IT is not to be supposed that the events which had moved so deeply the household at Mount, and all its connections, should have passed lightly over the one other person who, of all to whom the Mountfords were familiar, could alone feel himself a principal in the important matters involved. Douglas had looked on from a distance, keeping himself out of all the immediate complications, but not the less had he looked on with a beating heart, more anxious than it is possible to say, and, though still quiescent, never less than on the verge of personal action, and never clear that it would not have been wisest for him to plunge into the midst of it from the first. His position had not been easy, nor his mind composed, from the beginning. When he had heard of Mr. Mountford’s death his agitation was great. He had not become indifferent to Anne. The thought that she was in trouble, and he not near her, was no pleasant thought. All the first evening, after he had received Charley Ashley’s telegram, he had spent in a prolonged argument with himself. He knew from Anne that something had been done, though he did not know what; that, according to her father’s own words, the property had been taken from her and given to her sister. She had told him what her father said, that it was understood between them that this transfer was to be made, and that she had no longer any interest in the fortune which had once been so certainly considered hers. Cosmo had not admired the ease with which she spoke on this question. He had gnashed his teeth at Anne’s unworldliness, at her calm consent to her father’s arrangements, and ready making up of the quarrel with him. She was his love, his dearest, in all truth the one woman in the world who had captivated his affections, and made him feel that he had no longer any choice, any preference, that did not point to her; but he had acted like a fool all the same, he thought. In some minds, perhaps in most minds, this conviction can exist without in the least affecting the reality of the love which lies behind. He loved Anne, but his love did not make him think that everything she did was well done. She had behaved like a fool. Old Mr. Loseby said the same thing, but he said it with glistening eyes, and with an appreciation of the folly and its character such as Cosmo was altogether incapable of.
Nevertheless, Anne’s lover did not feel his love materially lessened by this conviction. He gnashed his teeth at it, thinking, ‘Had I but been there!’ though he knew very well that, had he been there, he could have done nothing to change it. But one thing he could do: when she was his wife he could put a stop to such follies. There should be none of this ridiculous magnanimity, this still more ridiculous indifference, then. In writing to her he had felt that it was difficult to keep all vestige of his disapproval out of his letters, but he had managed pretty nearly to do so: feeling wisely that it was useless to preach to her on such a subject, that only his own constant guidance and example, or, better still, his personal conduct of her affairs, could bring real good sense into them. He had been anxious enough while this was going on, not seeing what was to come, feeling only certain that, love as he might, he could no more marry his love without a penny than he could make himself Lord Chief Justice. It was out of the question: in his position marriage was difficult in the best of circumstances; but to marry a wife without a fortune of her own, without enough to keep her comfortable, was simply folly not to be thought of. Anne’s dreams of romantic toil, of the enthusiasm of hard work into which a man might rush for the sake of a woman he loved, and of the heroic life the two could lead, helping each other on to fame and fortune at the end, were to him as silly as a nursery tale. Men who made their own way like that, overcoming every obstacle and forcing their way to the heights of ambition, were men who did it by temperament, not by love, or for any sentimental motive. Cosmo knew that he was not the sort of man to venture on such a madness. His wife must have enough to provide for her own comfort, to keep her as she had been accustomed to be kept, or else he could have no wife at all.
This had given him enough to think of from the very beginning of the engagement, as has been already shown. His part was harder than Anne’s, for she had fanciful ups and downs as was natural to her, and if she sometimes was depressed would be next moment up in the clouds, exulting in some visionary blessedness, dreaming out some love in a cottage or still more ludicrous love in chambers, which his sterner reason never allowed to be possible, not for an hour; therefore his was the hardest burden of the two. For he was not content to part with her, nor so much as to think of parting with her; and yet, with all his ingenuity, he could not see how, if her father did not relent, it could be done. And the worst thing now was that the father was beyond all power of relenting—that he was dead, absolutely dead, allowed to depart out of this world having done his worst. Not one of the family, not one of Mr. Mountford’s dependents, was more stunned by the news than Cosmo. Dead! he read over the telegram again and again—he could not believe his eyes—it seemed impossible that such a piece of wickedness could have been accomplished; he felt indignant and furious at everybody concerned, at Mr. Mountford for dying, at God for permitting it. A man who had made such a mistake, and to whom it was absolutely indispensable that he should be allowed time to repent of his mistake and amend it—and instead of this he had died—he had been permitted to die.
The news threw Cosmo into a commotion of mind which it is impossible to describe. At one period of the evening he had thrown some things into a bag, ready to start, as Ashley expected him to do; then he took another thought. If he identified himself with everything that was being done now, how could he ever withdraw after, how postpone ulterior proceedings? This, however, is a brutal way of stating even the very first objection that occurred to Cosmo. Sophistry would be a poor art if it only gave an over-favourable view of a man’s actions and motives to the outside world, and left himself unconvinced and undeceived. His was of a much superior kind. It did a great deal more for him. When its underground industry was once in full action it bewildered himself. It was when he was actually closing his bag, actually counting out the contents of his purse to see if he had enough for the journey, that this other line of reasoning struck him. If he thus rushed to Mount to take his place by Anne’s side, and yet was not prepared (and he knew he was not prepared) to urge, nay, almost force himself upon Anne’s immediate acceptance as her husband, would he not be doing a wrong to Anne? He would compromise her; he would be holding her up to the world as the betrothed of a poor man, a man not so well off as to be able to claim her, yet holding her bound. He paused, really feeling this to throw a new light upon the subject. Would it be acting honourably by Anne? Would it, in her interest, be the right thing to do?
This, however, was not all or half the mental process he had to go through. He paused for her sake; yet not in this way could the reason of his hesitation be made clear to her. She would not mind being ‘compromised.’ She would not insist upon the fulfilment of their engagement. He had to think of some other reason to prove to her that it was better he should stay away. He made out his case for her, gradually, at more cost of thought than the plea which had convinced himself; but at the end it satisfied him as full of very cogent and effective reasoning. The whole matter opened up before him as he pondered it. He began to ask himself, to ask her, how he could, as a man of honour, hurry to Mount as soon as the breath was out of the body of the master of the house who had rejected and sent him away? How could he thrust himself into Mr. Mountford’s presence as soon as he was dead and incapable of resenting it—he, who when living would have refused to admit him, would have had nothing to say to him? He put back his money into his purse, and slowly undid his bag and threw out his linen as these thoughts arose and shaped themselves in his mind. In either point of view it would be impossible to do it; in either point of view manly self-denial, honour, and consideration for all parties required that in this emergency he should not think of what was pleasant either to her or himself. It was a crisis too important for the mere action of instinctive feelings. Of course he would like to be with her—of course she would like to have him by her. But here was something more than what they would like—a world of things to be considered. To say that Cosmo, deep down at the bottom of his heart, was not aware that there might be another larger, simpler mode of considering the question which would sweep all these intellectual cobwebs away and carry him off in a moment to Anne’s side, to stand by her in defiance of all prudential motives, would be untrue. It is the curse of sophistry that this sense of something better, this consciousness of a fundamental flaw in its arguments, is seldom quite obliterated; but at the same time it was far more in accordance with his nature to act according to the more elaborate, and not according to the simpler system. He satisfied himself, if not completely, yet sufficiently to reconcile himself to what he was doing; and he satisfied Anne so far at least as her first response, her first apprehension was concerned. ‘Dear Cosmo, you are right, you are right, you are more than right, as you always are,’ she had said with a kind of enthusiasm, in her first letter. ‘They say that women have more delicate perceptions, but that only shows how little people know. I see in a moment the truth and the wisdom and the fine honour of what you say. I am capable of understanding it at least, but I feel how far you go beyond me in delicacy of feeling as well as in other things. No, no! you must not come; respect for my dear father forbids it, although I cannot but hope and feel certain that my father himself knows better now.’ This had been her first reply to his explanation; and he had been satisfied then that what he had done, and the reasons he had given, were in all senses the best.
It was now, however, the day after Mr. Mountford’s funeral, and everything had progressed beyond that event. Till it is over, the dead is still the first person to be considered, and all things refer to him as to one who is the centre of every thought. But when the earth has closed over his head then an inevitable change occurs. He is left there where he lies—be he the most important, the most cherished and beloved—and other interests push in and take the first place. Cosmo sat in his chambers on the evening of that day, and read his letters with a distinct consciousness of this difference, though he himself had taken no immediate share in the excitements of the dying and the burial. There was a long, very long letter from Anne, and a shorter one from Charley Ashley, which he read first with a slight sensation of alarm, notwithstanding his anxiety to hear about the will; for Cosmo could not but feel, although he was satisfied himself with the reasons for his conduct, and though Anne was satisfied, that such a rude simpleton as the Curate might possibly take a different view. He held Anne’s letter in his hand while he read the other. Charley was very brief. He was not much of a correspondent in any case.
‘We got over the funeral well on the whole,’ Charley wrote. ‘The others only went to the church, but she followed her father to the grave as you would expect. At one moment I thought she would break down; and then I confess that I felt, in your place, scarcely her own express command could have made up to me for being absent at such a time. The reading of the will was still more trying, if possible—at least I should have thought so. But she behaved like—herself—I can’t say anything more. I thought you would like to have a separate account, as, no doubt, she will make as light of all she has to go through as possible. Only on this point you ought not altogether to take her own word. She has acknowledged that she will have a great deal to bear. She wants support, whatever she may say.’
A slight smile went over Cosmo’s face as he put down this note. It was not a very comfortable smile. A man does not like even an imaginary tone of contempt in another man’s voice. And Charley Ashley was his own retainer, his dog, so to speak. To be judged by him was a novel and not a pleasant sensation. A year ago Cosmo could have felt certain that Charley would find everything he did right; he would have believed in his friend’s inscrutable motives, even if he could not understand them. But now there was a change. It was not only the hopeless rivalry which Charley himself felt to be hopeless, and which had never stood for a moment in Cosmo’s way, but it was the instinct of true affection in the good fellow’s heart which made a severe critic, a judge incorruptible, of Charley. Douglas did not think very much of Charley’s opinion or approval; but to feel it withdrawn from him, to detect a doubt, and even suspicion in his faithful adherent’s words, gave him a sting. Then he read the long letter in which Anne had poured forth all her heart; there were revelations in it also. It had been interrupted by Rose’s matter-of-fact questions. Darts of vulgar misapprehension, of commonplace incapacity to understand those fine motives of Cosmo’s which to herself were so eloquent, had come across the current of her words. Anne had not been aware of the risings and fallings of sentiment with which she wrote. She had known that by turns her heart in her bosom felt, as she had herself described it, ‘like lead.’ She had been aware that now and then there had seemed no sort of comfort nor lightening of the sky wherever she looked, even when she looked to him, and endeavoured to think of that ‘falling back upon’ him to support her, which had seemed the happiest image of their mutual relations a few days ago. But she had not been aware of the breaks in her letter, following these fluctuations of sentiment, of how she had flagged and shown her discouragement, and sometimes permitted to be audible a breathing, not of complaint, not of reproach, but of something which was neither, yet included both—a sort of sigh of loneliness.
‘My heart almost failed me when all was over, she wrote; ‘I think I must have shown it in my looks, for our cousin, Heathcote Mountford, held out his arm to me. It was not his arm I wanted, Cosmo, you know. Oh, how strange and how sad it is that just when we want support most, hard life has so altered everything that we cannot have it!’ And then, again, after giving him the fullest details of the will: ‘I told you before that the thought of being set aside—of being second where I had always been first—was more hard to me than I could have believed possible; and you, who are always ready to think the best of me, said that it was natural, that I could not have been expected to feel otherwise. I must tell you now, however, in my own defence, that I did not feel at all like this to-day; I never imagined, though I have thought so often on the subject, that it would have been possible to set me aside so completely as has been done. You understand that I have nothing (except what came to me from old Uncle Ben), nothing—except indeed a sort of allowance like a schoolmistress for taking care of Rose, which will only last three years. But, Cosmo, if you will believe me, I never thought of it; my heart did not sink in the least. I did not seem to care that it had all gone away from me, or that Rose had been set in my place, or that my father—(poor papa—how he must have felt it at the last!) should have been so unjust. They were all made of no account, as if they were the most trifling things in the world by—something else. I owe that to you too: and you must understand, dear Cosmo, you must understand that I feel you must have thought of this, and more or less done it on purpose, for my sake. I cared nothing, nothing, for all the loss and downfall, because there just gleamed upon me a possibility—no, not a possibility—a fancy, an imagination, of how different it would be if I had to face not the loss of fortune, but the loss of love, and companionship, and support. I cried out to myself, What would it all matter in comparison with that? Thank God that it is money that has been taken from me, not that. Feeling myself just for that moment, and for good reason, alone, made me realise to the very bottom of my heart what it would be to be really alone—to have no one to fall back upon, no Cosmo, no world of my own where I can enter in and be above all the world. So you see this little bitter has been sweet, it has been medicine for all my other weaknesses. Through this I rose altogether superior to everything that was sordid. I was astonished at myself. Making believe not to care and not caring are two different things, and this time I attained real indifference, thanks to you.’
This was the passage that affected him most; there were others in which there were slighter references of the same kind, showing that Anne had already tasted the forlorn consciousness of what it was to be alone. It was not a complaint, as will be seen; it was indeed quite the opposite of a complaint; but it gave Cosmo a chill of alarm, a sensation which it would be very difficult to describe. Nor was it a threat on Anne’s part—yet he was alarmed; he grew pale and chilly in spite of himself. When he read Anne’s letter he took up Charley’s again, and ran over that. If he did not want to marry on nothing, and have a family to provide for before he had enough for himself, still less did he wish anyone to regard him us the hero of a broken engagement, a domestic traitor. He was not bad nor treacherous, nor had he any pleasure in the possibility of breaking a heart. What he wanted was, first, to find in the woman he loved ‘a lady richly left’ like Portia, bringing with her all the natural provisions for a beautiful home which she would grace and give charm to; second, if the first should not prove possible, patience to wait, and make no fuss, and see what would turn up. But to be supposed to have behaved badly to a lady, to be set down as drawing back, or holding off, or any of the mild phrases which imply desertion, was terrible to him. This Cosmo could not bear. He did not want to lose or even to risk Anne. And to have her think badly of him, lose the respect, not to say the love, which she felt for him, was a danger that made the hair stand upright on his head. He did not wish even to lose Charley Ashley’s regard, and become a mean and discredited person in the Curate’s eyes: how much more in Anne’s, whom he loved! A panic took possession of Cosmo. A dishonourable lover, a betrayer, was as much an anachronism as a cruel father; it was a thing out of date. Men of his stamp broke no vows. They might be disinclined to heroic measures generally, and above all to the uncomfortable heroism of dragging down a woman into poverty, taking advantage of her inexperience, and marrying in the face of every suggestion of prudence. But to desert her because she had lost her fortune, to cry off as soon as it became evident that she was no longer a good match—this, whatever the vulgar imagination may think, is what a young man on his promotion, like Cosmo Douglas, could not venture to do. He was horrified by the very notion. In all questions of marriage there is of course a possibility that it may all come to nothing, that ‘circumstances may arise’—that incompatibilities may be discovered—even that a mutual sense of what is prudent may cause an absolute breach. Such things are to be heard of every day in society. But for a man, especially one who is a nobody, to ‘behave badly’ to a lady—that is what cannot be. If the mere suggestion of such a thing got out, it would be unendurable. And Cosmo knew that everybody was ready to report every rumour, to put on record every incident of such a story. At the same time, the great crisis being over, there need be no longer, he said to himself, any idea of compromising Anne. Perhaps the ground on which he framed his new resolution was less solid than that on which he had framed the last. But, according to his new light, the emergency was pressing, and there was no time to lose.
That evening accordingly, the linen which had been put back into his drawers was replaced in the bag, and the contents of his purse reinvestigated. He sent a telegram to Charley Ashley, which filled that good fellow with excitement, compunction, and perhaps a touch of disappointment, and left London by the night train. It brought him to the rectory uncomfortably early; but still there was no other so convenient which entailed so little loss of time, and Cosmo felt the advantage of making it apparent that he had come hurriedly and had little time to spare. He arrived while it was still dark on the wintry, foggy, chill morning. Could any man do more to show the fervent reality of his passion? He had stayed away as long as Anne was filling a kind of official position, so long as she was the object of general observation. Now, when she had no longer any sort of artificial claim upon her, or necessity for exerting herself, here he was at her command.