Read Ebook: A House Divided Against Itself; vol. 2 of 3 by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

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"Ah, I understand you have heard a great deal about my sister. I suffer here from being compared with her. I am not nearly so good, so wise, as Frances. But is that my fault, Captain Gaunt? You are impartial; you are a new-comer. If I could, I would, be as nice as Frances, don't you believe?"

The young man gave Constance a look, which, indeed, she expected, and said with confusion, "I don't see--any need for improvement," and blushed as near crimson as was possible over the greenish brown of his Indian colour.

Constance for her part did not blush. She laughed, and made him an almost imperceptible curtsey. The ways of flirtation are not original, and all the parallels of the early encounters might be stereotyped, as everybody knows.

"You are very amiable," she said; "but then you don't know Frances, and your opinion, accordingly, is less valuable. I did not ask you, however, to believe me to be equal to my sister, but only to believe that I would be as nice if I could. However, all that is no explanation. We have a mother, you know, in England. We are, unfortunately, that sad thing, a household divided against itself."

Captain Gaunt was not prepared for such confidences. He grew still a little browner with embarrassment, and muttered something about being very sorry, not knowing what to say.

"You must find it," he said, knowing nothing more original to say, "dreadfully dull living here."

"I have not found anything as yet; I have only just come. I am no more than a few days older than you are. We can compare notes as time goes on. But perhaps you don't mean to stay very long in these abodes of the blest?"

"I don't know that I did intend it. But I shall stay now as long as ever I can," said the young man. Then--for he was shy--he added hastily, "It is a long time since I have seen my people, and they like to have me."

"Naturally. But you need not have spoiled what looked like a very pretty compliment by adding that. Perhaps you didn't mean it for a compliment? Oh, I don't mind at all. It is much more original, if you didn't mean it. Compliments are such common coin. But I don't pretend to despise them, as some girls do; and I don't like to see them spoiled," Constance said seriously.

The young man looked at her with consternation. After a while, his moustache expanded into a laugh, but it was a confused laugh, and he did not understand. Still less did he know how to reply. Constance had been used to sharper wits, who took her at half a word; and she was half angry to be thus obliged to explain.

"We are going to San Remo, as I told you," she said. "I am waiting for my father. We are going to look for a piano. Frances is not musical, so there is no piano in the house. You must come too, and give your advice. Oh, are you ready, papa? Captain Gaunt, who does not know San Remo, and who does know music, is coming with us to give us his advice."

"Come; we are all ready," said Constance, leading the way.

Waring had to let the young fellow precede him, to see him get into the carriage without any articulate murmur. As a matter of fact, a sort of stupor seized the father, altogether unaccustomed to be the victim of accidents. Frances might have lived by his side till she was fifty before she would have thought of inviting a stranger to be of their party--a stranger, a young man, which was a class of being with which Waring had little patience, a young soldier, proverbially frivolous, and occupied with foolish matters. Young Gaunt respectfully left to his senior the place beside Constance; but he placed himself opposite to her, and kept his eyes upon her with a devout attention, which Waring would have thought ridiculous had he not been irritated by it. The young fellow was a great deal too much absorbed to contribute much to the amusement of the party; and it irritated Waring beyond measure to see his eyes gleam from under his eyebrows, opening wider with delight, half closing with laughter, the ends of his moustache going up to his ears. Waring, an impartial spectator, was not so much impressed by his daughter's wit. He thought he had heard a great deal of the same before, or even better, surely better, for he could recollect that he had in his day been charmed by a similar treatment, which must have been much lighter in touch, much less commonplace in subject, because--he was charmed. Thus we argue in our generations. In the meantime, young Gaunt, though he had not been without some experience, looked at Constance from under his brows, and listened as if to the utterances of the gods. If only they could have had it all to themselves; if only the old father had been out of the way!

The sunshine, the sea, the beautiful colour, the unexpected vision round every corner of another and another picturesque cluster of towns and roofs; all that charm and variety which give to Italy above every country on earth the admixture of human interest, the endless chain of association which adds a grace to natural beauty, made very little impression upon this young pair. She would have been amused and delighted by the exercise of her own power, and he would have been enthralled by her beauty, and what he considered her wit and high spirits, had their progress been along the dullest streets. It was only Waring's eyes, disgusted by the prospect before him of his daughter's little artifices, and young Gaunt's imbecile subjection, which turned with any special consciousness to the varying blues of the sea, to the endless developments of the landscape. Flirtation is one of the last things in the world to brook a spectator. Its little absurdities, which are so delightful to the actors in the drama, and which at a distance the severest critic may smile at and forgive, excite the wrath of a too close looker-on, in a way quite disproportioned to their real offensiveness. The interchange of chatter which prevents, as that observer would say, all rational conversation, the attempts to charm, which are so transparent, the response of silly admiration, which is only another form of vanity--how profoundly sensible we all are of their folly! Had Constance taken as much pains to please her father, he would, in all probability, have yielded altogether to the spell; but he was angry, ashamed, furious, that she should address those wiles to the young stranger, and saw through him with a clearsightedness which was exasperating. It was all the more exasperating that he could not tell what she meant by it. Was it possible that she had already formed an inclination towards this tawny young stranger? Had his bilious hues affected her imagination? Love at first sight is a very respectable emotion, and commands in many cases both sympathy and admiration. But no man likes to see the working of this sentiment in a woman who belongs to him. Had Constance fallen in love? He grew angry at the very suggestion, though breathed only in the recesses of his own mind. A girl who had been brought up in the world, who had seen all kinds of people, was it possible that she should fall a victim in a moment to the attractions of a young nobody--a young fellow who knew nothing but India? That he should be subjected, was simple enough; but Constance! Waring's brow clouded more and more. He kept silent, taking no part in the talk, and the young fools did not so much as remark it, but went on with their own absurdity more and more.

The transformation of a series of little Italian municipalities, although in their nature more towns than villages, rendered less rustic by the traditions of an exposed coast, and many a crisis of self-defence, into little modern towns full of hotels and tourists, is neither a pleasant nor a lovely process. San Remo in the old days, before Dr Antonio made it known to the world, lay among its olive-gardens on the edge of the sea, which grew bluer and bluer as it crept to the feet of the human master of the soil, a delight to behold, a little picture which memory cherished. Wide promenades flanked with big hotels, with conventional gardens full of green bushes, and a kiosk for the band, make a very different prospect now. But then, in the old days, there could have been no music-sellers with pianos to let or sell; no famous English chemist with coloured bottles; no big shops in which travellers could be tempted. Constance forgot Captain Gaunt when she found herself in this atmosphere of the world. She began to remember things she wanted. "Papa, if you don't despise it too much, you must let me do a little shopping," she said. She wanted a hat for the sun. She wanted some eau-de-Cologne. She wanted just to run into the jeweller's to see if the coral was good, to see if there were any peasant-ornaments which would be characteristic. At all this her father smiled somewhat grimly, taking it as a part of the campaign into which his daughter had chosen to enter for the overthrow of the young soldier. But Constance was perfectly sincere, and had forgotten her campaign in the new and warmer interest.

"So long as you do not ask me to attend you from shop to shop," he said.

"Oh no; Captain Gaunt will come," said Constance.

Captain Gaunt was not a victim who required many wiles. He was less amusing than she had hoped, in so far that he had given in, in an incredibly short space of time. He was now in a condition to be trampled on at her pleasure, and this was unexciting. A longer resistance would have been much more to Constance's mind. Captain Gaunt accompanied her to all the shops. He helped her with his advice about the piano, bending his head over her as she ran through a little air or two, and struck a few chords on one after the other of the music-seller's stock. They were not very admirable instruments, but one was found that would do.

"You can bring your violin," Constance said; "we must try to amuse ourselves a little." This was before her father left them, and he heard it with a groan.

The drive home was scarcely more satisfactory. Young Gaunt had got a little courage by the episode of the shops. He ventured to tell her of the trifles he had brought with him from India, and to ask if Miss Waring would care to see them; and he described to her the progress he had made with his violin, and what his attainments were in music. Constance told him that the best thing he could do was to bring the said violin and all his music, so that they might see what they could do together. "If you are not too far advanced for me," she said with a laugh. "Come in the morning, when we shall not be interrupted."

Her father listened, but said nothing. His imagination immediately set before him the tuning and scraping, the clang of the piano, the shriek of the fiddle, and he himself only two rooms off, endeavouring in vain to collect his thoughts and do his work! Mr Waring's work was not of the first importance, but still it was his work, and momentous to him. He bore, however, a countenance unmoved, if very grave, and even endured without a word the young man's entrance with them, the consultation about where the piano was to stand, and tea afterwards in the loggia. He did not himself want any tea; he left the young people to enjoy this refreshment together while he retired to his bookroom. But with only two rooms between, and with his senses quickened by displeasure, he heard their voices, the laughter, the continual flow of talk, even the little tinkle of the teacups--every sound. He had never been disturbed by Frances' tea; but then, except Tasie Durant, there had been nobody to share it, no son from the bungalow, no privileged messenger sent by his mother. Mrs Gaunt's children, of whom she talked continually, had always been a nuisance, except to the sympathetic soul of Frances. But who could have imagined the prominence which they had assumed now?

Young Gaunt did not go away until shortly before dinner; and Constance, after accompanying him to the anteroom, went along the corridor singing, to her own room, to change her dress. Though her room was at the extremity of the suite, her father heard her light voice running on in a little operatic air all the time she made her toilet. Had it been described in a book, he thought to himself it would have had a pretty sound. The girl's voice, sweet and gay, sounding through the house, the voice of happy youth brightening the dull life there, the voice of innocent content betraying its own satisfaction with existence--satisfaction in having a young fool to flirt with, and some trumpery shops to buy unnecessary appendages in! At dinner, however, she made fun of young Gaunt, and the morose father was a little mollified. "It is rather dreadful for other people when there is an adoring mother in the background to think everything you do perfection," Constance said. "I don't think we shall make much of the violin."

"These are subjects on which you can speak with more authority than I--both the violin and the mother," said Waring.

"Oh," she cried, "you don't think mamma was one of the adoring kind, I hope! There may be things in her which might be mended; but she is not like that. She kept one in one's proper place. And as for the violin, I suspect he plays it like an old fiddler in the streets."

"You have changed your mind about it very rapidly," said Waring; but on the whole he was pleased. "You seemed much interested both in the hero and the music, a little while ago."

"Yes; was I not?" said Constance with perfect candour. "And he took it all in, as if it were likely. These young men from India, they are very ingenuous. It seems wicked to take advantage of them, does it not?"

"What were my intentions?" cried Constance, with an outburst of the gayest laughter. "Oh, what a pity I began! How sorry I am to have missed that! Do you think his mother will ask me, papa? It is generally the man, isn't it, who is questioned? and he says his intentions are honourable. Mine, I frankly allow, are not honourable."

"No, papa; only was a little nice to him, because he is lonely too."

"It is I who am complaining, Constance."

"Well, papa--but why? You told me last night to take what I had, since I could not have what I want."

"And you have acted upon my advice? With great promptitude, I must allow."

"Yes," she said with composure. "What is the use of losing time? It is not my fault if there is somebody here quite ready. It amuses him too. And what harm am I doing? A girl can't be asked--except for fun--those disagreeable questions."

"And therefore you think a girl can do--what would be dishonourable in a man."

"Oh, you are so much too serious," cried Constance. "Are you always as serious as this? You laughed when I told you about Fanny Gervoise. Is it only because it is me that you find fault? And don't you think it is a little too soon for parental interference? The Gaunts would be much surprised. They would think you were afraid for my peace of mind, papa--as her parents were afraid for Miss Tasie."

This moved the stern father to a smile. He had thought that Constance did not appreciate that joke; but the girl had more humour than he supposed. "I see," he said, "you will have your own way; but remember, Constance, I cannot allow it to go too far."

How could he prevent it going as far as she pleased? she said to herself with a little scorn, when she was alone. Parents may be medieval if they will; but the means have never yet been invented of preventing a woman, when she is so minded and has the power in her hands, from achieving her little triumph over a young man's heart.

"Where is George? I scarcely ever see him," said the General, in querulous tones. "He is always after that girl of Waring's. Why don't you try to keep him at home?"

Mrs Gaunt did not say that she had done her best to keep him at home, but found her efforts unsuccessful. She said apologetically, "He has so very little to amuse him here; and the music, you know, is a great bond."

"He plays like a beginner; and she, like a--like a--as well as a professional, I don't understand what kind of bond that can be."

"So much the greater a compliment is it to George that she likes his playing," responded the mother promptly.

"Oh, my dear," said Mrs Gaunt, "if it ever should come to that--think, what an excellent connection. I wish it had been Frances; I do wish it had been Frances. I had always set my heart on that. But the connection would be the same."

"You knew nothing about the connection when you set your heart on Frances. And I can't help thinking there is something odd about the connection. Why should that girl have come here, and why should the other one be spirited away like a transformation scene?"

"Well, my dear, it is in the peerage," said Mrs Gaunt. "Great families, we all know, are often very queer in their arrangements. But there can be no doubt it is all right, for it is in the peerage. If it had been Frances, I should have been too happy. With such a connection, he could not fail to get on."

The General kissed the end of his fingers and tossed them into the air. He was, perhaps, a little annoyed that his son had stepped in and monopolised the most amusing member of the society. And perhaps he did not think so badly of George's chances as he said.

"I have never seen much good come of great connections," said the General; but though his tone was that of a sceptic, his mind was softer than his speech. He, too, felt a certain elation in the thought that the youngest, who was not the clever one of the family, and who had not been quite so steady as might have been desired, was thus in the way of putting himself above the reach of fate. For of course, to be brother-in-law to a viscount was a good thing. It might not be of the same use as in the days when patronage ruled supreme; but still it would be folly to suppose that it was not an advantage. It would admit George to circles with which otherwise he could have formed no acquaintance, and make him known to people who could push him in his profession. George was the one about whom they had been most anxious. All the others were doing well in their way, though it was not a way which threw them into contact with viscounts or fine society. George would be over all their heads in that respect, and he was the one that wanted it most,--he was the one who was most dependent on outside aid.

"Women don't count," said the General, "as I've often told you. She's Waring's daughter."

"Is she a viscountess in her own right?"

This question brought Mrs Gaunt to a sudden pause. She looked at him with a startled air. "It is not through Mr Waring, that is clear," she said.

"But it is not in her own right--at least I don't think so; it is through her first husband, the father of that funny little creature" .

"If what? If your boy gets a wife who has titled connections, for that is all. A wife! and what is he to keep her on, in the name of heaven?"

"Oh, I suppose he has enough to live on. But as for pinching himself in order to enable his girl to marry your boy, I don't believe a word of it," exclaimed the General. Fortunately, being carried away by this wave of criticism, he had forgotten his wife's allusion to his own intentions in George's favour; and this was a subject on which she had no desire to be premature.

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