Mab’s eyes ranged over all the people on the platform in astonishment, to see who could be the object of this outburst.
‘Not poor Jim?’ she said, faltering.
‘Jim is worth a dozen of him,’ said Miss Grey.
There was only one face that was not friendly and bright. And that was, Mab supposed, because Mr. Osborne was so anxious that everything should go off well. Florence, the duet just over, was standing within three steps of him, with a little group about her congratulating her on her success, and the sound of the applause behind was still riotous in the room. Old George was very audibly exclaiming at the top of his gruff voice: ‘That’s your sort now! that’s somethin’ as a man can understand;’ while some of the Riverside lads, the people Mr. Osborne had been so anxious about, kept on clapping their big rough hands persistently, when everybody else had stopped, not daring to cry encore to the young ladies, but signifying their wishes very clearly in that way. The two girls hesitated and lingered, kept by their friends from retiring while this noisy but timid call went on, which presently was joined in by all the front benches, under the leadership of the General, who was not at all shy, and cried ‘encore’ lustily. Mr. Osborne grew more gloomy than ever, and called imperiously for the next performers. ‘We must stick to the programme,’ he cried; ‘we shall never get done at this rate,’ and the Winwick amateurs came up again with their fiddles, while Emmy and Florry stole away, escaping abashed from their friends, who were discomfited too. It was then that Miss Grey said between her closed teeth, ‘I know who I think is silly;’ as if she would have liked to crush that person in her little hand which (in a very ill-fitting glove) she clenched as she spoke. If he had been a butterfly he would have had no chance in that clenched fist of Miss Grey.
And then Jim came up smiling and delivered his ‘Ride,’ and was applauded till the roof rang, chiefly, however, because he was Jim, and there was something about racing horses in what he had read. ‘That’s your sort,’ old George said again, but more doubtfully; ‘though I’d like to have known a little more about them horses,’ he added; and shortly after the entertainment came to an end. There was no doubt it had been a great success. While the common people streamed out, not sorry to be able to stretch their limbs and let loose their opinion, and indemnify themselves for having been silent so long, the audience in the front benches lingered to pay their respects and congratulations, and to assure the curate that everything had gone off beautifully. ‘I hope the Riverside people enjoyed it. I am sure I did,’ said General FitzStephen. Mr. Osborne looked at that gallant officer as if he would have liked to knock him down. He could not have shown a more angry and clouded face had the entertainment been a failure. ‘Oh yes. I suppose it has done well enough,’ he said. Mab, who did not know what all this meant, but who was able to perceive that something was wrong, was fixing her wits upon this mystery, and very anxious to know what it meant, when she suddenly heard a little cry from her mother, whose eyes were fixed upon the last stragglers of the crowd going out, and who suddenly broke off in the midst of a conversation, and with every appearance of excitement suddenly rushed out after some one—Mab could not tell whom. Mab rushed after her mother full of astonishment and eager curiosity, but only to find Lady William standing outside looking vaguely round her with an anxious, bewildered look upon her face. ‘What is it, mother? Who is it?’ Mab cried. ‘Do you want to speak to somebody?’ ‘I am certain,’ cried Lady William, ‘I saw her in the crowd. She turned round for a moment and I saw her face.’ ‘Who is it, mother? Who is it, mother?’ cried Mab. But Lady William did not make any reply to her. She turned round to another who had rushed after her (‘That Leo Swinford, of course,’ Mab said to herself) and put out her hand to him, as if he, and not her child, could help her. ‘I have seen her, I am sure I have seen her!’ she cried—and she repeated in a tone of rising excitement what she had said before—‘with a black veil over her head. She turned round as she went out of the door; and there was Artémise. Oh, find her for me; find her, Leo!’ Lady William cried.
XLII
Next morning, however, there came a crisis which drove all thought of anything else for the moment out of Lady William’s mind.
It came in the shape of a letter laid upon her innocent breakfast table, along with the little bunch of correspondence, very small, and very unimportant, which was all that the post generally brought to that peaceable house. Lady William had, of course, a friend or two with whom occasionally she exchanged those utterly unimportant letters which form so large a portion in the lives of some unoccupied women. It would be hard to grudge these poor ladies so innocent a pleasure, but their letters were not exciting enough to make a woman like Lady William, who felt that she had herself a great deal to do, and did not want that gentle stimulant, very impatient for the arrival of the post: and her mild correspondence waited for her quite contentedly on both sides till she had performed various little morning duties, and was ready to sit down to breakfast. The long blue envelope, however, alarmed her a little whenever she saw it, and yet there was nothing so very alarming in it, for it was a similar envelope, directed in the same writing, as that which brought her the cheque for her quarterly allowance, which, as it happened, was now a little overdue. She lingered, however, over the letter—though it did enclose a cheque, which she took out and laid upon the table—much longer than she was wont to linger over the letters of Messrs. Fox and Round. She read it carefully over, and then she folded it up, put it in its envelope, and poured out the coffee. But before she touched her own cup, returned to the letter; took it once more from its envelope, read it all over again, and put it back once more. Mab had a little letter of her own to read, all about nothing, from a girl of her own age, so that she did not for a minute or so observe these proceedings of her mother. But she very soon did so, and divined not only from them, but from the manner in which Lady William swallowed her coffee and pushed away the innocent rolls on the table as if they had done her some harm, that all was not as usual. When Lady William spoke, however, it was in a voice elaborately calm.
‘Are you going out this morning, Mab?’
‘Yes, mother—I am going——’ Mab paused a moment. She had got up that morning with her mind full of the weighty determination of last night; but it seemed to her that if she said she was going to the school it might partly betray the secret which was not hers, but which lay so heavy on her soul. ‘I think,’ she went on, correcting herself, ‘I will run over and see how they feel at the Rectory, now it’s over, about last night. And I will probably look in at the school,’ she added, for to have a secret from her mother was dreadful to her, ‘before I come back.’