CHAPTER X.
FAMILY COUNSELS.
‘Has Anne spoken to you at all on the subject—what does she intend to do?’
Mr. Mountford was subjecting his wife to a cross-examination as to the affairs of the household. It was a practice he had. He felt it to be beneath his dignity to inquire into these details in his own person, but he found them out through her. He was not a man who allowed his authority to be shared. So far as ordering the dinner went and regulating the household bills, he was content to allow that she had a mission in the world; but everything of greater importance passed through his hands. Mrs. Mountford was in the habit of expressing her extreme satisfaction with this rule, especially in respect to Anne. ‘What could I have done with a stubborn girl like that? she would have worn me out. The relief that it is to feel that she is in her father’s hands and not in mine!’ she was in the habit of saying. But, though she was free of the responsibility, she was not without trouble in the matter. She had to submit to periodical questioning, and, if she had been a woman of fine susceptibilities, would have felt herself something like a spy upon Anne. But her susceptibilities were not fine, and the discussion of other people which her husband’s inquisitions made necessary was not disagreeable to her. Few people find it altogether disagreeable to sit in a secret tribunal upon the merits and demerits of those around them. Sometimes Mrs. Mountford would rebel at the closeness of the examination to which she was subjected, but on the whole she did not dislike it. She was sitting with her husband in that business-room of his which could scarcely be dignified by the name of a library. She had her usual worsted work in her hand, and a wisp of skeins plaited together in various bright colours on a table before her. Sometimes she would pause to count one, two, three, of the stitches on her canvas; her head was bent over it, which often made it more easy to say what she had got to say. A serious truth may be admitted, or censure conveyed, in the soft sentence which falls from a woman’s lips with an air of having nothing particular in it, when the one, two, three, of the Berlin pattern, the exact shade of the wool, is evidently the primary subject in her mind. Mrs. Mountford felt and employed to the utmost the shield of her work. It made everything more easy, and took away all tedium from these prolonged conversations. As for Mr. Mountford, there was always a gleam of expectation in his reddish hazel eyes. Whether it was about a servant, or his children, or even an indifferent person in the parish, he seemed to be always on the verge of finding something out. ‘What does she intend to do?’ he repeated. ‘She has never mentioned the subject again, but I suppose she has talked it over with you.’
‘Something has been said,’ answered his wife; ‘to say that she had talked it over with me would not be true, St. John. Anne is not one to talk over anything with anybody, especially me. But something was said. I confess I thought it my duty, standing in the place of a mother to her, to open the subject.’
‘And what is she going to do?’
‘You must know very little about girls, St. John, though you have two of your own (and one of them as difficult to deal with as I ever encountered), if you think that all that is wanted in order to know what they are going to do is to talk it over with them—it is not so easy as that.’
‘I suppose you heard something about it, however,’ he said, with a little impatience. ‘Does she mean to give the fellow up? that is the chief thing I want to know.’
‘I never knew a girl yet that gave a fellow up, as you call it, because her father told her,’ said Mrs. Mountford: and then she paused, hesitating between two shades; ‘that blue is too blue, it will never go with the others. I must drive into Hunston to-day or to-morrow, and see if I cannot get a better match.—As for giving up, that was not spoken of, St. John. Nobody ever believes in it coming to that. They think you will be angry; but that of course, if they stand out, you will come round at the last.’
‘Does Anne think that? She must know very little of me if she thinks that I will come round at the last.’
‘They all think it,’ said Mrs. Mountford, calmly counting the lines of the canvas with her needle: ‘I am not speaking only of Anne. I daresay she counts upon it less than most do, for it must be allowed that she is very like you, St. John, and as obstinate as a mule. You have to be very decided indeed before a girl will think you mean it. Why, there is Rose. What I say is not blaming Anne, for I am a great deal more sure what my own child would think than what Anne would think. Rose would no more believe that you would cross her seriously in anything she wanted than she would believe you could fly if you tried. She would cry outwardly, I don’t doubt, but she would smile in her heart. She would say to herself, “Papa go against me! impossible!” and the little puss would look very pitiful and submissive, and steal her arms round your neck and coax you, and impose upon you. You would be more than mortal, St. John, if you did not come round at the end.’