The Lovels of Arden Part 36

"I was sure of it," exclaimed Mr. Granger; "and you will have more time to be my companion, Clarissa, if your brain is not muddled with groceries and butcher's-meat. You see, Sophia has such a peculiarly business-like mind."

"However humble my gifts may be, I have always endeavoured to employ them for your benefit, papa," Miss Granger replied with a frosty air.

She had come to dine at Mill Cottage for the first time since she had known of her father's engagement. She had come in deference to her father's express desire, and it was a hard thing for her to offer even this small tribute to Clarissa. It was a little family dinner--the Olivers, Mr.

Padget, the rector of Arden, who was to a.s.sist cheery Matthew Oliver in tying the fatal knot, and Mr. and Miss Granger--a pleasant little party of seven, for whom Mr. Lovel's cook had prepared quite a model dinner. She had acquired a specialty for about half-a-dozen dishes which her master affected, and in the preparation of these could take her stand against the pampered matron who ruled Mr. Granger's kitchen at a stipend of seventy guineas a year, and whose subordinate and a.s.sistant had serious thoughts of launching herself forth upon the world as a professed cook, by advertis.e.m.e.nt in the _Times_--"clear soups, entrees, ices, &c."

The wedding was to be a very quiet one. Mr. Lovel had expressed a strong desire that it should be so; and Mr. Granger's wishes in no way clashed with those of his father-in-law.

"I am a man of fallen fortunes," said Mr. Lovel, "and all Yorks.h.i.+re knows my history. Anything like pomp or publicity would be out of place in the marriage of my daughter. When she is your wife it will be different. Her position will be a very fine one; for she will have some of the oldest blood in the county, supported by abundance of money. The Lycians used to take their names from their mothers. I think, if you have a son. Granger, you ought to call him Lovel."

"I should be proud to do so," answered Mr. Granger. "I am not likely to forget that my wife is my superior in social rank."

"A superiority that counts for very little when unsustained by hard cash, my dear Granger," returned Marmaduke Lovel lightly. He was supremely content with the state of affairs, and had no wish to humiliate his son-in-law.

So the wedding was performed as simply as if Miss Lovel had been uniting her fortunes with those of some fledgling of the curate species. There were only two bridesmaids--Miss Granger, who performed the office with an unwilling heart; and Miss Pontifex, a flaxen-haired young lady of high family and no particular means, provided for the occasion by Mrs. Oliver, at whose house she and Clarissa had become acquainted. There was a breakfast, elegant enough in its way--for the Holborough confectioner had been put upon his mettle by Mrs. Oliver--served prettily in the cottage parlour. The sun shone brightly upon Mr. Granger's espousals. The village children lined the churchyard walk, and strewed spring flowers upon the path of bride and bridegroom--tender vernal blossoms which scarcely harmonised with Daniel Granger's stalwart presence and fifty years.

Clarissa, very pale and still, with a strange fixed look on her face, came out of the little church upon her husband's arm; and it seemed to her in that hour as if all the life before her was like an unknown country, hidden by a great cloud.

CHAPTER XXVI.

COMING HOME.

The leaves were yellowing in the park and woods round Arden Court, and the long avenue began to wear a somewhat dreary look, before Mr. Granger brought his young wife home. It was October again, and the weather bleaker and colder than one had a right to expect in October. Mr. Lovel was at Spa, recruiting his health in the soft breezes that blow across the pine-clad hills, and leading a pleasant elderly-bachelor existence at one of the best hotels in the bright little inland watering-place. The shutters were closed at Mill Cottage, and the pretty rustic dwelling was left in the care of the honest housekeeper and her handmaiden, the rosy-faced parlour-maid, who dusted master's books and hung linen draperies before master's bookcases with a pious awe.

Miss Granger had spent some part of her father's honeymoon in paying visits to those friends who were eager to have her, and who took this opportunity of showing special attention to the fallen heiress. The sense of her lost prestige was always upon her, however, and she was scarcely as grateful as she might have been for the courtesy she received. People seemed never weary of talking about her father's wife, whose sweetness, and beauty, and other interesting qualities, Miss Granger found herself called upon to discuss continually. She did not bow the knee to the popular idol, however, but confessed with a charming candour that there was no great sympathy between her stepmother and herself.

"Her education has been so different from mine," she said, "that it is scarcely strange if all our tastes are different. But, of course, I shall do my duty towards her, and I hope and pray that she may make my father happy."

But Miss Granger did not waste all the summer months in visiting. She was more in her element at the Court. The model children in the new Arden poor-schools had rather a hard time of it during Mr. Granger's honeymoon, and were driven through Kings and Chronicles at a more severe pace than usual. The hardest and driest facts in geography and grammar were pelted like summer hail upon their weak young brains, and a sterner demand was made every day upon their juvenile powers of calculation. This Miss Granger called giving them a solid foundation; but as the edifice destined to be erected upon this educational basis was generally of the humblest--a career of carpentering, or blacksmithing, or housemaiding, or plain-cooking, for the most part--it is doubtful whether that accurate knowledge of the objective case or the longitude of the Sandwich Islands which Miss Granger so resolutely insisted upon, was ever of any great service to the grown-up scholar.

In these philanthropic labours she had always an ardent a.s.sistant in the person of Mr. Tillott, whose somewhat sandy head and florid complexion used to appear at the open door of the schoolroom very often when Sophia was teaching. He did really admire her, with all sincerity and singleness of heart; describing her, in long confidential letters to his mother, as a woman possessed of every gift calculated to promote a man's advancement in this world and the next. He knew that her father's second marriage must needs make a considerable change in her position. There would be an heir, in all probability, and Sophia would no longer be the great heiress she had been. But she would be richly dowered doubtless, come what might; and she was brought nearer to the aspirations of a curate by this reduction of her fortune.

Miss Granger accepted the young priest's services, and patronised him with a sublime unconsciousness of his aspirations. She had heard it whispered that his father had been a grocer, and that he had an elder brother who still carried on a prosperous colonial trade in the City. For anything like retail trade Miss Granger had a profound contempt. She had all the pride of a parvenu, and all the narrowness of mind common to a woman who lives in a world of her own creation. So while Mr. Tillott flattered himself that he was making no slight impression upon her heart, Miss Granger regarded him as just a little above the head gardener and the certificated schoolmaster.

October came, and the day appointed for the return of the master of Arden Court; rather a gloomy day, and one in a succession of wet and dismal days, with a dull gray sky that narrowed the prospect, and frequent showers of drizzling rain. Miss Granger had received numerous letters from her father during his travels, letters which were affectionate if brief; and longer epistles from Clarissa, describing their route and adventures. They had done Switzerland thoroughly, and had spent the last month in Rome.

The interior of the old house looked all the brighter, perhaps, because of that dull sky and, and those sodden woods without. Fires were blazing merrily in all the rooms; for, whatever Miss Granger's secret feelings might be, the servants were bent on showing allegiance to the new power, and on giving the house a gala aspect in honour of their master's return.

The chief gardener, with a temporary indifference to his own interests, had stripped his hothouses for the decoration of the rooms, and great vases of exotics made the atmosphere odorous, and contrasted pleasantly with the wintry fires.

Miss Granger sat in the princ.i.p.al drawing-room, with her embroidery-frame before her, determined not to be flurried or disturbed by the bride's return. She sat at a respectful distance from the blazing logs, with a screen interposed carefully between her complexion and the fire, the very image of stiffness and propriety; not one of her dull-brown hairs ruffled, not a fold of her dark green-silk dress disarranged.

The carriage was to meet the London express at Holborough station at half-past four, and at a little before five Miss Granger heard the sound of wheels in the avenue. She did not even rise from her embroidery-frame to watch the approach of the carriage, but went on steadily st.i.tch by st.i.tch at the ear of a Blenheim spaniel. In a few minutes more she heard the clang of doors thrown open, then the wheels upon the gravel in the quadrangle, and then her father's voice, sonorous as of old. Even then she did not fly to welcome him, though her heart beat a little faster, and the colour deepened in her cheeks.

"I am nothing to him now," she thought.

She began to lay aside her wools, however, and rose as the drawing-room door opened, to offer the travellers a stately welcome.

Clarissa was looking her loveliest, in violet silk, with a good deal of fur about her, and with an air of style and fas.h.i.+on which was new to her, Miss Granger thought. The two young women kissed each other in a formal way, and then Mr. Granger embraced his daughter with some show of affection.

"How lovely the dear old place looks!" cried Clarissa, as the one triumph and glory of her marriage came home to her mind: she was mistress of Arden Court. "Everything is so warm and bright and cheerful, such an improvement upon foreign houses. What a feast of fires and flowers you have prepared to welcome us, Sophia!"

She wished to say something cordial to her step-daughter, and she did really believe that the festive aspect of the house was Miss Granger's work.

"I have not interfered with the servants' arrangements," that young lady replied primly; "I hope you don't find so many exotics oppressive in these hot rooms? _I_ do."

"O dear, no; they are so lovely," answered Clarissa, bending over a pyramid of stephanotis, "one can scarcely have too many of them. Not if the perfume makes your head ache, however; in that case they had better be sent away at once."

But Miss Granger protested against this with an air of meek endurance, and the flowers were left undisturbed.

"Well, Sophy, what have you been doing with yourself all this time?" Mr.

Granger asked in a cheerful voice; "gadding about finely, according to your letters."

"I spent a week with the Stapletons, and ten days with the Trevors, and I went to Scarborough with the Chesneys, as you expressed a wish that I should accept their invitation, papa," Miss Granger replied dutifully; "but I really think I am happier at home."

"I'm very glad to hear it, my dear, and I hope you'll find your home pleasanter than ever now.--So you like the look of the old place, do you, Clary?" he went on, turning to his wife; "and you don't think we've quite spoilt it by our renovation?"

"O no, indeed. There can be no doubt as to your improvements. And yet, do you know, I was so fond of the place, that I am almost sorry to miss its old shabbiness--the faded curtains, and the queer Indian furniture which my great-uncle Colonel Radnor, brought home from Bombay. I wonder what became of those curious old cabinets?"

"I daresay they are still extant in some lumber-room in the roof, my dear.

Your father took very little of the old furniture away with him, and there was nothing sold. We'll explore the garrets some day, and look for your Indian cabinets.--Will you take Clarissa to her rooms, Sophy, and see what she thinks of our arrangements?"

Miss Granger would gladly have delegated this office to a servant; but her father's word was law; so she led the way to a suite of apartments which Daniel Granger had ordered to be prepared for his young wife, and which Clarissa had not yet been allowed to see. They had been kept as a pleasant surprise for her coming home.

Had she been a princess of the blood royal, she could not have had finer rooms, or a more perfect taste in the arrangement of them. Money can do so much, when the man who dispenses it has the art of intrusting the carrying out of his desires to the best workmen.

Clarissa was delighted with everything, and really grateful for the generous affection which had done so much to gratify her.

"It is all a great deal too handsome," she said.

"I am glad you like the style in which they have carried out papa's ideas,"

replied Miss Granger; "for my own part, I like plainer furniture, and more room for one's work; but it is all a matter of taste."

They were in the boudoir, a perfect gem of a room, with satin-wood furniture and pale green-silk hangings; its only ornaments a set of priceless Wedgwood vases in cream colour and white, and a few water-coloured sketches by Turner, and Creswick, and Stanfield. The dressing-room opened out of this and was furnished in the same style, with a dressing-table that was a marvel of art and splendour, the looking-gla.s.s in a frame of oxydised silver, between two monster jewel-cases of ebony and malachite with oxydised silver mouldings. One entire side of this room was occupied by an inlaid maple wardrobe, with seven doors, and Clarissa's monogram on all of them--a receptacle that might have contained the multifarious costumes of a Princess Metternich.

It would have been difficult for Clarissa not to be pleased with such tribute, ungracious not to have expressed her pleasure; so when Daniel Granger came presently to ask how she liked the rooms, she was not slow to give utterance to her admiration.

"You give me so much more than I deserve, Mr. Granger," she said, after having admired everything; "I feel almost humiliated by your generosity."

"Clarissa," exclaimed her husband, putting his two hands upon her shoulders, and looking gravely down at her, "when will you remember that I have a Christian name? When am I to be something more to you than Mr.

Granger?"

"You are all that is good to me, much too good," she faltered. "I will call you Daniel, if you like. It is only a habit."