She
“What?” cried Mariuccia, making the small monosyllable sound as if it were the biggest word in her vocabulary.
“She has come to stay. She is my sister; papa’s daughter as much as I am. She has come—home.” Frances was a little uncertain about the word, and it was only “a casa” that she said—“to the house,” which means the same.
Mariuccia threw up her arms in astonishment. “Then there has been another signorina all the time!” she cried. “Figure to yourself that I have been with the padrone a dozen years, and I never heard of her before.”
“Papa does not talk very much about his concerns,” said Frances in her faithfulness. “And what we have got to do is to make hervery comfortable. She is very pretty, don’t you think? Such beautiful blond hair—and tall. I never shall be tall, I fear. They say she is like papa; but, as is natural, she is much more beautiful than papa.”
“Beauty is as you find it,” said Mariuccia. “Carina, no one will ever be so pretty as our own signorina to Domenico and me.—What is the child doing? She is pulling the things off her own bed.—My angel, you have lost your good sense. You are fluttered and upset by this new arrival. The blue room will be very good for the new young lady. Perhaps she will not stay very long?”
The wish was father to the thought. But Frances took no notice of the suggestion. She said briskly, going on with what she was doing, “She must have my room, Mariuccia. The blue room isquitenice; it will do very well for me; but I should like her to feel at home, not to think our house was bare and cold. The blue room would be rather naked, if we were to put her there to-night. It will not be naked for me, for, of course, I am used to it all, and know everything. But when Constancewakes to-morrow morning and looks round her, and wonders where she is—oh, how strange it all seems!—I wish her to open her eyes upon things that are pretty, and to say to herself, ‘What a delightful house papa has! What a nice room! I feel as if I had been here all my life.’”
“Constanza—is that her name? It is rather a common name—not distinguished, like our signorina’s. But it is very good for her, I have no doubt. And so you will give her your own room, that she may be fond of the house, and stay and supplant you? That is what will happen. The good one, the one of gold, gets pushed out of the way. I would not give her my room to make her love the house.”
“I think you would, Mariuccia.”
“No; I do not think so,” said Mariuccia, squaring herself with one arm akimbo. “No; I do not deny that I would probably take some new things into the blue room, and put up curtains. But I am older than you are, and I have more sense. I would not do it. If she gets your room, she will get your place; and she will please everybody, and be admired, and my angel will be put out of the way.”
“I am such a horrid little wretch,” said Frances, “that I thought of that too. It was mean, oh, so mean of me. She is prettier than I am, and taller; and—yes, of course, she must be older too, so you see it is her right.”
“Is she the eldest?” asked Mariuccia.
Frances made a puzzled pause; but she would not let the woman divine that she did not know. “Oh yes; she must be the eldest.—Come quick, Mariuccia; take all these things to the blue room; and now for your clean linen and everything that is nice and sweet.”
Mariuccia did what she was told, but with many objections. She carried on a running murmur of protest all the time. “When there are changes in a family; when it is by the visitation of God, that is another matter. A son or a daughter who is in trouble, who has no other refuge; that is natural; there is nothing to say. But to remain away during a dozen years, and then to come back at a moment’s notice—nay, without even a moment’s notice—in the evening, when all the beds are made up, and demand everything that is comfortable.—I have always thought that there was a great dealto be said for the poor young signorino of whom the priest speaks, he who had always stayed at home when his brother was amusing himself.Carina, you know what I mean.”
“I have thought of that too,” said Frances. “But my sister is not a prodigal; and papa has never done anything for her. It is all quite different. When we know each other better, it will be delightful always to have a companion, Mariuccia—think how pleasant it will be always to have a companion. I wonder if she will like my pictures?—Now, don’t you think the room looks very pretty? I always thought it was a pretty room. Leave thepersianiopen that she may see the sea; and in the morning don’t forget to come in and close them before the sun gets hot.—I think that will do now.”
“Indeed I hope it will do—after all the trouble you have taken. And I hope the young lady is worthy of it.—But, my angel, what shall I do when I come in to wake her? Does she expect that I can talk her language to her? No, no. And she will know nothing; she will not even be able to say ‘Good morning.’”
“I hope so. But if not, you must call mefirst, that is all,” said Frances cheerfully.—“Now, don’t go to bed just yet; perhaps she will like something—some tea; or perhaps a little supper; or—— I never asked if she had dined.”
Mariuccia regarded this possibility with equanimity. She was not afraid of a girl’s appetite. But she made a grimace at the mention of the tea. “It is good when one has a cold; oh yes,” she said; “but to drink it at all times, as you do! If she wants anything it will be a great deal better to give her a sirop, or a little red wine.”
Frances detained Mariuccia as long as she could, and lingered herself still longer after all was ready in the room. She did not know how to go back to the drawing-room, where she had left these two together, to say to each other, no doubt, many things that could be better said in her absence. There was no jealousy, only delicacy, in this; and she had given up her pretty room to her sister, and carried her indispensable belongings to the bare one, with the purest pleasure in making Constance comfortable. Constance! whom an hour ago she hadnever heard of, and who now was one of them, nearer to her than anybody, except her father. But all this being done, she had the strangest difficulty in going back, in thrusting herself, as imagination said, between them, and interrupting their talk. To think that it should be such a tremendous matter to return to that familiar room in which the greater part of her life had been passed! It felt like another world into which she was about to enter, full of unknown elements and conditions which she did not understand. She had not known what it was to be shy in the very limited society she had ever known; but she was shy now, feeling as if she had not courage to put her hand upon the handle of the door. The familiar creak and jar of it as it opened seemed to her like noisy instruments announcing her approach, which stopped the conversation, as she had divined, and made her father and her sister look up with a little start. Frances could have wished to sink through the floor, to get rid of her own being altogether, as she saw them both give this slight start. Constance was leaning upon the table, the light of the lamp shining fullupon her face, with the air of being in the midst of an animated narrative, which she stopped when Frances entered; and Mr Waring had been listening with a smile. He turned half round and held out his hand to the timid girl behind him. “Come, Frances,” he said, “you have been a long time making your preparations. Have you been bringing out the fairest robe for your sister?” It was odd how the parable—which had no signification in their circumstances—haunted them all.
“Your room is quite ready whenever you please. And would you like tea or anything? I ought to have asked if you had dined,” Frances said.
“Is she the housekeeper?—How odd!—Do you look after everything?—Dear me! I am afraid, in that case, I shall make a very poor substitute for Frances, papa.”
“It is not necessary to think of that,” he said hastily, giving her a quick glance.
Frances saw it, with another involuntary, quickly suppressed pang. Of course there would be things that Constance must be warned not to say. And yet it felt as if papa haddeserted her and gone over to the other side. She had not the remotest conception what the warning referred to, or what Constance meant.
“I dined at the hotel,” Constance went on, “with those people whom I travelled with. I suppose you will have to call and be civil. They were quite delighted to think that they would know somebody at Bordighera—some of the inhabitants.— Yes, tea, if you please. And then I think I shall go to bed; for twenty-four hours in the train is very fatiguing, besides the excitement. Don’t you think Frances is very much like mamma? There is a little way she has of setting her chin.—Look there! That is mamma all over. I think they would get on together very well: indeed I feel sure of it.” And again there was a significant look exchanged, which once more went like a sting to Frances’ heart.
“Your sister has been telling me,” said Mr Waring, with a little hesitation, “of a great many people I used to know. You must be very much surprised, my dear; but I will take an opportunity——” He was confused before her, as if he had been before a judge. He gaveher a look which was half shame and half gratitude, sentiments both entirely out of place between him and Frances. She could not bear that he should look at her so.
“Yes, papa,” she said as easily as she could; “I know you must have a great deal to talk of. If Constance will give me her keys I will unpack her things for her.” Both the girls instinctively, oddly, addressed each other through their father, the only link between them, hesitating a little at the familiarity which nature made necessary, but which had no other warrant.
“Oh, isn’t there a maid who can do it?” Constance cried, opening her eyes.
The evening seemed long to Frances, though it was not long. Constance trifled over the tea—which Mariuccia made with much reluctance—for half an hour. But she talked all the time; and as her talk was of people Frances had never heard of, and was mingled with little allusions to what had passed before,—“I told you about him;” “You remember, we were talking of them;” with a constant recurrence of names which to Frances meant nothing at all,—it seemed long to her.
She sat down at the table, and took her knitting, and listened, and tried to look as if she took an interest. She did indeed take a great interest; no one could have been more eager to enter withoutarrière-penséeinto the new life thus unfolded before her; and sometimes she was amused and could laugh at the stories Constance was telling; but her chief feeling was that sense of being entirely “out of it”—having nothing to do with it—which makes people who do not understand society feel like so many ghosts standing on the margin, knowing nothing. The feeling was strange and very forlorn. It is an unpleasant experience even for those who are strangers, to whom it is a passing incident; but as the speaker was her sister and the listener her father, Frances felt this more deeply still. Generally in the evening conversation flagged between them. He would have his book, and Frances sometimes had a book too, or a drawing upon which she could work, or at least her knitting. She had felt that the silence which reigned in the room on such occasions was not what ought to be.It was not like the talk which was supposed to go on in all the novels she had ever read where the people werenice. And sometimes she attempted to entertain her father with little incidents in the life of their poor neighbours, or things which Mariuccia had told her; but he listened benevolently, with his finger between the leaves of his book, or even without closing his book, looking up at her over the leaves—only out of kindness to her, not because he was interested; and then silence would fall on them, a silence which was very sweet to Frances, in the midst of which her own little stream of thoughts flowed on continuously, but which now and then she was struck to the heart to think must be very dull for papa.
But to-night it was not dull for him. She listened, and said to herself this was the way to make conversation; and laughed whenever she could, and followed every little gesture of her sister’s with admiring eyes. But at the end, Frances, though she would not acknowledge it to herself, felt that she had not been amused. She thought the people in the village were justas interesting. But then she was not so clever as Constance, and could not do them justice in the same way.
“And now I am going to bed,” Constance said. She rose up in an instant with a rapid movement, as if the thought had only just struck her and she obeyed the impulse at once. There was a freedom about all her movements which troubled and captivated Frances. She had been leaning half over the table, her sleeves, which were a little wide, falling back from her arms, now leaning her chin in the hollow of one hand, now supporting it with both, putting her elbows wherever she pleased. Frances herself had been trained by Mariuccia to very great decorum in respect to attitudes. If she did furtively now and then lean an elbow upon the table, she was aware that it was wrong all the time; and as for legs, she knew it was only men who were permitted to cross them, or to do anything save sit with two feet equal to each other upon the floor. But Constance cared for none of these rules. She rose up abruptly (Mariuccia would have said, as if something had stung her),almost before she had finished what she was saying. “Show me my room, please,” she said, and yawned. She yawned quite freely, naturally, without any attempt to conceal or to apologise for it as if it had been an accident. Frances could not help being shocked, yet neither could she help laughing with a sort of pleasure in this breach of all rules. But Constance only stared, and did not in the least understand why she should laugh.
“Where have you put your sister?” Mr Waring asked.
“I have put her—in the room next to yours, papa; between your room and mine, you know: for I am in the blue room now. There she will not feel strange; she will have people on each side.”
“That is to say, you have given her——”
It was Frances’ turn now to give a warning glance. “The room I thought she would like best,” she said, with a soft but decisive tone. She too had a little imperious way of her own. It was so soft, that a stranger would not have found it out; but in the Palazzo they were all acquainted with it, and no one—not evenMariuccia—found it possible to say a word after this small trumpet had sounded. Mr Waring accordingly was silenced, and made no further remark. He went with his daughters to the door, and kissed the cheek which Constance held lightly to him. “I shall see you again, papa,” Frances said, in that same little determined voice.
Mr Waring did not make any reply, but shrank a little aside, to let her pass. He looked like a man who was afraid. She had spared him; she had not betrayed the ignorance in which he had brought her up; but now the moment of reckoning was near, and he was afraid of Frances. He went back into thesalone, and walked up and down with a restlessness which was natural enough, considering how all the embers of his life had been raked up by this unexpected event. He had lived in absolute quiet for fourteen long years: a strange life—a life which might have been supposed to be impossible for a man still in the heyday of his strength; but yet, as it appeared, a life which suited him, which he preferred to others more natural. To settledown in an Italian village with a little girl of six for his sole companion—when he came to think of it, nothing could be more unnatural, more extraordinary; and yet he had liked it well enough, as well as he could have liked anything at that crisis of his fate. He was the kind of man who, in other circumstances, in another age, would have made himself a monk, and spent his existence very placidly in illuminating manuscripts. He had done something as near this as is possible to an Englishman not a Roman Catholic, of the nineteenth century. Unfortunately, Waring had no ecclesiastical tendencies, or even in the nineteenth century he might have found out for himself some pseudo-monkery in which he could have been happy. As it was, he had retired with his little girl, and on the whole had been comfortable enough. But now the little girl had grown up, and required to have various things accounted for; and the other individuals who had claims upon him, whom he thought he had shaken off altogether, had turned up again, and had to be dealt with. The monk had an easy time of it in comparison. He who has but himself to think of may manage himself, if he has good luck; but the responsibility of others on your shoulders is a terrible drawback to tranquillity. A little girl! That seemed the simplest of all things. It had never occurred to him that she would form a link by which all his former burdens might be drawn back; or that she, more wonderful still, should ever arise and demand to know why. But both of these impossible things had happened.
Waring walked about thesalone. He opened the glass door and stepped out into the loggia, into the tranquil shining of the moon, which lit up all the blues of the sea, and kindled little silver lamps all over the quivering palms. How quiet it was! and yet that tranquil nature lying unmoved, taking whatever came of good or evil, did harm in a far more colossal way than any man could do. The sea, then looking so mild, would suddenly rise up and bring havoc and destruction worse than an army; yet next day smile again, and throw its spray into the faces of the children, and lie like a harmless thing under the light. But a mancould not do this. A man had to give an account of all that he had done, whether it was good or whether it was evil,—if not to God—which on the whole was the easiest, for God knew all about it, how little harm had been intended, how little anything had been intended, how one mistake involved another,—if not to God—why, to some one harder to face; perhaps to one’s little girl.
He came back from the loggia and the moonlight and nature, which, all of them, were so indifferent to what was happening to him, with a feeling that the imperfect human lamp which so easily got out of gear—as easily as a man—was a more appropriate light for his disturbed soul; and met Frances with her brown eyes waiting for him at the door.
“Itis not because of this only, papa—I wanted before to speak to you. I was waiting in the loggia for you, when Constance came.”
“What did you want, Frances? Oh, I quite acknowledge that you have a right to inquire. I hoped, perhaps, I might be spared to-night; I am rather exhausted—to-night.”
Frances dropped the hand which she had laid upon his arm. “It shall be exactly as you please, papa. I seem to know a great deal—oh, a great deal more than I knew at dinner. I don’t think I am the same person; and I thought it might save us all trouble if you would tell me—as much as you think I ought to know.”
She had sat down in her usual place, in her careful little modest pose, a little stiff, a littleprim—the training of Mariuccia. After Constance, there was something in the attitude of Frances which made her father smile, though he was in no mood for smiling; and it was clear that he could not, that he ought not to escape. He would not sit down, however, and meet her eye. He stood by the table for a few minutes, with his eyes upon the books, turning them over, as if he were looking for something. At last he said, but without looking up, “There is nothing very dreadful to tell; no guilty secret, though you may suppose so. Your mother and I——”
“Then I have really a mother, and she is living?” the girl cried.
He looked at her for a moment. “I forgot that for a girl of your age that means a great deal—I hadn’t thought of it. Perhaps if you knew—— Yes; you have got a mother, and she is living. I suppose that seems a very wonderful piece of news?”
Frances did not say anything. The water came into her eyes. Her heart beat loudly, yet softly, against her young bosom. She hadknown it, so that she was not surprised. The surprise had been broken by Constance’s careless talk, by the wonder, the doubt, the sense of impossibility, which had gradually yielded to a conviction that it must be so. Her feeling was that she would like to go now, without delay, without asking any more questions, to her mother. Her mother! and he hadn’t thought before how much that meant to a girl—of her age!
Mr Waring was a little disconcerted by having no answer. Of course it meant a great deal to a girl; but still, not so much as to make her incapable of reply. He felt a little annoyed, disturbed, perhaps jealous, as Frances herself had been. It was with difficulty that he resumed again; but it had to be done.
“Your mother and I,” he said, taking up the books again, opening and shutting them, looking at the title-page now of one, now of another, “did not get on very well. I don’t know who was in fault—probably both. She had been married before. She had a son whom you hear Constance speak of as Markham. Markham has been at the bottom of all the trouble. He drove me out of my senses when he was aboy. Now he is a man: so far as I can make out it is he that has disturbed our peace again—hunted us up, and sent Constance here. If you ever meet Markham—and of course now you are sure to meet him—beware of him.” Here he made a pause again, and looked with great seriousness at the book in his hand, turning the leaf to finish a sentence which was continued on the next page.
“I beg your pardon, papa,” said Frances; “I am afraid I am very stupid. What relation is Markham to me?”
He looked at her for a moment, then threw down the book with some violence on the table, as if it were the offender. “He is your step-brother,” he said.
“My—brother? Then I have a brother too?” After a little pause she added, “It is very wonderful, papa, to come into a new world like this all at once. I want—to draw my breath.”
“It is my fault that it comes upon you all at once. I never thought—— You were a very small child when I brought you away.You forgot them all, as was natural. I did not at first know how entirely a child forgets; and then—then it seemed a pity to disturb your mind, and perhaps set you longing for—what it was impossible for you to obtain.”
It surprised him a little that Frances did not breathe a syllable of reproach. She said nothing. In her imagination she was looking back over these years, wondering how it would have been had she known. Would life ever be the same, now that she did know? The world seemed to open up round her, so much greater, wider, more full than she had thought. She had not thought much on the subject. Life in Bordighera was more limited even than life in an English village. The fact that she did not belong to the people among whom she had spent all these years, made a difference; and her father’s recluse habits, the few people he cared to know, the stagnation of his life, made a greater difference still. Frances had scarcely felt it until that meeting with the Mannerings, which put so many vague ideas into her mind. A child does not naturally inquire into the circumstances which have surrounded it all its life. It was natural to her to live in thisretired place, to see nobody, to make amusements and occupations for herself—to know no one more like herself than Tasie Durant. Had she even possessed any girl-friends living the natural life of youth, that might have inspired a question or two. But she knew no girls—except Tasie, whose girlhood was a sort of fossil, and who might almost have been the mother of Frances. She saw indeed the village girls, but it did not occur to her to compare herself with them. Familiar as she was with all their ways, she was still aforestière—one of the barbarous people, English, a word which explains every difference. Frances did not quite know in what the peculiarity and eccentricity of the English consisted; but she, too, recognised with all simplicity that, being English, she was different. Now it came suddenly to her mind that the difference was not anything generic and general, but that it was her own special circumstances that had been unlike all the rest. There had been a mother all the time; another girl, a sister, like herself. It made her brain whirl.
She sat quite silent, thinking it all over, notperceiving her father’s embarrassment—thinking less of him, indeed, than of all the wonderful new things that seemed to crowd about her. She did not blame him. She was not thinking enough of him to blame him; her mind was quite sufficiently occupied by her discoveries. As she had taken him all her life without examination, she continued to take him. He was her father; that was enough. It did not occur to her to ask herself whether what he had done was right or wrong. Only, it was all very strange. The old solid earth had gone from under her feet, and the old order of things had been overthrown. She was looking out upon a world not realised—a spectator of something like the throes of creation, seeing the new landscape tremble and roll into place, the heights and hollows all changing; there was a great deal of excitement in it, both pain and pleasure. It occupied her so fully, that he fell back into a secondary place.
But this did not occur to Waring. He had not realised that it could be possible. He felt himself the centre of the system in which hislittle daughter lived, and did not understand how she could ignore him. He thought her silence—the silence of amazement, and excitement, and of that curious spectatorship—was the silence of reproach, and that her mind was full of a sense of wrong, which only duty kept in check. He felt himself on his trial before her. Having said all that he had to say, he remained silent, expecting her response. If she had given vent to an indignant exclamation, he would have been relieved; he would have allowed that she had a right to be indignant. But her silence was more than he could bear. He searched through the recesses of his own thoughts; but for the moment he could not find any further excuse for himself. He had done it for the best. Probably she would not see that. Waring was well enough acquainted with the human mind to know that every individual sees such a question from his or her own point of view: and he was prepared to find that his daughter would be unable to perceive what was so plain to him. But still he was aware that he had done it for the best. After a while the silence became so irksome to him that he felt compelled to break itand resume his explanations. If she would not say anything, there were a number of things which he might say.
“It is a pity,” he said, “that it has all broken upon you so suddenly. If I could have divined that Constance would have taken such a step—— To tell you the truth, I have never realised Constance at all,” he added, with an impulse towards the daughter he knew. “She was of course a mere child: to see her so independent, and with so distinct a will of her own, is very bewildering. I assure you, Frances, if it is wonderful to you, it is scarcely less wonderful to me.”
There was something in his tone that made her lift her eyes to him; and to see him stand there so embarrassed, so subdued, so much unlike the father who, though very kind and tender, had always been perhaps a little condescending, patronising, towards the girl, whom he scarcely recognised as an independent entity, went to her heart. She could not tell him not to be frightened—not to look at her with that guilty, apologetic look, which altogether reversed their ordinary relationship; but it added a pangto her bewilderment. She asked hastily, by way of concealing this uncomfortable change, a question which she thought he would have no difficulty in answering—“Is Constance much older than I am, papa?”
He gave a sort of furtive smile, as if he had no right to smile in the circumstances. “I don’t wonder at your question. She has seen a great deal more of the world. But if there is a minute or two between you, I don’t know which has it. There is no elder or younger in the case. You are twins, though no one would think so.”
This gave Frances a further shock—though why, it would be impossible to say. The blood rushed to her face. “She must think me—a very poor little thing,” she said, in a hurried tone. “I never knew—I have no friend except Tasie—to show me what girls might be.” The thought mortified her in an extraordinary way; it brought a sudden gush of salt tears—tears quite different from those which had welled to her eyes when he told her of her mother. Constance, who was so different, would despise her—Constance, who knew exactly all about it, and that Frances was as old, perhaps a fewminutes older than she. It is always difficult to divine what form pride will take. This was the manner in which it affected Frances. The same age! and yet the one an accomplished woman, judging for herself—and the other not much more than a child.
“You do yourself injustice,” said Mr Waring, somewhat rehabilitated by the mortification of Frances. “Nobody could think you a poor little thing. You have not the same knowledge of the world. Constance has been very differently brought up. I think my training a great deal better than what she has had,” he added quickly, with a mingled desire to cheer and restore self-confidence to Frances, and to reassert himself after his humiliation. He felt what he said; and yet, as was natural, he said a little more than he felt. “I must tell you,” he said, in this new impulse, “that your mother is—a much more important person than I am. She is a great deal richer. The marriage was supposed to be much to my advantage.”
There was a smile on his face which Frances, looking up suddenly, warned by a certain change of tone, did not like to see. She kept her eyesupon him instinctively, she could not tell why, with a look which had a certain influence upon him, though he did not well understand it either. It meant that the unknown woman of whom he spoke was the girl’s mother—her mother—one of whom no unbefitting word was to be said. It checked him in a quite curious unexpected way. When he had spoken of her, which he had done very rarely since they parted, it had been with a sense that he was free to characterise her as he thought she deserved. But here he was stopped short. That very evening he had said things to Constance of her mother which in a moment he felt that he dared not say to Frances. The sensation was a very strange one. He made a distinct pause, and then he said hurriedly, “You must not for a moment suppose that there was anything wrong; there is no story that you need be afraid of hearing—nothing, neither on her side nor mine—nothing to be ashamed of.”
All at once Frances grew very pale; her eyes opened wide; she gazed at him with speechless horror. The idea was altogether new to her artless mind. It flashed through his that Constancewould not have been at all surprised—that probably she would have thought it “nice of him” to exonerate his wife from all moral shortcoming. The holy ignorance of the other brought a sensation of shame to Waring, and at the same time a sensation of pride. Nothing could more clearly have proved the superiority of his training. She would have felt no consternation, only relief at this assurance, if she had been all her life in her mother’s hands.
“It is a great deal to say, however, though you are too inexperienced to know. The whole thing was incompatibility—incompatibility of temper, and of ideas, and of tastes, and of fortune even. I could not, you may suppose, accept advantages purchased with my predecessor’s money, or take the good of his rank through my wife; and she would not come down in the world to my means and to my name. It was an utter mistake altogether. We should have understood each other beforehand. It was impossible that we could get on. But that was all. There was probably more talk about it than if there had been really more to talk about.”
Frances rose up with a little start. “I think, perhaps,” she said, “I don’t want you to tell me any more.”
“Well—perhaps you are right.” But he was startled by her quick movement. “I did not mean to say anything that could shock you. If you are to hear anything at all, the truth is what you must hear. But you must not blame me over-much, Frances. Your very impatience of what I have been saying will explain to you why I thought that to say nothing—as long as I could help it—was the best.”
Her hand trembled a little as she lighted her candle, but she made no comment. “Good night, papa. To-morrow it will all seem different. Everything is strange to-night.”
He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked down into the little serious face, the face that had never been so serious before. “Don’t think any worse of me, Frances, than you can help.”
Her eyes opened wider with astonishment.
“Think of you, worse—— But, papa, I am not thinking of you at all,” she said, simply; “I am thinking ofit.”
Waring had gone through a number of depressing and humbling experiences during the course of the evening, but this was the unkindest of all—and it was so natural. Frances was no critic. She was not thinking of his conduct, which was the first thing in his mind, but ofIt, the revelation which had been made to her. He might have perceived that, or divined it, if he had not been occupied by this idea, which did not occupy her at all—the thought of how he personally had come through the business. He gave a little faltering laugh at himself as he stooped and kissed her. “That’s all right,” he said. “Good night; but don’t letItinterfere with your sleep. To-morrow everything will look different, as you say.”
Frances turned away with her light in her hand; but before she had reached the door, returned again. “I think I ought to tell you, papa, that I am sure the Durants know. They said a number of strange things to me yesterday, which I think I understand now. If you don’t mind, I would rather let them suppose that I knew all the time; otherwise,it looks as if you thought you could not trust me.”
“I could trust you,” he said, with a little fervour,—“my dear child, my dear little girl—I would trust you with my life.”
Was there a faint smile in the little girl’s limpid simple eyes? He thought so, and it disconcerted him strangely. She made no response to that protestation, but with a little nod of her head went away. Waring sat down at the table again, and began to think it all over from the beginning. He was sore and aching, like a man who has fallen from a height. He had fallen from the pedestal on which, to Frances, he had stood all these years. She might not be aware of it even—but he was. And he had fallen from those Elysian fields of peace in which he had been dwelling for so long. They had not, perhaps, seemed very Elysian while he was secure of their possession. They had been monotonous in their stillness, and wearied his soul. But now that he looked back upon them, a new cycle having begun,they seemed to him like the very home of peace. He had not done anything to forfeit this tranquillity; and yet it was over, and he stood once more on the edge of an agitated and disturbed life. He was a man who could bear monotony, who liked his own way, yet liked that bondage of habit which is as hard as iron to some souls. He liked to do the same things at the same time day after day, and to be undisturbed in doing them. But now all his quiet was over. Constance would have a thousand requirements such as Frances had never dreamed of; and her brother no doubt would soon turn up—that step-brother whom Waring had never been able to tolerate even when he was a child. She might even come Herself—who could tell?
When this thought crossed his mind, he got up hastily and left thesalone, leaving the lamp burning, as Domenico found it next morning, to his consternation—a symbol of Chaos come again—burning in the daylight. Mr Waring almost fled to his room and locked his door in the horror of that suggestion.And this was not only because the prospect of such a visit disturbed him beyond measure, but because he had not yet made a clean breast of it. Frances did not yet know all.
Frances for her part went to the blue room, and opened thepersiani, and sat looking out upon the moonlight for some time before she went to bed. The room was bare; she missed her pictures, which Constance had taken no notice of—the Madonna that had been above her head for so many years, and which had vaguely appeared to her as a symbol of the mother who had never existed in her life. Now there seemed less need for the Madonna. The bare walls had pictures all over them—pictures of a new life. In imagination, no one is shy, or nervous, or strange. She let the new figures move about her freely, and delighted herself with familiar pictures of them and the changes that must accompany them. She was not like her father, afraid of changes. She thought of the new people, the new combinations, the quickened life: and the thought made her smile. Theywould come, and she would make the house gay and bright to receive them. Perhaps some time, surrounded by this new family that belonged to her, she might even be taken “home.” The thought was delightful notwithstanding the thrill of excitement in it. But still there was something which Frances did not know.
“Whatis this I hear about Waring?” said General Gaunt, walking out upon the loggia, where the Durants were sitting, on the same memorable afternoon on which all that has been above related occurred. The General was dressed in loosely fitting light-coloured clothes. It was one of the recommendations of the Riviera to him that he could wear out there all his old Indian clothes, which would have been useless to him at home. He was a very tall old man, very yellow, nay, almost greenish in the complexion, extremely spare, with a fine old white moustache, which had an immense effect upon his brown face. The well-worn epigram might be adapted in his case to say that nobody ever was so fierce as the General looked; and yet he was at bottom rather a mildold man, and had never hurt anybody, except the sepoys in the Mutiny, all his life. His head was covered with a broad light felt hat, which, soft as it was, took an aggressive cock when he put it on. He held his gloves dangling from his hand with the air of having been in too much haste to put them to their proper use. And his step, as he stepped off the carpet upon the marble of the loggia, sounded like that of an alert officer who has just heard that the enemy has made a reconnaissance in force two miles off, and that there is no time to lose. “What is this I hear about Waring?” he said.
“Yes, indeed!” cried Mrs Durant.
“It is a most remarkable story,” said his Reverence, shaking his head.
“But what is it?” asked the General. “I found Mrs Gaunt almost crying when I went in. What she said was, ‘Charles, we have been nourishing a viper in our bosoms.’ I am not addicted to metaphor, and I insisted upon plain English; and then it all came out. She told me Waring was an impostor, and had been taking us all in; that some old friend of his had been here, and had told you. Is that true?”
“My dear!” said Mr Durant in a tone of remonstrance.
“Well, Henry! you never said it was to be kept a secret. It could not possibly be kept a secret—so few of us here, and all so intimate.”
“Then he is an impostor?” said General Gaunt.
“Oh, my dear General, that’s too strong a word. Henry, you had better tell the General, your own way.”
The old clergyman had been shaking his head all the time. He was dying to tell all that he knew, yet he could not but improve the occasion. “Oh, ladies, ladies!” he said, “when there is anything to be told, the best of women is not to be trusted. But, General, our poor friend is no impostor. He never said he was a widower.”
“It’s fortunate we’ve none of us girls——” the General began; then with a start, “I forgot Miss Tasie; but she’s a girl—a girl in ten thousand,” he added, with a happy inspiration. Tasie, who was still seated behind the teacups, give him a smile in reply.
“Poor dear Mr Waring,” she said, “whetherhe is a widower or has a wife, it does not matter much. Nobody can call Mr Waring a flirt. He might be any one’s grandfather from his manner. I cannot see that it matters a bit.”
“Not so far as we are concerned, thank heaven!” said her mother, with the air of one whose dear child has escaped a danger. “But I don’t think it is quite respectable for one of our small community to have a wife alive and never to let any one know.”
“I understand, a most excellent woman; besides being a person of rank,” said Mr Durant. “It has disturbed me very much—though, happily, as my wife says, from no private motive.” Here the good man paused, and gave vent to a sigh of thankfulness, establishing the impression that his ingenuous Tasie had escaped as by a miracle from Waring’s wiles; and then he continued, “I think some one should speak to him on the subject. He ought to understand that now it is known, public opinion requires—— Some one should tell him——”
“There is no one so fit as a clergyman,” the General said.
“That is true, perhaps, in the abstract; butwith our poor friend—— There are some men who will not take advice from a clergyman.”
“O Henry! do him justice. He has never shown anything but respect to you.”
“I should say that a man of the world, like the General——”
“Oh, not I,” cried the General, getting up hurriedly. “No, thank you; I never interfere with any man’s affairs. That’s your business, Padre. Besides, I have no daughter: whether he is married or not is nothing to me.”
“Nor to us, heaven be praised!” said Mrs Durant; and then she added, “It is not for ourselves; it is for poor little Frances, a girl that has never known a mother’s care! How much better for her to be with her mother, and properly introduced into society, than living in that hugger-mugger way, without education, without companions! If it were not for Tasie, the child would never see a creature near her own age.”
“And I am much older than Frances,” said Tasie, rather to heighten the hardship of the situation than from any sense that this was true.
“Decidedly the Padre ought to talk to him,” said the Anglo-Indian. “He ought to be made to feel that everybody at the station—— Wife all right, do you know? Bless me! if the wife is all right, what does the man mean? Why can’t they quarrel peaceably, and keep up appearances, as we all do?”
“Oh no—not all;wenever quarrel.”
“Not for a long time, my love.”
“Henry, you may trust to my memory. Not for about thirty years. We had a little disagreement then about where we were to go for the summer. Oh, I remember it well—the agony it cost me! Don’t say ‘as wealldo,’ General, for it would not be true.”
“You are a pair of old turtle-doves,” quoth the General. “All the more reason why you should talk to him, Padre. Tell him he’s come among us on false pretences, not knowing the damage he might have done. I always thought he was a queer hand to have the education of a little girl.”
“He taught her Latin; and that woman of theirs, Mariuccia, taught her to knit. That’s all she knows. And her mother all the time insuch a fine position, able to do anything for her! Oh, it is of Frances I think most!”
“It is quite evident,” said the General, “that Mr Durant must interfere.”
“I think it very likely I shall do no good. A man of the world, a man like that——”
“There is no such great harm about the man.”
“And he is very good to Frances,” said Tasie, almost under her breath.
“I daresay he meant no harm,” said the General, “if that is all. Only, he should be warned; and if anything can be done for Frances—— It is a pity she should see nobody, and never have a chance of establishing herself in life.”
“She ought to be introduced into society,” said Mrs Durant. “As for establishing herself in life, that is in the hands of Providence, General. It is not to be supposed that such an idea ever enters into a girl’s mind—unless it is put there, which is so often the case.”
“The General means,” said Tasie, “that seeing people would make her more fit to be a companion for her papa. Frances is a dear girl; but it is quite true—she is wanting in conversation.They often sit a whole evening together and scarcely speak.”
“She is a nice little thing,” said the General, energetically—“I always thought so; and never was at a dance, I suppose, or a junketing of any description, in her life. To be sure, we are all old duffers in this place. The Padre should interfere.”
“If I could see it was my duty,” said Mr Durant.
“I know what you mean,” said General Gaunt. “I’m not too fond of interference myself. But when a man has concealed his antecedents, and they have been found out. And then the little girl——”
“Yes: it is Frances I think of most,” said Mr Durant.
It was at last settled among them that it was clearly the clergyman’s business to interfere. He had been tolerably certain to begin with, but he liked the moral support of what he called a consensus of opinion. Mr Durant was not so reluctant as he professed to be. He had not much scope for those social duties which, he was of opinion,were not the least important of a clergyman’s functions; and though there was a little excitement in the uncertainty from Sunday to Sunday how many people would be at church, what the collection would be, and other varying circumstances, yet the life of the clergyman at Bordighera was monotonous, and a little variety was welcome. In other chaplaincies which Mr Durant had held, he had come in contact with various romances of real life. These were still the days of gaming, when every German bath had itstapis vertand its little troup of tragedies. But the Riviera was very tranquil, and Bordighera had just been found out by the invalid and the pleasure-seeker. It was monotonous: there had been few deaths, even among the visitors, which are always varieties in their way for the clergyman, and often are the means of making acquaintances both useful and agreeable to himself and his family. But as yet there had not even been many deaths. This gave great additional excitement to what is always exciting, for a small community—the cropping up under their very noses, in their own immediate circle, of a mystery, of a discovery which afforded boundless opportunity for talk. The first thing naturally that had affected Mr and Mrs Durant was the miraculous escape of Tasie, to whom Mr Waringmighthave made himself agreeable, and whose peace of mind might have been affected, for anything that could be said to the contrary. They said to each other that it was a hair-breadth escape; although it had not occurred previously to any one that any sort of mutual attraction between Mr Waring and Tasie was possible.
And then the other aspects of the case became apparent. Mr Durant felt now that to pass it over, to say nothing about the matter, to allow Waring to suppose that everything was as it had always been, was impossible. He and his wife had decided this without the intervention of General Gaunt; but when the General appeared—the only other permanent pillar of society in Bordighera—then there arose that consensus which made further steps inevitable. Mrs Gaunt looked in later, after dinner, in the darkening; and she, too, was of opinion that something must be done. She was affected to tears by the thought of that mystery in their very midst, and of what the poor (unknown) lady must have suffered, deserted by her husband, and bereft of her child. “He might at least have left her her child,” she said, with a sob; and she was fully of opinion that he should be spoken to without delay, and that they should not rest till Frances had been restored to her mother. She thought it was “a duty” on the part of Mr Durant to interfere. The consensus was thus unanimous; there was not a dissentient voice in the entire community. “We will sleep upon it,” Mr Durant said. But the morning brought no further light. They were all agreed more strongly than ever that Waring ought to be spoken to, and that it was undeniably a duty for the clergyman to interfere.
Mr Durant accordingly set out before it was too late, before the mid-day breakfast, which is the coolest and calmest moment of the day, the time for business, before social intercourse is supposed to begin. He was very carefully brushed from his hat to his shoes, and was indeed a veryagreeable example of a neat old clerical gentleman. Ecclesiastical costume was much more easy in those days. It was before the era of long coats and soft hats, when a white tie was the one incontrovertible sign of the clergyman who did not think of calling himself a priest. He was indeed, having been for a number of years located in Catholic countries, very particular not to call himself a priest, or to condescend to any garb which could recall thesoutaneand three-cornered hat of the indigenous clergy. His black clothes were spotless, but of the ordinary cut, perhaps a trifle old-fashioned. But yet neithersoutanenorberrettacould have made it more evident that Mr Durant, setting out with an ebony stick and black gloves, was an English clergyman going mildly but firmly to interfere. Had he been met with in the wilds of Africa, even there mistake would have been impossible. In his serious eye, in the aspect of the corners of his mouth, in a certain air of gentle determination diffused over his whole person, this was apparent. It made a great impression upon Domenico when he opened the door. After what hadhappened yesterday, Domenico felt that anything might happen. “Lo, this man’s brow, like to a title leaf, foretells the nature of the tragic volume,” he said to Mariuccia—at least if he did not use these words, his meaning was the same. He ushered the English pastor into the room which Mr Waring occupied as a library, with bated breath. “Master is going to catch it,” was what, perhaps, a light-minded Cockney might have said. But Domenico was a serious man, and did not trifle.
Waring’s library was, like all the rooms of his suite, an oblong room, with three windows and as many doors, opening into the dining-room on one hand, and the ante-room on the other. It had the usual indecipherable fresco on the roof, and the walls on one side were half clothed with bookcases. Not a very large collection of books, and yet enough to make a pretty show, with their old gilding, and the dull white of the vellum in which so many were bound. It was a room in which he spent the most of his time, and it had been made comfortable according to the notions of comfort prevailing in these regions. There was a square of carpet under hiswriting-table. His chair was a large oldfauteuil, covered with faded damask; and curtains, also faded, were festooned over all the windows and doors. Thepersianiwere shut to keep out the sun, and the cool atmosphere had a greenish tint. Waring, however, did not look so peaceful as his room. He sat with his chair pushed away from the table, reading what seemed to be a novel. He had the air of a man who had taken refuge there from some embarrassment or annoyance; not the tranquil look of a man occupied in so-called studies needing leisure, with his note-books at hand, and pen and ink within reach. Such a man is usually very glad to be interrupted in the midst of his self-imposed labours, and Waring’s first movement was one of satisfaction. He threw down the book, with an apology for having ever taken it up in the half-ashamed, half-violent way in which he got rid of it. Don’t suppose I care for such rubbish, his gesture seemed to say. But the aspect of Mr Durant changed his look of welcome. He rose hurriedly, and gave his visitor a chair. “You are early out,” he said.
“Yes; the morning, I find, is the best time. Even after the sun is down, it is never so fresh in the evening. Especially for business, I find it the best time.”
“That means, I suppose,” said Waring, “that your visit this morning means business, and not mere friendship, as I had supposed?”
“Friendship always, I hope,” said the tidy old clergyman, smoothing his hat with his hand; “but I don’t deny it is something more serious: a—a—question I want to ask you, if you don’t mind——”
Just at this moment, in the next room there rose a little momentary and pleasant clamour of voices and youthful laughter; two voices certainly—Frances and another. This made Mr Durant prick up his ears. “You have—visitors?” he said.
“Yes. I will answer to the best of my ability,” said Waring, with a smile.
Now was the time when Mr Durant realised the difficult nature of his mission. At home in his own house, especially in the midst of the consensus of opinion, with everybody encouraging him and pressing upon him the fact thatit was “a duty,” the matter seemed easy enough. But when he found himself in Waring’s house, looking a man in the face with whose concerns he had really no right to interfere, and who had not at all the air of a man ready to be brought to the confessional, Mr Durant’s confidence failed him. He faltered a little; he looked at his very unlikely penitent, and then he looked at the hat which he was turning round in his hands, but which gave him no courage. Then he cleared his throat. “The question is—quite a simple one,” he said. “There can be no doubt of your ability—to answer. I am sure you will forgive me if I say, to begin with——”
“One moment. Is this question—which seems to trouble you—about my affairs or yours?”
Mr Durant’s clear complexion betrayed something like a flush. “That is just what I want to explain. You will acknowledge, my dear Waring, that you have been received here—well, there is not very much in our power—but with every friendly feeling, every desire to make you one of us.”
“All this preface shows me that it is I whohave been found wanting. You are quite right; you have been most hospitable and kind—to myself, almost too much so; to my daughter, you have given all the society she has ever known.”
“I am glad, truly glad, that you think we have done our part. My dear friend, was it right, then, when we opened our arms to you so unsuspectingly, to come among us in a false character—under false colours?”
“Stop!” said Waring, growing pale. “This is going a little too far. I suppose I understand what you mean. Mannering, who calls himself my old friend, has been here; and as he could not hold his tongue if his life depended upon it, he has told you—— But why you should accuse me of holding a false position, of coming under false colours—which was what you said——”
“Waring!” said the clergyman, in a voice of mild thunder, “did you never think, when you came here, comparatively a young, and—well, still a good-looking man—did you never think that there might be some susceptible heart—some woman’s heart——”
“Good heavens!” cried Waring, starting to his feet, “I never supposed for a moment——”
“——Some young creature,” Mr Durant continued, solemnly, “whom it might be my duty and your duty to guard from deception; but who naturally, taking you for a widower——”
Waring’s countenance of horror was unspeakable. He stood up before his table like a little boy who was about to be caned. Exclamations of dismay fell unconsciously from his lips. “Sir! I never thought——”
Mr Durant paused to contemplate with pleasure the panic he had caused. He put down his hat and rubbed together his little fat white hands. “By the blessing of Providence,” he said, drawing a long breath, “that danger has been averted. I say it with thankfulness. We have been preserved from any such terrible result. But had things been differently ordered—think, only think! and be grateful to Providence.”
The answer which Waring made to this speech was to burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter. He seemed incapable of recovering his gravity. As soon as he paused, exhausted,to draw breath, he was off again. The suggestion, when it ceased to be horrible, became ludicrous beyond description. He quavered forth “I beg your pardon” between the fits, which Mr Durant did not at all like. He sat looking on at the hilarity very gravely without a smile.
“I did not expect so much levity,” he said.
“I beg your pardon,” cried the culprit, with tears running down his cheeks. “Forgive me. If you will recollect that the character of a gay Lothario is the last one in the world——”
“It is not necessary to be a gay Lothario,” returned the clergyman. “Really, if this is to continue, it will be better that I should withdraw. Laughter was the last thing I intended to produce.”
“It is not a bad thing, and it is not an indulgence I am given to. But I think, considering what a very terrible alternative you set before me, we may be very glad it has ended in laughter. Mr Durant,” continued Waring, “you have only anticipated an explanation I intended to make. Mannering is an ass.”
“I am sure he is a most respectable member of society,” said Mr Durant, with much gravity.
“So are many asses. I have some one else to present to you, who is very unlike Mannering, but who betrays me still more distinctly. Constance, I want you here.”
The old clergyman gazed, not believing his eyes, as there suddenly appeared in the doorway the tall figure of a girl who had never been seen as yet in Bordighera—a girl who was very simply dressed, yet who had an air which the old gentleman, acquainted, as he flattered himself, with the air of fine people, could not ignore. She stood with a careless grace, returning slightly, not without a little of that impertinence of a fine lady which is so impressive to the crowd, his salutation. “Did you want me, papa?” she quietly asked.