Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

“I don’t think I shall try,” said his new kinsman. “My father is dead, and one is less courageous than two. By Jove! just think what a difference it would make. Here am I, a poor wretch, living from hand to mouth, not knowing one year where my next year’s living is to come from, or sometimes where my next dinner is to come from, for that matter. If ever one man had an inducement to hate another, you may imagine it is I.”

This grim talk was not amusing to Edgar, as may be supposed; but, as his companion spoke with perfect composure, he received it with equal calm, though not without a secret shudder in his heart. “I think we might arrange better than that,” he said. “We have time to talk it over later; but, in my opinion, the head of a family has duties. It sounds almost impertinent to call myself the head of the family to you, who are older, and probably know much more about it; but–”

“You are so,” said Arthur Arden, “and fact is incapable of impertinence. Talking of the country having no attractions, I should rather like to try a June at Arden. I suppose you bucolics think that the best of the year, don’t you? roses, and all that sort of thing. And I happen to have heaps of invitations for September, and not much appetite for town at the present moment. If it suits you, and your sister Clare does not object too strenuously, I’ll go with you now.”

This sudden and unexpected acceptance of his invitation filled Edgar with dismay. September was a totally different affair. In September there would be various visitors, and one individual whom she disliked need not be oppressive to Clare. But now, while they were alone, and while yet all the novelty of his situation was fresh upon Edgar, nothing, he felt, could be more inappropriate. Arthur Arden swayed himself upon his chair, leaving one arm over the back, with careless ease, while his cousin, suddenly brought to a stand-still, tried to collect himself, and decide what it was best to do. “Ah, I see,” Arthur said, after a pause, still with the same carelessness, “I bore you. You were not prepared for anything so prompt on my part; and Madam Clare–”

“I cannot allow my sister’s name to be mentioned,” cried Edgar angrily, “except with respect.”

“Good heavens, how could I name her with greater respect? If I said Madam Arden, which is the proper traditionary title, you would think I meant your grandmother. I say Madam Clare, because my cousin is the lady of the parish: I will say Queen Clare, if you please: it comes to about the same thing in our family, as I suppose you know.”

“As I suppose you don’t know,” was in this arrogant Arden’s tone; but it was lost upon Edgar, whose mind was busy about the problem how he could manage between Arthur’s necessities and Clare’s dislike. The party was in motion by this time to join the ladies, and Lord Newmarch came up to the two Ardens in the momentary breaking up.

“I want very much to see more of you,” he said, addressing himself to Edgar. “I see you two cousins have made acquaintance, so I need not volunteer my services; but I am very anxious to see more of you. I daresay there are many things in the county and in the country which you will find a little puzzling after living so long abroad; and I hope to get a great deal of information from you about Continental politics. My father is in town, so I cannot ask you to Marchfield, as I should like to do; indeed, I am only off duty for a week on account of this great social assembly in Liverpool. How shall I manage to see a little of you? I go back to Liverpool with the Buxtons to-night.”

“I cannot promise to go to Liverpool,” said Edgar; “but if you could come to us at Arden–”

“That would be the very thing,” said the young politician, “the very thing. I could spare you from the 1st to the 5th. I must be back in town before the 7th for the Irish debate. My father has Irish property, and of course we poor slaves have to come up to the scratch; though, as for justice to Ireland, you know, Arden–”

“I fear I don’t know much about it; shall we join the ladies?” said Edgar, a little confused by finding his hospitality so readily embraced.

“I shall be very happy to give you the benefit of my experience,” said Lord Newmarch; “there are some things on which it is necessary a young landed proprietor should have an opinion of his own. Yes, by all means, let us go upstairs. There is a great deal in the present state of the country that I should be glad to talk to you about. We have become frightfully empirical of late; whether the Government is Whig or whether it is Tory, it seems a condition of existence that it should try experiments upon the people; we are always meddling with one thing or another—state of the representation—education—management of the poor–”

Such were the words that came to Arthur Arden’s ears as his cousin disappeared out of the dining-room under the wing of Lord Newmarch, being preached to all the way. The kinsman, who was a fashionable vagabond, looked after them with a smile which very much resembled a sneer. “Thank heaven, I am nobody,” he said to himself, half aloud. He was the last in the room, and no one cared whether he appeared late or early in Mrs. Pimpernel’s fine drawing-room; no one except, perhaps, one or two young ladies, who thought “poor Mr. Arden” very handsome and agreeable, but knew he was a man who could never be married, and must not even be flirted with overmuch. If he was bitter at such moments, it was not much to be wondered at. He was more mature, and much better able to give an opinion than Edgar, better educated, perhaps a more able man by nature; but Edgar had the family acres, and therefore it was to him that the politician addressed himself, and whom everybody distinguished. Arthur Arden persuaded himself, as he went his way after the others to the drawing-room, that it was almost a good bargain to be quit of Lord Newmarch and his tribe, even at the price of being quit of land and living at the same time; but the attempt was rather a failure. He would have appreciated political power, which Edgar was too ignorant to care for; he would have appreciated money, which Edgar evidently meant to throw away, in his capacity of head of the family, on poor relations and other unnecessary adjuncts. What a strange mistake of Providence it was! “He would have made a capital shopkeeper, or clerk, or something,” the elder Arden said to himself, “whereas I–; but, at all events, we shall see what effect his proceedings will have upon saucy Clare.”

CHAPTER XVI

It would be difficult to imagine anything more uncomfortable than were Edgar’s feelings as he drove home that evening. He had tried with much simplicity to avoid his kinsman Arden, thinking, in his inexperience, that if he did not repeat his invitation, or if no further conversation took place between them as to that visit in June, that the other would take it for granted, as he himself would have been quick to do, that such a visit was undesirable. Edgar, however, had reckoned without his guest, who was not a man to let any such trifling scruples stand in the way of his personal comfort. He was on the lawn with some of the other gentlemen when Edgar got into his dogcart, and shouted to him quickly, “I shall see you in a few days,” as he drove past. Here was a pleasant piece of news to take back to Clare. And Lord Newmarch was coming, who, though a stranger to himself, was none to his sister, and might possibly be, for anything Edgar knew, as distasteful to her as Arthur Arden himself. He laughed at his own discomfiture, but still was discomfited; for indifference to the feelings of anybody connected with him was an impossibility to the young man. “Of course, I am master, as people say,” he suggested to himself, with the most whimsical sense of the absurdity of such a notion. Master—in order to please other people. Such was the natural meaning of the term according to all the laws of interpretation known to him. It was Clare who was queen at the present moment of her brother’s heart and household; but even if there had been no Clare, Edgar would still have been trying to please somebody—to defer his own wishes to another’s pleasure, by instinct, as nature compelled him. It is a disposition which gives its possessor a great deal of trouble, but at least it is not a common one. And the curious thing was that he did not blame Arthur Arden for pushing his society upon him, as anybody else would have done. It was weakness on his own part, not selfishness on that of his kinsman. Had he been driven to reason on the subject, Edgar would have indeed manifested to you clearly how his own yielding temper was the greatest of sins, as tempting others to be selfish. “Of course it is my own fault” had been his theory all his life.

But he was very uncomfortable about it in this case. Up to this time, when he had been injudiciously amiable he alone had been the sufferer; but now it was Clare who must bear the brunt. When he reached the village he threw the reins to the groom, and jumped out of the dogcart. “If Miss Arden is downstairs let her know that I have gone for an hour’s chat to Dr. Somers’,” he said; and so started on, with his cigar, in the moonlight, feeling the stillness and solitude a relief to him. How free his old life had been! and yet he had felt himself wronged and injured to be left in enjoyment of so much freedom. Now he was hampered enough, surrounded by duties and responsibilities which he understood but dimly, with one of those terrible domestic critics by his side who had the power which only love has to wound him, and who subjected him to that terrible standard of family perfection which in his youth he had known nothing of, and the rules of which even now he did not recognise. Edgar sighed, and took his cigar from his lips, and looked at it as if he expected the kind spirit of that soothing plant to step forth and counsel him; but receiving no revelation, sighed and put it back again, and thrust his hands into his pockets, and passed along the silent village street with his disturbed thoughts. All was silent in Arden: the doors closed which stood open all day long, and only here and there a faint light twinkling. One in John Horsfall’s cottage, in the little room where Lizzie, his eldest daughter, was dying of consumption; one in old Simon the clerk’s window, downstairs, where his harsh-tempered but conscientious Sally was busy with the needlework which she did, as all Arden knew, “for the shop.” “The shop” meant a certain famous place for baby-linen in Liverpool, which demanded exquisite work—and Sally alone of all the neighbourhood was honoured with its commissions. In her aunt Sarah’s cottage, next door, the upper window showed a faint illumination, and stood open. These were all the signs of life which were visible in Arden. The old people, and the hard-working out-door people who began the day at five in the morning, were all safe in bed, enjoying their well-won repose. The moon was shining brightly, with all the soft splendour of the summer—shining over Arden woods, which looked black under her silver, and making the little street, with its white lines of broken pavement before each door, as bright as day. Edgar’s footsteps rang upon the stones as he crossed those little strips of white one by one. The sound broke the silent awe and mystery of the night, and with his usual sympathetic feeling he did his best to restrain it. He had thrown away his cigar, and had taken off his hat to refresh himself with the cool sweet air, when he heard a cry from the window above. It was the window of old Sarah’s Scotch lodger. He looked up eagerly, for her aspect had awakened some curiosity in his mind. But what he saw was a little white figure leaning out so far that its balance seemed doubtful, spreading out its hands, he thought, towards himself as he stood looking up. “My Willie! my Willie!” cried the voice; “is it you at last? Oh, he’s here, he’s here, whatever you may say. Willie! Willie! How could he rest in his grave, and me pining here?”

Edgar rushed forward in the wildest alarm. The little creature leaned over the window-sill, with arms stretched out, and hair streaming about her, till he felt that any moment she might be dashed upon the pavement below. The cry of “Willie!” rang into the stillness with a wild sweetness which went to the listener’s heart. It sounded like the very voice of despair. “Take care, for God’s sake,” he cried, instinctively rushing into the little garden below the window and holding out his arms to catch her should she fall. Just then, however, she was caught from behind. The grandmother’s face looked suddenly out, ghastly pale and stern in its emotion. “I have her safe, sir, thanks to you,” said the serious Scotch voice, every word of which sounded to Edgar like a chord in music full of a hundred mingled modulations. “Willie, my Willie!” cried the younger voice, rising wilder and shriller; and then there followed a momentary rustle, as of a slight struggle, and then the sharp decisive closing of the window. He could see nothing more. But it was not possible to pass on calmly after such an incident. After a moment’s indecision, Edgar tapped lightly at old Sarah’s window, which was dark. The sounds upstairs died into a distant murmur of voices, and downstairs all was still. Old Sarah, if she heard, took no notice of his summons; but young Sarah, her niece, who was working in the next cottage, roused herself and came to the door. “It’s best to take no notice, sir, if you’ll take my advice,” said Sally, with a piece of white muslin wrapped round her arm, which shone in the moonlight. “It’s nought but the mad lass next door.”

“Mad! is she mad?” said Edgar eagerly.

“Poor lass! they do say as it’s a brother; but I don’t hold for making all that fuss about brothers,” said Sally. “T’ou’d dame, she’s a proud one, and never says nought she can help; and the poor wench ain’t dangerous or that, but as mad as mad, in special when the moon’s at the full. Don’t you take no notice, sir, for there never was a proud un like t’ou’d dame. T’ poor lass had an only brother as died, and she’s ne’er been hersel’ since. That’s what they say.”

“But she looks like a child,” said Edgar, not knowing what to do; for already complete silence and darkness seemed to have fallen over the cottage. Old Sarah did not wake, or if she waked, kept still and made no sign, and the light had disappeared from the upper window. It was hard to believe, to look at the perfect stillness of the summer night, that any such interruption had ever been.

“She do, Squire,” said Sally; “but seventeen they say, and some thinks her mortal pretty—t’ou’d Doctor for one, as was awful wild in his own time, I’ve heerd say. But Mrs. Murray she watches her like a dragon. It’s t’ou’d lady as is my sort. I don’t hold with prettiness nor fuss, but them as takes that care of their own–”

Sally jumped aside with a sudden cry, as the door of the next house softly opened, and Mrs. Murray herself suddenly appeared. In the moon-light, which blanched even Sally’s dingy complexion, the old woman looked white as death; but probably it was as much an effect of the light as of the scene she had just gone through. She laid her hand very gently, with a certain dignity, upon Edgar’s arm.

“Sir,” she said, “you’ll excuse my poor bairn. Willie was her brother, that we lost a year back. He was lost at sea, and the poor thing looks for him night and day. He was in a Liverpool ship; that’s why we’re here. She took you for him,” the grandmother continued, and then made a pause, as if to recover her voice. Tears were glistening in her eyes. Her voice thrilled and changed even now, it seemed to Edgar, like chords. She touched his arm again with her hand, a soft, yet firm, momentary touch, which was like a caress. And then, all at once, “You’re like him. Good night,” she said.

It was as if she could not trust herself to say more. And Edgar stood gazing at the vacant spot where she had stood, while Sally peered round the porch of her own house, straining to see and hear. “She’s a queer ’un, t’ou’d dame,” said Sally, with a little gasp of disappointed excitement; and she stood at her door with the muslin twisted about her hand, and gazed after him when he went away up the village with a hasty good night. Edgar heard her close and bolt her door as he hurried on to the Doctor’s. Poor rural fastenings, what could they shut out? not even a clever thief, did any such care to enter—much less pain, trouble, sorrow, madness, or death.

Dr. Somers’ study was a great contrast to the splendour and silence of the night. It was lighted by a green reading-lamp, which threw its illumination only on the table, and it was full of smoke from a succession of cigars. The Doctor was seated in a large old-fashioned elbow-chair, with a high back and sides, covered with dark leather, against which his handsome head stood out. On the table stood a silver claret-cup, and a rough brown bottle of seltzer-water—such were his modest potations. He had a medical magazine before him on the table, but it was a novel which was in his hand, and which he pitched away from him as Edgar entered. “Some of Letty’s rubbish,” he explained, as he threw it on the sofa in the shade, and welcomed his young guest. “Bravo, Edgar! Now this is what I call emancipating yourself from petticoat government. These sisters of ours are as bad as half-a-dozen wives.”

“You don’t seem to have suffered much under yours,” said Edgar; “and mine, I assure you–”

“Oh, yes; yours, I assure you,” cried the Doctor, “is exactly like the rest—would not curtail any of your pleasures for the world; in short, would entreat you to amuse yourself, and be heartbroken at the thought of keeping you at home for her; but once let her find out that you have wings and can fly, and see what she says. I know them all.”

Edgar sat down, and cast a hurried glance round the room as the Doctor spoke. He asked himself quite involuntarily whether, after all, a cigar in Dr. Somers’ study was so much more delightful than Clare’s society and her pretty surroundings, and was not by any means so certain on that point as the Doctor was. But if he smiled within himself he suffered no evidence of it to escape, and for this night, at least, he had a definite object in his visit. “I did not know if I should find you,” he said. “What has become of the old whist party, of which I used to hear so much?”

“Ah, the whist party,” said the Doctor, with a sigh. “Poor Letty made an end of that. She was always willing to do her best, though she never was anything of a player; and she bore abuse like an angel. But that won’t do now, you know. And young Denbigh is the most abject spoon I ever saw. When he is not dangling after Alice Pimpernel, he is writing verses to her, I believe. The boy is capable of any folly, and revokes as soon as look at you. Croquet is the food of love; and that is what the degenerate cub has abandoned whist for. No wonder the race deteriorates day by day.”

“That is just what I wanted to speak to you about,” said Edgar; “I have just come from the Pimpernel’s.”

CHAPTER XVII

“Let us be correct and categorical,” said Dr. Somers. “That is just what you wanted to talk to me about? Which? Love, or croquet, or the Pimpernels?”

“Neither,” said Edgar, with a little impatience. “These are things altogether out of my way; and I must ask you to be serious, for what I have to ask is grave enough. Can you tell me anything about my cousin Arthur Arden? and why my sister dislikes him? and why–”

“Whew!” said Dr. Somers, with a prolonged whistle. “You might well tell me to be serious. Why, and why, and why? Have you met Arthur Arden? And if so, did nobody warn you that he was the worst enemy you ever had in your life.”

“He might very easily be that, and not scare me much,” said Edgar, with his careless, almost boyish, smile.

“You silly lad!” said the Doctor. “You simpleton! You think you never had an enemy in your life, and feel as if this would be something new. I wonder if I ought to enlighten you? You remember your father, Edgar? Which was he, enemy or friend?”

“Dr. Somers,” said Edgar, gravely, “I have already told you that nothing shall induce me to discuss my father.”

Dr. Somers said “Humph!” with sudden confusion, and filled himself out a large bumper of wine and seltzer water. “That shows a fine disposition on your part,” he said; “but whether it is safe or expedient to ignore such things you must judge for yourself. Perhaps I know more about it than you do, and it seems to me you have had an enemy or two. But, anyhow, take care of Arthur Arden, for he will be the worst.”

“I don’t think I am afraid.”

“No; I don’t suppose you are,” said the Doctor, looking at him between two puffs of his cigar; “but whether that is wise or not is a different matter. Why does Clare hate him? Why, I suppose, because he once made love to her, and offered ‘his hand,’ as people say, with nothing in it. Was not that enough?”

“Surely not enough to make her hate him,” said Edgar, “but enough to make it horribly embarrassing. Was that all? Don’t people say it is the highest compliment, &c. I am sure I have read something like that in books.”

“And so have I,” said the Doctor; “and I suppose it is the highest compliment, &c. Women don’t generally hate us because we love them, or think we love them. Clare has been petted and spoiled all her life. But still Arthur Arden is a handsome fellow–”

While Dr. Somers went on thus philosophically, Edgar winced and shifted about in his chair. He was not susceptible about himself, but he was intensely sensitive in respect to his sister. Clare was not to him an abstract woman, to be discussed by general rules, but an individual whom he would fain have drawn curtains of profoundest respect about, and veiled from every vulgar gaze. There is no doubt that this is one of the first primitive instincts of love. The Turk is the truest symbol of humanity so far, and there is no man, worth calling a man, who would not be satisfied in his inmost heart if he could shut up his womankind from every rash look or doubtful comment. Edgar beat a tune on the table with his fingers, blew clouds of smoke about him in his restlessness, shuffled and swayed himself about in his chair; but what could he do to stop the disquisitions of the man who had known Clare all her life?

“Arthur Arden is a handsome fellow, and a clever fellow,” continued Dr. Somers. “If he had impressed a girl’s imagination, I for one should not have been surprised. My own theory is that he did, and that it was her liking for him, combined with her sense of his enmity to you–”

“Good heavens! what has that to do with it?” cried Edgar, thankful of some means of expressing his impatience. “How could he show enmity to me when he had never seen me? and what did it matter if he had? That has nothing to do with Clare.”

“It had a great deal to do with Clare,” said the Doctor. “If I tell you what my theory is, of course you will understand I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Edgar. I think he must have proposed some sort of compromise to your father to exclude you quietly–”

“To exclude– me!” Edgar stopped him with an impatient gesture. “Dr. Somers, you speak in riddles. How could I be excluded? What compromise was possible? This is something so astounding that I must ask what it means in so many words–”

“Oh, of course it was absolute folly,” said the Doctor, with confusion. The truth was, he had taken Edgar for a fool, and it seemed to him as if anything could be said to so amiable, so good-tempered, so unsuspicious a simpleton. He paused and grew red, notwithstanding his ordinary composure and knowledge of the world. “I speak of the mad notions of a self-willed man, who thought persistence would overcome everything,” he went on, embarrassed. “Of course there was no compromise possible. You were the only son, and the undoubted heir. But, going upon some notion of his own that the Squire hated—I mean was not fond of you– In short, Edgar, I warned you you were not to think I wanted to wound your feelings—and that Arthur Arden was the worst enemy you ever had in your life.”

“You have given me a glimpse of something worse still,” said Edgar. “You have insinuated the possibility that his enmity might have been of importance—that there was some harm possible. What could he do? What could—since you force me to speak of that—my father have done? The estates were entailed. If he could have cut me off by will, I am not so simple as to doubt that he would have done it. But being, as I am, heir of entail–”

“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Somers eagerly; “of course you are heir of entail; of course it was all nonsense; you can’t imagine for a moment– But then there are such very curious things in law and family history. Men sometimes take an unaccountable aversion– Did I ever tell you the story of the Agostinis, a very strange thing that excited everybody when I was at Rome?”