“Let us be correct and categorical,” said Dr. Somers. “That is just what
you wanted to talk to me about? Which? Love, or croquet, or the
Pimpernels?”
“Neither,” said Edgar, with a little impatience. “These are things
altogether out of my way; and I must ask you to be serious, for what I
have to ask is grave enough. Can you tell me anything about my cousin
Arthur Arden? and why my sister dislikes him? and why----”
“Whew!” said Dr. Somers, with a prolonged whistle. “You might well tell
me to be serious. Why, and why, and why? Have you met Arthur Arden? And
if so, did nobody warn you that he was the worst enemy you ever had in
your life.”
“He might very easily be that, and not scare me much,” said Edgar, with
his careless, almost boyish, smile.
“You silly lad!” said the Doctor. “You simpleton! You think you never
had an enemy in your life, and feel as if this would be something new.
I wonder if I ought to enlighten you? You remember your father, Edgar?
Which was he, enemy or friend?”
“Dr. Somers,” said Edgar, gravely, “I have already told you that nothing
shall induce me to discuss my father.”
Dr. Somers said “Humph!” with sudden confusion, and filled himself out a
large bumper of wine and seltzer water. “That shows a fine disposition
on your part,” he said; “but whether it is safe or expedient to ignore
such things you must judge for yourself. Perhaps I know more about it
than you do, and it seems to me you have had an enemy or two. But,
anyhow, take care of Arthur Arden, for he will be the worst.”
“I don’t think I am afraid.”
“No; I don’t suppose you are,” said the Doctor, looking at him between
two puffs of his cigar; “but whether that is wise or not is a different
matter. Why does Clare hate him? Why, I suppose, because he once made
love to her, and offered ‘his hand,’ as people say, with nothing in it.
Was not that enough?”
“Surely not enough to make her hate him,” said Edgar, “but enough to
make it horribly embarrassing. Was that all? Don’t people say it is the
highest compliment, &c. I am sure I have read something like that in
books.”
“And so have I,” said the Doctor; “and I suppose it is the highest
compliment, &c. Women don’t generally hate us because we love them, or
think we love them. Clare has been petted and spoiled all her life. But
still Arthur Arden is a handsome fellow----”
While Dr. Somers went on thus philosophically, Edgar winced and shifted
about in his chair. He was not susceptible about himself, but he was
intensely sensitive in respect to his sister. Clare was not to him an
abstract woman, to be discussed by general rules, but an individual whom
he would fain have drawn curtains of profoundest respect about, and
veiled from every vulgar gaze. There is no doubt that this is one of the
first primitive instincts of love. The Turk is the truest symbol of
humanity so far, and there is no man, worth calling a man, who would not
be satisfied in his inmost heart if he could shut up his womankind from
every rash look or doubtful comment. Edgar beat a tune on the table with
his fingers, blew clouds of smoke about him in his restlessness,
shuffled and swayed himself about in his chair; but what could he do to
stop the disquisitions of the man who had known Clare all her life?
“Arthur Arden is a handsome fellow, and a clever fellow,” continued Dr.
Somers. “If he had impressed a girl’s imagination, I for one should not
have been surprised. My own theory is that he did, and that it was her
liking for him, combined with her sense of his enmity to you----”
“Good heavens! what has that to do with it?” cried Edgar, thankful of
some means of expressing his impatience. “How could he show enmity to me
when he had never seen me? and what did it matter if he had? That has
nothing to do with Clare.”
“It had a great deal to do with Clare,” said the Doctor. “If I tell you
what my theory is, of course you will understand I don’t mean to hurt
your feelings, Edgar. I think he must have proposed some sort of
compromise to your father to exclude you quietly----”
“To exclude---- me!” Edgar stopped him with an impatient gesture. “Dr.
Somers, you speak in riddles. How could I be excluded? What compromise
was possible? This is something so astounding that I must ask what it
means in so many words----”
“Oh, of course it was absolute folly,” said the Doctor, with confusion.
The truth was, he had taken Edgar for a fool, and it seemed to him as if
anything could be said to so amiable, so good-tempered, so unsuspicious
a simpleton. He paused and grew red, notwithstanding his ordinary
composure and knowledge of the world. “I speak of the mad notions of a
self-willed man, who thought persistence would overcome everything,” he
went on, embarrassed. “Of course there was no compromise possible. You
were the only son, and the undoubted heir. But, going upon some notion
of his own that the Squire hated--I mean was not fond of you---- In
short, Edgar, I warned you you were not to think I wanted to wound your
feelings--and that Arthur Arden was the worst enemy you ever had in your
life.”
“You have given me a glimpse of something worse still,” said Edgar. “You
have insinuated the possibility that his enmity might have been of
importance--that there was some harm possible. What could he do? What
could--since you force me to speak of that--my father have done? The
estates were entailed. If he could have cut me off by will, I am not so
simple as to doubt that he would have done it. But being, as I am, heir
of entail----”
“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Somers eagerly; “of course you are heir of entail;
of course it was all nonsense; you can’t imagine for a moment---- But
then there are such very curious things in law and family history. Men
sometimes take an unaccountable aversion---- Did I ever tell you the
story of the Agostinis, a very strange thing that excited everybody when
I was at Rome?”
Edgar gave a little wave of his hand in impatience. What were the
Agostinis or their story to him?
“That was almost a case in point,” said the Doctor. “There was supposed
to be no heir, and the estates had gone to the daughter (of course there
was no law of entail to complicate the matter), when all at once starts
up a young man, who had been bred in a public hospital, and yet was
proved beyond dispute to be the Duchess Agostini’s son. She was living,
though her husband was dead, and could not deny it. The proof, indeed,
was so strong that he won his suit, and is now the Duke, and head of one
of the oldest houses in Italy. Brought up in an orphan hospital, and
just as nearly shut out from all inheritance for ever--just as near----”
“But I suppose there was some explanation,” said Edgar, interested in
spite of himself; “mere aversion of a father could not surely go so far
as that?”
“Oh, yes, there was a reason given,” said the Doctor, more and more
confused, “something about the mother--some little speck, you know, on
her character: one must not inquire too closely into those family
stories. But he won his suit, and now he is Duke Agostini--the hospital
boy! You may imagine what a sensation it made in Rome.”
“Something about his mother,” Edgar repeated vaguely, under his breath,
with eyes in which a strange light suddenly sprang up. Then he bit his
lip, and restrained himself. Dr. Somers, watching closely, saw that he
had made an impression much more serious than he intended. He did not,
indeed, intend to make any impression. He meant only, in the wantonness
of fancied power, to make an experiment, to pique Edgar’s curiosity, to
give him, perhaps, a passing thrill of alarm and wonder, such as an
operator might give, half in jest, to curious spectators round an
electric machine; but, unfortunately, the operation had been too
successful, the shock overmuch. The young man said nothing farther, but
sat moody, with the cigar between his fingers, and let the Doctor talk.
Dr. Somers said a great deal more, but with the sense that Edgar was not
listening, and that he might as well have been a hundred miles off for
any companionship there was between them. And though he had in general a
very good opinion of himself, for once in his life the Doctor was
abashed, and felt that he had gone too far. He tried to draw the young
man’s attention to other matters--to local interests--to Lord Newmarch
and his enlightened views. “I may be a Radical myself,” said the
Doctor, “but I do not belong to that school of Enlightened Youth.
Newmarch is very appalling to me; and if you don’t mind, Edgar, you’ll
find he wants to make up to Clare _too_.”
“Too! is there any other?” said Edgar, with a certain languid
haughtiness which was more like the Ardens than anything that had ever
been seen in him before, and which gave Dr. Somers a thrill almost as
sharp and sudden as that he had produced in the young Squire. “Could it
be possible, at this moment, of all others, that his theory was to prove
itself wrong?”
“I should think there were others,” he said, with an attempt at
carelessness. “Flowers like Clare do not grow in every garden, not to
speak of the _dot_ which you and your father endowed her with. I suppose
nothing has been done about that as yet; or have you been so wise as to
take old Fazakerley’s advice?”
“I think I shall go home,” said Edgar abruptly, and he got up, and
lighted his cigar by the Doctor’s candle. “There was something I wanted
to speak to you about, but it has gone out of my head.”
“Nothing about your health, I hope,” said the Doctor anxiously. “You
look quite well----”
“Oh, no, nothing about my health,” he said, with a short laugh, and
went out, leaving Dr. Somers in a state of great discomfort, saying to
himself that he had not meant it, and that he could not have imagined
such a good-tempered careless fellow would have taken anything up so
quickly. “It was nothing,” he said to himself. “I did not even imply
that his circumstances were the same; in short, I did not say a word to
offend--any one; nonsense! Who is Edgar Arden, I wonder, that one should
study his feelings to such an extent? Good heavens, didn’t he insist
upon being told?” Thus the Doctor excused and accused himself, and felt
extremely uncomfortable, and at last went to bed, not feeling able to
drown his remorse either in his seltzer water or his novel. “If Fielding
had done anything as idiotic,” was his comment as he went upstairs, “or
poor Letty--but I, that pretend to some sort of discretion!” His folly
had at least this salutary effect.
Meanwhile Edgar walked home very fast, as if some one were pursuing him.
It was his thoughts which were pursuing him, rushing and driving him on.
The avenue had never looked so stately in the moonlight, nor the woods
so mysteriously sweet. All the soft perfumes of the night were in the
air; the smell of the fresh earth and the dew, the fragrance that
breathed out of here and there an old hawthorn, still covered with
blossom, beginning to brown and fade in the daylight, but still sweet in
the darkness. The front of the house lay in a great shadow made of its
own roof and the big trees behind; but lights were twinkling about, as
they ought to be in a house which expects its master. Was it possible
that Arthur Arden could have turned him out, could have replaced him
there? Could it be that Clare knew such a thing was possible? “Something
about his mother.” Edgar did not himself realise what horror it was
which had thus breathed across him. What could it be about his mother?
Could there be anything about her which gave to any man the right of a
possible insinuation? He did not remember her, and had not even a
portrait of her, but was like her, people said. And therefore his father
had hated him. Edgar’s brain burned as this strange thought whirled and
fluctuated about him; he was its victim, he did not entertain it
voluntarily. His father hated him because he was like her; but yet, was
not she the mother, too, of the beloved Clare?