A STEP THE WRONG WAY.
When Frank Renton had sent off his note to Nelly, accepting the
invitation for the birthday fête, and adding such little compliments as
have been recorded, a kind of sensation of having gone too far came over
him. He had not yet by any means made up his mind finally, and he had no
desire to commit himself. It seemed necessary, by way of holding the
balance even, to take a step in the other direction. So he set about
making very vigorous inquiries concerning the 200th, their destination,
and the character of the officers, and all the other points of
information most likely to be interesting. And the result of his
inquiries was a resolution to go up to town and see Montague, who did
not want to go to India. Edgbaston and the rest might laugh, but Frank
said to himself that he was far from having made up his mind, and that
it was very important for him to acquaint himself with all the
circumstances. It was on a June day when he went up to town in pursuance
of this resolution, hot enough to dissuade any man from business, and
especially from business connected with India. ‘If it is like this in
Pall Mall, what will it be in Calcutta?’ Frank asked himself; but,
nevertheless, he was not to be dissuaded. Montague, however, though
certified on all sides to be at home, was not to be found. Frank sought
him at his rooms, at one club after another, at the agent’s,--everywhere
he could think of,--but was unsuccessful. To be sure he got all the
necessary information, which answered his purpose almost as well; but
the ineffectual search tired him out. He was so thoroughly sick of it,
and the day was so hot, that none of his usual haunts or occupations
attracted him as it happened. After he had fortified himself with sherry
and biscuits, he went rambling forth to spend his time in some
misanthropical way till it should be time to return to Royalborough; but
the best way that occurred to him for doing that was to take a walk. The
Row was deserted; so, of course, it would have been foolish to go there;
and he did not feel disposed to make calls; and lounging about the
club,--or, indeed, anywhere where he should meet men and be questioned
on all hands about himself and his brothers,--was a trial he was not
equal to in his present frame of mind. So he went out to walk, which was
a curious expedient. And of all places in the world to go to, turned his
steps in the direction of the Regent’s Park, which, as everybody knows,
is close to Fitzroy Square.
I have never been able to understand what was Frank’s motive in setting
out upon this walk. He knew very well,--none better,--that it was
entirely out of the world. What a Guardsman could have to do in such a
neighbourhood, except, indeed, to visit a wayward brother, nobody could
have imagined; and now the wayward brother was gone. He said to himself
that he did not mind where he went, so long as it was quite out of the
way of meeting anybody; and yet on ordinary occasions Frank had no
objection to meeting people. He went up Harley Street, scowling at those
scowling houses, and then he went into the smiling, plebeian park, among
all the nursery-maids. How funny it was, he said to himself, to notice
the difference between this and the other parks, and persuaded himself
that he was studying life on its humdrum side. He looked into the steady
little broughams meandering round and round the dull terraces. Was it
any pleasure to the old ladies to drive about thus, each in her box? And
then he walked down the centre walk, where all the children were
playing. The children were just as pretty as if they had been in
Kensington Gardens. Mrs. Suffolk’s babies trotted past, with signs of
old Rich’s two hundred and fifty pounds in their little summer garments,
though Frank knew nothing of them,--and he kept stumbling over two
pretty boys, who recalled to him some face he knew, and to whom he
seemed an object of lively curiosity. They held close conversations,
whispering with their heads together, and discussing him, as he could
see, and turned up wherever he went, hanging about his path. ‘I tell you
it ain’t Laurie’s ghost,’ one of them said audibly, at length. ‘He’s
twice as tall, and he’s Laurie’s brother.’ ‘Hallo!’ Frank said, turning
round upon them; ‘you are the little Severns, to be sure.’ No doubt it
was the first time the idea had occurred to him. He must be close to
Fitzroy Square, and being so, and Mrs. Severn having been such a friend
of Laurie’s, it was his duty to call. Clearly it was his duty to call.
She was a friend of the Riches, too. There was thus a kind of connexion
on two sides; and to be near and not to call would be very uncivil.
Frank made friends with the boys without any difficulty, and took the
opportunity of making them perfectly happy by a purchase of canes and
whips from a passing merchant of such commodities, and set off for the
Square under their guidance. It would not have mattered if Mrs. Severn
had not known that he was in the neighbourhood; but of course the boys
would hasten home and tell. And to be uncivil to so great a friend of
Laurie’s was a sin Frank would not have been guilty of for the world.
Thus it will be seen that it was in the simplest, most unpremeditated
way that he was led to call at the Square.
The scene he saw when he went in was a scene of which Laurie had once
made a little drawing. Though it was so hot and blazing out of doors,
the great window of Mrs. Severn’s dining-room, which looked into her
garden, was by this time of the afternoon, overshadowed by the
projecting ends of her neighbours’ houses, and admitted only a softened
light. Alice sat full in the midst of this colourless day with her curls
hanging about her shoulders, and her delicate face, with all its soft
bright tints, like a flower a little bent upon its stem. The door of the
dining-room was ajar; and this was how Frank managed to catch a passing
glimpse as he was being ushered into the decorum of the great vacant
drawing-room; for to be sure he was a stranger, and had no right to go
as familiar visitors did, and tap at the padrona’s studio-door. He saw
as he passed Alice sitting by the window, her hands full of work, and
her face full of contentment and sweet peace. And at her feet, like a
rose-bud, sat little Edith, in all a child’s carelessness of attitude,
her little white frock tucked about her shapely, rosy limbs, her little
feet crossed. Miss Hadley was in the shadow, and Frank did not see her.
He thought Alice and her little sister were alone, and that he was in
luck. He paused at the open door, though the maid led the way to the
other. ‘May I come in?’ he said. Perhaps the tone was too much like that
in which he had asked permission to enter the music-room at Richmont.
Alice gave a great start at the sound of his voice, and dropped her work
on the floor. ‘Oh, Mr. Laurie’s brother!’ cried Edith, who was quite
unembarrassed. And Frank felt himself charmed out of all reason by the
little start and the flutter of the white work as it fell. ‘I feared you
were still at Richmont,’ he said, ‘and that I should not see you.’ And
so he went lightly in and found himself in Miss Hadley’s presence, with
her sternest countenance on, a face enough to have driven out of his
wits the most enterprising cavalier in the world.
‘It is Mr. Frank Renton,’ said Alice. ‘Miss Hadley, Mr. Renton’s
brother;’ and Miss Hadley made him a curtsey, and looked him through and
through with her sharp eyes, for which Frank was so entirely unprepared.
The thought of finding Alice all by herself had been so charming to him,
and he had brightened into such genuine exultation, that the way in
which his face fell was amusing to see.
‘Your mamma will be very glad to see Mr. Renton’s brother, I am sure,’
said Miss Hadley. ‘Run, my dear, and tell her; and ask if he shall go to
the studio, or if she will come here.’
‘Don’t disturb Mrs. Severn, pray, for me,’ said the discomfited Frank.
‘I was in the neighbourhood, and by accident met the boys in the park. I
could not be so near without calling; but pray don’t disturb her for
me.’
‘She is sure to want to see you,’ said Miss Hadley. ‘Have you heard from
your brother? It was so very unexpected to us all his going away. I
hope it was not his health. But you young men think so little of
travelling now-a-days. Is it you who are going to India, Mr. Renton?
Your brother used to talk a great deal of you.’
‘Yes, I think I am going to India,’ said Frank. Alice was standing
putting her work aside before she went to tell her mother of Frank’s
presence; but at these words she turned half round with an involuntary
movement,--he could see it was involuntary, almost unconscious,--and
gave him a soft look of inquiry and grief. ‘Must you go away,--shall we
never see you again?’ said the eyes of Alice. The tears were ready to
spring and the lips to quiver, and then she returned to the folding of
her work, and blushed all over her pretty throat. And Frank saw it, and
his heart swelled within him. To think she should care! Nelly
disappeared out of his thoughts like the merest shadow,--indeed, Nelly
had not been in his thoughts since he left Royalborough. ‘I have not
quite made up my mind yet; but I fear I must go,’ he continued,
answering her look. And Miss Hadley, always sharp, noticed at once the
changed direction of his eyes.
‘Run, my dear, and tell your mother,’ she said. ‘I will put your work
away for you, and Edie may go and play with the boys. Run out into the
garden, children. We cannot have you all making a noise when people are
here.’
‘But I want to stay and talk to Mr. Laurie’s brother,’ cried Edith. ‘I
love Laurie; there is nobody so nice ever comes now. And Alice loves him
too,’ said the little traitor, ‘and tells me such stories when she is
putting me to bed, about Richmont.’
‘But, you silly child, it was Mr. Frank Renton who was at Richmont,’
said Miss Hadley. Upon which the child nodded her head a great many
times, and repeated, ‘I know, I know.’
‘Your brother was such a favourite with them all,’ said Miss Hadley,
apologetically, ‘they get confused to know which Mr. Renton it is. He is
very nice. Is he just wandering about on the face of the earth, or has
he settled down anywhere? I don’t think Mrs. Severn has heard; and that
is strange too.’
‘We don’t know exactly what route he has taken,’ said Frank, ‘He is not
much of a letter-writer. Of course my mother hears. And I don’t think it
is anything about his health. There is such pleasure to a fellow like
Laurie, who never thinks of anything, in the mere fact of travelling
about.’
‘I always thought he considered everybody before himself,’ said Miss
Hadley.
‘He never pays the slightest attention to his own affairs,’ said Frank,
‘which comes to very nearly the same thing; and yet he is the best
fellow that ever was born.’
Having thus exhausted the only subject which they had in common, he and
Miss Hadley sat and gazed at each other for some time in silence. The
governess was very well aware that Laurie had not gone away for his
health,--indeed, she had a shrewd suspicion what it was that had driven
him away,--and she could not but look at Frank with watchful, suspicious
eyes, feeling that there was something in his uncalled-for visit, in his
embarrassment, and Alice’s start and look of interest, more than met the
eye. There might have been no harm in that, had he been staying at home.
But a young man on the eve of starting for India! It would break her
mother’s heart, Miss Hadley said to herself; and though she was
sometimes troublesome, and almost intrusive in her vigilance, the
governess loved her friend with that intense affection of one woman to
another,--generally of a lonely woman to one more fortunate than
herself,--which is so seldom appreciated and so little understood, but
which sometimes rises to the height of passion. Jane Hadley made herself
disagreeable by times to the padrona, but would have been cut in pieces
for her,--would have lain down to be trampled over,--could she have done
any good by such an act to the being she held highest in the world.
Therefore it immediately occurred to her that her first duty was to
discourage and snub this new visitor. Going away to India, and yet
trying to make himself agreeable in the eyes of Alice, was a sin of the
deepest dye.
‘You were going to change into another regiment, your brother said,’
remarked Miss Hadley. ‘When do you leave? I should think, on the whole,
it would be pleasanter to change the monotony of your leisure for a more
active life.’
‘It is not settled yet,’ said Frank. ‘But I suppose I’ll go. Yes; it is
rather monotonous doing garrison work at home.’
‘And what part of India are you going to?’ Miss Hadley continued. Frank
began to get irritated by the questions. Confound India! he did not want
to think of it,--or, indeed, to trouble his mind with anything at that
moment. He wanted Alice to come back again, to look at him, to speak to
him, to play for him. He kept his eyes on the door, and felt that the
place was empty till she came. Here it was he had seen her first. There,
under the curtains in the doorway, she had stood lighting up the
darkness with her face; there she had sat making the tea;--how clearly
every little incident dwelt on his mind! As for Nelly Rich, he had not
the slightest recollection where he saw her first, nor what the
circumstances were. He was never restless for her return when she was
out of the room; but at that moment he did not even pay Nelly Rich the
compliment of contrasting his feelings in respect to her with his
feelings to Alice Severn. He simply forgot her existence, and watched
the door, and stammered what reply he could to the inquisitor who sat
opposite to him,--like an old cat he said,--watching him with her keen
eyes.
And when the door opened at last it was only Mrs. Severn who came in.
Frank absolutely changed colour, and grew pale and green with
disappointment. Laurie had thought her a type of everything most perfect
in woman; but to Frank she was a sober personage, comely and
middle-aged, and Alice’s mother, which indeed was her real appearance in
the world. She came in with a gleam of interest in her eyes, and a
little eagerness in her manner. She had not taken off her
painting-dress, but she had put aside her brushes and her palette, and
sat down by him without any fuss about abandoning her work. With her
intimates she worked on without intermission, but to strangers the
padrona ignored the constant labour which filled her life.
‘Have you brought us some news of your brother, Mr. Renton?’ she said.
‘I shall be so glad to hear he is safe in Rome. He should not have gone
so late in the year.’
‘No, I have no particular news,’ said Frank. ‘His going took us all by
surprise. My mother has had two or three little notes, I believe. I was
in the neighbourhood,’ he added in an explanatory, apologetic way, ‘and
thought I would call.’
‘I am very glad to see you,’ said the padrona; ‘Laurie Renton’s brother
can never be but welcome here. I have known him so long,--since he was a
boy,’ she added, with a little colour rising on her cheek, seeking in
her turn to excuse the warmth with which she spoke; but the blush was
for Jane Hadley quietly seated in the background seeing everything, and
not for the unconscious Frank.
‘Oh, thanks,’ said Frank. ‘Laurie was always speaking of you. I met Miss
Severn the other day at Richmont. She might tell you, perhaps. How she
plays! I don’t think I ever heard anything like it. It draws the heart
out of one’s breast.’
‘Ah, yes, Alice plays very well,’ said Mrs. Severn, with placid
complacency. ‘She is doing something for me in the studio. She is as
clever with her needle as she is with her music,’ she added, calmly.
Clever! and to compare her needlework with her music! This speech went a
long way to prove that the padrona was a very ordinary, commonplace
personage in Frank’s eyes. That, however, did not matter so much. What
was a great deal more important was that Alice did not return.
‘I hope she liked Richmont,’ he said; ‘they are kind people, and the
country is lovely just now. You don’t know Renton, Mrs. Severn? My
mother, I am sure, would be charmed to see you, and Laurie must have
told you of our woods. My mother is a great invalid. She has always been
so as long as I can recollect, but she would be delighted to see you. I
wish I could persuade you and Miss Severn to come down for a day; I
could row you up from Cookesley,’ said Frank, eagerly. Alice came in
just in time to hear these last words, and gazed at her mother with a
longing look. She had not heard the previous part of the proposal, but
to be rowed up the river from Cookesley! The words flushed her young
imagination with every kind of delight.
‘It is very tempting,’ Mrs. Severn said, ‘but I fear we must not think
of it. Alice, you must go and make some music for Mr. Renton; he likes
your playing. Are you in town only for the day?’
‘Only for the day,’ said Frank; and then he paused and put on his
suppliant look. ‘When I was here with Laurie I was allowed to stay to
tea.’
‘And so you shall stay to tea if you like it,’ said the padrona,
laughing. And Alice gave him a momentary glance and a soft little smile
of content. A paradisiacal sense of well-being and happiness glided over
Frank he could not tell how. It was something quite new and strange to
him. He had been happy most part of his life,--not being yet quite
one-and-twenty, poor fellow!--happy for no particular reason,--because
he was alive, because he was Frank Renton, because he had got something
he wanted; but this was a totally different sort of happiness. It seemed
to float him away from all mean and indifferent things; he was mounted
up on a pinnacle from the heights of which he contemplated the rest of
the world with a tender pity; he was enveloped in an atmosphere of
blessedness. This intoxicating yet subduing delight seemed to him the
natural air of the place in which he was. They must breathe it all day
long these happy people; even the governess who sat grim over her
knitting and watched him with keen eyes. It was the air of the place,
though the place was Fitzroy Square, in the heart of London, on the way
to the City; for never in the summer woods, never at home in his
hereditary house, never amid the luxuries and delights of society, had
he breathed anything like it. He did his best to make himself agreeable
to Mrs. Severn, but it cannot be asserted that he was sorry when she
left the room, which she did after a while. True, Miss Hadley was there,
more watchful than a dozen padronas; but the watchfulness seemed
appropriate somehow and was harmonised by the atmosphere, just as summer
air harmonises all out-door noises. The children rushed to the garden,
getting tired of the quiet, and Alice went into the other room and began
to play. I have said it was the only poetry of which Frank was
susceptible. All the poets in one could not have moved him as these
sweet, inarticulate floods of sound did, making the atmosphere more
heavenly still, breathing a heart into it full of soft longings and a
tender languor. The house, as we have said, was on the shady side of the
Square--the great drawing-room felt like some cool, still, excluded
place, in the midst of the hot and lingering afternoon. Frank threw
himself into a chair at the other end of the room, from whence he could
watch the musician without disconcerting her. There were the three great
windows draped in white like tall ghosts ranged against the wall; and
the chairs and tables all grouped in a mysterious way as if there were
whispering spectators who marked all; and the cool grey-green walls with
here and there the frame of a picture catching the light; and Alice in
her fresh muslin gown, white, with lines and specks of blue, with blue
ribbons tied among her curls, and her bright eyes intent and her white
hands rippling among the ivory keys. The only thing that had ever made a
painter of Frank was his meeting with Alice. His mind was becoming a
kind of picture-gallery hung with sketches of her. He remembered every
look, almost every dress she had ever worn,--the dark neutral-tinted one
that night, the white at Richmont, and now the glimmer of blue ribbons
among the curls,----
After a time Miss Hadley, who sat there patient with her knitting, like
a cat watching a mouse, was called away for something and had to leave
them reluctantly. And then it is undeniable that Frank took advantage of
her absence and stole a little closer to the piano. He even interrupted
Alice ruthlessly in the midst of her sonata.
‘Play me this,’ he said, humming the bars that haunted him. He was even
so bold as to approach his hand to the piano and run over the notes. ‘It
was the first thing I had ever heard you play,’ the young man added; ‘I
have done nothing but sing it ever since. Ah, forgive me for stopping
you! Let me hear it again.’
‘It is very lovely,’ faltered Alice, stooping her head over the keys;
and then by chance their eyes met and they knew---- What? Neither said
another word. Alice’s fingers flew at the keys with the precipitancy of
haste and fear. She spoiled the air, her heart beating so loud as to
drown both tune and time. As the notes rushed out headlong after each
other, an indifferent looker-on would have concluded poor Alice to be a
school-girl in the fullest musical sense of the word. But Frank, though
he was a connoisseur, never found it out. He sat down behind her
listening with a perfect imbecility of admiration. It might have been
St. Cecilia, it might have been the angels playing in heaven whom
Cecilia heard. To him it was a strain divine. To think that he had not
known of Alice’s existence when he heard these notes first! He began to
babble in the midst of the music, quite unconscious of doing anything
amiss.
‘When I heard you play that first I had never seen you,’ he said, and
though Alice was at the crisis of the melody her hand slackened and
lightened to listen. ‘I could not think who it could be. I thought you
must be the sick one of the family or something. And then, when your
mother called you and you came and stood in the door----’
Alice now stopped altogether and did her best to laugh. ‘What a very
good memory you must have,’ she said. ‘I am sure I could not have
remembered all that.’
‘Yes; I have a good memory,--for some things,’ said Frank, while she
half unconsciously kept running on with one hand among the treble keys,
half drowning his voice, half making an accompaniment to it. ‘Your
mother spoke of you in such a tone--I understand it now, but it
bewildered me at the time, I thought you must be ill--or--sickly--or
something. And then she called Alice, and you appeared under the
curtains; I can see it all as plain as if it had happened yesterday.
Laurie chattering enough for six with his back turned, and you standing
in the doorway like----’
Alice made a great crash on the piano and burst at once into a grand
symphony. Instinct told her to play, and it was just as well she had
done so, for one minute after Miss Hadley appeared with her perpetual
knitting in her hand. She gave Frank a look when she perceived his
change of position and herself approached the piano. A young fellow who
was going to India! That was his sole and unique description to Miss
Hadley,--and she was deeply indignant at his presumption. The symphony
was a long one, but Alice was restored to herself. Safety had come in
place of danger. She had not wanted Miss Hadley to return, and yet under
shelter of Miss Hadley her faculties came back to her. There was a good
deal of crash and execution in what she was now playing, and it suited
her feelings. It was a kind of music which Frank would have scorned at
from any other player, but oddly enough it chimed in with his feelings
now. They were both tingling all over with soft emotion and that first
excitement of early love, in which it is the man’s object to say as much
as he may under covert of commonplace observations, and the woman’s to
receive it as if it meant nothing and to escape from all appearance of
comprehension. And yet if by chance they looked at each other both knew,
not what they were aiming at certainly, but in some darkened, vague
degree that there was a meaning, and a very decided one underneath.
Then Mrs. Severn appeared again in her black silk gown, and the tea was
set upon the table, and Alice made it as she had done before. It was
like the same scene repeated, and yet it was not the same. Alice who had
been to him but a fairy vision was now---- What was she now? Frank made
a sudden jump from that side of the question, and felt his cheeks flush
and a delicious glow come over his heart. But, not to speak of Alice,
he himself was no longer an accidental guest received for his brother’s
sake; but if not a friend, at least an acquaintance received for his
own. To Alice at least he was more than an acquaintance. ‘I have lived
in the same house with Miss Severn, and I feel as if we were old
friends,’ he said, and Alice, with a soft blush and smile, did not
reject the claim. ‘How pretty it was at Richmont!’ she said, with a
soft, little sigh. And if it had not been for that dreadful old
governess, who broke in, in the most abrupt way, with something about
India! What was India to her? What had she to do with it? If a man
wanted for the moment to forget everything that was disagreeable, what
business had Miss Hadley to interfere? Frank as nearly turned his back
upon her when she made her second interpellation on the subject as
good-breeding would allow. Was it her business? He was very wroth with
the meddler, but very soft and benignant with every one else, talking to
Edith--to the child’s immense delight--as if she were grown up, and
discussing games with the boys, and making himself very generally
agreeable. He stayed long enough to watch the people beginning to arrive
on their evening calls, and accepted all the circumstances of the house
with the profoundest satisfaction and sense of fitness. But he could not
find any more private opportunities of making known his recollections or
his fancies to Alice, and went away at last when he had but time for
his train, with a sense of intoxication and absorption in he knew not
what golden dreams. India!--but soft--India, when a man came to think of
it, might for anything he knew, involve brighter possibilities than he
had yet contemplated. Speak low; whisper low. When this thought occurred
to Frank he ran and took his leave with a sensation as if a whole hive
of bees had set to buzzing in his head. As I have said it intoxicated
him. He had need to go away, to get himself into the morose solitude of
the train to think it over. The sudden light that had burst upon his
path took all power of vision from his dazzled eyes.