CHAPTER XII.
MISTRESS AND MAID.
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.’
‘That is not what I mean, Keziah. What I can’t believe is that you could make up your mind to—marry the man who is rich. What! leave the other whom you love, and marry one whom you don’t love! However rich he was, you would be miserable; and he, poor fellow! would be miserable too.’
‘Oh, Miss Anne, that’s what I am afraid of!’ cried the girl; ‘that’s what I’m always saying to myself. I could face it if it were only me—(for it’s a great thing to be well off, Miss Anne, for us as have been so poor all our lives); but Jim will be miserable; that is what I always say. But what can I do? tell me what can I do.’
‘I will tell you what you can do. Be faithful to Jim, Keziah; be faithful to him whatever anyone says. Marry him, not the other. That is the only thing to do.’
‘Marry him? But how can I marry him when he’s enlisted and gone off for a soldier, and maybe I’ll never see him more?’
‘Enlisted!’ said Anne, for the moment taken aback; but she recovered quickly, seeing the easiest way out of it. ‘Soldiers are allowed to buy themselves out. I would rather a great deal do without a dress and give you the money for his discharge. Anything would be better than to see you sacrifice yourself—sell yourself. Oh, you could not do it! You must not think of it any more.’
‘It’s not me, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, mournfully; ‘it’s Mr. Saymore and aunt.’
‘Old Saymore! is it old Saymore?’ Anne did not know how to speak with ordinary patience of such a horrible transaction. ‘Keziah, this cannot be put up with for a moment. If they frighten you, I will speak to them. Old Saymore! No, Keziah; it is Jim you must marry, since you love him: and no one else.’
‘Yes, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, very doubtfully; ‘but I don’t know,’ she added, ‘whether Jim wanted me—to marry him. You see he is young, and he had nothing but his weekly wage, when he was in work; and I don’t even know if he wants to buy his discharge. Men is very queer,’ said the girl, shaking her head with profound conviction, ‘and keeping company’s not like marrying. Them that haven’t got you want you, and them that can have you for the asking don’t ask. It is a funny world and men are queer; things is not so straightforward before you to do one or another as you think, Miss Anne.’
‘Then, at all events, there is one thing you can always do—for it depends upon yourself alone. Marry no one, but be faithful, Keziah; faithful to Jim if you love him; and, you may be sure, things will come right at the last.’
‘I don’t know, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, shaking her head; ‘it seems as if it ought to; but it don’t always, as far as I can see. There’s ladies, and real ladies, aunt says, as has just the same before them; for if the man you like hasn’t a penny, Miss Anne, and other folks has plenty, what, even if you’re a lady, is a girl to do?’
‘You can always be faithful, whatever happens,’ cried Anne, holding her head high; ‘that depends only on yourself.’
‘If your folks will let you alone, Miss Anne.’ Keziah had dried her tears, and Anne’s confidence had given her a little courage; but still she felt that she had more experience of the world than her mistress, and shook her little head.
‘What can your “folks” do, Keziah? You have only to hold fast and be true,’ cried Anne. Her eyes shone with the faith and constancy that were in her. The very sight of her was inspiring. She looked like a woman who might have rallied an army, standing up with her head high, defying all danger. ‘They may make you unhappy, they may take everything from you; but only yourself can change you. The whole world cannot do anything to you if you remain true, and stand fast——’
‘Oh, Miss Anne, if we was all like you!’ said the girl, admiring but despondent. But just then the dressing-bell began to ring, and poor Keziah was recalled to her duties. She flew to the drawers and wardrobes to lay out the miscellaneous articles that were needed—the evening shoes, the ribbons, and little ornaments Anne was to wear. Then she lingered for a moment before fulfilling the same office for Rose. ‘Don’t you think, Miss Anne,’ she said, ‘if it comes to that at the end: don’t you think I mind for myself. I hope as I’ll do my duty, whoever the man may be. I’m not one to stick to my own way when I see as I can’t get it. It isn’t that I’m that bent on pleasing myself——’
‘But Keziah, Keziah!’ cried Anne, provoked, distressed, and disappointed, ‘when this is what you are thinking of, it is your duty to please yourself.’
‘The Bible don’t say so, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, with a little air of superior wisdom as she went away.
This discussion made the most curious break in Anne’s thoughts; instead of spending the half-hour in blessed solitude, reading over Cosmo’s last letter or thinking over some of his last words, how strange it was to be thus plunged into the confused and darkling ways of another world, so unlike her own! To the young lady it was an unalterable canon of faith that marriage was only possible where love existed first. Such was the dogma of the matter in England, the first and most important proviso of the creed of youth, contradicted sometimes in practice, but never shaken in doctrine. It was this that justified and sanctified all the rest, excusing even a hundred little departures from other codes, little frauds and compromises which lost all their guilt when done for the sake of love. But here was another code which was very different, in which the poor little heroine was ashamed to have it thought that, so far as concerned herself, love was the first thing in question. Keziah felt that she could do her duty whoever the man might be; it was not any wish to please herself that made her reluctant. Anne’s first impulse of impatience, and annoyance, and disgust at such a view of the question, and at the high ground on which it was held, transported her for the moment out of all sympathy with Keziah. No wonder, she thought, that there was so much trouble and evil deep down below the surface when that was how even an innocent girl considered the matter. But by-and-by Anne’s imagination got entangled with the metaphysics of the question, and the clear lines of the old undoubting dogmatism became less clear. ‘The Bible don’t say so.’ What did the Bible say? Nothing at all about it; nothing but a rule of mutual duty on the part of husbands and wives; no guidance for those who were making the first great decision, the choice that must mean happiness or no happiness to their whole lives. But the Bible did say that one was not to seek one’s own way, nor care to please one’s self, as Keziah said. Was the little maid an unconscious sophist in her literal adoption of these commands? or was Anne to blame, who, in this point of view, put aside the Bible code altogether, without being aware that she did so? Deny yourself! did that mean that you were to consent to a mercenary union when your heart was against it? Did that mean that you might profane and dishonour yourself for the sake of pleasing others? Keziah thought so, taking the letter as her rule; but how was Anne to think so? Their theories could not have been more different had the width of the world been between them.
And then the story of Heathcote Mountford glanced across her mind. This was what had happened to him. His Italian princess, though she loved him, had done her duty, had married somebody of her own rank, had left the man she loved to bear the desertion as he could. Was it the women who did this, Anne asked herself, while the men were true? It was bitter to the girl to think so, for she was full of that visionary pride—born both of the chivalrous worship and the ceaseless jibes of which they have been the objects—which makes women so sensitive to all that touches their sex. A flush of shame as visionary swept over her. If this cowardly weakness was common to women, then no wonder that men despised them; then, indeed, they must be inferior creatures, incapable of real nobleness, incapable of true understanding. For a moment Anne felt that she despised and hated her own kind; to be so poor, so weak, so miserable; to persuade the nobler, stronger being by their side that they loved him, and then weakly to abandon him; to shrink away from him for fear of a parent’s scolding or the loss of money, or comfort, or luxury! What indignation Anne poured forth upon these despicable creatures! and to call it duty! she cried within herself. When you can decide that one side is quite in the wrong, even though it be your own side, there is consolation in it; then all is plain sailing in the moral element, and no complication disturbs you. Though she felt it bitter, and humiliating, and shameful, Anne clung to this point of view. She was barely conscious, in the confused panorama of that unknown world that spread around her, of some doubtful points on which the light was not quite so simple and easy to identify. ‘Those that can have you for the asking don’t ask you,’ Keziah said: and she had not been sure that her lover wanted her to marry him, though she believed he would be miserable if she abandoned him. And Heathcote Mountford, though he seemed to be so faithful, had never been rich enough to make inconstancy possible. These were the merest specks of shadow on the full light in which one side of her picture was bathed. But yet they were there.
This made an entire change in Anne’s temper and disposition for the evening. Her mind was full of this question. When she went downstairs she suffered a great many stories to be told in her presence to which, on previous occasions, she would have turned a deaf ear; and it was astonishing how many corresponding cases seem to exist in society—the women ‘doing their duty’ weakly, giving in to the influence of some mercenary parent, abandoning love and truth for money and luxury; the men withdrawing embittered, disgusted, no doubt to jibe at women, perhaps to hate them; to sink out of constancy into misanthropy, into the rusty loneliness of the old bachelor. Her heart grew sad within her as she pondered. Was it to be her fate to vindicate all women, to show what a woman could do? but for the moment she felt herself too deeply disgusted with her sex to think of defending them from any attack. To be sure, there was that shadow in her picture, that fluctuation, that uncomfortable balance of which she was just conscious—Jim who, perhaps, would not have wanted to marry Keziah, though he loved her; and the others who could not afford to commit any imprudence, who could marry only when there was a fortune on what Mrs. Mountford would call ‘the other side.’ Anne felt herself cooped in, in the narrowest space, not knowing where to turn; ‘who could marry only when there was money on the other side.’ Why, this had been said of Cosmo! Anne laughed to herself, with an indignation and wrath, slightly, very slightly, tempered by amusement. Where Cosmo was concerned she could not tolerate even a smile.