Nextmorning, however, there came a crisis which drove all thought of anything else for the moment out of Lady William’s mind.
It came in the shape of a letter laid upon her innocent breakfast table, along with the little bunch of correspondence, very small, and very unimportant, which was all that the post generally brought to that peaceable house. Lady William had, of course, a friend or two with whom occasionally she exchanged those utterly unimportant letters which form so large a portion in the lives of some unoccupied women. It would be hard to grudge these poor ladies so innocent a pleasure, but their letters were not exciting enough to make a woman like Lady William, who felt that she had herself a great deal to do, and did not want that gentle stimulant, very impatient for the arrival of the post: and her mild correspondence waited for her quite contentedly on both sides till she had performed various little morning duties, and was ready to sit down to breakfast. The long blue envelope, however, alarmed her a little whenever she saw it, and yet there was nothing so very alarming in it, for it was a similar envelope, directed in the same writing, as that which brought her the cheque for her quarterly allowance, which, as it happened, was now a little overdue. She lingered, however, over the letter—though it did enclose a cheque, which she took out and laid upon the table—much longer than she was wont to linger over the letters of Messrs. Fox and Round. She read it carefully over, and then she folded it up, put it in its envelope, and poured out the coffee. But before she touched her own cup, returned to the letter; took it once more from its envelope, read it all over again, and put it back once more. Mab had a little letter of her own to read, all about nothing, from a girl of her own age, so that she did not for a minute or so observe these proceedings of her mother.But she very soon did so, and divined not only from them, but from the manner in which Lady William swallowed her coffee and pushed away the innocent rolls on the table as if they had done her some harm, that all was not as usual. When Lady William spoke, however, it was in a voice elaborately calm.
‘Are you going out this morning, Mab?’
‘Yes, mother—I am going——’ Mab paused a moment. She had got up that morning with her mind full of the weighty determination of last night; but it seemed to her that if she said she was going to the school it might partly betray the secret which was not hers, but which lay so heavy on her soul. ‘I think,’ she went on, correcting herself, ‘I will run over and see how they feel at the Rectory, now it’s over, about last night. And I will probably look in at the school,’ she added, for to have a secret from her mother was dreadful to her, ‘before I come back.’
‘If you are going to the Rectory,’ said Lady William, ‘tell your Uncle James that I should like to see him, Mab.’
‘Yes, mother;’ but Mab could not help glancing aside at the letter with an awakened interest, and wondering what Uncle James, so infrequent a visitor on ordinary occasions, could be wanted for—again.
‘You are right, Mab,’ said her mother, ‘it is about business and about this letter in particular. And if you can give him my message without anybody else knowing, I shall be all the better pleased.’
‘Is it about—Uncle Reginald, mother?’
‘About Reginald! Oh no, you may make your mind easy. It is not about Reginald. It is,’ she said, with a sudden desire for sympathy, ‘something much more important to you and me; but I cannot tell you now,’ she added, remembering herself, ‘you will know of it all in time.’
‘Is it from Mr. Leo, mother?’ said Mab, growing very pale, and towering over the table as she looked at her mother, with severity, yet terror, as if she had suddenly grown a foot in stature. Lady William, altogether engrossed in other thoughts, gave her a look of astonishment which was balm to Mab’s soul.
‘From Leo!’ she said, amazed. ‘Why should it be from Leo? I told you,’ she said, with a little impatience, ‘that it was a letter of importance, which none of his little communications could be. Tell your uncle,’ she continued, falling into her usual tone, ‘that I have received a letter on which I wish to consult him. Remember that I have no secrets,’ she said, suddenly looking up;‘I don’t want you to make a mystery; but if you could see him—by himself, to give him my message——’
‘Oh yes, I can do that easily,’ said Mab, in the relief of her mind. ‘I want to say something to him about Mrs. Brown.’
‘I must see this Mrs. Brown,’ said Lady William, with a smile. ‘She seems to have a fascination for you, Mab.’
At this unexpected and most unintentional carrying of the war into her own country Mab flushed crimson, and cried quickly: ‘Oh no, nothing of the sort. I don’t evenlikeher. She is not like any one else I ever saw.’
‘I must see her—one of these days,’ said Lady William vaguely: and then the faint smile died off her face, and she turned to contemplate the long blue letter which lay by her plate. It looked a dangerous thing among the little inoffensive white and gray envelopes. Lady William’s letters were chiefly gray, written upon that ugly paper which people, and especially ladies, use out of economy, and which is one of the additional (small) miseries of life.
Mab felt much ashamed of her foolish question as she went out, but hoped her mother had forgotten, or had not attached any meaning to it. It was all the fault of the horrid people who talked—as if there was anything strange in Mr. Swinford’s visits. ‘Where else should he go?’ Mab said indignantly to herself. ‘To the FitzStephens or the Kendalls, who are six times as old as he is? or to the Rectory, where Aunt Jane would talk to him all the time, and the girls never could get in a word? How different mother is! I don’t think I have ever seen any one so nice as mother! Well, of course, she is mother, which is a great thing in her favour; but not, perhaps, in the way of society. Emmy and Florry are very fond of Aunt Jane. She is very nice and kind if you are ill, and all that; but I am sure they would rather talk a little themselves sometimes, rather than just listen to her, especially when it is Mr. Leo.’ This was the result of Mab’s unprejudiced observation, and she was much ashamed of herself for having been moved to ask the very inappropriate question which her mother had not paid any attention to, thank heaven. Mab, as good luck would have it, met the Rector at his own door, and conveyed her message in the most natural way in the world. ‘Mother would like to see you, Uncle James. Would you go into the cottage as you pass? She has got a letter.’
‘Oh, she has got a letter?’ said the Rector.
Mab longed to say, ‘Not a letter from Leo Swinford, an important letter, a letter about business,’ but she restrained herinclination. Probably Uncle James had never thought upon that other subject. She went on quickly to the Rectory, in order to carry out her own programme which she had in a way bound herself to by announcing it to her mother. But she did not find the girls at the Rectory very anxious to talk over the events of the previous night. Mrs. Plowden, indeed, had no objection to discuss it fully; but it was in its connection with Jim that she thought of it most.
‘If it had not been for Jim,’ Mrs. Plowden said, ‘Mr. Osborne might just have kept all his music and his things to himself. Oh yes, I daresay, the FitzStephens, and Kendalls, and ourselves, and those people from the villas would have come; but, as for the men from Riverside, they came for Jim, not for him. And did you hear, Mab, what a noise they made with their cheers and their clappings after Jim’s piece? They thought that the gem of the whole evening. They came chiefly to hear that. As for Mr. Osborne, with his little speeches and his fiddles from Winwick——’
‘Oh, mamma,’ cried Emmy, ‘the violins were a great treat. We have not heard any music like that in Watcham for ever so long.’
‘Well, you may say what you like about fiddles,’ said the Rector’s wife, ‘but there’s always something a little like a village fair in them to me. And the poor people were bored beyond anything. They liked your songs, girls, and wanted to encore them if Mr. Osborne would have allowed it; and they liked that piano bit, with the tunes from thePinafore. They understood that, and so do I, I allow; but what do they care for a classical quartette? I don’t myself, and I know more about music than they can be supposed to do. But a fine, stirring thing like Jim’s “Ride to Aix”——’
‘It was Mr. Browning’s “Ride to Aix,” mamma.’
‘As if I did not know that! But, all the same, it was Jim’s ride to me. Don’t you think he did it great justice, Mab? I never heard it come off so well. The people were so attentive. That and the duets were certainly the success of the evening; and what it would have been without them I can’t tell.’
‘It would have been much more satisfactory without them, mamma,’ cried Florry, half turning a shadowed countenance towards her mother. ‘Mr. Osborne did not want mere amusement for the people—he wanted them to take pledges, and turn from drinking. That was his object, don’t you know—and a far better object than hearing two poor little country birds like Emmy andme sing. And I approve of it,’ said Florence a little loudly, as if she would have liked all the world to hear.
Mrs. Plowden looked at Mab and shrugged her shoulders behind her daughter. ‘I can’t think what has come over Florry,’ she said. ‘She has grown so domineering of late—I dare not say a word.’
What Mab thought was that poor Florry looked dark, and pale, and out of heart—she seemed to be losing her good looks and her merry ways. It was rare, very rare, when she put forth any of her old arts of mimicry which the elders laughed yet pretended to frown at, and which all the young ones delighted in; but I will not have it supposed that Mab was so precocious as to divine what was the matter with Florence—for this, to tell the truth, never came into her unconscious thoughts.
The Rector hurried along to see his sister after he had received Mab’s message. He was anxious and disturbed about the state of affairs, and very desirous to find some way of setting his poor Emily straight, and making her independent, as she would be gloriously, did this great fortune come to Mab. If, perhaps, he was at the same time not quite sorry that she had been brought to see she was not so able to do everything for herself as she supposed, and had it proved to her in the most effectual way that to have respectable relatives to fall back upon was the greatest blessing a woman could have, it was no more than natural: and certainly above all, his desire was to be able to help her, and ‘pull her through:’ but it would be uphill work he felt, and require all the efforts that he himself could make. His brow was full of care when he went into the room in which she sat expecting him; not, indeed, looking so serious as he did, but, still, with work enough for all her thoughts.
‘Well?’ he said, as he drew a chair opposite to her, and sat down on the other side of the table at which she sat at her work. He bent forward across this little table, fixing upon her a look of such solemnity that Lady William’s first impulse (though, heaven knows, she was not in a merry mood) was to laugh at his portentous looks, which would have been very inappropriate and improper, and would have shocked Mr. Plowden more than words could say. As she checked herself in this impulse there burst from her instead something which was half a sob and half also a chuckle: but he took it as a sob, which was much the best.
‘My dear,’ he said, ‘my dear!’ putting his hand upon hers, ‘it can’t be so bad as that you should cry about it. We will stick to you, whatever happens. Come, Emily, take heart, take heart!’
‘I am not losing heart,’ she said. ‘I have expected it, you know. It is a distinct demand for my certificates. And now the moment is come when I must decide what to do.’
‘Is this the letter?’ he said. It was lying on the table between them, and Mr. Plowden took it up and read it over with great care, making little comments of distress with his tongue against his palate, ‘Tchich, tchuch,’ as he did so. Lady William went on with her work, raising her eyes to him from time to time as he read. His arrival and his tragic looks had amused her for the moment, but those distressful, inarticulate remarks acted after a while on her imagination and nerves.
‘You think it a very bad business, James? How I wish,’ she said, ‘that John, who never was a friend of mine, could have lived for ever, or carried his dirty money with him to the grave!’
‘I don’t think that is a very Christian wish, Emily.’
‘What, to wish him alive and in enjoyment of all he ever possessed?’
‘Oh, well, perhaps that is one way of looking at it,’ said the Rector, ‘but, my dear, the noble family to which in fact you belong——’
‘And which show their belief in me so nobly,’ said Lady William, this time permitting herself to laugh.
‘The noble family to which you belong,’ repeated Mr. Plowden with a little irritation, ‘will be very much benefited by this money. That nice young Lord Will as good as said so: and your own daughter, Emily, if all goes well, and we are able to establish your rights——’
‘If!—--’ she cried, with a flash of her eyes which seemed for the moment to set the room aflame.
‘You know what I mean. I at least have no doubt what your rights are: the question now is what is the best thing to do.’
‘Yes,’ said Lady William, ‘we are in front of something definite at last. I have done little but think about it, as you may suppose, ever since you brought me that crushing news: and it seems to me that there are several ways that are open to us: the first——’
‘Emily,’ said the Rector, ‘by far the best, and first step to take, in my opinion, is to consult Perowne—which we should have done long ago.’
‘What could Mr. Perowne do? He could not rebuild the chapel and restore the books and bring back poor Mr. Gepps to life again. He might put my answer into formal words, but thatis quite unnecessary. I have not the least inclination to consult Mr. Perowne——’
‘Still, he must know how such things are managed better than we can do,’ murmured the Rector.
‘Such things—what things? You speak as if this was a common case.’
‘No, no, Emily, no, no——’
‘When it is, perhaps, such a case as never occurred before,’ she said. ‘I can answer these men formally to their questions, but to him I should have to go into the whole matter, explaining everything from the first step to the last. No, I will not ask Mr. Perowne for his opinion,’ she said. Her countenance, naturally so soft in colour, was suffused with a sudden flush. ‘Anything but that,’ she repeated, in almost an angry tone.
It is so difficult to be purely business-like in matters where men and women are concerned. Mr. Perowne, the ‘man of business’ employed by the old Rector of Watcham, the father of Emily Plowden—had taken upon him to admire that young lady, and to make certain overtures which were not received graciously in the days that were gone. Lady William would rather have died than disclose all the circumstances of her marriage, as well as the possible doubt that might be thrown upon it, to her former lover. It was no figure of speech to say this; she would rather have died. But to her brother it all seemed very foolish, and to show an arrogant confidence in her own judgment which he did not share.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘of course, it is your own business, and I cannot interfere with you, Emily: but that lawyer should meet lawyer is surely a much better way than that you should think you could encounter Messrs. Fox and Round—who are, of course, experienced in all sorts of villainy—in your own strength.’
‘It is a mere simple statement of fact that has to be made to them,’ she said. ‘I will write and say I have no certificates, but that one person is still alive who was present at my marriage if she can be found: and that my father——’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ cried the Rector. ‘What, what do you mean—you are going to show your hand at once to these men, and let them see that you have no proof at all?’
‘My father’s diary is the best of evidence,’ she said. ‘The law is not such a bugbear as you make it out to be. There must be some sense and justice in it: my father’s word, a clergyman, and a man of honour——’
‘They may say it is a got-up thing, and what so easy as forme to write that entry in an old book? I write very like my father.’
‘What folly, James! You! as little likely to cheat as my father, a clergyman, and a man of honour too!’
‘We might say,’ said the Rector, ‘for I have been thinking it over too, my dear Emily—that you were married at St. Alban’s Proprietary Chapel, Backwood Street, Marylebone, on such a day and year, by the incumbent, the Reverend T. I. Gepps: and leave it to them to got a copy of the register for themselves—if they can,’ he added grimly. ‘The books, of course, ought to have been saved, and perhaps some of them may be. It is their business to find all that out.’
This specious suggestion staggered Lady William for the moment. ‘But when they find out that the church is burnt, the book destroyed, and the clergyman dead—which is a catastrophe almost too complete for the theatre—they may think we have chosen the place on that account, and that we mean fraud and nothing else.’
‘I,’ cried the Rector, ‘meaning fraud—and you! It would be just as easy to suppose that I had forged the entry in my father’s diary. I hope we are two honourable people.’
Lady William shook her head.
‘I hope so too: but I could not send them on such a wildgoose chase, which would certainly harm us in the end, without letting them know the truth.’
‘Oh, the truth,’ cried the Rector. ‘Isn’t it all the truth, both one thing and the other? The truth is all very well and can’t be altered were you to harp upon it for ever, but what they want and what we want is the proof.’
Leo Swinfordhad been during all these proceedings haunted with a sense of a visitor about the house, whose comings and goings were kept secret from him. Those who were concerned were much too clever to permit this to be known or suspected by the risks of absolute meeting, by sudden withdrawal into corners, whisking past of clandestine shadows in the dark. It was not that he ever met Mrs. Brown on the stairs or in the hall, or just missed meeting her, as is generally the case under such circumstances. She had, as has been said, an entrance kept for herself, which opened upon the back part of the house, where there was a thick shrubbery, and where it would have been as impossible to find a fugitive in the dark as to find the proverbial needle in a bottle of hay. And Artémise was far too deeply learned in all the lore of evasion to be caught within the house. Nevertheless, he was well aware that the place was haunted by a personality very, perhaps unjustly, disagreeable to him, and with which he associated all those vague suspicions and troubles which haunt the mind of a child brought up among family secrets and discoveries. He had been accustomed all his life to this uncomfortable sense of some one about who was not seen, who had presumably unacknowledged errands of mischief-making, and whose presence, whose very existence, was inimical to family peace. That Leo’s thoughts went a great deal too far, and that this curious secret agent and confidante exercised, in fact, no evil influence, but had in many cases held the side of honour and justice, was a fact that Leo was not only quite unaware of, but totally incapable of believing in. It had always been, indeed, a sort of consolation when there was anything equivocal in Mrs. Swinford’s proceedings, to be able to think that it was not his mother who was to blame, but that wretched Artémise. Leo’s father, so long as he lived, had laid that flattering unction to his soul, and during his lifetimethe appearance of Artémise had always been the occasion of domestic trouble. It was natural that Leo in his youth should have had no such right or reason to object or interfere; and he had not even been of his father’s faction in the house until that father was dead, and a natural compunction towards a man not happy in his life nor lamented in his death, awoke his sense of reason, and of right and wrong in this matter. But he had always had an instinctive dislike to Artémise. She had teased and sneered at him as a child, which is a recollection seldom altogether forgotten, and she was his mother’s evil genius in life—or so it gave him a certain relief to believe.
The commission given him by Lady William to find this woman, so strange and incomprehensible a commission, and which was not explained in any way, roused all the indefinite feelings of disgust, and a kind of despair which had filled his mind from the moment of her reappearance (after a long interval, in which he had been of opinion that she was permanently shaken off) in the house. He had expressed to his mother so distinctly his objection to her presence, that it was difficult for him to reopen the subject, and still more difficult to suggest, as he was tempted to do, that since Mrs. Swinford could not live without her, it would be better on the whole that she should come to live in the house than haunt it clandestinely. Difficult, however, as these overtures were, he felt the necessity of making them, as soon as he understood that the finding of Artémise was necessary to his friend. What would not he have done to serve her, to please her? The laugh with which she had turned off his offer of service, the suggestion that such offers belonged to the regions of fairy tales, had scarcely been necessary to show Leo how futile, so far as she was concerned, was his devotion. But this conviction rarely puts an end to devotion, and it must be said that as there is fashion in all things, it was not disagreeable to Leo’s fashion of man to entertain a devotion of this kind, however hopeless, for an older woman, whom it was, in the nature of things, impossible that he could ever marry. In the nature of things as seen by her, that is to say, and which he clearly divined. His double breeding as Frenchman and Englishman did him service in this complication of fate. As an Englishman he was aware that such relationships as are possible to a Frenchman’s ideal, without apparently injuring it in his standard of honour, were here as impossible as that the sky should fall: while as Frenchman he was not so determined on that strong step of marriage which seems the foregone conclusion of love in an Englishman’s eyes. He was willing to be utterlydevoted to this lady of dreams who was not for him, and to ask no more, seeing that more could not be—but that her wishes should be obeyed and her commissions executed at whatever cost, was the thing most certain to his mind.
‘Mother,’ he said, on the first occasion when he had the possibility of an interview, for Mrs. Swinford, after the little controversy over Lord Will, had exercised her usual caprice, appearing only when she pleased at the common table, and ‘was not well enough’ to receive even her own son in her boudoir, ‘you have, I think, a very frequent visitor.’
‘I—have very frequent visitors! Where do I find them? I should be glad if you would tell me, Leo.’
‘I have no desire to be disagreeable, mother—you have Artémise.’
‘Ah, Artémise! Yes, fate for once has been a little favourable to me. To keep me from dying of England, and your village, and all the exciting circumstances of my life. I have Artémise—that is occasionally. You know that I am not permitted to have her here.’
‘Mother!’ he said; then subduing himself, ‘You are very much attached to this woman, who has never done anything but harm, so far as I know.’
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘and what then? Is it not permitted to me to love as well as to hate? Artémise is the nearest to me in blood of any one in the world.’
‘You forget your son, it appears.’
‘My son—ah, that is a different matter. Sons have a way of being in opposition to their mothers. Besides, isn’t there a high authority which says that a mother is no relation, so to speak—an accident? It is so in English law.’
‘English law has little to do with you and me, or any law. Mother, if you prefer this Artémise to every one, why have her pay you visits clandestinely like——’
‘Like a lover!’ she said, with her tinkling laugh. ‘Well, say she is my lover and I like it; have it so.’
‘Such a simile is insulting,’ he said. ‘I resent for you that you should even yourself say it.’
‘Ah, but I do not resent; I like the simile. The thing itself might not be so impossible. But you are a Puritan, Leo, like your father. I have tried to prevent it, but one cannot stop the course of nature. Fortunately, my own constitution is not so.’
He rose in impatience, as was generally the result of these conversations, and paced the long dining-room from end to end.Then he returned to where she sat with her back to the fire, which she still insisted on, though it was now May. He stood half behind her, leaning on the mantelpiece. It was better, perhaps, than being face to face.
‘What I mean,’ he said, ‘is, that if your comfort so depends upon this woman—whom I don’t pretend to like, as you know; but that does not matter: if your comfort depends upon her, mother, or if she is some pleasure to you, it would certainly be better to have her here, living with you, than skulking to and fro like a——’
‘Lover!’ she said again, with a laugh to madden him. Then she turned round upon him, as he stood with his head bent regarding the glow of the fire. ‘I don’t say that you’ve made your offer an insult, Leo, which would be the truth—but what is the cause of such a change? You have a motive. Ah! I think I see it!’
He looked up with a more profoundly clouded brow than had ever been seen in Leo before.
‘What do you see?’ he said.
She laughed again. Any one who has ever listened to the dreadful endless tinkling of an electric bell at a foreign railway station will understand how Mrs. Swinford laughed, and how it affected the nerves of those who listened.
‘Ah! I think I see!’ she repeated.
Perhaps it was because he was used to theseagaceriesthat he bore it so well. What tempests of impatience were in his heart! He did not move. He remained as still as if he had been made in bronze, leaning against the mantelpiece till the laugh ceased. Then he said coldly:
‘I have expressed myself willing to give up what may be my own prejudice on your account, mother. I think it would be more dignified, more fit and becoming for you that your visitor did not come by stealth. What motive you credit me with I can’t tell. If you do not think fit to adopt my suggestion, so be it; but at least let her come openly, not by stealth.’
The tinkling began again with that supreme power of exasperation, and she said amid her laughing, every word coming tinkling out:
‘That you may have her at hand and within reach when she is wanted, eh? I divine you, my Leo. What is becoming for the mother who is so little capable of understanding that for herself, is a beautiful pretext—what is convenient for some one else——’
‘Who is the person,’ he said, suddenly lifting his eyes, ‘to whom it will be so convenient to know where this woman is?’He did not shrink or show any consciousness as he thus carried the war into the enemy’s country. Leo, after all, was a man of the world, and his mother’s son.
‘Ah!’ she cried, stopping in her laugh, which was always a gain. ‘I congratulate you, my son, upon youraplomb. But don’t you know you take away all grace from your offer, if there were any in it, when you saythis woman? How dare you speak of your mother’s dear friend and relation asthis woman? It is an affront I will not bear.’
‘Mother, this is a subterfuge,’ said Leo indignantly.
‘And is not your proposal a subterfuge? Understand that I will manage things in my own way, Leo. Artémise shall come to me how she and I please. She shall stay with me if I wish it, and she consents to it, as would have been the case whatever you had felt on the subject. I am not here, you understand, as your housekeeper,’ she laughed scornfully, ‘or your dependent; I am, while I am here, the mistress of the house: and shall invite whom I please. If you think your order to shut her out affected me, any more than your order to admit her does now—I think we have said enough on this subject. You can give me your arm upstairs.’
She held out her arm, imperiously rising from the table, and Leo obeyed. They presented a group full of natural grace, as he led her carefully upstairs, subduing his steps to hers. She, wonderful in all her laces and draperies, amarquise, a lady of the oldrégime, exacting every sign of devotion; he, not made of velvet or brocade, as her cavalier ought to have been, but in the spare and reserved costume of modern days, with a manner very grave, very self-controlled, full of care, and attention, and duty. There was nothing in it of that pretty gallantry, so charming from a son to a mother, of which Leo for years of his life had been an example, but a serious care of guidance and protection, which was as different as night from day. They went upstairs thus, she leaning all her weight upon him, he careful above measure to keep her foot from stumbling even upon her own too ample skirts. When he had placed her in her favourite chair, and seen that she had everything she liked near her, he stood gravely by her side.
‘Is this your last word, mother?’ he said.
‘It is quite my last word. Should Artémise come here, I shall expect you to be civil to her. Should she not come, you will be careful to let her alone.’
‘I must act in that matter according to my own judgment,’ he said.
He could hear the tinkle of the laugh as he went away. Thatlaugh!—it had been compared to silver bellsdans les temps. It was not that now, but an electric jar or vibration that got on the nerves. Mrs. Swinford’s son did not think of this, or feel any pity for the woman who had descended thus from the poetic state of compliment and adulation. Sons, perhaps, rarely consider that downfall with any sympathy. And Leo was too angry to make any sentiment possible for the moment. He was all the more angry because of his own undisclosed motive, which his mother had been so quick to discover. Had he been quite single-minded, desiring only his mother’s comfort and honour, things might perhaps have gone better; but he was not single-minded. And now the question was, not how to justify his mother, but to discover for Lady William the woman she wanted—to secure her, wherever she was, and whatever might be the motive for which she was sought. He did not very clearly know what that was, nor was he sure as to the previous connection of Artémise with Lady William’s history. But his mother’s revelations to Lord Will had helped the vague recollections in his own mind, and he divined something of her possible importance—importance most probably (he thought) more fancied than real, for it would be in the nature of a woman to give weight to a personal witness of the marriage, above all papers and records. Importance or not, however, real or fancied as might be the need of her, it was enough that Lady William wanted her to make Leo’s action certain. She must be found, he said to himself, as he went downstairs.
He questioned Morris that evening carelessly: ‘Do you remember a lady, Morris, who came here one evening in the dusk? A lady—who insisted on disturbing Mrs. Swinford. Don’t you remember? And by dint of insisting was allowed to go in?’
‘Remember ‘er, sir!’ said Morris, with much emphasis. ‘I should just think I did—as well as I remember my own name.’
‘She has never,’ said Leo, carelessly aiming at a ball on the billiard table, ‘been here again?’
He spoke in so artificially careless a tone to convey no suspicion of any special meaning in the question, that Morris would not have been a man and a butler had he not been put upon the alert.
‘Oh, ‘asn’t she, sir!’ said Morris. ‘I should say, sir, as she’s here most days, is that lady; as if the house was her own——’
‘I have never seen her,’ said Leo, with as natural an expression of surprise as he could put on.
‘No more haven’t I,’ said Morris. ‘Never; and how she gets in and goes out is more nor I can say; but she’s favoured, sir, of course, in the ‘igher suckles; that we know.’
‘Morris, my man,’ said Leo briskly, ‘you forget yourself, I think. I asked you if a lady, who is a friend of my mother’s, had been here again: and you take it upon you to talk of how she comes into the house without attracting your intelligent attention, which was not the question at all.’
‘I ‘umbly beg your pardon, sir,’ said Morris; and here the conversation stayed. Leo felt that he had done as much as in the meantime it was possible to do. His own faculties alone must arrange the rest. Those faculties, thoroughly awakened and put to the sharpest usage that was in them, were, however, of but little use to Leo for a day or two. There could be no doubt, he felt sure, that Artémise was continually in the house. But it was impossible for him to storm his mother’s apartments in search of her, and equally impossible to show himself to a keen-eyed houseful of servants as in waiting to trap her near his mother’s door. The situation was one of the utmost difficulty, and demanded extreme caution, and the only result he attained after twenty-four hours’ sustained observation was that it was possible from Mrs. Swinford’s rooms to reach, without going near the formal entrance, a servants’ door, apparently little used, and which opened at an unfrequented angle of the house, quite apart from the noisy and populous kitchen entrance. He had made up his mind to post himself in the shrubbery close to this door at the hour of dinner, when his mother would imagine him to be occupied with his meal. She had sent down word that she herself was not coming to dinner, and the opportunity seemed propitious. Leo was pondering upon this resolution, and how to carry it out, as he returned from the village, where Lady William had told him that the need for finding Artémise was greater than ever. It was a hazy, rainy evening, not dark, but growing towards dusk, as he walked home soberly under his umbrella, full of this intention. And he had just passed the glimmer of the lake, all dimpled with the circlets of the falling rain, when a movement in the shrubbery behind caught his eye. The bushes were thick there, a heavybosquetof all the flowering shrubs that make spring delicious, a thicket of lilac and syringa, which extended along the further side of the pretty piece of water. Leo scarcely paused to think, but, putting down his umbrella, and pulling himself together, started at full speed for the house to intercept the visitor who, on whatsoever errand, was making her way towards the back entrance: probably only a servant using the legitimate way. He was not near enough, nor was there light enough to make out absolutely who it was, or, indeed, more than that the figure was that of a woman, coveredfrom head to foot with one of the shapeless garments, ulster or waterproof, which are the habitual wear of a humble class of the community. He managed so well that he reached the neighbourhood of the house sooner than this gliding figure, who was more a movement than a being, and whom, in a less excited state of his nerves, he would probably not have noticed at all. He made for the little entrance which he had discovered and arrived there before her. Would he be convicted of spying by the astonished eyes of some innocent maidservant? Or would he——? What was that? Certainly the movement had been there for a moment in the bushes, and there had been a pause—a pause was it of consternation to see him on the watch? A moment after, he perceived that the almost imperceptible quiver of the pale lilac, washed almost white with the rain, had gone further off; the visitor had retreated. He hurried along in the track, his heart beating. Certainly it was retreating. Down again along the edge of the little lake he followed, cautious, tracking the faint swaying in the branches. If the evening had not been perfectly still, he could not have noted any progress at all, the path of the fugitive was so judiciously chosen. Then he gave almost a shout of satisfaction; skirting among the bushes became no longer practicable, and, trusting to the dark and the rain, an indistinct form suddenly appeared in the open, moving like a shadow, but with great speed, over the grass. He uttered a cry, almost without knowing it, and launched himself forth in pursuit.
Hehad almost stumbled in his haste and perplexity upon another figure all cloaked in waterproof and sheltered under an umbrella near the Rectory gate. By this time it was quite dark, and the rain, small and soft but persistent, had increased so much as to be almost blinding. A faint exclamation—‘Oh, Mr. Swinford!’—greeted him as he was passing.
‘Miss Plowden,’ he said, ‘I beg your pardon,’ and then he added, breathlessly, ‘I am running after a lady—don’t laugh—an old friend of whom I had a sudden glimpse. I have pursued her all the way from the lake, and thought I had kept her well in sight, but at last I have lost the track. Have you met any one? Excuse me for keeping you in the rain.’
‘A lady?’ said Emmy. ‘No, I have seen no one—that is, no one that is not well known in Watcham. I suppose it was a stranger?’
‘How can I tell?’ said Leo in his perplexity; ‘a slight woman, exceedingly swift and energetic—witness, I have not been able to make up with her all this way—in a cloak—impermeable—what do you call it?—like what you wear.’
‘In a waterproof!’ said Emmy. ‘No one has passed me but the schoolmistress. It could not be the schoolmistress?’
The idea was so ludicrous to Leo that he burst into a laugh in the midst of his wretchedness and perplexity.
‘That does not seem likely,’ he said.
‘No one else has passed,’ said Emmy; ‘but there are some lanes, if the lady had wanted a short cut to the station, for instance.’
‘That is exactly what I should expect.’
‘Then if you will turn down to the right the first opening you come to, and afterwards to the left, and then—— The quickest way,’ she said suddenly, with a blush and a laugh, ‘wouldbe to show you; for I fear I am not clever enough to describe it.’
‘Not in this rain?’
‘Oh, I don’t care for the rain. We are out in all weathers; it will not take ten minutes.’ She had already turned and was hastening on in the direction she had indicated with a friendly desire to serve him, at which Leo admired and wondered. ‘Besides, I don’t call this bad rain,’ said Emmy cheerfully, ‘it is so soft and warm. But for habit I should prefer to have no umbrella. But you, perhaps, would like a share of mine?’
‘Thanks, it would do me no good and hamper you. I am as wet as I can be.’
‘Yes, you are very wet I see. Well, there is one good thing, you cannot be any worse now, and you must change as soon as you get in. When one is only a little wet one does not see the need, but when it is as bad as that you must. This way: I am afraid it is a little dirty, Mr. Swinford,’ said Emmy, with a tone of apology, as if it were somehow her fault.
‘It is not very clean,’ he said, with a laugh, ‘but it is worse for you than for me. I have an object, but you have none, save kindness,’ he added, with a grateful look that pleased Emmy.
‘If it were kindness,’ she said, ‘that is the best object of all. But I can’t claim that, for it is a pleasure to help a—friend if one can, in such a very little thing.’
‘You hesitated, Miss Plowden, before you said a friend.’
‘Yes,’ she said, with the faint little laugh of embarrassment, ‘I was not sure that I knew you enough to use that name.’
‘I hope,’ cried Leo, ‘you will never doubt that again after all the rain and mud you have faced to help me.’
‘Oh,’ said Emmy, ‘I would do as much for any one—if I had never seen them before: I should be a poor creature indeed if I took credit for this. Is that your lady, Mr. Swinford, running down the lane to the station? I am afraid she will be late for her train. Run on, please—never mind me—I’ll follow and see if you find her, though,’ she called after him cheerfully.
It was the pleasantest little excitement to Emmy, even had it not been Leo Swinford about whom she had once entertained so many romantic dreams. These dreams had faded away in the most wonderful manner in the light of reality—though they still kept a little atmosphere of romance about him. But it was perfectly true that she would have done this little service for any one, and would have felt the exhilaration of a small adventure in doing it, and the same curiosity to see how it ended. She wenton accordingly smiling under her umbrella: her hair was touched here and there by the raindrops, and shone in the light of the lamps, and her walk and the little excitement had given her a pretty colour. All the likeness to Lady William, of which Emmy was so proud, came out in the pleasant commotion in which she stood on the opposite side of the platform to look if Mr. Swinford had found his friend. But his friend, as the reader knows, was not bound for the station, and was, indeed, at that moment secure in the last place in the world where he was likely to look for her, shaking the rain from her cloak, and changing her shoes with the sensation of warmth and comfort which dry garments give after a drenching. Mrs. Brown had on the whole rather enjoyed the stern-chase, in which she felt herself quite safe: for she knew that she could elude her pursuer one way or the other—either by allowing him to overtake her, in which case she was confident that her own wits were quite equal to any encounter with Leo—or by vanishing into some side way by which she could gain her schoolhouse—the last place where he would seek her. Artémise was quite invigorated by the incident, which kept up, perhaps, an interest which was slightly flagging in her continued visits to Mrs. Swinford. If she were to be pursued every time, it would give to these visits a wonderful zest.
Leo came across the railway with a sensation of pleasure, for which he was quite unprepared, to give his guide the information that he had failed in his search. Emmy had always been pensive and stony when he had seen her before, a pale resemblance, like a half-faded photograph, of her aunt. Now her bright interest and readiness to listen and sympathise warmed him almost as much as the dry shoes which Artémise was luxuriously putting on by her little kitchen fire.
‘No,’ he said, ‘she is not there. Perhaps she felt that I was likely to go to the railway, and so avoided me—to take, perhaps, a later train.’
‘Oh,’ said Emmy, ‘did she want thennotto be found?’
There was a slight unconscious tone of suspicion in this which was very flattering to the young man.
‘She wanted to avoid me—yes,’ said Leo. ‘She knows that I don’t love to have her in my house. She is an old friend,’ he added, ‘I am not sure what—but a sort of relation of my mother.’
‘Oh,’ said Emmy.
This very English exclamation, which is so often laughed at, has, according to the intention—or sometimes contrary to theintention—of the speaker, a wonderful deal of meaning in it. In the present case it meant surprise, mingled with a sort of disapproval, and almost reproof. An old friend, a relation, and yet you don’t like to have her in your house! This was all expressed in Emmy’s tone. She would not—I need scarcely say—have put such a sentiment in words for the world, and had not the least intention of expressing it even in her astonished ‘Oh!’
‘You think that strange?’ said Leo.
‘Oh—no,’ said Emmy, hesitating slightly. ‘I—don’t know any of the circumstances,’ she added hastily, with a sudden blush. ‘Please, don’t think for a moment, if I knew them all, that I would set up myself for a judge.’
‘Why not?’ he said. ‘You are as well qualified to judge as any one I know; and even your surprise throws a little new light for me on the situation. It is always good to see a thing through another pair of eyes. However, what I want to find this lady for, is to prevent a wrong thing being done—which she could set right, but I fear does not want to set right. So I must find her.’
‘Certainly in that case——’ said Emmy. She added, ‘I wonder if I could help you—if there was any place here where you think she might have gone!’
‘She may, perhaps,’ said Leo, with a laugh, ‘have doubled like a hare, and got safely into my mother’s room after all, while I have been hunting her here.’
‘Into—your——!’ Emmy was so bewildered that she could not keep in these astonished words, which were out of her mouth before she felt that here was some complicated matter with which she had no right to interfere. ‘Oh, never mind,’ she cried, ‘never mind! I did not mean to be so impertinent as to make any remark.’
‘Well,’ said Leo, ‘perhaps I did not mean to say so much: but I must tell you now, Miss Plowden——’
‘Oh, nothing, nothing, please,’ said Emmy in distress.
‘That my mother and I don’t look on the matter in the same light. She takes one view, I another. We need not enter into the question, but that is the fact. It is permitted to a man to differ with his mother in judgment when he is as old as I am.’
‘One cannot help it sometimes,’ said Emmy, in a low tone, with a slight bowing of her head. ‘It is very painful, but I suppose God never meant that we were not to exercise the faculties. He has given us. We may keep the commandment all the same. It says “honour.” It does not say always agree. The Bible is always so reasonable, don’t you think?’
‘Oh! I don’t know that I have very much considered that question, Miss Plowden.’
‘Never anything excessive that would be a burden,’ said Emmy, with the grave simplicity of assurance. ‘Perhaps if you could give me any indication, Mr. Swinford, I might think of a place to look for her, being on the spot, and knowing all the people.
‘Indeed you must go in at once out of the rain—with my most grateful thanks for what you have done.’
‘To be sure,’ said Emmy, ‘no lady would be likely to stay out in such a wet night—but there are two or three people who keep lodgings in Watcham where I could inquire for you—or I could go to the early train and see if she goes by that. But you must describe her—what she looks like, and what I should say——’
‘And you would really take all this trouble for me?’
‘Oh, for any one!’ cried Emmy. Then she laughed, and added: ‘That does not sound very civil. Of course I should do everything I could—a great deal more—for you, who are a—friend. But I mean I would do that much—or any of us would do it—for any one. You know my father is the Rector. It is in a kind of way our business to be of any use we can—especially,’ she added, ‘when it is a question of right and wrong.’
‘You are too good,’ said Leo. ‘You are too systematically good. I don’t want to be helped merely because I am a fellow-creature, which I fear is what it comes to. I should like—very much—to be helped—because it was me——’
‘And it would be because it was you,’ said Emmy. These words were far more pleasant to hear, on both sides, than it is to be feared they were intended to be—but they were even upon Leo’s part perfectly sincere. He wanted to be more than merely any one, to be helped and served for his own sake, and perhaps it did not occur to him that to an unsophisticated girl like Emmy (of whose romance, to be sure, he was profoundly ignorant) such words as those meant more than they did to him.
‘You are very wet,’ she said suddenly; ‘will you come into the Rectory and get dried? Perhaps you could wear some of Jim’s things. You ought not to be so long in your damp clothes.’
This motherly solicitude amused Leo much, and, to tell the truth, he began to forget the annoyance of his unsuccessful quest and to feel very uncomfortable in his wetness, and disposed towards a little light and warmth. He hesitated for a moment.‘It would be wise to go home at once,’ he said, ‘and change my wet things there.’
‘Oh!’ said Emmy, who had indeed expected no favourable answer to her invitation, ‘I am sure mamma would be very sorry if you went away that long walk without resting. She would ask you to share our dinner and go home in the fly—for it means to rain on, I am sure, all night.’
‘Do you think Mrs. Plowden would be so very good?’ Leo said.
I do not deny that dreadful questions ran through Emmy’s mind about the dinner. She did not know in the first place what it was, for Mrs. Plowden was severely determined on the point of retaining the housekeeping in her own hands: nor was she quite sure that she would escape a lecture for bringing him in upon them like this without notice, a man accustomed to a French cook. But Leo was town-bred—Paris-bred, and not accustomed to long expeditions in all weathers, and it was clear that he was beginning to shiver in the persistent though softly falling rain.
‘I am quite sure mamma would never forgive me if I let you pass the door,’ she said, leading him in through the damp garden, where already the rain began to form little pools.
Emmy felt no cold as she went in by the side door, which was always on the latch, leading her captive. Her cheeks had never glowed with such a rosy colour; her eyes had never shown so like two stars. She slid off her cloak in the passage, and stood dry and trim underneath in her little gray dress as if she had come straight from her toilette. When she pushed open the drawing-room door the light flashed about her in a sudden warm dazzle, shining in her eyes, and in those raindrops that were like pearls in her hair.
‘Mamma,’ said Emmy, in a voice that had never before sounded so soft, ‘I have made Mr. Swinford come in with me, he is so wet; and I have told him you will make him stay to dinner; and that he must put on some of Jim’s clothes.’
‘Which will be much too long for me,’ said Leo; ‘but if you will really be so charitable as Miss Plowden says——’
What a sudden sensation it made in the drawing-room! Mrs. Plowden sent Florence upstairs flying, to put a match to the fire in Jim’s room.
‘It is all laid ready; it is no trouble,’ she explained breathlessly; ‘but Florry will do it so much quicker than ringing the bell. And Emmy, call Jim—he is in the study with your papa—to get everything comfortable for Mr. Swinford. You are wetindeed. I will not even keep you downstairs to give you some tea.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Emmy modestly, ‘a little wine or something, mamma, to keep him from catching cold——’
‘And what do you take to keep you from catching cold?’ he said. ‘Am I supposed to be more delicate than you?’
‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Plowden, sending Emmy off with a look, ‘they are used to it; they are accustomed to our climate. How glad I am you came! This is the way, Mr. Swinford; let me show you the way. You must excuse me if I don’t take you to one of the best rooms, but only to Jim’s, which will be the most homely; for I think comfort is the thing to think of when one is wet and cold. Oh, here you are, Jim. I will just go with you to see that the fire is burning—and you must get out dry things to make Mr. Swinford comfortable. Have you lighted the candles, Florry? And is the fire burning up? Oh, well, then I will leave you with Jim.’
Thus the whole family ministered to Leo, who, half-horrified, half-amused to see the two girls sent flying in different directions for his comfort, and Jim much puzzled and flurried, extracted from the dreadful depths of the study—submitted himself to these attentions with the best grace in the world. If he had fathomed Jim’s dreadful perplexity as to whether he should offer the brand-new coat which he had got for the FitzStephens’ ball, or his old one, which he believed in his heart would be a better fit, he could not have spoken more wisely than he did on this subject.
‘Give me an old coat,’ he said, ‘one you had before you had grown so big. You are a head taller than I am.’
The whole house was stirred by this unexpected visitor. Mrs. Plowden downstairs was eager in her questions to Emmy.
‘Where did you meet him? What made you think of asking him? What a good thing that we have such a nice dinner—really too nice a dinner to eat by ourselves to-day. I said so to cook this morning. Those beautiful chickens Mrs. Barndon sent us, and a piece of salmon, and—— Really, a dinner for a dinner-party. What a very lucky thing it was to-day!’
Even the Rector came forth from his study to hear what the commotion was about.
‘Emmy brought in Mr. Swinford to change his wet clothes and dine.’
‘Emmybrought him in? Why, you must be dreaming, Jane!’
‘And why shouldn’t Emmy bring him in?’ cried Mrs.Plowden, triumphant; ‘indeed, what could she do else on such a wet night?’
Thus, instead of dining mournfully alone, with Morris behind his chair, in the great dark dining-room with the mock marble pillars, Leo sat down with the cheerful Rectory party around the severe but shabby mahogany, upon a chair covered with horse-hair, to a dinner cooked by a plain cook. He was more amused than words could say, and delighted with the new scene, the kind people, and, above all, the contrast of the family party with his solitude, and thebourgeoiscomfort with his own elegant and fastidious fare. The chickens, carved anxiously by Mrs. Plowden with ‘Just another little piece of the breast,’ in addition to the well-developed wing, were so good, and everything was so warm and bright, so honest and simple, that his amusement soon grew into pleasure. What a contrast! He told them even his story with judicious elisions.
‘I cannot think how I lost her,’ he said, ‘even if she did not want me to find her: and where she disappeared I cannot tell.’
‘I came all through the village,’ Emmy explained, to add to the tale, ‘and no one creature passed me but Mrs. Brown, the schoolmistress, flying along in a great hurry to get out of the rain.’
Jim looked up at these words with a little start, but took care not to say anything, as may well be believed.
‘Perhaps,’ said Leo, with a laugh, ‘it might be Mrs. Brown, the schoolmistress, whom I was pursuing all the time. She might be paying an innocent visit to some friend in the servants’ hall. In which case she will think me a dangerous madman, and I owe her an apology.’
‘Oh, she’s not one of that sort!’ cried Jim. He said it under his breath, and fortunately nobody heard him but Florence, who gave him a look of inquiry, but no more.
‘So I might have saved myself the trouble—and the wetting,’ Leo said.
Asit happened, however, there were several people much occupied about Mrs. Brown on the morning after that wonderful chase with all its consequences. Mab, under one pretext or another, had spent most of the previous day in the school. She had heard the bigger girls say their lessons; she had hovered about the classes taught by the schoolmistress; she had watched over the course of instruction in general with anxious eyes. Was there any tampering with the morals of the girls of Watcham? Were the little ones taught their hymns and collects? Were the big ones kept up to their catechism now that the time for their confirmation began to approach? Mab had never hitherto felt herself one of the clergy of the parish, as the Rector’s niece might have been permitted to do. But now she was torn with those sensations which we may suppose to be felt by a priest who has received under the seal of confession a new light upon the proceedings and motives of an important official. This is a drawback of the priestly office which has rarely struck the general observer. To know that a man who is largely influential in life, who has important issues on hand, is using his powers for evil and not for good, and yet to be powerless to do anything, to prevent anything, to give any warning on the subject! Many a good priest no doubt has been bowed down under this unthought-of weight. And so was Mab, whose young shoulders were quite unfit for the part. Should she tell it all to Lady William, this knowledge that was too much for her to bear? Should she give her uncle a hint that she had discovered something which made the schoolmistress unfit for her place? Mab felt that in all likelihood Uncle James would laugh at her discovery, and to repeat Mrs. Brown’s confidences, even to Lady William, would be a breach of trust. Thus the only thing Mab could do was to come in, in her own person, to hold Mrs. Brown (perhaps) in awe, to watch overthe instruction, to correct what was wrong, to see how far it might be her bounden duty to interfere. One wonders how a priest would act in a similar case, or whether the possession of many secret responsibilities in his consciousness may perhaps neutralise the weight of each. Nothing neutralised this dreadful weight in Mab’s case. She watched Mrs. Brown as a cat watches a mouse. She did not like to let that enigmatical person out of her sight. She even followed down the ranks of the girls whose heads were bent over their copybooks, to see that the line so beautifully written in round hand at the head of each page was orthodox. Mab gave herself a great deal more to do than if she had herself been the mistress of the school. She asked the girls all sorts of unexpected questions to test their views of morality.
‘What would you do if you saw somebody take something out of a shop? Suppose you saw a very poor person take a loaf from the baker’s?’ said Mab, with an anxious pucker in her forehead.
‘Oh, miss!’ cried two or three girls together; ‘tell Mr. White that minute, and if he runned away, catch him up.’
‘But if he were very, very poor—starving?’ said Mab.
There was a pause, for of course all the girls studied her countenance to know what she wished them to reply; and Mab’s little round, blunt-featured face, with an anxious cloud upon its childish brow, was void of all expression that could be taken as guidance.
‘If we knowed the man we could tell after—when he was gone,’ said one Jesuitical little person.
‘And then ‘e could run after ‘im to ‘is ‘ouse—or send the police,’ cried the rest. The idea of sending the police was the most popular. It seemed somehow to take off the responsibility. But the girls soon perceived that this was not the solution required.
‘If you please, miss,’ said a sharp little girl who was well acquainted with Mab’s ways, ‘if I ‘ad a penny I’d pay instead of ‘im, and then it wouldn’t be stealing at all.’
This was received, however, by a spontaneous groan from the class. ‘Oh, Lizzie Jones! that would be cheating as well.’
‘And it ain’t likely as I’d ‘ave the penny,’ said Lizzie meekly. She drew from Mab’s countenance the consolation that, after all, it was she who had answered the best.
To describe the delight with which Mrs. Brown looked on and listened to all this would be difficult. She read little Mab like a book, and her sense of humour was tickled beyond description.That she was herself upon her trial, and that the sentiments of her scholars were to be considered in justification or condemnation—while, at the same time, Mab was covertly consulting their ignorance and (supposed) spontaneousness of perception like an oracle, was as clear as daylight to this clever woman. She had never met anything so funny in her life; and it delighted her as a good joke delights people who are given that way, whether it is against themselves or not. But the gravity of her aspect was equally beyond description. She seemed to take this question in ethics with the most perfect good faith and all the seriousness in the world.
‘If the man was starving,’ she said, taking up the argument, ‘and Lizzie Jones had not a penny, as is most likely, and he was known not to be a dishonest man, but only driven mad by the poor children hungry at home——’
‘Yes, teacher,’ said Lizzie Jones, who felt that she herself had thrown most light on the subject.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘of course it is never right to shield a wrong act.’
This was so unlike what the girls expected after her exordium that there was a little cry of surprise, swiftly modified into one of cordial assent.
‘But,’ said the schoolmistress, ‘knowing that this is so—which you must never forget—I’ll tell you what this young lady would do. She would go after the man to his house—which most likely she would know: and I’m not sure that she would not stop and buy some things on the way—at the butcher’s, perhaps——’
At this the girls manifested a little doubt; while one murmured ‘Tea, teacher,’ and another said ‘Potatoes’ loud out that she might not be overlooked; at which the class, consulting Mrs. Brown’s face by a lightning glance, burst into a laugh.
‘Hush!’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘This is a very interesting question that is set to us—as good as a story; but you mustn’t laugh. The young lady would go to the man’s house, and she would probably see the children devouring the bread; and she would ask a number of questions—far more than she has asked you to-day, though she has asked a great many. She would discover there was no fire (supposing it to be cold, which it isn’t to-day) and nothing to eat in the house, and that the man was out of work and the wife ill and the children starving. She would immediately send off for all that was wanted——’
‘Please, teacher,’ said Lizzie Jones, holding out her hand,‘she’d give ’em a coal ticket, and a bread ticket and bid ’em send one of the little ones up with a basket for the pieces.’
‘Well, perhaps she would do that. And when she had supplied their wants, she would take the man aside, and she would say to him, “I saw you steal that loaf at Mr. White’s.”’
There was a long breath and a cry of ‘Oh!’ from the girls, and Lizzie Jones, who was soft-hearted—or was it only that she was forward?—began to cry.
‘“Now,” the young lady would say, “come back with me and pay for it. You’re going to get work again presently, and the children shall not starve; but you must not have anything against you when you get work.”’
There was another very large round ‘Oh!’ from the girls, who turned their eyes with one accord from Mrs. Brown’s to Mab’s face.
‘I don’t know if I would do that,’ said Mab.
‘Neither do I,’ said Mrs. Brown; ‘but judging by what I know of your character, Miss Pakenham, that is what I should expect you to do.’
This happened on the morning of the day after Leo’s chase in the rain. Mab went home very soberly when the children were dismissed for dinner and in a very uncertain state of mind. She did not know how to take Mrs. Brown’s apologue, which already was being circulated through the village in a dozen different versions as a thing which Miss Mab had actually done, until it came to the ears of White, the baker, who contradicted it indignantly, and declared that he’d give a stale loaf as soon as look at it if the children were starving; but let a man off as stole it because he come and offered to pay up after was what he wouldn’t never do.
In the meantime Leo had been turning over in his mind that idea of Mrs. Brown, the schoolmistress. At first it amused him to think that so harmless a visitor to the servants’ hall might have been the object of his very unnecessary pursuit, and in this sense he laughed at the situation, which was so ludicrous, and longed to cross over to the cottage in the rain, when he left the Rectory, to make Lady William the partaker of so good a joke. But as he drove home in Jim’s clothes and the sober Watcham fly, which Mrs. Plowden, in her motherly care, had ordered for him, a different view suddenly occurred to Leo. The joke was good, but not good enough to last out that slow drive through the deep dark and the falling rain. It occurred to him as he thought of it that a visitor to the servants’ hall might, indeed, be disconcerted by the curiosity of the master of the house, but would not, unless shehad some very dishonest meaning, turn back and fly. Why should the schoolmistress, probably acquainted with the housekeeper and entertaining a very good opinion of herself, fly from Leo? There was no reason in the world why she should fly. She would probably have quickened her steps, and arrived at the little side entrance puffing and blowing, but chiefly with indignation, and given very warmly her opinion of the young master who spied upon the back-door visitors. But to turn back at the sight of him and get herself out of the way meant something more than a respectable visit to the housekeeper. What did it mean? A village schoolmistress was not one to visit the young maids, or get them into mischief; but why, why did she turn and flee? It was impossible to assign a sufficient reason for this to himself.
And then there was suddenly shot into his mind, as our best intuitions come, suddenly and with a sharp shock—almost a pang—the question, Who was the schoolmistress? Artémise was nothing if not a woman of variety. He had himself known her go through the most extraordinary transformation; one time dazzling in splendour, the next almost a beggar. Why should not she herself be the schoolmistress? There could be no such concealment, no such unlikely place to look for her, as in the parish school of Watcham. There she would be at his mother’s very door, accessible on every occasion, ever within call. He had thought it scarcely possible that she could come constantly from London and disappear again unseen; but if she were in Watcham, at hand, in such a place, where nobody could think of looking for her, the difficulty would disappear. And she was an excellent actress; a woman to take anybody in, not to say an unsophisticated and artless company like the Rector and his churchwardens. He could scarcely help smiling to himself in the dark as he suddenly thought of the perfect representation of a model schoolmistress which Artémise would get up for the edification of the authorities. No schoolmistress in the world was ever so excellent a type of the class as Artémise would make herself look—her voice, her gestures, her demeanour would be all perfect. And she would have the satisfaction of being perfectly safe, for who would think of looking for her there?
But then there were the ladies, who were different. Would she take in the ladies, too? Would not they suspect the representation to be too complete? And then Lady William—Lady William could not have been deceived. She must have recognised at once the woman of whom she was in search. Leo did not know Lady William’s peculiarity about the parish. He was aware that Mab knew everybody and all their circumstances, and it did notoccur to him that her mother would hold apart. This seemed to cut the ground from under his feet again. But he determined to see for himself next day who the schoolmistress was.
Next day, however, was a half-holiday, and he did not reach the school till the afternoon, when all the children were dispersed and the house shut up. Mrs. Brown, he was informed at the nearest cottage, where it appeared her little maid-servant lived, had gone away for the afternoon, so that his inquiries made no further progress that day. He went to tell his adventure to Lady William, and, if not to suggest this solution, at least to ask what she knew of Mrs. Brown. But Lady William also was out of doors, and nothing more was to be done. He hesitated whether he should not go to the Rectory to make a call of thanks, and to see (perhaps) if Emmy Plowden resembled her aunt as much by daylight as she had done in the unusually favourable circumstances of last night. But this intention he did not carry out. Unfortunately for romance, Leo was so ungrateful as to recall what he called thebourgeoisdinner, the drab-coloured comfort, the petty little anxieties and cares (chiefly on his own account) of the Rectory party, with more amusement than admiration, though with a compunction, too. Kind excellent people! How abominable it was to laugh at them! But his laughter was not checked by the compunction—it only gave a certain piquancy to all that was ludicrous in the picture.