Squire Arden; volume 2 of 3. Маргарет Олифант
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Arden long before you did, and I am quite sure he means to mend his fortune, if he can, by means of Clare. I knew it before you did, Edgar, and that was why I was so grieved to see him here. Now you know it, my dear boy, send him away.”
“Why did not you warn me, if you knew?” asked Edgar, surprised.
“What was the good? He might have changed his mind, or you might have thought me mistaken, and I did not know Clare’s feelings, or even yours, Edgar; if you had liked him, for instance– But, my dear fellow, now you have found it out, send him away.”
“I know as little about Clare’s feelings as you do,” said Edgar, almost sullenly, feeling that this was really no solution of his difficulties. “Clare, I suppose, is the chief person to be consulted. Should I speak to her? Should I bring matters to a conclusion? Perhaps it might come to nothing if they were let alone.”
“Edgar, my advice to you is to make short work,” said the Rector, solemnly, “and send him away.”
“That is very easy to say,” said Edgar, “but it takes more trouble in the doing. What, my nearest relative, my heir if I die! How can I turn him out of the house which is almost as much his as mine? So long as I am unmarried, which I am likely to be for some time, he is my heir.”
“Then you like him?” said the Rector; “that was what I feared. Of course, if you like him, and Clare likes him, nobody has any right to say a word.”
“But I never said I liked him,” said Edgar, pettishly. “Neither love nor hatred seems necessary so far as I am concerned; but could not something be done that would be just without being disagreeable? I don’t like to treat him badly, and yet–”
The Rector shook his head. “I think I would have courage of mind to do what I advise,” he said; “he is too old for Clare, and he has not a good character, which is a great deal worse. He will make love to her one day, and then the next he will come down to the village–Faugh! I don’t like to soil my lips with talking of such things. He is not a good man. I love Clare like my own child, and I would fight to the last before I would give her to that man. He ought never to have come here, Edgar, never again.”
“Did anything happen when he was here before; do you know anything?” said Edgar, eagerly.
“He is your enemy, my dear boy, he is your enemy,” said Mr. Fielding; and that was all that could be elicited from him. Edgar remembered that Clare had used the very same words, and it did not make him more comfortable. But yet, an enemy to himself was of so very much less importance; in short, it mattered next to nothing. He smiled, and tried to persuade Mr. Fielding that it was so, but produced no result. “Send him away” was all the Rector would say: and it was so easy for one who had not got it to do to give such advice to Edgar, who was a man incapable of sending any stranger away who claimed his hospitality, and whose sense of that virtue was as keen as an Arab’s. He would have taken in the worst of enemies had he wanted shelter, with a foolish, young, highminded scorn of any danger. Danger! Let the fellow do his worst; let him put forth all the powers he had at his command, Edgar was not afraid. But then! when Clare was in question, the importance of the matter increased in a moment tenfold, and he could not make up his mind what to do.
CHAPTER II
From Mr. Fielding Edgar went to Miss Somers, to whom he told his story under the same disguise, but who unlike the Rector believed him undoubtingly, and gave him her best sympathy, but not much enlightenment, as may be supposed. And he returned to Arden very little the wiser, asking himself still the same question, What should he do? Must he go home and be patient and look on while Arthur Arden, quite unmolested and at his ease, laid snares and toils for Clare? Clare had no warning, no preparation, no defence against these skilful and elaborate plots. She might fall into the net at any moment. And was it possible that her brother’s duty in the matter was to sit still and look on? Would not his very silence and passive attitude embolden and encourage the suitor? Would it not appear like a tacit consent to his plans and hopes? He was walking up the avenue while these thoughts were passing through his mind, when all at once there came to Edgar a suggestion which cleared his whole firmament. I call it a suggestion, because I do not understand any more than he himself did how it happened that all at once, being in utter darkness, he should see light, and perceive in a moment what was the best thing to do. If some unseen spirit had whispered it all at once in his ear it could not have been more vivid or more sudden. “I must go to town,” Edgar said to himself. He did not want to go to town, nor had the idea occurred to him before; but the moment it came to him he perceived that this was the thing to do. Arthur could not stay when he was gone; indeed, to take him away from Clare he did not object to his cousin’s company in London. “Poor fellow! after all I have the sweet and he has the bitter,” Edgar thought; and to share his purse with his kinsman was the easiest matter, so long as the kinsman did not object. After he had made this sudden decision his heart sat lightly in his breast, and everything brightened up. He even grew conceited, the simple fellow, thinking on the whole it was so very clever of him to have thought of so beautiful and simple a solution to all his troubles, though, as I have said, he did not think of it at all, but had it simply thrown into his mind without any exertion of his.
“I have taken a great resolution,” he said that evening after dinner before Clare left the table. “I have made up my mind to take the advice of all my good friends, and to betake myself to town.”
“To town!” said Clare and Arthur, in a breath—she with simple astonishment, he with dismay. “To town, Edgar? but I thought you hated town,” added Clare.
“I don’t know anything about it—I don’t love it,” he said; “but one must not always mind that. There is Newmarch, who writes me—and—why, there are the Thornleighs. With such inducements don’t you think it is worth a man’s while to go?”
“The Thornleighs; oh, they are cheap enough. You will meet them everywhere,” said Arthur, with a sneer. “If that is all you go to town for–”
“The Thornleighs!” said Clare; and she made a rapid feminine calculation, and decided that though it was very sudden it must be Gussy, and that a new mistress to Arden was inevitable. It did not strike her so painfully as it might have done, in the tumult of her personal thoughts. “Everything will be strange to you,” she said. “And then you are so fond of the country, and have to make acquaintance with everything. Don’t you think, Edgar—that might wait?”
“What might wait?” said Edgar, laughing; but he kept firm to his proposal. “Yes, I must go as soon as it is practicable,” he said to Arthur when they were alone. “I have got to make acquaintance with my own country. I don’t know London any more than I know Constantinople; I have been in it, and gazed at it, but that is all. And Newmarch is a very sensible fellow,” he added, abruptly. “By the way, Arden, what do you say to coming with me? You might share my rooms. If you have not any pressing engagements–”
“I have nothing at all to do,” said Arthur. “Of course, I should rather have stayed here. I need not tell you that, after all I have told you. Arden is to me the most captivating place in England. But if you are going, of course I must go too.” And he sighed a profound sigh.
“Of course,” said Edgar, with quiet calmness; and then there was an uncomfortable pause.
“That is what I object to,” said Arthur Arden; “You give me to understand you won’t interfere, and then you as good as turn me out of the house by going away yourself. By Jove! I believe that is the reason why–”
“If you think I am to give up all control over my movements because you happen to be in the house–” said Edgar, with a laugh. “No, Arden, that will never do. And I never said I would not interfere. It might be my duty. I am Clare’s brother, and the head of the house.”
“Clare can take care of herself, and so can the house. Fancy you——”
“I am all it has for a head,” said Edgar, keeping his temper with an effort. “But this is very unprofitable sort of talk.”
And then there was a gloomy pause, all conversation being arrested. Arthur Arden had been making, he thought, considerable