And it was to the Thornleighs that Edgar allowed himself to speak most freely of his own wonderments and perplexities. “I look at you all with amazement,” he said. “I don’t disapprove of you.” (“How very nice of him,” interrupted Gussy.) “You look very pretty (“Thanks,” said Beatrice, making him a curtsey), and you are very pleasant. Of course, I don’t mean ladies in particular (“Oh, you savage,” ejaculated Mary, the second youngest, who was a little disposed to hold Helena’s views, but did not understand them in the very least), I mean everybody. All this is very nice. It is charming never to take any thought for the morrow, except which invitation one will accept, or rather which place one will go to, of all that one has accepted. The only thing is, what is the good of it all? It tires you so that you require nine months’ rest to refresh you, and get you up to the point of doing all this over again; and while you are doing it, you call heaven and earth to witness what a bore it is. Would it not be better to try some other kind of useful exertion now and then? Three months’ work in the fields, for instance, or as poor needlewomen, or even in one of those pretty shops——”
“Oh, a shop! that is worse and worse; that is more frightful than ever. I should prefer the fields,” said Beatrice and Mary in a breath.
“The fields are exposed to a great deal of rain and cold, drought and wet, frost, and all kinds of perils,” said Edgar; “and then they would spoil your complexions. Ask Lady Augusta; she would never let you do that. But these beautiful shops, you know, such as that you took me to—Smallgear or something; and then that one in Regent Street. Why, they are palaces; soft carpets under your feet, and great mirrors to display you in, and beautiful things to handle. I should think it rather nice to belong to one of those shops.”
“You can’t possibly mean it?” cried Gussy, concerned for the credit of the man who was so generally assigned to her. “Fancy what an occupation it must be, turning over things to be pulled about by ladies who don’t know what to do with themselves otherwise, and never mean to buy.”
“Well,” said Edgar, “we are not criticising, we are merely taking facts as we find them. If it amuses the ladies to turn the things over, the men in the shops are really more useful to them than the other men who go to their five o’clock tea. And now and then there comes a bona fide purchaser. Whereas for you young ladies what could be better? trying on pretty shawls and things (I saw them), exercising the highest qualities of self-denial, making your prettiness and gracefulness of use to others, and yet having your time to yourselves say after six or seven o’clock. You would see the best of company all the same, par dessus la marché. Don’t you think it would be a very pleasant change?”
“If you would treat it seriously, and really consider how little women are allowed to do, Mr. Arden,” cried Helena Thornleigh, who was too much in earnest to encourage mere chatter like her sisters. “I am sure you might be a great help to us. You see what a desert our lives are, with no object in them. You see what vapid, aimless, useless creatures the most of us are——”
“I beg your pardon,” said Edgar. “I feel that it is frightfully selfish, but all my sympathies, in the first place, are for my own class. Stop till I have made that out. I will come to the ladies by-and-bye. We never have a moment’s time for anything; we are always pursued by work which has to be done, whether it is riding in the park, or going to the opera, or dining at Richmond. How stern duty runs after your brother, for instance, always reminding him of some engagement or other. Poor Harry finds it a dreadful bore. He says so, and he ought to know best. He is always bemoaning his hard fate, and yet he always goes on obeying it. I don’t object to routine, and I don’t object to suffering. They are both good things enough; but to suffer and be a slave to routine all for nothing is very hard—I confess I think it is very hard. To be sure, Harry need not do it unless he likes; but that he should like, and should go on doing it, and should not be able to find something better, that is what puzzles me.”
“I say,” said Harry, who was half-dozing over a book, “what is that about me? I don’t want to be made to point a moral in this house. The girls turn me to that use fast enough. What is Arden saying now?”
“Nothing that is very remarkable,” said Edgar; “only that we poor fellows, or you poor fellows, don’t get half enough credit for the hard life you lead. You give yourselves as much trouble as if you were founding a state or reforming society, and all the time you are doing nothing. I don’t object to it. If a man likes to spend his life so, why, of course, he is free to do it: he is a British subject like the rest of us. But I want to know who invented this theory of existence, and how men were got to give in to it—that is all.”
“It is all they are good for,” said Helena Thornleigh. “It is partly education and partly nature. Boys are brought up to think that they are to have everything they want. They are never obliged to deny themselves or think of others. However silly or frivolous a thing may be, they are free to do it if they like. And they have everything open to them; they go where they like, they live as they please——”