“Sir,
“It is deeply against my will that I address you, so long after all communication has ended between us; and it is possible that you may not remember even the new name with which I sign this. By a singular and unhappy chance, facts in your past life, affecting the honour and credit of the family, have been brought to my knowledge, of all people in the world. If I could have avoided the confidence, I should have done so; but it was out of my power. When I say that these facts concern a person called Lockwood (or so called, at least, before her pretended marriage), you will, I have no doubt, understand what I mean. Will you meet me, at any place you may choose to appoint, for the purpose of discussing this most momentous and fatal business? I have examined it minutely, with the help of the best legal authority, from whom the real names of the parties have been concealed, and I cannot hold out to you any hope that it will be easily arranged. In order, however, to save it from being thrown at once into professional hands, and exposed to the public, will you communicate with me, or appoint a time and place to meet me? I entreat you to do this, for the sake of your children and family. I cannot trust myself to appeal to any other sacred claim upon you. For God’s sake, let me see you, and tell me if you have any plea to raise!
“Edgar Earnshaw.”
He felt that the outburst at the end was injudicious, but could not restrain the ebullition of feeling. If he could but be allowed to manage it quietly, to have her misery broken to Clare without any interposition of the world’s scorn or pity. She was the one utterly guiltless, but it was she who would be most exposed to animadversion; he felt this, with his heart bleeding for his sister. If he had but had the privilege of a brother—if he could have gone to her, and drawn her gently away, and provided home and sympathy for her, before the blow had fallen! But neither he nor anyone could do this, for Clare was not the kind of being to make close friends. She reserved her love for the few who belonged to her, and had little or none to expend on strangers. Did she still think of him as one belonging to her, or was his recollection altogether eclipsed, blotted out from her mind? He began half a dozen letters to Clare herself, asking if she still thought of him, if she would allow him to remember that he was once her brother, with a humility which he could not have shown had she been as happy and prosperous as all the world believed her to be. But after he had written these letters, one after another, retouching a phrase here, and an epithet there, which was too weak or too strong for his excited fancy, and lingering over her name with tears in his eyes, he destroyed them all. Until he heard from her husband, he did not feel that he could venture to write to his sister. His sister!—his poor, forlorn, ruined, solitary sister, rich as she was, and surrounded by all things advantageous! a wife, and yet no wife; the mother of children whose birth would be their shame! Edgar rose up from where he was writing in the intolerable pang of this thought—he could not keep still while it flashed through his mind. Clara, the proudest, the purest, the most fastidious of women—how could she bear it? He said to himself that it was impossible—impossible—that she must die of it! There was no way of escape for her. It would kill her, and his was the hand which had to give the blow.
In this condition, with such thoughts running over in his vexed brain, to go back to the shop, and find poor Mr. Tottenham wrestling among the difficulties which, poor man, were overwhelming him, with dark lines of care under his eyes, and his face haggard with anxiety—imagine, dear reader, what it was! He could have laughed at the petty trouble; yet no one could laugh at the pained face, the kind heart wounded, the manifest and quite overwhelming trouble of the philanthropist.
“I don’t even know yet whether they will keep to their engagements; and we are all at sixes and sevens, and the company will begin to arrive in an hour or two!” cried poor Mr. Tottenham. Edgar’s anxieties were so much more engrossing and terrible that to have a share in these small ones did him good; and he was so indifferent that he calmed everybody, brought the unruly performers back to their senses, and thrust all the arrangements on by the sheer carelessness he felt as to whether they were ready or not. “Who cares about your play?” he said to Watson, who came to pour out his grievances. “Do you think the Duchess of Middlemarch is so anxious to hear you? They will enjoy themselves a great deal better chatting to each other.”
This brought Mr. Watson and his troupe to their senses, as all Mr. Tottenham’s agitated remonstrances had not brought them. Edgar did not care to be in the way of the fine people when they arrived. He got a kind word from Lady Mary, who whispered to him, “How ill you are looking! You must tell us what it is, and let us help you;” for this kind woman found it hard to realise that there were things in which the support of herself and her husband would be but little efficacious; and he had approached Lady Augusta, as has been recorded, with some wistful, hopeless intention of recommending Clare to her, in case of anything that might happen. But Lady Augusta had grown so pale at the sight of him, and had thrown so many uneasy glances round her, that Edgar withdrew, with his heart somewhat heavy, feeling his burden rather more than he could conveniently bear. He had gone and hid himself in the library, trying to read, and hearing far off the din of applause—the distant sound of voices. The noise of the visitors’ feet approaching had driven him from that refuge, when Mr. Tottenham, in high triumph, led his guests through his huge establishment. Edgar, dislodged, and not caring to put himself in the way of further discouragement, chose this moment to give his message to Phil, and strayed away from sound and light into the retired passages, when that happened to him in his time of extremity which it is now my business to record.
CHAPTER XII.
A New Event.
“Have you—forgotten me—then?”
“Forgotten you!” cried Edgar.