"What an idea!"
But the question had brought the colour to her face, and the sight of
this, with her evasive answer, kindled in Maurice's heart a sudden
relief, a delight almost, that was strange enough. Arthur was in
opposition, plainly, and that was why he had so promptly quitted London,
that was why Mrs. Tregent had refused Mr. Glanvil. The idea was an
instant balm. "He'd be quite right, poor fellow!" Maurice declared.
"I'll go abroad alone."
"Let me keep her six months," said Mrs. Tregent. "I'll try it--I'll try
it!"
"I wouldn't interfere for the world."
"It's an immense responsibility; but I should like so to succeed."
"She's an angel!" Maurice said.
"That's what gives me courage."
"But she mustn't dream of any plot," he added.
"For what do you take me?" Mrs. Tregent exclaimed with a smile which
lightened up for him intensely that far-away troubled past as to which
she had originally baffled his inquiry.
The joy of perceiving in an aversion to himself a possible motive for
Arthur's absence was so great in him that before he took leave of her he
ventured to say to his old friend: "Does he like her at all?"
"He likes her very much."
Maurice remembered how much he had liked Fanny Knocker and been willing
to admit it to his mother; but he presently observed: "Of course he
can't think her in the least pretty."
"As you say, she's an angel," Mrs. Tregent rejoined.
"She would pass for one better if she were a few inches taller."
"It doesn't matter," said Mrs. Tregent.
"One must remember that in that respect, at her age, she won't change,"
Maurice pursued, wondering after he had spoken whether he had pressed
upon the second pronoun.
"No, she won't change. But she's a darling!" Mrs. Tregent exclaimed; and
it was in these meagre words, which were only half however of what
passed between them, that an extraordinary offer was made and accepted.
They were so ready to understand each other that no insistence and no
professions now were necessary, and that Maurice Glanvil had not even
broken into a murmur of gratitude at this quick revelation of his old
friend's beautiful conception of a nobler remedy--the endeavour to place
their union outside themselves, to make their children know the
happiness they had missed. They had not needed to teach each other what
they saw, what they guessed, what moved them with pity and hope, and
there were transitions enough safely skipped in the simple conversation
I have preserved. But what Mrs. Tregent was ready to do for him filled
Maurice Glanvil, for days after this, with an even greater wonder, and
it seemed to him that not till then had she fully shown him that she had
forgiven him.
Six months, however, proved much more than sufficient for her attempt to
test the plasticity of her son. Maurice Glanvil went abroad, but was
nervous and restless, wandering from place to place, revisiting old
scenes and old friends, reverting, with a conscious, an even amused
incongruity, and yet with an effect that was momentarily soothing, to
places at which he had stayed with his wife, but feeling all the while
that he was really staking his child's happiness. It only half reassured
him to feel that Vera would never know what poor Fanny Knocker had been
condemned to know, for the daily contact was cruel from the moment the
issue was uncertain; and it only half helped him to reflect that she was
not so plain as Fanny, for had not Arthur Tregent given him the
impression that the young man of the present was intrinsically even more
difficult to please than the young man of the past? The letters he
received from Blankley conveyed no information about Arthur beyond the
fact that he was at home; only once Vera mentioned that he was
"remarkably good" to her. Toward the end of November he found himself in
Paris, submitting reluctantly to social accidents which put off from day
to day his return to London, when, one morning in the Rue de Rivoli, he
had to stop short to permit the passage of a vehicle which had emerged
from the court of an hotel. It was an open cab--the day was mild and
bright--with a small quantity of neat, leathery luggage, which Maurice
vaguely recognised as English, stowed in the place beside the
driver--luggage from which his eyes shifted straight to the occupant of
the carriage, a young man with his face turned to the allurements of
travel and the urbanity of farewell to bowing waiters still visible in
it. The young man was so bright and so on his way, as it were, that
Maurice, standing there to make room for him, felt for the instant that
he too had taken a tip. The feeling became acute as he recognised that
this humiliating obligation was to no less a person than Arthur Tregent.
It was Arthur who was so much on his way--it was Arthur who was catching
a train. He noticed his mother's friend as the cab passed into the
street, and, with a quick demonstration, caused the driver to pull up.
He jumped out, and under the arcade the two men met with every
appearance of cordiality, but with conscious confusion. Each of them
coloured perceptibly, and Maurice was angry with himself for blushing
before a boy. Long afterwards he remembered how cold, and even how hard,
was the handsome clearness of the young eyes that met his own in an
artificial smile.
"You here? I thought you were at Blankley."
"I left Blankley yesterday; I'm on my way to Spain."
"To Spain? How charming!"
"To join a friend there--just for a month or two."
"Interesting country--well worth seeing. Your mother's all right?"
"Oh, yes, all right. And Miss Glanvil----" Arthur Tregent went on,
cheerfully.
"Vera's all right?" interrupted Maurice, with a still gayer tone.
"Everyone, everything's all right!" Arthur laughed.
"Well, I mustn't keep you. Bon voyage!"
Maurice Glanvil, after the young man had driven on, flattered himself
that in this brief interview he had suppressed every indication of
surprise; but that evening he crossed the Channel, and on the morrow he
went down to Blankley. "To Spain--to Spain!" the words kept repeating
themselves in his ears. He, when he had taken flight in a similar
conjunction, had only got, for the time, as far as Boulogne; and he was
reminded afresh of the progress of the species. When he was introduced
into the drawing-room at Blankley--a chintzy, flowery, friendly
expanse--Mrs. Tregent rose before him alone and offered him a face that
she had never shown before. She was white and she looked scared; she
faltered in her movement to meet him.
"I met Arthur in Paris, so I thought I might come."
Oh, yes; there was pain in her face, and a kind of fear of him that
frightened him, but their hands found each other's hands while she
replied: "He went off--I didn't know it."
"But you had a letter the next morning," Maurice said.