It was the last week in August when Lady Geraldine went up to London, and George Fairfax hurried northward to his Friend’s aerie. The trousseau had been put in hand a day or two after the final settlement of affairs, and the post had carried voluminous letters of instruction from Lady Laura to the milliners, and had brought back little parcels containing snippings of dainty fabrics, scraps of laces, and morsels of delicate silk, in order that colours and materials might be selected by the bride. Everything was in progress, and Lady Geraldine was only wanted for the adjustment of those more important details which required personal supervision.
If Clarissa Lovel could have escaped from all this pleasant bustle and confusion, from the perpetual consultations and discussions which Lady Laura held with all her favourites upon the subject of the coming marriage — if she could by any means have avoided all these, and above all her honourable office of bridesmaid — she would most gladly have done so. A sudden yearning for the perfect peace, the calm eventless days of her old life at Mill Cottage, had taken possession of her. In a moment, as if by some magical change, the glory and delight of that brilliant existence at the Castle seemed to have vanished away. There were the same pleasures, the same people; but the very atmosphere was different, and she began to feel like those other girls whose dulness of soul she had wondered at a little while ago.
“I suppose I enjoyed myself too much when first I came here,” she thought, perplexed by this change in herself. “I gave myself up too entirely to the novelty of this gay life, and have used up my capacity for enjoyment, almost like those girls who have gone through half-a-dozen London seasons.”
When Lady Geraldine and George Fairfax were gone, it seemed to Clarissa that the Castle had a vacant air without them. The play still went on, but the chief actors had vanished from the scene. Miss Lovel had allowed herself to feel an almost morbid interest in Mr. Fairfax’s betrothed. She had watched Lady Geraldine from day to day, half unconsciously, almost in spite of herself, wondering whether she really loved her future husband, or whether this alliance were only the dreary simulacrum she had read of in fashionable novels — a marriage of convenience. Lady Laura certainly declared that her sister was much attached to Mr. Fairfax; but then, in an artificial world, where such a mode of marrying and giving in marriage obtained, it would obviously be the business of the bride’s relatives to affect a warm belief in her affection for the chosen victim. In all her watching Clarissa had never surprised one outward sign of Geraldine Challoner’s love. It was very difficult for a warm-hearted impulsive girl to believe in the possibility of any depth of feeling beneath that coldly placid manner. Nor did she perceive in Mr. Fairfax himself many of those evidences of affection which she would have expected from a man in his position. It was quite true that as the time of his marriage drew near he devoted himself more and more exclusively to his betrothed; but Clarissa could not help fancying, among her many fancies about these two people, that there was something formal and ceremonial in his devotion; that he had, at the best, something of the air of a man who was doing his duty. Yet it would have seemed absurd to doubt the reality of his attachment to Lady Geraldine, or to fear the result of an engagement that had grown out of a friendship which had lasted for years. The chorus of friends at Hale Castle were never tired of dwelling upon this fact, and declaring what a beautiful and perfect arrangement such a marriage was. It was only Lizzie Fermor who, in moments of confidential converse with Clarissa, was apt to elevate her expressive eyebrows and impertinent little nose, and to make disrespectful comments upon the subject of Lady Geraldine’s engagement — remarks which Miss Lovel felt it in some manner her duty to parry, by a warm defence of her friend’s sister.
“You are such a partisan, Clarissa,” Miss Fermor would exclaim impatiently; “but take my word for it, that woman only marries George Fairfax because she feels she has come to the end of her chances, and that this is about the last opportunity she may have of making a decent marriage.”
The engaged couple were to be absent only a week — that was a settled point; for on the very day after that arranged for their return there was to be a ball at Hale Castle — the first real ball of the season — an event which would of course lose half its glory if Lady Geraldine and her lover were missing. So Laura Armstrong had been most emphatic in her parting charge to George Fairfax.
“Remember, George, however fascinating your bachelor friends may be — and of course we know that nothing we have to offer you in a civilized way can be so delightful as roughing it in a Highland bothy (bothy is what you call your cottage, isn’t it?) with a tribe of wild sportsmen — you are to be back in time for my ball on the twenty-fifth. I shall never forgive you, if you fail me.”
“My dear Lady Laura, I would perish in the struggle to be up to time, rather than be such a caitiff. I would do the journey on foot, like Jeannie Deans, rather than incur the odium of disappointing so fair a hostess.”
And upon this Mr. Fairfax departed, with a gayer aspect than he had worn of late, almost as if it had been a relief to him to get away from Hale Castle.
Lady Laura had a new set of visitors coming, and was full of the business involved in their reception. She was not a person who left every arrangement to servants, numerous and skilful as her staff was. She liked to have a finger in every pie, and it was one of her boasts that no department of the household was without her supervision. She would stop in the middle of a page of Tasso to discuss the day’s bill of fare with her cook; and that functionary had enough to do to gratify my lady’s eagerness for originality and distinction even in the details of her dinner-table.
“My good Volavent,” she would say, tossing the poor man’s list aside, with a despairing shrug of her shoulders, “all these entrees are as old as the hills. I am sure Adam must have had stewed pigeons with green peas, and chicken à la Marengo — they are the very ABC of cookery. Do, pray, strike out something a little newer. Let me see; I copied the menu of a dinner at St. Petersburg from ‘Count Cralonzki’s Diary of his Own Times,’ the other day, on purpose to show you. There really are some ideas in it. Do look it over, Volavent, and see if it will inspire you. We must try to rise above the level of a West-end hotel.”
In the same manner did my lady supervise the gardens, to the affliction of the chief official and his dozen or so of underlings. To have the first peaches and the last grapes in the county of York, to decorate her table with the latest marvel in pitcher plants and rare butterfly-shaped orchids, was Lady Laura’s ambition; to astonish morning visitors with new effects in the garden her unceasing desire. Nor within doors was her influence less actively exercised. Drawing-rooms and boudoirs, morning-rooms and bedchambers, were always undergoing some improving touch, some graceful embellishment, inspired by that changeful fancy. When new visitors were expected at the Castle, Lady Laura flitted about their rooms, inspecting every arrangement, and thinking of the smallest minutiae. She would even look into the rooms prepared for the servants on these occasions, to be sure that nothing was wanting for their comfort. She liked the very maids and valets to go away and declare there was no place so pleasant as Hale Castle. Perhaps when people had been to her two or three times, she was apt to grow a little more careless upon these points. To dazzle and astonish was her chief delight, and of course it is somewhat difficult to dazzle old friends.
In the two days after Geraldine Challoner’s departure Lady Laura was in her gayest mood. She had a delightful air of mystery in her converse with Clarissa; would stop suddenly sometimes in the midst of her discourse to kiss the girl, and would contemplate her for a few moments with her sweetest smile.
“My dear Lady Laura, what pleasant subject are you thinking about?” Clarissa asked wonderingly; “I am sure there is something. You have such a mysterious air to-day, and one would suppose by your manner that I must be concerned in this mystery.”
“And suppose you were, Clary — suppose I were plotting for your happiness? But no; there is really nothing; you must not ta
ke such silly fancies into your head. You know how much I love you, Clary — as much as if you were a younger sister of my own; and there is nothing I would not do to secure your happiness.”
Clarissa shook her head sadly.
“My dear Lady Laura, good and generous as you are, it is not in your power to do that,” she said, “unless you could make my father love me, or bring my brother happily home.”
“Or give you back Arden Court?” suggested Lady Laura, smiling.
“Ah, that is the wildest dream of all! But I would not even ask Providence for that. I would be content, if my father loved me; if we were only a happy united family.”
“Don’t you think your father would be a changed man, if he could get back his old home somehow? The loss of that must have soured him a good deal.”
“I don’t know about that. Yes, of course that loss does weigh upon his mind; but even when we were almost children he did not seem to care much for my brother Austin or me. He was not like other fathers.”
“His money troubles may have oppressed him even then. The loss of Arden
Court might have been a foreseen calamity.”
“Yes, it may have been so. But there is no use in thinking of that. Even if papa were rich enough to buy it, Mr. Granger would never sell the Court.”
“Sell it!” repeated Lady Laura, meditatively; “well, perhaps not. One could hardly expect him to do that — a place for which he has done so much. But one never knows what may happen; I have really seen such wonderful changes come to pass among friends and acquaintances of mine, that scarcely anything would astonish me — no, Clary, not if I were to see you mistress of Arden Court.”
And then Lady Laura kissed her protégée once more with effusion, and anon dipped her brush in the carmine, and went on with the manipulation of a florid initial in her Missal — a fat gothic M, interlaced with ivy-leaves and holly.
“You haven’t asked me who the people are that I am expecting this afternoon,” she said presently, with a careless air.
“My dear Lady Laura, if you were to tell me their names, I don’t suppose I should be any wiser than I am now. I know so few people.”
“But you do know these — or at least you know all about them. My arrivals to-day are Mr. and Miss Granger.”
Clarissa gave a faint sigh, and bent a little lower over her work.
“Well, child, are you not surprised? have you nothing to say?” cried Lady
Laura, rather impatiently.
“I — I daresay they are very nice people,” Clarissa answered, nervously. “But the truth is — I know you must despise me for such folly — I cannot help associating them with our loss, and I have a kind of involuntary dislike of them. I have never so much as seen them, you know — not even at church; for they go to the gothic chapel which Mr. Granger has built in his model village, and never come to our dear little church at Arden; and it is very childish and absurd of me, no doubt, but I don’t think I ever could like them.”
“It is very absurd of you, Clary,” returned my lady; “and if I could be angry with you for anything, it certainly would be for this unjust prejudice against people I want you to like. Think what a nice companion Miss Granger would be for you when you are at home — so near a neighbour, and really a very superior girl.”
“I don’t want a companion; I am used to being alone.”
“Well, well, when you come to know her, you will like her very much, I daresay, in spite of yourself; that will be my triumph. I am bent upon bringing about friendly relation, between your father and Mr. Granger.”
“You will never do that, Lady Laura.”
“I don’t know. I have a profound faith in my own ideas.”
* * * * *
CHAPTER XI.
DANIEL GRANGER.
After luncheon that day, Clarissa lost sight of Lady Laura. The Castle seemed particularly quiet on this afternoon. Nearly every one was out of doors playing croquet; but Clarissa had begun to find croquet rather a wearisome business of late, and had excused herself on the plea of letters to write. She had not begun her letter-writing yet, however, but was wandering about the house in a purposeless way — now standing still for a quarter of an hour at a time, looking out of a window, without being in the least degree conscious of the landscape she was looking at, and then pacing slowly up and down the long picture gallery with a sense of relief in being alone.
At last she roused herself from this absent dreamy state.
“I am too idle to write this afternoon,” she thought. “I’ll go to the library and get a book.”
The Hale library was Clarissa’s delight. It was a noble collection gathered by dead-and-gone owners of the Castle, and filled up with all the most famous modern works at the bidding of Mr. Armstrong, who gave his bookseller a standing order to supply everything that was proper, and rarely for his own individual amusement or instruction had recourse to any shelf but one which contained neat editions of the complete works of the Druid and Mr. Apperley, the Life of Assheton Smith, and all the volumes of the original Sporting Magazine bound in crimson russia. These, with Ruff’s Guide, the Racing Calendar, and a few volumes on farriery, supplied Mr. Armstrong’s literary necessities. But to Clarissa, for whom books were at once the pleasure and consolation of life, this library seemed a treasure-house of inexhaustible delights. Her father’s collection was of the choicest, but limited. Here she found everything she had ever heard of, and a whole world of literature she had never dreamed of. She was not by any means a pedant or a blue-stocking, and it was naturally amongst the books of a lighter class she found the chief attraction; but she was better read than most girls of her age, and better able to enjoy solid reading.
To-day she was out of spirits, and came to the library for some relief from those vaguely painful thoughts that had oppressed her lately. The room was so little affected by my lady’s butterfly guests that she made sure of having it all to herself this afternoon, when the voices and laughter of the croquet-players, floating in at the open windows, told her that the sport was still at its height.
She went into the room, and stopped suddenly a few paces from the doorway. A gentleman was standing before the wide empty fireplace, where there was a great dog-stove of ironwork and brass which consumed about half a ton of coal a day in winter; a tall, ponderous-looking man, with his hands behind him, glancing downward with cold gray eyes, but not in the least degree inclining his stately head to listen to Lady Laura Armstrong, who was seated on a sofa near him, fanning herself and prattling gaily after her usual vivacious manner.
Clarissa started and drew back at sight of this tall stranger.
“Mr. Granger,” she thought, and tried to make her escape without being seen.
The attempt was a failure. Lady Laura called to her.
“Who is that in a white dress? Miss Lovel, I am sure. — Come here,
Clary — what are you running away for? I want to introduce my friend Mr.
Granger to you. — Mr. Granger, this is Miss Lovel, the Miss Lovel whose
birthplace fortune has given to you.”
Mr. Granger bowed rather stiffly, and with the air of a man to whom a bow was a matter of business.
“I regret,” he said, “to have robbed Miss Lovel of a home to which she was attached. I regret still more that she will not avail herself of my desire to consider the park and grounds entirely at her disposal on all occasions. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see her use the place as if it were her own.”
“And nothing could be kinder than such a wish on your part.” exclaimed my lady approvingly.
Clarissa lifted her eyes rather shyly to the rich man’s face. He was not a connoisseur in feminine loveliness, but they struck him at once as very fine eyes. He was a connoisseur in pictures, and no mean judge of them, and those brilliant hazel eyes of Clarissa’s reminded him of a portrait by Velasquez, of which he was particularly proud.
“You are very kind,” she murmured; “but — but there a
re some associations too painful to bear. The park would remind me so bitterly of all I have lost since I was a child.”
She was thinking of her brother, and his disgrace — or misfortune; she did not even know which of these two it was that had robbed her of him. Mr. Granger looked at her wonderingly. Her words and manner seemed to betray a deeper feeling than he could have supposed involved in the loss of an estate. He was not a man of sentiment himself, and had gone through life affected only by its sternest realities. There was something rather too Rosa-Matildaish for his taste in this faltered speech of Clarissa’s; but he thought her a very pretty girl nevertheless, and was inclined to look somewhat indulgently upon a weakness he would have condemned without compunction in his daughter. Mr. Granger was a man who prided himself upon his strength of mind, and he had a very poor idea of the exclusive recluse whose early extravagances had made him master of Arden Court. He had not seen Mr. Lovel half-a-dozen times in his life, for all business between those two that could be transacted by their respective lawyers had been so transacted; but what he had seen of that pale careworn face, that fragile figure, and somewhat irritable manner, had led the ponderous, strong-minded Daniel Granger to consider Marmaduke Lovel a very poor creature.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 539