“I am sure I can’t give an opinion,” cried Tasie, “for, of course, I don’t know anything about it. But George Gaunt has nothing but his pay; and Constance couldn’t be in love with him, could she? Oh no! I don’t know anything about it; but I can’t think a girl like Constance——”
“A girl in a false position,” said the chaplain’s wife, “is often glad to marry any one, just for a settled place in the world.”
“Oh, but not Constance, mamma! I am sure she is just amusing herself.”
“Tasie! you speak as if she were the man,” exclaimed Mrs Durant, in a tone of reproof.
CHAPTER XX.
The subjects of these consultations were at the moment in the full course of a sonata, and oblivious of everything else in the world but themselves, their music, and their concerns generally. A fortnight had passed of continual intercourse, of much music, of that propinquity which is said to originate more matches than any higher influence. Nothing can be more curious than the pleasure which young persons, and even persons who are no longer young, find perennially in this condition of suppressed love-making, this preoccupation of all thoughts and plans in the series of continually recurring meetings, the confidences, the divinations, the endless talk which is never exhausted, and in which the most artificial beings in the world probably reveal more of themselves than they themselves know—when the edge of emotion is always being touched, and very often, by one of the pair at least overpassed, in either a comic or a tragic way. It is not necessary that there should be any real charm in either party, and what is still more extraordinary, it is possible enough that one may be a person of genius, and the other not far removed from a fool; that one may be simple as a rustic, and the other a man or woman of the world. No rule, in short, holds in those extraordinary yet most common and everyday conjunctions. There is an amount of amusement, excitement, variety, to be found in them which is in no other kind of diversion. This is the great reason, no doubt, why flirtation never fails. It is dangerous, which helps the effect. For those sinners who go into it voluntarily for the sake of amusement, it has all the attractions of romance and the drama combined. If they are intellectual, it is a study of human character; in all cases, it is an interest which quickens the colour and the current of life: who can tell why or how? It is not the disastrous love-makings that end in misery and sin, of which we speak. It is those which are practised in society every day, which sometimes end in a heart-break indeed, but often in nothing at all.
Constance was not unacquainted with the amusement, though she was so young; and it is to be feared that she resorted to it deliberately for the amusement of her otherwise dull life at the Palazzo, in the first shock of her loneliness, when she felt herself abandoned. It was, of course, the victim himself who had first put the suggestion and the means of carrying it out into her hands. And she did not take it up in pure wantonness, but actually gave a thought to him, and the effect it might produce upon him, even in the very act of entering upon her diversion. She said to herself that Captain Gaunt, too, was very dull; that he would want something more than the society of his father and mother; that it would be a kindness to the old people to make his life amusing to him, since in that case he would stay, and in the other, not. And as for himself, if the worst came to the worst, and he fell seriously in love—as, indeed, seemed rather likely, judging from the fervour of the beginning—even that, Constance calculated, would do him no permanent harm. “Men have died,” she said to herself, “but not for love.” And then there is that famous phrase about a liberal education. What was it? To love her was a liberal education? Something of that sort. Then it could only be an advantage to him; for Constance was aware that she herself was cleverer, more cultivated, and generally far more “up to” everything than young Gaunt. If he had to pay for it by a disappointment, really everybody had to pay for their education in one way or another; and if he were disappointed, it would be his own fault; for he must know very well, everybody must know, that it was quite out of the question she should marry him in any circumstances—entirely out of the question; unless he was an absolute simpleton, or the most presumptuous young coxcomb in the world, he must see that; and if he were one or the other, the discovery would do him all the good in the world. Thus Constance made it out fully, and to her own satisfaction, that in any case the experience could do him nothing but good.
Things had gone very far during this fortnight—so far, that she sometimes had a doubt whether they had not gone far enough. For one thing, it had cost her a great deal in the way of music. She was a very accomplished musician for her age, and poor George Gaunt was one of the greatest bunglers that ever began to study the violin. It may be supposed what an amusement this intercourse was to Constance, when it is said that she bore with his violin like an angel, laughed and scolded and encouraged and pulled him along till he believed that he could play the waltzes of Chopin and many other things which were as far above him as the empyrean is above earth. When he paused, bewildered, imploring her to go on, assuring her that he could catch her up, Constance betrayed no horror, but only laughed till the tears came. She would turn round upon her music-stool sometimes and rally him with a free use of a superior kind of slang, which was unutterably solemn, and quite unknown to the young soldier, who laboured conscientiously with his fiddle in the evenings and mornings, till General Gaunt’s life became a burden to him—in a vain effort to elevate himself to a standard with which she might be satisfied. He went to practise in the morning; he went in the afternoon to ask if she thought of making any expedition? to suggest that his mother wished very much to take him to see this or that, and had sent him to ask would Miss Waring come? Constance was generally quite willing to come, and not at all afraid to walk to the bungalow with him, where, perhaps, old Luca’s carriage would be standing to drive them along the dusty road to the opening of some valley, where Mrs Gaunt, not a good climber, she allowed, would sit and wait for them till they had explored the dell, or inspected the little town seated at its head. Captain Gaunt was more punctilious about his mother’s presence as chaperon than Constance was, who felt quite at her ease roaming with him among the terraces of the olive woods. It was altogether so idyllic, so innocent, that there was no occasion for any conventional safeguards: and there was nobody to see them or remark upon the prolonged tête-à-tête. Constance came to know the young fellow far better than his mother did, better than he himself did, in these walks and talks.
“Miss Waring, don’t laugh at a fellow. I know I deserve it.—Oh yes, do, if you like. I had rather you laughed than closed the piano. I had a good long grind at it this morning; but somehow these triplets are more than I can fathom. Let us have that movement again, will you? Oh, not if you are tired. As long as you’ll let me sit and talk. I love music with all my heart, but I love——”
“Chatter,” said Constance. “I know you do. It is not a dignified word to apply to a gentleman; but you know, Captain Gaunt, you do love to chatter.”