Jimstrolled down into the village when the boat came to shore. It was before the hour at which he had concluded he would go home, which, as was natural, was considerably later than the hour proposed by Mab. What was the good, he said to himself, of going in before dinner, or at least before the time which was necessary to get ready for dinner? In that hour, as everybody knows, very little can be done. Mrs. Plowden and the girls would be in the drawing-room talking about what had happened in the afternoon, and the Rector would not have come in. So it was quite a certainty in Jim’s mind that no Sophocles would come of it if he had returned home when Florence did, as she begged him to do. He would not have worked; and, indeed, it would be a kind of breaking of his word if he had done so then, for had he not promised his father to work after dinner, which was quite a different thing? And it was more amusing to prowl along through the village on the outlook for anything that might happen, than to go in and listen to the girls chattering, probably about the Swinfords. And Jim was sick of the very name of the Swinfords. He had that distaste which a young man who has fallen into objectionable ways so often acquires of party-givings and society in what his mother called ‘his own rank of life.’ He flattered himself that what he did dislike was the conventionalities and stiffness of society, and that his own desire to see ‘life’ was a more original and natural sort of thing. He liked to hear what the people said when they were at their ease in inn parlours and tap-rooms. He liked, it is to be feared, what accompanied these sayings. And the more familiar he became in such localities, the more ‘out of it’ he felt in the drawing-rooms, and among the staid and quiet folk who represented society in Watcham. So that the Swinfords represented nothing but a succession of fresh annoyances to Jim. If they gave parties, as his mother and the girls hoped, he would be obliged to get himself up in gorgeous attire and take a part in these entertainments.There was a time when he, too, would have been excited by such a prospect; but that had departed after his first experiences of the life of the somewhat disreputable undergraduate, into which he had been so unfortunate as to fall. Now that he could not lounge into any resort where he could meet his peers in that class, Jim found his distaste for the home society grow upon him. He was tired to death of the girls. The old ladies bored him, which was not so wonderful. The correct old General and the clergymen about were old fogeys, which indeed was true enough. Where was the poor boy to find any one whom he could talk to with the freedom of those delightful but too brief terms at the University where he had been taught what life meant? It had been a shock to his own remaining scruples, and all the force of tradition, when he first strayed into the public-house. Oh no; not the public-house, but the little inn at Watcham, which was quite a pretty little house, all brilliant with flowers, and where people from town came down to stay in the summer; it was so nice, so quaint, so respectable, and so near the river. But it is a very different thing coming to stay at an inn for the sake of being near the river, and stealing in in the evening to the same place for society and amusement. There was nothing disreputable going on in the parlour of the ‘Swinford Arms,’ or the ‘Blue Boar,’ as it was vulgarly called, in reference to the Swinford crest, which presented that aspect to the common eye. The people who went there were respectable enough—the tradesmen in the village, good decent men who liked to see the papers and talk them over with the accompaniment of a glass of something, and a pipe: and the veterinary surgeon, who was a great deal about the country, and talked familiarly of Sir Thomas Barnes, and the Mortlocks of Wellwood, the great hunting people. It made a young man who felt acutely that he did not belong to the class of the tradesmen, more satisfied with himself to talk with a man who spoke of such people familiarly in a sort of hail-fellow well met way, even though he was only the vet. But by degrees as Jim acquired the habit of dropping in in the evenings to the ‘Blue Boar,’ he got to think that the village shopkeepers were very good fellows, and their opinions well worth hearing. So they were, indeed, as a matter of fact: solid, decent men, whose measured glass of something probably did them no harm, and whose wives were rather glad than otherwise that they had this little enlivenment in the evening of a little respectable society in the parlour of the ‘Blue Boar,’ which was itself as respectable as could be desired. But yet it was not respectable, alas! for Jim.
When the Rector first discovered that this was where his son went when he went out in the evenings to take a walk, as he said, Mr. Plowden’s feelings would be difficult to describe. The misery, the shame, the acute and intolerable sense of downfall were perhaps exaggerated. But who can say what the descent is from the drawing-room of the Rectory to the parlour of the village public-house? which is what it really was, no doubt, though it was a most respectable little inn, and frequented in summer by the best of company. The first interview between the father and the son was very painful, but not without hope, for Jim himself was very well aware of all that it meant, and did not stand against his father’s reproaches. ‘I know it is not a place for the Rector’s son,’ he said, humbly enough. ‘It’s not a place for anybody’s son,’ the Rector said. ‘Do you think even White and Slaughter would like their sons to go there?’ This was an argument Jim was not prepared for, and he acknowledged with humility that he did not think they would. The Rector was very gentle with the boy that first time. He pointed out that for Slaughter and White, and even the vet., it was a sort of club where they went to meet their friends—and whether or not there might be any objections morally to their glass of something, yet at all events it was a very moderate indulgence, and went no further. ‘I don’t say it is quite right even for them; but that’s a very different question,’ Mr. Plowden said, and Jim acknowledged the self-evident truth. The Rector said nothing to his wife for that first time, nor for several times afterwards; but he could not conceal his anxiety when Jim disappeared in the evening, as, after a few very quiet and dull nights at home, he again began to do. When Mrs. Plowden heard she cried, almost with indignation, ‘But why didn’t you speak to him, James?’ Speak to him! After two or three interviews poor Mr. Plowden soon began to recognise how little use there was in that.
Jim, accordingly, when he left the girls to stroll down the village street, did so against the remonstrances of Florry, who tried hard to persuade him to come back and hear what mamma and Emmy had been doing at the Hall, then offered herself to share his walk, with equal seriousness. ‘I like a stroll by myself,’ Jim said.
‘It will very soon be dark, Jim; it is no fun walking in the dark.’
‘Not for you. But let me alone; if I like it, that’s enough, Flo.’
‘Oh, Jim, mamma is so pleased when you come in early,’ cried Florence, pleading; ‘it does us all so much good. If you only sawthe difference in poor papa’s face when he knows you’re in the drawing-room.’
‘I shouldn’t be in the drawing-room in any case. I’ve got my Greek to do.’
‘Still better if you are at your Greek. Oh, Jim, do for once come home with me!’
‘I’ll come in in half an hour—will that satisfy you? I only want to shake myself up a bit after sitting there with nothing to do.’
‘Well, mind you don’t forget: in half an hour,’ said Florence.
He went off waving his hand to her. Then thrusting his hands into his pockets, with that idle lounging step of the man who is ready for any mischief, but has none immediately in sight, he strolled away. Florence stood looking after him, with anxiety in every line of her face, until she remembered Mab looking on, whom it was necessary to keep from knowing if possible: and then the poor girl laughed. ‘Isn’t he lazy?’ she said; ‘and it does vex papa so. Papa thinks Jim should like Sophocles as much as he does, which is nonsense, isn’t it? But Jim says that old people never can understand young ones, and perhaps it’s true.’
‘Mother always understands me,’ said Mab, with a child’s unhesitating confidence.
‘Oh,’ said Florence. Her secret thought was, ‘What is there in you, you little thing, to understand?’ She said after a moment, ‘Boys are so different!’ with a sigh.
‘You should not nag at him so much,’ said Mab, with a reflection of her mother’s sentiments, who as yet knew little of Jim’s case, and gave her opinion privately in the bosom of her own home that the boy was being driven out of his senses by never being left alone.
‘I don’t think we nag at him,’ said Florence meekly: and then the two girls parted, Mab taking the way to the cottage, and Florry that which led to the Rectory. ‘You don’t want to hear what they have got to say?’ Florry said, with a faint smile, before the other left her.
‘I shall hear it from mother,’ said Mab, ‘and I don’t know that I care.’
So the cousins separated—with thoughts so different. And Jim strolled away in the other direction with a thirst which was both physical and mental, in his whole being. It was physical, alas! and that was perhaps in its immediate development the worst: but it was also mental, a craving for something he knew not what; something that would supply the atmosphere, the novelty, hewanted, the something he had not got. He knew very well at other moments that the inn parlour, and the village society, and the pipes and the glass—in his own case so often repeated—would not give that. Ordinarily, he thought Oxford would give it and the society of the young men with whom he sometimes talked metaphysics, though usually it was only horses and racing, and boats and bumps, and the qualities of the different dogs of the circle, that they discussed; but still, it was not to be denied that there was something in Jim’s being which thirsted, as well as that fatal thirst in his body, which, alas! it was so much more easy to satisfy. The drab-coloured house at home, with its habits fixed like iron; the evening round the lamp; the mother’s prolonged talk about her neighbours, and about people she once knew, and about getting on; his father’s scanty, careless replies; the girls’ talk, which was very often about their dresses, and how things were worn now—all these had become wearisome to the young man: and he did not care at all for his Sophocles. He had found in Oxford that opening out of the restricted household circle for which his young being craved; but it had not been the best of openings, and now poor Jim prowled down the village street, wanting that something which he could not tell how to attain to, neither what it was. He did not want to go to the ‘Blue Boar.’ He had never yet gone in daylight openly, but under cover of night, when the parlour window looked so bright in the dull village street. It wanted some courage to go now, in cold blood as it were, when there was no reason for it, and he felt all that it meant, the son of the Rectory going in, in the light of day, to the village public-house. He did not want to do it, if he could only find somewhere else to go.
It happened in this way that Jim was very ready to be led in any quarter where a little novelty or amusement was to be found. Not in any quarter; for supposing he had at that moment met the good old General, whose company could do him nothing but good, who had told him, perhaps, that he had a young nephew, perhaps a pretty niece, to whom he wished to introduce the Rector’s son, Jim would at once have found that he had to go back to his Greek: he would not have gone to the General’s, nor to any house, as his mother said, ‘in his own rank of life.’ And why this should be I am quite unable to tell. Houses which were in his own rank of life did not seem to him to have what he wanted; he would have felt sure in advance that the General’s nephew would be a prig, or perhaps an insolent young soldier, thinking nobody was anybody who was out of the service; and the General’s niece, ugly and stupid. This he would have feltsure of, though he could not have told why. Neither can I tell why, nor any of those to whom it would be of the greatest advantage to make this all-important discovery. It would be even more important than finding out how to resist a deadly disease; and in the one case as in the other, there are many surprises and many experiments. But nobody as yet has been able to find out the way.
It was while he was thus moving along on the other side of the street, not desiring to go to the ‘Blue Boar,’ yet not knowing where else to go, and having within him an imperious wish to go somewhere, that Jim suddenly heard in the soft stillness of the evening air—for the wind had quite fallen as night came on—a pleasant voice saying, ‘Good evening, Mr. Plowden’; a voice which was quite new to him, and which he could not associate with anybody in Watcham. He knew everybody in Watcham, great and small, so that it was not easy to take him by surprise. He turned round, startled, and saw a woman, a lady, standing in the half-light in the door of the house next to the schools, which was appropriated to the village schoolmistress. He knew there was a new schoolmistress, for he had heard it talked of, but he had not seen her, so that this was about the only person in Watcham whose voice he did not know. Jim stopped suddenly and made a clutch at his cap. I hope he would on any occasion have taken off his hat to the schoolmistress, but at all events this voice made it imperative, for it was a refined voice, the voice of a lady, or else an exceedingly good make-believe.
‘Good evening,’ he replied vaguely. He could not very well make out her face, but yet there was something in it which it appeared to him he had seen before.
‘You do not remember me?’ she said.
‘You have newly come to the school, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I beg your pardon. I don’t think I have seen you before.’
‘You have seen me before, but not here, and if I were quite sure you did not remember me I should be very glad.’
‘That is rather a queer thing to say,’ said Jim.
‘Perhaps; but it is a true thing. I wanted to ask you, if you did remember me, not to do so—at least, to say nothing about it.’
‘This is more mysterious still.’
‘Yes, I daresay it does sound mysterious; but it is important to me. I don’t know whether to trust to you in this way, that if you remember me after you will say nothing about it; or to be frank and recall myself to your mind.’
‘You had better let me judge,’ said Jim.
Here was the something he wanted, perhaps—an adventure, a mystery; of all things in the world the least likely thing to find in Watcham village street.
The woman—lady he called her—gave a glance round to see if any one was looking, then suddenly stepping back, bade him come in. There was nothing in the house of the schoolmistress that looked like mystery. He knew it well enough. He had been there with his mother when he was a child. He had come with errands from her to the late mistress. The narrow passage and the tiny little sitting-room that opened off from it were as familiar to him as the Rectory. He walked into the parlour, which, however, startled him, as if it had been a new place which he had never seen before. How well he remembered the black haircloth sofa, the square table with its heavy woollen table-cover, which left so little room for coming or going. It was newly furnished, draped with curtains much more fresh than anything in the Rectory, a small sofa with pretty chintz, an easy-chair or two, the small tables which were not so common in those days. Jim did not notice those things in detail, but the general effect was such as to turn his head.
‘Hullo!’ he said, in his surprise.
‘You see the difference in the room? No; I wouldn’t have my predecessor’s old things. I have done it almost all with my own hands. Isn’t it nice?’
‘It is very different,’ said Jim. His home was dingy, but it was natural, and he had an undefined sense that this was not natural. There was something fictitious in the air of the little room with its poor, coarsely-papered walls—a sort of copy of a boudoir out of a novel, or on the stage. He was not very learned in such things, and yet it seemed to him to be part of adécorrather than a room to live in. In Mrs. Peters’ time it was very ugly, but as honest as the day.
‘Sit down,’ she said, ‘and let me give you a cup of tea; or perhaps—for I think I know gentlemen’s tastes—there may be something else that you will like better. Sit down, at least, and I will try if I can find something to your taste; for I want to make a little bargain with you, Mr. Plowden, that may be for my advantage and yours, too. Sit down for a moment, and wait for me here.’
She vanished as she spoke, and left him much bewildered in the little bedizened room. It occurred to him during the moment he was left there that perhaps, on the whole, it would have beenbetter had he gone after all to the parlour in the ‘Blue Boar.’ But his entertainer reappeared in a minute or two, bearing in her hands a tray, upon which stood a tall glass, foaming as nothing ever foamed in the ‘Blue Boar.’ I don’t pretend to say what its contents were. They were foaming, and highly scented, and they pleased Jim Plowden, I am sorry to say, better than tea.
‘That is something like what we had at Nuneham that lovely day. Don’t you recollect me now?’
‘Mrs. Brown!’ cried Jim. It was not a name which said very much to the ordinary ear. It would, indeed, be difficult to say less. But the new schoolmistress made him a curtsey such as had never been seen in Watcham before.
‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘that you remember me; though I ought to have been pleased and satisfied that you did not—for a woman, however she may came down in the world, never likes to think that she has been forgotten. I have recalled myself to your recollection, Mr. Plowden, in order to say that I hope you won’t say anything to your father or any one of where we met last. I was then, if you remember, chaperon, to some young ladies.’
‘Oh yes, indeed, I remember perfectly,’ cried Jim, ‘your nieces.’
‘Well, yes, my nieces if you like; and I was not at all like a village schoolmistress, was I? Things happen so in this life; but it would do me no good, Mr. Plowden, with the Rector or the other good people, to know that I had been—well, helping you to squander your money at Oxford only last year.’
‘You did not help me to squander my money, Mrs. Brown. I was only one of the guests. I had no money to squander; but I fear what you mean is that you have come down in the world. I am very sorry, I am as sorry as I can be. It is very different, this, from anything you have been accustomed to; but instead of saying nothing about it, which I can understand as a matter of pride, don’t you think it would be better for me to tell my mother, who though she has her own ways which you might perhaps not care for, is very kind, and would, I am sure, try to make things as pleasant as she could and as little hard, and ask you up to the Rectory and all that?’
Mrs. Brown turned her back upon Jim, and he feared that she wept. But I don’t think she wept, though when she turned round again she had her handkerchief to her eyes. She said, ‘I am sure your mother is goodness itself, Mr. Plowden; but I am a proud woman, as you perceive. No, you must not breathe a word to your mother. I have one friend who knows all about me; and that is Mrs. Swinford, at the Hall; but except her andyourself I want nobody to know. Will you promise me that nobody shall know from you, Mr. Jim?’
How did she know his name, Jim? How did she remember him at all, a little, young, ignorant freshman much honoured to make one of the brilliant water party of which she and her nieces had been the soul? He was ready to have promised anything, everything she asked.
‘Shewas nice enough to us,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘but very hoighty-toighty with your aunt. Did you observe that, Emmy? Poor Aunt Emily was very kind. She said in such a pretty way, “That is Emily Plowden now,” and really Emmy looked so very like her at that moment—with the charm of youth, of course, added on—that nobody could help remarking it. Mr. Swinford looked from one to the other, making a little comparison I could see—and you may imagine in whose favour it was.’
‘It was in my sister’s favour, of course,’ said the Rector. There was something in the way in which he emphasised themy, as if to mark the difference between his daughter, who was her mother’s as well as his, and his sister who was all his own, that might have been amusing to a bystander, but to Mrs. Plowden was not amusing at all.
‘It is most curious,’ she said, ‘the way you always stand up for your own family——’
‘Whom do you mean by my own family? Emmy is my own family, I suppose?’
‘You know very well what I mean. I mean your side of the house in opposition to mine. One would think that nobody born was ever equal to your people—not even your own children.’
‘My own children are as God has made them,’ said the Rector. He added, as if she had been somehow of a superior manufacture, ‘But my sister Emily was the sweetest creature I ever saw when she was Emmy’s age. Emmy is a good girl, and she is very nice-looking or she could not be supposed to be like my sister. But as for comparing the one to the other, my dear, it only shows how little you know.’
‘Upon my word!’ cried Mrs. Plowden, not without reason, ‘I hope my Emmy may be compared to any one. Your sister had always a great deal too much intellectual pride abouther to please me. She was not content to be nice-looking, which nobody ever denied, but she went in for being clever, too. I know you don’t approve of women taking that sort of position, James. Indeed, you have said as much a hundred times—and now to go on raving about your sister, as if we haven’t all had sisters that were out of the common in our day!’
‘My dear, I didn’t know there was anybody out of the common connected with you. My impression is I never heard you brag of that before—no more than poor Emily ever did about being more clever than the rest of us. Poor girl, it hasn’t come to much in her case.’
‘I am not one to be always blowing a trumpet about my family,’ said Mrs. Plowden angrily; ‘but if you think my brother Thurston is nobody——’
‘Not in the least; he is a very nice fellow, and a Q.C.’
‘Or my sister Florence!’ said the Rector’s wife, ‘poor Florry’s godmother—and the girl takes after her, I’m glad to say—and it’s to her credit, whatever you may think.’
‘Oh, your sister Florence!’ said the Rector. This was a point that had been argued between them often before, for, as a matter of fact, though Emily Plowden was understood to have done very little good for herself by her distinguished marriage, yet it was a distinguished marriage, and one of which the Rector’s wife herself was more proud than any one. She quoted Lady William in her own family in a way which made her brother who was a Q.C. and her sister who was Florence’s godmother very angry. ‘I wish you would not be always dinning that eternal Lady William into our ears,’ was what these good people said. But at home, in face of her husband, Mrs. Plowden liked to show her independence, and that she and her brothers and sisters were as remarkable as he and his brothers and sisters any day.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘they were really more nice to Emmy, though she is only my daughter, than they were to your sister Emily, James. I did not think that Emily was received as her rank demands. They were more civil to me, a simple clergyman’s wife, than they were to her. Now, though one is always pleased, of course to be put in the first place, I don’t think it was right. Oh! not Mr. Swinford, he was very attentive; but in such cases the man does not count, and the old lady——’
‘Is she really an old lady, mamma?’ said Florry, who had not yet found the opening for her anxious questions which she desired.
‘Well—her son is not quite young. He is not like Jim; heis a full-grown young man of the world. As for Mrs. Swinford, she is so curled and frizzed and powdered and everything done to her, that you can’t tell how old she is. But it is always safe to say the old lady when there is a son quite old enough to marry. Of course she will be the old lady as soon as he gets a wife.’
‘I am sure, mamma, it would not make you an old lady if Jim were to marry,’ said Emmy, always exemplary in her sentiments.
‘Jim!’ Mrs. Plowden said, with a sort of shriek. And then she added: ‘Poor Jim’s not a landed proprietor like Mr. Swinford. He can never make me a Dowager, poor boy! And what chance has he of ever marrying? none that I know of, without any money, and not even a profession. Alas! there is a great difference between Leo Swinford and Jim.’
‘Is Leo his name? What an odd name!’
‘But pretty, don’t you think—and so uncommon?’ said Emmy.
Emmy had a slightly dazzled look about the eyes, as one that has seen visions. She had been into that fairy palace, and come into absolute contact with Prince Charming. Florry knew that the details of the interview were not likely to come out until they two came face to face in their room, with no father or mother in the way.
‘By the way,’ said the Rector, as if it had not been the prominent thing in his mind all the time, ‘did Jim come back with you from the river, Flo?’
‘He thought he would like a little stroll before he came back—for half an hour. He promised me faithfully he would come back in half an hour.’
‘It is more than half an hour now,’ said the Rector, with his watch in his hand; and then he sighed and went away.
‘Oh, children,’ said Mrs. Plowden, when his steps had died out in the distance of the rambling house, ‘how often must I tell you not to be so pointed with your half-hours? How can a young man tell, if he strolls out in the evening, exactly to a moment when he’s to get back? He may meet a friend, or some little accident may happen, and he is kept, without any doing of his. And there is your father with his watch in his hand as if he had never been a young man himself. I don’t want you, I am sure, to be anything but truthful—but if you could throw a little veil over such things! Now, however soon he may come, and however right he may be, your father will never forget having looked at his watch. He will say you can never trust in his word because of that half-hour.’
‘I only said what he told me, mamma,’ said Florence, half offended.
‘As if there was any use in saying what he told you!’ cried Mrs. Plowden, ‘when you know that’s Jim’s weakness never to be sure when he is coming in; and to say in half an hour is just as easy as in—— Jim! why, here he is, as exact as clockwork. Run and tell your father, Florry: he can put his watch in his pocket. Oh, I am so glad! It is always a little triumph for us womenfolk who believe whatever you say, you troublesome Jim!’
‘Do you believe whatever I say, mother?’
‘Oh, more than I ought—more than I ought. And oh, Jim, if you only knew the pleasure of it, the pride of it! To see you walking in at your time as a gentleman should—and like a gentleman in every way!’
The words were, perhaps, capable of various interpretations; but the little party in the Rectory drawing-room knew precisely what they meant; and Jim knew very well that his mother, in the darkness of the room, where no lights as yet were lighted, was crying quietly to herself over his virtue and punctuality. It struck him with a sort of mingled shame and ridicule to think that, perhaps, had she known where he had been, she would not have been so much content. I may say that it was much more like an hour and a half than half an hour since he had left the two girls at the landing-place; so that he was not precisely a model of exactness after all.
When Jim came in all the other subjects in the world went out; and as he had no interest in the Hall and its inhabitants there was no further gossip about the Swinfords in the Rectory family that night, until, indeed, the evening was over, and the girls found themselves face to face in the room which they shared, which was a long and low one, under the eaves, with a number of small windows, and space enough to make up for a slanting roof on one side. It was indeed quite a large room, with two little beds, two little white-draped toilet tables, two sets of drawers, everything double, as the two were who had lived in it all their lives. All their little confidences had been made to each other there, all that had happened had been discussed; their whole life, which was not eventful, had passed in this dim chamber, where the light came in through greenish lattices, and under the shadow of the waving trees. They came upstairs, following each other very demurely, each with her candle, but when they were safe in their shelter, and had shut their door, each put down her candle on her own table, and they rushed together, seizing each other’s hands.‘Oh, Emmy, tell me!’ cried the one who had been left at home.
‘There is nothing to tell, indeed,’ said Emmy, ‘except what you have heard already.’
‘I have heard nothing abouthim,’ said her sister.
‘Oh, Flo, dear! all that nonsense was amusing enough as long as he was only a dream. He has been a dream for so long; but now he’s a man, just like another.’
‘Not like any other in the world, Em.’
‘That is, to you and me; but, thank heaven, nobody knows except us two, and it is all over. He is like any other man, rather more nicely dressed, rather more careful of his clothes.’
‘Oh, Emmy!’
‘That doesn’t sound like our hero, does it? I suppose it is because he is half French: red stockings and patent-leather shoes, as Mab said.’
‘Well,’ said Florry, ‘if true hearts are more than coronets, they are certainly more than patent-leather shoes.’
‘That is very true, but somehow it goes dreadfully against one’s ideal. And, Flo, he is not—tall.’
Florence burst into a somewhat agitated laugh. ‘What does that matter?’ she said.
‘Oh, nothing at all. I know that little men are just as nice, sometimes nicer, than big ones; but you know what we always thought: and he is not the least like it—not one little bit.’
Emmy looked as if she were going to cry; for the fact was that Mr. Swinford had been, by a piece of girlish romance not very uncommon among such unsophisticated girls as those of the Rectory, the hero of an entirely visionary castle in the air on the part of this young lady. Florence was more wise; she had the ideas of her century, and was very strongly convinced that for her sister to marry well was a thing most essential at the present crisis of the family fortunes; but she had been very indulgent to Emmy’s romance, possibly from the conviction that this was the only way in which her sister could be moved to take such a step—and partly because she had herself a sentimental side, and was deeply convinced that no true marriage could be made without love.
‘Well,’ she said soothingly, ‘never mind; he may be everything that is delightful in himself, even though he is short and not handsome.’
‘I never said he was not handsome,’ said Emmy, with some indignation, ‘nor yet short. How exaggerated you are! I said he was not tall. He is very nice-looking. Not the way we usedto think; not dark-haired and with deep dark eyes as we used to imagine—and not fair either, which is perhaps better: but yet very nice—in his own way.’
‘Brown!’ cried Florence, ‘sober, sensible, common brown—like most people. After all, that must be the best and safest since Providence makes the most of us of that hue.’
‘If you think he is common,’ said Emmy indignantly, ‘you are making the greatest mistake. He is not heroic—in appearance: but unusual—to a degree.’ Emmy’s powers of language were not great, but her feeling was unmistakable. ‘I never saw any one at all like him,’ she said. ‘If he is not like a man in a poem or on the stage, he is just as little like the ordinary man you meet. Fancy, it was he who made the tea! His mother said he always did it. The way she calls Leo at every moment is the most curious thing. She has a sweet voice, but it is so imperious, as if she never thought it possible that any one could resist her; and, though it is quite low, he hears her before she has half called him, whatever he may be doing.’
‘All that is very interesting,’ said Florence, ‘but’—she seized her sister’s hands and looked anxiously into her face—‘of course you can’t see how things are to go the first time—but, Emmy, oh, tell me——!’
Emmy shook her head; she withdrew her hands; her eyes drooped before her sister’s gaze. ‘How can you ask?’ she said, ‘how could anybody tell? He was very nice, of course—as he would have been to the housemaid if we had sent her, or to Mrs. Brown at the school.’
‘Mamma said he was exceedingly nice to you, and not so nice to Aunt Emily.’
‘Ah, that was Mrs. Swinford she was thinking of. Mamma naturally thinks of her. No, no, Flo, we must not deceive ourselves; it was all the other way. If there is any one here whom Mr. Swinford thinks it worth his while to talk to and make friends with, it will neither be you nor me.’
‘Me, no! I never thought of such a thing. But why not you, Emmy? and, if not you, who else?’
Emmy clasped her hands together and shook her head. She had been shaking it for at least a minute before she let the words ‘Aunt Emily’ drop from her lips, with an accent of something like despair.
‘Aunt Emily!’ said Florence in the profoundest surprise: her tone changed in a moment into one of disdain. ‘Aunt Emily! why, she is old enough to be—she is almost as old as mamma. She has nothing to do with it at all.’
‘Do you remember,’ said Emmy, with some solemnity, ‘thatFrench novel which we found in Uncle Thurston’s room?’
Florence nodded her head. It had been a fearful joy to find in their uncle’s room anything so wildly wicked, so universally condemned, as a yellow French novel. It had not been so delightful in the attempt to read it—for the girls were far too innocent to understand the stimulating fare there placed before them. But it was a terrible and alarming memory in their lives.
‘Well, the heroine in that was a widow,’ cried Emmy. ‘She was the one everybody thought of. And Mr. Swinford is quite French, and Aunt Emily doesn’t look old, and she is really handsome. Don’t you know when people want to be very complimentary to me they say I am like Aunt Emily?—only when they want to be very complimentary.’
‘So you are; and the more he thinks of her the more he ought to turn to you, who are so like her.’
‘Oh! do you think so? I, for my part, feel sure that he will like her best. She will be able to talk to him. She has been in Paris, where he comes from. She will be like the people he has been used to.’
‘Oh! not like the people in Uncle Thurston’s novel!’
‘I did not mean that; but she can talk, and she is what people call elegant, and you’ll see he’ll think more of her than either of you or me.’
‘It is impossible,’ cried Florence, with the confidence of youth. ‘A woman with a grown-up daughter!’
‘Wait,’ said Emmy oracularly, ‘and you will see.’
Itwas a day or two after these events before any new incident happened; and, indeed, the appearance of Mr. Swinford in the village of Watcham was not a very remarkable incident. For Watcham was not in the depths of the country, where the sight of a new face was in itself extraordinary. People from London were continually appearing in this little place. To be sure, it was too early in March for the shoals of men in flannels who were to be seen lounging about in summer; but still there were people who would come down ‘to have a look at the river’ even in the winter season, when the boats were laid up. And boating men, and indeed others, had a way of appearing at the ‘Blue Boar’ on visits from Saturday till Monday, and were very correct in their town costumes when they arrived, though afterwards falling into many eccentricities of apparel. Mr. Swinford might have been one of them, as he walked down on Saturday afternoon. He was not very fond of walking, having had a French rather than an English education. It had already been discovered that his usual way of going about was in an exceedingly smart dog-cart, which he drove in a way rather unusual to the aborigines, with a rein in each hand. I need not pause to point out that Leo Swinford, an Englishman educated in France, was not at all an Anglomane, but probably more French than most young Frenchmen whose desire would have been to look English—at least in everything that had to do with riding or driving. But on this occasion he walked, and might have been taken simply for one of the Saturday to Monday men. But no; Watcham was too clever for that. None of them were so point devise as the young master of the Hall. Though it is always a little muddy on this riverside road, he still had thechaussure, so much admired yet scorned by the young ladies who had discussed it—the red silk stockings and glistening patent-leather shoes which had filled Mab with wonder and disdain. Hehad a warm greatcoat buttoned over a white silkcache-nezwhich was round his throat. The cut of the coat, though excellent, was not like Bond Street—or is it Savile Row? I am of opinion that it had been made there, but it had acquired from the wearer a something, a little more shape than is common to a young Englishman, aje ne sais quoiof foreign and stranger. His hat, I suppose, was also an English hat, but somehow curled at the brim, as an Englishman’s hat rarely does. The village got note of his arrival in some extraordinary way before he was within its bounds. People peeped over the little muslin blinds in the cottages; a woman or two bolder than the rest came out to the door to have a good look at him. Even the men in the bakers’ and butchers’ carts stopped and winked at each other; ‘awful Frenchy,’ they thought he was.
After a while it became apparent that this exquisite figure was bound for the Rectory; and some thrill running through the very path brought the news before he did to the Plowdens, who came together as by some electric current driving the different atoms towards each other. I have no doubt this is an impossible metaphor, and that electric currents have nothing to do with atoms; but the reader who knows better will, I hope, derive a little gratification from his smile at my ignorance. Anyhow, the ladies of the house flew as by an instinctive movement into the drawing-room. Mrs. Plowden was the first to get there; and the girls found her shaking up the sofa cushions, and drawing the chairs about—not to range them against the wall and make everything tidy as her grandmother would have done, but to give them that air of comfortable disorder which is the right thing nowadays. Emmy followed her mother’s example with a little, flutter and agitation, shaking up anew the sofa cushions which Mrs. Plowden had just arranged to the best advantage, while Florence gathered up a leaf or two which had fallen from the flower vases, and picked off a faded flower or two from the pots of narcissus and jonquils which were in the room. It might have been the Queen who was coming, though it was only a natty young man. Then the Rector appeared, a little anxious, rubbing his hands. ‘What had I better do?’ he said; ‘shall I be here with you to receive him, or wait in my study? He may be coming only to call on me.’
This view of the subject filled the ladies with consternation, though they allowed there was a certain truth in it.
‘You had better be in the study, anyhow, James,’ Mrs. Plowden said; ‘and if he asks for me, of course I will send for you;if he is shown in to you instead, of course you will say, after you have had your conversation, “You must come into the drawing-room, Mr. Swinford; my wife and daughters will be rejoiced to see you;” or words to that effect.’
‘Oh, I don’t suppose I shall be at a loss for words,’ said the Rector, who had no respect for his wife’s style. He gave a glance round the room; not with any satisfaction, for he felt that it was rather dingy, and that a stranger would not be likely to see what he felt, being so accustomed to it, to be the real comfort of the room. It was looking its best, however. The sunshine was bright in the windows, the jonquils and narcissus filling it with the fragrance of spring—a little too much, perhaps; but then one window was open, so that it was not overpowering. The green of the lawn showed through that open window, just on a level with the carpet; but it was so bright outside that there was no chilling suggestion in this. And the girls looked animated, with more colour than usual, in their fervour of anticipation. The Rector gave a little note of semi-satisfaction, semi-dissatisfaction peculiar to men and fathers, and which is not in the least expressed by the conventional Humph! but I don’t know what better synonym to give than this time-honoured one; and then he turned away and shut himself into his study to await there the advent of the great man. There was no reason why he should be deeply moved by the coming of Leo Swinford. It would be well that the Rectory and the Hall should maintain amicable relations, but that was all. Mr. Plowden was not likely to be any the better whatever happened, except perhaps through the parish charities. There was no better living or dignity of any kind to which this young man’s influence was likely to help him. Jim? Was there perhaps a possibility that Leo, if he pleased, might do something for Jim? or at least bring him into better society, make him turn to better things, even if he did nothing more? There was surely that possibility. One young man can do more for another, if he likes to try, than any one else could do—if Jim would but allow himself to be influenced. And surely he would in this case. He would be flattered if Mr. Swinford sought him, if he was invited and made welcome at the Hall. These thoughts were not very clearly formed, as I set them down, in Mr. Plowden’s head; but they flitted through his mind, as many an anxious parent will know how. And this was what made his middle-aged bosom stir as he sat and waited for Leo Swinford. Then a smile just crept about his month as he remembered what his wife had been saying about, perhaps, one of the girls. But the Rector shook his head. No,no, that was not to be thought of. They were good girls—invaluable girls. But she might as well think of a prince for them as of Leo Swinford, who was a sort of prince in his way. No, not that; but perhaps Jim——
The question between the drawing-room and the study was now put to rest, for Mr. Swinford, when he had walked up briskly to the door, admired by the ladies from between the bars of the venetian blinds in the end window, asked for Mrs. Plowden, and was triumphantly ushered into the room by the parlourmaid, who secretly shared the excitement, wondering within herselfwhichof the young ladies? And he was received and shaken hands with, and set in a comfortable chair; and a polite conversation began, before Mrs. Plowden, looking as if the matter had just occurred to her, in the midst of her inquiries for Mrs. Swinford, broke off, and said, ‘Florry, my dear, your papa will be in the study; go and tell him that Mr. Swinford is here.’
‘Can I go?’ said the young man; ‘it is a shame to disturb Miss Florry on my account; tell me which door, and I will beard the Rector in his den.’
‘No, no! run, Flo; my husband will be so glad to see you here. I daresay you remember him in old times, though we were not here when you were a child. It was his father then who was Rector, and Lady William—I mean my sister-in-law Emily—was the young lady at home, as it might be one of my girls now.’
‘I recollect it all very well,’ said Leo, with a look and a smile which did not betray his sense that the girls now were not by any means what the Emily Plowden he remembered had been. He even paused, and said with a tone which naturally came into his voice when he spoke to a young woman—‘I see now how like your daughter is to the Miss Plowden who used to play with me, and put up with me when I was a disagreeable little boy.’
‘I am sure you never were a disagreeable little boy,’ said Mrs. Plowden. ‘I have often heard Emily speak of you. She was very fond of you as a child.’
‘I hope she will not give up that good habit now I am a man. I hope, indeed, I am a little more bearable than I was then. I was a spoiled brat, I am afraid. Now, I am more aware of my deficiencies. Ah, Rector, how do you do? I am so glad to meet another old friend.’
‘How do you do, Leo?’ said the Rector. The girls admired and wondered, to hear that their father did not hesitate to call this fine gentleman by his Christian name. ‘It is a very long timesince we met, and I don’t know that I should have recognised you: a boy of twelve, and a man of——’
‘Thirty,’ said Leo, with a laugh, ‘don’t spare me—though it is a little hard in presence of these young ladies. But it has not made any such change in you, sir, and I should have known you anywhere.’
‘Twenty years is a long time. What do you say, Jane? Eighteen years: well, there’s no great difference. And so you have come home at last, and I hope now you are at home you mean to stay, and take up the duties of an English country gentleman, my dear fellow—which is your real vocation, you know, as your father’s son.’
‘And what are those duties, my dear Rector,’ said Leo, with a laugh; ‘perhaps my ideas are rather muddled by my French habits—to keep up a pack of fox-hounds, and ride wildly across country: and provide a beef roasted whole for Christmas?’
‘Well, you can never go wrong about the beef at Christmas—but I think we’ll let you off the fox-hounds. If you’ll subscribe to the hunt, that will be enough.’
‘That is a comfort,’ said the unaccustomed squire, ‘for I am not, I fear, a Nimrod at all.’
To hear the familiar way in which their father talked, laying down the law, but not in the least in his imperative way, filled the girls, and even Mrs. Plowden, with an admiration for the Rector which was not invariable in his own house. He was at once so bold and so genial, so entirely at his ease with this gentleman, who was so much out of their way, and beyond their usual range, that they were at once astonished and proud—proud of their father, who spoke to Leo as if he were no better than any other young man in the place, and astonished that he should be able to do so. But Mrs. Plowden could not longer allow these two to have it all their own way.
‘It is so nice of Mrs. Swinford to give up her favourite place, and to consent to come home, in order that you may live among your own people—for it must be a sacrifice. We can’t say anything in favour of our English climate, I fear. We all get on very well, but then we are used to it—but Mrs. Swinford——’
‘Oh, your mother is with you, of course,’ the Rector said in no such conciliatory tone.
‘Yes, my mother is with me. But, so far as that goes, Mrs. Plowden, Paris, where we have chiefly lived, is no great improvement, that I know, upon England. It’s very cold, and now and then it’s foggy too: but she likes the society: you know it’sgenerally supposed to be more easy than in England. Not knowing England, except as a child, I can’t tell; but if you can manage to be more conventional here than people are in France, I shall be surprised. Of course, I should not have come, unless my mother had seen the necessity: for I am all she has, you know, now——’
‘Now,’ said the Rector, with pointed emphasis.
At which Leo Swinford showed a little uneasy feeling. ‘For a great many years,’ he said. ‘You know my father died—shortly after we left here.’
‘I know,’ said the Rector, very gravely. Then he added, in a softened tone, ‘It is a very long time ago.’
‘Yes,’ said the young man, more cheerfully, ‘so long, that almost my only experience of life is, that of being always with my mother, her companion in everything. We have been a sort of lovers,’ he said, with a laugh; ‘everything in the world to each other.’
Oh, how the girls admired this man, who said that his mother was everything in the world to him! It brought the tears to their eyes. An Englishman, they thought, would not have said it, however much it might have been the case: and Leo said it so pleasantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world; but papa, who had been so cheerful—papa kept a very serious face.
‘I hope it will be found that Watcham is not injurious to Mrs. Swinford’s health,’ he said, and then there was an uncomfortable pause.
‘I suppose,’ cried Mrs. Plowden, rushing in to break it, ‘that you do not know any of your neighbours in the county, Mr. Swinford? They will be eager, of course, to make your acquaintance. There is quite a nice society in the county. We only see them now and then, of course, in this little village.’
‘Lady Wade was here on Tuesday, mamma, and the Lenthall people the Saturday before, and Miss Twyford——’
‘Yes, that is true,’ said Mrs. Plowden, delighted that Emmy had been sensible enough to remember so opportunely, and bring in all these appropriate names. ‘They do not neglect us, though it is rather a long drive, from Lenthall especially; but Mr. Swinford will have better opportunities of seeing a great deal of them. When you have plenty of carriages and horses, everything is so much easier.’
‘Bobby Wade came to see us in Paris,’ said Mr. Swinford, ‘a funny little man: and I have met some of the Lenthalls. Onedrifts across most people one time or another. The world is such a small world.’
‘Oh, then you won’t feel such a stranger among them,’ Mrs. Plowden said; but she was a little disappointed. It had seemed to her that there would be a fine rôle to play in presenting this young potentate, so to speak, to the people about; but as she reflected, with a sort of disgust, people in that position have a way of knowing each other, and are always drifting across each other in that wonderful thing called society, which is such a mystery to those that are out of it. She made a little pause of partial discomfiture, and then she said, ‘Emmy, do you know where Jim is? Is Jim in the house, my dear? I should so like to introduce to Mr. Swinford our boy Jim.’
‘Most happy, I am sure. Is that the one who has religious doubts?’ said Leo, smiling. ‘Perhaps, as I am not very orthodox, the Rector may think he will not get any good from me.’
‘Has Jim doubts?’ said the Rector, with his severe, precise air, transfixing the anxious mother with that regard: and then he added, ‘Quite the reverse, Leo, the society of a man like you could not but be good for my boy; I should like you to know him. I’ll go and fetch him myself.’
But, alas! Jim was not to be found. He had gone out, the maid said, immediately after Mr. Swinford came in. He had indeed seized the opportunity to escape, fearing that he would be called in, and made to form an acquaintance with this new man, for whom he had a kind of aimless dislike, as quite different from himself. The Rector came back with a serious face, which he tried to conceal with a laugh.
‘We might have known,’ he said, ‘this was not a time to find Jim. He is reading with me to make up a little special work for his college, and as soon as his hours of work are over, he—bolts: as I suppose most young men in these circumstances would.’
‘Every one of them,’ said Leo. ‘And do you find it answer, sir, this work at home? Mr. Jim must be a wonderful man if he keeps hours, and all that—at home with you.’
There was not any reply made for a moment, but the father and mother exchanged a glance. Oh! God bless the man who speaks such words; it seemed as if there was nothing wrong, nothing but what was natural and universal in the shortcomings of their boy.
Mr. Swinfordwas afterwards watched by the village in his progress from one house to another of the great people of Watcham—the General’s, where the family were at home, and he went in and stayed for a quarter of an hour: the Archdeacon’s, where they were out, and where some close observers felt that he showed great satisfaction in leaving cards: and then he walked with his alert quick step round the village, as if to take a general view of it, and then returned towards the cottage, which all the spectators thought he was neglecting, the house of Lady William, generally the first on the list of all callers. He was not very tall, as Emmy Plowden had so regretfully allowed, but yet not short either, as she had indignantly asserted after. And it was true that he was neither dark nor fair, but brown, common brown, according to Florence’s conclusion, the most well-wearing and steadygoing of all colours. His eyes, I think, were blue, which is a pleasant combination; but I don’t mean by that the heroical sentimental combination of black hair and dark blue eyes which is so dear to romance, and so distinct a type of beauty. Mr. Swinford’s eyes were of rather an ordinary blue, as his hair was of an ordinary brown, a little curly on his temples. And he had a pleasant colour, and, what was really the only very striking thing about him, a waxed and pointed moustache, after the fashion of his former dwelling-place. He walked briskly, but like a man not used to rough and muddy roads; stumbling sometimes, not remembering that it was necessary to look where he set his foot, and looking down now and then, with a sort of smiling dismay, upon the spots of mud upon his varnished shoes; yet he pushed on briskly all the same; and walked down to the landing-place to take a look at the river, which was looking its best, reflecting the sunshine which began to get low, and to dazzle in the eyes of the gazer. He gave a little pleased nod, as of approval to the river, and then he came backagain to the village green, meeting the bands of children just dismissed, who had poured out of the school doors the minute before. He smiled upon them too, and their noise and their games, with little involuntary shrugs of his shoulders and uplifting of his eyebrows as he had to step out of their way: for they did not make room for him as they ought to have done, being rough and healthy village children, invaded by the spirit of the nineteenth century, and having passed beyond the age of curtseys and bows to the gentry. Some of the girls, indeed, stood aside with a little curiosity and pointed him out to each other, with whispers and giggles, which were less agreeable than the uproarious indifference of the rest. When he had got through the crowd, and passed the doors of the empty school, Leo suddenly stopped short at the sight of a face he knew. ‘What!’ he said, ‘you here?’ with very little pleasure in his tone.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Brown, with a slight sweep of a curtsey, ‘I am here. You do not say you are glad to see me, Leo.’
‘You know I am not glad to see you, and I do not pretend it. What are you doing here?’
Mrs. Brown smiled. She was a handsome woman, and looked, as all the village allowed, ‘superior’ to a village schoolmistress. She was tall and dark, not like Leo, but there was a resemblance in her face to that of his mother which filled him with an angry impatience whenever this woman crossed his path. She smiled, and again made a scarcely perceptible obeisance as of satirical humility. ‘That is my own concern,’ she said.
‘It is not mine, certainly: and I have no desire to know: but there is one thing I have to say,’ he said sternly. ‘Don’t come to the Hall—I won’t have you there. If I do you injustice I am sorry, but I don’t want you, please, in my house.’
‘And what then about your mother’s house?’ she said. ‘Has she no house; or where are her friends to see her? It is hard if at her age she has no place of her own to receive her friends.’
‘How do you venture to call yourself one of her friends?’
‘Ask her,’ said Mrs. Brown, with a smile. ‘I am sorry you let your prejudice carry you so far. Ask your mother, Leo, and then forbid me the house if you think well. I am going to see Mrs. Swinford to-night.’
He turned away from her angrily with a wave of his hand, while she stood for a moment looking after him. There was a faint smile of triumph on her face, but it was not malicious or unkind.
‘Bless us all, Mrs. Brown,’ said her colleague, the master, coming up with no very amiable look, ‘so it appears you know Mr. Swinford, and all the rest of the grandees?’
‘I don’t know anything about grandees: but I taught Leo Swinford his letters,’ said Mrs. Brown.
‘Oh, that’s it,’ said the schoolmaster, with a sort of satisfaction. It was an intelligible relationship, and seemed rather to temper than enhance the painful superiority in appearance and manners of Mrs. Brown. He added, ‘It’s a fine evening,’ and went upon his way. He had no house attached to the school, while the mistress had: and he had wanted to get the appointment for his wife, who was not qualified, on the idea that he could help her to ‘rub through somehow,’ and that the house would be very convenient; but this point of view had not been taken by the authorities, and there was thus ‘a little coolness’ between him and his colleague, though she, of course, could not be supposed to be in fault. Now to hear that she had taught Mr. Swinford his letters partly consoled Mr. Atkinson. It showed she was no lady who had seen better days, no fallen star, but only a member of the profession all through, probably a nursery governess. He liked to be assured of this, and thought the better of her from that time.
Leo’s light-hearted and amiable countenance was covered by a passing cloud. He went on quickly, as if trying to throw off the impression. He had many recollections in his life connected with this woman, who had been a member of his family in his earliest remembrance, who had taught him his letters, as she said, and who had always played a part, he did not know what, in his mother’s life. She was not a servant, nor was she an equal. She had disappeared when they left the Hall in his childhood, but only to reappear again at intervals, and, he had always felt, for harm, though he could not tell what harm. The faint resemblance between her and his mother was a horror and annoyance to him more than words could say. It was, perhaps, her greatest offence, one he could not get over. And now to find her here, at their very door, as soon as they had settled in their own house, gave him a feeling of angry impatience which was intolerable. He hurried on to the only place in Watcham which was not strange to him, the little house which the village speculators thought he was neglecting, the cottage of Lady William. All the rest were curiosities to this young man of the world—the village Rectory, the retired old soldier, the decorous little establishments where everything was on so moderate ascale, yet where the inhabitants were so calmly secure in their position, their social elevation above the masses. The stranger from a larger sphere is apt to smile in all circumstances at such a little hierarchy. But to Leo Swinford it was, in addition to all, so quaintly characteristically English, so unlike anything to be seen elsewhere, especially so unlike France, to which he was most accustomed, that he had felt himself walking rather through a mild English novel—one of those he had read, amid more exciting fare, with amusement yet tenderness for the peculiarities of his own country—than through a real village and actual life. He had felt that he was playing his part in this simple society, doing his social duty, much amused and often tickled by the oddity of all its novel ways. He had meant all along, when those duties had been done, and when he had shown himself the amiable young squire, friendly and accessible, to go to Lady William and laugh with her over the humours of Watcham. She would understand all that. She knew the other point of view, and how odd it must all seem in the eyes of the cosmopolitan, who knew French curés better than English churchmen, and to whom the rural parish was the quaintest thing. But in the meantime this last encounter was not in the harmony of the rural parish; there was another element, a tone of the more meretricious drama, a sort of Porte St. Martin, he said to himself, thrown in. Somehow that which was so much more exciting seemed vulgar to him in this quiet place. It was all so tranquil here and seemed so pure, that the other tone of the fictitious and conventional came in with a shock. Porte St. Martin, that was what this woman was. Whereas there was nothing here that savoured of the theatre in any way, but all pure nature and simplicity, and real, though to him almost inconceivable life.
He went on all the same, even after this shock, to Lady William, with a wonderful comfort in finding that here was somebody who would understand him when he spoke. The cottage looked more ridiculously small than ever when he reached it. The Rectory, and the red brick mansions on the other side, were large in comparison with this little place standing lowly in its garden, with the trees hanging over it, and all the crop of climbing plants with the spring sap pushing up through their long shoots, and their new leaves forming. He almost stumbled over the gate, and felt that to step over it would be more natural than to open it and go in. Mab was in the garden busy about some new flower beds, at which she was working with a child’s spade and trowel. She lifted her honest simple face flushedwith work, and laughed that she could not offer him such a dirty hand. ‘I have been grubbing,’ she said, ‘but mother is in the drawing-room.’ Her face was not only flushed, which sounds well enough, but red, and her fair hair a little in disorder from stooping over her ‘grubbing.’ Her plump arm was half bare, and looked very capable of work. She was a girl totally unconscious as yet of anything that was not homely and actual, not a budding woman with nerves and feelings, ready to thrill at a new presence. Whether it were Leo Swinford or any old woman that came in, it was quite the same to Mab. She laughed and pointed behind her to the tiny house, and the little open window. Even Emmy Plowden at the Rectory in all her English shyness and correctness might have made a timid effort to detain him a moment, to exchange a single word or two; but not Mab, who wanted to be rid of him simply, or even did not want that so much as to care whether he went or came. ‘Mother is in the drawing-room.’ She waited a moment with her trowel in her dirty hand till he should pass, then explained that she was in a hurry to get done before night, and stooped down again over her work.
‘Can I help you?’ he said, with the instinct of politeness, looking helplessly at her.
‘Oh dear, no!’ said Mab, with energy. ‘I don’t suppose you know anything about gardening; and then I like best to do it myself. Go in and talk to mother, Mr. Swinford. You’ll find her there.’
What a change it was to go into that little drawing-room! I am not of opinion that there was more ‘taste’ shown in this little room than in the other houses about. There were no art stuffs, no decorative articles to speak of; one or two sketches which were not very good, and one or two prints which were better, hung on the walls; even the cheap ‘pots’ which country ladies prize were not to be seen here: there were no Japanese fans. But Leo felt there was something in the room which he had not found anywhere else, and which made him feel himself at home, not playing the simple drama of a country life. But I really think that he deceived himself, and that the only thing different was Lady William, who was sitting by the table at her needlework, which she laid down when he came in. She was very constant at her needle, always busy, but she knew better than to keep on sewing when a man came to see her, especially such a man as Leo Swinford, who probably would have thought it an affectation, if not in her, yet in any one else who had treatedhim so. A conventional man would naturally think that the woman thought herself pretty in that attitude with her eyes cast down.
‘Well,’ said Lady William, ‘you have been parading the village, paying your visits. I have heard of your progress this hour past; and now I presume they are over, and you have come here to rest.’
‘How pleasant it is,’ said Leo, throwing himself into a chair, ‘to be understood before one says anything! That is precisely what I have been doing, and what I have come to do.’
‘There was no great insight required in either case,’ said Lady William. ‘And how do you like us now you have seen us, Leo? The Rectory is homely, but they’re all as good as gold. Yes, they are, though they are my people. You know one doesn’t often admire one’s sister-in-law, and I don’t pretend to admire her; but she’s a good woman, and the girls are excellent.’
Leo allowed to breathe into his voice a slight, though very slight, suspicion of fatigue.
‘You will not be surprised, dear lady,’ he said, ‘if I say that the member of the family who interested me most was your brother; and who is the son who could not be found, who is reading with his father?’
‘Ah, Jim, poor boy!’
‘Yes? I think I understand; there are then troubles even in this idyllic life?’
‘It is so little a stranger knows. I think there is no idyllic life. We are very prosaic and poor, and our troubles are so very real—vulgar, you might call them. We look up, on the other hand, to what we call your brilliant and gay life, and think, surely there are no troubles there. Thus it is true, you see, the one half of the world never understands the other.’
‘But you,’ said Leo, ‘know both.’
‘Do I? I had a little share of the other, very short, and not, perhaps, very satisfactory. I never found it very brilliant or gay. The village life I know by heart, and its troubles, which are bad enough; small little vices and weakness, dreadfully poor and commonplace: you can’t understand how pitiful they are.’
‘Can’t I? Well, so far as it is of any use, you must teach me. For you know from henceforth I am English, and will do my duty. My duty, perhaps, does not demand an endless seclusion here.’
‘Seclusion do you call it? You will have half the people inLondon pouring down soon, when your mother feels she has got established, and is ready to receive them.’
‘Very likely,’ he said. ‘That will not change matters much. Society is the same everywhere. At all events, I shall always have you to come to.’
‘It is very good of you to think that I can help you. There’s metal more attractive. The village is not everything; in the county there are some pleasant people.’
‘If you knew how sick I am of pleasant people! In sober fact, don’t you know, I want to feel that I have something to do in the world, and if this is my sphere, to make it really so, and fill the place which you would say God had appointed for me.’
‘Don’t you say so, Leo?’
‘I don’t refuse to say so. I know so little. Religion has not held much place in my life. Between the abbé of the stage and the “clergyman” of the English, what have I ever known? I have not been instructed by any one, except’—he laughed a little. ‘Do you know I remember scraps among all sorts of stuff, of the hymns you used to teach me—how long, long ago!’
‘Yes, it is very long ago.’ The room was rather dark; the day was waning. Mab outside was putting her tools together to leave off work. It was not possible for the two indoors to see each other’s faces, but there was something tremulous in Lady William’s tone. Leo Swinford put out his hand and laid it upon hers.
‘You must begin again—not with the hymns, perhaps—but to teach me what is the best way.’
Evidently there was a great deal of discrimination in what Emmy Plowden said.