Anne did not say anything. It was her policy and her safety not to say anything. She had come to herself. But the past time had been one of great struggle and trial, and she was worn out by it. After a while Mr. Ashley came to see that the words of wisdom he was speaking fell upon deaf ears. He talked a great deal, and there was much wisdom and experience and the soundest good sense in what he said, only it dropped half-way, as it were, on the wing, on the way to her, and never got to Anne.
He went away much subdued, just as a servant from the hotel came to get the letters for the post. Then the Rector left Anne, and went to the other part of the house to pay his respects to the other ladies. They had been out all the morning, and now had come back to luncheon.
‘Mr. Douglas is always so good,’ Mrs. Mountford said. ‘Fortunately it is the long vacation; but I suppose you know that; and he can give us almost all his time, which is so good of him. It was only the afternoons in the winter that we could have. And he tells Rose everything. I tell her Mr. Douglas is more use to her than any governess she ever had.’
‘Is Anne never of your parties?’ the Rector said.
‘Oh, Anne! she is always busy about something, or else she says she is busy. I am sure she need not shut herself up as she does. I wish you would speak to her. You are an old friend, and always had a great influence over Anne. She is getting really morose—quite morose—if you will take my opinion,’ said Mrs. Mountford. Rose was almost as emphatic. ‘I don’t know what she has against me. I cannot seal myself up as she does, can I, Mr. Ashley? No, she will never come with us. It is so tiresome; but I suppose when we are in the country, which she is always so fond of, that things will change.’
Just then Anne came into the room softly, in her usual guise. Mr. Ashley looked at her half in alarm. She had managed to dismiss from her voice and manner every vestige of agitation. What practice she must have had, the Rector said to himself, to be able to do it.
‘I hope you have had a pleasant morning,’ she said. She did not avoid Cosmo, but gave him her hand as simply as to the rest. She addressed him little, but still did not hesitate to address him, and once the Rector perceived her looking at him unawares with eyes full of the deepest compassion. Why was she so pitiful? Cosmo did not seem to like the look. He was wistful and anxious. Already there was something, a warning of evil, in the air.
CHAPTER XXXI.
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.’