The Lovels of Arden by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (ebook offline reader txt) 📕

shapeless and intangible as yet, but she did suspect. More than once--many times, in fact--during the painting of the portrait, she had seen, or had imagined she could see, signs and tokens of a closer intimacy between the painter and her father's wife than was warranted by their ostensible acquaintance. The circumstances were slight enough in themselves, but these fragile links welded together made a chain which would have been good enough evidence in a criminal court, skilfully handled by an Old Bailey lawyer. Sophia Granger racked her brain to account for this suspected intimacy. When and where had these two been friends, lovers perhaps? Mr. Austin had been away from England for many years, if his own statement were to be believed. It must have been abroad, therefore, that Clarissa had known him--in her school-days. He had been drawing-master, perhaps, in the seminary at Belforêt. What more likely?

Miss Granger cherished the peculiar British idea of all foreign schools, that they were more or less sinks of iniquity. A flirtation between drawing-master and pupil would be a small thing in such a pernicious atmosphere. Even amidst the Arcadian innocence of native academies such weeds have flourished This flirtation, springing up in foreign soil, would be of course ten times more desperate, secret, jesuitical in fact, than any purely English product.

Yes, Miss Granger decided at the end of every silent debate in which she argued this question with herself--yes, that was the word of the enigma. These two had been lovers in the days that were gone; and meeting again, both married, they were more than half lovers still.

Clarissa made some excuse to see her old admirer frequently. She was taking lessons in painting, perhaps. Miss Granger observed that she painted more than usual lately--merely for the sake of seeing him.

And how about George Fairfax? Well, that flirtation, of course, was of later date and a less serious affair. Jealousy--a new kind of jealousy, more bitter even than that which she had felt when Clarissa came between her and her father--sharpened Miss Granger's suspicions in this case. She was jealous even of that supposed flirtation at Belforêt, four or five years ago. She was angry with Clarissa for having once possessed this man's heart; ready to suspect her of any baseness in the past, any treason in the present.

The Grangers were at Madame Caballero's two or three evenings after this revelation of Warman's, and Sophia had an opportunity of gleaning some scraps of information from the good-natured little lion-huntress. Madame had been asking her if Mr. Austin's portraits had been a success.

"Yes; papa thinks they are excellent, and talks about having them exhibited in the salon. Mr. Austin is really very clever. Do you know, I was not aware that he was married, till the other day?" Sophia added, with a careless air.

"Indeed! Yes, there is a wife, I understand; but she never goes into society; no one hears of her. For my part I think him charming."

"Has he been long in Paris?"

Madame Caballero shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know," she said. "I have only known of his existence since he became famous--in a small way--a very small way, of course. He exhibited some military sketches, which attracted the attention of a friend of mine, who talked to me about him. I said at once, 'Bring him here. I can appreciate every order of genius, from Ary Scheffer to Gavarni.' The young man came, and I was delighted with him. I admitted him among my intimates; and he insisted on painting the picture which your papa was good enough to admire."

"Do you know how he lived before he came into notice--if he has ever been a drawing-master, for instance?"

"I know that he has given lessons. I have heard him complain of the drudgery of teaching."

This sustained Miss Granger's theory. It seemed so likely. No other hypothesis presented itself to her mind.

Day by day she watched and waited and speculated, hearing of all Clarissa's movements from the obsequious Warman, who took care to question Mrs. Granger's coachman in the course of conversation, in a pleasant casual manner, as to the places to which he had taken his mistress. She waited and made no sign. There was treason going on. The climax and explosion would come in good time.

In the meanwhile, Clarissa seemed almost entirely free. Mr. Granger, after living for nearly fifty years of his life utterly unaffected by feminine influence, was not a man to hang upon his wife's footsteps or to hold her bound to his side. If she had returned his affection with equal measure, if that sympathy for which he sighed in secret could have arisen between them, he might have been as devoted a slave as love could make an honest man. As it was, his married life at its best was a disappointment. Only in the fond hopes and airy visions which his son had inspired, did he find the happiness he had dreamt of when he first tried to win Clarissa for his wife. Here alone, in his love for his child, was there a pure and perfect joy. All other dreams ended in bitter waking. His wife had never loved him, never would love him. She was grateful for his affection, obedient, submissive; her grace and beauty gave him a reflected lustre in society. She was a creature to be proud of, and he was proud of her; but she did not love him. And with this thought there came always a sudden agony of jealousy. If not him, what other had she loved? Whose image reigned in the heart so closely shut against him? Who was that man, the mere memory of whom was more to her than the whole sum of her husband's devotion?

* * * * *


CHAPTER XXXVIII.


"FROM CLARISSA."

That jewel which Clarissa had given to Bessie Lovel was a treasure of price, the very possession whereof was almost an oppressive joy to the poor little woman, whose chief knowledge of life came from the experience of its debts and difficulties. That the massive gold locket with the diamond cross would be required of her sooner or later, to be handed into the ruthless paw of a clerk at the _mont de piété_, she had little doubt. Everything that she or her husband had ever possessed worth possessing had so vanished--had been not an absolute property, but a brief fleeting joy, a kind of supernal visitant, vanishing anon into nothingness, or only a pawnbroker's duplicate. The time would come. She showed the trinket to her husband with a melancholy foreboding, and read his thoughts as he weighed it in his palm, by mere force of habit, speculating what it would fetch, if in his desperate needs this waif might serve him.

She was not surprised, therefore--only a little distressed--when Austin broached the subject one day at his late breakfast--that breakfast at which it needed nearly a bottle of claret to wash down three or four mouthfuls of savoury pie, or half a tiny cutlet. She had possessed the bauble more than a month, holding it in fear and trembling, and only astonished that it had not been demanded of her.

"O, by the way, Bess," Austin Lovel said carelessly, "I was abominably unlucky last night, at Madame Caballero's. I'm generally lugged in for a game or two at _écarté there_, you know. One can't refuse in a house of that kind. And I had been doing wonders. They were betting on my game, and I stood to win something handsome, when the luck changed all in a moment. The fellow I was playing against marked the king three times running; and, in short, I rose a considerable loser--considerable for me, that is to say. I told my antagonist I should send him the money to-day. He's a kind of man I can't afford to trifle with; and you know the Caballero connection is of too much use to be jeopardised. So I've been thinking, Bess, that if you'd let me have that gimcrack locket my sister gave you, I could raise a tenner on it. Clary can afford to give you plenty of such things, even if it were lost, which it need not be."

Of course not. Mrs. Lovel had been told as much about the little Geneva watch which her husband had given her a few days after her marriage, and had taken away from her six weeks later. But the watch had never come back to her. She gave a faint sigh of resignation. It was not within the compass of her mind to oppose him.

"We shall never get on while you play cards, Austin," she said sadly.

"My dear Bessie, a man may win as well as lose. You see when I go into society there are certain things expected of me; and my only chance of getting on is by making myself agreeable to the people whose influence is worth having."

"But I can't see that card-playing leads to your getting commissions for pictures, Austin, no more than horseracing nor billiards. It all seems to end the same--in your losing money."

The painter pushed away his plate with an impatient gesture. He was taking his breakfast in his painting-room, hours after the family meal, Bessie waiting upon him, and cobbling some juvenile garment during the intervals of her attendance. He pushed his plate aside, and got up to pace the room in the restless way that was common to him on such occasions.

"My dear child, if you don't want to give me the locket, say so," he said, "but don't treat me to a sermon. You can keep it if you like, though I can't conceive what use the thing can be to you. It's not a thing you can wear."

"Not at home, dear, certainly; and I never go out," the wife answered, with the faintest touch of reproachfulness. "I am very fond of it, though, for your sister's sake. It was so kind of her to bring it to me, and such a new thing for me to have a present. But you are welcome to it, Austin, if you really want it."

"If I really want it! Do you suppose I should be mean enough to ask you for it if I didn't? I shouldn't so much care about it, you see, only I am to meet the man to-morrow evening at dinner, and I can't face him without the money. So if you'll look the thing out some time to-day, Bess, I'll take it down to the Quai between this and to-morrow afternoon, and get the business over."

Thus it was that George Fairfax, strolling into Mrs. Lovel's sitting-room that afternoon while Austin was out, happened to find her seated in a pensive attitude, with an open work-box before her and Clarissa's locket in her hand. It was a shabby battered old box, but had been for years the repository of all Bessie's treasures.

She had kept the locket there, looking at it very often, and wondering if she would ever be able to wear it--if Austin would take her to a theatre, for instance, or give a little dinner at home instead of abroad, for once in a way, to some of the men whose society absorbed so much of his time.

There was no hope of this now. Once gone from her hand; the treasure would return no more. She knew that very well and was