Part 20

Mab, in short, enjoyed herself so much, and was so frankly delighted with the progress of events, that the questions that were poured upon her by all the old ladies became superfluous.

‘Well, Mab, are you getting partners?’ Mrs. Plowden said, whose attention had been riveted upon her own children, and who, in sincerity, had scarcely noticed Mab until she danced with Jim.

‘Partners! she has never once sat down the whole evening,’ cried Miss Grey.

Mrs. Plowden was aware that Emmy had not danced the two last dances, and she felt the humiliation; but she smiled. ‘Everybody is anxious that a girl should enjoy her first ball,’ she said. ‘Jim wanted you so much to enjoy yourself to-night.’

‘Well, she paid him back for it,’ said Miss Grey; ‘she threw over Bobby Wade for him.’

‘Bobby Wade!’ cried Mrs. Plowden.

Bobby Wade had not asked either of the Rectory girls. This little heartburning ran on along all the line of mothers who sat or stood by the wall. Mr. Wade and Mr. Swinford were the two men whose approach made every heart beat. Those who had not been asked by them--or, rather, whose daughters had not been asked by them--felt the vanity of the whole affair, and that the apples which were so bright outside were but ashes within. Leo, for his part, worked very hard that nobody might be left out; but young Wade did not care in the least, dancing up with his arm extended to the young lady he fancied, when he pleased, and carrying her off sometimes under the very nose of her partner.

‘He had better not try that on with me,’ said Jim.

‘What would you do? You couldn’t knock him down in Mrs. FitzStephen’s room?’

‘No, I don’t suppose I could do that,’ said Jim, ‘for their sakes; but I should certainly give him to understand----’

‘How could you give him to understand?’ said Mab, pursuing her cousin with pitiless practicality. But, as it happened, the proof of what Jim could do occurred at once, for Mr. Wade made a long step up to her--her very self--and held out that insolent arm.

‘Our da-ance, I think,’ he said.

‘Indeed, it is nothing of the kind!’ said Mab; ‘I am not engaged to you at all----’

Wade opened his eyes very wide, and looked as if he could not believe his ears. ‘I assure you this is ours--booked first thing in the evening. Come!’ he said.

‘We are losing half the waltz,’ said Mab to her partner, and they dashed off, brushing against Mr. Wade’s extended arm. It was very rude, and Lady William took her daughter very much to task for her want of politeness.

‘But it wasn’t the least his dance--he had nothing to do with it, mother.’

‘That may be,’ said Lady William, ‘but it is one thing to refuse a partner and another nearly to knock him down.’

‘Oh, did we knock him down?’ said Mab, delighted, and softly clapping her hands. She was disappointed to hear that he had not been knocked down at all, but was standing in a corner of the room very sulky, and vowing vengeance upon the little fat thing who had rejected his condescending offer. When, however, the Rectory girls and some others surrounded her open-mouthed, to hear what it all meant, Mab took higher ground. ‘If I hadn’t snubbed him,’ she said, ‘Jim would have punched his head, or something. He told me he would not stand it, so I thought it better a girl should do it than a boy. He may sulk, but he cannot do anything to me. And what do I care for his sulking? He cannot dance a bit,’ said this high-handed young lady, who had not a dance, not even an extra, to give to any one; others who were not so deeply engaged did not, perhaps, feel themselves so free. They surrounded her, however, with a certain wondering admiration, and those girls who were not acquainted with Bobby Wade, and who had hitherto been a little ashamed of the fact, now proclaimed it as a superiority.

‘He is such bad form,’ they all said.

It need scarcely be said that there were other things in Lady William’s mind than even her child’s success, as she stood up in her corner watching the dancers. It would be to do great injustice to Mrs. FitzStephen, a woman of very good connections, and who had taken so much trouble to make her party everything that a party in a village, out of London, out of the great world, could be, to say that it was in any sense of the word common or inferior. They were all very nice people, some even, as has been seen, from the county, for Bobby Wade had brought his sisters with him, who really gave themselves no airs at all among the village folk, though they did what they could to appropriate Leo, and gave him to understand that he was the only man in the least degree of their own set. But Lady William, as she looked round the room, was haunted by an altogether unreasonable regret and discomfort, which she was indignant with herself for feeling, but which came into her mind in spite of her. This was not the scene, she said to herself, in which Mab should be making her first acquaintance with the world. Then, why not? her self said to her, hotly. It would have been far better for Mab’s mother if she had never known any other; if she had looked forward to an innocent dance in the village as her greatest pleasure, and never stepped out of that simple circle. Ah, but she had done so, the other visionary party in the argument said. She had stepped out of that circle, and her daughter was Lord William Pakenham’s daughter as well as hers: and was it not a wrong to Mab that she should be here where everybody looked up to the Wades, people who were of no particular importance, whose origin could not be compared to hers? These things Lady William was pondering with a grave face, when General FitzStephen came up to her, dodging between the dancers, to take her to supper.

‘I know you never take supper,’ the General said, ‘but none of the ladies can move till you do, and I should think you would at least be glad to sit down a little.’

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.’

XXVII

There is 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 idea could 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 behind her 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.