It will be seen, therefore, that Clarissa was at least a dutiful wife, anxious to give her husband every tribute that gratitude and a deep sense of obligation could suggest. Even Sophia Granger, always on the watch for some sign of weariness or shortcoming, could discover no cause for complaint in her stepmother’s conduct.
Mr. Lovel came back to Mill Cottage in December, much improved and renovated by the Belgian waters or the gaieties of the bright little pleasure place. The sense of having made an end of his difficulties, and being moored in a safe harbour for the rest of his life, may have done much towards giving him a new lease of existence. Whatever the cause may have been, he was certainly an altered man, and his daughter rejoiced in the change. To her his manner was at once affectionate and deferential, as if there had been lurking in his breast some consciousness that she had sacrificed herself for his welfare. She felt this, and felt that her marriage had given her something more than Arden Court, if it had won for her her father’s love. He spent some time at the Court, in deference to her wishes, during those dark winter months; and they fell hack on their old readings, and the evenings seemed gayer and happier for the introduction of this intellectual element, which was not allowed to prevail to such an extent as to overpower the practical Daniel Granger.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXVII.
IN THE SEASON.
In the spring Mr. Granger took his wife and daughter to London, where they spent a couple of months in Clarges-street, and saw a good deal of society in what may be called the upper range of middle-class life — rich merchants and successful professional men living in fine houses at the West-end, enlivened with a sprinkling from the ranks of the baronetage and lesser nobility. In this circle Mr. Granger occupied rather a lofty standing, as the owner of one of the finest estates in Yorkshire, and of a fortune which the common love of the marvellous exalted into something fabulous. He found himself more popular than ever since his marriage, as the husband of one of the prettiest women who had appeared that season. So, during the two months of their London life, there was an almost unbroken succession of gaieties, and Mr. Granger found himself yearning for the repose of Arden Court sometimes, as he waited in a crowded ball-room while his wife and daughter danced their last quadrille. It pleased him that Clarissa should taste this particular pleasure-cup — that she should have every delight she had a right to expect as his wife; but it pleased him not the less when she frankly confessed to him one day that this brilliant round of parties and party-giving had very few charms for her, and that she would be glad to go back to Arden.
In London Clarissa met Lady Laura Armstrong; for the first time since that September afternoon in which she had promised that no arts of George Fairfax’s should move her to listen to him. Lord Calderwood had been dead a year and a half, and my lady was resplendent once more, and giving weekly receptions in Mr. Armstrong’s great house in Portland-place — a corner house, with about a quarter of a mile of drawing-rooms, stretching back into one of the lateral streets. For Mr. and Mrs. Granger she gave a special dinner, with an evening party afterwards; and she took up a good deal of Clarissa’s time by friendly morning calls, and affectionate insistance upon Mrs. Granger’s company in her afternoon drives, and at her daily kettle-drums — drives and kettle-drums from which Miss Granger felt herself more or less excluded.
It was during one of these airings, when they had left the crowd and splendour of the Park, and were driving to Roehampton, that Clarissa heard the name of George Fairfax once more. Until this afternoon, by some strange accident as it seemed, Lady Laura had never mentioned her sister’s lover.
“I suppose you heard that it was all broken off?” she said, rather abruptly, and apropos to nothing particular.
“Broken off, Lady Laura?”
“I mean Geraldine’s engagement. People are so fond of talking about those things; you must have heard, surely, Clary.”
“No, indeed, I have heard nothing.
“That’s very curious. It has been broken off ever so long — soon after poor papa’s death, in fact. But you know what Geraldine is — so reserved — almost impenetrable, as one may say. I knew nothing of what had happened myself till one day — months after the breach had occurred, it seems — when I made some allusion to Geraldine’s marriage, she stopped me, in her cold, proud way, saying, ‘It’s just as well I should tell you that that affair is all off, Laura. Mr. Fairfax and I have wished each other good-bye for ever.’ That’s what I call a crushing blow for a sister, Clarissa. You know how I had set my heart upon that marriage.”
“I am very sorry,” faltered Clarissa. “They had quarrelled, I suppose.”
“Quarrelled! O, dear no; she had not seen him since she left Hale with Frederick and me, and they parted with every appearance of affection. No; there had been some letters between them, that was all. I have never been able to discover the actual cause of their parting. Geraldine refused to answer any questions, in a most arbitrary manner. It is a hard thing, Clarissa; for I know that she loved him.”
“And where is Lady Geraldine now?”
“At Hale, with my children. She has no regular home of her own now, you see, poor girl, and she did not care about another season in London — she has had enough of that kind of thing — so she begged me to let her stay at the Castle, and superintend the governesses, and amuse herself in her own way. Life is full of trouble, Clary!” and here the mistress of Hale Castle, and of some seventy thousand per annum, gave a despondent sigh.
“Have you seen Mr. Fairfax since you came from Germany?” asked Clarissa.
“Yes, I have met him once — some months ago. You may be sure that I was tolerably cool to him. He has been very little in society lately, and has been leading rather a wild life in Paris, I hear. A prudent marriage would have been his redemption; but I daresay it will end in his throwing himself away upon some worthless person.”
It was a relief to Clarissa to hear that George Fairfax was in Paris, though that was very near. But in her ignorance of his whereabouts she had fancied him still nearer, and in all her London festivities had been tormented by a perpetual dread of meeting him. Many times even she had imagined that she saw his face across the crowd, and had been relieved to find it was only a face that bore some faint resemblance to his.
He had kept his word, then, so far as the breaking of his engagement to Geraldine Challoner. He had been more in earnest than Clarissa had believed. She thought that she was sorry for this; but it is doubtful whether the regretful feeling in her heart was really sorrow for Lady Geraldine. She thought of George Fairfax a good deal after this conversation with Lady Laura — alas, when had she ceased to think of him! — and all the splendours and pleasures of her married life seemed to her more than ever worthless. What a hopeless entanglement, what a dismal mistake, her existence was! Had she sold herself for these things — for Arden Court and a town house, and unlimited millinery? No; again and again she told herself she had married Daniel Granger for her father’s sake, and perhaps a little from a desire to keep faith with Lady Laura.
This marriage had seemed to her the only perfect fulfilment of her promise that nothing should induce her to marry George Fairfax. But the sacrifice had been useless, since he had broken his engagement to Geraldine Challoner.
Sophia Granger’s lynx eyes perceived a change in her step mother about this time. Clarissa had never appeared especially enraptured by the gaieties of fashionable London; but then had come upon her of late a languor and weariness of spirit which she tried in vain to disguise by an assumed air of enjoyment. That simulated gaiety deluded her husband, but it could not deceive Miss Granger.
“She’s getting tired of her life already, even here where we have a perpetual round of amusements,” Sophia said to herself. “What will she be when we go back to Yorkshire?”
The time was close at hand for the return to Arden, when the thing which Clarissa had feared came to pass, and the hazard of London life brought her face to face with Georg
e Fairfax.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXVIII.
MR. WOOSTER.
The season was at its height, and the Grangers found every available hour of their existence engaged in visiting and receiving visitors. There were so many people whom Lady Laura insisted upon introducing to her dear Clarissa — there was so much in the way of party-giving that Lady Laura wanted her sweet Mrs. Granger to do. Now it was a morning concert of my lady’s planning, at which weird and wonderful-looking denizens of the Norseland — Poles, Hungarians, Danes, and Swedes — with unkempt hair and fierce flashing eyes, performed upon every variety of native instrument, or sang wild national songs in some strange language — concerts to which Lady Laura brought herds of more or less fashionable people, all of whom were languishing to know “that sweet Mrs. Granger.” My lady had taken pains to advertise her share in the manufacturer’s marriage. Every one belonging to her set knew that the match was her contriving, and that Clarissa had to thank the mistress of Hale Castle for her millionaire husband. She was really proud of her protégée’s success, and was never tired of praising her and “that admirable Granger.”
That admirable Granger endured the accession of party-giving with a very good grace. It pleased him to see his wife admired; it pleased him still more to see her happy; and he was single-minded enough to believe her increased volatility a symptom of increased happiness. Whatever undefined regrets and dim forebodings there might be lurking in his own mind, he had no doubt of his wife’s integrity — no fear of hidden perils in this ordeal of fashionable life.
She would come to love him in time, he said to himself, trusting as blindly in the power of time to work this wonder for him as Clarissa herself had trusted when she set herself to win her father’s affection. He believed this not so much because the thing was probable or feasible, as because he desired it with an intensity of feeling that blinded him to the force of hard facts. He — the man who had never made a false reckoning in the mathematics of business-life — whose whole career was unmarred by a mistake — whose greatest successes had been the result of unrivalled coolness of brain and unerring foresight — he, the hard-headed, far-seeing man of the world — was simple as a child in this matter, which involved the greater hazard of his heart.
But while Clarissa’s husband trusted her with such boundless confidence, Clarissa’s stepdaughter watched her with the vigilant eyes of prejudice, not to say hatred. That a young lady so well brought up as Miss Granger — so thoroughly grounded in Kings and Chronicles — should entertain the vulgar passion of hate, seemed quite out of the question; but so far as a ladylike aversion may go, Miss Granger certainly went in relation to her step-mother. In this she was sustained by that model damsel Hannah Warman, who, not having made much progress in Mrs. Granger’s liking, had discovered that she could not “take to” that lady, and was always ready to dilate upon her shortcomings, whenever her mistress permitted. Sophia was capricious in this, sometimes listening eagerly, at other times suppressing Miss Warman with a high hand.
So Clarissa had, unawares, an enemy within her gates, and could turn neither to the right nor to the left without her motives for so turning becoming the subject of a close and profound scrutiny. It is hard to say what shape Miss Granger’s doubts assumed. If put into the witness-box and subjected to the cross-examination of a popular queen’s-counsel, she would have found it very difficult to give a substance or a form to her suspicions. She could only have argued in a general way, that Mrs. Granger was frivolous, and that any kind of wrong-doing might be expected from so light-minded a person.
It was the beginning of June, and West-end London was glorious with the brief brilliancy of the early summer. All the Mayfair balconies were bright with, flowers, and the Mayfair knockers resounded perpetually under the hand of the archetypal Jeames. The weather was unusually warm; the most perfect weather for garden-parties, every one declared, and there were several of these al fresco assemblies inscribed in Mrs. Granger’s visiting-book: one at Wimbledon; another as far afield as Henley-on-Thames, at a villa whose grounds sloped down to the river.
This Henley party was an affair in which Lady Laura Armstrong was particularly interested. It was given by a bachelor friend of her husband’s, a fabulously rich stockbroker; and it was Lady Laura who had brought the proprietor of the villa to Clarges-street, and who had been instrumental in the getting-up of the fête.
“You must really give us some kind of a party at your Henley place this year, Mr. Wooster,” she said. “There is the regatta now; I have positively not seen the Henley regatta for three years. The Putney business is all very well — supremely delightful, in short, while it lasts — but such a mere lightning flash of excitement. I like a long day’s racing, such as one gets at Henley.”
“Lady Laura ought to be aware that my house is at her disposal all the year round, and that she has only to signify her pleasure to her most devoted slave.”
“O, that’s all very well.” replied my lady. “Of course, I know that if Frederick and I were to come down, you would give us luncheon or dinner, and let us roam about the gardens as long as we liked. But that’s not what I want. I want you to give a party on one of the race days, and invite all the nice people in London.”
“Are there any nasty people on this side of Temple-bar, Lady Laura, before the closing of Parliament? I thought, in the season everybody was nice.”
“You know what I mean, sir. I want the really pleasant people. Half-a-dozen painters or so, and some of the nicest literary men — not the men who write the best books, but the men who talk cleverly; and, of course, a heap of musical people — they are always nice, except to one another. You must have marquees on the lawn for the luncheon — your house is too small for anything more than tea and coffee; and for once let there be no such thing as croquet — that alone will give your party an air of originality. I suppose you had better put yourself entirely into Gunter’s hands for the commissariat, and be sure you tell him you want novelty — no hackneyed ideas; sparkle and originality in everything, from the eggs to the apples. I should ask you to give us a dance in the evening, with coloured lamps, if that were practicable, but there is the coming back to town; and if we carried the business on to a breakfast next morning, some of the people might begin to be tired, and the women would look faded and limp. So I think we had better confine ourselves to a mere garden-party and luncheon, without any dancing,” Lady Laura concluded with a faint sigh.
“Will you send out the invitations, Lady Laura?”
“O, no; I leave all that to you. You really know everybody — or everybody we need care about.”
In this manner Mr. Wooster’s party had been arranged, and to this party the Grangers were bidden. Even the serious Sophia was going; indeed, it is to be observed that this young lady joined in all mundane gaieties, under protest as it were.
“I go out, my dear, but I never enjoy myself,” she would say to a serious friend, as if that were a kind of merit. “Papa wishes me to go, and I have no desire to withdraw myself in any way from Mrs. Granger’s amusements, however little sympathy there may be between us. I endeavour to do my duty, whatever the result may be.”
Mr. Wooster did know a great many people. His abnormal wealth, and a certain amount of cleverness, had been his sole passports to society. Among Burke’s Landed Gentry there was no trace of the Wooster family, nor had Mr. Wooster ever been heard to allude to a grandfather. He had begun stockjobbing in the smallest way, but had at a very early stage of his career developed a remarkable genius for this kind of traffic. Those of his own set who had watched his steady ascent declared him to be a very remarkable man; and the denizens of the West-end world, who knew nothing of stockjobbing or stockbroking, were quite ready to receive him when he came to them laden with the gold of Ophir, and with a reputation, of being something distinguished upon ’Change.
Time had begun to thin Mr. Wooster’s flowing locks before he landed himself safely upon the shores of fashionable li
fe, and Mr. Wooster’s carefully-trained moustache and whiskers had a purplish tinge that looked more like art than nature. He was short and stout, with a florid complexion, sharp black eyes, and a large aquiline nose, and considered himself eminently handsome. He dressed with elaborate splendour—”dressed for two,” as some of his less gorgeous friends were wont to say — and was reputed to spend a small fortune annually in exotics for his buttonhole, and in dress boots.
His chief merits in the estimation of the polite world lay in the possession of a perfectly-appointed town house, the villa at Henley, another villa at Cowes, and a couple of magnificent yachts. He was a perpetual giver of dinners, and spent his existence between the Stock Exchange and the dinner-table, devoting whatever mental force remained to him after his daily traffic to the study of menus, and the grave consideration of wine-lists.
To dine with Wooster was one of the right things to do once or twice in the course of a season; and Wooster’s steam yacht was a pleasant place of rest and haven of safety for any juvenile member of the peerage who had been plunging heavily, and went in fear of the Bankruptcy-court.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 556