Lady William. Mrs. Oliphant
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marriage, and one of which the Rector’s wife herself was more proud than any one. She quoted Lady William in her own family in a way which made her brother who was a Q.C. and her sister who was Florence’s godmother very angry. ‘I wish you would not be always dinning that eternal Lady William into our ears,’ was what these good people said. But at home, in face of her husband, Mrs. Plowden liked to show her independence, and that she and her brothers and sisters were as remarkable as he and his brothers and sisters any day.
‘Well,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘they were really more nice to Emmy, though she is only my daughter, than they were to your sister Emily, James. I did not think that Emily was received as her rank demands. They were more civil to me, a simple clergyman’s wife, than they were to her. Now, though one is always pleased, of course to be put in the first place, I don’t think it was right. Oh! not Mr. Swinford, he was very attentive; but in such cases the man does not count, and the old lady——’
‘Is she really an old lady, mamma?’ said Florry, who had not yet found the opening for her anxious questions which she desired.
‘Well—her son is not quite young. He is not like Jim; he is a full-grown young man of the world. As for Mrs. Swinford, she is so curled and frizzed and powdered and everything done to her, that you can’t tell how old she is. But it is always safe to say the old lady when there is a son quite old enough to marry. Of course she will be the old lady as soon as he gets a wife.’
‘I am sure, mamma, it would not make you an old lady if Jim were to marry,’ said Emmy, always exemplary in her sentiments.
‘Jim!’ Mrs. Plowden said, with a sort of shriek. And then she added: ‘Poor Jim’s not a landed proprietor like Mr. Swinford. He can never make me a Dowager, poor boy! And what chance has he of ever marrying? none that I know of, without any money, and not even a profession. Alas! there is a great difference between Leo Swinford and Jim.’
‘Is Leo his name? What an odd name!’
‘But pretty, don’t you think—and so uncommon?’ said Emmy.
Emmy had a slightly dazzled look about the eyes, as one that has seen visions. She had been into that fairy palace, and come into absolute contact with Prince Charming. Florry knew that the details of the interview were not likely to come out until they two came face to face in their room, with no father or mother in the way.
‘By the way,’ said the Rector, as if it had not been the prominent thing in his mind all the time, ‘did Jim come back with you from the river, Flo?’
‘He thought he would like a little stroll before he came back—for half an hour. He promised me faithfully he would come back in half an hour.’
‘It is more than half an hour now,’ said the Rector, with his watch in his hand; and then he sighed and went away.
‘Oh, children,’ said Mrs. Plowden, when his steps had died out in the distance of the rambling house, ‘how often must I tell you not to be so pointed with your half-hours? How can a young man tell, if he strolls out in the evening, exactly to a moment when he’s to get back? He may meet a friend, or some little accident may happen, and he is kept, without any doing of his. And there is your father with his watch in his hand as if he had never been a young man himself. I don’t want you, I am sure, to be anything but truthful—but if you could throw a little veil over such things! Now, however soon he may come, and however right he may be, your father will never forget having looked at his watch. He will say you can never trust in his word because of that half-hour.’
‘I only said what he told me, mamma,’ said Florence, half offended.
‘As if there was any use in saying what he told you!’ cried Mrs. Plowden, ‘when you know that’s Jim’s weakness never to be sure when he is coming in; and to say in half an hour is just as easy as in—— Jim! why, here he is, as exact as clockwork. Run and tell your father, Florry: he can put his watch in his pocket. Oh, I am so glad! It is always a little triumph for us womenfolk who believe whatever you say, you troublesome Jim!’
‘Do you believe whatever I say, mother?’
‘Oh, more than I ought—more than I ought. And oh, Jim, if you only knew the pleasure of it, the pride of it! To see you walking in at your time as a gentleman should—and like a gentleman in every way!’
The words were, perhaps, capable of various interpretations; but the little party in the Rectory drawing-room knew precisely what they meant; and Jim knew very well that his mother, in the darkness of the room, where no lights as yet were lighted, was crying quietly to herself over his virtue and punctuality. It struck him with a sort of mingled shame and ridicule to think that, perhaps, had she known where he had been, she would not have been so much content. I may say that it was much more like an hour and a half than half an hour since he had left the two girls at the landing-place; so that he was not precisely a model of exactness after all.
When Jim came in all the other subjects in the world went out; and as he had no interest in the Hall and its inhabitants there was no further gossip about the Swinfords in the Rectory family that night, until, indeed, the evening was over, and the girls found themselves face to face in the room which they shared, which was a long and low one, under the eaves, with a number of small windows, and space enough to make up for a slanting roof on one side. It was indeed quite a large room, with two little beds, two little white-draped toilet tables, two sets of drawers, everything double, as the two were who had lived in it all their lives. All their little confidences had been made to each other there, all that had happened had been discussed; their whole life, which was not eventful, had passed in this dim chamber, where the light came in through greenish lattices, and under the shadow of the waving trees. They came upstairs, following each other very demurely, each with her candle, but when they were safe in their shelter, and had shut their door, each put down her candle on her own table, and they rushed together, seizing each other’s hands. ‘Oh, Emmy, tell me!’ cried the one who had been left at home.
‘There is nothing to tell, indeed,’ said Emmy, ‘except what you have heard already.’
‘I have heard nothing about him,’ said her sister.
‘Oh, Flo, dear! all that nonsense was amusing enough as long as he was only a dream. He has been a dream for so long; but now he’s a man, just like another.’
‘Not like any other in the world, Em.’
‘That is, to you and me; but, thank heaven, nobody knows except us two, and it is all over. He is like any other man, rather more nicely dressed, rather more careful of his clothes.’
‘Oh, Emmy!’
‘That doesn’t sound like our hero, does it? I suppose it is because he is half French: red stockings and patent-leather shoes, as Mab said.’
‘Well,’ said Florry, ‘if true hearts are more than coronets, they are certainly more than patent-leather shoes.’
‘That is very true, but somehow it goes dreadfully against one’s ideal. And, Flo, he is not—tall.’
Florence burst into a somewhat agitated laugh. ‘What does that matter?’ she said.
‘Oh, nothing at all. I know that little men are just as nice, sometimes nicer, than big ones; but you know what we always thought: and he is not the least like it—not one little bit.’
Emmy looked as if she were going to cry; for the fact was that Mr. Swinford had been, by a piece of girlish romance not very uncommon among such unsophisticated girls as those of the Rectory, the hero of an entirely visionary castle in the air on the part of this young lady. Florence was more wise; she had the ideas of her century, and was very strongly convinced that for her sister to marry well was a thing most essential at the present crisis of the family fortunes; but she had been very indulgent to Emmy’s romance, possibly from the conviction that this was the only way in which her sister could be moved to take such a step—and partly because she had herself a sentimental side, and was deeply convinced that no true marriage could be made without love.