CROSS-EXAMINATION.
The change that is made in a quiet house in the country when the chief
source of life and emotion is closed for one or other of the inhabitants
is such a thing as ‘was never said in rhyme.’ There may be nothing
tragical, nothing final about it, but it penetrates through every hour
and every occupation. The whole scheme of living seems changed, although
there may be no change in any habit. It is, indeed, the very sameness
and unity of the life, the way in which every little custom survives, in
which the feet follow the accustomed round, the eyes survey the same
things, the very same words come to the lips that make the difference so
palpable. This was what Anne Mountford felt now. To outward seeming her
existence was absolutely as before. It was not an exciting life, but it
had been a happy one. Her mind was active and strong, and capable of
sustaining itself. Even in the warm and soft stagnation of her home, her
life had been like a running stream always in movement, turning off at
unexpected corners, flowing now in one direction, now another, making
unexpected leaps and variations of its own. She had the wholesome love
of new things and employments which keeps life fresh; and there had
scarcely been a week in which she had not had some new idea or other,
quickly copied and turned into matter-of-fact prose by her little
sister. This had made Mount lively even when there was nothing going on.
And for months together nothing did go on at Mount. It was not a great
country house filled with fashionable visitors in the autumn and winter,
swept clean of all its inhabitants in spring. The Mountfords stayed at
home all the year round, unless it were at the fall of the leaf, when
sometimes they would go to Brighton, sometimes at the very deadest
season to town. They had nobody to visit them except an occasional old
friend belonging to some other county family, who understood the kind of
life and lived the same at home. On these occasions if the friend were a
little superior they would ask Lord and Lady Meadowlands to dinner, but
if not they would content themselves with the clergymen of the two
neighbouring parishes, and the Woodheads, whose house was not much more
than a villa. Lately, since the girls grew up, the ‘game’ in the
afternoon which brought young visitors to the house in summer had added
to the mild amusements of this life; but the young people who came were
always the same, and so were the old people in the village, who had to
be visited, and to have flannels prepared for them against Christmas,
and their savings taken care of. When a young man ‘went wrong,’ or a
girl got into trouble, it made the greatest excitement in the parish.
‘Did you hear that Sally Lawson came home to her mother on Saturday,
sent away from her place at a moment’s notice?’ or: ‘Old Gubbins’s boy
has enlisted. Did you ever hear anything so sad--the one the rector took
so much pains with, and helped on so in his education?’ It was very sad
for the Gubbinses and Lawsons, but it was a great godsend to the parish.
And when Lady Meadowlands’ mother, old Lady Prayrey Poule, went and
married, actually _married_ at sixty, it did the very county, not to
speak of those parishes which had the best right to the news, good. This
was the way in which life passed at Mount. And hitherto Anne had
supplemented and made it lively with a hundred pursuits of her own. Even
up to the beginning of August, when Mr. Douglas, who had left various
reminiscences behind him of his Christmas visit, came back--having
enjoyed himself so much on the previous occasion, as he said--Anne had
continued in full career of those vigorous fancies which kept her always
interested. She had sketched indefatigably all the spring and early
summer, growing almost fanatical about the tenderness of the shadows and
the glory of the lights. Then finding the cottages, which were so
picturesque, and figured in so many sketches, to be too wretched for
habitation, though they were inhabited, she had rushed into building,
into plans, and elevations, and measurements, which it was difficult to
force Mr. Mountford’s attention to, but which were evidently a step in
the right direction. But on Douglas’s second arrival these occupations
had been unconsciously intermitted, they had been pushed aside by a
hundred little engagements which the Ashleys had managed to make for the
entertainment of their friend. There had been several pic-nics, and a
party at the rectory--the first since Mrs. Ashley’s death--and a party
at the Woodheads’, the only other people in the parish capable of
entertaining. Then there had been an expedition to the Castle, which the
Meadowlands, on being informed that Charley Ashley’s friend was anxious
to see it, graciously combined with a luncheon and a ‘game’ in the
afternoon. And then there was the game at Mount on all the other
afternoons. Who could wonder, as Mrs. Mountford said, that something had
come of it? The young men had been allowed to come continually about the
house. No questions had been asked, no conditions imposed upon them.
‘Thou shalt not make love to thy entertainer’s daughter’ had not been
written up, as it ought to have been, on the lodge. And now, all this
was over. Like a scene at the theatre, opening up, gliding off with
nothing but a little jar of the carpentry, this momentous episode was
concluded and the magician gone. And Anne Mountford returned to the
existence--which was exactly as it had been of old.
The other people did not see any difference in it; and to her the
wonderful thing was that there was no difference in it. She had been in
paradise, caught up, and had seen unspeakable things; but now that she
had dropped down again, though for a moment the earth seemed to jar and
tingle under her feet as they came in contact with it, there was no
difference. Her plans were there just the same, and the question still
to settle about how far the pigsty must be distant from the house; and
old Saymore re-emerged to view making up his bouquets for the vases, and
holding his head on one side as he looked at them, to see how they
‘composed;’ and Mrs. Worth, who all this time had been making dresses
and trying different shades to find out what would best set off Miss
Rose’s complexion. They had been going on like the figures on the
barrel-organ, doing the same thing all the time--never varying or
changing. Anne looked at them all with a kind of doleful amusement,
gyrating just in the old way, making the same little bobs and curtseys.
They had no want of interest or occupation, always moving quite
contentedly to the old tunes, turning round and round. Mr. Mountford sat
so many hours in his business-room, walked one day, rode the next for
needful exercise, sat just so long in the drawing-room in the evening.
His wife occupied herself an hour every morning with the cook, took her
wool-work at eleven, and her drive at half-past two, except when the
horses were wanted. Anne came back to it all, with a little giddiness
from her expedition to the empyrean, and looked at the routine with a
wondering amusement. She had never known before how like clockwork it
was. Now her own machinery, always a little eccentric, declined to
acknowledge that key: some sort of new motive power had got into her,
which disturbed the action of the other. She began again with a great
many jerks and jars, a great many times: and then would stop and look at
all the others in their unconscious dance, moving round and round, and
laugh to herself with a little awe of her discovery. Was this what the
scientific people meant by the automatic theory, she wondered, being a
young woman who read everything; but then in a law which permitted no
exceptions, how was it that she herself had got out of gear?
Rose, who followed her sister in everything, wished very much to follow
her in this too. She had always managed to find out about every new
impulse before, and catch the way of it, though the impulse itself was
unknown to her. She gave Anne no rest till she had ascertained about
this too. ‘Tell us what it is like,’ she said, with a hundred
repetitions. ‘How did you first find out that he cared for you? What
put it into your head? Was it anything he said that made you think
_that_? As it is probably something that one time or another will happen
to me too, I think it is dreadful of you not to tell me. Had you never
found it out till he told you? and what did he say? Did he ask you all
at once if you would marry him? or did it all come on by degrees?’
‘How do you think I can tell?’ said Anne; ‘it is not a thing you can put
into words. I think it all came on by degrees.’
But this, though it was her own formula, did not satisfy Rose. ‘I am
sure you could tell me a great deal more if you only would,’ she cried;
‘what did he _say_? Now, _that_ you can’t help remembering; you must
know what he said. Did he tell you he was in love with you, or ask you
straight off to marry him? You can’t have forgotten that--it is not so
very long ago.’
‘But, Rosie, I could not tell you. It is not the words, it is not
anything that could be repeated. A woman should hear that for the first
time,’ said Anne, with shy fervour, turning away her head to hide the
blush, ‘when it is said to herself.’
‘A woman! Then you call yourself a woman now? I am only a girl; is that
one of the things that show?’ asked Rose, gravely, in pursuit of her
inquiry. ‘Well, then, you ought surely to let me know what kind of a
thing it is. Are you so very fond of him as people say in books? are you
always thinking about him? Anne, it is dreadfully mean of you to keep it
all to yourself. Tell me one thing: when he said it first, did he go
down upon his knees?’
‘What nonsense you are talking!’ said Anne, with a burst of laughter.
Then there rose before her in sweet confusion a recollection of various
moments in which Rose, always matter-of-fact, might have described her
lover as on his knees. ‘You don’t know anything about it,’ she said,
‘and I can’t tell you anything about it. I don’t know myself, Rosie; it
was all like a dream.’
‘It is you who are talking nonsense,’ said Rose. ‘How could it be like a
dream? In a dream you wake up and it is all over; but it is not a bit
over with you. Well, then, _after_, how did it feel, Anne? Was he always
telling you you were pretty? Did he call you “dear,” and “love,” and all
that sort of thing? It would be so _very_ easy to tell me--and I do so
want to know.’
‘Do you remember, Rose,’ said Anne, with a little solemnity, ‘how we
used to wish for a brother? We thought we could tell him everything, and
ask him questions as we never could do to papa, and yet it would be
quite different from telling each other. He would know better; he would
be able to tell us quantities of things, and yet he would understand
what we meant too.’
‘I remember you used to wish for it,’ said Rose, honestly, ‘and that it
would have been such a very good thing for the entail.’
‘Then,’ said Anne, with fervour, ‘it is a little like that--like what we
thought that would be. One feels that one’s heart is running over with
things to say. One wants to tell him everything, what happened when one
was a little girl, and all the nonsense that has ever been in one’s
mind. I told him even about that time I was shut up in the blue room,
and how frightened I was. Everything! it does not matter if it is a
trifle. One knows he will not think it a trifle. Exactly--at least
almost exactly, like what it would be to have a brother--but yet with a
difference too,’ Anne added, after a pause, blushing, she could scarcely
tell why.
‘Ah!’ said Rose, with great perspicacity, ‘but the difference is just
what I want to know.’
The oracle, however, made no response, and in despair the pertinacious
questioner changed the subject a little. ‘If you will not tell me what
he said, nor what sort of a thing it is, you may at least let me know
one thing--what are you going to do?’
‘Nothing,’ said Anne, softly. She stood with her hands clasped before
her, looking with some wistfulness into the blueness of the distant air,
as if into the future, shaking her head a little, acknowledging to
herself that she could not see into it. ‘Nothing--so far as I know.’
‘Nothing! are you going to be in love, and engaged, and all that, and
yet do _nothing_? I know papa will not consent--mamma told me. She said
you would have to give up everything if you married him; and that it
would be a good thing for----’
Here Rose paused, gave her head a little shake to banish the foolish
words with which she had almost betrayed the confidence of her mother’s
communication, and reddened with alarm to think how near she had been to
letting it all out.
‘I am not going to----marry,’ said Anne, in spite of herself, a little
coldly, though she scarcely knew why, ‘if that is what you want to
know.’
‘Then what,’ said Rose, majestically, ‘do you mean to do?’
The elder sister laughed a little. It was at the serious pertinacity of
her questioner, who would not take an answer. ‘I never knew you so
curious before,’ she said. ‘One does not need to do anything all at
once----’
‘But what are you going to _do_?’ said Rose. ‘I never knew you so dull,
Anne. Dear me, there are a great many things to do besides getting
married. Has he just gone away for good, and is there an end of it? Or
is he coming back again, or going to write to you, or what is going to
happen? I know it can’t be going to end like that; or what was the use
of it at all?’ the girl said, with some indignation. It was Rose’s
office to turn into prose all Anne’s romancings. She stopped short as
they were walking, in the heat of indignant reason, and faced her
sister, with natural eloquence, as all oratorical talkers do.
‘It is not going to end,’ said Anne, a shade of sternness coming over
her face. She did not pause even for a moment, but went on softly with
her abstracted look. Many a time before in the same abstraction had she
escaped from her sister’s questions; but Rose had never been so
persistent as now.
‘If you are not going to do anything, and it is not to end, I wonder
what is going to happen,’ said Rose. ‘If it were me, I should know what
I was to do.’
They were walking up and down on the green terrace where so many games
had been played. It was getting almost too dark for the lime avenue when
their talk had begun. The day had faded so far that the red of the
geraniums had almost gone out; and light had come into the windows of
the drawing-room, and appeared here and there over the house. The season
had changed all in a day--a touch of autumn was in the air, and mist
hung in all the hollows. The glory of the year was over; or so at least
Anne thought.
‘And another thing,’ said Rose; ‘are you going to tell anybody? Mamma
says I am not to tell; but do you think it is right to go to the
Meadowlands’ party, and go on talking and laughing with everybody just
the same, and you an engaged girl? Somebody else might fall in love with
you! I don’t think it is a right thing to do.’
‘People have not been in such a hurry to fall in love with me,’ said
Anne; ‘but, Rose, I don’t think this is a subject that mamma would
think at all suited for you.’
‘Oh, mamma talked to me about it herself; she said she wished you would
give it up, Anne. She said it never could come to anything, for papa
will never consent.’
‘Papa may never consent; but yet it will come to something,’ said Anne,
with a gleam in her eyes. ‘That is enough, Rose; that is enough. I am
going in, whatever you may do.’
‘But, Anne! just one thing more; if papa does not consent, what _can_
you do? Mamma says he could never afford to marry if you had nothing,
and you would have nothing if papa refused. It is only _your_ money that
you would have to marry on; and if you had no money---- So what _could_
you do?’
‘I wish, when mamma speaks of my affairs, she would speak to me,’ said
Anne, with natural indignation. She was angry and indignant; and the
words made, in spite of herself, a painful commotion within her. Money!
what had money to do with it? She had felt the injustice, the wrong of
her father’s threat; but it had not occurred to her that this could
really have any effect upon her love; and though she had been annoyed to
find that Cosmo would not treat the subject with seriousness, or believe
in the gravity of Mr. Mountford’s menace, still she had been entirely
satisfied that his apparent carelessness was the right way for him to
consider it. He thought it of no importance, of course. He made jokes
about it; laughed at it; beguiled her out of her gravity on the subject.
Of course! what was it to him whether she was rich or poor; what did
Cosmo care? So long as she loved him, was not that all he was thinking
of? What would she have minded had she been told that _he_ had nothing?
Not one straw--not one farthing! But when this little prose personage,
with her more practical views of the question, rubbed against Anne,
there did come to her, quite suddenly, a little enlightenment. It was
like one chill, but by no means depressing, ray of daylight bursting in
through a crevice into the land of dreams. If he had no money, and she
no money, what then? Then, notwithstanding all generosity and nobleness
of affection, money certainly would have something to do with it. It
would count among the things to be taken into consideration; count
dolefully, in so far as it would keep them apart; yet count with
stimulating force as a difficulty to be surmounted, an obstacle to be
got the better of. When Mrs. Mountford put her head out of the window,
and called them to come in out of the falling dews, Anne went upstairs
very seriously, and shut the door of her room, and sat down in her
favourite chair to think it out. Fathers and mothers are supposed to
have an objection to long engagements; but girls, at all events at the
outset of their career, do not entertain the same objection. Anne was
still in the dreamy condition of youthful rapture, transported out of
herself by the new light that had come into the world, so that the
indispensable sequence of marriage did not present itself to her as it
does to the practical-minded. It was a barrier of fact with which, in
the meantime, she had nothing to do. She was not disappointed or
depressed, because _that_ was not the matter in question. It would come
in time, no doubt, as the afternoon follows the morning, and autumn
summer, but who would change the delights of the morning for the warmer,
steady glory of three o’clock? though that also is very good in its way.
She was quite resigned to the necessity of waiting, and not being
married all at once. The contingency neither alarmed nor distressed her.
Its immediate result was one which, indeed, most courses of thought
produced in her mind at the present moment. If I had but thought, of
that, she said to herself, before he went away! She would have liked to
talk over the money question with Cosmo; to discuss it in all its
bearings; to hear him say how little it mattered, and to plan how they
could do without it; not absolutely without it, of course; but Anne’s
active mind leaped at once at the thought of those systems of domestic
economy which would be something quite new to study, which had not yet
tempted her, but which would now have an interest such as no study ever
had. And, on his side, there could be no doubt that the effort would be
similar; in all likelihood even now (if he had thought of it) he was
returning with enthusiasm to his work, saying to himself, ‘I have Anne
to work for; I have my happiness to win.’ ‘_He_ could never afford to
marry if _you_ had nothing. It is only your money that you could marry
on; and if you had no money, what could you do?’ Anne smiled to herself
at Rose’s wisdom; nay, laughed in the silence, in the dark, all by
herself, with an outburst of private mirth. Rose--prose, she said to
herself, as she had said often before. How little that little thing
knew! but how could she know any better, being so young, and with no
experience? The thrill of high exhilaration which had come to her own
breast at the thought of this unperceived difficulty--the still higher
impulse that no doubt had been given to Cosmo, putting spurs to his
intellect, making impossibilities possible--a child like Rose could not
understand those mysteries. By-and-by Anne reminded herself that, as the
love of money was the root of all evil, so the want of it had been, not
only no harm, but the greatest good. Painters, poets, people of genius
of every kind had been stimulated by this wholesome prick. Had
Shakespeare been rich? She threw her head aloft with a smile of
conscious energy, and capacity, and power. No money! That would be the
best way to make a life worth living. She faced all heroisms, all
sacrifices, with a smile, and in a moment had gone through all the
labours and privations of years. He, working so many hours at a stretch,
bursting upon the world with the eloquence which was inspired by love
and necessity; she, making a shabby room into a paradise of content,
working for him with her own happy hands, carrying him through every
despondency and difficulty. Good heavens! could any little idiot suppose
that to settle down on a good income and never have any trouble would be
half so delightful as this? Anne used strong language in the swelling of
her breast.
It made her laugh with a little ridicule of herself, and a half sense
that, if Rose’s tendency was prose, hers might perhaps be heroics, when
it occurred to her that Cosmo, instead of rushing back to his work, had
only intended to catch the Scotch mail, and that he was going to the
Highlands to shoot; while she herself was expected in Mrs. Worth’s room
to have her dress tried on for the Meadowlands’ party. But, after all,
what did that matter? There was no hurry; it was still the Long
Vacation, in which no man can work, and in the meantime there was no
economy for her to begin upon.
The maid whom she and Rose shared between them, and whose name was
Keziah, came to the door to call her when she had reached this point.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Anne,’ she said; ‘I didn’t know you had no
lights.’
‘They were quite unnecessary, thank you,’ said Anne, rising up out of
her meditations, calmed, yet with all the force of this new stimulus to
her thoughts.