“I shall have to go back to the time when the late Squire was married,” said Edgar. “I beg you to wait just for a few minutes and hear my story, before you ask for any explanations. It has been commonly supposed, I believe, that the reason for the treatment I received during my childhood and youth, was that Squire Arden had been led to doubt whether I was his son, and to think my mother—I mean Mrs. Arden—unfaithful to him. This was a great slander and calumny, gentlemen. The reason Squire Arden was unkind to me was that he knew very well I was neither his son nor Mrs. Arden’s, but only an adopted child.”
There was a murmur and movement among the guests. Arthur Arden rose up in his bewilderment, and remained standing, staring at the man who had thus declared himself to be no Arden; and Mr. Fazakerly cried out loudly, “Nonsense; no! no! no! I know a great deal better. The boy’s brain is turned. Don’t say another word.”
“I asked you to hear me out,” said Edgar, whose colour and spirit were rising. “I told you I should have to go back to the time when Squire Arden married. He married a lady in very delicate health—or else she fell into bad health after their marriage. Five years afterwards the doctors told him that he had no chance whatever of having any children. His wife was too ill for that; but not ill enough to die. She was likely to live, indeed, as long as any one else, but never to give him an heir. He hated, I can’t tell why, his next of kin. I am not here to excuse him, but I believe there were excuses, for that—and after some hesitation he formed the plan of adopting a child, giving it out to be his own, and born abroad. The manner in which he carried out this plan is to be found in the packet in Mr. Fazakerly’s hands; and I am the boy whom he adopted. I can’t quite tell you,” Edgar continued, with the faint smile which had so often during three days past quivered about his lips, “who I am, but I am not an Arden. I am an impostor; and my cousin—I beg his pardon—Mr. Arthur Arden, is the proprietor of this place and all that is in it. He will allow me, I am sure, to retain his place for the moment, simply to make all clear.”
“To make all clear!” gasped Arthur. Clear! as if everything in heaven and earth was not confused by this extraordinary revelation, or could ever be made clear again.
“He must be mad,” said Mr. Fazakerly, loudly. And yet there went a thrill round the table—a feeling which nobody could resist—that every word he said was true.
“I have not sought any further,” said Edgar. “These letters have contented me, which disclose the whole transaction; but everybody knows as well as I do the after particulars. How Mr. Arden slighted me persistently and continuously—and yet how, without losing a moment when I came of age, he made use of me to provide for my—for Miss Arden. The fact that Old Arden was settled upon her, away from me, is of itself a corroborating evidence. Everything supports my story when you come to think of it. It makes the past clear for the first time.”
And then there was a pause, and they all looked at each other with blank astonishment and dismay. At least Mr. Fazakerly looked at everybody, while the others met his eye with appealing looks, asking him, as it were, to interfere. “It cannot be true—it is impossible it should be true,” they murmured, in their consternation. But it was Clare who was the first to speak.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Clare rose up instinctively, feeling the solemnity of the occasion to be such that she could not meet it otherwise. She was paler than ever, if that was possible—marble white—with great blue eyes, pathetically fixed upon the little audience which she addressed. She put one hand back feebly, and rested it on Edgar’s shoulder to support herself. “I want to speak first,” she said. “There is nobody so much concerned as me. It was I who found those papers, as my brother says. I found them, where I had no right to have looked, in an old bureau which did not belong to me, which I was looking through for levity and curiosity, and because I had nothing else to do. It is my fault, and it is I who will suffer the most. But what I want to tell you is, that I don’t believe them. How could any one believe them? I was brought up to love my father, and if they are true my father was a—was a—— I cannot say the word. Edgar asks me to give up everything I have in life when he asks me to believe in these letters. Oh, all of you, who are our old friends! you knew papa. Was he such a man as that? Had he no honour, no justice, no sense of right and wrong in him? You know it would be wicked to say so. Then these papers are not true.”
“And I know they are not true in other ways,” cried Clare, flushing wildly as she went on. “If Edgar was not my brother, do you think I could have felt for him as I do? I should have hated him, had he been an impostor, as he says. Oh, he is no impostor! He is not like the rest of us—not like us in the face—but what does that matter? He is a thousand times better than any of us. I was not brought up with him to get into any habit of liking him, and yet I love him with all my heart. Could that be anything but nature? If he were not my true brother, I would have hated him. And, on the contrary, I love him, and trust him, and believe in him. Say anything you please—make out what you please from these horrible letters, or any other lie against him; but I shall still feel that he is my own brother—my dearest brother—in my heart!”