‘But that is so easily remedied,’ said the lawyer. ‘Marry—marry, my dear sir! and you will no longer be the last of your family, and will very soon learn to appreciate an entailed estate. By——!’ cried Mr. Loseby, rubbing his hands. He would not say ‘By Jove!’ or even ‘By George!’ or anything of the sort, which would have been unbecoming his years and dignity; but when things were too many for him, he swore ‘By——!’ and was refreshed. ‘I could tell you a thing to do,’ cried the lawyer, with a chuckle, ‘that would save the family from a great deal of trouble. What do you think that obstinate—I beg your pardon, Mr. Heathcote, he and I are old friends, we say what we please to each other?—what do you suppose he has been doing here?—trying to force me, against all the teachings of reason, to alter his will—to cut off that fine girl, that delightful creature, Anne.’
‘Mr. Loseby, I don’t suppose this is a thing which I am intended to know.’
‘You will know, sooner or later, if he carries it out,’ cried the lawyer; ‘but you are right, I have no business to betray my client’s affairs. But, look here now,’ he said, bending across the table, leaning on both his elbows to look insinuatingly, coaxingly in Heathcote’s face, ‘look here now! I never saw you before, Mr. Heathcote, but your name is as familiar to me as my a, b, c, and I am a very old family friend, as I may say, as well as their man of business. Look here now. You are a very personable man, and not a bit too old for her, and a most suitable match in every way. Why shouldn’t you make up to Anne? Hear me out, and don’t flare up. Bless you, I am not a stranger, nor a mere impudent country attorney, as perhaps you are thinking. I knew them all before they were born. Anne is perhaps a little serious, you will think, a little highfaluting. But nobody knows till they do know her what a fine creature she is. Anne Mountford is a wife for a king. And here she’s got entangled with some fellow whom nobody knows, and Mountford of course refuses his consent. But she is not the girl to be bullied or treated with severity. Why couldn’t you go in now and try for Anne? You are not to be supposed to know anything about it; it would all be innocence in you; and who knows that she mightn’t be glad of the chance of slipping out of the other, though she won’t give in to threats. Won’t you think of it? Won’t you think of it? I don’t know the man, if he were a prince, that might not be proud of Anne.’
All this Heathcote listened to with very strange sensations. He was angry, amused, touched by the enthusiasm of the little round shining man who thus entreated him, with every kind of eloquence he was capable of, his eyes and hands and his whole frame twisting into gestures of persuasion. Heathcote was disposed to laugh, but he was still more disposed to resent this familiar employment of his cousin’s name.
‘Are you aware that I have no right to be brought into the family secrets, to have their affairs thus revealed to me?’ he said. ‘Stop—nor to hear the name of a young lady for whom I have so much respect treated so. Allowing that I need not resent it as a liberty, since you are an older friend than I am, still you must see that between you and me, strangers to each other——’
‘Yes, yes, I see,’ said Mr. Loseby, ‘you are quite right. I see. I thought perhaps exceptional circumstances might warrant—but never mind. I am wrong; I see it. Well, then, about this entail business. Don’t you see this is why our friend does not jump at it? Little Rose could never be Mountford of Mount. Anne would make a noble squire, but it is out of the question for her sister. Keep to your entail, Mr. Heathcote, and if I can be of use to you, I will do my best. If it’s a money difficulty we’ll tide it over for you. Let me know all the circumstances, and I will do my best.’
‘I cannot give up my project all at once,’ Heathcote said, hesitating.
‘I would if I were you. It would harm yourself and do good to nobody. I certainly would if I were you,’ said the lawyer, getting up and accompanying him to the door.
‘I must exercise my own judgment on that point, Mr. Loseby.’
‘Certainly, certainly, certainly, Mr. Heathcote Mountford! You will all exercise your judgment, you will all do what seems good in your own eyes. I know what the Mountfords are from generation to generation. If it had not been that St. John Mountford had the luck to take a fancy to a rich woman for his first wife, what would the place have been by this time? But that is a chance that doesn’t happen once in a century. And now, when here is another—the finest chance! with openings for such a settlement! But never mind; never mind; of course you will all take your own way.’
‘I hope you have brought him to reason, Loseby,’ said Mr. Mountford, from the back of his cob, as they emerged again into the street.
‘All arrangements about property which are against nature are against reason,’ said the little lawyer, sententiously. ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. When you go in for these fancy arrangements, it is some sort of a poetical personage you want, and not a lawyer. I wish you a pleasant ride.’
‘He is a character,’ said Mr. Mountford, with a short laugh, as they rode away. But that laugh was the only sound of the lighter sort that broke the gravity of their silent companionship, as their horses’ hoofs clattered over the stones of the little town, and came out upon the long silence of the country road now falling rapidly into twilight. ‘We are a little late,’ Mr. Mountford said, half-an-hour after. As for Heathcote, he did not feel, any more than his kinsman, in a humour for talk. What he had heard, though he had protested against hearing it, dwelt in his mind, and the somewhat morose gravity of the other infected him in spite of himself. What had St. John Mountford, who was in reality a commonplace, good enough sort of man, been doing to warrant so gloomy an aspect? Had he been turning the fortunes of the family upside down and spoiling the life of the daughter he loved best? or was it a mere exhibition of sulkiness consequent upon the quarrel with the lawyer and the opposition he had encountered? Heathcote had known nothing about these Mountfords a week ago, and now how closely he felt himself knitted up in their affairs, whether he continued to be formally connected with them or not! As he rode along in silence by his kinsman’s side, he could not help thinking of the catastrophe which might be coming; that ‘fine creature’ Anne—the little old bald shining lawyer had grown eloquent when he spoke of her. And though she seemed a little severe to Heathcote, he could not but acknowledge to himself that she had always interested him. Rose? oh, Rose was a pretty little thing, a child, a nobody; it did not matter very much what happened to her; but if it should happen that Anne’s life was being changed, the brightness taken out of it, and all those advantages which seem so natural and becoming transferred from her to the profit of Rose? Heathcote felt that this would be a wrong to move heaven and earth; but it was not a subject in which he, a stranger, had any right to interfere. As he looked at the dark muffled figure of her father by his side against the faint crimson which still lingered in the west, he could scarcely help chafing at the thought that, though he was their nearest relation, he was still a stranger, and must not, dared not say a word. And what kind of fellow, he said to himself, in natural indignation, could it be who was wilfully leading Anne into the wilderness, accepting her sacrifice of that which was the very foundation of her life? Perhaps had he himself been the man who loved Anne he would have seen things in a different light; but from his present point of view his mind was full of angry wrath and contempt for the unknown who could let a girl inexperienced in the world give up so much for him. He was a nobody, they said. He must be a poor sort of creature, Heathcote, on these very insufficient grounds, decided in his heart.
It was a beautiful clear October night, with frost in the air, the stars shining every minute more and more brightly, the crimson disappearing, even the last golden afterglow fading into palest yellow in the west, and all the great vault of sky darkening to perfect night. The horses’ hoofs beat upon the long, safe, well-kept road, bordered by long monotonous walls and clouds of trees, from which darkness had stolen their colour—a perfectly safe, tranquil country road, with a peaceful house at the end, already lighting all its windows, preparing its table for the wayfarers. Yet there was something of the gloom of a tragedy in the dark figure wrapped in silence, pondering one could not tell what plans of mischief, and wrathful gloomy intentions, which rode by Heathcote’s side, without a word, along all those miles of darkling way.
CHAPTER XVI.
GOOD ADVICE.
The dinner to which the family sat down after this ride somewhat alarmed the stranger-relative who so suddenly found himself mixed up in their affairs. He thought it must necessarily be a constrained and uncomfortable meal. But this did not turn out to be the case. Anne knew nothing at all about what her father had been doing, and from Rose’s light nature the half comprehended scene at luncheon, when her mother had wept and her father’s face had been like a thundercloud, had already faded away. These two unconscious members of the party kept the tide of affairs in flow. They talked as usual—Anne even more than usual, as one who is unaware of the critical point at which, to the knowledge of all around, he or she is standing, so often does. She gave even a little more information than was called for about her visit to the Woodheads, being in her own mind half ashamed of her cowardice in staying away after the scene of the morning. On the whole she was glad, she persuaded herself, of the scene of the morning. It had placed her position beyond doubt. There had seemed no occasion to make any statement to her father as to the correspondence which he had not forbidden or indeed referred to. He had bidden her give up her lover, and she had refused: but he had said nothing about the lover’s letters, though these followed as a matter of course. And now it was well that he should know the exact position of affairs. She had been greatly agitated at the moment, but soon composed herself. And in her desire to show that she was satisfied, not grieved by what had happened, Anne was more than usually cheerful and communicative in her talk.
‘Fanny is very happy about her brother who is coming home from India. He is to be here only six weeks; but he does not grudge the long journey: and they are all so happy.’
‘He is a fool for his pains,’ growled Mr. Mountford from the head of the table. ‘I don’t know what our young men are coming to. What right has he to such a luxury? It will cost him a hundred pounds at the least. Six weeks—he has not been gone as many years.’
‘Four years—that is a long time when people are fond of each other,’ said Anne, with a scarcely perceptible smile. Every individual at table instantly thought of the absent lover.
‘She is thinking that I will be dead and gone in four years, and she will be free,’ the angry father said to himself, with a vindictive sense that he was justified in the punishment he meant to inflict upon her. But Anne, indeed, was thinking of nothing of the kind, only with a visionary regret that in her own family there was no one to come eager over sea and land to be longed and prayed for with Fanny Woodhead’s anxious sisterly motherly passion. This was far, very far from the imagination of the others as a motive likely to produce such a sigh.
‘A brother from India is always anxiously looked for,’ said Mrs. Mountford, stepping in with that half-compunctious readiness to succour Anne which the knowledge of this day’s proceedings had produced in her. She did not, in fact, know what these proceedings had been, and they were in no way her fault. But still she felt a compunction. ‘They always bring such quantities of things with them,’ she added. ‘An Indian box is the most delightful thing to open. I had a brother in India, too——’
‘I wish we had,’ said Rose, with a pout. Heathcote had been preoccupied: he had not been so ‘attentive’ as usual: and she wished for a brother instantly, ‘just to spite him,’ she said to herself.
‘Fanny is not thinking of the presents; but Rose, consider you are interested in it, too—that is another man for your dance.’
Rose clapped her hands. ‘We are looking up,’ she said. ‘Twenty men from Sandhurst, and six from Meadowlands, and Lady Prayrey Poule’s husband, and Fred Woodhead and Willie Ashley—for of course Willie is coming—— ’
‘A dance at this time of the year is folly,’ said Mr. Mountford; ‘even in summer it is bad enough; but the only time of the year for entertainments in the country is when you have warm weather and short nights.’
‘It was because of cousin Heathcote, papa. It is not often we have a man, a real relation, staying at Mount.’
‘Heathcote! oh, so it is for your sake, Heathcote? I did not know that dancing was an attribute of reasonable beings after thirty,’ Mr. Mountford said.
Then it was Anne who came to Heathcote’s aid. ‘You are not afraid of seeming frivolous?’ she said, giving him the kindest look he had yet seen in her eyes; and his heart was touched by it: he had not known that Anne’s eyes had been so fine—‘and it will please everybody. The county requires to be stirred up now and then. We like to have something to talk about, to say, “Are you going to the So-and-so’s on the 25th?”’
‘An admirable reason certainly for trouble and expense. If you were electioneering, it might be reasonable; but I presume your woman’s rights are not so advanced yet as that. Miss Anne Mountford can’t stand for the county!’
‘I don’t think she is likely to try, father,’ said Anne, ‘whatever might be the rights—or wrongs.’
‘You must not think, Mr. Heathcote,’ said Mrs. Mountford anxiously, ‘that Anne has anything to say to women’s rights. She is far too sensible. She has her own ways of thinking, but she is neither absurd nor strong-minded——’
‘I hope you do not think me weak-minded, mamma,’ Anne said, with a soft laugh.
And then little more was said. Mr. Mountford half rose and mumbled that grace after meat which leaves out all the more ethereal part of the repast as, we suppose, a kind of uncovenanted mercies for which no thanks are to be uttered; and after a while the ladies left the room. It was cold, but the whole frosty world outside lay enchanted under the whitening of the moon. The girls caught up fur cloaks and shawls as they went through the hall, and stepped outside involuntarily. The sky was intensely blue; the clouds piled high in snowy masses, the moon sailing serenely across the great expanse, veiling herself lightly here and there with a film of vapour which the wind had detached from the cloud-mountains. These filmy fragments were floating across the sky at extraordinary speed, and the wind was rising, whirling down showers of leaves. The commotion among the trees, the sound of the wind, the rapid flight of the clouds, all chimed in with Anne’s mood. She took hold of her sister’s arm with gentle force. ‘Stay a little, Rose—it is all quiet inside, and here there is so much going on: it is louder than one’s thoughts,’ Anne said.
‘What do you mean by being louder than your thoughts? Your thoughts are not loud at all—not mine at least: and I don’t like those dead leaves all blowing into my face; they feel like things touching you. I think I shall go in, Anne.’
‘Not yet, dear. I like it: it occupies one in spite of one’s self. The lawn will be all yellow to-morrow with scattered gold.’
‘You mean with scattered leaves; of course it will,’ said Rose. ‘When the wind is high like this it brings the leaves down like anything. The lime trees will be stripped, and it is a pity, for they were pretty. Everything is pretty this year. Papa has been to Hunston,’ she said, abruptly, looking Anne in the face; but it was very difficult even for Rose’s keen little eyes to distinguish in the moonlight whether or not Anne knew.
Anne took very little notice of this bit of news. ‘So Saymore told me. Did Mr. Heathcote see the church, I wonder? I hope some one told him how fine it was, and that there were some Mountford monuments.’
‘Do you know what papa was doing in Hunston, Anne? He went to see Mr. Loseby. Mamma made quite a fuss when he went away. She would not tell me what it was. Perhaps she did not know herself. She often gets into quite a state about things she doesn’t know. Can you tell me what papa could want with Mr. Loseby? you can see for yourself how cross he is now he has come back.’
‘With Mr. Loseby? no, I cannot tell you, Rose.’ Anne heard the news with a little thrill of excitement. It was rarely that Mr. Mountford went so far; very rarely that he did anything which, through his wife, or Saymore, or Rose herself, did not find its way to the knowledge of the entire household. Anne connected the incident of the morning with this recent expedition, and her heart beat faster in her breast. Well: she was prepared; she had counted the cost. If she was to be disinherited, that could be borne—but not to be untrue.
‘That means you will not tell me, Anne. I wonder why I should always be the last to know. For all anyone can tell, it may just be of as much consequence to me as to you, if he went to tamper with his will, as mamma said. What do you call tampering with a will? I don’t see,’ cried Rose, indignantly, ‘why I should always be supposed too young to know. Most likely it is of just as much consequence to me as to you.’
‘Rose,’ cried her mother, from the window, ‘come in—come in at once! How can you keep that child out in the cold, Anne, when you know what a delicate throat she has?’ Then Mrs. Mountford gave an audible shiver and shut down the window hastily; for it was very cold.
‘I have nothing to tell you, dear,’ Anne said gently. ‘But you are quite right; if there is any change made, it will be quite as important to you as to me: only you must not ask me about it, for my father does not take me into his confidence, and I don’t know.’
‘You don’t want to tell me!’ said the girl; but this time Mrs. Mountford knocked loudly on the window, and Rose was not sufficiently emancipated to neglect the second summons. Anne walked with her sister to the door, but then came back again to the sheltered walk under the windows. It was a melancholy hour when one was alone. The yellow leaves came down in showers flying on the wind. The clouds pursued each other over the sky. The great masses of vapours behind the wind began to invade the frosty blue; yet still the moon held on serenely, though her light was more and more interrupted by sudden blanks of shadow. Anne had no inclination to go into the quiet of the drawing-room, the needlework, and Mrs. Mountford’s little lectures, and perhaps the half-heard chattering with which Rose amused and held possession of her cousin. To her, whose happier life was hidden in the distance, it was more congenial to stay out here, among the flying winds and falling leaves. If it was so that Fortune was forsaking her; if her father had carried out his threat, and she was now penniless, with nothing but herself to take to Cosmo, what change would this make in her future life? Would he mind? What would he say? Anne had no personal experience at all, though she was so serious and so deeply learned in the troubles at least of village life. As she asked herself these questions, a smile crept about her lips in spite of her. She did not mean to smile. She meant to inquire very gravely: would he mind? what would he say? but the smile came without her knowledge. What could he say but one thing? If it had been another man, there might have been doubts and hesitations—but Cosmo! The smile stole to the corners of her mouth—a melting softness came into her heart. How little need was there to question! Did not she know?
Her thoughts were so full of this that she did not hear another foot on the gravel, and when Heathcote spoke she awakened with a start, and came down out of that lofty hermitage of her thoughts with little satisfaction; but when he said something of the beauty of the night and the fascination of all those voices of the wind and woods, Anne, whether willingly or not, felt herself compelled to be civil. She came down from her abstraction, admitting, politely, that the night was fine. ‘But,’ she said, ‘it is very cold, and the wind is rising every moment; I was thinking of going in.’
‘I wonder if you would wait for a few minutes, Miss Mountford, and hear something I have to say.’
‘Certainly,’ Anne said; but she was surprised; and now that it was no longer her own will which kept her here, the wind all at once became very boisterous, and the ‘silver lights and darks’ dreary. ‘Do you know we have a ghost belonging to us?’ she said. ‘She haunts that lime avenue. We ought to see her to-night.’
‘We have so little time for ghosts,’ said Heathcote, almost fretfully; and then he added, ‘Miss Mountford, I came to Mount on a special mission. Will you let me tell you what it was? I came to offer your father my co-operation in breaking the entail.’
‘Breaking the entail!’ the idea was so surprising that all who heard it received it with the same exclamation. As for Anne, she did more: she cast one rapid involuntary glance around her upon the house with all its lights, the familiar garden, the waving clouds of trees. In her heart she felt as if a sharp arrow of possible delight, despair, she knew not which, struck her keenly to the core. It was only for a moment. Then she drew a long breath and said, ‘You bewilder me altogether; break the entail—why should you? I cannot comprehend it. Pardon me, it is as if the Prince of Wales said he would not have the crown. Mount is England to us Mountfords. I cannot understand what you mean.’
Heathcote thought he understood very well what she meant. He understood her look. Everything round was dear to her. Her first thought had been—Mount! to be ours still, ours always! But what did ours mean? Did she think of herself as heiress and mistress, or of—someone else? This pricked him at the heart, as she had been pricked by a different sentiment, by the thought that she had no longer the first interest in this piece of news; but there was no reason whatever for keen feeling in his case. What did it matter to him who had it? He did not want it. He cleared his throat to get rid of that involuntary impatience and annoyance. ‘It is not very difficult to understand,’ he said. ‘Mount is not to me what it is to you; I have only been here once before. My interests are elsewhere.’
Anne bowed gravely. They did not know each other well enough to permit of more confidential disclosures. She did not feel sufficient interest to ask, he thought; and she had no right to pry into his private concerns, Anne said to herself. Then there was a pause: which she broke quite unexpectedly with one of those impulses which were so unlike Anne’s external aspect, and yet so entirely in harmony with herself.
‘This makes my heart beat,’ she said, ‘the idea that Mount might be altogether ours—our home in the future as well as in the past; but at the same time, forgive me, it gives me a little pain to think that there is a Mountford, and he the heir, who thinks so little of Mount. It seems a slight to the place. I grudge that you should give it up, though it is delightful to think that we may have it; which is absurd, of course—like so many other things.’
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘there is a great deal of the same sort of feeling in my own mind. I can’t care for Mount, can I? I have not seen it for fifteen years; I was a boy then; now I am middle-aged, and don’t care much for anything. But yet I too grudge that I should care for it so little; that I should be so willing to part with it. The feeling is absurd, as you say. If you could have it, Miss Mountford, I should surmount that feeling easily: I should rejoice in the substitution——’
‘And why should not I have it?’ cried Anne quickly, turning upon him. Then she paused and laughed, though with constraint, and begged his pardon. ‘I don’t quite know what you mean,’ she said, ‘or what you know.’
‘Miss Mountford, having said so much to you, may I say a little more? I am one of your nearest relatives, and I am a great deal older than you are. There is some question which divides you from your father. I do not ask nor pretend to divine what it is. You are not agreed—and for this reason he thinks little of my proposal, and does not care to secure the reversion of his own property, the house which, in other circumstances, he would have desired to leave in your possession. I think, so far as I have gone, this is the state of the case?’
‘Well!’ She neither contradicted him nor consented to what he had said, but stood in the fitful moonlight, blown about by the wind, holding her cloak closely round her, and looking at him between the light and gloom.
‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘I have no right whatever to interfere: but—if you could bend your will to his—if you could humour him as long as his life lasts: your father is becoming an old man. Miss Mountford, you would not need perhaps to make this sacrifice for very long.’
She elapsed her hands with impatient alarm, stopping him abruptly—‘Is my father ill? Is there anything you know of that we do not know?’
‘Nothing whatever. I only know his age, no more. Could you not yield to him, subdue your will to his? You are young, and you have plenty of time to wait. Believe me, the happiness that will not bear to be waited for is scarcely worth having. I have no right to say a word—I do not understand the circumstances—actually I know nothing about them. But if you could yield to him, humour him for a time——’
‘Pretend to obey him while he lived,’ Anne said, in a low voice, ‘in order that I may be able to cheat him when he is gone: that is a strange thing to recommend to me.’
‘There is no question of cheating him. What I mean is, that if you would submit to him; give him the pleasure of feeling himself obeyed in the end of his life——’
‘I owe my father obedience at all times; but there are surely distinctions. Will you tell me why you say this to me?’
‘I cannot tell you why: only that there is something going on which will tell against you: sincerely, I do not know what it is. I do not want to counsel you to anything false, and I scarcely know what I am advising you to do. It is only, Miss Mountford, while you can—if you can—to submit to him: or even, if no better can be, seem to submit to him. Submit to him while he lives. This may be a caprice on his part—no more: but at the same time it may affect your whole life.’
Anne stood for a moment irresolute, not knowing what to say. The night favoured her and the dark. She could speak with less embarrassment than if the daylight had been betraying her every look and change of aspect. ‘Mr. Heathcote, I thank you for taking so much interest in me,’ she said.
‘I take the greatest interest in you, Miss Mountford; but in the meantime I would say the same to anyone so young. Things are going on which will injure you for your life. If you can by your submission avert these ills, and make him happier—even for a time?’
‘In short,’ she said again, ‘pretend to give up until he is no longer here to see whether I follow my own inclinations or his? It may be wise advice, Mr. Heathcote; but is it advice which you would like your—anyone you cared for—to take?’
‘I should not like anyone I cared for,’ he said hesitating—‘Pardon me, I cannot help offending you—to be in opposition to her family on such a point.’
The colour rushed to Anne’s face, and anger to her heart: but as the one was invisible, so she restrained the other. She put restraint in every way on herself.
‘That may be so, that may be so! you cannot tell unless you know everything,’ she said. Then, after a pause, ‘But whether it was right or wrong, it is done now, and I cannot alter it. It is not a matter upon which another can decide for you. Obedience at my age cannot be absolute. When you have to make the one choice of your life, can your father do it, or anyone but yourself? Did you think so when you were like me?’ she said, with an appeal full of earnestness which was almost impassioned. This appeal took Heathcote entirely by surprise, and changed all the current of his thoughts.
‘I was never like you,’ he said, hastily—‘like you! I never could compare myself—I never could pretend—I thought I loved half-a-dozen women. Did I ever make the one choice of my life? No, no! A wandering man afloat upon the world can never be like—such as you: there is too great a difference. We cannot compare things so unlike——’
‘But I thought’—she said, then stopped: for his story which she had heard bore a very different meaning. And what right had she to advert to it? ‘I don’t know if you speak in—in respect—or in contempt?’
‘In contempt—could that be? Here is the state of the case as concerns yourself—leaving the general question. My offer to break the entail has no attractions for your father, because he thinks he cannot secure Mount to you. It is doing something against his own heart, against all he wishes, to punish you. Don’t you know, Miss Mountford—but most likely you never felt it—that
Doth work like madness in the brain?’
‘Love?—that would be great love, passionate love—we have not anything of the kind in our house,’ said Anne, in a low tone of emotion. ‘If there was that, do you think I would go against it, even for——’
Here she stopped with a thrill in her voice. ‘I think you must be mistaken a little, Mr. Heathcote. But I do not see how I can change. Papa asked of me—not the lesser things in which I could have obeyed him, but the one great thing in which I could not. Were I to take your advice, I do not know what I could do.’
Then they walked in silence round the side of the house, under the long line of the drawing-room windows, from which indeed the interview had been watched with much astonishment. Rose had never doubted that the heir of the house was on her side. It seemed no better than a desertion that he should walk and talk with Anne in this way. It filled her with amazement. And in such a cold night too! ‘Hush, child!’ her mother was saying; ‘he has been with papa to Hunston, he has heard all the business arrangements talked over. No doubt he is having a little conversation with Anne, for her good.’
‘What are the business arrangements? What is going to happen? Is he trying to make her give up Mr. Douglas?’ said Rose: but her mother could not or would not give her any information. By-and-by Heathcote came in alone. Anne was too much disturbed by this strange interview to appear when it was over in the tranquil circle of the family. She went upstairs to take off her wraps, to subdue the commotion in her mind and the light in her eyes, and tame herself down to the every-day level. Her mind was somewhat confused, more confused than it had yet been as to her duty. Cosmo somehow had seemed to be gently pushed out of the first place by this stranger who never named him, who knew nothing of him, and who certainly ignored the fact that, without Cosmo, Anne no longer lived or breathed. She was angry that he should be so ignorant, yet too shy and proud to mention her lover or refer to him save by implication. She would have been willing to give up corresponding with him, to make any immediate sacrifice to her father’s prejudice against him—had that been ever asked of her. But to give up ‘the one choice of her life,’ as she had said, would have been impossible. Her mind was affected strongly, but not with alarm, by the intelligence that something was being done mysteriously in the dark against her, that the threat under which she had been living was now being carried out. But this did not move her to submit as Heathcote had urged—rather it stimulated her to resist.
Had Cosmo but been at hand! But if he had been at hand, how could he have ventured to give the advice which Heathcote gave? He could not have asked her to yield, to dissemble, to please the old man while his life lasted, to pretend to give himself up. Nothing of this could he have suggested or she listened to. And yet it was what Cosmo would have liked to advise; but to this state of Cosmo’s mind Anne had no clue.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE ABSOLUTE AND THE COMPARATIVE.
This secret incident in the family history left a great deal of agitation in the house. Mrs. Mountford had not been informed in any detail what her husband’s mission to Hunston was. She knew that he had gone to ‘tamper with his will,’ as she said, but what were the exact changes he meant to make in that will she did not know. They were certainly to the advantage of Rose and to the detriment of Anne: so much she was aware of, but scarcely anything more. And she herself was frightened and excited, afraid of all the odium to which she would infallibly be exposed if the positions of the sisters were changed, and more or less affected by a shrinking from palpable injustice; but yet very much excited about Rose’s possible good fortune, and not feeling it possible to banish hopes and imaginations on this point out of her mind. If Rose was put in the first place it would not be just—not exactly just, she said to herself, with involuntary softening of the expression. Rose’s mother (though she would be blamed) knew that of herself she never would have done anything to deprive Anne of her birthright. But still, if papa thought Anne had behaved badly, and that Rose deserved more at his hands, he was far better—no doubt far better, able to judge than she was; and who could say a word against his decision? But it was very irritating, very wearing, not to know. She tried a great many ways of finding out, but she did not succeed. Mr. Mountford was on his guard, and kept his own counsel. He told her of Heathcote’s proposal, but he did not tell her what he himself meant to do. And how it was that her husband was so indifferent to Heathcote’s proposal Mrs. Mountford could not understand. She herself, though not a Mountford born, felt her heart beat at the suggestion. ‘Of course you will jump at it?’ she said.
‘I do not feel in the least disposed to jump at it. If there had been a boy, it might have been different.’ Mrs. Mountford always felt that in this there was an inferred censure upon herself—how unjust a censure it is unnecessary to say: of course she would have had a boy if she could—of that there could be no question.
‘A boy is not everything,’ she said. ‘It would be just the same thing if Anne’s husband took the name.’
‘Don’t speak to me of Anne’s husband,’ he cried, almost with passion. ‘I forbid you to say a word to me of Anne’s affairs.’
‘St. John! what can you mean? It would be barbarous of me, it would be unchristian,’ cried the much-exercised mother, trying hard to do her duty, ‘not to speak of Anne’s affairs. Probably the man you object to will never be her husband; probably——’
‘That is enough, Letitia. I want to hear nothing more upon the subject. Talk of anything else you like, but I will have nothing said about Anne.’
‘Then you are doing wrong,’ she cried, with a little real indignation. After this her tone changed in a moment: something like bitterness stole into it. ‘It shows how much more you are thinking of Anne than of anyone else. You are rejecting Mount because you don’t choose that she should be the heir. You forget you have got another child.’
‘Forget I have got another child! It is the first subject of my thoughts.’
‘Ah, yes, perhaps so far as the money is concerned. Of course if Anne does not have it, there is nobody but Rose who could have any right to it. But you don’t think your youngest daughter good enough to have anything to do with Mount. I see very well how it is, though you don’t choose to explain.’
‘If that is how you prefer to look at it,’ he said; but at this moment a budget of papers arrived from Hunston by a special messenger, and Mrs. Mountford withdrew perforce. She was in a very irritable condition, as all the house knew, ready to find fault with everything. Perhaps it was rather an advantage to her to have a grievance, and to be able to reproach her husband with preferring in his heart the elder to the younger, even when he was preferring the younger to the elder in this new will. ‘There will never be any question of my child’s husband taking the name, that is very clear,’ she said to herself, with much vehemence, nursing her wrath to keep it warm, and thus escaping from the question of injustice to Anne. And again it occurred to her, but with more force than before, that to announce to her husband that Rose was going to marry Heathcote Mountford would be a delightful triumph. She would thus be Mrs. Mountford of Mount in spite of him, and the victory would be sweet. But even this did not seem to progress as it appeared to do at first. Heathcote, too, seemed to be becoming interested in Anne: as if that could advantage him! when it was clear that Anne was ready to lose everything, and was risking everything, every day, for that other! Altogether Mrs. Mountford’s position was not a comfortable one. To know so much and yet to know so little was very hard to bear.
Her husband had a still harder life as being a free agent, and having the whole weight of the decision upon his shoulders. It was not to be supposed that he could free himself entirely from all sense of guilt towards the child whom in his heart he loved most. He had resolved to punish her and he clung to his resolution with all the determination of a narrow mind. He had said that she should never marry the man who was nobody, that if she held by him he would give her fortune to Rose. And she did hold by him, with an obstinacy equal to his own. Was it possible that he should bear this and give her reason to laugh at his words as mere sound and fury signifying nothing? No, whatever he might have to suffer for it, no! Perhaps, however, the great secret of Mr. Mountford’s obstinate adherence to a determination which he could not but know to be unjust and cruel—and of many more of the cruelties and eccentricities that people perpetrate by their wills—lay in the fact that, after all, though he took so much trouble to make his will, he had not the slightest intention of dying. If a man does not die, a monstrous will is no more than an angry letter—a thing which wounds and vexes, perhaps, and certainly is intended to wound and vex, and which suffices to blow off a great deal of the steam of family quarrels; but which does no real harm to anybody, in that there is plenty of time to change it, and to make all right again some time or other. Another thing which assisted him in getting over his own doubts and disquietudes was the strenuous, almost violent, opposition of Mr. Loseby, who did not indeed refuse at last to carry out his wishes, but did so with so many protests and remonstrances that Mr. Mountford’s spirit was roused, and he forgot the questionings of his own conscience in the determination to defend himself against those of this other man who had, he declared to himself, nothing whatever to do with it, and no right to interfere. Could not a man do what he would with his own? The money was his own, the land his own, and his children too were his own. Who else had anything to do with the arrangements he chose to make for them? It was of his grace and favour if he gave them his money at all. He was not bound to do so. It was all his: he was not responsible to any mortal; it was a pretty piece of impudence that Loseby should venture to take so much upon him. This opposition of Loseby’s did him all the good in the world. It set him right with himself. But still those packets of papers, always accompanied by a letter, were annoying to him. ‘I send you the draft of the new codicil, but you must allow me to observe——’ ‘I return draft with the corrections you have made, but I must once more entreat you to pause and reconsider——’ What did the old fellow mean? Did he think he had any right to speak—a country attorney, a mere man of business? To be sure he was an old friend—nobody said he was not an old friend; but the oldest friend in the world should know his own place, and should not presume too far. If Loseby thought that now, when matters had gone this length, his representations would have any effect, he was indeed making a mistake. Before pen had been put to paper Mr. Mountford might perhaps have reconsidered the matter; but now, and in apparent deference to Loseby! this was a complaisance which was impossible.
The whole house was agitated by these proceedings, though publicly not a word was said nor an allusion made to them. Anne even, absolutely disinterested as she was, and full of a fine, but alas! quite unreasonable contempt for fortune—the contempt of one who had no understanding of the want of it—felt it affect her in, as she thought, the most extraordinary and unworthy way. She was astonished at herself. After all, she reflected, with a sense of humiliation, how much power must those external circumstances have on the mind, when she, whose principles and sentiments were all so opposed to their influence, could be thus moved by the possible loss of a little land or a little money! It was pitiful: but she could not help it, and she felt herself humbled to the very dust. In the fulness of her heart she wrote an account of all that was happening to Cosmo, reproaching herself, yet trying to account for her weakness. ‘It cannot be the mere loss of the wealth that affects me,’ Anne wrote. ‘I cannot believe so badly of myself, and I hope—I hope—you will not think so badly of me. It must be (don’t you think?) the pain of feeling that my father thinks so little of me as to put upon me this public mark of his displeasure. I say to myself, dear Cosmo, that this must be the cause of the very unquestionable pain I feel; and I hope you will think so too, and not, that it is the actual money I care for. And, then, there is the humiliation of being put second—I who have always been first. I never thought there was so much in seniority, in all those little superiorities which I suppose we plume ourselves upon without knowing it. I can’t bear the idea of being second, I suppose. And then there is the uncertainty, the sense of something that is going on, in which one is so closely concerned, but which one does not know, and the feeling that others are better informed, and that one is being talked of, and the question discussed how one will bear it. As if it mattered! but I acknowledge with humiliation that it does matter, that I care a great deal more than I ever thought I cared—that I am a much poorer creature than I believed I was. I scorn myself, but I hope my Cosmo will not scorn me. You know the world better, and the heart which is pettier than one likes to think. Perhaps it is women only that are the victims of these unworthy sentiments. I cannot think of you as being moved by them; perhaps what is said of us is true, and we are only “like moonlight unto sunlight, and like water unto wine.” But these are far too pretty comparisons if I am right. However, heaven be praised, there is the happiness of feeling that, if I am but after all a mean and interested creature, there is you to fall back upon, who are so different. O Cosmo mio, what would the world be now if I had not you to fall back upon (I like these words!), and lean against and feel myself doubled, or so much more than doubled, and propped up by you. I feel already a little better for getting this off my mind and telling you what I have found out in myself, and how ashamed I am by my discoveries. You have “larger, other eyes” than mine, and you will understand me, and excuse me, and put me right.’
Cosmo Douglas received this letter in his chambers, to which he had now gone back. He read it with a sort of consternation. First, the news it convened was terrible, making an end of all his hopes; and second, this most ill-timed and unnecessary self-accusation was more than his common sense could put up with. It was not that the glamour of love was wearing off, for he still loved Anne truly; but that anyone in her senses could write so about money was inconceivable to him. Could there be a more serious predicament? and yet here was she apologising to him for feeling it, making believe that he would not feel it. Is she a fool? he said to himself—he was exasperated, though he loved her. And in his reply he could not but in some degree betray this feeling.
‘My dearest,’ he said, ‘I don’t understand how you can blame yourself. The feelings you express are most natural. It is very serious, very painful—infinitely painful to me, that it is my love and the tie which binds us which has brought this upon you. What am I to say to my dear love? Give me up, throw me over? I will bear anything rather than that you should suffer; but I know your generous heart too well to imagine that you will do this. If you were “petty,” as you call yourself (heaven forgive you for such blasphemy!) I could almost be tempted to advise you to have recourse to—what shall I call it?—strategy—one of the fictions that are said to be all fair in love and war. I could do this myself, I am afraid, so little is there in me of the higher sentiment you give me credit for. Rather than that you should lose your birthright, if it were only my happiness that was concerned, I would take myself out of the way, I would give up the sweet intercourse which is life to me, and hope for better days to come. And if you should decide to do this, I will accept whatever you decide, my darling, with full trust in you that you will not forget me, that the sun may shine for me again. Will you do this, my Anne? Obey your father, and let me take my chance: it will be better that than to be the cause of so much suffering to you. But even in saying this I feel that I will wound your tender heart, your fine sense of honour: what can I say? Sacrifice me, my dearest, if you can steel your heart to the possibility of being unkind. I would be a poor wretch, indeed, unworthy the honour you have done me, if I could not trust you and bide my time.’
This letter was very carefully composed and with much thought. If Anne could but have been made a convert to the code that all is fair in love, what a relief it would have been; or if she could have divined the embarrassment that a portionless bride, however much he loved her, would be to Cosmo! But, on the other hand, there was no certainty that, even if the worst came to the worst, she would be a portionless bride; and the chances of alarming her, and bringing about a revulsion of feeling, were almost more dreadful than the chances of losing her fortune. It wanted very delicate steering to hit exactly the right passage between those dangers, and Cosmo was far from confident that he had hit it. A man with a practical mind and a real knowledge of the world has a great deal to go through when he has to deal with the absolute in the person of a young inexperienced and high-flown girl, altogether ignorant of the world. And, as a matter of fact, the letter did not please Anne. It gave her that uneasy sense of coming in contact with new agencies, powers unknown, not to be judged by her previous canons, which is one of the first disenchantments of life. How to lie and yet not be guilty of lying was a new science to her. She did not understand that casuistry of love, which makes it a light offence to deceive. She understood the art of taking her own way, but that of giving up her own way, and yet resolving to have it all the same, was beyond her power. What they wanted her to do was to deceive her father, to wait—surely the most terrible of all meanness—till he should be dead and then break her promise to him. This was what Heathcote had advised, and now Cosmo—Cosmo himself replied to her when she threw herself upon him for support, in the same sense. A chill of disappointment, discouragement, came over her. If this was the best thing to be done, it seemed to Anne that her own folly was better than their wisdom. Had she been told that love and a stout heart and two against the world were better than lands or wealth, she would have felt herself strong enough for any heroism. But this dash of cold water in her face confounded her. What did they mean by telling her to obey her father? he had not asked for obedience. He had said, ‘If you do not give up this man, I will take your fortune from you,’ and she had proudly accepted the alternative. That was all; and was she to go back to him now, to tell him a lie, and with a mental reservation say, ‘I prefer my fortune; I have changed my mind; I will give him up?’ Anne knew that she could not have survived the utter scorn of herself which would have been her portion had she done this. Were it necessary to do it, the proud girl would have waited till the other sacrifice was completed, till her father had fulfilled his threat. Cosmo’s letter gave her a chill in the very warmth of her unbounded faith in him. She would not allow to herself that he did not understand her, that he had failed of what she expected from him. This was honour, no doubt, from his point of view; but she felt a chill sense of loneliness, a loss of that power of falling back upon an unfailing support which she had so fondly and proudly insisted on. She was subdued in her courage and pride and confidence. And yet this was not all that Anne had to go through.
It was Mr. Loseby who was the next operator upon her disturbed and awakening thoughts. One wintry afternoon when November had begun, he drove over to Mount in his little phaeton with a blue bag on the seat beside him. ‘Don’t say anything to your master yet, Saymore,’ he said, when he got down, being familiar with all the servants, and the habits of the house, as if it had been his own. ‘Do you think you could manage to get me a few words privately with Miss Anne?’
‘If I might make bold to ask, sir,’ said Saymore, ‘is it true as there is something up about Miss Anne? Things is said and things is ‘inted, and we’re interested, and we don’t know what to think. Is it along of that gentleman, Mr. Loseby? Master is set against the match, I know as much as that.’
‘I dare say you’re right,’ said the lawyer. ‘An old family servant like you, Saymore, sees many things that the rest of the world never guess at. Hold your tongue about it, old fellow, that’s all I’ve got to say. And try whether you can bring me to speech of Miss Anne. Don’t let anyone else know. You can manage it, I feel sure.’
‘I’ll try, sir,’ Saymore said, and he went through the house on tiptoe from room to room, looking for his young mistress, with the air of a conspirator in an opera, doing everything he could to betray himself. When he found her, he stole behind a large screen, and made mysterious gestures which everybody saw. ‘What is it, Saymore?’ asked Anne. Then Saymore pointed downstairs, with jerks over his shoulder, and much movement of his eyebrows. ‘There’s somebody, Miss Anne, as wants a word with you,’ he said, with the deepest meaning. Anne’s heart began to beat. Could it be Cosmo come boldly, in person, to comfort her? She was in the billiard-room with Rose and Heathcote. She put down the cue which she had been using with very little energy or interest, and followed the old man to the hall. ‘Who is it, Saymore?’ she asked tremulously. ‘It’s some one that’s come for your good. I hope you’ll listen to him, Miss Anne, I hope you’ll listen to him.’ Anne’s heart was in her mouth. If he should have come so far to see her, to support her, to make up for the deficiency of his letter! She seemed to tread on air as she went down the long passages. And it was only Mr. Loseby after all!
The disappointment made her heart sink. She could scarcely speak to him. It was like falling down to earth from the skies. But Mr. Loseby did not notice this. He put his arm into hers as the rector did, with a fatherly familiarity, and drew her to the large window full of the greyness of the pale and misty November sky. ‘I have something to say to you, my dear Miss Anne—something that is of consequence. My dear, do you know anything about the business that brings me here?’
‘I know—that my father is making some alteration in his will, Mr. Loseby. I don’t know any more—why should I?—I do not see why I should believe that it has anything to do with me.’
‘Anne, my dear, I can’t betray your father’s secrets; but I am afraid it has something to do with you. Now look here, my dear girl—why it is not so long since you used to sit on my knee! Tell me what this is, which has made you quarrel with papa——’
‘Mr. Loseby!—I—do not know that I have quarrelled with my father——’
‘Don’t be so stern, my dear child. Call him papa. After all he is your papa, Anne. Who was so fond of you when you were a tiny creature? I remember you a baby in his arms, poor man! when he lost his first wife, before he married again. Your mother died so young, and broke his life in two. That is terribly hard upon a man. Think of him in that light, my dear. He was wrapped up in you when you were a baby. Come! let me go to him, an old friend, your very oldest friend, and say you are ready to make it up.’
‘To make it up?—but it is not a quarrel—not anything like a quarrel.’
‘Yes, yes, it is—I know better. Only say that you will do nothing without his consent; that you will form no engagement; that you will give up corresponding and all that. You ought to, my dear; it is your duty. And when it will save you from what would inconvenience you all your life! What, Anne, you are not going to be offended with what I say, your oldest friend?’
‘Mr. Loseby, you do not understand,’ she said. She had attempted, in her impatience, to withdraw her arm from his. ‘He said “Give up”—I do not wish to conceal who it is—“give up Mr. Douglas, or I will take away your portion and give it to your sister.” What could I say? Could I show so little faith in the choice I had made—so little—so little—regard for the gentleman I am going to marry, as to say, “I prefer my fortune?” I will not do it; it would be falsehood and baseness. This is all the alternative I have ever had. It is like saying, “Your money or your life”——’
‘In that case one gives the money, Anne, to save the life.’
‘And so I have done,’ she said, proudly. ‘Dear Mr. Loseby, I don’t want to vex you. I don’t want to quarrel with anyone. Can I say, when it is not true—“I have changed my mind, I like the money best?” Don’t you see that I could not do that? then what can I do?’
‘You can give in, my dear, you can give in,’ repeated the lawyer. ‘No use for entering into particulars. So long as you authorise me to say you give in—that is all, I am sure, that is needful. Don’t turn me off, Anne—give me the pleasure of reconciling you, my dear.’
Mr. Loseby had always given himself out as one of Anne’s adorers. His eyes glistened with the moisture in them. He pressed her arm within his. ‘Come, my dear! I never was a father myself, which I have always regretted; but I have known you all your life. Let me do you a good turn—let me put a stop to all this nonsense, and tell him you will make it up.’
Anne’s heart had sunk very low; with one assault of this kind after another she was altogether discouraged. She did not seem to care what she said, or what interpretation was put upon her words. ‘You may say what you please,’ she said. ‘I will make it up, if you please: but what does that mean, Mr. Loseby? I will give up writing, if he wishes it—but how can I give up the—gentleman I am engaged to? Do you think I want to quarrel? Oh, no, no—but what can I do? Give up!—I have no right. He has my promise and I have his. Can I sell that for money?’ cried Anne, indignantly. ‘I will do whatever papa pleases—except that.’
‘You are making him do a dreadful injustice, Anne. Come, what does this young fellow say? Does he not want to release you, to save you from suffering? does he hold you to your promise in the face of such a loss? An honourable young man would tell you: never mind me——’
Anne detached her arm with a little energy from his. ‘Why should you torment me?’ she cried. ‘An honourable man?—is it honour, then, to prefer, as you said yourself, one’s money to one’s life?’
‘My dear child, money is always there, it is always to be relied upon; it is a strong back, whatever happens—whereas this, that you call life——!’ cried Mr. Loseby, spreading out his hands and lifting up his eyebrows; he had chosen the very image she had herself used when writing to her lover. Was this then what they all thought, that wealth was the best thing to fall back upon? She smiled, but it was a smile of pain.
‘If I thought so, I should not care either for the life or the money,’ she said.
Mr. Loseby held up his hands once more. He shook his shining little bald head, and took up his blue bag from the table. ‘You are as obstinate, as pig-headed, the whole family of you—one worse than another,’ he said.
CHAPTER XVIII.
AFTERTHOUGHTS.
There were two witnesses wanted for the will; one of these was Heathcote Mountford, the other the clerk whom Mr. Loseby had brought with him in his phaeton. He stood by himself, looking as like an indignant prophet whose message from heaven has been disregarded, as a fat little shining man of five feet four could look. It had been to make a last attempt upon the mind of Mr. Mountford, and also to try what effect he could produce on the heart of Anne, that he had come himself, facing all the risks of an east wind, with perhaps snow to come. And there had been a long and stormy interview in the library before the clerk had been called in. ‘She will give up the correspondence. She is as sweet as a girl can be,’ said the old lawyer, fibbing manfully; ‘one can see that it goes to her heart that you should think her disobedient. Mountford, you don’t half know what a girl that is. But for the money she would come to you, she would put herself at your feet, she would give up everything. But she says, bless her! “Papa would think it was because of the money. Do you think I would do that for the money which I wouldn’t do to please him?” That’s Anne all over,’ said her mendacious advocate. ‘After you have accomplished this injustice and cut her off, that sweet creature will come to you some fine day and say, “Papa, I give him up. I give everything up that displeases you—I cannot go against my duty.”’
There was a slight attempt at imitation of Anne’s voice in Mr. Loseby’s tone; he tried a higher key when he made those imaginary speeches on her behalf: but his eyes were glistening all the time: he did not intend to be humorous. And neither was Mr. Mountford a man who saw a joke. He took it grimly without any softening.
‘When she does that, Loseby, if I see reason to believe that she means it, I’ll make another will.’
‘You speak at your ease of making another will—are you sure you will have it in your power? When a man makes an unjust will, I verily believe every word is a nail in his coffin. It is very seldom,’ said Mr. Loseby, with emphasis, carried away by his feelings, ‘that they live to repent.’
Mr. Mountford paled in spite of himself. He looked up sharply at his mentor, then laughed a short uneasy laugh. ‘There’s nothing like a partisan,’ he said; ‘I call that brutal—if it were not so silly, Loseby—unworthy a man of your sense.’
‘By——!’ the lawyer cried to relieve himself, ‘I don’t see the silliness; when you’ve taken a wrong step that may plunge other people into misery, I cannot see how you can have any confidence, even in the protection of God; and you are not in your first youth any more than myself. The thought of dying can’t be put aside at your age or at my age, Mountford, as if we were boys of twenty. We have got to think of it, whether we will or not.’
This address made Mr. Mountford furious. He felt no occasion at all in himself to think of it; it was a brutal argument, and quite beyond all legitimate discussion; but nevertheless it was not pleasant. He did not like the suggestion. ‘Perhaps you’ll call that clerk of yours, and let us finish the business, before we get into fancy and poetry. I never knew you were so imaginative,’ he said, with a sneer; but his lips were bluish, notwithstanding this attempt at disdain. And Mr. Loseby stood with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, as if with a desire not to see, holding his little bald head high in the air, with a fine indignation in every line of his figure. Heathcote, who was brought in to sign as one of the witnesses, felt that it needed all his consciousness of the importance of what was going on to save him from indecorous laughter. When Mr. Mountford said, ‘I deliver this,’ ‘And I protest against it,’ Mr. Loseby cried, in a vehement undertone, ‘protest against it before earth and heaven.’ ‘Do you mean little Thompson there and Heathcote Mountford?’ said the testator, looking up with a laugh that was more like a snarl. And Heathcote too perceived that his very lips were palish, bluish, and the hand not so steady as usual with which he pushed the papers away. But Mr. Mountford recovered himself with great courage. ‘Now that I have finished my business, we will have time to consider your proposition,’ he said, putting his hand on Heathcote’s shoulder as he got up from his chair. ‘That is, if you have time to think of anything serious in the midst of all this ball nonsense. You must come over for the ball, Loseby, a gay young bachelor like you.’
‘You forget I am a widower, Mr. Mountford,’ said the lawyer, with great gravity.
‘To be sure; I beg your pardon; but you are always here when there is anything going on; and while the young fools are dancing, we’ll consider this question of the entail.’
‘I don’t know what he means,’ Mr. Loseby said, some time after taking Heathcote into a corner; ‘consider the question of the entail the moment he has made another will! I’ll tell you what it is—he is repenting already. I thought what I said couldn’t be altogether without effect. St. John Mountford is as obstinate as a pig, but he is not a fool. I thought he must be touched by what I said. That’s how it is; he would not seem to give in to us; but if you agree on this point, it will be a fine excuse for beginning it all over again. That’s a new light—and it’s exactly like him—it’s St. John Mountford all over,’ said the lawyer, rubbing his hands; ‘as full of crotchets as an egg is full of meat—but yet not such a bad fellow after all.’
The household, however, had no such consoling consciousness of the possibility there was of having all done over again, and there was a great deal of agitation on the subject, both upstairs and down. Very silent upstairs—where Mrs. Mountford, in mingled compunction on Anne’s account and half-guilty joy (though it was none of her doing she said to herself) in respect to Rose’s (supposedly) increased fortune, was reduced to almost complete dumbness, her multiplicity of thoughts making it impossible to her to share in Rose’s chatter about the coming ball; and where Anne, satisfied to think that whatever was to happen had happened, and could no longer be supposed to depend upon any action of hers, sat proud and upright by the writing-table, reading—and altogether out of the talk which Rose carried on, and was quite able to carry on whatever happened, almost entirely by herself. Rose had the same general knowledge that something very important was going on as the rest; but to her tranquil mind, a bird in the hand was always more interesting than two or three in the bush. Downstairs, however, Saymore and Worth and the cook were far from silent. They had a notion of the state of affairs which was wonderfully accurate, and a strong conviction that Miss Anne for her sins had been deposed from her eminence and Miss Rose put in her place. The feeling of Saymore and the cook was strong in Anne’s favour, but Mrs. Worth was not so certain. ‘Miss Rose is a young lady that is far more patient to have her things tried on,’ Worth said. Saymore brought down an account of the party in the drawing-room, which was very interesting to the select party in the housekeeper’s room. ‘Missis by the side of the fire, as serious as a judge—puckering up her brows—never speaking a word.’
‘I dare say she was counting,’ said Worth.
‘And Miss Anne up by the writing-table, with her back against the wall, reading a book, never taking no notice no more than if she were seventy; and Miss Rose a-chattering. The two before the fire had it all their own way. They were writing down and counting up all the folks for this dance. Dash the dance!’ said Saymore; ‘that sort of a nonsense is no satisfaction to reasonable folks. But Miss Rose, she’s as merry as a cricket with her Cousin Heathcote and Cousin Heathcote at every word. She knows it’s all to her advantage what’s been a-doing to-day.’
‘That might be a match, I shouldn’t wonder—eh!’ said the cook, who was from the north-country; ‘the luck as some folks have—I never can understand these queer wills; why can’t gentlefolks do like poor folks, and divide fair, share and share alike? As for what you call entail, I don’t make head or tail of it; but if Miss Rose’s to get all the brass, and marry the man with the land, and Miss Anne to get nought, it’s easy to see that isn’t fair.’
‘If it’s the cousin you mean,’ said Mrs. Worth, ‘he is just twice too old for Miss Rose.’
‘Then he will know how to take care of her,’ said Saymore, which made the room ring with laughter: for though the affairs of the drawing-room were interesting, there was naturally a still warmer attraction in the drama going on downstairs.
Mr. Mountford was in his room alone. He had retired there after dinner, as was his custom. At dinner he had been very serious. He had not been able to get Mr. Loseby’s words out of his mind. Every word a nail in his coffin! What superstitious folly it was! No man ever died the sooner for attending to his affairs, for putting them in order, he said to himself. But this was not simply putting them in order. His mind was greatly disturbed. He had thought that, as soon as he had done it he would be relieved and at ease from the pressure of the irritation which had disturbed him so; but now that it was done he was more disturbed than ever. Perhaps for the first time he fully realised that, if anything should happen to himself, one of his children would be made to sustain the cruellest disappointment and wrong. ‘It will serve her right,’ he tried to say to himself, ‘for the way she has behaved to me;’ but when it became really apparent to him that this would be, not merely a tremendous rebuff and discomfiture for Anne, but a settled fate which she could not escape, a slight shiver ran through him. He had not seen this so plainly before. He had meant to punish her, cruelly, even bitterly, and with an ironical completeness. But then he had never meant to die. This made a greater difference than it was possible to say. He meant that she should know that her marriage was impossible; that he had the very poorest opinion of the man she had chosen; that he would not trust him, and was determined never to let him handle a penny of his (Mr. Mountford’s) money. In short, he said to himself, what he meant was to save Anne from this adventurer, who would no longer wish to marry her when he knew her to be penniless. He meant, he persuaded himself, that his will should have this effect in his lifetime; he meant it to be known, and set things right, not in the future, but at once. Now that all was done he saw the real meaning of the tremendous instrument he had made for the first time. To save Anne from an adventurer—not to die and leave her without provision, not really to give anything away from her, though she deserved it after the way in which she had defied him, had been his intention. Mr. Mountford thought this over painfully, not able to think of anything else. Last night even, no later, he had been thinking it over vindictively, pleased with the cleverness and completeness with which he had turned the tables upon his daughter. It had pleased him immoderately before it was done. But now that it was done, and old Loseby, like an old fool, had thrown in that bit of silly superstition about the nails in his coffin, it did not please him any longer. His face had grown an inch or two longer, nothing like a smile would come whatever he might do. When his wife came ‘to sit with him,’ as she often did, perturbed herself, half frightened, half exultant, and eager to learn all she could, he sent her away impatiently. ‘I have a great deal to do,’ he said. ‘What do I care for your ball? For heaven’s sake let me have a little quiet. I have a great mind to say that there shall be no ball——’ ‘Papa!’ his wife said, ‘you would not be so unkind. Rose has set her heart on it so.’ ‘Oh confound——!’ he said. Did he mean confound Rose, whom he had just chosen to be his heir, whom he had promoted to the vacant place of Anne? All through this strange business Mrs. Mountford’s secret exultation, when she dared to permit herself to indulge it, in the good fortune of her daughter had been chequered by a growing bitterness in the thought that, though Rose was to have the inheritance, Anne still retained by far the higher place even in her husband’s thoughts. He was resolved apparently that nobody should have any satisfaction in this overturn—not even the one person who was benefited. Mrs. Mountford went away with a very gloomy countenance after the confound——! The only thing that gave her any consolation was to see the brisk conversation going on between her daughter and Heathcote Mountford. Anne sat stiff and upright, quite apart from them, reading, but the two who were in front of the cheerful fire in the full light of the lamp were chattering with the gayest ease. Even Mrs. Mountford wondered at Rose, who surely knew enough to be a little anxious, a little perturbed as her mother was—but who showed no more emotion than the cricket that chirped on the hearth. Was it mere innocence and childish ease of heart, or was it that there was no heart at all? Even her mother could not understand her. And Heathcote, too, who knew a great deal, if not all that was going on, though he threw back lightly the ball of conversation, wondered at the gaiety of this little light-minded girl who was not affected, not a hair’s breadth, by the general agitation of the house, nor by the disturbed countenance of her mother, nor by her sister’s seriousness. He talked—it was against his principles not to respond to the gay challenges thrown out to him—but he wondered. Did she know nothing, though everybody else knew? Was she incapable of divining that other people were in trouble? The conversation was very lively in front of the fire, but he, too, as well as the others, wondered at Rose.