The next day after these events occurred the dinner at the Pimpernels.
Miss Arden had made no further allusion to it in her brother’s presence.
He had said he would stay away if she exacted it, but Clare was much too
proud to exact. She stood aside, and let him have his will. She was even
so amiable as to fasten a sprig of myrtle in his coat when he came to
bid her good night. “That is very sweet of you, as you don’t approve of
me,” he said, kissing the white hand that performed this little sisterly
office. They were two orphans, alone in the world, and Edgar’s heart
expanded over his sister, notwithstanding the many doubts and
difficulties which he was aware he had occasioned her.
“Why should I disapprove?” she said. “You are a man; you are not so
easily affected as a girl; but only please remember, Edgar, they are not
people that it would be nice for you to see much of. They are not like
us.”
“Not like you, certainly,” said light-hearted Edgar. “I rather liked to
see you, do you know, beside them; you looked like a young queen.”
Clare was pleased, though she did not care to confess it. “It does not
require much to make one look like a queen beside that good, fat Mrs.
Pimpernel,” she said, with more charity than she had ever before felt
towards her recent visitors. “If you are not very late, Edgar, perhaps I
shall see you when you come home.”
And she watched him as he drove his dogcart down the avenue with a less
anxious mind. “He is not like an Arden,” she said to herself; “but yet
one could not but remark him wherever he went. He has so much heart and
spirit about him; and I think he is clever. He knows a great deal more
than most people, though that does not matter much. But still I think
perhaps he would not be so easily carried away after all.”
Edgar, for his part, went away in very good spirits. He liked the rapid
sense of motion, the light vehicle, the fine horse, the swiftness which
was almost flight. He rather liked making a dive out of the formal world
which had absorbed him, into another hemisphere; and he even liked,
which would have vexed Clare had she known it, to be alone. He would not
suffer himself to think so, for it seemed ungrateful, unbrotherly,
unkind; but still a man cannot get over all the habits of his life in
three weeks, and it was a pleasure to him to be alone. He seemed to have
thrown off the burden of his responsibilities as he swept through the
village and along the rural road to the Red House. He expected to be
amused, and he was pleased that in his amusement he would be subject to
no criticism. Criticism is very uncomfortable, especially when it comes
from your nearest and dearest. To feel in your freest moments that an
eye is upon you, that your proceedings are subject to lively comment, is
always trying. And Edgar had not been used to it. Thanks to the sweetest
temper in the world, he took it very well on the whole. But this night
he certainly did feel the happier that he was free. The Pimpernels
greeted him with a cordiality that was almost overpowering. The father
shook both his hands, the mother pounced upon him and introduced him to
a dozen people in a moment, and as for poor Alice, she blushed, and
smiled, and buttoned her gloves, which was her usual occupation. When
the business of the introduction was over Edgar fell back out of the
principal place, and took a passing note of the guests. A dozen names
had been said to him, but not one had he made out, except that of Lord
Newmarch, who was a tall, spare young man in spectacles, with a thin
intellectual face. There were two men of Mr Pimpernel’s stamp, with vast
white waistcoats, and heads slightly bald--men very well known upon
’Change, and holding the best of reputations in Liverpool--with two
wives, who were ample and benign, like the mistress of the house; and
there were two or three men in a corner, with Oxford written all over
them, curiously looking out through spectacles, or as it were out of
mists, at the other part of the company. Lord Newmarch did not attach
himself to either of these parties. It was not very long indeed since he
had been an Oxford man himself, but he was now a politician, and had
emerged from the academical state.
There was one other among the guests who attracted Edgar’s attention, he
could not tell why--a tall man about ten years older than himself, with
black hair, just touched in some places with grey, and deep-set
dark-blue eyes, which shone like a bit of frosty sky out of his dark
bearded face. The face was familiar to him, though he felt sure he had
never seen this individual man before; and though he kept himself in the
background there was an air about him which Edgar recognised by
instinct. Among the old merchants and the young Dons--men limited on one
hand within a very material universe, and on the other by the still
straiter limitations of a purely intellectual sphere--this man looked,
what he was, a man of the world. Edgar came to this conclusion
instinctively, feeling himself drawn by an interest which was only half
sympathy to the only individual in the party who deserved that name.
Chance or Mrs. Pimpernel arranged it so that this man was placed at the
opposite end of the table at dinner, quite out of Edgar’s reach. Mr.
Arden of Arden had to conduct one of the most important ladies present
to dinner, and was within reach of Mrs. Pimpernel with Alice on his
other hand; but the stranger who interested him was at the foot of the
table, being evidently a person of no importance. It was only Edgar’s
second English party, and certainly at this moment it was not nearly so
pleasant as the dinner at Thorne, with pretty Gussy telling him
everything. Mrs. Buxton, who sat between him and Lord Newmarch, was too
anxious to attend to her noble neighbour’s conversation to give very
much attention to Edgar. Now and then she turned to him indeed, and was
very affable; but her subject was still Newmarch, and they were too near
to that personage to make the discussion agreeable. “You should hear
Lord Newmarch on the education question,” the lady said; “his ideas are
so clear, and then they are so charmingly expressed. I consider his
style admirable. You don’t know it? How very strange, Mr. Arden! He
contributes a good deal to the _Edinburgh_. I thought of course you must
have been acquainted with his works.”
“I never read any of them,” said Edgar; and I trust I never shall, he
felt he should have liked to have said; but he only added instead, “I
have spent all my time wandering to and fro over the face of the earth,
which leaves one in the depths of ignorance of everything one ought to
know.”
“Oh, do you think so?” said Mrs. Buxton. “For my part, I think there is
nothing like travelling for expanding the mind. Lord Newmarch published
a charming book of travels last year--From Turnstall to Teneriffe.
Turnstall is one of his family places, you know. It made quite a
commotion in the literary world. I do think he is one of the most rising
young men of the age.”
“Do you admire Lord Newmarch very much?” Edgar whispered to Alice, who
was eating her fish very sedately by his side. Poor Alice grew very red,
and gave a little choking cough, and put down her fork, and cleared her
throat. She looked as if she had been caught doing something which was
very improper, and dropped her fork as if it burned her. And it was a
moment before she could speak. “Oh yes, Mr. Arden,” was the reply she
made, giving a shy glance at him, and then looking down upon her plate.
“But don’t you think he looks a little too much as if the fate of the
country rested on his head?” said Edgar, valiantly trying again. “Tell
me, please, is he a bore?”
“Oh no, Mr. Arden!” said Alice, and she looked at her plate again. “Does
she want to finish her fish, I wonder?” Edgar asked himself; and then he
turned to Mrs. Buxton, to leave his younger companion at liberty. But
Mrs. Buxton had tackled Lord Newmarch, and they were discussing the
question of compulsory education, with much authoritative condescension
on the gentleman’s part, and eager interest on the lady’s. Edgar was not
uninterested in such questions, but he had come to the Red House with a
light-hearted intention of amusing himself, and he sighed for Gussy
Thornleigh and her gossip, or anything that should be pleasant and
nonsensical. Alice had returned to her fish, not that she cared for the
fish, but because it was the only thing for her to do. If Edgar had but
known it, she was quite disposed to go on saying, “Oh yes, Mr. Arden,”
and “Oh no, Mr. Arden,” all the time of dinner, without caring in the
least for the _entrees_, or even for the jellies and creams and other
dainties with which the banquet wound up. But then he did not know
that, and could not but imagine that her fish was what she liked best.
In his despair, however, he caught Mrs. Pimpernel’s eye, who was looking
bland but disturbed, saying “There is no doubt of that,” and “Education
is very necessary,” and “I am sure I am quite of Lord Newmarch’s
opinion,” at intervals. She was amiable, but she was not happy with that
wise young nobleman at her right hand, and such an appreciative audience
as Mrs. Buxton beside him. Edgar glanced across at her, and caught her
look of distress. “I do not care anything about education,” he said,
firing a friendly gun, as it were, across her bows. “I hate it when I am
at dinner.” And then Mrs. Pimpernel gave him a look which said more than
words.
“Oh, fie,” she said, leaning across the corner, “you know you should not
say that. Do you think we English are behind in light conversation, Mr.
Arden? For more important matters I know we can defy anybody,” and she
gave Lord Newmarch an eloquent look, which he returned with a little
bow; “but I daresay,” said Mrs. Pimpernel, with that cloud of uneasiness
on her brow, “we are behind in chitter-chatter and table-talk.”
“I like chitter-chatter,” said Edgar; “and besides, I want to know who
the people are. Who is that pretty girl on Mr. Pimpernel’s left hand?
You must recollect I know nobody, and am quite a stranger in my own
place.”
“Oh, Mr. Arden, that is Miss Molyneaux, Mrs. Molyneaux’s eldest
daughter,” said the gracious hostess, indicating the lady on her left
hand, who smiled and coloured, and looked at Edgar with friendly eyes.
“She _is_ pretty--such a complexion and teeth! Did you notice her teeth,
Mr. Arden? They are like pearls. My Alice has nice teeth, but I always
say they are nothing to compare to Mary Molyneaux’s. And that’s Mr.
Arden, your namesake, beside her. He is considered a very handsome man.”
“Do you approve of personal gossip, Mr. Arden?” said Mrs. Buxton,
breaking in; but Edgar was too much interested to be stopped, even by
motives of civility.
“Mr. Arden, my namesake! Then that explains it.” He said these last
words, not aloud, but within himself, for now he could see that the face
which this man’s face recalled to him was that of his own sister, Clare.
It gave him the most curious sensation, moving him almost to anger. A
stranger whom he knew nothing of, who was nothing to him, to resemble
Clare! It looked like profanity, desecration. After all, there was
something evidently in the Arden blood--something entirely wanting to
himself--a secret influence--which he, the first of the name, did not
share.
“Not only your namesake,” said Lord Newmarch, in his thin voice, much to
Mrs. Buxton’s disgust. The young lord was very philosophical, and full
to overflowing with questions of political importance, and the progress
of the world, and all the knowledge of the nineteenth century; but still
he was patrician born, and could not resist a genealogical question.
“Not only your namesake. He is old Arthur Arden’s son, who was your
father’s first cousin. He is the nearest relative you have except your
sister; and, as long as you don’t have sons of your own, he is the next
heir.”
“Ah!” said Edgar, as if he had sustained a blow. He could not explain
how it was that he received the information thus. Why should he object
to Arthur Arden, or be anything but pleased to see the next in the
succession--the man who, of all the men in the world, should be most
interesting to him? “The same blood runs in our veins,” he tried to say
to himself, and gazed down curiously at the end of the table, raising
thereby a little pleasurable excitement in the bosom of Mrs. Molyneaux,
who sat opposite to him. “He is struck with my Mary,” the mother
thought; and Edgar was so good a match that it was no wonder she was
moved a little. Fortunately, Mary knew nothing about it, but sat by the
other Arden, and chattered as much as Gussy Thornleigh had done, and
could not help thinking what a pity it was so handsome a man, and one so
like the family, should not be the true heir. “I have been over Arden
Hall, and you are so like the portraits,” Mary Molyneaux was saying at
that very moment, while Lord Newmarch explained who her companion was to
Edgar. “The present Mr. Arden is not a bit like them. I can’t help
feeling as if you must be the rightful Squire.”
“I have got only the complexion, and not the lands,” said Mr. Arthur
Arden. “It is a poor exchange. And this is the first time I ever saw my
cousin. He does not know me from Adam. We are not a very friendly race;
but I know Clare.”
“Oh, Miss Arden? Don’t you think she is quite beautiful--but awfully
proud?” said the girl. “She will not know the Pimpernels; though all the
best people have called on them, she will never call. Don’t you think it
is horrid for a girl to be so proud?”
“She has the family spirit,” said her kinsman, with a look which Mary,
in her innocence, did not comprehend. The talk at the table at Thorne
was more amusing, but perhaps there was a deeper interest in what was
then going on at the Red House.