Part 28

The Rector, as had been perceived, had gone towards the cottage when he went out with care upon his brow. He had not, after all, as the reader will understand, proclaimed the wonderful news about Mab when he went home after his meeting with Lord Will. He reflected to himself that it might be some time before he could set his sister’s position quite straight, and that in the meantime the report of Mab’s heiress-ship would flash all over the parish, and that any question, any hesitation, any delay, on the subject would attract the curiosity and interest of the village folks. Mab an heiress! It would go from one end of the county to the other, and questions as to when she would come into her fortune would come from all sides; very likely that last horror of impertinent gossip which reveals what everybody leaves behind him to the admiration of the public, would communicate the news in spite of all precautions. Lord John’s death intestate and the amount of his fortune would be in all the papers, with a list of the kindred concerned. But at all events, the Rector said to himself, he would say nothing till the matter was more assured. It was not an easy thing to do. He felt it bursting from his lips during the first day when he allowed himself to mention Lord Will simply to relieve his mind, but by main force kept the other communication back. And to say that it was not with the most dreadful difficulty that he kept his mouth shut on those many occasions when it is so natural to let slip to your wife the secret that is in your heart, would be to do Mr. Plowden great injustice. He was not in the habit of keeping things to himself. Even the secrets of the parish, it must be allowed, sometimes slipped--things that ought to have been kept rigorously inviolate. He had not, perhaps, the most exalted opinion of his wife’s discretion, and yet she was his other self--a being indivisible, inseparable, with whom he could not be on his guard. But she had shown great discrimination when she said that the Plowdens stuck to each other. Nothing would have made him confess to his wife that there was any insecurity in the position of his sister. Emily was a thing beyond remark, a creature not to be criticised. He would have nothing said about her--not a word of compassion. There are a great many men who deliver over their sisters and mothers without hesitation to be cut in small pieces by their wives, but here and there occurs an exception. Emily was James Plowden’s ideal and the impersonation of the family honour and credit. He could not have a word on that subject, and thus he was strengthened in his resolution to say nothing of Mab’s prospects--until, at least, they were established beyond any kind of doubt.

This did not by any means look like the position in which they were now. Mr. Plowden went into the cottage almost with a little secrecy--looking round him before he opened the little garden gate--for the gossips in the parish were quite capable of reporting that there was something odd and unusual in the Rector’s constant visits to his sister, and that certainly something must be ‘up.’ To be sure it was only his second business visit--but even so much as that was unlike his usual habits, and he was extremely anxious that no question should be raised on the subject. He found her in the drawing-room, at her usual sewing. Mab was out, which was a thing of which the Rector was glad. She looked up hastily at the sight of him, reading his face, as women do with their eyes, before he had time to say a word.

‘You have not succeeded, James?’

‘How do you know I have not succeeded?’ he asked crossly. ‘I have not, perhaps, done all that I hoped to do--but Rome was not built in a day. It was absurd to expect that I had only to go up to London--an hour in the train--and walk into old Gepps’ parsonage and find him still there.’

‘You did not find him at all?’

‘No, I didn’t find him at all. I never expected to find him, considering that he was an older man than my father, and that my father has been dead for sixteen years.’

‘To be sure,’ said Lady William faintly.

‘I found his name, however, all right, and the place--not quite in the City, as I thought--St. Alban’s proprietary chapel, Marylebone.’

‘Ah!’

‘Do you remember the name?’

‘No,’ said Lady William; ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember even the name.’

‘Well, never mind; Gepps was incumbent then. And a very good place, too, for anything that was to be kept quiet--hidden away in a labyrinth of little streets; not so noticeable as the City, where an old church in the midst of warehouses is often something to see. Lady Somebody or other’s proprietary chapel; incumbent, the Rev. T. I. Gepps. No doubt that was the one.’

‘Was it like my description? But, to be sure, it may have been changed, or restored, or something.’

‘I can tell nothing about that. It has been changed with a vengeance. Emily, the chapel has been burned down----’

She gave a little scream of annoyance, but more because of the face he had put on, than from any perception in her own mind of the significance of the words.

‘A few of the things were saved--the books, I mean--but not all, not all, by any means: and all those between 1860 and 1870 perished.’

‘What do you say, James?’

She began to awaken to a little consciousness that this concerned her, which she had not at first understood. ‘The books?’--she took it up but vaguely now--‘the books? What--what does that mean, James?’

‘It means that of the period of your marriage there is no record at all. Do you understand me, Emily? No record, no certificate possible--nothing. It is as if you had planned it all. A clergyman who is dead; a chapel which is burned down; a registry which is destroyed. That is what it might be made to look by skilful hands--as if you had invented the whole.’

She sat half stupefied looking at him, the work still in her hands, her needle in her fingers, looking up at him more astonished than was compatible with speech. ‘The clergyman dead, the chapel burnt down, the registry destroyed!’ She said these words in a kind of half-conscious tone--repeating them after him, yet not knowing what she had said.

‘That is about the state of the case; if you had meant to deceive, you couldn’t have done better all round.’

Lady William looked at him with a curious half smile, yet wistful wonder in her eyes. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I did not want to deceive.’ There was a sort of startled amusement in her tone, mingling with something of reality, a question half rising, a faint feeling of the possibility, and that even, perhaps, her brother----‘James,’ she cried, ‘you do not imagine that I--I----’

The words failed her; the colour forsook her face, and she sat looking up at him dismayed; her work fallen into her lap, but the needle still in her hand.

‘Of course I do not imagine that you--nor, did I doubt that, could I doubt for a moment when there’s my father’s hand and date upon it. And I suppose that would be evidence in a court of justice,’ the Rector said, knitting his brows--‘I’m rather ignorant on such subjects, and I don’t know. But I suppose it would be evidence. I could prove my father’s handwriting, and that I found his notebooks, and produce the rest of them, and so forth. But it’s touch and go to rely upon a thing so close as that.’

‘The books destroyed!’ she said, repeating the words, ‘the church burned down, the clergyman dead. Do such things happen? all to overcome a poor woman? If it was in a book one would say how impossible--how absurd---- ’

‘Emily,’ said the Rector, ‘you must forgive me for saying it, but that’s just what your whole story is--impossible and absurd. It has been so from the beginning; people have no right to launch themselves on such a career. You had it always in your power not to take the first step. I blame my father almost more than you--he ought not to have allowed you to do it: but I blame you too. For even a girl of nineteen is old enough to know what’s possible and what’s impossible. You ought not to have allowed yourself to be launched upon such a bad way. After your ridiculous marriage you might have expected everything else that was ridiculous to follow. It is all of a piece. Nobody would believe one word of it from the beginning to the end--if it was, as you say, in a book.’

Lady William listened to this tirade with a curious piteous look, almost like a child’s; a look that was on the verge of tears and yet had a faint appealing smile in it, an appeal against judgment. Oh what a foolish girl that had been, that girl of nineteen, that ought to have known better! and what a good thing for her if she had known better; if she had been able by her own good sense and judgment to overcome those about her: the foolish old father, the false friend who led her into the net. Listening to her brother’s voice so long, long after the event, and looking back upon the thing that was so impossible, the thing which between them these foolish people had done--she could see very well how preposterous it was, and how it could have been resisted. Mab (all these thoughts flew through her mind while the Rector was speaking) would not have done it. But Mab’s mother had done it, and could not even now see what else she could have done among these three people surrounding her, arranging everything for her. And there was a sort of whimsical, ridiculous humour in the idea that all these complications must have followed from that foolish beginning. What could she expect but that the clergyman should die, the church be burned down, and the books destroyed? To the disturbed and disappointed Rector, thoroughly put out, touched in mind and in temper by a _contretemps_ so painful and disconcerting, there was nothing whatever ludicrous in the thought. But to her, whose whole life hung upon it, her child’s fortune, her own good name, everything that was worth thinking of in the world, there was an absurdity which had almost made her laugh in the midst of her despair.

‘I am very sensible of the folly of it now,’ she said, commanding her voice, ‘and I know all the misery that has been involved better than any one can tell me--but it is too late now to think of that. We must think in these dreadful circumstances what is now to be done.’

‘You see, Emily,’ said Mr. Plowden, ‘I never knew the rights of it till the other day. I knew there was something queer and hasty about it, a sort of running away; but you know that till you came back here a widow with your little girl I had heard actually nothing--and, indeed, not very much until you came to the Rectory the other day.’

‘That is quite true; and I am very sorry, James.’

‘I don’t say it to upbraid you, my dear. My father was much more to blame than you were. I would not like to have any of my daughters exposed to such a temptation, even at their age. And Florence is twenty-three. And you were always a spoiled child, getting everything your own way.’ The Rector had gradually worked out his impatience and had gone round the circle to tenderness and indulgence again. He put his hand on her shoulder, and patted it as he might have done a child. ‘My poor girl,’ he said, ‘my poor Emily!’ with the voice of one who brings tidings of death, and a face as long as a day without bread, as the French say.

She looked up at him with a gaze of alarm.

‘James!’ she cried, ‘do you think it is all over with us? Don’t say so, for Heaven’s sake! I’ll find Artémise if I seek her through all the country; I’ll find evidence somehow. Don’t condemn us with that dreadful tone.’

‘Condemn you!’ said Mr. Plowden, ‘never will I condemn you, Emily. Even if you had done something wrong instead of only something very foolish, you may be sure I should have stood by you through thick and thin. No, my poor dear, you shall get no condemnation from me; and Jane, I am sure, has far too much sense and too good a heart----’

Here the Rector’s voice broke a little. The idea that his wife would have to be made the judge of his sister, and might almost, indeed, hold Emily’s reputation in her hands, was more than he could bear.

‘Jane!’ said Lady William, with a ring in her voice as sharp and keen as that of her brother’s was lachrymose; but, happily, she had sufficient command of herself not to express the exasperation which this suggestion of being at Jane’s mercy caused her. She said, however, with a painful smile, ‘You are throwing down your arms too soon; I don’t intend to be discouraged so easily. Now I know that the fight will be desperate I can rouse myself to it. It is evident that the one thing that is indispensable is to find Artémise.’

‘Who is Artémise? Some French maid or other?’ said the Rector, with a tinge of disdain.

‘Artémise is Miss Mansfield, who was with us--a cousin, or some people thought a half-sister, of Mrs. Swinford. Their father was a strange man, more French than English, and that is the reason of their names, and--many other odd things. She is a strange woman, and has a strange history. She was at the Hall, a sort of governess--when---- And she was sent with me that night. And without her I don’t think--but we need not enter into those old stories now. One thing I know is that she is living, and that Leo Swinford has seen her--not very long ago.’

‘A disreputable witness,’ said Mr. Plowden, shaking his head, ‘is not much better than no witness at all.’

He was in a despondent mood, and ready to throw discouragement upon every hope.

‘I don’t know that she is disreputable; and at all events she was present,’ said Lady William. ‘That must always tell--in a court of justice, as you say: though God grant that it may never come there.’

‘I suppose you can lay your hand upon her without any difficulty, through Mr. Swinford,’ the Rector said, suddenly adopting an indifferent tone as if with the rest of the business he had nothing to do.

‘That is, perhaps, too much to say; but at least she may be found--or I hope so,’ Lady William replied.

‘And now I must go,’ said Mr. Plowden. ‘Of course, anything and everything I can do, Emily--when you have tried what is to be accomplished in your own way----’ He turned towards the door, and then returned again, with a still more cloudy face. ‘My dear sister,’ he said, in a tone of solemnity and tenderness adapted to the words, ‘you may have to seek his help for this; but for all our sakes do not, any more than you can help, have young Mr. Swinford here.’

Lady William looked up quickly with a half-defiant glance.

‘Above all’ said the Rector impressively, ‘while there is any sort of doubt, any sort of cloud, and when every step you take will be remarked---- Don’t make me enter into explanations, but, for all our sakes, don’t have Mr. Swinford always here.’

XXXVIII

It is almost needless to say that the Rector left his sister in a state of mind in which exasperation healthily and beneficially contended with despair. She might have been crushed altogether by his discovery; but he had managed to mingle with that so many other sentiments that Lady William felt herself no broken-down and miserable woman, but a creature all full of fight and resistance--tingling, indeed, with pain, and scorched with a fire of injury, feeling insulted and outraged to the depths of her being, but all the same full of angry strength and force, determined that nothing as yet was lost, and that sooner than yield herself to the tolerance of her sister-in-law and indulgent interpretations of her friends, who would pity and assure each other that whatever dreadful thing had really happened, poor Emily, a mere child at the time, was innocent--there was nothing she was not capable of doing. To change from Lady William--in a sort, the head of the little community--to poor Emily, was a thought which fired her blood. For that, as well as for her child, the small motive thrusting in in the immediate present into the foreground--there was nothing she would not do. To find Artémise was a trifle to her roused and indignant soul. If she went out herself on foot with a lanthorn, she said to herself with a vehemence which soon turned into an angry laugh, she would find her. The lanthorn and the search on foot turned it all into stormy ridicule, as the Rector’s suggestion that the little, dingy, dark private chapel had been burned and the books destroyed as a natural consequence of her folly in being married there, had done. Lady William felt the laughter burst out in the middle of the bitter pain. For the pain was bitter enough down in the breast from which that stormy humour burst, so sharp that she could not sit still, but went raging about like--as she said to herself--a wild beast, pushing the crowded furniture aside, holding her hands together as if to keep down the anguish by physical torture. A thumbscrew or a deadly boot to crush her flesh would have been something of a relief to her in the active anguish of her soul. Mab to hear that her mother was---- Oh no; never that her mother was---- but only that there was a doubt, a horrible peradventure, a failure of proof.

Lady William paused in her movement to and fro and tried to look at it for a moment through Mab’s eyes. That is often a very good thing to do, but a difficult. We forget nature when the question is one so all-important as this, what a child will think of its mother. Often we believe in an opinion too favourable, without inquiry, forgetting what a formidable criticism is that which our children make of us from their cradles, learning our habitual ways so much better than we know them ourselves. But there are some ways in which the natural judgment of candid and clear-sighted youth may give any who is unjustly accused comfort. In the light of Mab’s eyes (though they were neither bright nor beautiful) Lady William felt for a moment that her trouble melted away. Mab might not see the fun--that she should see fun at such a crisis of her life!--of James’s suggestion of the connection between the burning of the church and the folly of the marriage: but she would be utterly stolid like a block of stone to any idea of shame. No one could cast suspicion upon her mother’s honour to Mab. Lady William thought she could see the girl’s look of utter disdain on any one who could suggest such a suspicion even by a glance. There was once a lady known to fame who, moved by a hot fit of jealous pain and misery, left the house in which she was being entertained, and walked home alone at night up the long length of Piccadilly. A man who met her, moved, I suppose, by her solitude and the unusual sight, followed, and at last addressed her. When her attention was attracted she turned round upon him, looked at him, and uttering the one word ‘Idiot!’ walked on, as secure as if she had been surrounded by a bodyguard of chivalry. Somehow that incident floated into Lady William’s memory. That was what Mab would do. She would think, if she did not say ‘Idiot!’ and pass by, too contemptuous almost to be angry, feeling it unnecessary to answer a word to the depth of imbecility which was capable of such a thought.

Yes; it made her quieter, it calmed her down, it delivered her from that worst and deepest horror, to look at it through Mab’s sensible, quiet eyes. But when Lady William remembered that James would tolerate her, and be kind, and that everybody else would say, ‘Poor Emily!’ the intolerableness of the catastrophe caught her once more--and the advantage which even her brother even James, who loved her in his way, who would spare no trouble for her, had taken of it already. While there was a shade, while there was a shadow of a doubt upon her, she must not admit Leo Swinford ‘for all our sakes.’ Women do not habitually swear, or I think Lady William would have used bad words, had she known any, when this intolerable recollection came into her mind, just as, if she had not been bound by the inevitable bonds of education and natural self-control, she might have broken the china or the furniture to relieve herself. A gentlewoman cannot do either of these things, fortunately, or unfortunately, for her, and they are outlets which must sometimes be of use. But the quick movement with which she dashed her hands together when that last thought came into her mind, upset a little table upon which was a plant, one of Mab’s especial nurslings just shaping for flower, as well as various other nicknacks of less importance. The sense of guilt and shame with which she saw what she had done, the compunction with which she stooped over the broken flower-pot, and gathered up the fortunately uninjured plant, and the specially prepared soil in which it had been placed, and which was but dirt to Patty, who came dashing in at the sound of the crash to set matters right--did Lady William as much good as smashing a window or two might have done to a poor woman out of Society. She was very penitent and much ashamed of herself, and horribly amused all the same. To express her rage, her injured feelings, her pride and desperation, by breaking a flower-pot, was again where bathos and ridicule came in.

‘I’ll sweep it all up, my lady,’ cried Patty, ‘and there won’t be no harm.’

‘Miss Mab’s leaf-mould? No, you shan’t do anything of the kind. Find me another flower-pot, and let us gather it all up carefully, and put it back.’

‘Miss Mab’s full of fads,’ said Patty, under her breath.

But Lady William did not allow herself such freedom of criticism, and she had scarcely gathered up the mould and built it securely round the plant in the new pot before Mab came in. ‘Oh, are you filling it up with fresh mould, mother?. My poor auricula! It will never produce a prize bloom now, and I had such hopes.’

‘You ungrateful child! when I have gathered up every scrap of your famous mould with my own dirty hands!’

‘Poor mother,’ cried Mab, ‘that can never bear to dirty her hands! let me see them.’

Mab kissed the fingers which Lady William held out, smiling. ‘After all it is clean dirt, nice mould carefully made, and with everything nice in it both for the colour and the health. Mother, your hands are a little like the auriculas, velvety and soft.’

‘And brown, and purple,’ said Lady William, laughing. Who is it that says that if we would not cry we must laugh? Heaven knows how true it is.

‘It must have been Patty that did it,’ said Mab. ‘That child will never learn to take care. And, oh! the little Dresden shoe is broken that I got off the Christmas tree, and the silver things all scattered. I wish Patty might get a whipping; it is the only thing that would make her take care.’

‘Whip me, then, Mab, for it was I. I was vexed and angry----’

‘You! angry, mother?’

‘It is not a thing that never happens, Mab.’

‘No, said Mab judicially; ‘it is not a thing that never happens: but it only happens when you are put out. And I should like to know what had put you out.’

‘Nothing,’ said Lady William, with a smile.

‘Oh! mother; you may say that to other people--but to me! Of course, I shall find out.’

‘It was something your uncle James said to me, Mab.’

‘Oh!’ said Mab, satisfied; ‘I am not surprised if he was in it. He does say such strange things. But he means well enough. Come out, then, mother, for a walk. That always does you more good than anything.’

‘It is too early; it is not noon yet. It is dissipated going away from one’s work at this time of the day.’