Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

“Why should you take so much trouble?” said Edgar. “If such was his desire, it is my duty to see it carried out. And I do not insist on the compactness of the property. Why should I? I who am the one who knows least about it. If this division pleased my father–”

“Tut, tut,” said the lawyer, “pleased a man who was a monomaniac and had a fixed idea! I had formed a higher opinion of your good sense and judgment; but to stand out for a piece of nonsense like this! Miss Clare herself would be the first to say otherwise. When dead men do justly and wisely by those they leave behind them, I am not the man ever to interfere. I hold a will sacred, Mr. Edgar, within fit bounds; but when a dead man’s will wrongs the living–”

“He is dead, and cannot stand up for it,” said Edgar, who was very pale; “and it was his own to do as he liked.”

“There’s the fallacy,” cried Mr. Fazakerley triumphantly, “there is just the fallacy. It was not his own. He had to get you to help him, and cheated you in your ignorance. Besides, even had he not required your help, which convicts him, it still was not his own. He was but one in the succession. What is the good of an old family but for that? Why, it is the very bulwark and defence of an aristocracy. I ought to know, for I see enough of the reverse. You may say the money these fellows make in Liverpool is their own—they may do what they like with it; and so they do, and the consequences are wonderful. But Squire Arden, good heavens, what was the good of him, what was the meaning of him, if he dismembered his property and broke it up! My dear Mr. Edgar, you are a charming young fellow, but you don’t understand–”

“Well,” said Edgar, warming under the influence of the lawyer’s half-whimsical vehemence, “perhaps you are right, but it does not matter entering into that now. Before Clare marries–”

“There is no time like the present,” said Mr. Fazakerley. “When she marries she will have other things in her mind, and her husband, that is to be, might interfere. Besides, that land near Liverpool is the most valuable part of the property. You have nothing to do but build villas upon it, or let other people build villas, and you will make a fortune. Your worthy father would never hear of it; but it really was a prejudice, and a waste of opportunity–”

“Do you want me to fly in his face in everything, and do just what he did not wish to be done?” said Edgar, with a smile, which he tried to suppress.

Mr. Fazakerley shrugged his narrow brown shoulders. “New monarchs, new laws,” he said. “I don’t see why you should be bound by his fancies. He did not show much respect for yours, if you had any. No, I mean to suggest very important modifications, if you will permit me, in the management of the estate. Perhaps, if we were to have up Tom Perfitt and the map, and go over it–”

Edgar consented with a sigh, which he also suppressed. It was not that he disliked the initiation into his real work in life, or objected to throw off the idleness in which he had spent all these years. On the contrary, he had chafed again and again over the inaction—the wretched aimlessness of his existence. But there was something in this sudden plunge into all its new responsibilities and trials, and, more than all, in this posthumous conflict with the will and inclinations of the father who had hated him, which sent a thrill through his mind, and moved his whole being. And in this life which was about to begin there was a mystery concealed somewhere—the secret of his own existence, which some time or other would have to be found out. Nobody seemed to feel this, not even those who were the most fully conscious that an explanation was wanted of the old Squire’s ceaseless enmity to his son. They all took it for granted that it was over; that the Squire’s death had ended everything; and that the heir who had succeeded so tranquilly would reign in peace in his unkind father’s stead. But Edgar’s mind was not so easily satisfied. It seemed to him that on this road which he was entering there stood a great signpost, with a shadowy hand pointing to the secret, and he shrank, knowing that secret would bring him trouble. However, to oppose this visionary sense of risk and danger to Mr. Fazakerley and his papers or to Perfitt and his map would have been folly indeed. So Perfitt, who was the Scotch steward, came, and the young Squire was drawn unconsciously within the charmed circle of property, and began to feel his heart beating and his head throbbing with a certain exhilarated sense of importance and responsibility. When he heard of all that was his, he, who never up to this moment had possessed anything but his personalities, a curious feeling of power came over him. He was young, and his mind was fresh, and the emotions of nature were still strong in him. He had seen a great deal of the world, but it had not been that phase of the world which makes a young man blasé. He sat and listened to the discussion of rents and boundaries, of what ought to be done with one farm and another, of the wood that ought to be cut, and the moor that ought to be reclaimed, with a puzzled yet pleasant consciousness that, discuss as they liked, they could not decide without him. He knew so little about it that he had to content himself with listening; but the talk was as a pleasant song to him, pleasing his newborn sense of importance. “You’ll understand fine, Sir, when once you’ve been over the estate with me,” said Perfitt, with a certain condescension which amused Edgar mightily. They seemed to him to be playing at government, suggesting so many things which they had no power to carry out, which must wait for his approval. All his graver anticipations floated away from him in his sense of the humour of the situation. He made mental notes in his mind as they settled this and that, saying to himself, “Wait a little; I will not have it so” with a boyish delight in the feeling that he could put all their calculations out by any sudden exercise of his will. If this was very childish in Edgar, I don’t know what excuse to make for him. It was so amusing to him to feel himself a great man, with supreme power in his hands—he who had never been master of anything all his life.

CHAPTER VIII

That day was a long day. Just before luncheon the Thornleighs called, as Clare had expected. The Thornleighs were next neighbours to the Ardens in the county; and in the general estimation they were more fashionable than the Ardens, in so much that Mr. Thornleigh had married Lady Augusta Highton, a daughter of the Duke of Grandmaison; whereas the late Mr. Arden had married a wife whose antecedents were very little known, and who had been dead for years. So that while the Thornleighs had a house in town, and went a great deal into society, the Ardens had not budged for years from Arden Hall, and were very little known in the great world. This, however, was counterbalanced by the fact that while Clare was quite fresh and unworn, the five Thornleigh girls were rather too well known, and were talked about with just that shade of ennui which so speedily creeps over a fashionable reputation. “One sees them everywhere,” said the fastidious rulers of that capricious world; and as there were five of them, it was not easy to invite them to those choicest little gatherings in which Fashion is worshipped with the most perfect rites, and distinctions are granted or withdrawn. None of the Thornleigh girls were yet married, and many people were disposed to censure Lady Augusta for bringing out little Beatrice, who was just seventeen, while she had still Ada, and Gussy, and Helena, and Mary on her hands. How could she ever expect to be able to take them all out—people said?—which was very true.

But, however, the thing was done, and could not be mended. Lady Augusta was not a matchmaker, in the usual sense of the word; neither were her daughters trained to the pursuit of elder sons or other eligible members of society, as it is common to suppose such young women to be. But it cannot be denied that as a reasonable woman, much concerned about the wellbeing of her children, Lady Augusta now and then allowed, with a sigh, that if Gussy and Ada were comfortably married it would be a very good thing, and a great relief to her mind. “Not to say that they could take their sisters out,” she would sometimes say to herself, with a sigh reflecting upon all the cotillions to which little Beatrice, in the fervour of seventeen, would no doubt subject her mother. And it would be vain to attempt to deny that a little thrill of curiosity was in Lady Augusta’s mind as she drove up the avenue to Arden. Edgar was their nearest neighbour, he was young and “nice,” so far as anybody knew—for, of course, he had been met abroad from time to time by wandering sons and cousins, and reports of him had been brought home—and just a suitable age for Gussy, or, indeed, for any of the girls, should the young people by any chance take a fancy to each other. I cannot see why Lady Augusta should be condemned for having this speculation in her mind. If she had been quite indifferent to the future fate of her daughters she would have been an unnatural woman. It was her chief business in the world to procure a happy life for them, and provide them with everything that was best; and why—a good husband being placed, by common consent, foremost in the list of those good things—a mother’s efforts towards the securing of him should not be thought the very highest and best of her occupations, it is very hard to say. As a matter of fact, everywhere but in England it is her first and most clearly recognised duty. And I for one do not feel in the least disposed to sneer at Lady Augusta. She went with her husband to look at this young man with a sense that one day he might be very important to her. It is possible that Edgar might not have liked it had the idea occurred to him that he was thus already a subject of speculation, and that his tenderest affections—the things which belong most exclusively to a man’s personal being—were already being directed, whether potentially or not, by the imagination of another, into channels as yet totally unknown to him. I believe such a thought is not pleasant to a young man. But still it was quite natural—and, indeed, laudable—on the part of Lady Augusta, and demands neither scorn nor condemnation. She had made Mr. Thornleigh give up a morning’s consultation with the keeper on some interesting young moorland families and the general prospects of the game, in order that no time might be lost in making this call. Of course, she said nothing to him as he sat rather sulkily by her side, thinking all the time of the young pheasants; but on the whole, perhaps, the mother’s were not the least elevated thoughts.

“I am so very glad to be the first to welcome you home, Mr. Arden,” she said. “We don’t know each other yet—at least we two individuals don’t know each other; but the Ardens and the Thornleighs have been friends these hundreds of years. How many hundreds, Clare? You girls are so dreadfully well-informed now-a-days, I never dare open my lips. And I hope now your sister will go out a little more, and come to us a little more. She has been such a little hermit all her life.”

“She shall not be a hermit now, if I can help it,” said Edgar. And he was pleased with the kindness of the elder woman, who was still a handsome woman, and gracious in her manner, as became a great lady. He sat down by her, as was his duty, but without thinking it was his duty—another sign of the spontaneousness which puzzled Clare, and gave Edgar’s simple ways their greatest charm.

And the fact was that Lady Augusta, without in the least meaning it, was captivated by the young man. “He is not the least like an Arden,” she said to her husband, as they drove away; “he has not their stiffness, any more than their black hair. I think he is charming. There is something very nice in a foreign education, you know. One would not choose it for one’s own boys; but it does give a certain character when you meet with it by accident. Young men in general are so frightfully like each other,” she added, with a sigh. Mr. Thornleigh gave a half articulate grunt, being full of calculations about the partridges; besides, the young men did not trouble him much. He was not called upon to remember which was which, and to hear them say exactly the same things to his girls ball after ball. Lady Augusta’s sigh turned into a half yawn as she glanced back upon all her experiences. He was just about the age and about the height for Gussy. Gussy was a small, little thing, and Edgar was not tall. He would not answer at all for the stately Helena, who was five feet ten. And then, if the mother had a weakness, it was for little Gussy of all her children. And it would be so nice to have her settled so near. “But just because it is so nice, and would be so desirable, of course it will never come to pass,” she said to herself, with another sigh. She had left an invitation behind her, and had made up her mind it should not be her fault if it came to nothing. Thus Edgar was assailed by altogether unexpected dangers the very day after his return.

And then there was the dinner in the evening, which was not so pleasant to think of as the dinner to which the brother and sister had been invited at Thorne. There were only three gentlemen—the Rector, and the Doctor, and Mr. Fazakerley—all twice as old as Edgar, and all patronising and explanatory. They knew his affairs so much better than he did, that it was not wonderful if they alarmed him. So long as Clare sat at the other end of the table her brother did not mind, for she was used to them, and used to having her own way with them; but Edgar felt it would be hard upon him when he was left to their tender mercies. He was very anxious to detain Clare, so as to shorten the awful hour after dinner. “Why should you go away?” he said, “wait till we are all ready. Are we such bears in England that ladies can’t stay with us for an hour? We don’t mean to smoke; that is the only thing that need send you away.”

“Smoke!” said Mr. Fielding, with horror. “Edgar, I hope you don’t mean to introduce these new-fangled foreign ways. I shall have to retire with the ladies if you do. I detest smoke, except in the open air.”

“That is one of his old-fashioned notions,” said Dr. Somers, “but you must have a smoking-room fitted up: then the ladies can’t object. The old Squire resisted such an innovation. He was of the antique school, like Fielding here, and hated everything that was new.”

“Just the reverse of our young friend,” said Mr. Fazakerley. “I and Tom Perfitt have been giving him a great many ideas to-day. You will find Tom a very satisfactory fellow, I am sure. He is broad Scotch, and he is fond of having his own way, but he knows every inch of the land, and what is best for it. If you do any amateur farming you could not have a better man. If that sort of thing ever was anything but ruinous, Tom is the man to make it pay.”

“I must take a little time to think what I am going to do,” said Edgar, “and to make acquaintance with the place. You forget that I don’t know Arden, though you all do. Clare, why should you go away?”

“I am going to make you some tea,” said Clare, with a smile, as she went away. And she took no notice of his appealing look. She was half vexed, indeed, that he should have suggested such an innovation. It was a bad symptom for the time to come. Why should not Edgar be content, as everybody else was, with the usual customs of society? She was annoyed that he should show his foreign breeding even before his old friends. It seemed to her that Dr. Somers’ keen eye launched a gleam of mockery at her as she went out. They would laugh at him, even these old gentlemen; and of course other people would laugh still more.

“Let her go,” the Doctor said, as the door closed behind the young mistress of the house. “Don’t disturb the customs of your country, Edgar. It is all very well just now when you are young; but the time will come, my boy, when you will prefer having an hour’s serious talk, without any women to interfere with it. And they like it themselves, my dear fellow; they like a moment to put their hair straight and their ribbons, and have their private gossip. Don’t train Clare into evil ways.”

“I think they are much pleasanter ways,” said Edgar; but he was put down by acclamation. To suggest an innovation in Arden of all places in the world! the three old men looked at him as if he were a natural curiosity, and studied his unusual habits with a mixture of amusement and alarm.

“I don’t object to young men being fond of ladies’ society,” said Mr. Fielding, in his gentle voice; “it is a great preservative to them; but still not too much, not too much, my dear boy. Your sister, of course, will be a kind of guardian angel to you; but you know there are a great many Liverpool people about with large families—nice people enough, and of course they will be very friendly, if you will let them; and pretty girls, and all that. But you must be careful, you must be very careful. You must remember a great deal depends on the circle you collect round you at first.”

“I don’t see how I can collect a circle round me,” said Edgar, laughing. “I have always supposed it was the great ladies who did that—Lady Augusta, for instance, who called here to-day–”

“My dear fellow,” said Dr. Somers, “take care of that woman. She has five daughters, and she will play the pretty comedy of the spider and the fly with you for the amusement of the county, if you don’t mind. If you let yourself be drawn into her net, you will have to marry one of the girls, and that is a severe price to pay for a few dinners. You must take care what you are about.”

“The Miss Thornleighs are nice girls,” said Mr. Fazakerley, “but they will have very little money. Young Thornleigh has been dreadfully extravagant at Oxford. I know for certain that his father has paid his bills three times. Of course they have so much under the marriage settlements; but when there are five, and only a certain sum to be divided, there can’t be very much for each.”

“She has Edgar booked for one, you may be sure,” said the Doctor, “and a very nice thing, too—for them. Next neighbours, and a fine old place, and a nice young fellow. For my part, I think Lady Augusta is quite right.”

“If you don’t mind,” said Edgar, “I’d rather not have myself suggested as the subject of anybody’s calculations. Suppose one of the Miss Thornleighs should do me the honour to marry me hereafter, do you think I should like to remember how you talked of it? I am aware I have ridiculous notions–”

Dr. Somers laughed; Mr. Fazakerley chuckled, interrupting the young man’s speech; but Mr. Fielding, who was of a gentler nature, peered at him through his short-sighted old eyes with kindly sympathy. “Edgar, I think you are quite right,” he said. “We all talk about women in a most unjustifiable way. The Miss Thornleighs are very nice girls, and never gave any one reason to speak of them without respect—nor their mother either, that I know of; but we all talk as if they were put up to auction, and you might buy which you please. You are quite right.”

“I do not know whether I am right or not,” said Edgar, with some vehemence; “but I know I should punch any man’s head who spoke so of Clare.”

“Clare! Ah, that’s different,” said the Doctor; “where Clare is concerned, I give you full leave to punch anybody’s head–”

“Miss Clare is an heiress,” said Mr. Fazakerley. “She is as great a prize in the matrimonial market as her brother. If I took the liberty to speak on such a subject at all, I should represent her, not as the huntress, but the hunted. Penniless girls are in a very different position; and why should we blame them? It is their natural way of providing for themselves, after all.”

“Then, money is everything,” said Edgar, “and to provide for one’s self one’s first duty. I have not been very well brought up, you know, but I thought I had heard something better than that.”

“Don’t be too severely virtuous, my boy,” the Doctor said, pushing back his chair. “You may be sure that, from the savage to the swell (two classes not so far apart), to provide for one’s self is one’s highest duty. Love, &c., are very nice things, but your living comes first of all. Now, come, we are getting metaphysical; let us join Clare.”

CHAPTER IX

“Tell me something about the Thornleighs,” Edgar said on the morning of the day they were to dine at Thorne. “I like to know what sort of people I am about to make acquaintance with. Are they friends of yours, Clare?”

“Pretty well,” Clare answered, with just that little elevation of her head which Edgar began to know. “What is the use of describing them when you will see them to-night, and then judge for yourself? Ada is nice. She is the eldest of all, and she talks very little. I like her for that. Gussy is short, with heaps of light hair; and Helena is very tall, and rather dark, like her father. They are not at all like each other—not much more like each other than you and me.”

“That is a consolation,” said Edgar, with a smile.

“Not so much as you think, for they are like in their ways; and then you can tell in a moment which side of the house they belong to,” said Clare, with a shade crossing her face. “Whereas, Edgar—don’t be vexed with me for saying so—but you are not even—like mamma.”

“How do you know?” said Edgar, a little sharply; for that he was like his mother had been one of the established principles of his life.

“I have a little miniature in a bracelet. Nobody knows of it, I think, but myself. She must have been fair, to be sure; but you are not very like her, Edgar. You are not vexed? Of course, you must be like her family. But Helena Thornleigh is like her father, and Ada and Gussy are like Lady Augusta. You can’t mistake it; and then they all have little ways of speaking, and little movements: if you are going to like any of them, I wish it may be Ada. She is really nice. But Gussy is a chatterbox, and Helena is superior; and as for Mary and Beatrice–”

“Is it certain that I must like one more than another?” said Edgar. “I mean to like them all, as they are our next neighbours. Is there any reason why I should confine myself to one?”

“Oh, I suppose not,” said Clare, with a suppressed laugh; “only somehow one always thinks where there are girls– Look! Edgar; here is some one coming up the avenue. Who can it be? The servant is in livery, and I don’t recognise the carriage, nor anything. It can’t be the Thorpes, or the Mandevilles, or the Blundells; and it can’t be the Earl, for he is in town. Look! they don’t see us and I do so want to make them out.”

“The servants are in purple and green, and there is an astounding coat of arms on the panel,” said Edgar. “You must know that—arms as big as a saucer—and somebody very big inside.” The two were in a little morning room which opened from the great drawing room, where they could see the avenue and even the flight of steps before which the carriage stopped. Clare uttered an exclamation of horror as she stood gazing out at the new comers. She seemed to her brother to shiver with sudden dismay. “It cannot be possible!” she said. What could she mean? Perhaps it was some secret enemy whom she recognised but he did not know; somebody, perhaps, connected with the secret which more or less weighed on Edgar’s life.

“Who is it?” he said, in serious alarm, coming close to her. “Any one we have reason to be afraid of? Don’t tremble so. Nobody can harm you while I am here.”

“On the contrary, they would never have ventured had not you been here!” said Clare, with vehement indignation. “They never could have had the presumption– Edgar, it is an insult! We ought to send and say we are not at home. There are some things one ought not to bear–”

“Who are they?” he asked, beginning to perceive that there was no serious cause for fear.

But Clare’s flushed and indignant countenance showed no signs of softening. “I knew they were presuming, but I never could have imagined anything so bad as this,” she cried. “Edgar, it is the Pimpernels!”

“The Pimpernels?” Edgar repeated, confused and wondering; but before he could ask another question the door was thrown open, and Wilkins appeared in front of the invading party. Wilkins’ face was a study of suppressed consternation and dismay. He did his office as if he were going to the stake, stern necessity compelling him in the shape of those three solid figures behind. “Mr., Mrs., and Miss Pimpernel,” said Wilkins, with a voice in which the protest of a martyr was audible behind the ordinary formality. Edgar did not know anything about the Pimpernels. He saw before him a large man, made larger by light summer costume, which magnified his breadth and diminished his height, with sparkling jewelled studs in his shirt, and a great coil of watch-chain spreading across his buff waistcoat; and a large lady, enveloped in black silk and lace, which somehow, though so totally different, seemed to have the same effect of enlarging and setting forth her amplitude of form. Behind these two there appeared, seen by intervals, the slim figure of a tall girl, with a pretty blushing face. Nothing could have made Edgar uncivil—not even the terrible fact, had he known it, that Mr. Pimpernel was a Liverpool cotton-broker, such a man as had never before made his appearance in the capacity of visitor within the stately shades of Arden. But he was not aware of that awful fact. He knew only that Clare had been moved by horror at the sight of them, and that she stood now at as great a distance as possible, and made a very solemn curtsey, and looked as if she were assisting at a funeral. The Pimpernels, who had produced this melancholy effect, were themselves so utterly unlike it, at once in manners and appearance, that the situation affected Edgar rather with comic than with solemn feelings.