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

society,--a serene and tranquil elegance which never tries to be elegant, a perfect self-possession which never degenerates into insolence.

In a party so large as that now assembled at Hale, this tacit avoidance of one person could scarcely be called a rudeness. It might so easily be accidental. Clarissa felt it nevertheless, and felt somehow that it was not accidental. Though she could never be anything to George Fairfax, though all possibility even of friendship was at an end between them, she would have liked to gain his mother's regard. It was an idle wish perhaps, but scarcely an unnatural one.

She watched Mrs. Fairfax and Lady Geraldine together. The affection between those two was very evident. Never did the younger lady appear to greater advantage than in her intercourse with her future mother-in-law. All pride and coldness vanished in that society, and Geraldine Challoner became genial and womanly.

"She has played her cards well," Barbara Fermor said maliciously. "It is the mother who has brought about this marriage."

If Mrs. Fairfax showed herself coldly disposed towards Clarissa, there was plenty of warmth on the parts of Ladies Emily and Louisa Challoner, who arrived at the Castle about the same time, and at once took a fancy to their sister's _protégée._

"Laura has told us so much about you, Miss Lovel," said Lady Louisa, "and we mean to be very fond of you, if you will allow us; and, O, please may we call you Clarissa? It is such a _sweet_ name!"

Both these ladies had passed that fearful turning-point in woman's life, her thirtieth birthday, and had become only more gushing and enthusiastic with increasing years. They were very much like Lady Laura, had all her easy good-nature and liveliness, and were more or less afraid of the stately Geraldine.

"Do you know, we are quite glad she is going to be married at last," Lady Emily said in a confidential tone to Clarissa; "for she has kept up a kind of frigid atmosphere at home that I really believe has helped to frighten away all our admirers. Men of the present day don't like that sort of thing. It went out of fashion in England with King Charles I., I think, and in France with Louis XIV. You know how badly the royal household behaved coming home from his funeral, laughing and talking and all that: I believe it arose from their relief at thinking that the king of forms and ceremonies was dead. We always have our nicest little parties--kettle-drums, and suppers after the opera, and that sort of thing--when Geraldine is away; for we can do anything with papa."

The great day came, and the heavens were propitious. A fine clear September day, with a cool wind and a warm sun; a day upon which the diaphanous costumes of the bridesmaids might be a shade too airy; but not a stern or cruel day, to tinge their young noses with a frosty hue, or blow the crinkles out of their luxuriant hair.

The bridesmaids were the Ladies Emily and Louisa Challoner, the two Miss Fermors, Miss Granger, and Clarissa--six in all; a moderation which Lady Laura was inclined to boast of as a kind of Spartan simplicity. They were all to be dressed alike, in white, with bonnets that seemed composed of waxen looking white heather and tremulous harebells, and with blue sashes to match the harebells. The dresses were Lady Laura's inspiration: they had come to her almost in her sleep, she declared, when she had well-nigh despaired of realising her vague desires; and Clarissa's costume was, like the ball-dress, a present from her benefactress.

The nine-o'clock breakfast--a meal that begun at nine and rarely ended till eleven--was hurried over in the most uncomfortable and desultory manner on this eventful morning. The principals in the great drama did not appear at all, and Clarissa and Miss Granger were the only two bridesmaids who could spare half an hour from the cares of the toilet. The rest breakfasted in the seclusion of their several apartments, with their hair in crimping-pins. Miss Granger was too perfect a being to crinkle her hair, or to waste three hours on dressing, even for a wedding. Lady Laura showed herself among her guests, for a quarter of an hour or so, in a semi-hysterical flutter; so anxious that everything should go off well, so fearful that something might happen, she knew not what, to throw the machinery of her arrangements out of gear.

"I suppose it's only a natural feeling on such an occasion as this," she said, "but I really do feel as if something were going to happen. Things have gone on so smoothly up to this morning--no disappointments from milliners, no stupid mistakes on the part of those railway people--everything has gone upon velvet; and now it is coming to the crisis I am quite nervous."

Of course every one declared this was perfectly natural, and recommended his or her favourite specific--a few drops of sal-volatile--a liqueur-glass of dry curaçoa--red lavender--chlorodyne--and so on; and then Lady Laura laughed and called herself absurd, and hurried away to array herself in a pearl-coloured silk, half smothered by puffings of pale pink areophane and Brussels-lace flounces; a dress that was all pearly gray and rose and white, like the sky at early morning.

Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Granger, with some military men and country squires, took their breakfast as calmly as if a wedding were part of the daily business of life. Miss Granger exhibited a polite indifference about the great event; Miss Level was pale and nervous, not able to give much attention to Daniel Granger, who had contrived to sit next her that morning, and talked to her a good deal, with an apparent unconsciousness of the severe gaze of his daughter, seated exactly opposite to him.

Clarissa was glad to make her toilet an excuse for leaving Mr. Granger; but once in the sanctuary of her own room, she sat down in an absent manner, and made no attempt to begin dressing. Fosset, the maid, found her there at a quarter past ten o'clock--the ceremony was to take place at eleven--and gave a cry of horror at seeing the toilet uncommenced.

"Good gracious me, miss! what have you been thinking of? Your hair not begun nor nothing! I've been almost torn to bits with one and another--Miss Fermor's maid bothering for long hair-pins and narrow black ribbon; and Jane Roberts--Lady Emily Challoner's maid--who really never has anything handy, wanting half the things out of my work-box--or I should have been with you ever so long ago. My Lady would be in a fine way if you were late."

"I think my hair will do very well as it is, Fosset," Clarissa said listlessly.

"Lor, no, miss; not in that dowdy style. It don't half show it off."

Clarissa seated herself before the dressing-table with an air of resignation rather than interest, and the expeditious Fosset began her work. It was done very speedily--that wealth of hair was so easy to dress; there was no artful manipulation of long hair-pins and black ribbon needed to unite borrowed tresses with real ones. The dress was put on, and Clarissa was invited to look at herself in the cheval-glass.

"I do wish you had a bit more colour in your cheeks to-day, miss," Fosset said, with rather a vexed air. "Not that I'd recommend you any of their vinegar rouges, or ineffaceable blooms, or anything of that kind. But I don't think I ever saw you look so pale. One would think _you_ were going to be married, instead of Lady Geraldine. _She's_ as cool as a cucumber this morning, Sarah Thompson told me just now. You can't put _her_ out easily."

The carriages were driving up to the great door by this time. It was about twenty minutes to eleven, and in ten minutes more the procession would be starting. Hale Church was within five minutes' drive of the Castle.

Clarissa went fluttering down to the drawing-room, where she supposed people would assemble. There was no one there but Mr. Granger, who was stalking up and down the spacious room, dressed in the newest and stiffest of coats and waistcoats, and looking as if he were going to assist at a private hanging. Miss Lovel felt almost inclined to ran away at sight of him. The man seemed to pursue her somehow; and since that night when George Fairfax had offered her his mocking congratulations, Mr. Granger's attentions had been particularly repugnant to her.

She could not draw back, however, without positive rudeness, and it was only a question of five minutes; so she went in and entered upon an interesting little conversation about the weather. It was still fine; there was no appearance of rain; a most auspicious day, really; and so on,--from Mr. Granger; to which novel remarks Clarissa assented meekly.

"There are people who attach a good deal of significance to that kind of thing," he said presently. "For my own part, _if_ I were going to be married to the woman I loved, I should care little how black the sky above us might be. That sounds rather romantic for me, doesn't it? A man of fifty has no right to feel like that."

This he said with a half-bitter laugh. Clarissa was spared the trouble of answering by the entrance of more bridesmaids--Lady Louisa Challoner and Miss Granger--with three of the military men, who wore hothouse flowers in their buttonholes, and were altogether arrayed like the lilies of the field, but who had rather the air of considering this marriage business a tiresome interruption to partridge-shooting.

"I suppose we are going to start directly," cried Lady Louisa, who was a fluttering creature of three-and-thirty, always eager to flit from one scene to another. "If we don't, I really think we shall be late--and there is some dreadful law, isn't there, to prevent people being married after eleven o'clock?"

"After twelve," Mr. Granger answered in his matter of fact way. "Lady Geraldine has ample margin for delay."

"But why not after twelve?" asked Lady Louisa with a childish air; "why not in the afternoon or evening, if one liked? What can be the use of such a ridiculous law? One might as well live in Russia."

She fluttered to one of the windows and looked out.

"There are all the carriages. How well the men look! Laura must have spent a fortune in white ribbon and gloves for them--and the horses, dear things!"--a woman of Lady Louisa's stamp is generally enthusiastic about horses, it is such a safe thing--"they look as if they knew it was a wedding. O, good gracious!"

"What is the matter. Lady Louisa?"

"A man from the railway--with a telegram--yes, I am sure it's a telegram! Do you know, I have such a horror of telegrams! I always fancy they mean illness--or death--or something dreadful. Very absurd of me, isn't it? And I daresay this is only a message about some delayed parcel, or some one who was to be here and can't come, or something of that kind."

The room was full of idle people by this time. Every one went to the open window and stared down at the man who had brought the telegram. He had given his message, and was standing on the broad flight of steps before the Castle door, waiting for the return of the official who had taken it. Whether the electric wires had brought the tidings of some great calamity, or a milliner's apology for a delayed bonnet, was impossible to guess. The messenger stood there stolid and impenetrable, and there was nothing to be divined from his aspect.

But presently,