The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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The drawing-room looking north was rather a dreary apartment, if any
apartment furnished with blue-satin damask and unlimited gilding can be
called dreary. There was splendour, of course, but it was a chilling kind
of splendour. The room was large and square, with two tall wide windows
commanding a view of one of the dullest streets in new Paris--a street at
the end of which workmen were still busy cutting away a hill, the removal
whereof was necessary for the realisation of the Augustan idea of that
archetypal city, which was to be left all marble. Mr. Granger's apartments
were in a corner house, and he had the advantage of this side view. There
was very little of what Mr. Wemmick called "portable property" in this
northern drawing-room. There were blue-satin divans running along the
walls, a couple of blue-satin easy-chairs, an ormolu stand with a monster
Sevres dish for cards, and that was all--a room in which one might,
"receive," but could scarcely live.

The light was capital, Mr. Austin said. He set up his easel, settled the
position of his sister, after a little discussion with Mr. Granger, and
began work. Clarissa's was to be the first portrait. This being arranged,
Mr. Granger departed to write letters, leaving Sophia established, with her
Berlin-wool work, at one of the windows. Clarissa would not, of course,
like to be left _tete-a-tete_ for two or three hours with a strange
painter, Miss Granger opened.

Yes, it was very pleasant to have him there, even though their talk was
restrained by the presence of a third person, and they could only speak of
indifferent things. Perhaps to Austin Lovel himself it was pleasanter to
have Miss Granger there than to be quite alone with his sister. He was very
fond of Clarissa, but there was much in his past life--some things in his
present life even--that would not bear talking of, and he shrank a little
from his sister's tender questioning. Protected by Miss Granger and her
Berlin-wool spaniels, he was quite at his ease, and ran gaily on about all
manner of things as he sketched his outline and set his palette. He gave
the two ladies a lively picture of existing French art, with little
satirical touches here and there. Even Sophia was amused, and blushed to
find herself comparing the social graces of Mr. Austin the painter with
those of Mr. Tillott the curate, very much to the advantage of the
former--blushed to find herself so much interested in any conversation that
was not strictly utilitarian or evangelical in its drift. Once or twice
Austin spoke of his travels, his Australian experiences; and at each
mention, Clarissa looked up eagerly, anxious to hear more. The history of
her brother's past was a blank to her, and she was keenly interested by the
slightest allusion that cast a ray of light upon it. Mr. Austin did not
care, however, to dwell much upon his own affairs. It was chiefly of
other people that he talked. Throughout that first sitting Miss Granger
maintained a dignified formality, tempered by maidenly graciousness.
The young man was amusing, certainly, and it was not often Miss Granger
permitted herself to be amused. She thought Clarissa was too familiar
with him, treated him too much with an air of perfect equality. A man who
painted portraits for hire should be received, Miss Granger thought, as one
would receive a superior kind of bootmaker.

More than once, in fact, in the course of that agreeable morning, Clarissa
had for a moment forgotten that she was talking to Mr. Austin the painter,
and not to her brother Austin Lovel. More than once an unconscious
warmth or softness in her tone had made Miss Granger look up from her
embroidery-frame with the eyes of wonder.

Mr. Granger came back to the drawing-room, having finished his
letter-writing just as the sitting concluded, and, luncheon being announced
at the same time, asked Mr. Austin to stay for that meal. Austin had no
objection to linger in his sister's society. He wanted to know what kind
of man this Daniel Granger was; and perhaps wanted to see what probability
there was of Daniel Granger's wife being able to supply him with money in
the future. Austin Lovel had, from his earliest boyhood, possessed a fatal
capacity for getting rid of money, and for getting into debt; not common
plain-sailing debt, which would lead at the worst to the Bankruptcy Court,
but liability of a more disreputable and perilous character, involving the
terror of disgrace, and entanglements that would have to be unravelled by a
police-magistrate.

Racing debts, gambling debts, and bill-discounting transactions, had been
the agreeable variety of difficulties which had beset Austin Level's
military career; and at the end there had been something--something fully
known to a few only--which had made the immediate sale of his commission
a necessity. He was _allowed_ to sell it; and that was much, his friends
said. If his commanding officer had not been an easy-going kind of man, he
would scarcely have got off so cheaply.

"I wonder how this fellow Granger would treat me, if he knew who I was?" he
thought to himself. "He'd inaugurate our acquaintance by kicking me out of
his house most likely, instead of asking me to luncheon." Notwithstanding
which opinion Mr. Austin sat down to share the sacred bread and salt with
his brother-in-law, and ate a cutlet _a la Maintenon_, and drank half a
bottle of claret, with a perfect enjoyment of the situation. He liked
the idea of being patronised by the man who would not have tolerated his
society for a moment, had he been aware of his identity.

He talked of Parisian life during luncheon, keeping carefully clear of all
subjects which the "young person," as represented by Miss Granger, might
blush to hear; and Mr. Granger, who had only an Englishman's knowledge of
the city, was amused by the pleasant gossip. The meal lasted longer than
usual, and lost all its wonted formality; and the fair Sophia found herself
more and more interested in this fascinating painter, with his brilliant
dark eyes, and sarcastic mouth, and generally agreeable manner. She
sat next him at luncheon, and, when there came a little pause in the
conversation, began to question him about the state of the Parisian poor.
It was very bad, was it not?

Mr. Austin shrugged his shoulders.

"I don't know," he said, "but I don't think it would be possible for a man
to starve to death in Paris under the Imperial regime; and it seems very
easy for an Englishman to do it in Spitalfields or Mile-end New Town. You
don't hear of men and women found dead in their garrets from sheer hunger.
But of course there is a good deal of poverty and squalor to be found in
the city."

And then Mr. Austin launched into a graphic description of some interesting
phases of life among the lower classes, borrowed from a novel that had been
recently delighting the reading public of France, but appropriated with
such an air of reality, that Miss Granger fancied this delightful painter
must spend some considerable part of his existence as a district visitor or
city missionary.

"What a pity that Mr. Tillott has not his persuasive powers!" she thought;
Mr. Tillott's eloquence being, in fact, of a very limited order, chiefly
exhibiting itself in little jerky questions about the spiritual and
temporal welfare of his humble parishioners--questions which, in the
vernacular language of agricultural labourers, "put a chap's back up,
somehow."

"I should like to show Mr. Austin the baby, Daniel," Clarissa said to her
husband shyly, while Miss Granger was keeping Austin hard and fast to the
amelioration of the working classes; "he would make such a lovely picture."

Mr. Granger smiled, a quiet well-satisfied smile. He, the strong man, the
millowner and millionaire, was as weak as the weakest woman in all things
concerning the child of his mature age.

"Yes," he said, with some affectation of indifference; "Lovel would make a
nice picture enough. We'll have him painted if you like, Clary, some day.
Send for him, my dear."

She had her hand upon the bell directly.

"Yes," she cried, "he would make the sweetest picture in the world, and
Austin shall paint him."

The familiar mention of the name Austin, _tout court_, scared Mr. Granger
almost as much as a cannon fired close at his elbow might have done. He
stared at his wife with grave displeasure.

"_Mr_. Austin can paint him some day, if you wish it, Clarissa," he said.

Mrs. Granger blushed crimson; again she remembered that this brother she
loved so dearly was only a strange painter of portraits, whom it behoved
her to treat with only the most formal courtesy. She hated the deception;
and having a strong faith in her husband's generosity, was sorely tempted
to put an end to this acted lie on the spot, and to tell him who his guest
was; but fear of her brother's anger stopped her. She had no right to
betray him; she must wait his permission to tell the secret.

"Even Sophia seems to like him," she thought; "and I don't think Daniel
could help being pleased with him, in spite of anything papa may have said
to his prejudice."

The baby was brought, and, being in a benignant humour, was graciously
pleased to look his brightest and prettiest, and in nurse's phraseology, to
"take to" his unknown uncle. The unknown uncle kissed him affectionately,
and said some civil things about the colour of his eyes, and the plumpness
of his limbs--"quite a Rubens baby," and so on, but did not consider a
boy-baby an especially wonderful creature, having had two boy-babies of his
own, and not having particularly wanted them. He looked upon them rather as
chronic perplexities, like accommodation bills that had matured unawares.

"And this is the heir of Arden," he said to himself, as he looked down at
the fat blue-eyed thing struggling in Clarissa's arms, with that desperate
desire to get nowhere in particular, common to infancy. "So this little
lump of humanity is the future lord of the home that should have been mine.
I don't know that I envy him. Country life and Arden would hardly have
suited me. I think I'd rather have an _entresol_ in the Champs Elysees,
and the run of the boulevards, than the gray old Court and a respectable
position. Unless a man's tastes are 'horsey' or agricultural, country life
must be a bore."

Mr. Austin patted the plump young cheeks without any feeling of enmity.

"Poor little beggar! What ghosts will haunt him in the old rooms by-and-by,
I wonder?" he said to himself, smiling down at the child.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXIV.

AUSTIN'S PROSPECTS.

The picture made rapid progress. For his very life--though the finishing of
his work had been the signal of his doom, and the executioner waiting to
make a sudden end of him when the last touch was laid upon the canvas,
Austin Lovel could not have painted slowly. The dashing offhand brush was
like a young thoroughbred, that could not be pulled, let the jockey saw at
his mouth as he might. And yet the painter would have liked much to prolong
this easy intercourse with his sister. But after Clarissa's portrait was
finished, there was Miss Granger to be painted; and then they would want a
picture of that unapproachable baby, no doubt; and after that, perhaps,
Mr. Granger might consent to have his massive features perpetuated. Austin
considered that the millionaire should be good for three hundred guineas or
so; he had promised two hundred, and the painter was spending the money by
anticipation as fast as he could.

He came every other morning to the Rue de Morny, and generally stayed to
luncheon; and those mornings spent in his company were very pleasant to
Clarissa--as pleasant as anything could be which involved deception; there
was always the sting of that fact. Miss Granger was rarely absent for ten
minutes together on these occasions; it was only some lucky chance which
took her from the room to fetch some Berlin wool, or a forgotten skein of
floss silk for the perennial spaniels, and afforded the brother and sister
an opportunity for a few hurried words. The model villagers almost faded
out of Miss Granger's mind in this agreeable society. She found herself
listening to talk about things which were of the earth earthy, and was fain
to confess herself interested in the conversation. She dressed as
carefully to receive the painter as if he had been, to use her particular
phraseology, "a person in her own sphere;" and Mr. Tillott would have
thought his chances of success at a very low point, if he could have seen
her in Austin Lovel's presence.

That gentleman himself was not slow to perceive the impression he had made.

"It's rather a pity I'm married, isn't it, Clary?" he said to his sister
one day, when Sophia, whose habits had not been quite so methodical of
late, had gone in search of some white beads for the spaniels, some of
which were of a beady nature. "It would have been a great chance for me,
wouldn't it?"

What do you mean, Austin?"

"Miss Granger," answered the painter, without looking up from his work, "I
think she rather likes me, do you know; and I suppose her father will give
her fifty thousand or so when she marries, in spite of young Lovel. He
seems to have no end of money. It would have been an uncommonly good thing,
wouldn't it?"

"I don't think it's any use talking of it, Austin, however good it might
have been; and I don't think Sophia would have suited you as a wife."

"Not suited me--bosh! Any woman with fifty thousand pounds would have
suited me. However, you're right--there's no good in talking of _that_. I'm
booked. Poor little woman, she's a good wife to me; but it's rather a
pity. You don't know how many chances I might have had but for that
entanglement."

"I wish, Austin, for your poor wife's sake, you'd let me tell my husband
who you are. This concealment seems so hard upon her, as well as a kind of
wrong to Daniel. I can do so little to serve her, and I might do so much,
if I could own her as my sister-in-law. I don't think Daniel could help
liking you, if he knew everything."

"Drop that, if you please, Clarissa," said Austin, with a darkening
countenance. "I have told you that your husband and I can never be friends,
and I mean it. I don't want to be degraded by any intercession of yours.
_That's_ a little too much even for me. It suits my purpose well enough to
accept Mr. Granger's commissions; and of course it's very agreeable to see
you; but the matter must end there."

Miss Granger returned at this moment; but had she stayed away for an hour,
Clarissa could scarcely have pressed the question farther. In the old days
when they had been boy and girl together, Austin seven years her senior,
Clarissa had always been just a little afraid of her brother; and she was
afraid of him now.

The very fact of his somewhat dependent position made her more fearful
of offending him. She was anxious about his future anxious too about his
present mode of life; but she dared not question closely upon either
subject. Once, when she had ventured to ask him about his plan of life, he
answered in his careless off-hand way,--

"My dearest Clary, I have no plans. I like Paris; and if I am not
particularly successful here, I don't suppose I should be more successful
anywhere else. I mean to stay here as long as I can hold out. I know a good
many people, and sometimes get a stroke of luck."

"But you are ruining your health. Austin, I fear, with--late hours,
and--and--parties."

"Who told you I keep late hours? The Parisians, as a rule, don't go to bed
at curfew. I don't suppose I'm worse than my neighbours. If I didn't go
out, Clary, and keep myself in the minds of my patrons, I might rot in a
garret. You don't know how soon a man is forgotten--even a man who has made
his mark more positively than I have; and then you see, my dear, I like
society, and have no taste for the domestic hearth, except for variety,
once in a way, like dining on a bouillon after a week's high feeding. Yes,
come what may, I shall stay in Paris--as long as I can."

There was something in the tone of the last words that alarmed Clarissa.

"You--you--are not in debt, are you, Austin?" she asked timidly.

"No--no--I'm not in debt; but I owe a good deal of money."

Clarissa looked puzzled.

"That is to say, I have no vulgar debts--butcher and baker, and so on; but
there are two or three things, involving some hundreds, which I shall have
to settle some of these days or else----"

"Or else what, Austin?"

"Cut Paris, Clary, that's all."

Clarissa turned pale. Austin began to whistle a popular _cafe-chantant_
air, as he bent over his palette, squeezing little dabs of Naples yellow
out of a leaden tube. Some hundreds!--that was a vague phrase, which might
mean a great deal of money; it was a phrase which alarmed Clarissa; but she
was much more alarmed by the recklessness of her brother's tone.

"But if you owe money, you must pay it, Austin," she said; "you can't leave
a place owing money."

The painter shrugged his shoulders.

"It's not an agreeable thing to do," he said, "but it has been done. Of the
two, it's pleasanter than staying in a place where you owe money."

"Of course I shall do all I can to help you, dear," said his sister. "There
will be a hundred and twenty-five pounds due to me at Christmas, and I'll
give you the hundred."

"You're a first-rate girl, Clary, but I think that fellow Granger might
give you more pin-money. Five hundred a year is a beggarly pittance for a
man of his means."

"It is more than I fancied I could ever want; and Daniel allows papa five
hundred a year, you know Austin."

"Humph! that makes a thousand--no great things for a millionaire. A pretty
girl, married to a man of that stamp, ought to have unlimited command of
money," replied her brother. "It's the only compensation," he said to
himself afterwards.

"I don't like to hear you say these things, Austin. My husband is very kind
to me. I'm afraid I'm not half as grateful as I ought to be."

"Gratitude be----!" He did not finish the ejaculation.

"Gratitude from a Lovel of twenty to a Granger of fifty! My dear Clary,
that's too good a joke! The man is well enough--better than I expected to
find him: but such a girl as you is a prize for which such a man could not
pay too highly."

It was rarely they had the opportunity for so long a conversation as this;
and Austin was by no means sorry that it was so. He had very pressing need
of all the money his sister could give him; but he did not care to enter
into explanations about the state of his affairs.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXV.

SISTERS-IN-LAW.

Clarissa did not forget the existence of the poor little wife in the Rue du
Chevalier Bayard; and on the very first afternoon which she had to herself,
Mr. Granger having gone to see some great cattle-fair a few miles from
Paris, and Miss Granger being afflicted with a headache, she took courage
to order her coachman to drive straight to the house where her brother
lived.

"It is much better than making a mystery of it," she thought.

"The man will think that I have come to see a milliner or some one of that
kind."

The footman would fain have escorted Mrs. Granger the way she should go,
and held himself in readiness to accompany her into the house; but she
waved him aside on the threshold of the darksome _porte-cochere_, out of
which no coach ever came nowadays.

"I shan't want you, Trotter," she said. "Tell Jarvis to walk the horses
gently up and down. I shall not be very long."

The man bowed and obeyed, wondering what business his mistress could have
in such a dingy street, "on the Surrey side of the water, too," as he said
to his comrade.

Austin was out, but Mrs. Lovel was at home, and it was Mrs. Lovel whom
Clarissa had come chiefly to see. The same tawdrily-dressed maid admitted
her to the same untidy sitting-room, a shade more untidy to-day, where
Bessie Lovel was dozing in an easy-chair by the fire, while the two boys
played and squabbled in one of the windows.

Mrs. Granger, entering suddenly, radiant in golden-brown moire and sables,
seemed almost to dazzle the eyes of Austin's wife, who had not seen much
of the brighter side of existence Her life before her marriage had been
altogether sordid and shabby, brightness or luxury of any kind for her
class being synonymous with vice; and Bessie Stanford the painter's model
had never been vicious. Her life since her marriage had been a life of
trouble and difficulty, with only occasional glimpses of spurious kind of
brilliancy. She lived outside her husband's existence, as it were, and felt
somehow that she was only attached to him by external links, as a dog might
have been. He had a certain kind of affection for her, was conscious of
her fidelity, and grateful for her attachment; and there an end. Sympathy
between them there was none; nor had he ever troubled himself to cultivate
her tastes, or attempted in the smallest degree to bring her nearer to him.
To Bessie Lovel, therefore, this sister of her husband's, in all the glory
of her fresh young beauty and sumptuous apparel, seemed a creature of
another sphere, something to be gazed upon almost in fear and trembling.

"I beg your parding!" she faltered, rubbing her eyes. She was apt, when
agitated, to fall back upon the pronunciation of her girlhood, before
Austin Lovel had winced and ejaculated at her various mutilations of the
language. "I was just taking forty winks after my bit of dinner."

"I am so sorry I disturbed you," said Clarissa, in her gracious way. "You
were tired, I daresay."

"O, pray don't mention it! I'm sure I feel it a great compliment your
comin'. It must seem a poor place to you after your beautiful house in the
Roo de Morny. Austin told me where you lived; and I took the liberty of
walking that way one evening with a lady friend. I'm sure the houses are
perfect palaces."

"I wish you could come to my house as my sister-in-law ought," replied
Clarissa. "I wanted to confide in my husband, to bring about a friendship
between him and my brother, if I could; but Austin tells me that is
impossible. I suppose he knows best. So, you see, I am obliged to act in
this underhand way, and to come to see you by stealth, as it were."

"It's very good of you to come at all," answered the wife with a sigh. "It
isn't many of Austin's friends take any notice of me. I'm sure most of 'em
treat me as if I was a cipher. Not that I mind that, provided he could
get on; but it's dinners there, and suppers here, and never no orders for
pictures, as you may say. He had next to nothing to do all the autumn;
Paris being so dull, you know, with all the high people away at the sea. He
painted Madame Caballero for nothing, just to get himself talked of among
her set; and if it wasn't for Mr. Granger's orders, I don't know where
we should be.--Come and speak to your aunt, Henery and Arthur, like good
boys."

This to the olive-branches in the window, struggling for the possession of
a battered tin railway-engine with a crooked chimney.

"She ain't my aunt," cried the eldest hope. "I haven't got no aunt."

"Yes, this is your aunt Clarissa. You've heard papa talk of her."

"Yes, I remember," said the boy sharply. "I remember one night when he
talked of Arden Court and Clarissa, and thumped his forehead on the
mantelpiece like that;" and the boy pantomimed the action of despair.

"He has fits of that kind sometimes," said Bessie Lovel, "and goes on about
having wasted his life, and thrown away his chances, and all that. He used
to go on dreadful when we were in Australia, till he made me that nervous I
didn't know what to do, thinking he'd go and destroy himself some day. But
he's been better since we've been in Paris. The gaiety suits him. He says
he can't live without society."

Clarissa sighed. Little as she knew of her brother's life, she knew enough
to be very sure that love of society had been among the chief causes of his
ruin. She took one of her nephews on her lap, and talked to him, and let
him play with the trinkets on her chain. Both the children were bright and
intelligent enough, but had that air of premature sharpness which comes
from constant intercourse with grown-up people, and an early initiation in
the difficulties of existence.

She could only stay half an hour with her sister-in-law; but she could see
that her visit of duty had gratified the poor little neglected wife. She
had not come empty-handed, but had brought an offering for Bessie Lovel
which made the tired eyes brighten with something of their old light--a
large oval locket of massive dead gold, with a maltese cross of small
diamonds upon it; one of the simplest ornaments which Daniel Granger had
given her, and which she fancied herself justified in parting with. She had
taken it to a jeweller in the Palais Royal, who had arranged a lock of her
dark-brown hair, with a true-lover's knot of brilliants, inside the locket,
and had engraved the words "From Clarissa" on the back.