While all these schemes and dreams were going on at Arden Edgar was
learning to accustom himself to the life of a young man about town--a
thing which it was almost as hard for him to do as it would have been
for any of the male butterflies whom he was attempting to emulate to
settle down to work. Edgar found it very hard work to adapt himself to
the systematic diversions of society--to portion out his hours and
engagements on the theory of killing time, and getting through as much
amusement as possible. To him the world was full of amusement taken
simply by itself, or else of something more satisfactory, more
important, which made amusement unnecessary. He did not know what it was
to be vacant of interest either in his own affairs or those of his
neighbours, and consequently a system which is built upon the theory
that Time is man’s enemy, and must be killed laboriously, did not at all
suit him--but yet his mind was so fresh that he found it possible to
shift his interest, to get concerned about the new people round him and
their new ways, which were so wonderful. Not the German professors, with
their speculations, their talk, their music, and their _bier-garten_,
nor their wives and daughters, at once so notable and so sentimental,
nor the English farmers and peasants of Arden, were really so wonderful
to Edgar as the ways of Mayfair in June. He would sit and listen with
eyes which shone with fun and wonder while the people about him went
gravely on making and re-making their engagements, promising to go
there, promising not to go here, rising into wild excitement about a
difficult invitation, dining, dancing, driving, riding, sauntering at
flower shows, at Zoological gardens, at afternoon teas, at garden
parties, counting the Row and the Park as sacred duties, considering as
serious occupation the scribbling of half-a-dozen notes, and considering
the gossip about Lord This and Lady That to be matter of European
interest. And how seriously they did it all! How important they felt
themselves with all that mass of engagements on hand--every hour of
every day forestalled! Edgar looked on laughing, and then gradually got
beyond laughing. It was difficult for so sympathetic a spirit to live
long in such an atmosphere without beginning to feel that there must be
some intrinsic value in the system which was held in such high esteem
by all around him. He was bewildered in his great candour. He laughed,
and then, growing silent, only smiled, and then began to ponder and
wonder and ask himself questions. Perhaps it was well on the whole that
as the apex of a great social system founded upon a vast basis of labour
and suffering and pain, there should be this human froth, or rather
those bubbles sparkling in the sun--those snowy foam-wreaths and
gleaming surface ripples to cover and beautify the depths below. Was it
well? He could not come to any very satisfactory conclusion with
himself. It was easy to laugh, and easy to condemn, and equally easy,
when one was trained to it, to take it as the natural condition of
affairs; but here, as in all other cases, it was the attempt to
discriminate what was good and what was bad--what was mere frivolity and
what had some human use in it, which was the difficult matter. The
puzzle brought a look of wonder to Edgar’s brown eyes. “Are you going to
Lady Thistledown’s to-night?” Harry Thornleigh would say to him; “it is
a horrible bore.” “Why should you go then?” Edgar would answer. “My dear
fellow, everybody will be there.” “And everybody will be bored,” said
Edgar; “and if everybody survives it, will do the same to-morrow, and
to-morrow, and to-morrow. Why don’t you do something that interests you,
all you fellows?” “That would be a still more confounded bore,” said
Harry. And what could the new man do but shrug his shoulders and give up
the discussion?
He himself was the only one perhaps among them who was not in the least
bored. There was something even in Lady Thistledown’s party that
occupied Edgar. Sometimes he was interested, sometimes amused, and
sometimes very much saddened by what he saw. And then personal risks
surrounded him, which he did not in the least understand or realise.
“Lady Augusta is to be there, I suppose, and your sisters, so that I
don’t think I shall be bored,” he had said to Harry Thornleigh in
reference to this very party; and Harry said nothing, but opened his
eyes very wide at this plain speaking. “Which of them is it, I wonder?”
he mused to himself as he went off. “Gussy, I hope;” for Gussy was her
brother’s favourite, and he felt it would be very pleasant, as Lady
Augusta did, to have the pleasantest and brightest and most
sweet-tempered of the girls settled so near as Arden. But in point of
fact Edgar had no intention of settling any one at Arden. He was still
quite faithful to his sister’s sway. If Clare were to marry and go away,
then indeed he would no doubt feel the loneliness uncomfortable; but at
present it would have seemed something like high treason to Edgar to
dethrone his sister. Such an idea had never entered into his mind. But
he was fond of Lady Augusta, who was like a mother to him, and he was
fond of her daughter--indeed, of all her daughters--whom he regarded
with the freshest and most cordial sentiment. He was always ready to get
their carriage, to do anything for them. He was not afraid, as so many
men were, to _affichér_ himself; and, therefore, as society does not
understand brotherly affection on the part of a young man towards young
women, everybody decided that one of the Thornleigh girls was to be his
lawful owner. There was some difficulty in the common mind as to which
was the fortunate individual; but Gussy was so distinctly indicated by
the family for the post that naturally no one else had a chance against
her. And this conclusion was really the most natural that could be
drawn. Edgar, though he was so friendly and so frank, was yet in some
respects a shy man, and he clung to the people he knew best. When he was
with the Thornleighs he was free from every shade of embarrassment--he
knew them all so well (he thought); they were so kind to him--they
understood him and his ways of thinking so completely (he believed).
When he went to them it was like going home--entering into his family--a
more genial family, and one more apt to understand, than he had ever
known.
And it was to the Thornleighs that Edgar allowed himself to speak most
freely of his own wonderments and perplexities. “I look at you all with
amazement,” he said. “I don’t disapprove of you.” (“How very nice of
him,” interrupted Gussy.) “You look very pretty (“Thanks,” said
Beatrice, making him a curtsey), and you are very pleasant. Of course, I
don’t mean ladies in particular (“Oh, you savage,” ejaculated Mary, the
second youngest, who was a little disposed to hold Helena’s views, but
did not understand them in the very least), I mean everybody. All this
is very nice. It is charming never to take any thought for the morrow,
except which invitation one will accept, or rather which place one will
go to, of all that one has accepted. The only thing is, what is the good
of it all? It tires you so that you require nine months’ rest to refresh
you, and get you up to the point of doing all this over again; and while
you are doing it, you call heaven and earth to witness what a bore it
is. Would it not be better to try some other kind of useful exertion now
and then? Three months’ work in the fields, for instance, or as poor
needlewomen, or even in one of those pretty shops----”
“Oh, a shop! that is worse and worse; that is more frightful than ever.
I should prefer the fields,” said Beatrice and Mary in a breath.
“The fields are exposed to a great deal of rain and cold, drought and
wet, frost, and all kinds of perils,” said Edgar; “and then they would
spoil your complexions. Ask Lady Augusta; she would never let you do
that. But these beautiful shops, you know, such as that you took me
to--Smallgear or something; and then that one in Regent Street. Why,
they are palaces; soft carpets under your feet, and great mirrors to
display you in, and beautiful things to handle. I should think it rather
nice to belong to one of those shops.”
“You can’t possibly mean it?” cried Gussy, concerned for the credit of
the man who was so generally assigned to her. “Fancy what an occupation
it must be, turning over things to be pulled about by ladies who don’t
know what to do with themselves otherwise, and never mean to buy.”
“Well,” said Edgar, “we are not criticising, we are merely taking facts
as we find them. If it amuses the ladies to turn the things over, the
men in the shops are really more useful to them than the other men who
go to their five o’clock tea. And now and then there comes a _bona
fide_ purchaser. Whereas for you young ladies what could be better?
trying on pretty shawls and things (I saw them), exercising the highest
qualities of self-denial, making your prettiness and gracefulness of use
to others, and yet having your time to yourselves say after six or seven
o’clock. You would see the best of company all the same, _par dessus la
marché_. Don’t you think it would be a very pleasant change?”
“If you would treat it seriously, and really consider how little women
are allowed to do, Mr. Arden,” cried Helena Thornleigh, who was too much
in earnest to encourage mere chatter like her sisters. “I am sure you
might be a great help to us. _You_ see what a desert our lives are, with
no object in them. You see what vapid, aimless, useless creatures the
most of us are----”
“I beg your pardon,” said Edgar. “I feel that it is frightfully selfish,
but all my sympathies, in the first place, are for my own class. Stop
till I have made that out. I will come to the ladies by-and-bye. We
never have a moment’s time for anything; we are always pursued by work
which has to be done, whether it is riding in the park, or going to the
opera, or dining at Richmond. How stern duty runs after your brother,
for instance, always reminding him of some engagement or other. Poor
Harry finds it a dreadful bore. He says so, and he ought to know best.
He is always bemoaning his hard fate, and yet he always goes on obeying
it. I don’t object to routine, and I don’t object to suffering. They are
both good things enough; but to suffer and be a slave to routine all for
nothing is very hard--I confess I think it is very hard. To be sure,
Harry need not do it unless he likes; but that he should like, and
should go on doing it, and should not be able to find something better,
that is what puzzles me.”
“I say,” said Harry, who was half-dozing over a book, “what is that
about me? I don’t want to be made to point a moral in this house. The
girls turn me to that use fast enough. What is Arden saying now?”
“Nothing that is very remarkable,” said Edgar; “only that we poor
fellows, or you poor fellows, don’t get half enough credit for the hard
life you lead. You give yourselves as much trouble as if you were
founding a state or reforming society, and all the time you are doing
nothing. I don’t object to it. If a man likes to spend his life so, why,
of course, he is free to do it: he is a British subject like the rest of
us. But I want to know who invented this theory of existence, and how
men were got to give in to it--that is all.”
“It is all they are good for,” said Helena Thornleigh. “It is partly
education and partly nature. Boys are brought up to think that they are
to have everything they want. They are never obliged to deny themselves
or think of others. However silly or frivolous a thing may be, they are
free to do it if they like. And they have everything open to them; they
go where they like, they live as they please----”
“And a very fine thing they make of it,” said Edgar, reflectively, as
the young reformer paused for breath. “Miss Thornleigh, when you begin
to work upon the young ladies, I think I ought to have a try at the men.
We might go halves in a crusade. We should disagree in this, though--for
I am quite satisfied with the ladies. You are all very nice; you are
just what you ought to be.”
“Mr. Arden, I hate compliments,” said Helena, growing red with
indignation. “When you make those sort of speeches I should like to do
something disagreeable. We are not in the least nice. Oh, I don’t
believe in your crusade; you are not half earnest enough. You laugh and
jibe and then you ask us to believe that you have a serious meaning.
That is not how I should take it up. You don’t half understand, you
don’t realise how serious it is----”
“Then I may not share in the missionary work?” said Edgar; and he was a
little surprised when Gussy interposed, with a slight flush on her face.
“If you were working with Helena, people would not believe much in your
seriousness,” said Gussy; “they would not give you much credit, either
one or the other. Missions _á deux_ are not understood in society--or I
suppose they are too well understood,” said Gussy, with a laugh. She had
been aggravated, as everybody may perceive. Edgar was her special
property, allotted to her by the world in general, and what had Helena
to do with him, cutting in like this with her missionary work and her
nonsense? Gussy felt that she had very good reason to be put out.
And Helena, though she was a missionary, was woman enough to see the
justice of the irritation and to cover her sister’s retreat. “I hate
missions _á deux_,” she said. “We had much better go on in our own way.
And then, what Mr. Arden wants and what I want are two very different
things. He is only amused, but it goes to my very heart----”
“What, Miss Thornleigh?”
“To look round upon all the women I know, and see them without any
occupation,” said Helena; “dressing and dancing, that is about all we
do. And when we make an effort after something better we are snubbed
and thrust down on every side. Our people stop us, our friends sneer at
us; they tell us to go and amuse ourselves. But I am sick of amusing
myself. I have done it for three years, and I hate it. I want something
better to do.”
“But Harry does not hate it,” said Edgar, turning his eyes once more
upon the eldest son. Harry was not at all a bad fellow. He tossed the
book he had been reading away from him, and twisted his moustache, and
pulled his snow-white cuffs. “I think it’s a confounded bore,” said
Harry, and then he got up and strolled away.
This conversation took place in a house which had shuddered from garret
to basement at the thought of not being able to get cards for Lady
Bodmiller’s ball. Harry had roused himself up for that occasion, and had
shown an energy which was almost superhuman. He had rushed about London
as if his mission had been to stop a war or save a kingdom. His scheme
of operations was as elaborate and careful as if it had been a campaign.
And even Helena had forgotten all about the injuries of women, and had
rushed to meet her brother at the door and to ask “What news?” with as
much eagerness as if she thought dancing the real employment of life.
Such relapses into levity may be pardoned to a young philosopher; but
they were very strange to Edgar who, with the wondering clear mystified
eyes of a semi-savage, was looking on.