"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
upstairs 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 recognised 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.