as it turned out, frances had not the courage. mr waring strolled into the loggia shortly after miss durant had left her. he smiled when he heard of her visit, and asked what news she had brought. tasie was the recognised channel for news, and seldom appeared without leaving some little story behind her.
“i don’t think she had any news to-day, except that there had been a great many at the sunday-school last sunday. fancy, papa, twelve children! she is quite excited about it.”
“that is a triumph,” said mr waring, with a laugh. he stretched out his long limbs from the low basket-chair in which he had placed himself. he had relaxed a little altogether from the tension of the morning, feeling himself secure and at his ease in his own house, where{v1-44} no one could intrude upon him or call up ghosts of the past. the air was beyond expression sweet and tranquillising, the sun going down in a mist of glory behind the endless peaks and ridges that stretched away towards the west, the sea lapping the shore with a soft cadence that was more imagined than heard on the heights of the punto, but yet added another harmony to the scene. near at hand a faint wind rustled the long leaves of the palm-trees, and the pale olive woods lent a softness to the landscape, tempering its radiance. such a scene fills up the weary mind, and has the blessed quality of arresting thought. it was good for the breathing too—or at least so this invalid thought—and he was more amiable than usual, with no harshness in voice or temper to introduce a discord. “i am glad she was pleased,” he said. “tasie is a good girl, though not perhaps so much of a girl as she thinks. why she goes in for a sunday-school where none is wanted, i can’t tell; but anyhow, i am glad she is pleased. where did they come from, the twelve children? poor little beggars, how sick of it they must have been!{v1-45}”
“a number of them belonged to that english family, papa——”
“i suppose they must all belong to english families,” he said, calmly; “the natives are not such fools.”
“but, papa, i mean—the people we met—the people you knew.”
he made no reply for a few minutes, and then he said calmly, “what an ass the man must be, not only to travel with children, but to send them to poor tasie’s sunday-school! you must do me the justice, fan, to acknowledge that i never attempted to treat you in that way.”
“no; but, papa—perhaps the gentleman is a very religious man.”
“and you don’t think i am? well, perhaps i laid myself open to such a retort.”
“o papa!” frances cried, with tears starting to her eyes, “you know i could not mean that.”
“if you take religion as meaning a life by rule, which is its true meaning, you were right enough, my dear. that is what i never could do. it might have been better for me if i had been more capable of it. it is always better to put one’s self in harmony with received notions{v1-46} and the prejudices of society. tasie would not have her sunday-school but for that. it is the right thing. i think you have a leaning towards the right thing, my little girl, yourself.”
“i don’t like to be particular, papa, if that is what you mean.”
“always keep to that,” her father said, with a smile. and then he opened the book which he had been holding all this time in his hand. such a thing had happened, when frances was in high spirits and very courageous, as that she had pursued him even into his book; but it was a very rare exercise of valour, and to-day she shrank from it. if she only had the courage! but she had not the courage. she had given up her drawing, for the sun no longer shone on the group of palms. she had no book, and indeed at any time was not much given to reading, except when a happy chance threw a novel into her hands. she watched the sun go down by imperceptible degrees, yet not slowly, behind the mountains. when he had quite disappeared, the landscape changed too; the air, as the italians say, grew brown; a little momentary chill breathed out of the sky. it{v1-47} is always depressing to a solitary watcher when this change takes place.
frances was not apt to be depressed, but for the moment she felt lonely and dull, and a great sense of monotony took hold upon her. it was like this every night; it would be like this, so far as she knew, every night to come, until perhaps she grew old, like tasie, without becoming aware that she had ceased to be a girl. it was not a cheering prospect. and when there is any darkness or mystery surrounding one’s life, these are just the circumstances to quicken curiosity, and turn it into something graver, into an anxious desire to know. frances did not know positively that there was a mystery. she had no reason to think there was, she said to herself. her father preferred to live easily on the riviera, instead of living in a way that would trouble him at home. perhaps the gentleman they had met was a bore, and that was why mr waring avoided all mention of him. he frequently thought people were bores, with whom frances was very well satisfied. why should she think any more of it? oh, how she wished she had the courage{v1-48} to ask plainly and boldly, who are we? where do we come from? have we any friends? but she had not the courage. she looked towards him, and trembled, imagining within herself what would be the consequence if she interrupted his reading, plucked him out of the quietude of the hour and of his book, and demanded an explanation—when very likely there was no explanation! when, in all probability, everything was quite simple, if she only knew.
the evening passed as evenings generally did pass in the palazzo. mr waring talked a little at dinner quite pleasantly, and smoked a cigarette in the loggia afterwards in great good-humour, telling frances various little stories of people he had known. this was a sign of high satisfaction on his part, and very agreeable to her, and no doubt he was entirely unaware of the perplexity in her mind and the questions she was so desirous of asking. the air was peculiarly soft that evening, and he sat in the loggia till the young moon set, with an overcoat on his shoulders and a rug on his knees, sometimes talking, sometimes silent—in either way{v1-49} a very agreeable companion. frances had never been cooped up in streets, or exposed to the chill of an english spring; so she had not that keen sense of contrast which doubles the enjoyment of a heavenly evening in such a heavenly locality. it was all quite natural, common, and everyday to her; but no one could be indifferent to the sheen of the young moon, to the soft circling of the darkness, and the reflections on the sea. it was all very lovely, and yet there was something wanting. what was wanting? she thought it was knowledge, acquaintance with her own position, and relief from this strange bewildering sensation of being cut off from the race altogether, which had risen within her mind so quickly and with so little cause.
but many beside frances have felt the wistful call for happiness more complete, which comes in the soft darkening of a summer night; and probably it was not explanation, but something else, more common to human nature, that she wanted. the voices of the peaceful people outside, the old men and women who came out to sit on the benches upon the punto, or on the{v1-50} stone seat under the wall of the palazzo, and compare their experiences, and enjoy the cool of the evening, sounded pleasantly from below. there was a softened din of children playing, and now and then a sudden rush of voices, when the young men who were strolling about got excited in conversation, and stopped short in their walk for the delivery of some sentence more emphatic than the rest; and the mothers chattered over their babies, cooing and laughing. the babies should have been in bed, frances said to herself, half laughing, half crying, in a sort of tender anger with them all for being so familiar and so much at home. they were entirely at home where they were; they knew everybody, and were known from father to son, and from mother to daughter, all about them. they did not call a distant and unknown country by that sweet name, nor was there one among them who had any doubt as to where he or she was born. this thought made frances sigh, and then made her smile. after all, if that was all! and then she saw that domenico had brought the lamp into the salone, and that it was time to go indoors.{v1-51}
next morning she went out between the early coffee and the mid-day breakfast to do some little household business, on which, in consideration that she was english and not bound by the laws that are so hard and fast with italian girls, mariuccia consented to let her go alone. it was very seldom that mr waring went out or indeed was visible at that hour, the expedition of the former day being very exceptional. frances went down to the shops to do her little commissions for mariuccia. she even investigated the savona pots of which tasie had spoken. in her circumstances, it was scarcely possible not to be more or less of a collector. there is nobody in these regions who does not go about with eyes open to anything there may be to “pick up.” and after this she walked back through the olive woods, by those distracting little terraces which lead the stranger so constantly out of his way, but are quite simple to those who are to the manner born—until she reached once more the broad piece of unshadowed road which leads up to the old town. at the spot at which she and her father had met the english family yesterday,{v1-52} she made a momentary pause, recalling all the circumstances of the meeting, and what the stranger had said—“a fellow that stuck by you all through.” all through what? she asked herself. as she paused to make this little question, to which there was no response, she heard a sound of voices coming from the upper side of the wood, where the slopes rose high into more and more olive gardens. “don’t hurry along so; i’m coming,” some one said. frances looked up, and her heart jumped into her mouth as she perceived that it was once more the english family whom she was about to meet on the same spot.
the father was in advance this time, and he was hurrying down, she thought, with the intention of addressing her. what should she do? she knew very well what her father would have wished her to do; but probably for that very reason a contradictory impulse arose in her. without doubt, she wanted to know what this man knew and could tell her. not that she would ask him anything; she was too proud for that. to betray that she was not acquainted with her father’s affairs, that she{v1-53} had to go to a stranger for information, was a thing of which she was incapable. but if he wished to speak to her—to send, perhaps, some message to her father? frances quieted her conscience in this way. she was very anxious, excited by the sense that there was something to find out; and if it was anything her father would not approve, why, then she could shut it up in her own breast and never let him know it to trouble him. and it was right at her age that she should know. all these sophistries hurried through her mind more rapidly than lightning during the moment in which she paused hesitating, and gave the large englishman, overwhelmed with the heat, and hurrying down the steep path with his white umbrella over his head, time to make up to her. he was rather out of breath, for though he had been coming down hill, and not going up, the way was steep.
“miss waring, miss waring!” he cried as he approached, “how is your father? i want to ask for your father,” taking off his straw hat and exposing his flushed countenance under the shadow of the green-lined umbrella, which en{v1-54}hanced all its ruddy tints. then, as he came within reach of her, he added hastily, “i am so glad i have met you. how is he? for he did not give me any address.”
“papa is quite well, thank you,” said frances, with the habitual response of a child.
“quite well? oh, that is a great deal more than i expected to hear. he was not quite well yesterday, i am sure. he is dreadfully changed. it was a sort of guesswork my recognising him at all. he used to be such a powerful-made man. is it pulmonary? i suspect it must be something of the kind, he has so wasted away.”
“pulmonary? indeed i don’t know. he has a little asthma sometimes. and of course he is very thin,” said frances; “but that does not mean anything; he is quite well.”
the stranger shook his head. he had taken the opportunity to wipe it with a large white handkerchief, and had made his bald forehead look redder than ever. “i shouldn’t like to alarm you,” he said—“i wouldn’t, for all the world; but i hope you have trustworthy advice? these italian doctors, they are not much{v1-55} to be trusted. you should get a real good english doctor to come and have a look at him.”
“oh, indeed, it is only asthma; he is well enough, quite well, not anything the matter with him,” frances protested. the large stranger stood and smiled compassionately upon her, still shaking his head.
“mary,” he said—“here, my dear! this is miss waring. she says her father is quite well, poor thing. i am telling her i am so very glad we have met her, for waring did not leave me any address.”
“how do you do, my dear?” said the stout lady—not much less red than her husband—who had also hurried down the steep path to meet frances. “and your father is quite well? i am so glad. we thought him looking rather—thin; not so strong as he used to look.”
“but then,” added her husband, “it is such a long time since we have seen him, and he never was very stout. i hope, if you will pardon me for asking, that things have been smoothed down between him and the rest of{v1-56} the family? when i say ‘smoothed down,’ i mean set on a better footing—more friendly, more harmonious. i am very glad i have seen you, to inquire privately; for one never knows how far to go with a man of his—well—peculiar temper.”
“don’t say that, george. you must not think, my dear, that mr mannering means anything that is not quite nice, and friendly, and respectful to your papa. it is only out of kindness that he asks. your poor papa has been much tried. i am sure he has always had my sympathy, and my husband’s too. mr mannering only means that he hopes things are more comfortable between your father and—— which is so much to be desired for everybody’s sake.”
the poor girl stood and stared at them with large, round, widely opening eyes, with the wondering stare of a child. there had been a little half-mischievous, half-anxious longing in her mind to find out what these strangers knew; but now she came to herself suddenly, and felt as a traveller feels who all at once pulls himself up on the edge of a precipice. what{v1-57} was this pitfall which she had nearly stumbled into, this rent from the past which was so great and so complete that she had never heard of it, never guessed it? fright seized upon her, and dismay, and, what probably stood her in more stead for the moment, a stinging sensation of wounded pride, which brought the colour burning to her cheeks. must she let these people find out that she knew nothing, at her age—that her father had never confided in her at all—that she could not even form an idea what they were talking about? she had pleased herself with the possibility of some little easy discovery—of finding out, perhaps, something about the cousins whom it seemed certain, according to tasie, every one must possess, whether they were aware of it or not—some little revelation of origin and connections such as could do nobody any harm. but when she woke up suddenly to find herself as it were upon the edge of a chasm which had split her father’s life in two, the young creature trembled. she was frightened beyond measure by this unexpected contingency; she dared not listen to another word.{v1-58}
“oh,” she said, with a quiver in her voice, “i am afraid i have no time to stop and talk. papa will be waiting for his breakfast. i will tell him you—asked for him.”
“give him our love,” said the lady. “indeed, george, she is quite right; we must hurry too, or we shall be too late for the table d’hôte.”
“but i have not got the address,” said the husband. frances made a little curtsey, as she had been taught, and waved her hand as she hurried away. he thought that she had not understood him. “where do you live?” he called after her as she hastened along. she pointed towards the height of the little town, and alarmed for she knew not what, lest he should follow her, lest he should call something after her which she ought not to hear, fled along towards the steep ascent. she could hear the voices behind her slightly elevated talking to each other, and then the sound of the children rattling down the stony course of the higher road, and the quick question and answer as they rejoined their parents. then gradually everything relapsed into silence as the party disappeared. when she heard the{v1-59} voices no longer, frances began to regret that she had been so hasty. she paused for a moment, and looked back; but already the family were almost out of sight, the solid figures which led the procession indistinguishable from the little ones who straggled behind. whether it might have been well or ill to take advantage of the chance, it was now over. she arrived at the palazzo out of breath, and found domenico at the door, looking out anxiously for her. “the signorina is late,” he said, very gravely; “the padrone has almost had to wait for his breakfast.” domenico was quite original, and did not know that such a terrible possibility had threatened any illustrious personage before.
