The Wheel of Time, Collaboration, Owen Wingrave/The Wheel of Time/Chapter 2
II
She knew this fact about Fanny's mind, she believed, some time before Jane Knocker knew it; but she also had reason to think that Jane Knocker had known it for some time before she spoke of it. It was not till the middle of June, after a succession of encounters between the young people, that her old friend came one morning to discuss the circumstance. Mrs. Knocker asked her if she suspected it, and she promptly replied that it had never occurred to her. She added that she was extremely sorry, and that it had probably in the first instance been the fault of that injudicious dinner.
"Ah, the day of my headache—my miserable headache?" said her visitor. "Yes, very likely that did it. He's so dreadfully good-looking."
"Poor child, he can't help that. Neither can I!" Lady Greyswood ventured to add.
"He comes by it honestly. He seems very nice."
"He's nice enough, but he hasn't a farthing, you know, and his expectations are nil." They considered, they turned the matter about, they wondered what they had better do. In the first place there was no room for doubt; of course Mrs. Knocker hadn't sounded the girl, but a mother, a true mother, was never reduced to that. If Fanny was in every relation of life so painfully, so constitutionally awkward, the still depths of her shyness, of her dissimulation even, in such a predicament as this, might easily be imagined. She would give no sign that she could possibly smother, she would say nothing and do nothing, watching herself, poor child, with trepidation; but she would suffer, and some day, when the question of her future should really come up—it might, after all, in the form of some good proposal—they would find themselves beating against a closed door. That was what they had to think of; that was why Mrs. Knocker had come over. Her old friend cross-examined her with a troubled face, but she was very impressive with her reasons, her intuitions.
"I'll send him away in a moment, if you'd like that," Lady Greyswood said at last. "I'll try and get him to go abroad."
Her visitor made no direct reply to this, and no reply at all for some moments. "What does he expect to do—what does he want to do?" she asked.
"Oh, poor boy, he's looking—he's trying to decide. He asks nothing of any one. If he would only knock at a few doors! But he's too proud."
"Do you call him very clever?" Fanny's mother demanded.
"Yes, decidedly; and good and kind and true. But he has been unlucky."
"Of course he can't bear her!" said Mrs. Knocker, with a little dry laugh.
"Lady Greyswood stared; then she broke out: "Do you mean you'd be willing—?"
"He's very charming."
"Ah, but you must have great ideas."
"He's very well connected," said Mrs. Knocker, snapping the tight elastic on her umbrella.
"Oh, my dear Jane—'connected!'" Lady Greyswood gave a sigh of the sweetest irony.
"He's connected with you, to begin with."
Lady Greyswood put out her hand and held her visitor's for a moment. "Of course it isn't as if he were a different sort of person. Of course I should like it!" she added.
"Does he dislike her very much?"
Lady Greyswood looked at her friend with a smile. "He resembles Fanny—he doesn't tell. But what would her father say?" she went on.
"He doesn't know it."
"You've not talked with him?"
Mrs. Knocker hesitated a moment. "He thinks she's all right." Both the ladies laughed a little at the density of men; then the visitor said: "I wanted to see you first."
This circumstance gave Lady Greyswood food for thought; it suggested comprehensively that, in spite of a probable deficiency of zeal on the General's part, the worthy man would not be the great obstacle. She had begun so quickly to turn over in her mind the various ways in which this new phase of the business might make it possible the real obstacle should be surmounted that she scarcely heard her companion say next: "The General will only want his daughter to be happy. He has no definite ambitions for her. I dare say Maurice could make him like him." It was something more said by her companion about Maurice that sounded sharply through her reverie. "But unless the idea appeals to him a bit there's no use talking about it."
"At this Lady Greyswood spoke with decision. "It shall appeal to him. Leave it to me! Kiss your dear child for me," she added, as the ladies embraced and separated.
In the course of the day she made up her mind, and when she again broached the question to her son (it befell that very evening) she felt that she stood on firmer ground. She began by mentioning to him that her dear old friend had the same charming dream—for the girl—that she had; she sketched with a light hand a picture of their preconcerted happiness in the union of their children. When he replied that he couldn't for the life of him imagine what the Knockers could see in a poor beggar of a younger son who had publicly come a cropper, she took pains to prove that he was as good as any one else, and much better than many of the young men to whom persons of sense were often willing to confide their daughters. She had been in much tribulation over the circumstance announced to her in the morning, not knowing whether, in her present enterprise, to keep it back or put it forward. If Maurice should happen not to take it in the right way, it was the sort of thing that might dish the whole experiment. He might be bored, he might be annoyed, he might be horrified—there was no limit in such cases to the perversity, to the possible brutality of even the most amiable man. On the other hand he might be pleased, touched, flattered—if he didn't dislike the girl too much. Lady Greyswood could indeed imagine that it might be unpleasant to know that a person who was disagreeable to you was in love with you; so that there was just that risk to run. She determined to run it only if there should be absolutely no other card to play. Meanwhile she said: "Don't you see, now, how intelligent she is, in her quiet way, and how perfect she is at home—without any nonsense or affectation or ill-nature? She's not a bit stupid, she's remarkably clever. She can do a lot of things; she has no end of talents. Many girls with a quarter of her abilities would make five times the show."
"My dear mother, she's a great swell; I freely admit it. She's far too good for me. What in the world puts it into your two heads that she would look at me?"
At this Lady Greyswood was tempted to speak; but after an instant she said, instead: "She has looked at you, and you've seen how. You've seen her several times now, and she has been remarkably nice to you."
"Nice? Ah, poor girl, she's frightened to death!"
"Believe me—I read her," Lady Greyswood replied.
"She knows she has money, and she thinks I'm after it. She thinks I'm a ravening wolf, and she's scared."
"I happen to know, as a fact, that she's in love with you!" Before she could check herself Lady Greyswood had played her card, and though she held her breath a little after doing so, she felt that it had been a good moment. "If I hadn't known it,"
she hastened further to declare, "I should never have said another word." Maurice burst out laughing—how in the world did she know it? When she put the evidence before him she had the pleasure of seeing that he listened without irritation; and this emboldened her to say: "Don't you think you could try to like her?"
Maurice was lounging on a sofa opposite to her; jocose but embarrassed, he had thrown back his head, and while he stretched himself his eyes wandered over the upper expanse of the room. "It's very kind of her and of her mother, and I'm much obliged and all that, though a fellow feels rather an ass in talking about such a thing. Of course, also, I don't pretend—before such a proof of wisdom—that I think her in the least a fool. But, oh, dear!—" And the young man broke off with laughing impatience, as if he had too much to say. His mother waited an instant, then she uttered a persuasive, interrogative sound, and he went on: "It's only a pity she's so awful!"
"So awful?" murmured Lady Greyswood.
"Dear mother, she's about as ugly a woman as ever turned round on you. If there were only just a touch or two less of it!"
Lady Greyswood got up; she stood looking in silence at the tinted shade of the lamp. She remained in this position so long that he glanced at her—he was struck with the sadness in her face. He would have been in error, however, if he had suspected that this sadness was assumed for the purpose of showing him that she was wounded by his resistance, for the reflection that his last words caused her to make was as disinterested as it was melancholy. Here was an excellent, a charming girl—a girl, she was sure, with a rare capacity for devotion—whose future was reduced to nothing by the mere accident, in her face, of a certain want of drawing. A man could settle her fate with a laugh, could give her away with a snap of his fingers. She seemed to see Maurice administer to poor Fanny's image the little displeased shove with which he would have disposed of an ill-seasoned dish. Moreover, he greatly exaggerated. Her heart grew heavy with a sense of the hardness of the lot of women, and when she looked again at her son there were tears in her eyes that startled him. "Poor girl—poor girl!" she simply sighed, in a tone that was to reverberate in his mind and to constitute in doing so a real appeal to his imagination. After a moment she added: "We'll talk no more about her—no, no!"
All the same she went three days later to see Mrs. Knocker and say to her: "My dear creature, I think it's all right."
"Do you mean he'll take us up?"
"He'll come and see you, and you must give him plenty of chances." What Lady Greyswood would have liked to be able to say, crudely and comfortably, was, "He'll try to manage it—he promises to do what he can." What she did say, however, was, "He's greatly prepossessed in the dear child's favor."
"Then I dare say he'll be very nice."
"If I didn't think he'd behave like a gentleman I wouldn't raise a finger. The more he sees of her the more he'll be sure to like her."
"Of course with poor Fanny that's the only thing one can build on," said Mrs. Knocker. "There's so much to get over."
Lady Greyswood hesitated a moment. "Maurice has got over it. But I should tell you that at first he doesn't want it known."
"Doesn't want what known?"
"Why, the footing on which he comes. You see it's just the least bit experimental."
"For what do you take me?" asked Mrs. Knocker. "The child shall never dream that anything has ever passed between us. No more of course shall her father."
"It's too delightful of you to leave it that way," Lady Greyswood replied. "We must surround her happiness with every safeguard."
Mrs. Knocker sat pensive for some moments. "So that, if nothing comes of it, there's no harm done? That idea—that nothing may come of it—makes one a little nervous," she added.
"Of course I can't absolutely answer for my poor boy!" said Lady Greyswood, with just the faintest ring of impatience. "But he's much affected by what he knows—I told him. That's what moves him."
"He must of course be perfectly free."
"The great thing is for her not to know."
Mrs. Knocker considered. "Are you very sure?" She had apparently had a profounder second thought.
"Why, my dear—with the risk!"
"Isn't the risk, after all, greater the other way? Mayn't it help the matter on, mayn't it do the poor child a certain degree of good, the idea that, as you say, he's prepossessed in her favor? It would perhaps cheer her up, as it were, and encourage her, so that by the very fact of being happier about herself she may make a better impression. That's what she wants, poor thing—to be helped to hold up her head, to take herself more seriously, to believe that people can like her. And fancy, when it's a case of such a beautiful young man who's all ready to!"
"Yes, he's all ready to," Lady Greyswood conceded. "Of course it's a question for your own discretion. I can't advise you, for you know your child. But it seems to me a case for tremendous caution."
"Oh, trust me for that!" said Mrs. Knocker. "We shall be very kind to him," she smiled, as her visitor got up.
"He'll appreciate that. But it's too nice of you to leave it so."
Mrs. Knocker gave a hopeful shrug. "He has only to be civil to Blake!"
"Ah, he isn't a brute!" Lady Greyswood exclaimed, caressing her.
After this she passed a month of no little anxiety. She asked her son no question, and for two or three weeks he offered her no other information than to say two or three times that Miss Knocker really could ride; but she learned from her old friend everything she wanted to know. Immediately after the conference of the two ladies Maurice, in the Row, had taken an opportunity of making up to the girl. She rode every day with her father, and Maurice rode, though possessed of nothing in life to put a leg across; and he had been so well received that this proved the beginning of a custom. He had a canter with the young lady most days in the week, and when they parted it was usually to meet again in the evening. His relations with the household in Ennismore Gardens were indeed not left greatly to his initiative, he became on the spot the subject of perpetual invitations and arrangements, the centre of the friendliest manœuvres; so that Lady Greyswood was struck with Jane Knocker's feverish energy in the good cause—the ingenuity, the bribery, the cunning that an exemplary mother might be inspired to practise. She herself did nothing, she left it all to poor Jane, and this perhaps gave her for the moment a sense of contemplative superiority. She wondered if she would in any circumstances have plotted so almost fiercely for one of her children. She was glad her old friend's design had her full approbation, she held her breath a little when she said to herself: "Suppose I hadn't liked it—suppose it had been for Chumleigh!" Chumleigh was the present Lord Greyswood, whom his mother still called by his earlier designation. Fanny Knocker's thirty thousand would have been by no means enough for Chumleigh. Lady Greyswood, in spite of her suspense, was detached enough to be amused when her accomplice told her that "Blake" had said that Maurice really could ride. The two mothers thanked God for the riding—the riding would see them through. Lady Greyswood had watched Fanny narrowly in the Park, where, in the saddle, she looked no worse than lots of girls. She had no idea how Maurice got his mounts—she knew Chumleigh had none to give him; but there were directions in which she would have encouraged him to incur almost any liability. He was evidently amused and beguiled; he fell into comfortable attitudes on the soft cushions that were laid for him and partook with relish of the dainties that were served, he had his fill of the theatres, of the opera—entertainments of which he was fond. She could see he didn't care for the sort of people he met in Ennismore Gardens, but this didn't matter; so much as that she didn't ask of him. She knew that when he should have something to tell her he would speak; and meanwhile she pretended to be a thousand miles away. The only thing that worried her was that he had dropped photography. She said to Mrs. Knocker more than once: "Does he make love?—that's what I want to know!" to which this lady replied, with her incongruous drollery, "My dear, how can I make out? He's so little like Blake!" But she added that she believed Fanny was intensely happy. Lady Greyswood had been struck with the girl's looking so, and she rejoiced to be able to declare, in perfectly good faith, that she thought her greatly improved. "Didn't I tell you?" returned Mrs. Knocker to this with a certain accent of triumph. It made Lady Greyswood nervous, for she took it to mean that Fanny had had a hint from her mother of Maurice's possible intentions. She was afraid to ask her old friend directly if this were definitely true; poor Fanny's improvement was, after all, not a gain sufficient to make up for the cruelty that would reside in the sense of being rejected.
One day, in Queen Street, Maurice said, in an abrupt, conscientious way, "You were right about Fanny Knocker—she's a remarkably clever and a thoroughly nice girl; a fellow can really talk with her. But oh, mother!"
"Well, my dear?"
The young man's face wore a strange smile. "Oh, mother!" he expressively, quite tragically repeated. "But it's all right!" he presently added, in a different tone, and Lady Greyswood was reassured. This confidence, however, received a shock a little later, on the evening of a day that had been intensely hot. A torrid wave had passed over London, and in the suffocating air the pleasures of the season had put on a purple face. Lady Greyswood, whose own fine lowness of tone no temperature could affect, knew, in her bedimmed drawing-room, exactly the detail of her son's engagements. She pitied him—she had managed to keep clear; she had in particular a vision of a distribution of prizes, by one of the princesses, at a big horticultural show; she saw the sweltering starers (and at what, after all?) under a huge glass roof, while there passed before her, in a blur of crimson, the glimpse of uncomfortable cheeks under an erratic white bonnet, together also with the sense that some of Jane Knocker's ideas of pleasure were of the oddest (she had such lacunes), and some of the ordeals to which she exposed poor Fanny singularly ill-chosen. Maurice came in, perspiring but pale, (nothing could make him ugly!) to dress for dinner; and though he was in a great hurry, he found time to pant: "Oh, mother, what I'm going through for you!"
"Do you mean rushing about so—in this weather? We shall have a change to night."
"I hope so! There are people for whom it doesn't do at all; ah, not a bit!" said Maurice, with a laugh that she didn't fancy. But he went up-stairs before she could think of anything to reply, and after he had dressed, he passed out without speaking to her again. The next morning, on entering her room, her maid mentioned, as a delicate duty, that Mr. Glanvil, whose door stood wide open, and whose bed was untouched, had apparently not yet come in. While, however, her ladyship was in the first freshness of meditation on this singular fact, the morning's letters were brought up, and as it happened that the second envelope she glanced at was addressed in Maurice's hand, she was quickly in possession of an explanation still more startling than his absence. He wrote from a club, at nine o'clock the previous evening, to announce that he was taking the night train for the Continent. He hadn't dressed for dinner, he had dressed otherwise, and having stuffed a few things with surreptitious haste into a Gladstone bag, had slipped unperceived out of the house and into a hansom. He had sent to Ennismore Gardens, from his club, an apology—a request he should not be waited for; and now he should just have time to get to Charing Cross. He was off he didn't know where, but he was off he did know why. "You'll know why, dear mother, too, I think," this wonderful communication continued; "you'll know why, because I haven't deceived you. I've done what I could, but I've broken down. I felt to-day that it was no use; there was a moment, at that beastly exhibition, when I saw it, when the question was settled. The truth rolled over me in a stifling wave. After that I made up my mind there was nothing to do but to bolt. I meant to put it off till to-morrow, and to tell you first; but while I was dressing to-day it struck me irresistibly that my true course is to break now—never to enter the house or go near her again. I was afraid of a scene with you about this. I haven't uttered a word of 'love' to her (Heaven save us!), but my position this afternoon became definitely false, and that fact prescribes the course I am taking. You shall hear from me again in a day or two. I have the greatest regard for her, but I can't bear to look at her. I don't care a bit for money, but, hang it, I must have beauty! Please send me twenty pounds, poste restante, Boulogne."
"What I want, Jane, is to get at this," Lady Greyswood said, later in the day, with an austerity that was sensible even through her tears. "Does the child know, or doesn't she, what was at stake?"
"She hasn't an inkling of it—how should she? I recognized that it was best not to tell her—and I didn't."
On this, as Mrs. Knocker's tears had also flowed, Lady Greyswood kissed her. But she didn't believe her. Fanny herself, however, for the rest of the season, proved inscrutable. "She's a character!" Lady Greyswood reflected, with admiration. In September, in Yorkshire, the girl was taken seriously ill.