WhenMr. Osborne found himself alone—the impromptu committee which had hastily discussed the emergency having melted away, with the understanding that nothing could be done for this morning, that the holiday must be permitted, and a more formal meeting held in the afternoon at which some expedient might be settled upon—he stood for a moment at the door of the schoolhouse looking out upon the emancipated children, and making up his mind what to do. There was one thing very clear, and that was that the Rector ought to know. The curate stood and meditated with many things in his mind. He had not gone to the Rectory for some weeks, not since that disastrous moment when Florence had spoken her mind. His heart leaped up in his bosom, and began to beat in a most wild, unclerical, and unjustifiable way, when he saw that it was his duty to go now, and that there was no one else to do it for him. Jim had gone off in attendance upon Lady William, which was wholly unnecessary, seeing she had already her daughter and Swinford with her; but the fact that he had gone was evident, and more immediately important than to decide whether he had any right to go. And there was nobody but the curate to fulfil this necessary duty. Miss Grey even, the feminine curate, who ought to have been the first to undertake that mission, had melted away with the rest, going off to her district—as if her district for once could not wait! Mr. Osborne looked round him for help, but found none. At last he buttoned up his coat, which was the same as the Scriptural preparation of girding his loins, and went forth, hesitating no longer, but walking with a firm foot, light and swift, up the village street, resolved to do his duty. His duty was clearly to beard the lion in his den: no, not the Rector—the Rector was no lion to this critical young man: the lion whom he felt himself called upon to beard was a person of very different appearance from thatof the respectable middle-aged clergyman who was Mr. Osborne’s ecclesiastical superior, and whom, with the instinct of the new generation, the curate was disposed to estimate lightly. It was a very different kind of lion indeed—a lion probably in a white gown, with pretty brown locks a little astray on her forehead, with a pair of mild brown eyes, that could indeed shine with sacred fire, as when she dared to discourse to a consecrated priest upon his duty—his duty! which was, first of all, by all laws, both of Nature and the Church, to hold her in subjection and ordain for her what she was to do—a case which she had taken upon herself to reverse. It would be difficult to say why Mr. Osborne should have concluded that this dangerous animal was the one he would see at the Rectory and not the true spiritual ruler of the parish himself, or even the ruler-ess, at whose pretensions the curate would have snapped his fingers. No, curiously enough, it was of neither of these that he thought. He felt absolutely certain, by what means I cannot tell, that it was Florence he would see—Florence, who had so offended him that he had all but insulted her sister and herself in the sight of the whole parish about their duet: and now he would have to face her—probably alone. To all ordinary calculations nothing could be more improbable than this—that circumstances should conjoin in such a concatenation accordingly as that nobody should be in the Rectory to receive Mr. Osborne but Florence; that her father should be out—a man always in his study till luncheon; and her mother out—a woman devoted to housekeeping and the cares of her family; and even Emmy out, with whom Mr. Osborne had no controversy. Only that spitfire, that little dictator, that feminine meddler, who had taken upon her to give advice to a priest! Such a contingency was not to be looked for by any of the laws of probability; and yet Mr. Osborne felt certain this was how it would be. His heart would not have beat so, his cheek taken such a colour, his head been held so high, if it had been the Rector he expected to see. He knew he should seeher, and no one else; and he strode along accordingly, with sensations which were somewhere between those which moved David when he went out to meet Goliath and those which might be supposed to inspire a Forlorn Hope.
He did, however, everything he could to persuade himself that, after all, this was an ordinary visit upon parish business to the Rector. He went in by the parish door, which, as has been said, was a swinging door, always open in case any shy and shame-faced parishioner should wish to communicate with the spiritual authorities; but Mr. Plowden was not in his study, as Mr. Osborneforesaw. As he came out of that room, pretending to himself that he was disappointed—which he was not—he met one of the servants, who informed him (what he had discovered without her aid) that her master was out, and missis was out, and Mr. Jim was out, but she thought there was some one in the drawing-room, one of the young ladies, if that would do. Mr. Osborne could not say to Mary Janethatthat would not do, that it was the last thing he wished, though he had been sure of it all along. All that he did was to nod his head rather impatiently in reply, and push past Mary Jane. No, he would not have himself announced by the maid, as if it were quite a usual matter. He waved her away, and went on by himself and opened the drawing-room door. How his heart beat, and what a wrathful shining was in his eyes!
And of course his previsions were quite true, true in every particular: there she sat, looking as if—as if, according to the old wives, butter would not melt in her mouth. Not with the air of a lion to be boarded in his den. Oh no! much more like a lamb—in the white dress which (even that detail!) the unfortunate curate had foreseen, looking so peaceable and innocent, so—so—sweet, confound her! Oh no, the curate did not say that. It is I who say it, in the impossibility of finding words to express his sentiments. It all surged upon him now—much worse even than he had expected! the abominable impertinence and presumption of her, the sweetness of her, the everything he liked best, conjoined with that intolerable something which he could not endure. Poor curate! He had foreseen it all—but not so bad, not quite so bad as it turned out. She was seated close by the window, at one side of the large table which had been thrust into a corner, but not put away, as being so convenient for work—with a good deal of white stuff about, cotton from which she was cutting out various shapes, of which I do not pretend that Mr. Osborne recognised more than the purpose of them, which was for the sewing class evidently in the first place, and the comfort of its members after that. A clergyman—if not celibate, which, perhaps, is the best—but Mr. Osborne had regretfully allowed the difficulties of it some months before this—could not well behold in visions a wife more suitably employed. Florence was so busy that it did not occur to her to turn round when the door opened. She was singing to herself in a sort of undertone as she planned out, and pinned, and cut, not thinking of any visitor. It piqued Mr. Osborne extremely, as if it were a special little defiance thrown out at himself, that she should be singing at her work.
‘Miss Plowden,’ he said.
Oh, then he was revenged for the moment! Florence started so that she nearly jumped from her chair, and the scissors with which she was cutting out so carefully gave a long and jagged gash into the cotton like a wound, and the cheeks and pretty white throat which were under his gaze suddenly turned red to the edge of the white dress as if with some relay dye.
‘Mr. Osborne!’ she said, with a half-terrified look.
‘I am afraid I startled you. I came to see the Rector—to tell him of a most extraordinary incident.’
Florence uttered a quavering, troubled ‘O—oh!’ and then she said, dropping her scissors, ‘I hope it is not bad news.’
‘Oh, not to any of us,’ said the curate hurriedly, ‘to the parish, perhaps; but I am not even sure of that.’
When Florence heard it was only the parish that was threatened, she calmed down immediately; her ‘O—oh!’ repeated, was in quite a different tone. ‘My father is out,’ she said, ‘and so, I am afraid, are mamma and Emmy. It is very seldom,’ said Florence, feeling herself almost on her defence, ‘that I am the only one at home; but I can tell papa—anything——’
Anything? How was it that it occurred to both of them instinctively that there might be things which Florry could not tell papa—which it would be Mr. Osborne’s duty to say in his own person? If there is anything that it is specially embarrassing to think of, at any given moment, that, one may be sure, is the thing that comes into one’s head. Anything? If the curate wanted to ask Mr. Plowden for his daughter, for example, which was a thing that did not seem unlikely some time ago, though not now—oh, certainly, not now! This thought in all its ramifications went like lightning through the minds of both, and made each—thinking nothing could be further from the ideas of the other—more confused than words can say.
‘It is to ask,’ said the curate, recovering himself, ‘that the Rector would call together the education committee at once, if he does not mind. A wonderful thing has occurred. The schoolmistress, without giving any notice or warning, without a word to any one, has gone away. When the children went to school this morning the door was locked, and she was gone.’
‘The schoolmistress? Mrs. Brown?’
‘I don’t know how she was appointed,’ said the curate; ‘I was away at the time for my holiday; nor who is responsible for her, nor what recommendations she had. I had never any confidence in her, for my own part. She did not at all seem fitted for such a sphere.’
Florence felt that this was an assault upon her father’s judgment, and immediately stood to her guns.
‘She was an excellent teacher; the girls would do anything for her, and the inspector said there was such an improvement.’
‘She was not a woman to have charge of the moral training of all those girls.’
‘Oh, their moral training! But it was for the standards that she was there.’
‘We need not quarrel over that,’ said the curate, as who should say, we have plenty of subjects to quarrel upon, ‘the thing is that she is gone. I was going to say bag and baggage; but that would not be correct, for her boxes are left all fastened up—directed to a distant railway station. She has not even left an address.’
‘How very odd!’ Florence said. And then there was a little pause: there is nothing so dangerous as a pause in certain positions of affairs.
Mr. Osborne stood in front of the window, and when he came to the end of a sentence looked out upon the garden. Florence, except when she was speaking and was obliged to raise her eyes to him now and then, kept them upon her work. She had not asked him to sit down—partly from inadvertence, partly from embarrassment—and both of them cast furtive glances at the gate, longing for somebody to come. Did they long for somebody to come? At last the silence became so very appalling that Florence rushed into it, not knowing what might come of that too eloquent pause.
‘I am to tell papa that there is to be a meeting of the education——’
‘I hope you don’t think I would send my Rector a message like that? That, if he thinks well, there ought, perhaps, to be a meeting—for something must be done at once; the children are all about’—Mr. Osborne added, sinking into a more confidential tone—‘we cannot keep the girls’ school shut.’
‘No,’ said Florence, ‘oh no; do you know of any one? There is Anderson’s wife, the schoolmaster. He wanted her to get it, but now she has the infant school. At the worst, don’t you think for a day or two we ladies, perhaps? If you can’t hear of any one, I could take the reading and spelling, and perhaps the writing. Having the copylines makes that easy, though, of course, I don’t write well enough myself.’
‘You might do it, Miss Plowden; you don’t mind what trouble you put yourself to—’ He had to pull up sharply, or he did notknow what he might have said. His voice began to grow rather soft in spite of himself, which was a thing that could not be permitted to be. ‘We might think of Mrs. Anderson,’ he said; ‘as for the other ladies, I don’t think it would do. It is useless trusting to amateurs.’
‘Yes,’ said Florence, with humility. ‘I never thought, of course, that I could be much good, or any of us, only for a stop-gap for the moment. Mrs. Anderson would be the most hopeful thing, perhaps.’
‘I did not mean to imply that you would be no good. Quite the reverse. I meant——’
‘Oh! I know, I know, Mr. Osborne,’ said Florry. ‘We need not stand upon compliments; we are only trying to think what’s best for the children.’
That was all—what was best for the children—nothing more.
He stood looking out of the window, and Florence pinned her paper patterns to new folds of the white cotton. And there was again a pause—which Florry this time did not try to break. It was he who began. ‘Your brother,’ he said, suddenly but harshly, ‘was so good about that ridiculous entertainment of mine; I should never have got those men to come but for him.’
‘Jim?’ said Florence. ‘I am very glad; he liked to help; but I don’t see why you should call it a ridiculous entertainment.’
‘I felt it so,’ cried the curate fiercely. ‘What is the good of such attempts? Perhaps if they went on, like the public-house, every night, a warm bright place, with ladies to sing, and——’
‘Dance!’ said Florry, with unsteady laughter, ‘as Miss Grey said. Well, then, you must start a working-man’s club, Mr. Osborne, and then you can have it every night, and there will always be a nice bright, light place to sit in, and games, you know, and papers——’
‘And beer?’
‘I have heard people say,’ said Florence, ‘that it is best to let them have whatever they would have if it was natural. But I am rather on your side about that, and so is mamma.’
‘On my side?’ said the curate, with a faintness in his voice.
‘About the temperance. But, on the other hand, papa says it is not having no beer, but having just as much as is good, that is temperance.’
‘None is good,’ cried Mr. Osborne impulsively.
‘Well,’ said Florence, with judicial calm, ‘I have said that I think I am on your side.’
A pause again, and Florence went on with her work steadily. Nobody came—the May sunshine fell over the lawn without a shadow to break it. Would they never come back, Florry asked herself? And yet the present situation was not without its charm. All his displeasure was oozing out of his fingers’ ends, all his unwillingness to be dictated to by a girl. He thought he would like it if she would dictate to him again, and tell him what was his duty. No; he did not think this, he only felt it vaguely—touched, he could not tell why, by her avowal of being on his side. Was he not her spiritual superior, and was it not her duty, as soon as she heard his sentiments on the subject, to be on his side? But somehow he did not feel so sure of that position, and rather wanted to hear her unbiassed opinion and what she would say.
‘Your brother has been a great help to me,’ he said again.
He would not for the world have reminded her of what she had said that day. And, of course, she had said nothing in so many words about her brother. He was by no means sure that it was not a mean thing thrusting this forward to make her think she was obliged to him, but yet—when a man is at his wits’ end, what can he say?
‘We have all been so glad to see that Jim was beginning—to take an interest——’
‘And he knows so much,’ pursued the curate, ‘more than I do. If we were to get up a club, he might do almost anything he pleased with the men. I have to thank you, Miss Florence,’ he went on, finding as he proceeded that it was necessary to be definite if he was to make any impression, ‘for giving me a hint——’
‘I don’t think I gave you any hint,’ said Florence, dropping her scissors; while she stooped for them she went on, saying quickly: ‘We know what we owe to you; we all feel it. One can’t talk of such things, Mr. Osborne, and I was very bold and disagreeable once; but if you think I don’t thank you from my heart——’
‘Florence!’ said the curate.
‘Oh, I don’t mind, call me whatever you like. You had a good right to be angry, and I took a great deal, a very great deal upon me—but if you knew how we all thanked you from the bottom of our hearts.’
‘Florence!’ the curate said again; he had got down on his knee on the carpet to look for the scissors too—they were strange scissors to disappear like that—scissors are not round things like a ring or a reel of cotton to run into a corner; yet they eludedboth these people who were looking for them, and who, not finding them, suddenly somehow looked at each other, probably for the first time since that day.
I think it highly probable that these young people forgot from that moment that there was a girls’ school in Watcham at all, much more that the mistress had ran away from it, or that there was any occasion for moving heaven and earth, as Mr. Osborne had intended when he entered the Rectory, to get a substitute for Mrs. Brown.
Mr. Osbornewent off and had a long walk after this little scene, and Florence retreated to her own room. Neither of them for that first hour felt at all disposed to face the looks and possible inquiries of those ridiculously composed and commonplace persons to whom nothing had happened. The presence of these people surrounding them on every side, prying at them, laughing or wondering, or making investigation into their feelings, is at once a trouble and an astonishment to the hero and heroine. On a day which is the beginning of a new life to them, to think there should be so many in the world to whom it was only the fifteenth of May. How grotesque it seems! Only a day like another to be written down quite calmly as the date of their letters, and never thought of more, just the same as the sixteenth or the twenty-second! There are so many stupidities, so much that is dull and common in this life.
And in the afternoon there was that other event, so much less important, but yet meaning much, in Lady William’s cottage. That the Rector, after spending all the morning out of doors, should have gone out again in the afternoon was a contrariety which Mr. Osborne for one could scarcely believe. When he came back in the afternoon to see his chief and to tell his tale, the curate’s face, on hearing that once more that chief was out, was a study. Astonishment, annoyance, even displeasure were written on it, as well as a subduing consciousness that Florence would laugh, which Florence did accordingly with a strong inclination partially mastered to mimic the curate to his face: an inclination which, perhaps—who can tell?—if indulged in might have been too much for that gentleman, though he was very much in love. She laughed, and explained that poor papa could not mean any offence, seeing he was quite unaware what great intimation was about to be made to him.
‘I tried to keep him,’ she said, ‘but he had business with Aunt Emily, and frowned upon me when I tried to insinuate that there might be more important business at home.’
Florence had come out to meet her curate at the gate. She put her hand within his arm as they came together across the lawn, and as she said these words she looked up into his face with so exact a representation of the Rector’s frown, and his ‘Go away, child, don’t worry me with nonsense,’ that Mr. Osborne, all grave, provoked, and half offended as he was, could not help but laugh.
‘Florry, darling,’ he said, pressing her arm to his side, ‘it is very funny—but when you are a clergyman’s wife, you know——’ Poor Florry had not had the heart to mimic anybody since that April day: but now she only laughed at the reproof: she was ready to have ‘taken off’ the Archbishop of Canterbury had His Grace come in her way.
I need scarcely say that the sight of Florry coming across the lawn with her arm within that of the curate, laughing and looking up at him, while he looked down, and shook his head, and had the air of reproving, though with a smile on his face, had the greatest effect upon the people in the drawing-room who saw that scene from the windows.
‘Emmy—Emmy!’ cried Mrs. Plowden to her daughter, who was coming in calmly with the basket of stockings to be darned—and as soon as Emmy was within reach, her mother seized her by the skirts and pulled her forward to the window. ‘What does that mean?’ cried the Rector’s wife. Mrs. Plowden’s heart had leaped up into her throat, beating almost as fast and as tumultuously as the curate’s heart had done when he stooped down in that very spot to look for the scissors. ‘Tell me,whatdoesthatmean?’ she said imperiously, while Emmy in consternation gazed out, not knowing what to say.
‘Well, mamma, you are not angry, are you?’ said Emmy, with a sympathetic jump of her heart, too.
‘Angry!’ said Mrs. Plowden, and began forthwith to cry; for though she was fussy, and perhaps commonplace, she was a very devoted mother. And there was not a word to be said against Mr. Osborne—he was tolerably well off, well connected, likely to ‘get on,’ and an excellent young man—almost too good, if a fault might be hinted; and Florry liked him; and, crowning virtue of all, he had been kind to Jim. Afterwards, when the little épanchement was over which followed on the entry of these two evident lovers, after she had cried a good deal and laughed a little,and given her consent and blessed them, and retired to see whether Mr. Plowden had returned, followed by Emmy, who thought it would be well to tell the cook to have some sally-luns for tea—Mrs. Plowden expressed her sentiments more freely. ‘I should not like to marry him myself,’ she said, ‘but since Florry likes it, and everything is so suitable, I feel quite sure your father will be pleased.’
‘No,’ said Emmy thoughtfully, ‘he is very nice, but I should not like to marry him.’ Which was just as well, probably, since there was no possibility of anything of the kind. Emmy thought of Another, with whom she thought Mr. Osborne could not bear comparison. But, alas! that Other, it is to be feared, was quite as little likely to fall in Emmy’s way.
The young pair walked over to Lady William’s cottage after a while, with that satisfaction in communicating the fact of their happiness which is natural to well-conditioned friendly young pairs. I am not myself sure that Mr. Osborne, indeed, liked to be led, in triumph even to the house of so near a relation, for he had a secret dread of ridicule, which gave this young man a great deal of trouble. They met Mr. Swinford walking away from the cottage with a grave face, accompanied by little Miss Grey, who was full of excitement. I need not say that by this time, as they walked along in full view of the village, Florence no longer hung on the curate’s arm, as she had done while crossing the lawn at the Rectory. On the contrary, they were walking very demurely side by side, with the air of people who had met accidentally in the street and could not help but walk together, little as they liked it, as they were going the same way. Miss Grey’s chatter was audible almost before they came in sight of her. Her countenance was wreathed in smiles, her old-fashioned broad hat had got a little to one side, and looked more jaunty and ‘fast’ than the most fashionable headgear.
‘I could have told her years ago if I had thought it would be of any consequence,’ Miss Grey was saying; and so much preoccupied was she, that the unusual spectacle of the curate and Florence walking together, although in the most austere manner, which would have excited her so much on another occasion, did not even attract her observation now.
‘Has anything happened, Miss Grey?’ Florence asked demurely, with a secret consciousness which made her heart dance, of all she had herself to tell, and of the very great thing which had certainly happened, far greater than anything else which could possibly have taken place in Watcham. And Miss Grey remarkednothing! The young people gave a glance of amazement at each other, and Miss Grey fell in the opinion of both—but most in that of the curate, who had been so great a friend of hers, and who felt that she ought to have divined him at the first glance.
‘I should think, indeed, something has happened,’ cried Miss Grey. ‘I have just been telling your dear aunt Emily, Lady William, that I was at her marriage. And she is so pleased, it has been quite a littlefêtefor me. Think of Lady William, the darling, being so pleased that I was there, and I always frightened she should find out, fearing she would think it a liberty! I am sure I might have told her years ago if I had thought she would have liked it. It made quite a little sensation, Mr. Swinford can tell you. It agitated her a little, poor darling, to think of that time at all; and yet she was so pleased.’
‘She never speaks of her marriage,’ said Florence carelessly. Oh! what waste of sentiment to think of people making a fuss about a marriage of twenty years ago when they might hear at first hand of one that was going to be now!
‘No, she never speaks of it; and I had taken it into my head that she did not like to go back upon it. We never knew him, and I don’t know why people should have taken an unfavourable impression; but to see her agitation and her change of colour when I spoke! Ah, my dear Florry, there are many things in this world that are never thought of in our philosophy! She must have been thinking of him many and many a day when we thought there was no such thing in her mind.’
It surprised Miss Grey a little, it must be allowed, to see that the curate stood by all this time, and did not stalk on about his business, leaving Florry to go also her own way; and afterwards she thought of it with a little surprise and a question to herself. But, in the meantime, she was much more taken up with what was in her own mind.
‘I thought,’ cried Florry when they had passed on, ‘that we carried it written all over us; and yet she never found out anything! Miss Grey, too, who knows so many things.’
‘It proves,’ said the curate loftily, ‘how much more largely the most trivial incident in our own experience bulks in our eyes than the greatest event in another’s. I must say I am surprised that Miss Grey should be so obtuse—Miss Grey, of all people in the world.’
He was perhaps, to tell the truth, a little offended, too.
They went into the cottage, where Lady William was in the course of writing a letter, for which the Rector seemed to be waitingto give it his approval. Lady William was writing hurriedly, sometimes pausing to listen to something he said, but, I fear, not giving him the devoted attention which the Rector felt that he merited. Mr. Osborne was not a very common visitor at the cottage, and Lady William stopped her writing to give him a reception a little more ceremonious than usual.
‘Will you excuse me for a moment,’ she said, ‘while I finish a letter? It is an important one, which must be ready for this post, and my brother must see it before it goes.’
And then there ensued a curious pause. Mab did her best to entertain the visitors, discoursing to them on what she in her innocence still believed to be the principal event of the day—for Miss Grey’s revelation did not strike Mab as particularly exciting, and she had thought her mother’s interest in it quite out of proportion with the importance of the subject. And she felt the appearance of Florence and the curate together to be another proof of the momentous nature of the morning’s event; for what could have brought them here but a desire to settle about Mrs. Brown’s successor? So Mab began, thinking, no doubt, this was the chief matter in their thoughts, to talk of Mrs. Brown.
‘I was there yesterday,’ she said, ‘she might have given me a hint. I was there almost all the morning; the afternoon was a half-holiday. She might have said she was going away.’
‘My dear,’ cried Florry, a little impatient, ‘if she had intended to tell, there were other people whom she was more likely to tell than you.’
‘She told me a great many things,’ said Mab, ‘and I was interested in her. But, Mr. Osborne, there is a very nice girl, who was a pupil teacher, in one of the houses down by Riverside. She would do very well till you can get somebody, if you like to try her. I meant to have told Uncle James, but Uncle James is so full of that business of mother’s.’
‘Just as you are about the schoolmistress, Mab,’ said Florence, with a laugh.
Mr. Osborne did not make any remark, but he, too, thought—to fuss about Lady William’s business, whatever it might be, to make a commotion about the very ordinary and commonplace fact that Miss Grey had been present at a certain wedding twenty years ago—what a waste of emotion, what folly it was, when there was here, waiting for the telling, a piece of news so much more interesting! He exchanged a glance with Florence, and they both laughed at human absurdity and the blindness even of fathers and aunts, the latter especially, who are supposed to have an eye forevents of the kind of which these two were so conscious. And then that everlasting affair about the schoolmistress! To be sure, somebody must be found and something done; but to thrust it upon them now!
Lady William had finished the letter, which was the one she had begun in the morning with the admission which Mr. Plowden thought so rash of the burning down of the chapel. She had struck out the line in which she said ‘one witness of my marriage is alive, but——.’ What she wrote was as follows:
‘There are two witnesses of my marriage alive, one Miss Grey, The Nook, Watcham, who will make an affidavit, or see anybody you may send to take her evidence; the other, Mrs. Artémise Mansfield. I do not know at this present moment where to find the latter, but she will appear if necessary. There is also a record in a diary of my father’s which I am told would hold good in law——’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Plowden doubtfully, ‘I suppose that is all right, Emily; Miss Grey’s evidence, of course, makes all the difference. Still, I can’t see why you should be so anxious to confess to them that the chapel is burnt down.’
‘They would discover that fact themselves: and they might think we knew it all the time, and had chosen that place on purpose to have a good excuse.’
‘Who is thinking ill of her fellow-creatures now?’ said the Rector. ‘Yes, yes, I suppose it will do—with my father’s diary and Miss Grey to back you up, you may say anything you please. Yes, I think you may send it, and I think I may congratulate Mab now. Yes, I believe we may allow ourselves to think that it is all right now.’ He watched while Lady William folded up and put the letter into its envelope. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said, so as to be heard by all, ‘this has been a very interesting day. There was first that untoward act of the schoolmistress going away—which indeed I must not call untoward, for she was not the sort of person for the place: but that also had to do with you, Emily: and then the quite unhoped-for, unthought-of discovery that Miss Grey had gone to see you married in such an easy, natural way; and then the great fact, to be announced to-day for the first time, that little Mab is an heiress. Do you hear, Florry? Could you have believed such a thing? The finest piece of news! that our little Mab is an heiress. She has come into a great deal of money. She will be able to take her proper position, which is far better than anything we can give her in Watcham. Mab,’ said the Rector, rising up and looking round him, as he had a way of doingwhen addressing a much larger audience, ‘has come into a fortune of fifty thousand pounds—as to-day.’
A little shriek broke from Florence—it came against her will. It was not wonder and sympathy, as might have been expected from her, but an intolerable sense of the contrariety and distraction of things. ‘Oh, papa!’ There was a protest in it against Mab, Mab’s mother, and all that could happen to those secondary persons. What did anything matter in comparison with what she herself had to tell? And they were all in a conspiracy against her to prevent her from getting it out!
At last, however, there arrived a crisis, as the Rector got his hat and prepared to go away. The curate rose, too.
‘I’ll go with you, if you will permit me. There is something I want to talk to you about,’ said Mr. Osborne, with a visible blush, which Lady William, looking suddenly up, caught, and started a little to behold, feeling for the first time some thrill in the air of the new thing.
‘Oh yes, to be sure, the schoolmistress,’ the Rector said. He gave a little sigh of impatience. ‘To be sure, that is a thing that must be attended to,’ he said.
‘No, it is not the schoolmistress. It is something much more important,’ said Mr. Osborne, at the end of his patience. There was something in the tone of his voice this time which made them all look up.
‘Ah?’ said Mr. Plowden, half alarmed.
‘Oh!’ said Lady William, sitting upright, bending forward to catch the new light. Mab did not say anything, but her eyes turned upon Florence with a certain illumination too. Florence, excited, exasperated, and worn out with the suspense which had been so little expected, was on the point of bursting into tears. Mr. Osborne took her hand, and pressed it so that she gave another little shriek of excitement and almost pain, as he followed the Rector out; and there was Florence left half sobbing, angry, full of the news which was so much greater than any of the others—even Mab’s fortune, which she did not in the least believe in—which nobody would take the trouble to understand.
‘Florry, dear child, what is this?’ cried Lady William, while the big steps of the gentlemen were heard, one following the other, from the door.
‘Oh, what does it matter?’ cried Florry, ‘you are all so full of your own affairs. We came to tell you, thinking you would be interested; but you would not let us speak; and to see papa standing there talking about the finest piece of news! “Mab, ourlittle Mab, is an heiress,”’cried the irreverent girl, getting up and looting round exactly as he had done, and with all his solemnity, ‘“Mab has come into a fortune.”’
‘Florry, Florry, spare your father!’ cried Lady William, with an irrepressible laugh.
And then Florry, who, notwithstanding her white frock, and her agitated heart, and her girl’s face, had been the Rev. James Plowden in person for one malicious, humorous, angry moment, dropped into her chair and fell a-crying in her own character and no other.
‘Oh,’ she cried, ‘to think that you should be so stupid, Aunt Emily, you that always see everything. When we came expressly to tell you! Good gracious, what are fortunes, or schoolmistresses, or Miss Greys, or anything, in comparison with it being all right, all right and everything settled between Edward and me?’
NotwithstandingMiss Grey’s testimony and all that had happened to make her quite sure of her position, it cannot be denied that Lady William awaited the lawyers’ reply to her letter with some anxiety. How does an uninstructed woman know what lawyers may do? They may find the clearest evidence wanting in something, some formality which may invalidate the whole. Had she not heard a hundred times of the difference between moral certainty and legal evidence? They might allege something of this sort, and perhaps, for anything she could tell, insist upon a trial, and the public appearance of witnesses, and the discussion of her marriage in the papers, a possibility which made Lady William’s heart sick. I am not at all sure (but then I know little more about law than Lady William did) that had Messrs. Fox and Round been pettifogging lawyers, and their clients petty and unknown people, they might not have attempted something of the kind; but, as a matter of fact, they had never advised their clients to do anything in the matter, and Lord Portcullis, who remembered his sister-in-law very well, and all the circumstances of Lord William’s death, had never entertained a doubt on the subject.
‘Certificates?’ he said, ‘why, I have seen the woman!’ as if that was more than certificates; and Lord Portcullis was not a man who was ignorant of the evil that exists in the world, or who was at all in a general way an optimist about women. It had been the Marchioness, more hasty, and more disposed to think that by a bold coup anything could be done, who hoped to secure the whole of Lord John’s fortune in that way. When she found that this was impossible (though she always retained a secret conviction that Lady William was ‘just as much Lady William as my old housekeeper is!’) my Lady Portcullis thought of another way—a way, indeed, which had been one of the two thingsshe had thought of in sending her son Will to see into the affair.
‘If we can’t have it in any other way we might at least marry it’, she said to her husband. ‘If Will got it in the end it would not be altogether lost.’ And this was how it happened that the gay Guardsman, cursing his luck, was sent down again to Watcham to pay a visit ‘at that hole of an old Hall, with that dreadful witch of an old woman,’ as he expressed it to his friends, in the first burst of the opening season, when everything had a special zest, and all was delightful, fresh, and new. Lord Will’s petition to be received so soon again was the first thing which revealed, to the Swinfords at least, that against Lady William there was now no further word to say.
‘Why don’t you come up to town?’ that young gentleman said at dinner, where Mrs. Swinford was not present. ‘What good can it do, Swinford, to bury yourself down here? Why, man alive! it’s not even the country; it’s not much better than a suburban villa. Fine place, I allow, and all that; curious old relic of grandpapa, don’t you know; but grandpapa is such a very recent relation, it is not much worth your while keeping this up.’
‘Thanks for your kindness,’ said Leo; ‘I may say, also, if that is not too much, that, had I not been here, it would, my dear Will, have been less convenient for you.’
‘Ah yes,’ said the young man, ‘less convenient, but much nicer, if the truth must be told; for to come down here a-fortune-hunting, don’t you know, is about the last thing in the world to please me.’
‘Oh, that is it!’ said Leo.
‘That’s it, to be sure,’ said the other. ‘A cousin, too; and it is not such a heavy price to put oneself up for. There’s half-a-dozen little Americans about town, or Australians, or whatever you like to call them, that are much better worth than that, if a man is to make a sacrifice of himself,’ said poor Lord Will.
‘But so long as your brother Pontoon is well and strong, the Americans don’t care much, do they, for a courtesy title?’
‘They’re getting awfully well up,’ confessed the other in a doleful tone, ‘got their peerage at their fingers’ ends, and care nothing for younger brothers, that’s the truth; and I’m sure I don’t want to marry any of them, nor any girl that I know of. I say, Swinford, you don’t know how well off you are, you lucky beggar, to be all there is of your family. I don’t mean to say that I’m not a bore to Pontoon, and all that, having to be provided for somehow—as much as he is to me, standing in my way.’
‘You think it would be a better arrangement having only one son?’
‘One child, that’s what I should recommend; like the French do,’ said this victim of English prejudices. He was not aware that his grammar was bad, and would not have cared had he known. There are some people who are above grammar, just as there are many who are below it. He sighed, and added, as if that was a dreadful fact that needed no comment: ‘There are four girls, and none of them married.’ A second sigh after he had made this announcement was something like a groan.
‘They are almost too young for that, as yet,’ said Leo, with good nature.
‘Too young! This will be Addie’s third season, and not so much as a nibble. If you don’t think that serious, by Jove, I do—and Betty treading on her heels, and the little ones beginning to perk their heads out of the schoolroom. The poor old mother, it’s enough to turn her gray. And when she bids me up and do something for myself, I can’t turn on her, Swinford, I can’t indeed, though it’s hard on a fellow all the same. It ought all to have come to us, it ought indeed—without any encumbrance, the advertisements say.’
‘The encumbrance,’ said Leo, who was half angry and half amused, ‘is not a thing you will find it so easy to reckon with, my poor Will. She has her own ways of thinking, and a will of her own.’
‘Ah!’ said Lord Will, with much calm. He was not afraid, it would appear, of Mab. He thought of the little roundabout thing whom he had seen on his previous visit, not, certainly, with much alarm, but with a sense that if she resisted his advances (which was so very unlikely) he would not be inconsolable. Anyhow, he would have done what duty and his parents required of him. It was very satisfactory to him that Mrs. Swinford did not come downstairs that evening, for the recollection of his last interview with her was not agreeable to him in the present changed circumstances. How he was to explain to her themotifof his conduct now, and how the failure of all her information—her hints and prophecies of evil—was to be got over, did there ever again ensue atête-à-têtebetween the hostess and her visitor, he could not tell. Mrs. Swinford was much more alarming to Lord Will than the little cousin whom he came to woo.
The first assurance received by Lady William that all was well was thus conveyed to her by the second visit of the young man who bore her husband’s name, who came stalking into the cottage alone on the morning after his arrival as if he had been one of the intimates there, and addressed her as Aunt William, to her greatsurprise and agitation. Not a word did Lord Will say of his uncle’s money or the proceedings of Messrs. Fox and Round. Watcham was so handy for town, was what the young man said. It was so easy to run down for a breath of fresh air: and boxed up in town, as it was his hard fate to be, nobody could think what a pleasure it was to get into the country from time to time.
‘I had no idea that you were such a lover of the country,’ Lady William said.
‘Not the country in the abstract,’ said Lord Will; ‘but a pleasant little place like this within an hour’s ride—with such a pleasant fellow as Swinford always throwing open his doors—a man with really a nice place, and the bestchefI’ve met with, out of the very best houses, don’t you know.’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Lady William; ‘I should not think of asking you to meetmycook after that.’
‘Oh, delighted,’ said Lord Will. ‘I don’t demand acheflike Swinford’s everywhere; besides, there’s not a dozen of his quality in the world—brought him from Paris with them, don’t you know. Women don’t often care much for what they eat—but when they do——!’
‘Yes,’ said Lady William, with great gravity, ‘when women are bad, as people say, they are worse than men; which is a compliment or not, according as we receive it.’
‘There is nothing bad, my dear aunt, in being particular about what you eat.’
‘Nothing in the world, or I should be a great sinner. We both like nice things, both Mab and I.’
‘Oh,’ said Lord Will—‘but I am not surprised,’ he added—‘not even that my cousin should show so much sense: for when she has had the advantage of being trained by such a mother——’
Lady William burst into a laugh. His compliments pleased her, as showing how complete was her own victory; but he amused her still more.
‘Let us hope that Mab will continue to show that she has profited by that training,’ she said.
‘Oh, ah,’ said Lord Will; ‘now, of course, you will take her to town. My mother, indeed, wanted to know if she could do anything for you about that—look out for a house, or see after rooms, or that sort of thing?’
‘Lady Portcullis is very kind. I am not sure if I shall make any move this year. Mab is only seventeen; there is plenty of time.’
‘That is just what my mother thought,’ said Lord Will.
Lady William could not restrain another laugh. The kindness of Lady Portcullis, and her desire to be useful, were profoundly amusing to her.
‘Your mother is too kind to take my plans into consideration,’ she said.
‘Well, you see, the mother has girls of her own, and knows all the fuss about introducing them and all that. A girl is ever so much more trouble than sons. We are tossed into the world to sink or swim; but there’s all sorts of fuss about invitations and things for them—the right sort of invitations, don’t you know, to meet the right sort of people. My mother’s deeply up in all that. She could give you a great many wrinkles. That’s one reason, I suppose, why women are so pleased when they get their girls off their hands.’
‘Is it the result of your personal observation, my dear Lord Will, that women are so pleased to get their girls, as you say, off their hands?’
‘Oh, Lord, yes,’ cried the Guardsman, with warm conviction; ‘to marry them off in their first season is the very best thing that can happen, especially if there’s money in the case. You get a lot of fellows dangling about that think of nothing else; and the poor things get ticketed, you know, with their values, and if a man thinks he can let himself go at that price——’
‘What a terrible prospect for the girls with money—and their mothers!’
‘So it is. And if a decent fellow turns up beforehand who can take care of the girl, don’t you know——’
‘I see,’ said Lady William. ‘How good you are to come and give me these hints—to be a guide to my ignorance!’
He gave her a doubtful look; but seeing her perfect gravity was encouraged.
‘Well,’ said Lord Will, ‘some people would think it wasn’t my place; but when I see a nice woman like you, Aunt William——’
‘Thank you, Lord Will.’
‘Oh, you need not thank me; it is a pleasure. When I see you just starting out of this nice quiet place upon the world, and think what a horrid wicked deceitful place it is——’
‘My dear Lord Will, you almost make me cry over you in the character of youthful prophet, and myself in that of the inexperienced novice. You are a Daniel come to judgment; but surely you have too bad an opinion of the poor world.’
‘I hope you will think so when you come to try it,’ he said.And then looking up suddenly he was caught by the gleam of fun in Lady William’s eye.
‘I believe,’ he said, ‘you are laughing at me and my advice all the time.’
‘I shall not perhaps require to take advantage of it,’ she said evasively, ‘till next year: and one can never tell what wonderful things may happen before that time.’
It was Lord Will’s decision as he went away that his dear aunt was much ‘deeper’ than he had given her credit for being, and that perhaps to be chary of advice might be better on the whole. But he came back in the afternoon, and also next morning before he went away, and was very anxious to be permitted to be of use to the ladies when they came to town—if they should come.
‘I suppose you’ll come up—for the pictures or something,’ he said, ‘or to go to the opera, or that sort of thing?—when a fellow that knows his way about might be of use. Drop me a line, Aunt William. There is nothing I like so much as being of use.’
‘I like a day in town,’ said Mab, who this time was present. ‘Don’t you think, mother, it’s a good idea? There are a number of things I want to see. I should like to go to the Row with somebody who could tell me who everybody was. And if Cousin Will can spare the time——’
‘I shall take care to spare the time, Cousin Mab.’
‘And you can tell me who everybody is?’
‘Oh! I know a few of the swells,’ the young man responded modestly; and an appointment was accordingly made. But in the evening, when they were alone together, Mab made inquiries into the sudden cordiality of her cousin. ‘Why should he have come back again so soon? I am sure you did not wish him to come back: and why should he be so kind? He was not kind like this when he was here before. And you look either as if you were very happy about it, or as if it were a capital joke.’
‘It is a capital joke—as it has turned out, Mab; but I don’t know what it might have been if Lucy Grey, devoured by curiosity, had not gone to my marriage without being asked, as she told us the other day.’
Mab opened her eyes very wide.
‘What could it matter whether Miss Grey was there or not?’
‘I will tell you, Mab—I can’t keep secrets. I was married in a great hurry, and got no—certificates, or things of that sort. The church has been burnt down; the clergyman is dead—accidents which your uncle James thinks have been partly myfault for being married there—and I might have had difficulty in proving my marriage——’
‘Why, mother?’
‘Well, Mab—— Why, because I had no evidence, don’t you see?’
‘You had me,’ said Mab calmly; ‘surely I am evidence. If you had not been married how could you account for me?’
Lady William kept an expression of perfect gravity, though not without some trouble.
‘That is an unquestionable proof, to be sure,’ she said, bending her head; ‘but,’ she added, in a lighter tone, ‘I could not send you by post to show the lawyers, as I could have done a certificate.’
‘A certificate!’ cried Mab, with mild disdain, ‘as if people would ever ask for certificates from you! But that,’ she added, ‘anyhow has nothing to do with Cousin Will. Why should he have come back so soon? and why should he be so kind? and why are we asked to lunch with the Marchioness, and all that? I think there must be more in this than meets the eye.’
‘You know that you have just come into a fortune——’
‘Oh, mother, don’t say it is for that,’ Mab said, in tones of disgust.
‘No, it’s not exactly for that. But perhaps your cousin thinks that he might help you—to spend it, or take care of it——’
‘Oh!’ said Mab. She did not blush, nor was she excited, but a faint movement swept over her round face which indicated that she knew what his visit meant. And not only did she know what it meant, but it gave her a certain satisfaction as clearing up for her a question which had been very puzzling to her little sober brain.
‘Oh,’ she said again, ‘is that what it means?’
‘No one can speak quite certainly on such a subject,’ said Lady William, ‘but I think that is what it means.’
It was some time before Mab spoke again.
‘Is it then,’ she said, ‘a very large fortune, mother?’
‘It is fifty thousand pounds.’
‘And how much does that mean a year?’
Lady William had a woman’s limited understanding of interest, that is, a woman’s view who has never had money to invest. She thought it meant something about five per cent, a little more or a little less, and replied accordingly that it meant a little more than two thousand pounds a year.
‘That’s not so much, is it, for a man like Cousin Will?’‘No, it is not so very much——’
‘And a cousin—that would be no fun. If I were to marry a cousin, I think I would much rather have Jim——’
‘Jim!’ cried Lady William, with a start. ‘Not for the world, Mab! an idle young man, with bad habits—you would never be so mad as that!’
‘Everybody is not made exactly alike, mother,’ said Mab gravely. ‘Jim is idle, it is true, and he always will be idle, should all the Rectory people go on at him till doomsday. The more reason that he should be married (if he is ever married) to some one who is very steady, and has money enough to live on, and can keep him straight.’
‘But, Mab,’ her mother said, with a gasp, ‘what reasoning is this? To put a premium on idleness, and save a man from himself.’
‘Well, mother, I’ve heard you say what a pity it was that people were so afraid of responsibility. I am not afraid of it. If I were to marry my cousin—which would be no fun at all, in the first place—I should certainly rather have Cousin Jim, whom I could be of most use to, than Cousin Will.’
‘Sothat is all finished and settled and done with,’ said Leo Swinford, with no great expression of delight on his face.
‘You don’t seem to see the great happiness and satisfaction of it,’ said Lady William.
‘No, perhaps I do not. I had always the hope that I might have been of some use, of some service to you, something more both in importance and use than a mere friend.’
‘Is there anything more than a true friend?’ said Lady William, holding out her hand.
He took her hand, which was so cool and soft and white—and kind—and indifferent. As kind as could be, ready to soothe him, help him, do anything for him that he needed; and perfectly indifferent, as if he had been the little boy of ten whom Emily Plowden had been so fond of in his ingenuous childish days.
‘Yes,’ said Leo, ‘there is something more——’
‘Not according to my understanding of life. Perhaps my experience has not been a very favourable one. I like a friend—one who understands me and whom I understand—who would stand by me in any need as I would stand by him—with a nice wife and children whom I could love.’
‘Ah!’ said Leo, dropping the hand he had held. After a moment he said, in a different tone: ‘My mother has finally made up her mind that she can endure this hermitage no more.’
‘And you are going to town? It will be better for you in every way.’
‘She is going back to Paris. I have done all I could to persuade her to gather friends about her here—or in London better still. But she will not hear me. Her opinion is that Paris, even out of season, is better than London at its gayest. She will go, perhaps, to someville de mer, and then back in October to her old apartment and her old friends.’
‘And you, Leo?’
‘I am an Englishman,’ he said, with a little air half of pride, half of self-abnegation, which created in his friend a profane inclination to laugh.