"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. Pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion 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 G.o.d 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. G.o.d 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 dishonourable as to forget that Mr. Fairfax is engaged to Lady Geraldine."
"And you promise that there shall be no more meetings, no repet.i.tion 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 superst.i.tious 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 superst.i.tion. 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.
CHAPTER XIX.
MR. GRANGER IS PRECIPITATE.
Clarissa had little sleep that night. The image of George Fairfax, and of that dead soldier whom she pictured darkly like him, haunted her all through the slow silent hours. Her mother"s story had touched her to the heart; but her sympathies were with her father. Here was a new reason why she should shut her heart against Lady Geraldine"s lover, if any reason were wanted to strengthen that sense of honour which reigns supreme in a girl"s unsullied soul. In her conviction as to what was right she never wavered. She felt herself very weak where this man was concerned--weak enough to love him in spite of reason and honour; but she did not doubt her power to keep that guilty secret, and to hide her weakness from George Fairfax.
She had almost forgotten her engagement at Arden Court when her father came down to his late breakfast, and found her sketching at a little table near the window, with the affectionate Ponto nestling close at her side.
"I thought you would be dressing for your visit by this time, Clary," he said very graciously.
"My visit, papa? O, yes, to the Court," she replied, with a faint sigh of resignation. "I had very nearly forgotten all about it. I was to be there between twelve and one, I think. I shall have plenty of time to give you your breakfast. It"s not eleven yet."
"Be sure you dress yourself becomingly. I don"t want you to appear at a disadvantage compared with the heiress."
"I"ll put on my prettiest dress, if you like, papa; but I can"t wear such silks and laces as Miss Granger wears."
"You will have such things some day, I daresay, and set them off better than Miss Granger. She is not a bad-looking young woman--good complexion, fine figure, and so on--but as stiff as a poker."
"I think she is mentally stiff, papa; she is a sort of person I could never get on with. How I wish you were coming with me this morning!"
"I couldn"t manage it, Clarissa. The schools and the model villagers would be more than I could stand. But at your age you ought to be interested in that sort of thing; and you really ought to get on with Miss Granger."
It was half-past twelve when Miss Lovel opened the gate leading into Arden Park--the first time that she had ever opened it; though she had stood so often leaning on that rustic boundary, and gazing into the well-known woodland, with fond sad looks. There was an actual pain at her heart as she entered that unforgotten domain; and she felt angry with Daniel Granger for having forced this visit upon her.
"I suppose he is determined that we shall pay homage to his wealth, and admire his taste, and drink the bitter cup of humiliation to the very dregs. If he had any real delicacy of feeling, he would understand our reluctance to any intimacy with him."
While she was thinking of Mr. Granger in this unfriendly spirit, a step sounded on the winding path before her, and looking up, she perceived the subject of her thoughts coming quickly towards her. Was there ever such an intrusive man? She blushed rosy red with vexation.
He came to her, with his hat in his hand, looking very big and stiff and counting-house-like among the flickering shadows of forest trees; not an Arcadian figure by any means, but with a certain formal business-like dignity about him, for all that; not a man to be ridiculed or despised.
"I am glad you have not forgotten your promise to come early, Miss Lovel,"
he said, in his strong sonorous voice. "I was just walking over to the cottage to remind you. Sophia is quite ready to do the honours of her schools. But I shall not let her carry you off till after luncheon; I want to show you my improvements. I had set my heart on your seeing the Court for the first time--since its restoration--under my guidance."
"Pompous, insufferable _parvenu_," thought Clarissa, to whom this desire on Mr. Granger"s part seemed only an odious eagerness to exhibit his wealth.
She little knew how much sentiment there was involved in this wish of Daniel Granger"s.
They came into the open part of the park presently, and she was fain to confess, that whatever changes had been made--and the alterations here were not many--had been made with a perfect appreciation of the picturesque.
Even the supreme neatness with which the grounds were now kept did not mar their beauty. Fairy-like young plantations of rare specimens of the coniferous tribe had arisen at every available point of the landscape, wherever there had been barrenness before. Here and there the old timber had been thinned a little, always judiciously. No c.o.c.kney freaks of fancy disfigured the scene. There were no sham ruins, no artificial waterfalls poorly supplied with water, no Chinese paG.o.das, or Swiss cottages, or gothic hermitages. At one point of the shrubbery where the gloom of cypress and fir was deepest, they came suddenly on a Grecian temple, whose slender marble columns might have gleamed amidst the sacred groves of Diana; and this was the only indulgence Mr. Granger had allowed to an architect"s fancy, Presently, at the end of a wide avenue, a broad alley of turf between double lines of unrivalled beeches, the first glimpse of the Court burst upon Clarissa"s sight--unchanged and beautiful. A man must have been a Goth, indeed, who had altered the outward aspect of the place by a hair"s breadth.
The house was surrounded by a moat, and there was a ma.s.sive stone gateway, of older date than the Court itself--though that was old--dividing a small prim garden from the park; this gatehouse was a n.o.ble piece of masonry, of the purest gothic, rich with the mellow tint of age, and almost as perfect as in the days when some wandering companionship of masons gave the last stroke of their chisels to the delicate tracery of window and parapet.
The Court formed three sides of a quadrangle. A dear old place, lovable rather than magnificent, yet with all the grandeur of the middle ages; a place that might have stood a siege perhaps, but had evidently been built for a home. The garden originally belonging to the house was simplicity itself, and covered scarcely an acre. All round the inner border of the moat there ran a broad terrace-walk, divided by a low stone bal.u.s.trade from a gra.s.sy bank that sloped down to the water. The square plot of ground before the house was laid out in quaint old flower-beds, where the roses seemed, to Clarissa at least, to flourish as they flourished nowhere else.
The rest of the garden consisted of lawn and flower-beds, with more roses.
There were no trees near the house, and the stables and out-offices, which made a ma.s.sive pile of building, formed a background to the grave old gothic mansion.
Without, at least, Mr. Granger had respected the past. Clarissa felt relieved by this moderation, and was inclined to think him a little less hateful. So far he had said nothing which could seem to betray a boastful spirit. He had watched her face and listened to her few remarks with a kind of deferential eagerness, as if it had been a matter of vital importance to him that she should approve what he had done. A steward, who had been entrusted with the conduct of alterations and renovations during the absence of his master, could scarcely have appeared more anxious as to the result of his operations.