THE dinner, it need scarcely be said, was a strange one. Except in Constance, who was perfectly cool, and Claude, who was more concerned about a possible draught from a window than anything else, there was much agitation in the rest of the party. Lady Markham was nervously cordial, anxious to talk and to make everything “go”—which, indeed, she would have done far more effectually had she been able to retain her usual cheerful and benign composure. But there are some things which are scarcely possible even to the most accomplished woman of the world. How to place the guests, even, had been a trouble to her, almost too great to be faced. To place her husband by her side was more than she could bear, and where else could it be appropriate to place him, unless opposite to her, where the master of the house should sit? The difficulty was solved loosely by placing Constance there, and her father beside her. He sat between his daughters; while Ramsay and Sir Thomas were on either side of his wife. Under such circumstances, it was impossible that the conversation could be other than formal, with outbursts of somewhat conventional vivacity from Sir Thomas, supported by anxious responses from Lady Markham. Frances took refuge in saying nothing at all. And Waring sat like a ghost, with a smile on his face, in which there was a sort of pathetic humour, dashed with something that was half derision. To be sitting there at all was wonderful indeed, and to be listening to the smalltalk of a London dinner-table, with all its little discussions, its talk of plays and pictures and people, its scraps of political life behind the scenes, its esoteric revelations on all subjects, was more wonderful still. He had half forgotten it; and to come thus at a single step into the midst of it all, and hear this babble floating on the air which was charged with so many tragic elements, was more wonderful still. To think that they should all be looking at each other across the flowers and the crystal, and knowing what questions were to be solved between them, yet talking and expecting others to talk of the new tenor and the last scandal! It seemed to the stranger out of the wilds, who had been banished from society so long, that it was a thing incredible, when he was thus thrown into it again. There were allusions to many things which he did not understand. There was something, for instance, about Nelly Winterbourn which called forth a startling response from Lady Markham. “You must not,” she said, “say anything about poor Nelly in this house. From my heart, I am sorry and grieved for her; but in the circumstances, what can any one do? The least said, the better, especially here.” The pause after this was minute but marked, and Waring asked Constance, “Who is Nelly Winterbourn?”
“She is a young widow, papa. It was thought her husband had left her a large fortune; but he has left it to her on the condition that she should not marry again.”
“Is that why she is not to be spoken of in this house?” said Waring, growing red. This explanation had been asked and given in an undertone. He thought it referred to the circumstances in which his own marriage had taken place—Lady Markham being a young widow with a large jointure; and that this was the reason why the other was not to be mentioned; and it gave him a hot sense of offence, restrained by the politeness which is exercised in society, but not always when the offenders are one’s wife and children. It turned the tide of softened thoughts back upon his heart, and increased to fierceness the derision with which he listened to all the trifles that floated uppermost. When the ladies left the room, he did not meet the questioning, almost timid, look that Lady Markham threw upon him. He saw it, indeed, but he would not respond to it. That allusion had spoiled all the rest.
In the little interval after dinner, Claude Ramsay did his best to make himself agreeable. “I am very glad to see you back, sir,” he said. “I told Lady Markham it was the right thing. When a girl has a father, it’s always odd that he shouldn’t appear.”
“Oh, you told Lady Markham that it was—the right thing?”
“A coincidence, wasn’t it? when you were on your way,” said Claude, perceiving the mistake he had made. “You know, sir,” he added with a little hesitation, “that it has all been made up for a long time between Constance and me.”
“Yes? What has all been made up? I understand that my daughter came out to me to——”
“Oh!” said Claude, interrupting hurriedly, “it is that that has all been made up. Constance has been very nice about it,” he continued. “She has been making a study of the Riviera, and collecting all sorts of renseignements; for in most cases, it is necessary for me to winter abroad.”
“That was what she was doing then—her object, I suppose?” said Waring with a grim smile.
“Besides the pleasure of visiting you, sir,” said Claude, with what he felt to be great tact. “She seems to have done a great deal of exploring, and she tells me she has found just the right site for the villa—and all the renseignements,” he added. “To have been on the spot, and studied the aspect, and how the winds blow, is such a great thing; and to be near your place too,” he said politely, by an after-thought.
“Which I hope is to be your place no more, Waring,” said Sir Thomas. “Your own place is very empty, and craving for you all the time.”
“It is too fine a question to say what is my own place,” he said, with that pale indignant smile. “Things are seldom made any clearer by an absence of a dozen years.”
“A great deal clearer—the mists blow away, and the hot fumes. Come, Waring, say you are glad you have come home.”
“I suppose,” said Claude, “you find it really too hot for summer on that coast. What would you say was the end of the season? May? Just when London begins to be possible, and most people have come to town.”
“Is not that one of the renseignements Constance has given you?” Waring asked with a short laugh; but he made no reply to the other questions. And then there was a little of the inevitable politics before the gentlemen went up-stairs. Lady Markham had been threatened with what in France is called an attaque des nerfs, when she reached the shelter of the drawing-room. She was a little hysterical, hardly able to get the better of the sobbing which assailed her. Constance stood apart, and looked on with a little surprise. “You know, mamma,” she said reflectively, “an effort is the only thing. With an effort, you can stop it.”
Frances was differently affected by this emotion. She, who had never learned to be familiar, stole behind her mother’s chair and made her breast a pillow for Lady Markham’s head,—a breast in which the heart was beating now high, now low, with excitement and despondency. She did not say anything; but there is sometimes comfort in a touch. It helped Lady Markham to subdue the unwonted spasm. She held close for a moment the arms which were over her shoulders, and she replied to Constance, “Yes, that is true. I am ashamed of myself. I ought to know better—at my age.”
“It has gone off on the whole very well,” Constance said. And then she retired to a sofa and took up a book.
Lady Markham held Frances’ hand in hers for a moment or two longer, then drew her towards her and kissed her, still without a word. They had approached nearer to each other in that silent encounter than in all that had passed before. Lady Markham’s heart was full of many commotions; the past was rising up around her with all its agitating recollections. She looked back, and saw, oh, so clearly in that pale light which can never alter, the scenes that ought never to have been, the words that ought never to have been said, the faults, the mistakes—those things which were fixed there for ever, not to be forgotten. Could they ever be forgotten? Could any postscript be put to the finished story? Or was this strange meeting—unsought, scarcely desired on either side, into which the separated Two, who ought to have been One, seemed to have been driven without any will of their own—was it to be mere useless additional pain, and no more?
The ladies were all very peacefully employed when the gentlemen came up-stairs. Lady Markham turned round as usual from her writing-table to receive them with a smile. Constance laid down her book. Frances, from her accustomed dim corner, lifted up her eyes to watch them as they came in. They stood in the middle of the room for a minute, and talked to each other according to the embarrassed usage of Englishmen, and then they distributed themselves. Sir Thomas fell to Frances’ share. He turned to her eagerly, and took her hand and pressed it warmly. “We have done it,” he said, in an excited whisper. “So far, all is victorious; but still there is a great deal more to do.”
“I think it is Constance that has done it,” Frances said.
“She has worked for us—without meaning it—no doubt. But I am not going to give up the credit to Constance; and there is still a great deal to do. You must not lay down your arms, my dear. You and I, we have the ball at our feet: but there is a great deal still to do.”
Frances made no reply. The corner which she had chosen for herself was almost concealed behind a screen which parted the room in two. The other group made a picture far enough withdrawn to gain perspective. Waring stood near his wife, who from time to time gave him a look, half watchful, half wistful, and sometimes made a remark, to which he gave a brief reply. His attitude and hers told a story; but it was a confused and uncertain one, of which the end was all darkness. They were together, but fortuitously, without any will of their own; and between them was a gulf fixed. Which would cross it, or was it possible that it ever could be crossed at all? The room was very silent, for the conversation was not lively between Constance and Claude on the sofa; and Sir Thomas was silent, watching too. All was so quiet, indeed, that every sound was audible without; but there was no expectation of any interruption, nobody looked for anything, there was a perfect indifference to outside sounds. So much so, that for a moment the ladies were scarcely startled by the familiar noise, so constantly heard, of Markham’s hansom drawing up at the door. It could not be Markham; he was out of the way, disposed of till next morning. But Lady Markham, with that presentiment which springs up most strongly when every avenue by which harm can come seems stopped, started, then rose to her feet with alarm. “It can’t surely be—— Oh, what has brought him here!” she cried, and looked at Claude, to bid him, with her eyes, rush to meet him, stop him, keep him from coming in. But Claude did not understand her eyes.
As for Waring, seeing that something had gone wrong in the programme, but not guessing what it was, he accepted her movement as a dismissal, and quietly joined his daughter and his friend behind the screen. The two men got behind it altogether, showing only where their heads passed its line; but the light was not bright in that corner, and the new-comer was full of his own affairs. For it was Markham, who came in rapidly, stopped by no wise agent, or suggestion of expediency. He came into the room dressed in light morning-clothes, greenish, grayish, yellowish, like the colour of his sandy hair and complexion. He came in with his face puckered up and twitching, as it did when he was excited. His mother, Constance, Claude, sunk in the corner of the sofa, were all he saw; and he took no notice of Claude. He crossed that little opening amid the fashionably crowded furniture, and went and placed himself in front of the fireplace, which was full at this season of flowers, not of fire. From that point of vantage he greeted them with his usual laugh, but broken and embarrassed. “Well, mother—well, Con; you thought you were clear of me for to-night.”
“I did not expect you, Markham. Is anything—has anything——?
“Gone wrong?” he said. “No—I don’t know that anything has gone wrong. That depends on how you look at it. I’ve been in the country all day.”
“Yes, Markham; so I know.”
“But not where I was going,” he said. His laugh broke out again, quite irrelevant and inappropriate. “I’ve seen Nelly,” he said.
“Markham!” his mother cried, with a tone of wonder, disapproval, indignation, such as had never been heard in her voice before, through all that had been said and understood concerning Markham and Nelly Winterbourn. She had sunk into her chair, but now rose again in distress and anxiety. “Oh,” she cried, “how could you? how could you? I thought you had some true feeling. O Markham, how unworthy of you now to vex and compromise that poor girl!”
He made no answer for a moment, but moistened his lips, with a sound that seemed like a ghost of the habitual chuckle. “Yes,” he said, “I know you made it all up that the chapter was closed now; but I never said so, mother. Nelly’s where she was before, when we hadn’t the courage to do anything. Only worse: shamed and put in bondage by that miserable beggar’s will. And you all took it for granted that there was an end between her and me. I was waiting to marry her when she was free and rich, you all thought; but I wasn’t bound, to be sure, nor the sort of man to think of it twice when I knew she would be poor.”
“Markham! no one ever said, nobody thought——”
“Oh, I know very well what people thought—and said too, for that matter,” said Markham. “I hope a fellow like me knows Society well enough for that. A pair of old stagers like Nelly and me, of course we knew what everybody said. Well, mammy, you’re mistaken this time, that’s all. There’s nothing to be taken for granted in this world. Nelly’s game, and so am I. As soon as it’s what you call decent, and the crape business done with—for she has always done her duty by him, the wretched fellow, as everybody knows——”
“Markham!” his mother cried, almost with a shriek—“why, it is ruin, destruction. I must speak to Nelly—ruin both to her and you.”
He laughed. “Or else the t’other thing—salvation, you know. Anyhow, Nelly’s game for it, and so am I.”
There suddenly glided into the light at this moment a little figure, white, rapid, noiseless, and caught Markham’s arm in both hers. “O Markham! O Markham!” cried Frances, “I am so glad! I never believed it; I always knew it. I am so glad!” and began to cry, clinging to his arm.
Markham’s puckered countenance twitched and puckered more and more. His chuckle sounded over her half like a sob. “Look here,” he said. “Here’s the little one approves. She’s the one to judge, the sort of still small voice—eh, mother? Come; I’ve got far better than I deserve: I’ve got little Fan on my side.”
Lady Markham wrung her hands with an impatience which partly arose from her own better instincts. The words which she wanted would not come to her lips. “The child, what can she know!” she cried, and could say no more.
“Stand by me, little Fan,” said Markham, holding his sister close to him. “Mother, it’s not a small thing that could part you and me; that is what I feel, nothing else. For the rest, we’ll take the Priory, Nelly and I, and be very jolly upon nothing. Mother, you didn’t think in your heart that YOUR son was a base little beggar, no better than Winterbourn?”
Lady Markham made no reply. She sank down in her chair and covered her face with her hands. In the climax of so many emotions, she was overwhelmed. She could not stand up against Markham: in her husband’s presence, with everything hanging in the balance, she could say nothing. The worldly wisdom she had learned melted away from her. Her heart was stirred to its depths, and the conventional bonds restrained it no more. A kind of sweet bitterness—a sense of desertion, yet hope; of secret approval, yet opposition—disabled her altogether. One or two convulsive sobs shook her frame. She was able to say nothing, nothing, and was silent, covering her face with her hands.
Waring had seen Markham come in with angry displeasure. He had listened with that keen curiosity of antagonism which is almost as warm as the interest of love, to hear what he had to say. Sir Thomas, standing by his side, threw in a word or two to explain, seeing an opportunity in this new development of affairs. But nothing was really altered until Frances rose. Her father watched her with a poignant anxiety, wonder, excitement. When she threw herself upon her brother’s arm, and, all alone in her youth, gave him her approval, the effect upon the mind of her father was very strange. He frowned and turned away, then came back and looked again. His daughter, his little white spotless child, thrown upon the shoulder of the young man whom he had believed he hated, his wife’s son, who had been always in his way. It was intolerable. He must spring forward, he thought, and pluck her away. But Markham’s stifled cry of emotion and happiness somehow arrested Waring. He looked again, and there was something tender, pathetic, in the group. He began to perceive dimly how it was. Markham was making a resolution which, for a man of his kind, was heroic; and the little sister, the child, his own child, of his training, not of the world, had gone in her innocence and consecrated it with her approval. The approval of little Frances! And Markham had the heart to feel that in that approval there was something beyond and above everything else that could be said to him. Waring, too, like his wife, was in a condition of mind which offered no defence against the first touch of nature which was strong enough to reach him. He was open not to everyday reasoning, but to the sudden prick of a keen unhabitual feeling. A sudden impulse came upon him in this softened, excited mood. Had he paused to think, he would have turned his back upon that scene and hurried away, to be out of the contagion. But, fortunately, he did not pause to think. He went forward quickly, laying his hand upon the back of the chair in which Lady Markham sat, struggling for calm—and confronted his old antagonist, his boy-enemy of former times, who recognised him suddenly, with a gasp of astonishment. “Markham,” he said, “if I understand rightly, you are acting like a true and honourable man. Perhaps I have not done you justice, hitherto. Your mother does not seem able to say anything. I believe in my little girl’s instinct. If it will do you any good, you have my approval too.”
Markham’s slackened arm dropped to his side, though Frances embraced it still. His very jaw dropped in the amazement, almost consternation, of this sudden appearance. “Sir,” he stammered, “your—your—support—your—friendship would be all I could——” And here his voice failed him, and he said no more.
Then Waring went a step further by an unaccountable impulse, which afterwards he could not understand. He held out one hand, still holding with the other the back of Lady Markham’s chair. “I know what the loss will be to your mother,” he said; “but perhaps—perhaps, if she pleases: that may be made up too.”
She removed her hands suddenly and looked up at him. There was not a particle of colour in her cheek. The hurrying of her heart parched her open lips. The two men clasped hands over her, and she saw them through a mist, for a moment side by side.
At this moment of extreme agitation and excitement, Lady Markham’s butler suddenly opened the drawing-room door. He came in with that solemnity of countenance with which, in his class, it is thought proper to name all that is preliminary to death. “If you please, my lady,” he said, “there’s a man below has come to say that the fever’s come to a crisis, and that there’s a change.”
“You mean Captain Gaunt,” cried Lady Markham, rising with a half-stupefied look. She was so much worn by these divers emotions, that she did not see where she went.