CHAPTER XIV

“These foreigners!” exclaimed young Edward Burney when Rauzzini had left them, and Fanny was asking her cousin if her father was not looking for her. “These foreigners! Your father is talking with another of them—an Italian too, as I live—I have seen him in St. Martin’s Street—Signor Piozzi. But I suppose Uncle Burney likes to keep in touch with them. The town is swarming with them: they are even to be found about Leicester Fields. Why do some people fancy that we must have Italians to sing for us? There are plenty of good singers in England, without a drop of foreign blood in their veins. A good sea song with a chorus that is easy to get into the swing of—that’s English and honest.”

“Honest down to the hoarsest note,” said Fanny. “You and James are at one in the matter of songs.”

“Cousin Jim hates foreigners, as is quite proper that an officer in a King’s ship should,” said Edward stoutly.

“Not all foreigners,” said Fanny smiling. “You forget how kindly he took to Prince Omai.”

“Oh, a South Sea Islander is different,” cried her cousin. “I expect that the South Seas will soon become as English as ourselves if Captain Cook goes on discovering islands.”

“Edward,” said Fanny, after a pause sufficient to allow of the introduction of a new topic; “Edward, could you make it convenient to call at the Orange Coffee House some day soon to inquire if there is another letter for Mr. Grafton?”

“I’ll not omit it on any account,” he replied. “Oh, yes, Mr. Grafton, I’ll collect your correspondence for you, never fear. You have not let anyone else into the secret, I hope?”

“No one knows it except Susy and Lottie and Charles and Hetty; but Hetty only knows that I wrote the book, not that it is to be printed—Charles is still away from us, or I would not trouble you, Edward.”

“Poor Charlie grew tired of the Orange Coffee House, did he not? He told me how you made him your messenger at first, disguising him in a cloak and a gentleman’s hat, so that he might not seem quite the boy that he was. But how the secret has been kept so well is a wonder to me—kept from the powers that be, I mean—uncle and aunt. I wonder if your mother never had a suspicion of what was going on, especially as she knew all about your writing long ago.”

“I think that it was the copying out of the padre’s History that saved me,” said Fanny. “Many a page of my novel I wrote when she believed that I was copying the notes for the History—yes, that, and the letters which Mr. Crisp insists on my sending him every week. But even with these excuses I could sometimes not get through more than three or four pages of my own book during a whole week.”

“How will you look when the secret is let out—it must be let out some day, you know? If the writing a novel is thought shocking, how will Uncle Burney receive the news, think you? He has not yet given you leave to publish it.”

There was a troubled look on poor Fanny’s face as she replied, after a pause:

“I have often meant to ask father’s permission, but I was not able to summon up courage enough to face him with the whole truth. But it cannot be delayed much longer. Perhaps I might write him a letter about it some time when I am at Chessington.”

“I don’t envy you the duty, my dear Fanny,” said he. “But I think that the sooner you get it over the easier you will feel. I suppose that writing a novel is worse than writing a ‘History of Music.’ I wonder why you took so much trouble over the business.”

“I could not help it,” she cried. “I have often wondered myself why I was sitting up in that cold room at the top of the house, writing until my fingers were benumbed, when I might have been at my comfortable sewing in front of a fire downstairs; but I could not help it—I could not help doing it, Eddy.”

Eddy never reached that point in his career as a painter when he found the artist’s impulse to create too great to be resisted. He could not appreciate her explanation.

“‘I couldn’t help it,’ that’s what we were used to say long ago, when we got into mischief; I hope that Uncle Burney and Aunt Burney—don’t forget her in this matter—I hope that they will accept your excuse. Anyhow, you may trust me to act as your ‘Mr. Grafton’ at the Orange Coffee House some day this week.”

He caught a glimpse of his uncle, Dr. Burney, sitting with Mr. Greville, so that he had no trouble in placing Fanny once more in charge of her father. He could see that the girl was a little downcast, and tried to cheer her up a bit by whispering in a sly way into her ear:

“Good-night, Mr. Grafton; my best respects to Mrs. Grafton and the children—especially Evelina.”

The smile that Fanny gave in acknowledgment of his pleasantry did not quite carry conviction that his well-meant effort had been successful. He went away feeling as much sympathy for her as was possible for him to have in common with the reflection that if she was in a difficult position, it was wholly one of her own seeking. What could have induced a girl who had been carefully brought up, and provided with an excellent stepmother, to write a novel, placing herself thereby on a level with those dreadful ladies whose productions were prohibited in every self-respecting household and only read by stealth when obtained at a cost of twopence—more than the best of them were worth—at the circulating library?

Yes, poor Fanny was undoubtedly to be pitied; but she had really only herself to blame for the trouble that was looming in front of her when the secret of her authorship should be revealed to her father and her excellent stepmother—one of the best judges to be found anywhere of all sorts of needlework—not merely plain sewing and button-holing, but satin stitch, herring-boning and running and felling.

The very next day Cousin Edward called at St. Martin’s Street, carrying with him a small parcel neatly done up in white paper. He was lucky enough to find Fanny and Susan alone in the work-room; and after asking mysteriously if there was any chance of his uncle or aunt coming upon them, and being assured that they were both away for the day, he carefully locked the door of the room, saying in the whisper of a man of plots and mysteries:

“’Tis better to be sure than sorry. In matters of this nature ’tis impossible to be too cautious.”

He then handed the parcel to Fanny, who gave an exclamation when she saw that it was addressed:

“To Mr. Grafton, at the Orange Coffee House, Orange Street.”

She opened the parcel, and found it to contain a printer’s unbound copy of a book, the title page of which stared up at her: “Evelina; or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World,” and with it was a letter from Mr. Lowndes, the bookseller, presenting his compliments to Mr. Grafton, with the request that Mr. Grafton would read the book and prove it as soon as possible, returning the list of errata to Mr. Lowndes, so that the edition might go to press for early publication.

There it lay on the table in front of her. She read the letter standing, and remained on her feet, looking down at the unbound book. It had a queer, half-dressed appearance, lacking covers; and when, after some minutes of silence, Susy took a step or two closer to it, and, with her hand on Fanny’s arm, looked down on it also, the picture that they made suggested two sisters looking into the cradle where the first baby of one of them lay. The expression on Susy’s face—a mingling of wonder and curiosity, with delight not far off—was exactly that which the younger sister of the picture might be expected to wear, catching a glimpse of the undressed morsel of humanity in its first cot.

Susy put her hand down to it, and moved the printed sheets about. She read the title page down to the last name on the imprint, and then she flung up her hands, crying:

“How lovely! how lovely! But it seems wonderful! How did it come into being? It looks like a real thing now that we see it printed. The copy that you wrote out in that disguised hand seemed somehow quite different from this. There is life in this. It feels warm, actually warm, Fanny. Oh, don’t you love it, dear?”

Fanny, the young mother, shook her head, but with no significance, so far as Susy could see.

“’Tis too late now,” said Edward gloomily, taking on himself the burden of interpreting that head-shake. “You are bound down to go on with it now. You should have thought of all this before.”

“What nonsense is this you are talking?” cried Susy, turning upon him almost indignantly; for his tone suggested an aspersion upon the offspring. “What do you say is too late now? Do you mean to say that there’s anything to be ashamed of in this? Cannot you see that she did not put her name to it? Who is there to know that it came from this house? The name of Burney nowhere appears on it.”

“That’s so much, at any rate,” said he.

“Do you mean to say that you don’t think it quite wonderful, Eddy?” cried Susy. “And getting twenty pounds for it—twenty pounds! And you say something about it being too late!”

“I only judged from the way Fanny shook her head,” said he.

“Oh, that was not what Fanny was thinking at all—now was it, Fanny?” said Susy encouragingly to her sister.

“I don’t know quite what I meant or what I mean even now,” replied Fanny. “It made me feel for the moment somehow as if I had appeared in a street full of people before I had quite finished dressing!”

“Ah!” exclaimed Edward.

“But that is nonsense, dear,” said Susy, still consolatory. “The book is not yourself.”

“Not all myself, but part of myself—that is what I feel,” said Fanny.

“I cannot see that that is so. You are you—you yourself quite apart from the book. Whatever the book may be, you will still remain Fanny Burney, the best daughter and the best sister in the world. What does it matter if people—foolish people who know nothing about it—laugh at it or say nasty things about it? Do you think that that will make any of us like you the less?”

She put her arm about Fanny and kissed her on the cheek, and Fanny’s tears began to fall. The young man standing by felt more uneasy than he had ever felt in his life. He crossed the room and looked out of the window, turning his back upon the scene of the sisters. He did not know what to say to a girl when once she allowed herself to weep. He wished with all his heart that he had not been dragged into this business. But Fanny’s tears convinced him that his first impression of her reception of her book was the correct one: she was, like other young mothers he had heard of, bitterly repentant when it was too late.

The next sound of which he became aware was of the crinkling of the stiff paper of the wrapper. One of the girls was folding up the parcel. He glanced round and saw that it was Fanny herself who was so engaged. She had dried her tears; the expression on her face was one of resignation—one of determination to make the best of a bad matter.

“Ah, that’s better,” said he, going to her and picking up the string from the floor. “There’s no use crying over spilt milk, is there, Fanny? We have all kept your secret loyally, and no one need ever know that you so far forgot yourself. Certainly the revelation will never come from my lips.”

Fanny burst out laughing.

“Oh, dear Eddy, you are the best cousin that any poor girl could have,” she said. “Your words have helped me greatly. They have helped to make me feel what is the aspect of the world in regard to my poor little story. It has been my constant companion night and day for three years and more. I worked at it in the cold and I tried how I could improve pages of it, copying it and recopying it; I practised a duplicity which was foreign to my nature in writing it—I have deceived my father and my mother about it—I wasted my eyesight over it—I robbed myself of sleep so that I might complete it, and when it was completed I lay awake in anxiety lest no bookseller would look at it, all this trouble I had with it, so that the world might have of my best, and what is the verdict of the world after all this? You have pronounced it, dear Eddy—you said thoughtfully and consolingly—‘There’s no use crying over spilt milk.’ You are quite right. Not another tear will I shed over this poor little bantling of mine. ‘A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World’? Nay, call it rather a rickety brat that should never have made its entrance into the world at all.”

“I should be ashamed of myself if I ever spoke of it in such terms,” cried Susy, looking indignantly at her cousin as though he had abused it in that phrase. “‘Rickety brat,’ indeed! Oh, I should be ashamed. It looked so much alive—more alive, I think, than if it was in its covers. Let us sit down and read it together, Fanny.”

Cousin Edward felt that he was being badly treated between these sisters. That last remark of Susy was rather more than a suggestion that he might go as soon as it pleased him. He had not any previous experience of young women and their offspring. He could not know that their attitude in such circumstances is one of hostility to the male—that they resent his appearance as an intrusion.

“I am glad that you are so pleased,” said he, with only a trace of irritability in his voice. “And I am glad that I have been of any use to you, Cousin Fanny. After all, the thing is yours, not Susy’s.”

“That is true, indeed,” cried Fanny. “And it is I who offer you my gratitude for your help. Believe me, Eddy, I am sensible of the adroitness you have shown in this matter ever since we let you into our secret; and if any trouble comes from what we have done you may be quite sure that I will accept the entire responsibility for it.”

“Oh, so far as that goes, I do not shrink from taking my share,” said he magnanimously. “I do not feel quite without blame—I am a man and I should have warned you at the outset. But you had nearly finished it before I heard anything of it—you must not forget that.”

“That is true indeed,” said Fanny. “I was self-willed. I wonder was it vanity that impelled me. Never mind! It cannot be helped now. It may never be heard of again.”

“There’s always that to remember,” said he, with the eagerness of a drowning man grasping at a straw.

“And I believe that the chances are greatly in favour of that hope being realized. Thank you again for your encouragement, dear Eddy,” said she.

“Oh, that’s nothing—nothing worth talking about,” said he, picking up his gloves. “You can command me always, Cousin Fanny. And you have seen that I can keep a secret. Now mind you don’t leave that lying about”—he pointed to the parcel, the string of which Susy was knotting—“and, be advised by me, turn the key in the lock when you are working at it.”

“Yes,” said Susy, “we’ll be sure to do our best to prevent anyone from suspecting that we have a secret, by locking ourselves in.”

“Caution—nothing like caution,” said he in a whisper, unfastening the door and putting his head out to glance to right and left of the short corridor. He held up his finger. “All safe so far,” he whispered; “no one is in sight.”