In Trust: The Story of a Lady and Her Lover

by Mrs. Oliphant

‘And another thing,’ said Rose; ‘are you going to tell anybody? Mamma says I am not to tell; but do you think it is right to go to the Meadowlands’ party, and go on talking and laughing with everybody just the same, and you an engaged girl? Somebody else might fall in love with you! I don’t think it is a right thing to do.’

‘People have not been in such a hurry to fall in love with me,’ said Anne; ‘but, Rose, I don’t think this is a subject that mamma would think at all suited for you.’

‘Oh, mamma talked to me about it herself; she said she wished you would give it up, Anne. She said it never could come to anything, for papa will never consent.’

‘Papa may never consent; but yet it will come to something,’ said Anne, with a gleam in her eyes. ‘That is enough, Rose; that is enough. I am going in, whatever you may do.’

‘But, Anne! just one thing more; if papa does not consent, what can you do? Mamma says he could never afford to marry if you had nothing, and you would have nothing if papa refused. It is only your money that you would have to marry on; and if you had no money—— So what could you do?’

‘I wish, when mamma speaks of my affairs, she would speak to me,’ said Anne, with natural indignation. She was angry and indignant; and the words made, in spite of herself, a painful commotion within her. Money! what had money to do with it? She had felt the injustice, the wrong of her father’s threat; but it had not occurred to her that this could really have any effect upon her love; and though she had been annoyed to find that Cosmo would not treat the subject with seriousness, or believe in the gravity of Mr. Mountford’s menace, still she had been entirely satisfied that his apparent carelessness was the right way for him to consider it. He thought it of no importance, of course. He made jokes about it; laughed at it; beguiled her out of her gravity on the subject. Of course! what was it to him whether she was rich or poor; what did Cosmo care? So long as she loved him, was not that all he was thinking of? What would she have minded had she been told that he had nothing? Not one straw—not one farthing! But when this little prose personage, with her more practical views of the question, rubbed against Anne, there did come to her, quite suddenly, a little enlightenment. It was like one chill, but by no means depressing, ray of daylight bursting in through a crevice into the land of dreams. If he had no money, and she no money, what then? Then, notwithstanding all generosity and nobleness of affection, money certainly would have something to do with it. It would count among the things to be taken into consideration; count dolefully, in so far as it would keep them apart; yet count with stimulating force as a difficulty to be surmounted, an obstacle to be got the better of. When Mrs. Mountford put her head out of the window, and called them to come in out of the falling dews, Anne went upstairs very seriously, and shut the door of her room, and sat down in her favourite chair to think it out. Fathers and mothers are supposed to have an objection to long engagements; but girls, at all events at the outset of their career, do not entertain the same objection. Anne was still in the dreamy condition of youthful rapture, transported out of herself by the new light that had come into the world, so that the indispensable sequence of marriage did not present itself to her as it does to the practical-minded. It was a barrier of fact with which, in the meantime, she had nothing to do. She was not disappointed or depressed, because that was not the matter in question. It would come in time, no doubt, as the afternoon follows the morning, and autumn summer, but who would change the delights of the morning for the warmer, steady glory of three o’clock? though that also is very good in its way. She was quite resigned to the necessity of waiting, and not being married all at once. The contingency neither alarmed nor distressed her. Its immediate result was one which, indeed, most courses of thought produced in her mind at the present moment. If I had but thought, of that, she said to herself, before he went away! She would have liked to talk over the money question with Cosmo; to discuss it in all its bearings; to hear him say how little it mattered, and to plan how they could do without it; not absolutely without it, of course; but Anne’s active mind leaped at once at the thought of those systems of domestic economy which would be something quite new to study, which had not yet tempted her, but which would now have an interest such as no study ever had. And, on his side, there could be no doubt that the effort would be similar; in all likelihood even now (if he had thought of it) he was returning with enthusiasm to his work, saying to himself, ‘I have Anne to work for; I have my happiness to win.’ ‘He could never afford to marry if you had nothing. It is only your money that you could marry on; and if you had no money, what could you do?’ Anne smiled to herself at Rose’s wisdom; nay, laughed in the silence, in the dark, all by herself, with an outburst of private mirth. Rose—prose, she said to herself, as she had said often before. How little that little thing knew! but how could she know any better, being so young, and with no experience? The thrill of high exhilaration which had come to her own breast at the thought of this unperceived difficulty—the still higher impulse that no doubt had been given to Cosmo, putting spurs to his intellect, making impossibilities possible—a child like Rose could not understand those mysteries. By-and-by Anne reminded herself that, as the love of money was the root of all evil, so the want of it had been, not only no harm, but the greatest good. Painters, poets, people of genius of every kind had been stimulated by this wholesome prick. Had Shakespeare been rich? She threw her head aloft with a smile of conscious energy, and capacity, and power. No money! That would be the best way to make a life worth living. She faced all heroisms, all sacrifices, with a smile, and in a moment had gone through all the labours and privations of years. He, working so many hours at a stretch, bursting upon the world with the eloquence which was inspired by love and necessity; she, making a shabby room into a paradise of content, working for him with her own happy hands, carrying him through every despondency and difficulty. Good heavens! could any little idiot suppose that to settle down on a good income and never have any trouble would be half so delightful as this? Anne used strong language in the swelling of her breast.

It made her laugh with a little ridicule of herself, and a half sense that, if Rose’s tendency was prose, hers might perhaps be heroics, when it occurred to her that Cosmo, instead of rushing back to his work, had only intended to catch the Scotch mail, and that he was going to the Highlands to shoot; while she herself was expected in Mrs. Worth’s room to have her dress tried on for the Meadowlands’ party. But, after all, what did that matter? There was no hurry; it was still the Long Vacation, in which no man can work, and in the meantime there was no economy for her to begin upon.

The maid whom she and Rose shared between them, and whose name was Keziah, came to the door to call her when she had reached this point.

‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss Anne,’ she said; ‘I didn’t know you had no lights.’

‘They were quite unnecessary, thank you,’ said Anne, rising up out of her meditations, calmed, yet with all the force of this new stimulus to her thoughts.