THE BEECHES.
The Beeches were a beautiful clump of trees on a knoll in the middle of
the park. They were renowned through the county, and one of the glories
of Mount. When the family was absent--which did not happen often--picnic
parties were made up to visit them. There was nothing like them in all
the country round. The soil was rich and heavy round them with the
shedding of their own leaves, and when the sun got in through their big
branches and touched that brown carpet it shone like specks of gold.
Some of the branches were like trees in themselves, and the great grey
trunks like towers. One of them had been called, from time immemorial,
the lover’s tree. It was scrawled over with initials, some of them half
a century old, or more. From the elevation on which they stood the
spectator looked down upon the house lying below among its gardens, on
the green terrace and the limes, and could watch what the group there
was doing, while himself safe from all observation. When Douglas had
informed Anne of her father’s rejection of his suit, she had bidden him
come to this spot to hear the issue of her own interview with Mr.
Mountford. He seated himself tranquilly enough under the lover’s tree
to await her coming. He was not too much agitated to smoke his cigar.
Indeed, he was not much agitated at all. He had no fear for the eventual
issue. True, it might not come immediately. He did not know that he
wanted it to come immediately. To love is one thing, to marry another.
So long as he was sure of Anne, he did not mind waiting for a year or
two. And he felt that he was sure of Anne, and in that case, eventually,
of her father too. Consequently, he sat still and waited, pleased, in
spite of himself, with the little lawlessness. To be received in the
ordinary way as a son-in-law, to kiss the ladies of the house, and shake
hands with the men, and be told in a trembling voice that it was the
choicest treasure of the family that was being bestowed upon him, were
all things which a man of courage has to go through, and does go through
without flinching. But on the whole it was more delightful to have Anne
steal away to him out of all commonplace surroundings and make him sure
of her supreme and unfailing love, whatever anyone might say--with,
_bien entendu_, the paternal blessing in the background, to be won after
a little patience. Douglas was flattered in all his wishes and fancies
by this romantic beginning. He would have the good, he thought, both of
the old system of love-making and the new--Anne by herself, without any
drawbacks, willing to dare any penalties for his sake; but at the end
everything that was legitimate and proper--settlements and civilities.
He liked it better so than if it had been necessary to wind up
everything in a few months, and marry and be settled; indeed it pleased
him much, being so sure as he was of all that was to follow, to have
this little secret and clandestine intercourse. He liked it. To get Anne
to do so much as this for him was a triumph; his vanity overflowed while
he sat and waited for her, though vanity was but a small part of his
character. He reached that spot so soon that he saw the beginning of the
‘game,’ and Anne’s white figure going back through the flower garden all
blazing with colour, to the house. What excuse had she been able to find
for leaving them? She must have invented some excuse. And he saw the
curate settling himself to that ‘game,’ with unspeakable amusement. He
took his cigar from between his lips to laugh. Poor old Charley! his
heart was broken, but he did his duty like a man. He watched him
settling to his afternoon’s work with Gertrude Woodhead as his partner,
and laughed, feeling the full humour of the event, and enjoying the
tremendous seriousness with which that sacrifice to duty was made. Then,
while the game went on in the bright foreground of the picture, he saw
the moving speck of that white figure re-issuing on the other side of
the house, and advancing towards him, threading her way among the trees.
It was for him that Anne did this, and he it was alone of all concerned
who could sit here calmly puffing the blue smoke among the branches, and
waiting for his happiness to come to him. Never was man more elated,
more flattered, more perfectly contented with himself.
He threw the cigar away when she was within a short distance of the
spot, and went to meet her with triumphant pleasure.
‘My faithful Anne--my true love,’ he said as he met her. And Anne came
to him; her eyes shining, her lips apart with eagerness. What a meeting
it was! No tame domestic reception and hubbub of family excitement could
compare with it. How glad and flattered he felt that it was a
clandestine indulgence, and that papa had not vulgarised everything by
giving his consent! Then they sat down upon the knoll, arm linked in
arm, and clasping each other’s hands. There was the peaceful house
within sight, and the party on the green terrace absorbed in their
inferior amusement, in complete ignorance, not knowing what romance was
going on, scarcely out of their range of vision, under the trees. All
these experiences served to enhance the delight of his position. For the
first few minutes he attached less importance to the words which Anne
said.
‘But you do not seem to understand me. My father will not consent.’
‘If _you_ consent, my darling, what do I want more? I am not afraid of
your father.’
‘But Cosmo--listen! you are not really paying any attention----’
‘Every attention, to the real matter in question. I am reading that in
your eyes, in your hands, in you altogether. If I am too happy to take
any notice of those vulgarer symbols, words----’
‘But they are not vulgar symbols. Yes, I am happy too. I am not afraid
of anything. But, Cosmo, you must listen, and you must understand. My
father refuses his consent.’
‘For how long?’ he said with a smile. ‘I also should like to refuse you
something for the pleasure of being persuaded to forswear myself. I
think papa is right. I should hold out as long as you would put any
faith in the delusion of my resistance.’
‘It is no delusion,’ said Anne, shaking her head. ‘You must not think
so. It is very serious. He has threatened me. There was no make-believe
in his mind, Cosmo.’
‘Threatened you? With what? Ah! so should I if I thought you were going
to desert me.’
‘You will not see how serious it is! I do not believe he will give in,
Cosmo. He has threatened me that if I persevere he will leave everything
he has to leave, away from me.’
‘Away from you? But he has no power to do that,’ said the young man. ‘It
is skilful of him to try your faithfulness--but he might have tried it
by less conventional means.’
‘Yes, he has the power,’ said Anne, neglecting the other part of this
speech. ‘He has power over everything, except, indeed, the entail; and I
believe he will do what he says. My father is not a man at all likely to
try my faithfulness. He knows me, for one thing.’
‘And knows you true as steel,’ said Cosmo, looking admiringly in her
face and still quite unimpressed by the news.
‘Knows that I am not one to give way. He knows that very well. So here
is something for your serious consideration. No, indeed, it is no joke.
You must not laugh. We must face what is before us,’ said Anne,
endeavouring to withdraw her hand and half offended by his unbelief.
‘I cannot face your frown,’ said Cosmo; ‘that is the only thing I am
really afraid of. What! must it really be so stern as this? But these
hard fathers, my darling, belong to the fifteenth century. You don’t
mean to tell me that rebellious daughters are shut up in their rooms,
and oaths insisted upon, and paternal curses uttered _now_!’
‘I said nothing about being shut up in my room; but it is quite
certain,’ said Anne, with a little heat, ‘that if I oppose him in this
point my father will take all that ought to come to me and give it to
Rose.’
‘To Rose!’ a shade of dismay stole over Cosmo’s face. ‘But I thought,’
he said--showing an acquaintance with the circumstances which after,
when she thought of it, surprised Anne--‘I thought your fortune came
from your mother, not from Mr. Mountford at all.’
‘And so it does; but it is all in his hands; my mother trusted in my
father entirely, as she was of course quite right to do.’
‘As it must have been the height of imprudence to permit her to do!’
cried Douglas, suddenly reddening with anger. ‘How could the trustees be
such fools? So you, like the money, are entirely in Mr. Mountford’s
hands?’
All at once the tone had ceased to be that of a lovers’ interview. Anne,
startled and offended, this time succeeded in drawing her hand out of
his.
‘Yes,’ she said, with a chill of surprise in her voice, ‘entirely in his
hands.’
What was going to follow? Under the great beechen boughs, through the
warm summer sunshine there seemed all at once to breathe a wintry gale
which penetrated to the heart.
This sudden cloud was dissipated in a moment by another laugh, which
rang almost too loudly among the trees. ‘Well,’ he said, drawing her arm
through his again, and holding the reluctant hand clasped fast, ‘what of
that? Because you are in his hands, Anne, my own, do you think I am
going to let you slip out of mine?’
The sun grew warm again, and the air delicious as before. Two on one
side, and all the world on the other, is not that a perfectly fair
division? So long as there are two--if there should come to be but one,
then the aspect of everything is changed. Anne’s hands clasped between
two bigger ones all but disappeared from view. It would be hard, very
hard, to slip out of that hold; and it was a minute or two before she
regained possession of what Cosmo had called the vulgarer symbols,
words. Without recurrence to their aid between people who love each
other, how much can be said!
‘That is all very well,’ said Anne, at last; ‘but whatever we may do or
say we must come back to this: My father has promised to disinherit me,
Cosmo, and he will not go back from his word.’
‘Disinherit! the very word sounds romantic. Are we in a novel or are we
not? I thought disinherit was only a word for the stage.’
‘But you know this is mere levity,’ said Anne. She smiled in spite of
herself. It pleased her to the bottom of her heart that he should take
it so lightly, that he should refuse to be frightened by it. ‘We are not
boy and girl,’ she said, with delightful gravity of reproof. ‘We _must_
think seriously of a thing which affects our interests so much. The
question is, what is to be done?’
Had she but known how keenly under his levity he was discussing that
question within himself! But he went on, still half laughing as if it
were the best joke in the world.
‘The only thing, so far as I can see, that is _not_ to be done,’ he
said, ‘is to obey papa and give me up.’
‘Give up--I would not give up a dog!’ cried Anne, impetuously; ‘and
Cosmo, you!’
‘I am not a dog; and yet in one sense, in Mr. Mountford’s eyes---- What
is it, Anne, that hedges you round with such divinity, you landed
people? Mountford of Mount: it sounds very well, I confess. And why was
I not Douglas of somewhere or other? It is very hard upon you, but yet
it is not my fault.’
‘I like you infinitely better,’ cried Anne, with proud fervour, ‘that
you are Douglas of nowhere, but stand upon yourself--the father of your
own fortunes. That is the thing to be proud of--if one has ever any
right to be proud.’
‘I have not achieved much to be proud of as yet,’ he said, shaking his
head; and then there was again a pause, perhaps not quite so ecstatic a
pause, for practical necessity and the urgent call for a decision of
one kind or other began to be felt, and silenced them. It was easy to
say that there was one thing that was _not_ to be done--but after? Then
for the first time in her life Anne felt the disability of her
womanhood. This tells for little so long as the relations between men
and women are not in question. It is when these ties begin--and a girl,
who has perhaps taken the initiative all her life, finds herself
suddenly reduced to silence in face of her lover--that the bond is felt.
What could she say or suggest? She had exhausted her powers when she
declared with such proud emphasis that to give up was impossible. Then
nature, which is above all law, stepped in and silenced her. What could
she do further? It was for him to speak. The first sense of this
compulsion was both sweet and painful to her--painful, because her mind
was overflowing with active energy and purpose which longed for
utterance: sweet, as the sign and symbol of a new condition, a union
more rich and strange than any individuality. Anne had hesitated little
in her life, and had not known what it was to wait. Now she bent her
head to the necessity in a curious maze of feeling--bewildered, happy, a
little impatient, wondering and hoping, silent as she had never in all
her life before been tempted to be.
As for Douglas, he was silent too, with a much less delightful
consciousness. In such circumstances what are the natural things for a
man to say? That what his love has is nothing to him, so long as she
brings him herself--that if there is only a sacrifice of money in
question, no money can be allowed to stand in the way of happiness; that
he has no fear, unless it might be for her; that to labour for her, to
make her independent of all the fathers in the world, is his first
privilege; and that the only thing to be considered is, when and how she
will make his happiness complete by trusting herself to his care. These
are, no doubt, the right things for a man to say, especially if they
happen to be true, but even whether they are quite true or not, as his
natural _rôle_ requires. Then, on the other side, the woman (if she has
any sense) will certainly come in and impose conditions and limit the
fulness of the sacrifice; so that, what by masculine boldness of plan,
and feminine caution of revisal, something reasonable and practical is
at last struck out. But the caution, the repression, the prudence, ought
not to be on the man’s side. Nothing can be more distinct than this
great law. It becomes the woman to see all the drawbacks, to hold back,
and to insist upon every prudential condition, not to make herself a
burden upon him or permit him to be overwhelmed by his devotion. But it
is not from his side that these suggestions of prudence can be allowed
to come, however strongly he may perceive them. Perhaps it is as hard
upon the man, who sees all the difficulties, to be compelled to adopt
this part, as it is on the woman, accustomed to lead the way, to be
silent and hold back. Douglas was in this predicament, if Anne felt all
the mingled penalties and privileges of the other. He must do it, or
else acknowledge himself a poor creature. And Cosmo had not the
slightest inclination to appear a poor creature in Anne’s eyes. Yet at
the same time he felt that to propose to this impetuous girl--who was
quite capable of taking him at his word--that she should marry him at
once in face of her father’s menace, was madness. What was he to do? He
sat silent--for more minutes than Anne’s imagination approved. Her heart
began to sink, a wondering pang to make itself felt in her breast, not
for herself so much as for him. Was he about to fail to the emergency?
to show himself unprepared to meet it? Was he, could it be possible,
more concerned about the loss of the money than herself?
‘Here am I in a nice predicament,’ he burst forth at last; ‘what am I to
say to you? Anne--you who have been brought up to wealth, who have known
nothing but luxury--what am I to say to you? Is it to be my part to
bring you down to poverty, to limit your existence? I who have no
recommendation save that of loving you, which heaven knows many a better
man must share with me; I an intruder whom you did not know a year
ago--an interloper----’
There are some cases in which there is no policy like the naked truth.
Anne held up her hands to stop him as he went on, exclaiming softly,
‘Cosmo, Cosmo!’ in various tones of reproach and horror. Then at last
she stopped him practically, by putting one of her hands upon his
mouth--an action which made her blush all over with tender agitation,
pleasure, and shame.
‘How can you say such things? Cosmo! I will not hear another word.’
‘Am I anything but an interloper? How is any man worth calling a man to
let you sacrifice yourself to him, Anne?’
‘I shall soon think it is you that want to throw me over,’ she said.
This shifted the tragic issue of the question and put him more at ease.
If it could but be brought back to the general ground, on which mutual
professions of fidelity would suffice and time could be gained! So far
as that went, Cosmo knew very well what to say. It was only the
practical result that filled him with alarm. Why had he been so hasty in
declaring himself? The preliminaries of courtship may go on for years,
but the moment an answer has been asked and given, some conclusion must
be come to. However, it is always easy to answer a girl when she utters
such words as these. He eluded the real difficulty, following her lead,
and so filled up the time with lovers’ talk that the hour flew by
without any decision. They talked of the one subject in a hundred
different tones--it was all so new, and Anne was so easily transported
into that vague and beautiful fairyland where her steps were treading
for the first time. And she had so much to say to him on her side; and
time has wings, and can fly on some occasions though he is so slow on
others. It was she who at the end of many digressions finally discovered
that while they had been talking the green terrace below had become
vacant, the company dispersed. She started up in alarm.
‘They have all gone in. The game is over. How long we must have been
sitting here! And they will be looking for me. I was obliged to say I
had a headache. Indeed I had a headache,’ said Anne, suddenly waking to
a sense of her subterfuge and hanging her head--for he had
laughed--which was a failure of perception on his part and almost roused
her pride to arms. But Cosmo was quick-sighted and perceived his
mistake.
‘Dear Anne! is this the first issue of faith to me?’ he said. ‘What am I
to do, my darling? Kill myself for having disturbed your life and made
your head ache, or----’
‘Do not talk nonsense, Cosmo; but I must go home.’
‘And we have been talking nonsense, and have come to no settlement one
way or another,’ he said, with a look of vexation. Naturally Anne took
the blame to herself. It could only be her fault.
‘The time has gone so fast,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘But, perhaps, on
the whole, it is best not to settle anything. Let us take a little time
to think. Is there any hurry? Nobody can separate us so long as we are
faithful to each other. There is no need that I know for--any
conclusion.’
Poor Cosmo! there were points in which at this moment his was a hard
case. He was obliged to look vexed and complain, though he was so fully
convinced of the wisdom of this utterance. ‘You forget,’ he said
tenderly, ‘that I have to go away, to return to my life of
loneliness--perhaps to ask myself if Anne was only a heavenly dream, a
delusion, and to find myself waking----’
‘To what?’ she replied, in her enthusiasm, half angry, ‘to what?’ ‘If
you have my heart with you and my thoughts, is not that the best part of
me? The Anne that will be with you will be the true Anne, not the
outside of her which must stay here.’
‘But I want the outside too. Ah, Anne, if I were to stay here, if I
could live at your gate like Charley Ashley (poor fellow!). But you
forget that I must go away.’
‘I don’t forget it. When must you go?’ She sank her voice a little and
drew closer to him, and looked at him with a cloud rising over her face.
He must go, there was no eluding that certainty, and to think of it was
like thinking of dying--yet of a sweet death to be borne heroically for
the sake each of each, and with a speedy bright resurrection in
prospect; but it would be an extinction of all the delight of living so
long as it lasted. Cosmo’s mind was not so elevated as Anne’s, nor his
imagination so inspiring, but the look of visionary anguish and courage
went to his heart.
‘I don’t deserve it,’ he cried with a broken voice; which was very true.
Then recovering himself, ‘It would not do for me to linger after what
has passed between your father and me. It will be a terrible wrench, and
without knowing when we are to meet again. Love, it must be before
Saturday,’ he said.
They were standing close, very close together, clasping each other’s
hands. Two tears came into Anne’s eyes, great lakes of moisture not
falling, though brimming over. But she gave him such a smile as was all
the sweeter reflected in them. ‘By Friday, then--we must make up our
minds what we are to do.’
His fears and doubtfulness yielded for the moment to an impulse of real
emotion. ‘How am I to live without you, now that I know you?’ he said.
‘You will not be without me, Cosmo! Did I not tell you the best of me
would be with you always? Let us both think with all our might what will
be the right thing for us.’
‘I know what I shall feel to be the best, Anne.’ He said this with a
little fervour, suddenly coming to see--as now and then a man does--by a
sudden inspiration, entirely contrary to his judgment, what would be his
only salvation. This answered his purpose far better than any cleverness
he could have invented. She shook her head.
‘We must not insist on choosing the happiest way,’ she said. ‘We must
wait--in every way, I feel sure that to wait is the only thing we can
do.’
‘Certainly not the happiest,’ he said, with emphasis. ‘There is no
reason because of that interview with your father why I should not come
to say good-bye. I will come on Friday publicly; but to-morrow, Anne,
to-morrow, here----’
She gave him her promise without hesitation. There had been no pledge
against seeing him asked or given, and it was indispensable that they
should settle their plans. And then they parted, he, in the agitation
and contagious enthusiasm of the moment, drawn closer to the girl whom
he loved, but did not understand, nearer knowing her than he had ever
been before. The impulse kept him up as on borrowed wings as far as the
enclosure of the park. Then Cosmo Douglas dropped down to earth, ceased
to reflect Anne Mountford, and became himself. She on wings which were
her own, and borrowed from no one--wings of pure visionary passion,
devotion, faith--skimmed through the light air homeward, her heart
wrung, her sweet imagination full of visions, her courage and constancy
strong as for life or death.