“WHERE is George? I scarcely ever see him,” said the General, in querulous tones. “He is always after that girl of Waring’s. Why don’t you try to keep him at home?”
Mrs Gaunt did not say that she had done her best to keep him at home, but found her efforts unsuccessful. She said apologetically, “He has so very little to amuse him here; and the music, you know, is a great bond.”
“He plays like a beginner; and she, like a—like a—as well as a professional, I don’t understand what kind of bond that can be.”
“So much the greater a compliment is it to George that she likes his playing,” responded the mother promptly.
“She likes to make a fool of him, I think,” the General said; “and you help her on. I don’t understand your tactics. Women generally like to keep their sons free from such entanglements; and after getting him safely out of India, where every man is bound to fall into mischief——”
“Oh, my dear,” said Mrs Gaunt, “if it ever should come to that—think, what an excellent connection. I wish it had been Frances; I do wish it had been Frances. I had always set my heart on that. But the connection would be the same.”
“You knew nothing about the connection when you set your heart on Frances. And I can’t help thinking there is something odd about the connection. Why should that girl have come here, and why should the other one be spirited away like a transformation scene?”
“Well, my dear, it is in the peerage,” said Mrs Gaunt. “Great families, we all know, are often very queer in their arrangements. But there can be no doubt it is all right, for it is in the peerage. If it had been Frances, I should have been too happy. With such a connection, he could not fail to get on.”
“He had much better get on by his own merits,” retorted the General with a grumble. “Frances! Frances was not to be compared with this girl. But I don’t believe she means anything more than amusing herself,” he added. “This is not the sort of girl to marry a poor soldier without a penny—not she. She will take her fun out of him, and then——”
The General kissed the end of his fingers and tossed them into the air. He was, perhaps, a little annoyed that his son had stepped in and monopolised the most amusing member of the society. And perhaps he did not think so badly of George’s chances as he said.
“You may be sure,” said Mrs Gaunt, indignantly, “she will do nothing of the kind. It is not every day that a girl gets a fine fellow like our George at her feet. He is just a little too much at her feet, which is always a mistake, I think. But still, General, you cannot but allow that Lord Markham’s sister——”
“I have never seen much good come of great connections,” said the General; but though his tone was that of a sceptic, his mind was softer than his speech. He, too, felt a certain elation in the thought that the youngest, who was not the clever one of the family, and who had not been quite so steady as might have been desired, was thus in the way of putting himself above the reach of fate. For of course, to be brother-in-law to a viscount was a good thing. It might not be of the same use as in the days when patronage ruled supreme; but still it would be folly to suppose that it was not an advantage. It would admit George to circles with which otherwise he could have formed no acquaintance, and make him known to people who could push him in his profession. George was the one about whom they had been most anxious. All the others were doing well in their way, though it was not a way which threw them into contact with viscounts or fine society. George would be over all their heads in that respect, and he was the one that wanted it most,—he was the one who was most dependent on outside aid.
“I don’t quite understand,” said Mrs Gaunt, “what Constance’ position is. She ought to be the Honourable, don’t you think? The Honourable Constance sounds very pretty. It would come in very nicely with Gaunt, which is an aristocratic-sounding name. People may say what they like about titles, but they are very nice, there is such individuality in them. Mrs George might be anybody; it might be me, as your name is George too. But the Honourable would distinguish it at once. When she called here, there was only Miss Constance Waring written on her father’s card; but then you don’t put Honourable on your card; and as Lady Markham’s daughter——”
“Women don’t count,” said the General, “as I’ve often told you. She’s Waring’s daughter.”
“Mr Waring may be a very clever man,” said Mrs Gaunt, indignantly; “but I should like to know how Constance can be the daughter of a viscountess in her own right without——”
“Is she a viscountess in her own right?”
This question brought Mrs Gaunt to a sudden pause. She looked at him with a startled air. “It is not through Mr Waring, that is clear,” she said.
“But it is not in her own right—at least I don’t think so; it is through her first husband, the father of that funny little creature” (meaning Lord Markham).
“General!” said Mrs Gaunt, shocked. Then she added, “I must make some excuse to look at the Peerage this afternoon. The Durants have always got their Peerage on the table. We shall have to send for one too, if——”
“If what? If your boy gets a wife who has titled connections, for that is all. A wife! and what is he to keep her on, in the name of heaven?”
“Mothers and brothers are tolerably close connections,” said Mrs Gaunt with dignity. “He has got his pay, General; and you always intended, if he married to your satisfaction—— Of course,” she added, speaking very quickly, to forestall an outburst, “Lady Markham will not leave her daughter dependent upon a captain’s pay. And even Mr Waring—Mr Waring must have a fortune of his own, or—or a person like that would never have married him; and he would not be able to live as he does, very comfortably, even luxuriously——”
“Oh, I suppose he has enough to live on. But as for pinching himself in order to enable his girl to marry your boy, I don’t believe a word of it,” exclaimed the General. Fortunately, being carried away by this wave of criticism, he had forgotten his wife’s allusion to his own intentions in George’s favour; and this was a subject on which she had no desire to be premature.
“Well, General,” she said, “perhaps we are going a little too fast. We don’t know yet whether anything will come of it. George is rather a lady’s man. It may be only a flirtation; it may end in nothing. We need not begin to count our chickens——”
“Why, it was you!” cried the astonished General. “I never should have remarked anything about it, or wasted a moment’s thought on the subject!”
Mrs Gaunt was not a clever woman, skilled in the art of leaving conversational responsibilities on the shoulders of her interlocutor; but if a woman is not inspired on behalf of her youngest boy, when is she to be inspired? She gave her shoulders the slightest possible shrug and left him to his newspaper. They had a newspaper from England every morning—the ‘Standard,’ whose reasonable Conservatism suited the old General. Except in military matters, such questions as the advance of Russia towards Afghanistan, or the defences of our own coasts, the General was not a bigot, and preferred his politics mild, with as little froth and foam as possible. His newspaper afforded him occupation for the entire morning, and he enjoyed it in very pleasant wise, seated under his veranda with a faint suspicion of lemon-blossom in the air which ruffled the young olive-trees all around, and the blue breadths of the sea stretching far away at his feet. The garden behind was fenced in with lemon and orange trees, the fruit in several stages, and just a little point of blossom here and there, not enough to load the air. Mrs Gaunt had preserved the wild flowers that were natural to the place, and accordingly had a scarlet field of anemones which wanted no cultivation, and innumerable clusters of the sweet white narcissus filling her little enclosure. These cost no trouble, and left Toni, the man-of-all-work, at leisure for the more profitable culture of the olives. From where the General sat, there was nothing visible, however, but the terraces descending in steps towards the distant glimpse of the road, and the light-blue margin, edged with spray, of the sea—under a soft and cheering sun, that warmed to the heart, but did not scorch or blaze, and with a soft air playing about his old temples, breathing freshness and that lemon-bloom. Sometimes there would come a faint sound of voices from some group of workers among the olives. The little clump of palm-trees at the end of the garden—for nothing here is perfect without a palm or two—cast a fantastic shadow, that waved over the newspaper now and then. When a man is old and has done his work, what can he want more than this sweet retirement and stillness? But naturally, it was not all that was necessary to young Captain George.
Mrs Gaunt went over to the Durants in the afternoon, as she so often did, and found that family, as usual, on their loggia. It cost her a little trouble and diplomacy to get a private inspection of the Peerage, and even when she did so, it threw but little light upon her question. Geoffrey Viscount Markham, tenth lord, was a name which she read with a little flutter of her heart, feeling that he was already almost a relation; and she read over the names of Markham Priory and Dunmorra, his lodge in the Highlands, and the town address in Eaton Square, all with a sense that by-and-by she might herself be directing letters from one or other of these places. But the Peerage said nothing about the Dowager Lady Markham subsequent to the conclusion of the first marriage, except that she had married again, E. Waring, Esq.; and thus Mrs Gaunt’s studies came to no satisfactory end. She introduced the subject, however, in the course of tea. She had asked whether any one had heard from Frances, and had received a satisfactory reply.
“Oh yes; I have had two letters; but she does not say very much. They had gone down to the Priory for Easter; and she was to be presented at the first drawing-room. Fancy Frances in a Court train and feathers, at a drawing-room! It does seem so very strange,” Tasie said. She said it with a slight sigh, for it was she, in old times, who had expounded Society to little Frances, and taught her what in an emergency it would be right to do and say; and now little Frances had taken a stride in advance. “I asked her to write and tell us all about it, and what she wore.”
“It would be white, of course.”
“Oh yes, it would be white—a débutante. When I went to drawing-rooms,” said Mrs Durant, who had once, in the character of chaplainess to an Embassy, made her courtesy to her Majesty, “young ladies’ toilets were simpler than now. Frances will probably be in white satin, which, except for a wedding dress, is quite unsuitable, I think, for a girl.”
“I wonder if we shall see it in the papers? Sometimes my sister-in-law sends me a ‘Queen,’” said Mrs Gaunt, “when she thinks there is something in it which will interest me; but she does not know anything about Frances. Dear little thing, I can’t think of her in white satin. Her sister, now——”
“Constance would wear velvet, if she could—or cloth-of-gold,” cried Tasie, with a little irritation. Her mother gave her a reproving glance.
“There is a tone in your voice, Tasie, which is not kind.”
“Oh yes; I know, mamma. But Constance is rather a trial. I know one ought not to show it. She looks as if one was not good enough to tie her shoes. And after all, she is no better than Frances; she is not half so nice as Frances; but I mean there can be no difference of position between sisters—one is just as good as the other; and Frances was so fond of coming here.”
“Do you think Constance gives herself airs? Oh no, dear Tasie,” said Mrs Gaunt, “she is really not at all—when you come to know her. I am most fond of Frances myself. Frances has grown up among us, and we know all about her; that is what makes the difference. And Constance—is a little shy.”
At this there was a cry from the family. “I don’t think she is shy,” said the old clergyman, whom Constance had insulted by walking out of church before the sermon.
“Shy!” exclaimed Mrs Durant, “about as shy as——” But no simile occurred to her which was bold enough to meet the case.
“It is better she should not be shy,” said Tasie. “You remember how she drove those people from the hotel to church. They have come ever since. They are quite afraid of her. Oh, there are some good things in her, some very good things.”
“We are the more hard to please, after knowing Frances,” repeated Mrs Gaunt. “But when a girl has been like that, used to the best society—— By the way, Mr Durant, you who know everything, are sure to know—Is she the Honourable? For my part I can’t quite make it out.”
Mr Durant put on his spectacles to look at her, as if such a question passed the bounds of the permissible. He was very imposing when he looked at any one through those spectacles with an air of mingled astonishment and superiority. “Why should she be an Honourable?” he said.
Mrs Gaunt felt as if she would like to sink into the abysses of the earth—that is, through the floor of the loggia, whatever might be the dreadful depths underneath. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said meekly. “I—I only thought—her mother being a—a titled person, a—a viscountess in her own right——”
“But my dear lady,” said Mr Durant, with a satisfaction in his superior knowledge which was almost unspeakable, “Lady Markham is not a viscountess in her own right. Dear, no! She is not a viscountess at all. She is plain Mrs Waring, and nothing else, if right was right. Society only winks good-naturedly at her retaining the title, which she certainly, if there is any meaning in the peerage at all, forfeits by marrying a commoner.”
Mrs Durant and Tasie both looked with great admiration at their head and instructor as he thus spoke. “You may be sure Mr Durant says nothing that he is not quite sure of,” said the wife, crushing any possible scepticism on the part of the inquirer; and “Papa knows such a lot,” added Tasie, awed, yet smiling, on her side.
“Oh, is that all?” said Mrs Gaunt, greatly subdued. “But then, Lord Markham—calls her his sister, you know.”
“The nobility,” said Mr Durant, “are always very scrupulous about relationships; and she is his step-sister. He couldn’t qualify the relationship by calling her so. A common person might do so, but not a man of high breeding, like Lord Markham—that is all.”
“I suppose you must be right,” said Mrs Gaunt. “The General said so too. But it does seem very strange to me that of the same woman’s children, and she a lady of title, one should be a lord, and the other have no sort of distinction at all.” They all smiled upon her blandly, every one ready with a new piece of information, and much sympathy for her ignorance, which Mrs Gaunt, seeing that it was she that was likely to be related to Lord Markham, and not any of the Durants, felt that she could not bear; so she jumped up hastily and declared that she must be going, that the General would be waiting for her. “I hope you will come over some evening, and I will ask the Warings, and Tasie must bring her music. I am sure you would like to hear George’s violin. He is getting on so well, with Constance to play his accompaniments;” and before any one could reply to her, Mrs Gaunt had hurried away.
It is painful not to have time to get out your retort; and these excellent people turned instinctively upon each other to discharge the unflown arrows. “It is so very easy, with a little trouble, to understand the titles, complimentary and otherwise, of our own nobility,” said Mr Durant, shaking his head.
“And such a sign of want of breeding not to understand them,” said his wife.
“The Honourable Constance would sound very pretty,” cried Tasie; “it is such a pity.”
“Especially, our friend thinks, if it was the Honourable Constance Gaunt.”
“That she could never be, my dear,” said the old clergyman mildly. “She might be the Honourable Mrs Gaunt; but Constance, no—not in any case.”
“I should like to know why,” Mrs Durant said.
Perhaps here the excellent chaplain’s knowledge failed him; or he had become weary of the subject; for he rose and said, “I have really no more time for a matter which does not concern us,” and trotted away.
The mother and daughter left alone together, naturally turned to a point more interesting than the claims of Constance to rank. “Do you really think, mamma,” said Tasie—“do you really, really think,—it is silly to be always discussing these sort of questions—but do you believe that Constance Waring actually—means anything?”
“You should say does George Gaunt mean anything? The girl never comes first in such a question,” said Mrs Durant, with that ingrained contempt for girls which often appears in elderly women. Tasie was so (traditionally) young, besides having a heart of sixteen in her bosom, that her sympathies were all with the girl.
“I don’t think in this case, mamma,” she said. “Constance is so much more a person of the world than any of us. I don’t mean to say she is worldly. Oh no! but having been in society, and so much out.”
“I should like to know in what kind of society she has been,” said Mrs Durant, who took gloomy views. “I don’t want to say a word against Lady Markham; but society, Tasie, the kind of society to which your father and I have been accustomed, looks rather coldly upon a wife living apart from her husband. Oh, I don’t mean to say Lady Markham was to blame. Probably she is a most excellent person; but the presumption is that at least, you know, there were—faults on both sides.”
“I am sure I can’t give an opinion,” cried Tasie, “for, of course, I don’t know anything about it. But George Gaunt has nothing but his pay; and Constance couldn’t be in love with him, could she? Oh no! I don’t know anything about it; but I can’t think a girl like Constance——”
“A girl in a false position,” said the chaplain’s wife, “is often glad to marry any one, just for a settled place in the world.”
“Oh, but not Constance, mamma! I am sure she is just amusing herself.”
“Tasie! you speak as if she were the man,” exclaimed Mrs Durant, in a tone of reproof.