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

The girl poured out her mistress's tea, and persuaded her to take something. She perceived that there was something amiss, some serious misunderstanding between Clarissa and her husband. Had not the business been fully discussed in the Areopagus downstairs, all those unaccountable visits to the street near the Luxembourg, and Mr. Fairfax's order to the coachman?

"Nor it ain't the first time I've seen him there neither," Jarvis had remarked; "me and Saunders have noticed him ever so many times, dropping in promiscuous like while Mrs. G. was there, Fishy, to say the least of it!"

Jane Target was very fond of her mistress, and would as soon have doubted that the sun was fire as suspected any flaw in Clarissa's integrity. She had spoken her mind more than once upon this subject in the servants' hall, and had put the bulky Jarvis to shame.

"Do, ma'am, eat something!" she pleaded, when she had poured out the tea. "You had no dinner yesterday, and no tea, unless you had it in the nursery. You'll be fit for nothing, if you go on like this."

Fit for nothing! The phrase roused Clarissa from her apathy. Too weak to do battle for her right to the custody of her child, she thought; and influenced by this idea, she struggled through a tolerable breakfast, eating delicate _petite pains_ which tasted like ashes, and drinking strong tea with a feverish eagerness.

The tea fortified her nerves; she got up and paced her room, thinking what she ought to do.

Daniel Granger was going to take her child from her--that was certain--unless by some desperate means she secured her darling to herself. Nothing could be harder or more pitiless than his manner that morning. The doors of Arden Court were to be shut against her.

"And I sold myself for Arden!" she thought bitterly. She fancied how the record of her life would stand by-and-by, like a verse in those Chronicles which Sophia was so fond of: "And Clarissa reigned a year and a half, and did that which was evil"--and so on. Very brief had been her glory; very deep was her disgrace.

What was she to do? Carry her child away before they could take him from her--secure him to herself somehow. If it were to be done at all, it must be done quickly; and who had she to help her in this hour of desperate need.

She looked at Jane Target, who was standing by the dressing-table dusting the gold-topped scent-bottles and innumerable prettinesses scattered there--the costly trifles with which women who are not really happy strive to create for themselves a factitious kind of happiness. The girl was lingering over her work, loth to leave her mistress unless actually dismissed.

Jane Target, Clarissa remembered her a flaxen-haired cottage girl, with an honest freckled face and a calico-bonnet; a girl who was always swinging on five-barred gates, or overturning a baby brother out of a primitive wooden cart--surely this girl was faithful, and would help her in her extremity. In all the world, there was no other creature to whom she could appeal.

"Jane," she said at last, stopping before the girl and looking at her with earnest questioning eyes, "I think I can trust you." "Indeed you can, ma'am," answered Jane, throwing down her feather dusting-brush to clasp her hands impetuously. "There's nothing in this world I would not do to prove myself true to you."

"I am in great trouble, Jane."

"I know that, ma'am," the girl answered frankly.

"I daresay you know something of the cause. My husband is angry about--about an accidental meeting which arose between a gentleman and me. It was entirely accidental on my part; but he does not choose to believe this, and----" The thought of Daniel Granger's accusation flashed upon her in this moment in all its horror, and she broke down, sobbing hysterically.

The girl brought her mistress a chair, and was on her knees beside her in a moment, comforting her and imploring her to be calm.

"The trouble will pass away, ma'am," said the maid, soothingly. "Mr. Granger will come to see his mistake. He can't be angry with you long, I'm sure; he loves you so."

"Yes, yes, he has been very good to me--better than I have ever deserved; but that is all over now. He won't believe me--he will hardly listen to me. He is going to take away my boy, Jane."

"Going to take away Master Lovel?"

"Yes; my darling is to go back to Arden, and I am to go to papa."

"What!" cried Jane Target, all the woman taking fire in her honest heart. "Part mother and child! He couldn't do that; or if he could, he _shouldn't_, while I had the power to hinder him."

"How are we to prevent him, Jane--you and I?"

"Let's take the darling away, ma'am, before he can stop us."

"You dear good soul!" cried Clarissa. "It's the very thing I've been thinking of. Heaven knows how it is to be done; but it must be done somehow. And you will come with me, Jane? and you will brave all for me, you good generous girl?"

"Lor, ma'am, what do you think I'm frightened of? Not that stuck-up Mrs. Brobson, with her grand airs, and as lazy as the voice of the sluggard into the bargain. Just you make up your mind, mum, where you'd like to go, and when you'd like to start, and I shall walk into the nursery as bold as brass, and say I want Master Lovel to come and amuse his mar for half an hour; and once we've got him safe in this room, the rest is easy. Part mother and child indeed! I should like to see him do it! I warrant we'll soon bring Mr. Granger to his senses."

Where to go? yes, there was the rub. What a friendless creature Clarissa Granger felt, as she pondered on this serious question! To her brother? Yes, he was the only friend she would care to trust in this emergency. But how was she to find him? Brussels was a large place, and she had no clue to his whereabouts there. Could she feel even sure that he had really gone to Brussels?

Somewhither she must go, however--that was certain. It could matter very little where she found a refuge, if only she had her darling with her. So the two women consulted together, and plotted and planned in Clarissa's sanctum; while Daniel Granger paced up and down the great dreary drawing-room, waiting for that promised visit from George Fairfax.

* * * * *


CHAPTER XLIII.


CLARISSA'S ELOPEMENT.

Mr. Fairfax came a little after noon--came with a calm grave aspect, as of a man who had serious work before him. With all his heart he wished that the days of duelling had not been over; that he could have sent his best friend to Daniel Granger, and made an end of the quarrel in a gentlemanlike way, in some obscure alley at Vincennes, or amidst the shadowy aisles of St. Germains. But a duel nowadays is too complete an anachronism for an Englishman to propose in cold blood. Mr. Fairfax came to his enemy's house for one special purpose. The woman he loved was in Daniel Granger's power; it was his duty to explain that fatal meeting in Austin's rooms, to justify Clarissa's conduct in the eyes of her husband. It was not that he meant to surrender his hope of their future union--indeed, he hoped that the scene of the previous evening would bring about a speedy separation between husband and wife. But he had placed her in a false position; she was innocent, and he was bound to assert her innocence.

He found Daniel Granger like a man of iron, fully justifying that phrase of Lady Laura's--"_Carré par la base_." The ignominy of his own position came fully home to him at the first moment of their meeting. He remembered the day when he had liked and respected this man: he could not despise him now.

He was conscious that he carried the mark of last night's skirmish in an unpleasantly conspicuous manner. That straight-out blow of Daniel Granger's had left a discoloration of the skin--what in a meaner man might have been called a black eye. He, too, had hit hard in that brief tussle; but no stroke of his had told like that blow of the Yorkshireman's. Mr. Granger bore no trace of the encounter.

The two men met with as serene an air as if they had never grappled each other savagely in the twilight.

"I considered it due to Mrs. Granger that I should call upon you," George Fairfax began, "in order to explain her part in the affair of last night."

"Go on, sir. The old story, of course--Mrs. Granger is spotless; it is only appearances that are against her."

"So far as she is concerned, our meeting yesterday afternoon was an accident. She came there to see another person."

"Indeed I Mr. Austin the painter, I suppose?--a man who painted her portrait, and who had no farther acquaintance with her than that. A very convenient person, it seems, since she was in the habit of going to his rooms nearly every afternoon; and I suppose the same kind of accident as that of yesterday generally brought you there at the same time."

"Mrs. Granger went to see her brother."

"Her brother?"

"Yes, Austin Lovel; otherwise Mr. Austin the painter. I have been pledged to him to keep his identity a secret; but I feel myself at liberty to break my promise now--in his sister's justification."

"You mean, that the man who came to this house as a stranger is my wife's brother?"

"I do."

"What duplicity! And this is the woman I trusted!"

"There was no voluntary duplicity on your wife's part. I know that she was most anxious you should be told the truth."

"_You_ know! Yes, of course; _you_ are in my wife's confidence--an honour I have never enjoyed."

"It was Austin who objected to make himself known to you."

"I scarcely wonder at that, considering his antecedents. The whole thing has been very cleverly done, Mr. Fairfax, and I acknowledge myself completely duped. I don't think there is any occasion for us to discuss the subject farther. Nothing that you could say would alter my estimation of the events of last night. I regret that I suffered myself to be betrayed into any violence--that kind of thing is behind the times. We have wiser remedies for our wrongs nowadays."

"You do not mean that you would degrade your wife in a law court!" cried Mr. Fairfax. "Any legal investigation must infallibly establish her innocence; but no woman's name can escape untainted from such an ordeal."

"No, I am not likely to do that. I have a son, Mr. Fairfax. As for my wife, my plans are formed. It is not in the power of any one living to alter them."

"Then it is useless for me to say more. On the honour of a gentleman, I have told you nothing but the truth. Your wife is innocent."

"She is not guiltless of having listened to you. That is quite enough for me."

"I have done, sir," said George Fairfax gravely, and, with a bow and a somewhat cynical smile, departed.

He had done