Frances had not succeeded in resolving this question in her mind when
Thursday came. The two intervening days had been very quiet. She had
gone with her mother to several shops, and had stood by almost passive
and much astonished while a multitude of little luxuries which she had
never been sufficiently enlightened even to wish for, were bought for
her. She was so little accustomed to lavish expenditure, that it was
almost with a sense of wrong-doing that she contemplated all these
costly trifles, which were for the use not of some typical fine lady,
but of herself, Frances, who had never thought it possible she could
ever be classed under that title. To Lady Markham these delicacies were
evidently necessaries of life. And then it was for the first time that
Frances learned what an evening dress meant--not only the garment
itself, but the shoes, the stockings, the gloves, the ribbons, the fan,
a hundred little accessories which she had never so much as thought of.
When you have nothing but a set of coral or amber beads to wear with
your white frock, it is astonishing how much that matter is simplified.
Lady Markham opened her jewel-boxes to provide for the same endless roll
of necessities. “This will go with the white dress, and this with the
pink,” she said, thus revealing to Frances another delicacy of accord
unsuspected by her simplicity.
“But, mamma, you are giving me so many things!”
“Not your share yet,” said Lady Markham. And she added: “But don’t say
anything of this to your aunt Clarendon. She will probably give you
something out of her hoards, if she thinks you are not provided.”
This speech checked the pleasure and gratitude of Frances. She stopped
with a little gasp in her eager thanks. She wanted nothing from her aunt
Clarendon, she said to herself with indignation, nor from her mother
either. If they would but let her keep her ignorance, her pleasure in
any simple gift, and not represent her, even to herself, as a little
schemer, trying how much she could get! Frances cried rather than smiled
over her turquoises and the set of old gold ornaments, which but for
that little speech would have made her happy. The suggestion put gall
into everything, and made the timid question in her mind as to Lady
Markham’s generous forbearance with her sister-in-law more difficult
than ever. Why did she bear it? She ought not to have borne it--not for
a day.
On the Wednesday evening before the visit to Portland Place, to which
she looked with so much alarm, two gentlemen came to dinner at the
invitation of Markham. The idea of two gentlemen to dinner produced no
exciting effect upon Frances so as to withdraw her mind from the trial
that was coming. Gentlemen were the only portion of the creation with
which she was more or less acquainted. Even in the old Palazzo, a guest
of this description had been occasionally received, and had sat
discussing some point of antiquarian lore, or something about the old
books at Colla, with her father without taking any notice, beyond what
civility demanded, of the little girl who sat at the head of the table.
She did not doubt it would be the same thing to-night; and though
Markham was always _nice_, never leaving her out, never letting the
conversation drop altogether into that stream of personality or allusion
which makes Society so intolerable to a stranger, she yet prepared for
the evening with the feeling that dulness awaited her, and not pleasure.
One of the guests, however, was of a kind which Frances did not expect.
He was young, very young in appearance, rather small and delicate, but
at the same time refined, with a look of gentle melancholy upon a
countenance which was almost beautiful, with child-like limpid eyes, and
features of extreme delicacy and purity. This was something quite unlike
the elderly antiquarians who talked so glibly to her father about Roman
remains or Etruscan art. He sat between Lady Markham and herself, and
spoke in gentle tones, with a soft affectionate manner, to her mother,
who replied with the kindness and easy affectionateness which were
habitual to her. To see the sweet looks which this young gentleman
received, and to hear the tender questions about his health and his
occupations which Lady Markham put to him, awoke in the mind of Frances
another doubt of the same character as those others from which she had
not been able to get free. Was this sympathetic tone, this air of tender
interest, put on at will for the benefit of everybody with whom Lady
Markham spoke? Frances hated herself for the instinctive question which
rose in her, and for the suspicions which crept into her mind on every
side and undermined all her pleasure. The other stranger opposite to her
was old--to her youthful eyes--and called forth no interest at all. But
the gentleness and melancholy, the low voice, the delicate features,
something plaintive and appealing about the youth by her side, attracted
her interest in spite of herself. He said little to her, but from time
to time she caught him looking at her with a sort of questioning glance.
When the ladies left the table, and Frances and her mother were alone
in the drawing-room, Lady Markham, who had said nothing for some
minutes, suddenly turned and asked: “What did you think of him,
Frances?” as if it were the most natural question in the world.
“Of whom?” said Frances in her astonishment.
“Of Claude, my dear. Whom else? Sir Thomas could be of no particular
interest either to you or me.”
“I did not know their names, mamma; I scarcely heard them. Claude is the
young gentleman who sat next to you?”
“And to you also, Frances. But not only that. He is the man of whom, I
suppose, Constance has told you--to avoid whom she left home, and ran
away from me. Oh, the words come quite appropriate, though I could not
bear them from the mouth of Caroline Clarendon. She abandoned me, and
threw herself upon your father’s protection, because of----”
Frances had listened with a sort of consternation. When her mother
paused for breath, she filled up the interval: “That little, gentle,
small, young man!”
Lady Markham looked for a moment as if she would be angry; then she took
the better way, and laughed. “He is little and young,” she said; “but
neither so young nor even so small as you think. He is most wonderfully,
portentously rich, my dear; and he is very nice and good and intelligent
and generous. You must not take up a prejudice against him because he is
not an athlete or a giant. There are plenty of athletes in Society, my
love, but very, very few with a hundred thousand a-year.”
“It is so strange to me to hear about money,” said Frances. “I hope you
will pardon me, mamma. I don’t understand. I thought he was perhaps some
one who was delicate, whose mother, perhaps, you knew, whom you wanted
to be kind to.”
“Quite true,” said Lady Markham, patting her daughter’s cheek with a
soft finger; “and well judged: but something more besides. I thought, I
allow, that it would be an excellent match for Constance; not only
because he was rich, but _also_ because he was rich. Do you see the
difference?”
“I--suppose so,” Frances said; but there was not any warmth in the
admission. “I thought the right way,” she added after a moment, with a
blush that stole over her from head to foot, “was that people fell in
love with each other.”
“So it is,” said her mother, smiling upon her. “But it often happens,
you know, that they fall in love respectively with the wrong people.”
“It is dreadful to me to talk to you, who know so much better,” cried
Frances. “All that _I_ know is from stories. But I thought that even a
wrong person, whom you chose yourself, was better than----”
“The right person chosen by your mother? These are awful doctrines,
Frances. You are a little revolutionary. Who taught you such terrible
things?” Lady Markham laughed as she spoke, and patted the girl’s cheek
more affectionately than ever, and looked at her with unclouded smiles,
so that Frances took courage. “But,” the mother went on, “there was no
question of choice on my part. Constance has known Claude Ramsay all her
life. She liked him, so far as I knew. I supposed she had accepted him.
It was not formally announced, I am happy to say; but I made sure of it,
and so did everybody else--including himself, poor fellow--when,
suddenly, without any warning, your sister disappeared. It was unkind to
me, Frances,--oh, it was unkind to me!”
And suddenly, while she was speaking, two tears appeared all at once in
Lady Markham’s eyes.
Frances was deeply touched by this sight. She ventured upon a caress,
which as yet, except in timid return, to those bestowed upon her, she
had not been bold enough to do. “I do not think Constance can have meant
to be unkind,” she said.
“Few people mean to be unkind,” said this social philosopher, who knew
so much more than Frances. “Your aunt Clarendon does, and that makes her
harmless, because one understands. Most of those who wound one, do it
because it pleases themselves, without meaning anything--or caring
anything--don’t you see?--whether it hurts or not.”
This was too profound a saying to be understood at the first moment, and
Frances had no reply to make to it. She said only by way of apology,
“But Markham approved?”
“My love,” said her mother, “Markham is an excellent son to me. He
rarely wounds me himself--which is perhaps because he rarely does
anything particular himself--but he is not always a safe guide. It makes
me very happy to see that you take to him, though you must have heard
many things against him; but he is not a safe guide. Hush! here are the
men coming up-stairs. If Claude talks to you, be as gentle with him as
you can--and sympathetic, if you can,” she said quickly, rising from her
chair, and moving in her noiseless easy way to the other side. Frances
felt as if there was a meaning even in this movement, which left herself
alone with a vacant seat beside her; but she was confused as usual by
all the novelty, and did not understand what the meaning was.
It was balked, however, if it had anything to do with Mr Ramsay, for it
was the other gentleman--the old gentleman, as Frances called him in
her thoughts--who came up and took the vacant place. The old gentleman
was a man about forty-five, with a few grey hairs among the brown, and a
well-knit manly figure, which showed very well between the delicate
youth on the one hand and Markham’s insignificance on the other. He was
Sir Thomas, whom Lady Markham had declared to be of no particular
interest to any one; but he evidently had sense enough to see the charm
of simplicity and youth. The attention of Frances was sadly distracted
by the movements of Claude, who fidgeted about from one table to
another, looking at the books and the nick-nacks upon them, and staring
at the pictures on the walls, then finally came and stood by Markham’s
side in front of the fire. He did well to contrast himself with Markham.
He was taller, and the beauty of his countenance showed still more
strikingly in contrast with Markham’s odd little wrinkled face. Frances
was distracted by the look which he kept fixed upon herself, and which
diverted her attention in spite of herself away from the talk of Sir
Thomas, who was, however, very _nice_, and, she felt sure, most
interesting and instructive, as became his advanced age, if only she
could attend to what he was saying. But what with the lively talk which
her mother carried on with Markham, and to which she could not help
listening all through the conversation of Sir Thomas, and the movements
and glances of the melancholy young lover, she could not fix her mind
upon the remarks that were addressed to her own ear. When Claude began
to join languidly in the other talk, it was more difficult still. “You
have got a new picture, Lady Markham,” she heard him say; and a sudden
quickening of her attention and another wave of colour and heat passing
over her, arrested even Sir Thomas in the much more interesting
observation which presumably he was about to make. He paused, as if he,
too, waited to hear Lady Markham’s reply.
“Shall we call it a picture? It is my little girl’s sketch from her
window where she has been living--her present to her mother; and I think
it is delightful, though in the circumstances I don’t pretend to be a
judge.”
Where she has been living! Frances grew redder and hotter in the flush
of indignation that went over her. But she could not stand up and
proclaim that it was from her home, her dear loggia, the place she loved
best in the world, that the sketch was made. Already the bonds of
another life were upon her, and she dared not do that. And then there
was a little chorus of praise, which silenced her still more
effectually. It was the group of palms which she had been so simply
proud of, which--as she had never forgotten--had made her father say
that she had grown up. Lady Markham had placed it on a small easel on
her table; but Frances could not help feeling that this was less for any
pleasure it gave her mother, than in order to make a little exhibition
of her own powers. It was, to be sure, in her own honour that this was
done--and what so natural as that the mother should seek to do her
daughter honour? but Frances was deeply sensitive, and painfully
conscious of the strange tangled web of motives, which she had never in
her life known anything about before. Had the little picture been hung
in her mother’s bedroom, and seen by no eyes but her own, the girl would
have found the most perfect pleasure in it; but here, exhibited as in a
public gallery, examined by admiring eyes, calling forth all the incense
of praise, it was with a mixture of shame and resentment that Frances
found it out. It produced this result, however, that Sir Thomas rose, as
in duty bound, to examine the performance of the daughter of the house;
and presently young Ramsay, who had been watching his opportunity, took
the place by her side.
“I have been waiting for this,” he said, with his air of pathos. “I have
so many things to ask you, if you will let me, Miss Waring.”
“Surely,” Frances said.
“Your sketch is very sweet--it is full of feeling--there is no colour
like that of the Riviera. It is the Riviera, is it not?”
“Oh yes,” cried Frances, eager to seize the opportunity of making it
apparent that it was not only where she had been living, as her mother
said. “It is from Bordighera, from our loggia, where I have lived all my
life.”
“You will find no colour and no vegetation like that near London,” the
young man said.
To this Frances replied politely that London was full of much more
wonderful things, as she had always heard; but felt somewhat
disappointed, supposing that his communications to her were to be more
interesting than this.
“And the climate is so very different,” he continued. “I am very often
sent out of England for the winter, though this year they have let me
stay. I have been at Nice two seasons. I suppose you know Nice? It is a
very pretty place; but the wind is just as cold sometimes as at home.
You have to keep in the sun; and if you always keep in the sun, it is
warm even here.”
“But there is not always sun here,” said Frances.
“That is very true; that is a very clever remark. There is not always
sun here. San Remo was beginning to be known when I was there; but I
never heard of Bordighera as a place where people went to stay. Some
Italian wrote a book about it, I have heard--to push it, no doubt.
Could you recommend it as a winter-place, Miss Waring? I suppose it is
very dull, nothing going on?”
“Oh, nothing at all,” cried Frances eagerly. “All the tourists complain
that there is nothing to do.”
“I thought so,” he said; “a regular little Italian dead-alive place.”
Then he added after a moment’s pause: “But of course there are
inducements which might make one put up with that, if the air happened
to suit one. Are there villas to be had, can you tell me? They say, as a
matter of fact, that you get more advantage of the air when you are in a
dull place.”
“There are hotels,” said Frances more and more disappointed, though the
beginning of this speech had given her a little hope.
“Good hotels?” he said with interest. “Sometimes they are really better
than a place of one’s own, where the drainage is often bad, and the
exposure not all that could be desired. And then you get any amusement
that may be going. Perhaps you will tell me the names of one or two? for
if this east wind continues, my doctors may send me off even now.”
Frances looked into his limpid eyes and expressive countenance with
dismay. He must look, she felt sure, as if he were making the most
touching confidences to her. His soft pathetic voice gave a _faux air_
of something sentimental to those questions, which even she could not
persuade herself meant nothing. Was it to show that he was bent upon
following Constance wherever she might go? That must be the true
meaning, she supposed. He must be endeavouring by this mock-anxiety to
find out how much she knew of his real motives, and whether he might
trust to her or not. But Frances resented a little the unnecessary
precaution.
“I don’t know anything about the hotels,” she said. “I have never
thought of the air. It is my home--that is all.”
“You look so well, that I am the more convinced it would be a good place
for me,” said the young man. “You look in such thorough good health, if
you will allow me to say so. Some ladies don’t like to be told that; but
I think it the most delightful thing in existence. Tell me, had you any
trouble with drainage, when you went to settle there? And is the water
good? and how long does the season last? I am afraid I am teasing you
with my questions; but all these details are so important--and one is so
pleased to hear of a new place.”
“We live up in the old town,” said Frances with a sudden flash of
malice. “I don’t know what drainage is, and neither does any one else
there. We have our fountain in the court--our own well. And I don’t
think there is any season. We go up among the mountains, when it gets
too hot.”
“Your well in the court!” said the sentimental Claude, with the look of
a poet who has just been told that his dearest friend is killed by an
accident,--“with everything percolating into it! That is terrible
indeed. But,” he said, after a pause, an ethereal sense of consolation
stealing over his fine features--“there are exceptions, they say, to
every rule; and sometimes, with fine health such as you have, bad
sanitary conditions do not seem to tell--_when there has been no
stirring-up_. I believe that is at the root of the whole question.
People can go on, on the old system, so long as there is no stirring-up;
but when once a beginning has been made, it must be complete, or it is
fatal.”
He said this with animation much greater than he had shown as yet; then
dropping into his habitual pathos: “If I come in for tea to-morrow--Lady
Markham allows me to do it, when I can, when the weather is fit for
going out--will you be so very kind as to give me half an hour, Miss
Waring, for a few particulars? I will take them down from your lips--it
is so much the most satisfactory way; and perhaps you would add to your
kindness by just thinking it over beforehand--if there is anything I
ought to know.”
“But I am going out to-morrow, Mr Ramsay.”
“Then after to-morrow,” he said; and rising with a bow full of tender
deference, went up to Lady Markham to bid her good-night. “I have been
having a most interesting conversation with Miss Waring. She has given
me so many _renseignements_,” he said. “She permits me to come after
to-morrow for further particulars. Dear Lady Markham, good-night and _à
revoir_.”
“What was Claude saying to you, Frances?” Lady Markham asked with a
little anxiety, when everybody save Markham was gone, and they were
alone.
“He asked me about Bordighera, mamma.”
“Poor dear boy! About Con, and what she had said of him? He has a
faithful heart, though people think him a little too much taken up with
himself.”
“He did not say anything about Constance. He asked about the climate and
the drains--what are drains?--and if the water was good, and what hotel
I could recommend.”
Lady Markham laughed and coloured slightly, and tapped Frances on the
cheek. “You are a little satirical----! Dear Claude! he is very anxious
about his health. But don’t you see,” she added, “that was all a covert
way of finding out about Con? He wants to go after her; but he does not
want to let everybody in the world see that he has gone after a girl who
would not have him. I have a great deal of sympathy with him, for my
part.”
Frances had no sympathy with him. She felt, on the other hand, more
sympathy for Constance than had moved her yet. To escape from such a
lover, Frances thought a girl might be justified in flying to the end of
the world. But it never entered into her mind that any like danger to
herself was to be thought of. She dismissed Claude Ramsay from her
thoughts with half resentment, half amusement, wondering that Constance
had not told her more; but feeling, as no such image had ever risen on
her horizon before, that she would not have believed Constance. However,
her sister had happily escaped, and to herself, Claude Ramsay was
nothing. Far more important was it to think of the ordeal of to-morrow.
She shivered a little even in her warm room as she anticipated it.
England seemed to be colder, greyer, more devoid of brightness in
Portland Place than in Eaton Square.