Маргарет Олифант
Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3
CHAPTER X
Clare was standing by the table with her hands clasped tightly, her mouth shut fast, her tall figure towering taller than usual, when Edgar, all unconscious, returned to her. She assailed him in a moment, without warning. “Edgar, how can you—how could you?” she said, with an impatient movement, which, had she been less fair, less delicate, less young, would have been a stamp of her foot. Her tone and look and gesture were so passionate that the young man stood aghast.
“What have I done?” he asked.
“What have you done? You know as well as I do. Oh, Edgar, you have given me such a blow! I thought when you came home, and we were together, that all would be well; but to see you the very first day—the very first opportunity—throw yourself into the arms of people like these—people that never should have entered this house–”
“Who are they? What are they? Have they done us any harm?” said the astonished Edgar. “If they are enemies you should have told me. How was I to know?”
“Enemies!” said Clare, with increasing indignation; “how could such people be our enemies? They are a great deal worse—they are the vulgar rich, whom I hate; they are trying to force themselves in among us because they are rich; they are trades-people, pretending to be our equals, venturing to ask you to dinner! Oh, Edgar, could not you see by my manner that they were not people to know?”
“I saw you were very rude to them, certainly,” he said. “But, Clare, that goes against me; even—may I say it?—it disappointed me. I do not understand how a lady can be rude.”
Once more she repeated his last word with a certain contempt. “Rude! The man is a tradesman. They have thrust themselves into the village; and now they have seized an opportunity—which was in reality no opportunity—to thrust themselves into the house. Edgar, I have no patience; I ought not to have patience. They have been impertinent. And you as civil as if they were the best people in the county—and going to dine with them! I did not expect this.”
“I am sorry, Clare, if it hurts you,” he said. “They seemed very kind; and how could I help it? Besides, you made them very uncomfortable, and I owed them amends. And you know I am but an indifferent Arden; I have not any horror of trade.”
“You told them so!” said Clare—“you took people like these into your confidence, and confessed to them that you were not an Arden like the rest of us! Oh, please, Edgar, don’t! you might think how unhappy it makes me. As if it was not enough–”
“What, Clare?”
“Oh, can’t you understand?” she cried. “Is it not enough to see that you are not a thorough Arden; that you don’t care for the things we care for, nor hate the things we hate. But to have to hear you say so as if it did not matter!—it is the grief of my life.”
And she threw herself into a chair, and cried—weeping a sudden shower of passionate tears, which were so hot and rapid that they seemed to scorch her, yet dried as they fell. Her brother came and stood by her chair, putting his hand softly on her bent head. Edgar was sorry, but not only because she wept. He was grieved, and perplexed, and disappointed. A half smile came over his serious face at her last words. “My poor Clare—my poor Clare,” he repeated softly, smoothing the dark glossy locks of her hair. When the thunder shower was over he spoke, with a voice that sounded more manly and mature and grave than anything Clare had heard from him before.
“You must take my character and my training a little into consideration,” he said. “If I had been brought up like you I might have thought with you. But, Clare, though I love you more than anything in the world, and would not vex you for all Arden, still I cannot change my nature. Arden is only a very small spot in England, dear, not to speak of the world; and I can’t look at the big world through Arden spectacles. You must not ask it of me; anything else I will do to please you. I will give up dining with these people if you wish it. Of course I don’t care for their dinner; but they looked as if they wanted to be kind–”
“They wanted to come to Arden, to know you and me, and get admittance among the county families,” said Clare in one breath.
“Well, perhaps. I suppose we are all mean wretches more or less,” he said. “Suppose we give up the Pimpernels; but you must not ask me to avoid everybody who has anything to do, or to content myself with the old groove. For instance, I like pictures, though you say the Ardens don’t–”
“That is not what I meant,” said Clare, with a blush; “I meant–”
“You meant opposition, and to snub that fat, good-tempered man; and you only made me uncomfortable—he did not feel it. But I like pictures, Clare, and the people who paint them. I have known a great many in my life; and when I like any man I cannot pause to ask what is his pedigree, or what is his occupation. Putting aside the Pimpernels, you must still make up your mind to that.”
“But you will put aside the Pimpernels?” said Clare, with pleading looks.
“I will see about it,” said Edgar. It was the first time he had not yielded, and Clare felt it. She felt too that a shade of real difference had stolen between them—almost of separation. She had been unreasonable, and had put herself in the wrong; and he had set up a principle of action, erected as it were his standard, and made it clearly apparent what he would and what he would not do. She went away to her own room with a certain soreness in her heart. She had committed herself. Certain words of her own and certain words of his came back to her with the poignant shame of youth—what she had said about the pictures, and what Edgar had said of her rudeness, and of the antagonism which only made him uncomfortable. She had made herself ridiculous, she thought—that worst of all offences against one’s self. It seemed to the proud Clare as if neither she nor any one else could forget how ridiculous she had made herself; and more than ever with tenfold force of enmity she hated those unlucky Pimpernels.
It was brilliant daylight, the sun was setting, and the air full of light and sweetness, when they set off upon their drive to Thorne. Clare was all black, as her mourning demanded—black ornaments, black gloves—everything about her as sable as the night—a dress, which was not perhaps so becoming to her dark hair and pale complexion as it would have been to pretty Alice Pimpernel, or the fair-haired Gussy, whom Edgar was going (though he did not know it) expressly to see. Probably Clare did not waste a thought on the subject, for she was young and entirely fancy free, a condition of things which frees a girl from any keen anxiety in respect to her appearance. She was wrapped in a large white cloak, however, which relieved the blackness, and brought out the delicate pale tints of her face as only white can do; and Edgar, as he took his place by her side, found himself admiring her as if he had seen her for the first time. The high, proud features, so finely cut, the perfect roundness of youth in the cheek, the large, lovely blue eyes, were of a kind of beauty which you may like or dislike as you please, but which it is impossible to ignore. Clare was beautiful, there was no other word for it. Not pretty, like that pretty Alice; and her proud looks and air of reserve enhanced her beauty, just as the sweet wistful frankness of the simpler girl added a charm to hers. “I don’t suppose I shall see any one like my sister where we are going,” Edgar said, with that admiring affection which is so pleasant in a brother.
“No, indeed, they are all quite a different style,” Clare answered with a laugh, turning aside the compliment, which nevertheless pleased her. This did much to restore the former delightful balance of affairs between them. About half-a-mile from the village they came upon a house, just visible through the trees, a very old solid mass of red brick, shining with a subdued glow in the midst of the green wealth of foliage, which looked the greener for its redness, and heightened its native depth of colour. There was a fine cedar on the lawn, and many great old trees within the enclosure, which was so arranged that it might be taken for a park. Edgar gave an inquiring glance at his sister, who answered him by shaking her head, and putting up her hands as if to shut out the hateful vision.
“So that is the Red House?” said Edgar. “I had forgotten all about it. It is a nice house enough. If I should ever happen to be turned out of Arden, I should like to live there.”
“What nonsense you do talk!” said Clare. “Who can turn you out of Arden, unless there was a revolution, as some people think?”
“I don’t think there will be a revolution. But have we no cousins who might do one that good turn?” he said, laughing. “How? Oh, I can’t tell how. It is impossible, I suppose.”
“Simply impossible,” said Clare with energy. “We are the elder branch. The Ardens of Warwickshire were quite a late offshoot. You are the head of the name.”
“I am glad to hear it,” said Edgar; “and I am sure it is a very proud position. Does that Red House belong to us, Clare? But if it had belonged to us, I suppose you would not have let it to those respectable—I mean objectionable—Pimpernels?”
“Don’t speak of the Pimpernels,” she said. “Oh, Edgar, if you only knew how much I dislike those sort of people—not because they are common people—on the contrary, I am very fond of the poor; but those presumptuous pushing nouveaux riches—don’t let us speak of them! We have got a cousin—only one; and if you were not to have any children, I suppose the estates would go to his son. But I hope they never will.”
“Why?” said Edgar. “Is there any reason to suppose that his son would be less satisfactory than mine? I hope he is less problematical. Tell me about him—who is he—where is he? I feel very curious about my heir.”
“And I hate to hear you speak in such a careless way,” said his sister. “Why should you show so much levity on so serious a subject? Arthur Arden is a great deal older than you are. I dislike him very much. Pray, don’t speak of him to me.”
“Another subject I must not speak of!” said Edgar. “Why do you dislike him? Is it because he is my heir? You need not hate a man for that.”
“But I do hate him,” said Clare, with a clouded brow; and the rest of the way to Thorne was gone over in comparative silence. The jars that kept occurring, putting now one string, now another out of tune, vibrated through both with an unceasing thrill of discord. There was no quarrel, and yet each was afraid to touch on any new subject. To be sure, it was Clare who was in the wrong; but then, why was he so light, so easily moved, so free from all natural prejudices, she said to herself? Men ought not to run from one subject to another in this careless way. They ought to be more grave, more stately in their ways of thinking, not moved by freaks of imagination. Such levity was so different from the Arden disposition that it looked almost like something wrong to Clare.
Thorne was a great house, but not like Arden. It stood alone, not shadowed by trees, amid the great green solitude of its park; and already lights were glimmering in the open windows, though it was still day. The servants were closing shutters in the dining-room, and the table gleamed inside under the lamplight, making itself brightly visible, like a picture, with all its ornaments and flowers. It was Lady Augusta’s weakness that she could not bear to dine in daylight. In the very height of summer she had to support the infliction; but as long as she could she shut out the intrusive day. Edgar felt his head swim as he walked into the cool green drawing-room after his sister into the midst of a bevy of ladies. He was fond of ladies, like most well-conditioned men; but the first moment of introducing himself into the midst of a crowd of them fluttered him, as was quite reasonable. There was Ada, the quiet one, on a sofa by herself, knitting. Edgar discriminated her at once. And that, no doubt, was Gussy, with the prettiest tiny figure, and a charming little rose-tinted face, something between an angel and a Dresden shepherdess. “That will be my one,” he said to himself, remembering with natural perversity that Ada was Clare’s favourite. That little indication was enough to raise in the young man’s mind a certain disinclination to Ada. And he did not know that Lady Augusta had already decided upon the advisability of allotting to him her second daughter. He could not see the others, who were busied in different corners with different occupations. It was the first English party of the kind he had ever been at, and he was very curious about it. And then it was so perfectly orthodox a party. There was the nearest squire and his wife, one of the great Blundell family; and there was a younger son of the Earl’s, with his young wife; and the rector of the parish, and a man from London. Such a party is not complete without the man from London, who has all the news at his finger-ends, and under whose manipulation the biggest of cities becomes in reality that “little village” which slang calls it. “Will you take in my daughter, Mr. Arden?” said Lady Augusta; and Edgar, without any thought of his own dignity, was quite happy to find Gussy’s pretty curls brushing his shoulder as they joined the procession into the dining-room. He thought it was kind of his new friends to provide him with such a pleasant companion, while Clare was making herself rather unhappy with the thought that he should have taken in, if not the Honourable Mrs. Everard, at least Mrs. Blundell, or, at the very least, Ada, who was the Princess Royal of the House of Thorne. “I am so glad all the solemn people are at the other end of the table,” Gussy whispered to him, as they took their places. “Mr. Arden, I am sure you are not solemn. You are not a bit like Clare.”
“Is Clare solemn?” asked Edgar, with a half sense of treachery to his sister; but he could not refuse to smile at Gussy’s pretty up-turned face.
“I love her dearly; she is as good as gold,” said Gussy, “but not such fun as I am sure you are. If you will promise never to betray me to mamma, I will tell you who everyone here is.”
“Not if I went to the stake for it,” said Edgar; and so his first alliance was formed.
CHAPTER XI
“You know mamma, of course,” said Edgar’s pretty cicerone. “I suppose I need not enter into the family history. You know all us Thornleighs, as we have known you all our lives.”
“I am ashamed of my ignorance; but I have never been at home to have the chance of knowing the Thornleighs,” said Edgar. “Don’t imagine it is my fault.”
“No; it is quite romantic, I know,” said Gussy. “You have been brought up abroad. Oh yes; I know all about it. Mr. Arden nearly died of losing your mother, and you are so like her that he could not bear to look at you. Poor dear old Mr. Arden, he was so nice. But I thought you must have known us by instinct all the same. That is Ada sitting opposite. I must begin with us young ones, for what could I say about papa and mamma? Everybody knows papa and mamma. It would be like repeating a chapter out of Macaulay’s history, or that sort of thing. Harry is the eldest, but he is not at home. And that is Ada opposite. She is the good one among us. It is she who keeps up the credit of the family. Poor dear mamma has plenty to do with five girls on her hands, not to speak of the boys. And Ada looks after the schools, and manages the poor people, and all that. All the cottagers adore her. But she is not fun, though she is a dear. There is not another boy for ever so long. We girls all made a rush into the world before them. I am sure I don’t know why. As if we were any good!”
“Are not you any good?” said Edgar, laughing. He was not used to advanced views about women, and he thought it was a joke.
“Of course, we are no good,” said Gussy. “We are all very well so long as we are young—and some of us are ornamental. I think Helena is very ornamental for one; but we can’t do anything or be anything. You should hear what she says about that. Well, then, after Ada there is nothing very important—there is only me. I am the chattering one, and some people call me the little one, or the one with the curls. I have not any character to speak of, nor any vocation in the family, so it is not worth while considering me. Let us pass on to Helena. That is Helena, the one who is so like papa. I think she is awfully handsome. Of course, I don’t mean that I expect you to think so, or to say so; but all her sisters admire her very much. And she is as clever as a dozen men. All the boys put together are not half so clever as she is. She ought to have been in Parliament, and that sort of thing; but she can’t, for she is a girl. Don’t you think it is hard? Well, I do. There is nothing she could not do, if she only had the chance. That is the Rector who is sitting beside her. He is High, but he is Broad as well. He burns candles on the altar, and lets us decorate the church, and has choral service; but all the same he is very philosophical in his preaching. Helena thinks a great deal of that. She says he satisfies both the material and intellectual wants. Do you feel sleepy? Don’t be afraid to confess it, for I do myself whenever anybody uses long words. I thought it was my duty to tell you. For anything I know, you may be intellectual too.”
“I don’t think I am intellectual, but I am not in the least sleepy,” said Edgar; “pray go on. I begin to feel the mists clear away, and the outlines grow distinct. I am a kind of Columbus on the shores of a new world; but he had not such a guide as you.”
“Please wait a little,” said Gussy, shaking her pretty curls, “till I have eaten my soup. I am so fond of white soup. It is a combination of every sort of eatable that ever was invented, and yet it does not give you any trouble. I must have two minutes for my soup.”
“Then it is my turn,” said Edgar. “I should like to tell you all my difficulties about Arden. Clare is not such an able guide as you are. She does not tell me who everybody is, but expects me to know. And when one has been away from home all one’s life, instinct is a poor guide. Fancy, I should never have known that you were the chattering one, and Miss Thornleigh the good one, if you had not told me! I might have supposed it was the other way. And if you had been at Arden I never should have made such a dreadful mistake as I made this morning.”
“Oh, tell me! what was it?” said Gussy, with her spoon suspended in her hand, looking up at him with dancing eyes.
“I hope you will not think the worse of me for such a confession. I was so misled as to say I would go and dine with a certain Mr. Pimpernel–”
“Oh, I know,” said Gussy, clapping her hands, and forgetting all about her soup. “I wish I could have seen Clare’s face. But it is not at all a bad house to dine at, and I advise you to go. He is a cotton-merchant or something; but, you know, though it is all very well for Clare, who is an only daughter and an heiress, we can’t afford to stand on our dignity. All the men say it is a very nice house.”
“Then I have not behaved so very badly after all?” said Edgar. “You can’t think what a comfort that is to me. I rather thought I deserved to be sent to the Tower.”
“I should not think it was bad at all,” said Gussy. “I should like it of all things; but then I am not Clare. They have everything, you know, that can be got with money. And such wine, the men say; though I don’t understand that either. And there are some lovely pictures, and a nice daughter. I know she is pretty, for I have seen her, and they say she will have oceans of money. Money must be very nice when there are heaps of it,” Gussy added softly, with a little sigh.
Edgar paused for a moment, taken aback. He had not yet met his ideal woman; but it seemed to him that when he did meet her, she would care nothing for money, and would shrink from any contact with the world. A woman was to him a soft, still-shadowy ideal, surrounded by an atmosphere of the tenderest poetry, and celestial detachment from earth and its necessities. It gave him a gentle shock to be brought thus face to face with so many active, real human creatures, full of personal wants and wishes, and to identify them as the maiden-queens of imagination. Clare had not helped him to any such realisation of the abstract woman. There was no sort of struggle in her being, no aspiration after anything external to her. It was impossible to think of her as capable of advancement or promotion. Edgar himself was by no means destitute of ambition. He had already felt that to settle himself down with all his energies and powers into the calm routine of a country gentleman’s life would be impossible. He wanted more to do, something to aim at, the prospect of an expanding existence. But Clare was different. She was in harmony with all her surroundings, wanted nothing, was adapted to every necessity of her position—a being totally different from any man. It seemed to Edgar that so all women should be—passive, receiving with a tender grace, which made their acceptance a favour and honour, but never acquiring, never struggling; regarding, indeed, with horror, any possibility of being obliged to struggle and acquire. Gussy, though she charmed him, gave him at the same time a gentle shock. That it should be hard for Helena not to be able to go into Parliament, and that this fair creature should sigh at the thought of heaps of money, sounded like sacrilege to him. He came to a confused pause, wondering at her. Gussy was as keen as a needle notwithstanding her chattering, and she found him out.
“Do you think it is shocking to care for money?” she said.
“N-no,” said Edgar, “not for some people. I might, without any derogation; but for a lady– You must remember I don’t know anything about the world.”
“No,” said Gussy, “of course you don’t; but a lady wants money as much as a man. We girls are dreadfully hampered sometimes, and can’t do what we please because of money. The boys go and spend, but we can’t. It is a little hard. You should hear Helena on that. I don’t mind myself, for I can always manage somehow; but Helena gives all sort of subscriptions, and likes to buy books and things; and then she has to keep it off her dress. Papa gives us as much as he can afford, so we have nothing to complain of; for, fancy five girls! and all to be provided for afterwards. Of course, we can’t go into professions like the boys. I don’t want to change the laws, as Helena does, because I don’t see how it is to be done; so then the only thing that remains is to wish for heaps of money—quantities of money; and then everybody could get on.”
Edgar was very glad to retire into an entrée while this curious statement of difficulties was being made. It seemed so strange to him, with all his own wealth, to hear any of his friends wish for money without offering his purse. Had Gussy been Gus, he would have said—“I have plenty; take some of mine,” with all the ready goodfellowship of youth. But he dared not say anything of the kind to the young lady. He dared not even suggest that it was possible: this wonderful difference was beyond all aid of legislation. Accordingly, he was silent, and ate his dinner, and was no longer the agreeable companion Gussy expected him to be. She did not like her powers of conversation to be thus practically undervalued, nor was she content, as her sister Helena would have been, with the feeling that she had made him think. Gussy liked an immediate return. She liked to make her interlocutors, not think, but listen, and laugh, and respond, giving her swift repayment for her trouble. She gave her curls another shake, and changed the subject, having long ere this got done with her soup.
“I have not half finished my carte du pays,” she resumed; “don’t you want to hear about the other people, or have you had enough of Thorne? I feel sure you must be thinking about your new friends. If I ride over to see Clare the day after your dinner, will you tell me all about the Pimpernels? I do so want to have a credible account of them, and the Lesser Celandine, and all–”
“Who is the Lesser Celandine?”
“Oh, please, do not look so grave, as if you could eat me. I believe you are a little like Clare after all. Of course it is the pretty daughter: they say she is just like it; peeps from behind her leaves—I mean her mamma—and never says a word. Don’t you think all girls should do so? Now, confess, Mr. Arden. I am sure that is what you think, if you would allow yourself to speak.”
“I don’t suppose all girls should follow one rule any more than all boys,” said Edgar, with polite equivocation; and then Gussy returned to her first subject, and gave him sketches of everybody at the table. Mr. Blundell, who was stupid and good, and his wife, who was stupid and not very good; and the Honourable pair, who were close to their young historian—so close, that she had to speak half in whisper, half in metaphor. “They have both been so dreadfully taken in,” Gussy said. “She thought his elder brother was dying; and he thought she was as rich as the Queen of Sheba; whereas she has only got a little money, and poor Newmarch is better again. Hush, I can’t say any more. Yes, he is better; and they say he is going to be married, which would be dreadfully hard upon them. How wicked it is to talk like this!—but then everybody does it. You hear just the same things everywhere till you get to believe them, and are so glad of somebody fresh to tell them to. Oh yes, there is that man. If you were to listen to him for an hour, you would think there was not a good man nor a good woman in the world. He tells you how all the marriages are made up, and how she was forced into it, and he was cheated; or how they quarrelled the day before the wedding, and broke it off; or how the husband was trapped and made to marry when he did not want to. Oh, don’t you hate such men? Yet he is very amusing, especially in the country. I don’t remember his name. He is in some office or other—somebody’s secretary; but there are dozens just like him. We are going to town next week, and I shall hate the very sight of such men; but in the country he is well enough. Oh, there is mamma moving; do pick up my glove for me, please.”
Thus Gussy was swept away, leaving her companion a little uncertain as to the impression she had made upon him. It was a new world, and his head swam a little with the novelty and the giddiness. When the gentlemen gathered round the table, and began to talk in a solid agricultural way about steady-going politics, and the state of the country, and the prospects of the game, he found his head relieved a little. Clare had given him a glance as she left the room, but he had not understood the glance. It was an appeal to him not to commit himself; but Edgar had no intention of committing himself among the men as they drank their wine and got through their talk. He was far more likely to do that with Gussy, to make foolish acknowledgments, and betray the unsophistication of his mind. But he did not betray himself to Mr. Blundell and Mr. Thornleigh. They shook their heads a little, and feared he was affected by the Radical tendencies of the age. But so were many of the young fellows, the Oxford men who had distinguished themselves, the young dilettante philanthropists and revolutionists of the time. If he sinned in that way, he sinned in good company. There was Lord Newmarch, for instance, the Earl’s eldest son, and future magnate of the county, who was almost Red in his views. Edgar got on very well with the men. They said to each other, “Old Arden treated that boy very badly. It is a wonder to see how well he has turned out;” and the ladies in the drawing-room were still more charitably disposed towards the young Squire. There was thus a certain amount of social success in Edgar Arden’s first entrance into his new sphere.
