‘Your true friend in all circumstances,
‘Anne.’
There are some names which are regal in their mere simplicity of a few letters. This signature seemed like Anne Princess, or Anne Queen to the eyes of the old man who read it. He sat with the letter in his hands for some time after he had read to the end, not able to trust his voice or even his old eyes by any sudden movement. The writer all this time sat at her table moving about the papers. Some of the business letters which were lying there she read over. One little note she wrote a confused reply to, which had to be torn up afterwards. She waited—but not with any tremor—with a still sort of aching deep down in her heart, which seemed to answer instead of beating. How is it that there is so often actual pain and heaviness where the heart lies, to justify all our metaphorical references to it? The brain does not ache when our hearts are sore; and yet, they say our brains are all we have to feel with. Why should it be so true, so true, to say that one’s heart is heavy? Anne asked herself this question vaguely as she sat so quietly moving about her papers. Her head was as clear as yours or mine, but her heart—which, poor thing, means nothing but a bit of hydraulic machinery, and was pumping away just as usual—lay heavy in her bosom like a lump of lead.
‘My dear child, my dear child!’ the old Rector said at length, rising up hastily and stumbling towards her, his eyes dim with tears, not seeing his way. The circumstances were far too serious for his usual exclamation of ‘God bless my soul!’ which, being such a good wish, was more cheerful than the occasion required.
‘Do you think that is sufficient?’ said Anne, with a faint smile. ‘You see I am not ignorant of the foundations. Do you think that will do?’
‘My dear, my dear!’ Mr. Ashley said. He did not seem capable of saying any more.
With that Anne, feeling very like a woman at the stake—as if she were tied to her chair, at least, and found the ropes, though they cut her, some support—took the letter out of his hand and put it into an envelope, and directed it very steadily to ‘Cosmo Douglas, Esq., Middle Temple.’ ‘There, that is over,’ she said. The ropes were cutting, but certainly they were a support. The papers before her were all mixed up and swimming about, but yet she could see the envelope—four-square—an accomplished thing, settled and done with; as perhaps she thought her life too also was.
‘Anne,’ said the old Rector, in his trembling voice, ‘my dear! I know one far more worthy of you, who would give all the world to know that he might hope——’
She put out one hand and pushed herself away from the table. The giddiness went off, and the paper again became perceptible before her. ‘You don’t suppose that I—want anything to do with any man?’ she said, with an indignant break in her voice.
‘No, my dear; of course you do not. It would not be in nature if you did not scorn and turn from—— But, Anne,’ said the old Rector, ‘life will go on, do what you will to stand still. You cannot stand still, whatever you do. You will have to walk the same path as those that have gone before you. You need never marry at all, you will say. But after a while, when time has had its usual effect, and your grief is calmed and your mind matured, you will do like others that have gone before you. Do not scorn what I say. You are only twenty-two when all is done, and life is long, and the path is very dreary when you walk by yourself and there is no one with you on the way.’