‘Mr. Ashley,’ said Anne, with a shiver running over her, ‘don’t let us talk of it any more.’
‘As you please, as you please, my dear,’ said the old man; but it was with reluctance that he let her go; he had a hundred questions to ask. He wanted to have satisfied himself about Cosmo, why he had done it, how he had done it, and everything about it. The Rector was confused. He remembered the letter to Cosmo, which she had given him to read, and which had bewildered him at the time by its apparent calm. And yet now she seemed to mind! he did not understand it. He wanted to hear everything about it, but she would not let him ask. His questions, which he was not permitted to give vent to, lay heavy upon his heart as he went back. ‘She would not open her mind to me,’ he said to Charley. ‘Whatever has happened, it must have been a comfort to her to open her mind. That is what is making her so pale. To shut it all up in her own heart cannot be good for her. But she would not open her mind to me.’
‘It would have been difficult to do it with all those people present,’ the Curate said, and this gave his father a little consolation. For his own part Charley had never been so out of spirits. So long as she was happy, what did it matter? he had said so often to himself. And now she was no longer happy and there was nothing anyone could do to make her so. He for one had to stand by and consent to it, that Anne should suffer. To suffer himself would have been a hundred times more easy, but he could not do anything. He could not punish the man who had been at the bottom of it all. He could not even permit himself the gratification of telling that fellow what he thought of him. He must be dumb and inactive, whatever happened, for Anne’s sake. While the good Rector told out his regrets and disappointment, and distress because of Anne’s silence, and certainty that to open her heart would do her good, the Curate was wondering sadly over this one among the enigmas of life. He himself, and Heathcote Mountford, either of them, would have given half they had (all they had in the world, Charley put it) to be permitted to be Anne’s companion and comforter through the world. But Anne did not want either of them. She wanted Cosmo, who would not risk his own comfort by taking the hand she held out to him, or sacrifice a scrap of his own life for hers. How strange it was, and yet so common—to be met with everywhere! And nobody could do anything to mend it. He scarcely ventured to allow, when he was in his parish, that there were a great many things of this kind which it was impossible to him to understand: he had to be very sure that everything that befell his poor people was ‘for their good;’ but in the recesses of his own bosom he allowed himself more latitude. He did not see how this, for instance, could be for anyone’s good. But there is very little consolation in such a view, even less than in the other way of looking at things. And he was very ‘low,’ sad to the bottom of his good heart. He had not said anything to Anne. He had only ventured to press her hand, perhaps a little more warmly than usual, and he had felt, poor fellow, that for that silent sympathy she had not been grateful. She had drawn her hand away impatiently; she had refused to meet his eye. She had not wanted any of his sympathy. Perhaps it was natural, but it was a little hard to bear.
Rose had her own grievances while all this was going on. If her sister, worked into high irritation by the questions and significant looks to which she had been exposed, had found it almost intolerable to live through the succession of visits, and to meet everybody with genial indifference, and give an account of all they had been doing, and all that they were about to do—Rose was much displeased, for her part, to find herself set down again out of the importance to which she had attained, and made into the little girl of old, the young sister, the nobody whom no one cared to notice particularly while Anne was by. It was not Rose’s fault, certainly, that her father had made that will which changed the positions of herself and her sister: but Lady Meadowlands, for one, had always treated her as if it was her fault. Even that, however, was less disrespectful than the indifference of the others, who made no account of her at all, and to whom she was still little Rose, her sister’s shadow—nothing at all to speak of in her own person. They did not even notice her dress, which she herself thought a masterpiece, and which, was certainly such a work of art as had never been seen in Hunston before. And when all these people went away, Rose, for her part, sought Mrs. Keziah, who was always ready to admire. She was so condescending that she went downstairs to the parlour in which old Saymore and his young wife spent most of their lives, and went in for a talk. It was a thing Rose was fond of doing, to visit her humble friends and dependents in their own habitations. But there were a great many reasons why she should do what she liked in Saymore’s house: first, because she was one of ‘his young ladies’ whom he had taken care of all their lives; second, because she was an important member of the party who were bringing success and prosperity to Saymore’s house. She was queen of all that was in the ‘Black Bull.’ Miss Anne might be first in Saymore’s allegiance, as was the case with all the old friends of the family; but, on the other hand, Anne was not a person to skip about through the house and come in for a talk to the parlour, as Rose did lightly, with no excuse at all. ‘I am so sick of all those people,’ she cried; ‘I wish they would not all come and be sympathetic; I don’t want any one to be sympathetic! Besides, it is such a long, long time since. One must have found some way of living, some way of keeping on, since then. I wish they would not be so awfully sorry for us. I don’t think now that even mamma is so sorry for herself.’
‘Your mamma is a Christian, Miss Rose,’ said old Saymore, getting up, though with a little reluctance, from his comfortable arm-chair as she came in. ‘She knows that what can’t be cured must be endured; but, at the same time, it is a great pleasure and an honour to see all the carriages of the gentry round my door. I know for certain, Miss Rose, that Lady Meadowlands never takes out that carriage for anybody below a title, which shows the opinion she has of our family. Your papa was wonderfully respected in the county. It was a great loss; a loss to everything. There is not a gentleman left like him for the trouble he used to take at Quarter Sessions and all that. It was a dreadful loss to the county, not to speak of his family. And a young man, comparatively speaking,’ said Saymore, with a respectful sigh.
‘Poor dear papa! I am sure I felt it as much as anyone—at the time,’ said Rose; ‘don’t you remember, Keziah, how awful that week was? I did nothing but cry; but for a young man, Saymore, you know that is nonsense. He was not the least young; he was as old, as old——’
Here Rose stopped and looked at him, conscious that the words she had intended to say were, perhaps, not quite such as her companions would like to hear. Keziah was sitting by, sewing. She might have taken it amiss if her young mistress had held up this new husband of hers as a Methuselah. Rose looked from one to the other, confused, yet hardly able to keep from laughing. And probably old Saymore divined what she was going to say.
‘Not old, Miss Rose,’ he said, with the steady pertinacity which had always been one of his characteristics; ‘a gentleman in the very prime of life. When you’ve lived virtuous and sober, saving your presence, Miss, and never done nothing to wear yourself out, sixty is nothing but the prime of life. Young fools, as has nothing but their youth to recommend them, may say different, but from them as has a right to give an opinion, you’ll never hear nothing else said. He was as healthy a man, your late dear papa, as ever I wish to see; and as hearty, and as full of life. And all his wits about him, Miss. I signed a document not longer than the very last day before he was taken—me and John Gardiner—and he was as clear as any judge, that’s what he was. “It’s not my will,” he said to me, “Saymore—or you couldn’t sign, as you’re one of the legatees; for a bit of a thing like this it don’t matter.” I never see him more joky nor more pleasant, Miss Rose. He wasn’t joky not in his ordinary, but that day he was poking his fun at you all the time. “It’s a small bit of a thing to want witnessing, ain’t it?” he said; “and it’s not a new will, for you couldn’t witness that, being both legatees.”’
Rose was a good deal startled by this speech. Suddenly there came before her a vision of the sealed-up packet in Anne’s desk—the seals of which she had been so anxious to break. ‘What a funny thing that he should have made you sign a paper!’ she said.
‘Bless you, they’re always having papers to sign,’ said Saymore; ‘sometimes it’s one thing, sometimes it’s another. A deal of money is a deal of trouble, Miss Rose. You don’t know that as yet, seeing as you’ve got Miss Anne to do everything for you.’