The Belton Estate Part 63

"There need be no question of Aylmer Park."

"There shall be none!"

"But, so much being allowed, you will be my wife?"

"No, Captain Aylmer;--no. I cannot be your wife. Do not press it further; you must know that on such a subject I would think much before I answered you. I have thought much, and I know that I am right."

"And your promised word is to go for nothing?"

"If it will comfort you to say so, you may say it. If you do not perceive that the mistake made between us has been as much your mistake as mine, and has injured me more than it has injured you, I will not remind you of it,--will never remind you of it after this."

"But there has been no mistake,--and there shall be no injury."

"Ah, Captain Aylmer! you do not understand; you cannot understand.

I would not for worlds reproach you; but do you think I suffered nothing from your mother?"

"And must I pay for her sins?"

"There shall be no paying, no punishment, and no reproaches. There shall be none at least from me. But,--do not think that I speak in anger or in pride,--I will not marry into Lady Aylmer's family."

"This is too bad,--too bad! After all that is past, it is too bad!"

"What can I say? Would you advise me to do that which would make us both wretched?"

"It would not make me wretched. It would make me happy. It would satisfy me altogether."

"It cannot be, Captain Aylmer. It cannot be. When I speak to you in that way, will you not let it be final?"

He paused a moment before he spoke again, and then he turned sharp upon her. "Tell me this, Clara; do you love me? Have you ever loved me?" She did not answer him, but stood there, listening quietly to his accusations. "You have never loved me, and yet you have allowed yourself to say that you did. Is not that true?" Still she did not answer. "I ask you whether that is not true?" But though he asked her, and paused for an answer, looking the while full into her face, yet she did not speak. "And now I suppose you will become your cousin's wife?" he said. "It will suit you to change, and to say that you love him."

Then at last she spoke. "I did not think that you would have treated me in this way, Captain Aylmer! I did not expect that you would insult me!"

"I have not insulted you."

"But your manner to me makes my task easier than I could have hoped it to be. You asked me whether I ever loved you? I once thought that I did so; and so thinking, told you, without reserve, all my feeling.

When I came to find that I had been mistaken, I conceived myself bound by my engagement to rectify my own error as best I could; and I resolved, wrongly,--as I now think, very wrongly,--that I could learn as your wife to love you. Then came circ.u.mstances which showed me that a release would be good for both of us, and which justified me in accepting it. No girl could be bound by any engagement to a man who looked on and saw her treated in his own home, by his own mother, as you saw me treated at Aylmer Park. I claim to be released myself, and I know that this release is as good for you as it is for me."

"I am the best judge of that."

"For myself at any rate I will judge. For myself I have decided. Now I have answered the questions which you asked me as to my love for yourself. To that other question which you have thought fit to put to me about my cousin, I refuse to give any answer whatsoever." Then, having said so much, she walked out of the room, closing the door behind her, and left him standing there alone.

We need not follow her as she went up, almost mechanically, into her own room,--the room that used to be her own,--and then shut herself in, waiting till she should be a.s.sured, first by sounds in the house, and then by silence, that he was gone. That she fell away greatly from the majesty of her demeanour when she was thus alone, and descended to the ordinary ways of troubled females, we may be quite sure. But to her there was no further difficulty. Her work for the day was done. In due time she would take herself to the cottage, and all would be well, or, at any rate, comfortable with her. But what was he to do? How was he to get himself out of the house, and take himself back to London? While he had been in pursuit of her, and when he was leaving his vehicle at the public-house in the village of Belton, he,--like some other invading generals,--had failed to provide adequately for his retreat. When he was alone he took a turn or two about the room, half thinking that Clara would return to him.

She could hardly leave him alone in a strange house,--him, who, as he had twice told her, had come all the way from Yorkshire to see her.

But she did not return, and gradually he came to understand that he must provide for his own retreat without a.s.sistance. He was hardly aware, even now, how greatly he had transcended his usual modes of speech and action, both in the energy of his supplication and in the violence of his rebuke. He had been lifted for awhile out of himself by the excitement of his position, and now that he was subsiding into quiescence, he was unconscious that he had almost mounted into pa.s.sion,--that he had spoken of love very nearly with eloquence. But he did recognise this as a fact,--that Clara was not to be his wife, and that he had better get back from Belton to London as quickly as possible. It would be well for him to teach himself to look back on the result of his aunt's dying request as an episode in his life satisfactorily concluded. His mother had undoubtedly been right.

Clara, he could now see, would have led him a devil of a life; and even had she come to him possessed of a moiety of the property,--a supposition as to which he had very strong doubts,--still she might have been dear at the money. "No real feeling," he said to himself, as he walked about the room,--"none whatever; and then so deficient in delicacy!" But still he was discontented,--because he had been rejected, and therefore tried to make himself believe that he could still have her if he chose to persevere. "But no," he said, as he continued to pace the room, "I have done everything,--more than everything that honour demands. I shall not ask her again. It is her own fault. She is an imperious woman, and my mother read her character aright." It did not occur to him, as he thus consoled himself for what he had lost, that his mother's accusation against Clara had been altogether of a different nature. When we console ourselves by our own arguments, we are not apt to examine their accuracy with much strictness.

But whether he were consoled or not, it was necessary that he should go, and in his going he felt himself to be ill-treated. He left the room, and as he went down-stairs was disturbed and tormented by the creaking of his own boots. He tried to be dignified as he walked through the hall, and was troubled at his failure, though he was not conscious of any one looking at him. Then it was grievous that he should have to let himself out of the front door without attendance.

At ordinary times he thought as little of such things as most men, and would not be aware whether he opened a door for himself or had it opened for him by another;--but now there was a distressing awkwardness in the necessity for self-exertion. He did not know the turn of the handle, and was unfamiliar with the manner of exit. He was being treated with indignity, and before he had escaped from the house had come to think that the Amedroz and Belton people were somewhat below him. He endeavoured to go out without a noise, but there was a slam of the door, without which he could not get the lock to work; and Clara, up in her own room, knew all about it.

"Carriage;--yes; of course I want the carriage," he said to the unfortunate boy at the public-house. "Didn't you hear me say that I wanted it?" He had come down with a pair of horses, and as he saw them being put to the vehicle he wished he had been contented with one. As he was standing there, waiting, a gentleman rode by, and the boy, in answer to his question, told him that the horseman was Colonel Askerton. Before the day was over Colonel Askerton would probably know all that had happened to him. "Do move a little quicker; will you?" he said to the boy and the old man who was to drive him. Then he got into the carriage, and was driven out of Belton, devoutly purposing that he never would return; and as he made his way back to Perivale he thought of a certain Lady Emily, who would, as he a.s.sured himself, have behaved much better than Clara Amedroz had done in any such scene as that which had just taken place.

When Clara was quite sure that Captain Aylmer was off the premises, she, too, descended, but she did not immediately leave the house. She walked through the room, and rang for the old woman, and gave certain directions,--as to the performance of which she certainly was not very anxious, and was careful to make Mrs. Bunce understand that nothing had occurred between her and the gentleman that was either exalting or depressing in its nature. "I suppose Captain Aylmer went out, Mrs. Bunce?" "Oh yes, miss, a went out. I stood and see'd un from the top of the kitchen stairs." "You might have opened the door for him, Mrs. Bunce." "Indeed then I never thought of it, miss, seeing the house so empty and the like." Clara said that it did not signify; and then, after an hour of composure, she walked back across the park to the cottage.

"Well?" said Mrs. Askerton as soon as Clara was inside the drawing-room.

"Well," replied Clara.

"What have you got to tell? Do tell me what you have to tell."

"I have nothing to tell."

"Clara, that is impossible. Have you seen him? I know you have seen him, because he went by from the house about an hour since."

"Oh yes; I have seen him."

"And what have you said to him?"

"Pray do not ask me these questions just now. I have got to think of it all;--to think what he did say and what I said."

"But you will tell me."

"Yes; I suppose so." Then Mrs. Askerton was silent on the subject for the remainder of the day, allowing Clara even to go to bed without another question. And nothing was asked on the following morning,--nothing till the usual time for the writing of letters.

"Shall you have anything for the post?" said Mrs. Askerton.

"There is plenty of time yet."

"Not too much if you mean to go out at all. Come, Clara, you had better write to him at once."

"Write to whom? I don't know that I have any letter to write at all."

Then there was a pause. "As far as I can see," she said, "I may give up writing altogether for the future, unless some day you may care to hear from me."

"But you are not going away."

"Not just yet;--if you will keep me. To tell you the truth, Mrs.

Askerton, I do not yet know where on earth to take myself."

"Wait here till we turn you out."

"I have got to put my house in order. You know what I mean. The job ought not to be a troublesome one, for it is a very small house."

"I suppose I know what you mean."

"It will not be a very smart establishment. But I must look it all in the face; must I not? Though it were to be no house at all, I cannot stay here all my life."

"Yes, you may. You have lost Aylmer Park because you were too n.o.ble not to come to us."

"No," said Clara, speaking aloud, with bright eyes,--almost with her hands clenched. "No;--I deny that."