CHAPTER XXI.
WHEN ALL WAS OVER.
THE night dropped over Mount very darkly, as dark a November night as ever fell, fog and damp heaviness over everything outside, gloom and wonder and bewilderment within. Mr. Loseby stayed all night and dined with Heathcote, to his great relief. Nobody else came downstairs. Mrs. Mountford, though she felt all the natural and proper grief for her great loss, was not by any means unable to appear, and Rose, who was naturally tired of her week’s seclusion, would have been very glad to do so; but her mother was of opinion that they ought not to be capable of seeing anyone on the funeral day, and their meal was brought up to their rooms as before. They played a melancholy little game of bézique together afterwards, which was the first symptom of returning life which Mrs. Mountford had permitted herself to be able for. Anne had joined them in Mrs. Mountford’s sitting-room, and had shared their dinner, which still was composed of some of the delicacies from the ball supper. In winter everything keeps so long. There had been very little conversation between them there, for they did not know what to say to each other. Mrs. Mountford, indeed, made a little set speech, which she had conned over with some care and solemnity. ‘Anne,’ she had said, ‘it would not become me to say a word against what dear papa has done; but I wish you to know that I had no hand in it. I did not know what it was till to-day: and, for that matter, I don’t know now. I was aware that he was displeased and meant to make some change, and I entreated him not to do so. That was all I knew——’
‘I am sure you had nothing to do with it,’ Anne said gently; ‘papa spoke to me himself. He had a right to do as he pleased. I for one will not say a word against it. I crossed him, and it was all in his hands. I knew what the penalty was. I am sure it has been a grief to you for some time back.’
‘Indeed, you only do me justice, Anne,’ cried her stepmother, and a kiss was given and received; but perhaps it was scarcely possible that it should be a very warm caress. After they had eaten together Anne went back to her room, saying she had letters to write, and Rose and her mother played that game at bézique. It made the evening pass a little more quickly than if they had been seated on either side of the fire reading good books. And when the bézique was over Mrs. Mountford went to bed. There are many people who find in this a ready way of getting through their superfluous time. Mrs. Mountford did not mind how soon she went to bed; but this is not an amusement which commends itself to youth. When her mother was settled for the night, Rose, though she had promised to go too, felt a little stirring of her existence within her roused, perhaps, by the dissipation of the bézique. She allowed that she was tired; but still, after her mother was tucked up for the night, she felt too restless to go to bed. Where could she go but to Anne’s room, which had been her refuge all her life, in every trouble? Anne was still writing letters, or at least one letter, which looked like a book, there was so much of it, Rose thought. She came behind her sister, and would have looked over her shoulder, but Anne closed her writing-book quickly upon the sheet she was writing. ‘Are you tired, dear?’ she said—just, Rose reflected, like mamma.
‘I am tired—of doing nothing, and of being shut up. I hope mamma will let us come downstairs to-morrow,’ said Rose. Then she stole a caressing arm round her sister’s waist. ‘I wish you would tell me, Anne. What is it all about, and what does it mean?’
‘It is not so easy to tell. I did not obey papa——’
‘Are you sorry, Anne?’
‘Sorry? very sorry to have vexed him, dear. If I had known he would be with us only such a little time—but one never knows.’
‘I should have thought you would have been too angry to be sorry——’
‘Angry—when he is dead?’ said Anne, with quick rising tears. ‘Oh, no! if he had been living I might have been angry; but now to think he cannot change it, and perhaps would do anything to change it——’
Rose did not understand this. She said in a little, petulant voice, ‘Is it so dreadfully wrong to give it to me instead of you?’
‘There is no question of you or me,’ said Anne, ‘but of justice. It was my mother’s. You are made rich by what was hers, not his or anyone else’s. This is where the wrong lies. But don’t let us talk of it. I don’t mean to say a word against it, Rose.’
Then Rose roamed about the room, and looked at all the little familiar pictures and ornaments she knew. The room was more cheerful than her mother’s room, with all its heavy hangings, in which she had been living for a week. After a few minutes she came back and leaned upon Anne’s shoulder again.
‘I wish you would tell me what it means. What is In Trust? Have you a great deal to do with me?’ she said.
Anne’s face lighted up a little. ‘I have everything to do with you,’ she said; ‘I am your guardian, I think. I shall have to manage your money and look after all your interests. Though I am poor and you are rich, you will not be able to do anything without me.’
‘But that will not last for ever,’ said Rose, with a return of the little, petulant tone.
‘No; till you come of age. Didn’t you hear to-day what Mr. Loseby said? and look, Rosie, though it will break your heart, look here.’
Anne opened her desk and took out from an inner drawer the sealed packet which Mr. Mountford had himself taken to the lawyer on the day of his death. The tears rose to her eyes as she took it out, and Rose, though curiosity was so strong in her as almost to quench emotion, felt something coming in her throat at the first sight of her father’s writing, so familiar as it was. ‘For my daughter Anne, not to be opened till Rose’s twenty-first birthday.’ Rose read it aloud, wondering. She felt something come in her throat, but yet she was too curious, too full of the novelty of her own position, to be touched as Anne was. ‘But that may change it all over again,’ she said.
‘It is not likely; he would not have settled things one day and unsettled them the next; especially as nothing had happened in the meantime to make him change again.’
Rose looked very curiously, anxiously, at the letter. She took it in her hand and turned it over and over. ‘It must be about me, anyhow, I suppose——’
‘Yes,’ said Anne, with a faint smile, ‘or me; perhaps he might think, after my work for you was over, that I might want some advice.’
‘I suppose you will be married long before that?’ said Rose, still poising the letter in her hands.
‘I don’t know—it is too early to talk of what is going to be done. You are tired, Rosie—go to bed.’
‘Why should I be tired more than you? You have been doing a great deal, and I have been doing nothing. That is like mamma’s way of always supposing one is tired, and wants to go to bed. I hate bed. Anne, I suppose you will get married—there can be nothing against it, now—only I don’t believe he has any money: and if you have no money either——’
‘Don’t let us talk on the subject, dear—it is too early, it hurts me—and I want to finish my letter. Sit down by the fire—there is a very comfortable chair, and a book—if you don’t want to go to bed.’
‘Are you writing to Mr. Douglas, Anne?’
Anne answered only with a slight nod of her head. She had taken her pen into her hand. She could not be harsh to her little sister this day above all others, in which her little sister had been made the means of doing her so much harm—but it cost her an effort to be patient. Rose, for her part, had no science to gain information from the inflections of a voice. ‘Why wasn’t he here to-day?’ was the next thing she said.
‘Rosie, dear, do you know I have a great deal to do? Don’t ask me so many questions,’ Anne said, piteously. But Rose was more occupied by her own thoughts than by anything her sister said.
‘He ought to have been at the funeral,’ she said, with that calm which was always so astonishing to her sister. ‘I thought when you went to the grave you must have known you were to meet him there. Mamma thought so, too.’
These words sank like stones into Anne’s heart; but there was a kind of painful smile on her face. ‘You thought I was thinking of meeting anyone there? Oh, Rose, did you think me so cold-hearted? I was thinking only of him who was to be laid there.’
‘I don’t mean that you are cold-hearted. Of course we were all wretched enough. Mamma said it would have been too much either for her or me; but you were always the strongest, and then of course we expected Mr. Douglas would be there.’
‘You do not know him,’ cried Anne, with a little vehemence; ‘you do not know the delicacy, the feeling he has. How was he to come intruding himself the moment that my father was gone—thrusting himself even into his presence, after being forbidden. A man of no feeling might have done it, but he——. Rosie, please go away. I cannot talk to you any more.’
‘Oh, was that how it was?’ Rose was silenced for the moment. She went away to the seat by the fire which her sister had pointed out to her. Anne had not noticed that she had still the letter in her hands. And then she was quiet for some time, while her sister resumed her writing. Cosmo’s conduct soon went out of Rose’s head, while she occupied herself with the other more important matter which concerned herself. What might be in this letter of papa’s? Probably some new change, some new will, something quite different. ‘If I am not to be the heiress after all, only have the name of it for three years, what will be the use?’ Rose said to herself. She was very sensible in her limited way. ‘I would rather not have any deception or have the name of it, if it is going to be taken away from me just when I should want to have it.’ She looked at the seals of the packet with longing eyes. If they would only melt—if they would but break of themselves. ‘I wonder why we shouldn’t read it now?’ she said. ‘It is not as if we were other people, as if we were strangers—we are his own daughters, his two only children—he could not have meant to hide anything from us. If you will open and read it, and tell me what it is, we need not tell anyone—we need not even tell mamma.’
‘What are you talking of, Rose?’
‘I am talking of papa’s letter, of course. Why should you keep it, not knowing what harm it may be going to do—— Anne! you hurt me—you hurt me!’ Rose cried.
Anne sprang to her feet with the natural impetuosity which she tried so hard to keep under, and seized the letter out of her sister’s hands.
‘You must never speak nor think of anything of the kind,’ she cried; ‘my father’s wish, his last charge to us——’
‘I am sure,’ said Rose, beginning to cry, ‘you need not speak—it is you that refused to do what he told you, not I? This is quite innocent; what could it matter? It can’t vex him now, whatever we do, for he will never know. I would not have disobeyed him when he was living—that is, not in anything serious, not for the world—but now, what can it matter, when he will never, never know?’
The utter scepticism and cynicism of the little childish creature, crying by the fire, did not strike Anne. It was only a naughtiness, a foolishness upon the child’s part, nothing more. She restored the packet to the private drawer and locked it with energy, closing down and locking the desk, too. It was herself she blamed for having shown the packet, not Rose, who knew no better. But now it was clear that she must do, what indeed she generally had to do, when Rose claimed her attention—give up her own occupation, and devote herself to her sister. She came and sat down by her, leaving the letter in which her heart was. And Rose, taking advantage of the opportunity, tormented her with questions. When at last she consented to retire to her room, Anne could do nothing but sit by the fire, making a vain attempt to stifle the more serious questions, which were arising, whether she would or no, in her own heart. ‘Rose = prose,’ she had tried hard to say to herself, as so often before; but her lips quivered, so that a smile was impossible. She sat there for a long time after, trying to recover herself. She had arrived at a crisis of which she felt the pain without understanding the gravity of it. And indeed the sudden chaos of confusion and wonder into which she had wandered, she could not tell how, had no doubt so deadened the blow of the strange will to her, as to give her a heroism which was half stupidity, as so many heroisms are. She, too, had expected, like all the world, that Cosmo would have come to her at once—if not to Mount, yet to the rectory, where his friends would have received him. She had taken it for granted—though she had not said a word on the subject to anyone, nor even to herself, feeling that to see him and feel him near her would be all the greater consolation if she had never said she looked for it, even in her own heart. She had not given his name to Charley Ashley as one of those to be informed by telegraph, nor had she mentioned his name at all, though she seemed to herself to read it in a continual question in the Curate’s eyes. A chill had stolen over her when she heard nothing of him all the first long day. She had not permitted herself to ask or to think, but she had started at every opening door, and listened to every step outside, and even, with a pang which she would not acknowledge, had looked out through a crevice of the closed shutters, with an ache of wondering anguish in her heart, to see the Curate coming up the avenue alone on the second morning. But when Cosmo’s letter came to her, by the ordinary return of post, Anne tried to say to herself that of course he was right and she was wrong—nay more than that—that she had known exactly all through which was the more delicate and noble way, and that it was this. How could he come to Mount, he who had been turned away from it (though this was not quite true), who had been the cause of her disinheritance? How could he present himself the moment the father, who had objected to him so strenuously, was dead? Cosmo laid the whole case before her with what seemed the noblest frankness, in that letter. ‘I am in your hands,’ he said. ‘The faintest expression of a wish from you will change everything. Say to me, “Come,” and I will come, how gladly I need not say—but without that word, how can I intrude into the midst of a grief which, believe me, my dearest, I shall share, for it will be yours, but which by all the rest of the world will seem nothing but a deliverance and relief to me.’ Anne, who had not allowed herself to say a word, even to her own soul, of the sickening of disappointment and wonder in her, who had stood bravely dumb and refused to be conscious that she had expected him, felt her heart leap up with a visionary triumph of approval, when this letter came. Oh, how completely and nobly right he was! How superior in his instinctive sense of what it was most delicately honourable and fit to do, in such an emergency, to any other, or to herself even, who ought to have known better!
She wrote instantly to say, ‘You are right, dear Cosmo. You are more than right; how could anyone be so blind as not to see that this is what you ought to, what you must have done, and that nothing else was possible?’ And since then she had said these words over to herself again and again—and had gone about all her occupations more proudly, more erect and self-sustaining, because of this evident impossibility that he should have been there, which the heavier people about, without his fine perceptions and understanding, did not seem to see. As a matter of fact, she said to herself, she wanted no help. She was not delicate or very young, like Rose, but a full-grown woman, able for anything, worthy of the confidence that had been placed in her. Nevertheless, there had been a moment, when Heathcote had put out his arm to support her at the side of the grave, when the sense of Cosmo’s absence had been almost more than she could bear, and his excuse had not seemed so sufficient as before. She had rejected the proffered support. She had walked firmly away, proving to all beholders that she was able to do all that she had to do, and to bear all that she had to bear; but, nevertheless the pang and chill of this moment had shaken Anne’s moral being. She had read in Heathcote’s eyes some reflection of the indignant question, ‘Where is that fellow?’ She had discerned it in Charley Ashley’s every look and gesture—and there had been a dull anticipation and echo of their sentiments in her heart. She had, as it were, struck against it, and her strength and her nerves were shaken by the encounter. The after thrill of this, still going through and through her, had made her almost indifferent to the shock given by the reading of the will. She had not cared the least about that. She had been dulled to it, and was past feeling it—though it was not in the least what she had expected, and had so much novelty and individuality of vengeance in it as to have given a special blow had she been able to receive it. Even now when her intelligence had fully taken it in, her heart was still untouched by it—Un chiodo caccia un’ altro. But she had slowly got the better of the former shock. She had re-read Cosmo’s letters, of which she received one every day, and had again come to see that his conduct was actuated by the very noblest motives. Then had come Rose’s visit and all those questionings, and once more Anne had felt as if she had run against some one in the dark, and had been shaken by the shock. She sat trying to recover herself, trembling and incapable for a long time, before she could go and finish her letter. And yet there was much in that letter that she was anxious Cosmo should know.
While all this was going on upstairs, the two gentlemen were sitting over their dinner, with still a little excitement, a little gloom hovering over them, but on the whole comfortable, returning to their usual ways of thinking and usual calm of mind. Even to those most intimately concerned, death is one of the things to which the human mind most easily accustoms itself. Mr. Loseby was more new than Heathcote was to the aspect of the house, from which for the time all its usual inhabitants and appearances had gone. He said ‘Poor Mountford!’ two or three times in the course of dinner, and stopped to give an account of the claret on which the late master of the house had much prided himself. ‘And very good it is,’ Mr. Loseby said. ‘I suppose, unless the widow reserves it for her own use—and I don’t believe she knows it from Gladstone claret at 12s. a dozen—there will be a sale.’ This intruded a subject which was even more interesting than the will and all that must flow from it. ‘What do you intend to do?’
Now Heathcote Mountford was not very happy, any more than the other members of the household. He had gone through a disappointment too. Heathcote had but one person in the world who had been of any importance in his past life, and that was his young brother Edward, now at Sandhurst. It had been settled that Edward and a number of his comrades should come to Mount for the dance, but when Heathcote had signified his wish, after all this was over, that Edward should come for the funeral, the young man had refused. “Why should I? You will all be as dull as ditch-water; and I never knew our kinsman as you call him. You are dismal by nature, Heathcote, old boy,’ the young man had said, ‘but not I—why should I come to be another mute? Can’t you find enough without me?’ Edward, who was very easily moved when his own concerns were in question, was as obstinate as the rest of the Mountfords as to affairs which did not concern himself. He paid no attention to his brother’s plea for a little personal consolation. And Heathcote, who regarded the young fellow as a father regards his spoiled child, was disappointed. To be sure, he represented to himself, Edward too had been disappointed; he had lost his ball, which was a thing of importance to him, and the settlement of his affairs, for which he had been looking with such confidence, was now indefinitely postponed. Edward had not been an easy boy to manage; he had not been a very good boy. He had been delicate and wayward and spoiled—spoiled as much by the elder brother who was thoroughly aware how wrong it was, as by the mother who had been foolish about Edward, and had died when he was still so young that spoiling did not matter much. Heathcote had carried the process on, he had vowed to himself that, so far as was possible, the delicate boy should not miss his mother’s tenderness; and he had kept his word, and ruined the boy. Edward had got everything he wanted from his brother, so long as he wanted only innocent things; and afterwards he had got for himself, and insisted on getting, things that were not so innocent; and the result was that, though still only twenty, he was deeply in debt. It was for this that Heathcote had made up his mind to sacrifice the succession to Mount. Sacrifice—it was not a sacrifice; he cared nothing for Mount, and Edward cared less than nothing. Even afterwards, when he had begun to look upon Mount with other eyes, he had persevered in his intention to sacrifice it; but now all that had come to an end. Whether he would or not, Heathcote Mountford had become the possessor of Mount, and Edward’s debts were very far from being paid. In these circumstances Heathcote felt it specially hard upon him that his brother did not come to him, to be with him during this crisis. It was natural; he did not blame Edward; and yet he felt it almost as a woman might have felt it. This threw a gloom over him almost more than the legitimate gloom, which, to be sure, Heathcote by this time had recovered from. It was not in nature that he could have felt it very deeply after the first shock. His own vexations poured back upon his mind, when Mr. Loseby said, ‘What do you intend to do?’
‘You will say what have I to do with that?’ the old lawyer said. ‘And yet, if you will think, I have to do with it more or less. We have to get the family out on our side. It’s early days—but if you should wish an early settlement——’
‘I don’t mind if it is never settled,’ said Heathcote; ‘what should I do with this great place? It would take all my income to keep it up. If they like to stay, they are very welcome. I care nothing about it. Poor St. John had a handsome income from other sources. He was able to keep it up.’
‘Good Lord, Mr. Heathcote!’ said the lawyer, ‘why didn’t you come a year ago? A young man should not neglect his relations; it always turns out badly. If you had come here a year ago, in the natural course of events, I could have laid a thousand pounds upon it that you and Anne would have taken a fancy to each other. You seem to me exactly cut out for each other—the same ways, a little resemblance even in looks——’
‘You pay me too great a compliment,’ said Heathcote, with an uneasy laugh, colouring in spite of himself; ‘and you must let me say that my cousin’s name is sacred, and that, old friend as you are, you ought not to discuss her so.’
‘I—oughtn’t to talk of Anne? Why, she has sat upon my knee,’ said Mr. Loseby. ‘Ah! why didn’t you come a year ago? I don’t say now that if it was to your mind to make yourself comfortable as poor Mountford did, in the same way, there’s still the occasion handy. No, I can’t say that,’ said the old lawyer, ‘I am too sick of the whole concern. Anne treated like that, and Rose, little Rose, that bit of a girl!—-- However,’ he said, recovering himself, ‘I ought to remember that after all you can’t take the same interest in them as I do, and that we were talking of your own concerns.’
‘I take a great interest in my cousins,’ said Heathcote gravely. ‘Do you know I believe poor St. John meant to buy my interest, to accept my proposal, and leave Mount to his eldest daughter.’
‘No; you don’t think so? Well, that might have been a way out of it—that might have been a way out of it—now that you recall it to me the same thought struck myself; at least I thought he would take advantage of that to make a new settlement, after he had taken his fling and relieved his mind with this one. Ah, poor man, he never calculated on the uncertainty of life—he never thought of that rabbit-hole. God help us, what a thing life is! at the mercy of any rolling stone, and any falling branch, of a poor little rabbit’s burrowing, or even a glass of water. And what a thing is man! as Hamlet says; it’s enough to make anyone moralise: but we never take a bit of warning by it—never a bit. And so you really think he meant to take Mount off your hands and settle it on Anne? I don’t think he had gone so far as that—but I’ll tell you what we’ll do, we’ll tell her so, and that will make her happy. She’s not like other people, she is all wrong here,’ said Mr. Loseby, laughing, with the tears in his eyes, and tapping his forehead. ‘She has a bee in her bonnet, as the Scotch say. She is a fool, that is what Anne is—she will be as pleased as if he had left her a kingdom. The worst thing of it all to that girl is, that her father has made himself look like a tyrant and a knave—which he wasn’t, you know—he wasn’t, poor Mountford! though he has done his best to make himself appear so. Once give her something to build up his character again upon, some ground, it doesn’t matter how fanciful it is, and she’ll be happy. She won’t mind her own loss, bless you,’ said the old lawyer, half crying, ‘she is such a fool!’
‘Mr. Loseby,’ said Heathcote with an emotion which surprised him, ‘I think you are giving my cousin Anne the most beautiful character that ever was.’
‘Sir,’ cried Mr. Loseby, not ashamed to dry his eyes, ‘whoever said anything different? Did you ever hear anything different? As long as I have known the world I have never known but one Anne Mountford. Oh, Mr. Heathcote, Mr. Heathcote,’ he added, his voice turning into tremulous laughter, ‘what a thousand pities that you did not make your appearance a year before!’
Heathcote got up from his chair with a start, and walked about the room in a nervous impatience, for which he could give no reason to himself. Was it that he, too, wished he had come to Mount a year sooner? He left the old man to finish his wine, and roamed about, now pausing a moment with his back to the fire, now extending his walk into the dark corners. He had lit his cigarette, which furnished him with an excuse—but he was not thinking of his cigarette. What he was thinking was—What the devil did that fellow mean by staying away now? Why didn’t he come and stand by her like a man? What sort of a pitiful cur was he that he didn’t come, now he was free to do it, and stand by her like a man? He disposed of Charley Ashley’s mild plea with still greater impatience. Perhaps she had forbidden him to come. ‘Would I have been kept away by any forbidding?’ Heathcote said to himself without knowing it. Then he came back from the corners in which such suggestions lay, feeling uneasy, feeling wroth and uncomfortable, and took his stand again before the fire. ‘Perhaps you will give me a little advice about the money I wanted,’ he said to Mr. Loseby. This was safer on the whole than suffering himself to stray into foolish fancies as to what he would have done, or would not have done, supposing an impossible case—supposing he had made his appearance a year sooner; before there was any complication of any unsatisfactory ‘fellow’ with the image of his cousin Anne.