Greville Fane | Page 9

prevent young idlers from becoming
cads. He had, abroad, a casual tutor and a snatch or two of a Swiss
school, but no consecutive study, no prospect of a university or a
degree. It may be imagined with what zeal, as the years went on, he
entered into the pleasantry of there being no manual so important to
him as the massive book of life. It was an expensive volume to peruse,
but Mrs. Stormer was willing to lay out a sum in what she would have
called her premiers frais. Ethel disapproved--she thought this education
far too unconventional for an English gentleman. Her voice was for
Eton and Oxford, or for any public school (she would have resigned
herself) with the army to follow. But Leolin never was afraid of his
sister, and they visibly disliked, though they sometimes agreed to assist,
each other. They could combine to work the oracle--to keep their
mother at her desk.
When she came back to England, telling me she had got all the
continent could give her, Leolin was a broad-shouldered, red-faced
young man, with an immense wardrobe and an extraordinary assurance
of manner. She was fondly obstinate about her having taken the right
course with him, and proud of all that he knew and had seen. He was
now quite ready to begin, and a little while later she told me he HAD
begun. He had written something tremendously clever, and it was
coming out in the Cheapside. I believe it came out; I had no time to
look for it; I never heard anything about it. I took for granted that if this
contribution had passed through his mother's hands it had practically
become a specimen of her own genius, and it was interesting to
consider Mrs. Stormer's future in the light of her having to write her
son's novels as well as her own. This was not the way she looked at it
herself; she took the charming ground that he would help her to write
hers. She used to tell me that he supplied passages of the greatest value
to her own work--all sorts of technical things, about hunting and
yachting and wine--that she couldn't be expected to get very straight. It
was all so much practice for him and so much alleviation for her. I was
unable to identify these pages, for I had long since ceased to "keep up"
with Greville Fane; but I was quite able to believe that the

wine-question had been put, by Leolin's good offices, on a better
footing, for the dear lady used to mix her drinks (she was perpetually
serving the most splendid suppers) in the queerest fashion. I could see
that he was willing enough to accept a commission to look after that
department. It occurred to me indeed, when Mrs. Stormer settled in
England again, that by making a shrewd use of both her children she
might be able to rejuvenate her style. Ethel had come back to gratify
her young ambition, and if she couldn't take her mother into society she
would at least go into it herself. Silently, stiffly, almost grimly, this
young lady held up her head, clenched her long teeth, squared her lean
elbows and made her way up the staircases she had elected. The only
communication she ever made to me, the only effusion of confidence
with which she ever honoured me, was when she said: "I don't want to
know the people mamma knows; I mean to know others." I took due
note of the remark, for I was not one of the "others." I couldn't trace
therefore the steps of her process; I could only admire it at a distance
and congratulate her mother on the results. The results were that Ethel
went to "big" parties and got people to take her. Some of them were
people she had met abroad, and others were people whom the people
she had met abroad had met. They ministered alike to Miss Ethel's
convenience, and I wondered how she extracted so many favours
without the expenditure of a smile. Her smile was the dimmest thing in
the world, diluted lemonade, without sugar, and she had arrived
precociously at social wisdom, recognising that if she was neither
pretty enough nor rich enough nor clever enough, she could at least in
her muscular youth be rude enough. Therefore if she was able to tell
her mother what really took place in the mansions of the great, give her
notes to work from, the quill could be driven at home to better purpose
and precisely at a moment when it would have to be more active than
ever. But if she did tell, it would appear that poor Mrs. Stormer didn't
believe. As regards many points this was