At this Jim laughed loudly, and his father, who did not often join in his jokes, such as they were, backed him up faintly with a smile.
‘No, I don’t think we could get up a game for him here. It’s a tremendous game; not like anything so simple as lawn tennis. It is the oldjeu de paume, isn’t it?’ said the Rector, ‘the beginning of them all.’
A conversation between the Rector and his son, on a general subject, on a question, something they were both interested in, without reproof on one side, or defence on the other: what a thing that was! Mrs. Plowden’s eyes grew lambent with the light of unusual happiness; after a moment she said: ‘I suppose you play it, Jim?’
‘I!’ said the young man. ‘Oh, I’m not half enough of a swell for that, mother.’
‘I don’t see,’ said the mother, half happy, half indignant, ‘why you shouldn’t be swell enough, Jim, to do anything Mr. Osborne does.’
‘You don’t remember,’ said the Rector sharply, ‘that it takes application to play a game well, as well as to study well, and that Jim never thought it good enough, either for one thing or another.’
Alas! how short the moment of happiness is!
‘Oh, girls,’ said Mrs. Plowden, when lunch was over, and the three ladies were in the drawing-room again, ‘if Mr. Osborne would only take up Jim! He is the only man in the parish who could do it; and now that I hear he plays games and things I feel a little hopeful. For whatever your father may say, I know that Jim is good at all games. We might get up this racquets, whatever it is, and get them to play together. We might ask the General, Florry, what it is. Army men always know everything of that kind. Or, Emmy, you might remember to ask your aunt; and there’s Mr. Swinford; perhaps he plays it too.’
‘I suppose it is a gentleman’s game,’ said Emmy, with perhaps not so strong an enthusiasm.
‘Do you think I might speak to Mr. Osborne about it?’ said the mother, pondering. When she asked advice of her girls it was in fact a sort of thinking aloud, a putting of the question to her own mind. A thing often seems quite different put out in audible words from what it does when only turned over and over in the recesses of your own heart. ‘I might tell him that Jim was very fond of it, and that hearing he was good I thought I would consult him how we should get it up.’
‘But Jim never said he was fond of it, mamma.’
‘Oh, how matter-of-fact you are, Emmy! Jim would be fond of anything that was a game. He would be glad of any break; and to get him surrounded with nice companions like himself, and taking his pleasure with them, wouldn’t that be better for him than Sophocles, or any old Pagan of them all? Your father doesn’t think so, perhaps, but I do; and, if you look at it reasonably, so will you too.’
‘I would not trust to Mr. Osborne if I were you,’ said Florence. She was standing in the corner beyond the window at the big old-fashioned round table, which had been dismissed from its old-fashioned place in the centre of the room, but was retained in the corner because it was so useful. Florence had her back to her mother and sister, and was very busy cutting out clothes for her girls’ class, which, like Miss Grey’s mothers’ meeting, met weekly for needlework. ‘I would not speak to him about it. He sometimes takes offence when you suggest a thing, and then goes away and does it. I would not say a word if I were you.’
‘But it never has been suggested to him, Florry! Why, you know I never heard of this even, till to-day. Here is your aunt Emily coming. We can ask her what she thinks. She has been more in the world than any of us, and probably she can tell us what racquets is.’
A considerable time elapsed, but no visitors appeared; and then Mrs. Plowden, from wondering what Emily would say, at last came to wonder where Emily could be, or if her eyes had deceived her, and Lady William had not crossed the lawn at all. ‘I declare,’ she said, ‘I shall feel quite unhappy if your aunt does not appear: for I saw her as plainly as I see you. I saw her black gown, and the feather in her hat, which really ought to be renewed if she will go on wearing black for ever—and that umbrella of hers with the long handle.’
‘But, mamma dear,’ said Emmy, ‘you must have known atonce whether it was Aunt Emily or not, without thinking what she had on.’
‘Well, so I should have supposed,’ said Mrs. Plowden, bewildered, ‘but then where is she, and what has become of her? She should have been here ten minutes ago. Oh, who is that? Mab! Why, child, where have you come from? And where is your mother? I am sure I saw her cross the lawn ten minutes ago or more.’
‘And we think it must have been her wraith, Mab.’
‘Mother has gone to talk to Uncle James,’ said Mab. ‘She says it’s about business, but I think it is some worry, she looks so serious. So I came on after to wait for her. Oh, are you cutting out, Florry? Shall I help you, or do you want any help?’
‘Some worry?’ said Mrs. Plowden, with a sorrowful brow. ‘I hope it is not anything new about your uncle Reginald, girls.’
Reginald was the brother to whom Lady William had given her money, and who had never come back.
‘Hadn’t we better wait till we hear what it is, mamma? I thought Uncle Reginald had not been heard of for years.’
‘That is quite true, and it was my opinion we should never hear from him any more; but what worry can your aunt Emily have if it is not about him? For I am sure otherwise she is a happy woman, and never has the shadow of a trouble. Was it after getting a foreign letter that she grew so serious, Mab?’
‘She has had no letter at all,’ said Mab, ‘and she did not say it was anything but business. The worry was only my own fancy; and I daresay I was wrong.’
‘What else could it be?’ said Mrs. Plowden. ‘She may have heard he is coming home. And I am sure, if he is coming home, I don’t know what I shall do. He shall not come here. I could not have him in this house. Our own burdens we must bear; but Reginald Plowden—oh, Reginald Plowden is too much! If he comes here I shall run away.’
‘Dear mamma, don’t you think we had better wait a little? Aunt Emily is sure to come here when she leaves papa, and then you will know.’
‘Oh, it is all very well to tell me to wait—when Reginald Plowden would just put the crown upon everything,’ the poor lady said.
Lady Williamhad gone across the lawn, not to the usual door which admitted into what may be called the private part of the Rectory, but to the little parish door where people came who wanted the Rector on parish business. This was always open, always accessible, though I don’t know that the parishioners used it very much. It was at least an excellent thing for them to have their clergyman always within reach, and suited the Rector’s theory of his duty, which was a great matter, even if it were not of very much practical use. Miss Grey trotted in by it with her parish books, and the curate came, when something occurred about which it was necessary to consult his chief. He did not, Mr. Plowden thought, consult his chief nearly as much as would have been appropriate and desirable—being a young man who liked his own way, and considered that the elder generation did not always understand.
The Rector, however, was much surprised when the door sounded with the familiar little click which he knew so well, and his sister presently appeared in his study. He had expected one or other of the two functionaries above named, or perhaps the churchwarden, or the treasurer of the schools, who was a troublesome person with nothing to do, and consequently an endless number of things to suggest. When he saw Lady William his heart—which you may say ought to have been sufficiently experienced to take things quietly—gave a jump. Experience does not make us indifferent in certain cases, and the Rector was as easily disturbed on one subject as if he had no experience at all. It flashed into his mind that his sister, who was not much in the habit of consulting him, must have something to say about Jim.
‘Emily!’ he said, with great surprise: and then, with a little attempt at a lighter tone, which was not very successful, ‘What, have you fallen into parish business, too?’
‘No,’ she replied, with a quickly drawn breath, which the Rector, as a man accustomed to have to do with people in trouble, knew must mean excitement, or anxiety, or distress. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I want to consult you, James: but it is entirely about my own private business.’
The Rector drew a long breath. He was not glad—oh no!—to think that his sister was in trouble: but nothing that affected her could be so serious, he felt, as if it had been something about Jim. He drew forward a chair near himself for her. He had always been both fond and proud of Emily. Perhaps the fact that she was Lady William (though he knew the marriage had not been a success) added a little to the feeling that she was a being by herself, not to be compared with any one else. But still, a great deal of it was very genuine, and meant a conviction that he knew nobody comparable to Emily. He was pleased that she should consult him on her own affairs, of which, generally, she said very little. She had thrown away almost all her own money upon Reginald—provided only that she did not mean to tell him that scapegrace was coming back to trouble his respectable connections again! Thus the same idea that had disturbed his wife occurred to the Rector, both terrors, no doubt, arising from the fact that neither could imagine what Lady William could wish to consult the Rector about.
‘My affairs,’ she said, with a faint smile, as she got her breath, ‘haven’t for a long time been very troublesome to my family, James. I hope they are not entering now into a new stage.’
‘A new stage?’ he said, and the Rector’s middle-aged heart actually took a jump again. What could it all mean? Good heavens!—Emily’s affairs in a new stage! What could she be going to do? It could not be about any change in her life that she was going to consult him. Change in her life! That was what people said when somebody was going to marry. He looked at his sister with sudden alarm. Emily marry! Vague things he had heard said of Leo Swinford and jests about Lady William’s attractions, started up in his mind. It rarely happens, I think, that a man likes his sister (if she is not dependent upon him) to compromise her dignity by a second marriage. He did not like to think that Emily might intend to come down from her pedestal and show herself a mere common person, like the rest.
‘What do you mean by a new stage?’ he said, with a pucker in his brow. ‘You are very well as you are, and occupy a very good position, and all that. I don’t see what need there is for a new stage.’
‘Nor I,’ she said; ‘and I hope you will continue of the same opinion when I tell you. I knew,’ she continued, with a little hot colour flushing across her face, ‘that the coming of the Swinfords would upset all our tranquillity. I was sure of it. She is a woman of evil omen wherever she appears.’
‘Yet you were once very fond of her, if I remember right.’
‘When I was a girl, and she petted me, and made much of me—I was going to say for her own ends; but I hope it was not for her own ends from the beginning—that would be too diabolical.’
‘What ends could she have had that were to be promoted by you?’ said the Rector, with a smile. He was sufficiently used to these preposterous notions women so often have of their own importance, prompting them to think the attention of other people, who probably never thought of them, is fixed upon them, and that intentions of various kinds are formed respecting them, without the least foundation in fact. Thus his own wife was in the habit of thinking that her girls were watched and followed; that their movements and their dresses were the subject of constant remark, when in all probability nobody even knew that they were there. He was surprised, however, that his sister Emily should share this view.
‘We need not discuss that,’ she said. ‘James, I want to ask you—do you think it is my duty by Mab to seek further acquaintance with her father’s family? We are exceedingly well as we are. The allowance they make is not large, but it is enough, and there is something settled on Mab when I die. They have done their duty, if not very liberally, yet they have done it. And I don’t want any more from them. Mab is quite contented, she likes her home better than anything; and though she is a very dear girl, and my hope and comfort, I don’t know if she is fitted to shine in—what people call the great world. I might get them, of course, to bring her out in a way more fitting, perhaps—to take her to Court, and all that——’
‘I don’t see,’ said the Rector, ‘that that would do her much good.’ Men ought not, to be sure, to be touched by any of those motives, which are entirely feminine; but it did certainly flash across the Rector’s mind that his own girls had none of these advantages, had never gone to Court or anything of the kind, and yet could not be said to be any the worse.
‘No, that is just what I think. She is quite satisfied as she is: to go out with her Pakenham cousins, probably to their annoyance and against their will, and to be taken to places where sheknew nobody, would be no pleasure to my little girl. She is such a thoroughly reasonable, sensible, understanding child. I am so glad that you agree with me on that point, James.’
While she was speaking the Rector began to think that perhaps all was not said in that hasty opinion of his, and that a man consulted by his nearest relation should not be moved by any little trifling feeling—like that which might be legitimate enough in a mother, about his own girls. And he said, ‘Stop a little, Emily. You’re still quite a young woman, but life is uncertain. Perhaps, you know, if anything were to happen to you:—as long as you are there, that is all right, of course—but she would be very forlorn, poor little thing, if she were left——’
‘There would be you and Jane, James. You would both be very kind to her.’ But Lady William was a little startled by what he said. It is startling to all, however little objection we may have to that catastrophe, even however desirable it may be, to be spoken to abruptly of our own death.
‘Both my wife and I are older than you are, and we could introduce her to nobody in—well, in her father’s rank of life. If she married it would probably be a curate—the Marquis of Portcullis’s niece!’
‘Oh, if it were no worse than a curate!’ said Lady William, with a laugh. The laugh was a little strained, and under her eyes there was a hot, red colour which did not consort with laughter. She grew suddenly very grave, and added hurriedly, ‘That was not exactly all. James, in case of the—risk of which you were speaking, do you think as Mrs. Swinford does——’
‘What, Emily?’ He was frightened when he saw the excitement that seemed to come over her.
‘Well! That the family would have a right to—examine into—and have all the papers about—my marriage, and her birth, and all that.’
It was of Lady William’s marriage alone that Mrs. Swinford had spoken, but it made it a little easier to state it so.
‘Oh!’ said the Rector, startled. ‘Well,’ he added, ‘I suppose it’s a very good thing to have your papers all in order, and saves trouble afterwards. It is so seldom that people take the trouble to do it. I am sure I don’t know anything about my own marriage certificate, though I furnish them to other people. Have you got them all?’
Lady William’s face blanched out of its momentarily high colour. ‘I have got none of them,’ she said, in a faint voice.
‘Well, there is no particular harm in that. I don’t know whohas—not me, I am sure. What does your friend want you to do—send these things to the Marquis? What does the Marquis want with Mab’s baptismal certificate? My dear Emily, I suppose that woman, being partly French, thinks that you should always have yourpapiersin order? There could not be greater nonsense.’
‘Do you really think so? I did myself. Why should there ever be any question? Nobody asks you, as you say, for your marriage certificate, James.’
‘No,’ said the Rector; but he added, looking at the question from a purely professional point of view, ‘of course, you can get that sort of thing, when it’s wanted, at a moment’s, at least, at a day’s notice. Where were you married, Emily?’
She was evidently not prepared for this question, and came to herself with a little start. The colour forsook her cheeks. She clasped her hands together nervously. ‘Oh James, that is what gives it its sting. I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘Is that dreadful? Is it dangerous? Might it throw a doubt? My father went with me, that is the only thing—to London somewhere.’
‘I knew you were not married at home,’ said Mr. Plowden, rising up and placing himself in front of the fireplace. ‘I knew there was something queer about it. In the name of wonder, Emily, why, if my father went with you, didn’t he have you married at home? He can’t, in that case, have disapproved.’
‘I don’t think he disapproved.’
‘Then why,whyweren’t you married at home? My father went with you, and you don’t know? What a very queer business! And who went with you beside my father?’
‘Old Meredith, do you remember, who used to be my nurse—and a lady. But Meredith is dead, and papa is dead—and the other——’
‘This grows rather funny,’ said the Rector. ‘I mean it isn’t funny at all. So there is nobody living who was there, and you don’t know where it was? Does your friend, Mrs. Swinford, know these circumstances, Emily, and does she want to frighten you? It would be like her amiable temper.’
‘James, tell me, is there any real reason to fear?’
‘Oh, dear, no. Of course not; the only thing is to find the place. Of course, it must be on the register. What a queer thing not to know the church you were married in! I thought a woman always remembered that, whatever she forgot.’
‘I was a frightened girl,’ said Lady William. ‘I didn’t knowwhat they were going to do with me. I was sent down from the Hall at midnight, as I thought in disgrace—though I could not tell for what. There was a great tumult in the house. Mr. Swinford, who was so quiet, in the midst of it all; and then my husband came down here with me, and my father was called up to speak to him and then it was all like a flash of lightning. I was taken up to London two days after, and there I was married. It was a little old church, in a district which I didn’t know.’
‘How is it I never heard anything of this before?’
‘How can I tell?’ she said. ‘I was taken away, frightened, not knowing what had happened. Oh, I suppose that I was not unwilling: I did not understand it: but my father was there—and he liked it, James. He said it was a great match for me, and, though it was so hurried, I was not to mind. After, I understood better—but at the time not at all.’
‘It must have been by special license,’ said the Rector; ‘but why in the name of wonder didn’t my father have it here?—Why—— But I suppose it’s no use saying why and why. There must have been reasons——’ He looked at his sister fixedly, yet avoiding her eye.
But Lady William neither met nor avoided his look. She sat before him, pale, with an air of deep and melancholy recollection. ‘Oh, there were reasons,’ she said, shaking her head sadly. ‘It was years before I found them out. I would rather not enter into them even now—reasons which for a time made life odious to me. It had not been very happy before. Don’t let us speak of that.’
‘They were reasons—which Mrs. Swinford knew!’
‘Don’t speak of her to me,’ said Lady William. ‘I was a fool to go near her, to see her again. Knew! ah, indeed she knew—indeed she knew! She was my patroness, my kind friend. My father thought it such a fine thing for me to be at the Hall. Oh, James, why should a girl be allowed to live when she has no mother? She ought to be put away in her mother’s coffin, and not enter helpless into the world.’
‘In my opinion fathers are some good,’ said the Rector, with severity.
And then a few hot tears fell from his sister’s eyes. ‘Poor papa!’ she said. Mr. Plowden added nothing to this phrase. They remained silent, both thinking of the parent who had not indeed been very wise, but always kind. After a while Lady William resumed: ‘He approved: if he hadnot approved—I should never—— But what could I do against my father? And Miss Mansfield told me I should be ungrateful to the friend who had made such a match for me.’
‘Who was Miss Mansfield, Emily?’
‘The lady I told you of—a cousin of Mrs. Swinford’s, who was with me that day.’
‘And is she dead, too?’
‘I think not. No; Leo Swinford said something of her the other day—that she had been here.’
‘Then she must be found, Emily.’
Lady William gave him a startled look. ‘Do you think, then, James, after all, it is necessary to go into all that again—to rake up everything? Oh! when I think of it—the hurry, the strangers, the unknown place, which looked as if there was shame in it——’
‘My dear Emily, it is only the hurry and the unknown place that make it important. As soon as you know where to write to find the marriage in the register it does not matter, you can let it rest. But now that I know—even if Mrs. Swinford had never said a word—I shall not rest till I find it out.’
‘Then I wish,’ she said, with returning spirit, ‘that I had said nothing to you on the subject, James.’
‘Don’t say that. To whom should you go but to your brother? And be sure I’ll find it out, Emily. I don’t like to say a word that will hurt you. I am afraid you have been the victim of some plot or other, my poor girl.’
She did not answer for a moment, then she said: ‘I cannot have been without blame myself. I was pleased with the promotion, I suppose, and with the romance, and all that. Romance! it seemed so strange to be carried away, to be married almost in spite of myself; and I suppose the name—— It is all very vague and dreadful, though at the time I was dazzled, and it sounded like something in a story. I wonder, rather, that you do not despise your sister, James.’
‘Poor Emily!’ he said, patting her shoulder with his hand.
Mrs. Plowdenawaited with some anxiety the appearance of her sister-in-law in the drawing-room, which was an ordeal which Lady William would have liked much to escape. But as this was not possible, she submitted to it with as good a grace as might be. The Rector kindly led the way, saying on the threshold: ‘Here is Emily, Jane,’ as if that had been at all necessary; as if they had not all been on the outlook for her appearance for the last half-hour. Mrs. Plowden took her by the hand, and led her to a comfortable sofa in the corner, which was where she took her friends when they had something to say to her, or she something to say to them. ‘My dear Emily,’ she said, ‘I hear you have been sadly worried about something, and, of course, you know I have been trying to guess. You have heard from Reginald again?’
‘From Reginald?’ said Lady William. ‘Poor fellow! Ah, no. I wish I had. And who said I had been sadly worried? I had only some business I wanted to talk over with James.’
‘Not Reginald—really?’ said Mrs. Plowden. She was much relieved; but there sprang up in her a fresh curiosity, very lively and warm, to think, if it was not Reginald, what it could be? Of course she said to herself she would hear all about it from James; but she did not like to wait till the uncertain moment, never to be calculated on during the day, when she should find her husband alone.
And then it occurred to Lady William that to tell a half truth frankly as if it were the whole is sometimes a wise thing to do.
‘To tell the truth,’ she said, ‘I was asking James’s serious advice on that matter which you have so often spoken to me about, Jane—whether I should attempt to improve my acquaintance with the Pakenhams, and get Mab, now that she is almost old enough, introduced to the world in their way.’
‘Oh!’ cried Mrs. Plowden, making a very large mouthful of that word; astonishment, and satisfaction, and pride, and yet a little drawback of another feeling was in her tone. ‘So you are thinking at last, Emily, that there may be something in what I said.’
‘I always knew,’ said Lady William, ‘that there was a great deal of sense in what you said. But, I was very unwilling to do it, it must be allowed. And now Mrs. Swinford says the same thing; and though I am very doubtful whether it would be to Mab’s advantage, still—I am thinking it over once more.’
‘And what advice did you get from James? James is too like yourself in many ways, Emily, to be your best adviser.’
‘Do you think he is like myself?’ The Rector had gone back to his study after, as it were, introducing his sister into the feminine part of the house. ‘Well, perhaps,’ said Lady William, with a smile, ‘there may be a family resemblance. There is so far as this—that he is by no means certain, I think, of the advantage to Mab.’
‘Oh, what nonsense,’ said the Rector’s wife, ‘and what does he know about such things? Advantage! of course it would be an advantage. Dear me, to go to Court with the Ladies Pakenham, to be taken out into society by the Marchioness, to see the best of company at her uncle’s house! My dear Emily, you might just as well say, to confuse small things with great, that it would not be an advantage in the parish of Watcham to belong to the Rectory—and that is what nobody would say.’
The comparison was one which made Lady William smile, though she was not much inclined to smiling. ‘There are differences,’ she said, ‘however; for you could not but be kind to a girl thrown on your care. Whereas, I doubt very much if the Marchioness would be at all kind to a poor relation; and I don’t care to have my Mab thought of as a poor relation in any case.’
‘You are so proud,’ said the Rector’s wife; and then she said, with a laugh, ‘Fancy little Mab to be the one of us all that will see the great world, and make her curtsey to the Queen!’
If the Rector himself had thought of this, it would have been wonderful indeed that his wife should not think of it. She laughed continuously for a minute with an odd little trill in her laugh, looking at her own girls, who she could not help thinking were more worthy than Mab of such a distinction. It was a thing she had urged upon Mab’s mother since her child was ten. But now that it seemed an actual possibility, nay more than that—for Mrs. Plowden’s mind leaped forward to the ceremony, and already wondered what Mab would wear, and if feathers would really be wanted upon her little head—the ridicule of the thought that Mab, little Mab, would be the one to go to Court, an honour which was quite beyond the hopes of Emmy and Florry, gave their mother a shock of half-irritated feeling. That their cousin should have this glory would not hurt them—but still—if honours went by merit in this world how different things would be!
‘I wonder,’ said Lady William, as they walked home, ‘what your opinion, Mab, may be in the matter which everybody has been discussing. It was your little fortunes that Mrs. Swinford wanted to talk to me about yesterday, and that I have been advising about with Uncle James to-day.’
‘My little fortunes?’ said Mab. ‘I never knew I had any.’
‘Your future, perhaps, it would be better to say.’
‘My future! is that to be detached and put separate from other people’s like an odd piece in a puzzle? I don’t know still what you mean, mother!’
‘And yet it is plain enough,’ said Lady William, with a sigh. ‘The other girls here are all in their natural sphere. But you, Mab, are a bird of another species in a sparrow’s nest.’
‘I hope you don’t compare me to a cuckoo, mother.’
‘Something very different, my dear; the others are plain brown homely birds. Emmy and Florry will twitter under the eaves in some parsonage or other, probably all their lives; but you are a Pakenham.’
‘What’s a Pakenham?’ said Mab; ‘you speak as if it were a Plantagenet.’
‘Well, not so grand, perhaps—but still it is different. And I have brought you up only like what I was myself: a little country girl.’
‘Only like what you were yourself! You know very well, mother, and it’s unkind to remind me of it, that if I were to live a hundred years I should never get to be like you. It’s Emmy that’s like you. I’m not envious; but to think that your daughter should be a little—just a—Pakenham, as you say; and Emmy like you!’
‘She is not very like me—if I’m any judge myself,’ Lady William said.
‘She is not half nor a quarter so pretty as you are, mammy dear.’
‘You little flatterer! Emmy is a much better girl than Iever was, Mab, and perhaps that’s pretty much the same thing. She is a much better girl to tell the truth than my own little girl is.’
‘I know; my own opinion is that Emmy is too good. She is never out of temper, always puts up with everything, is bored by nobody. That, I understand, is one reason why—as you say, mother. For I think, to tell the truth, that to look really nice, and be like a human woman, you must not be quite so good.’
‘That is a dangerous doctrine, Mab. And it is not the question; which is, what do you think? The Pakenhams are more or less fashionable, and of course they have a fine position. With them you would see a little of the world. You would meet people very different from any you ever see here in the village. I am told that I ought to make advances to them; to tell them of my child who is growing up, and ought to be introduced properly into the world.’
‘Oh, is that what it means?’ said Mab. ‘Tell me more about them, that I may be able to judge. I don’t know anything at all about them, and how can I say?’
Lady William’s heart sank a little at this calm and judicial tone on the part of her child. She, too, jumped, as Mrs. Plowden had done, to the spectacle of Mab’s presentation under the wing of the Marchioness, and at all that might follow.
‘I have never seen Lady Pakenham or the girls. Your uncle I have seen, and he was—not unkind. No, I am sure he was not in the least unkind; he did what he could for me. He took a little notice of you as a baby, and so did the other brother—your uncle John. They were not clever, nor distinguished in any way; but they were by no means without feeling.’
‘That was when my father died.’
Lady William, who had rarely to Mab said anything about her father, nodded her head. Her eyes had a dreamy look, fixed far away. Mab never was sure whether it was for grief that her mother was so reticent, or from some other cause.
‘And do you mean to say, mother,’ said Mab, ‘that my aunt—if she is my aunt—never came near you when you were in such trouble?’
‘She is just exactly as much your aunt as your uncle James’s wife is—neither less nor more. No, she never came near me. But I was not surprised. It happened in Paris, and then I came away as soon as I could to this little place. I neither expected her to come to Paris, which would have been absurd: nor tocome after me here, where she knew I would be among my own people.’
‘Why,’ said Mab, ‘you would have gone! You would not have minded if it had been in Paris, or at the end of the world.’
‘I do a great many foolish things,’ said Lady William, with a smile, ‘that wise people don’t do; besides they hadn’t approved much, as was natural. Substantially kind is what you may call them, practically kind your uncles were that, and have been——’
‘And yet I am seventeen and I have never seen them.’
‘If you had been a boy,’ said Lady William, ‘they would have felt their duty more; a girl is supposed to be best with her mother. You must not be surprised at that, my dear child. Your uncle Pakenham has always supplied all your wants.’
‘You never showed me any of his letters——’
‘His letters! oh, he is not a man who writes letters. His lawyer does all that; but substantially, he has been very kind.’
‘Mother,’ said Mab, ‘instead of wishing to know these people, to visit them, and all that, I’ll tell you what I should like to do. I should like to be able to work for you, and throw their money in their face—which is what you mean, I suppose, when you say they are substantially kind.’
‘That would be very foolish, Mab; the money is your right, and for that matter mine too.’
‘It may be right, but I should like to fling it in their faces all the same. Had my father nothing to leave us, to give us to live on, that you should have to accept it from them?’
Lady William made no answer for some time. Then she said in a low tone: ‘Your father had many things to do. I cannot enter into such questions, Mab; you are not old enough. No; we were destitute but for them.’
‘You had money of your own, mother?’
‘Fortunately,’ said Lady William, ‘that did not come to me till after.’ And then she stopped short and bit her lip with annoyance. ‘I didn’t do much with it when it did come,’ she said. ‘I gave it to your poor uncle Reginald. He was to make his fortune, poor fellow, and ours.’
‘Perhaps he may yet, mother.’
‘Thank you for the suggestion, Mab; perhaps he may. Alas! I am afraid it is not very likely——’
‘If he were to do so, mother, you would take this dirty money and fling it back in their faces?’
‘I don’t know that I should, Mab. I doubt if it would be kind or just—and still more, whether it would be wise.’
‘Oh, you may be sure they wouldn’t mind, people like that! They would only be glad to have it back, whether you flung it at them or not, provided they had it.’
‘My dear, you are very hot-headed. In that respect you are, I fear, of my side of the house.’
‘And Emmy, who is like you, isn’t. She would eat any amount of dirt; she thinks it her duty not to resent anything. That’s not my way of thinking,’ cried Mab. ‘I resent it, and I should like to fling it in their face.’
The two ladies went on after this in silence for a little while, Mab pondering many things in her heart. Some she knew about, and some she did not know. Of her father she had very little idea, scarcely any at all. She had never seen any one belonging to him. He was dead; that was all she knew; and she had never missed him, or any one, having her mother. Vague ideas that he had not been good to her mother had floated through her mind, and yet she never was sure that it was not out of great love that Lady William spoke of him so little. She had known in the parish people who grieved like that, who could not mention the names of those who were gone. It might be for that reason. She walked on pondering, saying nothing till they had nearly reached the cottage door. Then she suddenly turned on her mother, having forgotten till this moment what was the question that had been given her to answer.
‘And you want me,’ she said, ‘to say that I would like to go to those people—to leave you?’
‘Not to leave me, Mab, except for a little time.’
‘Then I won’t, mother, short time or long time! What! to a woman that knew you were in trouble, and never went to you—whom you don’t even know! If I am allowed to have any say in it, I would not for anything in the world. And what is it for? To go to parties with them, to be taken out, to enjoy myself? Mother, mother, do you think I am like that—to enjoy myself with people who don’t know you, who leave you, who are insolent to you?’
‘No; they are not insolent—they ignore me; but, then, I have always wished to be ignored. To tell the truth, Mab, I doubt very much whether you would enjoy yourself. It is possible that you might, but I fear it is more likely that you would not. That is why I am against it.’
‘Then you are against it, mother?’
‘For that reason—that I could not bear my Mab to be treated like a nobody, to be taken out, perhaps, because they could not help it, or left alone and snubbed——’
‘Snubbed! They should not snub me twice, mother!’
‘No, you little hothead! But everybody here thinks it would be so much to your advantage to go to Court—that is something—to be introduced as you ought to be.’
‘Introduced to whom?—to the Queen? Yes, that would be nice. But then I don’t suppose the Queen would take the least notice of me, would she? I would just be another little girl among so many. No, mother, people here—Aunt Jane, or whoever it is—may say what they like. I will have nothing to say to those people who took no notice of you.’
‘Your uncle James is of the same opinion—and Mrs. Swinford.’
‘Odious old woman!’ said Mab.
‘My dear child, how do you know that she is an odious old woman? She was a very fascinating woman once. When I was like you I would have laid down my life for her.’ Lady William breathed forth a long, soft sigh involuntarily, unable to restrain herself. ‘I think I did,’ she said under her breath.
Mab did not hear these words, but she said somewhat loudly, ‘Odious old woman!’ again.
‘Who is that you are describing so succinctly?’ cried a voice behind them. ‘Miss Mab has an energy and conciseness of expression which I admire.’
‘She has a pitch of voice occasionally which is not at all admirable,’ said Lady William, turning round. Mab, as may be supposed, turned a bright scarlet up to her hat, her very hair warming in the quick suffusion of colour. But her mother was skilled in such emergencies and betrayed nothing.
‘It is always admirable to know what you think, and to express it clearly,’ said Swinford. ‘I was on my way,’ he added, putting his hands together with a supplicating movement, ‘to inquire whether I might consider myself forgiven. You know you turned me out the other day. May I come back with you now? You take so much from me when you shut your door. Miss Mab will intercede for me. She was as much shocked as I was when you sent me away.’
‘There was no sending away,’ said Lady William. ‘We have been having an argument—my daughter and I. You shall be the impartial umpire and set us right.’
‘With all the pleasure in the world,’ he said.
‘Itis a very good thing to have somebody impartial to refer to,’ said Lady William; ‘all our advisers take a side strongly. Now, Leo, you are of no faction; you can give us fair advice.’
‘I am of your faction always,’ he said.
‘Ah, but I am of no faction. I am the seeker of advice. We want to be well advised, Mab and I. By the way, she does take a side strongly, but I will not tell you which it is.’
‘Expound the case, Miss Mab; I must know before I can say.’
‘So you shall know; but Mab must not tell you, for she has a bias. The case is this: Mab you see is grown up——’
He gave a glance at her in her (still) short frock, with her (still) large waist, and round, artless, almost childish look.
‘I see,’ he said, with a smile.
‘And must presently be introduced into society. The question is, must it be the society of Watcham, and is the dance at the FitzStephens’ to be herdébut? or is she to enter the world in a different way, and be taken to town for a season with all that follows? What is your opinion?’
‘Can there be two opinions?’ he said, opening his eyes wide. ‘This is not treating me well. I hoped it was to be a difficult and delicate question, but it is no question at all.’
‘You see,’ said Lady William to her daughter.
‘If you put it to him in that way, mother: but that is not the way. Imagine, Mr. Leo, what they all want!—that mother, who is, I know, better than the whole of them, every one, whoever they may be—should go and—and—petition my uncle and his wife, who have never taken any notice of us—to take me by the hand and introduce me, as people say, into society: to introduce me—me, Mab, do you understand, to the Queen and all the rest; to get me asked to parties with them—me, Mab, do you understand?’ saidthe girl, beating upon her breast, ‘only me; and that is what everybody wants, and mother hesitates and wonders whether she ought to do it: and I,’ cried the girl, her dull eyes growing bright, ‘I will obey mother. I have never gone against her yet except in the way of reason, and if she were to tell me to jump into the river I would do it (hoping to scramble out somewhere lower down); and I’ll do this of course if I must, and perhaps escape alive—but never, never of my own free will. Now say what you think, Mr. Leo. Isn’t it I that am in the right?’
‘The question has a very different aspect, certainly,’ said Leo, ‘from Miss Mab’s side.’
‘Hasn’t it?’ said the girl triumphantly. ‘Now I should be proud, mother, if he who is of your faction should pronounce for me.’
‘But there is a great deal more to be said on both sides,’ said Leo; ‘we have not come to a decision yet. And just tell me why you should not go to town yourself as everybody does, and introduce your daughter in your own person, and show yourself in the world? That would seem so much the most natural way.’
‘Ah!’ cried Mab, with something like a shout of triumph. ‘That is something like advice! I did not think much, I tell you true, of consulting Mr. Leo—but now I see he is a Daniel come to judgment. And to think that none of us ever thought of that before!’
Lady William grew red and she grew pale. It had not occurred to her, strangely enough, that any one would suggest this simple alternative. The other advisers, indeed, knew her position too well to think of it. She said with a laugh: ‘You speak very much at your ease, you young people. Where am I to get the money for a campaign in town? I might squeeze out a few dresses for Mab—that is all I could do. You forget that I am not a wealthy person like you, Leo. And then I know nobody. We might as well stay here for anything I could do for her. Yes, the Lenthalls might invite us, or Lady Wade, who belongs to this neighbourhood; but nobody else. And we should be ruined! No, no; that is more impossible than anything else. It must, I fear, be Lady Portcullis, or nobody. Her aunt is her only hope.’
‘If I am to be sent off to Lady Portcullis like a brown-paper parcel,’ said Mab, ‘I will do what I’m told, mother; but I won’t discuss it any more. Mr. Leo, I would ask you to stand up for me, if I thought you could ever stand up against mother.’
‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ said Leo; ‘but I will try as much asI can.’ He got up to open the door for her (for by this time they had reached the cottage), which was a thing Mab hated, feeling the attention very right for her mother, but a sort of mockery in the case of a little girl like herself. She submitted with her head bent; and then bolted like a young colt, which she still was. It must be allowed that the young man, who, according to all laws, ought to have preferred her company, was relieved when she was gone. He came quickly back to where Lady William sat, her head bowed upon her hand in much thought, and drew a low chair, Mab’s little baby-chair, to her feet.
‘I have a counter proposition to make,’ he said, lightly touching her hand to draw her attention.
She smiled, and said, ‘What is that?’ with a friendly indifference which made him frown. It was very clear that his proposition, whatever it might be, awakened no excitement, scarcely even curiosity, in Lady William’s breast. He made a very long pause indeed, but she took no notice until there had been time for various tumults and revolutions of thought in his mind. Then she looked up, with a little start, to see him in an attitude which was strangely like supplication, though he was in reality only seated in the low chair. ‘Well,’ she said, in her easy tone, ‘what is it? You keep me a long time in suspense.’
‘It was—nothing,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said Lady William, with a laugh, ‘you pay me back in my own coin.’
‘Rather,’ he said in a changed tone, ‘let us say that it was this. We must, I suppose, go to London next month—though my mother does not seem to care for it now as I thought she would. However, we shall go; and why should not you come too? Come with us; take Miss Mab where you please, and come back when you please. It would obviate all the difficulties you were speaking of, and secure all the—— What! You will not listen to such a simple suggestion as that?’
There had been a great many exclamations on Lady William’s lips as he went on, but she had smothered them one by one till it was impossible to keep silence longer. ‘With your mother?’ she said, almost under her breath.
‘Well: I should like it, oh, a great deal better, if it were with me; but you think of me as if I were a cabbage, and my mother was your friend—was she not your friend?—and I am your servant—to mount behind your carriage, if you like.’
‘Do not speak nonsense, Leo; you are my very kind friend, andthe greatest acquisition, and if you had been going to town with your wife instead of your mother—— It is not indispensable, don’t you know, that old friends should continue friends for ever. Your mother was very good to me once—that is, I believe, for a time: but it would do no good to go into those old questions. She would not suffer me with her, nor would I—— No, no; forgive me. That does not mean necessarily any harm, does it? that we do not now—see things—exactly in the same light——’
‘Then that is settled,’ he said gloomily, ‘so far as my mother is concerned; as for me, though, you call me a friend and all that——’
‘My dear boy,’ said Lady William, ‘you don’t imagine for a moment, I hope, that I would let you pay my expenses—for the benefit of Mab?’
He paused again, gazing at her, saying nothing; then threw up his hands with an impatient sigh.
‘And yet friendship is supposed to be something more than words,’ he said.
‘There is one thing that friendship is not,’ said Lady William; ‘at least, in England, Leo. It is not money. When that comes in it is supposed to spoil all.’
‘What an absurd, false, conventional, inhuman, ridiculous view!’
‘Perhaps. Oh! I don’t know that it need tell between two young men. There is an allowance to be made in that way forbons camarades. But I think it is a just rule on the whole. My poor little experience is that it is best not to be very much obliged to one’s neighbours. No, no! I don’t say so for you, Leo. I believe you might give everything you have to a friend, and never remind him of it—never recollect it even yourself, as long as you lived.’
‘Is that much to say?’
‘In the way of the world, it is something extraordinary to say; but this is a totally different question from my little problem, which is urged upon me by your mother, Leo, as well as by my innocent people—my brother and sister here.’
‘You think my mother is not innocent—that she had some other motive?’
‘I did not say so; why should she have another motive? Whatever there may have been between her and me, I, at least, have done her no harm.’
‘Then it must be she who has harmed you?’
‘No; what can any one do to you, outside of yourself? Allour troubles come from our own faults or mistakes. We say faults when we speak of others, mistakes when it is ourselves. You told me once that Miss Mansfield—Artémise—had appeared again?’
‘Ah! I should like to know what she had to do with it,’ he cried.
‘Nothing,’ said Lady William; ‘but it would be important to me to know where to find her. Will you find out for me? There is something which she only knows which I am anxious to make sure of.’
‘Something important to you?’
‘They tell me so. I was not aware of it, and yet—if you could bring me to speech of her, Leo, for five minutes. She was never unkind to me.’
‘She is a bird of evil omen!’ cried Leo; ‘wherever she appears some harm follows.’
‘Ah!’ said Lady William, ‘and you said she was here the other day!’
‘There is something which has happened between you and my mother—something she has done to you which you will not tell me?’
‘What could she have done to me?’ Lady William made a movement as though shaking off some annoyance. ‘No; all she has done is to persuade me to this—about Lady Portcullis and the introduction of Mab into society. What could be more innocent?’ she said, with a laugh.
‘There is one thing,’ he said, ‘that one ought to do before giving an opinion. Has Lady Portcullis ever shown any interest? I have met her; she is very commonplace—one of the rigid English. Oh! very English. You do not know her? she has not sought your acquaintance? Would she?—has she ever?—do you think it is likely——?’
Lady William laughed again, but uneasily, painfully. ‘You are a sorcerer, Leo—this is the doubt I have never mentioned to any one—not to Mab herself, not to my brother. Do I think it is likely——? Since you ask me, I must answer no; my pride prevented me from saying it—not even to your mother did I say it—but she—ah!’ Lady William broke off again, still laughing—and the evening was beginning to fade, but Leo thought he could see the hot flush on her cheek.
‘I am not my mother’s champion,’ he said; ‘she has her peculiarities. She may have thought it would embroil you with the family.’
‘That,’ said Lady William, ‘was the least of what she thought!’
‘Dear lady,’ he said, ‘here is some mystery. You know that I am of your faction whatever happens. But you must tell me before I can do any good.’
Lady William did not make any immediate reply. She said at last: ‘Artémise: if you can bring me to speech of Artémise, I shall want nothing more.’ Then with a change of tone—‘Here is Mab coming back; no more of it—no more of it! there has been too much already. Mab, Leo is waiting till you give him some tea.’
‘Give it me strong and sweet,’ said Leo, who had jumped up from his low chair with perhaps a touch of embarrassment—but Lady William felt none—‘sweet and strong; for my head is a little confused, and I want it clear.’
‘Is it all about me and my father’s people? That is very good of you, Mr. Leo,’ said Mab, ‘to take so much interest—and have you converted mother to my way of thinking?—which is the thing I want most.’
‘I have been doing my best,’ he said, standing up beside her against the waning light in the window. And then it was for the first time that it occurred to Lady William—— Well, she was no more a matchmaking mother than you or I; but to see two young people together—one of them your own child, and the other a very good match—very well off, and kind, and true, and good,par-dessus le marché—this is a thing which will make the most unworldly woman think. To be sure, Leo was twice or nearly twice the age of Mab—but at their respective ages that was of no consequence. It was true also that Leo gave unmistakable signs at this present moment of much preferring Emily, the mother, to any seventeen-year-old; but that Lady William in her wisdom thought less important still. That would blow over quickly enough; it was scarcely even worth a thought; but they were smiling at each other in a very happy, pleasant way, she appealing, he answering the appeal. It was nothing, but yet it was a suggestion—and how many pleasant things it would involve! It was far too distant, too misty and vague to suggest to the mother how she should feel in her cottage if her Mab was spirited away. But it was a suggestion—and gave a new and agreeable direction to her thoughts.
Leo remained until the lamp was brought in by little Patty, whose eyes shone at the sight of him, partly because it pleased her to see ‘a gentleman’ again in the house (for Patty was a matchmaker, if you please, and never looked upon a ‘gentleman’ without an immediate calculation whether or not he would ‘do’ for MissMab), and partly because she felt that she must now be wholly forgiven for any wrong thing she had done in respect to him, seeing he was allowed to come back. Patty had never been sure what it was that she had done which was wrong; but none the less was it evident to her that she herself must have shared the pardon of the worst offender. And in the meantime there had been a pleasant little hour over the tea-table; as if to encourage her mother’s imagination, Mab had for once been seized with an impulse to talk, which was a thing that happened to her now and then. And it was beyond doubt that Leo was amused by her chatter, and responded gaily. They discussed Lord and Lady Portcullis with great mutual satisfaction, and the Ladies Pakenham, whom Leo had met in Paris; and he gave Mab a great deal of information as to her family, which the girl received with a mixture of amusement and offence, proving to her mother that there had been more things even in little Mab’s thoughts than were dreamt of in her philosophy. And then the young man went away, and they were left alone to resume the controversy or not, as fate might decide. Lady William, who had been brought into very close observation of her daughter, left the subject in Mab’s hands—but Mab did not enter into it again. She changed the subject to the FitzStephens’ dance, which was now so near, and led her mother to a discussion of the dresses they were to wear, which had the air of absorbing all Mab’s thoughts. ‘Do you think I will look very fat in white, mother? and my arms so red and healthy,’ she said. And this sort of conversation was carried on until Mab fairly put her mother, with all her anxieties and questions, to bed. The little girl was not without questions in her own mind, questions about her father, about the life she could not remember, or scarcely could remember, in Paris; about the family and relations she had never seen. By dint of much reflection it appeared to her that she could recollect a stiff gentleman with a fat face, who must have been Lord Portcullis himself. Why was it she knew nothing of her uncle? Why did he take no notice? Was there any reason for it? or was it her mother’s fault? If so, Mab was as strongly determined that she was of her mother’s faction as ever Leo Swinford could be; but more still than Leo Swinford she wanted to know from the beginning, and find out how and why it all was.
Thenight of the FitzStephens’ dance was a great one in Watcham. It was not precisely a dance, to tell the truth, as, to temper the pretensions belonging to the name of a ball, there was to be a little musical performance to begin with—a duet from Emily and Florry Plowden, a few pieces for violin and piano, and so on—which was sufficient to give something of the air of an impromptu and accidental performance to the dance, which, of course, was the real meaning of the whole. Some of the people were so unkind as not to arrive till the music was over, which was thought exceedingly bad taste by the performers and their families, and gave the General and his wife a moment of dread lest the party they had got up so carefully might not be a success after all. But by ten o’clock the music was over, the piano rolled into its appointed corner, and the music stands, which had been prepared for the violinists, put away. The musicians who were engaged for the dance did not want any music stands, and the assembled party required every scrap of room that was available. The excellent FitzStephens had done wonders to enlarge the space. They had taken away everything—almost the fixtures of the house: doors were unhung, carpets lifted: I cannot really calculate the trouble that had been taken. Even after the party assembled, the removal of the chairs on which they had been seated to hear the music was a matter of labour, for they were not all light chairs like those which people in Watcham borrow by the dozen from Simpkinson of the ‘Blue Boar,’ but included a number of comfortable easy-chairs for the ladies who did not dance, of whom there were a considerable number. The FitzStephens did not see the necessity of leaving the elder people out. They were old themselves, and though they delighted in seeing the young ones enjoy themselves, as they said, yet they liked also to have their own playfellows, with whom to have a comfortable talk, while they looked on. WhatMrs. FitzStephen would have liked best would have been to keep the elder ladies apart in the room which was called the General’s study, which had a door (removed) into the dancing room, by the opening of which (had it not been crowded by the elder gentlemen) the matrons could have seen enough of their children’s performances, as well as have been out of the way. This, however, was the one point which was not successful in the arrangements, for the mothers preferred to cling to the walls in the dancing room itself, at the risk of being swept away by flying skirts, or trodden upon by nimble feet; and the fathers occupied the doorway in a solemn block, so that nobody could see anything through them. Even Lady William, who generally was so great a help in getting people to stay where they were wanted, herself got into a corner in the dancing room, taking up, it must be admitted, very little room, as she stood up against the wall to watch how Mab got on among the dancers; and Miss Grey, in a costume in which she had gone to all the parties in the neighbourhood for the last twenty years, flitted about like an aged butterfly, getting the puffs of superannuated tulle about her into everybody’s way, in order to see not only how Mab got on, but how everybody got on in whom she was interested, and that meant every girl in the room. Thus Mrs. FitzStephen had one little point of vexation amid the perfect success of everything else. But it was so natural. The General declared that he himself liked to see the dancing, and was not at all satisfied to be sent away into another room.
The reader, perhaps, would like to know at once how Mab, who was thedébutanteof the evening, got on. Her white frock was very simple, being, as has been said, the manufacture of her mother and herself; but Lady William was universally allowed to have great taste, and it is saying a great deal to say that she herself was satisfied with the effort. As a matter of fact, the finest dressmaker in the world could not have disguised the fact that Mab’s figure was too solid, and her well-formed, round arms a little too rosy with health, for perfect grace. But that solid form and rosy tint agreed very well with the childish roundness of the face, under the dimpled and infantile softness of which Mab hid so much good sense and independent judgment of her own. She looked as she was, like a little girl just escaped from the trammels of childhood, enjoying the dance with all her might, without thinking for a moment whether anybody admired her, or what people thought of her dancing or demeanour, and without the slightest thrill of consciousness in mind or person. Mab was so popular that she was a little bored at first by her own success, for many of the mostdignified persons present, men quite old enough to be her father, considered it a right thing to show their interest in her by ‘coming forward’ and performing a solemn dance with her—General FitzStephen himself (who might have been her grandfather) taking her out for a quadrille as he might have taken Mrs. Swinford had she been there. There passed through Mab’s mind a devout thanksgiving that Uncle James was a clergyman, or perhaps he might have asked her too. The Archdeacon, indeed, who was also prevented by his cloth from any such escapades, insisted on taking her to have an ice, which she did not want, and which almost lost her one waltz. It will be seen from this that the dance was all that a first dance ought to be to Mab. Her card was filled before she had been two minutes in the room, the gentlemen crowding round her, so that before the end of the evening she, who accepted everybody at first with smiles and pleasure, became critical, and actually threw over young Mr. Wade, one of the county people, whom most girls delighted to dance with, in order to career over the floor with Jim for the third time in succession, to the astonishment of everybody. Jim, with whom she was on terms of easy family intimacy, finding fault with him all the time, was, on the whole, the dancer she preferred—though there was much to be said for Leo, who was making himself extremely agreeable, and whose ‘style’ most of the ladies admired greatly as something quite out of the common, and not in the least like the careless romping of Bobby Wade, who had been supposed to be the representative of the fashionable world, and to bring the last graces of thebeau mondeto astonish the villagers. That Mr. Swinford, on the contrary, should be so quiet, so far from any ideas of romping, filled the ladies with surprise, who had been watching Bobby as the glass of fashion and the mould of form. But Mab thought, and did not hesitate to say so, that Leo was a little stiff. She said whatever came into her head, that daring little girl—she was not afraid of offending anybody, especially not Mr. Leo, as she called him, to the admiration and wonder of all the other girls.
Mab, in short, enjoyed herself so much, and was so frankly delighted with the progress of events, that the questions that were poured upon her by all the old ladies became superfluous.
‘Well, Mab, are you getting partners?’ Mrs. Plowden said, whose attention had been riveted upon her own children, and who, in sincerity, had scarcely noticed Mab until she danced with Jim.
‘Partners! she has never once sat down the whole evening,’ cried Miss Grey.
Mrs. Plowden was aware that Emmy had not danced the two last dances, and she felt the humiliation; but she smiled. ‘Everybody is anxious that a girl should enjoy her first ball,’ she said. ‘Jim wanted you so much to enjoy yourself to-night.’
‘Well, she paid him back for it,’ said Miss Grey; ‘she threw over Bobby Wade for him.’
‘Bobby Wade!’ cried Mrs. Plowden.
Bobby Wade had not asked either of the Rectory girls. This little heartburning ran on along all the line of mothers who sat or stood by the wall. Mr. Wade and Mr. Swinford were the two men whose approach made every heart beat. Those who had not been asked by them—or, rather, whose daughters had not been asked by them—felt the vanity of the whole affair, and that the apples which were so bright outside were but ashes within. Leo, for his part, worked very hard that nobody might be left out; but young Wade did not care in the least, dancing up with his arm extended to the young lady he fancied, when he pleased, and carrying her off sometimes under the very nose of her partner.
‘He had better not try that on with me,’ said Jim.
‘What would you do? You couldn’t knock him down in Mrs. FitzStephen’s room?’
‘No, I don’t suppose I could do that,’ said Jim, ‘for their sakes; but I should certainly give him to understand——’
‘How could you give him to understand?’ said Mab, pursuing her cousin with pitiless practicality. But, as it happened, the proof of what Jim could do occurred at once, for Mr. Wade made a long step up to her—her very self—and held out that insolent arm.
‘Our da-ance, I think,’ he said.
‘Indeed, it is nothing of the kind!’ said Mab; ‘I am not engaged to you at all——’
Wade opened his eyes very wide, and looked as if he could not believe his ears. ‘I assure you this is ours—booked first thing in the evening. Come!’ he said.
‘We are losing half the waltz,’ said Mab to her partner, and they dashed off, brushing against Mr. Wade’s extended arm. It was very rude, and Lady William took her daughter very much to task for her want of politeness.
‘But it wasn’t the least his dance—he had nothing to do with it, mother.’
‘That may be,’ said Lady William, ‘but it is one thing to refuse a partner and another nearly to knock him down.’
‘Oh, did we knock him down?’ said Mab, delighted, andsoftly clapping her hands. She was disappointed to hear that he had not been knocked down at all, but was standing in a corner of the room very sulky, and vowing vengeance upon the little fat thing who had rejected his condescending offer. When, however, the Rectory girls and some others surrounded her open-mouthed, to hear what it all meant, Mab took higher ground. ‘If I hadn’t snubbed him,’ she said, ‘Jim would have punched his head, or something. He told me he would not stand it, so I thought it better a girl should do it than a boy. He may sulk, but he cannot do anything to me. And what do I care for his sulking? He cannot dance a bit,’ said this high-handed young lady, who had not a dance, not even an extra, to give to any one; others who were not so deeply engaged did not, perhaps, feel themselves so free. They surrounded her, however, with a certain wondering admiration, and those girls who were not acquainted with Bobby Wade, and who had hitherto been a little ashamed of the fact, now proclaimed it as a superiority.
‘He is such bad form,’ they all said.
It need scarcely be said that there were other things in Lady William’s mind than even her child’s success, as she stood up in her corner watching the dancers. It would be to do great injustice to Mrs. FitzStephen, a woman of very good connections, and who had taken so much trouble to make her party everything that a party in a village, out of London, out of the great world, could be, to say that it was in any sense of the word common or inferior. They were all very nice people, some even, as has been seen, from the county, for Bobby Wade had brought his sisters with him, who really gave themselves no airs at all among the village folk, though they did what they could to appropriate Leo, and gave him to understand that he was the only man in the least degree of their own set. But Lady William, as she looked round the room, was haunted by an altogether unreasonable regret and discomfort, which she was indignant with herself for feeling, but which came into her mind in spite of her. This was not the scene, she said to herself, in which Mab should be making her first acquaintance with the world. Then, why not? her self said to her, hotly. It would have been far better for Mab’s mother if she had never known any other; if she had looked forward to an innocent dance in the village as her greatest pleasure, and never stepped out of that simple circle. Ah, but she had done so, the other visionary party in the argument said. She had stepped out of that circle, and her daughter was Lord William Pakenham’s daughter as well ashers: and was it not a wrong to Mab that she should be here where everybody looked up to the Wades, people who were of no particular importance, whose origin could not be compared to hers? These things Lady William was pondering with a grave face, when General FitzStephen came up to her, dodging between the dancers, to take her to supper.
‘I know you never take supper,’ the General said, ‘but none of the ladies can move till you do, and I should think you would at least be glad to sit down a little.’