She looked at her brother with anxious scrutinising eyes. No, George Fairfax had not deceived her. He had the look of a man who was going the wrong way. There were premature lines across the forehead, and about the dark brilliant eyes; a nervous expression in the contracted lips. It was the face of a man who burns the candle of life at both ends. Late hours, anxiety, dissipation of all kinds, had set their fatal seal upon his countenance.
"Dear Austin, you are as handsome as ever; but I don"t think you are looking well," she said tenderly.
"Don"t look so alarmed, my dear girl," he answered lightly; "I am well enough; that is to say, I am never ill, never knock under, or strike work.
There are men who go through life like that--never ill, and never exactly well. I rarely get up in the morning without a headache; but I generally brighten considerably as the sun goes down. We move with a contrary motion, Helios and I."
"I am afraid you work too hard, and sit up too late."
"As to working hard, my dear, that is a necessity; and going out every night is another necessity. I get my commissions in society."
"But you must have a reputation by this time, Austin; and commissions would come to you, I should think, without your courting them."
"No, child; I have only a reputation _de salon_, I am only known in a certain set. And a man must live, you see. To a man himself that is the primary necessity. Your _generosity_ set me on my legs last year, and tempted me to take this floor, and make a slight advance movement altogether. I thought better rooms would bring me better work--sitters for a new style of cabinet-portraits, and so on. But so far the rooms have been comparatively a useless extravagance. However, I go out a good deal, and meet a great many influential people; so I can scarcely miss a success in the end."
"But if you sacrifice your health in the meantime, Austin."
"Sacrifice my health! That"s just like a woman. If a man looks a trifle pale, and dark under the eyes, she begins to fancy he"s dying. My poor little wife takes just the same notions into her head, and would like me to stop at home every evening to watch her darn the children"s stockings."
"I think your wife is quite right to be anxious, Austin; and it would be much better for you to stay at home, even to see stockings darned. It must be very dull for her too when you are out, poor soul."
Mr. Lovel shrugged his shoulders with a deprecating air.
"_C"est son metier,_" he said. "I suppose she does find it rather dismal at times; but there are the children, you see--it is a woman"s duty to find all-sufficient society in her children. And now, Clary, tell me about yourself. You have made a brilliant match, and are mistress of Arden Court.
A strange stroke of fortune that. And you are happy, I hope, my dear?"
"I ought to be very happy," Clarissa answered, with a faint sigh, thinking perhaps that, bright as her life might be, it was not quite the fulfilment of her vague girlish dreams--not quite the life she had fancied lying before her when the future was all unknown; "I ought to be very happy and very grateful to Providence; and, O Austin, my boy is the sweetest darling is the world!"
Austin Lovel looked doubtful for a moment, half inclined to think "my boy"
might stand for Daniel Granger.
"You must see him, Austin," continued his sister; "he is nearly ten months old now, and such a beauty!"
"O, the baby!" said Austin, rather coolly. "I daresay he"s a nice little chap, and I should like to see him very much, if it were practicable. But how about Granger himself? He is a good sort of fellow, I hope."
"He is all goodness to me," Clarissa answered gravely, casting down her eyes as she spoke; and Austin Lovel knew that the marriage which had given his sister Arden Court had been no love-match.
They talked for some time; talked of the old days when they had been together at Arden; but of the years that made the story of his life, Austin Lovel spoke very little.
"I have always been an unlucky beggar," he said, in his careless way.
"There"s very little use in going over old ground. Some men never get fairly on the high-road of life. They spend their existence wading across swamps, and scrambling through bushes, and never reach any particular point at the end. My career has been that sort of thing."
"But you are so young, Austin," pleaded Clarissa, "and may do so much yet."
He shook his head with an air of hopelessness that was half indifference.
"My dear child, I am neither a Raffaelle nor a Dore," he said, "and I need be one or the other to redeem my past But so long as I can pick up enough to keep the little woman yonder and the bairns, and get a decent cigar and an honest bottle of Bordeaux, I"m content. Ambition departed from me ten years ago."
"O Austin, I can"t bear to hear you say that! With your genius you ought to do so much. I wish you would be friends with my husband, and that he could be of use to you."
"My dear Clarissa, put that idea out of your mind at once and for ever.
There can be no such thing as friendship between Mr. Granger and me. Do you remember what Samuel Johnson said about some one"s distaste for clean linen--"And I, sir, have no pa.s.sion for it!" I confess to having no pa.s.sion for respectable people. I am very glad to hear Mr. Granger is a good husband; but he"s much too respectable a citizen for my acquaintance."
Clarissa sighed; there was a prejudice here, even if Daniel Granger could have been induced to think kindly of his brother-in-law.
"Depend upon it, the Prodigal Son had a hard time of it after the fatted calf had been eaten, Clary, and wished himself back among the swine. Do you think, however lenient his father might be, that his brother and the friends of the family spared him? His past was thrown in his face, you may be sure. I daresay he went back to his evil ways after a year or so. Good people maintain their monopoly of virtue by making the repentant sinner"s life a burden to him."
Clarissa spoke of his wife presently.
"You must introduce me to her, Austin. She took me for a stranger just now, and I did not undeceive her."
"Yes I"ll introduce you. There"s not much in common between you; but she"ll be very proud of your acquaintance. She looks upon my relations as an exalted race of beings, and myself as a kind of fallen angel. You mustn"t be too hard upon her, Clary, if she seems not quite the sort of woman you would have chosen for your sister-in-law. She has been a good wife to me, and she was a good daughter to her drunken old father--one of the greatest scamps in London, who used to get his bread--or rather his gin--by standing for Count Ugolino and Cardinal Wolsey, or anything grim and gray and aquiline-nosed in the way of patriarchs. The girl Bessie was a model too in her time; and it was in Jack Redgrave"s painting-room--the pre-Raphaelite fellow who paints fearfully and wonderfully made women with red hair and angular arms--I first met her. Jack and I were great chums at that time--it was just after I sold out--and I used to paint at his rooms. I was going in for painting just then with a great spurt, having nothing but my brush to live upon. You can guess the rest. As Bessie was a very pretty girl, and neither she nor I had a sixpence wherewith to bless ourselves, of course we fell in love with each other. Poor little thing, how pretty she used to look in those days, standing on Jack"s movable platform, with her hair falling loose about her face, and a heap of primroses held up in her petticoat!--such a patient plaintive look in the sweet little mouth, as much as to say, "I"m very tired of standing here; but I"m only a model, to be hired for eighteenpence an hour; go on smoking your cigars, and talking your slangy talk about the turf and the theatres, gentlemen. I count for nothing." Poor little patient soul! she was so helpless and so friendless, Clary. I think my love for her was something like the compa.s.sion one feels for some young feeble bird that has fallen out of its nest. So we were married one morning; and for some time lived in lodgings at Putney, where I used to suffer considerable affliction from Count Ugolino and two bony boys, Bessie"s brothers, who looked as if the Count had been acting up to his character with too great a fidelity. Ugolino himself would come prowling out of a Sat.u.r.day afternoon to borrow the wherewithal to pay his week"s lodging, lest he should be cast out into the streets at nightfall; and it was a common thing for one of the bony boys to appear at breakfast-time with a duplicate of his father"s coat, pledged over-night for drink, and without the means of redeeming which he could not pursue his honourable vocation. In short, I think it was as much the affliction of the Ugolino family as my own entanglements that drove me to seek my fortunes on the other side of the world."
Austin Lovel opened one of the doors, and called his wife "Come here, Bessie; I"ve a pleasant surprise for you."
Mrs. Lovel appeared quickly in answer to this summons. She had changed her morning dress for a purple silk, which was smartly trimmed, but by no means fresh, and she had dressed her hair, and refreshed her complexion by a liberal application of violet powder. She had a look which can only be described as "flashy"--a look that struck Clarissa unpleasantly, in spite of herself.
Her expressions of surprise did not sound quite so natural as they might have done--for she had been listening at the folding-doors during a considerable part of the interview; but she seemed really delighted by Mrs.
Granger"s condescension, and she kissed that lady with much affection.
"I"m sure I do feel proud to know any relation of Austin"s," she said, "and you most of all, who have been so kind to him. Heaven knows what would have become of us last winter, if it hadn"t been for your generosity."
Clarissa laid her hand upon Bessie Lovel"s lips.
"You mustn"t talk of generosity between my brother and me," she said; "all I have in the world is at his service. And now let me see my nephews, please; and then I must run away."
The nephews were produced; the boy Clarissa had seen, and another of smaller growth--pale-faced, bright-eyed little fellows; They too had been subjected to the infliction of soap-and-water and hair-brushes, clean pinafores, and so on, since Mrs. Granger"s arrival.
She knelt down and kissed them both, with real motherly tenderness, thinking of her own darling, and the difference between his fortunes and theirs; and then, after a warm caress, she slipped a napoleon into each little warm hand, "to buy toys," and rose to depart.
"I must hurry away now, Austin," she said; "but I shall come again very soon, if I may. Good-bye, dear, and G.o.d bless you."
The embrace that followed was a very fervent one. It had been sweet to meet again after so many years, and it was hard to leave him so soon--to leave him with the conviction that his life was a wreck. But Clarissa had no time to linger. The thought of the baby in the Luxembourg Gardens had been distracting her for ever so long. These stolen meetings must needs be short.
She looked at her watch when she got back to the street, and found, to her horror, that she had been very nearly an hour away from the nurse and her charge. The carriage was waiting at the gate, and she had to encounter the full fire of her servants" gaze as she crossed the road and went into the gardens. Yes, there was the baby"s blue-velvet pelisse resplendent at the end of an avenue, Clarissa walked quickly to meet him.
"My darling!" she cried. "Has he been waiting for his mamma? I hope he has not been tired of the gardens, nurse?"
"Yes, ma"am, he have been tired," replied Mrs. Brobson, with an outraged air. "There ain"t much in these gardens to keep a baby of his age amused for an hour at a stretch; and in a east wind too! It"s right down cutting at that corner."
"Why didn"t you take him home in the carriage, nurse? It would have been better than running any risk of his catching cold."
"What, and leave you without a conveyance, ma"am? I couldn"t have done that!"
"I was detained longer than I expected to stay. O, by the bye, you need not mention to Miss Granger that I have been making a call. The people I have been to see are--are in humble circ.u.mstances; and I don"t want her to know anything about it."
"I hope I know my duty, ma"am," replied Mrs. Brobson stiffly. That hour"s parading in the gardens, without any relief from her subordinate, had soured her temper, and inclined her to look with unfavourable eyes upon the conduct of her mistress. Clarissa felt that she had excited the suspicion of her servant, and that all her future meetings with her brother would involve as much plotting and planning as would serve for the ripening of a political conspiracy.