THERE were two witnesses wanted for the will; one of these was Heathcote Mountford, the other the clerk whom Mr. Loseby had brought with him in his phaeton. He stood by himself, looking as like an indignant prophet whose message from heaven has been disregarded, as a fat little shining man of five feet four could look. It had been to make a last attempt upon the mind of Mr. Mountford, and also to try what effect he could produce on the heart of Anne, that he had come himself, facing all the risks of an east wind, with perhaps snow to come. And there had been a long and stormy interview in the library before the clerk had been called in. ‘She will give up the correspondence. She is as sweet as a girl can be,’ said the old lawyer, fibbing manfully; ‘one can see that it goes to her heart that you should think her disobedient. Mountford, you don’t half know what a girl that is. But for the money she would come to you, she would put herself at your feet, she would give up everything. But she says, bless her! “Papa would think it was because of the money. Do you think I would do that for the money which I wouldn’t do to please him?” That’s Anne all over,’ said her mendacious advocate. ‘After you have accomplished this injustice and cut her off, that sweet creature will come to you some fine day and say, “Papa, I give him up. I give everything up that displeases you—I cannot go against my duty.”’
There was a slight attempt at imitation of Anne’s voice in Mr. Loseby’s tone; he tried a higher key when he made those imaginary speeches on her behalf: but his eyes were glistening all the time: he did not intend to be humorous. And neither was Mr. Mountford a man who saw a joke. He took it grimly without any softening.
‘When she does that, Loseby, if I see reason to believe that she means it, I’ll make another will.’
‘You speak at your ease of making another will—are you sure you will have it in your power? When a man makes an unjust will, I verily believe every word is a nail in his coffin. It is very seldom,’ said Mr. Loseby, with emphasis, carried away by his feelings, ‘that they live to repent.’
Mr. Mountford paled in spite of himself. He looked up sharply at his mentor, then laughed a short uneasy laugh. ‘There’s nothing like a partisan,’ he said; ‘I call that brutal—if it were not so silly, Loseby—unworthy a man of your sense.’
‘By——!’ the lawyer cried to relieve himself, ‘I don’t see the silliness; when you’ve taken a wrong step that may plunge other people into misery, I cannot see how you can have any confidence, even in the protection of God; and you are not in your first youth any more than myself. The thought of dying can’t be put aside at your age or at my age, Mountford, as if we were boys of twenty. We have got to think of it, whether we will or not.’
This address made Mr. Mountford furious. He felt no occasion at all in himself to think of it; it was a brutal argument, and quite beyond all legitimate discussion; but nevertheless it was not pleasant. He did not like the suggestion. ‘Perhaps you’ll call that clerk of yours, and let us finish the business, before we get into fancy and poetry. I never knew you were so imaginative,’ he said, with a sneer; but his lips were bluish, notwithstanding this attempt at disdain. And Mr. Loseby stood with his spectacles pushed up on his forehead, as if with a desire not to see, holding his little bald head high in the air, with a fine indignation in every line of his figure. Heathcote, who was brought in to sign as one of the witnesses, felt that it needed all his consciousness of the importance of what was going on to save him from indecorous laughter. When Mr. Mountford said, ‘I deliver this,’ ‘And I protest against it,’ Mr. Loseby cried, in a vehement undertone, ‘protest against it before earth and heaven.’ ‘Do you mean little Thompson there and Heathcote Mountford?’ said the testator, looking up with a laugh that was more like a snarl. And Heathcote too perceived that his very lips were palish, bluish, and the hand not so steady as usual with which he pushed the papers away. But Mr. Mountford recovered himself with great courage. ‘Now that I have finished my business, we will have time to consider your proposition,’ he said, putting his hand on Heathcote’s shoulder as he got up from his chair. ‘That is, if you have time to think of anything serious in the midst of all this ball nonsense. You must come over for the ball, Loseby, a gay young bachelor like you.’
‘You forget I am a widower, Mr. Mountford,’ said the lawyer, with great gravity.
‘To be sure; I beg your pardon; but you are always here when there is anything going on; and while the young fools are dancing, we’ll consider this question of the entail.’
‘I don’t know what he means,’ Mr. Loseby said, some time after taking Heathcote into a corner; ‘consider the question of the entail the moment he has made another will! I’ll tell you what it is—he is repenting already. I thought what I said couldn’t be altogether without effect. St. John Mountford is as obstinate as a pig, but he is not a fool. I thought he must be touched by what I said. That’s how it is; he would not seem to give in to us; but if you agree on this point, it will be a fine excuse for beginning it all over again. That’s a new light—and it’s exactly like him—it’s St. John Mountford all over,’ said the lawyer, rubbing his hands; ‘as full of crotchets as an egg is full of meat—but yet not such a bad fellow after all.’
The household, however, had no such consoling consciousness of the possibility there was of having all done over again, and there was a great deal of agitation on the subject, both upstairs and down. Very silent upstairs—where Mrs. Mountford, in mingled compunction on Anne’s account and half-guilty joy (though it was none of her doing she said to herself) in respect to Rose’s (supposedly) increased fortune, was reduced to almost complete dumbness, her multiplicity of thoughts making it impossible to her to share in Rose’s chatter about the coming ball; and where Anne, satisfied to think that whatever was to happen had happened, and could no longer be supposed to depend upon any action of hers, sat proud and upright by the writing-table, reading—and altogether out of the talk which Rose carried on, and was quite able to carry on whatever happened, almost entirely by herself. Rose had the same general knowledge that something very important was going on as the rest; but to her tranquil mind, a bird in the hand was always more interesting than two or three in the bush. Downstairs, however, Saymore and Worth and the cook were far from silent. They had a notion of the state of affairs which was wonderfully accurate, and a strong conviction that Miss Anne for her sins had been deposed from her eminence and Miss Rose put in her place. The feeling of Saymore and the cook was strong in Anne’s favour, but Mrs. Worth was not so certain. ‘Miss Rose is a young lady that is far more patient to have her things tried on,’ Worth said. Saymore brought down an account of the party in the drawing-room, which was very interesting to the select party in the housekeeper’s room. ‘Missis by the side of the fire, as serious as a judge—puckering up her brows—never speaking a word.’
‘I dare say she was counting,’ said Worth.
‘And Miss Anne up by the writing-table, with her back against the wall, reading a book, never taking no notice no more than if she were seventy; and Miss Rose a-chattering. The two before the fire had it all their own way. They were writing down and counting up all the folks for this dance. Dash the dance!’ said Saymore; ‘that sort of a nonsense is no satisfaction to reasonable folks. But Miss Rose, she’s as merry as a cricket with her Cousin Heathcote and Cousin Heathcote at every word. She knows it’s all to her advantage what’s been a-doing to-day.’
‘That might be a match, I shouldn’t wonder—eh!’ said the cook, who was from the north-country; ‘the luck as some folks have—I never can understand these queer wills; why can’t gentlefolks do like poor folks, and divide fair, share and share alike? As for what you call entail, I don’t make head or tail of it; but if Miss Rose’s to get all the brass, and marry the man with the land, and Miss Anne to get nought, it’s easy to see that isn’t fair.’
‘If it’s the cousin you mean,’ said Mrs. Worth, ‘he is just twice too old for Miss Rose.’
‘Then he will know how to take care of her,’ said Saymore, which made the room ring with laughter: for though the affairs of the drawing-room were interesting, there was naturally a still warmer attraction in the drama going on downstairs.
Mr. Mountford was in his room alone. He had retired there after dinner, as was his custom. At dinner he had been very serious. He had not been able to get Mr. Loseby’s words out of his mind. Every word a nail in his coffin! What superstitious folly it was! No man ever died the sooner for attending to his affairs, for putting them in order, he said to himself. But this was not simply putting them in order. His mind was greatly disturbed. He had thought that, as soon as he had done it he would be relieved and at ease from the pressure of the irritation which had disturbed him so; but now that it was done he was more disturbed than ever. Perhaps for the first time he fully realised that, if anything should happen to himself, one of his children would be made to sustain the cruellest disappointment and wrong. ‘It will serve her right,’ he tried to say to himself, ‘for the way she has behaved to me;’ but when it became really apparent to him that this would be, not merely a tremendous rebuff and discomfiture for Anne, but a settled fate which she could not escape, a slight shiver ran through him. He had not seen this so plainly before. He had meant to punish her, cruelly, even bitterly, and with an ironical completeness. But then he had never meant to die. This made a greater difference than it was possible to say. He meant that she should know that her marriage was impossible; that he had the very poorest opinion of the man she had chosen; that he would not trust him, and was determined never to let him handle a penny of his (Mr. Mountford’s) money. In short, he said to himself, what he meant was to save Anne from this adventurer, who would no longer wish to marry her when he knew her to be penniless. He meant, he persuaded himself, that his will should have this effect in his lifetime; he meant it to be known, and set things right, not in the future, but at once. Now that all was done he saw the real meaning of the tremendous instrument he had made for the first time. To save Anne from an adventurer—not to die and leave her without provision, not really to give anything away from her, though she deserved it after the way in which she had defied him, had been his intention. Mr. Mountford thought this over painfully, not able to think of anything else. Last night even, no later, he had been thinking it over vindictively, pleased with the cleverness and completeness with which he had turned the tables upon his daughter. It had pleased him immoderately before it was done. But now that it was done, and old Loseby, like an old fool, had thrown in that bit of silly superstition about the nails in his coffin, it did not please him any longer. His face had grown an inch or two longer, nothing like a smile would come whatever he might do. When his wife came ‘to sit with him,’ as she often did, perturbed herself, half frightened, half exultant, and eager to learn all she could, he sent her away impatiently. ‘I have a great deal to do,’ he said. ‘What do I care for your ball? For heaven’s sake let me have a little quiet. I have a great mind to say that there shall be no ball——’ ‘Papa!’ his wife said, ‘you would not be so unkind. Rose has set her heart on it so.’ ‘Oh confound——!’ he said. Did he mean confound Rose, whom he had just chosen to be his heir, whom he had promoted to the vacant place of Anne? All through this strange business Mrs. Mountford’s secret exultation, when she dared to permit herself to indulge it, in the good fortune of her daughter had been chequered by a growing bitterness in the thought that, though Rose was to have the inheritance, Anne still retained by far the higher place even in her husband’s thoughts. He was resolved apparently that nobody should have any satisfaction in this overturn—not even the one person who was benefited. Mrs. Mountford went away with a very gloomy countenance after the confound——! The only thing that gave her any consolation was to see the brisk conversation going on between her daughter and Heathcote Mountford. Anne sat stiff and upright, quite apart from them, reading, but the two who were in front of the cheerful fire in the full light of the lamp were chattering with the gayest ease. Even Mrs. Mountford wondered at Rose, who surely knew enough to be a little anxious, a little perturbed as her mother was—but who showed no more emotion than the cricket that chirped on the hearth. Was it mere innocence and childish ease of heart, or was it that there was no heart at all? Even her mother could not understand her. And Heathcote, too, who knew a great deal, if not all that was going on, though he threw back lightly the ball of conversation, wondered at the gaiety of this little light-minded girl who was not affected, not a hair’s breadth, by the general agitation of the house, nor by the disturbed countenance of her mother, nor by her sister’s seriousness. He talked—it was against his principles not to respond to the gay challenges thrown out to him—but he wondered. Did she know nothing, though everybody else knew? Was she incapable of divining that other people were in trouble? The conversation was very lively in front of the fire, but he, too, as well as the others, wondered at Rose.
And Mr. Mountford alone in his library thought, and over again thought. Supposing after all, incredible as it seemed, that he was to die? He did not entertain the idea, but it took possession of him against his will. He got up and walked about the room in the excitement it caused. He felt his pulse almost involuntarily, and was a little comforted to feel that it was beating just as usual; but if it should happen as Loseby said? He would not acknowledge to himself that he had done a wrong thing, and yet, if anything of that sort were to take place, he could not deny that the punishment he had inflicted was too severe. Whereas, as he intended it, it was not a punishment, but a precaution; it was to prevent Anne throwing herself away upon an adventurer, a nobody. Better even that she should have no money than be married for her money, than fall into the hands of a man unworthy of her. But then, supposing he were to die, and this will, made—certainly, as he persuaded himself, as a mere precautionary measure—should become final? That would make a very great difference. For a long time Mr. Mountford thought over the question. He was caught in his own net. After all that had been said and done, he could not change the will that he had made. It was not within the bounds of possibility that he should send for that little busybody again and acknowledge to him that he had made a mistake. What was there that he could do? He sat up long beyond his usual hour. Saymore, extremely curious and excited by so strange an incident, came to his door three several times to see that the fire was out and to extinguish the lamp, and received the last time such a reception as sent the old man hurrying along the passages at a pace nobody had ever seen him adopt before, as if in danger of his life. Then Mrs. Mountford came, very anxious, on tiptoe in her dressing-gown, to see if anything was the matter; but she too retired more quickly than she came. He let his fire go out, and his lamp burn down to the last drop of oil—and it was only when he had no more light to go on with, and was chilled to death, that he lighted his candle and made his way to his own room through the silent house.
The victim herself was somewhat sad. She had spent the evening in a proud and silent indignation, saying nothing, feeling the first jar of fate, and the strange pang of the discovery that life was not what she had thought, but far less moved by what her father had done than by the failure round of her understanding and support. And when she had gone to her room, she had cried as did not misbecome her sex and her age, but then had read Cosmo’s letter over again, and had discovered a new interpretation for it, and reading between the lines, had found it all generosity and nobleness, and forthwith reconciled herself to life and fate. But her father had no such ready way of escape. He was the master of Anne’s future in one important respect, the arbiter of the family existence, with the power of setting up one and putting down another; but he had no reserve of imaginative strength, no fund of generous and high-flown sentiment, no love-letter to restore his courage. He did what he could to bring that courage back. During the hours which he spent unapproachable in his library, he had been writing busily, producing pages of manuscript, half of which he had destroyed as soon as it was written. At the end, however, he so far satisfied himself as to concoct something of which he made a careful copy. The original he put into one envelope, the duplicate into another, and placed these two packets in the drawer of his writing-table, just as his light failed him. As he went upstairs his cold feet and muddled head caused him infinite alarm, and he blamed himself in his heart for risking his health. What he had done in his terror that night might have been left till to-morrow; whereas he might have caught cold, and cold might lead to bronchitis. Every word a nail in his coffin! What warrant had Loseby for such a statement? Was there any proof to be given of it? Mr. Mountford’s head was buzzing and confused with the unusual work and the still more unusual anxiety. Perhaps he had caught an illness; he did not feel able to think clearly or even to understand his own apprehensions. He felt his pulse again before he went to bed. It was not feverish—yet: but who could tell what it might be in the morning? And his feet were so cold that he could not get any warmth in them, even though he held them close to the dying fire.
He was not, however, feverish in the morning, and his mind became more placid as the day went on. The two packets were safe in the drawer of the writing-table. He took them out and looked at them as a man might look at a bottle of quack medicine, clandestinely secured and kept in reserve against an emergency. He would not care to have his possession of it known, and yet there it was, should the occasion to try it occur. He felt a little happier to know that he could put his hands upon it should it be wanted—or at least a little less alarmed and nervous. And days passed on without any symptoms of cold or other illness. There was no sign or sound of these nails driven into his coffin. And the atmosphere grew more clear in the house. Anne, between whom and himself there had been an inevitable reserve and coldness, suddenly came out of that cloud, and presented herself to him the Anne of old, with all the sweetness and openness of nature. The wrong had now been accomplished, and was over, and there was a kind of generous amusement to Anne in the consternation which her sudden return to all her old habits occasioned among the people surrounding her, who knew nothing of her inner life of imaginative impulse and feeling. She took her cottage-plans into the library one morning with her old smile as if nothing had happened or could happen. The plans had been all pushed aside in the silent combat between her father and herself. Mr. Mountford could not restrain a little outburst of feeling, which had almost the air of passion. ‘Why do you bring them to me? Don’t you know you are out of it, Anne? Don’t you know I have done—what I told you I should do?’
‘I heard that you had altered your will, papa; but that does not affect the cottagers. They are always there whoever has the estate.’
‘Don’t you mind, then, who has the estate?’
‘Yes, immensely,’ said Anne, with a smile. ‘I could not have thought I should mind half so much. I have felt the coming down and being second. But I am better again. You have a right to do what you please, and I shall not complain.’
He sat in his chair at his writing-table (in the drawer of which were still those two sealed packets) and looked at her with contemplative, yet somewhat abashed eyes. There was an unspeakable relief in being thus entirely reconciled to her, notwithstanding the sense of discomfiture and defeat it gave him. ‘Do you think—your sister—will be able to manage property?’ he said.
‘No doubt she will marry, papa.’
‘Ah!’ he had not thought of this somehow. ‘She will marry, and my substance will go into the hands of some stranger, some fellow I never heard of; that is a pleasant prospect: he will be a fool most likely, whether he is an adventurer or not.’
‘We must all take our chance, I suppose,’ said Anne, with a little tremor in her voice. She knew the adventurer was levelled at herself. ‘I suppose you have made it a condition that he shall take the name of Mountford, papa?’
He made her no reply, but looked up suddenly with a slight start. Oddly enough he had made no stipulation in respect to Rose. It had never occurred to him that it was of the slightest importance what name Rose’s husband should bear. He gave Anne a sudden startled look; then, for he would not commit himself, changed the subject abruptly. After this interval of estrangement it was so great a pleasure to talk to Anne about the family affairs. ‘What do you think,’ he said, ‘about Heathcote’s proposal, Anne?’
‘I should have liked to jump at it, papa. Mount in our own family! it seemed too good to be true.’
‘Seemed! you speak as if it were in the past. I have not said no yet. I have still got the offer in my power. Mount in our own family! but we have not got a family—a couple of girls!’
‘If we had not been a couple of girls there would have been no trouble about the entail,’ said Anne, permitting herself a laugh. ‘And of course Rose’s husband——’
‘I know nothing about Rose’s husband,’ he cried testily. ‘I never thought of him. And so you can talk of all this quite at your ease?’ he added. ‘You don’t mind?’
This was a kind of offence to him, as well as a satisfaction. She had no right to think so little of it: and yet what a relief it was!
Anne shook her head and smiled. ‘It is better not to talk of it at all,’ she said.
This conversation had a great effect upon Mr. Mountford. Though perhaps it proved him more wrong than ever, it restored him to all the ease of family intercourse which had been impeded of late. And it set the whole house right. Anne, who had been in the shade, behind backs, resigning many of her usual activities on various pretences, came back naturally to her old place. It was like a transformation scene. And everybody was puzzled, from Mrs. Mountford, who could not understand it at all, and Heathcote, who divined that some compromise had been effected, to the servants, whose interest in Miss Anne rose into new warmth, and who concluded that she had found means at last ‘to come over master,’ which was just what they expected from her. After this everything went on very smoothly, as if the wheels of life had been freshly oiled, and velvet spread over all its roughnesses. Even the preparations for the ball proceeded with far more spirit than before. The old wainscoted banqueting-room, which had not been used for a long time, though it was the pride of the house, was cleared for dancing, and Anne had already begun to superintend the decoration of it. Everything went on more briskly from the moment that she took it in hand, for none of the languid workers had felt that there was any seriousness in the preparations till Anne assumed the direction of them. Heathcote, who was making acquaintance very gradually with the differing characters of the household, understood this sudden activity less than anything before. ‘Is it for love of dancing?’ he said. Anne laughed and shook her head.
‘I don’t know that I shall enjoy this ball much; but I am not above dancing—and I enjoy this,’ she said. ‘I like to be doing something.’ To have regained her own sense of self-command, her superiority to circumstances, made this magnanimous young woman happy in her downfall. She liked the knowledge that she was magnanimous almost more than the good fortune and prosperity which she had lost. She had got over her misfortunes. She gave her head a little toss aloft, shaking off all shadows, as she ran hither and thither, the soul of everything. She had got the upper hand of fate.
As for Mr. Mountford, he had a great deal more patience about the details of the approaching entertainment when Anne took them in hand. Either she managed to make them amusing to him, or the additional reality in the whole matter, from the moment she put herself at the head of affairs, had a corresponding effect upon her father. Perhaps, indeed, a little feeling of making up to her, by a more than ordinary readiness to accept all her lesser desires, was in his mind. His moroseness melted away. He forgot his alarm about his health and Mr. Loseby’s ugly words. It is possible, indeed, that he might have succeeded in forgetting altogether what he had done, or at least regaining his feeling that it was a mere expedient to overawe Anne and bring her into order, liable to be changed as everything changes—even wills, when there are long years before the testator—but for the two sealed envelopes in his drawer which he could not help seeing every time he opened it. A day or two before the ball some business called him into Hunston, and he took them out with a half smile, weighing them in his hand. Should he carry them with him and put them in Loseby’s charge? or should he leave them there? He half laughed at the ridiculous expedient to which Loseby’s words had driven him, and looked at the two letters jocularly; but in the end he determined to take them, it would be as well to put them in old Loseby’s hands. Heathcote volunteered to ride with him as he had done before. It was again a bright calm day, changed only in so far as November is different from October. There had been stormy weather in the meantime, and the trees were almost bare; but still it was fine and bright. Anne came out from the hall and stood on the steps to see them ride off. She gave them several commissions: to inquire at the bookseller’s for the ball programmes, and to carry to the haberdasher’s a note of something Mrs. Worth wanted. She kissed her hand to her father as he rode away, and his penitent heart gave him a prick. ‘You would not think that was a girl that had just been cut off with a shilling,’ he said, half mournfully (as if it had been a painful necessity), and half with parental braggadocio, proud of her pluck and spirit.
‘I thought you must have changed your mind,’ Heathcote said.
Mr. Mountford shook his head and said, ‘No, worse luck. I have not changed my mind.’
This was the only expression of changed sentiment to which he gave vent. When they called at Mr. Loseby’s, the lawyer received them with a mixture of satisfaction and alarm. ‘What’s up now?’ he said, coming out of the door of his private room to receive them. ‘I thought I should see you presently.’ But when he was offered the two sealed letters Mr. Loseby drew back his hand as if he had been stung. ‘You have been making another will,’ he said, ‘all by yourself, to ruin your family and make work for us lawyers after you are dead and gone.’
‘No,’ said Mr. Mountford, eagerly, ‘no, no—it is only some stipulations.’
The packets were each inscribed with a legend on the outside, and the lawyer was afraid of them. He took them gingerly with the ends of his fingers, and let them drop into one of the boxes which lined his walls. As for Mr. Mountford, he became more jaunty and pleased with himself every moment. He went to the haberdasher’s for Mrs. Worth, and to the stationer’s to get the programmes which had been ordered for the ball. He was more cheerful than his companion had ever seen him. He opened the subject of the entail of his own accord as they went along. ‘Loseby is coming for the ball: it is a kind of thing he likes; and then we shall talk it over,’ he said. Perhaps in doing this a way might be found of setting things straight, independent of these sealed packets, which, however, in the meantime, were a kind of sop to fate, a propitiation to Nemesis. Then they rode home in cheerful talk. By the time night fell they had got into the park; and though the trees stood up bare against the dark blue sky, and the grass looked too wet and spongy for pleasant riding, there was still some beauty in the dusky landscape. Mount, framed in its trees and showing in the distance the cheerful glow of its lights, had come in sight. ‘It is a pleasant thing to come home, and to know that one is looked for and always welcome,’ Mr. Mountford said. Heathcote had turned round to answer, with some words on his lips about his own less happy lot, when suddenly the figure at his side dropped out of the dusk around them. There was a muffled noise, a floundering of horse’s hoofs, a dark heap upon the grass, moving, struggling, yet only half discernible in the gloom, over which he almost stumbled and came to the ground also, so sudden was the fall. His own horse swerved violently, just escaping its companion’s hoof. And through the darkness there ran a sharp broken cry, and then a groan: which of them came from his own lips Heathcote did not know.