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.