Маргарет Олифант
Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3
Mrs. Murray rose slowly at this appeal, and came and stood by the invalid’s chair.
CHAPTER XXV
“I have heard so much about you,” said Miss Somers, eagerly. “I am so glad to have met you. The Doctor is always so busy he never gives me any answer when I speak; and you know when one is helpless and can’t budge– I should have been in my room for ever but for Edgar, you know—I mean Mr. Arden—the dearest fellow!—who has sent me– I don’t know if you understand such things; but look at it. This is the first time I have been out for two years. Such a handsome chair! the very best, you may be sure, that he could get to buy. And I know he is so interested in both– Which is your grandchild? Goodness gracious me? Are not you frightened to death to leave her? She might catch cold; she might have something go up her ear—lying right down in the grass.”
“She’ll take no harm,” said the old woman, “and it’s kind, kind of you to ask–”
“Oh, I am always asking,” said Miss Somers; “but people are so very impatient. ‘How you do run on!’ is all my brother says. I hear your child is so pretty; and I am so fond of seeing pretty people. Once, when I was young myself—but that is such a long time ago, and, of course, you would not think it, and I don’t suppose any traces are left—but people did say– Well, well, you know, one ought never to be vain. She lies dreadfully still; are you not frightened to see her like that—so pale, you know, and so still? It always frightens me to see any one lie so quiet.”
“She is sleeping, poor bairn,” said Mrs. Murray. “She has had a fright, and a bit little attack—and now she’s sleeping. The Doctor has been real kind. I canna say in words how kind he has been—and Mr. Arden. You’re fond of Mr. Arden? I do not wonder at that, for he’s a fine lad.”
“There can’t be anything wrong in saying I am fond of Edgar. No; I am sure there can’t be anything wrong,” said Miss Somers: “he is the dearest fellow! We were brought up so very strict, I always feel a little difficulty, you know, in saying, about gentlemen– But then at my age, and so helpless as I am– I have him up to my room to see me, you know, and I can’t think there is any harm, though I would not for the world do anything that was considered fast, or that would make any talk. Why, I have known him from a baby—or rather I ought to have known him. The Doctor was not here then. When one thinks of such a while ago, you know, everything was so very different. I was going to balls and parties and things, like other young people. Five and twenty years ago!—there was a gentleman that had a post out in India somewhere—but it never came to anything. How strange it would have been, supposing I had been all these five and twenty years in India! I wonder if I should have been helpless as I am now?—but probably it would have been the liver—it would have been sure to have been the liver. Poor dear Edgar, he never was like the Ardens. That was why they were so unkind.”
“Unkind!” said Mrs. Murray, with a sudden start.
“Oh, you must not say anything of it now,” said the invalid, frightened. “He is the Squire, and there is no harm done. The old Squire was not nice; he was that sort of hard-hearted man—and poor dear Edgar was never like an Arden. My brother has his own ways of thinking, you know, and takes things into his head; and he thinks he understands: he thinks it was something about Mrs. Arden. But that is all the greatest wickedness and folly. I knew her, and I can say– He was so hard-hearted—not the least like a father—and that made him think, you know–”
Mrs. Murray, who was not used to Miss Somers, and could not unravel the maze, or make out which him was the Squire and which the Doctor, gazed at her with wondering eyes. She was almost as much moved as Edgar had been. Her cheeks grew red, her glance eager. “I have no right to be asking questions,” she said, “but there’s a cousin of mine here that has long been in their service, and I cannot but take an interest in the family. Thomas Perfitt has told us a’ about the Ardens at home. If I was not presuming, I would like to know about Mr. Edgar. There’s something in his kind eyes that goes to the heart of the poor. I’m a stranger; but if it’s no presuming–”
“Yes; I suppose you are a stranger,” said Miss Somers, who was too glad to have any one to talk to. “But I have heard so much about you, I can’t think– Oh, dear, no, you are not presuming. Everybody knows about the Ardens; they were always a very proud sort of stiff people. The old Squire was married when I was a young lady, you know, and cared for a little attention and to be taken notice of; though I am sure why I should talk of myself! That is long past—ever so long past; and his wife was so nice and so sweet. If she had been a great lady I am sure I should never have loved her so– And the baby—but somehow no one ever thought of the baby—not even his mamma. She had always to be watching her husband’s looks, poor thing. On the whole, I am not sure that one is not happier when one does not marry. The things I have seen! Not daring to call their souls their own; and then looking down upon you, as if you were not far, far– But poor dear Edgar never was petted like Clare. One never saw him when he was a child; and I do believe his poor dear papa hated him after– I ought not to talk like this, I know. But he has come out of it all like—like– Oh, he is the dearest fellow! And to be sure, he is the Squire, and no one can harm him now.”
“Maybe the servants should not hear,” said Mrs. Murray, whose face was glowing with a deep colour. The red was not natural to her, and seemed to burn into her very eyes. And she did not look at Miss Somers, but stood anxiously fingering the apron of the little carriage. John and Mercy were both close by—perhaps out of hearing, but no more.
“Oh, my dear woman, the servants know all about it,” said Miss Somers. “They talk more about it than we do; that is always the way with them. I might give a hint, you know; but they speak plain. No; he was not happy when he was a boy; he went wandering all about and about–”
“But that was for his education,” said the anxious inquirer, whose interest in the question did not astonish Miss Somers. To her it seemed only natural that the Ardens should be prominent in everybody’s horizon. She shook her head with such a continuous shake, that Mercy was tempted to interfere.
“You’ll have the headache, Miss, if you don’t mind,” said Mercy, coming forward; “and me and John both thinks that it ain’t what the Doctor would like, to see you a-sitting here.”
“It’s only for a minute,” said the invalid, humbly, “I want a little breath, after being so long shut up. You may think what it would be if you were shut up for two years. Would you tell John to go and gather me some may, there’s a dear good creature? I am so interested in these nice people; and my brother says– Some may, please, John; not the brown branches that are going off– I think I saw some there. Mercy, you have such good eyes, go and show him, please. There, now they are gone, one can talk. Old servants are a great blessing, though sometimes– But it is all their interest in one, you know. His education was the excuse. I remember when I was young, Mary Thorpe– They said it was to learn Italian; but if that young man had not been so poor– It is such a strange, strange world! If people were to think less of money, don’t you think it would be happier, especially for young girls? I hope it is not anything of that kind with your poor little grandchild; but then she is so young–”
“You were speaking of Mr. Arden,” said Mrs. Murray, with a sigh; and then she added—“But he is the only heir, and all’s his now.”
“Oh, yes, all is his—the dear fellow; but he is not the only heir; there is Clare, you know– Don’t you hate entails, and that sort of thing, that cut off the girls? We may not be so clever, though I am sure I don’t know– But we can’t live without a little money, all the same. I say to my brother sometimes—but then he is so impatient. And Clare is wonderfully superior—equal to any man. I think, though I have seen her every day for years, I get on better with Edgar. It makes my poor head ache, I am such a helpless creature, not good for anything. If you could have seen me a few years back you would not know me. I was always running about: the ‘little busy bee;’ when I was young that is what they always used to call me. There was a gentleman that used to say—a Mr. Templeton, of the Royal Navy– but there were difficulties, you know– Oh, yes; I remember, about Arden– I do run on, I know; my brother is always telling me I lose the thread, but why there should be a thread– Yes, there is another Arden—Arthur Arden; you must have seen him pass just now.”
“The man that was so like–” said Mrs. Murray; and then she stopped, and shut up her lips tight, as if to establish even physical safeguards against the utterance of another word.
“He is very like his family—just the reverse of poor dear Edgar,” said Miss Somers; “but I don’t like him at all, and he is such a dear fellow– If there had been no son, Arthur would have succeeded, and poor dear Clare would have been cut off, unless they were to marry. I sometimes think if they were to marry– Was that your daughter stirring? I can’t think how you don’t die of fright to see her lying there so still. Do bring her to see me, please. I am never out of my room—except now, in this fine new chair, of course, I shall be going out every day. But it is so dreadful to have to be carried, and not to put your foot to the ground. Mercy says it is a judgment; but, you know, I cannot believe– Of course, you must be a Calvinist, I suppose?”
“There’s many a judgment that never shows,” said the Scotchwoman; “you feel it deep in your heart, and you ken how it comes, but nobody in this world is any the wiser. Of that I am well aware.”
Miss Somers was a little frightened by the gravity of her companion’s tone, and did not quite understand what she meant, and was alarmed by the sight of Jeanie lying still and white in the grass. She gave a little cough, which was an appeal to Mercy, and was seized with a sudden flutter of nervousness and desire to get away.
“Yes, yes; I have no doubt you know a great deal better,” she said; “if one was to do anything very wicked– I say to my brother sometimes– I am on my way to Arden, you know, to show Edgar– And Clare passed just now; did you see her? I mean Miss Arden, but it comes so natural to say Edgar and Clare. Oh, yes, I must go on; my brother might think– And then Mercy does not like to be kept– and John’s work– Good-bye. Please come and see me. If there was any room, I should offer to take your grandchild home, but a chair, you know– I am so glad to have seen you. And do you think you should let her sleep there in the grass? Earwigs is the thing that frightens me; they might creep up, you know, and then– Yes, Mercy, I am quite ready; oh, yes, quite ready. I am so sorry– Please come to see me– and the grass, and the earwigs– Oh, John, gently! Good-bye, good-bye!”
With these fragmentary words Miss Somers was drawn away, looking behind her, and throwing her good-byes after her with a certain guilty politeness. This Scotchwoman was superior, too, she said to herself, with a little shudder, and made her head ache almost as much as Clare did. Mrs. Murray, for her part, went back and sat down by Jeanie, who still slept, but began to move and stir with the restlessness of waking. The grandmother did not resume her work. She let her hands drop on her knees, and sat and pondered. The sound of the wheels which slowly carried the invalid along the path grew less and less, the air sank into quietness, the bees hummed, and the leaves stirred, murmuring in that stillness of noon, which is almost greater than the stillness of night. But the old woman sat alone with another world about her, conscious of other times and other things. She was in the woods of Arden, with the unseen house near at hand, and all its history, past and present, floating about her, as it were, an atmosphere new and yet old, strange yet familiar, of which she knew more and knew less than any other in the world. How and what she knew was known to nobody but herself; yet this very conversation had opened to her a mass of unsuspected information, and new avenues of thought, each more painful than the other. She had to bring all the powers of her mind to bear upon the new questions thus set before her, and it was with a doubly painful strain that she brought herself back when the young creature at her feet opened her bright eyes, and with a confused gaze, slowly finding out where she was, came back to the life of dreams, which was her portion in this world so full of care.
CHAPTER XXVI
While Miss Somers was discoursing thus with Mrs. Murray under the trees, Arthur Arden had pursued Clare to the village. He had lost the best possible opportunity, he felt. Just as he had been beginning to make an impression! He sped after her between the long lines of trees, swearing softly under his breath at the intruders. “Confound them!” he was saying; and yet in his secret thoughts there was a lurking determination to see that pretty little thing again, although the pretty little thing was nothing to him in comparison with Clare. He skimmed along, devouring the way, planning to himself how he should recover the ground he must have lost by his benevolent errand. “Putting one’s self out of the way for other people is a deuced mistake,” he said to himself. It was not a habitual weakness of his, so that he could identify the moment and recognise the results with undoubting accuracy, and a clear perception of the weakness and folly which had produced them. He must get over this kind of impulse, he thought, and prove himself superior to all such frivolous distractions. A mere pretty face! with probably nothing in it. Arthur Arden remembered Clare, who was not pretty, but beautiful; whose face had a great deal in it, not to speak of her purse; who was to have Old Arden, the cradle of the race. If he could but secure Clare everything would come right with him; and accordingly no pretty face—nothing frivolous or foolish—must be allowed to intercept or block up his way.
Clare was going towards the village school when Arthur overtook her. She had been walking very fitfully, sometimes with great haste, sometimes slow and softly, losing herself in thought. He came up to her when she had fallen into one of these lulls of movement, and Arthur was satisfied to see that he was recognised with a start, and that the little shock of thus suddenly perceiving him brought light to her eyes and colour to her face.
“You, Mr. Arden!” she said, with a kind of forced steadiness. “I thought you were still occupied about—that—girl. I am so sorry, it seems uncivil, but I don’t really know her name. Was she better? It was good of you to interest yourself so much.”
“I did no more than any man must have done,” said Arthur. “Your maid promised to go, and gave me salts, &c. But she was better, I think. The old woman seemed quite used to it. She was lying asleep in the grass—a very pretty picture. But the old woman is an old dragon. She fairly drove me away.”
“Indeed!” said Clare feebly, with white lips, feeling that the crisis of her fate might be near.
“I only looked at the child—pretty she is, you know, but a little dwarf—when the mother got up and drove me away. I dared not stay a moment longer; and she gave me my orders, to turn my head away if I met them, and never to show my face again. Droll, is it not? One surely should be permitted a little property in one’s own head and face.”
“Yes; but it is not every head and face that have the same effect.” And then Clare paused a little to collect her energy. She had the fortitude of a young princess and ruling personage, accustomed (for their good) to speak very freely to the persons under her, and even to ask questions which would have covered her with confusion had she looked at them in another point of view; but the queen of a community, however small, is not permitted to blush and hesitate like other girls. She made a pause, and collected all her energies, and looked her cousin in the face, not with any shyness, but pale, with a passionate sense of her duty. She was so simple at bottom, notwithstanding all her stateliness, that she thought she could assume over him the same authority which she had over the lads of the village. “Mr. Arden,” she said, with tremulous firmness, “you may think it is a matter with which I have nothing to do—you may think even that it is unwomanly in me to ask anything about it,” and here a sudden violent blush covered her face; “but I have always considered myself responsible for the village, and—and entitled to interfere. One’s position is of no use unless one can do that. I wish to know what you have to do with these people—what is—your business—with that poor girl?”
Clare’s courage almost gave way before she concluded. She faltered and stumbled in her words; her face burned; her courage fled. If she could have sunk into the earth she would gladly have done it. This was very different from a village lad. She felt his eye upon her; she imagined the curious gleam that was passing over his countenance; she was almost conscious of putting herself in his power. And yet she made her speech, going on to the end, though her excitement was such that she felt quite incapable of paying any attention to the answer. She did not look at him, and yet she divined the look of mingled wonder and offence and partial amusement that was in his face. There was something else besides—a look of less innocent meaning—the significant glance which such a man gives to the woman who has committed herself; but Clare was too innocent, too void of evil thought to divine that.
“My dear Miss Arden, you surprise me very much,” he said. “What could be my business with the girl? What could I have to do with such people? Your imagination goes more quickly than mine. I do not know what connection there could possibly be between us. Do you? I am at a loss to understand–”
Poor Clare felt herself ready to sink to the ground with shame and mortification; and then her pride blazed up in sudden fury. “How can you ask me? How dare you ask me?” she said, at the height of passion; and he was so quiet, so entirely in command of himself.
“Why should not I dare?” he said softly. “My cousin has always been very good to me, except once, when she mistook my meaning, as she does now. There is nothing I dare not tell you about myself at this moment.” He winced a little when he had said this, not intending to make so explicit a declaration; but yet went on courageously. “About these poor people, there is really nothing in the world to say. I never saw them in my life before. The old woman said so, if you remember. I was like somebody who had disturbed their peace—very unlucky indeed for me, for I feel I shall be subject to all manner of false construction. But my cousin Clare can understand me, I think. Should I be likely to venture into her presence while carrying on a vulgar– Such things should never so much as be mentioned in her hearing. I am ashamed to seem to imply–”
Clare had been driven to such a pitch of shame and passion that she could no longer endure herself. “I did not imply,” she said, “I asked—plainly– I am the protector of everybody here. It is not for me to shut my eyes to things, though they may be a horror and shame to think of. I asked you—plainly—what you had been doing—why the sight of you had such an effect upon that poor girl?”
“I will answer the Princess, not the young lady,” said Arden, with mocking calm. “Your young subject has taken no scathe by me. I never saw her until this morning in your presence. I never should have known of her existence but for you; is that enough? or shall I appear in your Highness’s Court and swear to it? Such a question could scarcely be put by you to me; but from a Sovereign to a stranger is a different matter. Have I cleared myself to the Princess Clare of Arden? Then let me be acquitted, and let it be forgotten. It wounds me to suppose–”
“You are to suppose nothing,” said Clare, with averted face. “I have asked you because I thought it was my duty, Mr. Arden, in my position– I have spoken quite plainly—and– I am going to visit the school. You will not find it at all amusing. I am sorry to have said anything—I mean I am sorry if I have been unjust. I am grieved– Good morning. I will not trouble you more just now–”
“Mayn’t I wait for you?” said Arthur, in his gentlest tone. “If you could know how much higher I think of you for your straightforwardness, how much nobler– No, please don’t stop me; there are some things that must be said–”
“And there are some things that cannot be listened to,” said Clare, waving her hand as she entered the porch. She escaped from him without another word, plunging into the midst of the children and the monotonous hum of their lessons with a sense that everything about it was simply intolerable, that she could bear no more, and must fall down at his feet or their feet, it did not much matter which. She could not see the trim little schoolmistress, her own special protegée and pupil, who came forward curtesying and smiling. A haze of agitation and bewilderment was about her. The rows of pinafored children rising and bobbing their little curtseys to the young lady of the manor were visible to her as through a mist. “My head aches so,” she said faintly. “Let me sit down for a little in the quiet; and oh, couldn’t you keep them quite still for two minutes? The sun is so hot outside.”
“Won’t you go and sit down in my room, Miss Clare?” said the schoolmistress. “The children will be moving and whispering. It is so cool in my room. You have never been there since you had it built for me; and the jasmine has grown so, you would not know it. Please come into my room.”
Clare followed mechanically into the little sitting-room, a tiny cottage parlour, with jasmine clustering about the window, and some monthly roses in a little vase on the table. “It is so sweet and so quiet here. I am so happy in my little room,” said the schoolmistress; “and it is all your doing, Miss Clare: everything is so convenient. And then the garden. I am so happy here.”
“Are you, indeed?” said Clare, sitting down in the little wickerwork chair, covered with chintz, which creaked under her, but which was at once soft and splendid in the eyes of her companion. “Never mind me, please; go on with your work, and as soon as I am rested I will follow you to the school. Please leave me by myself, I want nothing now.”
And there she sat for half an hour all alone in that little homely quiet place. The window was open, the white curtain fluttered in the wind, the white stars of the jasmine gleamed—just one or two early blossoms—among the darkness of the foliage. And the roses were faintly sweet, and the atmosphere warm and balmy; and in the distance a faint hum like that of the bees betrayed the neighbourhood of the school. Clare, who had all Arden at her command, and to whom the great rooms and stately passages of her home were a matter of necessity, felt grateful for this balmy, homely stillness. She took off her hat, and pushed her hair off her forehead, and gradually got the mist out of her eyes, and saw things clearly. Oh, how foolish she had been! She, who prided herself upon her good sense. Edgar would not have committed himself so, she thought, though she was continually finding fault with him; but she, who had so good an opinion of her own wisdom, she who was so proudly pure, and above the breath of evil, that she should have thus betrayed and made apparent her evil suspicions and wicked thoughts! What must anyone think of her? “Your imagination goes faster than mine;” that was what he had said. And her imagination had jumped at something which should never be named in maidenly ears. Clare’s confusion and self-horror were so great that the longer she mused over them the more insupportable they grew. Her cheeks blazed with a hot permanent blush, though she sat alone. What could he think of her? what could anybody think of her? Such thoughts would never have entered Miss Budd’s head, whose life was spent between the noisy school and this quiet parlour, who was a good little creature, never interfering with anybody, doing her work and smiling at the world. “Why cannot I do that?” Clare said to herself, with the wild shame of youth, which feels its little sins to be indelible. She, Clare, did not seem to be able to help interfering with her brother, who knew better than she did—with everybody, down to this little Scotch girl, and even with Arthur Arden! Oh, how she hated herself, and what a fool she had been!
Clare was very lowly in her tone when she went into the school, with a bad headache and a pale face, and a spirit more subdued probably than it had ever been in her life before. It is very dreadful to make one’s self ridiculous, to show one’s self in a bad light, when one is young. The sense of shame is so intense, the certainty that nobody will ever forget it. She passed a great many false notes in the singing, and big stitches in the needlework, and was altogether so subdued and gentle that Miss Budd was filled with astonishment. “She must be going to be married,” sighed the schoolmistress, with a glow of sympathy and admiration in her eyes; for she was romantic, like so many young persons in her position, and full of interest, and a wistful, half-envying curiosity what that state of mind could be like. Miss Budd had seen a gentleman lingering about the school door; she had seen him pass and repass when she came back from the little parlour in which she had left Clare. She could not but volunteer one little timid observation, when Miss Arden’s duties were over, and she attended her to the door. “The gentleman went that way, Miss Clare,” said the schoolmistress, timidly stealing a glance from under her eyelashes. “What gentleman?” said Clare, with a start; and her self-control was not sufficient to keep the telltale blush from her cheeks. “Oh, my cousin, Mr. Arden,” she went on, coldly. “He has gone back to the Hall, I suppose.” And she pointedly went the other way when she left the school, taking a path which could only lead to Sally Timms’ cottage, a woman who was quite out of Clare’s good graces. “Can it be a quarrel?” Miss Budd asked herself anxiously, as she went back to her scholars. And Clare went hurriedly, seeing there was nothing else for it, to visit Sally Timms. Nothing could well be imagined more utterly unsatisfactory than Sally Timms’s house, and her children, and her personal character. She was the favourite pest of the village, though she did not originally belong to it, or even to the neighbourhood. Her boys thieved and played tricks, and took every malady incident to boys, and were generally known to have brought measles and whooping-cough, not to say small-pox, into Arden. The two former maladies had passed through all the children of the place, in consequence of the wandering propensities of Johnny and Tommy, and their faculty for catching everything that was going. And the latter had been only kept off by the prompt removal of Sally herself to the hospital in Liverpool, from whence she had come back white and swollen, and seamed and scarred, to the utter destruction of the remnant of good looks which she had once possessed. She was a widow, as such people always manage to be, and had no established means of livelihood. She took in washing when she could get it. She would go messages to Liverpool when her boys were doing something else, always ready for any piece of variety. She had some boxes of matches and bunches of twigs in her window for lighting fires, by which she sometimes turned a penny. Now and then she had been seen with a basket furnished with tapes and buttons, which she sold about the country, enjoying that, too, as a relief from the monotony of ordinary existence. In short, she was one of those wild nomads to be met in all classes of society, who cannot confine themselves to routine—who must have change and movement, and hold in less than no estimation the cleanliness and good order and decorums of life. She was very fond of gadding about, not very particular as to the laws of property, and utterly indifferent to ordinary comfort. It would be impossible for one person to disapprove more entirely of another than Clare disapproved of Sally Timms. And yet she was on her way to see her—there being only her cottage at the end of the village street which could lead her in an opposite direction from that taken by Arthur Arden—which was only too clear a sign, had she but known it, how important Arthur Arden was becoming to Clare.
How long the conversation lasted Miss Arden could not have told any one—nor indeed what it was about. Sally was saucy and she was penitent; but she was not hopeful; and Clare shook her head as she went away. She gave a little nod to John Hesketh’s wife, who was the model woman of the village, as she passed her cottage. “I have been talking to Sally Timms, but I fear there is nothing to be done with her,” she said, stopping a second at the garden gate. “She’s a bad one, Miss Clare, is Sally Timms,” said Mrs. Hesketh, disapprovingly. But neither of them were aware that Clare’s visit was totally irrespective of Sally’s welfare, spiritual or bodily; and was only a pretext to avoid Arthur Arden, who, nevertheless, was patiently waiting for her all this time at the great gate.
