‘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.’