CHAPTER XXVII.
A NEW BEGINNING.
FOR people who are well off, not to say rich, and who have no prevailing anxieties to embitter their life, and who take an interest in what is going on around them, London is a pleasant place enough, even in December. And still more is Park Lane a pleasant place. To see the red wintry sunshine lighting up the misty expanse of the Park, the brisk pedestrians going to and fro under the bare trees, the carriages following each other along the broad road, the coveys of pretty children and neat nursemaids, and all the flood of prosperous life that flows along, leisurely in the morning, crowding in the afternoons, is very pleasant to the uninitiated. All the notable people that are to be found in London at that period, appearing now and then, and a great many people who get lost to sight in the throngs of the season, but are more worth seeing than even those throngs, were pointed out to the ladies by the two cicerones who took in hand to enlighten their ignorance. The house they had was one of those small houses with large, ample, bow windows to the drawing-rooms, which give a sort of rustic, irregular simplicity to this street of the rich. Those people who are happy and well off and live in Park Lane must be happier and more well off than people anywhere else. They must be amused besides, which is no small addition to happiness. Even Anne felt that to sit at that window all day long would be a pleasant way of occupying a day. The misty distance, penetrated by the red rays of sunshine, was a kind of poem, relieved by the active novelty of the animated foreground, the busy passengers, the flood and high tide of life. How different from the prospect over the park at Mount, where Charley Ashley on the road, coming up from the Rectory, was something to look at, and an occasional friend with him the height of excitement. The red rays made the mist brighter and brighter; the crowd increased; the carriages went faster; and then the sun waned and got low and went out in a bank of cloud, and the lamps were all lighted in the misty twilight, but still the crowd went on. The ladies sat at the window and were amused, as by a scene in a play; and then to think that ‘all the pictures,’ by which Anne meant the National Gallery, were within reach—and many another wonder, of which they had been able to snatch a hasty glance once a year, or not so often as once a year, but which was now daily at their hand: and even, last, but yet important, the shops behind all, in which everything that was interesting was to be found. Rose and her mother used to like, when they had nothing better and more important to buy, to go to the Japanese shop, and turn over the quaint articles there. Everything was new to them, as if they had come from the South Seas. But the newest of all was this power of doing something whenever they pleased, finding something to look at, something to hear, something to buy. The power of shopping is in itself an endless delight to country ladies. Nothing to do but to walk into a beautiful big place, with obsequious people ready to bring you whatever you might want, graceful young women putting on every variety of mantle to please you, bland men unfolding the prettiest stuffs, the most charming dresses. The amusement thus afforded was unending. Even Anne liked it, though she was so highflown. Very different from the misty walk through their own park to ask after some sick child, or buy postage stamps at the village post-office. This was about all that could be done at Mount. But London was endless in its variety. And then there was sightseeing such as never could be managed when people came up to town only for a month in the season. Mr. Mountford indeed had been impatient at the mere idea that his family wanted to see St. Paul’s and the Tower, like rustics come to town for a holiday. Now they were free to do all this with nobody to interfere.
And it was Cosmo who was their guide, philosopher, and friend in this new career. He had chosen their house for them, with which they were all so entirely pleased, and it was astonishing how often he found leisure to go with them here and there, explaining to them that his work was capable of being done chiefly in the morning, and that those afternoon hours were not good for much. ‘Besides, you know the time of a briefless barrister is never of much importance,’ he said, with a laugh. Rose was very curious on this point. She questioned him a great deal more closely than Anne would have done. ‘Are you really a briefless barrister, Mr. Douglas? What is a briefless barrister? Does that mean that you have no work at all to do?’ she said.
‘Not very much. Sometimes I am junior with some great man who gets all the fees and all the reputation. Sometimes an honest, trustful individual, with a wrong to be redressed, comes to ask my advice. This happens now and then, just to keep me from giving in altogether. It is enough to swear by, that is about all,’ he said.
‘Then it is not enough to live on,’ said Rose, pushing her inquiries to the verge of rudeness. But Cosmo was not offended. He was indulgent to her curiosity of every kind.
‘No, not near enough to live on. I get other little things to do, you know—sometimes I write a little for the newspapers—sometimes I have a report to write or an inquiry to conduct. And sometimes a kind lady, a friend to the poor, will ask me out to dinner,’ he said, with a laugh. They were sitting at dinner while this conversation was going on.
‘But then, how could you——?’ Rose began, then stopped short, and looked at her sister. ‘I will ask you that afterwards,’ she said.
‘Now or afterwards, your interest does me honour, and I shall do my best to satisfy you,’ said Cosmo, with a bow of mock submission. He was more light-hearted, Anne thought, than she had ever seen him before; and she was a little surprised by the amount of leisure he seemed to have. She had formed no idea of the easy life of the class of so-called poor men to which Cosmo belonged. According to her ideas they were all toiling, lying in wait for Fortune, working early and late, and letting no opportunity slip. She could have understood the patience, the weariness, the obstinate struggle of such lives; but she could not understand how, being poor, they could get on so comfortably, and with so little strain, with leisure for everything that came in the way, and so many little luxuries. Anne was surprised by the fact that Cosmo could bestow his afternoons upon their little expeditions, and go to the club when he left them, and be present at all the theatres when anything of importance was going on, and altogether show so little trace of the pressure which she supposed his work could not fail to make upon him. He seemed indeed to have fewer claims upon his time than she herself had. Sometimes she was unable to go out with the others, having letters from Mr. Loseby to answer, or affairs of the estate to look after; but Cosmo’s engagements were less pressing. How was it? she asked herself. Surely it was not in this way that men got to be Judges, Lord Chancellors—all those great posts which had been in Anne’s mind since first she knew that her lover belonged to the profession of the law. That he must be aspiring to these heights seemed to her inevitable—and especially now, when she had lost all her money, and there was no possible means of union for them, save in his success. But could success be won so easily? Was it by such simple means that men got to the top of the tree, or even reached as far as offices which were not the highest?
These questions began to meet and bewilder her very soon after their arrival, after the first pleasure of falling into easy constant intercourse with the man who loved her and whom she loved.
At first it had been but too pleasant to see him continually, to get acquainted with the new world in which they were living, through his means, and to admire his knowledge of everything—all the people and all their histories. But by-and-by Anne’s mind began to get bewildered. She was only a woman and did not understand—nay, only a girl, and had no experience. Perhaps, it was possible men got through their work by such a tremendous effort of power that the strain could only be kept up for a short period of time; perhaps Cosmo was one of those wonderful people who accomplish much without ever seeming to be employed at all; perhaps—and this she felt was the most likely guess—it was her ignorance that did not understand anything about the working of an accomplished mind, but expected everything to go on in the jog-trot round of labour which was all she understood. Happy are the women who are content to think that all is well which they are told is well—and who can believe in their own ignorance and be confident in the better knowledge of the higher beings with whom they are connected. Anne could not do this—she abode as in a city of refuge in her own ignorance, and trusted in that to the fullest extent of her powers—but still her mind was confused and bewildered. She could not make it out. At the same time, however, she was quite incapable of Rose’s easy questioning. She could not take Cosmo to task for his leisure, and ask him how he was employing it. When she heard her little sister’s interrogations she was half alarmed, half horrified. Fools rush in—she did not say this to herself, but something like it was in her thoughts.
After this particular dinner, however, Rose kept to her design very steadily. She beckoned Cosmo to come to her when he came upstairs. Rose’s rise into importance since her father’s death had been one of the most curious incidents in the family history. It was not that she encroached upon the sphere of Anne, who was supreme in the house as she had always been—almost more supreme now, as having the serious business in her hands; nor was she disobedient to her mother, who, on her side, was conscientiously anxious not to spoil the little heiress, or allow her head to be turned by her elevation. But Rose had risen somehow, no one could tell how. She was on the top of the wave—the successfulness of success was in her veins, exhilarating her, calling forth all her powers. Anne, though she had taken her own deposition with so much magnanimity, had yet been somewhat changed and subdued by it. The gentle imperiousness of her character, sympathetic yet naturally dominant, had been already checked by these reverses. She had been stopped short in her life, and made to pause and ask of the world and the unseen those questions which, when once introduced into existence, make it impossible to go on with the same confidence and straightforward rapidity again. But little Rose was full of confidence and curiosity and faith in herself. She did not hesitate either in advising or questioning the people around her. She had told Anne what she ought to do—and now she meant to tell Cosmo. She had no doubt whatever as to her competence for it, and she liked the rôle.
‘Come and sit here beside me,’ she said. ‘I am going to ask you a great many questions. Was that all true that you told me at dinner, or was it your fun? Please tell me in earnest this time. I want so very much to know.’
‘It would have been poor fun; not much of a joke, I think. No, it was quite true.’
‘All of it? About writing in the newspapers, and one person asking your advice once in a way? And about ladies asking you out to dinner?’
‘Perhaps that would be a little too matter-of-fact. I have always had enough to pay for my dinner. Yes, I think I can say that much,’ said Cosmo, with a laugh.
‘But that does not make very much difference,’ said Rose. ‘Well, then, now I must ask you another question. How did you think, Mr. Douglas, that you could marry Anne?’
She spoke low, so that nobody else could hear, and looked him full in the face, with her seeming innocence. The question was so unexpected, and the questioner so unlike a person entitled to institute such examinations, that Cosmo was entirely taken by surprise. He gave an almost gasp of amazement and consternation, and though he was not easily put out, his countenance grew crimson.
‘How did I think I could——? You put a very startling question. I always knew I was entirely unworthy,’ he stammered out.
‘But that isn’t what I meant a bit. Anne is awfully superior,’ said Rose. ‘I always knew she was—but more than ever now. I am not asking you how you ventured to ask her, or anything of that sort—but how did you think that you could marry—when you had only enough to be sure of paying for your own dinner? And I don’t mean either just at first, for of course you thought she would be rich. But when you knew that papa was so angry, and that everything was so changed for her, how could you think you could go on with it? It is that that puzzles me so.’
Rose was seated in a low chair, busy with a piece of crewel work, from which she only raised her eyes now and then to look him in the face with that little matter-of-fact air, leaving him no loophole of sentiment to escape by. And he had taken another seat on a higher elevation, and had been stooping over her with a smile on his face, so altogether unsuspicious of any attack that he had actually no possibility of escape. Her half-childish look paralysed him: it was all he could do not to gape at her with open mouth of bewilderment and confusion. But her speech was a long one, and gave him a little time to get up his courage.
‘You are very right,’ he said. ‘I did not think you had so much judgment. How could I think of it—I cannot tell. It is presumption; it is wretched injustice to her—to think of dragging her down into my poverty.’
‘But you don’t seem a bit poor, Mr. Douglas; that is the funny thing—and you are not very busy or working very hard. I think it would all be very nice for you, and very comfortable. But I cannot see, for my part,’ said the girl, tranquilly, ‘what you would do with Anne.’
‘Those are questions which we do not discuss——’ he was going to say ‘with little girls,’ being angry; but he paused in time—‘I mean which we can only discuss, Anne and I, between ourselves.’
‘Oh, Anne! she would never mind!’ said Rose, with a certain contempt.
‘What is it that Anne would never mind?’ said Mrs. Mountford. Anne was out of the room, and had not even seen this curious inquisition into the meaning of her betrothed.
‘Nothing at all that is prudent, mamma. I was asking Mr. Douglas how he ever thought he would be able to get married, living such an easy life.’
‘Rose, are you out of your senses?’ cried her mother, in alarm. ‘You will not mind her, Mr. Douglas, she is only a child—and I am afraid she has been spoiled of late. Anne has always spoiled her: and since her dear papa has been gone, who kept us all right——’
Here Mrs. Mountford put her handkerchief lightly to her eyes. It was her tribute to the occasion. On the whole she was finding her life very pleasant, and the pressure of the cambric to her eyelids was the little easy blackmail to sorrow which she habitually paid.
‘She asks very pertinent questions,’ said Cosmo, getting up from the stool of repentance upon which he had been placed, with something between a smile and a sigh.
‘She always had a great deal of sense, though she is such a child,’ said her mother fondly; ‘but, my darling, you must learn that you really cannot be allowed to meddle with things that don’t concern you. People always know their own affairs best.’
At this moment Anne came back. When the subject of a discussion suddenly enters the place in which it has been going on, it is strange how foolish everybody looks, and what a sense of wrong-doing is generally diffused in the atmosphere. They had been three together to talk, and she was but one. Cosmo, who, whatever he might do, or hesitate to do, had always the sense in him of what was best, the perception of moral beauty and ideal grace which the others wanted, looked at her as she came across the room with such compunctious tenderness in his eyes as the truest lover in existence could not have surpassed. He admired and loved her, it seemed to him, more than he ever did before. And Anne surprised this look of renewed and half-adoring love. It went through and through her like a sudden warm glow of sunshine, enveloping her in sudden warmth and consolation. What a wonderful glory, what a help and encouragement in life, to be loved like that! She smiled at him with the tenderest gratitude. Though there might be things in which he fell below the old ideal Cosmo, to whom all those scraps of letters in her desk had been addressed, still life had great gladness in it which had this Cosmo to fall back upon. She returned to that favourite expression, which sometimes lately she had refrained even from thinking of, and with a glance called him to her, which she had done very little of late. ‘I want your advice about Mr. Loseby’s letter,’ she said. And thus the first result of Rose’s cross-examination was to bring the two closer to each other. They went together into the inner room, where Anne had her writing-table and all her business papers, and where they sat and discussed Mr. Loseby’s plans for the employment of money. ‘I would rather, far rather, do something for the estate with it,’ Anne said. ‘Those cottages! my father would have consented to have them; and Rose always took an interest in them, almost as great an interest as I did. She will be so well off, what does it matter? Comfort to those poor people is of far more importance than a little additional money in the bank, for that is what it comes to—not even money to spend, we have plenty of that.’
‘You do not seem to think that all this should have been for yourself, Anne. Is it possible? It is more than I could have believed.’
‘Dear Cosmo,’ said Anne, apologetically, ‘you know I have never known what it is to be poor. I don’t understand it. I am intellectually convinced, you know, that I am a beggar, and Rose has everything; but otherwise it does not have the slightest effect upon me. I don’t understand it. No, I am not a beggar. I have five hundred a year.’
‘Till that little girl comes of age,’ he said, with an accent of irritation which alarmed Anne. She laid her soft hand upon his to calm him.
‘You like Rose well enough, Cosmo; you have been so kind to her, taking them everywhere. Don’t be angry, it is not her fault.’
‘No, it is my fault,’ he said. ‘I am at the bottom of all the mischief. It is I who have spoiled your life. She has been talking to me, that child, and with the most perfect reason. She says how could I think of marrying Anne if I was so poor? She is quite right, my dearest: how could I think of marrying you, of throwing my shadow across your beautiful, bright, prosperous life?’
‘For that matter,’ said Anne, with a soft laugh, ‘you did not, Cosmo—you only thought of loving me. You are like the father in the “Précieuses Ridicules,” do you remember, who so shocked everybody by coming brutally to marriage at once. That, after all, has not so much to do with it. Scores of people have to wait for years and years. In the meantime the pays de tendre is very sweet; don’t you think so?’ she said, turning to him soft eyes which were swimming in a kind of dew of light, liquid brightness and happiness, like a glow of sunshine in them. What could Cosmo do or say? He protested that it was very sweet, but not enough. That nothing would be enough till he could carry her away to the home which should be hers and his, and where nobody would intermeddle. And Anne was as happy as if her lover, speaking so earnestly, had been transformed at once into the hero and sage, high embodiment of man in all the nobleness of which man is capable, which it was the first necessity of her happiness that he should be.