Chapter IX: Doubts Dispelled

'In Paris to-night?' said a voice that thrilled him, and he found himself face to face with Clare, who unexpectedly, and somewhat to her own confusion, appeared at the drawing-room door.

'I knew not that you were at home,' replied Chute, with some coldness of manner, as the memories of last night occurred to him, and he too became confused as he added, 'I meant to have left a farewell card for Sir Carnaby.'

Mechanically they entered the drawing-room. For reasons of her own, Ida did not follow them, and feeling full of the awkwardness of the situation, Trevor Chute lingered, hat in hand, and Clare, amid the tremor and tumult of her thoughts, forgot to offer him a seat.

She was provoked now that she had yielded to Ida's urgency, and written personally to Chute.

Yet wherefore, or why? She had loved him in the past time, and loved him still, as she whispered in her heart; and felt sure that he loved her; and yet--and yet she thought now that letter should have been written by Ida, not her, if written at all.

'I hope you enjoyed your evening with papa at the club,' she said; with polite frigidity of manner.

'Far from it,' said he abruptly, as he felt piqued thereby.

'Indeed!'

'I can scarcely tell you why.'

'Do, if possible,' said she, with genuine surprise.

'Pardon the admission, Miss Collingwood, but all night long Sir Carnaby sang the praises of a certain Major Desmond.'

Clare coloured deeply; her eyes darkened, and sparkled, yet softly, under the sweep of their long black lashes.

'It was horrible taste in papa--to _you_ especially! How could he act so strangely?'

'So cruelly, Clare,' said Trevor Chute, with a burst of honest emotion, born of the sudden line this conversation had taken.

'Fear not for Desmond,' said she, in a bitter, yet low tone, as she shook her graceful head.

'He was to--to propose for your hand.'

'He did so this morning,' was the calm reply.

'And you, Miss Collingwood, you----'

'Refused him.'

'Oh, Clare!' exclaimed Trevor, and all the old love beamed in his eyes as he uttered her name.

'Neither doubt nor misunderstand me,' said Clare, very calmly, and in a voice that was earnest, sweet, and low. 'Papa and others too' ('What others?' thought Chute) 'have tried hard to make me forget what you and I were to each other once, but he and they have failed.'

'Thank God!' exclaimed Chute, so full of emotion that he clutched the back of a chair for support.

'In the seeming emptiness of my heart,' said Clare, speaking in a low tone and with downcast eyes, while the throbbing of her bosom was apparent beneath her dress, 'I made for myself a life within a life, known to myself alone.'

'And that life, darling?'

'Was full of _you_.'

He made a step towards her; but she drew back, and said, questioningly:

'And you, Trevor, in the days of this long separation?'

'Have never, never forgotten you, Clare!'

'Yet you must have seen many!'

'Many--yes, and lovely women, too; but never have I felt a touch of even the slightest passing pang or preference for any one out of the many.'

Clare gazed at him softly and sweetly. She did not, she could not, tell him that in the intervals of a brilliant garden party she had rejected for the third time the passionate supplications and proposals of one who could have made her a marchioness; and those who knew of this thought her cold and proud, but they were wrong, for Clare was 'one of those women who, beneath the courtly negligence of a chill manner, are capable of infinite tenderness, infinite nobility, and infinite self-reproach,' and her heart was loving, tender, sweet, and warm as a summer rose to those who knew her, and whom she loved.

The mist was dispelling fast now.

Again they were discovering, or recalling, all that was sympathetic in each other, and learning to understand each other by word, and hint, or glance, when soul seemed to speak to soul, and more than all, when hand met hand, did Clare feel that which she had never felt since their separation, how magnetic was the influence between them, and how no other hand had made the blood course through her veins as his had done.

The situation was becoming perilous, and Sir Carnaby might at any moment come upon them, like the ogre of a fairy tale, or the irate father of a melodrama.

'I must go, Clare,' said he, but yet he lingered.

Again he was calling her by her name--her Christian name--as of old, in the dear past time, and how sweetly it sounded in her ear!

'Trevor,' said she, pressing a hand on her heart as if to soothe its throbbing, while she leant on a table with the other, 'stay yet a moment.'

Clare was with him again; he was conscious of nothing more; and the old love that had never passed out of his heart, or hers either, stronger now than it had ever been, made him linger in her presence, and made eye dwell on eye, tenderly, sadly, and passionately, till emotion got the better of all prudence, pride, and policy, and snatching the hand that was pressed upon her bosom, he besought her, in what terms, or with what words, he scarcely knew in the whirl of his thoughts, to be his wife at all risks and hazards.

But Clare drew her hand away, and mournfully shook her head, and then, with an effort, spoke calmly--

'You know, Trevor, how I loved poor mamma, and how she loved me?'

'I do, my own Clare.'

'Well, on her death-bed she made me give her two solemn promises.'

'And these were?'

'First, to be, so far as I could, a mother to Ida and Violet, and--and----'

'The second? Oh, Clare, keep me not in suspense!'

'Never to marry without the fullest consent of papa; and as he acted before, so will he act again, out of mere petulance and pride, perhaps, as he will never acknowledge himself in error. Oh, Trevor!' she added, pathetically, 'I would that we had never met, and almost wish that after being so cruelly parted we had never met more.'

Trevor Chute was silent for a time, but a sense of irritation against her father gave him courage to hope.

'Clare, Sir Carnaby is a somewhat gay man,' said he, 'and he has hinted to Jerry Vane, to Colonel Rakes, and others, the chance----'

'Of what?' asked Clare, as her lips became pale.

'Pardon me--his marrying again.'

'With whom?'

'I heard no name.'

'Marrying again!' she exclaimed, with anger, as certain undefined suspicions occurred to her or came to memory. 'If Sir Carnaby does aught so absurd, I shall consider myself absolved from my promise to await his permission, and--and----'

'What, dearest Clare?'

'Become that which I should have been three long years ago,' she replied, with tenderness and vehemence.

'My wife, darling?'

'Your wife, Trevor.'

'Oh, Clare, God bless you for these words!'

And as his arms went round her, all the man's brave heart went out to her, and tears started to his eyes as he kissed her with a passionate warmth in which he had never indulged in the past days of their early and unclouded love.

Soft Clare in his arms again! Clare's tender lips touching his! Oh, which was a dream and which was the truth? The three years of excitement, sorrow, and disappointment in burning India; the marches under the fierce glaring sun; long days of drought and thirst, when facing death among the fierce hill tribes; nights, chill and bitter, among the Himalayan snows; the hard existence in barrack, tent, and bungalow, all so different from what his Guards life had been in London--the present or the past!

But to what would the present lead?

They knew too well that, so far as Sir Carnaby was concerned, his consent would never be given.

'Heavens, Clare!' exclaimed Trevor, in this bitter conviction, 'to what a death in life does your father doom you!'

'Say _us_, Trevor,' said she, in a choking voice.

'Bless you, dear girl, for saying so; but you it seems, and all for my sake!'

At last he had to retire--literally to tear himself away.

So there was acted and there was ended, for the time, their bitter but sorrowful romance, in that most prosaic of all places a fashionable drawing-room, with all its mirrors, lounges, porcelains, and _objets d'art_, which seem so necessary to that apartment which Button Cook calls essentially 'the British drawing-room,' and mentally over and over again did Trevor Chute react and recall every detail of that delicious, yet painful interview, which had come so unexpectedly about, while the swift tidal train bore him from Charing Cross; and her last words seemed to linger yet in his ear--her face before his eye, like the vision of a waking dream--as on the deck of the steam-packet he sat, apart from all, full of his own thoughts, and saw the lights of Harwich and Landguard Fort mingling with moonshine on the water, while the clang of the Bell Buoy came on the wind, and the Shipwash floating beacon was soon left astern, and Trevor Chute, careless of whither he went, changed his mind and resolved to go to Germany.

Happy thoughts banished sleep from his eyes, and on deck he stayed nearly the whole night through, till the muddy waters of the Maese were rippling against the bow of the Dutch steamer.

Clare loved him still, as she had ever, ever done! New happiness grew with hope in his heart.

Yet the prospect was a hard one. He could only know that, though not his wife, Clare Collingwood should never be the wife of another, and tenderly he looked on a ring of sapphires and opals from her hand, on which he had slipped their old engagement ring of diamonds.

He was alone, we have said, for his friend Vane did not accompany him.

He had a card for Lady Rakes' 'at home;' Clare was going, and Ida too; so the former asked Trevor to get him to defer his journey and be present, adding:

'It is for Ida's sake; you know _all_ I mean, and all I hope she wishes.'

'I do, Clare, and so will Jerry.'

'But do not speak of her.'

Hence Vane remained behind in London.