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Forgiveness
 Probing the Boundaries

Series Editors
Dr Robert Fisher Lisa Howard
Dr Ken Monteith

Advisory Board

James Arvanitakis Simon Bacon

Katarzyna Bronk Stephen Morris
Jo Chipperfield John Parry
Ann-Marie Cook Karl Spracklen
Peter Mario Kreuter Peter Twohig
S Ram Vemuri Kenneth Wilson

A Probing the Boundaries research and publications project.

http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/probing-the-boundaries/

The Persons Hub

‘Forgiveness’

2013
 Forgiveness:

Philosophy, Psychology and the Arts

Edited by

Timothy McKenry and Charlotte Bruun Thingholm

Inter-Disciplinary Press
Oxford, United Kingdom
© Inter-Disciplinary Press 2013
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/

The Inter-Disciplinary Press is part of Inter-Disciplinary.Net – a global network

for research and publishing. The Inter-Disciplinary Press aims to promote and
encourage the kind of work which is collaborative, innovative, imaginative, and
which provides an exemplar for inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary
publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior
permission of Inter-Disciplinary Press.

Inter-Disciplinary Press, Priory House, 149B Wroslyn Road, Freeland,

Oxfordshire. OX29 8HR, United Kingdom.
+44 (0)1993 882087

ISBN: 978-1-84888-171-6
First published in the United Kingdom in eBook format in 2013. First Edition.
 Table of Contents

Introduction vii
Timothy McKenry and Charlotte Bruun Thingholm

Part 1 Philosophical Perspectives on Forgiveness

Recognising Contingency: A Philosophical Reflection

on Forgiveness 3
Alberto L. Siani

Virtuous Anger and Inappropriate Apology: When

Actions Are Unforgivable 11
Sandy Koll

Forgiveness in Not Undoing the Past but Pardoning the

Impossible 19
Cameron Surrey

Imputation and Preserving the Face of the Other: The

Human Economy of Forgiveness 29
Steve Larocco

Part 2 Psychological Perspectives on Forgiveness

Two Kinds of Forgiveness 37

Kerstin Reibold

Forgiveness in Counselling: Client and Practitioner

Issues 45
Christine Ffrench

In Defence of the Self-Respecting Nature of Unconditional

Forgiveness 53
Kimberly M. Goard

Part 3 Forgiveness and Culture

The Pardons of the Hamidian Era: The Petitions and the

State Policy 67
Çiğdem Oğuz
 The Abuse of Forgiveness in Dealing with Legacies of
Violence 77
Urszula Pękala

Tourism: A Step towards Post-War Reconciliation 85

Maria Dorsey

Understanding the Propensity to Forgive in a Society at

War: An Initial Study among the Colombian Population 97
Ricardo Abad Barros-Castro and Luis Arturo Pinzón-Salcedo

Religious Peacebuilding: Forgiveness as a Peacebuilding

Tool within the Five Major World Religions 113
Charlotte Bruun Thingholm and Martin Bak Jørgensen

Part 4 Forgiveness and the Arts

What Do We Mean by ‘Forgiveness?’: Some Answers from

the Ancient Greeks 127
Maria Magoula Adamos and Julia B. Griffin

Redemption of King Lear and Isak Borg: An Analysis of

the Dying Protagonists in Shakespeare’s King Lear
and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries 133
Zhongfeng Huang

Surrender to Social Injustice for the Sake of Personal

Healing? The Ambiguity of Forgiveness in Anita
Desai’s Clear Light of Day 143
Elizabeth Jackson

A Forgiveness Song: The Emergence of an Ethical

Framework Informing Australian Composers’
Interactions with the Music of Indigenous Peoples 153
Timothy McKenry
 Introduction

Timothy McKenry and Charlotte Bruun Thingholm

The fifth annual global conference on Forgiveness: Probing the Boundaries
took place at Mansfield College at Oxford University in July 2011. Delegates from
around the world gathered at this three day conference to discuss one common
theme: forgiveness. The diversity of academic disciplines represented at the
conference resulted in genuinely multidisciplinary discussions enriched by a range
of world-views. A representative collection of various academic perspectives on
forgiveness is presented in this publication.

Part 1: Philosophical Perspectives on Forgiveness

Part one explores various dimensions of forgiveness through a consideration of
philosophical ideas drawn from a range of traditions of thought. In the first chapter,
Alberto L. Siani builds on Hegel’s discussion of forgiveness in Phenomenology of
Spirit and goes on to develop a four-fold philosophical reflection which
contextualises forgiveness as a contingent act that conciliates the space between
issues of free will and rational action.
Sandy Koll explores contemporary philosopher Charles Griswold’s exploration
of forgiveness in the second chapter of this section. In addition to analysing
Griswold’s thesis on the topic, Koll builds on Griswold’s work by exploring case
studies that, based on the conditions set out by Griswold, have the capacity to
represent unforgivable acts: acts which warrant virtuous anger. Koll concludes by
critiquing some aspects of Griswold’s ideas suggesting that his neglect of the
intersections between the virtue of forgiveness and the virtue of charity represent a
shortcoming in his work.
Cameron Surrey presents a robust philosophical defence of the ethical
imperative for unconditional forgiveness in the third chapter of this section.
Drawing on the ideas of a range of scholars including Aristotle, Augustine,
Nietzsche and Jankélévitch, Surrey grapples with paradoxes related to time and the
metaphysical problems associated with viewing forgiveness merely as an attempt
to ‘undo’ the past injuries. His conclusion requires a re-examination of the
orientation of the human will and an incorporating of ‘impossible’ misdeeds into
meaningful narratives. For Surrey, forgiveness involves not undoing past actions,
but embracing the possibility of pardon as an imperative arising out of the essential
personhood and humanity of offenders.
The final chapter in this section examines forgiveness in terms of a social
exchange marked by shifting dynamics of power. The author, Steve Larocco,
presents forgiveness as a process involving both an imputation of the offender -
where the offering of forgiveness becomes an indictment on the wrongdoer - and at
the same time constitutes a gift as the party offering forgiveness asserts a
willingness to cancel the ensuing social debt caused by this imputation.
viii Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
Forgiveness becomes an exchange within a constructed human economy that
functions to maintain social equilibrium.

Part 2: Psychological Perspectives on Forgiveness

The second part of this volume concerns psychological perspectives of
forgiveness. It contains three chapters, each dealing with different aspects of
forgiveness and the implications it holds for both society at large and the wellbeing
of the individual in relation to both counselling practice and the self-respect of the
victim.
In the first chapter, Kerstin Reibold suggests the need to differentiate between
social and personal forgiveness. Her concept of social forgiveness concerns the re-
integration of the perpetrator into society and the maintenance of social norms. On
the other hand, personal forgiveness deals solely with the two parties: the
perpetrator and the victim. Through personal forgiveness the victim has the power
to set free the perpetrator from an otherwise unpayable debt. Reibold argues that
distinguishing between these two forms of forgiveness has some advantages
regarding the disagreements related to discussion surrounding the process of
forgiveness, such forgiveness granted as a gift versus withholding forgiveness
unduly, and the relationship between criminal prosecution and forgiveness.
Furthermore, Reibold argues that personal forgiveness can never be considered as a
morally wrong act, whereas social forgiveness might. Lastly, distinguishing
between the personal and social concept of forgiveness can make consideration of
specific cases clearer as they sometimes require only one of these two types of
forgiveness.
In chapter two, Christine Ffrench reflects on various aspects of forgiveness in
the context of psychological counselling practice. She argues that even though the
notion of forgiveness is relevant for various types of clients, it remains a complex
concept. In this regard it is highly relevant what meaning and qualitative difference
is granted to the notion of forgiveness during counselling, such as ‘forgetting,’
‘letting go’ or ‘moving on.’ The relationship between survivor and perpetrator is
likewise of great importance as are the steps taken after the offence has taken place
since a range of factors - including whether or not the perpetrator has apologised,
acknowledged the offence, been punished, or is now dead - are relevant to the
operation of forgiveness in a counselling setting. Moreover, the importance granted
to forgiveness by the counselling psychologist is important. Lastly, what makes
dealing with forgiveness in counselling psychology complex is that fact that while
for some survivors, forgiveness can be important; for others it is not a pre-requisite
for healing.
Chapter three contains Kimberly M. Goard’s contribution to the philosophical
discussion concerning the relationship between forgiveness, unconditional
forgiveness and the self-respect of the victim. It is often argued that forgiveness
undermines the victim’s self-respect if the offence has taken place under certain
 Timothy McKenry and Charlotte Bruun Thingholm ix
__________________________________________________________________
circumstances, such as where an offence was grossly excessive, perpetual and
relentless, or if it functions to marginalise or oppress the disadvantaged. Goard’s
chapter asserts the argument that forgiveness always reinforces self-respect and
goes on to analyse possible consequences to the victim where forgiveness is not
granted.

Part 3: Forgiveness and Culture

The third part of this volume examines the way forgiveness and the related
concepts of pardon and reconciliation operates in specific cultural settings. The
five chapters in this section explore these issues using a range of case studies: three
consider reconciliation processes following armed conflict; one examines pardon
as a political tool, and another examines the potential for the world’s five major
religions to be overtly harnessed in international peacebuilding efforts.
Çiğdem Oğuz examines the phenomenon of political pardons in the Ottoman
Empire in the late 19th-century. A controversial period in late-Ottoman history,
Oğuz exposes the power dynamic that underpinned the granting and requesting of
pardons during the Hamidian regime and concludes that pardons functioned to
consolidate the autocratic rule of the Sultan by manufacturing the image of a
beneficent, merciful ruler. Oğuz also explores the way in which the negotiation that
typically preceded a pardon functioned to alleviate political tension by fostering
personal loyalty towards the Sultan.
Urszula Pękala considers the moral hazards that have the potential to arise
when Christian notions of interpersonal forgiveness are transplanted into inter-
governmental processes of reconciliation. Through an exploration of Polish-
German relations in the years since the Second World War, Pękala explores a
range of ways forgiveness can be abused by those both seeking and granting it, and
goes on to examine how issues of corporate memory and cultural identity are
informed and transformed by processes of forgiveness. Pękala also asserts that
memory and identity can problematise the forgiveness process: the communicative,
dynamic process of constructing and reconstructing memory can lead to abuse
where memory misrepresents history, and forgiveness that necessarily involves a
recasting of identity by both victim and offender stumbles when the prospect of
identity change incites defensive and fearful reactions in the minds of both groups.
Conflict resolution, reconciliation and psycho-social healing are considered in
Maria Dorsey’s chapter on tourism as a mechanism to facilitate forgiveness. Using
a qualitative study of the experiences of a group of New Zealand veterans of the
Vietnam War in returning as tourists to the site of the conflict, Dorsey examines
the positive and negative effects of such experiences. While stating that further
research into post-war tourism is needed and acknowledging the complexity of
human responses to such situations, Dorsey suggests that post-war tourism
experiences have the capacity to increase empathy between former enemies.
Columbian society provides the setting for a study into the propensity of a
population with recent experience of violent civil conflict to forgive. In this chapter
x Introduction
__________________________________________________________________
Ricardo Abad Barros-Castro and Luis Arturo Pinzón-Salcedo describe a survey
conducted with individuals randomly selected from streets, parks and other public
spaces in Bogotá that examined how these individuals reacted to a fictional account
of a circumstance featuring a slight or injury, and then asked about a real case in
which the participant had been offended. The survey asked the participants to rate,
on the basis of a range of variables, the likelihood that they would forgive the
offender presented in the fictional case. The results of this survey reveal a range of
differing propensities to forgive based on demographic factors including age,
gender, religious affiliation and socio-economic status and, furthermore, provides a
foundation for the development of strategies to construct a positive model of peace
in Columbian society.
In the final chapter of this section Charlotte Bruun Thingholm and Martin Bak
Jørgensen explore the capacity of religion to be a tool in international
peacebuilding efforts. Using exemplars of religious leaders who advocated
forgiveness and non-violence, as well as examining how forgiveness has the
capacity to operate in five of the world’s major religious, Thingholm and
Jørgensen contend that within any religion lie powerful, transformative tools that
have the potential to foster peace, and that particularly where a population has
entrenched religious sensibilities, eschewing religion in the course of
peacebuilding efforts on the basis of a primarily Western academic notion that
religion is purely a negative phenomenon is a mistake.

Part 4: Forgiveness and the Arts

The fourth and last part concerns the different approaches to dealing with
forgiveness from the perspective of the arts. The artistic disciplines examined in
this part include literature, film and music.
In the first chapter Maria Magoula Adamos and Julia B. Griffin analyse various
ancient literary works with a specific focus on Homer’s The Iliad, Euripides’
Hippolytus, and Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in an attempt to help clarify
current discussion on the meaning of interpersonal forgiveness. Throughout this
chapter, changes and developments to the concept of interpersonal forgiveness are
examined as well as its relationship with concomitant concepts such as
anger/resentment, hurt, clemency, desert/merit, excuse, etc. During this process of
clarification, the various historical figures are accompanied by a succinct
contextual explanation which makes the chapter accessible to any interested reader,
including those with no extensive knowledge of ancient literature or philosophy.
The second chapter contains Zhongfeng Huang comparative analysis of
Shakespeare’s King Lear and Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries. Huang’s
analysis demonstrates how family alienation can result in painful isolation. This
situation leads the two aging protagonists of King Lear and Wild Strawberries on a
strikingly similar process of re-evaluation of their past actions which leads them to
realise their own errors. This results in the two old men seeking redemption and
 Timothy McKenry and Charlotte Bruun Thingholm xi
__________________________________________________________________
forgiveness from their family members. The suffering both men are forced to
endure leads them on a journey of self re-evaluation which ultimately leads to their
seeking forgiveness. Thus, these similar stories, one a film the other a play, have
three themes at their centre: the portrayal of old age, the gaining self-knowledge,
and the search for redemption. Huang concludes that suffering leads these two old
men to a clearer understanding of love and the essence of life itself.
The third chapter also has a focus on literature with Elizabeth Jackson’s
analyses the concept of forgiveness through an examination of Anita Desai’s novel
Clear Light of Day. In contract of the often perceived reasoning behind the main
character Bim’s decision to forgive, namely that she is defeated by her own
inability to changes the rigid family structures which is the underlying reason for
her grievance. Jackson provides an alternative analysis of her decision to forgive
by claiming that Bim needs to reach a state of forgiveness for her own mental and
psychological well-being. Nevertheless, the decision to forgive does not contribute
to the change of traditional family structures that causes Bim extended suffering
throughout the novel. The central themes of this chapter are thus oppression of
women and gender equalities inherent in traditional societal structures, and the
concept of forgiveness and its implication for the individual, family and societal
levels are also discussed in this chapter.
In the fourth and last chapter Timothy McKenry analyses the use of Indigenous
Australian music by non-Indigenous Australian composers. McKenry charts the
way Australian Indigenous music has been used by these composers to try to create
a distinctly Australian musical idiom, without any thought of the cultural
sensitivities of Indigenous people. Through a historical examination from the
earliest major interactions between aboriginal music and Australian composers, to
contemporary examples of the same, McKenry illustrates how Australian
composers have gradually moved from overt appropriation of Indigenous music
towards ethically-informed collaboration with Indigenous musicians. Such
development could arguably prove to be very important in the process of granting
forgiveness and achieving reconciliation between the relevant parties.
 Part 1

Philosophical Perspectives on Forgiveness

 Recognising Contingency: A Philosophical Reflection
on Forgiveness

Alberto L. Siani
Abstract
Forgiveness has apparently to do with either the individual-psychological sphere or
with a religious/political dimension. It does not seem to be a philosophically
relevant topic and, in fact, there have not been many remarkable philosophical
investigations about it. One of the most significant is made in the last pages of the
Spirit chapter of G. W. F. Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), where
forgiveness is given a philosophically decisive function. In a first step I sketch the
features and the role of forgiveness in Hegel’s text. However, my aim is not a
faithful reconstruction of Hegel’s argument, but rather, starting from its categories,
the development of an idealistically-inspired and systematically-attractive
philosophical reflection on forgiveness. In a second step I interpret the Hegelian
concepts to work out four main aspects of forgiveness, developing a partial
philosophical definition of it as a) activity, and not simple re-activity or passivity;
b) rehabilitation of the meaningfulness of the linguistic act; c) integral
concreteness; and d) recognition and acceptance of contingency.

Key Words: Forgiveness, Hegel, idealism, modernity, political philosophy,

contingency, language, recognition.

*****

A philosophical reflection on forgiveness may seem to be something

contradictory in itself. Forgiveness is a spontaneous, contingent act, and its very
nature seems to exclude the possibility of a general norm. Philosophy on the other
hand has to do with necessity and the normative power of reason. This is at least
the case for the idealistic approach to philosophy, which is my own. Thus it is quite
astonishing that one of the most fascinating philosophical reflections on
forgiveness is to be found in the most famous work of the most representative of
the idealistic philosophers, namely in the Phenomenology of Spirit of Hegel
(1807). My aim is not, however, a faithful reconstruction of Hegel’s own position,
but rather an autonomous development of the main lines of a philosophical theory
of forgiveness based on a free appropriation of Hegel’s own thoughts. I will go
through two main parts. Firstly I will offer a sketch of Hegel’s conception, and
secondly I will attempt to outline an autonomous reflection.

1. Hegel on Forgiveness
First of all, a couple of words concerning Hegel’s Phenomenology: 1 this is a
unique, extremely obscure and dense philosophical work. Its main subject is the
4 Recognising Contingency
__________________________________________________________________
science of the experience of consciousness, that is the speculative reconstruction of
the historical, cultural and psychological processes that take consciousness (both
individual and collective) from the first immediate stage of sensitive certainty to
absolute knowledge, through a series of stages that develop from each other
dialectically. In this process, which Hegel calls a ‘path of despair,’ 2 consciousness
undergoes the progressive destruction of all its cognitive and practical certainties,
up to the point of absolute knowledge, where consciousness recognises that truth
does not lie in a separate object, but is the very reconciliation of subject and object.
The path is divided into six main stages, or moments, that consist of various
sections. The six moments are: consciousness, self-consciousness, reason, spirit,
religion and absolute knowledge. Hegel deals with forgiveness in the last pages of
Spirit, hence forgiveness represents the passage to Religion. Here Spirit is all the
collective forms of consciousness, hence its historical, ethical, political and cultural
configurations, from the tragic ethical life of Classical Greece to the modern moral
vision of the world contemporary with Hegel. The last section of Spirit has the
title: Conscience. The Beautiful Soul, Evil and Its Forgiveness. Here Hegel deals
with the romantic view of the world, whose principle is the self-determination of
the I and the self-grounding of morality and ethical life. This principle is abstract,
and hence splits into various contradictory figures. More precisely, Hegel
distinguishes two main figures that interact in these pages as characters of a theatre
play: the judging and the acting character. These are two typical figures of modern
life, as Terry Pinkard, an American philosopher and Hegel-interpreter and
translator writes:

1) the judgemental agent becomes the person who does not act
but only prattles on about the “absolute standards” that must be
maintained and is forever moaning about the loss of such
standards; 2) the ironist [that is, the acting figure, ALS] becomes
the kind of casuistical agent who is always invoking the
“complexity” of life to justify his own self-serving actions. 3

Both are hypocrites, though in different ways. The judging character never acts
herself, but claims to be able to judge the other’s action. The acting character
claims to be acting for good aims, and regrets the circumstances that bring her to
actually act only for her own sake. Both boast a purity that exists only in their
words. It seems that there is no way out for consciousness, and that modern moral
life is condemned to be itself empty and contradictory. However, the acting
character, by looking at her own actions through the words of the judging
character, understands the selfish nature of those actions and confesses it to the
other, expecting from her the recognition of her dignity, and hence of their
equality. The judging character does at first refuse the acting character opposing
only silence to her, hence turning in yet another figure, which Hegel calls the ‘hard
 Alberto L. Siani 5
__________________________________________________________________
heart.’ 4 By refusing the confession, the judging character loses all of her value and
truth, and we are once again stuck in a hollow opposition. The evil seems not to be
overcome. Nonetheless the way out of it is already contained in the previous
confession. As a matter of fact, the acting character had recognised that her acting
standard was no universal, but only her particular interest. Likewise, the judging
character understands, thanks to that confession, that her judging standard cannot
be taken as an absolute truth, because there is no truth independently of the other’s
recognition. Hence the judging character also renounces her claim, having
discovered equality with the other conscience.
Right at this point we have the act of forgiveness: the renouncement of the
judging character to her own nature is in itself the act of forgiveness. Both
consciences recognise each other by abandoning their claim of self-identification
with the standard of absolute truth. We hence have a reconciliation where the spirit
comes back to itself from its divisions and the truth is no more a subjective moral
claim, but the plural, spiritual recognition of the self in the other. This
reconciliation is of course based on the previous conflict, but the very fact of the
conflict is not something ultimate and definitive anymore. We can reconsider it and
quit considering it as a motive for our actions. As Hegel writes, ‘the wounds of the
spirit heal and leave no scars behind; it is not the deed which is imperishable.’ 5
This reconciliation is of course mediated through religion (which is, as mentioned,
is the following moment of the Phenomenology), but it is not simply the result of a
transcendent divine intervention in the human world. It is, on the contrary, the
recognition of the immanent presence of spirit within the human world. With the
closing word of this section, ‘It is God appearing in the midst of those who know
themselves as pure knowledge.’ 6
Even from this very rough exposition it should be clear that Hegel’s reflection
does not constitute a normative theory of forgiveness, but rather a phenomenology
or maybe a genealogy of it. In my view, this means that Hegel offers a good basis
for a philosophical reflection on forgiveness, without removing its characteristic
features by constricting it in a normative dimension.

2. A Theory Sketch: Four Features

In this second part I would like to propose a sketch of a theory drawn from this
phenomenology or genealogy. I distinguish four main features of this theory of
forgiveness, whereby the fourth is the most general and encompasses the former
three. I understand forgiveness as a) activity, and not simple re-activity or
passivity; b) rehabilitation of the meaningfulness of the linguistic act; c) integral
concreteness and d) recognition and acceptance of contingency. I will now briefly
deal with them.
6 Recognising Contingency
__________________________________________________________________
A. Activity, and Not Simple Re-Activity or Passivity
This was already pointed out by Hannah Arendt in her work The Human
Condition, in connection with Kant and not with Hegel. However, I think it is a
good starting point for my sketch. Up to the moment of forgiveness, the moves of
the two characters are simply reactions to pre-existing conditions and to the moves
of each other, and not concretely free, but rather mechanistically determined.
Forgiveness, on the contrary, is not a simple reaction, but a new action that
abstracts from the given conditions and from the developed conflict situation. The
forgiving agent refuses to follow the conflict mechanism and to depend on it and
reveals herself as a free agent. Forgiveness is hence a fully self-determined action,
and not a mere reaction.

B. Rehabilitation of the Meaningfulness of the Linguistic Act

The act of forgiveness and the following reconciliation re-establishes the
meaningfulness and reliability of the speech acts. The very conflict that forgiveness
is called to reconcile has linguistic roots in the first place. In both characters we
witness an escalating failure of correspondence between linguistic enunciation and
act. They both claim to be acting on the basis of universally valid and recognisable
principles, whereas they actually only act for their own sake, or even do not act at
all. The speech act hence gets progressively emptied of its meaning up to the point
of a total incommunicability and obliteration of every linguistic possibility.
Linguistic communication gets hypocritically exploited, and hence turns into its
opposite: silence and solipsism. The only way out is to re-establish its
meaningfulness. However, this seems only to be possible through a new linguistic
act, which has to express a radical inversion. That is, it has to break with the
former hypocrisy and begin anew. This new act entails a moment of weakness and
risk. It is no accident that this new act is one of confession: the person opening
herself to reconciliation takes the chance of being refused and humiliated like
Hegel’s acting character. Should that happen, then only the refusing individual is to
blame, as she thereby explicitly admits the lack of universality, discursivity and
rationality in her own principle. She deliberately enters into an inward
contradiction likely to drive her mad, unless she abandons her standpoint and
becomes open to forgiveness. So, whereas in the previous situation we had
linguistic acts without real content making communication impossible, now we
have real content (the reconciliation) that does not really require a linguistic
confirmation, but that makes communication possible again. Through the act of
forgiveness we are taught something about the ambiguous power of language and
the necessity of taking linguistic acts seriously. Using the terminology of Robert
Brandom (another American philosopher and Hegel-interpreter), in every linguistic
act we should be able to make explicit the reference to the actual content or
concept, and thereby to be committed to it as in the words of forgiveness. If this is
not the case, then we are hypocritically exploiting the ambiguous nature of
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been Mab’s lullaby as a baby, and amusement through all her childhood—a
few yards from where she stood. They were nothing but the spontaneous
utterances of her fresh spirit, like breathing, or the trilling of the birds, to
which Mab compared them. Mab did not herself require utterances, givings
forth, of that kind. She worked away and was silent, wholly given to what
she was about. But she admired the trill and movement of the lighter spirit,
and thought her mother the most delightful human creature that had ever
been upon this earth.
The basket was tolerably heavy when they came back, and Mab was still
a little flushed with her hard work. The sky was very sweet and subdued in
colour, a great band of softened gold binding the growing grayness of the
afternoon, approaching night—and opening, as it were, a glimpse into the
heavens, a broad shining pathway, reflected fully in the river, between the
awakening greens and browns of the spring country and the soft clouds
above. It was still light, but evening was in the air, and among the folds of
the clouds a few mild stars were already visible. The cows were coming
lowing home; the children were leaving off their games; and people coming
up from the river, who found a little chill in the air after the sun had gone
down. The mother and daughter met everybody on their progress home. The
doctor, another botanist, who sniffed at Mab’s basket, and affected
contempt at her brag of the peculiar coltsfoot she had found, which grew
nowhere but on Denham Hill. ‘Common, common,’ he said, ‘you’ll find it
everywhere,’ as one connoisseur says to another, upon most new
acquisitions; but that was because he had never had such luck himself, Mab
felt convinced. And they met the tall curate, Mr. Osborne, stalking off to a
meeting, who stopped to ask whether Lady William would not help in a
temperance tea party of his, where the ladies and gentlemen were to amuse
the villagers, and make them forget that there was such a thing on earth, or
rather, in Watcham, as the ‘Why Not?’ or the ‘Blue Boar.’ Mr. Osborne
wore his Inverness cape, as usual, and a quantity of books and pamphlets
under it; but there was something a little different from his ordinary aspect
in his looks. After he had passed he made a step back again, and called
Lady William, with a hesitating voice.
‘Do you see—young Plowden often?’ he said, in the most awkward way.
‘Jim!’ she said, surprised, ‘my nephew?’
‘Don’t be vexed; I think he goes to—— places which he had better
avoid,’ said the curate. Lady William looked at him, but there was nothing
further to be learned from his cloudy face.
‘That is very possible,’ she said. ‘Do you mean—— there?’ for she had
heard something of the ‘Blue Boar,’ which was now beginning to light up,
and looked cheerful enough across the village green. The curate gave a little
stamp of impatience as he saw some one else approaching, and said
quickly:
‘I can’t say any more,’ and stalked away, leaving, as such monitors so
often do, a prick of pain behind him, but nothing that could do any good. It
was the General who was coming, and he walked a few steps with the
ladies, congratulating them on their walk.
‘For I should not wonder if it rained to-morrow,’ he said. And then he
told them of Mrs. Swinford’s visit, and how she had gone from door to
door. ‘You see you have missed something; you have not had that honour.’
‘I am glad that we went for our long walk,’ Lady William said. And then,
finally, they met Mr. Swinford, who came up joyfully, with his hat in his
hand, and his head uncovered from the moment he saw them.
‘Ah, I have found you at last,’ said Leo; ‘I have waited for you in the
cottage, sitting inside by the invitation of Miss Patty, who is very kind to
me, and observing the proceedings of my mother.’
‘I hear she has been paying visits.’
‘To everybody, which is not, perhaps, the way to make the visit prized;
but she does not like the English climate, and she is used, you know, to do
as she likes,’ he said, with a smile.
 ‘Surely, in such matters as that she has a very good right.’
‘Yes, to be sure,’ he said doubtfully, and then laughed. ‘She came to see
you, too—and I lay there, like a spider in a web, wondering if she would
also come in to wait for you; but Miss Patty was not so kind to my mother
as to me. I heard her answer unhesitatingly, “Not at home!” with a voice
like that of a groom of the chambers. She has great capabilities, Patty.’
‘And did you not go out, to say——’
‘What should I have said? I was waiting, feeling that you would
probably snub me for my pains, and why should I interfere with my
mother? She left a card with a message pencilled on it, which I had the
honourable feeling not to read. It got upon my nerves to be in the same
room with it, and if I had not come out to meet you I should have yielded to
the temptation.’
‘That would have been as bad as opening a letter,’ said Mab, who had as
yet taken no part.
‘Would it, do you think? It was open; there would have been no seal
broken; but, at all events, I resisted temptation, so you must praise me and
not censure, Miss Mab.’
‘And how did you know,’ said Mab, while her mother pondered, ‘that we
were coming this way!’
‘Give me the basket and I will tell you. What is in it? Worms? But also
clay and earth. Have you not mud enough already in Watcham, that you
must bring in more from the woods?’
‘Give me my basket again,’ said Mab indignantly; ‘there’s a clump of
wood anemones, beauties, and the famous coltsfoot that only grows at
Denham. I have hunted for it for years, and I only found it to-day. Give it
me back.’
‘I am not worthy to carry such treasures,’ said Leo, ‘but the contact will
do me good.’
‘All the same you haven’t answered,’ said Mab. ‘Who told you we were
coming this way?’
‘If you must know, it was the accomplished Patty again. She offered me
tea, which I declined, and she offered me also my mother’s card, which in
my high sense of honour I declined too, and then she said, “My lydy was a-
going to Denham Hill, and you’ll meet ’em sure, if you go that way.” Patty
is my friend, Miss Mab; she has a higher opinion of me than you have.’
‘We must hurry home now, Mab; we have been too long away,’ said
Lady William, with a serious face. ‘It does not do for a woman of my age to
go out on your long grubbings. Come, Leo, give me the basket, and let us
run home.’
‘I can run too,’ he said. ‘Are you really sorry, is that what you mean, that
you missed my mother?’
‘I cannot quite say that honestly. No, I am not sorry I missed your
mother. Perhaps she and I have been too long apart to bridge over the
difference now. How I used to admire your mother, Leo! How beautiful she
was!’
‘Was she, indeed?’ he said, with a sort of polite attention, but surprised.
Perhaps it is curious at any time for a man to realise that his mother may
have been beautiful and admired. ‘I should not have thought,’ he said, ‘with
submission, that her features, for instance—— ’
‘Women don’t think of features,’ said Lady William, with a little
impatience. ‘It was she, not her features, that was beautiful. She had so
much charm—when she pleased. It must always be added, that when she
did not please—but we are not going to discuss your mother. She is a
wonderful creature to be imprisoned here.’
‘You are not imprisoned here,’ he said, almost angrily, who are still more
wonderful: ‘and you forget that my mother is old, and has had her day.’
‘The day will not be over as long as she lives; and as for me, I am not
imprisoned; I dwell among my own people.’
‘How curious,’ he said, ‘pardon me, that the people here should be your
own people! I say nothing against them, don’t fear it; they are very good
people, but not——’
‘Thanks,’ she said, with a half laugh, ‘it was I who used to be the black
sheep. Mrs. Plowden is not sure that she approves of me now; and if——’
‘If what?’
‘Nothing,’ said Lady William, with the slightest tinge of angry colour in
her face.
‘That is just like mother,’ said Mab; ‘she gives you a word as if she were
going to say something of importance, and then she tells you it is nothing. I
have known her to do it a hundred times.’
‘There is nothing like the criticism of one’s children,’ said Lady William,
with a laugh. ‘You, with your mother, Leo, and Mab with hers, you are two
iconoclasts. Now, the humble people, like my good Emmy, are very
different; they do not criticise. And then you despise them as common, you
two—— Ah! here we are at our own door.’ She turned and held out her
hand to Leo, who looked at her surprised.
‘Are you not going to ask me in?’ he said, holding part of the basket, for
which Mab, too, had held out her hands.
They all stood looking at each other in front of the cottage door.
‘It is late,’ said Lady William, with some hesitation—‘yes, if you wish it:
but don’t you think it would be better to get back to the Hall before it is
dark?’
‘No,’ said Leo, ‘why should I hurry back to the Hall? Of course I wish it;
and you never told me before that I was not to come.’
‘I do not say so now, but——’
‘But what?’
‘Nothing,’ said Lady William, with a faint smile.
‘I told you that was her way,’ cried Mab, triumphant. ‘ “Nothing,” and
one is sure that she means heaps of things more than she ever says.’
He followed her into the little drawing-room, where there was still a
little bright fire, though it was no longer cold. Mrs. Swinford’s card was
lying upon a small table conspicuously, though there was not light enough
to read its pencilled message. Lady William hesitated a little, not sitting
down, giving her visitor no excuse for doing so. He followed her
movements with a disturbed aspect, standing within the door, watching her
figure against the light. Mab, who had seized the basket when he put it
down, had gone off to put her treasures in safety. ‘I perceive,’ he said at last,
‘that I have done something wrong. What have I done wrong? Am I
troubling you coming in when you did not want me? Then tell me so, dear
lady, and send me away.’
‘Leo,’ said Lady William, ‘you should not have remained here while
your mother was at the door; I do not like it; it puts me in a very
uncomfortable position. Why didn’t you go and tell her we were out, Mab
and I?’
 ‘I am your devoted servant, dear lady,’ said Leo, ‘but I am not your
groom of the chambers, and Patty is. How could I have taken her duties out
of her hands?’
‘That is all very well for a laugh,’ she said, ‘but it vexes me very much;
it is very uncomfortable; why should you have been in my drawing-room
while your mother was sent away from the door?’
‘You mean I ought not to have come in to wait.’
‘That for one thing, certainly; but being in, you should certainly not have
allowed——’
‘What?’ said the young man.
Lady William did not say ‘Nothing’ again, but she stood at the window
looking out with her back turned to him, and as strong an expression of
discomfort and vexation in her attitude and eloquent silence as if she had
used many words.
‘I see,’ he said, ‘I have been very indiscreet; I have vexed you though I
did not mean it. I don’t make any excuse for myself, except that I thought at
first you were coming back immediately. Forgive me: and I will go away,
and never at any time will I do it any more.’
She gave a little laugh, turning round. ‘No, I don’t think you will do it
again; but, unfortunately, that does not alter the fact that you have done it,
and made me very uncomfortable. Are you going away? Then good night;
you will have a pleasant walk up to the Hall.’
‘Not nearly so pleasant as if it had been an hour later,’ he said.
‘Oh, that is merely an idea. You will really like it better. Mab ought to be
here to thank you for carrying her basket. Good night, Leo,’ Lady William
said. She stepped out into the narrow passage after him to see him away;
and, at the moment, in the open doorway Mab appeared with a cry of
surprise.
‘Oh, are you going so soon? Are you not going to stop for tea?’
‘I am sent away,’ he said.
‘By mother?’
‘Yes. To make sure of amendment another time,’ he said ruefully, and
went away with so much the air of a schoolboy under punishment, that Mab
came in open-mouthed to her mother.
 ‘Oh! what have you been doing to Mr. Leo? Oh! why have you sent him
away?’
Lady William made no answer, but rang the bell, as it very seldom was
rung in this small house; an unusual occurrence, which brought Patty in
with a rush, still rubbing a candlestick she held in her hand.
‘Patty, did you ask Mr. Swinford to come in and wait till Miss Mab and I
came back?’
‘Yes, my lydy,’ said Patty, with sharp eyes that gleamed in the light.
‘And you did not ask Mrs. Swinford, when she called, to come in and
wait?’
‘Oh, no, my lydy,’ cried Patty, aggrieved.
‘Why?’ said her mistress solemnly.
‘Oh, my lydy!’ said Patty, thunderstruck.
‘Yes, why?’ I want to know, why should Mr. Swinford wait for me and
not Mrs. Swinford? I do not wish anybody to be asked to wait for me when
I am out. If you were ever to do it again, I don’t know what I might be
obliged to say.’
‘Oh, my lydy,’ said Patty, ‘I thought as Mr. Swinford was a young
gentleman as perhaps made it a little cheerful for Miss Mab—— and I
thought as the old lady wasn’t a pleasure for nobody; and I thought—— ’
‘If that is true of old ladies, why should you stay with me, Patty, who am
an old lady, too, and not a pleasure to anybody——’
‘Oh, my lydy!’ said Patty, bursting into a torrent of tears.
‘Go, you little goose, and think no more of it; but ask nobody to wait for
me. Now remember! you are here to do what you are told, but never to
think. Thinking is the destruction of little maids. Ask Anne if she ever
ventured to think when she was a girl like you.’
‘Yes, my lydy,’ said Patty, drying her eyes.
 XVIII
It is not necessary to make a room snug with curtains drawn and the
draught shut out, in the month of April as it is in early March, so that it was
some time even after the lamp was brought in before the wistful clearness in
the east, and that gleam of yellow, ‘the daffodil sky’ of the other quarter,
which turns to ethereal tints of green, and has so many gradations of colour
all its own, was shut out. Lady William liked to see the sky when she was in
a cheerful or excited, not a sad mood. Such moods came to her as to every
one by times; but she was angry and active to-night. Mab was not much
used to such moments of commotion, to her mother’s slightly disturbed
condition, and the scolding which had made Patty cry. Scolding was very
infrequent in the cottage. Now and then Lady William would launch a fiery
arrow; she would throw a distinct terrible light of displeasure upon dusty
corners and silver badly cleaned. Sometimes even Mab would be brought to
a sudden perception that her faults were quite visible and apparent,
notwithstanding all her mother’s love and indulgence. But a moment like
this, when all was disturbed and broken without any apparent motive, was
astonishing to the girl. It was not for some time that Mab felt even the
courage to inquire: only after tea when Lady William’s hasty ejaculations
and movements of anger had almost died away.
‘But, mother, now that we are cool,’ said Mab——
‘Cool? I have never been anything but cool.’
‘Now,’ continued the girl, ‘that it is over, what was there so very bad in
letting Mr. Leo come in to wait?’
‘And not his mother?’ said Lady William. ‘There would have been
nothing particular, though very absurd if everybody who called had been
asked in to wait. Fancy coming back to find the room crowded like a
dentist’s waiting-room! But to bring in one and leave out another! Though I
confess,’ said Lady William, with an angry flush, ‘that if the little goose had
done so, and brought in Mrs. Swinford to find her son waiting, I should
have been still more uncomfortable.’
‘Then you scolded her, mother, for what it was best to do?’
 ‘Nothing of the sort; her sin was inviting a gentleman to come in and
wait for us who—— Oh, it is too horrid altogether, and if Mrs. Swinford
had found him——’
‘Mother, what then?’ cried Mab, a little alarmed.
Her limpid gaze, so full of innocent surprise, seemed to bring back all
Lady William’s annoyance. ‘You must take it for granted, Mab, that there
are some things I know better than you do,’ she said. ‘By-the-bye, give me
her card; let us see what message she left.’
The card did not seem to afford Lady William any more satisfaction. It
was a very highly-polished card, and the pencil had cut into it, and the
writing was difficult to read. She put it down with a heightened colour,
throwing it from her hand. ‘I wonder if she thinks I put any faith in her
câlineries,’ she said.
‘What are câlineries, mother?’ said Mab, taking up the card, which was
inscribed as follows: ‘Chère Petite,—Much regret not to find you. Come to
see me to-morrow; I have something important for your welfare to say.’
‘Chère Petite,’ repeated Mab, ‘that is a câlinerie, I suppose. It seems queer
to call you Petite—but I suppose she knew you when you were quite little.’
‘She knew me, certainly, when the title was more appropriate than it is
now.’
‘That must be the reason; and perhaps she thought you might like it.
Some ladies,’ said Mab, with her serious, almost childish, face, ‘like to be
thought young.’
‘I don’t think she can have thought I would like it, Mab,’ said Lady
William, with a little shiver. ‘Close the window and draw the curtain,
please. I have a sort of uncomfortable feeling of somebody looking in.’
‘You are uncomfortable altogether to-night, mother.’
‘Yes, I suppose it’s my nerves; it’s—that woman. I never thought I had
any nerves before.’
‘Oh, but you have,’ cried Mab; ‘I know better than that. Not nerves,
perhaps, like Aunt Jane, but—— There is somebody in the garden. Shall I
go and see who it is?’
Lady William started up and looked over Mab’s shoulder. Whether she
thought it might be Leo come again, or what other intruder at this untimely
hour, I cannot tell. But she said, in a tone that was half relief and half
annoyance: ‘Your Aunt Jane in person, Mab, and the girls. What can they
want now?’ Her tone was a little fretful. They were in the way of wanting a
great many things from her at the Rectory, and frequently her advice on one
subject or another, which they did not generally take.
‘It will be about their dresses for the FitzStephens’ party,’ said Mab, to
whom the ladies outside were beckoning that she should open the door to
them. But Lady William shook her head.
‘Run and let them in, at all events. They have not rung the bell,’ she said,
drawing the curtains with an impatient movement. The little room looked so
full that it could contain no more when the three ladies came in; but they
knew all its accommodations, and settled themselves in their places at as
great a distance as possible from the little bright fire. ‘It is such a mild night
there is no occasion for it,’ said Mrs. Plowden, ‘but you always keep up
fires, Emily, later than any one.’
‘Do I? It’s cheerful at least.’
‘And the window open! That’s rather wasteful, don’t you think? I like to
do either one thing or another; to shut up the house and keep all the heat in,
as one does on winter nights, or else to throw up all the windows, and get
the full advantage of the air. But I don’t see the good of dispersing all the
heat outside, as if it could warm the garden. That would be a very good
idea; but I’m afraid it would not be a success if you were to try it ever so
much.’
‘I suppose,’ said Lady William, ‘you have come to tell me something;
not to talk about the fire.’
‘I don’t know. We came over just to see you. It’s such a lovely night I
thought I should like a walk. I said to Emmy, after James had gone back to
his study, I think I’d like to have a little run; it’s so sweet to-night, not cold
at all. Let’s run out and see your Aunt Emily, I said. I knew you were sure
to be in.’
‘Oh, yes, we are always sure to be in.’
‘And, except ourselves, you are the only person of whom that can be
said; for the FitzStephens are always dining with the Kendals or the
Kendals with the FitzStephens; and Miss Grey, she goes in later to tea, not
to put the table out, or she is at one of Mr. Osborne’s meetings, or has some
parish tea party of her own. We are never sure to find anybody but you; and
it is such a thing in a little place like this to know somebody you can
depend upon to be in, if you find it dull or want a little run.’
‘I am afraid that Mab and I can’t do much to help your dulness.’
‘Oh, yes, you can. You can always talk nicely, Emily, on almost any
subject; and I always say it is such a good thing for the girls only to hear
you talk. And Mab is the most sensible little thing that ever was. I always
tell the girls it’s quite a treat to hear her; no nonsense, but so sensible, and
taking up things so quick!’
‘It is very kind of you, Jane, to have so good an opinion of my little girl.’
‘Oh, it is merely the truth, Emily. I have always heard the Marquis was a
very sensible man, and we all know there was once a Prime Minister in the
family. Of course that’s a great thing to begin with. I can’t boast anything
like that on my side, and I can’t say I think the Plowdens are remarkable for
common sense, do you? Our children have other qualities. My poor Jim
complains that his father is always at him because he does not stick to his
Greek, and how can you expect a young man to stick to his Greek when it is
only in that interrupted broken way? James thinks he gives him his full
attention. But you know what a parish is, Emily. Sometimes it’s a
christening, or some sick person to see, or a funeral. And then James has to
tell him, “I can’t hear you, Jim, to-day.” Now, I ask you, Emily, honestly, do
you think a boy can be expected to stick to his Greek like that?’
‘I quite agree with you, Jane; it is very hard upon him.’
‘Of course it is hard; everything’s hard. And he doesn’t know what’s the
good of it, or what it’s for. He cannot go into the Church, and it requires so
much, all the technicalities, you know, to be a schoolmaster; and if James
makes up his mind at the end to put him into an office, or to send him—
which is terrible to think of,’ cried poor Mrs. Plowden, putting her
handkerchief to her eyes—‘abroad—what use would all that Greek be?’
‘It is quite true,’ said Lady William, ‘and I wish we could persuade
James to make up his mind. Do you know what friends Jim has in the
parish; where he goes; who are his companions? Some one said something
to me——’
‘Oh, what did they say to you? Who spoke to you? Tell me what any one
has to say about my boy.’
‘It was nothing, after all; it was Mr. Osborne. He said Jim went to some
house where it would be better he should not go.’
 ‘Mr. Osborne!’ cried the Rector’s wife. ‘Oh, Emily, that one who belongs
to Jim should listen to that man! There is a man,’ cried the troubled mother,
‘who, if he liked, might have done almost anything with Jim. Not preaching
to him; that’s not what I mean. But he is a young man, only five years older;
a University man, a man wishing to have good influence. Where does he go
to exercise this good influence, Emily? To Riverside; to the men who don’t
care, who laugh at him behind his back—and to get the old women to give
up their glass of beer, and the little children, that know nothing, to take his
blue ribbon. Oh, and there was Jim in his way,’ said the poor mother, ‘Jim at
his door, a University man, too; his Rector’s son, his own kind. Did he ever
try to get a good influence over Jim? to ask him of an evening, to take him
for walks, to give him an interest? Never, never, never! He goes about the
parish and makes the poor women promise to give up their drop of beer.
What does he know about what they need, about their innocent drop of beer,
him a strong young man, well fed, wanting nothing? But my Jim, that was
what he wanted, a strong man of his own kind; a young man that he had no
suspicion of; that didn’t need to preach. That’s what the boy wants, Emily;
not his father, that is angry, or me that only cries, but one like himself. Is it
better to gain a good influence over poor old Mrs. Lloyd than over Jim, or
to hold temperance meetings when he might do a brother’s part to get hold
of that boy?’
‘Oh, mamma, what are you saying?’ said Emmy, still anxious to save
appearances. ‘Aunt Emily will think that dear Jim——’
Florence said nothing, but sat staring into the vacant air with wide open
eyes full of trouble, while Mrs. Plowden, altogether broken down, put her
head upon Lady William’s shoulder and cried.
‘It’s mamma’s nerves,’ said Emmy again; ‘she has been upset to-day.
You are not to think, Aunt Emily, that anything dreadful has happened.
Nothing is wrong with Jim; it is only that papa is angry with him, and
mamma has got it on her nerves, and—mamma, this was not what you came
to talk of, you know.’
Mrs. Plowden raised her head after a minute with a piteous smile.
‘Thank you, Emily, you’re always kind,’ she said; ‘and it’s only my nerves,
as Emmy says. I get agitated, and then everything looks black, as if it never
would come right again. It isn’t that there’s anything to be frightened about,
and you know what a true good heart my Jim has, and that’s everything,
isn’t it? That’s everything,’ the poor lady said.
‘What mamma really wanted to ask you, Aunt Emily,’ said Emmy, ‘was
whether you had seen Mrs. Swinford. She has been to call at the Rectory.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Mrs. Plowden; ‘that was what we wanted, to be sure.
Emily, you won’t think anything more of the little fuss I’ve made about Mr.
Osborne, will you? You would think I meant that he intended to slight my
son. You know I couldn’t mean that. And he is a very good curate, and
James puts great confidence in him. It’s my nerves that get the better of me.
But Emmy always brings me up to the mark. Yes, about Mrs. Swinford, that
was it; did she come here, too?’
‘I believe so; but before we came in. She left a card with a message——
’
‘My dear Emily, I don’t think Mrs. Swinford is a very nice woman,’ said
Mrs. Plowden solemnly.
‘Don’t you?’ said Lady William, with a faint smile.
‘You see, girls,’ said the Rector’s wife, ‘your aunt will never say
anything. Perhaps it is prudent, but it’s a little confusing. One doesn’t know
what to say.’
‘If you think you will hurt my feelings, Jane, by speaking plainly, don’t
let that weigh upon your mind. I know very well what Mrs. Swinford is, and
I don’t care to make myself her champion.’
‘I don’t think she’s a nice woman,’ repeated the Rector’s wife; ‘I don’t
think she’s a good woman. She looks to me—notwithstanding that she
professes to be so fond of you, and Emily this and Emily that—as if she
would like to do you a bad turn.’
Lady William took this alarming statement quite calmly. ‘Indeed I
should not be surprised,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think it is in her power.’
‘We must try and make sure that it is not in her power. Don’t you think
she could perhaps do you harm with the family? It occurred to me, and you
will wonder to hear that it occurred to James. He said to me, “If that woman
can injure Emily she will.” Dear Emily, you have never been such very
good friends with the family, and they have never seen Mab. You know I’ve
always wanted you to do something. If you were to put yourself forward a
little——’
 ‘You are very kind, Jane, and James too. I don’t think the family can do
us much harm; we have what they chose to give us, and they will not give
us anything more, nor do I wish it. I have my pride, too.’
‘But their countenance, Emily!’
‘Their countenance!’ cried Lady William, rising to her feet with a quick
start of indignation. ‘To me! I want none of their countenance; I can’t help
bearing their name, and they cannot take it from me.’
‘Oh, my dear, my dear, there can be no question of that! They can’t take
away your rank, nor Mrs. Swinford either, whatever she may do. My
conviction,’ said Mrs. Plowden, nodding her head, ‘is that she can’t bear the
thought of your rank. If you should meet anywhere out, and you were to
pass before her, Emily—that’s the thought that she can’t bear.’
A gleam of light passed over Lady William’s face. ‘That would be a little
compensation,’ she said, half to herself. ‘But don’t put such hopes in my
head,’ she added laughing; ‘she and I will never meet out, alas!’
‘If it was only for that I should like to give a dinner party at the Rectory
and ask her, Emily—just to show her. Oh, I should like that! It might look
strange, James giving his arm to his own sister, but I should never mind
how it looked. And it would be a kind of duty, by way of welcoming them
back. But you know, Emily, though Mary Jane is an excellent parlourmaid,
she is not equal to a formal party. We should require to have a butler, or
some one who would look like a butler. And the dinner-service is very
shabby and a great many pieces broken. I am sure I would do it with the
greatest pleasure, and, indeed, would think it a duty; but only——’
‘No, my kindest Jane, you will do nothing of the sort for me. As for Mrs.
Swinford, she will go out to no parties in the village. Don’t imagine for a
moment that I want to be avenged upon her in that very small way.’
‘Avenged! I did not think of it in that light. And do you know James was
very cool to her to-day, scarcely civil. I thought she had been very nice to
you in the old times.’
‘Don’t let us talk of the Swinfords for ever,’ said Lady William, ‘we
have had enough of them for one day. Let me know what the girls are going
to wear at the FitzStephens’, and who is to be there——’
This new subject, notwithstanding that Mrs. Plowden had her head full
of graver matters, was too interesting to be dropped quickly, and there
ensued a long conversation, which Lady William, having set it going, left to
be carried on by the others. Mrs. Plowden had naturally a great deal to say,
and Emmy, whose heart was full of the consciousness that any social
occasion where she could see and be seen was more important now in her
life than it had ever been before, lent her attention with great earnestness to
her mother’s view, to Mab’s remarks, and to the occasional word with
which Lady William kept up the talk. Only Florence took no part in it. She
had taken up a book, and so appeared to have her attention fixed; I don’t
know if she held it upside down, but I am very sure that she did not read a
page. Her mind was occupied with affairs of her own.
 XIX
The dining-room at the Hall was gloomy but grand. The walls dark, save
where they were relieved by scrolls of gilding and ornamental panels, in
which were set some full-length portraits of doubtful merit, and more than
doubtful antiquity. It was divided, like the drawing-room, by pillars, not of
marble, though they assumed that virtue, leaving a darker strait at each end,
intended, no doubt, to throw up the brilliancy of the larger central room, in
which stood the dinner-table with all its lights. And this might have been the
case had there been a large and brilliant party round the table, and
abundance of light, with reflections of silver and crystal, as probably the
builder of the house intended should be the case. But now the Swinfords,
mother and son, alone at a round table of no great size, with a shaded lamp
suspended over it, furnished little more than an oasis in the great desert of
darkness. There was, indeed, a large fire blazing, against which Mrs.
Swinford sat, shivering from time to time, notwithstanding the mild
softness of the April night. And the table was adorned with a great bouquet
of flowers, dazzling white azaleas, and the other brilliant children of the
spring who come in such a triumph over the footsteps of winter. Mrs.
Swinford was dressed, as she always was, elaborately, and like a picture, in
dark velvet, just showing a little colour here and there where the light
caught it—and a great deal of lace. She had a lace scarf fastened over her
head, fantastically indeed, and scarcely enough to have been allowed by
Mrs. Plowden to pass muster as a cap, but still softening the age of the face,
and the tower of the abundant dark hair piled unnaturally upon her head.
She might have been a dethroned and indignant queen. She, and the
flowers, and Leo’s more youthful face, gave a centre to the dark solemnity
around, through which the servants moved noiseless.
‘You have been in the village,’ he said; ‘I hear, making calls.’ But this
was not till the lengthened and elaborate dinner—of which both ate
fastidiously, with many criticisms and remarks little complimentary to a
very ambitious and highly-paid cook—was done.
‘I am glad you take so much interest in my movements, Leo, as to
know.’
 ‘Of course I know. I saw the carriage for one thing; and besides——’
‘You, I suppose, were paying visits, too?’
‘Not much,’ he said, with an embarrassed smile. ‘I saw little Miss Grey
about some of our schemes; but you don’t give Miss Grey the light of your
countenance.’
‘I have never noticed any but the principal people—who, in case of an
election or any public matter, might be useful.’
‘I don’t see what an election would be to us.’
‘Nor I, Leo. But it is part of our hereditary policy to keep the matter
open, should you or any one of the family be of a different opinion.’
‘My dear mother,’ he said, with a laugh, ‘don’t you think this hereditary
policy is overdone a little? I am afraid I thought myself a person of much
greater importance than I prove to be.’
‘I don’t admit it,’ she said; ‘but is that why you are taking so much
trouble for the canaille?’
‘No,’ said the young man, growing red. ‘I take trouble for the canaille,
as you call them—our poor neighbours, Miss Grey says—because I thought
I was somehow responsible for them.’
‘Responsible!’
‘I should have been,’ he said firmly, ‘had I been their seigneur; which I
suppose in my folly was something like what I thought: now that I know
they are only our poor neighbours——’
‘Well: you think you may at least get the benefit in popularity,’ she said,
with a laugh.
‘My dear mother, as we shall never think alike on these points, don’t you
think we had better choose another subject?’
‘The subject of my calls?’ said Mrs. Swinford. ‘But how, Leo, about
your own? You find a wonderful attraction in the village, I understand.’
‘You know, I think, pretty well what attraction I find in the village,’ he
said coldly; ‘I have made no secret of my doings there.’
‘Perhaps not; but you have dwelt little upon a certain cottage. One
knows how a man can be exceedingly frank in order to conceal.’
‘There is no certain cottage,’ he said, with indignation. ‘If you mean
Lady William’s, I certainly go there with pleasure, and often, and will
continue to do so. In such a matter I may surely be allowed to judge for
myself.’
‘Why do you call her by that ridiculous name? It makes me laugh—if it
didn’t make me furious!’
‘What has she done to you?’ said Leo. ‘I thought you were fond of her. It
has always been represented so to me. What has she done, a woman not
very powerful or prosperous certainly, not coming in your way, to make you
hate her so?’
‘Not coming in my way!—But what do you know of my history or my
feelings? She is already again coming in my way—with you.’
‘That is nonsense, mother. No, I know little of your history, perhaps,
except what you have told me; and as you say, excessive frankness——’
‘You forget, I think, Leo, that you are speaking to your mother?’
‘I never wish to do so,’ he said. ‘Believe me, mother, there is nothing I
desire so much as to make you feel my anxiety, my strong desire, to do
what will please you——’
‘By bringing me to this miserable country, for example, in the middle of
winter,’ she cried.
Leo sprang to his feet, and began to pace about the room. ‘It is my
country,’ he said. ‘If I have duties anywhere, they must be here. But I have
never wished to bind you. Why, if you hate England so, should you stay
here? We have always been together; but sooner than you should suffer,
leave me, mother. I will bear my loneliness as best I can.’
‘Your loneliness! You would not be long lonely. You would find plenty
to cheer you; whereas I am in a different position. Nay: come back with me.
You have seen exactly how things are. If you want to be charitable, nothing
is more easy. James Plowden, or if you prefer it, his sister,’ she paused, with
a harsh laugh, ‘will do everything you want in that way. Come back to the
life we know; come back to the surroundings you are accustomed to. You—
you can’t, any more than I, be happy here. Where are your courses, your
clubs, your theatres? There is nothing, nothing to amuse you. Leo, you
know you would be more amused, you would be more happy, as well as I.’
‘But this,’ he said, ‘is my proper sphere.’
‘Grand seigneur again,’ she cried, with a laugh; ‘who takes up that view
now? Your great-grandfather bought this estate; it is then four generations
in the family. And you think that feudal! Ah! be kind to the canaille if you
will; they will cheat you and hate you, but never mind. Leo, if you keep me
here, and I am tempted beyond my powers, and do harm—harm, do you
hear?—murder even—the guilt will not be on me, but you!’
‘Mother, do you think there is any use in scaring yourself by such big
words? Murder! Whom will you kill, for example? You who faint if you
prick yourself and the blood runs! I am not afraid of you.’
‘There are more ways of murder than one. I will take no life.’
‘No, I don’t suppose so,’ he said, with a laugh; ‘but if you think you will
die of ennui, which, I allow, is a danger, my dear mother, your appartement
is still open. I will make every arrangement. Pardon me if I feel it is my
duty to live in my own house; but why should that affect you?’
‘If I said, Leo, that I could not live without you, that you are my only
child——’
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘we both understand perfectly what that means. When
I was a child you were very fond of me. I was part of your ensemble. You
gave me everything I wanted. Now, it is not your fault nor mine that I am a
man of thirty-five, not even in my first youth. If I am ever to be good for
anything, I have no time to lose; but you have arrived at an age——’
‘Ah!’ she said, ‘I have arrived at an age when I am no longer good for
anything, neither the pleasures nor the duties. It is fit that it should be you
who say that to me.’
‘I say that you have arrived at an age when everything should be made
easy to you, and pleasant, mother; and that you should live, without
consideration of others, as suits you best.’
‘And you?’ she said with a smile; ‘as suits you best? Is not that what you
mean?’
‘It was not what I meant; but perhaps it is true,’ he said.
Then there was a silence, during which Leo stood by the high
mantelpiece, leaning upon it, looking down upon the bright blaze of the fire,
yet furtively watching his mother’s face.
‘I know who has done all this,’ she said rapidly and very low, as if
speaking to herself. ‘I know who has done it. It was a caprice—a fancy that
would have lasted a moment; a trick of his father’s blood. But I know who
has done it—who has stamped it in. I know—I know! for her own
advantage as before: to put me under her foot as before. But let her take
care, let her take care!’ she cried, suddenly raising her voice, ‘J’ai des
griffes, moi!’
‘Mother, for heaven’s sake what do you mean? Who is to take care?’
‘A tigress, that’s what men call a woman in respect to her children, Leo.
I said that a tigress has claws, that was all.’
‘There is no question, surely,’ he said, looking at her; at her soft lace, her
warm velvet, her carefully-dressed hair, her air of luxury and delicacy, ‘of
claws or anything of the kind here.’
She burst out into a laugh, and rose, turning her face to the fire.
‘No; at the worst of little pins to prick, little pins that don’t draw blood,
as you say, but still make a wound. Now, Leo, though we quarrel, you will
not refuse to give me your arm upstairs?’
The drawing-room was also illuminated by a blazing fire, and groups of
candles placed about which made it very bright, unlike the gloom of the
room below; bright, yet with all manner of soft shades and contrivances to
temper the light. It was full of flowers and sweetness, full of luxury. Mrs.
Swinford paused and looked round with a satirical smile. ‘Charming!’ she
said; ‘and a little more or less feudal, grand seigneur, as we have been
saying, with all that is novel and delightful added; but vacant, Leo. Were we
in Paris, one would come, and then another and another, to talk, or chat
round the fire; to bring the news, to discuss everything, spiritual, gay. These
words have no meaning here.’
‘I fully feel it for you, mother. It is very dull; no one worth your trouble
to talk to. I understand perfectly. But why not, then, fill the house?’
‘For what end? There is not even shooting to tempt them at this time of
the year. Nothing to amuse. It is not the time. In the autumn, perhaps, if I
survive it so long——’
‘Then there is London,’ said Leo; ‘it is not exactly a village, though I
believe it is a happy slang to call it so. Let us go there.’
‘London!’ Mrs. Swinford contracted her brows. ‘I have forgotten all my
friends, or they have forgotten me. I don’t go to Court——’
‘Why not, mother?’
She looked at him with a gleam of fury in her eyes, and a sort of wild
laugh, which was the most unlike mirth of anything Leo had ever heard.
‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘Emily Plowden would present me once again—
whitewashed, after all these years.’
‘What do you mean by whitewashed, mother?’ There was something
then in the look with which he faced her, insisting with a flush on his face,
and a look of determination for which she was not prepared.
‘What do I mean by whitewashed? I mean’—— she paused a little,
looking at him with a malicious devil in her eye, as if undecided what she
should say. But his look subdued her, though it was a strange thing for any
look of Leo to do. It was a look of alarm yet dismay, excited and almost
fierce, yet struck with sudden fear. Her eyes sank before his.
‘I don’t know why you should look at me so. I mean that I am forgotten
—as well may be, in all these years.’
She had placed herself in the deep chair covered with brocade, which
had been carefully placed for her at the exact angle from the fire and the
lights which she liked. The table beside it was covered with the evening
papers; the French papers, arrived by the evening post; one or two yellow
novels, an English book, and all the little paraphernalia which ladies of her
period affect. She sat there, lying back in her luxurious chair, looking at her
son with defiance in her eyes; defiance, and yet a certain uneasiness
underneath. And he looked at her, uneasily too, with a doubt, yet no wish to
question her further. She broke this silence by a sudden shrill burst of
laughter, clapping her delicate hands together.
‘Could one give a greater pleasure to one’s protégée of old?—to the little
girl of whom one has made a lady? A lady of rank, if you please, according
to all the clowns. Emily shall take me; she shall patronise me; she shall be
my condescending superior. Mrs. Swinford, on her return to England, by
Lady William—bah! the jest is too good.’
Her laugh rang out shrill into the silent space about them. Leo, for his
part, stood before her as grave as a judge. ‘I don’t see anything so
wonderful about it,’ he said.
‘What, not that Emily! Emily, the country girl, not so good as your
governess, not much better than my maid! Your governess? Why, for the
moment, that was Artémise.’
‘Mother, I must warn you that you are speaking of a lady for whom not
only I, but every one here has the most exalted esteem.’
 ‘Ah!’ she cried, still laughing, ‘so Artémise tells me. The most exalted!
She has thrown dust in everybody’s eyes.’
‘And your Artémise—I give you warning I doubt that woman.’
‘Ah! perhaps you will forbid her the house.’
‘You know very well that the house is free to all you please to see here.
For myself I shall certainly let her know that her presence is not agreeable
to me.’
‘Well, Leo,’ said his mother, ‘that will do for a token between us. When
you turn my friend, my near relation, the only creature whom I care for
here, to the door—I shall understand that I have notice to quit, and that you
want no more with me.’
‘What folly!’ he cried, ‘when you know I would as soon try to interfere
with the constitution of the earth as to lift a finger against any of your
friends.’
‘Or consort with any of my enemies, Leo.’
‘Certainly, no, if I knew who they were; but I know of none here at
least.’
She laughed again; then, turning to her table, took up the Figaro which
lay there. ‘Enough, enough,’ she said. ‘Enough, Leo; a quarrel is a fearful
joy; but one wearies even of that at the last.’
Leo stood for a time in the same attitude, while she opened her paper and
began to read. Then he made a turn or two round the room, stopping here
and there to look at a picture, though he neither saw nor cared what it was.
Finally, when this wandering had lasted for, perhaps, five minutes without
any sign on the part of his mother, he went quietly out of the room and
downstairs.
She did not move a finger until the sound of his steps had died away;
then she put down the paper, and listened for the closing of his door. It
came at last with a dull echo going through the silent house. That sound
brought many memories to the mind of the lady left alone in the great room,
which would have held a crowd. She remembered the times without number
when his father had retired so, and gave vent to a low laugh of scorn. And
then she remembered other things, and her face grew grave. The paper fell
rustling at her feet. She cast a look round her upon the room with its
flowers, its lights, its cosy atmosphere, which was a triumph of skill and
care, just so warm, and no more. The comfort and the luxury were perfect;
there was nothing that could be done to increase the beauty, the ease, the
grace, and completeness of all about her; and there she sat like a queen—
alone.
 XX
Lady William was still a little disturbed next morning, her usual
composure gone, her countenance clouded. She had not forgiven little Patty,
who in consequence went about her work watering with tears, instead of
damp tea-leaves as usual, the carpet in the drawing-room which it was her
business to sweep. Patty entertained the idea which, alas! is so little general
among servant-girls, that her mistress was an angel, or something even
more than that; for angels to Patty’s consciousness were generally little
boys with wings and without any clothes, to whom it would have been
profane to compare a lady. It may be imagined how hollow the world was,
and how little satisfactory the routine of work when Lady William frowned;
everything went badly with Patty. She broke a china bowl and received
from Miss Mab—Miss Mab always so bon camarade, if Patty had known
the qualification—a very sharp and decided scolding, not to say that Anne
—old Anne, whom Patty considered almost too old to live, and whose work
she was conscious of doing in great part—fell upon her and nagged till the
poor girl nearly ran away. Lady William was not busy this lovely spring
morning which ought to have put new heart into everything. She said very
little even to Mab. She was evidently thinking of something with which
even Mab had but little to do. But when the girl talked of her own
afternoon’s occupation, her mother interposed quickly. ‘I think you had
better come up with me to the Hall, Mab.’
‘Then you are going, mother? in obedience to a call like that——’
‘In obedience to nothing; because I hate it, and want to get it over.’
‘Do you hate Mrs. Swinford, mother?’
‘Oh, I hope not,’ said Lady William, the tears starting to her eyes; ‘don’t
ask me such questions. I hope not: I don’t want to hate any one. I would
rather not think of her. But I hate going into a house that has so many
memories—into a house where I have known so much——’
‘It was there you met my father,’ said Mab.
‘Yes;’ the monosyllable dropped from Lady William’s closed lips as if
dropped out against her will.
 ‘But that ought not to be altogether a painful recollection, mother.’ Mab
had never heard anything of her father who was so long dead; there was no
portrait of him that she had ever seen. Her idea of him was not precisely a
happy one. Other people talked of the husbands they had lost, especially the
poor women who liked to enlarge upon the good or bad qualities of the
departed—but Mab knew nothing of her father, whether he had been bad or
good. And she had a great curiosity, if no more, to know something of him.
It was seldom, very seldom, that an opportunity occurred even for a
question.
‘I cannot enter into the past,’ said Lady William; ‘there is a great deal
that is very painful in it. I would rather not tell you the story, Mab. It would
do you no good, nor any one. I had forgotten a great deal till this lady
appeared again. So far as I can see now, she is determined that I shall no
longer forget.’
‘Is she your enemy, mother?’
‘I don’t believe in enemies, it is too melodramatic; and probably she
means no harm; only she likes to stir up things which I prefer to forget. Do
you understand the difference? Perhaps it keeps up her interest, but to me it
spoils everything. Death is very dreadful to you, Mab; but it’s very
merciful, too. It makes you forget many things, when they are not forcibly
brought back to your mind.’
Mab eyed her mother very curiously with a hundred questions on her
lips: but Lady William’s face was not encouraging, and with a sigh the girl
gave up her intended inquiry. She added, after some time: ‘The only thing,
mother, is that Mrs. Swinford may want to speak to you of things that you
don’t wish me to know.’
‘That is very possible, Mab: and it is for that I want you to go with me,
to protect me. She would never bring up old stories which would be painful,
before you.’
‘Mother,’ said Mab, and then paused.
‘What is it?’
‘I want to know—if I am perhaps at the mercy of a stranger like Mrs.
Swinford to tell me things that would be painful—about my father—
whether it would not be better for you, mother, who would do it in love and
quietly, to tell me yourself and put me beyond her power?’
‘Mab, you are very sensible, very reasonable.’
 ‘I don’t know if I’m that: but it seems to me the better way.’
Lady William began to speak: then hesitated, became husky, and paused
a moment to steady her voice. ‘There is nothing to tell about your father,
Mab, that could affect you; nothing that would hurt his name in the world;
only private matters between him and me, in which unfortunately Mrs.
Swinford was mixed up. There is no such thing,’ she went on after a pause,
with a sort of painful smile, ‘as trouble—without faults on both sides. I was
to blame as much as any one else. You would not think the better of either
of your parents if you were to be told all that there is to tell. Will you take
my word for that? and that there is nothing which it is at all necessary for
you to hear?’
‘Certainly, I will take your word, mother. But I don’t believe you were so
much wrong. You are hasty sometimes, but you never keep on or nag. And
sometimes you are so patient; if there were quarrels I know it was not your
fault.’
The girl came to her mother’s side and gave her a kiss, putting down her
soft young cheek upon Lady William’s, which was as soft, though no longer
young. The mother took the kiss with a smile. It was not wholly a smile of
pleasure at Mab’s approval and vindication of her—innocent Mab that
knew of nothing but a quarrel, a difference of opinion, a nagging. Mab
thought it was a great pity, that perhaps her father had troubles of temper
which she was conscious herself of possessing, and that no doubt Mrs.
Swinford had interfered and made things worse. It brought her father even a
little nearer to her to learn that he had been cross. Poor father! he had been
long forgiven and his tempers forgotten, when they were not thrust back
upon the memory: and poor mother, who perhaps blamed herself more than
was just, and thought now how often she might have answered with a soft
word! Lady William smiled, reading in the child’s mind as in a book, so
easy was that young interpretation, so desirable, so strange to the woman
who knew all.
The afternoon was radiant: sky and air had been washed clean, as Mab
said, by frequent showers, and there did not seem an atom of impurity, not
even a cloudlet that was not white and shining, in the whole expanse of
atmosphere. Lady William was grave, but had recovered her composure,
and Mab was gay with an unusual freshness, ready to gambol about the path
like the large loose-limbed puppy from the lodge who was fond of taking
walks with visitors, and who came up and offered himself as guide and
companion as soon as the two ladies had entered the gate. Mab was
acquainted with the puppy’s family for several generations, and knew his
mother upon intimate terms, so that there was no need of ceremony. He and
she had gone up the avenue to the point at which the house becomes visible,
rising high above the little lake and among the trees, when Lady William
called her daughter back. ‘You have had enough of the puppy,’ she said;
‘now you must turn into a young lady, Mab.’
‘It is not half so amusing, mother; but, oh, look at the violets, how thick
they are under the trees!’
‘About the ashen roots the violets blow,’ said Lady William.
‘I never knew any one have so many bits of poetry ready for all
occasions,’ said Mab admiringly. ‘It’s a pity they’re only dog-violets, and
not sweet at all; but they are pretty like that all the same.’
‘Why, I wonder, should one speak of dog-violets, and dog-roses, and
dog-daisies?’ said Lady William. ‘I suppose it is in contempt of things that
grow wild.’
‘A dog is the wisest thing that lives,’ said Mab; ‘there’s no contempt in
such a name. Puppy! puppy! where are you going? I must run after him,
mother, and keep him from frightening those ducks.’
‘There’s contempt, if you please! The famous Swinford wild fowl!’
‘Oh, I can’t bear them, the stupid things. Puppy! puppy! oh, don’t be a
fool, they are not worth your while.’
‘Nor yours either, puppy mine. You will be as red as a peony next, and
what will Mrs. Swinford say?’
‘I hate Mrs. Swinford,’ said Mab; but she walked soberly the rest of the
way. Mrs. Swinford was in the same room and chair as she had occupied on
the previous night: with flowers piled in the jardinières, on the tables,
everywhere; a wood fire blazing very bright, but more bright than warm,
and the mistress of the house arrayed, as always, in dark velvet, with a
crimson tone in the lights, but without the lace which had softened at once
her features and her age. Her hair, in which there was not a thread of white,
was dressed high on her head; her back was, as usual, to the light.
‘Oh, you have brought your little girl,’ she said, in a tone almost of
displeasure. ‘You are very perverse and contradictory, my dear, as you
always were. I had something to say to you, alone.’
‘Oh, as for that,’ said Mab, angry, ‘I can go away.’
Her mother gave her a restraining look. ‘There is so little,’ she said, ‘in
my life that requires to be talked about en tête-à-tête, and Mab goes
wherever I go.’
‘That is to say, you bring her with you as young women sometimes bring
their babies, in defence.’ Mrs. Swinford laughed, and, holding out her hand,
added, ‘Come here and let me see you, little girl.’
‘I am not a little girl,’ said Mab, still angry; but another glance from her
mother to the lady of the house restored that reasonableness in which the
girl was so strong. ‘And I am not much to look at,’ she added steadily, ‘but,
as it does not much matter, here I am.’
Mrs. Swinford took her by the hand, and, drawing her forward, looked at
her closely. Then she dropped the girl’s hand and laughed. ‘She proves her
parentage, at least,’ she said; ‘no doubt upon that subject; she is a Pakenham
all over. And she is like them, Emily, in temper and intellect, too.’
Mab, unfortunately, did not understand the whole weight of the
insinuation in this remark, and she did not see her mother’s face behind her.
She answered quickly for herself. ‘I have not a very good temper, Mrs.
Swinford. When people say nasty things to me, I can be nasty too.’
‘So I presume,’ said the lady of the house.
‘Or to my mother,’ said Mab; ‘she is too patient and too much a lady; but
I’m not.’
‘Mab!’ said her mother’s warning voice behind.
‘It is that I think this lady wants to provoke me,’ said Mab, ‘and I don’t
see——’
‘My dear, you will show your superiority best by not suffering yourself
to be provoked.’
Mab went off to one of the jardinières with a little toss of her head, and it
was at this moment that Leo came in, a little hurried and not without
agitation. He came in saying quickly, ‘I have just heard that you had
visitors, mother.’
‘Leo,’ said Mrs. Swinford, ‘I have something to say to Emily here. I did
not expect her to bring her daughter, and I did not desire my son’s company.
You can go and show the young lady the pictures; it is a young man’s
business; and you ought to thank me for giving you the opportunity. Now,
Emily, à nous deux.’
‘I was not aware,’ said Lady William, pale but steadfast, ‘that what you
wanted to say to me was of particular importance.’
‘You thought I only sent for you to say I love you,’ said Mrs. Swinford.
‘Well, you knew that already; but I had something much more serious to
say. And I am glad, after all, you brought your little girl, Emily; for she is
the strongest argument I can bring forward to make you do what I want you
to do.’
‘And what is that?’ said Lady William. ‘I must warn you that I am not
very open to advice.’
‘As if I did not know you were not open to advice! except, my dear, you
will recollect, when you wished to take a certain course which was
advised.’
‘Did I wish to take it?’ said Lady William; ‘that is what has never been
clear.’
‘Oh, did you wish it?’ cried Mrs. Swinford, with a laugh. ‘However, that
is old ground; but if I have any responsibility for that first step, Emily, I
have the more right to speak now. For that child’s sake you must make
overtures to the family. Whatever they may do or say, it is for you to put
your pride in your pocket, and make friends with them, if they like it or not.
Your claims must be fully established.’
‘My claims?’ said Lady William; ‘there has never been any question
made of my claims.’
‘Probably not, so long as you live; but look at that child. You must make
everything certain for her; I must press it upon you with all my might,
Emily. Life is uncertain, and you have nothing of your own.’
‘Not much, that is true.’
‘And what would she have to depend upon if you died? You don’t even
know what questions might arise. They might ask her what her proofs were,
what evidence she had.’
‘Of what?’ said Lady William, wondering. ‘What evidence does Mab
require to prove that she is my daughter? But all the parish could prove that,
with the Rector at their head.’
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