FRANCES had not succeeded in resolving this question in her mind when Thursday came. The two intervening days had been very quiet. She had gone with her mother to several shops, and had stood by almost passive and much astonished while a multitude of little luxuries which she had never been sufficiently enlightened even to wish for, were bought for her. She was so little accustomed to lavish expenditure, that it was almost with a sense of wrong-doing that she contemplated all these costly trifles, which were for the use not of some typical fine lady, but of herself, Frances, who had never thought it possible she could ever be classed under that title. To Lady Markham these delicacies were evidently necessaries of life. And then it was for the first time that Frances learned what an evening dress meant—not only the garment itself, but the shoes, the stockings, the gloves, the ribbons, the fan, a hundred little accessories which she had never so much as thought of. When you have nothing but a set of coral or amber beads to wear with your white frock, it is astonishing how much that matter is simplified. Lady Markham opened her jewel-boxes to provide for the same endless roll of necessities. “This will go with the white dress, and this with the pink,” she said, thus revealing to Frances another delicacy of accord unsuspected by her simplicity.
“But, mamma, you are giving me so many things!”
“Not your share yet,” said Lady Markham. And she added: “But don’t say anything of this to your aunt Clarendon. She will probably give you something out of her hoards, if she thinks you are not provided.”
This speech checked the pleasure and gratitude of Frances. She stopped with a little gasp in her eager thanks. She wanted nothing from her aunt Clarendon, she said to herself with indignation, nor from her mother either. If they would but let her keep her ignorance, her pleasure in any simple gift, and not represent her, even to herself, as a little schemer, trying how much she could get! Frances cried rather than smiled over her turquoises and the set of old gold ornaments, which but for that little speech would have made her happy. The suggestion put gall into everything, and made the timid question in her mind as to Lady Markham’s generous forbearance with her sister-in-law more difficult than ever. Why did she bear it? She ought not to have borne it—not for a day.
On the Wednesday evening before the visit to Portland Place, to which she looked with so much alarm, two gentlemen came to dinner at the invitation of Markham. The idea of two gentlemen to dinner produced no exciting effect upon Frances so as to withdraw her mind from the trial that was coming. Gentlemen were the only portion of the creation with which she was more or less acquainted. Even in the old Palazzo, a guest of this description had been occasionally received, and had sat discussing some point of antiquarian lore, or something about the old books at Colla, with her father without taking any notice, beyond what civility demanded, of the little girl who sat at the head of the table. She did not doubt it would be the same thing to-night; and though Markham was always nice, never leaving her out, never letting the conversation drop altogether into that stream of personality or allusion which makes Society so intolerable to a stranger, she yet prepared for the evening with the feeling that dulness awaited her, and not pleasure. One of the guests, however, was of a kind which Frances did not expect. He was young, very young in appearance, rather small and delicate, but at the same time refined, with a look of gentle melancholy upon a countenance which was almost beautiful, with child-like limpid eyes, and features of extreme delicacy and purity. This was something quite unlike the elderly antiquarians who talked so glibly to her father about Roman remains or Etruscan art. He sat between Lady Markham and herself, and spoke in gentle tones, with a soft affectionate manner, to her mother, who replied with the kindness and easy affectionateness which were habitual to her. To see the sweet looks which this young gentleman received, and to hear the tender questions about his health and his occupations which Lady Markham put to him, awoke in the mind of Frances another doubt of the same character as those others from which she had not been able to get free. Was this sympathetic tone, this air of tender interest, put on at will for the benefit of everybody with whom Lady Markham spoke? Frances hated herself for the instinctive question which rose in her, and for the suspicions which crept into her mind on every side and undermined all her pleasure. The other stranger opposite to her was old—to her youthful eyes—and called forth no interest at all. But the gentleness and melancholy, the low voice, the delicate features, something plaintive and appealing about the youth by her side, attracted her interest in spite of herself. He said little to her, but from time to time she caught him looking at her with a sort of questioning glance. When the ladies left the table, and Frances and her mother were alone in the drawing-room, Lady Markham, who had said nothing for some minutes, suddenly turned and asked: “What did you think of him, Frances?” as if it were the most natural question in the world.
“Of whom?” said Frances in her astonishment.
“Of Claude, my dear. Whom else? Sir Thomas could be of no particular interest either to you or me.”
“I did not know their names, mamma; I scarcely heard them. Claude is the young gentleman who sat next to you?”
“And to you also, Frances. But not only that. He is the man of whom, I suppose, Constance has told you—to avoid whom she left home, and ran away from me. Oh, the words come quite appropriate, though I could not bear them from the mouth of Caroline Clarendon. She abandoned me, and threw herself upon your father’s protection, because of——”
Frances had listened with a sort of consternation. When her mother paused for breath, she filled up the interval: “That little, gentle, small, young man!”
Lady Markham looked for a moment as if she would be angry; then she took the better way, and laughed. “He is little and young,” she said; “but neither so young nor even so small as you think. He is most wonderfully, portentously rich, my dear; and he is very nice and good and intelligent and generous. You must not take up a prejudice against him because he is not an athlete or a giant. There are plenty of athletes in Society, my love, but very, very few with a hundred thousand a-year.”
“It is so strange to me to hear about money,” said Frances. “I hope you will pardon me, mamma. I don’t understand. I thought he was perhaps some one who was delicate, whose mother, perhaps, you knew, whom you wanted to be kind to.”
“Quite true,” said Lady Markham, patting her daughter’s cheek with a soft finger; “and well judged: but something more besides. I thought, I allow, that it would be an excellent match for Constance; not only because he was rich, but also because he was rich. Do you see the difference?”
“I—suppose so,” Frances said; but there was not any warmth in the admission. “I thought the right way,” she added after a moment, with a blush that stole over her from head to foot, “was that people fell in love with each other.”
“So it is,” said her mother, smiling upon her. “But it often happens, you know, that they fall in love respectively with the wrong people.”
“It is dreadful to me to talk to you, who know so much better,” cried Frances. “All that I know is from stories. But I thought that even a wrong person, whom you chose yourself, was better than——”
“The right person chosen by your mother? These are awful doctrines, Frances. You are a little revolutionary. Who taught you such terrible things?” Lady Markham laughed as she spoke, and patted the girl’s cheek more affectionately than ever, and looked at her with unclouded smiles, so that Frances took courage. “But,” the mother went on, “there was no question of choice on my part. Constance has known Claude Ramsay all her life. She liked him, so far as I knew. I supposed she had accepted him. It was not formally announced, I am happy to say; but I made sure of it, and so did everybody else—including himself, poor fellow—when, suddenly, without any warning, your sister disappeared. It was unkind to me, Frances,—oh, it was unkind to me!”
And suddenly, while she was speaking, two tears appeared all at once in Lady Markham’s eyes.
Frances was deeply touched by this sight. She ventured upon a caress, which as yet, except in timid return, to those bestowed upon her, she had not been bold enough to do. “I do not think Constance can have meant to be unkind,” she said.
“Few people mean to be unkind,” said this social philosopher, who knew so much more than Frances. “Your aunt Clarendon does, and that makes her harmless, because one understands. Most of those who wound one, do it because it pleases themselves, without meaning anything—or caring anything—don’t you see?—whether it hurts or not.”
This was too profound a saying to be understood at the first moment, and Frances had no reply to make to it. She said only by way of apology, “But Markham approved?”
“My love,” said her mother, “Markham is an excellent son to me. He rarely wounds me himself—which is perhaps because he rarely does anything particular himself—but he is not always a safe guide. It makes me very happy to see that you take to him, though you must have heard many things against him; but he is not a safe guide. Hush! here are the men coming up-stairs. If Claude talks to you, be as gentle with him as you can—and sympathetic, if you can,” she said quickly, rising from her chair, and moving in her noiseless easy way to the other side. Frances felt as if there was a meaning even in this movement, which left herself alone with a vacant seat beside her; but she was confused as usual by all the novelty, and did not understand what the meaning was.
It was balked, however, if it had anything to do with Mr Ramsay, for it was the other gentleman—the old gentleman, as Frances called him in her thoughts—who came up and took the vacant place. The old gentleman was a man about forty-five, with a few grey hairs among the brown, and a well-knit manly figure, which showed very well between the delicate youth on the one hand and Markham’s insignificance on the other. He was Sir Thomas, whom Lady Markham had declared to be of no particular interest to any one; but he evidently had sense enough to see the charm of simplicity and youth. The attention of Frances was sadly distracted by the movements of Claude, who fidgeted about from one table to another, looking at the books and the nick-nacks upon them, and staring at the pictures on the walls, then finally came and stood by Markham’s side in front of the fire. He did well to contrast himself with Markham. He was taller, and the beauty of his countenance showed still more strikingly in contrast with Markham’s odd little wrinkled face. Frances was distracted by the look which he kept fixed upon herself, and which diverted her attention in spite of herself away from the talk of Sir Thomas, who was, however, very nice, and, she felt sure, most interesting and instructive, as became his advanced age, if only she could attend to what he was saying. But what with the lively talk which her mother carried on with Markham, and to which she could not help listening all through the conversation of Sir Thomas, and the movements and glances of the melancholy young lover, she could not fix her mind upon the remarks that were addressed to her own ear. When Claude began to join languidly in the other talk, it was more difficult still. “You have got a new picture, Lady Markham,” she heard him say; and a sudden quickening of her attention and another wave of colour and heat passing over her, arrested even Sir Thomas in the much more interesting observation which presumably he was about to make. He paused, as if he, too, waited to hear Lady Markham’s reply.
“Shall we call it a picture? It is my little girl’s sketch from her window where she has been living—her present to her mother; and I think it is delightful, though in the circumstances I don’t pretend to be a judge.”
Where she has been living! Frances grew redder and hotter in the flush of indignation that went over her. But she could not stand up and proclaim that it was from her home, her dear loggia, the place she loved best in the world, that the sketch was made. Already the bonds of another life were upon her, and she dared not do that. And then there was a little chorus of praise, which silenced her still more effectually. It was the group of palms which she had been so simply proud of, which—as she had never forgotten—had made her father say that she had grown up. Lady Markham had placed it on a small easel on her table; but Frances could not help feeling that this was less for any pleasure it gave her mother, than in order to make a little exhibition of her own powers. It was, to be sure, in her own honour that this was done—and what so natural as that the mother should seek to do her daughter honour? but Frances was deeply sensitive, and painfully conscious of the strange tangled web of motives, which she had never in her life known anything about before. Had the little picture been hung in her mother’s bedroom, and seen by no eyes but her own, the girl would have found the most perfect pleasure in it; but here, exhibited as in a public gallery, examined by admiring eyes, calling forth all the incense of praise, it was with a mixture of shame and resentment that Frances found it out. It produced this result, however, that Sir Thomas rose, as in duty bound, to examine the performance of the daughter of the house; and presently young Ramsay, who had been watching his opportunity, took the place by her side.
“I have been waiting for this,” he said, with his air of pathos. “I have so many things to ask you, if you will let me, Miss Waring.”
“Surely,” Frances said.
“Your sketch is very sweet—it is full of feeling—there is no colour like that of the Riviera. It is the Riviera, is it not?”
“Oh yes,” cried Frances, eager to seize the opportunity of making it apparent that it was not only where she had been living, as her mother said. “It is from Bordighera, from our loggia, where I have lived all my life.”
“You will find no colour and no vegetation like that near London,” the young man said.
To this Frances replied politely that London was full of much more wonderful things, as she had always heard; but felt somewhat disappointed, supposing that his communications to her were to be more interesting than this.
“And the climate is so very different,” he continued. “I am very often sent out of England for the winter, though this year they have let me stay. I have been at Nice two seasons. I suppose you know Nice? It is a very pretty place; but the wind is just as cold sometimes as at home. You have to keep in the sun; and if you always keep in the sun, it is warm even here.”
“But there is not always sun here,” said Frances.
“That is very true; that is a very clever remark. There is not always sun here. San Remo was beginning to be known when I was there; but I never heard of Bordighera as a place where people went to stay. Some Italian wrote a book about it, I have heard—to push it, no doubt. Could you recommend it as a winter-place, Miss Waring? I suppose it is very dull, nothing going on?”
“Oh, nothing at all,” cried Frances eagerly. “All the tourists complain that there is nothing to do.”
“I thought so,” he said; “a regular little Italian dead-alive place.” Then he added after a moment’s pause: “But of course there are inducements which might make one put up with that, if the air happened to suit one. Are there villas to be had, can you tell me? They say, as a matter of fact, that you get more advantage of the air when you are in a dull place.”
“There are hotels,” said Frances more and more disappointed, though the beginning of this speech had given her a little hope.
“Good hotels?” he said with interest. “Sometimes they are really better than a place of one’s own, where the drainage is often bad, and the exposure not all that could be desired. And then you get any amusement that may be going. Perhaps you will tell me the names of one or two? for if this east wind continues, my doctors may send me off even now.”
Frances looked into his limpid eyes and expressive countenance with dismay. He must look, she felt sure, as if he were making the most touching confidences to her. His soft pathetic voice gave a faux air of something sentimental to those questions, which even she could not persuade herself meant nothing. Was it to show that he was bent upon following Constance wherever she might go? That must be the true meaning, she supposed. He must be endeavouring by this mock-anxiety to find out how much she knew of his real motives, and whether he might trust to her or not. But Frances resented a little the unnecessary precaution.
“I don’t know anything about the hotels,” she said. “I have never thought of the air. It is my home—that is all.”
“You look so well, that I am the more convinced it would be a good place for me,” said the young man. “You look in such thorough good health, if you will allow me to say so. Some ladies don’t like to be told that; but I think it the most delightful thing in existence. Tell me, had you any trouble with drainage, when you went to settle there? And is the water good? and how long does the season last? I am afraid I am teasing you with my questions; but all these details are so important—and one is so pleased to hear of a new place.”
“We live up in the old town,” said Frances with a sudden flash of malice. “I don’t know what drainage is, and neither does any one else there. We have our fountain in the court—our own well. And I don’t think there is any season. We go up among the mountains, when it gets too hot.”
“Your well in the court!” said the sentimental Claude, with the look of a poet who has just been told that his dearest friend is killed by an accident,—“with everything percolating into it! That is terrible indeed. But,” he said, after a pause, an ethereal sense of consolation stealing over his fine features—“there are exceptions, they say, to every rule; and sometimes, with fine health such as you have, bad sanitary conditions do not seem to tell—when there has been no stirring-up. I believe that is at the root of the whole question. People can go on, on the old system, so long as there is no stirring-up; but when once a beginning has been made, it must be complete, or it is fatal.”
He said this with animation much greater than he had shown as yet; then dropping into his habitual pathos: “If I come in for tea to-morrow—Lady Markham allows me to do it, when I can, when the weather is fit for going out—will you be so very kind as to give me half an hour, Miss Waring, for a few particulars? I will take them down from your lips—it is so much the most satisfactory way; and perhaps you would add to your kindness by just thinking it over beforehand—if there is anything I ought to know.”
“But I am going out to-morrow, Mr Ramsay.”
“Then after to-morrow,” he said; and rising with a bow full of tender deference, went up to Lady Markham to bid her good-night. “I have been having a most interesting conversation with Miss Waring. She has given me so many renseignements,” he said. “She permits me to come after to-morrow for further particulars. Dear Lady Markham, good-night and à revoir.”
“What was Claude saying to you, Frances?” Lady Markham asked with a little anxiety, when everybody save Markham was gone, and they were alone.
“He asked me about Bordighera, mamma.”
“Poor dear boy! About Con, and what she had said of him? He has a faithful heart, though people think him a little too much taken up with himself.”
“He did not say anything about Constance. He asked about the climate and the drains—what are drains?—and if the water was good, and what hotel I could recommend.”
Lady Markham laughed and coloured slightly, and tapped Frances on the cheek. “You are a little satirical——! Dear Claude! he is very anxious about his health. But don’t you see,” she added, “that was all a covert way of finding out about Con? He wants to go after her; but he does not want to let everybody in the world see that he has gone after a girl who would not have him. I have a great deal of sympathy with him, for my part.”
Frances had no sympathy with him. She felt, on the other hand, more sympathy for Constance than had moved her yet. To escape from such a lover, Frances thought a girl might be justified in flying to the end of the world. But it never entered into her mind that any like danger to herself was to be thought of. She dismissed Claude Ramsay from her thoughts with half resentment, half amusement, wondering that Constance had not told her more; but feeling, as no such image had ever risen on her horizon before, that she would not have believed Constance. However, her sister had happily escaped, and to herself, Claude Ramsay was nothing. Far more important was it to think of the ordeal of to-morrow. She shivered a little even in her warm room as she anticipated it. England seemed to be colder, greyer, more devoid of brightness in Portland Place than in Eaton Square.