The Lovels of Arden by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ebook offline reader txt) 📕

railway carriage, the gentleman argued with himself; a very grave anxious expression for a girl's face. She had indeed altogether the aspect of a woman, rather than of a girl who had just escaped from boarding-school, and to whom the cares of life must needs be unknown.

She was thinking so deeply, that she did not hear the opening of the door, or her fellow-traveller's light footstep as he crossed the room. He was standing on the opposite side of the fireplace, looking down at her, before she was aware of his presence. Then she raised her head with a start; and he saw her blush for the first time. "You must have been absorbed in some profound meditation, Miss Lovel," he said lightly.

"I was thinking of the future."

"Meaning your own future. Why, at your age the future ought to be a most radiant vision."

"Indeed it is not that. It is all clouds and darkness. I do not see that one must needs be happy because one is young. There has been very little happiness in my life yet awhile, only the dreary monotonous routine of boarding-school."

"But all that is over now, and life is just beginning for you. I wish I were eighteen instead of eight-and-twenty."

"Would you live your life over again?"

The traveller laughed.

"That's putting a home question," he said. "Well, perhaps not exactly the same life, though it has not been a bad one. But I should like the feeling of perfect youth, the sense of having one's full inheritance of life lying at one's banker's, as it were, and being able to draw upon the account a little recklessly, indifferent as to the waste of a year or two. You see I have come to a period of existence in which a man has to calculate his resources. If I do not find happiness within the next five years, I am never likely to find it at all. At three-and-thirty a man has done with a heart, in a moral and poetic sense, and begins to entertain vague alarms on the subject of fatty degeneration."

Clarissa smiled faintly, as if the stranger's idle talk scarcely beguiled her from her own thoughts.

"You said you had been at Arden," she began rather abruptly; "then you must know papa."

"No, I have not the honour to know Mr. Lovel," with the same embarrassed air which he had exhibited before in speaking of Arden Court. "But I am acquainted--or I was acquainted, rather, for he and I have not met for some time--with one member of your family, a Mr. Austin Lovel."

"My brother," Clarissa said quickly, and with a sudden shadow upon her face.

"Your brother; yes, I supposed as much."

"Poor Austin! It is very sad. Papa and he are ill friends. There was some desperate quarrel between them a few years ago; I do not even know what about; and Austin was turned out of doors, never to come back any more. Papa told me nothing about it, though it was the common talk at Holborough. It was only from a letter of my aunt's that I learnt what had happened; and I am never to speak of Austin when I go home, my aunt told me."

"Very hard lines," said the stranger, with a sympathetic air. "He was wild, I suppose, in the usual way. Your brother was in a line regiment when I knew him; but I think I heard afterwards that he had sold out, and had dropped away from his old set, had emigrated, I believe, or something of that kind exactly the thing I should do, if I found myself in difficulties; turn backwoodsman, and wed some savage woman, who should rear my dusky race, and whose kindred could put me in the way to make my fortune by cattle-dealing; having done which, I should, of course, discover that fifty years of Europe are worth more than a cycle of Cathay, and should turn my steps homeward with a convenient obliviousness upon the subject of the savage woman."

He spoke lightly, trying to win Clarissa from her sad thoughts, and with the common masculine idea, that a little superficial liveliness of this kind can lighten the load of a great sorrow.

"Come, Miss Lovel, I would give the world to see you smile. Do you know that I have been watching for a smile ever since I first saw your face, and have not surprised one yet? Be sure your brother is taking life pleasantly enough in some quarter of the globe. We worthless young fellows always contrive to fall upon our feet."

"If I could believe that he was happy, if I could think that he was leading an honourable life anywhere, I should not feel our separation so much," the girl said mournfully; "but to be quite ignorant of his fate, and not to be allowed to mention his name, that is hard to bear. I cannot tell you how fond I was of him when we were children. He was seven years older than I, and so clever. He wanted to be a painter, but papa would not hear of that. Yet I think he might have been happier if he had been allowed to have his own way. He had a real genius for art."

"And you too are fond of art, I suppose?" hazarded the traveller, more interested in the young lady herself than in this reprobate brother of hers.

"Yes, I am very fond of it. It is the only thing I really care for. Of course, I like music to a certain extent; but I love painting with my whole heart."

"Happy art, to be loved by so fair a votary! And you dabble with brushes and colours, of course?"

"A little."

"A true young lady's answer. If you were a Raffaelle in glacé silk and crinoline, you would tell me no more than that. I can only hope that some happy accident will one day give me an opportunity of judging for myself. And now, I think, you had better put on your hat. Our train will be in almost immediately."

She obeyed him; and they went out together to the windy platform, where the train rumbled in presently. They took their places in a carriage, the gentleman bundling in his rugs and travelling-bags and despatch boxes with very little ceremony; but this time they were not alone. A plethoric gentleman, of the commercial persuasion, was sleeping laboriously in one corner.

The journey to Holborough lasted a little less than an hour. Miss Lovel and her companion did not talk much during that time. She was tired and thoughtful, and he respected her silence. As she drew nearer home, the happiness she had felt in her return seemed to melt away somehow, leaving vague anxieties and morbid forebodings in its stead. To go home to a father who would only be bored by her coming. It was not a lively prospect for a girl of eighteen.

The dull cold gray dawn was on the housetops of Holborough, as the train stopped at the little station. The traveller alighted, and assisted Clarissa's descent to the platform.

"Can I see about your luggage, Miss Lovel?" he asked; but looking up at that moment, the girl caught sight of a burly gentleman in a white neckcloth, who was staring in every direction but the right one.

"Thank you very much, no; I need not trouble you. My uncle Oliver is here to meet me--that stout gentleman over there."

"Then I can only say good-bye. That tiresome engine is snorting with a fiendish impatience to bear me away. Good-bye, Miss Lovel, and a thousand thanks for the companionship that has made this journey so pleasant to me."

He lifted his hat and went back to the carriage, as the stout gentleman approached Clarissa. He would fain have shaken hands with her, but refrained from that unjustifiable familiarity. And so, in the bleak early autumnal dawn, they parted.

* * * * *


CHAPTER II.


BEGINNING THE WORLD.

"Who on earth was that man you were talking to, Clary?" asked the Reverend Mathew Oliver, when he had seen his niece's luggage carried off to a fly, and was conducting her to that vehicle. "Is it any one you know?"

"O, no, uncle; only a gentleman who travelled in the same carriage with me from London. He was very kind."

"You seemed unaccountably familiar with him," said Mr. Oliver with an aggrieved air; "you ought to be more reserved, my dear, at your age. A young lady travelling alone cannot be too careful. Indeed, it was very wrong of your father to allow you to make this long journey alone. Your aunt has been quite distressed about it."

Clarissa sighed faintly; but was not deeply concerned by the idea of her aunt's distress. Distress of mind, on account of some outrage of propriety on the part of her relatives, was indeed almost the normal condition of that lady.

"I travelled very comfortably, I assure you, uncle Oliver," Clarissa replied. "No one was in the least rude or unpleasant. And I am so glad to come home--I can scarcely tell you how glad--though, as I came nearer and nearer, I began to have all kinds of fanciful anxieties. I hope that all is well--that papa is quite himself."

"O, yes, my dear; your papa is--himself," answered the parson, in a tone that implied that he did not say very much for Mr. Lovel in admitting that fact. "Your papa is well enough in health, or as well as he will ever acknowledge himself to be. Of course, a man who neither hunts nor shoots, and seldom gets out of bed before ten o'clock in the day, can't expect to be remarkably robust. But your father will live to a good old age, child, rely upon it, in spite of everything."

"Am I going straight home, uncle?"

"Well, yes. Your aunt wished you to breakfast at the Rectory; but there are your trunks, you see, and altogether I think it's better for you to go home at once. You can come and see us as often as you like."

"Thank you, uncle. It was very kind of you to meet me at the station. Yes, I think it will be best for me to go straight home. I'm a little knocked up with the journey. I haven't slept five minutes since I left Madame Marot's at daybreak yesterday."

"You're looking rather pale; but you look remarkably well in spite of that--remarkably well. These six years have changed you from a child into a woman. I hope they gave you a good education yonder; a solid practical education, that will stand by you."

"I think so, uncle. We were almost always at our studies. It was very hard work."

"So much the better. Life is meant to be hard work. You may have occasion to make use of your education some day, Clary."

"Yes," the girl answered with a sigh; "I know that we are poor."

"I suppose so; but perhaps you hardly know how poor."

"Whenever the time comes, I shall be quite ready to work for papa," said Clarissa; yet she could not help wondering how the master of Arden Court could ever bring himself to send out his daughter as a governess; and then she had a vague childish recollection that