Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “Out of the question — almost a stranger.” Clarissa remembered that night in the railway carriage, and it seemed to her as if she and George Fairfax had never been strangers.

  “It is so easy for you to give me this promise. Tell me now, Clary dear, that you will not have anything to say to him, if he should contrive to see you again.”

  “I will not, Lady Laura.”

  “Is that a promise, now, Clarissa?”

  “A most sacred promise.”

  Lady Armstrong kissed her young friend in ratification of the compact.

  “You are a dear generous-minded girl,” she said, “and I feel as if I had saved my sister’s happiness by this bold course. And now tell me what you have been doing since you left us. Have you seen anything more of the Grangers?”

  Questioned thus, Clarissa was fain to give her friend some slight account of her day at Arden.

  “It must have affected you very much to see the old place. Ah, Clary, it is you who ought to be mistress there, instead of Miss Granger!”

  Clarissa blushed, remembering that awkward avowal of Daniel Granger’s.

  “I am not fit to be mistress of such, a place,” she said. “I could never manage things as Miss Granger does.”

  “Not in that petty way, perhaps. I should not care to see you keeping accounts and prying into grocery-lists as she does. You would govern your house on a grander scale. I should like to see you the owner of a great house.”

  “That is a thing you are never likely to see, Lady Laura.”

  “I am not so sure of that. I have an idea that there is a great fortune lying at your feet, if you would only stoop to pick it up. But girls are so foolish; they never know what is really for their happiness; and if by any chance there should happen to be some passing folly, some fancy of the moment, to come between them and good fortune, everything is lost.”

  She looked at Clarissa closely as she said this. The girl’s face had been changing from red to pale throughout the interview. She was very pale now, but quite self-possessed, and had left off blushing. Had she not given her promise — pledged away her freedom of action with regard to George Fairfax — and thus made an end of everything between them? She felt very calm, but she felt as if she had made a sacrifice. As for Daniel Granger, any reference to him and his admiration for her touched upon the regions of the absurd. Nothing — no friendly manoeuvring of Lady Laura’s, no selfish desires of her father’s — could ever induce her to listen for a moment to any proposition from that quarter.

  She asked her visitor to go into the house presently, in order to put an end to the conversation; and Lady Laura went in to say a few words to Mr. Lovel. They were very melancholy words — all about the dead, and his innumerable virtues — which seemed really at this stage of his history to have been alloyed by no human frailty or shortcoming. Mr. Lovel was sympathetic to the last degree — sighed in unison with his visitor, and brushed some stray drops of moisture from his own eyelids when Lady Laura wept. And then he went out to the carriage with my lady, and saw her drive away, with the blinds discreetly lowered as before.

  “What did she come about, Clarissa?” he asked his daughter, while they were going back to the house.

  “Only to see me, papa.”

  “Only to see you! She must have had something very important to say to you,

  I should think, or she would scarcely have come at such a time.”

  He glanced at his daughter sharply as he said this, but did not question her farther, though he would have liked to do so. He had a shrewd suspicion that this visit of Lady Laura’s bore some reference to George Fairfax. Had there been a row at the Castle? he wondered, and had my lady come to scold her protégée?

  “I don’t suppose they would show her much mercy if she stood in the way of their schemes,” he said to himself. “His brother’s death makes this young Fairfax a very decent match. The property must be worth five or six thousand a year — five or six thousand. I wonder what Daniel Granger’s income is? Nearer fifty thousand than five, if I may believe what I have been told.”

  Mr. Granger and his daughter called at Mill Cottage next day: the fair Sophia with a somewhat unwilling aspect, though she was decently civil to Mr. and Miss Lovel. She had protested against the flagrant breach of etiquette in calling on people who had just dined with her, instead of waiting until those diners had discharged their obligation by calling on her; but in vain. Her father had brought her to look at some of Clarissa’s sketches, he told his friends.

  “I want her to take more interest in landscape art, Mr. Lovel,” he said, “and I think your daughter’s example may inspire her. Miss Lovel seems to me to have a real genius for landscape. I saw some studies of ferns and underwood that she had done at Hale — full of freedom and of feeling. Sophia doesn’t draw badly, but she wants feeling.”

  The young lady thus coldly commended gave her head rather a supercilious toss as she replied, —

  “You must remember that I have higher duties than sketching, papa,” she said; “I cannot devote all my existence to ferns and blackberry-bushes.”

  “O, yes, of course; you’ve your schools, and that kind of thing; but you might give more time to art than you do, especially if you left the management of the house more to Mrs. Plumptree. I think you waste time and energy upon details.”

  “I hope I know my duty as mistress of a large establishment, papa, and that I shall never feel the responsibility of administering a large income any less than I do at present. It would be a bad thing for you if I became careless of your interests in order to roam about sketching toadstools and blackberry-bushes.”

  Mr. Granger looked as if he were rather doubtful upon this point, but it was evidently wisest not to push the discussion too far.

  “Will you be so kind as to show us your portfolio, Miss Lovel?” he asked.

  “Of course she will,” answered her father promptly; “she will only be too happy to exhibit her humble performances to Miss Granger. Bring your drawing-book, Clary.”

  Clarissa would have given the world to refuse. A drawing-book is in some measure a silent confidante — almost a journal. She did not know how far her random sketches — some of them mere vagabondage of the pencil, jotted down half unconsciously — might betray the secrets of her inner life to the cold eyes of Miss Granger.

  “I’d better bring down my finished drawings, papa; those that were mounted for you at Belforêt,” she said.

  “Nonsense, child; Mr. Granger wants to see your rough sketches, not those stiff schoolgirl things, which I suppose were finished by your drawing-master. Bring that book you are always scribbling in. The girl has a kind of passion for art,” said Mr. Lovel, rather fretfully; “she is seldom without a pencil in her hand. What are you looking for, Clarissa, in that owlish way? There’s your book on that table.”

  He pointed to the volume — Clarissa’s other self and perpetual companion — the very book she had been sketching in when George Fairfax surprised her by the churchyard wall. There was no help for it, no disobeying that imperious finger of her father’s; so she brought the book meekly and laid it open before Sophia Granger.

  The father and daughter turned over the leaves together. It was book of “bits:” masses of foliage, bramble, and bird’s-nest; here the head of an animal, there the profile of a friend; anon a bit of still life; a vase of flowers, with the arabesqued drapery of a curtain for a background; everywhere the evidence of artistic feeling and a practised hand, everywhere a something much above a schoolgirl’s art.

  Miss Granger looked through the leaves with an icy air. She was obliged to say, “Very pretty,” or “Very clever,” once in a way; but this cold praise evidently cost her an effort. Not so her father. He was interested in every page, and criticised everything with a real knowledge of what he was talking about, which made Clarissa feel that he was at least no pretender in his love of art; that he was not a man who bought pictures merely because he was rich and picture-buying was the right th
ing to do.

  They came presently to the pages Clarissa had covered at Hale Castle — bits of familiar landscape, glimpses of still life in the Castle rooms, and lightly-touched portraits of the Castle guests. There was one head that appeared very much oftener than others, and Clarissa felt herself blushing a deeper red every time Mr. Granger paused to contemplate this particular likeness.

  He lingered longer over each of these sketches, with rather a puzzled air, and though the execution of these heads was very spirited, he forbore to praise.

  “There is one face here that I see a good deal of, Miss Lovel,” he said at last. “I think it is Mr. Fairfax, is it not?”

  Clarissa looked at a profile of George Fairfax dubiously.

  “Yes, I believe I meant that for Mr. Fairfax; his is a very easy face to draw, much easier than Lady Geraldine’s, though her features are so regular. All my portraits of her are failures.”

  “I have only seen one attempt at Lady Geraldine’s portrait in this book,

  Miss Lovel,” said Sophia.

  “I have some more on loose sheets of paper, somewhere; and then I generally destroy my failures, if they are quite hopeless.”

  “Mr. Fairfax would be quite flattered if he could see how often you have sketched him,” Sophia continued blandly.

  Clarissa thought of the leaf George Fairfax had cut out of her drawing-book; a recollection which did not serve to diminish her embarrassment.

  “I daresay Mr. Fairfax is quite vain enough without any flattery of that kind,” said Mr. Lovel. “And now that you have exhibited your rough sketches, you can bring those mounted drawings, if you like, Clarissa.”

  This was a signal for the closing of the book, which Clarissa felt was intended for her relief. She put the volume back upon the little side-table from which she had taken it, and ran upstairs to fetch her landscapes. These Miss Granger surveyed in the same cold tolerant manner with which she had surveyed the sketch-book — the manner of a person who could have done much better in that line herself, if she had cared to do anything so frivolous.

  After this Mr. Lovel and his daughter called at the Court; and the acquaintance between the two families being thus formally inaugurated by a dinner and a couple of morning calls, Mr. Granger came very often to the Cottage, unaccompanied by the inflexible Sophia, who began to feel that her father’s infatuation was not to be lessened by any influence of hers, and that she might just as well let him take his own way. It was an odious unexpected turn which events had taken; but there was no help for it. Her confidential maid, Hannah Warman, reminded her of that solemn truth whenever she ventured to touch upon this critical subject.

  “If your pa was a young man, miss, or a man that had admired a great many ladies in his time, it would be quite different,” said the astute Warman; “but never having took notice of any one before, and taking such particular notice of this young lady, makes it clear to any one that’s got eyes. Depend upon it, miss, it won’t be long before he’ll make her an offer; and it isn’t likely she’ll refuse him — not with a ruined pa to urge her on!”

  “I suppose not,” said Sophia disconsolately.

  “And after all, miss, he might have made a worse choice. If he were to marry one of those manoeuvring middle-aged widows we’ve met so often out visiting, you’d have had a regular stepmother, that would have taken every bit of power out of your hands, and treated you like a child. But Miss Lovel seems a very nice young lady, and being so near your own age will be quite a companion for you.”

  “I don’t want such a companion. There is no sympathy between Miss Lovel and me; you ought to know that, Warman. Her tastes are the very reverse of mine, in every way. It’s not possible we can ever get on well together; and if papa marries her, I shall feel that he is quite lost to me. Besides, how could I ever have any feeling but contempt for a girl who would marry for money? and of course Miss Lovel could only marry papa for the sake of his money.”

  “It’s done so often nowadays. And sometimes those matches turn out very well — better than some of the love-matches, I’ve heard say.”

  “It’s no use discussing this hateful business, Warman,” Miss Granger answered haughtily. “Nothing could change my opinion.”

  And in this inflexible manner did Daniel Granger’s daughter set her face against the woman he had chosen from among all other women for his wife. He felt that it was so, and that there would be a hard battle for him to fight in the future between these two influences; but no silent opposition of his daughter’s could weaken his determination to win Clarissa Lovel, if she was to be won by him.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  “HE’S SWEETEST FRIEND, OR HARDEST FOE.”

  Mr. Granger fell into the habit of strolling across his park, and dropping into the garden of Mill Cottage by that little gate across which Clarissa had so often contemplated the groves and shades of her lost home. He would drop in sometimes in the gloaming, and take a cup of tea in the bright lamplit parlour, where Mr. Lovel dawdled away life over Greek plays, Burton’s Anatomy, and Sir Thomas Browne — a humble apartment, which seemed pleasanter to Mr. Granger under the dominion of that spell which bound him just now, than the most luxurious of his mediaeval chambers. Here he would talk politics with Mr. Lovel, who took a mild interest in the course of public affairs, and whose languid adherence to the Conservative party served to sustain discussion with Daniel Granger, who was a vigorous Liberal.

  After tea the visitor generally asked for music; and Clarissa would play her favourite waltzes and mazourkas, while the two gentlemen went on with their conversation. There were not many points of sympathy between the two, perhaps. It is doubtful whether Daniel Granger had ever read a line of a Greek play since his attainment to manhood and independence, though he had been driven along the usual highway of the Classics by expensive tutors, and had a dim remembrance of early drillings in Caesar and Virgil. Burton he had certainly never looked into, nor any of those other English classics which were the delight of Marmaduke Lovel; so the subject of books was a dead letter between them. But they found enough to talk about somehow, and really seemed to get on very tolerably together. Mr. Granger was bent upon standing well with his poor neighbour; and Mr. Lovel appeared by no means displeased by the rapid growth of this acquaintance, from which he had so obstinately recoiled in the past. He took care, however, not to be demonstrative of his satisfaction, and allowed Mr. Granger to feel that at the best he was admitted to Mill Cottage on sufferance, under protest as it were, and as a concession to his own wishes. Yet Mr. Lovel meant all this time that his daughter should be mistress of Arden Court, and that his debts should be paid, and his future comfort provided for out of the ample purse of Daniel Granger.

  “I shall go and live on the Continent,” he thought, “when that is all settled. I could not exist as a hanger-on in the house that was once my own, I might find myself a pied à terre in Paris or Vienna, and finish life pleasantly enough among some of the friends I liked when I was young. Six or seven hundred a year would be opulence for a man of my habits.”

  Little by little Clarissa came to accept those visits of Mr. Granger’s as a common part of her daily life; but she had not the faintest notion that she was drifting into a position from which it would be difficult by-and-by to escape. He paid her no disagreeable attentions; he never alluded to that unfortunate declaration which she remembered with such a sense of its absurdity. It did not seem unreasonable to suppose that he came to Mill Cottage for no keener delight than a quiet chat with Mr. Lovel about the possibility of a coming war, or the chances of a change in the ministry.

  Clarissa had been home from Hale nearly six weeks, and she had neither heard nor seen any more of George Fairfax. So far there had been no temptation for the violation of that sacred pledge which she had given to Lady Laura Armstrong. His persistence did not amount to much evidently; his ardour was easily checked; he had sworn that night that she should see him, should listen to him, and six weeks had gone b
y without his having made the faintest attempt to approach her. It was best, of course, that it should be so — an unqualified blessing for the girl whose determination to be true to herself and her duty was so deeply fixed; and yet she felt a little wounded, a little humiliated, as if she had been tricked by the common phrases of a general wooer — duped into giving something where nothing had been given to her.

  “Lady Laura might well talk about his transient folly,” she said to herself. “It has not lasted very long. She need scarcely have taken the trouble to be uneasy about it.”

  There had been one brief note for Clarissa from the mistress of Hale Castle, announcing her departure for Baden with Mr. Armstrong, who was going to shoot capercailzies in the Black Forest. Lady Geraldine, who was very much shaken by her father’s death, was to go with them. There was not a word about Mr. Fairfax, and Clarissa had no idea as to his whereabouts. He had gone with the Baden party most likely, she told herself.

  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.