CHAPTER XXIX.
CHARLEY INTERFERES.
Heathcote Mountford, however, notwithstanding the dulness and the dismal weather, and all the imperfections of the incomplete household, continued at Mount. The long blanks of country life, nothing happening from the arrival of one post to another, no stir of life about, only the unbroken stillness of the rain or the sunshine, the good or bad weather, the one tempting him out, the other keeping him within, were all novelties, though of the heavy kind, and gave him a kind of amused-spectator consciousness of the tedium, rather than any suffering from it. He was not so easily affected as many people would be by the circumstances of external life, and knowing that he could at any moment go back to his den at the Albany, he took the much deeper seclusion of Mount as a sort of ‘retreat,’ in which he could look out upon the before and after, and if he sometimes ‘pined for what was not,’ yet could do it unenviously and unbitterly, wondering at rather than objecting to the strange misses and blunders of life. Mr. Loseby, who had tutored Anne in her duties, did the same for Heathcote, showing him by what means he could ‘take an interest’ in the dwellers upon his land, so as to be of some use to them. And he rode about the country with the land-agent, and became aware, and became proud as he became aware, of the character of his own possessions, of the old farmhouses, older than Mount itself, and the old cottages, toppling to their ruin, among which were many that Anne had doomed. Wherever he went he heard of what Miss Anne had done, and settled to do. The women in the condemned cottages told him the improvements she had promised, and he, in most cases, readily undertook to carry out these promises, notwithstanding his want of means. ‘They’re doing it at Lilford, where Miss Anne has been and given her orders,’ said the women. ‘I don’t know why there should be differences made. We’re as good every bit as the Lilford folks.’ ‘But you have not got Miss Anne,’ said Heathcote. And then there would be an outburst of lamentations, interrupted by anxious questioning. ‘Why haven’t we got Miss Anne?—is it true as all the money has been left away from her?’ Heathcote had a great many questions of this kind to answer, and soon began to feel that he himself was the supposed culprit to whom the estate had been ‘left away.’ ‘I am supposed to be your supplanter,’ he wrote to Anne herself, ‘and I feel your deputy doing your work for you. Dear Lady of Mount, send me your orders. I will carry them out to the best of my ability. I am poor, and not at all clever about the needs of the estate, but I think, don’t you think? that the great Mr. Bulstrode, who is so good as to be my agent, is something of a bully, and does not by any means do his spiriting gently. What do you think? You are not an ignoramus, like me.’ This letter Anne answered very fully, and it produced a correspondence between them which was a great pleasure to Heathcote, and not only a pleasure, but in some respects a help, too. She approved greatly of his assumption of his natural duties upon his own shoulders, and kindly encouraged him ‘not to mind’ the bullying of the agent, the boorishness of Farmer Rawlins, and the complaints of the Spriggs. In this matter of the estate Anne felt the advantage of her experience. She wrote to him in a semi-maternal way, understanding that the information she had to give placed her in a position of superiority, while she gave it, at least. Heathcote was infinitely amused by these pretensions; he liked to be schooled by her, and made her very humble replies; but the burden of all his graver thoughts was still that regret expressed by Mr. Loseby, Why, why had he not made his appearance a year before? But now it was too late.
Thus the winter went on. The Mountfords had gone abroad. They had been in all the places where English families go while their crape is still fresh, to Paris and Cannes, and into Italy, trying, as Mrs. Mountford said, ‘the effect of a little change.’ And they all liked it, it is needless to deny. They were so unaccustomed to use their wings that the mere feeling of the first flight, the wild freedom and sense of boundless action and power over themselves filled them with pleasure. They were not to come back till the summer was nearly over, going to Switzerland for the hot weather, when Italy became too warm. They had not intended, when they set out, to stay so long, but indeed it was nearly a year from the period of Mr. Mountford’s death when they came home. They did not return to Park Lane, nor to any other settled abode, but went to one of the many hotels near Heathcote’s chambers, to rest for a few days before they settled what they were to do for the autumn; for it was Mrs. Mountford’s desire to go ‘abroad’ again for the winter, staying only some three months at home. When the little world about Mount heard of this, they were agitated by various feelings—desire to get them back alternating in the minds of the good people with indignation at the idea of their renewed wanderings, which were all put down to the frivolity of Mrs. Mountford; and a continually growing wonder and consternation as to the future of Anne. ‘She has no right to keep a poor man hanging on so long, when there can be no possible reason for it; when it would really be an advantage for her to have someone to fall back upon,’ Miss Woodhead said, in righteous indignation over her friend’s extraordinary conduct—extraordinary as she thought it. ‘Rose has her mother to go with her. And I think poor Mr. Douglas is being treated very badly for my part. They ought to come home here, and stay for the three months, and get the marriage over, among their own people.’ Fanny Woodhead was considered through all the three adjacent parishes to be a person of great judgment, and the Rector, for one, was very much impressed with this suggestion. ‘I think Fanny’s idea should be acted upon. I think it certainly should be acted on,’ he said. ‘The year’s mourning for her father will be over, if that is what they are waiting for—and look at all the correspondence she has, and the trouble. She wants somebody to help her. Someone should certainly suggest to Anne that it would be a right thing to follow Fanny Woodhead’s advice.’
Heathcote, who, though he had allowed himself a month of the season, was back again in Mount, with a modest household gathered round him, and every indication of a man ‘settling down,’ concurred in this counsel, so far as to write, urging very warmly that Mount should be their head-quarters while they remained in England. Mr. Loseby was of opinion that the match was one which never would come off at all, an idea which moved several bosoms with an unusual tremor. There was a great deal of agitation altogether on the subject among the little circle, which felt that the concerns of the Mountfords were more or less concerns of their own; and when it was known that Charley Ashley, who was absent on his yearly holiday, was to see the ladies on his way through London, there was a general impression that something would come of it—that he would be able to set their duty before them, or to expedite the settlement of affairs in one way or another. The Curate himself said nothing to anyone, but he had a very serious purpose in his mind. He it was who had introduced these two to each other; his friendship had been the link which had connected Douglas—so far as affairs had yet gone, very disastrously—with the woman who had been the adoration of poor Charley’s own life. He had resigned her, having neither hopes nor rights to resign, to his friend, with a generous abandonment, and had been loyal to Cosmo as to Anne, though at the cost of no little suffering to himself. But, if it were possible that Anne herself was being neglected, then Charley felt that he had a right to a word in the matter. He was experimenting sadly in French seaside amusements with his brother at Boulogne, when the ladies returned to England. Charley and Willie were neither of them great in French. They had begun by thinking all the humours of the bathing place ‘fun,’ and laughing mightily at the men in their bathing dresses, and feeling scandalised at their presence among the ladies; but, after a few days, they had become very much bored, and felt the drawback of having ‘nothing to do;’ so that, when they heard that the Mountfords had crossed the Channel and were in London, the two young men made haste to follow. It was the end of July when everybody was rushing out of town, and only a small sprinkling of semi-fashionable persons were to be seen in the scorched and baked parks. The Mountfords were understood to be in town only for a few days. It was all that any lady who respected herself could imagine possible at this time of the year.
‘I suppose they’ll be changed,’ Willie said to his brother, as they made their way to the hotel. ‘I have never seen them since all these changes came about; that is, I have never seen Rose. I suppose Rose won’t be Rose now, to me at least. It is rather funny that such a tremendous change should come about between two times of seeing a person whom you have known all your life.’ By ‘rather funny’ Willie meant something much the reverse of amusing: but that is the way of English youth. He, too, had entertained his little dreams, which had been of a more substantial character than his brother’s; for Willie was destined for the bar, and had, or believed himself to have, chances much superior to those of a country clergyman. And according to the original disposition of Mr. St. John Mountford’s affairs, a rising young fellow at the bar, with Willie Ashley’s hopes and connections, would have been no very bad match for little Rose. This it was that made him feel it was ‘funny.’ But still his heart was not gone together in one great sweep out of his breast, like Charley’s. And he went to see his old friends with a little quickening of his pulse, yet a composed determination ‘to see if it was any use.’ If it seemed to him that there was still an opening, Willie was not afraid of Rose’s fortune, and did not hesitate to form ulterior plans; and he stood on this great vantage ground that, if he found it was not ‘any use,’ he had no intention of breaking his heart.
When they went in, however, to the hotel sitting-room in which the Mountfords were, they found Rose and her mother with their bonnets on, ready to go out, and there were but a few minutes for conversation. Rose was grown and developed so that her old adorer scarcely recognised her for the first minute. She was in a white dress, profusely trimmed with black, and made in a fashion to which the young men were unaccustomed, the latest Parisian fashion, which they did not understand, indeed, but which roused all their English conservatism of feeling, as much as if they had understood it. ‘Oh, how nice of you to come to see us!’ Rose cried. ‘Are you really passing through London, and were you at Boulogne when we came through? I never could have imagined you in France, either the one or the other. How did you get on with the talking? You could not have any fun in a place unless you understood what people were saying. Mamma, I don’t think we ought to wait for Mr. Douglas; it is getting so late.’
‘Here is Mr. Douglas,’ said Mrs. Mountford; ‘he is always punctual. Anne is not going with us; she has so much to do—there is quite a packet of letters from Mr. Loseby. If you would rather be let off going with us, Mr. Douglas, you have only to say so; I am sure we can do very well by ourselves.’
But at this suggestion Rose pouted, a change of expression which was not lost upon the anxious spectators.
‘I came for the express purpose of going with you,’ said Cosmo; ‘why should I be turned off now?’
‘Oh, I only thought that because of Anne——; but of course you will see Anne after. Will you all, like good people, come back and dine, as we are going out now? No, Charley, I will not, indeed, take any refusal. I want to hear all about Mount, dear Mount—and what Heathcote Mountford is doing. Anne wishes us to go to Hunston; but I don’t know that I should like to be so near without being at Mount.’