THE dinner to which the family sat down after this ride somewhat alarmed the stranger-relative who so suddenly found himself mixed up in their affairs. He thought it must necessarily be a constrained and uncomfortable meal. But this did not turn out to be the case. Anne knew nothing at all about what her father had been doing, and from Rose’s light nature the half comprehended scene at luncheon, when her mother had wept and her father’s face had been like a thundercloud, had already faded away. These two unconscious members of the party kept the tide of affairs in flow. They talked as usual—Anne even more than usual, as one who is unaware of the critical point at which, to the knowledge of all around, he or she is standing, so often does. She gave even a little more information than was called for about her visit to the Woodheads, being in her own mind half ashamed of her cowardice in staying away after the scene of the morning. On the whole she was glad, she persuaded herself, of the scene of the morning. It had placed her position beyond doubt. There had seemed no occasion to make any statement to her father as to the correspondence which he had not forbidden or indeed referred to. He had bidden her give up her lover, and she had refused: but he had said nothing about the lover’s letters, though these followed as a matter of course. And now it was well that he should know the exact position of affairs. She had been greatly agitated at the moment, but soon composed herself. And in her desire to show that she was satisfied, not grieved by what had happened, Anne was more than usually cheerful and communicative in her talk.
‘Fanny is very happy about her brother who is coming home from India. He is to be here only six weeks; but he does not grudge the long journey: and they are all so happy.’
‘He is a fool for his pains,’ growled Mr. Mountford from the head of the table. ‘I don’t know what our young men are coming to. What right has he to such a luxury? It will cost him a hundred pounds at the least. Six weeks—he has not been gone as many years.’
‘Four years—that is a long time when people are fond of each other,’ said Anne, with a scarcely perceptible smile. Every individual at table instantly thought of the absent lover.
‘She is thinking that I will be dead and gone in four years, and she will be free,’ the angry father said to himself, with a vindictive sense that he was justified in the punishment he meant to inflict upon her. But Anne, indeed, was thinking of nothing of the kind, only with a visionary regret that in her own family there was no one to come eager over sea and land to be longed and prayed for with Fanny Woodhead’s anxious sisterly motherly passion. This was far, very far from the imagination of the others as a motive likely to produce such a sigh.
‘A brother from India is always anxiously looked for,’ said Mrs. Mountford, stepping in with that half-compunctious readiness to succour Anne which the knowledge of this day’s proceedings had produced in her. She did not, in fact, know what these proceedings had been, and they were in no way her fault. But still she felt a compunction. ‘They always bring such quantities of things with them,’ she added. ‘An Indian box is the most delightful thing to open. I had a brother in India, too——’
‘I wish we had,’ said Rose, with a pout. Heathcote had been preoccupied: he had not been so ‘attentive’ as usual: and she wished for a brother instantly, ‘just to spite him,’ she said to herself.
‘Fanny is not thinking of the presents; but Rose, consider you are interested in it, too—that is another man for your dance.’
Rose clapped her hands. ‘We are looking up,’ she said. ‘Twenty men from Sandhurst, and six from Meadowlands, and Lady Prayrey Poule’s husband, and Fred Woodhead and Willie Ashley—for of course Willie is coming—— ’
‘A dance at this time of the year is folly,’ said Mr. Mountford; ‘even in summer it is bad enough; but the only time of the year for entertainments in the country is when you have warm weather and short nights.’
‘It was because of cousin Heathcote, papa. It is not often we have a man, a real relation, staying at Mount.’
‘Heathcote! oh, so it is for your sake, Heathcote? I did not know that dancing was an attribute of reasonable beings after thirty,’ Mr. Mountford said.
Then it was Anne who came to Heathcote’s aid. ‘You are not afraid of seeming frivolous?’ she said, giving him the kindest look he had yet seen in her eyes; and his heart was touched by it: he had not known that Anne’s eyes had been so fine—‘and it will please everybody. The county requires to be stirred up now and then. We like to have something to talk about, to say, “Are you going to the So-and-so’s on the 25th?”’
‘An admirable reason certainly for trouble and expense. If you were electioneering, it might be reasonable; but I presume your woman’s rights are not so advanced yet as that. Miss Anne Mountford can’t stand for the county!’
‘I don’t think she is likely to try, father,’ said Anne, ‘whatever might be the rights—or wrongs.’
‘You must not think, Mr. Heathcote,’ said Mrs. Mountford anxiously, ‘that Anne has anything to say to women’s rights. She is far too sensible. She has her own ways of thinking, but she is neither absurd nor strong-minded——’
‘I hope you do not think me weak-minded, mamma,’ Anne said, with a soft laugh.
And then little more was said. Mr. Mountford half rose and mumbled that grace after meat which leaves out all the more ethereal part of the repast as, we suppose, a kind of uncovenanted mercies for which no thanks are to be uttered; and after a while the ladies left the room. It was cold, but the whole frosty world outside lay enchanted under the whitening of the moon. The girls caught up fur cloaks and shawls as they went through the hall, and stepped outside involuntarily. The sky was intensely blue; the clouds piled high in snowy masses, the moon sailing serenely across the great expanse, veiling herself lightly here and there with a film of vapour which the wind had detached from the cloud-mountains. These filmy fragments were floating across the sky at extraordinary speed, and the wind was rising, whirling down showers of leaves. The commotion among the trees, the sound of the wind, the rapid flight of the clouds, all chimed in with Anne’s mood. She took hold of her sister’s arm with gentle force. ‘Stay a little, Rose—it is all quiet inside, and here there is so much going on: it is louder than one’s thoughts,’ Anne said.
‘What do you mean by being louder than your thoughts? Your thoughts are not loud at all—not mine at least: and I don’t like those dead leaves all blowing into my face; they feel like things touching you. I think I shall go in, Anne.’
‘Not yet, dear. I like it: it occupies one in spite of one’s self. The lawn will be all yellow to-morrow with scattered gold.’
‘You mean with scattered leaves; of course it will,’ said Rose. ‘When the wind is high like this it brings the leaves down like anything. The lime trees will be stripped, and it is a pity, for they were pretty. Everything is pretty this year. Papa has been to Hunston,’ she said, abruptly, looking Anne in the face; but it was very difficult even for Rose’s keen little eyes to distinguish in the moonlight whether or not Anne knew.
Anne took very little notice of this bit of news. ‘So Saymore told me. Did Mr. Heathcote see the church, I wonder? I hope some one told him how fine it was, and that there were some Mountford monuments.’
‘Do you know what papa was doing in Hunston, Anne? He went to see Mr. Loseby. Mamma made quite a fuss when he went away. She would not tell me what it was. Perhaps she did not know herself. She often gets into quite a state about things she doesn’t know. Can you tell me what papa could want with Mr. Loseby? you can see for yourself how cross he is now he has come back.’
‘With Mr. Loseby? no, I cannot tell you, Rose.’ Anne heard the news with a little thrill of excitement. It was rarely that Mr. Mountford went so far; very rarely that he did anything which, through his wife, or Saymore, or Rose herself, did not find its way to the knowledge of the entire household. Anne connected the incident of the morning with this recent expedition, and her heart beat faster in her breast. Well: she was prepared; she had counted the cost. If she was to be disinherited, that could be borne—but not to be untrue.
‘That means you will not tell me, Anne. I wonder why I should always be the last to know. For all anyone can tell, it may just be of as much consequence to me as to you, if he went to tamper with his will, as mamma said. What do you call tampering with a will? I don’t see,’ cried Rose, indignantly, ‘why I should always be supposed too young to know. Most likely it is of just as much consequence to me as to you.’
‘Rose,’ cried her mother, from the window, ‘come in—come in at once! How can you keep that child out in the cold, Anne, when you know what a delicate throat she has?’ Then Mrs. Mountford gave an audible shiver and shut down the window hastily; for it was very cold.
‘I have nothing to tell you, dear,’ Anne said gently. ‘But you are quite right; if there is any change made, it will be quite as important to you as to me: only you must not ask me about it, for my father does not take me into his confidence, and I don’t know.’
‘You don’t want to tell me!’ said the girl; but this time Mrs. Mountford knocked loudly on the window, and Rose was not sufficiently emancipated to neglect the second summons. Anne walked with her sister to the door, but then came back again to the sheltered walk under the windows. It was a melancholy hour when one was alone. The yellow leaves came down in showers flying on the wind. The clouds pursued each other over the sky. The great masses of vapours behind the wind began to invade the frosty blue; yet still the moon held on serenely, though her light was more and more interrupted by sudden blanks of shadow. Anne had no inclination to go into the quiet of the drawing-room, the needlework, and Mrs. Mountford’s little lectures, and perhaps the half-heard chattering with which Rose amused and held possession of her cousin. To her, whose happier life was hidden in the distance, it was more congenial to stay out here, among the flying winds and falling leaves. If it was so that Fortune was forsaking her; if her father had carried out his threat, and she was now penniless, with nothing but herself to take to Cosmo, what change would this make in her future life? Would he mind? What would he say? Anne had no personal experience at all, though she was so serious and so deeply learned in the troubles at least of village life. As she asked herself these questions, a smile crept about her lips in spite of her. She did not mean to smile. She meant to inquire very gravely: would he mind? what would he say? but the smile came without her knowledge. What could he say but one thing? If it had been another man, there might have been doubts and hesitations—but Cosmo! The smile stole to the corners of her mouth—a melting softness came into her heart. How little need was there to question! Did not she know?
Her thoughts were so full of this that she did not hear another foot on the gravel, and when Heathcote spoke she awakened with a start, and came down out of that lofty hermitage of her thoughts with little satisfaction; but when he said something of the beauty of the night and the fascination of all those voices of the wind and woods, Anne, whether willingly or not, felt herself compelled to be civil. She came down from her abstraction, admitting, politely, that the night was fine. ‘But,’ she said, ‘it is very cold, and the wind is rising every moment; I was thinking of going in.’
‘I wonder if you would wait for a few minutes, Miss Mountford, and hear something I have to say.’
‘Certainly,’ Anne said; but she was surprised; and now that it was no longer her own will which kept her here, the wind all at once became very boisterous, and the ‘silver lights and darks’ dreary. ‘Do you know we have a ghost belonging to us?’ she said. ‘She haunts that lime avenue. We ought to see her to-night.’
‘We have so little time for ghosts,’ said Heathcote, almost fretfully; and then he added, ‘Miss Mountford, I came to Mount on a special mission. Will you let me tell you what it was? I came to offer your father my co-operation in breaking the entail.’
‘Breaking the entail!’ the idea was so surprising that all who heard it received it with the same exclamation. As for Anne, she did more: she cast one rapid involuntary glance around her upon the house with all its lights, the familiar garden, the waving clouds of trees. In her heart she felt as if a sharp arrow of possible delight, despair, she knew not which, struck her keenly to the core. It was only for a moment. Then she drew a long breath and said, ‘You bewilder me altogether; break the entail—why should you? I cannot comprehend it. Pardon me, it is as if the Prince of Wales said he would not have the crown. Mount is England to us Mountfords. I cannot understand what you mean.’
Heathcote thought he understood very well what she meant. He understood her look. Everything round was dear to her. Her first thought had been—Mount! to be ours still, ours always! But what did ours mean? Did she think of herself as heiress and mistress, or of—someone else? This pricked him at the heart, as she had been pricked by a different sentiment, by the thought that she had no longer the first interest in this piece of news; but there was no reason whatever for keen feeling in his case. What did it matter to him who had it? He did not want it. He cleared his throat to get rid of that involuntary impatience and annoyance. ‘It is not very difficult to understand,’ he said. ‘Mount is not to me what it is to you; I have only been here once before. My interests are elsewhere.’
Anne bowed gravely. They did not know each other well enough to permit of more confidential disclosures. She did not feel sufficient interest to ask, he thought; and she had no right to pry into his private concerns, Anne said to herself. Then there was a pause: which she broke quite unexpectedly with one of those impulses which were so unlike Anne’s external aspect, and yet so entirely in harmony with herself.
‘This makes my heart beat,’ she said, ‘the idea that Mount might be altogether ours—our home in the future as well as in the past; but at the same time, forgive me, it gives me a little pain to think that there is a Mountford, and he the heir, who thinks so little of Mount. It seems a slight to the place. I grudge that you should give it up, though it is delightful to think that we may have it; which is absurd, of course—like so many other things.’
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘there is a great deal of the same sort of feeling in my own mind. I can’t care for Mount, can I? I have not seen it for fifteen years; I was a boy then; now I am middle-aged, and don’t care much for anything. But yet I too grudge that I should care for it so little; that I should be so willing to part with it. The feeling is absurd, as you say. If you could have it, Miss Mountford, I should surmount that feeling easily: I should rejoice in the substitution——’
‘And why should not I have it?’ cried Anne quickly, turning upon him. Then she paused and laughed, though with constraint, and begged his pardon. ‘I don’t quite know what you mean,’ she said, ‘or what you know.’
‘Miss Mountford, having said so much to you, may I say a little more? I am one of your nearest relatives, and I am a great deal older than you are. There is some question which divides you from your father. I do not ask nor pretend to divine what it is. You are not agreed—and for this reason he thinks little of my proposal, and does not care to secure the reversion of his own property, the house which, in other circumstances, he would have desired to leave in your possession. I think, so far as I have gone, this is the state of the case?’
‘Well!’ She neither contradicted him nor consented to what he had said, but stood in the fitful moonlight, blown about by the wind, holding her cloak closely round her, and looking at him between the light and gloom.
‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘I have no right whatever to interfere: but—if you could bend your will to his—if you could humour him as long as his life lasts: your father is becoming an old man. Miss Mountford, you would not need perhaps to make this sacrifice for very long.’
She elapsed her hands with impatient alarm, stopping him abruptly—‘Is my father ill? Is there anything you know of that we do not know?’
‘Nothing whatever. I only know his age, no more. Could you not yield to him, subdue your will to his? You are young, and you have plenty of time to wait. Believe me, the happiness that will not bear to be waited for is scarcely worth having. I have no right to say a word—I do not understand the circumstances—actually I know nothing about them. But if you could yield to him, humour him for a time——’
‘Pretend to obey him while he lived,’ Anne said, in a low voice, ‘in order that I may be able to cheat him when he is gone: that is a strange thing to recommend to me.’
‘There is no question of cheating him. What I mean is, that if you would submit to him; give him the pleasure of feeling himself obeyed in the end of his life——’
‘I owe my father obedience at all times; but there are surely distinctions. Will you tell me why you say this to me?’
‘I cannot tell you why: only that there is something going on which will tell against you: sincerely, I do not know what it is. I do not want to counsel you to anything false, and I scarcely know what I am advising you to do. It is only, Miss Mountford, while you can—if you can—to submit to him: or even, if no better can be, seem to submit to him. Submit to him while he lives. This may be a caprice on his part—no more: but at the same time it may affect your whole life.’
Anne stood for a moment irresolute, not knowing what to say. The night favoured her and the dark. She could speak with less embarrassment than if the daylight had been betraying her every look and change of aspect. ‘Mr. Heathcote, I thank you for taking so much interest in me,’ she said.
‘I take the greatest interest in you, Miss Mountford; but in the meantime I would say the same to anyone so young. Things are going on which will injure you for your life. If you can by your submission avert these ills, and make him happier—even for a time?’
‘In short,’ she said again, ‘pretend to give up until he is no longer here to see whether I follow my own inclinations or his? It may be wise advice, Mr. Heathcote; but is it advice which you would like your—anyone you cared for—to take?’
‘I should not like anyone I cared for,’ he said hesitating—‘Pardon me, I cannot help offending you—to be in opposition to her family on such a point.’
The colour rushed to Anne’s face, and anger to her heart: but as the one was invisible, so she restrained the other. She put restraint in every way on herself.
‘That may be so, that may be so! you cannot tell unless you know everything,’ she said. Then, after a pause, ‘But whether it was right or wrong, it is done now, and I cannot alter it. It is not a matter upon which another can decide for you. Obedience at my age cannot be absolute. When you have to make the one choice of your life, can your father do it, or anyone but yourself? Did you think so when you were like me?’ she said, with an appeal full of earnestness which was almost impassioned. This appeal took Heathcote entirely by surprise, and changed all the current of his thoughts.
‘I was never like you,’ he said, hastily—‘like you! I never could compare myself—I never could pretend—I thought I loved half-a-dozen women. Did I ever make the one choice of my life? No, no! A wandering man afloat upon the world can never be like—such as you: there is too great a difference. We cannot compare things so unlike——’
‘But I thought’—she said, then stopped: for his story which she had heard bore a very different meaning. And what right had she to advert to it? ‘I don’t know if you speak in—in respect—or in contempt?’
‘In contempt—could that be? Here is the state of the case as concerns yourself—leaving the general question. My offer to break the entail has no attractions for your father, because he thinks he cannot secure Mount to you. It is doing something against his own heart, against all he wishes, to punish you. Don’t you know, Miss Mountford—but most likely you never felt it—that
to be wroth with those we love
Doth work like madness in the brain?’
‘Love?—that would be great love, passionate love—we have not anything of the kind in our house,’ said Anne, in a low tone of emotion. ‘If there was that, do you think I would go against it, even for——’
Here she stopped with a thrill in her voice. ‘I think you must be mistaken a little, Mr. Heathcote. But I do not see how I can change. Papa asked of me—not the lesser things in which I could have obeyed him, but the one great thing in which I could not. Were I to take your advice, I do not know what I could do.’
Then they walked in silence round the side of the house, under the long line of the drawing-room windows, from which indeed the interview had been watched with much astonishment. Rose had never doubted that the heir of the house was on her side. It seemed no better than a desertion that he should walk and talk with Anne in this way. It filled her with amazement. And in such a cold night too! ‘Hush, child!’ her mother was saying; ‘he has been with papa to Hunston, he has heard all the business arrangements talked over. No doubt he is having a little conversation with Anne, for her good.’
‘What are the business arrangements? What is going to happen? Is he trying to make her give up Mr. Douglas?’ said Rose: but her mother could not or would not give her any information. By-and-by Heathcote came in alone. Anne was too much disturbed by this strange interview to appear when it was over in the tranquil circle of the family. She went upstairs to take off her wraps, to subdue the commotion in her mind and the light in her eyes, and tame herself down to the every-day level. Her mind was somewhat confused, more confused than it had yet been as to her duty. Cosmo somehow had seemed to be gently pushed out of the first place by this stranger who never named him, who knew nothing of him, and who certainly ignored the fact that, without Cosmo, Anne no longer lived or breathed. She was angry that he should be so ignorant, yet too shy and proud to mention her lover or refer to him save by implication. She would have been willing to give up corresponding with him, to make any immediate sacrifice to her father’s prejudice against him—had that been ever asked of her. But to give up ‘the one choice of her life,’ as she had said, would have been impossible. Her mind was affected strongly, but not with alarm, by the intelligence that something was being done mysteriously in the dark against her, that the threat under which she had been living was now being carried out. But this did not move her to submit as Heathcote had urged—rather it stimulated her to resist.
Had Cosmo but been at hand! But if he had been at hand, how could he have ventured to give the advice which Heathcote gave? He could not have asked her to yield, to dissemble, to please the old man while his life lasted, to pretend to give himself up. Nothing of this could he have suggested or she listened to. And yet it was what Cosmo would have liked to advise; but to this state of Cosmo’s mind Anne had no clue.