CHAPTER XXX

The levity shown by Fanny Burney and the flippancy of her phrases did not wholly conceal from her sisters all that she was feeling on the subject of the proposal to which she had referred with such lightness. She knew that while her father and her stepmother would not treat her with any marked disfavour on account of her rejection of the worthy young man who was ready to offer her a home, still Mrs. Burney at least regarded with great disfavour the nature of the answer which she had to send to the Poultry, and Fanny was very well aware of the ease with which so conscientious a guardian as Mrs. Burney could make her feel every day of her life what was Mrs. Burney’s opinion of her rejection of an eligible young man.

Fanny recognized the great merits of her stepmother, and she could look from her standpoint at most of the incidents of their daily life. In that household one mouth less to feed was worth consideration—the number of mouths to feed was a constant source of thought with Mrs. Burney, as was also the question of a provision for the future of all of them.

Mrs. Burney would be fully justified in feeling cross with her, not being aware of the fact that another young man, compared with whom Thomas Barlowe was as the dust of the ground, was burning, with an ardour of which Thomas was incapable, to take her to himself and provide for her in a style undreamt of in the Poultry.

But the worst of the matter was that she could not let her stepmother into this secret. She could not say that she was engaged to marry Signor Rauzzini, and she might leave herself open to the gravest rebuke for having listened to his protestations of devotion without obtaining the consent of either of her parents.

And through all this tangle of reflections there ran the silken thread of consciousness that she was no longer the Fanny Burney who was regarded by her stepmother as the dunce, but Fanny Burney the writer of “Evelina,” to whom the most critical review had devoted a full column of adulation!

That was what made her position so anomalous; and it was because she took the happenings of the previous days to heart that she went to bed with a shocking headache, and after a sleepless night was found on the verge of a fever. She was suffering from suppressed secrets; but the doctor did not know this. He prescribed James’s Powders; and when these should have done all that they were meant to do—a small part of all that Dr. James and Mr. Newbery affirmed they would do—a change into the country.

But several weeks had passed before she was strong enough to start on the latter and most essential portion of the prescription, and found herself in her own room in Mr. Crisp’s isolated house at Chessington.

Meantime, of course, she had no further news of the book, and she remained unconfessed, so far as the secret of its publication was concerned. Her sisters did not so much as mention its name or the name of Thomas Barlowe, so cleverly had they diagnosed the nature of her malady and so tactfully did they try to hasten her recovery.

Her old friend Mr. Crisp had been her guide since her childhood. She always alluded to him as her second Daddy—so far as paternal influence was concerned she might have given him the foremost place. He it was who had led her on to embody in letters to him the daily incidents of her life, thus unconsciously setting the loom, as it were, in which “Evelina” was to be woven. He it was who became her teacher and her critic, and it was possibly because she feared his criticism of her work that she refrained from making a confidant of him from the first. She felt that she could face the public and the reviewers—it did not matter how they might receive the book, but she was too timid to submit it to the mature judgment of the man who had first put a pen in her hand. It was not on her own account that she refrained from giving him a chance of reading her book, but on his: she knew how hurt he would be if he found her book to be an indifferent one, and whether indifferent or not, how angry he would be if people did not buy it by the thousand.

Now, however, that she found herself alone with him, she made up her mind to tell him all about it. She would choose her own time for doing this; but it would certainly be done before she returned to St. Martin’s Street.

But on the second day after her arrival at Chessington a parcel came for her, addressed by Susy. On opening it, she found it to contain two volumes of “Evelina.” The letter that was enclosed told her that Cousin Edward had called at the Orange Coffee House and found that a set had been left there at the instance of Mr. Lowndes, addressed to Mr. Grafton. Of these, Lottie had read the first two, which were now sent on to the author, but the third she had not finished, and hoped that Fanny would not mind her detaining it for a few days longer.

This was really the first glimpse that the author had of her book in its binding. She had, in the name of Mr. Grafton, requested Mr. Lowndes to send a set of the volumes to the Orange Coffee House. But that was nearly three months ago, and until now Mr. Lowndes appeared not to have thought it worth his while to comply with the request. Now, however, it seemed to have occurred to him that the author of a book that everyone was talking about might be worth conciliating, and so he had directed a set of volumes to the Coffee House.

At once Fanny made up her mind that she would pave the way, so to speak, for a full confession to Mr. Crisp.

“Susy has sent me on two volumes of a new novel, lest I should feel dull,” she said. “As if I am not much more likely to feel dull in the company of a new novel than of my old Daddy!”

“I thought that your stepmother prohibited the reading of novels, new or old, in your house,” said he.

“Perhaps mamma did not know anything about this particular one,” replied Fanny; “besides, it is to be read in your house, not ours.”

“So that the responsibility will be mine?” said he. “Mrs. Burney is only answerable to heaven for keeping your mind free from the baleful influence of novels, but I am in a worse case, for I am answerable to Mrs. Burney. And what is the name of the precious production?”

“Let me see,” said Fanny, artfully referring to the title page. “Oh, yes: ‘Evelina; or, a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World.’ Do you call that an alluring title?”

“Too sentimental by half,” he replied. “But I have heard of the thing, and one of the reviews dealt with it some weeks ago.”

“Praise or blame?”

“Oh, foolish adulation for the great part; but not without a reasonable word here and there.”

“The reasonable part you are sure must be the censorious? That is not fair to the poor author.”

“Poor author? Yes, they are all poor authors nowadays. What’s the name of this particular item of poverty?”

“There is no name on the title page; but I hear that the writer was Mr. Anstey himself.”

“What! another ‘Bath Guide’!”

“Sir Joshua Reynolds told mamma that he had remained up all night reading it.”

“Poor Sir Joshua! His eyes are none too good at the best! And does Susy believe that the book which kept Sir Joshua awake is the best one to send you asleep? You came to Chessington, you know, to get as much as possible; ‘Tired Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep!’ the truest words that Shakespeare ever writ.”

“What I propose to do is to try it upon you, my dear sir. I mean to give you a dose of it this evening, instead of gruel, and if it makes you sleep I will know that I may continue it for myself—it will be more wholesome than poppy or mandragora.”

“Good! But I dare swear that it will be bad enough to keep me awake. You know that extremes meet in the case of books, as well as other matters; one keeps awake reading a good book, in expectancy of its undeveloped goodness; and reading a bad one, wondering how far the author can actually go in point of dullness.”

“I have often thought that; but Susy has sent only two of the three volumes.”

“So that we shall not be able to fathom the full depth of the author’s dullness? We should be grateful to Susy—so should the author. Well, you shall begin after tea, while there is yet daylight: Le livre ne vaut pas la chandelle.”

“Nous verrons,” cried Fanny.

And she started reading the book that same day, an hour before sunset. The room in which they sat was a small one with a window facing the west and overlooking a long stretch of billowy common. The spicy scent of the wallflowers in the little garden patch at the side of the house was wafted through the half-open lattice, and occasionally there came the sound of the ducks gabbling at the pool beyond the gate that shut off the house from the lane. It was a cloudless evening, and the sunset promised to be peach-like in its tender tints of pink and saffron with the curves of delicate green in the higher sky. Fanny sat at the window and the old man reclined at his ease upon the sofa.

“I am giving myself every chance,” he said. “All that I ask of you, my Fannikin, is that you do not glance at me every now and again to see if I am still awake. If you do so, I shall never yield to so much as a doze.”

“I promise faithfully to await your signal that you are alert,” said she.

And so began one of the most delightful hours of her life.

She was not a particularly good reader aloud when a book was casually put into her hands, but here she had before her a volume that she could almost have repeated verbatim, so that she soon found that she was just too fluent: she felt that if she went on at this rate his critical ear would tell him that she had every page by heart, and he would ask her for an explanation of so singular a thing as her being able to repeat so much of a book which she professed to have in her hands for the first time. She put a check upon her fluency, and though she did not go so far as to simulate stumbling over certain words, she neglected the punctuation now and again, and then went back upon some of the passages, causing him to give a little grumble and say:

“Be careful, my dear; there’s no need for haste: the evening is still young.”

After that she was more careful—which is the same as saying she was more careless of adhering to the scheme she had adopted. She felt that as he had now been put off the scent, she might run along as she pleased without there being a chance of his suspecting anything through her showing herself familiar with passage after passage.

Before she had got through more than a dozen pages she heard a creaking of the sofa—she trusted herself to glance in that direction and found that he was no longer reclining: he was sitting up and listening attentively. She continued reading without making a remark for a full hour. The sun had set, but the twilight was clear enough to allow of her seeing the print on the page before her for some time still; then the darkness seemed to fall all at once, and she laid the book down when she had come to the close of one of the letters.

“Candles,” he said. “Candles! Upon my word, the world is right for once: the stuff is good. We must have candles. Candles, I say!”

“Supper, say I,” cried Fanny. “I feel that I have need of bodily refreshment after such a task. Does it sound real to you, Daddy Crisp—all about the Young Lady who is about to enter the world?”

“Not merely does it sound real, it is real—it is reality,” he replied quickly. “The man who wrote what you have read has something of the genius of—of—now whom does he resemble, think you?—Richardson here and there, and in places, Fielding, it seems to me.”

“You suppose that ’tis written by a man?” she said.

“Why, of course, ’tis the work of a man,” he replied. “Where is the woman living that is capable of writing a single page of that book? What, have I gone to so much trouble in training you to understand what is bad and what is good in writing, to so little purpose, that you should have a doubt as to the sex of what you have just heard?”

“The sex of a book—a novel?”

“Why not? There are masculine books and there is feminine—trash. There you have the difference.”

“And you do not consider this to be—trash?”

“Will you get the candles, Miss Burney? It seems that you are sorely in need of illumination if you put that question to me seriously. Trash? Madam, you perceive that I am all eagerness to hear the rest of the story, and yet you put that silly question to me! Look you here, you rogue, cannot you see that the very fact of your putting such a question to me shows that the book is the work of a man? When a carefully trained woman such as you cannot yet discriminate between the good and the trash that is written, how would it be possible for a woman to write what you have read?”

“You think there is nothing womanly in the book?”

“There is nothing effeminate in the writing, so much is sure. There is plenty that is womanly in the book, because the man who wrote it knows how to convey to a reader a sense of womanliness to be in keeping with the character of the letters—that is what is meant by genius. A woman trying to produce the same effect would show the frill of her petticoat on every page. She would make the men’s parts in the book as feminine as the women’s. Now, no more chatter an you please, but get the candles.”

“And Mrs. Hamilton will get our supper by their light.”

Fanny tripped away, and was behind the door of the larder before she allowed the laughter which was pent up very close to her eyes to have its freedom. It was a very hearty laugh that she had, for there was a constant buzzing in her ears of the question:

“What will he say when he learns the truth?”

She was ready to dance her Nancy Dawson in delight at seeing the effect of the book upon the old man whom she loved—the man who was directly responsible for its existence. If Mr. Crisp had not taken trouble with her, encouraging her to write her letters to him in a natural style, the correspondence in “Evelina” would, she knew, be very different from what it was. So, after all, she reflected, he was right in pronouncing the book the work of a man; but he had no idea that he was the man who was responsible for it. That reflection of hers was as fully imbued with the true spirit of comedy as her anticipation of the effect that would be produced upon him by the revelation of the authorship.

And that was why this young student of the human comedy was able to restrain herself from making the revelation to him at once: she had, as it were, a delicate palate for comedy, and it was a delight to her—the gratification of her natural vanity had nothing to do with it—to lead him on to commit himself more deeply every moment on the question of the sex of the writer. Oh, no; she had no idea of making any confession to him for the present. She would have many another chat with him before the moment for that dénouement in the comedy should arrive.

So she got the candles and the housekeeper laid the cold chicken and the plates on the supper-table, and Mr. Crisp set about mixing the salad in the manner he had acquired in Italy. And all the time they were engaged over the simple meal he was criticising what she had read, and he had scarcely a word to say about it that was not favourable. But he took care to protect himself in case he should be forced to retire from the position he had taken up.

“A man is a fool to pronounce an opinion on a book before he has had the last page read to him,” he said. “I have only been touching upon the part that I have heard, and I say that it seems to me to be as good as anything I have read for years; but that is not saying that the remainder, or some portions of the remainder, may not be so greatly inferior as to compel me to pronounce unfavourably of the book as a whole. I have had instances of such inequality shown by many writers, and it may be that the writer of ‘Evelina’ will be added to the list, although he shows no sign of falling off up to your last page. Do not be hurried by me, my dear, but if you have indeed made up your mind to eat no cheese, Mrs. Hamilton can remove the débris, and unless you are tired, you will read me a few pages more.”

She read until midnight. The only pauses that she made were when he trimmed the wicks of the candles. He commended her fluency. She had never read better in his hearing, he said. She showed that she understood what she was reading; and that, after all, was the greatest praise that could be given to anyone. He did not suggest the likelihood that she was tired.

There was the sound of the bleating of lambs occasionally borne from the meadows beyond the little stream—the sound of an owl that came nightly about the house from the barn of the farm a few hundred yards away—the sound of a large moth bumping against the glass of the casement through which the candle-light shone. There was nothing to interrupt her in her delightful task until the church clock struck the hour of midnight.

“Not another line,” she cried, jumping from her chair. “Poor Evelina! she will be the better for a sleep. When she awakens she may be able to see more clearly who are her true friends and who are not to be trusted. Good-night, dear Daddy; and receive my thanks for your attention.”

“Give me the volume,” he said. “I usually awake before six, and so shall have a couple of hours of it before rising.”

“You will not get it from me, sir,” she cried. “Captain Mervain knows the naval rule about drinking glass for glass, and let me tell you that the same rule holds in the matter of reading a book—chapter for chapter between us, sir; we shall finish as we have begun.”

She blew him a kiss and ran upstairs to escape his protests: he shouted them after her from the foot of the stairs.