The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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"What should I know of his antecedents more than you, Sophy?" she said,
avoiding a more direct reply. "It is quite enough for me to know that he
has undeniable genius."

The blush, and a certain warmth in her tone, seemed to Sophia conclusive
evidence of her hidden regard for this man. Miss Granger's heart beat a
good deal faster than usual, and little jealous sparkles shone in her cold
gray eyes. She had never admired any man so much as she had admired this
brilliant young painter. Many men had paid her compliments; as the rich Mr.
Granger's sole daughter and heiress, she had been gratified with no meagre
share of mankind's worship; but no words ever spoken had sounded so sweet
in her ears as those few civil speeches that Mr. Austin had found time to
address to her during his visits to the Rue de Morny. And after having
taken so much pleasure in his converse, and thought so much more about him
than she would have considered it proper for any model villager to
think about an individual of the opposite sex, it was a hard thing to
find--first, that the base impostor had a wife; and secondly, that whatever
illegitimate worship he might have to render, was to be offered at the
shrine of Clarissa.

"Indeed!" she exclaimed, with an air of extreme surprise. "You seemed on
such very friendly terms with him, that I fancied you must really have
known each other before, and that you had some motive for concealing the
fact from papa."

Clarissa blushed a deeper crimson at this homethrust, and bent a little
lower over her drawing-board. It seemed a fortunate thing that she happened
to be painting when Miss Granger opened her guns upon her in this manner.

"He gives lessons, I believe; does he not?" asked Sophia.

"Yes--I--I believe--I have heard so."

"Do you know, I took it into my head that he might have been your
drawing-master at Belforet."

Clarissa laughed aloud at this suggestion. Miss Granger's persistent
curiosity amused her a little, dangerous as the ground was.

"Oh dear no, he was not our master at Belforet," she said. "We had a little
old Swiss--such an ancient, ancient man--who took snuff continually, and
was always talking about his _pays natal_ and Jean Jacques Rousseau. I
think he had known Rousseau; and I am sure he was old enough to remember
the night they locked him out of Geneva."

Sophia was fairly posed; she had been on a false scent evidently, and yet
she was sure there was something. That is how she shaped her doubts in her
own mind--there was _something_. Warman thought so, she knew; and Warman
was gifted with no ordinary amount of penetration.

So Mrs. Granger went her way, with suspicion around and about her, and
danger ahead. Whatever peace had been hers in the brief period of her
married life--and the quiet spring-time and summer that came after her
baby's birth had been very peaceful--had vanished now. A cloud of fear
encompassed her; a constant melancholy possessed her; a pleading voice,
which she ought never to have heard, was always in her ears--a voice that
charged her with the burden of a broken life--a voice that told her it was
only by some sacrifice of her own she could atone for the sacrifice that
had been made for her--a too persuasive voice, with a perilous charm in its
every accent.

She loved him. That she could ever be weak enough, or vile enough, to sink
into that dread abyss, whereto some women have gone down for the love of
man, was not within the compass of her thought. But she knew that no day in
her life was sinless now; that no pure and innocent joys were left to her;
that her every thought of George Fairfax was a sin against her husband.

And yet she went on loving him. Sometimes, when the dense of her guilt was
strongest, she would fain have asked her husband to take her back to Arden;
which must needs be a kind of sanctuary, as it were, she thought. Nay,
hardly so; for even in that tranquil retreat Temple Fairfax had contrived
to pursue her mother, with the poison of his influence and his presence.
Very often she felt inclined to ask her husband this favour; but she could
not do so without running some risk of betraying herself--Heaven knows how
much she might betray--unawares. Again, their sojourn in the Rue de Morny
was not to endure for ever. Already Mr. Granger had expressed himself
somewhat tired of Paris; indeed, what denizen of that brilliant city does
not become a little weary of its brightness, sooner or later, and fall
sick of the Boulevard-fever--a harassing sense of all-pervading glare and
confusion, a sensation of Paris on the brain?

There was some talk of returning to Arden at the end of a month. They were
now at the close of January; by the first of March Mr. Granger hoped to be
at the Court. His architect and his head-bailiff were alike eager for his
return; there were more pullings down and reconstructions required on the
new estate; there were all manner of recondite experiments to be tried
in scientific farming: there were new leases to be granted, and expiring
leases, the covenants whereof must be exacted.

Since they were likely to leave Paris so soon, it would be foolish to
excite wonder by asking to leave sooner, Mrs. Granger thought. It mattered
so little, after all, she told herself sometimes. It mattered this much
only--that day by day her feet were straying farther from the right road.

O those happy winter afternoons in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard! Such
innocent happiness, too, in all seeming--only a little animated rambling
talk upon all manner of subjects, from the loftiest problems in philosophy
to the frothiest gossip of the Faubourg St. Honore; only the presence of
two people who loved each other to distraction. A dim firelit room; a
little commonplace woman coming in and out; two young men disputing in the
dusk; and Clarissa in her low chair by the fire, listening to the magical
voice that was now the only music of her dreams. If it could have gone on
for ever thus--a sweet sentimental friendship like that which linked Madame
Roland and Brissot, Madame Recamier and Chateaubriand--there would surely
have been no harm, Clarissa sometimes argued with herself. She was married
to a man whom she could respect for many qualities of his heart and mind,
against whom she could never seriously offend. Was it so great a sin if the
friendship of George Fairfax was dear to her? if the few happy hours of her
life were those she spent in his company? But such special pleading as this
was the poorest sophistry; at heart she was conscious that it was so. A
woman has a double conscience, as it were--a holy of holies within the
temple of her mind, to which falsehood cannot enter. She may refuse to lift
the screen, and meet the truth face to face; but it is there--not to be
extinguished--eternal, immutable; the divine lamp given for her guidance,
if only she will not withdraw herself from its light.

Just a little less than a month before his intended departure, Mr. Granger
had a letter from that exacting bailiff, entreating his return. Something
in the scientific farming had gone wrong, some great sewage question was at
issue, and none but the lord of the soil himself could settle the matter.
Very dear to Daniel Granger were those lands of Arden, that Arden-Court
estate which he had made to spread itself so far over the face of the
county. Sweet are ancestral domains, no doubt; dear by association, made
holy by the pride of the race; but perhaps sweeter to the soul of man are
those acres he has won by the work of his own strong hand, or his own
steadfast brain. Next to his wife and children, in Mr. Granger's regard,
were the lands of Arden: the farms and homesteads, in valleys and on
hill-tops; the cottages and school-houses, which he had built for the
improvement of his species; the bran-new slack-baked gothic church in an
outlying village, where the church had never been before his coming.

He was very sorry to leave his wife; but the question at stake was an
important one. If he could have carried his household away with him at an
hour's notice, he would gladly have done so; but to move Clarissa and
the nurse, and the baby, and Miss Granger, would be rather a formidable
business--in fact, not to be done without elaborate preparation. He had the
apartments in the Rue du Morny on his hands, too, until the beginning
of March; and even a millionaire seldom cares to waste such a rental as
Parisian proprietors exact for houseroom in a fashionable quarter. So he
decided upon going to Arden at once--which was essential--and returning
directly he had adjusted matters with his bailiff, and done a morning's
work with his architect.

He told Clarissa of his intention one evening when they had returned from a
dinner-party, and she was seated before her dressing-table, taking off her
jewels in a slow, absent way. She looked up with a start as her husband
came into the room, and planted himself on the white sheepskin rug, with
his back against the mantelpiece.

"I am obliged to go back to Yorkshire, Clary," he said.

She thought he meant they were all going back--that it was an interposition
of Providence, and she was to be taken away from sin and danger. But O, how
hard it seemed to go--never again to look forward to those stolen twilights
in her brother's painting-room!

"I am glad!" she exclaimed. "I shall be very glad to go back to Arden."

"You, my dear!" said her husband; "it is only I who am going. There is some
hitch in our experiments on the home farm, and Forley knows how anxious I
am about making a success this year. So he wants me to run over and see
to things; he won't accept the responsibility of carrying on any longer
without me. I needn't be away above two or three days, or a week at most.
You can get on very well without me."

Clarissa was silent, looking down at a bracelet which she was turning idly
round her arm. Get on without him! Alas, what part had Daniel Granger
played in her life of late beyond that of some supernumerary king in a
stage-play?--a person of importance by rank and title in the play-bill, but
of scarcely any significance to the story. Her guilty heart told her how
little he had ever been to her; how, day by day, he had been growing less
and less. And while he was away, she might go to the Rue du Chevalier
Bayard every day. There would be nothing to prevent her so doing if she
pleased. The carriage was nominally and actually hers. There was a brougham
at Miss Granger's disposal; but the landau was essentially Clarissa's
carriage.

"You can get on very well without me," repeated Mr. Granger. "I do not
think my presence or absence makes very much difference to you, Clarissa,"
he added, in a grave displeased tone.

It was almost his first hint of a reproach. To his wife's guilty heart it
struck sharply home, like an unexpected blow. She looked up at him with a
pale conscience-stricken face, in which he might have read much more
than he did read there. He only thought that he had spoken a shade too
severely--that he had wounded her.

"I--I don't know what you mean by that," she faltered helplessly, "I always
try to please you."

"Try to please me!" he repeated passionately. "Yes, Clary, as a child tries
to please a schoolmaster. Do you know, that when I married you I was mad
enough to hope the day would come when you would love me--that you loved me
a little even then? Do you know how I have waited for that day, and have
learned to understand, little by little, that it never can dawn for me
upon this earth? You are my wife, and the mother of my child; and yet,
God knows, you are no nearer to me than the day I first saw you at Hale
Castle--a slim, girlish figure in a white dress, coming in at the door of
the library. Not a whit nearer," he went on, to himself rather than to
Clarissa; "but so much more dear."

There was a passion in his words which touched his wife. If it had only
been possible for her to love him! If gratitude and respect, joined
together, could have made up the sum of love; but they could not. She knew
that George Fairfax was in all moral qualities this man's inferior; yet,
for some indefinable charm, some trick of tone or manner, some curious
magic in a smile or a glance, she loved him.

She was silent. Perhaps the sense of her guilt came more fully home to her
in this moment than it had ever done before. What words could she speak to
bring comfort to her husband's soul--she whose whole life was a lie?

Daniel Granger wandered up and down the room for some minutes in a vague
restless way, and then came to his wife's chair, and looked down at her
very tenderly.

"My dear, I do wrong to worry you with reproaches," he said. "The mistake
has been mine. From first to last, I have been to blame. I suppose in the
wisest life there must always be some folly. Mine has been the hope that I
could win your love. It has gone now, Clarissa; it is quite gone. Not even
my child has given me a place in your heart."

She looked up at him again, with that look which expressed such a depth of
remorse.

"I am very wicked," she said, "I am utterly unworthy of all you have done
for me. It would have been better for you never to have seen my face."

"Wicked! no, Clary. Your only sin has been to have disappointed a foolish
fancy. What right had I to suppose you loved me? Better never to have seen
your face?--yes, perhaps that might have been better. But, once having seen
you, I would rather be wretched with you than happy with any other woman in
the world. That is what love means, Clary."

He stooped down to kiss her.

"Say no more, dear," he said, "I never meant to speak as I have spoken
to-night. I love you for ever."

The day came when she remembered those words, "I love you for ever."

If she could have thrown herself upon his breast and acknowledged all her
weakness, beseeching him to shield her from herself in obedience to the
impulse of that moment, what a world of anguish might have been spared to
these two! But she let the impulse pass, and kept silence.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XL.

LYING IN WAIT.

Mr. Granger went back to Yorkshire; and Clarissa's days were at her own
disposal. They were to leave Paris at the beginning of March. She knew it
was only for a very short time that she would be able to see her brother.
It was scarcely natural, therefore, that she should neglect such an
opportunity as this. There was so much in Austin's life that caused her
uneasiness; he seemed in such sore need of wiser counsel than his poor
empty-headed little wife could give him; and Clarissa believed that she had
some influence with him: that if he would be governed by the advice of any
creature upon earth, that counsellor was herself.

So she spent her mornings in baby-worship, and went every afternoon to the
Rue du Chevalier Bayard, where it happened curiously that Mr. Fairfax came
even oftener than usual just at this time. In the evening she stayed at
home--not caring to keep her engagements in society without her husband's
escort--and resigned herself to the edifying companionship of Miss Granger,
who was eloquent upon the benighted condition of the Parisian poor as
compared with her model villagers. She described them sententiously as a
people who put garlic in everything they ate, and never read their Bibles.

"One woman showed me a book with little pictures of saints printed upon
paper with lace edges," said Sophia, "as if there were any edification to
be derived from lace edges; and such a heathen book too--Latin on one side
and French on the other. And there the poor forsaken creatures sit in their
churches, looking at stray pictures and hearing a service in an unknown
tongue."

Daniel Granger had been away nearly a week; and as yet there was no
announcement of his return; only brief business-like letters, telling
Clarissa that the drainage question was a complicated one, and he should
remain upon the spot till he and Forley could see their way out of the
difficulty. He had been away nearly a week, when George Fairfax went to the
Rue du Chevalier Bayard at the usual hour, expecting to find Austin Lovel
standing before his easel with a cigar in his mouth, and Clarissa sitting
in the low chair by the fire, in the attitude he knew so well, with the red
glow of the embers lighting up gleams of colour in her dark velvet dress,
and shining on the soft brown hair crowned with a coquettish little
seal-skin hat--a _toque_, as they called it on that side of the Channel.

What was his astonishment to find a pile of trunks and portmanteaus on the
landing, Austin's easel roughly packed for removal, and a heap of that
miscellaneous lumber without which even poverty cannot shift its dwelling!
The door was open; and Mr. Fairfax walked straight into the sitting-room,
where the two boys were eating some extemporised meal at a side-table under
their mother's supervision; while Austin lounged with his back against
the chimney-piece, smoking. He was a man who would have smoked during the
culminating convulsions of an earthquake.

"Why, Austin, what the--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Austin--what _does_ this
mean?"

"It means Brussels by the three-fifteen train, my dear Fairfax, that's
all."

"Brussels? With those children and that luggage? What, in Heaven's name,
induces you to carry your family off like this, at an hour's notice?"

"It is not an hour's notice; they've had an hour and three-quarters. As to
my reasons for this abrupt hegira--well, that involves rather a long story;
and I haven't time to tell it to-day. One thing is pretty clear--I can't
live in Paris. Perhaps I may be able to live in Brussels. I can't very well
do worse than I've done here--that's _one_ comfort."

At this Bessie Lovel began to cry--in a suppressed kind of way, like a
woman who is accustomed to cry and not to be taken much notice of. George
Fairfax flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He was at
once sorry for this man and angry with him; vexed to see any man go to ruin
with such an utter recklessness, with such a deliberate casting away of
every chance that might have redeemed him.

"You have got into some scrape, I suppose," he said presently.

"Got into a scrape!" cried Austin with a laugh, tossing away the end of one
cigar and preparing to light another. "My normal condition is that of being
in a scrape. Egad! I fancy I must have been born so.--For God's sake don't
whimper, Bessie, if you want to catch the three-fifteen train! _I_ go by
that, remember, whoever stays behind.--There's no occasion to enter into
explanations, Fairfax. If you could help me I'd ask you to do it, in
spite of former obligations; but you can't. I have got into a
difficulty--pecuniary, of course; and as the law of liability in this city
happens to be a trifle more stringent than our amiable British code, I have
no alternative but to bid good-bye to the towers of Notre Dame. I love the
dear, disreputable city, with her lights and laughter, and music and mirth;
but she loves not me.--When those boys have done gorging themselves,
Bessie, you had better put on your bonnet."

"His wife cast an appealing glance at George Fairfax, as if she felt she
had a friend in him who would sustain her in any argument with her husband.
Her face was very sad, and bore the traces of many tears.

"If you would only tell me why we are going, Austin," she pleaded, "I could
bear it so much better."

"Nonsense, child! Would anything I could tell you alter the fact that we
are going? Pshaw, Bessie! why make a fuss about trifles? The packing is
over: that was the grand difficulty, I thought. I told you we could manage
that."

"It seems so hard--running away like criminals."

Austin Lovel's countenance darkened a little.

"I can go alone," he said.

"No, no," cried the wife piteously: "I'll go with you. I don't want to vex
you, Austin. Haven't I shared everything with you--everything? I would go
with you if it was to prison--if it was to death. You know that."

"I know that we shall lose the three-fifteen train if you don't put on your
bonnet."

"Very well, Austin; I'm going. And Clarissa--what will she think of us? I'm
so sorry to leave her."

"O, by the way, George," said Austin, "you might manage that business for
me. My sister was to be here at five o'clock this afternoon. I've written
her a letter telling her of the change in my plans. She was in some measure
prepared for my leaving Paris; but not quite so suddenly as this. I was
going to send the letter by a commissionnaire; but if you don't mind taking
it to the Rue de Morny, I'd rather trust it to you. I don't want Clary to
come here and find empty rooms."

He took a sealed letter from the mantelpiece and handed it to George
Fairfax, who received it with somewhat of a dreamy air, as of a man who
does not quite understand the mission that is intrusted to him. It was a
simple business enough, too--only the delivery of a letter.

Mrs. Lovel came out of the adjoining room dressed for the journey, and
carrying a collection of wraps for the children. It was wonderful to behold
what comforters, and scarves, and gaiters, and muffetees those juvenile
individuals required for their equipment.

"Such a long cold journey!" the anxious mother exclaimed, and went on
winding up the two children in woollen stuffs, as if they had been
royal mummies. She pushes little papers of sandwiches into their
pockets--sandwiches that would hardly be improved by the squeezing and
sitting upon they must need undergo in the transit.

When this was done, and the children ready, she looked into the
painting-room with a melancholy air.

"Think of all the furniture, Austin," she exclaimed; "the cabinets and
things!"

"Yes; there's a considerable amount of money wasted there Bess; for I don't
suppose we shall ever see the things again, but there's a good many of them
not paid for. There's comfort in that reflection."

"You take everything go lightly," she said with a hopeless sigh.

"There's nothing between that and the Morgue, my dear. You'd scarcely like
to see me framed and glazed _there_, I think."

"O, Austin!"

"Precisely. So let me take things lightly, while I can. Now, Bess, the time
is up. Good-bye, George."

"I'll come downstairs with you," said Mr. Fairfax, still in a somewhat
dreamy state. He had put Austin's letter into his pocket, and was standing
at a window looking down into the street, which had about as much life
or traffic for a man to stare at as some of the lateral streets in the
Bloomsbury district--Caroline-place, for instance, or Keppel-street.

There was a great struggling and bumping of porters and coachman on the
stairs, with a good deal more exclamation than would have proceeded from
stalwart Englishmen under the same circumstances; and then Austin went down
to the coach with his wife and children, followed by George Fairfax. The
painter happened not to be in debt to his landlord--a gentleman who gave
his tenants small grace at any time; so there was no difficulty about the
departure.

"I'll write to Monsieur Meriste about my furniture," he said to the
guardian of the big dreary mansion. "You may as well come to the station
with us, George," he added, looking at Mr. Fairfax, who stood irresolute on
the pavement, while Bessie and the boys were being packed into the vehicle,
the roof of which was laden with portmanteaus and the painter's "plant."

"Well--no; I think not. There's this letter to be delivered, you see. I had
better do that at once."

"True; Clarissa might come. She said five o'clock, though; but it doesn't
matter. Good-bye, old fellow. I hope some of these days I may be able to
make things square with you. Good-bye, Tell Clary I shall write to her from
Brussels, under cover to the maid as usual."

He called out to the coachman to go on; and the carriage drove off,
staggering under its load. George Fairfax stood watching it till it was out
of sight, and then turned to the porter.

"Those rooms up-stairs will be to let, I suppose?" he said.

"But certainly, monsieur."

"I have some thoughts of taking them for--for a friend. I'll just take
another look round them now they're empty. And perhaps you wouldn't mind my
writing a letter up-stairs--eh?"

He slipped a napoleon into the man's hand--by no means the first that he
had given him. New-Year's day was not far past; and the porter remembered
that Mr. Fairfax had tipped him more liberally than some of the lodgers in
the house. If monsieur had a legion of letters to write, he was at liberty
to write them. The rooms up yonder were entirely at his disposal; the
porter laid them at his feet, as it were. He might have occupied them
rent-free for the remainder of his existence, it would have been supposed
from the man's manner.

"If madame, the sister of Monsieur Austin, should come by-and-by, you will
permit her to ascend," said Mr. Fairfax. "I have a message for her from her
brother."

"Assuredly, monsieur."

The porter retired into his den to meditate upon his good fortune. It was
a rendezvous, of course, cunningly arranged on the day of the painter's
departure. It seemed to him like a leaf out of one of those flabby novels
on large paper, with a muddy wood-cut on every sixteenth page, which he
thumbed and pored over now and then of an evening.