Captain Gaunt called next day to bring, he said, a message from his
mother. She sent Mr Waring a newspaper which she thought he might like
to see, an English weekly newspaper, which some of her correspondents
had sent her, in which there was an article---- He did not give a very
clear account of this, nor make it distinctly apparent why Waring should
be specially interested; and as a matter of fact, the newspaper found
its way to the waste-paper basket, and interested nobody. But, no doubt,
Mrs Gaunt’s intentions had been excellent. When the young soldier
arrived, there was a carriage at the door, and Constance had her hat on.
“We are going,” she said, “to San Remo, to see about a piano. Do you
know San Remo? Oh, I forgot you are as much a stranger as I am; you
don’t know anything. What a good thing that there are two ignorant
persons! We will keep each other in countenance, and they will be
compelled to make all kinds of expeditions to show us everything.”
“That will be a wonderful chance for me,” said the young man, “for
nobody would take so much trouble for me alone.”
“How can you tell that? Miss Tasie, I should think, would be an
excellent cicerone,” said Constance. She said it with a light laugh of
suggestion, meaning to imply, though, of course, she had _said_ nothing,
that Tasie would be too happy to put herself at Captain Gaunt’s
disposition; a suggestion which he, too, received with a laugh--for this
is one of the points upon which both boys and girls are always
ungenerous.
“And failing Miss Tasie,” said Constance, “suppose you come with papa
and me? They say it is a pretty drive. They say, of course, that
everything here is lovely, and that the Riviera is paradise. Do you find
it so?”
“I can fancy circumstances in which I should find it so,” said the young
soldier.
“Ah, yes; every one can do that. I can fancy circumstances in which Bond
Street would be paradise--oh, very easily! It is not far from paradise
at any time.”
“That is a heaven of which I know very little, Miss Waring.”
“Ah, then, you must learn. The true Elysian fields are in London in May.
If you don’t know that, you can form no idea of happiness. An exile from
all delights gives you the information, and you may be sure it is true.”
“Why, then, Miss Waring, if you think so----”
“Am I here? Oh, that is easily explained. I have a sister.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Ah, I understand you have heard a great deal about my sister. I suffer
here from being compared with her. I am not nearly so good, so wise, as
Frances. But is that my fault, Captain Gaunt? You are impartial; you are
a new-comer. If I could, I would, be as nice as Frances, don’t you
believe?”
The young man gave Constance a look, which, indeed, she expected, and
said with confusion, “I don’t see--any need for improvement,” and
blushed as near crimson as was possible over the greenish brown of his
Indian colour.
Constance for her part did not blush. She laughed, and made him an
almost imperceptible curtsey. The ways of flirtation are not original,
and all the parallels of the early encounters might be stereotyped, as
everybody knows.
“You are very amiable,” she said; “but then you don’t know Frances, and
your opinion, accordingly, is less valuable. I did not ask you, however,
to believe me to be equal to my sister, but only to believe that I would
be as nice if I could. However, all that is no explanation. We have a
mother, you know, in England. We are, unfortunately, that sad thing, a
household divided against itself.”
Captain Gaunt was not prepared for such confidences. He grew still a
little browner with embarrassment, and muttered something about being
very sorry, not knowing what to say.
“Oh, there is not very much to be sorry about. Papa enjoys himself in
his way here, and mamma is very happy at home. The only thing is that we
must each have our turn, you know--that is only fair. So Frances has
gone to mamma, and here am I in Bordighera. We are each dreadfully out
of our element. Her friends condemn me, to begin with, as if it were my
fault that I am not like her; and my friends, perhaps---- But no; I
don’t think so. Frances is so good, so nice, so everything a girl ought
to be.”
At this she laughed softly again; and young Gaunt’s consciousness that
his mother’s much vaunted Frances was the sort of girl to please old
ladies rather than young men, a prim, little, smooth, correct maiden,
with not the least “go” in her, took additional force and certainty.
Whereas---- But he had no words in which to express his sense of the
advantages on the other side.
“You must find it,” he said, knowing nothing more original to say,
“dreadfully dull living here.”
“I have not found anything as yet; I have only just come. I am no more
than a few days older than you are. We can compare notes as time goes
on. But perhaps you don’t mean to stay very long in these abodes of the
blest?”
“I don’t know that I did intend it. But I shall stay now as long as ever
I can,” said the young man. Then--for he was shy--he added hastily, “It
is a long time since I have seen my people, and they like to have me.”
“Naturally. But you need not have spoiled what looked like a very pretty
compliment by adding that. Perhaps you didn’t mean it for a compliment?
Oh, I don’t mind at all. It is much more original, if you didn’t mean
it. Compliments are such common coin. But I don’t pretend to despise
them, as some girls do; and I don’t like to see them spoiled,” Constance
said seriously.
The young man looked at her with consternation. After a while, his
moustache expanded into a laugh, but it was a confused laugh, and he did
not understand. Still less did he know how to reply. Constance had been
used to sharper wits, who took her at half a word; and she was half
angry to be thus obliged to explain.
“We are going to San Remo, as I told you,” she said. “I am waiting for
my father. We are going to look for a piano. Frances is not musical, so
there is no piano in the house. You must come too, and give your advice.
Oh, are you ready, papa? Captain Gaunt, who does not know San Remo, and
who does know music, is coming with us to give us his advice.”
The young soldier stammered forth that to go to San Remo was the thing
he most desired in the world. “But I don’t think my advice will be good
for much,” he said, conscientiously. “I do a little on the violin; but
as for pretending to be a judge of a piano----”
“Come; we are all ready,” said Constance, leading the way.
Waring had to let the young fellow precede him, to see him get into the
carriage without any articulate murmur. As a matter of fact, a sort of
stupor seized the father, altogether unaccustomed to be the victim of
accidents. Frances might have lived by his side till she was fifty
before she would have thought of inviting a stranger to be of their
party--a stranger, a young man, which was a class of being with which
Waring had little patience, a young soldier, proverbially frivolous, and
occupied with foolish matters. Young Gaunt respectfully left to his
senior the place beside Constance; but he placed himself opposite to
her, and kept his eyes upon her with a devout attention, which Waring
would have thought ridiculous had he not been irritated by it. The young
fellow was a great deal too much absorbed to contribute much to the
amusement of the party; and it irritated Waring beyond measure to see
his eyes gleam from under his eyebrows, opening wider with delight, half
closing with laughter, the ends of his moustache going up to his ears.
Waring, an impartial spectator, was not so much impressed by his
daughter’s wit. He thought he had heard a great deal of the same before,
or even better, surely better, for he could recollect that he had in his
day been charmed by a similar treatment, which must have been much
lighter in touch, much less commonplace in subject, because--he was
charmed. Thus we argue in our generations. In the meantime, young Gaunt,
though he had not been without some experience, looked at Constance
from under his brows, and listened as if to the utterances of the gods.
If only they could have had it all to themselves; if only the old father
had been out of the way!
The sunshine, the sea, the beautiful colour, the unexpected vision round
every corner of another and another picturesque cluster of towns and
roofs; all that charm and variety which give to Italy above every
country on earth the admixture of human interest, the endless chain of
association which adds a grace to natural beauty, made very little
impression upon this young pair. She would have been amused and
delighted by the exercise of her own power, and he would have been
enthralled by her beauty, and what he considered her wit and high
spirits, had their progress been along the dullest streets. It was only
Waring’s eyes, disgusted by the prospect before him of his daughter’s
little artifices, and young Gaunt’s imbecile subjection, which turned
with any special consciousness to the varying blues of the sea, to the
endless developments of the landscape. Flirtation is one of the last
things in the world to brook a spectator. Its little absurdities, which
are so delightful to the actors in the drama, and which at a distance
the severest critic may smile at and forgive, excite the wrath of a too
close looker-on, in a way quite disproportioned to their real
offensiveness. The interchange of chatter which prevents, as that
observer would say, all rational conversation, the attempts to charm,
which are so transparent, the response of silly admiration, which is
only another form of vanity--how profoundly sensible we all are of their
folly! Had Constance taken as much pains to please her father, he would,
in all probability, have yielded altogether to the spell; but he was
angry, ashamed, furious, that she should address those wiles to the
young stranger, and saw through him with a clearsightedness which was
exasperating. It was all the more exasperating that he could not tell
what she meant by it. Was it possible that she had already formed an
inclination towards this tawny young stranger? Had his bilious hues
affected her imagination? Love at first sight is a very respectable
emotion, and commands in many cases both sympathy and admiration. But no
man likes to see the working of this sentiment in a woman who belongs to
him. Had Constance fallen in love? He grew angry at the very suggestion,
though breathed only in the recesses of his own mind. A girl who had
been brought up in the world, who had seen all kinds of people, was it
possible that she should fall a victim in a moment to the attractions of
a young nobody--a young fellow who knew nothing but India? That he
should be subjected, was simple enough; but Constance! Waring’s brow
clouded more and more. He kept silent, taking no part in the talk, and
the young fools did not so much as remark it, but went on with their own
absurdity more and more.
The transformation of a series of little Italian municipalities,
although in their nature more towns than villages, rendered less rustic
by the traditions of an exposed coast, and many a crisis of
self-defence, into little modern towns full of hotels and tourists, is
neither a pleasant nor a lovely process. San Remo in the old days,
before Dr Antonio made it known to the world, lay among its
olive-gardens on the edge of the sea, which grew bluer and bluer as it
crept to the feet of the human master of the soil, a delight to behold,
a little picture which memory cherished. Wide promenades flanked with
big hotels, with conventional gardens full of green bushes, and a kiosk
for the band, make a very different prospect now. But then, in the old
days, there could have been no music-sellers with pianos to let or sell;
no famous English chemist with coloured bottles; no big shops in which
travellers could be tempted. Constance forgot Captain Gaunt when she
found herself in this atmosphere of the world. She began to remember
things she wanted. “Papa, if you don’t despise it too much, you must let
me do a little shopping,” she said. She wanted a hat for the sun. She
wanted some eau-de-Cologne. She wanted just to run into the jeweller’s
to see if the coral was good, to see if there were any peasant-ornaments
which would be characteristic. At all this her father smiled somewhat
grimly, taking it as a part of the campaign into which his daughter had
chosen to enter for the overthrow of the young soldier. But Constance
was perfectly sincere, and had forgotten her campaign in the new and
warmer interest.
“So long as you do not ask me to attend you from shop to shop,” he said.
“Oh no; Captain Gaunt will come,” said Constance.
Captain Gaunt was not a victim who required many wiles. He was less
amusing than she had hoped, in so far that he had given in, in an
incredibly short space of time. He was now in a condition to be trampled
on at her pleasure, and this was unexciting. A longer resistance would
have been much more to Constance’s mind. Captain Gaunt accompanied her
to all the shops. He helped her with his advice about the piano, bending
his head over her as she ran through a little air or two, and struck a
few chords on one after the other of the music-seller’s stock. They were
not very admirable instruments, but one was found that would do.
“You can bring your violin,” Constance said; “we must try to amuse
ourselves a little.” This was before her father left them, and he heard
it with a groan.
Waring took a silent walk round the bay while the purchases went on. He
thought of past experiences, of the attraction which a shop has for
women. Frances, no doubt, after a little of her mother’s training, would
be the same. She would find out the charms of shopping. He had not even
her return to look forward to, for she would not be the same Frances who
had left him, when she came back. _When_ she came back?--if she ever
came back. The same Frances, never; perhaps not even a changed Frances.
Her mother would quickly see what an advantage she had in getting the
daughter whom her husband had brought up. She would not give her back;
she would turn her into a second Constance. There had been a time when
Waring had concluded that Constance was amusing and Frances dull; but it
must be remembered that he was under provocation now. If she had been
amusing, it had not been for him. She had exerted herself to please a
commonplace, undistinguished boy, with an air of being indifferent to
everything else, which was beyond measure irritating to her father. And
now she had got scent of shops, and would never be happy save when she
was rushing from one place to another--to Mentone, to Nice perhaps,
wherever her fancied wants might lead her. Waring discussed all this
with himself as he rambled along, his nerves all set on edge, his taste
revolted. Flirtations and shops--was he to be brought to this? he who
had been free from domestic encumbrance, who had known nothing for so
many years but a little ministrant, who never troubled him, who was
ready when he wanted her, but never put forth herself as a restraint or
an annoyance. He had advised Constance to take what good she could find
in her life; but he had never imagined that this was the line she would
take.
The drive home was scarcely more satisfactory. Young Gaunt had got a
little courage by the episode of the shops. He ventured to tell her of
the trifles he had brought with him from India, and to ask if Miss
Waring would care to see them; and he described to her the progress he
had made with his violin, and what his attainments were in music.
Constance told him that the best thing he could do was to bring the said
violin and all his music, so that they might see what they could do
together. “If you are not too far advanced for me,” she said with a
laugh. “Come in the morning, when we shall not be interrupted.”
Her father listened, but said nothing. His imagination immediately set
before him the tuning and scraping, the clang of the piano, the shriek
of the fiddle, and he himself only two rooms off, endeavouring in vain
to collect his thoughts and do his work! Mr Waring’s work was not of the
first importance, but still it was his work, and momentous to him. He
bore, however, a countenance unmoved, if very grave, and even endured
without a word the young man’s entrance with them, the consultation
about where the piano was to stand, and tea afterwards in the loggia. He
did not himself want any tea; he left the young people to enjoy this
refreshment together while he retired to his bookroom. But with only
two rooms between, and with his senses quickened by displeasure, he
heard their voices, the laughter, the continual flow of talk, even the
little tinkle of the teacups--every sound. He had never been disturbed
by Frances’ tea; but then, except Tasie Durant, there had been nobody to
share it, no son from the bungalow, no privileged messenger sent by his
mother. Mrs Gaunt’s children, of whom she talked continually, had always
been a nuisance, except to the sympathetic soul of Frances. But who
could have imagined the prominence which they had assumed now?
Young Gaunt did not go away until shortly before dinner; and Constance,
after accompanying him to the anteroom, went along the corridor singing,
to her own room, to change her dress. Though her room (Frances’ room
that was) was at the extremity of the suite, her father heard her light
voice running on in a little operatic air all the time she made her
toilet. Had it been described in a book, he thought to himself it would
have had a pretty sound. The girl’s voice, sweet and gay, sounding
through the house, the voice of happy youth brightening the dull life
there, the voice of innocent content betraying its own satisfaction with
existence--satisfaction in having a young fool to flirt with, and some
trumpery shops to buy unnecessary appendages in! At dinner, however, she
made fun of young Gaunt, and the morose father was a little mollified.
“It is rather dreadful for other people when there is an adoring mother
in the background to think everything you do perfection,” Constance
said. “I don’t think we shall make much of the violin.”
“These are subjects on which you can speak with more authority than
I--both the violin and the mother,” said Waring.
“Oh,” she cried, “you don’t think mamma was one of the adoring kind, I
hope! There may be things in her which might be mended; but she is not
like that. She kept one in one’s proper place. And as for the violin, I
suspect he plays it like an old fiddler in the streets.”
“You have changed your mind about it very rapidly,” said Waring; but on
the whole he was pleased. “You seemed much interested both in the hero
and the music, a little while ago.”
“Yes; was I not?” said Constance with perfect candour. “And he took it
all in, as if it were likely. These young men from India, they are very
ingenuous. It seems wicked to take advantage of them, does it not?”
“More people are ingenuous than the young man from India. I intended to
speak to you very seriously as soon as he was gone--to ask you----”
“What were my intentions?” cried Constance, with an outburst of the
gayest laughter. “Oh, what a pity I began! How sorry I am to have missed
that! Do you think his mother will ask me, papa? It is generally the
man, isn’t it, who is questioned? and he says his intentions are
honourable. Mine, I frankly allow, are not honourable.”
“No; very much the reverse, I should think. But it had better be clearly
defined, for my satisfaction, Constance, which of you is true--the girl
who cried over her loneliness last night, or she who made love to
Captain Gaunt this morning----”
“No, papa; only was a little nice to him, because he is lonely too.”
“These delicacies of expression are too fine for me.---- Who made the
poor young fellow believe that she liked his society immensely, was much
interested, counted upon him and his violin as her greatest pleasures.”
“You are going too far,” she said. “I think the fiddle will be fun. When
you play very badly and are a little conceited about it, you are always
amusing. And as for Captain Gaunt--so long as he does not complain----”
“It is I who am complaining, Constance.”
“Well, papa--but why? You told me last night to take what I had, since I
could not have what I want.”
“And you have acted upon my advice? With great promptitude, I must
allow.”
“Yes,” she said with composure. “What is the use of losing time? It is
not my fault if there is somebody here quite ready. It amuses him too.
And what harm am I doing? A girl can’t be asked--except for fun--those
disagreeable questions.”
“And therefore you think a girl can do--what would be dishonourable in a
man.”
“Oh, you are so much too serious,” cried Constance. “Are you always as
serious as this? You laughed when I told you about Fanny Gervoise. Is it
only because it is me that you find fault? And don’t you think it is a
little too soon for parental interference? The Gaunts would be much
surprised. They would think you were afraid for my peace of mind,
papa--as her parents were afraid for Miss Tasie.”
This moved the stern father to a smile. He had thought that Constance
did not appreciate that joke; but the girl had more humour than he
supposed. “I see,” he said, “you will have your own way; but remember,
Constance, I cannot allow it to go too far.”
How could he prevent it going as far as she pleased? she said to herself
with a little scorn, when she was alone. Parents may be medieval if they
will; but the means have never yet been invented of preventing a woman,
when she is so minded and has the power in her hands, from achieving her
little triumph over a young man’s heart.