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

indulging her grief by a farewell contemplation of the trinket, when Mr. Fairfax came into the room.

The flash of the diamonds caught his quick eye.

"What a pretty locket you've got there, Mrs. Austin!" he said, as he shook hands with her. "A new-year's gift from Austin, I suppose."

"No, it was my sister-in-law, Mrs. Granger, who gave it me," Bessie answered, with a sigh.

He was interested in it immediately, but was careful not to betray his interest. Mrs. Lovel put it into his hands. She was proud of it even in this last hour of possession. "Perhaps you'd like to look at it," she said. "It's got her 'air inside."

Yes, there was a circlet of the dark brown hair he knew so well, and the two works, "From Clarissa."

"Upon my word, it's very handsome," he said, looking at the diamond cross outside, but thinking of the love-lock within. "I never saw a locket I liked better. You are very fond of it, I daresay?" he added interrogatively.

"O, yes, I like it very much! I can't bear to part with it."

And here Bessie Lovel, not being gifted with the power of concealing her emotions, fairly broke down and cried like a child.

"My dear Mrs. Austin," exclaimed George Fairfax, "pray don't distress yourself like that. Part with it? Why should you part with your locket?"

"O, Mr. Fairfax, I oughtn't to have told you--Austin would be so angry if he knew--but he has been losing money at that horrid ecarty, and he says he must have ten pounds to-morrow; so my beautiful locket must go to the pawnbroker's."

George Fairfax paused. His first impulse was to lend the poor little woman the money--the veriest trifle, of course, to the lord of Lyvedon. But the next moment another idea presented itself to him. He had the locket lying in the open palm of his hand. It would be so sweet to possess that lock of hair--to wear so dear a token of his mistress. Even those two words, "From Clarissa," had a kind of magic for him. It was a foolish weakness, of course; but then love is made up of such follies.

"If you really mean to part with this," he said, "I should be very glad to have it. I would give you more than any pawnbroker--say, twenty instead of ten pounds, for instance--and a new locket for yourself into the bargain. I shouldn't like to deprive you of an ornament you valued without some kind of compensation. I have taken a fancy to the design of the thing, and should really like to have it. What do you say now, Mrs. Austin--shall that be a transaction between you and me, without any reference to your husband, who might be angry with you for having let me into domestic secrets? You can tell him you got the money from the _mont de piété_. Look here, now; let's settle the business at once."

He opened his purse, and tumbled the contents out upon the table. Bessie Lovel thought what a blessed state of existence that must be in which people walked this world with all that ready money about them.

"There are just four-and-twenty pounds here," he said cheerily; "so we'll say four-and-twenty."

He saw that she was yielding.

"And would you really give me a locket for myself," she said, almost incredulously, "as well as this money?"

"Unquestionably. As good a one as I can find in the Rue de la Paix. This has diamonds, and that shall have diamonds. It's the design, you see," he added persuasively, "that has taken my fancy."

"I'm sure you are very generous," Bessie murmured, still hesitating.

"Generous! Pshaw, not at all. It's a caprice; and I shall consider myself under an obligation to you if you gratify it."

The temptation was irresistible. To obtain the money that was required--more than double the sum her husband had wanted--and to have another locket as well! Never, surely, had there been such a bargain since the famous magician offered new lamps for old ones. Of course, it was only Mr. Fairfax's delicate way of doing them a kindness; his fancy for the locket was merely a benevolent pretence. What could he care for that particular trinket; he who might, so to speak, walk knee-deep in diamonds, if he pleased?

She took the twenty-four pounds--an English ten-pound note, and the rest in new glittering napoleons--and then began to speculate upon the possibility of giving Austin twenty pounds, and appropriating the balance to her own uses. The children wanted so many things--that perpetual want of the juvenile population above all, shoe-leather; and might she not even screw some cheap dress for herself out of the sum? while if it were all given to Austin, it would vanish, like smoke before the wind, leaving no trace behind.

So George Fairfax put the bauble in his waistcoat-pocket, and whatever sentimental pleasure might be derived from such a talisman was his. There are those among our disciples of modern magic who believe there is a subtle animal magnetism in such things; that the mere possession of such a token constitutes a kind of spiritual link between two beings. Mr. Fairfax had no such fancy; but it pleased him to have obtained that which no prayers of his could have won from Clarissa herself. Not at present, that is to say. It would all come in good time. She loved him; secure of that one fact, he believed all the rest a mere question of patience and constancy.

"And she is worth the winning," he said to himself. "A man might serve for a longer slavery than Jacob's, and yet be rewarded by such a conquest. I think, by the way, that Rachel must have been just a trifle faded when the patriarch was out of his time."

He dawdled away an hour or so in Bessie's salon--telling the poor little woman the news of the day, and playing with the two boys, who regarded him as a beneficent being, from whose hands flowed perpetual toys and sweetmeats. He waited as long as he could without making his motive obvious; waited, in the hope that Clarissa would come; and then, as there was no sign of her coming, and Austin was still out, he wished Bessie good-bye.

"I shan't forget the locket," he said, as he departed.

Austin came in five minutes afterwards. The boys had been scuttled off to take their evening meal in the kitchen--a darksome cupboard about eight feet square--where the tawdry servant was perpetually stewing savoury messes upon a small charcoal stove.

Bessie handed her husband the ten-pound note, and twelve bright napoleons.

"Why, what's this?" he asked.

"The--the money for the locket, Austin. I thought you might be late home; so I ran round to the Quai with it myself. And I asked for twenty pounds, and the man gave it to me."

"Why, that's a brave girl!" cried Austin, kissing the pleading face uplifted to his. "I don't believe they'd have given me as much. An English tenner, though; that's odd!" he added carelessly, and then slipped the cash loose into his pocket, with the air of a man for whom money is at best a temporary possession.

* * * * *


CHAPTER XXXIX.


THAT IS WHAT LOVE MEANS.

The Grangers and Mr. Fairfax went on meeting in society; and Daniel Granger, with whom it was a kind of habit to ask men to dinner, could hardly avoid inviting George Fairfax. It might have seemed invidious to do so; and for what reason should he make such a distinction? Even to himself Mr. Granger would not be willing to confess that he was jealous of this man. So Mr. Fairfax came with others of his species to the gorgeous caravanserai in the Rue de Morny, where the rooms never by any chance looked as if people lived in them, but rather as if they were waiting-rooms at some railway station got up with temporary splendour for the reception of royalty.

He came; and though Clarissa sometimes made feeble efforts to avoid him, it happened almost always, that before the evening was out he found some few minutes for unreserved talk with her. There is little need to record such brief stolen interviews--a few hurried words by the piano, a sentence or two in a lowered voice at parting. There was not much in the words perhaps--only very common words, that have done duty between thousands of men and women--a kind of signal code, as it were; and yet they had power to poison Clarissa's life, to take the sweetness out of every joy, even a mother's innocent idolatry of her child.

The words were spoken; but so carefully did George Fairfax play his part, that not even Sophia's sharp eyes could perceive more than was correct in the conduct of her stepmother. No, she told herself, that other flirtation was the desperate one. Clarissa might have had some preference for George Fairfax; there had been occasional indications of such a feeling in her manner at Hale Castle; but the dark spot of her life, the secret of her girlhood, was a love affair with Mr. Austin.

By way of experiment, one day she asked her father's wife a question about the painter.

"You seemed to admire Mr. Austin very much, Clarissa," she said, "and I admit that he is remarkably clever; but he appears such a waif and stray. In all his conversation with us he never threw much light upon his own history. Do you know anything of his antecedents?"

Clarissa blushed in spite of herself. The deception she had sustained so long was unspeakably distasteful her. Again and again she had been tempted to hazard everything, and acknowledge Austin as her brother, whether he liked or not that she should do so. It was only his peremptory tone that had kept her silent.

"What should I know of his antecedents more than you, Sophy?" she said, avoiding a more direct reply. "It is quite enough for me to know that he has undeniable genius."

The blush, and a certain warmth in her tone, seemed to Sophia conclusive evidence of her hidden regard for this man. Miss Granger's heart beat a good deal faster than usual, and little jealous sparkles shone in her cold gray eyes. She had never admired any man so much as she had admired this brilliant young painter. Many men had paid her compliments; as the rich Mr. Granger's sole daughter and heiress, she had been gratified with no meagre share of mankind's worship; but no words ever spoken had sounded so sweet in her ears as those few civil speeches that Mr. Austin had found time to address to her during his visits to the Rue de Morny. And after having taken so much pleasure in his converse, and thought so much more about him than she would have considered it proper for any model villager to think about an individual of the opposite sex, it was a hard thing to find--first, that the base impostor had a wife; and secondly, that whatever illegitimate worship he might have to render, was to be offered at the shrine of Clarissa.

"Indeed!" she exclaimed, with an air of extreme surprise. "You seemed on such very friendly terms with him, that I fancied you must really have known each other before, and that you had some motive for concealing