The Lovels of Arden Part 28

The great iron gates under the gothic archway stood wide open just as they had been wont to do in Mr. Lovel's time, and Clarissa and her companion pa.s.sed into the quiet garden. How well she remembered the neglected air of the place when last she had seen it--the mossgrown walks, the duckweed in the moat, the straggling rose-bushes, everything out of order, from the broken weatherc.o.c.k on one of the gateway towers, to the sc.r.a.per by the half-gla.s.s door in one corner of the quadrangle, which had been, used instead of the chief entrance! It seems natural to a man of decayed fortune to shut up his hall-door and sneak in and out of his habitation by some obscure portal.

Now all was changed; a kind of antique primness, which had no taint of c.o.c.kney stiffness, pervaded the scene. One might have expected to see Sir Thomas More or Lord Bacon emerge from the ma.s.sive gothic porch, and stroll with slow step and meditative aspect towards the stone sun-dial that stood in the centre of that square rose-garden. The whole place had an air of doublet and hose. It seemed older to Clarissa than when she had seen it last--older and yet newer, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty, restored, after a century of decay, to all its original grandeur.

The door under the porch stood open; but there were a couple of men in a sober livery waiting in the hall--footmen who had never been reared in those Yorkshire wilds--men with powdered hair, and the stamp of Grosvenor-square upon them. Those flew to open inner doors, and Clarissa began with wonder to behold the new glories of the mansion. She followed Mr. Granger in silence through dining and billiard-rooms, saloon and picture-gallery, boudoir and music-room, in all of which the Elizabethan air, the solemn grace of a departed age, had been maintained with a marvellous art. Money can do so much; above all, where a man has no bigoted belief in his own taste or capacity, and will put his trust in the intelligence of professional artists. Daniel Granger had done this. He had said to an accomplished architect, "I give you the house of my choice; make it what it was in its best days. Improve wherever you can, but alter as little as possible; and, above all, no modernising."

Empowered by this _carte blanche_, the architect had given his soul to dreams of mediaeval splendour and had produced a place which, in its way, was faultless. No matter that some of the carved-oak furniture was fresh from the chisel of the carver, while other things were the spoil of old Belgian churches; that the tapestry in one saloon was as old as the days of its designer, Boucher, and that in the adjoining chamber made on purpose for Arden Court at the Gobelins manufactory of his Imperial Majesty Napoleon III. No matter that the gilt-leather hangings in one room had hung there in the reign of Charles I., while those in another were supplied by a West-end upholsterer. Perfect taste had harmonised every detail; there was not so much as a footstool or a curtain that could have been called an anachronism. Clarissa looked at all these things with a strange sense of wandering somewhere in a dream. It was, and yet was not her old home. There was nothing incongruous. The place scarcely seemed new to her, though everything was altered. It was only as it ought to have been always.

She remembered the bare rooms, the scanty shabby furniture of the Georgian era, the patches and glimpses of faded splendour here and there, the Bond-street prettinesses and fripperies in her mother's boudoir, which, even in her early girlhood, had grown tawdry and _rococo_, the old pictures rotting in their tarnished frames; everything with that sordid air of poverty and decay upon it.

"Well, Miss Lovel," Daniel Granger said at last, when they had gone through all the chief rooms almost in silence, "do you approve of what has been done?"

"It is beautiful," Clarissa answered, "most beautiful; but--but it breaks my heart to see it."

The words were wrung from her somehow. In the next moment she was ashamed of them--it seemed like the basest envy.

"O, pray, pray do not think me mean or contemptible, Mr. Granger," she said; "it is not that I envy you your house, only it was my home so long, and I always felt its neglect so keenly; and to see it now so beautiful, as I could have only pictured it in my dreams--and even in them I could not fancy it so perfect."

"It may be your home again, Clarissa, if you care to make it so," said Mr.

Granger, coming very close to her, and with a sudden pa.s.sion in his voice.

"I little thought when I planned this place that it would one day seem worthless to me without one lovely mistress. It is all yours, Clarissa, if you will have it--and the heart of its master, who never thought that it was in his nature to feel what he feels for you."

He tried to take her hand; but she shrank away from him, trembling a little, and with a frightened look in her face.

"Mr. Granger, O, pray, pray don't----"

"For G.o.d's sake don't tell me that this seems preposterous or hateful to you--that you cannot value the love of a man old enough to be your father.

You do not know what it is for a man of my age and my character to love for the first time. I had gone through life heart-whole, Clarissa, till I saw you. Between my wife and me there was never more than liking. She was a good woman, and I respected her, and we got on very well together. That was all. Clarissa, tell me that there is some hope. I ought not to have spoken so soon; I never meant to be such a fool--but the words came in spite of me. O, my dearest, don't crush me with a point-blank refusal. I know that all this must seem strange to you. Let it pa.s.s. Think no more of anything I have said till you know me better--till you find my love is worth having.

I believe I fell in love with you that first afternoon in the library at Hale. From that time forth your face haunted me--like some beautiful picture--the loveliest thing I had ever seen, Clarissa."

"I cannot answer you, Mr. Granger," she said in a broken voice; "you have shocked and surprised me so much, I----"

"Shocked and surprised you! That seems hard."

In that very moment it flashed upon her that this was what her father and Lady Laura Armstrong had wished to bring about. She was to win back the lost heritage of Arden Court--win it by the sacrifice of every natural feeling of her heart, by the barter of her very self.

How much more Mr. Granger might have said there is no knowing--for, once having spoken, a man is loth to leave such a subject as this unexhausted--but there came to Clarissa's relief the rustling sound of a stiff silk dress, announcing the advent of Miss Granger, who sailed towards them through a vista of splendid rooms, with a stately uncompromising air that did not argue the warmest possible welcome for her guest.

"I have been hunting for you everywhere, papa," she said in an aggrieved tone. "Where have you been hiding Miss Lovel?"

And then she held out her hand and shook hands with Clarissa in the coldest manner in which it was possible for a human being to perform that ceremony.

She looked at her father with watchful suspicious eyes as he walked away to one of the windows, not caring that his daughter should see his face just at that moment. There was something, evidently, Sophia thought,--something which it concerned her to discover.

CHAPTER XX.

MODEL VILLAGERS.

They went to luncheon in a secondary dining room--a comfortable apartment, which served pleasantly for all small gatherings, and had that social air so impossible in a stately banqueting-chamber--a perfect gem of a room, hung with gilt leather, relieved here and there by a choice picture in a frame of gold and ebony. Here the draperies were of a dark crimson cut velvet, which the sunshine brightened into ruby. The only ornaments in this room were a pair of matchless Venetian girandoles on the mantelpiece, and a monster Palissy dish, almost as elaborate in design as the shield of Achilles, on the oaken buffet.

The luncheon was not a very genial repast; Miss Granger maintained a polite sulkiness; Clarissa had not yet recovered from the agitation which Mr.

Granger's most unexpected avowal had occasioned; and even the strong man himself felt his nerves shaken, and knew that he was at a disadvantage, between the daughter who suspected him and the woman who had all but refused his hand. He did his utmost to seem at his ease, and to beguile his daughter into a more cordial bearing; but there was a gloom upon that little party of three which was palpably oppressive. It seemed in vain to struggle against the dismal influence. Mr. Granger felt relieved when, just at the close of the meal, his butler announced that Mr. Tillott was in the drawing-room. Mr. Tillott was a mild inoffensive young man of High-church tendencies, the curate of Arden.

"I asked Tillott to go round the schools with us this afternoon," Mr.

Granger said to his daughter in an explanatory tone. "I know what an interest he takes in the thing, and I thought it would be pleasanter."

"You are very kind, papa," Miss Granger replied, with implacable stiffness; "but I really don't see what we want with Mr. Tillott, or with you either.

There's not the least reason that we should take you away from your usual occupations; and you are generally so busy of an afternoon. Miss Lovel and I can see everything there is to be seen, without any escort; and I have always heard you complain that my schools bored you."

"Well, perhaps I may have had rather an overdose of the philanthropic business occasionally, my dear," answered Mr. Granger, with a good-humoured laugh. "However, I have set my heart upon seeing how all your improvements affect Miss Lovel. She has such a peculiar interest in the place, you see, and is so identified with the people. I thought you'd be pleased to have Tillott. He's really a good fellow, and you and he always seem to have so much to talk about."

On this they all repaired to the drawing-room, where Mr. Tillott the curate was sitting at a table, turning over the leaves of an illuminated psalter, and looking altogether as if he had just posed himself for a photograph.

To this mild young man Miss Granger was in a manner compelled to relax the austerity of her demeanour. She even smiled in a frosty way as she shook hands with him; but she had no less a sense of the fact that her father had out-manoeuvred her, and that this invitation to Mr. Tillott was a crafty design whereby he intended to have Clarissa all to himself during that afternoon.

"I am sorry you could not come to luncheon with us, Tillott," said Mr.

Granger in his hearty way. "Or are you sure, by the bye, that you have taken luncheon? We can go back to the dining-room and hear the last news of the parish while you wash down some game-pie with a gla.s.s or two of the old madeira."

"Thanks, you are very good; but I never eat meat on Wednesdays or Fridays.

I had a hard-boiled egg and some cocoa at half-past seven this morning, and shall take nothing more till sunset. I had duties at Swanwick which detained me till within the last half-hour, or I should have been very happy to have eaten a biscuit with you at your luncheon."

"Upon my word, Tillott, you are the most indefatigable of men; but I really wish you High-church people had not such a fancy for starving yourselves.

So much expenditure of brain-power must involve a waste of the coa.r.s.er material. Now, Sophy, if you and Miss Lovel are ready, we may as well start."

They went out into the sunny quadrangle, where the late roses were blooming with all their old luxuriance. How well Clarissa remembered them in those days when they had been the sole glory of the neglected place! In spite of Sophia, who tried her hardest to prevent the arrangement, Mr. Granger contrived that he and Clarissa should walk side by side, and that Mr.

Tillott should completely absorb his daughter. This the curate was by no means indisposed to do; for, if the youthful saint had a weakness, it lay in the direction of vanity. He sincerely admired the serious qualities of Miss Granger's mind, and conceived that, blest with such a woman and with the free use of her fortune, he might achieve a rare distinction for his labours in this fold, to say nothing of placing himself on the high-road to a bishopric. Nor was he inclined to think Miss Granger indifferent to his own merits, or that the conquest would be by any means an impossible one.

It was a question of time, he thought; the sympathy between them was too strong not to take some higher development. He thought of St. Francis de Sales and Madame de Chantal, and fancied himself entrusted with the full guidance of Miss Granger's superior mind.

They walked across the park to a small gothic gateway, which had been made since the close of Marmaduke Lovel's reign. Just outside this stood the chapel of Mr. Granger's building, and the new schools, also gothic, and with that bran-new aspect against which architecture can do nothing. They would be picturesque, perhaps, ten years hence. To-day they had the odour of the architect's drawing-board.

Beyond the schools there were some twenty cottages, of the same modern gothic, each habitation more or less borne down and in a manner extinguished by its porch and chimney. If the rooms had been in reasonable proportion to the chimneys, the cottages would have been mansions; but gothic chimneys are pleasing objects, and the general effect was good.

These twenty cottages formed the beginning of Mr. Granger's model village--a new Arden, which was to arise on this side of the Court. They were for the most part inhabited by gardeners and labourers more or less dependent on Arden Court, and it had been therefore an easy matter for Miss Granger to obtain a certain deference to her wishes from the tenants.

The inspection of the schools and cottages was rather a tedious business.

Sophia would not let her companions off with an iota less than the whole thing. Her model pupils were trotted out and examined in the Scriptures--always in Kings and Chronicles--and evinced a familiarity with the ways of Jezebel and Rehoboam that made Clarissa blush at the thought of her own ignorance. Then there came an exhibition of plain needlework, excruciatingly suggestive of impaired eyesight; then fancy-work, which Miss Granger contemplated with a doubtful air, as having a frivolous tendency; and then the school mistress's parlour and kitchen were shown, and displayed so extreme a neatness that made one wonder where she lived; and then the garden, where the heels of one's boots seemed a profanation; and then, the schools and schoolhouses being exhausted, there came the cottages.

How Clarissa's heart bled for the nice clean motherly women who were put through their paces for Miss Granger's glorification, and were fain to confess that their housekeeping had been all a delusion and a snare till that young lady taught them domestic economy! How she pitied them as the severe Sophia led the way into sacred corners, and lifted the lids of coppers and dustholes, and opened cupboard-doors, and once, with an aspect of horror, detected an actual cobweb lurking in an angle of the whitewashed wall! Clarissa could not admire things too much, in order to do away with some of the bitterness of that microscopic survey. Then there was such cross-examination about church-going, and the shortcomings of the absent husbands were so ruthlessly dragged into the light of day. The poor wives blushed to own that these unregenerate spirits had still a lurking desire for an occasional social evening at the Coach and Horses, in spite of the charms of a gothic chimney, and a porch that was ma.s.sive enough for the dungeon of a mediaeval fortress. Miss Granger and the curate played into each other's hands, and between the two the model villagers underwent a kind of moral dissection. It was dreary work altogether; and Daniel Granger had been guilty of more than one yawn before it was all over, even though he had the new delight of being near Clarissa all the time. It was finished at last. One woman, who in her benighted state had known Miss Lovel, had shown herself touched by the sight of her.

"You never come anigh me now, miss," she said tenderly, "though I've knowed you ever since you was a little girl; and it would do my heart good to see your sweet face here once in a way."

"You've better friends now, you see, Mrs. Rice," Clarissa answered gently.

"I could do so little for you. But I shall be pleased to look in upon you now and then."

"Do'ee, now, miss; me and my master will be right down glad to see you.

However kind new friends may be," this was said with a conciliatory curtsey to Miss Granger, "we can't forget old friends. We haven't forgot your goodness when my boy Bill was laid up with the fever, miss, and how you sat beside his bed and read to him."