CHAPTER XXVIII.
A day or two after, they all went to the Priory for Easter.
The Priory was in the Isle of Wight, and it was Markham’s house. It was not a very great house, nor was it medieval and mysterious, as an unsophisticated imagination naturally expected. Its name came, it was said (or hoped), from an old ecclesiastical establishment once planted there; but the house itself was a sort of Strawberry-Hill Gothic, with a good deal of plaster and imitated ornament of the perpendicular kind,—that is to say, the worst of its kind, which is, unfortunately, that which most attracts the imitator. It stood on a slope above the beach, where the vegetation was soft and abundant, recalling more or less to the mind of Frances the aspect of the country with which she was best acquainted—the great bosquets of glistering green laurel and laurestine simulating the daphnes and orange-trees, and the grey downs above recalling in some degree the scattered hill-tops above the level of the olives; though the great rollers of the Atlantic which thundered in upon the beach were not like that rippling blue which edged the Riviera in so many rims of delicate colour. The differences, however, struck Frances less than the resemblance, for which she had scarcely been prepared, and which gave her a great deal of surprised pleasure at the first glance. This put temporarily out of her mind all the new and troublesome thoughts which her conversation with Markham had called forth, and which had renewed her curiosity about her step-brother, whom she had begun to receive into the landscape around her with the calm of habit and without asking any questions. Was he really bad, or rather, not good?—which was as far as Frances could go. Had he really been the cause, or partly the cause, of the separation between her father and mother? She was bewildered by these little breaks in the curtain which concealed the past from her so completely—that past which was so well known to the others around, which an invincible delicacy prevented her from speaking of or asking questions about. All went on so calmly around her, as if nothing out of the ordinary routine had ever been; and yet she was aware not only that much had been, but that it remained so distinctly in the minds of those smiling people as to influence their conduct and form their motives still. Though it was Markham’s house, it was his mother who was the uncontested sovereign, not less, probably more, than if the real owner had been her husband instead of her son. And even Frances, little as she was acquainted with the world, was aware that this was seldom the case. And why should not Markham at his age, which to her seemed at least ten years more than it was, be married, when it was already thought important that Constance should marry? These were very bewildering questions, and the moment to resume the subject never seemed to come.
There was a party in the house, which included Claude Ramsay, and Sir Thomas, the elder person in whom Lady Markham had thought there could be nothing particularly interesting. He was a very frequent member of the family party, all the same; and now that they were living under the same roof, Frances did not find him without interest. There was also a lady with two daughters, whose appearance was very interesting to the girl. They reminded her a little of Constance, and of the difficulty she had found in finding subjects on which to converse with her sister. The Miss Montagues knew a great many people, and talked of them continually; but Frances knew nobody. She listened with interest, but she could add nothing either to their speculations or recollections. She did not know anything about the contrivances which brought about the marriage between Cecil Gray and Emma White. She was utterly incompetent even to hazard an opinion as to what Lady Milbrook would do now; and she did not even understand about the hospitals which they visited and “took an interest” in. She tried very hard to get some little current with which she could make herself acquainted in the river of their talk; but nothing could be more difficult. Even when she brought out her sketch-book and opened ground upon that subject—about which the poor little girl modestly believed she knew by experience a very little—she was silenced in five minutes by their scientific acquaintance with washes, and glazing, and body colour, and the laws of composition. Frances did not know how to compose a picture. She said: “Oh no; I do not make it up in my head at all; I only do what I see.”
“You mean you don’t formulate rules,” said Maud. “Of course you don’t mean that you merely imitate, for that is tea-board style; and your drawings are quite pretty. I like that little bit of the coast.”
“How well one knows the Riviera,” said Ethel; “everybody who goes there has something to show. But I am rather surprised you don’t keep to one style. You seem to do a little of everything. Don’t you feel that flower-painting rather spoils your hand for the larger effects?”
“It wants such a very different distribution of light and shade,” said the other sister. “You have to calculate your tones on such a different scale. If you were working at South Kensington or any other of the good schools——”
“I should not advise her to do that—should you, Maud?—there is such a long elementary course. But I suppose you did your freehand, and all that, in the schoolroom?”
Frances did not know how to reply. She put away her little sketch with a sense of extreme humiliation. “Oh, I am afraid I am not fit to talk about it at all,” she said. “I don’t even know what words to use. It has been all imitation, as you say.”
The two young ladies smiled upon her, and reassured her. “You must not be discouraged. I am sure you have talent. It only wants a little hard work to master the principles; and then you go on so much easier afterwards,” they said. It puzzled Frances much that they did not produce their own sketches, which she thought would have been as good as a lesson to her; and it was not till long after that it dawned upon her that in this particular Maud and Ethel were defective. They knew how to do it, but could not do it; whereas she could do it without knowing how.