Squire Arden; volume 1 of 3

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 now he 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 a Radical 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 Clare too.”

“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 the dot which 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, with a 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 old hawthorn, 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?

CHAPTER XVIII

It was 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 be a 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 marry that girl 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 then her 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 sadness which 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 a whisper, 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 was a 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 disappointment on 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 morning had 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.

CHAPTER XIX

It was, 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. Somers as 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 this appalling 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, “that can 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, she never 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 once and 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.