Squire Arden; volume 3 of 3

“Why shouldn’t I smile?” said Edgar. “Is all the world to be covered with gloom because I am not Squire Arden? Nonsense! It is I who must suffer the most, and therefore I have a right to smile. Clare will get over it by degrees,” he added. “It has been a great shock to her, but she will get over it. I don’t know what to say about her future. Of course I have no right to say anything, but I can’t help it. I suppose the chances are she will marry Arthur Arden. I hate to think of that. It is not mere prejudice against him as superseding me; it is because he is not worthy of her. But it would be the most suitable match. Of course you know she will lose Old Arden now that I am found out?”

“Edgar, stop! I can’t bear it,” cried the Rector. “For Heaven’s sake don’t say any more!”

“But why not? It is a relief to me; and you are our oldest friend. Of course I had no more to do with the entail than you have; all that is null and void. For Clare’s sake I wonder he did not destroy those papers, if for nothing else. Mr. Fielding, I have a horrible idea in my head. I wish I could get rid of it. It is worse than all the rest. He hated me, because of course I reminded him continually of his guilt. He wanted me to break my neck that day after Old Arden was settled on Clare. It would have been the most comfortable way of arranging the matter for all parties, if I had only known. But I can’t help thinking he carried his enmity further than that. I think he left those letters to be a trap to me. He meant me to find them, and hide them or destroy them, and share his guilt. Of course he believed I would do that; and oh, God! how strong the temptation was to do it! If I had found them myself—if they not been given to me by Clare–”

Mr. Fielding pressed the arm he held. He doubted no longer, questioned no longer. “My poor boy! my poor boy!” he murmured under his breath; and, kind soul as he was, in his heart, with all the fervour of a zealot, he cursed the old Squire. He cursed him without condition or peradventure. God give him his reward! he said; and for the first time in his life believed in a lake of fire and brimstone, and wished it might be true.

“I suppose I have got into the talking stage now,” said poor Edgar. “I have had a long spell of it, and felt everything that can be felt, I believe. It was on Sunday night I found it out—fancy, on Sunday night!—a hundred years ago. And I want you to stand by me to-day. I have telegraphed for Fazakerly. I have asked him to come to dinner; why, I don’t know, except that dinner is a solemnity which agrees with everything. It will be my table for the last time. Is it not odd that Arthur Arden should be here at such a moment? not by my doing, nor Clare’s, nor even his own—by Providence, I suppose. If Mr. Pimpernel’s horses had not run away, and if poor little Jeanie had not been in the carriage– What strange, invisible threads things hang together by! Am I talking wildly still?”

“No, Edgar,” said Mr. Fielding, with a half sob. “No, my poor boy. Edgar, I think it would be a relief to be able to cry– What shall you do? What shall you do? I think my heart will break.”

“I shall do very well,” said Edgar, cheerily. “Remember, I have not been brought up a fine gentleman. I shall be of as much use in the world probably as Arthur Arden, after all. Ridiculous, is it not? but I feel as if he were my rival, as if I should like to win some victory over him. It galls me to think that perhaps Clare will marry him—a man no more worthy of her– But, of course, the match would be suitable, as people call it, now.”

“Say you don’t like it, Edgar,” said Mr. Fielding, with sudden warmth. “Clare, you may be sure, if she ever neglected your wishes, will not neglect them now.”

Edgar shook his head; a certain sadness came into the meditative smile which had been on his face. “I believe she loves him,” he said, and then was silent, feeling even in that moment that it was not for Clare’s good he should say more. No; it was not for him to lay any further burdens upon his sister. His sister! “I must think of her as my sister,” he said aloud, defending himself, as it were, from some attack. “It is like my Christian name. I can’t give that up, and I can’t give her up—in idea, I mean; in reality, of course, I will.”

“The man who would ask you to do so would be a brute,” cried Mr. Fielding.

“No man will ask me to do so,” said Edgar. “I don’t fear that; but time, and distance, and life. But you are old—you will not forget me. You will stand by me, won’t you, to the last!”

The good Rector was old, as Edgar said; he could not bear any more. He sat down on the roadside, and covered his face with his handkerchief. And the tears came to Edgar’s eyes. But the suffering was his own, not another’s; therefore they did not fall.

Thus they separated, to meet again in the evening at the dinner, to which Edgar begged the Rector to ask Dr. Somers also. “It will be my last dinner,” he said, with a smile; and so went away—with something of his old look and manner restored to him—home.

Home! He had been the master of everything, secure and undoubting, three days ago. He was the master yet to the gamekeeper, who took off his hat in the distance; to Wilkins, who let him in so respectfully; even to Arthur Arden, who watched him with anxious curiosity. How strange it all was! Was he playing in some drama not comprehended by his surroundings, or was it all a dream?

It seemed a dream to the Rector, who hurried home, not knowing what to think, and sent for Dr. Somers, and went over it all again. Could it be true? Was the boy mad? What did it mean? They asked each other these questions, wondering. But in their hearts they knew he was not mad, and felt that his revelation was true. And so all prepared itself for the evening, when everything should be made public. A sombre cloud fell over Arden to everybody concerned. The sun looked sickly, the wind refused to blow. The afternoon was close, sultry, and threatening. Even Nature showed a certain sympathy. She would say her “hush” no longer, but with a gathering of clouds and feverish excitement awaited the catastrophe of the night.

CHAPTER XVII

And yet amid all this excitement and lurid expectation, how strange it was to go through the established formulas of life: the dinner, the indifferent conversation, the regulated course of dishes and of talk! Mr. Fazakerly made his appearance, very brisk and busy as usual. He had come away hurriedly, in obedience to Edgar’s summons, from the very midst of the preparations for a great wedding, involving property and settlements so voluminous that they had turned the heads of the entire firm and all its assistants. Fortunately he was full of this. The bride was an heiress, with lands and wealth of every description—the bridegroom a poor Irish peer, with titles enough to make up for the money which was being poured upon him; and the lawyer’s whole soul was lost in the delightful labyrinth of wealth—this which was settled upon the lady, that which was under the control of the husband. He talked so much on the subject, that it was some time before he perceived the pre-occupied faces of all the rest of the company. The only one thoroughly able to talk was Dr. Somers, whose mind was never sufficiently absorbed by any one subject to be incapable of others, and who knew everybody, and could discuss learnedly with his old friend upon the property and its responsibilities. Edgar, too, did his best to talk. His excitement had run into a kind of humour which was “only his fun” to Mr. Fazakerly, but which brought tears to the Rector’s eyes. He meant to die gaily, poor fellow, and make as little as possible of this supreme act of his life. Clare sat at the head of the table, perfectly pale and silent. She made a fashion of eating, but in reality took nothing, and she did not even pretend to talk. Mr. Fielding by her side was as silent. Sometimes he laid his withered gentle old hand upon hers when she rested it on the table, and he looked at her pathetically from time to time, especially when Edgar said something at which the others laughed. “I wish he would not, my dear—I wish he would not,” he would murmur to her. But Clare made no reply. He who was no longer her brother was to her the most absorbing of interests at this moment. She could not understand him. An Arden would have concealed the thing, she thought to herself, or if he had been forced to divulge it, would have done it with unwilling abruptness and severity, defying all the world in the action. But the bitter pride which would have felt itself humbled to the dust by such a revelation did not seem to exist in Edgar. If there was in him a certain desperation, it was the gay desperation, the pathetic light-heartedness of a man leading a forlorn hope. He defied nobody, but faced the world with a smile and a tear—a man wronged, but doing right—a soul above suspicion. And Clare was asking herself eagerly, anxiously, what would be the difference it would make to him. It would make a horrible difference—more, far more, than he in his sanguine soul could understand. His friends would drop off from him. In her knowledge of what she called the world, Clare felt but too certain of this. The dependants who had hitherto hung upon his lightest word would become suddenly indifferent, and she herself—his sister—what could she do? Clare was aware that even she, in outward circumstances, must of necessity cease to be to him what she had been. She was not his sister. They could no longer remain together—no longer be each other’s close companions; everything would be changed. Even if she continued as she was, she would be compelled to treat Edgar with the ceremonies which are universally thought to be necessary between a young woman and a young man. If she continued as she was? Were she to marry, the case would be different. As a married woman, he might be her brother still. And yet how could she marry, as it were, on his ruin; how could she build a new fabric of happiness over the sacked foundations of her brother’s house? Her brother, and yet not her brother—a stranger to her! Clare’s brain reeled, too, as she contemplated his position and her own. She was not capable of feeling the contrast between Edgar’s playful talk and the precipice on which he was standing. She was too much absorbed in a bewildering personal discussion what he was to do, what she was to do, what was to become of them all.

Arthur Arden was at her other hand. He was growing more and more interested in the situation of affairs, and more and more began to feel that something must be in it of greater importance than he had thought. Clare never addressed a word to him, though he was so near to her. Her eyes were fixed on the other end of the table, where Edgar sat. Her lips trembled with a strange quiver of sympathy, which seemed actually physical, when her brother said anything. She looked too far gone in some extraordinary emotion to be able to realise what was going on. When Arthur spoke she did not hear him. She had to be called back to herself by Mr. Fielding’s soft touch upon her hand before she noticed anything, except Edgar. “You seem very much interested in what Mr. Fazakerly is saying. Do you know this bride he is talking of?” Arthur said, trying to draw her attention. “Clare, my love, Mr. Arden is speaking to you; he is asking if you know Miss Monypenny,” said the Rector, with a warning pressure from his thin fingers. “Oh, I beg your pardon; I did not hear you,” Clare would reply, but she made no answer to the question. Her attention would stray again before it was repeated. And then Mr. Fielding gave Arthur Arden an imploring glance across the table. It seemed to ask him to spare her—not to say anything—to leave her to herself. “She is not well to-night,” the Rector said, softly, with tears glistening in his old eyes. What did it mean? Arthur asked himself. It must be something worse than he had thought.

The silence at the other end of the table struck Mr. Fazakerly, as it seemed, all at once. He gave two or three anxious looks in the direction of Clare. “Your sister does not look well, Mr. Edgar,” he said. “We can’t afford to let her be ill, she who is the pride of the county. After Miss Monypenny’s, I hope to have her settlements to prepare. You will not be allowed to keep her long, I promise you. But I trust she is not ill. Doctor, I hope you have been attending to your duty. Miss Arden can’t be allowed, in all our interests, to grow so pale.”

“Miss Arden is not in the way of consulting me on such subjects,” said the Doctor. “She has a will of her own, like everybody belonging to her. I never knew such a self-willed race. When they take a thing into their heads there is no getting it out again, as you will probably find, Fazakerly, before you are many hours older. I have long known that there was a disposition to mania in the family. Oh, no, not anything dangerous—monomania—delusion on one point.”

“I never heard of it before,” said Mr. Fazakerly, promptly, “and I flatter myself I ought to know about the family if any one does. Monomania! Fiddlesticks! Why, look at our young friend here. I’ll back him against the world for clear-seeing and common sense.”

“He has neither the one nor the other,” said Dr. Somers, hotly. “I could have told you so any time these ten years. He may have what people call higher qualities; I don’t pretend to pronounce; but he can’t see two inches before his nose in anything that concerns his own interest; and as for common sense, he is the most Quixotic young idiot I ever knew in my life.”

“Don’t believe such accusations against me,” said Edgar, with a smile. “Your own opinion is the right one. I don’t pretend to be clever; but if there is anything I pique myself upon, it is common sense. This is the best introduction we could have to the business of the evening. It is not anything very convivial, and it may startle you, I fear. Perhaps we had better finish our wine first, Doctor, don’t you think?”

“What is the matter?” said Mr. Fazakerly. “Now I begin to look round me, you are all looking very grave. I don’t know what you mean by these signs, Mr. Fielding. Am I making indiscreet observations? What’s the matter? God preserve us! you all look like so many ghosts!”

“So we are—or at least some of us,” said Edgar, “ghosts that a puff of common air will blow away in a moment. The fact is, I have something very disagreeable to tell you. But don’t look alarmed, it is disagreeable chiefly to myself. To one of my guests at least it will be good news. It is simple superstition, of course, but I can’t tell you while you are comfortable, taking your wine. I should like you not to be quite at your ease. If you were all seated in the library, on hard chairs, for example–”

“Edgar!” said Clare, in a sharp tone of pain.

Dr. Somers laid a hand on his arm. “Don’t overdo it,” he said, with something between remonstrance and sympathy. The Rector stood covering his eyes with his hands. At all this Arthur Arden looked on with keen and eager interest, and Mr. Fazakerly with the sharpest, freshly-awakened curiosity, not knowing evidently what to make of it. Arthur’s comment was of a kind that made the heart jump in his breast. The secret, whatever it was, had been evidently confided both to the Doctor and the Rector. They were reasonable men, not likely to be affected by a foolish story; yet they both, it was apparent, considered it something serious. A hundred pulses of impatience and excitement began to beat within him. And yet he could not, with any regard to good taste or good feeling, say a word.

“Don’t be afraid,” said Edgar; “it is not bravado. What I have to say is very serious, but it is not disgraceful—at least to me. There is no reason why I should assume a gloom which is not congenial to myself, nor natural so far as others are concerned. As it has been mentioned so early, perhaps it is better not to lose any time with preliminaries now. Will you come with me to the library? The proofs of what I have to say are there. And without any further levity, I would rather speak to you in that room than in this.”

When he had said this, without waiting to hear Mr. Fazakerly’s amazed exclamations, Edgar walked quietly to the other end of the table and offered his arm to Clare. Before she took it, she joined her hands together, and looked up beseechingly in his face. He shook his head, with a tender smile at her, and drew her hand within his arm. This dumb show was eagerly observed by Arthur Arden at her left hand. By this time he was so lost in a maze that he no longer permitted himself to think. What was the meaning of it all? Was the boy a fool to give in, and throw up his arms at once? He had not, it was evident, even spoken to Fazakerly first, as any man in his senses would have done. For once in his life Arthur was moved to a disinterested sentiment. Even yet, after all that had been said, he had no real hope that any advantage was coming to himself; and something moved him to interfere to save an unnecessary exposure. A certain compassion for this candid foolish boy—a compassion mingled with some contempt—had arisen in his heart.

“Arden,” he said hastily, “look here, talk it over with Fazakerly first. I don’t know what cock-and-a-bull story you have got hold of, but before you make a solemn business of it, for Heaven’s sake talk it over with Fazakerly first.”

Edgar put out his hand, without at first saying a word. It took him nearly half a minute (a long interval at that crisis) to steady his voice. “Thanks,” he said. “It is no cock-and-bull story; but I thank you for thinking, and saying that. Come and hear what it is—and, for your generosity, thanks.”

“It was not generosity,” answered Arthur, under his breath. He was abashed and confounded by the undeserved gratitude. But he made no further attempt to detain the procession, which set out towards the library. Edgar placed Clare in a chair when he had reached it. He put her beside himself, and with a movement of the hand invited the others to seat themselves. The table had been prepared, the lamp was burning on it, and before one of the chairs was already laid a packet of letters directed to B. Fazakerly, Esq. Edgar meant that his evidence should be seen before he told his tale.

“Will you take possession of these,” he said, seating himself at the end of the table. “These are my proofs of what I am going to tell you; and it is so strange that you will need proofs. My sister—I mean Miss Arden—now seated beside me—found these papers. They have thrown the strangest light upon my own life, and upon that of my predecessor here.”

“Your father?” said Mr. Fazakerly, with a glance of dismay.

“I shall have to go back to the time when the late Squire was married,” said Edgar. “I beg you to wait just for a few minutes and hear my story, before you ask for any explanations. It has been commonly supposed, I believe, that the reason for the treatment I received during my childhood and youth, was that Squire Arden had been led to doubt whether I was his son, and to think my mother—I mean Mrs. Arden—unfaithful to him. This was a great slander and calumny, gentlemen. The reason Squire Arden was unkind to me was that he knew very well I was neither his son nor Mrs. Arden’s, but only an adopted child.”

There was a murmur and movement among the guests. Arthur Arden rose up in his bewilderment, and remained standing, staring at the man who had thus declared himself to be no Arden; and Mr. Fazakerly cried out loudly, “Nonsense; no! no! no! I know a great deal better. The boy’s brain is turned. Don’t say another word.”

“I asked you to hear me out,” said Edgar, whose colour and spirit were rising. “I told you I should have to go back to the time when Squire Arden married. He married a lady in very delicate health—or else she fell into bad health after their marriage. Five years afterwards the doctors told him that he had no chance whatever of having any children. His wife was too ill for that; but not ill enough to die. She was likely to live, indeed, as long as any one else, but never to give him an heir. He hated, I can’t tell why, his next of kin. I am not here to excuse him, but I believe there were excuses, for that—and after some hesitation he formed the plan of adopting a child, giving it out to be his own, and born abroad. The manner in which he carried out this plan is to be found in the packet in Mr. Fazakerly’s hands; and I am the boy whom he adopted. I can’t quite tell you,” Edgar continued, with the faint smile which had so often during three days past quivered about his lips, “who I am, but I am not an Arden. I am an impostor; and my cousin—I beg his pardon—Mr. Arthur Arden, is the proprietor of this place and all that is in it. He will allow me, I am sure, to retain his place for the moment, simply to make all clear.”

“To make all clear!” gasped Arthur. Clear! as if everything in heaven and earth was not confused by this extraordinary revelation, or could ever be made clear again.

“He must be mad,” said Mr. Fazakerly, loudly. And yet there went a thrill round the table—a feeling which nobody could resist—that every word he said was true.

“I have not sought any further,” said Edgar. “These letters have contented me, which disclose the whole transaction; but everybody knows as well as I do the after particulars. How Mr. Arden slighted me persistently and continuously—and yet how, without losing a moment when I came of age, he made use of me to provide for my—for Miss Arden. The fact that Old Arden was settled upon her, away from me, is of itself a corroborating evidence. Everything supports my story when you come to think of it. It makes the past clear for the first time.”

And then there was a pause, and they all looked at each other with blank astonishment and dismay. At least Mr. Fazakerly looked at everybody, while the others met his eye with appealing looks, asking him, as it were, to interfere. “It cannot be true—it is impossible it should be true,” they murmured, in their consternation. But it was Clare who was the first to speak.

CHAPTER XVIII

Clare rose up instinctively, feeling the solemnity of the occasion to be such that she could not meet it otherwise. She was paler than ever, if that was possible—marble white—with great blue eyes, pathetically fixed upon the little audience which she addressed. She put one hand back feebly, and rested it on Edgar’s shoulder to support herself. “I want to speak first,” she said. “There is nobody so much concerned as me. It was I who found those papers, as my brother says. I found them, where I had no right to have looked, in an old bureau which did not belong to me, which I was looking through for levity and curiosity, and because I had nothing else to do. It is my fault, and it is I who will suffer the most. But what I want to tell you is, that I don’t believe them. How could any one believe them? I was brought up to love my father, and if they are true my father was a—was a– I cannot say the word. Edgar asks me to give up everything I have in life when he asks me to believe in these letters. Oh, all of you, who are our old friends! you knew papa. Was he such a man as that? Had he no honour, no justice, no sense of right and wrong in him? You know it would be wicked to say so. Then these papers are not true.”

“And I know they are not true in other ways,” cried Clare, flushing wildly as she went on. “If Edgar was not my brother, do you think I could have felt for him as I do? I should have hated him, had he been an impostor, as he says. Oh, he is no impostor! He is not like the rest of us—not like us in the face—but what does that matter? He is a thousand times better than any of us. I was not brought up with him to get into any habit of liking him, and yet I love him with all my heart. Could that be anything but nature? If he were not my true brother, I would have hated him. And, on the contrary, I love him, and trust him, and believe in him. Say anything you please—make out what you please from these horrible letters, or any other lie against him; but I shall still feel that he is my own brother—my dearest brother—in my heart!”

Clare did not conclude with a burst of tears, solely because she was past weeping. She was past herself altogether; she was not conscious of anything but the decision about to be come to—the verdict that was to be given by this awful tribunal. She sank back into her chair, keeping her eyes fixed upon them, too anxious to lose a single gesture or look. “Bring her some water,” said Dr. Somers; “give her air, Edgar; no, let her alone—let her alone; that is best. Just now, you may be sure, she will take no harm.”