IT is comparatively easy to make a sudden and rapid decision which is (one says to one’s self) final, and settles in a moment some great question which affects a whole existence. As soon as the uncertainty is over, and the decision absolutely made, everything will come easy, the sufferer thinks. And such had been Clare’s feeling when she set out upon that wretched ramble, with Barbara toiling after her. She would cut herself off at once, and for ever, from all possibility of being remonstrated with, talked over, moved by any argument. She would cut the knot by one arbitrary action, and free herself. And when that was once successfully done she could live without sympathy, without any desire to cast herself upon the aid of others; she would be self-sufficing, self-contained, self-restraining all the rest of her life. Had not she already tried every relationship, and found it wanting? He who had made himself most dear to her—he who had pretended to love her, had deceived her. Every friend she had, in all probability, would disapprove of the encouragement she had given to Arthur, and would equally disapprove of the summary and insulting way in which she had cast him off. Her father—— Clare’s whole being surged up into excitement as she thought of him—excitement produced by two words which she had spied through a torn envelope, and which, perhaps, meant nothing in the world. Her brother—— Clare’s heart sank again into a sickness and miserable failing of all strength and composure. She was alone, absolutely alone, on the face of the earth. She had no one to fall back upon, to consult on such a terrible dilemma as never surely woman was placed in before. Walking under that blazing sun was fortunately of itself confusing and exhausting enough; but when she reached the Three Beeches, and sat down under their shadow, all the excitement in her mind seemed to meet and clash, filling up her brain with a buzz and sound which almost drove her mad. Not one great battle only, but two or three were raging within her, exploding now from one quarter, now from another, like a network of storms. The Three Beeches stood upon an elevated point, not very high in itself, but possessing all the importance of a hill in that level country. The trees were very fine old trees, with great gnarled trunks, and such a wealth of shadow under them as made the traveller rejoice. Seated on the thick mossy turf, Clare looked down and saw her home among its trees, and the bright white street of the village, and the Red House, burning in the sunshine. Even Thornleigh Church, which was seven miles off, was visible in the sunny distance. Almost every individual involved in the dim and confused drama which was weaving itself about her was at present, could she but see under those roofs, within her range of vision. She let her books, which she had brought with the intention of working hard at a translation, and thus making thought impossible, lie beside her, without so much as remembering their existence. Thinking! How could she help thinking? As long as there is nothing particular in your mind it is, of course, easy enough to occupy it with external matters; but when it is full—full to overflowing—— So Clare thought and thought till her mind felt on the eve of giving way. Arthur Arden had done her a great wrong—she thought he had done her such a wrong as a woman can never forgive to a man—not only preferred another to her, but made false pretences of love to her in order to enjoy that other’s society. Injury and contempt could go no further. He had wounded her heart, and struck a deadly blow at her maidenly dignity and pride. It was the bitterest wrong, and as such she had resented it.
And yet perhaps Arthur Arden had been wronged as bitterly; perhaps he had unconsciously suffered all his life, and Providence had thrown the means of avenging him into her hands. Edgar, too, had been wronged, not in the same way, but by being made an instrument of injury. But from the thought of Edgar she shrank as if it hurt her. And her father, whom she had held in such reverence, whom she had worshipped as the very embodiment of all the Ardens, whom she had loved so much, and who had loved her—Clare shrank as if a shower of blows were hailing upon her head. She had thrust herself into his secrets, and now she must bear the burden. If she had pried over his shoulder while he was living, how poor, how dishonourable she would have felt herself; but she had done worse than that. She had stolen a surreptitious glance at his secrets after he was dead. Then she tried to calm herself down. Perhaps the words she had read did not mean what they seemed to mean. Perhaps they referred to something perfectly innocent, some piece of generosity on her father’s part of which he had said nothing to any one. But Clare felt that even were this the case she must bear the penalty of her prying. She dared not examine further. Her half-secret, which perhaps was no secret, must be the burden of her existence. Never would she breathe it to any one, never allow she knew it; never, never escape from its burning presence. If there was wrong involved, she must allow that wrong to go on; she must not even permit herself to see or approach the man who was the sufferer. And then, all at once, in the midst of her rage and indignation against him, and while she still felt that no punishment was too great to requite his treachery, there suddenly came upon poor Clare, in her inexperience and ignorance, a fit of such yearning for him as rent her very heart. What! with her injury so fresh, with all that anger and bitterness in her mind? Dismayed, bewildered, torn asunder, she thus found out that love will not go out of the heart at any formal bidding. It turned and rent her, like the demon, convulsing her very soul with pain. She opened her heavy eyes after the struggle with a despairing amazement in them. Could it be? Was her judgment to go for nothing, and the bitter wound which he had inflicted to be no argument against him? Nothing but this sudden, appalling, unlooked-for experience could have convinced her. She felt so weak and miserable that she dropped her face into her hands, and wept, she who had been so indignant and so strong.
“Miss Arden, I’m afraid you’re feeling poorly,” said Barbara. “Do now, there’s a dear young lady, take this glass of wine. I made Mrs. Fillpot give it me for you, and I’ve kept it cool in the bottom of the basket. Do, Miss, there’s a dear.”
“I don’t want anything, Barbara,” said Clare; and in the greatness of her misery, she who had made up her mind for the rest of her life to be self-sufficing, to hide her secret in the depths of her being, and ask no one for sympathy, had all the difficulty in the world to keep from throwing her arms round Barbara’s neck, and weeping on her breast. She restrained the impulse, however, and kept her head away, and preserved her pride for the moment. This was, alas, how her heart treated Clare, after she had made up her mind that one decision was all that was necessary. She made her decision, expecting henceforward everlasting sadness, but calm; whereas, on the contrary, she was a prey to shock after shock, her heart melting, her resolution giving way, a hundred struggles going on within her. Her very determination made everything worse instead of better. “If you had not thrust everybody from you, if you had not condemned unheard, if you had not come away, and insulted, and abandoned him, all might yet have been well,” said the traitor within. And thus poor Clare waded in the very deepest of waters all that long miserable day.
It was nightfall when she returned to the house. Time had gone imperceptibly, as it goes when there is nothing tangible in it. Long threads of reverie linked themselves into each other, going on and on as if they need never end, and coming back after all manner of digressions to the same central subject. “Don’t you think it’s time to be going, Miss?” the maid would say timidly from time to time. “Presently,” Clare would reply, hopelessly opening or shutting the book she had taken into her hands; but at length the sun began to sink, and it was evident they must begin their walk if they were to reach Arden before night. Clare swallowed Barbara’s glass of wine, and then set out upon the weary way. “It has been a nice quiet day,” she said, mechanically, fibbing with the instinct of good society, as she got up. “I hope it has done you good, Miss,” said Barbara, doubtfully. “Oh, all the good in the world,” said Clare. And with this forlorn fiction she walked home again; so much less sure of her own constancy; so much more doubtful of the possibility of shutting up secrets in a silence as of the grave, and living a perpetual life of sacrifice, without hope or call for sympathy, than she had been in the morning. She was very weary when she got home, weary in body and mind, and could only answer with a faint smile to the message which Wilkins gave her from her cousin. Jeanie had not kept him back to-day; only one day had he been kept back by all the united influences which could be brought to bear upon him. Had not she been hard upon him, sending him summarily away from her for one offence, he who perhaps all his life had been wronged so bitterly? Had he been wronged? Or was it a dream? And had he wronged her—or was this but a cloud that might pass away? When Clare had got rid of the servants, who worried her, and had also got rid of the poor pretence of dining which she went through in order not to reveal to them too clearly the commotion in her mind, she had another struggle with herself. Whether he had wronged her or had been wronged, surely it was best now to keep him at arm’s length. Better not to see him again, never to attempt to lean her cares upon him, to confide her difficulties to him. Oh, no, no! He must never come again. And Clare said to herself that she must live and die alone.
When the servants had gone to bed she went into the library once more in her dressing-gown with her candle, and unlocked all its fastenings, and took out the bundle of papers to look at it. The words she had seen, which had woke her out of one dream of pain into another, and which had shaken her being so profoundly, were covered over now by the envelope into which she had thrust them. She took it out and weighed it in her hands—the neat harmless little packet, which looked as if it could harm nobody! What right had she to think it would harm any one? Clare took it out as if it had been something explosive, and weighed it, and gazed at it. All the house was silent. There was not one creature in it who was not sleeping or seeking sleep. Her own light and the dim one which awaited her in her chamber upstairs were the only signs of life in the great, silent, locked-up place. It was guarded without from every kind of assault; but who could ward off the enemies who existed insidious within?
Clare sat revolving this problem until the night was far gone. She did not seem able to leave it; and yet her thoughts made no progress. Was she the guardian of Arden, watching over that secret, unable to give it up, keeping the house and the family from harm? She thought it was some demon which kept tempting her to open the packet, and discover all. Most likely it would be the best thing to do. Most likely what she would find out on a closer examination would altogether clear up those words which had thrilled her through and through as with an electric touch. They were her father’s papers. Was it not her duty to find out what was in them, to be ready to vindicate her father’s memory should anyone ever assail it? She sat and weighed the papers in her hand, and listened to all the mysterious sounds and mutterings of the night, till at last her mind became incapable of any personal action, and she felt it grow into a furious battle-field of the two opinions which charged and encountered and were repulsed, and rallied again, and tore her in sunder. It was more weariness than anything else which prompted her at last to the step she took. She was reluctant to think of Edgar at all in the present state of her mind, and yet it was he who was most deeply concerned. After she had discussed it with herself for hours she rose up from the bureau at the bidding of a sudden impulse, and sat down in her father’s chair. It was a chair which nobody ever occupied, which the servants were afraid of—and Clare could not but feel with involuntary superstition that her father himself was somehow superintending this action of hers. She drew towards her the blotting book he had used, and which contained his paper—paper which no one had made any use of since his death. Was it he who was dictating to her, holding her pen, guiding her in this tardy justice? Her letter was very short, concise, and restrained. Before she began to write she did not feel as if she could address him again, or could know what to say; but old use and wont came to her aid.
“DEAR EDGAR (this is what Clare wrote)—I have found something among my father’s papers which seems to me very important—important to everybody, and to you above all. I have not read it—only just seen a word or two, which have made me very unhappy. I thought I would try to keep it from you, but I find I cannot. Come, then, and see what it means. It is of more importance than anything you can be doing. Come immediately, if I may ask that much of you. Come without any delay.
C. A.”
This was all the subscription she could bring herself to put. When she had read it over and placed it in an envelope, she put it down on the Squire’s blotting book in front of his seat. It was a kind of test which she felt herself to be applying. If the letter disappeared before morning she would accept it as a supernatural intimation that it ought not to be sent. If not—— To such a pass her mind had come, which was in general so free from any fear or consciousness of the supernatural. When she had done this she took up her packet again and went upstairs, and replaced it under her pillow. And thus worn out with all she had gone through Clare slept. She had not expected it, but she fell asleep like a child. Fatigue, excitement, and that long conflict had been of use to her in this one way from which she could derive any help or consolation. And then she had done something which must be decisive, and settle the matter without any further action of her own.