Waring went out with Constance when the sun got low in the skies. He took a much longer walk than was at all usual to him, and pointed out to her many points of view. The paths that ran among the olive woods, the little terraces which cut up the sides of the hills, the cool grey foliage and gnarled trunks, the clumps of flowers—garden flowers in England, but here as wild, and rather more common than blades of grass—delighted her; and her talk delighted him. He had not gone so far for months; nor had he, he thought, for years found the time go so fast. It was very different from Frances’ mild attempts at conversation. “Do you think, papa?” “Do you remember, papa?”—so many references to events so trifling, and her little talk about Tasi{v1-254}e’s plans and Mrs Gaunt’s news. Constance took him boldly into her life and told him what was going on in the world. Ah, the world! That was the only world. He had said in his bitterness, again and again, that Society was as limited as any village, and duchesses curiously like washerwomen; but when he found himself once more on the edge of that great tumult of existence, he was like the old war-horse that neighs at the sound of the battle. He began to ask her questions about the people he had known. He had always been a shy, proud man, and had never thrown himself into the stream; but still there had been people who had known him and liked him, or whom he had liked: and gradually he awakened into animation and pleasure.
When they met the old General taking his stroll too, before dinner, that leathern old Indian was dazzled by the bright creature, who walked along between them, almost as tall as the two men, with her graceful careless step and independent ways, not deferring to them as the other ladies did, but leading the conversation. Even General Gaunt began{v1-255} to think whether there was any one whom he could speak of, any one he had known, whom perhaps this young exponent of Society might know. She knew everybody. Even princes and princesses had no mystery for her. She told them what everybody said, with an air of knowing better, which in her meant no conceit or presumption, as in other young persons. Constance was quite unconscious of the possibility of being thus judged. She was not self-conscious at all. She was pleased to bring out her news for the advantage of the seniors. Frances was none the wiser when her sister told her the change that had come over the Grandmaisons, or how Lord Sunbury’s marriage had been brought about, and why people now had altered their hours for the Row. Frances listened; but she had never heard about Lord Sunbury’s marriage, nor why it should shock the elegant public. But the gentleman remembered his father, or they knew how young men commit themselves without intending it. It is not to be supposed that there was anything at all risqué in Constanc{v1-256}e’s talk. She touched, indeed, upon the edge of scandals which had been in the newspapers, and therefore were known even to people in the Riviera; but she did it with the most absolute innocence, either not knowing or not understanding the evil. “I believe there was something wrong, but I don’t know what—mamma would never tell me,” she said. Her conversation was like a very light graceful edition of a Society paper—not then begun to be—with all the nastiness and almost all the malice left out. But not quite all; there was enough to be piquant. “I am afraid I am a little ill-natured; but I don’t like that man,” she would say now and then. When she said, “I don’t like that woman,” the gentlemen laughed. She was conscious of having a little success, and she was pleased too. Frances perhaps might be a better housekeeper, but Constance could not but think that in the equally important work of amusing papa she would be more successful than Frances. It was not much of a triumph, perhaps, for a girl who had known so many; but yet it was the only one as{v1-257} yet possible in the position in which she now was.
“I suppose it is settled that Frances is to go?” she said, as General Gaunt took the way to his bungalow, and she and her father turned towards home.
“She seems to have settled it for herself,” he said.
“I am always repeating she is so like mamma—that is exactly what mamma would have done. They are very positive. You and I, papa, are not positive at all.”
“I think, my dear, that coming off as you did by yourself, was very positive indeed—and the first step in the universal turning upside-down which has ensued.”
“I hope you are not sorry I came?”
“No, Constance; I am very glad to have you;” and this was quite true, although he had said to Frances something that sounded very different. Both things were true—both that he wished she had never left her mother; that he wished she might return to her mother, and leave Frances with him as of old; and that he was very glad to have her here.{v1-258}
“If I were to go back, would not everything settle down just as it was before?”
Then he thought of what Frances, taught by the keenness of a personal experience, had said to him a few hours ago. “No,” he said; “nothing can ever be as it was before. We never can go back to what has been, whether the event that has changed it has been happy or sad.”
“Oh, surely sometimes,” said Constance. “That is a dreadful way to talk of anything so trifling as my visit. It could not make any real difference, because all the facts are just the same as they were before.”
To this he made no reply. She had no way, thanks to Frances, of finding out how different the position was. And she went on, after a pause—“Have you settled how she is to go?”
“I have not even thought of that.”
“But, papa, you must think of it. She cannot go unless you manage it for her. Markham heard of those people coming, and that made it quite easy for me. If Markham were here{v1-259}——”
“Heaven forbid!”
“I have always heard you were prejudiced about Markham. I don’t think he is very safe myself. I have warned Frances, whatever she does, not to let herself get into his hands.”
“Frances in Markham’s hands! That is a thing I could not permit for a moment. Your mother may have a right to Frances’ society, but none to throw her into the companionship of——”
“Her brother, papa.”
“Her brother! Her step-brother, if you please—which I think scarcely a relationship at all.”
Waring’s prejudices, when they were roused, were strong. His daughter looked up in amazement at his sudden passion, the frown on his face, and the fire in his eye.
“You forget that I have been brought up with Markham,” she said. “He is my brother; and he is a very good brother. There is nothing he will not do for me. I only warned Frances because—because she is different; because——”
“Because—she is a girl who ought not to{v1-260} breathe the same air with a young reprobate—a young——”
“Papa! you are mistaken. I don’t know what Markham may have been; but he is not a reprobate. It was because Frances does not understand chaff, you know. She would think he was in earnest, and he is never in earnest. She would take him seriously, and nobody takes him seriously. But if you think he is bad, there is nobody who thinks that. He is not bad; he only has ways of thinking——”
“Which I hope my daughters will never share,” said Waring, with a little formality.
Constance raised her head as if to speak, but then stopped, giving him a look which said more than words, and added no more.
In the meantime, Frances had been left alone. She had directed her letter, and left it to be posted. That step was taken, and could no more be thought over. She was glad to have a little of her time to herself, which once had been all to herself. She did not like as yet to broach the subject of her departure to Mariuccia; but she thought it all over very anxiously, trying to find some way which{v1-261} would take the burden of the household off the shoulders of Constance, who was not used to it. She thought the best thing to do would be to write out a series of menus, which Mariuccia might suggest to Constance, or carry out upon her own responsibility, whichever was most practicable; and she resolved that various little offices, which she had herself fulfilled, might be transferred to Domenico without interfering with her father’s comfort. All these arrangements, though she turned them over very soberly in her mind, had a bewildering, dizzying effect upon her. She thought that it was as if she were going to die. When she went away out of the narrow enclosure of this world, which she knew, it would be to something so entirely strange to her that it would feel like another life. It would be as if she had died. She would not know anything; the surroundings, the companions, the habits, all would be strange. She would have to leave utterly behind her everything she had ever known. The thought was not melancholy, as is in almost all cases the thought of leaving “the warm precincts of the cheerful day”; it made her heart{v1-262} swell and rise with an anticipation which was full of excitement and pleasure, but which at the same time had the effect of making her brain swim.
She could not make to herself any picture of the world to which she was going. It would be softer, finer, more luxurious than anything she knew; but that was all. Of her mother, she did try to form some idea. She was acquainted only with mothers who were old. Mrs Durant, who wore a cap, encircling her face, and tied under her chin; and Mrs Gaunt, who had grandchildren who were as old as Frances. Her own mother could not be like either of these; but still she would be old, more or less—would wrap herself up when she went out, would have grey, or even perhaps white hair (which Frances liked in an old lady: Mrs Durant wore a front, and Mrs Gaunt was suspected of dyeing her hair), and would not care to move about more than she could help. She would go out “into Society” beautifully dressed with lace and jewels; and Frances grew more dizzy than ever, trying to imagine herself standing behind this magnificent old figure, like a maid of hon{v1-263}our behind a queen. But it was difficult to imagine the details of a picture so completely vague. There was a general sense of splendour and novelty, a vague expectation of something delightful, which it was beyond her power to realise, but no more.
She had roused herself from the vague excitement of these dreams, which were very absorbing, though there was so little solidity in them, with a sudden fear that she was losing all the afternoon, and that it was time to prepare for dinner. She went to the corner of the loggia which commanded the road, to look out for Constance and her father. The road swept along below the Punto, leading to the town; and a smaller path traversing the little height, climbed upward to the platform on which the Palazzo stood. Frances did not at first remark, as in general every villager does, an unfamiliar figure making its way up this path. Her father and sister were not visible, and it was for them she was looking. Presently, however, her eye was caught by the stranger, no doubt an English tourist, with a gla............