The Lovels of Arden Part 63

"I can't find him, please, sir. I've been looking in Mrs. Granger's dressing-room, and everywhere almost. Jane Target fetched him for his ma close upon a hour ago; and Mrs. Brobson sent me for him, and I fancied as you might have got him with you, sir."

Mr. Granger came out of his room with the lamp in his hand, and came through the bedroom to his wife's dressing-room, looking with that stern searching gaze of his into every shadowy corner, as if he thought Clarissa and her baby might be playing hide-and-seek there. But there was no one--the cheval-gla.s.s and the great gla.s.s door of the wardrobe reflected only his own figure, and the scared nursemaid peering from behind his elbow. He went on to the nursery, opening the doors of all the rooms as he pa.s.sed, and looking in. There are some convictions that come in a minute.

Before that search was finished, Daniel Granger felt very sure that his wife had left him, and had taken her child away with her.

In what manner and to what doom had she gone? Was her flight a shameful one, with George Fairfax for her companion? He knew now, for the first time, that in the depths of his mind there had been some lurking belief in her innocence, it was so supreme an agony to him to imagine that she had taken a step which must make her guilt a certainty. He did not waste much time in questioning the verbose Brobson. The child was missing--that was quite clear--and his wife, and his wife's maid. It was some small relief to him to know that she had taken the honest Yorks.h.i.+re girl. If she had been going to ignominy, she would scarcely have taken any one who knew her past history, above all, one whom she had known in her childhood.

What was he to do? To follow her, of course, if by any means he could discover whither she had gone. To set the telegraph wires going, also, with a view to discovering her destination. He drove off at once to the chief telegraph office, and wrote a couple of messages, one to Mr. Lovel, at Spa--the other to Mr. Oliver, at Holborough Rectory; with a brief stern request to be informed immediately if his wife should arrive at either place. There was Lady Laura Armstrong, her most intimate friend, with whom she might possibly seek a refuge in the hour of her trouble; but he did not care to make any application in that quarter, unless driven to do so. He did not want to make his wrongs public.

From the telegraph office he drove to the Northern Railway Station, and made minute inquiries about the trains. There was a train by which she might have gone to Calais half an hour before he arrived there. He enlisted the services of an official, and promenaded the waiting-rooms and platforms, the dreary chambers in which travellers wait for their luggage, to and fro between the barriers that torment the soul of the impatient. He asked this man, and several other men, if a lady, with her baby and maid, had been observed to take their departure by any train within the last hour. But the men shrugged their shoulders hopelessly. Ladies and maids and babies came and went in flocks, and no one noticed them. There were always babies. Yes; one of the men did remember a stout lady in a red shawl, with a baby and a birdcage and a crowd of boxes, who had gone by the second-cla.s.s. Is it that that was the lady monsieur was looking for, _par hasard_?

"She will go to her father," Mr. Granger said to himself again and again; and this for the moment seemed to him such a certainty, that he had half made up his mind to start for Spa by the next train that would carry him in that direction. But the thought of George Fairfax--the possibility that his wife might have had a companion in her flight--arrested him in the next moment. "Better that I should stop to make sure of _his_ whereabouts," he thought; and drove straight to the Champs Elysees, where Mr. Fairfax had his bachelor quarters.

Here he saw the valet, who had not long returned from that diplomatic expedition to the neighbourhood of the Rue de Morny; but who appeared the very image of unconsciousness and innocence notwithstanding. Mr. Fairfax was dining at home with some friends. Would Mr. Granger walk in? The dinner was not served yet. Mr. Fairfax would be delighted to see him.

Mr. Granger refused to go in; but told the man he should be glad to see Mr.

Fairfax there, in the ante-room, for a moment. He wanted to be quite sure that the valet was not lying.

Mr. Fairfax came out, surprised at the visit.

"I had a special reason for wis.h.i.+ng to know if you were at home this evening," said Daniel Granger. "I am sorry to have disturbed you, and will not detain you from your friends."

And then the question flashed upon him--_Was she there?_ No; that would be too daring. Any other refuge she might seek; but surely not this.

George Fairfax had flung the door wide open in coming out. Mr. Granger saw the dainty bachelor room, with its bright pictures s.h.i.+ning in the lamp-light, and two young men in evening-dress lolling against the mantelpiece. The odours of an elaborate dinner were also perceptible. The valet had told the truth. Daniel Granger murmured some vague excuse, and departed.

"Queer!" muttered Mr. Fairfax as he went back to his friends.

"I'm afraid the man is going off his head; and yet he seemed cool enough to-day."

From the Champs Elysees Mr. Granger drove to the Rue du Chevalier Bayard.

There was another possibility to be considered: if Austin the painter were indeed Austin Lovel, as George Fairfax had a.s.serted, it was possible that Clarissa had gone to him; and the next thing to be done was to ascertain his whereabouts. The ancient porter, whom Mr. Granger had left the night before in a doubtful and bewildered state of mind, was eating some savoury mess for his supper comfortably enough this evening, but started up in surprise, with his spectacles on his forehead, at Mr. Granger's reappearance.

"I want to know where your lodger Mr. Austin went when he left here?" Mr.

Granger demanded briefly.

The porter shrugged his shoulders.

"Alas, monsieur, that is an impossibility. I know nothing of Mr. Austin's destination; only that he went away yesterday, at three o'clock, in a hackney-coach, which was to take him to the Northern Railway."

"Is there no one who can tell me what I want to know?" asked Mr. Granger.

"I doubt it, monsieur. Monsieur Austin was in debt to almost every one except his landlord. He promised to write about his furniture,--some of the movables in those rooms upstairs are his--cabinets, carved chairs, tapestries, and so on; but he said nothing as to where he was going."

"He promised to write," repeated Mr. Granger. "That's an indefinite kind of promise. You could let me know, I suppose, if you heard anything?"

"But certainly," replied the porter, who saw Mr. Granger's fingers in his waistcoat pocket, and scented a fee, "monsieur should know immediately."

Mr. Granger wrote his address upon a card, and gave it to the porter, with a napoleon.

"You shall have another when you bring me any information. Good-night."

At home, Daniel Granger had to face his daughter, who had heard by this time of her stepmother's departure and the abstraction of the baby.

"O, papa," she exclaimed, "I do so feel for you!" and made as if she would have embraced her parent; but he stood like a rock, not inviting any affectionate demonstration.

"Thank you, my dear," he said gravely; "but I can do very well without pity. It's a kind of thing I'm not accustomed to. I am annoyed that Clarissa should have acted in--in this ill-advised manner; but I have no doubt matters will come right in a little time."

"Lovel--my brother is safe, papa?" inquired Sophia, clasping her hands.

"I have every reason to believe so. He is with his mother."

Miss Granger sighed profoundly, as much as to say, "He could not be in worse hands."

"And I think, my dear," continued her father, "that the less you trouble yourself about this business the better. Any interference on your part will only annoy me, and may occasion unpleasantness between us. You will go back to Arden, to-morrow, as I intended, with Warman, and one of the men to take care of your luggage. The rest of the establishment will follow in a day or so."

"And you, papa?"

"My plans are uncertain. I shall return to Arden as soon as I can."

"Dear old Arden!" exclaimed Sophia; "how I wish we had never left it! How happy I was for the first four years of my life there!"

This apostrophe Mr. Granger perfectly understood--it meant that, with the advent of Clarissa, happiness had fled away from Sophia's dwelling-place.

He did not trouble himself to notice the speech; but it made him angry nevertheless.

"There is a letter for you, papa," said Miss Granger, pointing to a side-table; "a letter which Warman found upstairs."

The lynx-eyed Warman, prying and peering about, had spied out Clarissa's letter to her husband, half hidden among the frivolities on the dressing-table. Mr. Granger pounced upon it eagerly, full of hope. It might tell him all he wanted to know.

It told him nothing. The words were not consistent with guilt, unless Clarissa were the very falsest of women. But had she not been the falsest?

Had she not deceived him grossly, unpardonably? Alas, he was already trying to make excuses for her--trying to believe her innocent, innocent of what society calls sin--yes, she might be that. But had he not seen her kneeling beside her lover? Had she not owned that she loved him? She had; and the memory of her words were poison to Daniel Granger.

CHAPTER XLIV.

UNDER THE SHADOW OF ST. GUDULE.

It was about half an hour before noon on the following day when Clarissa arrived at Brussels, and drove straight to her brother's lodging, which was in an obscure street under the shadow of St. Gudule. Austin was at work in a room opening straight from the staircase--a bare, shabby-looking chamber--and looked up from his easel with profound astonishment on beholding Mrs. Granger with her maid and baby.

"Why, Clary, what in the name of all that's wonderful, brings you to Brussels?" he exclaimed.

"I have come to live with you for a little while, Austin, if you will let me," she answered quietly. "I have no other home now."

Austin Lovel laid down his palette, and came across the room to receive her.