Chapter Seventeen.
The Result of Incoherence.
Millie, with shame at her own appropriation, which, looked back upon, appeared excessive, decided that Fanny had been bored that night, and no wonder, with so floundering an acquaintance thrust upon her! She admired her friend, penitently, for that last offer of a plank of refuge, and hoped that bashfulness might prevent his accepting it.
“Why were you so kind, Fanny?” she remonstrated. “I am sure you had done all that could have been expected of you!”
“Oh, and more. He never expects,” said Lady Fanny, musingly. “One ought to do something for the helpless. You, at any rate, might be obliged to him.”
It was Mrs Ravenhill who asked why?
Lady Fanny considered that he made a second centre of conversation, and, cried out at, maintained her assertion.
“First you have to discover what he has to say, and then to help him to say it. It is very absorbing.”
“I think you might have been more helpful, then,” Mrs Ravenhill remarked, smiling. “For a long time you left him to me, and what did I know of what he had to say! And I don’t approve of your laughing at him, for he is a good man, and carries it in his face.”
“Is goodness pink?” asked Fanny, with an innocent air. The next moment she cried out, “Oh, don’t listen to me! Good? He is better than all of us put together. The poor love him. You don’t know how he has changed the place where he has been working. Even Milborough hasn’t a word to say against him. There was a young fellow at Huntsdon going to the bad as fast as he could, and Mr Elliot got hold of him and never let go again—that’s the only way of describing it. It was splendid. And then one makes much of these little trifles, as if they mattered! as if they could compare with the real thing!”
And once more Milly caught a gleam in the grey Irish eyes, which, if it had been possible, looked like tears.
Mrs Ravenhill, suddenly enlightened, was beginning to say something in praise of such a character, when Fanny interrupted her.
“No. He’s absurd, ridiculous!” she cried, and tore him to tatters.
This was at breakfast. Afterwards, when Millie was alone with her mother, she flew at her with questions. What did she think? Was it possible? Mrs Ravenhill was as much at sea as herself. Everything pointed to unlikelihood, yet nothing else seemed to explain those rushing words with which Fanny had painted a noble nature. They talked amazedly. The last person they would have expected! Mrs Ravenhill was more quickly reconciled than Millie.
“If she respects him, I have no fear; and what else can have attracted her? I hope he does not think of her fortune, but I should not suspect him.”
“No, no! But a man that she laughs at!”
“It is her revenge on her own heart. I can hardly fancy Milborough approving, still—in a year she will be her own mistress. And, after all, Millie, we may have gone too far. It may be no more than girlish enthusiasm. You know, as well as I, how quickly Fanny is stirred by what she admires, and, poor child, Thorpe has not too much of that! If I were you, I would say nothing to her until she speaks herself.”
Not a word did Fanny breathe, and perhaps was unconscious of having betrayed feeling. A suggestion made that she might not care to accompany Mrs Ravenhill and Millie for some shopping, she set aside, declaring that with fashion changing every week, she must make the most of being at head-quarters. Mrs Ravenhill satisfied herself by leaving word, unknown to her, that if Mr Elliot appeared they would be at home for tea. However, the precaution was useless, for he did not come, and Fanny made no remark.
By the next day, Mrs Ravenhill, now on the look-out for signs, convinced herself that her guest was restless, and earned off Millie. Fanny, left to herself, wandered about the house, and peeped over the stairs when a hesitating ring sounded, declaring that it must be his.
“He cannot even ring like other people, he turns it into an apology,” she cried, angry with every shortcoming. But when only a card followed the ring she grew uneasy, beginning to fear she knew not what, wandered on the landing, watched from the balcony. “This living?—he is in the tortures of doubt; so am I. It would make all the difference; perhaps provide him with a tongue, at least give me an excuse. An excuse! Now, Fanny the coward, Fanny the worldly”—she scourged herself with scorn—“what excuse do you want? You know him—that he is worth a hundred of those butterfly nonentities who are suggested as appropriate husbands—yet you have not the courage of your convictions.” Then, with a laugh, she relented from her fierceness. “When the courage of convictions includes something extremely like having to offer oneself, one may be forgiven hesitation—”
At this point Mr Elliot was announced, and Fanny coloured as furiously as if she had been caught in the act she was contemplating. She even descended to an untruth by implication of surprise.
“You are the most surprising person! Who would have expected you to be still in London!”
“Did you think I had left?”
Mr Elliot was no longer shy, and his look, fixed on hers, was as frank and open as a child’s. Lady Fanny fidgeted, and confessed—
“No, no, I did not.”
“I could not have gone without seeing you. Do you recollect what I said I wanted?” Fanny nodded, and remarked that it could only be a question of what he wished himself.
“Scarcely that,” he said, without looking at her. “But circumstances have forced me into decision without asking your advice.”
She leant forward eagerly.
“I am very glad. I hope you asked nobody. Why should you hesitate? It was offered to you because you were the best man. The best man should have it. Yes, I am glad, for it shows that they can appreciate—”
She stopped, fearing to have said too much. He fingered a paper-knife on the table, and eyed the floor. When he spoke, it was with a certain stiffness.
“I shall always be sensible of the kindness—the undeserved kindness. It has made me more ashamed of my own failures than ever before—”
“Oh, no,” cried Lady Fanny, happy enough to jest once more, “I forbid your growing more retiring. Go on, please, go on; never mind the failures. I dare say your letter of acceptance was as full of apologies as if you were a fraud.”
“I—I—” he became nervous again, but recovered himself. “I have refused.”
“Refused!” Her voice was tragic.
“I could do nothing else.”
“Why, why? What possessed you!”
“There was another.”
“Another? What other?” She grew ashamed of her eagerness, and sat back in her chair trying to look unconcerned. “Of course I have no right to ask.”
This roused him. He looked at her like a man who had been struck. “You are the one, the only person—forgive me, I don’t know what I am saving.”
She looked away. “If you were kindly to explain what you have done, and why?”
“Yes, yes, I came here to do so. When—when I had seen you on Monday night, I thought—I fancied—yes, I determined to accept the offer. There seemed no reason against it, except the doubt whether I should not be filling the place of another man who would be better fitted. But—one may carry that fear too far—”
Fanny played with a flower. “Is it possible!”
“I thought so,” he said humbly. “The offer came unsought, and it did not appear to me that I should be right to reject it until to-day. To-day I had a letter.”
“From the Duke?”
“No. From the wife of a man who, it appears, hoped to have had the living.”
“Men hope easily.”
“He had grounds. The Duke replied to him that if he had not offered it already to me, he should have been glad to have assisted him.”
“He had applied for it! What becomes of your scruples in such a case?”
“They belong only to myself. Heaven forbid that I should judge a man who has worked on a pittance, and is saddled with half-a-dozen children.”
“Oh, of course!” cried Lady Fanny pettishly. “I wanted to hear that conclusion. Are you certain there are only six?” He went on, unheeding.
“There can be no doubt that he wants it more. And he is a good man. I know him. He will work the parish well.”
“Pray, are you aware that the Duke never offers a second living to a man who has refused one?”
“I should not expect it.”
“And you do not care! It is nothing to you that—”
So far Fanny’s words rushed, then she suddenly stopped and crimsoned. He drew a hard breath, and was silent, and with him silence said more than speech. She interpreted it as a declaration that he knew what he was renouncing.
After what seemed to her a long time she forced herself to say—
“Have you absolutely decided?”
“I could do nothing else. You—you disapprove?”
“I? It concerns yourself only.”
“Yes—of course!”
He sighed and stood up. Lady Fanny’s foot impatiently patted the carpet. She turned her head away, and remarked that he had probably consulted his friends before making a wreck of his prospects.
“There is no one to consult,” he returned. “If my father had lived, he, I think, would have bid me do as I am doing. It has helped me, to remember that.”
“I don’t think you appear to require consolation,” said Fanny airily, and hated herself for her cruelty. She used it as a spur, wanting him to say more, but he only answered—
“One should not.”
“You prefer to be a curate all your life?”
“Prefer? No. I am dishonest if I give you that impression, but in this case there was nothing else to be done.”
“I wonder how many people would have thought so! Well, as I have said more than once, you must please yourself. For the sake of a man whom you have never seen, and on account of a few quixotic scruples, you give up your own advancement, and disappoint all—all your friends.”
The words were indignant, but the voice trembled. He made a step towards her, checked himself, and drew back. The hand with which he grasped a chair tightened its hold as he said slowly—
“Try to think of me kindly.”
“You go back to Huntsdon?”
“For a time, a short time. Afterwards I shall look out for work in London.”
“Oh!”
She turned away her head, then, as he offered his hand, remarked, “You will not stay to tea?”
He would not. Something was murmured of an appointment, and before she quite realised that he had said good-bye, she heard the front door slam. She flew to the window only to see a black back disappearing, rushed up to her room, bolted the door, and sobbed on her bed, scolding herself the while. “He has behaved splendidly as usual, and I not a good word to throw him when I love him better than ever. I would not have had him do differently, no, not for all the livings in England, but I haven’t the grace to say so, and have sent the poor fellow away with a sore heart. What does Milborough’s opinion matter? In a year I can do as I like, marry a chimney-sweep, I suppose, if it pleases me, with only a chorus of protesting uncles and aunts to fear. Be honest, you stupid little thing, and own that it is your own pride, your own odious contemptible pride which stood in your way! For Lady Fanny Enderby to marry a curate without prospects, for no better reason than that he is a good man, and she loves him, when all the while, only a finger lifted, and there you have a budding Duke at her feet, certainly not the best of men, and certainly not beloved!”
To be fair, she trotted out this youth before her judgment, and tried to credit him with what virtues might charitably be hoped to be his. Opposite, she set up John Elliot, at his pinkest, when she thought she hated him, and looked at the pair with coldly discriminative eyes. To the eye, goodness would have kicked the beam, but that her heart flung its weight into the balance, and was big enough to carry the day. She sat up, sighed, bathed her eyes, and dismissed the young lord, frankly owning that she wished he and the other could have changed places. Heigh-ho! and the worst of it was, that after that day he might have no more to say to her.
When Mrs Ravenhill and Millie came home, Lady Fanny sat with her back to the light, and asked questions with an immense show of interest. She laughed immoderately over the slenderest materials for mirth, avoiding allusion to her own visitor until suddenly dragging in the subject.
“By the way there has been a visitor—Mr Elliot.”
“His card is down-stairs,” said Mrs Ravenhill. “You saw him?”
“Saw, and quarrelled with him.”
“Why?”
“He came to London to accept a living, and some man’s wife has written to say she wants it for her husband.”
“Well?”
“You needn’t ask,” said Lady Fanny, with asperity, “or, you wouldn’t need to ask if you knew Mr Elliot. Of course he means to hand over the offer to him.”
There was silence, then Mrs Ravenhill said gently—
“I think your Mr Elliot must be a very fine fellow, Fanny, and I’m beginning to be proud of knowing him.”
“That’s the only pride left to me.” She broke down, and buried her face in a sofa cushion. Millie was by her side in a moment, with her hand in both hers.
“Dearest, clearest Fanny!”
“Idiotic Fanny!—Say anything you like—Nothing would be foolish enough.—And I do detest shy men”—with a gasp between each sentence, and a laugh at the end.
Mrs Ravenhill slipped out of the room.
“There! Now I have spoilt your mother’s tea.”
“She had finished. Fanny, tell me, are you going to marry him?”
“Oh, I suppose so,”—sighing. The next moment she had pushed Millie aside, started up, and stared blankly at her friend. “Good gracious!”
“What is it?” cried Millie in alarm.
“I had forgotten! He has never asked me. Isn’t that necessary?”
“Perhaps words aren’t necessary?”
“Oh, they are—unfortunately—for now nothing will ever work him up to say them. I’m not sure that he could have done it with a living at his back, but now, not a word! Martyrdom, self-denial, all the discomforts of life! Perhaps if I were to have small-pox, or to tumble into the fire and be horribly scarred—otherwise!—Oh, Millie, when you fall in love, avoid excellence. The inconvenience of it!”
Millie murmured something consolatory, but Fanny broke in with a quick shake of the head.
“My dear, I know all you’re feeling, wondering what I find in him to like—attraction of opposites, isn’t there such an expression? There ought to be. I don’t expect you to sympathise, I only ask one thing.”
“Anything!” Millie kissed her.
“Don’t call him worthy. That’s what they’ll all do, I know, those of them who try to approve. ‘Fanny has chosen a very worthy man.’ To hear that, I really believe would make me hate him.”
She had the promise. Satisfied on this point, she began to talk about him, his simplicity, earnestness, unworldliness. “So unlike us all. And now, what he has just done, though it has driven me distracted, isn’t it splendid? Tell me, do you know any other man who would be so disinterested?”
Challenged, Millie flung a mental glance at Wareham, but finding it impossible to set the two men side by side, signified her admiration, thinking it unnecessary to allude to its qualifications. After Fanny had glorified her idol for a little, she fell back upon the difficulty. He would never, never propose. What was to be done? Somebody must move.
“Somebody must,” Millie acknowledged. “Can’t he take a hint?”
“Never.”
“Would you like mother to write?”
“And get her into a scrape with Milborough and all of them? No.”
“She might ask him to luncheon—to breakfast?”
“He would arrive at eight. Besides—oh, no, no!”
Her head was buried again. When she lifted it, it was to remark—
“The morning is so cold-blooded! If there was only some excuse!”
“I dare say mother has a paper to be signed before a clergyman,” said Millie hopefully. “And they’re all taking holidays. I’ll go and see.”
Fanny called anxiously after her—“Not a word of me!”
Reluctantly Mrs Ravenhill consented, though she declined to offer the bait of a signature. She felt that Fanny’s love must be real, since it could not have sprung from imaginary causes.
“And the man is a gentleman,” she said.
Millie sighed and owned amazement.
“So that no one has really the right to object. I have long wished her to marry, and her own heart is more to be trusted than Milborough. He shall be asked to luncheon, and shall have his opportunity. Whether he’ll take it!”
This communicated to Fanny by Millie, she was dolefully certain that he would not come.
“Don’t you think he may read encouragement?”
“Dear man, yes! But he’ll think himself bound to quash encouragement. And if he should come, and turns pink—I shall inevitably be cross. This is your doing, Millie! I’ll—”
She threatened.
“What?”
“Do the same for you some day.”
There was a pause before the answer came, and Fanny prophesied disaster. At first he had left London; when that idea was abandoned it was for the certainty that she had so disgusted him at the last interview that he would have no more to do with her.
“The more right I thought him, the more disagreeable I became. My dear, depend upon it, he is blessing his stars for his escape. And his mind once made up, no little inveiglements of luncheon will move him. Millie, what possessed me to be such a wretch?”
Her presentiments were unfounded. Mr Elliot wrote to accept, and Fanny’s mood varied between mirth which sparkled sometimes through tears, and a dignity which her friends found comic. When he arrived, she was in her room. Millie went to fetch her, and was told that it was no use, she should not come down.
“Two shy people will be ridiculously unmanageable, and you shan’t be saddled with them. Besides, I suppose he is roseately triumphant?”
A happy inspiration made Millie assure her that he looked as if he had not slept for a week. Lady Fanny fidgeted.
“Absurd!”
“I only answer your question.”
“Well, go. I will see about it. But don’t expect me,” she called after her, warningly.
Luncheon was announced before she appeared, with dignity in the ascendant. She hardly glanced at Mr Elliot, and her embarrassment was greater than his, for he carried the look of a man who had been through the worst, and has nothing to fear. Ice all round and about. Mrs Ravenhill and Millie made heroic efforts to warm the chilly atmosphere, but do what they would, it enveloped them Fanny without a tongue had changed to lead and to a stranger.
The dreary meal ended, Mrs Ravenhill rose. “Millie and Fanny will take you up-stairs, Mr Elliot,” she said, “for I have to go out.” Up spoke Fanny.
“Mayn’t I come with you?”
“Oh, certainly,” said Mrs Ravenhill, provoked. Then, to her amazement, Mr Elliot’s voice was heard.
“There is something I should be glad of an opportunity of saying, if Lady Fanny could give me five minutes.”
And, “Certainly she will,” interposed Mrs Ravenhill again. “The drawing-room is at your service. Come, Millie.”
Fanny’s feet dragged all the way up-stairs. She marched into the drawing-room, and sat stiffly on a seat by the window; tried to say something jesting, and failed. All that she got out was—
“Well?”
“Forgive me if I speak of my own feelings. It is for the first and last time,” he said hurriedly.
A slight movement of her head.
“I—I am quite aware that they have no excuse, except in the law of our nature; one must love what is lovable, however wide the distance. Your kindness, your sweetness—”
His voice shook, but he controlled it, and she was aware of the effort. “I don’t want to talk of anything except just to tell you what, even with the gap between us hopelessly widening, I think you should know. If I could have fairly accepted this living, without harming another man, I had a wild dream of trying whether my love could have won some crumb of hope. I would have waited years, a lifetime, but I meant to try to win your heart at last. That is at an end. Since I have been in town I have made inquiries—to stay at Huntsdon would be impossible—I—I am not strong enough—I have accepted an offer of work in London. Forgive me for troubling you. It seemed to me that this much I might say. You may trust to my giving you no more annoyance. I am very grateful to you for letting me speak.”
He stood looking down upon her, and all Fanny’s composure had returned, and with it her powers of teasing. She leaned back in the chair, and glanced up at him with a wicked smile in her eyes.
“Oh, don’t thank me. If you only knew how glad I am to hear your plans!”
“They please you?”
She evaded the question.
“I admire your rapidity. It is all settled then? Perhaps you don’t return to Huntsdon at all?”
“It is necessary until my successor comes.” He spoke quietly, but his face was that of a man braced to meet strokes. Suddenly he put out his hand. “Good-bye, Lady Fanny.” She rose, without taking his hand, and leaned against the window.
“You have decided so much that I should like to know if you have fixed upon a house?”
“A house? Where? In London?”
“In your new parish, of course.”
“I have not thought of it.”
“And that’s lucky,” she said, with a smile which sent his head spinning.
“Why?” The word broke from him.
“I should hate a house I did not choose for myself.”
“You!—Fanny!” He made a step nearer, but checked himself, gripping the back of a chair, and breathing the words—“You are cruel!”
She darted a look at him.
“Do you want me to retract?”
He became incoherent.
“You—you know I daren’t think of what I want—”
“You might.”
“Fanny!”
She leaned forward a little, her lips curved into a smile.
“Well?”
For answer he caught her to him with a cry, and another “Fanny!”
When she was released, she put an anxious question.
“Tell me the truth. It was really you who proposed?”
But he had grown audacious.
“What does it matter?”
“It matters a great deal, for I had been screwing myself up to do it, in case you were too shy, but I really believe it would have killed me. Didn’t you see how uncomfortable I was?”
“I, you mean. I was wretched.”
“Cool enough to speak. And of course when you said that if only this and that had happened, you would have asked me to marry you, it was exactly the same as asking me to do it now.”
“Was it?” His tone was blissful. Then a cloud swept over him. “Poverty—can you face it?”
Lady Fanny shook her head dolefully. He stepped back.
“No? But I am poor. No, of course not. I have been very wrong.”
She put her hand shyly on his arm.
“Dear, we shan’t be poor, unless—” Her smile returned. “What do you call poverty?”
“I suppose we ought to have some hundreds a year?” he said, with gloom.
“Oh, more.”
“More? Then indeed I have done wrongly. My income will not reach four.”
Her tone mimicked his.
“And you give away three-quarters. You must be the worst match in the country.”
“Oh no,” he said simply. “Till now I always thought that I was rather rich. But I see now that of course you want more—coming from Thorpe and its luxuries, and—I am ashamed at my selfishness.”
“I don’t wonder. But let us see. You know I have something.”
“Have you? Enough to give you a little of what you have been accustomed to?”
“That, and a few pounds over for you, which you may spend on beef-tea and flannel.” The murmurs which followed were incoherent. Lady Fanny said afterwards to Millie—
“For pity’s sake, let no one tell him I have three thousand a year. If he doesn’t fly from England in dismay, he will want me to build two or three cathedrals at least. And now to prepare for the family wrath. At any rate Milborough can’t say much. He should have taken me to Norway.”