LADY MARKHAM did not forget her promise. Whatever else a great lady may forget in these days, her sick people, her hospitals, she is sure never to forget. She went early to the lodgings, which were not far off, hidden in one of the quaint corners of little old lanes behind Piccadilly, where poor Gaunt was. She did not object to the desire of Frances to go with her, nor to the anxiety she showed. The man was ill; he had become a “case;” it was natural and right that he should be an object of interest. For herself, so far as Lady Markham’s thoughts were free at all, George Gaunt was much more than a case to her. A little while ago, she would have given him a large share in her thoughts, with a remorseful consciousness almost of a personal part in the injury which had been done him. But now there were so many other matters in the foreground of her mind, that this, though it gave her one sharp twinge, and an additional desire to do all that could be done for him, had yet fallen into the background. Besides, things had arrived at a climax: there was no longer any means of delivering him, no further anxiety about his daily movements; there he lay, incapable of further action. It was miserable, yet it was a relief. Markham and Markham’s associates had no more power over a sick man.
Lady Markham managed her affairs always in a business-like way. She sent to inquire what was the usual hour of the doctor’s visit, and timed her arrival so as to meet him, and receive all the information he could give. Even the medical details of the case were not beyond Lady Markham’s comprehension. She had a brief but very full consultation with the medical man in the little parlour down-stairs, and promptly issued her orders for nurses and all that could possibly be wanted for the patient. Two nurses at once—one for the day, and the other for the night; ice by the cart-load; the street to be covered with hay; any traffic that it was possible to stop, arrested. These directions Frances heard while she sat anxious and trembling in the brougham, and watched the doctor—a humble and undistinguished practitioner of the neighbourhood, stirred into excited interest by the sudden appearance of the great lady, with her liberal ideas, upon the scene—hurrying away. Lady Markham then disappeared again into the house,—the small, trim, shallow, London lodging-house, with a few scrubby plants in its little balconies on the first floor, where the windows were open, but veiled by sun-blinds. Something that sounded like incessant talking came from these windows—a sound to which Frances paid no attention at first, thinking it nothing but a conversation, though curiously carried on without break or pause. But after a while the monotony of the sound gave her a painful sensation. The street was very quiet, even without the hay. Now and then a cart or carriage would come round the corner, taking a short-cut from one known locality to another. Sometimes a street cry would echo through the sunshine. A cart full of flowering-plants, with a hoarse-voiced proprietor, went along in stages, stopping here and there; but through all ran the strain of talk, monologue or conversation, never interrupted. The sound affected the girl’s nerves, she could not tell why. She opened the door of the brougham at last, and went into the narrow little doorway of the house, where it became more distinct,—a persistent dull strain of speech. All was deserted on the lower floor, the door of the sitting-room standing open, the narrow staircase leading to the sick man’s rooms above. Frances felt her interest, her eager curiosity, grow at every moment. She ran lightly, quickly up-stairs. The door of the front room, the room with the balconies, was ajar; and now it became evident that the sound was that of a single voice, hoarse, not always articulate, talking. Oh, the weary strain of talk, monotonous, unending—sometimes rising faintly, sometimes falling lower, never done, without a pause. That could not be raving, Frances said to herself. Oh, not raving! Cries of excitement and passion would have been comprehensible. But there was something more awful in the persistency of the dull choked voice. She said to herself it was not George Gaunt’s voice: she did not know what it was. But as she put forth all these arguments to herself, trembling, she drew ever nearer and nearer to the door.
“Red—red—and red. Stick to my colour: my colour—my coat, Markham, and the ribbon, her ribbon. I say red. Play, play—all play—always: amusement: her ribbon, red. No, no; not red, black, colour death—no colour: means nothing, all nothing. Markham, play. Gain or lose—all—all: nothing kept back. Red, I say; and red—blood—blood colour. Mother, mother! no, it’s black, black. No blood—no blood—no reproach. Death—makes up all—death. Black—red—black—all death colours, all death, death.” Then there was a little change in the voice. “Constance?—India; no, no; not India. Anywhere—give up everything. Amusement, did you say amusement? Don’t say so, don’t say so. Sport to you—but death, death:—colour of death, black: or red—blood: all death colours, death. Mother! don’t put on black—red ribbons like hers—red, heart’s blood. No bullet, no—her little hand, little white hand—and then blood-red. Constance! Play—play—nothing left—play.”
Frances stood outside and shuddered. Was this, then, what they called raving? She shrank within herself; her heart failed her; a sickness which took the light from her eyes, made her limbs tremble and her head swim. Oh, what sport had he been to the two—the two who were nearest to her in the world! What had they done with him, Mrs Gaunt’s boy—the youngest, the favourite? There swept through the girl’s mind like a bitter wind a cry against—Fate was it, or Providence? Had they but let alone, had each stayed in her own place, it would have been Frances who should have met, with a fresh heart, the young man’s early fancy. They would have met sincere and faithful, and loved each other, and all would have been well. But there was no Frances; there was only Constance, to throw his heart away. She seemed to see it all as in a picture—Constance with the red ribbons on her grey dress, with the smile that said it was only amusement; with the little hand, the little white hand, that gave the blow. And then all play, all play, red or black, what did it matter? and the bullet; and the mother in mourning, and Markham. Constance and Markham! murderers. This was the cry that came from the bottom of the girl’s heart. Murderers!—of two; of him and of herself; of the happiness that was justly hers, which at this moment she claimed, and wildly asserted her right to have, in the clamour of her angry heart. She seemed to see it all in a moment: how he was hers; how she had given her heart to him before she ever saw him; how she could have made him happy. She would not have shrunk from India or anywhere. She would have made him happy. And Constance, for a jest, had come between; for amusement, had broken his heart. And Markham, for amusement—for amusement!—had destroyed his life; and hers as well. There are moments when the gentle and simple mind becomes more terrible than any fury. She saw it all as in a picture—with one clear sudden revelation. And her heart rose against it with a sensation of wrong, which was intolerable—of misery, which she could not, would not bear.
She pushed open the door, scarcely knowing what she did. The bed was pulled out from the wall, almost into the centre of the room; and behind, while this strange husky monologue of confused passion was going on unnoted, Lady Markham and the landlady stood together talking in calm undertones of the treatment to be employed. Frances’ senses, all stimulated to the highest point, took in, without meaning to do so, every particular of the scene and every word that was said.
“I can do no good by staying now,” Lady Markham was saying. “There is so little to be done at this stage. The ice to his head, that is all till the nurse comes. She will be here before one o’clock. And in the meantime, you must watch him carefully, and if anything occurs, let me know. Be very careful to tell me everything; for the slightest symptom is important.”
“Yes, my lady; I’ll take great care, my lady.” The woman was overawed, yet excited, by this unexpected visitor, who had turned the dull drama of the lodger’s illness into a great, important, and exciting conflict, conducted by the highest officials, against disease and death.
“As I go home, I shall call at Dr——’s”—naming the great doctor of the moment—“who will meet the other gentleman here; and after that, if they decide on ice-baths or any other active treatment—— But there will be time to think of that. In the meantime, if anything important occurs, communicate with me at once, at Eaton Square.”
“Yes, my lady; I’ll not forget nothing. My ’usband will run in a moment to let your ladyship know.”
“That will be quite right. Keep him in the house, so that he may get anything that is wanted.” Lady Markham gave her orders with the liberality of a woman who had never known any limit to the possibilities of command in this way. She went up to the bed and looked at the patient, who lay all unconscious of inspection, continuing the hoarse talk, to which she had ceased to attend, through which she had carried on her conversation in complete calm. She touched his forehead for a moment with the back of her ungloved hand, and shook her head. “The temperature is very high,” she said. There was a semi-professional calm in all she did. Now that he was under treatment, he could be considered dispassionately as a “case.” When she turned round and saw Frances within the door, she held up her finger. “Look at him, if you wish, for a moment, poor fellow; but not a word,” she said. Frances, from the passion of anguish and wrong which had seized upon her, sank altogether into a confused hush of semi-remorseful feeling. Her mother at least was occupied with nothing that was not for his good.
“I told you that I mistrusted Markham,” she said, as they drove away. “He did not mean any harm. But that is his life. And I think I told you that I was afraid Constance—— Oh, my dear, a mother has a great many hard offices to undertake in her life—to make up for things which her children may have done—en gaieté du cœur, without thought.”
“Gaieté du cœur—is that what you call it,” cried Frances, “when you murder a man?” Her voice was choked with the passion that filled her.
“Frances! Murder! You are the last one in the world from whom I should have expected anything violent.”
“Oh,” cried the girl, flushed and wild, her eyes gleaming through an angry dew of pain, “what word is there that is violent enough? He was happy and good, and there were—there might have been—people who could have loved him, and—and made him happy. When one comes in, one who had no business there, one who—and takes him from—the others, and makes a sport of him and a toy to amuse herself, and flings him broken away. It is worse than murder—if there is anything worse than murder,” she cried.
Lady Markham could not have been more astonished if some passer-by had presented a pistol at her head. “Frances!” she cried, and took the girl’s hot hands into her own, endeavouring to soothe her; “you speak as if she meant to do it—as if she had some interest in doing it. Frances, you must be just!”
“If I were just—if I had the power to be just—is there any punishment which could be great enough? His life? But it is more than his life. It is misery and torture and wretchedness, to him first, and then to—to his mother—to——” She ended as a woman, as a poor little girl, scarcely yet woman grown, must—in an agony of tears.
All that a tender mother and that a kind woman could do—with due regard to the important business in her hands, and a glance aside to see that the coachman did not mistake Sir Joseph’s much frequented door—Lady Markham did to quench this extraordinary passion, and bring back calm to Frances. She succeeded so far, that the girl, hurriedly drying her tears, retiring with shame and confusion into herself, recovered sufficient self-command to refrain from further betrayal of her feelings. In the midst of it all, though she was not unmoved by her mother’s tenderness, she had a kind of fierce perception of Lady Markham’s anxiety about Sir Joseph’s door, and her eagerness not to lose any time in conveying her message to him, which she did rapidly in her own person, putting the footman aside, corrupting somehow by sweet words and looks the incorruptible functionary who guarded the great doctor’s door. It was all for poor Gaunt’s sake, and done with care for him, as anxious and urgent as if he had been her own son; and yet it was business too, which, had Frances been in a mood to see the humour of it, might have lighted the tension of her feelings. But she was in no mind for humour—a thing which passion has never any eyes for or cognisance of. “That is all quite right. He will meet the other doctor this afternoon; and we may be now comfortable that he is in the best hands,” Lady Markham said, with a sigh of satisfaction. She added: “I suppose, of course, his parents will not hesitate about the expense?” in a faintly inquiring tone; but did not insist on any reply. Nor could Frances have given any reply. But amid the chaos of her mind, there came a consciousness of poor Mrs Gaunt’s dismay, could she have known. She would have watched her son night and day; and there was not one of the little community at Bordighera—Mrs Durant, with all her little pretences; Tasie, with her airs of young-ladyhood—who would not have shared the vigil. But the two expensive nurses, with every accessory that new-fangled science could think of—this would have frightened out of their senses the two poor parents, who would not “hesitate about the expense,” or any expense that involved their son’s life. In this point, too, the different classes could not understand each other. The idea flew through the girl’s mind with a half-despairing consciousness that this, too, had something to do with the overwhelming revolution in her own circumstances. A man of her own species would have understood Constance; he would have known Markham’s reputation and ways. The pot of iron and the pot of clay could not travel together without damage to the weakest. This went vaguely through Frances’ mind in the middle of her excitement, and perhaps helped to calm her. It also stilled, if it did not calm her, to see that her mother was a little afraid of her in her new development.
Lady Markham, when she returned to the brougham after her visit to Sir Joseph, manifestly avoided the subject. She was careful not to say anything of Markham or of Constance. Her manner was anxious, deprecatory, full of conciliation. She advised Frances, with much tenderness, to go and rest a little when they got home. “I fear you have been doing too much, my darling,” she cried, and followed her to her room with some potion in a glass.
“I am quite well,” Frances said; “there is nothing the matter with me.”
“But I am sure, my dearest, that you are overdone.” Her anxious and conciliatory looks were of themselves a tonic to Frances, and brought her back to herself.
Markham, when he appeared in the evening, showed unusual feeling too. He was at the crisis, it seemed, of his own life, and perhaps other sentiments had therefore an easier hold upon him. He came in looking very downcast, with none of his usual banter in him. “Yes, I know. I have heard all about it, bless you. What else, do you think, are those fellows talking about? Poor beggar. Who ever thought he’d have gone down like that in so short a time? Now, mother, the only thing wanting is that you should say ‘I told you so.’ And Fan,—no, Fan can do worse; she can tell me that she thought he was safe in my hands.”
“It is not my way to say I told you so, Markham; but yet——”
“You could do it, mammy, if you tried—that is well known. I’m rather glad he is ill, poor beggar; it stops the business. But there are things to pay, that is the worst.”
“Surely, if it is to a gentleman, he will forgive him,” cried Frances, “when he knows——”
“Forgive him! Poor Gaunt would rather die. It would be as much as a man’s life was worth to offer to—forgive another man. But how should the child know? That’s the beauty of Society and the rules of honour, Fan. You can forgive a man many things, but not a shilling you’ve won from him. And how is he to mend, good life! with the thought of having to pay up in the end?” Markham repeated this despondent speech several times before he went gloomily away. “I had rather die straight off, and make no fuss. But even then, he’d have to pay up, or somebody for him. If I had known what I know now, I’d have eaten him sooner than have taken him among those fellows, who have no mercy.”
“Markham, if you would listen to me, you would give them up—you too.”
“Oh, I——” he said, with his short laugh. “They can’t do much harm to me.”
“But you must change—in that as well as other things, if——”
“Ah, if,” he said, with a curious grimace; and took up his hat and went away.
Thus, Frances said to herself, his momentary penitence and her mother’s pity melted away in consideration of themselves. They could not say a dozen words on any other subject, even such an urgent one as this, before their attention dropped, and they relapsed into the former question about themselves. And such a question!—Markham’s marriage, which depended upon Nelly Winterbourn’s widowhood and the portion her rich husband left her. Markham was an English peer, the head of a family which had been known for centuries, which even had touched the history of England here and there; yet this was the ignoble way in which he was to take the most individual step of a man’s life. Her heart was full almost to bursting of these questions, which had been gradually awakening in her mind. Lady Markham, when left alone, turned always to the consolation of her correspondence—of those letters to write which filled up all the interstices of her other occupations. Perhaps she was specially glad to take refuge in this assumed duty, having no desire to enter again with her daughter into any discussion of the events of the day. Frances withdrew into a distant corner. She took a book with her, and did her best to read it, feeling that anything was better than to allow herself to think, to summon up again the sound of that hoarse broken voice running on in the feverish current of disturbed thought. Was he still talking, talking, God help him! of death and blood and the two colours, and her ribbon, and the misery which was all play? Oh, the misery, causeless, unnecessary, to no good purpose, that had come merely from this—that Constance had put herself in Frances’ place,—that the pot of iron had thrust itself in the road of the pot of clay. But she must not think—she must not think, the girl said to herself with feverish earnestness, and tried the book again. Finding it of no avail, however, she put it down, and left her corner and came, in a moment of leisure between two letters, behind her mother’s chair. “May I ask you a question, mamma?”
“As many as you please, my dear;” but Lady Markham’s face bore a harassed look. “You know, Frances, there are some to which there is no answer—which I can only ask with an aching heart, like yourself,” she said.
“This is a very simple one. It is, Have I any money—of my own?”
Lady Markham turned round on her chair and looked at her daughter. “Money!” she said. “Are you in need of anything? Do you want money, Frances? I shall never forgive myself, if you have felt yourself neglected.”
“It is not that. I mean—have I anything of my own?”
After a little pause. “There is a—small provision made for you by my marriage settlement,” Lady Markham said.
“And—once more—could, oh, could I have it, mamma?”
“My dear child! you must be out of your senses. How could you have it at your age—unless you were going to marry?”
This suggestion Frances rejected with the contempt it merited. “I shall never marry,” she said; “and there never could be a time when it would be of so much importance to me to have it as now. Oh, tell me, is there no way by which I could have it now?”
“Sir Thomas is one of our trustees. Ask him. I do not think he will let you have it, Frances. But perhaps you could tell him what you want, if you will not have confidence in me. Money is just the thing that is least easy for me. I could give you almost anything else; but money I have not. What can you want money for, a girl like you?”
Frances hesitated before she replied. “I would rather not tell you,” she said; “for very likely you would not approve; but it is nothing—wrong.”
“You are very honest, my dear. I do not suppose for a moment it is anything wrong. Ask Sir Thomas,” Lady Markham said, with a smile. The smile had meaning in it, which to Frances was incomprehensible. “Sir Thomas—will refuse nothing he can in reason give—of that I am sure.”
Sir Thomas, when he came in shortly afterwards, said that he would not disturb Lady Markham. “For I see you are busy, and I have something to say to Frances.”
“Who has also something to say to you,” Lady Markham said, with a benignant smile. Her heart gave a throb of satisfaction. It was all she could do to restrain herself, not to tell the dear friend to whom she was writing that there was every prospect of a most happy establishment for dear Frances. And her joy was quite genuine and almost innocent, notwithstanding all she knew.
“You have written to your father?” Sir Thomas said. “My dear Frances, I have got the most hopeful letter from him, the first I have had for years. He asks me if I know what state Hilborough is in—if it is habitable? That looks like coming home, don’t you think? And it is years since he has written to me before.”
Frances did not know what Hilborough was; but she disliked showing her ignorance. And this idea was not so comforting to her as Sir Thomas expected. She said: “I do not think he will come,” with downcast eyes.
But Sir Thomas was strong in his own way of thinking. He was excited and pleased by the letter. He told her again and again how he had desired this—how happy it made him to think he was about to be successful at last. “And just at the moment when all is likely to be arranged—when Markham—— You have brought me luck, Frances. Now, tell me what it was you wanted from me?”
Frances’ spirits had fallen lower and lower while his rose. Her mind ranged over the new possibilities with something like despair. It would be Constance, not she, who would have done it, if he came back—Constance, who had taken her place from her—the love that ought to have been hers—her father—and who now, on her return, would resume her place with her mother too. Ah, what would Constance do? Would she do anything for him who lay yonder in the fever, for his father and his mother, poor old people!—anything to make up for the harm she had done? Her heart burned in her agitated, troubled bosom. “It is nothing,” she said—“nothing that you would do for me. I had a great wish—but I know you would not let me do it, neither you nor my mother.”
“Tell me what it is, and we shall see.”
Frances felt her voice die away in her throat. “We went this morning to see—to see——”
“You mean poor Gaunt. It is a sad sight, and a sad story—too sad for a young creature like you to be mixed up in. Is it anything for him, that you want me to do?”
She looked at him through those hot gathering tears which interrupt the vision of women, and blind them when they most desire to see clearly. A sense of the folly of her hope, of the impossibility of making any one understand what was in her mind, overwhelmed her. “I cannot, I cannot,” she cried. “Oh, I know you are very kind. I wanted my own money, if I have any. But I know you will not give it me, nor think it right, nor understand what I want to do with it.”
“Have you so little trust in me?” said Sir Thomas. “I hope, if you told me, I could understand. I cannot give you your own money, Frances; but if it were for a good—no, I will not say that—for a sensible, for a practicable purpose, you should have some of mine.”
“Yours!” she cried, almost with indignation. “Oh no; that is not what I mean. They are nothing—nothing to you.” She paused when she had said this, and grew very pale. “I did not mean—— Sir Thomas, please do not say anything to mamma.”
He took her hand affectionately between his own. “I do not half understand,” he said; “but I will keep your secret, so far as I know it, my poor little girl.”
Lady Markham at her writing-table, with her back turned, went on with her correspondence all the time in high satisfaction and pleasure, saying to herself that it would be far better than Nelly Winterbourn’s—that it would be the finest match of the year.