Clarissa hung over her baby with all manner of fond endearments.
"My darling! my darling!" she sobbed; "is it a hard thing to resist temptation for your sake?"
She had shed many bitter tears since that interview with George Fairfax, alone in the dreary room, while Lovel slept the after-dinner sleep of infancy, and while Mrs. Lovel and Jane Target gossipped sociably in the general sitting-room. Austin was out playing dominoes at the café of a Thousand Columns, with some Bohemianishly-disposed Bruxellois.
She had wept for the life that might have been, but which never could be. On that point she was decided. Not under the shadow of dishonour could she spend her days. She had her son. If she had been alone, utterly desolate, standing on some isolated rock, with nothing but the barren sea around her, she might perhaps have listened to that voice which was so very sweet to her, and yielded. But to take this dreadful leap which she was asked to take, alone, was one thing; to take it with her child in her arms, another. Her fancy, which was very vivid, made pictures of what her boy's future might be, if she were to do this thing. She thought of him stung by the mention of his mother's name, as if it were the foulest insult. She thought of his agony when he heard other men talk of their mothers, and remembered the blackness of darkness that shrouded his. She thought of the boyish intellect opening little by little, first with vague wonder, then fearful curiosity, to receive this fatal knowledge; and then the shame for that young innocent soul!
"O, not for worlds!" she cried, "O, not for worlds! God keep me from any more temptation!"
Not with mere idle prayers did she content herself. She knew her danger; that man was resolute, unscrupulous, revengeful even: and she loved him. She determined to leave Brussels. She would go and lose herself in the wide world of London; and then, after a little while, when all possibility of her movements being traced was over, she would take her child to some secluded country place, where there were woods and meadows, and where the little dimpled hands could gather bright spring flowers. She announced her intention to her brother that evening, when he came home at a latish hour from the Thousand Columns, elated by having won three francs and a half at dominoes—an amount which he had expended on cognac and syphons for himself and his antagonist.
He was surprised, vexed even, by Clarissa's decision. Why had she come to him, if she meant to run away directly? What supreme folly to make such a journey for nothing! Why did she not go from Paris to London at once?
"I did not think of that, Austin; I was almost out of my senses that day, I think, after Daniel told me he was going to separate me from my boy; and it seemed natural to me to fly to you for protection."
"Then why run away from me? Heaven knows, you are welcome to such a home as I can give. The quarters are rough, I know; but we shall improve that, by-and-by."
"No, no, Austin, it is not that. I should be quite happy with you, only—only—I have a particular reason for going to London."
"Clarissa!" cried her brother sternly, "has that man anything to do with this? Has he tried to lure you away from here, to your destruction?"
"No, no, no! you ought to know me better than that. Do you think I would bring dishonour upon my boy?"
Her face told him that she was speaking the truth.
"Very well, Clary," he said with a sigh of resignation; "you must do as you please. I suppose your reason is a good one, though you don't choose to trust me."
So, by an early train next morning, Clarissa, with her nurse and child, left Brussels for Ostend—a somewhat dreary place wherein to arrive in early spring-time, with March winds blowing bleak across the sandy dunes.
They had to spend a night here, at a second-rate hotel on the Quay.
"We must go to humble-looking places, you know, Jane, to make our money last," Clarissa said on the journey. They had travelled second-class; but she had given a five-pound note to her brother, by way of recompense for the brief accommodation he had given her, not telling him how low her stock was. Faithful Jane's five-and-twenty pounds were vanishing. Clarissa looked at the two glittering circlets on her wedding finger.
"We cannot starve while we have these," she thought; and once in London, she could sell her drawings. Natural belief of the school-girl mind, that water-coloured sketches are a marketable commodity!
Again in the dismal early morning—that sunrise of which poets write so sweetly, but which to the unromantic traveller is wont to seem a dreary thing—mother and nurse and child went their way in a great black steamer, redolent of oil and boiled mutton; and at nine o'clock at night—a starless March night—Clarissa and her belongings were deposited on St. Katharine's Wharf, amidst a clamour and bustle that almost confused her senses.
She had meditated and debated and puzzled herself all through the day's voyage, sitting alone on the windy deck, brooding over her troubles, while Jane kept young Lovel amused and happy below. Inexperienced in the ways of every-day life as a child—knowing no more now than she had known in her school-girl days at Belforêt—she had made her poor little plan, such as it was.
Two or three times during her London season she had driven through Soho—those weird dreary streets between Soho Square and Regent Street—and had contemplated the gloomy old houses, with a bill of lodgings to let here and there in a parlour-window; anon a working jeweller's humble shop breaking out of a private house; here a cheap restaurant, there a French laundress; everywhere the air of a life which is rather a struggle to live than actual living. In this neighbourhood, which was the only humble quarter of the great city whereof she had any knowledge, Clarissa fancied they might find a temporary lodging—only a temporary shelter, for all her hopes and dreams pointed to some fair rustic retreat, where she might live happily with her treasure. Once lodged safely and obscurely, where it would be impossible for either her husband or George Fairfax to track her, she would spend a few shillings in drawing-materials, and set to work to produce a set of attractive sketches, which she might sell to a dealer. She knew her brother's plan of action, and fancied she could easily carry it out upon a small scale.
"So little would enable us to live happily, Jane," she said, when she revealed her ideas to her faithful follower.
"But O, mum, to think of you living like that, with such a rich husband as Mr. Granger, and him worshipping the ground you walk upon, as he did up to the very last; and as to his anger, I'm sure it was only tempory, and he's sorry enough he drove you away by this time, I'll lay."
"He wanted to take away my child, Jane."
They took a cab, and drove from Thames-street to Soho. Clarissa had never been through the City at night before, and she thought the streets would never end. They came at last into that quieter and dingier region; but it was past ten o'clock, and hard work to find a respectable lodging at such an hour. Happily the cabman was a kindly and compassionate spirit, and did his uttermost to help them, moving heaven and earth, in the way of policemen and small shopkeepers, until, by dint of much inquiry, he found a decent-looking house in acul-de-sacout of Dean-street—a little out-of-the-way quadrangle, where the houses were large and stately, and had been habitations of sweetness and light in the days when Soho was young, and Monmouth the young man of the period.
To one of these houses the cabman had been directed by a good-natured cheesemonger, at a corner not far off; and here Clarissa found a second-floor—a gaunt-looking sitting-room, with three windows and oaken window-seats, sparsely furnished, but inexorably clean; a bedroom adjoining—at a rent which seemed moderate to this inexperienced wayfarer. The landlady was a widow—is it not the normal state of landladies?—cleanly and conciliating, somewhat surprised to see travellers with so little luggage, but reassured by that air of distinction which was inseparable from Mrs. Granger, and by the presence of the maid.
The cabman was dismissed, with many thanks and a princely payment; and soClarissa began life alone in London.
* * * * *
It was a dreary habitation, that London lodging, after the gardens and woods of Arden, the luxurious surroundings and innumerable prettinesses which Mr. Granger's wealth had provided for the wife of his love; dreary after the holiday brightness of Paris; dreary beyond expression to Clarissa in the long quiet evenings when she sat alone, trying to face the future—the necessity for immediate action being over, and the world all before her.
She had her darling. That was the one fact which she repeated to herself over and over again, as if the words had been a charm—an amulet to drive away guilty thoughts of the life that might have been, if she had listened to George Fairfax's prayer.
It was not easy for her to shutthatimage out of her heart, even with her dearest upon earth beside her. The tender pleading words, the earnest face, came back to her very often. She thought of him wandering about those hilly streets in Brussels, disappointed and angry: thought of his reproaches, and the sacrifices he had made for her.
And then from such weak fancies she was brought suddenly back by the necessities of every-day life Her money was very nearly gone; the journeys had cost so much, and she had been obliged to buy clothing for Jane and Lovel and herself at Brussels. She had spent a sovereign on colours and brushes and drawing-paper at Winsor and Newton's—her little stock-in-trade. She looked at her diamond rings meditatively as she sat brooding in the March twilight, with as vague an idea of their value as a child might have had. The time was very near when she would be obliged to turn them into money.
Fortunately the woman of the house was friendly, and the rooms were clean. But the airs of Soho are not as those breezes which come blowing over Yorkshire wolds and woods, with the breath of the German Ocean; nor had they the gay Tuileries garden and the Bois for Master Lovel's airings. Jane Target was sorely puzzled where to take the child. It was a weary long way to St. James's Park on foot; and the young mother had a horror of omnibuses—in which she supposed smallpox and fever to be continually raging. Sometimes they had a cab, and took the boy down to feed the ducks and stare at the soldiers. But in the Park Clarissa had an ever-present terror of being seen by some one she knew. Purposeless prowlings with baby in the streets generally led unawares into Newport-market, from which busy mart Mrs. Granger fled aghast, lest her darling should die of the odour of red herrings and stale vegetables. In all the wider streets Clarissa was afflicted by that perpetual fear of being recognised; and during the airings which Lovel enjoyed with Jane alone the poor mother endured unspeakable torments. At any moment Mr. Granger, or some one employed by Mr. Granger, might encounter the child, and her darling be torn from her; or some accident might befall him. Clarissa's inexperience exaggerated the perils of the London streets, until every paving-stone seemed to bristle with dangers. She longed for the peace and beauty of the country; but not until she had found some opening for the disposal of her sketches could she hope to leave London. She worked on bravely for a fortnight, painting half a dozen hours a day, and wasting the rest of her day in baby worship, or in profound plottings and plannings about the future with Jane Target. The girl was thoroughly devoted, ready to accept any scheme of existence which her mistress might propose. The two women made their little picture of the life they were to lead when Clarissa had found a kindly dealer to give her constant employment: a tiny cottage, somewhere in Kent or Surrey, among green fields and wooded hills, furnished ever so humbly, but with a garden where Lovel might play. Clarissa sketched the ideal cottage one evening—a bower of roses and honeysuckle, with a thatched roof and steep gables. Alas, when she had finished her fortnight's work, and carried half a dozen sketches to a dealer in Rathbone-place, it was only to meet with a crushing disappointment. The man admitted her power, but had no use for anything of that kind. Chromolithographs were cheap and popular—people would rather buy a lithograph of some popular artist's picture than a nameless water-colour. If she liked to leave a couple of her sketches, he would try to dispose of them, but he could not buy them—and giving her permanent employment was quite out of the question.
"Do you know anything about engraving?" he asked.
Clarissa shook her head sadly.
"Can you draw on the wood?"
"I have never tried, but I daresay I could do that."
"I recommend you to turn your attention that way. There's a larger field for that sort of thing. You might exhibit some of your sketches at the next Water-Colour Exhibition. They would stand a chance of selling there."
"Thanks. You are very good, but I want remunerative employment immediately."
She wandered on—from dealer to dealer, hoping against hope always with the same result—from Rathbone-place to Regent-street, and on to Bond-street, and homewards along Oxford-street, and then back to her baby, broken-hearted.
"It is no use, Jane," she sobbed. "I can understand my brother's life now. Art is a broken reed. We must get away from this dreadful London—how pale my Lovel is looking!—and go into some quiet country-place, where we can live very cheaply. I almost wish I had stayed in Belgium—in one of the small out-of-the-way towns, where we might have been safely hidden. We must go down to the country, Jane, and I must take in plain needle-work."
"I'm a good un at that, you know, mum," Jane cried with a delighted grin.
And then they began to consider where they should go. That was rather a difficult question. Neither of them knew any world except the region surrounding Arden Court. At last Clarissa remembered Beckenham. She had driven through Beckenham once on her way to a garden-party. Why should they not go to Beckenham?—the place was so near London, could be reached with so little expense, and yet was rustic.
"We must get rid of one of the rings, Jane," Clarissa said, looking at it doubtfully.
"I'll manage that, mum—don't you fidget yourself about that. There's a pawnbroker's in the next street. I'll take it round there in the evening, if you like, mum."
Clarissa shuddered. Commerce with a pawnbroker seemed to her inexperience a kind of crime—something like taking stolen property to be melted down.
But Jane Target was a brave damsel, and carried the ring to the pawnbroker with so serene a front, and gave her address with so honest an air, that the man, though at first inclined to be doubtful, believed her story; namely, that the ring belonged to her mistress, a young married lady who had suffered a reverse of fortune.
She went home rejoicing, having raised fifteen pounds upon a ring that was worth ninety. The pawnbroker had a notice that it would never be redeemed—young married ladies who suffer reverse of fortune rarely recover their footing, but generally slide down, down, down to the uttermost deeps of poverty.
They were getting ready for that journey to Beckenham, happy in the idea of escaping from the monotonous unfriendly streets, and the grime and mire and general dinginess of London life, when an unlooked-for calamity befell them, and the prospect of release had, for the time at least, to be given up. Young Lovel fell ill. He was "about his teeth," the woman of the house said, and tried to make light of the evil. These innocents are subject to much suffering in this way. He had a severe cold, with a tiresome hacking cough which rent Clarissa's heart. She sent for a doctor immediately—a neighbouring practitioner recommended by the landlady—and he came and saw the child lying in his mother's lap, and the mother young and beautiful and unhappy, and was melted accordingly, and did all he could to treat the matter lightly. Yet he was fain, after a few visits, and no progress for the better, to confess that these little lives hang by a slender thread.
"The little fellow has a noble frame and an excellent constitution," he said; "I hope we shall save him."
Save him! An icy thrill went through Clarissa's veins. Save him! Was there any fear of losing him? O God, what would her life be without that child? She looked at the doctor, white to the lips and speechless with horror.
"I don't wish to alarm you," he said gently, "but I am compelled to admit that there is danger. If the little one's father is away," he added doubtfully, "and you would like to summon him, I think it would be as well to do so."
"O, my flower, my angel, my life!" she cried, flinging herself down beside the child's bed; "I cannot lose you!"
"I trust in God you will not," said the surgeon. "We will make every effort to save him." And then he turned to Jane Target, and murmured his directions.
"Is there any one else," said Clarissa in a hoarse voice, looking up at the medical man—"anyone I can send for besides yourself—any one who can cure my baby?"
"I doubt whether it would be of any use. The case is such a simple one. I have fifty such in a year. But if you would like a physician to see the little fellow, there is Dr. Ormond, who has peculiar experience in children's cases. You might call him in, if you liked."
"I will send for him this minute.—Jane, dear, will you go?"
"I don't think it would be any use, just now. He will be out upon his rounds. There is no immediate danger. If you were to send to him this evening—a note would do—asking him to call to-morrow—that would be the best way. Remember, I don't for a moment say the case is hopeless. Only, if you have any anxiety about the little one's father, and if he is within a day's journey, I would really advise you to send for him."
Clarissa did not answer. She was hanging over the bed, watching every difficult breath with unutterable agony. The child had only begun to droop a week ago, had been positively ill only four days.
All the rest of that day Clarissa was in a kind of stupor. She watched the child, and watched Jane administering her remedies, and the landlady coming in now and then to look at the boy, or to ask about him with a friendly anxiety. She tried to help Jane sometimes, in a useless tremulous way, sometimes sat statue-like, and could only gaze. She could not even pray—only now and then, she whispered with her dry lips, "Surely God will not take away my child!"
At dusk the doctor came again, but said very little. He was leaving the room, when Clarissa stopped him with a passionate despairing cry. Until that moment she had seemed marble.
"Tell me the truth," she cried. "Will he be taken away from me? He is all the world to me—the only thing on earth I have to love. Surely God will not be so pitiless! What difference can one angel more make in heaven? and he is all the world to me."
"My dear lady, these things are ordered by a Wisdom beyond our comprehension," the doctor answered gently. That picture of a disconsolate mother was very common to him—only Clarissa was so much lovelier than most of the mothers, and her grief had a more romantic aspect and touched him a little more than usual. "Believe me, I shall make every effort to pull the little fellow through," he added with the professional air of hopefulness. "Have you written to Dr. Ormond?"
"Yes, my letter was posted an hour after you called."
"Then we shall hear what he says to-morrow. You can have no higher opinion. And now pray, my dear Mrs. Graham"—Clarissa had called herself Graham in these Soho lodgings—"pray keep up your spirits; remember your own health will suffer if you give way—and I really do not think you are strong."
He looked at her curiously as he spoke. She was deadly pale, and had a haggard look which aged her by ten years: beauty less perfect in its outline would have been obscured by that mental anguish—hers shone through all, ineffaceable.
"Do not forget what I said about the little one's father," urged the doctor, lingering for a minute on the threshold. "There is really too great a responsibility in keeping him ignorant of the case, if he is anywhere within reach."
Clarissa smiled for the first time since her boy's illness—a strange wan smile. She was thinking how Daniel Granger had threatened her with separation from her child; and now Death had come between them to snatch him from both.
"My son!" She remembered the proud serenity, the supreme sense of possession, with which she had pronounced those words.
And the child would die perhaps, and Daniel Granger never look upon his face again. A great terror came into her mind at that thought. What would her husband say to her if he came to claim his boy, and found him dead? For the first time since she had left him—triumphant in the thought of having secured this treasure—the fact that the boy belonged to him, as well as to herself, came fully home to her. From the day of the baby's birth she had been in the habit of thinking of him as her own—hers by a right divine almost—of putting his father out of the question, as it were—only just tolerating to behold that doating father's fond looks and caresses—watching all communion between those two with a lurking jealousy.
Now all at once she began to feel what a sacred bond there was between the father and son, and how awful a thing it would be, if Daniel Granger should find his darling dead. Might he not denounce her as the chief cause of his boy's death? Those hurried journeys by land and sea—that rough shifting to and fro of the pampered son and heir, whose little life until that time had been surrounded with such luxurious indulgences, so guarded from the faintest waft of discomfort—who should say that these things had not jeopardised the precious creature? And out of her sin had this arisen. In that dread hour by her darling's sick-bed, what unutterably odious colours did her flirtation with George Fairfax assume—her dalliance with temptation, her weak hankering after that forbidden society! She saw, as women do see in that clear after-light which comes with remorse, all the guilt and all the hatefulness of her sin.
"God gave me my child for my redemption," she said to herself, "and I went on sinning."
What was it the doctor had said? Again and again those parting words came back to her. The father should be summoned. But to summon him, to reveal her hiding-place, and then have her darling taken from her, saved from the grasp of death only to be torn from her by his pitiless unforgiving father! No thought of what Daniel Granger had been to her in all the days of her married life arose to comfort or reassure her. She only thought of him as he had been after that fatal meeting in her brother's painting-room; and she hoped for no mercy from him.
"And even if I were willing to send for him, I don't know where he is," she said at last helplessly.
Jane Target urged her to summon him.
"If you was to send a telegraft to the Court, mum, Miss Granger is pretty sure to be there, and she'd send to her pa, wherever he was."
Clarissa shivered. Send to Miss Granger! suffer those cold eyes to see the depth of her humiliation! That would be hard to endure. Yet what did anything in the world matter to her when her boy was in jeopardy?
"We shall save him, Jane," she said with a desperate hopefulness, clasping her hands and bending down to kiss the troubled little one, who had brief snatches of sleep now and then in weary hours of restlessness. "We shall save him. The doctor said so."
"God grant we may, mum! But the doctor didn't say for certain—he only said hehoped; and it would be so much better to send for master. It seems a kind of crime not to let him know; and if the poor dear should grow worse—"
"He will not grow worse!" cried Clarissa hysterically. "What, Jane! are you against me? Do you want me to be robbed of him, as his father would rob me without mercy? No, I will keep him, I will keep him! Nothing but death shall take him from me."
Later in the evening, restless with the restlessness of a soul tormented by fear, Clarissa began to grow uneasy about her letter to Dr. Ormond. It might miscarry in going through the postoffice. She was not quite sure that it had been properly directed, her mind had been so bewildered when she wrote it. Or Dr. Ormond might have engagements next morning, and might not be able to come. She was seized with a nervous anxiety about this.
"If there were any one I could send with another note," she said.
Jane shook her head despondently. In that house there was no messenger to be procured. The landlady was elderly, and kept no servant—employing only a mysterious female of the charwoman species, who came at daybreak, dyed herself to the elbows with blacking or blacklead before breakfast, and so remained till the afternoon, when she departed to "do for" a husband and children—the husband and children passing all the earlier part of the day in a desolate and un-"done-for" condition.
"There's no one to take a letter, mum," said Jane, looking wistfully at her mistress, who had been watching without rest or slumber for three days and three nights. "But why shouldn't you go yourself, mum? Cavendish Square isn't so very far. Don't you remember our going there one morning with baby? It's a fine evening, and a little fresh air would do you good."
Clarissa was quite willing to go on the errand herself. It would be doing something at least. She might see the physician, and obtain his promise to come to her early next day; and beside that sick-bed she was of so little use. She could only hold her darling in her lap, when he grew weary of his bed, or carry him up and down the room sometimes. Jane, whose nerves were as steady as a rock, did all the rest.
She looked at the bed. It was hard to leave that tender little sufferer even for half an hour.
"If he should grow worse while I am away?" she said doubtfully.
"No fear of that," replied Jane. "He's sleeping better now than he has slept for ever so long. God grant he's upon the turn!"
"God grant it! And you won't forget the medicine at half-past eight?"
"Lor', mum, as if I should forget!"
"Then I'll go," said Clarissa.
She put on her bonnet and shawl, startled a little by the white face that looked at her from the glass. The things she had worn when she left Paris were the darkest and plainest in her wardrobe. They had grown shabby by this time, and had a very sombre look. Even in these garments the tall slim figure had a certain elegance; but it was not a figure to be remarked at nightfall, in the London streets. The mistress of Arden Court might have been easily mistaken for a sempstress going home from her work.
Just at first the air made her giddy, and she tottered a little on the broad pavement of the quietcul-de-sac. It seemed as if she had not been out of doors for a month. But by degrees she grew more accustomed to the keen March atmosphere and the noise of Oxford-street, towards which she was hastening, and so hurried on, thinking only of her errand. She made her way somehow to Cavendish-square. How well she remembered driving through it in the summer gloaming, during the brief glory of her one season, on her way to a commercial magnate's Tusculum in the Regent's-park! It had seemed remote and out of the world after Mayfair—a locality which one might be driven by reverse of fortune to inhabit, not otherwise. But to-night the grave old square had an alarming stateliness of aspect after slipshod Soho.
She found Dr. Ormond's house, and saw his butler, a solemn bald-headed personage, who looked wise enough to prescribe for the most recondite diseases of humanity. The doctor himself was dining out, but the butler pledged himself for his master's appearance at Clarissa's lodgings between eleven and two to-morrow.
"He never disappints; and he draws no distinctions," said the official, with an evident reference to the humility of the applicant's social status. "There's not many like him in the medical perfession."
"And you think he is sure to come?" urged Clarissa anxiously.
"Don't you be afraid, mum. I shall make a particular pint of it myself. You may be quite easy about his comin'."
Clarissa thanked the man, and surprised him with half-a-crown gently slipped into his fat palm. She had not many half-crowns now; but the butler seemed to pity her, and might influence his master to come to her a little sooner than he would come in the ordinary way.
Her errand being done, she turned away from the house with a strange sinking at the heart. An ever-present fear of his illness coming to a fatal end, and a guilty sense of the wrong she was doing to Daniel Granger, oppressed her. She walked in a purposeless way, took the wrong turning after coming out of the square, and so wandered into Portland-place. She came to a full stop suddenly in that wide thoroughfare, and looking about her like an awakened sleep-walker, perceived that she had gone astray—recognised the place she was in, and saw that she was within a few doors of Lady Laura Armstrong's house.
Although the London season had begun, there was an air of stillness and solitude in this grave habitation of splendours that have for the most part vanished. At one door there was a carriage waiting; here and there lighted windows shone out upon the night; but the general aspect was desolation. If there were gaiety and carousing anywhere, closed shutters hid the festival from the outer world. The underground world of Egypt could scarcely have seemed more silent than Portland-place.
Clarissa went on to the familiar corner house, which was made conspicuous to the stranger by encaustic tiled balconies, or glass fern and flower cases at every available window, and by a certain colour and glitter which seemed almost a family likeness to Lady Laura herself. There were lights burning dimly in the two last windows on the drawing-room floor looking into the side street. Clarissa remembered the room very well—it was Lady Laura's own especial sanctum, the last and smallest of four drawing-rooms—a nest lined with crimson silk, and crowded with everything foolish in the way of ebony and ormolu, Venetian glass and Sèvres china, and with nothing sensible in it except three or four delicious easy-chairs of thepouffspecies, immortalised by Sardou. Alas for that age of pouff which he satirised with such a caustic pen! To what dismal end has it come! End of powder and petroleum, and instead of beauty, burning!
The lonely wanderer, so sorely oppressed with cares and perplexities, looked wistfully up at those familiar windows. How often she had loitered away the twilight with Lady Laura, talking idly in that flower-laden balcony! As she looked at it to-night, there came into her mind a foolish wonder that life could have had any interest for her in those days, before the birth of her son.
"If I were to lose him now, I should be no poorer than I was then," she thought; and then, after a moment's reflection, "O yes, yes, a thousand times poorer, once having had him."
She walked a little way down the street, and then came back again and lingered under those two-windows, with an unspeakable yearning to cast herself upon her friend in this hour of shipwreck. She had such bitter need of sympathy from some one nearer her own level than the poor honest faithful Yorkshire girl.
"She was once my friend," she said to herself, still hovering there irresolute, "and seemed very fond of me. She could advise me, knowing the world so well as she does; and I do not think she would betray me. She owes me something, too. But for my promise to her, I might have been George Fairfax's wife, and all this trouble might have been avoided."
George Fairfax's wife! What a strange dreamlike fancy it seemed! And yet it might have been; it had needed only one little word from herself to make the dream a fact.
"I tried to do my duty," she thought, "and yet ruin and sorrow have come upon me." And then the small still voice whispered, "Tried to do your duty, but not always; sometimes you left off trying, and dared to be happy in your own way. Between the two roads of vice and virtue, you tried to make a devious pathway of your own, not wholly on one side or the other."
Once having seen that light, feeling somehow that there was sympathy and comfort near, she could not go away without making some attempt to see her friend. She thought with a remorseful pang of times and seasons during her wedded life when Laura Armstrong's too solicitous friendship had seemed to her something of a bore. How different was it with her now!
She summoned up resolution at last, and in a half desperate mood, went round to the front door and knocked—a tremulous conscience-stricken knock, as of some milliner's apprentice bringing home a delayed bonnet. The man who opened the door looked involuntarily for her basket.
"What is it?" he asked dubiously, scenting a begging-letter writer in the tall slim figure and closely-veiled face, and being on principle averse from gentility that did not ride in its carriage. "What is it, young woman?"
"Can I see Lady Laura Armstrong? I want to see her very particularly."
"Have you got an appointment?"
"No; but I wish to see her."
"You're from Madame Lecondre's, I suppose. You can see my lady's maid; but it's quite out of the question for you to see my lady herself, at this time of night."
"Will you take a message to her, on a slip of paper? I am almost sure she will see me." And again Clarissa opened her slender purse, and slipped a florin into the man's hand, by way of bribe.
He was somewhat melted by this, but yet had an eye to the portable property in the hall.
"You can come in," he said, pointing with a lofty air to a table whereon were pens and paper, "and write your message." And then rang an electric bell, which summons brought a second powdered footman, who was, as it were, a Corsican Brother or Siamese Twin, without the ligature, to the first.
Clarissa scrawled a few hasty lines on a sheet of paper, and folded it.
"Be so kind as to take that to your mistress," she said. "I am sure she will see me."
The second footman was that superior young man, Norris, whom Hannah Warman had praised. He stared aghast, recognising Mrs. Granger's voice and bearing, in spite of the thick veil folded over her face, in spite of her shabby garments.
"My lady shall have your note immediately, ma'am," he said with profound respect, and sped off as if to carry the message of a cabinet minister, much to the bewilderment of his brother officer, who did not know Mrs. Granger.
He reappeared in about two minutes, and ushered Clarissa duly up the broad staircase—dimly lighted to-night, the family being in Portland-place, in a kind of semi-state, only newly arrived, and without so much as a hall-porter—through the corridor, where there were velvet-cushioned divans against the walls, whereon many among Lady Laura's guests considered it a privilege to sit on her great reception nights, content to have penetrated so far, and with no thought of struggling farther, and on to the white-and-gold door at the farther end, which admitted the elect into my lady's boudoir.
Laura Armstrong was sitting at an ebony writing-table, with innumerable little drawers pulled out to their utmost extent, and all running over with papers, a chaotic mass of open letters before her, and a sheet of foolscap scrawled over with names. She had been planning her campaign for the season—so many dinners, so many dances, alternate Thursdays in May and June; and a juvenile fancy ball, at which a Pompadour of seven years of age could lead off the Lancers with a Charles the Twelfth of ten, with an eight-year-old Mephistopheles and a six-year-old Anna Boleyn for theirvis-à-vis.
As the footman opened the door, and ushered in Mrs. Granger, there was a faint rustling of silk behind theportièredividing Lady Laura's room from the next apartment; but Clarissa was too agitated to notice this.
Laura Armstrong received her with effusion.
"My dearest girl," she exclaimed, rising, and grasping both Clarissa's hands, as the man closed the door, "how glad I am to see you! Do you know, something told me you would come to me? Yes, dear; I said to myself ever so many times, 'That poor misguided child will come to me.' O, Clary, Clary, what have you been doing! Your husband is like a rock. He was at Arden for a few days, about a fortnight ago, and I drove over to see him, and entreated him to confide in me; but he would tell nothing. My poor, poor child! how pale, how changed!"
She had thrown back Clarissa's veil, and was scrutinising the haggard face with very womanly tenderness.
"Sit down, dear, and tell me everything. You know that you can trust me. If you had gone ever so wrong—and I don't believe it is in you to do that—I would still be your friend."
Clarissa made a faint effort to speak, and then burst into tears. This loving welcome was quite too much to bear.
"He told me he was going to take my boy away from me," she sobbed, "so I ran away from him, with my darling—and now my angel is dying!"
And then, with many tears, and much questioning and ejaculation from Lady Laura, she told her pitiful story—concealing nothing, not even her weak yielding to temptation, not even her love for George Fairfax.
"I loved him always," she said; "yes—always, always, always—from that first night when we travelled together! I used to dream of him sometimes, never hoping to see him again, till that summer day when he came suddenly upon me in Marley Wood. But I kept my promise; I was true to you, Lady Laura; I kept my promise."
"My poor Clary, how I wish I had never exacted that promise! It did no good; it did not save Geraldine, and it seems to have made you miserable. Good gracious me," cried Lady Laura with sudden impetuosity, "I have no patience with the man! What is one man more than another, that there should be so much fuss about him?"
"I must go home to Lovel," Clarissa said anxiously. "I don't know how long I have been away from him. I lost my head, almost; and I felt that Imustcome to you."
"Thank God you did come, you poor wandering creature! Wait a few minutes,Clary, while I send for a cab, and put on my bonnet. I am coming with you."
"You, Lady Laura?"
"Yes, and I too," said a calm voice, that Clarissa remembered very well; and looking up at the door of communication between the two rooms, she saw theportièrepushed aside, and Geraldine Challoner on the threshold.
"Let me come and nurse your baby, Mrs. Granger," she said gently; "I have had a good deal of experience of that sort of thing."
"You do not know what an angel she is to the poor round Hale," said Lady Laura; "especially to the children. And she nursed three of mine, Maud, Ethel, and Alick—no; Stephen, wasn't it?" she asked, looking at her sister for correction—"through the scarlatina. Nothing but her devotion could have pulled them through, my doctor assured me. Let her come with us, Clary."
"O, yes, yes! God bless you, Lady Geraldine, for wanting to help my darling!"
"Norris, tell Fosset to bring me my bonnet and shawl, and fetch a cab immediately; I can't wait for the carriage."
Five minutes afterwards, the three women were seated in the cab, and on their way to Soho.
"You have sent for Mr. Granger, of course," said Lady Laura.
"No, not yet. I trust in God there may be no necessity; my darling will get well; I know he will! Dr. Ormond is to see him to-morrow."
"What, Clarissa! you have not sent for your husband, although you say that his boy is in danger?"
"If I let Mr. Granger know where I am, he will come and take my son away from me."
"Nonsense, Clary; he can't do that. It is very shameful of you to keep him in ignorance of the child's state." And as well as she could, amidst the rattling of the cab, Lady Laura tried to awaken Clarissa to a sense of the wrong she was doing. Jane Target stared in amazement on seeing her mistress return with these two ladies.
"O, ma'am, I've been, so frightened!" she exclaimed. "I couldn't think what was come of you."
Clarissa ran to the bed.
"He has been no worse?" she asked eagerly.
"No, ma'am. I do think, if there's any change, it is for the better."
"O thank God, thank God!" cried Clarissa hysterically, falling on her knees by the bed. "Death shall not rob me of him! Nobody shall take him from me!" And then, turning to Laura Armstrong, she said, "I need not send for my husband, you see; my darling will recover."
* * * * *
Lady Laura went back to Portland-place in an hour; but Geraldine Challoner stayed all night with the sick child. God was very merciful to Clarissa; the angel of death passed by. In the night the fever abated, if only ever so little; and Dr. Ormond's report next day was a cheering one. He did not say the little one was out of danger; but he did say there was hope.
Lady Geraldine proved herself an accomplished nurse. The sick child seemed more tranquil in her arms than even in his mother's. The poor mother felt a little pang of jealousy as she saw that it was so; but bore the trial meekly, and waited upon Geraldine with humble submission.
"How good you are!" she murmured once, as she watched the slim white hands that had played chess with George Fairfax adjusting poultices—"how good you are!"
"Don't say that, my dear Mrs. Granger. I would do as much for any cottager's child within twenty miles of Hale; it would be hard if I couldn't do it for my sister's friend."
"Have you always been fond of the poor?" Clarissa asked wonderingly.
"Yes," Geraldine answered, with a faint blush; "I was always fond of them. I can get on with poor people better than with my equals sometimes, I think; but I have visited more amongst them lately, since I have gone less into society—since papa's death, in fact. And I am particularly fond of children; the little things always take to me."
"My baby does, at any rate."
"Have you written or telegraphed to Mr. Granger?" Lady Geraldine asked gravely.
"No, no, no; there can be no necessity now. Dr. Ormond says there is hope."
"Hope, yes; but these little lives are so fragile. I implore you to send to him. It is only right."
"I will think about it, by and by, perhaps, if he should grow any worse; but I know he is getting better. O, Lady Geraldine, have some pity upon me! If my husband finds out where I am, he will rob me of my child."
The words were hardly spoken, when there was a loud double-knock at the door below, a delay of some two minutes, and then a rapid step on the stair—a step that set Clarissa's heart beating tumultuously. She sat down by the bed, clinging to it like an animal at bay, guarding her cub from the hunter.
The door was opened quickly, and Daniel Granger came into the room. He went straight to the bed, and bent down to look at his child.
The boy had been light-headed in the night, but his brain was clear enough now. He recognised his father, and smiled—a little wan smile, that went to the strong man's heart.
"My God, how changed he is!" exclaimed Mr. Granger. "How long has he been ill?"
"Very little more than a week, sir," Jane Target faltered from the background.
"More than a week! and I am only told of his illness to-day, by a telegram from Lady Laura Armstrong! I beg your pardon, Lady Geraldine; I did not see you till this moment. I owe it to your sister's consideration that I am here in time to see my boy before he dies."
"We have every hope of saving him," said Geraldine.
"And what a place I find him in! He has had some kind of doctor attending him, I suppose?"
"He has had a surgeon from the neighbourhood, who seems both kind and clever, and Dr. Ormond."
Mr. Granger seated himself at the foot of the bed, a very little way fromClarissa, taking possession of his child, as it were.
"Do you know, Mrs. Granger, that I have scarcely rested night or day since you left Paris, hunting for my son?" he said. And this was the first time he acknowledged his wife's presence by word or look.
Clarissa was silent. She had been betrayed, she thought—betrayed by her own familiar friend; and Daniel Granger had come to rob her of her child. Come what might, she would not part with him without a struggle.
After this, there came a weary time of anxious care and watching. The little life trembled in the balance; there were harassing fluctuations, a fortnight of unremitting care, before a favourable issue could be safely calculated upon. And during all that time Daniel Granger watched his boy with only the briefest intervals for rest or refreshment. Clarissa watched too; nor did her husband dispute her right to a place in the sick-room, though he rarely spoke to her, and then only with the coldest courtesy.
Throughout this period of uncertainty, Geraldine Challoner was faithful to the duty she had undertaken; spending the greatest part of her life at Clarissa's lodgings, and never wearying of the labours of the sick-room. The boy grew daily fonder of her; but, with a womanly instinct, she contrived that it should be Clarissa who carried him up and down the room when he was restless—Clarissa's neck round which the wasted little arm twined itself.
Daniel Granger watched the mother and child sometimes with haggard eyes, speculating on the future. If the boy lived, who was to have him? The mother, whose guilt or innocence was an open question—who had owned to being at heart false to her husband—or the father, who had done nothing to forfeit the right to his keeping? And yet to part them was like plucking asunder blossom and bud, that had grown side by side upon one common stem. In many a gloomy reverie the master of Arden Court debated this point.
He could never receive his wife again—upon that question there seemed to him no room for doubt. To take back to his home and his heart the woman who had confessed her affection for another man, was hardly in Daniel Granger's nature. Had he not loved her too much already—degraded himself almost by so entire a devotion to a woman who had given him nothing, who had kept her heart shut against him?
"She married Arden Court, not me," he said to himself; "and then she tried to have Arden Court and her old lover into the bargain. Would she have run away with him, I wonder, if he had had time to persuade her that day?Canany woman be pure, when a man dares ask her to leave her husband?"
And then the locket that man wore—"From Clarissa"—was not that damning evidence?
He thought of these things again and again, with a weary iteration—thought of them as he watched the mother walking slowly to and fro with her baby in her arms.Thatpicture would surely live in his mind for ever, he thought. Never again, never any more, in all the days to come, could he take his wife back to his heart; but, O God, how dearly he had loved her, and how desolate his home would be without her! Those two years of their married life seemed to be all his existence; looking back beyond that time, his history seemed, like Viola's, "A blank, my lord." And he was to live the rest of his life without her. But for that ever-present anxiety about the child, which was in some wise a distraction, the thought of these things might have driven him mad.
At last, after those two weeks of uncertainty, there came a day when Dr. Ormond pronounced the boy out of danger—on the very high-road to recovery, in fact.
"I would say nothing decided till I could speak with perfect certainty," he said. "You may make yourselves quite happy now."
Clarissa knelt down and kissed the good old doctor's hand, raining tears upon it in a passion of gratitude. He seemed to her in that moment something divine, a supernal creature who, by the exercise of his power, had saved her child.
Dr. Ormond lifted her up, smiling at her emotion.
"Come, come, my dear soul, this is hysterical," he said, in his soothing paternal way, patting her shoulder gently as he spoke; "I always meant to save the little fellow; though it has been a very severe bout, I admit, and we have had a tussle for it. And now I expect to see your roses come back again. It has been a hard time for you as well as for baby."
When Mr. Granger went out of the room with the physician presently, Dr.Ormond said gravely,—
"The little fellow is quite safe, Mr. Granger; but you must look to your wife now."
"What do you mean?"
"She has a nasty little hacking cough—a chest cough—which I don't like; and there's a good deal of incipient fever about her."
"If there is anything wrong, for God's sake see to her at once!" criedDaniel Granger. "Why didn't you speak of this before?"
"There was no appearance of fever until to-day. I didn't wish to worry her with medicines while she was anxious about the child; indeed, I thought the best cure for her would be the knowledge of his safety. But the cough is worse to-day; and I should certainly like to prescribe for her, if you will ask her to come in here and speak to me for a few minutes."
So Clarissa went into the dingy lodging-house sitting-room to see the doctor, wondering much that any one could be interested in such an insignificant matter asherhealth, now that her treasure was safe. She went reluctantly, murmuring that she was well enough—quite well now; and had hardly tottered into the room, when she sank down upon the sofa in a dead faint.
Daniel Granger looked on aghast while they revived her.
"What can have caused this?" he asked.
"My dear sir, you are surely not surprised," said Dr. Ormond. "Your wife has been sitting up with her child every night for nearly a month—the strain upon her, bodily and mental, has been enormous, and the reaction is of course trying. She will want a good deal of care, that is all. Come now," he went on cheerfully, as Clarissa opened her eyes, to find her head lying on Jane Target's shoulder, and her husband standing aloof regarding her with affrighted looks—"come now, my dear Mrs. Granger, cheer up; your little darling is safely over his troubles."
She burst into a flood of tears.
"They will take him away from me!" she sobbed.
"Take him away from you—nonsense! What are you dreaming of?"
"Death has been merciful; but you will be more cruel," she cried, looking at her husband. "You will take him away."
"Come, come, my dear lady, this is a delusion; you really must not give way to this kind of thing," murmured the doctor, rather complacently. He had a son-in-law who kept a private madhouse at Wimbledon, and began to think Mrs. Granger was drifting that way. It was sad, of course, a sweet young woman like that; but patients are patients, and Daniel Granger's wife would be peculiarly eligible.
He looked at Mr. Granger, and touched his forehead significantly. "The brain has been sorely taxed," he murmured, confidentially; "but we shall set all that right by-and-by." This with as confident an air as if the brain had been a clock.
Daniel Granger went over to his wife, and took her hand—it was the first time those two hands had met since the scene in Austin's painting-room—looking down at her gravely.
"Clarissa," he said, "on my word of honour, I will not attempt to separate you from your son."
She gave a great cry—a shriek, that rang through the room—and cast herself upon her husband's breast.
"O, God bless you for that!" she sobbed; "God bless—" and stopped, strangled by her sobs.
Mr. Granger put her gently back into her faithful hand-maiden's arms.Thatwas different. He might respect her rights as a mother; he could never again accept her as his wife.
But a time came now in which all thought of the future was swept away by a very present danger. Before the next night, Clarissa was raving in brain-fever; and for more than a month life was a blank to her—or not a blank, an age of confused agony rather, to be looked back upon with horror by-and-by.
They dared not move her from the cheerless rooms in Soho. Lovel was sent down to Ventnor with Lady Geraldine and a new nurse. It could do no harm to take him away from his mother for a little while, since she was past the consciousness of his presence. Jane Target and Daniel Granger nursed her, with a nursing sister to relieve guard occasionally, and Dr. Ormond in constant attendance.
The first thing she saw, when sense came back to her, was her husband's figure, sitting a little way from the bed, his face turned towards her, gravely watchful. Her first reasonable words—faintly murmured in a wondering tone—moved him deeply; but he was strong enough to hide all emotion.
"When she has quite recovered, I shall go back to Arden," he said to himself; "and leave her to plan her future life with the help of Lady Geraldine's counsel. That woman is a noble creature, and the best friend my wife can have. And then we must make some fair arrangement about the boy—what time he is to spend with me, and what with his mother. I cannot altogether surrender my son. In any case he is sure to love her best."
When Clarissa was at last well enough to be moved, her husband took her down to Ventnor, where the sight of her boy, bright and blooming, and the sound of his first syllables—little broken scraps of language, that are so sweet to mothers' ears—had a better influence than all Dr. Ormond's medicines. Here, too, came her father, from Nice, where he had been wintering, having devoted his days to the pleasing duty of taking care of himself. He would have come sooner, immediately on hearing of Clarissa's illness, he informed Mr. Granger; but he was a poor frail creature, and to have exposed himself to the north-cast winds of this most uncertain climate early in April would have been to run into the teeth of danger. It was the middle of May now, and May this year had come without her accustomed inclemency.
"I knew that my daughter was in good hands," he said. Daniel Granger signed, and answered nothing.
Mr. Lovel's observant eyes soon perceived that there was something amiss; and one evening, when he and Mr. Granger were strolling on the sands between Ventnor and Shanklin, he plainly taxed his son-in-law with the fact.
"There is some quarrel between Clary and you," he said; "I can see that at a glance. Why, I used to consider you a model couple—perfectly Arcadian in your devotion—and now you scarcely speak to each other."
"There is a quarrel that must last our lives," Daniel Granger answered moodily, and then told his story, without reservation.
"Good heavens!" cried Mr. Lovel, at the end, "there is a curse upon that man and his race."
And then he told his own story, in a very few words, and testified to his undying hatred of all the house of Fairfax.
After this there came a long silence, during which Clarissa's father was meditative.
"You cannot, of course, for a moment suppose that I can doubt my daughter's innocence throughout this unfortunate business," he said at last. "I know the diabolical persistency of that race too well. It was like a Fairfax to entangle my poor girl in his net—to compromise her reputation, in the hope of profiting by his treachery. I do not attempt to deny, however, that Clarissa was imprudent. We have to consider her youth, and that natural love of admiration which tempts women to jeopardise their happiness and character even for the sake of an idle flirtation. I do not pretend that my daughter is faultless; but I would stake my life upon her purity. At the same time I quite agree with you, Granger, that under existing circumstances, a separation—a perfectly amicable separation, my daughter of course retaining the society of her child—would be the wiser course for both parties."
Mr. Granger had a sensation as of a volume of cold water dashed suddenly in his face. This friendly concurrence of his father-in-law's took him utterly by surprise. He had expected that Mr. Lovel would insist upon a reconciliation, would thrust his daughter upon her husband at the point of the sword, as it were. He bowed acquiescence, but for some moments could find no words to speak.
"There is no other course open to me," he said at last. "I cannot tell you how I have loved your daughter—God alone knows that—and how my every scheme of life has been built up from that one foundation. But that is all over now. I know, with a most bitter certainty, from her own lips, that I have never possessed her heart."
"I can scarcely imagine that to be the case," said Mr. Lovel, "even though Clarissa may have been betrayed into some passionate admission to that effect. Women will say anything when they are angry."
"This was not said in anger."
"But at the worst, supposing her heart not to have been yours hitherto, it might not be too late to win it even now. Men have won their wives after marriage."
"I am too old to try my hand at that," replied Mr. Granger, with a bitter smile. He was mentally comparing himself with George Fairfax, the handsome soldier, with that indescribable charm of youth and brightness about him.
"If you were a younger man, I would hardly recommend such a separation," Mr. Lovel went on coolly; "but at your age—well, existence is quite tolerable without a wife; indeed there is a halcyon calm which descends upon a man when a woman's influence is taken out of his life, that is, perhaps, better than happiness. You have a son and heir, and that, I should imagine, for a man of your position, is the chief end and aim of marriage. My daughter can come abroad with me, and we can lead a pleasant drowsy life together, dawdling about from one famous city or salubrious watering-place to another. I shall, as a matter of course, surrender the income you have been good enough to allow me; but,en revanche, you will no doubt make Clarissa an allowance suitable to her position as your wife."
Mr. Granger laughed aloud.
"Do you think there can ever be any question of money between us?" he asked. "Do you think that if, by the surrender of every shilling I possess, I could win back my faith in my wife, I should hold the loss a heavy one?"
Mr. Lovel smiled, a quiet, self-satisfied smile, in the gloaming.
"He will make her income a handsome one," he said to himself, "and I shall have my daughter—who is really an acquisition, for I was beginning to find life solitary—and plenty of ready money. Or he will come after her in three months' time. That is the result I anticipate."
They walked till a late moon had risen from the deep blue waters, and when they went back to the house everything was settled. Mr. Lovel answered for his daughter as freely as if he had been answering for himself. He was to take her abroad, with his grandson and namesake Lovel, attended by Jane Target and the new nurse, vice Mrs. Brobson, dismissed for neglect of her charge immediately after Clarissa's flight. If the world asked any questions, the world must be told that Mr. and Mrs. Granger had parted by mutual consent, or that Mrs. Granger's doctor had ordered continental travel. Daniel Granger could settle that point according to his own pleasure; or could refuse to give the world any answer at all, if he pleased.
Mr. Lovel told his daughter the arrangement that he had made for her next morning.
"I am to have my son?" she asked eagerly.
"Yes, don't I tell you so? You and Lovel are to come with me. You can live anywhere you please; you will have a fair income, a liberal one, I daresay. You are very well off, upon my word, Clarissa, taking into consideration the fact of your supreme imprudence—only you have lost your husband."
"And I have lost Arden Court. Does not there seem a kind of retribution in that? I made a false vow for the love of Arden Court—and—and for your sake, papa."
"False fiddlestick!" exclaimed Mr. Lovel, impatiently; "any reasonable woman might have been happy in your position, and with such a man as Granger; a man who positively worshipped you. However, you have lost all that. I am not going to lecture you—the penalty you pay is heavy enough, without any sermonising on my part. You are a very lucky woman to retain custody of your child, and escape any public exposure; and I consider that your husband has shown himself most generous."
Daniel Granger and his wife parted soon after this; parted without any sign of compunction—there was a dead wall of pride between them. Clarissa felt the burden of her guilt, but could not bring herself to make any avowal of her repentance to the husband who had put her away from him,—so easily, as it seemed to her.Thattouched her pride a little.
On that last morning, when the carriage was waiting to convey the travellers to Ryde, Mr. Granger's fortitude did almost abandon him at parting with his boy. Clarissa was out of the room when he took the child up in his arms, and put the little arms about his neck. He had made arrangements that the boy was to spend so many weeks in every year with him—was to be brought to him at his bidding, in fact; he was not going to surrender his treasure entirely.
And yet that parting seemed almost as bitter as if it had been for ever. It was such an outrage upon nature; the child who should have been so strong a link to bind those two hearts, to be taken from him like this, and for no sin of his. Resentment against his wife was strong in his mind at all times, but strongest when he thought of this loss which she had brought upon him. And do what he would, the child would grow up with a divided allegiance, loving his mother best.
One great sob shook him as he held the boy in that last embrace, and then he set him down quietly, as the door opened, and Clarissa appeared in her travelling-dress, pale as death, but very calm.
Just at the last she gave her hand to her husband, and said gently,—"I am very grateful to you for letting me take Lovel. I shall hold him always at your disposal."
Mr. Granger took the thin cold hand, and pressed it gently.
"I am sorry there is any necessity for a divided household," he said gravely. "But fate has been stronger than I. Good-bye."
And so they parted; Mr. Granger leaving Ventnor later in the day, purposeless and uncertain, to moon away an evening at Ryde, trying to arrive at some decision as to what he should do with himself.
He could not go back to Arden yet awhile, that was out of the question. Farming operations, building projects, everything else, must go on without him, or come to a standstill. Indeed, it seemed to him doubtful whether he should ever go back to the house he had beautified, and the estate he had expanded: to live there alone—as he had lived before his marriage, that is to say, in solitary state with his daughter—must surely be intolerable. His life had been suddenly shorn of its delight and ornament. He knew now, even though their union had seemed at its best so imperfect, how much his wife had been to him.
And now he had to face the future without her. Good heavens! what a blank dismal prospect it seemed! He went to London, and took up his abode at Claridge's, where his life was unspeakably wearisome to him. He did not care to see people he knew, knowing that he would have to answer friendly inquiries about his wife. He had nothing to do, no interest in life; letters from architect and builder, farm-bailiff and steward, were only a bore to him; he was too listless even to answer them promptly, but let them lie unattended to for a week at a time. He went to the strangers' gallery when there was any debate of importance, and tried to give his mind to politics, with a faint idea of putting himself up for Holborough at the next election. But, as Phèdre says, "Quand ma bouche implorait le nom de la déesse, j'adorais Hippolyte;" so Mr. Granger, when he tried to think of the Irish-Church question, or the Alabama claims, found himself thinking of Clarissa. He gave up the idea at last, convinced that public life was, for the most part, a snare and a delusion; and that there were plenty of men in the world better able to man the great ship than he. Two years ago he had been more interested in a vestry meeting than he was now in the most stirring question of the day.
Finally, he determined to travel; wrote a brief letter to Sophia, announcing his intention; and departed unattended, to roam the world; undecided whether he should go straight to Marseilles, and then to Africa, or whether he should turn his face northwards, and explore Norway and Sweden. It ended by his doing neither. He went to Spa to see his boy, from whom he had been separated something over two months.
* * * * *