THERE is nothing that happens more frequently in human experience than that, after long doubting what to do, and hesitation over a new step, the whole matter is suddenly taken out of our hands, and the question solved for us in a moment, and in the most summary way. Lady William had found many reasons for resisting the advice, whether given in love or enmity, of her friends. Her husband’s family had not been hostile to her, but it had been bitterly indifferent, taking no notice, making no inquiry into her condition or that of her child, and she had but small inducement to endeavour to draw closer that very loose and artificial tie which united her to the great people. It seemed to herself a sort of accidental tie, meaning so little to any body except to herself—and to herself whose whole life it had shaped, it was no pleasure to recur to the few years of marriage in which she had been taken so entirely out of her sphere without attaining anything else that was of pleasure or advantage to her. Sometimes she had been tempted to ask herself whether that was more than a terrible dream, a sort of fever through which she had passed, and at the end of which she had found herself back again in her native place, among the quiet scenes of her childhood, but with a different name, a changed personality, and Mab—the greatest sign of all that things were not as they had been. The Rector and his wife, however, did not take into consideration the great indifference of the family to Lady William and her child. They knew but little about the details. Mrs. Plowden for one could scarcely have got into her head that to be Lady William, to have lived in France, as well as in the great world, and to have grown familiar with many things that appeared very grand and delightful to a country lady who had never moved out of her parish, was perhaps to be rather humiliated than elevated both in one’s own opinion and in that of the world. Such an idea could have found no place in her intelligence. And she had not the slightest doubt that Lord and Lady Portcullis, if it were properly represented to them, would do their duty by their niece if not by their sister-in-law. She thought it was Emily’s pride which alone stood in the way. And though her husband knew the world better, yet he, too, was of opinion that it was chiefly Emily’s pride. Mrs. Swinford’s thoughts on the subject were of a very different complexion, even before she had thrown that horrible uncertainty into Lady William’s mind, that feeling that even her position, so modest as it was, might be assailed and turned into shame. If she had held back hitherto it was not from pride nor from fear of inquiry, but from a doubt whether it would be of the least advantage to her child to make any overtures or petition. Petition, that was the right word—and a petition which was more or less likely to be rejected, as she felt sure.
She was seated in her little drawing-room full of these doubts and questions one morning very soon after the FitzStephens’ ball. It seemed impossible now that things could go on as they were. The mere fact of all that had been said on the subject shook the foundations of life. And Mab’s age made a change in everything. So long as she was a child, the obscurity of her position was of no consequence. All that was needed for her was her mother’s care, and to be with her mother wherever she might happen to be; but with every day the position changed. Lord William Pakenham’s child was one thing, and Emily Plowden’s another. Was it her duty to let Mab grow up in the humbler region, perhaps fix her own fate in that, and settle for ever as a poor man’s wife in the village, while another world might be open to her? Had she any right to bind her child to her own limited fortunes, to keep her all her life a mere pensioner on the bounty of those who ought to recognise and care for her in a very different way? But if she made any attempt to alter the position, might she not make it worse instead of better? Might she not subject herself only, and Mab, who was of more consequence, to a repulse which would be much worse than neglect, to perhaps a question even of the humble rights which had been already recognised, the right of the widow and child to a subsistence, however doled out? The thought of having to fight for those rights, to open up the secrets of her life, and prove that she had a right to her name, was an idea intolerable to Lady William. She said to herself with a sick heart that she would rather die—she would rather die! Oh, that would be an easy way out of it; but that she should die and leave Mab behind her to fight it out, to prove her own lawful birth, her mother’s honour, that was impossible. If she were to die she must climb out of her grave, she felt, to prevent that, to take the brunt upon herself, to save from such a horrible struggle the child, the little girl who did not know what dishonour was—Mab, of all creatures in the world, to have any stain upon her of any kind! Then Lady William tried to brace herself up to think that she must no longer hesitate, that for Mab’s happiness she must venture everything, and prove at last, beyond any question, that whatever her fate might be there could never be in it any doubt or possibility of shame.
She was seated thinking of all this, her needlework going mechanically through her hands, her head bent, and every faculty occupied with this debate within herself, when she heard the little click of the gate which announced a visitor, and then the rap of Patty’s knuckles upon the door. ‘If you please, my lydy, it is Mr. Swinford and a strange gentleman. Am I to say as your lydyship’s at home?’
‘Did I ever tell you to say I was not at home, Patty?’
‘I don’t know, my lydy. You wouldn’t speak to me not for two days, ‘cause I let Mr. Leo come in.’
‘You are a little nuisance,’ said Lady William, which was enough to make Patty’s heart dance as she rushed along the narrow passage to answer—what was not yet, however, a knock at the door.
For the two gentlemen had met Mab in the garden. Mab was very busy in the garden in the end of April. She had a hundred things to do. She had a large apron with pockets heavy with all kinds of necessities covering her dress, and a very homely hat upon her head—one of those broad articles plaited of brown rushes, which are called reed hats, and may be bought for sixpence anywhere. It was not unbecoming, though it was entirely without decoration. Mab’s hair was slightly untidy from much stooping over the flowerbeds, and her cheeks were flushed by the same cause. She had fortunately large gardening gloves on, which kept her hands from the soil and pricks which were too familiar to them. Mab met the two young men as they came in. She was hurrying past with a box full of roots in one arm. But she was not in the least embarrassed by the encounter. She put the trowel which she carried in the other hand, among the roots, and stopped to speak. ‘I am very busy,’ she said. ‘It is beautiful this morning, isn’t it? but we shall have rain before night. So it is just the very opportunity to put in my carnations. They are a little late, but I was waiting for some good kinds.’
Of course, while she spoke to Leo her eyes had wandered to the other man with him, who was of quite a different kind—younger than Leo, still in the twenties, Mab thought, and not handsome; but surely she had seen him somewhere before. He was fair, like herself, with blunt features, and eyes that were blue, but not bright. In every way his appearance was quite different to that of Leo Swinford—no foreign air about him—clothes that looked much less thought of and cared for, more carelessly worn, but somehow giving, Mab could not tell how, a more perfect effect. She gave him a friendly glance, though she did not know him. But, indeed, she did not feel at all as if she did not know him. She was confident that the face was quite familiar to her, and that she must have seen him before.
‘I have brought a friend to introduce to you, Miss Mab: and I expect you to be friends at once, although you have never seen each other before.’
‘Have I never seen him before?’ said Mab. ‘Perhaps you are mistaken, Mr. Leo. I am sure I know his face, though I don’t know his name.’
And then the young men both laughed. ‘I will tell you where you have seen his face—in your own glass when you dress in the morning—I am sure you never look at it afterwards. This is Lord Will Pakenham, Miss Mab, and to be sure you ought to have known each other all your lives.’
‘Lord Will——’ Mab grew very red from the tip of her chin to the untidy locks on her forehead. ‘Does that mean Lord William—my father’s name?’
‘And I am your cousin Will,’ said the young man.
Mab paused a few moments longer before she held out to him her big gardening glove. ‘I do not remember my father,’ she said, ‘so you cannot remind me of him. Did we ever—perhaps when we were little children—see each other before?’
‘Every time,’ said Leo, ‘did I not tell you, that you have looked in the glass.’
I do not know what was the effect at that moment upon Lord Will, but the impression on Mab’s mind was one full of pleasure. These other people, with their clean-cut features, Leo himself, her cousin Emmy, who had the impertinence to be like Mab’s own mother, who belonged to her—were a sort of reproach to the girl. But here was somebody who had a blunt nose, and eyes which were rather dull in colour, like her own, and who looked friendly, homely, as if he did not mind—who also smiled upon her in a very natural way, as if he too felt that he had known her all his life. ‘Stop,’ said Mab, suddenly drawing off her glove with her white, strong, small teeth. ‘This time my hand is cleaner than my glove.’ She caught the glove in her other hand as it fell. If she had been a year older, of course she would not have done it: and her frock was short and her manner entirely at ease. Though she had been at a dance, and might be supposed to have come out, she was still Lady William’s little girl.
‘Come in to mother; she will be glad to see you,’ she added immediately. ‘I can’t go into the drawing-room, can I, with all this? and I must get these put in before I do anything. Mr. Leo, please go in to mother; you know the way.’
Next minute Leo was presenting Lord Will to Lady William. It was a very curious scene. She rose up in the midst of her thoughts, wondering, questioning with herself what she was to do, and heard in a moment her husband’s name pronounced in her ears. The effect was so great that as she rose hastily from her chair the blood forsook her face altogether. She held by the table before her, letting her work fall out of her hand.
‘Dear lady,’ said Leo, ‘we have startled you. I ought to have known.’
‘Whom did you say?’
‘I am William Pakenham,’ said the young man. ‘I beg you ten thousand pardons. Swinford has brought me to make acquaintance with—my relations.’
She sank back into her chair, and for a moment covered her eyes with her hand. ‘You must forgive me,’ she said, ‘I am very foolish; but the sound of your name so suddenly in the midst of all I was thinking——’ She paused a little, and then looked up at him. A smile came upon her face. She felt like one who has looked up and, expecting to see some painful apparition, sees instead a smiling face. ‘You are like my Mab,’ she said, tears coming with a rush to her eyes.
‘So Swinford tells me; but I am not like my uncle.’
Lady William did not say anything, but something in her eyes, something in the momentary tremor of her lips, seemed to say, ‘Thank God.’
It was an exceedingly awkward, stupid, uncalled-for remark upon the part of Will Pakenham, who knew that his uncle had been a scamp, but did not know whether or not his wife might have cherished his memory all the same. There are some wives who deify a blackguard after he is gone. But the visitor was young, and this possibility did not occur to him.
‘You have been living here,’ he said, ‘a long time.’
It may be supposed that Lady William was very much shaken out of her usual self-command before she would allow the stranger to take the conversation thus into his own hands, and to begin an interrogatory examination. It was not so much the suddenness of his introduction that had this effect upon her, as the bewilderment of thoughts in which she was involved when these intricacies were thus cut as by a knife, by the appearance of such an astonishing and unexpected figure upon the scene. She began now, however, to recover herself, and to realise that these questions were not at all of the manner in which she chose to permit herself to be addressed. Accordingly, though she smiled in reply, she gave no other answer, but turned to Leo, who stood by watching her, and by no means at his ease.
‘You were telling us the other day of the ladies of the family,’ she said, with a half-reproachful smile; ‘but you did not tell us of Lord Will——’
How quick she was, seizing the diminutive which made the name less dreadful to her—though she had never heard it before!
‘We are old friends,’ said Leo; but I did not think—in short, it is years since we saw each other. He has come on purpose to make your acquaintance, and his cousin’s.’
‘He is very good,’ Lady William said, with a little bow towards him. ‘I have been here for many years open to a visit. And you, are you adopting any profession or service? or are you merely a gentleman at large?’
She smiled upon the young man with her usual gracious reserve; and he began clearly to perceive that questions to her were practicable no more. He answered, ‘Oh, Coldstreams,’ a little awkwardly, feeling somehow that this lady in the little cottage, whose daughter did her own gardening, and who had a little charity girl for a servant, had put him back in his own place.
‘That is a great deal better than doing nothing,’ said Lady William; ‘but it is not very hard work. I thought you were all adopting professions, to work hard, you young men about town. Has your father come to town yet?’
‘My father?’ said Lord Will vaguely. ‘Oh, he’s—— somewhere fishing. My mother comes up after Easter. The governor’s not very fond of town.’
‘And your uncle John?——’
‘Oh——’ said the young man, colouring a little, ‘we thought you would be sure to see it in the papers—everybody is supposed to see everything in the papers: he died about a fortnight ago.’
‘Well, he was rather an old fellow, don’t you know,’ said Will in an apologetic tone, ‘and lived hard. I don’t think it was ever expected he’d have dragged on so long.’
‘In France,’ said Lady William, ‘there is such a thing as a faire part. They don’t exist in England, I suppose?’
‘They are hideous things in France,’ said Leo, with a shiver, ‘when you get a letter black to your elbow with a long string of names which you don’t know, till you come to one little one at the end——’
‘They are better, however, than no information at all.’
‘Oh, I hope you will not think there was any incivility meant. I myself heard my mother say that you must be informed. There was a search through all the address books, but we could not find at first where you lived. And then I volunteered——’
‘To come here, of all places in the world—next door to my cottage! How extraordinarily acute your flair must be, my dear Lord Will!’
‘It’s not that,’ said the young man, very red. ‘I knew that Swinford knew you. He wrote to one of the girls, saying what a stun—I mean that you were in his neighbourhood, and about your daughter, and all that—— ’
‘Perhaps it was the first intimation you had of our existence,’ she said.
‘Oh, no—no; don’t think so. Besides, you are in the peerage; there can be no mistake about that.’
‘That is an honour I didn’t think of. And so your uncle John is dead? He was a very strange man—not like any of the family——’
‘Not at all like the rest of us. None of the others had ever two sixpences to rub against each other. He has died leaving a great fortune.’
‘A great fortune!’ said Lady William, startled.
The young man looked as if he had said more than he intended. ‘A—a good deal of money,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean a great fortune as people think of fortunes nowadays. A good bit of money.’ He paused a little as if unwilling to go further, then quickly throwing the words from him like a stone, ‘And no will,’ he said.