Part 17

However, what the devil _are_, exactly, the little fundamentals in the past? Fix them, focus them hard; they need only be perfectly conceivable, but they must be of the most lucid sharpness. I want to have it that for Gray, and essentially for Rosanna, it's a _renewal_ of an early, almost, or even quite positively, childish beginning; and for Gray it's the same with Horton Vint--the impression of Horton already existing in him, a very strong and "dazzled" one, made in the quite young time, though in a short compass of days, weeks, possibly months, or whatever, and having lasted on (always for Gray) after a fashion that makes virtually a sort of relation already established, small as it ostensibly is. Such his relation with Rosanna, such his relation with Horton--but for his relation with Cissy----? Do I want that to be also a renewal, the residuum of an old impression, or a fresh thing altogether? What strikes me prima facie is that it's better to have two such pre-established origins for the affair than three; the only question is does that sort of connection more complicate or more simplify for that with Cissy? It more simplifies if I see myself wanting to give, by my plan, the full effect of a revolution in her, a revolution marked the more by the germ of the relation being thrown back, marked the more, that is, in the sense of the shade of perfidy, treachery, the shade of the particular element and image that is of the essence, so far as she is concerned, of my action. How this exactly works I must in a moment go into--hammer it out clear; but meanwhile there are these other fundamentals. Gray then is the son of his uncle's half-sister, not sister (on the whole, I think); whose dissociation from her rich brother, before he was anything like _so_ rich, must have followed upon her marrying a man with whom he, Mr. Betterman, was on some peculiarly bad terms resulting from a business difference or quarrel of one of those rancorous kinds that such lives (as Mr. Betterman's) are plentifully bestrown with. The husband has been his victim, and he hasn't hated him, or objected to him for a brother-in-law, any the less for that. The objected-to brother-in-law has at all events died early, and the young wife, with her boy, her scant means, her disconnection from any advantage to her represented by her half-brother, has betaken herself to Europe; where the rest of _that_ history has been enacted. I see the young husband, Gray's father, himself Graham Fielder the elder or whatever, as dying early, but probably dying in Europe, through some catastrophe to be determined, two or three years after their going there. This is better than his dying at home, for removal of everything from nearness to Mr. Betterman. Betterman has been married and has had children, a son and a daughter, this is indispensable, for diminution of the fact of paucity of children; but he has lost successively these belongings--there is nothing over strange in it; the death of his son, at 16 or 18 or thereabouts, having occurred a few years, neither too few nor too many, before my beginning, and having been the sorest fact of his life. Well then, young Mrs. Fielder or whoever, becomes thus in Europe an early widow, with her little boy, and there, after no long time, marries again, marries an alien, a European of some nationality to be determined, but probably an Englishman; which completes the effect of alienation from her brother--easily conceivable and representable as "in his way," disliking this union; and indeed as having made known to her, across the sea, that if she will forbear from it (this when he first hears of it and before it has taken place) and will come back to America with her boy, he will "forgive" her and do for her over there what he can. The great fact is that she declines this condition, the giving up of her new fiancé, and thereby declines an advantage that may, or might have, become great for her boy. Not so great then--Betterman not _then_ so rich. But in fine--With which I cry Eureka, eureka; I have found what I want for Rosanna's connection, though it will have to make Rosanna a little older than Gray, 2 or 3 or 3 or 4 years, instead of same age. I see Gray's mother at any rate, with her small means, in one of the smaller foreign cities, Florence or Dresden, probably the latter, and also see there Rosanna and her mother, this preceding by no long time the latter's death. Mrs. Gaw has come abroad with her daughter, for advantages, in the American way, while the husband and father is immersed in business cares at home; and when the two couples, mother and son, and mother and daughter, meet in a natural way, a connection is more or less prepared by the fact of Mr. Gaw having had the business association with Mrs. Fielder's half-brother, Mr. Betterman, at home, even though the considerably violent rupture or split between the two men will have already taken place. Mrs. Gaw is a very good simple, a bewildered and pathetic rich woman, in delicate health, and is sympathetic to Gray's mother, on whom she more or less throws herself for comfort and support, and Gray and Rosanna, Rosanna with a governess and all the facilities and accessories natural to wealth, while the boy's conditions are much leaner and plainer--the two, I say, fraternise and are good friends; he figuring to Rosanna (say he is about 13, while she is 16) as a tremendously initiated and informed little polyglot European, knowing France, Germany, Italy etc. from the first. It is at this juncture that Mrs. Fielder's second marriage has come into view, or the question and the appearance of it; and that, very simultaneously, the proposal has come over from her half-brother on some rumour of it reaching him. As already mentioned, Betterman proposes to her that if she will come back to America with her boy, and not enter upon the union that threatens, and which must have particular elements in it of a nature to displease and irritate him, he will look after them both, educate the boy at home, do something substantial for them. Mrs. Fielder takes her American friend into her confidence in every way, introduces to her the man who desires to marry her, whom Rosanna sees and with whom the boy himself has made great friends, so that the dilemma of the poor lady becomes a great and lively interest to them all; the pretendant himself forming also a very good relation with the American mother and daughter, the friends of his friend, and putting to Mrs. Gaw very eagerly the possibility of her throwing her weight into the scale in his favour. Her meeting, that is Mrs. Fielder's meeting, the proposition from New York involves absolutely her breaking off with him; and he is very much in love with her, likes the boy, and, though he doesn't want to stand in the latter's light, has hopes that he won't be quite thrown over. The engagement in fact, with the marriage near at hand, must be an existing reality. It is for Mrs. Fielder something of a dilemma; but she is very fond of her honourable suitor, and her inclinations go strongly to sticking to him. She takes the boy himself into her confidence, young as he is,--perhaps I can afford him a year or two more--make him 15, say; in which case Rosanna becomes 18, and the subsequent chronology is thereby affected. It isn't, I must remember, as a young man in his very first youth, at all, that I want Gray, or see him, with the opening of the story at Newport. On the contrary all the proprieties, elements of interest, convenience etc., are promoted by his being not less than 30. I don't see why I shouldn't make him 33, with Rosanna thus _two_ years older, not three. If he is 15 in Dresden and she 17, it will be old enough for each, without being too old, I think, for Gray. 18 years will thus have elapsed from the crisis at Florence or wherever to the arrival at Newport. I want that time, I think, I can do with it very well for what I see of elements operative for him; and a period of some length moreover is required for bringing the two old men at Newport to a proper pitch of antiquity. Mr. Betterman dies very much in the fulness of years, and as Rosanna's parent is to pass away soon after I want him to have come to the end. If Gray is 15, however, I mustn't make his mother too mature to inspire the devotion of her friend; at the same time that there must have been years enough for her to have lived awhile with her first husband and lost him. Of course this first episode may have been very brief--there is nothing to prevent that. If she had married at 20 she will then be, say, about 36 or so at the time of the crisis, and this will be quite all right for the question of her second marriage. Say she lives a considerable number of years after this, in great happiness, her marriage having taken place; I in fact require her to do so, for I want Gray to have had reasons fairly strong for his not having been back to America in the interval. I may put it that he has, even, been back for a very short time, on some matter connected with his mother's interests, or his own, or whatever; but I complicate the case thereby and have to deal somehow with the question of whether or no he has then seen Mr. Betterman. No, I don't want him to have been back, and can't do with it; keep this simple and workable. All I am doing here is just to fix a little his chronology. Say he has been intending to go over at about 25, when his mother's death takes place, about 10 years after her second marriage. Say then, as is very conceivable, that his stepfather, with whom he has become great friends, then requires and appeals to his care and interest in a way that keeps him on and on till the latter's death takes place just previous to Mr. Betterman's sending for him. This gives me quite sufficiently what I want of the previous order of things; but doesn't give me yet the fact about Rosanna's connection in her young history which I require. I see accordingly what has happened in Florence or Dresden as something of this kind: that Mrs. Fielder, having put it to her boy that he shall decide, if he can, about what they shall do, she lets Mrs. Gaw, who was at this juncture in constant intercourse with her, know that she has done so--Mrs. Gaw and Rosanna being, together, exceedingly interested about her, and Rosanna extremely interested, in a young dim friendly way, about Gray; very much as if he were the younger brother she hasn't got, and whom, or an older, she would have given anything to have. Rosanna hates Mr. Betterman, who has, as she understands and believes, in some iniquitous business way, wronged or swindled her father; and isn't at all for what he has proposed to the Fielders. In addition she is infatuated with Europe, makes everything of being there, dreams, or would dream, of staying on if she could, and has already in germ, in her mind, those feelings about the dreadful American money-world of which she figures as the embodiment or expression in the eventual situation. She knows thus that the boy has had, practically, the decision laid upon him, and with the whole case with all its elements and possibilities before her she takes upon herself to act upon him, influence and determine him. She wouldn't have him accept Mr. Betterman's cruel proposition, as she declares she sees it, for the world. She proceeds with him as she would in fact with a younger brother: there is a passage to be alluded to with a later actuality, which figures for her in memory as her creation of a responsibility; her very considerably passionate, and thereby meddlesome, intervention. I see some long beautiful walk or stroll, some visit to some charming old place or things--and Florence is here indicated--during which she puts it all to him, and from which he, much inspired and affected by her, comes back to say to his mother that he doesn't want what is offered--at any such price as she will have to pay. I see this occasion as really having settled it--and Rosanna's having always felt and known that it did. She and her mother separate then from the others; Mrs. Fielder communicates her refusal, sticks to her friend, marries him shortly afterwards, and her subsequent years take the form I have noted. The American mother and daughter go back across the sea; the mother in time dies etc. I see also how much better it is to have sufficient time for these various deaths to happen. But the point is that the sense of responsibility, begetting gradually a considerable, a deepening force of reflection, and even somewhat of remorse, as to all that it has meant, is what has taken place for Rosanna in proportion as, by the sequence of events and the happening of many things, Mr. Betterman has grown into an apparently very rich old man with no natural heir. His losses, his bereavements, I have already alluded to, and a considerable relaxation of her original feeling about him in the light of more knowledge and of other things that have happened. In the light, for instance, of her now mature sense of what her father's career has been and of all that his great ferocious fortune, as she believes it to be, represents of rapacity, of financial cruelty, of consummate special ability etc. She has kept to some extent in touch with Gray, so far that is as knowing about his life and general situation are concerned; but the element of compunction in her itself, and the sense of what she may perhaps have deprived him of in the way of a great material advantage, may be very well seen, I think, as keeping her shy and backward in respect to following him up or remaining in intercourse. It isn't likely, for the American truth of things, that she hasn't been back to Europe again, more than once, whether before or after her mother's death; but what I can easily and even interestingly see is that on whatever occasion of being there she has yet not tried to meet him again. She knows that neither he nor his stepfather are at all well off, she has a good many general impressions and has tried to get knowledge of them, without directly appealing for it to themselves, whenever she can. Thus it is, to state things very simply, that, on hearing of the stepfather's death, during the Newport summer, she has got at Mr. Betterman and spoken to him about Gray; she has found him accessible to what she wants to say, and has perceived above all what a pull it gives her to be able to work, in her appeal, the fact, quite vivid in the fulness of time to the old man himself indeed, that the young man, so nearly, after all, related to him, and over there in Europe all these years, is about the only person, who could get at him in any way, who hasn't ever asked anything of him or tried to get something out of him. Not only this, but he and his mother, in the time, are the only ones who ever refused a proffered advantage. I think I must make it that Rosanna finds that she can really tell her story to Mr. Betterman, can make a confidant of him and so interest him only the more. She feels that he likes her, and this a good deal on account of her enormous difference from her father. But I need only put it here quite simply: she does interest him, she does move him, and it is as a consequence of her appeal that he sends for Gray and that Gray comes. What I must above all take care of is the fact that she has represented him to the old man as probably knowing less about money, having had less to do with it, having moved in a world entirely outside of it, in a degree utterly unlike anyone and everyone whom Mr. Betterman has ever seen.