"I am not afraid of that. I tell you, Clarissa, it is not in her cold proud nature to care much for any man. We can invent some story to account for the rupture, which will save her womanly pride. The world can be told that it is she who has broken the engagement: all that will be easily settled.
Poor Lord Calderwood! Don"t imagine that I am not heartily sorry for him; he was always a good friend to me; but his death has been most opportune.
It has saved me, Clarissa. But for that I should have been a married man this night, a bound slave for evermore. You can never conceive the gloomy dogged spirit in which I was going to my doom. Thank G.o.d, the release came; and here, sitting by your side, a free man, I feel how bitter a bondage I have escaped."
He put his arm round Clarissa, and tried to draw her towards him; but she released herself from him with a quick proud movement, and rose from her seat on the low wall. He rose at the same moment, and they stood facing each other in the darkening twilight.
"And what then, Mr. Fairfax?" she said, trembling a little, but looking him steadily in the face nevertheless. "When you have behaved like a traitor, and broken your engagement, what then?"
"What then? Is there any possible doubt about what must come then? You will be my wife, Clarissa!"
"You think that I would be an accomplice to such cruelty? You think that I could be so basely ungrateful to Lady Laura, my first friend? Yes, Mr.
Fairfax, the first friend I ever had, except my aunt, whose friendship has always seemed a kind of duty. You think that after all her goodness to me I could have any part in breaking her sister"s heart?"
"I think there is one person whose feelings you overlook in this business."
"And who is that?"
"Myself. You seem to forget that I love you, and that my happiness depends upon you. Are you going to stand upon punctilio, Clarissa, and break my heart because Laura Armstrong has been civil to you?"
Clarissa smiled--a very mournful smile.
"I do not believe you are so dreadfully in earnest," she said. "If I did--"
"If you did, what then, Clarissa?"
"It might be different. I might be foolish enough, wicked enough--But I am sure that this folly of yours is no more than a pa.s.sing fancy. You will go away and forget all about me. You would be very sorry by-and-by, if I were weak enough to take you at your word; just as sorry as you are now for your engagement to Lady Geraldine. Come, Mr. Fairfax, let us both be sensible, if we can, and let there be an end of this folly for evermore between us.
Good-night; I must go home. It is half-past eight o"clock, and at nine papa has his tea."
"You shall go home in time to pour out Mr. Lovel"s tea; but you shall hear me out first, Clarissa, and you shall confess to me. I will not be kept in the dark."
And then he urged his cause, pa.s.sionately, eloquently, or with that which seemed eloquence to the girl of nineteen, who heard him with pale cheeks and fast-throbbing heart, and yet tried to seem unmoved. Plead as he might, he could win no admission from her. It was only in her eyes, which could not look denial, on her tremulous lips, which could not simulate coldness, that he read her secret. There he saw enough to make him happy and triumphant.
"Say what you please, my pitiless one," he cried at last; "in less than three months you shall be my wife!"
The church-clock chimed the three-quarters. He had no excuse for keeping her any longer.
"Come then, Clarissa," he said, drawing her hand through his arm; "let me see you to your father"s door."
"But your horse--you can"t leave him here?"
"Yes, I can. I don"t suppose any one will steal him in a quarter of an hour or so; and I daresay we shall meet some village urchin whom I can send to take care of him."
"There is no occasion. I am quite accustomed to walk about Arden alone."
"Not at this hour. I have detained you, and am bound to see you safely lodged."
"But if papa should hear----"
"He shall near nothing. I"ll leave you within a few yards of his gate."
It was no use for her to protest; so they went back to within half a dozen paces of Mill Cottage arm-in-arm; not talking very much, but dangerously happy in each other"s company.
"I shall see you again very soon, Clarissa," George Fairfax said. And then he asked her to tell him her favourite walks; but this she refused to do.
"No matter. I shall find you out in spite of your obstinacy. And remember, child, you owe nothing to Laura Armstrong except the sort of kindness she would show to any pretty girl of good family. You are as necessary to her as the orchids on her dinner-table. I don"t deny that she is a warm-hearted little woman, with a great deal that is good in her--just the sort of woman to dispense a large fortune. But I shall make matters all right in that quarter, and at once."
They were now as near Mill Cottage as Mr. Fairfax considered it prudent to go. He stopped, released Clarissa"s hand from his arm, only to lift it to his lips and kiss it--the tremulous little ungloved hand which had been sketching his profile when he surprised her, half an hour before, on the churchyard wall.
There was not a creature on the road before them, as they stood thus in the moonlight; but in spite of this appearance of security, they were not un.o.bserved. A pair of angry eyes watched them from across a clipped holly hedge in front of the cottage--the eyes of Marmaduke Lovel, who had ventured out in the soft September night to smoke his after-dinner cigar.
"Good-night, Clarissa," said George Fairfax; "I shall see you again very soon."
"No, no; I don"t wish to see you. No good can come of our seeing each other."
"You will see me, whether you wish or not. Good-night. There is nine striking. You will be in time to pour out papa"s tea."
He let go the little hand which he had held till now, and went away. When Clarissa came to the gate, she found it open, and her father standing by it. She drew back with a guilty start.
"Pray come in," said Mr. Lovel, in his most ceremonious tone. "I am very glad that a happy accident has enabled me to become familiar with your new habits. Have you learnt to give clandestine meetings to your lovers at Hale Castle? Have I to thank Lady Laura for this novel development of your character?"
"I don"t know what you mean, papa. I was sitting in the churchyard just now, sketching, when Mr. Fairfax rode up to me. He stopped talking a little, and then insisted on seeing me home. That is all."
"That is all. And so it was George Fairfax--the bridegroom that was to have been--who kissed your hand just now, in that loverlike fashion. Pray come indoors; I think this is a business that requires to be discussed between us quietly."
"Believe me you have no reason to be angry, papa," pleaded Clarissa; "nothing could have been farther from my thoughts than the idea of meeting Mr. Fairfax to-night."
"I have heard that kind of denial before, and know what it is worth,"
answered her father coldly. "And pray, if he did not come here to meet you, may I ask what motive brought Mr. Fairfax to Arden to-night? His proper place would have been at Hale Castle, I should have supposed."
"I don"t know, papa. He may have come to Arden for a ride. Everything is in confusion at the Castle, I scarcely think he would be wanted there."
"You scarcely think! And you encourage him to follow you here--this man who was to have been married to Lady Geraldine Challoner to-day--and you let him kiss your hand, and part from you with the air of a lover. I am ashamed of you, Clarissa. This business is odious enough in itself to provoke the anger of any father, if there were not circ.u.mstances in the past to make it trebly hateful to me."
They had pa.s.sed in at the open window by this time, and were standing in the lamp-lit parlour, which had a pretty air of home comfort, with its delicate tea-service and quaintly shaped silver urn. Mr. Lovel sank into his arm-chair with a faint groan, and looking at him in the full light of the lamp, Clarissa saw that he was deadly pale.
"Do you know that the father of that man was my deadliest foe?" he exclaimed.
"How should I know that, papa?"
"How should you know it!--no. But that you should choose that man for your secret lover! One would think there was some hereditary curse upon your mother"s race, binding her and hers with that hateful name. I tell you, Clarissa, that if there had been no such creature as Temple Fairfax, my life might have been as bright a one as any man need hope for. I owe every misery of my existence to that man."
"Did he injure you so deeply, papa?"
"He did me the worst wrong that one man can do to another. He came between me and the woman I loved; he stole your mother"s heart from me, Clarissa, and embittered both our lives."
He stopped, and covered his face with his hand. Clarissa could see that the hand trembled. She had never seen her father so moved before. She too was deeply moved. She drew a chair close to him, and sat down by his side, but dared not speak.
"It is just as well that you should hear the story from me," he said, after a long pause. "You may hear hints and whispers about it from other people by-and-by perhaps, if you go more into society; for it was known to several. It is best you should know the truth. It is a common story enough in the history of the world; but whenever it happens, it is enough to make the misery of one man"s life. I was not always what you have known me, Clarissa,--a worn-out machine, dawdling away the remnant of a wasted existence. I once had hopes and pa.s.sions like the rest of mankind--perhaps more ardent than the most. Your mother was the loveliest and most fascinating woman I ever met, and from the hour of our first meeting I had but one thought--how I should win her for my wife. It was not a prudent marriage. She was my equal by birth; but she was the daughter of a ruined spendthrift, and had learnt extravagance and recklessness in her very nursery. She thought me much richer than I was, and I did not care to undeceive her. Later, when we were married, and I could see that her extravagant habits were hastening my ruin, I was still too much a moral coward to tell her the naked truth. I could not bear to come between her and caprices that seemed a natural accompaniment to her charms. I was weakness itself in all that concerned her."