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

issue could be safely calculated upon. And during all that time Daniel Granger watched his boy with only the briefest intervals for rest or refreshment. Clarissa watched too; nor did her husband dispute her right to a place in the sick-room, though he rarely spoke to her, and then only with the coldest courtesy.

Throughout this period of uncertainty, Geraldine Challoner was faithful to the duty she had undertaken; spending the greatest part of her life at Clarissa's lodgings, and never wearying of the labours of the sick-room. The boy grew daily fonder of her; but, with a womanly instinct, she contrived that it should be Clarissa who carried him up and down the room when he was restless--Clarissa's neck round which the wasted little arm twined itself.

Daniel Granger watched the mother and child sometimes with haggard eyes, speculating on the future. If the boy lived, who was to have him? The mother, whose guilt or innocence was an open question--who had owned to being at heart false to her husband--or the father, who had done nothing to forfeit the right to his keeping? And yet to part them was like plucking asunder blossom and bud, that had grown side by side upon one common stem. In many a gloomy reverie the master of Arden Court debated this point.

He could never receive his wife again--upon that question there seemed to him no room for doubt. To take back to his home and his heart the woman who had confessed her affection for another man, was hardly in Daniel Granger's nature. Had he not loved her too much already--degraded himself almost by so entire a devotion to a woman who had given him nothing, who had kept her heart shut against him?

"She married Arden Court, not me," he said to himself; "and then she tried to have Arden Court and her old lover into the bargain. Would she have run away with him, I wonder, if he had had time to persuade her that day? _Can_ any woman be pure, when a man dares ask her to leave her husband?"

And then the locket that man wore--"From Clarissa"--was not that damning evidence?

He thought of these things again and again, with a weary iteration--thought of them as he watched the mother walking slowly to and fro with her baby in her arms. _That_ picture would surely live in his mind for ever, he thought. Never again, never any more, in all the days to come, could he take his wife back to his heart; but, O God, how dearly he had loved her, and how desolate his home would be without her! Those two years of their married life seemed to be all his existence; looking back beyond that time, his history seemed, like Viola's, "A blank, my lord." And he was to live the rest of his life without her. But for that ever-present anxiety about the child, which was in some wise a distraction, the thought of these things might have driven him mad.

At last, after those two weeks of uncertainty, there came a day when Dr. Ormond pronounced the boy out of danger--on the very high-road to recovery, in fact.

"I would say nothing decided till I could speak with perfect certainty," he said. "You may make yourselves quite happy now."

Clarissa knelt down and kissed the good old doctor's hand, raining tears upon it in a passion of gratitude. He seemed to her in that moment something divine, a supernal creature who, by the exercise of his power, had saved her child Dr. Ormond lifted her up, smiling at her emotion.

"Come, come, my dear soul, this is hysterical," he said, in his soothing paternal way, patting her shoulder gently as he spoke; "I always meant to save the little fellow; though it has been a very severe bout, I admit, and we have had a tussle for it. And now I expect to see your roses come back again. It has been a hard time for you as well as for baby."

When Mr. Granger went out of the room with the physician presently, Dr. Ormond said gravely,--

"The little fellow is quite safe, Mr. Granger; but you must look to your wife now."

"What do you mean?"

"She has a nasty little hacking cough--a chest cough--which I don't like; and there's a good deal of incipient fever about her."

"If there is anything wrong, for God's sake see to her at once!" cried Daniel Granger. "Why didn't you speak of this before?"

"There was no appearance of fever until to-day. I didn't wish to worry her with medicines while she was anxious about the child; indeed, I thought the best cure for her would be the knowledge of his safety. But the cough is worse to-day; and I should certainly like to prescribe for her, if you will ask her to come in here and speak to me for a few minutes."

So Clarissa went into the dingy lodging-house sitting-room to see the doctor, wondering much that any one could be interested in such an insignificant matter as _her_ health, now that her treasure was safe. She went reluctantly, murmuring that she was well enough--quite well now; and had hardly tottered into the room, when she sank down upon the sofa in a dead faint.

Daniel Granger looked on aghast while they revived her.

"What can have caused this?" he asked.

"My dear sir, you are surely not surprised," said Dr. Ormond. "Your wife has been sitting up with her child every night for nearly a month--the strain upon her, bodily and mental, has been enormous, and the reaction is of course trying. She will want a good deal of care, that is all. Come now," he went on cheerfully, as Clarissa opened her eyes, to find her head lying on Jane Target's shoulder, and her husband standing aloof regarding her with affrighted looks--"come now, my dear Mrs. Granger, cheer up; your little darling is safely over his troubles."

She burst into a flood of tears.

"They will take him away from me!" she sobbed.

"Take him away from you--nonsense! What are you dreaming of?"

"Death has been merciful; but you will be more cruel," she cried, looking at her husband. "You will take him away."

"Come, come, my dear lady, this is a delusion; you really must not give way to this kind of thing," murmured the doctor, rather complacently. He had a son-in-law who kept a private madhouse at Wimbledon, and began to think Mrs. Granger was drifting that way. It was sad, of course, a sweet young woman like that; but patients are patients, and Daniel Granger's wife would be peculiarly eligible.

He looked at Mr. Granger, and touched his forehead significantly. "The brain has been sorely taxed," he murmured, confidentially; "but we shall set all that right by-and-by." This with as confident an air as if the brain had been a clock.

Daniel Granger went over to his wife, and took her hand--it was the first time those two hands had met since the scene in Austin's painting-room--looking down at her gravely.

"Clarissa," he said, "on my word of honour, I will not attempt to separate you from your son."

She gave a great cry--a shriek, that rang through the room--and cast herself upon her husband's breast.

"O, God bless you for that!" she sobbed; "God bless--" and stopped, strangled by her sobs.

Mr. Granger put her gently back into her faithful hand-maiden's arms. _That_ was different. He might respect her rights as a mother; he could never again accept her as his wife.

But a time came now in which all thought of the future was swept away by a very present danger. Before the next night, Clarissa was raving in brain-fever; and for more than a month life was a blank to her--or not a blank, an age of confused agony rather, to be looked back upon with horror by-and-by.

They dared not move her from the cheerless rooms in Soho. Lovel was sent down to Ventnor with Lady Geraldine and a new nurse. It could do no harm to take him away from his mother for a little while, since she was past the consciousness of his presence. Jane Target and Daniel Granger nursed her, with a nursing sister to relieve guard occasionally, and Dr. Ormond in constant attendance.

The first thing she saw, when sense came back to her, was her husband's figure, sitting a little way from-the bed, his face turned towards her, gravely watchful. Her first reasonable words--faintly murmured in a wondering tone--moved him deeply; but he was strong enough to hide all emotion.

"When she has quite recovered, I shall go back to Arden," he said to himself; "and leave her to plan her future life with the help of Lady Geraldine's counsel. That woman is a noble creature, and the best friend my wife can have. And then we must make some fair arrangement about the boy--what time he is to spend with me, and what with his mother. I cannot altogether surrender my son. In any case he is sure to love her best."

When Clarissa was at last well enough to be moved, her husband took her down to Ventnor, where the sight of her boy, bright and blooming, and the sound of his first syllables--little broken scraps of language, that are so sweet to mothers' ears--had a better influence than all Dr. Ormond's medicines. Here, too, came her father, from Nice, where he had been wintering, having devoted his days to the pleasing duty of taking care of himself. He would have come sooner, immediately on hearing of Clarissa's illness, he informed Mr. Granger; but he was a poor frail creature, and to have exposed himself to the north-cast winds of this most uncertain climate early in April would have been to run into the teeth of danger. It was the middle of May now, and May this year had come without her accustomed inclemency.

"I knew that my daughter was in good hands," he said. Daniel Granger signed, and answered nothing.

Mr. Lovel's observant eyes soon perceived that there was something amiss; and one evening, when he and Mr. Granger were strolling on the sands between Ventnor and Shanklin, he plainly taxed his son-in-law with the fact.

"There is some quarrel between Clary and you," he said; "I can see that at a glance. Why, I used to consider you a model couple--perfectly Arcadian in your devotion--and now you scarcely speak to each other."

"There is a quarrel that must last our lives," Daniel Granger answered moodily, and then told his story, without reservation.

"Good heavens!" cried Mr. Lovel, at the end, "there is a curse upon that man and his race."

And then he told his own story, in a very few words, and testified to his undying hatred of all the house of Fairfax.

After this there came a long silence, during which Clarissa's father was meditative.

"You cannot, of course, for a moment suppose that I can doubt my daughter's innocence throughout this unfortunate business," he said at last. "I know the diabolical persistency of that race too well. It was like a Fairfax to entangle my poor girl in his net--to compromise her reputation, in the hope of profiting by his treachery. I do not attempt to deny, however, that Clarissa was imprudent. We have to consider her youth, and that natural love of admiration which tempts women to jeopardise their happiness and character even for the sake of an idle flirtation. I do not pretend that my daughter is faultless; but I would stake my life