ALL was pleasant commotion and stir in Mount, where almost every room had received some addition to its decoration. On this particular evening there was a great show of candles in the old banqueting hall, which was to be the ballroom, and great experiments in lighting were going on. The ball at Mount was stirring the whole county. In all the houses about there was more or less commotion, toilets preparing, an additional thrill of liveliness and pleasure sent into the quiet country life. And Mount itself was all astir. Standing outside, it was pretty to watch the lights walking about the full house, gliding along the long corridors, gleaming at windows along the whole breadth of the rambling old place. With all these lights streaming out into the night, the house seemed to warm the evening air, which was now white with inevitable mists over the park. Rose ran about like a child, delighted with the stir, dragging holly wreaths after her, and holding candles to all the workers; but Anne had the real work in hand. It was to her the carpenters came for their orders, and the servants who never knew from one half-hour to another what next was to be done. Mrs. Mountford had taken the supper under her charge, and sat serenely over her worsted work, in the consciousness that whatever might go wrong, that, at least, would be right. ‘As for your decorations, I wash my hands of them,’ she said. It was Anne upon whom all these cares fell. And though she was by no means sure that she would enjoy the ball, it was quite certain, as she had said to Heathcote, that she enjoyed this. She enjoyed the sensation of being herself again, and able to throw herself into this occupation with a fine indifference to her own personal standing in the house. If she had been dethroned in the will, only herself could dethrone her in nature. She felt, as she wished to feel, that she was above all that; that she was not even under the temptation of sullenness, and had no sense of injury to turn the sweet into bitter. She went about holding her head consciously a little higher than usual, as with a gay defiance of all things that could pull her down. Who could pull her down, save herself? And what was the use of personal happiness, of that inspiration and exhilaration of love which was in her veins, if it did not make her superior to all little external misfortunes? She felt magnanimous, and to feel so seemed to compensate her for everything else. It would have been strange, indeed, she said to herself, if the mere loss of a fortune had sufficed to crush the spirit of a happy woman, a woman beloved, with a great life before her. She smiled at fate in her faith and happiness. Her head borne higher than usual, thrown back a little, her eyes shining, a smile, in which some fine contempt for outside trouble just touched the natural sweetness of her youth, to which, after all, it was so natural to take pleasure in all that she was about—all these signs and marks of unusual commotion in her mind, of the excitement of a crisis about her, struck the spectators, especially the keen-sighted ones below stairs. ‘It can’t be like we think. She’s the conquering hero, Miss Anne is. She’s just like that army with banners as is in the Bible,’ said the north-country cook. ‘I don’t understand her not a bit,’ Saymore said, who knew better, who was persuaded that Anne had not conquered. Mrs. Worth opined that it was nature and nothing more. ‘A ball is a ball, however downhearted you may be; it cheers you up, whatever is a going to happen,’ she said; but neither did this theory find favour in old Saymore’s eyes.
What a beehive it was! Rooms preparing for the visitors who were to come to-morrow, linen put out to air, fires lighted, housemaids busy; in the kitchen all the cook’s underlings, with aids from the village, already busy over the ball supper. Even Mrs. Mountford had laid aside her worsted work, and was making bows of ribbons for the cotillon. There was to be a cotillon. It was ‘such fun,’ Rose had said. In the ballroom the men were busy hammering, fixing up wreaths, and hanging curtains. Both the girls were there superintending, Rose half encircled by greenery. There was so much going on, so much noise that it was difficult to hear anything. And it must have been a lull in the hammering, in the consultation of the men, in the moving of stepladders and sound of heavy boots over the floor, which allowed that faint sound to penetrate to Anne’s ear. What was it? ‘What was that?’ she cried. They listened a moment, humouring her. What should it be? The hammers were sounding gaily, John Stokes, the carpenter belonging to the house, mounted high upon his ladder, with tacks in his mouth, his assistant holding up to him one of the muslin draperies. The wreaths were spread out over the floor. Now and then a maid put in her head to gaze, and admire, and wonder. ‘Oh, you are always fancying something, Anne,’ said Rose. ‘You forget how little time we have.’ Then suddenly it came again, and everybody heard. A long cry, out of the night, a prolonged halloo. John Stokes himself put down his hammer. ‘It’s somebody got into the pond,’ he said. ‘No, it’s the other side of the park,’ said the other man. Anne ran out to the corridor, and threw open the window at the end, which swept a cold gust through all the house. A wind seemed to have got up at that moment, though it had been calm before. Then it came again, a long, far-echoing ‘halloo—halloo—help!’ Was it ‘help’ the voice cried? No doubt it was an appeal, whatever it was.
The men threw down their hammers and rushed downstairs with a common instinct, to see what it was. Anne stood leaning out of the window straining her eyes in the milky misty air, which seemed to grow whiter and less clear as she gazed. ‘Oh please put down the window,’ cried Rose, shivering, ‘it is so cold—and what good can we do? It is poachers, most likely; it can’t be anybody in the pond, or they wouldn’t go on shrieking like that.’ Saymore, who had come up to look at the decorations, gave the same advice. ‘You’ll get your death of cold, Miss Anne, and you can’t do no good; maybe it’s something caught in a snare—they cry like Christians, them creatures do, though we call ’em dumb creatures; or it’s maybe a cart gone over on the low road—the roads is very heavy; or one of the keepers as has found something; it’s about time for Master and Mr. Heathcote coming back from Hunston; they’ll bring us news. Don’t you be nervish, Miss Anne; they’ll see what it is. I’ve known an old owl make just such a screeching.’
‘Could an owl say “halloo,”’ said Anne, ‘and “help”? I am sure I heard “help.” I hear somebody galloping up to the door—no, it is not to the door, it is to the stables. It will be papa or Heathcote come for help. I am sure it is something serious,’ she said. And she left the great window wide open, and rushed downstairs. As for Rose she was very chilly. She withdrew within the warmer shelter of the ballroom, and arranged the bow of ribbon with which one of the hangings was to be finished. ‘Put down the window,’ she said; ‘it can’t do anyone any good to let the wind pour in like that, and chill all the house.’
Heathcote had been half an hour alone in the great wilderness of the park, nothing near him that could help, the trees rustling in the wind, standing far off round about like a scared circle of spectators, holding up piteous hands to heaven, but giving no aid. He was kneeling upon the horse’s head, himself no more than a protuberance in the fallen mass, unable to get any answer to his anxious questions. One or two groans were all that he could elicit, groans which grew fainter and fainter; he shouted with all his might, but there seemed nothing there to reply—no passing labourer, no one from the village making a short cut across the park, as he had seen them do a hundred times. The mist rose up out of the ground, choking him, and, he thought, stifling his voice; the echoes gave him back the faint sounds which were all he seemed able to make. His throat grew dry and hoarse. Now and then the fallen horse gave a heave, and attempted to fling out, and there would be another scarcely articulate moan. His helplessness went to his very heart; and there, almost within reach, hanging suspended, as it were, between heaven and earth, were the lights of the house, showing with faint white haloes round them, those lights which had seemed so full of warmth and welcome. When the first of the help-bringers came running, wildly flashing a lantern about, Heathcote’s limbs were stiffened and his voice scarcely audible; but it required no explanation to show the state of the case. His horse, which had escaped when he dismounted, had made its way to the stable door, and thus roused a still more effectual alarm. Then the other trembling brute was got to its legs, and the body liberated. The body!—what did they mean? There was no groan now or cry—‘Courage, sir, courage—a little more patience and you will be at home,’ Heathcote heard himself saying. To whom? There was no reply; the groan would have been eloquence. But he could not permit himself to believe that the worst had come. He kept on talking, not knowing what he was doing, while they brought something, he did not know what, to place the motionless figure upon. ‘Softly, softly!’ he cried to the men, and took the limp hand into his own, and continued to speak. He heard himself talking, going along, repeating always the same words, ‘A little longer, only a little longer. Keep up your heart, sir, we are nearly there.’ When they had almost reached the door of the house, one of the bearers suddenly burst forth in a kind of loud sob, ‘Don’t you, sir, don’t you now!—don’t you see as he’ll never hear a spoken word again?’
Then Heathcote stopped mechanically, as he had been speaking mechanically. His hat had been knocked off his head. His dress was wet and muddy, his hair in disorder, his whole appearance wild and terrible. When the light from the door fell full upon him, and Anne stepped forward, he was capable of nothing but to motion her away with his hand. ‘What is it?’ she said, in an awe-stricken voice. ‘Don’t send me away. I am not afraid. Did papa find it? He ought to come in at once. Make him come in at once. What is it, Mr. Heathcote? I am not afraid.’
‘Send the young lady away, sir,’ cried the groom, imperatively. ‘Miss Anne, I can’t bring him in till you are out o’ that. Good Lord, can’t you take her away?’
‘I am not afraid,’ she said, very pale, ranging herself on one side to let them pass. Heathcote, who did not know what it was, any more than she did, laid a heavy hand upon her shoulder, and put her, almost roughly, out of the way. ‘I will go,’ she said, frightened. ‘I will go—if only you will make papa come in out of the damp—it is so bad for his—— Ah!’ She fell down upon her knees and her cry rang through all the house. She had seen a sudden light from a lantern out of doors flash across the covered face, the locks of grey hair.
It was not long till everybody knew; from the top to the bottom of the great house the news ran in a moment. John Stokes, the carpenter, returned and mounted his ladder mechanically, to resume his work: then remembered, and got down solemnly and collected his tools, leaving one wreath up and half of the drapery. ‘There won’t be no ball here this time,’ he said to his mate. ‘You bring the stepladder, Sam.’ This was the first sign that one cycle of time, one reign was over, and another begun.
From that moment Heathcote Mountford’s position was changed. He felt it before he had gone up the stairs, reverently following that which now he no longer addressed with encouraging human words, but felt to be the unapproachable and solemn thing it was. A man had ridden off for the doctor before they entered the house, but there was no question of a doctor to those who now laid their old master upon his bed. ‘I should say instantaneous, or next to instantaneous,’ the doctor said when he came; and when he heard of the few groans which had followed the fall, he gave it as his opinion that these had been but unconscious plaints of the body after all sense of pain or knowledge of what was happening had departed. The horse had put his foot into a hole in the spongy wet turf—a thing that might have happened any day, and which it was a wonder did not happen oftener. There were not even the usual questionings and wonderings as to how it came about, which are so universal when death seizes life with so little warning. Mr. Mountford had been in the habit of riding with a loose rein. He had unbounded confidence in his cob, which, now that the event had proved its danger, a groom came forward to say by no means deserved his confidence, but had two or three times before stumbled with its rider. Heathcote felt that doctors and grooms alike looked to himself with something more than ordinary courtesy and respect. He walked away from the comfortable bedroom now turned into a solemn presence chamber, and all its homely uses intermitted, with a gravity he had not felt before for years. He was not this man’s son, scarcely his friend, that his death should affect him so. But, besides the solemnity of the event thus happening in his presence, it changed his position even more than if he had been St. John Mountford’s son. It would be barbarous to desert the poor women in their trouble; but how was he to remain here, a comparative stranger, their kinsman but their supplanter, become in a moment the master of the house in which these girls had been born, and which their mother had ruled for twenty years. He went to his room to change his wet and soiled clothes, with a sense of confusion and sadness that made everything unreal to him. His past as well as that of his kinsman had ended in a moment; his careless easy life was over, the indulgences which he had considered himself entitled to as a man upon whom nobody but Edward had any special claim. Now Edward’s claims, for which he had been willing to sacrifice his patrimony, must be put aside perforce. He could no longer think of the arrangement which an hour ago he had been talking of so easily, which was to have been accomplished with so little trouble. It was in no way to be done now. Actually in a moment he had become Mountford of Mount, the representative of many ancestors, the proprietor of an old house and property, responsible to dependents of various kinds, and to the future and to the past. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye; no idea of this kind had crossed his mind during that long half-hour in the park, which looked like half a year. A fatal issue had not occurred to him. It was not until he had reached the threshold of the house, until he felt hope and help to be near, until he had heard Anne’s voice appealing to him to know what it was, that the whole meaning of it had burst upon him. St. John Mountford dead, and he himself master of the house! It was impossible that, apart from the appalling suddenness of the catastrophe, and the nervous agitation of his own share in it, the death of his cousin even in this startling and pitiful way should plunge him into grief. He was deeply shocked and awed and impressed—sorry for the ladies, stricken so unexpectedly with a double doom, loss of their head, loss of their home—and sorry beyond words for the poor man himself, thus snatched out of life in a moment without preparation, without any suggestion even of what was going to happen; but it was not possible that Heathcote Mountford could feel any private pang in himself. He was subdued out of all thought of himself, except that strange sensation of absolute change. He dressed mechanically, scarcely perceiving what it was he was putting on, in his usual evening clothes which had been laid out for him, just as if he had been dressing for the usual peaceful dinner, his kinsman in the next room doing the same, and the table laid for all the family party. Notwithstanding the absolute change that had occurred, the revolution in everything, what could a man do but follow mechanically the habitual customs of every day?
He dressed very slowly, sometimes standing by the fire idly for ten minutes at a time, in a half stupor of excitement, restless yet benumbed and incapable of either action or thought; and when this was accomplished went slowly along the long corridors to the drawing-room, still as if nothing had happened, though more had happened than he could fathom or realise. The change had gone down before him and was apparent in every corner of the deserted place. There were two candles burning feebly on the mantelpiece, and the fire threw a little fitful light about, but that was all; and no one was there; of course it was impossible that anyone should be there—but Heathcote was strange to family trouble, and did not know what happened when a calamity like this same crashing down from heaven into the midst of a household of people. Mrs. Mountford’s work was lying on the sofa with the little sheaf of bright-coloured wools, which she had been used to tuck under her arm when she went ‘to sit with papa;’ and on the writing-table there was the rough copy of the ball programme, corrected for the printer in Rose’s hand. The programmes; it floated suddenly across his mind to recollect the commission they had received on this subject as they had ridden away; had they fulfilled it? he asked himself in his confusion; then remembered as suddenly how he who was lying upstairs had fulfilled it, and how useless it now was. Ball programmes! and the giver of the ball lying dead in the house within reach of all the preparations, the garlands, and ornaments. It was incredible, but it was true. Heathcote walked about the dark and empty room in a maze of bewildered trouble which he could not understand, troubled for the dead, and for the women, and for himself, who was neither one nor the other, who was the person to profit by it. It was no longer they who had been born here, who had lived and ruled here for so many years, but he himself who was supreme in the house. It was all his own. The idea neither pleased him nor excited, but depressed and bewildered him. His own house: and all his easy quiet life in the Albany, and his little luxuries in the way of art and of travel—all over and gone. It seemed unkind to think of this in the presence of calamity so much more serious. Yet how could he help it? When some one came with a soft knock at the door he was startled as if it had been a ghost. It was Saymore who came into the room, neat in his evening apparel, dressed and trim whatever happened, making his little formal bow. ‘The ladies, sir,’ Saymore said, conquering a little huskiness, a little faltering in his own voice, ‘send their compliments and they don’t feel equal to coming down. They hope you will excuse them; and dinner is served, Mr. Mountford,’ the old man said, his voice ending in a jar of broken sound, almost like weeping. Heathcote went downstairs very seriously, as if he had formed one of the usual procession. He seated himself at the end of the table, still decorated with all its usual prettinesses as for the family meal; he did all this mechanically, taking the place of the master of the house, without knowing that he did so, and sitting down as if with ghosts, with all those empty seats round the table and every place prepared. Was it real or was it a dream? He felt that he could see himself as in a picture, sitting there alone, eating mechanically, going through a semblance of the usual meal. The soup was set before him, and then the fish, and then—
‘Saymore, old man,’ Heathcote said suddenly, starting up, ‘I don’t know if this is a tragedy or a farce we are playing—I cannot stand it any longer—take all those things away.’
‘It do seem an awful change, sir, and so sudden,’ cried the old man, frightened by the sudden movement, and by this departure from the rigid rules of ceremony—yet relieved after his first start was over. And then old Saymore began to sob, putting down the little silver dish with the entrée. ‘I’ve been his butler, sir, this thirty years, and ten years in the pantry before that, footman, and born on the property like. And all to be over, sir, in a moment; and he was a good master, sir, though strict. He was very particular, but always a kind master. It’ll be long before we’ll yet another like him—not but what I beg your pardon, Mr. Mountford. I don’t make no doubt but them as serves you will give the same character to you.’
This good wish relieved the oppression with a touch of humour; but Heathcote did not dare to let a smile appear. ‘I hope so, sir,’ Saymore said. He rubbed his old eyes hard with his napkin. Then he took up again the little silver dish. ‘It’s sweetbreads, sir, and it won’t keep; it was a great favourite with master. Have a little while it’s hot. It will disappoint cook if you don’t eat a bit; we must eat, whatever happens, sir,’ the old man said.