Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  Mr. Granger gave a sigh that was almost a groan, and, for perhaps the first time in his life, it occurred to him that it would be a pleasant thing if his only daughter were to fall in love with some fortunate youth, and desire to marry him. A curate even. There was Tillott. Why shouldn’t she marry Tillott? He, Daniel Granger, would give his child a handsome portion, and they could go through life inspecting model cottages, and teaching village children the works and ways of all those wicked kings of Israel, who made groves and set up the idols of their heathen neighbours; a pure and virtuous and useful life, without question, if tempered with come consideration for the feelings of the model cottagers, and some mercy for the brains of the humble scholars.

  In the interval between this little after-dinner scene and the departure from Arden, Mr. Granger invited Mr. Tillott to dinner two or three times, and watched him with the eyes of anxiety as he conversed with Sophia. But although the curate was evidently eager to find favour in the sight of the damsel, the damsel herself showed no sign of weakness. Mr. Granger sighed, and told himself that the lamp of hope burned dimly in this quarter.

  “She really ought to marry,” he said to himself. “A girl of her energetic indefatigable nature would be a treasure to some man, and she is only wasting herself here. Perhaps in Paris we shall meet some one;” and then there arose before Mr. Granger the vision of some foreign adventurer, seeking to entangle the wealthy English “meess” in his meshes. Paris might be a dangerous place; but with such, a girl as Sophia, there could be no fear; she was a young woman who might be trusted to walk with unfaltering steps through the most tortuous pathways of this life, always directing herself aright, and coming in at the finish just at that very point at which a well brought-up young person should arrive.

  Mr. Granger made his Parisian arrangements on the large scale which became him as a landed gentleman of unlimited wealth. A first floor of some ten spacious rooms was selected in one of the bran-new stone mansions in a bran-new street in the fashionable Faubourg; a house that seemed to have been built for the habitation of giants; a house made splendid by external decoration in carved stonework, garlands of stone-fruit and flowers, projecting lion-heads, caryatides, and so on: no gloomy porte-cochère, but a street-door, through which a loaded drag might have been driven without damage to the hats of the outside passengers. A house glorified within by egg-and-dart mouldings, white enamelled woodwork and much gilding; but a house in which the winter wind howled as in a primeval forest, and which required to be supplied with supplementary padded crimson-velvet doors before the spacious chambers could be made comfortable. Here Mr. Granger took up his abode, with ten of his Arden Court servants quartered on a floor above. The baby had a nursery loosing into the broad bare street, where some newly-planted sticks of the sycamore species shivered in the north-east wind; and the baby took his matutinal airings in the Tuileries Gardens, and his afternoon drives in the Bois, while every movement of his infant existence was watched or directed by the tenderest of mothers. The chief nurse, who had lived with more fashionable mistresses, for whom the duties of the nursery were subordinate to the business of society, pronounced Mrs. Granger “fidgety”; a very sweet lady, but too fond of interfering about trifles, and not reposing boundless confidence in the experience of her nurse.

  There were a good many English people in Paris this year whom the Grangers knew, and Lady Laura had insisted upon giving Clarissa introductions to some of her dearest friends among the old French nobility — people who had known Lord Calderwood in their days of exile — and more than one dearest friend among the newer lights of the Napoleonic firmament. Then there were a Russian princess and a Polish countess or so, whom Lady Laura had brought to Mrs. Granger’s receptions in Clarges-street: so that Clarissa and her husband found themselves at once in the centre of a circle, from the elegant dissipations whereof there was no escape. The pretty Mrs. Granger and the rich Mr. Granger were in request everywhere; nor was the stately Sophia neglected, although she took her share in all festivities with the familiar Sunday-school primness, and seemed to vivacious Gaul the very archetype of that representative young English lady who is always exclaiming “Shocking!” Even after her arrival in Paris, when she felt herself so very near him, after so many years of severance, Clarissa did not find it the easiest thing in the world to see her brother. Mr. and Mrs. Granger had only spent a couple of days in Paris during their honeymoon, and Daniel Granger planned a round of sight-seeing, in the way of churches, picture-galleries, and cemeteries, which fully occupied the first four or five days after their arrival. Clarissa was obliged to be deeply interested in all the details of Gothic architecture — to appreciate Ingres, to give her mind to Gérome — when her heart was yearning for that meeting which she had waited so long to compass. Mr. Granger, as an idle man, with no estate to manage — no new barns being built within his morning’s ride — no dilapidated cottages to be swept away — was not easily to be got rid of. He devoted his days to showing his wife the glories of the splendid city, which he knew by heart himself, and admired sufficiently in a sober business-like way. The evenings were mortgaged to society. Clarissa had been more than a week in Paris before she had a morning to herself; and even then there was Miss Granger to be disposed of, and Miss Granger’s curiosity to be satisfied.

  Mr. Granger had gone to breakfast at the Maison Dorée with a mercantile magnate from his own country — a solemn commercial breakfast, whereat all the airy trifles and dainty compositions of fish, flesh, and fowl with which the butterfly youth of France are nourished, were to be set before unappreciative Britons. At ten o’clock Clarissa ordered her carriage. It was best to go in her own carriage, she thought, even at the risk of exciting the curiosity of servants. To send for a hired vehicle would have caused greater wonder; to walk alone was impossible; to walk with her nurse and child might have been considered eccentric.

  She could not even take an airing, however, without some discussion with Miss Granger. That young lady was established in the drawing-room — the vast foreign chamber, which never looked like a home — illuminating a new set of Gothic texts for the adornment of her school. She sorely missed the occupation and importance afforded her by the model village. In Paris there was no one afraid of her; no humble matrons to quail as her severe eyes surveyed wall and ceiling, floor and surbase. And being of a temperament which required perpetual employment, she was fain to fall back upon illumination, Berlin-wool work, and early morning practice of pianoforte music of the most strictly mathematical character. It was her boast that she had been thoroughly “grounded” in the science of harmony; but although she could have given a reason for every interval in a sonata, her playing never sparkled into brilliancy or melted into tenderness, and never had her prim cold fingers found their way to a human soul.

  “Are you going out so early?” this wise damsel asked wonderingly, as

  Clarissa came into the drawing-room in her bonnet and shawl.

  “Yes, it is such a fine morning, and I think baby will enjoy it. I have not had a drive with him since we have been here.”

  “No,” replied Sophia, “you have only had papa. I shouldn’t think he would be very much flattered if he heard you preferred baby.”

  “I did not say that I preferred baby, Sophia. What a habit you have of misrepresenting me!”

  The nurse appeared at this moment, carrying the heir of the Grangers, gloriously arrayed in blue velvet, and looking fully conscious of his magnificence.

  “But I do like to have a drive with my pet-lamb, don’t I, darling?” said the mother, stooping to kiss the plump rosy cheek. And then there followed some low confidential talk, in the fond baby language peculiar to young mothers.

  “I should have thought you would have been glad to get a morning alone, for once in a way,” remarked Sophia, coming over to the baby, and giving him a stately kiss. She liked him tolerably well in her own way, and was not angry with him for having come into the world to oust her from her proud position as sole h
eiress to her father’s wealth. The position had been very pleasant to her, and she had not seen it slip away from her without many a pang; but, however she might dislike Clarissa, she was not base enough to hate her father’s child. If she could have had the sole care and management of him, physicked and dieted him after her own method, and developed the budding powers of his infant mind by her favourite forcing system — made a model villager of him, in short — she might have grown even to love him. But these privileges being forbidden to her — her wisdom being set at naught, and her counsel rejected — she could not help regarding Lovel Granger as more or less an injury.

  “I should have thought you would have been glad of a morning at home,

  Clarissa,” she repeated.

  “Not such a fine morning as this, Sophy. It would be such a pity for baby to lose the sunshine; and I have really nothing to do.”

  “If I had known a little sooner that you were going, I would have gone with you,” said Miss Granger.

  Clarissa’s countenance fell. She could not help that little troubled look, which told Miss Granger that her society would not have been welcome.

  “You would have had no objection to my coming with you, I suppose?” the fair Sophia said sharply. “Baby is not quite a monopoly.”

  “Of course not. If you’ll put on your things now, Sophia, I’ll wait for you.”

  It was a hard thing for Clarissa to make the offer, when she had been waiting so anxiously for this opportunity of seeing her brother. To be in the same city with him, and not see him, was more painful than to be divided from him by half the earth, as she had been. It was harder still to have to plot and plan and stoop to falsehood in order to compass a meeting. But she remembered the stern cold look in her husband’s face when she had spoken of Austin, and she could not bring herself to degrade her brother by entreating Daniel Granger’s indulgence for his past misdeeds, or Daniel Granger’s interest in his future fortunes.

  Happily Sophia had made elaborate preparations for the Gothic texts, and was not inclined to waste so much trouble.

  “I have got my colours all ready,” she said, “and have put everything out, you see. No, I don’t think I’ll go to-day. But another time, if you’ll be so kind as to let me know beforehand, I shall be pleased to go with my brother. I suppose you know there’s an east wind to-day, by-the-bye.”

  The quarter whence the wind came, was a subject about which Clarissa had never concerned herself. The sun was shining, and the sky was blue.

  “We have plenty of wraps,” she said, “and we can have the carriage closed if we are cold.”

  “It is not a day upon which I should take an infant out,” Miss Granger murmured, dipping her brush in some Prussian-blue; “but of course you know best.”

  “O, we shall take care of baby, depend upon it. Good-bye, Sophy.”

  And Clarissa departed, anxious to avoid farther remonstrance on the part of her step-daughter. She told the coachman to drive to the Luxembourg Gardens, intending to leave the nurse and baby to promenade that favourite resort, while she made her way on foot to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard. She remembered that George Fairfax had described her brother’s lodging as near the Luxembourg.

  They drove through the gay Parisian streets, past the pillar in the Place Vendôme, and along the Rue de la Paix, all shining with jewellers’ ware, and the Rue de Rivoli, where the chestnut-trees in the gardens of the Tuileries were shedding their last leaves upon the pavement, past the airy tower of St. Jacques, and across the bridge into that unknown world on the other side of the Seine. The nurse, who had seen very little of that quarter of the town, wondered what obscure region she was traversing, and wondered still more when they alighted at the somewhat shabby-looking gardens.

  “These are the Luxembourg Gardens,” said Clarissa. “As you have been to the

  Tuileries every day, I thought it would be a change for you to come here.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” replied Mrs. Brobson, the chief nurse; “but I don’t think as these gardings is anyways equal to the Tooleries — nor to Regent’s Park even. When I were in Paris with Lady Fitz-Lubin we took the children to the Tooleries or the Bore de Boulong every day — but, law me! the Bore de Boulong were a poor place in those days to what it is now.”

  Clarissa took a couple of turns along one of the walks with Mrs. Brobson, and then, as they were going back towards the gate, she said, as carelessly as she could manage to say: “There is a person living somewhere near here whom I want to see, Mrs. Brobson. I’ll leave you and baby in the gardens for half an hour or so, while I go and pay my visit.”

  Mrs. Brobson stared. It was not an hour in the day when any lady she had ever served was wont to pay visits; and that Mrs. Granger of Arden Court should traverse a neighbourhood of narrow streets and tall houses, on foot and alone, to call upon her acquaintance at eleven o’clock in the morning, seemed to her altogether inexplicable.

  “You’ll take the carriage, won’t you, ma’am?” she said, with undisguised astonishment.

  “No, I shall not want the carriage; it’s very near. Be sure you keep baby warm, Mrs. Brobson.”

  Clarissa hurried out into the street. The landau, with its pair of Yorkshire-bred horses, was moving slowly up and down, to the admiration of juvenile Paris, which looked upon Mr. Granger’s deep-chested, strong-limbed bays almost as a new order in the animal creation. Mrs. Granger felt that the eyes of coachman and footman were upon her as she turned the first corner, thinking of nothing for the moment, but how to escape the watchfulness of her own servants. She walked a little way down the street, and then asked a sleepy-looking waiter, who was sweeping the threshold of a very dingy restaurant, to direct her to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard. It was tous près, the man said; only a turn to the right, at that corner yonder, and the next turning was the street she wanted. She thanked him, and hurried on, with her heart beating faster at every step. Austin might be out, she thought, and her trouble wasted; and there was no knowing when she might have another opportunity. Even if he were at home, their interview must needs be brief: there was the nurse waiting and wondering; the baby exposed to possible peril from east winds.

  The Rue du Chevalier Bayard was a street of tall gaunt houses that had seen better days — houses with porte-cochères, exaggerated iron knockers, and queer old lamps; dreary balconies on the first floor, with here and there a plaster vase containing some withered member of the palm tribe, or a faded orange-tree; everywhere and in everything an air of dilapidation and decay; faded curtains, that had once been fine, flapping in the open windows; Venetian shutters going to ruin; and the only glimpse of brightness or domestic comfort confined to the humble parlour of the portress, who kept watch and ward over one of the dismal mansions, and who had a birdcage hanging in her window, an Angora cat sunning itself on the stone sill, and a row of scarlet geraniums in the little iron balcony.

  But this model portress did not preside over the house inhabited by Austin Lovel. There Clarissa found only a little deaf old man, who grinned and shook his head helplessly when she questioned him, and shrugged his shoulders and pointed to the staircase — a cavernous stone staircase, with an odour as of newly opened graves. She went up to the first-floor, past the entresol, where the earthy odour was subjugated by a powerful smell of cooking, in which garlic was the prevailing feature. One tall door on the first-floor was painted a pale pink, and had still some dingy indications of former gilding upon its mouldings. On this pink door was inscribed the name of Mr. Austin, Painter.

  Clarissa rang a bell, and a tawdry-looking French servant, with big earrings and a dirty muslin cap, came to answer her summons. Mr. Austin was at home; would madame please to enter. Madame, having replied in the affirmative, was shown into a small sitting-room, furnished with a heterogeneous collection of cabinets, tables, and sofas, every one of which bore the stamp of the broker’s shop — things which had been graceful and pretty in their day, but from which the ormolu-moulding had been knocked off here, and the
inlaid-wood chipped away there, and the tortoiseshell cracked in another place, until they seemed the very emblems of decay. It was as if they had been set up as perpetual monitors — monuments of man’s fragility. “This is what life comes to,” they said in their silent fashion. This faded rubbish in buhl and marqueterie was useful enough to Mr. Lovel, however; and on his canvas the faded furniture glowed and sparkled with all its original brightness, fresh as the still-life of Meissonier. There were a child’s toys scattered on the floor; and Clarissa heard a woman’s voice talking to a child in an adjoining room, on the other side of a pair of tall pink folding-doors. Then she heard her brother’s voice saying something to the servant; and at the sound she felt as if she must have fallen to the ground. Then one of the doors was opened, and a woman came in; a pretty, faded-looking woman, dressed in a light-blue morning wrapper that might very well have been cleaner; a woman with a great deal of dyed hair in an untidy mass at the back of her head; a woman whom Clarissa felt it must be a difficult thing to like.

  This was her brother’s wife, of course. There was a boy of four or five years old clinging to his mother’s gown, and Clarissa’s heart yearned to the child. He had Austin’s face. It would be easy to love him, she thought.

  “Mr. Austin is in his paintin’-room, madame,” said the wife, putting on a kind of company manner. “Did you wish to see him about a picture? Je parle très poo de Français, mais si — —”

  “I am English,” Clarissa answered, smiling; “if you will kindly tell Mr.

  Austin a lady from England wishes to see him. What a dear little boy! May

  I shake hands with him?”

  “Give the lady your hand, Henery,” said the mother. “Not that one,” as the boy, after the invariable custom of childhood, offered his left—”the right hand.”

  Clarissa took the sticky little paw tenderly in her pearl-gray glove. To think that her brother Austin Lovel should have married a woman who could call her son “Henery,” and who had such an unmistakable air of commonness!