GOOD ADVICE.
The dinner to which the family sat down after this ride somewhat alarmed
the stranger-relative who so suddenly found himself mixed up in their
affairs. He thought it must necessarily be a constrained and
uncomfortable meal. But this did not turn out to be the case. Anne knew
nothing at all about what her father had been doing, and from Rose’s
light nature the half comprehended scene at luncheon, when her mother
had wept and her father’s face had been like a thundercloud, had already
faded away. These two unconscious members of the party kept the tide of
affairs in flow. They talked as usual--Anne even more than usual, as one
who is unaware of the critical point at which, to the knowledge of all
around, he or she is standing, so often does. She gave even a little
more information than was called for about her visit to the Woodheads,
being in her own mind half ashamed of her cowardice in staying away
after the scene of the morning. On the whole she was glad, she persuaded
herself, of the scene of the morning. It had placed her position beyond
doubt. There had seemed no occasion to make any statement to her father
as to the correspondence which he had not forbidden or indeed referred
to. He had bidden her give up her lover, and she had refused: but he had
said nothing about the lover’s letters, though these followed as a
matter of course. And now it was well that he should know the exact
position of affairs. She had been greatly agitated at the moment, but
soon composed herself. And in her desire to show that she was satisfied,
not grieved by what had happened, Anne was more than usually cheerful
and communicative in her talk.
‘Fanny is very happy about her brother who is coming home from India. He
is to be here only six weeks; but he does not grudge the long journey:
and they are all so happy.’
‘He is a fool for his pains,’ growled Mr. Mountford from the head of the
table. ‘I don’t know what our young men are coming to. What right has he
to such a luxury? It will cost him a hundred pounds at the least. Six
weeks--he has not been gone as many years.’
‘Four years--that is a long time when people are fond of each other,’
said Anne, with a scarcely perceptible smile. Every individual at table
instantly thought of the absent lover.
‘She is thinking that I will be dead and gone in four years, and she
will be free,’ the angry father said to himself, with a vindictive sense
that he was justified in the punishment he meant to inflict upon her.
But Anne, indeed, was thinking of nothing of the kind, only with a
visionary regret that in her own family there was no one to come eager
over sea and land to be longed and prayed for with Fanny Woodhead’s
anxious sisterly motherly passion. This was far, very far from the
imagination of the others as a motive likely to produce such a sigh.
‘A brother from India is always anxiously looked for,’ said Mrs.
Mountford, stepping in with that half-compunctious readiness to succour
Anne which the knowledge of this day’s proceedings had produced in her.
She did not, in fact, know what these proceedings had been, and they
were in no way her fault. But still she felt a compunction. ‘They always
bring such quantities of things with them,’ she added. ‘An Indian box is
the most delightful thing to open. I had a brother in India, too----’
‘I wish we had,’ said Rose, with a pout. Heathcote had been preoccupied:
he had not been so ‘attentive’ as usual: and she wished for a brother
instantly, ‘just to spite him,’ she said to herself.
‘Fanny is not thinking of the presents; but Rose, consider you are
interested in it, too--that is another man for your dance.’
Rose clapped her hands. ‘We are looking up,’ she said. ‘Twenty men from
Sandhurst, and six from Meadowlands, and Lady Prayrey Poule’s husband,
and Fred Woodhead and Willie Ashley--for of course Willie is coming----
’
‘A dance at this time of the year is folly,’ said Mr. Mountford; ‘even
in summer it is bad enough; but the only time of the year for
entertainments in the country is when you have warm weather and short
nights.’
‘It was because of cousin Heathcote, papa. It is not often we have a
man, a real relation, staying at Mount.’
‘Heathcote! oh, so it is for your sake, Heathcote? I did not know that
dancing was an attribute of reasonable beings after thirty,’ Mr.
Mountford said.
Then it was Anne who came to Heathcote’s aid. ‘You are not afraid of
seeming frivolous?’ she said, giving him the kindest look he had yet
seen in her eyes; and his heart was touched by it: he had not known that
Anne’s eyes had been so fine--‘and it will please everybody. The county
requires to be stirred up now and then. We like to have something to
talk about, to say, “Are you going to the So-and-so’s on the 25th?”’
‘An admirable reason certainly for trouble and expense. If you were
electioneering, it might be reasonable; but I presume your woman’s
rights are not so advanced yet as that. Miss Anne Mountford can’t stand
for the county!’
‘I don’t think she is likely to try, father,’ said Anne, ‘whatever might
be the rights--or wrongs.’
‘You must not think, Mr. Heathcote,’ said Mrs. Mountford anxiously,
‘that Anne has anything to say to women’s rights. She is far too
sensible. She has her own ways of thinking, but she is neither absurd
nor strong-minded----’
‘I hope you do not think me weak-minded, mamma,’ Anne said, with a soft
laugh.
And then little more was said. Mr. Mountford half rose and mumbled that
grace after meat which leaves out all the more ethereal part of the
repast as, we suppose, a kind of uncovenanted mercies for which no
thanks are to be uttered; and after a while the ladies left the room. It
was cold, but the whole frosty world outside lay enchanted under the
whitening of the moon. The girls caught up fur cloaks and shawls as they
went through the hall, and stepped outside involuntarily. The sky was
intensely blue; the clouds piled high in snowy masses, the moon sailing
serenely across the great expanse, veiling herself lightly here and
there with a film of vapour which the wind had detached from the
cloud-mountains. These filmy fragments were floating across the sky at
extraordinary speed, and the wind was rising, whirling down showers of
leaves. The commotion among the trees, the sound of the wind, the rapid
flight of the clouds, all chimed in with Anne’s mood. She took hold of
her sister’s arm with gentle force. ‘Stay a little, Rose--it is all
quiet inside, and here there is so much going on: it is louder than
one’s thoughts,’ Anne said.
‘What do you mean by being louder than your thoughts? Your thoughts are
not loud at all--not mine at least: and I don’t like those dead leaves
all blowing into my face; they feel like things touching you. I think I
shall go in, Anne.’
‘Not yet, dear. I like it: it occupies one in spite of one’s self. The
lawn will be all yellow to-morrow with scattered gold.’
‘You mean with scattered leaves; of course it will,’ said Rose. ‘When
the wind is high like this it brings the leaves down like anything. The
lime trees will be stripped, and it is a pity, for they were pretty.
Everything is pretty this year. Papa has been to Hunston,’ she said,
abruptly, looking Anne in the face; but it was very difficult even for
Rose’s keen little eyes to distinguish in the moonlight whether or not
Anne _knew_.
Anne took very little notice of this bit of news. ‘So Saymore told me.
Did Mr. Heathcote see the church, I wonder? I hope some one told him how
fine it was, and that there were some Mountford monuments.’
‘Do you know what papa was doing in Hunston, Anne? He went to see Mr.
Loseby. Mamma made quite a fuss when he went away. She would not tell me
what it was. Perhaps she did not know herself. She often gets into quite
a state about things she doesn’t know. Can you tell me what papa could
want with Mr. Loseby? you can see for yourself how cross he is now he
has come back.’
‘With Mr. Loseby? no, I cannot tell you, Rose.’ Anne heard the news with
a little thrill of excitement. It was rarely that Mr. Mountford went so
far; very rarely that he did anything which, through his wife, or
Saymore, or Rose herself, did not find its way to the knowledge of the
entire household. Anne connected the incident of the morning with this
recent expedition, and her heart beat faster in her breast. Well: she
was prepared; she had counted the cost. If she was to be disinherited,
that could be borne--but not to be untrue.
‘That means you will not tell me, Anne. I wonder why I should always be
the last to know. For all anyone can tell, it may just be of as much
consequence to me as to you, if he went to tamper with his will, as
mamma said. What do you call tampering with a will? I don’t see,’ cried
Rose, indignantly, ‘why I should always be supposed too young to know.
Most likely it is of just as much consequence to me as to you.’
‘Rose,’ cried her mother, from the window, ‘come in--come in at once!
How can you keep that child out in the cold, Anne, when you know what a
delicate throat she has?’ Then Mrs. Mountford gave an audible shiver and
shut down the window hastily; for it was very cold.
‘I have nothing to tell you, dear,’ Anne said gently. ‘But you are quite
right; if there is any change made, it will be quite as important to you
as to me: only you must not ask me about it, for my father does not take
me into his confidence, and I don’t know.’
‘You don’t want to tell me!’ said the girl; but this time Mrs. Mountford
knocked loudly on the window, and Rose was not sufficiently emancipated
to neglect the second summons. Anne walked with her sister to the door,
but then came back again to the sheltered walk under the windows. It was
a melancholy hour when one was alone. The yellow leaves came down in
showers flying on the wind. The clouds pursued each other over the sky.
The great masses of vapours behind the wind began to invade the frosty
blue; yet still the moon held on serenely, though her light was more and
more interrupted by sudden blanks of shadow. Anne had no inclination to
go into the quiet of the drawing-room, the needlework, and Mrs.
Mountford’s little lectures, and perhaps the half-heard chattering with
which Rose amused and held possession of her cousin. To her, whose
happier life was hidden in the distance, it was more congenial to stay
out here, among the flying winds and falling leaves. If it was so that
Fortune was forsaking her; if her father had carried out his threat, and
she was now penniless, with nothing but herself to take to Cosmo, what
change would this make in her future life? Would _he_ mind? What would
he say? Anne had no personal experience at all, though she was so
serious and so deeply learned in the troubles at least of village life.
As she asked herself these questions, a smile crept about her lips in
spite of her. She did not mean to smile. She meant to inquire very
gravely: would he mind? what would he say? but the smile came without
her knowledge. What could he say but one thing? If it had been another
man, there might have been doubts and hesitations--but Cosmo! The smile
stole to the corners of her mouth--a melting softness came into her
heart. How little need was there to question! Did not she _know_?
Her thoughts were so full of this that she did not hear another foot on
the gravel, and when Heathcote spoke she awakened with a start, and came
down out of that lofty hermitage of her thoughts with little
satisfaction; but when he said something of the beauty of the night and
the fascination of all those voices of the wind and woods, Anne, whether
willingly or not, felt herself compelled to be civil. She came down
from her abstraction, admitting, politely, that the night was fine.
‘But,’ she said, ‘it is very cold, and the wind is rising every moment;
I was thinking of going in.’
‘I wonder if you would wait for a few minutes, Miss Mountford, and hear
something I have to say.’
‘Certainly,’ Anne said; but she was surprised; and now that it was no
longer her own will which kept her here, the wind all at once became
very boisterous, and the ‘silver lights and darks’ dreary. ‘Do you know
we have a ghost belonging to us?’ she said. ‘She haunts that lime
avenue. We ought to see her to-night.’
‘We have so little time for ghosts,’ said Heathcote, almost fretfully;
and then he added, ‘Miss Mountford, I came to Mount on a special
mission. Will you let me tell you what it was? I came to offer your
father my co-operation in breaking the entail.’
‘Breaking the entail!’ the idea was so surprising that all who heard it
received it with the same exclamation. As for Anne, she did more: she
cast one rapid involuntary glance around her upon the house with all its
lights, the familiar garden, the waving clouds of trees. In her heart
she felt as if a sharp arrow of possible delight, despair, she knew not
which, struck her keenly to the core. It was only for a moment. Then she
drew a long breath and said, ‘You bewilder me altogether; break the
entail--why should you? I cannot comprehend it. Pardon me, it is as if
the Prince of Wales said he would not have the crown. Mount is England
to us Mountfords. I cannot understand what you mean.’
Heathcote thought he understood very well what _she_ meant. He
understood her look. Everything round was dear to her. Her first thought
had been--Mount! to be ours still, ours always! But what did _ours_
mean? Did she think of herself as heiress and mistress, or of--someone
else? This pricked him at the heart, as she had been pricked by a
different sentiment, by the thought that she had no longer the first
interest in this piece of news; but there was no reason whatever for
keen feeling in his case. What did it matter to him who had it? He did
not want it. He cleared his throat to get rid of that involuntary
impatience and annoyance. ‘It is not very difficult to understand,’ he
said. ‘Mount is not to me what it is to you; I have only been here once
before. My interests are elsewhere.’
Anne bowed gravely. They did not know each other well enough to permit
of more confidential disclosures. She did not feel sufficient interest
to ask, he thought; and she had no right to pry into his private
concerns, Anne said to herself. Then there was a pause: which she broke
quite unexpectedly with one of those impulses which were so unlike
Anne’s external aspect, and yet so entirely in harmony with herself.
‘This makes my heart beat,’ she said, ‘the idea that Mount might be
altogether ours--our home in the future as well as in the past; but at
the same time, forgive me, it gives me a little pain to think that there
is a Mountford, and he the heir, who thinks so little of Mount. It seems
a slight to the place. I grudge that you should give it up, though it is
delightful to think that we may have it; which is absurd, of
course--like so many other things.’
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘there is a great deal of the same sort of
feeling in my own mind. I can’t care for Mount, can I? I have not seen
it for fifteen years; I was a boy then; now I am middle-aged, and don’t
care much for anything. But yet I too grudge that I should care for it
so little; that I should be so willing to part with it. The feeling is
absurd, as you say. If you could have it, Miss Mountford, I should
surmount that feeling easily: I should rejoice in the substitution----’
‘And why should not I have it?’ cried Anne quickly, turning upon him.
Then she paused and laughed, though with constraint, and begged his
pardon. ‘I don’t quite know what you mean,’ she said, ‘or what you
know.’
‘Miss Mountford, having said so much to you, may I say a little more? I
am one of your nearest relatives, and I am a great deal older than you
are. There is some question which divides you from your father. I do not
ask nor pretend to divine what it is. You are not agreed--and for this
reason he thinks little of my proposal, and does not care to secure the
reversion of his own property, the house which, in other circumstances,
he would have desired to leave in your possession. I think, so far as I
have gone, this is the state of the case?’
‘Well!’ She neither contradicted him nor consented to what he had said,
but stood in the fitful moonlight, blown about by the wind, holding her
cloak closely round her, and looking at him between the light and gloom.
‘Pardon me,’ he said, ‘I have no right whatever to interfere: but--if
you could bend your will to his--if you could humour him as long as his
life lasts: your father is becoming an old man. Miss Mountford, you
would not need perhaps to make this sacrifice for very long.’
She elapsed her hands with impatient alarm, stopping him abruptly--‘Is
my father ill? Is there anything you know of that we do not know?’
‘Nothing whatever. I only know his age, no more. Could you not yield to
him, subdue your will to his? You are young, and you have plenty of time
to wait. Believe me, the happiness that will not bear to be waited for
is scarcely worth having. I have no right to say a word--I do not
understand the circumstances--actually I _know_ nothing about them. But
if you could yield to him, humour him for a time----’
‘Pretend to obey him while he lived,’ Anne said, in a low voice, ‘in
order that I may be able to cheat him when he is gone: that is a strange
thing to recommend to me.’
‘There is no question of cheating him. What I mean is, that if you would
submit to him; give him the pleasure of feeling himself obeyed in the
end of his life----’
‘I owe my father obedience at all times; but there are surely
distinctions. Will you tell me why you say this to me?’
‘I cannot tell you why: only that there is something going on which will
tell against you: sincerely, I do not know what it is. I do not want to
counsel you to anything false, and I scarcely know what I am advising
you to do. It is only, Miss Mountford, while you can--if you can--to
submit to him: or even, if no better can be, _seem_ to submit to him.
Submit to him while he lives. This may be a caprice on his part--no
more: but at the same time it may affect your whole life.’
Anne stood for a moment irresolute, not knowing what to say. The night
favoured her and the dark. She could speak with less embarrassment than
if the daylight had been betraying her every look and change of aspect.
‘Mr. Heathcote, I thank you for taking so much interest in me,’ she
said.
‘I take the greatest interest in you, Miss Mountford; but in the
meantime I would say the same to anyone so young. Things are going on
which will injure you for your life. If you can by your submission avert
these ills, and make him happier--even for a time?’
‘In short,’ she said again, ‘pretend to give up until he is no longer
here to see whether I follow my own inclinations or his? It may be wise
advice, Mr. Heathcote; but is it advice which you would like
your--anyone you cared for--to take?’
‘I should not like anyone I cared for,’ he said hesitating--‘Pardon me,
I cannot help offending you--to be in opposition to her family on such a
point.’
The colour rushed to Anne’s face, and anger to her heart: but as the one
was invisible, so she restrained the other. She put restraint in every
way on herself.
‘That may be so, that may be so! you cannot tell unless you know
everything,’ she said. Then, after a pause, ‘But whether it was right or
wrong, it is done now, and I cannot alter it. It is not a matter upon
which another can decide for you. Obedience at my age cannot be
absolute. When you have to make the one choice of your life, can your
father do it, or anyone but yourself? Did you think so when you were
like me?’ she said, with an appeal full of earnestness which was almost
impassioned. This appeal took Heathcote entirely by surprise, and
changed all the current of his thoughts.
‘I was never like you,’ he said, hastily--‘like you! I never could
compare myself--I never could pretend--I thought I loved half-a-dozen
women. Did I ever make the one choice of my life? No, no! A wandering
man afloat upon the world can never be like--such as you: there is too
great a difference. We cannot compare things so unlike----’
‘But I thought’--she said, then stopped: for his story which she had
heard bore a very different meaning. And what right had she to advert to
it? ‘I don’t know if you speak in--in respect--or in contempt?’
‘In contempt--could that be? Here is the state of the case as concerns
yourself--leaving the general question. My offer to break the entail has
no attractions for your father, because he thinks he cannot secure Mount
to you. It is doing something against his own heart, against all he
wishes, to punish you. Don’t you know, Miss Mountford--but most likely
you never felt it--that
to be wroth with those we love
Doth work like madness in the brain?’
‘Love?--that would be great love, passionate love--we have not anything
of the kind in our house,’ said Anne, in a low tone of emotion. ‘If
there was that, do you think I would go against it, even for----’
Here she stopped with a thrill in her voice. ‘I think you must be
mistaken a little, Mr. Heathcote. But I do not see how I can change.
Papa asked of me--not the lesser things in which I could have obeyed
him, but the one great thing in which I could not. Were I to take your
advice, I do not know what I could do.’
Then they walked in silence round the side of the house, under the long
line of the drawing-room windows, from which indeed the interview had
been watched with much astonishment. Rose had never doubted that the
heir of the house was on her side. It seemed no better than a desertion
that he should walk and talk with Anne in this way. It filled her with
amazement. And in such a cold night too! ‘Hush, child!’ her mother was
saying; ‘he has been with papa to Hunston, he has heard all the business
arrangements talked over. No doubt he is having a little conversation
with Anne, for her good.’
‘What are the business arrangements? What is going to happen? Is he
trying to make her give up Mr. Douglas?’ said Rose: but her mother
could not or would not give her any information. By-and-by Heathcote
came in alone. Anne was too much disturbed by this strange interview to
appear when it was over in the tranquil circle of the family. She went
upstairs to take off her wraps, to subdue the commotion in her mind and
the light in her eyes, and tame herself down to the every-day level. Her
mind was somewhat confused, more confused than it had yet been as to her
duty. Cosmo somehow had seemed to be gently pushed out of the first
place by this stranger who never named him, who knew nothing of him, and
who certainly ignored the fact that, without Cosmo, Anne no longer lived
or breathed. She was angry that he should be so ignorant, yet too shy
and proud to mention her lover or refer to him save by implication. She
would have been willing to give up corresponding with him, to make any
immediate sacrifice to her father’s prejudice against him--had that been
ever asked of her. But to give up ‘the one choice of her life,’ as she
had said, would have been impossible. Her mind was affected strongly,
but not with alarm, by the intelligence that something was being done
mysteriously in the dark against her, that the threat under which she
had been living was now being carried out. But this did not move her to
submit as Heathcote had urged--rather it stimulated her to resist.
Had Cosmo but been at hand! But if he had been at hand, how could he
have ventured to give the advice which Heathcote gave? He could not have
asked her to yield, to dissemble, to please the old man while his life
lasted, to pretend to give himself up. Nothing of this could he have
suggested or she listened to. And yet it was what Cosmo would have liked
to advise; but to this state of Cosmo’s mind Anne had no clue.