CHAPTER XXIX.
CHARLEY INTERFERES.
HEATHCOTE MOUNTFORD, however, notwithstanding the dulness and the dismal weather, and all the imperfections of the incomplete household, continued at Mount. The long blanks of country life, nothing happening from the arrival of one post to another, no stir of life about, only the unbroken stillness of the rain or the sunshine, the good or bad weather, the one tempting him out, the other keeping him within, were all novelties, though of the heavy kind, and gave him a kind of amused-spectator consciousness of the tedium, rather than any suffering from it. He was not so easily affected as many people would be by the circumstances of external life, and knowing that he could at any moment go back to his den at the Albany, he took the much deeper seclusion of Mount as a sort of ‘retreat,’ in which he could look out upon the before and after, and if he sometimes ‘pined for what was not,’ yet could do it unenviously and unbitterly, wondering at rather than objecting to the strange misses and blunders of life. Mr. Loseby, who had tutored Anne in her duties, did the same for Heathcote, showing him by what means he could ‘take an interest’ in the dwellers upon his land, so as to be of some use to them. And he rode about the country with the land-agent, and became aware, and became proud as he became aware, of the character of his own possessions, of the old farmhouses, older than Mount itself, and the old cottages, toppling to their ruin, among which were many that Anne had doomed. Wherever he went he heard of what Miss Anne had done, and settled to do. The women in the condemned cottages told him the improvements she had promised, and he, in most cases, readily undertook to carry out these promises, notwithstanding his want of means. ‘They’re doing it at Lilford, where Miss Anne has been and given her orders,’ said the women. ‘I don’t know why there should be differences made. We’re as good every bit as the Lilford folks.’ ‘But you have not got Miss Anne,’ said Heathcote. And then there would be an outburst of lamentations, interrupted by anxious questioning. ‘Why haven’t we got Miss Anne?—is it true as all the money has been left away from her?’ Heathcote had a great many questions of this kind to answer, and soon began to feel that he himself was the supposed culprit to whom the estate had been ‘left away.’ ‘I am supposed to be your supplanter,’ he wrote to Anne herself, ‘and I feel your deputy doing your work for you. Dear Lady of Mount, send me your orders. I will carry them out to the best of my ability. I am poor, and not at all clever about the needs of the estate, but I think, don’t you think? that the great Mr. Bulstrode, who is so good as to be my agent, is something of a bully, and does not by any means do his spiriting gently. What do you think? You are not an ignoramus, like me.’ This letter Anne answered very fully, and it produced a correspondence between them which was a great pleasure to Heathcote, and not only a pleasure, but in some respects a help, too. She approved greatly of his assumption of his natural duties upon his own shoulders, and kindly encouraged him ‘not to mind’ the bullying of the agent, the boorishness of Farmer Rawlins, and the complaints of the Spriggs. In this matter of the estate Anne felt the advantage of her experience. She wrote to him in a semi-maternal way, understanding that the information she had to give placed her in a position of superiority, while she gave it, at least. Heathcote was infinitely amused by these pretensions; he liked to be schooled by her, and made her very humble replies; but the burden of all his graver thoughts was still that regret expressed by Mr. Loseby, Why, why had he not made his appearance a year before? But now it was too late.
Thus the winter went on. The Mountfords had gone abroad. They had been in all the places where English families go while their crape is still fresh, to Paris and Cannes, and into Italy, trying, as Mrs. Mountford said, ‘the effect of a little change.’ And they all liked it, it is needless to deny. They were so unaccustomed to use their wings that the mere feeling of the first flight, the wild freedom and sense of boundless action and power over themselves filled them with pleasure. They were not to come back till the summer was nearly over, going to Switzerland for the hot weather, when Italy became too warm. They had not intended, when they set out, to stay so long, but indeed it was nearly a year from the period of Mr. Mountford’s death when they came home. They did not return to Park Lane, nor to any other settled abode, but went to one of the many hotels near Heathcote’s chambers, to rest for a few days before they settled what they were to do for the autumn; for it was Mrs. Mountford’s desire to go ‘abroad’ again for the winter, staying only some three months at home. When the little world about Mount heard of this, they were agitated by various feelings—desire to get them back alternating in the minds of the good people with indignation at the idea of their renewed wanderings, which were all put down to the frivolity of Mrs. Mountford; and a continually growing wonder and consternation as to the future of Anne. ‘She has no right to keep a poor man hanging on so long, when there can be no possible reason for it; when it would really be an advantage for her to have someone to fall back upon,’ Miss Woodhead said, in righteous indignation over her friend’s extraordinary conduct—extraordinary as she thought it. ‘Rose has her mother to go with her. And I think poor Mr. Douglas is being treated very badly for my part. They ought to come home here, and stay for the three months, and get the marriage over, among their own people.’ Fanny Woodhead was considered through all the three adjacent parishes to be a person of great judgment, and the Rector, for one, was very much impressed with this suggestion. ‘I think Fanny’s idea should be acted upon. I think it certainly should be acted on,’ he said. ‘The year’s mourning for her father will be over, if that is what they are waiting for—and look at all the correspondence she has, and the trouble. She wants somebody to help her. Someone should certainly suggest to Anne that it would be a right thing to follow Fanny Woodhead’s advice.’
Heathcote, who, though he had allowed himself a month of the season, was back again in Mount, with a modest household gathered round him, and every indication of a man ‘settling down,’ concurred in this counsel, so far as to write, urging very warmly that Mount should be their head-quarters while they remained in England. Mr. Loseby was of opinion that the match was one which never would come off at all, an idea which moved several bosoms with an unusual tremor. There was a great deal of agitation altogether on the subject among the little circle, which felt that the concerns of the Mountfords were more or less concerns of their own; and when it was known that Charley Ashley, who was absent on his yearly holiday, was to see the ladies on his way through London, there was a general impression that something would come of it—that he would be able to set their duty before them, or to expedite the settlement of affairs in one way or another. The Curate himself said nothing to anyone, but he had a very serious purpose in his mind. He it was who had introduced these two to each other; his friendship had been the link which had connected Douglas—so far as affairs had yet gone, very disastrously—with the woman who had been the adoration of poor Charley’s own life. He had resigned her, having neither hopes nor rights to resign, to his friend, with a generous abandonment, and had been loyal to Cosmo as to Anne, though at the cost of no little suffering to himself. But, if it were possible that Anne herself was being neglected, then Charley felt that he had a right to a word in the matter. He was experimenting sadly in French seaside amusements with his brother at Boulogne, when the ladies returned to England. Charley and Willie were neither of them great in French. They had begun by thinking all the humours of the bathing place ‘fun,’ and laughing mightily at the men in their bathing dresses, and feeling scandalised at their presence among the ladies; but, after a few days, they had become very much bored, and felt the drawback of having ‘nothing to do;’ so that, when they heard that the Mountfords had crossed the Channel and were in London, the two young men made haste to follow. It was the end of July when everybody was rushing out of town, and only a small sprinkling of semi-fashionable persons were to be seen in the scorched and baked parks. The Mountfords were understood to be in town only for a few days. It was all that any lady who respected herself could imagine possible at this time of the year.
‘I suppose they’ll be changed,’ Willie said to his brother, as they made their way to the hotel. ‘I have never seen them since all these changes came about; that is, I have never seen Rose. I suppose Rose won’t be Rose now, to me at least. It is rather funny that such a tremendous change should come about between two times of seeing a person whom you have known all your life.’ By ‘rather funny’ Willie meant something much the reverse of amusing: but that is the way of English youth. He, too, had entertained his little dreams, which had been of a more substantial character than his brother’s; for Willie was destined for the bar, and had, or believed himself to have, chances much superior to those of a country clergyman. And according to the original disposition of Mr. St. John Mountford’s affairs, a rising young fellow at the bar, with Willie Ashley’s hopes and connections, would have been no very bad match for little Rose. This it was that made him feel it was ‘funny.’ But still his heart was not gone together in one great sweep out of his breast, like Charley’s. And he went to see his old friends with a little quickening of his pulse, yet a composed determination ‘to see if it was any use.’ If it seemed to him that there was still an opening, Willie was not afraid of Rose’s fortune, and did not hesitate to form ulterior plans; and he stood on this great vantage ground that, if he found it was not ‘any use,’ he had no intention of breaking his heart.
When they went in, however, to the hotel sitting-room in which the Mountfords were, they found Rose and her mother with their bonnets on, ready to go out, and there were but a few minutes for conversation. Rose was grown and developed so that her old adorer scarcely recognised her for the first minute. She was in a white dress, profusely trimmed with black, and made in a fashion to which the young men were unaccustomed, the latest Parisian fashion, which they did not understand, indeed, but which roused all their English conservatism of feeling, as much as if they had understood it. ‘Oh, how nice of you to come to see us!’ Rose cried. ‘Are you really passing through London, and were you at Boulogne when we came through? I never could have imagined you in France, either the one or the other. How did you get on with the talking? You could not have any fun in a place unless you understood what people were saying. Mamma, I don’t think we ought to wait for Mr. Douglas; it is getting so late.’
‘Here is Mr. Douglas,’ said Mrs. Mountford; ‘he is always punctual. Anne is not going with us; she has so much to do—there is quite a packet of letters from Mr. Loseby. If you would rather be let off going with us, Mr. Douglas, you have only to say so; I am sure we can do very well by ourselves.’
But at this suggestion Rose pouted, a change of expression which was not lost upon the anxious spectators.
‘I came for the express purpose of going with you,’ said Cosmo; ‘why should I be turned off now?’
‘Oh, I only thought that because of Anne——; but of course you will see Anne after. Will you all, like good people, come back and dine, as we are going out now? No, Charley, I will not, indeed, take any refusal. I want to hear all about Mount, dear Mount—and what Heathcote Mountford is doing. Anne wishes us to go to Hunston; but I don’t know that I should like to be so near without being at Mount.’
‘Is Anne too busy to see us now? I should just like to say how d’you do.’
‘Oh, if you will wait a little, I don’t doubt that you will see her. But I am sure you will excuse us now, as we had fixed to go out. We shall see you this evening. Mind you are here by seven o’clock,’ cried Mrs. Mountford, shaking her fingers at them in an airy way which she had learned ‘abroad.’ And Rose said, as they went out, ‘Yes, do come; I want to hear all about Mount.’ About two minutes after they left the room Anne came in. She had not turned into a spider or wasp, like Rose in her Paris costume, but she was much changed. She no longer carried her head high, but had got a habit of bowing it slightly, which made a curious difference in her appearance. She was like a tall flower bent by the winds, bowing before them; she was more pale than she used to be; and to Charley it seemed that there was an inquiry in her eyes, which first cast one glance round, as if asking something, before they turned with a little gleam of pleasure to the strangers.
‘You here?’ Anne said. ‘How glad I am to see you! When did you come, and where are you staying? I am so sorry that mamma and Rose have gone out; but you must come back and see them: or will you wait? They will soon be back;’ and once more she threw a glance round, investigating—as if some one might be hiding somewhere, Willie said. But his brother knew better. Charley felt that there was the bewilderment of wonder in her eyes, and felt that it must be a new experience to her that Cosmo should not wait to see her. For a moment the light seemed to fade in her face, then came back: and she sat down and talked with a subdued sweetness that went to their hearts. ‘Not to Mount,’ she said; ‘Heathcote is very kind, but I don’t think I will go to Mount. To Hunston rather—where we can see everybody all the same.’
‘What is the matter with Anne?’ Willie Ashley asked, wondering, when they came away. ‘It can’t be because she has lost her money. She has no more spirit left in her. She has not a laugh left in her. What is the cause of it all?’ But the Curate made no answer. He set his teeth, and he said not a word. There was very little to be got out of him all that day. He went gloomily about with his brother, turning Willie’s holiday into a somewhat poor sort of merry-making. And when they went to dinner with the Mountfords at night, Charley’s usual taciturnity was so much aggravated that he scarcely could be said to talk at all. But the dinner was gay enough. Rose, it seemed to young Ashley, who had his private reasons for being critical, ‘kept it up’ with Douglas in a way which was not at all pleasant. They had been together all the afternoon, and had all sorts of little recollections in common. Anne was much less subdued than in the morning, and talked like her old self, yet with a difference. It was when the party broke up, however, that Willie Ashley felt himself most ill-used. He was left entirely out in the cold by his brother, who said to him briefly, ‘I am going home with Douglas,’ and threw him on his own devices. If it had not been that some faint guess crossed the younger brother’s mind as to Charley’s meaning, he would have felt himself very badly used.
The Curate put his arm within his friend’s. It was somewhat against the grain, for he did not feel so amicable as he looked. ‘I am coming back with you,’ he said. ‘We have not had a talk for so long. I want to know what you’ve been after all this long while.’
‘Very glad of a talk,’ said Douglas, but neither was he quite as much gratified as he professed to be; ‘but as for coming back with me, I don’t know where that is to be, for I am going to the club.’
‘I’ll walk with you there,’ said Charley. However, after this announcement Cosmo changed his mind: he saw that there was gravity in the Curate’s intentions, and turned his steps towards his rooms. He had not been expected there, and the lamp was not lighted, nor anything ready for him; and there was a little stumbling in the dark and ringing of bells before they got settled comfortably to their tête-à-tête. Charley seated himself in a chair by the table while this was going on, and when lights came he was discovered there as in a scene in a theatre, heavy and dark in his black clothes, and the pale desperation with which he was addressing himself to his task.
‘Douglas,’ he said, ‘for a long time I have wanted to speak to you——’
‘Speak away,’ said the other; ‘but have a pipe to assist your utterance, Charley. You never could talk without your pipe.’
The Curate put away the offered luxury with a determined hand. How much easier, how much pleasanter it would have been to accept it, to veil his purpose with the friendly nothings of conversation, and thus perhaps delude his friend into disclosures without affronting him by a solemn demand! That would have been very well had Charley had any confidence in his own powers—but he had not, and he put the temptation away from him. ‘No, thank you, Douglas,’ he said, ‘what I want to say is something which you may think very interfering and impertinent. Do you remember a year ago when you were at the Rectory and we had a talk—one very wet night?’
‘Perfectly. You were sulky because you thought I had cut you out; but you always were the best of fellows, Charley——’
‘Don’t talk of it like that. You might have taken my life blood from me after that, and I shouldn’t have minded. That’s a figure of speech. I mean that I gave up to you then what wasn’t mine to give, what you had got without any help from me. You know what I mean. If you think I didn’t mind, that was a mistake. A great many things have happened since then, and some things have not happened that looked as if they ought to have done so. You made use of me after that, and I was glad enough to be of use. I want to ask you one question now, Douglas. I don’t say that you’ll like to be questioned by me——’
‘No,’ said Cosmo, ‘a man does not like to be questioned by another man who has no particular right to interfere: for I don’t pretend not to understand what you mean.’
‘No: you can’t but understand what I mean. All of us, down about Mount, take a great interest—there’s never a meeting in the county of any kind but questions are always asked. As for my father, he is excited on the subject. He cannot keep quiet. Will you tell me for his satisfaction and my own, what is going to come of it? is anything going to come of it? I think that, as old friends, and mixed up as I have been all through, I have a right to inquire.’
‘You mean,’ said Cosmo, coolly knocking a pipe upon the mantelpiece with his back turned to the questioner, whose voice was broken with emotion, and who was grasping the table nervously all the while he spoke—‘you mean, is marriage going to come of it? at least, I suppose that is what you mean.’
The Curate replied by a sort of inarticulate gurgle in his throat, an assent which excitement prevented from forming itself into words.
‘Well!’ said the other. He took his time to everything he did, filled the pipe aforesaid, lighted it with various long-drawn puffs, and finally seated himself at the opposite side of the dark fireplace, over which the candles on the mantelpiece threw an additional shadow. ‘Well! it is no such simple matter as you seem to think.’
‘I never said it was a simple matter; and yet when one thinks that there are other men,’ cried the Curate, with momentary vehemence, ‘who would give their heads——’
Douglas replied to this outburst with a momentary laugh, which, if he had but known it, as nearly gave him over to punishment as any foolish step he ever took in his life. Fortunately for him it was very short, and in reality more a laugh of excitement than of mirth.
‘Oh, there’s more than one, is there?’ he said. ‘Look here, Charley, I might refuse point-blank to answer your question. I should have a perfect right. It is not the sort of thing that one man asks another in a general way.’
The Curate did not make any reply, and after a moment Douglas continued—
‘But I won’t. I understand your motives, if you don’t understand mine. You think I am shilly-shallying, that I ought to fulfil my engagement, that I am keeping Anne hanging on.’
‘Don’t name any names,’ cried Ashley, hoarsely.
‘I don’t know how I can give you an answer without naming names: but I’ll try to please you. Look here, it is not such an easy matter, plain-sailing and straightforward as you think. When I formed that engagement I was—well, just what I am now—a poor devil of a barrister, not long called, with very little money, and not much to do. But, then, she was rich. Did you make a remark?’
Charley had stirred unconsciously, with a movement of indignant fury, which he was unable altogether to restrain. But he made no answer, and Douglas continued with a quickened and somewhat excited tone—
‘I hope you don’t suppose that I mean to say that had anything to do with the engagement. Stop! yes, it had. I should not have ventured to say a word about my feelings to a poor girl. I should have taken myself off as soon as they became too much for me. I don’t hide the truth from you, and I am not ashamed of it. To thrust myself and her into trouble on my present income is what I never would have thought of. Well, you know all that happened as well as I do. I entreated her not to be rash, I begged her to throw me over, not so much as to think of me when her father objected. She paid no attention. I don’t blame her——’
‘Blame her!’
‘Those were the words I used. I don’t blame her. She knew nothing about poverty. She was not afraid of it: it was rather a sort of excitement to her, as they say a revolution was to the French princesses. She laughed at it, and defied her father. If you think I liked that, or encouraged that, it is a mistake; but what could I do? And what am I to do now? Can I bring her here, do you think? What can I do with her? I am not well enough off to marry. I should never have dreamt of such a thing on my own account. If you could show me a way out of it, I should be very thankful. As for working one’s self into fame and fortune and all that kind of thing, you know a little what mere romance it is. Some fellows do it; but they don’t marry to begin with. I am almost glad you interviewed me to get this all out. What am I to do? I know no more than you can tell me. I have got the character of playing fast and loose, of behaving badly to a girl whom I love and respect; for I do love and respect her, mind you, whatever you and your belongings may think or say.’
‘You could not well help yourself, so far as I can see,’ said the Curate hotly.
‘That is all you know. If you were in my place and knew the false position into which I have been brought, the expectations I have been supposed to raise, the reluctance I have seemed to show in carrying them out—by Jove! if you could only feel as I do all the miseries of my position, unable to stir a step one way or another——’
‘I know men who would give their heads to stand in your position——’
‘And what would they do in it?’ asked Douglas, pulling ineffectually at the pipe, which had long gone out. ‘Say yourself, for example; you are totally different—you have got your house and your settled income, and you know what is before you.’
‘I can’t discuss it in this way. Do you imagine that I have as much to spend, to use your own argument,’ cried the Curate, ‘as you have here?’
‘It is quite different,’ Douglas said. Then he added, with a sort of dogged determination, ‘I am getting on. I think I am getting the ball at my foot; but to marry at present would be destruction—and to her still more than to me.’
‘Then the short and the long is——’
‘The short and the long is exactly what I have told you. You may tell her yourself, if you please. Whatever love in a cottage may be, love in chambers is impossible. With her fortune we could have married, and it would have helped me on. Without it, such a thing would be madness, ruin to me and to her too.’
Charley rose up, stumbling to his feet. ‘This is all you have got to say?’ he said.
‘Yes, that is all I have got to say; and, to tell the truth, I think it is wonderfully good of me to say it, and not to show you politely to the door; but we are old friends, and you are her old friend——’
‘Good-night, Douglas,’ the Curate said, abruptly. He did not offer his friend his hand, but went out bewildered, stumbling down the stairs and out at the door. This was what he had yielded up all his hopes (but he never had any hopes) for! this was what Anne had selected out of the world. He did not go back to his hotel, but took a long walk round and round the parks in the dismal lamplight, seeing many a dismal scene. It was almost morning when his brother, utterly surprised and alarmed, heard him come in at last.