Mr. Fazakerley was a little brown man, with a wig--a man who might have
appeared on any stage as the conventional type of a crafty solicitor. He
was very much like a fox, with little keen red-brown eyes, and whiskers
which were grizzled, yet still retained the reddish colour of youth. His
wig, too, was reddish-brown, and might have been made out of a foxskin,
so true was it to the colour and texture of that typical animal. As may
be divined from the fact of his outward appearance, he was not in the
very least like a fox or a conventional solicitor, but was a good,
little, kind, respectable sort of man, chiefly distinguished for his
knowledge of Lancashire families--their intermarriages, and the division
of their properties and value of their land; on which points he was an
infallible guide. He came forward to meet the young Squire with both his
hands extended, and a smile beaming out of every wrinkle of his brown
face. “Welcome home, Mr. Edgar,” he said; “welcome home, welcome to your
own house,” with a warmth and effusion which betrayed that there was
more than the usual occasion for such a welcome. He shook the young
man’s hand so long, and so energetically, swaying it between both of
his, that Edgar felt as if it must come off. “You don’t remember me, I
can see,” said Mr. Fazakerley. “I never happened to be at home while you
were at Arden; but I know you well, and how nobly you have behaved. So
you must think of me as your old friend, and one always ready to serve
you--me and everybody belonging to me--you must indeed.”
“Thanks,” said Edgar, taken by surprise; “a thousand thanks. I never
knew how rich I was in friends till now. Clare has just been telling me
I ought to have known you all my life.”
“So you ought, and so you should, but for--ah--circumstances, Mr.
Edgar,” said the lawyer, “circumstances of a painful character--over
which we had no control. Miss Clare said that, did she? And quite right
too. Your sister is a very sweet young lady, Mr. Edgar. You may be proud
of her. I don’t know her equal in Lancashire, and that is saying a great
deal, for we are proud of our Lancashire witches. I have two daughters
of my own, pretty girls enough, and I am very proud of them, I can tell
you; but I don’t pretend that they come within a hundred miles of Miss
Arden. You must not think me an impudent old fellow to talk of her so,
for, as she says, I have known her all her life.”
In this way Mr. Fazakerley chatted on, doing, as it were, the honours of
his own house to Edgar, inviting him to sit down, and gradually
beginning to arrange before him on the table a mass of papers. Then he
changed the subject; gave up Clare, whose trumpet he had blown for about
half-an-hour; and began a disquisition upon “your worthy father,” at
which Edgar winced. And yet there was nothing in it to hurt him; it was
not full of inferences which he could not understand, like the sayings
of Mr. Fielding and Dr. Somers. It had not a hidden meaning, like so
much that Clare said on the same subject. Mr. Fazakerley was in his way
very straightforward. “I won’t attempt to disguise either from myself or
from you that there was much in his conduct that was very
extraordinary,” said the lawyer, “very extraordinary--so much so, that
monomania is the only word that occurs to me. Monomania--that is the
only explanation, and I don’t know that it is a satisfactory
explanation; but it is the best we can make. We need not enter into that
matter, Mr. Edgar, for it is very unintelligible; but the question
is--Why did you give in to any arrangement about breaking the entail
without my advice?”
“I did what my father wished me to do,” said Edgar, with a deep colour
rising over his face. “It appeared to me that in so doing I could not
but be right.”
“You were very wrong, Mr. Edgar,” said the lawyer. “What! rob your
children because it pleased your father! Your father was a very worthy
man--an excellent landlord--a good staunch Tory--everything a country
gentleman need wish to be; but he was only one of the family, Mr. Edgar,
only the head of it in his time, as your son will be. You had no more
right to consult the one than the other. I don’t want to hurt your
feelings, but you were wrong.”
“My son is not born yet, nor, so far as I can see, any chance of him,”
said Edgar, laughing, “so he could scarcely be consulted.”
“That is all very well,” said Mr. Fazakerley, bending over his papers.
“I do not object to a laugh; but at the same time it was very foolish,
and worse than foolish--wrong. I don’t blame you so much, for of course
you were taught to be generous, and magnanimous, and all that; but your
worthy father, Mr. Edgar, your worthy father--it was more than wrong.”
Mr. Fazakerley shook his head for at least five minutes while he
repeated these words; but Edgar made no reply. If he could have found
the shadow of an excuse for the old Squire, or even perhaps if it had
not been for that look which he remembered so distinctly, he would have
said something in his defence. But his mouth was closed, and he could
not reply.
“If it had been any other part of the estate, or if Miss Clare had not
been well provided for already, I could have understood it,” the lawyer
continued; “but she is very well provided for. Monomania, Sir, it could
be nothing but monomania; and to give up Old Arden was quite
inconceivable--permit me to say it, Mr. Edgar--on your part.”
“I did not know much about old Arden,” said Edgar, shyly putting forth
this excuse for himself, almost with a blush. It was not his fault; but
he looked much as if it had been a voluntary abandonment of his duty.
“The more shame to--ah,” said Mr. Fazakerley, with a frown, feeling that
his zeal had led him too far; and then he paused, and coughed, and
recovered himself. “The thing to be done now is to set it right as far
as possible,” he went on. “We may be quite sure that Miss Clare, as soon
as she knows of it, will be but too eager to aid us. She is only a
girl, but she has a fine spirit, and hates injustice. What I would
suggest to you would be to effect an exchange. Old Arden lies in the
very centre of the property, besides being the oldest part of it, and
all that. I don’t insist upon the sentimental reasons; but the
inconvenience would be immense--especially when Miss Clare marries, as
of course she will soon do. I advise you to offer her an equal portion,
by valuation, of some other part of the estate--say the land between
this and Liverpool--which she could make untold wealth of----”
“I don’t think we must interfere with the existing arrangement,” said
Edgar. “Pray don’t think of it. My father must have had some reason. I
can’t divine it, nor perhaps any one; but some reason he must have had.”
“Reason--nonsense! Caprice, monomania,” said Mr. Fazakerley, getting
excited. “That was the reason. He indulged himself so that at the last
every impulse became irresistible. That is my theory. I don’t ask you to
accept it, but it is my way of explaining the matter. One day or other
he looked at Miss Clare, and perceived how like she was to the family
portraits (she is an Arden all over, and you are like your mother’s
family), and he said to himself, no doubt, ‘Old Arden must be hers.’
Some such train of ideas must have passed through his mind. And nobody
ever opposed him. You did not oppose him, not knowing any better. He had
come to take it for granted that he must have his own way. It is very
bad for a man, Mr. Edgar, to have everything his own way. It led your
worthy father on to a great piece of injustice and even folly. But, now
that the time has come when the folly of it is apparent--if we give her
acre for acre of the land near Liverpool----”
“Why should you take so much trouble?” said Edgar. “If such was his
desire, it is my duty to see it carried out. And I do not insist on the
compactness of the property. Why should I? I who am the one who knows
least about it. If this division pleased my father----”
“Tut, tut,” said the lawyer, “pleased a man who was a monomaniac and had
a fixed idea! I had formed a higher opinion of your good sense and
judgment; but to stand out for a piece of nonsense like this! Miss Clare
herself would be the first to say otherwise. When dead men do justly and
wisely by those they leave behind them, I am not the man ever to
interfere. I hold a will sacred, Mr. Edgar, within fit bounds; but when
a dead man’s will wrongs the living----”
“He is dead, and cannot stand up for it,” said Edgar, who was very
pale; “and it was his own to do as he liked.”
“There’s the fallacy,” cried Mr. Fazakerley triumphantly, “there is just
the fallacy. It was not his own. He had to get you to help him, and
cheated you in your ignorance. Besides, even had he not required your
help, which convicts him, it still was not his own. He was but one in
the succession. What is the good of an old family but for that? Why, it
is the very bulwark and defence of an aristocracy. I ought to know, for
I see enough of the reverse. You may say the money these fellows make in
Liverpool is their own--they may do what they like with it; and so they
do, and the consequences are wonderful. But Squire Arden, good heavens,
what was the good of him, what was the meaning of him, if he dismembered
his property and broke it up! My dear Mr. Edgar, you are a charming
young fellow, but you don’t understand----”
“Well,” said Edgar, warming under the influence of the lawyer’s
half-whimsical vehemence, “perhaps you are right, but it does not matter
entering into that now. Before Clare marries----”
“There is no time like the present,” said Mr. Fazakerley. “When she
marries she will have other things in her mind, and her husband, that
is to be, might interfere. Besides, that land near Liverpool is the
most valuable part of the property. You have nothing to do but build
villas upon it, or let other people build villas, and you will make a
fortune. Your worthy father would never hear of it; but it really was a
prejudice, and a waste of opportunity----”
“Do you want me to fly in his face in everything, and do just what he
did not wish to be done?” said Edgar, with a smile, which he tried to
suppress.
Mr. Fazakerley shrugged his narrow brown shoulders. “New monarchs, new
laws,” he said. “I don’t see why you should be bound by his fancies. He
did not show much respect for yours, if you had any. No, I mean to
suggest very important modifications, if you will permit me, in the
management of the estate. Perhaps, if we were to have up Tom Perfitt and
the map, and go over it----”
Edgar consented with a sigh, which he also suppressed. It was not that
he disliked the initiation into his real work in life, or objected to
throw off the idleness in which he had spent all these years. On the
contrary, he had chafed again and again over the inaction--the wretched
aimlessness of his existence. But there was something in this sudden
plunge into all its new responsibilities and trials, and, more than
all, in this posthumous conflict with the will and inclinations of the
father who had hated him, which sent a thrill through his mind, and
moved his whole being. And in this life which was about to begin there
was a mystery concealed somewhere--the secret of his own existence,
which some time or other would have to be found out. Nobody seemed to
feel this, not even those who were the most fully conscious that an
explanation was wanted of the old Squire’s ceaseless enmity to his son.
They all took it for granted that it was over; that the Squire’s death
had ended everything; and that the heir who had succeeded so tranquilly
would reign in peace in his unkind father’s stead. But Edgar’s mind was
not so easily satisfied. It seemed to him that on this road which he was
entering there stood a great signpost, with a shadowy hand pointing to
the secret, and he shrank, knowing that secret would bring him trouble.
However, to oppose this visionary sense of risk and danger to Mr.
Fazakerley and his papers or to Perfitt and his map would have been
folly indeed. So Perfitt, who was the Scotch steward, came, and the
young Squire was drawn unconsciously within the charmed circle of
property, and began to feel his heart beating and his head throbbing
with a certain exhilarated sense of importance and responsibility. When
he heard of all that was his, he, who never up to this moment had
possessed anything but his personalities, a curious feeling of power
came over him. He was young, and his mind was fresh, and the emotions of
nature were still strong in him. He had seen a great deal of the world,
but it had not been that phase of the world which makes a young man
_blasé_. He sat and listened to the discussion of rents and boundaries,
of what ought to be done with one farm and another, of the wood that
ought to be cut, and the moor that ought to be reclaimed, with a puzzled
yet pleasant consciousness that, discuss as they liked, they could not
decide without him. He knew so little about it that he had to content
himself with listening; but the talk was as a pleasant song to him,
pleasing his newborn sense of importance. “You’ll understand fine, Sir,
when once you’ve been over the estate with me,” said Perfitt, with a
certain condescension which amused Edgar mightily. They seemed to him to
be playing at government, suggesting so many things which they had no
power to carry out, which must wait for his approval. All his graver
anticipations floated away from him in his sense of the humour of the
situation. He made mental notes in his mind as they settled this and
that, saying to himself, “Wait a little; I will not have it so” with a
boyish delight in the feeling that he could put all their calculations
out by any sudden exercise of his will. If this was very childish in
Edgar, I don’t know what excuse to make for him. It was so amusing to
him to feel himself a great man, with supreme power in his hands--he who
had never been master of anything all his life.