LYING IN WAIT.
Mr. Granger went back to Yorkshire; and Clarissa's days were at her own
disposal. They were to leave Paris at the beginning of March. She knew it
was only for a very short time that she would be able to see her brother.
It was scarcely natural, therefore, that she should neglect such an
opportunity as this. There was so much in Austin's life that caused her
uneasiness; he seemed in such sore need of wiser counsel than his poor
empty-headed little wife could give him; and Clarissa believed that she had
some influence with him: that if he would be governed by the advice of any
creature upon earth, that counsellor was herself.
So she spent her mornings in baby-worship, and went every afternoon to the
Rue du Chevalier Bayard, where it happened curiously that Mr. Fairfax came
even oftener than usual just at this time. In the evening she stayed at
home--not caring to keep her engagements in society without her husband's
escort--and resigned herself to the edifying companionship of Miss Granger,
who was eloquent upon the benighted condition of the Parisian poor as
compared with her model villagers. She described them sententiously as a
people who put garlic in everything they ate, and never read their Bibles.
"One woman showed me a book with little pictures of saints printed upon
paper with lace edges," said Sophia, "as if there were any edification to
be derived from lace edges; and such a heathen book too--Latin on one side
and French on the other. And there the poor forsaken creatures sit in their
churches, looking at stray pictures and hearing a service in an unknown
tongue."
Daniel Granger had been away nearly a week; and as yet there was no
announcement of his return; only brief business-like letters, telling
Clarissa that the drainage question was a complicated one, and he should
remain upon the spot till he and Forley could see their way out of the
difficulty. He had been away nearly a week, when George Fairfax went to the
Rue du Chevalier Bayard at the usual hour, expecting to find Austin Lovel
standing before his easel with a cigar in his mouth, and Clarissa sitting
in the low chair by the fire, in the attitude he knew so well, with the red
glow of the embers lighting up gleams of colour in her dark velvet dress,
and shining on the soft brown hair crowned with a coquettish little
seal-skin hat--a _toque_, as they called it on that side of the Channel.
What was his astonishment to find a pile of trunks and portmanteaus on the
landing, Austin's easel roughly packed for removal, and a heap of that
miscellaneous lumber without which even poverty cannot shift its dwelling!
The door was open; and Mr. Fairfax walked straight into the sitting-room,
where the two boys were eating some extemporised meal at a side-table under
their mother's supervision; while Austin lounged with his back against
the chimney-piece, smoking. He was a man who would have smoked during the
culminating convulsions of an earthquake.
"Why, Austin, what the--I beg your pardon, Mrs. Austin--what _does_ this
mean?"
"It means Brussels by the three-fifteen train, my dear Fairfax, that's
all."
"Brussels? With those children and that luggage? What, in Heaven's name,
induces you to carry your family off like this, at an hour's notice?"
"It is not an hour's notice; they've had an hour and three-quarters. As to
my reasons for this abrupt hegira--well, that involves rather a long story;
and I haven't time to tell it to-day. One thing is pretty clear--I can't
live in Paris. Perhaps I may be able to live in Brussels. I can't very well
do worse than I've done here--that's _one_ comfort."
At this Bessie Lovel began to cry--in a suppressed kind of way, like a
woman who is accustomed to cry and not to be taken much notice of. George
Fairfax flung himself into a chair with an impatient gesture. He was at
once sorry for this man and angry with him; vexed to see any man go to ruin
with such an utter recklessness, with such a deliberate casting away of
every chance that might have redeemed him.
"You have got into some scrape, I suppose," he said presently.
"Got into a scrape!" cried Austin with a laugh, tossing away the end of one
cigar and preparing to light another. "My normal condition is that of being
in a scrape. Egad! I fancy I must have been born so.--For God's sake don't
whimper, Bessie, if you want to catch the three-fifteen train! _I_ go by
that, remember, whoever stays behind.--There's no occasion to enter into
explanations, Fairfax. If you could help me I'd ask you to do it, in
spite of former obligations; but you can't. I have got into a
difficulty--pecuniary, of course; and as the law of liability in this city
happens to be a trifle more stringent than our amiable British code, I have
no alternative but to bid good-bye to the towers of Notre Dame. I love the
dear, disreputable city, with her lights and laughter, and music and mirth;
but she loves not me.--When those boys have done gorging themselves,
Bessie, you had better put on your bonnet."
"His wife cast an appealing glance at George Fairfax, as if she felt she
had a friend in him who would sustain her in any argument with her husband.
Her face was very sad, and bore the traces of many tears.
"If you would only tell me why we are going, Austin," she pleaded, "I could
bear it so much better."
"Nonsense, child! Would anything I could tell you alter the fact that we
are going? Pshaw, Bessie! why make a fuss about trifles? The packing is
over: that was the grand difficulty, I thought. I told you we could manage
that."
"It seems so hard--running away like criminals."
Austin Lovel's countenance darkened a little.
"I can go alone," he said.
"No, no," cried the wife piteously: "I'll go with you. I don't want to vex
you, Austin. Haven't I shared everything with you--everything? I would go
with you if it was to prison--if it was to death. You know that."
"I know that we shall lose the three-fifteen train if you don't put on your
bonnet."
"Very well, Austin; I'm going. And Clarissa--what will she think of us? I'm
so sorry to leave her."
"O, by the way, George," said Austin, "you might manage that business for
me. My sister was to be here at five o'clock this afternoon. I've written
her a letter telling her of the change in my plans. She was in some measure
prepared for my leaving Paris; but not quite so suddenly as this. I was
going to send the letter by a commissionnaire; but if you don't mind taking
it to the Rue de Morny, I'd rather trust it to you. I don't want Clary to
come here and find empty rooms."
He took a sealed letter from the mantelpiece and handed it to George
Fairfax, who received it with somewhat of a dreamy air, as of a man who
does not quite understand the mission that is intrusted to him. It was a
simple business enough, too--only the delivery of a letter.
Mrs. Lovel came out of the adjoining room dressed for the journey, and
carrying a collection of wraps for the children. It was wonderful to behold
what comforters, and scarves, and gaiters, and muffetees those juvenile
individuals required for their equipment.
"Such a long cold journey!" the anxious mother exclaimed, and went on
winding up the two children in woollen stuffs, as if they had been
royal mummies. She pushed little papers of sandwiches into their
pockets--sandwiches that would hardly be improved by the squeezing and
sitting upon they must need undergo in the transit.
When this was done, and the children ready, she looked into the
painting-room with a melancholy air.
"Think of all the furniture, Austin," she exclaimed; "the cabinets and
things!"
"Yes; there's a considerable amount of money wasted there, Bess; for I
don't suppose we shall ever see the things again, but there's a good many
of them not paid for. There's comfort in that reflection."
"You take everything go lightly," she said with a hopeless sigh.
"There's nothing between that and the Morgue, my dear. You'd scarcely like
to see me framed and glazed _there_, I think."
"O, Austin!"
"Precisely. So let me take things lightly, while I can. Now, Bess, the time
is up. Good-bye, George."
"I'll come downstairs with you," said Mr. Fairfax, still in a somewhat
dreamy state. He had put Austin's letter into his pocket, and was standing
at a window looking down into the street, which had about as much life
or traffic for a man to stare at as some of the lateral streets in the
Bloomsbury district--Caroline-place, for instance, or Keppel-street.
There was a great struggling and bumping of porters and coachman on the
stairs, with a good deal more exclamation than would have proceeded from
stalwart Englishmen under the same circumstances; and then Austin went down
to the coach with his wife and children, followed by George Fairfax. The
painter happened not to be in debt to his landlord--a gentleman who gave
his tenants small grace at any time; so there was no difficulty about the
departure.
"I'll write to Monsieur Meriste about my furniture," he said to the
guardian of the big dreary mansion. "You may as well come to the station
with us, George," he added, looking at Mr. Fairfax, who stood irresolute on
the pavement, while Bessie and the boys were being packed into the vehicle,
the roof of which was laden with portmanteaus and the painter's "plant."
"Well--no; I think not. There's this letter to be delivered, you see. I had
better do that at once."
"True; Clarissa might come. She said five o'clock, though; but it doesn't
matter. Good-bye, old fellow. I hope some of these days I may be able to
make things square with you. Good-bye. Tell Clary I shall write to her
from Brussels, under cover to the maid as usual."
He called out to the coachman to go on; and the carriage drove off,
staggering under its load. George Fairfax stood watching it till it was out
of sight, and then turned to the porter.
"Those rooms up-stairs will be to let, I suppose?" he said.
"But certainly, monsieur."
"I have some thoughts of taking them for--for a friend. I'll just take
another look round them now they're empty. And perhaps you wouldn't mind my
writing a letter up-stairs--eh?"
He slipped a napoleon into the man's hand--by no means the first that he
had given him. New-Year's day was not far past; and the porter remembered
that Mr. Fairfax had tipped him more liberally than some of the lodgers in
the house. If monsieur had a legion of letters to write, he was at liberty
to write them. The rooms up yonder were entirely at his disposal; the
porter laid them at his feet, as it were. He might have occupied them
rent-free for the remainder of his existence, it would have been supposed
from the man's manner.
"If madame, the sister of Monsieur Austin, should come by-and-by, you will
permit her to ascend," said Mr. Fairfax. "I have a message for her from her
brother."
"Assuredly, monsieur."
The porter retired into his den to meditate upon his good fortune. It was
a rendezvous, of course, cunningly arranged on the day of the painter's
departure. It seemed to him like a leaf out of one of those flabby novels
on large paper, with a muddy wood-cut on every sixteenth page, which he
thumbed and pored over now and then of an evening.
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.
* * * * *