‘Perhaps you will tell me what woman I regard with feminine spite,’ Mrs. FitzStephen very reasonably said.
‘Oh, you, my dear, you’ve no occasion; you are a pretty woman still, and can hold your own: but that poor old soul,’ said the General, ‘as you may have perceived, I had almost to carry her down the walk; that poor old creature must be seventy if she is a day—and to see her old subaltern taking the pas from her: I am not subject to the same kind of feelings—but I confess I don’t like it myself, if it comes to that,’ the General said.
Mrs. Swinford went on to the Rectory with a curious smile upon her face. She drove past the school-room door and saw her friend standing at it, sheltered in the depth of the doorway, by no means unlike a spider standing at watch, having laid all its nets, till some silly fly buzzes in. A salutation of the eyes only passed between the two women, the schoolmistress and the great lady of the Hall. In the daylight they resembled each other, though Mrs. Brown’s plain black gown was not becoming to her dark good looks, and every particular of Mrs. Swinford’s attire was calculated to enhance her antiquated beauty. There was a softening in both pairs of eyes as they met. They were not good women; their aims were not fine nor the means they were disposed to use; but yet, curiously enough, they loved each other. It was a strange sight to see. The walk from the little gate of the Rectory to the door was still more trying to Mrs. Swinford than the other had been. It made her quite sure that she had no vocation to call at houses where there was no drive. Her dress was long, and she resented the fact that it must trail on the gravel and get dirty and damp. As for holding it up, it did not occur to her: that any one should think she hobbled, or was not a glass of fashion and mould of form wherever she went would have been incredible to her; but she resented much the length of that walk, and that she should be exposed to such trouble and annoyance in the act of doing what she thought her duty. Had it been only her duty, however, Mrs. Swinford would have cared very little for fulfilling it; but she had a different motive now.
There was a dreadful hurry-scurry in the Rectory drawing-room when she was seen approaching. The antimacassars, I am sorry to say, were much tumbled and untidy, and the loose covers of the chairs anything but what might be desired. Both mother and daughters flew with one impulse to the arranging of the room. Jim had been seated by the fireside all the afternoon with a bad cold, which they had been nursing; but he fled at once into his own cold room, which might, his mother thought, be very bad for him, but could not be helped in the circumstances. Florence ran, with more sense than any one would have given her credit for, to tell the parlourmaid to bring in a more elegant, less substantial tea than usual, and to give her father a hint in his study—‘Mrs. Swinford, papa!’ while Mrs. Plowden and Emily stood nervously awaiting the visit, anxious to go out and meet her and bring her in by the drawing-room window, which would have saved the old lady a few steps; but kept back by the fear that it might be thought indecorous, too familiar, not dignified enough. Mrs. Swinford looked round upon the Rectory drawing-room as she had done on Mrs. FitzStephen’s, but with a different air. ‘You have made wonderfully few changes,’ she said; ‘it is just the same damp little place it used to be.’ She was like so many of those great ladies, not careful of people’s feelings; but that was, no doubt, mainly from want of thought.
‘Oh,’ Mrs. Plowden said: and made a pause, that no explosion might follow, ‘I assure you,’ she said, ‘it is not damp at all. We have proved again and again that no water ever comes in. The elevation is small, but quite sufficient; and as for the furniture and doing it up——’
‘Yes, I recognise all the old things,’ Mrs. Swinford said, with a careless wave of the hand (when there was not one thing, not one, except the Indian cabinet, that had not been renewed!); ‘and another Emily Plowden just the same. It is only you,’ she said, with a sweet but careless smile upon the Rector’s wife, ‘that are new——’
‘New! But we have been here for fifteen years,’ Mrs. Plowden said: and her visitor smiled again as if in complacent consciousness of having said the most agreeable thing in the world.
‘I am glad,’ she said, ‘there is no other daughter, no one to disturb the harmony of what used to be. Oh, but here is the other daughter.’
‘Florence, my second, Mrs. Swinford: not considered like the Plowdens, but taking more after my side of the house.’
‘I see she is not like the Plowdens,’ said Mrs. Swinford, with the look of indifference which was natural to her: it was of so little consequence! ‘The other is a little like Emily.’