“And she has so rooted a prejudice against those good people the Pimpernels—it is a pity,” said Lady Augusta. “I suppose you know your cousin Arthur Arden is staying there?”
“There?” cried Edgar, “at Arden?” and he half rose to go off at once and guard his sister, whose imprudence it seemed impossible to understand.
“I mean he is at the Pimpernels;” said Lady Augusta. “Alice, I suppose, will have a good deal of money. I have known the day when Arthur Arden could have done a great deal better than that. But neither men nor women improve their case matrimonially by growing older. It will be curious to see him as the husband of Alice Pimpernel.”
“But is it certain that because he is her father’s guest the other must follow?” said Edgar, who asked the question at random, without thinking much about it. The answer was a little pointed, and it found a lodgment in his mind.
“Oh dear no, Mr. Arden. But yet the world is apt to ask why does he go there? What does he want in that house? It is a question that is asked whenever a young man visits a great deal at a house where there are girls.”
“I did not know that,” said Edgar, with a simplicity which went to Lady Augusta’s heart. “I believe he is as innocent as a baby,” she said afterwards when she was telling the story. “He may be as innocent as he pleases, but he shan’t trifle with Gussy,” said Harry, putting on a very valiant air. Gussy, for her own part, did not know what to think. “He likes me very well, but that is all,” she said to her mother. “I am sure he means nothing. Indeed, mamma, I am quite sure——”
“I don’t think you know anything at all about it,” said Lady Augusta, with some irritation; for Edgar was her own protegé—it was she who had vouched for him, and settled how everything was to be—and not only her pride but her feelings were concerned. She thought she had never met with any one she could like so well for a son-in-law. He was so thoughtful, so considerate, and (a matter which is well worth noting) had the air of liking her too, for herself, as well as for her daughter. “One could really make a son of him,” the poor lady said to herself with a sigh; for to tell the truth she was sometimes sadly in want of a good son to help her. The girls were very good, but they were only girls, and could not be of all the use a man could—and Harry was quite as much trouble as comfort—and Mr. Thornleigh left everything to his wife. Therefore she was reluctant to give up the idea of Edgar, which was, as we have said, her own idea. It was so seldom that everything that could be desired was to be found united in one person, as in his case. When a man was very “nice” and a comfort to talk to, the chances were he was poor and had to be snubbed instead of encouraged. But Edgar was everything that was desirable, even down to his very local position. So Lady Augusta spoke very sharply even to her favourite daughter when she insinuated that Edgar was indifferent. “You don’t know anything at all about it,” was what she said; and she clung to the idea with a certain desperation. Arden was so near, and the family was so good, and the rent-roll so satisfactory, and the man so nice. It was impossible to improve the combination which she found in him; and Lady Augusta’s mind was fully made up to brave a great deal, and do a great deal, before she relinquished the prize which Providence had thrown in her way.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Edgar left the Thornleighs that day with several quite new subjects of thought. His heart was touched to the very quick by that little revelation which Gussy had made to him of her sister’s history. It stopped him quite suddenly in the current of his previous reflections. He had been so full of the unprofitableness and unmeaningness of the new existence into which he found himself thrown, that the discovery of a tragedy so simple and so hopeless, just one step out of it, upset once more all his conclusions. The idea he had been forming was, that within the range of “Society” strong feeling of any kind, much less passion, was impossible—even suffering and death seemed things too great and too human to penetrate within that artificial ring. He could have imagined the same routine going on for ever and ever, without any novelty in it, or touch of the real. Yet here, upon the very edge of the eternal dance, here was a single silent figure who had suffered (as Edgar felt, in the fervour of youthful sympathy) the extremity of human woe. How strange it was! The contrast confused him, and gave another turn, as it were, to his whirling brain. They were then human creatures after all, those people of fashion, whirling on and on in their everlasting round. Sometimes pain, passion, disappointment, tragical rending asunder of hearts and lives, proved their real nature. Perhaps even the man who was trying to take all the use out of his life by means of engagements twenty deep, had been pierced through and through with some such shaft as that which had killed poor Ada’s lover. Perhaps some of those women who hurried from one assemblage to another as fast as hours and horses could carry them had suffered in silence all that Ada had done, and lost all savour and sweetness in life like her. Edgar felt himself pulled up short, and paused in his wholesale criticisms. How could he tell—how could any one tell—what lay underneath the surface of the stream? He paused, and then he went off at a tangent, as young philosophers are apt to do, and asked himself whether this flutter and crowding and universal buzz of amusement was not a vast pretence, adopted by common consent, to hide what everybody was suffering underneath? outside an attempt to appear as if they were having things their own way, enjoying to the height of their capacity all the good the world could give; but underneath a deep universal conviction that life was naught, and happiness a dream! Was this the true theory of life? The question occupied him a great deal more perhaps than the readers of this history will sympathise with; but then, it must be remembered that it was all very new to him, and that every novel phase of life strikes us more strongly than that to which we are accustomed. To Arthur Arden, for instance, the course of existence which startled Edgar was too common to call for a single question. It was the ordinary state of affairs to him. But Edgar knew the other forms so much better. He understood those conditions under which a man labours that he may live. That theory was familiar to him which makes the day’s work necessary to the day; but to exist in order to get rid of your existence—to bend all your faculties to the question, not how you are to provide for, but how you are to spend and dispose of your days, that was new to him. And therefore he puzzled over it in a way which a man of fashion to the manner born could not possibly understand. The man of fashion would probably have been quite as much astonished and amazed by Edgar’s prejudices in favour of something to do. Something to do! Why, Harry Thornleigh had a hundred things to do, and never a moment to spare, and yet had never been of use either to himself or any other living creature all his life!
And then this new theory—about what was expected of young men who visited in houses where there were girls—troubled Edgar much. The other question occupied his intelligence, but this one disturbed him in a tenderer point. It hurt his amour-propre in the first place; for to suppose you have been a favourite in a house on your own merits, and then to find that you are only encouraged with a view of providing for a daughter, is sadly humbling to a young man’s vanity; and it hurt him in the affectionate respect he had for women in general and the Thornleighs in particular. He liked them all so kindly and so truly, and had been so pleased to believe that they liked him; whereas, apparently, it was only on the chance that he should bestow what he had upon one of them that they admitted him so freely. What a disenchantment it was! Instead of being their friend, whom they had confidence in, he was a man who meant nothing like Arthur Arden—a man whose inclinations were speculated upon, and his indifference despised. Edgar asked himself with a certain bitterness which of them it was whom he was expected to address. Perhaps the stately Helena, notwithstanding her views about the occupations of women, had been given to understand that it was her duty to accept Arden instead; perhaps Gussy—— But Edgar could not help feeling sore on this subject. He was fond of Gussy, he said to himself; she was so frank, and so friendly, and so sympathetic, so ready to respond, so willing to communicate. He could not bear the idea that she had been making merchandise of him, and calculating upon Arden—for, of course, it is Arden, not me, he thought. I for myself am nobody—less a great deal than the poor fellow who died, whom they seem to have had a kind of human feeling for. She cried over him even—and laughed, and said I meant nothing, Edgar added, in a sudden flush of pique and dissatisfaction. What meaning, I wonder, did she intend me to have? From this it will be seen that Edgar Arden was not in love—was not the least in love; but yet did not care that Gussy should think of him as an article of merchandise—a creature representing settlements and a house of her own. It is a humiliating position for a man to find himself in. It is pleasant (perhaps) to be the object of pursuit, and to feel that mothers and daughters are fluttered by your entrance or exit, or by any silly word it may be your pleasure to address to the young women who are being put up to market. But even to those young women who are put up to market the transaction is scarcely so humbling as it is to the man, who is reckoned among them not as a man at all, but as so much money, so many lands, so many luxuries. Edgar was cast down by this revelation—down to the very depths. What a fool he had been to think they liked him. Was he worth liking by anybody? Was he not rather an insignificant, common-place wretch, unworthy the least notice on his own merits? And he did not in the least desire to be noticed for the sake of Arden. It seemed to him the very last depth of contempt.