‘That is true, perhaps,’ said Lady William; ‘but after all, you know, the squire of the parish is not everything, and we have all helped to keep things going. You don’t know our aspect of poverty, Leo; perhaps it looks worse than it is. You will find plenty to do, no doubt. If you announce your intentions, I know several people who will be delighted to tell you just what you must do; my brother, of course, first of all.’
‘Shall I put myself, then, in the Rector’s hands?’
‘Oh, don’t let him, mother,’ said Mab (that little girl again: how these little creatures are allowed to put themselves in the front in England!), ‘Uncle James has so many fads. He wants a new organ (we do want it very much) and a new infant school, and he is always, always after the drains! But I know a great many things that it would be delightful to do.’
‘Of course your advice will be the best,’ said her mother. ‘My dear Leo, it is so new to us to find a man delivering himself over to be fleeced, for the good of the people.’
‘Do not use such a word; I am so much in earnest; I am so anxious to do everything I can do. All these years I have been receiving revenues from this place and giving nothing back; and I am lodged like a prince, while these poor people, who do their duty to their country better than I have ever done, are in—what do you call them, sties, stables, worse, a great deal worse, than my horses——’
‘You must not run away with that idea,’ said Lady William. ‘Mab, where can he have been?’
‘I tell you, on Riverside, mother; there are some houses there, old, damp, horrid places; it is quite true.’
‘Dear lady,’ said Mr. Swinford, laying his hand lightly on Lady William’s arm, ‘you consult this child: but what can she know of the miseries which at her age one does not understand?’
Mab kept down by an effort the reply which was breaking from her lips. Child! to a woman of seventeen! and to be told she did not understand: she that knew every soul on Riverside, and what they worked at, and how many children there were, and every domestic incident! She kept leaning across her mother to catch every word, and cast terrible looks at the accuser, though she commanded herself, and allowed Lady William to reply.
‘You forget,’ said Lady William gently, ‘that to us there is no horror about our poor neighbours, Leo. We know most of them as well as we know our own relations, perhaps better; for on that level nothing is hid; whereas on our own, if there is trouble in a house, there is often an attempt to conceal, or perhaps even to deceive outsiders, and pretend that everything is well.’