The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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Mr. Lovel came back to Mill Cottage in December, much improved and
renovated by the Belgian waters or the gaieties of the bright little
pleasure place. The sense of having made an end of his difficulties, and
being moored in a safe harbour for the rest of his life, may have done much
towards giving him a new lease of existence. Whatever the cause may have
been, he was certainly an altered man, and his daughter rejoiced in the
change. To her his manner was at once affectionate and deferential, as
if there had been lurking in his breast some consciousness that she had
sacrificed herself for his welfare. She felt this, and felt that her
marriage had given her something more than Arden Court, if it had won for
her her father's love. He spent some time at the Court, in deference to her
wishes, during those dark winter months; and they fell hack on their old
readings, and the evenings seemed gayer and happier for the introduction
of this intellectual element, which was not allowed to prevail to such an
extant as to overpower the practical Daniel Granger.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXVII.

IN THE SEASON.

In the spring Mr. Granger took his wife and daughter to London, where they
spent a couple of months in Clarges-street, and saw a good deal of society
in what may he called the upper range of middle-class life--rich merchants
and successful professional men living in fine houses at the West-end,
enlivened with a sprinkling from the ranks of the baronetage and lesser
nobility. In this circle Mr. Granger occupied rather a lofty standing, as
the owner of one of the finest estates in Yorkshire, and of a fortune which
the common love of the marvellous exalted into something fabulous. He found
himself more popular than ever since his marriage, as the husband of one of
the prettiest women who had appeared that season. So, during the two months
of their London life, there was an almost unbroken succession of gaieties,
and Mr. Granger found himself yearning for the repose of Arden Court
sometimes, as he waited in a crowded ball-room while his wife and daughter
danced their last quadrille. It pleased him that Clarissa should taste this
particular pleasure-cup--that she should have every delight she had a right
to expect as his wife; but it pleased him not the less when she frankly
confessed to him one day that this brilliant round of parties and
party-giving had very few charms for her, and that she would be glad to go
back to Arden.

In London Clarissa met Lady Laura Armstrong; for the first time since
that September afternoon in which she had promised that no arts of George
Fairfax's should move her to listen to him. Lord Calderwood had been dead a
year and a half, and my lady was resplendent once more, and giving weekly
receptions in Mr. Armstrong's great house in Portland-place--a corner
house, with about a quarter of a mile of drawing-rooms, stretching back
into one of the lateral streets. For Mr. and Mrs. Granger she gave a
special dinner, with an evening party afterwards; and she took up a good
deal of Clarissa's time by friendly morning calls, and affectionate
insistance upon Mrs. Granger's company in her afternoon drives, and at her
daily kettle-drums--drives and kettle-drums from which Miss Granger felt
herself more or less excluded.

It was during one of these airings, when they had left the crowd and
splendour of the Park, and were driving to Roehampton, that Clarissa heard
the name of George Fairfax once more. Until this afternoon, by some strange
accident as it seemed, Lady Laura had never mentioned her sister's lover.

"I suppose you heard that it was all broken off?" she said, rather
abruptly, and apropos to nothing particular.

"Broken off, Lady Laura?"

"I mean Geraldine's engagement. People are so fond of talking about those
things; you must have heard, surely, Clary."

"No, indeed, I have heard nothing.

"That's very curious. It has been broken off ever so long--soon after poor
papa's death, in fact. But you know what Geraldine is--so reserved--almost
impenetrable, as one may say. I knew nothing of what had happened myself
till one day--months after the breach had occurred, it seems--when I made
some allusion to Geraldine's marriage, she stopped me, in her cold, proud
way, saying, 'It's just as well I should tell you that that affair is all
off, Laura. Mr. Fairfax and I have wished each other good-bye for ever.'
That's what I call a crushing blow for a sister, Clarissa. You know how I
had set my heart upon that marriage."

"I am very sorry," faltered Clarissa. "They had quarrelled, I suppose."

"Quarrelled! O, dear no; she had not seen him since she left Hale with
Frederick and me, and they parted with every appearance of affection. No;
there had been some letters between them, that was all. I have never been
able to discover the actual cause of their parting. Geraldine refused to
answer any questions, in a most arbitrary manner. It is a hard thing,
Clarissa; for I know that she loved him."

"And where is Lady Geraldine now?"

"At Hale, with my children. She has no regular home of her own now, you
see, poor girl, and she did not care about another season in London--she
has had enough of that kind of thing--so she begged me to let her stay at
the Castle, and superintend the governesses, and amuse herself in her own
way. Life is full of trouble, Clary!" and here the mistress of Hale Castle,
and of some seventy thousand per annum, gave a despondent sigh.

"Have you seen Mr. Fairfax since you came from Germany?" asked Clarissa.

"Yes, I have met him once--some months ago. You may be sure that I was
tolerably cool to him. He has been very little in society lately, and has
been leading rather a wild life in Paris, I hear. A prudent marriage would
have been his redemption; but I daresay it will end in his throwing himself
away upon some worthless person."

It was a relief to Clarissa to hear that George Fairfax was in Paris,
though that was very near. But in her ignorance of his whereabouts she
had fancied him still nearer, and in all her London festivities had been
tormented by a perpetual dread of meeting him. Many times even she had
imagined that she saw his face across the crowd, and had been relieved to
find it was only a face that bore some faint resemblance to his.

He had kept his word, then, so far as the breaking of his engagement
to Geraldine Challoner. He had been more in earnest than Clarissa had
believed. She thought that she was sorry for this; but it is doubtful
whether the regretful feeling in her heart was really sorrow for
Lady Geraldine. She thought of George Fairfax a good deal after this
conversation with Lady Laura--alas, when had she ceased to think of
him!--and all the splendours and pleasures of her married life seemed to
her more than ever worthless. What a hopeless entanglement, what a dismal
mistake, her existence was! Had she sold herself for these things--for
Arden Court and a town house, and unlimited millinery? No; again and again
she told herself she had married Daniel Granger for her father's sake, and
perhaps a little from a desire to keep faith with Lady Laura.

This marriage had seemed to her the only perfect fulfilment of her promise
that nothing should induce her to marry George Fairfax. But the sacrifice
had been useless, since he had broken his engagement to Geraldine
Challoner.

Sophia Granger's lynx eyes perceived a change in her step mother about this
time. Clarissa had never appeared especially enraptured by the gaieties
of fashionable London; but then had come upon her of late a languor and
weariness of spirit which she tried in vain to disguise by an assumed air
of enjoyment. That simulated gaiety deluded her husband, but it could not
deceive Miss Granger.

"She's getting tired of her life already, even here where we have a
perpetual round of amusements," Sophia said to herself. "What will she be
when we go back to Yorkshire?"

The time was close at hand for the return to Arden, when the thing which
Clarissa had feared came to pass, and the hazard of London life brought her
face to face with George Fairfax.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXVIII.

MR. WOOSTER.

The season was at its height, and the Grangers found every available hour
of their existence engaged in visiting and receiving visitors. There were
so many people whom Lady Laura insisted upon introducing to her dear
Clarissa--there was so much in the way of party-giving that Lady Laura
wanted her sweet Mrs. Granger to do. Now it was a morning concert of my
lady's planning, at which weird and wonderful-looking denizens of the
Norseland--Poles, Hungarians, Danes, and Swedes--with unkempt hair and
fierce flashing eyes, performed upon every variety of native instrument, or
sang wild national songs in some strange language--concerts to which Lady
Laura brought herds of more or less fashionable people, all of whom were
languishing to know "that sweet Mrs. Granger." My lady had taken pains to
advertise her share in the manufacturer's marriage. Every one belonging to
her set knew that the match was her contriving, and that Clarissa had to
thank the mistress of Hale Castle for her millionaire husband. She was
really proud of her protegee's success, and was never tired of praising her
and "that admirable Granger."

That admirable Granger endured the accession of party-giving with a very
good grace. It pleased him to see his wife admired; it pleased him still
more to see her happy; and he was single-minded enough to believe her
increased volatility a symptom of increased happiness. Whatever undefined
regrets and dim forebodings there might be lurking in his own mind, he had
no doubt of his wife's integrity--no fear of hidden perils in this ordeal
of fashionable life.

She would come to love him in time, he said to himself, trusting as blindly
in the power of time to work this wonder for him as Clarissa herself had
trusted when she set herself to win her father's affection. He believed
this not so much because the thing was probable or feasible, as because he
desired it with an intensity of feeling that blinded him to the force
of hard facts. He--the man who had never made a false reckoning in the
mathematics of business-life--whose whole career was unmarred by a
mistake--whose greatest successes had been the result of unrivalled
coolness of brain and unerring foresight--he, the hard-headed, far-seeing
man of the world--was simple as a child in this matter, which involved the
greater hazard of his heart.

But while Clarissa's husband trusted her with such boundless confidence,
Clarissa's stepdaughter watched her with the vigilant eyes of prejudice,
not to say hatred. That a young lady so well brought up as Miss Granger--so
thoroughly grounded in Kings and Chronicles--should entertain the vulgar
passion of hate, seemed quite out of the question; but so far as a
ladylike aversion may go, Miss Granger certainly went in relation to her
step-mother. In this she was sustained by that model damsel Hannah Warman,
who, not having made much progress in Mrs. Granger's liking, had discovered
that she could not "take to" that lady, and was always ready to dilate upon
her shortcomings, whenever her mistress permitted. Sophia was capricious in
this, sometimes listening eagerly, at other times suppressing Miss Warman
with a high hand.

So Clarissa had, unawares, an enemy within her gates, and could turn
neither to the right nor to the left without her motives for so turning
becoming the subject of a close and profound scrutiny. It is hard to say
what shape Miss Granger's doubts assumed. If put into the witness-box and
subjected to the cross-examination of a popular queen's-counsel, she
would have found it very difficult to give a substance or a form to her
suspicions. She could only have argued in a general way, that Mrs. Granger
was frivolous, and that any kind of wrong-doing might be expected from so
light-minded a person.

It was the beginning of June, and West-end London was glorious with the
brief brilliancy of the early summer. All the Mayfair balconies were bright
with, flowers, and the Mayfair knockers resounded perpetually under the
hand of the archetypal Jeames. The weather was unusually warm; the most
perfect weather for garden-parties, every one declared, and there were
several of these _al fresco_ assemblies inscribed in Mrs. Granger's
visiting-book: one at Wimbledon; another as far afield as Henley-on-Thames,
at a villa whose grounds sloped down to the river.

This Henley party was an affair in which Lady Laura Armstrong was
particularly interested. It was given by a bachelor friend of her
husband's, a fabulously rich stockbroker; and it was Lady Laura who had
brought the proprietor of the villa to Clarges-street, and who had been
instrumental in the getting-up of the fete.

"You must really give us some kind of a party at your Henley place this
year, Mr. Wooster," she said. "There is the regatta now; I have positively
not seen the Henley regatta for three years. The Putney business is all
very well--supremely delightful, in short, while it lasts--but such a mere
lightning flash of excitement. I like a long day's racing, such as one gets
at Henley."

"Lady Laura ought to be aware that my house is at her disposal all the year
round, and that she has only to signify her pleasure to her most devoted
slave."

"O, that's all very well." replied my lady. "Of course, I know that if
Frederick and I were to come down, you would give us luncheon or dinner,
and let us roam about the gardens as long as we liked. But that's not what
I want. I want you to give a party on one of the race days, and invite all
the nice people in London."

"Are there any nasty people on this side of Temple-bar, Lady Laura, before
the closing of Parliament? I thought, in the season everybody was nice."

"You know what I mean, sir. I want the really pleasant people. Half-a-dozen
painters or so, and some of the nicest literary men--not the men who write
the best books, but the men who talk cleverly; and, of course, a heap of
musical people--they are always nice, except to one another. You must have
marquees on the lawn for the luncheon--your house is too small for anything
more than tea and coffee; and for once let there be no such thing as
croquet--that alone will give your party an air of originality. I
suppose you had better put yourself entirely into Gunter's hands for the
commissariat, and be sure you tell him you want novelty--no hackneyed
ideas; sparkle and originality in everything, from the eggs to the apples.
I should ask you to give us a dance in the evening, with coloured lamps,
if that were practicable, but there is the coming back to town; and if we
carried the business on to a breakfast next morning, some of the people
might begin to be tired, and the women would look faded and limp. So I
think we had better confine ourselves to a mere garden-party and luncheon,
without any dancing," Lady Laura concluded with a faint sigh.

"Will you send out the invitations, Lady Laura?"

"O, no; I leave all that to you. You really know everybody--or everybody we
need care about."

In this manner Mr. Wooster's party had been arranged, and to this party the
Grangers were bidden. Even the serious Sophia was going; indeed, it is to
be observed that this young lady joined in all mundane gaieties, under
protest as it were.

"I go out, my dear, but I never enjoy myself," she would say to a serious
friend, as if that were a kind of merit. "Papa wishes me to go, and I have
no desire to withdraw myself in any way from Mrs. Granger's amusements,
however little sympathy there may be between us. I endeavour to do _my_
duty, whatever the result may be."

Mr. Wooster did know a great many people. His abnormal wealth, and a
certain amount of cleverness, had been his sole passports to society. Among
Burke's _Landed Gentry_ there was no trace of the Wooster family, nor
had Mr. Wooster ever been heard to allude to a grandfather. He had begun
stockjobbing in the smallest way, but had at a very early stage of his
career developed a remarkable genius for this kind of traffic. Those of
his own set who had watched his steady ascent declared him to be a very
remarkable man; and the denizens of the West-end world, who knew nothing of
stockjobbing or stockbroking, were quite ready to receive him when he came
to them laden with the gold of Ophir, and with a reputation, of being
something distinguished upon 'Change.

Time had begun to thin Mr. Wooster's flowing locks before he landed
himself safely upon the shores of fashionable life, and Mr. Wooster's
carefully-trained moustache and whiskers had a purplish tinge that
looked more like art than nature. He was short and stout, with a florid
complexion, sharp black eyes, and a large aquiline nose, and considered
himself eminently handsome. He dressed with elaborate splendour--"dressed
for two," as some of his less gorgeous friends were wont to say--and was
reputed to spend a small fortune annually in exotics for his buttonhole,
and in dress boots.

His chief merits in the estimation of the polite world lay in the
possession of a perfectly-appointed town house, the villa at Henley,
another villa at Cowes, and a couple of magnificent yachts. He was a
perpetual giver of dinners, and spent his existence between the Stock
Exchange and the dinner-table, devoting whatever mental force remained
to him after his daily traffic to the study of menus, and the grave
consideration of wine-lists.

To dine with Wooster was one of the right things to do once or twice in the
course of a season; and Wooster's steam yacht was a pleasant place of rest
and haven of safety for any juvenile member of the peerage who had been
plunging heavily, and went in fear of the Bankruptcy-court.

So, on a brilliant June morning, the Grangers left the Great Western
station by special train, and sped through the summer landscape to Henley.
This garden-party at Mr. Wooster's villa was almost their last engagement.
They were to return to Arden in two days; and Clarissa was very glad that
it was so. That weariness of spirit which had seemed to her so strange in
some of the young ladies at Hale Castle had come upon herself. She longed
for Arden Court and perfect rest; and then she remembered, with something
like a shudder, that there were people invited for the autumn, and that
Lady Laura Armstrong had promised to spend a week with her dearest
Clarissa.

"I want to put you into the way of managing that great house, Clary," said
my lady, brimming over with good-nature and officiousness. "As to leaving
the housekeeping in Miss Granger's hands, that's not to be dreamt of. It
might do very well for the first six months--just to let her down gently,
as it were--but from henceforth you must hold the reins yourself, Clary,
and I'll teach you how to drive."

"But, dear Lady Laura, I don't want the trouble and responsibility of
housekeeping. I would much rather leave all that in Sophy's hands,"
protested Clarissa. "You have no idea how clever she is. And I have my own
rooms, and my painting."

"Yes," exclaimed Lady Laura, "and you will mope yourself to death in your
own rooms, with your painting, whenever you have no company in the house.
You are not going to become a cipher, surely, Clarissa! What with Miss
Granger's schools, and Miss Granger's clothing-club, and Miss Granger's
premiums and prizes for this, that, and the other, you stand a fair chance
of sinking into the veriest nobody, or you would, if it were not for your
pretty face. And then you really must have employment for your mind, Clary.
Look at me; see the work I get through."

"But you are a wonder, dear Lady Laura, and I have neither your energy nor
your industry."

Laura Armstrong would not admit this, and held to the idea of putting
Clarissa in the right away.

"Wait till I come to you in the autumn," she said. And in that depression
of spirit which had grown upon her of late, Mrs. Granger found it a hard
thing to say that she should be rejoiced when that time came.

She wanted to get back to Arden Court, and was proud to think of herself as
the mistress of the place she loved so dearly; but it seemed to her that
an existence weighed down at once by the wisdom of Sophia Granger and the
exuberant gaiety of Lady Laura would be barely endurable. She sighed for
Arden Court as she remembered it in her childhood--the dreamy quiet of the
dull old house, brightened only by her brother's presence; the perfect
freedom of her own life, so different from the life whose every hour was
subject to the claims of others.

She had changed very much since that visit to Hale Castle. Then all the
pleasures of life were new to her--to-day they seemed all alike flat,
stale, and unprofitable. She had been surfeited with splendours and
pleasures since her marriage. The wealth which Daniel Granger so freely
lavished upon her had rendered these things common all at once. She looked
back and wondered whether she had really ever longed for a new dress, and
been gladdened by the possession of a five-pound note.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXIX.

"IF I SHOULD MEET THEE--"

Mr. Wooster's villa was almost perfection in its way; but there was
something of that ostentatious simplicity whereby the parvenu endeavours
sometimes to escape from the vulgar glitter of his wealth. The chairs and
tables were of unpolished oak, and of a rustic fashion. There were no
pictures, but the walls of the dining-room were covered with majolica
panels of a pale gray ground, whereon sported groups of shepherds and
shepherdesses after Boucher, painted on the earthenware with the airiest
brush in delicate rose-colour; the drawing-room and breakfast-room were
lined with fluted chintz, in which the same delicate grays and rose-colours
were the prevailing hues. The floors were of inlaid woods, covered only by
a small Persian carpet here and there. There was no buhl or marquetery, not
a scrap of gilding or a yard of silk or satin, in the house; but there
was an all-pervading coolness, and in every room the perfume of
freshly-gathered flowers.

Mr. Wooster told his fashionable acquaintance that in winter the villa was
a howling wilderness by reason of damp and rats; but there were those of
his Bohemian friends who could have told of jovial parties assembled there
in November, and saturnalias celebrated there in January; for Mr. Wooster
was a bachelor of very liberal opinions, and had two sets of visitors.

To-day the villa was looking its best and brightest. The hothouses had been
almost emptied of their choicest treasures in order to fill jardinieres and
vases for all the rooms. Mr. Wooster had obeyed Lady Laura, and there was
nothing but tea, coffee, and ices to be had in the house; nor were the
tea and coffee dispensed in the usual business-like manner, which reduces
private hospitality to the level of a counter at a railway station. Instead
of this, there were about fifty little tables dotted about the rooms, each
provided with a gem of a teapot and egg-shell cups and saucers for three
or four, so that Mr. Wooster's feminine visitors might themselves have the
delight of dispensing that most feminine of all beverages. This contrivance
gave scope for flirtation, and was loudly praised by Mr. Wooster's guests.

The gardens of the villa were large--indeed, the stockbroker had pulled
down a fine old family mansion to get a site for his dainty little
dwelling. There was a good stretch of river-frontage, from which the crowd
could watch the boats flash by; now the striped shirts shooting far ahead
to the cry of "Bravo, Brazenose!" anon the glitter of a line of light-blue
caps, as the Etonian crew answered to the call of their coxswain, and
made a gallant attempt to catch their powerful opponents; while Radley,
overmatched and outweighted, though by no means a bad crew, plodded
hopelessly but pluckily in the rear. Here Clarissa strolled for some time,
leaning on her husband's arm, and taking a very faint interest in the
boats. It was a pretty sight, of course; but she had seen so many pretty
sights lately, and the brightness of them had lost all power to charm her.
She looked on, like a person in a picture-gallery, whose eyes and brain
are dazed by looking at too many pictures. Mr. Granger noticed her
listlessness, and was quick to take alarm. She was paler than usual, he
thought.

"I'm afraid you've been overdoing it with so many parties, Clary," he said;
"you are looking quite tired to-day."

"I am rather tired. I shall be glad to go back to Arden."

"And I too, my dear. The fact is, there's nothing in the world I care less
for than this sort of thing: but I wanted you to have all the enjoyment to
be got out of a London season. It is only right that you should have any
pleasure I can give you."

"You are too good to me," Clarissa answered with a faint sigh.

Her husband did not notice the sigh; but he did remark the phrase, which
was one she had used very often--one that wounded him a little whenever he
heard it.