‘The less that is said on that subject, I think, the better,’ said the Rector, standing bolt upright before the fire.
‘Oh, James,’ said his wife, ‘when Mrs. Swinford is so kind——’
‘I gave it,’ said Mrs. Swinford, bending forward, ‘and, my good Rector, you will take care not to be insolent; I may also, perhaps, take it away.’
XVII
Lady William, on this eventful afternoon, had gone out with Mab on one of her rambles. The air was full of spring, the buds bursting on every tree, the cottage gardens all blooming with those common flowers which can be got anywhere, which are the inheritance of the poorest, and are more beautiful, spontaneous, and abundant than any other: the early primroses, daffodils and Lent lilies, the rich dark wallflowers that fill the air with sweetness. Mab had a little basket with her, in which to bring home any wild thing that pleased her in the woods and slopes of Denham Hill, on the other side of the water. It was a long walk, but neither mother nor daughter was afraid of a long walk. They came back, breathing of every sweet-wildness of the spring, just as Mrs. Swinford, disappointed and angry, was leaving a card, with a message, at the cottage door; but the carriage had disappeared along the road long before they reached their own end of Watcham. It had been a lovely afternoon, warm, yet fresh with the dewy moisture of the April breezes, that germinating weather, and sparkle of showers and waters which is not damp. Several showers had fallen upon them in their ramble, but done no harm; they had taken shelter, after a laughing run against the wind and the bright falling veil of rain, under the trees, or in a cottage when one was near, and shaken the rain-drops off their dresses, and carried the freshness of the outside atmosphere, as if they had been nymphs of the air, into the little wayside houses. It would have been hard to say whether mother or daughter was youngest in these runs and shelterings. Lady William was almost more swift of foot than Mab, who more easily got out of breath, and was built on heavier lines; and though the girl’s colour was higher, the delicate flush on the other’s cheek spoke of almost finer health and brightness in its fluctuations and changes. They were both equally interested about the plants and roots which Mab grubbed up from under the trees, but hers was the delight of superior knowledge, as she discovered a rare something here and there, a flower peculiar to one place or another. Mab was altogether absorbed in her botany and her researches, flushed with her digging, eager about her new treasures. But her mother was more free for the delights of the sweet air and sensations of the spring, the freedom of the woods, and sometimes would burst out singing, and sometimes fling bits of moss at her child, as she held the basket.
‘Isn’t that beautiful, Mab?’
‘Yes, mother,’ Mab would say, digging, her head bent over the mossy soil, nothing free of her but the ear which took in the sound of the poetry in a kind of subdued pleasure which mingled with her humbler sensations.
‘You are a little grub,’ said Lady William; ‘you are never so happy as when you are probing among the roots and the dead leaves.’
‘And you are of the kind of the birds, mother, and I like to hear you up among the branches,’ said Mab. I do not mean to say that Lady William was a musician, or that you could hear the bits of songs she sang, which had been Mab’s lullaby as a baby, and amusement through all her childhood—a few yards from where she stood. They were nothing but the spontaneous utterances of her fresh spirit, like breathing, or the trilling of the birds, to which Mab compared them. Mab did not herself require utterances, givings forth, of that kind. She worked away and was silent, wholly given to what she was about. But she admired the trill and movement of the lighter spirit, and thought her mother the most delightful human creature that had ever been upon this earth.
The basket was tolerably heavy when they came back, and Mab was still a little flushed with her hard work. The sky was very sweet and subdued in colour, a great band of softened gold binding the growing grayness of the afternoon, approaching night—and opening, as it were, a glimpse into the heavens, a broad shining pathway, reflected fully in the river, between the awakening greens and browns of the spring country and the soft clouds above. It was still light, but evening was in the air, and among the folds of the clouds a few mild stars were already visible. The cows were coming lowing home; the children were leaving off their games; and people coming up from the river, who found a little chill in the air after the sun had gone down. The mother and daughter met everybody on their progress home. The doctor, another botanist, who sniffed at Mab’s basket, and affected contempt at her brag of the peculiar coltsfoot she had found, which grew nowhere but on Denham Hill. ‘Common, common,’ he said, ‘you’ll find it everywhere,’ as one connoisseur says to another, upon most new acquisitions; but that was because he had never had such luck himself, Mab felt convinced. And they met the tall curate, Mr. Osborne, stalking off to a meeting, who stopped to ask whether Lady William would not help in a temperance tea party of his, where the ladies and gentlemen were to amuse the villagers, and make them forget that there was such a thing on earth, or rather, in Watcham, as the ‘Why Not?’ or the ‘Blue Boar.’ Mr. Osborne wore his Inverness cape, as usual, and a quantity of books and pamphlets under it; but there was something a little different from his ordinary aspect in his looks. After he had passed he made a step back again, and called Lady William, with a hesitating voice.