Part 11

Mrs. Brown was not a woman who was easily disconcerted; she could have borne the assault of all the ladies of the parish and given them as good, nay, much more than they could have given her: for though Mrs. Plowden had a good steady command of words when she was scolding the servants at the Rectory, she never could have stood for a moment before the much more nimble and fiery tongue of the schoolmistress. But before Jim’s assertion of her irreproachableness and conviction that her only disadvantage was that she had seen better days, Mrs. Brown was utterly silenced; she could not answer the boy a word; she was a woman quite ready to laugh at the idea of innocence in a young man, but when she was thus brought face to face with it, instead of laughing she was struck dumb; she could not make him any reply; she pretended to be busy with the lamp, raising and then lowering the light, and then she left the room altogether without a word. Poor Jim felt that he must have offended her by this untoward allusion to better days. Did she think by any chance that he was taunting her with her poverty, or that anybody in the world, at least anybody at Watcham, could think the less of her? Perhaps he ought not even to have said that; he ought to have made sure that it went without saying, a certainty that it was half an offence to put into words. As, however, he sat pondering this in doubt and fear, Mrs. Brown came back all smiles, bringing that familiar tall glass foaming high with the drink which nobody in Watcham could compound--nobody he had ever known before.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought you were angry; and here you come like--like Hebe, you know--with nectar in your hand.’

‘I am rather an elderly Hebe,’ she said, ‘but it’s a pretty comparison all the same. If I were young and blooming instead of being old and dried up, I should have made you a curtsey for your compliment; but there’s this compensation, Mr. Jim, that a Hebe of seventeen, which is, I believe, the right age, would probably not know how to make up a drink like this. Taste it, and tell me if it isn’t the very nicest I have made for you yet?’

‘It is nectar,’ said Jim fervently; ‘but,’ he added, ‘do you know, I wish you wouldn’t make me such delicious things to drink. Why should I give you all this trouble, and’--he paused, and added, embarrassed--‘expense too?’

Mrs. Brown laughed and clapped her hands. ‘Expense, too!’ she cried; ‘how good! Oh, you don’t know how I get the materials, and how little they cost me; people I used to employ in--in what you call my better days, are so faithful to me. As you say, Mr. Jim, the world isn’t at all such a hard place as one thinks; and even the ladies of the parish--but you do amuse me so with your stories of the parish--it’s such an odd little world, isn’t it? Tell me, what are they saying about Leo Swinford? Has any one made up her mind to marry him? That’s what I expect to hear every day.’

‘I don’t know anybody that wants to marry him,’ said Jim. ‘I suppose he must take the first step in anything of that kind.’

‘Do you think so, really?’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘Now, do you know, I am not at all so sure of that; the ladies will think of it first, I’ll promise you. He is a nice young man, with a good estate; and he hadn’t been a week in the parish, I’ll answer for it, before two or three ladies had settled who was to have him--and as for the young ones themselves---- Oh, my dear Mr. Jim, you are too good-hearted; you don’t think, then, of the plans and schemes that may be laid for you?’

‘Me!’ said Jim, with a blush; and then he shook his head. ‘Nobody approves of me enough to make any plans about me.’

‘Don’t you be too sure of that,’ she said airily; ‘but Leo Swinford is a new man, and he’s got a quantity of money. Now, answer me my question, for I’ve known him all his life, and I take an interest in him: who is going to marry him? Does your----’ She paused, and the mischief in her eyes yielded to alarm for a moment. However much a youth may be in your bonds, and capable of guidance, yet it is possible that he may rebel if you question him about his mother; so she changed what she was about to say. ‘Does your--aunt,’ she proceeded, ‘Lady William, don’t you know, as everybody calls her--think of him for her little fat girl? Oh, I beg your pardon; I think she is a very nice little girl, but she is fat; when she grows older she will fine down.’

Jim’s delicacy was not offended by this statement. He laughed. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘Mab is fat; but she is a nice little girl for all that.’

‘A dear little girl,’ said Mrs. Brown; ‘she comes and gives me advice about the children. You would think she was seventy instead of seventeen. Well, is she to be the bride. Have the parish ladies given their votes for her?’

‘For Mab!’ Jim repeated with wonder. ‘Mab’s not that kind of girl at all. She does not go in for--for marrying or so forth. She’s too young. She thinks of her garden, and of boating, and that sort of thing. She is a very jolly girl. She has got a will of her own, just. The ladies might give their votes as much as they please, it would not matter for that.’

‘Of course I may be mistaken,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘I am the poor schoolmistress. I don’t judge the gentry from their own point of view as you do. I have to look up from such a very, very long way down.’ She laughed, and Jim laughed too, though he did not quite know why. ‘But I know that he is always at Lady William’s. What a little cottage she lives in to be a lady of title, Mr. Jim; not very much bigger than mine!’

‘Aunt Emily is not rich,’ said Jim, with a little uneasiness, feeling that he ought not to be discussing his relation.

‘Poor lady; but if she marries her daughter to Leo Swinford? I know he is there almost every day.’

‘Yes, so I hear,’ said Jim, ‘but I don’t believe he thinks of marrying any one. He goes to see Aunt Emily. He goes for a good talk. There are not many people to talk to here.’

‘To talk to a middle-aged lady, when there are plenty of young ones? Oh no, Mr. Jim, you must not try to persuade me of that.’

‘But,’ said Jim, stammering a little, ‘it’s quite true. What difference is there? just as I come to see you, and Osborne--but perhaps that’s not quite the same thing.’

‘Osborne----’ said Mrs. Brown. ‘Oh, the curate, the good young curate. As you come to see me--thank you, Mr. Jim, how nice you are!--Leo goes and sits with your dear aunt. And Mr. Osborne--to whom does Mr. Osborne go? Oh, I owe him something; he is so nice to me about the school. Tell me where he goes to have his talk.’

‘Well, perhaps it’s not quite the same thing,’ said Jim, confused; ‘Miss Grey, you know she is almost like another curate, she knows as much about the parish; but if he goes and has tea with her, I don’t quite see, don’t you know, what anybody could say--how anybody could object--or what is out of the way, don’t you know, in me----’

‘Going to sit a little in the evening with Mrs. Brown,’ said the schoolmistress with a burst of laughter, clapping her hands. ‘And quite right too; the analogy is perfect. So there are three of us,’ she said, ‘whom the young men prefer. You can’t think how nice, and cheering, and pleasant for an old person; to think of three old ladies, Lady William, Miss Grey, and me! How much I am obliged to you, my dear Mr. Jim!’

How was she obliged to him? What had he said? Jim felt very uncomfortable, though he could not have told why.

XIV

When Leo Swinford said that he was lodged like a prince there was little extravagance in the phrase. He was lodged like a prince indeed in the age of reason, not that of subdued æstheticism like this. The rooms in the Hall were spacious and lofty, and decorated with mirrors and gilding and marble, generally false marble, to an extent very rarely seen in England. And they were hung with pictures which would have been worth a king’s ransom had the names upon them been genuine, which of course they were not. A Swinford of a hundred years ago, Leo’s great-grandfather, had been one of those dilettanti of the eighteenth century to whom the languid Italy of those days was at once an idol and a place of plunder. He had filled his house with copies, with supposed antiques picked up here and there, with much old furniture and false statuary and bronzes. All the splendid names of art flourished on the walls; I am not sure that there was not a fragment, so called, of Phidias, from some classic excavation, and I am certain that there were several Raphaels, and even a Michael Angelo (the day of Botticelli was not yet). The cabinets and carvings which were genuine gave an air of reality to much that was false. If it was not true art, it was at least a good representation of the age when connoisseurs were few, when the craft of the copyist was in great request, and when it was fondly hoped, with that stupidity which belongs to the cultured person in all ages, that the model of the Italian palace, designed for skies and customs so different from ours, might be made to improve the natural beauty of an English house; the attempt was a mistake, but here and there, when carried out regardless of expense, it was not without effect, and the Hall was a good specimen of its period. A hundred years is a respectable period of time, and an example of the aims and meaning of a past century is worth preserving. But the large suites of rooms opening from each other, with large windows and doors, and no system of warming, were chilly and severe in a season still scarcely genial--England in this respect, with the cheerful open fires upon which we pride ourselves, being so much inferior to France with its calorifères, or Germany with its endless stuffy but effective stoves, in the art of keeping a house warm. Our houses, alas, are far from being warm, as many a shivering invalid knows.

It was on a Saturday, late in the afternoon in the beginning of April, but before the blasts were altogether over, that another visitor who was not at all so well received as Lady William and the Plowdens, walked briskly up the avenue and along by the side of the lake towards the Hall. She went quietly, looking neither to the right nor the left, with the air of a person who knew very well where she was going; and she was, I think, better dressed than Lady William, with something like fashion in the fit of her garments and the fall of her draperies, not over-dressed either, in black with a little veil over her face, a woman with a presence which all the poor in Watcham recognised as that of a lady, and a person who had seen better days. How it was that her air and aspect which impressed all the others, even Mrs. Plowden and most of the other ladies of the parish, failed to impress Morris the butler I cannot tell. There are mysteries in all crafts, and though he was for a moment slightly flustered by her bearing, Morris put himself straight in the middle of the doorway and opposed Mrs. Brown’s entrance with a decision which he would not have ventured to exhibit in face of little Miss Grey, who had the air of being dressed out of a rag-bag, or the humblest curate’s wife. ‘Not at home,’ Morris said with the utmost audacity, looking the visitor full in the face.

‘I know,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘but I will come in till you have sent up my name, for I know that she will see me.’

‘It is quite contrary to my lady’s habits to see any one at this hour,’ said Morris, who was a person of education--‘if you will state your business I will report it to Madame Julie, who will convey it to her mistress at a fitting time, and then, if Mrs. Swinford will receive you----’

Mrs. Brown laughed.

‘Do you ask all the ladies that call to state their business?’ she said, with an air of amusement which confused Mr. Morris.

‘Ladies,’ he said, with a slight falter in his assurance, ‘who call at the usual hours is a different thing.’

‘Why, it isn’t six o’clock,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘and if I had not known Mrs. Swinford I should not have thought it too late. But it is precisely because it is too late that I am here; for I’ve no business except to see your lady, Morris, so you may as well go at once and not keep me standing here.’

Morris began to grow more and more uncertain in spite of himself. Everything was against her; her look, though how he knew that, it would be difficult to tell; her composure, not angry as a real lady should have been (in his opinion) and indisposed to bandy words. A curate’s wife would have retired in high dudgeon before he had enunciated his first phrase. Little Miss Grey would have transfixed him with a look, and turned away; but this visitor was not disinclined even to chaff the butler, therefore she was no lady. Yet there was something in her patronage, in her composure, and last of all in that sudden use of his own name, which gave the man a vague sensation of alarm.

‘You seem to know my name,’ he said, ‘but you haven’t even taken the trouble, ma’am, to give me yours.’

Upon which the visitor broke into a laugh.

‘Mine is not very distinguished, Morris,’ she said, ‘I am Mrs. Brown, but not the dressmaker from the village to ask for orders from Julie, as you seem to suppose. Come, come, there’s been enough of this.’ As she spoke, she passed Mr. Morris adroitly, and entered the great lofty hall which formed the vestibule of the Swinford mansion. ‘There has been no change made, I see,’ she said, with a rapid glance round; ‘do you mean to tell me, Morris, that your lady is going to support all this and make no change?’

The hall was almost dark, the lamps as yet unlighted, and only a dim evening light in the row of long windows. Some one stirred, however, in a corner, and came forward, only half distinguishable in the twilight.

‘Morris,’ said this half-seen person, ‘you know my mother never receives at this hour----’

‘Ah, Leo,’ said the visitor, with a slight quaver in the assurance of her voice, ‘is it you?’

When Morris heard his master called Leo, he retired discreetly with a momentary sense that the sky, or rather the gilded roof of the hall, was falling upon him. Had it occurred to him, so assured in his duties, to make a tremendous mistake? The feeling at first gave him a sensation not to be put into words, and his impulse was to take immediate flight; but on reflection, he felt it so very unlikely that he could have made a mistake, that he subsided into the shelter of one of the pillars and waited to see what would happen. Mr. Leo Swinford was known among the servants as a most affable gentleman; but Morris was well aware that his master was not one to submit to any impertinence. It was a moment of great excitement, almost too thrilling--for a butler has the pride of his profession, like another, and it would have been dreadful to him to have to acknowledge that he had made a mistake.

‘I fear I must say that you have the advantage of me,’ Leo said, with a coldness that was balm to Morris’s soul.

The visitor came forward with a short laugh, to one of the windows.

‘You have a short memory,’ she said; ‘but yet if you remember we met only the other day.’

Then there was a little pause, and then Mr. Swinford said in a tone which was half rage and half contempt:

‘I thought I made my sentiments clear enough that day: but I might have known----’

‘Yes,’ said the lady, ‘I think you might have known; but I don’t blame you, Leo, your views and mine don’t agree, and never will; all the same you can take off your bulldog and make him understand that the house is free to your relations. I needn’t trouble you otherwise; of course I have come to see your mother, and I hope I know my way.’

Morris behind his pillar beheld aghast an alert shadow glide through the gloom across the hall and up the stairs. There was now so little light that she looked like a ghost, a darkness moving through the gloom, but in no other way ghostlike, quite vigorous, full of life. The man could not move; he was humiliated in his tenderest point--a relation! and to think he should have made such a mistake; but on the whole, Morris was consoled by the fact that it was a relation; relations are not always equals, they are not always friends; sometimes the people of the house would prefer to have them shut out. If it had been a lady of a county family, perhaps, or some intimate friend, it would have been different. He gradually began to raise again his drooping spirits; he was about to start away from his post of observation when his master called him briskly, having probably heard the noise of his retiring feet. Morris did not like to be caught eavesdropping; he was a functionary of a very high ideal; he allowed a moment to elapse, during which he judiciously and stealthily edged further off, and answered, as from a distance, ‘Did you call, sir?’ with the air of a man who has heard imperfectly, being so far off.

‘Come here, quick,’ said Leo impatiently. ‘Morris, I want to speak to you about that lady; you refused to let her in.’

‘I am very sorry, sir, very sorry if I made a mistake; but my lady’s orders are, after half-past five, no one, unless there’s an exception.’

‘Just so, you are quite right; but probably there will be an exception; I don’t suppose my mother knew Mrs. Brown was here; she is a very old friend. Of course you must take my mother’s orders on the matter; but I suppose an exception will be made.’

‘Of course, sir,’ said Morris politely, with a sense of giving way from his absolute right as guardian of the Swinford House; ‘if it’s your--or my lady’s wish----’

This sacrifice made the master of the house laugh, and cleared his brow for the moment; and presently he retired into the great gilded pillared room which was the library. He was not without a little pride in the grandiose decorations which had been his ancestors’ doing; but as he cast his eye round the great room, with the gilded gallery that ran round it, he thought, with a sigh, of the luxurious apartment in Paris in which he had been brought up. The one was so warm and gay, the other so glittering and cold; he believed there were a great many dummies on those huge shelves; unquestionably there were a great many worthless books; it was too big, too grand, too full of pretension to be made a home of, and everything was new and laborious and dull around him, even his own unaccustomed works of beneficence, which had been amusing at first. Had he been allowed to give up a portion of his income in order to make happy all the poor people without any trouble to himself!--but he had begun to be bored by Miss Grey and her intimate knowledge of everybody’s wants, and to cease to be amused by the curate, who was all for shutting up the public-houses, those public-houses which Leo, in the toleration of his foreign training, looked upon as the only means of necessary relaxation which the poor people possessed. There was only one thing among his new surroundings that did not cease to amuse him, and that was the little, the very little drawing-room in which of an evening he found Lady William sitting in the firelight, and where he could talk of all that was in his heart. It was, perhaps, a little later than usual, for he had been detained by various matters of business, but still it was not too late, and in a few minutes more he had put on the coat with the fur lining which had made such a sensation in Watcham, and was walking very briskly down the avenue, with the gloom deepened and the vexation lightened, wondering how much he might tell her, and whether she would remember Mrs. Brown.

Now I wonder much whether the reader would rather hear what passed that evening in Lady William’s drawing-room in the firelight, at the hour when people can talk more confidentially and cosily, only half seeing each other’s faces, than at any other time; or whether he (or she) would prefer to be present at the interview in Mrs. Swinford’s boudoir, which was going on at the same moment. I know which I prefer myself. The simple people in the world who have no mysteries about them, who have their little humours and follies, but mean no harm, and do no harm as far as human judgment can guide them, are familiar and well known. I know what they are thinking about, and what they say, and how much or how little they mean. But with the others there is a strain. I know, of course, very well what Mrs. Swinford and Mrs. Brown had to talk about and what they said, but it is a kind of artificial knowledge, and I don’t like having much to do with these women of the world. There are different kinds of women of the world; but the lady who was Leo Swinford’s mother was not of the good kind, neither was her old friend, or her relation, or whoever Mrs. Brown was. They were of the kind who are enemies of the good, perhaps not absolutely meaning to be so, but because they were intent each of them on her own way, and on pleasing herself; and looked upon every obstacle to that, only as something to be cleared away. Therefore, if the gentle reader pleases, we will put off their talk for a while, and go cheerfully down with Leo through the dark avenue, and by the side of the little wistful lake, in which the clearness of the evening sky is reflected, and along the quiet country road; till we come to the village green where the lights are beginning to shine in the windows, past the church with its low spire rising against the sky, and the Rectory behind its damp and level lawn; and at last arrive at the quarter where the best houses stand out against the west, with their trees budding and the crocuses ablow in all the borders, and a pleasant scent of wallflowers in the air. Lady William’s garden was more full of wallflowers than any of the others, and the narcissus were coming out, and the primroses taking the place of the crocuses; jealous people said because, if anything, it had the finest south exposure; but chiefly because Mab was the head gardener, and had a genius for that art. General FitzStephen was in his garden when Leo passed, and called ‘good evening’ to him over the privet hedge, for the General knew very well where the young man was going, and thought it very natural. The old gentleman was fond of little Mab, and hoped that it was she, though she was so ridiculously young, that was to make this great match; but he did not feel so sure as he would have liked to do, whether this was what Leo meant.

In Lady William’s cottage things were a little different from the usual conditions--for Leo was late, later than he had ever been before--and he did not like them quite so well as usual. For one thing the lamp was lighted and the fire very low, the evening being, or so these ladies thought, warmer than usual; and for another thing they were very busy, Mab and her mother, over their necessary sewing. As everybody knows, the coming of summer is a much more troublesome thing, in respect to dress, than winter, when two warm nice dresses, one for common use and one for best, is as much as anybody wants. But in summer, besides the best frock on which Lady William was employed, with her daughter, when we first made her acquaintance, there are cotton dresses to be thought of, and things for the warm weather, of which a girl who is always in movement wants a great many. And indeed, at this present moment the work in hand was a white frock, which was intended for a party, to be given by the FitzStephens, which very possibly might end in a dance; and this was naturally a very interesting piece of work.

‘Shall I put it away, mother?’ said Mab.

‘No,’ said Lady William, ‘a man knows nothing about it, he will think we are hemming tablecloths; and he would not be any the wiser if he did know.’