THREE months passed. During that time Frank remained in London; pursuing his new duties, and writing occasionally to report himself to Mr. Vanstone, as he had promised.
His letters were not enthusiastic on the subject of mercantile occupations. He described himself as being still painfully loose in his figures. He was also more firmly persuaded than ever—now when it was unfortunately too late—that he preferred engineering to trade. In spite of this conviction; in spite of headaches caused by sitting on a high stool and stooping over ledgers in unwholesome air; in spite of want of society, and hasty breakfasts, and bad dinners at chop-houses, his attendance at the office was regular, and his diligence at the desk unremitting. The head of the department in which he was working might be referred to if any corroboration of this statement was desired. Such was the general tenor of the letters; and Frank’s correspondent and Frank’s father differed over them as widely as usual. Mr. Vanstone accepted them as proofs of the steady development of industrious principles in the writer. Mr. Clare took his own characteristically opposite view. “These London men,” said the philosopher, “are not to be trifled with by louts. They have got Frank by the scruff of the neck—he can’t wriggle himself free—and he makes a merit of yielding to sheer necessity.”
The three months’ interval of Frank’s probation in London passed less cheerfully than usual in the household at Combe-Raven.
As the summer came nearer and nearer, Mrs. Vanstone’s spirits, in spite of her resolute efforts to control them, became more and more depressed.
“I do my best,” she said to Miss Garth; “I set an example of cheerfulness to my husband and my children—but I dread July.” Norah’s secret misgivings on her sister’s account rendered her more than usually serious and uncommunicative, as the year advanced. Even Mr. Vanstone, when July drew nearer, lost something of his elasticity of spirit. He kept up appearances in his wife’s presence—but on all other occasions there was now a perceptible shade of sadness in his look and manner. Magdalen was so changed since Frank’s departure that she helped the general depression, instead of relieving it. All her movements had grown languid; all her usual occupations were pursued with the same weary indifference; she spent hours alone in her own room; she lost her interest in being brightly and prettily dressed; her eyes were heavy, her nerves were irritable, her complexion was altered visibly for the worse—in one word, she had become an oppression and a weariness to herself and to all about her. Stoutly as Miss Garth contended with these growing domestic difficulties, her own spirits suffered in the effort. Her memory reverted, oftener and oftener, to the March morning when the master and mistress of the house had departed for London, and then the first serious change, for many a year past, had stolen over the family atmosphere. When was that atmosphere to be clear again? When were the clouds of change to pass off before the returning sunshine of past and happier times?
The spring and the early summer wore away. The dreaded month of July came, with its airless nights, its cloudless mornings, and its sultry days.
On the fifteenth of the month, an event happened which took every one but Norah by surprise. For the second time, without the slightest apparent reason—for the second time, without a word of warning beforehand—Frank suddenly re-appeared at his father’s cottage.
Mr. Clare’s lips opened to hail his son’s return, in the old character of the “bad shilling”; and closed again without uttering a word. There was a portentous composure in Frank’s manner which showed that he had other news to communicate than the news of his dismissal. He answered his father’s sardonic look of inquiry by at once explaining that a very important proposal for his future benefit had been made to him, that morning, at the office. His first idea had been to communicate the details in writing; but the partners had, on reflection, thought that the necessary decision might be more readily obtained by a personal interview with his father and his friends. He had laid aside the pen accordingly, and had resigned himself to the railway on the spot.
After this preliminary statement, Frank proceeded to describe the proposal which his employers had addressed to him, with every external appearance of viewing it in the light of an intolerable hardship.
The great firm in the City had obviously made a discovery in relation to their clerk, exactly similar to the discovery which had formerly forced itself on the engineer in relation to his pupil. The young man, as they politely phrased it, stood in need of some special stimulant to stir him up. His employers (acting under a sense of their obligation to the gentleman by whom Frank had been recommended) had considered the question carefully, and had decided that the one promising use to which they could put Mr. Francis Clare was to send him forthwith into another quarter of the globe.
As a consequence of this decision, it was now, therefore, proposed that he should enter the house of their correspondents in China; that he should remain there, familiarizing himself thoroughly on the spot with the tea trade and the silk trade for five years; and that he should return, at the expiration of this period, to the central establishment in London. If he made a fair use of his opportunities in China, he would come back, while still a young man, fit for a position of trust and emolument, and justified in looking forward, at no distant date, to a time when the House would assist him to start in business for himself. Such were the new prospects which—to adopt Mr. Clare’s theory—now forced themselves on the ever-reluctant, ever-helpless and ever-ungrateful Frank. There was no time to be lost. The final answer was to be at the office on “Monday, the twentieth”: the correspondents in China were to be written to by the mail on that day; and Frank was to follow the letter by the next opportunity, or to resign his chance in favor of some more enterprising young man.
Mr. Clare’s reception of this extraordinary news was startling in the extreme. The glorious prospect of his son’s banishment to China appeared to turn his brain. The firm pedestal of his philosophy sank under him; the prejudices of society recovered their hold on his mind. He seized Frank by the arm, and actually accompanied him to Combe-Raven, in the amazing character of visitor to the house!
“Here I am with my lout,” said Mr. Clare, before a word could be uttered by the astonished family. “Hear his story, all of you. It has reconciled me, for the first time in my life, to the anomaly of his existence.” Frank ruefully narrated the Chinese proposal for the second time, and attempted to attach to it his own supplementary statement of objections and difficulties. His father stopped him at the first word, pointed peremptorily southeastward (from Somersetshire to China); and said, without an instant’s hesitation: “Go!” Mr. Vanstone, basking in golden visions of his young friend’s future, echoed that monosyllabic decision with all his heart. Mrs. Vanstone, Miss Garth, even Norah herself, spoke to the same purpose. Frank was petrified by an absolute unanimity of opinion which he had not anticipated; and Magdalen was caught, for once in her life, at the end of all her resources.
So far as practical results were concerned, the sitting of the family council began and ended with the general opinion that Frank must go. Mr. Vanstone’s faculties were so bewildered by the son’s sudden arrival, the father’s unexpected visit, and the news they both brought with them, that he petitioned for an adjournment before the necessary arrangements connected with his young friend’s departure were considered in detail. “Suppose we all sleep upon it?” he said. “Tomorrow our heads will feel a little steadier; and to-morrow will be time enough to decide all uncertainties.” This suggestion was readily adopted; and all further proceedings stood adjourned until the next day.
That next day was destined to decide more uncertainties than Mr. Vanstone dreamed of.
Early in the morning, after making tea by herself as usual, Miss Garth took her parasol and strolled into the garden. She had slept ill; and ten minutes in the open air before the family assembled at breakfast might help to compensate her, as she thought, for the loss of her night’s rest.
She wandered to the outermost boundary of the flower-garden, and then returned by another path, which led back, past the side of an ornamental summer-house commanding a view over the fields from a corner of the lawn. A slight noise—like, and yet not like, the chirruping of a bird—caught her ear as she approached the summer-house. She stepped round to the entrance; looked in; and discovered Magdalen and Frank seated close together. To Miss Garth’s horror, Magdalen’s arm was unmistakably round Frank’s neck; and, worse still, the position of her face, at the moment of discovery, showed beyond all doubt that she had just been offering to the victim of Chinese commerce the first and foremost of all the consolations which a woman can bestow on a man. In plainer words, she had just given Frank a kiss.
In the presence of such an emergency as now confronted her, Miss Garth felt instinctively that all ordinary phrases of reproof would be phrases thrown away.
“I presume,” she remarked, addressing Magdalen with the merciless self-possession of a middle-aged lady, unprovided for the occasion with any kissing remembrances of her own—“I presume (whatever excuses your effrontery may suggest) you will not deny that my duty compels me to mention what I have just seen to your father?”
“I will save you the trouble,” replied Magdalen, composedly. “I will mention it to him myself.”
With those words, she looked round at Frank, standing trebly helpless in a corner of the summer-house. “You shall hear what happens,” she said, with her bright smile. “And so shall you,” she added for Miss Garth’s especial benefit, as she sauntered past the governess on her way back to the breakfast-table. The eyes of Miss Garth followed her indignantly; and Frank slipped out on his side at that favorable opportunity.
Under these circumstances, there was but one course that any respectable woman could take—she could only shudder. Miss Garth registered her protest in that form, and returned to the house.
When breakfast was over, and when Mr. Vanstone’s hand descended to his pocket in search of his cigar-case, Magdalen rose; looked significantly at Miss Garth; and followed her father into the hall.
“Papa,” she said, “I want to speak to you this morning—in private.”
“Ay! ay!” returned Mr. Vanstone. “What about, my dear!”
“About—” Magdalen hesitated, searching for a satisfactory form of expression, and found it. “About business, papa,” she said.
Mr. Vanstone took his garden hat from the hall table—opened his eyes in mute perplexity—attempted to associate in his mind the two extravagantly dissimilar ideas of Magdalen and “business”—failed—and led the way resignedly into the garden.
His daughter took his arm, and walked with him to a shady seat at a convenient distance from the house. She dusted the seat with her smart silk apron before her father occupied it. Mr. Vanstone was not accustomed to such an extraordinary act of attention as this. He sat down, looking more puzzled than ever. Magdalen immediately placed herself on his knee, and rested her head comfortably on his shoulder.
“Am I heavy, papa?” she asked.
“Yes, my dear, you are,” said Mr. Vanstone—“but not too heavy for me. Stop on your perch, if you like it. Well? And what may this business happen to be?”
“It begins with a question.”
“Ah, indeed? That doesn’t surprise me. Business with your sex, my dear, always begins with questions. Go on.”
“Papa! do you ever intend allowing me to be married?”
Mr. Vanstone’s eyes opened wider and wider. The question, to use his own phrase, completely staggered him.
“This is business with a vengeance!” he said. “Why, Magdalen! what have you got in that harum-scarum head of yours now?”
“I don’t exactly know, papa. Will you answer my question?”
“I will if I can, my dear; you rather stagger me. Well, I don’t know. Yes; I suppose I must let you be married one of these days—if we can find a good husband for you. How hot your face is! Lift it up, and let the air blow over it. You won’t? Well—have your own way. If talking of business means tickling your cheek against my whisker I’ve nothing to say against it. Go on, my dear. What’s the next question? Come to the point.”
She was far too genuine a woman to do anything of the sort. She skirted round the point and calculated her distance to the nicety of a hair-breadth.
“We were all very much surprised yesterday—were we not, papa? Frank is wonderfully lucky, isn’the?”
“He’s the luckiest dog I ever came across,” said Mr. Vanstone “But what has that got to do with this business of yours? I dare say you see your way, Magdalen. Hang me if I can see mine!”
She skirted a little nearer.
“I suppose he will make his fortune in China?” she said. “It’s a long way off, isn’t it? Did you observe, papa, that Frank looked sadly out of spirits yesterday?”
“I was so surprised by the news,” said Mr. Vanstone, “and so staggered by the sight of old Clare’s sharp nose in my house, that I didn’t much notice. Now you remind me of it—yes. I don’t think Frank took kindly to his own good luck; not kindly at all.”
“Do you wonder at that, papa?”
“Yes, my dear; I do, rather.”
“Don’t you think it’s hard to be sent away for five years, to make your fortune among hateful savages, and lose sight of your friends at home for all that long time? Don’t you think Frank will miss us sadly? Don’t you, papa?—don’t you?”
“Gently, Magdalen! I’............