YOUNG FRANK.
I have already mentioned that Frank Renton, being up in town on the
business of negotiating the change he desired into a regiment of the
line, was taken one evening by his brother Laurie to No. 375, Fitzroy
Square.
It was a thing very lightly done, as so many things are that affect our
lives. ‘Come with me and see the padrona,’ Laurie had said, as the
evening darkened, before they went out to dinner. ‘You’ve heard me talk
of her. She has such charming children.’ This was the first thing it
came into his head to say; for being foolish he could not launch into
praise of herself. And Frank had gone very carelessly, looking with open
eyes of amused wonder at all the artists’ houses, and at the dinginess
of the Square. Alice was playing when they went in, and Frank, sitting
down in the shade before the lamp was lighted, and observing, still with
a half-amused surprise, how familiar his brother was in the house, was
softly penetrated by those unknown strains coming from he could not
tell where, and made by he knew not whom. The door of the great
drawing-room was open, and there came from it the usual gleam of red
firelight, the usual ghostly appearance behind of the curtained windows.
When he had listened for a long time in silence, not feeling himself
quite able to join in the conversation which was going on, Frank at last
took heart to ask who was the musician. The lamp was brought into the
room at this moment, and the padrona turned to him, with a smile as soft
and tender as the music, just dawning about her lips. ‘It is my child,’
she answered, in that full tone of love and pride which comes only out
of the heart of a woman who has a daughter. There was such softness in
the tone, such love and profound complacency and content, that it
touched the young soldier. Somehow it occurred to him for the moment
that there must be some painful defect about the creature whose name
came thus from her mother’s lips--blind, perhaps, or sick, or somehow
not just an ordinary child. Then with a curious impulse, which she could
not have explained, the padrona lifted her voice and called ‘Alice!’
Frank turned to the open door as the music stopped, with unusual
curiosity, expecting some pale vision, with signs of decay in its
countenance, or sightless eyes at the least; when all at once there
looked out upon him, ‘Alice with her curls,’ like a rose between the
falling folds of the vague, dim-coloured curtains, with eyes like stars,
half dazzled, confused with the sudden light, and those sweet tints for
which, as I have said, the beholder was grateful to her. He looked and
looked, and the young man’s eyes were touched as by Ithuriel’s spear. No
man had yet seen in her what, all at once, Frank Renton saw. She was to
him no child, but a woman. He got up off his chair stumbling, confused.
And Laurie was sitting calmly there talking to the mother with this
fairy princess coming to them! It seemed incredible. And, in fact,
Laurie scarcely looked at Alice even as he shook hands with her. He gave
her a kind, half-paternal smile, and went on talking, which was to Frank
such a mystery as no explanation could clear away. Then she sat down and
took her work with the quiet of a child, totally unaware of young
Frank’s reverential admiration. Fortunately he knew a little about
music. ‘Was that so-and-so that you were playing?’ he said, when he had
sat for some minutes looking at her work and listening to Laurie’s
interminable talk with the padrona. The young soldier had a certain
contempt for them as they sat and chattered--talking nonsense about any
stupid subject that came into their heads, when they might have been
talking to Alice, or listening to her music. ‘You must practise a great
deal,’ then said the young man, in the safe obscurity into which his
silence had thrown him--for, though the padrona had received him very
graciously as Laurie’s brother, what was she to find that could be said
to a speechless young Guardsman who probably had not an idea in his
head? Frank, however, had several ideas; but he was discomposed, as most
people are when brought suddenly into the company of familiar friends
who know all each other’s ways of thinking and habits of mind. He could
not strike into the full stream of their conversation, and it was
natural that he should draw towards Alice, who was also left out of it.
‘You must practise a great deal or you could not play so well,’ he
repeated, taking a little courage. And nobody paid any great heed to the
two sitting apart, as it were, in the shade.
‘I am very fond of music,’ said Alice; ‘I like it better than anything;’
and then there was a long pause, and the conversation on the other side
of the table thrust itself into prominence again, and became offensively
audible. There was talk chiefly about pictures of which Frank did not
know very much, and about people of whom he knew nothing--not the kind
of people talked of in society whom he would have known. Laurie had
always had strange friends; but how odd it was to find him in the midst
of a new world like this, and a world so entirely apart and separate
from the known hemisphere! But yet Frank did not find it disagreeable to
sit silent against the wall now that Alice was at the table with her
work. After ten minutes more he made another attempt at conversation.
‘Have you heard Madame Schumann play that?’ he said; and Alice glanced
up at him and softly shook her curls.
‘I have not heard much music,’ she said. ‘We never go out. It bores
mamma going out in the evening. I shall when I am older, perhaps; but
not now.’
‘But if you never go out in the evening, what do you do with yourself?’
said Frank, with some consternation. Upon which Alice startled him
completely by answering, in the softest matter-of-course voice, ‘We have
mostly people with us at home.’
Here Frank came to a dead standstill. He glanced round upon the room,
which, though pleasant, and cheerful, and homelike, bore no appearance
of being adapted for such perpetual hospitality. ‘We have mostly people
with us at home.’ Did they give dinners or dances, or what did they give
in this curious, grey-green, picture-hung, half-lighted place? As if in
answer to this question Mary at that moment came in with the tea,
carrying a vast tray before her, with heaps of cups and saucers,
substantial bread and butter, steaming urn, and all the paraphernalia of
that modern meal. The young Guardsman looked on bewildered to see Alice
rise, in the same calm, matter-of-course way, and rinse the teapot and
make the tea. Was it the tea-party of humble life which he was in for?
Would the guests come in presently and take their seats round the table
and munch their bread and butter? And what if there might be muffins,
perhaps, or buttered toast? Frank would have been amused had not Alice
been there in the midst of it. He would have concluded that his brother
had brought him to make acquaintance with the habits of the aborigines
in these dingy regions out of the world. But then how came this creature
there? He was relieved when he saw little Edith clamber up to her high
chair, and became aware that it was only to be a family party after all.
Frank was not sufficiently philanthropical, being a Guardsman, to
interest himself much in the children and the bread and butter; but by
degrees Alice surmounted all the obstacles of her surroundings, and
began to cast a lovely haze upon the whole scene. He did not say much;
he sat, if the truth must be told, in rather an embarrassed, sheepish
way in his chair against the wall, with very little of the assurance
natural to his profession. But then it must be taken into account that
this was an undiscovered country,--such an America, as Columbus
discovered, full of strange new beings, new customs,--a foreign world to
Frank. He was out of his depth. When the padrona now and then turned to
address him, with a vain attempt to make him comfortable, he felt
himself drawl and yaw-haw as does the ordinary young swell of romance.
And it was evident to him that his brother’s friend gave him up as quite
impracticable. Little Edith, however, was less fastidious. She got down
out of her high chair and placed it close to the stranger, and took him
under her little wing.
‘Sit next to me,’ said Edith, ‘and you shall have some cake. Are you
Laurie’s little brother? You are bigger than he is. Didn’t he say it was
his little brother, Alice? But I always say Harry is my little brother,
and he is a great deal,--such a great deal,--about six feet taller than
me.’
‘And older too,’ said Harry. ‘I am eight and you are six. You’re not six
till your birthday, and Alice is sixteen, and me and Frank----’
‘Nurse says girls are quite different,’ said little Edie. ‘You are only
boys, you two. Are you Mr. Renton, as well as Laurie, Mr. Laurie’s
brother?--how funny it would be to call you that!--or have you another
name all to yourself?’
‘I am Frank,’ said the Guardsman, laughing; and then the boys drew near
him, and Alice looked up smiling from her tea-making, and a certain
acquaintance sprang up. To know that Alice was sixteen on the one
side,--and to know that this young fellow, who gazed and addressed her
in a tone so different from Laurie’s tone, for instance, was Frank,
seemed somehow to give each of them a certain hold on the other. Frank
put down his hat, and drew his chair to the table; and by-and-by they
were all sitting round it, drinking tea and talking.
‘Laurie’s brother is not so stupid as I thought he was,’ the padrona
said afterwards, as she made her _resumé_ of the whole proceedings; and
with that slight remark Mrs. Severn dismissed the matter from her
thoughts. Laurie himself was trouble enough, the foolish fellow; but
that any further complication should arise through Laurie’s brother was
a thing which never entered into her mind.
When the two brothers left the house there was silence between them for
some time. Indeed, little was said till they had got as far as Harley
Street. Then, all at once, Laurie spoke.
‘You were out of your element in the Square,’ he said, with a little
forced laugh. ‘You don’t understand the kind of thing; but I can tell
you it is no small matter to me to have such a house to go to.’ This was
uttered abruptly, and was not at all what he meant to say. To seem to
apologise for the padrona and her house was as far as possible from his
intention, and yet it sounded like an apology in his brother’s ears.
‘I daresay,’ said Frank; and then he too added hastily, with a shade of
embarrassment,--‘She is quite lovely, I think.’
‘No;--do you though?’ cried Laurie, with a mixture of amaze, and
delight, and indignation. ‘I never saw you look at her even, all the
time we were there.’
‘And she plays wonderfully,’ said Frank. ‘Music goes to one’s heart, you
know, coming like that, out of the dark, one can’t tell how. I thought
she must be blind, or consumptive, or something; and then to see a face
like a little rose!’
‘Oh, you mean Alice,’ said Laurie, drawing a long breath of relief, and
amusement, and kindly contempt. Alice was a very nice little thing; but
how it should occur to any one to put her in the first place! To be
sure, the boy was only twenty. Laurie, who was twenty-four, felt the
difference strongly.
‘Who else could I mean?’ said Frank, calmly;--‘there was no other girl
there. But, Laurie, really you ought to mind what you are about. We may
have come down in the world, you know, and seen better days, and all
that; but we need not fall quite out of the habits of gentlemen all the
same.’
‘Am I falling out of the habits, &c.?’ said Laurie, laughing. ‘I am only
a poor painter, my dear fellow. I am not a swell and a Guardsman like
you.’
‘I shan’t be a Guardsman a minute longer than I can help it, and you
know that,’ said Frank, with a little indignation; ‘but I hope I shall
never see a girl like that come into a room without treating her with
proper respect.’
‘Proper respect!’ cried Laurie, much mystified; and then he laughed.
‘Alice is only a child,’ he said. ‘I have known her since she was that
height. She thinks me a kind of old uncle, or godfather, or something.
Yes, of course, she plays charmingly,--but she is only a child all the
same.’
‘A child! she is sixteen,’ said Frank; ‘and lovely, I think. I don’t
know the family, of course; they are your friends; but a young lady
like Miss Severn is generally considered entitled to a little ceremony.
I don’t want to be didactic,’ said the Guardsman, ‘but----’
This remonstrance furnished Laurie with laughter for the rest of the
evening; but Frank did not see the joke. Of course the young lady was
nothing to him. This he explained fully. But it vexed him to think that
his brother was falling into the free and easy habits which, he
supposed, were current among the people who lived in those dingy
streets, where every house boasted a long, central window, and the very
atmosphere was redolent of paint;--beings who lived all their lives in
shooting-coats and wide-awakes,--wild, untrimmed, hairy men, not fit to
come into a lady’s society at any time. People on that level might be
utterly indifferent and irreverent, and treat a woman as they treated
their comrades; but that Laurie should fall into such ways vexed Frank.
This was the chief subject of his thoughts as he bowled down through the
darkness in the twelve o’clock train to Royalborough, where his
battalion was quartered. It was another of the results of his father’s
unfortunate will. Frank had been, as Mr. Renton foresaw, the one who
felt it least. His nominal allowance had always been just what it now
was, and his mother was as ready now as ever to supply him with those
odd five-pound notes which drop in so pleasantly to a youthful pocket.
It made no more difference than his father’s death must have made under
any circumstances. There was no longer a bright and pleasant house to
take his friends to, but that had nothing to do with the will, and was
at the present moment a necessity of nature. And then he had his
profession, and liked it, and might hope for advancement in it. And in
the meantime he had made up his mind to go to India, a proceeding which
had its pleasant as well as unpleasant aspects. He had sold his pet
horse, to be sure, which cost him a pang; but still a man may get over
that. And he was noway banished from the society he had been used to, or
from the kind of life. Nothing was changed with him to speak of, but
everything was changed with Laurie; and as for Ben, he had disappeared
under the waters altogether,--disgusted, or indignant, or furious with
fate. Frank’s heart was heavy as he went back in the dreary ‘last
train,’ dropping people at all the stations,--coming every now and then
to a jarring, tedious stoppage in the blackness of the night. It is not
a cheerful mode of locomotion when a man is alone, and has thoughts
which are the reverse of agreeable. Laurie’s intimacy in the painter’s
house, the accustomed, familiar way in which he sat down amongst all
those children and took his tea, the homely table, the talk in which his
brother was so absorbed as to forget everything,--even common
politeness,--how fatal was all this! Had he gone there, indeed, kindly
as a chance visitor,--as any potentate from Belgravia might look in now
and then, it might have been well; but to become an _habitué_ of such a
house, to give up for it,--as he seemed to be doing,--all the charms of
society, could that be well? ‘Why should it be so?’ Frank asked himself.
No doubt Lady Grandmaison would have invited Laurie all the same,--as,
indeed, she had invited himself, Frank,--notwithstanding the temporary
cloud under which they all were living. No doubt the Barnards and the
Courtenays would have been just as kind as ever. He might have kept up
all his friends, Frank concluded to himself, with the premature prudence
of a young man of society; why shouldn’t he? Nothing but the absence of
a coat or a pair of gloves could have absolutely shut out Laurie Renton
from society; and his coat, Frank felt, was quite presentable, and had
even a flower in it, the extravagant wretch; and yet his world had
become Fitzroy Square!
Frank Renton dwelt so much on this thought that the apparition of Alice
Severn went out of his head,--and yet not, perhaps, quite out of his
head. He had not been such a fool, he would have said, as to fall in
love with a girl whom he had only seen once,--a girl belonging to the
objectionable locality in which Laurie had lost himself; yet the little
picture she made as she stood for a moment answering her mother’s call
in the doorway, with the dim curtains falling round her like a frame,
and herself so bright in colouring, so sweet in all her rose-tints,
lasted in his mind as such impressions seldom did. Perhaps it was the
quite unexpected character of the appearance that made him dwell upon
it. In a ball-room, or at a picnic, or, in short, at any party, or in a
country-house where there are a number of people assembled, a man knows
he is likely to meet some pretty girl or other, and is prepared for the
vision; but when you are making a humdrum call, in a house quite out of
the world, on people quite unacquainted with anybody you know,--in
short, very respectable people, but moving in a different sphere,--and
are, all at once, confronted by a creature like a rose, playing
Beethoven in the dark, standing looking at you from the doorway with
dazzling, lovely, half-seeing eyes,--of course you had not been looking
for anything of the kind, and it makes a certain impression on you.
Frank was not in any way addicted to art. He did not understand it much,
nor care for it. Now and then something struck him as being ‘a pretty
picture;’ but it might be one of Laurie’s drawings, or it might be a
Raffael, and the difference was not very evident to the Guardsman.
Perhaps it was the first time that he had of his own accord, or rather
involuntarily, in spite of himself, by impulsion of nature, hung up as
it were a picture of his own making on the walls of his mind. ‘By Jove,
if Laurie were to paint something like that,’ he said to himself,
altogether unaware in his simplicity that neither Laurie nor any of his
fellows could have done justice to the evening darkness, and the soft
lamplight, and the dark, undefined curtains draping themselves about the
bright young face. Frank made it for himself, which was much more
satisfactory, and left it there, hanging in his private closet of
recollections, though, so far as he was aware, he thought but little of
Alice Severn, and was much too sensible a fellow to fall in love at
first sight.
Besides, he was busy, and had no time just then for nonsense of any
kind. It was not quite so easy to manage the exchange he wanted as he
had believed it would be; and Mrs. Renton, though she interfered so
little in her son’s proceedings, did what she could to put a stop to
this movement on his part. ‘I never even hear from Ben,’ she said,
pathetically. ‘I do not know where he has gone or what has become of
him; and Laurie, though he writes punctually, has not been to see me for
ever so long; what shall I do if you go too?’
‘But, mother, I must go,’ Frank would say; ‘I can’t get on where I am
now. No, mamma,--thanks; I ought not to take it. What my father meant
was that we should go and seek our fortune. And beside, if Ben and
Laurie don’t have money from you, I ought not to have it. That is as
clear as daylight.’
‘If Ben and Laurie were here they would have everything I could give
them,’ said Mrs. Renton; ‘they ought to know that; but you are the only
one of my boys that stands by me, Frank. Put it in your pocket, dear,
and never mind. Ah! if your poor dear papa could but have seen the harm
it has done!’ and she cried, poor soul, longing for her other children,
though she had not energy enough to seek them out; ‘but we must not
blame your dear papa,’ she added, hastily, drying her eyes.
‘No,’ said Frank. ‘But it has done harm. Laurie was not like himself
last time I saw him. He has got among a queer sort of people,--artists
and that sort of thing. I don’t feel quite easy about him, to tell the
truth.’
‘Among low people, do you mean?’ cried his mother, with the tears ready
to flow from her eyes.
‘N--no; not exactly low people,’ said Frank; and somehow a hot flush of
colour covered his own face. All at once that picture rose up before
him, and Alice out of the doorway looked at him with reproachful eyes.
‘I heard that favourite thing of yours so beautifully played the other
day,’ he added, hastily; and then he hummed a few bars to identify the
melody; ‘charmingly played. I don’t think any one could have done it
better.’
‘Mary plays it very nicely,’ said his mother, who was easily led away
from one subject to another.
‘Oh, Mary!’ said Frank. ‘Yes, she does very well, of course; but this
was almost genius, you know. She played it as if she were making it up
herself. Quite a young girl, fifteen or so,’ Frank went on; ‘and sitting
in a dark room, so she must have played from memory. I wish you could
have heard her.’
‘Was it any one I know?’ said Mrs. Renton.
‘It was somebody Laurie knows,’ said Frank shortly. ‘I suppose he’ll
stick there for ever and ever, and never do anything. I wish he were not
such a lazy beggar. In one way he is the cleverest of us all.’
‘My poor Laurie! so you all say,’ said the mother; ‘but this I
know,--Laurie is never lazy when he can serve other people, Frank; and
he is not so clever as Ben is,’ she added. ‘Your dear papa always said
so. Ben was the clever one, he always said. I would not mind about
cleverness if I but knew where he was and what he was doing. That breaks
my heart.’
‘Oh, he will turn up,’ said Frank, whose heart was not in any danger of
breaking. And he put his mother’s gift in his pocket, though not
without compunction. ‘It seems like stealing a march upon them,’ he said
to himself as he went away. This was just about a month before the time
when Ben suddenly appeared at Renton Manor to bid them all good-bye, and
when Laurie was near the climax of his little drama. Frank, whom no
necessity had urged on, was but beginning to make his arrangements for
setting out in the world, when they voluntarily or involuntarily had
completed theirs, and were about to take their plunge. As he went down
the walk to the river, under the budded trees, his own idea was that he
was the only one of the three who would really go off, as his father
wished, to seek his fortune. Ben had hidden himself somewhere in a fit
of disgust, but would repent and become reasonable, and return to Renton
to manage his mother’s affairs, which needed some one to look after
them. After all, Renton was his mother’s for the time being, and it was
the natural home of her eldest son; and as for Laurie, he would stick
fast where he was, and would not have pluck enough to make any change.
So that it was utterly out of the question that he, Frank, should
relinquish his plans and prospects in order that one of his mother’s
children might be near her. Mrs. Renton, indeed, was not a woman to
exercise such an influence on her sons. They were fond of her; but
either they were not fond enough to make a sacrifice for her, or she
was not the kind of woman to require it. She kept in the background,
wailing softly, but was not energetic enough to demand a response from
any one. Frank marched down to his boat, which lay waiting for him, with
a feeling that if he was not the clever one, he was at least the
energetic one, of the family, and probably would be the only one to make
his fortune. The first step, to be sure, was a little slow and
troublesome, but, once in India, everything became possible. He resolved
within himself that he would scorn delight and live laborious days, as
soon as he had got himself made into a real soldier instead of an
ornamental Guardsman. He would go in for his profession with all his
heart. No doubt it was a resolve which might call for a good deal of
self-denial, but for that young Frank was prepared. Parties, and
pleasure, and music, and even love affairs, were things he meant to be
out of his way. As for falling into a lower sphere contentedly, as
Laurie seemed to have done, Frank hoped that such a descent was
impossible to him. He pulled down the stream to Cookesley, though it was
cold; for the river was at once the best and most expeditious way of
passing between the manor and Royalborough. Frank pulled down the
stream, and felt his heart glow and tingle as he thought of all he was
going to do. He had some ‘pluck’ he admitted to himself, if not so much
cleverness as Laurie or Ben. So it will be seen he had quite forgotten
that momentary peep at Alice Severn, and the equally temporary
impression which her young beauty had made upon his imagination or his
heart.