In Lady William’s cottage things were a little different from the usual conditions—for Leo was late, later than he had ever been before—and he did not like them quite so well as usual. For one thing the lamp was lighted and the fire very low, the evening being, or so these ladies thought, warmer than usual; and for another thing they were very busy, Mab and her mother, over their necessary sewing. As everybody knows, the coming of summer is a much more troublesome thing, in respect to dress, than winter, when two warm nice dresses, one for common use and one for best, is as much as anybody wants. But in summer, besides the best frock on which Lady William was employed, with her daughter, when we first made her acquaintance, there are cotton dresses to be thought of, and things for the warm weather, of which a girl who is always in movement wants a great many. And indeed, at this present moment the work in hand was a white frock, which was intended for a party, to be given by the FitzStephens, which very possibly might end in a dance; and this was naturally a very interesting piece of work.
‘Shall I put it away, mother?’ said Mab.
‘No,’ said Lady William, ‘a man knows nothing about it, he will think we are hemming tablecloths; and he would not be any the wiser if he did know.’
It is curious that Mab, an inexperienced little girl, should have known better in this respect than her mother, who was so much more acquainted with the world. She went on with her work, indeed, all the same, but she shook her head and felt convinced that when Leo Swinford saw what they were doing, he would perfectly well know; and, indeed, he had scarcely been ushered in by Patty, and found a chair for himself, than he said at once:
‘Why, you are making a dress!’
‘Why not?’ said Lady William; ‘we always do.’
‘It is for Miss Mab, and she is going to a party,’ said Leo. ‘Is it a ball, and will they probably ask me?’
‘Certainly, if you will go; but you are the great man, you know, here, and they may be afraid to ask you with all the little village people.’
‘I love the village people,’ said Leo; and then he laughed a little, remembering that there had been of late other thoughts in his mind.
‘You are getting a little tired of them,’ said Lady William; ‘I told you so; between the time that they amuse you with their little ways, and the time that you know the real goodness of them, there comes a moment when you are bored. You must soon go to town for the season, and let Watcham rest, or yourself.’
‘I have no desire to go to town for the season, or let Watcham rest. I may be a little tired of the philanthropy: I am not tired of this room,’ he said, looking round upon it affectionately; ‘do you know I don’t think I ever saw it lighted before.’
‘So brilliantly lighted,al giorno,’ said Lady William; ‘the firelight is kind and hides its little defects. But you are late to-night.’
‘Yes, my mother has had a visit, which sent me out untimely; it annoys me, and of course I must come and tell you my annoyance. Do you remember a certain Mansfield woman long ago?’
‘Do I remember her!’
‘Of course you must; there is always mischief where she is. She has appeared again.’
‘But is that a strange event? She is a relation, and your mother was much attached to her, too.’
‘I suppose so; though why——? Can anybody explain these things? And there is always mischief when she comes. I don’t know what may be brewing at present, nor why she comes now. Does she live here?’
‘Oh no,’ said Lady William; ‘certainly not, she must have come from London: everybody that is uncomfortable comes from London. But you must not be superstitious. Mischief can’t be created if the elements of it don’t exist, and I see none that she can work upon now.’
‘She might make dissension; she will make dissension, dear lady, between my mother and me.’
‘Forewarned is forearmed; don’t let her,’ said Lady William, ‘that is the only thing to say.’
‘But she will be too many for me,’ said Leo, shaking his head yet smiling; ‘I have no confidence in myself.’
‘You are too superstitious; she must not be too many for you; your mother’s son is more to her than her cousin.’
‘Is she her cousin? and am I——’
‘Her son!’ said Lady William, with a laugh; ‘the wonderful question! I don’t think any doubt can be entertained on that subject.’‘No, no; I meant am I more strong as son than the other as—— How can I tell what to say?’
‘My dear Leo! A son is stronger than anything in the world.’
‘Except a daughter,’ he said, looking at Mab.
‘It is the same; one’s own child is more to one than all the world beside.’
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘there is one thing that I think is almost better, that clears away the clouds and brings out the sun, and makes one see him:—and that is you.’ He put his hand upon hers softly, with a momentary touch.
‘That is a friend,’ said Lady William hastily. A little uneasy flush came over her face. She was very conscious, more conscious than was pleasant, of little Mab sewing on sedately, never lifting her eyes.
Mrs. Brownwalked quickly through the darkening house. She met a footman with a lamp, who stood bewildered at the strange figure, and a housemaid in the upper corridor, who stopped her to ask what she wanted, but was soon intimidated by her look and voice. The stranger wanted no guidance, no indication, to which side to turn, as the maid perceived, who stood watching her, and saw her swift, familiar approach to Mrs. Swinford’s door. ‘Missis will go out of her senses,’ said Mary Jane to herself, and she hurried away, to be out of it, whatever might happen. ‘Nobody can say as I let her in,’ the young woman said.
Madame Julie, the maid, came to the door in answer to Mrs. Brown’s light knock, but not before that lady, waiting for no one, had opened it and stepped into the ante-room in which Julie sat. Mrs. Swinford’s apartment was as complete as English comfort and French refinement could make it. The ante-room, in which Julie sat, was finer than any of the village drawing-rooms, kept comfortable by many carpets and thick curtains, and lighted by a large window turned to the west, by the remaining light in which she regarded with alarm and fury the bold intruder.
‘What you want here?’ she said in her doubtful English, unintimidated by the aspect of the lady who had overawed Mary Jane. ‘Madame reçoit personne,’ she added, in a less assured tone.
‘Moi exceptée toujours, Julie,’ said Mrs. Brown.
Upon which Julie started and clasped her hands. ‘Mon Dieu!’ she said, ‘Madame Artémise!’
‘You need not announce me, I’ll find my way by myself. Has she lights, Julie? Is she alone?’
‘You will startle Madame out of her life, Madame Artémise.’
‘Not a bit. What is pleasant harms no one, and you know she is always happy to see me.’
Julie knew, yet did not look quite sure. ‘I will say but a word, apetit mot. Madame will not look up, but it will prepare her. Ah, she hears us talk!’ for a bell at this moment tinkled into the stillness. Julie put aside the curtain and opened a door, from which came a gleam of light, and a voice saying querulously, ‘You are talking with some one; how often must I say no one must come here?’
‘It is not Julie’s fault: it is I, Cecile, come to welcome you home.’
Mrs. Swinford rose up from the couch upon which she had been reclining, with a cry. She made a step forward, and allowed herself to drop into the arms which the visitor held forth. It was a strange embrace, apparently altogether on one side; the other passive, receiving only the marks of affection. Yet there was something in theabandonwith which the great lady let herself go into the stranger’s arms, which showed almost a greater warmth in the receiver than giver of the embrace. She put down her head on Mrs. Brown’s shoulder with a murmur of welcome and satisfaction; then raised it to wave an angry hand towards Julie, bidding her go. The maid retired without a word. She was a middle-aged Frenchwoman, very neat, and rather grim, black-haired, and dark-complexioned, with a black gown, and hair elaborately dressed. She obeyed her mistress in utter silence, closing the door noiselessly behind her, but threw her head and body, like a pendulum, to and fro as she went back to the work which she had been doing under the west window by the waning light. Evidently this stranger was no welcome apparition to Julie, any more than to more important persons in the house.
‘What wind has blown you here? and where do you come from, just when I felt such enormous need of you?’ Mrs. Swinford said.
‘Some people would say it was an ill wind; and you know I feel always when you want me,’ said Mrs. Brown.
‘You must have known that when I came here, where there are so many horrible associations, I must have wanted you. It is an instinct. Listen, Artémise. Leo has forced me here against my will. He has all his father’s foolish notions, with more added of his own. And he has the upper hand, which his father never had——’
‘Sometimes, my dear.’
‘Once, you mean,’ said Mrs. Swinford. She was old, though she kept that fact at bay, and did not admit it by any outward sign: but she flushed over all her face like a girl at these words.‘Once, no more: and you know how that is brought back to me here, and every incident of the time. That woman at my very door, bearing the name—— which she never would have had but for me.’
‘I never liked the expedient, Cecile.’
‘Why, it was you who—— and it was the only way. But now that the whole dreadful tale is swept away into the past, and everybody, except you and me, has forgotten it, there she sits at my door, calm, with that name. And I have to receive her; to call her friend; to kiss her—— imagine! I have kissed Emily Plowden, and called her by that name!’
‘I don’t see what else you could do. It was your own doing, the whole affair. I will always stand by you, through thick and thin. But I never approved ofthat, Cecile. It was too heavy a responsibility. If you like to do certain things you know you will have to pay for them. You get nothing for nothing in this world. But I don’t like meddling with another creature’s life.’
‘I detest you when you preach, Artémise; you have so fine a position for that; hands so clean! From whence do you come now? from wandering to and fro upon the earth——’
‘Seeking whom I may devour? No, I am devouring no one; I have settled myself—at your very door, too—to do good, my dear.’
‘To do—— good!’
‘You are surprised. Don’t you know there comes a time when we would all like to be sisters of charity? But I have not gone so far as that. I have a very nice little post in the village, gained chiefly by a recommendation you once gave me, and your poor husband—— naturally that had great weight here—and other things. I am schoolmistress of the girls’ school, Watcham parish. At your service, Madame Cecile.’
Mrs. Swinford uttered that exclamation, which means so little in French and so much in English. She did not join in the laugh with which her visitor broke off. She was a more tragical person altogether than Mrs. Brown.
‘Mistress of the school, living in the village! You are welcome, as you know, to live with me. Why should you demean yourself in such a way? Why do you always try to compromise——’
‘Not you, Mrs. Swinford. I have never compromised you. I don’t choose to be your dependent; to eat that bitter bread. But you have never had any trouble brought into your life by me.’
‘Not that of being ignorant for years together where you are?of not knowing what you are doing? whether you may be in want? whether you may be ill? if you may have died——’
‘On some roadside, or in some hospital, nobody knowing anything about me,’ said Mrs. Brown, with a harsh little laugh, ‘and not a bad thing either, and probably the way it will happen at the last. But I should always, unless it was sudden, take care that you knew. It is a curious thing,’ she said, laughing again, and winking her eyes rapidly, as if to shake off some moisture, ‘that you and I, two such women as we are, not of the soft kind, should in a sort of a way, not caring much for anybody else, love each other, Cecile!’
We need not be sentimental and talk of it at least,’ said the other; ‘I see nothing wonderful in it. With others always contradiction and contrariety, but between you and me understanding—even when you take upon you, so much younger as you are, not to approve.’
‘Oh, I must always reserve that power—if I were only four, instead of forty,’ said Mrs. Brown.
‘Forty and a little more.’
‘If you think I am in any danger of forgetting the little more—forty-six—a sensible age. You would not imagine at that discreet period of existence that my chief friend in Watcham should be a young man.’
Mrs. Swinford shrugged her shoulders as if nothing could be more perfectly indifferent to her.
‘Who keeps me informed of all that is going on,’ she added, after a moment’s pause.
‘Ah!’ Even this, however, did not awake the great lady’s interest; for what were the village news to her?
‘I hear of Leo’s proceedings. He seems to mean to turn everything upside down.’
‘The foolish boy! he has got it into his head that he has neglected his duties. What are his duties? I know not. One, that he does not regard, is to make life as pleasant as time and circumstances will admit to his mother. It is not much I ask. To reside where I can breathe. To see a few people whom I like, who understand me. To be kept from sordid calculations and cares. What he thinks more important is to come back here to look after his people, as he calls them. His people! How are they his people? They pay him rent, that is all. And he thinks more of them than of what is comfort and life to me!’
‘I feel very much for you, Cecile, in many ways,’ said Mrs. Brown, not without a hidden tone of satire, ‘but do you know,I cannot see that you are much deficient in point of comfort here.’
Mrs. Swinford looked round the pretty room with an air of disgust. It would have been difficult to imagine anything more luxurious. The old grandfather’s decorations had been removed or softened with a taste more French than English, yet exquisite in its way. The curtains were of the softest rich stuffs. The walls were hung with a few bright pictures, little English water-colours, French genre subjects, as cheerful and smiling as could be desired. It was lighted with soft lamps carefully shaded, giving a subdued silvery light. There were books of all kinds, from those in rows of beautiful binding, which filled the low bookcases, to the French novels in yellow paper, which occupied the table at Mrs. Swinford’s hand. If there was anything wanting to the beauty or comfort of this wonderful little room it was difficult to find it out. Mrs. Brown instantly compared it with the sitting-room in the schoolhouse, and burst into a laugh.
‘You should see the rooms in which I live,’ she said, ‘and yet I don’t think they are bad rooms. I have known worse. I consider myself very well off. Oh, you are different, a great lady as you have always been, and I only a waif and stray.’
‘That was at your own will, Artémise.’
‘I know; I blame nobody. I have been the wilful one that have always taken my own way; you have generally succeeded in making other people take yours.’
Mrs. Swinford smiled faintly, and then she said, her face resuming its discontented expression:
‘That is over; now, it is my son I have to deal with; my son, who owes me everything.’
‘Be reasonable; he owes you his birth, of course, and a great deal of petting when he was a boy——’
‘And the sacrifice of my life,’ said Mrs. Swinford. ‘Do you think I ever would have done what I did and given up all I cared for, if it had not been for Leo? Do you think I would have cared for scandal or anything but for the boy? or for what his father might say or do? The whole thing was for him. Emily may thank him for her title, as they call it—ridiculous title! When I hear that name and her rank, talked of—her rank, forsooth—and that she takes precedence of everybody—even, I suppose, she will, with a fierce laugh, ‘of me——’
‘Ah!’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘that’s something, I did not think of that; but take care, Cecile, that she does not take precedence of you in other ways.’
‘In what way? You mean, I suppose, that she is younger and has a sort of beauty! I cannot deny that she has a sort of beauty. She is not the common pretty girl that Emily Plowden was. It is not for nothing that I helped to plunge her into the world. She knows something of life, and though she will never make anything of the advantages she possesses, still she has them. You may imagine I looked at her with sharp eyes enough, remembering what she used to be and what she was. But her world is not my world, and what do I care for her village precedence, or for any comparison that may be made here?’
‘There will be no comparison made, Cecile.’
Mrs. Brown looked with a curious pitying glance at the woman, who was old, yet had never given up the pretensions of youth. She was nearly twenty years younger, and saw the futility of these pretensions with perfect lucidity of vision; but there was kindness as well as pity in her eyes. Did not her glass say anything to this old woman, that she should talk of comparison between her and Lady William’s mature but unfaded years? Did not common sense say anything? As Mrs. Brown was much more near to Lady William’s age than Mrs. Swinford’s, the case was perfectly clear to her eyes.
‘No, I do not suppose so,’ Mrs. Swinford said; ‘and my hope is that he will tire of it presently. What attraction can he find in a country village in England? There is nothing. His philanthropy, bah! his people, ridiculous! It is ignorance that makes him talk of his people as if he were a great potentate, when he is only a country gentleman.’
‘It is his breeding,’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘How was he to find out the difference in Paris? and you always treated him, you who are, as I tell you, a great lady by nature, as if he were agrand seigneur.’
‘I must be patient,’ said Mrs. Swinford; ‘it is difficult, but I must be patient: I gave him three months to be sick of the life, and the half of the time is not gone; I don’t think he will hold out a month more——’
‘Unless there should in the meantime arise some other attraction.’
‘What other attraction?’ Mrs. Swinford caught her visitor by the arm. ‘An attraction—in this village? Artémise, you have heard of something! A woman? who is she? I must know, I must know!’
‘Do not be frightened. But I think you are imprudent, Cecile; you should have filled the house with company, you shouldhave come back in a storm of gaiety; he should have known nothing of the village at all.’
‘Who is she?’ said Mrs. Swinford, tightening her grasp on the other’s arm; ‘some wretched girl with a baby face.’
‘It is no girl, it is nothing of that sort; it is a woman as old, nearly as old as I am. I told you I had a young admirer too, who comes to me for the superiority of my conversation, and my knowledge of the world. So does Leo; to discuss the world, and things in general, and the topics of the day.’
‘You are either laughing at everything, as has been your custom all your life, or you are announcing to me a great danger; the loss of all my power.’
‘Do not always be so high heroical. Let me tell you my own story first. My young friend is Jim, the Rector’s son. He saw me with a gay party in Oxford, and I thought that he would betray me. But he is as innocent as a child, and respects and admires me as one who has seen better days. I keep him from vulgar dangers; from the “Blue Boar”—but you don’t know the perils of the “Blue Boar”——’
‘What are all these puerilities to me?’ said Mrs. Swinford. ‘You weary me. Do you think it is interesting to me, this story of the Rector’s son?’
‘I am aware it wearies you; one sees that on your still fine countenance, Cecile: but I am coming to what will interest you. In the same way Leo frequents a cottage, a very genteel cottage, far superior to the schoolmistress’s house. There is a mother and a daughter in it. He may be falling in love with the daughter, but I think not, for the little thing is plain. But the mother is not plain; she is a woman who has known the world. She has been buried here, among the bucolics, for years. But when she sees a man of manners, who also knows the world, is there anything wonderful in it if she likes his conversation too?’
‘Artémise, who is she? Tell me her name.’
Mrs. Brown did not say a word, but looked at her companion with wondering eyes.
Nextday the village was roused into great excitement by the appearance of a carriage from the Hall, in unusual state, with the coachman and footman in their gala liveries—or so at least it appeared to the unsophisticated ideas of the villagers, who came out to gape at the sight. A carriage passing is nothing wonderful in Watcham, however gorgeous—but a carriage which drives about from door to door, paying visits—this was a thing that happened seldom; the great people in the neighbourhood, the Lenthalls and Lady Wade, and the rest, would come occasionally to leave a card at the FitzStephens’, or to show civility to the people in the Rectory: but the sight of the prancing horses, and the footman attending his mistress from door to door, was a delight to the eyes such as seldom happened. The children were coming from school, and they ran in a little crowd to see and make their remarks with the usual frankness of a population in which the sharpness of town had crept in, modifying the bashfulness, but not the dull candour inaccessible to notions of civility, of the country. The Watcham children were, fortunately, more interested in the appearance of the servants than they were in that of the mistress, though some of the girls whispered together and indulged in pointed laughter at the lady who had to be assisted from the carriage, and who picked her steps, with such an expression in every turn of her person of impatient disgust, along the garden paths. Mrs. Swinford felt it a personal injury that the houses had all gardens and no entrance for the carriage, so that it was absolutely necessary for her, however reluctant, to walk so far before she could reach the door. But she was civil to the FitzStephens’, who both met her at their drawing-room door with effusion, and handed her to the most comfortable chair—which, however, Mrs. Swinford turned from the light before she would sit down.
‘My eyes will not support so much light. You seem to make really no use of curtains and blinds in this country,’ she said.
‘My husband likes all the light he can get,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen: though she had been, as the reader knows, a pretty woman, and was a fool, according to her visitor’s ideas, to face the day and show her wrinkles as she did. But the General’s wife had no idea that her old beauty required to be taken care of in this way.
‘It is all very well for men,’ said Mrs. Swinford—but she explained no further. She added: ‘I do not make calls generally, and country visits are an abomination, even when one can drive up to the door.’
‘We take your call as all the greater compliment,’ said the General, with his finest bow; but Mrs. FitzStephen remembering that she herself was a Challoner, and certainly as good as any Swinford of them all, not to speak of the claims of the FitzStephens—was not quite so complacent.
‘It is a pity,’ she said, ‘that we have no drive, and that our garden must be crossed on foot. We feel it very much when we have company. It is impossible to put up an awning all the way.’
‘Oh, you sometimes have company!’ said the fine lady.
‘We are even looking forward to a dance, in ten days,’ said the General, ‘a little ridiculous, you may think, for a quiet couple without children like my wife and me: but a dance is more pleasant to the young people than anything else.’
‘And consider,’ said his wife, ‘there is no need to do anything to amuse them, except to provide good music and as nice a floor as possible. They do the rest themselves.’
Mrs. Swinford looked round upon the small drawing-room with an air of inquiry which she did not attempt to disguise. ‘I am not much interested in amusing young people,’ she said; ‘where do they dance?’ in a tone that showed she was quite satisfied no dancing could take place there.
Mrs. FitzStephen grew red, and the General confused. They were very fond of this pretty drawing-room. Compliments upon its furniture and arrangements were familiar to them, and they were in the habit of deprecating too much praise by a fond apology as to its diminutive size. ‘Oh, it is too small for anything,’ Mrs. FitzStephen was in the habit of saying, with a mild inference that she was herself accustomed to something much larger. But the great lady’s seeming simple question dashed all their littlepretences. Fortunately she left them no time to reply. ‘You have your little society in the village?’ she said.
‘Oh, we are not confined to the village,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen sharply, ‘we have a tolerably large list—I expect the Lenthalls, and some others.’
Mrs. Swinford again permitted her eyes to stray—with a slight elevation of the eyebrows—round the tiny room.
‘We did not venture to send an invitation to the Hall,’ said the General, with an uneasy laugh. ‘We scarcely ventured to hope—though I am happy to say that Mr. Swinford is coming, my dear.’
‘If you mean me,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘I never go out—at least to balls—since I have ceased to dance.’
‘Ah well, those days soon pass over,’ said the good old soldier, ‘we find other amusements at our age.’
Mrs. Swinford gave him a look—which did not reduce the gallant General to ashes, for he was not at all aware what she meant.
‘My husband is very fond of seeing the young people enjoy themselves,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen; ‘that amuses him more than anything for himself.’
‘Oh come, my dear, you must not give me too good a character,’ said the General. ‘I like a snug little dinner-party too, and a good talk.’
‘Do you talk here, too, as well as dance?’ said Mrs. Swinford, with an ineffable smile.
‘Oh, my dear lady, I assure you we have sometimes quite remarkable conversations. The Rector is an exceedingly well-informed man, and young Osborne has a great deal to say for himself, though he is taken up with fads—too much. And then, above all, there is Lady William——’
‘Oh, Emily! I had forgotten Lady William, as you call her.’
‘One can’t live in Watcham and leave out Lady William, I assure you, my dear madam,’ the General said; ‘besides her rank, which of course places her in the front of all.’
‘Ah, to be sure!’ said Mrs. Swinford, with a little gurgling laugh, which stopped and then ran on again, as if with a ridicule impossible to restrain—‘Her rank! I had forgotten her rank—such rank as it is.’
‘We think a good deal of it here,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen. ‘Lady Wade, you know, is only a baronet’s wife, and of course has to give place. It gives quite a little distinction to ourvillage; everybody even in the county, at this end of it at least, must give way to Lady William. It is a great feather in our cap.’
Mrs. Swinford went on laughing, breaking into fresh little runs of merriment from time to time. ‘This is really amusing,’ she said. ‘Poor Emily: and does she talk too?’
‘She is an exceedingly cultivated woman, and one who has seen the world. I know few greater treats than to discuss either books or people with Lady William,’ said the General, with great gravity, holding up his head as if he were in uniform—which indeed this fine attitude almost persuaded his admiring wife that he was. What a champion for any one to have! But Mrs. Swinford went on with her little exasperating laugh like the vibration of an electric bell. It was very disconcerting to the pair, who were a little proud of their friendship with Lady William, and liked to wave her flag in any stranger’s eyes.
‘You see,’ said the great lady, ‘Emily Plowden, poor girl, was in the bread and butter stage when I knew her best: and to hear now of her rank, and then of her accomplishments, is a new experience. I cannot convey to your minds the amusement it causes me.’
‘Ah!’ said General FitzStephen gravely, ‘as I feel when I hear of a little ensign who came out to India at sixteen, and is now in command of my old regiment.’
Mrs. Swinford’s laugh ran on like the endless irritating tinkle of that electric bell. ‘More,’ she said, ‘for the boy would gain his promotion; but Emily!—it is more amusing than you can have any idea of to see that she takes itau grand sérieux, the rank and all.’
‘Perhaps, General,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen quickly, ‘you will ring for tea, instead of standing there,’ which was the most uncalled-for, unjustifiable attack: for why should not he stand there, and where else could he have stood but respectfully in front of her chair, listening to their guest? He roused himself with a little start, and did what he was told, but not without a look of surprised appeal at his wife’s face.
‘No tea,’ said Mrs. Swinford, rising; ‘I have not acquired the habit: but I am sure the General will kindly give me his arm to my carriage. I walk so little, I stumble; I have not the use of gravel walks.’
Mrs. FitzStephen watched the lady sweep away. She had very high-heeled shoes and a long dress, too long for walking. The General’s wife watched her along the gravel path, which shethought it very insolent of any one to object to. Mrs. Swinford did not sweep (except indoors) or glide, or march, majestically, as would have been consonant with her pretensions, but accoutred as she was, hobbled, not more gracefully than if she had been any old woman in the village. Her step showed she was an old woman, however she might ignore that fact, and it gave the General’s wife, whom she had rubbed so persistently the wrong way, a certain characteristic feminine satisfaction to feel that it was so. Also Mrs. FitzStephen strongly disapproved of the respectful and devoted air with which her husband conducted the great lady. It was Stephen’s way; he could not help it. He was an old——, taken in by any woman that would take the trouble. But what could she mean about Lady William, and all those scoffs at her rank? Could there be any doubt about her rank? It might be a courtesy title, but what did that matter? The daughter-in-law of a marquis held precedence over quite a number of people who were Lady So-and-So. Lady Wade never disputed it, and the Wades had an old baronetcy. They were not upstart people. What did the—the—Mrs. FitzStephen paused for a word—the old hag mean?
‘Oh, she meant nothing but spite,’ said the General when he came back, ‘feminine spite such as you all entertain towards your neighbours when they are prettier or wiser than you.’
‘Perhaps you will tell me what woman I regard with feminine spite,’ Mrs. FitzStephen very reasonably said.
‘Oh, you, my dear, you’ve no occasion; you are a pretty woman still, and can hold your own: but that poor old soul,’ said the General, ‘as you may have perceived, I had almost to carry her down the walk; that poor old creature must be seventy if she is a day—and to see her old subaltern taking thepasfrom her: I am not subject to the same kind of feelings—but I confess I don’t like it myself, if it comes to that,’ the General said.
Mrs. Swinford went on to the Rectory with a curious smile upon her face. She drove past the school-room door and saw her friend standing at it, sheltered in the depth of the doorway, by no means unlike a spider standing at watch, having laid all its nets, till some silly fly buzzes in. A salutation of the eyes only passed between the two women, the schoolmistress and the great lady of the Hall. In the daylight they resembled each other, though Mrs. Brown’s plain black gown was not becoming to her dark good looks, and every particular of Mrs. Swinford’s attire was calculated to enhance her antiquated beauty. There was a softening in both pairs of eyes as they met. They were not goodwomen; their aims were not fine nor the means they were disposed to use; but yet, curiously enough, they loved each other. It was a strange sight to see. The walk from the little gate of the Rectory to the door was still more trying to Mrs. Swinford than the other had been. It made her quite sure that she had no vocation to call at houses where there was no drive. Her dress was long, and she resented the fact that it must trail on the gravel and get dirty and damp. As for holding it up, it did not occur to her: that any one should think she hobbled, or was not a glass of fashion and mould of form wherever she went would have been incredible to her; but she resented much the length of that walk, and that she should be exposed to such trouble and annoyance in the act of doing what she thought her duty. Had it been only her duty, however, Mrs. Swinford would have cared very little for fulfilling it; but she had a different motive now.
There was a dreadful hurry-scurry in the Rectory drawing-room when she was seen approaching. The antimacassars, I am sorry to say, were much tumbled and untidy, and the loose covers of the chairs anything but what might be desired. Both mother and daughters flew with one impulse to the arranging of the room. Jim had been seated by the fireside all the afternoon with a bad cold, which they had been nursing; but he fled at once into his own cold room, which might, his mother thought, be very bad for him, but could not be helped in the circumstances. Florence ran, with more sense than any one would have given her credit for, to tell the parlourmaid to bring in a more elegant, less substantial tea than usual, and to give her father a hint in his study—‘Mrs. Swinford, papa!’ while Mrs. Plowden and Emily stood nervously awaiting the visit, anxious to go out and meet her and bring her in by the drawing-room window, which would have saved the old lady a few steps; but kept back by the fear that it might be thought indecorous, too familiar, not dignified enough. Mrs. Swinford looked round upon the Rectory drawing-room as she had done on Mrs. FitzStephen’s, but with a different air. ‘You have made wonderfully few changes,’ she said; ‘it is just the same damp little place it used to be.’ She was like so many of those great ladies, not careful of people’s feelings; but that was, no doubt, mainly from want of thought.
‘Oh,’ Mrs. Plowden said: and made a pause, that no explosion might follow, ‘I assure you,’ she said, ‘it is not damp at all. We have proved again and again that no water ever comesin. The elevation is small, but quite sufficient; and as for the furniture and doing it up——’
‘Yes, I recognise all the old things,’ Mrs. Swinford said, with a careless wave of the hand (when there was not one thing, not one, except the Indian cabinet, that had not been renewed!); ‘and another Emily Plowden just the same. It is only you,’ she said, with a sweet but careless smile upon the Rector’s wife, ‘that are new——’
‘New! But we have been here for fifteen years,’ Mrs. Plowden said: and her visitor smiled again as if in complacent consciousness of having said the most agreeable thing in the world.
‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘there is no other daughter, no one to disturb the harmony of what used to be. Oh, but here is the other daughter.’
‘Florence, my second, Mrs. Swinford: not considered like the Plowdens, but taking more after my side of the house.’
‘I see she is not like the Plowdens,’ said Mrs. Swinford, with the look of indifference which was natural to her: it was of so little consequence! ‘The other is a little like Emily.’
‘Like her aunt, our dear Lady William.’
‘You are all much delighted,’ said the great lady, ‘with that name.’
‘My sister-in-law’s name? Well, we like it, for she has no other, poor thing. We couldn’t call her anything else—as long as she doesn’t change it or marry again.’
‘Oh, mamma!’ said Emmy and Florry together.
‘No,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘I don’t think she will marry again—now. I did once hope she would; for, though rank is nice, a good husband who would have looked after her and her little girl would have been nicer: while the late Lord William, as I have heard——’
Mrs. Swinford made a little movement of impatience. ‘Have the family,’ she said, ‘taken any notice of Emily—or the little girl?’
‘It is very funny,’ said Florence, ‘to hear Mab, who has such a character of her own, spoken of as the little girl.’
‘Oh, Florry, hold your tongue, you are always making remarks. The family, Mrs. Swinford?’
‘Poor little thing, poor little thing,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘I think you were very wise, my dear Mrs. Plowden, in advising your sister-in-law to marry again. What a thing it would be if after all it was found that nothing could be done for the little girl!’
‘They have their little annuity,’ said Mrs. Plowden, startled; ‘there has never been anything said of taking it away. And I could not make such a statement as that I advised her to marry, for there has really been no one that she could have married except——, and he was quite an old gentleman. Not to say that Emily ever thought of such a thing. She was not so happy the first time as to have any wish——’
Mrs. Swinford’s attention had once more flagged, and here she interposed with her usual calm bearing, addressing Emmy. ‘I thought you had a brother,’ she said.
Emmy coloured high, being thus suddenly spoken to. ‘Oh yes.’
‘Yes, indeed,’ cried Mrs. Plowden, recovering herself the more easily that this new subject was one on which she could be eloquent. ‘He has a bad cold, poor boy, or he would have been here at once to pay his respects. Is that you, James? Mrs. Swinford is making such kind inquiries.’
The great lady held out her hand. ‘You have not taken the trouble to come and see me,’ she said.
The Rector had come in much against his will. He made a bow which had not his usual ease. ‘I must beg your pardon,’ he said very gravely. ‘I am aware that I have been negligent.’
‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you did not want to come? but I supposed when your excellent wife did me so much honour, that bygones were to be bygones; and Emily——’
‘My sister acts for herself; I do not try to influence her; and my wife thinks she knows what is best for her——’
‘Her family, of course; good woman. She thought it would be a wrong thing to neglect opportunities, and so did your father, as you may recollect.’
‘I prefer not to recollect, any more than I can help,’ said the Rector.
‘Which? that Emily has come to great promotion, very high promotion, as all those ladies think—while she was in my house? There would have been no title in the case—a title such as it is!—but for my house.’
‘The less that is said on that subject, I think, the better,’ said the Rector, standing bolt upright before the fire.
‘Oh, James,’ said his wife, ‘when Mrs. Swinford is so kind——’
‘I gave it,’ said Mrs. Swinford, bending forward, ‘and, my good Rector, you will take care not to be insolent; I may also, perhaps, take it away.’
Lady William, on this eventful afternoon, had gone out with Mab on one of her rambles. The air was full of spring, the buds bursting on every tree, the cottage gardens all blooming with those common flowers which can be got anywhere, which are the inheritance of the poorest, and are more beautiful, spontaneous, and abundant than any other: the early primroses, daffodils and Lent lilies, the rich dark wallflowers that fill the air with sweetness. Mab had a little basket with her, in which to bring home any wild thing that pleased her in the woods and slopes of Denham Hill, on the other side of the water. It was a long walk, but neither mother nor daughter was afraid of a long walk. They came back, breathing of every sweet-wildness of the spring, just as Mrs. Swinford, disappointed and angry, was leaving a card, with a message, at the cottage door; but the carriage had disappeared along the road long before they reached their own end of Watcham. It had been a lovely afternoon, warm, yet fresh with the dewy moisture of the April breezes, that germinating weather, and sparkle of showers and waters which is not damp. Several showers had fallen upon them in their ramble, but done no harm; they had taken shelter, after a laughing run against the wind and the bright falling veil of rain, under the trees, or in a cottage when one was near, and shaken the rain-drops off their dresses, and carried the freshness of the outside atmosphere, as if they had been nymphs of the air, into the little wayside houses. It would have been hard to say whether mother or daughter was youngest in these runs and shelterings. Lady William was almost more swift of foot than Mab, who more easily got out of breath, and was built on heavier lines; and though the girl’s colour was higher, the delicate flush on the other’s cheek spoke of almost finer health and brightness in its fluctuations and changes. They were both equally interested about theplants and roots which Mab grubbed up from under the trees, but hers was the delight of superior knowledge, as she discovered a rare something here and there, a flower peculiar to one place or another. Mab was altogether absorbed in her botany and her researches, flushed with her digging, eager about her new treasures. But her mother was more free for the delights of the sweet air and sensations of the spring, the freedom of the woods, and sometimes would burst out singing, and sometimes fling bits of moss at her child, as she held the basket.
‘Isn’t that beautiful, Mab?’
‘Yes, mother,’ Mab would say, digging, her head bent over the mossy soil, nothing free of her but the ear which took in the sound of the poetry in a kind of subdued pleasure which mingled with her humbler sensations.
‘You are a little grub,’ said Lady William; ‘you are never so happy as when you are probing among the roots and the dead leaves.’
‘And you are of the kind of the birds, mother, and I like to hear you up among the branches,’ said Mab. I do not mean to say that Lady William was a musician, or that you could hear the bits of songs she sang, which had been Mab’s lullaby as a baby, and amusement through all her childhood—a few yards from where she stood. They were nothing but the spontaneous utterances of her fresh spirit, like breathing, or the trilling of the birds, to which Mab compared them. Mab did not herself require utterances, givings forth, of that kind. She worked away and was silent, wholly given to what she was about. But she admired the trill and movement of the lighter spirit, and thought her mother the most delightful human creature that had ever been upon this earth.
The basket was tolerably heavy when they came back, and Mab was still a little flushed with her hard work. The sky was very sweet and subdued in colour, a great band of softened gold binding the growing grayness of the afternoon, approaching night—and opening, as it were, a glimpse into the heavens, a broad shining pathway, reflected fully in the river, between the awakening greens and browns of the spring country and the soft clouds above. It was still light, but evening was in the air, and among the folds of the clouds a few mild stars were already visible. The cows were coming lowing home; the children were leaving off their games; and people coming up from the river, who found a little chill in the air after the sun had gone down. The mother and daughter met everybody on their progress home. The doctor,another botanist, who sniffed at Mab’s basket, and affected contempt at her brag of the peculiar coltsfoot she had found, which grew nowhere but on Denham Hill. ‘Common, common,’ he said, ‘you’ll find it everywhere,’ as one connoisseur says to another, upon most new acquisitions; but that was because he had never had such luck himself, Mab felt convinced. And they met the tall curate, Mr. Osborne, stalking off to a meeting, who stopped to ask whether Lady William would not help in a temperance tea party of his, where the ladies and gentlemen were to amuse the villagers, and make them forget that there was such a thing on earth, or rather, in Watcham, as the ‘Why Not?’ or the ‘Blue Boar.’ Mr. Osborne wore his Inverness cape, as usual, and a quantity of books and pamphlets under it; but there was something a little different from his ordinary aspect in his looks. After he had passed he made a step back again, and called Lady William, with a hesitating voice.
‘Do you see—young Plowden often?’ he said, in the most awkward way.
‘Jim!’ she said, surprised, ‘my nephew?’
‘Don’t be vexed; I think he goes to—— places which he had better avoid,’ said the curate. Lady William looked at him, but there was nothing further to be learned from his cloudy face.
‘That is very possible,’ she said. ‘Do you mean—— there?’ for she had heard something of the ‘Blue Boar,’ which was now beginning to light up, and looked cheerful enough across the village green. The curate gave a little stamp of impatience as he saw some one else approaching, and said quickly:
‘I can’t say any more,’ and stalked away, leaving, as such monitors so often do, a prick of pain behind him, but nothing that could do any good. It was the General who was coming, and he walked a few steps with the ladies, congratulating them on their walk.
‘For I should not wonder if it rained to-morrow,’ he said. And then he told them of Mrs. Swinford’s visit, and how she had gone from door to door. ‘You see you have missed something; you have not had that honour.’
‘I am glad that we went for our long walk,’ Lady William said. And then, finally, they met Mr. Swinford, who came up joyfully, with his hat in his hand, and his head uncovered from the moment he saw them.
‘Ah, I have found you at last,’ said Leo; ‘I have waited for you in the cottage, sitting inside by the invitation of Miss Patty,who is very kind to me, and observing the proceedings of my mother.’
‘I hear she has been paying visits.’
‘To everybody, which is not, perhaps, the way to make the visit prized; but she does not like the English climate, and she is used, you know, to do as she likes,’ he said, with a smile.
‘Surely, in such matters as that she has a very good right.’
‘Yes, to be sure,’ he said doubtfully, and then laughed. ‘She came to see you, too—and I lay there, like a spider in a web, wondering if she would also come in to wait for you; but Miss Patty was not so kind to my mother as to me. I heard her answer unhesitatingly, “Not at home!” with a voice like that of a groom of the chambers. She has great capabilities, Patty.’
‘And did you not go out, to say——’
‘What should I have said? I was waiting, feeling that you would probably snub me for my pains, and why should I interfere with my mother? She left a card with a message pencilled on it, which I had the honourable feeling not to read. It got upon my nerves to be in the same room with it, and if I had not come out to meet you I should have yielded to the temptation.’
‘That would have been as bad as opening a letter,’ said Mab, who had as yet taken no part.
‘Would it, do you think? It was open; there would have been no seal broken; but, at all events, I resisted temptation, so you must praise me and not censure, Miss Mab.’
‘And how did you know,’ said Mab, while her mother pondered, ‘that we were coming this way!’
‘Give me the basket and I will tell you. What is in it? Worms? But also clay and earth. Have you not mud enough already in Watcham, that you must bring in more from the woods?’
‘Give me my basket again,’ said Mab indignantly; ‘there’s a clump of wood anemones, beauties, and the famous coltsfoot that only grows at Denham. I have hunted for it for years, and I only found it to-day. Give it me back.’
‘I am not worthy to carry such treasures,’ said Leo, ‘but the contact will do me good.’
‘All the same you haven’t answered,’ said Mab. ‘Who told you we were coming this way?’
‘If you must know, it was the accomplished Patty again. She offered me tea, which I declined, and she offered me also my mother’s card, which in my high sense of honour I declined too, and then she said, “My lydy was a-going to Denham Hill, andyou’ll meet ’em sure, if you go that way.” Patty is my friend, Miss Mab; she has a higher opinion of me than you have.’
‘We must hurry home now, Mab; we have been too long away,’ said Lady William, with a serious face. ‘It does not do for a woman of my age to go out on your long grubbings. Come, Leo, give me the basket, and let us run home.’
‘I can run too,’ he said. ‘Are you really sorry, is that what you mean, that you missed my mother?’
‘I cannot quite say that honestly. No, I am not sorry I missed your mother. Perhaps she and I have been too long apart to bridge over the difference now. How I used to admire your mother, Leo! How beautiful she was!’
‘Was she, indeed?’ he said, with a sort of polite attention, but surprised. Perhaps it is curious at any time for a man to realise that his mother may have been beautiful and admired. ‘I should not have thought,’ he said, ‘with submission, that her features, for instance—— ’
‘Women don’t think of features,’ said Lady William, with a little impatience. ‘It was she, not her features, that was beautiful. She had so much charm—when she pleased. It must always be added, that when she did not please—but we are not going to discuss your mother. She is a wonderful creature to be imprisoned here.’
‘You are not imprisoned here,’ he said, almost angrily, who are still more wonderful: ‘and you forget that my mother is old, and has had her day.’
‘The day will not be over as long as she lives; and as for me, I am not imprisoned; I dwell among my own people.’
‘How curious,’ he said, ‘pardon me, that the people here should be your own people! I say nothing against them, don’t fear it; they are very good people, but not——’
‘Thanks,’ she said, with a half laugh, ‘it was I who used to be the black sheep. Mrs. Plowden is not sure that she approves of me now; and if——’
‘If what?’
‘Nothing,’ said Lady William, with the slightest tinge of angry colour in her face.
‘That is just like mother,’ said Mab; ‘she gives you a word as if she were going to say something of importance, and then she tells you it is nothing. I have known her to do it a hundred times.’
‘There is nothing like the criticism of one’s children,’ said Lady William, with a laugh. ‘You, with your mother, Leo, andMab with hers, you are two iconoclasts. Now, the humble people, like my good Emmy, are very different; they do not criticise. And then you despise them as common, you two—— Ah! here we are at our own door.’ She turned and held out her hand to Leo, who looked at her surprised.
‘Are you not going to ask me in?’ he said, holding part of the basket, for which Mab, too, had held out her hands.
They all stood looking at each other in front of the cottage door.
‘It is late,’ said Lady William, with some hesitation—‘yes, if you wish it: but don’t you think it would be better to get back to the Hall before it is dark?’
‘No,’ said Leo, ‘why should I hurry back to the Hall? Of course I wish it; and you never told me before that I was not to come.’
‘I do not say so now, but——’
‘But what?’
‘Nothing,’ said Lady William, with a faint smile.
‘I told you that was her way,’ cried Mab, triumphant. ‘“Nothing,” and one is sure that she means heaps of things more than she ever says.’
He followed her into the little drawing-room, where there was still a little bright fire, though it was no longer cold. Mrs. Swinford’s card was lying upon a small table conspicuously, though there was not light enough to read its pencilled message. Lady William hesitated a little, not sitting down, giving her visitor no excuse for doing so. He followed her movements with a disturbed aspect, standing within the door, watching her figure against the light. Mab, who had seized the basket when he put it down, had gone off to put her treasures in safety. ‘I perceive,’ he said at last, ‘that I have done something wrong. What have I done wrong? Am I troubling you coming in when you did not want me? Then tell me so, dear lady, and send me away.’
‘Leo,’ said Lady William, ‘you should not have remained here while your mother was at the door; I do not like it; it puts me in a very uncomfortable position. Why didn’t you go and tell her we were out, Mab and I?’
‘I am your devoted servant, dear lady,’ said Leo, ‘but I am not your groom of the chambers, and Patty is. How could I have taken her duties out of her hands?’
‘That is all very well for a laugh,’ she said, ‘but it vexes me very much; it is very uncomfortable; why should you have been in my drawing-room while your mother was sent away from the door?’
‘You mean I ought not to have come in to wait.’
‘That for one thing, certainly; but being in, you should certainly not have allowed——’
‘What?’ said the young man.
Lady William did not say ‘Nothing’ again, but she stood at the window looking out with her back turned to him, and as strong an expression of discomfort and vexation in her attitude and eloquent silence as if she had used many words.
‘I see,’ he said, ‘I have been very indiscreet; I have vexed you though I did not mean it. I don’t make any excuse for myself, except that I thought at first you were coming back immediately. Forgive me: and I will go away, and never at any time will I do it any more.’
She gave a little laugh, turning round. ‘No, I don’t think you will do it again; but, unfortunately, that does not alter the fact that you have done it, and made me very uncomfortable. Are you going away? Then good night; you will have a pleasant walk up to the Hall.’
‘Not nearly so pleasant as if it had been an hour later,’ he said.
‘Oh, that is merely an idea. You will really like it better. Mab ought to be here to thank you for carrying her basket. Good night, Leo,’ Lady William said. She stepped out into the narrow passage after him to see him away; and, at the moment, in the open doorway Mab appeared with a cry of surprise.
‘Oh, are you going so soon? Are you not going to stop for tea?’
‘I am sent away,’ he said.
‘By mother?’
‘Yes. To make sure of amendment another time,’ he said ruefully, and went away with so much the air of a schoolboy under punishment, that Mab came in open-mouthed to her mother.
‘Oh! what have you been doing to Mr. Leo? Oh! why have you sent him away?’
Lady William made no answer, but rang the bell, as it very seldom was rung in this small house; an unusual occurrence, which brought Patty in with a rush, still rubbing a candlestick she held in her hand.
‘Patty, did you ask Mr. Swinford to come in and wait till Miss Mab and I came back?’
‘Yes, my lydy,’ said Patty, with sharp eyes that gleamed in the light.
‘And you did not ask Mrs. Swinford, when she called, to come in and wait?’
‘Oh, no, my lydy,’ cried Patty, aggrieved.
‘Why?’ said her mistress solemnly.
‘Oh, my lydy!’ said Patty, thunderstruck.
‘Yes, why?’ I want to know, why should Mr. Swinford wait for me and not Mrs. Swinford? I do not wish anybody to be asked to wait for me when I am out. If you were ever to do it again, I don’t know what I might be obliged to say.’
‘Oh, my lydy,’ said Patty, ‘I thought as Mr. Swinford was a young gentleman as perhaps made it a little cheerful for Miss Mab—— and I thought as the old lady wasn’t a pleasure for nobody; and I thought—— ’
‘If that is true of old ladies, why should you stay with me, Patty, who am an old lady, too, and not a pleasure to anybody——’
‘Oh, my lydy!’ said Patty, bursting into a torrent of tears.
‘Go, you little goose, and think no more of it; but ask nobody to wait for me. Now remember! you are here to do what you are told, but never to think. Thinking is the destruction of little maids. Ask Anne if she ever ventured to think when she was a girl like you.’
‘Yes, my lydy,’ said Patty, drying her eyes.
Itis not necessary to make a room snug with curtains drawn and the draught shut out, in the month of April as it is in early March, so that it was some time even after the lamp was brought in before the wistful clearness in the east, and that gleam of yellow, ‘the daffodil sky’ of the other quarter, which turns to ethereal tints of green, and has so many gradations of colour all its own, was shut out. Lady William liked to see the sky when she was in a cheerful or excited, not a sad mood. Such moods came to her as to every one by times; but she was angry and active to-night. Mab was not much used to such moments of commotion, to her mother’s slightly disturbed condition, and the scolding which had made Patty cry. Scolding was very infrequent in the cottage. Now and then Lady William would launch a fiery arrow; she would throw a distinct terrible light of displeasure upon dusty corners and silver badly cleaned. Sometimes even Mab would be brought to a sudden perception that her faults were quite visible and apparent, notwithstanding all her mother’s love and indulgence. But a moment like this, when all was disturbed and broken without any apparent motive, was astonishing to the girl. It was not for some time that Mab felt even the courage to inquire: only after tea when Lady William’s hasty ejaculations and movements of anger had almost died away.
‘But, mother, now that we are cool,’ said Mab——
‘Cool? I have never been anything but cool.’
‘Now,’ continued the girl, ‘that it is over, what was there so very bad in letting Mr. Leo come in to wait?’
‘And not his mother?’ said Lady William. ‘There would have been nothing particular, though very absurd if everybody who called had been asked in to wait. Fancy coming back to find the room crowded like a dentist’s waiting-room! But to bring in one and leave out another! Though I confess,’ said Lady William,with an angry flush, ‘that if the little goose had done so, and brought in Mrs. Swinford to find her son waiting, I should have been still more uncomfortable.’
‘Then you scolded her, mother, for what it was best to do?’
‘Nothing of the sort; her sin was inviting a gentleman to come in and wait for us who—— Oh, it is too horrid altogether, and if Mrs. Swinford had found him——’
‘Mother, what then?’ cried Mab, a little alarmed.
Her limpid gaze, so full of innocent surprise, seemed to bring back all Lady William’s annoyance. ‘You must take it for granted, Mab, that there are some things I know better than you do,’ she said. ‘By-the-bye, give me her card; let us see what message she left.’
The card did not seem to afford Lady William any more satisfaction. It was a very highly-polished card, and the pencil had cut into it, and the writing was difficult to read. She put it down with a heightened colour, throwing it from her hand. ‘I wonder if she thinks I put any faith in hercâlineries,’ she said.
‘What arecâlineries, mother?’ said Mab, taking up the card, which was inscribed as follows: ‘Chère Petite,—Much regret not to find you. Come to see me to-morrow; I have something important for your welfare to say.’ ‘Chère Petite,’ repeated Mab, ‘that is acâlinerie, I suppose. It seems queer to call youPetite—but I suppose she knew you when you were quite little.’
‘She knew me, certainly, when the title was more appropriate than it is now.’
‘That must be the reason; and perhaps she thought you might like it. Some ladies,’ said Mab, with her serious, almost childish, face, ‘like to be thought young.’
‘I don’t think she can have thought I would like it, Mab,’ said Lady William, with a little shiver. ‘Close the window and draw the curtain, please. I have a sort of uncomfortable feeling of somebody looking in.’
‘You are uncomfortable altogether to-night, mother.’
‘Yes, I suppose it’s my nerves; it’s—that woman. I never thought I had any nerves before.’
‘Oh, but you have,’ cried Mab; ‘I know better than that. Not nerves, perhaps, like Aunt Jane, but—— There is somebody in the garden. Shall I go and see who it is?’
Lady William started up and looked over Mab’s shoulder. Whether she thought it might be Leo come again, or what other intruder at this untimely hour, I cannot tell. But she said, in a tone that was half relief and half annoyance: ‘Your Aunt Jane inperson, Mab, and the girls. What can they want now?’ Her tone was a little fretful. They were in the way of wanting a great many things from her at the Rectory, and frequently her advice on one subject or another, which they did not generally take.
‘It will be about their dresses for the FitzStephens’ party,’ said Mab, to whom the ladies outside were beckoning that she should open the door to them. But Lady William shook her head.
‘Run and let them in, at all events. They have not rung the bell,’ she said, drawing the curtains with an impatient movement. The little room looked so full that it could contain no more when the three ladies came in; but they knew all its accommodations, and settled themselves in their places at as great a distance as possible from the little bright fire. ‘It is such a mild night there is no occasion for it,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘but you always keep up fires, Emily, later than any one.’
‘Do I? It’s cheerful at least.’
‘And the window open! That’s rather wasteful, don’t you think? I like to do either one thing or another; to shut up the house and keep all the heat in, as one does on winter nights, or else to throw up all the windows, and get the full advantage of the air. But I don’t see the good of dispersing all the heat outside, as if it could warm the garden. That would be a very good idea; but I’m afraid it would not be a success if you were to try it ever so much.’
‘I suppose,’ said Lady William, ‘you have come to tell me something; not to talk about the fire.’
‘I don’t know. We came over just to see you. It’s such a lovely night I thought I should like a walk. I said to Emmy, after James had gone back to his study, I think I’d like to have a little run; it’s so sweet to-night, not cold at all. Let’s run out and see your Aunt Emily, I said. I knew you were sure to be in.’
‘Oh, yes, we are always sure to be in.’
‘And, except ourselves, you are the only person of whom that can be said; for the FitzStephens are always dining with the Kendals or the Kendals with the FitzStephens; and Miss Grey, she goes in later to tea, not to put the table out, or she is at one of Mr. Osborne’s meetings, or has some parish tea party of her own. We are never sure to find anybody but you; and it is such a thing in a little place like this to know somebody you can depend upon to be in, if you find it dull or want a little run.’
‘I am afraid that Mab and I can’t do much to help your dulness.’
‘Oh, yes, you can. You can always talk nicely, Emily, onalmost any subject; and I always say it is such a good thing for the girls only to hear you talk. And Mab is the most sensible little thing that ever was. I always tell the girls it’s quite a treat to hear her; no nonsense, but so sensible, and taking up things so quick!’
‘It is very kind of you, Jane, to have so good an opinion of my little girl.’
‘Oh, it is merely the truth, Emily. I have always heard the Marquis was a very sensible man, and we all know there was once a Prime Minister in the family. Of course that’s a great thing to begin with. I can’t boast anything like that on my side, and I can’t say I think the Plowdens are remarkable for common sense, do you? Our children have other qualities. My poor Jim complains that his father is always at him because he does not stick to his Greek, and how can you expect a young man to stick to his Greek when it is only in that interrupted broken way? James thinks he gives him his full attention. But you know what a parish is, Emily. Sometimes it’s a christening, or some sick person to see, or a funeral. And then James has to tell him, “I can’t hear you, Jim, to-day.” Now, I ask you, Emily, honestly, do you think a boy can be expected to stick to his Greek like that?’
‘I quite agree with you, Jane; it is very hard upon him.’
‘Of course it is hard; everything’s hard. And he doesn’t know what’s the good of it, or what it’s for. He cannot go into the Church, and it requires so much, all the technicalities, you know, to be a schoolmaster; and if James makes up his mind at the end to put him into an office, or to send him—which is terrible to think of,’ cried poor Mrs. Plowden, putting her handkerchief to her eyes—‘abroad—what use would all that Greek be?’
‘It is quite true,’ said Lady William, ‘and I wish we could persuade James to make up his mind. Do you know what friends Jim has in the parish; where he goes; who are his companions? Some one said something to me——’
‘Oh, what did they say to you? Who spoke to you? Tell me what any one has to say about my boy.’