Squire Arden; volume 2 of 3

“Oh, Perfitt saw her, did he?” said the Rector.

“Yes, sir. But I don’t see what difference that could make,” said Mrs. Fillpot, jealous of her power.

“No, no, I don’t suppose so,” said Mr. Fielding; but in his mind he allowed that it might make a great deal of difference, and went away very thoughtfully, shaking his head. “She has taken it to heart, poor child; she has taken it to heart,” he said to himself as he went home, shaking his head with that mingled pity and sense of superiority which an affectionate bystander feels in such a case. Better that she should suffer a little now than afterwards, when it would be too late, was Mr. Fielding’s thought, and in his aged mind this “suffer a little” was all that was comprehensible of Clare’s passion and agony. She would get over it after a while, of course, and no particular harm would be done. Such was his conception of the state of affairs.

There was, however, another visitor to Arden, whose consternation was still greater. Arthur came at his usual hour in the afternoon, with all his energies refreshed by his temporary absence, and with a determination in his mind to know his fate at once, so far as Clare was concerned. He loved her, he said to himself. It was true that he was quite capable of being momentarily drawn aside from his allegiance, and that his recent pursuit of her had been complicated by other motives. But yet he loved her. If Edgar were unmasked to-morrow, and himself in Edgar’s place, it would still be his cousin Clare whom he would prefer to all others to sit upon his throne with him. And why should he delay speaking to her on the subject? If things remained as they were—which was probable—then she would share what she had with him; and if he could make any discovery and better his own position, why then of course he would share everything with her.

“If you are not the heiress born,
And I, he said, the lawful heir,
We two will wed to-morrow morn,
And you shall still be Lady Clare.”

This rhyme ran in his head as he went up the avenue, with many a softer thought. He had made himself very agreeable to Alice Pimpernel the day before—so much so as to leave little doubt on her mother’s mind as to what would follow “if anything came of that Arden business;” and he had shown an inclination to make himself more than agreeable to Jeanie. But neither of them so much as touched his determination, if it were possible, to wed Clare Arden, whatever might happen. Accordingly, he went with his mind made up to see her, and open his heart. And there was so much natural feeling in the matter that he was more excited by it than he had been for years. Really it was something which he could with justice call his happiness which was involved. It would make the most material difference to him if she refused him. He felt that he might return to the Red House an altered man—either happy and serene, or discouraged beyond all conception. He feared a little, because he was in earnest; but he hoped a great deal more than he feared. These days of uninterrupted intercourse had been much in his favour, he felt. He had done everything he could to gain his cousin’s confidence; he had refrained from love-making in any of its distincter fashions. He had shown himself anxious for her approval, conscious of the improprieties of his past life. In short, he knew he had made progress; and now with a thrill of excitement he came to seek his fate.

“Out!” he said blankly, stricken dumb with amazement, and gazing at Wilkins as if he had been a prodigy; and then he recovered himself. “Ah! out in the garden, I suppose,” he added. “Be so good as to let Miss Arden know that I am here, and ask if I may join her.”

“She is not in the garden,” said Wilkins, with a solemn enjoyment of the other’s disappointment. Arthur Arden was not liked by the servants; and Wilkins lingered over every word by way of tantalising him more. “Miss Arden has gone out, sir, for the day. For the day—them were her very words. ‘Wilkins,’ she says, ‘if any one calls, I have gone out for the day.’ Nothing, sir, could be more exact than Miss Arden was.”

Arthur was so completely taken aback that he stood aghast for a moment gazing at the man who confronted him with the ghost of a smile on his face, blocking up the door. Wilkins stood like one who felt his own supremacy, in an easy attitude upon the threshold, forbidding all comers as effectually as if he had been a squadron of cavalry. “Them were the very words,” he said, rubbing his hands; and Arthur stood below, expelled as it were from Paradise. The catastrophe was so sudden and so unlooked for that he did not in the least know how to meet it. He could not even for the moment hide his own discomfiture and dismay.

“I suppose Miss Arden intends me to go on with my work and await her coming,” he said at length. “I am very sorry to miss her, but I suppose that is what I must do.”

“She didn’t say nothing about it, sir,” said Wilkins; “and what is more, she’s been and locked the library door.”

Then Arthur perceived that things were really going against him. He would not betray himself to the servant’s all-penetrating eyes. “Ah, I suppose something must have happened,” he said, with as light a tone as he could summon up. “Tell Miss Arden I was very sorry to find her gone. I suppose she has changed her mind about the papers. Tell her if she wishes me to go on with them that she must send me word to the Red House. I shall be there for some days longer. I shall pay my respects to her whether I hear from her or not before I leave; but if I am to do any more work ask her to let me know.”

“I’ll give her your message, sir,” said Wilkins, with ill-concealed satisfaction; and then, before he was conscious what it meant, before he could half realise the position, Arthur found himself with his back to the house, making his way once more down the avenue. Could it be possible? Was he dreaming? He was so completely taken by surprise that he had lost all his readiness of reason and promptitude in an emergency. Nothing so overwhelming, so sudden, so mysterious, had ever happened to him before. It was not only a disappointment, it was an insult. Dismissed by a servant; turned away from the door which, it might be, was legally his; sent off without a word of explanation! Arthur paused when he had gone half-way down the avenue to say to himself that he must be dreaming, that he must go back and laugh at the hoax that had been played upon him, and find Clare, in the full satisfaction of a successful trick, laughing too. But then there came in the chill thought that Clare was not at all the sort of person to perform a trick of any kind, and that what she did was generally in deadly earnest, relieved by no practical jokes. His amazement was so profound that he scarcely said a word to himself all the way down. Had she found out anything? Was there anything to find out? His meaning in that raid upon the papers was known to no one but himself. Nobody could say a word against his motives; nobody could be offended with him because he had a zeal for his family. To write a book about them even was a perfectly justifiable, not to say laudable, idea. What could she have had to find fault with? Arthur was as much surprised as dismayed. He went home feeling as if he had been beaten corporeally as well as mentally—feeling more absolutely small, and mean, and contemptible than he had ever done in his life—humiliated before Wilkins, even—made the laughing-stock of the servants. This was the manner in which he was sent away from Arden on the day which he had selected to decide his fate.

CHAPTER XIX

It is comparatively easy to make a sudden and rapid decision which is (one says to one’s self) final, and settles in a moment some great question which affects a whole existence. As soon as the uncertainty is over, and the decision absolutely made, everything will come easy, the sufferer thinks. And such had been Clare’s feeling when she set out upon that wretched ramble, with Barbara toiling after her. She would cut herself off at once, and for ever, from all possibility of being remonstrated with, talked over, moved by any argument. She would cut the knot by one arbitrary action, and free herself. And when that was once successfully done she could live without sympathy, without any desire to cast herself upon the aid of others; she would be self-sufficing, self-contained, self-restraining all the rest of her life. Had not she already tried every relationship, and found it wanting? He who had made himself most dear to her—he who had pretended to love her, had deceived her. Every friend she had, in all probability, would disapprove of the encouragement she had given to Arthur, and would equally disapprove of the summary and insulting way in which she had cast him off. Her father– Clare’s whole being surged up into excitement as she thought of him—excitement produced by two words which she had spied through a torn envelope, and which, perhaps, meant nothing in the world. Her brother– Clare’s heart sank again into a sickness and miserable failing of all strength and composure. She was alone, absolutely alone, on the face of the earth. She had no one to fall back upon, to consult on such a terrible dilemma as never surely woman was placed in before. Walking under that blazing sun was fortunately of itself confusing and exhausting enough; but when she reached the Three Beeches, and sat down under their shadow, all the excitement in her mind seemed to meet and clash, filling up her brain with a buzz and sound which almost drove her mad. Not one great battle only, but two or three were raging within her, exploding now from one quarter, now from another, like a network of storms. The Three Beeches stood upon an elevated point, not very high in itself, but possessing all the importance of a hill in that level country. The trees were very fine old trees, with great gnarled trunks, and such a wealth of shadow under them as made the traveller rejoice. Seated on the thick mossy turf, Clare looked down and saw her home among its trees, and the bright white street of the village, and the Red House, burning in the sunshine. Even Thornleigh Church, which was seven miles off, was visible in the sunny distance. Almost every individual involved in the dim and confused drama which was weaving itself about her was at present, could she but see under those roofs, within her range of vision. She let her books, which she had brought with the intention of working hard at a translation, and thus making thought impossible, lie beside her, without so much as remembering their existence. Thinking! How could she help thinking? As long as there is nothing particular in your mind it is, of course, easy enough to occupy it with external matters; but when it is full—full to overflowing– So Clare thought and thought till her mind felt on the eve of giving way. Arthur Arden had done her a great wrong—she thought he had done her such a wrong as a woman can never forgive to a man—not only preferred another to her, but made false pretences of love to her in order to enjoy that other’s society. Injury and contempt could go no further. He had wounded her heart, and struck a deadly blow at her maidenly dignity and pride. It was the bitterest wrong, and as such she had resented it.

And yet perhaps Arthur Arden had been wronged as bitterly; perhaps he had unconsciously suffered all his life, and Providence had thrown the means of avenging him into her hands. Edgar, too, had been wronged, not in the same way, but by being made an instrument of injury. But from the thought of Edgar she shrank as if it hurt her. And her father, whom she had held in such reverence, whom she had worshipped as the very embodiment of all the Ardens, whom she had loved so much, and who had loved her—Clare shrank as if a shower of blows were hailing upon her head. She had thrust herself into his secrets, and now she must bear the burden. If she had pried over his shoulder while he was living, how poor, how dishonourable she would have felt herself; but she had done worse than that. She had stolen a surreptitious glance at his secrets after he was dead. Then she tried to calm herself down. Perhaps the words she had read did not mean what they seemed to mean. Perhaps they referred to something perfectly innocent, some piece of generosity on her father’s part of which he had said nothing to any one. But Clare felt that even were this the case she must bear the penalty of her prying. She dared not examine further. Her half-secret, which perhaps was no secret, must be the burden of her existence. Never would she breathe it to any one, never allow she knew it; never, never escape from its burning presence. If there was wrong involved, she must allow that wrong to go on; she must not even permit herself to see or approach the man who was the sufferer. And then, all at once, in the midst of her rage and indignation against him, and while she still felt that no punishment was too great to requite his treachery, there suddenly came upon poor Clare, in her inexperience and ignorance, a fit of such yearning for him as rent her very heart. What! with her injury so fresh, with all that anger and bitterness in her mind? Dismayed, bewildered, torn asunder, she thus found out that love will not go out of the heart at any formal bidding. It turned and rent her, like the demon, convulsing her very soul with pain. She opened her heavy eyes after the struggle with a despairing amazement in them. Could it be? Was her judgment to go for nothing, and the bitter wound which he had inflicted to be no argument against him? Nothing but this sudden, appalling, unlooked-for experience could have convinced her. She felt so weak and miserable that she dropped her face into her hands, and wept, she who had been so indignant and so strong.

“Miss Arden, I’m afraid you’re feeling poorly,” said Barbara. “Do now, there’s a dear young lady, take this glass of wine. I made Mrs. Fillpot give it me for you, and I’ve kept it cool in the bottom of the basket. Do, Miss, there’s a dear.”

“I don’t want anything, Barbara,” said Clare; and in the greatness of her misery, she who had made up her mind for the rest of her life to be self-sufficing, to hide her secret in the depths of her being, and ask no one for sympathy, had all the difficulty in the world to keep from throwing her arms round Barbara’s neck, and weeping on her breast. She restrained the impulse, however, and kept her head away, and preserved her pride for the moment. This was, alas, how her heart treated Clare, after she had made up her mind that one decision was all that was necessary. She made her decision, expecting henceforward everlasting sadness, but calm; whereas, on the contrary, she was a prey to shock after shock, her heart melting, her resolution giving way, a hundred struggles going on within her. Her very determination made everything worse instead of better. “If you had not thrust everybody from you, if you had not condemned unheard, if you had not come away, and insulted, and abandoned him, all might yet have been well,” said the traitor within. And thus poor Clare waded in the very deepest of waters all that long miserable day.

It was nightfall when she returned to the house. Time had gone imperceptibly, as it goes when there is nothing tangible in it. Long threads of reverie linked themselves into each other, going on and on as if they need never end, and coming back after all manner of digressions to the same central subject. “Don’t you think it’s time to be going, Miss?” the maid would say timidly from time to time. “Presently,” Clare would reply, hopelessly opening or shutting the book she had taken into her hands; but at length the sun began to sink, and it was evident they must begin their walk if they were to reach Arden before night. Clare swallowed Barbara’s glass of wine, and then set out upon the weary way. “It has been a nice quiet day,” she said, mechanically, fibbing with the instinct of good society, as she got up. “I hope it has done you good, Miss,” said Barbara, doubtfully. “Oh, all the good in the world,” said Clare. And with this forlorn fiction she walked home again; so much less sure of her own constancy; so much more doubtful of the possibility of shutting up secrets in a silence as of the grave, and living a perpetual life of sacrifice, without hope or call for sympathy, than she had been in the morning. She was very weary when she got home, weary in body and mind, and could only answer with a faint smile to the message which Wilkins gave her from her cousin. Jeanie had not kept him back to-day; only one day had he been kept back by all the united influences which could be brought to bear upon him. Had not she been hard upon him, sending him summarily away from her for one offence, he who perhaps all his life had been wronged so bitterly? Had he been wronged? Or was it a dream? And had he wronged her—or was this but a cloud that might pass away? When Clare had got rid of the servants, who worried her, and had also got rid of the poor pretence of dining which she went through in order not to reveal to them too clearly the commotion in her mind, she had another struggle with herself. Whether he had wronged her or had been wronged, surely it was best now to keep him at arm’s length. Better not to see him again, never to attempt to lean her cares upon him, to confide her difficulties to him. Oh, no, no! He must never come again. And Clare said to herself that she must live and die alone.

When the servants had gone to bed she went into the library once more in her dressing-gown with her candle, and unlocked all its fastenings, and took out the bundle of papers to look at it. The words she had seen, which had woke her out of one dream of pain into another, and which had shaken her being so profoundly, were covered over now by the envelope into which she had thrust them. She took it out and weighed it in her hands—the neat harmless little packet, which looked as if it could harm nobody! What right had she to think it would harm any one? Clare took it out as if it had been something explosive, and weighed it, and gazed at it. All the house was silent. There was not one creature in it who was not sleeping or seeking sleep. Her own light and the dim one which awaited her in her chamber upstairs were the only signs of life in the great, silent, locked-up place. It was guarded without from every kind of assault; but who could ward off the enemies who existed insidious within?

Clare sat revolving this problem until the night was far gone. She did not seem able to leave it; and yet her thoughts made no progress. Was she the guardian of Arden, watching over that secret, unable to give it up, keeping the house and the family from harm? She thought it was some demon which kept tempting her to open the packet, and discover all. Most likely it would be the best thing to do. Most likely what she would find out on a closer examination would altogether clear up those words which had thrilled her through and through as with an electric touch. They were her father’s papers. Was it not her duty to find out what was in them, to be ready to vindicate her father’s memory should anyone ever assail it? She sat and weighed the papers in her hand, and listened to all the mysterious sounds and mutterings of the night, till at last her mind became incapable of any personal action, and she felt it grow into a furious battle-field of the two opinions which charged and encountered and were repulsed, and rallied again, and tore her in sunder. It was more weariness than anything else which prompted her at last to the step she took. She was reluctant to think of Edgar at all in the present state of her mind, and yet it was he who was most deeply concerned. After she had discussed it with herself for hours she rose up from the bureau at the bidding of a sudden impulse, and sat down in her father’s chair. It was a chair which nobody ever occupied, which the servants were afraid of—and Clare could not but feel with involuntary superstition that her father himself was somehow superintending this action of hers. She drew towards her the blotting book he had used, and which contained his paper—paper which no one had made any use of since his death. Was it he who was dictating to her, holding her pen, guiding her in this tardy justice? Her letter was very short, concise, and restrained. Before she began to write she did not feel as if she could address him again, or could know what to say; but old use and wont came to her aid.

“Dear Edgar (this is what Clare wrote)—I have found something among my father’s papers which seems to me very important—important to everybody, and to you above all. I have not read it—only just seen a word or two, which have made me very unhappy. I thought I would try to keep it from you, but I find I cannot. Come, then, and see what it means. It is of more importance than anything you can be doing. Come immediately, if I may ask that much of you. Come without any delay.

    C. A.”

This was all the subscription she could bring herself to put. When she had read it over and placed it in an envelope, she put it down on the Squire’s blotting book in front of his seat. It was a kind of test which she felt herself to be applying. If the letter disappeared before morning she would accept it as a supernatural intimation that it ought not to be sent. If not– To such a pass her mind had come, which was in general so free from any fear or consciousness of the supernatural. When she had done this she took up her packet again and went upstairs, and replaced it under her pillow. And thus worn out with all she had gone through Clare slept. She had not expected it, but she fell asleep like a child. Fatigue, excitement, and that long conflict had been of use to her in this one way from which she could derive any help or consolation. And then she had done something which must be decisive, and settle the matter without any further action of her own.

CHAPTER XX

While all these schemes and dreams were going on at Arden Edgar was learning to accustom himself to the life of a young man about town—a thing which it was almost as hard for him to do as it would have been for any of the male butterflies whom he was attempting to emulate to settle down to work. Edgar found it very hard work to adapt himself to the systematic diversions of society—to portion out his hours and engagements on the theory of killing time, and getting through as much amusement as possible. To him the world was full of amusement taken simply by itself, or else of something more satisfactory, more important, which made amusement unnecessary. He did not know what it was to be vacant of interest either in his own affairs or those of his neighbours, and consequently a system which is built upon the theory that Time is man’s enemy, and must be killed laboriously, did not at all suit him—but yet his mind was so fresh that he found it possible to shift his interest, to get concerned about the new people round him and their new ways, which were so wonderful. Not the German professors, with their speculations, their talk, their music, and their bier-garten, nor their wives and daughters, at once so notable and so sentimental, nor the English farmers and peasants of Arden, were really so wonderful to Edgar as the ways of Mayfair in June. He would sit and listen with eyes which shone with fun and wonder while the people about him went gravely on making and re-making their engagements, promising to go there, promising not to go here, rising into wild excitement about a difficult invitation, dining, dancing, driving, riding, sauntering at flower shows, at Zoological gardens, at afternoon teas, at garden parties, counting the Row and the Park as sacred duties, considering as serious occupation the scribbling of half-a-dozen notes, and considering the gossip about Lord This and Lady That to be matter of European interest. And how seriously they did it all! How important they felt themselves with all that mass of engagements on hand—every hour of every day forestalled! Edgar looked on laughing, and then gradually got beyond laughing. It was difficult for so sympathetic a spirit to live long in such an atmosphere without beginning to feel that there must be some intrinsic value in the system which was held in such high esteem by all around him. He was bewildered in his great candour. He laughed, and then, growing silent, only smiled, and then began to ponder and wonder and ask himself questions. Perhaps it was well on the whole that as the apex of a great social system founded upon a vast basis of labour and suffering and pain, there should be this human froth, or rather those bubbles sparkling in the sun—those snowy foam-wreaths and gleaming surface ripples to cover and beautify the depths below. Was it well? He could not come to any very satisfactory conclusion with himself. It was easy to laugh, and easy to condemn, and equally easy, when one was trained to it, to take it as the natural condition of affairs; but here, as in all other cases, it was the attempt to discriminate what was good and what was bad—what was mere frivolity and what had some human use in it, which was the difficult matter. The puzzle brought a look of wonder to Edgar’s brown eyes. “Are you going to Lady Thistledown’s to-night?” Harry Thornleigh would say to him; “it is a horrible bore.” “Why should you go then?” Edgar would answer. “My dear fellow, everybody will be there.” “And everybody will be bored,” said Edgar; “and if everybody survives it, will do the same to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. Why don’t you do something that interests you, all you fellows?” “That would be a still more confounded bore,” said Harry. And what could the new man do but shrug his shoulders and give up the discussion?

He himself was the only one perhaps among them who was not in the least bored. There was something even in Lady Thistledown’s party that occupied Edgar. Sometimes he was interested, sometimes amused, and sometimes very much saddened by what he saw. And then personal risks surrounded him, which he did not in the least understand or realise. “Lady Augusta is to be there, I suppose, and your sisters, so that I don’t think I shall be bored,” he had said to Harry Thornleigh in reference to this very party; and Harry said nothing, but opened his eyes very wide at this plain speaking. “Which of them is it, I wonder?” he mused to himself as he went off. “Gussy, I hope;” for Gussy was her brother’s favourite, and he felt it would be very pleasant, as Lady Augusta did, to have the pleasantest and brightest and most sweet-tempered of the girls settled so near as Arden. But in point of fact Edgar had no intention of settling any one at Arden. He was still quite faithful to his sister’s sway. If Clare were to marry and go away, then indeed he would no doubt feel the loneliness uncomfortable; but at present it would have seemed something like high treason to Edgar to dethrone his sister. Such an idea had never entered into his mind. But he was fond of Lady Augusta, who was like a mother to him, and he was fond of her daughter—indeed, of all her daughters—whom he regarded with the freshest and most cordial sentiment. He was always ready to get their carriage, to do anything for them. He was not afraid, as so many men were, to affichér himself; and, therefore, as society does not understand brotherly affection on the part of a young man towards young women, everybody decided that one of the Thornleigh girls was to be his lawful owner. There was some difficulty in the common mind as to which was the fortunate individual; but Gussy was so distinctly indicated by the family for the post that naturally no one else had a chance against her. And this conclusion was really the most natural that could be drawn. Edgar, though he was so friendly and so frank, was yet in some respects a shy man, and he clung to the people he knew best. When he was with the Thornleighs he was free from every shade of embarrassment—he knew them all so well (he thought); they were so kind to him—they understood him and his ways of thinking so completely (he believed). When he went to them it was like going home—entering into his family—a more genial family, and one more apt to understand, than he had ever known.

And it was to the Thornleighs that Edgar allowed himself to speak most freely of his own wonderments and perplexities. “I look at you all with amazement,” he said. “I don’t disapprove of you.” (“How very nice of him,” interrupted Gussy.) “You look very pretty (“Thanks,” said Beatrice, making him a curtsey), and you are very pleasant. Of course, I don’t mean ladies in particular (“Oh, you savage,” ejaculated Mary, the second youngest, who was a little disposed to hold Helena’s views, but did not understand them in the very least), I mean everybody. All this is very nice. It is charming never to take any thought for the morrow, except which invitation one will accept, or rather which place one will go to, of all that one has accepted. The only thing is, what is the good of it all? It tires you so that you require nine months’ rest to refresh you, and get you up to the point of doing all this over again; and while you are doing it, you call heaven and earth to witness what a bore it is. Would it not be better to try some other kind of useful exertion now and then? Three months’ work in the fields, for instance, or as poor needlewomen, or even in one of those pretty shops–”

“Oh, a shop! that is worse and worse; that is more frightful than ever. I should prefer the fields,” said Beatrice and Mary in a breath.

“The fields are exposed to a great deal of rain and cold, drought and wet, frost, and all kinds of perils,” said Edgar; “and then they would spoil your complexions. Ask Lady Augusta; she would never let you do that. But these beautiful shops, you know, such as that you took me to—Smallgear or something; and then that one in Regent Street. Why, they are palaces; soft carpets under your feet, and great mirrors to display you in, and beautiful things to handle. I should think it rather nice to belong to one of those shops.”

“You can’t possibly mean it?” cried Gussy, concerned for the credit of the man who was so generally assigned to her. “Fancy what an occupation it must be, turning over things to be pulled about by ladies who don’t know what to do with themselves otherwise, and never mean to buy.”

“Well,” said Edgar, “we are not criticising, we are merely taking facts as we find them. If it amuses the ladies to turn the things over, the men in the shops are really more useful to them than the other men who go to their five o’clock tea. And now and then there comes a bona fide purchaser. Whereas for you young ladies what could be better? trying on pretty shawls and things (I saw them), exercising the highest qualities of self-denial, making your prettiness and gracefulness of use to others, and yet having your time to yourselves say after six or seven o’clock. You would see the best of company all the same, par dessus la marché. Don’t you think it would be a very pleasant change?”

“If you would treat it seriously, and really consider how little women are allowed to do, Mr. Arden,” cried Helena Thornleigh, who was too much in earnest to encourage mere chatter like her sisters. “I am sure you might be a great help to us. You see what a desert our lives are, with no object in them. You see what vapid, aimless, useless creatures the most of us are–”

“I beg your pardon,” said Edgar. “I feel that it is frightfully selfish, but all my sympathies, in the first place, are for my own class. Stop till I have made that out. I will come to the ladies by-and-bye. We never have a moment’s time for anything; we are always pursued by work which has to be done, whether it is riding in the park, or going to the opera, or dining at Richmond. How stern duty runs after your brother, for instance, always reminding him of some engagement or other. Poor Harry finds it a dreadful bore. He says so, and he ought to know best. He is always bemoaning his hard fate, and yet he always goes on obeying it. I don’t object to routine, and I don’t object to suffering. They are both good things enough; but to suffer and be a slave to routine all for nothing is very hard—I confess I think it is very hard. To be sure, Harry need not do it unless he likes; but that he should like, and should go on doing it, and should not be able to find something better, that is what puzzles me.”

“I say,” said Harry, who was half-dozing over a book, “what is that about me? I don’t want to be made to point a moral in this house. The girls turn me to that use fast enough. What is Arden saying now?”

“Nothing that is very remarkable,” said Edgar; “only that we poor fellows, or you poor fellows, don’t get half enough credit for the hard life you lead. You give yourselves as much trouble as if you were founding a state or reforming society, and all the time you are doing nothing. I don’t object to it. If a man likes to spend his life so, why, of course, he is free to do it: he is a British subject like the rest of us. But I want to know who invented this theory of existence, and how men were got to give in to it—that is all.”

“It is all they are good for,” said Helena Thornleigh. “It is partly education and partly nature. Boys are brought up to think that they are to have everything they want. They are never obliged to deny themselves or think of others. However silly or frivolous a thing may be, they are free to do it if they like. And they have everything open to them; they go where they like, they live as they please–”

“And a very fine thing they make of it,” said Edgar, reflectively, as the young reformer paused for breath. “Miss Thornleigh, when you begin to work upon the young ladies, I think I ought to have a try at the men. We might go halves in a crusade. We should disagree in this, though—for I am quite satisfied with the ladies. You are all very nice; you are just what you ought to be.”

“Mr. Arden, I hate compliments,” said Helena, growing red with indignation. “When you make those sort of speeches I should like to do something disagreeable. We are not in the least nice. Oh, I don’t believe in your crusade; you are not half earnest enough. You laugh and jibe and then you ask us to believe that you have a serious meaning. That is not how I should take it up. You don’t half understand, you don’t realise how serious it is–”

“Then I may not share in the missionary work?” said Edgar; and he was a little surprised when Gussy interposed, with a slight flush on her face.

“If you were working with Helena, people would not believe much in your seriousness,” said Gussy; “they would not give you much credit, either one or the other. Missions á deux are not understood in society—or I suppose they are too well understood,” said Gussy, with a laugh. She had been aggravated, as everybody may perceive. Edgar was her special property, allotted to her by the world in general, and what had Helena to do with him, cutting in like this with her missionary work and her nonsense? Gussy felt that she had very good reason to be put out.

And Helena, though she was a missionary, was woman enough to see the justice of the irritation and to cover her sister’s retreat. “I hate missions á deux,” she said. “We had much better go on in our own way. And then, what Mr. Arden wants and what I want are two very different things. He is only amused, but it goes to my very heart–”

“What, Miss Thornleigh?”

“To look round upon all the women I know, and see them without any occupation,” said Helena; “dressing and dancing, that is about all we do. And when we make an effort after something better we are snubbed and thrust down on every side. Our people stop us, our friends sneer at us; they tell us to go and amuse ourselves. But I am sick of amusing myself. I have done it for three years, and I hate it. I want something better to do.”

“But Harry does not hate it,” said Edgar, turning his eyes once more upon the eldest son. Harry was not at all a bad fellow. He tossed the book he had been reading away from him, and twisted his moustache, and pulled his snow-white cuffs. “I think it’s a confounded bore,” said Harry, and then he got up and strolled away.

This conversation took place in a house which had shuddered from garret to basement at the thought of not being able to get cards for Lady Bodmiller’s ball. Harry had roused himself up for that occasion, and had shown an energy which was almost superhuman. He had rushed about London as if his mission had been to stop a war or save a kingdom. His scheme of operations was as elaborate and careful as if it had been a campaign. And even Helena had forgotten all about the injuries of women, and had rushed to meet her brother at the door and to ask “What news?” with as much eagerness as if she thought dancing the real employment of life. Such relapses into levity may be pardoned to a young philosopher; but they were very strange to Edgar who, with the wondering clear mystified eyes of a semi-savage, was looking on.

CHAPTER XXI

It was not, however, Edgar Arden’s intention to preach any crusade. On the contrary, the first impulse of his friendly and neighbour-loving soul was to find out some reason for the existence which seemed so strange to him. He tried to approach, in a great many different ways, and evoke out of it, as it were, or surprise out of it, its secrets. It could not exist, he said to himself, without a meaning. Edgar was not very profound in his philosophy, but still he had a way of thinking of what he saw, and his amused interest in everything led him into a world of questions. Besides, he was not merely conversant with Harry Thornleigh and his class, but also with various other divisions of society. He saw a good deal of Lord Newmarch, for instance, who was entirely a different kind of man; and he renewed his acquaintance with some men whom he had met abroad in his earlier days, one of whom was a great cricketer, and another who was of the Alpine Club, and whose soul dwelt habitually in the sacred recesses of the Matterhorn or Jungfrau. Except Lord Newmarch and his set, these men were all utterly disinterested, pursuing their favourite amusements, not for any purpose to be gained, but for the mere sake of the pursuit itself. The Alpine Club man had no curiosity about the view from the mountain-head, and cared nothing for the formation of the glaciers, or any other subject connected with his mountains: all his object was to get to the top; and he did get to a great many tops, and distinguished himself, and acquired various bits of practical knowledge, which, having no connection of purpose or interest in his mind, were of little use to himself, and none to others. And so likewise the men who devoted themselves to society did not expect to be amused, or instructed, or to meet people they liked, or to find in it any of those solaces which theorists pretend. They went because everybody went—because it was the right thing to do—just for the sake of going, and no other reason. This disinterestedness was the great thing that struck Edgar. He himself was aware that he did not at all possess it. He was continually desiring some result—pleasure or advantage of some description, which, when you come to think of it (he reflected), is a mean way of treating existence after all. Whereas, society was grand in its indifference to any issue. It lived, it assembled, it talked, it went to and fro, and gave itself a great deal of trouble; and from all this exertion it expected nothing to come. This was the first discovery Edgar made, or thought he made; and it staggered him much in the contempt for society which he had been settling into. Was not this in reality a higher principle than his own? It bewildered him, and he could not make it out; and Lord Newmarch, though he was a social philosopher of much greater experience than Edgar, did not seem capable of giving him any aid.