Маргарет Олифант
Squire Arden; volume 2 of 3
CHAPTER XI
The next day was one of excitement for Clare. She began it with feelings so changed from that of the previous morning, when life had seemed nothing but tedium and heaviness to her, that it was difficult to imagine that she was the same creature. The calm composure of her earlier days, when no new incident was wanted to break the pleasant blank of existence, was as different from this new exhiliration as it was from the heavy, leaden dulness of the time which was just over. She had wanted nothing in the first serenity of her youth. She had seemed to want everything in the monotony of her loneliness after her brother and her cousin had left her. And now, again, she wanted nothing—except–
Except– She did not say to herself what it was; or if she did she called it by other names. Something to do—something to interest her—a little society in the midst of her solitude. She did not say, I am happy because he is coming. A girl must have gone a long way on that path before she will say as much to herself; but a sense that he was coming seemed to be in the air—the sunshine was brighter for it, the morning was sweeter, all kinds of lovely lights and gleams of life and movement were upon the park—the very scene which yesterday had been so unbearably still and motionless. The hours did not seem long till he came, but glided past with the softest harmony. She rather felt disposed to dwell upon them—to lengthen them out—for were they not all threaded through with that thread of expectation which made their stillness rosy? It fretted her a little to have this enchanted quiet broken by Mrs. Murray, though she came according to an appointment which Clare had forgotten. The girl’s brow clouded over with impatience when this visitor was announced to her. “Yes, I remember,” she said sharply to Wilkins. “Let her come upstairs. I told her to come.” But it was a little relief to Clare’s mind to find that her visitor was alone, which supplied her at once with a legitimate cause of offence.
“You have not brought Jeanie with you?” she said. “Is she ill, or what is the matter? I so particularly wished her to come!”
“I had a reason for no bringing her; and in case it should be made known to you after, and look like a falseness, I have come to tell you, Miss Arden,” said Mrs. Murray. “Your house, no doubt, is full of pictures of your father. It is but right. I saw one down the stair as I came in at the door–”
“And what then? What has papa’s picture to do with it?” asked Clare in amaze.
“You would think, little enough, Miss Arden,” said Mrs. Murray. “That is just what I have to tell you. Ye’ll mind that my cousin Thomas Perfitt has been long in the service of your house. And Jeanie has seen your father, and it made her heart sore—”
“Seen my father!” said Clare, with wonder, which was not so great as her visitor expected. “I did not know you had been here before.”
“We were never here before. Where we saw your father was at Loch Arroch in our own place. I knew him before you were born, Miss Arden—when I was—no to say young, but younger than I am now; and your mother, poor lady, too–”
This she said sinking her voice, so that Clare with difficulty made it out.
“My mother, too!” she cried, “how strange, how very strange, you should never have told me this before!”
“I canna think you will say it’s strange, if ye consider,” said the Scotchwoman; “plenty folk here must have seen your mother. It’s no as if you were ignorant—and it’s no as if I had anything to say but as I’ve been led to say it to others, I wouldna have you think there was a falseness. She was young, and she was feeble, poor thing, when I saw her. It’s more than five and twenty years ago, when him that’s now Mr. Arden had but lately come into this weary world.”
“You speak in such a strange way,” said Clare—“him that’s now Mr. Arden! Do you mean my brother Edgar? He is just twenty-five now.”
“He was but an infant, and well I mind it,” said the old woman, shaking her head with mournful meaning. “It was a sore time to me—death and trouble was in my house; and, oh, the trouble and the deaths I have had, Miss Arden! To hear of them would frighten the like of you. But first I must tell you why I canna bring Jeanie here. Two years ago, or may be more—two months more, for it was in the month of April—your father came to see me. Him and me, I told you, had met before. There were things I kent that were of consequence to him, and things he kent that were of consequence to me. Jeanie and her brother Willie—a bonnie blythe laddie—were both about the house. Willie was a sailor, sore against my will; and, oh, Miss Arden, so bonnie a boy! Your father was real kind. It’s been hard, hard to bear—but he meant to be kind. He got my Willie a ship out of Liverpool. The poor laddie went away from us—it’s two years this June—as blythe as ony bridegroom; and, Miss Arden, he’s never come back–”
“Never come back!” Clare’s wonder was so great that she repeated the last words without any real sense of their meaning, as she would have repeated anything that made a pause in this strange narrative. Her father! She seemed to herself to possess his later life—to know its every detail—to hold it, as it were, in her hands. He had never done anything without telling her—without consulting her, she would have said. Yet here was a secret of which she knew nothing. She was not selfish, but her mind was not so readily open to the affairs of others as was that of her brother. She never thought of the young sailor, or of the old mother, who spoke so sadly. She thought only of her father and his secret. What were the others to her? Of course she would have been sorry for them had their sorrows been sufficiently impressed on her imagination. But in the meantime it was her father she was thinking of, with bewildering wonder and pain.
Mrs. Murray, on the other hand, was absorbed with her own part of the tale. “He never came back,” she repeated, with a thrill of agitation in her voice. “He was lost in the wild sea, far out of our reach. Oh! it might have happened a’ the same. It might have come to the innocentest woman as it came to me. Many a lad is lost, and many a family brought to mourning, and naebody to blame. But when I think of all that’s been in my life, and that the like of that should come by means o’ the one man!– That is how Jeanie knew your father, Miss Arden. She took your cousin for him, and it made her wild. I daurna bring her here to pain her with his picture. She was aye a strange bairn all her life, and Willie’s loss made her all wrong. That’s what I came to tell you, to be honest and clear o’ reproach. I’m no good or without guilt, that I should say so—but, oh, I hate a lie!”
Clare scarcely heeded this exclamation. She did not realise it, nor occupy herself about what her visitor felt. There was so much in this revelation that concerned herself that she had no leisure for other people’s feelings. “I do not see how you could blame papa,” she said, almost coldly; “of course, he did it for the best. How was he to know the ship would be lost? I am sorry, but I think it very strange that you should suppose it was his fault. Jeanie ought to be told how foolish it is. Papa would not have hurt any one—he would not have been cruel to—a fly.”
Here Clare paused with a good deal of natural indignant feeling. Was the woman trying to make some claim upon her, to establish a grievance? It was a kind thing her father had done. He had taken the trouble to interest himself about it without even telling his daughter. And then they were discontented because the ship was lost. How unreasonable, how preposterous it seemed! “Nothing must be said about my father which I ought not to hear,” she said after a pause. “No words can say how fond I was of papa. He was everything to me; he was so good to me. He never had any—secrets from me. No, I am sure he had not! He did not speak of you, because perhaps–For he was not one to blazon his own kindness, or– And then he might forget. Why should he speak to me of you?”
“You think we are humble folk, no worthy to be thought upon,” said Mrs. Murray with a half smile. It was not sneering, but pitying, very grave and very sad. “And that’s true—that’s true. What was a life more or less in a poor farmhouse so long as the grand race ran on? You are very like your father, Miss Arden—that was the very way his thoughts ran–”
“His thoughts were always kind and good,” said Clare, hastily; and it was hard, very hard for her in the agitation of the moment to resist a girlish inclination to burst into tears. It was so ungrateful, she would have said—so cruel and unkind. What! because a kind service was done, which brought on painful results, was it the benefactor that was to be blamed? “If Jeanie were to be ill now, you might just as well say it was my doing,” she added in her suppressed passion, and felt that she disliked the very looks of this stranger and her monotonous Scotch voice.
Then there was a long pause. Clare turned over all the books on the table before her—took up and put down her work—twisted the wools about her fingers till her anger had somewhat evaporated. Mrs. Murray sat at a little distance from her, saying nothing. Her eyes were fixed on a portrait of Clare, taken a year or two before, which hung on the wall. She looked at it with a wondering interest, growing more and more earnest in her attention. “You are like her, too,” she said at length, with a certain astonishment. The portrait was not like Clare at that moment. It was Clare in repose, when gentler thoughts were in her mind. “You are like her, too,” Mrs. Murray resumed, with a little eagerness. “I could not have thought it. But you’re no one to let your heart be broken without a word, the Lord be praised.”
“What do you mean? If it is of mamma you are speaking, it is my brother who is like her,” said Clare, haughtily, “and I should be glad if you would not meddle any further with our affairs.”
“Eh, if I could but let them alone, and never think of them more!” The Scotchwoman rose as she said this, with a deep and prolonged sigh. Without another word she went to the door. “I will come to you if you send for me, Miss Arden, if I’m ever wanted in this house,” she said, “but no for any other reason. I would forget if I could that there ever was man or woman bearing your name. But the past cannot be forgotten, and I’ll come if I am ever wanted here.”
With these words she went away. Something solemn was in them, something which was incomprehensible, which sounded real, and yet must be absolute folly, Clare thought. Why should she be wanted at Arden? What could she ever do to affect the house? No doubt there were people still living in the world who believed in revenge, and would hunt down (if they could) a man who had injured them. But what revenge could this woman carry out upon the Ardens? It was a piece of folly—a mere dream. Clare laughed at the thought that Mrs. Murray could be wanted—that she could be sent for to Arden. But her laugh sounded harsh to herself. She resented the whole matter, the visit, the uncalled for narrative, the almost threat, the interruption of her pleasant thoughts. And then the question would come back—What had been the tie between her parents and this woman? She remembered so clearly her father’s absence from home two years ago. He had told her he had business in London—and he had gone to Scotland instead! How very strange it was! The more Clare thought of it the more angry she grew. If he had secrets—if he did things she was not to know—what right had any one to come and tell her now, when he could no longer explain the matter, and all his secrets were buried with him? She had her hand on the bell, to send for Mr. Perfitt, and question him what sort of woman this was whom he had brought to Arden to perplex and vex everybody. And then she remembered Sally Timms’ gossip, and tried to think evil thoughts. To some people it comes natural to think ill of their neighbours; but Clare was too spotless and too proud for such a tendency. She did not believe any harm of Mrs. Murray, and yet she tried to believe it. And then she tried to laugh once more and dismiss the whole matter from her mind; and then–
It was the clock striking two which roused her, and the entrance of Wilkins with the little luncheon tray, which furnished her doleful, solitary, little meal. This roused her out of her resentment and her dreams—not that she was tempted by the chicken’s wing, or even the strawberries among their cool green leaves; but that the morning was over, and the second chapter of the day, as it were, about to commence. And that second chapter had the hero in it, and all the nameless sweet agitations that would come with him—the fancies and visions and expectations which distinguish one phase of life, and make it more enthralling than any other. After a while that other step would disturb the silence, and all the world would brighten up and widen, she could not tell why. Not because of Arthur Arden, surely. He was no prince of romance, she said to herself. She entertained (she assured herself) no delusions about him. He was very agreeable to her—a man who pleased her—a true Arden; but she did not pretend to think him a king of men. Therefore, it could not be her cousin whose coming was to change everything. It must be the pleasant work she was about to begin with him—the common family interest—the intercourse with one who almost belonged to her—who was always ready to talk, and willing to discuss anything that caught her interest. Very different from being alone, and worrying over everything, as people do who have no one to confide their troubles to. She would tell her cousin about Mrs. Murray, and thus get rid of the thought. This was what lightened the cloud from about her, and brought back the atmosphere to its original clearness. It was so pleasant to have some one to talk to—one of the family, to whom she could venture to say anything. Of course, this was all; and it was enough for Clare.
CHAPTER XII
Arthur Arden was punctual to his appointment: he had thought of little else since he left Arden the day before. To do him justice, Clare’s society, the power of approaching her as he would, was very sweet to him, especially after a severe course of croquet at the Red House, and a few days with the Pimpernels. In short, he was able to disguise to himself his other motive altogether, and to forget he had any clandestine object. “I am going to look over some old family papers with my cousin,” he had said to Mrs. Pimpernel, who, for her part, had not much liked the information. “If he is going to make a cat’s-paw of us, and spend all his time running after that proud stuck-up thing!” she said to her husband. “Our Alice is worth two of her any day; and I don’t hold with your family papers.” “We haven’t got any, have we?” said Mr. Pimpernel; “but you wait a bit, Mary; I know what the family papers mean.” “I hope you do, Mr. Pimpernel,” said his wife, with evident scepticism. And she did not like it when Arthur Arden, instead of joining Alice at her croquet, or attending herself upon her drive, went off again after luncheon to visit his cousin. “If that is the way of it, I don’t see the good of having a gentleman in the house,” she said to Alice. “But then there is Mr. Denbigh, mamma,” said Alice, innocently, for which her mother could have boxed her ears.
And Arthur turned his back upon them and their croquet ground with the intensest satisfaction. It was very heavy work. He had been in a great many country houses, and he had occasionally felt that in his position as a man without any particular means or advantages, a good deal of exertion had been required from him in payment for the hospitality he received. He had seen the justice of it, and in a general way he had not made much objection. But then these were houses full of people where, if a man made himself generally useful, every necessity of the circumstances was satisfied, and he was not compelled to devote himself specially to stupid or wearisome individuals. He had the sweet along with the bitter, and he had not complained. But to be told off for Mrs. Pimpernel’s personal service or for croquet was a different matter, and he turned his back upon them with a light heart. And when the door of the old hereditary house opened to him, and Clare, like one of the pictures from the walls, rose with a little tremulous expectation, holding out her hand, the difference was such that it confused his mind altogether, and made him conscious of nothing but intense relief. Look over family papers! oh, yes; or mow the lawn, if she liked, or work in the garden. He said to himself that the one pretext would be just as good as the other. It was a pretext, not any intended treachery, but only a means of being near Clare.
“Would you like to go to the library at once?” she said. “I have just glanced at the papers poor papa arranged on the top shelves of his bureau. All his own letters and things are below. Shall we go to the library at once?”
“I am not in a hurry,” said Arthur; “if you don’t mind, let me wait a little and breathe Arden. It is so sweet after the atmosphere I have been in. I am not ungrateful; pray don’t think so. It was extremely kind of the Pimpernels to give me shelter in my forlorn condition–”
“I don’t see why you should ever be in a forlorn condition,” said Clare. “Please don’t suppose I mean to be rude; but I can’t bear to think of an Arden receiving hospitality from people like the Pimpernels.”
“My dear cousin,” said Arthur, “an Arden, when he is not actually of the reigning family, must do what he can in this world. The sanctity of the race is not perhaps acknowledged as it ought to be; and I am too much obliged to anybody who gives me shelter in this neighbourhood. One ought to be in town, I suppose; but then I am sick of town, and there is nobody to go to yet in the country. Therefore I say long live the Pimpernels. But all the same, one breathes freer here.”
“There is not much to amuse any one here,” said Clare.
“Amuse! I know how it will be. You will make me speak as—I ought not to speak, and then you will drive me away; and I cannot bear being driven away. There is a little pucker in the brow of the Lady Clare. May I know why?”
“You are like Edgar. He always worries me about that line in my forehead,” said Clare; “as if I could help it! Yes; I have been a little annoyed to-day. I think I may as well tell you, and perhaps you can give me some advice. It is that Mrs. Murray—that Scotchwoman. She has just been here to tell me that she knew papa, and that he went to see her in Scotland two years ago. It is very strange, and very uncomfortable. He used to tell me everything—or at least so I thought.”
“Nobody ever does tell everything,” said Arthur, like an oracle. Clare paused, and gazed wistfully into his face.
“Not what they are thinking, nor what they feel, but surely what they do. How can you conceal what you do? Some one must be taken into your confidence. Common people must see you, in whom you have no confidence; while your very own–”
Here Clare stopped abruptly, feeling that tears were about to come into her voice.
“You don’t know what you say,” said Arthur, who was secretly touched. “What one thinks and feels is often the best of one. But what we do– Was there ever a man who could venture to show a woman everything in his life—a woman like you?”
“Yes; papa,” said Clare, boldly. “I am sure he told me everything—except– Oh! is it not dreadful, is it not horrible, to have this wretched woman coming, when he is no longer here to explain it all, to make me lose my confidence in papa? And then you too!”
“I too!” he said, and he ventured to take her hand; “who am not worthy of your interest at all, and dare not lay my poor worthless life open before you. But listen, I will recant. One could not show you the past, in which one was wandering without any compass. But, Clare– I am your cousin—I may call you Clare sometimes?—if one could be so bold as to believe that you took any interest—I mean—Edgar, for instance, who can be sure you take an interest—I do believe that such a lucky man as he is might tell you everything. Yes; no doubt your father did; but not the past—not all the past!”
Clare drew a little aside, afraid, she could not tell why. She had withdrawn her hand from him at once. She had given him only a little bow of assent when he called her by her name. She had not encouraged him—of that she was certain.
“Perhaps it is best not to discuss it,” she said. “But I cannot tell you how that woman vexed me. To come and say she knew things of my own father which I did not know. Fancy, papa! Perhaps it is my pride—I should not wonder; but I could not bear it. And now, you know, if I look into his letters I may find things. Do you think it is likely? He was an old man; he was sixty when he died. He had been forty years in the world before he had any one—I mean before he had me to confide in. Should I read them? Should I look at them? I don’t know what to do.”
“If you could trust me,” said Arthur Arden. The thought flushed him with sudden excitement. This would indeed be delivering the very stronghold into his hands. And then all the remnants of honourable feeling that was left there stirred together in his mind. He blushed for the baseness he had almost meditated. “If you could trust me to look over them,” he resumed, with an earnestness which surprised himself, “you may be quite sure that any and every secret– I mean—I am nearest to you after Edgar—it would be safe with me.”
And then with the speed of lightning a calculation ran through his mind. Yes, he would be faithful to his word. The secret should be safe with him, safe as in the grave. If even he should find proof of facts which would be damning to Edgar, he would consider himself bound to take no personal action upon it, if he discovered it in such a way. He would let Edgar know and Clare, who were the persons most concerned; and then he would himself withdraw, and never more mention the subject. He would leave the knowledge of it to work in their minds. He himself would win only the reward of honour and virtue. To such a course of procedure the strictest moralist could have no objection. For if anything were found out, though it would be treachery to employ it for his own interest, it could only be duty to reveal it to Edgar and Clare. He looked at his cousin with a certain anxiety, feeling that his fate lay in her hands. It lay in her hands in a great many ways. She was but a child in comparison with his years—a baby in experience, an unreasoning, impulsive girl. And yet she held all his future in her little fingers. Its higher or lower position, even its honour or dishonour, its virtue or ill-doing—a tremendous power to lie in such unconscious hands.
“Thanks!” said Clare, with a certain haughtiness; and then in a moment Arthur felt that this at least was not to be. “No one but myself must do it,” she went on firmly; “not even Edgar, who did not love– At least it was not possible he could love much—they were so separated. No; if there is any pain in it, I must bear it as best I can—no one must do it but me.”
He made a bow of assent to her decision. It was not for him to say a word, and even in his momentary disappointment there was a certain relief. After all, even had he adopted that path of strict virtue, there would have been something doubtful about the proceeding. Whereas, if he found anything by chance– And then he could not but speculate what Clare would do if she made any such discovery as he hoped. What would she do? Would she, in her innocence, understand what it meant? or if it should be too clear for mistake, would her love for him who would still be her brother, for her dead mother’s son, be stronger than abstract justice? Probably she would not understand it all, he thought, and so this fine opportunity, this wonderful chance, would be thrown away. He heard her renewed invitation to him to go to the library like a man in a dream. The issues might be mighty, but it was such a chance—all depending upon how far an innocent girl could understand a record of wickedness, or an injured man have proofs of his own dishonour. “The chances are he destroyed everything,” he said to himself, but half aloud, as he followed Clare.
“What did you say?”
“I was not aware I said anything. The thought that passed through my mind was that probably your father, if he had any painful secrets in his life, was so wise as to destroy all trace of them. Nay, don’t mistake me. I say if. Probably he had no secrets at all, or only innocent ones—but if——”
“I don’t think he destroyed anything,” said Clare, almost sharply, as she led the way. Now that she had made up her mind to it, she did not wish to be balked of her mystery. It was very dreadful and painful, and a great shock; but still, if there was anything in it– She went on first into the large, lofty, sombre room which was the Arden library. It was everything that a library ought to be. The books were but little used, it is true; but then the room was so noiseless, so cool, and grey, and secluded, that it seemed the very place for a student. To be sure the Ardens had never been great students, but they had all the books that ought to be in a gentleman’s library—an excellent collection of English literature, a fair show of classics, and many books in other living languages. These books were very seldom disturbed behind their wires; but the silence was supreme, and would have lent itself to the deepest study. Edgar had been daunted by the solemn dignity of the place. He had felt that his discussions with Perfitt, and all the business he had to transact, were out of place in this stately, solemn room; and, with his usual indifference to the traditions of the Ardens, had removed himself into a homely, bright, little place, full of impertinent windows and modern papered walls, where he had hung up a great many of his possessions, and where Perfitt could talk above his breath.
After this change, a deepened and still deepening solemnity had fallen upon the library. It had been the old Squire’s room, where he had spent all his mornings. The quaint, old-fashioned bureau, which stood in one corner, was full of his papers. He had locked it up himself the last day he was downstairs, and nobody had opened it since. So completely was the room identified with him that the maids in the house began to rush past the door when twilight was coming on, and would not enter it after dark. “I know I’d see t’ ou’d man a-sitting in his chair as he used to,” the housemaid had said to the housekeeper; and the library was clearly in a fair way for being haunted. It was with a certain solemnity now that Clare opened the door. She had scarcely been in it since her father’s death; and though she would have repudiated all superstitious feeling, no doubt there was a certain thrill of awe in her mind when she entered her father’s private room, with the intention of investigating into his secrets. What if some spiritual presence might guard these relics of the ended life—what if something impalpable, undiscernible, should float between her and its records! Clare hung back a little, and paused on the threshold. She could almost fancy she saw him seated at the writing-table, not yet feeble, not asking even her sympathy, dearly though he loved her. She had known everything he did or planned; and yet, now she thought of it, how little had she known of him! Nothing except the present; his old age, with all its hushed excitements and interests past. It was (now that she thought of it) a veiled being who had sat there for so many years in her sight. Except that he loved herself, that he dined and rode with her, and sat for hours in this library, and allowed the cottages to be rebuilt, and a great deal of charity to be given, what did she know of her father? That—and that he hated Edgar; nothing more. Her heart gave a jump to her mouth as she entered the room, in which the silence seemed to brood and deepen, knowing a great deal more than she did. Clare owned this strange influence, and it subdued her for the moment; but the next, she raised her head proudly, and shook off the momentary impression. Not now, on the threshold of the mystery, was it possible to withdraw or fail.
