“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 myMary,” 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 notcomprehend. 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.
Itwas impossible for Edgar not to look with interest upon this other Arden, who was so like his family, so like his own sister, with the very same air about him which the portraits had, and in which the young man felt he was himself so strangely wanting. Perhaps if Gussy Thornleigh had been by his side, or even that pretty Miss Molyneaux, who was entertaining his unknown relation, his eyes and thoughts would not have been so persistently drawn that way. But between Alice Pimpernel, who said, “Oh no, Mr. Arden,” and “Oh yes, Mr. Arden,” and Mrs. Buxton, who was collecting the pearls which dropped from the lips of Lord Newmarch, the dinner was not lively to him; and he caught from the other end of the table tones of that voice which somehow sounded familiar, and turns of the head full of that vague family resemblance which goes so far in a race, and which recalled to him not only his sister whom he loved, but his father whom he did not love. How strange it was that he should havebeen so entirely passed over amid all those family links that bound the others together! It proves, Edgar said to himself, that it is not blood that does it, but only association, education, the impressions made upon the mind at its most susceptible age. He reasoned thus with himself, but did not find the reasoning quite satisfactory, and could not but feel a mingled attraction and repulsion to the stranger who was his nearest relation, his successor if he died, and surely ought to be his friend while he lived. When the ladies left the room, and the others drew closer round the table, he could no longer resist the impulse that moved him. It was true that Clare had expressed anything but friendly feelings for this unknown cousin; but anyhow, were he bad or good, it was Edgar’s duty, as the chief of the family, to know its branches. It did not seem to him even that it was right or natural to ask for any introduction. After a little hesitation he changed his place, and took the chair by Arthur Arden’s side. “They tell me you are of my family,” he said, “and your face makes me sure of it—in which case, I suppose, we are each other’s nearest relations, at least on the Arden side.”
The landless cousin paused for a moment before he replied to the young Squire. He looked him all over with something which might have seemedinsolence had Edgar’s nature led him to expect evil. “I suppose, of course, you are my cousin the Squire,” he said, carelessly, “though I certainly should never have made you out to be an Arden by your face.”
“No; I am like my mother they tell me,” said Edgar; but for the first time in his life he reddened at that long understood and acknowledged fact. There was nothingsaidthat insulted him, but there was an inference which he did not understand, which yet penetrated him like a dagger. It was unendurable, though he had no comprehension what it meant.
“I never knew rightly who Mrs. Arden was,” said Arthur; “a foreigner, I believe, or at least a stranger to the county. I don’t think I should like my eldest son to be so unlike me if I were a married man.”
“Mr. Arden, I don’t pretend to understand your meaning; but if you wish to be offensive perhaps our acquaintance had better end at once,” said Edgar, “I have no desire to quarrel with my heir.”
Another pause followed, during which the dark countenance of the other Arden fluctuated for a moment between darkness and light. Then it suddenly brightened all over with that smile for which the Ardens were famous. “Your heir!” he said. “You are half a lifetime younger than I am,and much more likely to be my heir—if I had anything to leave. And I don’t want to be offensive. I am a bitter beggar; I can’t help myself. If you were as poor as I am, and saw a healthy boy cutting you out of everything—land, money, consideration, life——”
“Don’t say so,” cried open-hearted Edgar, forgetting his offence; “on the contrary, if I can do anything to make life more tolerable—more agreeable—— I am just as likely to die as any one,” he continued, with a half comic sense that this must be consolatory to his new acquaintance; “and I have my sister to think of, who in that case would want a friend. Why should not we be of mutual use to each other? I now; you perhaps hereafter——”
“By Jove!” cried the other, looking at him keenly. And then he drank off a large glass of claret, as if he required the strength it would give. “You are the strangest fellow I ever met.”
“I don’t think so,” said Edgar, laughing. “Nothing so remarkable; but I hope we shall know each other better before long. There is not much attraction just now in the country, but in September, if you will come to Arden——”
“Do you know Miss Arden can’t bear me?” said his new friend.
“Can’t bear you!” Edgar faltered as he spoke—for as soon as his unwary lips had uttered the invitation he remembered what Clare had said.
“Yes; your sister hates me,” said Arthur Arden. “I cannot tell why, I am sure. I suppose because my father and yours fought like cat and dog—or like near relations if you choose, which answers quite as well. I am not at all sure that he did not send you abroad to be out of our way. He believed us capable of poisoning you—or—any other atrocity,” he added, with a little harsh laugh.
“And are you?” said Edgar, laughing too, though with no great heart.
“I don’t think I shall try,” said his new kinsman. “My father is dead, and one is less courageous than two. By Jove! just think what a difference it would make. Here am I, a poor wretch, living from hand to mouth, not knowing one year where my next year’s living is to come from, or sometimes where my next dinner is to come from, for that matter. If ever one man had an inducement to hate another, you may imagine it is I.”
This grim talk was not amusing to Edgar, as may be supposed; but, as his companion spoke with perfect composure, he received it with equal calm, though not without a secret shudder in his heart. “I think we might arrange better than that,” he said. “We have time to talk it over later; but, in myopinion, the head of a family has duties. It sounds almost impertinent to call myself the head of the family to you, who are older, and probably know much more about it; but——”
“You are so,” said Arthur Arden, “and fact is incapable of impertinence. Talking of the country having no attractions, I should rather like to try a June at Arden. I suppose you bucolics think that the best of the year, don’t you? roses, and all that sort of thing. And I happen to have heaps of invitations for September, and not much appetite for town at the present moment. If it suits you, and your sister Clare does not object too strenuously, I’ll go with you now.”
This sudden and unexpected acceptance of his invitation filled Edgar with dismay. September was a totally different affair. In September there would be various visitors, and one individual whom she disliked need not be oppressive to Clare. But now, while they were alone, and while yet all the novelty of his situation was fresh upon Edgar, nothing, he felt, could be more inappropriate. Arthur Arden swayed himself upon his chair, leaving one arm over the back, with careless ease, while his cousin, suddenly brought to a stand-still, tried to collect himself, and decide what it was best to do. “Ah, I see,” Arthur said, after a pause, stillwith the same carelessness, “I bore you. You were not prepared for anything so prompt on my part; and Madam Clare——”
“I cannot allow my sister’s name to be mentioned,” cried Edgar angrily, “except with respect.”
“Good heavens, how could I name her with greater respect? If I said Madam Arden, which is the proper traditionary title, you would think I meant your grandmother. I say Madam Clare, because my cousin is the lady of the parish: I will say Queen Clare, if you please: it comes to about the same thing in our family, as I suppose you know.”
“As I suppose you don’t know,” was in this arrogant Arden’s tone; but it was lost upon Edgar, whose mind was busy about the problem how he could manage between Arthur’s necessities and Clare’s dislike. The party was in motion by this time to join the ladies, and Lord Newmarch came up to the two Ardens in the momentary breaking up.
“I want very much to see more of you,” he said, addressing himself to Edgar. “I see you two cousins have made acquaintance, so I need not volunteer my services; but I am very anxious to see more of you. I daresay there are many things in the county and in the country which you will find a littlepuzzling after living so long abroad; and I hope to get a great deal of information from you about Continental politics. My father is in town, so I cannot ask you to Marchfield, as I should like to do; indeed, I am only off duty for a week on account of this great social assembly in Liverpool. How shall I manage to see a little of you? I go back to Liverpool with the Buxtons to-night.”
“I cannot promise to go to Liverpool,” said Edgar; “but if you could come to us at Arden——”
“That would be the very thing,” said the young politician, “the very thing. I could spare you from the 1st to the 5th. I must be back in town before the 7th for the Irish debate. My father has Irish property, and of course we poor slaves have to come up to the scratch; though, as for justice to Ireland, you know, Arden——”
“I fear I don’t know much about it; shall we join the ladies?” said Edgar, a little confused by finding his hospitality so readily embraced.
“I shall be very happy to give you the benefit of my experience,” said Lord Newmarch; “there are some things on which it is necessary a young landed proprietor should have an opinion of his own. Yes, by all means, let us go upstairs. There is a great deal in the present state of the country that I should be glad to talk to you about.We have become frightfully empirical of late; whether the Government is Whig or whether it is Tory, it seems a condition of existence that it should try experiments upon the people; we are always meddling with one thing or another—state of the representation—education—management of the poor——”
Such were the words that came to Arthur Arden’s ears as his cousin disappeared out of the dining-room under the wing of Lord Newmarch, being preached to all the way. The kinsman, who was a fashionable vagabond, looked after them with a smile which very much resembled a sneer. “Thank heaven, I am nobody,” he said to himself, half aloud. He was the last in the room, and no one cared whether he appeared late or early in Mrs. Pimpernel’s fine drawing-room; no one except, perhaps, one or two young ladies, who thought “poor Mr. Arden” very handsome and agreeable, but knew he was a man who could never be married, and must not even be flirted with overmuch. If he was bitter at such moments, it was not much to be wondered at. He was more mature, and much better able to give an opinion than Edgar, better educated, perhaps a more able man by nature; but Edgar had the family acres, and therefore it was to him that the politician addressedhimself, and whom everybody distinguished. Arthur Arden persuaded himself, as he went his way after the others to the drawing-room, that it was almost a good bargain to be quit of Lord Newmarch and his tribe, even at the price of being quit of land and living at the same time; but the attempt was rather a failure. He would have appreciated political power, which Edgar was too ignorant to care for; he would have appreciated money, which Edgar evidently meant to throw away, in his capacity of head of the family, on poor relations and other unnecessary adjuncts. What a strange mistake of Providence it was! “He would have made a capital shopkeeper, or clerk, or something,” the elder Arden said to himself, “whereas I——; but, at all events, we shall see what effect his proceedings will have upon saucy Clare.”
Itwould be difficult to imagine anything more uncomfortable than were Edgar’s feelings as he drove home that evening. He had tried with much simplicity to avoid his kinsman Arden, thinking, in his inexperience, that if he did not repeat his invitation, or if no further conversation took place between them as to that visit in June, that the other would take it for granted, as he himself would have been quick to do, that such a visit was undesirable. Edgar, however, had reckoned without his guest, who was not a man to let any such trifling scruples stand in the way of his personal comfort. He was on the lawn with some of the other gentlemen when Edgar got into his dogcart, and shouted to him quickly, “I shall see you in a few days,” as he drove past. Here was a pleasant piece of news to take back to Clare. And Lord Newmarch was coming, who, though a stranger to himself, was none to his sister, and might possibly be, for anything Edgar knew, as distasteful to heras Arthur Arden himself. He laughed at his own discomfiture, but still was discomfited; for indifference to the feelings of anybody connected with him was an impossibility to the young man. “Of course, I am master, as people say,” he suggested to himself, with the most whimsical sense of the absurdity of such a notion. Master—in order to please other people. Such was the natural meaning of the term according to all the laws of interpretation known to him. It was Clare who was queen at the present moment of her brother’s heart and household; but even if there had been no Clare, Edgar would still have been trying to please somebody—to defer his own wishes to another’s pleasure, by instinct, as nature compelled him. It is a disposition which gives its possessor a great deal of trouble, but at least it is not a common one. And the curious thing was that he did not blame Arthur Arden for pushing his society upon him, as anybody else would have done. It was weakness on his own part, not selfishness on that of his kinsman. Had he been driven to reason on the subject, Edgar would have indeed manifested to you clearly how his own yielding temper was the greatest of sins, as tempting others to be selfish. “Of course it is my own fault” had been his theory all his life.
But he was very uncomfortable about it in this case. Up to this time, when he had been injudiciously amiable he alone had been the sufferer; but now it was Clare who must bear the brunt. When he reached the village he threw the reins to the groom, and jumped out of the dogcart. “If Miss Arden is downstairs let her know that I have gone for an hour’s chat to Dr. Somers’,” he said; and so started on, with his cigar, in the moonlight, feeling the stillness and solitude a relief to him. How free his old life had been! and yet he had felt himself wronged and injured to be left in enjoyment of so much freedom. Now he was hampered enough, surrounded by duties and responsibilities which he understood but dimly, with one of those terrible domestic critics by his side who had the power which only love has to wound him, and who subjected him to that terrible standard of family perfection which in his youth he had known nothing of, and the rules of which even now he did not recognise. Edgar sighed, and took his cigar from his lips, and looked at it as if he expected the kind spirit of that soothing plant to step forth and counsel him; but receiving no revelation, sighed and put it back again, and thrust his hands into his pockets, and passed along the silent village street with his disturbed thoughts. All wassilent in Arden: the doors closed which stood open all day long, and only here and there a faint light twinkling. One in John Horsfall’s cottage, in the little room where Lizzie, his eldest daughter, was dying of consumption; one in old Simon the clerk’s window, downstairs, where his harsh-tempered but conscientious Sally was busy with the needlework which she did, as all Arden knew, “for the shop.” “The shop” meant a certain famous place for baby-linen in Liverpool, which demanded exquisite work—and Sally alone of all the neighbourhood was honoured with its commissions. In her aunt Sarah’s cottage, next door, the upper window showed a faint illumination, and stood open. These were all the signs of life which were visible in Arden. The old people, and the hard-working out-door people who began the day at five in the morning, were all safe in bed, enjoying their well-won repose. The moon was shining brightly, with all the soft splendour of the summer—shining over Arden woods, which looked black under her silver, and making the little street, with its white lines of broken pavement before each door, as bright as day. Edgar’s footsteps rang upon the stones as he crossed those little strips of white one by one. The sound broke the silent awe and mystery of the night, and with his usual sympathetic feeling he did his best torestrain it. He had thrown away his cigar, and had taken off his hat to refresh himself with the cool sweet air, when he heard a cry from the window above. It was the window of old Sarah’s Scotch lodger. He looked up eagerly, for her aspect had awakened some curiosity in his mind. But what he saw was a little white figure leaning out so far that its balance seemed doubtful, spreading out its hands, he thought, towards himself as he stood looking up. “My Willie! my Willie!” cried the voice; “is it you at last? Oh, he’s here, he’s here, whatever you may say. Willie! Willie! How could he rest in his grave, and me pining here?”
Edgar rushed forward in the wildest alarm. The little creature leaned over the window-sill, with arms stretched out, and hair streaming about her, till he felt that any moment she might be dashed upon the pavement below. The cry of “Willie!” rang into the stillness with a wild sweetness which went to the listener’s heart. It sounded like the very voice of despair. “Take care, for God’s sake,” he cried, instinctively rushing into the little garden below the window and holding out his arms to catch her should she fall. Just then, however, she was caught from behind. The grandmother’s face looked suddenly out, ghastly pale and stern in its emotion.“I have her safe, sir, thanks to you,” said the serious Scotch voice, every word of which sounded to Edgar like a chord in music full of a hundred mingled modulations. “Willie, my Willie!” cried the younger voice, rising wilder and shriller; and then there followed a momentary rustle, as of a slight struggle, and then the sharp decisive closing of the window. He could see nothing more. But it was not possible to pass on calmly after such an incident. After a moment’s indecision, Edgar tapped lightly at old Sarah’s window, which was dark. The sounds upstairs died into a distant murmur of voices, and downstairs all was still. Old Sarah, if she heard, took no notice of his summons; but young Sarah, her niece, who was working in the next cottage, roused herself and came to the door. “It’s best to take no notice, sir, if you’ll take my advice,” said Sally, with a piece of white muslin wrapped round her arm, which shone in the moonlight. “It’s nought but the mad lass next door.”
“Mad! is she mad?” said Edgar eagerly.
“Poor lass! they do say as it’s a brother; but I don’t hold for making all that fuss about brothers,” said Sally. “T’ou’d dame, she’s a proud one, and never says nought she can help; and the poor wench ain’t dangerous or that, but as mad as mad, in special when the moon’s at the full. Don’t youtake no notice, sir, for there never was a proud un like t’ou’d dame. T’ poor lass had an only brother as died, and she’s ne’er been hersel’ since. That’s what they say.”
“But she looks like a child,” said Edgar, not knowing what to do; for already complete silence and darkness seemed to have fallen over the cottage. Old Sarah did not wake, or if she waked, kept still and made no sign, and the light had disappeared from the upper window. It was hard to believe, to look at the perfect stillness of the summer night, that any such interruption had ever been.
“She do, Squire,” said Sally; “but seventeen they say, and some thinks her mortal pretty—t’ou’d Doctor for one, as was awful wild in his own time, I’ve heerd say. But Mrs. Murray she watches her like a dragon. It’s t’ou’d lady as is my sort. I don’t hold with prettiness nor fuss, but them as takes that care of their own——”
Sally jumped aside with a sudden cry, as the door of the next house softly opened, and Mrs. Murray herself suddenly appeared. In the moon-light, which blanched even Sally’s dingy complexion, the old woman looked white as death; but probably it was as much an effect of the light as of the scene she had just gone through. She laid her hand very gently, with a certain dignity, upon Edgar’s arm.
“Sir,” she said, “you’ll excuse my poor bairn. Willie was her brother, that we lost a year back. He was lost at sea, and the poor thing looks for him night and day. He was in a Liverpool ship; that’s why we’re here. She took you for him,” the grandmother continued, and then made a pause, as if to recover her voice. Tears were glistening in her eyes. Her voice thrilled and changed even now, it seemed to Edgar, like chords. She touched his arm again with her hand, a soft, yet firm, momentary touch, which was like a caress. And then, all at once, “You’re like him. Good night,” she said.
It was as if she could not trust herself to say more. And Edgar stood gazing at the vacant spot where she had stood, while Sally peered round the porch of her own house, straining to see and hear. “She’s a queer ’un, t’ou’d dame,” said Sally, with a little gasp of disappointed excitement; and she stood at her door with the muslin twisted about her hand, and gazed after him when he went away up the village with a hasty good night. Edgar heard her close and bolt her door as he hurried on to the Doctor’s. Poor rural fastenings, what could they shut out? not even a clever thief, did any such care to enter—much less pain, trouble, sorrow, madness, or death.
Dr. Somers’ study was a great contrast to the splendour and silence of the night. It was lighted by a green reading-lamp, which threw its illumination only on the table, and it was full of smoke from a succession of cigars. The Doctor was seated in a large old-fashioned elbow-chair, with a high back and sides, covered with dark leather, against which his handsome head stood out. On the table stood a silver claret-cup, and a rough brown bottle of seltzer-water—such were his modest potations. He had a medical magazine before him on the table, but it was a novel which was in his hand, and which he pitched away from him as Edgar entered. “Some of Letty’s rubbish,” he explained, as he threw it on the sofa in the shade, and welcomed his young guest. “Bravo, Edgar! Now this is what I call emancipating yourself from petticoat government. These sisters of ours are as bad as half-a-dozen wives.”
“You don’t seem to have suffered much under yours,” said Edgar; “and mine, I assure you——”
“Oh, yes; yours, I assure you,” cried the Doctor, “is exactly like the rest—would not curtail any of your pleasures for the world; in short, would entreat you to amuse yourself, and be heartbroken at the thought of keeping you at home for her; but once let her find out that you have wings and can fly, and see what she says. I know them all.”
Edgar sat down, and cast a hurried glance round the room as the Doctor spoke. He asked himself quite involuntarily whether, after all, a cigar in Dr. Somers’ study was so much more delightful than Clare’s society and her pretty surroundings, and was not by any means so certain on that point as the Doctor was. But if he smiled within himself he suffered no evidence of it to escape, and for this night, at least, he had a definite object in his visit. “I did not know if I should find you,” he said. “What has become of the old whist party, of which I used to hear so much?”
“Ah, the whist party,” said the Doctor, with a sigh. “Poor Letty made an end of that. She was always willing to do her best, though she never was anything of a player; and she bore abuse like an angel. But that won’t do now, you know. And young Denbigh is the most abject spoon I ever saw. When he is not dangling after Alice Pimpernel, he is writing verses to her, I believe. The boy is capable of any folly, and revokes as soon as look at you. Croquet is the food of love; and that is what the degenerate cub has abandoned whist for. No wonder the race deteriorates day by day.”
“That is just what I wanted to speak to you about,” said Edgar; “I have just come from the Pimpernel’s.”
“Letus be correct and categorical,” said Dr. Somers. “That is just what you wanted to talk to me about? Which? Love, or croquet, or the Pimpernels?”
“Neither,” said Edgar, with a little impatience. “These are things altogether out of my way; and I must ask you to be serious, for what I have to ask is grave enough. Can you tell me anything about my cousin Arthur Arden? and why my sister dislikes him? and why——”
“Whew!” said Dr. Somers, with a prolonged whistle. “You might well tell me to be serious. Why, and why, and why? Have you met Arthur Arden? And if so, did nobody warn you that he was the worst enemy you ever had in your life.”
“He might very easily be that, and not scare me much,” said Edgar, with his careless, almost boyish, smile.
“You silly lad!” said the Doctor. “You simpleton! You think you never had an enemy in your life, and feel as if this would be something new. Iwonder if I ought to enlighten you? You remember your father, Edgar? Which was he, enemy or friend?”
“Dr. Somers,” said Edgar, gravely, “I have already told you that nothing shall induce me to discuss my father.”
Dr. Somers said “Humph!” with sudden confusion, and filled himself out a large bumper of wine and seltzer water. “That shows a fine disposition on your part,” he said; “but whether it is safe or expedient to ignore such things you must judge for yourself. Perhaps I know more about it than you do, and it seems to me you have had an enemy or two. But, anyhow, take care of Arthur Arden, for he will be the worst.”
“I don’t think I am afraid.”
“No; I don’t suppose you are,” said the Doctor, looking at him between two puffs of his cigar; “but whether that is wise or not is a different matter. Why does Clare hate him? Why, I suppose, because he once made love to her, and offered ‘his hand,’ as people say, with nothing in it. Was not that enough?”
“Surely not enough to make her hate him,” said Edgar, “but enough to make it horribly embarrassing. Was that all? Don’t people say it is the highest compliment, &c. I am sure I have read something like that in books.”
“And so have I,” said the Doctor; “and I suppose it is the highest compliment, &c. Women don’t generally hate us because we love them, or think we love them. Clare has been petted and spoiled all her life. But still Arthur Arden is a handsome fellow——”
While Dr. Somers went on thus philosophically, Edgar winced and shifted about in his chair. He was not susceptible about himself, but he was intensely sensitive in respect to his sister. Clare was not to him an abstract woman, to be discussed by general rules, but an individual whom he would fain have drawn curtains of profoundest respect about, and veiled from every vulgar gaze. There is no doubt that this is one of the first primitive instincts of love. The Turk is the truest symbol of humanity so far, and there is no man, worth calling a man, who would not be satisfied in his inmost heart if he could shut up his womankind from every rash look or doubtful comment. Edgar beat a tune on the table with his fingers, blew clouds of smoke about him in his restlessness, shuffled and swayed himself about in his chair; but what could he do to stop the disquisitions of the man who had known Clare all her life?
“Arthur Arden is a handsome fellow, and a clever fellow,” continued Dr. Somers. “If he hadimpressed a girl’s imagination, I for one should not have been surprised. My own theory is that he did, and that it was her liking for him, combined with her sense of his enmity to you——”
“Good heavens! what has that to do with it?” cried Edgar, thankful of some means of expressing his impatience. “How could he show enmity to me when he had never seen me? and what did it matter if he had? That has nothing to do with Clare.”
“It had a great deal to do with Clare,” said the Doctor. “If I tell you what my theory is, of course you will understand I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, Edgar. I think he must have proposed some sort of compromise to your father to exclude you quietly——”
“To exclude—— me!” Edgar stopped him with an impatient gesture. “Dr. Somers, you speak in riddles. How could I be excluded? What compromise was possible? This is something so astounding that I must ask what it means in so many words——”
“Oh, of course it was absolute folly,” said the Doctor, with confusion. The truth was, he had taken Edgar for a fool, and it seemed to him as if anything could be said to so amiable, so good-tempered, so unsuspicious a simpleton. He paused andgrew red, notwithstanding his ordinary composure and knowledge of the world. “I speak of the mad notions of a self-willed man, who thought persistence would overcome everything,” he went on, embarrassed. “Of course there was no compromise possible. You were the only son, and the undoubted heir. But, going upon some notion of his own that the Squire hated—I mean was not fond of you—— In short, Edgar, I warned you you were not to think I wanted to wound your feelings—and that Arthur Arden was the worst enemy you ever had in your life.”
“You have given me a glimpse of something worse still,” said Edgar. “You have insinuated the possibility that his enmity might have been of importance—that there was some harm possible. What could he do? What could—since you force me to speak of that—my father have done? The estates were entailed. If he could have cut me off by will, I am not so simple as to doubt that he would have done it. But being, as I am, heir of entail——”
“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Somers eagerly; “of course you are heir of entail; of course it was all nonsense; you can’t imagine for a moment—— But then there are such very curious things in law and family history. Mensometimes take an unaccountable aversion—— Did I ever tell you the story of the Agostinis, a very strange thing that excited everybody when I was at Rome?”
Edgar gave a little wave of his hand in impatience. What were the Agostinis or their story to him?
“That was almost a case in point,” said the Doctor. “There was supposed to be no heir, and the estates had gone to the daughter (of course there was no law of entail to complicate the matter), when all at once starts up a young man, who had been bred in a public hospital, and yet was proved beyond dispute to be the Duchess Agostini’s son. She was living, though her husband was dead, and could not deny it. The proof, indeed, was so strong that he won his suit, and is now the Duke, and head of one of the oldest houses in Italy. Brought up in an orphan hospital, and just as nearly shut out from all inheritance for ever—just as near——”
“But I suppose there was some explanation,” said Edgar, interested in spite of himself; “mere aversion of a father could not surely go so far as that?”
“Oh, yes, there was a reason given,” said the Doctor, more and more confused, “something about the mother—some little speck, you know, on her character: one must not inquire too closely into those family stories. But he won his suit, and nowhe is Duke Agostini—the hospital boy! You may imagine what a sensation it made in Rome.”
“Something about his mother,” Edgar repeated vaguely, under his breath, with eyes in which a strange light suddenly sprang up. Then he bit his lip, and restrained himself. Dr. Somers, watching closely, saw that he had made an impression much more serious than he intended. He did not, indeed, intend to make any impression. He meant only, in the wantonness of fancied power, to make an experiment, to pique Edgar’s curiosity, to give him, perhaps, a passing thrill of alarm and wonder, such as an operator might give, half in jest, to curious spectators round an electric machine; but, unfortunately, the operation had been too successful, the shock overmuch. The young man said nothing farther, but sat moody, with the cigar between his fingers, and let the Doctor talk. Dr. Somers said a great deal more, but with the sense that Edgar was not listening, and that he might as well have been a hundred miles off for any companionship there was between them. And though he had in general a very good opinion of himself, for once in his life the Doctor was abashed, and felt that he had gone too far. He tried to draw the young man’s attention to other matters—to local interests—to Lord Newmarch and his enlightened views. “I may be aRadical myself,” said the Doctor, “but I do not belong to that school of Enlightened Youth. Newmarch is very appalling to me; and if you don’t mind, Edgar, you’ll find he wants to make up to Claretoo.”
“Too! is there any other?” said Edgar, with a certain languid haughtiness which was more like the Ardens than anything that had ever been seen in him before, and which gave Dr. Somers a thrill almost as sharp and sudden as that he had produced in the young Squire. “Could it be possible, at this moment, of all others, that his theory was to prove itself wrong?”
“I should think there were others,” he said, with an attempt at carelessness. “Flowers like Clare do not grow in every garden, not to speak of thedotwhich you and your father endowed her with. I suppose nothing has been done about that as yet; or have you been so wise as to take old Fazakerley’s advice?”
“I think I shall go home,” said Edgar abruptly, and he got up, and lighted his cigar by the Doctor’s candle. “There was something I wanted to speak to you about, but it has gone out of my head.”
“Nothing about your health, I hope,” said the Doctor anxiously. “You look quite well——”
“Oh, no, nothing about my health,” he said, witha short laugh, and went out, leaving Dr. Somers in a state of great discomfort, saying to himself that he had not meant it, and that he could not have imagined such a good-tempered careless fellow would have taken anything up so quickly. “It was nothing,” he said to himself. “I did not even imply that his circumstances were the same; in short, I did not say a word to offend—any one; nonsense! Who is Edgar Arden, I wonder, that one should study his feelings to such an extent? Good heavens, didn’t he insist upon being told?” Thus the Doctor excused and accused himself, and felt extremely uncomfortable, and at last went to bed, not feeling able to drown his remorse either in his seltzer water or his novel. “If Fielding had done anything as idiotic,” was his comment as he went upstairs, “or poor Letty—but I, that pretend to some sort of discretion!” His folly had at least this salutary effect.
Meanwhile Edgar walked home very fast, as if some one were pursuing him. It was his thoughts which were pursuing him, rushing and driving him on. The avenue had never looked so stately in the moonlight, nor the woods so mysteriously sweet. All the soft perfumes of the night were in the air; the smell of the fresh earth and the dew, the fragrance that breathed out of here and there an oldhawthorn, still covered with blossom, beginning to brown and fade in the daylight, but still sweet in the darkness. The front of the house lay in a great shadow made of its own roof and the big trees behind; but lights were twinkling about, as they ought to be in a house which expects its master. Was it possible that Arthur Arden could have turned him out, could have replaced him there? Could it be that Clare knew such a thing was possible? “Something about his mother.” Edgar did not himself realise what horror it was which had thus breathed across him. What could it be about his mother? Could there be anything about her which gave to any man the right of a possible insinuation? He did not remember her, and had not even a portrait of her, but was like her, people said. And therefore his father had hated him. Edgar’s brain burned as this strange thought whirled and fluctuated about him; he was its victim, he did not entertain it voluntarily. His father hated him because he was like her; but yet, was not she the mother, too, of the beloved Clare?
Itwas perhaps fortunate for Edgar that he did not see his sister that night. She had waited for him till the return of the groom with the dogcart, and then she had gone upstairs. Probably she had gone with a little irritation against him for delaying his return, Edgar felt; and a momentary impatience of all and everyone of the new circumstances which made his life so different came upon him. What if Dr. Somers’ suggestion had come true, and he had been shut out of the succession? Why, then, this bondage on one side or other, this failure in satisfying one and understanding another, this expenditure of himself for everybody’s pleasure, would not have been. “I should have been brought up to a profession, probably,” he said to himself, “or even a trade;” and for the moment, in his impatience, he almost wished it had been so. But then he looked out upon the park, lying broad in the moonlight, and the long lines of trees which he could see from his open window, and felt that he would bea coward indeed who would give up such an inheritance without an effort. The lands of his fathers. Were they the lands of his fathers? or what did that terrible insinuation mean?
Clare was cloudy, there could be no doubt of it, when she met her brother next morning. She thought he might have come back earlier. “What is Dr. Somers to him?” she said to herself, and concluded, like a true woman, that he must have fallen in love with Alice Pimpernel. “If he were to marrythatgirl I should certainly keep Old Arden,” she said to herself; for it seemed almost impossible to imagine that, seeing Alice was the last girl in the world who ought to attract him, he should have been able to resist falling in love with her. And thus she came down cloudy, and found Edgar with a face all overcast by the events of the previous night, which confirmed her in all her fears. “Of course, he does not like to speak of her,” Clare said to herself. Poor Alice Pimpernel! who was too frightened for Mr. Arden even to raise her eyes from her plate.
“Had you a pleasant party?” she said, with a half angry sound in her voice.
“Not very pleasant,” said Edgar. “I suppose that is why I am so tired this morning; but yet I met some people who interested me.”
“Indeed!” said Clare, with polite wonder. “Tell me who you took in to dinner? and who was next you? and in short all about it? One would think it was I who had been at a party last night, and you who had stayed at home.”
“I took in Mrs. Buxton, whoever she may be—and I sat next Miss Pimpernel—and the one was philosophical, and the other was—— Is there not some word that sounds pretty, and that means inane? She is a very nice girl, I am sure. She said, ‘Oh, yes, Mr. Arden,’ and then, ‘Oh, no, Mr. Arden.’ If I had not kept up the proper alternations I wonder what the poor girl would have said?”
“But you did?” said Clare, with all her cloud removed. Had she but known who was at that party beside Alice Pimpernel!
“Oh, yes, I did. And there was Lord Newmarch, who is coming here on the 1st to make my acquaintance. I hope you don’t mind. He was so anxious to see me, poor fellow, that I could not deprive him of that pleasure. I hope, Clare, you don’t mind.”
“Not in the least,” she said, in her most genial mood. “If you will not be shocked, I rather like him, Edgar. He means well; and then if he is a Radical, it is in a kind of dignified superior way.”
“So it is,” said Edgar; “very superior, and very dignified—not to say instructive—but we might get too clever, don’t you think, if we had too much of it? There was some one else there, about whom you must pardon me, Clare. I was led into giving him an invitation—without thinking. It did not occur to me till after——”
Edgar grew very red making his excuses, and Clare grew pale listening. She made a great effort over herself, and clasped her hands together, and looked at her brother with a forced smile. “Why should you hesitate?” she said. “Edgar, you are master; I wish you to be master. Whoever you choose to ask ought to be welcome to me.”
“I do not wish to be master so long as I have my sister to consult,” he said; “but this was a mistake, an inadvertence, Clare. You can’t guess? It was Arthur Arden whom I met at the Pimpernels!”
“Ah!” Clare said, growing paler and paler. But she made no observation, and kept listening with her hands clasped fast.
“I asked him to come in September, remembering you had said you did not like him much; but he offered himself for June. I did not accept his proposed visit; but from what I saw and what I hear it seems likely he will come.”
“No doubt he will come,” said Clare; and thenher hands separated themselves. She had heard all that she had to fear. “If I hate him it is not for myself,” she added hurriedly, “but for you Edgar. He did all he could to injure you.”
“So I have heard. But how could he injure me?” said her brother, feeling that it was now his turn.
“Edgar, I hate to speak of it. You can’t understand my love for poor papa. Arthur tried to set him against—— It was—his fault. No; Edgar, no, I don’t mean that—it was not his fault; but he tried to make things worse. That is why I hate—no, I don’t hate. If you don’t mind Edgar—— You kind, good, sweet-tempered boy——!”
And here, in a strange transport, which he could not understand, Clare took his hand, and held it close, and pressed it to her heart, which was beating fast. She looked up at him with tears in her eyes, with a curious admiration. “You are not like us other Ardens,” she said. “We ought to learn of you; we ought to look up to you, Edgar. You can forgive. You don’t keep on remembering and thinking over everything that people have done and said against you. You can put it away out of your mind. Edgar, dear, I hate myself, and I love you with all my heart.”
“Do you, Clare; do you, indeed, Clare?” he said, and went to her side, and kissed her with brotherly tenderness. “God do so to me and more also,” he said to himself, if I ever forget her good and her happiness; or, at least, if he did not say the words, such was the sentiment that passed through his mind. He was so much moved that he felt able to ask a question he had been hesitating over all the morning. “Clare,” he said softly, bending over her, and smoothing her dark hair. His voice had a certain sound of supplication in it which struck her strangely. She thought he was about to ask something hard to do—perhaps a renunciation, perhaps a sacrifice. “Clare, can you tell me anything about our mother? Do you know?”
“About mamma?” said Clare, with a sense of disappointment. “Edgar, you frighten me so; I thought you were going to ask me something that was very hard. About mamma? Of course I will tell you all I know.”
“And there is a portrait—you said there was a portrait—I should like to see that too.”
“Yes, Edgar, I will run and get it. Oh, I wonder if you would have been very like her—if she had lived? I sometimes think it would have been so much better for us all.”
“Do you think so?” said Edgar, with a sadnesswhich he could not control. Would it have been better? But, at all events, Clare knew of nothing evil that concerned their mother. He walked about the room slowly while she went to seek the portrait, and finally paused at the great window, and gazed out. It had the same view over the park which he had looked at last night under the moon-light. Now, in the morning, with a certain ache of strange doubtfulness, he looked at it again. The feeling in his mind was that it might all dissolve as he looked, and melt away, and leave no sign—that, and the house, and the room he stood in, with all their appearance of weight and reality. Such things had been; at least, surely that was what Dr. Somers’ story meant about those Agostini. What was it? “Something about the mother.” A mist of bewilderment had fallen over him, and he could not tell.
Clare’s entrance with a little case in her hand roused him. She came up, and put her arm within his where he stood, and, thus hanging on him, opened the case, and showed him the miniature, which formed the clasp of a bracelet. It was the portrait of a face so young that it startled him. He had been thinking and talking of his mother, which meant something almost venerable, and this was the face of a girl younger, ever so much younger, than himself. “Are you sure this is her?” he said in awhisper, taking it out of his sister’s hand. “Of course it is her; who else could it be?” she answered, in the same tone. “She is so young,” said Edgar, apologetically. He was quite startled by that youthfulness. He held it up to the light, and looked at it with wondering admiration. “This child! Could she be my mother, your mother, Clare?”
“I suppose everybody is young some time. She must have looked very different from that when she died.”
“Will it ever seem as strange, I wonder,” said Edgar, still little above a whisper, “to somebody to look at your portrait and mine? How pretty she must have been, Clare. What a sweet look in her eyes! You have that look sometimes, though you are not like her. Poor little thing! What a soft innocent-looking child.”
“Edgar,” said his sister, half horrified, for she had little imagination, “do you remember you are speaking of mamma?”
He gave a strange little laugh, which seemed made up of pleasure and tears. “Do you think I might kiss her?” he said under his breath. Clare was half scandalized half angry. He was always so strange; you never could tell what he might do or say next; he was so inconsistent, not bound by sacred laws like the Ardens; but still his sister herself wasa little touched by the portrait and the suggestions it made.
“She would not have been old now if she had been living, not too old for a companion. Oh, Edgar, what a difference it would have made! I never had a real companion, not one I was thoroughly fond of; only think what it would have been to have had her——”
“With that face!” Edgar said, with a sigh of relief, though Clare could not guess why he felt so relieved. Then—“I wonder if she would have liked me,” he said, softly. “Clare, there has been a kind fiction about my mother. I am not like her. I don’t think I am like her. But she looks as innocent as an angel, Clare.”
“Why should not she be innocent?” said Clare, wondering. “We are all innocent. I don’t see why you should fix upon that. What strikes me is that she must have been so pretty. Don’t you think it is pretty? How arched the eyebrows are and dark, though she is so fair.”
“But I am not like her,” he said, shaking his head. How strange it was. Was he a waif of fortune, some mere stray soul whom Providence had made to be born in the house of Arden, quite out of its natural sphere? It gave him a little shock, and yet somehow he could feel no sharp disappointmenton the day he had made acquaintance with this innocent face.
“Do you think not?” said Clare, faltering. “Oh, yes; you are like her. See how fair she is, and you are fair, and the Ardens are all dark; besides, you know, poor papa—— Don’t change like that, Edgar, when I mention his name. He was the only one who knew her, and he said——”
“Did he ever say I was like my mother?” said Edgar, while the sweetness and softness had all gone out of his voice.
“I am not sure that he ever said it in so many words. But, Edgar! Why, everybody here—— What could it be but that? And see how fair she is, and you are fair——”
Edgar Arden shook his head. The face in the miniature was not sanguine and ruddy, like his, but a pensive face; locks too fair to be called golden surrounding it, and soft blue eyes. Everything was soft, gentle, tender, composed, in the young face. Even Clare’s grave beauty, though in itself so different, was less unlike her than Edgar’s warm vitality, the gleams of superabundant life, which showed as colour in his hair and as light in his eyes. “I am not like her,” he said to himself, as he closed the little case and gave it back to his sister; but the shadow which had been upon him all the morninghad disappeared for ever. Whatever was the secret of his story, it was not like the story of the Agostini. Once and for ever he dismissed that dread from his breast.
Itwas, however, some time before Edgar got over the painful impression made upon his mind by what Dr. Somers had said. He had known very well for the greater part of his life that his father did not love him; but the idea that doubt had ever fallen upon his rights, that there had been a possibility of shutting him out from his natural inheritance, had never entered his mind. Of course there was really no such possibility; but still the merest suggestion of it excited the young man. It seemed to hint at a deeper secret in his own existence than anything he had yet suspected. He had been able to take it for granted with all the carelessness of youth that his father disliked him. But why should his father dislike him? What reason could there be? And then that story of the Agostini returned to him. Edgar pondered and pondered it for days, and rejected the suggestions conveyed in it, feeling from the moment he had seen his mother’s picture a certain fierce sentiment of rage against Dr. Somersas her maligner. But yet this explanation being evidently a false one, and his mother cleared of all shadow of shame or wrong, there remained the strange thought that there must be some clue to the mystery; and what was it? If it had been within the bounds of possibility that the Squire could have doubted his wife’s faithfulness, that of course would have explained a great deal. But the evidence of the portrait was quite conclusive that any such suspicion was out of the question. Edgar was young and fanciful, and ready to accept the evidence of a look, and every natural sentiment within him rose up in defence of his mother. But he could not help asking himself, even though the question seemed an injury to her—what if it had been possible? Had she been another kind of woman and, capable of wickedness, what in such horrible circumstances would it have been a man’s duty to do? He had of course heard such questions discussed, like everybody else in the world, as affecting the husband and wife, the immediate parties. But imagine a young man making such a discovery, finding himself out to be a spurious branch thus arbitrarily engrafted upon a family tree; in a position so frightful, what would it be his duty to do? Edgar roamed about the woods which were his, putting to himself in every point of view thisappalling question. A man could take no single step in such circumstances without taking upon him the responsibility of heaping shame upon his mother, and giving up her cause. It would be her whom he would cover with disgrace, much more than himself. He would have to decide a question which nobody but she could decide, and to give it against her, his nearest and dearest relation. Could any one willingly assume such an office? And, on the other hand, how could he retain a name, an inheritance, a position to which he had no right, and probably exclude the rightful heir? “Thank heaven,” said Edgar fervently, “thatcan never be my case. The son of the woman to whom God gave so angelic a countenance can never have to blush for his mother. Whatever records came to light,shenever shall be shamed.” He gave up whole days to this question, pondering it again and again in his mind. The sight of the portrait gave him for that one day an absolute certainty that such was not his position: and this force of conviction carried him through the second and even the third day; but then as the first impression waned a horrible chill of doubt stole slowly over him. That hypothesis, terrible as it was, could it but be believed, explained so much. It explained the Squire’s dislike to himself at onceand vindicated the unhappy old man. It explained why he was kept at so great a distance, brought up in so strange a way; and oh, good God! if such could be the case, what was Edgar’s duty? His brain began to whirl when he got so far; and then he would work his way back again through all the arguments. Dr. Somers had calculated when he threw abroad this winged and barbed seed that Edgar was too easy-minded, too careless and good-natured and indifferent to let it rest in his thoughts; and to hide his consciousness of it, to be blank as a stone wall to any allusion which might recall it, was clearly now the first duty of Mrs. Arden’s son. If he could but be absolutely sure of it one way or other; if he could put it utterly out of his mind, on the one hand, or—a horrible alternative, which nevertheless would be next best—know absolutely that it was true! But neither of these things seemed possible to Edgar. He had to submit to that doubt which was so fundamental and all-embracing—doubt as to his own very being, the foundations upon which his life was built—and never to breathe a whisper of it to any creature on the face of the earth. A hard task.
It may be thought that Clare must have observed her brother’s abstraction, his silent wanderings and musings, and the look of thought and care whichhe could not banish from his face; but the truth was that Clare herself was occupied by a hundred reflections. She had told her brother she hated Arthur Arden, and at the moment it was true; but now that Edgar, for whose sake she hated him, had condoned his offences, and asked him to the house, Clare, if her pride would have let her, might have confessed that she loved Arthur Arden, and it would have been equally true. He had exercised over her when she had seen him last that strange fascination which a man much older than herself often exercises over a girl. She had been pleased by the trouble he took to make himself agreeable, flattered by the attentions which a man of experience knows how to regulate according to the age and tastes of the subject under operation, and had felt the full charm of that kindred not near enough to be familiar, but yet sufficiently near to account for all kinds of mysterious affinities and sympathies which he knew so well how to make use of. He was a true Arden—everybody said so. And Clare, who was an Arden to the very finger tips, felt all the force of the bond. She had sighed secretly, wishing that her brother might have been like him. The tears had come into her eyes with affectionate pity that such a genuine representative of the family should be so poor; and again a little glow of generous warmthhad followed, as a faint dream of how it might be made up to him stole across her mind. A man of such excellence and such grace—so distinguished by blood and talent, and all the qualities that adorn a hero, who could doubt that it would be made up to him? Honour would fall at his feet for the lifting up, and if wealth should be wanting, why then somebody whom Clare would try to love would endow him with everything that heart could desire, and herself best of all. She had nourished these notions until she had heard from Arthur himself, with one of the inadvertencies common to men whose consideration for others, however elaborate outside, does not come from the heart, of his opposition to her distant brother. He had taken it for granted that she must share her father’s opinion on the subject. “Why, you do not know him!” he had said, in his astonishment, when he became aware of his mistake. “I love my brother with all my heart,” was all the answer Clare had made. Something of the magniloquence of youth was in this large assertion; but the poor girl’s heart was very sore, and the struggle she had with herself in this wild sudden revulsion of feeling was almost more than she could bear. He was Edgar’s enemy, this man who had been too pleasant, only too tender to herself and she hated him! She had walkedaway from him at that painful moment, and when they met afterwards had only looked at him from behind the visor of cold pride and icy stateliness which the Ardens knew so well how to use. But the feeling in her heart was only hatred because it had been so nearly love.
And now that the tables had been so strangely turned, now that Arthur was coming to Arden as Edgar’s guest, Clare was seized with a sudden giddiness of mind and heart, which made the outer world invisible to her, or at least changed, and threw it so awry that no clear impression came to her brain. As Edgar’s friend—— She could not feel quite sure whether her feelings were those of excited expectation and delight or of alarm and terror. And she was not sure either what to think of her brother. Was he magnanimous beyond all the powers of the Arden mind to conceive, as had been her first idea; or was he simply careless, insensible—not capable of the amount of feeling which came natural to the Ardens? This second thought was less pleasant than the first, and yet in one way it was a kind of relief from an overpowering and scarcely comprehensible excellence. “He does not feel it,” Clare said to herself; but surely Arthur would feel it; Arthur would be moved by a forgiveness so generous. Even now, whenEdgar was fully aware what his kinsman had done against him, it did not occur to him to withdraw his invitation or forbid his enemy to the house. Such a sublime magnanimity could not fail to impress the mind of the other. But yet, Clare recollected that Arthur was a true Arden, and the Ardens were tenacious, not addicted to forgiving or giving up their own way, as was her strange brother. Arthur might come, concealing his enmity, watching his foe’s weak points and the crevices in his armour, and laying up in his mind all these particulars for future use. Such a proceeding was not so foreign to the Arden mind as was that magnanimity or indifference—which was it?—that made Edgar a wonder in his race. If her cousin was to do this, what horrible thing might happen? Between Arthur’s watchfulness and Edgar’s unwariness, Clare trembled. But then, would not she be there to guard the one and keep the other in check?
Thus, Clare was so fully occupied with thoughts of her own that she did not notice the change in her brother’s looks, nor his sudden love of solitude. When Mr. Fielding expressed to her his fear that Edgar was ill, the thought filled her with surprise. “Ill! Oh, no, there is nothing the matter with him,” she said. “Here he comes to speak for himself: he looks just the same as usual. Edgar, youare not ill? Mr. Fielding has been giving me a fright.”
“I am not ill in the least,” he said, “but I wanted to see you. Are you going into the village? I will walk there with Mr. Fielding, Clare, and you can pick me up on your way.”
“You see there is not much the matter with him; he is always walking,” said Clare, waving her hand to the Rector. “I will call for you, Edgar, in half-an-hour;” and she went away smiling to put on her riding-habit. The brother and sister were going to Thornleigh to pay their homage before Lady Augusta should go away.
“Of course I understand you don’t want to alarm Clare,” said the Rector, when they were on their way down the avenue; “but, my dear boy, you are looking very poorly. I don’t like the change in your look. You should speak to the Doctor. He has known you more or less all your life.”
“The Doctor! I do not think he knows much about it,” said Edgar, with vehemence. “But I am not ill. I am as well as ever I was.” Then he made a little pause; and then, putting his hand on his old friend’s arm, he said impulsively, yet trying with all his might to hide the force of the impulse, “Mr. Fielding, you have always been very good to me. I want you to help me to recollectwhat happened long ago. I want you to tell me something about—my mother.”
Old Mr. Fielding’s short-sighted eyes woke up amidst the puckers which buried them, and showed a diamond twinkle of kindness in each wrinkled socket. He gave a look of benign goodness to Edgar, and then he turned and sent a glance towards the village which might almost have set fire to Dr. Somers’ high roof. “Yes, Edgar,” he said quickly, “and I am very glad you have asked me. I can tell you a great deal about your mother.”
“You knew her, then?” cried the young man, turning upon him with eager eyes.
“I knew her very well. She was quite young, younger than you are; but as good a woman, Edgar, as sweet a woman as ever went to heaven.”
“I was sure of that!” he cried, holding out his hand; and he grasped that slim hand of the old Rector’s in his strong young grasp, till Mr. Fielding would fain have cried out, but restrained himself, and bore it smiling like a martyr, though the water stood in his eyes.
“Somers never saw her,” said Mr. Fielding, waving his hand towards the village. “He was in Italy at the time; but ask his sister, or ask me. Ah, Edgar! in that, as in some other things, the old parson is the best man to come to. Why, boy, it isnot you I care for! How do I know you may not turn out a young rascal yet, or as hard as the nether millstone, like so many of the Ardens? but I love you forhersake.”