Claire

“ Claire, Claire, there has never been in my heart aught but love for you. As Lady of the Blended Rose, as daughter of a Colonel of Queen's Rangers, even in the disguise of a Dragoon, I have never questioned the depth of your womanhood. Once I guessed you a British spy, yet ceased not to love you. Am I to have my reward? You know little of me, as you say, but as an officer and a gentleman, I ask you to repeat again what you whispered to me once out yonder under the stars—do you remember, dear? ”

“ His talk was light, pleasantly humorous, and very genial. He was, in short, the lover. Claire, too, shone with a new radiance.
Doubt rearose in Philip's heart, and grew rapidly into suspicion. He became less responsive to their chatter. His dark eyes grew somber with misgiving, and love swelled into longing that made him feel sure that Claire was necessary to his life. Without her there could be no living for him. He wondered if she and Lawrence had found love. "If they have," he argued, "there can be but one explanation. Claire is unreliable, vicious, and dangerous." ”

“ But Claire—Claire's love. People never believed how dear women could be to one another. Claire had been something wonderful in her life—an exquisite, serene and sunny refuge of understanding that would have been stronger than death or separation. Even if they had never seen each other again it wouldn't have mattered. But now this had happened—this stupid, awful, silly catastrophe and everything would be spoiled. Digby would stand between them like a sword cutting off their very thoughts from each other. ”

“ No, it is you, Claire—your influence, yourself—that I shall miss beyond all measure. No one in the world can take your place with me—no one!"
"But there may be a place as good for some one else to take," said Claire. "Do not fear: the path will open before you. If we trust God He will certainly show us what to do. Trust Him, Marion, and try to be reconciled, will you not?" ”

“ It's not your fault. Claire understands better than any one."
He was silent. He didn't trust his voice. She comforted him immeasurably. And yet he knew that she herself was in bitter need of comfort. He glanced swiftly at her profile and saw how pale she was—deathly pale. She loved Claire. There had always been something between these two—a rare and exquisite understanding, such as is possible only between women, which had sometimes left him out side. Somehow he hadn't minded. He loved beautiful things and he saw that it was beautiful, their closeness to each other. ”

“ Not even Claire can comfort her now—Claire, her whole soul in her eyes, watching her every movement, while her own thoughts turn to the fate of the lover who, at her command, risked his life to liberate the queen.{144}
One evening, sitting together at sunset on the tower, the sound of horses’ feet galloping rapidly on the grass rouses them. A white terror is in Blanche’s eyes as she fixes them on Claire, who, leaning over, can perceive a little company of men-at-arms rapidly approaching, bearing a flag with the king’s badge. ”

“ Claire first smiled, and then sighed, and pulled out the hat-pins with impatient tugs. To be prudent and self-denying is not always an exhilarating process for sweet and twenty.
Presently the maid came staggering upstairs with the smaller boxes, and Claire busied herself in her room until the clock had struck eight, when she again descended to the joint sitting-room. This time the fire was lighted, and the table laid for breakfast, and behind the tea-tray sat Miss Rhodes, the English mistress, already halfway through her meal. ”

“ Claire gripped the chair arms. Anger, fear, doubt, then the knowledge that he could do as he said, swept over her in rapidly succeeding waves, and gathered at last into a steel hate that she felt must last through eternity.
"You, you would do that, after I guided you here! You would take advantage of what I could not help, and—and—" she choked, and then said swiftly—"so, under your indifferent exterior you used your touch that way these days! Oh, you—you beast!"
Lawrence laughed coolly. "I could no more help it than I can avoid being here."
"Lies!" she exclaimed. "A gentleman could help it!" ”

“ You, too, worn out by struggling to live more fully, but not until your lust for life has sent children out to carry on the struggle.
"Oh, Claire, it is you the woman, demanding at any cost that your child live, who gives us our great knowledge, our beauty, our selfishness, and our strident sex, our pain."
Claire caught her breath and sobbed: "Lawrence, Lawrence!"
"Yes," he went on, "that is the end of it all. I see it now. You, unknown to yourself, demanding your child, stung to fear of death without it here in the wilderness, you love me—I know it, you love me. And I—I love you. ”

“ A cry moved her sometimes with a swift violence that alarmed those around her. The message of a note of music shut one door on her soul, opened another, and let her in to strange regions in which she chose to be lonely.
How amazing it was to think that Claire, with all her serpentine beauty, all her celebrity, all the legends that clung to her fame, all the wild caprices of which two worlds had talked for years,—that Claire was hidden away three feet off, beneath the canvas shield that looked like a moderate-sized mushroom from the Kasbar on the hill. ”

“ The presence of the cuckoo clock preserved Claire from personal suffering, but during that silent week there was borne in upon her a realisation of the loneliness of the great city which was never obliterated. A girl like herself, coming to London without introductions, might lead this desert life, not for a week alone, but for years! Her youth might fade, might pass away, she might grow middle-aged and old, and still pass to and fro through crowded street, unnoted, uncared for, unknown beyond the boundaries of the schoolroom or the office walls. ”

“ I always wish I could. There are times, Claire, when I don't want to be a realist, don't want to face life as it is, when it seems too tawdry to be valuable just as it is; then I reach out into the night and cry, 'Let me be the maddest of dreamers, the wildest of idealists, a knight of fancy seeking the illusive dream!'"
Claire laughed aloud as she said, "And don't you know, dear man, that that is just what you do become at times?"
"I know it. That's the joke of it. All the while I mock myself for being a romancing idiot!" ”

“ Philip did not answer for a few minutes, then his voice vibrated.
"The things that mean more than life to me. I know that one holds his own life dear, but there are things, love, courage, honor, for example, that he holds even above life."
"Would you kill me, for instance," asked Lawrence pleasantly, "if I stood between you and Claire?"
"That is scarcely answerable," nervously interposed Claire. "You see, you don't and the man who does—though it's all absurd, since we none of us here are the least in love—is my husband." ”

“ Poor Claire looked a little dubious as she read those last words. The pursuit of pleasure does not as a rule begin to pall at twenty-one; and the old life looked very sweet and pleasant viewed from the new standpoint of change. ”

“ They laughed with the joy that was filling their hearts.
"Don't be longer than you can help, Philip," Claire admonished, and Lawrence added: "Every minute that divides us from our life ahead seems an eternity."
Claire smiled at the dear thoughts his words provoked.
"Good," said Philip in the doorway. "I'll hurry." And he was gone.
Claire and Lawrence stood in the doorway while Philip went singing down the lake shore. Her eyes filled with a warm light, and she slipped her hand into Lawrence's.
"At this moment, dear," she said, "I feel only pity for him. He is going to be hurt." ”

“ Here the Journal has a single entry:
'O Claire, Claire, that we should have met here in the time of eternity, and so parted! Claire, Claire! Oh, it is a vile devil's earth, and good is only in the slave. To have held thee in my arms, and, with my eyes in thine, to have kissed thee once, and died. Death were sweet so.—But it is useless to think. This city is a market where souls are pledged for bodies, and bodies for souls, and wealth buys all. I will go out from it. Useless to think, useless to think!'
It was a few days after this that Rosy and I went our second evening walk together. ”

“ Claire was more familiar with the distinctly male phases of Philip than Lawrence—perhaps a woman always is—but they were too happy to give the matter any real consideration, and, after the fashion of all lovers, they shut out the third person from their little self-bound universe. ”

“ He wants his rescue as an argument." Then her thinking was broken into detached images. She saw her husband and cried aloud to him. She had pictures flashing in her mind of him, of old scenes, parties, places they had been together, tenements she had visited in her charity work, the beach that morning when Lawrence had found her, and in and through it all she heard words falling from his lips that recalled later, stung her to wrath.
"I need you, Claire," she heard him again, and then, "I shall use you, Claire. You will be my masterpiece. ”

“ Claire does not love you, but you attract what is best in her. She relies, I have guessed it, upon the very pathos of her moral ugliness to enchant you, to arouse in you the chivalrous, redemptive qualities she sees in you. ”

“ No other woman in Paris can touch her for brains.”
Claire lifted her eyebrows. I saw that she washed her hands of me. At the moment I was glad of it. As for Clémentine, she cared nothing for what Claire or any one else thought of her. She was a law unto herself. Her love affairs, of which I knew more than I admitted, were as necessary to her as her meals. She must have food, and she attached no great importance to it. An artistic find, an amusing trip or an exciting debate in the Chamber of Deputies, would make her forget with equal ease her lunch or a sentimental rendezvous. ”

“ Her eyes strayed to the figure before the fireplace. Idly she noted the lustrous, wavy black hair and deep brown eyes protected by unusually heavy lashes. It was clearly the face of a thinker, a dreamer, yet there was something sensual about the mouth, potentially voluptuous, abandoned, and suggestive of tremendous passion that slumbered close beneath the brain that was so actively awake. Claire ached, and her body tingled with the unaccustomed warmth. She lay quiet, looking at the fire, her mind still uncertain in its action, weaving sharp, dynamic images about this new personality. ”

“ For this purpose, her education had, at the early age of fourteen, fitted her for a nurse; and in the convent she was called on, in all the little cases of illness which needed a soother. Nobody could spread a plaster so smoothly as Claire—nobody could place a pillow so nicely under the head as Claire—no one stepped so softly, spoke so gently, bathed so coolly, as Claire—none murmured so monotonously the rosary, or sung in a low tone the Ave Maria, so as to bring sleep on the strained eyelids, as Claire—and her gentleness and assiduity had entirely won the hearts of the good Sisters. ”

“ It was while the two were laughing together over an unexpected dénouement that the departure of two guests left a space across which Claire could see a far corner of the room, and perceived that a lady seated on a sofa had raised a tortoiseshell-bound lorgnon, to stare across at herself. She was an elderly lady, and at first sight her appearance awoke no recollection. ”

“ Lawrence was dreaming of his work, his future with Claire, and the home that was to be. Claire was pondering Lawrence's words, "Human beings think many things they don't and can't do." To her these words had been both a great comfort and a startling awakening. Almost instantly had returned an idea which she had thought forever gone, and all day it kept growing.
That night they camped beside a stream under great trees where tiny blue flowers winked up at them from the deep grass. After supper they sat beside their fire dreaming. ”

“ Captain Fanshawe said, leading the way to the furthest corner of the dining-room, and Claire found herself sipping a hot cup of soup, and realising that the world was an agreeable place, and that it was folly ever to allow oneself to be downhearted, since such delightful surprises awaited round corners ready to transform the grey into gold! ”

“ Claire hurried on, eager to be through with the suspense of this plunge into bizarre life which she could not realize would ever be her portion. She was carrying the whole thing through in a spirit of bravado, and she was conscious that her hopes leaned unmistakably toward finding the position filled or her qualifications not up to the mark. ”

“ As her body grew rested, Claire’s mind became increasingly active. It was inevitable, but the second stage was infinitely harder to bear. For the first hours after her arrival her supreme longing had been to lie down and shut her eyes; but now restlessness overtook her, and with every fresh hour drove her more helplessly to and fro. She went out for long walks over the countryside, her thoughts so engrossingly turned inward that she saw nothing of the landscape on either hand ”

“ What do you think of that, Miss Claire? And to wear a black coat and a stiff shirt-front, just like a gentleman! Won’t they all laugh at me when my back’s turned, and talk about daws’ and peacocks’ feathers? It’s all Mr. Christian’s fault, so I suppose you will say it’s all right?”
“It is all right, Bram,” said Claire gravely; “and they won’t laugh at you. They can’t. You’re too modest. And too clever besides.” She paused, dropped her work in her lap, and looked intently at the fire. “Is it true that you’re going to be married, Bram?” ”