Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

“I am afraid you have had too much play,” Clare said, looking at him with those eyes of young wisdom, utterly without experience, which look so soft yet judge so hardly; “but, Edgar, you must remember you are not a wanderer now. You have begun serious life.”

“I wonder if life is as serious as you are, Clare,” he said, looking at her with that half-tender, half mocking look, which Clare did not quite understand nor like; “or whether this lawyer and his green bag will be half as alarming as those looks of yours. I may satisfy him; but I fear I shall never come up to your mark.”

“Don’t speak so, please,” said Clare. “Why shouldn’t you come up to my mark? I like a man to be very high-minded and generous, and that you are, Edgar; but then I like people to have proper pride, and believe in their own position, and feel its duties. That is all—and I like people to be English–, and it would be so nice to think you were going to show yourself a true Arden, in spite of everything.” This was said at a fortunate moment, when Wilkins, the butler, was at the very other end of the great room, fetching something from the sideboard, and could not hear. She leant across the table hastily, before the man turned round, and added, in a hurried tone, “Don’t discuss such things before the servants, Edgar; they listen to everything we say.”

“I forgot,” he said; “I never had servants before who knew English. You don’t recollect that English has always been a grand foreign language to me.”

“The more’s the pity!” said Clare, with a deep sigh. This sentiment made her beautiful face so long, and drooped the corners of her mouth so sadly, that her brother laughed in spite of himself.

“But it is possible to live out of England for all that,” he said; “and I know people in Germany that would have the deepest sympathy with you. The Von Dummkopfs think just the same of themselves as the Ardens do, and look down just as much upon outsiders. I wonder how you would like the Fraulein Ida? They have twenty quarterings in their arms, and blood that has been filtered through all the veins worth speaking of in Germany for ever so many centuries; but then the Von Dummkopfs are not so rich as we are, Clare.”

“As if I ever thought of that!” she said. “Who is Fraulein Ida? I have no doubt I shall like her—if she is nice. But, Edgar, though I would not say a word against your German friends, it would be so much nicer if you would marry an English girl. I should be able to love her so much more.”

“Softly,” said Edgar; “don’t go so fast, please. I have not the least intention of marrying any one; and I don’t admire the Fraulein Ida. I want nobody but my sister, as long as she will keep faithful to me. Let us have the good of each other for a little now, without any one to interfere.”

“Edgar, no one can interfere,” said Clare hurriedly. “Now that man is gone, oh, Edgar! I must say one word for poor papa. I know he was hard upon you, dear; but he never interfered—never said a word—never tried to keep me from loving you. Indeed, indeed, he never did! I know I was cross yesterday about that picture. If you don’t like it, it shall come down; it is only right it should come down. But oh, Edgar, he was so kind, he was so good to me!”

Edgar had risen before the words were half said, and stood by her, holding her tenderly in his arms. “My dear little sister!” he said, “you have always been the one star I had to cheer me. You shall hang all the house with his picture if you like. I forgive him all my grievances because he was good to you. But, Clare, he hated me.”

“No, Edgar, not hated,” cried Clare, raising to him her weeping face. “Oh, not hated; but he loved mamma so, and you were so like her, he never could bear–”

Her voice faltered as she spoke. It was all she could say, but she did not believe it. As for Edgar, he shook his head with a smile that was half bitter half sad.

“I know better,” he said; “but it is a question we need not discuss. Believe the gentle fiction, dear, if you can. But I will never say a word again about any picture. Let it be. It would be hard if your brother could not put up with anything that was dear to you. Now tell me about Mr. Fazakerley, and what he is going to say.”

“Edgar, it all belongs to the same subject,” said Clare, drying her eyes. “I am glad you have spoken. I should not have had the courage to begin. There is something about the Old Arden estate; they told me, but I would not listen to them—would not hear anything about it till you came back. They said it was your doing as well as his; I don’t understand how that can be. They said you wanted it to be settled on me; but why, Edgar, should it be settled on me? It is neither right nor natural,” said Clare, her blue eyes lighting up, though tears still hung upon the eyelashes. “Arden, that gave us our name—that was the very beginning of the race—why should you wish to give it to me?”

“Is it given to you?” said Edgar, with a certain sense of bewilderment creeping over him. “I am afraid I have been like you—I have not understood, nor thought on the subject indeed for that matter. There was something about breaking the entail between him and me; but I did not understand anything about it. I never knew—Clare, I can’t make it out,” he said, suddenly sitting down and gazing at her. “Why did he hate me?”

Then they looked at each other without a word. Clare’s great blue eyes, dilated with grief and wonder, and two big tears which filled them to overflowing, were fixed upon her brother’s face. But she had no elucidation to give. She only put out her hands to him, and took his, and held it close, with that instinctive impulse to tender touch and contact which is more than words. She followed her brother with her eyes while he faced this new wonder. “Well,” he was saying to himself, “of course you must have known he meant something by breaking the entail. Of course it was not for your sake he did it. What could it be for? You never asked—never thought. Of course it could only be to take it from you. And why not give it to Clare? If not to you, of course it must go to Clare; and but for that she could not have had it. It is very well that it should be so. It is best; is it not best?” Thus he reasoned according to his nature, while Clare sat watching him with wistful dilated eyes. While he calmed himself down she was rousing herself. Her agitation rose to the intolerable pitch, while his was slowly coming down to moderation and composure. The sudden cloud floated away from him, and the light came back to his eyes. “I begin to see it,” he said slowly. “Don’t be vexed, Clare, that I did not see it all at once. It is not that I grudge you anything; he might have given you all, and I don’t think I should have grudged it. It is the mistrust—the preference. It is so strange. One wonders what it can mean.”

“Yes,” said Clare, impulsively, “I wonder too. But, more than that, Edgar; you did not know—you did it in ignorance; and I will never, never, take advantage of that! I was bewildered at first; but it is your right, and I will never take it from you–”

Then it was he, who had been robbed of his birthright, who had to exert himself to reconcile her to his loss. “Nay, that is nonsense,” he said. “It is done, and it cannot be done over again. The will must not be interfered with: it is my business to see to that. No, Clare; don’t try to make me do wrong. Nothing we can say will change it, nor anything you can do either. What has been given you is yours, and yours it must remain.”

“But I will not accept it,” said Clare; “I will give it all back the moment I come of age. What! rob you and your children, Edgar—all the Ardens that may come after you! That is what I will never do.”

“It is time enough to think of the Ardens who may come after me,” said Edgar, with an attempt at a laugh. But Clare was not to be pacified so easily. He drew closer to her side, and sat down by her, and took her hand, and spoke softly in her ear, arguing it out as if the question had not been a personal one. “It startled me at first,” he said; “it was strange, very strange, that he should think of taking this, as you say, Clare, not only from me, but from all the Ardens to come; but then you were the dearest to him, and that was quite natural. And it must have been my fault that he did not tell me. I never asked any questions about it—never thought of inquiring. He must have taken me for a kind of Esau, careless of what was going to happen. If I had shown a little more interest, no doubt he would have told me. Of course, he must have felt it would have been for your advantage had I known all about it, and been able to stand by you. I am so glad you have told me now. You may be sure he would have done so had I behaved myself properly. So, you see, it was my fault, Clare. I must have been ungracious, boorish, indifferent. It is clear it was my fault.”

“Mr. Fazakerley, sir, is in the library,” said Wilkins, opening the door. There was a certain breath of agitation in the air about the two young people which the servants had scented out; and the eager eyes of Wilkins expressed not only his own curiosity, but that of the household in general. “He was a patting of her and a smoothing of her down,” was the butler’s report downstairs, “and Miss Clare in one of her ways. I daresay they have quarrelled already, for she is her father’s daughter, is Miss Clare.” The brother and sister were quite unconscious of this comment; but though they had not quarrelled, the conflict of feeling had risen so high that Mr. Fazakerley’s arrival was a relief to both. “I must go and see him,” Edgar said, loosing his sister’s hand, and laying his own tenderly upon her bowed head. “Don’t let it trouble you so much. You will see it as I do when you think of it rightly, Clare.”

“Never!” Clare cried among her tears. Edgar shook his head, with a soft smile, as he went away. Of course, she would come to see it. Reason and simple sense must gain the day at last. So he thought, feeling perfectly persuaded that such were his own leading principles—calm reason and sober sense. Edgar rather prided himself upon their possession; and thus fortified with a conviction of what were the leading characteristics of his own mind, went to meet the family lawyer, and hear all about it in a sober and business-like way.

CHAPTER VII

Mr. Fazakerley was a little brown man, with a wig—a man who might have appeared on any stage as the conventional type of a crafty solicitor. He was very much like a fox, with little keen red-brown eyes, and whiskers which were grizzled, yet still retained the reddish colour of youth. His wig, too, was reddish-brown, and might have been made out of a foxskin, so true was it to the colour and texture of that typical animal. As may be divined from the fact of his outward appearance, he was not in the very least like a fox or a conventional solicitor, but was a good, little, kind, respectable sort of man, chiefly distinguished for his knowledge of Lancashire families—their intermarriages, and the division of their properties and value of their land; on which points he was an infallible guide. He came forward to meet the young Squire with both his hands extended, and a smile beaming out of every wrinkle of his brown face. “Welcome home, Mr. Edgar,” he said; “welcome home, welcome to your own house,” with a warmth and effusion which betrayed that there was more than the usual occasion for such a welcome. He shook the young man’s hand so long, and so energetically, swaying it between both of his, that Edgar felt as if it must come off. “You don’t remember me, I can see,” said Mr. Fazakerley. “I never happened to be at home while you were at Arden; but I know you well, and how nobly you have behaved. So you must think of me as your old friend, and one always ready to serve you—me and everybody belonging to me—you must indeed.”

“Thanks,” said Edgar, taken by surprise; “a thousand thanks. I never knew how rich I was in friends till now. Clare has just been telling me I ought to have known you all my life.”

“So you ought, and so you should, but for—ah—circumstances, Mr. Edgar,” said the lawyer, “circumstances of a painful character—over which we had no control. Miss Clare said that, did she? And quite right too. Your sister is a very sweet young lady, Mr. Edgar. You may be proud of her. I don’t know her equal in Lancashire, and that is saying a great deal, for we are proud of our Lancashire witches. I have two daughters of my own, pretty girls enough, and I am very proud of them, I can tell you; but I don’t pretend that they come within a hundred miles of Miss Arden. You must not think me an impudent old fellow to talk of her so, for, as she says, I have known her all her life.”

In this way Mr. Fazakerley chatted on, doing, as it were, the honours of his own house to Edgar, inviting him to sit down, and gradually beginning to arrange before him on the table a mass of papers. Then he changed the subject; gave up Clare, whose trumpet he had blown for about half-an-hour; and began a disquisition upon “your worthy father,” at which Edgar winced. And yet there was nothing in it to hurt him; it was not full of inferences which he could not understand, like the sayings of Mr. Fielding and Dr. Somers. It had not a hidden meaning, like so much that Clare said on the same subject. Mr. Fazakerley was in his way very straightforward. “I won’t attempt to disguise either from myself or from you that there was much in his conduct that was very extraordinary,” said the lawyer, “very extraordinary—so much so, that monomania is the only word that occurs to me. Monomania—that is the only explanation, and I don’t know that it is a satisfactory explanation; but it is the best we can make. We need not enter into that matter, Mr. Edgar, for it is very unintelligible; but the question is—Why did you give in to any arrangement about breaking the entail without my advice?”

“I did what my father wished me to do,” said Edgar, with a deep colour rising over his face. “It appeared to me that in so doing I could not but be right.”

“You were very wrong, Mr. Edgar,” said the lawyer. “What! rob your children because it pleased your father! Your father was a very worthy man—an excellent landlord—a good staunch Tory—everything a country gentleman need wish to be; but he was only one of the family, Mr. Edgar, only the head of it in his time, as your son will be. You had no more right to consult the one than the other. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you were wrong.”

“My son is not born yet, nor, so far as I can see, any chance of him,” said Edgar, laughing, “so he could scarcely be consulted.”

“That is all very well,” said Mr. Fazakerley, bending over his papers. “I do not object to a laugh; but at the same time it was very foolish, and worse than foolish—wrong. I don’t blame you so much, for of course you were taught to be generous, and magnanimous, and all that; but your worthy father, Mr. Edgar, your worthy father—it was more than wrong.”

Mr. Fazakerley shook his head for at least five minutes while he repeated these words; but Edgar made no reply. If he could have found the shadow of an excuse for the old Squire, or even perhaps if it had not been for that look which he remembered so distinctly, he would have said something in his defence. But his mouth was closed, and he could not reply.

“If it had been any other part of the estate, or if Miss Clare had not been well provided for already, I could have understood it,” the lawyer continued; “but she is very well provided for. Monomania, Sir, it could be nothing but monomania; and to give up Old Arden was quite inconceivable—permit me to say it, Mr. Edgar—on your part.”

“I did not know much about old Arden,” said Edgar, shyly putting forth this excuse for himself, almost with a blush. It was not his fault; but he looked much as if it had been a voluntary abandonment of his duty.

“The more shame to—ah,” said Mr. Fazakerley, with a frown, feeling that his zeal had led him too far; and then he paused, and coughed, and recovered himself. “The thing to be done now is to set it right as far as possible,” he went on. “We may be quite sure that Miss Clare, as soon as she knows of it, will be but too eager to aid us. She is only a girl, but she has a fine spirit, and hates injustice. What I would suggest to you would be to effect an exchange. Old Arden lies in the very centre of the property, besides being the oldest part of it, and all that. I don’t insist upon the sentimental reasons; but the inconvenience would be immense—especially when Miss Clare marries, as of course she will soon do. I advise you to offer her an equal portion, by valuation, of some other part of the estate—say the land between this and Liverpool—which she could make untold wealth of–”

“I don’t think we must interfere with the existing arrangement,” said Edgar. “Pray don’t think of it. My father must have had some reason. I can’t divine it, nor perhaps any one; but some reason he must have had.”

“Reason—nonsense! Caprice, monomania,” said Mr. Fazakerley, getting excited. “That was the reason. He indulged himself so that at the last every impulse became irresistible. That is my theory. I don’t ask you to accept it, but it is my way of explaining the matter. One day or other he looked at Miss Clare, and perceived how like she was to the family portraits (she is an Arden all over, and you are like your mother’s family), and he said to himself, no doubt, ‘Old Arden must be hers.’ Some such train of ideas must have passed through his mind. And nobody ever opposed him. You did not oppose him, not knowing any better. He had come to take it for granted that he must have his own way. It is very bad for a man, Mr. Edgar, to have everything his own way. It led your worthy father on to a great piece of injustice and even folly. But, now that the time has come when the folly of it is apparent—if we give her acre for acre of the land near Liverpool–”

“Why should you take so much trouble?” said Edgar. “If such was his desire, it is my duty to see it carried out. And I do not insist on the compactness of the property. Why should I? I who am the one who knows least about it. If this division pleased my father–”

“Tut, tut,” said the lawyer, “pleased a man who was a monomaniac and had a fixed idea! I had formed a higher opinion of your good sense and judgment; but to stand out for a piece of nonsense like this! Miss Clare herself would be the first to say otherwise. When dead men do justly and wisely by those they leave behind them, I am not the man ever to interfere. I hold a will sacred, Mr. Edgar, within fit bounds; but when a dead man’s will wrongs the living–”

“He is dead, and cannot stand up for it,” said Edgar, who was very pale; “and it was his own to do as he liked.”

“There’s the fallacy,” cried Mr. Fazakerley triumphantly, “there is just the fallacy. It was not his own. He had to get you to help him, and cheated you in your ignorance. Besides, even had he not required your help, which convicts him, it still was not his own. He was but one in the succession. What is the good of an old family but for that? Why, it is the very bulwark and defence of an aristocracy. I ought to know, for I see enough of the reverse. You may say the money these fellows make in Liverpool is their own—they may do what they like with it; and so they do, and the consequences are wonderful. But Squire Arden, good heavens, what was the good of him, what was the meaning of him, if he dismembered his property and broke it up! My dear Mr. Edgar, you are a charming young fellow, but you don’t understand–”

“Well,” said Edgar, warming under the influence of the lawyer’s half-whimsical vehemence, “perhaps you are right, but it does not matter entering into that now. Before Clare marries–”

“There is no time like the present,” said Mr. Fazakerley. “When she marries she will have other things in her mind, and her husband, that is to be, might interfere. Besides, that land near Liverpool is the most valuable part of the property. You have nothing to do but build villas upon it, or let other people build villas, and you will make a fortune. Your worthy father would never hear of it; but it really was a prejudice, and a waste of opportunity–”

“Do you want me to fly in his face in everything, and do just what he did not wish to be done?” said Edgar, with a smile, which he tried to suppress.

Mr. Fazakerley shrugged his narrow brown shoulders. “New monarchs, new laws,” he said. “I don’t see why you should be bound by his fancies. He did not show much respect for yours, if you had any. No, I mean to suggest very important modifications, if you will permit me, in the management of the estate. Perhaps, if we were to have up Tom Perfitt and the map, and go over it–”

Edgar consented with a sigh, which he also suppressed. It was not that he disliked the initiation into his real work in life, or objected to throw off the idleness in which he had spent all these years. On the contrary, he had chafed again and again over the inaction—the wretched aimlessness of his existence. But there was something in this sudden plunge into all its new responsibilities and trials, and, more than all, in this posthumous conflict with the will and inclinations of the father who had hated him, which sent a thrill through his mind, and moved his whole being. And in this life which was about to begin there was a mystery concealed somewhere—the secret of his own existence, which some time or other would have to be found out. Nobody seemed to feel this, not even those who were the most fully conscious that an explanation was wanted of the old Squire’s ceaseless enmity to his son. They all took it for granted that it was over; that the Squire’s death had ended everything; and that the heir who had succeeded so tranquilly would reign in peace in his unkind father’s stead. But Edgar’s mind was not so easily satisfied. It seemed to him that on this road which he was entering there stood a great signpost, with a shadowy hand pointing to the secret, and he shrank, knowing that secret would bring him trouble. However, to oppose this visionary sense of risk and danger to Mr. Fazakerley and his papers or to Perfitt and his map would have been folly indeed. So Perfitt, who was the Scotch steward, came, and the young Squire was drawn unconsciously within the charmed circle of property, and began to feel his heart beating and his head throbbing with a certain exhilarated sense of importance and responsibility. When he heard of all that was his, he, who never up to this moment had possessed anything but his personalities, a curious feeling of power came over him. He was young, and his mind was fresh, and the emotions of nature were still strong in him. He had seen a great deal of the world, but it had not been that phase of the world which makes a young man blasé. He sat and listened to the discussion of rents and boundaries, of what ought to be done with one farm and another, of the wood that ought to be cut, and the moor that ought to be reclaimed, with a puzzled yet pleasant consciousness that, discuss as they liked, they could not decide without him. He knew so little about it that he had to content himself with listening; but the talk was as a pleasant song to him, pleasing his newborn sense of importance. “You’ll understand fine, Sir, when once you’ve been over the estate with me,” said Perfitt, with a certain condescension which amused Edgar mightily. They seemed to him to be playing at government, suggesting so many things which they had no power to carry out, which must wait for his approval. All his graver anticipations floated away from him in his sense of the humour of the situation. He made mental notes in his mind as they settled this and that, saying to himself, “Wait a little; I will not have it so” with a boyish delight in the feeling that he could put all their calculations out by any sudden exercise of his will. If this was very childish in Edgar, I don’t know what excuse to make for him. It was so amusing to him to feel himself a great man, with supreme power in his hands—he who had never been master of anything all his life.

CHAPTER VIII

That day was a long day. Just before luncheon the Thornleighs called, as Clare had expected. The Thornleighs were next neighbours to the Ardens in the county; and in the general estimation they were more fashionable than the Ardens, in so much that Mr. Thornleigh had married Lady Augusta Highton, a daughter of the Duke of Grandmaison; whereas the late Mr. Arden had married a wife whose antecedents were very little known, and who had been dead for years. So that while the Thornleighs had a house in town, and went a great deal into society, the Ardens had not budged for years from Arden Hall, and were very little known in the great world. This, however, was counterbalanced by the fact that while Clare was quite fresh and unworn, the five Thornleigh girls were rather too well known, and were talked about with just that shade of ennui which so speedily creeps over a fashionable reputation. “One sees them everywhere,” said the fastidious rulers of that capricious world; and as there were five of them, it was not easy to invite them to those choicest little gatherings in which Fashion is worshipped with the most perfect rites, and distinctions are granted or withdrawn. None of the Thornleigh girls were yet married, and many people were disposed to censure Lady Augusta for bringing out little Beatrice, who was just seventeen, while she had still Ada, and Gussy, and Helena, and Mary on her hands. How could she ever expect to be able to take them all out—people said?—which was very true.

But, however, the thing was done, and could not be mended. Lady Augusta was not a matchmaker, in the usual sense of the word; neither were her daughters trained to the pursuit of elder sons or other eligible members of society, as it is common to suppose such young women to be. But it cannot be denied that as a reasonable woman, much concerned about the wellbeing of her children, Lady Augusta now and then allowed, with a sigh, that if Gussy and Ada were comfortably married it would be a very good thing, and a great relief to her mind. “Not to say that they could take their sisters out,” she would sometimes say to herself, with a sigh reflecting upon all the cotillions to which little Beatrice, in the fervour of seventeen, would no doubt subject her mother. And it would be vain to attempt to deny that a little thrill of curiosity was in Lady Augusta’s mind as she drove up the avenue to Arden. Edgar was their nearest neighbour, he was young and “nice,” so far as anybody knew—for, of course, he had been met abroad from time to time by wandering sons and cousins, and reports of him had been brought home—and just a suitable age for Gussy, or, indeed, for any of the girls, should the young people by any chance take a fancy to each other. I cannot see why Lady Augusta should be condemned for having this speculation in her mind. If she had been quite indifferent to the future fate of her daughters she would have been an unnatural woman. It was her chief business in the world to procure a happy life for them, and provide them with everything that was best; and why—a good husband being placed, by common consent, foremost in the list of those good things—a mother’s efforts towards the securing of him should not be thought the very highest and best of her occupations, it is very hard to say. As a matter of fact, everywhere but in England it is her first and most clearly recognised duty. And I for one do not feel in the least disposed to sneer at Lady Augusta. She went with her husband to look at this young man with a sense that one day he might be very important to her. It is possible that Edgar might not have liked it had the idea occurred to him that he was thus already a subject of speculation, and that his tenderest affections—the things which belong most exclusively to a man’s personal being—were already being directed, whether potentially or not, by the imagination of another, into channels as yet totally unknown to him. I believe such a thought is not pleasant to a young man. But still it was quite natural—and, indeed, laudable—on the part of Lady Augusta, and demands neither scorn nor condemnation. She had made Mr. Thornleigh give up a morning’s consultation with the keeper on some interesting young moorland families and the general prospects of the game, in order that no time might be lost in making this call. Of course, she said nothing to him as he sat rather sulkily by her side, thinking all the time of the young pheasants; but on the whole, perhaps, the mother’s were not the least elevated thoughts.

“I am so very glad to be the first to welcome you home, Mr. Arden,” she said. “We don’t know each other yet—at least we two individuals don’t know each other; but the Ardens and the Thornleighs have been friends these hundreds of years. How many hundreds, Clare? You girls are so dreadfully well-informed now-a-days, I never dare open my lips. And I hope now your sister will go out a little more, and come to us a little more. She has been such a little hermit all her life.”