In Trust: The Story of a Lady and Her Lover

by Mrs. Oliphant

‘But Fanny has not closed in,’ said Anne, with a half malicious smile, which had a quiver of pain in it: for she knew his meaning almost better than he himself did.

‘No, no, Fanny is an excellent girl. She is everything that can be desired. But you must marry, Anne, you must marry,’ he said, in a lower tone, coming round to the back of her chair. There was doubt and alarm in his eyes. He saw in her that terror of single-minded men, an old maid. Women have greatly got over the fear of that term of reproach. But men who presumably know their own value best; and take more deeply to heart the loss to every woman of their own sweet society, have a great horror of it. And Anne seemed just the sort of person who would not marry, having been once disgusted and disappointed, Mr. Ashley concluded within himself, with much alarm. He was even so far carried away by his feelings as to burst forth upon his excellent son and Curate, one evening in the late autumn, when they were returning together from the Dower-house. They had been walking along for some time in silence upon the dusty, silent road, faintly lighted by some prevision of a coming moon, though she was not visible. Perhaps the same thoughts were in both their minds, and this mutual sympathy warmed the elder to an overflow of the pent-up feeling. ‘Man alive!’ he cried out suddenly, turning upon Charley with a kind of ferocity, which startled the Curate as much as if a pistol had been presented at him. ‘Man alive! can’t you go in for her? you’re better than nothing if you’re not very much. What is the good of you, if you can’t try, at least try, to please her? She’s sick of us all, and not much wonder; but, bless my soul, you’re young, and why can’t you make an effort? why can’t you try? that’s what I would like to know,’ the Rector cried.

Charley was taken entirely by surprise. He gasped in his agitation, ‘I—try? But she would not look at me. What have I to offer her?’ he said, with a groan.

Upon which the Rector repeated that ungracious formula. ‘You may not be very much, but you’re better than nothing. No,’ the father said, shaking his head regretfully, ‘we are none of us very much to look at; but, Lord bless my soul, think of Anne, Anne, settling down as a single woman: an old maid!’ he cried, with almost a shriek of dismay. The two men were both quite subdued, broken down by the thought. They could not help feeling in their hearts that to be anybody’s wife would be better than that.

But when they had gone on for about half an hour, and the moon had risen silvery over the roofs of the cottages, showing against the sky the familiar and beloved spire of their own village church, Charley, who had said nothing all the time, suddenly found a voice. He said, in his deep and troubled bass, as if his father had spoken one minute ago instead of half an hour, ‘Heathcote Mountford is far more likely to do something with her than I.’

‘Do you think so?’ cried the Rector, who had not been, any more than his son, distracted from the subject, and was as unconscious as Charley was of the long pause. ‘She does not know him as she knows you.’

‘That is just the thing,’ said the Curate, with a sigh. ‘She has known me all her life, and why should she think any more about me? I am just Charley, that is all, a kind of a brother; but Mountford is a stranger. He is a clever fellow, cleverer than I am; and, even if he were not,’ said poor Charley, with a tinge of bitterness, ‘he is new, and what he says sounds better, for they have not heard it so often before. And then he is older, and has been all about the world; and besides—well,’ the Curate broke off with a harsh little laugh, ‘that is about all, sir. He is he, and I am me—that’s all.’

‘If that is what you think,’ said the Rector, who had listened to all this with very attentive ears, pausing, as he took hold of the upper bar of his own gate, and raising a very serious countenance to his son, ‘if this is really what you think, Charley—you may have better means of judging—we must push Mountford. Anything would be better,’ he said, solemnly, ‘than to see Anne an old maid. And she’s capable of doing that,’ he added, laying his hand upon his son’s in the seriousness of the moment. ‘She is capable of doing it, if we don’t mind.’

Charley felt the old hand chill him like something icy and cold. And he did not go in with his father, but took a pensive turn round the garden in the moonlight. No, she would never walk with him there. It was too presumptuous a thought. Never would Anne be the mistress within, never would it be permitted to Charley to call her forth into the moonlight in the sweet domestic sanctity of home. His heart stirred within him for a moment, then sank, acknowledging the impossibility. He breathed forth a vast sigh as he lit the evening cigar, which his father did not like him to smoke in his presence, disliking the smell, like the old-fashioned person he was. The Curate walked round and round the grass-plats, sadly enjoying this gentle indulgence. When he tossed the end away, after nearly an hour of silent musing, he said to himself, ‘Mountford might do it,’ with another sigh. It was hard upon Charley. A stranger had a better chance than himself, a man that was nothing to her, whom she had known for a few months only. But so it was: and it was noble of him that he wished Mountford no manner of harm.

This was the state of affairs between the Rectory and the Dower-house, which, fortunately, was on the very edge of Lilford parish, and therefore could, without any searchings of heart on the part of the new Vicar there, permit the attendance of the ladies at the church which they loved. When Willie was home at Christmas his feet wore a distinct line on the road. He was always there, which his brother thought foolish and weak, since nothing could ever come of it. Indeed, if anything did exasperate the Curate, it was the inordinate presumption and foolishness of Willie, who seemed really to believe that Rose would have something to say to him. Rose! who was the rich one of the house, and whose eyes were not magnanimous to observe humble merit like those of her sister. It was setting that little thing up, Charley felt, with hot indignation, as if she were superior to Anne. But then Willie was always more complacent, and thought better of himself than did his humble-minded brother. As for Mr. Ashley himself, he never intermitted his anxious watch upon Anne. She was capable of it. No doubt she was just the very person to do it. The Rector could not deny that she had provocation. If a woman had behaved to him like that, he himself, he felt, might have turned his back upon the sex, and refused to permit himself to become the father of Charley and Willie. That was putting the case in a practical point of view. The Rector felt a cold dew burst out upon his forehead, when it gleamed across him with all the force of a revelation, that in such a case Charley and Willie might never have been. He set out on the spot to bring this tremendous thought before Anne, but stopped short and came back after a moment depressed and toned down. How could he point out to Anne the horrible chance that perhaps two such paragons yet unborn might owe their non-existence (it was difficult to put it into words even) to her? He could not say it; and thus lost out of shyness or inaptness, he felt (for why should there have been any difficulty in stating it?), by far the best argument that had yet occurred to him. But though he relinquished his argument he did not get over his anxiety. Anne an old maid! it was a thought to move heaven and earth.