I
"And your daughter?" said Lady Greyswood; "tell me about her. She must
be nice."
"Oh, yes, she's nice enough. She's a great comfort."
Mrs. Knocker hesitated a moment, then she went on: "Unfortunately she's
not good-looking--not a bit."
"That doesn't matter, when they're not ill-natured," rejoined,
insincerely, Lady Greyswood, who had the remains of great beauty.
"Oh, but poor Fanny is quite extraordinarily plain. I assure you it does
matter. She knows it herself; she suffers from it. It's the sort of
thing that makes a great difference in a girl's life."
"But if she's charming, if she's clever!" said Lady Greyswood, with more
benevolence than logic. "I've known plain women who were liked."
"Do you mean _me_, my dear?" her old friend straightforwardly inquired.
"But I'm not so awfully liked!"
"You?" Lady Greyswood exclaimed. "Why, you're grand!"
"I'm not so repulsive as I was when I was young perhaps, but that's not
saying much."
"As when you were young!" laughed Lady Greyswood. "You sweet thing, you
_are_ young. I thought India dried people up."
"Oh, when you're a mummy to begin with!" Mrs. Knocker returned, with her
trick of self-abasement. "Of course I've not been such a fool as to keep
my children there. My girl _is_ clever," she continued, "but she's
afraid to show it. Therefore you may judge whether, with her unfortunate
appearance, she's charming."
"She shall show it to _me!_ You must let me do everything for her."
"Does that include finding her a husband? I should like her to show it
to someone who'll marry her."
"_I_'ll marry her!" said Lady Greyswood, who was handsomer than ever
when she laughed and looked capable.
"What a blessing to meet you this way on the threshold of home! I give
you notice that I shall cling to you. But that's what I meant; that's
the thing the want of beauty makes so difficult--as if it were not
difficult enough at the best."
"My dear child, one meets plenty of ugly women with husbands," Lady
Greyswood argued, "and often with very nice ones."
"Yes, mine is very nice. There are men who don't mind one's face, for
whom beauty isn't indispensable, but they are rare. I don't understand
them. If I'd been a man about to marry I should have gone in for looks.
However, the poor child will _have_ something," Mrs. Knocker continued.
Lady Greyswood rested thoughtful eyes on her. "Do you mean she'll be
well off?"
"We shall do everything we can for her. We're not in such misery as we
used to be. We've managed to save in India, strange to say, and six
months ago my husband came into money (more than we had ever dreamed
of), by the death of his poor brother. We feel quite opulent (it's
rather nice!) and we should expect to do something decent for our
daughter. I don't mind it's being known."
"It _shall_ be known!" said Lady Greyswood, getting up. "Leave the dear
child to me!" The old friends embraced, for the porter of the hotel had
come in to say that the carriage ordered for her ladyship was at the
door. They had met in Paris by the merest chance, in the court of an
inn, after a separation of years, just as Lady Greyswood was going home.
She had been to Aix-les-Bains early in the season and was resting on her
way back to England. Mrs. Knocker and the General, bringing their
eastern exile to a close, had arrived only the night before from
Marseilles and were to wait in Paris for their children, a tall girl and
two younger boys, who, inevitably dissociated from their parents, had
been for the past two years with a devoted aunt, their father's maiden
sister, at Heidelberg. The reunion of the family was to take place with
jollity in Paris, whither this good lady was now hurrying with her
drilled and demoralized charges. Mrs. Knocker had come to England to see
them two years before, and the period at Heidelberg had been planned
during this visit. With the termination of her husband's service a new
life opened before them all, and they had plans of comprehensive
rejoicing for the summer--plans involving however a continuance, for a
few months, of useful foreign opportunities, during which various
questions connected with the organization of a final home in England
were practically to be dealt with. There was to be a salubrious house on
the continent, taken in some neighbourhood that would both yield a
stimulus to plain Fanny's French (her German was much commended), and
permit of frequent "running over" for the General. With these
preoccupations Mrs. Knocker, after her delightful encounter with Lady
Greyswood, was less keenly conscious of the variations of destiny than
she had been when, at the age of twenty, that intimate friend of her
youth, beautiful, loveable and about to be united to a nobleman of
ancient name, was brightly, almost insolently alienated. The less
attractive of the two girls had married only several years later, and
her marriage had perhaps emphasised the divergence of their ways. To-day
however the inequality, as Mrs. Knocker would have phrased it, rather
dropped out of the impression produced by the somewhat wasted and faded
dowager, exquisite still, but unexpectedly appealing, who made no secret
(an attempt that in an age of such publicity would have been useless),
of what she had had, in vulgar parlance, to put up with, or of her
having been left badly off. She had spoken of her children--she had had
no less than six--but she had evidently thought it better not to speak
of her husband. That somehow made up, on Mrs. Knocker's part, for some
ancient aches.
It was not till a year after this incident that, one day in London, in
her little house in Queen Street, Lady Greyswood said to her third son,
Maurice--the one she was fondest of, the one who on his own side had
given her most signs of affection:
"I don't see what there is for you but to marry a girl of a certain
fortune."
"Oh, that's not my line! I may be an idiot, but I'm not mercenary," the
young man declared. He was not an idiot, but there was an examination,
rather stiff indeed, to which, without success, he had gone up twice.
The diplomatic service was closed to him by this catastrophe; nothing
else appeared particularly open; he was terribly at leisure. There had
been a theory none the less that he was the ablest of the family. Two of
his brothers had been squeezed into the army and had declared rather
crudely that they would do their best to keep Maurice out. They were not
put to any trouble in this respect however, as he professed a complete
indifference to the trade of arms. His mother, who was vague about
everything except the idea that people ought to like him, if only for
his extraordinary good looks, thought it strange there shouldn't be some
opening for him in political life, or something to be picked up even in
the City. But no bustling borough solicited the advantage of his
protection, no eminent statesman in want of a secretary took him by the
hand, no great commercial house had been keeping a stool for him.
Maurice, in a word, was not "approached" from any quarter, and meanwhile
he was as irritating as the intending traveller who allows you the
pleasure of looking out his railway-connections. Poor Lady Greyswood
fumbled the social Bradshaw in vain. The young man had only one marked
taste, with which his mother saw no way to deal--an invincible passion
for photography. He was perpetually taking shots at his friends, but she
couldn't open premises for him in Baker Street. He smoked endless
cigarettes--she was sure they made him languid. She would have been more
displeased with him if she had not felt so vividly that someone ought to
do something for him; nevertheless she almost lost patience at his
remark about not being mercenary. She was on the point of asking him
what he called it to live on his relations, but she checked the words as
she remembered that she herself was the only one who did much for him.
Nevertheless, as she hated open professions of disinterestedness, she
replied that that was a nonsensical tone. Whatever one should get in
such a way one would give quite as much, even if it didn't happen to be
money; and when he inquired in return what it was (beyond the disgrace
of his failures) that she judged a fellow like him would bring to his
bride, she replied that he would bring himself, his personal qualities
(she didn't like to be more definite about his appearance), his name,
his descent, his connections--good honest commodities all, for which any
girl of proper feeling would be glad to pay. Such a name as that of the
Glanvils was surely worth something, and she appealed to him to try what
he could do with it.
"Surely I can do something better with it than sell it," said Maurice.
"I should like then very much to hear what," she replied very calmly,
waiting reasonably for his answer. She waited to no purpose; the
question baffled him, like those of his examinations. She explained that
she meant of course that he should care for the girl, who might easily
have a worse fault than the command of bread and butter. To humour her,
for he was always good-natured, he said after a moment, smiling:
"Dear mother, is she pretty?"
"Is who pretty?"
"The young lady you have in your eye. Of course I see you've picked her
out."
She coloured slightly at this--she had planned a more gradual
revelation. For an instant she thought of saying that she had only had a
general idea, for the form of his question embarrassed her; but on
reflection she determined to be frank and practical. "Well, I confess I
_am_ thinking of a girl--a very nice one. But she hasn't great beauty."
"Oh, then it's of no use."
"But she's delightful, and she'll have thirty thousand pounds down, to
say nothing of expectations."
Maurice Glanvil looked at his mother. "She must be hideous--for you to
admit it. Therefore if she's rich she becomes quite impossible; for how
can a fellow have the air of having been bribed with gold to marry a
monster?"
"Fanny Knocker isn't the least a monster, and I can see that she'll
improve. She's tall, and she's quite strong, and there's nothing at all
disagreeable about her. Remember that you can't have everything."
"I thought you contended that I could!" said Maurice, amused at his
mother's description of her young friend's charms. He had never heard
anyone damned, as regards that sort of thing, with fainter praise. He
declared that he would be perfectly capable of marrying a poor girl, but
that the prime necessity in any young person he should think of would be
the possession of a face--to put it at the least--that it would give him
positive pleasure to look at. "I don't ask for much, but I do ask for
beauty," he went on. "My eye must be gratified--I must have a wife I can
photograph."
Lady Greyswood was tempted to answer that he himself had good looks
enough to make a handsome couple, but she withheld the remark as
injudicious, though effective, for it was a part of her son's amiability
that he appeared to have no conception of his plastic side. He would
have been disgusted if she had put it forward; if he had the ideal he
had just described it was not because his own profile was his standard.
What she herself saw in it was a force for coercing heiresses. She had
however to be patient, and she promised herself to be adroit; which was
all the easier as she really liked Fanny Knocker.
The girl's parents had at last taken a house in Ennismore Gardens, and
the friend of her mother's youth had been confronted with the question
of redeeming the pledges uttered in Paris. This unsophisticated and
united family, with relations to visit and schoolboys' holidays to
outlive, had spent the winter in the country and had but lately begun to
talk of itself, extravagantly of course, through Mrs. Knocker's droll
lips, as open to social attentions. Lady Greyswood had not been false to
her vows; she had on the contrary recognised from the first that, if he
could only be made to see it, Fanny Knocker would be just the person to
fill out poor Maurice's blanks. She had kept this confidence to herself,
but it had made her very kind to the young lady. One of the forms of
this kindness had been an ingenuity in keeping her from coming to Queen
Street until Maurice should have been prepared. Was he to be regarded as
prepared now that he asserted he would have nothing to do with Miss
Knocker? This was a question that worried Lady Greyswood, who at any
rate said to herself that she had told him the worst. Her idea had been
to sound her old friend only after the young people should have met and
Fanny should have fallen in love. Such a catastrophe for Fanny belonged
for Lady Greyswood to that order of convenience that she could always
take for granted.
She had found the girl, as she expected, ugly and awkward, but had also
discovered a charm of character in her intelligent timidity. No one knew
better than this observant woman how thankless a task in general it was
in London to "take out" a plain girl; she had seen the nicest creatures,
in the brutality of balls, participate only through wistful, almost
tearful eyes; her little drawing-room, at intimate hours, had been
shaken by the confidences of desperate mothers. None the less she felt
sure that Fanny's path would not be rugged; thirty thousand pounds were
a fine set of features, and her anxiety was rather on the score of the
expectations of the young lady's parents. Mrs. Knocker had dropped
remarks suggestive of a high imagination, of the conviction that there
might be a real efficacy in what they were doing for their daughter. The
danger, in other words, might well be that no younger son need apply--a
possibility that made Lady Greyswood take all her precautions. The
acceptability of her favourite child was consistent with the rejection
of those of other people--on which indeed it even directly depended. She
remembered on the other hand the proverb about taking your horse to the
water; the crystalline spring of her young friend's homage might
overflow, but she couldn't compel her boy to drink. The clever way was
to break down his prejudice--to get him to consent to give poor Fanny a
chance. Therefore if she was careful not to worry him she let him see
her project as something patient and deeply wise; she had the air of
waiting resignedly for the day on which, in the absence of other
solutions, he would say to her: "Well, let me have a look at my fate!"
Meanwhile moreover she was nothing if not conscientious, and as she had
made up her mind about the girl's susceptibility she had a scruple
against exposing her. This exposure would not be justified so long as
Maurice's theoretic rigour should remain unabated.
She felt virtuous in carrying her scruple to the point of rudeness; she
knew that Jane Knocker wondered why, though so attentive in a hundred
ways, she had never definitely included the poor child in any invitation
to Queen Street. There came a moment when it gave her pleasure to
suspect that her old friend had begun to explain this omission by the
idea of a positive exaggeration of good faith--an honest recognition of
the detrimental character of the young man in ambush there. As Maurice,
though much addicted to kissing his mother at home, never dangled about
her in public, he had remained a mythical figure to Mrs. Knocker: he had
been absent (culpably--there was a touch of the inevitable incivility in
it), on each of the occasions on which, after their arrival in London,
she and her husband dined with Lady Greyswood. This astute woman knew
that her delightful Jane was whimsical enough to be excited
good-humouredly by a mystery: she might very well want to make Maurice's
acquaintance in just the degree in which she guessed that his mother's
high sense of honour kept him out of the way. Moreover she desired
intensely that her daughter should have the sort of experience that
would help her to take confidence. Lady Greyswood knew that no one had
as yet asked the girl to dinner and that this particular attention was
the one for which her mother would be most grateful. No sooner had she
arrived at these illuminations than, with deep diplomacy, she requested
the pleasure of the company of her dear Jane and the General. Mrs.
Knocker accepted with delight--she always accepted with delight--so that
nothing remained for Lady Greyswood but to make sure of Maurice in
advance. After this was done she had only to wait. When the dinner, on a
day very near at hand, took place (she had jumped at the first evening
on which the Knockers were free), she had the gratification of seeing
her prevision exactly fulfilled. Her whimsical Jane had thrown the game
into her hands, had been taken at the very last moment with one of her
Indian headaches and, infinitely apologetic and explanatory, had hustled
poor Fanny off with the General. The girl, flurried and frightened by
her responsibility, sat at dinner next to Maurice, who behaved
beautifully--not in the least as the victim of a trick; and when a
fortnight later Lady Greyswood was able to divine that her mind from
that evening had been filled with a virginal ecstasy, she was also
fortunately able to feel serenely, delightfully guiltless.