The Belton Estate

A >> Anthony Trollope >> The Belton Estate

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33

'But we are engaged, and I will not hear of its being broken.'

'A lady's word, Fred, is always the most potential before marriage; and
you must therefore yield to me in this matter. I am sure your judgment
will approve of my decision when you think of it. There shall be no
engagement between us. I shall consider myself quite free free to do as
I please altogether; and you, of course, will be free also.'

'If you please, of course it must be so.'

'I do please, Fred.'

'And yesterday, then, is to go for nothing.'

'Not exactly. It cannot go for nothing with me. I told you too many of
my secrets for that. But nothing that was done or said yesterday is to
be held as binding upon either of us.'

'And you made up your mind to that last night?'

'It is at any rate made up to that now. Come I shall have to go without
my breakfast if I do not eat it at once. Will you have your tea now, or
wait and take it comfortably when I am gone?'

Captain Aylmer breakfasted with her, and took her to the station, and
saw her off with all possible courtesy and attention, and then he
walked back by himself to his own great house in Perivale. Not a word
more had been said between him and Clara as to their engagement, and he
recognized it as a fact that he was no longer bound to her as her
future husband. Indeed, he had no power of not recognizing the fact, so
decided had been her language, and so imperious her manner It had been
of no avail that he had said that the engagement should stand. She had
told him that her voice was to be the more potential, and he had felt
that it was so. Well might it not be best for him that it should be so?
He had kept his promise to his aunt, and bad done all that lay in his
power to make Clara Amedroz his wife. If she chose to rebel against her
own good fortune simply because he spoke to her a few words which
seemed to him to be fitting, might it not be well for him to take her
at her word?

Such were his first thoughts; but as the day wore on with him,
something more generous in his nature came to his aid, and something
also that was akin to real love. Now that she was no longer his own, he
again felt a desire to have her. Now that there would be again
something to be done in winning her, he was again stirred by a man's
desire to do that something. He ought not to have told her of the
promise. He was aware that what he had said on that point had been
dropped by him accidentally, and that Clara's resolution after that had
not been unnatural. He would, therefore, give her another chance, and
resolved before he went to bed that night that he would allow a
fortnight to pass away, and would then write to her, renewing his offer
with all the strongest declarations of affection which he would be
enabled to make.

Clara on her way home was not well satisfied with herself or with her
position. She had had great joy, during the few hours of joy which had
been hers, in thinking of the comfort which her news would give to her
father. He would be released from all further trouble on her account by
the tidings which she would convey to him by the tidings which she had
intended to convey to him. But now the story which she would have to
tell would by no means be comfortable. She would have to explain to him
that her aunt had left no provision for her, and that would be the
beginning and the end of her story. As for those conversations about
the fifteen hundred pounds of them she would say nothing. When she
reflected on what had taken place between herself and Captain Aylmer
she was more resolved than ever that she would not touch any portion of
that money or of any money that should come from him. Nor would she
tell her father anything of the marriage engagement which had been made
on one day and unmade on the next. Why should she add to his distress
by showing him what good things might have been hers had she only had
the wit to keep them? No; she would tell her father simply of the will,
and then comfort him in his affliction as best she might.

As regarded her position with Captain Aylmer, the more she thought of
it the more sure she became that everything was over in that quarter.
She had, indeed, told him that such need not necessarily be the case
but this she had done in her desire at the moment to mitigate the
apparent authoritativeness of her own decision, rather than with any
idea of leaving the matter open for further consideration. She was sure
that Captain Aylmer would be glad of a means of escape, and that he
would not again place himself in the jeopardy which the promise exacted
from him by his aunt had made so nearly fatal to him. And for herself,
though she still loved the man so loved him that she lay back in the
corner of her carriage weeping behind her veil as she thought of what
she had lost still she would not take him, though he should again press
his suit upon her with all the ardour at his command. No, indeed. No
man should ever be made to regard her as a burden imposed upon him by
an extorted promise! What! let a man sacrifice himself to a sense of
duty on her behalf! And then she repeated the odious words to herself,
till she came to think that it had fallen from his lips and not from
her own.

In writing to her father from Perivale, she had merely told him of Mrs
Winterfield's death and of her own intended return. At the Taunton
station she met the well-known old fly and the well-known old driver,
and was taken home in the accustomed manner. As she drew nearer to
Belton the sense of her distress became stronger and stronger, till at
last she almost feared to meet her father. What could she say to him
when he should repeat to her, as be would be sure to do, his
lamentation as to her future poverty?

On arriving at the house she learned that he was upstairs in his
bedroom. He had been ill, the servant said, and though he was not now
in bed, he had not come down-stairs. So she ran up to his room, and
finding him seated in an old arm-chair by the fire-side, knelt down at
his feet, as she took his hand and asked him as to his health.

'What has Mrs Winterfield done for you in her will?' These were the
first words he spoke to her.

'Never mind about wills now, papa. I want you to tell me of yourself.'

'Nonsense, Clara. Answer my question.'

'Oh, papa, I wish you would not think so much about money for me.'

'Not think about it? Why am I not to think about it? What else have I
got to think of? Tell me at once, Clara, what she has done. You ought
to have written to me directly the will was made known.'

There was no help for her, and the terrible word must be spoken. 'She
has left her property to Captain Aylmer, papa; and I must say that I
think she is right.'

'You do not mean everything?'

'She has provided for her servants.'

'And has made no provision for you?'

'No, papa.'

'Do you mean to tell me that she has left you nothing absolutely
nothing?' The old man's manner was altogether altered as he asked the
question; and there came over his face so unusual a look of energy of
the energy of anger that Clara was frightened, and knew not how to
answer him with that tone of authority which she was accustomed to use
when she found it necessary to exercise control over him. 'Do you mean
to say that there is nothing nothing?' And as he repeated the question
he pushed her away from his knees and stood up with an effort, leaning
against the back of his chair.

'Dear papa, do not let this distress you.'

'But is it so? Is there in truth nothing?'

'Nothing, papa. Remember that she was not really my aunt.'

'Nonsense, child! nonsense! How can you talk such trash to me as that?
And then you tell me not to distress myself! I am to know that you will
be a beggar in a year or two probably in a few months and that is not
to distress me! She has been a wicked woman!'

'Oh, papa, do not say that.'

'A wicked woman. A very wicked woman. It is always so with those who
pretend to be more religious than their neighbours. She has been a very
wicked woman, alluring you into her house with false hopes.'

'No, papa no; I must contradict you. She had given me no grounds for
such hope.'

'I say she had even though she may not have made a promise. I say she
had. Did not everybody think that you were to have her money?'

'I don't know what people may have thought. Nobody has had any right to
think about it at all.'

'That is nonsense, Clara. You know that I expected it that you expected
it yourself.'

'No no, no!'

'Clara how can you tell me that?'

'Papa, I knew that she intended to leave me nothing. She told me so
when I was there in the spring.'

'She told you so?'

'Yes, papa. She told me that Frederic Aylmer was to have all her
property. She explained to me everything that she meant to do, and I
thought that she was right.'

'And why was not I told when you came home?'

'Dear papa!'

'Dear papa, indeed. What is the meaning of dear papa? Why have I been
deceived?'

'What good could I do by telling you? You could not change it.'

'You have been very undutiful; and as for her, her wickedness and
cruelty shock me shock me. They do, indeed. That she should have known
your position, and had you with her always and then have made such a
will as that! Quite heartless! She must have been quite heartless.'

Clara now began to find that she must in justice to her aunt's memory
tell her father something more. And yet it would be very difficult to
tell him anything that would not bring greater affliction upon him, and
would not also lead her into deeper trouble. Should it come to pass
that her aunt's intention with reference to the fifteen hundred pounds
was mentioned, she would be subjected to an endless persecution as to
the duty of accepting that money from Captain Aylmer. But her present
feelings would have made her much prefer to beg her bread upon the
roads than accept her late lover's generosity. And then again, how
could she explain to her father Mrs Winterfield's mistake about her own
position without seeming to accuse her father of having robbed her? But
nevertheless she must say something, as Mr Amedroz continued to apply
that epithet of heartless to Mrs Winterfield, going on with it in a low
droning tone, that was more injurious to Clara's ears than the first
full energy of his anger.

'Heartless quite heartless shockingly heartless shockingly heartless!'

'The truth is, papa,' Clara said at last, 'that when my aunt told me
about her will, she did not know but what I had some adequate provision
from my own family.'

'Oh, Clara!'

'That is the truth, papa for she explained the whole thing to me. I
could not tell her that she was mistaken, and thus ask for her money.'

'But she knew everything about that poor wretched boy.' And now the
father dropped back into his chair, and buried his face in his hands.

When he did this Clara again knelt at his feet. She felt that she had
been cruel, and that she had defended her aunt at the cost of her own
father. She had, as it were, thrown in his teeth his own imprudence,
and twitted him with the injuries which he had done to her. 'Papa,' she
said, 'dear papa, do not think about it at all. What is the use? After
all, money is not everything. I care nothing for money. If you will
only agree to banish the subject altogether, we shall be so
comfortable.'

'How is it to be banished?'

'At any rate we need not speak of it. Why should we talk on a subject
which is simply uncomfortable, and which we cannot mend?'

'Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!' And now he swayed himself backwards and
forwards in his chair, bewailing his own condition and hers, and his
past imprudence, while the tears ran down his checks. She still knelt
there at his feet, looking up into his face with loving, beseeching
eyes, praying him to be comforted, and declaring that all would still
be well if he would only forget the subject, or, at any rate, cease to
speak of it. But still he went on wailing, complaining of his lot as a
child complains, and refusing all consolation. 'Yes; I know,' said he,
'it has all been my fault. But how could I help it? What was I to do?'

'Papa, nobody has said that anything was your fault; nobody has thought
so.'

'I never spent anything on myself never, never; and yet and yet and yet
!'

'Look at it with more courage, papa. After all, what harm will it be if
I should have to go out and earn my own bread like any other young
woman? I am not afraid.'

At last he wept himself into an apathetic tranquillity, as though he
had at present no further power for any of the energy of grief; and she
left him while she went about the house and learned how things had gone
on during her absence. It seemed, from the tidings which the servant
gave her, that he had been ill almost since she had been gone. He had,
at any rate, chosen to take his meals in his own room, and as far as
was remembered, had not once left the house since she had been away. He
had on two or three occasions spoken of Mr Belton, appearing to be
anxious for his coming, and asking questions as to the cattle and the
work that was still going on about the place; and Clara, when she
returned to his room, tried to interest him again about her cousin. But
he had in truth been too much distressed by the ill news as to Mrs
Winterfield's will to be able to rally himself, and the evening that
was spent up in his room was very comfortless to both of them. Clara
had her own sorrows to bear as well as her father's, and could take no
pleasant look out into the world of her own circumstances. She had
gained her lover merely to lose him and had lost him under
circumstances that were very painful to her woman's feeling. Though he
had been for one night betrothed to her as her husband, he had never
loved her. He had asked her to be his wife simply in fulfilment of a
death-bed promise! The more she thought of it the more bitter did the
idea of it become to her. And she could not also but think of her
cousin. Poor Will! He, at any rate, had loved her, though his eagerness
in love had been, as she told herself, but short-lived. As she thought
of him, it seemed but the other day that he had been with her up on the
rock in the park but as she thought of Captain Aylmer, to whom she had
become engaged only yesterday, and from whom she had separated herself
only that morning, she felt that an eternity of time had passed since
she had parted from him.

On the following day, a dull, dark, melancholy day, towards the end of
November, she went out to saunter about the park, leaving her father
still in his bedroom, and after a while made her way down to the
cottage. She found Mrs Askerton as usual alone in the little
drawing-room, sitting near the window with a book in her hand; but
Clara knew at once that her friend had not been reading that she had
been sitting there looking out upon the clouds, with her mind fixed
upon things far away. The general cheerfulness of this woman had often
been cause of wonder to Clara, who knew how many of her hours were
passed in solitude; but there did occasionally come upon her periods of
melancholy in which she was unable to act up to the settled rule of her
life, and in which she would confess that the days and weeks and months
were too long for her.

'So you are back,' said Mrs Askerton, as soon as the first greeting was
over.

'Yes; I am back.'

'I supposed you would not stay there long after the funeral.'

'No; what good could I do?'

'And Captain Aylmer is still there, I suppose?'

'I left him at Perivale.'

There was a slight pause, as Mrs Askerton hesitated before she asked
her next question. 'May I be told anything about the will?' she said.

'The weary will! If you knew how I hated the subject you would not ask
me. But you must not think I hate it because it has given me nothing.'

'Given you nothing?'

'Nothing ! But that does not make me hate it. It is the nature of the
subject that is so odious. I have now told you all everything that
there is to be told, though we were to talk for a week. If you are
generous you will not say another word about it.'

'But I am so sorry.'

'There that's it. You won't perceive that the expression of such sorrow
is a personal injury to me. I don't want you to be sorry.'

'How am I to help it?'

'You need not express it. I don't come pitying you for supposed
troubles. You have plenty of money; but if you were so poor that you
could eat nothing but cold mutton, I shouldn't condole with you as to
the state of your larder. I should pretend to think that poultry and
piecrust were plentiful with you.'

'No, you wouldn't, dear not if I were as dear to you as you are to me.'

'Well, then, be sorry; and let there be an end of it. Remember how much
of all this I must of necessity have to go through with poor papa.'

'Ah, yes; I can believe that.'

'And he is so far from well. Of course you have not seen him since I
have been gone.'

'No; we never see him unless he comes up to the gate there.' Then there
was another pause for a moment. And what about Captain Aylmer?' asked
Mrs Askerton.

'Well what about him?'

'He is the heir now?'

'Yes he is the heir.'

'And that is all?'

'Yes; that is all. What more should there be? The poor old house at
Perivale will be shut up, I suppose.'

'I don't care about the old house much, as it is not to be your house.'

'No it is not to be my house certainly.'

'There were two ways in which it might have become yours.'

'Though there were ten ways, none of those ways have come my way,' said
Clara.

'Of course I know that you are so close that though there were anything
to tell you would not tell it.'

'I think I would tell you anything that was proper to be told; but now
there is nothing proper or improper.'

'Was it proper or improper when Mr Belton made an offer to you as I
knew he would do of course; as I told you that he would? Was that so
improper that it could not be told?'

Clara was aware that the tell-tale colour in her face at once took from
her the possibility of even pretending that the allegation was untrue,
and that in any answer she might give she must acknowledge the fact. 'I
do not think,' she said, 'that it is considered fair to gentlemen to
tell such stories as that.'

'Then I can only say that the young ladies I have known are generally
very unfair.'

'But who told you?'

'Who told me? My maid. Of course she got it from yours. Those things
are always known.'

'Poor Will!'

'Poor Will, indeed. He is coming here again, I hear, almost
immediately, and it needn't be "poor Will" unless you like it. But as
for me, I am not going to be an advocate in his favour. I tell you
fairly that I did not like what little I saw of poor Will.'

'I like him of all things.'

'You should teach him to be a little more courteous in his demeanour to
ladies; that is all. I will tell you something else, too, about poor
Will but not now. Some other day I will tell you something of your
Cousin Will.'

Clara did not care to ask any questions as to this something that was
to be told, and therefore took her leave and went away.

CHAPTER XIII

MR WILLIAM BELTON TAKES A WALK IN THE COUNTRY

Clara Amedroz had made one great mistake about her cousin, Will
Belton, when she came to the conclusion that she might accept his
proffered friendship without any apprehension that the friend would
become a lover; and she made another, equally great, when she convinced
herself that his love had been as short-lived as it had been eager.
Throughout his journey back to Plaistow, he bad thought of nothing else
but his love, and had resolved to persevere, telling himself sometimes
that he might perhaps be successful, and feeling sure at other times
that he would encounter renewed sorrow and permanent disappointment but
equally resolved in either mood that he would persevere. Not to
persevere in pursuit of any desired object let the object be what it
might was, to his thinking, unmanly, weak, and destructive of
self-respect. He would sometimes say of himself, joking with other men,
that if he did not succeed in this or that thing, he could never speak
to himself again. To no man did he talk of his love in such a strain as
this; but there was a woman to whom he spoke of it; and though he could
not joke on such a matter, the purport of what he said showed the same
feeling. To be finally rejected, and to put up with such rejection,
would make him almost contemptible in his own eyes.

This woman was his sister, Mary Belton. Something has been already said
of this lady, which the reader may perhaps remember. She was a year or
two older than her brother, with whom she always lived, but she had
none of those properties of youth which belonged to him in such
abundance. She was, indeed, a poor cripple, unable to walk beyond the
limits of her own garden, feeble in health, dwarfed in stature, robbed
of all the ordinary enjoyments of life by physical deficiencies, which
made even the task of living a burden to her. To eat was a pain, or at
best a trouble. Sleep would not comfort her in bed, and weariness
during the day made it necessary that the hours passed in bed should be
very long. She was one of those whose lot in life drives us to marvel
at the inequalities of human destiny, and to inquire curiously within
ourselves whether future compensation is to be given.

It is said of those who are small and crooked-backed in their bodies,
that their minds are equally cross-grained and their tempers as
ungainly as their stature. But no one had ever said this of Mary
Belton. Her friends, indeed, were very few in number; but those who
knew her well loved her as they knew her, and there were three or four
persons in the world who were ready at all times to swear that she was
faultless. It was the great happiness of her life that among those
three or four her own brother was the foremost. Will Belton's love for
his sister amounted almost to veneration, and his devotion to her was
so great, that in all the affairs of his life he was prepared to make
her comfort one of his first considerations. And she, knowing this, had
come to fear that she might be an embargo on his prosperity, and a
stumbling-block in the way of his success. It had occurred to her that
he would have married earlier in life if she had not been, as it were,
in his way; and she had threatened him playfully for she could be
playful that he would leave him if he did not soon bring a mistress to
Plaistow Hall. 'I will go to uncle Robert,' she had said. Now uncle
Robert was the clergyman in Lincolnshire of whom mention has been made,
and he was among those two or three who believed in Mary Belton with an
implicit faith as was also his wife. ' I will go to uncle Robert, Will,
and then you will be driven to get a wife.'

'If my sister ever leaves my house, whether there be a wife in it or
not,' Will had answered, 'I will never put trust in any woman again.'

Plaistow Manor-house or Hall was a fine brick mansion, built in the
latter days of Tudor house architecture, with many gables and countless
high chimneys very picturesque to the eye, but not in all respects
comfortable as are the modern houses of the well-to-do squirearchy of
England. And, indeed, it was subject to certain objectionable
characteristics which in some degree justified the scorn which Mr
Amedroz intended to throw upon it when he declared it to be a
farm-house. The gardens belonging to it were large and excellent; but
they did not surround it, and allowed the farm appurtenances to come
close up to it on two sides. The door which should have been the front
door, opening from the largest room in the house, which had been the
hall and which was now the kitchen, led directly into the farm-yard.
From the farther end of this farm-yard a magnificent avenue of elms
stretched across the home pasture down to a hedge which crossed it at
the bottom. That there had been a road through the rows of trees or, in
other words, that there had in truth been an avenue to the house on
that side was, of course, certain. But now there was no vestige of such
road, and the front entrance to Plaistow Hall was by a little path
across the garden from a modern road which had been made to run cruelly
near to the house. Such was Plaistow Hall, and such was its mistress.
Of the master, the reader, I hope, already knows so much as to need no
further description.

As Belton drove himself home from the railway station late on that
August night, he made up his mind that he would tell his sister all his
story about Clara Amedroz. She had ever wished that he should marry,
and now he had made his attempt. Little as had been her opportunity of
learning the ways of men and women from experience in society, she had
always seemed to him to know exactly what every one should do in every
position of life. And she would be tender with him, giving him comfort
even if she could not give him hope. Moreover Mary might be trusted
with his secret; for Belton felt, as men always do feel, a great
repugnance to have it supposed that his suit to a woman had been
rejected. Women, when they have loved in vain, often almost wish that
their misfortune should be known. They love to talk about their wounds
mystically telling their own tales under feigned names, and extracting
something of a bitter sweetness out of the sadness of their own
romance. But a man, when he has been rejected rejected with a finality
that is acknowledged by himself is unwilling to speak or hear a word
upon the subject, and would willingly wash the episode out from his
heart if it were possible.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33