CAPTAIN GAUNT called next day to bring, he said, a message from his mother. She sent Mr Waring a newspaper which she thought he might like to see, an English weekly newspaper, which some of her correspondents had sent her, in which there was an article—— He did not give a very clear account of this, nor make it distinctly apparent why Waring should be specially interested; and as a matter of fact, the newspaper found its way to the waste-paper basket, and interested nobody. But, no doubt, Mrs Gaunt’s intentions had been excellent. When the young soldier arrived, there was a carriage at the door, and Constance had her hat on. “We are going,” she said, “to San Remo, to see about a piano. Do you know San Remo? Oh, I forgot you are as much a stranger as I am; you don’t know anything. What a good thing that there are two ignorant persons! We will keep each other in countenance, and they will be compelled to make all kinds of expeditions to show us everything.”
“That will be a wonderful chance for me,” said the young man, “for nobody would take so much trouble for me alone.”
“How can you tell that? Miss Tasie, I should think, would be an excellent cicerone,” said Constance. She said it with a light laugh of suggestion, meaning to imply, though, of course, she had said nothing, that Tasie would be too happy to put herself at Captain Gaunt’s disposition; a suggestion which he, too, received with a laugh—for this is one of the points upon which both boys and girls are always ungenerous.
“And failing Miss Tasie,” said Constance, “suppose you come with papa and me? They say it is a pretty drive. They say, of course, that everything here is lovely, and that the Riviera is paradise. Do you find it so?”
“I can fancy circumstances in which I should find it so,” said the young soldier.
“Ah, yes; every one can do that. I can fancy circumstances in which Bond Street would be paradise—oh, very easily! It is not far from paradise at any time.”
“That is a heaven of which I know very little, Miss Waring.”
“Ah, then, you must learn. The true Elysian fields are in London in May. If you don’t know that, you can form no idea of happiness. An exile from all delights gives you the information, and you may be sure it is true.”
“Why, then, Miss Waring, if you think so——”
“Am I here? Oh, that is easily explained. I have a sister.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Ah, I understand you have heard a great deal about my sister. I suffer here from being compared with her. I am not nearly so good, so wise, as Frances. But is that my fault, Captain Gaunt? You are impartial; you are a new-comer. If I could, I would, be as nice as Frances, don’t you believe?”
The young man gave Constance a look, which, indeed, she expected, and said with confusion, “I don’t see—any need for improvement,” and blushed as near crimson as was possible over the greenish brown of his Indian colour.
Constance for her part did not blush. She laughed, and made him an almost imperceptible curtsey. The ways of flirtation are not original, and all the parallels of the early encounters might be stereotyped, as everybody knows.
“You are very amiable,” she said; “but then you don’t know Frances, and your opinion, accordingly, is less valuable. I did not ask you, however, to believe me to be equal to my sister, but only to believe that I would be as nice if I could. However, all that is no explanation. We have a mother, you know, in England. We are, unfortunately, that sad thing, a household divided against itself.”
Captain Gaunt was not prepared for such confidences. He grew still a little browner with embarrassment, and muttered something about being very sorry, not knowing what to say.
“Oh, there is not very much to be sorry about. Papa enjoys himself in his way here, and mamma is very happy at home. The only thing is that we must each have our turn, you know—that is only fair. So Frances has gone to mamma, and here am I in Bordighera. We are each dreadfully out of our element. Her friends condemn me, to begin with, as if it were my fault that I am not like her; and my friends, perhaps—— But no; I don’t think so. Frances is so good, so nice, so everything a girl ought to be.”
At this she laughed softly again; and young Gaunt’s consciousness that his mother’s much vaunted Frances was the sort of girl to please old ladies rather than young men, a prim, little, smooth, correct maiden, with not the least “go” in her, took additional force and certainty. Whereas—— But he had no words in which to express his sense of the advantages on the other side.
“You must find it,” he said, knowing nothing more original to say, “dreadfully dull living here.”
“I have not found anything as yet; I have only just come. I am no more than a few days older than you are. We can compare notes as time goes on. But perhaps you don’t mean to stay very long in these abodes of the blest?”
“I don’t know that I did intend it. But I shall stay now as long as ever I can,” said the young man. Then—for he was shy—he added hastily, “It is a long time since I have seen my people, and they like to have me.”
“Naturally. But you need not have spoiled what looked like a very pretty compliment by adding that. Perhaps you didn’t mean it for a compliment? Oh, I don’t mind at all. It is much more original, if you didn’t mean it. Compliments are such common coin. But I don’t pretend to despise them, as some girls do; and I don’t like to see them spoiled,” Constance said seriously.
The young man looked at her with consternation. After a while, his moustache expanded into a laugh, but it was a confused laugh, and he did not understand. Still less did he know how to reply. Constance had been used to sharper wits, who took her at half a word; and she was half angry to be thus obliged to explain.
“We are going to San Remo, as I told you,” she said. “I am waiting for my father. We are going to look for a piano. Frances is not musical, so there is no piano in the house. You must come too, and give your advice. Oh, are you ready, papa? Captain Gaunt, who does not know San Remo, and who does know music, is coming with us to give us his advice.”
The young soldier stammered forth that to go to San Remo was the thing he most desired in the world. “But I don’t think my advice will be good for much,” he said, conscientiously. “I do a little on the violin; but as for pretending to be a judge of a piano——”
“Come; we are all ready,” said Constance, leading the way.
Waring had to let the young fellow precede him, to see him get into the carriage without any articulate murmur. As a matter of fact, a sort of stupor seized the father, altogether unaccustomed to be the victim of accidents. Frances might have lived by his side till she was fifty before she would have thought of inviting a stranger to be of their party—a stranger, a young man, which was a class of being with which Waring had little patience, a young soldier, proverbially frivolous, and occupied with foolish matters. Young Gaunt respectfully left to his senior the place beside Constance; but he placed himself opposite to her, and kept his eyes upon her with a devout attention, which Waring would have thought ridiculous had he not been irritated by it. The young fellow was a great deal too much absorbed to contribute much to the amusement of the party; and it irritated Waring beyond measure to see his eyes gleam from under his eyebrows, opening wider with delight, half closing with laughter, the ends of his moustache going up to his ears. Waring, an impartial spectator, was not so much impressed by his daughter’s wit. He thought he had heard a great deal of the same before, or even better, surely better, for he could recollect that he had in his day been charmed by a similar treatment, which must have been much lighter in touch, much less commonplace in subject, because—he was charmed. Thus we argue in our generations. In the meantime, young Gaunt, though he had not been without some experience, looked at Constance from under his brows, and listened as if to the utterances of the gods. If only they could have had it all to themselves; if only the old father had been out of the way!
The sunshine, the sea, the beautiful colour, the unexpected vision round every corner of another and another picturesque cluster of towns and roofs; all that charm and variety which give to Italy above every country on earth the admixture of human interest, the endless chain of association which adds a grace to natural beauty, made very little impression upon this young pair. She would have been amused and delighted by the exercise of her own power, and he would have been enthralled by her beauty, and what he considered her wit and high spirits, had their progress been along the dullest streets. It was only Waring’s eyes, disgusted by the prospect before him of his daughter’s little artifices, and young Gaunt’s imbecile subjection, which turned with any special consciousness to the varying blues of the sea, to the endless developments of the landscape. Flirtation is one of the last things in the world to brook a spectator. Its little absurdities, which are so delightful to the actors in the drama, and which at a distance the severest critic may smile at and forgive, excite the wrath of a too close looker-on, in a way quite disproportioned to their real offensiveness. The interchange of chatter which prevents, as that observer would say, all rational conversation, the attempts to charm, which are so transparent, the response of silly admiration, which is only another form of vanity—how profoundly sensible we all are of their folly! Had Constance taken as much pains to please her father, he would, in all probability, have yielded altogether to the spell; but he was angry, ashamed, furious, that she should address those wiles to the young stranger, and saw through him with a clearsightedness which was exasperating. It was all the more exasperating that he could not tell what she meant by it. Was it possible that she had already formed an inclination towards this tawny young stranger? Had his bilious hues affected her imagination? Love at first sight is a very respectable emotion, and commands in many cases both sympathy and admiration. But no man likes to see the working of this sentiment in a woman who belongs to him. Had Constance fallen in love? He grew angry at the very suggestion, though breathed only in the recesses of his own mind. A girl who had been brought up in the world, who had seen all kinds of people, was it possible that she should fall a victim in a moment to the attractions of a young nobody—a young fellow who knew nothing but India? That he should be subjected, was simple enough; but Constance! Waring’s brow clouded more and more. He kept silent, taking no part in the talk, and the young fools did not so much as remark it, but went on with their own absurdity more and more.
The transformation of a series of little Italian municipalities, although in their nature more towns than villages, rendered less rustic by the traditions of an exposed coast, and many a crisis of self-defence, into little modern towns full of hotels and tourists, is neither a pleasant nor a lovely process. San Remo in the old days, before Dr Antonio made it known to the world, lay among its olive-gardens on the edge of the sea, which grew bluer and bluer as it crept to the feet of the human master of the soil, a delight to behold, a little picture which memory cherished. Wide promenades flanked with big hotels, with conventional gardens full of green bushes, and a kiosk for the band, make a very different prospect now. But then, in the old days, there could have been no music-sellers with pianos to let or sell; no famous English chemist with coloured bottles; no big shops in which travellers could be tempted. Constance forgot Captain Gaunt when she found herself in this atmosphere of the world. She began to remember things she wanted. “Papa, if you don’t despise it too much, you must let me do a little shopping,” she said. She wanted a hat for the sun. She wanted some eau-de-Cologne. She wanted just to run into the jeweller’s to see if the coral was good, to see if there were any peasant-ornaments which would be characteristic. At all this her father smiled somewhat grimly, taking it as a part of the campaign into which his daughter had chosen to enter for the overthrow of the young soldier. But Constance was perfectly sincere, and had forgotten her campaign in the new and warmer interest.
“So long as you do not ask me to attend you from shop to shop,” he said.
“Oh no; Captain Gaunt will come,” said Constance.
Captain Gaunt was not a victim who required many wiles. He was less amusing than she had hoped, in so far that he had given in, in an incredibly short space of time. He was now in a condition to be trampled on at her pleasure, and this was unexciting. A longer resistance would have been much more to Constance’s mind. Captain Gaunt accompanied her to all the shops. He helped her with his advice about the piano, bending his head over her as she ran through a little air or two, and struck a few chords on one after the other of the music-seller’s stock. They were not very admirable instruments, but one was found that would do.
“You can bring your violin,” Constance said; “we must try to amuse ourselves a little.” This was before her father left them, and he heard it with a groan.
Waring took a silent walk round the bay while the purchases went on. He thought of past experiences, of the attraction which a shop has for women. Frances, no doubt, after a little of her mother’s training, would be the same. She would find out the charms of shopping. He had not even her return to look forward to, for she would not be the same Frances who had left him, when she came back. When she came back?—if she ever came back. The same Frances, never; perhaps not even a changed Frances. Her mother would quickly see what an advantage she had in getting the daughter whom her husband had brought up. She would not give her back; she would turn her into a second Constance. There had been a time when Waring had concluded that Constance was amusing and Frances dull; but it must be remembered that he was under provocation now. If she had been amusing, it had not been for him. She had exerted herself to please a commonplace, undistinguished boy, with an air of being indifferent to everything else, which was beyond measure irritating to her father. And now she had got scent of shops, and would never be happy save when she was rushing from one place to another—to Mentone, to Nice perhaps, wherever her fancied wants might lead her. Waring discussed all this with himself as he rambled along, his nerves all set on edge, his taste revolted. Flirtations and shops—was he to be brought to this? he who had been free from domestic encumbrance, who had known nothing for so many years but a little ministrant, who never troubled him, who was ready when he wanted her, but never put forth herself as a restraint or an annoyance. He had advised Constance to take what good she could find in her life; but he had never imagined that this was the line she would take.
The drive home was scarcely more satisfactory. Young Gaunt had got a little courage by the episode of the shops. He ventured to tell her of the trifles he had brought with him from India, and to ask if Miss Waring would care to see them; and he described to her the progress he had made with his violin, and what his attainments were in music. Constance told him that the best thing he could do was to bring the said violin and all his music, so that they might see what they could do together. “If you are not too far advanced for me,” she said with a laugh. “Come in the morning, when we shall not be interrupted.”
Her father listened, but said nothing. His imagination immediately set before him the tuning and scraping, the clang of the piano, the shriek of the fiddle, and he himself only two rooms off, endeavouring in vain to collect his thoughts and do his work! Mr Waring’s work was not of the first importance, but still it was his work, and momentous to him. He bore, however, a countenance unmoved, if very grave, and even endured without a word the young man’s entrance with them, the consultation about where the piano was to stand, and tea afterwards in the loggia. He did not himself want any tea; he left the young people to enjoy this refreshment together while he retired to his bookroom. But with only two rooms between, and with his senses quickened by displeasure, he heard their voices, the laughter, the continual flow of talk, even the little tinkle of the teacups—every sound. He had never been disturbed by Frances’ tea; but then, except Tasie Durant, there had been nobody to share it, no son from the bungalow, no privileged messenger sent by his mother. Mrs Gaunt’s children, of whom she talked continually, had always been a nuisance, except to the sympathetic soul of Frances. But who could have imagined the prominence which they had assumed now?
Young Gaunt did not go away until shortly before dinner; and Constance, after accompanying him to the anteroom, went along the corridor singing, to her own room, to change her dress. Though her room (Frances’ room that was) was at the extremity of the suite, her father heard her light voice running on in a little operatic air all the time she made her toilet. Had it been described in a book, he thought to himself it would have had a pretty sound. The girl’s voice, sweet and gay, sounding through the house, the voice of happy youth brightening the dull life there, the voice of innocent content betraying its own satisfaction with existence—satisfaction in having a young fool to flirt with, and some trumpery shops to buy unnecessary appendages in! At dinner, however, she made fun of young Gaunt, and the morose father was a little mollified. “It is rather dreadful for other people when there is an adoring mother in the background to think everything you do perfection,” Constance said. “I don’t think we shall make much of the violin.”
“These are subjects on which you can speak with more authority than I—both the violin and the mother,” said Waring.
“Oh,” she cried, “you don’t think mamma was one of the adoring kind, I hope! There may be things in her which might be mended; but she is not like that. She kept one in one’s proper place. And as for the violin, I suspect he plays it like an old fiddler in the streets.”
“You have changed your mind about it very rapidly,” said Waring; but on the whole he was pleased. “You seemed much interested both in the hero and the music, a little while ago.”
“Yes; was I not?” said Constance with perfect candour. “And he took it all in, as if it were likely. These young men from India, they are very ingenuous. It seems wicked to take advantage of them, does it not?”
“More people are ingenuous than the young man from India. I intended to speak to you very seriously as soon as he was gone—to ask you——”
“What were my intentions?” cried Constance, with an outburst of the gayest laughter. “Oh, what a pity I began! How sorry I am to have missed that! Do you think his mother will ask me, papa? It is generally the man, isn’t it, who is questioned? and he says his intentions are honourable. Mine, I frankly allow, are not honourable.”
“No; very much the reverse, I should think. But it had better be clearly defined, for my satisfaction, Constance, which of you is true—the girl who cried over her loneliness last night, or she who made love to Captain Gaunt this morning——”
“No, papa; only was a little nice to him, because he is lonely too.”
“These delicacies of expression are too fine for me.—— Who made the poor young fellow believe that she liked his society immensely, was much interested, counted upon him and his violin as her greatest pleasures.”
“You are going too far,” she said. “I think the fiddle will be fun. When you play very badly and are a little conceited about it, you are always amusing. And as for Captain Gaunt—so long as he does not complain——”
“It is I who am complaining, Constance.”
“Well, papa—but why? You told me last night to take what I had, since I could not have what I want.”
“And you have acted upon my advice? With great promptitude, I must allow.”
“Yes,” she said with composure. “What is the use of losing time? It is not my fault if there is somebody here quite ready. It amuses him too. And what harm am I doing? A girl can’t be asked—except for fun—those disagreeable questions.”
“And therefore you think a girl can do—what would be dishonourable in a man.”
“Oh, you are so much too serious,” cried Constance. “Are you always as serious as this? You laughed when I told you about Fanny Gervoise. Is it only because it is me that you find fault? And don’t you think it is a little too soon for parental interference? The Gaunts would be much surprised. They would think you were afraid for my peace of mind, papa—as her parents were afraid for Miss Tasie.”
This moved the stern father to a smile. He had thought that Constance did not appreciate that joke; but the girl had more humour than he supposed. “I see,” he said, “you will have your own way; but remember, Constance, I cannot allow it to go too far.”
How could he prevent it going as far as she pleased? she said to herself with a little scorn, when she was alone. Parents may be medieval if they will; but the means have never yet been invented of preventing a woman, when she is so minded and has the power in her hands, from achieving her little triumph over a young man’s heart.