Part 13

Mrs. Swinford again permitted her eyes to stray--with a slight elevation of the eyebrows--round the tiny room.

‘We did not venture to send an invitation to the Hall,’ said the General, with an uneasy laugh. ‘We scarcely ventured to hope--though I am happy to say that Mr. Swinford is coming, my dear.’

‘If you mean me,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘I never go out--at least to balls--since I have ceased to dance.’

‘Ah well, those days soon pass over,’ said the good old soldier, ‘we find other amusements at our age.’

Mrs. Swinford gave him a look--which did not reduce the gallant General to ashes, for he was not at all aware what she meant.

‘My husband is very fond of seeing the young people enjoy themselves,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen; ‘that amuses him more than anything for himself.’

‘Oh come, my dear, you must not give me too good a character,’ said the General. ‘I like a snug little dinner-party too, and a good talk.’

‘Do you talk here, too, as well as dance?’ said Mrs. Swinford, with an ineffable smile.

‘Oh, my dear lady, I assure you we have sometimes quite remarkable conversations. The Rector is an exceedingly well-informed man, and young Osborne has a great deal to say for himself, though he is taken up with fads--too much. And then, above all, there is Lady William----’

‘Oh, Emily! I had forgotten Lady William, as you call her.’

‘One can’t live in Watcham and leave out Lady William, I assure you, my dear madam,’ the General said; ‘besides her rank, which of course places her in the front of all.’

‘Ah, to be sure!’ said Mrs. Swinford, with a little gurgling laugh, which stopped and then ran on again, as if with a ridicule impossible to restrain--‘Her rank! I had forgotten her rank--such rank as it is.’

‘We think a good deal of it here,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen. ‘Lady Wade, you know, is only a baronet’s wife, and of course has to give place. It gives quite a little distinction to our village; everybody even in the county, at this end of it at least, must give way to Lady William. It is a great feather in our cap.’

Mrs. Swinford went on laughing, breaking into fresh little runs of merriment from time to time. ‘This is really amusing,’ she said. ‘Poor Emily: and does she talk too?’

‘She is an exceedingly cultivated woman, and one who has seen the world. I know few greater treats than to discuss either books or people with Lady William,’ said the General, with great gravity, holding up his head as if he were in uniform--which indeed this fine attitude almost persuaded his admiring wife that he was. What a champion for any one to have! But Mrs. Swinford went on with her little exasperating laugh like the vibration of an electric bell. It was very disconcerting to the pair, who were a little proud of their friendship with Lady William, and liked to wave her flag in any stranger’s eyes.

‘You see,’ said the great lady, ‘Emily Plowden, poor girl, was in the bread and butter stage when I knew her best: and to hear now of her rank, and then of her accomplishments, is a new experience. I cannot convey to your minds the amusement it causes me.’

‘Ah!’ said General FitzStephen gravely, ‘as I feel when I hear of a little ensign who came out to India at sixteen, and is now in command of my old regiment.’

Mrs. Swinford’s laugh ran on like the endless irritating tinkle of that electric bell. ‘More,’ she said, ‘for the boy would gain his promotion; but Emily!--it is more amusing than you can have any idea of to see that she takes it _au grand sérieux_, the rank and all.’

‘Perhaps, General,’ said Mrs. FitzStephen quickly, ‘you will ring for tea, instead of standing there,’ which was the most uncalled-for, unjustifiable attack: for why should not he stand there, and where else could he have stood but respectfully in front of her chair, listening to their guest? He roused himself with a little start, and did what he was told, but not without a look of surprised appeal at his wife’s face.

‘No tea,’ said Mrs. Swinford, rising; ‘I have not acquired the habit: but I am sure the General will kindly give me his arm to my carriage. I walk so little, I stumble; I have not the use of gravel walks.’

Mrs. FitzStephen watched the lady sweep away. She had very high-heeled shoes and a long dress, too long for walking. The General’s wife watched her along the gravel path, which she thought it very insolent of any one to object to. Mrs. Swinford did not sweep (except indoors) or glide, or march, majestically, as would have been consonant with her pretensions, but accoutred as she was, hobbled, not more gracefully than if she had been any old woman in the village. Her step showed she was an old woman, however she might ignore that fact, and it gave the General’s wife, whom she had rubbed so persistently the wrong way, a certain characteristic feminine satisfaction to feel that it was so. Also Mrs. FitzStephen strongly disapproved of the respectful and devoted air with which her husband conducted the great lady. It was Stephen’s way; he could not help it. He was an old----, taken in by any woman that would take the trouble. But what could she mean about Lady William, and all those scoffs at her rank? Could there be any doubt about her rank? It might be a courtesy title, but what did that matter? The daughter-in-law of a marquis held precedence over quite a number of people who were Lady So-and-So. Lady Wade never disputed it, and the Wades had an old baronetcy. They were not upstart people. What did the--the--Mrs. FitzStephen paused for a word--the old hag mean?

‘Oh, she meant nothing but spite,’ said the General when he came back, ‘feminine spite such as you all entertain towards your neighbours when they are prettier or wiser than you.’

‘Perhaps you will tell me what woman I regard with feminine spite,’ Mrs. FitzStephen very reasonably said.

‘Oh, you, my dear, you’ve no occasion; you are a pretty woman still, and can hold your own: but that poor old soul,’ said the General, ‘as you may have perceived, I had almost to carry her down the walk; that poor old creature must be seventy if she is a day--and to see her old subaltern taking the _pas_ from her: I am not subject to the same kind of feelings--but I confess I don’t like it myself, if it comes to that,’ the General said.

Mrs. Swinford went on to the Rectory with a curious smile upon her face. She drove past the school-room door and saw her friend standing at it, sheltered in the depth of the doorway, by no means unlike a spider standing at watch, having laid all its nets, till some silly fly buzzes in. A salutation of the eyes only passed between the two women, the schoolmistress and the great lady of the Hall. In the daylight they resembled each other, though Mrs. Brown’s plain black gown was not becoming to her dark good looks, and every particular of Mrs. Swinford’s attire was calculated to enhance her antiquated beauty. There was a softening in both pairs of eyes as they met. They were not good women; their aims were not fine nor the means they were disposed to use; but yet, curiously enough, they loved each other. It was a strange sight to see. The walk from the little gate of the Rectory to the door was still more trying to Mrs. Swinford than the other had been. It made her quite sure that she had no vocation to call at houses where there was no drive. Her dress was long, and she resented the fact that it must trail on the gravel and get dirty and damp. As for holding it up, it did not occur to her: that any one should think she hobbled, or was not a glass of fashion and mould of form wherever she went would have been incredible to her; but she resented much the length of that walk, and that she should be exposed to such trouble and annoyance in the act of doing what she thought her duty. Had it been only her duty, however, Mrs. Swinford would have cared very little for fulfilling it; but she had a different motive now.

There was a dreadful hurry-scurry in the Rectory drawing-room when she was seen approaching. The antimacassars, I am sorry to say, were much tumbled and untidy, and the loose covers of the chairs anything but what might be desired. Both mother and daughters flew with one impulse to the arranging of the room. Jim had been seated by the fireside all the afternoon with a bad cold, which they had been nursing; but he fled at once into his own cold room, which might, his mother thought, be very bad for him, but could not be helped in the circumstances. Florence ran, with more sense than any one would have given her credit for, to tell the parlourmaid to bring in a more elegant, less substantial tea than usual, and to give her father a hint in his study--‘Mrs. Swinford, papa!’ while Mrs. Plowden and Emily stood nervously awaiting the visit, anxious to go out and meet her and bring her in by the drawing-room window, which would have saved the old lady a few steps; but kept back by the fear that it might be thought indecorous, too familiar, not dignified enough. Mrs. Swinford looked round upon the Rectory drawing-room as she had done on Mrs. FitzStephen’s, but with a different air. ‘You have made wonderfully few changes,’ she said; ‘it is just the same damp little place it used to be.’ She was like so many of those great ladies, not careful of people’s feelings; but that was, no doubt, mainly from want of thought.

‘Oh,’ Mrs. Plowden said: and made a pause, that no explosion might follow, ‘I assure you,’ she said, ‘it is not damp at all. We have proved again and again that no water ever comes in. The elevation is small, but quite sufficient; and as for the furniture and doing it up----’

‘Yes, I recognise all the old things,’ Mrs. Swinford said, with a careless wave of the hand (when there was not one thing, not one, except the Indian cabinet, that had not been renewed!); ‘and another Emily Plowden just the same. It is only you,’ she said, with a sweet but careless smile upon the Rector’s wife, ‘that are new----’

‘New! But we have been here for fifteen years,’ Mrs. Plowden said: and her visitor smiled again as if in complacent consciousness of having said the most agreeable thing in the world.

‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘there is no other daughter, no one to disturb the harmony of what used to be. Oh, but here is the other daughter.’

‘Florence, my second, Mrs. Swinford: not considered like the Plowdens, but taking more after my side of the house.’

‘I see she is not like the Plowdens,’ said Mrs. Swinford, with the look of indifference which was natural to her: it was of so little consequence! ‘The other is a little like Emily.’

‘Like her aunt, our dear Lady William.’

‘You are all much delighted,’ said the great lady, ‘with that name.’

‘My sister-in-law’s name? Well, we like it, for she has no other, poor thing. We couldn’t call her anything else--as long as she doesn’t change it or marry again.’

‘Oh, mamma!’ said Emmy and Florry together.

‘No,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘I don’t think she will marry again--now. I did once hope she would; for, though rank is nice, a good husband who would have looked after her and her little girl would have been nicer: while the late Lord William, as I have heard----’

Mrs. Swinford made a little movement of impatience. ‘Have the family,’ she said, ‘taken any notice of Emily--or the little girl?’

‘It is very funny,’ said Florence, ‘to hear Mab, who has such a character of her own, spoken of as the little girl.’

‘Oh, Florry, hold your tongue, you are always making remarks. The family, Mrs. Swinford?’

‘Poor little thing, poor little thing,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘I think you were very wise, my dear Mrs. Plowden, in advising your sister-in-law to marry again. What a thing it would be if after all it was found that nothing could be done for the little girl!’

‘They have their little annuity,’ said Mrs. Plowden, startled; ‘there has never been anything said of taking it away. And I could not make such a statement as that I advised her to marry, for there has really been no one that she could have married except----, and he was quite an old gentleman. Not to say that Emily ever thought of such a thing. She was not so happy the first time as to have any wish----’

Mrs. Swinford’s attention had once more flagged, and here she interposed with her usual calm bearing, addressing Emmy. ‘I thought you had a brother,’ she said.

Emmy coloured high, being thus suddenly spoken to. ‘Oh yes.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ cried Mrs. Plowden, recovering herself the more easily that this new subject was one on which she could be eloquent. ‘He has a bad cold, poor boy, or he would have been here at once to pay his respects. Is that you, James? Mrs. Swinford is making such kind inquiries.’

The great lady held out her hand. ‘You have not taken the trouble to come and see me,’ she said.

The Rector had come in much against his will. He made a bow which had not his usual ease. ‘I must beg your pardon,’ he said very gravely. ‘I am aware that I have been negligent.’

‘Ah,’ she said, ‘you did not want to come? but I supposed when your excellent wife did me so much honour, that bygones were to be bygones; and Emily----’

‘My sister acts for herself; I do not try to influence her; and my wife thinks she knows what is best for her----’

‘Her family, of course; good woman. She thought it would be a wrong thing to neglect opportunities, and so did your father, as you may recollect.’

‘I prefer not to recollect, any more than I can help,’ said the Rector.

‘Which? that Emily has come to great promotion, very high promotion, as all those ladies think--while she was in my house? There would have been no title in the case--a title such as it is!--but for my house.’

‘The less that is said on that subject, I think, the better,’ said the Rector, standing bolt upright before the fire.

‘Oh, James,’ said his wife, ‘when Mrs. Swinford is so kind----’

‘I gave it,’ said Mrs. Swinford, bending forward, ‘and, my good Rector, you will take care not to be insolent; I may also, perhaps, take it away.’

XVII

Lady William, on this eventful afternoon, had gone out with Mab on one of her rambles. The air was full of spring, the buds bursting on every tree, the cottage gardens all blooming with those common flowers which can be got anywhere, which are the inheritance of the poorest, and are more beautiful, spontaneous, and abundant than any other: the early primroses, daffodils and Lent lilies, the rich dark wallflowers that fill the air with sweetness. Mab had a little basket with her, in which to bring home any wild thing that pleased her in the woods and slopes of Denham Hill, on the other side of the water. It was a long walk, but neither mother nor daughter was afraid of a long walk. They came back, breathing of every sweet-wildness of the spring, just as Mrs. Swinford, disappointed and angry, was leaving a card, with a message, at the cottage door; but the carriage had disappeared along the road long before they reached their own end of Watcham. It had been a lovely afternoon, warm, yet fresh with the dewy moisture of the April breezes, that germinating weather, and sparkle of showers and waters which is not damp. Several showers had fallen upon them in their ramble, but done no harm; they had taken shelter, after a laughing run against the wind and the bright falling veil of rain, under the trees, or in a cottage when one was near, and shaken the rain-drops off their dresses, and carried the freshness of the outside atmosphere, as if they had been nymphs of the air, into the little wayside houses. It would have been hard to say whether mother or daughter was youngest in these runs and shelterings. Lady William was almost more swift of foot than Mab, who more easily got out of breath, and was built on heavier lines; and though the girl’s colour was higher, the delicate flush on the other’s cheek spoke of almost finer health and brightness in its fluctuations and changes. They were both equally interested about the plants and roots which Mab grubbed up from under the trees, but hers was the delight of superior knowledge, as she discovered a rare something here and there, a flower peculiar to one place or another. Mab was altogether absorbed in her botany and her researches, flushed with her digging, eager about her new treasures. But her mother was more free for the delights of the sweet air and sensations of the spring, the freedom of the woods, and sometimes would burst out singing, and sometimes fling bits of moss at her child, as she held the basket.

‘Isn’t that beautiful, Mab?’

‘Yes, mother,’ Mab would say, digging, her head bent over the mossy soil, nothing free of her but the ear which took in the sound of the poetry in a kind of subdued pleasure which mingled with her humbler sensations.

‘You are a little grub,’ said Lady William; ‘you are never so happy as when you are probing among the roots and the dead leaves.’

‘And you are of the kind of the birds, mother, and I like to hear you up among the branches,’ said Mab. I do not mean to say that Lady William was a musician, or that you could hear the bits of songs she sang, which had been Mab’s lullaby as a baby, and amusement through all her childhood--a few yards from where she stood. They were nothing but the spontaneous utterances of her fresh spirit, like breathing, or the trilling of the birds, to which Mab compared them. Mab did not herself require utterances, givings forth, of that kind. She worked away and was silent, wholly given to what she was about. But she admired the trill and movement of the lighter spirit, and thought her mother the most delightful human creature that had ever been upon this earth.

The basket was tolerably heavy when they came back, and Mab was still a little flushed with her hard work. The sky was very sweet and subdued in colour, a great band of softened gold binding the growing grayness of the afternoon, approaching night--and opening, as it were, a glimpse into the heavens, a broad shining pathway, reflected fully in the river, between the awakening greens and browns of the spring country and the soft clouds above. It was still light, but evening was in the air, and among the folds of the clouds a few mild stars were already visible. The cows were coming lowing home; the children were leaving off their games; and people coming up from the river, who found a little chill in the air after the sun had gone down. The mother and daughter met everybody on their progress home. The doctor, another botanist, who sniffed at Mab’s basket, and affected contempt at her brag of the peculiar coltsfoot she had found, which grew nowhere but on Denham Hill. ‘Common, common,’ he said, ‘you’ll find it everywhere,’ as one connoisseur says to another, upon most new acquisitions; but that was because he had never had such luck himself, Mab felt convinced. And they met the tall curate, Mr. Osborne, stalking off to a meeting, who stopped to ask whether Lady William would not help in a temperance tea party of his, where the ladies and gentlemen were to amuse the villagers, and make them forget that there was such a thing on earth, or rather, in Watcham, as the ‘Why Not?’ or the ‘Blue Boar.’ Mr. Osborne wore his Inverness cape, as usual, and a quantity of books and pamphlets under it; but there was something a little different from his ordinary aspect in his looks. After he had passed he made a step back again, and called Lady William, with a hesitating voice.

‘Do you see--young Plowden often?’ he said, in the most awkward way.

‘Jim!’ she said, surprised, ‘my nephew?’

‘Don’t be vexed; I think he goes to---- places which he had better avoid,’ said the curate. Lady William looked at him, but there was nothing further to be learned from his cloudy face.

‘That is very possible,’ she said. ‘Do you mean---- there?’ for she had heard something of the ‘Blue Boar,’ which was now beginning to light up, and looked cheerful enough across the village green. The curate gave a little stamp of impatience as he saw some one else approaching, and said quickly:

‘I can’t say any more,’ and stalked away, leaving, as such monitors so often do, a prick of pain behind him, but nothing that could do any good. It was the General who was coming, and he walked a few steps with the ladies, congratulating them on their walk.

‘For I should not wonder if it rained to-morrow,’ he said. And then he told them of Mrs. Swinford’s visit, and how she had gone from door to door. ‘You see you have missed something; you have not had that honour.’

‘I am glad that we went for our long walk,’ Lady William said. And then, finally, they met Mr. Swinford, who came up joyfully, with his hat in his hand, and his head uncovered from the moment he saw them.

‘Ah, I have found you at last,’ said Leo; ‘I have waited for you in the cottage, sitting inside by the invitation of Miss Patty, who is very kind to me, and observing the proceedings of my mother.’

‘I hear she has been paying visits.’

‘To everybody, which is not, perhaps, the way to make the visit prized; but she does not like the English climate, and she is used, you know, to do as she likes,’ he said, with a smile.

‘Surely, in such matters as that she has a very good right.’

‘Yes, to be sure,’ he said doubtfully, and then laughed. ‘She came to see you, too--and I lay there, like a spider in a web, wondering if she would also come in to wait for you; but Miss Patty was not so kind to my mother as to me. I heard her answer unhesitatingly, “Not at home!” with a voice like that of a groom of the chambers. She has great capabilities, Patty.’

‘And did you not go out, to say----’

‘What should I have said? I was waiting, feeling that you would probably snub me for my pains, and why should I interfere with my mother? She left a card with a message pencilled on it, which I had the honourable feeling not to read. It got upon my nerves to be in the same room with it, and if I had not come out to meet you I should have yielded to the temptation.’

‘That would have been as bad as opening a letter,’ said Mab, who had as yet taken no part.

‘Would it, do you think? It was open; there would have been no seal broken; but, at all events, I resisted temptation, so you must praise me and not censure, Miss Mab.’

‘And how did you know,’ said Mab, while her mother pondered, ‘that we were coming this way!’

‘Give me the basket and I will tell you. What is in it? Worms? But also clay and earth. Have you not mud enough already in Watcham, that you must bring in more from the woods?’

‘Give me my basket again,’ said Mab indignantly; ‘there’s a clump of wood anemones, beauties, and the famous coltsfoot that only grows at Denham. I have hunted for it for years, and I only found it to-day. Give it me back.’

‘I am not worthy to carry such treasures,’ said Leo, ‘but the contact will do me good.’

‘All the same you haven’t answered,’ said Mab. ‘Who told you we were coming this way?’

‘If you must know, it was the accomplished Patty again. She offered me tea, which I declined, and she offered me also my mother’s card, which in my high sense of honour I declined too, and then she said, “My lydy was a-going to Denham Hill, and you’ll meet ’em sure, if you go that way.” Patty is my friend, Miss Mab; she has a higher opinion of me than you have.’

‘We must hurry home now, Mab; we have been too long away,’ said Lady William, with a serious face. ‘It does not do for a woman of my age to go out on your long grubbings. Come, Leo, give me the basket, and let us run home.’

‘I can run too,’ he said. ‘Are you really sorry, is that what you mean, that you missed my mother?’

‘I cannot quite say that honestly. No, I am not sorry I missed your mother. Perhaps she and I have been too long apart to bridge over the difference now. How I used to admire your mother, Leo! How beautiful she was!’