None of the ladies could move till she did. That was true enough; she had the benefit, such as it was, of her rank. Lady Wade it was well known would not come to the village festivities because she was unseated from her usual priority by the superior claims of Lady William. She had the advantage, such as it was; but the child——
‘Mab is having a thoroughly “good time,”’said the General. ‘You need not concern yourself with her any more. She is as happy as the night is long, and I hope the young ones will make it long and keep it up. They all seem to be enjoying themselves tremendously now.’
‘Yes; they all seem very happy. It is so kind of you——’
‘To give ourselves the pleasure of seeing them so?’ said the old General. ‘I don’t call that kindness but selfishness on our parts. My wife was always fond of young people—which made it more a regret to us in former times that we had no children of our own.’
‘Yes, indeed; how strange it is—you who would have done them so much justice—who would have been such perfect parents! and they seem to be sown broadcast about the streets at everybody’s door.’
‘We must not say that, for, of course, Providence arranges for the best,’ said the General, ‘and I don’t regret it now—I don’t regret it now. The worst troubles that people have come through their children—either they have not enough for them; or they spend everything their parents have got; or they are ill-behaved; or they are unhappy. And there is scarcely a moment of their lives that fathers and mothers are not at their children’s mercy, to be struck to the ground by one thing or another—perhaps misfortune perhaps death. Oh no, my dear lady, I do not regret it. I am very glad to be ending my life with my dear wife without anxiety—now.’
‘And yet I can’t contemplate life at all without my Mab,’ Lady William said.
‘Ah, my dear lady, that is exactly what I say. You are entirely in her power. You can’t call your soul your own. If she were to take a perverse line, or if she were to fall ill——’
‘For Heaven’s sake, General, don’t be such an evil prophet,’ she said, with a shiver, and then laughing, ‘I had meant to distinguish myself at supper, and you have taken all my appetite away.’
‘I don’t believe in your appetite,’ said the fatherly old gentleman; ‘I have never seen it yet. But seriously, even you must be pleased with Mab’s little success; and I hear she snubbed Bobby Wade. Do him all the good in the world to be well snubbed by a little girl. The little fool thinks he has all the girls at his feet. But Mab will never be of that mind.’
‘She is independent enough. I wonder what you will think of my puzzle, General. They say that I ought not to keep her here in the village—that she ought to come out under her aunt, Lady Portcullis’, auspices, instead of living so quietly here with me.’
‘They talk nonsense, my dear lady,’ said the General; ‘a girl is always best, and I think she always looks her nicest, by her mother’s side.’
‘Thank you for that kind opinion, General.’
‘But I can’t see any reason,’ said the old gentleman, ‘why her mother, a lady whom we all admire and honour, should not herself abandon the quiet corner a little (though we should miss her dreadfully), and bring out her daughter, which would be better than any Lady Portcullis in the world.’
‘Ah, but that is impossible,’ Lady William said quickly. She was moved a little out of her place by the rush of the procession from the drawing-room, all the elder ladies going in; but presently she went back and addressed herself to doing her duty by Mrs. FitzStephen in guiding these elder ladies as they returned into the smaller room. ‘We may as well make ourselves comfortable here,’ she said, ‘since all the children are happy and in full swing.’ It was always Lady William who settled these things—and so quietly. The ladies were very glad of comfortable seats after standing half the evening against the wall, and the General managed to get up the quiet rubber he loved, while still one waltz followed another, and the whirling figures went round and round.
‘Tell me,’ said Leo Swinford, coming in behind her a little out of breath, ‘why Miss Wade tells me I am the only one of her set. I am not of her set, or any set; is it intended to be civil, or what does she mean?’
‘She means that the rest of us are of the village, and she and you are of the county, which is a very different thing.’
‘It is a distinction I do not understand. Nobility and gentry!—yes, I know what that means: but we are not noblesse at all, neither she nor I. We are more or less rich—no two of us the same—but is that the only distinction here?’
‘Oh no; there are a great many grades of distinction. The county means the aristocracy——’
‘Permit me; you and Miss Mab are the only persons noble here—is that not so? Ah, you will have to give me many lessons to bring me to a proper understanding.
‘And yet I condemn Mab to be nobody,’ said Lady William. ‘Yes, that is what I am doing. Her old friends are very good to her. She has her little triumph to-night. But it will not always be her first ball. And it is I who keep her in obscurity. I think I am learning my lesson more quickly than you do yours.’
Thereis nothing that happens more frequently in human experience than that, after long doubting what to do, and hesitation over a new step, the whole matter is suddenly taken out of our hands, and the question solved for us in a moment, and in the most summary way. Lady William had found many reasons for resisting the advice, whether given in love or enmity, of her friends. Her husband’s family had not been hostile to her, but it had been bitterly indifferent, taking no notice, making no inquiry into her condition or that of her child, and she had but small inducement to endeavour to draw closer that very loose and artificial tie which united her to the great people. It seemed to herself a sort of accidental tie, meaning so little to any body except to herself—and to herself whose whole life it had shaped, it was no pleasure to recur to the few years of marriage in which she had been taken so entirely out of her sphere without attaining anything else that was of pleasure or advantage to her. Sometimes she had been tempted to ask herself whether that was more than a terrible dream, a sort of fever through which she had passed, and at the end of which she had found herself back again in her native place, among the quiet scenes of her childhood, but with a different name, a changed personality, and Mab—the greatest sign of all that things were not as they had been. The Rector and his wife, however, did not take into consideration the great indifference of the family to Lady William and her child. They knew but little about the details. Mrs. Plowden for one could scarcely have got into her head that to be Lady William, to have lived in France, as well as in the great world, and to have grown familiar with many things that appeared very grand and delightful to a country lady who had never moved out of her parish, was perhaps to be rather humiliated than elevated both in one’s own opinion and in that of the world. Such an ideacould have found no place in her intelligence. And she had not the slightest doubt that Lord and Lady Portcullis, if it were properly represented to them, would do their duty by their niece if not by their sister-in-law. She thought it was Emily’s pride which alone stood in the way. And though her husband knew the world better, yet he, too, was of opinion that it was chiefly Emily’s pride. Mrs. Swinford’s thoughts on the subject were of a very different complexion, even before she had thrown that horrible uncertainty into Lady William’s mind, that feeling that even her position, so modest as it was, might be assailed and turned into shame. If she had held back hitherto it was not from pride nor from fear of inquiry, but from a doubt whether it would be of the least advantage to her child to make any overtures or petition. Petition, that was the right word—and a petition which was more or less likely to be rejected, as she felt sure.
She was seated in her little drawing-room full of these doubts and questions one morning very soon after the FitzStephens’ ball. It seemed impossible now that things could go on as they were. The mere fact of all that had been said on the subject shook the foundations of life. And Mab’s age made a change in everything. So long as she was a child, the obscurity of her position was of no consequence. All that was needed for her was her mother’s care, and to be with her mother wherever she might happen to be; but with every day the position changed. Lord William Pakenham’s child was one thing, and Emily Plowden’s another. Was it her duty to let Mab grow up in the humbler region, perhaps fix her own fate in that, and settle for ever as a poor man’s wife in the village, while another world might be open to her? Had she any right to bind her child to her own limited fortunes, to keep her all her life a mere pensioner on the bounty of those who ought to recognise and care for her in a very different way? But if she made any attempt to alter the position, might she not make it worse instead of better? Might she not subject herself only, and Mab, who was of more consequence, to a repulse which would be much worse than neglect, to perhaps a question even of the humble rights which had been already recognised, the right of the widow and child to a subsistence, however doled out? The thought of having to fight for those rights, to open up the secrets of her life, and prove that she had a right to her name, was an idea intolerable to Lady William. She said to herself with a sick heart that she would rather die—she would rather die! Oh, that would be an easy way out of it; but that she should die and leave Mab behindher to fight it out, to prove her own lawful birth, her mother’s honour, that was impossible. If she were to die she must climb out of her grave, she felt, to prevent that, to take the brunt upon herself, to save from such a horrible struggle the child, the little girl who did not know what dishonour was—Mab, of all creatures in the world, to have any stain upon her of any kind! Then Lady William tried to brace herself up to think that she must no longer hesitate, that for Mab’s happiness she must venture everything, and prove at last, beyond any question, that whatever her fate might be there could never be in it any doubt or possibility of shame.
She was seated thinking of all this, her needlework going mechanically through her hands, her head bent, and every faculty occupied with this debate within herself, when she heard the little click of the gate which announced a visitor, and then the rap of Patty’s knuckles upon the door. ‘If you please, my lydy, it is Mr. Swinford and a strange gentleman. Am I to say as your lydyship’s at home?’
‘Did I ever tell you to say I was not at home, Patty?’
‘I don’t know, my lydy. You wouldn’t speak to me not for two days, ‘cause I let Mr. Leo come in.’
‘You are a little nuisance,’ said Lady William, which was enough to make Patty’s heart dance as she rushed along the narrow passage to answer—what was not yet, however, a knock at the door.
For the two gentlemen had met Mab in the garden. Mab was very busy in the garden in the end of April. She had a hundred things to do. She had a large apron with pockets heavy with all kinds of necessities covering her dress, and a very homely hat upon her head—one of those broad articles plaited of brown rushes, which are called reed hats, and may be bought for sixpence anywhere. It was not unbecoming, though it was entirely without decoration. Mab’s hair was slightly untidy from much stooping over the flowerbeds, and her cheeks were flushed by the same cause. She had fortunately large gardening gloves on, which kept her hands from the soil and pricks which were too familiar to them. Mab met the two young men as they came in. She was hurrying past with a box full of roots in one arm. But she was not in the least embarrassed by the encounter. She put the trowel which she carried in the other hand, among the roots, and stopped to speak. ‘I am very busy,’ she said. ‘It is beautiful this morning, isn’t it? but we shall have rain before night. So it is just the very opportunity to put in my carnations. They are a little late, but I was waiting for some good kinds.’
Of course, while she spoke to Leo her eyes had wandered to the other man with him, who was of quite a different kind—younger than Leo, still in the twenties, Mab thought, and not handsome; but surely she had seen him somewhere before. He was fair, like herself, with blunt features, and eyes that were blue, but not bright. In every way his appearance was quite different to that of Leo Swinford—no foreign air about him—clothes that looked much less thought of and cared for, more carelessly worn, but somehow giving, Mab could not tell how, a more perfect effect. She gave him a friendly glance, though she did not know him. But, indeed, she did not feel at all as if she did not know him. She was confident that the face was quite familiar to her, and that she must have seen him before.
‘I have brought a friend to introduce to you, Miss Mab: and I expect you to be friends at once, although you have never seen each other before.’
‘Have I never seen him before?’ said Mab. ‘Perhaps you are mistaken, Mr. Leo. I am sure I know his face, though I don’t know his name.’
And then the young men both laughed. ‘I will tell you where you have seen his face—in your own glass when you dress in the morning—I am sure you never look at it afterwards. This is Lord Will Pakenham, Miss Mab, and to be sure you ought to have known each other all your lives.’
‘Lord Will——’ Mab grew very red from the tip of her chin to the untidy locks on her forehead. ‘Does that mean Lord William—my father’s name?’
‘And I am your cousin Will,’ said the young man.
Mab paused a few moments longer before she held out to him her big gardening glove. ‘I do not remember my father,’ she said, ‘so you cannot remind me of him. Did we ever—perhaps when we were little children—see each other before?’
‘Every time,’ said Leo, ‘did I not tell you, that you have looked in the glass.’
I do not know what was the effect at that moment upon Lord Will, but the impression on Mab’s mind was one full of pleasure. These other people, with their clean-cut features, Leo himself, her cousin Emmy, who had the impertinence to be like Mab’s own mother, who belonged to her—were a sort of reproach to the girl. But here was somebody who had a blunt nose, and eyes which were rather dull in colour, like her own, and who looked friendly, homely, as if he did not mind—who also smiled upon her in a very natural way, as if he too felt that he had known her all his life.‘Stop,’ said Mab, suddenly drawing off her glove with her white, strong, small teeth. ‘This time my hand is cleaner than my glove.’ She caught the glove in her other hand as it fell. If she had been a year older, of course she would not have done it: and her frock was short and her manner entirely at ease. Though she had been at a dance, and might be supposed to have come out, she was still Lady William’s little girl.
‘Come in to mother; she will be glad to see you,’ she added immediately. ‘I can’t go into the drawing-room, can I, with all this? and I must get these put in before I do anything. Mr. Leo, please go in to mother; you know the way.’
Next minute Leo was presenting Lord Will to Lady William. It was a very curious scene. She rose up in the midst of her thoughts, wondering, questioning with herself what she was to do, and heard in a moment her husband’s name pronounced in her ears. The effect was so great that as she rose hastily from her chair the blood forsook her face altogether. She held by the table before her, letting her work fall out of her hand.
‘Dear lady,’ said Leo, ‘we have startled you. I ought to have known.’
‘Whom did you say?’
‘I am William Pakenham,’ said the young man. ‘I beg you ten thousand pardons. Swinford has brought me to make acquaintance with—my relations.’
She sank back into her chair, and for a moment covered her eyes with her hand. ‘You must forgive me,’ she said, ‘I am very foolish; but the sound of your name so suddenly in the midst of all I was thinking——’ She paused a little, and then looked up at him. A smile came upon her face. She felt like one who has looked up and, expecting to see some painful apparition, sees instead a smiling face. ‘You are like my Mab,’ she said, tears coming with a rush to her eyes.
‘So Swinford tells me; but I am not like my uncle.’
Lady William did not say anything, but something in her eyes, something in the momentary tremor of her lips, seemed to say, ‘Thank God.’
It was an exceedingly awkward, stupid, uncalled-for remark upon the part of Will Pakenham, who knew that his uncle had been a scamp, but did not know whether or not his wife might have cherished his memory all the same. There are some wives who deify a blackguard after he is gone. But the visitor was young, and this possibility did not occur to him.
‘You have been living here,’ he said, ‘a long time.’
It may be supposed that Lady William was very much shaken out of her usual self-command before she would allow the stranger to take the conversation thus into his own hands, and to begin an interrogatory examination. It was not so much the suddenness of his introduction that had this effect upon her, as the bewilderment of thoughts in which she was involved when these intricacies were thus cut as by a knife, by the appearance of such an astonishing and unexpected figure upon the scene. She began now, however, to recover herself, and to realise that these questions were not at all of the manner in which she chose to permit herself to be addressed. Accordingly, though she smiled in reply, she gave no other answer, but turned to Leo, who stood by watching her, and by no means at his ease.
‘You were telling us the other day of the ladies of the family,’ she said, with a half-reproachful smile; ‘but you did not tell us of Lord Will——’
How quick she was, seizing the diminutive which made the name less dreadful to her—though she had never heard it before!
‘We are old friends,’ said Leo; but I did not think—in short, it is years since we saw each other. He has come on purpose to make your acquaintance, and his cousin’s.’
‘He is very good,’ Lady William said, with a little bow towards him. ‘I have been here for many years open to a visit. And you, are you adopting any profession or service? or are you merely a gentleman at large?’
She smiled upon the young man with her usual gracious reserve; and he began clearly to perceive that questions to her were practicable no more. He answered, ‘Oh, Coldstreams,’ a little awkwardly, feeling somehow that this lady in the little cottage, whose daughter did her own gardening, and who had a little charity girl for a servant, had put him back in his own place.
‘That is a great deal better than doing nothing,’ said Lady William; ‘but it is not very hard work. I thought you were all adopting professions, to work hard, you young men about town. Has your father come to town yet?’
‘My father?’ said Lord Will vaguely. ‘Oh, he’s—— somewhere fishing. My mother comes up after Easter. The governor’s not very fond of town.’
‘And your uncle John?——’
‘Oh——’ said the young man, colouring a little, ‘we thought you would be sure to see it in the papers—everybody is supposed to see everything in the papers: he died about a fortnight ago.’
‘Died!’
‘Well, he was rather an old fellow, don’t you know,’ said Will in an apologetic tone, ‘and lived hard. I don’t think it was ever expected he’d have dragged on so long.’
‘In France,’ said Lady William, ‘there is such a thing as afaire part. They don’t exist in England, I suppose?’
‘They are hideous things in France,’ said Leo, with a shiver, ‘when you get a letter black to your elbow with a long string of names which you don’t know, till you come to one little one at the end——’
‘They are better, however, than no information at all.’
‘Oh, I hope you will not think there was any incivility meant. I myself heard my mother say that you must be informed. There was a search through all the address books, but we could not find at first where you lived. And then I volunteered——’
‘To come here, of all places in the world—next door to my cottage! How extraordinarily acute yourflairmust be, my dear Lord Will!’
‘It’s not that,’ said the young man, very red. ‘I knew that Swinford knew you. He wrote to one of the girls, saying what a stun—I mean that you were in his neighbourhood, and about your daughter, and all that—— ’
‘Perhaps it was the first intimation you had of our existence,’ she said.
‘Oh, no—no; don’t think so. Besides, you are in the peerage; there can be no mistake about that.’
‘That is an honour I didn’t think of. And so your uncle John is dead? He was a very strange man—not like any of the family——’
‘Not at all like the rest of us. None of the others had ever two sixpences to rub against each other. He has died leaving a great fortune.’
‘A great fortune!’ said Lady William, startled.
The young man looked as if he had said more than he intended. ‘A—a good deal of money,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean a great fortune as people think of fortunes nowadays. A good bit of money.’ He paused a little as if unwilling to go further, then quickly throwing the words from him like a stone, ‘And no will,’ he said.
‘So,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘you have seen your dear aunt.’
Lord Will had arrived in the afternoon, and she had scarcely seen him until dinner. After that meal—in the moment always anxiously awaited when there is any subject to talk of, when the servants had left the room—she entered into conversation. It was not by her invitation that he had come to the Hall—neither, of course, were any of the circumstances of her arranging. Sometimes, strangely enough, when there is an evil deed to be done, Providence will seem to arrange all the circumstances for it with special care—to give the intending sinner a clearer light for the resistance of temptation, or to commit him to his evil choice and inevitable doom. Thus Mrs. Swinford’s whole soul was set upon the ruin of Lady William—if she could fathom it—and the chain of possibilities seemed woven for that end.
‘Yes,’ said Lord Will, though a little embarrassed by this description, ‘I have seen Lady William: and being a dear aunt whom I never saw before, and whom I did not expect to be proud of, she is the greatest piece of luck I ever came upon. You know her, I suppose?’
‘Know her!’ said Mrs. Swinford, with that little continuous laugh which was like the tingling of an electric bell. ‘Indeed, I know her—to my cost.’
‘Ah! there’s mischief in her, then?’
‘There are always old sores in a friendship of twenty years. Isn’t that true, mother? But whatever they are, they must be of very old date, and there can be no reason for bringing them forward now.’
Thus Leo, who was evidently very uneasy, and had showed symptoms of rising from the table though his mother had as yet given no sign.
‘Leo,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘has fallen under the fascinationwhich a woman of that age often exercises—too old to be dangerous, but old enough to know how to make herself very agreeable.’
‘Oh, she’s very agreeable,’ said Lord Will; ‘as for fascination, one doesn’t associate it somehow with the name of an aunt, don’t you know.’
‘That is true, but you see she is not everybody’s aunt. To some people she is——’
‘I should say to everybody a charming woman. Do you take your coffee downstairs to-night, mother?’
‘I know what you mean, Leo: but coffee or no coffee, you must understand that I have a great deal to say to Lord Will. It may be now, or it may be later—but I have a great deal to say——’
‘I need not tell you I am entirely at your disposition, Mrs. Swinford.’
‘You know,’ said Leo, almost angrily, ‘it is bad for your health to stay up late: and Will wants a glass of wine, or perhaps to knock about the balls a little——’
‘I hope I don’t look like a fellow to knock about balls—when I have so much better within reach——’
‘It’s always well,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘to know how to turn a compliment. Will you now give me your arm upstairs like a Frenchman, or wait like a Britisher till you have had your glass of wine?’
‘Perish the glass of wine!’ said Lord Will with a laugh, ‘though I hear ladies say nowadays that they like the British fashion best.’
‘These are strong-minded ladies, who are, I believe, the fashion, too—whom the men don’t care for, and who, consequently, pretend not to care for the men.’
‘Well, that’s very flattering to us, at least,’ said Lord Will. He was perhaps a little too much in the movement of his time to accept it as the gospel it has always been supposed to be, and was even a little disposed to laugh in his sleeve at the antiquated charmer who held by that old doctrine. Mrs. Swinford’s air of the ancient seductrice and devourer of men was not a new thing to this experienced youth.
‘It comes to much the same thing,’ said Leo, ‘for the Frenchmen adjourn for their cigarette after they have reconducted the ladies. Come, mother, let him be English for to-night. I have something to say to him, too.’
‘My son,’ said Mrs. Swinford, with the blandest smile, ‘LordWill shall choose between us. I am not going to exercise any pressure, or pull against you.’
The natural result, of course, was that in a minute or two more Mrs. Swinford was established in the great drawing-room in her favourite chair, just within reach of the influence of the blazing, cheerful fire, amid the banks of flowers and pleasant twinkling of the lights, with Lord Will before her, at her feet.
‘We need not detain you, Leo,’ she said, with a nod and a smile; ‘I know your liking for this hour by yourself.’
‘I have no choice of one hour more than another by myself,’ said Leo, ‘and I, too, prefer the company of my guest to my own.’
‘Go, dear boy,’ she said, kissing the tips of her fingers. ‘I prefer that you should not remain: I have a great deal to say, and it is grave. You can say your say afterwards. At present, I don’t want to be contradicted. It puts me out.’
Leo looked at her with an earnest remonstrance in his eyes, but she continued to nod and smile at him, waving him away with that action of her arm which had once been so graceful and playful. Leo had been brought up to think all his mother’s movements graceful, and herself the most distinguished of women. But there was a painful sense of unwilling ridicule in his mind as he looked back at her waving him away, placed in the most careful pose in the great chair, and with the young man, much perplexed between curiosity and embarrassment, and a sense of ridicule, too, in the low chair at her feet. He withdrew into the shade beyond the pillars, but he did not go away. His mother could still see him moving in the partial dark, standing staring at a half-seen picture, or taking up and throwing down again book after book.
‘We are not to be left quite alone,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders; ‘Leo acts sheep-dog. It is a new rôle for him. But whether it is in my interest or yours, Lord Will, I cannot tell.’
‘There can be only one of us who is in any danger,’ said the young man.
‘I might say that was enigmatical still: but I will receive it as I am sure it is meant, and I congratulate you upon a very pretty turn of speech. Few young Englishmen deserve that. My Leo I used to think—but he is getting heavy in England, as most young men do.’
To this Lord Will, who was much intent upon the revelations to be made to him, was prepared with no reply; and serious as this old woman’s meaning was, and fatal in intent, she was nevertheless half disappointed that he did not continue a little thebadinage with which she would have been pleased to preface what she had to say. She had an eye to serious interest even in desiring to prolong this moment. For no man likes to see his old mother imitating the coquette, and it might have resulted in sending Leo away.
‘I think I heard you say—and you must pardon me for interfering with your family affairs—that there was a question of money involved in your coming here to see after these unknown relations?’
‘Yes,’ said Lord Will, straightening himself up with relief; ‘there is money. My uncle John died the other day, rich, and without a will. There were only two other brothers, my father and my Uncle William. In that case, Uncle William’s heirs would come in for half the estate.’ He stopped with a little embarrassment. ‘And my father was of opinion—my mother thought—— It seemed a little hard perhaps that people we know nothing of—and then, for his rank, and with all he has to keep up, my father is a poor man.’
‘So you came to see——?’
Whatever her own motives might be, Mrs. Swinford had no thought of letting off a culprit of another kind. The young man grew red under her searching eye. ‘You thought it a pity,’ she went on, ‘that the money you could spend so much better should be wasted upon a couple of insignificant women—who perhaps had never heard, never knew that they had any claim to it, so would have been none the worse?’
‘You take me up too sharply,’ answered Lord Will. ‘I don’t think I meant anything like that. I meant that it was best to see something of them—to know something. My father has given Lady William an allowance all along. I don’t know that he was compelled to do it. He has not abandoned his brother’s widow. We thought that perhaps——’
‘I will not ask what you find so much difficulty in putting into words. What would your father say to any one who gave him a chance of proving—that Emily Plowden was not William Pakenham’s widow at all?’
She had lowered her voice, but yet spoke with such a keenness of meaning that she was heard further than she intended. Leo came striding out of the dark where he was, calling out in a voice of indignation, ‘Mother!’ She turned to him and waved her hand quickly, threateningly, without any of the former consciousness of a gracious pose.
‘Go away!’ she cried, ‘go away, go away! What I am sayingis not for you. Go away, Leo Swinford, or you may hear something you will like still less—go away, go away!’
‘Swinford,’ said Lord Will, standing up, ‘this you see is too serious to be suppressed. Whether it’s fact or not, don’t you see I must hear out what your mother has got to say?’
Leo did not make any reply. He retired again to the darker part of the room, but instead of lounging about drew forward a chair almost ostentatiously, and placed himself therein.
‘I see,’ said Mrs. Swinford, with a laugh, ‘the Devil’s Advocate—on the part of his client. That will not make any difference. Would you like me to tell you how these two came together? I can do so in every detail.’
‘The question for me is,’ said Lord Will, after a pause: for to tell the truth, being a young man with a clear view of his own interests, but no wickedness in him, nor desire to harm his neighbours—at least no more than was essential to benefit himself—he was a little frightened by the gleam of devilry in Mrs. Swinford’s eyes; and he was well enough aware—as people in society are aware of everything of the kind—that there was something about Mrs. Swinford herself which had kept her out of England for so long. ‘The question for me is simply about the marriage. If there is scandal there is no use in raking up old scandals; besides, whatever happened before, if she is his wife and the girl his child, nothing else matters to us. I am sure it would be all very interesting—but you see——’
‘I am not going to rake up old scandals,’ Mrs. Swinford said, ‘but as it all happened within my knowledge—— She was here—a pretty little country girl, nothing more. She has immensely improved—quite, quite a different creature. A girl I had taken a fancy to. I am not sure that she did not teach Leo a little. That was her standing, the daughter of the parish clergyman.’
‘That I am sure she did not,’ said Leo from behind; ‘you forget that I had a governess, mother.’
‘Oh, you are there still, old Truepenny! You seem practising for the ghost inHamlet, Leo. No, decidedly I cannot go on while he is there. It shall be for another time. To-morrow you will come to me in my boudoir before you go away.’
Lord Will looked round to his friend with an appealing air. Then going up to him, ‘Swinford,’ he said, ‘like a good fellow, let me hear it all now. I must know it.’
‘In order, if you can, to keep what is theirs from two helpless women?’
‘I want to keep nothing that is theirs from any one,’ said the young man, with an angry flush.
‘And yet it appears this is what you came here for. But forewarned is forearmed. Yes, you shall hear it all now; I will not interfere.’
‘Is he gone?’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘really gone? Leo is the most scrupulous and delicate of men. He hates your talk of the clubs, gossip and scandal, as he calls it. If I had brought him up in England would it have been so? Shut the door, and draw the curtain, Lord Will. I have the temperature kept up as well as I can, but there are always cold winds about.’ She shivered a little and drew round her a film of a white shawl that had been hanging over her chair. ‘Now come back and put yourself there. Now I may speak my mind.’
‘You must know,’ she went on after all had been done as she ordered, ‘that your uncle William was a great deal here in this house—a very great deal—it was a kind of home to him. I cannot say that I myself remarked that he had been attracted by Emily Plowden, but I have told you that she had a certain bread-and-butter-prettiness. I do not saybeauté de diable, for it was neitherbeauté, nor had she enough in her for the devil to have anything to do with it. Youth alone sometimes attracts a man.Enfin, I never saw anything of it: but one evening, nay, it was pretty late—he came to me’—she paused a little and drew a long breath—‘to tell me—it was a confused story—something about having committed himself. Mr. Swinford, Leo’s father, was a little like Leo, but more English, more rigid. He burst in while this was being explained to me, took up a false idea, got what you call the wrong end of the stick——’ She spoke not with her usual ease, but with strange breaks of breathlessness. ‘Enough, he got it all wrong, completely wrong from beginning to end, and stormed and made a scene. And when he understood that it was Emily who was concerned—Emily had always been a great favourite,’ with the electrical tinkle running through her words, ‘he insisted that a marriage should take place at once. She left our house late that night, escorted by your uncle: and what happened I cannot tell. I never met her again except in Paris, where she was called Lady William, but saw no society, except the sort of men among whom your poor uncle, by that time heartbroken and misunderstood——’
‘But why heartbroken—if he had been in love with her?’
‘You are an innocent young man,’ said Mrs. Swinford, tapping him on the shoulder with her fan. ‘Oh, a very innocent dearboy! You don’t think what a man like that would feel with a creature like her—a country girl tied to him, and no doubt leading him a life! She kept him—from saying a word to me, watching over him like a cat over a mouse. He was burning to tell me—something; I know not what. My husband also was much prejudiced, and would not let us meet. So that I never heard his secret, if there was a secret, as I suppose there must have been. I have never seen her again till I saw her last month, shining as Lady William, and believed in by all the country folk—taking precedence,’ Mrs. Swinford cried with her little laugh, throwing up her fine hands, with all her rings flashing, ‘upon next to nothing a year.’
‘But she was acknowledged by my uncle as his wife.’
‘She was called Lady William among the sort ofdemi-mondethey lived in. But what happened between the time she left my house and the time I saw her there——’
‘Do you mean to say that my uncle eloped with this young lady, Mrs. Swinford?’
My dear Lord Will, you are young, but you know the world. They left the house together, late at night. I tell you, quite late, after midnight. He, a man who was known to be—well, not the safest for women: and she a country girl of nineteen—oh, very well able to take care of herself, but as silly and ignorant as they usually are: and—I know no more.’
Mrs. Swinford threw up her hands again, with the dazzling rings. There was a thrill and tremble in her whole frame with the excitement of the story, which was so elaborately false yet so nearly true. The young man had not seated himself a second time. He stood leaning upon the mantelpiece, his head bent, looking down upon the blazing fire.
‘And you?’ he said, ‘you allowed a girl to go out of your house like that—a girl, unprotected?’
‘What could I do?’ said Mrs. Swinford. ‘I was not her keeper, neither was I in command of affairs. I tell you that my husband insisted——’
‘For the marriage, you said, for a marriage—that was very different.’
‘Ah, you aredifficile! And she, a hot-headed girl full of her own attractions, do you think she would be restrained——’
‘From leaving home with her lover in the dead of night?’
‘Her lover!’ cried Mrs. Swinford, with the tingling laugh; ‘her lover!’
‘Was he not her lover? For heaven’s sake say what you mean.’
There was a little pause again, through which her laugh ran on, as if she could not stop it when once it had begun. Lord Will was the first to speak. He said: ‘All this is very curious and dramatic and strange; but the one question of my uncle’s marriage is, after all, the chief thing. I don’t think my father ever entertained any doubt. It is in the peerage——’
‘That is no proof,’ said Mrs. Swinford sharply.
‘I know; but still—my father was sent for at his death. There was no suspicion. I have heard that it was amésalliance, but that is all I have ever heard.’
‘Your father arrived when he was dying, had no communication with him, nor had any of his true friends. She kept them away. Lord Will, perhaps we have talked on this question long enough; it is no matter to me, it is only you who are affected. If there is money involved it is of the more consequence. You will require proof of the marriage before you do anything further. That is all you have to do. Ask her to send in her certificates, child’s birth, and all that. Women of that class are very wary; they generally see after their papers. I have thought it over; I thought it all over before I made up my mind to speak to you. I felt that I could not allow what might be a great wrong to be done to the family of one who was once a dear friend——’
Mrs. Swinford put her handkerchief lightly to her eyes; it was scarcely substantial enough to have imbibed one tear. And there were perhaps other reasons why tears would have been out of place; but, had they existed at all, they would have been not dew, but fire.
Lord Willwas greatly impressed, as may be supposed, by that interview with Mrs. Swinford. When he joined Leo downstairs he had very little to say. He had not the heart to play a game at billiards, but knocked the balls a little vaguely, and took the refreshment which was given to him while he puffed at his cigar. ‘I say, Swinford, your mother and this aunt of mine don’t seem to hit it off,’ he said.
‘Don’t they?’ said Leo. ‘I don’t know, indeed; they were great friends once.’
‘Which makes women hate each other all the more when they fall out.’
‘Does it?’ said Leo. ‘You seem to know so much. I am older, but my knowledge is much less.’
‘By Jove!’ said Lord Will. ‘You ought to have learnt a thing or two,’ and then he became suddenly silent, thinking it would be very difficult if he were called upon to explain himself. Leo did not ask any questions, but he was not indifferent to what his friend said.
‘I think you should not take anybody’s opinion,’ he said. ‘If you want to know about your aunt, go and see her for yourself.’
‘I’ve done that, thanks to you, Swinford; and I thought her stunning—that’s the truth. But you see there’s money in it, and we’re not to call rich at Pakenham. It would be a deal pleasanter for my father to keep all Uncle John’s money than to divide with a lady who perhaps has no real right. Don’t jump up in that way—I think her stunning. But still you know that’s a very queer story of Mrs. Swinford’s. Uncle Will was no end of a bad old man, I’ve always heard. Why mightn’t he do that as well as the rest?’
‘I do not know,’ said Leo, who had grown pale, ‘what yourrespected uncle is supposed to have done. He may have been the greatest reprobate that ever lived; but I do not see how that furthers your case. I presume there must have been two of them before it would do you any good; and the man who will endeavour to cast a blemish upon that lady—well, I may say he will have to do with me first.’
‘Swinford! for goodness’ sake don’t take up that tone. Why, what have you to do with it? Do you mean to challenge me? These are your French ways—you know as well as I do they’re no go here.’
‘The more’s the pity, when it is a question of injuring a woman!’ said Leo, whose moustache had taken a warlike twist, and every nerve in his person seemed strung.
‘I don’t want to injure her; but if you think fifty thousand pounds or so—that’s a nice bit of money to hand over for no motive but sheer love of justice—if it should turn out perhaps—’
‘If what should turn out?’
‘Well—that perhaps they had no real right. I don’t mean that it would be their fault. She might have been taken in, and never known. I’ve always heard he was a horrible old scamp, up to everything—and would have cheated you as soon as look at you. It would be nothing wonderful if he had cheated a girl who, I suppose, was fond of him. A woman will be fond of anything that notices her, I believe. And fifty thousand pounds is a big bit of money to throw away.’
‘Well, my friend,’ said Leo, ‘I am quite well aware that fighting is, as you say in England, no go; but I am bound also to allow that it is a farce in France, and that if it were ever so serious and real it is not a way to decide a question like this. However, let us try, if not to decide it at least to throw some light upon it.’
‘Oh, that’s easy enough done, old man,’ said Lord Will. ‘You needn’t trouble yourself. She has a solicitor, I suppose, and he will have to send in all the papers to our man, and they’ll manage it between them. Of course, if our fellow has a hint that there is anything irregular he will be more particular. That’s more or less what I came for, don’t you know: to see what she had heard about old John, and so forth, and what she expected and——’
‘What you say,’ said Leo, ‘sounds as if you meant—that you were to try whether she could be made to be content with less than her rights—with anything that it was thought well to give. I don’t suppose that is what you mean.’
‘It’s kind of you to add that much,’ said Lord Will, who had stopped in his amusement of knocking about the balls, which he had been doing savagely, to stare in a threatening way at his friend. Then he threw down the cue and began to walk up and down the hall. ‘Swinford,’ he said after a while, coming back to the table, ‘do you know that is, I believe, exactly what I was intended to do? I knew it in a kind of a way, but I never put it into words. I believe they thought she might have been put off with a thousand pounds or two, as if it had been a legacy.’
‘But your lawyers—I suppose they have a character to lose—would not have consented.’
‘Oh! there’s no saying what lawyers will consent to when they’re on your side. I note what you say, about having characters to lose. I suppose you think that we—haven’t much, perhaps.’
‘I did not mean that,’ said Leo briefly.
‘Well, perhaps you will now—but that would be a mistake. We’re none of us lawyers. Don’t you know that people sometimes take up an idea that looks quite allowable until you put it into words? Here’s a woman living quite by herself in a corner, wanting very little money. And the governor, you know, has been making her an allowance all this time. What can she want with a lot of money like that? It would only worry her, make her think, perhaps, she could set up in a different way of living, and bring her to grief in the end. And she as good as owes the family her allowance all these years, which my father wasn’t any way compelled to give. D’ye see? Well, it doesn’t sound very high-minded, I allow, but it’s very plausible. It would be no end of use to us—fifty thousand pounds, or say forty-five with five thousand or so off to her——’
‘Oh! you mean to be so liberal as that!’
‘By Jove! don’t drive me to it, or I may—— Look here, don’t let’s quarrel, Swinford. It’s so caddish. I never thought of the business, I tell you, from your point of view. It sounds very plausible. It’s quite possible the lawyers wouldn’t have stood it; I don’t know. They never thought of the law, nor that she had any natural right, don’t you see, to old John’s money. They knew very well he would never have left it to her, when he knew how heavily the governor was dipped and all that. I fail to see even now what harm there was in it. The allowance, of course, would be continued, and five thousand pounds is as much to a woman living like that, as fifty is at home. It would havebeen an enormous windfall; that is what my mo—I mean what my people thought.’
Leo Swinford had a mind which was very tolerant, and he wanted of course, now he had calmed down a little, to make the best of it. He nodded his head, and said: ‘I allow that perhaps it was plausible; but I presume it would be felony all the same.’
‘Felony,’ said the other with a stare of astonishment—the word seemed to puzzle him. ‘The governor is the head of the family,’ he said vaguely, which somehow seemed a reason.
‘It would be defrauding one of the heirs of an intestate person of her just share. The heir would be Mab, I suppose, not her mother.’
‘Oh,’ said Lord Will, quite confused; what between the transference of the heirship, the inattention of his friend to his plea that his father was the head of the family, which to himself seemed to be a condition of importance, and the extremely big word that Leo had used, this young man, who was not clever, but who was not at all a bad fellow notwithstanding the mission in which his dull intelligence had not seen any harm, was quite bewildered, and did not know what to think.
‘Yes,’ said Leo, ‘I don’t know much about English law, but Mab no doubt would be the heir; and any reasoning brought to bear upon her to make her accept a portion of her natural right in place of the whole, would be the same, I presume, as if you had stolen so much from her.’
‘Oh, stolen! rubbish!’ cried Lord Will; then he explained ingenuously, ‘there was to be no reasoning brought to bear; I was to inform them simply that Uncle John had left—a legacy.’
‘That would have been what I believe is called in English—lying.’
‘Swinford! you mean, I think, to make me forget that I am your guest, in your house.’
‘In French,’ said Leo, taking no notice, ‘it is calledmensonge, and has sometimes interpretations more or less favourable. When you save your mother’s reputation or your father’s honour, as it is called,mensongeis the word, and you are not judged too severely; but I have always heard that in England to lie was the worst offence.’
Lord Will was a little stupid, and therefore very placable. But this stung him to the quick. He knew what a lie meant, and though he felt a resistance and profound objection in himself to accept that dreadful word as representing his action, still, he felt there was a horrible resemblance between his intentions and thattheory. Certainly the legacy would have been a lie. He did not see that though he had come to say this, he had already in the frankness which was far deeper down in his nature than any intention of guilt, committed himself to the actual truth. No consciousness of that fact softened his sensations. What Leo said was true. He had come not only to say but to act a lie.
‘You’re tremendously severe,’ he said. ‘I should knock you down by rights for hinting at such a thing.’
‘Yes, you might,’ said Leo, ‘and you could if you liked. You are bigger than I am; but I don’t see what difference that would make.’
‘I don’t either,’ said Lord Will. And then there was a pause; he was not clear enough in his mind to stop there. ‘But if this,’ he said, ‘that Mrs. Swinford tells me is true——’
‘What did my mother tell you?’
‘Well! you ought to care more about what she says than about any other woman’s pretences. She says that it’s very uncertain whether they were ever married at all. Look here, don’t you know, it isn’t me, it’s your mother. She says they went off from her house together, eloping, as far as I could make out, in the middle of the night: and that the next time she saw them, she—this lady—was with my uncle in Paris and called Lady William. That’s all. Of course, if it was a marriage she’ll be able to prove everything about it; but if not, it does seem a little hard, doesn’t it, that those fifty thousand pounds of old John’s money should be lost? And you must remember, Swinford, it is your mother who says so; it is not I.’
Leo was silenced by this speech. He had not been prepared for so bold a statement, nor that Mrs. Swinford would interfere in such a way as this. Whence had she derived this hate against her old friend? His mind went back easily to the period when Emily Plowden was the pet of the house. He had only been a child, indeed, but a child remembers every detail which older people forget. And he remembered more vaguely, yet well enough, to have heard his father speak of Lady William after their establishment in Paris. Leo had not known very much of his father, who was a reserved man, and not demonstrative to the boy, who was his mother’s toy and darling, a little drawing-room puppet, everything that an English father would most dislike in his son. Leo was aware of all this now, and exaggerated it, as was natural, his own later conduct in life having been revolutionised more or less by compunctions and repentances in respect to his father. He could not tell how it was that in a moment the image of thatfather leaped into his mind. It seemed to him that he could almost see the little scene—the ornate suite of rooms in Paris, his mother lying back scornful and splendid in a great chair, his father walking up and down in high indignation and something about Lady William on his lips. What it was he did not remember, but that his father had spoken in respect, he was sure. The recollection came to his mind like an assurance and pledge that all was well.
‘You must take care,’ he said, taking the cue which Lord Will had thrown down, and beginning in his turn to torture the balls, ‘that the wish is not father to the thought. When it is for one’s interest that a thing should be, it is so easy to persuade oneself that it is.’
‘That is not my case, Swinford. I did hope I might have made something of the business; but to have it settled for good and all in this way was never in my thoughts. The governor himself never knew, nor any one. I don’t believe he ever suspected——’
‘And yet you are certain, all at once?’
‘Well, not certain,’ said Lord Will; ‘but when a lady, a friend of the woman, with nothing in her mind but justice, I suppose——’
‘My mother,’ said Leo, ‘has told you nothing from her own knowledge. She informs you of a possibility of wrong. Your own father was on the spot; he went over when his brother died, but he suspected nothing; and my father, a man of the highest honour, though I did not know him as I ought, suspected nothing. Take care how you let a mere insinuation—a doubt——’
‘It was your mother who made it, Swinford.’
Leo was very pale, and an angry cloud came over his countenance. He turned round with an impulse of indignation towards the young man who forced this upon him. ‘My mother,’ he said, ‘may be mistaken; she is human, like the rest of us. In the meantime, I think you are showing little knowledge of human nature, Pakenham. Do you think that lady whom you saw to-day could have lived as she has done for all these years under a burden of shame? and could look as she does if she knew that she might be found out any day?’
‘Women are dreadful hypocrites,’ said Lord Will. ‘They can face things out in a way no man could do. Why, I’ve seen at home how things can be faced out—and no doubt so have you, too.’
‘She is not of the kind to face things out.’
‘Oh, I quite acknowledge she’s a stunner, and all that. Reason the more why she should hold her own, and refuse to understand if a fellow dared to put a question—oh, not that I should ever dare to do that. I’m no more a coward than most other people, but say to a woman like that that I believed she wasn’t rightly married, I’d sooner jump into the river any day with a bullet at my heel.’
‘Which means simply that your inner man—the better part of you—is aware of the fact, which, for your interest, you would like to deny: that is all about it. I advise you to drop the idea, like a hot potato, as they say here. It is not true.’
‘Prove that it isn’t true, and I’ll not say another word.’
‘I prove it by simply pointing to the lady in question,’ said Leo hotly.
‘Oh, that! but even if I were to take that view, she mightn’t know, herself. She might be deceived as well as the rest.’
A look of sudden alarm came upon Leo’s face. Lady William was a person of high intelligence, but she was not a woman of the world. In the quick look he gave upward, in his way of returning to his aimless play, and the impatience with which he struck again the innocent balls, sending them coursing to every corner, the trouble of his mind might be guessed. This gave his visitor fresh courage.
‘You needn’t fear, Swinford,’ he said, ‘that I’ll bully a—person like that. Whatever her position may be, there’s nothing common about her, that’s clear. I’ll give our man a hint. Get it all clear about marriage and all that, and the proof of the child’s birth and so forth—all in the way of business. You may trust me for that: not a word to her, but just what’s necessary between the two solicitors, don’t you know. I think now I’m going to bed.’
‘I advise you,’ said Leo, taking care not to see his companion’s hand stretched out to him, ‘to be careful how you discount your hopes. Do not count your eggs, as they say here, till they are hatched.’
‘You mean the chickens: and I should not dream of putting the fifty thousand pounds in my own pocket. Why, man alive, it’s not for me! I shan’t get twenty thousand farthings of it, nor anything like that.’
‘Ah, then you are hopeless, for you will feel yourself disinterested,’ said Leo, so busy with the balls that once more he missed seeing Lord Will’s hand stretched out.
‘I say, Swinford, there’s no ill-feeling, I hope.’
‘Why should there be any ill-feeling?’ said Leo, raising his eyes for a moment with a benign but too radiant smile. He turned to the balls again the next moment as he said lightly with a wave of his cue, ‘Good night.’
It is confusing, it must be allowed, to a plain intelligence, to have one member of a family force information of the most serious kind upon you, while another avoids shaking hands with you because you believe it. Such things happen, no doubt, in the world, but they are rare, and Lord Will went upstairs to his room in a very uncomfortable state of mind, not knowing which he should depend on of those two conflicting powers. Leo remained for some time after, still knocking about the balls. Morris, with whom his master in the dearth of other companions had sometimes played an occasional game, hung about in prospect of a call. But Morris was disappointed, though it was perhaps an hour later before Mr. Swinford left that uninviting occupation. He went on with the gravest face in the world, but very devious strokes, evidently as indifferent to what he was doing as he was overwhelmingly serious in doing it. The click of the balls and of his steps round the table gave a curious sound in the midst of the silence of the great house. Such sounds say more of solitude than the most complete stillness, and Leo’s countenance was as grave as if he had been playing, like a man in an old legend, with some unseen being for his own soul.
Itis not to be supposed that during this period the visits of Mrs. Brown, the schoolmistress, to her friend at the Hall, who was so like yet so unlike her—so unlike in personal importance—so superior in position, and yet so strangely resembling—should have ceased. There were no other two persons in all the precincts of Watcham so evidently belonging to the same world and species, and yet there were no two more separate in all those externals that distinguish life. Mrs. Brown’s visits were almost all paid in the evening, sometimes very late, sometimes at that hour before dinner when Mrs. Swinford was known to receive no one. But there was no bar at any time against the entrance of this privileged visitor. On the evening which Lord Will spent at the Hall Mrs. Brown came late, while dinner was going on. She had an entrance of her own by which she preferred to come in, a door which gave admittance to the servants’ quarters, but which was always open, and spared the schoolmistress the intervention of Morris, whom she did not dislike to see now and then, and metaphorically put her foot upon with the pride of a superior knowledge which he could not understand. But this malicious gratification, though she enjoyed it occasionally, was not enough to make up for the disadvantage of having her movements known and chronicled, and it suited her character and habits better to have a mode of access absolutely free and beyond control. She was so swift and subtle in her movements, and so fortunate, as the clandestine often are, in finding her passage free, that on many occasions she had glided through the great house, mounted the great stairs, and appeared noiseless in the ante-room occupied by Julie, the maid, without an individual in the house being aware that she was there. It had so happened on this particular night when even Julie was out of the way. Mrs. Brown came in noiseless, slightly breathless, having hurried upstairs, and just escaped meeting a strange youngman, whose wide shirt-front indicated him in the partial darkness of the corridor as if he had carried a light, but whom to her surprise she did not know. A woman with her wits so much about her, knew by sight by this time everybody in the neighbourhood who was likely to dine with Leo. She avoided him by a rapid step aside, and consequently she was a little out of breath when she arrived in Julie’s room, where there was no one, a dereliction of duty that might have cost Julie her place had it been known. Mrs. Brown looked round her with a nod of satisfaction as she put off the heavy veil in which she was accustomed to wrap herself on these visits. She went into the inner room, and looked round with an even more vivid look of satisfaction. Mrs. Swinford’s luxurious room was as she had left it in the perfection of silent repose and comfort—soft light, soft warmth, everything that the most refined suggestion of luxury and ease could command. Mrs. Brown gave a sigh, and then a laugh. She said to herself, ‘How little a difference would have made me like this!’ and then she said, ‘What a bore it would have been!’ The laugh suited her better than the sigh. It called forth a twinkle of mischief and lurking vagabondism in her eyes. She then lay down on Mrs. Swinford’s sofa, put back her head upon the cushions, took up first one book, then another, and read a page or two. Then she threw them down one after another, and looked round the room again. How pretty it was! Her eyes lingered for a moment here and there on the pictures, the little graceful bronzes, the prevailing ornament, the lights, carefully planned to the advantage of the decorations. And then a strange shadow came over her face. Good heavens, to lie here, and remember! she said. Perhaps in her energy of feeling, these words were said aloud. At least, they brought in Julie, who had in the meantime returned to her room, not suspecting the presence of this visitor, and who peeped in suspicious, half-terrified, with her hand on her breast. ‘C’est vous, Madame?’ she said, with a look of mingled terror and relief.
‘Who else should it be, unless a thief?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘But as it might have been a thief and not me, you know, you ought not to be absent,ma chère.’
Julie clasped her hands and entreated that Madame would not say anything. ‘This is not the house for thiefs,’ she said.
‘On the contrary, it is just the house. Don’t you know all the robberies of jewels are done when the family are at dinner?’ Mrs. Brown rose from the sofa and took a low chair beside the fire, where she continued to sit when she had dismissedJulie much alarmed by the admonition. Many thoughts went through her mind while she waited, and she had a long time to wait. She compared her own vagabond lot, now up, now down, which she had led after her own wild fancy—the life rather of a man than of a woman—with this beauty and luxury, with a shudder of pity going over her. The pity was not for herself, but for the other woman shut in, in this gilded cage to—— remember! The pictures on the walls, the carefully arranged lights, the unchangeable surroundings, all luxury and brightness, affected her like a spell. Good heavens! to sit there day after day, evening after evening, and remember! Mrs. Brown thought of her own little rooms which it had given her pleasure to arrange and decorate in a manner which she felt to be fictitious and out of character, but which amused her all the same, and which she laughed at, having done it, with a full consciousness that it was trumpery, and that the trumpery was out of place, as a woman who knew better could not fail to see. ‘Ah, well!’ she said to herself, ‘I’d rather have my trumpery that I can throw away any day, and probably shall some day, and that I can run away from when I like, when it gets too absurd.’ And then there were the books: French novels, going over and over with fantastic variations the one story—the story of (so-called) love—that is, the complicated ways by which two people, generally old enough to know better, are brought into the relations of intrigue or passion with each other—which ends badly, either in the death of one or the disgust of both: and soda capo, always beginning over again. ‘Good heavens!’ said Mrs. Brown to herself again, ‘how can she go on day after day, day after day, readingthat—and remembering!’ The schoolmistress had no objection to a French novel of this class herself now and then; and reading only now and then—being within reach of such indulgences only now and then—naturally she got only the best, the ones that had wit and genius in them. But the unhappy woman who lived upon that food for ever! What garbage, what insipidity of nastiness must go through her hands! The poor Bohemian whose life was a continual scuffle (chiefly of her own choosing) looked upon this unvarying luxury, ease, and wealth, with a horror and wonder which it would be difficult to describe. ‘Good heavens!’ she repeated to herself; ‘why doesn’t she take a little chloral and be done?’
Mrs. Swinford gave a start of pleasure when, sweeping into her room in those long and splendid robes which were more fit for a Court than for a country house of so little distinction as the Hall at Watcham, she perceived Mrs. Brown sitting by the fire.It was, perhaps, the only event which could have lighted up her face with pleasure. She was cross, excited, full of the impatience and exasperation of effort which she felt to be at least only half successful; and Julie had perceived by her first glance at the lines on her lady’s brow that her evening’s task to undress, and soothe, and persuade into calm and sleep this agitated and disturbed old woman would be no easy one. ‘You come at the best time. You always know when I have need of you,’ Mrs. Swinford said, letting herself drop, as was her wont, into Mrs. Brown’s arms. The very passiveness of the embrace was a habit—a habit of reliance and expected help which had never failed. If such a thing as affection had ever been in Mrs. Swinford’s heart it was this other woman, so like her, and so unlike, who was its object.
‘I see you are got up for conquest,’ Mrs. Brown said.
‘Conquest! I am dressed as usual. There was one guest at dinner—an insignificant boy. You can leave us, Julie, till I ring. A boy, but with such a name! What do you think? A nephew—Lord Will they call him fortunately, or it would have been too much.’
‘A nephew——! of——’
‘Do you need to inquire? Then you are growing dull, dull as your surroundings. You who used to understand everythingà demi-mot!’
‘I understand. I almost met him on the stairs. I thought there was something familiar in his face. And what does he want here?’
‘Is it necessary to ask? Might he not come to see me, or Leo, whom he knows? But no, no, Artémise, I will not deceive you. He has come to find out about that woman—her rights to his name—which she has none, having stolen it, as you know; and to some money that has fallen in, do I care how! He could not have come to a better quarter. I gave him some information.’
‘What information?’ said Mrs. Brown, sitting up in her chair.
‘I told him all that I knew. You will please to remember it is all I know: that she left the Hall hastily at midnight, that I met her after in Paris bearing his name.’ Mrs. Swinford, too, sat upright, with a colour in her cheeks and a fire in her eyes that recalled something of the beauty of old to her worn face. ‘What do I know more? Nothing,’ she said, with a movement of her hands, which made the rings upon them flash and send out rays like sparks of light.
‘Ah! you told him that?’
‘There is money in the question,’ said Mrs. Swinford, leaning forward and speaking low, ‘and their object is to find out that she has no rights. He took my hints like milk; they were balm to him. Fancy so many thousand pounds—I know no details—and if not to her they will go to him. Is not that worth the trouble?’
‘To the man, perhaps, Cecile—but why to you?’
‘To me much more than to him,’ she said, with flashing eyes.
‘Why?’
‘You are stupid to-night,’ said Mrs. Swinford coldly; ‘not for a long time, for many years, have I found you so before.’
‘Because,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘this that you have said is, as you are aware, not——’