Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

CHAPTER XIII

She was a woman of about sixty, with very dark eyes and very white hair—a tall woman, quite unbent by the weight of her years, and unshaken by anything she could have met with in them; and yet she did not look as if she had encountered little, or found life an easy passage from the one unknown to the skirts of the other. She did not look younger than her age, and yet there was no sentiment of age about her. She was not the kind of woman of whom one says that they have been beautiful, or have been pretty. She had perhaps never been either one or the other; but all that she had ever been, or more, she was now. Her eyes were still perfectly clear and bright, and they had depths in them which could never have belonged to them in youth. The outline of her face was not the round and perfect outline which belongs to the young, but every wrinkle had its meaning. It was not mere years of which they spoke, but of many experiences, varied knowledge, deep acquaintance with that hardest of all sciences—life. Not a trace of its original colour belonged to the hair—slightly rippled, with an irregularity which gave a strange impression of life and vigour to it—which appeared under her cap. The cap was dead white too, tied under her chin with a solid bow of white ribbon; and this mass of whiteness brought out the pure tints of her face like a picture. These tints had deepened a little in tone from the red and white of youth, but were as clear as a child’s complexion of lilies and roses. The slight shades of brown did but mellow the countenance, as it does in so many painted faces. The eyes were full of energy and animation, not like the eyes of a spectator, but of one accustomed to do and to struggle—acting, not looking on. The whole party assembled in old Sarah’s living-room turned round and looked at her as she came in, and there was not one who did not feel abashed when they became conscious that for a moment this inspection was not quite respectful to the stranger. So far as real individuality and personal importance went, she was a more notable personage than any one of them. The Rector, who was the nearest to her in age, drew a little aside from before the clear eyes of this old woman. He had been a quiet man, harboured from all the storms, or almost all the storms of existence; but here was one who had gone through them all. As for Edgar, there was something in her looks which won his heart in a moment. He went up to her with his natural frankness, while the others stood looking on doubtfully. “I am sure it is you whom Perfitt has been talking to me about,” he said. “I hope you like Arden. I hope your granddaughter is better. And I trust you will tell Perfitt if there is anything than can be done to make you more comfortable; my sister and I will be too glad–”

Here Clare stepped forward, feeling that she must not permit herself to be committed. “I am sure Sarah will do her very best to make you comfortable,” she said, with great distinctness, not hurrying over her words, as Edgar did—and not disposed to permit any vague large promises to be made in her name. She was not particularly anxious about the stranger’s comfort; but Edgar was hasty, and would always have his way.

“I am much obliged to ye both,” said the newcomer, her strong yet soft Scotch voice, with its broad vowels, sounding large and ample, like her person. She gave but one glance at Clare, but her eyes dwelt upon Edgar with curious interest and eagerness. No one else in the place seemed to attract her as he did. She returned the touch of his hand with a vigorous clasp, which startled even him. “I hear ye’re but late come hame,” she said, in a deep melodious tone, lingering upon the words.

“Yes,” said Edgar, somewhat surprised by her air of interest. “I am almost as much a stranger here as you are. Perfitt tells me you have come from the hills. I hope Arden will agree with the little girl.”

“Is there some one ill?” said Clare.

“My granddaughter,” said the stranger, “but no just a little girl—little enough, poor thing—the weakliest I ever trained; but she’s been seventeen years in this world—a weary world to her. Her life is a thread. I cannot tell where she got her weakness from—no from my side.”

“Na; not from your side,” echoed Perfitt, who had been standing behind. “But Mr. Arden has other things ado than listen to our clavers about our family. I’ll go with you, with his leave, up the stair.”

“Has Dr. Somers been to see her?” said Clare. “If she is Mr Perfitt’s relation, perhaps we could be of some use; some jelly perhaps, or fruit–”

“I am much obliged to the young lady, but I’ll not trouble anybody,” was the answer. “Thank ye all. If I might ask the liberty, when Jeanie is able, of a walk about your park–”

She had turned to Edgar again, upon whom her eyes dwelt with growing interest. Even Mr. Fielding thought it strange. “If she wants anything, surely I am the fit person to help her,” Clare could not help saying within herself. But it was Edgar to whom the stranger turned. He, too, was a little surprised by her look. “The park is open to everybody” he said; “that is no favour. But if you would like to go through the gardens and the private grounds—or even the house—Perfitt, you can arrange all that. And perhaps you might speak to the gardener, Clare?”

“Whatever you wish, Edgar,” said his sister, turning away. She was displeased. It was she who ought naturally to have been appealed to, and she was left out. But the new-comer evidently was honestly oblivious of Clare’s very presence. She had no intention of disrespect to the young lady, or of neglecting her claims; but she forgot her simply, being fascinated by her brother. It was him whom she thanked with concise and reserved words, but a certain strange fulness of tone and expression. And then she made the party a little bow, which took in the whole, and turned and led the way up the narrow cottage stair—Perfitt following her—leaving them all considerably puzzled, and more moved than Clare would have allowed to be possible. “If this is your Scotchwoman,” she said, turning to the Rector, “I don’t wonder you found her original;” and Clare went hastily out of the cottage, without a word to Sarah, followed by the gentlemen, who did not know what to say.

“Listen to her story before you begin to dislike her,” said Edgar. “Perfitt told me as we came along. It appears she had her daughter’s family thrown on her hands a great many years ago. She has a little farm in Scotland somewhere, and manages it herself. When these children came to her, she set to work as if she had been six men. She has brought up and educated every one of them,—not to be ploughmen, as you would think—but educated them in the Scotch way; one is a doctor, another a clergyman, and so on. If you don’t respect a woman like that, I do. Perfitt says she never flinched nor complained, but went at her work like a hero. And this is a granddaughter of another family whom she has taken charge of in the same way.”

“I felt sure she was something remarkable,” said Mr. Fielding, “I told Clare I had never seen any one quite like her; now, didn’t I? Scotch, you know—very Scotch; but to me a new type.”

“I think I prefer the old type,” said Clare, with a feeling of opposition, which she herself scarcely understood; “one knows what to do with them; and then they are civil, at least. I am going to see some now,” and she turned back suddenly, waving her hand to her companions, and went on past Sarah’s cottage to pay her visits. The people she was going to see were quite of the old type. They had no susceptibilities to menagér, no over-delicate feelings to be studied. They were ready to accept all that could be procured, and to ask for more. Clare knew, when she entered these cottages, that she was about to hear a long list of wants, and to have it made apparent to her that the comfort, and health, and happiness of her pensioners was entirely in her hands. It was more flattering than the independence of the stranger, who wanted nothing; but yet the contrast confused the mind of the girl, who had never had anything of the kind made so clearly apparent to her before. One of her old women had an orphan granddaughter too; but her complaints were many of the responsibility this threw upon her, and the trouble she had in keeping her charge in order. “Them young lasses, they eats and they drinks, and they’re never done; when a cup o’ tea would serve me, there’s a cooking and a messing for Lizzy; and out o’ evenings when I just want her; and every penny a going for nonsense. At my time o’ life, Miss, it ain’t bother as one wants; it’s quiet as does best for ou’d folks.”

“But she has nobody to take care of her except you,” said Clare, pondering her new lesson.

“Eh, Miss! They ben’t good for nothing for taking care o’ young ones ben’t ou’d folks.”

Clare turned away with a little disgust. She promised to supply all the wants that had been indicated to her, and they were many. But she did it with less than her usual kindness, and a sensation of indignation in her mind. How different was this servile dependence and denial of all individual responsibility from the story she had just heard! She was wrong, as was natural; for the old egotist was in reality very fond of her Lizzy, and only made use of her name in order to derive a more plentiful supply from the open hand of the young lady. Had there been no young lady to depend on, probably old Betty would have made no complaint, but done her best, and grudged nothing she had to her grandchild. Clare, however, was too young and inexperienced in human kind to know that what is bad often comes uppermost, concealing the good, and that there are quantities of people who always show their worst, not their best, face to the world. She went away in suppressed discontent, revolving in her mind without knowing it those questions of social philosophy with which every alms-giver must more or less come in contact. It was right for the Ardens, as lords of the manor, to watch over their dependents; of that there could be no doubt. Clare would have felt, as one might imagine a benevolent slaveholder to feel, had there been any destitution or unrelieved misery in her village: but the question had never occurred to her whether it was good for the people to be so watched over and taken care of? Supposing, for instance, such a case as that of Mr. Perfitt’s relative, Sarah’s lodger. Was it best for a woman in such circumstances to toil and strive, and deny herself all ease and pleasure, and bring up the children thus cast upon her with the sweat of her brow, according to that primeval curse or blessing which was not laid upon woman? Or would it be better to appeal to others, and make interest, and establish the helpless beings in orphan schools and benevolent institutions? The last was the plan which Clare had been chiefly cognisant of. When any one died in the village, it had been her wont to bestir herself instantly about their children, as if the responsibility was not upon the widow or the relatives, but upon her. She had disposed of them in all sorts of places—here one, and there another; and she had found, in most cases, that the villagers were but too willing to transfer their burdens to the young shoulders which were so ready to undertake them. But was that the best? If Edgar had enunciated this new doctrine in words, no doubt she would have combated it with all her might, and would have been very eloquent about the duties of property and the bond between superiors and inferiors. But Edgar had not said a word on the subject, probably had not thought at all about it. He was as liberal as she was, even lavish in his bounty, ready to give to anybody or everybody. He had said nothing on the subject; but he had told the story of that strange new-comer, who was (surely) so out of place, so unlike everything else in the little Arden world.

Clare passed by Sarah’s house again as the thoughts went through her mind. The window of the upper room was a broad lattice window with diamond panes, half concealed by honeysuckles, which were not in very good trim, but waved their long branches in sweet disorder over the half-red half-white wall, where the original bricks, all stained with lichens, peered through the whitewash. The casement was open, and against it leaned a little figure, the sight of which sent a thrill through the young lady’s heart. The face looked very young, and was surrounded by softly curling masses of hair, of that ruddy golden hue which is so often to be seen in children’s hair in Scotland, and which is almost always accompanied by the sweetest purity of complexion. It was a lovely face, like an angel’s, with something of the half-divine abstraction about it of Raphael’s angel children. She had never seen anything so strangely visionary, fair, and wild, like something from another world. Clare stood still and gazed, forgetting everything but this strange beautiful vision. The stranger’s eyes were turned towards Arden, to the great banks of foliage which stood up against the sky, hiding the house within their depths. What was she thinking of? whom was she looking for? or was she thinking of, looking for no one, abstracted in some dream? Clare’s heart began to beat as she stood unconscious and gazed. She was brought back to herself and to the ordinary rules of life by seeing that the old woman had come to the window, and was looking down upon her with equal earnestness. Then she went on with a little start, trembling, she could not tell why. Was it a child or a woman she had seen? and why had she come here?

CHAPTER XIV

The next day after these events occurred the dinner at the Pimpernels. Miss Arden had made no further allusion to it in her brother’s presence. He had said he would stay away if she exacted it, but Clare was much too proud to exact. She stood aside, and let him have his will. She was even so amiable as to fasten a sprig of myrtle in his coat when he came to bid her good night. “That is very sweet of you, as you don’t approve of me,” he said, kissing the white hand that performed this little sisterly office. They were two orphans, alone in the world, and Edgar’s heart expanded over his sister, notwithstanding the many doubts and difficulties which he was aware he had occasioned her.

“Why should I disapprove?” she said. “You are a man; you are not so easily affected as a girl; but only please remember, Edgar, they are not people that it would be nice for you to see much of. They are not like us.”

“Not like you, certainly,” said light-hearted Edgar. “I rather liked to see you, do you know, beside them; you looked like a young queen.”

Clare was pleased, though she did not care to confess it. “It does not require much to make one look like a queen beside that good, fat Mrs. Pimpernel,” she said, with more charity than she had ever before felt towards her recent visitors. “If you are not very late, Edgar, perhaps I shall see you when you come home.”

And she watched him as he drove his dogcart down the avenue with a less anxious mind. “He is not like an Arden,” she said to herself; “but yet one could not but remark him wherever he went. He has so much heart and spirit about him; and I think he is clever. He knows a great deal more than most people, though that does not matter much. But still I think perhaps he would not be so easily carried away after all.”

Edgar, for his part, went away in very good spirits. He liked the rapid sense of motion, the light vehicle, the fine horse, the swiftness which was almost flight. He rather liked making a dive out of the formal world which had absorbed him, into another hemisphere; and he even liked, which would have vexed Clare had she known it, to be alone. He would not suffer himself to think so, for it seemed ungrateful, unbrotherly, unkind; but still a man cannot get over all the habits of his life in three weeks, and it was a pleasure to him to be alone. He seemed to have thrown off the burden of his responsibilities as he swept through the village and along the rural road to the Red House. He expected to be amused, and he was pleased that in his amusement he would be subject to no criticism. Criticism is very uncomfortable, especially when it comes from your nearest and dearest. To feel in your freest moments that an eye is upon you, that your proceedings are subject to lively comment, is always trying. And Edgar had not been used to it. Thanks to the sweetest temper in the world, he took it very well on the whole. But this night he certainly did feel the happier that he was free. The Pimpernels greeted him with a cordiality that was almost overpowering. The father shook both his hands, the mother pounced upon him and introduced him to a dozen people in a moment, and as for poor Alice, she blushed, and smiled, and buttoned her gloves, which was her usual occupation. When the business of the introduction was over Edgar fell back out of the principal place, and took a passing note of the guests. A dozen names had been said to him, but not one had he made out, except that of Lord Newmarch, who was a tall, spare young man in spectacles, with a thin intellectual face. There were two men of Mr Pimpernel’s stamp, with vast white waistcoats, and heads slightly bald—men very well known upon ’Change, and holding the best of reputations in Liverpool—with two wives, who were ample and benign, like the mistress of the house; and there were two or three men in a corner, with Oxford written all over them, curiously looking out through spectacles, or as it were out of mists, at the other part of the company. Lord Newmarch did not attach himself to either of these parties. It was not very long indeed since he had been an Oxford man himself, but he was now a politician, and had emerged from the academical state.

There was one other among the guests who attracted Edgar’s attention, he could not tell why—a tall man about ten years older than himself, with black hair, just touched in some places with grey, and deep-set dark-blue eyes, which shone like a bit of frosty sky out of his dark bearded face. The face was familiar to him, though he felt sure he had never seen this individual man before; and though he kept himself in the background there was an air about him which Edgar recognised by instinct. Among the old merchants and the young Dons—men limited on one hand within a very material universe, and on the other by the still straiter limitations of a purely intellectual sphere—this man looked, what he was, a man of the world. Edgar came to this conclusion instinctively, feeling himself drawn by an interest which was only half sympathy to the only individual in the party who deserved that name. Chance or Mrs. Pimpernel arranged it so that this man was placed at the opposite end of the table at dinner, quite out of Edgar’s reach. Mr. Arden of Arden had to conduct one of the most important ladies present to dinner, and was within reach of Mrs. Pimpernel with Alice on his other hand; but the stranger who interested him was at the foot of the table, being evidently a person of no importance. It was only Edgar’s second English party, and certainly at this moment it was not nearly so pleasant as the dinner at Thorne, with pretty Gussy telling him everything. Mrs. Buxton, who sat between him and Lord Newmarch, was too anxious to attend to her noble neighbour’s conversation to give very much attention to Edgar. Now and then she turned to him indeed, and was very affable; but her subject was still Newmarch, and they were too near to that personage to make the discussion agreeable. “You should hear Lord Newmarch on the education question,” the lady said; “his ideas are so clear, and then they are so charmingly expressed. I consider his style admirable. You don’t know it? How very strange, Mr. Arden! He contributes a good deal to the Edinburgh. I thought of course you must have been acquainted with his works.”

“I never read any of them,” said Edgar; and I trust I never shall, he felt he should have liked to have said; but he only added instead, “I have spent all my time wandering to and fro over the face of the earth, which leaves one in the depths of ignorance of everything one ought to know.”

“Oh, do you think so?” said Mrs. Buxton. “For my part, I think there is nothing like travelling for expanding the mind. Lord Newmarch published a charming book of travels last year—From Turnstall to Teneriffe. Turnstall is one of his family places, you know. It made quite a commotion in the literary world. I do think he is one of the most rising young men of the age.”

“Do you admire Lord Newmarch very much?” Edgar whispered to Alice, who was eating her fish very sedately by his side. Poor Alice grew very red, and gave a little choking cough, and put down her fork, and cleared her throat. She looked as if she had been caught doing something which was very improper, and dropped her fork as if it burned her. And it was a moment before she could speak. “Oh yes, Mr. Arden,” was the reply she made, giving a shy glance at him, and then looking down upon her plate.

“But don’t you think he looks a little too much as if the fate of the country rested on his head?” said Edgar, valiantly trying again. “Tell me, please, is he a bore?”

“Oh no, Mr. Arden!” said Alice, and she looked at her plate again. “Does she want to finish her fish, I wonder?” Edgar asked himself; and then he turned to Mrs. Buxton, to leave his younger companion at liberty. But Mrs. Buxton had tackled Lord Newmarch, and they were discussing the question of compulsory education, with much authoritative condescension on the gentleman’s part, and eager interest on the lady’s. Edgar was not uninterested in such questions, but he had come to the Red House with a light-hearted intention of amusing himself, and he sighed for Gussy Thornleigh and her gossip, or anything that should be pleasant and nonsensical. Alice had returned to her fish, not that she cared for the fish, but because it was the only thing for her to do. If Edgar had but known it, she was quite disposed to go on saying, “Oh yes, Mr. Arden,” and “Oh no, Mr. Arden,” all the time of dinner, without caring in the least for the entrees, or even for the jellies and creams and other dainties with which the banquet wound up. But then he did not know that, and could not but imagine that her fish was what she liked best.

In his despair, however, he caught Mrs. Pimpernel’s eye, who was looking bland but disturbed, saying “There is no doubt of that,” and “Education is very necessary,” and “I am sure I am quite of Lord Newmarch’s opinion,” at intervals. She was amiable, but she was not happy with that wise young nobleman at her right hand, and such an appreciative audience as Mrs. Buxton beside him. Edgar glanced across at her, and caught her look of distress. “I do not care anything about education,” he said, firing a friendly gun, as it were, across her bows. “I hate it when I am at dinner.” And then Mrs. Pimpernel gave him a look which said more than words.

“Oh, fie,” she said, leaning across the corner, “you know you should not say that. Do you think we English are behind in light conversation, Mr. Arden? For more important matters I know we can defy anybody,” and she gave Lord Newmarch an eloquent look, which he returned with a little bow; “but I daresay,” said Mrs. Pimpernel, with that cloud of uneasiness on her brow, “we are behind in chitter-chatter and table-talk.”

“I like chitter-chatter,” said Edgar; “and besides, I want to know who the people are. Who is that pretty girl on Mr. Pimpernel’s left hand? You must recollect I know nobody, and am quite a stranger in my own place.”

“Oh, Mr. Arden, that is Miss Molyneaux, Mrs. Molyneaux’s eldest daughter,” said the gracious hostess, indicating the lady on her left hand, who smiled and coloured, and looked at Edgar with friendly eyes. “She is pretty—such a complexion and teeth! Did you notice her teeth, Mr. Arden? They are like pearls. My Alice has nice teeth, but I always say they are nothing to compare to Mary Molyneaux’s. And that’s Mr. Arden, your namesake, beside her. He is considered a very handsome man.”

“Do you approve of personal gossip, Mr. Arden?” said Mrs. Buxton, breaking in; but Edgar was too much interested to be stopped, even by motives of civility.

“Mr. Arden, my namesake! Then that explains it.” He said these last words, not aloud, but within himself, for now he could see that the face which this man’s face recalled to him was that of his own sister, Clare. It gave him the most curious sensation, moving him almost to anger. A stranger whom he knew nothing of, who was nothing to him, to resemble Clare! It looked like profanity, desecration. After all, there was something evidently in the Arden blood—something entirely wanting to himself—a secret influence—which he, the first of the name, did not share.