THE Rector, when he came home upon that day, when Jim’s alliance with Mr. Osborne began, did not show any such pleasure in the circumstances as his wife expected. He mumbled and coughed, and with a lowering brow said that anything was an excuse that kept the boy from his work, and that if Jim picked up Osborne’s fads in addition to his own faults they would make a pretty hash of it altogether. Mrs. Plowden, however, made the less of this that the Rector was evidently in but an indifferent state of temper and spirits generally. ‘He has been put out about something,’ his interpreter said to the girls; ‘something has gone wrong with him in town; he has not got his business done as he wished.’ But what that business was, his wife was obliged to allow that she did not know. ‘I can’t help thinking,’ she said, ‘that it’s something about your uncle Reginald. What else could Emily have come over in such hot haste about? And then your father going up to town in this wild way without giving any reason. I can’t imagine what can be the cause unless it was something about Reginald. They are dreadful for sticking to each other, the Plowdens; they would think, perhaps, that I would make a remark, and I am sure that there are plenty of remarks I might make, for if ever there was a man who was utterly unbearable in a house it was Reginald Plowden, and nothing in the world would make me consent to have him here again, nothing! Your father has had something on his mind for some time back. Don’t you remember he burst in one day as if he were full of something to tell us, and then stopped short all at once?’
‘But that looked as if it was good news, mamma. He had met Mr. Swinford and he was just going to tell us.’
‘What good news could come to us through Leo Swinford?’ cried Mrs. Plowden scornfully: which was to poor Emmy as if somebody had given her a blow in the face. She fell back quite suddenly behind her sister, and attempted no reply.
‘It did look at first as if it was something good,’ Mrs. Plowden allowed; ‘but when I tried to draw it out of him he only got into a fuss you know, as he does so often, and told me I’d hear it all in good time. I am sure ever since he has had something on his mind; and when he came back from town last night he could have torn us all in pieces. If it is not about Reginald I am sure I can’t imagine what it can be.’
‘It may be something about Aunt Emily, mamma.’
‘What could there be about Emily? No, she has heard from Reginald, that is what it is, and he has told her he was sending back her money, or something of that sort, and your father has gone up to town to see if it was true. And he has found out, of course, that it was not true, as I could have told him before he went a step on such an errand. And now he can’t contain himself for rage and disappointment, and if I’m not mistaken, he has gone over to tell your aunt Emily that she is not to think of it any more.’
‘He did walk over to the cottage,’ one of the girls said; and the other added:
‘How do you find out things, mamma? Now I am sure I never should have thought of anything of that kind.’
‘My dears,’ said Mrs. Plowden with a certain complaisance, ‘you never knew Reginald Plowden. And I do. You cannot gather grapes off thorns, or figs off thistles; and if there ever was thorns and thistles in flesh and blood, Reginald Plowden is the man. That your Aunt Emily should still expect to get her money back from him, just shows what a thing family affection is; but she might as well expect it to drop down from those lilac-trees.’
The girls did not say anything in reply; but Emmy, for her part, thought of quite a different explanation. She believed that Leo Swinford, whose proceedings had been so great an object of interest, and of whom she knew both by her own observation and by common report that he was ‘always at the cottage,’ had offered himself and his fortune to Lady William. Proposed to Aunt Emily!—that was how poor Emmy put it. A girl cannot but think such a proposal wholly ridiculous, if not an absolute infatuation. Her respect for her aunt made her still believe and hope that the proposal had been rejected; but this wonderful event would quite account for the ‘something on his mind,’ which it was very clear the Rector had. What he had gone to town about, however, and whether his mission could have any bearing upon this disquieting question, Emmy could not say. Florence was so preoccupied with other matters that upon this, even though it cost her sister so much disquietude, she expressed no opinion at all.
The Rector, as had been perceived, had gone towards the cottage when he went out with care upon his brow. He had not, after all, as the reader will understand, proclaimed the wonderful news about Mab when he went home after his meeting with Lord Will. He reflected to himself that it might be some time before he could set his sister’s position quite straight, and that in the meantime the report of Mab’s heiress-ship would flash all over the parish, and that any question, any hesitation, any delay, on the subject would attract the curiosity and interest of the village folks. Mab an heiress! It would go from one end of the county to the other, and questions as to when she would come into her fortune would come from all sides; very likely that last horror of impertinent gossip which reveals what everybody leaves behind him to the admiration of the public, would communicate the news in spite of all precautions. Lord John’s death intestate and the amount of his fortune would be in all the papers, with a list of the kindred concerned. But at all events, the Rector said to himself, he would say nothing till the matter was more assured. It was not an easy thing to do. He felt it bursting from his lips during the first day when he allowed himself to mention Lord Will simply to relieve his mind, but by main force kept the other communication back. And to say that it was not with the most dreadful difficulty that he kept his mouth shut on those many occasions when it is so natural to let slip to your wife the secret that is in your heart, would be to do Mr. Plowden great injustice. He was not in the habit of keeping things to himself. Even the secrets of the parish, it must be allowed, sometimes slipped—things that ought to have been kept rigorously inviolate. He had not, perhaps, the most exalted opinion of his wife’s discretion, and yet she was his other self—a being indivisible, inseparable, with whom he could not be on his guard. But she had shown great discrimination when she said that the Plowdens stuck to each other. Nothing would have made him confess to his wife that there was any insecurity in the position of his sister. Emily was a thing beyond remark, a creature not to be criticised. He would have nothing said about her—not a word of compassion. There are a great many men who deliver over their sisters and mothers without hesitation to be cut in small pieces by their wives, but here and there occurs an exception. Emily was James Plowden’s ideal and the impersonation of the family honour and credit. He could not have a word on that subject, and thus he was strengthened in his resolution to say nothing of Mab’s prospects—until, at least, they were established beyond any kind of doubt.
This did not by any means look like the position in which they were now. Mr. Plowden went into the cottage almost with a little secrecy—looking round him before he opened the little garden gate—for the gossips in the parish were quite capable of reporting that there was something odd and unusual in the Rector’s constant visits to his sister, and that certainly something must be ‘up.’ To be sure it was only his second business visit—but even so much as that was unlike his usual habits, and he was extremely anxious that no question should be raised on the subject. He found her in the drawing-room, at her usual sewing. Mab was out, which was a thing of which the Rector was glad. She looked up hastily at the sight of him, reading his face, as women do with their eyes, before he had time to say a word.
‘You have not succeeded, James?’
‘How do you know I have not succeeded?’ he asked crossly. ‘I have not, perhaps, done all that I hoped to do—but Rome was not built in a day. It was absurd to expect that I had only to go up to London—an hour in the train—and walk into old Gepps’ parsonage and find him still there.’
‘You did not find him at all?’
‘No, I didn’t find him at all. I never expected to find him, considering that he was an older man than my father, and that my father has been dead for sixteen years.’
‘To be sure,’ said Lady William faintly.
‘I found his name, however, all right, and the place—not quite in the City, as I thought—St. Alban’s proprietary chapel, Marylebone.’
‘Ah!’
‘Do you remember the name?’
‘No,’ said Lady William; ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember even the name.’
‘Well, never mind; Gepps was incumbent then. And a very good place, too, for anything that was to be kept quiet—hidden away in a labyrinth of little streets; not so noticeable as the City, where an old church in the midst of warehouses is often something to see. Lady Somebody or other’s proprietary chapel; incumbent, the Rev. T. I. Gepps. No doubt that was the one.’
‘Was it like my description? But, to be sure, it may have been changed, or restored, or something.’
‘I can tell nothing about that. It has been changed with a vengeance. Emily, the chapel has been burned down——’
She gave a little scream of annoyance, but more because of the face he had put on, than from any perception in her own mind of the significance of the words.
‘A few of the things were saved—the books, I mean—but not all, not all, by any means: and all those between 1860 and 1870 perished.’
‘What do you say, James?’
She began to awaken to a little consciousness that this concerned her, which she had not at first understood. ‘The books?’—she took it up but vaguely now—‘the books? What—what does that mean, James?’
‘It means that of the period of your marriage there is no record at all. Do you understand me, Emily? No record, no certificate possible—nothing. It is as if you had planned it all. A clergyman who is dead; a chapel which is burned down; a registry which is destroyed. That is what it might be made to look by skilful hands—as if you had invented the whole.’
She sat half stupefied looking at him, the work still in her hands, her needle in her fingers, looking up at him more astonished than was compatible with speech. ‘The clergyman dead, the chapel burnt down, the registry destroyed!’ She said these words in a kind of half-conscious tone—repeating them after him, yet not knowing what she had said.
‘That is about the state of the case; if you had meant to deceive, you couldn’t have done better all round.’
Lady William looked at him with a curious half smile, yet wistful wonder in her eyes. ‘But,’ she said, ‘I did not want to deceive.’ There was a sort of startled amusement in her tone, mingling with something of reality, a question half rising, a faint feeling of the possibility, and that even, perhaps, her brother——‘James,’ she cried, ‘you do not imagine that I—I——’
The words failed her; the colour forsook her face, and she sat looking up at him dismayed; her work fallen into her lap, but the needle still in her hand.
‘Of course I do not imagine that you—nor, did I doubt that, could I doubt for a moment when there’s my father’s hand and date upon it. And I suppose that would be evidence in a court of justice,’ the Rector said, knitting his brows—‘I’m rather ignorant on such subjects, and I don’t know. But I suppose it would be evidence. I could prove my father’s handwriting, and that I found his notebooks, and produce the rest of them, and so forth. But it’s touch and go to rely upon a thing so close as that.’
‘The books destroyed!’ she said, repeating the words, ‘the church burned down, the clergyman dead. Do such things happen? all to overcome a poor woman? If it was in a book one would say how impossible—how absurd—— ’
‘Emily,’ said the Rector, ‘you must forgive me for saying it, but that’s just what your whole story is—impossible and absurd. It has been so from the beginning; people have no right to launch themselves on such a career. You had it always in your power not to take the first step. I blame my father almost more than you—he ought not to have allowed you to do it: but I blame you too. For even a girl of nineteen is old enough to know what’s possible and what’s impossible. You ought not to have allowed yourself to be launched upon such a bad way. After your ridiculous marriage you might have expected everything else that was ridiculous to follow. It is all of a piece. Nobody would believe one word of it from the beginning to the end—if it was, as you say, in a book.’
Lady William listened to this tirade with a curious piteous look, almost like a child’s; a look that was on the verge of tears and yet had a faint appealing smile in it, an appeal against judgment. Oh what a foolish girl that had been, that girl of nineteen, that ought to have known better! and what a good thing for her if she had known better; if she had been able by her own good sense and judgment to overcome those about her: the foolish old father, the false friend who led her into the net. Listening to her brother’s voice so long, long after the event, and looking back upon the thing that was so impossible, the thing which between them these foolish people had done—she could see very well how preposterous it was, and how it could have been resisted. Mab (all these thoughts flew through her mind while the Rector was speaking) would not have done it. But Mab’s mother had done it, and could not even now see what else she could have done among these three people surrounding her, arranging everything for her. And there was a sort of whimsical, ridiculous humour in the idea that all these complications must have followed from that foolish beginning. What could she expect but that the clergyman should die, the church be burned down, and the books destroyed? To the disturbed and disappointed Rector, thoroughly put out, touched in mind and in temper by a contretemps so painful and disconcerting, there was nothing whatever ludicrous in the thought. But to her, whose whole life hung upon it, her child’s fortune, her own good name, everything that was worth thinking of in the world, there was an absurdity which had almost made her laugh in the midst of her despair.
‘I am very sensible of the folly of it now,’ she said, commanding her voice, ‘and I know all the misery that has been involved better than any one can tell me—but it is too late now to think of that. We must think in these dreadful circumstances what is now to be done.’
‘You see, Emily,’ said Mr. Plowden, ‘I never knew the rights of it till the other day. I knew there was something queer and hasty about it, a sort of running away; but you know that till you came back here a widow with your little girl I had heard actually nothing—and, indeed, not very much until you came to the Rectory the other day.’
‘That is quite true; and I am very sorry, James.’
‘I don’t say it to upbraid you, my dear. My father was much more to blame than you were. I would not like to have any of my daughters exposed to such a temptation, even at their age. And Florence is twenty-three. And you were always a spoiled child, getting everything your own way.’ The Rector had gradually worked out his impatience and had gone round the circle to tenderness and indulgence again. He put his hand on her shoulder, and patted it as he might have done a child. ‘My poor girl,’ he said, ‘my poor Emily!’ with the voice of one who brings tidings of death, and a face as long as a day without bread, as the French say.
She looked up at him with a gaze of alarm.
‘James!’ she cried, ‘do you think it is all over with us? Don’t say so, for Heaven’s sake! I’ll find Artémise if I seek her through all the country; I’ll find evidence somehow. Don’t condemn us with that dreadful tone.’
‘Condemn you!’ said Mr. Plowden, ‘never will I condemn you, Emily. Even if you had done something wrong instead of only something very foolish, you may be sure I should have stood by you through thick and thin. No, my poor dear, you shall get no condemnation from me; and Jane, I am sure, has far too much sense and too good a heart——’
Here the Rector’s voice broke a little. The idea that his wife would have to be made the judge of his sister, and might almost, indeed, hold Emily’s reputation in her hands, was more than he could bear.
‘Jane!’ said Lady William, with a ring in her voice as sharp and keen as that of her brother’s was lachrymose; but, happily, she had sufficient command of herself not to express the exasperation which this suggestion of being at Jane’s mercy caused her. She said, however, with a painful smile, ‘You are throwing down your arms too soon; I don’t intend to be discouraged so easily. Now I know that the fight will be desperate I can rouse myself to it. It is evident that the one thing that is indispensable is to find Artémise.’
‘Who is Artémise? Some French maid or other?’ said the Rector, with a tinge of disdain.
‘Artémise is Miss Mansfield, who was with us—a cousin, or some people thought a half-sister, of Mrs. Swinford. Their father was a strange man, more French than English, and that is the reason of their names, and—many other odd things. She is a strange woman, and has a strange history. She was at the Hall, a sort of governess—when—— And she was sent with me that night. And without her I don’t think—but we need not enter into those old stories now. One thing I know is that she is living, and that Leo Swinford has seen her—not very long ago.’
‘A disreputable witness,’ said Mr. Plowden, shaking his head, ‘is not much better than no witness at all.’
He was in a despondent mood, and ready to throw discouragement upon every hope.
‘I don’t know that she is disreputable; and at all events she was present,’ said Lady William. ‘That must always tell—in a court of justice, as you say: though God grant that it may never come there.’
‘I suppose you can lay your hand upon her without any difficulty, through Mr. Swinford,’ the Rector said, suddenly adopting an indifferent tone as if with the rest of the business he had nothing to do.
‘That is, perhaps, too much to say; but at least she may be found—or I hope so,’ Lady William replied.
‘And now I must go,’ said Mr. Plowden. ‘Of course, anything and everything I can do, Emily—when you have tried what is to be accomplished in your own way——’ He turned towards the door, and then returned again, with a still more cloudy face. ‘My dear sister,’ he said, in a tone of solemnity and tenderness adapted to the words, ‘you may have to seek his help for this; but for all our sakes do not, any more than you can help, have young Mr. Swinford here.’
Lady William looked up quickly with a half-defiant glance.
‘Above all’ said the Rector impressively, ‘while there is any sort of doubt, any sort of cloud, and when every step you take will be remarked—— Don’t make me enter into explanations, but, for all our sakes, don’t have Mr. Swinford always here.’