‘So that is all finished and settled and done with,’ said Leo Swinford,
with no great expression of delight on his face.
‘You don’t seem to see the great happiness and satisfaction of it,’ said
Lady William.
‘No, perhaps I do not. I had always the hope that I might have been of
some use, of some service to you, something more both in importance and
use than a mere friend.’
‘Is there anything more than a true friend?’ said Lady William, holding
out her hand.
He took her hand, which was so cool and soft and white--and kind--and
indifferent. As kind as could be, ready to soothe him, help him, do
anything for him that he needed; and perfectly indifferent, as if he had
been the little boy of ten whom Emily Plowden had been so fond of in his
ingenuous childish days.
‘Yes,’ said Leo, ‘there is something more----’
‘Not according to my understanding of life. Perhaps my experience has
not been a very favourable one. I like a friend--one who understands me
and whom I understand--who would stand by me in any need as I would
stand by him--with a nice wife and children whom I could love.’
‘Ah!’ said Leo, dropping the hand he had held. After a moment he said,
in a different tone: ‘My mother has finally made up her mind that she
can endure this hermitage no more.’
‘And you are going to town? It will be better for you in every way.’
‘She is going back to Paris. I have done all I could to persuade her to
gather friends about her here--or in London better still. But she will
not hear me. Her opinion is that Paris, even out of season, is better
than London at its gayest. She will go, perhaps, to some _ville de mer_,
and then back in October to her old apartment and her old friends.’
‘And you, Leo?’
‘I am an Englishman,’ he said, with a little air half of pride, half of
self-abnegation, which created in his friend a profane inclination to
laugh.
‘In spite of all temptations
To belong to other nations,’
she said.
Leo laughed, too, but not with the best grace in the world.
‘It is true that I perceive drawbacks in it,’ he said. ‘The life is
not--gay.’
‘No, it is not gay. You must go to town when your mother goes to her
_ville de mer_. And in autumn you must fill the house. And then--you
must marry, Leo.’
He gave her a wistful, lingering look.
‘Whom?’ he said, and then he went away.
He went away, going down the village, turning many things over in his
mind. It occurred to him to remember that rush down this same street in
the rain in pursuit of Mrs. Brown, while he was still fully of the mind
that much was in his power to do for the woman who occupied his
thoughts--and with the possibility at the end that he might rescue her
from undeserved humiliation by the offer of his home and name. And then
he remembered the girl whom he had met, who had entered so warmly into
his search, and of her eyes shining in the lamplight and the raindrops
upon her hair. The raindrops upon Emmy’s hair were certainly not moral
qualifications like the unfeigned kindness of her look, the instant
sympathy with which she had responded to his call, her concern about his
condition of damp and discomfort. He thought of her with a rush of kind
and almost tender feeling. Certainly she never looked so pretty as on
that evening. And she was very like Lady William. When her mind was
roused to interest, and what he in his modesty called kindness, there
was nothing in Emmy of the vulgarity of her surroundings. Nor was it
vulgarity, properly speaking. Mrs. Plowden, good woman, was
_bourgeoise_, that was all. And how kind she had been! How she had
stirred the whole house to attend to his comfort! Leo saw all the family
running this way and that to wait upon him, and Jim turning out his
wardrobe to give him whatever he liked. How kind they all were! He had
never been in the smallest degree civil to them. None of the
entertainments to which Mrs. Plowden had looked forward had been given
at the Hall. There had not been so much as a dinner to the neighbours.
Mrs. Swinford had put her veto upon anything of the kind, and Leo had
felt it impossible to do anything without his mother. And yet how kind,
how anxious to serve him they had all been! Leo laughed within himself
at the race of civility--every one trying to be agreeable to him. And
then his thoughts turned upon Emmy, who, after introducing him to the
Rectory, had done nothing--had stood aloof a little from all these
attentions. Why did she stand aloof? Perhaps if she had been the kindest
and most active of all, doing everything for him, his vanity would have
profited by that. It did still serve when he remembered that she was the
only one who stood aloof. Why? Was it because Emmy felt the inclination
to be a little more than kind which he had felt for Lady William? A very
small matter is enough for a complacent imagination to build upon. He
hesitated, with a half intention of going to the Rectory, of making a
call upon--whom? His call could not be upon Emily. It would be upon her
mother, who would receive it as a piece of ordinary civility. He paused,
lingering at the corner where the road to the Rectory crossed the
high-road in which stood the great gates and chief entrance to the Hall.
It was at this moment that Jim, feeling himself much ‘out of it,’
suddenly loomed in view. Very much out of it was poor Jim once more. Mr.
Osborne was so much engrossed with Florry that he had clean forgotten
that Workman’s Club which he and his future brother-in-law were about to
begin to organise. And Jim was aware that to go to the curate’s rooms
was unnecessary, seeing he was much more likely to be found near or
about the Rectory. And Mrs. Brown was gone. There was no longer the
alternative of dropping in at the schoolhouse. What was he to do with
himself these late afternoons when the time for work was over, and there
was nothing to do? Did he think of the ‘Blue Boar’ again? I hope Jim had
no hankering after the ‘Blue Boar’; but he wanted a little variety--a
change, somebody to speak to who did not belong to him, who would not
tell him over again the same things he had heard at breakfast and
luncheon and tea. He, too, was wavering, not certain which way to
go--the road that led out to the country, where he could take a walk--a
very doubtful kind of pleasure--or the road that led to the ‘Blue Boar.’
No one had ever told Leo Swinford to put forth a hand to this youth, who
was still lingering between good and evil. No Florence had taken upon
herself to preach to him upon this text. It was no business of his; he
had no responsibility in respect to Jim; but he suddenly remembered
certain things he had heard, and good-nature and a good heart, which
are sometimes even more efficacious, being more spontaneous, than a
sense of duty prompted him. It was more self-denying than the curate’s
interposition, for Leo had no Florry to please; and it was less
self-denying, for he had no feeling of repulsion to the careless young
fellow wavering between good and evil. He waved his hand to Jim, who was
coming slowly towards him, and waited at that corner of the road.
‘You are the very man,’ said Leo, ‘whom I wished to see. Come and dine
with me to-night at the Hall, will you, Plowden? It will be an act of
charity, for I shall be quite alone.’
‘At the Hall!’ said Jim, startled.
‘It is far to go for a charitable object,’ said Leo, with a laugh.
‘Oh, I didn’t mean that!’ cried Jim, confused. And thus once more the
‘Blue Boar’ (which was, indeed, quite an innocent beast, and rather
relieved than otherwise that the Rector’s son entered its jaws no more)
was cheated of its prey.
But whether Jim, unconscious Jim, may be the means of bringing together
Leo Swinford and the good Emmy, who was so like, and yet so unlike, the
other Emily Plowden of the past, is a fact which lies still undiscovered
in the womb of time--where also it remains as yet unknown whether the
dispositions of Mab in his favour (conditionally) will ever be
understood by him or carried out. Should they be, the reader may be sure
that the strenuous opposition of Lady William will be a difficulty hard
to surmount in the experiences of this young pair.
Mab and her mother, however, spent more than one day in town during that
summer--it being decided that the young lady’s introduction to society
was not to take place till she was eighteen--under the escort of Lord
Will: and they went to luncheon with the family, and were most benignly
received by the Marchioness, who regretted warmly that she had never up
to this time made the acquaintance of her sister-in-law.
‘But you see how my time is taken up,’ she said, with a significant
glance at the four tall girls (all taking after her ladyship’s family,
and not a Pakenham among them, thank Heaven! she was apt to say) who
assembled at luncheon, the two who were still in the schoolroom looking
quite as mature as the two who were ‘out.’ Mab was the only one who was
like Lord Portcullis, ridiculously like, all the family agreed. And one
day they went to the Row together, where Lord Will and his sister, who
accompanied the party, pointed out everybody who was anybody to Mab.
They pointed out to her many people whose names she knew, and whom she
looked upon with admiration and interest, and a great many who were to
her quite unknown.
‘I never heard of them before,’ said little Mab, ready to yawn after a
list of such names. ‘Who are they? What have they done?’
‘Oh, you little simpleton,’ said Lady Betty, ‘they are the very smartest
people in town,’ for that odious adjective had just come into use at the
time.
As for Lord Will, he was at that moment engaged in communicating a piece
of modern history to the charming aunt, whom that young man much
preferred to her daughter.
‘You know the Swinford woman’s gone off,’ he said. ‘What a release for
that poor Leo who was never allowed to stir from her apron-strings!’
‘I don’t know,’ said Lady William, ‘that he will think it such a
release.’
‘And, of course, you know why she’s going,’ said the young man of
fashion. ‘The old witch thought everybody had forgotten her naughty
ways. Well, she’s old enough, she might be allowed benefit of clergy:
and she meant to go to the Drawing Room and get whitewashed, don’t you
know. But H.M. has a long memory--wouldn’t have her at any price--asked
what they meant by insulting her Court, bringing such a Person there.
When Her Most Gracious calls a woman a Person there’s an end of _her_.
So town don’t agree with that old lady’s health, no more does the
Hall--and she’s off to her beloved France, she says, where there’s
something like society--society, don’t you know, where there’s nobody
that has any right to interfere.’
‘Is that the reason?’ said Lady William--her heart was touched, though
she was aware that she had little cause to love Mrs. Swinford. ‘I have
not been very much in charity with her lately, but she was once very
kind. I am sorry this should have happened. Everything that is naughty,
as you say, must have been over long ago.’
‘Oh, don’t you be too sure of that,’ said Lord Will. ‘The old hag, made
up for a burlesque, would have flirted with me the other day, between
the showers of the venom she was shooting out upon you.’
‘Did she shoot out venom upon me?’ said Lady William. Her face lighted
up for a moment with a gleam of angry indignation. And then, ‘Poor old
woman!’ she said.
I am afraid Lord Will had no comprehension whatever of this misplaced
pity. He stared; and he made up his mind that his handsome aunt
overestimated his simplicity, and intended to take him in by that show
of feeling--which was the most unlikely undertaking, seeing that Lord
Will was a young man about town, and up, as he himself would have said,
to all the dodges. It was trouble altogether thrown away in his case.
‘What did Will mean by H.M. having a long memory?’ said Mab, who had
overheard part of this talk.
‘He means that Her Majesty remembers all about everybody--it is a point
of Royal politeness--and that the Queen will not receive anybody at
Court with a stain upon her name.’
‘But that is the very thing she ought to do!’ cried Mab.
She was not aware that it was improper to use vulgar pronouns in
speaking of the greatest lady in the land.
Lady William made no reply. She was thinking of the long life of
self-indulgence, of luxury and pleasure, a life in which no wish had
been allowed to remain unfulfilled, of the woman who had sentenced
herself in her youth, remorselessly, to a horrible fate--to deception
and undeception, one more dreadful than the other--in order to save her
own reputation: and then had turned upon her and endeavoured to ruin her
for having been thus deceived. Mrs. Swinford had suffered little
outwardly for all those indulgences which she had insisted upon securing
for herself, and for all the wrong she had done to others. But here, at
last, her lovers, her victims, her husband whom she had deceived, her
friend whom she had sacrificed, were avenged. By what?--by the Lord
Chamberlain’s wand across that doorway forbidding entrance to one of the
most tiresome ceremonials in the world.
‘Poor old woman!’ Lady William said.
‘I don’t know who is the poor old woman,’ said Mab, ‘nor what she has
done; but it’s grand of the Queen, if she is a wicked old woman, not to
let her in. So, say poor woman as much as you like, mother; I approve of
the Queen.’
‘I hope Her Majesty may be duly grateful, Mab,’ her mother replied.
I will not say that Mr. Francis Osborne’s family were quite satisfied
that he had done as well for himself as he ought by marrying his
Rector’s daughter. With his connections and prospects he might, as they
said, have married anybody. But, at the same time, for a curate to marry
his Rector’s daughter is a thing that is always on the cards, and the
Plowdens in their way were unexceptionable; and then there was that
connection with the Portcullis family, which was always something. So
the Osbornes and the kindred in general exerted themselves, as they had
always intended to do on fit occasion, and provided the living which was
always understood to be waiting until Francis should have gained a
little experience. There was the prettiest wedding in Watcham Church,
which became a bower of flowers, all the old lines of its arches and
pillars traced out with lilies and roses, and the dim building made
bright with a festal company of old and young, which filled it as if for
an Easter or a Christmas service. The procession walked from the Rectory
through the little private gate to the church, with all Watcham looking
on outside the hedge of the garden. Fortunately, it was very dry as well
as bright, and the most delicate dresses got no harm, and the sight
afforded the truest gratification to all the parishioners, great and
small. When Florence had changed her wedding robes for the pretty gray
gown in which she was to travel, she lingered in the old room which she
had shared for nearly all her life with her sister, and kissed her
inseparable Emmy with a few tears.
‘If it had not been me, it would have been you,’ Florry said. ‘One of us
was bound to go the first. And it will soon be your turn, too.’
‘No,’ said Emmy, ‘I do not think I shall ever marry.’
‘Oh, what nonsense!’ Florence said. ‘He has kept beside you all day.’
Emmy disengaged herself from her sister with a gravity beyond
description.
‘That will never be,’ she said. ‘You know it was only a girl’s fancy,
and never, never meant anything.’
‘I know nothing of the sort,’ Florence said, ‘and I think it never meant
so much as now.’
‘Florry!’ cried Emily, in sudden alarm, ‘if you ever tell, if you ever
breathe a syllable----!’
‘No, I never will!’ said Florence, pursing up her lips as if to prevent
any treacherous word from coming out.
And, though she had many temptations and struggles with herself, she
never did--until there came a time----