The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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Not yet. He was really attached to Geraldine Challoner. Her society had
been a kind of habit with him for several years of his life. She had been
more admired than any woman he knew, and it was, in some sort, a triumph to
have won her. That he never would have won her but for his brother's death
he knew very well, and accepted the fact as a matter of course; a mere
necessity of the world in which they lived, not as evidence of a mercenary
spirit in the lady. He knew that no woman could better discharge the duties
of an elevated station, or win him more social renown. To marry Geraldine
Challoner was to secure for his house the stamp of fashion, for every
detail of his domestic life a warrant of good taste. She had a kind of
power over him too, an influence begun long ago, which had never yet been
oppressive to him. And he took these things for love. He had been in love
with other women during his long alliance with Lady Geraldine, and had
shown more ardour in the pursuit of other flames than he had ever evinced
in his courtship of her; but these more passionate attachments had come,
for the most part, to a sorry end; and now he told himself that Geraldine
suited him better than any other woman in the world.

"I have outgrown all foolish notions," he said to himself, believing that
the capacity was dead within him for that blind unreasoning passion which
poets of the Byronic school have made of love. "What I want is a wife; a
wife of my own rank, or a little above me in rank; a wife who will be true
and loyal to me, who knows the world well enough to forgive my antecedents,
and to be utterly silent about them, and who will help me to make a
position for myself in the future. A man must be something in this world.
It is a hard thing that one cannot live one's own life; but it seems
inevitable somehow."

His mother had helped not a little to the bringing about of this
engagement. She knew that her son's bachelor life had been at best a wild
one; not so bad as it was supposed to be, of course, since nothing in this
world ever is so bad as the rest of the world supposes it; and she was very
anxious to see him safely moored in the sheltered harbour of matrimony. She
was a proud woman, and she was pleased that her son should have an earl's
daughter for his wife; and beyond this there was the fact that she liked
Lady Geraldine. The girl who had been too proud to let the man she loved
divine the depth of her feeling, had not been too proud to exhibit her
fondness for his mother. There had grown up a warm friendship between these
two women; and Mrs. Fairfax's influence had done much, almost unknown
to her son, to bring about this result of his chronic flirtation with
Geraldine Challoner.

Just at present he was very well satisfied with the fact of his engagement,
believing that he had taken the best possible means for securing his future
happiness; an equable, quiet sort of happiness, of course--he was nearly
thirty, and had outlived the possibility of anything more than that. It
would have bored him to suppose that Geraldine expected more from him
than this tranquil kind of worship. Perhaps the lady understood this, and
schooled herself to a colder tone than was even natural to her, rather than
be supposed for one moment to be the more deeply attached of the two.

Thus it happened that Mr. Fairfax was not severely taxed in his capacity of
plighted lover. However exacting Lady Geraldine may have been by nature,
she was too proud to demand more exclusive attention than her betrothed
spontaneously rendered; indeed, she took pains to let him perceive that he
was still in full enjoyment of all his old bachelor liberty. So the days
drifted by very pleasantly, and George Fairfax found himself in Clarissa
Lovel's society perhaps a little oftener than was well for either of those
two.

He was very kind to her; he seemed to understand her better than other
people, she thought; and his companionship was more to her than that of
any one else--a most delightful relief after Captain Westleigh's incessant
frivolity, or Mr. Halkin's solemn small-talk. In comparison with these
men, he appeared to such wonderful advantage. Her nature expanded in his
society, and she could talk to him as she talked to no one else.

He used to wonder at her eloquence sometimes, as the beautiful face glowed,
and the dark hazel eyes brightened; he wondered not a little also at the
extent of her reading, which had been wide and varied during that quiet
winter and spring-time at Mill Cottage.

"What a learned lady you are!" he said, smiling at her enthusiasm one day,
when they had been talking of Italy and Dante; "your close knowledge of the
poet puts my poor smattering to shame. Happily, an idler and a worldling
like myself is not supposed to know much. I was never patient enough to be
a profound reader; and if I cannot tear the heart out of a book, I am apt
to throw it aside in disgust. But you must have read a great deal; and yet
when we met, less than a year ago, you confessed to being only a schoolgirl
fresh from grinding away at Corneille and Racine."

"I have had the advantage of papa's help since then," answered Clarissa,
"and he is very clever. He does not read many authors, but those he does
care for he reads with all his heart. He taught me to appreciate Dante, and
to make myself familiar with the history of his age, in order to understand
him better."

"Very wise of him, no doubt. And that kind of studious life with your papa
is very pleasant to you, I suppose, Miss Lovel?"

"Yes," she answered thoughtfully; "I have been quite happy with papa. Some
people might fancy the life dull, perhaps, but it has scarcely seemed so to
me. Of course it is very different from life here; but I suppose one would
get tired of such a perpetual round of pleasure as Lady Laura provides for
us."

"I should imagine so. Life in a country house full of delightful people
must be quite intolerable beyond a certain limit. One so soon gets tired of
one's best friends. I think that is why people travel so much nowadays. It
is the only polite excuse for being alone."

The time came when Clarissa began to fancy that her visit had lasted long
enough, and that, in common decency, she was bound to depart; but on
suggesting as much to Lady Laura, that kindly hostess declared she could
not possibly do without her dearest Clarissa for ever so long.

"Indeed, I don't know how I shall ever get on without you, my dear," she
said; "we suit each other so admirably, you see. Why, I shall have no one
to read Tasso with--no one to help me with my Missal when you are gone."

Miss Lovel's familiar knowledge of Italian literature, and artistic tastes,
had been altogether delightful to Lady Laura; who was always trying to
improve herself, as she called it, and travelled from one pursuit to
another, with a laudable perseverance, but an unhappy facility for
forgetting one accomplishment in the cultivation of another. Thus by
a vigorous plunge into Spanish and Calderon this year, she was apt to
obliterate the profound impression created by Dante and Tasso last year.
Her music suffered by reason of a sudden ardour for illumination; or art
went to the wall because a London musical season and an enthusiastic
admiration of Halle had inspired her with a desire to cultivate a more
classic style of pianoforte-playing. So in her English reading, each new
book blotted out its predecessor. Travels, histories, essays, biographies,
flitted across the lady's brain like the coloured shadows of a
magic-lantern, leaving only a lingering patch of picture here and there.
To be versatile was Lady Laura's greatest pride, and courteous friends had
gratified her by treating her as an authority upon all possible subjects.
Nothing delighted her so much as to be appealed to with a preliminary,
"Now, you who read so much, Lady Laura, will understand this;" or, "Dear
Lady Laura, you who know everything, must tell me why," etc.; or to be told
by a painter, "You who are an artist yourself can of course see this, Lady
Laura;" or to be complimented by a musician as a soul above the dull mass
of mankind, a sympathetic spirit, to whom the mysteries of harmony are a
familiar language.

In that luxurious morning-room of Lady Laura's Clarissa generally spent the
first two hours after breakfast. Here the children used to come with French
and German governesses, in all the freshness of newly-starched cambric and
newly-crimped tresses, to report progress as to their studies and general
behaviour to their mother; who was apt to get tired of them in something
less than a quarter of an hour, and to dispatch them with kisses and
praises to the distant schoolrooms and nurseries where these young exotics
were enjoying the last improvements in the forcing system.

Geraldine Challoner would sometimes drop into this room for a few minutes
at the time of the children's visit, and would converse not unkindly with
her nephews and nieces; but for her sister's accomplishments she displayed
a profound indifference, not to say contempt. She was not herself given to
the cultivation of these polite arts--nothing could ever induce her to sing
or play in public. She read a good deal, but rarely talked about books--it
was difficult indeed to say what Lady Geraldine did talk about--yet in
the art of conversation, when she chose to please, Geraldine Challoner
infinitely surpassed the majority of women in her circle. Perhaps this may
have been partly because she was a good listener; and, in some measure, on
account of that cynical, mocking spirit in which she regarded most things,
and which was apt to pass for wit.

Clarissa had been a month at Hale Castle already; but she stayed on at the
urgent desire of her hostess, much too happy in that gay social life to
oppose that lady's will.

"If you really, really wish to have me, dear Lady Laura," she said; "but
you have been so kind already, and I have stayed so long, that I begin to
feel myself quite an intruder."

"You silly child! I do really, really wish to have you. I should like to
keep you with me always, if I could. You suit me so much better than any of
my sisters; they are the most provoking girls in the world, I think, for
being uninterested in my pursuits. And your Italian is something wonderful.
I have not opened my dictionary since we have been reading together. And
beyond all that, I have a very particular reason for wishing you to be here
next month."

"Why next month, Lady Laura?"

"I am not going to tell you that."

"But you quite mystify me."

"I mean to mystify you. No, it's not the least use asking questions, Clary;
but mind, you must not tease me any more about running away: that is
understood."

In all this time Clarissa had not found herself any nearer to that desired
result of getting on well with Geraldine Challoner. That, lady seemed quite
as far away from her after a month's acquaintance as she had seemed at the
very first. It was not that Lady Geraldine was uncivil. She was polite,
after her manner, to Clarissa, but never cordial; and yet she could not
fail to see that George Fairfax admired and liked Miss Lovel, and she might
have been supposed to wish to think well of any one he liked.

Was she jealous of Clarissa? Well, no, it scarcely seemed possible to
associate the fever of jealousy with that serene temperament. She had an
air of complete security in all her intercourse with George Fairfax, which
was hardly compatible with doubt or the faintest shadow of suspicion.

If ever she did speak of Miss Lovel to her lover, or to any one else, she
talked of her as a pretty country girl, and seemed to consider her as far
removed, by reason of her youth and obscure position, from herself, as if
they had been inhabitants of two separate worlds.

Mr. Lovel had been invited to several dinner-parties at the Castle during
his daughter's visit, but was not to be drawn from his seclusion. He had no
objection, however, that Clarissa should stay as long as Lady Laura cared
to retain her, and wrote very cordially to that effect.

What a pleasant, idle, purposeless life it was, and how rapidly it drifted
by for Clarissa! She wondered to find herself so happy; wondered what the
charm was which made life so new and sweet, which made her open her eyes on
the morning sunshine with such a glad eagerness to greet the beginning
of another day, and filled up every hour with such a perfect sense of
contentment.

She wondered at this happiness only in a vague dreamy way, not taking much
trouble to analyse her feelings. It was scarcely strange that she should be
completely happy in a life so different from her dull existence at home.
The freshness and beauty of all these pleasant things would be worn off in
time, no doubt, and she would become just like those other young women,
with their experience of many seasons, and their perpetual complaint of
being bored; but just now, while the freshness lasted, everything delighted
her.

Clarissa had been more than six weeks at the Castle, while other visitors
had come and gone, and the round of country-house gaieties had been
unbroken. The Fermors still lingered on, and languidly deprecated the
length of their visit, without any hint of actual departure. Captain
Westleigh had gone back to his military duties, very much in love with
Miss Lovel. He plaintively protested, in his confidences with a few chosen
friends, against a Providence which had made them both penniless.

"I don't suppose I shall ever meet such a girl again," he would declare
piteously. "More than once I was on the point of making her an offer; the
words were almost out, you know; for I don't go in for making a solemn
business of the thing, with a lot of preliminary palaver. If a fellow
really likes a girl, he doesn't want to preach a sermon in order to let her
know it; and ever so many times, when we've been playing croquet, or when
I've been hanging about the piano with her of an evening, I've been on the
point of saying, 'Upon my word, Miss Lovel, I think we two are eminently
suited to each other, don't you?' or something plain and straightforward
of that kind; and then I've remembered that her father can't give her a
sixpence, which, taken in conjunction with my own financial condition,
would mean starvation!"

"And do you think she liked you?" a curious friend would perhaps inquire.

"Well, I don't know. She might do worse, you see. As a rule, girls
generally do like me. I don't see why there should be any difference in her
case."

Nor did the Captain for a moment imagine that Clarissa would have rejected
him, had he been in a position to make an offer of his hand.

Lady Geraldine was a fixture at Hale. She was to stay there till her
marriage, with the exception, perhaps, of a brief excursion to London for
millinery purposes, Lady Laura told Clarissa. But the date of the marriage
had not yet been settled--had been, indeed, only discussed in the vaguest
manner, and the event seemed still remote.

"It will be some time this year, I suppose," Lady Laura said; "but beyond
that I can really say nothing. Geraldine is so capricious; and perhaps
George Fairfax may not be in a great hurry to give up his bachelor
privileges. He is very different from Fred, who worried me into marrying
him six weeks after he proposed. And in this case a long engagement seems
so absurd, when you consider that they have known each other for ten years.
I shall really be very glad when the business is over, for I never feel
quite sure of Geraldine."

* * * * *

CHAPTER VIII.

SMOULDERING FIRES.

With the beginning of August there came a change in the weather. High
winds, gloom, and rain succeeded that brilliant cloudless summer-time,
which had become, as it were, the normal condition of the universe;
and Lady Laura's guests were fain to abandon their picnics and forest
excursions, their botanical researches and distant-race meetings--nay, even
croquet itself, that perennial source of recreation for the youthful mind,
had to be given up, except in the most fitful snatches. In this state
of things, amateur concerts and acted charades came into fashion. The
billiard-room was crowded from breakfast till dinner time. It was
a charmingly composite apartment--having one long wall lined with
bookshelves, sacred to the most frivolous ephemeral literature, and a grand
piano in an arched recess at one end of the room--and in wet weather was
the chosen resort of every socially-disposed guest at Hale. Here Clarissa
learned to elevate her pretty little hand into the approved form of bridge,
and acquired some acquaintance with the mysteries of cannons and pockets.
It was Mr. Fairfax who taught her billiards. Lady Geraldine dropped into
the room now and then, and played a game in a dashing off-hand way with her
lover, amidst the admiring comments of her friends; but she did not come
very often, and Mr. Fairfax had plenty of time for Clarissa's instruction.

Upon one of these wet days he insisted upon looking over her portfolio of
drawings; and in going through a heap of careless sketches they came upon
something of her brother Austin's. They were sitting in the library,--a
very solemn and splendid chamber, with a carved oak roof and deep mullioned
windows,--a room that was less used than any other apartment in the Castle.
Mr. Fairfax had caught Miss Lovel here, with her portfolio open on the
table before her, copying a drawing of Piranesi's; so there could be no
better opportunity for inspecting the sketches, which she had hitherto
refused to show him.

That sketch of Austin's--a group of Arab horsemen done in pen and ink--set
them talking about him at once; and George Fairfax told Clarissa all he
could tell about his intercourse with her brother.

"I really liked him so much," he said gently, seeing how deeply she was
moved by the slightest mention of that name. "I cannot say that I ever knew
him intimately, that I can claim to have been his friend; but I used at
one time to see a good deal of him, and I was very much impressed by
his genius. I never met a young man who gave me a stronger notion of
undisciplined genius; but, unhappily, there was a recklessness about him
which I can easily imagine would lead him into dangerous associations. I
was told that he had quarrelled with his family, and meant to sell out, and
take to painting as a profession,--and I really believe that he would have
made his fortune as a painter; but when I heard of him next, he had gone
abroad--to the colonies, some one said. I could never learn anything more
precise than that."

"I would give the world to know where he is," said Clarissa mournfully;
"but I dare not ask papa anything about him, even if he could tell me,
which I doubt very much. I did try to speak of him once; but it was no
use--papa would not hear his name."

"That seems very hard; and yet your father must have been proud of him and
fond of him once, I should think."

"I am not sure of that. Papa and Austin never seemed to get on quite well
together. There was always something--as if there had been some kind of
hidden resentment, some painful feeling in the mind of each. I was too
young to be a competent judge, of course; but I know, as a child, I had
always a sense that there was a cloud between those two, a shadow that
seemed to darken our lives."

They talked for a long time of this prodigal son; and this kind of
conversation seemed to bring them nearer to each other than anything else
that had happened within the six weeks of their acquaintance.

"If ever I have any opportunity of finding out your brother's whereabouts,
Miss Lovel, you may be sure that I will use every effort to get you some
tidings of him. I don't want to say anything that might lead to your being
disappointed; but when I go to town again, I will hunt up a man who used to
be one of his friends, and try to learn something. Only you must promise me
not to be disappointed if I fail."

"I won't promise that; but I promise to bear my disappointment quietly, and
to be grateful to you for your goodness," Clarissa answered, with a faint
smile.

They went on with the inspection of the drawings, in which Mr. Fairfax
showed himself deeply interested. His own manipulative powers were of the
smallest, but he was an excellent critic.

"I think I may say of you what I said of your brother just now--that you
might make a fortune, if you were to cultivate art seriously."

"I wish I could make a fortune large enough to buy back Arden Court,"
Clarissa answered eagerly.

"You think so much of Arden?"

"O yes, I am always thinking of it, always dreaming of it; the dear old
rooms haunt me sleeping and waking. I suppose they are all altered now. I
think it would almost break my heart to see them different."

"Do you know, I am scarcely in a position to understand that fervent love
for one's birthplace. I may be said to have no birthplace myself. I
was born in lodgings, or a furnished house--some temporary ark of that
kind--the next thing to being born on board ship, and having Stepney for
one's parish. My father was in a hard-working cavalry regiment, and the
early days of my mother's married life were spent in perpetual wanderings.
They separated, when I was about eight years old, for ever--a sad story,
of course--something worse than incompatibility of temper on the husband's
side; and from that time I never saw him, though he lived for some years.
So, you see, the words 'home' and 'father' are for me very little more than
sentimental abstractions. But with my mother I have been quite happy. She
has indeed been the most devoted of women. She took a house at Eton when
my brother and I were at school there, and superintended our home studies
herself; and from that time to this she has watched my career with
unchanging care. It is the old story of maternal kindness and filial
shortcomings. I have given her a world of trouble; but I am not the less
fond of her, or the less grateful to her." He stopped for a few moments,
with something like a sigh, and then went on in a lighter tone: "You can
see, however, that having no ancestral home of my own, I am hardly able to
understand the depth of your feeling for Arden Court. There is an old place
down in Kent, a fine old castellated mansion, built in the days of Edward
VI., which is to be mine by-and-by; but I doubt if I shall ever value it as
you do your old home. Perhaps I am wanting in the poetic feeling necessary
for the appreciation of these things."

"O no, it is not that," Clarissa answered eagerly; "but the house you
speak of will not have been your home. You won't have that dim, dreamy
recollection of childhood spent in the old rooms; another life, the life of
another being almost, it seems, as one looks back to it. I have only
the faintest memory of my mother; but it is very sweet, and it is all
associated with Arden Court. I cannot conjure up her image for a moment
without that background. Yes, I do wish for fortune, for that one reason. I
would give the world to win back Arden."

She was very much in earnest. Her cheeks flushed and her eyes brightened
with those eager words. Never perhaps had she looked lovelier than at that
moment. George Fairfax paused a little before he answered her, admiring the
bright animated face; admiring her, he thought, very much as he might have
admired some beautiful wayward child. And then he said gravely:

"It is dangerous to wish for anything so intensely. There are wishes the
gratification whereof is fatal. There are a dozen old stories in the
classics to show that; to say nothing of all those mediaeval legends in
which Satan is complaisant to some eager wisher."

"But there is no chance of my wish being gratified. If I could work my
fingers to the bone in the pursuit of art or literature, or any of the
professions by which women win money, I should never earn the price of
Arden; nor would that hateful Mr. Granger be disposed to sell a place which
gives him his position in the county. And I suppose he is fond of it,
after a fashion. He has spent a fortune upon improvements. Improvements!"
repeated Clarissa contemptuously; "I daresay be has improved away the very
spirit of the place."

"You cherish a strong dislike for this gentleman, it seems, Miss Lovel."

"I am wicked enough to dislike him for having robbed us of Arden. Of course
you will say that any one else might have bought the place. But then I can
only reply, that I should have disliked any other purchaser just the same;
a little less though, perhaps, if he had been a member of some noble old
family--a man with a great name. It would have been some consolation to
think that Arden was promoted."

"I am afraid there is a leaven of good old Tory spirit in your composition,
Miss Lovel."

"I suppose papa is a Tory. I know he has a profound contempt for what he
calls new people--very foolish, of course, I quite feel that; but I think
he cannot help remembering that he comes of a good old race which has
fallen upon evil days."