Therevelation which thus burst upon Mr Durant was known throughout the length and breadth of Bordighera, as that good man said, before the day was out. The expression was not so inappropriate as might be at first supposed, considering the limited society to which the fact that Mr Waring had a second daughter was of any particular interest; for the good chaplain’s own residence was almost at the extremity of the Marina, and General Gaunt’s on the highest point of elevation among the olive gardens; while the only other English inhabitants were in the hotels near the beach, and consisted of a landlady, a housekeeper, and the highly respectable person who had charge of the stables at the Bellevue. This little inferior worldwas respectfully interested but not excited by the new arrival.
But to Mrs Durant and Tasie it was an event of the first importance; and Mrs Gaunt was at first disposed to believe that it was a revelation of further wickedness, and that there was no telling where these discoveries might end. “We shall be hearing that he has a son next,” she said. They had a meeting in the afternoon to talk it over; and it really did appear at first that the new disclosure enhanced the enormity of the first—for, naturally, the difference between a widower and a married man is aggravated by the discovery that the deceiver pretending to have only one child has really “a family.” At the first glance the ladies were all impressed by this; though afterwards, when they began to think of it, they were obliged to admit that the conclusion perhaps was not very well founded. And when it turned out that Frances and the new-comer were twins, that altogether altered the question, and left them, though they were by no means satisfied, without anything further to say.
While all this went on outside the Palazzo, there was much going on within it that was calculated to produce difficulty and embarrassment. Mr Waring, with a consciousness that he was acting a somewhat cowardly part, ran away from it altogether, and shut himself up in his library, and left his daughters to make acquaintance with each other as they best could. He was, as has been said, by no means sufficiently at his ease to return to what he called his studies, the ordinary occupations of his life. He had run away, and he knew it. He went so far as to turn the key in one door, so that, whatever happened, he could only be invaded from one side, and sat down uneasily in the full conviction that from moment to moment he might be called upon to act as interpreter or peacemaker, or to explain away difficulties. He did not understand women, but only his wife, from whom he had taken various prejudices on the subject; neither did he understand girls, but only Frances, whom, indeed, he ought to have known better than to suppose, either that she was likely to squabble with hersister, or call him in to mediate or explain. Frances was not at all likely to do either of these things; and he knew that, yet lived in a vague dread, and did not even sit comfortably on his chair, and tried to distract his mind with a novel—which was the condition in which he was found by Mr Durant. The clergyman’s visit did him a little good, giving him at once a grievance and an object of ridicule. During the rest of the day he was so far distracted from his real difficulties as to fall from time to time into fits of secret laughter over the idea of having been in all unconsciousness a source of danger for Tasie. He had never been a gay Lothario, as he said; but to have run the risk of destroying Tasie’s peace of mind was beyond his wildest imagination. He longed to confide it to somebody, but there was no one with whom he could share the fun. Constance perhaps might have understood; but Frances! He relapsed into gravity when he thought of Frances. It was not the kind of ludicrous suggestion which would amuse her.
Meanwhile the girls, who were such strangersto each other, yet so closely bound by nature, were endeavouring to come to a knowledge of each other by means which were much more subtle than any explanation their father could have supplied; so that he might, if he had understood them better, have been entirely at his ease on this point. As a matter of fact, though Constance was the cleverer of the two, it was Frances who advanced most quickly in her investigations, for the excellent reason that it was Constance who talked, while Frances, for the most part having nothing at all interesting to say of herself, held her peace. Frances had been awakened at an unusually late hour in the morning—for the agitation of the night had abridged her sleep at the other end—by the sounds of mirth which accompanied the first dialogue between her new sister and Mariuccia. The Italian which Constance knew was limited, but it was of a finer quality than any with which Mariuccia was acquainted; yet still they came to some sort of understanding, and both repudiated the efforts of Frances to explain. And from that moment Constance had keptthe conversation in her hands. She did not chatter, nor was there any appearance of loquacity in her; but Frances had lived much alone, and had been taught not to disturb her father when she was with him, so that it was more her habit to be talked to than to talk. She did not even ask many questions—they were scarcely necessary; for Constance, as was natural, was full of herself and of her motives for the step she had taken. These revelations gave Frances new lights almost at every word.
“You always knew, then, about—us?” Frances said. She had intended to say “about me,” but refrained, with mingled modesty and pride.
“Oh, certainly. Mamma always writes, you know, at Christmas, if not oftener. We did not know you were here. It was Markham who found out that. Markham is the most active-minded fellow in the world. Papa does not much like him. I daresay you have never heard anything very favourable of him; but that is a mistake. We knew pretty well about you. Mamma used to ask that you should write, since there was no reason why, at yourage, you should not speak for yourself; but you never did. I suppose he thought it better not.”
“I suppose so.”
“I should not myself have been restrained by that,” said Constance. “I think very well on the whole of papa; but obedience of that sort at our age is too much. I should not have obeyed him. I should have told him that in such a matter I must judge for myself. However, if one learns anything as one grows up,” said this young philosopher, “it is that no two people are alike. I suppose that was not how the subject presented itself to you?”
Frances made no reply. She wondered what she would have said had she been told to write to an unknown mother. Ought she to do so now? The idea was a very strange one to her mind, and yet what could be more natural? It was with a sense of precipitate avoidance of a subject which must be contemplated fully at an after-period, that she said hurriedly, “I have never written letters. It did not come into my head.”
“Ah!” said Constance, looking at her with a sort of impartial scrutiny. Then she added, with a sequence of thoughts which it was not difficult to follow, “Don’t you think it is very odd that you and I should be the same age?”
Frances felt herself grow red, and the water came to her eyes. She looked wistfully at the other, who was so much more advanced than she felt herself to be. “I suppose—we ought to have been like each other,” she said.
“We are not, however, a bit. You are like mamma. I don’t know whether you are like her in mind—but on the outside. And I am likehim. It is very funny. It shows that one has these peculiarities from one’s birth; it couldn’t be habit or association, as people say, for I have never been with him—neither have you with mamma. I suppose he is very independent-minded, and does what he likes without thinking? So do I. And you consider what other people will say, and how it will look, and a thousand things.”
It did not seem to Frances that this was the case; but she was not at all in the habit of studying herself, and made no protest. Didshe consider very much what other people would say? Perhaps it was true. She had been obliged, she reflected, to consider what Mariuccia would say; so that probably Constance was right.
“It was Markham that discovered you, after all, as I told you. He is invaluable; he never forgets; and if you want to find anything out, he will take any amount of trouble. I may as well tell you why I left home. If we are going to live together as sisters, we ought to make confidants of each other; and if you have to go, you can take my part. Well, then! You must know there is a man in it. They say you should always ask, ‘Who is She?’ when there is a row between men; and I am sure it is just as natural to ask, ‘Who is He?’ when a girl gets into a scrape.”
The language, the tone, the meaning, were all new to Frances. She did not know anything about it. When there is a row between men; when a girl gets into a scrape: the one and the other were equally far from her experience. She felt herself blush, though she scarcely knew why. She shook her head when Constanceadded, though rather as a remark than as a question, “Don’t you know? Oh, well; I did not mean, have you any personal experience, but as a general principle? The man in this case was well enough. Papa said, when I told him, that it was quite right; that I had better have made up my mind without making a fuss; that he would have advised me so, if he had known. But I will never allow that this is a point upon which any one can judge for you. Mamma pressed me more than a mother has any right to do—to a person of my age.”
“But, Constance, eighteen is not so very old.”
“Eighteen is the age of reason,” said the girl, somewhat imperiously; then she paused and added—“in most cases, when one has been much in the world, like me. Besides, it is like the middle ages when your mother thinks she can make you do what she pleases and marry as she likes. That must be one’s own affair. I must say that I thought papa would take my part more strongly, for they have always been so much opposed. But after all, though he is not in harmony with her, still the parents’ side is his side.”
“Did you not like—the gentleman?” said Frances. Nothing could be more modest than this question, and yet it brought the blood to her face. She had never heard the ordinarybadinageon this subject, or thought of love with anything but awe and reverence, as a mystery altogether beyond her and out of discussion. She did not look at her sister as she put the question. Constance lay back in the long wicker-work chair, well lined with cushions, which was her father’s favourite seat, with her hands clasped behind her head, in one of those attitudes of completeabandonwhich Frances had been trained to think impossible to a girl.
“Did I like—the gentleman? I did not think that question could ever again be put to me in an original way. I see now what is the good of a sister. Mamma and Markham and all my people had such a different way of looking at it. You must know thatthatis not the first question, whether you like the man. As for that, I liked him—well enough. There was nothing to—dislike in him.”
Frances turned her eyes to her sister’s face with something like reproach. “I may nothave used the right word. I have never spoken on such subjects before.”
“I have always been told that men are dreadful prudes,” said Constance. “I suppose papa has brought you up to think that such things must never be spoken of. I’ll tell you what is original about it. I have been asked if he was not rich enough, if he was not handsome enough, if it was because he had no title: and I have been asked if I loved him, which was nonsense. I could answer all that; but you I can’t answer. Don’t I like him? I was not going to be persecuted about him. It was Markham who put this into my head. ‘Why don’t you go to your father,’ he said, ‘if you won’t hear reason? He is just the sort of person to understand you, if we don’t.’ So, then, I took them at their word. I came off—to papa.”
“Does Markham dislike papa? I mean, doesn’t he think——”
“I know what you mean. They don’t think that papa has good sense. They think him romantic, and all that. I have always beenaccustomed to think so too. But the curious thing is that he isn’t,” said Constance, with an injured air. “I suppose, however foolish one’s father may be for himself, he still feels that he must stand on the parents’ side.”
“You speak,” said Frances, with a little indignation, “as if papa was likely to be against—his children; as if he were an enemy.”
“Taking sides is not exactly being enemies,” said Constance. “We are each of our own faction, you know. It is like Whigs and Tories. The fathers and mothers side with each other, even though they may be quite different and not get on together. There is a kind of reason in it. Only, I have always heard so much of papa as unreasonable and unlike other people, that I never thought of him in that light. He would be just the same, though, except that for the present I am a stranger, and he feels bound to be civil to me. If it were not for his politeness, he is capable of being medieval too.”
“I don’t know what medieval means,” said Frances, with much heat, indignant to hear her father thus spoken of as a subject for criticism.Perhaps she had criticised him in her time, as children use—but silently, not putting it into words, which makes a great difference. And besides, what one does one’s self in this way is quite another matter. As she looked at this girl, who was a stranger, though in some extraordinary way not a stranger, a momentary pang and impotent sudden rage against the web of strange circumstances in which she felt herself caught and bewildered, flamed up in her mild eyes and mind, unaccustomed to complications. Constance took no notice of this sudden passion.
“It means bread and water,” she said, with a laugh, “and shutting up in one’s own room, and cutting off of all communication from without. Mamma, if she were driven to it, is quite capable of that. They all are—rather than give in; but as we are not living in the middle ages, they have to give in at last. Perhaps, if I had thought that what you may call his official character would be too strong for papa, I should have fought it out at home. But I thought he at least would be himself, and not a conventional parent. I am sure he has been a veryqueer sort of parent hitherto; but the moment a fight comes, he puts himself on his own side.”
She gave forth these opinions very calmly, lying back in the long chair, with her hands clasped behind her head, and her eyes following abstractedly the lines of the French coast. The voice which uttered sentiments so strange to Frances was of the most refined and harmonious tones, low, soft, and clear. And the lines of her slim elastic figure, and of her perfectly appropriate dress, which combined simplicity and costliness, carelessness and consummate care, as only high art can, added to the effect of a beauty which was not beauty in any demonstrative sense, but rather harmony, ease, grace, fine health, fine training, and what, for want of a better word, we call blood. Not that the bluest blood in the world inevitably carries with it this perfection of tone; but Constance had the effect which a thoroughbred horse has upon the connoisseur. It would have detracted from the impression she made had there been any special point upon which the attention lingered—had her eyes, or her complexion, herhands, or her hair, or any individual trait, called for particular notice. But hers was not beauty of that description.
Her sister, who was, so to speak, only a little rustic, sat and gazed at her in a kind of rapture. Her heart did not, as yet at least, go out towards this intruder into her life; her affections were as yet untouched; and her temper was a little excited, disturbed by the critical tone which her sister assumed, and the calm frankness with which she spoke. But though all these dissatisfied, almost hostile sentiments were in Frances’ mind, her eyes and attention were fascinated. She could not resist the influence which this external perfection of being produced upon her. It was only perhaps now in the full morning light, in theabandonof this confidence and candour, which had none of the usual tenderness of confidential revelations, but rather a certain half-disdainful self-discovery which necessity demanded, that Frances fully perceived her sister’s gifts. Her own impatience, her little impulses of irritation and contradiction, died away in the wonderingadmiration with which she gazed. Constance showed no sign even of remarking the effect she produced. She said meditatively, dropping the words into the calm air without any apparent conception of novelty or wonder in them, “I wonder how you will like it when you have to go.”
Withinthe first few days, a great many of these conversations took place, and Frances gradually formed an idea to herself—not, perhaps, very like reality, but yet an idea—of the other life from which her sister had come. The chief figure in it was “mamma,” the mother with whom Constance was so carelessly familiar, and of whom she herself knew nothing at all. Frances did not learn from her sister’s revelations to love her mother. The effect was very different from that which, in such circumstances, might have been looked for. She came to look upon this unknown representative of “the parents’ side,” as Constance said, as upon a sort of natural opponent, one who understood but little and sympathised not at all with the younger, the other faction, the generation which was to succeed and replace her. Of this fact the other girl never concealed her easy conviction. The elders for the moment had the power in their hands, but by-and-by their day would be over. There was nothing unkind or cruel in this certainty; it was simply the course of nature: by-and-by their sway would be upset by the natural progress of events, and in the meantime it was modified by the other certainty, that if the young stood firm, the elders had no alternative but to give in. Altogether, it was evident the parents’ side was not the winning side; but all the same it had the power of annoying the other to a very great extent, and exercised this power with a selfishness which was sometimes brutal. Mamma, it was evident, had not considered Constance at all. She had taken her about into society for her own ends, not for her daughter’s pleasure: and, finally, she had formed a plan by which Constance was to be handed over to another proprietor without any consultation of her own wishes.
The heart of Frances sank as she slowly identified this maternal image, so different from that which fancy and nature suggest. She tried to compare it with the image which she herself might in her turn have communicated of herfather, had it been she who was the expositor. It frightened her to find, as she tried this experiment in her own mind, that the representation of papa would not have been much more satisfactory. She would have shown him as passing his time chiefly in his library, taking very little notice of her tastes and wishes, settling what was to be done, where to go, everything that was of any importance in their life, without at all taking into account what she wished. This she had always felt to be perfectly natural, and she had no feeling of a grievance in the matter; but supposing it to be necessary to tell the story to an ignorant person, what would that ignorant person’s opinion be? It gave her a great shock to perceive that the impression produced would also be one of harsh authority, indifferent, taking no note of the inclinations of those who were subject to it. That was how Constance would understand papa. It was not the case, and yet it would look so to one who did not know. Perceiving this, Frances came to feel that it might be natural to represent the world as consisting of two factions, parents and children. There was a certain truth in it. Ifthere should happen to occur any question—which was impossible—between papa and herself, she felt sure that it would be very difficult for him to realise that she had a will of her own; and yet Frances was very conscious of having a will of her own.
In this way she learned a great many things vaguely through the talk of her sister. She learned that balls and other entertainments, such as, to her inexperienced fancy, had seemed nothing but pleasure, were not in reality intended, at least as their first object, for pleasure at all. Constance spoke of them as things to which one must go. “We looked in for an hour,” she would say. “Mamma thinks she ought to have half-a-dozen places to go to every evening,” with a tone in which there was more sense of injury than pleasure. Then there was the mysterious question of love, which was at once so simple and so awful a matter, on which there could be no doubt or question: that, it appeared, was quite a complicated affair, in which the lover, the hero, was transferred into “the man,” whose qualities had to be discovered and considered, as if he were a candidate for a public office. All this bewildered Frances more than can be imagined or described. Her sister’s arrival, and the disclosures involved in it, had broken up to her all the known lines of heaven and earth; and now that everything had settled down again, and these lines were beginning once more to be apparent, Frances felt that though they were wider, they were narrower too. She knew a great deal more; but knowledge only made that appear hard and unyielding which had been elastic and infinite. The vague and imaginary were a great deal more lovely than this, which, according to her sister’s revelation, was the real and true.
Another very curious experience for Frances occurred when Mrs Durant and Mrs Gaunt, as in duty bound, and moved with lively curiosity, came to call and make acquaintance with Mr Waring’s new daughter. Constance regarded these visitors with languid curiosity, only half rising from her chair to acknowledge her introduction to them, and leaving Frances to answer the questions which they thought it only civil to put. Did she like Bordighera?
“Oh yes; well enough,” Constance replied.
“My sister thinks the people not so picturesque as she expected,” said Frances.
“But of course she felt the delightful difference in the climate?” People, Mrs Durant understood, were suffering dreadfully from east wind in London.
“Ah! one doesn’t notice in town,” said Constance.
“My sister is not accustomed to living without comforts and with so little furniture. You know that makes a great difference,” said her anxious expositor and apologist.
And then there would ensue a long pause, which the new-comer did nothing at all to break: and then the conversation fell into the ordinary discussion of who was at church on Sunday, how many new people from the hotels, and how disgraceful it was that some who were evidently English should either poke into the Roman Catholic places or never go to church at all.
“It comes to the same thing, indeed,” Mrs Durant said, indignantly; “for when they go to the native place of worship, they don’t understand. Even I, that have been so long on the Continent, I can’t follow the service.”
“But papa can,” said Tasie.
“Ah, papa—papa is much more highly educated than I could ever pretend to be; and besides, he is a theologian, and knows. There were quite half-a-dozen people, evidently English, whom I saw with my own eyes coming out of the chapel on the Marina. Oh, don’t say anything, Tasie! I think, in a foreign place, where the English have a character to keep up, it is quite a sin.”
“You know, mamma, they think nobody knows them,” Tasie said.
Mrs Gaunt did not care so much who attended church; but when she found that Constance had, as she told the General, “really nothing to say for herself,” she too dropped into her habitual mode of talk. She did her best in the first place to elicit the opinions of Constance about Bordighera and the climate, about how she thought Mr Waring looking, and if dear Frances was not far stronger than she used to be. But when these judicious inquiries failed of a response, Mrs Gaunt almost turned her back upon Constance. “I have had a letter from Katie, my dear,” she said.
“Have you indeed? I hope she is quite well—and the babies?”
“Oh, the babies; they are always well. But poor Katie, she has been a great sufferer. I told you she had a touch of fever, by last mail. Now it is her liver. You are never safe from your liver in India. She had been up to the hills, and there she met Douglas, who had gone to settle his wife and children. His wife is a poor little creature, always ailing; and their second boy—— But, dear me, I have not told you my great news! Frances—George is coming home! He is coming by Brindisi and Venice, and will be here directly. I told him I was sure all my kind neighbours would be so glad to see him; and it will be so nice for him—don’t you think?—to see Italy on his way.”
“Oh, very nice,” said Frances. “And you must be very happy, both the General and you.”
“The General does not say much, but he is just as happy as I am. Fancy! by next mail! in another week!” The poor lady dried her eyes, and added, laughing, sobbing, “Only think—in a week—my youngest boy!”
“Do you mean to say,” said Constance, whenMrs Gaunt was gone, “that you have made them believe you care? Oh, that is exactly like mamma. She makes people think she is quite happy and quite miserable about their affairs, when she does not care one little bit! What is this woman’s youngest son to you?”
“But she is—— I have been here all my life. I am glad that she should be happy,” cried Frances, suddenly placed upon her defence.
When she thought of it, Mrs Gaunt’s youngest boy was nothing at all to her; nor did she care very much whether all the English in the hotels on the Marina went to church. But Mrs Gaunt was interested in the one, and the Durants in the other. And was it true what Constance said, that she was a humbug, that she was a deceiver, because she pretended to care? Frances was much confused by this question. There was something in it: perhaps it was true. She faltered as she replied, “Do you think it is wrong to sympathise? It is true that I don’t feel all that for myself. But still it is not false, for I do feel it for them—in a sort of a way.”
“And that is all the society you have here? the clergywoman and the old soldier. Andwill they expect me, too, to feel for them—in a sort of a way?”
“Dear Constance,” said Frances, in a pleading tone, “it could never be quite the same, you know; because you are a stranger, and I have known them ever since I was quite a little thing. They have all been very kind to me. They used to have me to tea; and Tasie would play with me; and Mrs Gaunt brought down all her Indian curiosities to amuse me. Oh, you don’t know how kind they are! I wonder, sometimes, when I see all the carved ivory things, and remember how they were taken out from under the glass shades for me, a little thing, how I didn’t break them, and how dear Mrs Gaunt could trust me with them! And then Tasie——”
“Tasie! What a ridiculous name! But it suits her well enough. She must be forty, I should think.”
“Her right name is Anastasia. She is called after the Countess of Denrara, who is her godmother,” said Frances, with great gravity. She had heard this explanation a great many times from Mrs Durant, and unconsciously repeated it in something of the same tone. Constancereceived this with a sudden laugh, and clapped her hands.
“I didn’t know you were a mimic. That is capital. Do Tasie now. I am sure you can; and then we shall have got a laugh out of them at least.”
“What do you mean?” asked Frances, growing pale. “Do you think I would laugh at them? When you know how really good they are——”
“Oh yes; I suppose I shall soon know,” said Constance, opening her mouth in a yawn, which Frances thought would have been dreadful in any one else, but which, somehow, was rather pretty in her. Everything was rather pretty in her, even her little rudenesses and impertinences. “If I stay here, of course I shall have to be intimate with them, as you have been. And must I take a tender interest in the youngest boy? Let us see! He will be a young soldier probably, as his mother is an old one, and as he is coming from India. He will never have seen any one. He is bound to take one of us for a goddess, either you or me.”
“Constance!” cried Frances, in her consternation raising her voice.
“Well,” said her sister, “is there anything wonderful in that? We are very different types, and till we see the hero, we shall not be able to tell which he is likely to prefer. I see my way to a little diversion, if you will not be too puritanical, Fan. That never does a man any harm. It will rouse him up; it will give him something to think of. A place like this can’t have much amusement, even for a youngest boy. We shall make him enjoy himself. His mother will bless us. You know, everybody says it is part of education for a man.”
Frances looked at her sister with eyes bewildered, somewhat horrified, full of disapproval; while Constance, roused still more by her sister’s horror than by the first mischievous suggestion which had awakened her from her indifference, laughed, and woke up into full animation. “We will go and return their visits,” she said, “and I will be sympathetic too. But you shall see, when I take up a part, I make much more of it than you do. I know who these peoplewere who did not go to church. They were my people—the people I travelled with; and they shall go next Sunday, and Tasie’s heart shall rejoice. When we call, I will let them know that England, even at Bordighera, expects every man—and every woman, which is more to the purpose—and that their absence was remarked. They will never be absent again, Fan. And as for the other interest, I shall inquire all about Katie’s illnesses, and secure the very last intelligence about the youngest boy. She will show me his photograph. She will tell me stories of how he cut his first tooth. I wonder,” said Constance, suddenly pausing and falling back into the old languid tone, “whether you will take up my old ways, when you are with mamma.”
“I shall never have it in my power to try,” said Frances. “Mamma will never want me.” She was a little shy of using that name.
“Don’t you know the condition, then? I think you don’t half know our story. Papa behaved rather absurdly, but honestly too. When they separated, he settled that one of us should always be with her, and one of uswith him. He had the right to have taken us both. Men have more rights than women. We belong to him, but we don’t belong to her. I don’t see the reason of it, but still that is law. He allowed her to have one of us always. I daresay he thought two little things like what we were then would have been a bore to him. At all events, that is how it was settled. Now it does not need much cleverness to see, that as I have left her, she will probably claim you. She will not let papa off anything he has promised. She likes a girl in the house. She will say, ‘Send me Frances.’ I should like to hide behind a door or under a table, and see how you get on.”
“I am sure you must be mistaken,” said Frances, much disturbed; “there was never any question about me.”
“No; because I was there. Oh yes; there was often question of you. Mamma has a little picture of you as you were when you were taken away. It always hangs in her room; and when I had to be scolded, she used to apostrophise you. She used to say, ‘That little angel would never have done so-and-so.’ I did, for I was a little demon; so I rather hated you. She will send for you now; and I wonder if you will be a little angel still. I should like to see how you get on. But I shall be fully occupied here driving people to church, and making things pleasant for the old soldier’s youngest son.”
“I wish you would not talk so wildly,” said Frances. “You are laughing at me all the time. You think I am such a simpleton, I will believe all you say. And indeed I am not clever enough to understand when you are laughing at me. All this is impossible. That I should take your place, and that you should take mine—oh, impossible!” cried Frances, with a sharper certainty than ever, as that last astounding idea made itself apparent: that Constance should order papa’s dinners and see after the mayonnaise, and guide Mariuccia—“oh, impossible!” she cried.
“Nothing is impossible. You think I am not good enough to do the housekeeping for papa. I only hope you wills’en tirerof the difficulties of my place, as I shall of yours. Be a kind girl, and write to me, and tell mehow things go. I know what will happen. You will think everything charming at first; and then—— But don’t let Markham get hold of you. Markham is very nice. He is capital for getting you out of a scrape; but still, I should not advise you to be guided by him, especially as you are papa’s child, and he is not fond of papa.”
“Please don’t say any more,” cried Frances. “I am not going—anywhere. I shall live as I have always done; but only more pleasantly from having—you.”
“That is very pretty of you,” said Constance, turning round to look at her; “if you are sure you mean it, and that it is not only true—in a sort of a way. I am afraid I have been nothing but a bore, breaking in upon you like this. It would be nice if we could be together,” she added, very calmly, as if, however, no great amount of philosophy would be necessary to reconcile her to the absence of her sister. “It would be nice; but it will not be allowed. You needn’t be afraid, though, for I can give you a number of hints which will make it much easier. Mamma is a little—she is just a little—but I should think you would get on with her. You look so young, for one thing. She will begin your education over again, and she likes that; and then you are like her, which will give you a great pull. It is very funny to think of it; it is like a transformation scene; but I daresay we shall both get on a great deal better than you think. For my part, I never was the least afraid.”
With this, Constance sank into her chair again, and resumed the book she had been reading, with that perfect composure and indifference which filled Frances with admiration and dismay.
It was with difficulty that Frances herself kept her seat or her self-command at all. She had been drawing, making one of those innumerable sketches which could be made from the loggia: now of a peak among the mountains; now of the edge of foam on the blue, blue margin of the sea; now of an olive, now of a palm. Frances had a consistent conscientious way of besieging Nature, forcing her day by day to render up the secret of another tint, another shadow. It was thus she had cometo the insight which had made her father acknowledge that she was “growing up.” But to-day her hand had no cunning. Her pulses beat so tumultuously that her pencil shared the agitation, and fluttered too. She kept still as long as she could, and spoiled a piece of paper, which to Frances, with very little money to lose, was something to be thought of. And when she had accomplished this, and added to her excitement the disagreeable and confusing effect of failure in what she was doing, Frances got up abruptly and took refuge in the household concerns, in directions about the dinner, and consultations with Mariuccia, who was beginning to be a little jealous of the signorina’s absorption in her new companion. “If the young lady is indeed your sister, it is natural she should have a great deal of your attention; but not even for that does one desert one’s old friends,” Mariuccia said, with a little offended dignity.
Frances felt, with a sinking of the heart, that her sister’s arrival had been to her perhaps less an unmixed pleasure than to any of the household. But she did not say so. Shemade no exhibition of the trouble in her bosom, which even the consultations over the mayonnaise did not allay. That familiar duty indeed soothed her for the moment. The question was whether it should be made with chicken or fish—a very important matter. But though this did something to relieve her, the culinary effort did not last. To think of being sent away into that new world in which Constance had been brought up—to leave everything she knew—to meet “mamma,” whose name she whispered to herself almost trembling, feeling as if she took a liberty with a stranger,—all this was bewildering, wonderful, and made her heart beat and her head ache. It was not altogether that the anticipation was painful. There was a flutter of excitement in it which was almost delight; but it was an alarmed delight, which shook her nerves as much as if it had been unmixed terror. She could not compose herself into indifference as Constance did, or sit quietly down to think, or resume her usual occupation, in the face of this sudden opening out before her of the unforeseen and unknown.
Thedays ran on for about a week with a suppressed and agitating expectation in them, which seemed to Frances to blur and muddle all the outlines, so that she could not recollect which was Wednesday or which was Friday, but felt it all one uncomfortable long feverish sort of day. She could not take the advantage of any pleasure there might be in them—and it was a pleasure to watch Constance, to hear her talk, to catch the many glimpses of so different a life, which came from the careless, easy monologue which was her style of conversation—for the exciting sense that she did not know what might happen at any moment, or what was going to become of her. Even the change from her familiar place at table, which Constance took without any thought, just asshe took her father’s favourite chair on the loggia, and the difference in her room, helped to confuse her mind, and add to the feverish sensation of a life altogether out of joint.
Constance had not observed any of those signs of individual habitation about the room which Frances had fancied would lead to a discovery of the transfer she had made. She took it quite calmly, not perceiving anything beyond the ordinary in the chamber which Frances had adorned with her sketches, with the little curiosities she had picked up, with all the little collections of her short life. It was wanting still in many things which to Constance seemed simple necessities. How was she to know how many were in it which were luxuries to that primitive locality? She remained altogether unconscious, accordingly, of the sacrifice her sister had made for her, and spoke lightly of poor Frances’ pet decorations, and of the sketches, the authorship of which she did not take the trouble to suspect. “What funny little pictures!” she had said. “Where did you get so many odd littlethings? They look as if the frames were homemade, as well as the drawings.”
Fortunately she was not in the habit of waiting for an answer to such a question, and she did not remark the colour that rose to her sister’s cheeks. But all this added to the disturbing influence, and made these long days look unlike any other days in Frances’ life. She took the other side of the table meekly with a half-smile at her father, warning him not to say anything; and she lived in the blue room without thinking of adding to its comforts—for what was the use, so long as this possible banishment hung over her head? Life seemed to be arrested during these half-dozen days. They had the mingled colours and huddled outlines of a spoiled drawing; they were not like anything else in her life, neither the established calm and certainty that went before, nor the strange novelty that followed after.
There were no confidences between her father and herself during this period. Since their conversation on the night of Constance’s arrival, not a word had been said between them on thesubject. They mutually avoided all occasion for further talk. At least Mr Waring avoided it, not knowing how to meet his child, or to explain to her the hazard to which her life was exposed. He did not take into consideration the attraction of the novelty, the charm of the unknown mother and the unknown life, at which Frances permitted herself to take tremulous and stealthy glimpses as the days went on. He contemplated her fate from his own point of view as something like that of the princess who was doomed to the dragon’s maw but for the never-to-be-forgotten interposition of St George, that emblem of chivalry. There was no St George visible on the horizon, and Waring thought the dragon no bad emblem of his wife. And he was ashamed to think that he was helpless to deliver her; and that, by his fault, this poor little Una, this hapless Andromeda, was to be delivered over to the waiting monster.
He avoided Frances, because he did not know how to break to her this possibility, or how, since Constance probably had made her aware of it, to console her in the terrible crisisat which she had arrived. It was a painful crisis for himself as well as for her. The first evening on which, coming into the loggia to smoke his cigarette after dinner, he had found Constance extended in his favourite chair, had brought this fully home to him. He strolled out upon the open-air room with all the ease of custom, and for the first moment he did not quite understand what it was that was changed in it, that put him out, and made him feel as if he had come, not into his own familiar domestic centre, but somebody else’s place. He hung about for a minute or two, confused, before he saw what it was; and then, with a half-laugh in his throat, and a mingled sense that he was annoyed, and that it was ridiculous to be annoyed, strolled across the loggia, and half seated himself on the outer wall, leaning against a pillar. He was astonished to think how much disconcerted he was, and with what a comical sense of injury he saw his daughter lying back so entirely at her ease in his chair. She was his daughter, but she was a stranger, and it was impossible to tell her that her place was not there. Next eveninghe was almost angry, for he thought that Frances might have told her though he could not. And indeed Frances had done what she could to warn her sister of the usurpation. But Constance had no idea of vested rights of this description, and had paid no attention. She took very little notice, indeed, of what was said to her, unless it arrested her attention in some special way; and she had never been trained to understand that the master of a house has sacred privileges. She had not so much as known what it is to have a master to a house.
This and other trifles of the same kind gave to Waring something of the same confused and feverish feeling which was in the mind of Frances. And there hung over him a cloud as of something further to come, which was not so clear as her anticipations, yet was full of discomfort and apprehension. He thought of many things, not of one thing, as she did. It seemed to him not impossible that his wife herself might arrive some day as suddenly as Constance had done, to reclaim her child, or to take away his, for that was how they weredistinguished in his mind. The idea of seeing again the woman from whom he had been separated so long, filled him with dread; and that she should come here and see the limited and recluse life he led, and his bare rooms, and his homely servants, filled him with a kind of horror. Rather anything than that. He did not like to contemplate even the idea that it might be necessary to give up the girl, who had flattered him by taking refuge with him and seeking his protection; but neither was the thought of being left with her and having Frances taken from him endurable. In short, his mind was in a state of mortal confusion and tumult. He was like the commander of a besieged city, not knowing on what day he might be summoned to surrender; not able to come to any conclusion whether it would be most wise to yield, or if the state of his resources afforded any feasible hopes of holding out.
Constance had been a week at the Palazzo before the trumpets sounded: The letters were delivered just before the twelve-o’clock breakfast; and Frances had received so much warningas this, that Mariuccia informed her there had been a large delivery that morning. The signor padrone had a great packet; and there were also some letters for the other young lady, Signorina Constanza. “But never any for thee,carina,” Mariuccia had said. The poor girl thus addressed had a momentary sense that she was indeed to be pitied on this account, before the excitement of the certainty that now something definite must be known as to what was to become of her, swelled her veins to bursting; and she felt herself grow giddy with the thought that what had been so vague and visionary, might now be coming near, and that in an hour or less she would know! Waring was as usual shut up in his bookroom; but she could see Constance on the loggia with her lap full of letters, lying back in the long chair as usual, reading them as if they were the most ordinary things in the world. Frances, for her part, had to wait in silence until she should learn from others what her fate was to be. It seemed very strange that one girl should be free to do so much, while another of the same age could do nothing at all.
Waring came into breakfast with the letters in his hand. “I have heard from your mother,” he said, looking straight before him, without turning to the right or the left. Frances tried to appropriate this to herself, to make some reply, but her voice died in her throat; and Constance, with the easiest certainty that it was she who was addressed, answered before she could recover herself.
“Yes—so have I. Mamma is rather fond of writing letters. She says she has told you what she wishes, and then she tells me to tell you. I don’t suppose that is of much use?”
“Of no use at all,” said he. “She is pretty explicit. She says——”
Constance leant over the table a little, holding up her finger. “Don’t you think, papa,” she said, “as it is business, that it would be better not to enter upon it just now? Wait till we have had our breakfast.”
He looked at her with an air of surprise. “I don’t see——” he said; then, after a moment’s reflection, “Perhaps you are right, after all. It may be better not to say anything just now.”
Frances had recovered her voice. She looked from one to another as they spoke, with a cruel consciousness that it was she, not they, who was most concerned. At this point she burst forth with feelings not to be controlled. “If it is on my account, I would rather know at once what it is,” she cried.
And then she had to bear the looks of both—her father’s astonished half-remorseful gaze, and the eyes of Constance, which conveyed a warning. Why should Constance, who had told her of the danger, warn her now not to betray her knowledge of it? Frances had got beyond her own control. She was vexed by the looks which were fixed upon her, and by the supposed consideration for her comfort which lay in their delay. “I know,” she said quickly, “that it is something about me. If you think I care for breakfast, you are mistaken; but I think I have a right to know what it is, if it is about me. O papa, I don’t mean to be—disagreeable,” she cried suddenly, sinking into her own natural tone as she caught his eye.
“That is not very much like you, certainly,” he said, in a confused voice.
“Evil communications,” said Constance, with a laugh. “I have done her harm already.”
Frances felt that her sister’s voice threw a new irritation into her mood. “I am not like myself,” she said, “because I know something is going to happen to me, and I don’t know what it is. Papa, I don’t want to be selfish, but let me know, please, only let me know what it is.”
“It is only that mamma has sent for you,” said Constance, lightly; “that is all. It is nothing so very dreadful. Now do let us have our breakfast in peace.”
“Is that true, papa?” Frances said.
“My dear little girl—I had meant to explain it all—to tell you—and I have been so silly as to put off. Your sister does not understand how we have lived together, Frances, you and I.”
“Am I to go, papa?”
He made a gesture of despair. “I don’t know what to do. I have given my promise. It is as bad for me as for you, Frances. But what am I to do?”
“I suppose,” said Constance, who had helped herself very tranquilly from the dish whichDomenico had been holding unobserved at his master’s elbow, “that there is no law that could make you part with her, if you don’t wish to. Promises are all very well with strangers; but they are never kept—are they?—between husband and wife. The father has all the right on his side, and you are not obliged to give either of us up. What a blessing,” she cried suddenly, “to have servants who don’t understand! That was why I said, don’t talk of it till after breakfast. But it does not at all matter. It is as good as if he were deaf and dumb. Papa, you need not give her up unless you like.”
Waring looked at his daughter with mingled attention and anger. The suggestion was detestable, but yet——
“And then,” she went on, “there is another thing. It might have been all very well when we were children; but now we are of an age to judge for ourselves. At eighteen, you can choose which you will stay with. Oh, younger than that. There have been several trials in the papers—no one can force Frances to go anywhere she does not like, at her age.”
“I wish,” he said, with a little irritation,restrained by politeness, for Constance was still a young-lady visitor to her father, “that you would leave this question to be discussed afterwards. Your sister was right, Frances—after breakfast—after I have had a little time to think of it. I cannot come to any decision all at once.”
“That is a great deal better,” said Constance, approvingly. “One can’t tell all in a moment. Frances is like mamma in that too. She requires you to know your own mind—to say Yes or No at once. You and I are very like each other, papa. I shall never hurry your decision, or ask you to settle a thing in a moment. But these cutlets are getting quite cold. Do have some before they are spoiled.”
Waring had no mind for the cutlets, to which he helped himself mechanically. He did not like to look at Frances, who sat silent, with her hands clasped on the table, pale but with a light in her eyes. The voice of Constance running on, forming a kind of veil for the trouble and confusion in his own mind, and doubtless in that of her sister, was half a relief and half an aggravation; he was grateful for it,yet irritated by it. He felt himself to play a very poor figure in the transaction altogether, as he had felt ever since she arrived. Frances, whom he had regarded as a child, had sprung up into a judge, into all the dignity of an injured person, whose right to complain of the usage to which she had been subjected no one could deny. And when he stole a furtive glance at her pale face, her head held high, the new light that burned in her eyes, he felt that she was fully aware of the wrong he had done her, and that it would not be so easy to dictate what she was to do, as everybody up to this moment had supposed. He saw, or thought he saw, resistance, indignation, in the gleam that had been awakened in Frances’ dove’s eyes. And his heart fell—yet rose also; for how could he constrain her, if she refused to go? He had no right to constrain her. Her mother might complain, but it would not be his doing. On the other side, it would be shameful, pitiful on his part to go back from his word—to acknowledge to his wife that he could not do what he had pledged himself to do.
In every way it was an uncomfortable breakfast, all the forms of which he followed, partly for the sake of Constance, partly for that of Domenico. But Frances ate nothing, he could see. He prolonged the meal, through a sort of fear of the interview afterwards, of what he must say to her, and of what she should reply. He felt ashamed of his reluctance to encounter this young creature, whom a few days ago he had smiled at as a child; and ashamed to look her in the face, to explain and argue with, and entreat, where he had been always used to tell her to do this and that, without the faintest fear that she would disobey him. If even he had been left to tell her himself of all the circumstances, to make her aware gradually of all that he had kept from her (for her good), to show her now how his word was pledged! But even this had been taken out of his hands.
All this time no one talked but Constance, who went on with an occasional remark and with her meal, for which she had a good appetite. “I wish you would eat something, Frances,” she said. “You need not begin to punish yourself at once. I feel it dreadfully, for it is all my fault. It is I who ought to losemy breakfast, not you. If you will take a few hints from me, I don’t think you will find it so bad. Or perhaps, if we all lay our heads together, we may see some way out of it. Papa knows the law, and I know the English side, and you know what you think yourself. Let us talk it all over, and perhaps we may see our way.”
To this Frances made no reply save a little inclination of her head, and sat with her eyes shining, with a certain proud air of self-control and self-support, which was something quite new to her. When the uncomfortable repast could be prolonged no longer, she was the first to get up. “If you do not mind,” she said, “I want to speak to papa by himself.”
Constance had risen too. She looked with an air of surprise at her little sister. “Oh, if you like,” she said; “but I think you will find that I can be of use.”
“If you are going to the bookroom, I will come with you, papa,” said Frances, but she did not wait for any reply; she opened the door and walked before him into that place of refuge, where he had been sheltering himself allthese days. Constance gave him an inquiring look, with a slight shrug of her shoulders.
“She is on her high horse, and she is more like mamma than ever; but I suppose I may come all the same.”
He wavered a moment: he would have been glad of her interposition, even though it irritated him; but he had a whimsical sense of alarm in his mind, which he could not get over. He was afraid of Frances—which was one of the most comical things in the world. He shook his head, and followed humbly into the bookroom, and himself closed the door upon the intruder. Frances had seated herself already at his table, in the seat which she always occupied when she came to consult him about the dinner, or about something out of the usual round which Mariuccia had asked for. To see her seated there, and to feel that the door was closed against all intrusion, made Waring feel as if all this disturbance was a dream. How good the quiet had been; the calm days, which nothing interfered with; the little housekeeper, whose childlike prudence and wisdom were so quaint, whose simple obedience was so ready, who never, savein respect to thespese, set up her own will or way! His heart grew very soft as he sat down and looked at her. No, he said to himself, he would not break that old bond; he would not compel his little girl to leave him, send her out as a sacrifice. He would rather stand against all the wives in the world.
“Papa,” said Frances, “a great deal of harm has been done by keeping me ignorant. I want you to show me mamma’s letter. Unless I see it, how can I know?”
This pulled him up abruptly and checked the softening mood. “Your mother’s letter,” he said, “goes over a great deal of old ground. I don’t see that it could do you any good. It appears I promised—what Constance told you, with her usual coolness—that one of you should be always left with her. Perhaps that was foolish.”
“Surely, papa, it was just.”
“Well, I thought so at the time. I wanted to do what was right. But there was no right in the matter. I had a perfect right to take you both away, to bring you up as I pleased. It would have been better, perhaps, had I done what the law authorised me to do. However,that need not be gone into now. What your sister said was quite true. You are at an age when you are supposed to be able to judge for yourself, and nobody in the world can force you to go where you don’t want to go.”
“But if you promised, and if—my mother trusted to your promise?” There was something more solemn in that title than to say “mamma.” It seemed easier to apply it to the unknown.
“I won’t have you made a sacrifice of on my account,” he said, hastily.
He was surprised by her composure, by that unwonted light in her eyes. She answered him with great gravity, slowly, as if conscious of the importance of her conclusion. “It would be no sacrifice,” she said.
Waring, there could be no doubt, was very much startled. He could not believe his ears. “No sacrifice? Do you mean to say that you want to leave me?” he cried.
“No, papa: that is, I did not. I knew nothing. But now that I know, if my mother wants me, I will go to her. It is my duty. And I should like it,” she added, after a pause.
Waring was dumb with surprise and dismay. He stared at her, scarcely able to believe that she could understand what she was saying—he, who had been afraid to suggest anything of the kind, who had thought of Andromeda and the virgins who were sacrificed to the dragon. He gazed aghast at this new aspect of the face with which he was so familiar, the uplifted head and shining eyes. He could not believe that this was Frances, his always docile, submissive, unemancipated girl.
“Papa,” she said, “everything seems changed, and I too. I want to know my mother; I want to see—how other people live.”
“Other people!” He was glad of an outlet for his irritation. “What have we to do with other people? If it had not been for this unlucky arrival, you would never have known.”
“I must have known some time,” she said. “And do you think it right that a girl should not know her mother—when she has a mother? I want to go to her, papa.”
He flung out of his chair with an angry movement, and took up the keys which lay on his table and opened a small cabinet which stoodin the corner of the room, Frances watching him all the time with the greatest attention. Out of this he brought a small packet of letters, and threw them to her with a movement which, for so gentle a man, was almost violent. “I kept these back for your good, not to disturb your mind. You may as well have them, since they belong to you—now,” he said.