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

Clarissa rose at the word, with a shrill indignant cry. For a few moments
she stood looking at her accuser, magnificent in her anger and surprise.

"You dare to call me _that_!" she exclaimed.

"I dare to call you what I believe you to be. What! I find you in an
obscure house, with locked doors; you go to meet your lover alone; and I am
to think nothing!"

"Never alone until last night, and then not with my consent, I went to see
Mr. and Mrs. Austin--I did not know they had left Paris."

"But their departure was very convenient, was it not? It enabled your lover
to plead his cause, to make arrangements for your flight. You were to
have three days' start of me. Pshaw! why should we bandy words about the
shameful business? You have told me that you love him--that is enough."

"Yes," she said, with the anger and defiance gone out of her face and
manner, "I have been weak and guilty, but not as guilty as you suppose. I
have done nothing to forfeit my right to my son. You shall not part us!"

"You had better tell your maid you are going on a journey to-morrow. She
will have to pack your things--your jewels, and all you care to take."

"I shall tell her nothing. Remember what I have said--I will not be
separated from Lovel!"

"In that case, I must give the necessary orders myself," said Mr. Granger
coolly, and saying this he left the room to look for his wife's maid.

Jane Target, the maid, came in presently. She was the young woman chosen
for Clarissa's service by Mrs. Oliver; a girl whose childhood had been
spent at Arden, and to whose childish imagination the Levels of Arden Court
had always seemed the greatest people in the world. The girl poured out her
mistress's tea, and persuaded her to take something. She perceived that
there was something amiss, some serious misunderstanding between Clarissa
and her husband. Had not the business been fully discussed in the Areopagus
downstairs, all those unaccountable visits to the street near the
Luxembourg, and Mr. Fairfax's order to the coachman?

"Nor it ain't the first time I've seen him there neither," Jarvis had
remarked; "me and Saunders have noticed him ever so many times, dropping in
promiscuous like while Mrs. G. was there, Fishy, to say the least of it!"

Jane Target was very fond of her mistress, and would as soon have doubted
that the sun was fire as suspected any flaw in Clarissa's integrity. She
had spoken her mind more than once upon this subject in the servants' hall,
and had put the bulky Jarvis to shame.

"Do, ma'am, eat something!" she pleaded, when she had poured out the tea.
"You had no dinner yesterday, and no tea, unless you had it in the nursery.
You'll be fit for nothing, if you go on like this."

Fit for nothing! The phrase roused Clarissa from her apathy. Too weak to
do battle for her right to the custody of her child, she thought; and
influenced by this idea, she struggled through a tolerable breakfast,
eating delicate _petite pains_ which tasted like ashes, and drinking strong
tea with a feverish eagerness.

The tea fortified her nerves; she got up and paced her room, thinking what
she ought to do.

Daniel Granger was going to take her child from her--that was
certain--unless by some desperate means she secured her darling to herself.
Nothing could be harder or more pitiless than his manner that morning. The
doors of Arden Court were to be shut against her.

"And I sold myself for Arden!" she thought bitterly. She fancied how the
record of her life would stand by-and-by, like a verse in those Chronicles
which Sophia was so fond of: "And Clarissa reigned a year and a half, and
did that which was evil"--and so on. Very brief had been her glory; very
deep was her disgrace.

What was she to do? Carry her child away before they could take him from
her--secure him to herself somehow. If it were to be done at all, it must
be done quickly; and who had she to help her in this hour of desperate
need.

She looked at Jane Target, who was standing by the dressing-table dusting
the gold-topped scent-bottles and innumerable prettinesses scattered
there--the costly trifles with which women who are not really happy strive
to create for themselves a factitious kind of happiness. The girl was
lingering over her work, loth to leave her mistress unless actually
dismissed.

Jane Target, Clarissa remembered her a flaxen-haired cottage girl, with an
honest freckled face and a calico-bonnet; a girl who was always swinging on
five-barred gates, or overturning a baby brother out of a primitive wooden
cart--surely this girl was faithful, and would help her in her extremity.
In all the world, there was no other creature to whom she could appeal.

"Jane," she said at last, stopping before the girl and looking at her with
earnest questioning eyes, "I think I can trust you." "Indeed you can,
ma'am," answered Jane, throwing down her feather dusting-brush to clasp her
hands impetuously. "There's nothing in this world I would not do to prove
myself true to you."

"I am in great trouble, Jane."

"I know that, ma'am," the girl answered frankly.

"I daresay you know something of the cause. My husband is angry
about--about an accidental meeting which arose between a gentleman and me.
It was entirely accidental on my part; but he does not choose to believe
this, and----" The thought of Daniel Granger's accusation flashed
upon her in this moment in all its horror, and she broke down, sobbing
hysterically.

The girl brought her mistress a chair, and was on her knees beside her in a
moment, comforting her and imploring her to be calm.

"The trouble will pass away, ma'am," said the maid, soothingly. "Mr.
Granger will come to see his mistake. He can't be angry with you long, I'm
sure; he loves you so."

"Yes, yes, he has been very good to me--better than I have ever deserved;
but that is all over now. He won't believe me--he will hardly listen to me.
He is going to take away my boy, Jane."

"Going to take away Master Lovel?"

"Yes; my darling is to go back to Arden, and I am to go to papa."

"What!" cried Jane Target, all the woman taking fire in her honest
heart. "Part mother and child! He couldn't do that; or if he could, he
_shouldn't_, while I had the power to hinder him."

"How are we to prevent him, Jane--you and I?"

"Let's take the darling away, ma'am, before he can stop us."

"You dear good soul!" cried Clarissa. "It's the very thing I've been
thinking of. Heaven knows how it is to be done; but it must be done
somehow. And you will come with me, Jane? and you will brave all for me,
you good generous girl?"

"Lor, ma'am, what do you think I'm frightened of? Not that stuck-up Mrs.
Brobson, with her grand airs, and as lazy as the voice of the sluggard into
the bargain. Just you make up your mind, mum, where you'd like to go, and
when you'd like to start, and I shall walk into the nursery as bold as
brass, and say I want Master Lovel to come and amuse his mar for half an
hour; and once we've got him safe in this room, the rest is easy. Part
mother and child indeed! I should like to see him do it! I warrant we'll
soon bring Mr. Granger to his senses."

Where to go? yes, there was the rub. What a friendless creature Clarissa
Granger felt, as she pondered on this serious question! To her brother?
Yes, he was the only friend she would care to trust in this emergency. But
how was she to find him? Brussels was a large place, and she had no clue to
his whereabouts there. Could she feel even sure that he had really gone to
Brussels?

Somewhither she must go, however--that was certain. It could matter very
little where she found a refuge, if only she had her darling with her. So
the two women consulted together, and plotted and planned in Clarissa's
sanctum; while Daniel Granger paced up and down the great dreary
drawing-room, waiting for that promised visit from George Fairfax.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLIII.

CLARISSA'S ELOPEMENT.

Mr. Fairfax came a little after noon--came with a calm grave aspect, as of
a man who had serious work before him. With all his heart he wished that
the days of duelling had not been over; that he could have sent his best
friend to Daniel Granger, and made an end of the quarrel in a gentlemanlike
way, in some obscure alley at Vincennes, or amidst the shadowy aisles of
St. Germains. But a duel nowadays is too complete an anachronism for an
Englishman to propose in cold blood. Mr. Fairfax came to his enemy's house
for one special purpose. The woman he loved was in Daniel Granger's power;
it was his duty to explain that fatal meeting in Austin's rooms, to justify
Clarissa's conduct in the eyes of her husband. It was not that he meant to
surrender his hope of their future union--indeed, he hoped that the scene
of the previous evening would bring about a speedy separation between
husband and wife. But he had placed her in a false position; she was
innocent, and he was bound to assert her innocence.

He found Daniel Granger like a man of iron, fully justifying that phrase of
Lady Laura's--"_Carre par la base_." The ignominy of his own position came
fully home to him at the first moment of their meeting. He remembered the
day when he had liked and respected this man: he could not despise him now.

He was conscious that he carried the mark of last night's skirmish in an
unpleasantly conspicuous manner. That straight-out blow of Daniel Granger's
had left a discoloration of the skin--what in a meaner man might have been
called a black eye. He, too, had hit hard in that brief tussle; but no
stroke of his had told like that blow of the Yorkshireman's. Mr. Granger
bore no trace of the encounter.

The two men met with as serene an air as if they had never grappled each
other savagely in the twilight.

"I considered it due to Mrs. Granger that I should call upon you," George
Fairfax began, "in order to explain her part in the affair of last night."

"Go on, sir. The old story, of course--Mrs. Granger is spotless; it is only
appearances that are against her."

"So far as she is concerned, our meeting yesterday afternoon was an
accident. She came there to see another person."

"Indeed I Mr. Austin the painter, I suppose?--a man who painted her
portrait, and who had no farther acquaintance with her than that. A very
convenient person, it seems, since she was in the habit of going to his
rooms nearly every afternoon; and I suppose the same kind of accident as
that of yesterday generally brought you there at the same time."

"Mrs. Granger went to see her brother."

"Her brother?"

"Yes, Austin Lovel; otherwise Mr. Austin the painter. I have been pledged
to him to keep his identity a secret; but I feel myself at liberty to break
my promise now--in his sister's justification."

"You mean, that the man who came to this house as a stranger is my wife's
brother?"

"I do."

"What duplicity! And this is the woman I trusted!"

"There was no voluntary duplicity on your wife's part. I know that she was
most anxious you should be told the truth."

"_You_ know! Yes, of course; _you_ are in my wife's confidence--an honour I
have never enjoyed."

"It was Austin who objected to make himself known to you."

"I scarcely wonder at that, considering his antecedents. The whole thing
has been very cleverly done, Mr. Fairfax, and I acknowledge myself
completely duped. I don't think there is any occasion for us to discuss the
subject farther. Nothing that you could say would alter my estimation of
the events of last night. I regret that I suffered myself to be betrayed
into any violence--that kind of thing is behind the times. We have wiser
remedies for our wrongs nowadays."

"You do not mean that you would degrade your wife in a law court!" cried
Mr. Fairfax. "Any legal investigation must infallibly establish her
innocence; but no woman's name can escape untainted from such an ordeal."

"No, I am not likely to do that. I have a son, Mr. Fairfax. As for my wife,
my plans are formed. It is not in the power of any one living to alter
them."

"Then it is useless for me to say more. On the honour of a gentleman, I
have told you nothing but the truth. Your wife is innocent."

"She is not guiltless of having listened to you. That is quite enough for
me."

"I have done, sir," said George Fairfax gravely, and, with a bow and a
somewhat cynical smile, departed.

He had done what he felt himself bound to do. He had no ardent wish to
patch up the broken union between Clarissa and her husband. From the
first hour in which he heard of her marriage, he had held it in jealous
abhorrence. He had very little compunction about what had happened. It must
bring matters to a crisis, he thought. In the meantime, he would have given
a great deal to be able to communicate with Clarissa, and began accordingly
to deliberate how that might best be done.

He did not deliberate long; for while he was meditating all manner of
roundabout modes of approach, he suddenly remembered how Austin Lovel had
told him he always wrote to his sister under cover to her maid. All he had
to do, therefore, was to find out the maid's name.

That would be easy enough, Mr. Fairfax imagined, if his servant was good
for anything. The days of Leporello are over; but a well-bred valet may
still have some little talent for diplomacy.

"My fellow has only to waylay one of Granger's grooms," Mr. Fairfax said to
himself, "and he can get the information I want readily enough."

There was not much time to be lost, he thought. Mr. Granger had spoken of
his plans with a certain air of decision. Those plans involved some change
of residence, no doubt. He would take his wife away from Paris; punish
her by swift banishment from that brilliant city; bury her alive at Arden
Court, and watch her with the eyes of a lynx for the rest of his life.

"Let him watch you never so closely, or shut you in what prison he may, I
will find a door of escape for you, my darling," he said to himself.

The mistress and maid were busy meanwhile, making arrangements for a sudden
flight. There was very little packing to be done; for they could take
nothing, or scarcely anything, with them. The great difficulty would be, to
get the child out of the house. After a good deal of deliberation they
had decided the manner in which their attempt was to be made. It was dusk
between five and six; and at dusk Jane was to go to the nursery, and in the
most innocent manner possible, carry off the boy for half-an-hour's play in
his mother's dressing-room. It was, fortunately, a usual thing for Clarissa
to have him with her at this time, when she happened to be at home so
early. There was a dingy servants' staircase leading from the corridor to
the ground-floor; and down this they were to make their escape unobserved,
the child bundled up in a shawl, Jane Target having slipped out beforehand
and hired a carriage, which was to wait for them a little way off in a
side-street. There was a train leaving Paris at seven, which would take
them to Amiens, where they could sleep that night, and go on to Brussels in
the morning. Once in Brussels, they must contrive somehow to find Austin
Lovel.

Of her plans for the future--how she was to live separated from her
husband, and defying him--Clarissa thought nothing. Her mind was wholly
occupied by that one consideration about her child. To secure him to
herself was the end and aim of her existence.

It was only at Jane's suggestion that she set herself to calculate ways and
means. She had scarcely any ready money--one five-pound note and a handful
of silver comprised all her wealth. She had given her brother every
sixpence she could spare. There were her jewels, it is true; jewels worth
three or four thousand pounds. But she shrank from the idea of touching
these.

While she sat with her purse in her hand, idly counting the silver, and not
at all able to realise the difficulties of her position, the faithful Jane
came to her relief.

"I've got five-and-twenty pounds with me, ma'am; saved out of my wages
since I've been in your service; and I'm sure you're welcome to the money."

Jane had brought her little hoard with her, intending to invest some part
of it in presents for her kindred--a shawl for her mother, and so on; but
had been disappointed, by finding that the Parisian shops, brilliant as
they were, contained very much the same things she had seen in London, and
at higher prices. She had entertained a hazy notion that cashmere shawls
were in some manner a product of the soil of France, and could be bought
for a mere trifle; whereby she had been considerably taken aback when the
proprietor of a plate-glass edifice on the Boulevard des Italiens asked her
a thousand francs for a black cashmere, which she had set her mind upon as
a suitable covering for the shoulders of Mrs. Target.

"You dear good girl!" said Clarissa, touched by this new proof of fidelity;
"but if I should never be able to pay you the money!"

"Stuff and nonsense, ma'am! no fear of that; and if you weren't, I
shouldn't care. Father and mother are comfortably off; and I'm not going to
work for a pack of brothers and sisters. I gave the girls new bonnets last
Easter, and sent them a ribbon apiece at Christmas; and that's enough for
_them_. If you don't take the money, ma'am, I shall throw it in the fire."

Clarissa consented to accept the use of the money. She would be able to
repay it, of course. She had a vague idea that she could earn money as a
teacher of drawing in some remote continental city, where they might live
very cheaply. How sweet it would be to work for her child! much sweeter
than to be a millionaire's wife and dress him in purple and fine linen that
cost her nothing.

She spent some hours in looking over and arranging her jewels. From all of
these she selected only two half-hoop diamond rings, as a reserve against
the hour of need. These and these only of Daniel Granger's gifts would she
take with her. She made a list of her trinkets, with a _nota bene_ stating
her appropriation of the two rings, and laid it at the top of her principal
jewel-case. After this, she wrote a letter to her husband--a few lines
only, telling him how she had determined to take her child away with her,
and how she should resist to the last gasp any attempt to rob her of him.

"If I were the guilty wretch you think me," she wrote, "I would willingly
surrender my darling, rather than degrade him by any association with such
a fallen creature. But whatever wrong I have committed against you--and
that wrong was done by my marriage--I have not forfeited the right to my
child's affection."

This letter written, there was nothing more to be done. Jane packed a
travelling-bag with a few necessary items, and that was all the luggage
they could venture to carry away with them.

The afternoon post brought a letter from Brussels, addressed to Miss Jane
Target, which the girl brought in triumph to her mistress.

"There'll be no bother about finding Mr. Austin, ma'am," she cried. "Here's
a letter!"

The letter was in Austin's usual brief careless style, entering into no
explanations; but it told the quarter in which he had found a lodging; so
Clarissa was at least sure of this friendly shelter. It would be a poor
one, no doubt; nor was Austin Lovel by any means a strong rock upon which
to lean in the hour of trouble. But she loved him, and she knew that he
would not turn his back upon her.

The rest of the day seemed long and dreary. Clarissa wandered into the
nursery two or three times in order to assure herself, by the evidence of
her own eyes, of her boy's safety. She found the nursemaid busy packing,
under Mrs. Brobson's direction.

The day waned. Clarissa had not seen her husband since that meeting in the
corridor; nor had she gone into any of the rooms where Miss Granger might
be encountered.

That young lady, painfully in the dark as to what had happened, sat at her
table in the window, diligently illuminating, and wondering when her father
would take her into his confidence. She had been told of the intended
journey on the next day, and that she and her brother were to go back to
Arden Court, under the protection of the servants, while Mr. Granger and
his wife went elsewhere, and was not a little puzzled by the peculiarity of
the arrangement. Warman was packing, complaining the while at having to do
so much in so short a time, and knew nothing of what had occurred in
the Rue du Chevalier Bayard, after the dismissal of the carriage by Mr.
Fairfax.

"There must have been something, miss," she said, "or your pa would never
have taken, this freak into his head--racing back as if it was for a wager;
and me not having seen half I wanted to see, nor bought so much as a
pincushion to take home to my friends. I had a clear month before me, I
thought, so where was the use of hurrying; and then to be scampered and
harum-scarumed off like this! It's really too bad."

"I have no doubt papa has good reasons for what he is doing, Warman,"
answered Miss Granger, with dignity.

"O, of course, miss; gentlefolks has always good reasons for _their_
goings-on!" Warman remarked snappishly, and then "took it out" of one of
Miss Granger's bonnets during the process of packing.

Twilight came at last, the longed-for dusk, in which the attempt was to be
made. Clarissa had put on one of her darkest plainest dresses, and borrowed
a little black-straw bonnet of her maid's. This bonnet and her sealskin
jacket she deferred putting on until the last; for there was always the
fear that Mr. Granger might come in at some awkward moment. At half-past
five Jane Target went to the nursery and fetched the year-old heir of Arden
Court.

He was always glad to go to his mother; and he came to-night crowing and
laughing, and kicking his little blue shoes in boisterous rapture. Jane
kept guard at the door while Clarissa put on her bonnet and jacket, and
wrapped up the baby--first in a warm fur-lined opera-jacket, and then in a
thick tartan shawl. They had no hat for him, but tied up his pretty flaxen
head in a large silk handkerchief, and put the shawl over that. The little
fellow submitted to the operation, which he evidently regarded in the light
of an excellent joke.

Everything was now ready. Clarissa carried her baby, Jane went before with
the bag, leading the way down the darksome servants' staircase, where at
any moment they might meet one of Mr. Granger's retainers. Luckily, they
met no one; the descent only occupied about two minutes; and at the bottom
of the stairs, Clarissa found herself in a small square stone lobby,
lighted by a melancholy jet of gas, and pervaded by the smell of cooking.
In the next moment Jane--who had made herself mistress of all minor
details--opened a door, and they were out in the dull quiet street--the
side-street, at the end of which workmen were scalping away a hill.

A few doors off they found the carriage, which Jane had secured half an
hour before, and a very civil driver. Clarissa told the driver where to go,
and then got in, with her precious burden safe in her arms.

The precious burden set up a wail at this juncture, not understanding or
approving these strange proceedings, and it was as much as his mother could
do to soothe him. A few yards round the corner they passed a man, who
looked curiously at the vehicle. This was George Fairfax, who was pacing
the street in the gloaming in order to reconnoitre the dwelling of the
woman he loved, and who let her pass him unaware. His own man was busy at
the same time entertaining one of Mr. Granger's footmen in a neighbouring
wine-shop, in the hope of extracting the information his master required
about Mrs. Granger's maid. They reached the station just five minutes
before the train left for Amiens; and once seated in the railway-carriage,
Clarissa almost felt as if her victory was certain, so easily had the first
stage been got over. She kissed and blessed Jane Target, whom she called
her guardian angel; and smothered her baby with kisses, apostrophising him
with all manner of fond foolishness.

Everything favoured her. The flight was not discovered until nearly
three-quarters of an hour after Clarissa had eloped with her baby down that
darksome stair. Mrs. Brobson, luxuriating in tea, toast, and gossip
before the nursery fire, and relieved not a little by the absence of her
one-year-old charge, had been unconscious of the progress of time. It was
only when the little clock upon the chimney-piece chimed the half-hour
after six, that she began to wonder about the baby.

"His mar's had him longer than ever," she said; "you'd better go and fetch
him, Liza. She'll be wanting to dress for dinner, I dessay. I suppose she's
going down to dinner to-night, though there is something up."

"She didn't go down to breakfast, nor yet to lunch," said Eliza, who had
her information fresh and fresh from one of the footmen; "and Mr. Granger's
been a-walking up and down the droring-room as if he was a-doing of it for
a wager, William Baker says. Mr. Fairfax come this morning, and didn't stop
above a quarter of a hour; but William was outside the droring-room door
all the time, and there was no loud talking, nor quarrelling, nor nothink."