The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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"LAURA ARMSTRONG."

Not a word about George Fairfax. Clarissa wondered where he was; whether
he was still angry with her, or had forgotten her altogether. The latter
seemed the more likely state of affairs. She wondered about him and then
reminded herself that she had no right even to wonder now. His was an image
which must be blotted out of her life. She cut all those careless sketches
out of her drawing-book. If it had only been as easy to tear the memory of
him out of her mind!

The end of May came very quickly, and with it Clarissa's wedding-day.
Before that day Miss Granger made a little formal address to her future
stepmother--an address worded with studious humility--promising a strict
performance of duty on Miss Granger's part in their new relations.

This awful promise was rather alarming to Clarissa, in whose mind Sophia
seemed one of those superior persons whom one is bound to respect and
admire, yet against whom some evil spark of the old Adam in our degraded
natures is ever ready to revolt.

"Pray don't talk of duty, my dear Sophia," she answered in a shy tremulous
way, clinging a little closer to Mr. Granger's arm. It was at Mill Cottage
that this conversation took place, a few days before the wedding. "There
can scarcely be a question of duty between people of the same age, like
you and me. But I hope we shall get to love each other more and more every
day."

"Of course you will," cried Daniel Granger heartily. "Why should you not
love each other? If your tastes don't happen to be exactly the same just
now, habitual intercourse will smooth down all that, and you'll find all
manner of things in which you _can_ sympathise. I've told Sophy that I
don't suppose you'll interfere much with her housekeeping, Clarissa. That's
rather a strong point with her, and I don't think it's much in your line."

Miss Granger tightened her thin lips with a little convulsive movement.
This speech seemed to imply that Miss Lovel's was a loftier line than hers.

Clarissa remembered Lady Laura's warning, and felt that she might be doing
wrong in surrendering the housekeeping. But then, on the other hand, she
felt herself quite unable to cope with Miss Granger's account-books.

"I have never kept a large house," she said. "I should be very sorry to
interfere."

"I was sure of it," exclaimed Mr. Granger; "and you will have more time to
be my companion, Clarissa, if your brain is not muddled with groceries and
butcher's-meat. You see, Sophia has such a peculiarly business-like mind."

"However humble my gifts may be, I have always endeavoured to employ them
for your benefit, papa," Miss Granger replied with a frosty air.

She had come to dine at Mill Cottage for the first time since she had known
of her father's engagement. She had come in deference to her father's
express desire, and it was a hard thing for her to offer even this small
tribute to Clarissa. It was a little family dinner--the Olivers, Mr.
Padget, the rector of Arden, who was to assist cheery Matthew Oliver in
tying the fatal knot, and Mr. and Miss Granger--a pleasant little party of
seven, for whom Mr. Lovel's cook had prepared quite a model dinner. She
had acquired a specialty for about half-a-dozen dishes which her master
affected, and in the preparation of these could take her stand against the
pampered matron who ruled Mr. Granger's kitchen at a stipend of seventy
guineas a year, and whose subordinate and assistant had serious thoughts
of launching herself forth upon the world as a professed cook, by
advertisement in the _Times_--"clear soups, entrees, ices, &c."

The wedding was to be a very quiet one. Mr. Lovel had expressed a strong
desire that it should be so; and Mr. Granger's wishes in no way clashed
with those of his father-in-law.

"I am a man of fallen fortunes," said Mr. Lovel, "and all Yorkshire knows
my history. Anything like pomp or publicity would be out of place in the
marriage of my daughter. When she is your wife it will be different. Her
position will be a very fine one; for she will have some of the oldest
blood in the county, supported by abundance of money. The Lycians used to
take their names from their mothers. I think, if you have a son. Granger,
you ought to call him Lovel."

"I should be proud to do so," answered Mr. Granger. "I am not likely to
forget that my wife is my superior in social rank."

"A superiority that counts for very little when unsustained by hard cash,
my dear Granger," returned Marmaduke Lovel lightly. He was supremely
content with the state of affairs, and had no wish to humiliate his
son-in-law.

So the wedding was performed as simply as if Miss Lovel had been uniting
her fortunes with those of some fledgling of the curate species. There
were only two bridesmaids--Miss Granger, who performed the office with an
unwilling heart; and Miss Pontifex, a flaxen-haired young lady of high
family and no particular means, provided for the occasion by Mrs. Oliver,
at whose house she and Clarissa had become acquainted. There was a
breakfast, elegant enough in its way--for the Holborough confectioner had
been put upon his mettle by Mrs. Oliver--served prettily in the cottage
parlour. The sun shone brightly upon Mr. Granger's espousals. The village
children lined the churchyard walk, and strewed spring flowers upon the
path of bride and bridegroom--tender vernal blossoms which scarcely
harmonised with Daniel Granger's stalwart presence and fifty years.
Clarissa, very pale and still, with a strange fixed look on her face, came
out of the little church upon her husband's arm; and it seemed to her in
that hour as if all the life before her was like an unknown country, hidden
by a great cloud.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXVI.

COMING HOME.

The leaves were yellowing in the park and woods round Arden Court, and
the long avenue began to wear a somewhat dreary look, before Mr. Granger
brought his young wife home. It was October again, and the weather bleaker
and colder than one had a right to expect in October. Mr. Lovel was at Spa,
recruiting his health in the soft breezes that blow across the pine-clad
hills, and leading a pleasant elderly-bachelor existence at one of the best
hotels in the bright little inland watering-place. The shutters were closed
at Mill Cottage, and the pretty rustic dwelling was left in the care of the
honest housekeeper and her handmaiden, the rosy-faced parlour-maid, who
dusted master's books and hung linen draperies before master's bookcases
with a pious awe.

Miss Granger had spent some part of her father's honeymoon in paying visits
to those friends who were eager to have her, and who took this opportunity
of showing special attention to the fallen heiress. The sense of her lost
prestige was always upon her, however, and she was scarcely as grateful
as she might have been for the courtesy she received. People seemed never
weary of talking about her father's wife, whose sweetness, and beauty, and
other interesting qualities, Miss Granger found herself called upon to
discuss continually. She did not bow the knee to the popular idol, however,
but confessed with a charming candour that there was no great sympathy
between her stepmother and herself.

"Her education has been so different from mine," she said, "that it is
scarcely strange if all our tastes are different. But, of course, I shall
do my duty towards her, and I hope and pray that she may make my father
happy."

But Miss Granger did not waste all the summer months in visiting. She was
more in her element at the Court. The model children in the new Arden
poor-schools had rather a hard time of it during Mr. Granger's honeymoon,
and were driven through Kings and Chronicles at a more severe pace than
usual. The hardest and driest facts in geography and grammar were pelted
like summer hail upon their weak young brains, and a sterner demand was
made every day upon their juvenile powers of calculation. This Miss Granger
called giving them a solid foundation; but as the edifice destined to be
erected upon this educational basis was generally of the humblest--a career
of carpentering, or blacksmithing, or housemaiding, or plain-cooking,
for the most part--it is doubtful whether that accurate knowledge of the
objective case or the longitude of the Sandwich Islands which Miss Granger
so resolutely insisted upon, was ever of any great service to the grown-up
scholar.

In these philanthropic labours she had always an ardent assistant in the
person of Mr. Tillott, whose somewhat sandy head and florid complexion used
to appear at the open door of the schoolroom very often when Sophia was
teaching. He did really admire her, with all sincerity and singleness of
heart; describing her, in long confidential letters to his mother, as a
woman possessed of every gift calculated to promote a man's advancement in
this world and the next. He knew that her father's second marriage must
needs make a considerable change in her position. There would be an heir,
in all probability, and Sophia would no longer be the great heiress she had
been. But she would be richly dowered doubtless, come what might; and she
was brought nearer to the aspirations of a curate by this reduction of her
fortune.

Miss Granger accepted the young priest's services, and patronised him with
a sublime unconsciousness of his aspirations. She had heard it whispered
that his father had been a grocer, and that he had an elder brother who
still carried on a prosperous colonial trade in the City. For anything like
retail trade Miss Granger had a profound contempt. She had all the pride of
a parvenu, and all the narrowness of mind common to a woman who lives in a
world of her own creation. So while Mr. Tillott flattered himself that he
was making no slight impression upon her heart, Miss Granger regarded him
as just a little above the head gardener and the certificated schoolmaster.

October came, and the day appointed for the return of the master of Arden
Court; rather a gloomy day, and one in a succession of wet and dismal days,
with a dull gray sky that narrowed the prospect, and frequent showers of
drizzling rain. Miss Granger had received numerous letters from her father
during his travels, letters which were affectionate if brief; and longer
epistles from Clarissa, describing their route and adventures. They had
done Switzerland thoroughly, and had spent the last month in Rome.

The interior of the old house looked all the brighter, perhaps, because
of that dull sky and, and those sodden woods without. Fires were blazing
merrily in all the rooms; for, whatever Miss Granger's secret feelings
might be, the servants were bent on showing allegiance to the new power,
and on giving the house a gala aspect in honour of their master's return.
The chief gardener, with a temporary indifference to his own interests, had
stripped his hothouses for the decoration of the rooms, and great vases of
exotics made the atmosphere odorous, and contrasted pleasantly with the
wintry fires.

Miss Granger sat in the principal drawing-room, with her embroidery-frame
before her, determined not to be flurried or disturbed by the bride's
return. She sat at a respectful distance from the blazing logs, with a
screen interposed carefully between her complexion and the fire, the very
image of stiffness and propriety; not one of her dull-brown hairs ruffled,
not a fold of her dark green-silk dress disarranged.

The carriage was to meet the London express at Holborough station at
half-past four, and at a little before five Miss Granger heard the sound of
wheels in the avenue. She did not even rise from her embroidery-frame to
watch the approach of the carriage, but went on steadily stitch by stitch
at the ear of a Blenheim spaniel. In a few minutes more she heard the clang
of doors thrown open, then the wheels upon the gravel in the quadrangle,
and then her father's voice, sonorous as of old. Even then she did not
fly to welcome him, though her heart beat a little faster, and the colour
deepened in her cheeks.

"I am nothing to him now," she thought.

She began to lay aside her wools, however, and rose as the drawing-room
door opened, to offer the travellers a stately welcome.

Clarissa was looking her loveliest, in violet silk, with a good deal of fur
about her, and with an air of style and fashion which was new to her, Miss
Granger thought. The two young women kissed each other in a formal way, and
then Mr. Granger embraced his daughter with some show of affection.

"How lovely the dear old place looks!" cried Clarissa, as the one triumph
and glory of her marriage came home to her mind: she was mistress of Arden
Court. "Everything is so warm and bright and cheerful, such an improvement
upon foreign houses. What a feast of fires and flowers you have prepared to
welcome us, Sophia!"

She wished to say something cordial to her step-daughter, and she did
really believe that the festive aspect of the house was Miss Granger's
work.

"I have not interfered with the servants' arrangements," that young lady
replied primly; "I hope you don't find so many exotics oppressive in these
hot rooms? _I_ do."

"O dear, no; they are so lovely," answered Clarissa, bending over a pyramid
of stephanotis, "one can scarcely have too many of them. Not if the perfume
makes your head ache, however; in that case they had better be sent away at
once."

But Miss Granger protested against this with an air of meek endurance, and
the flowers were left undisturbed.

"Well, Sophy, what have you been doing with yourself all this time?" Mr.
Granger asked in a cheerful voice; "gadding about finely, according to your
letters."

"I spent a week with the Stapletons, and ten days with the Trevors, and
I went to Scarborough with the Chesneys, as you expressed a wish that I
should accept their invitation, papa," Miss Granger replied dutifully; "but
I really think I am happier at home."

"I'm very glad to hear it, my dear, and I hope you'll find your home
pleasanter than ever now.--So you like the look of the old place, do you,
Clary?" he went on, turning to his wife; "and you don't think we've quite
spoilt it by our renovation?"

"O no, indeed. There can be no doubt as to your improvements. And yet, do
you know, I was so fond of the place, that I am almost sorry to miss its
old shabbiness--the faded, curtains, and the queer Indian furniture which
my great-uncle Colonel Radnor, brought home from Bombay. I wonder what
became of those curious old cabinets?"

"I daresay they are still extant in some lumber-room in the roof, my dear.
Your father took very little of the old furniture away with him, and there
was nothing sold. We'll explore the garrets some day, and look for your
Indian cabinets.--Will you take Clarissa to her rooms, Sophy, and see what
she thinks of our arrangements?"

Miss Granger would gladly have delegated this office to a servant; but her
father's word was law; so she led the way to a suite of apartments which
Daniel Granger had ordered to be prepared for his young wife, and which
Clarissa had not yet been allowed to see. They had been kept as a pleasant
surprise for her coming home.

Had she been a princess of the blood royal, she could not have had finer
rooms, or a more perfect taste in the arrangement of them. Money can do so
much, when the man who dispenses it has the art of intrusting the carrying
out of his desires to the best workmen.

Clarissa was delighted with everything, and really grateful for the
generous affection which had done so much to gratify her.

"It is all a great deal too handsome," she said.

"I am glad you like the style in which they have carried out papa's ideas,"
replied Miss Granger; "for my own part, I like plainer furniture, and more
room for one's work; but it is all a matter of taste."

They were in the boudoir, a perfect gem of a room, with satin-wood
furniture and pale green-silk hangings; its only ornaments a set
of priceless Wedgwood vases in cream colour and white, and a few
water-coloured sketches by Turner, and Creswick, and Stanfield. The
dressing-room opened out of this and was furnished in the same style, with
a dressing-table that was a marvel of art and splendour, the looking-glass
in a frame of oxydised silver, between two monster jewel-cases of ebony and
malachite with oxydised silver mouldings. One entire side of this room was
occupied by an inlaid maple wardrobe, with seven doors, and Clarissa's
monogram on all of them--a receptacle that might have contained the
multifarious costumes of a Princess Metternich.

It would have been difficult for Clarissa not to be pleased with such
tribute, ungracious not to have expressed her pleasure; so when Daniel
Granger came presently to ask how she liked the rooms, she was not slow to
give utterance to her admiration.

"You give me so much more than I deserve, Mr. Granger," she said, after
having admired everything; "I feel almost humiliated by your generosity."

"Clarissa," exclaimed her husband, putting his two hands upon her
shoulders, and looking gravely down at her, "when will you remember that
I have a Christian name? When am I to be something more to you than Mr.
Granger?"

"You are all that is good to me, much too good," she faltered. "I will call
you Daniel, if you like. It is only a habit."

"It has such a cold sound, Clary. I know Daniel isn't a pretty name; but
the elder sons of Grangers have been Daniels for the last two centuries. We
were stanch Puritans, you know, in the days of old Oliver, and scriptural
names became a fashion with us. Well, my dear, I'll leave you to dress
for dinner. I'm very glad you like the rooms. Here are the keys of your
jewel-cases; we must contrive to fill them by and by. You see I have no
family diamonds to reset for you."

"You have given me more than enough jewelry already," said Clarissa. And
indeed Mr. Granger had showered gifts upon her with a lavish hand during
his brief courtship.

"Pshaw, child! only a few trinkets bought at random. I mean to fill those
cases with something better. I'll go and change my coat. We dine half an
hour earlier than usual to-day, Sophia tells me."

Mr. Granger retired to his dressing-room on the other side of the spacious
bed-chamber, perhaps the very plainest apartment in the house, for he was
as simple in his habits as the great Duke of Wellington; a room with a
monster bath on one side, and a battered oak office-desk on the other--a
desk that had done duty for fifty years or so in an office at Leeds--in
one corner a well-filled gunstand, in another a rack of formidable-looking
boots--boots that only a strong-minded man could wear.

When she was quite alone, Clarissa sat down in one of the windows of her
boudoir, and looked out at the park. How well she remembered the prospect!
how often she had looked at it on just such darksome autumnal evenings long
ago, when she was little more than a child! This very room had been her
mother's dressing-room. She remembered it deserted and tenantless, the
faded finery of the furniture growing dimmer and duller year by year. She
had come here in an exploring mood sometimes when she was quite a child,
but she never remembered the room having been put to any use; and as she
had grown older it had come to have a haunted air, and she had touched the
inanimate things with a sense of awe, wondering what her mother's life had
been like in that room--trying to conjure up the living image of a lovely
face, which was familiar to her from more than one picture in her father's
possession.

She knew more about her mother's life now; knew that there had been a
blight upon it, of which a bad unscrupulous man had been the cause. And
that man was the father of George Fairfax.

"Papa had reason to fear the son, having suffered so bitterly from the
influence of the father," she said to herself; and then the face that she
had first seen in the railway carriage shone before her once more, and her
thoughts drifted away from Arden Court.

She remembered that promise which George Fairfax had made her--the promise
that he would try and find out something about her brother Austin.

He had talked of hunting up a man who had been a close friend of the absent
wanderer's; but it seemed as if he had made no effort to keep his word.
After that angry farewell in the orchard, Clarissa could, of course, expect
no favour from him; but he might have done something before that. She
longed so ardently to know her brother's fate, to find some means of
communication with him, now that she was rich, and able to help him in
his exile. He was starving, perhaps, in a strange land, while she was
surrounded by all this splendour, and had five hundred a year for
pocket-money.

Her maid came in to light the candles, and remind her of the dinner-hour,
while she was still looking out at the darkening woods. The maid was an
honest country-bred young woman, selected for the office by Mrs. Oliver.
She had accompanied her mistress on the honeymoon tour, and had been dazed
and not a little terrified by the wonders of Swiss landscape and the
grandeurs of fallen Rome.

"I've been listening for your bell ever so long, ma'am," said the girl;
"you'll scarcely have time to dress."

There was time, however, for Mrs. Granger's toilet, which was not an
elaborate one; and she was seated by the drawing-room fire talking to her
husband when the second dinner-bell rang.

They were not a very lively party that evening. The old adage about three
not being company went near to be verified in this particular case. The
presence of any one so thoroughly unsympathetic as Sophia Granger was in
itself sufficient to freeze any small circle. But although they did not
talk much, Clarissa and her husband seemed to be on excellent terms.
Sophia, who watched them closely during that initiatory evening, perceived
this, and told herself that her father had not yet discovered the mistake
which he had made. That he would make such a discovery sooner or later was
her profound conviction. It was only a question of time.

Thus it was that Clarissa's new life began. She knew herself beloved by
her husband with a quiet unobtrusive affection, the depth and wide measure
whereof had come home to her very often since her marriage with a sense
of obligation that was almost a burden. She knew this, and, knew that she
could give but little in return for so much--the merest, coldest show of
duty and obedience in recompense for all the love of this honest heart. If
love had been a lesson to be learnt, she would have learned it, for she was
not ungrateful, not unmindful of her obligations, or the vow that she
had spoken in Arden Church; but as this flower called love must spring
spontaneous in the human breast, and is not commonly responsive to the
efforts of the most zealous cultivator, Clarissa was fain to confess to
herself after five months of wedded life that her heart was still barren,
and that her husband was little more to her than he had been at the very
first, when for the redemption Of her father's fortunes she had consented
to become his wife.

So the time went on, with much gaiety in the way of feasting and company at
Arden Court, and a palpable dulness when there were no visitors. Mr.
and Mrs. Granger went out a good deal, sometimes accompanied by Sophia,
sometimes without her; and Clarissa was elected by the popular voice the
most beautiful woman in that part of the country. The people who knew her
talked of her so much, that other people who had not met her were eager to
see her, and made quite a favour of being introduced to her. If she knew of
this herself, it gave her no concern; but it was a matter of no small pride
to Daniel Granger that his young wife should be so much admired.

Was he quite happy, having won for himself the woman he loved, seeing
her obedient, submissive, always ready to attend his pleasure, to be his
companion when he wanted her company, with no inclination of her own
which she was not willing to sacrifice at a moment's notice for his
gratification? Was he quite happy in the triumph of his hopes? Well, not
quite. He knew that his wife did not love him. It might come some day
perhaps, that affection for which he still dared to hope, but it had not
come yet. He watched her face sometimes as she sat by his hearth on those
quiet evenings when they were alone, and he knew that a light should have
shone upon it that was not there. He would sigh sometimes as he read his
newspaper by that domestic hearth, and his wife would wonder if he were
troubled by any business cares--whether he were disturbed by any abnormal
commotion among those stocks or consols or other mysterious elements of the
financial world in which all rich men seemed more or less concerned. She
did not ever venture to question him as to those occasional sighs; but she
would bring the draught-board and place it at his elbow, and sit meekly
down to be beaten at a game she hated, but for which Mr. Granger had a
peculiar affection.

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.