“MAY I walk with you, if you are going to the village?” said Arthur Arden, when Clare met him in one of the side walks, two or three mornings after his arrival. She had not seen him until he was by her side, and all this time had avoided him strenuously, allowing herself to be deluged with Lord Newmarch’s philosophy, and feeling by instinct that to keep out of her cousin’s way as long as she was able would be her soundest policy. She would have abandoned her walk had she known that he was in the park waiting for her; but now it was too late to escape. Clare gave him a little bow of assent, feeling that she could not help herself; and she did not take any trouble to conceal her sentiments. The pucker came to her brow which Edgar knew so well, and the smile that just touched her lips was merely a smile of civility—cold and reluctant. She was, indeed, so far from disguising her feelings that Arthur, who was learned in such matters, drew a certain encouragement from her frank discontent. He was clever enough to know that if this reluctance had been quite genuine, Clare would have taken some pains to restrain it. Her faint smile and only half-suppressed frown were the best warrants to him that she was not so perfectly indifferent as she had attempted to appear.
“You don’t want me?” he said, with a plaintive intonation. “I can see that very clearly; and you will never give me a chance of saying a word. But, Miss Arden, you must not be angry with me, if I have schemed for this moment. I am not going to say anything that will offend you. I only want to beg you to pardon me for what I once said in ignorance. I did not know Edgar then. What a fine fellow he is! I came disposed to hate him, and find fault with everything he did and said. But now I feel for him as if he were my younger brother. He is one of the finest young fellows I ever met. I feel that I must say this to you, at whatever cost.”
The blood rushed to Clare’s cheek, and her heart thumped wildly in her breast, but she did all she could to keep her stiff demeanour. “I am glad you acknowledge it,” she said, ungraciously; and then with a little rush of petulance, which was more agitation than anger—“If that was how you thought of my brother—if you intended to hate him—why did you come here?”
A pause followed upon this hasty question—a pause which had the highest dramatic effect, and told immensely upon the questioner, notwithstanding all her power of self-control. “Must I answer?” said Arthur Arden, at last, subduing his voice, and permitting a certain tremulousness to appear in it—for he had full command of his voice; “I will, if I must; but in that case you must promise not to be angry, for it will not be my fault.”
“I do not want any answer,” said Clare, seeing her danger. “I meant, how could you come with that opinion of Edgar? and why should you have formed such an opinion of Edgar? He has done nothing to make any man think ill of him—of that, I am very sure. An old prejudice that never had any foundation; because he did not resemble the rest of us——”
“Dear Miss Arden, do not I confess it?” said her cousin, humbly. “The echo of a prejudice—that was all—which could never stand for a moment before the charm of his good nature. If there are any words which will express my recantation more strongly teach them to me, and I will repeat them on my knees.”
“Edgar would be much surprised to see you on your knees,” said Clare, who felt the clouds melting away from her face, in spite of herself.
“He need not see me,” said Arthur; “the offence was not committed in his knowledge. I am in that attitude now, though no one can see it. Will not the Lady Clare forgive her poor kinsman when he sues—on his knees?”
“Pray—pray, don’t be ridiculous!” said Clare, in momentary alarm; but Arthur Arden was not the kind of man to go the length of making himself ridiculous. Emotion which is very great has not time to think of such restraints; but he was always conscious of the limitations which it is wise to put to feeling. His homage was spiritual, not external; but still, he allowed her to feel that he might at any moment throw himself at her feet, and betray that which he had the appearance of concealing so carefully. Clare went on, unconsciously quickening her steps, surrounded by an atmosphere of suppressed passion. He did not attempt to take her hand—to arrest her in any way; but yet he spread round her that dazzling web which was woven of looks and tones, and hints of words that were not said.
“It is not anything new to me,” she said, hurriedly. “I always knew what Edgar was. It is very sad to think that poor papa would never understand him; and, then, his education—— One cannot wonder that he should be different. My grand anxiety is that he should marry suitably,” Clare added, falling into a confidential strain, without knowing it. “He has so little knowledge of the world.”
“Does he mean to marry? Lucky fellow!” said Arthur Arden, with a sigh.
“It does not matter much whether he means it or not,” said Clare. “Of course he must. And then, he has such strange notions. If he fell in love with any girl in the village, I believe he would marry her as soon as if she were a Duke’s daughter. It is very absurd. It is something wanting, I think. He does not seem to see the most ordinary rules of life.”
“Lucky fellow, I say!” said Arthur Arden. “Do you know, I think it is angelic of me not to hate him. One might forgive him the houses and lands; but for the blessed power of doing what he pleases, it is hard not to hate him. Of course, he won’t be able to do as he pleases. If nobody else steps in, Fate will, and baulk him. There is some consolation to be got out of that.”
“It does not console me to think so,” said Clare. “But look—here is something very pretty. Look at them, and tell me if you think the girl is a great beauty. I don’t know whether I admire her or not, with those wild, strange, visionary eyes.”
The sight, which was very pretty, which suddenly stopped them as they talked, was that of Mrs. Murray and her granddaughter. They were seated under a hawthorn, the whiteness of which had begun to tarnish, but which still scented the air all round. The deeper green of the elms behind, and the sweet silken greenness of the limes in the foreground framed in this little picture. The old lady sat knitting, with a long length of stocking depending from her hands, sometimes raising her head to look at her charge, sometimes sending keen glances up or down the avenue, like sentinels, against any surprise. Jeanie had no occupation whatever. She lay back, with her eyes fixed on the sky, over which the lightest of white clouds were passing. Her lap was full of flowers, bits of hawthorn, and of the yellow-flowered gorse and long-plumed grasses—the bouquet of a child; but she was paying no attention to the flowers. Her eyes and upturned face were absorbed, as it were, in the fathomless blue of the sky.
“I hope she is better,” said Clare, in her clear voice. “I am very glad you can bring her out to enjoy the park. They say the air is so good here. Do you find it much milder than Scotland? I suppose it is very cold among the hills.”
“Cold, oh, no cold,” said Mrs. Murray, “but no so dry as here among your fine parks and all your pleasant fields. Jeanie, do you see the young lady? She likes to come out, and does nothing, the idle thing, but look up at the sky. I canna tell what she finds there for my part. She tells me stories for an hour at a time about all the bits of fleecy clouds. Ye may think it idle, Miss Arden, and a bad way to bring up a young thing; but the doctors a’ tell me it’s the best for the puir bairn.”
“I don’t think it idle,” said Clare, who nevertheless in her mind highly disapproved. “When one is ill, of course one must seek health first of all.”
“Jeanie, do ye no see the young lady?” whispered the grandmother; but neither of them rose, neither attempted to make that curtsey of which Clare felt herself defrauded. When the girl was thus called, she raised her head and looked up in Clare’s face with a soft child-like smile.
“I am better, thank you,” she said, with a dreamy sense that only a question about her health could have been addressed to her. “I am quite better, quite better. I canna feel now that it’s me at all.”
“What does she mean?” said Clare, wondering.
“That was the worst of all,” said Jeanie, answering for herself. “I never could forget that it was me. Whatever I did, or wherever I was, it was aye me, me—but now the world is coming back, and that sky. Granny! do ye mind what you promised to say?”
“It was to tell you how thankful we are,” said Mrs. Murray, looking up from her knitting, yet going on with it without intermission, “that ye let us come here, Miss Arden. It is like balm to my poor bairn. When it’s no the body that’s ailing, but the mind, it’s hard to ken what to do. I’ve tried many a thing they told me to try—physic and strengthening meat, and all; but there’s nothing like the sweet air and the quiet—and many, many thanks for it. Jeanie, Jeanie, my darlin’, what has come to you?”
The girl had gradually raised herself upright, and had been seated with her eyes fixed in admiration upon Clare, who was as a goddess to the young creature, thus dreaming her way back into life; but there had been a rustle by Clare’s side which had attracted her attention. It was when she saw Arthur Arden that she gave that cry. It rang out shrill and wild through the stillness, startling all the echoes, startling the very birds among the trees. Then she started up wildly to her feet, and clutched at her grandmother, who rose also in sudden fright and dismay. “Look at him, look at him!” said Jeanie—“that man! it’s that man!”—and with every limb trembling, and wild cries bursting from her lips, which grew fainter and fainter as her strength failed, she fell back into the arms which were opened to support her. Arthur Arden started forward to offer his assistance, but Mrs. Murray waved him away with an impatient exclamation.
“Oh, if you would go and no come near us—oh, if you would keep out of her sight! No, my bonnie Jeanie—no, my darlin’! it’s no that man. It’s one that’s like him, one ye never saw before. No, my bonnie bairn! Oh, Jeanie, Jeanie, have ye the courage to look, and I’ll show ye the difference? Sir, dinna go away, dinna go away. Oh, Miss Arden, keep him still till my darling opens her eyes and sees that he’s no the man.”
Clare stood silent in her consternation, looking from one to the other. Did it mean that Arthur knew these strangers? that there was a secret, some understanding she had not been meant to know, some undisclosed wrong? She suspected her cousin; she hated that old, designing, artful woman; she feared the mad girl. “I can do nothing,” she said hoarsely, with quivering lips, drawing apart, and sheltering herself behind a tree. And then she hated herself that her first movement was anger and not pity. As for Jeanie, her cries sank into moans, her trembling increased, until suddenly she dropped so heavily on her grandmother’s shoulder as to draw Mrs. Murray down on her knees. They sank together into the deep, cool grass—the young creature like one dead, the old woman, in her pale strength and self-restraint, holding her fast. She asked no help from either of the two astonished spectators, but laid the girl down softly, and put back her hair, and fanned her, with the gentleness of a nurse to an infant, murmuring all the while words which her nursling could not hear. “It’s no him, my bonnie bairn; oh, my Jeanie, it’s no him! It’s a young gentleman, one ye never saw—maybe one of his kin. Oh, my poor bairn, here’s it come all back again—all to do over again! Why did I bring her here?”
“What has here to do with it? what do you mean by calling Mr. Arden that man? what is the meaning of it all?” said Clare, coming forward. “I must know the meaning of it. Yes, I see she has fainted; but you are used to it—you are not unhappy about her; and I am unhappy, very unhappy, to know what it means.”
The three women were by this time alone, for Arthur Arden had gone for help from the Hall, which was the nearest house, as soon as Jeanie fainted. Clare came forward, almost imperious, to where the poor girl was lying. It was a thing the grandmother was used to, she said to herself. The old woman made no fuss about it, and why should she make any fuss? “I don’t want to be cruel,” she said, almost crying in her excitement; “if you are anxious about her, tell me so; but you don’t look anxious. And what, oh, what does it mean?”
“It means our ain private affairs, that neither you nor any stranger has aught to do with,” said Mrs. Murray, looking up with an air as proud as Clare’s own. And then she returned in a moment to her natural tone. “I am no anxious because she has fainted. She will come out of her faint, poor bairn; but it’s sore, sore work, when you think it’s all passing away, that the look of a man she never saw before should bring it back again. I canna tell ye my private history, Miss Arden. I may have done wrong in my day, and I may be suffering for it; but I canna tell it a’ to a stranger; and that is what it means—no an accident, but our ain private affairs that are between me and my Maker, and no one beside.”
“But she knew Mr. Arden!” said Clare.
“The man she took him for is dead; he was a man that did evil to me and mine, and brought us to evil,” said the grandmother, solemnly. “The life is coming back to her; and oh, if ye would but go away, and keep yon gentleman away! If we were to bide here for a year, I could tell ye no more.”
Wretched with suspicion, unbelieving and unhappy, Clare turned away. Had she been capable of feeling any additional blow to her pride, that dismissal would have given it; but her pride was in abeyance for the moment, swallowed up in wonder and anxious curiosity. “The man she took him for is dead”—was that true, or a lie invented to screen one who had betrayed poor Jeanie. The girl herself could not surely be deceived. And if Arthur Arden had wrought this ruin, what remained for Clare?