The Lovels of Arden by M. E. Braddon

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"That Fairfax is a villain," replied Mrs. Brobson. "I don't forget the
day he kissed baby in Arden Park. I never see any good come of a single
gentleman kissing a lady's baby, voluntary. It isn't their nature to do it,
unless they've a hankering after the mar."

"Lor, Brobson, how horful!" cried Eliza. And in this pleasant converse, the
nurse and her subordinate wasted another five minutes.

The nursemaid frittered away a few more minutes in tapping gingerly at the
dressing-room door, until at last, emboldened by the silence, she opened
it, and, peering in, beheld nothing but emptiness. Mrs. Granger had gone to
the drawing-room perhaps; but where was baby? and where was Jane Target?
The girl went in search of her favourite, William Baker. Were Mrs. Granger
and baby in the drawing-room? No; Mr. Baker had been in attendance all the
afternoon. Mrs. Granger had not left her own apartments.

"But she's not there," cried Eliza, aghast; "nor Target either. I've been
looking for baby."

She ran back to the dressing-room; it was still empty, and the bedroom
adjoining. Mr. Granger's dressing-room was beyond that, and he was there
writing letters. At this door--this sacred door, the threshold whereof she
had never crossed--Eliza the nursemaid tapped nervously.

"O, if you please, sir, have you got Master Lovel?"

"No," cried Daniel Granger, starting up from his desk. "What made you think
him likely to be here?"

"I can't find him, please, sir. I've been looking in Mrs. Granger's
dressing-room, and everywhere almost. Jane Target fetched him for his ma
close upon a hour ago; and Mrs. Brobson sent me for him, and I fancied as
you might have got him with you, sir."

Mr. Granger came out of his room with the lamp in his hand, and came
through the bedroom to his wife's dressing-room, looking with that stern
searching gaze of his into every shadowy corner, as if he thought Clarissa
and her baby might be playing hide-and-seek there. But there was no
one--the cheval-glass and the great glass door of the wardrobe reflected
only his own figure, and the scared nursemaid peering from behind his
elbow. He went on to the nursery, opening the doors of all the rooms as he
passed, and looking in. There are some convictions that come in a minute.
Before that search was finished, Daniel Granger felt very sure that his
wife had left him, and had taken her child away with her.

In what manner and to what doom had she gone? Was her flight a shameful
one, with George Fairfax for her companion? He knew now, for the first
time, that in the depths of his mind there had been some lurking belief in
her innocence, it was so supreme an agony to him to imagine that she had
taken a step which must make her guilt a certainty. He did not waste much
time in questioning the verbose Brobson. The child was missing--that was
quite clear--and his wife, and his wife's maid. It was some small relief to
him to know that she had taken the honest Yorkshire girl. If she had been
going to ignominy, she would scarcely have taken any one who knew her past
history, above all, one whom she had known in her childhood.

What was he to do? To follow her, of course, if by any means he could
discover whither she had gone. To set the telegraph wires going, also, with
a view to discovering her destination. He drove off at once to the chief
telegraph office, and wrote a couple of messages, one to Mr. Lovel, at
Spa--the other to Mr. Oliver, at Holborough Rectory; with a brief stern
request to be informed immediately if his wife should arrive at either
place. There was Lady Laura Armstrong, her most intimate friend, with whom
she might possibly seek a refuge in the hour of her trouble; but he did not
care to make any application in that quarter, unless driven to do so. He
did not want to make his wrongs public.

From the telegraph office he drove to the Northern Railway Station, and
made minute inquiries about the trains. There was a train by which she
might have gone to Calais half an hour before he arrived there. He
enlisted the services of an official, and promenaded the waiting-rooms and
platforms, the dreary chambers in which travellers wait for their luggage,
to and fro between the barriers that torment the soul of the impatient. He
asked this man, and several other men, if a lady, with her baby and maid,
had been observed to take their departure by any train within the last
hour. But the men shrugged their shoulders hopelessly. Ladies and maids and
babies came and went in flocks, and no one noticed them. There were always
babies. Yes; one of the men did remember a stout lady in a red shawl,
with a baby and a birdcage and a crowd of boxes, who had gone by the
second-class. Is it that that was the lady monsieur was looking for, _par
hasard_?

"She will go to her father," Mr. Granger said to himself again and again;
and this for the moment seemed to him such a certainty, that he had half
made up his mind to start for Spa by the next train that would carry him in
that direction. But the thought of George Fairfax--the possibility that his
wife might have had a companion in her flight--arrested him in the next
moment. "Better that I should stop to make sure of _his_ whereabouts," he
thought; and drove straight to the Champs Elysees, where Mr. Fairfax had
his bachelor quarters.

Here he saw the valet, who had not long returned from that diplomatic
expedition to the neighbourhood of the Rue de Morny; but who appeared the
very image of unconsciousness and innocence notwithstanding. Mr. Fairfax
was dining at home with some friends. Would Mr. Granger walk in? The dinner
was not served yet. Mr. Fairfax would be delighted to see him.

Mr. Granger refused to go in; but told the man he should be glad to see Mr.
Fairfax there, in the ante-room, for a moment. He wanted to be quite sure
that the valet was not lying.

Mr. Fairfax came out, surprised at the visit.

"I had a special reason for wishing to know if you were at home this
evening," said Daniel Granger. "I am sorry to have disturbed you, and will
not detain you from your friends."

And then the question flashed upon him--_Was she there?_ No; that would be
too daring. Any other refuge she might seek; but surely not this.

George Fairfax had flung the door wide open in coming out. Mr. Granger
saw the dainty bachelor room, with its bright pictures shining in the
lamp-light, and two young men in evening-dress lolling against the
mantelpiece. The odours of an elaborate dinner were also perceptible. The
valet had told the truth. Daniel Granger murmured some vague excuse, and
departed.

"Queer!" muttered Mr. Fairfax as he went back to his friends.

"I'm afraid the man is going off his head; and yet he seemed cool enough
to-day."

From the Champs Elysees Mr. Granger drove to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard.
There was another possibility to be considered: if Austin the painter were
indeed Austin Lovel, as George Fairfax had asserted, it was possible that
Clarissa had gone to him; and the next thing to be done was to ascertain
his whereabouts. The ancient porter, whom Mr. Granger had left the night
before in a doubtful and bewildered state of mind, was eating some savoury
mess for his supper comfortably enough this evening, but started up
in surprise, with his spectacles on his forehead, at Mr. Granger's
reappearance.

"I want to know where your lodger Mr. Austin went when he left here?" Mr.
Granger demanded briefly.

The porter shrugged his shoulders.

"Alas, monsieur, that is an impossibility. I know nothing of Mr. Austin's
destination; only that he went away yesterday, at three o'clock, in a
hackney-coach, which was to take him to the Northern Railway."

"Is there no one who can tell me what I want to know?" asked Mr. Granger.

"I doubt it, monsieur. Monsieur Austin was in debt to almost every one
except his landlord. He promised to write about his furniture,--some of
the movables in those rooms upstairs are his--cabinets, carved chairs,
tapestries, and so on; but he said nothing as to where he was going."

"He promised to write," repeated Mr. Granger. "That's an indefinite kind of
promise. You could let me know, I suppose, if you heard anything?"

"But certainly," replied the porter, who saw Mr. Granger's fingers in his
waistcoat pocket, and scented a fee, "monsieur should know immediately."

Mr. Granger wrote his address upon a card, and gave it to the porter, with
a napoleon.

"You shall have another when you bring me any information. Good-night."

At home, Daniel Granger had to face his daughter, who had heard by this
time of her stepmother's departure and the abstraction of the baby.

"O, papa," she exclaimed, "I do so feel for you!" and made as if she would
have embraced her parent; but he stood like a rock, not inviting any
affectionate demonstration.

"Thank you, my dear," he said gravely; "but I can do very well without
pity. It's a kind of thing I'm not accustomed to. I am annoyed that
Clarissa should have acted in--in this ill-advised manner; but I have no
doubt matters will come right in a little time."

"Lovel--my brother is safe, papa?" inquired Sophia, clasping her hands.

"I have every reason to believe so. He is with his mother."

Miss Granger sighed profoundly, as much as to say, "He could not be in
worse hands."

"And I think, my dear," continued her father, "that the less you trouble
yourself about this business the bettor. Any interference on your part will
only annoy me, and may occasion unpleasantness between us. You will go back
to Arden, to-morrow, as I intended, with Warman, and one of the men to take
care of your luggage. The rest of the establishment will follow in a day or
so."

"And you, papa?"

"My plans are uncertain. I shall return to Arden as soon as I can."

"Dear old Arden!" exclaimed Sophia; "how I wish we had never left it! How
happy I was for the first four years of my life there!"

This apostrophe Mr. Granger perfectly understood--it meant that, with the
advent of Clarissa, happiness had fled away from Sophia's dwelling-place.
He did not trouble himself to notice the speech; but it made him angry
nevertheless.

"There is a letter for you, papa," said Miss Granger, pointing to a
side-table; "a letter which Warman found upstairs."

The lynx-eyed Warman, prying and peering about, had spied out Clarissa's
letter to her husband, half hidden among the frivolities on the
dressing-table. Mr. Granger pounced upon it eagerly, full of hope. It might
tell him all he wanted to know.

It told him nothing. The words were not consistent with guilt, unless
Clarissa were the very falsest of women. But had she not been the falsest?
Had she not deceived him grossly, unpardonably? Alas, he was already trying
to make excuses for her--trying to believe her innocent, innocent of what
society calls sin--yes, she might be that. But had he not seen her kneeling
beside her lover? Had she not owned that she loved him? She had; and the
memory of her words were poison to Daniel Granger.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLIV.

UNDER THE SHADOW OF ST. GUDULE.

It was about half an hour before noon on the following day when Clarissa
arrived at Brussels, and drove straight to her brother's lodging, which was
in an obscure street under the shadow of St. Gudule. Austin was at work
in a room opening straight from the staircase--a bare, shabby-looking
chamber--and looked up from his easel with profound astonishment on
beholding Mrs. Granger with her maid and baby.

"Why, Clary, what in the name of all that's wonderful, brings you to
Brussels?" he exclaimed.

"I have come to live with you for a little while, Austin, if you will let
me," she answered quietly. "I have no other home now."

Austin Lovel laid down his palette, and came across the room to receive
her.

"What does it all mean, Clary?--Look here, young woman," he said to Jane
Target; "you'll find my wife in the next room; and she'll help you to make
that youngster comfortable.--Now, Clary," he went on, as the girl curtseyed
and vanished through the door that divided the two rooms, "what does it all
mean?"

Clarissa told him her story--told it, that is to say, as well as she could
tell a story which reflected so much discredit upon herself.

"I went to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard at 5 on Tuesday--as I promised, you
know, Austin--and found Mr. Fairfax there. You may imagine how surprised
I was when I heard you were gone. He did not tell me immediately; and he
detained me there--talking to me."

The sudden crimson which mounted to her very temples at this juncture
betrayed her secret.

"Talking to you!" cried Austin; "you mean making love to you! The infernal
scoundrel!"

"It was--very dishonourable!"

"That's a mild way of putting it. What! he hung about my rooms when I had
gone, to get you into a trap, as it were, at the risk of compromising you
in a most serious manner! You never gave him any encouragement, did you,
Clarissa?"

"I never meant to do so."

"You never meant! But a woman must know what she is doing. You used to
meet him at my rooms very often. If I had dreamt there was any flirtation
between you, I should have taken care to put a stop to _that_. Well, go on.
You found Fairfax there, and you let him detain you, and then----?"

"My husband came, and there was a dreadful scene, and he knocked Mr.
Fairfax down."

"Naturally. I respect him for doing it."

"And for a few minutes I thought he was dead," said Clarissa with a
shudder; and then she went on with her story, telling her brother how
Daniel Granger had threatened to separate her from her child.

"That was hard lines," said Austin; "but I think you would have done better
to remain passive. It's natural that he should take this business rather
seriously at first: but that would wear off in a short time. What you have
done will only widen the breach."

"I have got my child," said Clarissa.

"Yes; but in any case you must have had him. That threat of Granger's was
only blank cartridge. He could not deprive you of the custody of your son."

"He will try to get a divorce, perhaps. He thinks me the vilest creature in
the world."

"A divorce--bosh! Divorces are not obtained so easily. What a child you
are, Clarissa!"

"At any rate, he was going to take me back to papa in disgrace. I could not
have endured that. My father would think me guilty, perhaps."

Again the tell-tale crimson flushed Clarissa's face. The memory of that
September evening at Mill Cottage flashed across her mind, and her father's
denunciation of George Fairfax and his race.

"Your father would be wise enough to defend his child, I imagine," replied
Austin, "although he is not a person whose conduct I would pretend to
answer for. But this quarrel between you and your husband must be patched
up, Clary."

"That will never be."

"It must be--for your son's sake, if not for yours. You pretend to love
that boy, and are yet so blind to his interests? He is not the heir to an
entailed estate, remember. Granger is a self-made man, and if you offend
him, may leave Arden Court to his daughter's children."

She had robbed her son of his birthright, perhaps. For what? Because she
had not had the strength to shut her heart against a guilty love; because,
in the face of every good resolution she had ever made, she had been weak
enough to listen when George Fairfax chose to speak.

"It seems very hard," she said helplessly.

"It would be uncommonly hard upon that child, if this breach were not
healed. But it must be healed."

"You do not know half the bitter things Mr. Granger said. Nothing would
induce me to humiliate myself to him."

"Not the consideration of your son's interests?"

"God will protect my son; he will not be punished for any sin of his
mother's."

"Come now, Clary, be reasonable. Let me write to Granger in my own proper
character, telling him that you are here."

"If you do that, I will never forgive you. It would be most dishonourable,
most unkind. You will not do that, Austin?"

"Of course I will not, if you insist upon it. But I consider that you are
acting very foolishly. There must have been a settlement, by the way, when
you married. Do you remember anything about it?"

"Very little. There was five hundred a year settled on me for pin money;
and five hundred a year for papa, settled somehow. The reversion to come
to me, I think they said. And--yes, I remember--If I had any children, the
eldest son was to inherit Arden Court."

"That's lucky! I thought your father would never be such a fool as to let
you marry without some arrangement of that sort."

"Then my darling is safe, is he not?"

"Well, yes, I suppose so."

"And you will not betray me, Austin?" said Clarissa imploringly.

"Betray you! If you put it in that way, of course not. But I should be
acting more in your interests if I wrote to Granger. No good can come
of the step you have taken. However, we must trust to the chapter of
accidents," added Austin, with a resumption of his habitual carelessness.
"I needn't tell you that you are heartily welcome to my hospitality, such
as it is. Our quarters are rough enough, but Bessie will do what she can to
make you comfortable; and I'll put on a spurt and work hard to keep things
together. I have found a dealer in the Montagne de la Cour, who is willing
to take my sketches at a decent price. Look here, Clary, how do you like
this little bit of _genre?_ 'Forbidden Fruit'--a chubby six-year-old girl,
on tiptoe, trying to filch a peach growing high on the wall; flimsy child,
and pre-Raphaelite wall. Peach, carnation velvet; child's cheek to match
the peach. Rather a nice thing, isn't it?" asked Austin lightly.

Clarissa made some faint attempt to appear interested in the picture, which
she only saw in a dim far-off way.

"I shall be very glad to see where you are going to put baby," she said
anxiously.

The bleak and barren aspect of the painting-room did not promise much for
the accommodation or comfort of Mr. Lovel's domicile.

"Where I am going to put baby! Ah, to be sure, you will want a room to
sleep in," said Austin, as if this necessity had only just struck him.
"We'll soon manage that; the house is roomy enough,--a perfect barrack, in
fact. There was a lace-factory carried on in it once, I believe. I daresay
there's a room on this floor that we can have. I'll go and see about
that, while you make yourself comfortable with Bessie. We have only two
rooms--this and the next, which is our bedroom; but we shall do something
better by and by, if I find my pictures sell pretty fast."

He went off whistling an opera air, and by no means oppressed by the idea
that he had a sister in difficulties cast upon his hands.

There was a room--a darksome chamber at the back of the house--looking into
a narrow alley, where domestic operations of some kind seemed to be going
on in every window and doorway, but sufficiently spacious, and with two
beds. It was altogether homely, but looked tolerably clean; and Clarissa
was satisfied with it, although it was the poorest room that had ever
sheltered her. She had her baby--that was the grand point; and he rolled
upon the beds, and crowed and chattered, in his half inarticulate way, with
as much delight as if the shabby chamber had been an apartment in a palace.

"If he is happy, I am more than content!" exclaimed Mrs. Granger.

A fire was lighted in the stove, and Bessie brought them a second breakfast
of coffee and rolls, and a great basin of bread and milk for young Lovel.
The little man ate ravenously, and did not cry for Brobson--seemed indeed
rather relieved to have escaped from the jurisdiction of that respectable
matron. He was fond of Jane Target, who was just one of those plump
apple-cheeked young women whom children love instinctively, and who had
a genius for singing ballads of a narrative character, every verse
embellished with a curious old-fashioned quavering turn.

After this refreshment--the first that Clarissa had taken with any approach
to appetite since that luckless scene in her brother's painting-room--Jane
persuaded her mistress to lie down and rest, which she did, falling asleep
peacefully, with her boy's bright young head nestling beside her on the
pillow. It was nearly dark when she awoke; and after dinner she went out
for a walk with Austin, in the bright gas-lit streets, and along a wide
boulevard, where the tall bare trees looked grim in the darkness. The
freedom of this new life seemed strange to her, after the forms and
ceremonies of her position as Daniel Granger's wife, and Sophia Granger's
stepmother--strange, and not at all unpleasant.

"I think I could be very happy with you and Bessie always, Austin," she
said, "if they would only leave me in peace."

"Could you, Clary? I'm sure I should be very glad to have you; but it would
be rather hard upon Granger."

"He was going to take me back to papa; he wanted to get rid of me."

"He was in a passion when he talked about that, rely upon it."

"He was as cold as ice, Austin. I don't believe he was ever in a passion in
his life."

* * * * *

CHAPTER XLV.

TEMPTATION.

It was Sunday; and Clarissa had been nearly a week in Brussels--a very
quiet week, in which she had had nothing to do but worship her baby, and
tremblingly await any attempt that might be made to wrest him from her. She
lived in hourly fear of discovery, and was startled by every step on the
staircase and fluttered by every sudden opening of a door, expecting to see
Daniel Granger on the threshold.

She went to church alone on this first Sunday morning. Austin was seldom
visible before noon, dawdling away the bleaker morning hours smoking and
reading in bed. Bessie had a world of domestic business on her hands, and
the two boys to torment her while she attempted to get through it. So
Clarissa went alone to St. Gudule. There were Protestant temples, no doubt,
in the Belgian city wherein she might have worshipped; but that solemn
pile drew her to itself with a magnetic attraction. She went in among
the gay-looking crowd--the old women in wondrous caps, the sprinkling
of soldiers, the prosperous citizens and citizenesses in their Sunday
splendour--and made her way to a quiet corner remote from the great
carved-oak pulpit and the high altar--a shadowy corner behind a massive
cluster of columns, and near a little wooden door in one of the great
portals, that opened and shut with a clanging noise now and then, and
beside which a dilapidated-looking old man kept watch over a shell-shaped
marble basin of holy water, and offered a brush dipped in the sacred fluid
to devout passers-by. Here she could kneel unobserved, and in her ignorant
fashion, join in the solemn service, lifting up her heart with the
elevation of the host, and acknowledging her guiltiness in utter humility
of spirit.

Yet not always throughout that service could she keep her thoughts from
wandering. Her mind had been too much troubled of late for perfect peace or
abstraction of thought to be possible to her. The consideration of her own
folly was very constantly with her. What a wreck and ruin she had made of
her life--a life which from first to last had been governed by impulse
only!

"If I had been an honourable woman, I should never have married Daniel
Granger," she said to herself. "What right had I to take so much and give
so little--to marry a man I could not even hope to love for the sake of
winning independence for my father, or for the sake of my old home?"

Arden Court--was not that the price which had made her sacrifice tolerable
to her? And she had lost it; the gates of the dwelling she loved were
closed upon her once again--and this time for ever. How the memory of the
place came back to her this chill March morning!--the tall elms rocking in
the wind, the rooks' nests tossing in the topmost branches, and the hoarse
cawing of discontented birds bewailing the tardiness of spring.

"It will be my darling's home in the days to come," she said to herself;
but even this thought brought no consolation. She dared not face her son's
future. Would it not involve severance from her? Now, while he was an
infant, she might hold him; but by-and-by the father's stern claim would
be heard. They would take the boy away from her--teach him to despise and
forget her. She fancied herself wandering and watching in Arden Park, a
trespasser, waiting for a stolen glimpse of her child's face.

"I shall die before that time comes," she thought gloomily.

Some such fancy as this held her absorbed when the high mass concluded, and
the congregation began to disperse. The great organ was pealing out one of
Mozart's Hallelujahs. There was some secondary service going on at either
end of the church. Clarissa still knelt, with her face hidden in her hands,
not praying, only conjuring up dreadful pictures of the future. Little by
little the crowd melted away; there were only a few worshippers murmuring
responses in the distance; the last chords of the Hallelujah crashed and
resounded under the vaulted roof; and at last Clarissa looked up and found
herself almost alone.