After the interview with Mr. Mountford, and after the still greater shock of Anne’s intimation that her father would not yield, Cosmo’s mind had been much exercised, and there had been a moment, in which he had not known what to do or say. Marriage without pecuniary advantage was impossible to him—he could not, he dared not think of it. It meant downfall of every kind, and a narrowing of all the possibilities of life. It would be ruin to him and also to the girl who should be his wife. It would be impossible for him to keep her in the position she belonged to, and he would have to relinquish the position which belonged to him—two things not for a moment to be thought of. The only thing possible, evidently, was to wait. He was in love, but he was not anxious to marry at once. In any case it would be expedient to defer that event; and the old man might die—nay, most likely would die—and would not certainly change his will if all things were kept quiet and no demonstration made. He left Mount full of suppressed excitement, yet glad to be able to withdraw; to go away without compromising Anne, without being called upon to confront or defy the harsh parent, or do anything to commit himself. If Anne but held her tongue, there was no reason why Mr. Mountford might not suppose that she had given Cosmo up, and Cosmo was rather pleased than otherwise with the idea that she might do so. He wanted no sentimental passion; no sacrifice of everything for his sake. All for love and the world well lost, was not in the least a sentiment which commended itself to him. He would have much preferred that she had dissembled altogether, and put on an appearance of obeying her father; but this was a thing that he could not recommend her to do, any more than he could put forth his invented story of the ruined Douglasses. The fashion of his age and his kind and his education was so against lying, that it could be practised only individually, so to speak, and as it were accidentally. You might be betrayed into it by the emergency of a moment, but you could not, unless you were very sure indeed of your ground and your coadjutor, venture to suggest falsehood. The thing could not be done. This, however, was what he would have thought the safest thing—that all should fall back into its usual state; that Anne should go on as if she were still simply Anne, without any difference in her life; and that, except for the fine but concealed bond between them, which should be avowed on the first possible occasion, but never made any display of while things were not ripe, everything should be exactly as before. This was perfectly fair in love, according to all known examples and rules. Something like it had happened in the majority of similar cases, and indeed, Cosmo said to himself with a half smile, a lover might feel himself little flattered for whom such a sacrifice would not be made. But all the same he could not suggest it. He could not say to Anne, ‘Tell a lie for me—persuade your father that all is over between us, though it is not all over between us and never shall be till death parts us.’ A young man of the nineteenth century, brought up at a public school and university, a member of the bar, and in very good society, could not say that. It would have been an anachronism. He might wish it, and did do so fervently; but to put it in words was impossible.
It was with this view, however, that Cosmo had omitted all mention of correspondence in his last interviews with Anne. They were full of so much that was novel and exciting to her that she did not notice the omission, nor in the hurry and rush of new sensations in her mind had she that eager longing for a letter which most girls would have felt on parting with their lovers. She had no habit of letters. She had never been at school or made any friendships of the kind that need to be solaced by continual outpourings upon paper. Almost all her intimates were about her, seeing her often, not standing in need of correspondence. She had not even said in the hurry of parting, ‘You will write.’ Perhaps she saw it like himself, but like himself was unwilling to propose the absolute concealment which was desirable. Cosmo’s mind had been full of nothing else on his way to Scotland to his friend’s moor. He had thought of her half the time, and the other half of the time he had thought how to manage, how to secure her without injuring her (which was how he put it); the long night’s journey was made short to him by these thoughts. He did not sleep, and he did not want to sleep; the darkness of the world through which he was rushing, the jumble of perpetual sound, which made a sort of atmosphere about him, was as a hermitage to Cosmo, as it has been to many before him. Railway trains, indeed, are hermitages in life for the much-pondering and careworn sons of the present age. There they can shut themselves up and think at will. He turned it all over and over in his mind. No wild notion—such as had moved the inexperienced mind of Anne with a thrill of delightful impulse—of rushing back to work and instantly beginning the toil which was to win her, occurred to Anne’s lover. To be sure it was the Long Vacation, which is a thing girls do not take into account, and Cosmo would have smiled at the notion of giving up his shooting and going back to his chambers out of the mere sentiment of losing no time, which probably would have appeared to Anne a heroic and delightful idea; but he did what Anne could not have done; he went into the whole question, all the pros and cons, and weighed them carefully. He had a long journey, far up into the wilds, by the Highland railway. Morning brought him into the land of hills and rivers, and noon to the bleaker mountains and glens, wealthy only in grouse and deer. He did nothing but think it over in the night and through the day. Nevertheless, Cosmo, when he reached Glentuan, was as little worn out as it becomes an experienced young Englishman to be after a long journey. He was quite fresh for dinner after he had performed the customary rites—ready to take his part in all the conversation and help in the general amusement.
‘Douglas—which of the Douglasses does he belong to?’ one of the guests asked after he had withdrawn.
‘I’ve always known him as Douglas of Trinity,’ said the host.
‘Trinity, Trinity,’ answered the other, who was a local personage, thinking of nothing but territorial designation, ‘I never heard of any Douglasses of Trinity. Do you mean the place near Edinburgh where all the seaside villas are?’
‘He means Cambridge,’ said another, laughing.
‘Douglas is the best fellow in the world, but he is—nobody: at least so I’ve always heard.’
Cosmo did not overhear this conversation, but he knew that it had taken place as well as if he had heard it; not that it did him the least harm with his comrades of the moment, to whom he was a very nice fellow, a capital companion, thoroughly acquainted with all the habits and customs of their kind, and though no great shot, yet good enough for all that was necessary, good enough to enjoy the sport, which nobody who is awkward and really ignorant can do. But he knew that one time or other this little conversation would take place, and though he felt that he might do himself the credit to say that he had no false shame, nor attached any exaggerated importance to the subject, still it was no doubt of more importance to him than it was to those with whom it was only one out of many subjects of a casual conversation. All the same, however, even these casual talkers did not forget it. Strange superstition, strangest folly, he might well say to himself with such a smile as was possible in the circumstances. Douglas of Trinity—Douglas of Lincoln’s Inn meant something—but to be one of the Douglasses of some dilapidated old house, what did that mean? This question, however, had nothing to do with the matter, and the smile had not much pleasantness in it, as may easily be perceived.
The fruit of Cosmo’s cogitations, however, was that he wrote to Anne, as has been seen, and sent his letter to Charley Ashley to be delivered. This was partly policy and partly uncertainty, a sort of half measure to feel his way; but, on the whole, was most of all the necessity he felt to say something to her, to seize upon her, not to let this beautiful dream escape from him.
‘We said nothing about writing, and I don’t know, my dearest, what you wish in this respect. Silence seems impossible, but if you wish it, if you ask this sacrifice, I will be content with my perfect trust in my Anne, and do whatever she would have me do. I know that it would be against your pride and your delicacy, my darling, to keep up any correspondence which the severest parent could call clandestine, and if I take advantage of a good fellow who is devoted to us both, for once, it is not with the least idea that you will like it, or will allow me to continue it. But what can I do? I must know what is your will in this matter, and I must allow myself the luxury once, if only once, of telling you on paper what I have tried to tell you so often in words—how I love you, my love, and what it is to me to love you—a new creation, an opening up both of earth and heaven.’ (We need not continue what Cosmo said on this point because, to be sure, it has all been said over and over again, sometimes no doubt worse, and sometimes unquestionably a great deal better, than he said it: and there is no advantage that we know of to be got from making young persons prematurely acquainted with every possible manner in which this sentiment can be expressed.) At the end he resumed, with generous sentiment, which was perfectly genuine, and yet not any more free of calculation and the idea of personal advantage than all the rest was:—
‘Charley Ashley is the truest friend that ever man had; he has loved you all his life (that is nothing wonderful), and yet, though, at such a cost as I do not like to try to estimate, he still loves me, though he knows that I have come between him and any possibility there was that he should ever win any return from you. To do him full justice, I do not think he ever looked for any return, but was content to love you as in itself a happiness and an elevation for which a man might well be grateful; but still it is hard upon him to see a man no better than himself, nay, less worthy in a hundred ways, winning the unimaginable reward for which he, poor Charley, had not so much as ventured to hope. Yet with a generosity—how can I express it, how could I ever have emulated it?—which is beyond words, he has neither withdrawn his brotherly kindness from me, nor refused to stand by me in my struggle towards you and happiness. What can we say to a friend like this? Trust him, my dearest, as I do. I do not mean that he should be the medium of communication between us, but there are ways in which he may be of help and comfort to us both; and, in the meantime, you will at your dear pleasure tell me yourself what you wish to do, or let me know by him: if I may write, if I must be silent, if you will make me a happy man now and then by a word from your hand, or if I am to wait for that hand till I dare claim it as mine. Nay, but my Anne, my darling, for once, if for once only, you must send two or three words, a line or two, to give me patience and hope.’
As he folded this up his whole heart longed for the ‘word or two’ he had asked for. Without that it almost seemed to him that all that had passed before might mean nothing, might roll away like the mists, like the fabric of a vision. But at the same time Cosmo felt in his heart that if Anne would send him the consolation of this one letter through Charley Ashley, and after that bid him be silent and wait for chance opportunities or modes of communication, that she would do well. It was what he would have advised her to do had he been free to tell her exactly what he thought. But he was not free to advise such a proceeding. It was not in his rôle; nor could he have proposed any clandestine correspondence, though he would have liked it. It was impossible. Anne would most probably have thrown him off as altogether unworthy had he proposed anything of the kind to her, or at least would have regarded him with very different eyes from those with which she looked upon him now. And even independent of this he could not have done it: the words would have failed him to make such a proposal. It was contrary to all tradition, and to the spirit of his class and time.
When he had despatched this letter Cosmo’s bosom’s lord sat more lightly upon his throne. He went out next morning very early and made a respectable, a very respectable, bag. Nobody could say that he was a cockney sportsman not knowing how to aim or hold a gun. In this as in everything else he had succeeded in mastering the rules of every fashion, and lived as a man who was to the manner born. He was indeed to the manner born, with nothing in him, so far as he was aware, that went against the traditions of a gentleman: and yet similar conversations to that one which occurred in the smoking-room, occurred occasionally on the hills among the heather. ‘Of what Douglasses is your friend?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know that he is of any Douglasses,’ the master of the moor would say with impatience. ‘He is a capital fellow, and a rising man in the law—that’s all I know about him;’ or else, ‘He is a college friend, a man who took a very good degree, as clever a fellow as you will meet with, and getting on like a house on fire.’ But all these recommendations, as they all knew, were quite beside the question. He was of nowhere in particular—he was nobody. It was a mysterious dispensation, altogether unexplainable, that such a man should have come into the world without suitable ancestors who could have responded for him. But he had done so. And he could not even produce that fabulous house which, as he had invented it, was a far prettier and more truly gentle and creditable family than half the families who would have satisfied every question. Thus the very best quality of his age was against him as well as its superstitions. Had he been an enriched grocer to whom it could have done no possible good, he might easily have invented a pedigree; but being himself he could not do it. And thus the injury he had sustained at the hands of Providence was beyond all remedy or hope of amendment.
‘Has Anne spoken to you at all on the subject—what does she intend to do?’
Mr. Mountford was subjecting his wife to a cross-examination as to the affairs of the household. It was a practice he had. He felt it to be beneath his dignity to inquire into these details in his own person, but he found them out through her. He was not a man who allowed his authority to be shared. So far as ordering the dinner went and regulating the household bills, he was content to allow that she had a mission in the world; but everything of greater importance passed through his hands. Mrs. Mountford was in the habit of expressing her extreme satisfaction with this rule, especially in respect to Anne. ‘What could I have done with a stubborn girl like that? she would have worn me out. The relief that it is to feel that she is in her father’s hands and not in mine!’ she was in the habit of saying. But, though she was free of the responsibility, she was not without trouble in the matter. She had to submit to periodical questioning, and, if she had been a woman of fine susceptibilities, would have felt herself something like a spy upon Anne. But her susceptibilities were not fine, and the discussion of other people which her husband’s inquisitions made necessary was not disagreeable to her. Few people find it altogether disagreeable to sit in a secret tribunal upon the merits and demerits of those around them. Sometimes Mrs. Mountford would rebel at the closeness of the examination to which she was subjected, but on the whole she did not dislike it. She was sitting with her husband in that business-room of his which could scarcely be dignified by the name of a library. She had her usual worsted work in her hand, and a wisp of skeins plaited together in various bright colours on a table before her. Sometimes she would pause to count one, two, three, of the stitches on her canvas; her head was bent over it, which often made it more easy to say what she had got to say. A serious truth may be admitted, or censure conveyed, in the soft sentence which falls from a woman’s lips with an air of having nothing particular in it, when the one, two, three, of the Berlin pattern, the exact shade of the wool, is evidently the primary subject in her mind. Mrs. Mountford felt and employed to the utmost the shield of her work. It made everything more easy, and took away all tedium from these prolonged conversations. As for Mr. Mountford, there was always a gleam of expectation in his reddish hazel eyes. Whether it was about a servant, or his children, or even an indifferent person in the parish, he seemed to be always on the verge of finding something out. ‘What does she intend to do?’ he repeated. ‘She has never mentioned the subject again, but I suppose she has talked it over with you.’
‘Something has been said,’ answered his wife; ‘to say that she had talked it over with me would not be true, St. John. Anne is not one to talk over anything with anybody, especially me. But something was said. I confess I thought it my duty, standing in the place of a mother to her, to open the subject.’
‘And what is she going to do?’
‘You must know very little about girls, St. John, though you have two of your own (and one of them as difficult to deal with as I ever encountered), if you think that all that is wanted in order to know what they are going to do is to talk it over with them—it is not so easy as that.’
‘I suppose you heard something about it, however,’ he said, with a little impatience. ‘Does she mean to give the fellow up? that is the chief thing I want to know.’
‘I never knew a girl yet that gave a fellow up, as you call it, because her father told her,’ said Mrs. Mountford: and then she paused, hesitating between two shades; ‘that blue is too blue, it will never go with the others. I must drive into Hunston to-day or to-morrow, and see if I cannot get a better match.—As for giving up, that was not spoken of, St. John. Nobody ever believes in it coming to that. They think you will be angry; but that of course, if they stand out, you will come round at the last.’
‘Does Anne think that? She must know very little of me if she thinks that I will come round at the last.’
‘They all think it,’ said Mrs. Mountford, calmly counting the lines of the canvas with her needle: ‘I am not speaking only of Anne. I daresay she counts upon it less than most do, for it must be allowed that she is very like you, St. John, and as obstinate as a mule. You have to be very decided indeed before a girl will think you mean it. Why, there is Rose. What I say is not blaming Anne, for I am a great deal more sure what my own child would think than what Anne would think. Rose would no more believe that you would cross her seriously in anything she wanted than she would believe you could fly if you tried. She would cry outwardly, I don’t doubt, but she would smile in her heart. She would say to herself, “Papa go against me! impossible!” and the little puss would look very pitiful and submissive, and steal her arms round your neck and coax you, and impose upon you. You would be more than mortal, St. John, if you did not come round at the end.’
Mr. Mountford’s countenance relaxed while this description was made—an almost imperceptible softening crept about the corners of his mouth. He seemed to feel the arms of the little puss creeping round his neck, and her pretty little rosebud face close to his own. But he shook off the fascination abruptly, and frowned to make his wife think him insensible to it. ‘I hope I am not such a weak fool,’ he said. ‘And there is not much chance that Anne would try that way,’ he added, with some bitterness. Rose was supposed to be his favourite child, but yet he resented the fact that no such confession of his absolute authority and homage to his power was to be looked for from Anne. Mrs. Mountford had no deliberate intention of presenting his eldest daughter to him under an unfavourable light, but if she wished him to perceive the superior dutifulness and sweetness of her own child, could anyone wonder? Rose had been hardly used by Nature. She ought to have been a boy and the heir of entail, or, if not so, she ought to have had a brother to take that position, and protect her interests; and neither of these things had happened. That her father should love her best and do all in his will that it was possible to do for her, was clearly Rose’s right as compensation for the other injustices of fate.
‘No,’ said Mrs. Mountford, after a longer piece of mental arithmetic than usual, ‘that is not Anne’s way; but still you must do Anne justice, St. John. She will never believe, any more than Rose, that you will go against her. I don’t say this from anything she has said to me. Indeed, I cannot say that she has spoken to me at all on the subject. It was I that introduced it; I thought it my duty.’
‘And she gave you to understand that she would go on with it, whatever I might say; and that, like an old fool, if she stuck to it, I would give in at the end?’
‘St. John! St. John! how you do run away with an idea! I never said that, nor anything like it. I told you what, judging from what I know of girls, I felt sure Anne must feel. They never dream of any serious opposition: as we have given in to them from their childhood, they think we will continue to give in to them to the end; and I am sure it is quite reasonable to think so; only recollect how often we have yielded, and done whatever they pleased.’
‘This time she will find that I will not yield,’ said Mr. Mountford, getting up angrily, and planting himself in front of the polished fireplace, which was innocent of any warmth. He set himself very firmly upon his feet, which were wide apart, and put his hands under his coat tails in the proverbial attitude of an Englishman. To see him standing there you would have thought him a man who never would yield; and yet he had, as his wife said, yielded to a great many vagaries of the girls. She gave various curious little glances of investigation at him from over her wools.
‘I should like to know,’ she said, ‘why you object so much to Mr. Douglas? he seems a very gentlemanly young man. Do you know something more of him than we know?’
‘Nobody,’ said Mr. Mountford, with solemnity, ‘knows any more of the young man than we know.’
‘Then why should you be so determined against him?’ persisted his wife.
Mr. Mountford fixed his eyes severely upon her. ‘Letitia,’ he said, ‘there is one thing, above all others, that I object to in a man; it is when nobody knows anything about him. You will not deny that I have had some experience in life; some experience you must grant me, whatever my deficiencies may be; and the result of all I have observed is that a man whom nobody knows is not a person to connect yourself with. If he is a member of a well-known family—like our own, for instance—there are his people to answer for him. If, on the other hand, he has made himself of consequence in the world, that may answer the same purpose. But when a man is nobody, you have nothing to trust to; he may be a very good sort of person; there may be no harm in him; but the chances are against him. At all times the chances are heavily against a man whom nobody knows.’
Mr. Mountford was not disinclined to lay down the law, but he seldom did it on an abstract question; and his wife looked at him, murmuring ‘one, two, three’ with her lips, while her eyes expressed a certain mild surprise. The feeling, however, was scarcely so strong as surprise; it was rather with a sensation of unexpectedness that she listened. Surely nobody had a better right to his opinion: but she did not look for a general dogma when she had asked a particular question. ‘But,’ she said, ‘papa! he was known very well, I suppose, or they would not have had him there—to the Ashleys, at least.’
‘What was known? Nothing about him—nothing whatever about him! as Anne was so absurd as to say they know him, or their own opinion of him; but they know nothing about him—nobody knows anything about him. Whatever you may think, Letitia, that is quite enough for me.’
‘Oh, my dear, I don’t pretend to understand; but we meet a great many people whom we don’t know anything of. In society we are meeting them for ever.’
‘Pardon me,’ said Mr. Mountford, lifting an emphatic finger; ‘we may know nothing about them, but somebody knows. Now, all I hear of this man is that he is nobody; he may be good or he may be bad, much more likely the latter; but, this being the case, if he were an angel I will have nothing to do with him; neither shall anyone belonging to me. We are well-known people ourselves, and we must form connections with well-known people—or none at all.’
‘None at all; you would not keep her an old maid, papa?’
‘Pshaw!’ said Mr. Mountford, turning away. Then he came back to add a last word. ‘Understand me, Letitia,’ he said; ‘I think it’s kind of you to do your best for Anne, for she is a girl who has given you a great deal of trouble; but it is of no use; if she is so determined to have her own way, she shall not have anything else. I am not the weak idiot of a father you think me; if I have given in to her before, there was no such important matter in hand; but I have made up my mind now: and it may be better for Rose and you, perhaps, if the worst comes to the worst.’
Mrs. Mountford was completely roused now; the numbers, so to speak, dropped from her lips; her work fell on her knee. ‘It is quite true what you say,’ she said, feeling herself on very doubtful ground, and not knowing what to do, whether to express gratitude or to make no reference to this strange and dark saying: ‘she has given me a great deal of trouble: but she is your child, St. John, and that is enough for me.’
He did not make any reply; nor did he repeat the mysterious promise of advantage to follow upon Anne’s disobedience. He was not so frank with his wife as he had been with his daughter. He went to his writing-table once more, and sat down before it with that air of having come to an end of the subject under discussion which his wife knew so well. He did not mean to throw any further light to her upon the possible good that might result to Rose. To tell the truth, this possibility was to himself too vague to count for much. In the first place, he expected Anne to be frightened, and to give in; and, in the second place, he fully intended to live long after both his daughters had married and settled, and to be able to make what dispositions he pleased for years to come. He was not an old man; he was still under sixty, and as vigorous (he believed) as ever he had been. In such a case a will is a very pretty weapon to flourish in the air, but it does nobody much harm. Mr. Mountford thought a great deal of this threat of his; but he no more meant it to have any speedy effect than he expected the world to come to an end. Perhaps most of the injustices that people do by will are done in the same way. It is not comprehensible to any man that he should be swept away and others reign in his stead; therefore he is more free to make use of that contingency than if he believed in it. There would always be plenty of time to set it right; he had not the least intention of dying; but for the moment it was something potent to conjure withal. He reseated himself at his table, with a consciousness that he had the power in his hands to turn his whole world topsy-turvy, and yet that it would not do anybody any harm. Naturally, this feeling was not shared either by Anne, to whom he had made the original threat, nor by his wife, to whom he held out the promise. We all know very well that other people must die—it is only in our own individual case that the event seems unlikely.
Mrs. Mountford’s mind was filled with secret excitement; she was eager to know what her husband meant, but she did not venture to ask for any explanation. She watched him over her work with a secret closeness of observation such as she had never felt herself capable of before. What did he mean? what would he do? She knew nothing about the law of inheritance, except that entail kept an estate from the daughters, which was a shame, she thought. But in respect to everything else her mind was confused, and she did not know what her husband could do to benefit Rose at Anne’s expense. But the more she did not understand, the more eager she was to know. When you are possessed by an eager desire for the enrichment of another, it does not seem a bad or selfish object as it might do if the person to be benefited was yourself; and, least of all, does it ever appear that to look out for the advantage of your child can be wrong. But the poor lady was in the uncomfortable position of not being able to inquire further. She could not show herself too anxious to know what was to happen after her husband’s death; and even to take ‘the worst’ for granted was not a pleasant thing, for Mrs. Mountford, though naturally anxious about Rose, was not a hard woman who would wilfully hurt anyone. She sat for some time in silence, her heart beating very fast, her ears very alert for any word that might fall from her husband’s mouth. But no word came from his mouth. He sat and turned over the papers on the table; he was pleased to have excited her interest, her hopes and fears, but he did not half divine the extent to which he had excited her, not feeling for his own part that there was anything in it to warrant immediate expectation: while she, on the other hand, though she had a genuine affection for her husband, could not help saying to herself, ‘He may go any day; there is never a day that some one does not die; and if he died while he was on these terms with Anne, what was it, what was it, that might perhaps happen to Rose?’ Mrs. Mountford turned over in her mind every possible form of words she could think of in which to pursue her inquiries; but it was very difficult, nay, impossible, to do it: and, though she was not altogether without artifice, her powers altogether failed her in presence of this difficult question. At length she ventured to ask, clearing her throat with elaborate precaution,
‘Do you mean to say that if Anne sets her heart upon her own way, and goes against you—all our children do it more or less; one gets accustomed to it. St. John—do you mean to say——that you will change your will, and put her out of the succession?——’ Mrs. Mountford faltered over the end of her sentence, not knowing what to say.
‘There is no succession. What I have is my own to do what I like with it,’ he said sharply: and then he opened a big book which lay on the table, and began to write. It was a well-known, if tacit, signal between them, that his need of social intercourse was over, and that his wife might go; but she did not move for some time. She went on with her work, with every appearance of calm; but her mind was full of commotion. As her needle went through and through the canvas, she cast many a furtive glance at her husband turning over the pages of his big book, writing here and there a note. They had been as one for twenty years; two people who were, all the world said, most ‘united’—a couple devoted to each other. But neither did she understand what her husband meant, nor could he have believed the kind of feeling with which, across her worsted work, she kept regarding him. She had no wish but that he should live and thrive. Her position, her personal interests, her importance were all bound up in him; nevertheless, she contemplated the contingency of his death with a composure that would have horrified him, and thought with much more keen and earnest feeling of what would follow than any alarm of love as to the possibility of the speedy ending of his life produced in her. Thus the two sat within a few feet of each other, life-long companions, knowing still so little of each other—the man playing with the fears and hopes of his dependents, while smiling in his sleeve at the notion of any real occasion for those fears and hopes; the woman much more intent upon the problematical good fortune of her child than on the existence of her own other half, her closest and nearest connection, with whom her life had been so long identified. Perhaps the revelation of this feeling in her would have been the most cruel disclosure had both states of mind been made apparent to the eye of day. There was not much that was unnatural in his thoughts, for many men like to tantalise their successors, and few men realise with any warmth of imagination their own complete withdrawal from the pains and pleasures of life; but to know that his wife could look his death in the face without flinching, and think more of his will than of the event which must precede any effect it could have, would have penetrated through all his armour and opened his eyes in the most dolorous way. But he never suspected this; he thought, with true human fatuity, with a little gratified importance and vanity, of the commotion he had produced—that Anne would be ‘pulled up’ in her career by so serious a threat; that Rose would be kept ‘up to the mark’ by a flutter of hope as to the reward which might fall to her. All this it pleased him to think of. He was complacent as to the effect of his menaces and promises, but at bottom he felt them to be of no great consequence to himself—amusing rather than otherwise; for he did not in the least intend to die.
At last Mrs. Mountford felt that she could stay no longer. She rose up from her chair, and gathered her wools in one arm. ‘The girls will be coming in from their ride,’ she said. ‘I must really go.’
The girls had all the machinery of life at Mount in their hands; in other houses it is ‘the boys’ that are put forward as influencing everything. The engagements and occupations of the young people map out the day, and give it diversity, though the elder ones move the springs of all that is most important. It was generally when ‘the girls’ were busy in some special matter of their own that Mrs. Mountford came to ‘sit with’ her husband in the library, and furnished him with so much information. But their positions had been changed to-day. It was he who had been her informant, telling her about things more essential to be known than any of her gossip about Anne’s intentions or Rose’s habits. She lingered even as she walked across the floor, and dropped her little plaited sheaf of many colours and stooped to pick it up, inviting further confidence. But her husband did not respond. He let her go without taking any notice of her proceedings or asking any question as to her unusual reluctance to leave him. At last, when she had fairly turned her back upon him, and had her hand upon the handle of the door, his voice startled her, and made her turn round with anxious expectation.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I forgot to tell you: I have a letter to-day from Heathcote Mountford, offering a visit. I suppose he wants to spy out the nakedness of the land.’
‘Heathcote Mountford!’ cried his wife, bewildered; then added, after a little interval, ‘I am sure he is quite welcome to come when he pleases—he or anyone. There is no nakedness in the land that we need fear.’
‘He is coming next week,’ said Mr. Mountford. ‘Of course, as you perceive, I could not refuse.’
Mrs. Mountford paused at the door, with a great deal of visible interest and excitement. It was no small relief to her to find a legitimate reason for it. ‘Of course you could not refuse: why should you refuse? I shall be very glad to see him; and’—she added, after a momentary pause, which gave the words significance, ‘so will the girls.’
‘I wish I could think so; the man is forty,’ Mr. Mountford said. Then he gave a little wave of his hand, dismissing his wife. Even the idea of a visit from his heir did not excite him. He was not even conscious, for the moment, of the hostile feeling with which men are supposed to regard their heirs in general, and which, if legitimate in any case, is certainly so in respect to an heir of entail. It is true that he had looked upon Heathcote Mountford with a mild hatred all his life as his natural enemy; but at the present crisis the head of the house regarded his successor with a kind of derisive complacency, as feeling that he himself was triumphantly ‘keeping the fellow out of it.’ He had never been so certain of living long, of cheating all who looked for his death, as he was after he had made use of that instrument of terrorism against his daughter. Heathcote Mountford had not been at Mount for nearly twenty years. It pleased his kinsman that he should offer to come now, just to be tantalised, to have it proved to him that his inheritance of the family honours was a long way off, and very problematical in any sense. ‘A poor sort of fellow; always ailing, always delicate; my life is worth two of his,’ he was saying, with extreme satisfaction, in his heart.
The girls had just come in from their ride; they were in the hall awaiting that cup of tea which is the universal restorative, when Mrs. Mountford with her little sheaf of wools went to join them. They heard her come softly along the passage which traversed the house, from the library, in quite the other end of it, to the hall,—a slight shuffle in one foot making her step recognisable. Rose was very clear-sighted in small matters, and it was she who had remarked that, after having taken her work to the library ‘to sit with papa,’ her mother had generally a much greater acquaintance with all that was about to happen on the estate or in the family affairs. She held up her finger to Anne as the step was heard approaching. ‘Now we shall hear the last particulars,’ Rose said; ‘what is going to be done with us all, and if we are to go to Brighton, and all that is to happen.’ Anne was much less curious on these points. Whether the family went to Brighton or not mattered little to her. She took off her hat, and smoothed back her hair from her forehead. It was October by this time, and no longer warm; but the sun was shining, and the afternoon more like summer than autumn. Old Saymore had brought in the tray with the tea. There was something on his very lips to say, but he did not desire the presence of his mistress, which checked his confidences with the young ladies. Anne, though supposed generally to be proud, was known by the servants to be very gentle of access, and ready to listen to anything that concerned them. And as for Rose, old Saymore—who had, so to speak, seen her born—did not feel himself restrained by the presence of Rose. ‘I had something to ask Miss Anne,’ he said, in a kind of undertone, as if making a remark to himself.
‘What is it, Saymore?’
‘No, no,’ said the old man, shaking his head. ‘No, no; I am not such a fool as I look. There is no time now for my business. No, no, Miss Anne, no, no,’ he went on, shaking his head as he arranged the cups and saucers. The sun, though it had passed off that side of the house, had caught in some glittering thing outside, and sent in a long ray of reflection into the huge old dark mirror which filled up one side of the room. Old Saymore, with his white locks, was reflected in this from top to toe, and the shaking of the white head produced a singular commotion in it like circles in water. He was always very deliberate in his movements; and as Mrs. Mountford’s step stayed in the passage, and a sound of voices betrayed that she had been stopped by some one on the way, Rose, with ideas of ‘fun’ in her mind, invited the arrested confidence. ‘Make haste and speak,’ she said, ‘Saymore; mamma has stopped to talk to Worth. There is no telling how long it may be before she comes here.’
‘If it’s Mrs. Worth, it may be with the same object, miss,’ said Saymore, with solemnity. And then he made a measured, yet sidelong step towards Anne. ‘I hope, Miss Anne, you’ll not disapprove?’
‘What do you want me to approve of, Saymore? I don’t think it matters very much so long as mamma is pleased.’
‘It matters to me, Miss Anne; it would seem unnatural to do a thing that was really an important thing without the sanction of the family; and I come from my late lady’s side, Miss Anne. I’ve always held by you, miss, if I may make so bold as to say it.’
Saymore made so bold as to say this often, and it was perfectly understood in the house; indeed it was frequently supposed by new-comers into the servants’ hall that old Saymore was a humble relation of the family on that side.
‘It is very kind of you to be so faithful; tell me quickly what it is, if you want to say it to me privately, and not to mamma.’
‘Miss Anne, I am an old man,’ he said; ‘you’ll perhaps think it unbecoming. I’m a widower, miss, and I’ve no children nor nobody belonging to me.’
‘We’ve known all that,’ cried Rose, breaking in, ‘as long as we’ve lived.’
Saymore took no notice of the interruption; he did not even look at her, but proceeded with gravity, though with a smile creeping to the corners of his mouth. ‘And some folks do say, Miss Anne, that, though I’m old, I’m a young man of my years. There is a deal of difference in people. Some folks is older, some younger. Yourself, Miss Anne, if I might make so bold as to say so, you’re not a young lady for your years.’
‘No, is she?’ said Rose. ‘I always tell you so, Anne! you’ve no imagination, and no feelings; you are as serious as the big trees. Quick, quick, Saymore, mamma is coming!’
‘I’ve always been considered young-looking,’ said old Saymore, with a complacent smile, ‘and many and many a one has advised me to better my condition. That might be two words for themselves and one for me, Miss Anne,’ he continued, the smile broadening into a smirk of consciousness. ‘Ladies is very pushing now-a-days; but I think I’ve picked out one as will never deceive me, and, if the family don’t have any objections, I think I am going to get married, always hoping, Miss Anne, as you don’t disapprove.’
‘To get married?’ said Anne, sitting upright with sheer amazement. Anne’s thoughts had not been occupied on this subject as the thoughts of girls often are; but it had entered her imagination suddenly, and Anne’s imagination was of a superlative kind, which shed a glory over everything that occupied it. This strange, beautiful, terrible, conjunction of two had come to look to her the most wonderful, mysterious, solemn thing in the world since it came within her own possibilities. All the comedy in it which is so apt to come uppermost had disappeared when she felt herself walking with Cosmo towards the verge of that unknown and awful paradise. Life had not turned into a tragedy indeed, but into a noble, serious poem, full of awe, full of wonder, entering in by those great mysterious portals, which were guarded as by angels of love and fate. She sat upright in her chair, and gazed with wide open eyes and lips apart at this caricature of her fancy. Old Saymore? the peal of laughter with which Rose received the announcement was the natural sentiment; but Anne had not only a deep sense of horror at this desecration of an idea so sacred, but was also moved by the secondary consciousness that old Saymore too had feelings which might be wounded, which added to her gravity. Saymore, for his part, took Rose’s laugh lightly enough, but looked at her own grave countenance with rising offence. ‘You seem to think that I haven’t no right to please myself, Miss Anne,’ he said.
‘But who is the lady? tell us who is the lady,’ cried Rose.
Saymore paused and held up a finger. The voices in the corridor ceased. Some one was heard to walk away in the opposite direction, and Mrs. Mountford’s soft shuffle advanced to the hall. ‘Another time, Miss Anne, another time,’ he said, in a half whisper, shaking his finger in sign of secresy. Then he walked towards the door, and held it open for his mistress with much solemnity. Mrs. Mountford came in more quickly than usual; she was half angry, half laughing. ‘Saymore, I think you are an old fool,’ she said.
Saymore made a bow which would have done credit to a courtier. ‘There’s a many, madam,’ he replied, ‘as has been fools like me.’ He did not condescend to justify himself to Mrs. Mountford, but went out without further explanation. He belonged to the other side of the house; not that he was not perfectly civil to his master’s second wife—but she was always ‘the new mistress’ to Saymore, though she had reigned at Mount for nearly twenty years.
‘What does he mean, mamma?’ cried Rose, with eager curiosity. She was fond of gossip, about county people if possible, but, if not, about village people, or the servants in the house, it did not matter. Her eyes shone with amazement and excitement. ‘Is it old Worth? who is it? What fun to have a wedding in the house!’
‘He is an old fool,’ said Mrs. Mountford, putting the wools out of her arm and placing herself in the most comfortable chair. ‘Give me a cup of tea, Rose. I have been standing in the corridor till I’m quite tired, and before that with papa.’
‘You were not standing when you were with papa?’
‘Well, yes, part of the time; he has a way—Anne has it too, it is very tiresome—of keeping the most important thing he has to say till the last moment. Just when you have got up and got to the door, and think you are free, then he tells you. It is very tiresome—Anne is just the same—in many things she is exceedingly like papa.’
‘Then he told you something important?’ cried Rose, easily diverted from the first subject. ‘Are we to go to Brighton? What is going to happen? I told Anne you would have something to tell us when we heard you had been sitting with papa.’
‘Of course we consult over things when we get a quiet hour together,’ Mrs. Mountford said; and then she made a pause. Even Anne felt her heart beat. It seemed natural that her own affairs should have been the subject of this conference; for what was there in the family that was half so interesting as Anne’s affairs? A little colour came to her face, then fled again, leaving her more pale than usual.
‘If it was about me, I would rather not have my affairs talked over,’ she said.
‘My dear Anne,’ said Mrs. Mountford, ‘try not to get into the way of thinking that everything that is interesting in the family must come from you; this is a sort of way that girls get when they begin to think of love and such nonsense; but I should have expected more sense from you.’
Love and such nonsense! Anne’s countenance became crimson. Was this the way to characterise that serious, almost solemn, mystery which had taken possession of her life? And then the girl, in spite of herself, laughed. She felt herself suddenly placed beside old Saymore in his grotesque sentiment, and between scorn and disgust and unwilling amusement words failed her; then the others laughed, which made Anne more angry still.
‘I am glad to hear you laugh,’ said Mrs. Mountford, ‘for that shows you are not so much on your high horse as I fancied you were. And yours is such a very high horse, my dear! No, I don’t mean to say you were not referred to, for you would not believe me; there was some talk about you; but papa said he had spoken to you himself, and I never make nor meddle between him and you, as you know, Anne. It was something quite different. We are not going to Brighton, Rosie; some one is coming here.’
‘Oh—h!’ Rose’s countenance fell. Brighton, which was a break upon the monotony of the country, was always welcome to her. ‘And even Willie Ashley gone away!’ was the apparently irrelevant observation she made, with a sudden drooping of the corners of her mouth.
‘What is Willie Ashley to you? you can’t have your game in winter,’ said her mother, with unconscious cynicism; ‘but there is somebody coming who is really interesting. I don’t know that you have ever seen him; I have seen him only once in my life. I thought him the most interesting-looking man I ever saw; he was like a hero on the stage, tall and dark, with a natural curl in his hair; and such eyes!’
Rose’s blue and inexperienced orbs grew round and large with excitement. ‘Who is it? No one we ever saw; oh, no, indeed, I never saw a man a bit like that. Who is it, mamma?’
Mrs. Mountford liked to prolong the excitement. It pleased her to have so interesting a piece of news in hand. Besides, Anne remained perfectly unmoved, and to excite Rose was too easy. ‘He is a man with a story too,’ she said. ‘When he was quite young he was in love with a lady, a very grand personage, indeed, quite out of the reach of a poor gentleman like—this gentleman. She was an Italian, and I believe she was a princess or something. That does not mean the same as it does here, you know; but she was a great deal grander than he was, and her friends would not let her marry him.’
‘And what happened?’ cried Rose breathless, as her mother came to an artful pause. Anne did not say anything, but she leant forward, and her eyes too had lighted up with interest. It was no part of Mrs. Mountford’s plan to interest Anne, but, once entered upon her story, the desire of the artist for appreciation seized upon her.
‘What could happen, my dear?’ she said, pointedly adding a moral; ‘they gave everybody a great deal of trouble for a time, as young people who are crossed in anything always do; but people abroad make very short work with these matters. The lady was married, of course, to somebody in her own rank of life.’
‘And the gentleman?—it was the gentleman you were telling us about.’
‘The gentleman—poor Heathcote! well, he has got on well enough—I suppose as well as other people. He has never married; but then I don’t see how he could marry, for he has nothing to marry upon.’
‘Heathcote! do you mean Heathcote Mountford?’
It was Anne who spoke this time—the story had grown more and more interesting to her as it went on. Her voice trembled a little as she asked this hasty question; it quivered with sympathy, with wondering pain. The lady married somebody—in her own rank in life—the man never married at all, but probably could not because he had nothing to marry on. Was that the end of it all—a dull matter-of-fact little tragedy? She remembered hearing such words before often enough, but never had given them any attention until now.
‘Yes, I mean your cousin Heathcote Mountford. He is coming next week to see papa.’
Rose had been looking from one to another with her round eyes full of excitement. Now she drew a long breath and said in a tone of awe, ‘The heir of the entail.’
‘Yes, the heir of the entail,’ said Mrs. Mountford solemnly. She looked at her daughter, and the one pair of eyes seemed to take fire from the other. ‘He is as poor—as poor as a mouse. Of course he will have Mount when—anything happens to papa. But papa’s life is as good as his. He is thirty-five, and he has never had much stamina. I don’t mean to say that it is so generally, but sometimes a man is quite old at thirty-five.’
At this time very different reflections gleamed across the minds of the girls. ‘Papa was nearly forty when mamma married him,’ Rose said to herself with great quickness, while the thought that passed through Anne’s mind was ‘Thirty-five—five years older than Cosmo.’ Neither one thing nor the other, it may be said, had much to do with Heathcote Mountford; and yet there was meaning in it, so far as Rose at least was concerned.
She was thoughtful for the rest of the day, and asked her mother several very pertinent questions when they were alone, as ‘Where does Heathcote Mountford live? Has he any money at all? or does he do anything for his living? has he any brothers and sisters?’ She was determined to have a very clear understanding of all the circumstances of his life.
‘Oh yes, my love, he has a little,’ Mrs. Mountford said; ‘one says a man has nothing when he has not enough to settle upon; but most people have a little. I suppose he lives in London in chambers, like most unmarried men. No, he has no brothers and sisters,—but, yes, I forgot there is one—a young one—whom he is very much attached to, people say.’
‘And he will have Mount when papa dies,’ said Rose. ‘How strange that, though papa has two children, it should go away to quite a different person, not even a very near relation! It is very unjust; don’t you think it is very unjust? I am sure it is not a thing that ought to be.’
‘It is the entail, my dear. You must remember the entail.’
‘But what is the good of an entail? If we had had a brother, it might have been a good thing to keep it in the family; but surely, when we have no brother, we are the proper heirs. It would be more right even, if one person were to have it all, that Anne should be the person. She,’ said Rose, with a little fervour, ‘would be sure to take care of me.’
‘I think so too, Rosie,’ said her mother; ‘but then Anne will not always just be Anne. She will marry somebody, and she will not have a will of her own—at least not such a will of her own. There is one way,’ Mrs. Mountford added with a laugh, ‘in which things are sometimes put right, Rose. Do you remember Mr. Collins in Miss Austen’s novel? He came to choose a wife among the Miss Bennetts to make up for taking their home from them. I am afraid that happens oftener in novels than in real life. Perhaps,’ she said, laughing again, but with artificial mirth, ‘your cousin Heathcote is coming to look at you girls to see whether he would like one of you for his wife.’
‘I daresay,’ said Rose calmy; ‘that went through my mind too. He would like Anne, of course, if he could get her; but then Anne—likes somebody else.’
‘There are more people than Anne in the world,’ said the mother, with some indignation. ‘Anne! we all hear so much of Anne that we get to think there is nobody like her. No, my pet, a man of Heathcote Mountford’s age—it is not anything like Anne he is thinking of; they don’t want tragedy queens at that age; they want youth.’
‘You mean, mamma, said Rose, still quite serious, ‘that he would like me best.’
‘My pet, we don’t talk of such things. It is quite time enough when they happen, if they ever happen.’
‘But I prefer to talk about them,’ said Rose. ‘It would be very nice to keep Mount; but then, if Anne had all the money, what would be the good of Mount? We, I mean, could never keep it up.’
‘This is going a very long way,’ said her mother, amused; ‘you must not talk of what most likely will never happen. Besides, there is no telling what changes may take place. Anne has not pleased papa, and no one can say what money she may have and what you may have. That is just what nobody can tell till the time comes.’
‘You mean—till papa dies?’
‘Oh, Rosie,’ said Mrs. Mountford, alarmed, ‘don’t be so plain-spoken, dear; don’t let us think of such a thing. What would become of us if anything happened to dear papa?’
‘But it must happen some time,’ said Rose, calmly, ‘and it will not happen any sooner because we speak of it. I hope he will live a long time, long after we are both married and everything settled. But if one of us was rich, it would not be worth her while to marry Heathcote, unless she was very fond of Mount; and I don’t think we are so very fond of Mount. And if one of us was poor, it would not be worth his while, because he would not be able to keep it up.’
‘That is the very best conclusion to come to,’ said her mother; ‘since it would not be worth while either for the rich one or the poor one, you may put that out of your head and meet him at your ease, as you ought to meet an elderly cousin.’
‘Thirty-five is not exactly elderly—for a man,’ said Rose, thoughtfully. She did not put the question out of her mind so easily as her mother suggested. ‘But I suppose it is time to go and dress,’ she added, with a little sigh. ‘No Brighton, and winter coming on, and nobody here, not even Willie Ashley. I hope he will be amusing at least,’ she said, sighing again, as she went away.
Mrs. Mountford followed slowly with a smile on her face. She was not sorry, on the whole, to have put the idea into her child’s head. Even when the Mountfords of Mount had been poor, it was ‘a very nice position’—and Heathcote had something, enough to live upon: and Rose would have something. If they ‘fancied’ each other, worse things might happen. She did not feel inclined to oppose such a consummation. It would be better than marrying Willie Ashley, or—for of course that would be out of the question—wanting to marry him. Mrs. Mountford knew by experience what it was for a girl to spend all her youth in the unbroken quiet of a house in the country which was not really a great house. She had been thirty when she married Mr. Mountford, and before that time there had occurred sundry passages, involving at least one ineligible young man, which had not quite passed from her memory. How was it possible to help it?—a girl must do something to amuse herself, to occupy the time that hangs so heavily on her hands. And often, she reflected, before you know what you are doing, it has become serious, and there is no way out of it. As she looked back she remembered many instances in which this had happened. Better, far better, an elderly cousin with an old though small estate, than the inevitable clergyman or Willie Ashley. And thirty-five, for a man, was not an age to make any objection to.
She went upstairs with her head full of such thoughts, and there once more she found Mrs. Worth, with whom she had held so earnest a colloquy in the corridor, while Saymore opened his heart to his young ladies. Mrs. Worth shook her head when her mistress addressed a question to her. She pinned on the lace pelerine with which it was Mrs. Mountford’s pride to make her old dresses look nice for the evening, with many shakings of her head.
‘I don’t know, ma’am, as I shall ever bring her to hear reason,’ Mrs. Worth said. ‘I tell her as a good worthy man, and a nice little bit of money, is not for any girl to despise, and many that is her betters would be glad of the chance. But “you can’t put an old head on young shoulders,” as the saying is, and I don’t know as I shall ever bring her to hear reason. There’s things as nothing will teach us but experience ma’am,’ Mrs. Worth said.
‘Well, he is old for such a girl, said Mrs. Mountford, candidly; ‘we must not be too hard upon her, Worth.’
‘Old, ma’am! well, in one way he may be called old,’ said the confidential maid; ‘but I don’t call it half so bad when they’re that age as when they’re just betwixt and between, both old and young, as you may say. Forty or so, that is a worry; but sixty-five you can do with. If I’ve told her that once I’ve told her fifty times; but she pays no attention. And when you think what a nice little bit of money he’s put away since he’s been here, and how respectable he is, and respected by the family; and that she has nothing, poor girl! and nobody but me to look to! I think, if Miss Anne were to speak a word to her, ma’am, perhaps it would make a difference. They think a deal more of what a young lady says, like themselves, so to speak, than an old person like me.’
Anne had gone upstairs some time before. At this time of her life she liked to be alone, and there were many reasons why solitude should be dear to her. For one thing, those who have just begun to thread the flowery ways of early love have always a great deal to think of. It is an occupation in itself to retrace all that has been done and said, nay, even looked and thought, and to carry this dream of recollection on into the future, adding what shall be to what has been. A girl does not require any other business in life when she has this delightful maze awaiting her, turning her room into a Vita nuova, another life which she can enter at her pleasure, shutting impenetrable doors upon all vulgar sights and sounds. In addition to this, which needed no addition, she had something active and positive to occupy her. She had answered Cosmo’s letter, thanking him for his offer to deny himself, to be silent if she wished him to be silent. But Anne declared that she had no such wish. ‘Do not let us make a folly of our correspondence,’ she had written; ‘but neither must we deny ourselves this great happiness, dear Cosmo, for the sake of my father. I have told my father that in this point I cannot obey him. I should scorn myself now if I made believe to obey him by giving up such intercourse as we can have. He has not asked this, and I think it would not be honest to offer it. What he wanted was that we should part altogether, and this we are not going to do. Write to me then, not every day, nor even every week, to make it common, but when your heart is full, and it would be an injustice to keep it from me any longer. And so will I to you.’ The bargain, if somewhat highflown, was very like Anne, and on this footing the letters began. Anne very soon felt that her heart was always full, that there was constantly more to say than a sheet of paper could carry; but she held by her own rule, and only broke silence when she could not keep it any longer, which gave to her letters a character of intensity and delicate passion most rare and strange, which touched her lover with an admiration which sometimes had a little awe in it. His own letters were delightful to Anne, but they were of a very different character. They were full of genuine love; for, so far as that went, there was nothing fictitious in his sentiments; but they were steady-going weekly letters, such as a man pens on a certain day and sends by a certain post, not only to the contentment of his own heart, but in fulfilment of what is expected of him, of what it is indeed his duty to do. This made a great difference; and Cosmo—who was full of intellectual perceptions and saw more clearly than, being not so complete in heart as in mind, it was to his own comfort to see—perceived it very clearly, with an uneasy consciousness of being ‘not up to’ the lofty strain which was required of him. But Anne, in her innocence and inexperience, perceived it not. His letters were delightful to her. The words seemed to glow and shine before her eyes. If there was a tame expression, a sentence that fell flat, she set it down to that reticence of emotion, that English incapacity for saying all that is felt and tendency to depreciate itself, which we all believe in, and which counts for so much in our estimates of each other. These letters, as I have said, added an actual something to be done to the entrancing occupation of ‘thinking over’ all that had happened and was going to happen. Whenever she had a little time to spare, Anne, with her heart beating, opened the little desk in which she kept these two or three precious performances. I think, indeed, she carried the last always about her, to be re-read whenever an occasion occurred: and it was with her heart intent upon this gratification, this secret delight which nobody knew of, that she went into her room, leaving her sister and stepmother still talking over their tea in the hall. More sweet to her than the best of company was this pleasure of sitting alone.
But on this occasion she found herself not alone. Though the dressing-bell would not ring for about an hour, Keziah was already there preparing her young lady’s evening toilette. She was standing with her back to the door laying out Anne’s dress upon the bed, and crying softly to herself. Keziah was very near Anne’s age, and they had been in a manner brought up together, and had known everything that had happened to each other all their lives. This makes a bond between mistress and maid, not common in the ordinary relationships which we form and break so easily. To see Keziah crying was not a matter of indifference to Anne; but neither was it a matter of alarm, for it was not difficult to make Keziah cry. Some one, no doubt, had been scolding the girl; her aunt, who was very strict with her, or the cook, who was half-housekeeper and apt to find fault with the younger servants. Anne stepped forward with her light foot, which Keziah, in her agitation, did not hear, and put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. But this, which was done in all kindness, had tragical results. Keziah started violently, and a great big tear, as large as half-a-crown, fell upon the airy skirts of the dress which the was opening out on the bed. The poor girl uttered a shriek of dismay.
‘Oh, Miss Anne! I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it!’ she cried.
‘What is it, Keziah? There is no harm done; but why are you crying? Has anything happened at home? Have you bad news? or is it only Worth that has been cross again?’
‘I’m silly, Miss Anne, that’s what it is,’ said Keziah, drying her eyes. ‘Oh, don’t pity me, please, or I’ll only cry more! Give me a good shaking; that’s what I want, as aunt always says.’
‘Has she been scolding you?’ said Anne. It was not the first time that she had found Keziah in tears; it was not an alarming occurrence, nor did it require a very serious cause.
‘But to think,’ cried the girl, ‘that I should be such a silly, me that ought to know better, as to go and cry upon an Indian muslin, that oughtn’t to go to the wash not for ever so long! Aunt would never forgive me if she knew; and oh, I’m bad enough already without that! If I could only tell you, Miss Anne! Morning or evening she never lets me be. It’s that as makes me so confused, I don’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes I think I’ll just take and marry him, to have done with him and her too.’
‘Marry him? is that what is the matter? It must be some one you don’t like, or you wouldn’t cry so.’
‘It isn’t so much that I don’t like him. If that was all,’ said Keziah, with philosophy, ‘I wouldn’t mind so much. Many a girl has had the same to do. You have to take the bitter with the sweet, as aunt always says.’
‘Keziah!’ exclaimed Anne, with consternation. ‘You wouldn’t mind! then what are you crying for? And why do you try to cheat me into sympathy,’ cried the young lady, indignantly, ‘if you don’t mind, as you say?’
Keziah by this time had mastered her tears. She had dried the spot carefully and tenderly with a handkerchief, pressing the muslin between two folds.
‘Miss Anne,’ she said, ‘don’t you say as I’m cheating, or my heart will break. That is one thing nobody can say of me. I tell him honest that I can’t abide him, and if he will have me after that, is it my fault? No, it’s not that,’ she said shaking her head with the melancholy gravity of superior experience: ‘I wasn’t thinking just of what I’d like. You ladies do what you please, and when you’re crossed, you think the world is coming to an end; but in our class of life, you’re brought up to know as you can’t have your own way.’
‘It is not a question of having your own way. How could you marry a man you did not—love?’ cried Anne, full of wrath and indignation, yet with awe of the sacred word she used. Was it too fine a word to be used to little Keziah? The girl gazed at her for a moment, half-roused, half-wondering; then shook her head again.
‘Oh, Miss Anne, love! a girl couldn’t love an old man like that; and he don’t look for it, aunt says. And he’d think a deal of me, more than—than others might. It’s better to be an old man’s darling than a young man’s slave. And he’s got plenty of money—I don’t know how much—in the bank; and mother and all of us so poor. He would leave it to me, every penny. You can’t just hear that, Miss Anne, can you, and take no notice? There’s a deal to be said for him, I don’t deny it; and if it was only not being fond of him, I shouldn’t mind that.’
‘Then you must not ask me to be sorry for you,’ said Anne, with stern severity, ‘if you could sell yourself for money, Keziah! But, no, no, you could not do it, it is not possible—you, a girl just my age, and brought up with me. You could not do it, Keziah. You have lived here with me almost all your life.’
‘Miss Anne, you don’t understand. You’ve been used to having your own way; but the like of us don’t get our own way. And aunt says many a lady does it and never minds. It’s not that,’ said Keziah, with a fresh outburst of tears. ‘I hope as I could do my duty by a man whether I was fond of him or whether I wasn’t. No, it isn’t that: it’s—it’s the other one, Miss Anne.’
And here the little girl hid her face in her hands and sobbed; while Anne, her sternness melting in spite of herself, stood looking on with the face of the recording angel, horrified by this new admission and reluctant to write it down.
‘Is there—another?’ she asked in a whisper of horror.
Keziah uncovered her face; the tone in which she was addressed curdled her blood; she turned her white, little, tear-stained countenance to her mistress with an appalled look of guilt. She had not understood before, poor little girl, how guilty she was. She had not known that it was guilt at all. She was herself standing at the bar, a poor little tremulous criminal in the blaze of Anne’s indignant eyes.
‘Yes, Miss Anne.’ Keziah’s voice was almost inaudible; but her eyes kept an astonished appeal in them against the tremendous sentence that seemed to await her.
‘Another whom you love. And you would give him up for this man who is rich, who can leave you his money? Keziah! if this were true, do you know what you would deserve? But I cannot believe it is true.’
‘Miss Anne!’ The poor little culprit regained a little courage; the offence of a mercenary marriage did not touch her conscience, but to be supposed to be laying claim without reason to a real lover went to her heart. ‘Miss Anne; it’s quite true. We were always sweethearts, always since we were little things. Him and me: we’ve always kept company. It’s as true—as true! Nobody can say different,’ cried the girl, with a fresh burst of angry tears. ‘You have seen him yourself, Miss Anne; and all the village knows. Ask aunt, if you don’t believe me; ask anyone. We’re as well known to be keeping company, as well known—as the Beeches on Mount Hill.’