Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

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Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 535

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon


  “I am looking for a picnic party,” he said. “I discovered the débris of a luncheon yonder, but no human creature visible. Perhaps you can kindly tell me where the strayed revellers are to be found; you are one of them, perhaps?”

  Clarissa looked up at him, blushing furiously, and very much ashamed of herself for the weakness, and then went on with her drawing in a nervous way, as she answered him, —

  “Yes, I am with Lady Laura Armstrong’s party; but I really cannot tell you where to look for them all. They are roaming about in every direction, I believe.”

  “Good gracious me!” cried the gentleman, coming a good deal nearer — stepping hastily across the streamlet, in fact, which had divided him from Clarissa hitherto. “Have I really the pleasure of speaking to Miss Lovel? This is indeed a surprise. I scarcely expected ever to see you again.”

  “Nor I to see you,” Clarissa answered, recovering herself a little by this time, and speaking with her accustomed frankness. “And I have been very anxious to see you again.”

  “Indeed!” cried the gentleman eagerly.

  “In order to explain a mistake I made that night in the railway-carriage, in speaking of Arden Court. I talked of the place as if it had still belonged to papa; I did not know that he had sold it, and fancied I was going home there. It was only when I saw my uncle that I learnt the truth. You must have thought it very strange.”

  “I was just a little mystified, I confess, for I had dined at the Court with Mr. Granger.”

  “Papa had sold the dear old place, and, disliking the idea of writing such unpleasant news, had told me nothing about the sale. It was not wise, of course; but he felt the loss of Arden so keenly, I can scarcely wonder that he could not bring himself to write about it.”

  “It would have been better to have spared you, though,” the unknown answered gravely. “I daresay you were as fond of the old home as ever your father could have been?”

  “I don’t think it would be possible for any one to love Arden better than

  I. But then, of course, a man is always prouder than a woman—”

  “I am not so sure of that,” the stranger muttered parenthetically.

  “ — And papa felt the degradation involved in the loss.”

  “I won’t admit of any degradation in the case. A gentleman is none the less a gentleman for having spent his fortune rather recklessly, and the old blood is no less pure without the old acres. If your father were a wise man, he might be happier now than he has ever been. The loss of a great estate is the loss of a bundle of cares.”

  “I daresay that is very good philosophy,” Clarissa answered, smiling, beguiled from painful thoughts by the lightness of his tone; “but I doubt if it applies to all cases — not to papa’s, certainly.”

  “You were sketching, I see, when I interrupted you. I remember you told me that night of your fondness for art. May I see what you were doing?”

  “It is hardly worth showing you. I was only amusing myself, sketching at random — that ivy straggling along there, or anything that caught my eye.”

  “But that sort of thing indicates so much. I see you have a masterly touch for so young an artist. I won’t say anything hackneyed about so fair a one; for women are showing us nowadays that there are no regions of art closed against them. Well, it is a divine amusement, and a glorious profession.”

  There was a little pause after this, during which Clarissa looked at her watch, and finding it nearly five o’clock, began to put up her pencils and drawing-book.

  “I did not think that you knew Lady Laura Armstrong,” she said; and then blushed for the speech, remembering that, as she knew absolutely nothing about himself or his belongings, the circumstance of her ignorance on this one point was by no means surprising.

  “No; nor did I expect to meet you here,” replied the gentleman. “And yet I might almost have done so, knowing that you lived at Arden. But, you see, it is so long since we met, and I — —”

  “Had naturally forgotten me.”

  “No, I had not forgotten you, Miss Lovel, nor would it have been natural for me to forget you. I am very glad to meet you again under such agreeable auspices. You are going to stay at the Castle a long time, I hope. I am booked for an indefinite visit.”

  “O no, I don’t suppose I shall stay very long. Lady Laura is extremely kind; but this is my first visit, and she must have many friends who have a greater claim upon her hospitality.”

  “Hale Castle is a large place, and I am sure Lady Laura has always room for agreeable guests.”

  “She is very, very kind. You have known her a long time, perhaps?”

  “Yes. I have been intimate with the Challoners ever since I was a boy.

  Lady Laura was always charming; but I think her marriage with Fred

  Armstrong — who worships the ground she walks on — and the possession of Hale

  Castle have made her absolutely perfect.”

  “And you know her sister, Lady Geraldine, of course?”

  “O yes, I know Geraldine.”

  “Do you know Mr. Fairfax, the gentleman to whom she is engaged?”

  “Well, yes; I am supposed to have some knowledge of that individual.”

  Something in his smile, and a certain significance in his tone, let in a sudden light upon Clarissa’s mind.

  “I am afraid I am asking very foolish questions,” she said. “You are Mr.

  Fairfax?”

  “Yes, I am George Fairfax. I forgot that I had omitted to tell you my name that night.”

  “And I had no idea that I was speaking to Mr. Fairfax. You were not expected till quite late this evening.”

  “No; but I found my business in London easier to manage than I had supposed it would be; so, as in duty bound, I came down here directly I found myself free. When I arrived at the Castle, I was told of this picnic, and rode off at once to join the party.”

  “And I am keeping you here, when you ought to be looking for your friends.”

  “There is no hurry. I have done my duty, and am here; that is the grand point. Shall we go and look for them together?”

  “If you like. I daresay we shall be returning to the Castle very soon.”

  They sauntered slowly away, in and out among the trees, towards a grassy glade, where there was more open space for walking, and where the afternoon sun shone warmly on the smooth turf.

  “I hope you get on very well with Geraldine?” Mr. Fairfax said presently.

  It was almost the same phrase Lady Laura had used about her sister.

  “I have seen so little of her yet,” Clarissa answered, rather embarrassed by this inquiry. “I should like to know her very much; but she only arrived yesterday, and we have scarcely spoken half-a-dozen words to each other yet.”

  “You will hardly like her at first, perhaps,” Mr. Fairfax went on, doubtfully. “People who don’t know much of her are apt to fancy her cold and proud; but to those whom she really likes she is all that is charming, and I don’t think she can fail to like you.”

  “You are very kind to say so. I hope she may like me. Do you know, I have been so much interested in Lady Geraldine from the first, before I saw her even — partly, perhaps, because her sister told me about her engagement. You will think that very romantic and silly, I daresay.”

  “Not at all; a young lady is bound to be interested in that kind of thing. And I hope your interest in Lady Geraldine was not lessened when you did see her.”

  “It could scarcely be that. No one could help admiring her.”

  “Yes, she is very handsome, there is no question about that; she has been an acknowledged beauty ever since she came out. I think I can catch a glimpse of her yonder among the trees; I see a white dress and a scarlet shawl. Geraldine always had a penchant for scarlet draperies.”

  “Yes, that is Lady Geraldine.”

  They hastened their steps a little, and came presently to the circle of beeches where they had lunched, and where most of the party were now a
ssembled, preparing for the return journey. Lady Geraldine was sauntering to and fro with Major Mason, listening with a somewhat indifferent air to that gentleman’s discourse.

  She caught sight of her lover the moment he appeared; and Clarissa saw the statuesque face light up with a faint flush of pleasure that brightened it wonderfully. But however pleased she might be, Lady Geraldine Challoner was the last of women to demonstrate her pleasure in her lover’s arrival by any overt act. She received him with the tranquil grace of an empress, who sees only one courtier more approach the steps of her throne. They shook hands placidly, after Mr. Fairfax had shaken hands and talked for two or three minutes with Lady Laura Armstrong, who welcomed him with considerable warmth.

  The major dropped quietly away from Lady Geraldine’s side, and the plighted lovers strolled under the trees for a little, pending the signal for the return.

  “So you know Miss Lovel?” Geraldine said, with an icy air of surprise, as soon as she and George Fairfax were alone.

  “I can hardly say that I know her; our acquaintance is the merest accident,” answered Mr. Fairfax; and then proceeded to relate his railway adventure.

  “How very odd that she should travel alone!”

  “Scarcely so odd, when you remember the fact of her father’s poverty. He could not be supposed to find a maid for his daughter.”

  “But he might be supposed to take some care of her. He ought not to have allowed her to travel alone — at night too.”

  “It was careless and imprudent, no doubt. Happily she came to no harm. She was spared from any encounter with a travelling swell-mobsman, who would have garotted her for the sake of her watch and purse, or an insolent bagman, who would have made himself obnoxiously agreeable on account of her pretty face.”

  “I suppose she has been in the habit of going about the world by herself.

  That accounts for her rather strong-minded air.”

  “Do you find her strong-minded? I should have thought her quite gentle and womanly.”

  “I really know nothing about her; and I must not say anything against her. She is Laura’s last protégée; and you know, when my sister takes any one up, it is always a case of rapture.”

  After this the lovers began to talk about themselves, or rather George Fairfax talked about himself, giving a detailed account of his proceedings since last they had met.

  “I went down to see my uncle,” he said, “the day before yesterday. He is at Lyvedon, and I had a good look at the old house. Really it is the dearest old place in the world, Geraldine, and I should like above all things to live there by-and-by, when the estate is ours. I don’t think we are likely to wait very long. The poor old man is awfully shaky. He was very good to me, dear old boy, and asked all manner of kind questions about you. I think I have quite won his heart by my engagement; he regards it as a pledge of my reform.”

  “I am glad he is pleased,” replied Lady Geraldine, in a tone that was just a shade more gracious than that in which she had spoken of Clarissa.

  The summons to the carriages came almost immediately. Mr. Fairfax conducted his betrothed to her seat in the barouche, and then mounted his horse to ride back to the Castle beside her. He rode by the side of the carriage all the way, indifferent to dust; but there was not much talk between the lovers during that homeward progress, and Clarissa fancied there was a cloud upon Mr. Fairfax’s countenance.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER VII.

  DANGEROUS GROUND.

  Life was very pleasant at Hale Castle. About that one point there could be no shadow of doubt. Clarissa wondered at the brightness of her new existence; began to wonder vaguely by-and-by what it was that made it seem brighter every day. There was the usual round of amusements — dinner-parties, amateur concerts, races, flower-shows, excursions to every point of interest within a day’s drive, a military ball at the garrison-town twenty miles off, perennial croquet, and gossip, and afternoon tea-drinking in arbours or marquees in the gardens, and unlimited flirtation. It was impossible for the most exacting visitor to be dull. There was always something.

  And to Clarissa all these things possessed the charm of freshness. She was puzzled beyond measure by the indifference, real or simulated, of the girls who had seen half-a-dozen London seasons; the frequent declarations that these delights only bored them, that this or that party was a failure. George Fairfax watched her bright face sometimes, interested in spite of himself by her freshness.

  “What a delicious thing youth is!” he said to himself. “Even if that girl were less completely lovely than she is, she would still be most charming. If Geraldine were only like that — only fresh and candid and pure, and susceptible to every new emotion! But there is an impassable gulf of ten years between them. Geraldine is quite as handsome — in her own particular style — and she talks much better than Clarissa Lovel, and is more clever, no doubt; and yet there are some men who would be bewitched by that girl before they knew where they were.”

  Very often after this Mr. Fairfax fell a-musing upon those apocryphal men who might be subjugated by the charms of Miss Lovel.

  When did he awaken to the fatal truth that those charms were exercising a most potent influence upon his own mind? When did he open his eyes for the first time to behold his danger?

  Not yet. He was really attached to Geraldine Challoner. Her society had been a kind of habit with him for several years of his life. She had been more admired than any woman he knew, and it was, in some sort, a triumph to have won her. That he never would have won her but for his brother’s death he knew very well, and accepted the fact as a matter of course; a mere necessity of the world in which they lived, not as evidence of a mercenary spirit in the lady. He knew that no woman could better discharge the duties of an elevated station, or win him more social renown. To marry Geraldine Challoner was to secure for his house the stamp of fashion, for every detail of his domestic life a warrant of good taste. She had a kind of power over him too, an influence begun long ago, which had never yet been oppressive to him. And he took these things for love. He had been in love with other women during his long alliance with Lady Geraldine, and had shown more ardour in the pursuit of other flames than he had ever evinced in his courtship of her; but these more passionate attachments had come, for the most part, to a sorry end; and now he told himself that Geraldine suited him better than any other woman in the world.

  “I have outgrown all foolish notions,” he said to himself, believing that the capacity was dead within him for that blind unreasoning passion which poets of the Byronic school have made of love. “What I want is a wife; a wife of my own rank, or a little above me in rank; a wife who will be true and loyal to me, who knows the world well enough to forgive my antecedents, and to be utterly silent about them, and who will help me to make a position for myself in the future. A man must be something in this world. It is a hard thing that one cannot live one’s own life; but it seems inevitable somehow.”

  His mother had helped not a little to the bringing about of this engagement. She knew that her son’s bachelor life had been at best a wild one; not so bad as it was supposed to be, of course, since nothing in this world ever is so bad as the rest of the world supposes it; and she was very anxious to see him safely moored in the sheltered harbour of matrimony. She was a proud woman, and she was pleased that her son should have an earl’s daughter for his wife; and beyond this there was the fact that she liked Lady Geraldine. The girl who had been too proud to let the man she loved divine the depth of her feeling, had not been too proud to exhibit her fondness for his mother. There had grown up a warm friendship between these two women; and Mrs. Fairfax’s influence had done much, almost unknown to her son, to bring about this result of his chronic flirtation with Geraldine Challoner.

  Just at present he was very well satisfied with the fact of his engagement, believing that he had taken the best possible means for securing his future happiness; an equable, quiet sort of happiness, of course — he was nearly thirty,
and had outlived the possibility of anything more than that. It would have bored him to suppose that Geraldine expected more from him than this tranquil kind of worship. Perhaps the lady understood this, and schooled herself to a colder tone than was even natural to her, rather than be supposed for one moment to be the more deeply attached of the two.

  Thus it happened that Mr. Fairfax was not severely taxed in his capacity of plighted lover. However exacting Lady Geraldine may have been by nature, she was too proud to demand more exclusive attention than her betrothed spontaneously rendered; indeed, she took pains to let him perceive that he was still in full enjoyment of all his old bachelor liberty. So the days drifted by very pleasantly, and George Fairfax found himself in Clarissa Lovel’s society perhaps a little oftener than was well for either of those two.

  He was very kind to her; he seemed to understand her better than other people, she thought; and his companionship was more to her than that of any one else — a most delightful relief after Captain Westleigh’s incessant frivolity, or Mr. Halkin’s solemn small-talk. In comparison with these men, he appeared to such wonderful advantage. Her nature expanded in his society, and she could talk to him as she talked to no one else.

  He used to wonder at her eloquence sometimes, as the beautiful face glowed, and the dark hazel eyes brightened; he wondered not a little also at the extent of her reading, which had been wide and varied during that quiet winter and spring-time at Mill Cottage.

  “What a learned lady you are!” he said, smiling at her enthusiasm one day, when they had been talking of Italy and Dante; “your close knowledge of the poet puts my poor smattering to shame. Happily, an idler and a worldling like myself is not supposed to know much. I was never patient enough to be a profound reader; and if I cannot tear the heart out of a book, I am apt to throw it aside in disgust. But you must have read a great deal; and yet when we met, less than a year ago, you confessed to being only a schoolgirl fresh from grinding away at Corneille and Racine.”

 

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