“Is your mother—not living, Mr. Fairfax?”
“She never has been for me—she died so long ago; I am afraid I have never thought much about her. Ought I to stay, Miss Markham?” He raised his eyes to her with a piteous look, yet one that was half comic in its earnestness, and a sudden blush, unawares, as their eyes met, flamed over both faces. For why? How could they tell? It was so, and they knew no more.
“Surely,” Alice said; “mamma wishes it, and we all wish it. After showing us so much kindness, you would not go away the moment you have come here?”
“But that is not the question,” said Fairfax. “The fact is, I am nobody. Don’t laugh, or I shall laugh too, and I am much more disposed to cry. I have a tolerable name, haven’t I? but alas! it does not mean anything. I don’t know what it means, nor how we came by it. I am one of the unfortunate men, Miss Markham, who—never had a grandfather.”
Alice had been waiting with much solemnity for the secret which made him so profoundly grave (yet there was a twinkle, too, which nothing but the deepest misfortune could quench, in the corner of his eye). When this statement came, however, she was taken with a sudden fit of laughter. Could anything be more absurd? And yet in her heart she felt a sudden chill, a sense of horror. Alice would not have owned it, but this was a terrible statement for any young man on the verge of intimacy to make. No grandfather! It was a misfortune she could not understand.
“At least, none to speak of,” he said, the fun growing in his eyes. “You should not laugh, Miss Markham. Don’t you think it is hard upon a man? To come to an enchanted palace, where he would give his head to be allowed to stay, and to feel that for no fault of his, for a failure which he is not responsible for, which can be laid only to the score of those ancestors who did not exist——”
“Mr. Fairfax, no one was thinking of your grandfather.”
“I know that; but, dear Miss Markham, you know very well that to-night, or to-morrow night, or a year hence, your mother, before whom I feel disposed to go down upon my knees, will say with her smile, ‘Are you of the Norfolk Fairfaxes, or the Westchester family, or——?’ And I, with shame, will begin to say, ‘Madam, of no Fairfaxes at all.’ What will she think of me then? Will not she think that I have done wrong to be here—that I had no right to stay?”
“Oh, Mr. Fairfax!” cried Alice, somewhat pale and troubled; “how can I advise you? Mamma is not a fanatic about family. She does not build upon it to that extent. I do not see why she should ever ask you. It is no business of ours.” Alice was not strong enough to have such a tremendous question thrown upon her to decide. As a matter of fact, she knew that her mother would very soon make those inquiries about the Westchester family and the Norfolk Fairfaxes. Already Lady Markham had indulged in speculations on the subject, and had begun to remember that in the one case she “used to know” a cousin of his, and in the other had met his uncle, the ambassador, and saw a great deal of him once in Paris. She grew quite pale, and her eyes puckered up and took the most anxious aspect. Besides, it was a shock to herself. That absence of a grandfather was a want which was almost indecent. She did not understand it, and she was extremely sorry for him. He had no home then—no house that his people had lived in for ages—no people. Poor boy!
And Fairfax’s countenance also fell, in reflection of hers. However deep may be one’s private consciousness of one’s own deficiencies, there is always a little expectation in one’s mind that other people will make light of them; but when you see your own dismay, and more than your own dismay, in the eyes of your counsellor, then is the moment when you sink into the abyss. His lip quivered for a moment, and though it eventually succeeded in forming into a smile, the smile was very tremulous and uncertain.