THE presence of Mr. Stainforth and his daughter added another embarrassment to the sudden arrival of Paul. His mother did not know what to say to him, how to restrain her questions,—how to talk of his health and his occupations, if the journey had been pleasant, how he had come from the station, and all the other trivialities which are said to a visitor suddenly arriving. She had to treat Paul like a visitor while the others were there. Paul for his part answered these matter-of-course questions very briefly. He had an air of suffering both mentally and bodily, and he was very pale. He looked at Dolly Stainforth, and said nothing, sitting in the shade as far from the great window as possible. And the Rector would not go away. He sat and put innumerable questions to the new-comer. What he was going to do? What he thought of this thing and the other? Of course he was going back to Oxford to take his degree? that was the one thing that was indispensable. Paul gave the shortest possible answers to every question, and they were not of a satisfactory description. His mother, anxiously watching and fretting beyond measure to be thus kept in suspense about his purposes, could get no information from what he said to Mr. Stainforth, nor did the earnest gaze she had fixed upon him bring her any more enlightenment. Alice had gone out beyond the shade of the curtains to speak to Fairfax, and the embarrassment of the four thus left together was extreme. Dolly had not spoken a word since Paul entered. She had given him her hand, no more, when he came in, but she did not speak to him or even raise her head, except to listen with something of the same breathless anxiety as was apparent in Lady Markham’s face, while the old Rector went on with his questions and advices. The two women trembled in concert with a mutual sense of intolerable suspense, scarcely able to bear it. Dolly knew, however, that she would have to bear it, that she had nothing to do with the matter, that the only service she could do them was to relieve the mother and son of her presence and that of her father, who, however, after she had at length got him to his feet, still stood for ten minutes at least holding Paul’s hand and impressing a great many platitudes upon his attention—with “Depend upon it, my dear boy,” and “You may take my word for it.” Paul had no mind to depend upon anything he said or to take his word for it in any way. He stood saying “Yes” and “No,” or replying only with a nod of his head to his mentor. But Mr. Stainforth was not at all aware that he had stayed a second too long. He blamed Dolly for the haste with which she had hurried him away. “But I am glad I had the opportunity of seeing Paul,” the old man said complacently, as his daughter drove him down the avenue. “You must have seen how pleased he was to talk his circumstances over with such an old friend as myself. Poor fellow, that is just what he must most want now. The ladies are very much attached to him, of course, but with the best intentions in the world, how can they know? He wants a man to talk to,” said Mr. Stainforth; and “I suppose so, papa,” Dolly said.
Lady Markham turned to her son as soon as the Rector’s back was turned, her face quivering with anxiety. “Paul? Paul?” she said with the intensest question in her tone, though she asked nothing, seizing him by both hands.
“Well, mother?” He met her eye with something of the old impatience in his voice.
“You have come to tell me——?” she said breathless.
“I don’t know what I have come to tell you. I have come to collect some of my things. You speak as if I had some important decision to make. You forget that there is nothing important about me, mother, one way or another,” Paul said with a smile. It was an angry smile, and it did not reassure his anxious hearer. He gave a little wave with his hand towards the larger room. “Fairfax is with me,” he said.
“Mr. Fairfax! I thought we might have had you to ourselves for this time at least.” There was a querulous tone in her voice. He did not know that she was thinking of what he considered an old affair, of a separation which might be for ever. All that had been swept away completely out of Paul’s mind as if it had never been, and he could not comprehend her anxiety. “But,” she added, recollecting herself, “I might have known that could not be. Paul, I don’t know what you will say to me. I was in a great difficulty. I did not know what to do. I have let him come to the house. He is here, actually staying here now.”
“He! What do you mean by he?” Then while she looked at him with the keenest anxiety, a gleam of understanding and contemptuous anger came over his face. “Well!” he said, “I suppose you could not shut him out of what is his own house.”
“I might have left it, my dear. I intend to leave it——”
“Why?” he said; “if you can live under the same roof with him, why not? Do you think I will have any objection? It cannot matter much to me.”
It was all settled then! She looked at him wistfully with a smile of pain, clasping her hands together. “He is very friendly, Paul. He wants to be very kind. And it is better there should be no scandal. I have your—poor father’s memory to think of—”
Paul’s face again took its sternest look. “It is a pity he himself had not thought a little of what was to come after. I am going to put my things together, mother.”
“But you will stay, you are not going away to-night—not directly, Paul!”
“Shall I have to ask Sir Gus’s leave to stay?” he said with a harsh laugh.
“Oh, Paul, you are very unkind, more unkind than he is,” said Lady Markham, with tears in her eyes. “He has never taken anything upon him. Up to this moment it has never been suggested to me that I was not in my own house.”
“Nevertheless, it is his,” said her son. He made a step or two towards the opening, then turned back with some embarrassment. “Mother, it is possible—I do not say likely—but still it is possible: that—Spears may come here to make some final arrangements to-morrow, before he goes.”
“Oh Paul!” she said, with a low cry of pain: but there was nothing in this exclamation to which he could make any reply. He hesitated for a moment, then turned again and went away. Lady Markham stood where he had left her, clasping her hands together against her bosom as if to staunch the wounds she had received and hide them, feeling the throb and ache of suffering go over her from head to foot. She felt that he was merciless, not only abandoning her without a word of regret, but parading before her his preparations for this mad journey, and the new companions who were to replace his family in his life. But Paul only thought she was displeased by the name of Spears. He went his way heavily enough, going through the familiar place which was no longer home, to the room which had been his from his childhood, but was his no longer. As if this was not pain enough, there was looming before him, threatening him, this shadow of a last explanation with Spears. What was there to explain to Spears? He could not tell. Others had deserted the undertaking as well as he. And Paul would not say to himself that there was another question, though he was aware of it to the depths of his being. Not a word had been said about Janet; yet it was not possible but that something must be said on that subject. His whole life was still made uncertain, doubtful, suspended in a horrible uncertainty because of this. What honour demanded of him, Paul knew that he must do; but what was it that honour demanded? It was the last question of his old life that remained to be settled, but it was a bitter question. And just when it had to be decided, just when it was necessary that he should brave himself to do what might turn out to be his duty, why, why was he made the hearer unawares of Dolly’s little address in his defence? She had always stood up for him; he remembered many a boyish offence in which Dolly, a mere baby, uncertain in speech, had stood up for him. If he had to do this—which he did not describe to himself in other words—Dolly would still stand up for him. With all these thoughts in his mind as he went upstairs, Paul was far too deeply occupied to think much of the personage whom he contemptuously called Sir Gus—Sir Gus was only an accident, though a painful and almost fatal one, in the young man’s path.
When Lady Markham had sufficiently overcome the sharp keenness of this latest wound, her ear was caught by a murmur of voices in the other room. This had been going on, she was vaguely sensible, for some time through all Mr. Stainforth’s lingering and leavetaking, and through her own conversation with Paul; voices that were low and soft—not obtrusive; as if the speakers had no wish to attract attention, or to have their talk interfered with. Perhaps this tone is of all others the most likely to provoke any listener into interruption. A vague uneasiness awoke in Lady Markham’s mind. She put back the curtains which had partially veiled the entrance to her own room with a slightly impatient hand. When one is wounded and aching in heart and mind, it is so hard not to be impatient. Alice had seated herself in a low chair, half hidden in one of the lace curtains that veiled a window, and Fairfax was leaning against the window talking to her. There was something tender and confidential in the sound of his voice. It was he who spoke most, but her replies were in the same tone, a tone of which both were entirely unconscious, but which struck Lady Markham with mingled suspicion and alarm. How had these two got to know each other well enough to speak in such subdued voices? She had never known or realised how much they had been thrown together during her absence in the sick room. When she drew back the curtain, Alice instinctively withdrew her chair a hair’s breadth, and Fairfax stood quite upright, leaning upon the window no longer. This alteration of their attitudes at the sight of her startled Lady Markham still more. Fairfax came forward hurriedly as she came into the drawing-room, a little flushed and nervous.
“I hope you will not consider this visit an impertinence,” he said. “I thought I must come with Markham to take care of him. He—twisted his foot—did he tell you? It is all right now, but I thought it would be well to come and take care of him,” Fairfax said, with that conciliatory smile and unnecessary repetition which marked his own consciousness of a feeble cause.
“I did not hear anything about it,” Lady Markham said. “He has been writing me very short letters. You are very kind, Mr. Fairfax—very kind; we know that of old.”
“That is the last name to give my selfish intrusion,” he said; then added, after a pause, “And I had something I wanted to speak to you about. Did Miss Markham,” he said, hesitating, shifting from one foot to the other, and showing every symptom of extreme embarrassment—“Did Miss Markham tell you—what I had been saying to her?”
Alice had taken occasion of her mother’s entry upon the scene to rise from her chair and come quite out of the shelter of the curtain. She was standing (as indeed they all were) immediately in front of the window, with the light full upon her, when he put this question. He looked from Lady Markham to her as he spoke, and by bad luck caught Alice’s eye. Then—why or wherefore, who could say?—the countenances of these two foolish young people suddenly flamed, the one taking light from the other, with the most hot and overwhelming blush. Alice seemed to be enveloped in it; she felt it passing over her like the sudden reflection of some instantaneous flame. She shrank back a step, her eyes fell with an embarrassment beyond all power of explanation. As for Fairfax, he stole a second guilty look at her, and stopped short—his voice suddenly breaking off with a thrill in it, like that of a cord that has snapped. Lady Markham looked on at this extraordinary pantomime with consternation. What could she think, or any mother? She felt herself grow crimson, too, with alarm and distress.
“What was it you were saying, Mr. Fairfax? Alice has not said anything to me.”
“O—oh!” he said; then gave a faint little laugh of agitation and confusion, and something that sounded strangely like happiness. “It was—nothing—not much—something of very little importance—only about myself. Perhaps you would let me have a little conversation, when it is quite convenient, Lady Markham, with you?”
“Surely,” she said, but with a coldness she could not restrain. What a thing it is to be a mother! The sentiment has found utterance in Greek, so it does not profess to be novel. If not one thing, then another; sometimes two troubles together, or six, as many as she has children—except that, in the merciful dispensation of Providence, the woman who has many children cannot make herself so wretched about every individual as she who has few contrives to do. Only Paul and Alice however were old enough to give their mother this kind of discipline, and in a moment she felt herself plunged into the depths of a second anxiety. There was a very uncomfortable pause. Alice would have liked to run away to her room, to hide herself in utter shame of her own weakness, but dared not, fearing that this would only call the attention of the others more forcibly to it—as if anything was wanted to confirm that impression! She stood still, therefore, for a few minutes, and made one or two extremely formal remarks, pointing out that the days were already much shorter and the afternoon beginning to close in. Both her companions assented, the one with tender, the other with suspicious and alarmed glances. Then it occurred to Alice to say that she would go and see if Paul wanted anything. The others watched her breathless as she went away.
“Mr. Fairfax, what does this mean?” said Lady Markham, almost haughtily.
Was it not enough to make the politest of women forget her manners? Fairfax did not know, any more than she did, what it meant. He hoped that it meant a great deal more than he had ever hoped, and his heart was dancing with sudden pride and happiness.
“It means,” he said, “dear Lady Markham, what you see: that I have forgotten myself, and that being nobody, I have ventured to lift my eyes—oh, don’t imagine I don’t know it!—to one who is immeasurably above me—to one who—I won’t trust myself to say anything about her—you know,” said the young man. “How could I help it? I saw her—though it was but for a little while—every day.”
“When her father was dying!” cried Lady Markham, with a sob. This was what went to her heart. Her Alice, her spotless child—to let this stranger woo her in the very shadow of her father’s death-bed. She covered her face with her hands. Paul had not wrung her heart enough; there was one more drop of pain to be crushed out.
“I did not think of that. I did not think of anything, except that I was there—in a paradise I had no right to be in—by her side: heaven knows how. I had so little right to it that it looked like heaven’s own doing, Lady Markham. I did not know there was any such garden of Eden in the world,” he said. “I never knew there was such a woman as you; and then she—that was the crown of all. Do you think I intended it? I was surprised out of my senses altogether. I should have liked to stretch myself out like a bit of carpet for you to walk on: and she——”
“Mr. Fairfax, this is nonsense,” said Lady Markham, but in a softened tone. “My daughter is just like other girls; but when I was compelled to leave her, when my other duties called me, could I have supposed that a gentleman would have taken advantage——”
“Ah!” he said, with a tone of profound discouragement, “perhaps that is what it is—perhaps it may be because I am not what people call a gentleman.”
“Mr. Fairfax!” cried Lady Markham, with horror in her voice.
“Yes,” he said, with a sigh, “it is out now; that is what I wanted to ask if Miss Markham had told you. I am nobody, Lady Markham. I don’t belong to the Wiltshire Fairfaxes, or to the Fairfaxes of the north, or to any Fairfaxes that ever were heard of: I told her so. I did not want to come into your house under false pretences; and it was that that I meant to ask Miss Markham when—I betrayed myself.”
“You betrayed yourself?” Lady Markham was entirely bewildered; for to her it appeared that it was Alice who had betrayed herself. But this new statement calmed and restrained her. If he had not remarked, perhaps, the agitation of Alice, it was not for her mother to point it out. “Am I to understand, Mr. Fairfax, that you said anything to Alice, when you were here in the midst of our trouble——?”
“No,” he cried out; “surely no. What do you take me for?”
She put out her hand to him with her usual gracious kindness: “For a gentleman, Mr. Fairfax; and the kindest heart in the world. Of course I knew there must be some mistake.”
But when they had gone through this explanation and reconciliation, they came back simultaneously to a recollection of that blaze of sudden colour on Alice’s face, and felt the one with rapture, the other with great alarm and tribulation, that in respect to this there could not be any mistake.
“But, Lady Markham,” said the young man, “all this does not alter my circumstances. You are very kind and good to me; but here are the facts of the case. I have seen her now; none of us can alter that. It was not, so to speak, my doing. It was—accident, as people say. When a man has had a revelation like this, he does not believe it is an accident; he knows,” said Fairfax, with a slight quiver of his lip, “that something higher than accident has had to do with it. And it can’t be altered now. When that comes into a man’s heart, it is for his life. And, at the same time, I confess to you that I am nobody, Lady Markham—not fit to tie her shoe; but I might be a prince, and not good enough for that. What is to be done with me? Am I to be put to the door once for all, and never to come near her again? Whatever you say I am to do, I will do it. I believe in you as I do in heaven. What you tell me, I will do it; though it may make an end of me, it shall be done all the same.”
“Did you come to Markham all the way to say this to me, Mr. Fairfax?” Lady Markham put the question only to gain a little time.
“No; I came pretending it was to take care of Paul, who did twist his foot—that is true; and pretending that it was to ask you to persuade him to let me help him (I know a few people and that sort of thing,” said Fairfax hurriedly); “but I believe, if I must tell the truth, it was only just to have the chance of getting one look at her again. That was all. I did not mean to be so bold as to say a word—only to see her again.”
“You wanted to help Paul!” Lady Markham felt her head going round. If he was nobody, how could he help Paul? The whole imbroglio seemed more than she could fathom. And Fairfax was confused too.
“There are some little things—that I have in my power: I thought, if he would let me, I might set him in the way——: I’ll speak of all that another time, Lady Markham. When a thing like this gets the upper hand, one can’t get one’s head clear for anything else. Now that I have betrayed myself, which I did not mean to, tell me—tell me what is to be done with me. I cannot think of anything else.”
What was to be done with him? It is to be feared that, kind as Lady Markham was, she would have made but short work with Fairfax, had it been he only who had betrayed himself. But the light that had blazed on the face of Alice was another kind of illumination altogether. A hasty sentence would not answer here.