CHAPTER XXXI.
FALLEN FROM HER HIGH ESTATE.
THE ‘Black Bull’ at Hunston is one of those old inns which have been superseded, wherever it is practicable, by new ones, and which are in consequence eagerly resorted to by enlightened persons, wherever they are to be found; but there was nobody in Hunston, beyond the ordinary little countrytown visitors, to appreciate its comfortable old rooms, old furniture, and old ways. When there was a county ball, the county people who had daughters engaged rooms in it occasionally, and the officers coming from Scarlett-town filled up all the corners. But county balls were rare occurrences, and there had not been yet under the régime of old Saymore a single instance of exceptional gaiety or fulness. So that, though it was highly respectable, and the position of landlord one of ease and dignity, the profits had been as yet limited. Saymore himself, however, in the spotless perfection of costume which he had so long kept up at Mount, and with his turn for artistic arrangements, and general humble following of the ‘fads’ of his young ladies, was in himself a model of a master for a Queen Anne house (though not in the least what the prototype of that character would have been), and was in a fair way to make his house everything which a house of that period ought to be. And though Keziah, in the most fashionable of nineteenth-century dresses, was a decided anachronism, yet her little face was pleasant to the travellers arriving hot and dusty on an August evening, and finding in those two well-known figures a something of home which went to their hearts. To see Saymore at the carriage door made Mrs. Mountford put her handkerchief to her eyes, a practice which she had given up for at least six months past. And, to compare small things with great, when Keziah showed them to their rooms, notwithstanding the pride of proprietorship with which she led the way, the sight of Anne and Rose had a still greater effect upon little Mrs. Saymore; Rose especially, in her Paris dress, with a waist like nothing at all—whereas to see Keziah, such a figure! She cried, then dried her tears, and recollected the proud advances in experience and dignity she had made, and her responsibilities as head of a house, and all her plate and linen, and her hopes: so much had she gone through, while with them everything was just the same: thus pride on one side in her own second chapter of life, and envy on the other of the freedom of their untouched lives produced a great commotion in her. ‘Mr. Saymore and me, we thought this would be the nicest for Miss Anne, and I put you here, Miss Rose, next to your mamma. Oh, yes, I am very comfortable. I have everything as I wish for. Mr. Saymore don’t deny me nothing—he’d buy me twice as many things as I want, if I’d let him. How nice you look, Miss Rose, just the same, only nicer; and such style! Is that the last fashion? It makes her look just nothing at all, don’t it, Miss Anne? Oh, when we was all at Mount, how we’d have copied it, and twisted it, and changed it to look something the same, and not the least the same—but I’ve got to dress up to forty and look as old as I can now.’
Saymore came into the sitting-room after them with his best bow, and that noiseless step, and those ingratiating manners which had made him the best of butlers. ‘I have nothing to find fault with, ma’am,’ he said. ‘I’ve been very well received, very well received. Gentlemen as remembered me at Mount has been very kind. Mr. Loseby, he has many a little luncheon here. “I’ll not bother my old housekeeper,” he says, when he has gentlemen come sudden. “I’ll just step over to my old friend Saymore. Saymore knows how to send up a nice little lunch, and he knows a good glass of wine when he sees it.” That’s exactly what Mr. Loseby said, no more than three days ago. But business is quiet,’ Saymore added. ‘I don’t complain, but things is quiet; we’d be the better, ma’am, of a little more stir here.’
‘But I hope you find everything comfortable—at home, Saymore?’ said his former mistress. ‘You know I always told you it was an experiment. I hope you find everything comfortable at home.’
‘Meaning Mrs. Saymore, ma’am?’ replied the landlord of the ‘Black Bull,’ with dignity. ‘I’m very glad to say as she have given me and everybody great satisfaction. She is young, but that is a fault, as I made so bold as to observe to you, ma’am, on a previous occasion, a fault as is sure to mend. I’ve never repented what I did when I married. She’s as nice as possible downstairs, but never too nice—giving herself no airs: but keeping her own place. She’s given me every satisfaction,’ said Saymore, with much solemnity. In the meantime Keziah was giving her report on the other side of the question, upstairs.
‘No, Miss Anne. I can’t say as I’ve repented. Oh, no, I’ve never repented. Mr. Saymore is very much respected in Hunston—and there’s never a day that he don’t bring me something, a ribbon or a new collar, or a story book if he can’t think of nothing else. It was a little disappointing when mother was found not to do in the kitchen. You see, Miss Anne, we want the best of cooking when strangers come, and mother, she was old-fashioned. She’s never forgiven me, though it wasn’t my fault. And Tommy, he was too mischievous for a waiter. We gave him a good long try, but Mr. Saymore was obliged at last to send him away. Mother says she don’t see what it’s done for her, more than if I had stayed at Mount—but I’m very comfortable myself, Miss Anne,’ said Keziah, with a curtsey and a tear.
‘I am very glad to hear it: and I hope you’ll be still happier by-and-by,’ said Anne, retiring to the room which was to be hers, and which opened from the little sitting-room in which they were standing. Rose remained behind for further talk and gossip. And when all the news was told Keziah returned to her admiration of the fashion of Rose’s gown.
‘Are they all made like that now, in Paris? Oh, dear, I always thought when you went to France I’d go too. I always thought of Paris. But it wasn’t to be.’
‘You see, Keziah, you liked Saymore best,’ said Rose, fixing her mischievous eyes upon Keziah’s face, who smiled a little sheepish smile, and made a little half-pathetic appeal with her eyes, but did not disown the suggestion, which flattered her vanity if not her affection.
‘You are as blooming as a rose, Miss—as you always was,’ said Keziah, ‘but what’s Miss Anne been a-doing to herself? She’s like a white marble image in a church; I never saw her that pale.’
‘Hush!’ cried Rose, in a whisper, pointing to the door behind them, by which Anne had disappeared; and then she came close to the questioner, with much pantomime and mystery. ‘Don’t say a word. Keziah. It is all broken off. She has thrown the gentleman over. Hush, for heaven’s sake, don’t say a word!’
‘You don’t mean it, Miss Rose. Broken off! Mr. Dou——’
Rose put her hand on the little landlady’s mouth. ‘She must not hear we are talking of her. She would never forgive me. And besides, I don’t know—it is only a guess; but I am quite, quite sure.’
Keziah threw up her hands and her eyes. ‘All broken off—thrown the gentleman over! Is there someone else?’ she whispered, trembling, thinking with mingled trouble and complacency of her own experiences in this kind, and of her unquestioned superiority nowadays to the lover whom she had thrown over—the unfortunate Jim.
‘No, no, no,’ said Rose, making her mouth into a circle, and shaking her head. No other! No richer, better, more desirable lover! This was a thing that Keziah did not understand. Her face grew pale with wonder, even with awe. To jilt a gentleman for your own advancement in life, that might be comprehensible—but to do it to your own damage, and have cheeks like snowflakes in consequence—that was a thing she could not make out. It made her own position, with which she was already satisfied, feel twice as advantageous and comfortable; even though her marriage had not turned out so well for mother and the boys as Keziah had once hoped.
Mr. Loseby came across the street, humming a little tune, to join them at dinner. He was shining from top to toe in his newest black suit, all shining, from his little varnished shoes to his bald head, and with the lights reflected in his spectacles. It was a great day for the lawyer, who was fond of both the girls, and who had an indulgent amity, mingled with contempt, for Mrs. Mountford herself, such as men so often entertain for their friends’ wives. He was triumphant in their arrival, besides, and very anxious to secure that they should return to the neighbourhood and settle among their old friends. He, too, however, after his first greetings were over, was checked in his rejoicings by the paleness of his favourite. ‘What have you been doing to Anne?’ were, after his salutations, the first words he said.
‘If anything has been done to her, it is her own doing,’ said Mrs. Mountford, with a little indignation.
‘Nothing has been done to me,’ said Anne, with a smile. ‘I hear that I am pale, though I don’t notice it. It is all your letters, Mr. Loseby, and the business you give me. I have to let mamma and Rose go to their dissipations by themselves.’
‘Our dissipations! You do not suppose I have had spirits for much dissipation,’ said Mrs. Mountford, now fully reminded of her position as a widow, and with her usual high sense of duty, determined to live up to it. She pressed her handkerchief upon her eyelids once more, after the fashion she had dropped. ‘But it is true that I have tried to go out a little,’ she added, ‘more than I should have done at home—for Rose’s sake.’
‘You were quite right,’ said the lawyer; ‘the young ones cannot feel as we do, they cannot be expected to go on in our groove. And Rose is blooming like her name. But I don’t like the looks of Anne. Have I been giving you so much business to do? But then, you see, I expected that you would have Mr. Douglas close at hand, to help you. Indeed, my only wonder was——’
Here Mr. Loseby broke off, and had a fit of coughing, in which the rest of the words were lost. He had surprised a little stir in the party, a furtive interchange of looks between Mrs. Mountford and Rose. And this roused the alarm of the sympathetic friend of the family, who, indeed, had wondered much—as he had begun to say—
‘No,’ said Anne, with a smile, ‘you know I was always a person of independent mind. I always liked to do my work myself. Besides, Mr. Douglas has his own occupations, and the chief part of the time we have been away.’
‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Loseby. He was much startled by the consciousness which seemed to pervade the party, though nothing more was said. Mrs. Mountford became engrossed with her dress, which had caught in something; and Rose, though generally very determined in her curiosity, watched Anne, the spectator perceived, from under her eyelids. Mr. Loseby took no notice externally. ‘That’s how it always happens,’ he said cheerfully; ‘with the best will in the world we always find that our own business is as much as we can get through. I have found out that to my humiliation a hundred times in my life.’
‘These questions about the leases are the most difficult,’ said Anne, steadily. ‘I suppose the old tenants are not always the best.’
‘My dear, I hope in these bad times we may get tenants at all, old or new,’ said the old lawyer. And then he plunged into the distresses of the country, the complaints of the farmers, the troubles of the labourers, the still greater trials of the landlord. ‘Your cousin Heathcote has made I don’t know how much reduction. I am not at all sure that he is right. It is a dreadfully bad precedent for other landlords. And for himself he simply can’t afford it. But I cannot get him to hear reason. “What does it matter to me?” he says, “I have always enough to live on, and those that till the land have the best right to any advantage they can get out of it.” What can you say to a man that thinks like that? I tell him he is a fool for his pains; but it is I who am a fool for mine, for he takes no notice though I talk myself hoarse.’
‘Indeed, I think it is very unjustifiable conduct,’ said Mrs. Mountford. ‘He should think of those who are to come after him. A man has no right to act in that way as if he stood by himself. He ought to marry and settle down. I am sure I hope he will have heirs of his own, and not leave the succession to that horrid little Edward. To think of a creature like that in Mount would be more than I could bear.’
‘I doubt if Heathcote will ever marry; not unless he gets the one woman—— But we don’t all get that even when we are most lucky,’ said the old lawyer, briskly. ‘He is crotchety, crotchety, full of his own ideas: but a fine fellow all the same.’
‘Does he want to marry more than one woman?’ cried Rose, opening great eyes, ‘and you talk of it quite coolly, as if it was not anything very dreadful; but of course he can’t, he would be hanged or something. Edward is not so bad as mamma says. He is silly; but, then, they are mostly silly.’ She had begun to feel that she was a person of experience, and justified in letting loose her opinion. All this time it seemed to Mr. Loseby that Anne was going through her part like a woman on the stage. She was very quiet; but she seemed to insist with herself upon noticing everything, listening to all that was said, giving her assent or objection. In former times she had not been at all so particular, but let the others chatter with a gentle indifference to what they were saying. She seemed to attend to everything, the table, and the minutiae of the dinner, letting nothing escape her to-night.
‘I think Heathcote is right,’ she said; ‘Edward will not live to succeed him; and, if he does not marry, why should he save money, and pinch others now, on behalf of a future that may never come? What happens if there is no heir to an entail? Could not it all be eaten up, all consumed, re-absorbed into the country, as it were, by the one who is last?’
‘Nonsense, Anne. He has no right to be the last. No one has any right to be the last. To let an old family die down,’ cried Mrs. Mountford, ‘it is a disgrace. What would dear papa have said? When I remember what a life they all led me because I did not have a boy—as if it had been my fault! I am sure if all the hair off my head, or everything I cared for in my wardrobe, or anything in the world I had, could have made Rose a boy, I would have sacrificed it. I must say that if Heathcote does not marry I shall think I have been very badly used: though, indeed, his might all be girls too,’ she added, half hopefully, half distressed. ‘Anyhow, the trial ought to be made.’ Notwithstanding the danger to the estate, it would have been a little consolation to Mrs. Mountford if Heathcote on marrying had been found incapable, he also, of procuring anything more than girls from Fate.
‘When an heir of entail fails——’ Mr. Loseby began, not unwilling to expound a point on which he was an authority; but Rose broke in and interrupted him, never having had any wholesome fear of her seniors before her eyes. Rose wanted to know what was going to be done now they were here, if they were to stay all the autumn in the ‘Black Bull;’ if they were to take a house anywhere; and generally what they were to do. This gave Mr. Loseby occasion to produce his scheme. There was an old house upon the property which had not been entailed, which Mr. Mountford had bought with his first wife’s money, and which was now the inheritance of Rose. It had been suffered to fall out of repair, but it was still an inhabitable house. ‘You know it, Anne,’ the lawyer said; ‘it would be an amusement to you all to put it in order. A great deal could be done in a week or two. I am told there is no amusement like furnishing, and you might make a pretty place of it.’ The idea, however, was not taken up with very much enthusiasm.
‘In all probability,’ Mrs. Mountford said, ‘we shall go abroad again for the winter. The girls like it, and it is very pleasant, when one can, to escape from the cold.’
The discussion of this subject filled the rest of the evening. Mr. Loseby was very anxious on his side. He declared that it did not bind them to anything; that to have a house, a pied-à-terre, ‘even were it only to put on your cards,’ was always an advantage. After much argument it was decided at last that the house at Lilford, an old Dower-house, and bearing that picturesque name, should be looked at before any conclusion was come to; and with this Mr. Loseby took his leave. Anne had taken her full share in the discussion. She had shown all the energy that her rôle required. She had put in suggestions of practical weight with a leaning to the Dower-house, and had even expressed a little enthusiasm about that last popular plaything—a house to furnish—which nowadays has become the pleasantest of pastimes. ‘It shall be Morris-ey, but not too Morris-ey,’ she had said, with a smile, still in perfect fulfilment of her rôle. But to see Anne playing at being Anne had a wonderful effect upon her old friend. Her stepmother and sister, being with her perpetually, did not perhaps so readily suspect the fine histrionic effort that was going on by their side. It was a fine performance; but such a performance is apt to make the enlightened beholder’s heart ache. When he had taken his leave of the other ladies—early, as they were tired, or supposed it right to be tired, with their journey—Anne followed Mr. Loseby out of the room. She asked him to come into another close by. ‘I have something to say to you,’ she said, with a faint smile. Mr. Loseby, like the old Rector, was very fond of Anne. He had seen her grow up from her infancy. He had played with her when she was a child, and carried her sugar-plums in his coat pockets. And he had no children of his own to distract his attention from his favourite. It troubled him sadly to see signs of trouble about this young creature whom he loved.
‘What is it, Anne? What is it, my dear? Something has happened?’ he said.
‘No, nothing of consequence. That is not true,’ she said, hurriedly; ‘it is something, and something of consequence. I have not said anything about it to them. They suspect, that is all; and it does not matter to them; but I want to tell you. Mr. Loseby, you were talking to-night of Mr. Douglas. It is about Mr. Douglas I want to speak to you.’
He looked at her very anxiously, taking her hand into his. ‘Are you going to be married?’
Anne laughed. She was playing Anne more than ever; but, on the whole, very successfully. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘quite the reverse——’
‘Anne! do you mean that he has—that you have—that it is broken off?’
‘The last form is the best,’ she said. ‘It is all a little confused just yet. I can’t tell if he has, or if I have. But yes—I must do him justice: it is certainly not his doing. I am wholly responsible myself. It has come to an end.’
She looked into his face wistfully, evidently fearing what he would say, deprecating, entreating. If only nothing might be said! And Mr. Loseby was confounded. He had not been kept up like the others to the course of affairs.
‘Anne, you strike me dumb. You take away my breath. What! he whom you have sacrificed everything for: he who has cost you all you have in the world? If it is a caprice, my dear girl, it is a caprice utterly incomprehensible; a caprice I cannot understand.’
‘That is exactly how to call it,’ she said, eagerly: ‘a caprice, an unpardonable caprice. If Rose had done it, I should have whipped her, I believe; but it is I, the serious Anne, the sensible one, that have done it. This is all there is to say. I found myself out, fortunately, before it was too late. And I wanted you to know.’
In this speech her powers almost failed her. She forgot her part. She played not Anne, but someone else, some perfectly artificial character, which her audience was not acquainted with, and Mr. Loseby was startled. He pushed away his spectacles, and contracted his brows, and looked at her with his keen, short-sighted eyes, which, when they could see anything, saw very clearly. But with all his gazing he could not make the mystery out. She faced him now, after that one little failure, with Anne’s very look and tone, a slight, fugitive, somewhat tremulous smile about her mouth, her eyes wistful, deprecating blame; but always very pale: that was the worst of it, that was the thing least like herself.
‘After losing,’ said the lawyer slowly, ‘everything you had in the world for his sake.’
‘Yes,’ Anne said, with desperate composure, ‘it is ridiculous, is it not? Perhaps it was a little to have my own way, Mr. Loseby. Nobody can tell how subtle one’s mind is till one has been tried. My father defied me, and I suppose I would not give in; I was very obstinate. It is inconceivable what a girl will do. And then we are all obstinate, we Mountfords. I have heard you say so a hundred times; pig-headed, was not that the word you used?’
‘Most probably it was the word I used. Oh, yes, I know you are obstinate. Your father was like an old mule; but you, you—I declare to you I do not understand it, Anne.’
‘Nor do I myself,’ she said, with another small laugh, a very small laugh, for Anne’s strength was going. ‘Can anyone understand what another does, or even what they do themselves? But it is so; that is all that there is to say.’
Mr. Loseby walked about the room in his distress. He thrust up his spectacles till they formed two gleaming globes on the shining firmament of his baldness. Sometimes he thrust his hands behind him under his coat tails, sometimes clasped them in front of him, wringing their plump joints. ‘Sacrificed everything for it,’ he said, ‘made yourself a beggar! and now to go and throw it all up. Oh, I can’t understand it, I can’t understand it! there’s more in this than meets the eye.’
Anne did not speak—truth to tell, she could not—she was past all histrionic effort. She propped herself up against the arm of the sofa, close to which she was standing, and endured, there being nothing more that she could do.
‘Why—why,’ cried Mr. Loseby, ‘child, couldn’t you have known your own mind? A fine property! It was bad enough, however you chose to look at it, but at least one thought there was something to set off against the loss; now it’s all loss, no compensation at all. It’s enough to bring your father back from his grave. And I wish there was something that would,’ said the little lawyer vehemently; ‘I only wish there was something that would. Shouldn’t I have that idiotical will changed as fast as pen could go to paper! Why, there’s no reason for it now, there’s no excuse for it. Oh, don’t speak to me, I can’t contain myself! I tell you what, Anne,’ he cried, turning upon her, seizing one of the hands with which she was propping herself up, and wringing it in his own, ‘there’s one thing you can do, and only one thing, to make me forgive you all the trouble you have brought upon yourself; and that is to marry, straight off, your cousin, Heathcote Mountford, the best fellow that ever breathed.’
‘I am afraid,’ said Anne faintly, ‘I cannot gratify you in that, Mr. Loseby.’ She dropped away from him and from her support, and sank upon the first chair. Fortunately he was so much excited himself, that he failed to give the same attention to her looks.
‘That would make up for much,’ he said; ‘that would cover a multitude of sins.’
Anne scarcely knew when he went away, but he did leave her at last seated there, not venturing to move. The room was swimming about her, dark, bare, half lighted, with its old painted walls. The prints hung upon them seemed to be moving round her, as if they were the decorations of a cabin at sea. She had got through her crisis very stoutly, without, she thought, betraying herself to anybody. She said to herself vaguely, always with a half-smile, as being her own spectator, and more or less interested in the manner in which she acquitted herself, that every spasm would probably be a little less violent, as she had heard was the case in fevers. And, on the whole, the spasm like this, which prostrated her entirely, and left her blind and dumb for a minute or two to come to herself by degrees, was less wearing than the interval of dead calm and pain that came between. This it was that took the blood from her cheeks. She sat still for a few minutes in the old-fashioned arm-chair, held up by its hard yet comforting support, with her back turned to the table and her face to the half-open door. The very meaninglessness of her position, thus reversed from all use and wont, gave a forlorn completeness to her desolation—turned away from the table, turned away from everything that was convenient and natural; her fortune given away for the sake of her love, her love sacrificed for no reason at all, the heavens and the earth all misplaced and turning round. When Anne came to herself the half-smile was still upon her lip with which she had been regarding herself, cast off on all sides, without compensation—losing everything. Fate seemed to stand opposite to her, and the world and life, in which, so far as appearance went, she had made such shipwreck. She raised herself up a little in her chair and confronted them all. Whatever they might do, she would not be crushed, she would not be destroyed. The smile came more strongly to the curves of her mouth, losing its pitiful droop. Looking at herself again, it was ludicrous; no wonder Mr. Loseby was confounded. Ludicrous—that was the only word. To sacrifice everything for one thing: to have stood against the world, against her father, against everybody, for Cosmo: and then by-and-by to be softly detached from Cosmo, by Cosmo himself, and allowed to drift, having lost everything, having nothing. Ludicrous—that was what it was. She gave a little laugh in the pang of revival. A touch with a redhot iron might be as good as anything to stimulate failing forces and string loose nerves. Ice does it—a plunge into an icy stream. Thus she mused, getting confused in her thoughts. In the meantime Rose and Mrs. Mountford were whispering with grave faces. ‘Is it a quarrel, or is it for good? I hope you hadn’t anything to do with it,’ said the mother, much troubled. ‘How should I have anything to do with it?’ said innocent Rose; ‘but, all the same, I am sure it is for good.’