‘What was known? Nothing about him—nothing whatever about him! as Anne was so absurd as to say they know him, or their own opinion of him; but they know nothing about him—nobody knows anything about him. Whatever you may think, Letitia, that is quite enough for me.’
‘Oh, my dear, I don’t pretend to understand; but we meet a great many people whom we don’t know anything of. In society we are meeting them for ever.’
‘Pardon me,’ said Mr. Mountford, lifting an emphatic finger; ‘we may know nothing about them, but somebody knows. Now, all I hear of this man is that he is nobody; he may be good or he may be bad, much more likely the latter; but, this being the case, if he were an angel I will have nothing to do with him; neither shall anyone belonging to me. We are well-known people ourselves, and we must form connections with well-known people—or none at all.’
‘None at all; you would not keep her an old maid, papa?’
‘Pshaw!’ said Mr. Mountford, turning away. Then he came back to add a last word. ‘Understand me, Letitia,’ he said; ‘I think it’s kind of you to do your best for Anne, for she is a girl who has given you a great deal of trouble; but it is of no use; if she is so determined to have her own way, she shall not have anything else. I am not the weak idiot of a father you think me; if I have given in to her before, there was no such important matter in hand; but I have made up my mind now: and it may be better for Rose and you, perhaps, if the worst comes to the worst.’
Mrs. Mountford was completely roused now; the numbers, so to speak, dropped from her lips; her work fell on her knee. ‘It is quite true what you say,’ she said, feeling herself on very doubtful ground, and not knowing what to do, whether to express gratitude or to make no reference to this strange and dark saying: ‘she has given me a great deal of trouble: but she is your child, St. John, and that is enough for me.’
He did not make any reply; nor did he repeat the mysterious promise of advantage to follow upon Anne’s disobedience. He was not so frank with his wife as he had been with his daughter. He went to his writing-table once more, and sat down before it with that air of having come to an end of the subject under discussion which his wife knew so well. He did not mean to throw any further light to her upon the possible good that might result to Rose. To tell the truth, this possibility was to himself too vague to count for much. In the first place, he expected Anne to be frightened, and to give in; and, in the second place, he fully intended to live long after both his daughters had married and settled, and to be able to make what dispositions he pleased for years to come. He was not an old man; he was still under sixty, and as vigorous (he believed) as ever he had been. In such a case a will is a very pretty weapon to flourish in the air, but it does nobody much harm. Mr. Mountford thought a great deal of this threat of his; but he no more meant it to have any speedy effect than he expected the world to come to an end. Perhaps most of the injustices that people do by will are done in the same way. It is not comprehensible to any man that he should be swept away and others reign in his stead; therefore he is more free to make use of that contingency than if he believed in it. There would always be plenty of time to set it right; he had not the least intention of dying; but for the moment it was something potent to conjure withal. He reseated himself at his table, with a consciousness that he had the power in his hands to turn his whole world topsy-turvy, and yet that it would not do anybody any harm. Naturally, this feeling was not shared either by Anne, to whom he had made the original threat, nor by his wife, to whom he held out the promise. We all know very well that other people must die—it is only in our own individual case that the event seems unlikely.
Mrs. Mountford’s mind was filled with secret excitement; she was eager to know what her husband meant, but she did not venture to ask for any explanation. She watched him over her work with a secret closeness of observation such as she had never felt herself capable of before. What did he mean? what would he do? She knew nothing about the law of inheritance, except that entail kept an estate from the daughters, which was a shame, she thought. But in respect to everything else her mind was confused, and she did not know what her husband could do to benefit Rose at Anne’s expense. But the more she did not understand, the more eager she was to know. When you are possessed by an eager desire for the enrichment of another, it does not seem a bad or selfish object as it might do if the person to be benefited was yourself; and, least of all, does it ever appear that to look out for the advantage of your child can be wrong. But the poor lady was in the uncomfortable position of not being able to inquire further. She could not show herself too anxious to know what was to happen after her husband’s death; and even to take ‘the worst’ for granted was not a pleasant thing, for Mrs. Mountford, though naturally anxious about Rose, was not a hard woman who would wilfully hurt anyone. She sat for some time in silence, her heart beating very fast, her ears very alert for any word that might fall from her husband’s mouth. But no word came from his mouth. He sat and turned over the papers on the table; he was pleased to have excited her interest, her hopes and fears, but he did not half divine the extent to which he had excited her, not feeling for his own part that there was anything in it to warrant immediate expectation: while she, on the other hand, though she had a genuine affection for her husband, could not help saying to herself, ‘He may go any day; there is never a day that some one does not die; and if he died while he was on these terms with Anne, what was it, what was it, that might perhaps happen to Rose?’ Mrs. Mountford turned over in her mind every possible form of words she could think of in which to pursue her inquiries; but it was very difficult, nay, impossible, to do it: and, though she was not altogether without artifice, her powers altogether failed her in presence of this difficult question. At length she ventured to ask, clearing her throat with elaborate precaution,
‘Do you mean to say that if Anne sets her heart upon her own way, and goes against you—all our children do it more or less; one gets accustomed to it. St. John—do you mean to say——that you will change your will, and put her out of the succession?——’ Mrs. Mountford faltered over the end of her sentence, not knowing what to say.
‘There is no succession. What I have is my own to do what I like with it,’ he said sharply: and then he opened a big book which lay on the table, and began to write. It was a well-known, if tacit, signal between them, that his need of social intercourse was over, and that his wife might go; but she did not move for some time. She went on with her work, with every appearance of calm; but her mind was full of commotion. As her needle went through and through the canvas, she cast many a furtive glance at her husband turning over the pages of his big book, writing here and there a note. They had been as one for twenty years; two people who were, all the world said, most ‘united’—a couple devoted to each other. But neither did she understand what her husband meant, nor could he have believed the kind of feeling with which, across her worsted work, she kept regarding him. She had no wish but that he should live and thrive. Her position, her personal interests, her importance were all bound up in him; nevertheless, she contemplated the contingency of his death with a composure that would have horrified him, and thought with much more keen and earnest feeling of what would follow than any alarm of love as to the possibility of the speedy ending of his life produced in her. Thus the two sat within a few feet of each other, life-long companions, knowing still so little of each other—the man playing with the fears and hopes of his dependents, while smiling in his sleeve at the notion of any real occasion for those fears and hopes; the woman much more intent upon the problematical good fortune of her child than on the existence of her own other half, her closest and nearest connection, with whom her life had been so long identified. Perhaps the revelation of this feeling in her would have been the most cruel disclosure had both states of mind been made apparent to the eye of day. There was not much that was unnatural in his thoughts, for many men like to tantalise their successors, and few men realise with any warmth of imagination their own complete withdrawal from the pains and pleasures of life; but to know that his wife could look his death in the face without flinching, and think more of his will than of the event which must precede any effect it could have, would have penetrated through all his armour and opened his eyes in the most dolorous way. But he never suspected this; he thought, with true human fatuity, with a little gratified importance and vanity, of the commotion he had produced—that Anne would be ‘pulled up’ in her career by so serious a threat; that Rose would be kept ‘up to the mark’ by a flutter of hope as to the reward which might fall to her. All this it pleased him to think of. He was complacent as to the effect of his menaces and promises, but at bottom he felt them to be of no great consequence to himself—amusing rather than otherwise; for he did not in the least intend to die.