IT was very hard to get rid of Leo Swinford, but Mab succeeded at last. He insisted on walking with Lady William to the cottage, full of apologies and excuses all the way.
‘I thought this morning,’ he said, ‘when I was told she was gone, that it was a dose of chloral. All women like her take chloral, and all women like her are apt to take a sudden disgust with life.’
‘Poor Artémise?’ said Lady William, who was always fair and rarely unkind. ‘Do any of us know what kind of woman she was? She has never had justice all her life, and with all that power and independence and spirit, she would have made a better man than a woman. I cannot think if she had known how much I wanted her that she would have gone away.’
To this Leo made no reply. He thought he knew a great deal better. He thought it was because of a cruel plot with his mother that Artémise had disappeared. But he would not destroy Lady William’s confidence, nor did he dare betray how much more he knew about the matter, and the cause of her anxiety to see Artémise than had ever been confided to him. But he walked on by her side repeating what he would do. He would go to London and take the boxes with him. He would wait at the station she had indicated till she came. But she might not come. She might send a stranger.
‘Bien!’ said Leo. ‘I will be there. I will follow, whoever it may be. I will not lose sight of her property, her boxes, till I have found her or some clue to her. Dear lady, the boxes—that is the best of guides: for what is a woman without her “things”? Is it not so?’
‘You are always safe to have a theory about women to fall back upon,’ said Lady William, beguiled into a laugh; and then they reached the door of the cottage, and Leo, who was not invited to cross the threshold, had nothing for it but to go away.
The ladies, however, had another attendant, who was more pertinacious, who waited for no invitation, but stalked in after them as he had stalked along by Mab’s side, with a much-troubled countenance but few words, all the way. Jim found himself in the midst of this imbroglio, which he did not in the least understand, not as a spectator only, but as a potential agent with something to say if he could but secure the means of saying it. What the message with which he was charged meant he knew as little as he could comprehend what possible or impossible link there could be between Mrs. Brown and Lady William, the one the symbol of dignity and modest greatness to Jim, the other—— He thought no evil of Mrs. Brown: he thought she was ‘queer’ though kind: that a woman so old and so clever should be on the terms of a bon camarade with himself was astounding to him, but agreeable. There was no harm in anything she had either said or done in his knowledge. But he had known that the ladies of the parish, at whom she laughed so much, would have very little approval of Mrs. Brown had they known more of her—and Lady William was ‘a cut above’ the ladies of the parish: that she should be so much distressed by Mrs. Brown’s sudden departure as to faint, or almost faint, when she discovered it, was incredible to him. But things being so, Mrs. Brown’s message, which he had thought at the time to be a kind of insanity, began to have meaning in it—meaning still dark to him, but which, perhaps, Lady William would understand. He went into the cottage after them, accordingly, indifferent to Mab’s looks, who frowned him back: but Jim was not to be kept back by Mab. When he appeared in the drawing-room, Lady William had thrown herself into a chair, and was leaning back with an air of anxiety and trouble, yet relief to be at rest and unobserved for the moment. Jim’s entrance made her start, with a little exclamation of annoyance.
‘Jim,’ said Mab, ‘oh, do go away, there’s a good fellow; don’t you see that mother’s overdone?’
‘Yes, I see,’ said Jim, ‘but I’ve got something to say to Aunt Emily.’
‘Oh, what can you have to say? Something about going up to town. There’s a hundred people ready to go up to town—if that would do any good. Please, Jim, please, go away!’
‘I have something to say to Aunt Emily,’ said Jim, standing first on one foot and then on the other in his embarrassment, but with a dogged look of determination that had never been seen upon his face before.
‘Get me a glass of water, Mab,’ said Lady William, ‘and let Jim alone. It is very kind of him to be so ready to help.’
It did not occur to her, indeed, that Jim could have very much real help to give; but she saw the anxiety in the young man’s face, and even (as she was always a person who could be amused at the most unlikely moments) the attitude of her little Mab, determined to sweep this big and obstinate encumbrance out of the way, stirred her with that sense of the humorous which gives so much solace to life. When Mab had most unwillingly gone out of the room, Jim came up, red and eager, and much flustered, to Lady William’s chair.
‘Aunt Emily,’ he said, breathless; ‘I know Mrs. Brown. She told me to tell you——’
‘What, Jim! she told you—you!’
‘Never mind that now,’ he cried, ‘I’ll explain after. She said: “If there is any chance of harm to Lady William—it sounds like madness, but I must say it—if she is likely to be overwhelmed, tell her not to be afraid, I’ll come.” That’s what she said, Aunt Emily. I thought she was mad—but then I thought I must tell you——’
‘She was not mad. Thank you, thank you, Jim. Don’t say anything—to any one. She said she would come?’
‘I was to tell you she would stand by you—not to be afraid—if you were likely to be overwhelmed——’
‘Here is Mab coming back. Thank you, Jim, I understand, and I believe her—I believe her! You’ve given me great comfort. Thank you, thank you, Jim!’
Jim did not know why he was thanked any more than he knew what the meaning of his communication was; but he was greatly elated all the same, and felt the clearing up of Lady William’s countenance—which was, he said to himself, exactly like the clearing of the clouds from the sky—to be his doing, with the warmest sense of beneficence and pleasure.
‘She is ever so much better; she is almost quite right,’ he said to Mab, who came hurrying in with a glass of water, and who could not help feeling a little annoyance to be thus assured by Jim of her mother’s recovery. By Jim!—with a smirk as if he had been instrumental in the improvement. He went away with that look of complacence and gratification on his face for which Mab would fain have boxed his ears; but at all events he did take himself away, and that was always something gained.
‘Now, mother, you will have a little peace,’ said Mab. ‘Lie down a little on the sofa, and close your eyes. That always does Aunt Jane good, and perhaps it may you. But I don’t know what will do you good; you never give me the chance to know.’
‘I don’t think closing my eyes will do me any good,’ said Lady William. ‘Give me that work of yours to set right, which you got into such a muddle last night. I am much better; I am almost all right, as poor Jim said.’
‘He seemed to think he had something to do with it,’ said Mab, with a snort of disdain.
‘Poor Jim! and perhaps he had. He brought me a message. You never told me much about Mrs. Brown, Mab.’
‘Oh, mother! I told you till I was tired telling you. I told you she was a lady. Well, what business had a lady in our school? But what does all that matter now? Who was she, mother? It is your turn to tell me.’
‘An old friend, Mab.’
‘Oh, that I know! But something more, surely? or you would not have been so startled to-day, or so distressed to miss her.’
‘The distress was selfish,’ said Lady William. ‘She was with me once, at a most important moment of my life; and she can help me better than any one to settle that question with the lawyers about your money, Mab.’
‘Oh!’ said Mab, ‘She told me she knew my father, and old John, as she called him, and——’
‘And you never told me, Mab.’
‘It was in a kind of confidence. And she did not say she knew you; and it was all so mixed up with things—that made me think she oughtn’t to be there, mother, in our school. And yet how could I tell any one, and make her lose her place? And that is why I wanted you to go this morning, to see what you thought; for you would have known in a moment if there was anything wrong.’
‘And that is why you have been so often at the school of late, my little girl?’
Mab nodded her head, slightly abashed, but yet not shaken in her confidence that it was the right thing.
Lady William drew her child into her arms and kissed her. ‘My little girl!’ she repeated, with a soft burst of laughter. And then she put her handkerchief to her eyes, and pushed Mab away and took the tangled work of last night, in which Mab had come to great grief, into her clever hands.
No doubt, whatever it was that had done it—even were it Jim—Jim, of all people in the world!—mother was better, brighter, happier, Mab concluded, half comforted, half perplexed. For that Jim should have had the power to do that—Jim!—transcended Mab’s powers of imagination. Lady William retained her cheerfulness until the afternoon, when she sat down to finish that letter which had been left in her blotting-book. But she made small speed over it, and it appeared to Mab that ‘the look over her eyes’ came back. If it could be imagined that Mab was capable of being glad at the overclouding of her mother’s face, I would say she was at least not displeased when this occurred, so that such a ridiculous instrumentality as that of Jim might be proved insufficient for the change it seemed to have caused. But this was a feeling of which Mab was ashamed after the first moment when it flashed upon her. Lady William sat for a long time over the letter, but she did not add anything to it. She held her pen in her hand, and on several occasions bent over the paper as if she were about to write, but always stopped short. What had she more to say? She knew now that when these words were written the all-important witness had been within her reach; but now she was as much out of it as Lady William had then supposed her to be—lost in that big world of London where the most anxious parent cannot find his child. And who could tell whether Artémise would ever hear how things went, or whether she was wanted? The promise Jim brought had consoled her for a moment. It had been like a revelation of comfort to hear that at least Artémise was on her side. But this did not outlast the depressing effect of the afternoon—that puller-down of hopes. Artémise might be on her side, but how, now that she had disappeared again, was she to find her when that moment arrived at which her word was indispensable? And then Lady William felt that this promise of help only in the moment of uttermost need had something humiliating in it. To keep her in suspense to the last, trembling with the sword suspended over her head, and then to step in—no sooner. This was not surely the act of a friend. And why should Artémise be her friend when Mrs. Swinford was her enemy? Her heart sank. The little flush of satisfaction faded. She threw down her pen, and left her letter unfinished, as before.
And then Leo Swinford came with his eager proposals to go to town, to find the runaway at all hazards, until Lady William, exhausted by many emotions and by that sickening revulsion of fresh despair after a rising of hope, became impatient, and more than half resentful of his importunities, which were more ardent than the occasion required—or seemed so to this fastidious lady, who in the failure of her own confidence was disposed to take umbrage at his—which rested upon the certainty of being able to do himself by his unassisted exertions now, what it would have been so easy, so simple, to do yesterday, and so entirely within his power.
‘It scarcely seems to me worth the while,’ she said, with a weary look. ‘Why should you make a sentry of yourself at that railway? She will send some one for her boxes and elude you, as she has done before.’
This was hard upon poor Leo, who, indeed, had done his best. He was still there when the Rector appeared, who interrupted one of those protestations and entreaties to be trusted, from which Lady William turned so coldly. And the Rector was still more cold.
‘If we had but known in time,’ Mr. Plowden said. ‘I had never seen the lady. If any of those who must have known her had but given us a hint in time.’
It could only be Leo to whom this reproach was addressed, and the Rector did not notice his protest that he had never associated his mother’s visitor with the school. Even Lady William was unjust. She said: ‘You must have suspected that she had some haunt or shelter at Watcham.’ Leo had to fall back upon some of his own general theories about women, that they are always unjust. But he did not go away, which made the Rector more angry still: for Mr. Plowden had come on business. Some days had elapsed since the lawyer’s letter was received, and yet it had not been answered, nor had any decision been come to as to what was or was not to be said in the reply. He had come again to-day with the intention of pressing for Mr. Perowne—Mr. Perowne and his firm had known all the secrets of the Plowden family for generations, why should not he be entrusted with this? But Lady William would only look at him with a silent resistance. She would not accept Mr. Perowne, nor would she tell him why.
‘I have begun my letter,’ she said, ‘I will finish it to-night; it is merely to tell them the facts——’
‘For Heaven’s sake,’ said the Rector solemnly, ‘don’t send it away at least without letting me see it—without taking my opinion at least.’
‘There is as much as I have written,’ she said, handing him the letter, ‘you are welcome to see it, but whatever comes of it I must do it my own way.’
And Leo had the bad taste to sit through this discussion, to remain even while the Rector read the half-written letter, vehemently shaking his head and saying ‘no—no—no’ as he went on. It is true that Mr. Swinford went to the other side of the room and talked to Mab, whose presence there her uncle also felt to be de trop. For the room was so small that being at the other end of it only meant that those other two people were some two or three yards away.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I would admit nothing, Emily. You are wrong—you are wrong. You are making no stand for yourself at all. Why tell them about the chapel being burnt down, and why say you don’t know where she is——. It is wrong, I say; it is betraying everything. When they see this, they will have no mercy.’
‘You think I should go away?’ said Leo to Mab. ‘But I have not yet received my orders. Have patience with me a little, and I will go.’
And then, as if there were not already too many, Miss Grey came in, to fulfil her volunteer promise to bring them news of how things were settled.
‘Oh, Mr. Plowden, how glad I am to see you,’ she said, ‘for I am very anxious to know whether you will sanction our arrangement. Mr. Osborne seemed to think it was all right because Florry—though, as I said to him, Florry is a darling, but she is not the Rector. What an extraordinary business it was, to be sure!’
‘Do you mean Mrs. Brown?’ the Rector asked, very impatiently: and yet incivility was not possible to Miss Grey.
‘What a wonderful thing to do, to shake the dust from her feet, as the Bible says. But we never did anything unkind. I should have laid myself out to be friendly if she would have responded. But I always felt she was a most unlikely person to hold that position. Did you happen to keep her testimonials, Mr. Plowden, or do you remember who they came from? There should be some inquiry made; and the people who recommended her should be warned of the way she treated us. Not that there was a word to say against her management of the school. Everybody seems to say she did very well there.’
‘I don’t remember,’ said the Rector, more affronted than ever. ‘anything about her appointment, Miss Grey.’
‘Ah, well! but you remember something about her, Emily. Didn’t you say you knew her—under some other name? If it was here, I must surely remember her, too. I always felt that I had seen her face somewhere before. The first time I saw her it made quite an impression on me. I kept asking myself where have I seen that face? But, you know, familiarity breeds—— that is to say, when you get used to a face, you no longer think. Was it in Watcham you knew her, Lady William, my dear?’
‘She did not live actually in Watcham,’ Lady William replied, with hesitation. ‘I saw her—that is, she was present—at my marriage.’
The Rector (for what reason I cannot tell) looked at his sister angrily, shaking his head as if this had somehow been a betrayal of weakness too.
As for Miss Grey, she threw up her hands as if a sudden light had flashed upon her, and cried: ‘Ah, to be sure! now I remember—at your marriage! I recollect all about her now: that was where I saw her—and often in Mrs. Swinford’s carriage before.’
‘That was where you saw her?’
Lady William’s bosom heaved with a quick breath; her colour changed from pale to red; she bent forward as if her hearing had failed her. As for Miss Grey, she gave her friend a sudden apologetic look, put up her hands as if to cover her face, and burst into a deprecating laugh.
‘Didn’t you know?’ she said. ‘No, of course you didn’t know. I kept it to myself, for I had no business to be there. And I was a little huffy that you had not asked me. Yes, my dear, I saw you married,’ said little Miss Grey.
Lady William fell back in her chair, and covered her face with her hands. The Rector, for his part, got up and walked to the window, where he stood looking out, ‘to see if it rained,’ he muttered; though a brighter sky could not be than that which shone in upon the startled group. Mab and Leo, looking on, were as much startled as little Miss Grey herself, by the sensation she had evidently produced.
‘You don’t mean to say that you’re angry,’ she said, ‘Emily, after nearly twenty years?’
Lady William uncovered her face, from which the blood had receded again, leaving her perfectly pale. She rose up tremulously, and cast herself upon the neck of her old friend.
‘Angry?’ she said. ‘Oh, glad, thankful beyond measure. Why didn’t I know it before?’
‘Well, my dear, I suppose I was ashamed to confess the liberty I had taken,’ said Miss Grey, who was much surprised, and yet pleased by the impression made. ‘I may as well make a clean breast of it now, since you’re not displeased. I was going up to town that day. I do assure you I was going up on my own business to town. And I saw you at the station, the dear old Rector, and you in a little white bonnet, and another lady. Bless me, to think that should have been Mrs. Brown! You were looking like a lily flower—paler even than you are now. Ah! you are not pale now, you are like a rose. Did ever any one see the mother of a big girl like Mab change colour like that before? I saw you all three get into a cab—and then my curiosity got the better of me. I daresay it was very dreadful. I was too much ashamed ever to tell anybody. I took another cab and followed you. And I crept in behind to the very back of that nasty ugly little chapel, quite furious with the Rector and everybody that you should have had such a wedding. To think how things come out all of a sudden after one has bottled them up for twenty years!’