‘THE Swinfords come back,’ Lady William said to herself, as she sat on the little sofa in the twilight by the light of the little fire. She had been very silent after the Plowdens withdrew, saying little except on the subject of the frock, which was resumed as soon as these ladies were gone. And when Mab went out, as she had a way of doing when the light began to fail, Lady William put the work away, and sat down in the corner of the sofa, which was the cosiest spot in the little room, almost out of reach of the draught. This is an extremely difficult thing to attain in small rooms where the doors and windows are at right angles, and you never can get far enough off from one of them to avoid the stream of cold air which pours in under the door, or from the window, or somewhere else in the sweet uncertainty of cottage architecture. But that end of the sofa was nearly out of the way from them all: and there she sat when she did not go out, at that wistful hour when it is neither night nor day. Lady William was not old enough to like that wistful hour. She was young enough to prefer taking a run with Mab, being, though she was Mab’s mother, quite as elastic and strong, and as fond of fresh air and exercise as she: and she was philosopher enough to take care not to think more than was absolutely necessary; for I do not disguise that there were episodes in her past life which were not pleasant to go back upon, and that the future, when she gazed into it closely, was too precarious and alarming to inspect. But to-day Lady William’s mind had been stirred, and so many things had come up which forced themselves to be remembered that she had no resource but to allow herself to think. The Swinfords! They were the great people of the place. Their house was close to Watcham, its gates opening upon the road a little beyond the village—and they had in her early days exercised a great influence upon Emily Plowden’s life. A flood of recollections poured back upon her, a succession of scenes one after another—scenes in the house, in the park, and in the conservatory, all about the place. She remembered even the looks of certain eyes, glances that had been cast at herself, or even at others, swift changes of aspect, vicissitudes of sun and shade which were more rapid than the shadows upon the hills. What a thing it is to recollect over twenty years and more the way one look succeeded another on a face, perhaps gone into dulness and decay, or perhaps only changed out of knowledge, but equally separated from us and the scenes in which we remembered it! Lady William sat and recollected, and saw again the very light of the days that were past, how it came through a long window and fell upon—sometimes her own face, which was as changed as any of the others, sometimes other faces fixed in eager regard upon hers. How strange to think that she was the girl that stood then on the threshold of life, so full of many emotions, so easily touched one way or another, smiles and tears chasing each other over her face. And to think it was all over, and everything connected with that time was as a dream! She had met her husband there; a great many things had befallen her there; and now here was Jane Plowden coming to ask her to call—to call, of all things in the world, on Mrs. Swinford, as if she were an ordinary neighbour, as if there was nothing between them that could not be told over the tea-table among the afternoon visitors! And she had consented to do it, which was more strange still—half for the wonder of it, half because now they had come back, she was curious to see how things looked across the abyss which separated now from then. Oh, as she thought of it there rose a hundred things she wanted to know! Her busy fancy figured how the patroness of her youth would look; what she would say; the questions she would ask. ‘So you have settled in Watcham again—in Watcham, after all? And you have a little girl? And you never see or hear of—— Oh, but that is impossible—you must hear of them constantly, for it is in the papers.’ All these things she heard Mrs. Swinford say with the little foreign accent which was one of that lady’s peculiarities. Then Lady William paused with a foreboding and asked herself whether she could not avoid the meeting—whether she could have a bad headache, or go off on a visit, or simply sit still and refuse to move. Alas! going off on a visit is not so easy—you want money for that, and there was nowhere she could go except for a day or two. Neither would a bad headache last beyond a day: and as for sitting still, that would be equally ineffectual, for if she did not go to Mrs. Swinford, Mrs. Swinford would probably come to her. She considered that but one of two things could be done—either to go away altogether from Watcham while the Swinfords remained there, which was, of course, impossible—or to call with Jane as was proposed to her. She laughed at this softly, with a little secret fright, yet sense of the ludicrous—to call with Jane! walking in over the ashes of volcanoes (so to speak), over the dragons’ teeth that had been sown in their time and produced such harvests, with that incarnation of the commonplace by her side. No doubt the ashes would be covered with Persian carpets, and Jane would think of nothing but the future parties to be given there, and whether perhaps young Mr. Swinford—— Lady William could not be supposed to be particularly happy during this review of the things that had been and the things that would have to be, but she laughed to herself again. That eternal question could never be left out, she said to herself.
‘What are you laughing at, mother?’ said Mab, as she came in, bringing with her a rush of cold, and that smell of the fresh air which changes the whole atmosphere of a little room in a moment. Her whole person was breathing it out. Her hat, which she took off when she came in, was full of it, sending the mingled fragrance and chill into every corner of the tiny little fire-lit room. Lady William shivered a little.
‘You have brought in the draught with you, Mab, like a gale at sea.’
‘I am sorry,’ said the girl, turning back to shut the door. And she came to the fire and knelt down before it, and repeated, with the pertinacity of youth, ‘What were you laughing at, mother?’
‘Nothing very much—chiefly at Aunt Jane and this new thing she has got in her head!’
‘Oh, Aunt Jane,’ said Mab carelessly, as if that was a subject already exhausted. Then, however, she added, still pertinacious, ‘but what is the new thing she has got into her head?’
Lady William thought of a certain baby in a book who wanted to see ‘the wheels go wound,’ and laughed a little once more.
‘How do you know that I can tell you?’ she said.
‘Don’t you tell me everything, mammy?’ said Mab, rubbing her head against her mother’s arm like an affectionate puppy: and Lady William stroked her child’s hair, which glistened with a drop or two of cold dew upon it from the dripping branches outside.
‘You have pretty hair, Mab,’ she said softly, with praise, which was a caress.
‘Have I? Oh, I don’t think there’s anything pretty about me,’ said the girl. ‘What a little fool I was not to take after you, mother! It is you who are the pretty one: and Emmy has the impudence to be a little like you—Emmy, and not me! But never mind. What has Aunt Jane got in her head?’
‘The pertinacious child! She has this in her head, that she wants to drag me to-morrow to go with her and call at the Hall.’
‘Oh, is that all?’ said Mab. She felt that her lively curiosity, which was a pleasant sensation, had been wasted. But then she added, ‘Is there anything that makes it of importance that she should call at the Hall?’
How the child swept over the ashes of the volcanoes, raising a little pungent dust, which got into her mother’s throat: but she laughed a little, for Aunt Jane was always fair game.
‘Do you remember the Bennets in Pride and Prejudice,’ she said, ‘and the commotion there was when Mr. Bingley first came?’
These ladies were great readers of novels, which held perhaps the first place among the amusements of their lives: and they were happy enough to possess an old edition of Miss Austen, which kept them, as much perhaps from their good luck as from good taste, familiar with all she has added to our knowledge of life, and fully prepared with an example for most emergencies that could occur in their little world.
‘Yes,’ said Mab, a little wondering. And then she said, ‘Oh, I see. Aunt Jane is like Mrs. Bennet, and Emmy—But Emmy is not half so nice as Jane. And Mr. Bingley is—Oh, I see, I see——’
‘Don’t see too much,’ said Lady William, ‘for it is all in embryo; but I should not wonder if your aunt were at present in her imagination arranging Emmy’s trousseau, and thinking over what hymns should be sung at the wedding. “The voice that breathed o’er Eden” is a little common. It was sung for Susan Green only last week, who said, “No, my lady; we ain’t got nothing to do with gardens nor apples, nor folks going about without no clo’es.”’
It is very probable that this story was told by the artful mother with the intention of throwing dust in the child’s eyes and leading her away from a subject on which explanations were difficult; but, if so, she reckoned without her Mab. The girl owned the fact of the anecdote with a little laugh just proportioned to the occasion.
‘Is Mr. Swinford quite—young?’ said Mab doubtfully. ‘And then there is his mother, who lives with him——’
‘Well, yes, I suppose that is the right way of putting the case,’ said Lady William. ‘He lived with his mother when I knew them—and as for his age, I remember him a little boy.’
‘Oh,’ said Mab, with partial satisfaction, ‘but you were young yourself then. I think I saw somebody in the village just now who may have been—this gentleman. He was in a big coat, all fur, and shiny shoes—fancy shiny shoes for going through the mud at Watcham! And he was as old, I should think, as—as old as—Uncle James’s last curate, the one who was locum tenens, and who did not stay—Oh, over thirty at the least. Now Mr. Bingley cannot have been more than twenty-five. I am sure he was not more than twenty-five—and I don’t call that very young.’
‘Leo Swinford must be over thirty, as you say. He was about nine or ten when I was eighteen—a great difference then, but perhaps, as you say, not so great a difference now. Who is that, Mab, at the gate?’ It showed how Lady William had been roused and disturbed by this afternoon’s intelligence that she should be thus moved by the idea of any one at the gate.
‘If you please, my lady,’ said Patty, the little maid, putting in her curly head once more; ‘it’s a gentleman as I never see before. Nayther the Rector, nor the Curate, nor the General, nor nobody as I know; and he has got fur round his neck like a female,’ said Patty, with a cough which covered a laugh. ‘It’s just like the thing as they call a victorine. I never see it on nobody but a female before.’
‘Let him come in, Patty,’ said Lady William. She gave a swift glance at the candles on the mantelpiece, and then she decided not to light them. ‘Mab, get up and take a seat like a rational creature. You will soon have your curiosity satisfied, it appears.’
She said to herself that she did not care for Leo Swinford, not a bit! It was his mother, not he, who had affected her former life. He had been a boy, and now he would be a man, just like the others. It showed that they meant to be civil that she should send him so soon. This was the only point of view in which Lady William regarded the visit; but that was the point of view which affected her mind most. She cared no more for Leo Swinford in himself than for any curate in the diocese—which was almost the only other specimen of young man which she was likely to see. She drew back into her corner, which was so near the fire that it was deep in shade, the reflection going quickly through her mind that her first question would be, How does she look? is she much altered? does she look old? That was what his mother would want to know. But she should be baulked in that desire at least. The firelight flickered about, making a pleasant ruddy half-light in the little room. It danced about Mab, coming and going, giving a note of colour to her light hair, and showing the round youthful curve of her cheeks without any insistence upon the overfulness of her chubby, childish figure. It was very favourable to the child, this ruddy, picturesque, uncertain light. These thoughts flashed through Lady William’s mind in the moment that elapsed before Patty threw open the door again, and with a loud voice announcing, ‘The gentleman, my lydy,’ shut it again smartly upon herself and the sudden chilly draught from outside. And then the scene changed, and the principal figure became, not Lady William and her thoughts any longer, but a solid shadow in the midst of the firelight, a man, unaccustomed intruder here, bringing with him a faint odour of cigars, and that sort of contradictory atmosphere which comes into a feminine household with the very breath of an unknown being of this unhabitual kind. It was an embarrassing position for a stranger; at least, it would have been an embarrassing position for most men. But Leo Swinford was not one of those who allow themselves to be affected by circumstances. He made a bow vaguely directed towards the corner, drawing his heels together after the manner of France, and then spoke in the easiest tone, though his words expressed the embarrassment which he did not at all feel.
‘I am under a double disadvantage,’ he said, ‘and how am I to come out of it? I came prepared to say that I feared you would not remember me, and now you cannot even see me. Never mind. I am Leo Swinford, and you cannot have forgotten altogether that name.’
‘No,’ said Lady William. She held out to him from the shade a hand which looked very white in the ruddy light. ‘I heard this afternoon that you had come home,’ she said, ‘and your name was on our lips.’
‘What a good thing for me,’ he said, ‘save that it does not at all test your recollection, which I had pleased myself with thoughts of trying. But it is all the same. Do not send for lights, and as you cannot see me, next time we meet I can put my question with equal force.’
‘I see you very well,’ said Lady William, ‘and I should not have known you. How could I? You were a child, and now you are a man. And I was a girl, and now I am an old woman. Your mother will see innumerable changes. How is she? It was kind of her to send you to see me so soon.’
‘Ah!’ said the visitor, ‘I said I was at a double disadvantage, but it seems there are more. She did not send me to see you, dear lady. I came on my proper feet, and by my proper will. Mamma is not changed, but she no longer sends little Leo on her errands. He has certain instincts of his own.’
‘Well, then, it was a kind instinct that brought you here,’ said Lady William.
‘I am not so sure of that—an instinct very kind to myself: I foresee little pleasure in the society of home, you will not be offended if I say so. But there was one quarter in which I knew I could indemnify myself, so long as you permit it, madame.’
He spoke very much like a Frenchman throughout, Mab thought, who sat breathlessly looking on, rather hostile but exceedingly curious, thinking it was as good as a play; but the ‘madame’ was altogether French, not that harsh ‘madam’ of the English, which comes at you like a stone, and which may mean more animosity than respect.
‘We have not, indeed, much variety here,’ said Lady William; ‘you will soon exhaust our little resources. But then we are not very far from town, and I advise you to keep the house full. After Paris, Watcham! It is perhaps rather too much of a difference, unless you have a very strong head.’
‘My head is indifferent strong. I can stand a good deal in the way of change, from ten degrees below zero to twenty over it. Ah! I forgot you go by that other impossible standard of Fahrenheit here. You have not presented me to the young lady whom I see by glimpses, as if we were all in a fairy tale.’
‘My daughter, Mab; and, as you have already divined Mab, the gentleman whom we were talking of, and who remains in my mind ten years old, in a velvet suit, with lace, and, I believe, curls——’
He waved his hand. ‘Spare me the curls, they were the supplice of my early days. Picture to yourself, Miss Mab—Mab! how curious to put Miss before that name! One might as well say Miss Titania.’
‘One does sometimes in this day of fantastic names. There are Miss Enids and Miss Imogenes.’
‘I was saying, picture to yourself a very plain little boy, with very common hair, exactly like every other little boy’s, only worse—in long curls upon his wretched shoulders! they made my life a burden to me. Mamma is a most interesting woman—not at all like other people—I am exceptionally happy in having had such a companion for my life—but so long as I was a child there were drawbacks. By degrees things right themselves,’ he added after a brief dramatic pause. ‘I have no longer curls, nor am I sent to call, and we have solved the problem of having two independent rulers in one house.’
There was another pause, which Lady William did not herself wish to break. Perhaps his voice, the atmosphere about him, produced recollections that were too strong for her: or perhaps Leo Swinford by himself did not interest Lady William. It was Mab who blurted forth suddenly, with a juvenile instinct of relieving the tension of the silence, a piece of information.
‘I saw you just now in the village, Mr. Swinford. I wondered if it was you. We don’t see many strangers in the village—at least at this time of the year. I said to myself: unless it is some one from the Hall, I don’t know who it can be.’
‘Some one from the Hall is very vague, Miss Mab—Queen Mab, if I may say so. I hope you had heard of me, myself, an individual, before that vague conjecture arose.’
‘No, I can’t say I had,’ said Mab bluntly. ‘Mother said something to-day to Aunt Jane about Leo wanting a wife; but then, you see, I didn’t know who Leo was.’
‘If that is the only attitude in which I am to be presented to my new world! but I don’t want a wife,’ he added plaintively, addressing himself to the dark corner in which Lady William was seated. ‘However, I am Leo,’ he added, turning to the girl again with such a bow as Mab had never seen before.