The conversation which Arthur Arden thrust upon Clare by persistently
waiting for her in the avenue was not a satisfactory one. Though she
could not refuse to accept his explanation that he knew nothing about
the strangers, yet a sense of uneasiness and discomfort remained in her
mind. When once it is suggested that such secrets exist in a world which
looks all fair and straightforward, it is difficult for a young mind to
throw off at once the shock of the suggestion. Clare looked at her
cousin, who was so much older than herself, and who had been so much in
the world, acquiring, no doubt experiences of which she knew nothing,
and shrank just a little aside, closing herself up, and putting on all
her defences. “How do I know what his life has been, what things may
have happened to him?” she said to herself. With a certain mingling of
attraction and repulsion, she glanced at him from under her eyelashes.
He had lived a man’s life, which is so different from a woman’s; he had
been abroad in the world, swept along in the great current, driven from
one place to another, from one society to another. And Clare felt that
she could never tell what recollections he might have brought out of
that great ocean in which he had been sailing, which was so unknown to
her, and doubtless so distinct and clear to him. He might have left
cares and sorrows behind him--nay, was it not certain that he must have
left many a trace behind him, being such a man as he was? As she walked
on beside him this feeling came over her so strongly that it swallowed
up all other sentiments. She too had a little line of memories, innocent
recollections, pangs of childish suffering, unjust reproofs, wounded
self-love, and one great natural grief. It was like a little rivulet
running under the bushes, hiding only the softest blameless secrets. But
his must be like the sea, full of sunny islands and dark cliffs, with
calms and storms in it, and havens and shipwrecks--things she could not
possibly know of, except by some chance word now and then, and never
could fully enter into. A certain admiration grew unconsciously in her
mind, along with a great deal of dread and shrinking. What a fine thing
it would be to be such a man! How wide his horizon in comparison with
hers! How extended and varied his knowledge! Poor Clare! she shrank
with a chilled sense that she never could partake or share this vast
extent of experience; but it never occurred to her to inquire what kind
of knowledge of the world is acquired at German gaming-tables. Clare’s
imagination was utterly ignorant of the Turf, and the _coulisses_, and
the Kursaal. She had an idea much more elevated than reality of the
Clubs, and took it for granted that a man who was an Arden, even though
he was poor, must have entrance always into the best society. He for his
part walked by her side with the real recollections bubbling in his mind
of which she formed so flattering a vision. He was remembering various
things that would not have borne telling, even to ears much less
innocent than those of Clare. The girl, who knew nothing about it,
surrounded him with a bright and wide and noble world, swelling higher
and greater than her unassisted thoughts could penetrate--with tragedies
in it, no doubt, and sins, but all on so large a scale; whereas the
meanest matters possible haunted Arthur’s mind, the narrow stifling
atmosphere of commonplace dissipation, the “Life” which is a round of
poor amusements, varied only by the excitement of gain or loss, with now
and then a flavour of vice, the only piquant element in the poor
mixture. Thus Imagination and Fact went side by side, unable to divine
each other; and Clare shrank, yet wondered, secretly inclining towards
the man who was so little known to her, painfully attracted and
repelled, averting her face for the moment, but drawing near in her
heart.
Lord Newmarch could only spare three days to the Ardens, one of which
was a Sunday. And he walked dutifully to church, carrying Clare’s
prayer-book, and placing himself by her side. “This is what I like,” he
said. “The only real remnant of anything worth preserving in the feudal
system. Here are your brother and yourself, Miss Arden, at the head of
your people, to take their part or plead their cause, or redress their
wrongs; here they can see you, and pay their homage; they have the
advantage of feeling that you too worship God in the same place; they
have the benefit of your example. This is the beautiful side of a
country gentleman’s life.”
“But they see us, I assure you, on other days besides Sunday,” said
Clare.
“That I do not doubt. Forgive me, Miss Arden, but it is very charming to
see your sense of duty. Women seem to me generally to be deficient in
that point. I see it in my sisters. They will be wildly charitable
whenever their feelings are touched, and that is easily enough done,
heaven knows. Any cottager on the estate--or off the estate, for that
matter--who has a story to tell can accomplish it. But they have not
that sense of duty to all, which is more or less impressed upon men who
have dependents. Allow me to pay my tribute of admiration to one who is
an exception to the rule.”
Clare made him a little curtsey in reply to his elaborate bow, and did
not laugh, partly because she was wanting in the sense of humour, and
partly because, to tell the truth, she agreed with him, and was so far
conscious of her own excellence. And then he had suggested another line
of reflection. “But your sisters”--she said, and hesitated, for it was
not quite polite to say what she was going to say, that his sisters were
young women of no family, with no feudal rights, and very different from
a daughter of the house of Arden. It does not answer, however, to make
this sort of speech to the son of an Earl, and Clare caught herself up.
“My sisters are comparatively little at Marchfield?” he suggested. “That
is what you would say; and no doubt it is quite true; but still there is
a deficiency in this point. There is no sense of duty. And I find it
common among women. They do things from emotional motives, or because
they like to do them, but not from that manly, serious sense---- I am
not one of those who sneer at what are called women’s rights. For my
part, I should be but too happy, for instance, to have the assistance
of your fine instincts and administrative powers in public business;
but, still, there are characteristic differences which cannot be
overlooked----”
“Pray, don’t think I care for women’s rights,” said Clare, with a blush
of indignation. “I hate the very name of them. Why should we be jested
and sneered at for the sake of two or three here and there who make a
talk? Let us alone, please. I would rather suffer a great deal, for my
part, than hear all this odious, odious talk!”
“Ah, you feel it in that way?” said Lord Newmarch, impartially. “I
cannot say I quite agree with you there, Miss Arden. You at present
suffer nothing. You are young and rich, and---- and every one you meet
with is your slave,” the young philosopher added gallantly, after a
pause. “But that is not the case with all women. Some of them are
oppressed by unjust laws, some feel the necessity of a career----”
“Helena Thornleigh, for instance,” said Clare. “I have no patience with
her. Thornleigh village is in pretty good order, thanks to Ada; but only
fancy a girl wanting a career, and all those dreadful cottages within a
mile of her father’s house! Don’t you know Chomely and Little Felton, on
the way to Thorne? They are frightful places. If the poor people were
pigs, they could not be more uncomfortable. And what does Helena ever do
to mend them? Why, there is a career ready to her hand.”
“But what could she do to mend them?” said Lord Newmarch, “I don’t
suppose she has any money of her own.”
“She has her father’s,” said Clare indignantly, and walked on, elevating
her head, her heart swelling with a recollection of all the power her
father accorded to her, and all the revolutions she had made.
“Ah,” said Lord Newmarch, shaking his head, “there are fathers and
fathers; and besides, Miss Thornleigh probably thinks that to gain a
thing by wheedling her father, which her brother could do independently,
is but a sign of bondage. She has a fine intellect, and a great deal of
energy----”
“Then I would go and build them with my own hands!” said Clare, with
that fine mixture of unreasoning Conservatism and Revolutionism which so
often distinguishes a woman’s politics. She was the strictest Tory in
the world: a change of law or custom was a horror to her. She scorned
the idea of a career for Helena Thornleigh with the intensest
inconsiderate disdain. But she would have backed her up about the
cottages to the fullest extent that enthusiasm could go, and helped her
to work at them had that been needful. Lord Newmarch put his head a
little on one side and took a close view of her, which was not without
meaning. Strong sense of duty, good fortune, enthusiasm in a certain way
which might be most usefully trained, excellent old family, great
personal beauty, youth. These were qualities most worthy of
consideration. He could not feel that he had encountered any one yet who
was quite so well endowed. She would do credit to the choice even of an
Earl’s son; she might further even a high political career. He made a
mental note in his mind to this effect as they arrived at the church
door.
Mr. Fielding was not very much of a preacher. He looked venerable in his
surplice, with his white hair, and he read the service with a certain
paternal grace, like a father among his children. He had baptised the
great majority of his hearers, married them, had some share in all the
great events of their life, and had given them all the instruction they
had in sacred things. Accordingly, there was no one so appropriate as he
to conduct their prayers, to read them the simple lesson of love to God
and aid to man. His teaching seldom went any further. His was not the
preaching which insists upon the authority of the Church, or the extreme
importance of the divisions of the ecclesiastical year. And though
there were one or two points of doctrine which he held very strongly, it
was only on very urgent pressure that he preached on them. His audience
knew, or, at least, the instructed among his audience knew, that the
Rector had been holding a very hot discussion with Dr. Somers when he
produced one of his discourses upon Faith or Predestination. On such
occasions Dr. Somers would himself be present, with his keen eyes
confronting the gentle preacher in an attitude of war, and noting all
the flaws in his armour; and it was well for Mr. Fielding that he was
short-sighted and could not see his adversary. But on this Sunday there
had been nothing to excite him. The June day was soft and balmy, and
through the open door the peaceable blue sky and green boughs looked in
to cool and lighten the atmosphere. A grave or two outside but made the
sense of home more profound. The rustics worshipped with their dead
around them, almost sharing their prayers, and eyes that wandered found
nothing worse to look upon than the green grassy turf with its pathetic
mounds below, and the deep blue, leading their thoughts to the
unutterable, above. The line of educated faces in the Squire’s pew, and
Dr. Somers, like a humanised eagle, seeing everything, were the only
breaks in the usual audience. Here or there a farmer or two, with an
ample wife more brilliant than her humble neighbours, headed a row of
ruddy boys and girls--but these were as much rustics as the ploughmen
round them. At the big door of the church, the west end, sat Perfitt and
Mrs. Murray, two faces of a very different type. She looked on, rather
than joined in the service, half disapproving, half interested; while
he, with a certain matter-of-fact superiority, patronised and initiated
the stranger, finding the places in the prayer-book for her, and
thrusting it into her hand at every change. No one noted the two thus
strangely introduced into a scene foreign and strange to at least one of
them, except Edgar, who, perhaps, was not so attentive as he ought to
have been to Mr. Fielding’s sermon, and to whom the changes on the old
Scotchwoman’s face were interesting, he could not tell why. It seemed to
him that he could divine what was passing through her mind, and he
looked on with almost affectionate amusement at the listener, who was
perhaps Mr. Fielding’s only attentive hearer in all the congregation.
The good folks about were dropping asleep in the unaccustomed quiet, or
else looking straight before them with complacent composure, hearing the
words addressed to them as they heard the bees and insects, which made
a slumberous pleasant hum about the place. That sound was natural to
church, as the hum of bees and twitter of birds are natural which come
so sweetly from the outer world. The hush, the warmth, the stray breath
of air, now and then, the Sunday clothes, the hum of parson and bees
together, the scent of the monthly rose laid on the prayer-book--all
this was pleasant to the simple folk. They were doing their duty, and
their hearts were at rest. But Mrs. Murray looked and commented, and
sometimes softly shook her handsome Scotch head, and wondered if this
was all the spiritual fare vouchsafed to the inhabitants of Arden. Edgar
divined her thoughts as if he had known her all his life, and was more
interested than if Mr. Fielding had been a much better preacher, though
it would have been hard to tell why.