LITMIR.BIZ

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he is married. Mama says they must be separated. That is shameful. If I can help him I will. I pray so that he may be happy. I hope God hears poor sinners' prayers. I am very sinful. Nobody knows it as I do. They say I am good, but I know. When I look on the ground I am not looking after earthworms, as he said. Oh, do forgive me, God!"

      Then she spoke of her own marriage, and that it was her duty to obey her mother. A blank in the Diary ensued.

      "I have seen Richard. Richard despises me," was the next entry.

      But now as he read his eyes were fixed, and the delicate feminine handwriting like a black thread drew on his soul to one terrible conclusion.

      "I cannot live. Richard despises me. I cannot bear the touch of my fingers or the sight of my face. Oh! I understand him now. He should not have kissed me so that last time. I wished to die while his mouth was on mine."

      Further: "I have no escape. Richard said he would die rather than endure it. I know he would. Why should I be afraid to do what he would do? I think if my husband whipped me I could bear it better. He is so kind, and tries to make me cheerful. He will soon be very unhappy. I pray to God half the night. I seem to be losing sight of my God the more I pray."

      Richard laid the book open on the table. Phantom surges seemed to be mounting and travelling for his brain. Had Clare taken his wild words in earnest? Did she lie there dead--he shrouded the thought.

      He wrapped the thoughts in shrouds, but he was again reading.

      "A quarter to one o'clock. I shall not be alive this time to-morrow. I shall never see Richard now. I dreamed last night we were in the fields together, and he walked with his arm round my waist. We were children, but I thought we were married, and I showed him I wore his ring, and he said--if you always wear it, Clare, you are as good as my wife. Then I made a vow to wear it for ever and ever... It is not mama's fault. She does not think as Richard and I do of these things. He is not a coward, nor am I. He hates cowards.

      "I have written to his father to make him happy. Perhaps when I am dead he will hear what I say.

      "I heard just now Richard call distinctly--Clare, come out to me. Surely he has not gone. I am going I know not where. I cannot think. I am very cold."

      The words were written larger, and staggered towards the close, as if her hand had lost mastery over the pen.

      "I can only remember Richard now a boy. A little boy and a big boy. I am not sure now of his voice. I can only remember certain words. 'Clari,' and 'Don Ricardo,' and his laugh. He used to be full of fun. Once we laughed all day together tumbling in the hay. Then he had a friend, and began to write poetry, and be proud. If I had married a young man he would have forgiven me, but I should not have been happier. I must have died. God never looks on me.

      "It is past two o'clock. The sheep are bleating outside. It must be very cold in the ground. Good-bye, Richard."

      With his name it began and ended. Even to herself Clare was not over-communicative. The book was slender, yet her nineteen years of existence left half the number of pages white.

      Those last words drew him irresistibly to gaze on her. There she lay, the same impassive Clare. For a moment he wondered she had not moved--to him she had become so different. She who had just filled his ears with strange tidings--it was not possible to think her dead! She seemed to have been speaking to him all through his life. His image was on that still heart.

      He dismissed the night-watchers from the room, and remained with her alone, till the sense of death oppressed him, and then the shock sent him to the window to look for sky and stars. Behind a low broad pine, hung with frosty mist, he heard a bell-wether of the flock in the silent fold. Death in life it sounded.

      The mother found him praying at the foot of Clare's bed. She knelt by his side, and they prayed, and their joint sobs shook their bodies, but neither of them shed many tears. They held a dark unspoken secret in common. They prayed God to forgive her.

      Clare was buried in the family vault of the Todhunters. Her mother breathed no wish to have her lying at Lobourne.

      After the funeral, what they alone upon earth knew brought them together.

      "Richard," she said, "the worst is over for me. I have no one to love but you, dear. We have all been fighting against God, and this... Richard! you will come with me, and be united to your wife, and spare my brother what I suffer."

      He answered the broken spirit: "I have killed one. She sees me as I am. I cannot go with you to my wife, because I am not worthy to touch her hand, and were I to go, I should do this to silence my self-contempt. Go you to her, and when she asks of me, say I have a death upon my head that--No! say that I am abroad, seeking for that which shall cleanse me. If I find it I shall come to claim her. If not, God help us all!"

      She had no strength to contest his solemn words, or stay him, and he went forth.

      CHAPTER XLI

      A man with a beard saluted the wise youth Adrian in the full blaze of Piccadilly with a clap on the shoulder. Adrian glanced leisurely behind.

      "Do you want to try my nerves, my dear fellow? I'm not a man of fashion, happily, or you would have struck the seat of them. How are you?"

      That was his welcome to Austin Wentworth after his long absence.

      Austin took his arm, and asked for news, with the hunger of one who had been in the wilderness five years.

      "The Whigs have given up the ghost, my dear Austin. The free Briton is to receive Liberty's pearl, the Ballot. The Aristocracy has had a cycle's notice to quit. The Monarchy and old Madeira are going out; Demos and Cape wines are coming in. They call it Reform. So, you see, your absence has worked wonders. Depart for another five years, and you will return to ruined stomachs, cracked sconces, general upset, an equality made perfect by universal prostration."

      Austin indulged him in a laugh. "I want to hear about ourselves. How is old Ricky?"

      "You know of his--what do they call it when greenhorns are licensed to jump into the milkpails of dairymaids?--a very charming little woman she makes, by the way--presentable! quite old Anacreon's rose in milk. Well! everybody thought the System must die of it. Not a bit. It continued to flourish in spite. It's in a consumption now, though--emaciated, lean, raw, spectral! I've this morning escaped from Raynham to avoid the sight of it. I have brought our genial uncle Hippias to town--a delightful companion! I said to him: 'We've had a fine Spring.' 'Ugh!' he answers, 'there's a time when you come to think the Spring old.' You should have heard how he trained out the 'old.' I felt something like decay in my sap just to hear him. In the prize-fight of life, my dear Austin, our uncle Hippias has been unfairly hit below the belt. Let's guard ourselves there, and go and order dinner."

      "But where's Ricky now, and what is he doing?" said Austin.

      "Ask what he has done. The miraculous boy has gone and got a baby!"

      "A child? Richard has one?" Austin's clear eyes shone with pleasure.

      "I suppose it's not common among your tropical savages. He has one: one as big as two. That has been the death-blow to the System. It bore the marriage--the baby was too much for it. Could it swallow the baby, 'twould live. She, the wonderful woman, has produced a large boy. I assure you it's quite amusing to see the System opening its mouth every hour of the day, trying to gulp him down, aware that it would be a consummate cure, or a happy release."

      By degrees Austin learnt the baronet's proceedings, and smiled sadly.

      "How has Ricky turned out?" he asked. "What sort of a character has he?"

      "The poor boy is ruined by his excessive anxiety about it. Character? he has the character of a bullet with a treble charge of powder behind it. Enthusiasm is the powder. That boy could get up an enthusiasm for the maiden days of Ops! He

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