Маргарет Олифант - Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

“Don’t, please,” said Clare, turning aside with a look of pain on her face.

“My dear love, I am only thinking of your good. Now is it reasonable, Edgar? She looks beautiful in mourning, to be sure; but it is more than a year, and she is still in crape. I would have put on my own light silk if I had known you were coming. I hate black from my heart, but it is the most useful to wear, with nice coloured ribbons, when you get old and helpless. I don’t know if you notice any change in my appearance, Edgar? Now how odd you should have found it out! I have plenty of hair still—it is not that; but one gets so untidy with one’s head on a pillow without a cap. Mrs. Pimpernel has quantities of hair; but a married lady is quite different—they can wear things and do things– Did you observe, Edgar, if ladies wear caps just now abroad?”

“They wear a great many different things,” said Edgar, “according to the different countries. I brought Clare a yashmak from Constantinople to cover her head with, and an Albanian cap–”

“My dear,” said Miss Somers, sitting upright with horror, “the idea of Clare wearing a cap at nineteen! That shows one should never speak to a man about what is the fashion. Just look at her lovely hair! It will be time enough for that thirty years hence. I cannot think how you could like to live among the Turks. I hope you did not do as they do, Edgar. It may be all very nice to look at, but having a quantity of wives and that sort of thing must be very dreadful. I am sure I never could have put up with it for a day; and then it goes in the very face of the Bible. I hope you are going to forget all that sort of thing now, and settle down quietly here.”

“Miss Somers,” said Edgar, with mock solemnity, “if I had left a quantity of wives at Constantinople, is it possible that you could calmly advise me to forget them, and marry another here?”

Miss Somers sat up still more straight on her sofa, and showed signs of agitation. “I am sure I would not advise you to what was wrong for all the world,” she said. “Oh, Edgar, my poor boy, what a dreadful position! You might ask the Rector– But if they were heathens, you know, in a Christian country do you think it would be binding? Clare, dear, suppose you step into the drawing-room a minute, till we talk this dreadful, dreadful business over. Oh, you poor boy! It seems wicked for me, an unmarried lady, even to think of such things; but if I could be of any use to you– Edgar! that kind of poor creatures,” said Miss Somers, putting her face close to his, and speaking in a whisper, “people buy them in the market, you know, as we read in books. Listen, my dear boy. It is not nice, of course, but–”

“What?” said Edgar, bending an eager ear.

“You could sell them again, don’t you think? Poor souls, if they are used to it, they wouldn’t care. Good gracious, how can you laugh, with such a burden on your mind? I am thinking what would be the best, Edgar, for you.”

The old lady was so anxious that she put her soft wrinkled old hand upon his, holding him fast, and gazing anxiously into his face. “You young men have such strange ways of thinking,” she said, looking disapprovingly at him; “you treat it as if it was a joke, but it is very, very serious. Clare, my love, just go and speak to old Mercy a moment. I cannot let him leave me, you know, until we have settled on something to do.”

“He is only laughing at you,” said Clare, with indignation. “How can you, Edgar? Dear Miss Somers, do you really believe he could be so wicked?”

“Wicked, my dear?” said Miss Somers, with a look of experience and importance on her eager old face, “young men have very strange ways. The less you know about such things the better. Edgar knows that he can speak to me.”

“But Clare is right,” said Edgar, smothering his laugh. “I did not mean to mystify you. I brought nothing more out of Constantinople than pipes and embroideries. I have some for you, Miss Somers. Slippers that will just do for you on your sofa, and a soft Turkish scarf that you might make a turban of–”

“What should I do with a turban, my dear boy?” said the invalid at once diverted out of her solemnity, “though I remember people wearing them once. My mother had a gorgeous one she used to wear when she went out to dinner—you never see anything so fine now—with bird of paradise feathers. Fancy me in a turban, Clare! But the slippers will be very nice. There was a Mr. Templeton I once knew, in the Royal Navy, a very nice young man, with black hair, like a Corsair, or a Giaour, or something– That was in my young days, my dears, when I was not perhaps quite so unattractive as I am now. Oh, you need not be so polite, Edgar; I know I am quite unattractive, as how could I be otherwise, with my health and at my age? He was a very nice young man, and he paid me a great deal of attention; but dear papa, you know—he was always a man that would have his own way–”

Here Miss Somers broke off with a sigh, and the story of Mr. Templeton, of the Royal Navy, came to an abrupt conclusion, notwithstanding an effort on the part of one of the listeners to keep it up. “Was Mr. Templeton at Constantinople?” Edgar asked, bringing the narrator back to her starting-point; but it was not to be.

“Oh, what does it matter where Mr. Templeton was?” said Clare. “Edgar has come down to see the village, Miss Somers, and all the poor people; and I must take him away now. Another time you can tell us all about it. Edgar, fancy, it is nearly twelve o’clock.”

“It is so nice of you to come and chatter to me,” said the invalid. She was a little fatigued by the conversation, the burden of which she had taken on herself—by Edgar’s (supposed) difficulties about the wives, and by that reference to Mr. Templeton of the Royal Navy. “You may send old Mercy to me,” she said with a sigh as she kissed Clare; for old Mercy was the tyrant whom Miss Somers most dreaded in the world. It was a sad change from the presence of the young people to see that despot come into the room, in the calm confidence of power. “Now, lie down a bit, do, and rest yoursel’,” Mercy said, peremptorily, “or we’ll have a nice restless night along o’ this, and the Doctor as cross as cross. Lie down and rest, do.”

Meanwhile the brother and sister went downstairs, she relieved, he much softened, and full of a tender compassion. “If that would do her any good, you and I might take her to the German baths some day,” said the soft-hearted Edgar, “if she is able to go. Such a restless little being as she was, it is hard to see her lying there.”

“I hope I am not hard-hearted,” said Clare, “but I think she is very well where she is. It is not as if she suffered much. We have lost almost an hour with her chatter. We shall never get back in time for luncheon if we talk to other people as long.”

“But there are not many other people like Miss Somers,” said Edgar, with a passing shade of gravity. He in his turn was grieved now and then by something Clare did or said. But in a few minutes they returned to their interrupted stream of talk, and began to discuss the village, and the plans for the new cottages, and the enlargement of the schools, and the restoration of the Church, and many other matters of detail. The two went from house to house, the village gradually becoming aware of them, and turning out to all the doors and the windows. The women stopped in their cooking and the men, jogging home for their early dinners, ranked themselves in rows here and there, and stood and gaped; the children formed themselves into little groups, and looked on awestricken. Such was Edgar’s first entry as master into the hereditary village. He made himself very “nice” to all the bystanders, and was as cordial as if he had been canvassing for their votes, Clare thought, who stood by in her position as domestic critic, and noted everything. It was odd to see what trifles he remembered, and what a memory he had for names and places. If he had been canvassing he could not have been more ingratiating, more full of that grace of universal courtesy which, in a general way, is only manifest at such times. And yet, it was not as a candidate for their favour, but as their sworn hereditary sovereign, that he came among them. Clare, her mind already in a tumult with all the events and all the talk of the morning, could not but acknowledge to herself that it was very strange.