‘As if we should care!’ said Florence, with a little sneer. ‘You can go and tell her if you like, that the ladies have no objection. We are not jealous, are we—of Mrs. Brown?’
This was not poor Florry’s natural tone, and the sharpness of it went to one heart at least—that of Miss Grey, who discovered what it meant: and startled the rest, who did not understand any meaning in it at all.
‘Don’t send Jim,’ said Mab, ‘let me go. I’ll tell her we should all like her to do—Lady Macbeth or whatever she pleases—and that none of the ladies would mind—not you, Miss Grey, I may tell her—for perhaps she thinks the young ones don’t count.’
‘Don’t bother, Mab,’ said Jim hastily, ‘It is too late; even if she were willing we cannot change the programme now.’
‘Oh, but I am going! I have a fancy for Mrs. Brown,’ said Mab, waving her hand.
XL
Mab left the others separating on every side towards their homes, and ran back to the schoolhouse, from which the children had all dispersed a little while before. She was full of her errand, in which there was a little sense of mischief as well as of pleasure, the one giving piquancy to the other. No doubt it was quite true that the ladies were not jealous of Mrs. Brown. It was to Mab the most amusing thing in the world that anybody should think so. Florence and Emmy, for instance, jealous—of a woman twice as old as they were, if she were the most beautiful and attractive woman in the world! How absurd it was! Youth has confidence in youth, in a manner as astonishing to the rest of the world as is the futility of that confidence in so many cases. And to a girl of seventeen a woman of forty is so entirely out of any sort of competition with herself that the suggestion is too ridiculous to be taken into the mind at all. Mrs. FitzStephen, perhaps, or Aunt Jane might be jealous of Mrs. Brown, but then they had nothing to do with it: and it was still more absurd to think that these good ladies could have anything in hand that would make it possible for jealousy to come in. All this ran through Mab’s cheerful mind as she went back, not noting the half-alarmed, half-displeased look which Jim threw after her, and his hesitating step in advance, as if he would have gone too. It was an exceedingly good joke to Mab, for though, of course, the ladies were not jealous, they would no doubt be much surprised to see Mrs. Brown appear—surprised, and perhaps not quite pleased. It was not that they habitually looked down upon the schoolmistress—even Mab in her short memory knew of some who had been much petted by the gentry in Watcham. There was one girl, who was delicate, and who was as much thought of as if she had been a princess in disguise, all ‘the best people’ uniting to spoil her, Mab thought, who, being more on this young woman’s level, saw things with a clear eye. But Mrs. Brown was not a favourite though nobody could tell why. She had seen better days, which was nothing against her; but then she had none of that genteel decay about her, which ought to be characteristic of those who had seen better days. She appeared, indeed, to make a joke of it all, rather than to lament her fallen estate. There was always a twinkle in those eyes, which were so bright, so bold, and so all-seeing. Mab had felt, like all the rest, an instinctive revulsion against her. But this had died off in that appreciation of cheerfulness and courage, which was deep in Mab’s nature. To be less well off than you used to be, and yet take it, not with a moan, but with a jest, or even a gibe, laughing at yourself, seemed to Mab a much more attractive thing than the melancholy of decayed gentility; but this was not the aspect in which the other ladies regarded it. They would all have been sorry for Mrs. Brown had she taken her humiliation sadly. What they did not understand was the joke she made of it, which, to them, seemed impudence and defiance. Perhaps, Mab thought to herself in the abundance of her thoughts as she ran along, this feeling on the part of the ladies was what the gentlemen called jealousy. It was not so bad a guess for a little girl.
It may be added here that Lady William had not made acquaintance with the schoolmistress from the fact that Lady William, probably by right of having been herself the Rector’s daughter and born to that work, refused determinedly to have anything to do with the parish. She did not keep Mab back from that inevitable work, but she would not herself take any part. District visiting, schools, mothers’ or girls’ meetings, penny banks, clothing clubs, all the machinery of the parish, Lady William kept religiously apart from them all. She had a recipe for beef tea which was known far and near, the strongest and the most quickly made, everybody knew, that had ever been heard of, and would go to the kitchen and make it herself, if old Anne, who was the sovereign there, was out of the way or out of temper: and puddings came from her house for the sick people which would have tempted an anchorite to eat: and if warm things were wanted for the winter there was no end to the flannel petticoats, the children’s frocks, and the knitted comforters and stockings which Lady William could turn out. But that was all. She said lightly that there were plenty of people to manage the parish, and that it was not her rôle. She took no responsibility, and had not entered the schools since she was Emily Plowden aiding and abetting all manner of little rebellions in a way not at all becoming for the Rector’s daughter. This was one reason she gave for taking no supervision of the schools now. ‘I should always be on the children’s side,’ she said, and thus it happened, which was so strange, that she had never even seen Mrs. Brown.
But Mab knew her very well, and burst into her little house at this hour which was Mrs. Brown’s own hour, in which the parish had no right to interfere with her, with an absence of regard which the girl did not realise, and which no doubt was an unthought-of result of the inferior position in which the schoolmistress was, though quite unintentional on the part of the young intruder. She gave the lightest little tap at the door of Mrs. Brown’s sitting-room, and burst in without waiting for any reply. Mab was, however, a little taken aback when she found Mrs. Brown seated at a little meal, which was not only very agreeable to the smell, but extremely dainty in appearance, much more so, Mab felt instinctively, than any table she was herself accustomed to. Perhaps it was the sight of this, so very different from the usual slovenly repast of the schoolmistresses, which brought Mab up suddenly with a little start, and cry: ‘Oh, I beg your pardon!’ which she gave forth in spite of herself.
‘Why should you beg my pardon?’ said Mrs. Brown. She had what seemed a little silver dish before her—some dainty little twists and loaves of French bread—a cover on her table of exquisite linen, white and fresh. Mab knew how it feels when the table-cloth is not in its first freshness when any one comes, and how frequently that little domestic incident happens; but Mrs. Brown’s table-cloth shone like white satin, and was fresh in all its folds. ‘Why should you beg my pardon?’ she said. ‘Do you think I do not know, Miss Pakenham, that I belong to the parish, body and soul? I must eat, to be sure, in order to live, but I ought to know better than to expect that I am to eat undisturbed.’