It will be perceived that society in Watcham was not without dignitaries. But the person who was of highest rank in the place, whom all the ladies had to acknowledge as unmistakably their superior, who had the undoubted right to walk out of a room and into a room before them all, was a lady who lived in one of the smallest of those little houses which were as Belgravia to the population of the village. Such a little house! It had a pretty little garden all round it, with a privet hedge and green gate, which in their insignificance, yet complete enclosure and privacy, were a sort of symbol of their owner and her position. For it could not be denied that she was Lady William, sister-in-law to a marquis, connected (by marriage) with half the aristocracy; and yet not only was she very poor, but she was of herself, so to speak, nobody, which was the exasperating particular in the tale. Nobody at all, the Rector’s sister, once a governess, whose elevation by her marriage—and such a marriage!—over the heads of the best people in Watcham was an affront which they never got over, though these ladies were too well bred to make any quarrel, or to be anything but observant of the necessities of the situation. I do not pretend for a moment that it was ever suggested to Lady William in any way that her precedence annoyed her neighbours, and that to have to walk humbly behind that governess-woman, as Mrs. FitzStephen, the General’s wife, had hastily called her on her return to Watcham, was an accident of fate which made them furious. She was a woman full of perception, however, and she was quite aware of the fact, and derived from it a certain amusement. Above all was Lady William amused by it in respect to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Plowden, who, as a married woman, and the Rector’s wife, not to speak of her own connections, had been vastly superior to Emily Plowden in her earlier days when that young woman was a governess and of no consequence at all. The first time Lady William dined at the General’s, and was taken out by him before all the rest, the sight of Mrs. Plowden’s face was almost too much for her gravity. Her elevation had cost her dear, and had brought her little, except that empty honour; but she was a woman with a fine sense of the ludicrous, and that moment compensated her for many troubles. She was the first lady in Watcham, where she had received many snubs once upon a time, and this was at once a balm and an amusement to her of the most agreeable kind.
But Lady William was very poor. They were none of them rich in that little society, but Lady William had less than any, less even than Miss Grey. The small annuity given her by her husband’s family, given very grudgingly, and sometimes in arrears, was all she had to depend upon. She had, as people said severely, as if it had been her fault, nothing of her own. The Plowdens were not rich, and all that Emily Plowden had had been bestowed upon a prodigal brother, who had disappeared in the wilds of Australia, and never had been heard of more. What she had thus lost would not have added fifty pounds a year to her income; but fifty pounds a year when you have only two hundred is a great addition, and she was very much reproached for having made this sacrifice ‘to that good-for-nothing boy,’ the neighbours said. I am afraid she thought it very foolish herself when she came to be what she was, middle-aged, with Mab growing up, and so little, so very little, nothing at all, so to speak, to keep her little household upon. Sometimes she would calculate to herself how much better off she would have been if she had still possessed the interest of her thousand pounds which poor Ned had carried with him, and which probably only enabled him to ruin himself more quickly. Sometimes she would amuse herself by speculating how much it would have brought in. Thirty-five pounds perhaps, or possibly forty-five if she had been very lucky: and how many comforts that might have got during the year; or she might have taken a little off it—two hundred pounds or so—for Mab’s education. And Mab had really got no education, poor child. However, these were nothing but speculations, and had no bitterness in them. She did not grudge her money to poor Ned. Poor Ned! How often is there one in a family who is never spoken of but with that prefix, and how often he is the one who is the best beloved!
Lady William was quite worthy in externals of her elevation, being of what is called an aristocratic appearance, though it is an appearance which is to be found impartially in all classes, and I have often seen a young woman in a shop who was much more like a duchess than the owners of that title sometimes are. Perhaps it would be better to say that Lady William was conventionally correct in every way, with a rather tall and slight figure, an oval face, a deportment which strangers thought distinguished, and fine hands and feet, which are always considered to betoken gentle blood. But Mab, alas! who ought to have possessed more of these attractions, had none of them. She was rather short, and at seventeen she was certainly too stout. Stumpy was what Mrs. Plowden at the Rectory said, and there can be no doubt that there was truth in that unlovely phrase. Her nose turned up, her face was round and her features blunt, her hair no colour in particular. As for waist the poor girl had none, and her feet were good useful beetle-crushers, which she encased by preference in square-toed shoes without heels. In short, it was impossible even for Mab herself to entertain any illusions as to her personal appearance. She was a plain and homely girl. ‘Ah!’ said the people who disliked the Plowdens, and those who did not know anything about it, except that her mother had been a governess; ‘the common blood bursting out.’ But, as a matter of fact, it was the noble family to which her father belonged whom Mab resembled. She was as like the present Marquis as it was possible for a girl to be like an elderly man. None of his daughters (heaven be praised, they said) were half so like him as the niece whom he barely acknowledged. Mab was the very quintessence of that distinguished man. She had very light hair of a faint greenish tinge, eyes equally light, but bluish. To see her beside her graceful mother was wonderful. And she did not show her blood like the Princess in the fairy tale by feeling the pea that was underneath two mattresses. Mab might have lain upon peas, and she would never have been any the wiser. Her perceptions were not delicate. She was not sensitive. In short she was the most perfectly robust and contented little soul there was in Watcham, and met all her little privations with a broad smile.
You could not imagine a more minute drawing-room than that in which this mother and daughter spent the greater part of their life. There was nothing poetical or romantic about the house. The door was exactly in the middle, with a window on each side, which indicated the two sitting-rooms, and three windows which represented as many bedrooms above. The reader will perceive that it was the rudimentary house designed by infantile art in its first command of a slate or other pencil with which to express its ideas. The narrow passage into which the outer door opened, and from which you entered the sitting-rooms, was scarcely capable of containing two persons at once. By dint of having the smallest specimens possible of those pieces of furniture, Lady William had contrived to have a sofa and a piano in the drawing-room. There were also some low chairs and two or three of those little tables which are so useful in this tea-drinking age, but which are chiefly remarkable as handy things to throw down. You could scarcely throw down Lady William’s tables, however, for there was not room enough for them to fall. The ladies were sitting together in this little room with a large basket on the floor between them, in which it was their habit to put their work if it was not suitable to be beheld by visitors. They were both engaged at this particular moment in the making of a dress, of a kind which is generally described by novelists as ‘some kind of light woollen material.’ Shopkeepers say simply ‘material,’ leaving the light woollen to the imagination. I think, as I love to be particular, that it was biège. There was a fashion-book, or perhaps a copy of the Lady’s Pictorial—but I think the scene occurred before the commencement of that excellent periodical—lying among the folds of the stuff, half hidden by them. And this was Mab’s spring dress, which her mother was making, aided by the less skilled yet patient efforts of Mab herself. ‘Do you think you like that sleeve?’ Lady William was saying, looking at it in her hand, with her head a little on one side, as an artist looks at his picture; ‘these puffs are apt to look a little fantastic, especially when they are home-made——’
‘You mean when they are on a fat little girl like me, mother.’
‘Well, Mab, you are a little—stout,’ Lady William said. She did not take it so lightly as Mab did, but half resented, half lamented, this unfortunate development.
‘Don’t say stout, please,’ said Mab. ‘Stout sounds such a determined thing. Call me fat, mother: it’s nicer—it might be accidental: or I might, as Mrs. FitzStephen says, fine down.’
Lady William shook her head with a suppressed sigh. She knew Mab would not fine down. ‘Never mind about words,’ she said, ‘but tell me——’
Here she was interrupted by a rattle of small shots, as of pebbles, on the door. She knew very well what it was. It was the knuckles of Patty, the little girl who was groom of the chambers, and head footman, and kitchenmaid, and general aid to the woman-of-all-work at the cottage. She opened the door when she had delivered this volley, and thrust in a curly head at about the height of the keyhole. ‘Please, my lydy,’ she said, breathless, ‘it’s Missis and the young lydies from the Rectory. I thought as you’d like to know——’
‘Are they coming here, Patty?’