Mab nodded her head, slightly abashed, but yet not shaken in her confidence that it was the right thing.
Lady William drew her child into her arms and kissed her. ‘My little girl!’ she repeated, with a soft burst of laughter. And then she put her handkerchief to her eyes, and pushed Mab away and took the tangled work of last night, in which Mab had come to great grief, into her clever hands.
No doubt, whatever it was that had done it—even were it Jim—Jim, of all people in the world!—mother was better, brighter, happier, Mab concluded, half comforted, half perplexed. For that Jim should have had the power to do that—Jim!—transcended Mab’s powers of imagination. Lady William retained her cheerfulness until the afternoon, when she sat down to finish that letter which had been left in her blotting-book. But she made small speed over it, and it appeared to Mab that ‘the look over her eyes’ came back. If it could be imagined that Mab was capable of being glad at the overclouding of her mother’s face, I would say she was at least not displeased when this occurred, so that such a ridiculous instrumentality as that of Jim might be proved insufficient for the change it seemed to have caused. But this was a feeling of which Mab was ashamed after the first moment when it flashed upon her. Lady William sat for a long time over the letter, but she did not add anything to it. She held her pen in her hand, and on several occasions bent over the paper as if she were about to write, but always stopped short. What had she more to say? She knew now that when these words were written the all-important witness had been within her reach; but now she was as much out of it as Lady William had then supposed her to be—lost in that big world of London where the most anxious parent cannot find his child. And who could tell whether Artémise would ever hear how things went, or whether she was wanted? The promise Jim brought had consoled her for a moment. It had been like a revelation of comfort to hear that at least Artémise was on her side. But this did not outlast the depressing effect of the afternoon—that puller-down of hopes. Artémise might be on her side, but how, now that she had disappeared again, was she to find her when that moment arrived at which her word was indispensable? And then Lady William felt that this promise of help only in the moment of uttermost need had something humiliating in it. To keep her in suspense to the last, trembling with the sword suspended over her head, and then to step in—no sooner. This was not surely the act of a friend. And why should Artémise be her friend when Mrs. Swinford was her enemy? Her heart sank. The little flush of satisfaction faded. She threw down her pen, and left her letter unfinished, as before.
And then Leo Swinford came with his eager proposals to go to town, to find the runaway at all hazards, until Lady William, exhausted by many emotions and by that sickening revulsion of fresh despair after a rising of hope, became impatient, and more than half resentful of his importunities, which were more ardent than the occasion required—or seemed so to this fastidious lady, who in the failure of her own confidence was disposed to take umbrage at his—which rested upon the certainty of being able to do himself by his unassisted exertions now, what it would have been so easy, so simple, to do yesterday, and so entirely within his power.
‘It scarcely seems to me worth the while,’ she said, with a weary look. ‘Why should you make a sentry of yourself at that railway? She will send some one for her boxes and elude you, as she has done before.’
This was hard upon poor Leo, who, indeed, had done his best. He was still there when the Rector appeared, who interrupted one of those protestations and entreaties to be trusted, from which Lady William turned so coldly. And the Rector was still more cold.
‘If we had but known in time,’ Mr. Plowden said. ‘I had never seen the lady. If any of those who must have known her had but given us a hint in time.’
It could only be Leo to whom this reproach was addressed, and the Rector did not notice his protest that he had never associated his mother’s visitor with the school. Even Lady William was unjust. She said: ‘You must have suspected that she had some haunt or shelter at Watcham.’ Leo had to fall back upon some of his own general theories about women, that they are always unjust. But he did not go away, which made the Rector more angry still: for Mr. Plowden had come on business. Some days had elapsed since the lawyer’s letter was received, and yet it had not been answered, nor had any decision been come to as to what was or was not to be said in the reply. He had come again to-day with the intention of pressing for Mr. Perowne—Mr. Perowne and his firm had known all the secrets of the Plowden family for generations, why should not he be entrusted with this? But Lady William would only look at him with a silent resistance. She would not accept Mr. Perowne, nor would she tell him why.
‘I have begun my letter,’ she said, ‘I will finish it to-night; it is merely to tell them the facts——’
‘For Heaven’s sake,’ said the Rector solemnly, ‘don’t send it away at least without letting me see it—without taking my opinion at least.’