which it was impossible to mistake; his father was watching intently for the spring—was it possible he was hoping that a fall would follow? How it was that Edgar got over the fence he never could tell; for to his hopeful, all-believing temper such a sudden glimpse into the darkness was like a paralysing blow. He kept steady on his saddle, and somehow, without any conscious guidance on his part, the horse accomplished the leap; but Edgar turned straight back, and went home with such a sense of misery as he had never experienced before. He was too wretched to understand the calls sent after him—the questions with which he was assailed. He could not even reply to Clare’s wondering inquiries. His father hated him—that was the discovery he had made. To suspect that anybody hated him would have given Edgar a shock; but to know it beyond all doubt, and to feel that it was his father who regarded him with such fierce enmity, made his very heart sink within him. He went away next day, giving no explanation of his desire to do so. Nor did the Squire make any inquiries. It was a mutual relief to them to be free of each other. Before his departure his father informed him that he would henceforward receive a much more liberal allowance—an intimation which Edgar received without thinking what it meant—without caring what sense was in the words. And that was the last he had seen of the Squire. Nobody but himself knew of this incident. It was nothing—an impression—a fancy; but in all Edgar’s life nothing had happened that was so bitter to him. The effect had not lasted, for his mind was essentially elastic, and he was young, and free to amuse himself as he would. Fortunately, the kind of amusements he preferred were innocent ones; for he had no guide, no one to control or restrain him, and not even the shadow of parental authority. His father hated him—a horrible freedom was his inheritance—nobody cared if he were to die the next day—nay, on the contrary, there was some one who would be glad.
This impression, which had been swept out of his mind by years and changes, came back upon him with singular force as all at once his eye fell on the great portrait of old Squire Arden, painted when he was Master of the Hounds, in sporting costume, which hung in the hall. He stopped short before it as he went in with his sister on the first day of his return, and felt a shudder come over him. Perhaps it was the costume and attitude which moved his memory; but there seemed to lurk in his father’s face, as he entered the house of which that father had been unable to deprive him, the same look which once had fallen upon him like a curse. He stopped short and grew pale, in spite of all his attempts to control himself. “Would you think it cruel, Clare,” he said suddenly in his impulsive way, “if I were to ask you to transfer that portrait to some other place? It has a painful effect upon me there.”
“This is your house, Edgar,” answered Clare. On this point her sweetness abandoned her. She knew he had been badly used; but she knew at the same time that her father had been all love and kindness to herself. Therefore, as was natural, Miss Arden took it for granted that somehow it must be Edgar’s fault.
“That is not the question,” he said. “I can understand by my own what your feelings must be on the subject. But it cannot harm him to remove it, and it does harm me to have it stay. If you will make this sacrifice to me, Clare–”
“Edgar, I tell you this is your house,” she said, with the tears rushing to her eyes; and ran in and left him there, in a sudden passion of grief and anger. Her brother, left alone, looked somewhat sadly round him. He was very destitute of those impulses of self-assertion which come so naturally to most young men; on the contrary, his impulse was to yield when the feeling of anyone he loved ran contrary to his own: he was a little sorrowful at Clare’s want of sympathy, but it did not move him to act as master. “What harm can it do me now?” he said, going up and looking closely at the portrait. It came natural to him to reason himself out of his own fancies, and to give place to those of others. “It would be wounding her only to satisfy my caprice,” he added after a while; “and why should I be indulged in everything, I should like to know?” Poor boy! up to this moment he had never been indulged in anything all his life. He stayed a long time in the hall, now walking about it, now standing before the portrait. It haunted him so that he felt obliged to face it, and defy the look; and he could not but think with a sigh what a comfort it would be to get quit of it, to take it down and turn it somewhere with its face to the wall. But then he remembered that though he was the master he was more a stranger in the house than any servant it contained; and what right had he to cross his sister, and go in the face of every tradition, and offend every soul in the place, by taking down that picture, which looked malevolent to nobody but him? “God forgive you!” he said at last, shaking his head at it sorrowfully as he went slowly upstairs. He could not feel himself free or safe so long as it remained there. If anything happened to him—supposing, for instance (this grim idea crossed his mind in spite of himself)—supposing it might ever happen that he should be carried into that hall, wounded or mangled by any accident, would the painted face smile at him, would the eyes gleam with a horrible joy? And it was his father’s face. Edgar shuddered, he could not help it, as he went slowly up the great stairs. As he went up, some one else was coming down, making a gleam of reflection in the still air. It was old Sarah, with her white apron, making a curtsey at every step, and finding that mode of progress difficult. Edgar’s mobile countenance dressed itself all in smiles at the appearance of this old woman. Clare would have thought it strange, but it came natural to her brother; though, perhaps, on the whole, it was Clare, her own special charge and nursling, who was most fond of old Sarah, as, indeed, it became her to be.
“Have you been waiting for us?” he said. “My sister has gone to look for you, I suppose.”
“Not gone to look for me, Mr. Edgar,” said Sarah, petulantly; “run upstairs in one of her tantrums, as I have seen her many a day. You’ll have to keep her a bit in hand, now you’ve come home, Mr. Edgar.”
“I keep her in hand!” cried Edgar, struck with the extreme absurdity of the suggestion; and then he tried hard to look severe, and added—“My dear old Sarah, you must recollect who Miss Arden is, and take care what you say.”
“There’s ne’er a one knows better who she is,” said old Sarah, “she’s my child, and my jewel, and the darlin’ of my heart. But, nevertheless, she’s an Arden, Mr. Edgar. All the Ardenses as ever was has got tempers—except you; and for her own good, the dear, you should keep her a bit in hand; and if you say it was her old nurse told you, as loves her dearly, it wouldn’t do no harm.”
“Am I the only Arden without a temper?” said Edgar, gaily; “it’s odd how I want everything that an Arden ought to have. But my sister is queen at Arden, Sarah; always has been; and most likely always will be.”
“Lord bless you, sir, wait till you get married,” said Sarah, nodding her head again and again, and beaming at the prospect. “Eh! I’d like to live to see that day!”
“It will be a long day first,” said Edgar, with a laugh, meaning nothing but a young man’s half-mocking, half-serious denial of the coming romance of his existence; “though I promise you, Sarah, you shall dance at my wedding—but at Clare’s first, which is the proper arrangement, you know.”
“If he was a good gentleman, Sir, and one as was fond of her, I shouldn’t care how soon it was,” she said. “Eh, my word, but I’ll dance till I dance you all off the floor!”
“But you must not go without something to remind you of your first visit to us,” he said; and he took out his purse from his pocket with the lavish liberality of his disposition. “Look, there is not very much in it. Buy something you like, Sarah, and say to yourself that it is given you by me.”
“No, Mr. Edgar; no, Sir. Oh, good Lord, not a purse full of money, as if that was all I was thinking of! I didn’t come here, not for money, but to see Miss Clare and you.”
“It is because it is your first visit to us,” repeated Edgar, and he gave her a kind nod, and went lightly past to his rooms. All his gloomy thoughts and superstitions had been driven out of his mind by this momentary encounter. His light heart had risen again like a ball of feathers.
