Many messages passed between the Rectory and the Cottage the next
morning on the subject of the visit to the Hall. How shall we go? Would
it be best to get the fly, as there is a prospect of rain? Would it do
to go in the pony-carriage, as the clouds were making a lift? Finally,
when the sun came out, would it be best to walk? Emmy and Florry Plowden
were running to and fro all the morning with notes and messages. Emmy
(who was going) was anxious and serious on this great subject. It would
be such a pity to get wet. ‘It is true it is nearly the end of the
winter, and our dresses are not in their first freshness; but it is so
disagreeable to go into a new house feeling mouldy and damp. First
impressions are of so much consequence. Don’t you think so, aunt? and
Mrs. Swinford is Parisian, and accustomed to everything in the last
fashion.’
‘You might as well go draggled as not,’ said Florence, ‘if that is what
you are thinking of: for she will see there is not much of the last
fashion about you.’
‘Aunt always looks as if she were the leader of the fashion wherever she
goes,’ said Emily proudly. She it was who was conscious of being the
only one who was like her aunt.
‘Thank you for such a pretty compliment,’ said Lady William; ‘but Florry
is right, I am sorry to say. We shall all be so much below her standard
at our best, that a little more or less doesn’t matter. Still, without
reference to Mrs. Swinford or her impressions, it is unpleasant to get
wet.’
‘Then you vote for the fly,’ said Emmy with satisfaction, ‘that is what
I always thought you would do. One does not get blown about, one comes
out fresh, without having one’s hair all wild and marks of mud upon
one’s shoes. Thanks, Aunt Emily, you always decide for what is best.’
In an hour, however, they returned, Florry, who was not going, leading
the way. ‘Mamma thinks as it’s so much brighter our own pony-chaise will
do. It’s much nicer being in the air than boxed up in a fly. And she
thinks it would make so much fuss, setting all the village talking, if
the fly was ordered, and it was known everywhere that she was going to
the Hall.’
‘I thought she wished it to be known.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Emmy, who was the aggrieved party, ‘mamma wishes
everything to be known. She says a clergyman’s family should always live
in a glass house and all that sort of thing. And to have the pony-chaise
out, and everybody seeing where we are going, will be just the same
thing.’
‘At all events it’s your own private carriage, and not a nasty hired
fly,’ said Florence. ‘“Mrs. Plowden’s carriage at the door,” and you
needn’t explain it’s a shandrydan.’
And the unfeeling girl laughed, as was her way: for it was not she who
was going to have her fringe disarranged, and the locks at the back
blown about by driving in the pony-carriage in the whistling March
breeze.
‘Tell your mother I think the pony-chaise will do quite well if she
likes it; everybody knows what sort of a carriage a country clergyman
can afford to keep.’
‘But you are not a country clergyman, Aunt Emily.’
‘Heaven forbid!’ that lady said.
Next time it was Emily alone who ran ‘across,’ as they called it. ‘Mamma
thinks on the whole we might walk. The roads have dried up beautifully,
and it’s not far. And walking is always correct in the country, isn’t
it, aunt?’
‘It is always correct anywhere, Emmy, when you have no other way to go.’
‘Ah, but we have two other ways to go! There is the fly, which I should
prefer, as it protects one most, and there’s our own pony-chaise. It
cannot be supposed to be for the want of means of driving, Aunt Emily,
if we pleased.’
‘Of course not,’ said Lady William with great gravity. ‘And there is a
gipsy van somewhere about. I have always thought I should like to drive
about the country in a gipsy van.’
Emmy gave her aunt a look of reproach: but by this time her sister had
arrived with Mrs. Plowden’s ultimatum. ‘If the sun comes out mamma will
call for you at the door, if you will please to be ready by three; but
if it is overcast she will come in the fly. So that is all settled, I
hope.’
Mab had maintained a great calm during all these searchings of heart.
She was not going, and had she been going it would have been a matter
of the greatest indifference to her, consciously a plain, and what is
still more dreadful to the imagination, a fat girl, whether her hair was
blown about or not, and what first impression Mrs. Swinford or even Leo
Swinford might form of her. As for Leo Swinford, indeed, in face of the
fact that he had called at the Cottage the night before, she felt for
him something of that familiarity which breeds contempt: and how it
could matter to anybody what he thought was to Mab’s youthful soul a
wonder not to be expressed.
‘What are you so anxious about, after all?’ she said. ‘If your hair is
untidy, what of that? Everybody in Watcham knows exactly how your hair
looks, Emmy, whether it is just newly done and tidy, or whether it is
hanging about your ears.’
‘I hope it never hangs about my ears,’ said Emmy primly, yet with
indignation. If there was one thing upon which she prided herself, it
was the tidiness in which she stood superior over all her peers.
‘Oh, I’ve seen it, after an afternoon at tennis, just as wild as other
people’s,’ said Mab, ‘and everybody in the village has seen it too.’
‘But then,’ said the other sister, ‘these are not people in the village;
they’re new people, and there’s a great deal in a first impression--at
least, so Emmy thinks.’
‘A first impression--upon whom?’ said Mab, with all the severity of her
age. Seventeen, being as yet scarcely in it, is a severe critic of the
ages over twenty which are in possession of the field.
There was a pause, which Florence broke by one of her disconcerting
laughs.
‘Mab, you are too much of a baby. Don’t you know the Swinfords are going
to entertain? Perhaps you don’t know what that means. They are going to
give all sorts of parties, and we’ll not be asked if--we don’t please.’
‘Whom?’ said Mab again.
And then there came another laugh from Florence, and an offended ‘What
can you mean, Mab? Mrs. Swinford, to be sure. It is only she who could
invite girls to make the house pleasant, and,’ said Emily, with a little
dignity, ‘it is as much for you as for me.’
‘Oh! I thought it might be Leo Swinford,’ said the audacious Mab, ‘who
wants a wife, mother says. But he says himself no, he doesn’t want
anything of the kind.’
‘Mab!’ said Lady William, in a warning tone from behind.
‘He didn’t say it in any secret,’ said Mab, ‘not the least. He didn’t
tell you “But this is between ourselves,” or “You won’t mention it,” or
anything of the kind, as people say when they confide in you. He said it
right out.’
‘Who said it right out?’ cried Emily. It was their turn to question now,
and they looked at each other after they had looked, in consternation,
at Mab--asking each other, with their eyes, awe-stricken, what could
this little minx mean, and how did she know?
‘As for Leo Swinford, I don’t think anything at all of him,’ said Mab.
‘He was got up in a fur coat yesterday, when it was not cold at all,
only blustering; and he had shiny shoes on and red socks showing, as if
he were got up for the evening--to walk about the Watcham roads.’
‘Do you mean to say,’ said Emily severely, crushing these pretensions in
the bud, ‘that _you_ have seen Mr. Swinford, Mab? And how did you know
it was Mr. Swinford--it might have been some excursionist or other down
here by a cheap train.’
‘A Marshall and Snelgrove young man,’ said Florence. ‘Absurd! red socks
and evening shoes and a fur coat.’
‘And we have always understood Mr. Swinford was a gentleman,’ Emily
said. ‘But it is not at all wonderful at Mab’s age to take up such a
foolish idea. For a new person in the village always looks as if there
was an adventure behind him, doesn’t he, aunt?--and Mab is such a child
still.’
‘However,’ said Lady William, ‘I don’t know how it came about, but it
was Leo Swinford, my dear. I knew him very well when he was a child, and
he sought me out because, I suppose, he didn’t know any one else here.’
There was another pause of consternation and disappointment: for to
think that Mab had seen this new personage before any of them, and that
he had seen Mab, was very disconcerting and disagreeable to these young
ladies. But then they reflected that Mab did not count--a little fat,
roundabout thing, looking even younger than her age, and that if it was
ordained that they should be forestalled by any one, better Mab than
another. The horrid little thing! But then it was a good sign for future
intimacy that he knew Aunt Emily, and had come in this way at once to
her house.
‘I am sure,’ said Emmy, ‘he might have come to the Rectory. Papa would
have been very glad to see him, and the clergyman is generally the first
person--unless when there is a squire. And of course he is the squire
himself. But then Aunt Emily is the highest in rank, everybody knows.’
‘My rank had not much to do with it. All that Leo knows of me was as
Emily Plowden, the Rector’s daughter, just as you are now, Emmy,’ said
Lady William, with a little laugh. She was going out of the room as she
spoke, and turned her head to give them one glance from the door. If it
occurred to Lady William that the second Emily Plowden was not precisely
like the first, she did not give vent to that opinion. But it was a
little ludicrous from her point of view to be told, as she was told so
often, that Emily was ‘her very image’--‘just what I remember you at her
age.’ It was with, perhaps, a little glance of satire in her eyes that
she flung this parting word at her niece. But the Emily Plowden of the
present generation understood no jest. She blushed a little with
conscious pleasure and pride, and threw up her head. Now, Lady William
had a throat like a swan, but Emily’s could be described no otherwise
than as a long neck, at the top of which her head jerked forward with a
motion not unlike the darting movement of a hen.
‘So you have really seen him, Mab? Think of having a man, a real man, a
young man in Watcham! Were you much excited? Had you presence of mind
enough to note any particulars as to eyes and hair and height, and so
forth--as well as the red socks and the shiny shoes?’
‘Oh, he’s fair, I think,’ said Mab indifferently, ‘a sort of no-coloured
hair like mine, and the rest to correspond. He was very talky and jokey
with mother, just as if she had been a young lady. But he said little to
me.’
‘It was not to be expected,’ said Emily, ‘that a gentleman and a man of
the world like Mr. Swinford would find much to say to you; and I wonder
that he should have remembered Aunt Emily. I have never heard that men
like that cared much for old ladies: but no doubt it was because he knew
nobody else, and just to pass the time.’
‘Mother is not an old lady,’ said Mab; ‘if I were a man I should like
her better than all of you girls put together. You are, on the whole,
rather silly things. You don’t talk out of your own heads, but watch
other people’s eyes to see what will please them. I don’t call that
talking! You never would have found out what would please that man if
you had looked into his eyes for a year. Now mother never minds--she
says what comes into her head: and if any one contradicts her she just
goes on saying the other thing.’
This somewhat vague description seemed to make a certain impression upon
the young ladies, who probably were able to fill up the outlines for
themselves. Emily gave a little sigh.
‘Conversation’s quite a gift,’ she said, ‘and it’s always difficult with
a new person till you know their tastes. I suppose Mr. Swinford knows
about pictures and that sort of thing, and unless you’ve somebody to
tell you when you go to the exhibitions it’s so hard to know which are
really the good ones. Then books--Mudie never sends us any of the best.
He puts all the common novels into the country parcels. At the Hall they
will get everything that comes out.’
‘He said nothing about books or pictures either,’ said Mab--‘Yes, by the
bye, he’s going to lend mother some--but they’re French ones----’
‘French ones!’ said the cousins; and then there was a pause of
consternation. ‘Papa once said if he had his will no French novel should
ever come into the parish.’
‘Ah!’ said Mab, ‘but then I suppose Mr. Swinford didn’t write and ask
uncle what he should bring.’
Emily remained gazing out of the window with a troubled air.
‘We shall never know what to say if that is the sort of thing; and as
for going to their parties, if they are all made up of---- Mamma, too,
who never read a French book in her life. We had a little practice in
the schoolroom, when we had Fräulein, don’t you remember, Flo---- Who
was it we read? It was all long speeches, and one could never make out
what they were about.’
‘And they sounded exactly like German when Fräulein read them. I never
could tell which was which. But I know where the books are, and perhaps
if you learned one of the speeches and said it to Mr. Swinford, he might
like it, don’t you know.’
‘I was not, of course, thinking of Mr. Swinford, but of Mrs. Swinford,’
said Emily, frowning.
‘And you think you will get a chance of talking to her with mamma and
Aunt Emily there?’
‘Well,’ said Emily, ‘at least I can show her that I know my place, and
how an English girl behaves.’
‘I wish you would not wrangle,’ said Mab; ‘it was rather fun listening
to mother and him: they said no speeches out of books--I believe after
all what they said was chiefly chaff. Mother is a wonderful hand at
chaff. She looks so quiet all the time, and goes on till you are nearly
jumping. But he liked it, and laughed, and gave her as good. There was
one thing he said,’ added Mab demurely, ‘which wasn’t chaff, and which
you might like to hear. He said at once he didn’t want----’
‘What! I’m sure I don’t care what he wants or doesn’t want--a gardener
perhaps? and papa has just heard of one he wanted to recommend.’
‘A wife!’ cried Mab, her blue eyes quickening a little with mischief.
‘Mother asked if he did, and he said he didn’t. Perhaps she had some one
she wanted to recommend.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Florence, coming to her sister’s aid; ‘that is the way
in France, the parents arrange it all. I shouldn’t mind at all--that. I
give my consent. It would be nice to be the bride’s relations and always
about the house. If you’ll promise to ask nice people and always us to
meet them--and be kind about sending the carriage for us, and that sort
of thing, for papa hates a bill for flys--I shall give my consent.’
‘Me!’ cried Mab, indignant, ‘I would not marry Leo Swinford, not if----
I’d rather marry the silliest of the curates. I’d rather----’ She
stopped short breathless, unable to find a stronger alternative.
‘Then what a good thing for you,’ said Florry, ‘that he doesn’t want a
wife!’
‘If you think it is nice,’ said Emily, ‘for young girls to talk about
gentlemen, and whether they want wives or not, as if wives were sold at
the shop at so much a pound--I am not of that kind of mind: and Aunt
Emily would not like it any more than mamma. Good-bye, you two. I have
got to go home and get ready, whatever you may have to do.’
And thus Emily retired with the honours of war. If there was any one who
had formed plans on the subject of Leo Swinford it was she; not plans,
indeed, which are dreadful foreign things, but just a floating idea such
as an English girl might entertain, that if a young man and a young
woman are thrown much together, why, then certain consequences might
follow. One never could tell what might happen, as Mrs. Plowden herself,
who was the very essence of propriety, did not hesitate to say.