BEGINNING AGAIN.
Mr. Lovel had taken his daughter to Spa, finding that she was quite
indifferent whither she went, so long as her boy went with her. It was a
pleasant sleepy place out of the season, and he liked it; having a fancy
that the mineral waters had done wonders for him. He had a villa on the
skirts of the pine-wood, a little way beyond the town; a villa in which
there was ample room for young Lovel and his attendants, and from which
five minutes' walk took them into shadowy deeps of pine, where the boy
might roll upon the soft short grass.
By and by, Mr. Lovel told Clarissa they could go farther afield, travel
wherever she pleased, in fact; but, for the present, perfect rest and quiet
would be her best medicine. She was not quite out of the doctor's hands
yet; that fever had tried her sorely, and the remnant of her cough still
clung to her. At first she had a great terror of George Fairfax discovering
her retreat. He had found her at Brussels; why should he not find her
at Spa? For the first month of her residence in the quiet inland
watering-place she hardly stirred out of doors without her father, and sat
at home reading or painting day after day, when she was longing to be out
in the wood with her baby and nurse.
But when the first four weeks had gone by, and left her unmolested, Mrs.
Granger grew bolder, and wandered out every day with her child, and saw the
young face brighten daily with a richer bloom, as the boy gained strength,
and was almost happy. The pine-wood was very pretty; but those slender
trees, shooting heavenwards, lacked the grandeur of the oaks and beeches of
Arden, and very often Clarissa thought of her old home with a sigh. After
all, it was lost to her; twice lost, by a strange fatality, as it seemed.
In these days she thought but seldom of George Fairfax. In very truth she
was well-nigh cured of her guilty love for him. Her folly had cost her too
dear; "almost the loss of my child," she said to herself sometimes.
There are passions that wear themselves out, that are by their very nature
self-destroying--a lighted candle that will burn for a given time, and then
die out with ignominious smoke and sputtering, not the supernal lamp that
shines on, star-like, for ever. Solitude and reflection brought this fact
home to Clarissa, that her love, fatal as it had been, was not eternal. A
woman's heart is scarcely wide enough to hold two great affections; and now
baby reigned supreme in the heart of Clarissa. She had plenty of money now
at her disposal; Mr. Granger having fixed her allowance at three thousand
a year, with extensive powers should that sum prove insufficient; so
the Bohemian household under the shadow of St. Gudule profited by her
independence. She sent her brother a good deal of money, and received very
cheery letters in acknowledgment of her generosity, with sometimes a little
ill-spelt scrawl from Bessie, telling her that Austin was much steadier in
Brussels than he had been in Paris, and was working hard for the dealers,
with whom he was in great favour. English and American travellers,
strolling down the Montagne de la Cour, were caught by those bright
"taking" bits, which Austin Lovel knew so well how to paint. An elderly
Russian princess had bought his Peach picture, and given him a commission
for portraits of a brood of Muscovian bantlings. In one way and another
he was picking up a good deal of money; and, with the help of Clarissa's
remittances, had contrived to arrange some of those awkward affairs in
Paris.
"Indeed, there is very little in this world that money won't settle,"
he wrote to his sister; "and I anticipate that enlightened stage of our
criminal code when wilful murder will be a question of pounds, shillings,
and pence. I fancy it in a police report: 'The fine was immediately paid,
and Mr. Greenacre left the court with his friends.' I have some invitation
to go back to my old quarters in the only city I love; there is a Flemish
buffet in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard that was a fortune to me in my
backgrounds; but the little woman pleads so earnestly against our return,
that I give way. Certainly, Paris is a dangerous place for a man of my
temperament, who has not yet mastered the supreme art of saying no at the
right moment. I am very glad to hear you are happy with your father and the
little one. I wish I had him here for a model; my own boys are nothing but
angles. Yet I would rather hear of you in your right position with your
husband. That fellow Fairfax is a scoundrel; I despise myself for ever
having asked him to put his name to a bill; and, still more, for being
blind to his motives when he was hanging about my painting-room last
winter. You have had a great escape, Clary; and God grant you wisdom to
avoid all such perilous paths in time to come. Preachment of any kind comes
with an ill grace from me, I know; but I daresay you remember what Portia
says: 'If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had
been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces;' and every man,
however fallen, has a kind of temple in his breast, wherein is enshrined
the image of his nearest and dearest. Let my garments be never so
besmirched and bedraggled, my sister's robes must be spotless."
There was comfort in these good tidings of her brother--comfort for which
Clarissa was very grateful to Providence. She would have been glad to go to
Brussels to see him, but had that ever-present terror of coming athwart the
pathway of George Fairfax; nor could she go on such an errand without some
kind of explanation with her father. She was content to abide, therefore,
among the quiet pine-woods and umbrageous avenues, which the holiday world
had not yet invaded, and where she was almost as free to wander with her
boy as amidst the beloved woods of Arden Court.
Life thus spent was very peaceful--peaceful, and just a little monotonous.
Mr. Lovel sipped his chocolate, and trifled with his maintenon cutlet, at
11 A.M., with an open volume of Burton or Bentley beside his cup, just as
in the old days of Clarissa's girlhood. It was just like the life at Mill
Cottage, with that one ever fresh and delicious element--young Lovel.
That baby voice lent a perpetual music to Clarissa's existence; the
sweet companionship of that restless clambering infant seemed to her the
perfection of happiness.
And yet--and yet--there were times when she felt that her life was a
failure, and lamented somewhat that she had so wrecked it. She was not hard
of heart; and sometimes she thought of Daniel Granger with a remorseful
pang, that cams upon her sharply in the midst of her maternal joys; thought
of all that he had done for love of her--the sublime patience wherewith
he had endured her coldness, the generous eagerness he had shown in the
indulgence of her caprices; in a word, the wealth of wasted love he had
lavished on an ungrateful woman.
"It is all over now," she said to herself sadly. "It is not every woman who
in all her lifetime can win so great a love as I have lost."
The tranquil sensuous life went on. There were hours in it which her child
could not fill--long hours, in which that marvellous blossom folded its
petals, slumbering sweetly through the summer noontide, and was no better
company than a rose-bud. Clarissa tried to interest herself in her old
studies; took up her Italian, and read Dante with her father, who was
a good deal more painstaking in his explanations of obscure idioms and
irregular verbs for the benefit of Mrs. Granger with a jointure of three
thousand per annum, than he had been wont to show himself for the behoof
of Miss Lovel without a sixpence. She drew a great deal; but somehow these
favourite pursuits had lost something of their charm. They could not fill
her life; it seemed blank and empty in spite of them.
She had her child--the one blessing for which she had prayed--about which
she had raved with such piteous bewailings in her delirium; but there was
no sense of security in the possession. She was full of doubts and fears
about the future. How long would Daniel Granger suffer her to keep her
treasure? Must not the day come when he would put forth his stronger claim,
and she would be left bereaved and desolate?
Scarcely could she dare to think of the future; indeed, she did her
uttermost to put away all thought of it, so fraught was it with terror and
perplexity; but her dreams were made hideous by scenes of parting--weird
and unnatural situations, such as occur in dreams; and her health suffered
from these shadowy fears. Death, too, had been very near her boy; and she
watched him with a morbid apprehension, fearful of every summer breeze that
ruffled his flaxen hair.
She was tired of Spa, and secretly anxious to cross the frontier, and
wander through Germany, away to the further-most shores of the Danube; but
was fain to wait patiently till her father's medical adviser--an English
physician, settled at Spa--should pronounce him strong enough to travel.
"That hurried journey to the Isle of Wight sent me back prodigiously," Mr.
Lovel told his daughter. "It will take me a month or two to recover the
effects of those abominable steamers. The Rhine and the Danube will keep,
my dear Clary. The castled crag of Drachenfels can be only a little
mouldier for the delay, and I believe the mouldiness of these things is
their principal charm."
So Clarissa waited. She had not the courage to tell her father of those
shapeless terrors that haunted her by day, and those agonising dreams that
visited her by night, which she fancied might be driven away by movement
and change of scene; she waited, and went on suffering, until at last
that supreme egotist, Marmaduke Lovel, was awakened to the fact, that
his daughter was looking no better than when he first brought her to
Belgium--worse rather, incontestably worse. He took alarm immediately.
The discovery moved him more than he could have supposed anything outside
himself could have affected him.
"What?" he asked himself. "Is my daughter going to languish and fade, as my
wife faded? Is she too to die of a Fairfax?"
The English physician was consulted; hummed and ha'd a little, prescribed a
new tonic; and finding, after a week or two, that this produced no result,
and that the pulse was weaker and more fitful, recommended change of air
and scene,--a remedy which common-sense might have suggested in the first
instance.
"We will start for Cologne to-morrow morning. Tell Target to pack, Clary.
You shall sleep under the shadow of the great cathedral to-morrow night."
Clarissa thanked her father warmly, and then burst into tears.
"Hysteria," murmured the physician.
"I shall get away from that dreadful room," she sobbed, "where I have such
hideous dreams;" and then went away to set Jane Target to work.
"I don't quite like the look of that," the doctor said gravely, when she
was gone. "Those distressing dreams are a bad sign. But Mrs. Granger is yet
very young, and has an excellent constitution, I believe. Change of scene,
and the amusement of travelling, may do all we want."
He left Mr. Lovel very thoughtful.
"If she doesn't improve very speedily, I shall telegraph to Granger," he
said to himself.
He had no occasion to do this. Daniel Granger, after going half way to
Marseilles, with a notion of exploring Algiers and Morocco, had stopped
short, and made his way by road and rail--through sirocco, clouds of dust,
and much inconvenience--to Liege, where he had lingered to recover and calm
himself down a little before going to see his child.
Going to see his child--that was the sole purpose of his journey; not for a
moment would he have admitted that it mattered anything to him that he was
also going to see his wife.
It was between seven and eight o'clock, on a bright June evening--a flush
of rosy light behind the wooded hills--and Clarissa was sitting on some
felled timber, with her boy asleep in her arms. He had dropped off to sleep
in the midst of his play; and she had lingered, unwilling to disturb him.
If he went on sleeping, she would be able to carry him home presently, and
put him to bed without awaking him. The villa was not a quarter of a mile
away.
She was quite alone with her darling, the nurse being engaged in the grand
business of packing. They were all to start the next morning after a very
early breakfast. She was looking down at the young sleeper, singing to him
softly--a commonplace picture perhaps, but a very fair one--a _Madonna aux
champs_.
So thought Daniel Granger, who had arrived at Spa half an hour ago, made
his inquiries at the villa, and wandered into the wood in quest of his only
son. The mother's face, with its soft smile of ineffable love, lips half
parted, breathing that fragment of a tender song, reminded him of a picture
by Raffaelle. She was nothing to him now; but he could not the less
appreciate her beauty, spiritualised by sorrow, and radiant with the glory
of the evening sunlight.
He came towards the little group silently, his footfall making no sound
upon the moss-grown earth. He did not approach quite near, however, in
silence, afraid of startling her, but stopped a little way off, and said
gently,--
"They told me I should most likely find you somewhere about here, with
Lovel."
His wife gave a little cry, and looked up aghast.
"Have you come to take him away from me?" she asked, thinking that her
dreams had been prophetic.
"No, no, I am not going to do that; though you told me he was to be at my
disposal, remember, and I mean to claim him sometimes. I can't allow him
to grow up a stranger to me.--God bless him, how well he is looking! Pray
don't look so frightened," he went on, in an assuring voice, alarmed by
the dead whiteness of Clarissa's face; "I have only come to see my boy
before----. The fact is, I have some thoughts of travelling for a year or
two. There is a rage for going to Africa nowadays, and I am not without
interest in that sort of thing."
Clarissa looked at him wonderingly. This sudden passion for foreign
wanderings seemed to her very strange in him. She had been accustomed
to suppose his mind entirely absorbed by new systems of irrigation, and
model-village building, and the extension of his estate. His very dreams,
she had fancied, were of the hedgerows that bounded his lands--boundaries
that vanished day by day, as the lands widened, with now a whole farm
added, and now a single field. Could he leave Arden, and the kingdom that
he had created for himself, to roam in sandy deserts, and hob-and-nob with
Kaffir chiefs under the tropic stars?
Mr. Granger seated himself upon the timber by his wife's side, and bent
down to look at his son, and to kiss him gently without waking him. After
that fond lingering kiss upon the little one's smooth cheek, he sat for
some minutes in silence, looking at his wife.
It was only her profile he could see; but he saw that she was looking ill,
worse than she had looked when they parted at Ventnor. The sight of the
pale face, with a troubled look about the mouth, touched him keenly. Just
in that moment he forgot that there was such a being as George Fairfax upon
this earth; forgot the sin that his wife had sinned against him; longed to
clasp her to his breast; was only deterred by a kind of awkward shyness--to
which such strong men as he are sometimes liable--from so doing.
"I am sorry to see that you are not looking very well," he said at last,
with supreme stiffness, and with that peculiarly unconciliating air which
an Englishman is apt to put on, when he is languishing to hold out the
olive-branch.
"I have not been very well; but I daresay I shall soon be better, now we
are going to travel."
"Going to travel!"
"Yes, papa has made up his mind to move at last. We go to Cologne
to-morrow. I thought they would have told you that at the house."
"No; I only waited to ask where you--where the boy was to be found. I did
not even stop to see your father."
After this there came a dead silence--a silence that lasted for about five
minutes, during which they heard the faint rustle of the pine branches
stirred ever so lightly by the evening wind. The boy slept on, unconscious
and serene; the mother watching him, and Daniel Granger contemplating both
from under the shadow of his eyebrows.
The silence grew almost oppressive at last, and Mr. Granger was the first
to break it.
"You do not ask me for any news of Arden," he said.
Clarissa blushed, and glanced at him with a little wounded look. It was
hard to be reminded of the paradise from which she had been exiled.
"I--I beg your pardon. I hope everything is going on as you wish; the home
farm, and all that kind of thing. Miss Granger--Sophia--is well, I hope?"
"Sophia is quite well, I believe. I have not seen her since I left
Ventnor."
"She has been away from Arden, then?"
"No; it is I who have not been there. Indeed, I doubt if I shall ever go
there again--without you, Clarissa. The place is hateful to me."
Again and again, with infinite iteration, Daniel Granger had told himself
that reconciliation with his wife was impossible. Throughout his journey
by road and rail--and above all things is a long journey conductive to
profound meditation--he had been firmly resolved to see his boy, and then
go on his way at once, with neither delay nor wavering. But the sight of
that pale pensive face to-night had well-nigh unmanned him. Was this the
girl whose brightness and beauty had been the delight of his life? Alas,
poor child, what sorrow his foolish love had brought upon her! He began
all at once to pity her, to think of her as a sacrifice to her father's
selfishness, his own obstinacy.
"I ought to have taken my answer that day at the Court, when I first told
her my secret," he said to himself. "That look of pained surprise, which
came into her face when I spoke, might surely have been enough for me. Yet
I persisted, and was not man enough to face the question boldly--whether
she had any heart to give me."
Clarissa rose, with the child still in her arms.
"I am afraid the dew is beginning to fall," she said; "I had better take
Lovel home."
"Let me carry him," exclaimed Mr. Granger; and in the next moment the boy
was in his father's strong arms, the flaxen head nestling in the paternal
waistcoat.
"And so you are going to begin your travels to-morrow morning," he said, as
they walked slowly homeward side by side.
"Yes, the train leaves at seven. But you would like to see more of Lovel,
perhaps, having come so far to see him. We can defer our journey for a day
or two."
"You are very good. Yes, I should like you to do that."
"And with regard to what you were saying just now," Clarissa said, in a low
voice, that was not quite steady, "I trust you will not let the memory of
any pain I may have given you influence your future life, or disgust you
with a place to which you were so much attached as I know you were to
Arden. Pray put me out of your thoughts. I am not worthy to be regretted by
you. Our marriage was a sad mistake on your part--a sin upon mine. I know
now that it was so."
"A mistake--a sin! O, Clary, Clary, I could have been so happy, if you had
only loved me a little--if you had only been true to me.
"I never was deliberately false to you. I was very wicked; yes, I
acknowledge that. I did trifle with temptation. I ought to have avoided the
remotest chance of any meeting with George Fairfax. I ought to have told
you the truth, told you all my weakness; but--but I had not the courage to
do that. I went to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard to see my brother."
"Was that honest, Clarissa, to allow me to be introduced to your brother as
a stranger?"
"That was Austin's wish, not mine. He would not let me tell you who he was;
and I was so glad for you to be kind to him, poor fellow! so glad to be
able to see him almost daily; and when the picture was finished, and Austin
had no excuse for coming to us any more, I went to see him very often, and
sometimes met Mr. Fairfax in his painting-room; but I never went with any
deliberate intention of meeting him."
"No," interjected Mr. Granger bitterly; "you only went, knowing that he was
likely to be there!"
"And on that unhappy day when you found me there," Clarissa went on, "I had
gone to see my brother, having no idea that he had left Paris. I wanted to
come away at once; but Mr. Fairfax detained me. I was very angry with him."
"Yes, it appeared so, when he was asking you to run away with him. It is a
hard thing for a man to believe in his wife's honour, when things have come
to such a pass as that, Clarissa."
"I have told you the truth," she answered gravely; "I cannot say any more."
"And the locket--the locket I gave you, which I found on that man's
breast?"
"I gave that locket to my sister-in-law, Bessie Lovel. I wished to give her
something, poor soul; and I had given Austin all my money. I had so many
gifts of yours, Daniel"--that sudden sound of his Christian name sent a
thrill through Mr. Granger's veins--"parting with one of them seemed not to
matter very much."
There was a pause. They were very near the villa by this time. Mr. Granger
felt as if he might never have an opportunity for speaking to his wife
again, if he lost his chance now.
"Clarissa," he said earnestly, "if I could forget all that happened in
Paris, and put it out of my mind as if it had never been, could you forget
it too?"
"With all my heart," she answered.
"Then, my darling, we will begin the world again--we will begin life over
again, Clarissa!"
So they went home together reconciled. And Mr. Lovel, looking up from Aime
Martin's edition of Moliere, saw that what he had anticipated had come to
pass. His policy had proved as successful as it had been judicious. In less
than three months Daniel Granger had surrendered. This was what came of Mr.
Granger's flying visit to his boy.
* * * * *