Маргарет Олифант: Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

“Exactly,” said the Doctor, looking at him with a certain curious complacency; and he gave a nod at Mr. Fielding, who stood winking to get rid of a tear which was in the corner of his eye. “Exactly what I said! Now, can you deny it? By Jove! I wish he had been my son! It is what I knew he would say.”

“Edgar, my dear boy,” said the Rector, “every word does you credit, and this more than all. Your poor father was mistaken. I say your poor father, for he evidently had something on his mind just before he died, and would have spoken if time had been allowed him. I have no doubt it was to say how sorry he was. But the Ardens are dreadfully obstinate, Edgar, and he never could bring himself to do it. It is just like you to say this. Clare will appreciate it, and I most fully appreciate it. It is the best way; let us not dwell upon the past, let us not even try to explain. Your being like your mother’s family can never be anything against you—far from it. I agree in every word you say.”

This speech, flattering and satisfactory as it was, took the young man a little by surprise. “I don’t know what being like my mother’s family has to do with it,” he said, with momentary petulance; but then his brighter spirits gained the mastery. “It is best never to explain anything,” he continued, with a smile. “There is Clare calling me. I suppose I am to go to Miss Somers, notwithstanding your defence, Doctor.” And he waved his hand to Clare from the window, and went out, leaving the two old men behind him, following him with their eyes. He was glad to get away, if truth must be told; they were fighting some sort of undisclosed duel over his body, Edgar could see, and he did not like it. He went across the village street, which was very quiet at that end, to the Doctor’s great red brick house, and as he did so his face clouded over a little. “They have got some theory about me,” he said to himself; “am I never to be rid of it? And what right has any one to discuss me and my affairs now?” Then the shade gradually disappeared from his face, and in spite of himself there glided across his mind a sudden comparison between the last time he had been at Arden and the present. Then he had a boy’s keen sense of injustice and unkindness eating into him. It had not cut so deeply as it might have done if his temperament had been gloomy; but still it had galled him. He had felt himself contemned, disliked, thrust aside—his presence half clandestine—his wishes made of no account—his whole being thrust into a corner—a thing to hide, or at least to apologise for. Now, he was the master of all. The bells had rung for his home-coming; everything was changed. The thought made his head swim as he walked along in the serene stillness, with the swallows making circles about, and the bees murmuring round the blossomed trees. He had been living an uncertain wandering life, not always well supplied with money, not trained to do anything, an innocent vagabond. Now there was not a corner of his life upon which some one interest or another did not lay a claim. He had the gravest occupations on his hands. He might make for himself a position of high influence and importance in his county; and could scarcely be insignificant if he tried. And all this had come to him without any training for it. His very habits of mind were not English; even in the midst of these serious thoughts the village green, which was at his left hand, beyond the Church and the Rectory, caught his eye, and a momentary speculation came across him, whether the village people danced there on Sundays? whether the fairs were held there, or the tombola, or something to represent them? and then he stopped and laughed at himself. What would Mr. Fielding say? Thus Edgar had come to be Squire Arden without even the habit of being an Englishman. The sense of injustice which had weighed upon him all his life might have embittered his beginning now, had his mind been less elastic. But nature had been so good to him that he was able to toss these dreary thoughts aside, as he would have tossed a ball, before he went in to see Miss Somers. “Things will come right somehow,” he said to himself. Such was his light-hearted philosophy; while Clare stood grave and silent at the door to meet him, with a seriousness which would have been more in accordance with his difficulties than with hers. What troubled her was the question—Would he be a radical, and introduce innovations, ignore the mightiness of his family, conduct himself as if his name were anything else than Arden? This sufficed to plant the intensest seriousness, with almost a cast of severity in it, upon the brow of Clare.

“Didn’t I tell you exactly how it would happen?” said the Doctor, when Edgar was gone; “no sentiment to speak of—utter absence of revengeful feelings: settling down as if it was the most natural thing in the world—bygones to be bygones, and a fair start for the future. Didn’t I tell you? That boy is worth his weight in gold.”

“You certainly told me,” said Mr. Fielding, faltering, “something very like what has come to pass; but I don’t receive your theory, for all that. No, no; depend upon it, the simplest explanation is always the best. One can see at a glance he is like his mother’s family. Poor thing! I don’t think she was too happy; and that must have intensified old Arden’s remorse.”

“Old Arden’s fiddlestick!” said the Doctor. “I wouldn’t give that for his remorse. He had his reasons you may be sure. Character has been my favourite study all my life, as you know; and if that frank, open-hearted, well-dispositioned boy ever came out of an Arden’s nest, I expect to hear of a dove in an eagle’s. He has justified every word I ever said of him. I declare to you, Fielding, I am as fond of him as if he were my own boy.”

“Poor fellow!” said Mr. Fielding, shaking his head, as if that was not so great a compensation as might have been desired. “He will get into dozens of scrapes with these strange ways of thinking; and he knows nothing and nobody—not a soul in the county—and probably will be running his head against some stone wall or other before he is much older. If I had been twenty years younger I might have tried to be of use to him, but as it is–”

“As it is we shall both be of use to him,” said the Doctor, “never fear. Of course, he will get into a hundred scrapes; but then he will struggle out again, and no harm will come of it. If he had been like the Ardens he might have escaped the scrapes, but he would have missed a great deal besides. I like a young man to pay his way.”

“It appears to me, Somers, that you are a radical yourself,” said the Rector, shaking once more his feeble old head.

“On the contrary, the only real Tory going. The last of my race,—the Conservative innovator,” said Dr. Somers. “These old races, my dear Fielding, are beautiful things to look at. Clare, for instance, who is the concentrated essence of Ardenism—and how charming she is! But that order of things must come to an end. Another Squire Arden would have been next to impossible: whereas this new-blooded sanguine boy will make a new beginning. I don’t want to shock your feelings as a clergyman: but the cuckoo’s egg sometimes comes to good.”

“Somers,” said the Rector, solemnly, “I have told you often that I knew Mrs. Arden well. She was a good woman; as unlikely to go wrong as any woman I ever knew. You do her horrible injustice by such a supposition. Besides, think: he was always with her wherever she went—there could not have been a more devoted husband; and to imagine that all the while he had such a frightful wrong on his mind—it is simply impossible! besides, she was the mother of Clare.”

“That covers a multitude of sins, of course,” said the Doctor, “but you forget that I know all your arguments by heart. I don’t pretend to explain everything. It is best never to explain, as that boy says—wise fellow! Half the harm done in the world comes of explanations. But to return to our subject. I never said he found it out at once; perhaps—most likely—it was not discovered in her lifetime. Her papers might inform him after her death. It is curious that when there is anything to conceal, people do always leave papers telling all about it. If you will give me any other feasible explanation I don’t stand upon my theory. Like his mother’s family—bah! Is that reason enough for a man to shut his heart against his only boy? Besides, he is not like any one I know. I wish I could light upon any man he was like. It might furnish a clue–”