The autumn tints were rich and beautiful upon the Kent woods, and nowhere more rich or more beautiful than in Sir Thomas Boldero's domain. The soft grass beneath the noble beeches was strewn with the russet leaves a little earlier than usual that year, and somewhat more plentifully, for the storm had shaken them down, and had even rent away a branch here and there from some of the less sturdy trees. And then the forester made his inspection, and the fallen branches were removed, and duly cut and housed for winter fire-wood, and it chanced that the hitherto forgotten log on which George Dallas had sat one spring morning was carried away with them.
Clare Carruthers missed it from its accustomed place as she rode down the glade which she still loved, though it had a painful association for her now. Every day her eyes had rested on the rugged log, and every day she had turned them away with a sigh. To-day it was there no longer, and its absence was a relief. She reined Sir Lancelot up for a moment, and looked at the vacant space. The earth lay bare and brown where the log had been; there was no grass there.
"It won't be hidden until the spring," she thought, impatiently. "I wish--I wish I could forget the place in which I saw him first! I wish I could forget that I ever had seen him!"
Then she turned her head away with an effort and a sigh, and rode on.
Clare was going over from the Sycamores to Poynings. She had occasion to see the housekeeper, started early, and, as usual, unattended, save by C?sar, who bounded along now by the side of Sir Lancelot, anon a considerable way in advance, doing the distance twice over, after the fashion of dogs, and evidently compassionating the leisurely pace to which his equine friend and comrade was condemned.
The months which had elapsed since her inauspicious meeting among the beeches with Paul Ward had had much inquietude and mysterious trouble in them for the girl whose graces they had but ripened and perfected, on whose fair face they had impressed a premature but very beautiful thoughtfulness. To one so young, so innocent, so carefully shielded from evil, living in so pure and calm an atmosphere of home, and yet around whom the inevitable solitude of orphanhood dwelt, the presence of a secret cause of sorrow, doubt, perplexity, was in itself a burden grievous to be borne. Clare could not help, dwelling perpetually on the only mystery which had ever come into her tranquil conventional life, and the more she shrank from the contemplation, the more it pressed itself upon her; Sometimes, for days and weeks together, the remembrance of it would be vague and formless, then it would take shape again and substance, and thrill her with fresh horror, distract her with new perplexity. Sometimes she would address herself with all the force of her intelligence to this mysterious remembrance, she would arrange the circumstances in order and question them, and then she would turn away from the investigation cold and trembling, with all the terrible conviction of the first moment of revelation forcibly restored.
The dreadful truth haunted her. When Sir Thomas Boldero asked her ladyship if there was any news in the Times each morning (for the Sycamores was governed by other laws than those which ruled Poynings, and Lady Boldero, who was interested in politics after her preserves and her linen-presses, always read the papers first), Clare had listened with horrid sickening fear for many and many a day. But suspense of this sort cannot last in its first vitality, and it had lessened, but it was not wholly dead even yet. One subject of speculation frequently occupied her. Had he seen the warning she had ventured to send him? No, she would sometimes say to herself, decisively, no, he had not seen it. His safety must have been otherwise secured; if he had seen it, he would know that the terrible truth was known to her, and he would never have dared to recall himself to her memory. For he did so recall himself, and this was the most terrible part of it all for Clare. On the first day of each month she received the current number of the Piccadilly, and there was always written on the fly-leaf, "From Paul Ward." No, her attempt had failed; such madness, such audacity, could not otherwise be accounted for. For some time Clare had not looked at the books which reached her with this terribly significant imprint. She had not destroyed them, but she had put them away out of her sight. One day, after her cousin's marriage, and when her thoughts--forcibly distracted for some time by the preparations, the hospitalities, and the rejoicings attendant on that event--had flown back to the subject which had such tormenting attraction for her, a sudden impulse of utter incredulity seized her. Nothing was changed in the facts, nothing in the circumstances; but Clare laid aside reason under the suddenly exerted power of feeling, and refused to believe that Paul Ward had murdered the unknown man in whose company he had been, and who undoubtedly had been murdered.
"I won't believe it! I don't believe it!"
These words have often been uttered by the human will, when tortured by the terrible impotence of human despair, as unreasonably, as obstinately, as Clare Carruthers spoke them, and with infinitely more suffering implied in the inevitable reaction. But they can seldom have brought greater relief. A generous, reckless impulse of youth, partly against the terrible knowledge of evil, partly against her own suffering, which wearied and oppressed her spirit, distant, vague, even chimerical as she told herself it was, animated her resolution. She rose, and stretched her arms out, and shook her golden head, as though she discarded a baleful vision by a strong act of her will.
"I shall never see him again," she thought. "I shall never know his fate, unless, indeed, he becomes famous, and the voice of his renown reaches me. I shall never know the truth of this dreadful story; but, strong as the evidence is, I never will believe it more. Never, never!"
Clare Carruthers was too young, too little accustomed to the sad science of self-examination, too candidly persuadable by the natural abhorrence of youth for grief, to ask herself how much of this resolution came from the gradual influence of time--how much from the longing she felt to escape from the constant pressure of the first misery she had ever known. The impulse, the resolution, had come to her, with her first waking thoughts, one glorious morning in the early autumn--the morning which saw George Dallas and his uncle arrive at Homburg, and witnessed Mr. Carruthers's reception of his stepson. This resolution she never abandoned. That day she had taken the books out of their hiding-place, and had set herself to read the serial story which she knew was written by him. Something of his mind, something of his disposition, would thus reveal itself to her. It was strange that he remembered to send her the books so punctually, but that might mean nothing; they might be sent by the publisher, by his order. He might have forgotten her existence by this time. Clare was sensible, and not vain, and she saw nothing more than a simple politeness in the circumstance. So she read the serial novel, and thought over it; but it revealed nothing to her. There was one description, indeed, which reminded her, vaguely, of Mrs. Carruthers, as she had been before her illness, as Clare remembered her, when she had first seen her, years ago. Clare liked the story. She was not enthusiastically delighted with it. A change which her newly-formed resolution to believe him innocent, to chase from her all that had tormented her, could never undo, had passed upon Clare, since her girlish imagination had been ready to exalt Paul Ward, "the author," Paul Ward, "the artist," as she had called him, with all the reverence her innocent heart accorded to such designations, into a hero; she had less impulse in her now, she had suffered, in her silent unsuspected way, and suffering is a sovereign remedy for all enthusiasm except that of religion. But she discerned in the story something which made her reason second her resolution. And from that day Clare grieved no more. She waited, she did not know for what; she hoped, she did not know why; she was pensive, but not unhappy. She was very young, very innocent, very trustful; and the story of the murder was six months old. So was that of the meeting, and that of the myrtle-sprig; and all three were growing vague.
The young girl's thoughts were very busy as she rode from the Sycamores to Poynings, but not exclusively with Paul Ward.
Her life presented itself in a more serious aspect to her then than it had ever before worn. All things seemed changed. Her uncle's letters to her had undergone a strange alteration. He wrote now to her as to one whom he trusted, to whom he looked for aid, on whom he purposed to impose a responsible duty. The pompousness of Mr. Carruthers's nature was absolutely inseparable from his style of writing as from his manner of speech, but the matter of his letters atoned for their faults of manner. He wrote with such anxious affection of his wife, he stepson, whose name Clare had never heard pronounced by his lips or in his presence. Above all, he seemed to expect very much from Clare. Evidently her life was not to be empty of interest for the future, if responsibility could fill it; for Clare was to be intrusted with all the necessary arrangements for Mrs. Carruthers's comfort, and Mrs. Carruthers was very anxious to get back to England, to Poynings, and to Clare! The girl learned this with inexpressible gladness, but some surprise. She was wholly unaware of the feelings with which Mrs. Carruthers had regarded her, and the intentions of maternal care and tenderness which she had formed--feelings she had hidden, intentions she had abandoned from motives of prudence founded on her thorough comprehension of the besetting weakness of her husband's character.
Clare had not the word of the enigma, and it puzzled her. But it delighted ............