EDGAR rode over the verdant country, wearily, languidly, with a heart that for once was closed to its influence. He was tired of the whole matter. It no longer seemed to him so dreadful a thing to give up Arden, to part from all he cared for. If he could but be done with the pain of it, get it over, have no more trouble. Agitation had worn him out. The thought that he would have another day like yesterday to live through, or perhaps more than one other day, filled his heart with a sick impatience. Why could he not ride on to the nearest railway station, and there take any train, going anywhere, and escape from the whole business? The mere suggestion of this relief was so sweet to him that he actually paused at the cross road which led to the railway. But he was not the kind of man to make an escape. To leave the burthen on others and save himself was the last thing he was likely to do. He touched his horse unconsciously with his whip and broke into a gay canter on the grassy border of the road that led to Thorne. Coraggio! he cried to himself. It would not last so long after all. He would leave no broken bits of duty undone, no ragged edges to his past. A little pain more or less, what did it matter? Honestly and dutifully everything must be done; and, after all, the shame was not his. It was the honest part that was his—the righting of wrong, the abolition of injustice. Strange that it should be he, a stranger to the race, who had to do justice to the Ardens! He was not one of them, and yet he had to act as their head, royally making restitution, disposing of their destinies. He smiled a painful smile as this thought crossed his mind. They were one of the proudest families in England, and yet it fell to a nameless man, a man most likely of no lineage at all, to set them right. If any forlorn consolation was to be got out of it at all it was this.
When Edgar was seen riding up the avenue at Thorne it made a commotion in the house. Mary and Beatrice spied him from the window of the room which had been their schoolroom, and where they still did their practising and wrote their letters to their dearest friends. “Oh, there is Edgar Arden coming to propose to Gussy!” cried Beatrice; and they rushed to the window to have a look at him, and then rushed to the drawing-room to warn the family. “Oh, mamma, oh, Gussy! here’s Edgar Arden!” they cried. Lady Augusta looked up from her accounts with composed looks. “Well, my dear children, I suppose none of us are much surprised,” she said. Gussy, for her part, grew red with a warm glow of rosy colour which suffused her throat and her forehead. “Poor, dear boy!” she said to herself. He had not lost a moment. It was a little past noon, not time for callers yet. He had not lost a moment. She wondered within herself how it would come—if he would ask her to speak to him alone in a formal way—if he would ask her mother—if he would manage it as if by chance? And then what would he say? That question, always so captivating to a girl’s imagination, was soon, very soon, to be resolved. He would tell her he had loved her ever since he knew her—he would tell her—— Gussy’s heart expanded and fluttered like a bird. She would know so soon all about it; how much he cared for her—everything he had to tell.
But they were all shocked by his paleness when he came in. “What have you been doing to yourself?” Gussy cried, who was the most impulsive. “Have you been ill, Mr. Arden?” said sympathetic Ada. They were all ready to gather about him like his sisters, to be sorry for him, and adopt all his grievances, if he had any, with effusion. He felt himself for the moment the centre of all their sympathies, and his hurt felt deeper and more hopeless than it had ever done before.
“I am not in the least ill,” he said, “and I have not been doing anything to speak of; but Fortune has been doing something to me. Lady Augusta, might I have half an hour’s talk with you, if it does not disturb you? I have—something to say——”
“Surely,” said Lady Augusta; and she closed her account-books and put them back into her desk. He meant to take the formal way of doing it, she supposed—a way not so usual as it used to be, but still very becoming and respectful to the fathers and mothers. She hesitated, however, a little, for she thought that most likely Gussy would like the other method best. And she was not so much struck as her daughters were by the change in his looks. Of course, he was a little excited—men always are in such an emergency, more so than women, Lady Augusta reflected; for when it comes to that a woman has made up her mind what is to be the end of it, whereas the man never knows. These reflections passed through her mind as she locked her desk upon the account-books, thus giving him a little time to get by Gussy’s side if he preferred that, and perhaps whisper something in her ear.
But Edgar made no attempt to get by Gussy’s side. He stood where he had stopped after shaking hands with them all, with a faint smile on his face, answering the questions the girls put to him, but visibly waiting till their mother was ready to give him the audience he had asked. “I suppose I must go and put him out of his pain; how anxious he looks, the foolish boy,” Lady Augusta whispered, as she rose, to her eldest daughter. “Mamma, he looks as if he had something on his mind,” Ada whispered back. “I know what he has on his mind,” said her mother gaily. And then she turned round and added aloud, “Come, Mr. Arden, to my little room where I scold my naughty children, and let us have our talk.”
The sisters, it must be said, were a little alarmed when Edgar was thus led away. They came round Gussy and kissed her, and whispered courage. As for the giddy young ones, they tried to laugh, though the solemnity of the occasion was greater than they could have supposed possible. But the others had no inclination to laugh. “It is only agitation, dear, not knowing what your answer may be,” Ada said, though she did not feel any confidence that it was so. “He should not have made so formal an affair of it,” said Helena; “That is what makes him look so grave.” Poor Gussy, who was the most deeply concerned of all, cried. “I am sure there is something the matter,” she said. The three eldest kept together in a window, while Mary and Beatrice roved away in quest of some amusement to fill up the time. And a thrill of suspense and excitement seemed to creep over all the house.
Edgar’s courage came back to him in some degree, as he entered Lady Augusta’s little boudoir. Imagination had no longer anything to do with it, the moment for action had come. He sat down by her in the dainty little chamber, which was hung with portraits of all her children. Just opposite was a pretty sketch of Gussy, looking down upon him with laughing eyes. They were all there in the mother’s private sanctuary, the girls who were her consolation, the boys who were her plague and her delight. What a centre it was of family cares and anxieties! She turned to him cheerfully as she took her chair. She was not in the least afraid of what was coming. She had not even remarked as yet how much agitated he was. “Well, Mr. Arden!” she said.
“I have come to make a very strange confession to you,” said Edgar. “You will think I am mad, but I am not mad. Lady Augusta, I meant to have come to-day to ask you—— to ask if I might ask your daughter to be my wife.”
“Gussy?” said Lady Augusta, with the tears coming to her eyes. There was something in his tone which she did not understand, but still his last words were plain enough. “Mr. Arden, I don’t know what my child’s feelings are,” she said; “but if Gussy is pleased I should be more than content.”
“Oh, stop, stop,” he said. “Don’t think I want you to commit yourself—to say anything. Something has happened since then which has torn my life in two—I cannot express it otherwise. I parted from you happy in the thought that as Arden was so near and everybody so kind—— But in the meantime I have made a dreadful discovery. Lady Augusta, I am not Edgar Arden; I am an impostor—not willingly, God knows, not willingly——”
“Mr. Arden,” Lady Augusta said, loudly, in her consternation, “you are dreaming—you are out of your mind. What do you mean?”
“I said you would think I was mad. It looks like madness, does not it?” said Edgar, with a smile, “but, unhappily, it is true. You remember how my father—I mean Mr. Arden—always treated me?—how he kept me away from home? I was not treated as his son ought to have been. I have never said a word on the subject, because I never doubted he was my father—but I have the explanation now.”
“Good God!” said Lady Augusta; she was so horror-stricken that she panted for breath. But she too put upon the news the interpretation which Arthur Arden put upon it. “Oh, Mr. Arden!” she cried, “don’t be so ready to decide against your poor mother! A jealous man takes things into his head which are mere madness. I knew her. I am sure she was not a wicked woman. I am a mother myself, and why should I hesitate to speak to you? Oh, my dear boy, don’t condemn your mother! Your father was a proud suspicious man, and he might doubt her without cause. I believe he doubted her without cause. What you have discovered must be some ravings of jealousy. I would not believe it. I would not, whatever he may say!”
And she put out her hand to him eagerly in her sympathy and indignation. Edgar took it in his, and kissed the kind, warm, motherly hand.
“Dear Lady Augusta,” he said, “how good you are! It is easier to tell you now. There is no stigma upon—Mrs. Arden; that was one of the attendant evils which have followed upon the greater crime. I am not her son any more than I am her husband’s. I am a simple impostor. I have no more to do with the Ardens than your servant has. I am false—all false; a child adopted—nothing more.”
“Good God!” said Lady Augusta once more. By degrees the reality of what he was saying came upon her. His face so pale, yet so full of lofty expression; his eyes that gleamed and shone as he spoke; the utter truthfulness and sincerity of every word impressed her in her first incredulity. Good God! he meant it. If he were not mad—and he showed no signs of being mad—then indeed it must be true, incredible as it seemed. And rapidly as a flash of lightning Lady Augusta’s mind ran over the situation. How unfortunate she was! First Ada, and now—— But if this was how it was, Gussy must not know of it. She was capable of heaven knows what pernicious folly. Gussy must not know. All this ran through Lady Augusta’s mind while she said the two solemn words of the exclamation given above.
And then there was a little pause. Edgar stopped too, partly for want of breath. It had cost him a great deal to say what he had said, and for the moment he could do no more.
“Do you mean to say this is true, Mr. Arden?” said Lady Augusta. “True! I cannot believe my ears. Why, what inducement had he? There was Clare.”
“So far as I can make out, it was thought to be impossible that there should be any children; but that I cannot explain. It is so,” said Edgar, insisting pathetically. “Believe me, it is so.”
“And how did you find it out?”
Lady Augusta’s tones were very low and awe-stricken; but her interrogatory was close and persistent. Edgar was depressed after his excitement. He thought he had calculated vainly on her sympathy. “Clare found the letters,” he said, “in my father’s—I mean in Mr. Arden’s room. They are too clear to admit of any doubt.”
“She found them! What does she think of it? It will not be any the better for her; and you such a good, kind brother to her!” cried Lady Augusta in a tone of indignation. She was glad to find some one to find fault with. And then she made a long pause. Edgar did not move. He sat quite still opposite, looking at her, wondering would she send him away without a word of sympathy? She looked up suddenly as he was thinking so, and met his wistful eyes. Then Lady Augusta, without a moment’s warning, burst out sobbing, “Oh, my poor dear boy! my poor dear boy!”
Edgar was at the furthest limit of self-control. He could not bear any more. He came and knelt down before her, and took her hand, and kissed it. It was all he could do to keep from weeping too. “Thanks, thanks,” he said, with a trembling voice; and Lady Augusta, kind woman, put her arm round him, and wept over him. “If I had been Clare I would have burned them, and you should never have known—you should never have known,” she cried. “Oh, my poor, poor boy!”
“I am very poor now,” he said. “I thought you would be my mother—I who never had one. And Gussy—you will tell her; and you will not blame me——”
“Blame you!” cried Lady Augusta. “My heart bleeds for you; but I blame Clare. I would have burned them, and never thought it wrong.”
“But it would have been wrong,” he said softly, rising. “Clare would burn them now if I would let her. She is not to blame. Dear Lady Augusta, good-bye. And you will say to Gussy——”
He paused; and so did she, struggling with herself. Should she let him see Gussy? Should she allow him to say good-bye? But Gussy was only a girl, and who can tell what mad thing a girl may propose to do? “Pardon me! pardon me!” she said; “but it is best you should not see Gussy now.”
“Yes,” said Edgar; “it is best.” But it was the first real sign that one life was over for him, and another begun.