Маргарет Олифант
Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3
CHAPTER IV
“I am not quite in a state to receive a gentleman,” Miss Somers was saying when Edgar went in, with a little flutter of timidity and eagerness. “But it is so kind of you to let me know, and so sweet of dear Edgar to want to come. I told my brother only last night I was quite sure– But then he always has his own way of thinking. And you know why should dear Edgar care for a poor creature like me? I quite recognise that, my dear. There might be a time in my young days when some people cared– but as my brother says– And just come from the Continent, you know!”
“May I come in?” said Edgar, tapping against the folding screen which sheltered the head of the sofa on which the invalid lay.
“Oh, goodness me! Clare, my love, the dear boy is there! Yes, come in, Edgar, if you don’t mind– But I ought to call you Mr. Arden now. I never shall be able to call you Mr. Arden. Oh, goodness, boy! Well, there can’t be any harm in his kissing me; do you think there can be any harm in it, Clare? I am old enough to be both your mothers, and I am sure I think I love you quite as well. Of course, I should never speak of loving a gentleman if it was not for my age and lying here so helpless. Yes, I do feel as if I should cry sometimes to think how I used to run about once. But so long as it is only me, you know, and nobody else suffers– And you are both looking so well! But tell me now how shall you put up with Arden after the Continent and all that? I never was on the Continent but once, and then it was nothing but a series of fétes, as they called them. I was saying to my brother only last night–; for you know you never would visit the Pimpernels, Clare–”
“Who are the Pimpernels? and what have they to do with it?” said Edgar. “But tell me about yourself first, and how you come to be on a sofa. I never remember to have seen you sitting still before all my life.”
“No, indeed,” said Miss Somers, her soft pretty old face growing suddenly grey and solemn, “that is what makes old Mercy think, it’s a judgment; but you wouldn’t say it was wicked to be always running about, would you now? It’s wrong to follow one’s own inclinations, to be sure, but so long as you don’t harm anybody– There are the Pimpernel girls, who play croquet, from morning till night—not that I mean it’s wicked to play croquet—but poor Mr. Denbigh gets just a little led away I fear sometimes; and if ever there was a game intended for the waste of young people’s time–”
“Never mind the Pimpernels,” said Clare, with a slightly imperative note in her voice. “It is Edgar who is here beside you now.”
“Oh, yes—dear fellow; but do you know I think my mind is weakened as well as my body? Do I run on different from what I used, Edgar? I was talking to my brother the other night—and he busy with his paper—and ‘how you run on!’ was all he said when I asked him– You know he might have given me a civil answer. I fear there is no doubt I am weakened, my dear. I was speaking to young Mr. Denbigh yesterday, and he says he said to the Doctor that if he were him he would take me to some baths or other, which did him a great deal of good, he says; but I could not take him away, you know, nor give anybody so much trouble. He is such a nice young man, Edgar. I should like you to know him. But, then, to think when I ask just a quiet question, ‘how you do run on!’ he said. Not that I am complaining of him, dear–”
“Of young Mr. Denbigh?” said Clare.
“Now, Clare, my love—the idea! How could I complain of young Mr. Denbigh, who is always the civillest and nicest– Of course, I mean my brother. He says these German baths are very good; but I would not mention it to him for worlds, for I am sure he would be unhappy if he had to leave home only with me.”
Edgar and Clare looked at each other as Miss Somers, to use her own expression, ran on. Clare was annoyed and impatient, as young people so often are of the little follies of their seniors; but Edgar’s brown eyes shone with fun, just modified by a soft affectionate sympathy. “Dear Miss Somers,” he said, half in joke half in earnest, “don’t trouble yourself about your mind. You talk just as you always did. If I had heard you outside without knowing you were here, I should have recognised you at once. Don’t worry yourself about your mind.”
“Do you think not, Edgar?—do you really think not? Now that is what I call a real comfort,” said Miss Somers; “for you are not like the people that are always with me; you would see in a moment if I was really weakened. Well, you know, I could not make up my mind to take him away—could I? For after all it does not matter so much about me. If I were young it would be different. Dear Edgar, no one has been civil enough to ask you to sit down. Bring a chair for yourself here beside me. Do you know, Clare, I don’t think, if you put it to me in a confidential way, that he has grown. He is not so tall as the rest of you Ardens. I was saying to my brother just the other day—I don’t care for your dreadfully tall people; for you have always to stoop coming into a room, and look as if you were afraid the sky was falling. And oh, my dears, what a long time it is since we have had any rain!”
“Any rain?” said Edgar, who was a little taken by surprise.
“What the farmers will do I can’t think, for you can’t water the fields like a few pots of geraniums. That last cutting you sent me, Clare, has got on so well. Do you mean to keep up all the gardens and everything as it used to be, Edgar? You must make her go to the Holmfirth flower show. You did not go last year, Clare, nor the year before; and I saw such a pretty costume, too, in the last fashions-book—all grey and black—just the very thing for you. You ought to speak to her, Edgar. She has worn that heavy deep mourning too long.”
“Don’t, please,” said Clare, turning aside with a look of pain on her face.
“My dear love, I am only thinking of your good. Now is it reasonable, Edgar? She looks beautiful in mourning, to be sure; but it is more than a year, and she is still in crape. I would have put on my own light silk if I had known you were coming. I hate black from my heart, but it is the most useful to wear, with nice coloured ribbons, when you get old and helpless. I don’t know if you notice any change in my appearance, Edgar? Now how odd you should have found it out! I have plenty of hair still—it is not that; but one gets so untidy with one’s head on a pillow without a cap. Mrs. Pimpernel has quantities of hair; but a married lady is quite different—they can wear things and do things– Did you observe, Edgar, if ladies wear caps just now abroad?”
“They wear a great many different things,” said Edgar, “according to the different countries. I brought Clare a yashmak from Constantinople to cover her head with, and an Albanian cap–”
“My dear,” said Miss Somers, sitting upright with horror, “the idea of Clare wearing a cap at nineteen! That shows one should never speak to a man about what is the fashion. Just look at her lovely hair! It will be time enough for that thirty years hence. I cannot think how you could like to live among the Turks. I hope you did not do as they do, Edgar. It may be all very nice to look at, but having a quantity of wives and that sort of thing must be very dreadful. I am sure I never could have put up with it for a day; and then it goes in the very face of the Bible. I hope you are going to forget all that sort of thing now, and settle down quietly here.”
“Miss Somers,” said Edgar, with mock solemnity, “if I had left a quantity of wives at Constantinople, is it possible that you could calmly advise me to forget them, and marry another here?”
Miss Somers sat up still more straight on her sofa, and showed signs of agitation. “I am sure I would not advise you to what was wrong for all the world,” she said. “Oh, Edgar, my poor boy, what a dreadful position! You might ask the Rector– But if they were heathens, you know, in a Christian country do you think it would be binding? Clare, dear, suppose you step into the drawing-room a minute, till we talk this dreadful, dreadful business over. Oh, you poor boy! It seems wicked for me, an unmarried lady, even to think of such things; but if I could be of any use to you– Edgar! that kind of poor creatures,” said Miss Somers, putting her face close to his, and speaking in a whisper, “people buy them in the market, you know, as we read in books. Listen, my dear boy. It is not nice, of course, but–”
“What?” said Edgar, bending an eager ear.
“You could sell them again, don’t you think? Poor souls, if they are used to it, they wouldn’t care. Good gracious, how can you laugh, with such a burden on your mind? I am thinking what would be the best, Edgar, for you.”
The old lady was so anxious that she put her soft wrinkled old hand upon his, holding him fast, and gazing anxiously into his face. “You young men have such strange ways of thinking,” she said, looking disapprovingly at him; “you treat it as if it was a joke, but it is very, very serious. Clare, my love, just go and speak to old Mercy a moment. I cannot let him leave me, you know, until we have settled on something to do.”
“He is only laughing at you,” said Clare, with indignation. “How can you, Edgar? Dear Miss Somers, do you really believe he could be so wicked?”
“Wicked, my dear?” said Miss Somers, with a look of experience and importance on her eager old face, “young men have very strange ways. The less you know about such things the better. Edgar knows that he can speak to me.”
“But Clare is right,” said Edgar, smothering his laugh. “I did not mean to mystify you. I brought nothing more out of Constantinople than pipes and embroideries. I have some for you, Miss Somers. Slippers that will just do for you on your sofa, and a soft Turkish scarf that you might make a turban of–”
“What should I do with a turban, my dear boy?” said the invalid at once diverted out of her solemnity, “though I remember people wearing them once. My mother had a gorgeous one she used to wear when she went out to dinner—you never see anything so fine now—with bird of paradise feathers. Fancy me in a turban, Clare! But the slippers will be very nice. There was a Mr. Templeton I once knew, in the Royal Navy, a very nice young man, with black hair, like a Corsair, or a Giaour, or something– That was in my young days, my dears, when I was not perhaps quite so unattractive as I am now. Oh, you need not be so polite, Edgar; I know I am quite unattractive, as how could I be otherwise, with my health and at my age? He was a very nice young man, and he paid me a great deal of attention; but dear papa, you know—he was always a man that would have his own way–”
Here Miss Somers broke off with a sigh, and the story of Mr. Templeton, of the Royal Navy, came to an abrupt conclusion, notwithstanding an effort on the part of one of the listeners to keep it up. “Was Mr. Templeton at Constantinople?” Edgar asked, bringing the narrator back to her starting-point; but it was not to be.
“Oh, what does it matter where Mr. Templeton was?” said Clare. “Edgar has come down to see the village, Miss Somers, and all the poor people; and I must take him away now. Another time you can tell us all about it. Edgar, fancy, it is nearly twelve o’clock.”
“It is so nice of you to come and chatter to me,” said the invalid. She was a little fatigued by the conversation, the burden of which she had taken on herself—by Edgar’s (supposed) difficulties about the wives, and by that reference to Mr. Templeton of the Royal Navy. “You may send old Mercy to me,” she said with a sigh as she kissed Clare; for old Mercy was the tyrant whom Miss Somers most dreaded in the world. It was a sad change from the presence of the young people to see that despot come into the room, in the calm confidence of power. “Now, lie down a bit, do, and rest yoursel’,” Mercy said, peremptorily, “or we’ll have a nice restless night along o’ this, and the Doctor as cross as cross. Lie down and rest, do.”
Meanwhile the brother and sister went downstairs, she relieved, he much softened, and full of a tender compassion. “If that would do her any good, you and I might take her to the German baths some day,” said the soft-hearted Edgar, “if she is able to go. Such a restless little being as she was, it is hard to see her lying there.”
“I hope I am not hard-hearted,” said Clare, “but I think she is very well where she is. It is not as if she suffered much. We have lost almost an hour with her chatter. We shall never get back in time for luncheon if we talk to other people as long.”
“But there are not many other people like Miss Somers,” said Edgar, with a passing shade of gravity. He in his turn was grieved now and then by something Clare did or said. But in a few minutes they returned to their interrupted stream of talk, and began to discuss the village, and the plans for the new cottages, and the enlargement of the schools, and the restoration of the Church, and many other matters of detail. The two went from house to house, the village gradually becoming aware of them, and turning out to all the doors and the windows. The women stopped in their cooking and the men, jogging home for their early dinners, ranked themselves in rows here and there, and stood and gaped; the children formed themselves into little groups, and looked on awestricken. Such was Edgar’s first entry as master into the hereditary village. He made himself very “nice” to all the bystanders, and was as cordial as if he had been canvassing for their votes, Clare thought, who stood by in her position as domestic critic, and noted everything. It was odd to see what trifles he remembered, and what a memory he had for names and places. If he had been canvassing he could not have been more ingratiating, more full of that grace of universal courtesy which, in a general way, is only manifest at such times. And yet, it was not as a candidate for their favour, but as their sworn hereditary sovereign, that he came among them. Clare, her mind already in a tumult with all the events and all the talk of the morning, could not but acknowledge to herself that it was very strange.
CHAPTER V
Edgar Arden had lived hitherto, as we have said, a very desultory wandering sort of life. He had been at school in Germany during his earlier years, and afterwards at Heidelberg, at the University, where he had seen a great many English afar off, and vaguely found out the difference between their training and ways of thinking and those in which he had himself been brought up. When he had first come to the age when a boy begins to inquire into his own position, and when it no longer becomes possible to take everything for granted, he had been told first that it was for his health that he had been sent away from home; and when he had fully satisfied himself that his health could no longer be the reason, other causes had been suggested to him equally unsatisfactory. It was his father who was in bad health, and could not be troubled with a lively boy about him; but then there were schools in England as well as in Germany, which would have settled that matter: or the German education was superior, which was a theory his tutor strongly inclined to, but which did not seem to Edgar’s lively young intelligence quite justified by the opinion visibly entertained by the English travellers whom he met. His first visit to England, after he was old enough to understand, made matters a great deal more clear to him. Injustice and dislike are hard to conceal from a young mind, even under the most specious disguises—and here no disguise was attempted. The Squire received his boy with a coldness which chilled him to the heart, saw as little of him as he possibly could, endured his presence with undisguised reluctance, and made it quite apparent to poor Edgar that, unlike all the other sons he had ever seen in his life, he was only a vexation and trouble to his father. The fact that his father was his enemy dawned vaguely upon him at a much later period; for it is hard in extreme youth to think that one has an enemy. A vague sense of being hustled into corners, and shut out of the life of the family, such as it was, had been the cloud upon his earlier days. He had felt that only in Clare’s nursery did he hold that position of chief and favourite to which surely the only son of the house was entitled. And little Clare accordingly became the one bright spot in the house which he still by instinct called home.
He had returned when he was seventeen, and again after he came of age—though not to be received with any rejoicings at that later period, as became the birthday of the heir. His birthday was over when he came home, and Clare, a girl of sixteen, thrust her little furtive present into his hand with a full sense that her brother was not to the Squire what he was to her. But at this period something occurred which enlightened Edgar as to his father’s feelings towards himself in the cruellest way; it enlightened him and yet it threw a confusion darker than ever over his life. The day after his arrival Mr. Arden sent for him, and elaborately explained to him that he wished for his aid in breaking the entail of certain estates, of which the young man knew nothing. It was the longest interview that had ever taken place between the two; and the Squire made very full explanations, the meaning of which was but indistinct to the youth. Edgar had all the impatient and reckless generosity which so often accompanies a buoyant temperament; his sense of the sweets of property was small; and he knew next to nothing about the estates. Had he known much there is little doubt that he would have done exactly as he did; but, however, he had not even that safeguard; and the consequence was that he took his father’s word at once, responded eagerly and promptly to the proposal, and gave his consent to denude himself of the property which had been longest in the family, the little estate from which the name of Arden first came, and which every Arden acquainted with his family history most highly prized. Edgar, however, knew very little about his family history; and with the foolish disinterestedness of a boy he acquiesced in all his father suggested. But after the necessary arrangements in respect to this were concluded Edgar caught a glance from his father’s eye which went to his heart like an arrow. It was in the hunting-field, where, untrained as he was, he had acquitted himself tolerably well; and he was just about to take a somewhat risky fence when he saw that look which he never forgot. The Squire had reined in his own horse, and sat like a bronze figure under a tree watching his son. And as plain as eyes could tell Edgar read in his father’s look a suppressed inappeasable enmity, which it was impossible to mistake; his father was watching intently for the spring—was it possible he was hoping that a fall would follow? How it was that Edgar got over the fence he never could tell; for to his hopeful, all-believing temper such a sudden glimpse into the darkness was like a paralysing blow. He kept steady on his saddle, and somehow, without any conscious guidance on his part, the horse accomplished the leap; but Edgar turned straight back, and went home with such a sense of misery as he had never experienced before. He was too wretched to understand the calls sent after him—the questions with which he was assailed. He could not even reply to Clare’s wondering inquiries. His father hated him—that was the discovery he had made. To suspect that anybody hated him would have given Edgar a shock; but to know it beyond all doubt, and to feel that it was his father who regarded him with such fierce enmity, made his very heart sink within him. He went away next day, giving no explanation of his desire to do so. Nor did the Squire make any inquiries. It was a mutual relief to them to be free of each other. Before his departure his father informed him that he would henceforward receive a much more liberal allowance—an intimation which Edgar received without thinking what it meant—without caring what sense was in the words. And that was the last he had seen of the Squire. Nobody but himself knew of this incident. It was nothing—an impression—a fancy; but in all Edgar’s life nothing had happened that was so bitter to him. The effect had not lasted, for his mind was essentially elastic, and he was young, and free to amuse himself as he would. Fortunately, the kind of amusements he preferred were innocent ones; for he had no guide, no one to control or restrain him, and not even the shadow of parental authority. His father hated him—a horrible freedom was his inheritance—nobody cared if he were to die the next day—nay, on the contrary, there was some one who would be glad.
This impression, which had been swept out of his mind by years and changes, came back upon him with singular force as all at once his eye fell on the great portrait of old Squire Arden, painted when he was Master of the Hounds, in sporting costume, which hung in the hall. He stopped short before it as he went in with his sister on the first day of his return, and felt a shudder come over him. Perhaps it was the costume and attitude which moved his memory; but there seemed to lurk in his father’s face, as he entered the house of which that father had been unable to deprive him, the same look which once had fallen upon him like a curse. He stopped short and grew pale, in spite of all his attempts to control himself. “Would you think it cruel, Clare,” he said suddenly in his impulsive way, “if I were to ask you to transfer that portrait to some other place? It has a painful effect upon me there.”
“This is your house, Edgar,” answered Clare. On this point her sweetness abandoned her. She knew he had been badly used; but she knew at the same time that her father had been all love and kindness to herself. Therefore, as was natural, Miss Arden took it for granted that somehow it must be Edgar’s fault.
“That is not the question,” he said. “I can understand by my own what your feelings must be on the subject. But it cannot harm him to remove it, and it does harm me to have it stay. If you will make this sacrifice to me, Clare–”
“Edgar, I tell you this is your house,” she said, with the tears rushing to her eyes; and ran in and left him there, in a sudden passion of grief and anger. Her brother, left alone, looked somewhat sadly round him. He was very destitute of those impulses of self-assertion which come so naturally to most young men; on the contrary, his impulse was to yield when the feeling of anyone he loved ran contrary to his own: he was a little sorrowful at Clare’s want of sympathy, but it did not move him to act as master. “What harm can it do me now?” he said, going up and looking closely at the portrait. It came natural to him to reason himself out of his own fancies, and to give place to those of others. “It would be wounding her only to satisfy my caprice,” he added after a while; “and why should I be indulged in everything, I should like to know?” Poor boy! up to this moment he had never been indulged in anything all his life. He stayed a long time in the hall, now walking about it, now standing before the portrait. It haunted him so that he felt obliged to face it, and defy the look; and he could not but think with a sigh what a comfort it would be to get quit of it, to take it down and turn it somewhere with its face to the wall. But then he remembered that though he was the master he was more a stranger in the house than any servant it contained; and what right had he to cross his sister, and go in the face of every tradition, and offend every soul in the place, by taking down that picture, which looked malevolent to nobody but him? “God forgive you!” he said at last, shaking his head at it sorrowfully as he went slowly upstairs. He could not feel himself free or safe so long as it remained there. If anything happened to him—supposing, for instance (this grim idea crossed his mind in spite of himself)—supposing it might ever happen that he should be carried into that hall, wounded or mangled by any accident, would the painted face smile at him, would the eyes gleam with a horrible joy? And it was his father’s face. Edgar shuddered, he could not help it, as he went slowly up the great stairs. As he went up, some one else was coming down, making a gleam of reflection in the still air. It was old Sarah, with her white apron, making a curtsey at every step, and finding that mode of progress difficult. Edgar’s mobile countenance dressed itself all in smiles at the appearance of this old woman. Clare would have thought it strange, but it came natural to her brother; though, perhaps, on the whole, it was Clare, her own special charge and nursling, who was most fond of old Sarah, as, indeed, it became her to be.
“Have you been waiting for us?” he said. “My sister has gone to look for you, I suppose.”
“Not gone to look for me, Mr. Edgar,” said Sarah, petulantly; “run upstairs in one of her tantrums, as I have seen her many a day. You’ll have to keep her a bit in hand, now you’ve come home, Mr. Edgar.”
“I keep her in hand!” cried Edgar, struck with the extreme absurdity of the suggestion; and then he tried hard to look severe, and added—“My dear old Sarah, you must recollect who Miss Arden is, and take care what you say.”
“There’s ne’er a one knows better who she is,” said old Sarah, “she’s my child, and my jewel, and the darlin’ of my heart. But, nevertheless, she’s an Arden, Mr. Edgar. All the Ardenses as ever was has got tempers—except you; and for her own good, the dear, you should keep her a bit in hand; and if you say it was her old nurse told you, as loves her dearly, it wouldn’t do no harm.”
“Am I the only Arden without a temper?” said Edgar, gaily; “it’s odd how I want everything that an Arden ought to have. But my sister is queen at Arden, Sarah; always has been; and most likely always will be.”
“Lord bless you, sir, wait till you get married,” said Sarah, nodding her head again and again, and beaming at the prospect. “Eh! I’d like to live to see that day!”
“It will be a long day first,” said Edgar, with a laugh, meaning nothing but a young man’s half-mocking, half-serious denial of the coming romance of his existence; “though I promise you, Sarah, you shall dance at my wedding—but at Clare’s first, which is the proper arrangement, you know.”
“If he was a good gentleman, Sir, and one as was fond of her, I shouldn’t care how soon it was,” she said. “Eh, my word, but I’ll dance till I dance you all off the floor!”
“But you must not go without something to remind you of your first visit to us,” he said; and he took out his purse from his pocket with the lavish liberality of his disposition. “Look, there is not very much in it. Buy something you like, Sarah, and say to yourself that it is given you by me.”
“No, Mr. Edgar; no, Sir. Oh, good Lord, not a purse full of money, as if that was all I was thinking of! I didn’t come here, not for money, but to see Miss Clare and you.”
“It is because it is your first visit to us,” repeated Edgar, and he gave her a kind nod, and went lightly past to his rooms. All his gloomy thoughts and superstitions had been driven out of his mind by this momentary encounter. His light heart had risen again like a ball of feathers. The glooms and griefs that lay in his past he shook off from him as lightly as thistledown. He thought no more of his father’s grim face in the hall—did not even look at it when he went downstairs. Was it that his mind was a light mind, easily blown about by any wind? or that God had given him that preservative which He gives to those whom He has destined to bear much in this world? At so early a moment, when his life lay all vague before him, this was a question which nobody could answer. There was one indication, however, that his elasticity was strength rather than weakness, which was this—that he had not forgotten what had moved him so strongly, but was able, his sunny nature helping him, to put it away.
