“LET us 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. I wonder 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 had impressed 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 and grew 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. Men sometimes 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 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?