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

legs and endangerment of spines, Mr. Granger made a wry face, and ordered that rubbish to be swept away.

"You can build me half-a-dozen upon the new Arden design," he said; "red brick, with stone dressings; and be sure you put a tablet with the date in front of each."

He was thinking of his son, anxious that there should be some notable improvement, some new building every year, to mark the progress of his boy's existence.

The farm-labourers and their wives did not look so delighted as they might have been by this edict. These benighted souls liked the old cottages, lop-sided as they were--liked the crooked staircase squeezed into a corner of the living room below, the stuffy little dens above, with casement windows which only opened on one side, letting in the smallest modicum of air, and were not often opened at all. Cottages on the Now Arden model meant stone floors below and open rafters above, thorough draughts everywhere, and, worst of all, they meant weekly inspection by Miss Granger. The free sons and daughters of Hickly-on-the-Hill--this little cluster of houses which formed a part of Mr. Granger's new estate--had rejoiced that they were not as the Ardenites; that they could revel in warmth and dirt, and eat liver-and-bacon for supper on a Saturday night, without any fear of being lectured for their extravagance by the omniscient Sophia on the following Monday, convicted of their guilt by the evidence of the grease in an unwashed frying-pan; that their children could sport on the hillside in garments that were guiltless of strings; that, in short, they were outside the circle of Miss Granger's sympathies and could live their own lives. But that sweet liberty was all over now: with the red brick and stone dressings would come the Draconian laws of New Arden; no more corners for the comfortable accumulation of dirt, no more delicious little cupboards for the stowing away of rubbish. Everything was to be square and solid and stony. They heard Mr. Granger giving orders that the chimney was to be flush with the wall, and so on; the stove, an "Oxford front," warranted to hold not more than a pound and a half of coal; no recesses in which old age could sit and croon, no cosy nook for the cradle of infancy.

After this interview with the architect, Mr. Granger rode home through Holborough. His way took him past that very hotel where George Fairfax was staying--the chief inn of the town, a fine old red-brick building that filled nearly one side of the market-place.

It happened that just as Mr. Granger rode along the High-street, where there were some half-a-dozen stragglers visible upon a wide expanse of pavement, and one carriage waiting at the draper's, Mr. Fairfax walked up the broad steps of the hotel and entered--entered with the air of a man who lived there, Daniel Granger thought. And he had said that he was staying with a bachelor friend. Mr. Granger rode slowly past the principal part of the hotel to an archway at the end--an archway leading to livery stables, where the ostler was lounging. He stopped opposite this archway, and beckoned the man over to him.

"There was a gentleman went into the hotel just now," he said; "did you see him?"

"Yes, sir, I seed him. Mr. Fairfax; him as was to have married Lady Laura Armstrong's sister."

"Is he staying in the house, do you know?"

"Yes, sir; came last night, down from London. Shall I take him your card, sir?"

"No, thank you, Giles; I won't call upon him this afternoon, I only wanted to be sure. Good-day."

He rode on. What was the meaning of this lie which George Fairfax had told him? Had it any meaning which it behoved him to fathom? It was strange, at the least--strange enough to make Mr. Granger very uncomfortable as he rode slowly back to the Court.

* * * * *


CHAPTER XXXII.


AUSTIN.

Late in the autumn of that year, Mr. Granger and his household took up their abode in Paris. Clarissa had expressed a wish to winter in that brilliant city, and Daniel Granger had no greater desire than to please her. But, in making any concession of this kind, he did it in such a quiet unobtrusive way, that his wife was scarcely aware how entirely her wishes had been studied. He was too proud a man to parade his affection for her; he kept a check upon himself rather, and in a manner regulated his own conduct by the standard of hers. There was never any show of devotion on his part. The world might have taken them for a couple brought together by convenience, and making the best of their loveless union.

So, with regard to the gratification of her wishes, it seemed always that the thing which Clarissa desired, happened to suit his own humour, rather than that he sacrificed all personal feeling for her pleasure. In this Parisian arrangement it had been so, and his wife had no idea that it was entirely on her account that Daniel Granger set up his tent in the Faubourg St. Honoré.

The fair Sophia had, however, a very shrewd suspicion of the fact, and for some weeks prior to the departure from Arden, existed in a state of suppressed indignation, which was not good for the model villagers; her powers of observation were, if possible, sharpened in the matter of cobwebs; her sense of smell intensified in relation to cabbage-water. Nor did she refrain from making herself eminently disagreeable to her stepmother.

"I should not have supposed you would so soon be tired of Arden Court," she remarked pleasantly, during that dreary quarter of an hour after dinner which Mr. Granger and his wife and daughter were wont to pass in the contemplation of crystallized apricots and hothouse grapes, and the exchange of the baldest commonplaces in the way of conversation; Perhaps if Clarissa and her husband had been alone on such occasions that air of ceremony might have vanished. The young wife might have drawn her chair a little nearer her husband's, and there might have been some pleasant talk about that inexhaustible source of wonder and delight, the baby. But with Miss Granger always at hand, the dessert was as ceremonious as if there had been a party of eighteen, and infinitely more dreary, lacking the cheery clatter and buzz of company. She ate five hothouse grapes, and sipped half a glass of claret, with as solemn an air as if she had been making a libation to the gods.

Mr. Granger looked up from his plate when his daughter made this remark about Arden, and glanced inquiringly at his wife, with a shadow of displeasure in his face. Yielding and indulgent as he had been to her, there was in his composition something of the stuff that makes a tyrant. His wife must love the things that he loved. It would have been intolerable to him to suppose that Mrs. Granger could grow weary of the house that he had beautified.

"I am not tired of the Court," Clarissa answered with a sad smile. "There are too many recollections to make it dear to me."

Daniel Granger's face flushed ever so slightly at this speech.

It was the past, then, and not the present, that rendered the place dear to her.

"I could never grow tired of Arden," she went on; "but I think it will be very nice to spend a winter in Paris."

"Lady Laura Armstrong has put that notion into your head, no doubt," said Miss Granger, with the faintest suspicion of a sneer. She was not very warmly attached to the lady of Hale Castle nowadays, regarding her as the chief promoter of Mr. Granger's marriage.

"Lady Laura has said that they enjoyed themselves very much in Paris the winter before last," Clarissa answered frankly; "and has promised me plenty of introductions. She even promises that she and Mrs. Armstrong will come over for a week or two, while we are there."

"And poor Lady Geraldine Challoner?"

Miss Granger always exhibited a profound pity for Lady Geraldine, and never lost any opportunity of dwelling upon Mr. Fairfax's bad conduct.

"No; I don't suppose Lady Geraldine would go with them," Clarissa answered, colouring a little. The name of Geraldine Challoner was always painful to her. "She doesn't care about going anywhere."

"Perhaps she would not care to run the risk of meeting Mr. Fairfax," suggested Sophia.

Mr. Granger looked up again, with that shadow of displeasure upon his countenance.

"She would not be more likely to meet him in Paris than at Hale," replied Clarissa. "He has gone to Germany."

"Yes, for the autumn, he said. Depend upon it, he will spend the winter in Paris. I have always observed that those dissipated kind of men prefer Paris to London."

"I don't think you have any right to call Mr. Fairfax dissipated, Sophia," said her father, with an offended air; "and I don't think that his movements can be of the smallest consequence to you, nor those of the Hale Castle people either? Clarissa and I have determined to spend two or three months in Paris, and we are not in the slightest degree dependent upon our English friends for our enjoyment there. If you are disinclined to accompany us, and would rather remain at Arden----"

"O, papa, papa!" cried Sophia, with an injured look, "don't say that; don't allow me to think I have grown quite indifferent to you."

"You have not grown indifferent to me; but I don't want to take you away from home against your wish."

"My wish is to be anywhere with you, papa; _anywhere_--even though you may feel me an incumbrance. I could endure the humiliation of feeling that, so long as I was allowed to remain with you."

Mr. Granger gave a sigh that was almost a groan, and, for perhaps the first time in his life, it occurred to him that it would be a pleasant thing if his only daughter were to fall in love with some fortunate youth, and desire to marry him. A curate even. There was Tillott. Why shouldn't she marry Tillott? He, Daniel Granger, would give his child a handsome portion, and they could go through life inspecting model cottages, and teaching village children the works and ways of all those wicked kings of Israel, who made groves and set up the idols of their heathen neighbours; a pure and virtuous and useful life, without question, if tempered with come consideration for the feelings of the model cottagers, and some mercy for the brains of the humble scholars.

In the interval between this little after-dinner scene and the departure from Arden, Mr. Granger invited Mr. Tillott to dinner two or three times, and watched him with the eyes of anxiety as he conversed with Sophia. But although the curate was evidently eager to find favour in the sight of the damsel, the damsel herself showed no sign of weakness. Mr. Granger sighed, and told himself that the lamp of hope burned dimly in this quarter.

"She really ought to marry," he said to himself. "A girl of her energetic indefatigable nature would be a treasure to some man, and she is only wasting herself here. Perhaps in Paris we shall meet some one;" and then there arose before Mr. Granger the vision of some foreign adventurer, seeking to entangle