The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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"Really glad! Is there any one in the world could make me gladder?"

"I am so happy to hear that. I was almost afraid you had half forgotten me.
Your letters were so few, and so short."

"Letters!" cried Austin Lovel, with a laugh; "I never was much of a hand at
letter-writing; and then I hadn't anything particularly pleasant to write
about. You mustn't gauge my affection by the length of my letters, Clary.
And then I have to work deucedly hard when I am at home, and have very
little time for scribbling."

Clarissa glanced round the room while he was speaking. Every detail in
her brother's surroundings had an interest for her. Here, as in the
drawing-room, there was an untidy air about everything--a want of harmony
in all the arrangements. There were Flemish carved-oak cabinets, and big
Japan vases; a mantelpiece draped with dusty crimson velvet, a broken
Venetian glass above it, and a group of rusty-looking arms on each side;
long limp amber curtains to the three tall windows, with festooned valances
in an advanced state of disarrangement and dilapidation. There were some
logs burning on the hearth, a pot of chocolate simmering among the ashes,
and breakfast laid for one person upon a little table by the fire--the
remnant of a perigord pie, flanked by a stone bottle of curacoa.

She looked at her brother with anxious scrutinising eyes. No, George
Fairfax had not deceived her. He had the look of a man who was going the
wrong way. There were premature lines across the forehead, and about the
dark brilliant eyes; a nervous expression in the contracted lips. It was
the face of a man who burns the candle of life at both ends. Late hours,
anxiety, dissipation of all kinds, had set their fatal seal upon his
countenance.

"Dear Austin, you are as handsome as ever; but I don't think you are
looking well," she said tenderly.

"Don't look so alarmed, my dear girl," he answered lightly; "I am well
enough; that is to say, I am never ill, never knock under, or strike work.
There are men who go through life like that--never ill, and never exactly
well. I rarely get up in the morning without a headache; but I generally
brighten considerably as the sun goes down. We move with a contrary motion,
Helios and I."

"I am afraid you work too hard, and sit up too late."

"As to working hard, my dear, that is a necessity; and going out every
night is another necessity. I get my commissions in society."

"But you must have a reputation by this time, Austin; and commissions would
come to you, I should think, without your courting them."

"No, child; I have only a reputation _de salon_, I am only known in a
certain set. And a man must live, you see. To a man himself that is the
primary necessity. Your _generosity_ set me on my legs last year, and
tempted me to take this floor, and make a slight advance movement
altogether. I thought better rooms would bring me better work--sitters for
a new style of cabinet-portraits, and so on. But so far the rooms have been
comparatively a useless extravagance. However, I go out a good deal, and
meet a great many influential people; so I can scarcely miss a success in
the end."

"But if you sacrifice your health in the meantime, Austin."

"Sacrifice my health! That's just like a woman. If a man looks a trifle
pale, and dark under the eyes, she begins to fancy he's dying. My poor
little wife takes just the same notions into her head, and would like me to
stop at home every evening to watch her darn the children's stockings."

"I think your wife is quite right to be anxious, Austin; and it would be
much better for you to stay at home, even to see stockings darned. It must
be very dull for her too when you are out, poor soul."

Mr. Lovel shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating air.

"_C'est son metier,_" he said. "I suppose she does find it rather dismal at
times; but there are the children, you see--it is a woman's duty to find
all-sufficient society in her children. And now, Clary, tell me about
yourself. You have made a brilliant match, and are mistress of Arden Court.
A strange stroke of fortune that. And you are happy, I hope, my dear?"

"I ought to be very happy," Clarissa answered, with a faint sigh, thinking
perhaps that, bright as her life might be, it was not quite the fulfilment
of her vague girlish dreams--not quite the life she had fancied lying
before her when the future was all unknown; "I ought to be very happy and
very grateful to Providence; and, O Austin, my boy is the sweetest darling
is the world!"

Austin Lovel looked doubtful for a moment, half inclined to think "my boy"
might stand for Daniel Granger.

"You must see him, Austin," continued his sister; "he is nearly ten months
old now, and such a beauty!"

"O, the baby!" said Austin, rather coolly. "I daresay he's a nice little
chap, and I should like to see him very much, if it were practicable. But
how about Granger himself? He is a good sort of fellow, I hope."

"He is all goodness to me," Clarissa answered gravely, casting down her
eyes as she spoke; and Austin Lovel knew that the marriage which had given
his sister Arden Court had been no love-match.

They talked for some time; talked of the old days when they had been
together at Arden; but of the years that made the story of his life, Austin
Lovel spoke very little.

"I have always been an unlucky beggar," he said, in his careless way.
"There's very little use in going over old ground. Some men never get
fairly on the high-road of life. They spend their existence wading across
swamps, and scrambling through bushes, and never reach any particular point
at the end. My career has been that sort of thing."

"But you are so young, Austin," pleaded Clarissa, "and may do so much yet."

He shook his head with an air of hopelessness that was half indifference.

"My dear child, I am neither a Raffaelle nor a Dore," he said, "and I need
be one or the other to redeem my past But so long as I can pick up enough
to keep the little woman yonder and the bairns, and get a decent cigar and
an honest bottle of Bordeaux, I'm content. Ambition departed from me ten
years ago."

"O Austin, I can't bear to hear you say that! With your genius you ought to
do so much. I wish you would be friends with my husband, and that he could
be of use to you."

"My dear Clarissa, put that idea out of your mind at once and for ever.
There can be no such thing as friendship between Mr. Granger and me. Do
you remember what Samuel Johnson said about some one's distaste for clean
linen--'And I, sir, have no passion for it!' I confess to having no passion
for respectable people. I am very glad to hear Mr. Granger is a good
husband; but he's much too respectable a citizen for my acquaintance."

Clarissa sighed; there was a prejudice here, even if Daniel Granger could
have been induced to think kindly of his brother-in-law.

"Depend upon it, the Prodigal Son had a hard time of it after the fatted
calf had been eaten, Clary, and wished himself back among the swine. Do you
think, however lenient his father might be, that his brother and the
friends of the family spared him? His past was thrown in his face, you may
be sure. I daresay he went back to his evil ways after a year or so. Good
people maintain their monopoly of virtue by making the repentant sinner's
life a burden to him."

Clarissa spoke of his wife presently.

"You must introduce me to her, Austin. She took me for a stranger just now,
and I did not undeceive her."

"Yes I'll introduce you. There's not much in common between you; but she'll
be very proud of your acquaintance. She looks upon my relations as an
exalted race of beings, and myself as a kind of fallen angel. You mustn't
be too hard upon her, Clary, if she seems not quite the sort of woman you
would have chosen for your sister-in-law. She has been a good wife to me,
and she was a good daughter to her drunken old father--one of the greatest
scamps in London, who used to get his bread--or rather his gin--by standing
for Count Ugolino and Cardinal Wolsey, or anything grim and gray and
aquiline-nosed in the way of patriarchs. The girl Bessie was a model too in
her time; and it was in Jack Redgrave's painting-room--the pre-Raphaelite
fellow who paints fearfully and wonderfully made women with red hair and
angular arms--I first met her. Jack and I were great chums at that time--it
was just after I sold out--and I used to paint at his rooms. I was going in
for painting just then with a great spurt, having nothing but my brush to
live upon. You can guess the rest. As Bessie was a very pretty girl, and
neither she nor I had a sixpence wherewith to bless ourselves, of course
we fell in love with each other. Poor little thing, how pretty she used
to look in those days, standing on Jack's movable platform, with her hair
falling loose about her face, and a heap of primroses held up in her
petticoat!--such a patient plaintive look in the sweet little mouth, as
much as to say, 'I'm very tired of standing here; but I'm only a model, to
be hired for eighteenpence an hour; go on smoking your cigars, and talking
your slangy talk about the turf and the theatres, gentlemen. I count for
nothing.' Poor little patient soul! she was so helpless and so friendless,
Clary. I think my love for her was something like the compassion one feels
for some young feeble bird that has fallen out of its nest. So we were
married one morning; and for some time lived in lodgings at Putney, where
I used to suffer considerable affliction from Count Ugolino and two bony
boys, Bessie's brothers, who looked as if the Count had been acting up
to his character with too great a fidelity. Ugolino himself would come
prowling out of a Saturday afternoon to borrow the wherewithal to pay his
week's lodging, lest he should be cast out into the streets at nightfall;
and it was a common thing for one of the bony boys to appear at
breakfast-time with a duplicate of his father's coat, pledged over-night
for drink, and without the means of redeeming which he could not pursue his
honourable vocation. In short, I think it was as much the affliction of the
Ugolino family as my own entanglements that drove me to seek my fortunes on
the other side of the world."

Austin Lovel opened one of the doors, and called his wife "Come here,
Bessie; I've a pleasant surprise for you."

Mrs. Lovel appeared quickly in answer to this summons. She had changed her
morning dress for a purple silk, which was smartly trimmed, but by no means
fresh, and she had dressed her hair, and refreshed her complexion by a
liberal application of violet powder. She had a look which can only be
described as "flashy"--a look that struck Clarissa unpleasantly, in spite
of herself.

Her expressions of surprise did not sound quite so natural as they might
have done--for she had been listening at the folding-doors during a
considerable part of the interview; but she seemed really delighted by Mrs.
Granger's condescension, and she kissed that lady with much affection.

"I'm sure I do feel proud to know any relation of Austin's," she said, "and
you most of all, who have been so kind to him. Heaven knows what would have
become of us last winter, if it hadn't been for your generosity."

Clarissa laid her hand upon Bessie Lovel's lips.

"You mustn't talk of generosity between my brother and me," she said; "all
I have in the world is at his service. And now let me see my nephews,
please; and then I must run away."

The nephews were produced; the boy Clarissa had seen, and another of
smaller growth--pale-faced, bright-eyed little fellows; They too had been
subjected to the infliction of soap-and-water and hair-brushes, clean
pinafores, and so on, since Mrs. Granger's arrival.

She knelt down and kissed them both, with real motherly tenderness,
thinking of her own darling, and the difference between his fortunes and
theirs; and then, after a warm caress, she slipped a napoleon into each
little warm hand, "to buy toys," and rose to depart.

"I must hurry away now, Austin," she said; "but I shall come again very
soon, if I may. Good-bye, dear, and God bless you."

The embrace that followed was a very fervent one. It had been sweet to meet
again after so many years, and it was hard to leave him so soon--to leave
him with the conviction that his life was a wreck. But Clarissa had no
time to linger. The thought of the baby in the Luxembourg Gardens had been
distracting her for ever so long. These stolen meetings must needs be
short.

She looked at her watch when she got back to the street, and found, to her
horror, that she had been very nearly an hour away from the nurse and her
charge. The carriage was waiting at the gate, and she had to encounter the
full fire of her servants' gaze as she crossed the road and went into the
gardens. Yes, there was the baby's blue-velvet pelisse resplendent at the
end of an avenue, Clarissa walked quickly to meet him.

"My darling!" she cried. "Has he been waiting for his mamma? I hope he has
not been tired of the gardens, nurse?"

"Yes, ma'am, he have been tired," replied Mrs. Brobson, with an outraged
air. "There ain't much in these gardens to keep a baby of his age amused
for an hour at a stretch; and in a east wind too! It's right down cutting
at that corner."

"Why didn't you take him home in the carriage, nurse? It would have been
better than running any risk of his catching cold."

"What, and leave you without a conveyance, ma'am? I couldn't have done
that!"

"I was detained longer than I expected to stay. O, by the bye, you need not
mention to Miss Granger that I have been making a call. The people I have
been to see are--are in humble circumstances; and I don't want her to know
anything about it."

"I hope I know my duty, ma'am," replied Mrs. Brobson stiffly. That hour's
parading in the gardens, without any relief from her subordinate, had
soured her temper, and inclined her to look with unfavourable eyes upon the
conduct of her mistress. Clarissa felt that she had excited the suspicion
of her servant, and that all her future meetings with her brother would
involve as much plotting and planning as would serve for the ripening of a
political conspiracy.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXIII.

ONLY A PORTRAIT-PAINTER.

While Clarissa was pondering on that perplexing question, how she was to
see her brother frequently without Mr. Granger's knowledge, fortune had
favoured her in a manner she had never anticipated. After what Mr. Fairfax
had said to her about Austin Lovel's "set," the last thing she expected
was to meet her brother in society--that fast Bohemian world in which she
supposed him to exist, seemed utterly remote from the faultless circle
of Daniel Granger's acquaintance. It happened, however, that one of the
dearest friends to whom Lady Laura Armstrong had introduced her sweet
Clarissa was a lady of the Leo-Hunter genus--a certain Madame Caballero,
_nee_ Bondichori, a little elderly Frenchwoman, with sparkling black eyes
and inexhaustible vivacity; the widow of a Portuguese wine-merchant; a lady
whose fortune enabled her to occupy a first floor in one of the freestone
palaces of the Champs Elysees, to wear black velvet and diamonds in
perpetuity, and to receive a herd of small lions and a flock of admiring
nobodies twice a-week. The little widow prided herself on her worship
of genius. All members of the lion tribe came alike to her: painters,
sculptors, singers; actors, and performers upon every variety of known
and unknown musical instruments; budding barristers, who had won forensic
laurels by the eloquent defence of some notorious criminal; homoeopathic
doctors, lady doctresses, or lawyeresses, or deaconesses, from America; and
pretty women who had won a kind of renown by something special in the way
of eyebrows, or arms, or shoulders.

To these crowded saloons Mr. Granger brought his wife and daughter one
evening. They found a great many people assembled in three lofty rooms,
hung with amber satin, in the remotest and smallest of which apartments
Madame Caballero made tea _a l'anglaise_, for her intimates; while, in the
largest, some fearful and wonderful instrumental music was going on, with
the very smallest possible amount of attention from the audience. There was
a perpetual buzz of conversation; and there was a considerable sprinkling
of curious-looking people; weird men with long unkempt hair, strong-minded
women, who counterbalanced these in a manner by wearing their hair
preternaturally short. Altogether, the assembly was an usual one; but
Madame Caballero's guests seemed to enjoy themselves very much. Their good
spirits may have been partly due to the fact that they had the pleasing
anticipation of an excellent supper, furnished with all the choicest
dainties that Chevet can provide; for Madame Caballero's receptions were
of a substantial order, and she owed a good deal of her popularity to the
profusion that distinguished the commissariat department.

Mr. and Mrs. Granger made their way to the inner room by and by. It was the
prettiest room of the three, with a great semi-circular window overlooking
nothing particular in the daytime, but making a handsome amber-hung recess
at night. Here there was a sea-coal fire _a l'anglaise_, and only a subdued
glimmering of wax candles, instead of the broad glare in the larger
saloons. Here, too were to be found the choicest of Madame Caballero's
guests; a cabinet minister, an ambassador, a poet of some standing, and one
of the most distinguished soprano's of the season, a fair-haired German
girl, with great pathetic blue eyes.

Even in this society Madame Caballero was rejoiced to see her sweet Mrs.
Granger and her charming Miss Granger, who was looking unutterably stiff,
in mauve silk and white lace. The lady and her friends had been talking of
some one as the Grangers entered, talking rapturously.

"_J'en raffole!_" exclaimed Madame; "such a charming young man, gifted with
talents of the most original order."

The ambassador was looking at a portrait--the likeness of Madame Caballero
herself--a mere sketch in oils, with a mark of the brush upon it, but
remarkable for the _chic_ and daring of the painter's style, and for that
idealised resemblance which is always so agreeable to the subject.

Clarissa's heart gave a little throb. The picture was like one she had seen
on the easel in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard.

"_Mais c'est charmant!_" exclaimed the ambassador; and the adjective was
echoed in every key by the rest of the little coterie.

"I expect him here this evening," said Madame; "and I shall be very much
gratified if you will permit me to present him to your excellency."

The ambassador bowed. "Any _protegee_ of Madame's," he said, and so on.

Mr. Granger, who was really a judge of art, fastened on to the picture
immediately.

"There's something fresh in the style, Clary," he said. "I should like this
man to paint your portrait. What's the signature? Austin! That's hardly a
French name, I should think--eh, Madame Caballero?"

"No," replied Madame; "Mr. Austin is an Englishman. I shall be charmed if
you will allow him to paint Mrs. Granger; and I'm sure he will be delighted
to have such a subject."

There was a good deal of talk about Mr. Austin's painting, and art in
general. There were some half dozen pictures of the modern French school
in this inner room, which helped to sustain the conversation. Mr. Granger
talked very fair French, of a soundly grammatical order; and Clarissa's
tongue ran almost as gaily as in her schoolgirl days at Belforet. She was
going to see her brother--to see him shining in good society, and not in
the pernicious "set" of which George Fairfax had spoken. The thought was
rapture to her. They might have a few minutes' talk to themselves, perhaps,
before the evening was over. That interview in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard
had been so sadly brief, and her heart too full for many words.

Austin Lovel came in presently, looking his handsomest, in his careful
evening-dress, with a brilliant light in his eyes, and that appearance of
false brightness which is apt to distinguish the man who is burning the
candle of life at both ends. Only by just the faintest elevation of his
eyebrows did he betray his surprise as he looked at his sister; and his
air, on being presented to her a few moments afterwards, was perfect in its
serene unconsciousness.

Mr. Granger talked to him of his picture pleasantly enough, but very much
as he would have talked to his architect, or to one of his clerks in the
great Bradford establishment. There was a marked difference between
the tone of the rich English trader and the German ambassador, when he
expressed himself on the subject of Mr. Austin's talent; but then the
Englishman intended to give the painter a commission, and the German did
not.

"I should like you to paint my wife--and--and--my daughter," said Mr.
Granger, throwing in Sophia as an after-thought. It would be only civil to
have his daughter's portrait painted, he thought.

Mr. Austin bowed. "I shall be most happy," he said. Clarissa's eyes
sparkled with delight. Sophia Granger saw the pleased look, and thought,
"O, the vanity of these children of perdition!" But she did not offer any
objection to the painting of her own likeness.

"When shall we begin?" asked Mr. Granger.

"My time is entirely at your disposal."

"In that case, the sooner the thing is done the better. My wife cannot come
to your studio--she has so many claims upon her time--but that would make
no difficulty, I suppose?"

"Not at all. I can paint Mrs. Granger in her own rooms as well as in mine,
if the light will serve."

"One of our drawing-rooms faces the north," answered Mr. Granger, "and
the windows are large--larger than I like. Any loss of time which you may
suffer in accommodating Mrs. Granger must, of course, be considered in the
price of your pictures."

"I have only one price for my pictures," replied Mr. Austin, with a
loftiness that astonished his patron. "I charge fifty guineas for a
portrait of that kind--whether it is painted for a duke or a grocer in the
Rue St. Honore."

"I will give you a hundred guineas for each of the pictures, if they are
successes," said Mr. Granger. "If they are failures, I will give you your
own price, and make you a present of the canvasses."

"I am not a stoic, and have no objection to accept a premium of a hundred
guineas from so distinguished a capitalist as Mr. Granger," returned Austin
Lovel, smiling. "I don't think Mrs. Granger's portrait will be a failure,"
he added confidently, with a little look at Clarissa.

Sophia Granger saw the look, and resented it. The painter had said nothing
of her portrait. It was of Clarissa's only that he thought. It was a very
small thing; but when her father's wife was concerned, small things were
great in the eyes of Miss Granger.

There was no opportunity for confidential talk between Austin Lovel and his
sister that evening; but Clarissa went home happy in the expectation of
seeing her brother very often in the simplest, easiest way. The portraits
would take some time to paint, of course; indeed Austin might make the
business last almost as long as he liked.

It was rather hard, however, to have to discuss her brother's merits with
Mr. and Miss Granger as if he had been a stranger; and Clarissa had to do
this going home in the carriage that night, and at breakfast next morning.
The young man was handsome, Mr. Granger remarked, but had rather a worn
look--a dissipated look, in point of fact. That sort of people generally
were dissipated.

Mrs. Granger ventured to say that she did not think Mr. Austin looked
dissipated--a little worn, perhaps, but nothing more; and that might be the
effect of hard work.

"My dear Clary, what can you know of the physiology of dissipation? I
tell you that young man is dissipated. I saw him playing _ecarte_ with
a Frenchman just before we left Madame Caballero's; and, unless I am
profoundly mistaken, the man is a gambler."

Clarissa shuddered. She could not forget what George Fairfax had said to
her about her brother's ways, nor the fact that her remittances had seemed
of so little use to him. He seemed in good repute too, and talked of fifty
guineas for a picture with the utmost coolness. He must have earned a good
deal of money, and the money must have gone somewhere. In all the details
of his home there was evidence of extravagance in the past and poverty in
the present.

He came at eleven o'clock on the second morning after Madame Caballero's
reception; came in a hired carriage, with his easel and all the
paraphernalia of his art. Mr. Granger had made a point of being present at
this first sitting, much to the discomfiture of Clarissa, who was yearning
for a long uninterrupted talk with her brother. Even when Mr. Granger
was absent, there would be Miss Granger, most likely, she thought, with
vexation; and, after all, these meetings with Austin would be only half
meetings. It would be pleasant only to see him, to hear his voice; but she
was longing to talk freely of the past, to give him counsel for the future.