Mrs. Oliphant

“ 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. ”

“ We were always sweethearts, always since we were little things. Him and me: we’ve always kept company. It’s as true—as true! Nobody can say different,’ cried the girl, with a fresh burst of angry tears. ‘You have seen him yourself, Miss Anne; and all the village knows. Ask aunt, if you don’t believe me; ask anyone. We’re as well known to be keeping company, as well known—as the Beeches on Mount Hill.’
‘That is not what I mean, Keziah. What I can’t believe is that you could make up your mind to—marry the man who is rich. What! leave the other whom you love, and marry one whom you don’t love! ”

“ Anne’s dreams of romantic toil, of the enthusiasm of hard work into which a man might rush for the sake of a woman he loved, and of the heroic life the two could lead, helping each other on to fame and fortune at the end, were to him as silly as a nursery tale. Men who made their own way like that, overcoming every obstacle and forcing their way to the heights of ambition, were men who did it by temperament, not by love, or for any sentimental motive. Cosmo knew that he was not the sort of man to venture on such a madness. ”

“ And then the story of Heathcote Mountford glanced across her mind. This was what had happened to him. His Italian princess, though she loved him, had done her duty, had married somebody of her own rank, had left the man she loved to bear the desertion as he could. Was it the women who did this, Anne asked herself, while the men were true? It was bitter to the girl to think so, for she was full of that visionary pride—born both of the chivalrous worship and the ceaseless jibes of which they have been the objects—which makes women so sensitive to all that touches their sex. ”

“ It does not matter which name comes first; it means one thing. Now that you are free, it is not Rose’s land-agent but mine that you ought to be. I am not your love,’ he said, a deep colour rising over his face, ‘but you are mine, Anne. And, though it sounds blasphemy to say so, love is not everything; life is something; and there is plenty for us to do—together.’
His voice broke off, full of emotion, and for a moment or two she could not command hers. Then she said, with a tremor in her tone—‘Heathcote—you are poor and I am poor. ”

“ To be able with one’s whole heart to consent and know that all they have done is well, to approve them not with blindness (though that is the silliest fable) of love, or its short-sightedness, but, on the contrary, with all its enlightenment in the eyes that cannot be content with less than excellence: to look on and see everything and approve—this, and not any personal transport or enjoyment, is heaven. Anne, standing by the window seeing the two figures come in sight, in a moment felt the gates of Paradise open before her, and was swept within them by a silent flood of joy. ”

“ Keziah, do you know what you are doing? A young girl like you, just my age— (but I am not so young, I have had so much to think of, and to go through) , to sell herself to an old man.’
‘Miss Anne, I’m not selling myself,’ said Keziah, with a little flush of resentment. ‘He hasn’t given me anything, not so much as a ring—I wouldn’t have it of him—I wouldn’t take not a silver thimble, though he’s always teasing—for fear you should say—— Whatever anyone may think, they can’t say as I’ve sold myself,’ said Keziah proudly. ”

“ She smiled at fate in her faith and happiness. Her head borne higher than usual, thrown back a little, her eyes shining, a smile, in which some fine contempt for outside trouble just touched the natural sweetness of her youth, to which, after all, it was so natural to take pleasure in all that she was about—all these signs and marks of unusual commotion in her mind, of the excitement of a crisis about her, struck the spectators, especially the keen-sighted ones below stairs. ‘It can’t be like we think. She’s the conquering hero, Miss Anne is. ”

“ Anne detached her arm with a little energy from his. ‘Why should you torment me?’ she cried. ‘An honourable man?—is it honour, then, to prefer, as you said yourself, one’s money to one’s life?’
‘My dear child, money is always there, it is always to be relied upon; it is a strong back, whatever happens—whereas this, that you call life——!’ cried Mr. Loseby, spreading out his hands and lifting up his eyebrows; he had chosen the very image she had herself used when writing to her lover. ”

“ I will not bind you against your will—that is out of the question, that is the one thing that is impossible. I will never give up hope that some change may come in the circumstances or in your resolution, till—something happens to show me that no change can come. Till then, I do not call myself your friend, for that would be folly. I am more than your friend, or I am nothing—but I will sign myself yours, as you are, without any doubt, the woman whom I will always love, and admire, and reverence, beyond any woman in the world.
‘Cosmo Douglas.’ ”

“ 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. ”

“ If this cowardly weakness was common to women, then no wonder that men despised them; then, indeed, they must be inferior creatures, incapable of real nobleness, incapable of true understanding. For a moment Anne felt that she despised and hated her own kind; to be so poor, so weak, so miserable; to persuade the nobler, stronger being by their side that they loved him, and then weakly to abandon him; to shrink away from him for fear of a parent’s scolding or the loss of money, or comfort, or luxury! What indignation Anne poured forth upon these despicable creatures! ”

“ When the subject of a discussion suddenly enters the place in which it has been going on, it is strange how foolish everybody looks, and what a sense of wrong-doing is generally diffused in the atmosphere. They had been three together to talk, and she was but one. Cosmo, who, whatever he might do, or hesitate to do, had always the sense in him of what was best, the perception of moral beauty and ideal grace which the others wanted, looked at her as she came across the room with such compunctious tenderness in his eyes as the truest lover in existence could not have surpassed. ”

“ How can a woman help that who has no opening out in her life, who is always at the first chapter?’
‘Dear me, Rector,’ said Mrs. Mountford, ‘I did not know you were such an advocate of marriage.’
‘Yes, I am a great advocate of marriage: without it we all get narrow. We want new interests to carry on our life; we want to expand in our children, and widen out instead of closing in.’
‘But Fanny has not closed in,’ said Anne, with a half malicious smile, which had a quiver of pain in it: for she knew his meaning almost better than he himself did. ”

“ He shook his head. ‘May I bring Edward to see you in Park Lane? Edward is my other life,’ he said, ‘and you will see how little strength there is in that.’
‘But, Cousin Heathcote, you must not speak so. Why should you? You are young; life is all before a man at your age.’
‘Who told you that?’ he said with a smile. ‘That is one of your feminine delusions. An old fellow of thirty-five, when he is an old fellow, is as old as Methuselah, Anne. He has seen everything and exhausted everything. This is the true age at which all is vanity. ”

“ And it isn’t myself neither,’ said Keziah. ‘I should be ashamed to make a fuss for me. I have always told you that, Miss Anne. I hope I’m not one as would go against my duty. It’s Jim I’ve always thought upon. Men folks are more wilful than women. They are more used to get their own way. If he was to go to the bad, Miss Anne, and me the cause of it——’
Here Keziah broke down, and wept without any further attempt to restrain her tears.
‘I don’t understand you,’ cried Anne impetuously. ‘You pretend to be sorry for him, and this is how you treat him. But leave Jim to take care of himself, Keziah. ”

“ Mountford, laying down her work upon her lap with a benevolent smile. ‘Oh, Anne, my dear child, at your age we are always told that beauty is skin-deep, but we never believe it. And I am not one that would say very much in that respect. I like handsome people myself; but dear, dear, as life goes on, if you have nothing but looks to trust to——!’
‘I assure you,’ said Anne, vehemently, succeeding after two or three attempts to break in, ‘I should despise myself if I thought that beauty was anything. It is almost as bad as money. ”

“ But yet Anne and Rose contrived to give as much trouble to Mr. and Mrs. Mountford as if they had been Jack and Tom. These good people had lived for about a dozen years in their rural mansion like the cabbages in the kitchen garden. Nothing had disturbed them. There had been no call upon their reasoning faculties, no strain upon their affections: everything had gone on quite tranquilly and comfortably, with that quiet persistence of well-being which makes trouble seem impossible. They had even said to themselves with sighs, that to have only girls was after all good for something. ”

“ He scarcely addressed her at all during the time of dinner, and he never, she perceived, broached to her stepmother or sister the question which he had discussed with her with so much vehemence. At dinner Anne felt herself at leisure—she was able to look at him and observe him, as she had never done before. He had a very handsome face, more like the ideal hero of a book than anything that is usually met with in the world. His eyes were large and dark; his nose straight; his hair dark, too, and framing his face as in a picture. ‘I do not like handsome men,’ Anne said to herself. ”

“ A woman might weep her heart out over such a fate, or she might smile as Anne smiled, pale, with a woful merriment, a tremulous pathetic scorn, an indignation half lost in that sentiment which made Othello cry out, ‘The pity of it! The pity of it!’ Oh, the pity of it! that such things should be; that a woman should give so much for so little—and a man return so little for so much. Sometimes, when she was by herself, this smile would come up unawares,{447} a scarcely perceptible gleam upon her pale countenance. ”

“ It is inconceivable that a just man should be turned into an unjust one by that power of making a will. He was a good man,’ Charley added, with a little gulp of feeling. ‘I have known him since I was that high. He never talked very much about it, but he never was hard upon anyone. I don’t think I ever knew him to be hard on anyone. He said little, but I am sure he was a good man at heart.’
Heathcote Mountford did not make any answer; he replied by another question: ‘Mr. Douglas is a friend of yours, I hear?’
‘Oh, yes, he is a friend of mine: it was I—we are such fools—that brought him. ”

“ The sun grew warm again, and the air delicious as before. Two on one side, and all the world on the other, is not that a perfectly fair division? So long as there are two—if there should come to be but one, then the aspect of everything is changed. Anne’s hands clasped between two bigger ones all but disappeared from view. It would be hard, very hard, to slip out of that hold; and it was a minute or two before she regained possession of what Cosmo had called the vulgarer symbols, words. Without recurrence to their aid between people who love each other, how much can be said! ”

“ A man in evening dress very often looks his best: but he does not look romantic—he does not look like a hero—the details of his appearance are too much like those of everybody else. Anne, looking at him breathlessly, trying to get a satisfactory impression of him when the light leaped up for a moment, found him too vigorous, too large, too life-like for her fastidious fancy; but Rose was made perfectly happy by the appearance of a man with whom it would not be at all necessary, she thought, to be upon stilts. ”

“ Mr. Loseby came over from Hunston, as pale as he was rosy on ordinary occasions, and with a self-reproach that was half pathetic, half ludicrous. ‘I said every word of that new will of his would be a nail in his coffin, God forgive me,’ he said. ‘How was I to know? A man should never take upon himself to prophesy. God knows what a murdering villain he feels if it chances to come true.’
‘But nothing you said could have made the horse put his foot in that rabbit-hole,’ Heathcote said.
‘That is true, that is true,’ said the little lawyer: and then he began the same plaint again. ”

“ He did not wish even to lose Charley Ashley’s regard, and become a mean and discredited person in the Curate’s eyes: how much more in Anne’s, whom he loved! A panic took possession of Cosmo. A dishonourable lover, a betrayer, was as much an anachronism as a cruel father; it was a thing out of date. Men of his stamp broke no vows. They might be disinclined to heroic measures generally, and above all to the uncomfortable heroism of dragging down a woman into poverty, taking advantage of her inexperience, and marrying in the face of every suggestion of prudence. ”

“ On the whole, perhaps, there was more fellowship between Keziah and Rose than the little maid felt with the more serious Anne, who was so much older than herself, though the same age.
‘I would not have married Saymore if I had been you,’ said Rose. ‘You will never know anything more than Hunston all your life now, Keziah. You should have come with me into the world. At Mount, or in a little country place, how could you ever see anybody? You have had no choice at all—Jim, whom you never could have married, and now old Saymore. ”

“ Mountford’s obstinate adherence to a determination which he could not but know to be unjust and cruel—and of many more of the cruelties and eccentricities that people perpetrate by their wills—lay in the fact that, after all, though he took so much trouble to make his will, he had not the slightest intention of dying. If a man does not die, a monstrous will is no more than an angry letter—a thing which wounds and vexes, perhaps, and certainly is intended to wound and vex, and which suffices to blow off a great deal of the steam of family quarrels ”