“SHE thinks I am fanciful,” he said.
He was sitting with Lady Markham in the room which was her special sanctuary. She did not call it her boudoir—she was not at all inclined to bouder; but it answered to that retirement in common parlance. Those who wanted to see her alone, to confide in her, as many people did, knocked at the door of this room. It opened with a large window upon the lawn, and looked down through a carefully kept opening upon the sea. Amid all the little luxuries appropriate to my lady’s chamber, you could see the biggest ships in the world pass across the gleaming foreground, shut in between two massifs of laurel, making a delightful confusion of the great and the small, which was specially pleasant to her. She sat, however, with her back to this pleasant prospect, holding up a screen, to shade her delicate cheek from the bright little fire, which, though April was far advanced, was still thought necessary so near the sea. Claude had thrown himself into another chair in front of the fireplace. No warmth was ever too much for him. There was the usual pathos in his tone, but a faint consciousness of something amusing was in his face.
“Did she?” said Lady Markham with a laugh. “The little impertinent! But you know, my dear boy, that is what I have always said.”
“Yes—it is quite true. You healthy people, you are always of opinion that one can get over it if one makes the effort; and there is no way of proving the contrary but by dying, which is a strong step.”
“A very strong step—one, I hope, that you will not think of taking. They are both very sincere, my girls, though in a different way. They mean what they say; and yet they do not mean it, Claude. That is, it is quite true; but does not affect their regard for you, which, I am sure, without implying any deeper feeling, is strong.”
He shook his head a little. “Dear Lady Markham,” he said, “you know if I am to marry, I want, above all things, to marry a daughter of yours.”
“Dear boy!” she said, with a look full of tender meaning.
“You have always been so good to me, since ever I can remember. But what am I to do if they—object? Constance—has run away from me, people say: run away—to escape me!” His voice took so tragically complaining a tone, that Lady Markham bit her lip and held her screen higher to conceal her smile. Next moment, however, she turned upon him with a perfectly grave and troubled face.
“Dear Claude!” she cried, “what an injustice to poor Con. I thought I had explained all that to you. You have known all along the painful position I am in with their father, and you know how impulsive she is. And then, Markham—— Alas!” she continued with a sigh, “my position is very complicated, Claude. Markham is the best son that ever was; but you know I have to pay a great deal for it.”
“Ah!” said Claude; “Nelly Winterbourn and all that,” with a good many sage nods of his head.
“Not only Nelly Winterbourn—there is no harm in her, that I know—but he has a great influence with the girls. It was he who put it into Constance’s head to go to her father. I am quite sure it was. He put it before her that it was her duty.”
“O—oh!” Claude made this very English comment with the doubtful tone which it expresses; and added, “Her duty!” with a very unconvinced air.
“He did so, I know. And she was so fond of adventure and change. I agreed with him partly afterwards that it was the best thing that could happen to her. She is finding out by experience what banishment from Society, and from all that makes life pleasant, is. I have no doubt she will come back—in a very different frame of mind.”
Claude did not respond, as perhaps Lady Markham expected him to do. He sat and dandled his leg before the fire, not looking at her. After some time, he said in a reflective way, “Whoever I marry, she will have to resign herself to banishment, as you call it—that has been always understood. A warm climate in winter—and to be ready to start at any moment.”
“That is always understood—till you get stronger,” said Lady Markham in the gentlest tone. “But you know I have always expected that you would get stronger. Remember, you have been kept at home all this year—and you are better; at all events you have not suffered.”
“Had I been sent away, Constance would have remained at home,” he said. “I am not speaking out of irritation, but only to understand it fully. It is not as if I were finding fault with Constance; but you see for yourself she could not stand me all the year round. A fellow who has always to be thinking about the thermometer is trying.”
“My dear boy,” said Lady Markham, “everything is trying. The thermometer is much less offensive than most things that men care for. Girls are brought up in that fastidious way: you all like them to be so, and to think they have refined tastes, and so forth; and then you are surprised when you find they have a little difficulty—— Constance was only fanciful, that was all—impatient.”
“Fanciful,” he repeated. “That was what the little one said. I wish she were fanciful, and not so horribly well and strong.”
“My dear Claude,” said Lady Markham quickly, “you would not like that at all! A delicate wife is the most dreadful thing—one that you would always have to be considering; who could not perhaps go to the places that suited you; who would not be able to go out with you when you wanted her. I don’t insist upon a daughter of mine: but not that, not that, for your own sake, my dear boy!”
“I believe you are right,” he said, with a look of conviction. “Then I suppose the only thing to be done is to wait for a little and see how things turn out. There is no hurry about it, you know.”
“Oh, no hurry!” she said, with uneasy assent. “That is, if you are not in a hurry,” she added after a pause.
“No, I don’t think so. I am rather enjoying myself, I think. It always does one good,” he said, getting up slowly, “to come and have it out with you.”
Lady Markham said “Dear boy!” once more, and gave him her hand, which he kissed; and then his audience was over. He went away; and she turned round to her writing-table to the inevitable correspondence. There was a little cloud upon her forehead so long as she was alone; but when another knock came at the door, it cleared by magic as she said “Come in.” This time it was Sir Thomas who appeared. He was a tall man, with grey hair, and had the air of being very carefully brushed and dressed. He came in, and seated himself where Claude had been, but pushed back the chair from the fire.
“Don’t you think,” he said, “that you keep your room a little too warm?”
“Claude complained that it was cold. It is difficult to please everybody.”
“Oh, Claude. I have come to speak to you, dear Lady Markham, on a very different subject. I was talking to Frances last night.”
“So I perceived. And what do you think of my little girl?”
“You know,” he said, with some solemnity, “the hopes I have always entertained that some time or other our dear Waring might be brought among us once more.”
“I have always told you,” said Lady Markham, “that no difficulties should be raised by me.”
“You were always everything that is good and kind,” said Sir Thomas. “I was talking to his dear little daughter last night. She reminds me very much of Waring, Lady Markham.”
“That is odd; for everybody tells me—and indeed I can see it myself—that she is like me.”
“She is very like you; still, she reminds me of her father more than I can say. I do think we have in her the instrument—the very instrument that is wanted. If he is ever to be brought back again——”
“Which I doubt,” she said, shaking her head.
“Don’t let us doubt. With perseverance, everything is to be hoped; and here we have in our very hands what I have always looked for—some one devoted to him and very fond of you.”
“Is she very fond of me?” said Lady Markham. Her face softened—a little moisture crept into her eyes. “Ah, Sir Thomas, I wonder if that is true. She was very much moved by the idea of her mother—a relation she had never known. She expected I don’t know what, but more, I am sure, than she has found in me. Oh, don’t say anything. I am scarcely surprised; I am not at all displeased. To come with your heart full of an ideal, and to find an ordinary woman—a woman in Society!” The moisture enlarged in Lady Markham’s eyes—not tears, but yet a liquid mist that gave them pathos. She shook her head, looking at him with a smile.
“We need not argue the question,” said Sir Thomas, “for I know she is very fond of you. You should have heard her stop me when she thought I was going to criticise you. Of course, had she known me better she would have known how impossible that was.”
Lady Markham did not say “Dear Sir Thomas!” as she had said “Dear boy!” but her look was the same as that which she had turned upon Claude. She was in no doubt as to what his account of her would be.
“She can persuade him, if anybody can,” he said. “I think I shall go and see him as soon as I can get away—if you do not object. To bring our dear Waring back, to see you two together again, who have always been the objects of my warmest admiration——”
“You are too kind. You have always had a higher opinion of me than I deserve,” she said. “One can only be grateful. One cannot try to persuade you that you are mistaken. As for my—husband”—there was the slightest momentary pause before she said the name—“I fear you will never get him to think so well of me as you do. It is a great misfortune; but still it sometimes happens that other people think more of a woman than—her very own.”
“You must not say that. Waring adored you.”
She shook her head again. “He had a great admiration,” she said, “for a woman to whom he gave my name. But he discovered that it was a mistake; and for me in my own person he had no particular feeling. Think a little whether you are doing wisely. If you should succeed in bringing us two together again——”
“What then?”
She did not say any more: her face grew pale, as by a sudden touch or breath. When such a tie as marriage is severed, if by death or by any other separation, it is not a light thing to renew it again. The thought of that possibility—which yet was not a possibility—suddenly realised, sent the blood back to Lady Markham’s heart. It was not that she was unforgiving, or even that she had not a certain remainder of love for her husband. But to resume those habits of close companionship after so many years—to give up her own individuality, in part at least, and live a dual life—this thought startled her. She had said that she would put no difficulties in the way. But then she had not thought of all that was involved.
The next visitor who interrupted her retirement came in without the preliminary of knocking. It was Markham who thus made his appearance, presenting himself to the full daylight in his light clothes and colourless aspect; not very well dressed, a complete contrast to the beautiful if sickly youth of her first visitor, and to the size and vigour of the other. Markham had neither beauty nor vigour. Even the usual keenness and humorous look had gone out of his face. He held a letter in his hand. He did not, like the others, put himself into the chair where Lady Markham, herself turned from the light, could mark every change of countenance in her interlocutor. He went up to the fire with the ease of the master of the house, and stood in front of it as an Englishman loves to do. But he was not quite at his ease on this occasion. He said nothing until he had assumed his place, and even stood for a whole minute or more silent before he found his voice. Lady Markham had turned her chair towards him at once, and sat with her head raised and expectant, watching him. For with Markham, never very reticent of his words, this prolonged pause seemed to mean that there was something important to say. But it did not appear when he spoke. He put the forefinger of one hand on the letter he held in the other. “I have heard from the Winterbourns,” he said. “They are coming to-morrow.”
Lady Markham made the usual little exclamation “Oh!”—faintly breathed with the slightest catch, as if it might have meant more. Then, after a moment—“Very well, Markham: they can have their usual rooms,” she said.
Again there was a little pause. Then—“He is not very well,” said Markham.
“Oh, that is a pity,” she replied with very little concern.
“That’s not strong enough. I believe he is rather ill. They are leaving the Crosslands sooner than they intended because there’s no doctor there.”
“Then it is a good thing,” said Lady Markham, “that there is such a good doctor here. We are so healthy a party, he is quite thrown away on us.”
Markham did not find that his mother divined what he wanted to say with her usual promptitude. “I am afraid Winterbourn is in a bad way,” he said at length, moving uneasily from one foot to the other, and avoiding her eye.
“Do you mean that there is anything serious—dangerous? Good heavens!” cried Lady Markham, now fully roused, “I hope she is not going to bring that man to die here.”
“That’s just what I have been thinking. It would be decidedly awkward.”
“Oh, awkward is not the word,” cried Lady Markham, with a sudden vision of all the inconveniences: her pretty house turned upside down—though it was not hers, but his—a stop put to everything—the flight of her guests in every direction—herself detained and separated from all her social duties. “You take it very coolly,” she said. “You must write and say it is impossible in the circumstances.”
“Can’t,” said Markham. “They must have started by this time. They are to travel slowly—to husband his strength.”
“To husband——! Telegraph, then! Good heavens! Markham, don’t you see what a dreadful nuisance—how impossible in every point of view.”
“Come,” he said, with a return of his more familiar tone. “There’s no evidence that he means to die here. I daresay he won’t, if he can help it, poor beggar! The telegraph is as impossible as the post. We are in for it, mammy. Let’s hope he’ll pull through.”
“And if he doesn’t, Markham!”
“That will be—more awkward still,” he said. Markham was not himself: he shuffled from one foot to another, and looked straight before him, never glancing aside with those keen looks of understanding which made his insignificant countenance interesting. His mother was, what mothers too seldom are, his most intimate friend; but he did not meet her eye. His hands were thrust into his pockets, his shoulders up to his ears. At last a faint and doubtful gleam broke over his face. He burst into a sudden chuckle—one of those hoarse brief notes of laughter which were peculiar to him. “By Jove! it would be poetic justice,” he said.
Lady Markham showed no inclination to laughter. “Is there nothing we can do?” she cried.
“Think of something else,” said Markham, with a sudden recovery. “I always find that the best thing to do—for the moment. What was Claude saying to you—and t’other man?”
“Claude! I don’t know what he was saying. News like this is enough to drive everything else out of one’s head. He is wavering between Con and Frances.”
“Mother, I told you. Frances will have nothing to say to him.”
“Frances—will obey the leading of events, I hope.”
“Poor little Fan! I don’t think she will, though. That child has a great deal in her. She shows her parentage.”
“Sir Thomas says she reminds him much of her—father,” Lady Markham said, with a faint smile.
“There is something of Waring too,” said her son, nodding his head.
This seemed to jar upon the mother. She changed colour a little; and then added, her smile growing more constrained: “He thinks she may be a powerful instrument in—changing his mind—bringing him, after all these years, back”—here she paused a little, as if seeking for a phrase; then added, her smile growing less and less pleasant—“to his duty.”
Then Markham for the first time looked at her. He had been paying but partial attention up to this moment, his mind being engrossed with difficulties of his own; but he awoke at this suggestion, and looked at her with something of his usual keenness, but with a gravity not at all usual. And she met his eye with an awakening in hers which was still more remarkable. For a moment they thus contemplated each other, not like mother and son, nor like the dear and close friends they were, but like two antagonists suddenly perceiving, on either side, the coming conflict. For almost the first time there woke in Lady Markham’s mind a consciousness that it was possible her son, who had been always her champion, her defender, her companion, might wish her out of his way. She looked at him with a rising colour, with all her nerves thrilling, and her whole soul on the alert for his next words. These were words which he would have preferred not to speak; but they seemed to be forced from his lips against his will, though even as he said them he explained to himself that they had been in his mind to say before he knew—before the dilemma that might occur had seemed possible.
“Yes?” he said. “I understand what he means. I—even I—had been thinking that something of the sort—might be a good thing.”
She clasped her hands with a quick passionate movement. “Has it come to this—in a moment—without warning?” she cried.