The Lovels of Arden, Mary Elizabeth Braddon [win 10 ebook reader .txt] 📗

George Fairfax should have been broken. That accident of Lord Calderwood's death had made everything more or less uncertain. Would the marriage ever take place? Would George Fairfax, with ample leisure for deliberation, hold himself bound by his promise, and marry a woman to whom he had confessed himself indifferent?

She was brooding over this question when she heard the thud of a horse's hoofs upon the grass, and, looking up, saw a man riding towards her. He was leaning across his horse's head, looking down at her in the next moment--a dark figure shutting out the waving line of fir-trees and the warm light in the western sky. "What are you doing there, Miss Lovel?" asked a voice that went straight to her heart. Who shall say that it was deeper or sweeter than, common voices? but for her it had a thrilling sound.

She started and dropped her book. George Fairfax dismounted, tied his horse's bridle to the churchyard gate, and picked up the little sketch-book.

"My portrait!" he cried, recognizing the carelessly-pencilled bead. "Then you do think of me a little, Clarissa! Do you know that I have been prowling about Arden for the last two hours, waiting and watching for you? I have ridden past your father's cottage twenty times, I think, and was on the point of giving up all hope and galloping back to Hale, when I caught sight of a familiar figure from that road yonder."

He had taken a knife from his pocket, and was deliberately cutting out the leaf from Miss Lovel's sketch-book.

"I shall keep this, Clarissa,--this one blessed scrap of evidence that you do sometimes think of me."

"I think of a good many people in the same manner," she said, smiling, with recovered self-possession. "I have very few acquaintance whose likenesses I have not attempted in some fashion."

"But you have attempted mine very often," he answered, looking over the leaves of the book. "Yes, here is my profile amongst bits of foliage, and scroll-work, and all the vagabond thoughts of your artistic brain. You shall not snub me, Clarissa. You do think of me--not as I think of you, perhaps, by day and night, but enough for my encouragement, almost enough for my happiness. Good heavens, how angry I have been with you during the last few weeks!"

"What right had you to be angry with me, Mr. Fairfax?"

"The sublime right of loving you. To my mind that constitutes a kind of moral ownership. And to see you flirting with that fellow Granger, and yet have to hold my peace! But, thank God, all pretences are done with. I recognize the event of to-day as an interposition of Providence. As soon as I can decently do so, I shall tell Lady Geraldine the truth."

"You will not break your engagement--at such a time--when she has double need of your love?" cried Clarissa indignantly.

She saw the situation from the woman's point of view, and it was of Geraldine Challoner's feelings she thought at this crisis. George Fairfax weighed nothing in the scale against that sorrowing daughter. And yet she loved him.

"My love she never had, and never can have; nor do I believe that honour compels me to make myself miserable for life. Of course I shall not disturb her in the hour of her grief by any talk about our intended marriage; but, so soon as I can do so with kindness, I shall let her know the real state of my feelings. She is too generous to exact any sacrifice from me."

"And you will make her miserable for life, perhaps?"

"I am not afraid of that. I tell you, Clarissa, it is not in her cold proud nature to care much for any man. We can invent some story to account for the rupture, which will save her womanly pride. The world can be told that it is she who has broken the engagement: all that will be easily settled. Poor Lord Calderwood! Don't imagine that I am not heartily sorry for him; he was always a good friend to me; but his death has been most opportune. It has saved me, Clarissa. But for that I should have been a married man this night, a bound slave for evermore. You can never conceive the gloomy dogged spirit in which I was going to my doom. Thank God, the release came; and here, sitting by your side, a free man, I feel how bitter a bondage I have escaped."

He put his arm round Clarissa, and tried to draw her towards him; but she released herself from him with a quick proud movement, and rose from her seat on the low wall. He rose at the same moment, and they stood facing each other in the darkening twilight.

"And what then, Mr. Fairfax?" she said, trembling a little, but looking him steadily in the face nevertheless. "When you have behaved like a traitor, and broken your engagement, what then?"

"What then? Is there any possible doubt about what must come then? You will be my wife, Clarissa!"

"You think that I would be an accomplice to such cruelty? You think that I could be so basely ungrateful to Lady Laura, my first friend? Yes, Mr. Fairfax, the first friend I ever had, except my aunt, whose friendship has always seemed a kind of duty. You think that after all her goodness to me I could have any part in breaking her sister's heart?"

"I think there is one person whose feelings you overlook in this business."

"And who is that?"

"Myself. You seem to forget that I love you, and that my happiness depends upon you. Are you going to stand upon punctilio, Clarissa, and break my heart because Laura Armstrong has been civil to you?"

Clarissa smiled--a very mournful smile.

"I do not believe you are so dreadfully in earnest," she said. "If I did--"

"If you did, what then, Clarissa?"

"It might be different. I might be foolish enough, wicked enough--But I am sure that this folly of yours is no more than a passing fancy. You will go away and forget all about me. You would be very sorry by-and-by, if I were weak enough to take you at your word; just as sorry as you are now for your engagement to Lady Geraldine. Come, Mr. Fairfax, let us both be sensible, if we can, and let there be an end of this folly for evermore between us. Good-night; I must go home. It is half-past eight o'clock, and at nine papa has his tea."

"You shall go home in time to pour out Mr. Lovel's tea; but you shall hear me out first, Clarissa, and you shall confess to me. I will not be kept in the dark."

And then he urged his cause, passionately, eloquently, or with that which seemed eloquence to the girl of nineteen, who heard him with pale cheeks and fast-throbbing heart, and yet tried to seem unmoved. Plead as he might, he could win no admission from her. It was only in her eyes, which could not look denial, on her tremulous lips, which could not simulate coldness, that he read her secret. There he saw enough to make him happy and triumphant.

"Say what you please, my pitiless one," he cried at last; "in less than three months you shall be my wife!"

The church-clock chimed the three-quarters. He had no excuse for keeping her any longer.

"Come then, Clarissa," he said, drawing her hand through his arm; "let me see you to your father's door."

"But your horse--you can't leave him here?"

"Yes, I can. I don't suppose any one will steal him in a quarter of an hour or so; and I daresay we shall meet some village urchin whom I can send to take care of him."

"There is no occasion. I am quite accustomed to walk about Arden alone."

"Not at this hour. I have detained you, and am bound to see you safely lodged."

"But if papa should hear----"

"He shall near nothing. I'll leave you within a few yards of his gate."

It was no use for her to protest; so they went back to within half a dozen paces of Mill Cottage arm-in-arm; not talking very much, but dangerously happy in each other's company.

"I shall see you again very soon, Clarissa," George Fairfax said. And then he asked her to tell him her favourite walks; but this she refused to do.

"No matter. I shall find you out in spite of your obstinacy. And remember, child, you owe nothing to Laura Armstrong except the sort of kindness she would show to any pretty girl of good family. You are as necessary to her as the orchids on her dinner-table. I don't deny that she is a warm-hearted little woman, with a great deal that is good in her--just the sort of woman to dispense a large fortune. But I shall make matters all right in that quarter, and at once."

They were now as near Mill Cottage as Mr. Fairfax considered it prudent to go. He stopped, released Clarissa's hand from his arm, only to lift it to his lips and kiss it--the tremulous little ungloved hand which had been sketching his profile when he surprised her, half an hour before, on the churchyard wall.

There was not a creature on the road before them, as they Stood thus in the moonlight; but in spite of this appearance of security, they were not unobserved. A pair of angry eyes watched them from across a clipped holly hedge in front of the cottage--the eyes of Marmaduke Lovel, who had ventured out in the soft September night to smoke his after-dinner cigar.

"Good-night, Clarissa," said George Fairfax; "I shall see you again very soon."

"No, no; I don't wish to see you. No good can come of our seeing each other."

"You will see me, whether you wish or not. Good-night. There is nine striking. You will be in time to pour out papa's tea."

He let go the little hand which he had held till now, and went away. When Clarissa came to the gate, she found it open, and her father standing by it. She drew back with a guilty start.

"Pray come in," said Mr. Lovel, in his most ceremonious tone. "I am very glad that a happy accident has enabled me to become familiar with your new habits. Have you learnt to give clandestine meetings to your lovers at Hale Castle? Have I to thank Lady Laura for this novel development of your character?"

"I don't know what you mean, papa. I was sitting in the churchyard just now, sketching, when Mr. Fairfax rode up to me. He stopped talking a little, and then insisted on seeing me home. That is all."

"That is all. And so it was George Fairfax--the bridegroom that was to have been--who kissed your hand just now, in that loverlike fashion. Pray come indoors; I think this is a business that requires to be discussed between us quietly."

"Believe me you have no reason to be angry, papa," pleaded Clarissa; "nothing could have been farther from my thoughts than the idea of meeting Mr. Fairfax to-night."

"I have heard that kind of denial before, and know what it is worth," answered her father coldly. "And pray, if he did not come here to meet you, may I ask what motive brought Mr. Fairfax to Arden to-night? His proper place would have been at Hale Castle, I should have supposed."

"I don't know, papa. He may have