The Claverings Part 34

Then she eat the food, and drank a drop of wine, and allowed the old woman to take her away to the bed that had been prepared for her. Of her husband she saw no more for four days. On the next morning a note was brought to her, in which Sir Hugh told her that he had returned to London. It was necessary, he said, that he should see his lawyer and his brother. He and Archie would return for the funeral. With reference to that he had already given orders.

During the next three days, and till her husband's return, Lady Clavering remained at the rectory; and in the comfort of Mrs.

Clavering's presence, she almost felt that it would be well for her if those days could be prolonged. But she knew the hour at which her husband would return, and she took care to be at home when he arrived.

"You will come and see him?" she said to the rector, as she left the parsonage. "You will come at once--in an hour or two?" Mr. Clavering remembered the circ.u.mstances of his last visit to the house, and the declaration he had then made that he would not return there. But all that could not now be considered.

"Yes," he said, "I will come across this evening. But you had better tell him, so that he need not be troubled to see me if he would rather be alone."

"Oh, he will see you. Of course he will see you. And you will not remember that he ever offended you?"

Mrs. Clavering had written both to Julia and to Harry, and the day of the funeral had been settled. Harry had already communicated his intention of coming down; and Lady Ongar had replied to Mrs. Clavering's letter, saying that she could not now offer to go to Clavering Park, but that if her sister would go elsewhere with her--to some place, perhaps, on the sea-side--she would be glad to accompany her; and she used many arguments in her letter to show that such an arrangement as this had better be made.

"You will be with my sister," she had said; "and she will understand why I do not write to her myself, and will not think that it comes from coldness." This had been written before Lady Ongar saw Harry Clavering.

Mr. Clavering, when he got to the great house, was immediately shown into the room in which the baronet and his younger brother were sitting.

They had, some time since, finished dinner, but the decanters were still on the table before them. "Hugh," said the, rector, walking up to his elder nephew briskly, "I grieve for you. I grieve, for you from the bottom of my heart."

"Yes," said Hugh, "it has been a heavy blow. Sit down, uncle. There is a clean gla.s.s there, or Archie will fetch you one." Then Archie looked out a clean gla.s.s, and pa.s.sed the decanter; but of this the rector took no direct notice.

"It has been a blow, my poor boy--a heavy blow," said the rector. "None heavier could have fallen. But our sorrows come from Heaven, as do our blessings, and must be accepted."

"We are all like gra.s.s," said Archie, "and must be cut down in our turns." Archie, in saying this, intended to put on his best behavior. He was as sincere as he knew how to be.

"Come, Archie, none of that," said his brother. "It is my uncle's trade."

"Hugh," said the rector, "unless you can think of it so, you will find no comfort."

"And I expect none, so there is an end of that. Different people think of these things differently, you know, and it is of no more use for me to bother you than it is for you to bother me. My boy has gone, and I know that he will not come back to me. I shall never have another, and it is hard to bear. But, meaning no offence to you, I would sooner be left to bear it in my own way. If I were to talk about gra.s.s, as Archie did just now, it would be a humbug, and I hate humbug. No offence to you. Take some wine, uncle." But the rector could not drink wine in that presence, and therefore he escaped as soon as he could. He spoke one word of intended comfort to Lady Clavering, and then returned to the rectory.

Chapter XXIV

Yes; Wrong--Certainly Wrong

Harry Clavering had heard the news of his little cousin's death before he went to Bolton Street to report the result of his negotiation with the count. His mother's letter with the news had come to him in the morning, and on the same evening he called on Lady Ongar. She also had then received Mrs. Clavering's letter, and knew what had occurred at the park. Harry found her alone, having asked the servant whether Madam Gordeloup was with his mistress. Had such been the case he would have gone away, and left his message untold.

As he entered the room his mind was naturally full of the tidings from Clavering. Count Pateroff and his message had lost some of their importance through this other event, and the emptiness of the childless house was the first subject of conversation between him and Lady Ongar.

"I pity my sister greatly," said she. "I feel for her as deeply as I should have done had nothing occurred to separate us--but I cannot feel for him."

"I do," said Harry.

"He is your cousin, and perhaps has been your friend?"

"No, not especially. He and I have never pulled well together; but still I pity him deeply."

"He is not my cousin, but I know him better than you do, Harry. He will not feel much himself, and his sorrow will be for his heir, not for his son. He is a man whose happiness does not depend on the life or death of any one. He likes some people, as he once liked me; but I do not think that he ever loved any human being. He will get over it, and he will simply wish that Hermy may die, that he may marry another wife. Harry, I know him so well!"

"Archie will marry now," said Harry.

"Yes; if he can get any one to have him. There are very few men who can't get wives, but I can fancy Archie Clavering to be one of them. He has not humility enough to ask the sort of girl who would be glad to take him. Now, with his improved prospects, he will want a royal princess or something not much short of it. Money, rank, and blood might have done before, but he'll expect youth, beauty, and wit now, as well as the other things. He may marry after all, for he is just the man to walk out of a church some day with the cookmaid under his arm as his wife."

"Perhaps he may find something between a princess and a cookmaid."

"I hope, for your sake, he may not--neither a princess nor a cookmaid, nor anything between."

"He has my leave to marry to-morrow, Lady Ongar. If I had my wish, Hugh should have his house full of children."

"Of course that is the proper thing to say, Harry."

"I won't stand that from you, Lady Ongar. What I say, I mean; and no one knows that better than you."

"Won't you, Harry? From whom, then, if not from me? But come, I will do you justice, and believe you to be simple enough to wish anything of the kind. The sort of castle in the air which you build, is not to be had by inheritance, but to be taken by storm. You must fight for it."

"Or work for it."

"Or win it in some way off your own bat; and no lord ever sat prouder in his castle than you sit in those that you build from day to day in your imagination. And you sally forth and do all manner of magnificent deeds.

You help distressed damsels--poor me, for instance; and you attack enormous dragons--shall I say that Sophie Gordeloup is the latest dragon?--and you wish well to your enemies, such as Hugh and Archie; and you cut down enormous forests, which means your coming miracles as an engineer--and then you fall gloriously in love. When is that last to be, Harry?"

"I suppose, according to all precedent, that must be done with the distressed damsel," he said--fool that he was.

"No, Harry, no; you shall take your young, fresh, generous heart to a better market than that; not but that the distressed damsel will ever remember what might once have been."

He knew that he was playing on the edge of a precipice--that he was fluttering as a moth round a candle. He knew that it behooved him now at once to tell her all his tale as to Stratton and Florence Burton--that if he could tell it now, the pang would be over and the danger gone. But he did not tell it. Instead of telling it he thought of Lady Ongar's beauty, of his own early love, of what might have been his had he not gone to Stratton. I think he thought, if not of her wealth, yet of the power and place which would have been his were it now open to him to ask her for her hand. When he had declared that he did not want his cousin's inheritance, he had spoken the simple truth. He was not covetous of another's money. Were Archie to marry as many wives as Henry, and have as many children as Priam, it would be no offence to him. His desires did not lie in that line. But in this other case, the woman before him who would so willingly have endowed him with all she possessed, had been loved by him before he had ever seen Florence Burton. In all his love for Florence--so he now told himself, but so told himself falsely--he had ever remembered that Julia Brabazon had been his first love, the love whom he had loved with all his heart. But things had gone with him most unfortunately--with a misfortune that had never been paralleled. It was thus he was thinking instead of remembering that now was the time in which his tale should be told.

Lady Ongar, however, soon carried him away from the actual brink of the precipice. "But how about the dragon," said she, "or rather about the dragon's brother, at whom you were bound to go and tilt on my behalf?

Have you tilted, or are you a recreant knight?"

"I have tilted," said he, "but the he-dragon professes that he will not regard himself as killed. In other words, he declares that he will see you."

"That he will see me?" said Lady Ongar, and as she spoke there came an angry spot on each cheek. "Does he send me that message as a threat?"

"He does not send it as a threat, but I think he partly means it so."

"He will find, Harry, that I will not see him; and that should he force himself into my presence, I shall know how to punish such an outrage. If he sent me any message, let me know it."

"To tell the truth, he was most unwilling to speak to me at all, though he was anxious to be civil to me. When I had inquired for him some time in vain, he came to me with another man, and asked me to dinner. So I went, and as there were four of us, of course I could not speak to him then. He still had the other man, a foreigner--"

"Colonel Schmoff, perhaps?"

"Yes; Colonel Schmoff. He kept Colonel Schmoff by him, so as to guard him from being questioned."

"That is so like him. Everything he does he does with some design--with some little plan. Well, Harry, you might have ignored Colonel Schmoff for what I should have cared."

"I got the count to come out into another room at last, and then he was very angry--with me, you know--and talked of what he would do to men who interfered with him."

"You will not quarrel with him, Harry? Promise me that there shall be no nonsense of that sort--no fighting."