Squire Arden; volume 2 of 3

by Mrs. Oliphant

“I don’t want anything, Barbara,” said Clare; and in the greatness of her misery, she who had made up her mind for the rest of her life to be self-sufficing, to hide her secret in the depths of her being, and ask no one for sympathy, had all the difficulty in the world to keep from throwing her arms round Barbara’s neck, and weeping on her breast. She restrained the impulse, however, and kept her head away, and preserved her pride for the moment. This was, alas, how her heart treated Clare, after she had made up her mind that one decision was all that was necessary. She made her decision, expecting henceforward everlasting sadness, but calm; whereas, on the contrary, she was a prey to shock after shock, her heart melting, her resolution giving way, a hundred struggles going on within her. Her very determination made everything worse instead of better. “If you had not thrust everybody from you, if you had not condemned unheard, if you had not come away, and insulted, and abandoned him, all might yet have been well,” said the traitor within. And thus poor Clare waded in the very deepest of waters all that long miserable day.

It was nightfall when she returned to the house. Time had gone imperceptibly, as it goes when there is nothing tangible in it. Long threads of reverie linked themselves into each other, going on and on as if they need never end, and coming back after all manner of digressions to the same central subject. “Don’t you think it’s time to be going, Miss?” the maid would say timidly from time to time. “Presently,” Clare would reply, hopelessly opening or shutting the book she had taken into her hands; but at length the sun began to sink, and it was evident they must begin their walk if they were to reach Arden before night. Clare swallowed Barbara’s glass of wine, and then set out upon the weary way. “It has been a nice quiet day,” she said, mechanically, fibbing with the instinct of good society, as she got up. “I hope it has done you good, Miss,” said Barbara, doubtfully. “Oh, all the good in the world,” said Clare. And with this forlorn fiction she walked home again; so much less sure of her own constancy; so much more doubtful of the possibility of shutting up secrets in a silence as of the grave, and living a perpetual life of sacrifice, without hope or call for sympathy, than she had been in the morning. She was very weary when she got home, weary in body and mind, and could only answer with a faint smile to the message which Wilkins gave her from her cousin. Jeanie had not kept him back to-day; only one day had he been kept back by all the united influences which could be brought to bear upon him. Had not she been hard upon him, sending him summarily away from her for one offence, he who perhaps all his life had been wronged so bitterly? Had he been wronged? Or was it a dream? And had he wronged her—or was this but a cloud that might pass away? When Clare had got rid of the servants, who worried her, and had also got rid of the poor pretence of dining which she went through in order not to reveal to them too clearly the commotion in her mind, she had another struggle with herself. Whether he had wronged her or had been wronged, surely it was best now to keep him at arm’s length. Better not to see him again, never to attempt to lean her cares upon him, to confide her difficulties to him. Oh, no, no! He must never come again. And Clare said to herself that she must live and die alone.

When the servants had gone to bed she went into the library once more in her dressing-gown with her candle, and unlocked all its fastenings, and took out the bundle of papers to look at it. The words she had seen, which had woke her out of one dream of pain into another, and which had shaken her being so profoundly, were covered over now by the envelope into which she had thrust them. She took it out and weighed it in her hands—the neat harmless little packet, which looked as if it could harm nobody! What right had she to think it would harm any one? Clare took it out as if it had been something explosive, and weighed it, and gazed at it. All the house was silent. There was not one creature in it who was not sleeping or seeking sleep. Her own light and the dim one which awaited her in her chamber upstairs were the only signs of life in the great, silent, locked-up place. It was guarded without from every kind of assault; but who could ward off the enemies who existed insidious within?

Clare sat revolving this problem until the night was far gone. She did not seem able to leave it; and yet her thoughts made no progress. Was she the guardian of Arden, watching over that secret, unable to give it up, keeping the house and the family from harm? She thought it was some demon which kept tempting her to open the packet, and discover all. Most likely it would be the best thing to do. Most likely what she would find out on a closer examination would altogether clear up those words which had thrilled her through and through as with an electric touch. They were her father’s papers. Was it not her duty to find out what was in them, to be ready to vindicate her father’s memory should anyone ever assail it? She sat and weighed the papers in her hand, and listened to all the mysterious sounds and mutterings of the night, till at last her mind became incapable of any personal action, and she felt it grow into a furious battle-field of the two opinions which charged and encountered and were repulsed, and rallied again, and tore her in sunder. It was more weariness than anything else which prompted her at last to the step she took. She was reluctant to think of Edgar at all in the present state of her mind, and yet it was he who was most deeply concerned. After she had discussed it with herself for hours she rose up from the bureau at the bidding of a sudden impulse, and sat down in her father’s chair. It was a chair which nobody ever occupied, which the servants were afraid of—and Clare could not but feel with involuntary superstition that her father himself was somehow superintending this action of hers. She drew towards her the blotting book he had used, and which contained his paper—paper which no one had made any use of since his death. Was it he who was dictating to her, holding her pen, guiding her in this tardy justice? Her letter was very short, concise, and restrained. Before she began to write she did not feel as if she could address him again, or could know what to say; but old use and wont came to her aid.

“Dear Edgar (this is what Clare wrote)—I have found something among my father’s papers which seems to me very important—important to everybody, and to you above all. I have not read it—only just seen a word or two, which have made me very unhappy. I thought I would try to keep it from you, but I find I cannot. Come, then, and see what it means. It is of more importance than anything you can be doing. Come immediately, if I may ask that much of you. Come without any delay.

C. A.”

This was all the subscription she could bring herself to put. When she had read it over and placed it in an envelope, she put it down on the Squire’s blotting book in front of his seat. It was a kind of test which she felt herself to be applying. If the letter disappeared before morning she would accept it as a supernatural intimation that it ought not to be sent. If not—— To such a pass her mind had come, which was in general so free from any fear or consciousness of the supernatural. When she had done this she took up her packet again and went upstairs, and replaced it under her pillow. And thus worn out with all she had gone through Clare slept. She had not expected it, but she fell asleep like a child. Fatigue, excitement, and that long conflict had been of use to her in this one way from which she could derive any help or consolation. And then she had done something which must be decisive, and settle the matter without any further action of her own.

CHAPTER XX.

While all these schemes and dreams were going on at Arden Edgar was learning to accustom himself to the life of a young man about town—a thing which it was almost as hard for him to do as it would have been for any of the male butterflies whom he was attempting to emulate to settle down to work. Edgar found it very hard work to adapt himself to the systematic diversions of society—to portion out his hours and engagements on the theory of killing time, and getting through as much amusement as possible. To him the world was full of amusement taken simply by itself, or else of something more satisfactory, more important, which made amusement unnecessary. He did not know what it was to be vacant of interest either in his own affairs or those of his neighbours, and consequently a system which is built upon the theory that Time is man’s enemy, and must be killed laboriously, did not at all suit him—but yet his mind was so fresh that he found it possible to shift his interest, to get concerned about the new people round him and their new ways, which were so wonderful. Not the German professors, with their speculations, their talk, their music, and their bier-garten, nor their wives and daughters, at once so notable and so sentimental, nor the English farmers and peasants of Arden, were really so wonderful to Edgar as the ways of Mayfair in June. He would sit and listen with eyes which shone with fun and wonder while the people about him went gravely on making and re-making their engagements, promising to go there, promising not to go here, rising into wild excitement about a difficult invitation, dining, dancing, driving, riding, sauntering at flower shows, at Zoological gardens, at afternoon teas, at garden parties, counting the Row and the Park as sacred duties, considering as serious occupation the scribbling of half-a-dozen notes, and considering the gossip about Lord This and Lady That to be matter of European interest. And how seriously they did it all! How important they felt themselves with all that mass of engagements on hand—every hour of every day forestalled! Edgar looked on laughing, and then gradually got beyond laughing. It was difficult for so sympathetic a spirit to live long in such an atmosphere without beginning to feel that there must be some intrinsic value in the system which was held in such high esteem by all around him. He was bewildered in his great candour. He laughed, and then, growing silent, only smiled, and then began to ponder and wonder and ask himself questions. Perhaps it was well on the whole that as the apex of a great social system founded upon a vast basis of labour and suffering and pain, there should be this human froth, or rather those bubbles sparkling in the sun—those snowy foam-wreaths and gleaming surface ripples to cover and beautify the depths below. Was it well? He could not come to any very satisfactory conclusion with himself. It was easy to laugh, and easy to condemn, and equally easy, when one was trained to it, to take it as the natural condition of affairs; but here, as in all other cases, it was the attempt to discriminate what was good and what was bad—what was mere frivolity and what had some human use in it, which was the difficult matter. The puzzle brought a look of wonder to Edgar’s brown eyes. “Are you going to Lady Thistledown’s to-night?” Harry Thornleigh would say to him; “it is a horrible bore.” “Why should you go then?” Edgar would answer. “My dear fellow, everybody will be there.” “And everybody will be bored,” said Edgar; “and if everybody survives it, will do the same to-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow. Why don’t you do something that interests you, all you fellows?” “That would be a still more confounded bore,” said Harry. And what could the new man do but shrug his shoulders and give up the discussion?

He himself was the only one perhaps among them who was not in the least bored. There was something even in Lady Thistledown’s party that occupied Edgar. Sometimes he was interested, sometimes amused, and sometimes very much saddened by what he saw. And then personal risks surrounded him, which he did not in the least understand or realise. “Lady Augusta is to be there, I suppose, and your sisters, so that I don’t think I shall be bored,” he had said to Harry Thornleigh in reference to this very party; and Harry said nothing, but opened his eyes very wide at this plain speaking. “Which of them is it, I wonder?” he mused to himself as he went off. “Gussy, I hope;” for Gussy was her brother’s favourite, and he felt it would be very pleasant, as Lady Augusta did, to have the pleasantest and brightest and most sweet-tempered of the girls settled so near as Arden. But in point of fact Edgar had no intention of settling any one at Arden. He was still quite faithful to his sister’s sway. If Clare were to marry and go away, then indeed he would no doubt feel the loneliness uncomfortable; but at present it would have seemed something like high treason to Edgar to dethrone his sister. Such an idea had never entered into his mind. But he was fond of Lady Augusta, who was like a mother to him, and he was fond of her daughter—indeed, of all her daughters—whom he regarded with the freshest and most cordial sentiment. He was always ready to get their carriage, to do anything for them. He was not afraid, as so many men were, to affichér himself; and, therefore, as society does not understand brotherly affection on the part of a young man towards young women, everybody decided that one of the Thornleigh girls was to be his lawful owner. There was some difficulty in the common mind as to which was the fortunate individual; but Gussy was so distinctly indicated by the family for the post that naturally no one else had a chance against her. And this conclusion was really the most natural that could be drawn. Edgar, though he was so friendly and so frank, was yet in some respects a shy man, and he clung to the people he knew best. When he was with the Thornleighs he was free from every shade of embarrassment—he knew them all so well (he thought); they were so kind to him—they understood him and his ways of thinking so completely (he believed). When he went to them it was like going home—entering into his family—a more genial family, and one more apt to understand, than he had ever known.