Part 4

The entire company pricked up its ears. Mrs. Plowden stopped short, much discomfited, in her explanation of what was the Rector’s opinion, in which Mrs. Swinford had interrupted her with such absolute indifference as to what she was saying. And Emmy raised her long neck, remembering always keenly that it was she who was now Emily Plowden; and even young Mr. Swinford, who had been talking to Lady William, raised his head with sudden attention, glancing from her to his mother. Lady William herself coloured suddenly, and with an unusual air asked, ‘What name?’

‘What but your married name, my dear?’ Mrs. Swinford said, and laughed low, but very distinctly, with her eyes fixed upon her guest.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Lady William, returning the look, ‘you are more used to my husband’s name than mine.’

Nobody had the least idea what this passage of arms meant--not even Mr. Swinford, who kept looking from his mother to Lady William with a questioning look. As for the other ladies, they stared severely, and did not attempt to understand. Mrs. Swinford was a little rude, and so was Lady William. They did not show the fine manners which ought to belong to fine ladies. On the whole, Mrs. Plowden thought it might have been better for her to make her first call alone. Mrs. Swinford had talked to her quite sweetly, she said afterwards, but Emily and she did not seem to be on such good terms. It is always a mistake, Mrs. Plowden thought, to depend upon any one else in the way of introduction. The Rector’s wife in her own parish is the equal of any one. And as for French, in which Emily was believed to be so superior, French was no more wanted, she reported to the Rector, ‘than between you and me.’

‘I daresay,’ she said, when this little sensation was over, ‘that you find our poor Emily much changed. Such a difference for her to come from the society in which she was, and everybody so superior, to our little village again: but, of course, all these things are little to the loss of a dear husband, which is the greatest a woman can have to bear----’

‘You speak most eloquently, Mrs. Plowden,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘the very greatest a woman can be called upon to bear.’

‘It is very kind of you,’ said Lady William, ‘to feel so much for me.’

‘Yes, yes, the very greatest: and she has taken it so well. But naturally it makes a great difference. My daughter Emmy is considered by everybody to be extremely like her aunt,’ said Mrs. Plowden, directing with a look the attention of the party to Emmy, who bridled and drew up her long neck with that little forward movement which was like a peck, but did not at all mean anything of the kind.

Mrs. Swinford gave poor Emmy a look--one of those full, undisguised looks which again women of the world alone permit themselves; but she made no remark--which was very eloquent, more so than many remarks. She said, after a time, with the air of a person who has been puzzling her brains to keep up a conversation:

‘You have other daughters?’ adding to her question a smile of great sweetness, as if there was nothing in the world she was more interested in.

‘One,’ said Mrs. Plowden, much gratified, ‘Florence, named after another aunt, and more like my side of the house. And I have a son, who we hoped would have gone into the Church; but he is like so many young men of the present day, he has religious difficulties. And the Rector thinks it is not right to force his inclinations, especially into a sacred profession. I have great confidence in my husband’s judgment, but I don’t quite agree with him on this point; for I think if you only use a little pressure upon them when they are young, they are often most truly grateful to you afterwards, when they begin to understand the claims of life. I wonder,’ said Mrs. Plowden, with a glance at Leo, who was once more leaning over Lady William’s chair, ‘whether you agree with me? I should like to have the support of your opinion, for you must have experience in dealing with the young.’

Mrs. Swinford had delicately intimated her entire indifference to the homily of the clergyman’s wife for some time past, but she was recalled by this appeal, which amused her.

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I have a son; but I do not think I have attempted to force his inclinations,’ she added, after a pause.

‘Ah, then you would agree with James! I am sorry, for it would have been a great support to me; but we must all judge for ourselves in these matters--and in such a question as entering a sacred profession----’

‘Leo,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘we are forgetting: our habits are not yet quite English. Offer Lady William some tea.’

‘Oh,’ said Mrs. Plowden, with a start, ‘let me pour it out! Or Emily will do so, I am sure, with pleasure, if you will permit. It is so awkward for a gentleman----’

‘Pray do not trouble yourself. Leo can manage it very well, or he can ring for some one if he wants help. And you, Emily, have a daughter, too?’

‘Yes, I have a daughter.’

‘Quite young? She can scarcely be grown up. I do not remember many dates, but there are two or three---- Eighteen perhaps, or a little less, or more?’

‘She will not be eighteen for some months.’

‘And pretty? Like you? Do you see anything of the family? Do they take any notice of the child?’

‘To tell the truth,’ said Lady William, ‘my child and I have been very happy in our cottage, and we have not thought much of any family--save our own very small family of two.’

She had flushed with suppressed anger, but with an evident desire to keep her feelings concealed, answered the questions very deliberately and in a tone of studied calm.

‘Ah, I recognise you in that! always proud: but not prudent. One must not despise a family, especially when it has a fine title. You ought to consider, my dear Emily, how important it may be for the child; your excellent sister-in-law,’ said Mrs. Swinford, turning with her wonted smile to Mrs. Plowden, ‘thoroughly recognises that.’

Mrs. Plowden, thus unexpectedly referred to, was taken in an undignified moment, when she had just begun to sip her first mouthful of very hot tea. She had felt that a second interruption in the very midst of what she had been saying was too much to be forgiven; but on being appealed to in this marked manner she changed her mind, and perceived that it was only Mrs. Swinford’s way. She swallowed the hot tea hastily, to her great discomfort, in her haste to respond.

‘Indeed I do,’ she said fervently, coughing a little. ‘Indeed I do---- I tell Emily often I would put my pride in my pocket, and insist on having Mab invited to make acquaintance with her father’s family. And she’s such a Pakenham, more like the Marquis than any daughter he has.’

‘Oh, she’s such a Pakenham!’ said Mrs. Swinford, with a faint laugh.

‘I think, Jane,’ said Lady William, ‘that you are forgetting we walked here, and that it is time we were going back.’

‘Oh, please, let these dear ladies finish their tea. Leo, Miss Plowden will take some cake. I am more interested than I can tell to hear that your child does not take after you, but is like the Pakenhams.’ The laugh was very soft, quite low, most ladylike, and, indeed, what is called poetically, silver in tone. ‘What an ill-advised little mortal!’ she said.

V

‘Well,’ said Florence to Mab, ‘we two are left alone. We’re the young ones, we have to keep out of the way. But I am sure the Swinfords would rather have seen you and me than Emmy. We are the youngest and we are the most amusing.’

‘Oh, please speak for yourself,’ said Mab, ‘I am not amusing at all.’

Florence looked at her with an air of consideration. ‘Well, perhaps that is true,’ she said; ‘you have a turn-up nose, and you ought to be lively, but appearances are very deceiving. I wonder what that army of observation will do to-day? I call them our army of observation because they have gone to spy out the land, and decide upon what are the proper lines of strategy. It’s quite new to us in Watcham to have a squire’s family: and then it is not even a common squire’s family. They are such superior people, and their ways are so unlike ours. Shouldn’t you say it would be a nice thing in Watcham to have people whose ways are not as our ways?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mab, with the indifference of extreme youth, ‘we are well enough as we are.’

‘It is easy for you to speak, with only Aunt Emily to think of, and your own way--and seventeen,’ said Florry, with a sigh. ‘I would give something to be seventeen again.’

‘Why?’ said Mab. ‘It is the most ridiculous age--too old to be a child, too young to be anything else. One cares no more for dolls and that sort of thing, and one doesn’t care either for what the old people talk about. How they go on and on and talk! as if anybody minded.’

‘You shouldn’t listen,’ said Florry.

‘Sometimes one can’t help it. Sometimes there’s a bit of story in it, and then it’s nice--only in that case they say, ‘You remember so-and-so: what a tragedy that was!’ and then the other wags his or her head, and they shut up, not reflecting that you’re dying to know.’

‘There’s something of that sort about Mrs. Swinford,’ said Florence; ‘there was quite a talk about calling before mamma made up her mind. Mrs. FitzStephen came in about a week or two ago, and she said, “I have come to know what you’re going to do?” And mamma said, without even asking what she meant, “I am very much perplexed, and I don’t know in the least.” And then papa, standing in front of the fire, with his coat-tails on his arms, you know, grumbles out--“You had better let it alone.” “Let what alone?” mamma called out quickly, and he just stared and said nothing. At this mamma said, “They are sure to entertain a great deal; they are people that can’t live without company.” And Mrs. FitzStephen, she said, “Oh, I don’t care for such company.” And then mamma replied, with her grand Roman matron air, “You have no young people to think of, Mrs. FitzStephen.”’

Florence was a tolerable mimic, and she ‘did’ those characters, with whom Mab was intimately acquainted, in an exceedingly broad style, and with considerable effect.

‘Florry, you oughtn’t to take off your own father and mother.’

‘Who then?’ cried Florry. ‘I must take such as I have; I don’t know such lots of people. Wait till the Swinfords come on the scene and I’ll do them.’

‘Ah, he’s not so easy to do. The others you’ve known all your life, and they are all the same kind of people: but you never saw any one like--_that_ gentleman. The General would give you no clue to him, nor anybody you know here. He is like nobody you ever saw; he is--I don’t know what to say.’

‘You are always thinking of that fur coat of his and patent leather shoes. I wonder if they will see him to-day? They had much better have taken you and me, Mab. Emmy may be the eldest, but she will never make any impression. A man like that will never look twice at her.’

‘Why should he?’ said Mab, raising her eyebrows, ‘or what does it matter whether he does or not?’

‘Oh, Mab, you silly little thing,’ said Florence, ‘you must know, however silly you may be, that it matters a great deal. Think only what it would matter! To have a girl settled like that--rich, able to do what she pleased, one’s sister; only think; or still more if it was one’s self. We’ve got twenty pounds a year each for our clothes, fancy! And Mrs. Swinford will have hundreds--she will have just as much as she likes, and whatever she likes, and a grand house where she could ask the Queen herself: and power--power to get Jim settled somehow, to make him sure of his living: perhaps to get something better for papa, and save mamma some of the anxiety she has. And if anything happened to _them_, why, there would be a home for--for--the other one, don’t you see? Oh!’ said Florence, with a deep-drawn breath that seemed to come from the very depth of her being, ‘it would matter so much that it is wicked, it is dreadful, to think that a man could make such a change in another creature’s life only by looking at her and throwing his handkerchief. It’s immoral to dangle a chance like that under a poor girl’s very nose.’

Mab was not unimpressed with this terrible truth. She felt also that to contemplate the differences that might ensue if one of the daughters of the Rectory became Mrs. Swinford of the Hall was more than words could say. The very possibility caught at her breath. She made a momentary pause of awe, and then she said, ‘But he never will, he never will!’

‘Emmy, no,’ said Florence; ‘no--she’s too--she’s not enough--oh! she’s impossible, and I can see that very well for myself. Emmy is--she’s one’s sister, and she is as nice as ever was. You know she is a nice girl! But she was never made for that; whereas if they had taken you and me----’

‘Don’t say me, please,’ said Mab, reddening all over that blunt-featured and irregular little face, which was unfortunately so like the Pakenhams. The flush was quite hot, and discomposed her. ‘I’m impossible, too--much more impossible,’ she said.

‘Oh! you stand upon your family,’ said Florence, ‘and upon your mother’s position, and all that; but you may take my word for it, that if you were the Marquis’s own daughter instead of a disrep---- I mean instead of his brother’s, you would have to do the very same thing. If it is because you’re not pretty, that’s true enough; but there’s never any telling what may take a man like that, and you’ve got plenty of “go” in you, Mab, though I don’t want to flatter you: and even in looks a year or two may make a great difference----’

‘Will you stop! will you stop, please!’ said Mab; ‘Florry, stop! You make me ashamed. You make me feel as if----’

‘You were going in for it, too?’ said Florence calmly. ‘It makes me crazy, too, sometimes to think that---- But so long as girls are poor, and a man, just because they please him, can change everything for them--how can we help it? Even if you were to work, as people say, what difference would it make? I could perhaps make my living--and Emmy---- But dear, dear, to think of the Hall beside any little breadwinning of ours----’

‘Don’t talk so, _please_,’ cried Mab, with a shiver. She was not a visionary at all, nor had she any sentiment to speak of. But she was very young, still something between a girl and a boy, and ashamed to hear those revelations which she only half understood; or, rather, did not understand at all.

‘Well, one needn’t talk,’ said Florry, with a slight emphasis on the word. ‘But though you mayn’t talk of it, you can’t stop a thing from being true.’

‘Let’s go out for a walk,’ said Mab, ‘a long walk, down by the Baron’s Wood and up by Durham Hill; or let’s go out on the river for a pull. Let us do something--one can’t stay quiet all this bright afternoon.’

‘I want so much to see them when they come back,’ said Florry. ‘I want to know what they think of him--if they saw him: and whether Emmy made any impression, and what happened.’

‘What could happen? Do you expect her to come home engaged to him?’ said Mab. ‘However well things may go, they could not go so quickly as that.’

‘I am not a fool,’ said Florry, with indignation. She stood at the little gate looking out wistfully along the road by which the ladies had gone. The great trees hung over the wall which bounded there the nearest corner of the demesne of the Swinfords; the lodge and gate were just round the corner out of sight. It was too soon to expect them to come back. ‘Unless Mrs. Swinford had been out,’ said Florry. ‘She might be out, you know, and then they’d be back directly.’

‘She never goes out,’ said Mab; ‘it’s too cold for her here.’

‘Or she might not receive them very well, and then they would only stay a few minutes. You are so indifferent, you don’t care a bit what has happened: and I am on pins and needles till I know.’

‘Then I shall go for a walk by myself.’

‘Don’t do that,’ said Florry, putting out her hand to stay her cousin. She stood thus for a moment with her head turned towards the Hall, but her hand clutching Mab, gazing in one direction while her person inclined towards the other. She drew a long breath, and turned at last from her fixed gaze. ‘They must,’ she said, sighing again, ‘have stayed to tea. Yes, I’ll go on the river if you like; but let us go round home on the way and fetch Jim.’

‘Jim!’ said Mab. ‘He’ll want to scull, and I prefer to scull myself.’

‘Oh, he doesn’t mind. He is as lazy as---- He’ll steer and let us pull as long as ever you please. I don’t know anybody so lazy as Jim.’

‘We should be better by ourselves,’ said Mab; ‘not that heavy weight in the stern of the boat. When we go by ourselves it’s no weight at all.’

‘He’ll steer,’ said Florry; ‘it’s better to have some one to steer. And don’t you see it will keep him out of mischief for one afternoon.’

‘You have always another reason behind,’ said Mab. ‘It never is just the thing you think of, but something at the back of it.’

‘Well,’ said Florry soothingly, ‘it’s always so, don’t you know, where there’s a family. You are so lonely, you have no brothers and sisters. If you do well, then everything is all right. But our being right depends upon so many things: First, if papa is in good humour, and if Jim is going straight. Emmy and I have little questions between ourselves, of course, but these are the chief ones. Now, you have only Aunt Emily to think of, and she neither gets into rages nor goes wrong.’

‘I should hope not,’ said Mab, indignantly.

‘It is all very well for you to throw up your head like that; but we cannot do it. We must manage the best we can. Mab, I do often wish there could be a change.’

This was said when she had at last torn herself away from the road to the Hall, and the two girls were walking towards the Rectory and the river.

‘What sort of change?’

‘Oh! anything. That Jim should go away, or that he should do something dreadful that couldn’t be forgiven--or that Emmy should marry. I would even marry myself--any one! to make a change in the family and get away.’

‘I should think, however bad things may be, that they would be worse if you were all separated and not knowing what happened to each other. And what is there so very bad? You are all happy enough for anything one can see.’

‘That is the worst of it,’ said Florry, ‘we are all pretending about everything. It’s just one big lie all round--and it isn’t right to tell lies, or at least the Bible says so. There is papa breaks every one of the commandments, you know.’

‘Florry, don’t tell stories of Uncle James; I am very fond of him, and I won’t have it.’

‘It’s true all the same. I don’t say it’s his fault, it’s Jim’s fault. Papa swears--he does, he can’t help it, at Jim, and then pretends it’s something else--the gardener, or the overseer, or the poor people, or even poor Dash--that makes him so angry. Isn’t that lying? Then mamma pretends Jim has doubts and won’t go in for the Church because of them, when she knows very well what it is really he has been sent down for. And Jim pretends that he is going back to Cambridge next term, and that he is quite friendly with all the dons, and came down to read--I’ve heard him say that.’

‘It may not be true,’ said Mab, doubtfully, ‘but I shouldn’t call that lying--why should we all go and tell that poor Jim has not been good? What have the other people to do with it? Mother says we’re not called upon to give them any information--and she just says the same as you do: but that is not to lie.’

‘We are all pretending, every one,’ said Florry. ‘Emmy and I are by way of knowing nothing at all. I believe Jim thinks we don’t know anything. So we have to pretend not only to other people, but to him in our very own house, and papa too. I have heard papa say, “Thank Heaven, the girls at least know nothing,” and mamma, the dreadful, dreadful liar that she is, thanks Heaven too, though she knows very well that we knew as soon as she did, and that she couldn’t keep anything from us two. If you think of that, Mab, and just imagine how we go on pretending to each other, and to everybody.

‘Now, if Jim were to go off to a ranche, as people advise, we should all be very wretched, and probably it would be his ruin, but it would be a little relief all the same. Or if Emmy were to get hold of this man--oh, it may be odious, and you may cry out, but it would be a great relief. There would be her wedding to think about, and her things, and altogether it would be a change for everybody; and then she could do something for Jim.’

‘Her husband could, you mean?’

‘It is the same thing: he would, for his own sake, not to have an idle brother always about. It is killing all of us. One could bear it, perhaps; but four all bearing it--all pretending something different, as I tell you; Emmy and I not to know; mamma and papa that it’s another thing altogether that vexes them. Oh! we get exasperated sometimes to that degree, we could tear each other to pieces just to make a change.’

‘You are so exaggerated, Florry; mother always says so. You make a mountain out of a molehill.’

‘I just wish Aunt Emily had our molehill for a little while--just for a little while--to see how she liked it. What a lucky woman she is to have only a girl! Nothing very bad can ever happen to you, Mab, or come to her through you. You may be dull, perhaps, just two women, one opposite to the other----’

‘Dull! mother and I? Never. We don’t know what it is to be dull!’

‘Ah, that’s very well just now,’ said Florence, ‘you’re only seventeen; but wait a bit till you are older, especially if you don’t marry, and year goes on after year, and nothing ever happens. See whether you are not dull then. I don’t know which is worst,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘to have men in the family that make you miserable, or to have no men at all about to make any variety, but just women together, who never do any harm, but kill you with dulness. I really don’t know which is the worst.’

Mab was a little overwhelmed by this point of view. She was at the same time still indignant and resentful of the unexpected accusation. ‘When we begin to be dull,’ she said, ‘I’ll let you know--but I don’t see any reason for being so miserable. Poor Jim has never done anything so very bad. Sometimes he is silly----’

‘There you are quite wrong,’ said Florence, with great decision--‘he is not silly: I wish he were, then one might think he didn’t know any better; but even papa allows he is very clever. It is not from want of brains or sense either, if he would only be as good as he knows how---- ’

‘Oh, if that is your opinion! Mother thinks he is only weak, and does what people ask him.’

‘Aunt Emily is just as far out of it as you are. Does he ever do anything that _we_ ask him? There is papa at him for ever--is he any the better for it? Weak! that is what people say, thinking it’s a kind of an excuse. I call it strong--to resist everything you ought to attend to, and take up everything you ought not. How can that be weak?’

‘I am sure I don’t know,’ said Mab; ‘I don’t understand about boys. Jim is the only one I ever knew intimately. But mother thinks if some one were to get hold of him in the right sort of way----’

‘What is the right sort of way? I suppose Aunt Emily thinks papa doesn’t know--nor any of us who have it to do; that is just the way with people. You are always thinking of a thing, thinking, and puzzling, and troubling: and then somebody comes in who has never spent ten minutes on it altogether, and says you are not taking the right way! Perhaps we are not; but who are they to pretend to know better? and since they are so wise, why don’t they tell us which is the right way?’