“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?
CHAPTER XVIII.
It was perhaps fortunate for Edgar that he did not see his sister that night. She had waited for him till the return of the groom with the dogcart, and then she had gone upstairs. Probably she had gone with a little irritation against him for delaying his return, Edgar felt; and a momentary impatience of all and everyone of the new circumstances which made his life so different came upon him. What if Dr. Somers’ suggestion had come true, and he had been shut out of the succession? Why, then, this bondage on one side or other, this failure in satisfying one and understanding another, this expenditure of himself for everybody’s pleasure, would not have been. “I should have been brought up to a profession, probably,” he said to himself, “or even a trade;” and for the moment, in his impatience, he almost wished it had been so. But then he looked out upon the park, lying broad in the moonlight, and the long lines of trees which he could see from his open window, and felt that he would be a coward indeed who would give up such an inheritance without an effort. The lands of his fathers. Were they the lands of his fathers? or what did that terrible insinuation mean?
Clare was cloudy, there could be no doubt of it, when she met her brother next morning. She thought he might have come back earlier. “What is Dr. Somers to him?” she said to herself, and concluded, like a true woman, that he must have fallen in love with Alice Pimpernel. “If he were to marry that girl I should certainly keep Old Arden,” she said to herself; for it seemed almost impossible to imagine that, seeing Alice was the last girl in the world who ought to attract him, he should have been able to resist falling in love with her. And thus she came down cloudy, and found Edgar with a face all overcast by the events of the previous night, which confirmed her in all her fears. “Of course, he does not like to speak of her,” Clare said to herself. Poor Alice Pimpernel! who was too frightened for Mr. Arden even to raise her eyes from her plate.
“Had you a pleasant party?” she said, with a half angry sound in her voice.