The crisis, however, was averted--“mercifully,” as Lady Markham said. Dr
Howard from Southampton--whom she had thought of only by chance, on the
spur of the moment, as a way of getting rid of Markham--produced some
new lights; and in reality was so successful with the invalid, that he
rallied, and it became possible to remove him by slow stages to his own
house, to die there, which he did in due course, but some time after,
and decorously, in the right way and place. Frances felt herself like a
spectator at a play during all this strange interval, looking on at the
third act of a tragedy, which somehow had got involved in a drawing-room
comedy, with scenes alternating, and throwing a kind of wretched
reflection of their poor humour upon the tableaux of the darker drama.
She thought that she never should forget the countenance of Nelly
Winterbourn as she took her seat beside her husband in the invalid
carriage in which he was conveyed away, and turned to wave a farewell to
the little group which had assembled to watch the departure. Her face
was quivering with a sort of despairing impatience, wretchedness,
self-pity, the miserable anticipations of a living creature tied to one
who was dead--nerves and temper and every part of her being wrought to a
feverish excitement, made half delirious by the prospect, the
possibility, of escape. A wretched sort of spasmodic smile was upon her
lips as she waved her hand to the spectators--those spectators all on
the watch to read her countenance, who, she knew, were as well aware of
the position as herself. Frances was learning the lesson thus set
practically before her with applications of her own. She knew now to a
great extent what it all meant, and why Markham disappeared as soon as
the carriage drove away; while her mother, with an aspect of intense
relief, returned to her guests. “I feel as if I could breathe again,”
Lady Markham said. “Not that I should have grudged anything I could do
for poor dear Nelly; but there is something so terrible in a death in
one’s house.”
“I quite enter into your feelings, dear--oh, quite!” said Mrs Montague;
“most painful, and most embarrassing besides.”
“Oh, as for that!” said Lady Markham. “It would have been indeed a great
annoyance and vexation to break up our pleasant party, and put out all
your plans. But one has to submit in such cases. However, I am most
thankful it has not come to that. Poor Mr Winterbourn may last yet--for
months, Dr Howard says.”
“Dear me; do you think that is to be desired?” said the other, “for poor
Nelly’s sake.”
“Poor Nelly!” said the young ladies. “Only fancy months! What a terrible
fate!”
“And yet it was supposed to be a great match for her, a penniless girl!”
“It was a great match,” said Lady Markham composedly. “And dear Nelly
has always behaved so well. She is an example to many women that have
much less to put up with than she has. Frances, will you see about the
lawn-tennis? I am sure you want to shake off the impression, you poor
girls, who have been _so_ good.”
“Oh, dear Lady Markham, you don’t suppose we could have gone on laughing
and making a noise while there was such anxiety in the house. But we
shall like a game, now that there is no impropriety----”
“And we are all so glad,” said the mother, “that there was no occasion
for turning out; for our visits are so dovetailed, I don’t know where we
should have gone--and our house in the hands of the workmen. I, for one,
am very thankful that poor Mr Winterbourn has a little longer to live.”
Thus, after this singular episode, the ordinary life of the household
was resumed; and though the name of poor Nelly recurred at intervals for
a day or two, there were many things that were of more importance--a
great garden-party, for instance, for which, fortunately, Lady Markham
had not cancelled the invitations; a yachting expedition, and various
other pleasant things. The comments of the company were diverted to
Claude, who, finding Frances more easily convinced than the others that
draughts were to be carefully avoided, sought her out on most occasions,
notwithstanding her plain-speaking about his fancifulness.
“Perhaps you were right,” he said, “that I think too much about my
health. I shouldn’t wonder if you were quite right. But I have always
been warned that I was very delicate; and perhaps that makes one rather
a bore to one’s friends.”
“Oh, I hope you will forgive me, Mr Ramsay! I never meant----”
“There is poor Winterbourn, you see,” said Claude, accepting the broken
apology with a benevolent nod of his head and the mild pathos of a
smile. “He was one of your rash people, never paying any attention to
what was the matter with him. He was quite a well-preserved sort of man
when he married Nelly St John; and now you see what a wreck! By Jove,
though, I shouldn’t like my wife, if I married, to treat me like Nelly.
But I promise you there should be no Markham in my case.”
“I don’t know what Markham has to do with it,” said Frances with sudden
spirit.
“Oh, you don’t know! Well,” he continued, looking at her, “perhaps you
don’t know; and so much the better. Never mind about Markham. I should
expect my wife to be with me when I am ill; not to leave me to servants,
to give me my--everything I had to take; and to cheer me up, you know.
Do you think there is anything unreasonable in that?”
“Oh no, indeed. Of course, if--if--she was fond of you--which of course
she would be, or you would not want to marry her.”
“Yes,” said Claude. “Go on, please; I like to hear you talk.”
“I mean,” said Frances, stumbling a little, feeling a significance in
this encouragement which disturbed her, “that, _of course_--there would
be no question of reasonableness. She would just do it by nature. One
never asks if it is reasonable or not.”
“Ah, you mean you wouldn’t. But other girls are different. There is Con,
for instance.”
“Mr Ramsay, I don’t think you ought to speak to me so about my sister.
Constance, if she were in such a position, would do--what was right.”
“For that matter, I suppose Nelly Winterbourn does what is right--at
least, every one says she behaves so well. If that is what you mean by
right, I shouldn’t relish it at all in my wife.”
Frances said nothing for a minute, and then she asked, “Are you going to
be married, Mr Ramsay?” in a tone which was half indignant, half amused.
At this he started a little, and gave her an inquiring look. “That is a
question that wants thinking of,” he said. “Yes, I suppose I am, if I
can find any one as nice as that. You are always giving me
_renseignements_, Miss Waring. If I can find some one who will, as you
say, never ask whether it is reasonable----”
“Then,” said Frances, recovering something of the sprightliness which
had distinguished her in old days, “you don’t want to marry any one in
particular, but just a wife?”
“What else could I marry?” he asked in a peevish tone. Then, with a
change of his voice,--“I don’t want to conceal anything from you; and
there is no doubt you must have heard: I was engaged to your sister Con;
but she ran away from me,” he added with pathos. “You must have heard
that.”
“I do not wonder that you were very fond of her,” cried Frances. “I see
no one so delightful as--she would be if she were here.”
She had meant to make a simple statement, and say, “No one so delightful
as she;” but paused, remembering that the circumstances had not been to
Constance’s advantage, and that here she would have been in her proper
sphere.
As for Claude, he was somewhat embarrassed. He said, “Fond is perhaps
not exactly the word. I thought she would have suited me--better than
any one I knew.”
“If that was all,” said Frances, “you would not mind very much; and I do
not wonder that she came away, for it would be rather dreadful to be
married because a gentleman thought one suited him.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that would be so--in every case,” cried Claude, with
sudden earnestness.
“In any case, I think you should never tell the girl’s sister, Mr
Ramsay; it is not a very nice thing to do.”
“Miss Waring--Frances!--I was not thinking of you as any girl’s sister;
I was thinking of you----”
“I hope not at all; for it would be a great pity to waste any more
thoughts on our family,” said Frances. “I have sometimes been a little
vexed that Constance came, for it changed all my life, and took me away
from every one I knew. But I am glad you have told me this, for now I
understand it quite.” She did not rise from where she was seated and
leave him, as he almost hoped she would, making a little quarrel of it,
but sat still, with a composure which Claude felt was much less
complimentary. “Now that I know all about it,” she said, after a little
interval, with a laugh, “I think what you want would be very
unreasonable--and what no woman could do.”
“You said the very reverse five minutes ago,” he said sulkily.
“Yes--but I didn’t know what the--what the wages were,” she said with
another laugh. “It is you who are giving me _renseignements_ now.”
Claude took his complaint next morning to Lady Markham’s room. “She
actually chaffed me--chaffed me, I assure you; though she looks as if
butter would not melt in her mouth.”
“That is a little vulgar, Claude. If you talk like that to a girl, what
can you expect? Some, indeed, may be rather grateful to you, as showing
how little you look for; but you know I have always told you what you
ought to try to do is to inspire a _grande passion_.”
“That is what I should like above all things to do,” said the young man;
“but----”
“But--it would cost too much trouble?”
“Perhaps; and I am not an impassioned sort of man. Lady Markham, was it
really from me that Constance ran away?”
“I have told you before, Claude, that was not how it should be spoken
of. She did not run away. She took into her head a romantic idea of
making acquaintance with her father, in which Markham encouraged her. Or
perhaps it was Markham that put it into her head. It is possible--I
can’t tell you--that Markham had already something else in his own head,
and that he had begun to think it would be a good thing to try if other
changes could be made.”
“What could Markham have in his head? and what changes----”
“Oh,” she cried, “how can you ask me? I know how you have all been
talking. You speculate, just as I do.”
“I don’t think so, Lady Markham,” said Claude. “I am sure Markham would
find all that sort of thing a great bore. Of course I know what you
mean. But I don’t think so. I have always told them my opinion. Whatever
may happen, Markham will stick to you.”
“Poor Markham!” she said, with a quick revulsion of feeling. “After all,
it is a little hard, is it not, that he should have nothing brighter
than that to look to in his life?”
“Than you?” said Claude. “If you ask my opinion, I don’t think so. I
think he’s a lucky fellow. An old mother, I don’t deny, might be a
bore. An old lady, half blind, never hearing what you say, sitting by
the fire--like the mothers in books, or the Mrs Nickleby kind. But you
are as young and handsome and bright as any of them--keeping everything
right for him, asking nothing. Upon my word, I think he is very well
off. I wish I were in his place.”
Lady Markham was pleased. Affectionate flattery of this kind is always
sweet to a woman. She laughed, and said he was a gay deceiver. “But, my
dear boy, you will make me think a great deal more of myself than I have
any right to think.”
“You ought to think more of yourself. And so you really do not think
that Con----? In many ways, dear Lady Markham, I feel that
Con--understood me better than any one else--except you.”
“I think you are right, Claude,” she said, with a grave face.
“I am beginning to feel quite sure I am right. When she writes, does she
never say anything about me?”
“Of course, she always--asks for you.”
“Is that all? Asking does not mean much.”
“What more could she say? Of course she knows that she has lost her
place in your affection by her own rashness.”
“Not lost, Lady Markham. It is not so easy to do that.”
“It is true. Perhaps I should have said, fears that she has
forfeited--your respect.”
“After all, she has done nothing wrong,” he said.
“Nothing wrong; but rash, headstrong, foolish. Oh yes, she has been all
that. It is in the Waring blood!”
“I think you are a little hard upon her, Lady Markham. By the way, don’t
you think yourself, that with two daughters to marry, and--and all that:
it would be a good thing if Mr Waring--for you must have got over all
your little tiffs long ago--don’t you think that it would be a good
thing if he could be persuaded to--come back?”
She had watched him with eyes that gleamed from below her dropped
eyelids. She said now, as she had done to Sir Thomas, “I should put no
difficulties in the way, you may be sure.”
“It would be more respectable,” said Claude. “If getting old is good for
anything, you know, it should make up quarrels; don’t you think so? It
would be a great deal better in every way. And then Markham----”
“Markham,” she said, “you think, would then be free?”
“Well--then it wouldn’t matter particularly about Markham, what he did,”
the young man said.
Lady Markham had borne a great many such assaults in her life as if she
felt nothing: but as a matter of fact she did feel them deeply; and when
a probable new combination was thus calmly set before her, her usual
composure was put to a severe test. She smiled upon Claude, indeed, as
long as he remained with her, and allowed him no glimpse of her real
feelings; but when he was gone, felt for a moment her heart fail her.
She had, even in the misfortunes which had crossed her life, secured
always a great share of her own way. Many people do this even when they
suffer most. Whether they get it cheerfully or painfully, they yet get
it, which is always something. Waring, when, in his fastidious
impatience and irritation, because he did not get his, he had flung
forth into the unknown, and abandoned her and her life altogether, did
still, though at the cost of pain and scandal, help his wife to this
triumph, that she departed from none of her requirements, and remained
mistress of the battlefield. She had her own way, though he would not
yield to it. But as a woman grows older, and becomes less capable of
that pertinacity which is the best means of securing her own way, and
when the conflicting wills against hers are many instead of being only
one, the state of the matter changes. Constance had turned against her,
when she was on the eve of an arrangement which would have been so very
much for Con’s good. And Frances, though so submissive in some points,
would not be so, she felt instinctively, on others. And Markham--that
was the most fundamental shock of all--Markham might possibly in the
future have prospects and hopes independent altogether of his mother’s,
in antagonism with all her arrangements. This, which she had not
anticipated, went to her heart. And when she thought of what had been
suggested to her with so much composure--the alteration of her whole
life, the substitution of her husband, from whom she had been so long
parted, who did not think as she did nor live as she did for her son,
who, with all his faults, which she knew so well, was yet in sympathy
with her in all she thought and wished and knew--this suggestion made
her sick and faint. It had come, though not with any force, even from
Markham himself. It had come from Sir Thomas, who was one of the oldest
of her friends; and now Claude set it before her in all the forcible
simplicity of commonplace: it would be more respectable! She laughed
almost violently when he left her, but it was a laugh which was not far
from tears.
“Claude has been complaining of you,” she said to Frances, recovering
herself with an instantaneous effort when her daughter came into the
room; “but I don’t object, my dear. Unless you had found that you could
like him yourself, which would have been the best thing, perhaps--you
were quite right in what you said. So far as Constance is concerned, it
is all that I could wish.”
“Mamma,” said Frances, “you don’t want Constance--you would not let
her--accept _that_?”
“Accept what? My love, you must not be so emphatic. Accept a life full
of luxury, splendour even, if she likes--and every care forestalled. My
dear little girl, you don’t know anything about the world.”
Frances pondered for some time before she replied. “Mamma,” she said
again, “if such a case arose--you said that the best thing for me would
have been to have liked--Mr Ramsay. There is no question of that. But if
such a case arose----”
“Yes, my dear”--Lady Markham took her daughter’s hand in her own, and
looked at her with a smile of pleasure--“I hope it will some day. And
what then?”
“Would you--think the same about me? Would you consider the life full of
luxury, as you said--would you desire for me the same thing as for
Constance?”
Lady Markham held the girl’s hand clasped in both of hers; the soft
caressing atmosphere about her enveloped Frances. “My dear,” she said,
“this is a very serious question. You are not asking me for curiosity
alone?”
“It is a very serious question,” Frances said.
And the mother and daughter looked at each other closely, with more
meaning, perhaps, than had as yet been in the eyes of either,
notwithstanding all the excitement of interest in their first meeting.
It was some time before another word was said. Frances saw in her mother
a woman full of determination, very clear as to what she wanted, very
unlikely to be turned from it by softer impulses, although outside she
was so tender and soft; and Lady Markham saw in Frances a girl who was
entirely submissive, yet immovable, whose dove’s eyes had a steady soft
gaze, against which the kindred light of her own had no power. It was a
mutual revelation. There was no conflict, nor appearance of conflict,
between these two, so like each other--two gentle and soft-voiced women,
both full of natural courtesy and disinclination to wound or offend;
both seeing everything around them very clearly from her own, perhaps
limited, point of view; and both feeling that between them nothing but
the absolute truth would do.
“You trouble me, Frances,” said Lady Markham at length. “When such a
case arises, it will be time enough. In the abstract, I should of course
feel for one as I feel for the other. Nay, stop a little. I should wish
to provide for you, as for Constance, a life of assured comfort,--well,
if you drive me to it--of wealth and all that wealth brings. Assuredly
that is what I should wish.” She gave Frances’ hand a pressure which was
almost painful, and then dropped it. “I hope you have no fancy for
poverty theoretically, like your patron saint,” she added lightly,
trying to escape from the gravity of the question by a laugh.
“Mother,” said Frances, in a voice which was tremulous and yet steady,
“I want to tell you--I think neither of poverty nor of money. I am more
used, perhaps, to the one than the other. I will do what you wish in
everything--everything else; but----”
“Not in the one thing which would probably be the only thing I asked of
you,” said Lady Markham, with a smile. She put her hands on Frances’
shoulders and gave her a kiss upon her cheek. “My dear child, you
probably think this is quite original,” she said; “but I assure you it
is what almost every daughter one time or other says to her parents:
Anything _else_--anything, but---- Happily there is no question between
you and me. Let us wait till the occasion arises. It is always time
enough to fall out.”