The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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It was near the close of October. The days were free from rain or
blusterous winds, but dull and gray. The leaves were falling silently in
the woods about Arden, and the whole scene wore that aspect of subdued
mournfulness which is pleasant enough to the light of heart, but very
sad to those who mourn. Clarissa Lovel was not light-hearted. She had
discovered of late that there was something wanting in her life. The days
were longer and drearier than they used to be. Every day she awoke with a
faint sense of expectation that was like an undefined hope; something would
come to pass, something would happen to her before the day was done, to
quicken the sluggish current of her life; and at nightfall, when the
uneventful day had passed in its customary blankness, her heart would grow
very heavy. Her father watched her somewhat anxiously at this crisis of her
life, and was inwardly disturbed on perceiving her depression.

She went out into the garden alone one evening after dinner, as it was her
wont to do almost every evening, leaving Mr. Lovel dozing luxuriously in
his easy-chair by the fire--she went out alone in the chill gray dusk, and
paced the familiar walks, between borders in which there were only pale
autumnal flowers, chrysanthemums and china asters of faint yellow and
fainter purple. Even the garden looked melancholy in this wan light,
Clarissa thought. She made the circuit of the small domain, walked up and
down the path by the mill-stream two or three times, and then went into the
leafless orchard, where the gnarled old trees cast their misshapen shadows
on the close-cropped grass. A week-old moon had just risen, pale in the
lessening twilight. The landscape had a cold shadowy beauty of its own; but
to-night everything seemed wan and cheerless to Clarissa.

She was near the gate leading into Arden Park, when she heard a crackling
of withered leaves, the sound of an approaching footstep. It was Mr.
Granger, of course. She gave a sigh of resignation. Another evening of the
pattern which had grown so familiar to her, that it seemed almost as if Mr.
Granger must have been dropping in of an evening all her life. The usual
talk of public matters--the leaders in that day's _Times_, and so on. The
usual request for a little music; the usual inquiries about her recent
artistic studies. It was as monotonous as the lessons she had learned at
Madame Marot's seminary.

"Is my life to go on like that for ever?" she asked herself.

The step came a little nearer. Surely it was lighter and quicker than
Daniel Granger's--it had a sharp martial sound; it was like a step she had
learned to know very well in the gardens of Hale Castle.

"He is at Baden," she said to herself.

But the beating of her heart grew faster in spite of that tranquillizing
assurance. She heard an unaccustomed hand trying the fastening of the gate,
then a bolt withdrawn, the sharp light step upon the turf behind her, and
in the next moment George Fairfax was by her side, among the weird shadows
of the orchard trees.

He tried to draw her towards him, with the air of an accepted lover.

"My darling!" he said, "I knew I should find you here. I had a fancy that
you would be here, waiting for me in the pale moonlight."

Clarissa laughed--rather an artificial little laugh--but she felt the
situation could only be treated lightly. The foolish passionate heart was
beating so fast all the time, and the pale face might have told so much, if
the light of the new-risen moon had not been dim as yet.

"How long do you suppose I have been waiting at this spot for you, Mr.
Fairfax?" she asked lightly. "For six weeks?"

"Six weeks! Yes, it is six weeks since I saw you. It might be six years,
if I were to measure the time by my own impatience. I have been at Nice,
Clarissa, almost ever since that night we parted."

"At Nice! with Lady Laura and Lady Geraldine, I suppose, I thought they
were going to Baden."

"They are at Baden; but I have not been with them. I left England with my
mother, who had a very bad attack of her chronic asthma earlier than usual
this year, and was ordered off to the South of France, where she is obliged
to spend all her winters, poor soul. I went with her, and stayed till she
was set up again in some measure. I was really uneasy about her; and it was
a good excuse for getting away from Hale."

Clarissa murmured some conventional expression of sympathy, but that was
all.

"My darling," said George Fairfax, taking her cold hand in his--she tried
to withdraw it, but it was powerless in that firm grasp--"My darling, you
know why I have come here; and you know now why my coming has been so long
delayed. I could not write to you. The Fates are against us, Clarissa, and
I do not expect much favour from your father. So I feared that a letter
might do us mischief, and put off everything till I could come, I said a
few words to Laura Armstrong before I left the Castle--not telling her very
much, but giving her a strong hint of the truth. I don't think she'll be
surprised by anything I may do; and my letters to Geraldine have all been
written to prepare the way for our parting. I know she will be generous;
and if my position with regard to her is rather a despicable one, I have
done all I could to make the best of it. I have not made things worse by
deceit or double-dealing. I should have boldly asked for my freedom before
this, but I hear such bad accounts of poor Geraldine, who seems to be
dreadfully grieved by her father's loss, that I have put off all idea
of any direct explanation for the present. I am not the less resolved,
however, Clarissa."

Miss Lovel turned her face towards him for the first time, and looked at
him with a proud steady gaze. She had given her promise, and was not afraid
that anything, not even his tenderest, most passionate pleading, could ever
tempt her to break it; but she knew more and more that she loved him--that
it was his absence and silence which, had made her life so blank, that his
coming was the event she had waited and watched for day after day.

"Why should you break faith with Lady Geraldine?" she asked calmly.

"Why! Because my bondage has been hateful to me ever since I came to Hale.
Because there is only one woman I will have for my wife--and her name is
Clarissa Lovel!"

"You had better keep your word, Mr. Fairfax. I was quite in earnest in what
I said to you six weeks ago. Nothing in the world would ever induce me to
have any part in your breach of faith. Why, even if I loved you--" her
voice trembled a little here, and George Fairfax repeated the words after
her, "_Even_ if you loved me--I could never trust you. How could I hope
that, after having been so false to her, you could be true to me?"

"Even if I loved you. Tell me that you do love me--as I have
hoped and dreamed--as I dared to believe sometimes at Hale, when my
wedding-day was so near, that I seemed like some wretch bound to the wheel,
for whom there is no possibility of escape. That is all over now, darling.
To all intents and purposes I am free. Confess that you love me." This was
said half tenderly, half imperiously--with the air of a conqueror
accustomed to easy triumphs, an air which this man's experience had made
natural to him. "Come, Clarissa, think how many miles I have travelled for
the sake of this one stolen half hour. Don't be so inexorable."

He looked down at her with a smile on his face, not very much alarmed by
her obduracy. It seemed to him only a new form of feminine eccentricity.
Here was a woman who actually could resist him for ten minutes at a
stretch--him, George Fairfax!

"I am very sorry you should have come so far. I am very sorry you should
have taken so much trouble; it is quite wasted."

"Then you don't like me, Miss Lovel," still half playfully--the thing was
too impossible to be spoken of in any other tone. "For some reason or other
I am obnoxious to you. Look me full in the face, and swear that you don't
care a straw for me."

"I am not going to swear anything so foolish. You are not obnoxious to me.
I have no wish to forfeit your friendship; but I will not hear of anything
more than friendship from your lips."

"Why not?"

"For many reasons. In the first place, because there would be treason
against Lady Geraldine in my listening to you."

"Put that delusion out of your mind. There would be no treason; all is over
between Lady Geraldine and me."

"There are other reasons, connected with papa."

"Oh, your father is against me. Yes, that is only natural. Any more
reasons, Clarissa?"

"One more."

"What is that?"

"I cannot tell you."

"But I insist upon being told."

She tried her uttermost to avoid answering his questions; but he was
persistent, and she admitted at last that she had promised not to listen to
him.

"To whom was the promise given?"

"That is my secret."

"To your father?"

"That is my secret, Mr. Fairfax. You cannot extort it from me. And now I
must go back to papa, if you please, or he will be sending some one to look
for me."

"And I shall be discovered in Mr. Capulet's orchard. Ten minutes more,
Clarissa, and I vanish amidst the woods of Arden, through which I came like
a poacher in order to steal upon you unawares by that little gate. And now,
my darling, since we have wasted almost all our time in fencing with words,
let us be reasonable. Promises such as you speak of are pledges given to
the winds. They cannot hold an hour against true love. Listen, Clary,
listen."

And then came the pleading of a man only too well accustomed to plead--a
man this time very much in earnest: words that seemed to Clarissa full of
a strange eloquence, tones that went to her heart of hearts. But she had
given her promise, and with her that promise meant something very sacred.
She was firm to the last--firm even when those thrilling tones changed from
love to auger.

All that he said towards the end she scarcely knew, for there was a
dizziness in her brain that confused her, and her chiefest fear was that
she should drop fainting at his feet; but the last words of all struck upon
her ear with a cruel distinctness, and were never forgotten.

"I am the merest fool and schoolboy to take this matter so deeply to
heart," he said, with a scornful laugh, "when the reason of my rejection
is so obvious. What I saw at Hale Castle might have taught me wisdom. Even
with my improved prospects I am little better than a pauper compared with
Daniel Granger. And I have heard you say that you would give all the world
to win back Arden Court. I will stand aside, and make way for a wealthier
suitor. Perhaps we may meet again some day, and I may not be so unfortunate
as my father."

He was gone. Clarissa stood like a statue, with her hands clasped before
her face. She heard the gate shut by a violent hand. He was gone in supreme
anger, with scorn and insult upon his lips, believing her the basest of the
base, the meanest of the mean, she told herself. The full significance of
his last words she was unable to understand, but it seemed to her that they
veiled a threat.

She was going back to the house slowly, tearless, but with something like
despair in her heart, when she heard the orchard gate open again. He had
come back, perhaps,--returned to forgive and pity her. No, that was not his
footstep; it was Mr. Granger, looking unspeakably ponderous and commonplace
in the moonlight, as he came across the shadowy grass towards her.

"I thought I saw a white dress amongst the trees," he said, holding out his
hand to her for the usual greeting. "How cold your hand is, Miss Lovel! Is
it quite prudent of you to be out so late on such a chilly evening, and in
that thin dress? I think I must ask your papa to lecture you."

"Pray don't, Mr. Granger; I am not in the habit of catching cold, and I am
used to being in the gardens at all times and seasons. You are late."

"Yes; I have been at Holborough all day, and dined an hour later than
usual. Your papa is quite well, I hope?"

"He is just the same as ever. He is always more or less of an invalid, you
know."

They came in sight of the broad bay window of the parlour at this moment,
and the firelight within revealed Mr. Lovel in a very comfortable aspect,
fast asleep, with his pale aristocratic-looking face relieved by the
crimson cushions of his capacious easy-chair, and the brown setter's head
on his knee. There were some books on the table by his side, but it was
evident that his studies since dinner had not been profound.

Clarissa and her companion went in at a half-glass door that opened into a
small lobby next the parlour. She knew that to open the window at such an
hour in the month of October was an unpardonable crime in her father's
eyes. They went into the room very softly; but Mr. Lovel, who was a light
sleeper, started up at their entrance, and declared with some show of
surprise that he must have been indulging in a nap.

"I was reading a German critic on Aeschylus," he said. "Those Germans are
clever, but too much given to paradoxes. Ring the bell for tea, Clary. I
didn't think we should see you to-night, Granger; you said you were going
to a dinner at Sir Archer Taverham's."

"I was engaged to dine with Sir Archer; but I wrote him a note this
morning, excusing myself upon the plea of gout. I really had a few twinges
last night, and I hate dinner-parties."

"I am glad you have so much wisdom. I don't think any man under a
Talleyrand or an Alvanley can make a masculine dinner worth going to; and
as for your mixed herds of men and women, every man past thirty knows that
kind of thing to be an abomination."

The rosy-faced parlour-maid brought in the lamp and the tea-tray, and
Clarissa sat quietly down to perform her nightly duties. She took her seat
in the full light of the lamp, with no evidence of emotion on her face, and
poured out the tea, and listened and replied to Mr. Granger's commonplace
remarks, just the same as usual, though the sound of another voice was in
her ear--the bitter passionate sound of words that had been almost curses.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXIV.

"IT MEANS ARDEN COURT."

The time went by, and Daniel Granger pursued his wooing, his tacit
undemonstrative courtship, with the quiet persistence of a man who meant
to win. He came to Mill Cottage almost every evening throughout the late
autumn and early winter months, and Clarissa was fain to endure his
presence and to be civil to him. She had no ground for complaint, no
opportunity for rebellion. His visits were not made ostensibly on her
account, though friends, neighbours, and servants knew very well why
he came, and had settled the whole business in their gossiping little
coteries. Nor did he take upon himself the airs of a lover. He was biding
his time, content to rejoice in the daily presence of the woman he loved;
content to wait till custom should have created a tie between them,
and till he could claim her for his wife by right of much patience and
fidelity. He had an idea that no woman, pure and true as he believed this
woman to be, could shut her heart against an honest man's love, if he were
only patient and faithful, single-minded and unselfish in his wooing.

George Fairfax kept his word. From the hour of that bitter parting he made
no sign of his existence to Clarissa Lovel. The Armstrongs were still in
Germany when December came, and people who had any claim upon Lady Laura's
hospitality lamented loudly that there were to be no gaieties at the Castle
this year. It was the second Christmas that the family had been absent. Mr.
Fairfax was with them at Baden most likely, Clarissa thought; and she tried
to hope that it was so.

Christmas came, and Miss Lovel had to assist at Miss Granger's triumphs.
That young lady was in full force at this time of year, dealing out
blankets of the shaggiest and most uncompromising textures--such coverings
as might have suited the requirements of a sturdy Highlander or a stalwart
bushranger sleeping in the open air, but seemed scarcely the pleasantest
gifts for feeble old women or asthmatic old men--and tickets
representative of small donations in kind, such as a quart of split-peas,
or a packet of prepared groats, with here and there the relief of a couple
of ounces of tea. Against plums and currants and candied peel Miss Granger
set her face, as verging on frivolity. The poor, who are always given
to extravagance, would be sure to buy these for themselves: witness
the mountain of currants embellished with little barrows of citron and
orange-peel, and the moorland of plums adorned with arabesques of Jamaica
ginger in the holly-hung chandler's shop at Arden. Split-peas and groats
were real benefits, which would endure when the indigestible delights
of plum-pudding were over. Happily for the model villagers, Mr. Granger
ordered a bullock and a dozen tons of coal to be distributed amongst them,
in a large liberal way that was peculiar to him, without consulting his
daughter as to the propriety of the proceeding. She was very busy with
the beneficent work of providing her special _protegees_ with the ugliest
imaginable winter gowns and frocks. Clarissa, who was eager to contribute
something to this good work, had wounded her fingers desperately in the
manufacture of these implacable fabrics, which set her teeth on edge every
time she touched them. Mr. Lovel would not even allow them to be in the
room where he sat.

"If you must work at those unspeakably odious garments, Clarissa," he said,
"for pity's sake do it out of my presence. Great Heavens! what cultivator
of the Ugly could have invented those loathsome olive-greens, or that
revolting mud-colour? evidently a study from the Thames at low water, just
above Battersea-bridge. And to think that the poor--to whom nature seems to
have given a copyright in warts and wens and boils--should be made still
more unattractive by such clothing as that! If you are ever rich, Clarissa,
and take to benevolence, think of your landscape before you dress your
poor. Give your old women and children scarlet cloaks and gray petticoats,
and gratify your men with an orange neckerchief now and then, to make a
patch of colour against your russet background."

There were dinner-parties at Arden Court that winter, to which Mr. Lovel
consented to take his daughter, obnoxious as he had declared all such
festivities to be to him. He went always as a concession to his host's
desires, and took care to let Daniel Granger know that his going was an
act of self-sacrifice; but he did go, and he gave his daughter a ten-pound
note, as a free-will offering, for the purchase of a couple of new dresses.

Clarissa wondered not a little at the distinction with which her father and
herself were treated by every one who met them at Mr. Granger's house. She
did not know that a good deal of this attention was given to the future
mistress of Arden Court, and that, in the eyes of county people and
Holborough gentry alike, she stood in that position. She did not know that
her destiny was a settled business in every one's mind except her own: that
her aunt Oliver and the Rector, quite as much as her father, looked upon
her marriage with Daniel Granger as inevitable. Mr. Lovel had been careful
not to alarm his daughter by any hint of his convictions. He was very well
satisfied with the progress of affairs. Daniel Granger was too securely
caught for there to be any room for fear of change on his part, and Daniel
Granger's mode of carrying on the siege seemed to Mr. Lovel an excellent
one. Whatever Clarissa's feelings might have been in the beginning, she
must needs succumb before such admirable patience, such almost sublime
devotion.

Christmas passed, and the new year and all festivities belonging to the
season, and a dreary stretch of winter remained, bleak and ungenial,
enlivened only by Christmas bills, the chill prelude of another year of
struggle. Towards the end of January, Marmarduke Lovel's health broke down
all of a sudden. He was really ill, and very fretful in his illness. Those
creditors of his became desperately pressing in their demands; almost every
morning's post brought him a lawyer's letter; and, however prostrate he
might feel, he was obliged to sit up for an hour or so in the day, resting
his feverish head upon his hand, while he wrote diplomatic letters for the
temporary pacification of impatient attorneys.

Poor Clarissa had a hard time of it in these days. Her father was a
difficult patient, and that ever-present terror of insolvency, and all the
pains and perils attendant thereupon, tormented her by day and kept her
awake at night. Every ring at the cottage gate set her heart beating, and
conjured up the vision of some brutal sheriff's officer, such as she had
read of in modern romance. She nursed her father with extreme tenderness.
He was not confined to his room for any length of time, but was weak and
ill throughout the bleak wintry months, with a racking cough and a touch of
low fever, lying prostrate for the greater part of the day on a sofa by the
fire, and only brightening a little in the evening when Mr. Granger paid
his accustomed visit. Clarissa tended him all through these melancholy
days, when the rain beat against the windows and the dull gray sky looked
as if it would never more be illuminated by a gleam of sunshine; tended him
with supreme patience, and made heroic efforts to cheer and sustain his
spirits, though her own heart was very heavy. And it came to pass that, in
these most trying days, Daniel Granger repeated the avowal of his love, not
urging his suit with any hazardous impatience, but offering to wait as long
as Clarissa pleased for his sentence. And then, in the midst of the girl's
distress at the renewal of this embarrassing declaration, her father spoke
to her, and told her plainly that she was, in all honour, bound to become
Mr. Granger's wife. She had suffered him to devote himself to her, with a
devotion rare in a man of his age and character. She had allowed the outer
world to take the business for granted. It would be a cruel wrong done to
this man, if she were to draw back now and leave him in the lurch.

"Draw back, papa!" she cried with unmitigated surprise and alarm; "but what
have I done to give you or Mr. Granger, or any one else, the slightest
justification for supposing I ever thought of him, except as the most
commonplace acquaintance?"

"That pretence of unconsciousness is the merest affectation, Clarissa. You
must have known why Mr. Granger came here."

"I thought he came to see you, papa, just like any other acquaintance."

"Nonsense, child; one man does not dance attendance upon another like
that--crying off from important dinner-parties in order to drink tea with
his neighbour, and that kind of thing. The case has been clear enough from
the beginning, and you must have known how it was--especially as Granger
made some declaration to you the first time you went to the Court. He told
me what he had done, in a most honourable manner. It is preposterous to
pretend, after that, you could mistake his intentions. I have never worried
you about the business; it seemed to me wisest and best to let matters take
their natural course; and I am the last of men to play the domestic tyrant
in order to force a rich husband upon my daughter; but I never for a moment
doubted that you understood Mr. Granger's feelings, and were prepared to
reward his patience."

"It can never be, papa," Clarissa said decisively; "I would not commit such
a sin as to marry a man I could not love. I am grateful to Mr. Granger,
of course, and very sorry that he should think so much more of me than I
deserve, but----"

"For God's sake don't preach!" cried her father fretfully. "You won't
have him; that's enough. The only road there was to extrication from my
difficulties is shut up. The sheriff's officers can come to-morrow. I'll
write no more humbugging letters to those attorneys, trying to stave off
the crisis. The sooner the crash comes the better; I can drag out the rest
of my existence somehow, in Bruges or Louvain. It is only a question of a
year or two, I daresay."

The dreary sigh with which Mr. Lovel concluded this speech went to
Clarissa's heart. It can scarcely be said that she loved him very dearly,
but she pitied him very much. To his mind, no doubt, it seemed a hard thing
that she should set her face against a change of fortune that would have
ensured ease and comfort for his declining years. She knew him weighed down
by embarrassments which were very real--which had been known to her before
Daniel Granger's appearance as a wooer. There was no pretence about the
ruin that menaced them; and it was not strange that her father, who had
been loath to move beyond the very outskirts of his lost domain, should
shrink with a shuddering dread from exile in a dismal Belgian town.

After that one bitter speech and that one dreary sigh, Mr. Lovel made
no overt attempt to influence his daughter's decision. He had a more
scientific game to play, and he knew how to play it. Peevish remonstrances
might have availed nothing; threats or angry speeches might have provoked a
spirit of defiance. Mr. Lovel neither complained nor threatened; he simply
collapsed. An air of settled misery fell upon him, an utter hopelessness,
that was almost resignation, took possession of him. There was an unwonted
gentleness in his manner to his daughter; he endured the miseries of
weakness and prostration with unaccustomed patience; meekness pervaded all
his words and actions, but it was the meekness of despair. And so--and
so--this was how the familiar domestic drama came to be acted once
more--the old, old story to be repeated. It was Robin Gray over again. If
the cow was not stolen, the sheriff's officers were at the door, and,
for lack of a broken arm, Marmaduke Lovel did not want piteous silent
arguments. He was weak and ill and despairing, and where threats or
jesuitical pleading would have availed little, his silence did much; until
at last, after several weary weeks of indecision, during which Mr. Granger
had come and gone every evening without making any allusion to his suit,
there came one night when Clarissa fell on her knees by her father's sofa,
and told him that she could not endure the sight of his misery any longer,
and that she was willing to be Daniel Granger's wife. Marmaduke Lovel put
his feeble arms round his daughter's neck, and kissed her as he had never
kissed her before; and then burst into tears, with his face hidden upon her
shoulder.