Маргарет Олифант - Squire Arden; volume 2 of 3

It would be difficult to conceive anything more strangely lonely and bleak than Arden seemed to Clare the day after her brother and cousin left it. She wandered about the vacant rooms and out upon the terrace, and kept thinking that she heard their voices and steps, and caught glimpses of them turning the corners. But they were gone—Edgar to come back again shortly, so that could scarcely be counted a calamity. But Arthur—would he come at all? Would he be years of coming, as he had been before? It seemed to Clare that it was years instead of weeks since she had dwelt thus alone and tranquil, waiting for Edgar’s return. She had been alone, but then her loneliness had seemed natural. She took it as a matter of course, scarcely pausing to think that she was different from others, or, if she ever did so, feeling her isolation almost as much a sign of superiority as of anything less pleasant. She was the Chatelaine—the one sole lady of the land, in her soft maidenly state; and the visits of the kind friends who offered themselves on all sides to come and stay with her, out of pity for her solitude, had been more a trouble than a pleasure to her. But now it seemed to Clare that she would be thankful for any companionship—anything that would free her from her own thoughts. She felt like a boat which had drifted ashore, like something which had been thrown out of the ordinary course of existence. Life had gone away and left her; and yet she was more full of life than she had ever been before, tingling to the very finger points, expecting, hoping, looking for a thousand new things to come. Once it had not occurred to her to look for anything new; but now every hour as it came thrilled her with consciousness that her life might be changed in it, that it might prove the supreme moment which should decide the character and colour of all the rest.

And yet what hope, what chance, what possibility was there that this auspicious moment should come now? Had not “everybody” been driven away? This was how she phrased it to herself—not one person, but every one. Who could approach her now in the solitude which was a more effectual guard than twenty brothers? If “any one” wished to come, if any one had anything to say, why, the visit must be postponed, and the words left unsaid, until—how could she tell how long? Three years had passed between Arthur Arden’s two last visits. What if three years should come and go again before Chance or Fate brought him back? It could only be Chance that had done it this time, not Providence; for if Providence had been the agent, then the visit must have come to something, and not ended without result. Thus Clare mused, as it were, in the depths of her being, concealing even from herself what she was thinking. When Arthur Arden’s name flitted across that part of her mind which lay, so to speak, in the light, she blushed, and started with a sense of guilt; but in the shadowy corners, where thought has no need of words, and where a hundred aimless cogitations pass like breath, and no sense of responsibility comes in, she put no bridle upon her dreaming fancy. And it was all new to her; for dreams had never been much in Clare’s way. Hers had been a practical intelligence, busied with many things to do and think of—the village and her subjects in it; the legislation necessary for them; the wants of the old women and the children—a hundred matters of detail which deserved the consideration of a wise ruler, and yet must be kept subordinate to greater principles. Even the larger questions affecting the estate had come more or less into Clare’s hands. She had been allowed no time to dream, and she had not dreamt; but now idleness and loneliness fell upon her both together. She was weary of the village and its concerns. She had nothing else to occupy her. And, indeed, she had no desire for other occupations, but preferred this new musing—this maze of fancies—to anything else in earth and heaven.

But the evenings were dreary, dreary, when darkness fell, and the wistful shadows of the summer night gathered about her, and no one came to break the silence. She tried to follow her brother in imagination, and to picture to herself what he might be doing—hanging about Gussy Thornleigh, perhaps—letting himself drift into the channel indicated by Lady Augusta. Ah!—and then, while she thought she was still thinking of Edgar and Gussy, Clare’s fancies would take their flight in another direction to another hero. When this, however, had gone on for a few days and nights, she was seized with a sense that it must not continue—that such a way of passing her time was fatal. It was much too like the girls whom Clare had read of in novels, whom she had indignantly denied to be true representatives of womankind, and whom she had scorned and blushed for in her heart. Was she to become one of that maudlin, sentimental band, to whom love, as novel-writers and essayists said, was everything, and to whom the inclinations of one man in this world conveyed life or death? Clare’s modesty, and her pride, and her good sense, all rose in arms. She had given up all her former pursuits for these first dreamy days; but now she woke up, and tied on her hat, and forced herself down the avenue to the village. There something was sure to be found to do—whatever might be the state of her own mind or its fancies. She walked straight to Sarah’s cottage, where Mary Smith and Ellen Jones were still busy with their needlework and their clear-starching. Sarah was sitting out in her cottage doorway, enjoying the evening calm. The sun had not yet set, but it had fallen below the line of the trees; and Sarah’s doorway was shadowy and cool. The old woman had many grumbles bottled up for Clare’s private enjoyment, which had been aggravated by keeping. Mary was “the thoughtlessest lass.” She had burned a big hole in Miss Somers’ muslin dressing-gown with an iron that was too hot. She had torn Mrs Pimpernel’s lace; and then, instead of trying to do her best for the future, she had cried her eyes out, and become hysterical, and could do nothing at all. Nor was Ellen a great deal better. Sally, next door, had got a piece of work clean spoiled in her hands; and some things as she was making for Mrs Solms, the Rector’s housekeeper, had just got to be unpicked on the spot. “The back was put to the front, and the wrong side to the right side—as if she had tried!” said old Sarah. “It couldn’t be accident, Miss Clare; and the sleeves put in bottom up. It’s enough to break a body’s heart, after all the trouble I’ve took.” The two culprits stood curtseying with their aprons to their eyes while this dreadful picture was being drawn; and Clare put on her most solemn face, and told them she was very sorry. “I hope I shall never hear anything of the kind again,” she said, in her most serious tones; and then stopped, and sighed with a weariness which had never before moved her. “Am I to go on all my life,” she said to herself, “looking after Mary’s clear-starching and Ellen’s sewing? Is this all I am to have out of the existence which is so rich and full to some people?” And for the moment Clare thought she understood Helena Thornleigh and the rest of the young women who wanted something to do. But this, the reader will perceive, was not really because she wanted anything to do, or was dissatisfied with the conditions of her own life, but only because she was in that state of suspense which turns existence all awry, and demands excitement of some kind outside to neutralise the excitement within.

Clare’s mind, however, was suddenly diverted from herself when she looked into old Sarah’s living-room, and saw another figure, which she had not before remarked, seated in the background. When Sarah perceived her keen look inside, she approached Clare with nods and significant glances. “Yes, Miss,” she said in a whisper, “she’s there, and as sensible as you or me, and the sweetest little thing that ever was, though she’s Scotch, and I don’t hold with Scotch, not in general. Just you go in and say a word to her, Miss Clare.”