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

'It was so unpleasant so very unpleasant! I had better speak out the
truth at once. I think that Lady Aylmer ill-used me cruelly. I do. No
one can talk me out of that conviction. Of course I am sorry to be
driven to say as much to you and I should never have said it, had you
not come here. But when you speak of me and your mother together, I
must say what I feel. Your mother and I, Captain Aylmer, are so opposed
to each other, not only in feeling, but in opinions also, that it is
impossible that we should be friends impossible that we should not be
enemies if we are brought together.'

This she said with great energy, looking intently into his face as she
spoke. He was seated near her, on a chair from which he was leaning
over towards her, holding his hat in both hands between his legs. Now,
as he listened to her, he drew his chair still nearer, ridding himself
of his hat, which he left upon the carpet, and keeping his eyes upon
hers as though he were fascinated. 'I am sorry to hear you speak like
this,' he said.

'It is best to say the truth.'

'But, Clara, if you intend to be my wife'

'Oh, no that is impossible now.' 'What is impossible?'

'Impossible that I should become your wife. Indeed I have convinced
myself that you do not wish it.'

'But I do wish it.'

'No no. If you will question your heart about it quietly, you will find
that you do not wish it.'

'You wrong me, Clara.'

'At any rate it cannot be so.'

'I will not take that answer from you,' he said, getting up from his
chair, and walking once up and down the room. Then he returned to it,
and repeated his words. 'I will not take that answer from you. An
engagement such as ours cannot be put aside like an old glove. You do
not mean to tell me that all that has been between us is to mean
nothing.' There was something now like feeling in his tone, something
like passion in his gesture, and Clara, though she had no thought of
changing her purpose, was becoming unhappy at the idea of his
unhappiness.

'It has meant nothing,' she said. 'We have been like children together,
playing at being in love. It is a game from which you will come out
scatheless, but I have been scalded.'

'Scalded!'

'Well never mind. I do not mean to complain, and certainly not of you.'

'I have come here all the way from Yorkshire in order that things may
be put right between us.'

'You have been very good very good to come, and I will not say that I
regret your trouble. It is best, I think, that we should meet each
other once more face to face, so that we may understand each other.
There was no understanding anything during those terrible days at
Aylmer Park.' Then she paused, but as he did not speak at once she went
on. 'I do not blame you for anything that has taken place, but I am
quite sure of this that you and I could never be happy together as man
and wife.'

'I do not know why you say so; I do not indeed.'

'You would disapprove of everything that I should do. You do disapprove
of what I am doing now.'

'Disapprove of what?'

'I am staying with my friend, Mrs Askerton.'

He felt that this was hard upon him. As she had shown herself inclined
to withdraw herself from him, he had become more resolute in his desire
to follow her up, and to hold by his engagement. He was not employed
now in giving her another chance as he had proposed to himself to do
but was using what eloquence he had to obtain another chance for
himself. Lady Aylmer had almost made him believe that Clara would be
the suppliant, but now he was the suppliant himself. In his anxiety to
keep her he was willing even to pass over her terrible iniquity in
regard to Mrs Askerton that great sin which had led to all these
troubles. He had once written to her about Mrs Askerton, using very
strong language, and threatening her with his mother's full
displeasure. At that time Mrs Askerton had simply been her friend.
There had been no question then of her taking refuge under that woman's
roof. Now she had repelled Lady Aylmer's counsels with scorn, was
living as a guest in Mrs Askerton's house; and yet he was willing to
pass over the Askerton difficulty without a word. He was willing not
only to condone past offences, but to wink at existing iniquity! But
she she who was the sinner, would not permit of this. She herself
dragged up Mrs Askerton's name, and seemed to glory in her own shame.

'I had not intended,' said he, 'to speak of your friend.'

'I only mention her to show how impossible it is that we should ever
agree upon some subjects as to which a husband and wife should always
be of one mind. I knew this from the moment in which I got your letter
and only that I was a coward I should have said so then.'

'And you mean to quarrel with me altogether?'

'No why should we quarrel?'

'Why, indeed?' said he.

'But I wish it to be settled quite settled, as from the nature of
things it must be, that there shall be no attempt at renewal of our
engagement. After what has passed, how could I enter your mother's
house?'

'But you need not enter it.' Now, in his emergency he was willing to
give up anything everything. He had been prepared to talk her over into
a reconciliation with his mother, to admit that there had been faults
on both sides, to come down from his high pedestal and discuss the
matter as though Clara and his mother stood upon the same footing.
Having recognized the spirit of his lady-love, he had told himself that
so much indignity as that must be endured. But now, he had been carried
so far beyond this, that he was willing, in the sudden vehemence of his
love, to throw his mother over altogether, and to accede to any terms
which Clara might propose to him. 'Of course, I would wish you to be
friends,' he said, using now all the tones of a suppliant; 'but if you
found that it could not be so'

'Do you think that I would divide you from your mother?'

'There need be no question as to that.'

'Ah there you are wrong. There must be such questions. I should have
thought of it sooner.'

'Clara, you are more to me than my mother. Ten times more.' As he said
this he came up and knelt down beside her. 'You are everything to me.
You will not throw me over.' He was a suppliant indeed, and such
supplications are very potent with women. Men succeed often by the
simple earnestness of their prayers. Women cannot refuse to give that
which is asked for with so much of the vehemence of true desire.
'Clara, you have promised to be my wife. You have twice promised; and
can have no right to go back because you are displeased with what my
mother may have said. I am not responsible for my mother. Clara, say
that you will be my wife.' As he spoke he strove to take her hand, and
his voice sounded as though there were in truth something of passion in
his heart.

CHAPTER XXIX

THERE IS NOTHING TO TELL

Captain Aylmer had never before this knelt to Clara Amedroz. Such
kneeling on the part of lovers used to be the fashion because lovers in
those days held in higher value than they do now that which they asked
their ladies to give or because they pretended to do so. The forms at
least of supplication were used; whereas in these wiser days Augustus
simply suggests to Caroline that they two might as well make fools of
themselves together and so the thing is settled without the need of
much prayer. Captain Aylmer's engagement had been originally made
somewhat after this fashion. He had not, indeed, spoken of the thing
contemplated as a folly, not being a man given to little waggeries of
that nature; but he had been calm, unenthusiastic, and reasonable. He
bad not attempted to evince any passion, and would have been quite
content that Clara should believe that he married as much from
obedience to his aunt as from love for herself, had he not found that
Clara would not take him at all under such a conviction. But though she
had declined to come to him after that fashion though something more
than that had been needed still she had been won easily, and,
therefore, lightly prized. I fear that it is so with everything that we
value with our horses, our houses, our wines, and, above all, with our
women. Where is the man who has heart and soul big enough to love a
woman with increased force of passion because she has at once
recognized in him all that she has herself desired? Captain Aylmer
having won his spurs easily, had taken no care in buckling them, and
now found, to his surprise, that he was like to lose them. He had told
himself that he would only be too glad to shuffle his feet free of
their bondage; but now that they were going from him, he began to find
that they were very necessary for the road that he was to travel.
'Clara,' he said, kneeling by her side,' you are more to me than my
mother; ten times more!'

This was all new to her. Hitherto, though she had never desired that he
should assume such attitude as this, she had constantly been
unconsciously wounded by his coldness by his cold propriety and
unbending self-possession. His cold propriety and unbending
self-possession were gone now, and he was there at her feet. Such an
argument, used at Aylmer Park, would have conquered her would have won
her at once, in spite of herself; but now she was minded to be
resolute. She had sworn to herself that she would not peril herself, or
him, by joining herself to a man with whom she had so little sympathy,
and who apparently had none with her. But in what way was she to answer
such a prayer as that which was now made to her? The man who addressed
her was entitled to use all the warmth of an accepted lover. He only
asked for that which had already been given to him.

'Captain Aylmer ' she began.

'Why is it to be Captain Aylmer? What have I done that you should use
me in this way? It was not I who who made you unhappy at Aylmer Park.'

'I will not go back to that. It is of no use. Pray get up. It shocks me
to see you in this way.'

'Tell me, then, that it is once more all right between us. Say that,
and I shall be happier than I ever was before yes, than I ever was
before. I know how much I love you now, how sore it would be to lose
you. I have been wrong. I had not thought enough of that, but I will
think of it now.'

She found that the task before her was very difficult so difficult that
she almost broke down in performing it. It would have been so easy and,
for the moment, so pleasant to have yielded. He had his hand upon her
arm, having attempted to take her hand. In preventing that she had
succeeded, but she could not altogether make herself free from him
without rising. For a moment she had paused paused as though she were
about to yield. For a moment, as he looked into her eyes, he had
thought that he would again be victorious. Perhaps there was something
in his glance, some too visible return of triumph to his eyes, which
warned her of her danger. 'No!' she said, getting up and walking away
from him; 'no!'

'And what does "no" mean, Clara?' Then he also rose, and stood leaning
on the table. 'Does it mean that you will be forsworn?'

'It means this that I will not come between you and your mother; that I
will not be taken into a family in which I am scorned; that I will not
go to Aylmer Park myself or be the means of preventing you from going
there.'

'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 circumstances 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 assured, 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 assistance.
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 passion that he had spoken of love very nearly with
eloquence. But he did recognize 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 see now, 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 him. self 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 every. thing 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 downstairs 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 carnage,' 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 assured 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 noble not
to come to us.'

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

'I shall choose to think so for my own purposes. Clara, you are savage
to me almost always savage; but next to him I love you better than all
the world beside. And so does he. "It's her courage," he said to me the
other day. "That she should dare to do as she pleases here, is nothing;
but to have dared to persevere in the fangs of that old dragon," it was
just what he said "that was wonderful!"'

'There is an end of the old dragon now, so far as I am concerned.'

'Of course there is and of the young dragon too. You wouldn't have had
the heart to keep me in suspense if you had accepted him again. You
couldn't have been so pleasant last night if that had been so.'

'I did not know I was very pleasant.'

'Yes, you were. You were soft and gracious gracious for you, at least.
And now, dear, do tell me about it. Of course I am dying to know.'

'There is nothing to tell.'

'That is nonsense. There must be a thousand things to tell. At any rate
it is quite decided?'

'Yes; it is quite decided.'

'All the dragons, old and young, are banished into outer darkness.'

'Either that, or else they are to have all the light to themselves.'

'Such light as glimmers through the gloom of Aylmer Park. And was he
contented? I hope not. I hope you had him on his knees before he left
you.'

'Why should you hope that? How can you talk such nonsense?'

'Because I wish that he should recognize what he has lost that he
should know that he has been a fool a mean fool.'

'Mrs Askerton, I will not have him spoken of like that. He is a man
very estimable of estimable qualities.'

'Fiddle-de-dee. He is an ape a monkey to be carried on his mother's
organ. His only good quality was that you could have carried him on
yours. I can tell you one thing there is not a woman breathing that
will ever carry William Belton on hers. Whoever his wife may be, she
will have to dance to his piping.'

'With all my heart and I hope the tunes will be good.'

'But I wish I could have been present to have heard what passed hidden,
you know, behind a curtain. You won't tell me?'

'I will tell you not a word more.'

'Then I will get it out from Mrs Bunce. I'll be bound she was
listening.'

'Mrs Bunce will have nothing to tell you; I do not know why you should
be so curious.'

'Answer me one question at least when it came to the last, did he want
to go on with it? Was the final triumph with him or with you?'

'There was no final triumph. Such things, when they have to end, do not
end triumphantly.'

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