"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 pa.s.sion, 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 l.u.s.t 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 Moliere"s troop of comedians. He had neither forgotten nor forgiven this slight; and mingled with that blind unreasoning pa.s.sion, 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 fete, 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 embarra.s.sment. "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 walk; 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."