Part 19

‘Who is that you are describing so succinctly?’ cried a voice behind them. ‘Miss Mab has an energy and conciseness of expression which I admire.’

‘She has a pitch of voice occasionally which is not at all admirable,’ said Lady William, turning round. Mab, as may be supposed, turned a bright scarlet up to her hat, her very hair warming in the quick suffusion of colour. But her mother was skilled in such emergencies and betrayed nothing.

‘It is always admirable to know what you think, and to express it clearly,’ said Swinford. ‘I was on my way,’ he added, putting his hands together with a supplicating movement, ‘to inquire whether I might consider myself forgiven. You know you turned me out the other day. May I come back with you now? You take so much from me when you shut your door. Miss Mab will intercede for me. She was as much shocked as I was when you sent me away.’

‘There was no sending away,’ said Lady William. ‘We have been having an argument--my daughter and I. You shall be the impartial umpire and set us right.’

‘With all the pleasure in the world,’ he said.

XXV

‘It is a very good thing to have somebody impartial to refer to,’ said Lady William; ‘all our advisers take a side strongly. Now, Leo, you are of no faction; you can give us fair advice.’

‘I am of your faction always,’ he said.

‘Ah, but I am of no faction. I am the seeker of advice. We want to be well advised, Mab and I. By the way, she does take a side strongly, but I will not tell you which it is.’

‘Expound the case, Miss Mab; I must know before I can say.’

‘So you shall know; but Mab must not tell you, for she has a bias. The case is this: Mab you see is grown up----’

He gave a glance at her in her (still) short frock, with her (still) large waist, and round, artless, almost childish look.

‘I see,’ he said, with a smile.

‘And must presently be introduced into society. The question is, must it be the society of Watcham, and is the dance at the FitzStephens’ to be her _début_? or is she to enter the world in a different way, and be taken to town for a season with all that follows? What is your opinion?’

‘Can there be two opinions?’ he said, opening his eyes wide. ‘This is not treating me well. I hoped it was to be a difficult and delicate question, but it is no question at all.’

‘You see,’ said Lady William to her daughter.

‘If you put it to him in that way, mother: but that is not the way. Imagine, Mr. Leo, what they all want!--that mother, who is, I know, better than the whole of them, every one, whoever they may be--should go and--and--petition my uncle and his wife, who have never taken any notice of us--to take me by the hand and introduce me, as people say, into society: to introduce me--me, Mab, do you understand, to the Queen and all the rest; to get me asked to parties with them--me, Mab, do you understand?’ said the girl, beating upon her breast, ‘only me; and that is what everybody wants, and mother hesitates and wonders whether she ought to do it: and I,’ cried the girl, her dull eyes growing bright, ‘I will obey mother. I have never gone against her yet except in the way of reason, and if she were to tell me to jump into the river I would do it (hoping to scramble out somewhere lower down); and I’ll do this of course if I must, and perhaps escape alive--but never, never of my own free will. Now say what you think, Mr. Leo. Isn’t it I that am in the right?’

‘The question has a very different aspect, certainly,’ said Leo, ‘from Miss Mab’s side.’

‘Hasn’t it?’ said the girl triumphantly. ‘Now I should be proud, mother, if he who is of your faction should pronounce for me.’

‘But there is a great deal more to be said on both sides,’ said Leo; ‘we have not come to a decision yet. And just tell me why you should not go to town yourself as everybody does, and introduce your daughter in your own person, and show yourself in the world? That would seem so much the most natural way.’

‘Ah!’ cried Mab, with something like a shout of triumph. ‘That is something like advice! I did not think much, I tell you true, of consulting Mr. Leo--but now I see he is a Daniel come to judgment. And to think that none of us ever thought of that before!’

Lady William grew red and she grew pale. It had not occurred to her, strangely enough, that any one would suggest this simple alternative. The other advisers, indeed, knew her position too well to think of it. She said with a laugh: ‘You speak very much at your ease, you young people. Where am I to get the money for a campaign in town? I might squeeze out a few dresses for Mab--that is all I could do. You forget that I am not a wealthy person like you, Leo. And then I know nobody. We might as well stay here for anything I could do for her. Yes, the Lenthalls might invite us, or Lady Wade, who belongs to this neighbourhood; but nobody else. And we should be ruined! No, no; that is more impossible than anything else. It must, I fear, be Lady Portcullis, or nobody. Her aunt is her only hope.’

‘If I am to be sent off to Lady Portcullis like a brown-paper parcel,’ said Mab, ‘I will do what I’m told, mother; but I won’t discuss it any more. Mr. Leo, I would ask you to stand up for me, if I thought you could ever stand up against mother.’

‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ said Leo; ‘but I will try as much as I can.’ He got up to open the door for her (for by this time they had reached the cottage), which was a thing Mab hated, feeling the attention very right for her mother, but a sort of mockery in the case of a little girl like herself. She submitted with her head bent; and then bolted like a young colt, which she still was. It must be allowed that the young man, who, according to all laws, ought to have preferred her company, was relieved when she was gone. He came quickly back to where Lady William sat, her head bowed upon her hand in much thought, and drew a low chair, Mab’s little baby-chair, to her feet.

‘I have a counter proposition to make,’ he said, lightly touching her hand to draw her attention.

She smiled, and said, ‘What is that?’ with a friendly indifference which made him frown. It was very clear that his proposition, whatever it might be, awakened no excitement, scarcely even curiosity, in Lady William’s breast. He made a very long pause indeed, but she took no notice until there had been time for various tumults and revolutions of thought in his mind. Then she looked up, with a little start, to see him in an attitude which was strangely like supplication, though he was in reality only seated in the low chair. ‘Well,’ she said, in her easy tone, ‘what is it? You keep me a long time in suspense.’

‘It was--nothing,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ said Lady William, with a laugh, ‘you pay me back in my own coin.’

‘Rather,’ he said in a changed tone, ‘let us say that it was this. We must, I suppose, go to London next month--though my mother does not seem to care for it now as I thought she would. However, we shall go; and why should not you come too? Come with us; take Miss Mab where you please, and come back when you please. It would obviate all the difficulties you were speaking of, and secure all the---- What! You will not listen to such a simple suggestion as that?’

There had been a great many exclamations on Lady William’s lips as he went on, but she had smothered them one by one till it was impossible to keep silence longer. ‘With your mother?’ she said, almost under her breath.

‘Well: I should like it, oh, a great deal better, if it were with me; but you think of me as if I were a cabbage, and my mother was your friend--was she not your friend?--and I am your servant--to mount behind your carriage, if you like.’

‘Do not speak nonsense, Leo; you are my very kind friend, and the greatest acquisition, and if you had been going to town with your wife instead of your mother---- It is not indispensable, don’t you know, that old friends should continue friends for ever. Your mother was very good to me once--that is, I believe, for a time: but it would do no good to go into those old questions. She would not suffer me with her, nor would I---- No, no; forgive me. That does not mean necessarily any harm, does it? that we do not now--see things--exactly in the same light----’

‘Then that is settled,’ he said gloomily, ‘so far as my mother is concerned; as for me, though, you call me a friend and all that----’

‘My dear boy,’ said Lady William, ‘you don’t imagine for a moment, I hope, that I would let you pay my expenses--for the benefit of Mab?’

He paused again, gazing at her, saying nothing; then threw up his hands with an impatient sigh.

‘And yet friendship is supposed to be something more than words,’ he said.

‘There is one thing that friendship is not,’ said Lady William; ‘at least, in England, Leo. It is not money. When that comes in it is supposed to spoil all.’

‘What an absurd, false, conventional, inhuman, ridiculous view!’

‘Perhaps. Oh! I don’t know that it need tell between two young men. There is an allowance to be made in that way for _bons camarades_. But I think it is a just rule on the whole. My poor little experience is that it is best not to be very much obliged to one’s neighbours. No, no! I don’t say so for you, Leo. I believe you might give everything you have to a friend, and never remind him of it--never recollect it even yourself, as long as you lived.’

‘Is that much to say?’

‘In the way of the world, it is something extraordinary to say; but this is a totally different question from my little problem, which is urged upon me by your mother, Leo, as well as by my innocent people--my brother and sister here.’

‘You think my mother is not innocent--that she had some other motive?’

‘I did not say so; why should she have another motive? Whatever there may have been between her and me, I, at least, have done her no harm.’

‘Then it must be she who has harmed you?’

‘No; what can any one do to you, outside of yourself? All our troubles come from our own faults or mistakes. We say faults when we speak of others, mistakes when it is ourselves. You told me once that Miss Mansfield--Artémise--had appeared again?’

‘Ah! I should like to know what she had to do with it,’ he cried.

‘Nothing,’ said Lady William; ‘but it would be important to me to know where to find her. Will you find out for me? There is something which she only knows which I am anxious to make sure of.’

‘Something important to you?’

‘They tell me so. I was not aware of it, and yet--if you could bring me to speech of her, Leo, for five minutes. She was never unkind to me.’

‘She is a bird of evil omen!’ cried Leo; ‘wherever she appears some harm follows.’

‘Ah!’ said Lady William, ‘and you said she was here the other day!’

‘There is something which has happened between you and my mother--something she has done to you which you will not tell me?’

‘What could she have done to me?’ Lady William made a movement as though shaking off some annoyance. ‘No; all she has done is to persuade me to this--about Lady Portcullis and the introduction of Mab into society. What could be more innocent?’ she said, with a laugh.

‘There is one thing,’ he said, ‘that one ought to do before giving an opinion. Has Lady Portcullis ever shown any interest? I have met her; she is very commonplace--one of the rigid English. Oh! very English. You do not know her? she has not sought your acquaintance? Would she?--has she ever?--do you think it is likely----?’

Lady William laughed again, but uneasily, painfully. ‘You are a sorcerer, Leo--this is the doubt I have never mentioned to any one--not to Mab herself, not to my brother. Do I think it is likely----? Since you ask me, I must answer no; my pride prevented me from saying it--not even to your mother did I say it--but she--ah!’ Lady William broke off again, still laughing--and the evening was beginning to fade, but Leo thought he could see the hot flush on her cheek.

‘I am not my mother’s champion,’ he said; ‘she has her peculiarities. She may have thought it would embroil you with the family.’

‘That,’ said Lady William, ‘was the least of what she thought!’

‘Dear lady,’ he said, ‘here is some mystery. You know that I am of your faction whatever happens. But you must tell me before I can do any good.’

Lady William did not make any immediate reply. She said at last: ‘Artémise: if you can bring me to speech of Artémise, I shall want nothing more.’ Then with a change of tone--‘Here is Mab coming back; no more of it--no more of it! there has been too much already. Mab, Leo is waiting till you give him some tea.’

‘Give it me strong and sweet,’ said Leo, who had jumped up from his low chair with perhaps a touch of embarrassment--but Lady William felt none--‘sweet and strong; for my head is a little confused, and I want it clear.’

‘Is it all about me and my father’s people? That is very good of you, Mr. Leo,’ said Mab, ‘to take so much interest--and have you converted mother to my way of thinking?--which is the thing I want most.’

‘I have been doing my best,’ he said, standing up beside her against the waning light in the window. And then it was for the first time that it occurred to Lady William---- Well, she was no more a matchmaking mother than you or I; but to see two young people together--one of them your own child, and the other a very good match--very well off, and kind, and true, and good, _par-dessus le marché_--this is a thing which will make the most unworldly woman think. To be sure, Leo was twice or nearly twice the age of Mab--but at their respective ages that was of no consequence. It was true also that Leo gave unmistakable signs at this present moment of much preferring Emily, the mother, to any seventeen-year-old; but that Lady William in her wisdom thought less important still. That would blow over quickly enough; it was scarcely even worth a thought; but they were smiling at each other in a very happy, pleasant way, she appealing, he answering the appeal. It was nothing, but yet it was a suggestion--and how many pleasant things it would involve! It was far too distant, too misty and vague to suggest to the mother how she should feel in her cottage if her Mab was spirited away. But it was a suggestion--and gave a new and agreeable direction to her thoughts.

Leo remained until the lamp was brought in by little Patty, whose eyes shone at the sight of him, partly because it pleased her to see ‘a gentleman’ again in the house (for Patty was a matchmaker, if you please, and never looked upon a ‘gentleman’ without an immediate calculation whether or not he would ‘do’ for Miss Mab), and partly because she felt that she must now be wholly forgiven for any wrong thing she had done in respect to him, seeing he was allowed to come back. Patty had never been sure what it was that she had done which was wrong; but none the less was it evident to her that she herself must have shared the pardon of the worst offender. And in the meantime there had been a pleasant little hour over the tea-table; as if to encourage her mother’s imagination, Mab had for once been seized with an impulse to talk, which was a thing that happened to her now and then. And it was beyond doubt that Leo was amused by her chatter, and responded gaily. They discussed Lord and Lady Portcullis with great mutual satisfaction, and the Ladies Pakenham, whom Leo had met in Paris; and he gave Mab a great deal of information as to her family, which the girl received with a mixture of amusement and offence, proving to her mother that there had been more things even in little Mab’s thoughts than were dreamt of in her philosophy. And then the young man went away, and they were left alone to resume the controversy or not, as fate might decide. Lady William, who had been brought into very close observation of her daughter, left the subject in Mab’s hands--but Mab did not enter into it again. She changed the subject to the FitzStephens’ dance, which was now so near, and led her mother to a discussion of the dresses they were to wear, which had the air of absorbing all Mab’s thoughts. ‘Do you think I will look very fat in white, mother? and my arms so red and healthy,’ she said. And this sort of conversation was carried on until Mab fairly put her mother, with all her anxieties and questions, to bed. The little girl was not without questions in her own mind, questions about her father, about the life she could not remember, or scarcely could remember, in Paris; about the family and relations she had never seen. By dint of much reflection it appeared to her that she could recollect a stiff gentleman with a fat face, who must have been Lord Portcullis himself. Why was it she knew nothing of her uncle? Why did he take no notice? Was there any reason for it? or was it her mother’s fault? If so, Mab was as strongly determined that she was of her mother’s faction as ever Leo Swinford could be; but more still than Leo Swinford she wanted to know from the beginning, and find out how and why it all was.

XXVI

The night of the FitzStephens’ dance was a great one in Watcham. It was not precisely a dance, to tell the truth, as, to temper the pretensions belonging to the name of a ball, there was to be a little musical performance to begin with--a duet from Emily and Florry Plowden, a few pieces for violin and piano, and so on--which was sufficient to give something of the air of an impromptu and accidental performance to the dance, which, of course, was the real meaning of the whole. Some of the people were so unkind as not to arrive till the music was over, which was thought exceedingly bad taste by the performers and their families, and gave the General and his wife a moment of dread lest the party they had got up so carefully might not be a success after all. But by ten o’clock the music was over, the piano rolled into its appointed corner, and the music stands, which had been prepared for the violinists, put away. The musicians who were engaged for the dance did not want any music stands, and the assembled party required every scrap of room that was available. The excellent FitzStephens had done wonders to enlarge the space. They had taken away everything--almost the fixtures of the house: doors were unhung, carpets lifted: I cannot really calculate the trouble that had been taken. Even after the party assembled, the removal of the chairs on which they had been seated to hear the music was a matter of labour, for they were not all light chairs like those which people in Watcham borrow by the dozen from Simpkinson of the ‘Blue Boar,’ but included a number of comfortable easy-chairs for the ladies who did not dance, of whom there were a considerable number. The FitzStephens did not see the necessity of leaving the elder people out. They were old themselves, and though they delighted in seeing the young ones enjoy themselves, as they said, yet they liked also to have their own playfellows, with whom to have a comfortable talk, while they looked on. What Mrs. FitzStephen would have liked best would have been to keep the elder ladies apart in the room which was called the General’s study, which had a door (removed) into the dancing room, by the opening of which (had it not been crowded by the elder gentlemen) the matrons could have seen enough of their children’s performances, as well as have been out of the way. This, however, was the one point which was not successful in the arrangements, for the mothers preferred to cling to the walls in the dancing room itself, at the risk of being swept away by flying skirts, or trodden upon by nimble feet; and the fathers occupied the doorway in a solemn block, so that nobody could see anything through them. Even Lady William, who generally was so great a help in getting people to stay where they were wanted, herself got into a corner in the dancing room, taking up, it must be admitted, very little room, as she stood up against the wall to watch how Mab got on among the dancers; and Miss Grey, in a costume in which she had gone to all the parties in the neighbourhood for the last twenty years, flitted about like an aged butterfly, getting the puffs of superannuated tulle about her into everybody’s way, in order to see not only how Mab got on, but how everybody got on in whom she was interested, and that meant every girl in the room. Thus Mrs. FitzStephen had one little point of vexation amid the perfect success of everything else. But it was so natural. The General declared that he himself liked to see the dancing, and was not at all satisfied to be sent away into another room.

The reader, perhaps, would like to know at once how Mab, who was the _débutante_ of the evening, got on. Her white frock was very simple, being, as has been said, the manufacture of her mother and herself; but Lady William was universally allowed to have great taste, and it is saying a great deal to say that she herself was satisfied with the effort. As a matter of fact, the finest dressmaker in the world could not have disguised the fact that Mab’s figure was too solid, and her well-formed, round arms a little too rosy with health, for perfect grace. But that solid form and rosy tint agreed very well with the childish roundness of the face, under the dimpled and infantile softness of which Mab hid so much good sense and independent judgment of her own. She looked as she was, like a little girl just escaped from the trammels of childhood, enjoying the dance with all her might, without thinking for a moment whether anybody admired her, or what people thought of her dancing or demeanour, and without the slightest thrill of consciousness in mind or person. Mab was so popular that she was a little bored at first by her own success, for many of the most dignified persons present, men quite old enough to be her father, considered it a right thing to show their interest in her by ‘coming forward’ and performing a solemn dance with her--General FitzStephen himself (who might have been her grandfather) taking her out for a quadrille as he might have taken Mrs. Swinford had she been there. There passed through Mab’s mind a devout thanksgiving that Uncle James was a clergyman, or perhaps he might have asked her too. The Archdeacon, indeed, who was also prevented by his cloth from any such escapades, insisted on taking her to have an ice, which she did not want, and which almost lost her one waltz. It will be seen from this that the dance was all that a first dance ought to be to Mab. Her card was filled before she had been two minutes in the room, the gentlemen crowding round her, so that before the end of the evening she, who accepted everybody at first with smiles and pleasure, became critical, and actually threw over young Mr. Wade, one of the county people, whom most girls delighted to dance with, in order to career over the floor with Jim for the third time in succession, to the astonishment of everybody. Jim, with whom she was on terms of easy family intimacy, finding fault with him all the time, was, on the whole, the dancer she preferred--though there was much to be said for Leo, who was making himself extremely agreeable, and whose ‘style’ most of the ladies admired greatly as something quite out of the common, and not in the least like the careless romping of Bobby Wade, who had been supposed to be the representative of the fashionable world, and to bring the last graces of the _beau monde_ to astonish the villagers. That Mr. Swinford, on the contrary, should be so quiet, so far from any ideas of romping, filled the ladies with surprise, who had been watching Bobby as the glass of fashion and the mould of form. But Mab thought, and did not hesitate to say so, that Leo was a little stiff. She said whatever came into her head, that daring little girl--she was not afraid of offending anybody, especially not Mr. Leo, as she called him, to the admiration and wonder of all the other girls.