“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——”