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
anyone. 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 anyone 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 favour."
"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 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 favour? 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."