The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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"Laura has told us so much about you, Miss Lovel," said Lady Louisa, "and
we mean to be very fond of you, if you will allow us; and, O, please may we
call you Clarissa? It is such a _sweet_ name!"

Both these ladies had passed that fearful turning-point in woman's life,
her thirtieth birthday, and had become only more gushing and enthusiastic
with increasing years. They were very much like Lady Laura, had all her
easy good-nature and liveliness, and were more or less afraid of the
stately Geraldine.

"Do you know, we are quite glad she is going to be married at last," Lady
Emily said in a confidential tone to Clarissa; "for she has kept up a kind
of frigid atmosphere at home that I really believe has helped to frighten
away all our admirers. Men of the present day don't like that sort of
thing. It went out of fashion in England with King Charles I., I think, and
in France with Louis XIV. You know how badly the royal household behaved
coming home from his funeral, laughing and talking and all that: I
believe it arose from their relief at thinking that the king of forms
and ceremonies was dead. We always have our nicest little
parties--kettle-drums, and suppers after the opera, and that sort of
thing--when Geraldine is away; for we can do anything with papa."

The great day came, and the heavens were propitious. A fine clear September
day, with a cool wind and a warm sun; a day upon which the diaphanous
costumes of the bridesmaids might be a shade too airy; but not a stern
or cruel day, to tinge their young noses with a frosty hue, or blow the
crinkles out of their luxuriant hair.

The bridesmaids were the Ladies Emily and Louisa Challoner, the two Miss
Fermors, Miss Granger, and Clarissa--six in all; a moderation which Lady
Laura was inclined to boast of as a kind of Spartan simplicity. They were
all to be dressed alike, in white, with bonnets that seemed composed of
waxen looking white heather and tremulous harebells, and with blue sashes
to match the harebells. The dresses were Lady Laura's inspiration: they
had come to her almost in her sleep, she declared, when she had well-nigh
despaired of realising her vague desires; and Clarissa's costume was, like
the ball-dress, a present from her benefactress.

The nine-o'clock breakfast--a meal that begun at nine and rarely ended till
eleven--was hurried over in the most uncomfortable and desultory manner on
this eventful morning. The principals in the great drama did not appear at
all, and Clarissa and Miss Granger were the only two bridesmaids who could
spare half an hour from the cares of the toilet. The rest breakfasted
in the seclusion of their several apartments, with their hair in
crimping-pins. Miss Granger was too perfect a being to crinkle her hair,
or to waste three hours on dressing, even for a wedding. Lady Laura
showed herself among her guests, for a quarter of an hour or so, in a
semi-hysterical flutter; so anxious that everything should go off well,
so fearful that something might happen, she knew not what, to throw the
machinery of her arrangements out of gear.

"I suppose it's only a natural feeling on such an occasion as this," she
said, "but I really do feel as if something were going to happen. Things
have gone on so smoothly up to this morning--no disappointments
from milliners, no stupid mistakes on the part of those railway
people--everything has gone upon velvet; and now it is coming to the crisis
I am quite nervous."

Of course every one declared this was perfectly natural, and recommended
his or her favourite specific--a few drops of sal-volatile--a liqueur-glass
of dry curacoa--red lavender--chlorodyne--and so on; and then Lady Laura
laughed and called herself absurd, and hurried away to array herself in a
pearl-coloured silk, half smothered by puffings of pale pink areophane
and Brussels-lace flounces; a dress that was all pearly gray and rose and
white, like the sky at early morning.

Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Granger, with some military men and country squires,
took their breakfast as calmly as if a wedding were part of the daily
business of life. Miss Granger exhibited a polite indifference about
the great event; Miss Level was pale and nervous, not able to give much
attention to Daniel Granger, who had contrived to sit next her that
morning, and talked to her a good deal, with an apparent unconsciousness of
the severe gaze of his daughter, seated exactly opposite to him.

Clarissa was glad to make her toilet an excuse for leaving Mr. Granger; but
once in the sanctuary of her own room, she sat down in an absent manner,
and made no attempt to begin dressing. Fosset, the maid, found her there at
a quarter past ten o'clock--the ceremony was to take place at eleven--and
gave a cry of horror at seeing the toilet uncommenced.

"Good gracious me, miss! what have you been thinking of? Your hair not
begun nor nothing! I've been almost torn to bits with one and another--Miss
Fermor's maid bothering for long hair-pins and narrow black ribbon; and
Jane Roberts--Lady Emily Challoner's maid--who really never has anything
handy, wanting half the things out of my work-box--or I should have been
with you ever so long ago. My Lady would be in a fine way if you were
late."

"I think my hair will do very well as it is, Fosset," Clarissa said
listlessly.

"Lor, no, miss; not in that dowdy style. It don't half show it off."

Clarissa seated herself before the dressing-table with an air of
resignation rather than interest, and the expeditious Fosset began her
work. It was done very speedily--that wealth of hair was so easy to dress;
there was no artful manipulation of long hair-pins and black ribbon needed
to unite borrowed tresses with real ones. The dress was put on, and
Clarissa was invited to look at herself in the cheval-glass.

"I do wish you had a bit more colour in your cheeks to-day, miss," Fosset
said, with rather a vexed air. "Not that I'd recommend you any of their
vinegar rouges, or ineffaceable blooms, or anything of that kind. But I
don't think I ever saw you look so pale. One would think _you_ were going
to be married, instead of Lady Geraldine. _She's_ as cool as a cucumber
this morning, Sarah Thompson told me just now. You can't put _her_ out
easily."

The carriages were driving up to the great door by this time. It was about
twenty minutes to eleven, and in ten minutes more the procession would be
starting. Hale Church was within five minutes' drive of the Castle.

Clarissa went fluttering down to the drawing-room, where she supposed
people would assemble. There was no one there but Mr. Granger, who was
stalking up and down the spacious room, dressed in the newest and stiffest
of coats and waistcoats, and looking as if he were going to assist at a
private hanging. Miss Lovel felt almost inclined to ran away at sight of
him. The man seemed to pursue her somehow; and since that night when
George Fairfax had offered her his mocking congratulations, Mr. Granger's
attentions had been particularly repugnant to her.

She could not draw back, however, without positive rudeness, and it was
only a question of five minutes; so she went in and entered upon an
interesting little conversation about the weather. It was still fine; there
was no appearance of rain; a most auspicious day, really; and so on,--from
Mr. Granger; to which novel remarks Clarissa assented meekly.

"There are people who attach a good deal of significance to that kind
of thing," he said presently. "For my own part, _if_ I were going to be
married to the woman I loved, I should care little how black the sky above
us might be. That sounds rather romantic for me, doesn't it? A man of fifty
has no right to feel like that."

This he said with a half-bitter laugh. Clarissa was spared the trouble of
answering by the entrance of more bridesmaids--Lady Louisa Challoner and
Miss Granger--with three of the military men, who wore hothouse flowers
in their buttonholes, and were altogether arrayed like the lilies of the
field, but who had rather the air of considering this marriage business a
tiresome interruption to partridge-shooting.

"I suppose we are going to start directly," cried Lady Louisa, who was a
fluttering creature of three-and-thirty, always eager to flit from one
scene to another. "If we don't, I really think we shall be late--and there
is some dreadful law, isn't there, to prevent people being married after
eleven o'clock?"

"After twelve," Mr. Granger answered in his matter of fact way. "Lady
Geraldine has ample margin for delay."

"But why not after twelve?" asked Lady Louisa with a childish air; "why not
in the afternoon or evening, if one liked? What can be the use of such a
ridiculous law? One might as well live in Russia."

She fluttered to one of the windows and looked out.

"There are all the carriages. How well the men look! Laura must have
spent a fortune in white ribbon and gloves for them--and the horses, dear
things!"--a woman of Lady Louisa's stamp is generally enthusiastic about
horses, it is such a safe thing--"they look as if they knew it was a
wedding. O, good gracious!"

"What is the matter. Lady Louisa?"

"A man from the railway--with a telegram--yes, I am sure it's a telegram!
Do you know, I have such a horror of telegrams! I always fancy they mean
illness--or death--or something dreadful. Very absurd of me, isn't it? And
I daresay this is only a message about some delayed parcel, or some one who
was to be here and can't come, or something of that kind."

The room was full of idle people by this time. Every one went to the open
window and stared down at the man who had brought the telegram. He had
given his message, and was standing on the broad flight of steps before
the Castle door, waiting for the return of the official who had taken it.
Whether the electric wires had brought the tidings of some great calamity,
or a milliner's apology for a delayed bonnet, was impossible to guess. The
messenger stood there stolid and impenetrable, and there was nothing to be
divined from his aspect.

But presently, while a vague anxiety possessed almost every one present,
there came from the staircase without a sudden cry of woe--a woman's
shriek, long and shrill, ominous as the wail of the banshee. There was a
rush to the door, and the women crowded, out in a distracted way. Lady
Laura was fainting in her husband's arms, and George Fairfax was standing
near her reading a telegram.

People had not long to wait for the evil news. Lord Calderwood had been
seized with a paralytic stroke--his third attack--at ten o'clock the
previous night, and had expired at half-past eight that morning. There
could be no wedding that day--nor for many days and weeks to come.

"O, Geraldine, my poor Geraldine, let me go to her!" cried Lady Laura,
disengaging herself from her husband's arms and rushing upstairs. Mr.
Armstrong hurried after her.

"Laura, my sweet girl, don't agitate yourself; consider yourself," he
cried, and followed, with Lady Louisa sobbing and wailing behind him.
Geraldine had not left her room yet. The ill news was to find her on the
threshold, calm and lovely in the splendour of her bridal dress.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVII.

"'TIS DEEPEST WINTER IN LORD TIMOR'S PURSE."

Before nightfall--before the evening which was to have been enlivened by a
dinner-party and a carpet-dance, and while bride and bridegroom should have
been speeding southwards to that noble Kentish mansion which his uncle had
lent George Fairfax--before the rooks flew homeward across the woods beyond
Hale--there had been a general flight from the Castle. People were anxious
to leave the mourners alone with their grief, and even the most intimate
felt more or less in the way, though Mr. Armstrong entreated that there
might be no hurry, no inconvenience for any one.

"Poor Laura won't be fit to be seen for a day or two," he said, "and of
course I shall have to go up to town for the funeral; but that need make no
difference. Hale is large enough for every one, and it will be a comfort to
her by-and-by to find her friends round her."

Through all that dreary day Lady Laura wandered about her morning-room,
alternately sobbing and talking of her father to those chosen friends with
whom she held little interviews.

Her sisters Louisa and Emily were with her for the greater part of the
time, echoing her lamentations like a feeble chorus. Geraldine kept
her room, and would see no one--not even him who was to have been her
bridegroom, and who might have supposed that he had the chiefest right to
console her in this sudden affliction.

Clarissa spent more than an hour with Lady Laura, listening with a tender
interest to her praises of the departed. It seemed as if no elderly
nobleman--more or less impecunious for the last twenty years of his
life--had ever supported such a load of virtues as Lord Calderwood had
carried with him to the grave. To praise him inordinately was the only
consolation his three daughters could find in the first fervour of their
grief. Time was when they had been apt to confess to one another that
papa was occasionally rather "trying," a vague expression which scarcely
involved a lapse of filial duty on the part of the grumbler. But to hear
them to-day one would have supposed that they had never been tried; that
life with Lord Calderwood in a small house in Chapel-street, Mayfair, had
been altogether a halcyon existence.

Clarissa listened reverently, believing implicitly in the merits of the
newly lost, and did her best to console her kind friend during the hour Mr.
Armstrong allowed her to spend with Lady Laura. At the end of that time he
came and solemnly fetched her away, after a pathetic farewell.

"You must come to me again, Clary, and very, very soon," said my lady,
embracing her. "I only wish Fred would let you stay with me now. You would
be a great comfort."

"My dearest Lady Laura, it is better not. You have your sisters."

"Yes, they are very good; but I wanted you to stay, Clary. I had such plans
for you. O, by the bye, the Grangers will be going back to-day, I
suppose. Why should they not take you with them in their great travelling
carriage?--Frederick, will you arrange for the Grangers to take Clarissa
home?" cried Lady Laura to her husband, who was hovering near the door.
In the midst of her grief my lady brightened a little; with the idea of
managing something, even so small a matter as this.

"Of course, my dear," replied the affectionate Fred. "Granger shall take
Miss Lovel home. And now I must positively hurry her away; all this talk
and excitement is so bad for you."

"I must see the Fermors before they go. You'll let me see the Fermors,
Fred?"

"Well, well, I'll bring them just to say good-bye--that's all--Come along,
Miss Lovel."

Clarissa followed him through the corridor.

"O, if you please, Mr. Armstrong," she said, "I did not like to worry Lady
Laura, but I would so much rather go home alone in a fly."

"Nonsense! the Grangers can take you. You could have Laura's brougham, of
course; but if she wants you to go with the Grangers, you must go. Her word
is law; and she's sure to ask me about it by-and-by. She's a wonderful
woman; thinks of everything."

They met Mr. and Miss Granger presently, dressed for the journey.

"O, if you please, Granger, I want you to take Miss Lovel home in your
carriage. You've plenty of 'room, I know."

Sophia looked as if she would have liked to say that there was no room, but
her father's face quite flushed with pleasure.

"I shall be only too happy," he said, "if Miss Lovel will trust herself to
our care."

"And perhaps you'll explain toiler father what has happened, and how sorry
we are to lose her, and so on."

"Certainly, my dear Armstrong. I shall make a point of seeing Mr. Lovel in
order to do so."

So Clarissa had a seat in Mr. Granger's luxurious carriage, the proprietor
whereof sat opposite to her, admiring the pale patrician face, and
wondering a little what that charm was which made it seem to him more
beautiful than any other countenance he had ever looked upon. They did not
talk much, Mr. Granger only making a few stereotyped remarks about the
uncertainties of this life, or occasionally pointing out some feature of
the landscape to Clarissa. The horses went at a splendid pace Their owner
would have preferred a slower transit.

"Remember, Miss Lovel," he said, as they approached the village of Arden,
"you have promised to come and see us."

"You are very good; but I go out so little, and papa is always averse to my
visiting."

"But he can't be that any more after allowing you to stay at the Castle,
or he will offend commoner folks, like Sophy and me, by his exclusiveness.
Besides, he told me he wished Sophy and you to be good friends. I am sure
he will let you come to us. When shall it be? Shall we say to-morrow,
before luncheon--at twelve or one, say? I will show you what I've done
for the house in the morning, and Sophy can take you over her schools and
cottages in the afternoon."

Sophia Granger made no attempt to second this proposition; but her father
was so eager and decisive, that it seemed quite impossible for Clarissa to
say no.

"If papa will let me come," she said doubtfully.

"O, I'm quite sure he will not refuse, after what he was good enough to say
to me," replied Mr. Granger; "and if he does not feel equal to going about
with us in the morning, I hope we shall be able to persuade him to come to
dinner."

They were at the little rustic gate before Mill Cottage by this time. How
small the place looked after Hale Castle! but not without a prettiness
of its own. The virginia creeper was reddening on the wall; the casement
windows open to the air and sunshine. Ponto ran out directly the gate was
opened--first to bark at the carriage, and then to leap joyously about
Clarissa, overpowering her with a fond canine welcome.

"You'll come in with us, Sophia?" asked Mr. Granger, when he had alighted,
and handed Clarissa out of the carriage.

"I think not, papa. You can't want me; and this dreadful morning has given
me a wretched headache."

"I thought there was something amiss. It would be more respectful to Mr.
Lovel for you to come in. I daresay he'll excuse you, however, when he
hears you are ill."

Clarissa held out her hand, which Miss Granger took with an almost obvious
reluctance, and the two young ladies said "Good-bye" to each other, without
a word from Sophia about the engagement for the next day.

They found Mr. Lovel in his favourite sitting-room; not dreaming over
a Greek play or a volume of Bentley, as it was his custom to do, but
seriously engaged with a number of open letters and papers scattered on the
writing-table before him--papers that looked alarmingly like tradesmens'
bills. He was taken by surprise on the entrance of Clarissa and her
companion, and swept the papers into an open drawer with rather a nervous
hand.

"My dear Clarissa, this is quite unexpected!--How do you do, Mr. Granger?
How very good of you to bring my little girl over to see me! Will you take
that chair by the window? I was deep in a file of accounts when you came
in. A man must examine his affairs sometimes, however small his household
may be.--Well, Clary, what news of our kind friends at the Castle? Why,
bless my soul, this is the wedding-day, isn't it? I had quite forgotten the
date. Has anything happened?"

"Yes, papa; there has been a great misfortune, and the wedding is put off."

Between them, Mr. Granger and Clarissa explained the state of affairs at
the Castle. Mr. Lovel seemed really shocked by the intelligence of the
Earl's death.

"Poor Calderwood! He and I were great friends thirty years ago. I suppose
it's nearly twenty since I last saw him. He was one of the handsomest men
I ever knew--Lady Geraldine takes after him--and when he was in the
diplomatic service had really a very brilliant career before him; but he
missed it somehow. Had always rather a frivolous mind, I fancy, and a want
of perseverance. Poor Calderwood! And so he is gone! How old could he have
been? Not much over sixty, I believe. I'll look into Debrett presently."

As soon as he could decently do so after this, Mr. Granger urged his
invitation for the next day.

"O, certainly, by all means. Clary shall come to you as early as you
like. It will be a great relief for her from the dulness of this place.
And--well--yes, if you insist upon it, I'll join you at dinner. But you see
what a perfect recluse I am. There will be no one else, I suppose?"

"You have only to say that you wish it, and there shall be no one else,"
Mr. Granger replied courteously.

Never had he been so anxious to propitiate any one. People had courted
him more or less all his life; and here he was almost suing for the
acquaintance of this broken-down spendthrift--a man whom he had secretly
despised until now.

On this assurance Mr. Lovel consented to dine with his neighbour for the
first time; and Mr. Granger, having no excuse for farther lingering, took
his departure, remembering all at once that he had such a thing as a
daughter waiting for him in the carriage outside.

He went, and Clarissa took up the thread of her old life just where she had
dropped it. Her father was by no means so gracious or agreeable to-day
as he had been during his brief visit to Hale Castle. He took out his
tradesmen's letters and bills when Mr. Granger was gone, and went on with
his examination of them, groaning aloud now and then, or sometimes stopping
to rest his head on his hands with a dreary long-drawn sigh. Clarissa would
have been very glad to offer her sympathy, to utter some word of comfort;
but there was something in her father's aspect which forbade any
injudicious approach. She sat by the open window with a book in her hand,
but not reading, waiting patiently in the hope that he would share his
troubles with her by-and-by.

He went on with his work for about an hour, and then tied the papers in a
bundle with an impatient air.

"Arithmetic is no use in such a case as mine," he said; "no man can make
fifty pounds pay a hundred. I suppose it must end in the bankruptcy court.
It will be only our last humiliation, the culminating disgrace."

"The bankruptcy court! O, papa!" cried Clarissa piteously. She had a very
vague idea as to what bankruptcy meant, but felt that it was something
unutterably shameful--the next thing to a criminal offence.

"Better men than I have gone through it," Mr. Lovel went on with a sigh,
and without the faintest notice of his daughter's dismay; "but I couldn't
stand Arden and Holborough after that degradation. I must go abroad, to
some dull old town in the south of France, where I could have my books and
decent wine, and where, as regards everything else, I should be in a living
grave.

"But they would never make you bankrupt surely, papa;" Clarissa exclaimed
in the same piteous tone.

"_They_ would never make me bankrupt!" echoed her father fretfully. "What
do you mean by _they_? You talk like a baby, Clarissa. Do you suppose that
tradesmen and bankers and bill-discounters would have more mercy upon me
than upon other people? They may give me more time than they would give
another man, perhaps, because they know I have some pride of race, and
would coin my heart's blood rather than adopt expedients that other men
make light of; but when they know there is no more to be got out of me,
they will do their worst. It is only a question of time."

"Are you very much in debt, papa?" Clarissa asked timidly, anticipating a
rebuff.

"No; that is the most confounded part of the business. My liabilities only
amount to a few pitiful hundreds. When I sold Arden--and I did not do that
till I was obliged, you may believe--the bulk of the purchase-money went to
the mortgagees. With the residue--a paltry sum--I bought myself an annuity;
a transaction which I was able to conclude upon better terms than most men
of my age, on account of my precarious health, and to which I was most
strongly urged by my legal advisers. On this I have existed, or tried to
exist, ever since: but the income has not been sufficient even for the
maintenance of this narrow household; if I lived in a garret, I must live
like a gentleman, and should be always at the mercy of my servants.
These are honest enough, I daresay, but I have no power of checking my
expenditure. And then I had your schooling to pay for--no small amount, I
assure you."

"Thank heaven that is over, papa! And now, if you would only let me go out
as a governess, I might be some help to you instead of a burden."

"There's time enough to think of that. You are not much of a burden to me
at present. I don't suppose you add many pounds a year to the expenses of
this house. And if I have to face the inevitable, and see my name in the
_Gazette_, we must begin life again upon a smaller scale, and in a cheaper
place--some out-of-the-way corner of France or Belgium. The governess
notion will keep till I am dead. You can always be of some use to me as a
companion, if you choose."