CHAPTER XXIII.
HEATHCOTE’S PROPOSAL.
IT was a new world upon which Anne rose that day. The excitement was over, the gloomy details of business drawing to completion, and the new circumstances of the family life remained to be settled by the family themselves. It was still early when Anne came downstairs, and took her way to the library in which Mr. Loseby was sitting. He was at her father’s table, almost in the same spot where Mr. Mountford, for as long as she could remember, had done his business, or made believe to do it. This startled her a little; but it was time to resist these overwhelming associations, and address herself, she felt, to the business in hand. She came up to him quickly, giving herself no time to think. ‘Mr. Loseby, you must instruct me what are my duties,’ she said.
Heathcote Mountford was at the other end of the room, idly looking through the books, and she had not seen him, but he was unconscious of this. By degrees he had come to know all about Anne, to feel a difference in the atmosphere when she came in, to see her whenever she appeared as if with eyes in the back of his head.
‘Your duties, my dear child?’ Mr. Loseby said, pushing up his spectacles on his forehead. ‘Sit down there in front of me and let us talk. It does one good to look at you, Anne.’
‘You were always very kind,’ she said gratefully. ‘But you must not spoil me now, for if you do I shall cry, and all my morning’s work will come to an end. Mamma is coming downstairs to-day, and all is to be as—it can never be again,’ said Anne, with an abrupt interruption of herself. ‘But in the meantime it is very needful for me to know what I am to do. I want you to tell me while we are safe—while we are alone.’
‘My dear Anne,’ said the old lawyer, ‘my dear Anne!’ and the tears came to his eyes. ‘I wish I were everything that I can’t be—a fairy prince or a romantic hero—for your sake.’
‘I like you a great deal better as Mr. Loseby than if you were a fairy prince.’
‘I dare say that is true; but in the one case I might have delivered you, and in the other I can’t. Do! I don’t know what you have got to do.’
‘Somebody must,’ said Anne. ‘Tell me, please. Am I the guardian, or what does it mean? In Trust! It might be a great deal, or it might not be much. I want to do my duty, Mr. Loseby.’
‘That I am sure you will do, whatever happens. You will have to administer the whole, and watch over the money, and look out for the investments. It is the most extraordinary office for you: but we will not say anything about that.’
‘No: but I do not think it is such an extraordinary office. If the money had been mine, I should have had it to do naturally, and of course I shall do it with all the more care when it is for Rose. The pity is that I don’t know anything about it,’ said Anne, gravely. ‘But I suppose there are books on the subject, books about money and how to manage it. You must tell me how to learn my new profession,’ she added with a smile. ‘It is a curious thing all at once to wake up and find that one has a trade.’
‘I don’t see how you can call it a trade.’
‘Oh, yes, Mr. Loseby, and I am to have 500l. a-year of pay—I shall not be worth half so much. When I was young,’ said Anne, with the serene consciousness of maturity, ‘it was one of my fancies to learn something that I could live by. I am afraid I thought of quite little pettifogging businesses—little bits of art-work or such like. I shall be a kind of land-steward with a little of a stockbroker in me, now.’
‘Yes, something of that sort,’ he said, humouring her, looking at her with a smile.
‘Curious,’ said Anne, with a gleam of laughter getting into her eyes, ‘I think I shall like it too; it ought to be amusing—it ought to have an interest—and you know everybody says that what we girls want is an interest in our lives.’
‘You have never wanted an interest in your life.’
‘No, I do not think I have; but you must not look so sorry—I am not sorry for myself. What does it matter after all?’ said Anne, raising her head with that lofty visionary defiance of all evil. ‘There are things which one could not consent to lose—which it really breaks one’s heart to lose—which would need to be torn and wrenched out of one: you know, Mr. Loseby?—but not money; how different when it is only money! The mere idea that you might lose the one makes you feel what loss would be, makes you contemptuous of the other.’
‘I know?—do you think I know?—Indeed, my dear, I cannot tell,’ said Mr. Loseby, shaking his head. ‘If I lost what I have, I should not find it at all easy to console myself. I don’t think I should be contemptuous or indifferent if all my living were to go.’
‘Ah!’ she cried, with a sudden light of compunction and pity in her eyes, ‘but that is because you—— Oh, forgive me!’ with a sudden perception of what she was saying.
‘That is because I have not much else to lose?’ said the old lawyer. ‘Don’t be sorry for saying it, it is true. I lost all I had in that way, my dear, as you know, many many years ago. Life, to be sure, has changed very much since then, but I am not unhappy. I have learnt to be content; and it would make a great difference to me if I lost what I have to live upon. Anne, I have got something to tell you which I think will make you happier.’
She looked at him eagerly with her lips apart, her eyes full of beseeching earnestness. ‘It is about your father, Anne.’
Her countenance changed a little, but kept its eagerness. She had not expected anything to make her happier from that quarter; but she was almost more anxious than before to hear what it was.
‘Your cousin has been telling me—you heard his proposal about the entail, which, alas! no time was left us to discuss?—he thinks from what your father said to him,’ said the lawyer, leaning across the table and putting his hand upon hers, ‘that he meant to have arranged this according to Heathcote Mountford’s wishes, and to have settled Mount on you.’
Anne could not speak at first. The tears that had been gathering in her eyes overflowed and fell in a warm shower upon Mr. Loseby’s hand. ‘My cousin Heathcote told you this?’ she said, half sobbing, after a pause.
‘Yes, Anne. I thought it would please you to know.’
‘Please me!’ she made a little pause again, sobbing and smiling. Then she clasped his old hand in both hers with sudden enthusiasm. ‘It makes me perfectly happy!’ she cried: ‘nothing, nothing troubles me any more.’
Then, with natural feminine instinct, she wanted to hear every detail from him of the distinct conversation which she immediately concluded to have taken place between her father and her cousin. Though no one was more ready to jump to conclusions, Anne became as matter-of-fact as Rose herself in her eagerness to know everything that had taken place. The old lawyer did not feel himself able to cope with her questions. ‘I was not present,’ he said; ‘but your cousin himself is here, and he will tell you. Yes, there he is, looking at the books. I am going to fetch some papers I left in my bedroom. Mr. Heathcote, will you come and explain it all while I am away?’
He chuckled to himself with satisfaction as he left them together: but after all what was the use? ‘Good Lord,’ he cried to himself, ‘why couldn’t the fellow have come a year ago?’ To see how Providence seems to take a pleasure in making the best of plans impracticable! It was inconceivable that nobody had sense enough ever to have thought of that plan before.
But when Anne found herself face to face with Heathcote Mountford, and suddenly discovered that he had been present all the time, she did not feel the same disposition to pursue her inquiries. She had even a feeling that she had committed herself, though she could scarcely tell how. She rose up from her seat with a faint smile, mastering her tears and excitement. ‘Thank you for telling Mr. Loseby what has made me so happy,’ she said. Then added, ‘Indeed, it was more for others than myself. I knew all the time my father had not meant to wrong anyone; no, no, he never was unjust in his life; but others, strangers, like yourself, how were you to know?’
‘I am sure this was what he meant,’ Heathcote said, putting much more fervour into the asseveration than it would have required had it been as certain as he said. Anne was chilled a little by his very warmth, but she would not admit this.
‘I was very certain of it always,’ she said, ‘though I did not know how he meant it to be. But now, Mr. Heathcote, thank you, thank you with all my heart! you have set that matter to rest.’
Was it really good for her to think that the matter was set at rest, that there never had been any doubt about it, that nothing but honour, and justice, and love towards her had ever been in her father’s thoughts? No doubt she would set up some theory of the same kind to explain, with the same certainty, the sluggishness of the other, of the fellow who, having a right to support her, had left her to stand alone in her trouble. This brought a warm glow of anger into Heathcote’s veins; but he could only show it by a little impatience expressed with a laugh over a small grievance of his own.
‘You said Cousin Heathcote just now. I think, after all we have seen and felt together, that a title at least as familiar as that might be mine.’
‘Surely,’ she said, with so friendly a smile, that Heathcote felt himself ridiculously touched. Why this girl should with a smile make him feel disposed to weep, if that were possible to a man of his age, he could not tell. It was too absurd, but perhaps it was because of the strange position in which she herself stood, and the way in which she occupied it, declaring herself happy in her loss, yet speaking with such bated breath of the other loss which she had discovered to be possible, and which, in being possible, had taken all feeling about her fortune away from her. A woman, standing thus alone among all the storms, so young, so brave, so magnanimous, touches a man’s heart in spite of himself. This was how he explained it. As he looked at her, he found it difficult to keep the moisture out of his eyes.
‘I want to speak to you about business,’ he said. ‘Mr. Loseby is not the only instructor in that art. Will you tell me—don’t think I am impertinent: where you intend—where you wish—to live?’
A flush came upon Anne’s face. She thought he wanted possession of his own house, which was so natural. ‘We will not stay to trouble you!’ she cried. Then, overcoming the little impulse of pride, ‘Forgive me, Cousin Heathcote, that was not what you meant, I know. We have not talked of it, we have had no consultation as yet. Except Mount, where I have always lived, one place is the same as another to me.’
But while she said this there was something in Anne’s eyes that contradicted her, and he thought that he could read what it meant. He felt that he knew better than she knew herself, and this gave him zeal in his proposal; though what he wanted was not to further but to hinder the wish which he divined in her heart.
‘If this is the case, why not stay at Mount?’ Heathcote said. ‘Listen to me; it is of no use to me; I am not rich enough to keep it up. This is why I wanted to get rid of it. You love the place and everything about it—whereas it is nothing to me.’
‘Is it so?’ said Anne, with a voice of regret. ‘Mount!—nothing to you?’
‘It was nothing to me, at least till the other day; and to you it is so much. All your associations are connected with it; you were born here, and have all your friends here,’ said Heathcote, unconsciously enlarging upon the claims of the place, as if to press them upon an unwilling hearer. Why should he think she was unwilling to acknowledge her love for her home? And yet Anne felt in her heart that there was divination in what he said.
‘But, Cousin Heathcote, it is yours, not ours. It was our home, but it is no longer so. Don’t you think it would be more hard to have no right to it, and yet stay, than to give it up and go? The happiness of Mount is over,’ she said softly. ‘It is no longer to us the one place in the world.’
‘That is a hard thing to say to me, Anne.’
‘Is it? why so? When you are settled in it, years after this, if you will ask me, I will come to see you, and be quite happy,’ said Anne with a smile; ‘indeed I shall; it is not a mean dislike to see you here. That is the course of nature. We always knew it was to be yours. There is no feeling of wrong, no pain at all in it; but it is no longer ours. Don’t you see the difference? I am sure you see it,’ she said.
‘But if your father had carried out his intention——’
‘Do you know,’ said Anne, looking at him with a half wistful, half smiling look, ‘on second thoughts it would perhaps be better not to say anything to mamma or Rose about my father’s intention? They might think it strange. They might say that was no punishment at all. I am very glad to know it for my own comfort, and that you should understand how really just he was; but they might not see it in the same light.’
‘And it has nothing to do with the question,’ said Heathcote, almost roughly; ‘the opportunity for such an arrangement is over. Whether he intended or whether he did not intend it—I cannot give you Mount.’
‘No, no; certainly you cannot give it to me——’
‘At least,’ he cried, carried beyond himself by the excitement of the moment. ‘There was only one way in which I could have given it to you: and that, without ever leaving me the chance, without thinking of any claim I had, you have put out of my power—you have made impossible, Anne!’
She looked at him, her eyes opened wider, her lips dropping apart, with a sort of consternation, then a tinge of warmer colour gradually rose over her face. The almost fierceness of his tone, the aggrieved voice and expression had something half ludicrous in it; but in her surprise this was not visible to Anne. And he saw that he had startled her, which is always satisfactory. She owed him reparation for this, though it was an unintentional wrong. He ended with a severity of indignation which overwhelmed her.
‘It does not seem to me that I was ever thought of, that anyone took me into consideration. I was never allowed to have a chance. Before I came here, my place, the place I might have claimed, was appropriated. And now I must keep Mount though I do not want it, and you must leave it though you do want it, when our interests might have been one. But no, no, I am mistaken. You do not want it now, though it is your home. You think you will prefer London, because London is——’
‘Mr. Heathcote Mountford, I think you forget what you are saying——’
‘Don’t call me that at least,’ he cried; ‘don’t thrust me away again as a stranger. Yes, I am absurd; I have no right to claim any place or any rights. If I had not been a fool, I should have come here a year, five years ago, as old Loseby says.’
‘What is that about old Loseby?’ said the lawyer, coming into the room. He was carrying a portfolio in his hands, which, let us hope, he had honestly gone to look for when he left them. Anyhow he carried it ostentatiously as if this had been his natural object in his absence. But the others were too much excited to notice his portfolio or his severely business air. At least Heathcote was excited, who felt that he had evidently made a fool of himself, and had given vent to a bit of ridiculous emotion, quite uncalled for, without any object, and originating he could not tell how. What was the meaning of it, he would have asked himself, but that the fumes of his own words had got into his head. He turned away, quite beyond his own control, when the lawyer appeared, his heart beating, his blood coursing through his veins. How had all this tempest got up in an instant? Did it come from nothing, and mean nothing? or had it been there within him, lying quiescent all this time. He could not answer the question, nor, indeed, for that matter, did he ask it, being much too fully occupied for the moment with the commotion which had thus suddenly got up like the boiling of a volcano within him, without any will of his own.
And Anne was too much bewildered, too much astonished to say anything. She could not believe her own ears. It seemed to her that her senses must be playing her false, that she could not be seeing aright or hearing aright—or else what did it mean? Mr. Loseby glided in between them with his portfolio, feeling sure they would remark his little artifice and understand his stratagem; but he had succeeded in that stratagem so much better than he thought, that they paid no attention to him at all.
‘What are you saying about old Loseby?’ he asked. ‘It is not civil in the first place, Mr. Heathcote, to call your family man of business old. It is a contumelious expression. I am not sure that it is not actionable. That reminds me that I have never had anything to do with your branch of the family—which, no doubt, is the reason why you take this liberty. I am on the other side——’
‘Do me this service, then, at once,’ said Heathcote, coming back from that agitated little walk with which a man who has been committing himself and showing uncalled-for emotion so often relieves his feelings. ‘Persuade my cousins to gratify me by staying at Mount. I have clearly told you I should not know what to do with it. If they will stay nothing need be changed.’
‘It is a very good idea,’ said Mr. Loseby. ‘I think an excellent idea. They will pay you a rent for it which will be reasonable, which will not be exorbitant.’
‘They shall do nothing of the sort,’ cried Heathcote: ‘rent—between me and——’
‘Yes, between you and Mrs. Mountford, the most reasonable proposal in the world. It is really a thing to be taking into your full consideration, Anne. Of course you must live somewhere. And there is no place you would like so well.’
Here a guilty flush came upon Anne’s face. She stole a furtive glance at Heathcote to see if he were observing her. She did not wish to give him the opportunity of saying ‘I told you so,’ or convicting her out of her own mouth.
‘I think mamma and Rose have some idea—that is, there was some talk—Rose has always wanted masters whom we can’t get here. There was an idea of settling in London—for a time——’
He did not turn round, which was merciful. If he had divined her, if he now understood her, he gave no sign at least. This was generous, and touched Anne’s heart.
‘In London! Now, what on earth would you do in London, country birds like Rose and you? I don’t say for a little time in the season, to see the pictures, and hear some music, and that sort of thing; but settling in London, what would you do that for? You would not like it; I feel sure you would not like it. You never could like it, if you tried.’
To this Anne was dumb, making no response. She stood with her eyes cast down, her face flushed and abashed, her two hands clasped together, as much like a confused and naughty child as it was possible for Anne to be. She gave once more an instantaneous, furtive glance from under her downcast eyelids at Heathcote. Would he rejoice over her to see his guess, his impertinent guess, proved true? But Heathcote was taking another agitated turn about the room, to blow off his own excitement, and was not for the moment observant of hers.
After this Mr. Loseby began to impart to Anne real information about the duties which would be required of her, to which she gave what attention she could. But this was not so much as could have been desired. Her mind was running over with various thoughts of her own, impulses which had come to her from another mind, and new aspects of old questions. She left the library as soon as she could, in order to get back to the shelter of her own room and there think them out. Had Heathcote known how little attention she gave to his own strange, unintentional self-betrayal—if it was indeed a self-betrayal, and not a mere involuntary outbreak of the moment, some nervous impulse or other, incomprehensible to the speaker as to the hearer—he would have been sadly humbled. But, as a matter of fact, Anne scarcely thought of his words at all. He had made some mistake, she felt sure. She had not heard him right, or else she had missed the real meaning of what he said, for that surface meaning was of course impossible. But she did think about the other matter. He had divined her almost more clearly than she had understood herself. When she had decided that to go to London would be the best thing the family could do, she had carefully directed her mind to other motives; to the facilities of getting masters for Rose, and books, and everything that was interesting; to the comfort and ease of life in a place where everything could be provided so easily, where there would be no great household to keep up. She had thought of the cheerfulness of a bright little house near the parks, and all the things there would be to see—the interests on all sides, the means of occupying themselves. But she had not thought—had she thought?—that Cosmo would be at hand, that he would be within reach, that he might be the companion of many expeditions, the sharer of many occupations. Had she secretly been thinking of this all the time? had this been her motive and not the other? Heathcote Mountford had seen through her and had divined it, though she had not known it herself. She paused now to ask herself with no small emotion, if this were true; and she could not say that it was not true or half true. If it were so, was it not unmaidenly, unwomanly, wrong to go after him, since he did not come to her? She had made up her mind to it without being conscious of that motive: but now the veil was torn from her eyes, and she was aware of the weakness in her own heart. Ought she to go, being now sure that to be near Cosmo was one of her chief objects; or would it be better to remain at Mount as Heathcote’s tenant? Anne’s heart sank down, down to the lowest depth; but she was a girl who could defy her heart and all her inclinations when need was. She threw herself back as a last resource upon the others who had to be consulted. Though she knew she could turn them as she pleased, yet she proposed to herself to make an oracle of them. According to their response, who knew nothing about it, who would speak according to the chance impression of the moment, so should the decision be.