CHAPTER XI.
PROJECTS OF MARRIAGE.
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.’