Lady William. Mrs. Oliphant
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them.’
‘Ah, he’s not so easy to do. The others you’ve known all your life, and they are all the same kind of people: but you never saw any one like—that gentleman. The General would give you no clue to him, nor anybody you know here. He is like nobody you ever saw; he is—I don’t know what to say.’
‘You are always thinking of that fur coat of his and patent leather shoes. I wonder if they will see him to-day? They had much better have taken you and me, Mab. Emmy may be the eldest, but she will never make any impression. A man like that will never look twice at her.’
‘Why should he?’ said Mab, raising her eyebrows, ‘or what does it matter whether he does or not?’
‘Oh, Mab, you silly little thing,’ said Florence, ‘you must know, however silly you may be, that it matters a great deal. Think only what it would matter! To have a girl settled like that—rich, able to do what she pleased, one’s sister; only think; or still more if it was one’s self. We’ve got twenty pounds a year each for our clothes, fancy! And Mrs. Swinford will have hundreds—she will have just as much as she likes, and whatever she likes, and a grand house where she could ask the Queen herself: and power—power to get Jim settled somehow, to make him sure of his living: perhaps to get something better for papa, and save mamma some of the anxiety she has. And if anything happened to them, why, there would be a home for—for—the other one, don’t you see? Oh!’ said Florence, with a deep-drawn breath that seemed to come from the very depth of her being, ‘it would matter so much that it is wicked, it is dreadful, to think that a man could make such a change in another creature’s life only by looking at her and throwing his handkerchief. It’s immoral to dangle a chance like that under a poor girl’s very nose.’
Mab was not unimpressed with this terrible truth. She felt also that to contemplate the differences that might ensue if one of the daughters of the Rectory became Mrs. Swinford of the Hall was more than words could say. The very possibility caught at her breath. She made a momentary pause of awe, and then she said, ‘But he never will, he never will!’
‘Emmy, no,’ said Florence; ‘no—she’s too—she’s not enough—oh! she’s impossible, and I can see that very well for myself. Emmy is—she’s one’s sister, and she is as nice as ever was. You know she is a nice girl! But she was never made for that; whereas if they had taken you and me——’
‘Don’t say me, please,’ said Mab, reddening all over that blunt-featured and irregular little face, which was unfortunately so like the Pakenhams. The flush was quite hot, and discomposed her. ‘I’m impossible, too—much more impossible,’ she said.
‘Oh! you stand upon your family,’ said Florence, ‘and upon your mother’s position, and all that; but you may take my word for it, that if you were the Marquis’s own daughter instead of a disrep—— I mean instead of his brother’s, you would have to do the very same thing. If it is because you’re not pretty, that’s true enough; but there’s never any telling what may take a man like that, and you’ve got plenty of “go” in you, Mab, though I don’t want to flatter you: and even in looks a year or two may make a great difference——’
‘Will you stop! will you stop, please!’ said Mab; ‘Florry, stop! You make me ashamed. You make me feel as if——’
‘You were going in for it, too?’ said Florence calmly. ‘It makes me crazy, too, sometimes to think that—— But so long as girls are poor, and a man, just because they please him, can change everything for them—how can we help it? Even if you were to work, as people say, what difference would it make? I could perhaps make my living—and Emmy—— But dear, dear, to think of the Hall beside any little breadwinning of ours——’
‘Don’t talk so, please,’ cried Mab, with a shiver. She was not a visionary at all, nor had she any sentiment to speak of. But she was very young, still something between a girl and a boy, and ashamed to hear those revelations which she only half understood; or, rather, did not understand at all.
‘Well, one needn’t talk,’ said Florry, with a slight emphasis on the word. ‘But though you mayn’t talk of it, you can’t stop a thing from being true.’
‘Let’s go out for a walk,’ said Mab, ‘a long walk, down by the Baron’s Wood and up by Durham Hill; or let’s go out on the river for a pull. Let us do something—one can’t stay quiet all this bright afternoon.’
‘I want so much to see them when they come back,’ said Florry. ‘I want to know what they think of him—if they saw him: and whether Emmy made any impression, and what happened.’
‘What could happen? Do you expect her to come home engaged to him?’ said Mab. ‘However well things may go, they could not go so quickly as that.’
‘I am not a fool,’ said Florry, with indignation. She stood at the little gate looking out wistfully along the road by which the ladies had gone. The great trees hung over the wall which bounded there the nearest corner of the demesne of the Swinfords; the lodge and gate were just round the corner out of sight. It was too soon to expect them to come back. ‘Unless Mrs. Swinford had been out,’ said Florry. ‘She might be out, you know, and then they’d be back directly.’
‘She never goes out,’ said Mab; ‘it’s too cold for her here.’
‘Or she might not receive them very well, and then they would only stay a few minutes. You are so indifferent, you don’t care a bit what has happened: and I am on pins and needles till I know.’
‘Then I shall go for a walk by myself.’
‘Don’t do that,’ said Florry, putting out her hand to stay her cousin. She stood thus for a moment with her head turned towards the Hall, but her hand clutching Mab, gazing in one direction while her person inclined towards the other. She drew a long breath, and turned at last from her fixed gaze. ‘They must,’ she said, sighing again, ‘have stayed to tea. Yes, I’ll go on the river if you like; but let us go round home on the way and fetch Jim.’
‘Jim!’ said Mab. ‘He’ll want to scull, and I prefer to scull myself.’
‘Oh, he doesn’t mind. He is as lazy as—— He’ll steer and let us pull as long as ever you please. I don’t know anybody so lazy as Jim.’
‘We should be better by ourselves,’ said Mab; ‘not that heavy weight in the stern of the boat. When we go by ourselves it’s no weight at all.’
‘He’ll steer,’ said Florry; ‘it’s better to have some one to steer. And don’t you see it will keep him out of mischief for one afternoon.’
‘You have always another reason behind,’ said Mab. ‘It never is just the thing you think of, but something at the back of it.’
‘Well,’ said Florry soothingly, ‘it’s always so, don’t you know, where there’s a family. You are so lonely, you have no brothers and sisters. If you do well, then everything is all right. But our being right depends upon so many things: First, if papa is in good humour, and if Jim is going straight. Emmy and I have little questions between ourselves, of course, but these are the chief ones. Now, you have only Aunt Emily to think of, and she neither gets into rages nor goes wrong.’
‘I should hope not,’ said Mab, indignantly.
‘It is all very well for you to throw up your head like that; but we cannot do it. We must manage the best we can. Mab, I do often wish there could be a change.’
This was said when she had at last torn herself away from the road to the Hall, and the two girls were walking towards the Rectory and the river.
‘What sort of change?’
‘Oh! anything. That Jim should go away, or that he should do something dreadful that couldn’t be forgiven—or that Emmy should marry. I would even marry myself—any one! to make a change in the family and get away.’
‘I