THE crisis, however, was averted—“mercifully,” as Lady Markham said. Dr Howard from Southampton—whom she had thought of only by chance, on the spur of the moment, as a way of getting rid of Markham—produced some new lights; and in reality was so successful with the invalid, that he rallied, and it became possible to remove him by slow stages to his own house, to die there, which he did in due course, but some time after, and decorously, in the right way and place. Frances felt herself like a spectator at a play during all this strange interval, looking on at the third act of a tragedy, which somehow had got involved in a drawing-room comedy, with scenes alternating, and throwing a kind of wretched reflection of their poor humour upon the tableaux of the darker drama. She thought that she never should forget the countenance of Nelly Winterbourn as she took her seat beside her husband in the invalid carriage in which he was conveyed away, and turned to wave a farewell to the little group which had assembled to watch the departure. Her face was quivering with a sort of despairing impatience, wretchedness, self-pity, the miserable anticipations of a living creature tied to one who was dead—nerves and temper and every part of her being wrought to a feverish excitement, made half delirious by the prospect, the possibility, of escape. A wretched sort of spasmodic smile was upon her lips as she waved her hand to the spectators—those spectators all on the watch to read her countenance, who, she knew, were as well aware of the position as herself. Frances was learning the lesson thus set practically before her with applications of her own. She knew now to a great extent what it all meant, and why Markham disappeared as soon as the carriage drove away; while her mother, with an aspect of intense relief, returned to her guests. “I feel as if I could breathe again,” Lady Markham said. “Not that I should have grudged anything I could do for poor dear Nelly; but there is something so terrible in a death in one’s house.”
“I quite enter into your feelings, dear—oh, quite!” said Mrs Montague; “most painful, and most embarrassing besides.”
“Oh, as for that!” said Lady Markham. “It would have been indeed a great annoyance and vexation to break up our pleasant party, and put out all your plans. But one has to submit in such cases. However, I am most thankful it has not come to that. Poor Mr Winterbourn may last yet—for months, Dr Howard says.”
“Dear me; do you think that is to be desired?” said the other, “for poor Nelly’s sake.”
“Poor Nelly!” said the young ladies. “Only fancy months! What a terrible fate!”
“And yet it was supposed to be a great match for her, a penniless girl!”
“It was a great match,” said Lady Markham composedly. “And dear Nelly has always behaved so well. She is an example to many women that have much less to put up with than she has. Frances, will you see about the lawn-tennis? I am sure you want to shake off the impression, you poor girls, who have been so good.”
“Oh, dear Lady Markham, you don’t suppose we could have gone on laughing and making a noise while there was such anxiety in the house. But we shall like a game, now that there is no impropriety——”
“And we are all so glad,” said the mother, “that there was no occasion for turning out; for our visits are so dovetailed, I don’t know where we should have gone—and our house in the hands of the workmen. I, for one, am very thankful that poor Mr Winterbourn has a little longer to live.”
Thus, after this singular episode, the ordinary life of the household was resumed; and though the name of poor Nelly recurred at intervals for a day or two, there were many things that were of more importance—a great garden-party, for instance, for which, fortunately, Lady Markham had not cancelled the invitations; a yachting expedition, and various other pleasant things. The comments of the company were diverted to Claude, who, finding Frances more easily convinced than the others that draughts were to be carefully avoided, sought her out on most occasions, notwithstanding her plain-speaking about his fancifulness.
“Perhaps you were right,” he said, “that I think too much about my health. I shouldn’t wonder if you were quite right. But I have always been warned that I was very delicate; and perhaps that makes one rather a bore to one’s friends.”
“Oh, I hope you will forgive me, Mr Ramsay! I never meant——”
“There is poor Winterbourn, you see,” said Claude, accepting the broken apology with a benevolent nod of his head and the mild pathos of a smile. “He was one of your rash people, never paying any attention to what was the matter with him. He was quite a well-preserved sort of man when he married Nelly St John; and now you see what a wreck! By Jove, though, I shouldn’t like my wife, if I married, to treat me like Nelly. But I promise you there should be no Markham in my case.”
“I don’t know what Markham has to do with it,” said Frances with sudden spirit.
“Oh, you don’t know! Well,” he continued, looking at her, “perhaps you don’t know; and so much the better. Never mind about Markham. I should expect my wife to be with me when I am ill; not to leave me to servants, to give me my—everything I had to take; and to cheer me up, you know. Do you think there is anything unreasonable in that?”
“Oh no, indeed. Of course, if—if—she was fond of you—which of course she would be, or you would not want to marry her.”
“Yes,” said Claude. “Go on, please; I like to hear you talk.”
“I mean,” said Frances, stumbling a little, feeling a significance in this encouragement which disturbed her, “that, of course—there would be no question of reasonableness. She would just do it by nature. One never asks if it is reasonable or not.”
“Ah, you mean you wouldn’t. But other girls are different. There is Con, for instance.”
“Mr Ramsay, I don’t think you ought to speak to me so about my sister. Constance, if she were in such a position, would do—what was right.”
“For that matter, I suppose Nelly Winterbourn does what is right—at least, every one says she behaves so well. If that is what you mean by right, I shouldn’t relish it at all in my wife.”
Frances said nothing for a minute, and then she asked, “Are you going to be married, Mr Ramsay?” in a tone which was half indignant, half amused.
At this he started a little, and gave her an inquiring look. “That is a question that wants thinking of,” he said. “Yes, I suppose I am, if I can find any one as nice as that. You are always giving me renseignements, Miss Waring. If I can find some one who will, as you say, never ask whether it is reasonable——”
“Then,” said Frances, recovering something of the sprightliness which had distinguished her in old days, “you don’t want to marry any one in particular, but just a wife?”
“What else could I marry?” he asked in a peevish tone. Then, with a change of his voice,—“I don’t want to conceal anything from you; and there is no doubt you must have heard: I was engaged to your sister Con; but she ran away from me,” he added with pathos. “You must have heard that.”
“I do not wonder that you were very fond of her,” cried Frances. “I see no one so delightful as—she would be if she were here.”
She had meant to make a simple statement, and say, “No one so delightful as she;” but paused, remembering that the circumstances had not been to Constance’s advantage, and that here she would have been in her proper sphere.
As for Claude, he was somewhat embarrassed. He said, “Fond is perhaps not exactly the word. I thought she would have suited me—better than any one I knew.”
“If that was all,” said Frances, “you would not mind very much; and I do not wonder that she came away, for it would be rather dreadful to be married because a gentleman thought one suited him.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that would be so—in every case,” cried Claude, with sudden earnestness.
“In any case, I think you should never tell the girl’s sister, Mr Ramsay; it is not a very nice thing to do.”
“Miss Waring—Frances!—I was not thinking of you as any girl’s sister; I was thinking of you——”
“I hope not at all; for it would be a great pity to waste any more thoughts on our family,” said Frances. “I have sometimes been a little vexed that Constance came, for it changed all my life, and took me away from every one I knew. But I am glad you have told me this, for now I understand it quite.” She did not rise from where she was seated and leave him, as he almost hoped she would, making a little quarrel of it, but sat still, with a composure which Claude felt was much less complimentary. “Now that I know all about it,” she said, after a little interval, with a laugh, “I think what you want would be very unreasonable—and what no woman could do.”
“You said the very reverse five minutes ago,” he said sulkily.
“Yes—but I didn’t know what the—what the wages were,” she said with another laugh. “It is you who are giving me renseignements now.”
Claude took his complaint next morning to Lady Markham’s room. “She actually chaffed me—chaffed me, I assure you; though she looks as if butter would not melt in her mouth.”
“That is a little vulgar, Claude. If you talk like that to a girl, what can you expect? Some, indeed, may be rather grateful to you, as showing how little you look for; but you know I have always told you what you ought to try to do is to inspire a grande passion.”
“That is what I should like above all things to do,” said the young man; “but——”
“But—it would cost too much trouble?”
“Perhaps; and I am not an impassioned sort of man. Lady Markham, was it really from me that Constance ran away?”
“I have told you before, Claude, that was not how it should be spoken of. She did not run away. She took into her head a romantic idea of making acquaintance with her father, in which Markham encouraged her. Or perhaps it was Markham that put it into her head. It is possible—I can’t tell you—that Markham had already something else in his own head, and that he had begun to think it would be a good thing to try if other changes could be made.”
“What could Markham have in his head? and what changes——”
“Oh,” she cried, “how can you ask me? I know how you have all been talking. You speculate, just as I do.”
“I don’t think so, Lady Markham,” said Claude. “I am sure Markham would find all that sort of thing a great bore. Of course I know what you mean. But I don’t think so. I have always told them my opinion. Whatever may happen, Markham will stick to you.”
“Poor Markham!” she said, with a quick revulsion of feeling. “After all, it is a little hard, is it not, that he should have nothing brighter than that to look to in his life?”
“Than you?” said Claude. “If you ask my opinion, I don’t think so. I think he’s a lucky fellow. An old mother, I don’t deny, might be a bore. An old lady, half blind, never hearing what you say, sitting by the fire—like the mothers in books, or the Mrs Nickleby kind. But you are as young and handsome and bright as any of them—keeping everything right for him, asking nothing. Upon my word, I think he is very well off. I wish I were in his place.”
Lady Markham was pleased. Affectionate flattery of this kind is always sweet to a woman. She laughed, and said he was a gay deceiver. “But, my dear boy, you will make me think a great deal more of myself than I have any right to think.”
“You ought to think more of yourself. And so you really do not think that Con——? In many ways, dear Lady Markham, I feel that Con—understood me better than any one else—except you.”
“I think you are right, Claude,” she said, with a grave face.
“I am beginning to feel quite sure I am right. When she writes, does she never say anything about me?”
“Of course, she always—asks for you.”
“Is that all? Asking does not mean much.”
“What more could she say? Of course she knows that she has lost her place in your affection by her own rashness.”
“Not lost, Lady Markham. It is not so easy to do that.”
“It is true. Perhaps I should have said, fears that she has forfeited—your respect.”
“After all, she has done nothing wrong,” he said.
“Nothing wrong; but rash, headstrong, foolish. Oh yes, she has been all that. It is in the Waring blood!”
“I think you are a little hard upon her, Lady Markham. By the way, don’t you think yourself, that with two daughters to marry, and—and all that: it would be a good thing if Mr Waring—for you must have got over all your little tiffs long ago—don’t you think that it would be a good thing if he could be persuaded to—come back?”
She had watched him with eyes that gleamed from below her dropped eyelids. She said now, as she had done to Sir Thomas, “I should put no difficulties in the way, you may be sure.”
“It would be more respectable,” said Claude. “If getting old is good for anything, you know, it should make up quarrels; don’t you think so? It would be a great deal better in every way. And then Markham——”
“Markham,” she said, “you think, would then be free?”
“Well—then it wouldn’t matter particularly about Markham, what he did,” the young man said.
Lady Markham had borne a great many such assaults in her life as if she felt nothing: but as a matter of fact she did feel them deeply; and when a probable new combination was thus calmly set before her, her usual composure was put to a severe test. She smiled upon Claude, indeed, as long as he remained with her, and allowed him no glimpse of her real feelings; but when he was gone, felt for a moment her heart fail her. She had, even in the misfortunes which had crossed her life, secured always a great share of her own way. Many people do this even when they suffer most. Whether they get it cheerfully or painfully, they yet get it, which is always something. Waring, when, in his fastidious impatience and irritation, because he did not get his, he had flung forth into the unknown, and abandoned her and her life altogether, did still, though at the cost of pain and scandal, help his wife to this triumph, that she departed from none of her requirements, and remained mistress of the battlefield. She had her own way, though he would not yield to it. But as a woman grows older, and becomes less capable of that pertinacity which is the best means of securing her own way, and when the conflicting wills against hers are many instead of being only one, the state of the matter changes. Constance had turned against her, when she was on the eve of an arrangement which would have been so very much for Con’s good. And Frances, though so submissive in some points, would not be so, she felt instinctively, on others. And Markham—that was the most fundamental shock of all—Markham might possibly in the future have prospects and hopes independent altogether of his mother’s, in antagonism with all her arrangements. This, which she had not anticipated, went to her heart. And when she thought of what had been suggested to her with so much composure—the alteration of her whole life, the substitution of her husband, from whom she had been so long parted, who did not think as she did nor live as she did for her son, who, with all his faults, which she knew so well, was yet in sympathy with her in all she thought and wished and knew—this suggestion made her sick and faint. It had come, though not with any force, even from Markham himself. It had come from Sir Thomas, who was one of the oldest of her friends; and now Claude set it before her in all the forcible simplicity of commonplace: it would be more respectable! She laughed almost violently when he left her, but it was a laugh which was not far from tears.
“Claude has been complaining of you,” she said to Frances, recovering herself with an instantaneous effort when her daughter came into the room; “but I don’t object, my dear. Unless you had found that you could like him yourself, which would have been the best thing, perhaps—you were quite right in what you said. So far as Constance is concerned, it is all that I could wish.”
“Mamma,” said Frances, “you don’t want Constance—you would not let her—accept that?”
“Accept what? My love, you must not be so emphatic. Accept a life full of luxury, splendour even, if she likes—and every care forestalled. My dear little girl, you don’t know anything about the world.”
Frances pondered for some time before she replied. “Mamma,” she said again, “if such a case arose—you said that the best thing for me would have been to have liked—Mr Ramsay. There is no question of that. But if such a case arose——”
“Yes, my dear”—Lady Markham took her daughter’s hand in her own, and looked at her with a smile of pleasure—“I hope it will some day. And what then?”
“Would you—think the same about me? Would you consider the life full of luxury, as you said—would you desire for me the same thing as for Constance?”
Lady Markham held the girl’s hand clasped in both of hers; the soft caressing atmosphere about her enveloped Frances. “My dear,” she said, “this is a very serious question. You are not asking me for curiosity alone?”
“It is a very serious question,” Frances said.
And the mother and daughter looked at each other closely, with more meaning, perhaps, than had as yet been in the eyes of either, notwithstanding all the excitement of interest in their first meeting. It was some time before another word was said. Frances saw in her mother a woman full of determination, very clear as to what she wanted, very unlikely to be turned from it by softer impulses, although outside she was so tender and soft; and Lady Markham saw in Frances a girl who was entirely submissive, yet immovable, whose dove’s eyes had a steady soft gaze, against which the kindred light of her own had no power. It was a mutual revelation. There was no conflict, nor appearance of conflict, between these two, so like each other—two gentle and soft-voiced women, both full of natural courtesy and disinclination to wound or offend; both seeing everything around them very clearly from her own, perhaps limited, point of view; and both feeling that between them nothing but the absolute truth would do.
“You trouble me, Frances,” said Lady Markham at length. “When such a case arises, it will be time enough. In the abstract, I should of course feel for one as I feel for the other. Nay, stop a little. I should wish to provide for you, as for Constance, a life of assured comfort,—well, if you drive me to it—of wealth and all that wealth brings. Assuredly that is what I should wish.” She gave Frances’ hand a pressure which was almost painful, and then dropped it. “I hope you have no fancy for poverty theoretically, like your patron saint,” she added lightly, trying to escape from the gravity of the question by a laugh.
“Mother,” said Frances, in a voice which was tremulous and yet steady, “I want to tell you—I think neither of poverty nor of money. I am more used, perhaps, to the one than the other. I will do what you wish in everything—everything else; but——”
“Not in the one thing which would probably be the only thing I asked of you,” said Lady Markham, with a smile. She put her hands on Frances’ shoulders and gave her a kiss upon her cheek. “My dear child, you probably think this is quite original,” she said; “but I assure you it is what almost every daughter one time or other says to her parents: Anything else—anything, but—— Happily there is no question between you and me. Let us wait till the occasion arises. It is always time enough to fall out.”