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

as the boy gained strength, and was almost happy. The pine-wood was very pretty; but those slender trees, shooting heavenwards, lacked the grandeur of the oaks and beeches of Arden, and very often Clarissa thought of her old home with a sigh. After all, it was lost to her; twice lost, by a strange fatality, as it seemed.

In these days she thought but seldom of George Fairfax. In very truth she was well-nigh cured of her guilty love for him. Her folly had cost her too dear; "almost the loss of my child," she said to herself sometimes.

There are passions that wear themselves out, that are by their very nature self-destroying--a lighted candle that will burn for a given time, and then die out with ignominious smoke and sputtering, not the supernal lamp that shines on, star-like, for ever. Solitude and reflection brought this fact home to Clarissa, that her love, fatal as it had been, was not eternal. A woman's heart is scarcely wide enough to hold two great affections; and now baby reigned supreme in the heart of Clarissa. She had plenty of money now at her disposal; Mr. Granger having fixed her allowance at three thousand a year, with extensive powers should that sum prove insufficient; so the Bohemian household under the shadow of St. Gudule profited by her independence. She sent her brother a good deal of money, and received very cheery letters in acknowledgment of her generosity, with sometimes a little ill-spelt scrawl from Bessie, telling her that Austin was much steadier in Brussels than he had been in Paris, and was working hard for the dealers, with whom he was in great favour. English and American travellers, strolling down the Montagne de la Cour, were caught by those bright "taking" bits, which Austin Lovel knew so well how to paint. An elderly Russian princess had bought his Peach picture, and given him a commission for portraits of a brood of Muscovian bantlings. In one way and another he was picking up a good deal of money; and, with the help of Clarissa's remittances, had contrived to arrange some of those awkward affairs in Paris.

"Indeed, there is very little in this world that money won't settle," he wrote to his sister; "and I anticipate that enlightened stage of our criminal code when wilful murder will be a question of pounds, shillings, and pence. I fancy it in a police report: 'The fine was immediately paid, and Mr. Greenacre left the court with his friends.' I have some invitation to go back to my old quarters in the only city I love; there is a Flemish buffet in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard that was a fortune to me in my backgrounds; but the little woman pleads so earnestly against our return, that I give way. Certainly, Paris is a dangerous place for a man of my temperament, who has not yet mastered the supreme art of saying no at the right moment. I am very glad to hear you are happy with your father and the little one. I wish I had him here for a model; my own boys are nothing but angles. Yet I would rather hear of you in your right position with your husband. That fellow Fairfax is a scoundrel; I despise myself for ever having asked him to put his name to a bill; and, still more, for being blind to his motives when he was hanging about my painting-room last winter. You have had a great escape, Clary; and God grant you wisdom to avoid all such perilous paths in time to come. Preachment of any kind comes with an ill grace from me, I know; but I daresay you remember what Portia says: 'If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces;' and every man, however fallen, has a kind of temple in his breast, wherein is enshrined the image of his nearest and dearest. Let my garments be never so besmirched and bedraggled, my sister's robes must be spotless."

There was comfort in these good tidings of her brother--comfort for which Clarissa was very grateful to Providence. She would have been glad to go to Brussels to see him, but had that ever-present terror of coming athwart the pathway of George Fairfax; nor could she go on such an errand without some kind of explanation with her father. She was content to abide, therefore, among the quiet pine-woods and umbrageous avenues, which the holiday world had not yet invaded, and where she was almost as free to wander with her boy as amidst the beloved woods of Arden Court.

Life thus spent was very peaceful--peaceful, and just a little monotonous. Mr. Lovel sipped his chocolate, and trifled with his maintenon cutlet, at 11 A.M., with an open volume of Burton or Bentley beside his cup, just as in the old days of Clarissa's girlhood. It was just like the life at Mill Cottage, with that one ever fresh and delicious element--young Lovel. That baby voice lent a perpetual music to Clarissa's existence; the sweet companionship of that restless clambering infant seemed to her the perfection of happiness.

And yet--and yet--there were times when she felt that her life was a failure, and lamented somewhat that she had so wrecked it. She was not hard of heart; and sometimes she thought of Daniel Granger with a remorseful pang, that cams upon her sharply in the midst of her maternal joys; thought of all that he had done for love of her--the sublime patience wherewith he had endured her coldness, the generous eagerness he had shown in the indulgence of her caprices; in a word, the wealth of wasted love he had lavished on an ungrateful woman.

"It is all over now," she said to herself sadly. "It is not every woman who in all her lifetime can win so great a love as I have lost."

The tranquil sensuous life went on. There were hours in it which her child could not fill--long hours, in which that marvellous blossom folded its petals, slumbering sweetly through the summer noontide, and was no better company than a rose-bud. Clarissa tried to interest herself in her old studies; took up her Italian, and read Dante with her father, who was a good deal more painstaking in his explanations of obscure idioms and irregular verbs for the benefit of Mrs. Granger with a jointure of three thousand per annum, than he had been wont to show himself for the behoof of Miss Lovel without a sixpence. She drew a great deal; but somehow these favourite pursuits had lost something of their charm. They could not fill her life; it seemed blank and empty in spite of them.

She had her child--the one blessing for which she had prayed--about which she had raved with such piteous bewailings in her delirium; but there was no sense of security in the possession. She was full of doubts and fears about the future. How long would Daniel Granger suffer her to keep her treasure? Must not the day come when he would put forth his stronger claim, and she would be left bereaved and desolate?

Scarcely could she dare to think of the future; indeed, she did her uttermost to put away all thought of it, so fraught was it with terror and perplexity; but her dreams were made hideous by scenes of parting--weird and unnatural situations, such as occur in dreams; and her health suffered from these shadowy fears. Death, too, had been very near her boy; and she watched him with a morbid apprehension, fearful of every summer breeze that ruffled his flaxen hair.

She was tired of Spa, and secretly anxious to cross the frontier, and wander through Germany, away to the further-most shores of the Danube; but was fain to wait patiently till her father's medical adviser--an English physician, settled at Spa--should pronounce him strong enough to travel.

"That hurried journey to the Isle of Wight sent me back prodigiously," Mr. Lovel told his daughter. "It will take me a month or two to recover the effects of those abominable steamers. The Rhine and the Danube will keep, my dear Clary. The castled crag of Drachenfels can be only a little mouldier for the delay, and I believe the mouldiness of these things is their principal charm."

So Clarissa waited. She had not the courage to tell her father of those shapeless terrors that haunted her by day, and those agonising dreams that visited her by night, which she fancied might be driven away by movement and change of scene; she waited, and went on suffering, until at last that supreme egotist, Marmaduke Lovel, was awakened to the fact, that his daughter was looking no better than when he first brought her to Belgium--worse rather, incontestably worse. He took alarm immediately. The discovery moved him more than he could have supposed anything outside himself could have affected him.

"What?" he asked himself. "Is my daughter going to languish and fade, as my wife faded? Is she too to die of a Fairfax?"

The English physician was consulted; hummed and ha'd a little, prescribed a new tonic; and finding, after a week or two, that this produced no result, and that the pulse was weaker and more fitful, recommended change of air and scene,--a remedy which common-sense might have suggested in the first instance.

"We will start for Cologne to-morrow morning. Tell Target to pack, Clary. You shall sleep under the shadow of the great cathedral to-morrow night."

Clarissa thanked her father warmly, and then burst into tears.

"Hysteria," murmured the physician.

"I shall get away from that dreadful room," she sobbed, "where I have such hideous dreams;" and then went away to set Jane Target to work.

"I don't quite like the look of that," the doctor said gravely, when she was gone. "Those distressing dreams are a bad sign. But Mrs. Granger is yet very young, and has an excellent constitution, I believe. Change of scene, and the amusement of travelling, may do all we want."

He left Mr. Lovel very thoughtful.

"If she doesn't improve very speedily, I shall telegraph to Granger," he said to himself.

He had no occasion to do this. Daniel Granger, after going half way to Marseilles, with a notion of exploring Algiers and Morocco, had stopped short, and made his way by road and rail--through sirocco, clouds of dust, and much inconvenience--to Liége, where he had lingered to recover and calm himself down a little before going to see his child.

Going to see his child--that was the sole purpose of his journey; not for a moment would he have admitted that it mattered anything to him that he was also going to see his wife.

It was between seven and eight o'clock, on a bright June evening--a flush of rosy light behind the wooded hills--and Clarissa was sitting on some felled timber, with her boy asleep in her arms. He had dropped off to sleep in the midst of his play; and she had lingered, unwilling to disturb him. If he went on sleeping, she would be able to carry him home presently, and put him to bed without awaking him. The villa was not a quarter of a mile away.

She was quite alone with her darling, the nurse being engaged in the grand business of packing. They were all to start the next morning after a very early breakfast. She was looking down at the young sleeper, singing to him softly--a commonplace picture perhaps, but a very fair one--a _Madonna aux champs_.

So thought Daniel Granger, who had arrived at Spa half an hour ago, made his