AUSTIN.
Late in the autumn of that year, Mr. Granger and his household took up
their abode in Paris. Clarissa had expressed a wish to winter in that
brilliant city, and Daniel Granger had no greater desire than to please
her. But, in making any concession of this kind, he did it in such a quiet
unobtrusive way, that his wife was scarcely aware how entirely her wishes
had been studied. He was too proud a man to parade his affection for her;
he kept a check upon himself rather, and in a manner regulated his own
conduct by the standard of hers. There was never any show of devotion on
his part. The world might have taken them for a couple brought together by
convenience, and making the best of their loveless union.
So, with regard to the gratification of her wishes, it seemed always that
the thing which Clarissa desired, happened to suit his own humour, rather
than that he sacrificed all personal feeling for her pleasure. In this
Parisian arrangement it had been so, and his wife had no idea that it was
entirely on her account that Daniel Granger set up his tent in the Faubourg
St. Honore.
The fair Sophia had, however, a very shrewd suspicion of the fact, and
for some weeks prior to the departure from Arden, existed in a state of
suppressed indignation, which was not good for the model villagers; her
powers of observation were, if possible, sharpened in the matter of
cobwebs; her sense of smell intensified in relation to cabbage-water.
Nor did she refrain from making herself eminently disagreeable to her
stepmother.
"I should not have supposed you would so soon be tired of Arden Court," she
remarked pleasantly, during that dreary quarter of an hour after dinner
which Mr. Granger and his wife and daughter were wont to pass in the
contemplation of crystallized apricots and hothouse grapes, and the
exchange of the baldest commonplaces in the way of conversation; Perhaps
if Clarissa and her husband had been alone on such occasions that air of
ceremony might have vanished. The young wife might have drawn her chair a
little nearer her husband's, and there might have been some pleasant talk
about that inexhaustible source of wonder and delight, the baby. But with
Miss Granger always at hand, the dessert was as ceremonious as if there had
been a party of eighteen, and infinitely more dreary, lacking the cheery
clatter and buzz of company. She ate five hothouse grapes, and sipped
half a glass of claret, with as solemn an air as if she had been making a
libation to the gods.
Mr. Granger looked up from his plate when his daughter made this remark
about Arden, and glanced inquiringly at his wife, with a shadow of
displeasure in his face. Yielding and indulgent as he had been to her,
there was in his composition something of the stuff that makes a tyrant.
His wife must love the things that he loved. It would have been intolerable
to him to suppose that Mrs. Granger could grow weary of the house that he
had beautified.
"I am not tired of the Court," Clarissa answered with a sad smile. "There
are too many recollections to make it dear to me."
Daniel Granger's face flushed ever so slightly at this speech.
It was the past, then, and not the present, that rendered the place dear to
her.
"I could never grow tired of Arden," she went on; "but I think it will be
very nice to spend a winter in Paris."
"Lady Laura Armstrong has put that notion into your head, no doubt," said
Miss Granger, with the faintest suspicion of a sneer. She was not very
warmly attached to the lady of Hale Castle nowadays, regarding her as the
chief promoter of Mr. Granger's marriage.
"Lady Laura has said that they enjoyed themselves very much in Paris the
winter before last," Clarissa answered frankly; "and has promised me plenty
of introductions. She even promises that she and Mrs. Armstrong will come
over for a week or two, while we are there."
"And poor Lady Geraldine Challoner?"
Miss Granger always exhibited a profound pity for Lady Geraldine, and never
lost any opportunity of dwelling upon Mr. Fairfax's bad conduct.
"No; I don't suppose Lady Geraldine would go with them," Clarissa answered,
colouring a little. The name of Geraldine Challoner was always painful to
her. "She doesn't care about going anywhere."
"Perhaps she would not care to run the risk of meeting Mr. Fairfax,"
suggested Sophia.
Mr. Granger looked up again, with that shadow of displeasure upon his
countenance.
"She would not be more likely to meet him in Paris than at Hale," replied
Clarissa. "He has gone to Germany."
"Yes, for the autumn, he said. Depend upon it, he will spend the winter
in Paris. I have always observed that those dissipated kind of men prefer
Paris to London."
"I don't think you have any right to call Mr. Fairfax dissipated, Sophia,"
said her father, with an offended air; "and I don't think that his
movements can be of the smallest consequence to you, nor those of the Hale
Castle people either. Clarissa and I have determined to spend two or three
months in Paris, and we are not in the slightest degree dependent upon
our English friends for our enjoyment there. If you are disinclined to
accompany us, and would rather remain at Arden----"
"O, papa, papa!" cried Sophia, with an injured look, "don't say that; don't
allow me to think I have grown quite indifferent to you."
"You have not grown indifferent to me; but I don't want to take you away
from home against your wish."
"My wish is to be anywhere with you, papa; _anywhere_--even though you may
feel me an incumbrance. I could endure the humiliation of feeling that, so
long as I was allowed to remain with you."
Mr. Granger gave a sigh that was almost a groan, and, for perhaps the first
time in his life, it occurred to him that it would be a pleasant thing
if his only daughter were to fall in love with some fortunate youth, and
desire to marry him. A curate even. There was Tillott. Why shouldn't she
marry Tillott? He, Daniel Granger, would give his child a handsome portion,
and they could go through life inspecting model cottages, and teaching
village children the works and ways of all those wicked kings of Israel,
who made groves and set up the idols of their heathen neighbours; a pure
and virtuous and useful life, without question, if tempered with come
consideration for the feelings of the model cottagers, and some mercy for
the brains of the humble scholars.
In the interval between this little after-dinner scene and the departure
from Arden, Mr. Granger invited Mr. Tillott to dinner two or three times,
and watched him with the eyes of anxiety as he conversed with Sophia. But
although the curate was evidently eager to find favour in the sight of the
damsel, the damsel herself showed no sign of weakness. Mr. Granger sighed,
and told himself that the lamp of hope burned dimly in this quarter.
"She really ought to marry," he said to himself. "A girl of her energetic
indefatigable nature would be a treasure to some man, and she is only
wasting herself here. Perhaps in Paris we shall meet some one;" and then
there arose before Mr. Granger the vision of some foreign adventurer,
seeking to entangle the wealthy English "meess" in his meshes. Paris might
be a dangerous place; but with such, a girl as Sophia, there could be no
fear; she was a young woman who might be trusted to walk with unfaltering
steps through the most tortuous pathways of this life, always directing
herself aright, and coming in at the finish just at that very point at
which a well brought-up young person should arrive.
Mr. Granger made his Parisian arrangements on the large scale which became
him as a landed gentleman of unlimited wealth. A first floor of some ten
spacious rooms was selected in one of the bran-new stone mansions in a
bran-new street in the fashionable Faubourg; a house that seemed to have
been built for the habitation of giants; a house made splendid by external
decoration in carved stonework, garlands of stone-fruit and flowers,
projecting lion-heads, caryatides, and so on: no gloomy _porte-cochere_,
but a street-door, through which a loaded drag might have been driven
without damage to the hats of the outside passengers. A house glorified
within by egg-and-dart mouldings, white enamelled woodwork and much
gilding; but a house in which the winter wind howled as in a primeval
forest, and which required to be supplied with supplementary padded
crimson-velvet doors before the spacious chambers could be made
comfortable. Here Mr. Granger took up his abode, with ten of his Arden
Court servants quartered on a floor above. The baby had a nursery loosing
into the broad bare street, where some newly-planted sticks of the sycamore
species shivered in the north-east wind; and the baby took his matutinal
airings in the Tuileries Gardens, and his afternoon drives in the Bois,
while every movement of his infant existence was watched or directed by the
tenderest of mothers. The chief nurse, who had lived with more fashionable
mistresses, for whom the duties of the nursery were subordinate to the
business of society, pronounced Mrs. Granger "fidgety"; a very sweet lady,
but too fond of interfering about trifles, and not reposing boundless
confidence in the experience of her nurse.
There were a good many English people in Paris this year whom the Grangers
knew, and Lady Laura had insisted upon giving Clarissa introductions to
some of her dearest friends among the old French nobility--people who had
known Lord Calderwood in their days of exile--and more than one dearest
friend among the newer lights of the Napoleonic firmament. Then there were
a Russian princess and a Polish countess or so, whom Lady Laura had brought
to Mrs. Granger's receptions in Clarges-street: so that Clarissa and her
husband found themselves at once in the centre of a circle, from the
elegant dissipations whereof there was no escape. The pretty Mrs. Granger
and the rich Mr. Granger were in request everywhere; nor was the stately
Sophia neglected, although she took her share in all festivities with the
familiar Sunday-school primness, and seemed to vivacious Gaul the very
archetype of that representative young English lady who is always
exclaiming "Shocking!" Even after her arrival in Paris, when she felt
herself so very near him, after so many years of severance, Clarissa did
not find it the easiest thing in the world to see her brother. Mr. and Mrs.
Granger had only spent a couple of days in Paris during their honeymoon,
and Daniel Granger planned a round of sight-seeing, in the way of churches,
picture-galleries, and cemeteries, which fully occupied the first four or
five days after their arrival. Clarissa was obliged to be deeply interested
in all the details of Gothic architecture--to appreciate Ingres, to give
her mind to Gerome--when her heart was yearning for that meeting which she
had waited so long to compass. Mr. Granger, as an idle man, with no
estate to manage--no new barns being built within his morning's ride--no
dilapidated cottages to be swept away--was not easily to be got rid of.
He devoted his days to showing his wife the glories of the splendid city,
which he knew by heart himself, and admired sufficiently in a sober
business-like way. The evenings were mortgaged to society. Clarissa had
been more than a week in Paris before she had a morning to herself; and
even then there was Miss Granger to be disposed of, and Miss Granger's
curiosity to be satisfied.
Mr. Granger had gone to breakfast at the Maison Doree with a mercantile
magnate from his own country--a solemn commercial breakfast, whereat all
the airy trifles and dainty compositions of fish, flesh, and fowl with
which the butterfly youth of France are nourished, were to be set before
unappreciative Britons. At ten o'clock Clarissa ordered her carriage.
It was best to go in her own carriage, she thought, even at the risk of
exciting the curiosity of servants. To send for a hired vehicle would have
caused greater wonder; to walk alone was impossible; to walk with her nurse
and child might have been considered eccentric.
She could not even take an airing, however, without some discussion with
Miss Granger. That young lady was established in the drawing-room--the vast
foreign chamber, which never looked like a home--illuminating a new set
of Gothic texts for the adornment of her school. She sorely missed the
occupation and importance afforded her by the model village. In Paris there
was no one afraid of her; no humble matrons to quail as her severe eyes
surveyed wall and ceiling, floor and surbase. And being of a temperament
which required perpetual employment, she was fain to fall back upon
illumination, Berlin-wool work, and early morning practice of pianoforte
music of the most strictly mathematical character. It was her boast that
she had been thoroughly "grounded" in the science of harmony; but although
she could have given a reason for every interval in a sonata, her playing
never sparkled into brilliancy or melted into tenderness, and never had her
prim cold fingers found their way to a human soul.
"Are you going out so early?" this wise damsel asked wonderingly, as
Clarissa came into the drawing-room in her bonnet and shawl.
"Yes, it is such a fine morning, and I think baby will enjoy it. I have not
had a drive with him since we have been here."
"No," replied Sophia, "you have only had papa. I shouldn't think he would
be very much flattered if he heard you preferred baby."
"I did not say that I preferred baby, Sophia. What a habit you have of
misrepresenting me!"
The nurse appeared at this moment, carrying the heir of the Grangers,
gloriously arrayed in blue velvet, and looking fully conscious of his
magnificence.
"But I do like to have a drive with my pet-lamb, don't I, darling?" said
the mother, stooping to kiss the plump rosy cheek. And then there followed
some low confidential talk, in the fond baby language peculiar to young
mothers.
"I should have thought you would have been glad to get a morning alone, for
once in a way," remarked Sophia, coming over to the baby, and giving him
a stately kiss. She liked him tolerably well in her own way, and was not
angry with him for having come into the world to oust her from her proud
position as sole heiress to her father's wealth. The position had been very
pleasant to her, and she had not seen it slip away from her without many a
pang; but, however she might dislike Clarissa, she was not base enough to
hate her father's child. If she could have had the sole care and management
of him, physicked and dieted him after her own method, and developed the
budding powers of his infant mind by her favourite forcing system--made a
model villager of him, in short--she might have grown even to love him. But
these privileges being forbidden to her--her wisdom being set at naught,
and her counsel rejected--she could not help regarding Lovel Granger as
more or less an injury.
"I should have thought you would have been glad of a morning at home,
Clarissa," she repeated.
"Not such a fine morning as this, Sophy. It would be such a pity for baby
to lose the sunshine; and I have really nothing to do."
"If I had known a little sooner that you were going, I would have gone with
you," said Miss Granger.
Clarissa's countenance fell. She could not help that little troubled look,
which told Miss Granger that her society would not have been welcome.
"You would have had no objection to my coming with you, I suppose?" the
fair Sophia said sharply. "Baby is not quite a monopoly."
"Of course not. If you'll put on your things now, Sophia, I'll wait for
you."
It was a hard thing for Clarissa to make the offer, when she had been
waiting so anxiously for this opportunity of seeing her brother. To be
in the same city with him, and not see him, was more painful than to be
divided from him by half the earth, as she had been. It was harder still to
have to plot and plan and stoop to falsehood in order to compass a meeting.
But she remembered the stern cold look in her husband's face when she had
spoken of Austin, and she could not bring herself to degrade her brother
by entreating Daniel Granger's indulgence for his past misdeeds, or Daniel
Granger's interest in his future fortunes.
Happily Sophia had made elaborate preparations for the Gothic texts, and
was not inclined to waste so much trouble.
"I have got my colours all ready," she said, "and have put everything out,
you see. No, I don't think I'll go to-day. But another time, if you'll be
so kind as to let me know _beforehand_, I shall be pleased to go with my
brother. I suppose you know there's an east wind to-day, by-the-bye."
The quarter whence the wind came, was a subject about which Clarissa had
never concerned herself. The sun was shining, and the sky was blue.
"We have plenty of wraps," she said, "and we can have the carriage closed
if we are cold."
"It is not a day upon which _I_ should take an infant out," Miss Granger
murmured, dipping her brush in some Prussian-blue; "but of course you know
best."
"O, we shall take care of baby, depend upon it. Good-bye, Sophy."
And Clarissa departed, anxious to avoid farther remonstrance on the part
of her step-daughter. She told the coachman to drive to the Luxembourg
Gardens, intending to leave the nurse and baby to promenade that favourite
resort, while she made her way on foot to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard. She
remembered that George Fairfax had described her brother's lodging as near
the Luxembourg.
They drove through the gay Parisian streets, past the pillar in the Place
Vendome, and along the Rue de la Paix, all shining with jewellers' ware,
and the Rue de Rivoli, where the chestnut-trees in the gardens of the
Tuileries were shedding their last leaves upon the pavement, past the airy
tower of St. Jacques, and across the bridge into that unknown world on
the other side of the Seine. The nurse, who had seen very little of that
quarter of the town, wondered what obscure region she was traversing, and
wondered still more when they alighted at the somewhat shabby-looking
gardens.
"These are the Luxembourg Gardens," said Clarissa. "As you have been to the
Tuileries every day, I thought it would be a change for you to come here."
"Thank you, ma'am," replied Mrs. Brobson, the chief nurse; "but I don't
think as these gardings is anyways equal to the Tooleries--nor to Regent's
Park even. When I were in Paris with Lady Fitz-Lubin we took the children
to the Tooleries or the Bore de Boulong every day--but, law me! the Bore de
Boulong were a poor place in those days to what it is now."
Clarissa took a couple of turns along one of the walks with Mrs. Brobson,
and then, as they were going back towards the gate, she said, as carelessly
as she could manage to say: "There is a person living somewhere near here
whom I want to see, Mrs. Brobson. I'll leave you and baby in the gardens
for half an hour or so, while I go and pay my visit."
Mrs. Brobson stared. It was not an hour in the day when any lady she had
ever served was wont to pay visits; and that Mrs. Granger of Arden Court
should traverse a neighbourhood of narrow streets and tall houses, on foot
and alone, to call upon her acquaintance at eleven o'clock in the morning,
seemed to her altogether inexplicable.
"You'll take the carriage, won't you, ma'am?" she said, with undisguised
astonishment.
"No, I shall not want the carriage; it's very near. Be sure you keep baby
warm, Mrs. Brobson."
Clarissa hurried out into the street. The landau, with its pair of
Yorkshire-bred horses, was moving slowly up and down, to the admiration of
juvenile Paris, which looked upon Mr. Granger's deep-chested, strong-limbed
bays almost as a new order in the animal creation. Mrs. Granger felt that
the eyes of coachman and footman were upon her as she turned the first
corner, thinking of nothing for the moment, but how to escape the
watchfulness of her own servants. She walked a little way down the street,
and then asked a sleepy-looking waiter, who was sweeping the threshold of a
very dingy restaurant, to direct her to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard. It was
_tous pres_, the man said; only a turn to the right, at that corner yonder,
and the next turning was the street she wanted. She thanked him, and
hurried on, with her heart beating faster at every step. Austin might be
out, she thought, and her trouble wasted; and there was no knowing when she
might have another opportunity. Even if he were at home, their interview
must needs be brief: there was the nurse waiting and wondering; the baby
exposed to possible peril from east winds.
The Rue du Chevalier Bayard was a street of tall gaunt houses that had seen
better days--houses with _porte-cocheres_, exaggerated iron knockers, and
queer old lamps; dreary balconies on the first floor, with here and there a
plaster vase containing some withered member of the palm tribe, or a faded
orange-tree; everywhere and in everything an air of dilapidation and decay;
faded curtains, that had once been fine, flapping in the open windows;
Venetian shutters going to ruin; and the only glimpse of brightness or
domestic comfort confined to the humble parlour of the portress, who kept
watch and ward over one of the dismal mansions, and who had a birdcage
hanging in her window, an Angora cat sunning itself on the stone sill, and
a row of scarlet geraniums in the little iron balcony.
But this model portress did not preside over the house inhabited by Austin
Lovel. There Clarissa found only a little deaf old man, who grinned and
shook his head helplessly when she questioned him, and shrugged his
shoulders and pointed to the staircase--a cavernous stone staircase, with
an odour as of newly opened graves. She went up to the first-floor, past
the _entresol_, where the earthy odour was subjugated by a powerful smell
of cooking, in which garlic was the prevailing feature. One tall door
on the first-floor was painted a pale pink, and had still some dingy
indications of former gilding upon its mouldings. On this pink door was
inscribed the name of Mr. Austin, Painter.
Clarissa rang a bell, and a tawdry-looking French servant, with big
earrings and a dirty muslin cap, came to answer her summons. Mr. Austin
was at home; would madame please to enter. Madame, having replied in
the affirmative, was shown into a small sitting-room, furnished with a
heterogeneous collection of cabinets, tables, and sofas, every one of which
bore the stamp of the broker's shop--things which had been graceful and
pretty in their day, but from which the ormolu-moulding had been knocked
off here, and the inlaid-wood chipped away there, and the tortoiseshell
cracked in another place, until they seemed the very emblems of decay. It
was as if they had been set up as perpetual monitors--monuments of man's
fragility. "This is what life comes to," they said in their silent fashion.
This faded rubbish in buhl and marqueterie was useful enough to Mr. Lovel,
however; and on his canvas the faded furniture glowed and sparkled with all
its original brightness, fresh as the still-life of Meissonier. There were
a child's toys scattered on the floor; and Clarissa heard a woman's voice
talking to a child in an adjoining room, on the other side of a pair
of tall pink folding-doors. Then she heard her brother's voice saying
something to the servant; and at the sound she felt as if she must have
fallen to the ground. Then one of the doors was opened, and a woman came
in; a pretty, faded-looking woman, dressed in a light-blue morning wrapper
that might very well have been cleaner; a woman with a great deal of dyed
hair in an untidy mass at the back of her head; a woman whom Clarissa felt
it must be a difficult thing to like.
This was her brother's wife, of course. There was a boy of four or five
years old clinging to his mother's gown, and Clarissa's heart yearned
to the child. He had Austin's face. It would be easy to love _him_, she
thought.
"Mr. Austin is in his paintin'-room, madame," said the wife, putting on a
kind of company manner. "Did you wish to see him about a picture? Je parle
tres poo de Francais, mais si----"
"I am English," Clarissa answered, smiling; "if you will kindly tell Mr.
Austin a lady from England wishes to see him. What a dear little boy! May
I shake hands with him?"
"Give the lady your hand, Henery," said the mother. "Not that one," as the
boy, after the invariable custom of childhood, offered his left--"the right
hand."
Clarissa took the sticky little paw tenderly in her pearl-gray glove. To
think that her brother Austin Lovel should have married a woman who could
call her son "Henery," and who had such an unmistakable air of commonness!
The wife went back to the painting-room; and returned the next minute to
beg the visitor to "step this way, if you please, ma'am." She opened one of
the folding-doors wide as she spoke, and Clarissa went into a large room,
at the other end of which there stood a tall slim young man, in a short
velvet coat, before a small easel.
It was her brother Austin; pale and a trifle haggard, too old in looks for
his years, but very handsome--a masculine edition of Clarissa herself, in
fact: the same delicate clearly-cut features, the same dark hazel eyes,
shaded by long brown lashes tinged with gold. This was what Mrs. Granger
saw in the broad noonday sunshine; while the painter, looking up from his
easel, beheld a radiant creature approaching him, a woman in pale-gray
silk, that it would have been rapture to paint; a woman with one of the
loveliest faces he had ever seen, crowned with a broad plait of dark-brown
hair, and some delicate structure of point-lace and pink roses, called by
courtesy a bonnet.
He laid down his mahl-stick, and came to meet her, with a puzzled look on
his face. Her beauty seemed familiar to him somehow, and yet he had no
recollection of ever having seen her before. He saw the faded counterpart
of that bright face every morning in his looking-glass.
She held out both her hands.
"Austin, don't you know me?"
He gave a cry of pleased surprise, and caught her in his arms.
"Clarissa!" he exclaimed; "why, my darling, how lovely you have grown! My
dear little Clary! How well I remember the sweet young face, and the tears,
and kisses, and the slender little figure in its childish dress, that
day your father carried you off to school! My own little Clary, what a
happiness to see you! But you never told me you were coming to Paris."
"No, dear, I kept that for a surprise. And are you really glad to see me,
Austin?"
"Really glad! Is there any one in the world could make me gladder?"
"I am so happy to hear that. I was almost afraid you had half forgotten me.
Your letters were so few, and so short."
"Letters!" cried Austin Lovel, with a laugh; "I never was much of a hand at
letter-writing; and then I hadn't anything particularly pleasant to write
about. You mustn't gauge my affection by the length of my letters, Clary.
And then I have to work deucedly hard when I am at home, and have very
little time for scribbling."
Clarissa glanced round the room while he was speaking. Every detail in
her brother's surroundings had an interest for her. Here, as in the
drawing-room, there was an untidy air about everything--a want of harmony
in all the arrangements. There were Flemish carved-oak cabinets, and big
Japan vases; a mantelpiece draped with dusty crimson velvet, a broken
Venetian glass above it, and a group of rusty-looking arms on each side;
long limp amber curtains to the three tall windows, with festooned valances
in an advanced state of disarrangement and dilapidation. There were some
logs burning on the hearth, a pot of chocolate simmering among the ashes,
and breakfast laid for one person upon a little table by the fire--the
remnant of a perigord pie, flanked by a stone bottle of curacoa.
She looked at her brother with anxious scrutinising eyes. No, George
Fairfax had not deceived her. He had the look of a man who was going the
wrong way. There were premature lines across the forehead, and about the
dark brilliant eyes; a nervous expression in the contracted lips. It was
the face of a man who burns the candle of life at both ends. Late hours,
anxiety, dissipation of all kinds, had set their fatal seal upon his
countenance.
"Dear Austin, you are as handsome as ever; but I don't think you are
looking well," she said tenderly.
"Don't look so alarmed, my dear girl," he answered lightly; "I am well
enough; that is to say, I am never ill, never knock under, or strike work.
There are men who go through life like that--never ill, and never exactly
well. I rarely get up in the morning without a headache; but I generally
brighten considerably as the sun goes down. We move with a contrary motion,
Helios and I."
"I am afraid you work too hard, and sit up too late."
"As to working hard, my dear, that is a necessity; and going out every
night is another necessity. I get my commissions in society."
"But you must have a reputation by this time, Austin; and commissions would
come to you, I should think, without your courting them."
"No, child; I have only a reputation _de salon_, I am only known in a
certain set. And a man must live, you see. To a man himself that is the
primary necessity. Your _generosity_ set me on my legs last year, and
tempted me to take this floor, and make a slight advance movement
altogether. I thought better rooms would bring me better work--sitters for
a new style of cabinet-portraits, and so on. But so far the rooms have been
comparatively a useless extravagance. However, I go out a good deal, and
meet a great many influential people; so I can scarcely miss a success in
the end."
"But if you sacrifice your health in the meantime, Austin."
"Sacrifice my health! That's just like a woman. If a man looks a trifle
pale, and dark under the eyes, she begins to fancy he's dying. My poor
little wife takes just the same notions into her head, and would like me to
stop at home every evening to watch her darn the children's stockings."
"I think your wife is quite right to be anxious, Austin; and it would be
much better for you to stay at home, even to see stockings darned. It must
be very dull for her too when you are out, poor soul."
Mr. Lovel shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating air.
"_C'est son metier,_" he said. "I suppose she does find it rather dismal at
times; but there are the children, you see--it is a woman's duty to find
all-sufficient society in her children. And now, Clary, tell me about
yourself. You have made a brilliant match, and are mistress of Arden Court.
A strange stroke of fortune that. And you are happy, I hope, my dear?"
"I ought to be very happy," Clarissa answered, with a faint sigh, thinking
perhaps that, bright as her life might be, it was not quite the fulfilment
of her vague girlish dreams--not quite the life she had fancied lying
before her when the future was all unknown; "I ought to be very happy and
very grateful to Providence; and, O Austin, my boy is the sweetest darling
is the world!"
Austin Lovel looked doubtful for a moment, half inclined to think "my boy"
might stand for Daniel Granger.
"You must see him, Austin," continued his sister; "he is nearly ten months
old now, and such a beauty!"
"O, the baby!" said Austin, rather coolly. "I daresay he's a nice little
chap, and I should like to see him very much, if it were practicable. But
how about Granger himself? He is a good sort of fellow, I hope."
"He is all goodness to me," Clarissa answered gravely, casting down her
eyes as she spoke; and Austin Lovel knew that the marriage which had given
his sister Arden Court had been no love-match.
They talked for some time; talked of the old days when they had been
together at Arden; but of the years that made the story of his life, Austin
Lovel spoke very little.
"I have always been an unlucky beggar," he said, in his careless way.
"There's very little use in going over old ground. Some men never get
fairly on the high-road of life. They spend their existence wading across
swamps, and scrambling through bushes, and never reach any particular point
at the end. My career has been that sort of thing."
"But you are so young, Austin," pleaded Clarissa, "and may do so much yet."
He shook his head with an air of hopelessness that was half indifference.
"My dear child, I am neither a Raffaelle nor a Dore," he said, "and I need
be one or the other to redeem my past But so long as I can pick up enough
to keep the little woman yonder and the bairns, and get a decent cigar and
an honest bottle of Bordeaux, I'm content. Ambition departed from me ten
years ago."
"O Austin, I can't bear to hear you say that! With your genius you ought to
do so much. I wish you would be friends with my husband, and that he could
be of use to you."
"My dear Clarissa, put that idea out of your mind at once and for ever.
There can be no such thing as friendship between Mr. Granger and me. Do
you remember what Samuel Johnson said about some one's distaste for clean
linen--'And I, sir, have no passion for it!' I confess to having no passion
for respectable people. I am very glad to hear Mr. Granger is a good
husband; but he's much too respectable a citizen for my acquaintance."
Clarissa sighed; there was a prejudice here, even if Daniel Granger could
have been induced to think kindly of his brother-in-law.
"Depend upon it, the Prodigal Son had a hard time of it after the fatted
calf had been eaten, Clary, and wished himself back among the swine. Do you
think, however lenient his father might be, that his brother and the
friends of the family spared him? His past was thrown in his face, you may
be sure. I daresay he went back to his evil ways after a year or so. Good
people maintain their monopoly of virtue by making the repentant sinner's
life a burden to him."
Clarissa spoke of his wife presently.
"You must introduce me to her, Austin. She took me for a stranger just now,
and I did not undeceive her."
"Yes I'll introduce you. There's not much in common between you; but she'll
be very proud of your acquaintance. She looks upon my relations as an
exalted race of beings, and myself as a kind of fallen angel. You mustn't
be too hard upon her, Clary, if she seems not quite the sort of woman you
would have chosen for your sister-in-law. She has been a good wife to me,
and she was a good daughter to her drunken old father--one of the greatest
scamps in London, who used to get his bread--or rather his gin--by standing
for Count Ugolino and Cardinal Wolsey, or anything grim and gray and
aquiline-nosed in the way of patriarchs. The girl Bessie was a model too in
her time; and it was in Jack Redgrave's painting-room--the pre-Raphaelite
fellow who paints fearfully and wonderfully made women with red hair and
angular arms--I first met her. Jack and I were great chums at that time--it
was just after I sold out--and I used to paint at his rooms. I was going in
for painting just then with a great spurt, having nothing but my brush to
live upon. You can guess the rest. As Bessie was a very pretty girl, and
neither she nor I had a sixpence wherewith to bless ourselves, of course
we fell in love with each other. Poor little thing, how pretty she used
to look in those days, standing on Jack's movable platform, with her hair
falling loose about her face, and a heap of primroses held up in her
petticoat!--such a patient plaintive look in the sweet little mouth, as
much as to say, 'I'm very tired of standing here; but I'm only a model, to
be hired for eighteenpence an hour; go on smoking your cigars, and talking
your slangy talk about the turf and the theatres, gentlemen. I count for
nothing.' Poor little patient soul! she was so helpless and so friendless,
Clary. I think my love for her was something like the compassion one feels
for some young feeble bird that has fallen out of its nest. So we were
married one morning; and for some time lived in lodgings at Putney, where
I used to suffer considerable affliction from Count Ugolino and two bony
boys, Bessie's brothers, who looked as if the Count had been acting up
to his character with too great a fidelity. Ugolino himself would come
prowling out of a Saturday afternoon to borrow the wherewithal to pay his
week's lodging, lest he should be cast out into the streets at nightfall;
and it was a common thing for one of the bony boys to appear at
breakfast-time with a duplicate of his father's coat, pledged over-night
for drink, and without the means of redeeming which he could not pursue his
honourable vocation. In short, I think it was as much the affliction of the
Ugolino family as my own entanglements that drove me to seek my fortunes on
the other side of the world."
Austin Lovel opened one of the doors, and called his wife "Come here,
Bessie; I've a pleasant surprise for you."
Mrs. Lovel appeared quickly in answer to this summons. She had changed her
morning dress for a purple silk, which was smartly trimmed, but by no means
fresh, and she had dressed her hair, and refreshed her complexion by a
liberal application of violet powder. She had a look which can only be
described as "flashy"--a look that struck Clarissa unpleasantly, in spite
of herself.
Her expressions of surprise did not sound quite so natural as they might
have done--for she had been listening at the folding-doors during a
considerable part of the interview; but she seemed really delighted by Mrs.
Granger's condescension, and she kissed that lady with much affection.
"I'm sure I do feel proud to know any relation of Austin's," she said, "and
you most of all, who have been so kind to him. Heaven knows what would have
become of us last winter, if it hadn't been for your generosity."
Clarissa laid her hand upon Bessie Lovel's lips.
"You mustn't talk of generosity between my brother and me," she said; "all
I have in the world is at his service. And now let me see my nephews,
please; and then I must run away."
The nephews were produced; the boy Clarissa had seen, and another of
smaller growth--pale-faced, bright-eyed little fellows; They too had been
subjected to the infliction of soap-and-water and hair-brushes, clean
pinafores, and so on, since Mrs. Granger's arrival.
She knelt down and kissed them both, with real motherly tenderness,
thinking of her own darling, and the difference between his fortunes and
theirs; and then, after a warm caress, she slipped a napoleon into each
little warm hand, "to buy toys," and rose to depart.
"I must hurry away now, Austin," she said; "but I shall come again very
soon, if I may. Good-bye, dear, and God bless you."
The embrace that followed was a very fervent one. It had been sweet to meet
again after so many years, and it was hard to leave him so soon--to leave
him with the conviction that his life was a wreck. But Clarissa had no
time to linger. The thought of the baby in the Luxembourg Gardens had been
distracting her for ever so long. These stolen meetings must needs be
short.
She looked at her watch when she got back to the street, and found, to her
horror, that she had been very nearly an hour away from the nurse and her
charge. The carriage was waiting at the gate, and she had to encounter the
full fire of her servants' gaze as she crossed the road and went into the
gardens. Yes, there was the baby's blue-velvet pelisse resplendent at the
end of an avenue, Clarissa walked quickly to meet him.
"My darling!" she cried. "Has he been waiting for his mamma? I hope he has
not been tired of the gardens, nurse?"
"Yes, ma'am, he have been tired," replied Mrs. Brobson, with an outraged
air. "There ain't much in these gardens to keep a baby of his age amused
for an hour at a stretch; and in a east wind too! It's right down cutting
at that corner."
"Why didn't you take him home in the carriage, nurse? It would have been
better than running any risk of his catching cold."
"What, and leave you without a conveyance, ma'am? I couldn't have done
that!"
"I was detained longer than I expected to stay. O, by the bye, you need not
mention to Miss Granger that I have been making a call. The people I have
been to see are--are in humble circumstances; and I don't want her to know
anything about it."
"I hope I know my duty, ma'am," replied Mrs. Brobson stiffly. That hour's
parading in the gardens, without any relief from her subordinate, had
soured her temper, and inclined her to look with unfavourable eyes upon the
conduct of her mistress. Clarissa felt that she had excited the suspicion
of her servant, and that all her future meetings with her brother would
involve as much plotting and planning as would serve for the ripening of a
political conspiracy.
* * * * *