Fanning

“ There is no use in buoying people up with false hopes." Here he gave a loud guffaw, which reached my ears at the further end of the table.
Captain Furlong bent across at that moment to say something to me, and I saw that he was much displeased at Mr. Fanning's loud, aggressive words. But Mr. Fanning, after all, was nothing to Mrs. Fanning. It was quite pleasant to me to see that he should turn his attentions to Miss Marion Armstrong, but Mrs. Fanning's winks were more than I could endure. They were just as much as to say, "Listen to him now; he is only doing that to draw you on." ”

“ The new boarder was introduced to my mother and me by Jane Mullins as Mr. Albert Fanning. He bowed profoundly when the introduction was made, and gave me a bold glance. At dinner I found, rather to my annoyance, that he was placed next to me. Jane usually put strangers next to me at the table, as she said that it gave general satisfaction, and helped to keep the house full.
"What sort of man is Mr. Fanning?" I asked as we were going down to dinner.
"I don't know anything about him, dear," was her reply. "He pays well, generously, in fact—no less than five guineas a week. ”

“ And in the cities and turmoil of civilisation so striking a personality as that of Renshaw Fanning was not likely to go unnoticed. For the man who owned that noble, refined face, bronzed with exposure, and when in repose never altogether free from a touch of saddened gravity—all manner of pitfalls were laid. ”

“ Strict veracity was not one of Sellon’s strong points. He did not choose to let her into the fact that the wild surprise of their meeting in the hall on the occasion of his arrival was absolutely and impartially mutual.
“But look here, Violet,” he went on. “Talking of Fanning, you were almost—well, carrying on with him last night. I began to get quite angry. You mustn’t make a fool of the poor chap—if you haven’t already, that’s to say.” ”

“ You have saved my life, Sellon, and you may possibly find that it was the best day’s work you ever did in yours. You shall share the knowledge that will make rich men of us. We will search for the ‘Valley’ together.”
“I’m your man, Fanning. That sort of thing will suit me down to the ground. Now, look sharp and get strong on your pins again, and we’ll start.”
The other smiled.
“What a mercurial fellow you are, Sellon! No; that isn’t how to go to work. How, I ask you, are we going to set out expedition on foot, now? Look at that, for instance,”—pointing through the open door to the bare veldt. ”

“ Father made him own up when he caught him red-handed like that, but in the meantime Morgan and Giles also had arrived. Well, the four of them were all equally guilty, so they agreed to stick together and say nothing till the excitement about the loss had blown over. But Fanning in the meantime said that he must have the ruby to let me wear. ”

“ Now, as Mary Grey could not venture to return to Blue Cliffs, or even to write a letter to that place with her own hand, so long as Mrs. Fanning should live in the house, the prospect of her doing either grew more and more remote. ”

“ We found our ‘Valley of the Eye’ all right, and a deuce of a job it was. Pheugh! I wouldn’t go on that jaunt again for twice the loot. The ‘Eye’ is a genuine concern, I can tell you—a splendid stone—Fanning has got it. Well, we spent the day picking up a few other stones, and just as we were clearing out we were attacked by a lot of Bushmen or Korannas, or whatever they were, and had to run. By Jove! ”

“ This was a very good plan of Fanny's. Nothing makes the time pass more quickly than setting oneself a certain task, and sticking to it steadily till it is finished. Fanny went on with her spinning, and soon became interested in her work, which she tried to do as well as she possibly could. As she took up the last roll, a fierce gust of wind shook the window so strongly that she turned, without thinking, and looked out. The air was full of snow-flakes whirling in all directions, as they were driven by the wind. Fanny went to the window. She could not even see the barn. ”

“ It was with Mr Crimble's eyes that I now scanned not only his phantom presence in Fanny's imagination, but my own, standing beside him—a "knick-knack" figure of fun, pygmied beneath the flappets of his clerical coat, like [Pg 180] a sun-beetle by a rook. The spectacle strengthened me without much affecting Fanny. She was no longer the absolute sultana of my being. I could think now, as well as adore.
How strange it is that when our minds are needled to a sharp focus mere "things" swarm so close. ”

“ Pigs?"
"My patience!" said Fanny, "did you never hear of esquarian exercise? I take it every day at Mr. Disbrow's. It is riding on horseback." [Pg 74]
"Oh!" said Sallie, rubbing her chin, "of course. I was a perfect goose not to know that. I wish, when the streets are muddy, we could fly like birds through the air: how pleasant it must be to be dangling in the air, with nothing to do but stare at the sun! I would not come down for a week. Just fancy! what perfect happiness!"
"And no lessons to learn," said Fanny. ”

“ For goodness sake, don’t talk,’ said Fanny; ‘I want to talk, myself. Edmund, we must not be alone any more. I must take such precautions as will prevent my being ever again reduced to the state of dreadful depression in which I am this evening.’
‘My dear,’ answered Mr Sparkler; ‘being as you are well known to be, a remarkably fine woman with no——’
‘Oh, good gracious!’ cried Fanny. ”

“ And while memory lingers I'll fondly believe thee
A being with life and its best feelings warm;
And freely the wild song of gratitude weave thee,
Bless'd spirit! that bore me and mine from the storm.
CIV.
But where is Fanny? She has long been thrown
Where cheeks and roses wither—in the shade.
The age of chivalry, you know, is gone;
And although, as I once before have said,
I love a pretty face to adoration,
Yet, still, I must preserve my reputation,
CV.
As a true dandy of the modern schools. ”

“ And there stood Fanny, in a posture of such unconscious sadness—such childlike innocence; her arms drooping— her face wistfully turned to his—and a half smile upon the lips, that made still more touching the tears not yet dried upon her cheeks. While thin, frail, shadowy, with white hair and furrowed cheeks, the old man fixed his sightless orbs on space; and his face, usually only animated from the lethargy of advancing dotage by a certain querulous cynicism, now grew suddenly earnest, and even thoughtful, as Fanny spoke of Death! ”

“ But I was ever a prophet, Fanny, and I venture to tell you that you have so overloaded your heart and your wits with caution and fear of the world's opinion that when you take pen in hand once more you 'll find it clogged and heavy. 'T will move on stilts instead of the light heels that danced 'Evelina,' and the ungrateful world will say, 'There goes a woman that if she had shut her eyes on forms and opened them on nature had been the glory of her age.' You are too fearful of the world, Fanny. ”

“ After a considerable pause he seemed to recollect himself, and with an effort resuming his sprightly manner, he said, "well, well, the next thing to keeping a secret well is, not to desire to possess one—talkativeness and curiosity generally go together; now I shall make test of you in the first place, respecting the latter of these qualities. I shall be your Bluebeard—tush, why do I trifle thus; listen to me, my dear Fanny, I speak now in solemn earnest; what I desire is, intimately, inseparably, connected with your happiness and honour as well as my own ”

“ The tea would have been very silent, but for Fanny's perpetual description of her own feelings; how she had been alarmed—and then thought they were gone—and then felt sick and faint and trembling in every limb.
"There, that's enough," said her brother, rising from the table. "The reality was enough for me." He was going to leave the room, when his mother stopped him with her hand upon his arm.
"You will come back here before you go to the Hales'," said she, in a low, anxious voice.
"I know what I know," said Fanny to herself.
"Why? Will it be too late to disturb them?" ”

“ You are not angry with us, I know, but it was so indeed.”
“Why should I feel angry with you for feeling just what I do myself, only more intensely,” said Fanny. “Tis one of the greatest mysteries of life—the only mystery of life that I have yet faced—why a man who is as handsome as an archangel, and who possesses a voice that an archangel might envy, should so much as glance at an insignificant young woman like myself! ”

“ There was once a philosopher called Plato, my dear. He poisoned Man's soul."
Flesh and spirit, Fanny must have been very tired. Her voice fluttered on like a ragged flag.
"But listen, listen!" I entreated her. "I haven't blamed you for that, Fanny. I swear it. I mean, you can't help not loving. I know that. But perhaps if only we had—— It's a dreadful thing to think of him sitting there alone—the vestry—and then looking up 'with a smile.' Oh, Fanny, with a smile! I dare hardly go into his mind—and the verger looking in. I think of him all day." ”

“ Fanny—as we shall call her when she is not in the company of her namesake—revelled in the possession of the key, and congratulated herself on her own shrewdness in obtaining it. She applied it to one of the drawers of the desk. Though her devoted young mistress had been faithful to the last degree in her efforts to instil good principles in the mind of her pupil, Fanny appeared to have no scruples of conscience. She did not hesitate, did not pause to consider the wickedness of her acts. ”

“ We are all quite well, and Fanny improves every day. You can hardly think how kind she is to me, and what pains she takes with me. She has a lover, who has followed her, first all the way from Switzerland, and then all the way from Venice, and who has just confided to me that he means to follow her everywhere. ”

“ She dreamed that we were busily employed in carrying out our scheme of removal, and that I came into the parlour where she was making some arrangements, and, with rather an agitated manner, told her that the carriage had come for the children. She thought she went out to the hall, in consequence, holding little Fanny by one hand, and the boy—or, as we still called him, "baby,"—by the other, and feeling, as she did so, an unaccountable gloom, almost amounting to terror, steal over her. ”

“ The master said to the Schoolboy,
As it fell on a day,
"All the rest are to go,
Frank Fane is to stay.
I set you all free
From the birch and the cane,
Not a boy shall be swished,
Not a boy, but Frank Fane." ”

“ What has he done to alarm you? he is neither old nor ugly."
I was silent, though I might have said, "He is neither young nor handsome."
"My dear Fanny," continued my mother, "in sober seriousness you have been most fortunate in engaging the affections of a nobleman such as Lord Glenfallen, young and wealthy, with first-rate, yes, acknowledged first-rate abilities and of a family whose influence is not exceeded by that of any in Ireland—of course you see the offer in the same light that I do—indeed I think you must." ”

“ In the days that followed the finishing of the Lance, it was as if her whole body and brain had been a scaffold or matrix for the story, and it had been taken from her, leaving a galvanism useless as an eggshell, a sort of afterbirth that persisted in staying alive.
... There was Fanny Gallup, who sat at her right, elbow to elbow at the pasting bench—Fanny of the intermittent pungencies of scent and the dreary muck of talk about boys and boys and boys. Fanny was a child and woman all in one, about Pidge’s age and size, one whom you could fancy had been a stringy street-kid a year or two ago. ”

“ Here was Fanny, proud, fitful, whimsical, further advanced in that disqualified state for going into society which had so much fretted her on the evening of the tortoise-shell knife, resolved always to want comfort, resolved not to be comforted, resolved to be deeply wronged, and resolved that nobody should have the audacity to think her so. ”

“ Fanny was moved to the depths of her nature—moved as she had never been moved before. She couldn't have believed that such scenes were real. She had read of them in romances, and even in the newspapers; but she had never realized that a man could be so hard as Mr. O'Shane, or that a woman could suffer so much as Mrs. Kent. ”

“ Meantime, Fanny had been singing—
"Oh why is he far,"
At the conclusion of the last verse, just as she repeats the words "why, why, why," in a very distracted and melting cadence, a voice behind startles her—she turns and beholds her guardian—so at least run the course of events in the real drama—that it should follow thus now however, "Dus aliter visum"—for just as she came to the very moving apostrophe alluded to, and called out, "why comes he not?"—a gruff voice from behind answered in a strong Cork brogue—"ah! would ye have him come in a state of nature?" ”

“ Little Fanny’s joy on this pedestrian tour was irrepressible; but the journey was not all performed on foot: many a good-natured farmer gave them a lift of a mile or two, and many a kind-hearted farm [Pg 196] er’s wife offered Fanny a cake, or a drink of milk, for the sake of her own sun-burnt children, yet blessed in a mother’s love. Then there were friendly trees to shade them from the scorching noon-day sun, where the peddler could unstrap his pack, and Fanny throw off her bonnet and go to sleep in his lap. ”