The day was warm, and there was no shade; out of the olive woods which
they had left behind, and where all was soft coolness and freshness,
they had emerged into a piece of road widened and perfected by recent
improvements till it was as shelterless as a broad street. High walls on
one side clothed with the green clinging trails of the mesembryanthemum,
with palm-trees towering above, but throwing no shadow below; on the
other a low house or two, and more garden walls, leading in a broad
curve to the little old walled town, its campanile rising up over the
clustered roofs, in which was their home. They had fifteen minutes or
more of dazzling sunshine before them ere they could reach any point of
shelter.
Ten minutes, or even five, would have been enough for Frances. She could
have run along, had she been alone, as like a bird as any human creature
could be, being so light and swift and young. But it was very different
with her father. He walked but slowly at the best of times; and in the
face of the sun at noon, what was to be expected of him? It was part of
the strange contrariety of fate, which was against him in whatever he
attempted, small or great, that it should be just here, in this broad,
open, unavoidable path, that he encountered one of those parties which
always made him wroth, and which usually he managed to keep clear of
with such dexterity--an English family from one of the hotels.
Tourists from the hotels are always objectionable to residents in a
place. Even when the residents are themselves strangers--perhaps,
indeed, all the more from that fact--the chance visitors who come to
stare and gape at those scenes which the others have appropriated and
taken possession of, are insufferable. Mr Waring had lived in the old
town of Bordighera for a great number of years. He had seen the Marina
and the line of hotels on the beach created, and he had watched the
travellers arriving to take possession of them--the sick people, and the
people who were not sick. He had denounced the invasion unceasingly, and
with vehemence; he had never consented to it. The Italians about might
be complacent, thinking of the enrichment of the neighbourhood, and of
what was good for trade, as these prosaic people do; but the English
colonist on the Punto could not put up with it. And to be met here, on
his return from his walk, by an unblushing band about whom there could
be no mistake, was very hard to bear. He had to walk along exposed to
the fire of all their unabashed and curious glances, to walk slowly, to
miss none, from that of the stout mother to that of the slim governess.
In the rear of the party came the papa, a portly Saxon, of the class
which, if comparisons could be thought of in so broad and general a
sentiment, Mr Waring disliked worst of all--a big man, a rosy man, a
fat man, in large easy morning clothes, with a big white umbrella over
his head. This last member of the family came at some distance behind
the rest. He did not like the sun, though he had been persuaded to leave
England in search of it. He was very warm, moist, and in a state of
general relaxation, his tidy necktie coming loose, his gloves only half
on, his waistcoat partially unbuttoned. It was March, when no doubt a
good genuine east wind was blowing at home. At that moment this
traveller almost regretted the east wind.
The Warings were going up-hill towards their abode: the slope was gentle
enough, yet it added to the slowness of Mr Waring’s pace. All the
English party had stared at him, as is the habit of English parties; and
indeed he and his daughter were not unworthy of a stare. But all these
gazes came with a cumulation of curiosity to widen the stare of the last
comer, who had, besides, twenty or thirty yards of vacancy in which the
indignant resident was fully exposed to his view. Little Frances, who
was English enough to stare too, though in a gentlewomanly way, saw a
change gradually come, as he gazed, over the face of the stranger. His
eyebrows rose up bushy and arched with surprise; his eyelids puckered
with the intentness of his stare; his lips dropped apart. Then he came
suddenly to a stand-still, and gasped forth the word “WARING!” in tones
of surprise to which capital letters can give but faint expression.
Mr Waring, struck by this exclamation as by a bullet, paused too, as
with something of that inclination to turn round which is said to be
produced by a sudden hit. He put up his hand momentarily, as if to pull
down his broad-brimmed hat over his brows. But in the end he did
neither. He stood and faced the stranger with angry energy. “Well?” he
said.
“Dear me! who could have thought of seeing you here? Let me call my
wife. She will be delighted. Mary! Why, I thought you had gone to the
East. I thought you had disappeared altogether. And so did everybody.
And what a long time it is, to be sure! You look as if you had forgotten
me.”
“I have,” said the other, with a supercilious gaze, perusing the large
figure from top to toe.
“Oh come, Waring! Why--Mannering; you can’t have forgotten Mannering, a
fellow that stuck by you all through. Dear, how it brings up everything,
seeing you again! Why, it must be a dozen years ago. And what have you
been doing all this time? Wandering over the face of the earth, I
suppose, in all sorts of out-of-the-way places, since nobody has ever
fallen in with you before.”
“I am something of an invalid,” said Waring. “I fear I cannot stand in
the sun to answer so many questions. And my movements are of no
importance to any one but myself.”
“Don’t be so misanthropical,” said the stranger in his large round
voice. “You always had a turn that way. And I don’t wonder if you are
soured--any fellow would be soured. Won’t you say a word to Mary? She’s
looking back, wondering with all her might what new acquaintance I’ve
found out here, never thinking it’s an old friend. Hillo, Mary! What’s
the matter? Don’t you want to see her? Why, man alive, don’t be so
bitter! She and I have always stuck up for you; through thick and thin,
we’ve stuck up for you. Eh! can’t stand any longer? Well, it is hot,
isn’t it? There’s no variety in this confounded climate. Come to the
hotel, then--the Victoria, down there.”
Waring had passed his interrogator, and was already at some distance,
while the other, breathless, called after him. He ended, affronted, by
another discharge of musketry, which hit the fugitive in the rear. “I
suppose,” the indiscreet inquirer demanded, breathlessly, “that’s the
little girl?”
Frances had followed with great but silent curiosity this strange
conversation. She had not interposed in any way, but she had stood close
by her father’s side, drinking in every word with keen ears and eyes.
She had heard and seen many strange things, but never an encounter like
this; and her eagerness to know what it meant was great; but she dared
not linger a moment after her father’s rapid movement of the hand, and
the longer stride than usual, which was all the increase of speed he was
capable of. As she had stood still by his side without a question, she
now went on, very much as if she had been a delicate little piece of
machinery of which he had touched the spring. That was not at all the
character of Frances Waring; but to judge by her movements while at her
father’s side, an outside observer might have thought so. She had never
offered any resistance to any impulse from him in her whole life; indeed
it would have seemed to her an impossibility to do so. But these
impulses concerned the outside of her life only. She went along by his
side with the movement of a swift creature restrained to the pace of a
very slow one, but making neither protest nor remark. And neither did
she ask any explanation, though she cast many a stolen glance at him as
they pursued their way. And for his part, he said nothing. The heat of
the sun, the annoyance of being thus interrupted, were enough to account
for that.
This broad bit of sunny road which lay between them and the shelter of
their home had been made by one of those too progressive municipalities,
thirsting for English visitors and tourists in general, who fill with
hatred and horror the old residents in Italy; and after it followed a
succession of stony stairs more congenial to the locality, by which,
under old archways and through narrow alleys, you got at last to the
wider centre of the town, a broad stony piazza, under the shadow of the
Bell Tower, the characteristic campanile which was the landmark of the
place. Except on one side of the piazza, all here was in grateful shade.
Waring’s stern face softened a little when he came into these cool and
almost deserted streets: here and there was a woman at a doorway, an old
man in the deep shadow of an open shop or booth unguarded by any window,
two or three girls filling their pitchers at the well, but no intrusive
tourists or passengers of any kind to break the noonday stillness. The
pair went slowly through the little town, and emerged by another old
gateway, on the farther side, where the blue Mediterranean, with all its
wonderful shades of colour, and line after line of headland cutting down
into those ethereal tints, stretched out before them, ending in the haze
of the Ligurian mountains. The scene was enough to take away the breath
of one unaccustomed to that blaze of wonderful light, and all the
delightful accidents of those purple hills. But this pair were too
familiarly acquainted with every line to make any pause. They turned
round the sunny height from the gateway, and entered by a deep small
door sunk in the wall, which stood high like a great rampart rising from
the Punto. This was the outer wall of the palace of the lord of the
town, still called _the_ Palazzo at Bordighera. Every large house is a
palace in Italy; but the pretensions of this were well founded. The
little door by which they entered had been an opening of modern and
peaceful times, the state entrance being through a great doorway and
court on the inner side. The deep outer wall was pierced by windows,
only at the height of the second storey on the sea side, so that the
great marble stair up which Waring toiled slowly was very long and
fatiguing, as if it led to a mountaintop. He reached his rooms
breathless, and going in through antechamber and corridor, threw himself
into the depths of a large but upright chair. There were no signs of
luxury about. It was not one of those hermitages of culture and ease
which English recluses make for themselves in the most unlikely places.
It was more like a real hermitage; or, to speak more simply, it was
like, what it really was, an apartment in an old Italian house, in a
rustic castle, furnished and provided as such a place, in the possession
of its natural inhabitants, would be.
The Palazzo was subdivided into a number of habitations, of which the
apartment of the Englishman was the most important. It was composed of a
suite of rooms facing to the sea, and commanding the entire circuit of
the sun; for the windows on one side were to the east, and at the other
the apartment ended in a large loggia, commanding the west and all the
glorious sunsets accomplished there. We Northerners, who have but a
limited enjoyment of the sun, show often a strange indifference to him
in the sites and situations of our houses; but in Italy it is well known
that where the sun does not go the doctor goes, and much more regard is
shown to the aspect of the house.
The Warings at the worst of that genial climate had little occasion for
fire; they had but to follow the centre of light when he glided out of
one room to fling himself more abundantly into another. The Punto is
always full in the cheerful rays. It commands everything--air and sea,
and the mountains and all their thousand effects of light and shade; and
the Palazzo stands boldly out upon this the most prominent point in the
landscape, with the houses of the little town withdrawing on a dozen
different levels behind. In the warlike days when no point of vantage
which a pirate could seize upon was left undefended or assailable, it is
probable that there was no loggia from which to watch the western
illuminations. But peace has been so long on the Riviera that the loggia
too was antique, the parapet crumbling and grey. It opened from a large
room, very lofty, and with much faded decoration on the upper walls and
roof, which was the salone or drawing-room, beyond which was an
ante-room, then a sort of library, a dining-room, a succession of
bed-chambers; much space, little furniture, sunshine and air unlimited,
and a view from every window which it was worth living to be able to
look out upon night and day. This, however, at the moment of which we
write, was shut out all along the line, the green _persiani_ being
closed, and nothing open but the loggia, which was still cool and in the
shade. The rooms lay in a soft green twilight, cool and fresh; the doors
were open from one to another, affording a long vista of picturesque
glimpses.
From where Waring had thrown himself down to rest, he looked straight
through the apartment, over the faded formality of the ante-room with
its large old chairs, which were never moved from their place, across
his own library, in which there was a glimmer of vellum binding and old
gilding, to the table with its white tablecloth, laid out for breakfast
in the eating-room. The quiet soothed him after a while, and perhaps the
evident preparations for his meal, the large and rotund flask of Chianti
which Domenico was placing on the table, the vision of another figure
behind Domenico with a delicate dish of mayonnaise in her hands. He
could distinguish that it was a mayonnaise, and his angry spirit calmed
down. Noon began to chime from the campanile, and Frances came in
without her hat and with the eagerness subdued in her eyes. “Breakfast
is ready, papa,” she said. She had that look of knowing nothing and
guessing nothing beyond what lies on the surface, which so many women
have.
She was scarcely to be called a woman, not only because of being so
young, but of being so small, so slim, so light, with such a tiny
figure, that a stronger breeze than usual would, one could not help
thinking, blow her away. Her father was very tall, which made her tiny
size the more remarkable. She was not beautiful--few people are to the
positive degree; but she had the prettiness of youth, of round soft
contour, and peach-like skin, and clear eyes. Her hair was light brown,
her eyes dark brown, neither very remarkable; her features small and
clearly cut, as was her figure, no slovenliness or want of finish about
any line. All this pleasing exterior was very simple and easily
comprehended, and had but little to do with her, the real Frances, who
was not so easy to understand. She had two faces, although there was in
her no guile. She had the countenance she now wore, as it were for daily
use--a countenance without expression, like a sunny cheerful morning in
which there is neither care nor fear--the countenance of a girl calling
papa to breakfast, very punctual, determined that nobody should reproach
her as being half of a minute late, or having a hair or a ribbon a
hair’s-breadth out of place. That such a girl should have ever suspected
anything, feared anything--except perhaps gently that the mayonnaise was
not to papa’s taste--was beyond the range of possibilities; or that she
should be acquainted with anything in life beyond the simple routine of
regular hours and habits, the sweet and gentle bond of the ordinary,
which is the best rule of young lives.
Frances Waring had sometimes another face. That profile of hers was not
so clearly cut for nothing; nor were her eyes so lucid only to perceive
the outside of existence. In her room, during the few minutes she spent
there, she had looked at herself in her old-fashioned dim glass, and
seen a different creature. But what that was, or how it was, must show
itself farther on. She led the way into the dining-room, the trimmest
composed little figure, all England embodied--though she scarcely
remembered England--in the self-restrained and modest toilet of a
little girl accustomed to be cared for by women well instructed in the
niceties of feminine costume; and yet she had never had any one to take
counsel with except an Italian maid-of-all-work, who loved the brightest
primitive colours, as became her race. Frances knew so few English
people that she had not even the admiration of surprise at her success.
Those she did know took it for granted that she got her pretty sober
suits, her simple unelaborate dresses, from some very excellent
dressmaker at “home,” not knowing that she did not know what home was.
Her father followed her, as different a figure as imagination could
suggest. He was very tall, very thin, with long legs and stooping
shoulders, his hair in limp locks, his shirt-collar open, a velvet
coat--looking as entirely adapted to the locality, the conventional
right man in the right place, as she was not the conventional woman. A
gloomy look, which was habitual to him, a fretful longitudinal pucker in
his forehead, the hollow lines of ill health in his cheeks, disguised
the fact that he was, or had been, a handsome man; just as his extreme
spareness and thinness made it difficult to believe that he had also
been a very powerful one. Nor was he at all old, save in the very young
eyes of his daughter, to whom forty-five was venerable. He might have
been an artist or a poet of a misanthropical turn of mind; though, when
a man has chronic asthma, misanthropy is unnecessary to explain his look
of pain, and fatigue, and disgust with the outside world. He walked
languidly, his shoulders up to his ears, and followed Frances to the
table, and sat down with that air of dissatisfaction which takes the
comfort out of everything. Frances either was inaccessible to this kind
of discomfort, or so accustomed to it that she did not feel it. She sat
serenely opposite to him, and talked of indifferent things.
“Don’t take the mayonnaise, if you don’t like it, papa; there is
something else coming that will perhaps be better. Mariuccia does not at
all pride herself upon her mayonnaise.”
“Mariuccia knows very little about it; she has not even the sense to
know what she can do best.” He took a little more of the dish, partly
out of contradiction, which was the result which Frances hoped.
“The lettuce is so crisp and young, that makes it a little better,” she
said, with the air of a connoisseur.
“A little better is not the word; it is very good,” he said, fretfully;
then added with a slight sigh, “Everything is better for being young.”
“Except people, I know. Why does young mean good with vegetables and
everything else, and silly only when it is applied to people?--though it
can’t be helped, I know.”
“That is one of your metaphysical questions,” he said, with a slight
softening of his tone. “Perhaps because of human jealousy. We all like
to discredit what we haven’t got, and most people you see are no longer
young.”
“Oh, do you think so, papa? I think there are more young people than old
people.”
“I suppose you are right, Fan; but they don’t count for so much, in the
way of opinion at least. What has called forth these sage remarks?”
“Only the lettuce,” she said, with a laugh. Then, after a pause, “For
instance, there were six or seven children in the party we met to-day,
and only two parents.”
“There are seldom more than two parents, my dear.”
She had not looked up when she made this careless little speech, and yet
there was a purpose in it, and a good deal of keen observation through
her drooped eyelashes. She received his reply with a little laugh. “I
did not mean that, papa; but that six or seven are a great deal more
than two, which of course you will laugh at me for saying. I suppose
they were all English?”
“I suppose so. The father--if he was the father--certainly was English.”
“And you knew him, papa?’
“He knew me, which is a different thing.”
Then there was a little pause. The conversation between the father and
daughter was apt to run in broken periods. He very seldom originated
anything. When she found a subject upon which she could interest him, he
would reply, to a certain limit, and then the talk would drop. He was
himself a very silent man, requiring no outlet of conversation; and
when he refused to be interested, it was a task too hard for Frances to
lead him into speech. She on her side was full of a thousand unsatisfied
curiosities, which for the most part were buried in her own bosom. In
the meantime Domenico made the circle of the table with the new dish,
and his step and a question or two from his master were all the remarks
that accompanied the meal. Mr Waring was something of a _gourmet_, but
at the same time he was very temperate--a conjunction which is
favourable to fine eating. His table was delicately furnished with
dishes almost infinitesimal in quantity, but superlative in quality; and
he ate his dainty light repast with gravity and slowly, as a man
performs what he feels to be one of the most important functions of his
life.
“Tell Mariuccia that a few drops from a fresh lemon would have improved
this _ragoût_--but a very fresh lemon.”
“Yes, Excellency, _freschissimo_,” said Domenico, with solemnity.
In the household generally, nothing was so important as the second
breakfast, except, indeed, the dinner, which was the climax of the day.
The gravity of all concerned, the little solemn movement round the
white-covered table in the still soft shade of the atmosphere, with
those green _persiani_ shutting out all the sunshine, and the brown old
walls, bare of any decoration, throwing up the group, made a curious
picture. The walls were quite bare, the floor brown and polished, with
only a square of carpet round the table; but the roof and cornices were
gilt and painted with tarnished gilding and half-obliterated pictures.
Opposite to Frances was a blurred figure of a cherub with a finger on
his lip. She looked up at this faint image as she had done a hundred
times, and was silent. He seemed to command the group, hovering over it
like a little tutelary god.