CHAPTER XVII.
THE ABSOLUTE AND THE COMPARATIVE.
THIS secret incident in the family history left a great deal of agitation in the house. Mrs. Mountford had not been informed in any detail what her husband’s mission to Hunston was. She knew that he had gone to ‘tamper with his will,’ as she said, but what were the exact changes he meant to make in that will she did not know. They were certainly to the advantage of Rose and to the detriment of Anne: so much she was aware of, but scarcely anything more. And she herself was frightened and excited, afraid of all the odium to which she would infallibly be exposed if the positions of the sisters were changed, and more or less affected by a shrinking from palpable injustice; but yet very much excited about Rose’s possible good fortune, and not feeling it possible to banish hopes and imaginations on this point out of her mind. If Rose was put in the first place it would not be just—not exactly just, she said to herself, with involuntary softening of the expression. Rose’s mother (though she would be blamed) knew that of herself she never would have done anything to deprive Anne of her birthright. But still, if papa thought Anne had behaved badly, and that Rose deserved more at his hands, he was far better—no doubt far better, able to judge than she was; and who could say a word against his decision? But it was very irritating, very wearing, not to know. She tried a great many ways of finding out, but she did not succeed. Mr. Mountford was on his guard, and kept his own counsel. He told her of Heathcote’s proposal, but he did not tell her what he himself meant to do. And how it was that her husband was so indifferent to Heathcote’s proposal Mrs. Mountford could not understand. She herself, though not a Mountford born, felt her heart beat at the suggestion. ‘Of course you will jump at it?’ she said.
‘I do not feel in the least disposed to jump at it. If there had been a boy, it might have been different.’ Mrs. Mountford always felt that in this there was an inferred censure upon herself—how unjust a censure it is unnecessary to say: of course she would have had a boy if she could—of that there could be no question.
‘A boy is not everything,’ she said. ‘It would be just the same thing if Anne’s husband took the name.’
‘Don’t speak to me of Anne’s husband,’ he cried, almost with passion. ‘I forbid you to say a word to me of Anne’s affairs.’
‘St. John! what can you mean? It would be barbarous of me, it would be unchristian,’ cried the much-exercised mother, trying hard to do her duty, ‘not to speak of Anne’s affairs. Probably the man you object to will never be her husband; probably——’
‘That is enough, Letitia. I want to hear nothing more upon the subject. Talk of anything else you like, but I will have nothing said about Anne.’
‘Then you are doing wrong,’ she cried, with a little real indignation. After this her tone changed in a moment: something like bitterness stole into it. ‘It shows how much more you are thinking of Anne than of anyone else. You are rejecting Mount because you don’t choose that she should be the heir. You forget you have got another child.’
‘Forget I have got another child! It is the first subject of my thoughts.’
‘Ah, yes, perhaps so far as the money is concerned. Of course if Anne does not have it, there is nobody but Rose who could have any right to it. But you don’t think your youngest daughter good enough to have anything to do with Mount. I see very well how it is, though you don’t choose to explain.’
‘If that is how you prefer to look at it,’ he said; but at this moment a budget of papers arrived from Hunston by a special messenger, and Mrs. Mountford withdrew perforce. She was in a very irritable condition, as all the house knew, ready to find fault with everything. Perhaps it was rather an advantage to her to have a grievance, and to be able to reproach her husband with preferring in his heart the elder to the younger, even when he was preferring the younger to the elder in this new will. ‘There will never be any question of my child’s husband taking the name, that is very clear,’ she said to herself, with much vehemence, nursing her wrath to keep it warm, and thus escaping from the question of injustice to Anne. And again it occurred to her, but with more force than before, that to announce to her husband that Rose was going to marry Heathcote Mountford would be a delightful triumph. She would thus be Mrs. Mountford of Mount in spite of him, and the victory would be sweet. But even this did not seem to progress as it appeared to do at first. Heathcote, too, seemed to be becoming interested in Anne: as if that could advantage him! when it was clear that Anne was ready to lose everything, and was risking everything, every day, for that other! Altogether Mrs. Mountford’s position was not a comfortable one. To know so much and yet to know so little was very hard to bear.
Her husband had a still harder life as being a free agent, and having the whole weight of the decision upon his shoulders. It was not to be supposed that he could free himself entirely from all sense of guilt towards the child whom in his heart he loved most. He had resolved to punish her and he clung to his resolution with all the determination of a narrow mind. He had said that she should never marry the man who was nobody, that if she held by him he would give her fortune to Rose. And she did hold by him, with an obstinacy equal to his own. Was it possible that he should bear this and give her reason to laugh at his words as mere sound and fury signifying nothing? No, whatever he might have to suffer for it, no! Perhaps, however, the great secret of Mr. Mountford’s obstinate adherence to a determination which he could not but know to be unjust and cruel—and of many more of the cruelties and eccentricities that people perpetrate by their wills—lay in the fact that, after all, though he took so much trouble to make his will, he had not the slightest intention of dying. If a man does not die, a monstrous will is no more than an angry letter—a thing which wounds and vexes, perhaps, and certainly is intended to wound and vex, and which suffices to blow off a great deal of the steam of family quarrels; but which does no real harm to anybody, in that there is plenty of time to change it, and to make all right again some time or other. Another thing which assisted him in getting over his own doubts and disquietudes was the strenuous, almost violent, opposition of Mr. Loseby, who did not indeed refuse at last to carry out his wishes, but did so with so many protests and remonstrances that Mr. Mountford’s spirit was roused, and he forgot the questionings of his own conscience in the determination to defend himself against those of this other man who had, he declared to himself, nothing whatever to do with it, and no right to interfere. Could not a man do what he would with his own? The money was his own, the land his own, and his children too were his own. Who else had anything to do with the arrangements he chose to make for them? It was of his grace and favour if he gave them his money at all. He was not bound to do so. It was all his: he was not responsible to any mortal; it was a pretty piece of impudence that Loseby should venture to take so much upon him. This opposition of Loseby’s did him all the good in the world. It set him right with himself. But still those packets of papers, always accompanied by a letter, were annoying to him. ‘I send you the draft of the new codicil, but you must allow me to observe——’ ‘I return draft with the corrections you have made, but I must once more entreat you to pause and reconsider——’ What did the old fellow mean? Did he think he had any right to speak—a country attorney, a mere man of business? To be sure he was an old friend—nobody said he was not an old friend; but the oldest friend in the world should know his own place, and should not presume too far. If Loseby thought that now, when matters had gone this length, his representations would have any effect, he was indeed making a mistake. Before pen had been put to paper Mr. Mountford might perhaps have reconsidered the matter; but now, and in apparent deference to Loseby! this was a complaisance which was impossible.
The whole house was agitated by these proceedings, though publicly not a word was said nor an allusion made to them. Anne even, absolutely disinterested as she was, and full of a fine, but alas! quite unreasonable contempt for fortune—the contempt of one who had no understanding of the want of it—felt it affect her in, as she thought, the most extraordinary and unworthy way. She was astonished at herself. After all, she reflected, with a sense of humiliation, how much power must those external circumstances have on the mind, when she, whose principles and sentiments were all so opposed to their influence, could be thus moved by the possible loss of a little land or a little money! It was pitiful: but she could not help it, and she felt herself humbled to the very dust. In the fulness of her heart she wrote an account of all that was happening to Cosmo, reproaching herself, yet trying to account for her weakness. ‘It cannot be the mere loss of the wealth that affects me,’ Anne wrote. ‘I cannot believe so badly of myself, and I hope—I hope—you will not think so badly of me. It must be (don’t you think?) the pain of feeling that my father thinks so little of me as to put upon me this public mark of his displeasure. I say to myself, dear Cosmo, that this must be the cause of the very unquestionable pain I feel; and I hope you will think so too, and not, that it is the actual money I care for. And, then, there is the humiliation of being put second—I who have always been first. I never thought there was so much in seniority, in all those little superiorities which I suppose we plume ourselves upon without knowing it. I can’t bear the idea of being second, I suppose. And then there is the uncertainty, the sense of something that is going on, in which one is so closely concerned, but which one does not know, and the feeling that others are better informed, and that one is being talked of, and the question discussed how one will bear it. As if it mattered! but I acknowledge with humiliation that it does matter, that I care a great deal more than I ever thought I cared—that I am a much poorer creature than I believed I was. I scorn myself, but I hope my Cosmo will not scorn me. You know the world better, and the heart which is pettier than one likes to think. Perhaps it is women only that are the victims of these unworthy sentiments. I cannot think of you as being moved by them; perhaps what is said of us is true, and we are only “like moonlight unto sunlight, and like water unto wine.” But these are far too pretty comparisons if I am right. However, heaven be praised, there is the happiness of feeling that, if I am but after all a mean and interested creature, there is you to fall back upon, who are so different. O Cosmo mio, what would the world be now if I had not you to fall back upon (I like these words!), and lean against and feel myself doubled, or so much more than doubled, and propped up by you. I feel already a little better for getting this off my mind and telling you what I have found out in myself, and how ashamed I am by my discoveries. You have “larger, other eyes” than mine, and you will understand me, and excuse me, and put me right.’
Cosmo Douglas received this letter in his chambers, to which he had now gone back. He read it with a sort of consternation. First, the news it convened was terrible, making an end of all his hopes; and second, this most ill-timed and unnecessary self-accusation was more than his common sense could put up with. It was not that the glamour of love was wearing off, for he still loved Anne truly; but that anyone in her senses could write so about money was inconceivable to him. Could there be a more serious predicament? and yet here was she apologising to him for feeling it, making believe that he would not feel it. Is she a fool? he said to himself—he was exasperated, though he loved her. And in his reply he could not but in some degree betray this feeling.
‘My dearest,’ he said, ‘I don’t understand how you can blame yourself. The feelings you express are most natural. It is very serious, very painful—infinitely painful to me, that it is my love and the tie which binds us which has brought this upon you. What am I to say to my dear love? Give me up, throw me over? I will bear anything rather than that you should suffer; but I know your generous heart too well to imagine that you will do this. If you were “petty,” as you call yourself (heaven forgive you for such blasphemy!) I could almost be tempted to advise you to have recourse to—what shall I call it?—strategy—one of the fictions that are said to be all fair in love and war. I could do this myself, I am afraid, so little is there in me of the higher sentiment you give me credit for. Rather than that you should lose your birthright, if it were only my happiness that was concerned, I would take myself out of the way, I would give up the sweet intercourse which is life to me, and hope for better days to come. And if you should decide to do this, I will accept whatever you decide, my darling, with full trust in you that you will not forget me, that the sun may shine for me again. Will you do this, my Anne? Obey your father, and let me take my chance: it will be better that than to be the cause of so much suffering to you. But even in saying this I feel that I will wound your tender heart, your fine sense of honour: what can I say? Sacrifice me, my dearest, if you can steel your heart to the possibility of being unkind. I would be a poor wretch, indeed, unworthy the honour you have done me, if I could not trust you and bide my time.’
This letter was very carefully composed and with much thought. If Anne could but have been made a convert to the code that all is fair in love, what a relief it would have been; or if she could have divined the embarrassment that a portionless bride, however much he loved her, would be to Cosmo! But, on the other hand, there was no certainty that, even if the worst came to the worst, she would be a portionless bride; and the chances of alarming her, and bringing about a revulsion of feeling, were almost more dreadful than the chances of losing her fortune. It wanted very delicate steering to hit exactly the right passage between those dangers, and Cosmo was far from confident that he had hit it. A man with a practical mind and a real knowledge of the world has a great deal to go through when he has to deal with the absolute in the person of a young inexperienced and high-flown girl, altogether ignorant of the world. And, as a matter of fact, the letter did not please Anne. It gave her that uneasy sense of coming in contact with new agencies, powers unknown, not to be judged by her previous canons, which is one of the first disenchantments of life. How to lie and yet not be guilty of lying was a new science to her. She did not understand that casuistry of love, which makes it a light offence to deceive. She understood the art of taking her own way, but that of giving up her own way, and yet resolving to have it all the same, was beyond her power. What they wanted her to do was to deceive her father, to wait—surely the most terrible of all meanness—till he should be dead and then break her promise to him. This was what Heathcote had advised, and now Cosmo—Cosmo himself replied to her when she threw herself upon him for support, in the same sense. A chill of disappointment, discouragement, came over her. If this was the best thing to be done, it seemed to Anne that her own folly was better than their wisdom. Had she been told that love and a stout heart and two against the world were better than lands or wealth, she would have felt herself strong enough for any heroism. But this dash of cold water in her face confounded her. What did they mean by telling her to obey her father? he had not asked for obedience. He had said, ‘If you do not give up this man, I will take your fortune from you,’ and she had proudly accepted the alternative. That was all; and was she to go back to him now, to tell him a lie, and with a mental reservation say, ‘I prefer my fortune; I have changed my mind; I will give him up?’ Anne knew that she could not have survived the utter scorn of herself which would have been her portion had she done this. Were it necessary to do it, the proud girl would have waited till the other sacrifice was completed, till her father had fulfilled his threat. Cosmo’s letter gave her a chill in the very warmth of her unbounded faith in him. She would not allow to herself that he did not understand her, that he had failed of what she expected from him. This was honour, no doubt, from his point of view; but she felt a chill sense of loneliness, a loss of that power of falling back upon an unfailing support which she had so fondly and proudly insisted on. She was subdued in her courage and pride and confidence. And yet this was not all that Anne had to go through.
It was Mr. Loseby who was the next operator upon her disturbed and awakening thoughts. One wintry afternoon when November had begun, he drove over to Mount in his little phaeton with a blue bag on the seat beside him. ‘Don’t say anything to your master yet, Saymore,’ he said, when he got down, being familiar with all the servants, and the habits of the house, as if it had been his own. ‘Do you think you could manage to get me a few words privately with Miss Anne?’
‘If I might make bold to ask, sir,’ said Saymore, ‘is it true as there is something up about Miss Anne? Things is said and things is ‘inted, and we’re interested, and we don’t know what to think. Is it along of that gentleman, Mr. Loseby? Master is set against the match, I know as much as that.’
‘I dare say you’re right,’ said the lawyer. ‘An old family servant like you, Saymore, sees many things that the rest of the world never guess at. Hold your tongue about it, old fellow, that’s all I’ve got to say. And try whether you can bring me to speech of Miss Anne. Don’t let anyone else know. You can manage it, I feel sure.’
‘I’ll try, sir,’ Saymore said, and he went through the house on tiptoe from room to room, looking for his young mistress, with the air of a conspirator in an opera, doing everything he could to betray himself. When he found her, he stole behind a large screen, and made mysterious gestures which everybody saw. ‘What is it, Saymore?’ asked Anne. Then Saymore pointed downstairs, with jerks over his shoulder, and much movement of his eyebrows. ‘There’s somebody, Miss Anne, as wants a word with you,’ he said, with the deepest meaning. Anne’s heart began to beat. Could it be Cosmo come boldly, in person, to comfort her? She was in the billiard-room with Rose and Heathcote. She put down the cue which she had been using with very little energy or interest, and followed the old man to the hall. ‘Who is it, Saymore?’ she asked tremulously. ‘It’s some one that’s come for your good. I hope you’ll listen to him, Miss Anne, I hope you’ll listen to him.’ Anne’s heart was in her mouth. If he should have come so far to see her, to support her, to make up for the deficiency of his letter! She seemed to tread on air as she went down the long passages. And it was only Mr. Loseby after all!
The disappointment made her heart sink. She could scarcely speak to him. It was like falling down to earth from the skies. But Mr. Loseby did not notice this. He put his arm into hers as the rector did, with a fatherly familiarity, and drew her to the large window full of the greyness of the pale and misty November sky. ‘I have something to say to you, my dear Miss Anne—something that is of consequence. My dear, do you know anything about the business that brings me here?’
‘I know—that my father is making some alteration in his will, Mr. Loseby. I don’t know any more—why should I?—I do not see why I should believe that it has anything to do with me.’
‘Anne, my dear, I can’t betray your father’s secrets; but I am afraid it has something to do with you. Now look here, my dear girl—why it is not so long since you used to sit on my knee! Tell me what this is, which has made you quarrel with papa——’
‘Mr. Loseby!—I—do not know that I have quarrelled with my father——’
‘Don’t be so stern, my dear child. Call him papa. After all he is your papa, Anne. Who was so fond of you when you were a tiny creature? I remember you a baby in his arms, poor man! when he lost his first wife, before he married again. Your mother died so young, and broke his life in two. That is terribly hard upon a man. Think of him in that light, my dear. He was wrapped up in you when you were a baby. Come! let me go to him, an old friend, your very oldest friend, and say you are ready to make it up.’
‘To make it up?—but it is not a quarrel—not anything like a quarrel.’
‘Yes, yes, it is—I know better. Only say that you will do nothing without his consent; that you will form no engagement; that you will give up corresponding and all that. You ought to, my dear; it is your duty. And when it will save you from what would inconvenience you all your life! What, Anne, you are not going to be offended with what I say, your oldest friend?’
‘Mr. Loseby, you do not understand,’ she said. She had attempted, in her impatience, to withdraw her arm from his. ‘He said “Give up”—I do not wish to conceal who it is—“give up Mr. Douglas, or I will take away your portion and give it to your sister.” What could I say? Could I show so little faith in the choice I had made—so little—so little—regard for the gentleman I am going to marry, as to say, “I prefer my fortune?” I will not do it; it would be falsehood and baseness. This is all the alternative I have ever had. It is like saying, “Your money or your life”——’
‘In that case one gives the money, Anne, to save the life.’
‘And so I have done,’ she said, proudly. ‘Dear Mr. Loseby, I don’t want to vex you. I don’t want to quarrel with anyone. Can I say, when it is not true—“I have changed my mind, I like the money best?” Don’t you see that I could not do that? then what can I do?’
‘You can give in, my dear, you can give in,’ repeated the lawyer. ‘No use for entering into particulars. So long as you authorise me to say you give in—that is all, I am sure, that is needful. Don’t turn me off, Anne—give me the pleasure of reconciling you, my dear.’
Mr. Loseby had always given himself out as one of Anne’s adorers. His eyes glistened with the moisture in them. He pressed her arm within his. ‘Come, my dear! I never was a father myself, which I have always regretted; but I have known you all your life. Let me do you a good turn—let me put a stop to all this nonsense, and tell him you will make it up.’
Anne’s heart had sunk very low; with one assault of this kind after another she was altogether discouraged. She did not seem to care what she said, or what interpretation was put upon her words. ‘You may say what you please,’ she said. ‘I will make it up, if you please: but what does that mean, Mr. Loseby? I will give up writing, if he wishes it—but how can I give up the—gentleman I am engaged to? Do you think I want to quarrel? Oh, no, no—but what can I do? Give up!—I have no right. He has my promise and I have his. Can I sell that for money?’ cried Anne, indignantly. ‘I will do whatever papa pleases—except that.’
‘You are making him do a dreadful injustice, Anne. Come, what does this young fellow say? Does he not want to release you, to save you from suffering? does he hold you to your promise in the face of such a loss? An honourable young man would tell you: never mind me——’
Anne detached her arm with a little energy from his. ‘Why should you torment me?’ she cried. ‘An honourable man?—is it honour, then, to prefer, as you said yourself, one’s money to one’s life?’
‘My dear child, money is always there, it is always to be relied upon; it is a strong back, whatever happens—whereas this, that you call life——!’ cried Mr. Loseby, spreading out his hands and lifting up his eyebrows; he had chosen the very image she had herself used when writing to her lover. Was this then what they all thought, that wealth was the best thing to fall back upon? She smiled, but it was a smile of pain.
‘If I thought so, I should not care either for the life or the money,’ she said.
Mr. Loseby held up his hands once more. He shook his shining little bald head, and took up his blue bag from the table. ‘You are as obstinate, as pig-headed, the whole family of you—one worse than another,’ he said.