“I don’t think you are happy in town, Mr. Arden,” said Gussy Thornleigh
the next time Edgar presented himself in Berkeley Square; “and when we
saw you last at home you said you were not coming. What made you resolve
to come after all?”
The truth was that Gussy supposed it was herself who had made him come:
this had been taken for granted by all the family, and Gussy naturally
had believed it, or at least had tried to believe it--a point on which,
however, her good sense made a feeble conflict with that happy girlish
vanity, which as yet had not experienced many rebuffs. Privately in the
retirement of her own chamber she had already disclosed her scepticism
to her sister Helena. “I don’t believe he came after me,” she said.
“Mamma thinks so, and Harry thinks so, but I believe it is only their
innocence. They don’t understand Edgar Arden. He is fond of me and he is
fond of you, and he does not care a bit for either of us. That is my
opinion. He wants to make friends of us all the same as if we were not
girls.”
“And why shouldn’t he?” asked Helena with some indignation; not that she
cared for Edgar Arden, but for the principle. “His being a man does not
make any difference to me; and why should it make a difference to him
that I am a girl?”
“Ah, but it does make a difference,” said wiser Gussy. “Perhaps not when
people are older; but I don’t know any except fast girls who go and
_afficher_ their friendship with men. I don’t think he came for me. I
think I shall ask him some day, quite promiscuous, that he may not be
put on his guard--and I shall soon see if it is for me.”
It was in accordance with this resolution that she spoke, and her
question was “quite promiscuous,” as she said, interjected into the
midst of a conversation with which it had nothing to do. Edgar bore the
test with a composure which satisfied Gussy’s intellect at once, though
it somewhat depressed her in spite of herself.
“I could not help it,” he said quite seriously, “It seemed a way out of
a difficulty. I am not quite sure now that it was a wise way, but then
it seemed the best.”
Gussy looked at him with a little surprise. He was so perfectly
composed and unmoved, evidently quite unaware of the interpretation that
had been placed on his change of purpose. She was not in love with him
in the very least, and yet it was a shock to her vanity to see how
unconscious he was of the supposed reason. “He might have complimented
and made belief a little,” she said to herself; “there is no need for
being so deadly sincere.”
“How odd that you should have to do anything like that,” she said aloud;
“it is like one of our expedients; but you can do just as you like, at
least Helena tells us so, and I suppose men can----”
“I don’t think men can,” said Edgar, laughing; “at least not men like
myself. The fact was, I had a guest whom I did not wish to keep any
longer. You must be kind, and not betray me.”
“Certainly,” said Gussy with promptitude, opening her eyes wide at the
same time in wonder at such a confession. “Don’t be angry with me,” she
resumed; “I do so like to know everything about my friends. Do tell me!
Was it Arthur Arden? Mamma would scold me dreadfully for asking; but I
should so like to know. There, don’t tell me any more. I can see it was
by your eyes. I know some people don’t like him; but he is very nice. I
think you might have let him stay.”
“Do you think he is very nice?” said Edgar, who was, as she had divined,
very fond of Gussy, though not (according to her own dialect) in _that_
way.
“Yes,” said Gussy, jumping by instinct into the heart of the question.
“The thing is, you know--but you serious people cannot understand--that
he never _means_ anything. He is very attentive, and all that. It is his
way with girls. He makes you think there never was any one like you, and
that he never had such an opinion of anybody before, and all that; but
he never means anything. Even mamma says so. A very young girl might be
taken in; but we all know that he means nothing, and I assure you he is
very nice.”
“I don’t understand how such a man can be very nice,” said Edgar, with
subdued annoyance, for he did not quite like the idea that Gussy herself
should have gone through this discipline or made such a discovery. “I
like people who mean more and not less than they say.”
“That is all very well, Mr. Arden, in most matters,” said Gussy, with a
little hesitation and a momentary blush. (“I wonder if _he_ means
anything?” she was asking herself; but Edgar was looking at her with the
simplest straightforwardness and making no pretences.) “But, you know,
when it is only just the common chatter of society---- Well, why should
everybody be so dreadfully sincere? People may just as well be
agreeable. I am not standing up for flirting or that sort of thing. But
still, you know, when you are quite sure that nothing is meant----”
“Don’t confuse my mind altogether,” said Edgar. “I am bewildered enough
as it is. You go to places not to be amused, but because everybody is
going; you do things you don’t care for because everybody does them; and
now you tell me men are very ‘nice’ because they never mean anything. My
brain is going very fast, but I think this last doctrine is the most
confusing of all.”
“You would see the sense of it if you were in our position,” said Gussy,
shaking her pretty head. “Now, for instance, Arthur Arden--suppose, just
for the sake of argument, that he was really in love with one of us. It
sounds ridiculous, does it not? What do you suppose papa and mamma would
say? They would send him out of the house very quickly you may be sure;
and the poor girl, whoever it was, would be scolded to death. Oh, there
would be such a business in the house! Worse than there was when poor
Fred. Burton wanted to marry Ada. Perhaps you never heard of that?”
“No, indeed,” said Edgar, to whom Ada, who was the quiet one, had
always appeared the least interesting of the family.
“He was the curate at Thorne,” said Gussy; “and, of course, he ought
never to have dreamt of such a thing; but Harry had been at college with
him, and he was very nice, and came to us constantly. I liked him
myself--indeed, we all liked him; and if he only had had two thousand or
so a-year, or even less, as he was a clergyman---- But he had only about
twopence,” said Gussy, with a sigh; “and what was poor papa to do?”
“And Miss Thornleigh?” asked Edgar, with all the impulsive interest in a
love story which comes natural to an unsophisticated mind. Ada was
sitting at the other end of the room with a great basket before her full
of pieces of coloured print. She was making little frocks for her poor
children--a work in which by fits and starts the other girls would give
her uncertain aid.
“O Ada!” said Gussy, with a little shrug of her shoulders; and then she
glanced at her sister, and a glimmer of moisture came into the corners
of her bright eyes. “She is the greatest darling that ever was! I don’t
think there is anybody so good in the whole world!” she said, under her
breath, and dashed away that drop of dew from her eyelashes. “It is so
absurd to make any fuss,” she added a moment after. “One knows it must
be, but one cannot help being sorry sometimes when one sees----” and
here Gussy’s voice failed her, and she bit her lip, that she might not
be proved to have broken down.
“You are a dear, kind girl to feel for her so,” cried Edgar, putting out
his hand to give her a grasp of sympathy; and then he remembered
suddenly that he was a man and she a woman, and that an invisible line
was stretched between them. “It is very hard,” he said, checking himself
with a half laugh, “that you are not your brother, or I my own sister
for the moment, because I must not say (I suppose) how sorry I am, nor
how I like you for it; but I do all the same. Don’t you think if we were
to lay our heads together and get him a living----”
“Oh, hush,” said Gussy, growing paler, and this time quite unable to
conceal the tears that rushed to her eyes. “Did you really never hear
about him? He died a year ago. It was not our fault. He went to the
East-End of London, you know, and worked dreadfully hard, and caught a
fever. Oh, will you take that chair between me and Ada, please! Don’t
you see she always wears black and white--nothing else--but you men
never notice what any one wears.”
Edgar made the change as he was desired, and this time all the
etiquettes that ever were invented would not have kept him from taking
Gussy’s soft hand into his, and holding it kindly, tenderly, as a
sympathising brother might have done. He would have taken her into his
arms, had he dared, in affectionate kindness and sympathy. He was too
much moved to say a word, but he held her hand fast, and looked at her
with his heart in his eyes.
“Thanks,” said Gussy, crying softly; “what a kind, friendly boy you are!
Oh, I am sure I never meant to talk of this any more. I was in a fury
with papa and mamma at the time, and said a great many things I ought
not to have said; but, of course, one knows that it had to be--they
could not have done anything else.”
“Couldn’t they?” said Edgar. “Is money everything then? I am a stranger
in this sort of a world, and I don’t know.”
“If it is not everything, it is a great deal,” said Gussy. “And now,
can’t you understand what I mean when I say a man is nice who can make
himself nice, without meaning anything? Why, there is you,” she added,
with a spice of malice. “You don’t do it in Arthur Arden’s way; but you
are very kind to one, and very pleasant; and it makes one so much at
one’s ease when one sees you don’t mean anything. There! That is a bold
argument; but now you will understand what I mean to say.”
Gussy got up when she had delivered this shot, and ran over to the other
side of the room to get her work, as she said, leaving Edgar very silent
and considerably bewildered. It was a new sensation to him. Was he
supposed to mean anything, he wondered? He felt that he had received an
arrow, but he did not quite understand how or why it came; and he was a
little sore, it must be confessed, to hear himself classed with Arthur
Arden as one of the men who meant nothing. In his own consciousness he
meant a great deal---- he meant the most cordial brotherliness,
affection, and sympathy. He had “taken to” the Thornleighs, as people
say. He liked to go to their house; he liked to talk to them all, one
almost as much as the others, and Lady Augusta as much as any of her
girls. This was what he meant; but could it be that some other meaning
was expected of him? Then he noticed with some surprise that Lady
Augusta was quite cognisant of the fact that Gussy had left him, and
that he was sitting all alone and silent, pondering and confused. Why
should she note so very unimportant a transaction? And she called him to
her side immediately on a most transparent pretext.
“Mr. Arden, come and tell me your last news from Clare,” she said. “It
is very hard-hearted of her not to come with you to town. And it must be
very dull for her at Arden, all by herself. Has she got old Miss Arden
from Escott, or good Mrs. Seldon with her? What, nobody! that must
surely be dull even for Clare----”
“So I thought,” said Edgar; “but she will not come----”
“And she has so rooted a prejudice against those good people the
Pimpernels--it is a pity,” said Lady Augusta. “I suppose you know your
cousin Arthur Arden is staying there?”
“There?” cried Edgar, “at Arden?” and he half rose to go off at once and
guard his sister, whose imprudence it seemed impossible to understand.
“I mean he is at the Pimpernels;” said Lady Augusta. “Alice, I suppose,
will have a good deal of money. I have known the day when Arthur Arden
could have done a great deal better than that. But neither men nor women
improve their case matrimonially by growing older. It will be curious to
see him as the husband of Alice Pimpernel.”
“But is it certain that because he is her father’s guest the other must
follow?” said Edgar, who asked the question at random, without thinking
much about it. The answer was a little pointed, and it found a lodgment
in his mind.
“Oh dear no, Mr. Arden. But yet the world is apt to ask why does he go
there? What does he want in that house? It is a question that is asked
whenever a young man visits a great deal at a house where there are
girls.”
“I did not know that,” said Edgar, with a simplicity which went to Lady
Augusta’s heart. “I believe he is as innocent as a baby,” she said
afterwards when she was telling the story. “He may be as innocent as he
pleases, but he shan’t trifle with Gussy,” said Harry, putting on a very
valiant air. Gussy, for her own part, did not know what to think. “He
likes me very well, but that is all,” she said to her mother. “I am sure
he means nothing. Indeed, mamma, I am quite sure----”
“I don’t think you know anything at all about it,” said Lady Augusta,
with some irritation; for Edgar was her own _protegé_--it was she who
had vouched for him, and settled how everything was to be--and not only
her pride but her feelings were concerned. She thought she had never met
with any one she could like so well for a son-in-law. He was so
thoughtful, so considerate, and (a matter which is well worth noting)
had the air of liking her too, for herself, as well as for her
daughter. “One could _really_ make a son of him,” the poor lady said to
herself with a sigh; for to tell the truth she was sometimes sadly in
want of a good son to help her. The girls were very good, but they were
only girls, and could not be of all the use a man could--and Harry was
quite as much trouble as comfort--and Mr. Thornleigh left everything to
his wife. Therefore she was reluctant to give up the idea of Edgar,
which was, as we have said, her own idea. It was so seldom that
everything that could be desired was to be found united in one person,
as in his case. When a man was very “nice” and a comfort to talk to, the
chances were he was poor and had to be snubbed instead of encouraged.
But Edgar was everything that was desirable, even down to his very local
position. So Lady Augusta spoke very sharply even to her favourite
daughter when she insinuated that Edgar was indifferent. “You don’t know
anything at all about it,” was what she said; and she clung to the idea
with a certain desperation. Arden was so near, and the family was so
good, and the rent-roll so satisfactory, and the man so nice. It was
impossible to improve the combination which she found in him; and Lady
Augusta’s mind was fully made up to brave a great deal, and do a great
deal, before she relinquished the prize which Providence had thrown in
her way.