“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 Elysées, 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 better. 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 d
ecent 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.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 575