It was a quiet hour when Edgar made his appearance in the drawing-room
at Berkeley Square. Why this afternoon should have been so still and
domestic and the last so noisy and full of visitors, it is difficult to
say. The girls had been riding in the Park in the morning, “their last
ride,” as the younger ones informed him, with voluble regret. The horses
were going off that evening; the whole house was, as it were, breaking
to pieces. Already half the pretty things--the stands of books and of
flowers--had disappeared from the tables. The girls looked somehow as if
their very dresses were plainer, which was not actually the case. The
cloud upon them was only a moral cloud, consequent upon the knowledge
that on Monday they were all going home.
“And fancy, the opera will go on all the same, and Patti will sing,
though we are away,” said Mary, who was musical.
“There will be just as many dances every night, and all night long, and
we at Thorne!” cried Beatrice. Gussy, who looked down upon them both
from the altitude of two and twenty, shook her head with a certain
grandeur of superior experience.
“Oh, you silly girls! if you had seen as much of it as I have! The opera
is all very well, and so are the dances; but you don’t know how tiresome
they get when you go on and on. Yes; it is my fourth season, Mr. Arden,
and I think I have a right to be tired.”
Lady Augusta gave her daughter a warning look. “The more seasons you can
count the less disposed you will be to speak so very frankly of them,”
she said; “but Mr. Arden has been too much with us not to know what a
chatterbox you are.”
“Yes,” said Edgar; “how good it has been of you to let me be so much
with you. It has made town so much more pleasant to me than it could
have been otherwise; and now I have come to bid you good-bye, though I
am glad to think it will not be for long.”
“To bid us good-bye!” they all cried, with surprise. And Lady Augusta
cast another significant glance over the heads of Mary and Beatrice, who
were too heedless to take any notice, at the daughter whose interests
were more specially concerned.
“Yes,” said Edgar; “Clare has written begging me to go to her directly.
I am going on Saturday. I had no idea of it when I saw you yesterday;
and after all I shall be in Lancashire before you are. I don’t even know
why it is I am sent for by my sovereign Clare.”
Once more a look passed between Lady Augusta and her elder girls. They
did not believe one word of this story. They took it quite simply for
granted that he was doing this to be near them, to be within reach of
Gussy. Gussy herself even was convinced. She had doubted and shaken her
head when the entire household had been persuaded of the fact. But now a
little flush of gratification lighted up her cheeks. She could no longer
resist the conviction that his coming and going depended somehow, as she
said modestly to herself, on “us.”
“It is strange of Clare to send you such a summons,” said Lady Augusta;
“but I daresay she is very lonely, poor child. I do hope we shall see a
great deal more of her at Thorne when we get home. To tell the truth, I
am very glad you are going. I do not like to think of her, still in
mourning as she is, and left in that house all alone.”
“Yes; I have been a little forgetful of Clare, I fear,” Edgar said,
without thought; and the girls, who were now very attentive, made
another rapid comment within themselves all in a breath. He has been
thinking so much of Gussy! How funny it was! How nice to be Gussy, for
whose sake a man “forgot all about” his duties! A little thrill of
interest ran through the assembled family; and even kind Lady Augusta,
who had become, as she herself said, “quite attached” to Edgar, was a
little moved by the thought of what might be coming.
“You are never forgetful of anybody, I am sure,” she said, “unless with
a very strong motive. I don’t like to praise people to their faces; but
I never saw any one less apt to think of himself than you.”
Edgar made no reply to this praise. There was a little pause of
expectation, an occasional hush in the room, which one and another
attempted to break by snatches of conversation, perpetually interrupted.
They can’t expect me to make the plunge before them all, Edgar mused to
himself, with a sense of fun which was very inappropriate to the gravity
of the position. And after all, when he came to think of it, it would be
very difficult to make this plunge. What could he say? Gussy and he had
been upon the easiest, the friendliest terms. He did not see how he
could alter that ground all at once, and assume a vein of high
sentiment. There was in reality so little sentiment in his mind. He was
not impassioned; and it occurred to him all at once that to ask a girl
to marry him in this perfectly calm and humdrum way would not be
flattering to the girl. Gussy, no doubt, would expect something very
different. She would expect a lover’s fervour, the excitement of a man
whose happiness for life depended on her Yea or Nay; and Edgar felt that
his happiness did not depend upon it. Altogether, it was an embarrassing
position. Conversation languished in the Thornleigh drawing-room, and
the family gave furtive glances at him, and tried to look indifferent,
and betrayed itself. As for Gussy, she never looked at him at all. She
had given up her tea-making, though she still sat at the table, with the
tray before her, which was a fortunate shield; but her eyes were bent
upon her work, and she was as silent as a mouse in her corner, conscious
to her finger-points, and expectant too.
It was a relief when old Lady Vere came in, and her daughters, who were
much of the same age as Mary and Beatrice, and instantly drew off the
attention of those two sharp-eyed young women. Lady Vere, too, kept Lady
Augusta in occupation, and had something to say to Helena. So that when
Edgar brought her cup back to the tea-table, it was quite natural that
he should glide into the vacant chair, and keep Gussy company. “Are you
sorry to leave town?” he said; and Gussy gave a shy, blushing, trustful
glance into his face, which made him draw his chair a little closer. He
_was_ fond of her! not impassioned, but yet--what a dear little girl she
was!
“Sorry for some things,” Gussy said, “but not so sorry as Mary and
Beatrice are. One’s first season is always delightful; one feels as if
it would all last for ever.”
“Do you? I think I have that feeling too, but only because it is so
dreary, so flat, so _banal_, always the same thing over again,” said
Edgar. “I think life must be waiting for us--real life, not this dull
routine--at home.”
“Yes, perhaps,” said Gussy faintly--for every word he said seemed to be
more and more weighted with meaning. He did not say absolutely, “the
real life I speak of is our life together, the existence in which we two
shall be one,” but could anything be more clear than that he meant it
so? Her voice sank in spite of herself. Gussy was not in the least
impassioned either, but what she thought was--“How dearly he must love
me, to be able to give up town and everything for my sake! Poor dear
boy, that is all he is thinking of; and oh, I am not so good as he is. I
am thinking of a great many other things besides him.”
Thus, with the very best motives in the world, they went on deceiving
each other. Not much was said over the tea-table except such broken
scraps of talk as this--talk which meant next to nothing, and yet was
supposed by the listeners on both sides to mean a great deal. “Ada is
anxious to get back to her schools and her poor people,” Gussy said.
“She is so good! She has done nothing but work for the children even
here. People ought to be happy, don’t you think, that give themselves up
like that, and think only of others? They must get to be happy because
they are so good.”
“I hope so,” said Edgar, with a certain doubtfulness; “but, above all,
those who are more happy should be good to her. One like her seems a
sacrifice for others, securing their happiness. I mean----”
“Oh, I know what you mean,” said Gussy, clasping her hands; “and indeed
it is no trouble to be good to Ada; we all love her so. Sometimes I feel
as if it would be wicked to be very happy while she sits there----”
And they both turned to look at the sister who sat cheerful in the
corner making little frocks. She was laughing at the moment, showing one
of the Miss Veres how to shape a little sleeve. Gussy, who believed
herself to stand on the very threshold of so different a world, felt
her heart overflow with love and compassion. “Dear Ada,” she said to
herself; only schools and poor children’s frocks for Ada, while she
herself was to have every delight. Edgar’s feelings were different. If
circumstances were so to arrange themselves as that he should be Ada’s
brother, he would be very good to her. She would find in him a friend
who would never alter, who would stand by her steadily, doing all that
brother could do to make her lonely path more easy. Involuntarily there
rose before Edgar the vision of an after-life, with new interests in it
and new duties; a new race of Ardens curiously different from the old, a
warm household place for Ada and for everybody, a centre of domestic
kindness. That was what the house of a country gentleman, the natural
head of a community, ought to be. He smiled over the imagination, and
yet it came naturally and pleasantly to his mind. Gussy, who was not
more than a pretty girl now, would be the sweetest, kindest, most
charming matron--like her own mother, but younger, and prettier, and
more sweet; and the house would be full of pleasant tumult and society.
He did not quite clearly identify himself, but that was, perhaps,
because of the laugh that gradually broadened in his eyes at the
thought. And to think that this arose simply out of Ada’s face in the
corner, and the impulse of making life brighter for her! Then he roused
up, and saw that Gussy was looking the same way, and that her pretty
eyes were full of tears. How sweet, and good, and tender-hearted she
was! They were women whom a man could trust his honour and happiness to
without a doubt or fear. Never surely was there a stranger wooing. When
their eyes met, Gussy blushed, and so did Edgar. Had they both been
seeing in a vision the house that was not yet, the unborn faces, the
unlighted fire? But then more visitors came in, and more tea was wanted,
and nothing decisive could be said then and there. “I suppose you are
going to the Lowestofts’ to-night,” Lady Augusta said, as he took leave
of her; for she, too, saw clearly that nothing could possibly be settled
in the drawing-room, under the eyes of all the family. “So it need not
be good-bye yet. Of course we shall see you there.”
And thus everything drew on towards the evident termination. If Edgar
had been consulted on the subject before hand, he would have said that
to enact his love drama, or at least its decisive scene, at a ball,
would have been the very last thing in the world he was likely to
do--just as it would have seemed absolutely impossible to him, had he
foreseen it, to forestall love in the way which he was doing, and put
affection in its place. But he did not seem to have any will of his own
at all in the matter. He was pleasantly drawn on by a tide which carried
him towards Gussy, which made her inevitable, and his position
unmistakeable. Not only was it expected of him, but he expected himself
to take this step. The only thing he was doubtful of was how to do it.
He could not possibly say to a girl so charming and worthy of all homage
that he was very fond of her, and yet did not love her in the least as a
lover should. If he did, it would be an insult, not such a lovesuit as
could be accepted. Therefore, he would be obliged to put aside his true
feeling, and produce an utterly false one, out of compliment to her; and
how was he to do it? All the rest he could do willingly, pleasantly,
with perfect consent of his mind and affections; but how was he to be
false to her, to pretend to feelings which were not his? This occupied
his mind all the rest of the afternoon, and gave him the greatest
possible trouble. And at the same time it was evident that the crisis
had come, and that he must speak. He sent her a bouquet as the first
step, which was very easy and pleasant. If it had been diamonds and
rubies instead of flowers, he would have done it with still greater
goodwill. He would give her anything, everything--Arden itself, and his
liberty and his life; but how was he to get himself up to a lover’s
pitch of excitement, and offer her his heart?