“I am not quite in a state to receive a gentleman,” Miss Somers was saying when Edgar went in, with a little flutter of timidity and eagerness. “But it is so kind of you to let me know, and so sweet of dear Edgar to want to come. I told my brother only last night I was quite sure—— But then he always has his own way of thinking. And you know why should dear Edgar care for a poor creature like me? I quite recognise that, my dear. There might be a time in my young days when some people cared—— but as my brother says—— And just come from the Continent, you know!”
“May I come in?” said Edgar, tapping against the folding screen which sheltered the head of the sofa on which the invalid lay.
“Oh, goodness me! Clare, my love, the dear boy is there! Yes, come in, Edgar, if you don’t mind—— But I ought to call you Mr. Arden now. I never shall be able to call you Mr. Arden. Oh, goodness, boy! Well, there can’t be any harm in his kissing me; do you think there can be any harm in it, Clare? I am old enough to be both your mothers, and I am sure I think I love you quite as well. Of course, I should never speak of loving a gentleman if it was not for my age and lying here so helpless. Yes, I do feel as if I should cry sometimes to think how I used to run about once. But so long as it is only me, you know, and nobody else suffers—— And you are both looking so well! But tell me now how shall you put up with Arden after the Continent and all that? I never was on the Continent but once, and then it was nothing but a series of fétes, as they called them. I was saying to my brother only last night——; for you know you never would visit the Pimpernels, Clare——”
“Who are the Pimpernels? and what have they to do with it?” said Edgar. “But tell me about yourself first, and how you come to be on a sofa. I never remember to have seen you sitting still before all my life.”
“No, indeed,” said Miss Somers, her soft pretty old face growing suddenly grey and solemn, “that is what makes old Mercy think, it’s a judgment; but you wouldn’t say it was wicked to be always running about, would you now? It’s wrong to follow one’s own inclinations, to be sure, but so long as you don’t harm anybody—— There are the Pimpernel girls, who play croquet, from morning till night—not that I mean it’s wicked to play croquet—but poor Mr. Denbigh gets just a little led away I fear sometimes; and if ever there was a game intended for the waste of young people’s time——”
“Never mind the Pimpernels,” said Clare, with a slightly imperative note in her voice. “It is Edgar who is here beside you now.”
“Oh, yes—dear fellow; but do you know I think my mind is weakened as well as my body? Do I run on different from what I used, Edgar? I was talking to my brother the other night—and he busy with his paper—and ‘how you run on!’ was all he said when I asked him—— You know he might have given me a civil answer. I fear there is no doubt I am weakened, my dear. I was speaking to young Mr. Denbigh yesterday, and he says he said to the Doctor that if he were him he would take me to some baths or other, which did him a great deal of good, he says; but I could not take him away, you know, nor give anybody so much trouble. He is such a nice young man, Edgar. I should like you to know him. But, then, to think when I ask just a quiet question, ‘how you do run on!’ he said. Not that I am complaining of him, dear——”
“Of young Mr. Denbigh?” said Clare.
“Now, Clare, my love—the idea! How could I complain of young Mr. Denbigh, who is always the civillest and nicest—— Of course, I mean my brother. He says these German baths are very good; but I would not mention it to him for worlds, for I am sure he would be unhappy if he had to leave home only with me.”
Edgar and Clare looked at each other as Miss Somers, to use her own expression, ran on. Clare was annoyed and impatient, as young people so often are of the little follies of their seniors; but Edgar’s brown eyes shone with fun, just modified by a soft affectionate sympathy. “Dear Miss Somers,” he said, half in joke half in earnest, “don’t trouble yourself about your mind. You talk just as you always did. If I had heard you outside without knowing you were here, I should have recognised you at once. Don’t worry yourself about your mind.”
“Do you think not, Edgar?—do you really think not? Now that is what I call a real comfort,” said Miss Somers; “for you are not like the people that are always with me; you would see in a moment if I was really weakened. Well, you know, I could not make up my mind to take him away—could I? For after all it does not matter so much about me. If I were young it would be different. Dear Edgar, no one has been civil enough to ask you to sit down. Bring a chair for yourself here beside me. Do you know, Clare, I don’t think, if you put it to me in a confidential way, that he has grown. He is not so tall as the rest of you Ardens. I was saying to my brother just the other day—I don’t care for your dreadfully tall people; for you have always to stoop coming into a room, and look as if you were afraid the sky was falling. And oh, my dears, what a long time it is since we have had any rain!”
“Any rain?” said Edgar, who was a little taken by surprise.
“What the farmers will do I can’t think, for you can’t water the fields like a few pots of geraniums. That last cutting you sent me, Clare, has got on so well. Do you mean to keep up all the gardens and everything as it used to be, Edgar? You must make her go to the Holmfirth flower show. You did not go last year, Clare, nor the year before; and I saw such a pretty costume, too, in the last fashions-book—all grey and black—just the very thing for you. You ought to speak to her, Edgar. She has worn that heavy deep mourning too long.”
“Don’t, please,” said Clare, turning aside with a look of pain on her face.
“My dear love, I am only thinking of your good. Now is it reasonable, Edgar? She looks beautiful in mourning, to be sure; but it is more than a year, and she is still in crape. I would have put on my own light silk if I had known you were coming. I hate black from my heart, but it is the most useful to wear, with nice coloured ribbons, when you get old and helpless. I don’t know if you notice any change in my appearance, Edgar? Now how odd you should have found it out! I have plenty of hair still—it is not that; but one gets so untidy with one’s head on a pillow without a cap. Mrs. Pimpernel has quantities of hair; but a married lady is quite different—they can wear things and do things—— Did you observe, Edgar, if ladies wear caps just now abroad?”
“They wear a great many different things,” said Edgar, “according to the different countries. I brought Clare a yashmak from Constantinople to cover her head with, and an Albanian cap——”
“My dear,” said Miss Somers, sitting upright with horror, “the idea of Clare wearing a cap at nineteen! That shows one should never speak to a man about what is the fashion. Just look at her lovely hair! It will be time enough for that thirty years hence. I cannot think how you could like to live among the Turks. I hope you did not do as they do, Edgar. It may be all very nice to look at, but having a quantity of wives and that sort of thing must be very dreadful. I am sure I never could have put up with it for a day; and then it goes in the very face of the Bible. I hope you are going to forget all that sort of thing now, and settle down quietly here.”
“Miss Somers,” said Edgar, with mock solemnity, “if I had left a quantity of wives at Constantinople, is it possible that you could calmly advise me to forget them, and marry another here?”
Miss Somers sat up still more straight on her sofa, and showed signs of agitation. “I am sure I would not advise you to what was wrong for all the world,” she said. “Oh, Edgar, my poor boy, what a dreadful position! You might ask the Rector—— But if they were heathens, you know, in a Christian country do you think it would be binding? Clare, dear, suppose you step into the drawing-room a minute, till we talk this dreadful, dreadful business over. Oh, you poor boy! It seems wicked for me, an unmarried lady, even to think of such things; but if I could be of any use to you—— Edgar! that kind of poor creatures,” said Miss Somers, putting her face close to his, and speaking in a whisper, “people buy them in the market, you know, as we read in books. Listen, my dear boy. It is not nice, of course, but——”
“What?” said Edgar, bending an eager ear.
“You could sell them again, don’t you think? Poor souls, if they are used to it, they wouldn’t care. Good gracious, how can you laugh, with such a burden on your mind? I am thinking what would be the best, Edgar, for you.”
The old lady was so anxious that she put her soft wrinkled old hand upon his, holding him fast, and gazing anxiously into his face. “You young men have such strange ways of thinking,” she said, looking disapprovingly at him; “you treat it as if it was a joke, but it is very, very serious. Clare, my love, just go and speak to old Mercy a moment. I cannot let him leave me, you know, until we have settled on something to do.”
“He is only laughing at you,” said Clare, with indignation. “How can you, Edgar? Dear Miss Somers, do you really believe he could be so wicked?”
“Wicked, my dear?” said Miss Somers, with a look of experience and importance on her eager old face, “young men have very strange ways. The less you know about such things the better. Edgar knows that he can speak to me.”
“But Clare is right,” said Edgar, smothering his laugh. “I did not mean to mystify you. I brought nothing more out of Constantinople than pipes and embroideries. I have some for you, Miss Somers. Slippers that will just do for you on your sofa, and a soft Turkish scarf that you might make a turban of——”
“What should I do with a turban, my dear boy?” said the invalid at once diverted out of her solemnity, “though I remember people wearing them once. My mother had a gorgeous one she used to wear when she went out to dinner—you never see anything so fine now—with bird of paradise feathers. Fancy me in a turban, Clare! But the slippers will be very nice. There was a Mr. Templeton I once knew, in the Royal Navy, a very nice young man, with black hair, like a Corsair, or a Giaour, or something—— That was in my young days, my dears, when I was not perhaps quite so unattractive as I am now. Oh, you need not be so polite, Edgar; I know I am quite unattractive, as how could I be otherwise, with my health and at my age? He was a very nice young man, and he paid me a great deal of attention; but dear papa, you know—he was always a man that would have his own way——”
Here Miss Somers broke off with a sigh, and the story of Mr. Templeton, of the Royal Navy, came to an abrupt conclusion, notwithstanding an effort on the part of one of the listeners to keep it up. “Was Mr. Templeton at Constantinople?” Edgar asked, bringing the narrator back to her starting-point; but it was not to be.
“Oh, what does it matter where Mr. Templeton was?” said Clare. “Edgar has come down to see the village, Miss Somers, and all the poor people; and I must take him away now. Another time you can tell us all about it. Edgar, fancy, it is nearly twelve o’clock.”
“It is so nice of you to come and chatter to me,” said the invalid. She was a little fatigued by the conversation, the burden of which she had taken on herself—by Edgar’s (supposed) difficulties about the wives, and by that reference to Mr. Templeton of the Royal Navy. “You may send old Mercy to me,” she said with a sigh as she kissed Clare; for old Mercy was the tyrant whom Miss Somers most dreaded in the world. It was a sad change from the presence of the young people to see that despot come into the room, in the calm confidence of power. “Now, lie down a bit, do, and rest yoursel’,” Mercy said, peremptorily, “or we’ll have a nice restless night along o’ this, and the Doctor as cross as cross. Lie down and rest, do.”
Meanwhile the brother and sister went downstairs, she relieved, he much softened, and full of a tender compassion. “If that would do her any good, you and I might take her to the German baths some day,” said the soft-hearted Edgar, “if she is able to go. Such a restless little being as she was, it is hard to see her lying there.”
“I hope I am not hard-hearted,” said Clare, “but I think she is very well where she is. It is not as if she suffered much. We have lost almost an hour with her chatter. We shall never get back in time for luncheon if we talk to other people as long.”
“But there are not many other people like Miss Somers,” said Edgar, with a passing shade of gravity. He in his turn was grieved now and then by something Clare did or said. But in a few minutes they returned to their interrupted stream of talk, and began to discuss the village, and the plans for the new cottages, and the enlargement of the schools, and the restoration of the Church, and many other matters of detail. The two went from house to house, the village gradually becoming aware of them, and turning out to all the doors and the windows. The women stopped in their cooking and the men, jogging home for their early dinners, ranked themselves in rows here and there, and stood and gaped; the children formed themselves into little groups, and looked on awestricken. Such was Edgar’s first entry as master into the hereditary village. He made himself very “nice” to all the bystanders, and was as cordial as if he had been canvassing for their votes, Clare thought, who stood by in her position as domestic critic, and noted everything. It was odd to see what trifles he remembered, and what a memory he had for names and places. If he had been canvassing he could not have been more ingratiating, more full of that grace of universal courtesy which, in a general way, is only manifest at such times. And yet, it was not as a candidate for their favour, but as their sworn hereditary sovereign, that he came among them. Clare, her mind already in a tumult with all the events and all the talk of the morning, could not but acknowledge to herself that it was very strange.