IT is an awkward and a painful thing to quarrel with a friend when he is staying under your roof; though in that case it will no doubt make a breach, and he will go away, which will relieve you, even if you regret it afterwards. But if there is no quarrel, yet you find out suddenly that you have a grievance—a grievance profound and bitter, but not permitting of explanation—the state of affairs is more painful still; especially if the friend is thrown into your special society, and not taken from you by the general courtesies of the house. It was in this unfortunate position that the young men at the Rectory found themselves on the evening that followed. There was nobody in the house to diminish the pressure. Mrs. Ashley had died some years before, and the Rector, at that time left much alone, as both his sons were absent at school and university, had fallen into the natural unsocial habits of a solitary. He had been obliged to make life bearable for himself by perpetual reading, and now he could do little but read. He was very attentive to his duty, visiting his sick parishioners with the regularity of clockwork, and not much more warmth; but when he came in he went to his study, and even at table would furtively bring a book with him, to be gone on with if the occasion served. Charley and Willie were resigned enough to this shutting out of their father from the ordinary social intercourse. It liberated them from the curb imposed by his grave looks and silence. He had always been a silent man. Now that he had not his wife to speak to, utterance was a trouble to him. And even his meals were a trouble to Mr. Ashley. He would have liked his tray brought into his study among his books, which was the doleful habit he had fallen into when he was left to eat the bread of tears alone. He gave up this gratification when the boys were at home, but it cost him something. And he painfully refrained even from a book when there were visitors, and now and then during the course of a meal would make a solemn remark to them. He was punctilious altogether about strangers, keeping a somewhat dismal watch to see that they were not neglected. This it was which had brought him out of his study when he saw Douglas alone upon the lawn. ‘In your mother’s time,’ he would say, ‘this was considered a pleasant house to stay at. I have given up asking people on my own account; but when you have friends I insist upon attention being paid them.’ This made the curate’s position doubly irksome; he had to entertain the stranger who was his own friend, yet had, he felt, betrayed him. There was nothing to take Douglas even for an hour off his hands. Willie, as the spectator and sympathiser, was even more indignant than his brother, and disposed to show his indignation; and the curate had to satisfy his father and soothe Willie, and go through a semblance of intimate intercourse with his friend all at the same time. His heart was very heavy; and, at the best of times, his conversation was not of a lively description; nor had he the power of throwing off his troubles. The friend who had proved a traitor to him had been his leader, the first fiddle in every orchestra where Charley Ashley had produced his solemn bass. All this made the state of affairs more intolerable. In the evening what could they do? They had to smoke together in the little den apportioned to this occupation, which the Rector himself detested; for it rained, to wind up all those miseries. As long as it was fine, talk could be eluded by strolling about the garden; but in a little room, twelve feet by eight, with their pipes lit and everything calculated to make the contrasts of the broken friendship seem stronger, what could be done? The three young men sat solemnly, each in a corner, puffing forth clouds of serious smoke. Willie had got a ‘Graphic,’ and was turning it over, pretending to look at the pictures. Charley sat at the open window, with his elbow leaning upon the sill, gazing out into the blackness of the rain. As for Douglas, he tilted his chair back on its hind legs, and looked just as usual—a smile even hovered about his mouth. He was the offender, but there was no sense of guilt in his mind. The cloud which had fallen on their relationship amused him instead of vexing him. It wrapped Charley Ashley in the profoundest gloom, who was innocent; but it rather exhilarated the culprit. Ten minutes had passed, and not a word had been said, which was terrible to the sons of the house, but agreeable enough to their guest. He had so much to think of; and what talk could be so pleasant as his own thoughts? certainly not poor Ashley’s prosy talk. He swayed himself backward now and then on his chair, and played a tune with his fingers on the table; and a smile hovered about his mouth. He had passed another hour under the Beeches before the rain came on, and everything had been settled to his satisfaction. He had not required to make any bold proposal, and yet he had been argued with and sweetly persuaded as if he had suggested the rashest instantaneous action. He could not but feel that he had managed this very cleverly, and he was pleased with himself, and happy. He did not want to talk; he had Anne to think about, and all her tender confidences, and her looks and ways altogether. She was a girl whose love any man might have been proud of. And no doubt the father’s opposition would wear away. He saw no reason to be uneasy about the issue. In these days there is but one way in which such a thing can end, if the young people hold out. And, with a smile of happy assurance, he said to himself that Anne would hold out. She was not a girl that was likely to change.
Some trifling circumstance here attracted Cosmo’s attention to the very absurd aspect of affairs. A big moth, tumbling in out of the rain, flew straight at the candle, almost knocked the light out, burned off its wings, poor imbecile! and fell with a heavy thud, scorched and helpless, upon the floor. The curate, whose life was spent on summer evenings in a perpetual crusade against those self-destroying insects, was not even roused from his gloom by this brief and rapidly-concluded tragedy. He turned half round, gave a kind of groan by way of remark, and turned again to his gloomy gaze into the rain. Upon this an impulse, almost of laughter, seized Douglas in spite of himself. ‘Charley, old fellow, what are you so grumpy about?’ he said.
This observation from the culprit, whom they were both trying their best not to fall upon and slay, was as a thunderbolt falling between the two brothers. The curate turned his pale countenance round with a look of astonishment. But Willie jumped up from his chair. ‘I can’t stand this,’ he said, ‘any longer. Why should one be so frightened of the rain? I don’t know what you other fellows mean to do, but I am going out.’
‘And we are going to have it out,’ said Cosmo, as the other hurried away. He touched the foot of the curate, who had resumed his former attitude, with his own. ‘Look here, Charley, don’t treat me like this; what have I done?’ he said.
‘Done? I don’t know what you mean. Nothing,’ said the curate, turning his head round once more, but still with his eyes fixed on the rain.
‘Come in, then, and put it into words. You should not condemn the greatest criminal without a hearing. You think somehow—why shouldn’t you own it? it shows in every look—you think I have stood in your way.’
‘No,’ said Ashley again. His under-lip went out with a dogged resistance, his big eyelids drooped. ‘I haven’t got much of a way—the parish, that’s about all—I don’t see how you could do me any damage there.’
‘Why are you so bitter, Charley? If you had ever taken me into your confidence you may be sure I would not have interfered—whatever it might have cost me.’
‘I should like to know what you are talking about,’ the other said, diving his hands into the depths of his pockets, and turning to the rain once more.
‘Would you? I don’t think it; and it’s no good naming names. Look here. Will you believe me if I say I never meant to interfere? I never found out what was in your mind till it was too late.’
‘I don’t know that there is anything in my mind,’ Charley said. He was holding out with all his might: but the fibres of his heart were giving way, and the ice melting. To be sure, how should any one have found out? had it not been hidden away at the very bottom of his heart? Anne had never suspected it, how should Cosmo? He would not even turn his head to speak; but he was going, going! he felt it, and Douglas saw it. The offender got up, and laid his hand upon the shoulder of his wounded friend.
‘I’d rather have cut off my hand, or tugged out my heart, than wound you, Charley; but I never knew till it was too late.’
All this, perhaps, was not quite true; but it was true—enough. Douglas did not want to quarrel; he liked his faithful old retainer. A bird in the hand—that is always worth something, though perhaps not so much as is the worth of the two who are in the bush; and he is a foolish man who will turn away the certain advantage of friendship for the chance of love; anyhow, the address went entirely into the simple, if wounded, heart.
‘I didn’t mean to show I was vexed. I don’t know that I’m vexed—a man is not always in the same disposition,’ he said, but his voice was changing. Douglas patted him on the shoulder, and went back to his seat.
‘You needn’t envy me—much,’ said Douglas. ‘We don’t know what’s to come of it; the father won’t hear of me. He would have had nothing to say to you either, and think what a rumpus it would have made in the parish! And there’s the Rector to think of. Charley——’
‘Perhaps you are right,’ Charley said, with a great heave of his shoulders. His pipe had gone out. As he spoke, he got up slowly, and came to the table to look for the matches. Cosmo lighted one, and held it out to him, looking on with interest while the solemn process of rekindling was gone through. Charley’s face, lighted by the fitful flame as he puffed, was still as solemn as if it had been a question of life and death; and Cosmo, looking on, kept his gravity too. When this act was accomplished, the curate in silence gripped his friend’s hand, and thus peace was made. Poor faithful soul; his heart was still as heavy as lead—but pain was possible, though strife was not possible. A load was taken off his honest breast.
‘I’ve seen it coming,’ he said, puffing harder than was needful. ‘I oughtn’t to have felt it so much. After all, why should I grumble? I never could have been the man.’
‘You are a far better fellow than I am,’ cried the other, with a little burst of real feeling.
Charley puffed and puffed, with much exertion. The red gleam of the pipe got reflected under his shaggy eyebrows in something liquid. Then he burst into an unsteady laugh.
‘You might as well fire a damp haystack as light a pipe that’s gone out,’ was the next sentimental remark he made.
‘Have a cigar?’ said Cosmo, tenderly, producing a case out of his pocket, with eager benevolence. And thus their peace was made. Anne’s name was not mentioned, neither was there anything said but these vague allusions to the state of affairs generally. Of all things in the world sentimental explanations are most foreign to the intercourse of young Englishmen with each other. But when Willie Ashley returned, very wet, and with an incipient cold in his head from the impatient flight he had made, he was punished for his cowardly abandonment of an unpleasant position by finding his brother with the old bonds refitted upon him, completely restored to his old devotion and subjection to Cosmo. Willie retired to bed soon after, kicking off his boots with an energy which was full of wrath. ‘The fool!’ he said to himself; while the reconciled pair carried on their tobacco and their reunion till far in the night. They were not conversational, however, though they were reconciled. Conversation was not necessary to the curate’s view of social happiness, and Cosmo was glad enough to go back upon his own thoughts.
While this was going on at the Rectory, Anne for her part was submitting to a still more severe course of interrogation. Mrs. Mountford had discussed the question with herself at some length, whether she should take any notice or not of the domestic convulsion which had occurred under her very eye without having been brought openly to her cognisance. Her husband had of course told her all about it; but Anne had not said anything—had neither consulted her stepmother nor sought her sympathy. After a while, however, Mrs. Mountford sensibly decided that to ignore a matter of such importance, or to make-believe that she was not acquainted with it, would be equally absurd. Accordingly she arranged that Rose should be sent for after dinner to have a dress tried on; which was done, to that young lady’s great annoyance and wrath. Mrs. Worth, Mrs. Mountford’s maid, was not a person who could be defied with impunity. She was the goddess Fashion, La Mode impersonified at Mount. Under her orders she had a niece, who served as maid to Anne and Rose; and these two together made the dresses of the family. It was a great economy, Mrs. Mountford said, and all the county knew how completely successful it was. But to the girls it was a trouble, if an advantage. Mrs. Worth studied their figures, their complexions, and what she called their ‘hidiousiucrasies’—but she did not study the hours that were convenient for them, or make allowance for their other occupations. And she was a tyrant, if a beneficent one. So Rose had to go, however loth. Lady Meadowlands was about to give a fête, a great garden party, at which all ‘the best people’ were to be assembled. And a new dress was absolutely necessary. Wouldn’t it do in the morning?’ she pleaded. But Mrs. Worth was inexorable. And so it happened that her mother had a quiet half-hour in which to interrogate Anne.
The drawing-room was on the side of the house overlooking the flower garden; the windows, a great row of them, flush with the wall outside and so possessing each a little recess of its own within, were all open, admitting more damp than air, and a chilly freshness and smell of the earth instead of the scents of the mignonette. There were two lamps at different ends of the room, which did not light it very well: but Mrs. Mountford was economical. Anne had lit the candles on the writing-table for her own use, and she was a long way off the sofa on which her stepmother sat, with her usual tidy basket of neatly-arranged wools beside her. A little time passed in unbroken quiet, disturbed by nothing but the soft steady downfall of the rain through the great open space outside, and the more distant sound of pattering upon the trees. When Mrs. Mountford said ‘Anne,’ her stepdaughter did not hear her at first. But there was a slight infraction of the air, and she knew that something had been said.
‘Did you speak, mamma?’
‘I want to speak to you, Anne. Yes, I think I did say your name. Would you mind coming here for a little? I want to say something to you while Rose is away.’
Anne divined at once what it must be. And she was not unreasonable—it was right that Mrs. Mountford should know: how could she help but know, being the wife of one of the people most concerned? And the thing which Anne chiefly objected to was that her stepmother knew everything about her by a sort of back way, thus arriving at a clandestine knowledge not honestly gained. It was not the stepmother that was to blame, but the father and fate. She rose and went forward slowly through the partial light—reluctant to be questioned, yet not denying that to ask was Mrs. Mountford’s right.
‘I sent her away on purpose, Anne. She is too young. I don’t want her to know any more than can be helped. My dear, I was very sorry to hear from your father that you had got into that kind of trouble so soon.’
‘I don’t think I have got into any trouble,’ said Anne.
‘No, of course I suppose you don’t think so; but I have more experience than you have, and I am sorry your mind should have been disturbed so soon.’
‘Do you call it so very soon?’ said Anne. ‘I am twenty-one.’
‘So you are; I forgot. Well! but it is always too soon when it is not suitable, my dear.’
‘It remains to be seen whether it is not suitable, mamma.’
‘My love! do you think so little of your father’s opinion? That ought to count above everything else, Anne. A gentleman is far better able to form an opinion of another gentleman than we are. Mr. Douglas, I allow, is good-looking and well-bred. I liked him well enough myself; but that is not all—you must acknowledge that is not half enough.’
‘My father seems to want a great deal less,’ said Anne; ‘all that he asks is about his family and his money.’
‘Most important particulars, Anne, however romantic you may be; you must see that.’
‘I am not romantic,’ said Anne, growing red, and resenting the imputation, as was natural; ‘and I do not deny they are important details; but not surely to be considered first as the only things worth caring for—which is what my father does.’
‘What do you consider the things worth caring for, dear? Be reasonable. Looks?’ said Mrs. Mountford, laying down her work upon her lap with a benevolent smile. ‘Oh, Anne, my dear child, at your age we are always told that beauty is skin-deep, but we never believe it. And I am not one that would say very much in that respect. I like handsome people myself; but dear, dear, as life goes on, if you have nothing but looks to trust to——!’
‘I assure you,’ said Anne, vehemently, succeeding after two or three attempts to break in, ‘I should despise myself if I thought that beauty was anything. It is almost as bad as money. Neither the one nor the other is yourself.’
‘Oh, I would not go so far as that,’ said Mrs. Mountford, with indulgence. ‘Beauty is a great deal in my opinion, though perhaps it is gentlemen that think most about it. But, my dear Anne, you are a girl that has always thought of duty. I will do you the justice to say that. You may have liked your own way, but even to me, that have not the first claim upon you, you have always been very good. I hope you are not going to be rebellious now. You must remember that your father’s judgment is far more mature than yours. He knows the world. He knows what men are.’
‘So long as he does not know—one thing,’ said Anne, indignantly, ‘what can all that other information matter to me?’
‘And what is the one thing, dear?’ Mrs. Mountford said.
Anne did not immediately reply. She went to the nearest window and closed it, for sheer necessity of doing something; then lingered, looking out upon the rain and the darkness of the night.
‘Thank you, that is quite right,’ said her stepmother. ‘I did not know that window was open. How damp it is, and how it rains! Anne, what is the one thing? Perhaps I might be of some use if you would tell me. What is it your father does not know?’
‘Me,’ said Anne, coming slowly back to the light. Her slight white figure had the pose of a tall lily, so light, so firm, that its very fragility looked like strength. And her face was full of the constancy upon which, perhaps, she prided herself a little—the loyalty that would not give up a dog, as she said. Mrs. Mountford called it obstinacy, of course. ‘But what does that matter,’ she added, with some vehemence, ‘when in every particular we are at variance? I do not think as he does in anything. What he prizes I do not care for—and what I prize——’
‘My dear, it is your father you are speaking of. Of course he must know better than a young girl like you——’
‘Mamma, it is not his happiness that is involved—it is mine! and I am not such a young girl—I am of age. How can he judge for me in what is to be the chief thing in my life?’
‘Anne,’ said Mrs. Mountford kindly, ‘this young man is almost a stranger to you—you had never seen him a year ago. Is it really true, and are you quite sure that this involves the happiness of your life?’
Anne made no reply. How otherwise? she said indignantly in her heart. Was she a girl to deceive herself in such a matter—was she one to make protestations? She held her head high, erecting her white throat more like a lily than ever. But she said nothing. What was there to say? She could not speak or tell anyone but herself what Cosmo was to her. The sensitive blood was ready to mount into her cheeks at the mere breathing of his name.
Mrs. Mountford shook her head. ‘Oh, foolish children,’ she said, ‘you are all the same. Don’t think you are the only one, Anne. When you are as old as I am you will have learned that a father’s opinion is worth taking, and that your own is not so infallible after all.’
‘I suppose,’ said Anne softly, ‘you are twice my age, mamma—that would be a long time to wait to see which of us was right.’
‘I am more than twice your age,’ said Mrs. Mountford, with a little heat; then suddenly changing her tone, ‘Well! so this is the new fashion we have been hearing so much of. Turn round slowly that I may see if it suits you, Rose.’