‘IT is a very good thing to have somebody impartial to refer to,’ said Lady William; ‘all our advisers take a side strongly. Now, Leo, you are of no faction; you can give us fair advice.’
‘I am of your faction always,’ he said.
‘Ah, but I am of no faction. I am the seeker of advice. We want to be well advised, Mab and I. By the way, she does take a side strongly, but I will not tell you which it is.’
‘Expound the case, Miss Mab; I must know before I can say.’
‘So you shall know; but Mab must not tell you, for she has a bias. The case is this: Mab you see is grown up——’
He gave a glance at her in her (still) short frock, with her (still) large waist, and round, artless, almost childish look.
‘I see,’ he said, with a smile.
‘And must presently be introduced into society. The question is, must it be the society of Watcham, and is the dance at the FitzStephens’ to be her début? or is she to enter the world in a different way, and be taken to town for a season with all that follows? What is your opinion?’
‘Can there be two opinions?’ he said, opening his eyes wide. ‘This is not treating me well. I hoped it was to be a difficult and delicate question, but it is no question at all.’
‘You see,’ said Lady William to her daughter.
‘If you put it to him in that way, mother: but that is not the way. Imagine, Mr. Leo, what they all want!—that mother, who is, I know, better than the whole of them, every one, whoever they may be—should go and—and—petition my uncle and his wife, who have never taken any notice of us—to take me by the hand and introduce me, as people say, into society: to introduce me—me, Mab, do you understand, to the Queen and all the rest; to get me asked to parties with them—me, Mab, do you understand?’ said the girl, beating upon her breast, ‘only me; and that is what everybody wants, and mother hesitates and wonders whether she ought to do it: and I,’ cried the girl, her dull eyes growing bright, ‘I will obey mother. I have never gone against her yet except in the way of reason, and if she were to tell me to jump into the river I would do it (hoping to scramble out somewhere lower down); and I’ll do this of course if I must, and perhaps escape alive—but never, never of my own free will. Now say what you think, Mr. Leo. Isn’t it I that am in the right?’
‘The question has a very different aspect, certainly,’ said Leo, ‘from Miss Mab’s side.’
‘Hasn’t it?’ said the girl triumphantly. ‘Now I should be proud, mother, if he who is of your faction should pronounce for me.’
‘But there is a great deal more to be said on both sides,’ said Leo; ‘we have not come to a decision yet. And just tell me why you should not go to town yourself as everybody does, and introduce your daughter in your own person, and show yourself in the world? That would seem so much the most natural way.’
‘Ah!’ cried Mab, with something like a shout of triumph. ‘That is something like advice! I did not think much, I tell you true, of consulting Mr. Leo—but now I see he is a Daniel come to judgment. And to think that none of us ever thought of that before!’
Lady William grew red and she grew pale. It had not occurred to her, strangely enough, that any one would suggest this simple alternative. The other advisers, indeed, knew her position too well to think of it. She said with a laugh: ‘You speak very much at your ease, you young people. Where am I to get the money for a campaign in town? I might squeeze out a few dresses for Mab—that is all I could do. You forget that I am not a wealthy person like you, Leo. And then I know nobody. We might as well stay here for anything I could do for her. Yes, the Lenthalls might invite us, or Lady Wade, who belongs to this neighbourhood; but nobody else. And we should be ruined! No, no; that is more impossible than anything else. It must, I fear, be Lady Portcullis, or nobody. Her aunt is her only hope.’
‘If I am to be sent off to Lady Portcullis like a brown-paper parcel,’ said Mab, ‘I will do what I’m told, mother; but I won’t discuss it any more. Mr. Leo, I would ask you to stand up for me, if I thought you could ever stand up against mother.’
‘It’s hard, isn’t it?’ said Leo; ‘but I will try as much as I can.’ He got up to open the door for her (for by this time they had reached the cottage), which was a thing Mab hated, feeling the attention very right for her mother, but a sort of mockery in the case of a little girl like herself. She submitted with her head bent; and then bolted like a young colt, which she still was. It must be allowed that the young man, who, according to all laws, ought to have preferred her company, was relieved when she was gone. He came quickly back to where Lady William sat, her head bowed upon her hand in much thought, and drew a low chair, Mab’s little baby-chair, to her feet.
‘I have a counter proposition to make,’ he said, lightly touching her hand to draw her attention.
She smiled, and said, ‘What is that?’ with a friendly indifference which made him frown. It was very clear that his proposition, whatever it might be, awakened no excitement, scarcely even curiosity, in Lady William’s breast. He made a very long pause indeed, but she took no notice until there had been time for various tumults and revolutions of thought in his mind. Then she looked up, with a little start, to see him in an attitude which was strangely like supplication, though he was in reality only seated in the low chair. ‘Well,’ she said, in her easy tone, ‘what is it? You keep me a long time in suspense.’
‘It was—nothing,’ he said.
‘Ah,’ said Lady William, with a laugh, ‘you pay me back in my own coin.’
‘Rather,’ he said in a changed tone, ‘let us say that it was this. We must, I suppose, go to London next month—though my mother does not seem to care for it now as I thought she would. However, we shall go; and why should not you come too? Come with us; take Miss Mab where you please, and come back when you please. It would obviate all the difficulties you were speaking of, and secure all the—— What! You will not listen to such a simple suggestion as that?’
There had been a great many exclamations on Lady William’s lips as he went on, but she had smothered them one by one till it was impossible to keep silence longer. ‘With your mother?’ she said, almost under her breath.
‘Well: I should like it, oh, a great deal better, if it were with me; but you think of me as if I were a cabbage, and my mother was your friend—was she not your friend?—and I am your servant—to mount behind your carriage, if you like.’
‘Do not speak nonsense, Leo; you are my very kind friend, and the greatest acquisition, and if you had been going to town with your wife instead of your mother—— It is not indispensable, don’t you know, that old friends should continue friends for ever. Your mother was very good to me once—that is, I believe, for a time: but it would do no good to go into those old questions. She would not suffer me with her, nor would I—— No, no; forgive me. That does not mean necessarily any harm, does it? that we do not now—see things—exactly in the same light——’
‘Then that is settled,’ he said gloomily, ‘so far as my mother is concerned; as for me, though, you call me a friend and all that——’
‘My dear boy,’ said Lady William, ‘you don’t imagine for a moment, I hope, that I would let you pay my expenses—for the benefit of Mab?’
He paused again, gazing at her, saying nothing; then threw up his hands with an impatient sigh.
‘And yet friendship is supposed to be something more than words,’ he said.
‘There is one thing that friendship is not,’ said Lady William; ‘at least, in England, Leo. It is not money. When that comes in it is supposed to spoil all.’
‘What an absurd, false, conventional, inhuman, ridiculous view!’
‘Perhaps. Oh! I don’t know that it need tell between two young men. There is an allowance to be made in that way for bons camarades. But I think it is a just rule on the whole. My poor little experience is that it is best not to be very much obliged to one’s neighbours. No, no! I don’t say so for you, Leo. I believe you might give everything you have to a friend, and never remind him of it—never recollect it even yourself, as long as you lived.’
‘Is that much to say?’
‘In the way of the world, it is something extraordinary to say; but this is a totally different question from my little problem, which is urged upon me by your mother, Leo, as well as by my innocent people—my brother and sister here.’
‘You think my mother is not innocent—that she had some other motive?’
‘I did not say so; why should she have another motive? Whatever there may have been between her and me, I, at least, have done her no harm.’
‘Then it must be she who has harmed you?’
‘No; what can any one do to you, outside of yourself? All our troubles come from our own faults or mistakes. We say faults when we speak of others, mistakes when it is ourselves. You told me once that Miss Mansfield—Artémise—had appeared again?’
‘Ah! I should like to know what she had to do with it,’ he cried.
‘Nothing,’ said Lady William; ‘but it would be important to me to know where to find her. Will you find out for me? There is something which she only knows which I am anxious to make sure of.’
‘Something important to you?’
‘They tell me so. I was not aware of it, and yet—if you could bring me to speech of her, Leo, for five minutes. She was never unkind to me.’
‘She is a bird of evil omen!’ cried Leo; ‘wherever she appears some harm follows.’
‘Ah!’ said Lady William, ‘and you said she was here the other day!’
‘There is something which has happened between you and my mother—something she has done to you which you will not tell me?’
‘What could she have done to me?’ Lady William made a movement as though shaking off some annoyance. ‘No; all she has done is to persuade me to this—about Lady Portcullis and the introduction of Mab into society. What could be more innocent?’ she said, with a laugh.
‘There is one thing,’ he said, ‘that one ought to do before giving an opinion. Has Lady Portcullis ever shown any interest? I have met her; she is very commonplace—one of the rigid English. Oh! very English. You do not know her? she has not sought your acquaintance? Would she?—has she ever?—do you think it is likely——?’
Lady William laughed again, but uneasily, painfully. ‘You are a sorcerer, Leo—this is the doubt I have never mentioned to any one—not to Mab herself, not to my brother. Do I think it is likely——? Since you ask me, I must answer no; my pride prevented me from saying it—not even to your mother did I say it—but she—ah!’ Lady William broke off again, still laughing—and the evening was beginning to fade, but Leo thought he could see the hot flush on her cheek.
‘I am not my mother’s champion,’ he said; ‘she has her peculiarities. She may have thought it would embroil you with the family.’
‘That,’ said Lady William, ‘was the least of what she thought!’
‘Dear lady,’ he said, ‘here is some mystery. You know that I am of your faction whatever happens. But you must tell me before I can do any good.’
Lady William did not make any immediate reply. She said at last: ‘Artémise: if you can bring me to speech of Artémise, I shall want nothing more.’ Then with a change of tone—‘Here is Mab coming back; no more of it—no more of it! there has been too much already. Mab, Leo is waiting till you give him some tea.’
‘Give it me strong and sweet,’ said Leo, who had jumped up from his low chair with perhaps a touch of embarrassment—but Lady William felt none—‘sweet and strong; for my head is a little confused, and I want it clear.’
‘Is it all about me and my father’s people? That is very good of you, Mr. Leo,’ said Mab, ‘to take so much interest—and have you converted mother to my way of thinking?—which is the thing I want most.’
‘I have been doing my best,’ he said, standing up beside her against the waning light in the window. And then it was for the first time that it occurred to Lady William—— Well, she was no more a matchmaking mother than you or I; but to see two young people together—one of them your own child, and the other a very good match—very well off, and kind, and true, and good, par-dessus le marché—this is a thing which will make the most unworldly woman think. To be sure, Leo was twice or nearly twice the age of Mab—but at their respective ages that was of no consequence. It was true also that Leo gave unmistakable signs at this present moment of much preferring Emily, the mother, to any seventeen-year-old; but that Lady William in her wisdom thought less important still. That would blow over quickly enough; it was scarcely even worth a thought; but they were smiling at each other in a very happy, pleasant way, she appealing, he answering the appeal. It was nothing, but yet it was a suggestion—and how many pleasant things it would involve! It was far too distant, too misty and vague to suggest to the mother how she should feel in her cottage if her Mab was spirited away. But it was a suggestion—and gave a new and agreeable direction to her thoughts.
Leo remained until the lamp was brought in by little Patty, whose eyes shone at the sight of him, partly because it pleased her to see ‘a gentleman’ again in the house (for Patty was a matchmaker, if you please, and never looked upon a ‘gentleman’ without an immediate calculation whether or not he would ‘do’ for Miss Mab), and partly because she felt that she must now be wholly forgiven for any wrong thing she had done in respect to him, seeing he was allowed to come back. Patty had never been sure what it was that she had done which was wrong; but none the less was it evident to her that she herself must have shared the pardon of the worst offender. And in the meantime there had been a pleasant little hour over the tea-table; as if to encourage her mother’s imagination, Mab had for once been seized with an impulse to talk, which was a thing that happened to her now and then. And it was beyond doubt that Leo was amused by her chatter, and responded gaily. They discussed Lord and Lady Portcullis with great mutual satisfaction, and the Ladies Pakenham, whom Leo had met in Paris; and he gave Mab a great deal of information as to her family, which the girl received with a mixture of amusement and offence, proving to her mother that there had been more things even in little Mab’s thoughts than were dreamt of in her philosophy. And then the young man went away, and they were left alone to resume the controversy or not, as fate might decide. Lady William, who had been brought into very close observation of her daughter, left the subject in Mab’s hands—but Mab did not enter into it again. She changed the subject to the FitzStephens’ dance, which was now so near, and led her mother to a discussion of the dresses they were to wear, which had the air of absorbing all Mab’s thoughts. ‘Do you think I will look very fat in white, mother? and my arms so red and healthy,’ she said. And this sort of conversation was carried on until Mab fairly put her mother, with all her anxieties and questions, to bed. The little girl was not without questions in her own mind, questions about her father, about the life she could not remember, or scarcely could remember, in Paris; about the family and relations she had never seen. By dint of much reflection it appeared to her that she could recollect a stiff gentleman with a fat face, who must have been Lord Portcullis himself. Why was it she knew nothing of her uncle? Why did he take no notice? Was there any reason for it? or was it her mother’s fault? If so, Mab was as strongly determined that she was of her mother’s faction as ever Leo Swinford could be; but more still than Leo Swinford she wanted to know from the beginning, and find out how and why it all was.