The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

M >> M. E. Braddon >> The Lovels of Arden

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41

When the three portraits were finished, Mr. Granger expressed himself
highly content with them, and gave Austin Lovel a cheque for three hundred
pounds; a sum which, in the painter's own words, ought to have set him
upon his legs. Unhappily, Austin's legs, from a financial point of view,
afforded only the most insecure basis--were always slipping away from him,
in fact. Three hundred pounds in solid cash did not suffice for even his
most pressing needs. He saw nothing before him but the necessity of an
ignominious flight from Paris. It was only a question of when and where he
should fly; there was no question as to the fact.

He did not care to tell Clarissa this, however. It would be time enough
when the thing was done, or just about to be done. All his life he had been
in the habit of shirking unpleasant subjects, and he meant to shirk this as
long as he could. He might have borrowed money of George Fairfax, no doubt;
but unfortunately he was already in that gentleman's debt, for money
borrowed during the previous winter; so he scarcely cared to make any new
appeal in that quarter.

So the unsubstantial Bohemian existence went on; and to Clarissa, for
whom this Bohemia was an utterly new world, it seemed the only life worth
living. Her brother had been pleased to discover the ripening of her
artistic powers, and had given her some rough-and-ready lessons in the art
she loved so well. Sometimes, on a bright wintry morning, when Mr. Granger
was engaged out of doors, she brought her portfolio to the Rue du Chevalier
Bayard, and painted there for an hour or so. At first this had been a
secure hour for unreserved talk with her brother; but after she had been
there two or three mornings in this way, Mr. Fairfax seemed mysteriously
aware of her movements, and happened to drop in while she was taking her
lesson.

It is not to be supposed that Clarissa could be so much away from home
without attracting the attention of Miss Granger. Whether that young lady
was at home or abroad, she contrived to keep herself always well informed
as to the movements of her stepmother. She speculated, and wondered, and
puzzled herself a good deal about these frequent outings; and finding
Clarissa singularly reticent upon the subject, grew daily more curious and
suspicious; until at last she could endure the burden of this perplexity no
longer, without some relief in words, and was fain to take the judicious
Warman into her confidence.

"Has Mrs. Granger been out again this afternoon, Warman?" she asked one
evening, when the handmaiden was dressing her hair for dinner.

"Yes, miss. The carriage came home just now. I heard it Mrs. Granger went
out almost directly after you did."

"I wonder she can care to waste so much time in calls," said Sophia.

"Yes, miss, it is odd; and almost always the same place too, as you may
say. But I suppose Mrs. Granger was intimate with Mr. and Mrs. Austin
before her marriage."

"Mr. and Mrs. Austin! What do you mean, Warman?"

"Lor', miss, I thought you would know where she went, as a matter of
course. It seems only natural you should. I've heard Jarvis mention it at
supper. Jarvis has his meals at _our_ table, you know, miss. 'We've been
to the Rue du Cavalier Barnard again to-day,' he says, 'which I suppose
is French for Barnard's-inn. Missus and them Austins must be very thick.'
Jarvis has no manners, you know, miss; and that's just his uncultivated way
of speaking. But from what I've heard him remark, I'm sure Mrs. Granger
goes to call upon the Austins as much as three times a week, and seldom
stops less than an hour."

A deadly coldness had crept over Sophia Granger--a cold, blank feeling,
which had never come upon her until that moment. He had a wife, then, that
dashing young painter with the brilliant brown eyes--the only man who had
ever aroused the faintest interest in her well-regulated soul. He was
married, and any vague day-dream with which she had interwoven his image
was the merest delusion and phantasmagoria. She was unspeakably angry
with herself for this unworthy weakness. A painter--a person paid by her
father--something less than a curate--if it was possible for any creature
to seem less than Mr. Tillott in Sophia's estimation. He was a married
man--a base impostor, who had sailed under false colours--a very pirate.
All those graceful airy compliments, those delicate attentions, which
had exercised such a subtle influence over her narrow mind--had, indeed,
awakened in her something that was almost sentiment--were worse than
meaningless, were the wiles of an adventurer trading on her folly.

"He wanted to paint papa's picture," she thought, "and I suppose he fancied
my influence might help him."

But what of Clarissa's visits to the painter's lodgings? what possible
reason could she have for going there? Miss Granger's suspicions were
shapeless and intangible as yet, but she did suspect. More than once--many
times, in fact--during the painting of the portrait, she had seen, or had
imagined she could see, signs and tokens of a closer intimacy between
the painter and her father's wife than was warranted by their ostensible
acquaintance. The circumstances were slight enough in themselves, but these
fragile links welded together made a chain which would have been good
enough evidence in a criminal court, skilfully handled by an Old Bailey
lawyer. Sophia Granger racked her brain to account for this suspected
intimacy. When and where had these two been friends, lovers perhaps? Mr.
Austin had been away from England for many years, if his own statement were
to be believed. It must have been abroad, therefore, that Clarissa had
known him--in her school-days. He had been drawing-master, perhaps, in the
seminary at Belforet. What more likely?

Miss Granger cherished the peculiar British idea of all foreign schools,
that they were more or less sinks of iniquity. A flirtation between
drawing-master and pupil would be a small thing in such a pernicious
atmosphere. Even amidst the Arcadian innocence of native academies such
weeds have flourished This flirtation, springing up in foreign soil, would
be of course ten times more desperate, secret, jesuitical in fact, than any
purely English product.

Yes, Miss Granger decided at the end of every silent debate in which she
argued this question with herself--yes, that was the word of the enigma.
These two had been lovers in the days that were gone; and meeting again,
both married, they were more than half lovers still.

Clarissa made some excuse to see her old admirer frequently. She was taking
lessons in painting, perhaps. Miss Granger observed that she painted more
than usual lately--merely for the sake of seeing him.

And how about George Fairfax? Well, that flirtation, of course, was of
later date and a less serious affair. Jealousy--a new kind of jealousy,
more bitter even than that which she had felt when Clarissa came between
her and her father--sharpened Miss Granger's suspicions in this case. She
was jealous even of that supposed flirtation at Belforet, four or five
years ago. She was angry with Clarissa for having once possessed this man's
heart; ready to suspect her of any baseness in the past, any treason in the
present.

The Grangers were at Madame Caballero's two or three evenings after this
revelation of Warman's, and Sophia had an opportunity of gleaning some
scraps of information from the good-natured little lion-huntress. Madame
had been asking her if Mr. Austin's portraits had been a success.

"Yes; papa thinks they are excellent, and talks about having them exhibited
in the salon. Mr. Austin is really very clever. Do you know, I was not
aware that he was married, till the other day?" Sophia added, with a
careless air.

"Indeed! Yes, there is a wife, I understand; but she never goes into
society; no one hears of her. For my part I think him charming."

"Has he been long in Paris?"

Madame Caballero shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know," she said. "I have
only known of his existence since he became famous--in a small way--a very
small way, of course. He exhibited some military sketches, which attracted
the attention of a friend of mine, who talked to me about him. I said at
once, 'Bring him here. I can appreciate every order of genius, from Ary
Scheffer to Gavarni.' The young man came, and I was delighted with him. I
admitted him among my intimates; and he insisted on painting the picture
which your papa was good enough to admire."

"Do you know how he lived before he came into notice--if he has ever been a
drawing-master, for instance?"

"I know that he has given lessons. I have heard him complain of the
drudgery of teaching."

This sustained Miss Granger's theory. It seemed so likely. No other
hypothesis presented itself to her mind.

Day by day she watched and waited and speculated, hearing of all Clarissa's
movements from the obsequious Warman, who took care to question Mrs.
Granger's coachman in the course of conversation, in a pleasant casual
manner, as to the places to which he had taken his mistress. She waited and
made no sign. There was treason going on. The climax and explosion would
come in good time.

In the meanwhile, Clarissa seemed almost entirely free. Mr. Granger, after
living for nearly fifty years of his life utterly unaffected by feminine
influence, was not a man to hang upon his wife's footsteps or to hold her
bound to his side. If she had returned his affection with equal measure, if
that sympathy for which he sighed in secret could have arisen between them,
he might have been as devoted a slave as love could make an honest man. As
it was, his married life at its best was a disappointment. Only in the
fond hopes and airy visions which his son had inspired, did he find the
happiness he had dreamt of when he first tried to win Clarissa for his
wife. Here alone, in his love for his child, was there a pure and perfect
joy. All other dreams ended in bitter waking. His wife had never loved
him, never would love him. She was grateful for his affection, obedient,
submissive; her grace and beauty gave him a reflected lustre in society.
She was a creature to be proud of, and he was proud of her; but she did
not love him. And with this thought there came always a sudden agony of
jealousy. If not him, what other had she loved? Whose image reigned in the
heart so closely shut against him? Who was that man, the mere memory of
whom was more to her than the whole sum of her husband's devotion?

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

"FROM CLARISSA."

That jewel which Clarissa had given to Bessie Lovel was a treasure of
price, the very possession whereof was almost an oppressive joy to the poor
little woman, whose chief knowledge of life came from the experience of its
debts and difficulties. That the massive gold locket with the diamond cross
would be required of her sooner or later, to be handed into the ruthless
paw of a clerk at the _mont de piete_, she had little doubt. Everything
that she or her husband had ever possessed worth possessing had so
vanished--had been not an absolute property, but a brief fleeting joy,
a kind of supernal visitant, vanishing anon into nothingness, or only a
pawnbroker's duplicate. The time would come. She showed the trinket to her
husband with a melancholy foreboding, and read his thoughts as he weighed
it in his palm, by mere force of habit, speculating what it would fetch, if
in his desperate needs this waif might serve him.

She was not surprised, therefore--only a little distressed--when Austin
broached the subject one day at his late breakfast--that breakfast at which
it needed nearly a bottle of claret to wash down three or four mouthfuls of
savoury pie, or half a tiny cutlet. She had possessed the bauble more than
a month, holding it in fear and trembling, and only astonished that it had
not been demanded of her.

"O, by the way, Bess," Austin Lovel said carelessly, "I was abominably
unlucky last night, at Madame Caballero's. I'm generally lugged in for a
game or two at _ecarte there_, you know. One can't refuse in a house of
that kind. And I had been doing wonders. They were betting on my game, and
I stood to win something handsome, when the luck changed all in a moment.
The fellow I was playing against marked the king three times running; and,
in short, I rose a considerable loser--considerable for me, that is to say.
I told my antagonist I should send him the money to-day. He's a kind of man
I can't afford to trifle with; and you know the Caballero connection is of
too much use to be jeopardised. So I've been thinking, Bess, that if you'd
let me have that gimcrack locket my sister gave you, I could raise a tenner
on it. Clary can afford to give you plenty of such things, even if it were
lost, which it need not be."

Of course not. Mrs. Lovel had been told as much about the little Geneva
watch which her husband had given her a few days after her marriage, and
had taken away from her six weeks later. But the watch had never come back
to her. She gave a faint sigh of resignation. It was not within the compass
of her mind to oppose him.

"We shall never get on while you play cards, Austin," she said sadly.

"My dear Bessie, a man may win as well as lose. You see when I go into
society there are certain things expected of me; and my only chance of
getting on is by making myself agreeable to the people whose influence is
worth having."

"But I can't see that card-playing leads to your getting commissions for
pictures, Austin, no more than horseracing nor billiards. It all seems to
end the same--in your losing money."

The painter pushed away his plate with an impatient gesture. He was taking
his breakfast in his painting-room, hours after the family meal, Bessie
waiting upon him, and cobbling some juvenile garment during the intervals
of her attendance. He pushed his plate aside, and got up to pace the room
in the restless way that was common to him on such occasions.

"My dear child, if you don't want to give me the locket, say so," he said,
"but don't treat me to a sermon. You can keep it if you like, though I
can't conceive what use the thing can be to you. It's not a thing you can
wear."

"Not at home, dear, certainly; and I never go out," the wife answered, with
the faintest touch of reproachfulness. "I am very fond of it, though, for
your sister's sake. It was so kind of her to bring it to me, and such a new
thing for me to have a present. But you are welcome to it, Austin, if you
really want it."

"If I really want it! Do you suppose I should be mean enough to ask you for
it if I didn't? I shouldn't so much care about it, you see, only I am to
meet the man to-morrow evening at dinner, and I can't face him without the
money. So if you'll look the thing out some time to-day, Bess, I'll take it
down to the Quai between this and to-morrow afternoon, and get the business
over."

Thus it was that George Fairfax, strolling into Mrs. Lovel's sitting-room
that afternoon while Austin was out, happened to find her seated in a
pensive attitude, with an open work-box before her and Clarissa's locket
in her hand. It was a shabby battered old box, but had been for years the
repository of all Bessie's treasures.

She had kept the locket there, looking at it very often, and wondering if
she would ever be able to wear it--if Austin would take her to a theatre,
for instance, or give a little dinner at home instead of abroad, for once
in a way, to some of the men whose society absorbed so much of his time.

There was no hope of this now. Once gone from her hand; the treasure would
return no more. She knew that very well and was indulging her grief by a
farewell contemplation of the trinket, when Mr. Fairfax came into the room.

The flash of the diamonds caught his quick eye.

"What a pretty locket you've got there, Mrs. Austin!" he said, as he shook
hands with her. "A new-year's gift from Austin, I suppose."

"No, it was my sister-in-law, Mrs. Granger, who gave it me," Bessie
answered, with a sigh.

He was interested in it immediately, but was careful not to betray his
interest. Mrs. Lovel put it into his hands. She was proud of it even in
this last hour of possession. "Perhaps you'd like to look at it," she said.
"It's got her 'air inside."

Yes, there was a circlet of the dark brown hair he knew so well, and the
two works, "From Clarissa."

"Upon my word, it's very handsome," he said, looking at the diamond cross
outside, but thinking of the love-lock within. "I never saw a locket
I liked better. You are very fond of it, I daresay?" he added
interrogatively.

"O, yes, I like it very much! I can't bear to part with it."

And here Bessie Lovel, not being gifted with the power of concealing her
emotions, fairly broke down and cried like a child.

"My dear Mrs. Austin," exclaimed George Fairfax, "pray don't distress
yourself like that. Part with it? Why should you part with your locket?"

"O, Mr. Fairfax, I oughtn't to have told you--Austin would be so angry if
he knew--but he has been losing money at that horrid ecarty, and he says
he must have ten pounds to-morrow; so my beautiful locket must go to the
pawnbroker's."

George Fairfax paused. His first impulse was to lend the poor little woman
the money--the veriest trifle, of course, to the lord of Lyvedon. But the
next moment another idea presented itself to him. He had the locket lying
in the open palm of his hand. It would be so sweet to possess that lock of
hair--to wear so dear a token of his mistress. Even those two words, "From
Clarissa," had a kind of magic for him. It was a foolish weakness, of
course; but then love is made up of such follies.

"If you really mean to part with this," he said, "I should be very glad to
have it. I would give you more than any pawnbroker--say, twenty instead of
ten pounds, for instance--and a new locket for yourself into the bargain. I
shouldn't like to deprive you of an ornament you valued without some kind
of compensation. I have taken a fancy to the design of the thing, and
should really like to have it. What do you say now, Mrs. Austin--shall that
be a transaction between you and me, without any reference to your husband,
who might be angry with you for having let me into domestic secrets? You
can tell him you got the money from the _mont de piete_. Look here, now;
let's settle the business at once."

He opened his purse, and tumbled the contents out upon the table. Bessie
Lovel thought what a blessed state of existence that must be in which
people walked this world with all that ready money about them.

"There are just four-and-twenty pounds here," he said cheerily; "so we'll
say four-and-twenty."

He saw that she was yielding.

"And would you really give me a locket for myself," she said, almost
incredulously, "as well as this money?"

"Unquestionably. As good a one as I can find in the Rue de la Paix. This
has diamonds, and that shall have diamonds. It's the design, you see," he
added persuasively, "that has taken my fancy."

"I'm sure you are very generous," Bessie murmured, still hesitating.

"Generous! Pshaw, not at all. It's a caprice; and I shall consider myself
under an obligation to you if you gratify it."

The temptation was irresistible. To obtain the money that was
required--more than double the sum her husband had wanted--and to have
another locket as well! Never, surely, had there been such a bargain since
the famous magician offered new lamps for old ones. Of course, it was only
Mr. Fairfax's delicate way of doing them a kindness; his fancy for the
locket was merely a benevolent pretence. What could he care for that
particular trinket; he who might, so to speak, walk knee-deep in diamonds,
if he pleased?

She took the twenty-four pounds--an English ten-pound note, and the rest in
new glittering napoleons--and then began to speculate upon the possibility
of giving Austin twenty pounds, and appropriating the balance to her own
uses. The children wanted so many things--that perpetual want of the
juvenile population above all, shoe-leather; and might she not even screw
some cheap dress for herself out of the sum? while if it were all given
to Austin, it would vanish, like smoke before the wind, leaving no trace
behind.

So George Fairfax put the bauble in his waistcoat-pocket, and whatever
sentimental pleasure might be derived from such a talisman was his. There
are those among our disciples of modern magic who believe there is a subtle
animal magnetism in such things; that the mere possession of such a token
constitutes a kind of spiritual link between two beings. Mr. Fairfax had no
such fancy; but it pleased him to have obtained that which no prayers of
his could have won from Clarissa herself. Not at present, that is to say.
It would all come in good time. She loved him; secure of that one fact, he
believed all the rest a mere question of patience and constancy.

"And she is worth the winning," he said to himself. "A man might serve for
a longer slavery than Jacob's, and yet be rewarded by such a conquest. I
think, by the way, that Rachel must have been just a trifle faded when the
patriarch was out of his time."

He dawdled away an hour or so in Bessie's salon--telling the poor little
woman the news of the day, and playing with the two boys, who regarded
him as a beneficent being, from whose hands flowed perpetual toys and
sweetmeats. He waited as long as he could without making his motive
obvious; waited, in the hope that Clarissa would come; and then, as there
was no sign of her coming, and Austin was still out, he wished Bessie
good-bye.

"I shan't forget the locket," he said, as he departed.

Austin came in five minutes afterwards. The boys had been scuttled off to
take their evening meal in the kitchen--a darksome cupboard about eight
feet square--where the tawdry servant was perpetually stewing savoury
messes upon a small charcoal stove.

Bessie handed her husband the ten-pound note, and twelve bright napoleons.

"Why, what's this?" he asked.

"The--the money for the locket, Austin. I thought you might be late home;
so I ran round to the Quai with it myself. And I asked for twenty pounds,
and the man gave it to me."

"Why, that's a brave girl!" cried Austin, kissing the pleading face
uplifted to his. "I don't believe they'd have given me as much. An English
tenner, though; that's odd!" he added carelessly, and then slipped the cash
loose into his pocket, with the air of a man for whom money is at best a
temporary possession.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THAT IS WHAT LOVE MEANS.

The Grangers and Mr. Fairfax went on meeting in society; and Daniel
Granger, with whom it was a kind of habit to ask men to dinner, could
hardly avoid inviting George Fairfax. It might have seemed invidious to do
so; and for what reason should he make such a distinction? Even to himself
Mr. Granger would not be willing to confess that he was jealous of this
man. So Mr. Fairfax came with others of his species to the gorgeous
caravanserai in the Rue de Morny, where the rooms never by any chance
looked as if people lived in them, but rather as if they were waiting-rooms
at some railway station got up with temporary splendour for the reception
of royalty.

He came; and though Clarissa sometimes made feeble efforts to avoid him, it
happened almost always, that before the evening was out he found some few
minutes for unreserved talk with her. There is little need to record such
brief stolen interviews--a few hurried words by the piano, a sentence
or two in a lowered voice at parting. There was not much in the words
perhaps--only very common words, that have done duty between thousands of
men and women--a kind of signal code, as it were; and yet they had power
to poison Clarissa's life, to take the sweetness out of every joy, even a
mother's innocent idolatry of her child.

The words were spoken; but so carefully did George Fairfax play his part,
that not even Sophia's sharp eyes could perceive more than was correct in
the conduct of her stepmother. No, she told herself, that other flirtation
was the desperate one. Clarissa might have had some preference for George
Fairfax; there had been occasional indications of such a feeling in her
manner at Hale Castle; but the dark spot of her life, the secret of her
girlhood, was a love affair with Mr. Austin.

By way of experiment, one day she asked her father's wife a question about
the painter.

"You seemed to admire Mr. Austin very much, Clarissa," she said, "and I
admit that he is remarkably clever; but he appears such a waif and stray.
In all his conversation with us he never threw much light upon his own
history. Do you know anything of his antecedents?"

Clarissa blushed in spite of herself. The deception she had sustained so
long was unspeakably distasteful her. Again and again she had been tempted
to hazard everything, and acknowledge Austin as her brother, whether he
liked or not that she should do so. It was only his peremptory tone that
had kept her silent.