“You know mamma, of course,” said Edgar’s pretty cicerone. “I suppose I
need not enter into the family history. You know all us Thornleighs, as
we have known you all our lives.”
“I am ashamed of my ignorance; but I have never been at home to have the
chance of knowing the Thornleighs,” said Edgar. “Don’t imagine it is my
fault.”
“No; it is quite romantic, I know,” said Gussy. “You have been brought
up abroad. Oh yes; I know all about it. Mr. Arden nearly died of losing
your mother, and you are so like her that he could not bear to look at
you. Poor dear old Mr. Arden, he was so nice. But I thought you must
have known us by instinct all the same. That is Ada sitting opposite. I
must begin with us young ones, for what could I say about papa and
mamma? Everybody knows papa and mamma. It would be like repeating a
chapter out of Macaulay’s history, or that sort of thing. Harry is the
eldest, but he is not at home. And that is Ada opposite. She is the
good one among us. It is she who keeps up the credit of the family. Poor
dear mamma has plenty to do with five girls on her hands, not to speak
of the boys. And Ada looks after the schools, and manages the poor
people, and all that. All the cottagers adore her. But she is not _fun_,
though she is a dear. There is not another boy for ever so long. We
girls all made a rush into the world before them. I am sure I don’t know
why. As if we were any good!”
“Are not you any good?” said Edgar, laughing. He was not used to
advanced views about women, and he thought it was a joke.
“Of course, we are no good,” said Gussy. “We are all very well so long
as we are young--and some of us are ornamental. I think Helena is very
ornamental for one; but we can’t do anything or be anything. You should
hear what she says about that. Well, then, after Ada there is nothing
very important--there is only me. I am the chattering one, and some
people call me the little one, or the one with the curls. I have not any
character to speak of, nor any vocation in the family, so it is not
worth while considering me. Let us pass on to Helena. That is Helena,
the one who is so like papa. I think she is awfully handsome. Of course,
I don’t mean that I expect you to think so, or to say so; but all her
sisters admire her very much. And she is as clever as a dozen men. All
the boys put together are not half so clever as she is. She ought to
have been in Parliament, and that sort of thing; but she can’t, for she
is a girl. Don’t you think it is hard? Well, I do. There is nothing she
could not do, if she only had the chance. That is the Rector who is
sitting beside her. He is High, but he is Broad as well. He burns
candles on the altar, and lets us decorate the church, and has choral
service; but all the same he is very philosophical in his preaching.
Helena thinks a great deal of that. She says he satisfies both the
material and intellectual wants. Do you feel sleepy? Don’t be afraid to
confess it, for I do myself whenever anybody uses long words. I thought
it was my duty to tell you. For anything I know, you may be intellectual
too.”
“I don’t think I am intellectual, but I am not in the least sleepy,”
said Edgar; “pray go on. I begin to feel the mists clear away, and the
outlines grow distinct. I am a kind of Columbus on the shores of a new
world; but he had not such a guide as you.”
“Please wait a little,” said Gussy, shaking her pretty curls, “till I
have eaten my soup. I am so fond of white soup. It is a combination of
every sort of eatable that ever was invented, and yet it does not give
you any trouble. I must have two minutes for my soup.”
“Then it is my turn,” said Edgar. “I should like to tell you all my
difficulties about Arden. Clare is not such an able guide as you are.
She does not tell me who everybody is, but expects me to know. And when
one has been away from home all one’s life, instinct is a poor guide.
Fancy, I should never have known that you were the chattering one, and
Miss Thornleigh the good one, if you had not told me! I might have
supposed it was the other way. And if you had been at Arden I never
should have made such a dreadful mistake as I made this morning.”
“Oh, tell me! what was it?” said Gussy, with her spoon suspended in her
hand, looking up at him with dancing eyes.
“I hope you will not think the worse of me for such a confession. I was
so misled as to say I would go and dine with a certain Mr.
Pimpernel----”
“Oh, I know,” said Gussy, clapping her hands, and forgetting all about
her soup. “I wish I could have seen Clare’s face. But it is not at all a
bad house to dine at, and I advise you to go. He is a cotton-merchant or
something; but, you know, though it is all very well for Clare, who is
an only daughter and an heiress, we can’t afford to stand on our
dignity. All the men say it is a very nice house.”
“Then I have not behaved so very badly after all?” said Edgar. “You
can’t think what a comfort that is to me. I rather thought I deserved to
be sent to the Tower.”
“I should not think it was bad at all,” said Gussy. “I should like it of
all things; but then I am not Clare. They have everything, you know,
that can be got with money. And such wine, the men say; though I don’t
understand that either. And there are some lovely pictures, and a nice
daughter. I know she is pretty, for I have seen her, and they say she
will have oceans of money. Money must be very nice when there are heaps
of it,” Gussy added softly, with a little sigh.
Edgar paused for a moment, taken aback. He had not yet met his ideal
woman; but it seemed to him that when he did meet her, she would care
nothing for money, and would shrink from any contact with the world. A
woman was to him a soft, still-shadowy ideal, surrounded by an
atmosphere of the tenderest poetry, and celestial detachment from earth
and its necessities. It gave him a gentle shock to be brought thus face
to face with so many active, real human creatures, full of personal
wants and wishes, and to identify them as the maiden-queens of
imagination. Clare had not helped him to any such realisation of the
abstract woman. There was no sort of struggle in her being, no
aspiration after anything external to her. It was impossible to think of
her as capable of advancement or promotion. Edgar himself was by no
means destitute of ambition. He had already felt that to settle himself
down with all his energies and powers into the calm routine of a country
gentleman’s life would be impossible. He wanted more to do, something to
aim at, the prospect of an expanding existence. But Clare was different.
She was in harmony with all her surroundings, wanted nothing, was
adapted to every necessity of her position--a being totally different
from any man. It seemed to Edgar that so all women should be--passive,
receiving with a tender grace, which made their acceptance a favour and
honour, but never acquiring, never struggling; regarding, indeed, with
horror, any possibility of being obliged to struggle and acquire. Gussy,
though she charmed him, gave him at the same time a gentle shock. That
it should be hard for Helena not to be able to go into Parliament, and
that this fair creature should sigh at the thought of heaps of money,
sounded like sacrilege to him. He came to a confused pause, wondering at
her. Gussy was as keen as a needle notwithstanding her chattering, and
she found him out.
“Do you think it is shocking to care for money?” she said.
“N-no,” said Edgar, “not for some people. I might, without any
derogation; but for a lady---- You must remember I don’t know anything
about the world.”
“No,” said Gussy, “of course you don’t; but a lady wants money as much
as a man. We girls are dreadfully hampered sometimes, and can’t do what
we please because of money. The boys go and spend, but we can’t. It is a
little hard. You should hear Helena on that. I don’t mind myself, for I
can always manage somehow; but Helena gives all sort of subscriptions,
and likes to buy books and things; and then she has to keep it off her
dress. Papa gives us as much as he can afford, so we have nothing to
complain of; for, fancy five girls! and all to be provided for
afterwards. Of course, we can’t go into professions like the boys. I
don’t want to change the laws, as Helena does, because I don’t see how
it is to be done; so then the only thing that remains is to wish for
heaps of money--quantities of money; and then everybody could get on.”
Edgar was very glad to retire into an _entrée_ while this curious
statement of difficulties was being made. It seemed so strange to him,
with all his own wealth, to hear any of his friends wish for money
without offering his purse. Had Gussy been Gus, he would have said--“I
have plenty; take some of mine,” with all the ready goodfellowship of
youth. But he dared not say anything of the kind to the young lady. He
dared not even suggest that it was possible: this wonderful difference
was beyond all aid of legislation. Accordingly, he was silent, and ate
his dinner, and was no longer the agreeable companion Gussy expected him
to be. She did not like her powers of conversation to be thus
practically undervalued, nor was she content, as her sister Helena would
have been, with the feeling that she had made him think. Gussy liked an
immediate return. She liked to make her interlocutors, not think, but
listen, and laugh, and respond, giving her swift repayment for her
trouble. She gave her curls another shake, and changed the subject,
having long ere this got done with her soup.
“I have not half finished my _carte du pays_,” she resumed; “don’t you
want to hear about the other people, or have you had enough of Thorne? I
feel sure you must be thinking about your new friends. If I ride over to
see Clare the day after your dinner, will you tell me all about the
Pimpernels? I do so want to have a credible account of them, and the
Lesser Celandine, and all----”
“Who is the Lesser Celandine?”
“Oh, please, do not look so grave, as if you could eat me. I believe you
are a little like Clare after all. Of course it is the pretty daughter:
they say she is just like it; peeps from behind her leaves--I mean her
mamma--and never says a word. Don’t you think all girls should do so?
Now, confess, Mr. Arden. I am sure that is what you think, if you would
allow yourself to speak.”
“I don’t suppose all girls should follow one rule any more than all
boys,” said Edgar, with polite equivocation; and then Gussy returned to
her first subject, and gave him sketches of everybody at the table. Mr.
Blundell, who was stupid and good, and his wife, who was stupid and not
very good; and the Honourable pair, who were close to their young
historian--so close, that she had to speak half in whisper, half in
metaphor. “They have both been so dreadfully taken in,” Gussy said. “She
thought his elder brother was dying; and he thought she was as rich as
the Queen of Sheba; whereas she has only got a little money, and poor
Newmarch is better again. Hush, I can’t say any more. Yes, he is better;
and they say he is going to be married, which would be dreadfully hard
upon them. How wicked it is to talk like this!--but then everybody does
it. You hear just the same things everywhere till you get to believe
them, and are so glad of somebody fresh to tell them to. Oh yes, there
is _that man_. If you were to listen to him for an hour, you would think
there was not a good man nor a good woman in the world. He tells you how
all the marriages are made up, and how she was forced into it, and he
was cheated; or how they quarrelled the day before the wedding, and
broke it off; or how the husband was trapped and made to marry when he
did not want to. Oh, don’t you hate such men? Yet he is very amusing,
especially in the country. I don’t remember his name. He is in some
office or other--somebody’s secretary; but there are dozens just like
him. We are going to town next week, and I shall hate the very sight of
such men; but in the country he is well enough. Oh, there is mamma
moving; do pick up my glove for me, please.”
Thus Gussy was swept away, leaving her companion a little uncertain as
to the impression she had made upon him. It was a new world, and his
head swam a little with the novelty and the giddiness. When the
gentlemen gathered round the table, and began to talk in a solid
agricultural way about steady-going politics, and the state of the
country, and the prospects of the game, he found his head relieved a
little. Clare had given him a glance as she left the room, but he had
not understood the glance. It was an appeal to him not to commit
himself; but Edgar had no intention of committing himself among the men
as they drank their wine and got through their talk. He was far more
likely to do that with Gussy, to make foolish acknowledgments, and
betray the unsophistication of his mind. But he did not betray himself
to Mr. Blundell and Mr. Thornleigh. They shook their heads a little, and
feared he was affected by the Radical tendencies of the age. But so were
many of the young fellows, the Oxford men who had distinguished
themselves, the young dilettante philanthropists and revolutionists of
the time. If he sinned in that way, he sinned in good company. There was
Lord Newmarch, for instance, the Earl’s eldest son, and future magnate
of the county, who was almost Red in his views. Edgar got on very well
with the men. They said to each other, “Old Arden treated that boy very
badly. It is a wonder to see how well he has turned out;” and the ladies
in the drawing-room were still more charitably disposed towards the
young Squire. There was thus a certain amount of social success in Edgar
Arden’s first entrance into his new sphere.