Itwas natural that this occurrence should take a great hold of the girl’s mind. It was not the first time that she had speculated concerning their life. A life which one has always lived, indeed, the conditions of which have been familiar and inevitable since childhood, is not a matter which awakens questions in the mind. However extraordinary its conditions may be, they are natural—they are life to the young soul which has had no choice in the matter. Still there are curiosities which will arise. General Gaunt foamed at the mouth when he talked of the way in which he had been treated by the people “at home”; but still he went “home” in the summer as a matter of course. And as for the Durants, it was a subject of the fondest consideration with them when theycould afford themselves that greatest of delights. They all talked about the cold, the fogs, the pleasure of getting back to the sunshine when they returned; but this made no difference in the fact that to go home was their thought all the year, and the most salient point in their lives. “Why do we never go home?” Frances had often asked herself. And both these families, and all the people to whom she had ever talked, the strangers who went and came, and those whom they met in the rambles which the Warings, too, were forced to take in the hot weather, when the mistral was blowing—talked continually of their county, of their parish, of their village, of where they lived, and where they had been born. But on these points Mr Waring never said a word. And whereas Mrs Gaunt could talk of nothing but her family, who were scattered all over the world, and the Durants met people they knew at every turn, the Warings knew nobody, had no relations, no house at home, and apparently had been born nowhere in particular, as Frances sometimes said to herself with more annoyance than humour. Sometimes she wondered whether she had ever had a mother.
These thoughts, indeed, occurred but fitfully now and then, when some incident brought more forcibly than usual under her notice the difference between herself and others. She did not brood over them, her life being quite pleasant and comfortable to herself, and no necessity laid upon her to elucidate its dimnesses. But yet they came across her mind from time to time. She had not been brought face to face with any old friend of her father’s, that she could remember, until now. She had never heard any question raised about his past life. And yet no doubt he had a past life, like every other man, and there was something in it—something, she could not guess what, which had made him unlike other men.
Frances had a great deal of self-command. She did not betray her agitation to her father; she did not ask him any questions; she told him about the greengrocer and the fisherman, these two important agents in the life of the Riviera, and of what she had seen in the Marina, even the Savona pots; but she didnot disturb his meal and his digestion by any reference to the English strangers. She postponed until she had time to think of it, all reference to this second meeting. She had by instinct made no reply to the question about where she lived; but she knew that there would be no difficulty in discovering that, and that her father might be subject at any moment to invasion by this old acquaintance, whom he had evidently no desire to see. What should she do? The whole matter wanted thought. Whether she should ask him what to do; whether she should take it upon herself; whether she should disclose to him her newborn curiosity and anxiety, or conceal them in her own bosom; whether she should tell him frankly what she felt—that she was worthy to be trusted, and that it was the right of his only child to be prepared for all emergencies, and to be acquainted with her family and her antecedents, if not with his,—all these were things to be thought over. Surely she had a right, if any one had a right. But she would not stand upon that.
She sat by herself all day and thought, putting forward all the arguments on either side. If there was, as there might be, something wrong in that past—something guilty, which might make her look on her father with different eyes, he had a right to be silent, and she no right, none whatever, to insist upon such a revelation. And what end would it serve? If she had relations or a family from whom she had been separated, would not the revelation fill her with eager desire to know them, and open a fountain of dissatisfaction and discontent in her life if she were not permitted to do so? Would she not chafe at the banishment if she found out that somewhere there was a home, that she had “belongings” like all the rest of the world? These were little feeble barriers which she set up against the strong tide of consciousness in her that she was to be trusted, that she ought to know. Whatever it was, and however she might bear it, was it not true that she ought to know? She was not a fool or a child. Frances knew that her eighteen years had brought more experience, more sense to her, than Tasie’s forty; that she was capable of understanding, capableof keeping a secret—and was it not her own secret, the explanation of the enigma of her life as well as of his?
This course of reflection went on in her mind until the evening, and it was somewhat quickened by a little conversation which she had in the afternoon with the servants. Domenico was going out. It was early in the afternoon, the moment of leisure, when one meal with all its responsibilities was over, and the second great event of the day, the dinner, not yet imminent. It was the hour when Mariuccia sat in the ante-room and did her sewing, her mending, her knitting—whatever was wanted. This was a large and lofty room—not very light, with a great window looking out only into the court of the Palazzo—in which stood a long table and a few tall chairs. The smaller ante-room, from which the long suite of rooms opened on either side, communicated with this, as did also the corridor, which ran all the length of the house, and the kitchen and its appendages on the other side. There is always abundance of space of this kind in every old Italian house. Here Mariuccia established herself whenever she was free to leave her cooking and her kitchen-work. She was a comely middle-aged woman, with a dark gown, a white apron, a little shawl on her shoulders, large earrings, and a gold cross at her neck, which was a little more visible than is common with Englishwomen of her class. Her hair was crisp and curly, and never had been covered with anything, save, when she went to church, a shawl or veil; and Mariuccia’s olive complexion and ruddy tint feared no encounter of the sun. Domenico was tall, and spare, and brown, a grave man with little jest in him; but his wife was always ready to laugh. He came out hat in hand while Frances stood by the table inspecting Mariuccia’s work. “I am going out,” he said; “and this is the hour when the English gentlefolks pay visits. See that thou remember what the padrone said.”
“What did the padrone say?” cried Frances, pricking up her ears.
“Signorina, it was to my wife I was speaking,” said Domenico.
“That I understand; but I wish to know as well. Was papa expecting a visit? What did he say?”
“The padrone himself will tell the signorina,” said Domenico, “all that is intended for her. Some things are for the servants, some for the family; Mariuccia knows what I mean.”
“You are an ass, ’Menico,” said his wife, calmly. “Why shouldn’t the dear child know? It is nothing to be concerned about, my soul—only that the padrone does not receive, and again that he does not receive, and that he never receives. I must repeat this till the Ave Maria, if necessary, till the strangers accept it and go away.”
“Are these special orders?” said Frances, “or has it always been so? I don’t think that it has always been so.”
Domenico had gone out while his wife was speaking, with a half-threatening and wholly disapproving look, as if he would not involve himself in the responsibility which Mariuccia had taken upon her.
“Carina, don’t trouble yourself about it. It has always been so in the spirit, if not in the letter,” said Mariuccia. “Figure to yourself Domenico or me letting in any one, any one that chose to come, to disturb the signor padrone! That would be impossible. It appears, however, that there is some one down there in the hotels to whom the padrone has a great objection, greater than to the others. It is no secret, nothing to trouble you. But ’Menico, though he is a good man, is not very wise.Che!you know that as well as I.”
“And what will you do if this gentleman will not pay any attention—if he comes in all the same? The English don’t understand what it means when you say you do not receive. You must say he is not in; he has gone out; he is not at home.”
“Che! che! che!” cried Mariuccia; “little deceiver! But that would be a lie.”
Frances shook her head. “Yes; I suppose so,” she said, with a troubled look; “but if you don’t say it, the Englishman will come in all the same.”
“He will come in, then, over my body,” cried Mariuccia with a cheerful laugh, standing square and solid against the door.
This gave the last impulse to Frances’ thoughts. She could not go on with her study of the palms. She sat with her pencilin her hand, and the colour growing dry, thinking all the afternoon through. It was very certain, then, that her father would not expose himself to another meeting with the strangers who called themselves his friends—innocent people who would not harm any one, Frances was sure. They were tourists—that was evident; and they might be vulgar—that was possible. But she was sure that there was no harm in them. It could only be that her father was resolute to shut out his past, and let no one know what had been. This gave her an additional impulse, instead of discouragement. If it was so serious, and he so determined, then surely there must be something that she, his only child, ought to know. She waited till the evening with a gradually growing excitement; but not until after dinner, after the soothing cigarette, which he puffed so slowly and luxuriously in the loggia, did she venture to speak. Then the day was over. It could not put him out, or spoil his appetite, or risk his digestion. To be sure, it might interfere with his sleep; but after consideration, Frances did not think that a veryserious matter, probably because she had never known what it was to pass a wakeful night. She began, however, with the greatest caution and care.
“Papa,” she said, “I want to consult you about something Tasie was saying.”
“Ah! that must be something very serious, no doubt.”
“Not serious, perhaps; but—— she wants to teach me to play.”
“To play! What? Croquet? or whist, perhaps? I have always heard she was excellent at both.”
“These are games, papa,” said Frances, with a touch of severity. “She means the piano, which is very different.”
“Ah!” said Mr Waring, taking the cigarette from his lips and sending a larger puff of smoke into the dim air; “very different indeed, Frances. It is anything but a game to hear Miss Tasie play.”
“She says,” continued Frances, with a certain constriction in her throat, “that every lady is expected to play—to play a little at least, even if she has not much taste for it.She thinks when we go home—that all our relations will be so surprised——”
She stopped, having no breath to go further, and watched as well as she could, through the dimness and through the mist of agitation in her own eyes, her father’s face. He made no sign; he did not disturb even the easy balance of his foot, stretched out along the pavement. After another pause, he said in the same indifferent tone, “As we are not going home, and as you have no relations in particular, I don’t think your friend’s argument is very strong. Do you?”
“O papa, I don’t want indeed to be inquisitive or trouble you, but I should like to know!”
“What?” he said, with the same composure. “If I think that a lady, whether she has any musical taste or not, ought to play? Well, that is a very simple question. I don’t, whatever Miss Tasie may say.”
“It is not that,” Frances said, regaining a little control of herself. “I said I did not know of any relations we had. But Tasie said there must be cousins; we must havecousins—everybody has cousins. That is true, is it not?”
“In most cases, certainly,” Mr Waring said; “and a great nuisance too.”
“I don’t think it would be a nuisance to have people about one’s own age, belonging to one—not strangers—people who were interested in you, to whom you could say anything. Brothers and sisters, that would be the best; but cousins—I think, papa, cousins would be very nice.”
“I will tell you, if you like, of one cousin you have,” her father said.
The heart of Frances swelled as if it would leap out of her breast. She put her hands together, turning full round upon him in an attitude of supplication and delight. “O papa!” she cried with enthusiasm, breathless for his next word.
“Certainly, if you wish it, Frances. He is in reality your first-cousin. He is fifty. He is a great sufferer from gout. He has lived so well in the early part of his life, that he is condemned to slops now, and spends most of his time in an easy-chair. He has the temper of a demon, and swears at everybody that comes near him. Heis very red in the face, very bleared about the eyes, very——”
“O papa!” she cried, in a very different tone. She was so much disappointed, that the sudden downfall had almost a physical effect upon her, as if she had fallen from a height. Her father laughed softly while she gathered all her strength together to regain command of herself, and the laugh had a jarring effect upon her nerves, of which she had never been conscious till now.
“I don’t suppose that he would care much whether you played the piano or not; or that you would care much, my dear, what he thought.”
“For all that, papa,” said Frances, recovering herself, “it is a little interesting to know there is somebody, even if he is not at all what one thought. Where does he live, and what is his name? That will give me one little landmark in England, where there is none now.”
“Not a very reasonable satisfaction,” said her father lazily, but without any other reply. “In my life, I have always found relations a nuisance. Happy are they who have none; and next best is to cast them off and do without them. Asa matter of fact, it is every one for himself in this world.”
Frances was silenced, though not convinced. She looked with some anxiety at the outline of her father’s spare and lengthy figure laid out in the basket-chair, one foot moving slightly, which was a habit he had, the whole extended in perfect rest and calm. He was not angry, he was not disturbed. The questions which she had put with so much mental perturbation had not affected him at all. She felt that she might dare further without fear.
“When I was out to-day,” she said, faltering a little, “I met—that gentleman again.”
“Ah!” said Mr Waring—no more; but he ceased to shake his foot, and turned towards her the merest hair’s-breadth, so little that it was impossible to say he had moved, and yet there was a change.
“And the lady,” said Frances, breathless. “I am sure they wanted to be kind. They asked me a great many questions.”
He gave a faint laugh, but it was not without a little quiver in it. “What a good thing that you could not answer them!” he said.
“Do you think so, papa? I was rather unhappy. It looked as if you could not trust me. I should have been ashamed to say I did not know; which is the truth—for I know nothing, not so much as where I was born!” cried the girl. “It is very humiliating, when you are asked about your own father, to say you don’t know. So I said it was time for breakfast, and you would be waiting; and ran away.”
“The best thing you could have done, my dear. Discretion in a woman, or a girl, is always the better part of valour. I think you got out of it very cleverly,” Mr Waring said.
And that was all. He did not seem to think another word was needed. He did not even rise and go away, as Frances had known him to do when the conversation was not to his mind. She could not see his face, but his attitude was unchanged. He had recovered his calm, if there had ever been any disturbance of it. But as for Frances, her heart was thumping against her breast, her pulses beating in her ears, her lips parched and dry. “I wish,” she cried, “oh, I wish you would tell me something, papa! Do you think I wouldtalk of things you don’t want talked about? I am not a child any longer; and I am not silly, as perhaps you think.”
“On the contrary, my dear,” said Mr Waring, “I think you are often very sensible.”
“Papa! oh, how can you say that, how can you say such things—and then leave me as if I were a baby, knowing nothing!”
“My dear,” he said (with the sound of a smile in his voice, she thought to herself), “you are very hard to please. Must not I say that you are sensible? I think it is the highest compliment I can pay you.”
“O papa!” Disappointment, and mortification, and the keen sense of being fooled, which is so miserable to the young, took her very breath away. The exasperation with which we discover that not only is no explanation, no confidence to be given us, but the very occasion for it ignored, and our anxiety baffled by a smile—a mortification to which women are so often subject—flooded her being. She had hard ado not to burst into angry tears, not to betray the sense of cruelty and injustice which overwhelmed her; but who could have seen anyinjustice or cruelty in the gentleness of his tone, his soft reply? Frances subdued herself as best she could in her dark corner of the loggia, glad at least that he could not see the spasm that passed over her, the acute misery and irritation of her spirit. It would be strange if he did not divine something of what was going on within her: but he took no notice. He began in the same tone, as if one theme was quite as important as the other, to remark upon the unusual heaviness of the clouds which hid the moon. “If we were in England, I should say there was a storm brewing,” he said. “Even here, I think we shall have some rain. Don’t you feel that little creep in the air, something sinister, as if there was a bad angel about? And Domenico, I see, has brought the lamp. I vote we go in.”
“Are there any bad angels?” she cried, to give her impatience vent.
He had risen up, and stood swaying indolently from one foot to the other. “Bad angels? Oh yes,” he said; “abundance; very different from devils, who are honest—like the fiends in the pictures, unmistakable. The others, you know, deceive. Don’t you remember?—
‘How there looked him in the faceAn angel beautiful and bright;And how he knew it was a fiend,That miserable knight.’”
‘How there looked him in the faceAn angel beautiful and bright;And how he knew it was a fiend,That miserable knight.’”
‘How there looked him in the faceAn angel beautiful and bright;And how he knew it was a fiend,That miserable knight.’”
He turned and went into thesalone, repeating these words in an undertone to himself. But there was in his face none of the bitterness or horror with which they must have been said by one who had ever in his own person made that discovery. He was quite calm, meditative, marking with a slight intonation and movement of his head the cadence of the poetry.
Frances stayed behind in the darkness. She had not the practice which we acquire in later life; she could not hide the excitement which was still coursing through her veins. She went to the corner of the loggia which was nearest the sea, and caught in her face the rush of the rising breeze, which flung at her the first drops of the coming rain. A storm on that soft coast is a welcome break in the monotony of the clear skies and unchanging calm. After a while her father called to her that the rain was coming in, that the windows must be shut; and she hurried in, brushing by Domenico, who had come to close everything up, and who lookedat her reproachfully as she rushed past him. She came behind her father’s chair and leaned over to kiss him. “I have got a little wet, and I think I had better go to bed,” she said.
“Yes, surely, if you wish it, my dear,” said Mr Waring. Something moist had touched his forehead, which was too warm to be rain. He waited politely till she had gone before he wiped it off. It was the edge of a tear, hot, miserable, full of anger as well as pain, which had made that mark upon his high white forehead. It made him pause for a minute or two in his reading. “Poor little girl!” he said, with a sigh. Perhaps he was not so insensible as he seemed.
Itis a common impression that happiness and unhappiness are permanent states of mind, and that for long tracts of our lives we are under the continuous sway of one or other of these conditions. But this is almost always a mistake, save in the case of grief, which is perhaps the only emotion which is beyond the reach of the momentary lightenings and alleviations and perpetual vicissitudes of life. Death, and the pangs of separation from those we love, are permanent, at least for their time; but in everything else there is an ebb and flow which keeps the heart alive. When Frances Waring told the story of this period of her life, she represented herself unconsciously as having been oppressed by the mystery that over-shadowed her, and as having lost all the easeof her young life prematurely in a sudden encounter with shadows unsuspected before. But as a matter of fact, this was not the case. She had a bad night—that is, she cried herself asleep; but once over the boundary which divides our waking thoughts from the visions of the night, she knew no more till the sun came in and woke her to a very cheerful morning. It is true that care made several partially successful assaults upon her that day and for several days after. But as everything went on quite calmly and peacefully, the impression wore off. The English family found out, as was inevitable, where Mr Waring lived, without any difficulty; and first the father came, then the mother, and finally the pair together, to call. Frances, to whom a breach of decorum or civility was pain unspeakable, sat trembling and ashamed in the deepest corner of the loggia, while these kind strangers encountered Mariuccia at the door. The scene, as a matter of fact, was rather comic than tragic, for neither the visitors nor the guardian of the house possessed any language but their own; and Mr and Mrs Mannering had as littleunderstanding of the statement that Mr Waring did not “receive” as Frances had expected.
“But he is in—è in casa—èIN?” said the worthy Englishman. “Then, my dear, of course it is only a mistake. When he knows who we are—when he has our names——”
“Non riceve oggi,” said Mariuccia, setting her sturdy breadth in the doorway; “oggi non riceve il signore” (The master does not receive to-day).
“But he is in?” repeated the bewildered good people. They could have understood “Not at home,” which to Mariuccia would have been simply a lie—with which indeed, had need been, or could it have done the padrone any good, she would have burdened her conscience as lightly as any one. But why, when it was not in the least necessary?
Thus they played their little game at cross-purposes, while Frances sat, hot and red with shame, in her corner, sensible to the bottom of her heart of the discourtesy, the unkindness, of turning them from the door. They were her father’s friends; they claimed to have “stuck by him through thick and thin;” theywere people who knew about him, and all that he belonged to, and the conditions of his former life; and yet they were turned from his door!
She did not venture to go out again for some days, except in the evening, when she knew that all the strangers were at the inevitabletable d’hôte; and it was with a sigh of relief, yet disappointment, that she heard they had gone away. Yes, at last they did go away, angry, no doubt, thinking her father a churl, and she herself an ignorant rustic, who knew nothing about good manners. Of course this was what they must think. Frances heard those words, “Non riceve oggi,” even in her dreams. She saw in imagination the astonished faces of the visitors. “But he will receive us, if you will only take in our names;” and then Mariuccia’s steady voice repeating the well-known phrase. What must they have thought? That it was an insult—that their old friend scorned and defied them. What else could they suppose?
They departed, however, and Frances got over it: and everything went on as before;her father was just as usual—a sphinx indeed, more and more hopelessly wrapped up in silence and mystery, but so natural and easy and kind in his uncommunicativeness, with so little appearance of repression or concealment about him, that it was almost impossible to retain any feeling of injury or displeasure. Love is cheated every day in this way by offenders much more serious, who can make their dependants happy even while they are ruining them, and beguile the bitterest anxiety into forgetfulness and smiles. It was easy to make Frances forget the sudden access of wonderment and wounded feeling which had seized her, even without any special exertion; time alone and the calm succession of the days were enough for that. She resumed her little picture of the palms, and was very successful—more than usually so. Mr Waring, who had hitherto praised her little works as he might have praised the sampler of a child, was silenced by this, and took it away with him into his room, and when he brought it back, looked at her with more attention than he had been used to show. “I think,” he said, “littleFan, that you must be growing up,” laying his hand upon her head with a smile.
“I am grown up, papa; I am eighteen,” she said.
At which he laughed softly. “I don’t think much of your eighteen; but this shows. I should not wonder, with time and work, if—you mightn’t be good enough to exhibit at Mentone—after a while.”
Frances had been looking at him with an expression of almost rapturous expectation. The poor little countenance fell at this, and a quick sting of mortification brought tears to her eyes. The exhibition at Mentone was an exhibition of amateurs. Tasie was in it, and even Mrs Gaunt, and all the people about who ever spoilt a piece of harmless paper. “O papa!” she said. Since the failure of her late appeal to him, this was the only formula of reproach which she used.
“Well,” he said, “are you more ambitious than that, you little thing? Perhaps, by-and-by, you may be fit even for better things.”
“It is beautiful,” said Mariuccia. “You see where the light goes, and where it is in theshade. But,carina, if you were to copy the face of Domenico, or even mine, that would be more interesting. The palms we can see if we look out of the window; but imagine to yourself that ’Menico might go away, or even might die; and we should not miss him so much if we had his face hung up upon the wall.”
“It is easier to do the trees than to do Domenico,” said Frances; “they stand still.”
“And so would ’Menico stand still, if it was to please the signorina—he is not very well educated, but he knows enough for that; or I myself, though you will think, perhaps, I am too old to make a pretty picture. But if I had my veil on, and my best earrings, and the coral my mother left me——”
“You look very nice, Mariuccia—I like you as you are; but I am not clever enough to make a portrait.”
Mariuccia cried out with scorn. “You are clever enough to do whatever you wish to do,” she said. “The padrone thinks so too, though he will not say it. Not clever enough!Magari!too clever is what you mean.”
Frances set up her palms on a little stand ofcarved wood, and was very well pleased with herself; but that sentiment palls perhaps sooner than any other. It was very agreeable to be praised, and also it was pleasant to feel that she had finished her work successfully. But after a short time it began to be a great subject of regret that the work was done. She did not know what to do next. To make a portrait of Domenico was above her powers. She idled about for the day, and found it uncomfortable. That is the moment in which it is most desirable to have a friend on whom to bestow one’s tediousness. She bethought herself that she had not seen Tasie for a week. It was now more than a fortnight since the events detailed in the beginning of this history. Her father, when asked if he would not like a walk, declined. It was too warm, or too cold, or perhaps too dusty, which was very true; and accordingly she set out alone.
Walking down through the Marina, the little tourist town which was rising upon the shore, she saw some parties of travellers arriving, which always had been a little pleasure to her. It was mingled now with a certain excitement.Perhaps some of them, like those who had just gone away, might know all about her, more than she knew herself—what a strange thought it was!—some of those unknown people in their travelling cloaks, which looked so much too warm—people whom she had never seen before, who had not a notion that she was Frances Waring! One of the parties was composed of ladies, surrounded and enveloped, so to speak, by a venerable courier, who swept them and their possessions before him into the hotel. Another was led by a father and mother, not at all unlike the pair who had “stuck by” Mr Waring. How strange to imagine that they might not be strangers at all, but people who knew all about her!
In the first group was a girl, who hung back a little from the rest, and looked curiously up at all the houses, as if looking for some one—a tall, fair-haired girl, with a blue veil tied over her hat. She looked tired, but eager, with more interest in her face than any of the others showed. Frances smiled to herself with the half-superiority which a resident is apt to feel: a girl must be very simple indeed, if she thought the houseson the Marina worth looking at, Frances thought. But she did not pause in her quick walk. The Durants lived at the other end of the Marina, in a little villa built upon a terrace over an olive garden—a low house with no particular beauty, but possessing also a loggia turned to the west, the luxury of building on the Riviera. Here the whole family were seated, the old clergyman with a large English newspaper, which he was reading deliberately from end to end; his wife with a work-basket full of articles to mend; and Tasie at the little tea-table, pouring out the tea. Frances was received with a little clamour of satisfaction, for she was a favourite.
“Sit here, my dear.” “Come this way, close to me, for you know I am getting a little hard of hearing.”
They had always been kind to her, but never, she thought, had she been received with so much cordiality as now.
“Have you come by yourself, Frances? and along the Marina? I think you should make Domenico or his wife walk with you, when you go through the Marina, my dear.”
“Why, Mrs Durant? I have always done it. Even Mariuccia says it does not matter, as I am an English girl.”
“Ah, that may be true; but English girls are not like American girls. I assure you they are taken a great deal more care of. If you ever go home——”
“And how is your poor father to-day, Frances?” said Mrs Durant.
“Oh, papa is very well. He is not such a poor father. There is nothing the matter with him. At least, there is nothingnewthe matter with him,” said Frances, with a little impatience.
“No,” said the clergyman, looking up over the top of his spectacles and shaking his head. “Nothingnewthe matter with him. I believe that.”
“——If you ever go home,” resumed Mrs Durant; “and of course some time you will go home——”
“I think very likely I never shall,” said the girl. “Papa never talks of going home. He says home is here.”
“That is all very well for the present moment, my dear; but I feel sure, for my part, that one time or other it will happen as I say;and then you must not let them suppose you have been a little savage, going about as you liked here.”
“I don’t think any one would care much, Mrs Durant; and I am not going; so you need not be afraid.”
“Your poor father,” Mr Durant went on in his turn, “has a great deal of self-command, Frances; he has a great deal of self-control. In some ways, that is an excellent quality, but it may be carried too far. I wish very much he would allow me to come and have a talk with him—not as a clergyman, but just in a friendly way.”
“I am quite sure you may come and talk with him as much as you like,” said Frances, astonished; “or if you want very much to see him, he will come to you.”
“Oh, I should not take it upon me to ask that—in the meantime,” Mr Durant said.
The girl stared a little, but asked no further questions. There was something among them which she did not understand—a look of curiosity, an air of meaning more than their words said. The Durants were always a little apt to bedidactic, as became a clergyman’s family; but Tasie was generally a safe refuge. Frances turned to her with a little sigh of perplexity, hoping to escape further question. “Was the Sunday-school as large last Sunday, Tasie?” she said.
“Oh, Frances, no! Such a disappointment! There were only four! Isn’t it a pity? But you see the little Mannerings have all gone away. Such sweet children! and the little one of all has such a voice. They are perhaps coming back for Easter, if they don’t stay at Rome; and if so, I think we must put little Herbert in a white surplice—he will look like an angel—and have a real anthem with a soprano solo, for once.”
“I doubt if they will all come back,” said Mr Durant. “Mr Mannering himself indeed, I don’t doubt,on business; but as for the family, you must not flatter yourself, Tasie.”
“Sheliked the place,” said his wife; “and very likely she would think it her duty, if anything is to come of it, you know.”
“Be careful,” said the clergyman, with a glance aside, which Frances would have been dull indeed not to have perceived was directedat herself. “Don’t say anything that may be premature.”
Frances was brave in her way. She felt, with a little rising excitement, that her friends were bursting with some piece of knowledge which they were longing to communicate. It roused in her an impatience and reluctance mingled with keen curiosity. She would not hear it, and yet was breathless with impatience to know what it was.
“Mr Mannering?” she said, deliberately—“that was the gentleman that knew papa.”
“You saw him, then?” cried Mrs Durant. There was something like a faint disappointment in her tone.
“He was one of papa’s early friends,” said Frances, with a little emphasis. “I saw him twice. He and his wife both; they seemed kind people.”
Mr Durant and his wife looked at each other, and even Tasie stared over her teacups. “Oh, very kind people, my dear; I don’t think you could do better than have full confidence in them,” Mrs Durant said.
“And your poor father could not have a truerfriend,” said the old clergyman. “You must tell him I am coming to have a talk with him about it. It was a great revelation, but I hope that everything will turn out for the best.”
Frances grew redder and redder as she sat a mark for all their arrows. What was it that was a “revelation”? But she would not ask. She began to be angry, and to say to herself that she would put her hands to her ears, that she would listen to nothing.
“Henry!” said Mrs Durant, “who is it that is premature now?”
“I am afraid I can’t stay,” said Frances, rising quickly from her chair. “I have something to do for Mariuccia. I only came in because—because I was passing. Never mind, Tasie; I know my way so well; and Mr Durant wants some more tea.”
“Oh but, Frances, my dear, you really must let me send some one with you. You must not move about in that independent way.”
“And we had a great many things to say to you,” said the old clergyman, keeping her hand in his. “Are you really in such a hurry? It will be better for yourself to wait a little,and hear something that will be for your good.”
“It cannot be any worse for me to run about to-day than any other day,” said Frances, almost sternly; “and whatever there is to hear, won’t to-morrow do just as well? I think it is a little funny of you all to speak to me so; but now I must go.”
She was so rapid in her movements that she was gone before Tasie could extricate herself from the somewhat crazy little table. And then they all three looked at each other and shook their heads. “Do you think she can know?” “Can she have known it all the time?” “Has Waring told her, or was it Mannering?” they said to each other.
Frances could not hear their mutual questions, but something very like the purport of them got into her agitated brain. She felt sure they were wondering whether she knew—what? this revelation, this something which they had found out. Nothing would make her submit to hear it from them, she said to herself. But the moment was come when she could not be put off any longer. She would go to her father,and she would not rest until she was informed what it was.
She hastened along, avoiding the Marina, which had amused her on her way, hurrying from terrace to terrace of the olive groves. Her heart was beating fast, and her rapid pace made it faster. But as she thought of her father’s unperturbed looks, the calm with which he had received her eager questions, and the very small likelihood that anything she could say about the hints of the Durants would move him, her pace and her excitement both decreased. She went more slowly, less hopefully, back to the Palazzo. It was all very well to say that she must know. But what if he would not tell her? What if he received her questions as he had received them before? The circumstances were not changed, nor was he changed because the Durants knew something, she did not know what. Oh, what a poor piece of friendship was that, that betrayed a friend’s secret to his neighbours! She did not know, she could not so much as form a guess, what the secret was. But little or great, his friend should have kept it. She said this to herselfbitterly, when the chill probabilities of the case began to make themselves felt. It was harder to think that the Durants knew, than to be kept in darkness herself.
She went in at last very soberly, with the intention of telling her father all that had passed, if perhaps that of itself might be an inducement to him to have confidence in her. It was not a pleasant mission. Her steps had become very sober as she went up the long marble stair. Mariuccia met her with a little cry. Had she not met the padrone? He had gone out down through the olive woods to meet her and fetch her home. It was a brief reprieve. In the evening after dinner was the time when he was most accessible. Frances, with a thrill of mingled relief and disappointment, retired to her room to make her little toilet. She had an hour or two at least before her ere it would be necessary to speak.
Whenone has made up one’s mind to reopen a painful subject after dinner, the preliminary meal is not usually a very pleasant one; nor, with the tremor of preparation in one’s mind, is one likely to make a satisfactory dinner. Frances could not talk about anything. She could not eat; her mind was absorbed in what was coming. It seemed to her that she must speak: and yet how gladly would she have escaped from or postponed the explanation! Explanation! Possibly he would only smile, and baffle her as he had done before; or perhaps be angry, which would be better. Anything would be better than that indifference.
She went out to the loggia when dinner was over, trembling with the sensation of suspense. It was still not dark, and the night was clearwith the young moon already shining, so that between the retiring day and the light of the night it was almost as clear as it had been two hours before. Frances sat down, shivering a little, though not with cold. Usually her father accompanied or immediately followed her, but by some perversity he did not do so to-night. She seated herself in her usual place, and waited, listening for every sound—that is, for sounds of one kind—his slow step coming along the polished floor, here soft and muffled over a piece of carpet, there loud upon theparquet. But for some time, during which she rose into a state of feverish expectation, there was no such sound.
It was nearly half an hour, according to her calculation, probably not half so much by common computation of time, when one or two doors were opened and shut quickly and a sound of voices met her ear—not sounds, however, which had any but a partial interest for her, for they did not indicate his approach. After a while there followed the sound of a footstep but it was not Mr Waring’s; it was not Domenico’s subdued tread, nor the measuredmarch of Mariuccia. It was light, quick, and somewhat uncertain. Frances was half disappointed, half relieved. Some one was coming, but not her father. It would be impossible to speak to him to-night. The relief was uppermost; she felt it through her whole being. Not to-night; and no one can ever tell what to-morrow may bring forth. She looked up no longer with anxiety, but curiosity, as the door opened. It opened quickly; some one looked out, as if to see what was beyond, then, with a slight exclamation of satisfaction, stepped out upon the loggia into the partial light.
Frances rose up quickly, with the curious sensation of acting over something which she had rehearsed before, she did not know where or how. It was the girl whom she had remarked on the Marina as having just arrived who now stood looking about her curiously, with her travelling-cloak fastened only at the throat, her gauze veil thrown up about her hat. This new-comer came in quickly, not with the timidity of a stranger. She came out into the centre of the loggia, where the light fell fully around her, and showed her tall slightfigure, the fair hair clustering in her neck, a certain languid grace of movement, which her energetic entrance curiously belied. Frances waited for some form of apology or self-introduction, prepared to be very civil, and feeling in reality pleased and almost grateful for the interruption.
But the young lady made no explanation. She put her hands up to her throat and loosed her cloak with a little sigh of relief. She undid the veil from her hat. “Thank heaven, I have got here at last, free of those people!” she said, putting herselfsans façoninto Mr Waring’s chair, and laying her hat upon the little table. Then she looked up at the astonished girl, who stood looking on.
“Are you Frances?” she said; but the question was put in an almost indifferent tone.
“Yes; I am Frances. But I don’t know——” Frances was civil to the bottom of her soul, polite, incapable of hurting any one’s feelings. She could not say anything disagreeable; she could not demand brutally, Who are you? and what do you want here?
“I thought so,” said the stranger; “and, oddly enough, I saw you this afternoon, and wondered if it could be you. You are a little like mamma.—I am Constance, of course,” she added, looking up with a half-smile. “We ought to kiss each other, I suppose, though we can’t care much about each other, can we?—Where is papa?”
Frances had no breath to speak; she could not say a word. She looked at the new-comer with a gasp. Who was she? And who was papa? Was it some strange mistake which had brought her here? But then the question, “Are you Frances?” showed that it could not be a mistake.
“I beg your pardon,” she said; “I don’t understand. This is—Mr Waring’s. You are looking for—your father?”
“Yes, yes,” cried the other impatiently; “I know. You can’t imagine I should have come here and taken possession if I had not made sure first! You are well enough known in this little place. There was no trouble about it.—And the house looks nice, and this must be a fine view when there is light to see it by.—Butwhere is papa? They told me he was always to be found at this hour.”
Frances felt the blood ebb to her very finger-points, and then rush back like a great flood upon her heart. She scarcely knew where she was standing or what she was saying in her great bewilderment. “Do you mean—myfather?” she said.
The other girl answered with a laugh: “You are very particular. I mean our father, if you prefer it. Your father—my father. What does it matter?—Where is he? Why isn’t he here? It seems he must introduce us to each other. I did not think of any such formality. I thought you would have taken me for granted,” she said.
Frances stood thunderstruck, gazing, listening, as if eyes and ears alike fooled her. She did not seem to know the meaning of the words. They could not, she said to herself, mean what they seemed to mean—it was impossible. There must be some wonderful, altogether unspeakable blunder. “I don’t understand,” she said again, in a piteous tone. “It must be some mistake.”
The other girl fixed her eyes upon her in the waning light. She had not paid so much attention to Frances at first as to the new place and scene. She looked at her now with the air of weighing her in some unseen balance and finding her wanting, with impatience and half contempt. “I thought you would have been glad to see me,” she said; “but the world seems just the same in one place as another. Because I am in distress at home you don’t want me here.”
Then Frances felt herself goaded, galled into the matter-of-fact question, “Who are you?” though she felt that she would not believe the answer she received.
“Who am I? Don’t you know who I am? Who should I be but Con? Constance Waring, your sister?—Where,” she cried, springing to her feet and stamping one of them upon the ground—“where,whereis papa?”
The door opened again behind her softly, and Mr Waring with his slow step came out. “Did I hear some one calling for me?” he said.—“Frances, it is not you, surely, that are quarrelling with your visitor?—I beg the lady’s pardon; I cannot see who it is.”
The stranger turned upon him with impatience in her tone. “It was I who called,” she said. “I thought you were sure to be here. Papa, I have always heard that you were kind—a kind man, they all said; that was why I came, thinking—— I am Constance!” she added after a pause, drawing herself up and facing him with something of his own gesture and attitude. She was tall, not much less than he was; very unlike little Frances. Her slight figure seemed to draw out as she raised her head and looked at him. She was not a suppliant. Her whole air was one of indignation that she should be subjected to a moment’s doubt.
“Constance!” said Mr Waring. The daylight was gone outside; the moon had got behind a fleecy white cloud; behind those two figures there was a gleam of light from within, Domenico having brought in the lamp into the drawing-room. He stepped backward, opening the glass door. “Come in,” he said, “to the light.”
Frances came last, with a great commotion in her heart, but very still externally. She felt herself to have sunk into quite a subordinateplace. The other two, they were the chief figures. She had now no explanation to ask, no questions to put, though she had a thousand; but everything else was thrown into the background, everything was inferior to this. The chief interest was with the others now.
Constance stepped in after him with a proud freedom of step, the air of one who was mistress of herself and her fate. She went up to the table on which the tall lamp stood, her face on a level with it, fully lighted up by it. She held her hat in her hand, and played with it with a careless yet half-nervous gesture. Her fair hair was short, and clustered in her neck and about her forehead almost like a child’s, though she was not like a child. Mr Waring, looking at her, was more agitated than she. He trembled a little; his eyelids were lifted high over his eyes. Her air was a little defiant; but there was no suspicion, only a little uncertainty in his. He put out his hand to her after a minute’s inspection. “If you are Constance, you are welcome,” he said.
“I don’t suppose that you have any doubt I am Constance,” said the girl, flinging her hat on the table and herself into a chair. “It isa very curious way to receive one, though, after such a long journey—such a tiresome long journey,” she repeated, with a voice into which a querulous tone of exhaustion had come.
Mr Waring sat down too in the immediate centre of the light. He had not kissed her nor approached her, save by the momentary touch of their hands. It was a curious way to receive a stranger, a daughter. She lay back in her chair as if wearied out, and tears came to her eyes. “I should not have come, if I had known,” she said, with her lip quivering. “I am very tired. I put up with everything on the journey, thinking, when I came here—— And I am more a stranger here than anywhere!” She paused, choking with the half-hysterical fit of crying which she would not allow to overcome her. “She—knows nothing about me!” she cried, with a sharp accent of pain, as if this was the last blow.
Frances, in her bewilderment, did not know what to do or say. She looked at her father, but his face was dumb, and gave her no suggestion; and then she looked at the new-comer, who lay back with her head against the backof the chair, her eyes closed, tears forcing their way through her eyelashes, her slender white throat convulsively struggling with a sob. The mind of Frances had been shaken by a sudden storm of feelings unaccustomed; a throb of something which she did not understand, which was jealousy, though she neither knew nor intended it, had gone through her being. She seemed to see herself cast forth from her easy supremacy, her sway over her father’s house, deposed from her principal place. And she was only human. Already she was conscious of a downfall. Constance had drawn the interest towards herself—it was she to whom every eye would turn. The girl stood apart for a moment, with that inevitable movement which has been in the bosom of so many since the well-behaved brother of the Prodigal put it in words, “Now that this thy son has come.” Constance, so far as Frances knew, was no prodigal; but she was what was almost worse—a stranger, and yet the honours of the house were to be hers. She stood thus, looking on, until the sight of the suppressed sob, of the closed eyes, of the weary, hopeless attitude, were too much for her. Then it came suddenly into her mind, if she is Constance! Frances had not known half an hour before that there was any Constance who had a right to her sympathy in the world. She gave her father another questioning look, but got no reply from his eyes. Whatever had to be done must be done by herself. She went up to the chair in which her sister lay and touched her on the shoulder. “If we had known you were coming,” she said, “it would have been different. It is a little your fault not to let us know. I should have gone to meet you; I should have made your room ready. We have nothing ready, because we did not know.”
Constance sat suddenly up in her chair and shook her head, as if to shake off the emotion that had been too much for her. “How sensible you are!” she said. “Is that your character?—She is quite right, isn’t she? But I did not think of that. I suppose I am impetuous, as people say. I was unhappy, and I thought you would—receive me with open arms. It is evidentIam not the sensible one.” She said this with still a quiver in herlip, but also a smile, pushing back her chair, and resuming the unconcerned air which she had worn at first.
“Frances is quite right. You ought to have written and warned us,” said Mr Waring.
“Oh yes; there are so many things that one ought to do.”
“But we will do the best we can for you, now you are here. Mariuccia will easily make a room ready. Where is your baggage? Domenico can go to the railway, to the hotel, wherever you have come from.”
“My box is outside the door. I made them bring it. The woman—is that Mariuccia?—would not take it in. But she let me come in. She was not suspicious. She did not say, ‘If you are Constance.’”And here she laughed, with a sound that grated upon Mr Waring’s nerves. He jumped up suddenly from his chair.
“I had no proof that you were Constance,” he said, “though I believed it. But only your mother’s daughter could reproduce that laugh.”
“Has Frances got it?” the girl cried, with an instant lighting up of opposition in hereyes; “for I am like you, but she is the image of mamma.”
He turned round and looked at Frances, who, feeling that an entire circle of new emotions, unknown to her, had come into being at a bound, stood with a passive, frightened look, spectator of everything, not knowing how to adapt herself to the new turn of affairs.
“By Jove!” her father said, with an air of exasperation she had never seen in him before, “that is true! But I had never noticed it. Even Frances. You’ve come to set us all by the ears.”
“Oh no! I’ll tell you, if you like, why I came. Mamma—has been more aggravating than usual. I said to myself you would be sure to understand what that meant. And something arose—I will tell you about it after—a complication, something that mamma insisted I should do, though I had made up my mind not to do it.”
“You had better,” said her father, with a smile, “take care what ideas on that subject you put into your sister’s head.”
Constance paused, and looked at Frances witha look which was half scrutinising, half contemptuous. “Oh, she is not like me,” she said. “Mamma was very aggravating, as you know she can be. She wanted me—— But I’ll tell you after.” And then she began: “I hope, because you live in Italy, papa, you don’t think you ought to be a medieval parent; but that sort of thing in Belgravia, you know, is too ridiculous. It was so out of the question that it was some time before I understood. It was not exactly a case of being locked up in my room and kept on bread and water; but something of the sort. I was so much astonished at first, I did not know what to do; and then it became intolerable. I had nobody I could appeal to, for everybody agreed with her. Markham is generally a safe person; but even Markham took her side. So I immediately thought of you. I said to myself, One’s father is the right person to protect one. And I knew, of course, that if anybody in the world could understand how impossible it is to live with mamma when she has taken a thing into her head, it would be you.”
Waring kept his eye upon Frances while thiswas being said, with an almost comic embarrassment. It was half laughable; but it was painful, as so many laughable things are; and there was something like alarm, or rather timidity, in the look. The man looked afraid of the little girl—whom all her life he had treated as a child—and her clear sensible eyes.
“One thinks these things, perhaps, but one does not put them into words,” he said.
“Oh, it is no worse to say them than to think them,” said Constance. “I always say what I mean. And you must know that things went very far—so far that I couldn’t put up with it any longer; so I made up my mind all at once that I would come off to you.”
“And I tell you, you are welcome, my dear. It is so long since I saw you that I could not have recognised you. That is natural enough. But now that you are here—I cannot decide upon the wisdom of the step till I know all the circumstances——”
“Oh, wisdom! I don’t suppose there is any wisdom about it. No one expects wisdom from me. But what could I do? There was nothing else that I could do.”
“At all events,” said Waring, with a little inclination of his head and a smile, as if he were talking to a visitor, Frances said to herself—“Frances and I will forgive any lack of wisdom which has given us—this pleasure.” He laughed at himself as he spoke. “You must expect for a time to feel like a fine lady paying a visit to her poor relations,” he said.
“Oh, I know you will approve of me when you hear everything. Mamma says I am a Waring all over, your own child.”
The sensations with which Frances stood and listened, it would be impossible to describe. Mamma! who was this, of whom the other girl spoke so lightly, whom she had never heard of before? Was it possible that a mother as well as a sister existed for her, as for others, in the unknown world out of which Constance had come? A hundred questions were on her lips, but she controlled herself, and asked none of them. Reflection, which comes so often slowly, almost painfully, to her came now like the flash of lightning. She would not betray to any one, not even to Constance, that she had never known she had a mother. Papamight be wrong—oh, how wrong he had been!—but she would not betray him. She checked the exclamation on her lips; she subdued her soul altogether, forcing it into silence. This was the secret she had been so anxious to penetrate, which he had kept so closely from her. Why should he have kept it from her? It was evident it had not been kept on the other side. Whatever had happened, had Frances been in trouble, she knew of no one with whom she could have taken refuge; but her sister had known. Her brain was made dizzy by these thoughts. It was open to her now to ask whatever she pleased. The mystery had been made plain; but at the same time her mouth was stopped. She would not confuse her father, nor betray him. It was chiefly from this bewildering sensation, and not, as her father, suddenly grown acute in respect to Frances, thought, from a mortifying consciousness that Constance would speak with more freedom if she were not there, that Frances now spoke. “I think,” she said, “that I had better go and see about the rooms. Mariuccia will not know what to do till Icome; and you will take care of Constance, papa.”
He looked at her, hearing in her tone a wounded feeling, a touch of forlorn pride, which perhaps was there, but not so much as he thought; but it was Constance who replied: “Oh yes, we will take care of each other. I have so much to tell him,” with a laugh. Frances was aware that there was relief in it, in the prospect of her own absence, but she did not feel it so strongly as her father did. She gave them both a smile, and went away.
“So that is Frances,” said the new-found sister, looking after her. “I find her very like mamma. But everybody says I am your child, disposition and all.” She rose, and came up to Waring, who had never lessened the distance between himself and her. She put her hand within his arm and held up her face to him. “I am like you. I shall be much happier with you. Do you think you will like having me instead of Frances, father?” She clasped his arm against her in a caressing way, and leant her cheek upon the sleeve of hisvelvet coat. “Don’t you think you would like to haveme, father, instead of her?” she said.
A whole panorama of the situation, like a landscape, suddenly flashed before Waring’s mind. The spell of this caress, and the confidence she showed of being loved, which is so great a charm, and the impulse of nature, so much as that is worth, drew him towards this handsome stranger, who took possession of him and his affections without a doubt, and pushed away the other from his heart and his side with an impulse which his philosophy said was common to all men—or at least, if that was too sweeping, to all women. But in the same moment came that sense of championship and proprietorship, the one inextricably mingled with the other, which makes us all defend our own whenever assailed. Frances was his own; she was his creation; he had taught her almost everything. Poor little Frances! Not like this girl, who could speak for herself, who could go everywhere, half commanding, half taking with guile every heart that she encountered. Frances would never do that. But she would be true, true as the heavens themselves, andnever falter. By a sudden gleam of perception he saw that, though he had never told her anything of this, though it must have been a revelation of wonder to her, yet that she had not burst forth into any outcries of astonishment, or asked any compromising questions, or done anything to betray him.
His heart went forth to Frances with an infinite tenderness. He had not been a doting father to her; he had even—being himself what the world calls a clever man, much above her mental level—felt himself to condescend a little, and almost upbraided Heaven for giving him so ordinary a little girl. And Constance, it was easy to see, was a brilliant creature, accustomed to take her place in the world, fit to be any man’s companion. But the first result of this revelation was to reveal to him, as he had never seen it before, the modest and true little soul which had developed by his side without much notice from him, whom he had treated with such cruel want of confidence, to whom the shock of this evening’s disclosures must have been so great, but who, even in the moment of discovery, shielded him. All thiswent through his mind with the utmost rapidity. He did not put his new-found child away from him; but there was less enthusiasm than Constance expected in the kiss he gave her. “I am very glad to have you here, my dear,” he said more coldly than pleased her. “But why instead of Frances? You will be happier both of you for being together.”
Constance did not disengage herself with any appearance of disappointment. She perceived, perhaps, that she was not to be so triumphant here as was usually her privilege. She relinquished her father’s arm after a minute, not too precipitately, and returned to her chair. “I shall like it, as long as it is possible,” she said. “It will be very nice for me having a father and sister instead of a mother and brother. But you will find that mamma will not let you off. She likes to have a girl in the house. She will have her pound of flesh.” She threw herself back into her chair with a laugh. “How quaint it all is; and how beautiful the view must be, and the mountains and the sea! I shall be very happy here—the world forgetting, by the world forgot—and with you, papa.”