The Lovels of Arden Part 43

Mrs. Fairfax did not venture to press the question any farther. She had her suspicions, and her suspicions pointed to Clarissa. But Clarissa now being married and fairly out of the way, she had some faint hope that her son would return to his old allegiance, and that she might even yet have Geraldine Challoner for her daughter. In the meantime she was fain to be patient, and to refrain from any irritating persistence upon a subject that was very near to her heart.

So far as her own interests were concerned, it would have been a pleasant thing for Mrs. Fairfax that her son should remain a bachelor. The sovereignty of Lyvedon was a pure and perfect delight to her. The place was the home of her childhood; and there was not a thicket in the park, or a flower-bed in the garden, that was not familiar and dear to her. Every corner of the sombre old rooms--in which the furniture had been unchanged for a century--had its tender a.s.sociations. All the hopes and dreams of her long-vanished youth came back to her, faint and pale, like faded flowers shut in the leaves of a book. And in the event of her son's marriage, she must of course resign all this--must make a new home for herself outside the walls of Lyvedon; for she was not a woman to accept a secondary place in any household. Considering the question merely from a selfish point of view, she had every reason to be satisfied with the existing state of things; but it was not of herself she thought. She saw her son restless and unsettled, and had a secret conviction that he was unhappy. There had been much in the history of his past life that had troubled her; and for his future her chief hope had been in the security of a judicious marriage. She was a woman of strong religious feeling, and had shed many bitter tears and prayed many prayers on account of this beloved son.

The beloved son in the meanwhile dawdled away life in a very unsatisfactory manner. He found the roads and lanes about Lyvedon remarkable for nothing but their dust. There were wild flowers, of course--possibly nightingales and that sort of thing; but he preferred such imported bouquets, grown on the flowery slopes of the Mediterranean, as he could procure to order at Covent Garden; and the song of nightingales in the dusky after dinner-time made him melancholy. The place was a fine old place and it was undoubtedly a good thing to possess it; but George Fairfax had lived too wild a life to find happiness in the simple pleasures of a Kentish squire. So, after enduring the placid monotony of Lyvedon for a couple of months, he grew insufferably weary all at once, and told his mother that he was going to the Black Forest.

"It's too early to shoot capercailzies," he said; "but I daresay I shall find something to do. I am nothing but a bore to you here, mother; and you can amuse yourself, while I'm gone, in carrying out any of the improvements we've discussed."

Mrs. Fairfax a.s.sured her son that his presence was always a delight to her, but that, of course, there was nothing in the world she desired so much as his happiness, and that it had been a pain to her to see him otherwise than happy.

"I had hoped that the possession of this place would have given you so much occupation," she said, "that you would have gone into parliament and made a position for yourself."

"My dear mother, I never had any affection for politics; and unless a man could be a modern Pitt, I don't see the use of that kind of thing. Every young Englishman turns his face towards the House of Commons, as the sunflower turns to the sun-G.o.d; and see what a charming level of mediocrity we enjoy in consequence thereof."

"Anything that would occupy your mind, George," remonstrated Mrs. Fairfax.

"The question is, whether I have any mind to be occupied, mother," replied the young man with a laugh. "I think the average modern intellect, when it knows its own capacity, rarely soars above billiards. That is a science; and what can a man be more than scientific?"

"It is so easy to laugh the subject down in that way, George," returned the mother with a sigh. "But a man has duties to perform."

"Surely not a man with an estate like this, mother! I can never understand that talk about the duties of a rich man, except to pay his income-tax properly. A fellow with a wife and children, and no income to speak of, has duties, of course--imprimis, the duty of working for his belongings; but what are the privileges of wealth, if one may not take life as one pleases?"

"Oh, George, George, I used to hope such great things of you!"

"The fond delusion common to maternity, my dearest mother. A brat learns his A B C a shade quicker than other children, or construes _Qui fit Maecenas_ with tolerable correctness; and straightway the doting mother thinks her lad is an embryo Canning. You should never have hoped anything of me, except that I would love you dearly all my life. You have made that very easy to me."

Mr. Fairfax took his portmanteau and departed, leaving his servant to carry the rest of his luggage straight to Paris, and await his master's arrival at one of the hotels in the Rue de Rivoli. The master himself took a somewhat circuitous route, and began his journey to the Black Forest by going down to Holborough.

"I can take a steamer from Hull to Hamburg," he said to himself, "and push on from there to Carlsruhe."

He wanted to see Clarissa again. He knew that she was at Arden Court, and that Lady Laura Armstrong was not at Hale Castle. He wanted to see her; his ulterior views were of the vaguest; but that pa.s.sionate yearning to see her, to hear the sweet winning voice, to look into the soft hazel eyes, was strong upon him. It was a year since the day he dined in Clarges-street; and in all that year he had done his uttermost to forget her, had hated himself for the weakness which made her still dearer to him than any other woman; and then, alike angry with her and with himself, had cried, with Wilmot Earl of Rochester,--

"Such charms by nature you possess, 'Twere madness not to love you."

He went up to London early one morning, and straight from London to Holborough, where he arrived late in the evening. He slept at the chief inn of the place; and in the golden summer noontide set out for Arden Court--not to make a formal visit, but rather to look about him in a somewhat furtive way. He did not care to make his advent known to Daniel Granger just yet; perhaps, indeed, he might find it expedient to avoid any revelation of himself to that gentleman. He wanted to find out all he could of Clarissa's habits, so that he might contrive an interview with her. He had seen the announcement of the baby's birth, and oh, what a bitter pang the commonplace paragraph had given him! Never before had the fact that she was another man's wife come home to him so keenly. He tried to put the subject out of his thoughts, to forget that there had been a son born to the house of Granger; but often in the dreary spring twilight, walking among the oaks of Lyvedon, he had said to himself, "_Her_ child ought to have been heir to this place."

He went in at the lodge gate, and strolled idly into the park, not being at all clear as to how he was to bring about what he wanted. The weather was lovely--weather in which few people, untrammelled by necessity, would have cared to remain indoors. There was just the chance that Mrs. Granger might be strolling in the park herself, and the still more remote contingency that she might be alone. He was quite prepared for the possibility of meeting her accompanied by the lynx-eyed Miss Granger; and was not a man to be thrown off his guard, or taken at a disadvantage, come what might.

The place wore its fairest aspect: avenues of elms, that had begun to grow when England was young; gigantic oaks dotted here and there upon the undulating open ground, reputed a thousand years old; bright young plantations of rare fir and pine, that had a pert crisp newness about them, like the air of a modern dandy; everywhere the appearance of that perfect care and culture which is the most conclusive evidence of unlimited wealth.

George Fairfax looked round him with a sigh. The scene he looked upon was very fair. It was not difficult to understand how dear a.s.sociation might have made so beautiful a spot to such a girl as Clarissa. She had told him she would give the world to win back her lost home; and she had given--something less than the world--only herself. "Paris is worth a ma.s.s," said the great Henry; and Clarissa's perjury was only one more of the many lies which men and women have told to compa.s.s their desires.

He kept away from the carriage-roads, loitering in the remoter regions of the park, and considering what he should do. He did not want to present himself at the Court as a formal visitor. In the first place, it would have been rather difficult to give any adequate reason for his presence in Holborough; and in the second, he had an unspeakable repugnance to any social intercourse with Clarissa's husband.

How he was ever to see her in the future without that hideous hypocrisy of friendliness towards Daniel Granger, he knew not; but he knew that it would cost him dearly to take the hand of the man who had supplanted him.

He wandered on till he came to a dell where the ground was broken a good deal, and where the fern seemed to grow more luxuriantly than in any other part of the park. There was a glimpse of blue water at the bottom of the slope--a narrow strip of a streamlet running between swampy banks, where the forget-me-nots and pale water-plants ran riot. This verdant valley was sheltered by some of the oldest hawthorns George Fairfax had ever seen--very Methuselahs of trees, whose grim old trunks and crooked branches time had twisted into the queerest shapes, and whose ma.s.sive boles and strange excrescences of limb were covered with the moss of past generations. It was such a valley as Gustave Dore would love to draw; a glimpse of wilderness in the midst of cultivation.

There were not wanted figures to brighten the landscape. A woman dressed in white sat under one of the hawthorns, with a baby on her lap; and a nursemaid, in gayer raiment, stood by, looking down at the child.

How well George Fairfax remembered the slight girlish figure, and the day when he had come upon it unawares in Marley Wood! He stood a few paces off, and listened to the soft sweet voice.

Clarissa was talking to her baby in the unintelligible mother-language inspired by the occasion. A baby just able to smile at her, and coo and crow and chuckle in that peculiarly unctuous manner common to babies of amiable character; a fair blue-eyed baby, big and bonny, with soft rings of flaxen hair upon his pink young head, and tender little arms that seemed meant for nothing so much as to be kissed.

After a good deal of that sweet baby-talk, there was a little discussion between the mistress and maid; and then the child was wrapped up as carefully as if destruction were in the breath of the softest June zephyr.

Mr. Fairfax was afraid the mother was going away with the child, and that his chance would be lost; but it was not so. The maid tripped off with the infant, after it had been brought back two or three times to be half smothered with kisses--kisses which it seemed to relish in its own peculiar way, opening its mouth to receive them, as if they had been something edible. The baby was carried away at last, and Clarissa took up a book and began to read.

George Fairfax waited till the maid had been gone about ten minutes, and then came slowly down the hollow to the spot where Clarissa was seated. The rustle of the fern startled her; she looked up, and saw him standing by her side. It was just a year since he had surprised her in Mr. Wooster's garden at Henley. She had thought of him very much in that time, but less since the birth of her boy. She turned very pale at sight of him; and when she tried to speak, the words would not come: her lips only moved tremulously.

"I hope I did not alarm you very much," he said, "by the suddenness of my appearance. I thought I heard your voice just now, speaking to some one"--he had not the heart to mention her baby--"and came down here to look for you. What a charming spot it is!"

She had recovered her self-possession by this time, and was able to answer him quite calmly. "Yes, it is very pretty. It was a favourite spot of Austin's. I have at least a dozen sketches of it done by him. But I did not know you were in Yorks.h.i.+re, Mr. Fairfax."

She wondered whether he was staying at Hale; and then it flashed upon her that there had been a reconciliation between him and Lady Geraldine.

"I have not been long in Yorks.h.i.+re. I am merely here _en pa.s.sant_, in short. My only excuse for approaching you lies in the fact that I have come to talk to you about your brother."

"About Austin!" exclaimed Clarissa, with a look of alarm. "There is nothing wrong--he is well, I hope?"

"Pray don't alarm yourself. Yes, he is tolerably well, I believe; and there is nothing wrong--nothing that need cause you any immediate concern at least. I am going to Paris, and I thought you might be glad to send some message."

"You are very kind to think of that; yes, I shall be glad to send to him.

He is not a good correspondent, and I get very anxious about him sometimes.

What you said just now seemed to imply that there was something wrong. Pray be candid with me, Mr. Fairfax."

He did not answer her immediately; in fact, for the moment he scarcely was conscious of her words. He was looking at the beautiful face--looking at it with a repressed pa.s.sion that was deeper and more real than any he had ever felt in his life. His thoughts wandered away from Austin Lovel. He was thinking what he would have given, what peril he would have dared, to call this woman his own. All this lower world seemed nothing to him when weighed against her; and in such a moment a man of his stamp rarely remembers any other world.

"There is something wrong," repeated Clarissa with increasing anxiety. "I entreat you to tell me the truth!"

"Yes, there is something wrong," he answered vaguely; and then, wrenching his mind away from those wild speculations as to what he would or would not do to win Daniel Granger's wife, he went on in another tone: "The truth is, my dear Mrs. Granger, I was in Paris last winter, and saw something of your brother's mode of life; and I cannot say that I consider it a satisfactory one. You have sent him a good deal of money since I saw you last, I daresay? Pray understand that there is nothing intrusive or impertinent in my question. I only wish to be some use to you, if I can."

"I am sure of that. Yes; I have sent him what I could--about four hundred pounds--since last June; and he has been very grateful, poor fellow! He ought to know that he is welcome to every s.h.i.+lling I have. I could send him much more, of course, if I cared to ask my husband for money."

"It is wiser to trust to your own resources. And I doubt if the command of much money would be a positive benefit to your brother. You have asked me to be candid; and I shall obey you, even at the hazard of giving you pain.

There is a kind of const.i.tutional weakness in your brother's nature. He is a man open to every influence, and not always governed by the best influences. I saw a good deal of him when I was last in Paris, and I saw him most in the fastest society, amongst people who petted him for the sake of his genius and vivacity, but who would turn their backs upon him to-morrow if he were no longer able to amuse them; the set into which an artist is so apt to fall when his home influences are not strong enough to keep him steady, and when he has that lurking disposition to Bohemianism which has been the bane of your brother's life. I speak entirely without reserve, you see."

"I am grateful to you for doing so. Poor Austin! if he had only chosen more wisely! But his wife is fond of him, you say?"

"Too fond of him, perhaps; for she is very much given to torment him with jealous outbreaks; and he is not a man to take that sort of thing pleasantly. She does not go into society with him: indeed, I doubt if half-a-dozen out of the people whom he lives amongst know that he has a wife. I found his social position considerably improved; thanks to your remittances, no doubt. He was still in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard--as, of course, you know--but had moved a stage lower down, and had furnished a painting-room in the stereotyped style--Flemish carved buffets, dingy tapestry from a pa.s.sage behind the Rue Richelieu, and a sprinkling of bric-a-brac from the Quai Voltaire. The poor little woman and her children were banished; and he had a room full of visitors chattering round him while he painted. You know his wonderful facility. The atmosphere was cloudy with tobacco-smoke; and the men were drinking that abominable concoction of worm-wood with which young France cultivates madness and early doom."

"It is not a pleasant picture," said Clarissa with a profound sigh.

"No, my dear Mrs. Granger; but it is a faithful one. Mr. Lovel had won a certain reputation for his airy style of art, and was beginning to get better prices for his pictures; but I fancy he has a capacity for spending money, and an inability to save it, which would bring him always to the same level of comparative insolvency. I have known so many men like that; and a man who begins in that way so rarely ends in any other way."

"What am I to do!" exclaimed Clarissa piteously; "what can I do to help him?"

"I am almost at a loss to suggest anything. Perhaps if you were on the spot, your influence might do something. I know he loves you, and is more moved by the mention of your name than by any sermon one could preach to him. But I suppose there is no chance of your being in Paris."

"I don't know. Mr. Granger talked some time ago of spending the autumn abroad, and asked me if I should like to see a New-Year's day in Paris. I think, if I were to express a wish about it, he would take me there; and it would be such happiness to me to see Austin!" And then Mrs. Granger thought of her baby, and wondered whether the atmosphere of Paris would be favourable to that rare and beauteous blossom; whether the tops-and-bottoms of the French capital would agree with his tender digestive machinery, and if the cowkeepers of the Faubourg St. Honore were an honest and unadulterating race. The very notion of taking the treasure away from his own nurseries, his own cow, his own goat-chaise, was enough to make her shudder.