‘Miss Greyknows, of course, everything about them. Miss Grey knows the whole story. She has been the longest here.’
‘Yes,’ said Miss Grey, ‘I know, I suppose, all the outs and ins of it; or, if not all, a great part; all is a big word to say. I don’t suppose anybody knows all—about the simplest of us—except the Almighty who made us, and understands all our curious ways.’
‘That is a true speech,’ said the old General, ‘for curious are our ways, and strange are the devices we have to hide ourselves from ourselves.’
‘Come, Stephen,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, ‘let us have none of your philosophising. You like a story, or gossip, if you like to call it so, just as well as any of us; draw your chair nearer the fire, and listen to what Miss Grey has got to tell us, for I can read a whole story in her eye.’
It was General FitzStephen’s drawing-room in which this conversation was taking place, in the March afternoon, when evening was falling. It had been cold and boisterous all day, with the March wind, which the farmer loves, drying and parching everything outside; the roads all gray and dusty; the fields looking as if every drop of sap in every green blade or leaf had retired to the heart of the plant. The wind had blown itself out, and fallen a little before the darkening, and Miss Grey, out, like all the rest of the world, for a little walk, had been met and apprehended by the General and his wife, and brought in for tea. How much this was on Miss Grey’s account and how much for their own, I would not undertake to say. They were fond of Miss Grey, and so was everybody at Watcham: and people had a way of thinking that she was lonely and wanted cheering up—which, in most cases, only meant that they wanted cheering up themselves, and that there was nobody in the village who knewso well how to do this as the little lonely spinster. The FitzStephens’ house was exceedingly cosy, and though it was not large, it was much larger than Lady William’s, and more pleasantly built; with cheerful irregularities in the shape of bow-windows, which gave more light, and agreeable little recesses and corners to talk in. It was not so plain in any way. It was almost richly furnished with warm Persian carpets and thick curtains, and a great deal of wadding and cushioning. The General and his wife had, indeed, reached a proficiency in the art of making each other comfortable, which only an elderly pair, without children, can attain, and which, in their hands becomes a fine art. There were no rough corners in their house; nothing that was not padded and made soft. The draughts, which Lady William could only faintly struggle against, they shut out by curtains, artistically-planned, to the arrangement of which they had given their whole mind, two together, which everybody knows is better than one, and each for the other, which is better still: for not a suspicion, nor even a sensation, of selfishness can be in the man who is afraid of a chill for his wife, or the woman whose whole soul is bent on keeping her husband comfortable. The candles had not been lighted, but the firelight was shining brightly through the room, giving a brightness which no other artificial light possesses: and, through the windows, the yellow glow of a spring sunset, with a little pink in it, but none of winter’s violent and frosty red, came in. Thus, between the day and the night, with the sweetness of the western light outside like a picture, and the warm domestic glow within, Mrs. FitzStephen’s pretty tea-table was the most pleasant thing one could see on an evening while it was still cold. They had generally some one to share that darkening hour with them, and make it more cheerful; and on this particular evening there were two, Miss Grey, as has been said, and the wife of the Archdeacon, Mrs. Kendal, as quiet a meek woman as ever was, not capable of doing much in the way of addition to the mirth, but quietly receptive of it, which is the next best thing.
It is a curious fact, which I don’t seem to have seen commented on, how well and easily a kind old man who has fallen into quiet society along with his wife in the evening of his days, takes to the feminine element which is apt to preponderate in it. An old lady rarely makes herself at home with men in the same way, or if she does it is perhaps with the young friends of her sons who look up to her as a mother. But old soldiers as well as old parsons, to whom that might seem more natural, fall into ladies’ society with a relish and satisfaction that is amazing. Pride ofsex, which is rarely wanting, takes refuge, we may suppose, in the little superiority so willingly accorded, the deferences and flatteries with which he is surrounded, and which he repays with little gallantries and pretty speeches with which the ladies on their side are amused and pleased. General FitzStephen was a great hero among all the ladies at Watcham, and he took his place among them with little sense of incongruity, with a pleasant ease and simplicity, not sighing for anything better, not wasting, or so it seemed, a thought upon his club or his men. He liked Miss Grey to come in to tea as well as his wife did, and was as pleased with Mrs. Kendal as with her husband—more so, indeed, for he thought and said that the Archdeacon was an old woman, an expression which he never employed to any lady. For Lady William he had a sort of devotion, but that was not remarkable, for Lady William was of a different species, and not unlikely to secure the homage of any age or kind of man.
It was therefore a very cheerful old party that was assembled round the FitzStephen fire, none among them under fifty-five, the General within easy sight of three-score and ten, but all very well, with the exception of Mrs. Kendal, who had been more or less of an invalid all her life, but enjoyed her ill-health on the whole, and was as likely to live now as at thirty. She sat lost in the deepest of easy-chairs on the side of the fire opposite the window and where there was least light. Miss Grey was on the sofa in the full light of the fire, which sparkled in a pair of beautiful brown eyes she had, which looked none the worse for the number of years which had passed over their possessor. Miss Grey was very small, a little bit of a woman, with scarcely body enough to lodge a soul which was not little at all: at least the part of it which was heart, if there are any divisions in our spiritual being, was so big as to rim over continually. She was very dark, with hair that had been black before it became iron-gray, and a gipsy complexion of olive and cherry. Her feet and hands were not so small as would have become her tiny person, but as they were feet that were always in motion for the good of her poor fellow-creatures, and hands that were noted in their service, these things are the less necessary to look into.
Mrs. FitzStephen was remarkable for little more than the neatness of her cap, and the trimness of her dress and person generally. She had been what people call a pretty little woman, and on that character she lived. She was a pretty little woman still according to the limitations of her age, and her husband was still proud of her simple and somewhat faded beauty. He hadalways been pleased to hear it said what a pretty little woman Mrs. FitzStephen was, and he was still pleased with the thought. She had not changed for him. She was seated in front of the low tea-table, on a low chair, making the tea. The General, who was tall, looked taller than ever moving about in the little glowing room between the firelight and the dark, handing to the ladies their cake and tea.
‘We are all quite new people in the place in comparison with Miss Grey,’ said Mrs. Kendal, in her little invalid voice, ‘though we used to come here, the Archdeacon and I, long ago, before he was the Archdeacon or I was delicate: dear me, we used to go on the water! he was a great boating man once——’
‘I remember,’ said Miss Grey, ‘he once took the duty for old Mr. Plowden, before the present Rector left College. I remember you very well—you were the bride—and there were ever so many little parties made——’
‘To be sure,’ said the Archdeacon’s wife, sitting up in her chair—‘dear me—it is so strange to think of the time when one was young——’
‘Emily was a little thing who was about everywhere—the child of the parish I used to call her. A girl who has lost her mother is so often like that, everybody’s child. I don’t say it’s not very nice as long as they’re children. One gets more used to them. She was always dancing about through everybody’s house—thank you, General, I couldn’t take any more cake—there wasn’t a house in the parish, rich or poor, but Emily was dancing out and in——’
‘Very bad for the child,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen.
‘Do you think so?’ said Miss Grey; ‘well, I don’t know, as long as she was a child.’
‘If it was bad for the child, my dear, the woman has come handsomely out of it,’ said the General, carrying the cake into the dark corner to Mrs. Kendal. ‘My dear lady, one morsel more—to keep me company.’
‘Oh! General, on that inducement—but only a very, very small piece—— ’
‘It’s bad when the child grows into a woman,’ said little Miss Grey, shaking her little head; ‘she was as dear a girl as ever lived—not one of them now is fit to hold the candle to what she was. Mab?—Mab’s a darling, the honestest little straightforward thing: and she would have been safer than Emily—she would never have been taken in—as her mother was.’
‘Dear Miss Grey,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, ‘another cup oftea: and you were going to tell us about the Swinfords—for we all know there was something: she was a Seymour, wasn’t she, of a very good family?’
‘But foreign blood in her,’ said Miss Grey; ‘I think her mother was a Russian; she always was fond of foreign things and foreign ways; he was a dear, good, quiet man. It never came into his head that anything could go wrong——’
‘No: why should it, in a quiet neighbourhood like this——?’
‘Oh! I like to hear you speak of a quiet neighbourhood. When the Hall was in full swing it was about as quiet as—as Windsor Castle in the old days, before Her Majesty knew what trouble was; always something going on, the town full of visitors; entertainments that were inThe Morning Post, and every kind of pleasure. They used to come down in the middle of the summer, from their town house, for a few days at a time, and bring half the town with them; and in autumn in the time of the partridges——’
‘There could never be much shooting,’ said the General with satisfaction, as on a subject he knew.
‘At the other end of the estate, the forest end—I have heard there was not very much, but it was very good; that is to say, it didn’t last very long, but as long as it lasted—at all events the shooting might be only a pretence: but the house was always full, that is the only thing I know——’
‘I daresay,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, ‘it will be so again; a young man fond of company, like young Mr. Swinford.’
‘Oh! you may be sure it will be so again. I don’t know about him; but I do know about Mrs. Swinford——’
‘Now, don’t be spiteful, Miss Grey; when one lady does not approve of another it is the right thing to say that she is spiteful——’ the General said in an explanatory way, to take away the sting of the word which had come out unawares.
‘And it is very pleasant in a country place to see a little company,’ said Mrs. Kendal, ‘not that I care for great parties—nor the Archdeacon; but it makes a little stir——’
‘It keeps a movement in the air,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, retiring from the fire.
‘Well, there will be plenty of it,’ said Miss Grey.
‘But, my dear lady, we must not have you cross—cross is what you never were; and society don’t you know, in this paradise of Watcham is the only thing we want.’
‘It would be very nice,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, with a little sigh; ‘though we have all done without it nicely, with our littletea parties, and a friend from town from Saturday to Monday, and so forth.’
‘I never wish for more,’ said Mrs. Kendal, ‘nor the Archdeacon; it is just what we like: but dear me, when I was young—I’ve danced sometimes all night.’
‘We’ve heard the chimes at midnight,’ said the General, rubbing his hands; ‘so I don’t see any great occasion, my dear ladies, to be afraid.’
Miss Grey said nothing, but there was a little twitter and thrill in her, half visible in the firelight, as of a bird stirring on a bough; perhaps this proceeded from a little nodding of her head, very slight, but continued like a little protest under her breath.
‘And then think of the young ladies,’ said General FitzStephen jauntily; ‘I have always heard that Lady William met her husband there——’
‘There is not much chance for any of them to meet their husbands here: I often try to induce the General to ask a nice young man—from Saturday to Monday, you know—the only way we could ever induce a man from town to come here: but he says it isn’t good enough—and asks his old fogies instead——’
‘The old fogies are more agreeable to us, my dear,’ said the General, ‘and the young ladies must find their husbands for themselves: but when the Hall is full of fine company as our dear friend predicts——’
Upon which Miss Grey, nodding, introduced what seemed an entirely new and uncalled-for assertion.
‘James Plowden,’ she said, ‘though he is the Rector, is not a wise man any more than his father was before him——’
‘My dear lady!’ cried the General.
‘Miss Grey!’ said Mrs. Kendal mildly, out of the dark.
‘Nelly, Nelly!’ cried Mrs. FitzStephen, who was the one most intimate with the culprit.
‘James Plowden,’ repeated Miss Grey, ‘is no Solomon, as you all very well know. I am saying nothing against him—he’s a very good man: but though he hasn’t very much wisdom, if he thought one of his girls was to get a prince for her husband in the same way as his sister got hers, he is not the man I think him, if he ever let one of them put a foot inside that door.’
They all said ‘Lady William!’ with a joint cry, which, though it was very quietly uttered by each individual, rose into quite an outcry when uttered by the whole.
‘Poor little Emily!’ said Miss Grey, putting up her handkerchief to her eyes, ‘that’s how I think of her—though if she getsany pleasure out of her title, poor child, if you can call that a title——’
‘Of course it is a title—she takes precedence of all of us,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen.
‘A courtesy title,’ said the General.
‘Dear, I never knew there was anything against it,’ said Mrs. Kendal.
‘I hope she gets some pleasure out of it, poor dear,’ said Miss Grey; ‘little else has she ever got. A horrible man, who never, I believe, made himself pleasant to her, never for one day: and a horrible life for I don’t know how many years. If there had been a mother, or if he hadn’t been—— well, I won’t call him names now he’s in his grave—such a sacrifice would never have been made.’
‘But I suppose she liked him at the time,’ said one of the ladies.
‘And no doubt he was in love with her,’ said another; ‘Lord Portcullis’ son, and she a country clergyman’s daughter.’
‘Oh, as for that, God knows: she was perhaps dazzled with the miserable title, and her father of course, who was only a silly old man—and then she was besought and persuaded, God knows how, by those who did it for their own sake, not hers——’
‘But what reason could any one have?’ said Mrs. FitzStephen; ‘my dear Nelly Grey, you must be making up a story in your head; what cause could any one have, unless to satisfy the man who was in love with a girl, or to help forward the girl to a match above her? These are the only two reasons possible, and there’s no harm in them; we would, any of us, do it,’ she said.
‘Not if the man was of bad character,’ said the General.
‘And if the girl was not in love with him? Oh, I don’t call that romantic at all,’ Mrs. Kendal said.
Miss Grey shook her head again, shook it till her little bonnet, and all that could twitter and tremble about her, shook too.
‘You’re all good people,’ she said; ‘you don’t know the mystery of a wicked woman’s heart—or for that matter of a man’s either.’
‘Nelly,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen, almost sharply, ‘what can you know, a little single woman, about mysteries and wicked persons? A soldier’s wife like me, that has been knocked about the world——’
‘Or, oh, dear me, a clergyman’s!’ said Mrs. Kendal, ‘and they are told everything——’
‘Whatever you may know, you don’t know Mrs. Swinford,’ said Miss Grey, hastily tying her bonnet-strings—‘No, I must go home, thank you; I want to be in before it’s quite dark. And really there’s not much to tell; nothing that I’ve seen with my eyes, asyou may have, my dear, knocking about as a soldier’s wife; or as a clergyman’s wife may have heard dreadful things trickling out through her husband. No, I’ve no husband. I haven’t knocked about the world. I may have fancied things, being always so quiet here. But good-night, for I must go; it’s nearly dark, and my little maid is always frightened if I’m not in before dark——’
‘The General will step round with you, Nelly dear—General, you’ll put on your greatcoat——’
‘Of course I am going,’ said the General. It was a duty he never was negligent of, to see a lady who came by herself to tea safely home.
‘Ihavebeen on a tour of inspection,’ said Leo Swinford. He had met on another beautiful afternoon all the villagers, that is, the gentry of the village, party by party, and he had repeated to them all the same phrase: ‘A tour of inspection!’ Perhaps he liked the words, for he had the love of his adopted country for significant and appropriate phrases; and it seemed to that simplicity, which lies at the bottom of so much that is conventional on the other side of the Channel, that it was highly appropriate, and very English and business-like, to describe his prowl about the village in such words. But it was not until, after many little pauses and talks, he had come upon Lady William and her daughter, that he went further into the matter. When he saw the two figures coming along, one of which at least was like no one else in Watcham, Leo felt that he had reached the society in which he could speak freely: so, though he repeated his phrase, he did not stop there. ‘I know now,’ he said, nodding his head in half disgust, half satisfaction, ‘what is meant in England when you speak of the slums.’
‘The slums!’ said Mab, who leant across her mother a little, with an ear attentive to hear what he should say; ‘but there are no slums in Watcham; it is in London and in the East End that there are slums. We have no slums here.’
Leo was too polite to say that what he said was not intended for little girls; but he gave that scarcely perceptible shrug of his shoulders which means the same thing, and answered with a smile:
‘I did not suppose, Miss Mab, that you were ever permitted to go there.’
‘Not permitted,’ said Mab; ‘mother! why shouldn’t I be permitted? I hope I know every cottage in Watcham, and about all the people, though of course they change a little. Mother, I suppose he has been down by Riverside.’
‘Very likely,’ said Lady William, ‘where the houses do notlook attractive, we must allow. But Mab is right, Leo, though perhaps she should not be so ready with her opinion. The houses do not look nice, nor, in some cases, the people that are in them; but we have nothing very bad here.’
‘I don’t know, then, what you call very bad; it must be something beyond my conception. I should like to clear all those houses off the face of the earth. It is ugly; it is loathsome. How can the children grow up with any sense of what is good in dens like those? I have come home with the meaning to do my best for the people who belong to me, you know. I have not very clear ideas of what my duty is, perhaps; I only know it has been neglected for many, many years.’
‘That is true, perhaps,’ said Lady William; ‘but after all, you know, the squire of the parish is not everything, and we have all helped to keep things going. You don’t know our aspect of poverty, Leo; perhaps it looks worse than it is. You will find plenty to do, no doubt. If you announce your intentions, I know several people who will be delighted to tell you just what you must do; my brother, of course, first of all.’
‘Shall I put myself, then, in the Rector’s hands?’
‘Oh, don’t let him, mother,’ said Mab (that little girl again: how these little creatures are allowed to put themselves in the front in England!), ‘Uncle James has so many fads. He wants a new organ (we do want it very much) and a new infant school, and he is always, always after the drains! But I know a great many things that it would be delightful to do.’
‘Of course your advice will be the best,’ said her mother. ‘My dear Leo, it is so new to us to find a man delivering himself over to be fleeced, for the good of the people.’
‘Do not use such a word; I am so much in earnest; I am so anxious to do everything I can do. All these years I have been receiving revenues from this place and giving nothing back; and I am lodged like a prince, while these poor people, who do their duty to their country better than I have ever done, are in—what do you call them, sties, stables, worse, a great deal worse, than my horses——’
‘You must not run away with that idea,’ said Lady William. ‘Mab, where can he have been?’
‘I tell you, on Riverside, mother; there are some houses there, old, damp, horrid places; it is quite true.’
‘Dear lady,’ said Mr. Swinford, laying his hand lightly on Lady William’s arm, ‘you consult this child: but what can she know of the miseries which at her age one does not understand?’
Mab kept down by an effort the reply which was breaking from her lips. Child! to a woman of seventeen! and to be told she did not understand: she that knew every soul on Riverside, and what they worked at, and how many children there were, and every domestic incident! She kept leaning across her mother to catch every word, and cast terrible looks at the accuser, though she commanded herself, and allowed Lady William to reply.
‘You forget,’ said Lady William gently, ‘that to us there is no horror about our poor neighbours, Leo. We know most of them as well as we know our own relations, perhaps better; for on that level nothing is hid; whereas on our own, if there is trouble in a house, there is often an attempt to conceal, or perhaps even to deceive outsiders, and pretend that everything is well.’
‘But, the very absence of concealment—the brutal frankness—the vice—the horror——’
‘Mother, I suppose Mr. Swinford means when the men drink, and everything goes wrong?’
‘Yes, Mab, that is what he means; it is not so common in France as in England. It is the root of everything here. They are not unkind generally when they can be kept from drink. Mr. Osborne, the curate, is a fanatic on that subject, and one can’t wonder. He would like you to oppose the giving of licenses, Leo, and to shut up every place in Watcham where drink is to be got. I am very much with him in my heart. But I would not advise you to give yourself altogether up to his guidance either.’
‘Not to the Rector’s, nor to the curate’s (whom I have not seen), nor to Miss Mab’s? To yours, then, dear lady, which is what I shall like best of all.’
‘No, not to mine. I share all of these extravagances, one now, and the other to-morrow. Sometimes I am all for Mr. Osborne’s way, sometimes I sympathise with my brother. You must put yourself in nobody’s hands, but examine everything, and judge for yourself what it is best to do.’
‘Ah!’ said Leo, throwing up his hands, ‘you give me the most difficult part of all. I will pull down their evil-smelling places, and build them better; or they shall have money, money to get clothes instead of rags, to be clean. These are things I understand; but to examine and form conclusions as if I were a statesman or a philanthropist—can’t it be done with money? I hear it said that anything can be done with money.’
‘Oh, mother, a great deal,’ said Mab eagerly; ‘don’t discourage him: a little money is such a help. I know people who could bemade so happy with just a little. There are the old Lloyds, who will have to go to the workhouse if their son does not send them something, and he is out of work. And there is George, who can’t go fishing any longer for his rheumatism, and poor dear Lizzie Minns, who is so afflicted, and won’t live to be a burden on her people. Oh, don’t tell him no, mother! Mr. Swinford, people say it is wrong to give money,’ said Mab, turning to him, always across the figure of Lady William, who was between, with her eyes, which were not pretty eyes, swimming in tears, ‘but I don’t think so; not in these kind of cases, where a few shillings a week would make all the difference: and we haven’t got it to give them, mother and I.’
‘They shall not go to the workhouse, nor die of their rheumatisms,’ cried Leo. He was so moved that the water stood in his eyes too. ‘Tell me how much it needs, or take my purse, or give me your orders. I was a fool! I was a fool! thinking the angels shouldn’t know.’
Mab stared a little across her mother, not in the least comprehending this address, or that she was the angel on behalf of whom Leo upbraided himself. She understood herself to be stigmatised as a little girl, but she was not aware that the higher being had anything to do with her. At the same time she perceived that his heart was touched, and that to the old Lloyd’s, etc., the best results possible might accrue. As for Lady William, she was half touched, half amused by the incident; pleased that her little girl had come out so well, and pleased with Leo’s enthusiasm, yet ready to laugh at them both. She put up a subduing hand between.
‘Don’t beg in this outrageous way, Mab; and don’t give in to her in that perfectly defenceless manner, Leo. I shall be compelled to interfere and stop both of you. But here is somebody coming who knows all about it, better than Mab, better than I do, far better even than the parson of the parish. Here is not only the head of all the charities, but Charity herself embodied. Look at her coming along, that you may know her again when you see her, one of the great Christian virtues in flesh and blood.’
Leo winked the tear out of his eye, though he was not ashamed of it, as a man all English might have been, and laughed in response to this new appeal, in which he did not know that there might not be a little satire. He said, ‘I see no white wings nor shining robes. I see a very small woman in the dress of a—no, I will not say that—but it’s alittle droll, isn’t it? scanty, to say the least, and perhaps shabby.’
‘Oh, if you want an appropriate dress! It ought to be white, with blazons of gold: but it is only an old black merino, worn rusty in the service of the poor. Miss Grey, Mr. Leo Swinford wants you to remember him. He was only a little boy when you saw him last, and he wants to speak to you about the poor.’
‘Of course I should not have known you again,’ said Miss Grey, ‘for I don’t know that I ever saw you nearer than in the carriage with your mamma. But I am very glad to know you, Mr. Swinford, though not much worth the trouble—and especially to tell you anything I can about the poor.’
‘He has views,’ said Lady William, ‘of abolishing them off the face of the earth.’
‘Oh, you’ll never do that,’ said little Miss Grey, with a flash of her beautiful brown eyes. ‘The poor ye have always with you; never, till you can make the race perfect, will you get rid of the poor.’
‘He thinks money will be able to do it: and Mab rather agrees with him.’
‘Money!’ said Miss Grey, with a disdain which no words could express. She turned not to Lady William, who spoke, but to Leo, when she replied, ‘Money is of use, no doubt: but to sow it about and give it to everybody is downright ruin.’
‘Not to good honest old people, Miss Grey, like the Lloyds and old Riverside George.’
‘Pensions?’ said the little lady, with her head on one side like a bird. ‘Well, there may be something in that. Come into my house and sit down, and we can argue it out.’
Miss Grey’s cottage was a smaller cottage even than Lady William’s. It was lopsided—a house with only one window beside the door; one little sitting-room with a little kitchen behind.
The little parlour looked as if it could not by any means contain the party which its little mistress ushered in. ‘Step in, step in,’ she said, ‘don’t be afraid. There is far more room than you would think. I have had ten of the mothers here at once, and not so much as a saucer broken. The ladies know where they can find places, but Mr. Swinford, as you are a stranger, you shall sit here.’
Here was a large easy-chair, the largest piece of furniture in the room, which stood almost in the centre, with a small table beside it. And there was a big old-fashioned sofa against the wall,occupying the whole side from door to window. It was the wonder of all the Watcham people how that sofa had been got into the room which it blocked up. But Miss Grey’s response always was that she could not part with her furniture; and that the old Chesterfield, which was what she called the sofa, was a cherished relic of her dear home. But the most remarkable thing about this little room was the manner in which it was lined and garlanded with china. Miss Grey was poor, but the china was not poor. It was of every kind that could be described, and it was everywhere, on little shelves and brackets against the wall, on the mantelpiece, on every table. There was scarcely anything in the room except the Chesterfield which did not support a row of dishes, or vases, or plates. Lady William and Mab, being closely acquainted with the place, managed to seat themselves without damaging any of these treasures: but to an unaccustomed visitor the entrance was one full of perils. It went to Miss Grey’s heart that Mr. Swinford made his entrance as gingerly as if all these riches had been his own.
‘Never mind,’ she said, as something rattled down from a corner, ‘it’s only a very common delft dish; or is it the majolica? Only the yellow majolica, it doesn’t matter at all; and besides, it isn’t broken, or chipped, or anything. Oh, that’s an accident that happens every day: but my ten mothers didn’t even knock down that plate, and some of them were big bouncing women.’
‘You are a collector, Miss Grey?’
‘Oh, I am not good enough for that; they are all old things, and I am fond of them; most of them, Mr. Swinford, came from my dear home; the things that were in one’s home are never like anything else; and a few I have picked up, but very few, not enough to make any difference. The majolica, I daresay you think nothing of it, you that know what is really good. And neither do I, but not from that reason, because I only bought it myself at a sale. It is not from my dear home.’
‘And may I ask,’ said Leo, with polite attention, ‘what it means, your ten mothers? You must understand that I am very ignorant of many things.’
‘Oh, that is easily explained,’ said little Miss Grey; ‘ten members of my mothers’ meeting, that’s what they are; they meet in the schoolroom once a week, and now and then I have them here to tea.’
‘Mothers,’ said Leo, ‘of children? I understand.’ He was perfectly serious in his polite attention. ‘And they meet every week, and consult, perhaps upon education?’
‘Oh no,’ said Miss Grey, ‘poor things, they are not much up to that. They cut out things for their children, little petticoats, and so forth, and work at them; and one of us reads aloud; and they pay only a little for the material, just enough to feel that they have bought it; and the schoolroom is nice and warm and bright, and it’s a little society for them.’
Leo’s face was very grave; there was not even a ghost of a smile upon it. ‘I should never have thought of that,’ he said, ‘but it is good, very good. But why not give them the material to make things for their children? I understand the women love it, and it does them good to work at it. But I will buy the stuff for you, all you want, with pleasure. Would not that be the simplest way?’
‘I think so too, often,’ said Mab, whose whole soul was in the question, and who understood nothing at all of the amusement with which her mother was looking on.
‘Not at all,’ said Miss Grey, ‘for then it would look like charity; now they buy everything, it is very cheap, but it is no charity, it is their very own.’
‘But charity is no bad thing; charity is to give what one has to those who have not.’
‘I think so, too, often,’ said Mab again. She added, nodding her head, ‘It is in the Bible just like that.’
‘But we must not pauperise them,’ said Miss Grey; ‘we must help them to keep their self-respect.’
‘There is nothing about self-respect in the Bible,’ said Mab quickly.
‘Oh, Mab, you are only a child. I am not against giving; sometimes it is the only way; and it’s a great pleasure. But it isn’t good for the people; we must think first what is good for them. We must not demoralise them; we mustn’t——’ The little woman hurried her argument till her cheeks grew like two little dark roses, with excitement and perplexity.
‘It is this,’ said Leo; ‘everything has been neglected by me for many years. First I was a child and did not understand, and then I was a young man, taken up by follies. I have come back. I wish now to do my duty to my people. I will put into your hands money, as much as you want, a hundred or a thousand pounds, as much as is wanted, to make happy whom you can, if they can be brought to be happy; and to make clean, and plentiful, and good. Hush! dear lady, don’t laugh at me. I would like to pull down those frightful houses, and put all the poor people in pleasant, bright rooms, where they could breathe.’
‘What frightful houses?’
‘He means Riverside, Miss Grey.’
‘He means Riverside! But they are not bad houses; the people are not unhappy there. Oh, I could show you some! But at Riverside they are only ugly. The people are not badly off; they get on well enough. One helps them a little sometimes, but they rarely come on the rates, or even apply to the Rector. Why, Mr. Swinford, you mustn’t only look at the outside of things.’
‘I know,’ said Leo, repeating himself (but this was part of his excited state), ‘that I am housed like a prince, and they—not so well as the horses in the stables.’
Little Miss Grey kept her eyes on him as he spoke, as if he were a madman, with a mixture of extreme curiosity and anxiety, to know if there was method in his madness. ‘Well!’ she cried, ‘that is not your fault. You are not—what do you call it, Emily? for I am not clever—anything feudal to them. You are not their chief, like a Scotch clan. What makes them poor (and they’re not so very poor) is their own fault. They’re as independent as you are. If they drink and waste their wages they’re badly off; if they don’t they’re comfortable enough; if they’re dirty, it’s because they don’t mind. Bless me, Mr. Swinford, it isn’t your fault. If you pulled down the houses, they would make an outcry that would be heard from here to London. Besides, I don’t think they belong to you!’ said Miss Grey triumphantly. ‘They were all built by White, the baker. I know they don’t belong to you!’
Leo Swinford sat and gazed at her with a rising perception that there was something ludicrous in the attitude he had assumed, which, at the same time, was so entirely sincere and true.
‘And as for the stables being better—some stables are ridiculous—sinful luxury, as if the poor dumb brutes were not just as happy in the old way. Why, my little house,’ said Miss Grey, looking round, ‘is not all marble and varnish, like your stables. And you think, perhaps, it is a poor little place for me to live in, while you live in your palace like a prince, as you say?’
He did not make any reply. This little woman took away his breath. But he did cast a look round him at the minuteness of the place; a kind of wistful look, as if he could not deny the feeling she imputed to him, and would have liked nothing so much as to build her a palace, too.
‘Well!’ said Miss Grey, ‘and I would not give it for Windsor Castle. I like it ten thousand times better than your palace; and the poor folk in Riverside are just like me.’
‘Dear lady,’ said Leo, in his perplexity, ‘it is not the same thing; but you take away my breath.’
Here Lady William came to his aid, yet did not fail to point a moral. ‘You see,’ she said, ‘you must not follow a hasty impulse even to do good. There are two reasons against making a desert of Riverside; first, because the people there don’t find it dreadful, as you do; and next, my dear Leo, because you’re not their feudal lord, as Miss Grey says, and the houses don’t belong to you.’
He shrugged his shoulders, as a man discomfited has a right to do. But Miss Grey burst in before he had time to say a word: ‘If that is what you want, Mr. Swinford, I can show you a place!’
WhileLeo Swinford was making his first attempt to revolutionise, or perhaps pauperise, the parish under the irregular and unofficial guidance of Miss Grey and Mab, who had, of course, no public standing at all, though he would have been a bold Rector indeed who had disowned the abounding services and constant help of Miss Grey—other incidents were going on of still more importance to the conduct of this history. Notwithstanding the indignation with which she had received the suggestion that money was strong enough to unlock all doors and solve all problems, it was astonishing how soon that unauthorised and unofficial Providence of the parish found ways and means to disembarrass Leo of a considerable sum of money, and to produce a list of requirements for which that vulgar dross would be very useful. She adopted all Mab’s suggestions as to the Lloyd couple and old George, permitting that little weekly allowances should be given them to keep them in life and comfort; and she pronounced and sealed the doom of a group of cottages which, though they were not ugly, like Riverside, rather the contrary, a picturesque group, making quite a feature in the level country, were not fit to live in, as Mr. Swinford was reluctantly brought to allow. He did not like pulling to pieces the venerable walls and high-pitched roofs, with their growths of lichen, which were a picture in themselves, and struggled long in the name of art against that dire necessity. Indeed, the case was a parable, since we are all but too willing to pull down the ugly but not uncomfortable tenements of White the baker, though it costs us a pang to do away with the unwholesome prettiness of our own. But while Leo’s education in the duties of a proprietor was thus progressing, there was another young man whose training was going on in a very different way. Jim’s Sophocles became more and more hard upon him as the spring days grew longer, and the east winds blew themselves out, and the sun grew warm.What was the good of all that Greek? he asked himself, and there was reason in the question. If he were to be sent out to a ranch it would not help him much to know about Electra and Antigone. Less tragic heroines, and lore less elevated, would serve the purpose of the common day; or if he went into a merchant’s office, there is no commercial correspondence in Greek, even if modern Greek was the least like the classic. What, then, was the use of it? And yet the Rector would hear no reason, but kept grinding on and on. Jim had some cause for his dissatisfaction: and he could not have understood the reluctance of his father, once a scholar in his time, to resign for his son all hope of the honours which Jim neither wished for nor prized. But the Rector could not wind himself up to the point of deciding that what he fondly hoped were his boy’s talents should be hidden either in a ranch or in an office. He kept hoping, as we all hope, that fate would take some turn, that some opening would come which would still permit of a happier conclusion. And nothing was settled from day to day, and nothing done except that Sophocles, that sop to anxiety, that poor expedient to occupy the lad who hated it. It is a commonplace to add that if the vexed and unhappy Rector had contrived a means to make his son’s prospects worse and his life more untenable, he could scarcely have hit upon a better. To send him away had a hope in it, though it might have been destruction, but to keep him unwilling and embittered at home, held in this treadmill of forced and unprofitable labour, was the destruction made sure and without hope.
Jim was too sore and vexed with this fate from which there seemed no escape, yet too well assured that it was his own fault, and that nothing he could do was likely to restore him to the old standing-ground in which everything that was good was hoped and believed of him—to make any manly protest against it. There was no such power in him, poor boy. It was his nature to drift, and to resent the drifting, but to take no initiative of his own. When he was upbraided, as he was so often for his idleness and uselessness, he would make angry retorts now and then, that he would work fast enough if he had anything to do except that beastly Greek: but these retorts were growled out under his breath, or flung over his shoulder as he escaped, and the angry father paid no attention to them, and did not perceive the reason that lay underneath this angry folly. Even when the Rector adjured him, as he did sometimes, to say what he would do, to strike out some path of his own, poor Jim had nothing to say. He had no path of his own; he had only an angry perception thatthe one upon which he was now drifting was the worst: but if they would only let him alone, Jim did not care otherwise much about it. What he proposed was to do nothing at all except a little boating and lawn tennis, or skating in winter. He did not think of the future, nor ask anything of it. If they would but let him alone.
When a young man in the country is what he calls bullied at home, work demanded of him which he hates, aims and purposes insisted upon which he does not possess, it is an infinite relief to him to escape to the society of those who will flatter and soothe, and make him feel himself a fine fellow and a gentleman in spite of all. Such was the company in the ‘Blue Boar’ where the Rector’s son was thought much of, and his opinions greatly looked up to, notwithstanding a conviction on the part of the honest tradespeople who frequented the parlour that it was a thousand pities he ever came there. They asked themselves why didn’t his father look to it, and see that Mr. Jim had summut to do, and friends of his own kind—in the same breath with which they flattered him as the nicest young gentleman, and considered it a pleasure to hear what he thought of things; but it was a long time before any one among them could make up his mind to utter the words which were on all their lips, and to tell Mr. Jim that the parlour of the ‘Blue Boar,’ though it was so respectable, was not the place for a young gentleman; and in the meantime the incense of their admiration and pride in his companionship was balm to the youth, notwithstanding his own knowledge that he ought not to be there.
And there was another place which was becoming still more agreeable to poor Jim. Since that first visit when she called him in, in the darkening, he had paid many visits at the schoolroom to Mrs. Brown. He could not go anywhere without passing the door, and in the evening, when it was not very easy to see who went or came, she was almost always there, looking out, breathing the air as she said, after the day’s work, and keeping a watch for Jim. He was flattered by this watch for him even more than by the admiration of the shopkeepers, and yet at the same time half ashamed. For there was no depravity about the boy, and these attentions on the part of a woman who was no longer young embarrassed him greatly, and gave him a sense of danger which, however, in her presence was entirely soothed and smoothed away. There was a sense of danger but still more a sense of ridicule, which seized him whenever he left her, and made him resolve with a blush never to go near her again. And, yet again, there was safety too.Had Mrs. Brown had a daughter, a girl whom he might have fallen in love with, whom people might have talked about, Jim felt that the circumstances would have been quite different; then, indeed, it would have been a duty to have stayed away: but a woman who might be his mother! If she liked to talk to him it was ridiculous, but it couldn’t be any harm. Nobody thought it anything wrong that Osborne the curate should pay long visits to Miss Grey, and take tea with her, and all that; and why not Jim to Mrs. Brown who was much more amusing, and who had no society? She was a capital one to talk; she had been a great deal about the world; she knew hundreds of people: and there was always a comfortable chair ready for him, and she had an art in manufacturing drinks which nobody Jim knew was equal to. It never occurred to him to inquire why she looked out for him in the evenings, and made those exquisite drinks for him. It was ridiculous, but it was not disagreeable, and in the evening as he prowled along, unwilling to go into the dull familiar house, where there was reproach more or less veiled in every eye, where even Florry, who stood by him the most, would rush out unexpectedly with an ‘Oh, Jim! why can’t you do something and please papa?’—there was a wonderful seduction in the sight or half-sight, for it was generally dark, of Mrs. Brown’s handsome head looking out from the door. ‘Good evening, Mr. Plowden; I hope you are coming in a little to cheer me up.’ It was said so low that, supposing somebody else to be passing, which was very rare, it could reach no other ear but Jim’s. Sometimes he resisted the call; sometimes when she was not at the door he went in of himself. It was all quite easy and irregular, and out of the way. The entrance to Mrs. Brown’s house was close to a lane which led to the Rectory, and thus it was easy for him to dart in without being observed. Once, he felt sure, Osborne passing had turned half-back to stare, and saw where he was going. Confound that fellow! but, what did it matter what Osborne saw? He had never been friendly with Jim, never showed any relish for his society, which had rankled in the young man’s breast, though he was too proud ever to have breathed a consciousness of the fact. But, whatever he was, the curate was not a sneak who would go off to the Rectory and betray what he had seen. Jim dived into the doorway, however, with an accelerated pace of which he was ashamed; and the ridicule of it came over him with a keener heat and flush. A woman old enough to be his mother! But what was the difference? That fellow Osborne would go off all the same to little Nelly Grey.
‘Oh, Mr. Jim, what a pleasure to see you!’ cried Mrs. Brown.‘I had almost given up hope: for it is near the Rectory dinner, isn’t it, and you will be wanted at home——’
‘Oh, I am not such a good little boy as all that,’ said Jim, with an uneasy laugh; ‘I am not so afraid of being late.’
‘That’s very bad, very bad,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘I am sure the young ladies are always in time and punctual; they come to see me sometimes, you know, and they always recommend punctuality. It’s a great virtue. I have all the ladies to come to see me, but I sometimes think, Mr. Jim, if they were to know——’
‘I don’t know what, I am sure,’ said Jim, growing very red, yet looking at her steadily; ‘there is nothing I could tell that would make them less respectful to you, Mrs. Brown—only that you were once in a better position, and better off than you are now; my mother and the rest may be a little narrow, but they would never think the less of you for that.’
Mrs. Brown was not a woman who was easily disconcerted; she could have borne the assault of all the ladies of the parish and given them as good, nay, much more than they could have given her: for though Mrs. Plowden had a good steady command of words when she was scolding the servants at the Rectory, she never could have stood for a moment before the much more nimble and fiery tongue of the schoolmistress. But before Jim’s assertion of her irreproachableness and conviction that her only disadvantage was that she had seen better days, Mrs. Brown was utterly silenced; she could not answer the boy a word; she was a woman quite ready to laugh at the idea of innocence in a young man, but when she was thus brought face to face with it, instead of laughing she was struck dumb; she could not make him any reply; she pretended to be busy with the lamp, raising and then lowering the light, and then she left the room altogether without a word. Poor Jim felt that he must have offended her by this untoward allusion to better days. Did she think by any chance that he was taunting her with her poverty, or that anybody in the world, at least anybody at Watcham, could think the less of her? Perhaps he ought not even to have said that; he ought to have made sure that it went without saying, a certainty that it was half an offence to put into words. As, however, he sat pondering this in doubt and fear, Mrs. Brown came back all smiles, bringing that familiar tall glass foaming high with the drink which nobody in Watcham could compound—nobody he had ever known before.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought you were angry; and here you come like—like Hebe, you know—with nectar in your hand.’
‘I am rather an elderly Hebe,’ she said, ‘but it’s a pretty comparison all the same. If I were young and blooming instead of being old and dried up, I should have made you a curtsey for your compliment; but there’s this compensation, Mr. Jim, that a Hebe of seventeen, which is, I believe, the right age, would probably not know how to make up a drink like this. Taste it, and tell me if it isn’t the very nicest I have made for you yet?’
‘It is nectar,’ said Jim fervently; ‘but,’ he added, ‘do you know, I wish you wouldn’t make me such delicious things to drink. Why should I give you all this trouble, and’—he paused, and added, embarrassed—‘expense too?’
Mrs. Brown laughed and clapped her hands. ‘Expense, too!’ she cried; ‘how good! Oh, you don’t know how I get the materials, and how little they cost me; people I used to employ in—in what you call my better days, are so faithful to me. As you say, Mr. Jim, the world isn’t at all such a hard place as one thinks; and even the ladies of the parish—but you do amuse me so with your stories of the parish—it’s such an odd little world, isn’t it? Tell me, what are they saying about Leo Swinford? Has any one made up her mind to marry him? That’s what I expect to hear every day.’
‘I don’t know anybody that wants to marry him,’ said Jim. ‘I suppose he must take the first step in anything of that kind.’
‘Do you think so, really?’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘Now, do you know, I am not at all so sure of that; the ladies will think of it first, I’ll promise you. He is a nice young man, with a good estate; and he hadn’t been a week in the parish, I’ll answer for it, before two or three ladies had settled who was to have him—and as for the young ones themselves—— Oh, my dear Mr. Jim, you are too good-hearted; you don’t think, then, of the plans and schemes that may be laid for you?’
‘Me!’ said Jim, with a blush; and then he shook his head. ‘Nobody approves of me enough to make any plans about me.’
‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ she said airily; ‘but Leo Swinford is a new man, and he’s got a quantity of money. Now, answer me my question, for I’ve known him all his life, and I take an interest in him: who is going to marry him? Does your——’ She paused, and the mischief in her eyes yielded to alarm for a moment. However much a youth may be in your bonds, and capable of guidance, yet it is possible that he may rebel if you question him about his mother; so she changed what she was about to say. ‘Does your—aunt,’ she proceeded, ‘Lady William, don’t you know, as everybody calls her—think of himfor her little fat girl? Oh, I beg your pardon; I think she is a very nice little girl, but she is fat; when she grows older she will fine down.’
Jim’s delicacy was not offended by this statement. He laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Mab is fat; but she is a nice little girl for all that.’
‘A dear little girl,’ said Mrs. Brown; ‘she comes and gives me advice about the children. You would think she was seventy instead of seventeen. Well, is she to be the bride. Have the parish ladies given their votes for her?’
‘For Mab!’ Jim repeated with wonder. ‘Mab’s not that kind of girl at all. She does not go in for—for marrying or so forth. She’s too young. She thinks of her garden, and of boating, and that sort of thing. She is a very jolly girl. She has got a will of her own, just. The ladies might give their votes as much as they please, it would not matter for that.’
‘Of course I may be mistaken,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘I am the poor schoolmistress. I don’t judge the gentry from their own point of view as you do. I have to look up from such a very, very long way down.’ She laughed, and Jim laughed too, though he did not quite know why. ‘But I know that he is always at Lady William’s. What a little cottage she lives in to be a lady of title, Mr. Jim; not very much bigger than mine!’
‘Aunt Emily is not rich,’ said Jim, with a little uneasiness, feeling that he ought not to be discussing his relation.
‘Poor lady; but if she marries her daughter to Leo Swinford? I know he is there almost every day.’
‘Yes, so I hear,’ said Jim, ‘but I don’t believe he thinks of marrying any one. He goes to see Aunt Emily. He goes for a good talk. There are not many people to talk to here.’
‘To talk to a middle-aged lady, when there are plenty of young ones? Oh no, Mr. Jim, you must not try to persuade me of that.’
‘But,’ said Jim, stammering a little, ‘it’s quite true. What difference is there? just as I come to see you, and Osborne—but perhaps that’s not quite the same thing.’
‘Osborne——’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘Oh, the curate, the good young curate. As you come to see me—thank you, Mr. Jim, how nice you are!—Leo goes and sits with your dear aunt. And Mr. Osborne—to whom does Mr. Osborne go? Oh, I owe him something; he is so nice to me about the school. Tell me where he goes to have his talk.’
‘Well, perhaps it’s not quite the same thing,’ said Jim,confused; ‘Miss Grey, you know she is almost like another curate, she knows as much about the parish; but if he goes and has tea with her, I don’t quite see, don’t you know, what anybody could say—how anybody could object—or what is out of the way, don’t you know, in me——’
‘Going to sit a little in the evening with Mrs. Brown,’ said the schoolmistress with a burst of laughter, clapping her hands. ‘And quite right too; the analogy is perfect. So there are three of us,’ she said, ‘whom the young men prefer. You can’t think how nice, and cheering, and pleasant for an old person; to think of three old ladies, Lady William, Miss Grey, and me! How much I am obliged to you, my dear Mr. Jim!’
How was she obliged to him? What had he said? Jim felt very uncomfortable, though he could not have told why.
WhenLeo Swinford said that he was lodged like a prince there was little extravagance in the phrase. He was lodged like a prince indeed in the age of reason, not that of subdued æstheticism like this. The rooms in the Hall were spacious and lofty, and decorated with mirrors and gilding and marble, generally false marble, to an extent very rarely seen in England. And they were hung with pictures which would have been worth a king’s ransom had the names upon them been genuine, which of course they were not. A Swinford of a hundred years ago, Leo’s great-grandfather, had been one of those dilettanti of the eighteenth century to whom the languid Italy of those days was at once an idol and a place of plunder. He had filled his house with copies, with supposed antiques picked up here and there, with much old furniture and false statuary and bronzes. All the splendid names of art flourished on the walls; I am not sure that there was not a fragment, so called, of Phidias, from some classic excavation, and I am certain that there were several Raphaels, and even a Michael Angelo (the day of Botticelli was not yet). The cabinets and carvings which were genuine gave an air of reality to much that was false. If it was not true art, it was at least a good representation of the age when connoisseurs were few, when the craft of the copyist was in great request, and when it was fondly hoped, with that stupidity which belongs to the cultured person in all ages, that the model of the Italian palace, designed for skies and customs so different from ours, might be made to improve the natural beauty of an English house; the attempt was a mistake, but here and there, when carried out regardless of expense, it was not without effect, and the Hall was a good specimen of its period. A hundred years is a respectable period of time, and an example of the aims and meaning of a past century is worth preserving. But the large suites of roomsopening from each other, with large windows and doors, and no system of warming, were chilly and severe in a season still scarcely genial—England in this respect, with the cheerful open fires upon which we pride ourselves, being so much inferior to France with its calorifères, or Germany with its endless stuffy but effective stoves, in the art of keeping a house warm. Our houses, alas, are far from being warm, as many a shivering invalid knows.
It was on a Saturday, late in the afternoon in the beginning of April, but before the blasts were altogether over, that another visitor who was not at all so well received as Lady William and the Plowdens, walked briskly up the avenue and along by the side of the lake towards the Hall. She went quietly, looking neither to the right nor the left, with the air of a person who knew very well where she was going; and she was, I think, better dressed than Lady William, with something like fashion in the fit of her garments and the fall of her draperies, not over-dressed either, in black with a little veil over her face, a woman with a presence which all the poor in Watcham recognised as that of a lady, and a person who had seen better days. How it was that her air and aspect which impressed all the others, even Mrs. Plowden and most of the other ladies of the parish, failed to impress Morris the butler I cannot tell. There are mysteries in all crafts, and though he was for a moment slightly flustered by her bearing, Morris put himself straight in the middle of the doorway and opposed Mrs. Brown’s entrance with a decision which he would not have ventured to exhibit in face of little Miss Grey, who had the air of being dressed out of a rag-bag, or the humblest curate’s wife. ‘Not at home,’ Morris said with the utmost audacity, looking the visitor full in the face.
‘I know,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘but I will come in till you have sent up my name, for I know that she will see me.’
‘It is quite contrary to my lady’s habits to see any one at this hour,’ said Morris, who was a person of education—‘if you will state your business I will report it to Madame Julie, who will convey it to her mistress at a fitting time, and then, if Mrs. Swinford will receive you——’
Mrs. Brown laughed.
‘Do you ask all the ladies that call to state their business?’ she said, with an air of amusement which confused Mr. Morris.
‘Ladies,’ he said, with a slight falter in his assurance, ‘who call at the usual hours is a different thing.’
‘Why, it isn’t six o’clock,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘and if I had notknown Mrs. Swinford I should not have thought it too late. But it is precisely because it is too late that I am here; for I’ve no business except to see your lady, Morris, so you may as well go at once and not keep me standing here.’
Morris began to grow more and more uncertain in spite of himself. Everything was against her; her look, though how he knew that, it would be difficult to tell; her composure, not angry as a real lady should have been (in his opinion) and indisposed to bandy words. A curate’s wife would have retired in high dudgeon before he had enunciated his first phrase. Little Miss Grey would have transfixed him with a look, and turned away; but this visitor was not disinclined even to chaff the butler, therefore she was no lady. Yet there was something in her patronage, in her composure, and last of all in that sudden use of his own name, which gave the man a vague sensation of alarm.
‘You seem to know my name,’ he said, ‘but you haven’t even taken the trouble, ma’am, to give me yours.’
Upon which the visitor broke into a laugh.
‘Mine is not very distinguished, Morris,’ she said, ‘I am Mrs. Brown, but not the dressmaker from the village to ask for orders from Julie, as you seem to suppose. Come, come, there’s been enough of this.’ As she spoke, she passed Mr. Morris adroitly, and entered the great lofty hall which formed the vestibule of the Swinford mansion. ‘There has been no change made, I see,’ she said, with a rapid glance round; ‘do you mean to tell me, Morris, that your lady is going to support all this and make no change?’
The hall was almost dark, the lamps as yet unlighted, and only a dim evening light in the row of long windows. Some one stirred, however, in a corner, and came forward, only half distinguishable in the twilight.
‘Morris,’ said this half-seen person, ‘you know my mother never receives at this hour——’
‘Ah, Leo,’ said the visitor, with a slight quaver in the assurance of her voice, ‘is it you?’
When Morris heard his master called Leo, he retired discreetly with a momentary sense that the sky, or rather the gilded roof of the hall, was falling upon him. Had it occurred to him, so assured in his duties, to make a tremendous mistake? The feeling at first gave him a sensation not to be put into words, and his impulse was to take immediate flight; but on reflection, he felt it so very unlikely that he could have made a mistake, that he subsided intothe shelter of one of the pillars and waited to see what would happen. Mr. Leo Swinford was known among the servants as a most affable gentleman; but Morris was well aware that his master was not one to submit to any impertinence. It was a moment of great excitement, almost too thrilling—for a butler has the pride of his profession, like another, and it would have been dreadful to him to have to acknowledge that he had made a mistake.
‘I fear I must say that you have the advantage of me,’ Leo said, with a coldness that was balm to Morris’s soul.
The visitor came forward with a short laugh, to one of the windows.
‘You have a short memory,’ she said; ‘but yet if you remember we met only the other day.’
Then there was a little pause, and then Mr. Swinford said in a tone which was half rage and half contempt:
‘I thought I made my sentiments clear enough that day: but I might have known——’
‘Yes,’ said the lady, ‘I think you might have known; but I don’t blame you, Leo, your views and mine don’t agree, and never will; all the same you can take off your bulldog and make him understand that the house is free to your relations. I needn’t trouble you otherwise; of course I have come to see your mother, and I hope I know my way.’
Morris behind his pillar beheld aghast an alert shadow glide through the gloom across the hall and up the stairs. There was now so little light that she looked like a ghost, a darkness moving through the gloom, but in no other way ghostlike, quite vigorous, full of life. The man could not move; he was humiliated in his tenderest point—a relation! and to think he should have made such a mistake; but on the whole, Morris was consoled by the fact that it was a relation; relations are not always equals, they are not always friends; sometimes the people of the house would prefer to have them shut out. If it had been a lady of a county family, perhaps, or some intimate friend, it would have been different. He gradually began to raise again his drooping spirits; he was about to start away from his post of observation when his master called him briskly, having probably heard the noise of his retiring feet. Morris did not like to be caught eavesdropping; he was a functionary of a very high ideal; he allowed a moment to elapse, during which he judiciously and stealthily edged further off, and answered, as from a distance, ‘Did you call, sir?’ with the air of a man who has heard imperfectly, being so far off.
‘Come here, quick,’ said Leo impatiently. ‘Morris, I want to speak to you about that lady; you refused to let her in.’
‘I am very sorry, sir, very sorry if I made a mistake; but my lady’s orders are, after half-past five, no one, unless there’s an exception.’
‘Just so, you are quite right; but probably there will be an exception; I don’t suppose my mother knew Mrs. Brown was here; she is a very old friend. Of course you must take my mother’s orders on the matter; but I suppose an exception will be made.’
‘Of course, sir,’ said Morris politely, with a sense of giving way from his absolute right as guardian of the Swinford House; ‘if it’s your—or my lady’s wish——’
This sacrifice made the master of the house laugh, and cleared his brow for the moment; and presently he retired into the great gilded pillared room which was the library. He was not without a little pride in the grandiose decorations which had been his ancestors’ doing; but as he cast his eye round the great room, with the gilded gallery that ran round it, he thought, with a sigh, of the luxurious apartment in Paris in which he had been brought up. The one was so warm and gay, the other so glittering and cold; he believed there were a great many dummies on those huge shelves; unquestionably there were a great many worthless books; it was too big, too grand, too full of pretension to be made a home of, and everything was new and laborious and dull around him, even his own unaccustomed works of beneficence, which had been amusing at first. Had he been allowed to give up a portion of his income in order to make happy all the poor people without any trouble to himself!—but he had begun to be bored by Miss Grey and her intimate knowledge of everybody’s wants, and to cease to be amused by the curate, who was all for shutting up the public-houses, those public-houses which Leo, in the toleration of his foreign training, looked upon as the only means of necessary relaxation which the poor people possessed. There was only one thing among his new surroundings that did not cease to amuse him, and that was the little, the very little drawing-room in which of an evening he found Lady William sitting in the firelight, and where he could talk of all that was in his heart. It was, perhaps, a little later than usual, for he had been detained by various matters of business, but still it was not too late, and in a few minutes more he had put on the coat with the fur lining which had made such a sensation in Watcham, and was walking very briskly down the avenue, with the gloom deepened and the vexation lightened, wonderinghow much he might tell her, and whether she would remember Mrs. Brown.
Now I wonder much whether the reader would rather hear what passed that evening in Lady William’s drawing-room in the firelight, at the hour when people can talk more confidentially and cosily, only half seeing each other’s faces, than at any other time; or whether he (or she) would prefer to be present at the interview in Mrs. Swinford’s boudoir, which was going on at the same moment. I know which I prefer myself. The simple people in the world who have no mysteries about them, who have their little humours and follies, but mean no harm, and do no harm as far as human judgment can guide them, are familiar and well known. I know what they are thinking about, and what they say, and how much or how little they mean. But with the others there is a strain. I know, of course, very well what Mrs. Swinford and Mrs. Brown had to talk about and what they said, but it is a kind of artificial knowledge, and I don’t like having much to do with these women of the world. There are different kinds of women of the world; but the lady who was Leo Swinford’s mother was not of the good kind, neither was her old friend, or her relation, or whoever Mrs. Brown was. They were of the kind who are enemies of the good, perhaps not absolutely meaning to be so, but because they were intent each of them on her own way, and on pleasing herself; and looked upon every obstacle to that, only as something to be cleared away. Therefore, if the gentle reader pleases, we will put off their talk for a while, and go cheerfully down with Leo through the dark avenue, and by the side of the little wistful lake, in which the clearness of the evening sky is reflected, and along the quiet country road; till we come to the village green where the lights are beginning to shine in the windows, past the church with its low spire rising against the sky, and the Rectory behind its damp and level lawn; and at last arrive at the quarter where the best houses stand out against the west, with their trees budding and the crocuses ablow in all the borders, and a pleasant scent of wallflowers in the air. Lady William’s garden was more full of wallflowers than any of the others, and the narcissus were coming out, and the primroses taking the place of the crocuses; jealous people said because, if anything, it had the finest south exposure; but chiefly because Mab was the head gardener, and had a genius for that art. General FitzStephen was in his garden when Leo passed, and called ‘good evening’ to him over the privet hedge, for the General knew very well where the young man was going, and thought it very natural. The old gentleman was fond of littleMab, and hoped that it was she, though she was so ridiculously young, that was to make this great match; but he did not feel so sure as he would have liked to do, whether this was what Leo meant.