It was about eight o’clock when he went across the park. He had already sent a messenger with a note to beg that Lady Clavering would be up to receive him. As he would come very early, he had said, perhaps she would see him in her own room. The poor lady had, of course, been greatly frightened by this announcement; but this fear had been good for her, as they had well understood at the rectory; the blow, dreadfully sudden as it must still be, would be somewhat less sudden under this preparation. When Mr. Clavering reached the house the servant was in waiting to show him upstairs to the sitting-room which Lady Clavering usually occupied when alone. She had been there waiting for him for the last half-hour.
“Mr. Clavering, what is it?” she exclaimed, as he entered with tidings of death written on his visage. “In the name of heaven, what is it? You have something to tell me of Hugh.”
“Dear Hermione,” he said, taking her by the hand.
“What is it? Tell me at once. Is he still alive?”
The rector still held her by the hand, but spoke no word. He had been trying as he came across the park to arrange the words in which he should tell his tale, but now it was told without any speech on his part.
“He is dead. Why do you not speak? Why are you so cruel?”
“Dearest Hermione, what am I to say to comfort you?”
What he might say after this was of little moment, for she had fainted. He rang the bell, and then, when the servants were there—the old housekeeper and Lady Clavering’s maid—he told to them, rather than to her, what had been their master’s fate.
“And Captain Archie?” asked the housekeeper.
The rector shook his head, and the housekeeper knew that the rector was now the baronet. Then they took the poor widow to her own room—should I not rather call her, as I may venture to speak the truth, the enfranchised slave than the poor widow?—and the rector, taking up his hat, promised that he would send his wife across to their mistress. His morning’s task had been painful, but it had been easily accomplished. As he walked home among the oaks of Clavering Park, he told himself, no doubt, that they were now all his own.
That day at the rectory was very sombre, if it was not actually sad. The greater part of the morning Mrs. Clavering passed with the widow, and sitting near her sofa she wrote sundry letters to those who were connected with the family. The longest of these was to Lady Ongar, who was now at Tenby; and in that there was a pressing request from Hermione that her sister would come to her at Clavering Park. “Tell her,” said Lady Clavering, “that all her anger must be over now.” But Mrs. Clavering said nothing of Julia’s anger. She merely urged the request that Julia would come to her sister. “She will be sure to come,” said Mrs. Clavering. “You need have no fear on that head.”
“But how can I invite her here, when the house is not my own?”
“Pray do not talk in that way, Hermione. The house will be your own for any time that you may want it. Your husband’s relations are your dear friends; are they not?” But this allusion to her husband brought her to another fit of hysterical tears. “Both of them gone,” she said. “Both of them gone!” Mrs. Clavering knew well that she was not alluding to the two brothers, but to her husband and to her baby. Of poor Archie no one had said a word—beyond that one word spoken by the housekeeper. For her, it had been necessary that she should know who was now the master of Clavering Park.
Twice in the day Mrs. Clavering went over to the big house, and on her second return, late in the evening, she found her son. When she arrived, there had already been some few words on the subject between him and his father.
“You have heard of it, Harry?”
“Yes; a clerk came to me from the banker’s.”
“Dreadful; is it not? Quite terrible to think of!”
“Indeed it is, sir. I was never so shocked in my life.”
“He would go in that cursed boat, though I know that he was advised against it,” said the father, holding up his hands and shaking his head. “And now both of them gone;—both gone at once!”
“How does she bear it?”
“Your mother is with her now. When I went in the morning—I had written a line, and she expected bad news—she fainted. Of course, I could do nothing. I can hardly say that I told her. She asked the question, and then saw by my face that her fears were well-founded. Upon my word, I was glad when she did faint;—it was the best thing for her.”
“It must have been very painful for you.”
“Terrible;—terrible;” and the rector shook his head. “It will make a great difference in your prospects, Harry.”
“And in your life, sir! So to say, you are as young a man as myself.”
“Am I? I believe I was about as young when you were born. But I don’t think at all about myself in this matter. I am too old to care to change my manner of living. It won’t affect me very much. Indeed, I hardly know yet how it may affect me. Your mother thinks I ought to give up the living. If you were in orders, Harry—”
“I’m very glad, sir, that I am not.”
“I suppose so. And there is no need; certainly, there is no
