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.”
And then there came another pause—a pause in which every sound seemed to thud and beat against the anxious ears that waited and listened. Arthur Arden had taken his seat again. He was moved, too, to the very depths of his being. He covered his face with his hands, unable to look at the two at the head of the table, who were both gazing at the company waiting for their fate. Edgar had taken Clare’s hand, and was holding it fast between his own. He was saying something, of which he was not himself conscious. “Thanks, Clare! courage, Clare!” he was repeating at intervals, as he might have murmured any other babble in the excitement of the moment. Mr. Fazakerly was the only one who stirred. He broke open the seals of the packet with agitated haste, muttering also under his breath. “Parcel of young fools!” was what Mr. Fazakerly was saying. He let the papers drop out in a heap upon the table, and picked up one here and one there, running it over with evident impatience and irritation. Then he tossed them down, and pushed his spectacles off his forehead, and wrathfully regarded the little company around him. “What am I expected to do with these?” he asked. “They are private letters of the late Mr. Arden, not, so far as I am aware, brought before us by any circumstances that call for attention. I don’t know what is intended to be done with them, or who produces them, or why we are called together. Mr. Edgar, I think you might provide better entertainment for your old friends than a mare’s nest like this. What is the meaning of it all? My opinion is, they had better be replaced in the old bureau from which Miss Clare tells us she fished them out.”
But while he said this in his most querulous tone, Mr. Fazakerly picked up the papers one by one, and tied them together. His irritation was extreme, and so was his dismay, but the last was uppermost, and was not easy to express. “If these had come before me in a proper way,” he went on, “of course I should have taken all pains to examine them and see what they meant; but unless there is some reason for it—some object, some end to be gained—I always object particularly to raking up dead men’s letters. I have known endless mischief made in that way. The chances are that most men do quite enough harm in their lifetime, or at least in a lawful way by their wills and so forth, after their death, without fishing up every scrap of rancour or folly they may have left behind them. Mr. Edgar, you have no right that I know of to go and rummage among old papers in order to prejudice yourself. It is the merest nonsense. I can’t, for my part, consent to it. I don’t believe a word of it. If anybody else takes it up, and I am called upon to defend you, of course I will act to the best of my ability; but in the meantime I decline to have anything to do with it. Take them away–”
Mr. Fazakerly thrust the tied-up parcel towards his client. Of course, he knew very well that the position he took up was untenable after all that had been said, but his irritation was real, and the idea of thus spoiling a case went to his very heart. He pushed it along the table; but, by one of those curious accidents which so often surpass the most elaborate design, the little packet which had been the cause of so much trouble, instead of reaching Edgar, stopped short in front of Arthur Arden, who was still leaning on the table, covering his face with his hand. It struck him lightly on the elbow, and he raised his head to see what it was. It was all so strange that the agitated company was moved as by a visible touch of fate. Arthur stared at it stupidly, as if the thing was alive. He let it lie, not putting forth a finger, gazing at it. Incredible change of fortune lay for him within the enclosure of these faded leaves; yet he could not secure them, could not do anything, was powerless, with Clare’s eyes looking at him, and the old friends of the family around. His own words came back to his mind suddenly in that pause—“Let him take everything, so long as he leaves me you.” And Clare’s answer, “Say that again to-morrow.” To-morrow! It was not yet to-morrow; and what was he to say?
It was Edgar, however, and not Arthur, who was the first to speak. “If it must be a matter of attack and defence,” he said, “the papers are now with the rightful heir, and it is his to pursue the matter further. But I don’t want to have any attack or defence. Mr. Arden, will you be so good as to take the packet, and put it in your lawyer’s hands. I suppose there are some legal forms to be gone through; but I will not by any act of mine postpone your entrance upon your evident right.”
A pause again—not a word said on any side—the three old men looking on without a movement, almost without a breath; and Arthur Arden, with his elbows still resting on the table, and his head turned aside, gazing, as if it were a reptile in his path, at the packet beside him. How he would have snatched at it had it not been for these spectators! There was no impulse of generosity towards Edgar in his mind. Such an impulse would have been at once foolish and uncalled for. Edgar himself had taken pains to show that he wanted no such generosity—and a man cannot part lightly with his rights. Everything would have been easy enough, clear enough, but for Clare’s presence and her words that morning. If he were to do what every impulse of good sense and natural feeling prompted—take up the papers before him and make himself master of a question affecting him so nearly—then no doubt he would lose Clare. He would lose (but that was of small importance) the good opinion of that foolish old Rector. He would create a most unjust prejudice against himself if he showed any eagerness about it, even in the eyes of the doctor and the lawyer, practical men, who knew that justice must prevail; and he would lose Clare. What was he to do? It was cruel, he felt, to put him to such a trial. He kept looking at the papers with his head turned, half of it shadowed over by the hands from which he had lifted it, half of it (his forehead and eyes) full in the light. To his own consciousness, an hour must have passed while he thus pondered. The others thought it five minutes, though it was not one. But another train of thought rapidly succeeded the first in Arthur’s mind. What did it matter, after all, what he did? He could be generous at Edgar’s cost, who, he felt sure, would accept no sacrifice. He gave a glance at the young man who was no Arden, who was looking on without anxiety now, with a faint smile still on his face, and a certain bright curiosity and interest in his eyes. It was perfectly safe. There are some people whom even their enemies, even those who do not understand them, can calculate upon, and Edgar was one of these. Arthur looked at him, and saw his way to save Clare and to save appearances, and yet attain fully his will and his rights. He took the packet up, and put it in Clare’s lap.
“Here I put my fate and Edgar’s,” he said, with, in spite of himself, a thrill of doubt in his voice which sounded like emotion. “Let Clare judge between us—it is for her to decide–”
Before Clare could speak, Edgar had taken back the papers from her. “That means,” he said, almost gaily, with a laugh which sounded strange to the excited company, “that they have come back to me. Clare has had enough of this. It is no matter of romantic judgment, but one of evidence merely. Mr. Fielding, will you take my sister away? Yes, I will say my sister still. She does not give me up, and I can’t give her up. Arden is little in comparison. Clare, if you could give me a kingdom, you could not do more for me than you have done to-night. Go with Mr. Fielding now–”
She rose up, obeying him mechanically, at once. “Where?” she said. “Edgar, tell me. Out of Arden? If it is no longer yours, it is no longer mine.”
“Hush, dear,” he said, soothing her as if she had been a child—“hush, hush. There is no cause for any violent change. Your kinsman is not likely to be hard upon either me or you.”
“He put the matter into my hands,” she cried, suddenly, with a sob. “O Edgar, listen! Let us go away at once. We must do justice—justice. Let us go and hide ourselves at the end of the world—for it cannot be yours, it is his.”
She stumbled as she spoke, not fainting, but overcome by sudden darkness, bewilderment, failure of all physical power. The strain had been too much for Clare. They carried her out, and laid her on the sofa in the quiet, silent room close by, where no excitement was. How strange to go out into the placid house, to see the placid servants carrying in trays with tea, putting in order the merest trifles! The world all around was unconscious of what was passing—unconscious even under the same roof—how much less in the still indifferent universe outside. Edgar laughed, as he went to the great open door, and looked out upon the peaceful stars. “What a fuss we are making about it!” he said to his supplanter, whose mind was incapable of any such reflection; “and how little it matters after all!” “Are you mad, or are you a fool?” cried Arthur Arden under his breath. To him it mattered more than anything else in heaven or earth. The man who was losing everything might console himself that the big world had greater affairs in hand—but to the man who was gaining Arden it was more than all the world—and perhaps it was natural that it should be so.
Half-an-hour after the three most concerned had returned to the library, to discuss quietly and in detail the strange story and its evidences. These three were Edgar, Arthur, and Mr. Fazakerly. The Rector sat by Clare’s sofa, in the drawing-room, soothing her. “My dear, God will bring something good out of it,” he was saying, with that pathetic bewilderment which so many good people are conscious of in saying such words. “It will be for the best, my poor child.” He patted her head and her hand, as he spoke, which did her more good, and kept by her—a supporter and defender. The Doctor gave her a gentle opiate, and went away. They were all, in their vocations, ministering vaguely, feebly to those desperate human needs which no man can supply—need of happiness, need of peace, need of wisdom. The Rector’s soft hand smoothing one sufferer’s hair; the doctor’s opiate; the lawyer’s discussion of the value of certain documents, legally and morally—such was all the help that in such an emergency man could give to man.