How was she obliged to him? What had he said? Jim felt very uncomfortable, though he could not have told why.
XIV
When Leo Swinford said that he was lodged like a prince there was little extravagance in the phrase. He was lodged like a prince indeed in the age of reason, not that of subdued æstheticism like this. The rooms in the Hall were spacious and lofty, and decorated with mirrors and gilding and marble, generally false marble, to an extent very rarely seen in England. And they were hung with pictures which would have been worth a king’s ransom had the names upon them been genuine, which of course they were not. A Swinford of a hundred years ago, Leo’s great-grandfather, had been one of those dilettanti of the eighteenth century to whom the languid Italy of those days was at once an idol and a place of plunder. He had filled his house with copies, with supposed antiques picked up here and there, with much old furniture and false statuary and bronzes. All the splendid names of art flourished on the walls; I am not sure that there was not a fragment, so called, of Phidias, from some classic excavation, and I am certain that there were several Raphaels, and even a Michael Angelo (the day of Botticelli was not yet). The cabinets and carvings which were genuine gave an air of reality to much that was false. If it was not true art, it was at least a good representation of the age when connoisseurs were few, when the craft of the copyist was in great request, and when it was fondly hoped, with that stupidity which belongs to the cultured person in all ages, that the model of the Italian palace, designed for skies and customs so different from ours, might be made to improve the natural beauty of an English house; the attempt was a mistake, but here and there, when carried out regardless of expense, it was not without effect, and the Hall was a good specimen of its period. A hundred years is a respectable period of time, and an example of the aims and meaning of a past century is worth preserving. But the large suites of rooms opening from each other, with large windows and doors, and no system of warming, were chilly and severe in a season still scarcely genial—England in this respect, with the cheerful open fires upon which we pride ourselves, being so much inferior to France with its calorifères, or Germany with its endless stuffy but effective stoves, in the art of keeping a house warm. Our houses, alas, are far from being warm, as many a shivering invalid knows.
It was on a Saturday, late in the afternoon in the beginning of April, but before the blasts were altogether over, that another visitor who was not at all so well received as Lady William and the Plowdens, walked briskly up the avenue and along by the side of the lake towards the Hall. She went quietly, looking neither to the right nor the left, with the air of a person who knew very well where she was going; and she was, I think, better dressed than Lady William, with something like fashion in the fit of her garments and the fall of her draperies, not over-dressed either, in black with a little veil over her face, a woman with a presence which all the poor in Watcham recognised as that of a lady, and a person who had seen better days. How it was that her air and aspect which impressed all the others, even Mrs. Plowden and most of the other ladies of the parish, failed to impress Morris the butler I cannot tell. There are mysteries in all crafts, and though he was for a moment slightly flustered by her bearing, Morris put himself straight in the middle of the doorway and opposed Mrs. Brown’s entrance with a decision which he would not have ventured to exhibit in face of little Miss Grey, who had the air of being dressed out of a rag-bag, or the humblest curate’s wife. ‘Not at home,’ Morris said with the utmost audacity, looking the visitor full in the face.
‘I know,’ said Mrs. Brown, ‘but I will come in till you have sent up my name, for I know that she will see me.’
‘It is quite contrary to my lady’s habits to see any one at this hour,’ said Morris, who was a person of education—‘if you will state your business I will report it to Madame Julie, who will convey it to her mistress at a fitting time, and then, if Mrs. Swinford will receive you——’
Mrs. Brown laughed.
‘Do you ask all the ladies that call to state their business?’ she said, with an air of amusement which confused Mr. Morris.
‘Ladies,’ he said, with a slight falter in his assurance, ‘who call at the usual hours is a different thing.’
‘Why, it isn’t six o’clock,’ said Mrs Brown, ‘and if I had not known Mrs. Swinford I should not have thought it too late. But it is precisely because it is too late that I am here; for I’ve no business except to see your lady, Morris, so you may as well go at once and not keep me standing here.’