‘She was nice enough to us,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘but very
hoighty-toighty with your aunt. Did you observe that, Emmy? Poor Aunt
Emily was very kind. She said in such a pretty way, “That is Emily
Plowden now,” and really Emmy looked so very like her at that
moment--with the charm of youth, of course, added on--that nobody could
help remarking it. Mr. Swinford looked from one to the other, making a
little comparison I could see--and you may imagine in whose favour it
was.’
‘It was in my sister’s favour, of course,’ said the Rector. There was
something in the way in which he emphasised the _my_, as if to mark the
difference between his daughter, who was her mother’s as well as his,
and his sister who was all his own, that might have been amusing to a
bystander, but to Mrs. Plowden was not amusing at all.
‘It is most curious,’ she said, ‘the way you always stand up for your
own family----’
‘Whom do you mean by my own family? Emmy is my own family, I suppose?’
‘You know very well what I mean. I mean your side of the house in
opposition to mine. One would think that nobody born was ever equal to
your people--not even your own children.’
‘My own children are as God has made them,’ said the Rector. He added,
as if she had been somehow of a superior manufacture, ‘But my sister
Emily was the sweetest creature I ever saw when she was Emmy’s age. Emmy
is a good girl, and she is very nice-looking or she could not be
supposed to be like my sister. But as for comparing the one to the
other, my dear, it only shows how little you know.’
‘Upon my word!’ cried Mrs. Plowden, not without reason, ‘I hope my Emmy
may be compared to any one. Your sister had always a great deal too much
intellectual pride about her to please me. She was not content to be
nice-looking, which nobody ever denied, but she went in for being
clever, too. I know you don’t approve of women taking that sort of
position, James. Indeed, you have said as much a hundred times--and now
to go on raving about your sister, as if we haven’t all had sisters that
were out of the common in our day!’
‘My dear, I didn’t know there was anybody out of the common connected
with you. My impression is I never heard you brag of that before--no
more than poor Emily ever did about being more clever than the rest of
us. Poor girl, it hasn’t come to much in her case.’
‘I am not one to be always blowing a trumpet about my family,’ said Mrs.
Plowden angrily; ‘but if you think my brother Thurston is nobody----’
‘Not in the least; he is a very nice fellow, and a Q.C.’
‘Or my sister Florence!’ said the Rector’s wife, ‘poor Florry’s
godmother--and the girl takes after her, I’m glad to say--and it’s to
her credit, whatever you may think.’
‘Oh, your sister Florence!’ said the Rector. This was a point that had
been argued between them often before, for, as a matter of fact, though
Emily Plowden was understood to have done very little good for herself
by her distinguished marriage, yet it was a distinguished marriage, and
one of which the Rector’s wife herself was more proud than any one. She
quoted Lady William in her own family in a way which made her brother
who was a Q.C. and her sister who was Florence’s godmother very angry.
‘I wish you would not be always dinning that eternal Lady William into
our ears,’ was what these good people said. But at home, in face of her
husband, Mrs. Plowden liked to show her independence, and that she and
her brothers and sisters were as remarkable as he and his brothers and
sisters any day.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘they were really more nice to Emmy, though
she is only my daughter, than they were to your sister Emily, James. I
did not think that Emily was received as her rank demands. They were
more civil to me, a simple clergyman’s wife, than they were to her. Now,
though one is always pleased, of course to be put in the first place, I
don’t think it was right. Oh! not Mr. Swinford, he was very attentive;
but in such cases the man does not count, and the old lady----’
‘Is she really an old lady, mamma?’ said Florry, who had not yet found
the opening for her anxious questions which she desired.
‘Well--her son is not quite young. He is not like Jim; he is a
full-grown young man of the world. As for Mrs. Swinford, she is so
curled and frizzed and powdered and everything done to her, that you
can’t tell how old she is. But it is always safe to say the old lady
when there is a son quite old enough to marry. Of course she will be the
old lady as soon as he gets a wife.’
‘I am sure, mamma, it would not make you an old lady if Jim were to
marry,’ said Emmy, always exemplary in her sentiments.
‘Jim!’ Mrs. Plowden said, with a sort of shriek. And then she added:
‘Poor Jim’s not a landed proprietor like Mr. Swinford. He can never make
me a Dowager, poor boy! And what chance has he of ever marrying? none
that I know of, without any money, and not even a profession. Alas!
there is a great difference between Leo Swinford and Jim.’
‘Is Leo his name? What an odd name!’
‘But pretty, don’t you think--and so uncommon?’ said Emmy.
Emmy had a slightly dazzled look about the eyes, as one that has seen
visions. She had been into that fairy palace, and come into absolute
contact with Prince Charming. Florry knew that the details of the
interview were not likely to come out until they two came face to face
in their room, with no father or mother in the way.
‘By the way,’ said the Rector, as if it had not been the prominent thing
in his mind all the time, ‘did Jim come back with you from the river,
Flo?’
‘He thought he would like a little stroll before he came back--for half
an hour. He promised me faithfully he would come back in half an hour.’
‘It is more than half an hour now,’ said the Rector, with his watch in
his hand; and then he sighed and went away.
‘Oh, children,’ said Mrs. Plowden, when his steps had died out in the
distance of the rambling house, ‘how often must I tell you not to be so
pointed with your half-hours? How can a young man tell, if he strolls
out in the evening, exactly to a moment when he’s to get back? He may
meet a friend, or some little accident may happen, and he is kept,
without any doing of his. And there is your father with his watch in his
hand as if he had never been a young man himself. I don’t want you, I am
sure, to be anything but truthful--but if you could throw a little veil
over such things! Now, however soon he may come, and however right he
may be, your father will never forget having looked at his watch. He
will say you can never trust in his word because of that half-hour.’
‘I only said what he told me, mamma,’ said Florence, half offended.
‘As if there was any use in saying what he told you!’ cried Mrs.
Plowden, ‘when you know that’s Jim’s weakness never to be sure when he
is coming in; and to say in half an hour is just as easy as in---- Jim!
why, here he is, as exact as clockwork. Run and tell your father,
Florry: he can put his watch in his pocket. Oh, I am so glad! It is
always a little triumph for us womenfolk who believe whatever you say,
you troublesome Jim!’
‘Do you believe whatever I say, mother?’
‘Oh, more than I ought--more than I ought. And oh, Jim, if you only knew
the pleasure of it, the pride of it! To see you walking in at your time
as a gentleman should--and like a gentleman in every way!’
The words were, perhaps, capable of various interpretations; but the
little party in the Rectory drawing-room knew precisely what they meant;
and Jim knew very well that his mother, in the darkness of the room,
where no lights as yet were lighted, was crying quietly to herself over
his virtue and punctuality. It struck him with a sort of mingled shame
and ridicule to think that, perhaps, had she known where he had been,
she would not have been so much content. I may say that it was much more
like an hour and a half than half an hour since he had left the two
girls at the landing-place; so that he was not precisely a model of
exactness after all.
When Jim came in all the other subjects in the world went out; and as he
had no interest in the Hall and its inhabitants there was no further
gossip about the Swinfords in the Rectory family that night, until,
indeed, the evening was over, and the girls found themselves face to
face in the room which they shared, which was a long and low one, under
the eaves, with a number of small windows, and space enough to make up
for a slanting roof on one side. It was indeed quite a large room, with
two little beds, two little white-draped toilet tables, two sets of
drawers, everything double, as the two were who had lived in it all
their lives. All their little confidences had been made to each other
there, all that had happened had been discussed; their whole life, which
was not eventful, had passed in this dim chamber, where the light came
in through greenish lattices, and under the shadow of the waving trees.
They came upstairs, following each other very demurely, each with her
candle, but when they were safe in their shelter, and had shut their
door, each put down her candle on her own table, and they rushed
together, seizing each other’s hands. ‘Oh, Emmy, tell me!’ cried the
one who had been left at home.
‘There is nothing to tell, indeed,’ said Emmy, ‘except what you have
heard already.’
‘I have heard nothing about _him_,’ said her sister.
‘Oh, Flo, dear! all that nonsense was amusing enough as long as he was
only a dream. He has been a dream for so long; but now he’s a man, just
like another.’
‘Not like any other in the world, Em.’
‘That is, to you and me; but, thank heaven, nobody knows except us two,
and it is all over. He is like any other man, rather more nicely
dressed, rather more careful of his clothes.’
‘Oh, Emmy!’
‘That doesn’t sound like our hero, does it? I suppose it is because he
is half French: red stockings and patent-leather shoes, as Mab said.’
‘Well,’ said Florry, ‘if true hearts are more than coronets, they are
certainly more than patent-leather shoes.’
‘That is very true, but somehow it goes dreadfully against one’s ideal.
And, Flo, he is not--tall.’
Florence burst into a somewhat agitated laugh. ‘What does that matter?’
she said.
‘Oh, nothing at all. I know that little men are just as nice, sometimes
nicer, than big ones; but you know what we always thought: and he is not
the least like it--not one little bit.’
Emmy looked as if she were going to cry; for the fact was that Mr.
Swinford had been, by a piece of girlish romance not very uncommon among
such unsophisticated girls as those of the Rectory, the hero of an
entirely visionary castle in the air on the part of this young lady.
Florence was more wise; she had the ideas of her century, and was very
strongly convinced that for her sister to marry well was a thing most
essential at the present crisis of the family fortunes; but she had been
very indulgent to Emmy’s romance, possibly from the conviction that this
was the only way in which her sister could be moved to take such a
step--and partly because she had herself a sentimental side, and was
deeply convinced that no true marriage could be made without love.
‘Well,’ she said soothingly, ‘never mind; he may be everything that is
delightful in himself, even though he is short and not handsome.’
‘I never said he was not handsome,’ said Emmy, with some indignation,
‘nor yet short. How exaggerated you are! I said he was not tall. He is
very nice-looking. Not the way we used to think; not dark-haired and
with deep dark eyes as we used to imagine--and not fair either, which is
perhaps better: but yet very nice--in his own way.’
‘Brown!’ cried Florence, ‘sober, sensible, common brown--like most
people. After all, that must be the best and safest since Providence
makes the most of us of that hue.’
‘If you think he is common,’ said Emmy indignantly, ‘you are making the
greatest mistake. He is not heroic--in appearance: but unusual--to a
degree.’ Emmy’s powers of language were not great, but her feeling was
unmistakable. ‘I never saw any one at all like him,’ she said. ‘If he is
not like a man in a poem or on the stage, he is just as little like the
ordinary man you meet. Fancy, it was he who made the tea! His mother
said he always did it. The way she calls Leo at every moment is the most
curious thing. She has a sweet voice, but it is so imperious, as if she
never thought it possible that any one could resist her; and, though it
is quite low, he hears her before she has half called him, whatever he
may be doing.’
‘All that is very interesting,’ said Florence, ‘but’--she seized her
sister’s hands and looked anxiously into her face--‘of course you can’t
see how things are to go the first time--but, Emmy, oh, tell me----!’
Emmy shook her head; she withdrew her hands; her eyes drooped before her
sister’s gaze. ‘How can you ask?’ she said, ‘how could anybody tell? He
was very nice, of course--as he would have been to the housemaid if we
had sent her, or to Mrs. Brown at the school.’
‘Mamma said he was exceedingly nice to you, and not so nice to Aunt
Emily.’
‘Ah, that was Mrs. Swinford she was thinking of. Mamma naturally thinks
of her. No, no, Flo, we must not deceive ourselves; it was all the other
way. If there is any one here whom Mr. Swinford thinks it worth his
while to talk to and make friends with, it will neither be you nor me.’
‘Me, no! I never thought of such a thing. But why not you, Emmy? and, if
not you, who else?’
Emmy clasped her hands together and shook her head. She had been shaking
it for at least a minute before she let the words ‘Aunt Emily’ drop from
her lips, with an accent of something like despair.
‘Aunt Emily!’ said Florence in the profoundest surprise: her tone
changed in a moment into one of disdain. ‘Aunt Emily! why, she is old
enough to be--she is almost as old as mamma. She has nothing to do with
it at all.’
‘Do you remember,’ said Emmy, with some solemnity, ‘_that_ French novel
which we found in Uncle Thurston’s room?’
Florence nodded her head. It had been a fearful joy to find in their
uncle’s room anything so wildly wicked, so universally condemned, as a
yellow French novel. It had not been so delightful in the attempt to
read it--for the girls were far too innocent to understand the
stimulating fare there placed before them. But it was a terrible and
alarming memory in their lives.
‘Well, the heroine in that was a widow,’ cried Emmy. ‘She was the one
everybody thought of. And Mr. Swinford is quite French, and Aunt Emily
doesn’t look old, and she is really handsome. Don’t you know when people
want to be very complimentary to me they say I am like Aunt Emily?--only
when they want to be very complimentary.’
‘So you are; and the more he thinks of her the more he ought to turn to
you, who are so like her.’
‘Oh! do you think so? I, for my part, feel sure that he will like her
best. She will be able to talk to him. She has been in Paris, where he
comes from. She will be like the people he has been used to.’
‘Oh! not like the people in Uncle Thurston’s novel!’
‘I did not mean that; but she can talk, and she is what people call
elegant, and you’ll see he’ll think more of her than either of you or
me.’
‘It is impossible,’ cried Florence, with the confidence of youth. ‘A
woman with a grown-up daughter!’
‘Wait,’ said Emmy oracularly, ‘and you will see.’