Good gracious me,” cried Lady Laura with sudden impetuosity, “I have no patience with the man! What is one man more than another, that there should be so much fuss about him?”
“I must go home to Lovel,” Clarissa said anxiously. “I don’t know how long I have been away from him. I lost my head, almost; and I felt that I _must_ come to you.”
“Thank God you did come, you poor wandering creature! Wait a few minutes, Clary, while I send for a cab, and put on my bonnet. I am coming with you.”
“You, Lady Laura?”
“Yes, and I too,” said a calm voice, that Clarissa remembered very well; and looking up at the door of communication between the two rooms, she saw the _portiere_ pushed aside, and Geraldine Challoner on the threshold.
“Let me come and nurse your baby, Mrs. Granger,” she said gently; “I have had a good deal of experience of that sort of thing.”
“You do not know what an angel she is to the poor round Hale,” said Lady Laura; “especially to the children. And she nursed three of mine, Maud, Ethel, and Alick–no; Stephen, wasn’t it?” she asked, looking at her sister for correction–“through the scarlatina. Nothing but her devotion could have pulled them through, my doctor assured me. Let her come with us, Clary.”
“O, yes, yes! God bless you, Lady Geraldine, for wanting to help my darling!”
“Norris, tell Fosset to bring me my bonnet and shawl, and fetch a cab immediately; I can’t wait for the carriage.”
Five minutes afterwards, the three women were seated in the cab, and on their way to Soho.
“You have sent for Mr. Granger, of course,” said Lady Laura.
“No, not yet. I trust in God there may be no necessity; my darling will get well; I know he will! Dr. Ormond is to see him to-morrow.”
“What, Clarissa! you have not sent for your husband, although you say that his boy is in danger?”
“If I let Mr. Granger know where I am, he will come and take my son away from me.”
“Nonsense, Clary; he can’t do that. It is very shameful of you to keep him in ignorance of the child’s state.” And as well as she could, amidst the rattling of the cab, Lady Laura tried to awaken Clarissa to a sense of the wrong she was doing. Jane Target stared in amazement on seeing her mistress return with these two ladies.
“O, ma’am, I’ve been, so frightened!” she exclaimed. “I couldn’t think what was come of you.”
Clarissa ran to the bed.
“He has been no worse?” she asked eagerly.
“No, ma’am. I do think, if there’s any change, it is for the better.”
“O thank God, thank God!” cried Clarissa hysterically, falling on her knees by the bed. “Death shall not rob me of him! Nobody shall take him from me!” And then, turning to Laura Armstrong, she said, “I need not send for my husband, you see; my darling will recover.”
* * * * *
CHAPTER XLVIII.
“STRANGERS YET.”
Lady Laura went back to Portland-place in an hour; but Geraldine Challoner stayed all night with the sick child. God was very merciful to Clarissa; the angel of death passed by. In the night the fever abated, if only ever so little; and Dr. Ormond’s report next day was a cheering one. He did not say the little one was out of danger; but he did say there was hope.
Lady Geraldine proved herself an accomplished nurse. The sick child seemed more tranquil in her arms than even in his mother’s. The poor mother felt a little pang of jealousy as she saw that it was so; but bore the trial meekly, and waited upon Geraldine with humble submission.
“How good you are!” she murmured once, as she watched the slim white hands that had played chess with George Fairfax adjusting poultices–“how good you are!”
“Don’t say that, my dear Mrs. Granger. I would do as much for any cottager’s child within twenty miles of Hale; it would be hard if I couldn’t do it for my sister’s friend.”
“Have you always been fond of the poor?” Clarissa asked wonderingly.
“Yes,” Geraldine answered, with a faint blush; “I was always fond of them. I can get on with poor people better than with my equals sometimes, I think; but I have visited more amongst them lately, since I have gone less into society–since papa’s death, in fact. And I am particularly fond of children; the little things always take to me.”
“My baby does, at any rate.”
“Have you written or telegraphed to Mr. Granger?” Lady Geraldine asked gravely.
“No, no, no; there can be no necessity now. Dr. Ormond says there is hope.”
“Hope, yes; but these little lives are so fragile. I implore you to send to him. It is only right.”
“I will think about it, by and by, perhaps, if he should grow any worse; but I know he is getting better. O, Lady Geraldine, have some pity upon me! If my husband finds out where I am, he will rob me of my child.”
The words were hardly spoken, when there was a loud double-knock at the door below, a delay of some two minutes, and then a rapid step on the stair–a step that set Clarissa’s heart beating tumultuously. She sat down by the bed, clinging to it like an animal at bay, guarding her cub from the hunter.
The door was opened quickly, and Daniel Granger came into the room. He went straight to the bed, and bent down to look at his child.
The boy had been light-headed in the night, but his brain was clear enough now. He recognised his father, and smiled–a little wan smile, that went to the strong man’s heart.
“My God, how changed he is!” exclaimed Mr. Granger. “How long has he been ill?”
“Very little more than a week, sir,” Jane Target faltered from the background.
“More than a week! and I am only told of his illness to-day, by a telegram from Lady Laura Armstrong! I beg your pardon, Lady Geraldine; I did not see you till this moment. I owe it to your sister’s consideration that I am here in time to see my boy before he dies.”
“We have every hope of saving him,” said Geraldine.
“And what a place I find him in! He has had some kind of doctor attending him, I suppose?”
“He has had a surgeon from the neighbourhood, who seems both kind and clever, and Dr. Ormond.”
Mr. Granger seated himself at the foot of the bed, a very little way from Clarissa, taking possession of his child, as it were.
“Do you know, Mrs. Granger, that I have scarcely rested night or day since you left Paris, hunting for my son?” he said. And this was the first time he acknowledged his wife’s presence by word or look.
Clarissa was silent. She had been betrayed, she thought–betrayed by her own familiar friend; and Daniel Granger had come to rob her of her child. Come what might, she would not part with him without a struggle.
After this, there came a weary time of anxious care and watching. The little life trembled in the balance; there were harassing fluctuations, a fortnight of unremitting care, before a favourable 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 upon her purity. At the same time I quite agree with you, Granger, that under existing circumstances, a separation–a perfectly amicable separation, my daughter of course retaining the society of her child–would be the wiser course for both parties.”
Mr. Granger had a sensation as of a volume of cold water dashed suddenly in his face. This friendly concurrence of his father-in-law’s took him utterly by surprise. He had expected that Mr. Lovel would insist upon a reconciliation, would thrust his daughter upon her husband at the point of the sword, as it were. He bowed acquiescence, but for some moments could find no words to speak.
“There is no other course open to me,” he said at last. “I cannot tell you how I have loved your daughter–God alone knows that–and how my every scheme of life has been built up from that one foundation. But that is all over now. I know, with a most bitter certainty, from her own lips, that I have never possessed her heart.”
“I can scarcely imagine that to be the case,” said Mr. Lovel, “even though Clarissa may have been betrayed into some passionate admission to that effect. Women will say anything when they are angry.”
“This was not said in anger.”
“But at the worst, supposing her heart not to have been yours hitherto, it might not be too late to win it even now. Men have won their wives after marriage.”
“I am too old to try my hand at that,” replied Mr. Granger, with a bitter smile. He was mentally comparing himself with George Fairfax, the handsome soldier, with that indescribable charm of youth and brightness about him.
“If you were a younger man, I would hardly recommend such a separation,” Mr. Lovel went on coolly; “but at your age–well, existence is quite tolerable without a wife; indeed there is a halcyon calm which descends upon a man when a woman’s influence is taken out of his life, that is, perhaps, better than happiness. You have a son and heir, and that, I should imagine, for a man of your position, is the chief end and aim of marriage. My daughter can come abroad with me, and we can lead a pleasant drowsy life together, dawdling about from one famous city or salubrious watering-place to another. I shall, as a matter of course, surrender the income you have been good enough to allow me; but, _en revanche_, you will no doubt make Clarissa an allowance suitable to her position as your wife.”
Mr. Granger laughed aloud.
“Do you think there can ever be any question of money between us?” he asked. “Do you think that if, by the surrender of every shilling I possess, I could win back my faith in my wife, I should hold the loss a heavy one?”
Mr. Lovel smiled, a quiet, self-satisfied smile, in the gloaming.
“He will make her income a handsome one,” he said to himself, “and I shall have my daughter–who is really an acquisition, for I was beginning to find life solitary–and plenty of ready money. Or he will come after her in three months’ time. That is the result I anticipate.”
They walked till a late moon had risen from the deep blue waters, and when they went back to the house everything was settled. Mr. Lovel answered for his daughter as freely as if he had been answering for himself. He was to take her abroad, with his grandson and namesake Lovel, attended by Jane Target and the new nurse, vice Mrs. Brobson, dismissed for neglect of her charge immediately after Clarissa’s flight. If the world asked any questions, the world must be told that Mr. and Mrs. Granger had parted by mutual consent, or that Mrs. Granger’s doctor had ordered continental travel. Daniel Granger could settle that point according to his own pleasure; or could refuse to give the world any answer at all, if he pleased.
Mr. Lovel told his daughter the arrangement that he had made for her next morning.
“I am to have my son?” she asked eagerly.
“Yes, don’t I tell you so? You and Lovel are to come with me. You can live anywhere you please; you will have a fair income, a liberal one, I daresay. You are very well off, upon my word, Clarissa, taking into consideration the fact of your supreme imprudence–only you have lost your husband.”
“And I have lost Arden Court. Does not there seem a kind of retribution in that? I made a false vow for the love of Arden Court–and–and for your sake, papa.”
“False fiddlestick!” exclaimed Mr. Lovel, impatiently; “any reasonable woman might have been happy in your position, and with such a man as Granger; a man who positively worshipped you. However, you have lost all that. I am not going to lecture you–the penalty you pay is heavy enough, without any sermonising on my part. You are a very lucky woman to retain custody of your child, and escape any public exposure; and I consider that your husband has shown himself most generous.”
Daniel Granger and his wife parted soon after this; parted without any sign of compunction–there was a dead wall of pride between them. Clarissa felt the burden of her guilt, but could not bring herself to make any avowal of her repentance to the husband who had put her away from him,–so easily, as it seemed to her. _That_ touched her pride a little.
On that last morning, when the carriage was waiting to convey the travellers to Ryde, Mr. Granger’s fortitude did almost abandon him at parting with his boy. Clarissa was out of the room when he took the child up in his arms, and put the little arms about his neck. He had made arrangements that the boy was to spend so many weeks in every year with him–was to be brought to him at his bidding, in fact; he was not going to surrender his treasure entirely.
And yet that parting seemed almost as bitter as if it had been for ever. It was such an outrage upon nature; the child who should have been so strong a link to bind those two hearts, to be taken from him like this, and for no sin of his. Resentment against his wife was strong in his mind at all times, but strongest when he thought of this loss which she had brought upon him. And do what he would, the child would grow up with a divided allegiance, loving his mother best.
One great sob shook him as he held the boy in that last embrace, and then he set him down quietly, as the door opened, and Clarissa appeared in her travelling-dress, pale as death, but very calm.
Just at the last she gave her hand to her husband, and said gently,–“I am very grateful to you for letting me take Lovel. I shall hold him always at your disposal.”
Mr. Granger took the thin cold hand, and pressed it gently.
“I am sorry there is any necessity for a divided household,” he said gravely. “But fate has been stronger than I. Good-bye.”
And so they parted; Mr. Granger leaving Ventnor later in the day, purposeless and uncertain, to moon away an evening at Ryde, trying to arrive at some decision as to what he should do with himself.
He could not go back to Arden yet awhile, that was out of the question. Farming operations, building projects, everything else, must go on without him, or come to a standstill. Indeed, it seemed to him doubtful whether he should ever go back to the house he had beautified, and the estate he had expanded: to live there alone–as he had lived before his marriage, that is to say, in solitary state with his daughter–must surely be intolerable His life had been suddenly shorn of its delight and ornament He knew now, even though their union had seemed at its best so imperfect, how much his wife had been to him.
And now he had to face the future without her. Good heavens! what a blank dismal prospect it seemed! He went to London, and took up his abode at Claridge’s, where his life was unspeakably wearisome to him. He did not care to see people he knew, knowing that he would have to answer friendly inquiries about his wife. He had nothing to do, no interest in life; letters from architect and builder, farm-bailiff and steward, were only a bore to him; he was too listless even to answer them promptly, but let them lie unattended to for a week at a time. He went to the strangers’ gallery when there was any debate of importance, and tried to give his mind to politics, with a faint idea of putting himself up for Holborough at the next election. But, as Phedre says, “Quand ma bouche implorait le nom de la deesse, j’adorais Hippolyte;” so Mr. Granger, when he tried to think of the Irish-Church question, or the Alabama claims, found himself thinking of Clarissa. He gave lip the idea at last, convinced that public life was, for the most part, a snare and a delusion; and that there were plenty of men in the world better able to man the great ship than he. Two years ago he had been more interested in a vestry meeting than he was now in the most stirring question of the day.
Finally, he determined to travel; wrote a brief letter to Sophia, announcing his intention; and departed unattended, to roam the world; undecided whether he should go straight to Marseilles, and then to Africa, or whether he should turn his face northwards, and explore Norway and Sweden. It ended by his doing neither. He went to Spa to see his boy, from whom he had been separated something over two months.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XLIX.
BEGINNING AGAIN.
Mr. Lovel had taken his daughter to Spa, finding that she was quite indifferent whither she went, so long as her boy went with her. It was a pleasant sleepy place out of the season, and he liked it; having a fancy that the mineral waters had done wonders for him. He had a villa on the skirts of the pine-wood, a little way beyond the town; a villa in which there was ample room for young Lovel and his attendants, and from which five minutes’ walk took them into shadowy deeps of pine, where the boy might roll upon the soft short grass.
By and by, Mr. Lovel told Clarissa they could go farther afield, travel wherever she pleased, in fact; but, for the present, perfect rest and quiet would be her best medicine. She was not quite out of the doctor’s hands yet; that fever had tried her sorely, and the remnant of her cough still clung to her. At first she had a great terror of George Fairfax discovering her retreat. He had found her at Brussels; why should he not find her at Spa? For the first month of her residence in the quiet inland watering-place she hardly stirred out of doors without her father, and sat at home reading or painting day after day, when she was longing to be out in the wood with her baby and nurse.
But when the first four weeks had gone by, and left her unmolested, Mrs. Granger grew bolder, and wandered out every day with her child, and saw the young face brighten daily with a richer bloom, 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 Liege, 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 inquiries at the villa, and wandered into the wood in quest of his only son. The mother’s face, with its soft smile of ineffable love, lips half parted, breathing that fragment of a tender song, reminded him of a picture by Raffaelle. She was nothing to him now; but he could not the less appreciate her beauty, spiritualised by sorrow, and radiant with the glory of the evening sunlight.
He came towards the little group silently, his footfall making no sound upon the moss-grown earth. He did not approach quite near, however, in silence, afraid of startling her, but stopped a little way off, and said gently,–
“They told me I should most likely find you somewhere about here, with Lovel.”
His wife gave a little cry, and looked up aghast.
“Have you come to take him away from me?” she asked, thinking that her dreams had been prophetic.
“No, no, I am not going to do that; though you told me he was to be at my disposal, remember, and I mean to claim him sometimes. I can’t allow him to grow up a stranger to me.–God bless him, how well he is looking! Pray don’t look so frightened,” he went on, in an assuring voice, alarmed by the dead whiteness of Clarissa’s face; “I have only come to see my boy before—-. The fact is, I have some thoughts of travelling for a year or two. There is a rage for going to Africa nowadays, and I am not without interest in that sort of thing.”
Clarissa looked at him wonderingly. This sudden passion for foreign wanderings seemed to her very strange in him. She had been accustomed to suppose his mind entirely absorbed by new systems of irrigation, and model-village building, and the extension of his estate. His very dreams, she had fancied, were of the hedgerows that bounded his lands–boundaries that vanished day by day, as the lands widened, with now a whole farm added, and now a single field. Could he leave Arden, and the kingdom that he had created for himself, to roam in sandy deserts, and hob-and-nob with Kaffir chiefs under the tropic stars?
Mr. Granger seated himself upon the timber by his wife’s side, and bent down to look at his son, and to kiss him gently without waking him. After that fond lingering kiss upon the little one’s smooth cheek, he sat for some minutes in silence, looking at his wife.
It was only her profile he could see; but he saw that she was looking ill, worse than she had looked when they parted at Ventnor. The sight of the pale face, with a troubled look about the mouth, touched him keenly. Just in that moment he forgot that there was such a being as George Fairfax upon this earth; forgot the sin that his wife had sinned against him; longed to clasp her to his breast; was only deterred by a kind of awkward shyness–to which such strong men as he are sometimes liable–from so doing.
“I am sorry to see that you are not looking very well,” he said at last, with supreme stiffness, and with that peculiarly unconciliating air which an Englishman is apt to put on, when he is languishing to hold out the olive-branch.
“I have not been very well; but I daresay I shall soon be better, now we are going to travel.”
“Going to travel!”
“Yes, papa has made up his mind to move at last. We go to Cologne to-morrow. I thought they would have told you that at the house.”
“No; I only waited to ask where you–where the boy was to be found. I did not even stop to see your father.”
After this there came a dead silence–a silence that lasted for about five minutes, during which they heard the faint rustle of the pine branches stirred ever so lightly by the evening wind. The boy slept on, unconscious and serene; the mother watching him, and Daniel Granger contemplating both from under the shadow of his eyebrows.
The silence grew almost oppressive at last, and Mr. Granger was the first to break it.
“You do not ask me for any news of Arden,” he said.
Clarissa blushed, and glanced at him with a little wounded look. It was hard to be reminded of the paradise from which she had been exiled.
“I–I beg your pardon. I hope everything is going on as you wish; the home farm, and all that kind of thing. Miss Granger–Sophia–is well, I hope?”
“Sophia is quite well, I believe. I have not seen her since I left Ventnor.”
“She has been away from Arden, then?”
“No; it is I who have not been there. Indeed, I doubt if I shall ever go there again–without you, Clarissa. The place is hateful to me.”
Again and again, with infinite iteration, Daniel Granger had told himself that reconciliation with his wife was impossible. Throughout his journey by road and rail–and above all things is a long journey conductive to profound meditation–he had been firmly resolved to see his boy, and then go on his way at once, with neither delay nor wavering. But the sight of that pale pensive face to-night had well-nigh unmanned him. Was this the girl whose brightness and beauty had been the delight of his life? Alas, poor child, what sorrow his foolish love had brought upon her! He began all at once to pity her, to think of her as a sacrifice to her father’s selfishness, his own obstinacy.
“I ought to have taken my answer that day at the Court, when I first told her my secret,” he said to himself. “That look of pained surprise, which came into her face when I spoke, might surely have been enough for me. Yet I persisted, and was not man enough to face the question boldly–whether she had any heart to give me.”
Clarissa rose, with the child still in her arms.
“I am afraid the dew is beginning to fall,” she said; “I had better take Lovel home.”
“Let me carry him,” exclaimed Mr. Granger; and in the next moment the boy was in his father’s strong arms, the flaxen head nestling in the paternal waistcoat.
“And so you are going to begin your travels to-morrow morning,” he said, as they walked slowly homeward side by side.
“Yes, the train leaves at seven. But you would like to see more of Lovel, perhaps, having come so far to see him. We can defer our journey for a day or two.”
“You are very good. Yes, I should like you to do that.”
“And with regard to what you were saying just now,” Clarissa said, in a low voice, that was not quite steady, “I trust you will not let the memory of any pain I may have given you influence your future life, or disgust you with a place to which you were so much attached as I know you were to Arden. Pray put me out of your thoughts. I am not worthy to be regretted by you. Our marriage was a sad mistake on your part–a sin upon mine. I know now that it was so.”
“A mistake–a sin! O, Clary, Clary, I could have been so happy, if you had only loved me a little–if you had only been true to me.
“I never was deliberately false to you. I was very wicked; yes, I acknowledge that. I did trifle with temptation. I ought to have avoided the remotest chance of any meeting with George Fairfax. I ought to have told you the truth, told you all my weakness; but–but I had not the courage to do that. I went to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard to see my brother.”
“Was that honest, Clarissa, to allow me to be introduced to your brother as a stranger?”
“That was Austin’s wish, not mine. He would not let me tell you who he was; and I was so glad for you to be kind to him, poor fellow! so glad to be able to see him almost daily; and when the picture was finished, and Austin had no excuse for coming to us any more, I went to see him very often, and sometimes met Mr. Fairfax in his painting-room; but I never went with any deliberate intention of meeting him.”
“No,” interjected Mr. Granger bitterly; “you only went, knowing that he was likely to be there!”
“And on that unhappy day when you found me there,” Clarissa went on, “I had gone to see my brother, having no idea that he had left Paris. I wanted to come away at once; but Mr. Fairfax detained me. I was very angry with him.”
“Yes, it appeared so, when he was asking you to run away with him. It is a hard thing for a man to believe in his wife’s honour, when things have come to such a pass as that, Clarissa.”
“I have told you the truth,” she answered gravely; “I cannot say any more.”
“And the locket–the locket I gave you, which I found on that man’s breast?”
“I gave that locket to my sister-in-law, Bessie Lovel. I wished to give her something, poor soul; and I had given Austin all my money. I had so many gifts of yours, Daniel”–that sudden sound of his Christian name sent a thrill through Mr. Granger’s veins–“parting with one of them seemed not to matter very much.”
There was a pause. They were very near the villa by this time. Mr. Granger felt as if he might never have an opportunity for speaking to his wife again, if he lost his chance now.
“Clarissa,” he said earnestly, “if I could forget all that happened in Paris, and put it out of my mind as if it had never been, could you forget it too?”
“With all my heart,” she answered.
“Then, my darling, we will begin the world again–we will begin life over again, Clarissa!”
So they went home together reconciled. And Mr. Lovel, looking up from Aime Martin’s edition of Moliere, saw that what he had anticipated had come to pass. His policy had proved as successful as it had been judicious. In less than three months Daniel Granger had surrendered. This was what came of Mr. Granger’s flying visit to his boy.
* * * * *
CHAPTER L.
HOW SUCH THINGS END.
After that reconciliation, which brought a wonderful relief and comfort to Clarissa’s mind–and who shall say how profoundly happy it made her husband?–Mr. and Mrs. Granger spent nearly a year in foreign travel. For his own part, Daniel Granger would have been glad to go back to Arden, now that the dreary burden was lifted off his mind, and his broken life pieced together again; but he did not want county society to see his wife till the bloom and brightness had come back to her face, nor to penetrate the mystery of their brief severance. To remain away for some considerable time was the surest way of letting the scandal, if any had ever arisen, die out.
He wrote to his daughter, telling her briefly that he and his wife had arranged all their little differences–little differences! Sophia gave a shrill scream of indignation as she went over this sentence in her father’s letter, scarcely able to believe her eyes at first–and they were going through Germany together with the intention of wintering at Borne. As Clarissa was still somewhat of an invalid, it would be best for them to be alone, he thought; but he was ready to further any plans for his daughter’s happiness during his absence.
Miss Granger replied curtly, that she was tolerably happy at Arden, with her “duties,” and that she had no desire to go roaming about the world in quest of that contented mind which idle and frivolous persons rarely found, go where they might. She congratulated her father upon the termination of a quarrel which she had supposed too serious to be healed so easily, and trusted that he would never have occasion to regret his clemency. Mr. Granger crushed the letter in his hand, and threw it over the side of the Rhine steamer, on which he had opened his budget of English correspondence, on that particular morning.
They had a very pleasant time of it in Germany, moving in a leisurely way from town to town, seeing everything thoroughly without hurry or restlessness. Young Lovel throve apace the new nurse adored him; and faithful Jane Target was a happy as the day was long, amidst all the foreign wonders that surrounded her pathway. Daniel Granger was contented and hopeful; happy in the contemplation of his wife’s fair young face, which brightened daily; in the society of his boy, who, with increasing intelligence, developed an ever-increasing appreciation of his father–the strong arms, that tossed him aloft and caught him so skilfully; the sonorous voice, that rang so cheerily upon his ear; the capacious pockets, in which there was wont to lurk some toy for his delectation.
Towards the middle of November they took up their winter quarters in Rome–not the November of fogs and drizzle, known to the denizens of London, but serene skies and balmy air, golden sunsets, and late-lingering flowers, that seemed loath to fade and vanish from a scene so beautiful. Clarissa loved this city of cities, and felt a thrill of delight at returning to it. She drove about with her two-year-old son, showing him the wonders and glories of the place as fondly as if its classic associations had been within the compass of his budding mind. She went on with her art-studies with renewed vigour, as if there had been a Raffaelle fever in the very air of the place, and made plans for copying half the pictures in the Vatican. There was plenty of agreeable society in the city, English and foreign; and Clarissa found herself almost as much in request as she had been in Paris. There were art-circles in which she was happiest, and where Daniel Granger held his own very fairly as a critic and connoisseur. And thus the first two winter months slipped away very pleasantly, till they came to January, in which month they were to return to Arden.
They were to return there to assist at a great event–an event the contemplation whereof was a source of unmitigated satisfaction to Mr. Granger, and which was more than pleasing to Clarissa. Miss Granger was going to be married, blest with her papa’s consent and approval, of course, and in a manner becoming a damsel whose first consideration was duty. After refusing several very fair offers, during the progress of her girlhood, she had at last suffered herself to be subjugated by the constancy and devotion of Mr. Tillott, the curate of New Arden.
It was not in any sense a good match. Mr. Tillott’s professional income was seventy-five pounds a year; his sole private means an allowance of fifty from his brother, who, Mr. Tillott admitted, with a blush, was in trade. He was neither handsome nor accomplished. The most his best friends could say of him was, that he was “a very worthy young man.” He was not an orator: he had an atrocious delivery, and rarely got through the briefest epistle, or collect even, without blundering over a preposition. His demeanour in pulpit and reading-desk was that of a prisoner at the bar, without hope of acquittal, and yet he had won Miss Granger–that prize in the matrimonial market, which many a stout Yorkshireman had been eager to win.
He had flattered her; with a slavish idolatry he followed her footsteps, and ministered to her caprices, admiring, applauding, and imitating all her works and ways, holding her up for ever as the pattern and perfection of womankind. Five times had Miss Granger rejected him; on some occasions with contumely even, letting him know that there was a very wide gulf between their social positions, and that although she might be spiritually his sister, she stood, in a worldly sense, on a very remote platform from that which it was his mission to occupy. Mr. Tillott swallowed every humiliation with a lowly spirit, that had in it some leaven of calculation, and bore up against every repulse; until at last the fair Sophia, angry with her father, persistently opposed to her stepmother, and out of sorts with the world in general, consented to accept the homage of this persevering suitor. He, at least, was true to her; he, at least, believed in her perfection. The stout country squires, who could have given her houses and lands, had never stooped to flatter her foibles; had shown themselves heartlessly indifferent to her dragooning of the model villagers; had even hinted their pity for the villagers under that martial rule. Tillott alone could sympathise with her, trudging patiently from cottage to cottage in bleak Christmas weather, carrying parcels of that uncomfortable clothing with which Miss Granger delighted to supply her pensioners.
Nor was the position which this marriage would give her, humble as it might appear, altogether without its charm. As Mr. Tillott’s wife, she would be a very great lady amongst small people; and Mr. Tillott himself would be invested with a reflected glory from having married an heiress. The curate stage would, of course, soon be past. The living of Arden was in Mr. Granger’s gift; and no doubt the present rector could be bought out somehow, after a year or so, and Mr. Tillott installed in his place. So, after due deliberation, and after the meek Tillott had been subjected to a trial of his faith which might have shaken the strongest, but which left him firm as a rock, Miss Granger surrendered, and acknowledged that she thought her sphere of usefulness would be enlarged by her union with Thomas Tillott.
“It is not my own feelings which, I consider,” remarked the maiden, in a tone which was scarcely flattering to her lover; “I have always held duty above those. I believe that New Arden is my proper field, and that it is a Providence that leads me to accept a tie which binds me more closely to the place. I could never have remained in _this_ house after Mrs. Granger’s return.”
Upon this, the enraptured Tillott wrote a humble and explanatory letter to Mr. Granger, stating the blessing which had descended upon him in the shape of Sophia’s esteem, and entreating that gentleman’s approval of his suit.
It came by return of post, in a few hearty words.
“MY DEAR TILLOTT,–Yes; with all my heart! I have always thought you a good fellow; and I hope and believe you will make my daughter a good husband. Mrs. Granger and I will be home in three weeks, in time to make all arrangements for the wedding.–Yours, &c.
“DANIEL GRANGER.”
“Ah,” said Miss Granger, when this epistle was shown her by her triumphant swain, “I expected as much. I have never been anything to papa since his marriage, and he is glad to get rid of me.”
The Roman season was at its height, when there arose a good deal of talk about a lady who did not belong to that world in which Mrs. Granger lived, but who yet excited considerable curiosity and interest therein.
She was a Spanish dancer, known as Donna Rita, and had been creating a _furore_ in St. Petersburg, Paris, Vienna, all over the civilised world, in fact, except in London, where she was announced as likely to appear during the approaching season. She had taken the world by storm by her beauty, which was exceptional, and by her dancing, which made up in _chic_ for anything it may have lacked in genius. She was not a Taglioni; she was only a splendid dark-haired woman, with eyes that reminded one of Cleopatra, a figure that was simply perfection, the free grace of some wild creature of the forest, and the art of selecting rare and startling combinations of colour and fabric for her dress.
She had hired a villa, and sent a small army of servants on before her to take possession of it–men and women of divers nations, who contrived to make their mistress notorious by their vagaries before she arrived to astonish the city by her own eccentricities. One day brought two pair of carriage horses, and a pair of Arabs for riding; the next, a train of carriages; a week after came the lady herself; and all Rome–English and American Rome most especially–was eager to see her. There was an Englishman in her train, people said. Of course, there was always some one–_elle en mange cinq comme ca tous les ans_, remarked a Frenchman.
Clarissa had no curiosity about this person. The idle talk went by her like the wind, and made no impression; but one sunny afternoon, when she was driving with her boy, Daniel Granger having an engagement to look at a new picture which kept him away from her, she met the Senora face to face–Donna Rita, wrapped in sables to the throat, with a coquettish little turban-shaped sable hat, a couple of Pomeranian dogs on her lap–half reclining in her barouche–a marvel of beauty and insolence. She was not alone. A gentleman–the Englishman, of course–sat opposite to her, and leant across the white bear-skin carriage-rug to talk to her. They were both laughing at something he had just said, which the Senora characterised as “_pas si bete._”
He looked up as the two carriages passed each other; for just one brief moment looked Clarissa Granger in the face; then, pale as death, bent down to caress one of the dogs.
It was George Fairfax.
It was a bitter ending; but such stories are apt to end so; and a man with unlimited means, and nothing particular to do with himself, must find amusement somehow. Clarissa remained in Rome a fortnight after this, and encountered the Senora several times–never unattended, but never again with George Fairfax.
She heard the story afterwards from Lady Laura. He had been infatuated, and had spent thousands upon “that creature.” His poor mother had been half broken-hearted about it.
“The Lyvedon estate spoiled him, my dear,” Lady Laura said conclusively. “He was a very good fellow till he came into his property.”
Mr. Fairfax reformed, however, a couple of years later, and married a fashionable widow with a large fortune; who kept him in a whirl of society, and spent their combined incomes royally. He and Clarissa meet sometimes in society–meet, touch hands even, and know that every link between them is broken.
And is Clarissa happy? Yes, if happiness can be found in children’s voices and a good man’s unchanging affection. She has Arden Court, and her children; her father’s regard, growing warmer year by year, as with increasing age he feels increasing need of some one to love him; her brother’s society now and then–for Mr. Granger has been lavish in his generosity, and all the peccadilloes of Austin’s youth have been extinguished from the memories of money-lenders and their like by means of Mr. Granger’s cheque-book.
The painter can come to England now, and roam his native woods unburdened by care; but though this is very sweet to him once in a way, he prefers a Continental city, with its _cafe_ life, and singing and dancing gardens, where he may smoke his in the gloaming. He grows steadier as he grows older, paints better, and makes friends worth making; much to the joy of poor Bessie, who asks no greater privilege than to stand humbly by, gazing fondly while he puts on his white cravat, and sallies forth radiant, with a hot-house flower in his button-hole, to dine in the great world.
But this is only a glance into the future. The story ends in the orthodox manner, to the sound of wedding bells–Miss Granger’s–who swears to love, honour, and obey Thomas Tillott, with a fixed intention to keep the upper baud over the said Thomas in all things. Yet these men who are so slavish as wooers are apt to prove of sterner mould as husbands, and life is all before Mrs. Tillott, as she journeys in chariot and posters to Scarborough for her unpretentious honeymoon, to return in a fortnight to a bran-new gothic villa on the skirts of Arden, where one tall tree is struggling vainly to look at home in a barren waste of new-made garden. And in the servants’ hall and housekeeper’s room at Arden Court there is rejoicing, as when the elder Miss Pecksniff went away from the little village near Salisbury.
For some there are no marriage bells–for Lady Geraldine, for instance, who is content to devote herself unostentatiously to the care of her sister’s neglected children–neglected in spite of French and German governesses, Italian singing masters, Parisian waiting-maids, and half an acre or so of nursery and schoolroom–and to wider charities: not all unhappy, and thankful for having escaped that far deeper misery–the fate of an unloved wife.
THE END