The dinner, it need scarcely be said, was a strange one. Except in
Constance, who was perfectly cool, and Claude, who was more concerned
about a possible draught from a window than anything else, there was
much agitation in the rest of the party. Lady Markham was nervously
cordial, anxious to talk and to make everything “go”--which, indeed, she
would have done far more effectually had she been able to retain her
usual cheerful and benign composure. But there are some things which are
scarcely possible even to the most accomplished woman of the world. How
to place the guests, even, had been a trouble to her, almost too great
to be faced. To place her husband by her side was more than she could
bear, and where else could it be appropriate to place him, unless
opposite to her, where the master of the house should sit? The
difficulty was solved loosely by placing Constance there, and her father
beside her. He sat between his daughters; while Ramsay and Sir Thomas
were on either side of his wife. Under such circumstances, it was
impossible that the conversation could be other than formal, with
outbursts of somewhat conventional vivacity from Sir Thomas, supported
by anxious responses from Lady Markham. Frances took refuge in saying
nothing at all. And Waring sat like a ghost, with a smile on his face,
in which there was a sort of pathetic humour, dashed with something that
was half derision. To be sitting there at all was wonderful indeed, and
to be listening to the smalltalk of a London dinner-table, with all its
little discussions, its talk of plays and pictures and people, its
scraps of political life behind the scenes, its esoteric revelations on
all subjects, was more wonderful still. He had half forgotten it; and to
come thus at a single step into the midst of it all, and hear this
babble floating on the air which was charged with so many tragic
elements, was more wonderful still. To think that they should all be
looking at each other across the flowers and the crystal, and knowing
what questions were to be solved between them, yet talking and expecting
others to talk of the new tenor and the last scandal! It seemed to the
stranger out of the wilds, who had been banished from society so long,
that it was a thing incredible, when he was thus thrown into it again.
There were allusions to many things which he did not understand. There
was something, for instance, about Nelly Winterbourn which called forth
a startling response from Lady Markham. “You must not,” she said, “say
anything about poor Nelly in this house. From my heart, I am sorry and
grieved for her; but in the circumstances, what can any one do? The
least said, the better, especially here.” The pause after this was
minute but marked, and Waring asked Constance, “Who is Nelly
Winterbourn?”
“She is a young widow, papa. It was thought her husband had left her a
large fortune; but he has left it to her on the condition that she
should not marry again.”
“Is that why she is not to be spoken of in this house?” said Waring,
growing red. This explanation had been asked and given in an undertone.
He thought it referred to the circumstances in which his own marriage
had taken place--Lady Markham being a young widow with a large jointure;
and that this was the reason why the other was not to be mentioned; and
it gave him a hot sense of offence, restrained by the politeness which
is exercised in society, but not always when the offenders are one’s
wife and children. It turned the tide of softened thoughts back upon his
heart, and increased to fierceness the derision with which he listened
to all the trifles that floated uppermost. When the ladies left the
room, he did not meet the questioning, almost timid, look that Lady
Markham threw upon him. He saw it, indeed, but he would not respond to
it. That allusion had spoiled all the rest.
In the little interval after dinner, Claude Ramsay did his best to make
himself agreeable. “I am very glad to see you back, sir,” he said. “I
told Lady Markham it was the right thing. When a girl has a father,
it’s always odd that he shouldn’t appear.”
“Oh, you told Lady Markham that it was--the right thing?”
“A coincidence, wasn’t it? when you were on your way,” said Claude,
perceiving the mistake he had made. “You know, sir,” he added with a
little hesitation, “that it has all been made up for a long time between
Constance and me.”
“Yes? What has all been made up? I understand that my daughter came out
to me to----”
“Oh!” said Claude, interrupting hurriedly, “it is _that_ that has all
been made up. Constance has been very nice about it,” he continued. “She
has been making a study of the Riviera, and collecting all sorts of
_renseignements_; for in most cases, it is necessary for me to winter
abroad.”
“That was what she was doing then--her object, I suppose?” said Waring
with a grim smile.
“Besides the pleasure of visiting you, sir,” said Claude, with what he
felt to be great tact. “She seems to have done a great deal of
exploring, and she tells me she has found just the right site for the
villa--and all the _renseignements_,” he added. “To have been on the
spot, and studied the aspect, and how the winds blow, is such a great
thing; and to be near your place too,” he said politely, by an
after-thought.
“Which I hope is to be your place no more, Waring,” said Sir Thomas.
“Your own place is very empty, and craving for you all the time.”
“It is too fine a question to say what is my own place,” he said, with
that pale indignant smile. “Things are seldom made any clearer by an
absence of a dozen years.”
“A great deal clearer--the mists blow away, and the hot fumes. Come,
Waring, say you are glad you have come home.”
“I suppose,” said Claude, “you find it really too hot for summer on that
coast. What would you say was the end of the season? May? Just when
London begins to be possible, and most people have come to town.”
“Is not that one of the _renseignements_ Constance has given you?”
Waring asked with a short laugh; but he made no reply to the other
questions. And then there was a little of the inevitable politics before
the gentlemen went up-stairs. Lady Markham had been threatened with what
in France is called an _attaque des nerfs_, when she reached the shelter
of the drawing-room. She was a little hysterical, hardly able to get the
better of the sobbing which assailed her. Constance stood apart, and
looked on with a little surprise. “You know, mamma,” she said
reflectively, “an effort is the only thing. With an effort, you can stop
it.”
Frances was differently affected by this emotion. She, who had never
learned to be familiar, stole behind her mother’s chair and made her
breast a pillow for Lady Markham’s head,--a breast in which the heart
was beating now high, now low, with excitement and despondency. She did
not say anything; but there is sometimes comfort in a touch. It helped
Lady Markham to subdue the unwonted spasm. She held close for a moment
the arms which were over her shoulders, and she replied to Constance,
“Yes, that is true. I am ashamed of myself. I ought to know better--at
my age.”
“It has gone off on the whole very well,” Constance said. And then she
retired to a sofa and took up a book.
Lady Markham held Frances’ hand in hers for a moment or two longer, then
drew her towards her and kissed her, still without a word. They had
approached nearer to each other in that silent encounter than in all
that had passed before. Lady Markham’s heart was full of many
commotions; the past was rising up around her with all its agitating
recollections. She looked back, and saw, oh, so clearly in that pale
light which can never alter, the scenes that ought never to have been,
the words that ought never to have been said, the faults, the
mistakes--those things which were fixed there for ever, not to be
forgotten. Could they ever be forgotten? Could any postscript be put to
the finished story? Or was this strange meeting--unsought, scarcely
desired on either side, into which the separated Two, who ought to have
been One, seemed to have been driven without any will of their own--was
it to be mere useless additional pain, and no more?
The ladies were all very peacefully employed when the gentlemen came
up-stairs. Lady Markham turned round as usual from her writing-table to
receive them with a smile. Constance laid down her book. Frances, from
her accustomed dim corner, lifted up her eyes to watch them as they came
in. They stood in the middle of the room for a minute, and talked to
each other according to the embarrassed usage of Englishmen, and then
they distributed themselves. Sir Thomas fell to Frances’ share. He
turned to her eagerly, and took her hand and pressed it warmly. “We have
done it,” he said, in an excited whisper. “So far, all is victorious;
but still there is a great deal more to do.”
“I think it is Constance that has done it,” Frances said.
“She has worked for us--without meaning it--no doubt. But I am not going
to give up the credit to Constance; and there is still a great deal to
do. You must not lay down your arms, my dear. You and I, we have the
ball at our feet: but there is a great deal still to do.”
Frances made no reply. The corner which she had chosen for herself was
almost concealed behind a screen which parted the room in two. The other
group made a picture far enough withdrawn to gain perspective. Waring
stood near his wife, who from time to time gave him a look, half
watchful, half wistful, and sometimes made a remark, to which he gave a
brief reply. His attitude and hers told a story; but it was a confused
and uncertain one, of which the end was all darkness. They were
together, but fortuitously, without any will of their own; and between
them was a gulf fixed. Which would cross it, or was it possible that it
ever could be crossed at all? The room was very silent, for the
conversation was not lively between Constance and Claude on the sofa;
and Sir Thomas was silent, watching too. All was so quiet, indeed, that
every sound was audible without; but there was no expectation of any
interruption, nobody looked for anything, there was a perfect
indifference to outside sounds. So much so, that for a moment the
ladies were scarcely startled by the familiar noise, so constantly
heard, of Markham’s hansom drawing up at the door. It could not be
Markham; he was out of the way, disposed of till next morning. But Lady
Markham, with that presentiment which springs up most strongly when
every avenue by which harm can come seems stopped, started, then rose to
her feet with alarm. “It can’t surely be---- Oh, what has brought him
here!” she cried, and looked at Claude, to bid him, with her eyes, rush
to meet him, stop him, keep him from coming in. But Claude did not
understand her eyes.
As for Waring, seeing that something had gone wrong in the programme,
but not guessing what it was, he accepted her movement as a dismissal,
and quietly joined his daughter and his friend behind the screen. The
two men got behind it altogether, showing only where their heads passed
its line; but the light was not bright in that corner, and the new-comer
was full of his own affairs. For it was Markham, who came in rapidly,
stopped by no wise agent, or suggestion of expediency. He came into the
room dressed in light morning-clothes, greenish, grayish, yellowish,
like the colour of his sandy hair and complexion. He came in with his
face puckered up and twitching, as it did when he was excited. His
mother, Constance, Claude, sunk in the corner of the sofa, were all he
saw; and he took no notice of Claude. He crossed that little opening
amid the fashionably crowded furniture, and went and placed himself in
front of the fireplace, which was full at this season of flowers, not of
fire. From that point of vantage he greeted them with his usual laugh,
but broken and embarrassed. “Well, mother--well, Con; you thought you
were clear of me for to-night.”
“I did not expect you, Markham. Is anything--has anything----?
“Gone wrong?” he said. “No--I don’t know that anything has gone wrong.
That depends on how you look at it. I’ve been in the country all day.”
“Yes, Markham; so I know.”
“But not where I was going,” he said. His laugh broke out again, quite
irrelevant and inappropriate. “I’ve seen Nelly,” he said.
“Markham!” his mother cried, with a tone of wonder, disapproval,
indignation, such as had never been heard in her voice before, through
all that had been said and understood concerning Markham and Nelly
Winterbourn. She had sunk into her chair, but now rose again in distress
and anxiety. “Oh,” she cried, “how could you? how could you? I thought
you had some true feeling. O Markham, how unworthy of you _now_ to vex
and compromise that poor girl!”
He made no answer for a moment, but moistened his lips, with a sound
that seemed like a ghost of the habitual chuckle. “Yes,” he said, “I
know you made it all up that the chapter was closed _now_; but I never
said so, mother. Nelly’s where she was before, when we hadn’t the
courage to do anything. Only worse: shamed and put in bondage by that
miserable beggar’s will. And you all took it for granted that there was
an end between her and me. I was waiting to marry her when she was free
and rich, you all thought; but I wasn’t bound, to be sure, nor the sort
of man to think of it twice when I knew she would be poor.”
“Markham! no one ever said, nobody thought----”
“Oh, I know very well what people thought--and said too, for that
matter,” said Markham. “I hope a fellow like me knows Society well
enough for that. A pair of old stagers like Nelly and me, of course we
knew what everybody said. Well, mammy, you’re mistaken this time, that’s
all. There’s nothing to be taken for granted in this world. Nelly’s
game, and so am I. As soon as it’s what you call decent, and the crape
business done with--for she has always done her duty by him, the
wretched fellow, as everybody knows----”
“Markham!” his mother cried, almost with a shriek--“why, it is ruin,
destruction. I must speak to Nelly--ruin both to her and you.”
He laughed. “Or else the t’other thing--salvation, you know. Anyhow,
Nelly’s game for it, and so am I.”
There suddenly glided into the light at this moment a little figure,
white, rapid, noiseless, and caught Markham’s arm in both hers. “O
Markham! O Markham!” cried Frances, “I am so glad! I never believed it;
I always knew it. I am so glad!” and began to cry, clinging to his arm.
Markham’s puckered countenance twitched and puckered more and more. His
chuckle sounded over her half like a sob. “Look here,” he said. “Here’s
the little one approves. She’s the one to judge, the sort of still small
voice--eh, mother? Come; I’ve got far better than I deserve: I’ve got
little Fan on my side.”
Lady Markham wrung her hands with an impatience which partly arose from
her own better instincts. The words which she wanted would not come to
her lips. “The child, what can she know!” she cried, and could say no
more.
“Stand by me, little Fan,” said Markham, holding his sister close to
him. “Mother, it’s not a small thing that could part you and me; that is
what I feel, nothing else. For the rest, we’ll take the Priory, Nelly
and I, and be very jolly upon nothing. Mother, you didn’t think in your
heart that YOUR son was a base little beggar, no better than
Winterbourn?”
Lady Markham made no reply. She sank down in her chair and covered her
face with her hands. In the climax of so many emotions, she was
overwhelmed. She could not stand up against Markham: in her husband’s
presence, with everything hanging in the balance, she could say nothing.
The worldly wisdom she had learned melted away from her. Her heart was
stirred to its depths, and the conventional bonds restrained it no more.
A kind of sweet bitterness--a sense of desertion, yet hope; of secret
approval, yet opposition--disabled her altogether. One or two convulsive
sobs shook her frame. She was able to say nothing, nothing, and was
silent, covering her face with her hands.
Waring had seen Markham come in with angry displeasure. He had listened
with that keen curiosity of antagonism which is almost as warm as the
interest of love, to hear what he had to say. Sir Thomas, standing by
his side, threw in a word or two to explain, seeing an opportunity in
this new development of affairs. But nothing was really altered until
Frances rose. Her father watched her with a poignant anxiety, wonder,
excitement. When she threw herself upon her brother’s arm, and, all
alone in her youth, gave him her approval, the effect upon the mind of
her father was very strange. He frowned and turned away, then came back
and looked again. His daughter, his little white spotless child, thrown
upon the shoulder of the young man whom he had believed he hated, his
wife’s son, who had been always in his way. It was intolerable. He must
spring forward, he thought, and pluck her away. But Markham’s stifled
cry of emotion and happiness somehow arrested Waring. He looked again,
and there was something tender, pathetic, in the group. He began to
perceive dimly how it was. Markham was making a resolution which, for a
man of his kind, was heroic; and the little sister, the child, his own
child, of his training, not of the world, had gone in her innocence and
consecrated it with her approval. The approval of little Frances! And
Markham had the heart to feel that in that approval there was something
beyond and above everything else that could be said to him. Waring, too,
like his wife, was in a condition of mind which offered no defence
against the first touch of nature which was strong enough to reach him.
He was open not to everyday reasoning, but to the sudden prick of a keen
unhabitual feeling. A sudden impulse came upon him in this softened,
excited mood. Had he paused to think, he would have turned his back upon
that scene and hurried away, to be out of the contagion. But,
fortunately, he did not pause to think. He went forward quickly, laying
his hand upon the back of the chair in which Lady Markham sat,
struggling for calm--and confronted his old antagonist, his boy-enemy of
former times, who recognised him suddenly, with a gasp of astonishment.
“Markham,” he said, “if I understand rightly, you are acting like a true
and honourable man. Perhaps I have not done you justice, hitherto. Your
mother does not seem able to say anything. I believe in my little girl’s
instinct. If it will do you any good, you have my approval too.”
Markham’s slackened arm dropped to his side, though Frances
embraced it still. His very jaw dropped in the amazement,
almost consternation, of this sudden appearance. “Sir,” he stammered,
“your--your--support--your--friendship would be all I could----” And
here his voice failed him, and he said no more.
Then Waring went a step further by an unaccountable impulse, which
afterwards he could not understand. He held out one hand, still holding
with the other the back of Lady Markham’s chair. “I know what the loss
will be to your mother,” he said; “but perhaps--perhaps, if she pleases:
that may be made up too.”
She removed her hands suddenly and looked up at him. There was not a
particle of colour in her cheek. The hurrying of her heart parched her
open lips. The two men clasped hands over her, and she saw them through
a mist, for a moment side by side.
At this moment of extreme agitation and excitement, Lady Markham’s
butler suddenly opened the drawing-room door. He came in with that
solemnity of countenance with which, in his class, it is thought proper
to name all that is preliminary to death. “If you please, my lady,” he
said, “there’s a man below has come to say that the fever’s come to a
crisis, and that there’s a change.”
“You mean Captain Gaunt,” cried Lady Markham, rising with a
half-stupefied look. She was so much worn by these divers emotions, that
she did not see where she went.
“Captain Gaunt!” said Constance with a low cry.