Waring was not so indifferent to the looks or feelings of his daughter
as appeared. After all, he was not entirely buried in his books. To
Frances, who had grown up by his side without particularly attracting
his attention, he had been kindly indifferent, not feeling any occasion
to concern himself about the child, who always had managed to amuse
herself, and never had made any call upon him. But Constance had come
upon him as a stranger, as an individual with a character and faculties
of her own, and it had not been without curiosity that he had watched
her to see how she would reconcile herself with the new circumstances.
Her absorption in the amusement provided for her by young Gaunt had
somewhat revolted her father, who set it down as one of the usual
exhibitions of love in idleness, which every one sees by times as he
makes his way through the world. He had not interfered, being thoroughly
convinced that interference is useless, in addition to that reluctance
to do anything which had grown upon him in his recluse life. But since
Gaunt had disappeared without a sign--save that of a little
irritability, a little unusual gravity on the part of Constance--her
father had been roused somewhat to ask what it meant. Had the young
fellow “behaved badly,” as people say? Had he danced attendance upon her
all this time only to leave her at the end? It did not seem possible,
when he looked at Constance with her easy air of mastery, and thought of
the shy, eager devotion of the young soldier and his impassioned looks.
But yet he was aware that in such cases all prognostics failed, that the
conqueror was sometimes conquered, and the intended victim remained
master of the field. Waring observed his daughter more closely than ever
on this evening. She was _distraite_, self-absorbed, a little impatient,
sometimes not noting what he said to her, sometimes answering in an
irritable tone. The replies she made to him when she did reply showed
that her mind was running on other matters. She said abruptly, in the
middle of a little account he was giving her, with the idea of amusing
her, of one of the neighbouring mountain castles, “Do you know, papa,
that everybody is going away?”
Waring felt, with a certain discomfiture, which was comic, yet annoying,
like one who has been suddenly pulled up with a good deal of “way” on
him, and stops himself with difficulty--“a branch of the old Dorias,” he
went on, having these words in his very mouth; and then, after a
precipitate pause, “Eh? Oh, everybody is----? Yes, I know. They always
do at this time of the year.”
“It will be rather miserable, don’t you think, when every one is gone?”
“My dear Constance, ‘every one’ means the Gaunts and Durants. I could
not have supposed you cared.”
“For the Gaunts and Durants--oh no,” said Constance. “But to think there
is not a soul--no one to speak to--not even the clergyman, not even
Tasie.” She laughed, but there was a certain look of alarm in her face,
as if the emergency was one which was unprecedented. “That frightens
one, in spite of one’s self. And what are we going to do?”
It was Waring now who hesitated, and did not know how to reply. “We!” he
said. “To tell the truth, I had not thought of it. Frances was always
quite willing to stay at home.”
“But I am not Frances, papa.”
“I beg your pardon, my dear; that is quite true. Of course I never
supposed so. You understand that for myself I prefer always not to be
disturbed--to go on as I am. But you, a young lady fresh from
society---- Had I supposed that you cared for the Durants, for instance,
I should have thought of some way of making up for their absence; but I
thought, on the whole, you would prefer their absence.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Constance. “I don’t care for the
individuals--they are all rather bores. Captain Gaunt,” she added,
resolutely, introducing the name with determination, “became very much
of a bore before he went away. But the thing is to have nobody--nobody!
One has to put up with bores very often; but to have nobody, actually
not a soul! The circumstances are quite unprecedented.”
There was something in her air as she said this which amused her father.
It was the air of a social philosopher brought to a pause in the face of
an unimagined dilemma, rather than of a young lady stranded upon a
desert shore where no society was to be found.
“No doubt,” he said, “you never knew anything of the kind before.”
“Never,” said Constance, with warmth. “People who are a nuisance, often
enough; but _nobody_, never before.”
“I prefer nobody,” said her father.
She raised her eyes to him, as if he were one of the problems to which,
for the first time, her attention was seriously called. “Perhaps,” she
said; “but then you are not in a natural condition, papa--no more than a
hermit in the desert, who has forsworn society altogether.”
“Allowing that I am abnormal, Constance, for the argument’s sake----”
“And so was Frances, more or less--that is, she could content herself
with the peasants and fishermen, who, of course, are just as good as
anybody else, if you make up your mind to it, and understand their ways.
But I am not abnormal,” Constance said, her colour rising a little. “I
want the society of my own kind. It seems unnatural to you, probably,
just as your way of thinking seems unnatural to me.”
“I have seen both ways,” said Waring, in his turn becoming animated;
“and so far as my opinion goes, the peasants and fishermen are a
thousand times better than what you call Society; and solitude, with
one’s own thoughts and pursuits, the best of all.”
There was a momentary pause, and then Constance said, “That may be,
papa. What is best in the abstract is not the question. In that way,
mere nothing would be the best of all, for there could be no harm in
it.”
“Nor any good.”
“That is what I mean on my side--nor any good. It might be better to be
alone--then (I suppose) you would never be bored, never feel the need of
anything, the mere sound of a voice, some one going by. That may be
your way of thinking, but it is not mine. If one has no society, one had
better die at once and save trouble. That is what I should like to do.”
A certain feminine confusion in her argument, produced by haste and the
stealing in of personal feeling, stopped Constance, who was too
clear-headed not to see when she had got involved. Her confusion had the
usual effect of touching her temper and causing a little crise of
sentiment. The tears came to her eyes. She could be heroic, and veil her
personal grievances like a social martyr so long as this was necessary
in presence of the world; but in the present case it was not necessary:
it was better, in fact, to let nature have its way.
“That will not be necessary, I hope,” said Waring, somewhat coldly. He
thought of Frances with a sigh, who never bothered him, who was
contented with everything! and carried on her own little thoughts,
whatever they might be, her little drawings, her little life, so
tranquilly, knowing nothing better. What was he to do, with the
responsibility upon his hands of this other creature? whom all the same
he could not shake off, nor even--as a gentleman, if not as a
father--allow to perceive what an embarrassment she was. “Without going
so far,” he said, “we must consult what is best to be done, since you
feel it so keenly. My ordinary habits even of _villeggiatura_ would not
please you any better than staying at home, I fear. We used to go up to
Dolceacqua, Frances and I; or to Eza; or to Porto Fino, on the opposite
coast,--at no one of which places was there a soul--as you reckon
souls--to be seen.”
“That is a great pity,” said Constance; “for even Frances, though she
may have been a Stoic born, must have wanted to see a human creature who
spoke English now and then.”
“A Stoic! It never occurred to me that she was a Stoic,” said Waring,
with astonishment, and a sudden sense of offence. The idea that his
little Frances was not perfectly happy, that she had anything to put up
with, anything to forgive, was intolerable to him; and it was a new
idea. He reflected that she had consented to go away with an ease which
surprised him at the time. Was it possible? This suggestion disturbed
him much in his certainty that his was absolutely the right way.
“If all these expedients are unsatisfactory,” he said, sharply, “perhaps
you will come to my assistance, and tell me where you would be satisfied
to go.”
“Papa,” said Constance, “I am going to make a suggestion which is a very
bold one; perhaps you will be angry--but I don’t do it to make you
angry; and, please, don’t answer me till you have thought a moment. It
is just this--Why shouldn’t we go home?”
“Go home!” The words flew from him in the shock and wonder. He grew pale
as he stared at her, too much thunderstruck to be angry, as she said.
Constance put up her hand to stop him. “I said, please don’t answer till
you have thought.”
And then they sat for a minute or more looking at each other from
opposite sides of the table--in that pause which comes when a new and
strange thought has been thrown into the midst of a turmoil which it has
power to excite or to allay. Waring went through a great many phases of
feeling while he looked at his young daughter sitting undaunted opposite
to him, not afraid of him, treating him as no one else had done for
years--as an equal, as a reasonable being, whose wishes were not to be
deferred to superstitiously, but whose reasons for what he did and said
were to be put to the test, as in the case of other men. And he knew
that he could not beat down this cool and self-possessed girl, as
fathers can usually crush the young creatures whom they have had it in
their power to reprove and correct from their cradles. Constance was an
independent intelligence. She was a gentlewoman, to whom he could not be
rude any more than to the Queen. This hushed at once the indignant
outcry on his lips. He said at last, calmly enough, with only a little
sneer piercing through his forced smile, “We must take care, like other
debaters, to define what we mean exactly by the phrases we use. Home,
for example. What do you mean by home? My home, in the ordinary sense of
the word, is here.”
“My dear father,” said Constance, with the air, somewhat exasperated by
his folly, of a philosopher with a neophyte, “I wish you would put the
right names to things. Yes, it is quite necessary to define, as you say.
How can an Englishman, with all his duties in his own country, deriving
his income from it, with houses belonging to him, and relations, and
everything that makes up life--how can he, I ask you, say that home, in
the ordinary sense of the word, is here? What is the ordinary sense of
the word?” she said, after a pause--looking at him with the indignant
frown of good sense, and that little air of repressed exasperation, as
of the wiser towards the foolisher, which made Waring, in the midst of
his own just anger and equally just discomfiture, feel a certain
amusement too. He kept his temper with the greatest pains and care.
Domenico had left the room when the discussion began, and the lamp which
hung over the table lighted impartially the girl’s animated countenance,
pressing forward in the strength of a position which she felt to be
invulnerable, and the father’s clouded and withdrawing face,--for he
had taken his eyes from her, with unconscious cowardice, when she fixed
him with that unwavering gaze.
“I will allow that you put the position very strongly--as well as a
little undutifully,” he said.
“Undutifully? Is it one’s duty to one’s father to be silly--to give up
one’s power of judging what is wrong and what is right? I am sure, papa,
you are much too candid a thinker to suggest that.”
What could he say? He was very angry; but this candid thinker took him
quite at unawares. It tickled while it defied him. And he was a very
candid thinker, as she said. Perhaps he had been treated illogically in
the great crisis of his life; for, as a matter of fact, when an argument
was set before him, when it was a good argument, even if it told against
him, he would never refuse to acknowledge it. And conscience, perhaps,
had said to him on various occasions what his daughter now said. He
could bring forward nothing against it. He could only say, I choose it
to be so; and this would bear no weight with Constance. “You are not a
bad dialectician,” he said. “Where did you learn your logic? Women are
not usually strong in that point.”
“Women are said to be just what it pleases men to represent them,” said
Constance. “Listen, papa. Frances would not have said that to you that I
have just said. But don’t you know that she would have thought it all
the same? Because it is quite evident and certain, you know. What did
you say the other day of that Italian, that Count something or other,
who has the castle there on the hill, and never comes near it from one
year’s end to another?”
“That is quite a different matter. There is no reason why he should not
spend a part of every year there.”
“And what reason is there with you? Only what ought to be an additional
reason for going--that you have----” Here Constance paused a little, and
grew pale. And her father looked up at her, growing pale too,
anticipating a crisis. Another word, and he would be able to crush this
young rebel, this meddler with things which concerned her not. But
Constance was better advised; she said, hurriedly--“relations and
dependants, and ever so many things to look to--things that cannot be
settled without you.”
“And what may these be?” He had been so fully prepared for the
introduction at this point of the mother, from whom Constance, too, had
fled--the wife, who was, as he said to himself, the cause of all that
was inharmonious in his own life--that the withdrawal of her name left
him breathless, with the force of an impulse which was not needed. “What
are the things that cannot be settled without me?”
“Well--for one thing, papa, your daughter’s marriage,” said Constance,
still looking at him steadily, but with a sudden glow of colour covering
her face.
“My daughter’s marriage?” he repeated, vaguely, once more taken by
surprise. “What! has Frances already, in the course of a few weeks----?”
“It is very probable,” said Constance, calmly. “But I was not thinking
of Frances. Perhaps you forget that I am your daughter too, and that
your sanction is needed for me as well as for her.”
Here Waring leant towards her over the table. “Is this how it has
ended?” he said. “Have you really so little perception of what is
possible for a girl of your breeding, as to think that a life in India
with young Gaunt----?”
Constance grew crimson from her hair to the edge of her white dress.
“Captain Gaunt?” she said, for the first time avoiding her father’s eye.
Then she burst into a laugh, which she felt was weak and half hysterical
in its self-consciousness. “Oh no,” she said; “that was only
amusement--that was nothing. I hope, indeed, I have a little
more--perception, as you say. What I meant was----” Her eyes took a
softened look, almost of entreaty, as if she wanted him to help her out.
“I did not know you had any second string to your bow,” he said. Now was
his time to avenge himself, and he took advantage of it.
“Papa,” said Constance, drawing herself up majestically, “I have no
second string to my bow. I have made a mistake. It is a thing which may
happen to any one. But when one does so, and sees it, the thing to do is
to acknowledge and remedy it, I think. Some people, I am aware, are not
of the same opinion. But I, for one, am not going to keep it up.”
“You refer to--a mistake which has not been acknowledged?”
“Papa, don’t let us quarrel, you and me. I am very lonely--oh,
dreadfully lonely! I want you to stand by me. What I refer to is my
affair, not any one’s else. I find out now that Claude--of course I told
you his name--Claude--would suit me very well--better than any one else.
There are drawbacks, perhaps; but I understand him, and he understands
me. That is the great thing, isn’t it?”
“It is a great thing--if it lasts.”
“Oh, it would last. I know him as well as I know myself.”
“I see,” said Waring, slowly. “You have made up your mind to return to
England, and accomplish the destiny laid out for you. A very wise
resolution, no doubt. It is only a pity that you did not think better of
it at first, instead of turning my life upside down and causing
everybody so much trouble. Never mind. It is to be hoped that your
resolution will hold now; and there need be no more trouble in that
case about finding a place in which to pass the summer. _You_ are going,
I presume--home?”
This time the tears came very visibly to Constance’s eyes. There was
impatience and vexation in them, as well as feeling. “Where is home?”
she said. “I will have to ask you. The home I have been used to is my
sister’s now. Oh, it is hard, I see, very hard, when you have made a
mistake once, to mend it! The only home that I know of is an old house
where the master has not been for a long time--which is all overgrown
with trees, and tumbling into ruins for anything I know. But I suppose,
unless you forbid me, that I have a right to go there--and perhaps aunt
Caroline----”
“Of what are you speaking?” he said, making an effort to keep his voice
steady.
“I am speaking of Hilborough, papa.”
At this he sprang up from his chair, as if touched by some intolerable
recollection; then composing himself, sat down again, putting force upon
himself, restraining the sudden impulse of excitement. After a time, he
said, “Hilborough. I had almost forgotten the name.”
“Yes,--so I thought. You forget that you have a home, which is cooler
and quieter, as quiet as any of your villages here--where you could be
as solitary as you liked, or see people if you liked--where you are the
natural master. Oh, I thought you must have forgotten it! In summer it
is delightful. You are in the middle of a wood, and yet you are in a
nice English house. Oh, an _English_ house is very different from those
Palazzos. Papa, there is your _villeggiatura_, as you call it, just what
you want, far, far better than Mrs Durant’s cheap little place, that she
asked me to tell you of, or Mrs Gaunt’s _pension_ in Switzerland, or
Homburg. They think you are poor; but you know quite well you are not
poor. Take me to Hilborough, papa; oh, take me home! It is there I want
to go.”
“Hilborough,” he repeated to himself--“Hilborough. I never thought of
that. I suppose she _has_ a right to it. Poor old place! Yes, I suppose,
if the girl chooses to call it home----”
He rose up quite slowly this time, and went, as was his usual custom,
towards the door which led through the other rooms to the loggia, but
without paying any attention to the movements of Constance, which he
generally followed instead of directing. She rose too, and went to him,
and stole her hand through his arm. The awning had been put aside, and
the soft night-air blew in their faces as they stepped out upon that
terrace in which so much of their lives was spent. The sea shone beyond
the roofs of the houses on the Marina, and swept outwards in a pale
clearness towards the sky, which was soft in summer blue, with the stars
sprinkled faintly over the vast vault, too much light still remaining in
heaven and earth to show them at their best. Constance walked with her
father, close to his side, holding his arm, almost as tall as he was,
and keeping step and pace with him. She said nothing more, but stood by
him as he walked to the ledge of the loggia and looked out towards the
west, where there was still a lingering touch of gold. He was not at all
in the habit of expressing admiration of the landscape, but to-night, as
if he were making a remark called forth by the previous argument, “It is
all very lovely,” he said.
“Yes; but not more lovely than home,” said the girl. “I have been at
Hilborough in a summer night, and everything was so sweet--the stars all
looking through the trees as if they were watching the house--and the
scent of the flowers. Don’t you remember the white rose at
Hilborough--what they call Mother’s tree?”
He started a little, and a thrill ran through him. She could feel it in
his arm--a thrill of recollection, of things beyond the warfare and
turmoil of his life, on the other, the boyish side--recollections of
quiet and of peace.
“I think I will go to my own room a little, Constance, and smoke my
cigarette there. You have brought a great many things to my mind.”
She gave his arm a close pressure before she let it go. “Oh, take me to
Hilborough! Let us go to our own home, papa.”
“I will think of it,” he replied.