Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

Miss Somers was a little frightened by the gravity of her companion’s tone, and did not quite understand what she meant, and was alarmed by the sight of Jeanie lying still and white in the grass. She gave a little cough, which was an appeal to Mercy, and was seized with a sudden flutter of nervousness and desire to get away.

“Yes, yes; I have no doubt you know a great deal better,” she said; “if one was to do anything very wicked– I say to my brother sometimes– I am on my way to Arden, you know, to show Edgar– And Clare passed just now; did you see her? I mean Miss Arden, but it comes so natural to say Edgar and Clare. Oh, yes, I must go on; my brother might think– And then Mercy does not like to be kept– and John’s work– Good-bye. Please come and see me. If there was any room, I should offer to take your grandchild home, but a chair, you know– I am so glad to have seen you. And do you think you should let her sleep there in the grass? Earwigs is the thing that frightens me; they might creep up, you know, and then– Yes, Mercy, I am quite ready; oh, yes, quite ready. I am so sorry– Please come to see me– and the grass, and the earwigs– Oh, John, gently! Good-bye, good-bye!”

With these fragmentary words Miss Somers was drawn away, looking behind her, and throwing her good-byes after her with a certain guilty politeness. This Scotchwoman was superior, too, she said to herself, with a little shudder, and made her head ache almost as much as Clare did. Mrs. Murray, for her part, went back and sat down by Jeanie, who still slept, but began to move and stir with the restlessness of waking. The grandmother did not resume her work. She let her hands drop on her knees, and sat and pondered. The sound of the wheels which slowly carried the invalid along the path grew less and less, the air sank into quietness, the bees hummed, and the leaves stirred, murmuring in that stillness of noon, which is almost greater than the stillness of night. But the old woman sat alone with another world about her, conscious of other times and other things. She was in the woods of Arden, with the unseen house near at hand, and all its history, past and present, floating about her, as it were, an atmosphere new and yet old, strange yet familiar, of which she knew more and knew less than any other in the world. How and what she knew was known to nobody but herself; yet this very conversation had opened to her a mass of unsuspected information, and new avenues of thought, each more painful than the other. She had to bring all the powers of her mind to bear upon the new questions thus set before her, and it was with a doubly painful strain that she brought herself back when the young creature at her feet opened her bright eyes, and with a confused gaze, slowly finding out where she was, came back to the life of dreams, which was her portion in this world so full of care.

CHAPTER XXVI

While Miss Somers was discoursing thus with Mrs. Murray under the trees, Arthur Arden had pursued Clare to the village. He had lost the best possible opportunity, he felt. Just as he had been beginning to make an impression! He sped after her between the long lines of trees, swearing softly under his breath at the intruders. “Confound them!” he was saying; and yet in his secret thoughts there was a lurking determination to see that pretty little thing again, although the pretty little thing was nothing to him in comparison with Clare. He skimmed along, devouring the way, planning to himself how he should recover the ground he must have lost by his benevolent errand. “Putting one’s self out of the way for other people is a deuced mistake,” he said to himself. It was not a habitual weakness of his, so that he could identify the moment and recognise the results with undoubting accuracy, and a clear perception of the weakness and folly which had produced them. He must get over this kind of impulse, he thought, and prove himself superior to all such frivolous distractions. A mere pretty face! with probably nothing in it. Arthur Arden remembered Clare, who was not pretty, but beautiful; whose face had a great deal in it, not to speak of her purse; who was to have Old Arden, the cradle of the race. If he could but secure Clare everything would come right with him; and accordingly no pretty face—nothing frivolous or foolish—must be allowed to intercept or block up his way.

Clare was going towards the village school when Arthur overtook her. She had been walking very fitfully, sometimes with great haste, sometimes slow and softly, losing herself in thought. He came up to her when she had fallen into one of these lulls of movement, and Arthur was satisfied to see that he was recognised with a start, and that the little shock of thus suddenly perceiving him brought light to her eyes and colour to her face.

“You, Mr. Arden!” she said, with a kind of forced steadiness. “I thought you were still occupied about—that—girl. I am so sorry, it seems uncivil, but I don’t really know her name. Was she better? It was good of you to interest yourself so much.”

“I did no more than any man must have done,” said Arthur. “Your maid promised to go, and gave me salts, &c. But she was better, I think. The old woman seemed quite used to it. She was lying asleep in the grass—a very pretty picture. But the old woman is an old dragon. She fairly drove me away.”

“Indeed!” said Clare feebly, with white lips, feeling that the crisis of her fate might be near.

“I only looked at the child—pretty she is, you know, but a little dwarf—when the mother got up and drove me away. I dared not stay a moment longer; and she gave me my orders, to turn my head away if I met them, and never to show my face again. Droll, is it not? One surely should be permitted a little property in one’s own head and face.”

“Yes; but it is not every head and face that have the same effect.” And then Clare paused a little to collect her energy. She had the fortitude of a young princess and ruling personage, accustomed (for their good) to speak very freely to the persons under her, and even to ask questions which would have covered her with confusion had she looked at them in another point of view; but the queen of a community, however small, is not permitted to blush and hesitate like other girls. She made a pause, and collected all her energies, and looked her cousin in the face, not with any shyness, but pale, with a passionate sense of her duty. She was so simple at bottom, notwithstanding all her stateliness, that she thought she could assume over him the same authority which she had over the lads of the village. “Mr. Arden,” she said, with tremulous firmness, “you may think it is a matter with which I have nothing to do—you may think even that it is unwomanly in me to ask anything about it,” and here a sudden violent blush covered her face; “but I have always considered myself responsible for the village, and—and entitled to interfere. One’s position is of no use unless one can do that. I wish to know what you have to do with these people—what is—your business—with that poor girl?”

Clare’s courage almost gave way before she concluded. She faltered and stumbled in her words; her face burned; her courage fled. If she could have sunk into the earth she would gladly have done it. This was very different from a village lad. She felt his eye upon her; she imagined the curious gleam that was passing over his countenance; she was almost conscious of putting herself in his power. And yet she made her speech, going on to the end, though her excitement was such that she felt quite incapable of paying any attention to the answer. She did not look at him, and yet she divined the look of mingled wonder and offence and partial amusement that was in his face. There was something else besides—a look of less innocent meaning—the significant glance which such a man gives to the woman who has committed herself; but Clare was too innocent, too void of evil thought to divine that.

“My dear Miss Arden, you surprise me very much,” he said. “What could be my business with the girl? What could I have to do with such people? Your imagination goes more quickly than mine. I do not know what connection there could possibly be between us. Do you? I am at a loss to understand–”

Poor Clare felt herself ready to sink to the ground with shame and mortification; and then her pride blazed up in sudden fury. “How can you ask me? How dare you ask me?” she said, at the height of passion; and he was so quiet, so entirely in command of himself.

“Why should not I dare?” he said softly. “My cousin has always been very good to me, except once, when she mistook my meaning, as she does now. There is nothing I dare not tell you about myself at this moment.” He winced a little when he had said this, not intending to make so explicit a declaration; but yet went on courageously. “About these poor people, there is really nothing in the world to say. I never saw them in my life before. The old woman said so, if you remember. I was like somebody who had disturbed their peace—very unlucky indeed for me, for I feel I shall be subject to all manner of false construction. But my cousin Clare can understand me, I think. Should I be likely to venture into her presence while carrying on a vulgar– Such things should never so much as be mentioned in her hearing. I am ashamed to seem to imply–”

Clare had been driven to such a pitch of shame and passion that she could no longer endure herself. “I did not imply,” she said, “I asked—plainly– I am the protector of everybody here. It is not for me to shut my eyes to things, though they may be a horror and shame to think of. I asked you—plainly—what you had been doing—why the sight of you had such an effect upon that poor girl?”

“I will answer the Princess, not the young lady,” said Arden, with mocking calm. “Your young subject has taken no scathe by me. I never saw her until this morning in your presence. I never should have known of her existence but for you; is that enough? or shall I appear in your Highness’s Court and swear to it? Such a question could scarcely be put by you to me; but from a Sovereign to a stranger is a different matter. Have I cleared myself to the Princess Clare of Arden? Then let me be acquitted, and let it be forgotten. It wounds me to suppose–”

“You are to suppose nothing,” said Clare, with averted face. “I have asked you because I thought it was my duty, Mr. Arden, in my position– I have spoken quite plainly—and– I am going to visit the school. You will not find it at all amusing. I am sorry to have said anything—I mean I am sorry if I have been unjust. I am grieved– Good morning. I will not trouble you more just now–”

“Mayn’t I wait for you?” said Arthur, in his gentlest tone. “If you could know how much higher I think of you for your straightforwardness, how much nobler– No, please don’t stop me; there are some things that must be said–”

“And there are some things that cannot be listened to,” said Clare, waving her hand as she entered the porch. She escaped from him without another word, plunging into the midst of the children and the monotonous hum of their lessons with a sense that everything about it was simply intolerable, that she could bear no more, and must fall down at his feet or their feet, it did not much matter which. She could not see the trim little schoolmistress, her own special protegée and pupil, who came forward curtesying and smiling. A haze of agitation and bewilderment was about her. The rows of pinafored children rising and bobbing their little curtseys to the young lady of the manor were visible to her as through a mist. “My head aches so,” she said faintly. “Let me sit down for a little in the quiet; and oh, couldn’t you keep them quite still for two minutes? The sun is so hot outside.”

“Won’t you go and sit down in my room, Miss Clare?” said the schoolmistress. “The children will be moving and whispering. It is so cool in my room. You have never been there since you had it built for me; and the jasmine has grown so, you would not know it. Please come into my room.”

Clare followed mechanically into the little sitting-room, a tiny cottage parlour, with jasmine clustering about the window, and some monthly roses in a little vase on the table. “It is so sweet and so quiet here. I am so happy in my little room,” said the schoolmistress; “and it is all your doing, Miss Clare: everything is so convenient. And then the garden. I am so happy here.”

“Are you, indeed?” said Clare, sitting down in the little wickerwork chair, covered with chintz, which creaked under her, but which was at once soft and splendid in the eyes of her companion. “Never mind me, please; go on with your work, and as soon as I am rested I will follow you to the school. Please leave me by myself, I want nothing now.”

And there she sat for half an hour all alone in that little homely quiet place. The window was open, the white curtain fluttered in the wind, the white stars of the jasmine gleamed—just one or two early blossoms—among the darkness of the foliage. And the roses were faintly sweet, and the atmosphere warm and balmy; and in the distance a faint hum like that of the bees betrayed the neighbourhood of the school. Clare, who had all Arden at her command, and to whom the great rooms and stately passages of her home were a matter of necessity, felt grateful for this balmy, homely stillness. She took off her hat, and pushed her hair off her forehead, and gradually got the mist out of her eyes, and saw things clearly. Oh, how foolish she had been! She, who prided herself upon her good sense. Edgar would not have committed himself so, she thought, though she was continually finding fault with him; but she, who had so good an opinion of her own wisdom, she who was so proudly pure, and above the breath of evil, that she should have thus betrayed and made apparent her evil suspicions and wicked thoughts! What must anyone think of her? “Your imagination goes faster than mine;” that was what he had said. And her imagination had jumped at something which should never be named in maidenly ears. Clare’s confusion and self-horror were so great that the longer she mused over them the more insupportable they grew. Her cheeks blazed with a hot permanent blush, though she sat alone. What could he think of her? what could anybody think of her? Such thoughts would never have entered Miss Budd’s head, whose life was spent between the noisy school and this quiet parlour, who was a good little creature, never interfering with anybody, doing her work and smiling at the world. “Why cannot I do that?” Clare said to herself, with the wild shame of youth, which feels its little sins to be indelible. She, Clare, did not seem to be able to help interfering with her brother, who knew better than she did—with everybody, down to this little Scotch girl, and even with Arthur Arden! Oh, how she hated herself, and what a fool she had been!

Clare was very lowly in her tone when she went into the school, with a bad headache and a pale face, and a spirit more subdued probably than it had ever been in her life before. It is very dreadful to make one’s self ridiculous, to show one’s self in a bad light, when one is young. The sense of shame is so intense, the certainty that nobody will ever forget it. She passed a great many false notes in the singing, and big stitches in the needlework, and was altogether so subdued and gentle that Miss Budd was filled with astonishment. “She must be going to be married,” sighed the schoolmistress, with a glow of sympathy and admiration in her eyes; for she was romantic, like so many young persons in her position, and full of interest, and a wistful, half-envying curiosity what that state of mind could be like. Miss Budd had seen a gentleman lingering about the school door; she had seen him pass and repass when she came back from the little parlour in which she had left Clare. She could not but volunteer one little timid observation, when Miss Arden’s duties were over, and she attended her to the door. “The gentleman went that way, Miss Clare,” said the schoolmistress, timidly stealing a glance from under her eyelashes. “What gentleman?” said Clare, with a start; and her self-control was not sufficient to keep the telltale blush from her cheeks. “Oh, my cousin, Mr. Arden,” she went on, coldly. “He has gone back to the Hall, I suppose.” And she pointedly went the other way when she left the school, taking a path which could only lead to Sally Timms’ cottage, a woman who was quite out of Clare’s good graces. “Can it be a quarrel?” Miss Budd asked herself anxiously, as she went back to her scholars. And Clare went hurriedly, seeing there was nothing else for it, to visit Sally Timms. Nothing could well be imagined more utterly unsatisfactory than Sally Timms’s house, and her children, and her personal character. She was the favourite pest of the village, though she did not originally belong to it, or even to the neighbourhood. Her boys thieved and played tricks, and took every malady incident to boys, and were generally known to have brought measles and whooping-cough, not to say small-pox, into Arden. The two former maladies had passed through all the children of the place, in consequence of the wandering propensities of Johnny and Tommy, and their faculty for catching everything that was going. And the latter had been only kept off by the prompt removal of Sally herself to the hospital in Liverpool, from whence she had come back white and swollen, and seamed and scarred, to the utter destruction of the remnant of good looks which she had once possessed. She was a widow, as such people always manage to be, and had no established means of livelihood. She took in washing when she could get it. She would go messages to Liverpool when her boys were doing something else, always ready for any piece of variety. She had some boxes of matches and bunches of twigs in her window for lighting fires, by which she sometimes turned a penny. Now and then she had been seen with a basket furnished with tapes and buttons, which she sold about the country, enjoying that, too, as a relief from the monotony of ordinary existence. In short, she was one of those wild nomads to be met in all classes of society, who cannot confine themselves to routine—who must have change and movement, and hold in less than no estimation the cleanliness and good order and decorums of life. She was very fond of gadding about, not very particular as to the laws of property, and utterly indifferent to ordinary comfort. It would be impossible for one person to disapprove more entirely of another than Clare disapproved of Sally Timms. And yet she was on her way to see her—there being only her cottage at the end of the village street which could lead her in an opposite direction from that taken by Arthur Arden—which was only too clear a sign, had she but known it, how important Arthur Arden was becoming to Clare.

How long the conversation lasted Miss Arden could not have told any one—nor indeed what it was about. Sally was saucy and she was penitent; but she was not hopeful; and Clare shook her head as she went away. She gave a little nod to John Hesketh’s wife, who was the model woman of the village, as she passed her cottage. “I have been talking to Sally Timms, but I fear there is nothing to be done with her,” she said, stopping a second at the garden gate. “She’s a bad one, Miss Clare, is Sally Timms,” said Mrs. Hesketh, disapprovingly. But neither of them were aware that Clare’s visit was totally irrespective of Sally’s welfare, spiritual or bodily; and was only a pretext to avoid Arthur Arden, who, nevertheless, was patiently waiting for her all this time at the great gate.

CHAPTER XXVII

The conversation which Arthur Arden thrust upon Clare by persistently waiting for her in the avenue was not a satisfactory one. Though she could not refuse to accept his explanation that he knew nothing about the strangers, yet a sense of uneasiness and discomfort remained in her mind. When once it is suggested that such secrets exist in a world which looks all fair and straightforward, it is difficult for a young mind to throw off at once the shock of the suggestion. Clare looked at her cousin, who was so much older than herself, and who had been so much in the world, acquiring, no doubt experiences of which she knew nothing, and shrank just a little aside, closing herself up, and putting on all her defences. “How do I know what his life has been, what things may have happened to him?” she said to herself. With a certain mingling of attraction and repulsion, she glanced at him from under her eyelashes. He had lived a man’s life, which is so different from a woman’s; he had been abroad in the world, swept along in the great current, driven from one place to another, from one society to another. And Clare felt that she could never tell what recollections he might have brought out of that great ocean in which he had been sailing, which was so unknown to her, and doubtless so distinct and clear to him. He might have left cares and sorrows behind him—nay, was it not certain that he must have left many a trace behind him, being such a man as he was? As she walked on beside him this feeling came over her so strongly that it swallowed up all other sentiments. She too had a little line of memories, innocent recollections, pangs of childish suffering, unjust reproofs, wounded self-love, and one great natural grief. It was like a little rivulet running under the bushes, hiding only the softest blameless secrets. But his must be like the sea, full of sunny islands and dark cliffs, with calms and storms in it, and havens and shipwrecks—things she could not possibly know of, except by some chance word now and then, and never could fully enter into. A certain admiration grew unconsciously in her mind, along with a great deal of dread and shrinking. What a fine thing it would be to be such a man! How wide his horizon in comparison with hers! How extended and varied his knowledge! Poor Clare! she shrank with a chilled sense that she never could partake or share this vast extent of experience; but it never occurred to her to inquire what kind of knowledge of the world is acquired at German gaming-tables. Clare’s imagination was utterly ignorant of the Turf, and the coulisses, and the Kursaal. She had an idea much more elevated than reality of the Clubs, and took it for granted that a man who was an Arden, even though he was poor, must have entrance always into the best society. He for his part walked by her side with the real recollections bubbling in his mind of which she formed so flattering a vision. He was remembering various things that would not have borne telling, even to ears much less innocent than those of Clare. The girl, who knew nothing about it, surrounded him with a bright and wide and noble world, swelling higher and greater than her unassisted thoughts could penetrate—with tragedies in it, no doubt, and sins, but all on so large a scale; whereas the meanest matters possible haunted Arthur’s mind, the narrow stifling atmosphere of commonplace dissipation, the “Life” which is a round of poor amusements, varied only by the excitement of gain or loss, with now and then a flavour of vice, the only piquant element in the poor mixture. Thus Imagination and Fact went side by side, unable to divine each other; and Clare shrank, yet wondered, secretly inclining towards the man who was so little known to her, painfully attracted and repelled, averting her face for the moment, but drawing near in her heart.

Lord Newmarch could only spare three days to the Ardens, one of which was a Sunday. And he walked dutifully to church, carrying Clare’s prayer-book, and placing himself by her side. “This is what I like,” he said. “The only real remnant of anything worth preserving in the feudal system. Here are your brother and yourself, Miss Arden, at the head of your people, to take their part or plead their cause, or redress their wrongs; here they can see you, and pay their homage; they have the advantage of feeling that you too worship God in the same place; they have the benefit of your example. This is the beautiful side of a country gentleman’s life.”

“But they see us, I assure you, on other days besides Sunday,” said Clare.

“That I do not doubt. Forgive me, Miss Arden, but it is very charming to see your sense of duty. Women seem to me generally to be deficient in that point. I see it in my sisters. They will be wildly charitable whenever their feelings are touched, and that is easily enough done, heaven knows. Any cottager on the estate—or off the estate, for that matter—who has a story to tell can accomplish it. But they have not that sense of duty to all, which is more or less impressed upon men who have dependents. Allow me to pay my tribute of admiration to one who is an exception to the rule.”

Clare made him a little curtsey in reply to his elaborate bow, and did not laugh, partly because she was wanting in the sense of humour, and partly because, to tell the truth, she agreed with him, and was so far conscious of her own excellence. And then he had suggested another line of reflection. “But your sisters”—she said, and hesitated, for it was not quite polite to say what she was going to say, that his sisters were young women of no family, with no feudal rights, and very different from a daughter of the house of Arden. It does not answer, however, to make this sort of speech to the son of an Earl, and Clare caught herself up.

“My sisters are comparatively little at Marchfield?” he suggested. “That is what you would say; and no doubt it is quite true; but still there is a deficiency in this point. There is no sense of duty. And I find it common among women. They do things from emotional motives, or because they like to do them, but not from that manly, serious sense– I am not one of those who sneer at what are called women’s rights. For my part, I should be but too happy, for instance, to have the assistance of your fine instincts and administrative powers in public business; but, still, there are characteristic differences which cannot be overlooked–”

“Pray, don’t think I care for women’s rights,” said Clare, with a blush of indignation. “I hate the very name of them. Why should we be jested and sneered at for the sake of two or three here and there who make a talk? Let us alone, please. I would rather suffer a great deal, for my part, than hear all this odious, odious talk!”

“Ah, you feel it in that way?” said Lord Newmarch, impartially. “I cannot say I quite agree with you there, Miss Arden. You at present suffer nothing. You are young and rich, and– and every one you meet with is your slave,” the young philosopher added gallantly, after a pause. “But that is not the case with all women. Some of them are oppressed by unjust laws, some feel the necessity of a career–”

“Helena Thornleigh, for instance,” said Clare. “I have no patience with her. Thornleigh village is in pretty good order, thanks to Ada; but only fancy a girl wanting a career, and all those dreadful cottages within a mile of her father’s house! Don’t you know Chomely and Little Felton, on the way to Thorne? They are frightful places. If the poor people were pigs, they could not be more uncomfortable. And what does Helena ever do to mend them? Why, there is a career ready to her hand.”

“But what could she do to mend them?” said Lord Newmarch, “I don’t suppose she has any money of her own.”

“She has her father’s,” said Clare indignantly, and walked on, elevating her head, her heart swelling with a recollection of all the power her father accorded to her, and all the revolutions she had made.

“Ah,” said Lord Newmarch, shaking his head, “there are fathers and fathers; and besides, Miss Thornleigh probably thinks that to gain a thing by wheedling her father, which her brother could do independently, is but a sign of bondage. She has a fine intellect, and a great deal of energy–”

“Then I would go and build them with my own hands!” said Clare, with that fine mixture of unreasoning Conservatism and Revolutionism which so often distinguishes a woman’s politics. She was the strictest Tory in the world: a change of law or custom was a horror to her. She scorned the idea of a career for Helena Thornleigh with the intensest inconsiderate disdain. But she would have backed her up about the cottages to the fullest extent that enthusiasm could go, and helped her to work at them had that been needful. Lord Newmarch put his head a little on one side and took a close view of her, which was not without meaning. Strong sense of duty, good fortune, enthusiasm in a certain way which might be most usefully trained, excellent old family, great personal beauty, youth. These were qualities most worthy of consideration. He could not feel that he had encountered any one yet who was quite so well endowed. She would do credit to the choice even of an Earl’s son; she might further even a high political career. He made a mental note in his mind to this effect as they arrived at the church door.

Mr. Fielding was not very much of a preacher. He looked venerable in his surplice, with his white hair, and he read the service with a certain paternal grace, like a father among his children. He had baptised the great majority of his hearers, married them, had some share in all the great events of their life, and had given them all the instruction they had in sacred things. Accordingly, there was no one so appropriate as he to conduct their prayers, to read them the simple lesson of love to God and aid to man. His teaching seldom went any further. His was not the preaching which insists upon the authority of the Church, or the extreme importance of the divisions of the ecclesiastical year. And though there were one or two points of doctrine which he held very strongly, it was only on very urgent pressure that he preached on them. His audience knew, or, at least, the instructed among his audience knew, that the Rector had been holding a very hot discussion with Dr. Somers when he produced one of his discourses upon Faith or Predestination. On such occasions Dr. Somers would himself be present, with his keen eyes confronting the gentle preacher in an attitude of war, and noting all the flaws in his armour; and it was well for Mr. Fielding that he was short-sighted and could not see his adversary. But on this Sunday there had been nothing to excite him. The June day was soft and balmy, and through the open door the peaceable blue sky and green boughs looked in to cool and lighten the atmosphere. A grave or two outside but made the sense of home more profound. The rustics worshipped with their dead around them, almost sharing their prayers, and eyes that wandered found nothing worse to look upon than the green grassy turf with its pathetic mounds below, and the deep blue, leading their thoughts to the unutterable, above. The line of educated faces in the Squire’s pew, and Dr. Somers, like a humanised eagle, seeing everything, were the only breaks in the usual audience. Here or there a farmer or two, with an ample wife more brilliant than her humble neighbours, headed a row of ruddy boys and girls—but these were as much rustics as the ploughmen round them. At the big door of the church, the west end, sat Perfitt and Mrs. Murray, two faces of a very different type. She looked on, rather than joined in the service, half disapproving, half interested; while he, with a certain matter-of-fact superiority, patronised and initiated the stranger, finding the places in the prayer-book for her, and thrusting it into her hand at every change. No one noted the two thus strangely introduced into a scene foreign and strange to at least one of them, except Edgar, who, perhaps, was not so attentive as he ought to have been to Mr. Fielding’s sermon, and to whom the changes on the old Scotchwoman’s face were interesting, he could not tell why. It seemed to him that he could divine what was passing through her mind, and he looked on with almost affectionate amusement at the listener, who was perhaps Mr. Fielding’s only attentive hearer in all the congregation. The good folks about were dropping asleep in the unaccustomed quiet, or else looking straight before them with complacent composure, hearing the words addressed to them as they heard the bees and insects, which made a slumberous pleasant hum about the place. That sound was natural to church, as the hum of bees and twitter of birds are natural which come so sweetly from the outer world. The hush, the warmth, the stray breath of air, now and then, the Sunday clothes, the hum of parson and bees together, the scent of the monthly rose laid on the prayer-book—all this was pleasant to the simple folk. They were doing their duty, and their hearts were at rest. But Mrs. Murray looked and commented, and sometimes softly shook her handsome Scotch head, and wondered if this was all the spiritual fare vouchsafed to the inhabitants of Arden. Edgar divined her thoughts as if he had known her all his life, and was more interested than if Mr. Fielding had been a much better preacher, though it would have been hard to tell why.

CHAPTER XXVIII

After this Sunday, and the thoughts it awoke in his mind, Lord Newmarch found that he could stay another day, and during that day he sought Clare’s company with great perseverance. And it was not so difficult as might have been expected to secure it. Miss Arden, indeed, found her noble companion tiresome sometimes, but yet she agreed in a good many of his ways of thinking. His Radicalism did not jar upon her as did the Radicalism of other people. For Lord Newmarch was clear as to the duty of the upper classes to head and guide the new movement in which he devoutly believed. He had no desire to lessen the influence of his own order, or withdraw a jot of position or power from them. And Clare did not laugh at the social reformer, as her brother was tempted to do. She was even angry with Edgar for his amusement, and could not understand what called it forth. “He is serious, of course; but a man whose mind is full of such subjects ought to be serious,” she said, with a little displeasure. “I don’t know what you find to laugh at in him.” And she did not object to being talked to about the improvement of the country, and how the people could best be guided for their own good. Clare knew, no one better, that the people took a great deal of guiding. She had not the least objection to make their social existence the subject of laws, to condescend to minute legislation, and ordain how often they were to wash, and what clothes they were to wear. Why not? It was all for their own comfort, and not for anybody else’s advantage. Thus Lord Newmarch and she had a good many topics of mutual interest. They squabbled over the question of education, but that only increased the interest of their talk; and it is not to be denied that his position as an actual legislator, a man not discussing an abstract question, but seeking information on a matter he would have personally to do with, increased his importance in her eyes. She battled stoutly against the impression which sometimes forced itself upon her mind that he was a bore, and did not decline to talk to him, nor show any desire to avoid him all through the following Monday. Arthur Arden looking on was dismayed. Even he was not clever enough in his own case to perceive, what he would have perceived in any other, that Clare’s avoidance of himself was the strongest argument in his favour. She did not avoid Lord Newmarch; and Arthur was in dismay. He took Edgar dolefully to the other end of the terrace, upon which the drawing-room windows opened, that Monday evening. Lord Newmarch had engaged Clare upon some of their favourite subjects, and the other two were thrown out, as people so often are by one animated dialogue going on in a small society. “That Newmarch has plenty to say,” Arthur ejaculated, sulkily; and pulled his moustache, and secretly murmured at Clare, whose presence prevented even the consolation of a cigar.

“Yes; he will not soon exhaust himself I fear,” said Edgar. “Clare will be too much accomplished with all this flood of information poured upon her. It is a triumph of good manners on her part not to look bored.”

“Do you think she is bored?” said Arthur Arden, eagerly. “I fear she is not. See how interested she looks. Confound him! The fellow’s father was a cheesemonger, or his grandfather—it comes to the same thing—and to see him sitting there! If I were you, Arden, I should not stand it. Being as I am, you know, only a poor cousin, it goes against me.”

“Why would not you stand it?” asked Edgar, calmly.

“Because—why, look at your sister. He is a nobody—a prig, and the son of a man who has no more right to be an Earl than Wilkins has. But can’t you see he is making up to Clare? I can’t help saying Clare. Why, she is my cousin, and I have known her all her life. She is rich, and she is handsome, and she has the air of a great lady, as she ought to have. But, mark my words, the fellow is making up to her, and if you don’t mind something will come of it.”

“I suppose he is what people call a very good match,” said Edgar. “If Clare is not to be trusted to refuse the honour—though I think she is quite to be trusted—we shall have nothing to reproach each other with. He is a bore, but if she should happen to like him, you know–”

“Oh, confound your coolness!” said Arthur, between his teeth; and he left Edgar standing there astonished, and made the round of the house, and came back to him. During that round various thoughts and calculations had passed through his mind. Should he tell Edgar of his love for Clare? Should he thus commit himself without knowing in the least whether Clare cared for him or not? It might secure him a powerful auxiliary, and it might lay him open to a rebuff which he could ill bear. The pause looked like a start of impatience, but it was in reality a most useful and important moment of deliberation. He had decided that boldness was the best policy by the time he came back to his cousin’s side.

“You think me a strange fellow,” he said, “making off from you like this, and showing so much temper about a matter which really does not seem to concern me in the least. But—I may as well make a clean breast of it, Arden—I am in love with Clare myself. Yes, you may well start—a penniless wretch like me, that am twice her age! But these things don’t go by any rule. I don’t ask you to approve of me; but I can’t stand by calmly, and see other people using opportunities which I fear to use. That’s enough. I am glad I have told you. I ought perhaps to have done so before I came into your house; but I thought I had got the better of it. Forgive me; I have no other excuse.”