Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon

by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

  “If I could only see him,” said Clarissa despondingly.

  “I doubt whether he would come to England, even for the happiness of seeing you. If you were in Paris, now, I daresay it might be managed. We could bring about a meeting. But I feel quite sure that your brother would not care to make himself known to Mr. Granger, or to meet your father. There is a deadly feud between those two; and I should think it likely Mr. Lovel has prejudiced your husband against his son.”

  Clarissa was fain to admit that it was so. More than once she had ventured to speak of her brother to Daniel Granger, and on each occasion had quickly perceived that her husband had some fixed opinion about Austin, and was inclined to regard her love for him as an amiable weakness that should be as far as possible discouraged.

  “Your father has told me the story of his disagreement with his son, my dear Clarissa,” Daniel Granger had said in his gravest tone, “and after what I have heard, I can but think it would be infinitely wise in you to forget that you had ever had a brother.”

  This was hard; and Clarissa felt her husband’s want of sympathy in this matter as keenly as she could have felt any overt act of unkindness.

  “Will you give me Austin’s address” she asked, after a thoughtful pause. “I can write to him, at least, and send him some money, without consulting any one. I have about thirty pounds left of my last quarter’s money, and even that may be of use to him.”

  “Most decidedly. The poor fellow told me he had been glad to get ten napoleons for half-a-dozen sketches: more than a fortnight’s hard work. Would it not be better, by the way, for you to send your letter to me, and allow me to forward it to your brother? and if you would like to send him fifty pounds, or a hundred, I shall be only too proud to be your banker.”

  Clarissa blushed crimson, remembering that scene in the orchard, and her baffled lover’s menaces. Had he forgiven her altogether, and was this kind interest in her affairs an unconscious heaping of coals of fire on her head? Had he forgiven her so easily? Again she argued with herself, as she had so often argued before, that his love had never been more than a truant fancy, a transient folly, the merest vagabondage of an idle brain.

  “You are very good,” she said, with a tinge of hauteur, “but I could not think of borrowing money, even to help my brother. If you will kindly tell me the best method of remitting money to Paris.”

  Here, Mr. Fairfax said, there was a difficulty; it ought to be remitted through a banker, and Mrs. Granger might find this troublesome to arrange, unless she had an account of her own. Clarissa said she had no account, but met the objection by suggesting bank notes; and Mr. Fairfax was compelled to own that notes upon the Bank of England could be converted into French coin at any Parisian money-changer’s.

  He gave Clarissa the address, 13, Rue du Chevalier Bayard, near the

  Luxembourg.

  “I will write to him to-night,” she said, and then rose from the rustic bench among the laurels. “I think I must go and look for my husband now. I left him some time ago on account of a headache. I wanted to get away from the noise and confusion on the river-bank.”

  “Is it wise to return to the noise and confusion so soon?” asked Mr.

  Fairfax, who had no idea of bringing this interview to so sudden a close.

  He had been waiting for such a meeting for a long time; waiting with a kind of sullen patience, knowing that it must come sooner or later, without any special effort of his; waiting with a strange mixture of feelings and sentiments — disappointed passion, wounded pride, mortified vanity, an angry sense of wrong that had been done to him by Clarissa’s marriage, an eager desire to see her again, which was half a lover’s yearning, half an enemy’s lust of vengeance.

  He was not a good man. Such a life as he had led is a life that no man can lead with impunity. To say that he might still be capable of a generous action or unselfish impulse, would be to say much for him, given the story of his manhood. A great preacher of to-day has declared, that he could never believe the man who said he had never been tempted. For George Fairfax life had been crowded with temptations; and he had not made even the feeblest stand against the tempter. He had been an eminently fortunate man in all the trifles which make up the sum of a frivolous existence; and though his successes had been for the most part small social triumphs, they had not been the less agreeable. He had never felt the sting of failure until he stood in the Yorkshire orchard that chill October evening, and pleaded in vain to Clarissa Lovel. She was little more than a schoolgirl, and she rejected him. It was us if Lauzun, after having played fast-and-loose with that eldest daughter of France who was afterwards his wife, had been flouted by some milliner’s apprentice, or made light of by an obscure little soubrette in Molière’s troop of comedians. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven this slight; and mingled with that blind unreasoning passion, which he had striven in vain to conquer, there was an ever-present sense of anger and wrong.

  When Clarissa rose from the bench, he rose too, and laid his hand lightly on her arm with a detaining gesture.

  “If you knew how long; I have been wishing for this meeting, you would not be so anxious to bring it to a close,” he said earnestly.

  “It was very good of you to wish to tell me about poor Austin,” she said, pretending to misunderstand him, “and I am really grateful. But I must not stay any longer away from my party.”

  “Clarissa — a thousand pardons — Mrs. Granger” — there is no describing the expression he gave to the utterance of that last name — a veiled contempt and aversion that just stopped short of actual insolence, because it seemed involuntary—”why are you so hard upon me? You have confessed that you wanted to escape the noise yonder, and yet to avoid me you would go back to that. Am I so utterly obnoxious to you?”

  “You are not at all obnoxious to me; but I am really anxious to rejoin my party. My husband will begin to wonder what has become of me. Ah, there is my stepdaughter coming to look for me.”

  Yes, there was Miss Granger, slowly advancing towards them. She had been quite in time to see George Fairfax’s entreating gestures, his pleading air. She approached them with a countenance that would have been quite as appropriate to a genteel funeral — where any outward demonstration of grief would be in bad taste — as it was to Mr. Wooster’s fête, a countenance expressive of a kind of dismal resignation to the burden of existence in a world that was unworthy of her.

  “I was just coming back to the river, Sophia,” Mrs. Granger said, not without some faint indications of embarrassment. “I’m afraid Mr. — I’m afraid Daniel must have been looking for me.”

  “Papa has been looking for you,” Miss Granger replied, with unrelenting stiffness.—”How do you do, Mr. Fairfax?” shaking hands with him in a frigid manner.—”He quite lost the last race. When I saw that he was growing really anxious, I suggested that he should go one way, and I the other, in search of you. That is what brought me here.”

  It was as much as to say, Pray understand that I have no personal interest in your movements.

  “And yet I have not been so very long away,” Clarissa said, with a deprecating smile.

  “You may not have been conscious of the lapse of time You have been long. You said you would go and rest for a quarter of an hour or so; and you have been resting more than an hour.”

  “I don’t remember saying that; but you are always so correct, Sophia.”

  “I make a point of being exact in small things. We had better go round the garden to look for papa. — Good-afternoon, Mr. Fairfax.”

  “Good-afternoon, Miss Granger.”

  George Fairfax shook hands with Clarissa.

  “Good-bye, Mrs. Granger.”

  That was all, but the words were accompanied by a look and a pressure of the hand that brought the warm blood into Clarissa’s cheeks. She had made for herself that worst enemy a woman can have — a disappointed lover.

  While they were shaking hands, Mr. Granger came in sight at the other end of the wal
k; so it was only natural that Mr. Fairfax, who had been tolerably intimate with him at Hale Castle, should advance to meet him. There were the usual salutations between the two men, exchanged with that stereotyped air of heartiness which seems common to Englishmen.

  “I think we had better get home by the next train, Clarissa,” said Mr. Granger; “5.50. I told them to have the brougham ready for us at Paddington from half-past six.”

  “I am quite ready to go,” Clarissa said.

  “Your headache is better, I hope.”

  “Yes; I had almost forgotten it.”

  Miss Granger gave an audible sniff, which did not escape George Fairfax.

  “What! suspicious already?” he said to himself.

  “You may as well come and dine with us, Mr. Fairfax, if you have nothing better to do,” said Mr. Granger, with his lofty air, as much as to say, “I suppose I ought to be civil to this young man.”

  “It is quite impossible that I could have anything better to do,” replied

  Mr. Fairfax.

  “In that case, if you will kindly give your arm to my daughter, we’ll move off at once. I have wished Mr. Wooster good-afternoon on your part, Clary. I suppose we may as well walk to the station.”

  “If you please.”

  And in this manner they departed, Miss Granger just touching George Fairfax’s coat-sleeve with the tips of her carefully-gloved fingers; Clarissa and her husband walking before them, arm in arm. Mr. Fairfax did his utmost to make himself agreeable during that short walk to the station; so much so that Sophia unbent considerably, and was good enough to inform him of her distaste for these frivolous pleasures, and of her wonder that other people could go on from year to year with an appearance of enjoyment.

  “I really don’t see what else one can do with one’s life, Miss Granger,” her companion answered lightly. “Of course, if a man had the genius of a Beethoven, or a Goethe, or a Michael Angelo — or if he were ‘a heaven-born general,’ like Clive, it would be different; he would have some purpose and motive in his existence. But for the ruck of humanity, what can they do but enjoy life, after their lights?”

  If all the most noxious opinions of Voltaire, and the rest of the

  Encyclopedists, had been expressed in one sentence, Miss Granger could not

  have looked more horrified than she did on hearing this careless remark of

  Mr. Fairfax’s.

  She gave a little involuntary shudder, and wished that George Fairfax had been one of the model children, so that she might have set him to learn the first five chapters in the first book of Chronicles, and thus poured the light of what she called Biblical knowledge upon his benighted mind.

  “I do not consider the destiny of a Michael Angelo or a Goethe to be envied,” she said solemnly. “Our lives are given us for something better than painting pictures or writing poems.”

  “Perhaps; and yet I have read somewhere that St. Luke was a painter,” returned George Fairfax.

  “Read somewhere,” was too vague a phrase for Miss Granger’s approval.

  “I am not one of those who set much value on tradition,” she said with increased severity. “It has been the favourite armour of our adversaries.”

  “Our adversaries?”

  “Yes, Mr. Fairfax. Of ROME!”

  Happily for George Fairfax, they were by this time very near the station. Mr. and Mrs. Granger had walked before them, and Mr. Fairfax had been watching the tall slender figure by the manufacturer’s side, not ill-pleased to perceive that those two found very little to say to each other during the walk. In the railway-carriage, presently, he had the seat opposite Clarissa, and was able to talk to her as much as he liked; for Mr. Granger, tired with staring after swift-flashing boats in the open sunshine, leaned his head back against the cushions and calmly slumbered. The situation reminded Mr. Fairfax of his first meeting with Clarissa. But she was altered since then: that charming air of girlish candour, which he had found so fascinating, had now given place to a womanly self-possession that puzzled him not a little. He could make no headway against that calm reserve, which was yet not ungracious. He felt that from first to last in this business he had been a fool. He had shown his cards in his anger, and Clarissa had taken alarm.

  He was something less than a deliberate villain: but he loved her; he loved her, and until now fate had always given him the thing that he cared for. Honest Daniel Granger, sleeping the sleep of innocence, seemed to him nothing more than a gigantic stumbling-block in his way. He was utterly reckless of consequences — of harm done to others, above all — just as his father had been before him. Clarissa’s rejection had aroused the worst attributes of his nature — an obstinate will, a boundless contempt for any human creature not exactly of his own stamp — for that prosperous trader, Daniel Granger, for instance — and a pride that verged upon the diabolic.

  So, during that brief express journey, he sat talking gaily enough to Clarissa about the Parisian opera-houses, the last new plays at the Gymnase and the Odéon, the May races at Chantilly, and so on; yet hatching his grand scheme all the while. It had taken no definite shape as yet, but it filled his mind none the less.

  “Strange that this fellow Granger should have been civil,” he said to himself. “But that kind of man generally contrives to aid and abet his own destruction.”

  And then he glanced at this fellow Granger, sleeping peacefully with his head in an angle of the carriage, and made a contemptuous comparison between himself and the millionaire. Mr. Granger had been all very well in the abstract, before he became an obstacle in the path of George Fairfax. But things were altered now, and Mr. Fairfax scrutinized him with the eyes of an enemy.

  The dinner in Clarges-street was a very quiet affair. George Fairfax was the only visitor, and the Grangers were “due” at an evening party. He learned with considerable annoyance that they were to leave London at the end of that week, whereby he could have little opportunity of seeing Clarissa. He might have followed her down to Yorkshire, certainly; but such a course would have been open to remark, nor would it be good taste for him to show himself in the neighbourhood of Hale Castle while Geraldine Challoner was there. He had an opportunity of talking confidentially to Clarissa once after dinner, when Mr. Granger, who had not fairly finished his nap in the railway-carriage, had retired to a dusky corner of the drawing-room and sunk anew into slumber, and when Miss Granger seemed closely occupied in the manufacture of an embroidered pincushion for a fancy fair. Absorbing as the manipulation of chenille and beads might be, however, her work did not prevent her keeping a tolerably sharp watch upon those two figures by the open piano: Clarissa with one hand wandering idly over the keys, playing some random passage, pianissimo, now and then; George Fairfax standing by the angle of the piano, bending down to talk to her with an extreme earnestness.

  He had his opportunity, and he knew how to improve it. He was talking of her brother. That subject made a link between them that nothing else could have made. She forgot her distrust of George Fairfax when he spoke with friendly interest of Austin.

  “Is the wife very vulgar?” Clarissa asked, when they had been talking some time.

  “Not so especially vulgar. That sort of thing would be naturally toned down by her association with your brother. But she has an unmistakable air of Bohemianism; looks like a third-rate actress, or dancer, in short; or perhaps an artist’s model. I should not wonder if that were her position, by the way, when your brother fell in love with her. She is handsome still, though a little faded and worn by her troubles, poor soul! and seems fond of him.”

  “I am glad of that. How I should like to see him, and the poor wife, and the children — my brother’s children! I have never had any children fond of me.”

  She thought of Austin in his natural position, as the heir of Arden Court, with his children playing in the old rooms — not as they were now, in the restored splendour of the Middle Ages, but as they had been in her childhood, sombre and faded, with here and there a remn
ant of former grandeur.

  Mr. Granger woke presently, and George Fairfax wished him good-night.

  “I hope we shall see you at the Court some day,” Clarissa’s husband said, with a kind of stately cordiality. “We cannot offer you the numerous attractions of Hale Castle, but we have good shooting, and we generally have a houseful in September and October.”

  “I shall be most happy to make one of the houseful,” Mr. Fairfax said, with a smile — that winning smile which had helped him to make so many friends, and which meant so little. He went away in a thoughtful spirit.

  “Is she happy?” he asked himself. “She does not seem unhappy; but then women have such a marvellous power of repression, or dissimulation, one can never be sure of anything about them. At Hale I could have sworn that she loved me. Could a girl of that age be absolutely mercenary, and be caught at once by the prospect of bringing down such big game as Daniel Granger? Has she sold herself for a fine house and a great fortune, and is she satisfied with the price? Surely no. She is not the sort of woman to be made happy by splendid furniture and fine dresses; no, nor by the common round of fashionable pleasures. There was sadness in her face when I came upon her unawares to-day. Yes, I am sure of that. But she has schooled herself to hide her feelings.”

  “I wonder you asked Mr. Fairfax to Arden, papa,” said Miss Granger, when the visitor had departed.

  “Why, my dear? He is a very pleasant young man; and I know he likes our part of the country. Besides, I suppose he will be a good deal at Hale this year, and that his marriage will come off before long. Lord Calderwood must have been dead a year.”

  “Lord Calderwood has been dead nearly two years,” replied Miss Granger. “I fancy that engagement between Mr. Fairfax and Lady Geraldine must have been broken off. If it were not so, they would surely have been married before now. And I observed that Mr. Fairfax was not with Lady Laura to-day. I do not know how long he may have been in the gardens,” Miss Granger added, with a suspicious glance at her stepmother, “but he certainly was not with Lady Laura during any part of the time.”