Part 22

‘Well--that perhaps they had no real right. I don’t mean that it would be their fault. She might have been taken in, and never known. I’ve always heard he was a horrible old scamp, up to everything--and would have cheated you as soon as look at you. It would be nothing wonderful if he had cheated a girl who, I suppose, was fond of him. A woman will be fond of anything that notices her, I believe. And fifty thousand pounds is a big bit of money to throw away.’

‘Well, my friend,’ said Leo, ‘I am quite well aware that fighting is, as you say in England, no go; but I am bound also to allow that it is a farce in France, and that if it were ever so serious and real it is not a way to decide a question like this. However, let us try, if not to decide it at least to throw some light upon it.’

‘Oh, that’s easy enough done, old man,’ said Lord Will. ‘You needn’t trouble yourself. She has a solicitor, I suppose, and he will have to send in all the papers to our man, and they’ll manage it between them. Of course, if our fellow has a hint that there is anything irregular he will be more particular. That’s more or less what I came for, don’t you know: to see what she had heard about old John, and so forth, and what she expected and----’

‘What you say,’ said Leo, ‘sounds as if you meant--that you were to try whether she could be made to be content with less than her rights--with anything that it was thought well to give. I don’t suppose that is what you mean.’

‘It’s kind of you to add that much,’ said Lord Will, who had stopped in his amusement of knocking about the balls, which he had been doing savagely, to stare in a threatening way at his friend. Then he threw down the cue and began to walk up and down the hall. ‘Swinford,’ he said after a while, coming back to the table, ‘do you know that is, I believe, exactly what I was intended to do? I knew it in a kind of a way, but I never put it into words. I believe they thought she might have been put off with a thousand pounds or two, as if it had been a legacy.’

‘But your lawyers--I suppose they have a character to lose--would not have consented.’

‘Oh! there’s no saying what lawyers will consent to when they’re on your side. I note what you say, about having characters to lose. I suppose you think that we--haven’t much, perhaps.’

‘I did not mean that,’ said Leo briefly.

‘Well, perhaps you will now--but that would be a mistake. We’re none of us lawyers. Don’t you know that people sometimes take up an idea that looks quite allowable until you put it into words? Here’s a woman living quite by herself in a corner, wanting very little money. And the governor, you know, has been making her an allowance all this time. What can she want with a lot of money like that? It would only worry her, make her think, perhaps, she could set up in a different way of living, and bring her to grief in the end. And she as good as owes the family her allowance all these years, which my father wasn’t any way compelled to give. D’ye see? Well, it doesn’t sound very high-minded, I allow, but it’s very plausible. It would be no end of use to us--fifty thousand pounds, or say forty-five with five thousand or so off to her----’

‘Oh! you mean to be so liberal as that!’

‘By Jove! don’t drive me to it, or I may---- Look here, don’t let’s quarrel, Swinford. It’s so caddish. I never thought of the business, I tell you, from your point of view. It sounds very plausible. It’s quite possible the lawyers wouldn’t have stood it; I don’t know. They never thought of the law, nor that she had any natural right, don’t you see, to old John’s money. They knew very well he would never have left it to her, when he knew how heavily the governor was dipped and all that. I fail to see even now what harm there was in it. The allowance, of course, would be continued, and five thousand pounds is as much to a woman living like that, as fifty is at home. It would have been an enormous windfall; that is what my mo--I mean what my people thought.’

Leo Swinford had a mind which was very tolerant, and he wanted of course, now he had calmed down a little, to make the best of it. He nodded his head, and said: ‘I allow that perhaps it was plausible; but I presume it would be felony all the same.’

‘Felony,’ said the other with a stare of astonishment--the word seemed to puzzle him. ‘The governor is the head of the family,’ he said vaguely, which somehow seemed a reason.

‘It would be defrauding one of the heirs of an intestate person of her just share. The heir would be Mab, I suppose, not her mother.’

‘Oh,’ said Lord Will, quite confused; what between the transference of the heirship, the inattention of his friend to his plea that his father was the head of the family, which to himself seemed to be a condition of importance, and the extremely big word that Leo had used, this young man, who was not clever, but who was not at all a bad fellow notwithstanding the mission in which his dull intelligence had not seen any harm, was quite bewildered, and did not know what to think.

‘Yes,’ said Leo, ‘I don’t know much about English law, but Mab no doubt would be the heir; and any reasoning brought to bear upon her to make her accept a portion of her natural right in place of the whole, would be the same, I presume, as if you had stolen so much from her.’

‘Oh, stolen! rubbish!’ cried Lord Will; then he explained ingenuously, ‘there was to be no reasoning brought to bear; I was to inform them simply that Uncle John had left--a legacy.’

‘That would have been what I believe is called in English--lying.’

‘Swinford! you mean, I think, to make me forget that I am your guest, in your house.’

‘In French,’ said Leo, taking no notice, ‘it is called _mensonge_, and has sometimes interpretations more or less favourable. When you save your mother’s reputation or your father’s honour, as it is called, _mensonge_ is the word, and you are not judged too severely; but I have always heard that in England to lie was the worst offence.’

Lord Will was a little stupid, and therefore very placable. But this stung him to the quick. He knew what a lie meant, and though he felt a resistance and profound objection in himself to accept that dreadful word as representing his action, still, he felt there was a horrible resemblance between his intentions and that theory. Certainly the legacy would have been a lie. He did not see that though he had come to say this, he had already in the frankness which was far deeper down in his nature than any intention of guilt, committed himself to the actual truth. No consciousness of that fact softened his sensations. What Leo said was true. He had come not only to say but to act a lie.

‘You’re tremendously severe,’ he said. ‘I should knock you down by rights for hinting at such a thing.’

‘Yes, you might,’ said Leo, ‘and you could if you liked. You are bigger than I am; but I don’t see what difference that would make.’

‘I don’t either,’ said Lord Will. And then there was a pause; he was not clear enough in his mind to stop there. ‘But if this,’ he said, ‘that Mrs. Swinford tells me is true----’

‘What did my mother tell you?’

‘Well! you ought to care more about what she says than about any other woman’s pretences. She says that it’s very uncertain whether they were ever married at all. Look here, don’t you know, it isn’t me, it’s your mother. She says they went off from her house together, eloping, as far as I could make out, in the middle of the night: and that the next time she saw them, she--this lady--was with my uncle in Paris and called Lady William. That’s all. Of course, if it was a marriage she’ll be able to prove everything about it; but if not, it does seem a little hard, doesn’t it, that those fifty thousand pounds of old John’s money should be lost? And you must remember, Swinford, it is your mother who says so; it is not I.’

Leo was silenced by this speech. He had not been prepared for so bold a statement, nor that Mrs. Swinford would interfere in such a way as this. Whence had she derived this hate against her old friend? His mind went back easily to the period when Emily Plowden was the pet of the house. He had only been a child, indeed, but a child remembers every detail which older people forget. And he remembered more vaguely, yet well enough, to have heard his father speak of Lady William after their establishment in Paris. Leo had not known very much of his father, who was a reserved man, and not demonstrative to the boy, who was his mother’s toy and darling, a little drawing-room puppet, everything that an English father would most dislike in his son. Leo was aware of all this now, and exaggerated it, as was natural, his own later conduct in life having been revolutionised more or less by compunctions and repentances in respect to his father. He could not tell how it was that in a moment the image of that father leaped into his mind. It seemed to him that he could almost see the little scene--the ornate suite of rooms in Paris, his mother lying back scornful and splendid in a great chair, his father walking up and down in high indignation and something about Lady William on his lips. What it was he did not remember, but that his father had spoken in respect, he was sure. The recollection came to his mind like an assurance and pledge that all was well.

‘You must take care,’ he said, taking the cue which Lord Will had thrown down, and beginning in his turn to torture the balls, ‘that the wish is not father to the thought. When it is for one’s interest that a thing should be, it is so easy to persuade oneself that it is.’

‘That is not my case, Swinford. I did hope I might have made something of the business; but to have it settled for good and all in this way was never in my thoughts. The governor himself never knew, nor any one. I don’t believe he ever suspected----’

‘And yet you are certain, all at once?’

‘Well, not certain,’ said Lord Will; ‘but when a lady, a friend of the woman, with nothing in her mind but justice, I suppose----’

‘My mother,’ said Leo, ‘has told you nothing from her own knowledge. She informs you of a possibility of wrong. Your own father was on the spot; he went over when his brother died, but he suspected nothing; and my father, a man of the highest honour, though I did not know him as I ought, suspected nothing. Take care how you let a mere insinuation--a doubt----’

‘It was your mother who made it, Swinford.’

Leo was very pale, and an angry cloud came over his countenance. He turned round with an impulse of indignation towards the young man who forced this upon him. ‘My mother,’ he said, ‘may be mistaken; she is human, like the rest of us. In the meantime, I think you are showing little knowledge of human nature, Pakenham. Do you think that lady whom you saw to-day could have lived as she has done for all these years under a burden of shame? and could look as she does if she knew that she might be found out any day?’

‘Women are dreadful hypocrites,’ said Lord Will. ‘They can face things out in a way no man could do. Why, I’ve seen at home how things can be faced out--and no doubt so have you, too.’

‘She is not of the kind to face things out.’

‘Oh, I quite acknowledge she’s a stunner, and all that. Reason the more why she should hold her own, and refuse to understand if a fellow dared to put a question--oh, not that I should ever dare to do that. I’m no more a coward than most other people, but say to a woman like that that I believed she wasn’t rightly married, I’d sooner jump into the river any day with a bullet at my heel.’

‘Which means simply that your inner man--the better part of you--is aware of the fact, which, for your interest, you would like to deny: that is all about it. I advise you to drop the idea, like a hot potato, as they say here. It is not true.’

‘Prove that it isn’t true, and I’ll not say another word.’

‘I prove it by simply pointing to the lady in question,’ said Leo hotly.

‘Oh, that! but even if I were to take that view, she mightn’t know, herself. She might be deceived as well as the rest.’

A look of sudden alarm came upon Leo’s face. Lady William was a person of high intelligence, but she was not a woman of the world. In the quick look he gave upward, in his way of returning to his aimless play, and the impatience with which he struck again the innocent balls, sending them coursing to every corner, the trouble of his mind might be guessed. This gave his visitor fresh courage.

‘You needn’t fear, Swinford,’ he said, ‘that I’ll bully a--person like that. Whatever her position may be, there’s nothing common about her, that’s clear. I’ll give our man a hint. Get it all clear about marriage and all that, and the proof of the child’s birth and so forth--all in the way of business. You may trust me for that: not a word to her, but just what’s necessary between the two solicitors, don’t you know. I think now I’m going to bed.’

‘I advise you,’ said Leo, taking care not to see his companion’s hand stretched out to him, ‘to be careful how you discount your hopes. Do not count your eggs, as they say here, till they are hatched.’

‘You mean the chickens: and I should not dream of putting the fifty thousand pounds in my own pocket. Why, man alive, it’s not for me! I shan’t get twenty thousand farthings of it, nor anything like that.’

‘Ah, then you are hopeless, for you will feel yourself disinterested,’ said Leo, so busy with the balls that once more he missed seeing Lord Will’s hand stretched out.

‘I say, Swinford, there’s no ill-feeling, I hope.’

‘Why should there be any ill-feeling?’ said Leo, raising his eyes for a moment with a benign but too radiant smile. He turned to the balls again the next moment as he said lightly with a wave of his cue, ‘Good night.’

It is confusing, it must be allowed, to a plain intelligence, to have one member of a family force information of the most serious kind upon you, while another avoids shaking hands with you because you believe it. Such things happen, no doubt, in the world, but they are rare, and Lord Will went upstairs to his room in a very uncomfortable state of mind, not knowing which he should depend on of those two conflicting powers. Leo remained for some time after, still knocking about the balls. Morris, with whom his master in the dearth of other companions had sometimes played an occasional game, hung about in prospect of a call. But Morris was disappointed, though it was perhaps an hour later before Mr. Swinford left that uninviting occupation. He went on with the gravest face in the world, but very devious strokes, evidently as indifferent to what he was doing as he was overwhelmingly serious in doing it. The click of the balls and of his steps round the table gave a curious sound in the midst of the silence of the great house. Such sounds say more of solitude than the most complete stillness, and Leo’s countenance was as grave as if he had been playing, like a man in an old legend, with some unseen being for his own soul.

XXX

It is not to be supposed that during this period the visits of Mrs. Brown, the schoolmistress, to her friend at the Hall, who was so like yet so unlike her--so unlike in personal importance--so superior in position, and yet so strangely resembling--should have ceased. There were no other two persons in all the precincts of Watcham so evidently belonging to the same world and species, and yet there were no two more separate in all those externals that distinguish life. Mrs. Brown’s visits were almost all paid in the evening, sometimes very late, sometimes at that hour before dinner when Mrs. Swinford was known to receive no one. But there was no bar at any time against the entrance of this privileged visitor. On the evening which Lord Will spent at the Hall Mrs. Brown came late, while dinner was going on. She had an entrance of her own by which she preferred to come in, a door which gave admittance to the servants’ quarters, but which was always open, and spared the schoolmistress the intervention of Morris, whom she did not dislike to see now and then, and metaphorically put her foot upon with the pride of a superior knowledge which he could not understand. But this malicious gratification, though she enjoyed it occasionally, was not enough to make up for the disadvantage of having her movements known and chronicled, and it suited her character and habits better to have a mode of access absolutely free and beyond control. She was so swift and subtle in her movements, and so fortunate, as the clandestine often are, in finding her passage free, that on many occasions she had glided through the great house, mounted the great stairs, and appeared noiseless in the ante-room occupied by Julie, the maid, without an individual in the house being aware that she was there. It had so happened on this particular night when even Julie was out of the way. Mrs. Brown came in noiseless, slightly breathless, having hurried upstairs, and just escaped meeting a strange young man, whose wide shirt-front indicated him in the partial darkness of the corridor as if he had carried a light, but whom to her surprise she did not know. A woman with her wits so much about her, knew by sight by this time everybody in the neighbourhood who was likely to dine with Leo. She avoided him by a rapid step aside, and consequently she was a little out of breath when she arrived in Julie’s room, where there was no one, a dereliction of duty that might have cost Julie her place had it been known. Mrs. Brown looked round her with a nod of satisfaction as she put off the heavy veil in which she was accustomed to wrap herself on these visits. She went into the inner room, and looked round with an even more vivid look of satisfaction. Mrs. Swinford’s luxurious room was as she had left it in the perfection of silent repose and comfort--soft light, soft warmth, everything that the most refined suggestion of luxury and ease could command. Mrs. Brown gave a sigh, and then a laugh. She said to herself, ‘How little a difference would have made me like this!’ and then she said, ‘What a bore it would have been!’ The laugh suited her better than the sigh. It called forth a twinkle of mischief and lurking vagabondism in her eyes. She then lay down on Mrs. Swinford’s sofa, put back her head upon the cushions, took up first one book, then another, and read a page or two. Then she threw them down one after another, and looked round the room again. How pretty it was! Her eyes lingered for a moment here and there on the pictures, the little graceful bronzes, the prevailing ornament, the lights, carefully planned to the advantage of the decorations. And then a strange shadow came over her face. Good heavens, to lie here, and remember! she said. Perhaps in her energy of feeling, these words were said aloud. At least, they brought in Julie, who had in the meantime returned to her room, not suspecting the presence of this visitor, and who peeped in suspicious, half-terrified, with her hand on her breast. ‘C’est vous, Madame?’ she said, with a look of mingled terror and relief.

‘Who else should it be, unless a thief?’ said Mrs Brown. ‘But as it might have been a thief and not me, you know, you ought not to be absent, _ma chère_.’

Julie clasped her hands and entreated that Madame would not say anything. ‘This is not the house for thiefs,’ she said.

‘On the contrary, it is just the house. Don’t you know all the robberies of jewels are done when the family are at dinner?’ Mrs. Brown rose from the sofa and took a low chair beside the fire, where she continued to sit when she had dismissed Julie much alarmed by the admonition. Many thoughts went through her mind while she waited, and she had a long time to wait. She compared her own vagabond lot, now up, now down, which she had led after her own wild fancy--the life rather of a man than of a woman--with this beauty and luxury, with a shudder of pity going over her. The pity was not for herself, but for the other woman shut in, in this gilded cage to---- remember! The pictures on the walls, the carefully arranged lights, the unchangeable surroundings, all luxury and brightness, affected her like a spell. Good heavens! to sit there day after day, evening after evening, and remember! Mrs. Brown thought of her own little rooms which it had given her pleasure to arrange and decorate in a manner which she felt to be fictitious and out of character, but which amused her all the same, and which she laughed at, having done it, with a full consciousness that it was trumpery, and that the trumpery was out of place, as a woman who knew better could not fail to see. ‘Ah, well!’ she said to herself, ‘I’d rather have my trumpery that I can throw away any day, and probably shall some day, and that I can run away from when I like, when it gets too absurd.’ And then there were the books: French novels, going over and over with fantastic variations the one story--the story of (so-called) love--that is, the complicated ways by which two people, generally old enough to know better, are brought into the relations of intrigue or passion with each other--which ends badly, either in the death of one or the disgust of both: and so _da capo_, always beginning over again. ‘Good heavens!’ said Mrs. Brown to herself again, ‘how can she go on day after day, day after day, reading _that_--and remembering!’ The schoolmistress had no objection to a French novel of this class herself now and then; and reading only now and then--being within reach of such indulgences only now and then--naturally she got only the best, the ones that had wit and genius in them. But the unhappy woman who lived upon that food for ever! What garbage, what insipidity of nastiness must go through her hands! The poor Bohemian whose life was a continual scuffle (chiefly of her own choosing) looked upon this unvarying luxury, ease, and wealth, with a horror and wonder which it would be difficult to describe. ‘Good heavens!’ she repeated to herself; ‘why doesn’t she take a little chloral and be done?’

Mrs. Swinford gave a start of pleasure when, sweeping into her room in those long and splendid robes which were more fit for a Court than for a country house of so little distinction as the Hall at Watcham, she perceived Mrs. Brown sitting by the fire. It was, perhaps, the only event which could have lighted up her face with pleasure. She was cross, excited, full of the impatience and exasperation of effort which she felt to be at least only half successful; and Julie had perceived by her first glance at the lines on her lady’s brow that her evening’s task to undress, and soothe, and persuade into calm and sleep this agitated and disturbed old woman would be no easy one. ‘You come at the best time. You always know when I have need of you,’ Mrs. Swinford said, letting herself drop, as was her wont, into Mrs. Brown’s arms. The very passiveness of the embrace was a habit--a habit of reliance and expected help which had never failed. If such a thing as affection had ever been in Mrs. Swinford’s heart it was this other woman, so like her, and so unlike, who was its object.

‘I see you are got up for conquest,’ Mrs. Brown said.

‘Conquest! I am dressed as usual. There was one guest at dinner--an insignificant boy. You can leave us, Julie, till I ring. A boy, but with such a name! What do you think? A nephew--Lord Will they call him fortunately, or it would have been too much.’

‘A nephew----! of----’

‘Do you need to inquire? Then you are growing dull, dull as your surroundings. You who used to understand everything _à demi-mot_!’

‘I understand. I almost met him on the stairs. I thought there was something familiar in his face. And what does he want here?’