The Belton Estate Part 21

Clara was to start by a train leaving Perivale at eight on the following morning, and therefore there was not much time for conversation before she went. During the night she had endeavoured so to school herself as to banish from her breast all feelings of anger against her lover, and of regret as regarded herself. Probably, as she told herself, she had made more of what he had said than he had intended that she should do; and then, was it not natural that he should think much of his mother, and feel anxious as to the way in which she might receive his wife? As to that feeling of anger on her own part, she did get quit of it;--but the regret was not to be so easily removed. It was not only what Captain Aylmer had said about his mother that clung to her, doing much to quench her joy; but there had been a coldness in his tone to her throughout the evening which she recognised almost unconsciously, and which made her heart heavy in spite of the joy which she repeatedly told herself ought to be her own. And she also felt,--though she was not clearly aware that she did so,--that his manner towards her had become less affectionate, less like that of a lover, since the honest tale she had told him of her own early love for him. She should have been less honest, and more discreet; less bold, and more like in her words to the ordinary run of women. She had known this as she was packing last night, and she told herself that it was so as she was dressing on this her last morning at Perivale. That frankness of hers had not been successful, and she regretted that she had not imposed on herself some little reticence,--or even a little of that coy pretence of indifference which is so often used by ladies when they are wooed. She had been boldly honest, and had found her honesty to be bad policy. She thought, at least, that she had found its policy to be bad. Whether in truth it may not have been very good,--have been the best policy in the world,--tending to give her the first true intimation which she had ever yet received of the real character of the man who was now so much to her,--that is altogether another question.

But it was clearly her duty to make the best of her present circ.u.mstances, and she went down-stairs with a smiling face and with pleasant words on her tongue. When she entered the breakfast-room Captain Aylmer was there; but Martha was there also, and her pleasant words were received indifferently in the presence of the servant.

When the old woman was gone, Captain Aylmer a.s.sumed a grave face, and began a serious little speech which he had prepared. But he broke down in the utterance of it, and was saying things very different from what he had intended before he had completed it.

"Clara," he began, "what occurred between us yesterday is a source of great satisfaction to me."

"I am glad of that, Frederic," said she, trying to be a little less serious than her lover.

"Of very great satisfaction," he continued; "and I cannot but think that we were justified by the circ.u.mstances of our position in forgetting for a time the sad solemnity of the occasion. When I remember that it was but the day before yesterday that I followed my dear old aunt to the grave, I am astonished to think that yesterday I should have made an offer of marriage."

What could be the good of his talking in this strain? Clara, too, had had her own misgivings on the same subject,--little qualms of conscience that had come to her as she remembered her old friend in the silent watches of the night; but such thoughts were for the silent watches, and not for open expression in the broad daylight.

But he had paused, and she must say something.

"One's excuse to oneself is this,--that she would have wished it so."

"Exactly. She would have wished it. Indeed she did wish it, and therefore--" He paused in what he was saying, and felt himself to be on difficult ground. Her eye was full upon him, and she waited for a moment or two as though expecting that he would finish his words. But as he did not go on, she finished them for him.

"And therefore you sacrificed your own feelings." Her heart was becoming sore, and she was unable to restrain the utterance of her sarcasm.

"Just so," said he; "or, rather, not exactly that. I don't mean that I am sacrificed; for, of course, as I have just now said, nothing as regards myself can be more satisfactory. But yesterday should have been a solemn day to us; and as it was not--"

"I thought it very solemn."

"What I mean is that I find an excuse in remembering that I was doing what she asked me to do."

"What she asked you to do, Fred?"

"What I had promised, I mean."

"What you had promised? I did not hear that before." These last words were spoken in a very low voice, but they went direct to Captain Aylmer's ears.

"But you have heard me declare," he said, "that as regards myself nothing could be more satisfactory."

"Fred," she said, "listen to me for a moment. You and I engaged ourselves to each other yesterday as man and wife."

"Of course we did."

"Listen to me, dear Fred. In doing that there was nothing in my mind unbefitting the sadness of the day. Even in death we must think of life, and if it were well for you and me that we should be together, it would surely have been but a foolish ceremony between us to have abstained from telling each other that it would be so because my aunt had died last week. But it may be, and I think it is the case, that the feelings arising from her death have made us both too precipitate."

"I don't understand how that can be."

"You have been anxious to keep a promise made to her, without considering sufficiently whether in doing so you would secure your own happiness; and I--"

"I don't know about you, but as regards myself I must be considered to be the best judge."

"And I have been too much in a hurry in believing that which I wished to believe."

"What do you mean by all this, Clara?"

"I mean that our engagement shall be at an end;--not necessarily so for always. But that as an engagement binding us both, it shall for the present cease to exist. You shall be again free--"

"But I don't choose to be free."

"When you think of it you will find it best that it should be so. You have performed your promise honestly, even though at a sacrifice to yourself. Luckily for you,--for both of us, I should say,--the full truth has come out; and we can consider quietly what will be best for us to do, independently of that promise. We will part, therefore, as dear friends, but not as engaged to each other as man and wife."

"But we are engaged, and I will not hear of its being broken."

"A lady's word, Fred, is always the most potential before marriage;--and you must therefore yield to me in this matter. I am sure your judgment will approve of my decision when you think of it.

There shall be no engagement between us. I shall consider myself quite free,--free to do as I please altogether; and you, of course, will be free also."

"If you please, of course it must be so."

"I do please, Fred."

"And yesterday, then, is to go for nothing."

"Not exactly. It cannot go for nothing with me. I told you too many of my secrets for that. But nothing that was done or said yesterday is to be held as binding upon either of us."

"And you made up your mind to that last night?"

"It is at any rate made up to that now. Come,--I shall have to go without my breakfast if I do not eat it at once. Will you have your tea now, or wait and take it comfortably when I am gone?"

Captain Aylmer breakfasted with her, and took her to the station, and saw her off with all possible courtesy and attention, and then he walked back by himself to his own great house in Perivale. Not a word more had been said between him and Clara as to their engagement, and he recognised it as a fact that he was no longer bound to her as her future husband. Indeed, he had no power of not recognising the fact, so decided had been her language, and so imperious her manner. It had been of no avail that he had said that the engagement should stand.

She had told him that her voice was to be the more potential, and he had felt that it was so. Well;--might it not be best for him that it should be so? He had kept his promise to his aunt, and had done all that lay in his power to make Clara Amedroz his wife. If she chose to rebel against her own good fortune simply because he spoke to her a few words which seemed to him to be fitting, might it not be well for him to take her at her word?

Such were his first thoughts; but as the day wore on with him, something more generous in his nature came to his aid, and something also that was akin to real love. Now that she was no longer his own, he again felt a desire to have her. Now that there would be again something to be done in winning her, he was again stirred by a man's desire to do that something. He ought not to have told her of the promise. He was aware that what he had said on that point had been dropped by him accidentally, and that Clara's resolution after that had not been unnatural. He would, therefore, give her another chance, and resolved before he went to bed that night that he would allow a fortnight to pa.s.s away, and would then write to her, renewing his offer with all the strongest declarations of affection which he would be enabled to make.

Clara on her way home was not well satisfied with herself or with her position. She had had great joy, during the few hours of joy which had been hers, in thinking of the comfort which her news would give to her father. He would be released from all further trouble on her account by the tidings which she would convey to him,--by the tidings which she had intended to convey to him. But now the story which she would have to tell would by no means be comfortable. She would have to explain to him that her aunt had left no provision for her, and that would be the beginning and the end of her story. As for those conversations about the fifteen hundred pounds,--of them she would say nothing. When she reflected on what had taken place between herself and Captain Aylmer she was more resolved than ever that she would not touch any portion of that money,--or of any money that should come from him. Nor would she tell her father anything of the marriage engagement which had been made on one day and unmade on the next. Why should she add to his distress by showing him what good things might have been hers had she only had the wit to keep them?

No;--she would tell her father simply of the will, and then comfort him in his affliction as best she might.

As regarded her position with Captain Aylmer, the more she thought of it the more sure she became that everything was over in that quarter.

She had, indeed, told him that such need not necessarily be the case,--but this she had done in her desire at the moment to mitigate the apparent authoritativeness of her own decision, rather than with any idea of leaving the matter open for further consideration. She was sure that Captain Aylmer would be glad of a means of escape, and that he would not again place himself in the jeopardy which the promise exacted from him by his aunt had made so nearly fatal to him.

And for herself, though she still loved the man,--so loved him that she lay back in the corner of her carriage weeping behind her veil as she thought of what she had lost,--still she would not take him, though he should again press his suit upon her with all the ardour at his command. No, indeed. No man should ever be made to regard her as a burden imposed upon him by an extorted promise! What;--let a man sacrifice himself to a sense of duty on her behalf! And then she repeated the odious words to herself, till she came to think that it had fallen from his lips and not from her own.

In writing to her father from Perivale, she had merely told him of Mrs. Winterfield's death and of her own intended return. At the Taunton station she met the well-known old fly and the well-known old driver, and was taken home in the accustomed manner. As she drew nearer to Belton the sense of her distress became stronger and stronger, till at last she almost feared to meet her father. What could she say to him when he should repeat to her, as he would be sure to do, his lamentation as to her future poverty?

On arriving at the house she learned that he was up-stairs in his bedroom. He had been ill, the servant said, and though he was not now in bed, he had not come down-stairs. So she ran up to his room, and finding him seated in an old arm-chair by the fire-side, knelt down at his feet, as she took his hand and asked him as to his health.

"What has Mrs. Winterfield done for you in her will?" These were the first words he spoke to her.

"Never mind about wills now, papa. I want you to tell me of yourself."

"Nonsense, Clara. Answer my question."

"Oh, papa, I wish you would not think so much about money for me."

"Not think about it? Why am I not to think about it? What else have I got to think of? Tell me at once, Clara, what she has done. You ought to have written to me directly the will was made known."