“WHAT is 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 mild old 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, “whether he 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; but with 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; we never 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 we all do,’ 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 in such 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 its tapis vert and 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 Waring might have 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 very agreeable 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 the soutane and three-cornered hat of the indigenous clergy. His black clothes were spotless, but of the ordinary cut, perhaps a trifle old-fashioned. But yet neither soutane nor berretta could 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 had happened 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 his writing-table. His chair was a large old fauteuil, covered with faded damask; and curtains, also faded, were festooned over all the windows and doors. The persiani were 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 that it 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 who have 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.