ARTHUR ARDEN strayed through the village street in the stillness of the summer afternoon after this bewildering interview. He did not know what he was to do to carry on his researches. Probably he might light upon some chance information in one of the cottages where there were people old enough to have known Edgar’s mother, but this was utterly uncertain, and he might be committing himself for no use in the world. If he went to the Rector or the Doctor he might commit himself still more, and rouse their curiosity as to his motives in an uncomfortable way. What he had to do was to find out accidentally, to discover without searching, a secret, if there was a secret, which must have been carefully hidden for twenty-five years. The chance of success was infinitesimal, and failure seemed almost certain. Probably everything that could throw any light on the subject had been destroyed long since. And then, if he injured Edgar, what of Clare? Was Mr. Pimpernel’s support worth Clare’s enmity? This, however, was a question he did not dwell on, for Arthur satisfied himself that Clare had no need to know, unless by some strange chance he should be successful. And if he were successful, she was not one to stand in the way of justice. But there was not the very slightest chance that he would be successful. It was simply impossible. He laughed at himself as he strolled along idly. If there had been anything better than croquet to do at the Red House he would have gone back to that, and left this wild-goose chase alone; but, in the meantime, there was nothing else to do, and at the worst his inquiries could do no harm.
The church was open, and he strolled in. Old Simon, the clerk, was about, heavily pattering in a dark corner. It was Saturday, and Sally had been helping her father to clean the church. She had gone home to her needlework, but he still pattered about at the west end, unseen in the gloom, putting, as might be supposed from the sound, his dusters and brooms away in some old ecclesiastical cupboard. He had clogs on, which made a great noise; and the utter stillness and shady quiet of the place was strangely enhanced by the sound of those heavy footsteps. Arthur walked down the length of the church, which echoed even under his lighter tread. The light in it was green and subdued, coming through the foliage and the dim small panes which replaced the old painted glass in the windows. Here and there a broken bit of colour, a morsel of brilliant ruby out of some saint’s mantle, or a warm effective bit of canopy-work, interrupted the colourless light. Arden Church had been a fine church in the ancient days, and there were tombs in the gloom in the corners near the chancel which were reckoned very fine still when anybody who knew anything about it came to see them. But knowledge had not made much inroad as yet in the neighbourhood. The old Squire had not been the kind of man to spend money in restoring a church, and Mr. Fielding had not been the kind of man to worry his life out about it. Should young Denbigh survive the croquet and succeed the Rector, it was probable that Edgar would not have half so easy a time in this respect as his father had been allowed to have; but, in the meantime, there had been no restoration, and there were even some high pews, in which the principal people hid themselves on Sundays. The Squire’s pew was like a box at the theatre, with open arches of carved oak, and a fireplace in it behind the chairs, and a private passage which led into the park. The impression which the church made upon Arthur Arden, however, was neither sacred nor historical. He did not think of it as associated for all those hundred years with the fortunes of his race; neither (still less) did he think of it as for all this time the centre of prayer and worship—the place where so many hearts had risen to God. All he thought was, what a curious ghostly look all those unoccupied seats had. The quiet about was almost more than quiet: it was a hush as if of forced stillness—a something in the air that made him feel as if all the seats were full, though nobody was visible, and some unseen ceremonial going on. And the old man in his clogs went clamping, clattering about in the green dimness under cover of the organ gallery. Simon’s white smock was visible now and then, toned down to a ghostly grey by the absence of light. Arthur Arden felt half afraid of him as he walked slowly up the aisle. He might have been the family Brownie—a homely ghost that watched over the graves and manes of the Ardens, which Arthur, though an Arden, meditated a certain desecration of. These, however, were sentiments not long likely to move the mind of such a man. He walked slowly up until he found himself opposite the Squire’s pew. It was quite near the chancel, close to the pulpit, which stood on one side, and opposite the reading desk, which stood on the other, like two sentinels watching the approach to the altar. On the wall of the church, almost on a parallel with where the Squire’s head must have come when he sat in his pew, was the white marble tablet that bore his wife’s name. It was a heavy plain square tablet, not apt to attract any one’s attention; and Arthur, who when he was in Arden Church had always been one of the occupants of the stage box, had scarcely remarked it at all. He paused now and read it as it glimmered in the dim silence. “Mary, wife of Arthur Arden of Arden.” That was all. The Arden arms were on the tablet, but without any quartering that could have belonged to the dead woman. Evidently she was the Squire’s wife only, with no other distinction.
While he stood thinking on this another step entered the church, and looking round Arthur saw Mr. Fielding, who after a few words with old Simon came and joined him. “You are looking at the old pew,” the Rector said in the subdued tone that became the sacred place. “They tell me it ought not to be a pew at all if I took a proper interest in Christian art; but it will last my time, I think. I should prefer that it lasted my time. I never was brought up in these new-fangled ways.”
“I was not looking at the pew, but at that,” said Arthur, pointing to the wall.
“Yes; it is very bad, I suppose,” said Mr. Fielding. “We are very far behind, I know, in art. It’s ugly, I confess; but do you know I like it all the same. When the church gets dark in a wintry afternoon, these white tablets glimmer. You would think there were angels holding them up. And after all, to me, who am far advanced in life, such names are sweeter than the finest monuments. It is different, of course, with you younger folks.”
“I was not thinking of art,” said Arthur, “but of the curt way the name is put. ‘Mary, wife of Arthur Arden.’ Was she nobody’s daughter? Hadn’t she got a name before she was married? Dying so young, one would think some one must have been living who had an interest in her; but there is neither blazon nor name.”
“Eh? What? I don’t see anything remarkable in that,” said Mr. Fielding. “The others are just the same. Aren’t they? I don’t remember, I am sure. ‘Mary, wife of Arthur Arden.’ Yes; that is all. Now that I think of it, I don’t remember Mrs. Arden’s name. I never knew what family she belonged to. They were married abroad.”
“And their son was born abroad. Was not that strange?” said Arthur. “There seems to have been a great deal of mystery about it one way and another—not much like the Arden ways.”
“You have been listening to Somers,” said Mr. Fielding, hotly; “pestilent old cynic as he is. He has taken up his notion, and nothing will make him give it up. If you had known Mrs. Arden as I did, you would have scouted such an idea. I never knew a better woman. She had dreadfully bad health——”
“Was that the reason why they were so much abroad?”
“I can’t tell why they were so much abroad,” said the Rector, testily. “Because they liked it, I suppose; and let me tell you, it would have been better for all the Ardens had they been more abroad. I suppose there never was a more bigoted, self-opinionated race. To be sure you are one of them, and perhaps I ought not to say it to you; but you have knocked about the world, and you know them as well as I do——”
“I knew only the old Squire,” said Arthur, “and my own father, of course; but he had knocked about the world enough. There was not much love lost between them, I think——”
“They hated each other, my dear sir—they hated each other,” said the Rector; and then he paused and wiped his forehead, as if it had been too much for him. “I beg your pardon, I am sure, for calling up family matters. I am very glad to see you on such different terms with the young people here——”
“Yes,” said Arthur, with a half sigh. “What is the use of keeping up rancour? The old Squire on the whole was rather kind to me. I suppose it was enough for him to have one Arden to hate. And as he transferred the feeling from my father to his own son——”
“Hush—hush—hush,” said the Rector, anxiously. “Don’t let us rake up old troubles. Thank heaven poor Edgar is very comfortable now. His father couldn’t do him any tangible injustice, you know; though that business about Old Arden was very shameful, very shameful—there is no other word for it. To take advantage of the boy’s ignorance to break the entail, and then to settle the very oldest of the property on Clare! I love Clare dearly—if she was my own child I could not love her more; but rather than take that from my brother, I would strip myself of every penny if I were in her place. It was shameful—there is no other word——”
“My cousin is much more of an Arden than her brother,” said Arthur. “I don’t see why she should strip herself of every penny? Surely he has enough. She is twice as much of an Arden as he.”
“And what is an Arden, I should like to know,” said Mr. Fielding, “to be kept up at such a cost? Edgar is not much of an Arden, poor boy! He is worth a dozen of any Ardens I ever knew——”
“You forget I am one of that unfortunate race,” said Arthur, with a forced laugh. “Oh, no harm! I know you don’t love us less, but only him more. And my cousin Clare is an Arden,” he added, after a pause; “for her I must make a stand. Even beside her brother’s excellence, you would still allow her a place, I hope.”
“I love Clare dearly,” said the Rector, with abrupt brevity. And then there was a pause. Arthur Arden smiled to himself—a smile which might very well have been a sneer. What did it matter what the old parson’s opinions were? The Ardens could stand a harder judgment than his.
“But about this poor lady,” he said. “She was a perfect creature, you say, and I don’t want to contradict you. Probably she was everything that was good and lovely; but I suppose a woman of no family, from the evidence of this record here?”
“I don’t know anything about her family,” said Mr. Fielding, shortly. “It never occurred to me to think what her family was.” This he said with some heat and energy, probably because it was—and alas! the good Rector knew it was—a considerable fib. Time was when he had asked a great deal about Mrs. Arden’s family—as, indeed, everybody in the county had done; but without gaining any information. The Rector was angry with himself for the fib; but still maintained it, with a certain irritation, as it was natural for a man to do.
“It is a pity there should be so much mystery,” said Arthur, quietly. Of course, he saw through the fiction with the utmost distinctness; but civility required that he should take no further notice. And then the two stood together for a minute or, perhaps, two, in the narrow aisle, pretending to look round them, and making a critical survey of the church. “That tomb is fine, if one could see it,” Arthur said, pointing to a recumbent figure of an old Arden; and Mr. Fielding assented with a little nod of his head. And all this time old Simon, in his clogs, with the smock that looked grey-green in the dimness, was clamping slowly about, stirring the slumbrous, silent echoes. How strange it was—so real and living and full of so many seeds of excitement; yet all the time like something in a dream.
The Rector, however, accompanied Arthur out with pertinacity, seeing him, as it were, “off the premises”—as if there could have been anything to find out in the little innocent church, which all the world was free to inspect. Was it to keep him from talking to old Simon?—who, however, knew nothing—or was it from mere wantonness of opposition? The latter was really the case, though it was difficult even to make out how Mr. Fielding was stimulated into opposition. He must have felt it in the air, by some curious magnetic antipathy, for Arthur had not said a word, so far as he was aware, to betray himself. They walked together as far as the Hall gates, talking of various indifferent matters. “Living at the Red House!” said Mr. Fielding, with a smile of strange satisfaction. “Does Miss Arden know?” The Rector was pleased with this bit of information. He was glad of anything which would set their kinsman wrong with the brother and sister. It was a highly unchristian sentiment, but so it was.
“Yes, she knows,” said Arthur, quietly. “I met her yesterday; and I am going to call there now. I suppose, as Clare is my cousin, and I am old enough to be her father, I may be permitted to call——”
“Yes, I suppose you are old enough to be her father,” Mr. Fielding said, with most provoking acquiescence. Arthur could have knocked the Rector down, had he given way to his feelings. After all, though there was a good deal of difference in point of age, it would have been difficult for him to have been Clare’s father. And he did not feel like her father in the smallest degree. The Rector paused at the Hall gates, and looked at his watch to see if he had time also to pay a visit to Clare; but, to Arthur’s intense relief, the man-of-all-work came running across from the Rectory as Mr. Fielding hesitated. Some one who was ill had sent for the Rector—some one who lived two miles off—and who had sent so urgent an appeal that Jack had already put the saddle on his master’s sturdy old cob. “I shall have to put it off till to-morrow,” Mr. Fielding said, with a sigh. “Tell Clare I shall see her to-morrow.” But alas! (he thought to himself) an antidote given twenty-four hours after the poison, what good is it? And he could not forbid her own cousin to pay her a visit. So Mr. Fielding turned away with a bad grace to visit his sick parishioner; and Arthur, much relieved, opened the little postern gate, and took his way under the great elms and beeches to the Hall.