IT would be difficult to conceive anything more strangely lonely and bleak than Arden seemed to Clare the day after her brother and cousin left it. She wandered about the vacant rooms and out upon the terrace, and kept thinking that she heard their voices and steps, and caught glimpses of them turning the corners. But they were gone—Edgar to come back again shortly, so that could scarcely be counted a calamity. But Arthur—would he come at all? Would he be years of coming, as he had been before? It seemed to Clare that it was years instead of weeks since she had dwelt thus alone and tranquil, waiting for Edgar’s return. She had been alone, but then her loneliness had seemed natural. She took it as a matter of course, scarcely pausing to think that she was different from others, or, if she ever did so, feeling her isolation almost as much a sign of superiority as of anything less pleasant. She was the Chatelaine—the one sole lady of the land, in her soft maidenly state; and the visits of the kind friends who offered themselves on all sides to come and stay with her, out of pity for her solitude, had been more a trouble than a pleasure to her. But now it seemed to Clare that she would be thankful for any companionship—anything that would free her from her own thoughts. She felt like a boat which had drifted ashore, like something which had been thrown out of the ordinary course of existence. Life had gone away and left her; and yet she was more full of life than she had ever been before, tingling to the very finger points, expecting, hoping, looking for a thousand new things to come. Once it had not occurred to her to look for anything new; but now every hour as it came thrilled her with consciousness that her life might be changed in it, that it might prove the supreme moment which should decide the character and colour of all the rest.
And yet what hope, what chance, what possibility was there that this auspicious moment should come now? Had not “everybody” been driven away? This was how she phrased it to herself—not one person, but every one. Who could approach her now in the solitude which was a more effectual guard than twenty brothers? If “any one” wished to come, if any one had anything to say, why, the visit must be postponed, and the words left unsaid, until—how could she tell how long? Three years had passed between Arthur Arden’s two last visits. What if three years should come and go again before Chance or Fate brought him back? It could only be Chance that had done it this time, not Providence; for if Providence had been the agent, then the visit must have come to something, and not ended without result. Thus Clare mused, as it were, in the depths of her being, concealing even from herself what she was thinking. When Arthur Arden’s name flitted across that part of her mind which lay, so to speak, in the light, she blushed, and started with a sense of guilt; but in the shadowy corners, where thought has no need of words, and where a hundred aimless cogitations pass like breath, and no sense of responsibility comes in, she put no bridle upon her dreaming fancy. And it was all new to her; for dreams had never been much in Clare’s way. Hers had been a practical intelligence, busied with many things to do and think of—the village and her subjects in it; the legislation necessary for them; the wants of the old women and the children—a hundred matters of detail which deserved the consideration of a wise ruler, and yet must be kept subordinate to greater principles. Even the larger questions affecting the estate had come more or less into Clare’s hands. She had been allowed no time to dream, and she had not dreamt; but now idleness and loneliness fell upon her both together. She was weary of the village and its concerns. She had nothing else to occupy her. And, indeed, she had no desire for other occupations, but preferred this new musing—this maze of fancies—to anything else in earth and heaven.
But the evenings were dreary, dreary, when darkness fell, and the wistful shadows of the summer night gathered about her, and no one came to break the silence. She tried to follow her brother in imagination, and to picture to herself what he might be doing—hanging about Gussy Thornleigh, perhaps—letting himself drift into the channel indicated by Lady Augusta. Ah!—and then, while she thought she was still thinking of Edgar and Gussy, Clare’s fancies would take their flight in another direction to another hero. When this, however, had gone on for a few days and nights, she was seized with a sense that it must not continue—that such a way of passing her time was fatal. It was much too like the girls whom Clare had read of in novels, whom she had indignantly denied to be true representatives of womankind, and whom she had scorned and blushed for in her heart. Was she to become one of that maudlin, sentimental band, to whom love, as novel-writers and essayists said, was everything, and to whom the inclinations of one man in this world conveyed life or death? Clare’s modesty, and her pride, and her good sense, all rose in arms. She had given up all her former pursuits for these first dreamy days; but now she woke up, and tied on her hat, and forced herself down the avenue to the village. There something was sure to be found to do—whatever might be the state of her own mind or its fancies. She walked straight to Sarah’s cottage, where Mary Smith and Ellen Jones were still busy with their needlework and their clear-starching. Sarah was sitting out in her cottage doorway, enjoying the evening calm. The sun had not yet set, but it had fallen below the line of the trees; and Sarah’s doorway was shadowy and cool. The old woman had many grumbles bottled up for Clare’s private enjoyment, which had been aggravated by keeping. Mary was “the thoughtlessest lass.” She had burned a big hole in Miss Somers’ muslin dressing-gown with an iron that was too hot. She had torn Mrs Pimpernel’s lace; and then, instead of trying to do her best for the future, she had cried her eyes out, and become hysterical, and could do nothing at all. Nor was Ellen a great deal better. Sally, next door, had got a piece of work clean spoiled in her hands; and some things as she was making for Mrs Solms, the Rector’s housekeeper, had just got to be unpicked on the spot. “The back was put to the front, and the wrong side to the right side—as if she had tried!” said old Sarah. “It couldn’t be accident, Miss Clare; and the sleeves put in bottom up. It’s enough to break a body’s heart, after all the trouble I’ve took.” The two culprits stood curtseying with their aprons to their eyes while this dreadful picture was being drawn; and Clare put on her most solemn face, and told them she was very sorry. “I hope I shall never hear anything of the kind again,” she said, in her most serious tones; and then stopped, and sighed with a weariness which had never before moved her. “Am I to go on all my life,” she said to herself, “looking after Mary’s clear-starching and Ellen’s sewing? Is this all I am to have out of the existence which is so rich and full to some people?” And for the moment Clare thought she understood Helena Thornleigh and the rest of the young women who wanted something to do. But this, the reader will perceive, was not really because she wanted anything to do, or was dissatisfied with the conditions of her own life, but only because she was in that state of suspense which turns existence all awry, and demands excitement of some kind outside to neutralise the excitement within.
Clare’s mind, however, was suddenly diverted from herself when she looked into old Sarah’s living-room, and saw another figure, which she had not before remarked, seated in the background. When Sarah perceived her keen look inside, she approached Clare with nods and significant glances. “Yes, Miss,” she said in a whisper, “she’s there, and as sensible as you or me, and the sweetest little thing that ever was, though she’s Scotch, and I don’t hold with Scotch, not in general. Just you go in and say a word to her, Miss Clare.”
“I don’t think she ought to be left by herself,” said Clare, drawing back with a certain repugnance. Jeanie was seated in a low chair, and looked like a child—her pretty head, with its golden hair closely braided about it, bent over her work. She looked so serious, so absorbed in her occupation, so far removed from the feverish regions in which Clare felt herself to be wandering, that the dislike she had felt for this mysterious child suddenly warmed into a certain curiosity and interest. She paused on the threshold, looking in, feeling as if the step she was about to take was much more important than an innocent every-day entrance into Sarah’s cottage; but after that momentary hesitation she went in, causing the little recluse to raise her head. When she saw who it was Jeanie rose, and gave Miss Arden a chair—not as Mary or Ellen would have done, but with simple courtesy. She stood until her visitor was seated, and then sat down again. But still she did not give to Clare that curtsey which she felt to be her due.
“I am glad to see you are better,” Clare said, with a little stiffness; and then she was melted in spite of herself by the soft wistful look in little Jeanie’s eyes. “Has your mother left you alone?” she said. “It must be strange to you to be left alone in such a place as this.”
“They are all kind, kind,” said Jeanie. “I’m no lonely, as if it was new to me; and then I have something to do. My head has been so strange, I have never had a seam for so long. And now it is as if I was coming back——”
“Poor child!” said Clare, “does it make you suffer much? Do you feel ill when—— I mean when—your head has been strange, as you say——?”
“I canna think about it,” said Jeanie, softly; “I mustna think about it; the world begins to swim and swim, and the light to go out of my eyes—— I will sew my seam, if ye please.”
And then there was a little pause, and everything was still. Old Sarah and her pupils stayed outside, and the murmur of their voices sounded softly in the summer air; but within the clock ticked, and the white ashes from the half-dead fire fell now and then faintly on the hearth, and Jeanie’s “seam” rustled as she worked; that was all. Though there was that ghost of a fire, the room, with its tiny window and thick walls, was cooler than many a much better ventilated house; and the light was cool and green and shadowy, coming through the tall woody branches of a geranium trained upon a fanshaped framework, which answered instead of a curtain to the little window. Clare sat embarrassed, not knowing how to address this creature, who was so unlike anything she had known or encountered before.
“Do you remember your home? I suppose it is a place very different from Arden?” she said at last.
“Home! oh it’s bonnie, bonnie!—bonnier than Arden,” cried Jeanie, and then she paused with instinctive courtesy. “But Arden is beautiful,” she said. “It’s a’ so beautiful that God has made. I canna’ bide towns and streets and places that are built—but Arden—— and the green grass and the bonnie trees——”
Where had the child learned to think of other people’s sentiments—was it natural to her nation—or only to her individual character? Clare felt that the Marys and Ellens of the village would not have thought of any such refinement. “Do you live among the hills?” she said.
“On Loch Arroch side. The trees are very bonnie, and so are all the parks and pleasant fields,” said Jeanie; “but if you were to see the hills up among the clouds, and the bonnie water at their feet! and then when you live always there, and your heart gets full——”
“Poor child!” said Clare again, growing more and more interested in spite of herself. “You are too young to have felt your heart grow full as you say.”
“I am seventeen,” said Jeanie. “Plenty folk have learned trouble before that. Granny says she had nobody to take care of her when she was seventeen—neither father nor mother, nor—— And I have always her—— Oh, if you had seen my Willie!” she said suddenly, “he was aye so bright and so kind. Miss Arden, you have a brother too——”
“My poor child!” cried Clare. “Jeanie, Jeanie, if that is your name, don’t think of that. For your poor grandmother’s sake don’t do anything to bring it on.”
“I cannot bring it on,” said Jeanie; “it comes when I am not thinking of Willie, if there is ever a time I am not thinking of him. It’s best to let me cry. Oh my bonnie boy! and in the sea, Miss Arden; think of that! no a grave under the sod, where I could go and greet, but in yon great, great, wild stormy sea—it is that I cannot bear.”
“Let us talk of something else,” said Clare, trembling. “Do you like old Sarah? I hope she is very attentive to you and does everything you want. You must come to the hall some day and see me; I am all alone in the hall.”
“Where has he gone that you are your lane?” said Jeanie; and she raised her head with a look of anxiety which startled Clare.
“He! whom?” cried Miss Arden; she drew herself up and looked at Jeanie from her altitude, feeling all her prejudices reawaken. Jeanie, for her part, put down her work in her lap, and crossed her hands softly with a smile and a sigh.
“I am meaning your bonnie brother, Miss Arden. Oh, I wish he was my brother! We dinna know him, but we’re awfu’ fond of him, both grannie and me.”
“Fond of him!” exclaimed Clare, more and more bewildered. “Do you know what you say?”
“Oh aye, real fond,” said innocent Jeanie; “he has such a bonnie light in his eyes.”
And while Clare sat in a state of partial stupefaction wondering what this might mean, there was a little stir at the door, and Mrs. Murray came in, as it were to the rescue, before her child could commit herself more.