FALLEN FROM HER HIGH ESTATE.
The ‘Black Bull’ at Hunston is one of those old inns which have been
superseded, wherever it is practicable, by new ones, and which are in
consequence eagerly resorted to by enlightened persons, wherever they
are to be found; but there was nobody in Hunston, beyond the ordinary
little countrytown visitors, to appreciate its comfortable old rooms,
old furniture, and old ways. When there was a county ball, the county
people who had daughters engaged rooms in it occasionally, and the
officers coming from Scarlett-town filled up all the corners. But county
balls were rare occurrences, and there had not been yet under the
_régime_ of old Saymore a single instance of exceptional gaiety or
fulness. So that, though it was highly respectable, and the position of
landlord one of ease and dignity, the profits had been as yet limited.
Saymore himself, however, in the spotless perfection of costume which he
had so long kept up at Mount, and with his turn for artistic
arrangements, and general humble following of the ‘fads’ of his young
ladies, was in himself a model of a master for a Queen Anne house
(though not in the least what the prototype of that character would have
been), and was in a fair way to make his house everything which a house
of that period ought to be. And though Keziah, in the most fashionable
of nineteenth-century dresses, was a decided anachronism, yet her little
face was pleasant to the travellers arriving hot and dusty on an August
evening, and finding in those two well-known figures a something of home
which went to their hearts. To see Saymore at the carriage door made
Mrs. Mountford put her handkerchief to her eyes, a practice which she
had given up for at least six months past. And, to compare small things
with great, when Keziah showed them to their rooms, notwithstanding the
pride of proprietorship with which she led the way, the sight of Anne
and Rose had a still greater effect upon little Mrs. Saymore; Rose
especially, in her Paris dress, with a waist like nothing at
all--whereas to see Keziah, such a figure! She cried, then dried her
tears, and recollected the proud advances in experience and dignity she
had made, and her responsibilities as head of a house, and all her plate
and linen, and her hopes: so much had she gone through, while with them
everything was just the same: thus pride on one side in her own second
chapter of life, and envy on the other of the freedom of their untouched
lives produced a great commotion in her. ‘Mr. Saymore and me, we thought
this would be the nicest for Miss Anne, and I put you here, Miss Rose,
next to your mamma. Oh, yes, I am very comfortable. I have everything as
I wish for. Mr. Saymore don’t deny me nothing--he’d buy me twice as many
things as I want, if I’d let him. How nice you look, Miss Rose, just the
same, only nicer; and such style! Is that the last fashion? It makes her
look just nothing at all, don’t it, Miss Anne? Oh, when we was all at
Mount, how we’d have copied it, and twisted it, and changed it to look
something the same, and not the least the same--but I’ve got to dress up
to forty and look as old as I can now.’
Saymore came into the sitting-room after them with his best bow, and
that noiseless step, and those ingratiating manners which had made him
the best of butlers. ‘I have nothing to find fault with, ma’am,’ he
said. ‘I’ve been very well received, very well received. Gentlemen as
remembered me at Mount has been very kind. Mr. Loseby, he has many a
little luncheon here. “I’ll not bother my old housekeeper,” he says,
when he has gentlemen come sudden. “I’ll just step over to my old friend
Saymore. Saymore knows how to send up a nice little lunch, and he knows
a good glass of wine when he sees it.” That’s exactly what Mr. Loseby
said, no more than three days ago. But business is quiet,’ Saymore
added. ‘I don’t complain, but things is quiet; we’d be the better,
ma’am, of a little more stir here.’
‘But I hope you find everything comfortable--at home, Saymore?’ said his
former mistress. ‘You know I always told you it was an experiment. I
hope you find everything comfortable at home.’
‘Meaning Mrs. Saymore, ma’am?’ replied the landlord of the ‘Black Bull,’
with dignity. ‘I’m very glad to say as she have given me and everybody
great satisfaction. She is young, but that is a fault, as I made so bold
as to observe to you, ma’am, on a previous occasion, a fault as is sure
to mend. I’ve never repented what I did when I married. She’s as nice as
possible downstairs, but never too nice--giving herself no airs: but
keeping her own place. She’s given me every satisfaction,’ said Saymore,
with much solemnity. In the meantime Keziah was giving her report on the
other side of the question, upstairs.
‘No, Miss Anne. I can’t say as I’ve repented. Oh, no, I’ve never
repented. Mr. Saymore is very much respected in Hunston--and there’s
never a day that he don’t bring me something, a ribbon or a new collar,
or a story book if he can’t think of nothing else. It _was_ a little
disappointing when mother was found not to do in the kitchen. You see,
Miss Anne, we want the best of cooking when strangers come, and mother,
she was old-fashioned. She’s never forgiven me, though it wasn’t my
fault. And Tommy, he was too mischievous for a waiter. We gave him a
good long try, but Mr. Saymore was obliged at last to send him away.
Mother says she don’t see what it’s done for her, more than if I had
stayed at Mount--but I’m very comfortable myself, Miss Anne,’ said
Keziah, with a curtsey and a tear.
‘I am very glad to hear it: and I hope you’ll be still happier
by-and-by,’ said Anne, retiring to the room which was to be hers, and
which opened from the little sitting-room in which they were standing.
Rose remained behind for further talk and gossip. And when all the news
was told Keziah returned to her admiration of the fashion of Rose’s
gown.
‘Are they all made like that now, in Paris? Oh, dear, I always thought
when you went to France I’d go too. I always thought of Paris. But it
wasn’t to be.’
‘You see, Keziah, you liked Saymore best,’ said Rose, fixing her
mischievous eyes upon Keziah’s face, who smiled a little sheepish smile,
and made a little half-pathetic appeal with her eyes, but did not disown
the suggestion, which flattered her vanity if not her affection.
‘You are as blooming as a rose, Miss--as you always was,’ said Keziah,
‘but what’s Miss Anne been a-doing to herself? She’s like a white marble
image in a church; I never saw her that pale.’
‘Hush!’ cried Rose, in a whisper, pointing to the door behind them, by
which Anne had disappeared; and then she came close to the questioner,
with much pantomime and mystery. ‘Don’t say a word. Keziah. It is all
broken off. She has thrown the gentleman over. Hush, for heaven’s sake,
don’t say a word!’
‘You don’t mean it, Miss Rose. Broken off! Mr. Dou----’
Rose put her hand on the little landlady’s mouth. ‘She must not hear we
are talking of her. She would never forgive me. And besides, I don’t
know--it is only a guess; but I am quite, quite sure.’
Keziah threw up her hands and her eyes. ‘All broken off--thrown the
gentleman over! Is there someone else?’ she whispered, trembling,
thinking with mingled trouble and complacency of her own experiences in
this kind, and of her unquestioned superiority nowadays to the lover
whom she had thrown over--the unfortunate Jim.
‘No, no, no,’ said Rose, making her mouth into a circle, and shaking her
head. No other! No richer, better, more desirable lover! This was a
thing that Keziah did not understand. Her face grew pale with wonder,
even with awe. To jilt a gentleman for your own advancement in life,
that might be comprehensible--but to do it to your own damage, and have
cheeks like snowflakes in consequence--that was a thing she could not
make out. It made her own position, with which she was already
satisfied, feel twice as advantageous and comfortable; even though her
marriage had not turned out so well for mother and the boys as Keziah
had once hoped.
Mr. Loseby came across the street, humming a little tune, to join them
at dinner. He was shining from top to toe in his newest black suit, all
shining, from his little varnished shoes to his bald head, and with the
lights reflected in his spectacles. It was a great day for the lawyer,
who was fond of both the girls, and who had an indulgent amity, mingled
with contempt, for Mrs. Mountford herself, such as men so often
entertain for their friends’ wives. He was triumphant in their arrival,
besides, and very anxious to secure that they should return to the
neighbourhood and settle among their old friends. He, too, however,
after his first greetings were over, was checked in his rejoicings by
the paleness of his favourite. ‘What have you been doing to Anne?’ were,
after his salutations, the first words he said.
‘If anything has been done to her, it is her own doing,’ said Mrs.
Mountford, with a little indignation.
‘Nothing has been done to me,’ said Anne, with a smile. ‘I hear that I
am pale, though I don’t notice it. It is all your letters, Mr. Loseby,
and the business you give me. I have to let mamma and Rose go to their
dissipations by themselves.’
‘Our dissipations! You do not suppose I have had spirits for much
dissipation,’ said Mrs. Mountford, now fully reminded of her position as
a widow, and with her usual high sense of duty, determined to live up to
it. She pressed her handkerchief upon her eyelids once more, after the
fashion she had dropped. ‘But it is true that I have tried to go out a
little,’ she added, ‘more than I should have done at home--for Rose’s
sake.’
‘You were quite right,’ said the lawyer; ‘the young ones cannot feel as
we do, they cannot be expected to go on in our groove. And Rose is
blooming like her name. But I don’t like the looks of Anne. Have I been
giving you so much business to do? But then, you see, I expected that
you would have Mr. Douglas close at hand, to help you. Indeed, my only
wonder was----’
Here Mr. Loseby broke off, and had a fit of coughing, in which the rest
of the words were lost. He had surprised a little stir in the party, a
furtive interchange of looks between Mrs. Mountford and Rose. And this
roused the alarm of the sympathetic friend of the family, who, indeed,
had wondered much--as he had begun to say--
‘No,’ said Anne, with a smile, ‘you know I was always a person of
independent mind. I always liked to do my work myself. Besides, Mr.
Douglas has his own occupations, and the chief part of the time we have
been away.’
‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Loseby. He was much startled by the
consciousness which seemed to pervade the party, though nothing more was
said. Mrs. Mountford became engrossed with her dress, which had caught
in something; and Rose, though generally very determined in her
curiosity, watched Anne, the spectator perceived, from under her
eyelids. Mr. Loseby took no notice externally. ‘That’s how it always
happens,’ he said cheerfully; ‘with the best will in the world we always
find that our own business is as much as we can get through. I have
found out that to my humiliation a hundred times in my life.’
‘These questions about the leases are the most difficult,’ said Anne,
steadily. ‘I suppose the old tenants are not always the best.’
‘My dear, I hope in these bad times we may get tenants at all, old or
new,’ said the old lawyer. And then he plunged into the distresses of
the country, the complaints of the farmers, the troubles of the
labourers, the still greater trials of the landlord. ‘Your cousin
Heathcote has made I don’t know how much reduction. I am not at all sure
that he is right. It is a dreadfully bad precedent for other landlords.
And for himself he simply can’t afford it. But I cannot get him to hear
reason. “What does it matter to me?” he says, “I have always enough to
live on, and those that till the land have the best right to any
advantage they can get out of it.” What can you say to a man that thinks
like that? I tell him he is a fool for his pains; but it is I who am a
fool for mine, for he takes no notice though I talk myself hoarse.’
‘Indeed, I think it is very unjustifiable conduct,’ said Mrs. Mountford.
‘He should think of those who are to come after him. A man has no right
to act in that way as if he stood by himself. He ought to marry and
settle down. I am sure I hope he will have heirs of his own, and not
leave the succession to that horrid little Edward. To think of a
creature like that in Mount would be more than I could bear.’
‘I doubt if Heathcote will ever marry; not unless he gets the one
woman---- But we don’t all get _that_ even when we are most lucky,’ said
the old lawyer, briskly. ‘He is crotchety, crotchety, full of his own
ideas: but a fine fellow all the same.’
‘Does he want to marry more than one woman?’ cried Rose, opening great
eyes, ‘and you talk of it quite coolly, as if it was not anything very
dreadful; but of course he can’t, he would be hanged or something.
Edward is not so bad as mamma says. He is silly; but, then, they are
mostly silly.’ She had begun to feel that she was a person of
experience, and justified in letting loose her opinion. All this time it
seemed to Mr. Loseby that Anne was going through her part like a woman
on the stage. She was very quiet; but she seemed to insist with herself
upon noticing everything, listening to all that was said, giving her
assent or objection. In former times she had not been at all so
particular, but let the others chatter with a gentle indifference to
what they were saying. She seemed to attend to everything, the table,
and the minutiae of the dinner, letting nothing escape her to-night.
‘I think Heathcote is right,’ she said; ‘Edward will not live to succeed
him; and, if he does not marry, why should he save money, and pinch
others now, on behalf of a future that may never come? What happens if
there is no heir to an entail? Could not it all be eaten up, all
consumed, re-absorbed into the country, as it were, by the one who is
last?’
‘Nonsense, Anne. He has no right to be the last. No one has any right to
be the last. To let an old family die down,’ cried Mrs. Mountford, ‘it
is a disgrace. What would dear papa have said? When I remember what a
life they all led me because I did not have a boy--as if it had been my
fault! I am sure if all the hair off my head, or everything I cared for
in my wardrobe, or anything in the world I had, could have made Rose a
boy, I would have sacrificed it. I must say that if Heathcote does not
marry I shall think I have been very badly used: though, indeed, his
might all be girls too,’ she added, half hopefully, half distressed.
‘Anyhow, the trial ought to be made.’ Notwithstanding the danger to the
estate, it would have been a little consolation to Mrs. Mountford if
Heathcote on marrying had been found incapable, he also, of procuring
anything more than girls from Fate.
‘When an heir of entail fails----’ Mr. Loseby began, not unwilling to
expound a point on which he was an authority; but Rose broke in and
interrupted him, never having had any wholesome fear of her seniors
before her eyes. Rose wanted to know what was going to be done now they
were here, if they were to stay all the autumn in the ‘Black Bull;’ if
they were to take a house anywhere; and generally what they were to do.
This gave Mr. Loseby occasion to produce his scheme. There was an old
house upon the property which had not been entailed, which Mr. Mountford
had bought with his first wife’s money, and which was now the
inheritance of Rose. It had been suffered to fall out of repair, but it
was still an inhabitable house. ‘You know it, Anne,’ the lawyer said;
‘it would be an amusement to you all to put it in order. A great deal
could be done in a week or two. I am told there is no amusement like
furnishing, and you might make a pretty place of it.’ The idea, however,
was not taken up with very much enthusiasm.
‘In all probability,’ Mrs. Mountford said, ‘we shall go abroad again for
the winter. The girls like it, and it is very pleasant, when one can,
to escape from the cold.’
The discussion of this subject filled the rest of the evening. Mr.
Loseby was very anxious on his side. He declared that it did not bind
them to anything; that to have a house, a _pied-à-terre_, ‘even were it
only to put on your cards,’ was always an advantage. After much argument
it was decided at last that the house at Lilford, an old Dower-house,
and bearing that picturesque name, should be looked at before any
conclusion was come to; and with this Mr. Loseby took his leave. Anne
had taken her full share in the discussion. She had shown all the energy
that her _rôle_ required. She had put in suggestions of practical weight
with a leaning to the Dower-house, and had even expressed a little
enthusiasm about that last popular plaything--a house to furnish--which
nowadays has become the pleasantest of pastimes. ‘It shall be Morris-ey,
but not too Morris-ey,’ she had said, with a smile, still in perfect
fulfilment of her _rôle_. But to see Anne playing at being Anne had a
wonderful effect upon her old friend. Her stepmother and sister, being
with her perpetually, did not perhaps so readily suspect the fine
histrionic effort that was going on by their side. It was a fine
performance; but such a performance is apt to make the enlightened
beholder’s heart ache. When he had taken his leave of the other
ladies--early, as they were tired, or supposed it right to be tired,
with their journey--Anne followed Mr. Loseby out of the room. She asked
him to come into another close by. ‘I have something to say to you,’ she
said, with a faint smile. Mr. Loseby, like the old Rector, was very fond
of Anne. He had seen her grow up from her infancy. He had played with
her when she was a child, and carried her sugar-plums in his coat
pockets. And he had no children of his own to distract his attention
from his favourite. It troubled him sadly to see signs of trouble about
this young creature whom he loved.
‘What is it, Anne? What is it, my dear? Something has happened?’ he
said.
‘No, nothing of consequence. That is not true,’ she said, hurriedly; ‘it
is something, and something of consequence. I have not said anything
about it to them. They suspect, that is all; and it does not matter to
them; but I want to tell you. Mr. Loseby, you were talking to-night of
Mr. Douglas. It is about Mr. Douglas I want to speak to you.’
He looked at her very anxiously, taking her hand into his. ‘Are you
going to be married?’
Anne laughed. She was playing Anne more than ever; but, on the whole,
very successfully. ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘quite the reverse----’
‘Anne! do you mean that he has--that you have--that it is broken off?’
‘The last form is the best,’ she said. ‘It is all a little confused just
yet. I can’t tell if he has, or if I have. But yes--I must do him
justice: it is certainly not his doing. I am wholly responsible myself.
It has come to an end.’
She looked into his face wistfully, evidently fearing what he would say,
deprecating, entreating. If only nothing might be said! And Mr. Loseby
was confounded. He had not been kept up like the others to the course of
affairs.
‘Anne, you strike me dumb. You take away my breath. What! he whom you
have sacrificed everything for: he who has cost you all you have in the
world? If it is a caprice, my dear girl, it is a caprice utterly
incomprehensible; a caprice I cannot understand.’
‘That is exactly how to call it,’ she said, eagerly: ‘a caprice, an
unpardonable caprice. If Rose had done it, I should have whipped her, I
believe; but it is I, the serious Anne, the sensible one, that have
done it. This is all there is to say. I found myself out, fortunately,
before it was too late. And I wanted you to know.’
In this speech her powers almost failed her. She forgot her part. She
played not Anne, but someone else, some perfectly artificial character,
which her audience was not acquainted with, and Mr. Loseby was startled.
He pushed away his spectacles, and contracted his brows, and looked at
her with his keen, short-sighted eyes, which, when they could see
anything, saw very clearly. But with all his gazing he could not make
the mystery out. She faced him now, after that one little failure, with
Anne’s very look and tone, a slight, fugitive, somewhat tremulous smile
about her mouth, her eyes wistful, deprecating blame; but always very
pale: that was the worst of it, that was the thing least like herself.
‘After losing,’ said the lawyer slowly, ‘everything you had in the world
for his sake.’
‘Yes,’ Anne said, with desperate composure, ‘it is ridiculous, is it
not? Perhaps it was a little to have my own way, Mr. Loseby. Nobody can
tell how subtle one’s mind is till one has been tried. My father defied
me, and I suppose I would not give in; I was very obstinate. It is
inconceivable what a girl will do. And then we are all obstinate, we
Mountfords. I have heard you say so a hundred times; pig-headed, was not
that the word you used?’
‘Most probably it was the word I used. Oh, yes, I know you are
obstinate. Your father was like an old mule; but you, you--I declare to
you I do not understand it, Anne.’
‘Nor do I myself,’ she said, with another small laugh, a very small
laugh, for Anne’s strength was going. ‘Can anyone understand what
another does, or even what they do themselves? But it is so; that is all
that there is to say.’
Mr. Loseby walked about the room in his distress. He thrust up his
spectacles till they formed two gleaming globes on the shining firmament
of his baldness. Sometimes he thrust his hands behind him under his coat
tails, sometimes clasped them in front of him, wringing their plump
joints. ‘Sacrificed everything for it,’ he said, ‘made yourself a
beggar! and now to go and throw it all up. Oh, I can’t understand it, I
can’t understand it! there’s more in this than meets the eye.’
Anne did not speak--truth to tell, she could not--she was past all
histrionic effort. She propped herself up against the arm of the sofa,
close to which she was standing, and endured, there being nothing more
that she could do.
‘Why--why,’ cried Mr. Loseby, ‘child, couldn’t you have known your own
mind? A fine property! It was bad enough, however you chose to look at
it, but at least one thought there was something to set off against the
loss; now it’s all loss, no compensation at all. It’s enough to bring
your father back from his grave. And I wish there was something that
would,’ said the little lawyer vehemently; ‘I only wish there was
something that would. Shouldn’t I have that idiotical will changed as
fast as pen could go to paper! Why, there’s no reason for it now,
there’s no excuse for it. Oh, don’t speak to me, I can’t contain myself!
I tell you what, Anne,’ he cried, turning upon her, seizing one of the
hands with which she was propping herself up, and wringing it in his
own, ‘there’s one thing you can do, and only one thing, to make me
forgive you all the trouble you have brought upon yourself; and that is
to marry, straight off, your cousin, Heathcote Mountford, the best
fellow that ever breathed.’
‘I am afraid,’ said Anne faintly, ‘I cannot gratify you in that, Mr.
Loseby.’ She dropped away from him and from her support, and sank upon
the first chair. Fortunately he was so much excited himself, that he
failed to give the same attention to her looks.
‘That would make up for much,’ he said; ‘that would cover a multitude of
sins.’
Anne scarcely knew when he went away, but he did leave her at last
seated there, not venturing to move. The room was swimming about her,
dark, bare, half lighted, with its old painted walls. The prints hung
upon them seemed to be moving round her, as if they were the decorations
of a cabin at sea. She had got through her crisis very stoutly, without,
she thought, betraying herself to anybody. She said to herself vaguely,
always with a half-smile, as being her own spectator, and more or less
interested in the manner in which she acquitted herself, that every
spasm would probably be a little less violent, as she had heard was the
case in fevers. And, on the whole, the spasm like this, which prostrated
her entirely, and left her blind and dumb for a minute or two to come to
herself by degrees, was less wearing than the interval of dead calm and
pain that came between. This it was that took the blood from her cheeks.
She sat still for a few minutes in the old-fashioned arm-chair, held up
by its hard yet comforting support, with her back turned to the table
and her face to the half-open door. The very meaninglessness of her
position, thus reversed from all use and wont, gave a forlorn
completeness to her desolation--turned away from the table, turned away
from everything that was convenient and natural; her fortune given away
for the sake of her love, her love sacrificed for no reason at all, the
heavens and the earth all misplaced and turning round. When Anne came to
herself the half-smile was still upon her lip with which she had been
regarding herself, cast off on all sides, without compensation--losing
everything. Fate seemed to stand opposite to her, and the world and
life, in which, so far as appearance went, she had made such shipwreck.
She raised herself up a little in her chair and confronted them all.
Whatever they might do, she would not be crushed, she would not be
destroyed. The smile came more strongly to the curves of her mouth,
losing its pitiful droop. Looking at herself again, it was ludicrous; no
wonder Mr. Loseby was confounded. Ludicrous--that was the only word. To
sacrifice everything for one thing: to have stood against the world,
against her father, against everybody, for Cosmo: and then by-and-by to
be softly detached from Cosmo, by Cosmo himself, and allowed to drift,
having lost everything, having nothing. Ludicrous--that was what it was.
She gave a little laugh in the pang of revival. A touch with a redhot
iron might be as good as anything to stimulate failing forces and string
loose nerves. Ice does it--a plunge into an icy stream. Thus she mused,
getting confused in her thoughts. In the meantime Rose and Mrs.
Mountford were whispering with grave faces. ‘Is it a quarrel, or is it
for good? I hope you hadn’t anything to do with it,’ said the mother,
much troubled. ‘How should I have anything to do with it?’ said innocent
Rose; ‘but, all the same, I am sure it is for good.’