THE name of the parish in which Mount was the principal house was Moniton, by some supposed to be a corruption of Mount-ton, the village being situated on the side of a circular hill looking more like a military mound than a natural object, which gave the name alike to the property and the district. Mount Hill, as it was called with unnecessary amplification, was just outside the park gates, and at its foot lay the Rectory, the nearest neighbouring house with which the Mountfords could exchange civilities. When one comes to think of it, the very existence of such ecclesiastical houses close by the mansions of the English gentry and nobility is a standing menace and danger to that nobler and more elevated class—now that the family living is no longer a natural provision for a younger son. The greatest grandee in the land has to receive the clergyman’s family as equals, whatever may be his private opinion on the subject; they are ladies and gentlemen, however poor they may be, or little eligible to be introduced into closer connection with members of the aristocracy, titled or otherwise; and, as a matter of fact, they have to be so received, whence great trouble sometimes arises, as everybody knows. The young people at the Hall and the parsonage grow up together, they meet continually, and join in all each other’s amusements, and if they determine to spend their lives together afterwards, notwithstanding all those social differences which are politely ignored in society, until the moment comes when they must be brought into prominence, who can wonder at it? The wonder is that on the whole so little harm occurs. The young Ashleys were the nearest neighbours of the Mountford girls. They called each other by their Christian names; they furnished each other with most of their amusements. Had the boys not been ready to their call for any scheme of pleasure or use, the girls would have felt themselves aggrieved. But if Charley or Willie had fallen in love with Anne or Rose, the whole social economy would have been shaken by it, and no earthquake would have made a greater commotion. Such catastrophes are constantly happening to the confusion of one district after another all over the country; but who can do anything to prevent it? That it had not happened (openly) in the present case was due to no exceptional philosophy or precaution on any side. And the chance which had made Mr. Cosmo Douglas speak first instead of his friend, the curate, was in no way a fortunate one, except in so far, indeed, that, though it produced great pain and sorrow, it, at least, preserved peace between the two families. The Rector was as much offended, as indignant as Mr. Mountford could be, at the audacity of his son’s friend. A stranger, a chance visitor, an intruder in the parish, he, at least, had no vested rights.
The facts of the case were as yet, however, but imperfectly known. Douglas had not gone away, though it was known that his interview with Mr. Mountford had not been a successful one; but that was no reason why the Ashleys should not stroll up to Mount on this summer afternoon, as was their very general practice. There was always some business to talk about—something about the schools, or the savings bank, or other parochial affairs; and both of them were well aware that without them ‘a game’ was all but impossible.
‘Do you feel up to it, old fellow?’ Willie said to Charley, who was the curate. The elder brother did not make any distinct reply. He said, ‘There’s Douglas to be thought of,’ with a somewhat lugubrious glance behind him where that conquering hero lay on the grass idly puffing his cigar.
‘Confound Douglas!’ said the younger brother, who was a secular person and free to speak his mind. Charley Ashley replied only with a stifled sigh. He might not himself have had the courage to lay his curacy and his hopes at Anne’s feet, at least for a long time to come, but it was not to be expected that he could look with pleasure on the man who had rushed in where he feared to tread, his supplanter, the Jacob who had pushed him out of his path. But yet he could not help in a certain sense admiring his friend’s valour. He could not help talking of it as they took their way more slowly than usual across the park, when Douglas, with a conscious laugh, which went sharply, like a needle, through the poor curate’s heart, declined to join them but begged they ‘would not mind’ leaving him behind.
‘When a fellow has the pluck to do it, things generally go well with him,’ Charley said.
The two brothers were very good friends. The subject of Anne was one which had never been discussed between them, but Willie Ashley knew by instinct what were his brother’s sentiments, and Charley was conscious that he knew. The little roughness with which the one thrust his arm into the other’s spoke of itself a whole volume of sympathy, and they walked through the sunshine and under the flickering shadows of the trees, slowly and heavily, the curate with his head bent, and his brown beard, of which he was as proud as was becoming to a young clergyman, lying on his breast.
‘Pluck carries everything before it,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘I never was one of your plucky ones.’
‘If you call that pluck!’ cried the other, ‘when a fellow thinks of nothing but himself, and goes straight before him, whatever happens.’
The curate pressed his brother’s arm with tacit thanks, but he sighed even more. ‘All the same it was a plucky thing to do,’ he said.
The young men were seen approaching for a long time before they reached the house. ‘I wonder what has happened,’ said Rose; ‘they walk as if they were going to a funeral; but I suppose I had better go and see that everything is ready for the game.’ After all this was the important matter, and the Ashleys, though of no great consequence in themselves, were at least the only young men in the parish; and if the Woodheads came, as Rose expected, it looked a poor sort of thing to have no men. What the game was I can scarcely pretend to say. It might be croquet, or it might be lawn tennis. This is entirely a chronological question, and one upon which, as the date of this commencement is a little vague, I cannot take upon me to decide. And just as Willie and Charley approached slowly, in a solemn march, the familiar house to which they had so often turned with steps and hearts less weighted, the Woodheads appeared on the other side.
‘I was sure they would come,’ cried Rose; ‘here are Gerty and Fanny.’ These young ladies were a clergyman’s daughters, and might have paired off most suitably with the Ashleys and no harm done; but perverse humanity may be so far trusted as to make sure that none of the four thought of any such sensible arrangement.
As for Anne, a sigh of satisfaction and relief came from her bosom, not like that deeper sigh which breathed forth the curate’s cares. As soon as she had seen the game begun and all comfortable, she would escape to her own business. Her heart beat high with the thought of the meeting that awaited her, and of the long, confiding, lover’s talk, the pouring out of all her cares into another heart which was her own. Anne had not been accustomed to much sympathy in her life. She had not wanted it perhaps. She loved her little sister with her whole heart; but a high sense of honour had kept her, even when a child, from confiding to Rose any of the little jars and frets of which Rose’s mother was the chief cause; and what other cares had Anne? So that the delight of saying everything that was in her heart was as new to her as the love that made it possible. And it was one of the elements of wondering happiness that filled her whole being to find out how many things she had to tell. She had thought herself reserved, unexpansive, sometimes even cold and heartless, when she beheld the endless confidential chatter of other girls, and wondered why it was that she had nothing to confide. But now she was half dismayed and half transported to discover how much she too had to say. The deep waters of her heart seemed to flow over from that secret place, and pour out in an irrestrainable flood. It seemed to herself that she kept them in with difficulty even to other people now. She had so much to tell him that she could scarcely help preluding even to those who were indifferent, betraying to them the great tide of utterance that was in her. As a matter of fact, she did not at all betray herself; the Woodheads and the Ashleys saw that Anne was slightly flushed and feverish, justifying the complaint she made of a headache, for the sake of which she feared staying out in the sun; and one of the former, who was a medical young lady, accustomed to manage all the lighter maladies of her father’s parish, immediately prescribed for the sufferer.
‘Don’t stay out here,’ Miss Fanny said; ‘it is the worst thing possible. Go and lie down; or, if you don’t like that, sit down in the shade and take a quiet book. Have you got a novel?—if it’s not an exciting one, that will do—but keep yourself perfectly quiet and never mind us. Her pulse is just a little excited—nothing to be alarmed about—if she will but go and lie down.’
The others, especially the two young men, exchanged furtive glances. Willie pressed Charley’s arm with a whisper, ‘Keep it up, old fellow!’ Poor curate! he looked piteously at the girl whom he had not had the courage to try for. Would her cheeks have taken that lovely flush, her eye got that anxious, nervous brightness for him? Was it all a question of pluck, and who should be the first to speak? He watched her going back to the house, across the flower garden, with his lips in an unconscious foolish gape of self-renunciation and tender pity and regret. But happily that rich brown beard of his hid the imbecility of this pathetic simple gaze. And then he turned with sober resolution to the game. He cared for nothing any more now that Anne had gone. But an Englishman must play his game out whatever happens; though heaven and earth should melt away.
Nobody suspected her, nobody dreamt what Anne was about to do. That she should do anything that was not open and manifest entered into no one’s idea of her. She had always been mistress of herself and all her ways, and had never quailed before the face of man. Did she feel guilty now when she thus appeared to accept the advice offered to her—appeared to consent to take shelter from the sun, and went back to the house to lie down, or take a quiet book, as was recommended? Anne was a great deal too much occupied with her own thoughts and plans to feel any of those little guilts yet. She was scarcely conscious of what she herself felt and thought. She had to carry the report of the morning to the other person, who was as much concerned as she was in it; to tell him everything, to know what he had to say, to consult with him as to what they were to do. With all this in her heart, a flood of thought, rising and falling, like waves of the sea, is it possible that she could think of what the others would say, or even of the novel aspect of her subterfuge and evasion? She could think of nothing about them, but of how to get free, to be delivered from her companions. To see him was necessary, indispensable. She had never permitted it to be supposed that she would not see him, or suffered anything to be drawn from her which could imply an intention of giving him up. Her father had said nothing on this subject. There had been neither condition nor promise. But still it was no doubt contrary to Anne’s character, as it was to high honour and sincerity, that she should allow it to be supposed that she was returning to the house on account of her headache, when her intention was to go out another way and meet her lover. When she thought of it afterwards the flush of shame which came over her ran from head to foot; but at the present moment she was entirely unmoved by it. The idea did not so much as cross the threshold of her mind.
She went softly into the cool and silent house. There was nobody visible in the long passages, nor in the hall through which she passed, not consciously going with any precaution, yet making little sound with her light foot. Even Mr. Mountford was out; the doors stood open, the sunshine streamed in here and there at a window making a bar of blazing whiteness across the corridor or stair. Old Saymore was in the open vestibule, full of plants and flowers, into which the great door opened. He was standing before a tall vase of white glass, almost as high as himself, in which he was arranging with great anxiety and interest a waving bouquet of tall ferns and feathery branches. Old Saymore had a soul for art, and the fancies of his young mistress stood in place of all the canons and science of beauty to his mind. He stood with his head on one side, now and then walking a few steps backward to consider the combination of his leaves like an artist before a picture, pulling one forward, pushing one back, pondering with the gravest countenance how to prop up in the middle the waving plume of sumach with which he intended to crown the edifice. He was too much absorbed in his performance to notice Anne, who for her part was too completely preoccupied by hers to see him where he stood, embowered in all that greenery, calculating and considering with the most serious countenance as if the weight of an empire was on his shoulders. As she ran down the steps he heard her for the first time, and turned round hurriedly, moved by the hope of finding a critic and adviser. But his cry of ‘Miss Anne!’ failed to reach her ear. Her heart was beating high, her thoughts rushing at such a rapid rate that they made a little atmosphere of sound about her, and shut out all less ethereal appeals.
After the Ashleys had left the Rectory, Mr. Cosmo Douglas for his part raised himself from the grass where he had lain so luxuriously puffing his cigar. He was more amused than distressed by the confusion he had brought among them. Charley Ashley was his friend, but the affection had been chiefly on one side. It had been, as the other very well knew, a distinction for Ashley, who was not distinguished in any other way, to be known as the friend of a personage so much more brilliant and popular than himself. Douglas had been accustomed to smile when he was asked by his admirers ‘what he could see’ in the good fellow who was neither clever nor gay, nor rich, nor witty, and who had, indeed, no particular recommendation except his goodness. It pleased him to attach to himself this useful, faithful, humble friend, who was always ready to stand up for him, and never likely to bring him into any scrape or trouble. And he had always been ready, he thought, to do anything for Charley—to coach him for an examination, to write an essay for him, to ‘pull him through’ any of the crises of a college career. But to go so far as to curb his own fancy for a girl who pleased him because Charley had set his affections in the same quarter, was a thing entirely beyond Cosmo’s perceptions of the duties of friendship. And when he saw the dismal looks of his friend—his heavy dropping back upon the sympathy of Willie, his younger brother, who had never hitherto been his confidant, and the suppressed indignation towards himself of that younger and always jealous companion—he was more tickled than grieved by it. The idea that he could find a serious rival in Ashley never entered his thoughts—or, indeed, that anyone should pay the slightest regard to poor Charley while he was by. Douglas had, indeed, so much confidence in the humility of his friend that he felt his own preference of any thing or person to be a quite sufficient reason why Charley should give it up. ‘He likes to give in to me,’ was what he had said on many previous occasions; and he was unable to understand how any other affection could be more deeply rooted in Ashley’s bosom than that which was directed to himself. Therefore he only smiled at what he supposed a momentary petulance. Good simple soul! perhaps Douglas respected his friend more that he was capable of being so badly ‘hit.’ But yet he could scarcely realise the possibility of it. Charley in love had not presented itself to him as a credible idea. It made him laugh in spite of himself. And as for interfering with Charley!—as if anyone could suppose it possible that Charley was a man to catch a lady’s eye.
Cosmo’s first visit had been at Christmas, when all was new to him, and when the revelation of the two girls at Mount, so full of life and movement amid the gentle stagnation of the parish, had been the most delightful surprise to the resigned visitor, who had come as a matter of duty, determined to endure anything, and make himself agreeable to Charley’s friends. ‘You never told me what sort of neighbours you had,’ he had said almost with indignation. ‘Neighbours! I told you about the Mountfords and the Woodheads, and Lord Meadowlands, who is our great gun,’ said Charley tranquilly. ‘You speak as if they were all the same—Mountfords and Woodheads and Smiths and Jones—whereas Miss Mountford would be remarked in any society,’ Douglas had said. He remembered afterwards that Charley had looked at him for a moment before he replied, and had grown red; but all he had said was, ‘I didn’t know that you thought much about girls.’ All this passed through Douglas’s mind as he stood looking after the two brothers, watching the mournfulness of their march with an irrepressible sense of the ludicrous. To see that victim of fate leaning on his brother’s arm, dropping now and then a melancholy word or deep-heaved sigh, and walking gloomily, as after a funeral, to the afternoon ‘game,’ was a sight at which the most sympathetic looker-on might have been excused for smiling. ‘I didn’t know that you thought much about girls!’ Was there ever a more stupid remark? And how was I to know he thought much about girls? Douglas asked himself with another laugh. His conscience was easily satisfied on this point. And he had come down at the beginning of the long vacation to see a little more of the Ashleys’ neighbours. He could not but feel that it must be a relief to them also to see a conversible being, an alive and awake human creature amidst those scenes of rural life.
But now how far things had gone! Douglas had been a month at the Rectory, and as his eyes followed the two Ashleys along the white sun-swept road and away under the shadow of the park trees, the idea came to him, with a curious sense of expansive and enlarged being, that the masses of foliage sweeping away towards the west, amid which the two solemn wayfarers soon disappeared, would one day, in all probability, be his own. ‘No, by the bye, not that; that’s the entailed part,’ he said to himself; then laughed again, this time partly in gentle self-ridicule, partly in pleasure, and turned his face the other way, towards Lower Lilford—for he had made himself master of the whole particulars. Facing this way, and with the laugh still on his lips, he suddenly found himself in the presence of the Rector, who had come out by his own study window at the sight of the solitary figure on the lawn. Douglas felt himself taken in the act—though of what it would have been hard to say. He grew red in spite of himself under the gaze of the Rector’s mild and dull eyes.
‘Have the boys left you alone? I can’t think how they could be so rude,’ Mr. Ashley said.
‘Not rude at all, sir. It is I who am rude. I was lazy, and promised to follow them when I had finished my—novel.’ Happily, he recollected in time that he had been holding one in his hand. ‘I am going now,’ he added. ‘I dare say I shall catch them up before they get to the house.’
‘I was afraid they were leaving you to take care of yourself—that is not our old-fashioned way,’ said the old clergyman. ‘I wish you a pleasant walk. It is a fine afternoon, but you will find the road dusty. I advise you to go over the meadows and round the lower way.’
‘That is just how I intended to go.’
‘Very sensible. The boys always take the high road. The other takes you round by the Beeches, much the prettiest way; but it is longer round, and that is why they never use it. A pleasant walk to you,’ Mr. Ashley said, waving his hand as he went back to the house.
Douglas laughed to himself as he took the path through the meadows which Mr. Ashley had indicated. The Rector had not as yet interested himself much in what was going on, and the simplicity with which he had suggested the way which the lovers had chosen, and which led to their trysting-place, amused the intruder still more. ‘If he but knew!’ Douglas said to himself, transferring to the old clergyman the thoughts that filled the mind of his son, by a very natural heightening of his own importance. And yet, to tell the truth, had Mr. Ashley known, it would have been a great relief to his mind, as releasing Charley from a great danger and the parish from a possible convulsion. To know this, however, might have lessened the extreme satisfaction with which Douglas set out for the meeting. He went slowly on across the green fields, all bright in the sunshine, across the little stream, and up the leafy woodland road that led to the Beeches, his heart pleasantly agitated, his mind full of delightful anticipations. Anne herself was sweet to him, and his conquest of her flattered him in every particular. Happiness, importance, wealth, an established place in the world, were all coming to him, linked hand in hand with the loves and joys which surrounded the girl’s own image. He had no fear of the consequences. Remorseless fathers were not of his time. Such mediæval furniture had been cleared out of the world. He expected nothing from this meeting but acceptance, reconciliation, love, and happiness.