frances slept very little all night; her mind was jarred and sore almost at every point. the day with all its strange experiences, and still more strange suggestions, had left her in a giddy round of the unreal, in which there seemed no ground to stand upon. nelly winterbourn was the first prodigy in that round of wonders. why, with that immovable tragic face, had she intimated to lady markham the tenure upon which she held her fortune? why had it been received as something conclusive on all sides? “there is an end of nelly.” but why? and then came her mission to her aunt, the impression that had been made on her mind—the hope that had dawned on frances; and then the event which swept both hope and impression away,{v3-255} and the bitter end that seemed to come to everything in the reappearance of constance. was it that she was jealous of constance? frances asked herself in the silence of the night, with noiseless bitter tears. the throbbing of her heart was all pain; life had become pain, and nothing more. was it that she was jealous—jealous of her sister? it seemed to frances that her heart was being wrung, pressed till the life came out of it in great drops under some giant’s hands. she said to herself, no, no. it was only that constance came in her careless grace, and the place was hers, wherever she came; and all frances had done, or was trying to do, came to nought. was that jealousy? she lay awake through the long hours of the summer night, seeing the early dawn grow blue, and then warm and lighten into the light of day. and then all the elements of chaos round her, which whirled and whirled and left no honest footing, came to a pause and disappeared, and one thing real, one fact remained—george gaunt in his fever, lying rapt from all common life, taking no note of night or day. perhaps the{v3-256} tide might be turning for death or life, for this was once more the day that might be the crisis. the other matters blended into a phantasmagoria, of which frances could not tell which part was false and which true, or if anything was true; but here was reality beyond dispute. she thought of the pale light stealing into his room, blinding the ineffectual candles; of his weary head on the pillow growing visible; of the long endless watch; and far away among the mountains, of the old people waiting and praying, and wondering what news the morning would bring them. this thought stung frances into a keen life and energy, and took from her all reflection upon matters so abstract as that question whether or not she was jealous of constance. what did it matter? so long as he could be brought back from the gates of death and the edge of the grave, so long as the father and mother could be saved from that awful and murderous blow. she got up hastily long before any one was stirring. there are moments when all our ineffectual thinkings, and even futile efforts, end in a sudden determination that{v3-257} the thing must be done, and revelation of how to do it. she got up with a little tremor upon her, such as a great inventor might have when he saw at last his way clearly, or a poet when he had caught the spark of celestial fire. is there any machine that was ever invented, or even any power so divine as the right way to save a life and deliver a soul? frances’ little frame was all tingling, but it made her mind clear and firm. she asked herself how she could have thought of any other but this way.
it was very early in the morning when she set out. if it had not been london, in which no dew falls, the paths would have been wet with dew; even in london, there was a magical something in the air which breathed of the morning, and which not all the housemaids’ brooms and tradesmen’s carts in the world could dispel. frances walked on in the stillness, along the long silent line of the park, where there was nobody save a little early schoolmistress, or perhaps a belated man about town, surprised by the morning, with red eyes and furtive looks, in the overcoat{v3-258} which hid his evening clothes, hurrying home—to break the breadth of the sunshine, the soft morning light, which was neither too warm nor dazzling, but warmed gently, sweetly to the heart. her trouble had departed from her in the resolution she had taken. she was very grave, not knowing whether death or life, sorrow or hope, might be in the air, but composed, because, whatever it was, it must now come, all being done that man could do. she did not hasten, but walked slowly, knowing how early she was, how astonished her aunt’s servants would be to see her, unattended, walking up to the door. “i will arise and go to my father.” wherever these words can be said, there is peace in them, a sense of safety at least. there are, alas! many cases in which, with human fathers, they cannot be said; but waring, whatever his faults might be, had not forfeited his child’s confidence, and he would understand. to all human aches and miseries, to be understood is the one comfort above all others. those to whom she had appealed before, had been sorry; they had been astonished; they had gazed at her with{v3-259} troubled eyes. but her father would understand. this was the chief thing and the best. she went along under the trees, which were still fresh and green, through the scenes which, a little while later, would be astir with all the movements, the comedies, the tragedies, the confusions and complications of life. but now they lay like a part of the fair silent country, like the paths in a wood, like the glades in a park, all silent and mute, birds in the branches, dew upon the grass—a place where town had abdicated, where nature reigned.
waring awoke betimes, being accustomed to the early hours of a primitive people. it was a curious experience to him to come down through a closed-up and silent house, where the sunshine came in between the chinks of the shutters, and all was as it had been in the confusion of the night. a frightened maid-servant came before him to open the study, which his brother-in-law clarendon had occupied till a late hour. traces of the lawyer’s vigil were still apparent enough—his waste-paper basket full of fragments; the little tray standing in the corner, which, even when hold{v3-260}ing nothing more than soda-water and claret, suggests dissipation in the morning. waring was jarred by all this unpreparedness. he thought with a sigh of the bookroom in the palazzo all open to the sweet morning air, before the sun had come round that way; and when he stepped out upon the little iron balcony attached to the window and looked out upon other backs of houses, all crowding round, the recollection of the blue seas, the waving palms, the great peaks, all carved against the brilliant sky, made him turn back in disgust. the mean london walls of yellow brick, the narrow houses, the little windows, all blinded with white blinds and curtains, so near that he could almost touch them—“however, it will not be like this at hilborough,” he said to himself. he was no longer in the mood in which he had left bordighera; but yet, having left it, he was ready to acknowledge that bordighera was now impossible. his life there had continued from year to year—it might have continued for ever, with frances ignorant of all that had gone before; but the thread of life once broken, could be knitted again no more.{v3-261} he acknowledged this to himself; and then he found that, in acknowledging it, he had brought himself face to face with all the gravest problems of his life. he had held them at arm’s-length for years; but now they had to be decided, and there was no alternative. he must meet them; he must look them in the face. and her, too, he must look in the face. life once more had come to a point at which neither habit nor the past could help him. all over again, as if he were a boy coming of age, it would have to be decided what it should be.
waring was not at all surprised by the appearance of frances fresh with the morning air about her. it seemed quite natural to him. he had forgotten all about the london streets, and how far it was from one point to another. he thought she had gained much in her short absence from him,—perhaps in learning how to act for herself, to think for herself, which she had acquired since she left him; for he was entirely unaware, and even quite incapable of being instructed, that frances had lived her little life as far apart from him, and been as independent of him while sitting by his side{v3-262} at bordighera, as she could have been at the other end of the world. but he was impressed by the steady light of resolution, the cause of which was as yet unknown to him, which was shining in her eyes. she told him her story at once, without the little explanations that had been necessary to the others. when she said george gaunt, he knew all that there was to say. the only thing that it was expedient to conceal was markham’s part in the catastrophe, which was, after all, not at all clear to frances; and as waring was not acquainted with markham’s reputation, there was no suggestion in his mind of the name that was wanting to explain how the young officer, knowing nobody, had found entrance into the society which had ruined him. frances told her tale in few words. she was magnanimous, and said nothing of constance on the one hand, any more than of markham on the other. she told her father of the condition in which the young man lay—of his constant mutterings, so painful to hear, the red and black that came up, over and over again, in his confused thoughts, the distracting burden that awaited him if{v3-263} he ever got free of that circle of confusion and pain—of the old people in switzerland waiting for the daily news, not coming to him as they wished, because of that one dread yet vulgar difficulty which only she understood. “mamma says, of course they would not hesitate at the expense. oh no, no! they would not hesitate. but how can i make her understand? yet we know.”
“how could she understand?” he said with a pale smile, which frances knew. “she has never hesitated.” it was all that jarred even upon her excited nerves and mind. the situation was so much more clear to him than to the others, to whom young gaunt was a stranger. and waring, too, was in his nature something of a quixote to those who took him on the generous side. he listened—he understood; he remembered all that had been enacted under his eyes. the young fellow had gone to london in desperation, unsettled, and wounded by the woman to whom he had given his love—and he had fallen into the first snare that presented itself. it was weak, it was miserable; but it was not more than a man could{v3-264} understand. when frances found that at last her object was attained, the unlikeliness that it ever should have been attained, overwhelmed her even in the moment of victory. she clasped her arms round her father’s arm, and laid down her head upon it, and, to his great surprise, burst into a passion of tears. “what is the matter? what has happened? have i said anything to hurt you?” he cried, half touched, half vexed, not knowing what it was, smoothing her glossy hair half tenderly, half reluctantly, with his disengaged hand.
“oh, it is nothing, nothing! it is my folly; it is—happiness. i have tried to tell them all, and no one would understand. but one’s father—one’s father is like no one else,” cried frances, with her cheek upon his sleeve.
waring was altogether penetrated by these simple words, and by the childish action, which reminded him of the time when the little forlorn child he had carried away with him had no one but him in the world. “my dear,” he said, “it makes me happy that you think so. i have been rather a failure, i fear, in most things; but if you think so, i can’t have been{v3-265} a failure all round.” his heart grew very soft over his little girl. he was in a new world, though it was the old one. his sister, whom he had not seen for so long, had half disgusted him with her violent partisanship, though his was the party she upheld so strongly. and constance, who had no hold of habitual union upon him, had exhibited all her faults to his eyes. but his little girl was still his little girl, and believed in her father. it brought a softening of all the ice and snow about his heart.
they walked together through the many streets to inquire for poor gaunt, and were admitted with shakings of the head and downcast looks. he had passed a very disturbed night, though at present he seemed to sleep. the nurse who had been up all night, and was much depressed, was afraid that there were symptoms of a “change.” “i think the parents should be sent for, sir,” she said, addressing herself at once to waring. these attendants did not mind what they said over the uneasy bed. “he don’t know what we are saying, any more than the bed he lies{v3-266} on. look at him, miss, and tell me if you don’t think there is a change?” frances held fast by her father’s arm. she was more diffident in his presence than she had been before. the sufferer’s gaunt face was flushed, his lips moved, though, in his weakness, his words were not audible. the other nurse, who had come to relieve her colleague, and who was fresh and unwearied, was far more hopeful. but she, too, thought that “a change” might be approaching, and that it would be well to summon the friends. she went down-stairs with them to talk it over a little more. “it seems to me that he takes more notice than we are aware of,” she said. “the ways of sick folks are that wonderful, we don’t understand, not the half of them; seems to me that you have a kind of an influence, miss. last night he changed after you were here, and took me for his mamma, and asked me what i meant, and said something about a miss una that was true, and a false jessie or something. i wonder if your name is miss una, miss?” this inquiry was made while waring was writing a telegram to the parents. frances,{v3-267} who was not very quick, could only wonder for a long time who una was and jessie. it was not till evening, nearly twelve hours after, that there suddenly came into her mind the false duessa of the poet. and then the question remained, who was una, and who duessa? a question to which she could find no reply.
frances remained with her father the greater part of the day. when she found that what she desired was to be done, there fell a strange kind of lull into her being, which unaccountably took away her strength, so that she scarcely felt herself able to hold up her head. she began to be aware that she had neither slept by night nor had any peace by day, and that a fever of the mind had been stealing upon her, a sort of reflection of the other fever, in which her patient was enveloped as in a living shroud. she was scarcely able to stand, and yet she could not rest. had she not put force upon herself, she would have been sending to and fro all day, creeping thither on limbs that would scarcely support her, to know how he was, or if the change had yet appeared. she had not feared for his life before, having no tradi{v3-268}tion of death in her mind; but now an alarm grew upon her that any moment might see the blow fall, and that the parents might come in vain. it was while she stood at one of the windows of mrs clarendon’s gloomy drawing-room, watching for the return of one of her messengers, that she saw her mother’s well-known brougham drive up to the door. she turned round with a little cry of “mamma” to where her father was sitting, in one of the seldom used chairs. mrs clarendon, who would not leave him for many minutes, was hovering by, wearying his fastidious mind with unnecessary solicitude, and a succession of questions which he neither could nor wished to answer. she flung up her arms when she heard frances’ cry. “your mother! oh, has she dared! edward, go away, and let me meet her. she will not get much out of me.”
“do you think i am going to fly from my wife?” waring said. he rose up very tremulous, yet with a certain dignity. “in that case, i should not have come here.{v3-269}”
“but, edward, you are not prepared. o edward, be guided by me. if you once get into that woman’s hands——”
“hush!” he said; “her daughter is here.” then, with a smile: “when a lady comes to see me, i hope i can receive her still as a gentleman should, whoever she may be.”
the door opened, and lady markham came in. she was very pale, yet flushed from moment to moment. she, who had usually such perfect self-command, betrayed her agitation by little movements, by the clasping and unclasping of her hands, by a hurried, slightly audible breathing. she stood for a moment without advancing, the door closing behind her, facing the agitated group. frances, following an instinctive impulse, went hastily towards her mother as a maid of honour in an emergency might hurry to take her place behind the queen. mrs clarendon on her side, with a similar impulse, drew nearer to her brother—the way was cleared between the two, once lovers, now antagonists. the pause was but for a moment. lady markham, after that{v3-270} hesitation, came forward. she said: “edward, i should be wanting in my duty if i did not come to welcome you home.”
“home!” he said, with a curious smile. then he, too, came forward a little. “i accept your advances in the same spirit, frances.” she was holding out her hands to him with a little appeal, looking at him with eyes that sank and rose again—an emotion that was restrained by her age, by her matronly person, by the dignity of the woman, which could not be quenched by any flood of feeling. he took her hands in his with a strange timidity, hesitating, as if there might be something more, then let them drop, and they stood once again apart.
“i have to thank you, too,” she said, “for bringing constance back to me safe and well; and what is more, edward, for this child.” she put out her hand to frances, and drew her close, so that the girl could feel the agitation in her mother’s whole person, and knew that, weak as she was, she was a support to the other, who was so much stronger. “i owe you more thanks still for her—that she never had been{v3-271} taught to think any harm of her mother, that she came back to me as innocent and true as she went away.”
“if you found her so, frances, it was to her own praise, rather than mine.”
“nay,” she said with a tremulous smile, “i have not to learn now that the father of my children was fit to be trusted with a girl’s mind—more, perhaps, than their mother—and the world together.” she shook off this subject, which was too germane to the whole matter, with a little tremulous movement of her head and hands. “we must not enter on that,” she said. “though i am only a woman of the world, it might be too much for me. discussion must be for another time. but we may be friends.”
“so far as i am concerned.”
“and i too, edward. there are things even we might consult about—without prejudice, as the lawyers say—for the children’s good.”
“whatever you wish my advice upon——”
“yes, that is perhaps the way to put it,” lady markham said, after a pause which looked like disappointment, and with an agitated smile.{v3-272} “will you be so friendly, then,” she added, “as to dine at my house with the girls and me? no one you dislike will be there. sir thomas, who is in great excitement about your arrival; and perhaps claude ramsay, whom constance has come back to marry.”
“then she has settled that?”
“i think so; yet no doubt she would like him to be seen by you. i hope you will come,” she said, looking up at him with a smile.
“it will be very strange,” he said, “to dine as a guest at your table.”
“yes, edward; but everything is strange. we are so much older now than we were. we can afford, perhaps, to disagree, and yet be friends.”
“i will come if it will give you any pleasure,” he said.
“certainly, it will give me pleasure.” she had been standing all the time, not having even been offered a seat—an omission which neither he nor she had discovered. he did it now, placing with great politeness a chair for her; but she did not sit down.
“for the first time, perhaps it is enough,{v3-273}” she said. “and caroline thinks it more than enough. good-bye, edward. if you will believe me, i am—truly glad to see you: and i hope we may be friends.”
she half raised her clasped hands again. this time he took them in both his, and leaning towards her, kissed her on the forehead. frances felt the tremor that ran through her mother’s frame. “good-bye,” she said, “till this evening.” only the girl knew why lady markham hurried from the room. she stopped in the hall below to regain her self-command and arrange her bonnet. “it is so long since we have met,” she said, “it upsets me. can you wonder, frances? the woman in the end always feels it most. and then there are so many things to upset me just now. constance and markham—say nothing of markham; do not mention his name—and even you——”
“there is nothing about me to annoy you, mamma.”
lady markham smiled with a face that was near crying. she gave a little tap with her finger upon frances’ cheek, and then she hurried away.
