The Claverings Part 67

"Why should his death make more difference to her than to you?" To this question Sir Hugh made no reply. "If you are thinking of society, she could be nowhere safer from any such necessity than with me. I never go out anywhere. I have never dined out, or even spent an evening in company, since Lord Ongar's death. And no one would come here to disturb her."

"I didn't mean that."

"I don't quite know what you did mean. From different causes, she and I are left pretty nearly equally without friends."

"Hermione is not left without friends," said Sir Hugh, with a tone of offence.

"Were she not, she would not want to come to me. Your society is in London, to which she does not come, or in other country houses than your own, to which she is not taken. She lives altogether at Clavering, and there is no one there except your uncle."

"Whatever neighborhood there is she has--just like other women."

"Just like some other women, no doubt. I shall remain in town for another month, and after that I shall go somewhere, I don't much care where. If Hermy will come to me as my guest, I shall be most happy to have her; and the longer she will stay with me the better. Your coming home need make no difference, I suppose."

There was a keenness of reproach in her tone as she spoke which even he could not but feel and acknowledge. He was very thick-skinned to such reproaches, and would have left this unnoticed had it been possible. Had she continued speaking he would have done so. But she remained silent, and sat looking at him, saying with her eyes the same thing that she had already spoken with her words. Thus he was driven to speak. "I don't know," said he, "whether you intend that for a sneer."

She was perfectly indifferent whether or no she offended him. Only that she had believed that the maintenance of her own dignity forbade it, she would have openly rebuked him, and told him that he was not welcome in her house. No treatment from her could, as she thought, be worse than he had deserved from her. His first enmity had injured her, but she could afford to laugh at his present anger. "It is hard to talk to you about Hermy without what you are pleased to call a sneer. You simply wish to rid yourself of her."

"I wish to do no such thing, and you have no right to say so."

"At any rate, you are ridding yourself of her society; and under those circ.u.mstances, she likes to come to me, I shall be glad to receive her.

Our life together will not be very cheerful, but neither she nor I ought to expect a cheerful life."

He rose from his chair now with a cloud of anger upon his brow. "I can see how it is," said he; "because everything has not gone smooth with yourself; you choose to resent it upon me. I might have expected that you would not have forgotten in whose house you met Lord Ongar."

"No, Hugh, I forget nothing: neither when I met him, nor how I married him, nor any of the events that have happened since. My memory, unfortunately, is very good."

"I did all I could for you, and should have been safe from your insolence."

"You should have continued to stay away from me, and you would have been quite safe. But our quarrelling in this way is foolish. We can never be friends, you and I, but we need not be open enemies. Your wife is my sister, and I say again that, if she likes to come to me, I shall be delighted to have her."

"My wife," said he, "will go to the house of no person who is insolent to me." Then he took his hat and left the room without further word or sign of greeting. In spite of his calculations and caution as to money--in spite of his well-considered arrangements and the comfortable provision for his future ease which he had proposed to himself; he was a man who had not his temper so much under control as to enable him to postpone his anger to his prudence. That little scheme for getting rid of his wife was now at an end. He would never permit her to go to her sister's house after the manner in which Julia had just treated him.

When he was gone, Lady Ongar walked about her own room smiling, and at first was well pleased with herself. She had received Archie's overture with decision, but at the same time with courtesy, for Archie was weak and poor and powerless. But she had treated Sir Hugh with scorn, and had been enabled to do so without the utterance of any actual reproach as to the wrongs which she herself had endured from him. He had put himself in her power, and she had not thrown away the opportunity. She had told him that she did not want his friends.h.i.+p, and would not be his friend; but she had done this without any loud abuse unbecoming to her either as a countess, a widow, or a lady. For Hermione she was sorry. Hermione now could hardly come to her. But even as to that, she did not despair. As things were going on, it would become almost necessary that her sister and Sir Hugh should be parted. Both must wish it; and if this were arranged, then Hermione should come to her.

But from this she soon came to think again about Harry Clavering. How was that matter to be decided, and what steps would it become her to take as to its decision? Sir Hugh had proposed to her that she should sell her interest in Ongar Park, and she had promised that she would make known her decision on that matter through her lawyer. As she had been saying this, she was well aware that she would never sell the property; but she had already resolved that she would at once give it back, without purchase-money, to the Ongar family, were it not kept that she might hand it over to Harry Clavering as a fitting residence for his lords.h.i.+p. If he might be there, looking after his cattle, going about with the steward subservient at his heels, ministering justice to the Enoch Gubbys and others, she would care nothing for the wants of any of the Courton people. But if such were not to be the destiny of Ongar Park--if there were to be no such Adam in that Eden--then the mother of the little lord might take herself thither, and revel among the rich blessings of the place without delay, and with no difficulty as to price. As to price--had she not already found the money-bag that had come to her to be too heavy for her hands?

But she could do nothing till that question was settled; and how was she to settle it? Every word that had pa.s.sed between her and Cecilia Burton had been turned over and over in her mind, and she could only declare to herself; as she had then declared to her visitor, that it must be as Harry should please. She would submit if he required her submission, but she could not bring herself to take steps to secure her own misery.

At last came the day on which the two Claverings were to go down to Harwich and put themselves on board Jack Stuart's yacht. The hail of the house in Berkeley Square was strewed with portmanteaus, gun cases, and fis.h.i.+ng rods, whereas the wine and packets of preserved meat, and the bottled beer and fish in tins, and the large box of cigars, and the prepared soups, had been sent down by Boxall, and were by this time on board the boat. Hugh and Archie were to leave London this day by train at 5 p.m., and were to sleep on board. Jack Stuart was already there, having a.s.sisted in working the yacht round from Brightlingsea.

On that morning Archie had a farewell breakfast at his club with Doodles, and after that, having spent the intervening hours in the billiard-room, a farewell luncheon. There had been something of melancholy in this last day between the friends, originating partly in the failure of Archie's hopes as to Lady Ongar, and partly, perhaps; in the bad character which seemed to cling to Jack Stuart and his craft.

"He has been at it for years, and always coming to grief;" said Doodles.

"He is just like a man I know, who has been hunting for the last ten years, and can't sit a horse at a fence yet. He has broken every bone in his side, and I don't suppose he ever saw a good thing to a finish. He never knows whether hounds are in cover, or where they are. His only idea is to follow another man's red coat till he comes to grief--and yet he will go on hunting. There are some people who never will understand what they can do and what they can't." In answer to this, Archie reminded his friend that on this occasion Jack Stuart would have the advantage of an excellent dry nurse, acknowledged to do very great on such occasions. Would not he, Archie Clavering, be there to pilot Jack Stuart and his boat? But, nevertheless, Doodles was melancholy, and went on telling stories about that unfortunate man who would continue to break his bones, though he had no apt.i.tude for out-of-door sports.

"He'll be carried home on a stretcher some day, you know," said Doodles.

"What does it matter if he is?" said Archie, boldly, thinking of himself and of the danger predicted for him. "A man can only die once."

"I call it quite a tempting of Providence," said Doodles.

But their conversation was chiefly about Lady Ongar and the Spy. It was only on this day that Doodles had learned that Archie had in truth offered his hand and been rejected, and Captain Clavering was surprised by the extent of his friend's sympathy. "It's a doosed disagreeable thing--a very disagreeable thing indeed," said Doodles. Archie, who did not wish to be regarded as specially unfortunate, declined to look at the matter in this light; but Doodles insisted. "It would cut me up like the very mischief;" he said. "I know that; and the worst of it is, that perhaps you wouldn't have gone on, only for me. I meant it all for the best, old fellow! I did, indeed. There--that's the game to you. I'm playing uncommonly badly this morning; but the truth is, I'm thinking of those women." Now, as Doodles was playing for a little money, this was really civil on his part.

And he would persevere in talking about the Spy, as though there were something in his remembrance of the lady which attracted him irresistibly to the subject. He had always boasted that in his interview with her he had come off with the victory, nor did he now cease to make such boasts; but still he spoke of her and her powers with an awe which would have completely opened the eyes of any one a little more sharp on such matters than Archie Clavering. He was so intent on this subject that he sent the marker out of the room so that he might discuss it with more freedom, and might plainly express his views as to her influence on his friend's fate.

"By George! she's a wonderful woman. Do you know I can't help thinking of her at night? She keeps me awake-she does, upon my honor."

"I can't say she keeps me awake, but I wish I had my seventy pounds back again."

"Do you know, if I were you, I shouldn't grudge it? I should think it worth pretty nearly all the money to have had the dealing with her."

"Then you ought to go halves."

"Well, yes--only that I ain't flush, I would. When one thinks of it, her absolutely taking the notes out of your waistcoat pocket--upon my-word, it's beautiful! She'd have had it out of mine if I hadn't been doosed sharp."

"She understood what she was about, certainly."

"What I should like to know is this: did she or did she not tell Lady Ongar what she was to do--about you, I mean? I dare say she did, after all."

"And took my money for nothing."

"Because you didn't go high enough, you know."

"But that was your fault. I went as high as you told me."

"No you didn't, Clavvy, not if you remember. But the fact is, I don't suppose you could go high enough. I shouldn't be surprised if such a woman as that wanted--thousands! I shouldn't indeed. I shall never forget the way in which she swore at me and how she abused me about my family. I think she must have had some special reason for disliking Warwicks.h.i.+re, she said such awful hard things about it."

"How did she know that you came from Warwicks.h.i.+re?"

"She did know it. If I tell you something, don't you say anything about it. I have an idea about her."

"What is it?"

"I didn't mention it before, because I don't talk much of those sort of things. I don't pretend to understand them, and it is better to leave them alone."

"But what do you mean?"

Doodles looked very solemn as he answered, "I think she's a medium--or a media, or whatever it ought to be called."

"What! one of those spirit-rapping people?" And Archie's hair almost stood on end as he asked the question.

"They don't rap now--not the best of them, that is. That was the old way, and seems to have been given up."

"But what do you suppose she did?"

"How did she know that the money was in your waistcoat pocket, now? How did she know that I came from Warwicks.h.i.+re? And then she had a way of going about the room as though she could have raised herself off her feet in a moment if she had chosen. And then her swearing, and the rest of it--so unlike any other woman, you know."

"But do you think she could have made Julia hate me?"

"Ah! I can't tell that. There are such lots of things going on now-a-days that a fellow can understand nothing about! But I've no doubt of this--if you were to tie her up with ropes ever so, I don't in the least doubt but what she'd get out." Archie was awe-struck, and made two or three strokes after this but then he plucked up his courage and asked a question--"Where do you suppose they get it from, Doodles?"