The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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Mr. Granger did not seem interested in the rather abstract question of
Clarissa's possible likeness to Madame Recamier.

"She is certainly very pretty," he repeated in a meditative manner; and
stared so long and vacantly at a fricandeau which a footman was just
offering him, that any less well-trained attendant must have left him in
embarrassment.

The next few days were enlivened by a good deal of talk about the ball, in
which event Miss Granger did not seem to take a very keen interest.

"I go to balls, of course," she said; "one is obliged to do so: for it
would seem so ungracious to refuse one's friends' invitations; but I really
do not care for them. They are all alike, and the rooms are always hot."

"I don't think you will be able to say that here," replied Miss Fermor.
"Lady Laura's arrangements are always admirable; and there is to be an
impromptu conservatory under canvas the whole length of the terrace, in
front of the grand saloon where we are to dance, so that the six windows
can be open all the evening."

"Then I daresay it will be a cold night," said Miss Granger, who was not
prone to admire other people's cleverness. "I generally find that it is so,
when people take special precautions against heat."

Clarissa naturally found herself thrown a good deal into Sophia Granger's
society; but though they worked, and drove, and walked together, and played
croquet, and acted in the same charades, it is doubtful whether there was
really much more sympathy between these two than between Clarissa and Lady
Geraldine. There was perhaps less; for Clarissa Lovel had been interested
in Geraldine Challoner, and she was not in the faintest degree interested
in Miss Granger. The cold and shining surface of that young lady's
character emitted no galvanic spark. It was impossible to deny that she was
wise and accomplished; that she did everything well that she attempted;
that, although obviously conscious of her own supreme advantages as the
heiress to a great fortune, she was benignly indulgent to the less blessed
among her sex,--it was impossible to deny all this; and yet it was not any
more easy to get on with Sophia Granger than with Lady Geraldine.

One day, after luncheon, when a bevy of girls were grouped round the piano
in the billiard-room, Lizzie Fermor--who indulged in the wildest latitude
of discourse--was audacious enough to ask Miss Granger how she would like
her father to marry again.

The faultless Sophia elevated her well-marked eyebrows with a look of
astonishment that ought to have frozen Miss Fermor. The eyebrows were as
hard and as neatly pencilled as the shading in Miss Granger's landscapes.

"Marry again!" she repeated, "papa!--if you knew him better, Miss Fermor,
you would never speculate upon such a thing. Papa will never marry again."

"Has he promised you that?" asked the irrepressible Lizzie.

"I do not require any promise from him. I know him too well to have the
slightest doubt upon the subject. Papa might have married brilliantly,
again and again, since I was a little thing." (It was rather difficult to
fancy Miss Granger a "little thing" in any stage of her existence.) "But
nothing has ever been more remote from his ideas than a second marriage. I
have heard people regret it."

"_You_ have not regretted it, of course."

"I hope I know my duty too well, to wish to stand between papa and his
happiness. If it had been for his happiness to marry--a person of a
suitable age and position, of course--I should not have considered my own
feelings in the matter."

"Well, I suppose not," replied Lizzie, rather doubtfully; "still it is nice
to have one's father all to oneself--to say nothing of being an heiress.
And the worst of the business is, that when a widower of your papa's age
does take it into his head to marry, he is apt to fall in love with some
chit of a girl."

Miss Granger stared at the speaker with a gaze as stony as Antigone herself
could have turned upon any impious jester who had hinted that Oedipus, in
his blindness and banishment, was groping for some frivolous successor to
Jocasta.

"My father in love with a girl!" she exclaimed. "What a very false idea you
must have formed of his character, Miss Fermor, when you can suggest such
an utter absurdity!"

"But, you see, I wasn't speaking of Mr. Granger, only of widowers in
general. I have seen several marriages of that kind--men of forty or fifty
throwing themselves away, I suppose one ought to say, upon girls scarcely
out of their teens. In some cases the marriage seems to turn out well
enough; but of course one does sometimes hear of things not going on quite
happily."

Miss Granger was grave and meditative after this--perhaps half disposed to
suspect Elizabeth Fermor of some lurking design on her father. She had
been seated at the piano during this conversation, and now resumed her
playing--executing a sonata of Beethoven's with faultless precision and the
highest form of taught expression; so much emphasis upon each note--careful
_rallentando_ here, a gradual _crescendo_ there; nothing careless or
slapdash from the first bar to the last. She would play the same piece a
hundred times without varying the performance by a hair's-breadth. Nor did
she affect anything but classical music. She was one of those young ladies
who, when asked for a waltz or a polka, freeze the impudent demander by
replying that they play no dance music--nothing more frivolous than Mozart.

The day for the ball came, but there was no George Fairfax. Lady Geraldine
had arrived at the Castle on the evening before the festival, bringing an
excellent account of her father's health. He had been cheered by her visit,
and was altogether so much improved, that his doctors would have given him
permission to come down to Yorkshire for his daughter's wedding. It was
only his own valetudinarian habits and extreme dread of fatigue which had
prevented Lady Geraldine bringing him down in triumph.

Lady Laura was loudly indignant at Mr. Fairfax's non-appearance; and for
the first time Clarissa heard Lady Geraldine defend her lover with some
natural and womanly air of proprietorship.

"After pledging his word to me as he did!" exclaimed my lady, when it had
come to luncheon-time and there were still no signs of the delinquent's
return.

"But really, Laura, there is no reason he should not keep his word,"
Geraldine answered, with her serene air. "You know men like to do these
things in a desperate kind of way--as if they were winning a race. I
daresay he has made his plans so as not to leave himself more than
half-an-hour's margin, and will reach the Castle just in time to dress."

"That is all very well; but I don't call that keeping his promise to me,
to come rushing into the place just as we are beginning to dance; after
travelling all night perhaps, and knocking himself up in all sorts of
ways, and with no more animation or vivacity left in him than a man who is
walking in his sleep. Besides, he ought to consider our anxiety."

"Your anxiety, if you please, Laura. I am not anxious. I cannot see that
George's appearance at the ball is a matter of such vital importance."

"But, my deal Geraldine, it would seem so strange for him to be away.
People would wonder so."

"Let them wonder," Lady Geraldine replied, with a little haughty backward
movement of her head, which was natural to her.

Amongst the cases and packages which had been perpetually arriving from
London during the last week or so, there was one light deal box which
Lady Laura's second maid brought to Clarissa's room one morning with
her mistress's love. The box contained the airiest and most girlish of
ball-dresses, all cloudlike white tulle, and the most entrancing wreath of
wild-roses and hawthorn, such a wreath as never before had crowned Miss
Lovel's bright-brown hair. Of course there was the usual amount of thanks
and kissing and raptures.

"I am responsible to your father for your looking your best, you see,
Clary," Lady Laura said, laughing; "and I intend you to make quite a
sensation to-night. The muslin you meant to wear is very pretty, and will
do for some smaller occasion; but to-night is a field-night. Be sure you
come to me when you are dressed. I shall be in my own rooms till the people
begin to arrive; and I want to see you when Fosset has put her finishing
touches to your dress."

Clarissa promised to present herself before her kind patroness. She was
really pleased with her dress, and sincerely grateful to the giver. Lady
Laura was a person from whom it was easy to accept benefits. There was
something bounteous and expansive in her nature, and her own pleasure in
the transaction made it impossible for any but the most churlish recipient
to feel otherwise than pleased.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIII.

OPEN TREASON.

The ball began, and without the assistance of Mr. Fairfax--much to
my lady's indignation. She was scarcely consoled by the praises and
compliments she received on the subject of her arrangements and
decorations; but these laudations were so unanimous and so gratifying,
that she did at last forget Mr. Fairfax's defection in the delight of such
perfect success.

_The_ Duke--the one sovereign magnate of that district--a tall
grand-looking old man with white hair, even deigned to be pleased and
surprised by what she had done.

"But then you have such a splendid platform to work upon," he said; "I
don't think we have a place in Yorkshire that can compare with Hale. You
had your decorators from London, of course?"

"No, indeed, your grace," replied my lady, sparkling with delighted pride;
"and if there is anything I can boast of, it is that. Fred wanted me
to send for London people, and have the thing done in their wholesale
manner--put myself entirely into their hands, give them _carte blanche_,
and so on; so that, till the whole business was finished, I shouldn't
have known what the place was to be like; but that is just the kind of
arrangement I detest. So I sent for one of my Holborough men, told him
my ideas, gave him a few preliminary sketches, and after a good many
consultations and discussions, we arrived at our present notion. Abolish
every glimmer of gas," I said, "and give me plenty of flowers and
wax-candles. The rest is mere detail."

Everything was successful; Miss Granger's prophecy of cold weather was
happily unfulfilled. The night was unusually still and sultry, a broad
harvest moon steeping terraces and gardens in tender mellow light; not a
breath to stir the wealth of blossoms, or to flutter the draperies of the
many windows, all wide open to the warm night--a night of summer at the
beginning of autumn.

Clarissa found herself in great request for the dances, and danced more
than she had done since the days of her schoolgirl waltzes and polkas in
the play-room at Belforet. It was about an hour after the dancing had
begun, when Lady Laura brought her no less a partner than Mr. Granger, who
had walked a solemn quadrille or two with a stately dowager, and whose
request was very surprising to Clarissa. She had one set of quadrilles,
however, unappropriated on her card, and expressed herself at Mr. Granger's
disposal for that particular dance, and then tripped away, to be whirled
round the great room by one of her military partners.

Daniel Granger stood amongst the loungers at one end of the room, watching
that aerial revolving figure. Yes, Lady Laura was right; she was very
lovely. In all his life he had never before paid much heed to female
loveliness, any more than to the grandeurs and splendours of nature, or
anything beyond the narrow boundary of his own successful commonplace
existence. But in this girl's face there was something that attracted his
attention, and dwelt in his memory when he was away from her; perhaps,
after all, it was the result of her position rather than her beauty. It was
natural that he should be interested in her, poor child. He had robbed her
of her home, or it would seem so to her, no doubt; and she had let him see
that she set an exaggerated value on that lost home, that she clung to it
with a morbid sentimentality.

"I should not wonder if she hates me," he said to himself. He had never
thought as much about her father, but then certainly he had never been
brought into such close contact with her father.

He waited quietly for that appointed quadrille, declining a dance in which
Lady Laura would have enlisted him, and keeping a close watch upon Clarissa
during the interval. What a gay butterfly creature she seemed to-night! He
could scarcely fancy this was the same girl who had spoken so mournfully
of her lost home in the library that afternoon. He looked from her to
his daughter for a moment, comparing the two; Sophia resplendent in pink
areophane and pearls, and showing herself not above the pleasures of a
polka; eminently a fine young woman, but O, of what a different day from
that other one!

Once Miss Fermor, passing the rich man on the arm of her partner, surprised
the watchful gray eyes with a new look in them--a look that was neither
cold nor stern.

"So, my gentleman," thought the lively Lizzie, "is it that way your fancies
are drifting? It was I whom you suspected of dangerous designs the other
day, Miss Granger. Take care your papa doesn't fall into a deeper pitfall.
I should like to see him marry again, if it were only to take down that
great pink creature's insolence." Whereby it will be seen that Miss Granger
was not quite so popular among her contemporaries as, in the serenity of
her self-possessed soul, she was wont to imagine herself.

The quadrille began presently, and Clarissa walked through its serious
mazes with the man whom she was apt to consider the enemy of her race. She
could not help wondering a little to find herself in this position, and her
replies to Mr. Granger's commonplace remarks were somewhat mechanical.

Once he contrived to bring the conversation round to Arden Court.

"It would give me so much pleasure to see you there as my daughter's
guest," he said, in a warmer tone than was usual to him, "and I really
think you would be interested in her parish-work. She has done wonders in a
small way."

"I have no doubt. You are very kind," faltered Clarissa; "but I do not the
least understand how to manage people as Miss Granger does, and I could not
bear to come to the Court. I was so happy there with my brother, and now
that he is gone, and that I am forbidden even to mention his name, the
associations of the place would be too painful."

Mr. Granger grew suddenly grave and silent.

"Yes, there was that business about the brother," he thought to himself;
"a bad business no doubt, or the father would never have turned him out of
doors--something very queer perhaps. A strange set these Lovels evidently.
The father a spendthrift, the son something worse."

And then he looked down at Clarissa, and thought again how lovely she was,
and pitied her for her beauty and her helplessness--the daughter of such a
father, the sister of such a brother.

"But she will marry well, of course," he said to himself, just as George
Fairfax had done; "all these young fellows seem tremendously struck by
her. I suppose she is the prettiest girl in the room. She will make a good
match, I daresay, and get out of her father's hands. It must be a dreary
life for her in that cottage, with, a selfish disappointed man."

The night waned, and there was no George Fairfax. Lady Geraldine bore
herself bravely, and danced a good deal more than she would have done, had
there not been appearances to be kept up. She had to answer a great many
questions about her lover, and she answered all with supreme frankness. He
was away in Scotland with some bachelor friends, enjoying himself no doubt.
He promised to be with them to-night, and had broken his promise; that was
all--she was not afraid of any accident.

"I daresay he found the grouse-shooting too attractive," she said coolly.

After supper, while the most determined of the waltzers were still spinning
round to a brisk _deux temps_ of Charles d'Albert's, Clarissa was fain to
tell the last of her partners she could dance no more.

"I am not tired of the ball," she said; "I like looking on, but I really
can't dance another step. Do go and get some one else for this waltz; I
know you are dying to dance it."

This was to the devoted Captain Westleigh, a person with whom Miss Level
always felt very much at home.

"With _you_," he answered tenderly. "But if you mean to sit down, I am at
your service. I would not desert you for worlds. And you really are looking
a little pale. Shall we find some pleasanter place? That inner room, looks
deliciously cool."

He offered his arm to Clarissa, and they walked slowly away towards a small
room at the end of the saloon; a room which Lady Laura had arranged with an
artful eye to effect, leaving it almost in shadow. There were only a few
wax-candles glimmering here and there among the cool dark foliage of the
ferns and pitcher-plants that filled every niche and corner, and the
moonlight shone full into the room through a wide window that opened upon a
stone balcony a few feet above the terrace.

"If I am left alone with her for five minutes, I am sure I shall propose,"
Captain Westleigh thought, on beholding the soft secluded aspect of this
apartment, which was untenanted when he and Clarissa entered it.

She sank down upon a sofa near the window, more thoroughly tired than she
had confessed. This long night of dancing and excitement was quite a new
thing to her. It was nearly over now, and the reaction was coming, bringing
with it that vague sense of hopelessness and disappointment which had so
grown upon her of late. She had abandoned herself fully to the enchantment
of the ball, almost losing the sense of her own identity in that brilliant
scene. But self-consciousness came back to her now, and she remembered that
she was Clarissa Lovel, for whom life was at best a dreary business.

"Can I get you anything?" asked the Captain, alarmed by her pallor.

"Thanks, you are very kind. If it would not be too much trouble--I know
the refreshment-room is a long way off--but I should be glad of a little
water."

"I'll get some directly. But I really am afraid you are ill," said the
Captain, looking at her anxiously, scarcely liking to leave her for fear
she should faint before he came back.

"No, indeed, I am not ill--only very tired. If you'll let me lest here a
little without talking."

She half closed her eyes. There was a dizziness in her head very much like
the preliminary stage of fainting.

"My dear Miss Lovel, I should be a wretch to bore you. I'll go for the
water this moment."

He hurried away. Clarissa gave a long weary sigh, and that painful
dizziness passed off in some degree. All she wanted was air, she thought,
if there had been any air to be got that sultry night. She rose from the
sofa presently, and went out upon the balcony. Below her was the river; not
a ripple upon the water, not a breath stirring the rushes on the banks.
Between the balcony and the river there was a broad battlemented walk, and
in the embrasures where cannon had once been there were great stone vases
of geraniums and dwarf roses, which seemed only masses of dark foliage in
the moonlight.

The Captain was some little time gone for that glass of water. Clarissa had
forgotten him and his errand as she sat upon a bench in the balcony with
her elbow leaning on the broad stone ledge, looking down at the water and
thinking of her own life--thinking what it might have been if everything in
the world had been different.

A sudden step on the walk below startled her, and a low voice said,

"I would I were a glove upon that hand, that I might kiss that cheek."

She knew the voice directly, but was not less startled at hearing it just
then. The step came near her, and in the next moment a dark figure had
swung itself lightly upward from the path below, and George Fairfax was
seated on the angle of the massive balustrade.

"Juliet!" he said, in the same low voice, "what put it into your head to
play Juliet to-night? As if you were not dangerous enough without that."

"Mr. Fairfax, how could you startle me so? Lady Laura has been expecting
you all the evening."

"I suppose so. But you don't imagine I've been hiding in the garden all the
evening, like the man in Tennyson's _Maud_? I strained heaven and earth to
be here in time; but there was a break-down between Edinburgh and Carlisle.
Nothing very serious: an engine-driver knocked about a little, and a few
passengers shaken and bruised more or less, but I escaped unscathed, and
had to cool my impatience for half a dozen hours at a dingy little station
where there was no refreshment for body or mind but a brown jug of
tepid water and a big Bible. There I stayed till I was picked up by the
night-mail, and here I am. I think I shall stand absolved by my lady when
she reads the account of my perils in to-morrow's papers. People are just
going away, I suppose. It would be useless for me to dress and put in an
appearance now."

"I think Lady Laura would be glad to see you. She has been very anxious, I
know."

"Her sisterly cares shall cease before she goes to sleep to-night. She
shall be informed that I am in the house; and I will make my peace
to-morrow morning."

He did not go away however, and Clarissa began to feel that there was
something embarrassing in her position. He had stepped lightly across the
balustrade, and had seated himself very near her, looking down at her face.

"Clarissa, do you know what has happened to me since I have been away from
this place?"

She looked up at him with an alarmed expression. It was the first time he
had ever uttered her Christian name, but his tone was so serious as to make
that a minor question.

"You cannot guess, I suppose," he went on, "I've made a discovery--a most
perplexing, most calamitous discovery."

"What is that?"

"I have found out that I love you."

Her hand was lying on the broad stone ledge. He took it in his firm grasp,
and held it as he went on:

"Yes, Clarissa; I had my doubts before I went away, but thought I was
master of myself in this, as I have been in other things, and fancied
myself strong enough to strangle the serpent. But it would not be
strangled, Clarissa; it has wound itself about my heart, and here I sit by
your side dishonoured in my own sight, come what may--bound to one woman
and loving another with all my soul--yes, with all my soul. What am I to
do?"

"Your duty," Clarissa answered, in a low steady voice.

Her heart was beating so violently that she wondered at her power to utter
those two words. What was it that she felt--anger, indignation? Alas, no;
Pride, delight, rapture, stirred that undisciplined heart. She knew now
what was wanted to make her life bright and happy; she knew now that she
had loved George Fairfax almost from the first. And her own duty--the duty
she was bound in honour to perform--what was that? Upon that question she
had not a moment's doubt. Her duty was to resign him without a murmur;
never to let him know that he had touched her heart. Even after having done
this, there would be much left to her--the knowledge that he had loved her.

"My duty! what is that?" he asked in a hoarse hard voice. "To keep faith
with Geraldine, whatsoever misery it may bring upon both of us? I am not
one of those saints who think of everybody's happiness before their own,
Clarissa. I am very human, with all humanity's selfishness. I want to
be happy. I want a wife for whom I can feel something more than a cold
well-bred liking. I did not think that it was in me to feel more than that.
I thought I had outlived my capacity for loving, wasted the strength of my
heart's youth on worthless fancies, spent all my patrimony of affection;
but the light shines on me again, and I thank God that it is so. Yes,
Clarissa, come what may, I thank my God that I am not so old a man in heart
and feeling as I thought myself."

Clarissa tried to stem the current of his talk, with her heart still
beating stormily, but with semblance of exceeding calmness.

"I must not hear you talk in this wild way, Mr. Fairfax," she said. "I feel
as if I had been guilty of a sin against Lady Geraldine in having listened
so long. But I cannot for a moment think you are in earnest."

"Do not play the Jesuit, Clarissa. You _know_ that I am in earnest."

"Then the railway accident must have turned your brain, and I can only hope
that to-morrow morning will restore your reason."

"Well, I am mad, if you like--madly in love with you. What am I to do? If
with some show of decency I can recover my liberty--by an appeal to Lady
Geraldine's generosity, for instance--believe me, I shall not break her
heart; our mutual regard is the calmest, coolest sentiment possible--if I
can get myself free from this engagement, will you be my wife, Clarissa?"

"No; a thousand times no."

"You don't care for me, then? The madness is all on my side?"