Clare Avery Part 35

There was another pause, during which Clare was thinking.

"Am I the first to whom thou hast opened thine heart hereon, dear Clare?"

"Well, I did let fall a word or twain at home," said Clare smiling; "but I found no like feeling in response thereto."

"Not even from Margaret?"

"Meg thought there was work enough at home," replied Clare laughing, "and bade me go look in the mending-chest and see how much lacked doing."

"Nor Mistress Rachel?"

"Nay, Aunt Rachel said I might well be thankful that I was safe guarded at home, and had not need to go about this wicked world."

"Well, there is reason in that. It is a wicked world."

"Yet, surely, we need try to make it better, Mistress Tremayne: and--any woman could st.i.tch and cut as well as I."

Clare spoke earnestly. Mrs Tremayne considered a little before she answered.

"Well, dear heart, it may be the Lord doth design thee to be a worker in His vineyard. I cannot say it is not thus. But if so, Clare, it seemeth me that in this very cutting and st.i.tching, which thou so much mislikest, He is setting thee to school to be made ready. Ere we be fit for such work as thou wouldst have, we need learn much: and one lesson we have to learn is patience. It may be that even now, if the Lord mean to use thee thus, He is giving thee thy lesson of patience. 'Let patience have her perfect work.' 'Tis an ill messenger that is so eager to be about his errand, that he will needs run ere he be sent. The great Teacher will set thee the right lessons; see thou that they be well learned: and leave it to Him to call thee to work when He seeth thee ripe for it."

"I thank you," said Clare meekly; "maybe I am too impatient."

"'Tis a rare grace, dear heart,--true patience: but mind thou, that is not idleness nor backwardness. Some make that blunder, and think they be patiently waiting for work when work waiteth for them, and they be too lazy to put hand thereto. We need have a care on both sides."

But though Mrs Tremayne gave this caution, in her own mind she thought it much more likely that Blanche would need it than Clare.

"And why should I press back her eagerness, if the Lord hath need of her? Truly"--and Thekla Tremayne sighed as she said this to herself--"'the labourers are few.'"

Note 1. Philadelphia Carey, a kinswoman of Queen Elizabeth through her mother, Anne Boleyn.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

CATCHING MOTHS.

"For my soul's sake, Maid Marjorie, And yet for my soul's sake, - I know no wrong I've done to thee, Nor why thy heart should break."

Rather late on the same evening, Sir Thomas walked into the parsonage, and rapped with his silver-hilted staff at the parlour door. Clare had gone up-stairs, and Mrs Tremayne was at that moment alone. She offered to send for her young guests, but he declined; he wished first to speak with her apart. He told her that Don Juan had gone to London; and that before leaving him, that estimable young gentleman had frankly communicated the interesting fact that he was bound by an engagement to a lady of his own country.

"Now what think you? Were it better, or worser, that Blanche should know the same?"

"Better far--by all manner of means," said the Rector's wife decidedly.

"I thought even so," replied Sir Thomas. "I had come sooner, but my wife was contrary thereto."

Mrs Tremayne could not feel astonished to hear of any amount of unwisdom on the part of Lady Enville, but she merely repeated that she thought it much better that Blanche should know.

"It should help to open her eyes. Though in sooth I do think they be scantly so close shut as at the first."

"Then you will tell the child, good Mistress?"

"If you so desire, a.s.suredly: but wherefore not give her to wit yourself?"

Sir Thomas evidently shrank from the idea.

"For Blanche's sake, I do think it should be better, Sir Thomas. You speak as he that hath heard this right from Don Juan himself; for me, I have but heard it from you."

"Well, if needs must--for Blanche's sake, then," said her father, sighing. "Pray you, send the child hither."

In another minute Blanche came in, with a warm welcome for her father in eyes and voice.

"So thou comest home to-morrow, my skylark!" he said. "Art thou glad, or sorry, Blanche?"

"Oh, glad, Father!"

"And all we be glad likewise.--Blanche, Don John is gone to London."

"Yes, I guessed so much," she answered, in a rather constrained tone.

"And ere he went, my darling, he said somewhat unto me which I reckon it best thou shouldst hear likewise."

Blanche looked up, surprised and expectant,--perhaps with a shade of fear. Sir Thomas pa.s.sed his arm round her, and drew her close to him.

He antic.i.p.ated a burst of tears, and was ready to console her.

"He told me, dear heart, that he is, and for divers years hath so been, troth-plight unto a maiden of his own land, with whom he shall wed when he is gone home."

There was no light in the room but from the fire, and Blanche's head was bent low, so that her father could not see her face. But no tears answered him. No answer came at all. Sir Thomas was astonished.

"Doth it grieve thee, my Blanche?" he asked tenderly, when he had waited a moment.

He waited still another. Then the reply came.

"I suppose it was better I should know it," she said in a cold, hard voice.

"So thou seest, dear child, he meant not his fair words."

"No," she said, in the same tone. "He meant it not."

Sir Thomas let her go. He thought she bore it uncommonly well. She did not care much about it, thank Heaven! He was one of those numerous surface observers who think that a woman cannot be startled if she does not scream, nor be unhappy if she does not weep.

Blanche went quietly enough out of the room, saying that she would send Clare. Her father did not see that in the middle of the stairs she paused, with a tight grasp on the banister, till the deadly faintness should pa.s.s off which seemed to make the staircase go spinning round her. Clare noticed nothing peculiar when Blanche came into their bedroom, and told her that Sir Thomas was below. But as soon as her sister was gone, Blanche knelt down by the bed, and buried her face in the counterpane.

This, then, was the end. The shrine was not only deserted--it was destroyed: the idol was not only dethroned--it was broken, and shown to be nothing but stone. Don Juan was not true. Nay, worse--he never had been true. His vow of eternal fidelity was empty breath; his reiterated protestations of single and unalterable love were worth just nothing.

He had only been amusing himself. He had known all the while, that in exchange for the solid gold of her young heart, he was offering her the veriest pinchbeck.