THE ‘GAME.’
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.