Waring was not so indifferent to the looks or feelings of his daughter as appeared. After all, he was not entirely buried in his books. To Frances, who had grown up by his side without particularly attracting his attention, he had been kindly indifferent, not feeling any occasion to concern himself about the child, who always had managed to amuse herself, and never had made any call upon him. But Constance had come upon him as a stranger, as an individual with a character and faculties of her own, and it had not been without curiosity that he had watched her to see how she would reconcile herself with the new circumstances. Her absorption in the amusement provided for her by young Gaunt had somewhat revolted her father, who set it down as one of the usual{v3-129} exhibitions of love in idleness, which every one sees by times as he makes his way through the world. He had not interfered, being thoroughly convinced that interference is useless, in addition to that reluctance to do anything which had grown upon him in his recluse life. But since Gaunt had disappeared without a sign—save that of a little irritability, a little unusual gravity on the part of Constance—her father had been roused somewhat to ask what it meant. Had the young fellow “behaved badly,” as people say? Had he danced attendance upon her all this time only to leave her at the end? It did not seem possible, when he looked at Constance with her easy air of mastery, and thought of the shy, eager devotion of the young soldier and his impassioned looks. But yet he was aware that in such cases all prognostics failed, that the conqueror was sometimes conquered, and the intended victim remained master of the field. Waring observed his daughter more closely than ever on this evening. She was distraite, self-absorbed, a little impatient, sometimes not noting what he said to her, sometimes answering in an irritable tone. The{v3-130} replies she made to him when she did reply showed that her mind was running on other matters. She said abruptly, in the middle of a little account he was giving her, with the idea of amusing her, of one of the neighbouring mountain castles, “Do you know, papa, that everybody is going away?”
Waring felt, with a certain discomfiture, which was comic, yet annoying, like one who has been suddenly pulled up with a good deal of “way” on him, and stops himself with difficulty—“a branch of the old Dorias,” he went on, having these words in his very mouth; and then, after a precipitate pause, “Eh? Oh, everybody is——? Yes, I know. They always do at this time of the year.”
“It will be rather miserable, don’t you think, when every one is gone?”
“My dear Constance, ‘every one’ means the Gaunts and Durants. I could not have supposed you cared.”
“For the Gaunts and Durants—oh no,” said Constance. “But to think there is not a soul—no one to speak to—not even the clergyman, not even Tasie.” She laughed, but there was{v3-131} a certain look of alarm in her face, as if the emergency was one which was unprecedented. “That frightens one, in spite of one’s self. And what are we going to do?”
It was Waring now who hesitated, and did not know how to reply. “We!” he said. “To tell the truth, I had not thought of it. Frances was always quite willing to stay at home.”
“But I am not Frances, papa.”
“I beg your pardon, my dear; that is quite true. Of course I never supposed so. You understand that for myself I prefer always not to be disturbed—to go on as I am. But you, a young lady fresh from society—— Had I supposed that you cared for the Durants, for instance, I should have thought of some way of making up for their absence; but I thought, on the whole, you would prefer their absence.”
“That has nothing to do with it,” said Constance. “I don’t care for the individuals—they are all rather bores. Captain Gaunt,” she added, resolutely, introducing the name with determination, “became very much of a bore before he went away. But the thing is to have{v3-132} nobody—nobody! One has to put up with bores very often; but to have nobody, actually not a soul! The circumstances are quite unprecedented.”
There was something in her air as she said this which amused her father. It was the air of a social philosopher brought to a pause in the face of an unimagined dilemma, rather than of a young lady stranded upon a desert shore where no society was to be found.
“No doubt,” he said, “you never knew anything of the kind before.”
“Never,” said Constance, with warmth. “People who are a nuisance, often enough; but nobody, never before.”
“I prefer nobody,” said her father.
She raised her eyes to him, as if he were one of the problems to which, for the first time, her attention was seriously called. “Perhaps,” she said; “but then you are not in a natural condition, papa—no more than a hermit in the desert, who has forsworn society altogether.”
“Allowing that I am abnormal, Constance, for the argument’s sake{v3-133}——”
“And so was Frances, more or less—that is, she could content herself with the peasants and fishermen, who, of course, are just as good as anybody else, if you make up your mind to it, and understand their ways. But I am not abnormal,” Constance said, her colour rising a little. “I want the society of my own kind. It seems unnatural to you, probably, just as your way of thinking seems unnatural to me.”
“I have seen both ways,” said Waring, in his turn becoming animated; “and so far as my opinion goes, the peasants and fishermen are a thousand times better than what you call Society; and solitude, with one’s own thoughts and pursuits, the best of all.”
There was a momentary pause, and then Constance said, “That may be, papa. What is best in the abstract is not the question. In that way, mere nothing would be the best of all, for there could be no harm in it.”
“Nor any good.”
“That is what I mean on my side—nor any good. It might be better to be alone—then (I suppose) you would never be bored, never feel the need of anything, the mere sound of a{v3-134} voice, some one going by. That may be your way of thinking, but it is not mine. If one has no society, one had better die at once and save trouble. That is what I should like to do.”
A certain feminine confusion in her argument, produced by haste and the stealing in of personal feeling, stopped Constance, who was too clear-headed not to see when she had got involved. Her confusion had the usual effect of touching her temper and causing a little crise of sentiment. The tears came to her eyes. She could be heroic, and veil her personal grievances like a social martyr so long as this was necessary in presence of the world; but in the present case it was not necessary: it was better, in fact, to let nature have its way.
“That will not be necessary, I hope,” said Waring, somewhat coldly. He thought of Frances with a sigh, who never bothered him, who was contented with everything! and carried on her own little thoughts, whatever they might be, her little drawings, her little life, so tranquilly, knowing nothing better. What was he to do, with the responsibility upon his hands{v3-135} of this other creature? whom all the same he could not shake off, nor even—as a gentleman, if not as a father—allow to perceive what an embarrassment she was. “Without going so far,” he said, “we must consult what is best to be done, since you feel it so keenly. My ordinary habits even of villeggiatura would not please you any better than staying at home, I fear. We used to go up to Dolceacqua, Frances and I; or to Eza; or to Porto Fino, on the opposite coast,—at no one of which places was there a soul—as you reckon souls—to be seen.”
“That is a great pity,” said Constance; “for even Frances, though she may have been a Stoic born, must have wanted to see a human creature who spoke English now and then.”
“A Stoic! It never occurred to me that she was a Stoic,” said Waring, with astonishment, and a sudden sense of offence. The idea that his little Frances was not perfectly happy, that she had anything to put up with, anything to forgive, was intolerable to him; and it was a new idea. He reflected that she had consented to go away with an ease which surprised him{v3-136} at the time. Was it possible? This suggestion disturbed him much in his certainty that his was absolutely the right way.
“If all these expedients are unsatisfactory,” he said, sharply, “perhaps you will come to my assistance, and tell me where you would be satisfied to go.”
“Papa,” said Constance, “I am going to make a suggestion which is a very bold one; perhaps you will be angry—but I don’t do it to make you angry; and, please, don’t answer me till you have thought a moment. It is just this—Why shouldn’t we go home?”
“Go home!” The words flew from him in the shock and wonder. He grew pale as he stared at her, too much thunderstruck to be angry, as she said.
Constance put up her hand to stop him. “I said, please don’t answer till you have thought.”
And then they sat for a minute or more looking at each other from opposite sides of the table—in that pause which comes when a new and strange thought has been thrown into the midst of a turmoil which it has power to excite{v3-137} or to allay. Waring went through a great many phases of feeling while he looked at his young daughter sitting undaunted opposite to him, not afraid of him, treating him as no one else had done for years—as an equal, as a reasonable being, whose wishes were not to be deferred to superstitiously, but whose reasons for what he did and said were to be put to the test, as in the case of other men. And he knew that he could not beat down this cool and self-possessed girl, as fathers can usually crush the young creatures whom they have had it in their power to reprove and correct from their cradles. Constance was an independent intelligence. She was a gentlewoman, to whom he could not be rude any more than to the Queen. This hushed at once the indignant outcry on his lips. He said at last, calmly enough, with only a little sneer piercing through his forced smile, “We must take care, like other debaters, to define what we mean exactly by the phrases we use. Home, for example. What do you mean by home? My home, in the ordinary sense of the word, is here.{v3-138}”
“My dear father,” said Constance, with the air, somewhat exasperated by his folly, of a philosopher with a neophyte, “I wish you would put the right names to things. Yes, it is quite necessar............