FAMILY COUNSELS.
‘Has Anne spoken to you at all on the subject--what does she intend to
do?’
Mr. Mountford was subjecting his wife to a cross-examination as to the
affairs of the household. It was a practice he had. He felt it to be
beneath his dignity to inquire into these details in his own person, but
he found them out through her. He was not a man who allowed his
authority to be shared. So far as ordering the dinner went and
regulating the household bills, he was content to allow that she had a
mission in the world; but everything of greater importance passed
through his hands. Mrs. Mountford was in the habit of expressing her
extreme satisfaction with this rule, especially in respect to Anne.
‘What could I have done with a stubborn girl like that? she would have
worn me out. The relief that it is to feel that she is in her father’s
hands and not in mine!’ she was in the habit of saying. But, though she
was free of the responsibility, she was not without trouble in the
matter. She had to submit to periodical questioning, and, if she had
been a woman of fine susceptibilities, would have felt herself something
like a spy upon Anne. But her susceptibilities were not fine, and the
discussion of other people which her husband’s inquisitions made
necessary was not disagreeable to her. Few people find it altogether
disagreeable to sit in a secret tribunal upon the merits and demerits of
those around them. Sometimes Mrs. Mountford would rebel at the closeness
of the examination to which she was subjected, but on the whole she did
not dislike it. She was sitting with her husband in that business-room
of his which could scarcely be dignified by the name of a library. She
had her usual worsted work in her hand, and a wisp of skeins plaited
together in various bright colours on a table before her. Sometimes she
would pause to count one, two, three, of the stitches on her canvas; her
head was bent over it, which often made it more easy to say what she had
got to say. A serious truth may be admitted, or censure conveyed, in the
soft sentence which falls from a woman’s lips with an air of having
nothing particular in it, when the one, two, three, of the Berlin
pattern, the exact shade of the wool, is evidently the primary subject
in her mind. Mrs. Mountford felt and employed to the utmost the shield
of her work. It made everything more easy, and took away all tedium from
these prolonged conversations. As for Mr. Mountford, there was always a
gleam of expectation in his reddish hazel eyes. Whether it was about a
servant, or his children, or even an indifferent person in the parish,
he seemed to be always on the verge of finding something out. ‘What does
she intend to do?’ he repeated. ‘She has never mentioned the subject
again, but I suppose she has talked it over with you.’
‘Something has been said,’ answered his wife; ‘to say that she had
talked it over with me would not be true, St. John. Anne is not one to
talk over anything with anybody, especially me. But something was said.
I confess I thought it my duty, standing in the place of a mother to
her, to open the subject.’
‘And what is she going to do?’
‘You must know very little about girls, St. John, though you have two of
your own (and one of them as difficult to deal with as I ever
encountered), if you think that all that is wanted in order to know what
they are going to do is to talk it over with them--it is not so easy as
that.’
‘I suppose you heard something about it, however,’ he said, with a
little impatience. ‘Does she mean to give the fellow up? that is the
chief thing I want to know.’
‘I never knew a girl yet that gave a fellow up, as you call it, because
her father told her,’ said Mrs. Mountford: and then she paused,
hesitating between two shades; ‘that blue is too blue, it will never go
with the others. I must drive into Hunston to-day or to-morrow, and see
if I cannot get a better match.--As for giving up, that was not spoken
of, St. John. Nobody ever believes in it coming to that. They think you
will be angry; but that of course, if they stand out, you will come
round at the last.’
‘Does Anne think that? She must know very little of me if she thinks
that I will come round at the last.’
‘They all think it,’ said Mrs. Mountford, calmly counting the lines of
the canvas with her needle: ‘I am not speaking only of Anne. I daresay
she counts upon it less than most do, for it must be allowed that she is
very like you, St. John, and as obstinate as a mule. You have to be very
decided indeed before a girl will think you mean it. Why, there is Rose.
What I say is not blaming Anne, for I am a great deal more sure what my
own child would think than what Anne would think. Rose would no more
believe that you would cross her seriously in anything she wanted than
she would believe you could fly if you tried. She would cry outwardly, I
don’t doubt, but she would smile in her heart. She would say to herself,
“Papa go against me! impossible!” and the little puss would look very
pitiful and submissive, and steal her arms round your neck and coax you,
and impose upon you. You would be more than mortal, St. John, if you did
not come round at the end.’
Mr. Mountford’s countenance relaxed while this description was made--an
almost imperceptible softening crept about the corners of his mouth. He
seemed to feel the arms of the little puss creeping round his neck, and
her pretty little rosebud face close to his own. But he shook off the
fascination abruptly, and frowned to make his wife think him insensible
to it. ‘I hope I am not such a weak fool,’ he said. ‘And there is not
much chance that Anne would try that way,’ he added, with some
bitterness. Rose was supposed to be his favourite child, but yet he
resented the fact that no such confession of his absolute authority and
homage to his power was to be looked for from Anne. Mrs. Mountford had
no deliberate intention of presenting his eldest daughter to him under
an unfavourable light, but if she wished him to perceive the superior
dutifulness and sweetness of her own child, could anyone wonder? Rose
had been hardly used by Nature. She ought to have been a boy and the
heir of entail, or, if not so, she ought to have had a brother to take
that position, and protect her interests; and neither of these things
had happened. That her father should love her best and do all in his
will that it was possible to do for her, was clearly Rose’s right as
compensation for the other injustices of fate.
‘No,’ said Mrs. Mountford, after a longer piece of mental arithmetic
than usual, ‘that is not Anne’s way; but still you must do Anne justice,
St. John. She will never believe, any more than Rose, that you will go
against her. I don’t say this from anything she has said to me. Indeed,
I cannot say that she has spoken to me at all on the subject. It was I
that introduced it; I thought it my duty.’
‘And she gave you to understand that she would go on with it, whatever I
might say; and that, like an old fool, if she stuck to it, I would give
in at the end?’
‘St. John! St. John! how you do run away with an idea! I never said
that, nor anything like it. I told you what, judging from what I know of
girls, I felt sure Anne must feel. They never dream of any serious
opposition: as we have given in to them from their childhood, they think
we will continue to give in to them to the end; and I am sure it is
quite reasonable to think so; only recollect how often we have yielded,
and done whatever they pleased.’
‘This time she will find that I will not yield,’ said Mr. Mountford,
getting up angrily, and planting himself in front of the polished
fireplace, which was innocent of any warmth. He set himself very firmly
upon his feet, which were wide apart, and put his hands under his coat
tails in the proverbial attitude of an Englishman. To see him standing
there you would have thought him a man who never would yield; and yet he
had, as his wife said, yielded to a great many vagaries of the girls.
She gave various curious little glances of investigation at him from
over her wools.
‘I should like to know,’ she said, ‘why you object so much to Mr.
Douglas? he seems a very gentlemanly young man. Do you know something
more of him than we know?’
‘Nobody,’ said Mr. Mountford, with solemnity, ‘knows any more of the
young man than we know.’
‘Then why should you be so determined against him?’ persisted his wife.
Mr. Mountford fixed his eyes severely upon her. ‘Letitia,’ he said,
‘there is one thing, above all others, that I object to in a man; it is
when nobody knows anything about him. You will not deny that I have had
some experience in life; some experience you must grant me, whatever my
deficiencies may be; and the result of all I have observed is that a man
whom nobody knows is not a person to connect yourself with. If he is a
member of a well-known family--like our own, for instance--there are his
people to answer for him. If, on the other hand, he has made himself of
consequence in the world, that may answer the same purpose. But when a
man is nobody, you have nothing to trust to; he may be a very good sort
of person; there may be no harm in him; but the chances are against him.
At all times the chances are heavily against a man whom nobody knows.’
Mr. Mountford was not disinclined to lay down the law, but he seldom did
it on an abstract question; and his wife looked at him, murmuring ‘one,
two, three’ with her lips, while her eyes expressed a certain mild
surprise. The feeling, however, was scarcely so strong as surprise; it
was rather with a sensation of unexpectedness that she listened. Surely
nobody had a better right to his opinion: but she did not look for a
general dogma when she had asked a particular question. ‘But,’ she said,
‘papa! he was known very well, I suppose, or they would not have had him
there--to the Ashleys, at least.’
‘What was known? Nothing about him--nothing whatever about him! as Anne
was so absurd as to say they know _him_, or their own opinion of him;
but they know nothing _about_ him--nobody knows anything about him.
Whatever you may think, Letitia, that is quite enough for me.’
‘Oh, my dear, I don’t pretend to understand; but we meet a great many
people whom we don’t know anything of. In society we are meeting them
for ever.’
‘Pardon me,’ said Mr. Mountford, lifting an emphatic finger; ‘_we_ may
know nothing about them, but somebody knows. Now, all I hear of this man
is that he is nobody; he may be good or he may be bad, much more likely
the latter; but, this being the case, if he were an angel I will have
nothing to do with him; neither shall anyone belonging to me. We are
well-known people ourselves, and we must form connections with
well-known people--or none at all.’
‘None at all; you would not keep her an old maid, papa?’
‘Pshaw!’ said Mr. Mountford, turning away. Then he came back to add a
last word. ‘Understand me, Letitia,’ he said; ‘I think it’s kind of you
to do your best for Anne, for she is a girl who has given you a great
deal of trouble; but it is of no use; if she is so determined to have
her own way, she shall not have anything else. I am not the weak idiot
of a father you think me; if I have given in to her before, there was
no such important matter in hand; but I have made up my mind now: and it
may be better for Rose and you, perhaps, if the worst comes to the
worst.’
Mrs. Mountford was completely roused now; the numbers, so to speak,
dropped from her lips; her work fell on her knee. ‘It is quite true what
you say,’ she said, feeling herself on very doubtful ground, and not
knowing what to do, whether to express gratitude or to make no reference
to this strange and dark saying: ‘she has given me a great deal of
trouble: but she is your child, St. John, and that is enough for me.’
He did not make any reply; nor did he repeat the mysterious promise of
advantage to follow upon Anne’s disobedience. He was not so frank with
his wife as he had been with his daughter. He went to his writing-table
once more, and sat down before it with that air of having come to an end
of the subject under discussion which his wife knew so well. He did not
mean to throw any further light to her upon the possible good that might
result to Rose. To tell the truth, this possibility was to himself too
vague to count for much. In the first place, he expected Anne to be
frightened, and to give in; and, in the second place, he fully intended
to live long after both his daughters had married and settled, and to be
able to make what dispositions he pleased for years to come. He was not
an old man; he was still under sixty, and as vigorous (he believed) as
ever he had been. In such a case a will is a very pretty weapon to
flourish in the air, but it does nobody much harm. Mr. Mountford thought
a great deal of this threat of his; but he no more meant it to have any
speedy effect than he expected the world to come to an end. Perhaps most
of the injustices that people do by will are done in the same way. It is
not comprehensible to any man that he should be swept away and others
reign in his stead; therefore he is more free to make use of that
contingency than if he believed in it. There would always be plenty of
time to set it right; he had not the least intention of dying; but for
the moment it was something potent to conjure withal. He reseated
himself at his table, with a consciousness that he had the power in his
hands to turn his whole world topsy-turvy, and yet that it would not do
anybody any harm. Naturally, this feeling was not shared either by Anne,
to whom he had made the original threat, nor by his wife, to whom he
held out the promise. We all know very well that other people must
die--it is only in our own individual case that the event seems
unlikely.
Mrs. Mountford’s mind was filled with secret excitement; she was eager
to know what her husband meant, but she did not venture to ask for any
explanation. She watched him over her work with a secret closeness of
observation such as she had never felt herself capable of before. What
did he mean? what would he do? She knew nothing about the law of
inheritance, except that entail kept an estate from the daughters, which
was a shame, she thought. But in respect to everything else her mind was
confused, and she did not know what her husband could do to benefit Rose
at Anne’s expense. But the more she did not understand, the more eager
she was to know. When you are possessed by an eager desire for the
enrichment of another, it does not seem a bad or selfish object as it
might do if the person to be benefited was yourself; and, least of all,
does it ever appear that to look out for the advantage of your child can
be wrong. But the poor lady was in the uncomfortable position of not
being able to inquire further. She could not show herself too anxious to
know what was to happen after her husband’s death; and even to take ‘the
worst’ for granted was not a pleasant thing, for Mrs. Mountford, though
naturally anxious about Rose, was not a hard woman who would wilfully
hurt anyone. She sat for some time in silence, her heart beating very
fast, her ears very alert for any word that might fall from her
husband’s mouth. But no word came from his mouth. He sat and turned over
the papers on the table; he was pleased to have excited her interest,
her hopes and fears, but he did not half divine the extent to which he
had excited her, not feeling for his own part that there was anything in
it to warrant immediate expectation: while she, on the other hand,
though she had a genuine affection for her husband, could not help
saying to herself, ‘He may go any day; there is never a day that some
one does not die; and if he died while he was on these terms with Anne,
what was it, what was it, that might perhaps happen to Rose?’ Mrs.
Mountford turned over in her mind every possible form of words she could
think of in which to pursue her inquiries; but it was very difficult,
nay, impossible, to do it: and, though she was not altogether without
artifice, her powers altogether failed her in presence of this difficult
question. At length she ventured to ask, clearing her throat with
elaborate precaution,
‘Do you mean to say that if Anne sets her heart upon her own way, and
goes against you--all our children do it more or less; one gets
accustomed to it. St. John--do you mean to say----that you will change
your will, and put her out of the succession?----’ Mrs. Mountford
faltered over the end of her sentence, not knowing what to say.
‘There is no succession. What I have is my own to do what I like with
it,’ he said sharply: and then he opened a big book which lay on the
table, and began to write. It was a well-known, if tacit, signal between
them, that his need of social intercourse was over, and that his wife
might go; but she did not move for some time. She went on with her
work, with every appearance of calm; but her mind was full of commotion.
As her needle went through and through the canvas, she cast many a
furtive glance at her husband turning over the pages of his big book,
writing here and there a note. They had been as one for twenty years;
two people who were, all the world said, most ‘united’--a couple devoted
to each other. But neither did she understand what her husband meant,
nor could he have believed the kind of feeling with which, across her
worsted work, she kept regarding him. She had no wish but that he should
live and thrive. Her position, her personal interests, her importance
were all bound up in him; nevertheless, she contemplated the contingency
of his death with a composure that would have horrified him, and thought
with much more keen and earnest feeling of what would follow than any
alarm of love as to the possibility of the speedy ending of his life
produced in her. Thus the two sat within a few feet of each other,
life-long companions, knowing still so little of each other--the man
playing with the fears and hopes of his dependents, while smiling in his
sleeve at the notion of any real occasion for those fears and hopes; the
woman much more intent upon the problematical good fortune of her child
than on the existence of her own other half, her closest and nearest
connection, with whom her life had been so long identified. Perhaps the
revelation of this feeling in her would have been the most cruel
disclosure had both states of mind been made apparent to the eye of day.
There was not much that was unnatural in his thoughts, for many men like
to tantalise their successors, and few men realise with any warmth of
imagination their own complete withdrawal from the pains and pleasures
of life; but to know that his wife could look his death in the face
without flinching, and think more of his will than of the event which
must precede any effect it could have, would have penetrated through all
his armour and opened his eyes in the most dolorous way. But he never
suspected this; he thought, with true human fatuity, with a little
gratified importance and vanity, of the commotion he had produced--that
Anne would be ‘pulled up’ in her career by so serious a threat; that
Rose would be kept ‘up to the mark’ by a flutter of hope as to the
reward which might fall to her. All this it pleased him to think of. He
was complacent as to the effect of his menaces and promises, but at
bottom he felt them to be of no great consequence to himself--amusing
rather than otherwise; for he did not in the least intend to die.
At last Mrs. Mountford felt that she could stay no longer. She rose up
from her chair, and gathered her wools in one arm. ‘The girls will be
coming in from their ride,’ she said. ‘I must really go.’
The girls had all the machinery of life at Mount in their hands; in
other houses it is ‘the boys’ that are put forward as influencing
everything. The engagements and occupations of the young people map out
the day, and give it diversity, though the elder ones move the springs
of all that is most important. It was generally when ‘the girls’ were
busy in some special matter of their own that Mrs. Mountford came to
‘sit with’ her husband in the library, and furnished him with so much
information. But their positions had been changed to-day. It was he who
had been her informant, telling her about things more essential to be
known than any of her gossip about Anne’s intentions or Rose’s habits.
She lingered even as she walked across the floor, and dropped her little
plaited sheaf of many colours and stooped to pick it up, inviting
further confidence. But her husband did not respond. He let her go
without taking any notice of her proceedings or asking any question as
to her unusual reluctance to leave him. At last, when she had fairly
turned her back upon him, and had her hand upon the handle of the door,
his voice startled her, and made her turn round with anxious
expectation.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘I forgot to tell you: I have a letter to-day
from Heathcote Mountford, offering a visit. I suppose he wants to spy
out the nakedness of the land.’
‘Heathcote Mountford!’ cried his wife, bewildered; then added, after a
little interval, ‘I am sure he is quite welcome to come when he
pleases--he or anyone. There is no nakedness in the land that we need
fear.’
‘He is coming next week,’ said Mr. Mountford. ‘Of course, as you
perceive, I could not refuse.’
Mrs. Mountford paused at the door, with a great deal of visible interest
and excitement. It was no small relief to her to find a legitimate
reason for it. ‘Of course you could not refuse: why should you refuse? I
shall be very glad to see him; and’--she added, after a momentary pause,
which gave the words significance, ‘so will the girls.’
‘I wish I could think so; the man is forty,’ Mr. Mountford said. Then he
gave a little wave of his hand, dismissing his wife. Even the idea of a
visit from his heir did not excite him. He was not even conscious, for
the moment, of the hostile feeling with which men are supposed to regard
their heirs in general, and which, if legitimate in any case, is
certainly so in respect to an heir of entail. It is true that he had
looked upon Heathcote Mountford with a mild hatred all his life as his
natural enemy; but at the present crisis the head of the house regarded
his successor with a kind of derisive complacency, as feeling that he
himself was triumphantly ‘keeping the fellow out of it.’ He had never
been so certain of living long, of cheating all who looked for his
death, as he was after he had made use of that instrument of terrorism
against his daughter. Heathcote Mountford had not been at Mount for
nearly twenty years. It pleased his kinsman that he should offer to come
now, just to be tantalised, to have it proved to him that his
inheritance of the family honours was a long way off, and very
problematical in any sense. ‘A poor sort of fellow; always ailing,
always delicate; my life is worth two of his,’ he was saying, with
extreme satisfaction, in his heart.