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

had learned at Madame Marot's seminary.

"Is my life to go on like that for ever?" she asked herself.

The step came a little nearer. Surely it was lighter and quicker than Daniel Granger's--it had a sharp martial sound; it was like a step she had learned to know very well in the gardens of Hale Castle.

"He is at Baden," she said to herself.

But the beating of her heart grew faster in spite of that tranquillizing assurance. She heard an unaccustomed hand trying the fastening of the gate, then a bolt withdrawn, the sharp light step upon the turf behind her, and in the next moment George Fairfax was by her side, among the weird shadows of the orchard trees.

He tried to draw her towards him, with the air of an accepted lover.

"My darling!" he said, "I knew I should find you here. I had a fancy that you would be here, waiting for me in the pale moonlight."

Clarissa laughed--rather an artificial little laugh--but she felt the situation could only be treated lightly. The foolish passionate heart was beating so fast all the time, and the pale face might have told so much, if the light of the new-risen moon had not been dim as yet.

"How long do you suppose I have been waiting at this spot for you, Mr. Fairfax?" she asked lightly. "For six weeks?"

"Six weeks! Yes, it is six weeks since I saw you. It might be six years, if I were to measure the time by my own impatience. I have been at Nice, Clarissa, almost ever since that night we parted."

"At Nice! with Lady Laura and Lady Geraldine, I suppose, I thought they were going to Baden."

"They are at Baden; but I have not been with them. I left England with my mother, who had a very bad attack of her chronic asthma earlier than usual this year, and was ordered off to the South of France, where she is obliged to spend all her winters, poor soul. I went with her, and stayed till she was set up again in some measure. I was really uneasy about her; and it was a good excuse for getting away from Hale."

Clarissa murmured some conventional expression of sympathy, but that was all.

"My darling," said George Fairfax, taking her cold hand in his--she tried to withdraw it, but it was powerless in that firm grasp--"My darling, you know why I have come here; and you know now why my coming has been so long delayed. I could not write to you. The Fates are against us, Clarissa, and I do not expect much favour from your father. So I feared that a letter might do us mischief, and put off everything till I could come, I said a few words to Laura Armstrong before I left the Castle--not telling her very much, but giving her a strong hint of the truth. I don't think she'll be surprised by anything I may do; and my letters to Geraldine have all been written to prepare the way for our parting. I know she will be generous; and if my position with regard to her is rather a despicable one, I have done all I could to make the best of it. I have not made things worse by deceit or double-dealing. I should have boldly asked for my freedom before this, but I hear such bad accounts of poor Geraldine, who seems to be dreadfully grieved by her father's loss, that I have put off all idea of any direct explanation for the present. I am not the less resolved, however, Clarissa."

Miss Lovel turned her face towards him for the first time, and looked at him with a proud steady gaze. She had given her promise, and was not afraid that anything, not even his tenderest, most passionate pleading, could ever tempt her to break it; but she knew more and more that she loved him--that it was his absence and silence which, had made her life so blank, that his coming was the event she had waited and watched for day after day.

"Why should you break faith with Lady Geraldine?" she asked calmly.

"Why! Because my bondage has been hateful to me ever since I came to Hale. Because there is only one woman I will have for my wife--and her name is Clarissa Lovel!"

"You had better keep your word, Mr. Fairfax. I was quite in earnest in what I said to you six weeks ago. Nothing in the world would ever induce me to have any part in your breach of faith. Why, even if I loved you--" her voice trembled a little here, and George Fairfax repeated the words after her, "_Even_ if you loved me--I could never trust you. How could I hope that, after having been so false to her, you could be true to me?"

"Even if I loved you. Tell me that you do love me--as I have hoped and dreamed--as I dared to believe sometimes at Hale, when my wedding-day was so near, that I seemed like some wretch bound to the wheel, for whom there is no possibility of escape. That is all over now, darling. To all intents and purposes I am free. Confess that you love me." This was said half tenderly, half imperiously--with the air of a conqueror accustomed to easy triumphs, an air which this man's experience had made natural to him. "Come, Clarissa, think how many miles I have travelled for the sake of this one stolen half hour. Don't be so inexorable."

He looked down at her with a smile on his face, not very much alarmed by her obduracy. It seemed to him only a new form of feminine eccentricity. Here was a woman who actually could resist him for ten minutes at a stretch--him, George Fairfax!

"I am very sorry you should have come so far. I am very sorry you should have taken so much trouble; it is quite wasted."

"Then you don't like me, Miss Lovel," still half playfully--the thing was too impossible to be spoken of in any other tone. "For some reason or other I am obnoxious to you. Look me full in the face, and swear that you don't care a straw for me."

"I am not going to swear anything so foolish. You are not obnoxious to me. I have no wish to forfeit your friendship; but I will not hear of anything more than friendship from your lips."

"Why not?"

"For many reasons. In the first place, because there would be treason against Lady Geraldine in my listening to you."

"Put that delusion out of your mind. There would be no treason; all is over between Lady Geraldine and me."

"There are other reasons, connected with papa."

"Oh, your father is against me. Yes, that is only natural. Any more reasons, Clarissa?"

"One more."

"What is that?"

"I cannot tell you."

"But I insist upon being told."

She tried her uttermost to avoid answering his questions; but he was persistent, and she admitted at last that she had promised not to listen to him.

"To whom was the promise given?"

"That is my secret."

"To your father?"

"That is my secret, Mr. Fairfax. You cannot extort it from me. And now I must go back to papa, if you please, or he will be sending some one to look for me."

"And I shall be discovered in Mr. Capulet's orchard. Ten minutes more, Clarissa, and I vanish amidst the woods of Arden, through which I came like a poacher in order to steal upon you unawares by that little gate. And now, my darling, since we have wasted almost all our time in fencing with words, let us be reasonable. Promises such as you speak of are pledges given to the winds. They cannot hold an hour against true love. Listen, Clary, listen."

And then came the pleading of a man only too well accustomed to plead--a man this time very much in earnest: words that seemed to Clarissa full of a strange eloquence, tones that went to her heart of hearts. But she had given her promise, and with her that promise meant something very sacred. She was firm to the last--firm even when those thrilling tones changed from love to auger.

All that he said towards the end she scarcely knew, for there was a dizziness in her brain that confused her, and her chiefest fear was that she should drop fainting at his feet; but the last words of all struck upon her ear with a cruel distinctness, and were never forgotten.

"I am the merest fool and schoolboy to take this matter so deeply to heart," he said, with a scornful laugh, "when the reason of my rejection is so obvious. What I saw at Hale Castle might have taught me wisdom. Even with my improved prospects I am little better than a pauper compared with Daniel Granger. And I have heard you say that you would give all the world to win back Arden Court. I will stand aside, and make way for a wealthier suitor. Perhaps we may meet again some day, and I may not be so unfortunate as my father."

He was gone. Clarissa stood like a statue, with her hands clasped before her face. She heard the gate shut by a violent hand. He was gone in supreme anger, with scorn and insult upon his lips, believing her the basest of the base, the meanest of the mean, she told herself. The full significance of his last words she was unable to understand, but it seemed to her that they veiled a threat.

She was going back to the house slowly, tearless, but with something like despair in her heart, when she heard the orchard gate open again. He had come back, perhaps,--returned to forgive and pity her. No, that was not his footstep; it was Mr. Granger, looking unspeakably ponderous and commonplace in the moonlight, as he came across the shadowy grass towards her.

"I thought I saw a white dress amongst the trees," he said, holding out his hand to her for the usual greeting. "How cold your hand is, Miss Lovel! Is it quite prudent of you to be out so late on such a chilly evening, and in that thin dress? I think I must ask your papa to lecture you."

"Pray don't, Mr. Granger; I am not in the habit of catching cold, and I am used to being in the gardens at all times and seasons. You are late."

"Yes; I have been at Holborough all day, and dined an hour later than usual. Your papa is quite well, I hope?"

"He is just the same as ever. He is always more or less of an invalid, you know."

They came in sight of the broad bay window of the parlour at this moment, and the firelight within revealed Mr. Lovel in a very comfortable aspect, fast asleep, with his pale aristocratic-looking face relieved by the crimson cushions of his capacious easy-chair, and the brown setter's head on his knee. There were some books on the table by his side, but it was evident that his studies since dinner had not been profound.

Clarissa and her companion went in at a half-glass door that opened into a small lobby next the parlour. She knew that to open the window at such an hour in the month of October was an unpardonable crime in her father's eyes. They went into the room very softly; but Mr. Lovel, who was a