Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

“I hope I am not hard-hearted,” said Clare, “but I think she is very well where she is. It is not as if she suffered much. We have lost almost an hour with her chatter. We shall never get back in time for luncheon if we talk to other people as long.”

“But there are not many other people like Miss Somers,” said Edgar, with a passing shade of gravity. He in his turn was grieved now and then by something Clare did or said. But in a few minutes they returned to their interrupted stream of talk, and began to discuss the village, and the plans for the new cottages, and the enlargement of the schools, and the restoration of the Church, and many other matters of detail. The two went from house to house, the village gradually becoming aware of them, and turning out to all the doors and the windows. The women stopped in their cooking and the men, jogging home for their early dinners, ranked themselves in rows here and there, and stood and gaped; the children formed themselves into little groups, and looked on awestricken. Such was Edgar’s first entry as master into the hereditary village. He made himself very “nice” to all the bystanders, and was as cordial as if he had been canvassing for their votes, Clare thought, who stood by in her position as domestic critic, and noted everything. It was odd to see what trifles he remembered, and what a memory he had for names and places. If he had been canvassing he could not have been more ingratiating, more full of that grace of universal courtesy which, in a general way, is only manifest at such times. And yet, it was not as a candidate for their favour, but as their sworn hereditary sovereign, that he came among them. Clare, her mind already in a tumult with all the events and all the talk of the morning, could not but acknowledge to herself that it was very strange.

CHAPTER V.

Edgar Arden had lived hitherto, as we have said, a very desultory wandering sort of life. He had been at school in Germany during his earlier years, and afterwards at Heidelberg, at the University, where he had seen a great many English afar off, and vaguely found out the difference between their training and ways of thinking and those in which he had himself been brought up. When he had first come to the age when a boy begins to inquire into his own position, and when it no longer becomes possible to take everything for granted, he had been told first that it was for his health that he had been sent away from home; and when he had fully satisfied himself that his health could no longer be the reason, other causes had been suggested to him equally unsatisfactory. It was his father who was in bad health, and could not be troubled with a lively boy about him; but then there were schools in England as well as in Germany, which would have settled that matter: or the German education was superior, which was a theory his tutor strongly inclined to, but which did not seem to Edgar’s lively young intelligence quite justified by the opinion visibly entertained by the English travellers whom he met. His first visit to England, after he was old enough to understand, made matters a great deal more clear to him. Injustice and dislike are hard to conceal from a young mind, even under the most specious disguises—and here no disguise was attempted. The Squire received his boy with a coldness which chilled him to the heart, saw as little of him as he possibly could, endured his presence with undisguised reluctance, and made it quite apparent to poor Edgar that, unlike all the other sons he had ever seen in his life, he was only a vexation and trouble to his father. The fact that his father was his enemy dawned vaguely upon him at a much later period; for it is hard in extreme youth to think that one has an enemy. A vague sense of being hustled into corners, and shut out of the life of the family, such as it was, had been the cloud upon his earlier days. He had felt that only in Clare’s nursery did he hold that position of chief and favourite to which surely the only son of the house was entitled. And little Clare accordingly became the one bright spot in the house which he still by instinct called home.

He had returned when he was seventeen, and again after he came of age—though not to be received with any rejoicings at that later period, as became the birthday of the heir. His birthday was over when he came home, and Clare, a girl of sixteen, thrust her little furtive present into his hand with a full sense that her brother was not to the Squire what he was to her. But at this period something occurred which enlightened Edgar as to his father’s feelings towards himself in the cruellest way; it enlightened him and yet it threw a confusion darker than ever over his life. The day after his arrival Mr. Arden sent for him, and elaborately explained to him that he wished for his aid in breaking the entail of certain estates, of which the young man knew nothing. It was the longest interview that had ever taken place between the two; and the Squire made very full explanations, the meaning of which was but indistinct to the youth. Edgar had all the impatient and reckless generosity which so often accompanies a buoyant temperament; his sense of the sweets of property was small; and he knew next to nothing about the estates. Had he known much there is little doubt that he would have done exactly as he did; but, however, he had not even that safeguard; and the consequence was that he took his father’s word at once, responded eagerly and promptly to the proposal, and gave his consent to denude himself of the property which had been longest in the family, the little estate from which the name of Arden first came, and which every Arden acquainted with his family history most highly prized. Edgar, however, knew very little about his family history; and with the foolish disinterestedness of a boy he acquiesced in all his father suggested. But after the necessary arrangements in respect to this were concluded Edgar caught a glance from his father’s eye which went to his heart like an arrow. It was in the hunting-field, where, untrained as he was, he had acquitted himself tolerably well; and he was just about to take a somewhat risky fence when he saw that look which he never forgot. The Squire had reined in his own horse, and sat like a bronze figure under a tree watching his son. And as plain as eyes could tell Edgar read in his father’s look a suppressed inappeasable enmity, which it was impossible to mistake; his father was watching intently for the spring—was it possible he was hoping that a fall would follow? How it was that Edgar got over the fence he never could tell; for to his hopeful, all-believing temper such a sudden glimpse into the darkness was like a paralysing blow. He kept steady on his saddle, and somehow, without any conscious guidance on his part, the horse accomplished the leap; but Edgar turned straight back, and went home with such a sense of misery as he had never experienced before. He was too wretched to understand the calls sent after him—the questions with which he was assailed. He could not even reply to Clare’s wondering inquiries. His father hated him—that was the discovery he had made. To suspect that anybody hated him would have given Edgar a shock; but to know it beyond all doubt, and to feel that it was his father who regarded him with such fierce enmity, made his very heart sink within him. He went away next day, giving no explanation of his desire to do so. Nor did the Squire make any inquiries. It was a mutual relief to them to be free of each other. Before his departure his father informed him that he would henceforward receive a much more liberal allowance—an intimation which Edgar received without thinking what it meant—without caring what sense was in the words. And that was the last he had seen of the Squire. Nobody but himself knew of this incident. It was nothing—an impression—a fancy; but in all Edgar’s life nothing had happened that was so bitter to him. The effect had not lasted, for his mind was essentially elastic, and he was young, and free to amuse himself as he would. Fortunately, the kind of amusements he preferred were innocent ones; for he had no guide, no one to control or restrain him, and not even the shadow of parental authority. His father hated him—a horrible freedom was his inheritance—nobody cared if he were to die the next day—nay, on the contrary, there was some one who would be glad.

This impression, which had been swept out of his mind by years and changes, came back upon him with singular force as all at once his eye fell on the great portrait of old Squire Arden, painted when he was Master of the Hounds, in sporting costume, which hung in the hall. He stopped short before it as he went in with his sister on the first day of his return, and felt a shudder come over him. Perhaps it was the costume and attitude which moved his memory; but there seemed to lurk in his father’s face, as he entered the house of which that father had been unable to deprive him, the same look which once had fallen upon him like a curse. He stopped short and grew pale, in spite of all his attempts to control himself. “Would you think it cruel, Clare,” he said suddenly in his impulsive way, “if I were to ask you to transfer that portrait to some other place? It has a painful effect upon me there.”

“This is your house, Edgar,” answered Clare. On this point her sweetness abandoned her. She knew he had been badly used; but she knew at the same time that her father had been all love and kindness to herself. Therefore, as was natural, Miss Arden took it for granted that somehow it must be Edgar’s fault.

“That is not the question,” he said. “I can understand by my own what your feelings must be on the subject. But it cannot harm him to remove it, and it does harm me to have it stay. If you will make this sacrifice to me, Clare——”

“Edgar, I tell you this is your house,” she said, with the tears rushing to her eyes; and ran in and left him there, in a sudden passion of grief and anger. Her brother, left alone, looked somewhat sadly round him. He was very destitute of those impulses of self-assertion which come so naturally to most young men; on the contrary, his impulse was to yield when the feeling of anyone he loved ran contrary to his own: he was a little sorrowful at Clare’s want of sympathy, but it did not move him to act as master. “What harm can it do me now?” he said, going up and looking closely at the portrait. It came natural to him to reason himself out of his own fancies, and to give place to those of others. “It would be wounding her only to satisfy my caprice,” he added after a while; “and why should I be indulged in everything, I should like to know?” Poor boy! up to this moment he had never been indulged in anything all his life. He stayed a long time in the hall, now walking about it, now standing before the portrait. It haunted him so that he felt obliged to face it, and defy the look; and he could not but think with a sigh what a comfort it would be to get quit of it, to take it down and turn it somewhere with its face to the wall. But then he remembered that though he was the master he was more a stranger in the house than any servant it contained; and what right had he to cross his sister, and go in the face of every tradition, and offend every soul in the place, by taking down that picture, which looked malevolent to nobody but him? “God forgive you!” he said at last, shaking his head at it sorrowfully as he went slowly upstairs. He could not feel himself free or safe so long as it remained there. If anything happened to him—supposing, for instance (this grim idea crossed his mind in spite of himself)—supposing it might ever happen that he should be carried into that hall, wounded or mangled by any accident, would the painted face smile at him, would the eyes gleam with a horrible joy? And it was his father’s face. Edgar shuddered, he could not help it, as he went slowly up the great stairs. As he went up, some one else was coming down, making a gleam of reflection in the still air. It was old Sarah, with her white apron, making a curtsey at every step, and finding that mode of progress difficult. Edgar’s mobile countenance dressed itself all in smiles at the appearance of this old woman. Clare would have thought it strange, but it came natural to her brother; though, perhaps, on the whole, it was Clare, her own special charge and nursling, who was most fond of old Sarah, as, indeed, it became her to be.

“Have you been waiting for us?” he said. “My sister has gone to look for you, I suppose.”