when one has made up one’s mind to reopen a painful subject after dinner, the preliminary meal is not usually a very pleasant one; nor, with the tremor of preparation in one’s mind, is one likely to make a satisfactory dinner. frances could not talk about anything. she could not eat; her mind was absorbed in what was coming. it seemed to her that she must speak: and yet how gladly would she have escaped from or postponed the explanation! explanation! possibly he would only smile, and baffle her as he had done before; or perhaps be angry, which would be better. anything would be better than that indifference.
she went out to the loggia when dinner was over, trembling with the sensation of suspense. it was still not dark, and the night was clear{v1-99} with the young moon already shining, so that between the retiring day and the light of the night it was almost as clear as it had been two hours before. frances sat down, shivering a little, though not with cold. usually her father accompanied or immediately followed her, but by some perversity he did not do so to-night. she seated herself in her usual place, and waited, listening for every sound—that is, for sounds of one kind—his slow step coming along the polished floor, here soft and muffled over a piece of carpet, there loud upon the parquet. but for some time, during which she rose into a state of feverish expectation, there was no such sound.
it was nearly half an hour, according to her calculation, probably not half so much by common computation of time, when one or two doors were opened and shut quickly and a sound of voices met her ear—not sounds, however, which had any but a partial interest for her, for they did not indicate his approach. after a while there followed the sound of a footstep but it was not mr waring’s; it was not domenico’s subdued tread, nor the measured{v1-100} march of mariuccia. it was light, quick, and somewhat uncertain. frances was half disappointed, half relieved. some one was coming, but not her father. it would be impossible to speak to him to-night. the relief was uppermost; she felt it through her whole being. not to-night; and no one can ever tell what to-morrow may bring forth. she looked up no longer with anxiety, but curiosity, as the door opened. it opened quickly; some one looked out, as if to see what was beyond, then, with a slight exclamation of satisfaction, stepped out upon the loggia into the partial light.
frances rose up quickly, with the curious sensation of acting over something which she had rehearsed before, she did not know where or how. it was the girl whom she had remarked on the marina as having just arrived who now stood looking about her curiously, with her travelling-cloak fastened only at the throat, her gauze veil thrown up about her hat. this new-comer came in quickly, not with the timidity of a stranger. she came out into the centre of the loggia, where the light fell fully around her, and showed her tall slight{v1-101} figure, the fair hair clustering in her neck, a certain languid grace of movement, which her energetic entrance curiously belied. frances waited for some form of apology or self-introduction, prepared to be very civil, and feeling in reality pleased and almost grateful for the interruption.
but the young lady made no explanation. she put her hands up to her throat and loosed her cloak with a little sigh of relief. she undid the veil from her hat. “thank heaven, i have got here at last, free of those people!” she said, putting herself sans façon into mr waring’s chair, and laying her hat upon the little table. then she looked up at the astonished girl, who stood looking on.
“are you frances?” she said; but the question was put in an almost indifferent tone.
“yes; i am frances. but i don’t know——” frances was civil to the bottom of her soul, polite, incapable of hurting any one’s feelings. she could not say anything disagreeable; she could not demand brutally, who are you? and what do you want here?{v1-102}
“i thought so,” said the stranger; “and, oddly enough, i saw you this afternoon, and wondered if it could be you. you are a little like mamma.—i am constance, of course,” she added, looking up with a half-smile. “we ought to kiss each other, i suppose, though we can’t care much about each other, can we?—where is papa?”
frances had no breath to speak; she could not say a word. she looked at the new-comer with a gasp. who was she? and who was papa? was it some strange mistake which had brought her here? but then the question, “are you frances?” showed that it could not be a mistake.
“i beg your pardon,” she said; “i don’t understand. this is—mr waring’s. you are looking for—your father?”
“yes, yes,” cried the other impatiently; “i know. you can’t imagine i should have come here and taken possession if i had not made sure first! you are well enough known in this little place. there was no trouble about it.—and the house looks nice, and this must be a fine view when there is light to see it by.—but{v1-103} where is papa? they told me he was always to be found at this hour.”
frances felt the blood ebb to her very finger-points, and then rush back like a great flood upon her heart. she scarcely knew where she was standing or what she was saying in her great bewilderment. “do you mean—my father?” she said.
the other girl answered with a laugh: “you are very particular. i mean our father, if you prefer it. your father—my father. what does it matter?—where is he? why isn’t he here? it seems he must introduce us to each other. i did not think of any such formality. i thought you would have taken me for granted,” she said.
frances stood thunderstruck, gazing, listening, as if eyes and ears alike fooled her. she did not seem to know the meaning of the words. they could not, she said to herself, mean what they seemed to mean—it was impossible. there must be some wonderful, altogether unspeakable blunder. “i don’t understand,” she said again, in a piteous tone. “it must be some mistake.”
the other girl fixed her eyes upon her in the waning light. she had not paid so much atten{v1-104}tion to frances at first as to the new place and scene. she looked at her now with the air of weighing her in some unseen balance and finding her wanting, with impatience and half contempt. “i thought you would have been glad to see me,” she said; “but the world seems just the same in one place as another. because i am in distress at home you don’t want me here.”
then frances felt herself goaded, galled into the matter-of-fact question, “who are you?” though she felt that she would not believe the answer she received.
“who am i? don’t you know who i am? who should i be but con? constance waring, your sister?—where,” she cried, springing to her feet and stamping one of them upon the ground—“where, where is papa?”
the door opened again behind her softly, and mr waring with his slow step came out. “did i hear some one calling for me?” he said.—“frances, it is not you, surely, that are quarrelling with your visitor?—i beg the lady’s pardon; i cannot see who it is.”
the stranger turned upon him with impa{v1-105}tience in her tone. “it was i who called,” she said. “i thought you were sure to be here. papa, i have always heard that you were kind—a kind man, they all said; that was why i came, thinking—— i am constance!” she added after a pause, drawing herself up and facing him with something of his own gesture and attitude. she was tall, not much less than he was; very unlike little frances. her slight figure seemed to draw out as she raised her head and looked at him. she was not a suppliant. her whole air was one of indignation that she should be subjected to a moment’s doubt.
“constance!” said mr waring. the daylight was gone outside; the moon had got behind a fleecy white cloud; behind those two figures there was a gleam of light from within, domenico having brought in the lamp into the drawing-room. he stepped backward, opening the glass door. “come in,” he said, “to the light.”
frances came last, with a great commotion in her heart, but very still externally. she felt herself to have sunk into quite a subordinate {v1-106}place. the other two, they were the chief figures. she had now no explanation to ask, no questions to put, though she had a thousand; but everything else was thrown into the background, everything was inferior to this. the chief interest was with the others now.
constance stepped in after him with a proud freedom of step, the air of one who was mistress of herself and her fate. she went up to the table on which the tall lamp stood, her face on a level with it, fully lighted up by it. she held her hat in her hand, and played with it with a careless yet half-nervous gesture. her fair hair was short, and clustered in her neck and about her forehead almost like a child’s, though she was not like a child. mr waring, looking at her, was more agitated than she. he trembled a little; his eyelids were lifted high over his eyes. her air was a little defiant; but there was no suspicion, only a little uncertainty in his. he put out his hand to her after a minute’s inspection. “if you are constance, you are welcome,” he said.
“i don’t suppose that you have any doubt i am constance,” said the girl, flinging her hat on the table and herself into a chair. “it is{v1-107} a very curious way to receive one, though, after such a long journey—such a tiresome long journey,” she repeated, with a voice into which a querulous tone of exhaustion had come.
mr waring sat down too in the immediate centre of the light. he had not kissed her nor approached her, save by the momentary touch of their hands. it was a curious way to receive a stranger, a daughter. she lay back in her chair as if wearied out, and tears came to her eyes. “i should not have come, if i had known,” she said, with her lip quivering. “i am very tired. i put up with everything on the journey, thinking, when i came here—— and i am more a stranger here than anywhere!” she paused, choking with the half-hysterical fit of crying which she would not allow to overcome her. “she—knows nothing about me!” she cried, with a sharp accent of pain, as if this was the last blow.
frances, in her bewilderment, did not know what to do or say. she looked at her father, but his face was dumb, and gave her no suggestion; and then she looked at the new-comer, who lay back with her head against the back{v1-108} of the chair, her eyes closed, tears forcing their way through her eyelashes, her slender white throat convulsively struggling with a sob. the mind of frances had been shaken by a sudden storm of feelings unaccustomed; a throb of something which she did not understand, which was jealousy, though she neither knew nor intended it, had gone through her being. she seemed to see herself cast forth from her easy supremacy, her sway over her father’s house, deposed from her principal place. and she was only human. already she was conscious of a downfall. constance had drawn the interest towards herself—it was she to whom every eye would turn. the girl stood apart for a moment, with that inevitable movement which has been in the bosom of so many since the well-behaved brother of the prodigal put it in words, “now that this thy son has come.” constance, so far as frances knew, was no prodigal; but she was what was almost worse—a stranger, and yet the honours of the house were to be hers. she stood thus, looking on, until the sight of the suppressed sob, of the closed eyes, of the weary, hopeless atti{v1-109}tude, were too much for her. then it came suddenly into her mind, if she is constance! frances had not known half an hour before that there was any constance who had a right to her sympathy in the world. she gave her father another questioning look, but got no reply from his eyes. whatever had to be done must be done by herself. she went up to the chair in which her sister lay and touched her on the shoulder. “if we had known you were coming,” she said, “it would have been different. it is a little your fault not to let us know. i should have gone to meet you; i should have made your room ready. we have nothing ready, because we did not know.”
constance sat suddenly up in her chair and shook her head, as if to shake off the emotion that had been too much for her. “how sensible you are!” she said. “is that your character?—she is quite right, isn’t she? but i did not think of that. i suppose i am impetuous, as people say. i was unhappy, and i thought you would—receive me with open arms. it is evident i am not the sensible one.” she said this with still a quiver in her{v1-110} lip, but also a smile, pushing back her chair, and resuming the unconcerned air which she had worn at first.
“frances is quite right. you ought to have written and warned us,” said mr waring.
“oh yes; there are so many things that one ought to do.”
“but we will do the best we can for you, now you are here. mariuccia will easily make a room ready. where is your baggage? domenico can go to the railway, to the hotel, wherever you have come from.”
“my box is outside the door. i made them bring it. the woman—is that mariuccia?—would not take it in. but she let me come in. she was not suspicious. she did not say, ‘if you are constance.’” and here she laughed, with a sound that grated upon mr waring’s nerves. he jumped up suddenly from his chair.
“i had no proof that you were constance,” he said, “though i believed it. but only your mother’s daughter could reproduce that laugh.”
“has frances got it?” the girl cried, with an instant lighting up of opposition in her{v1-111} eyes; “for i am like you, but she is the image of mamma.”
he turned round and looked at frances, who, feeling that an entire circle of new emotions, unknown to her, had come into being at a bound, stood with a passive, frightened look, spectator of everything, not knowing how to adapt herself to the new turn of affairs.
“by jove!” her father said, with an air of exasperation she had never seen in him before, “that is true! but i had never noticed it. even frances. you’ve come to set us all by the ears.”
“oh no! i’ll tell you, if you like, why i came. mamma—has been more aggravating than usual. i said to myself you would be sure to understand what that meant. and something arose—i will tell you about it after—a complication, something that mamma insisted i should do, though i had made up my mind not to do it.”
“you had better,” said her father, with a smile, “take care what ideas on that subject you put into your sister’s head.”
constance paused, and looked at frances with{v1-112} a look which was half scrutinising, half contemptuous. “oh, she is not like me,” she said. “mamma was very aggravating, as you know she can be. she wanted me—— but i’ll tell you after.” and then she began: “i hope, because you live in italy, papa, you don’t think you ought to be a medieval parent; but that sort of thing in belgravia, you know, is too ridiculous. it was so out of the question that it was some time before i understood. it was not exactly a case of being locked up in my room and kept on bread and water; but something of the sort. i was so much astonished at first, i did not know what to do; and then it became intolerable. i had nobody i could appeal to, for everybody agreed with her. markham is generally a safe person; but even markham took her side. so i immediately thought of you. i said to myself, one’s father is the right person to protect one. and i knew, of course, that if anybody in the world could understand how impossible it is to live with mamma when she has taken a thing into her head, it would be you.”
waring kept his eye upon frances while this{v1-113} was being said, with an almost comic embarrassment. it was half laughable; but it was painful, as so many laughable things are; and there was something like alarm, or rather timidity, in the look. the man looked afraid of the little girl—whom all her life he had treated as a child—and her clear sensible eyes.
“one thinks these things, perhaps, but one does not put them into words,” he said.
“oh, it is no worse to say them than to think them,” said constance. “i always say what i mean. and you must know that things went very far—so far that i couldn’t put up with it any longer; so i made up my mind all at once that i would come off to you.”
“and i tell you, you are welcome, my dear. it is so long since i saw you that i could not have recognised you. that is natural enough. but now that you are here—i cannot decide upon the wisdom of the step till i know all the circumstances——”
“oh, wisdom! i don’t suppose there is any wisdom about it. no one expects wisdom from me. but what could i do? there was nothing else that i could do.{v1-114}”
“at all events,” said waring, with a little inclination of his head and a smile, as if he were talking to a visitor, frances said to herself—“frances and i will forgive any lack of wisdom which has given us—this pleasure.” he laughed at himself as he spoke. “you must expect for a time to feel like a fine lady paying a visit to her poor relations,” he said.
“oh, i know you will approve of me when you hear everything. mamma says i am a waring all over, your own child.”
the sensations with which frances stood and listened, it would be impossible to describe. mamma! who was this, of whom the other girl spoke so lightly, whom she had never heard of before? was it possible that a mother as well as a sister existed for her, as for others, in the unknown world out of which constance had come? a hundred questions were on her lips, but she controlled herself, and asked none of them. reflection, which comes so often slowly, almost painfully, to her came now like the flash of lightning. she would not betray to any one, not even to constance, that she had never known she had a mother. papa{v1-115} might be wrong—oh, how wrong he had been!—but she would not betray him. she checked the exclamation on her lips; she subdued her soul altogether, forcing it into silence. this was the secret she had been so anxious to penetrate, which he had kept so closely from her. why should he have kept it from her? it was evident it had not been kept on the other side. whatever had happened, had frances been in trouble, she knew of no one with whom she could have taken refuge; but her sister had known. her brain was made dizzy by these thoughts. it was open to her now to ask whatever she pleased. the mystery had been made plain; but at the same time her mouth was stopped. she would not confuse her father, nor betray him. it was chiefly from this bewildering sensation, and not, as her father, suddenly grown acute in respect to frances, thought, from a mortifying consciousness that constance would speak with more freedom if she were not there, that frances now spoke. “i think,” she said, “that i had better go and see about the rooms. mariuccia will not know what to do till i{v1-116} come; and you will take care of constance, papa.”
he looked at her, hearing in her tone a wounded feeling, a touch of forlorn pride, which perhaps was there, but not so much as he thought; but it was constance who replied: “oh yes, we will take care of each other. i have so much to tell him,” with a laugh. frances was aware that there was relief in it, in the prospect of her own absence, but she did not feel it so strongly as her father did. she gave them both a smile, and went away.
“so that is frances,” said the new-found sister, looking after her. “i find her very like mamma. but everybody says i am your child, disposition and all.” she rose, and came up to waring, who had never lessened the distance between himself and her. she put her hand within his arm and held up her face to him. “i am like you. i shall be much happier with you. do you think you will like having me instead of frances, father?” she clasped his arm against her in a caressing way, and leant her cheek upon the sleeve of his{v1-117} velvet coat. “don’t you think you would like to have me, father, instead of her?” she said.
a whole panorama of the situation, like a landscape, suddenly flashed before waring’s mind. the spell of this caress, and the confidence she showed of being loved, which is so great a charm, and the impulse of nature, so much as that is worth, drew him towards this handsome stranger, who took possession of him and his affections without a doubt, and pushed away the other from his heart and his side with an impulse which his philosophy said was common to all men—or at least, if that was too sweeping, to all women. but in the same moment came that sense of championship and proprietorship, the one inextricably mingled with the other, which makes us all defend our own whenever assailed. frances was his own; she was his creation; he had taught her almost everything. poor little frances! not like this girl, who could speak for herself, who could go everywhere, half commanding, half taking with guile every heart that she encountered. frances would never do that. but she would be true, true as the heavens themselves, and{v1-118} never falter. by a sudden gleam of perception he saw that, though he had never told her anything of this, though it must have been a revelation of wonder to her, yet that she had not burst forth into any outcries of astonishment, or asked any compromising questions, or done anything to betray him.
his heart went forth to frances with an infinite tenderness. he had not been a doting father to her; he had even—being himself what the world calls a clever man, much above her mental level—felt himself to condescend a little, and almost upbraided heaven for giving him so ordinary a little girl. and constance, it was easy to see, was a brilliant creature, accustomed to take her place in the world, fit to be any man’s companion. but the first result of this revelation was to reveal to him, as he had never seen it before, the modest and true little soul which had developed by his side without much notice from him, whom he had treated with such cruel want of confidence, to whom the shock of this evening’s disclosures must have been so great, but who, even in the moment of discovery, shielded him. all this{v1-119} went through his mind with the utmost rapidity. he did not put his new-found child away from him; but there was less enthusiasm than constance expected in the kiss he gave her. “i am very glad to have you here, my dear,” he said more coldly than pleased her. “but why instead of frances? you will be happier both of you for being together.”
constance did not disengage herself with any appearance of disappointment. she perceived, perhaps, that she was not to be so triumphant here as was usually her privilege. she relinquished her father’s arm after a minute, not too precipitately, and returned to her chair. “i shall like it, as long as it is possible,” she said. “it will be very nice for me having a father and sister instead of a mother and brother. but you will find that mamma will not let you off. she likes to have a girl in the house. she will have her pound of flesh.” she threw herself back into her chair with a laugh. “how quaint it all is; and how beautiful the view must be, and the mountains and the sea! i shall be very happy here—the world forgetting, by the world forgot—and with you, papa.{v1-120}”
