CHAPTER III
I canbear no longer these futile speculations of my mind. For months past I have tried to keep them under subjection, but it is impossible to do so any more. I must have word of Clarissa. Is she happy? Have I misjudged that young man? Perhaps that evening when I saw him in the restaurant was only a momentary lapse of conduct. Maybe I have done him an injury and she is happy after all.
But no matter how often I put these questions to myself, they return again unanswered. I have an obstinate belief that she could not be happy with him. Sometimes I think it is this uncertainty about Clarissa which is inducing in me a mood, a conviction—the conviction that I have about run the length of my tether and there is but little left for me but to snap it and have done with the business altogether.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that a man should earn his meal before he eats it, deserve his sleep before he takes it and, above all, justify his existence that he may live. Now I find myself putting the question to my mind twenty times a day—how in the name of Heaven do I justify mine? It is unanswerable, or, rather, I can swear it too well. I do not justify it at all. Had I been of any service to Clarissa, it might have seemed different. But through my interference, I was only the means of spurring her destiny to its end. Certainly Bellwattle intervened, but that was all on my account. Had I not gone to Ballysheen, she would never have persuaded that poor child to rush so recklessly to meet her fate.
Once or twice I have written to Bellwattle, making inquiries. But I hear nothing that can be of much account. She tells me in letters wonderfully misspelt, but in words that are indeed graphic to me, how the roses are doing, of the baskets full of sweet peas that she picked every morning all through the summer. Yet of Clarissa, she gives me no report, except that the Miss Fennells say how they receive letters from her, telling them of her excitements in London and how happy she is in her new life.
I misdoubt these letters in the bottom of my heart. They do not ring true. So at last I have made up my mind to take a definite course of action. I am going to the house in Chelsea, the address of which was given me by Miss Teresa that Sunday afternoon before I left Ballysheen. If by this step I gain no definite news of her, then I shall hazard one final chance. I shall go and call upon Mrs. Farringdon, that married sister of the Miss Fennells whose address Bellwattle has discovered for me. If from her I can elicit nothing, then—it will be, as Peter Pan so wisely says, "a great adventure."
Having thought all this out, quite calmly and collectedly, I called Dandy.
"What'll be done with you, old man?" I asked.
He wagged his tail, but when he found that that was not the right answer he frowned.
"I think I know what we shall have to do with you," I continued. "There's a lady in Ireland who'd give her eyes to get you. That's where you'll go. You always were a success with ladies, weren't you?"
I thought he would have wagged his tail at that, but he still frowned as though he caught the note beneath my voice, that note, I suppose, of final despair, when a man knows that it is all but up with him. For so it had happened to me, as I had warned that little child it would happen to her. The spirit in me was broken. I felt the suspicion in every thought that I was done for.
It is when one comes to a conclusion as definite as this that one can throw into the voice a spurious tone of cheerfulness, which is the final admission of defeat.
I rose then from my chair with a laugh and called out to Dandy that we were setting off for Chelsea. But instead of leaping about me in his dancing way, as he does whenever he hears we are going out for a walk, he crept after me, close at my heels, and all the gaiety was gone out of him. I determined then that if the worst should happen, if I could get no news of Clarissa, I would send him over to Bellwattle. She would take care of him for his own sake—perhaps for his master's, too.
It was a shabby little street in Chelsea—two rows of houses on either side, with only the number on the lintels to differentiate between them. A strange mixture of apprehension and excitement possessed me as I approached the door. What if I should find her there? What could I say if I did? What does a man say after an absence of some months to the woman who has prayed God that she will never see him again? I expect he leaves the matter as much to chance as I did.
After a moment's hesitation while these thoughts were passing through my mind, I rang the bell and waited, my heart hammering wildly in all my pulses, till I heard the sound of footsteps on the other side of the door. Directly it reached me I felt quiet and ready for whatever should come to pass.
When the door was opened, there confronted me an elderly woman. She was stout, wearing a close-fitting blouse of some black material closely covered with white spots which long had lost their whiteness. There was the unmistakable lodging-house look about her which is quite different in London to any other place in England. In a moment she had taken me in. Quite wrongly, perhaps, but to her own satisfaction. My coat and hat she had priced before I had had time to open my mouth. They were priced by her standard, which I have no doubt was the pawn-shop, and probably from that point she was right to within a penny. There was that look in her, too, of suspicion. I felt it in the very way she opened the door. There had been the sense of expectation without greeting, and for one instant that expression of doubt as if she were not quite sure whether I were the person she expected to see. Directly I saw her, I knew my search there was hopeless.
"Does Mrs. Fennell live here?" I inquired.
She shook her head, still appraising me with her eyes.
"How long is it since she left?"
"She never lived here."
There seemed to be a certain cautiousness in this, so I persisted with my questions.
"But Mr. Fennell lived here?" said I.
"Yes—he did."
"How long is it since he left?"
"May I arsk why yer want ter know?" she inquired.
"I have private reasons," I replied.
Her eyes took a sudden smallness into them. I can explain the expression in no other way.
"Does he oweyoumoney?" she asked.
"No."
"He does me."
"I'm sorry to hear it," said I.
"'Cos you think I won't get it—eh?"
"I don't know anything about that."
"Well—I don't think I will. I've got a boy of mine what's in a solicitor's office to write him a letter, but he don't take no notice of it."
"Where did you send it to?" I asked, without any of the eagerness that I felt so strongly mine.
"To a club where he stays sometimes."
"What's the name of it?"
"The Lyric. Who told you he was married?"
I replied that I had heard so.
"God help the girl," she muttered; whereupon apologizing for the trouble I had given her I walked away. The name of God in her throat, and applied in such a case, sickened me. Directly I saw a taxi I hailed it. Dandy and I jumped in.
"The Lyric Club," said I.
It was just the club to which I should have expected him to belong. I had often heard of its members and their habits. They were a dissolute lot, composed of those impecunious young men who manage to subsist in some marvellous way upon their debts, maintaining an appearance of affluence by superficiality of manner and a certain smart way of dressing themselves, which will continue to deceive tradesmen as long as the world goes round. Their main object in life is to obtain money, and that without working for it. Wherefore they have a thousand little irons in the fire. Here they know some young man who has written a play; there they know some young man with money who is fool enough to put it on, and between the two they manage to derive some pecuniary benefit out of other people's brains which enables them to make their way, backing horses and playing cards for the next month or so.
Young Fennell must have been clearly eligible for such membership. I could have conceived no more fitting reputation for him than to say that he belonged to the Lyric Club.
The hall-porter was almost asleep when I entered. To my inquiries as to whether Mr. Fennell were in the club, he slowly opened his eyes and beckoned to a page-boy.
"Is Mr. Fennell in the club?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"Has he been in lately?" I inquired.
The hall-porter shook his head.
"Has he been in lately?" I inquired.
"I said no, didn't I?"
"You wagged your head," said I. "I thought you might be going to sleep again."
"If you had to keep the hours I do, sir—" he began.
I begged his pardon. I imagine it is no easy job to be hall-porter at that club.
"When did he come in last?"
He repeated my question to the page-boy, who informed him that it was about five days before. Then the hall-porter looked at me as though to say, "You heard what he said?"
I had heard and I left the club. There was now left my last hope of finding her. With a bitter feeling of despair weighing heavily on me I got back into the taxi, giving the address in Phillimore Gardens, where Mrs. Farringdon lived.
It was no time in the morning, I know, to be paying calls. But what man in such a case considers that? The fever of pursuing my mission to its ultimate end was a furnace burning in me. I could no more have waited the few hours that would have given the odor of etiquette to my visit, than I could have flown to Phillimore Gardens. It had come to be in my mind that I must know then and at once. All contemplation of delay was impossible. As we drove out to Kensington, Dandy jumped upon the seat beside me and, pushing up closely to my side pressed his nose against my arm. His brown eyes as they looked up at me were full of questions.
"What are we doing this for?" he asked. "Why are we tearing about in motors? Is anything the matter?"
"We're trying to find somebody," said I. "Somebody who—oh—what's it matter?"
"But why do we want to find her so much," he insisted, "if it doesn't matter?"
At that, suddenly, I realized something. I became aware of the fact that the questions I found in Dandy's eyes were only an expression of the thoughts harboring in my own mind. It was not he who asked them; it was I who asked myself. In that curly black head of his were probably no other ideas than memories of battles long past, of moments of the chase when he was bounding over the heather on those cliffs in Ireland. Or maybe it was only the affection of a dog for the man who treats him well. But all that searching interrogation was nothing more nor less than what I wanted to know myself.
It was I who asked myself why we should need so much to find her. Therefore, when I came upon this startling discovery, it brought me to the understanding of what I had not dared permit myself to realize before. I needed so much to find her because I needed her so much myself. I, who had talked so easily about the folly of plunging myself in love, was by now bitterly its slave. And so, as I came to review the events of the past months, I was made conscious that Bellwattle had spoken the truth from the very first. Indeed, I had known nothing of it till now. For when you begin by falling in love with a gown of canary-colored satin, it takes you some time before you come to be aware of it. And nothing less than this was what happened to me. The loneliness of that child in Ireland had drawn me to her. And now that I had seen her, even only those two times, I felt in the deepest heart of me that I was the man to make her happy.
This is the true conceit of love I suppose, that I who am so disfigured should for one moment imagine such a thing. As I looked at myself in the mirror which the taxi provided, I, too, was amazed that such a thought could enter my head. But it was the truth. There was no getting away from it, and as such it must be suffered with what courage I could muster to bear it.
If only I could find her and hear from her own lips that she was happy, I knew that I should be content. Married or unmarried, surely it made but little difference to me. She had prayed God she would never see me again. If once I might hear from her that she had found her place again in the sun, then, as far as I was concerned, her prayer should be answered, I would never see her again.
By this time we had reached the number in Phillimore Gardens. The taxi pulled up when, telling Dandy to stay there quietly till I returned, I hurried up the steps and rang the bell.
"Is Mrs. Farringdon in?" I inquired of the maid.
She said she was, whereupon, having taken my card, I was shown into just such a drawing-room as I should have imagined the Miss Fennells furnishing, with taste acquired by a visit to London. I had begun counting the cushions and photographs when the good lady came in. She is Miss Teresa over again, with just that difference of expression which marriage makes to the confidence in a woman's eyes. For if you are a woman, I believe, and reach the age which poor Miss Teresa has attained, there comes into your eyes, whether you will it or not, the look of watching for some phantom thing which never rides the seas upon your actual horizon. You know it is there, because you hope it is there. Maybe it is the disappointed spirit of maternity which has waited so long upon the road that its eyes are tired of watching.
With just the look of confidence in place of this Mrs. Farringdon was a repetition of Miss Teresa. She bowed to me stiffly as she came into the room, half closing the door with that unconscious sense of self-protection which is natural to the less prepossessing of her sex.
"Mr. Bellairs?" said she, and she referred in the proper way to my card, which she held scrupulously in her fingers.
"I met your sisters in Ireland," said I, without delay. "I was staying with Mr. and Mrs. Townshend at Ballysheen. I met there also a Miss Fawdry, who was living with your sisters. I must apologize for calling on you at this time in the morning; but I want to know where she is to be found. She was married from your house, I believe."
For a moment she stood there shaking her head backwards and forwards, as though I had come to the wrong house altogether; as though she was not Mrs. Farringdon, and had never heard of Miss Fawdry in her life before.
"Miss Fawdry has gone back to the West Indies," said she.
"Gone back!" I exclaimed. And at that moment I could not know whether I was glad or sorry. "Gone back," I repeated. "When? Why? Wasn't she married here from your house?"
"Oh, dear me, no."
"But your nephew left Ballysheen with her to marry her here in London."
"My nephew does many peculiar things," she replied, tartly, "that do not come to my hearing. Indeed, I did hear about this. My sisters told me that he was bringing her over. But when he came to see me, he told me that they had decided not to be married, and that Miss Fawdry had gone back to—Dominica, I think it was."
"Your nephew's a—rascal," I exclaimed. "Where does he live? I'll horsewhip him within an inch of his life."
She became so nervous then at my sudden burst of anger that she retired quickly to the door and called for Fred.
"I beg your pardon," said I. "I have no right, I know, to come as a stranger to your house and tell you what perhaps you already know about your nephew. I'm sorry."
But she took no notice. She stood there at the door, waiting for the arrival of Fred, who was no other than Mr. Farringdon himself. To him she hurriedly explained everything. He was a meek little man, and he listened to it all with a wary eye upon me.
"What's this mean, sir?" said he, and his voice was brave and his attitude was great.
"I have already explained," said I. "Moreover I have apologized, too. I understand that your nephew has not married Miss Fawdry."
"Yes—yes—that is so," he replied.
"Now can you tell me where he lives?"
"I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't. He lets me know nothing about his movements except when he is in need of money. As that apparently has not been the case for some time, we have not heard of him for the past six months. I'm sorry I can't tell you where he lives."
"But, my dear, he says he'd horsewhip him if he knew," said Mrs. Farringdon, in consternation.
"That's why I'm sorry," said the little man.
With a sudden instinct I held out my hand. He shook it warmly, and there I left him to such mercy as his wife should feel inclined to offer him. From the glance in her eyes I doubt if there were a great deal of it.
Dandy's face was peering round the corner of the taxi door as I came out. I told the man to drive home. Then I got inside, closed the door and sat down beside him.
"Well?" he asked. "Well—did you find her?"
I shook my head at him.
"She's gone," said I. "We shall never see her again. They've answered that prayer of hers. She said she'd ask God."
"Well?" said Dandy.
"That's all," said I.