Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

It may be thought that Clare must have observed her brother’s abstraction, his silent wanderings and musings, and the look of thought and care which he could not banish from his face; but the truth was that Clare herself was occupied by a hundred reflections. She had told her brother she hated Arthur Arden, and at the moment it was true; but now that Edgar, for whose sake she hated him, had condoned his offences, and asked him to the house, Clare, if her pride would have let her, might have confessed that she loved Arthur Arden, and it would have been equally true. He had exercised over her when she had seen him last that strange fascination which a man much older than herself often exercises over a girl. She had been pleased by the trouble he took to make himself agreeable, flattered by the attentions which a man of experience knows how to regulate according to the age and tastes of the subject under operation, and had felt the full charm of that kindred not near enough to be familiar, but yet sufficiently near to account for all kinds of mysterious affinities and sympathies which he knew so well how to make use of. He was a true Arden—everybody said so. And Clare, who was an Arden to the very finger tips, felt all the force of the bond. She had sighed secretly, wishing that her brother might have been like him. The tears had come into her eyes with affectionate pity that such a genuine representative of the family should be so poor; and again a little glow of generous warmth had followed, as a faint dream of how it might be made up to him stole across her mind. A man of such excellence and such grace—so distinguished by blood and talent, and all the qualities that adorn a hero, who could doubt that it would be made up to him? Honour would fall at his feet for the lifting up, and if wealth should be wanting, why then somebody whom Clare would try to love would endow him with everything that heart could desire, and herself best of all. She had nourished these notions until she had heard from Arthur himself, with one of the inadvertencies common to men whose consideration for others, however elaborate outside, does not come from the heart, of his opposition to her distant brother. He had taken it for granted that she must share her father’s opinion on the subject. “Why, you do not know him!” he had said, in his astonishment, when he became aware of his mistake. “I love my brother with all my heart,” was all the answer Clare had made. Something of the magniloquence of youth was in this large assertion; but the poor girl’s heart was very sore, and the struggle she had with herself in this wild sudden revulsion of feeling was almost more than she could bear. He was Edgar’s enemy, this man who had been too pleasant, only too tender to herself and she hated him! She had walked away from him at that painful moment, and when they met afterwards had only looked at him from behind the visor of cold pride and icy stateliness which the Ardens knew so well how to use. But the feeling in her heart was only hatred because it had been so nearly love.

And now that the tables had been so strangely turned, now that Arthur was coming to Arden as Edgar’s guest, Clare was seized with a sudden giddiness of mind and heart, which made the outer world invisible to her, or at least changed, and threw it so awry that no clear impression came to her brain. As Edgar’s friend– She could not feel quite sure whether her feelings were those of excited expectation and delight or of alarm and terror. And she was not sure either what to think of her brother. Was he magnanimous beyond all the powers of the Arden mind to conceive, as had been her first idea; or was he simply careless, insensible—not capable of the amount of feeling which came natural to the Ardens? This second thought was less pleasant than the first, and yet in one way it was a kind of relief from an overpowering and scarcely comprehensible excellence. “He does not feel it,” Clare said to herself; but surely Arthur would feel it; Arthur would be moved by a forgiveness so generous. Even now, when Edgar was fully aware what his kinsman had done against him, it did not occur to him to withdraw his invitation or forbid his enemy to the house. Such a sublime magnanimity could not fail to impress the mind of the other. But yet, Clare recollected that Arthur was a true Arden, and the Ardens were tenacious, not addicted to forgiving or giving up their own way, as was her strange brother. Arthur might come, concealing his enmity, watching his foe’s weak points and the crevices in his armour, and laying up in his mind all these particulars for future use. Such a proceeding was not so foreign to the Arden mind as was that magnanimity or indifference—which was it?—that made Edgar a wonder in his race. If her cousin was to do this, what horrible thing might happen? Between Arthur’s watchfulness and Edgar’s unwariness, Clare trembled. But then, would not she be there to guard the one and keep the other in check?

Thus, Clare was so fully occupied with thoughts of her own that she did not notice the change in her brother’s looks, nor his sudden love of solitude. When Mr. Fielding expressed to her his fear that Edgar was ill, the thought filled her with surprise. “Ill! Oh, no, there is nothing the matter with him,” she said. “Here he comes to speak for himself: he looks just the same as usual. Edgar, you are not ill? Mr. Fielding has been giving me a fright.”

“I am not ill in the least,” he said, “but I wanted to see you. Are you going into the village? I will walk there with Mr. Fielding, Clare, and you can pick me up on your way.”

“You see there is not much the matter with him; he is always walking,” said Clare, waving her hand to the Rector. “I will call for you, Edgar, in half-an-hour;” and she went away smiling to put on her riding-habit. The brother and sister were going to Thornleigh to pay their homage before Lady Augusta should go away.

“Of course I understand you don’t want to alarm Clare,” said the Rector, when they were on their way down the avenue; “but, my dear boy, you are looking very poorly. I don’t like the change in your look. You should speak to the Doctor. He has known you more or less all your life.”

“The Doctor! I do not think he knows much about it,” said Edgar, with vehemence. “But I am not ill. I am as well as ever I was.” Then he made a little pause; and then, putting his hand on his old friend’s arm, he said impulsively, yet trying with all his might to hide the force of the impulse, “Mr. Fielding, you have always been very good to me. I want you to help me to recollect what happened long ago. I want you to tell me something about—my mother.”

Old Mr. Fielding’s short-sighted eyes woke up amidst the puckers which buried them, and showed a diamond twinkle of kindness in each wrinkled socket. He gave a look of benign goodness to Edgar, and then he turned and sent a glance towards the village which might almost have set fire to Dr. Somers’ high roof. “Yes, Edgar,” he said quickly, “and I am very glad you have asked me. I can tell you a great deal about your mother.”

“You knew her, then?” cried the young man, turning upon him with eager eyes.

“I knew her very well. She was quite young, younger than you are; but as good a woman, Edgar, as sweet a woman as ever went to heaven.”

“I was sure of that!” he cried, holding out his hand; and he grasped that slim hand of the old Rector’s in his strong young grasp, till Mr. Fielding would fain have cried out, but restrained himself, and bore it smiling like a martyr, though the water stood in his eyes.

“Somers never saw her,” said Mr. Fielding, waving his hand towards the village. “He was in Italy at the time; but ask his sister, or ask me. Ah, Edgar! in that, as in some other things, the old parson is the best man to come to. Why, boy, it is not you I care for! How do I know you may not turn out a young rascal yet, or as hard as the nether millstone, like so many of the Ardens? but I love you for her sake.”

CHAPTER XX

“Your mother was very young,” Mr. Fielding continued, “and early matured as marriage makes a girl. She was a little old-fashioned, I think, as well as I can remember, through being driven into maturity before her time. When a girl is married, not over happily–”

“Was her marriage not happy?” Edgar interrupted, with a cloud on his face.

“I should not have said that. I mean, you know, her being so young. Why, I don’t think she was as old as Clare when they came back here with you a baby–”

“I was born abroad,” said Edgar, half in the tone of one making an inquiry, half as asserting a fact.

“If you would try not to interrupt me, please,” said Mr. Fielding, piteously. “You put me off my story. Yes, you were born abroad. They came home in October, and you had been born in the end of the previous year. They took everybody a good deal by surprise. In the first place, few people knew there was a baby; and no one knew when your father and mother were coming. There were no bells rung for you, Edgar, when you came home first, and the old wives have a notion—but never mind that.”

“Tell me the notion,” said Edgar.

“Oh, nothing—about mischief to the heir for whom no bells are rung. That’s all; and heaven be praised, no mischief has come to you, Edgar. They came quite suddenly and the baby. Your father never made a fuss about babies. That is to say, my dear boy,” said the old Rector, lowering his voice, “if it will not grieve you; from the very beginning that had begun.”

Edgar gave a little nod of his head, sudden and brief, understanding only too clearly; and Mr. Fielding stopped to grasp his hand, and then went on again.

“If I could have helped it, I would not have mentioned it; but, of course, it must be referred to now and then,” continued the Rector. “Instead of being proud of you, as a man, if he is good for anything, always is, he never seemed able to bear the fuss. To be sure, some men don’t. They will not be made second even for their own child. Your mother–”

“My mother was fond of me at least?” said Edgar, turning away his head, and cutting at the weeds with the light cane in his hand, doing his best to conceal his excitement and emotion.

“Your mother, poor child!—but that of course, that of course, Edgar; how could she be otherwise than fond of her first-born? Your mother’s entire life was absorbed in an attempt to satisfy her husband. I saw the whole process; and it made my heart bleed. She was a passive, gentle, little creature—not like him. She shrank from the world, and all that was going on in it. She liked melancholy books and sad songs, and all that—one of the creatures doomed to die young. And he was so different! She used to strain and strain her faculties trying to please him. She would try to amuse him even in her innocent way. It was very hard upon her, Edgar. You are an active, restless sort of being yourself; but, for heaven’s sake, don’t worry your wife when you get one. Let her follow her own constitution a little. She tried and tried till she could strive no longer: and when Clare was born, I think she was quite glad to be obliged to give in, and get a little rest in her grave. Of course, she was not here all the time. They used to come and go, and never stayed more than a month or two. You were left behind very often. The Doctor never saw her,” Mr. Fielding added pointedly, “till just before she died. He had newly come back and got settled in his house. He never saw her but on her death-bed. He knew nothing about her; but I—you may think I am bragging like a garrulous old talker as I am—but I saw a great deal of her one way or another. I think she felt she had a friend in me.”

“Thanks!” Edgar said below his breath. He was too deeply moved to look at his old friend, nor could he trust himself to speak.

“I buried her,” said the old clergyman in his musing way. “You know the place. It was all I could do to keep from crying loud out like a child. I lost my own wife the same way; but the child died too. That is one reason, perhaps, why I am so fond of Clare. When you come to think of it, Edgar, this world is a dreary place to live so long in. A year or two’s brightness you may have, and then the long, long, steady twilight that never changes. They are saved a great deal when they die early. What with her natural weakness, and what with you, it would have been hard upon her had she lived. However, it is lucky for us that life and death are not in our power.”

“I hate myself for thinking of myself when you have been telling me of—her,” said Edgar. “But—my fate, it appears, was the same from the beginning. It could not arise from anything—found out?”

“There was nothing that could be found out,” Mr. Fielding answered, almost severely. “Your mother was as good a woman as ever lived—too good. If she had been less tender and less gentle it would have been better for her—and for her son as well. Yes, there is such a thing as being too good.”

“Am I like her?” said Edgar suddenly, looking for the first time in the Rector’s face.

Mr. Fielding looked at him with critical gravity, which by-and-bye melted into a smile. “If black and white put together ever produced red,” he said, “I should be able to understand you, Edgar. But I can’t somehow. It must be one of the old Ardens asserting his right to be represented; that sometimes occurs in an old family; some great-grandfather tired of letting the other side of the house have it all their own way; for you know that dark beauty came in with the Spanish lady in Queen Elizabeth’s time. You must be like your mother in your disposition—for you are not a bit of an Arden. The difference is that you don’t take things to heart much—and she did.”

“Don’t I take things much to heart?”

“My dear boy, you ought to know better than I do. I should not think you did. The world comes more easily to you; and then, a man—and a young man in your position—can’t be kept down as she was. I am not blaming your father, Edgar. He meant no harm. To him it seemed quite proper and natural. Men should mind when they have a life and soul to deal with; but they never do until it is too late. Yes, of course, you are like her,” Mr. Fielding added; “I can see the marks of her bonds upon you. She taught herself to give in, and submit, and prefer another’s will to her own; and you do that same for your diversion, because you like it. Yes, my boy, you carry the marks of her bonds—you are the son of her heart.”

“That is a delusion,” said Edgar. “I always please myself.” But he was soothed by the kind speech of the old man, who was a friend to him, as he had been to his mother, and her story had moved him very deeply. She, too, had suffered like himself. “Thanks for telling me so much,” he added, humbly. “I never heard anything about her before. And Clare has a little picture, which she showed me. I have been thinking a very great deal about her for the last two or three days.”

“What has made you think of her more than usual?” asked Mr. Fielding, with some sharpness. Edgar paused, unwilling to answer. It seemed to him that the Rector knew or divined how it was. He had made several allusions to the Doctor, as if contradicting beforehand an adverse authority. But Edgar felt it impossible to allow that he had heard of any suspicion against his mother. He made a dash into indifferent subjects—the management of the estate, the building of the new cottages. Mr. Fielding was not deceived: but he was judicious enough to allow the conversation to be turned into another channel, and on this subject to ask no more.

CHAPTER XXI

Clare rode down the avenue about ten minutes later, the groom behind her leading Edgar’s horse, and her own thoughts very heavy with a hundred important affairs.

The immediate subject in her mind, however, was one which was very clearly suggested by the visit which she was about to make; and when her brother joined her at the Rectory Gate, she led him up to it artfully with many seeming innocent remarks, though it was with a little timidity and nervousness that she actually introduced at last the real matter which occupied her thoughts.

“You will laugh, I know,” she said, “but I don’t think it at all a laughing matter, Edgar. Please tell me, without any nonsense, do you ever think that you must marry—some time or other? I knew you would laugh; but it is not any nonsense that is in my mind.”

“Shouldn’t I return the question, and ask you, ‘Do you ever think that you must marry, Clare?’” said Edgar, when his laugh was over. Clare drew up her stately head with all the dignified disapproval which so much levity naturally called forth.

“That is quite a different matter,” she said, impatiently. “I may or may not; it is my own affair; but you must.”

“Why must I? I do not see the necessity,” said Edgar, still with a smile.

“You must, however. You are the last of our family. Why, because it is your duty! Arden has not gone out of the direct line for two hundred and fifty years. You must not only marry, but you must marry very soon.”

“There remains only to indicate the lady,” said Edgar. “Tell me that too, and then I shall be easy in my mind.”

“Edgar, I wish you would not be so teasing. Of course, I don’t want to indicate the lady; but I will tell you, if you like, the kind of person she ought to be. She must be well born; that is quite indispensable; any other deficiency may be taken into consideration, but birth we cannot do without. And she must be young, and handsome, and good—but not too good. And if she had some money—just enough to make her feel comfortable–”

“This is a paragon of all virtues and qualities,” said Edgar; “but where to be found? and when we find her, why should she condescend to me?”

“Condescend! Nonsense!” cried Clare. “You are just as good as she is;—so long as you are not carried away by a pretty face. It is so humbling to see you men. A pretty face carries the day with you over everything. Can you fancy anything more humiliating to a girl? She may be good, and wise, and clever, and yet people only want to marry her because her cheek has a pretty colour or her eyes are bright. I think it is almost as bad as if it were for money. To be married for your beauty! Every bit as bad—or even worse; for the money will last at least, and the beauty can’t.”

“But, my dear Clare, I don’t want to marry—either for beauty or anything else,” said Edgar.

“But you must marry,” repeated his sister, peremptorily. “If you had set your heart upon it, Edgar, I would not mind Gussy Thornleigh. I should like Ada a great deal better; but of course they have the same belongings. I think she is rather frivolous, and a great chatterbox; but still if you like her best–”

“I don’t like her best,” said Edgar. “I don’t like anybody best, except you. When you marry, then perhaps it will be time to think of it; but in the meantime I am very happy. I think, Clare, you should let well alone.”

“But it is not well,” said Clare, with her usual energy. And then she added, under her breath, “Arthur Arden is your heir-presumptive. He will be the one who will be looked up to; and if you don’t marry soon, people will think—Edgar, you had much better make up your mind.”