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

gone?" she asked at last.

"To Brussels. He may do very well there, no doubt, if he will only keep himself steady--turn his back upon the rackety society he is so fond of--and work honestly at his art. It is a place where they can live more cheaply, too, than they could here."

"I am so sorry they are gone without a word of parting. It must have been very sudden."

"Yes. I believe the necessity for the journey arose quite suddenly; or it may have been hanging over your brother for a long time, and he may have shut his eyes to the fact until the last moment. He is such a fellow for taking things easily. However, he did not enter into explanations with me."

"Poor Austin! What a wretched life!"

Clarissa rose and moved slowly towards the folding-doors. George Fairfax stopped her at the threshold, and quietly closed the door.

"Don't go yet, Clarissa. I want to speak to you."

His tone told her what was coming--the scene in the conservatory was to be acted over again. This was the first time they had been actually alone since that too-well-remembered night.

She drew herself up haughtily. A woman's weakness makes her desperate in such a case as this.

"I have no time to talk now, Mr. Fairfax. I am going home."

"Not yet, Clarissa. I have waited a long time for this chance. I am determined to say my say."

"You will not compel me to listen to you?"

"Compel is a very hard word. I beseech you to hear me. My future life depends on what I have to say, and on your answer."

"I cannot hear a word! I will not remain a moment!"

"The door yonder is locked, Clarissa, and the key in my pocket. Brutal, you will say. The circumstances of our lives have left me no option. I have watched and waited for such an opportunity as this; and now, Clarissa, you shall hear me. Do you remember that night in the orchard, when you drove me away by your coldness and obstinacy? And yet you loved me! You have owned it since. Ah, my darling, how I have hated myself for my dulness that night!--hated myself for not having seized you in my arms, if need were, and carried you off to the end of the world to make you my wife. What a fool and craven I must have been to be put off so easily!"

"Nothing can be more foolish than to discuss the past, Mr. Fairfax," replied Clarissa, in a low voice that trembled a little. "You have made me do wrong more than once in my life. There must be an end of this. What would my husband think, if he could hear you? what would he think of me for listening to you? Let me pass, if you please; and God grant that we may never meet again after to-night!"

"God grant that we may never part, Clarissa! O, my love, my love, for pity's sake be reasonable! We are not children to play fast and loose with our lives. You love me, Clary. No sweet-spoken pretences, no stereotyped denials, will convince me. You love me, my darling, and the world is all before us. I have mapped-out our future; no sorrow or discredit shall ever come nigh you--trust a lover's foresight for that. Whatever difficulties may lie in our pathway are difficulties that I will face and conquer--alone. You have only to forget that you have ever been Daniel Granger's wife, and leave Paris with me to-night."

"Mr. Fairfax! are you mad?"

"Never more reasonable--never so much in earnest. Come with me, Clarissa. It is not a sacrifice that I ask from you: I offer you a release. Do you think there is any virtue or beauty in your present life, or any merit in continuing it? From first to last, your existence is a lie. Do you think a wedding-ring redeems the honour of a woman who sells herself for money? There is no slavery more degrading than the bondage of such an alliance."

"Open the door, Mr. Fairfax, and let me go!"

His reproaches stung her to the quick; they were so bitterly true.

"Not till you have heard me, my darling--not till you have heard me out."

His tone changed all at once, softening into ineffable tenderness. He told her of his love with words of deeper passion than he had ever spoken yet--words that went home to the heart that loved him. For a moment, listening to that impassioned pleading, it seemed to Clarissa that this verily was life indeed--that to be so loved was in itself alone the perfect joy and fulness of existence, leaving nothing more to be desired, making shame as nothing in the balance. In that one moment the guilty heart was well-nigh yielding; the bewildered brain could scarcely maintain the conflict of thought and feeling. Then suddenly this mental agony changed to a strange dulness, a mist rose between Clarissa and the eager face of her lover. She was nearer fainting than she had ever been in her life before.

George Fairfax saw her face whiten, and the slender figure totter ever so slightly. In a moment a strong arm was round her. The weary head sank on his shoulder.

"My darling," he whispered, "why not leave Paris to-night? It cannot be too soon. Your husband is away. We shall have a start of two or three days, and avoid all risk of pursuit."

"Not quite," said a voice close behind him; and looking round, George Fairfax saw one of the folding-doors open, and Daniel Granger standing on the threshold. The locked outer door had availed the traitor nothing. Mr. Granger had come upstairs with the porter, who carried a bunch of duplicate keys in his pocket.

Clarissa gave a sudden cry, which rose in the next instant to a shrill scream. Two men were struggling in the doorway, grappling each other savagely for one dreadful minute of confusion and agony. Then one fell heavily, his head crashing against the angle of the doorway, and lay at full length, with his white face looking up to the ceiling.

This was George Fairfax.

Clarissa threw herself upon her knees beside the prostrate figure.

"George! George!" she cried piteously.

It was the first time she had ever uttered his Christian name, except in her dreams; and yet it came to her lips as naturally in that moment of supreme agony as if it had been their every-day utterance.

"George! George!" she cried again, bending down to gaze at the white blank face dimly visible in the firelight; and then, with a still sharper anguish, "He is dead!"

The sight of that kneeling figure, the sound of that piteous imploring voice, was well-nigh maddening to Daniel Granger. He caught his wife by the arm, and dragged her up from her knees with no tender hand.

"You have killed him," she said.

"I hope I have."

Whatever latent passion there was in this man's nature was at white heat now. An awful fury possessed him. He seemed transformed by the intensity of his anger. His bulky figure rose taller; his full gray eyes shone with a pitiless light under the straight stern brows.

"Yes," he said, "I hope I have killed your lover."

"My lover!"

"Your lover--the man with whom you were to have left Paris to-night. Your lover--the man you have met in this convenient rendezvous, day after day for the last two months. Your lover--the man you loved before you did me the honour to accept the use of my fortune, and whom you have loved ever since."

"Yes," cried Clarissa, with a wild hysterical laugh, "my lover! You are right. I am the most miserable woman upon earth, for I love him."

"I am glad you do not deny it. Stand out of the way, if you please, and let me see if I have killed him."

There were a pair of half-burned wax candles on the mantelpiece. Mr. Granger lighted one of them, and then knelt down beside the prostrate figure with the candle in his hand. George Fairfax had given no sign of life as yet. There had not been so much as a groan.

He opened his enemy's waistcoat, and laid his hand above the region of the heart. Yes, there was life still--a dull beating. The wretch was not dead.

While he knelt thus, with his hand upon George Fairfax's heart, a massive chain, loosened from its moorings, fell across his wrist. Attached to the chain there was a locket--a large gold locket with a diamond cross--one of the ornaments that Daniel Granger had given to his wife.

He remembered it well. It was a very trifle among the gifts be had showered upon her; but he remembered it well. If this had been the one solitary gem he had given to his wife, he could not have been quicker to recognise it, or more certain of its identity.

He took it in the palm of his hand and touched the spring, holding the candle still in the other hand. The locket flew open, and he saw the ring of silky brown hair and the inscription, "From Clarissa."

He looked up at his wife with a smile--such a smile! "You might have afforded your lover something better than a secondhand _souvenir_," he said.

Clarissa's eyes wandered from the still white face, with its awful closed eyes, only to rest for a moment on the unlucky locket.

"I gave that to my sister-in-law," she said indifferently. "Heaven only knows how he came by it." And then, in a different tone, she asked, "Why don't you do something for him? Why don't you fetch some one? Do you want him to die?"

"Yes. Do you think anything less than his death would satisfy me? Don't alarm yourself; I am not going to kill him. I was quite ready to do it just now in hot blood. But he is safe enough now. What good would there be in making an end of him? There are two of you in it."

"You can kill me, if you like," said Clarissa "Except for my child's sake, I have little wish to live."

"For your child's sake!" echoed her husband scornfully. "Do you think there is anything in common between my son and you, after to-night."

He dropped the locket on George Fairfax's breast with a contemptuous gesture, as if he had been throwing away a handful of dirt. _That_ folly had cost dearly enough.

"I'll go and fetch some one," he said. "Don't let your distraction make you forget that the man wants all the air he can get. You had better stand away from him."

Clarissa obeyed mechanically. She stood a little way off, staring at that lifeless figure, while Daniel Granger went to fetch the porter. The house was large, and at this time in the evening for the most part untenanted, and Austin's painting-room was over the arched carriage-way. Thus it happened that no one had heard that fall of George Fairfax's.

Mr. Granger explained briefly that the gentleman had had a fall, and was stunned--would the porter fetch the nearest doctor? The man looked a him rather suspiciously. The lovely lady's arrival in the gloaming; a locked door; this middle-aged Englishman's eagerness to get into the rooms; and now a fall and the young Englishman is disabled. The leaf out of a romance began to assume a darker aspect. There had been murder done, perhaps, up yonder. The