CHAPTER XXII.
EDGAR HARROWBY.
Thirty-two years of age; tall, handsome, well set-up, and every inch a soldier; manly in bearing, but also with that grace of gesture and softness of speech which goes by the name of polished manner; a bold sportsman, ignorant of physical fear, to whom England was the culmination of the universe, and such men as he—gentlemen, officers, squires—the culmination of humanity; a man who loved women as creatures, but despised them as intelligences; who respected socially the ladies of his own class, and demanded that they should be without stain, as befits the wives and mothers and sisters of gentlemen, but who thought women of a meaner grade fair game for the roving fowler; a conservative, holding to elemental differences whence arise the value of races, the dignity of family and the righteousness of caste; an hereditary landowner, regarding landed property as a sacred possession meant only for the few and not to be suffered to lapse into low-born hands; a gentleman, incapable of falsehood, treachery, meanness, social dishonor, but not incapable of injustice, tyranny, selfishness, even cruelty, if such came in his way as the privilege of his rank,—this was Edgar Harrowby as the world saw and his friends knew him, and as North Aston had henceforth to know him.
His return caused immense local excitement and great rejoicing. It seemed to set the social barometer at "fair," and to promise a spell of animation such as North Aston had been long wanting. And indeed personally for himself it was time that Major Harrowby was at home and at the head of his own affairs. Matters had been going rather badly on the estate without him, and the need of a strong hand to keep agents straight and tenants up to the mark had been making itself somewhat disastrously felt during the last three or four years. Wherefore he had sold out, broken all his ties in India handsomely, as he had broken them in London handsomely once before, when, mad with jealousy, he had fled like a thief in the night, burned his boats behind him, and, as he thought, obliterated every trace by which that loved and graceless woman could discover his real name or family holding; and now had come home prepared to do his duty to society and himself. That is, prepared to marry a nice girl of his own kind, keep the estate well in hand, and set an example of respectability and orthodoxy, family prayers and bold riding, according to the ideal of the English country gentleman.
But, above all, he must marry. And the wife provided for him by the eternal fitness of things was Adelaide Birkett. Who else could be found to suit the part so perfectly? She was well-born, well-mannered; though not coarsely robust, yet healthy in the sense of purity of blood; and she was decidedly pretty. So far to the good of the Harrowby stock in the future. Neither was she too young, though by reason of her quiet country life her twenty-four years did not count more to her in wear and tear of feeling and the doubtful moulding of experience than if she had lived through one London season. She was a girl of acknowledged good sense, calm, equable, holding herself in the strictest leash of ladylike reserve, and governing all her emotions without trouble, patent or unconfessed. Hers was a character which would never floreate into irregular beauties to give her friends anxiety and crowd her life with embarrassing consequences. She despised sentiment and ridiculed enthusiasm, thought skepticism both wicked and disreputable, but at the same time fanaticism was silly, and not nearly so respectable as that quiet, easy-going religion which does nothing of which society would disapprove, but does not break its heart in trying to found the kingdom of God on earth.
All her relations with life and society would be blameless, orthodox, ladylike and thoroughly English. As a wife she would preach submission in public and practice domination and the moral repression belonging to the superior being in private. As a mother she would take care to have experienced nurses and well-bred governesses, who would look after the children properly, when she would wash her hands of further trouble and responsibility, save to teach them good manners at luncheon and self-control in their evening visit to the drawing-room for the "children's half hour" before dinner. As the mistress of an establishment she would be strict, demanding perfect purity in the morals of her servants, not suffering waste, nor followers, nor kitchen amusements that she knew of, nor kitchen individuality anyhow. Her servants would be her serfs, and she would assume to have bought them by food and wages in soul as well as body, in mind as well as muscle. She would give broken meat in moderation to the deserving poor, but she would let those who are not deserving do the best they could with want at home and inclemency abroad; and she would have called it fostering vice had she fed the husbandless mother when hungry or clothed the drunkard's children when naked. She would never be talked about for extremes or eccentricities of any kind; and the world would be forced to mention her with respect when it mentioned her at all, having indeed no desire to do otherwise. For she was of the kind dear to the heart of England—one of those who are called the salt of the earth, and who are assumed to keep society safe and pure. She was incredulous of science, contemptuous of superstition, impatient of new ideas—appreciating art, but holding artists as inferior creatures, like actors, acrobats and newspaper writers. She was loyal to the queen and royal family, the nobility and Established Church, bracketing republicans with atheists, and both with unpunished felons; as also classing immorality, the facts of physiology and the details of disease in a group together, as things horrible and not to be spoken of before ladies. She was not slow to believe evil of her neighbors, maintaining, indeed, that to be spoken of at all was proof sufficient of undesirable conduct; but she would never investigate a charge, preferring rather to accept it in its vile integrity than to soil her hands by attempting to unweave its dirty threads; hence she would be pitiless, repellent, but she would never make herself the focus of gossip. She was a human being if you will, a Christian in creed and name assuredly; but beyond and above all things she was a well-mannered, well-conducted English lady, a person of spotless morals and exquisite propriety, in the presence of whom humanity must not be human, truth truthful, nor Nature natural.
This was the wife for Edgar Harrowby as a country gentleman—the woman whom Mrs. Harrowby would have chosen out of thousands to be her daughter-in-law, whom his sisters would like, who would do credit to his name and position; and whom he himself would find as good for his purpose as any within the four seas.
For when Edgar married he would marry on social and rational grounds: he would not commit the mistake of fancying that he need love the woman as he had loved some others. He would marry her, whoever she might be, because she would be of a good family and reasonable character, fairly handsome, unexceptionable in conduct, not tainted with hereditary disease nor disgraced by ragged relatives, having nothing to do with vice or poverty in the remotest link of her connections—a woman fit to be the keeper of his house, the bearer of his name, the mother of his children. But for love, passion, enthusiasm, sentiment—Edgar thought all such emotional impedimenta as these not only superfluous, but oftentimes disastrous in the grave campaign of matrimony.
It was for this marriage that Adelaide had saved herself. She believed that any woman can marry any man if she only wills to do so; and from the day when she was seventeen, and they had had a picnic at Dunaston, she had made up her mind to marry Edgar Harrowby. When he came home for good, unmarried and unengaged, she knew that she should succeed; and Edgar knew it too. He knew it so well after he had been at home about a week that if anything could have turned him against the wife carved out for him by circumstance and fitness, it would have been the almost fatal character of that fitness, as if Fortune had not left him a choice in the matter.
"And what do you think of Adelaide?" asked Mrs. Harrowby one day when her son said that he had been to the rectory. "You have seen her twice now: what is your impression of her?'"