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

George Fairfax went up-stairs. How supremely dismal the rooms looked in
their emptiness, with the litter of packing lying about!--old boots and
shoes in one corner; a broken parasol in another; battered fragments of
toys everywhere; empty colour-tubes; old newspapers and magazines; a
regiment of empty oil-flasks and wine-bottles in the den of a kitchen--into
which Mr. Fairfax peered curiously, out of very weariness. It was only
half-past three; and there was little hope of Clarissa's arrival until
five. He meant to meet her there. In the moment that Austin put the letter
in his hand some such notion flashed into his mind. He had never intended
to deliver the letter. How long he had waited for this chance--to see her
alone, free from all fear of interruption, and to be able to tell his story
and plead his cause, as he felt that he could plead!

He walked up and down the empty painting-room, thinking of her coming,
meditating what he should say, acting the scene over in his brain. He had
little fear as to the issue. Secure as she seemed in the panoply of her
woman's pride, he knew his power, and fancied that it needed only time and
opportunity to win her. This was not the first time he had counted his
chances and arranged his plan of action. In the hour he first heard of her
marriage he had resolved to win her. Outraged love transformed itself into
a passion that was something akin to revenge. He scarcely cared how low
he might bring her, so long as he won her for his own. He did not stop to
consider whether hers was a mind which could endure dishonour. He knew that
she loved him, and that her married life had been made unhappy because of
this fatal love.

"I will open the doors of her prison-house," he said to himself, "poor
fettered soul! She shall leave that dreary conventional life, with its
forms and ceremonies of pleasure; and we will wander all over the earth
together, only to linger wherever this world is brightest. What can she
lose by the exchange? Not wealth. For the command of all that makes life
delightful, I am as rich a man as Daniel Granger, and anything beyond
that is a barren surplus. Not position; for what position has she as Mrs.
Granger? I will take her away from all the people who ever knew her, and
guard her jealously from the hazard of shame. There will only be a couple
of years in her life which she will have to blot out--only a leaf torn out
of her history."

And the child? the blue-eyed boy that George Fairfax had stopped to kiss in
Arden Park that day? It is one thing to contemplate stealing a wife from
her husband--with George Fairfax's class there is a natural antipathy to
husbands, which makes that seem a fair warfare, like fox-hunting--but it is
another to rob a child of its mother. Mr. Fairfax's meditations came to a
standstill at this point--the boy blocked the line.

There was only one thing to be done; put on the steam, and run down the
obstacle, as Isambard Brunel did in the Box-tunnel, when he saw a stray
luggage-truck between him and the light.

"Let her bring the boy with her, and he shall be my son," he thought.

Daniel Granger would go in for a divorce, of course. Mr. Fairfax thought of
everything in that hour and a half of solitary reflection. He would try for
a divorce, and there would be no end of scandal--leading articles in some
of the papers, no doubt, upon the immorality of the upper middle classes; a
full-flavoured essay in the Saturday, proving that Englishwomen were in the
habit of running away from their husbands. But she should be far away from
the bruit of that scandal. He would make it the business of his life to
shield her from the lightest breath of insult. It could be done. There were
new worlds, in which men and women could begin a fresh existence, under new
names; and if by chance any denizen of the old world should cross their
path untimely--well, such unwelcome wanderers are generally open to
negotiation. There is a good deal of charity for such offenders among the
travelled classes, especially when the chief sinner is lord of such an
estate as Lyvedon.

Yet, varnish the picture how one will, dress up the story with what flowers
of fancy one may, it is at best but a patched and broken business. The
varnish brings out dark spots in the picture; the flowers have a faded
meretricious look, not the bloom and dew of the garden; no sophistry
can overcome the inherent ugliness of the thing--an honest man's name
dishonoured; two culprits planning a future life, to be spent in hiding
from the more respectable portion of their species; two outcasts, trying
to make believe that the wildernesses beyond Eden are fairer than that
paradise itself.

His mother--what would she feel when she came to know what he had done
with his life? It would be a disappointment to her, of course; a grief, no
doubt; but she would have Lyvedon. He had gone too far to be influenced
by any consideration of that kind; he had gone so far that life without
Clarissa seemed to him unendurable. He paced the room, contemplating this
crisis of his existence from every point of view, till the gray winter sky
grew darker, and the time of Clarissa's coming drew very near. There had
been some logs smouldering on the hearth when he came, and these he had
replenished from time to time. The glow of the fire was the only thing that
relieved the dreariness of the room.

Nothing could be more fortunate, he fancied, than the accident which had
brought about this meeting. Daniel Granger was away. The flight, which was
to be the preface of Clarissa's new existence, could not take place too
soon; no time need be wasted on preparations, which could only serve
to betray. Her consent once gained, he had only to put her into a
hackney-coach and drive to the Marseilles station. Why should they not
start that very night? There was a train that left Paris at seven, he knew;
in three days they might be on the shores of the Adriatic.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLI.

MR. GRANGER'S WELCOME HOME.

Clarissa left the Rue de Morny at three o'clock that day. She had a round
of calls to make, and for that reason had postponed her visit to her
brother's painting-room to a later hour than usual. The solemn dinner,
which she shared with Miss Granger in stately solitude, took place at
half-past seven, until which hour she considered her time at her own
disposal.

Sophia spent that particular afternoon at home, illuminating the new gothic
texts for her schoolrooms at Arden. She had been seated at her work about
an hour after Clarissa's departure, when the door opened behind her, and
her father walked into the room.

There had been no word of his return in his latest letter; he had only said
generally in a previous epistle, that he should come back directly the
business that had called him to Yorkshire was settled.

"Good gracious me, papa, how you startled me!" cried Miss Granger, dabbing
at a spot of ultramarine which had fallen upon her work. It was not a very
warm welcome; but when she had made the best she could of that unlucky blue
spot, she laid down her brush and came over to her father, to whom she
offered a rather chilly kiss. "You must be very tired, papa," she remarked,
with striking originality.

"Well, no; not exactly tired. We had a very fair passage; but the journey
from Calais is tedious. It seems as if Calais oughtn't to be any farther
from Paris than Dover is from London. There's something lop-sided in it. I
read the papers all the way. Where's Clarry?"

"Clarissa has gone to pay some visits."

"Why didn't you go with her?"

"I rarely do go with her, papa. Our sets are quite different; and I have
other duties."

"Duties, pshaw! Messing with those paint-brushes; you don't call that duty,
I hope? You had much better have gone out with your stepmother."

"I was not wanted, papa. Mrs. Granger has engagements which do not in the
least concern me. I should only be in the way."

"What do you mean by that, Sophia?" asked her father sternly. "And what do
you mean by calling my wife Mrs. Granger?"

"There are some people so uncongenial to each other, papa, that any
pretence of friendship can be only the vilest hypocrisy," replied Sophia,
turning very pale, and looking her father full in the face, like a person
prepared to do battle.

"I am very sorry to hear this, Sophia," said Mr. Granger. "for if this is
really the case, it will be necessary for you to seek some other home. I
will have no one in my house who cannot value my wife."

"You would turn me out of doors, papa?"

"I should certainly endeavour to provide you with a more
congenial--congenial, that was the word you used, I think--more congenial
home."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Sophia. "Then I suppose you quite approve of all my
stepmother's conduct--of her frequent, almost daily visits to such a person
as Mr. Austin?"

"Clarissa's visits to Austin! What, in heaven's name, do you mean?"

"What, papa! is it possible you are ignorant of the fact? I thought that,
though my stepmother never talked to _me_ of her visits to the Rue du
Chevalier Bayard, you of course knew all about them. Though I hardly
supposed you would encourage such an intimacy."

"Encourage such an intimacy! You must be dreaming, girl. My wife visit a
portrait-painter--a single man?"

"He is not a single man, papa. There is a wife, I understand; though he
never mentioned her to us. And Clarissa visits them almost every day."

"I don't believe it. What motive could she have for cultivating such
people?"

"I can't imagine--except that she is fond of that kind of society, and of
painting. She may have gone to take lessons of Mr. Austin. He teaches, I
know."

Daniel Granger was silent. It was not impossible; and it would have been no
crime on his wife's part, of course. But the idea that Clarissa could have
done such a thing without his knowledge and approval, offended him beyond
measure. He could hardly realize the possibility of such an act.

"There is some misapprehension on your part, Sophia, I am convinced," he
said. "If Clarissa had wished to take drawing lessons from Austin, she
would have told me so."

"There is no possibility of a mistake on my part, papa. I am not in the
habit of making statements which I cannot support."

"Who told you of these visits? Clarissa herself?"

"O dear, no; Clarissa is not in the habit of telling me her affairs. I
heard it from Warman; not in reply to any questioning of mine, I can assure
you. But the thing has been so frequent, that the servants have begun
to talk about it. Of course, I always make a point of discouraging any
speculations upon my stepmother's conduct."

The servants had begun to talk; his wife's intimacy with people of whom he
knew scarcely anything had been going on so long as to provoke the gossip
of the household; and he had heard nothing of it until this moment! The
thought stung him to the quick. That domestic slander should have been busy
with her name already; that she should have lived her own life so entirely
without reference to him! Both thoughts were alike bitter. Yet it was no
new thing for him to know that she did not love him.

He looked at his watch meditatively.

"Has she gone there this afternoon, do you think?" he asked.

"I think it is excessively probable. Warman tells me she has been there
every afternoon during your absence."

"She must have taken a strange fancy to these people. Austin's wife is some
old schoolfellow of Clary's perhaps."

Miss Granger shook her head doubtfully.

"I should hardly think that," she said.

"There must be some reason--something that we cannot understand. She may
have some delicacy about talking to me of these people; there may be
something in their circumstances to--"

"Yes," said Miss Granger, "there is _something_, no doubt. I have been
assured of that from the first."

"What did you say the address was?"

"The Rue du Chevalier Bayard, Number 7."

Mr. Granger left the room without another word. He was not a man to
remain long in doubt upon any question that could be solved by prompt
investigation. He went out into the hall, where a footman sat reading
_Galignani_ in the lamplight.

"Has Mrs. Granger's carriage come back, Saunders?" he asked.

"Yes, sir; the carriage has been back a quarter of an hour. I were out with
my mistress."

"Where is Mrs. Granger? In her own rooms?"

"No, sir; Mrs. Granger didn't come home in the carriage. We drove her to
the Shangs Elysy first, sir, and afterwards to the Rue du Cavalier Baynard;
and Mr. Fairfax, he came down and told me my mistress wouldn't want the
carriage to take her home."

"Mr. Fairfax--in the Rue du Chevalier Bayard!"

"Yes, sir; he's an intimate friend of Mr. Hostin's, I believe. Leastways,
we've seen him there very often."

George Fairfax! George Fairfax a frequent guest of those people whom
she visited! That slumbering demon, which had been sheltered in Daniel
Granger's breast so long, arose rampant at the sound of this name. George
Fairfax, the man he suspected in the past; the man whom he had done his
best to keep out of his wife's pathway in the present, but who, by some
fatality, was not be avoided. Had Clarissa cultivated an intimacy with this
Bohemian painter and his wife only for the sake of meeting George Fairfax
without her husband's knowledge? To suppose this was to imagine a depth of
depravity in the heart of the woman he loved. And he had believed her so
pure, so noble a creature. The blow was heavy. He stood looking at his
servant for a moment or so, paralysed; but except that one blank gaze, he
gave no sign of his emotion. He only took up his hat, and went quietly out.
"His looks was orful!" the man said afterwards in the servants' hall.

Sophia came out of the drawing-room to look for her father, just a little
disturbed by the thought of what she had done. She had gone too far,
perhaps. There had been something in her father's look when he asked her
for that address that had alarmed her. He was gone; gone _there_, no doubt,
to discover his wife's motives for those strange visits. Miss Granger's
heart was not often fluttered as it was this evening. She could not "settle
to anything," as she said herself, but wandered up into the nursery, and
stood by the dainty little cot, staring absently at her baby brother as he
slept.

"If anything should happen," she thought--and that event which she vaguely
foreshadowed was one that would leave the child motherless--"I should make
it _my_ duty to superintend his rearing. No one should have power to say
that I was jealous of the brother who has robbed me of my heritage."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLII.

CAUGHT IN A TRAP.

It was dusk when Clarissa's carriage drove into the Rue du Chevalier
Bayard--the dull gray gloaming of February--and the great bell of Notre
Dame was booming five. She had been paying visits of duty, talking
banalities in fashionable drawing-rooms, and she was weary. She seemed to
breathe a new life as she approached her brother's dwelling. Here there
would be the free reckless utterance of minds that harmonised, of souls
that sympathised:--instead of stereotyped little scraps of gossip about the
great world, or arid discussion of new plays and famous opera-singers.

She did not stop to ask any questions of the complacent porter. It was not
her habit to do so. She had never yet failed to find Austin, or Austin's
wife, at home at this hour. She went swiftly up the darksome staircase,
where never a lamp was lighted to illumine the stranger, only an occasional
candle thrust out of a doorway by some friendly hand. In the dusk of this
particular evening there was not so much as a glimmer.

The outer door was ajar--not such an uncommon thing as to occasion any
surprise to Clarissa. She pushed it open and went in, across a dingy lobby
some four feet square, on which abutted the kitchen, and into the salon.
This was dark and empty; but one of the folding-doors leading into the
painting-room was open, and she saw the warm glow of the fire shining on
the old Flemish cabinets and the brazen chandelier. That glow of firelight
had a comfortable look after the desolation and darkness of the salon.

She went into the painting-room. There was a tall figure standing by one of
the windows, looming gigantic through the dusk--a figure she knew very
well, but not Austin's. She looked quickly round the room, expecting to see
her brother lounging by the chimney-piece, or wandering about somewhere in
his desultory way; but there was no one else, only that tall figure by the
window.

The silence and emptiness of the place, and _his_ presence, startled her a
little.

"Good-evening, Mr. Fairfax," she said. "Isn't Austin here?"

"Not at this moment. How do you do, Mrs. Granger?" and they shook hands.
So commonplace a meeting might almost have disappointed the sentimental
porter.

"And Bessie?" Clarissa asked.

"She too is out of the way for the moment," replied George Fairfax,
glancing out of the window. "You came in your carriage, I suppose, Mrs.
Granger? If you'll excuse me for a moment, I'll just ran and see if--if
Austin has come in again."

He went quickly out of the room and downstairs, not to look for Austin
Lovel, who was on his way to Brussels by this time, but to tell Mrs.
Granger's coachman she had no farther use for the carriage, and would not
be home to dinner. The man looked a little surprised at this order, but Mr.
Fairfax's tone was too peremptory to be unauthorised; so he drove homeward
without hesitation.

Clarissa was seated in her favourite easy-chair, looking pensively at
the wood-fire, when George Fairfax came back. She heard his returning
footsteps, and the sharp click of a key turning in the outer door. This
sound set her wondering. What door was that being locked, and by whom?

Mr. Fairfax came into the painting-room. It was the crisis of his life, he
told himself. If he failed to obtain some promise from her to-night--some
definite pledge of his future happiness--he could never hope to succeed.

"Time and I against any two," he had said to himself sometimes in relation
to this business. He had been content to bide his time; but the golden
opportunity had come at last. If he failed to-night, he failed forever.

"Is he coming?" Clarissa asked, rather anxiously. There was something
ominous in the stillness of the place, and the absence of any sign of life
except George Fairfax's presence.

"Not immediately. Don't alarm yourself," he said hurriedly, as Clarissa
rose with a frightened look. "There is nothing really wrong, only there are
circumstances that I felt it better to break to you gently. Yet I fear I am
an awkward hand at doing that, at the best. The fact is, your brother has
left Paris."

"Left Paris!"

"Yes, only a couple of hours ago." And then Mr. Fairfax went on to tell the
story of Austin's departure, making as light of it as he could, and with no
word of that letter which had been given him to deliver.

The news was a shock to Clarissa. Very well did she remember what her
brother had told her about the probability of his being compelled to "cut
Paris." It had come, then, some new disgrace, and banished him from the
city he loved--the city in which his talents had won for him a budding
reputation, that might have blossomed into fame, if he had only been a
wiser and a better man. She heard George Fairfax in silence, her head bowed
with shame. This man was her brother, and she loved him so dearly.

"Do you know where they have gone?" she asked at last.

"To Brussels. He may do very well there, no doubt, if he will only keep
himself steady--turn his back upon the rackety society he is so fond
of--and work honestly at his art. It is a place where they can live more
cheaply, too, than they could here."

"I am so sorry they are gone without a word of parting. It must have been
very sudden."

"Yes. I believe the necessity for the journey arose quite suddenly; or it
may have been hanging over your brother for a long time, and he may have
shut his eyes to the fact until the last moment. He is such a fellow for
taking things easily. However, he did not enter into explanations with me."

"Poor Austin! What a wretched life!"

Clarissa rose and moved slowly towards the folding-doors. George Fairfax
stopped her at the threshold, and quietly closed the door.

"Don't go yet, Clarissa. I want to speak to you."

His tone told her what was coming--the scene in the conservatory was to
be acted over again. This was the first time they had been actually alone
since that too-well-remembered night.

She drew herself up haughtily. A woman's weakness makes her desperate in
such a case as this.

"I have no time to talk now, Mr. Fairfax. I am going home."

"Not yet, Clarissa. I have waited a long time for this chance. I am
determined to say my say."

"You will not compel me to listen to you?"

"Compel is a very hard word. I beseech you to hear me. My future life
depends on what I have to say, and on your answer."

"I cannot hear a word! I will not remain a moment!"

"The door yonder is locked, Clarissa, and the key in my pocket. Brutal, you
will say. The circumstances of our lives have left me no option. I have
watched and waited for such an opportunity as this; and now, Clarissa, you
shall hear me. Do you remember that night in the orchard, when you drove me
away by your coldness and obstinacy? And yet you loved me! You have owned
it since. Ah, my darling, how I have hated myself for my dulness that
night!--hated myself for not having seized you in my arms, if need were,
and carried you off to the end of the world to make you my wife. What a
fool and craven I must have been to be put off so easily!"

"Nothing can be more foolish than to discuss the past, Mr. Fairfax,"
replied Clarissa, in a low voice that trembled a little. "You have made
me do wrong more than once in my life. There must be an end of this. What
would my husband think, if he could hear you? what would he think of me for
listening to you? Let me pass, if you please; and God grant that we may
never meet again after to-night!"

"God grant that we may never part, Clarissa! O, my love, my love, for
pity's sake be reasonable! We are not children to play fast and loose with
our lives. You love me, Clary. No sweet-spoken pretences, no stereotyped
denials, will convince me. You love me, my darling, and the world is all
before us. I have mapped-out our future; no sorrow or discredit shall ever
come nigh you--trust a lover's foresight for that. Whatever difficulties
may lie in our pathway are difficulties that I will face and
conquer--alone. You have only to forget that you have ever been Daniel
Granger's wife, and leave Paris with me to-night."

"Mr. Fairfax! are you mad?"

"Never more reasonable--never so much in earnest. Come with me, Clarissa.
It is not a sacrifice that I ask from you: I offer you a release. Do you
think there is any virtue or beauty in your present life, or any merit in
continuing it? From first to last, your existence is a lie. Do you think
a wedding-ring redeems the honour of a woman who sells herself for money?
There is no slavery more degrading than the bondage of such an alliance."

"Open the door, Mr. Fairfax, and let me go!"

His reproaches stung her to the quick; they were so bitterly true.

"Not till you have heard me, my darling--not till you have heard me out."

His tone changed all at once, softening into ineffable tenderness. He
told her of his love with words of deeper passion than he had ever spoken
yet--words that went home to the heart that loved him. For a moment,
listening to that impassioned pleading, it seemed to Clarissa that this
verily was life indeed--that to be so loved was in itself alone the perfect
joy and fulness of existence, leaving nothing more to be desired, making
shame as nothing in the balance. In that one moment the guilty heart was
well-nigh yielding; the bewildered brain could scarcely maintain the
conflict of thought and feeling. Then suddenly this mental agony changed to
a strange dulness, a mist rose between Clarissa and the eager face of her
lover. She was nearer fainting than she had ever been in her life before.

George Fairfax saw her face whiten, and the slender figure totter ever so
slightly. In a moment a strong arm was round her. The weary head sank on
his shoulder.

"My darling," he whispered, "why not leave Paris to-night? It cannot be too
soon. Your husband is away. We shall have a start of two or three days, and
avoid all risk of pursuit."

"Not quite," said a voice close behind him; and looking round, George
Fairfax saw one of the folding-doors open, and Daniel Granger standing on
the threshold. The locked outer door had availed the traitor nothing. Mr.
Granger had come upstairs with the porter, who carried a bunch of duplicate
keys in his pocket.

Clarissa gave a sudden cry, which rose in the next instant to a shrill
scream. Two men were struggling in the doorway, grappling each other
savagely for one dreadful minute of confusion and agony. Then one fell
heavily, his head crashing against the angle of the doorway, and lay at
full length, with his white face looking up to the ceiling.