Part 35

‘No, I am afraid not. It is not that I dislike it, however. It is great fun. You should see little Mab Pakenham, who has conceived some doubts of me from what I have told her--so it is entirely my own fault--coming down as grave as a judge to superintend the moral effects of my teaching. She would not betray me for the world, but she is afraid of me lest I should teach the girls principles unknown to Watcham.’

‘The little impertinent! She ought to look at home----!’

‘She does look at home, and that is what makes her so staunch. She comes and superintends, but betrays me, never! However, as my morals might prove too great a charge for little Mab, and as your son Leo has got on my track----’

‘What, Leo--has got on your track, Artémise?’

‘Yes, that was rather fun, too. I saw him the other day watching me through the bushes, and as I did not want to fall into his arms at that little side door--which is so convenient--I turned and dodged him. His patience was wonderful; he was resolved to have me. We played an amusing game through and through the shrubbery, and then I took to the open, thinking I was lost. But the rain was blinding, I suppose, and the dark coming on, so I got off safe. Were you aware that he dined at the Rectory one night?’

‘I heard he did not come in for dinner. I was not downstairs. It did not concern me. At the Rectory--with that Plowden woman----’

‘And that Plowden girl. Do you know one of them is like her aunt? How should you like it if Leo----’

‘You insult my son, Artémise.’

‘Ah well! There is never any telling; since he cannot have one, he may content himself with the other. I have seen more wonderful things before now.’

‘Who is the one he cannot have?’

‘My dear Cecile, why this tone of surprise? I told you before. Leo thinks Lady William the most attractive woman he ever saw, and I do not wonder. She was always attractive, even as a silly girl.’

‘How you insult me, Artémise!--a woman I hate, who has no right to that name, and will soon be proved the impostor I have always known she was.’

Mrs. Swinford sat upright on her sofa, with a glow of anger on her face.

‘Then I had better hurry off,’ said Mrs. Brown composedly. ‘If she is to be attacked, it is evident I cannot stay here.’

‘But you said it was the safest place,’ cried Mrs. Swinford in alarm, ‘that nobody would think, of looking for you in Watcham.’

‘It is no longer safe now that Leo is on my track, and little Mab full of alarm as to my morality. She will not betray me, that little thing; but some time or other she will make her mother come with her, to judge if my teaching is all right.’

‘Then you must go, Artémise--you must go at once; though how I am to live, in this dreadful place, with no one to care whether I am alive or dead----’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Brown solemnly, ‘I have thought of that. You want somebody to look after you. You will have to make up your mind between two things, between the two greatest things in the world--love and hate. If you hate her more than you love me, I will go. But you must remember, it is not going to come back. I will have to disappear so entirely, that no one will ever hear of me more. I can’t turn up again when you want me, even by stealth, as I do now.’

‘Why, why?’ said Mrs. Swinford, who had uttered this question again and again, while Mrs. Brown was speaking. ‘Why should you disappear entirely? When it has blown over, when it is forgotten--everything is forgotten after a while.’

‘Do you think Emily will forget a thing that means her honour, and her child’s inheritance?--you have not forgotten, and it ought to be nothing to you.’

‘Nothing! You know what it is to me, Artémise.’

‘Yes, I know what it is to you. It is hate and revenge--and do you think your motives are stronger than hers? You want to pay off an old score, but she wants to live respected and to provide for her child. She will send detectives after me everywhere as soon as she knows. She will have you watched so that I shall never be able to approach you. It will be good-bye for ever between you and me, Cecile, if I am to carry out that rôle----’

‘Artémise, you are too cruel! You know that I cannot live long without you. You know that seeing you, having you at hand, is my only comfort. I live only while you are here; for the rest of the time I only exist, I vegetate, and hate the light----’

‘I know,’ said Mrs. Brown, in a slightly softened tone, ‘that you are fond of me, Cecile; that I have been more or less necessary to you ever since I was born. You must make up your mind, however, soon, for it will certainly be as I say.’

‘No, no!’ said Mrs. Swinford, rising from her sofa, trailing her long skirts after her from end to end of the beautiful room. ‘No, no! We will leave this place; we will go to Paris, where we can be secure. There are places there no detective would think of. Detective--an English detective’--she laughed her tinkling intolerable laugh. ‘Bunglers all! what do they ever find out? I tell you, Artémise, we can live there in perfect safety, you and I together--and see our friends--and amuse ourselves. All with you! Fancy what a changed life!’

‘On the edge of a volcano--for me.’

‘On the edge of no volcano--what could be done to you? Nothing! It is no crime--and she would give it up very soon. She could not help herself, she would have no money. These people will take even her allowance from her--she will have nothing, nothing--not a penny, not a name; she will have to work--she will not think much of detectives then; she will not be able to go to law. No, Artémise; we shall live together, and you will be safe, safe as a child.’

‘My dear Cecile! In the meantime if all this should come to pass, Leo will marry Lady William, who will have no alternative but to accept him, and it will be she who will have the revenge, not you. Stop a bit--and he has plenty of money, and will never rest till he has found me out. He will know well enough where to look. All that you know in Paris, and more, he knows.’

Mrs. Swinford had kept saying ‘No, no, no!’ all the time. Her face flushed, her eyes shone.

‘He shall not, he shall not! It will be with my curse. He shall never, never do it,’ she cried. ‘I would rather he were dead.’

‘It does not matter much what you wish--your curse! you have not made your blessing a thing to be desired, Cecile. Oh, I am not blaming you; it is not my affair, but I don’t believe in the curse, you know. He will do it, and the woman whom you have ruined will marry him, for she will have no other resource. And Leo will find me wherever you hide me: no, it is for you to choose--between love and hate, Cecile.’

‘I will never,’ she said between her closed teeth, ‘let that woman go.’

‘Then you choose hate? I knew you would,’ said Mrs. Brown, still perfectly calm; ‘and now, my dear, you must hear me. For I never meant to serve your hate all the time; I never meant to let Emily be ruined. If she needs me I shall reappear. Yes, wherever I am. I am going away, but I shall leave my address with Leo, or with Jim, or with----’

‘Artémise!’ she cried.

It was rarely that the sound of a raised voice was heard out of Mrs. Swinford’s room. She had nobody there to excite her to anger, but on this occasion she was no longer the sovereign in her own palace. It was not rebellion that moved her, for Artémise had always retained her independence; nor defiance, for nothing could be more quiet than Mrs. Brown’s tone. It was the impatience of contradiction, the surprise at opposition which a woman to whom everybody has yielded feels at the first check, and the sound was so sharp and keen, and raised to such an unusual pitch of surprised exasperation, that when a knock came immediately after to the door, and Leo’s voice was heard asking ‘May I come in?’ it was impossible for his mother to stop him with the languid, ‘No, I do not wish to be disturbed,’ with which she had often closed the door upon him. Julie, the usual sentinel, had stolen away, believing her mistress to be too much occupied to miss her--unhappy Julie when the moment of retribution came.

There was not a word said. Mrs. Swinford had not recovered her composure when her son opened the door.

‘You do not say anything; so I suppose I may come in,’ he said.

The man’s intrusion was strange in this chamber never intended for him. A man and a son!--that is something different from a man and a brother. Mrs. Swinford gave her visitor a sharp and meaning look, and then said:

‘What may you want, Leo, coming upon us in such a sudden way?’

‘Was I sudden? I heard you with some one, and I thought I might venture also, as you were evidently talking. And here I find precisely the person I wanted.’

‘Leo, you are very ill-bred. When you come to your mother’s room, which is not very often, you might pretend, at least, that it was for her you came.’

‘That surely goes without saying, mother. I was not aware when I came that there was any one here.’

‘And you may be very well assured, Cecile, that at all events it was not for the love of me.’

Mrs. Swinford returned to her sofa with an exclamation of impatience.

‘You have all your own objects,’ she said, ‘you are all pursuing your own ends. There is no one who thinks what is best for me. Leo, we were talking on private matters, women’s matters. Now that you have seen Artémise, as you seem to have wished, your good sense will tell you that it is best to go away.’

‘It was not from any desire to see her,’ said Leo. ‘Madame Artémise knows very well what I should be likely to wish in that respect: nor to talk to her, though she is so entertaining, but to know where I may find her, for the sake of others.’

‘Oh yes, we all know what you mean. It is Emily Plowden you mean--it is you who have been backing her up all this time against your mother. I know you, Leo--that it should be against your mother, gives it a zest. You make her think--poor thing!--that it is for her, while your real desire is to expose your mother--to build her up in opposition to me.’

‘I think you must be dreaming,’ he said provoked. ‘Madame Artémise, was it you I saw the other night in the shrubbery? Why did you run away?’

‘Do you call that running away? I wasn’t, however, displeased to have had a little excitement for once. But you see I was not afraid of you, for I have come back.’

‘I don’t know wherein the excitement lies,’ said Leo impatiently. ‘I have a message to give you, that is all.’

‘You will give no message to Madame Artémise in my room.’

‘Are you mad, mother? Why should I not say what I have got to say? There is nothing so sacred in your room. I respect your seclusion, and never interfere; but surely when I find you with your chosen companion----’

‘She is my chosen companion. She is the only person who cares for me in the world. She shall come here and live with me, and comfort me for all the evil I have had to bear. She knows how I have been treated here, by those who should have cherished me most. My husband, who never understood me: my son, who has been beguiled from my side by my enemy. Artémise knows all my miseries, every one. She has consoled me when I have been at my worst. She shall come and live with me now, and be my companion, as you say, or else----’

But then Mrs. Swinford paused. There had been a certain pathos and dignity in her complaint. And she meant to add a threat, but instead stopped short and looked her son in the face.

‘Mother,’ he said, ‘you have always been the mistress of your own house, and chosen your own company. You invite whom you choose here----’

‘Yes, I will invite whom I choose. Artémise shall stay with me, and we will fill the house. Oh, it is not the time for the country, I know; but later, later. Thank you, Leo, I will trouble you no longer. Send the housekeeper here, I will give my orders; or Julie--Julie will give my orders. You need not take any trouble. And we will not detain you any longer; you must have affairs of your own that interest you more than ours.’

Mrs. Swinford waved her hands and all her rings, dismissing her son, who made a step towards the door.

‘Leo will stay a little longer, please. You are speaking very much at your ease--mother and son: are you aware that this is a proposal that has been made before, and that I have never consented to it? No, Cecile, I will not live in your house--nor will I do your bidding, whatever it may be, Leo. The schoolmistress of Watcham has her own humble duties to perform, and she will perform them just as long as she chooses. She is a woman not bound by rules in general, and who does not care for a character from her last place, or anything of that sort. But at present she cannot be spared from her duties, not even for the sake of the best of friends who dispose of her so sweetly. She is not a woman to be calculated upon or to be disposed of, except in her own way.’

‘Do you mean to say that you are the schoolmistress, Mrs. Brown?’

Leo had no inclination or desire to thwart her, or to disturb her in her position. He commented to himself with secret satisfaction on the inconsequence of the woman who thus gave herself up, so to speak, into his hands. For all that he wanted he had now discovered, that is, where she was to be found.

‘Yes; I am the schoolmistress, Mrs. Brown, whom you scared the other day. Why should I have been scared and fled, and led you such a dance? Because it amused me, Mr. Swinford: and I am here because it amuses me. And I shall go away when I please, probably without giving notice. I think, Cecile, if you will ring your bell, it would probably please Mr. Morris, your dignified butler, to let me out to-night by the great door.’

‘It rains,’ said Leo. ‘If you will permit me, Madame Artémise, I will order the brougham to take you home.’

She made him another curtsey with a merry devil twinkling in her eye.

‘The poor schoolmistress! That will be the best joke of all,’ she said.

XLVII

‘Mother, I want you to come with me to the school,’ said Mab. She had lost no time in carrying out Mrs. Brown’s previsions, though she was quite unaware of them.

‘Me--to go with you to the school? You know I have never had anything to do with the school. There are plenty of ladies to look after the school.’

‘Yes, I know what you always say, mother: and I never asked you before. You will never have anything to do with the parish; but this is not the parish, it is me. Mrs. Brown is a very queer woman. She has them all in the most excellent order; but--I want you to see with your own eyes and tell me what you think.’

‘I have a very important letter to write, Mab.’

‘You are always writing important letters now, mother. What is it about? You never tell me anything now. I used to know all about your letters, and lately you never tell me anything. You are always conspiring with Uncle James. You never trust anything to me!’

‘Poor Uncle James! How much perplexity and trouble I have brought him--and everybody connected with me.’

‘You--mother!’

Mab stood and stared at her with wide-open eyes.

‘No,’ said Lady William, with a blush and a laugh. ‘You do well to stare, Mab. I suppose that is one of the conventional things that people say when they are in trouble. No, I have not brought perplexity upon any one, or trouble, for a great number of years; but it is true that I have begun again now----’

‘What is it, mother?’ Mab came to the back of her mother’s chair, put her arms round Lady William’s neck, and rubbed her downy girlish cheek against the other, which was paler, but not less soft. Then Mab made a guess at the trouble in the only form that occurred to her. ‘Have we been spending too much money? Have we got into debt? Has anything happened about--Uncle Reginald----’

‘Poor Reginald!’ cried Lady William. ‘That is what it is to be the prodigal of the family--everything is laid upon him. No, it is quite another matter. It is--why shouldn’t I tell her? It is your father’s brother, who has died and left a great deal of money. And there are things to arrange. If I can settle everything, as I wish--you will be a rich girl. But it is all uncertain, and it has stirred up so much that was gone and past.’

‘Then it is about money,’ said Mab in a relieved tone. ‘And perhaps we may be rich! Well, that is nothing to trouble about, mother. I should like it, on the contrary. Come out, and leave the letter till to-morrow. Come anyhow--whether you come to the school or not----’

‘What a little pertinacity you are! But, Mab, there is another side to the question. If it is not settled that you are to be rich--an heiress, as people call it--we shall, perhaps, be very poor, poorer than you can imagine: with nothing--less than nothing!’ cried Lady William, thinking with a pang of the good name and honour--the loss of which Mab never could understand.

‘Well!’ said Mab, with another rub of her cheek upon her mother’s, ‘that’s nothing so very dreadful either. Most people are poor--far, far more people than are rich. We shall be no worse than our neighbours. I daresay we shall be able to do something for our living. We are not useless people, mother, you and me. And now come out, come out, mother dear! You will write your letter much better after you have had a walk. The fresh air puts things into your head, the right things to say----’

‘Ah, Mab,’ cried Lady William, ‘if you only knew how willing I am to be tempted, how much rather I would put it off--for ever if I could----’

‘Well, mother, putting it off till the afternoon is not putting it off for ever,’ said sensible Mab.

And when Lady William went to get her hat, Mab, who had always a hundred things to do within as well as outside the house, in the course of her moving about as she put things straight upon the table, saw her mother’s letter upon the blotting-book, which Lady William had left open. Mab had no idea that she did anything wrong in looking at it. She had had no hesitation in all her life before, about anything that was her mother’s, and why now? It began, ‘Gentlemen,’ which was a queer mode of address, Mab thought, and this was how it went on:

‘I had already heard of Lord John Pakenham’s death, and expected your letter accordingly. I have no certificates to send you, as it never occurred to me to provide myself with anything of the kind, and circumstances, as I hear from my brother, have occurred to make it somewhat difficult to obtain them but you will perhaps know better how to act in the matter than I do. I was married on the 13th May, in St. Alban’s Proprietary Chapel, Stone Street, Marylebone, by the Rev. Mr. Gepps, who is since dead. And I am informed by my brother that the Chapel was burnt down some years ago. It seems an unfortunate concatenation of accidents, but I don’t doubt that you will know how to proceed in the matter. There is no witness of the marriage still alive--except----’

Here the writing broke off, and Mab stopped short with a curious sensation as if she had been pulled up suddenly. It startled her a little; she could scarcely tell why. What did people mean, inquiring into matters so long past? Her mother’s marriage! Why, everybody knew all about her mother’s marriage. ‘Am not I a proof of it? Mab said to herself. ‘I hope they don’t mean to suggest that I am not my mother’s child!’ It disturbed her a little, though she could not have told why. Poor mother! she never liked talking about her marriage. Why should she be troubled? Mab had long ago made up her mind that it could not have been a happy marriage, though natural piety (which was strong in her) prevented her from blaming her father. They did not understand each other, she supposed. Many married people failed in that: strange to think how anybody could fail to understand mother, who was so very easy to get on with, not jealous or touchy, or any of those things! And that anybody should worry her about her marriage after all this time when she had been a widow for such years and years! Mab could not bear that her mother should be worried in this or any other way.

‘Mother,’ she said, when they set out, ‘I want to say something to you. I read your letter, you know, in the writing-book----’

‘You read my letter, Mab?’

‘Well, you never said I mustn’t; I never thought you could be writing anything you did not want me to see.’

‘And you are quite right, my dear,’ said Lady William seriously; but all the same, she asked herself with a shudder, ‘How far she had gone, what she had said?’

‘And, mother, if they are raking up everything, all those things you prefer not to talk of, that you have never even told me--because of this money that might or should come to me--mother, I don’t want their money. Let them keep it to themselves. I will not have you worried or get that look over the eyes for anything of the kind. I ought to have a say in it, if it is for me.’

‘My love, it is very sweet of you to say that--and quite what I might have expected from my Mab; but unfortunately they, if you mean the lawyers, won’t keep it to themselves, nor can they keep it from you, if---- The family would keep it willingly, I have no doubt, but then it is not in their hands.’

‘If--what, mother?’

To think--among all her mother had said--that this little straightforward, practical mind should have seized on the one little word which she had not meant to say! Lady William was pale, besides having, as Mab remarked, a look over her eyes. ‘If--I can settle it all as I wish,’ she replied.

Mab gave a dissatisfied look, but said no more on the subject. Lady William’s tone admitted of no more questioning, and the little girl knew when to stop. She took her advantage, however, in another direction, and seizing her mother’s arm as they reached the village street, said: ‘Now, mother, come with me to the school.’

Lady William laughed, and consented. A laugh, an escape from present anxiety, a run with a little coaxing, not-to-be-denied girl through the morning air and sunshine--how pleasant these things are! She had been a little vexed about the letter, and had checked Mab’s inquiries in a manner which does not at all show in print, but which was very effectual, and now she could not fail to make up for all this by giving in to Mab. When they reached the schoolroom, however, it did not present the same aspect of quiet without and occupation within which it generally did. There was a little crowd round the door, in the midst of which were some of the elder girls talking volubly. And at the moment when Lady William and her daughter appeared upon the scene, Mr. Osborne was visible coming towards them on one side and Leo Swinford on the other. What was the matter? Mab, whom everybody knew, pushed into the midst of the agitated group.

‘Oh, Miss, teacher’s gone,’ the girls cried, hurrying round as to a new listener.

‘Gone! Mrs. Brown!’ cried Mab, with almost a shriek of dismay: and then the story was told by half-a-dozen eager voices at once. Mrs. Brown had returned last evening in a grand carriage--the carriage from the Hall--to the wonder and awe of the nearest neighbours who were witnesses of the event; but whether she went away again late that night or by the first train in the morning no one knew. What was certain was that when the children came to school in the morning the schoolroom (oh, joy!) was locked up, and no trace to be found of Mrs. Brown. Later, when the schoolmaster decided upon the strong step of breaking open the doors, it was found that Mrs. Brown’s trunks were fastened, her house stripped of all its embellishments, and no sign of her left anywhere. The boxes were addressed to a railway station in London to be left till called for. There was no letter, no statement of any excuse. She was gone, that was all that could be said.