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

come to Arden for a ride. Everything is in confusion at the Castle, I scarcely think he would be wanted there."

"You scarcely think! And you encourage him to follow you here--this man who was to have been married to Lady Geraldine Challoner to-day--and you let him kiss your hand, and part from you with the air of a lover. I am ashamed of you, Clarissa. This business is odious enough in itself to provoke the anger of any father, if there were not circumstances in the past to make it trebly hateful to me."

They had passed in at the open window by this time, and were standing in the lamp-lit parlour, which had a pretty air of home comfort, with its delicate tea-service and quaintly shaped silver urn. Mr. Lovel sank into his arm-chair with a faint groan, and looking at him in the full light of the lamp, Clarissa saw that he was deadly pale.

"Do you know that the father of that man was my deadliest foe?" he exclaimed.

"How should I know that, papa?"

"How should you know it!--no. But that you should choose that man for your secret lover! One would think there was some hereditary curse upon your mother's race, binding her and hers with that hateful name. I tell you, Clarissa, that if there had been no such creature as Temple Fairfax, my life might have been as bright a one as any man need hope for. I owe every misery of my existence to that man."

"Did he injure you so deeply, papa?"

"He did me the worst wrong that one man can do to another. He came between me and the woman I loved; he stole your mother's heart from me, Clarissa, and embittered both our lives."

He stopped, and covered his face with his hand. Clarissa could see that the hand trembled. She had never seen her father so moved before. She too was deeply moved. She drew a chair close to him, and sat down by his side, but dared not speak.

"It is just as well that you should hear the story from me," he said, after a long pause. "You may hear hints and whispers about it from other people by-and-by perhaps, if you go more into society; for it was known to several. It is best you should know the truth. It is a common story enough in the history of the world; but whenever it happens, it is enough to make the misery of one man's life. I was not always what you have known me, Clarissa,--a worn-out machine, dawdling away the remnant of a wasted existence. I once had hopes and passions like the rest of mankind--perhaps more ardent than the most. Your mother was the loveliest and most fascinating woman I ever met, and from the hour of our first meeting I had but one thought--how I should win her for my wife. It was not a prudent marriage. She was my equal by birth; but she was the daughter of a ruined spendthrift, and had learnt extravagance and recklessness in her very nursery. She thought me much richer than I was, and I did not care to undeceive her. Later, when we were married, and I could see that her extravagant habits were hastening my ruin, I was still too much a moral coward to tell her the naked truth. I could not bear to come between her and caprices that seemed a natural accompaniment to her charms. I was weakness itself in all that concerned her."

"And she loved you, papa?" said Clarissa softly. "I am sure she must have loved you."

"That is a question that I have never answered with any satisfaction to myself. I thought she loved me. She liked me well enough, I believe, till that man crossed her path, and might have learnt to like me better as she grew older and wiser, and rose above the slavery of frivolous pleasures. But, in the most evil hour of her life, she met Temple Fairfax, and from that hour her heart was turned from me. We were travelling, trying to recover from the expenses of a house perpetually full of my wife's set; and it was at Florence that we first encountered the Colonel. He had just returned from India, had been doing great things there, and was considered rather a distinguished person in Florentine society. I need not stop to describe him. His son is like him. He and I became friends, and met almost daily. It was not till a year afterwards that I knew how pitiful a dupe of this man's treachery I had been from the very first. We were still in Italy when I made my first discovery; it was one that let in the light upon his character, but did not seriously involve my wife. We fought, and I was wounded. When I recovered, I brought my wife home to Arden. Our year's retrenchment had left me poorer than when I left home. Your mother's beauty was a luxury not to be maintained more cheaply at Florence than in Yorkshire."

There was another pause, and then Marmaduke Lovel went on, in the same bitter tone:

"Within a short time of our return your brother was born. There are things that I can't even hint to you, Clarissa; but there have been times when the shadow of that man has come between me and my children. Passion has made me unjust. I know that in her worst sin against my love--for I went on loving her to the last--your mother remained what the world calls innocent. But years after I had believed there was an end of all communion between those two, I discovered letters, even stolen meetings--rare, I confess, and never without witnesses, but no less a treason against me. Colonel Fairfax had friends at Holborough, by whose aid he contrived to see my wife. That he urged her to leave me, I know, and that she was steadfast in her refusal to do me that last wrong. But I know too that she loved him. I have read the confession of that which she called her 'madness' under her own hand."

"O, papa, papa, how sad! how dreadful!"

"Within a year or two of your birth she began to fade. From my heart I believe it was this struggle between passion and the last remnant of honour that killed her. I need not tell you the details of my discoveries, some of them made not very long before her death. They led to bitter scenes between us; but I thank God I did believe her protestations of innocence, and that I kept her under my own roof. There were others not so merciful. Colonel Fairfax's wife was told of his devotion to mine at Florence, and the duel which ended our acquaintance. She found out something of his subsequent meetings with your mother, and her jealousy brought about a separation. It was managed quietly enough, but not without scandal; and nothing but my determination to maintain my wife's position could have saved her from utter disgrace. Yes, Clarissa, I loved her to the last, but the misery of that last year was something that no words can tell. She died in my arms, and in her latest hours of consciousness thanked me for what she called my generosity. I went straight from her funeral to London, with a bundle of letters in my pocket, to find Temple Fairfax. What might have happened between us, had we met, I can scarcely guess; but there were no scruples on my side. Fortune favoured him, however; he had sailed for India a few weeks before, in command of his regiment. I had some thoughts of following him even there, but abandoned the notion. My wrongs would keep. I waited for his return, but that never happened. He was killed in Afghanistan, and carried to his Indian grave the reputation of one of the worst men and best soldiers who ever bore the king's commission."

This was all. To speak of these things had profoundly agitated Marmaduke Lovel; but a sudden impulse had moved this man, who was apt to be so silent about himself and his own feelings, and he had been in a manner constrained to tell this story.

"You can understand now, I suppose, Clarissa," he said coldly, after another pause, "why this young man, George Fairfax, is hateful to me."

"Yes, papa. It is only natural that you should be prejudiced against him. Does he know, do you think----" she faltered and stopped, with a bitter sense of shame.

"Does he know what?"

"About the past?"

"Of course he must know. Do you suppose his mother has not told him her grievances?"

Clarissa remembered Mrs. Fairfax's cold manner, and understood the reason of that tacit avoidance which had wounded her so deeply. She too, no doubt, was hateful; as hateful to the injured wife of Colonel Fairfax as his son could be to her father.

"And now, Clarissa," said Mr. Lovel, "remember that any acquaintance between you and George Fairfax is most repugnant to me. I have told you this story in order that there may be no possibility of any mistake between us. God only knows what it costs a man to open old wounds as I have opened mine to-night. Only this afternoon you affected a considerable regard for me, which I promised to return to the best of my power. All that is a dead letter if you hold any communion with this man. Choose him for your friend, and renounce me for your father. You cannot have both."

"He is not my friend, papa; he is nothing to me. Even it there were no such thing as this prejudice on your part, I am not so dishonourably as to forget that Mr. Fairfax is engaged to Lady Geraldine."

"And you promise that there shall be no more meetings, no repetition of the kind of thing I saw to-night?"

"I promise, papa, that of my own free will I will never see him again. Our meeting to-night was entirely accidental."

"On your part, perhaps; but was it so on his?"

"I cannot tell that, papa."

Mr. Lovel felt himself obliged to be satisfied with this answer. It seemed to him a hard thing that the son of his enemy should arise thus to torment him--an accident that might have tempted a superstitious man to think that an evil fate brooded over his house; and Marmaduke Lovel's mind, being by no means strongly influenced by belief, was more or less tainted with superstition. Looked at from any point of view, it was too provoking that this man should cross Clarissa's pathway at the very moment when it was all-important to her destiny that her heart should be untouched, her fancy unfettered.

"If nothing comes of this Granger business I shall take her abroad," Mr. Lovel said to himself; "anything to get her out of the way of a Fairfax."

He drank his tea in silence, meditating upon that little scene in the moonlight, and stealing a look at his daughter every now and then, as she sat opposite to him pretending to read. He could see that the open book was the merest pretence, and that Clarissa was profoundly agitated. Was it her mother's story that had moved her so deeply, or that other newer story which George Fairfax might have been whispering to her just now in the lonely moonlit road? Mr. Lovel was disturbed by this question, but did not care to seek any farther explanation from his daughter. There are some subjects that will not bear discussion.