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

here Miss Granger gave a sigh expressive of resignation under circumstances of profound affliction.

"I believe you have, Sophy," answered her father kindly. "I believe that, however unwelcome this change may be to you at first--and I suppose it is only natural that it should be unwelcome--you will reconcile your mind to it fully when you discover that it is for my happiness. I am not ashamed to confess to you that I love Clarissa very fondly, and that I look forward to a happy future when she is my wife."

"I hope, papa, that your life has not been unhappy hitherto--that I have not in any manner failed in my duties as a daughter."

"Oh, dear no, child; of course not. That has nothing to do with the question."

"Will it--the marriage--be very soon, papa?" asked Miss Granger, with another gulp, as if there were still some obstructive substance in her throat.

"I hope so, Sophy. There is no reason, that I can see, why it should not be very soon."

"And will Mr. Lovel come to live with us?"

"I don't know; I have never contemplated such a possibility. I think Mr. Lovel is scarcely the kind of person who would care to live in another man's house."

"But this has been his own house, you see, papa, and will seem to belong to him again when his daughter is the mistress of it. I daresay he will look upon us as interlopers."

"I don't think so, Sophia. Mr. Lovel is a gentleman, and a sensible man into the bargain. He is not likely to have any absurd ideas of that kind."

"I suppose he is very much pleased at having secured such a rich husband for his daughter," Miss Granger hazarded presently, with the air of saying something agreeable.

"Sophia!" exclaimed her father angrily, "I must beg that the question of money may never be mooted in relation to Miss Lovel and myself--by you above all people. I daresay there may be men and women in the world malignant enough to say--mean enough to suppose--that this dear girl can only consent to marry me because I am a rich man. It is my happiness to know her to be much too noble to yield to any sordid consideration of that kind. It is my happiness to know that her father has done nothing to urge this marriage upon her. She gives herself to me of her own free-will, not hurried into a decision by any undue persuasion of mine, and under no pressure from outer circumstances."

"I am very glad to hear it, papa. I think I should have broken my heart, if I had seen you the dupe of a mercenary woman."

Mr. Granger got up from his seat with an impatient air, and began to pace the room. His daughter had said very little, but that little had been beyond measure irritating to him. It galled him to think that this marriage should seem to her an astonishing--perhaps even a preposterous--thing. True that the woman he was going to marry was younger, by a year or two, than his own daughter. In his own mind there was so little sense of age, that he could scarcely understand why the union should seem discordant. He was not quite fifty, an age which he had heard men call the very meridian of life; and he felt himself younger now than he had ever been since he first assumed the cares of manhood--first grew grave with the responsibilities involved in the disposal of a great fortune. Was not this newly-born love, this sudden awakening of a heart that had slumbered so long, a renewal of youth? Mr. Granger glanced at his own reflection in a glass over a buffet, as he paced to and fro. The figure that he saw there bore no sign of age. It was a relief to him to discover that--a thing he had never thought of till that moment.

"Why should she not love me?" he asked himself. "Are youth and a handsome face the only high-road to a woman's heart? I can't believe it. Surely constancy and devotion must count for something. Is there another man in the world who would love her as well as I? who could say, at fifty years of age, This is my first love?"

"I am to give up the housekeeping, of course, papa, when you are married," Miss Granger said presently, with that subdued air of resignation in which she had wrapped herself as in a garment since her father's announcement.

"Give up the housekeeping!" he echoed a little impatiently; "I don't see the necessity for that. Clarissa"--oh, how sweet it was to him to pronounce her name, and with that delicious sense of proprietorship!--"Clarissa is too young to care much for that sort of thing--dealing out groceries, and keeping account-books, as you do. Very meritorious, I am sure, my dear, and no doubt useful. No, I don't suppose you'll be interfered with, Sophy. In all essentials you will still be mistress. If Clarissa is queen, you will be prime minister; and you know it is the minister who really pulls the strings. And I do hope that in time you two will get to love each other."

"I shall endeavour to do my duty, papa," Miss Granger answered primly. "We cannot command our feelings."

It was some feeble relief to her to learn that her grocery-books, her day-books by double-entry, and all those other commercial volumes dear to her heart, were not to be taken away from her; that she was still to retain the petty powers she had held as the sole daughter of Daniel Granger's house and heart. But to resign her place at the head of her father's table, to see Clarissa courted and caressed, to find faltering allegiance perhaps even among her model poor--all these things would be very bitter, and in her heart Sophia Granger was angry with her father for a line of conduct which she considered the last stage of folly. She loved him, after her own precise well-regulated fashion--loved him as well as a creature so self-conscious could be expected to love; but she could not easily forgive him for an act which seemed, in some sort, a fraud upon herself. She had been brought up to believe herself his sole heiress, to look upon his second marriage as an utter impossibility. How often had she heard him ridicule the notion when it was suggested to him by some jocose acquaintance! and it did seem a very hard thing that she should be pushed all at once from this lofty stand-point, and levelled to the very dust. There would be a new family, of course; a brood of sons and daughters to divide her heritage. Hannah Warman had suggested as much when discussing the probability of the marriage, with that friendly candour, and disposition to look at the darker side of the picture, which are apt to distinguish confidantes of her class.

"I am sure, papa," Miss Granger whimpered by-and-by, not quite able to refrain from some expression of ill-temper, "I have scarcely had a pleasant evening since you have known the Lovels. You are always there, and it is very dull to be alone every night."

"It has been your own fault in some measure, Sophy. You might have had Clarissa here, if you'd chosen to cultivate her friendship."

"Our inclinations are beyond our control, papa. Nothing but your express commands, and a sense of duty, would induce me to select Miss Lovel for a companion. There is no sympathy between us."

"Why should there not be? You cannot think her unamiable, nor question her being highly accomplished."

"But it is not a question of playing, or singing, or painting, or talking foreign languages, papa. One selects a friend for higher qualities than those. There is Mary Anne Patterly, for instance, who can scarcely play the bass in a set of quadrilles, but whose admirable gifts and Christian character have endeared her to me. Miss Lovel is so frivolous. See how stupid and listless she seemed that day we took her over the schools and cottages. I don't believe she was really interested in anything she saw. And, though she has been at home a year and a half, she has not once offered to take a class in either of the schools."

"I daresay she sees the schools are well officered, my dear, and doesn't like to interfere with your functions."

"No, papa, it is not that. She has no vocation for serious things. Her mind is essentially frivolous; you will discover that for yourself by-and-by. I speak in perfect candour, you know, papa. Whatever your feelings about Miss Lovel may be, I am above concealing mine. I believe I know my duty; but I cannot stoop to hypocrisy."

"I suppose not. But I must say, you might have taken this business in a pleasanter spirit, Sophia. I shall expect, however, to see you take more pains to overcome your prejudice against the young Indy I have chosen for my wife; and I shall be rather slow to believe in your affection for myself unless it shows itself in that manner."

Miss Granger covered her face with her handkerchief, and burst into a flood of tears.

"Oh, papa, papa, it only needed that! To think that any one's influence can make my father doubt my affection for him, after all these years of duty and obedience!"

Mr. Granger muttered something about "duty," which was the very reverse of a blessing, and walked out of the room, leaving Sophia to her tears.

* * * * *


CHAPTER XXV.


WEDDING BELLS.

There was no reason why the marriage should not take place very soon. Mr. Granger said so; Mr. Lovel agreed with him, half reluctantly as it were, and with the air of a man who is far from eager to precipitate events. There was no imaginable reason for delay.

Upon this point Mr. and Mrs. Oliver were as strong as Daniel Granger himself. A union in every way so propitious could not be too speedily made secure. Matthew Oliver was full of demonstrative congratulation now when he dined at Mill Cottage.

"Who would have guessed when I brought you home from the station that morning, and we drove through the park, that you were going to be mistress of it so soon, Clary?" he exclaimed triumphantly. "Do you remember crying when you heard the place was sold? I do, poor child; I can see your piteous face at this moment. And now it is going to be yours again. Upon my word, Providence has been very good to you, Clarissa."

Providence had been very good to her. They all told her the same story. Amongst her few friends there was not one who seemed to suspect that this marriage might be a sacrifice; that in her heart of hearts there might be some image brighter than Daniel Granger's.

She found herself staring at these congratulatory friends in blank amazement sometimes, wondering that they should all look at this engagement of hers from the same point of view, all be so very certain of her happiness.

Had she not reason to be happy, however? There had been a time when she had talked and thought of her lost home almost as Adam and Eve may have done when yet newly expelled from Paradise, with the barren world in all its strangeness before them.