Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  So, on a brilliant June morning, the Grangers left the Great Western station by special train, and sped through the summer landscape to Henley. This garden-party at Mr. Wooster’s villa was almost their last engagement. They were to return to Arden in two days; and Clarissa was very glad that it was so. That weariness of spirit which had seemed to her so strange in some of the young ladies at Hale Castle had come upon herself. She longed for Arden Court and perfect rest; and then she remembered, with something like a shudder, that there were people invited for the autumn, and that Lady Laura Armstrong had promised to spend a week with her dearest Clarissa.

  “I want to put you into the way of managing that great house, Clary,” said my lady, brimming over with good-nature and officiousness. “As to leaving the housekeeping in Miss Granger’s hands, that’s not to be dreamt of. It might do very well for the first six months — just to let her down gently, as it were — but from henceforth you must hold the reins yourself, Clary, and I’ll teach you how to drive.”

  “But, dear Lady Laura, I don’t want the trouble and responsibility of housekeeping. I would much rather leave all that in Sophy’s hands,” protested Clarissa. “You have no idea how clever she is. And I have my own rooms, and my painting.”

  “Yes,” exclaimed Lady Laura, “and you will mope yourself to death in your own rooms, with your painting, whenever you have no company in the house. You are not going to become a cipher, surely, Clarissa! What with Miss Granger’s schools, and Miss Granger’s clothing-club, and Miss Granger’s premiums and prizes for this, that, and the other, you stand a fair chance of sinking into the veriest nobody, or you would, if it were not for your pretty face. And then you really must have employment for your mind, Clary. Look at me; see the work I get through.”

  “But you are a wonder, dear Lady Laura, and I have neither your energy nor your industry.”

  Laura Armstrong would not admit this, and held to the idea of putting

  Clarissa in the right away.

  “Wait till I come to you in the autumn,” she said. And in that depression of spirit which had grown upon her of late, Mrs. Granger found it a hard thing to say that she should be rejoiced when that time came.

  She wanted to get back to Arden Court, and was proud to think of herself as the mistress of the place she loved so dearly; but it seemed to her that an existence weighed down at once by the wisdom of Sophia Granger and the exuberant gaiety of Lady Laura would be barely endurable. She sighed for Arden Court as she remembered it in her childhood — the dreamy quiet of the dull old house, brightened only by her brother’s presence; the perfect freedom of her own life, so different from the life whose every hour was subject to the claims of others.

  She had changed very much since that visit to Hale Castle. Then all the pleasures of life were new to her — to-day they seemed all alike flat, stale, and unprofitable. She had been surfeited with splendours and pleasures since her marriage. The wealth which Daniel Granger so freely lavished upon her had rendered these things common all at once. She looked back and wondered whether she had really ever longed for a new dress, and been gladdened by the possession of a five-pound note.

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER XXIX.

  “IF I SHOULD MEET THEE—”

  Mr. Wooster’s villa was almost perfection in its way; but there was something of that ostentatious simplicity whereby the parvenu endeavours sometimes to escape from the vulgar glitter of his wealth. The chairs and tables were of unpolished oak, and of a rustic fashion. There were no pictures, but the walls of the dining-room were covered with majolica panels of a pale gray ground, whereon sported groups of shepherds and shepherdesses after Boucher, painted on the earthenware with the airiest brush in delicate rose-colour; the drawing-room and breakfast-room were lined with fluted chintz, in which the same delicate grays and rose-colours were the prevailing hues. The floors were of inlaid woods, covered only by a small Persian carpet here and there. There was no buhl or marquetery, not a scrap of gilding or a yard of silk or satin, in the house; but there was an all-pervading coolness, and in every room the perfume of freshly-gathered flowers.

  Mr. Wooster told his fashionable acquaintance that in winter the villa was a howling wilderness by reason of damp and rats; but there were those of his Bohemian friends who could have told of jovial parties assembled there in November, and saturnalias celebrated there in January; for Mr. Wooster was a bachelor of very liberal opinions, and had two sets of visitors.

  To-day the villa was looking its best and brightest. The hothouses had been almost emptied of their choicest treasures in order to fill jardinières and vases for all the rooms. Mr. Wooster had obeyed Lady Laura, and there was nothing but tea, coffee, and ices to be had in the house; nor were the tea and coffee dispensed in the usual business-like manner, which reduces private hospitality to the level of a counter at a railway station. Instead of this, there were about fifty little tables dotted about the rooms, each provided with a gem of a teapot and egg-shell cups and saucers for three or four, so that Mr. Wooster’s feminine visitors might themselves have the delight of dispensing that most feminine of all beverages. This contrivance gave scope for flirtation, and was loudly praised by Mr. Wooster’s guests.

  The gardens of the villa were large — indeed, the stockbroker had pulled down a fine old family mansion to get a site for his dainty little dwelling. There was a good stretch of river-frontage, from which the crowd could watch the boats flash by; now the striped shirts shooting far ahead to the cry of “Bravo, Brazenose!” anon the glitter of a line of light-blue caps, as the Etonian crew answered to the call of their coxswain, and made a gallant attempt to catch their powerful opponents; while Radley, overmatched and outweighted, though by no means a bad crew, plodded hopelessly but pluckily in the rear. Here Clarissa strolled for some time, leaning on her husband’s arm, and taking a very faint interest in the boats. It was a pretty sight, of course; but she had seen so many pretty sights lately, and the brightness of them had lost all power to charm her. She looked on, like a person in a picture-gallery, whose eyes and brain are dazed by looking at too many pictures. Mr. Granger noticed her listlessness, and was quick to take alarm. She was paler than usual, he thought.

  “I’m afraid you’ve been overdoing it with so many parties, Clary,” he said; “you are looking quite tired to-day.”

  “I am rather tired. I shall be glad to go back to Arden.”

  “And I too, my dear. The fact is, there’s nothing in the world I care less for than this sort of thing: but I wanted you to have all the enjoyment to be got out of a London season. It is only right that you should have any pleasure I can give you.”

  “You are too good to me,” Clarissa answered with a faint sigh.

  Her husband did not notice the sigh; but he did remark the phrase, which was one she had used very often — one that wounded him a little whenever he heard it.

  “It is not a question of goodness, my dear,” he said. “I love you, and I want to make you happy.”

  Later in the afternoon, when the racing was at its height, and almost all Mr. Wooster’s visitors had crowded to the terrace by the river, Clarissa strolled into one of the shrubbery walks, quite alone. It was after luncheon; and the rattle of plates and glasses, and the confusion of tongues that had obtained during the banquet, had increased the nervous headache with which she had begun the day. This grove of shining laurel and arbutus was remote from the river, and as solitary just now as if Mr. Wooster’s hundred or so of guests had been miles away. There were rustic benches here and there: and Clarissa seated herself upon one of them, which was agreeably placed in a recess amongst the greenery. She was more than usually depressed to-day, and no longer able to maintain that artificial vivacity by which she had contrived to conceal her depression. Her sin had found her out. The loveless union, entered upon so lightly, was beginning to weigh her down, as if the impalpable tie that bound her to her husband had been the iron chain that links a galley-slave to his companion.


  “I have been very wicked,” she said to herself; “and he is so good to me!

  If I could only teach myself to love him.”

  She knew now that the weakness which had made her so plastic a creature in her father’s hands had been an injustice to her husband; that it was not herself only she had been bound to consider in this matter. It was one thing to fling away her own chances of happiness; but it was another thing to jeopardise the peace of the man she married.

  She was meditating on these things with a hopeless sense of confusion — a sense that her married life was like some dreadful labyrinth, into which she had strayed unawares, and from which there was no hope of escape — when she was startled by an approaching footstep, and, looking up suddenly, saw George Fairfax coming slowly towards her, just as she had seen him in Marley Wood that summer day. How far away from her that day seemed now!

  They had not met since that night in the orchard, nearly two years ago. She felt her face changing from pale to burning red, and then growing pale again. But by a great effort she was able to answer him in a steady voice presently when he spoke to her.

  “What a happiness to see you again, my dear Mrs. Granger!” he said in his lightest tone, dropping quietly down into the seat by her side. “I was told you were to be here to-day, or I should not have come; I am so heartily sick of all this kind of thing. But I really wanted to see you.”

  “You were not at the luncheon, were you?” asked Clarissa, feeling that she must say something, and not knowing what to say.

  “No; I have only been here half-an-hour or so. I hunted for you amongst that gaping crowd by the river, and then began a circuit of the grounds. I have been lucky enough to find you without going very far. I have some news for you, Mrs. Granger.”

  “News for me?”

  “Yes; about your brother — about Mr. Austin Lovel.”

  That name banished every other thought. She turned to the speaker eagerly.

  “News of him — of my dear Austin? O, thank you a thousand times, Mr. Fairfax! Have you heard where he is, and what he is doing? Pray, pray tell me quickly!” she said, tremulous with excitement.

  “I have done more than that: I have seen him.”

  “In England — in London?” cried Clarissa, making a little movement as if she would have gone that moment to find him.

  “No, not in England. Pray take things quietly, my dear Mrs. Granger. I have a good deal to tell you, if you will only listen calmly.”

  “Tell me first that my brother is well — and happy, and then I will listen patiently to everything.”

  “I think I may venture to say that he is tolerably well; but his happiness is a fact I cannot vouch for. If he does find himself in a condition so unusual to mankind, he is a very lucky fellow. I never met a man yet who owned to being happy; and my own experience of life has afforded me only some few brief hours of perfect happiness.”

  He looked at her with a smile that said as plainly as the plainest words,

  “And those were when I was with you, Clarissa.”

  She noticed neither the look nor the words that went before it. She was thinking of her brother, and of him only.

  “But you have seen him,” she said. “If he is not in England, he must be very near — in Paris perhaps. I heard you were in Paris.”

  “Yes; it was in Paris that I saw him.”

  “So near! O, thank God, I shall see my brother again! Tell me everything about him, Mr. Fairfax — everything.”

  “I will. It is best you should have a plain unvarnished account. You remember the promise I made you at Hale? Well, I tried my utmost to keep that promise. I hunted up the man I spoke of — a man who had been an associate of your brother’s; but unluckily, there had been no correspondence between them after Mr. Lovel went abroad; in short, he could tell me nothing — not even where your brother went. He had only a vague idea that it was somewhere in Australia. So, you see, I was quite at a standstill here. I made several attempts in other directions, but all with the same result; and at last I gave up all hope of ever being of any use to you in this business.”

  “You were very kind to take so much trouble.”

  “I felt quite ashamed of my failure; I feel almost as much ashamed of my success; for it was perfectly accidental. I was looking at some water-coloured sketches in a friend’s rooms in the Rue du Faubourg St. Honoré — sketches of military life, caricatures full of dash and humour, in a style that was quite out of the common way, and which yet seemed in some manner familiar to me. My friend saw that I admired the things. ‘They are my latest acquisitions in the way of art,’ he said; they are done by a poor fellow who lives in a shabby third-floor near the Luxembourg — an Englishman called Austin. If you admire them so much, you might as well order a set of them. It would be almost an act of charity.’ The name struck me at once — your brother’s Christian name; and then I remembered that I had been shown some caricature portraits which he had done of his brother-officers — things exactly in the style of the sketches I had been looking at. I asked for this Mr. Austin’s address, and drove off at once to find him, with a few lines of introduction from my friend. ‘The man is proud,’ he said, ‘though he carries his poverty lightly enough.’”

  “Poor Austin!” sighed Clarissa.

  “I need not weary you with minute details. I found this Mr. Austin, and at once recognized your brother; though he is much altered — very much altered. He did not know me until afterwards, when I told him my name, and recalled our acquaintance. There was every sign of poverty: he looked worn and haggard; his clothes were shabby; his painting-room was the common sitting-room; his wife was seated by the open window patching a child’s frock; his two children were playing about the room.”

  “He is married, then? I did not even know that.”

  “Yes, he is married; and I could see at a glance that an unequal marriage has been one among the causes of his ruin. The woman is well enough — pretty, with a kind of vulgar prettiness, and evidently fond of him. But such a marriage is moral death to any man. I contrived to get a little talk with him alone — told him of my acquaintance with you and of the promise that I had made to you. His manner had been all gaiety and lightness until then; but at the mention of your name he fairly broke down. ‘Tell her that I have never ceased to love her,’ he said; ‘tell her there are times when I dare not think of her.’”

  “He has not forgotten me, then. But pray go on; tell me everything.”

  “There is not much more to tell. He gave me a brief sketch of his adventures since he sold out. Fortune had gone against him. He went to Melbourne, soon after his marriage, which he confessed was the chief cause of his quarrel with his father; but in Melbourne, as in every other Australian city to which he pushed his way, he found art at a discount. It was the old story: the employers of labour wanted skilled mechanics or stalwart navigators; there was no field for a gentleman or a genius. Your brother and his wife just escaped starvation in the new world, and just contrived to pay their way back to the old world. There were reasons why he should not show himself in England, so he shipped himself and his family in a French vessel bound for Havre, and came straight on to Paris, where he told me he found it tolerably easy to get employment for his pencil. ‘I give a few lessons,’ he said, ‘and work for a dealer; and by that means we just contrive to live. We dine every day, and I have a decent coat, though you don’t happen to find me in it. I can only afford to wear it when I go to my pupils. It is from-hand-to-mouth work; and if any illness should strike me down, the wife and little ones must starve.’”

  “Poor fellow! poor fellow! Did you tell him that I was rich, that I could help him?”

  “Yes,” answered Mr. Fairfax, with an unmistakable bitterness in his tone;

  “I told him that you had married the rich Mr. Granger.”

  “How can I best assist him?” asked Clarissa eagerly. “Every penny I have in the world is at his disposal. I can give him three or four hundred a year. I have five hund
red quite in my own control, and need not spend more than one. I have been rather extravagant since my marriage, and have not much money by me just now, but I shall economise from henceforward; and I do not mind asking Mr. Granger to help my brother.”

  “If you will condescend to take my advice, you will do nothing of that kind. Even my small knowledge of your brother’s character is sufficient to make me very certain that an appeal to Mr. Granger is just the very last thing to be attempted in this case.”

  “But why so? my husband is one of the most generous men in the world, I think.”

  “To you, perhaps, that is very natural. To a man of Mr. Granger’s wealth a few thousands more or less are not worth consideration; but where there is a principle or a prejudice at stake, that kind of man is apt to tighten his purse-strings with a merciless hand. You would not like to run the risk of a refusal?”

  “I do not think there is any fear of that.”

  “Possibly not; but there is your brother to be considered in this matter. Do you think it would be pleasant for him to know that his necessities were exposed to such a — to a brother-in-law whom he had never seen?”

  “I do not know,” said Clarissa thoughtfully; “I fancied that he would be glad of any helping hand that would extricate him from his difficulties. I should be so glad to see him restored to his proper position in the world.”

  “My dear Mrs. Granger, it is better not to think of that. There is a kind of morass from which no man can be extricated. I believe your brother has sunk into that lower world of Bohemianism from which a man rarely cares to emerge. The denizens of that nethermost circle lose their liking for the upper air, can scarcely breathe it, in fact. No, upon my word, I would not try to rehabilitate him; least of all through the generosity of Mr. Granger.”