‘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.’