The Lovels of Arden Part 6

"My dear Lady Laura, am I likely to do so, when my own fiftieth birthday is an event of the past? But I shouldn't suppose Granger to be a marrying man," he added meditatively; "such an idea has never occurred to me in conjunction with him." And here he glanced ever so slightly at his daughter. "That sort of granite man must take a great deal of thawing."

"There are suns that will melt the deepest snows," answered the lady, laughing. "Seriously, I am sorry you will not suffer him to know you. But I must run away this instant; my unfortunate ponies will be wondering what has become of me. You see this dear girl and I have got on so well together, that I have been quite unconscious of time; and I had ever so many more calls to make, but those must be put off to another day. Let me see; this is Tuesday, I shall send a carriage for you, this day week, Clarissa, soon after breakfast, so that I may have you with me at luncheon.

Good-bye."

Lady Laura kissed her new _protegee_ at parting. She was really fond of everything young and bright and pretty; and having come to Mr. Lovel's house intending to perform a social duty, was delighted to find that the duty was so easy and pleasant to her. She was always pleased with new acquaintances, and was apt to give her friends.h.i.+p on the smallest provocation. On the other hand, there came a time when she grew just a little weary of these dear sweet friends, and began to find them less charming than of old; but she was never uncivil to them; they always remained on her list, and received stray gleams from the sunlight of her patronage.

"Well," said Mr. Lovel interrogatively, when the mistress of Hale Castle had driven off, in the lightest and daintiest of phaetons, with a model groom and a pair of chestnut cobs, which seemed perfection, even in Yorks.h.i.+re, where every man is a connoisseur in horseflesh. "Well, child, I told you that you might go into society if Lady Laura Armstrong took you up, but I scarcely expected her to be as cordial as she has been to-day.

Nothing could have been better than the result of her visit; she seemed quite taken with you, Clary."

It was almost the first time her father had ever called her Clary. It was only a small endearment, but she blushed and sparkled into smiles at the welcome sound. He saw the smile and blush, but only thought she was delighted with the idea of this visit to the Castle. He had no notion that the placid state of indifference which he maintained towards her was otherwise than agreeable to her feelings. He was perfectly civil to her, and he never interfered with her pursuits or inclinations. What more could she want from a father?

Perhaps she a.s.sumed a new value in his eyes from the time of that visit of Lady Laura's. He was certainly kinder to her than usual, the girl thought, as they sat on the lawn in the balmy June evening, sipping their after-dinner coffee, while the moon rose fair and pale above the woods of Arden Court. He contemplated her with a meditative air now and then, when she was not looking his way. He had always known that she was beautiful, but her beauty had acquired a new emphasis from Lady Laura Armstrong's praises. A woman of the world of that cla.s.s was not likely to be deceived, or to mistake the kind of beauty likely to influence mankind; and in the dim recesses of his mind there grew up a new hope--very vague and shadowy; he despised himself for dwelling upon it so weakly--a hope that made him kinder to his daughter than he had ever been yet--a hope which rendered her precious to him all at once. Not that he loved her any better than of old; it was only that he saw how, if fortune favoured him, this girl might render him the greatest service that could be done for him by any human creature.

She might marry Daniel Granger, and win back the heritage he had lost.

It was a foolish thought, of course; Mr. Lovel was quite aware of the supremity of folly involved in it. This Granger might be the last man in the world to fall in love with a girl younger than his daughter; he might be as impervious to beauty as the granite to which Laura Armstrong had likened him. It was a foolish fancy, a vain hope; but it served to brighten the meditations of Marmaduke Lovel--who had really very few pleasant subjects to think about--with a faint rosy glow.

"It is the idlest dream," he said to himself. "When did good luck ever come my way? But O, to hold Arden Court again--by any tie--to die knowing that my race would inherit the old gray walls!"

CHAPTER V.

AT HALE CASTLE.

Mr. Lovel gave his daughter twenty pounds; a stretch of liberality which did not a little astonish her. She was very grateful for this unexpected kindness; and her father was fain to submit to be kissed and praised for his goodness more than was entirely agreeable to him. But he had been kinder to her ever since Lady Laura's visit, and her heart was very light under that genial influence. She thought he was beginning to love her, and that belief made her happy.

Nor was there anything but unqualified pleasure for her in the possession of twenty pounds--the largest sum she had ever had at her disposal.

Although the solitude of her life and the troubles that overshadowed it had made her thoughtful beyond her years, she was still young enough to be able to put aside all thought, and to live in the present. It was very pleasant to go into Holborough, with those four crisp new five-pound notes in her purse, to ask her aunt's advice about her purchases. Mrs. Oliver was enraptured to hear of the visit to the Castle, but naturally a little despondent about the circ.u.mstances under which the visit was to be paid.

That Clarissa should go to Lady Laura's without a maid was eminently distressing to her aunt.

"I really think you ought to take Peters," Mrs. Oliver said meditatively.

"She is a most reliable person; and of course n.o.body need know that she is not your own maid. I can fully rely upon her discretion for not breathing a word upon the subject to any of the Castle servants."

Peters was a prim middle-aged spinster, with a small waist and a painfully erect figure, who combined the office of parlour-maid at the Rectory with that of personal attendant upon the Rector's wife--a person whom Clarissa had always regarded with a kind of awe--a lynx-eyed woman, who could see at a glance the merest hint of a stray hair-pin in a ma.s.sive coil of plaits, or the minutest edge of a muslin petticoat, visible below the hem of a dress.

"O no, aunt; please don't think of such a thing!" the girl cried eagerly.

"I could not go with a borrowed servant; and I don't want a maid at all; I am used to do everything for myself Besides, Lady Laura did not ask me to bring a maid."

"She would take that for granted. She would never expect Mr. Lovel's daughter to travel without a maid."

"But papa told her how poor he was."

"Very unnecessary, and very bad taste on his part, I think. But of course she would not suppose him to be too poor to maintain a proper establishment in a small way. People of that kind only understand poverty in the broadest sense."

Mrs. Oliver consented to forego the idea of sending Peters to the Castle, with a regretful sigh; and then the two ladies went out shopping--Clarissa in high spirits; her aunt depressed by a conviction, that she would not make her first entrance into society with the surroundings that befitted a Lovel of Arden Court.

There seemed so many things indispensable for this all-important visit.

The twenty pounds were nearly gone by the time Miss Lovel's shopping was finished. A white muslin dress for ordinary occasions, some white gauzy fabric for a more important toilette, a golden-brown silk walking or dinner dress, a white areophane bonnet, a gray straw hat and feather, gloves, boots, slippers, and a heap of feminine trifles. Considerable management and discretion were required to make the twenty pounds go far enough: but Mrs. Oliver finished her list triumphantly, leaving one bright golden sovereign in Clarissa's purse. She gave the girl two more sovereigns at parting with her.

"You will want as much as that for the servants when you are coming away, Clary," she said imperatively, as Clarissa protested against this gift. "I don't suppose you will be called upon to spend a s.h.i.+lling for anything else during your visit, unless there should happen to be a charity sermon while you are at Hale. In that case, pray don't put less than half-a-crown in the plate. Those things are noticed so much. And now, good-bye, my dear. I don't suppose I shall see you again between this, and Tuesday. Miss Mallow will come to you to try-on the day after to-morrow at one o'clock, remember; be sure you are at home. She will have hard work to get your things ready in time; but I shall look in upon her once or twice, to keep her up to the mark. Pray do your best to secure Lady Laura's friends.h.i.+p.

Such an acquaintance as that is all-important to a girl in your position."

Tuesday came very quickly, as it seemed to Clarissa, who grew a little nervous about this visit among strangers, in a great strange house, as it came nearer. She had seen the outside of the Castle very often: a vast feudal pile it seemed, seen across the bright river that flowed beneath its outward wall--a little darksome and gloomy at the best, Clarissa had thought, and something too grand to make a pleasant habitation. She had never seen the inner quadrangle, in all its splendour of modern restoration--sparkling freestone, fresh from the mason's chisel; gothic windows, glowing with rare stained gla.s.s; and the broad fertile gardens, with their terraces and banks of flowers, crowded together to make a feast of colour, sloping down to the setting sun.

It was still the same bright midsummer weather--a blue sky without a cloud, a look upon earth and heaven as if there would never be rain again, or anything but this glow and glory of summer. At eleven o'clock the carriage came from the Castle; Clarissa's trunks and travelling-bag were accommodated somehow; and the girl bade her father good-bye.

"I daresay I shall be asked to dinner while you are there," he said, as they were parting, "and I may possibly come; I shall be curious to see how you get on."

"O, pray do come, papa; I'm sure it will do you good."

And then she kissed him affectionately, emboldened by that softer manner which he had shown towards her lately; and the carriage drove off. A beautiful drive past fertile fields, far stretching towards that bright river, which wound its sinuous way through all this part of the country; past woods that shut in both sides of the road with a solemn gloom even at midday--woods athwart which one caught here and there a distant glimpse of some n.o.ble old mansion lying remote within the green girdle of a park.

It was something less than an hour's drive from Arden to Hale: the village-church clock and a great clock in the Castle stables were both striking twelve as the carriage drove under a ma.s.sive stone arch, above which the portcullis still hung grimly. It was something like going into a prison, Clarissa thought; but she had scarcely time for the reflection, when the carriage swept round a curve in the smooth gravel road, and she saw the sunny western front of the Castle, glorious in all its brightness of summer flowers, and with a tall fountain leaping and sparkling up towards the blue sky.

She gave a little cry of rapture at sight of so much brightness and beauty, coming upon her all at once with a glad surprise. There were no human creatures visible; only the glory of fountain and flowers. It might have been the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, deep in the heart of the woodlands, for any evidence to the contrary, perceptible to Clarissa in this drowsy noontide; but presently, as the carriage drove up to the hall door, a dog barked, and then a sumptuous lackey appeared, and anon another, who, between them, took Miss Lovel's travelling-bag and parasol, prior to escorting her to some apartment, leaving the heavier luggage to meaner hands.

"The saloon, or my lady's own room, miss?" one of the grandiose creatures demanded languidly.

"I would rather see Lady Laura alone at first, if you please."

The man bowed, and conducted her up a broad staircase, lined with darksome pictures of battles by land and sea, along a crimson-carpeted corridor where there were many doors, to one particular portal at the southern end.

He opened this with a lofty air, and announced "Miss Lovel."

It was a very large room--all the rooms in this newly-restored part of the Castle were large and lofty (a great deal of the so-called "restoration"

had indeed been building, and many of these splendid rooms were new, newer even than the wealth of Frederick Armstrong)--a large room, furnished with chairs and tables and cabinets of satin wood, with oval medallions of pale blue Wedgwood let into the panelled doors of the cabinets, and a narrow beading of l.u.s.treless gold here and there; a room with pale blue silken hangings, and a carpet of white wood-anemones scattered on a turquoise-coloured ground. There were no pictures; art was represented only by a few choice bronzes and a pair of Venetian mirrors.

Lady Laura was busy at a writing-table, filling in the blanks in some notes of invitation. She was always busy. On one table there were an easel and the appliances of illumination; a rare old parchment Missal lying open, and my lady's copy of a florid initial close beside it. On a small reading-desk there was an open Ta.s.so with a couple of Italian dictionaries near at hand. Lady Laura had a taste for languages, and was fond of reviving her acquaintance with foreign cla.s.sics. She was really the most indefatigable of women. It was a pity, perhaps, that her numerous accomplishments and her multifarious duties towards society at large left her so very little leisure to bestow upon her own children; but then, they had their foreign governesses, and maids--there was one poor English drudge, by the way, who seemed like a stranger in a far land--gifted in many tongues, and began to imbibe knowledge from their cradles. To their young imaginations the nursery wing of Hale Castle must have seemed remarkably like the Tower of Babel.

The lady of the Castle laid down her pen, and received Clarissa with warm affection. She really liked the girl. It was only a light airy kind of liking, perhaps, in unison with her character; but, so far as it went, it was perfectly sincere.

"My dear child, I am so glad to have you here," she said, placing Miss Lovel beside her on a low sofa. "You will find me dreadfully busy sometimes, I daresay; but you must not think me neglectful if I cannot be very much with you downstairs. You are to come in and out of this room whenever you please. It is not open to the world at large, you know, and I am supposed to be quite inaccessible here; but it is open to my favourites, and I mean you to be one of them, Clarissa."

"You are very good, dear Lady Laura."

"No, I am not good; I daresay I am the most selfish creature in Christendom; but when I like people, I like them with all my heart. And now tell me what you think of Hale."

"It is lovely--it is like fairyland."

"Yes, it is pretty, isn't it, this new side? It has all been done in my time--it has all been my doing, indeed, I may venture to say; for Fred would have gone on living contentedly in the old rooms till his dying day.

You can't imagine the trouble I took. I read no end of books upon the domestic architecture of the middle ages, went all over England hunting for model houses, and led the poor architect a fine life. But I think, between us, we succeeded in carrying out a very fine idea at last. The crenellated roof, with its machicolations, is considered a great success. There was a time when one was obliged to get a license from the sovereign to build that kind of thing; but it is all changed now. The sovereign is not afraid of rebellion, and the machicolations are only for ornament. You have not seen the old hall yet. That is splendid--a real original bit of the Castle, you know, which has never been tampered with, as old as Edward III., with a raised platform at the upper end, where the lord of the castle used to sit while his va.s.sals ate below him; and with a stone hearth in the centre, where they used to make their wood fires, all the smoke going through an opening in the roof--rather pleasant for my lord and his va.s.sals, I should think! Take off your hat, Clarissa; or perhaps you would rather go to your room at once. Yes, you shall, dear; and I'll finish my letters, and we can meet at luncheon."

Lady Laura rang a bell twice; which particular summons produced a very smart-looking maid, into whose charge my lady confided Clarissa, with a pretty little wave of her hand, and "_a bientot_, dear child."