Beck Center English Dept. University Libraries Emory University
Emory Women Writers Resource Project Collections:
Women's Genre Fiction Project

Faith and Unfaith, an electronic edition

by The Duchess [Hungerford, Mrs. (Margaret Wolfe Hamilton), 1855?-1897]

date: [1883]
source publisher: John W. Lovell Company
collection: Genre Fiction

Table of Contents

<< chapter 1 chapter 38 >>

Display page layout

CHAPTER XI.

"I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me.
* * * * * * *
Oh! I could play the woman with mine eyes."
--Macbeth.

"To tell him herself" has some strange attraction for Clarissa. To hear face to face, what this her oldest friend will say to her engagement with Horace is a matter of great anxiety to her. She will know at once by his eyes and smile whether he approves or disapproves her choice.

Driving along the road to Scrope, behind her pretty ponies, "Cakes" and "Ale," with her little rough Irish terrier, "Secretary Bill," sitting bolt upright beside her, as solemn as half a dozen judges, she wonders anxiously how, she shall begin to tell James about it.

She hopes to goodness he won't be in his ultra-grave mood, that, as a rule, leads up to his finding fault with everything, and picking things to pieces, and generally condemning the sound judgment of others. (As a rule, Clarissa is a little unfair in her secret comments on James Scrope's character.) It will be so much better if she can only come upon him out of doors, in his homeliest mood, with a cigar between his lips, or his pipe. Yes, his pipe will be even better. Men are even more genial with a pipe than with the goodliest habana.

Well, of course, if he is the great friend he professes to be,--heavy emphasis on the verb, and a little flick on the whip on "Cakes's" quarters, which the spirited but docile creature resents bitterly,--he must be glad at the thought | | 77 that she is not going to leave the country,--is, in fact, very likely to spend most of her time still in Pullingham.

Not all of it, of course. Horace has duties, and though in her secret soul she detests town life, still there is a joy in the thought that she will be with him, helping him, encouraging him in his work, rejoicing in his successes, sympathyzing with his fai----, but no, of course there will be no failures! How stupid of her to think of that, when he is so clever, so learned, so----

Yet it would be sweet, too, to have him fail once or twice (just a little, insignificant, not-worth-speaking-about sort of a defeat), if only to let him see how she could love him even the more for it.

She blushes, and smiles to herself, and, turning suddenly, bestows a most unexpected caress upon "Secretary Bill," who wags his short tail in return--that is, what they left him of it--lovingly, if somewhat anxiously, and glances at her sideways out of his wonderful eyes, as though desirous of assuring himself of her sanity.

Oh, yes, of course James will be delighted. And he will tell her so with the gentle smile that so lights up his face, and he will take her hand, and say he is so glad, so pleased, and----

With a sharp pang she remembers how her father was neither pleased nor glad when she confided her secret to him. He had been, indeed, distressed and unfounded. He had certainly tried his hardest to conceal from her these facts, but she had seen them all the same. She could not be deceived where her father was concerned. He had felt unmistakable regret "Be quiet, Bill! You sha'n't come out driving again if you can't sit still! What a bore a dog is sometimes!"

Well, after all, he is her father. It is only natural he should dislike the thought of parting from her. She thinks, with an instant softening of her heart, of how necessary she has become to him, ever since her final return home. Before that he had been dull and distrait; now he is bright and cheerful, if still rather too devoted to his books to be quite good for him.

He might, indeed, be forgiven for regarding the man who should take her from him as an enemy. But Jim is different; he is a mere friend,--a dear and valued one, it | | 78 is true, but still only a friend,--a being utterly independent of her, who can be perfectly happy without her, and therefore, of course, unprejudiced.

He will, she feels sure, say everything kind and sweet to her, and wish her joy sincerely.

James, too, is very sensible, and will see the good points in Horace. He evidently likes him; at least, they have always appeared excellent friends when together. Dorian, of course, is the general favorite,--she acknowledges that,--just because he is a little more open, more outspoken perhaps,--easier to understand; whereas, she firmly believes, she alone of all the world is capable of fully appreciating the innate goodness of Horace!

Here she turns in the huge gateway of Scrope; and the terrier, growing excited, gives way to a sharp bark, and the ponies swing merrily down the avenue; and just before she comes to the hall door her heart fails her, and something within her--that something that never errs--tells her that James Scrope will not betray any pleasure at her tidings.

Before she quite reaches the hall door, a groom comes from a side-walk, and, seeing him, Clarissa pulls up the ponies sharply, and asks the man,

"Is Sir James at home?"

" Yes, miss; he is in the stables, I think; leastways, he was half an hour agone. Shall I tell him you are here?"

"No, thank you. I shall go and find him myself."

She flings her reins to her own groom, and, with Bill trotting at her heels, goes round to the yard, glad, at least, that her first hope is fulfilled,--that he is out of doors.

As she goes through the big portals into the ivied yard, she sees before her one of the stablemen on his knees, supporting in his arms an injured puppy: with all a woman's tenderness he is examining the whining little brute's soft, yellow paw, as it hangs mournfully downwards.

Sir James, with a pipe in his mouth,--this latter fact Clarissa hails with rapture,--is also bending anxiously over the dog, and is so absorbed in his contemplation of | | 79 it as not to notice Clarissa's approach until she is close beside him.

"What is the matter with the poor little thing?" she asks, earnestly, gazing with deep pity at the poor puppy, that whines dismally and glances up at her with the peculiarly tearful appealing expression that belongs to setters.

"A knock of a stone, miss, nayther more nor less," exclaims the man, angrily. "That's the honest truth, Sir James, you take my word for't. Some o' them rascally boys as is ever and allus about this 'ere yard, and spends their lives shyin' stones at every blessed sign they sets their two eyes on, has done this. 'Ere's one o' the best pups o' the season a'most ruined, and no satisfaction for it. It's a meracle if he comes round (quiet there, my beauty, and easy there now, I tell ye), and nobody does anything."

The old man stops, and regards his master reprovingly, nay, almost contemptuously.

"I really don't see why you should think it was the boys, Joe ? " says Sir James, meekly.

"'Twarn't anythin' else, anyway," persists Joe, doggedly.

"Poor little fellow!--dear fellow!" murmurs Miss Peyton, caressingly, to the great soft setter pup, patting its head lovingly, as it barks madly, and makes frantic efforts to get from Joe's arms to hers, while Bill shrieks in concert, being filled with an overwhelming amount of sympathy.

"Better leave him to me, miss," says Joe, regarding the injured innocent with a parent's eye. "He knows me. I'll treat him proper," raising his old honest weather-beaten face to Clarissa, in a solemn reassuring manner, "you be bound. Yet them pups" (disgustedly) "is like children, allus ungrateful. For the sake o' your handsome face, now, he'd go to you if he could, forgetful of all my kindness to him. Well, 'tis the way o' the world, I believe," winds up old Joe, rising from his knees,--cheered, perhaps, by the thought that his favorite pup, if only following the common dictates of animals, is no--worse than all others.

He grumbles something else in an undertone, and finally carries off the puppy to his kennel.

"I am too amazed for speech," says Sir James, rising also to his feet, and contemplating Clarissa with admira- | | 80 tion. "That man," pointing to Joe's retiring figure, "has been in my father's service, and in mine, for fifty years, and never before did I hear a civil word from his lips. I think he said your face was handsome, just now?--or was I deceived?"

"I like Joe," says Miss Peyton, elevating her rounded chin: "I downright esteem him. He knows where beauty lies."

"How he differs from the rest of the world!" says Scrope, not looking at her.

"Does he? That is unkind, I think. Why," says Clarissa, with a soft laugh, full of mischief, "should any one be blind to the claims of beauty?"

"Why, indeed? It is, as I have been told, `a joy forever.' No one nowadays disputes anything they are told, do they?"

"Don't be cynical, Jim," says Miss Peyton, softly. What an awful thing it will be if, now when her story is absolutely upon her lips, he relapses into his unsympathetic mood!

"Well, I won't, then," says Scrope, amiably, which much relieves her. And then he looks lovingly at his pipe, which he has held (as in duty bound) behind his back ever since her arrival, and sighs heavily, and proceeds to knock the ashes out of it.

"Oh, don't do that," says Clarissa, entreatingly. "I really wish you wouldn't!" (This is the strict truth.) "You know you are dying for a smoke, and I--I perfectly love the smell of tobacco. There is, therefore, no reason why you should deny yourself."

"Are you really quite sure?" says Scrope, politely and hopefully.

"Quite,--utterly. Put it in your mouth again. And--do you mind?"--with a swift glance upwards, from under her soft plush hat,--"I want you to come for a little walk with me."

"To the end of the world, with you, would be a short walk," says Scrope, with a half laugh, but a ring in his tone that, to a woman heart-whole and unoccupied with thoughts of another man, must have meant much. "Command me, madam."

"I have something very-very-very important to tell | | 81 you," says Miss Peyton, earnestly. This time she looks at her long black gloves, not at him, and makes a desperate effort to button an already obedient little bit of ivory.

They have turned into the orchard, now bereft of blossom, and are strolling carelessly along one of its side-paths. The earth is looking brown, the trees bare; for Autumn--greedy season--has stretched its hand "to reap the ripened fruits the which the earth had yold."

"Are you listening to me?" asks she, presently, seeing he makes no response to her first move.

"Intently." He has not the very faintest idea of her meaning, so speaks in a tone light and half amused, that leads her to betray her secret sooner than otherwise she might have done. "Is it an honest mystery," he says, carelessly, "or a common ghost-story, or a state secret? Break it to me gently."

"There is nothing to break," says Clarissa, softly. Then she looks down at the strawberry borders at her side,--now brown and aged,--and then says, in a very low tone, "I am going to be married!"

There is a dead silence. Sir James says nothing. He walks on beside her with an unfaltering footstep, his head erect as ever, his hands clasped in their old attitude behind his back. The sun is shining; some birds are warbling faintly (as though under protest) in some neighboring thicket; yet, I think Scrope neither sees the sun, nor heeds the birds, nor knows for the moment that life flows within him, after that little, low-toned speech of hers.

Then he awakes from his stupor, and, rousing himself, says, huskily, yet with a certain amount of self-possession that deceives her,--

"You were saying----?"

"Only that I am going to be married," repeats Clarissa, in a somewhat changed tone. The nervousness had gone out of it, and the natural hesitation; she is speaking now quite composedly and clearly, as if some surprise betrays itself in her voice.

Scrope is aware that his heart is beating madly. He has stopped, and is leaning against the trunk of an apple-tree, facing Clarissa, who is standing in the middle of the path. His face is ashen gray, but his manner is quite calm.

"Who is it? " he asks, presently, very slowly.

| | 82

"Mr. Branscombe,"--coldly.

"Dorian?"

"No. Horace."

"I wish it had been Dorian," he says, impulsively.

It is the last straw.

"And why?" demands she, angrily. She is feeling wounded, disappointed at his reception of her news; and now the climax has come. Like her father, he, too, prefers Dorian,--nay, by his tone, casts a slur upon Horace. The implied dislike cuts her bitterly to the heart.

"What evil thing have you to say of Horace," she goes on, vehemently, "that you so emphatically declare in favor of Dorian? When you are with him you profess great friendship for him, and now behind his back you seek to malign him to the woman he loves."

"You are unjust," says Scrope, wearily. "I know nothing bad of Horace. I merely said I wished it had been Dorian. No, I have nothing to say against Horace."

"Then why do you look as if you had?" says Miss Peyton, pettishly, frowning a little, and letting her eyes rest on him for a moment only, to withdraw them again with a deeper frown. "Your manner suggests many things. You are like papa----" She pauses, feeling she has made a false move, and wishes vainly her last words unsaid.

"Does your father disapprove, then?" asks he, more through idleness than a desire to know.

Instinctively he feels that, no matter what obstacles may be thrown in this girl's way, still she will carry her point and marry the man she has elected to love. Nay, will not difficulties but increase her steadfastness, and make strong the devotion that is growing in her heart?

Not until now, this moment, when hope has died and despair sprung into life, does he know how freely, how altogether, he has lavished the entire affection of his soul upon her. During all these past few months he has lived and thought and hoped but for her; and now all this is at an end.

Like a heavy blow from some unseen hand this terrible news has fallen upon him, leaving him spent and broken, and filled with something that is agonized surprise at the depth of the misfortune that has overtaken him. It is as | | 83 a revelation, the awakening to a sense of the longing that has been his,--to the knowledge of the cruel strength of the tenderness that binds his heart to hers.

With a slow wonder he lifts his eyes and gazes at her. There is a petulant expression round her mobile lips, a faint bending of her brows that bespeaks discontent, bordering upon anger, yet, withal, she is quite lovely,--so sweet, yet so unsympathetic; so gentle, yet so ignorant of all he is at present feeling.

With a sickening dread he looks forward to the future that still may lie before him. It seems to him that he can view, lying stretched out in the far distance, a lonely cheerless road, over which he must travel whether he will or not,--a road bare and dusty and companionless, devoid of shade, or rest, or joy, or that love that could transform the barrenness into a "flowery mead."

"He that loses hope"--says Congreve--"may part with anything." To Scrope, just now, it seems as though hope and he have parted company forever. The past has been so dear, with all its vague beliefs and uncertain dreamings,--all too sweet for realization,--that the present appears unbearable.

The very air seems dark, the sky leaden, the clouds sad and lowering. Vainly he tries to understand how he has come to love, with such a boundless passion, this girl, who loves him not at all, but has surrendered herself wholly to one unworthy of her,--one utterly incapable of comprehending the nobility and truthfulness of her nature.

The world, that only yesterday seemed so desirable a place, to-day has lost its charm.

"What is life, when stripped of its disguise? A thing to be desired it cannot be." With him it seems almost at an end. An unsatisfactory thing, too, at its best,--a mere "glimpse into the world of might have been."

Some words read a week ago come to him now, and ring their changes on his brain. "Rien ne va plus,"--the hateful words return to him with a pertinacity not to be subdued. It is with difficulty he refrains from uttering them aloud.

"No; he does not disapprove," says Clarissa, interrupting his reflections at this moment: "he has given his full consent to my engagement." She speaks somewhat slowly, | | 84 as if remembrance weighs upon her. "And, even if he had not, there is still something that must give me happiness: it is the certainty that Horace loves me, and that I love him."

Though unmeant, this is a cruel blow. Sir James turns away, and, paling visibly,--had she cared to see it,--plucks a tiny piece of bark from the old tree against which he is leaning.

There is something in his face that, though she understands it not, moves Clarissa to pity.

"You will wish me some good wish, after all, Jim, won't you?" she says, very sweetly, almost pathetically.

"No, I cannot," returns he, with a brusquerie foreign to him. "To do so would be actual hypocrisy."

There is silence for a moment: Clarissa grows a little pale, in her turn. In his turn, he takes no notice of her emotion, having his face averted. Then, in a low, faint, choked voice, she breaks the silence.

"If I had been wise," she says, "I should have stayed at home this morning, and kept my confidences to myself. Yet I wanted to tell you. So I came, thinking, believing, I should receive sympathy from you; and now what have I got? Only harsh and cruel words! If I had known----"

"Clarissa!"

"Yes! If any one had told me you would so treat me, I should----should----"

It is this supreme moment she chooses to burst out crying; and she cries heartily (by which I mean that she give way to grief of the most vehement and agonized description) for at least five minutes, without a cessation, making her lament openly, and in a carefully unreserved fashion, intended to reduce his heart to water. And not in vain is her "weak endeavor."

Sir James, when the first sob falls upon his ear, turns from her, and, as though unable to endure the sound, deliberately walks away from her down the garden path.

When he gets quite to the end of it, however, and knows the next turn will hide him from sight of her tears or sound of her woe, he hesitates, then is lost, and finally coming back again to where she is standing, hidden by a cambric handkerchief, lays his hand upon her arm. At his touch her sobs increase.

| | 85

"Don't do that!" he says, so roughly that she knows his heart is bleeding. "Do you hear me, Clarissa? Stop crying. It isn't doing you any good, and it is driving me mad. What has happened?--what is making you so unhappy?"

"You are," says Miss Peyton, with a final sob, and a whole octave of reproach in her voice. "Anything so unkind I never knew. And just when I had come all the way over here to tell you what I would tell nobody else except papa! There was a time, Jim" (with a soft but upbraiding glance), "when you would have been sweet and kind and good to me on an occasion like this."

She moves a step nearer to him, and lays her hand--the little, warm, pulsing hand he loves so passionately--upon his arm. Her glance is half offended, half beseeching: Scrope's strength of will gives way, and, metaphorically speaking, he lays himself at her feet.

"If I have been uncivil to you, forgive me," he says, taking her hand from his arm, and holding it closely in his own. "You do not know; you cannot understand; and I am glad you do not. Be happy! There is no substantial reason why you should not extract from life every sweet it can afford: you are young, the world is before you, and the love of your life is yours. Dry your eyes, Clarissa: your tears pierce my heart."

He has quite regal self-control by this time, and having conquered emotion, speaks dispassionately. Clarissa, as he has said, does not understand the terrible struggle it costs him to it here words in an ordinary tone, and with a face which, if .still pale, betrays no mental excitement.

She smiles. Her tears vanish. She sighs contentedly, and moves the hand that rests in his.

"I am so glad we are friends again," she says. "And now tell me why you were so horrid at first: you might just as well have begun as you have ended: it would have saved trouble and time, and" (reproachfully) "all my tears."

"Perhaps I value you so highly that I hate the thought of losing you," says Scrope, palliating the ugliness of his conduct as best he may. His voice is very earnest.

| | 86

"How fond you are of me!" says Miss Peyton, with some wonder and much pleasure.

To this he finds it impossible to make any answer.

"Whenever I wish I had had a brother, I always think of you," goes on she, pleasantly, "you are so--so--quiet, and your scoldings so half-hearted. Now, even though rather late, wish me joy."

"My dear, clear girl," says Scrope, "if I were to speak forever, I could not tell you how I long for and desire your happiness. If your life proves as calm and peaceful as I wish it, it will be a desirable life indeed! You have thought of me as your brother: let me be your brother indeed,--one in whom you can confide and trust should trouble overtake you."

He says this very solemnly, and again Clarissa's eyes fill with tears. She does now what she has not clone since she was a little, impulsive, loving girl: she lifts her head and presses her lips to his cheek.

For one brief moment he holds her in his arms, returning her caress, warmly, it is true, but with ineffable sadness. To her, this embrace is but the sealing of a fresh bond between them. To him it is a silent farewell, a final wrenching of the old sweet ties that have endured so long.

Up to this she has been everything to him,--far more than he ever dreamed until the rude awakening came,--the one bright spot in his existence; but now all is changed, and she belongs to another.

He puts her gently from him, and, with a kindly word and smile, leads her to the garden gate, and so round to where her ponies are impatiently awaiting her coming: after which he bids her good-by, and, turning, goes indoors, and locks himself into his own private den.

<< chapter 1 chapter 38 >>