This discussion made the most curious break in Anne’s thoughts; instead of spending the half-hour in blessed solitude, reading over Cosmo’s last letter or thinking over some of his last words, how strange it was to be thus plunged into the confused and darkling ways of another world, so unlike her own! To the young lady it was an unalterable canon of faith that marriage was only possible where love existed first. Such was the dogma of the matter in England, the first and most important proviso of the creed of youth, contradicted sometimes in practice, but never shaken in doctrine. It was this that justified and sanctified all the rest, excusing even a hundred little departures from other codes, little frauds and compromises which lost all their guilt when done for the sake of love. But here was another code which was very different, in which the poor little heroine was ashamed to have it thought that, so far as concerned herself, love was the first thing in question. Keziah felt that she could do her duty whoever the man might be; it was not any wish to please herself that made her reluctant. Anne’s first impulse of impatience, and annoyance, and disgust at such a view of the question, and at the high ground on which it was held, transported her for the moment out of all sympathy with Keziah. No wonder, she thought, that there was so much trouble and evil deep down below the surface when that was how even an innocent girl considered the matter. But by-and-by Anne’s imagination got entangled with the metaphysics of the question, and the clear lines of the old undoubting dogmatism became less clear. ‘The Bible don’t say so.’ What did the Bible say? Nothing at all about it; nothing but a rule of mutual duty on the part of husbands and wives; no guidance for those who were making the first great decision, the choice that must mean happiness or no happiness to their whole lives. But the Bible did say that one was not to seek one’s own way, nor care to please one’s self, as Keziah said. Was the little maid an unconscious sophist in her literal adoption of these commands? or was Anne to blame, who, in this point of view, put aside the Bible code altogether, without being aware that she did so? Deny yourself! did that mean that you were to consent to a mercenary union when your heart was against it? Did that mean that you might profane and dishonour yourself for the sake of pleasing others? Keziah thought so, taking the letter as her rule; but how was Anne to think so? Their theories could not have been more different had the width of the world been between them.
And then the story of Heathcote Mountford glanced across her mind. This was what had happened to him. His Italian princess, though she loved him, had done her duty, had married somebody of her own rank, had left the man she loved to bear the desertion as he could. Was it the women who did this, Anne asked herself, while the men were true? It was bitter to the girl to think so, for she was full of that visionary pride—born both of the chivalrous worship and the ceaseless jibes of which they have been the objects—which makes women so sensitive to all that touches their sex. A flush of shame as visionary swept over her. If this cowardly weakness was common to women, then no wonder that men despised them; then, indeed, they must be inferior creatures, incapable of real nobleness, incapable of true understanding. For a moment Anne felt that she despised and hated her own kind; to be so poor, so weak, so miserable; to persuade the nobler, stronger being by their side that they loved him, and then weakly to abandon him; to shrink away from him for fear of a parent’s scolding or the loss of money, or comfort, or luxury! What indignation Anne poured forth upon these despicable creatures! and to call it duty! she cried within herself. When you can decide that one side is quite in the wrong, even though it be your own side, there is consolation in it; then all is plain sailing in the moral element, and no complication disturbs you. Though she felt it bitter, and humiliating, and shameful, Anne clung to this point of view. She was barely conscious, in the confused panorama of that unknown world that spread around her, of some doubtful points on which the light was not quite so simple and easy to identify. ‘Those that can have you for the asking don’t ask you,’ Keziah said: and she had not been sure that her lover wanted her to marry him, though she believed he would be miserable if she abandoned him. And Heathcote Mountford, though he seemed to be so faithful, had never been rich enough to make inconstancy possible. These were the merest specks of shadow on the full light in which one side of her picture was bathed. But yet they were there.
This made an entire change in Anne’s temper and disposition for the evening. Her mind was full of this question. When she went downstairs she suffered a great many stories to be told in her presence to which, on previous occasions, she would have turned a deaf ear; and it was astonishing how many corresponding cases seem to exist in society—the women ‘doing their duty’ weakly, giving in to the influence of some mercenary parent, abandoning love and truth for money and luxury; the men withdrawing embittered, disgusted, no doubt to jibe at women, perhaps to hate them; to sink out of constancy into misanthropy, into the rusty loneliness of the old bachelor. Her heart grew sad within her as she pondered. Was it to be her fate to vindicate all women, to show what a woman could do? but for the moment she felt herself too deeply disgusted with her sex to think of defending them from any attack. To be sure, there was that shadow in her picture, that fluctuation, that uncomfortable balance of which she was just conscious—Jim who, perhaps, would not have wanted to marry Keziah, though he loved her; and the others who could not afford to commit any imprudence, who could marry only when there was a fortune on what Mrs. Mountford would call ‘the other side.’ Anne felt herself cooped in, in the narrowest space, not knowing where to turn; ‘who could marry only when there was money on the other side.’ Why, this had been said of Cosmo! Anne laughed to herself, with an indignation and wrath, slightly, very slightly, tempered by amusement. Where Cosmo was concerned she could not tolerate even a smile.
CHAPTER XIII.
HEATHCOTE MOUNTFORD.
The visit of the unknown cousin had thus become a very interesting event to the whole household, though less, perhaps, to its head than to anyone else. Mr. Mountford flattered himself that he had nothing of a man’s natural repugnance towards his heir. Had that heir been five-and-twenty, full of the triumph and confidence of youth, then indeed it might have been difficult to treat him with the same easy tolerance; for, whatever may be the chances in your own favour, it would be difficult to believe that a young man of twenty-five would not, one way or the other, manage to outlive yourself at sixty. But Heathcote Mountford had lived, his kinsman thought, very nearly as long as himself; he had not been a young man for these dozen years. It was half a lifetime since there had been that silly story about the Italian lady. Nothing can be more easy than to add on a few years to the vague estimate of age which we all form in respect to our neighbours; the fellow must be forty if he was a day; and between forty and sixty after all there is so little difference, especially when he of forty is an old bachelor of habits perhaps not too regular or virtuous. Mr. Mountford was one of the people who habitually disbelieve in the virtue of their neighbours. He had never been a man about town, a frequenter of the clubs, in his own person; and there was, perhaps, a spice of envy in the very bad opinion which he entertained of such persons. A man of forty used up by late hours and doubtful habits is not younger—is as a matter of fact older—than a respectable married man of sixty taking every care of himself, and regular as clockwork in all his ways. Therefore he looked with good-humoured tolerance on Heathcote, at whose rights under the entail he was almost inclined to laugh. ‘I shall see them all out,’ he said to himself—nay he even permitted himself to say this to his wife, which was going perhaps too far. Heathcote, to be sure, had a younger brother; but then he was well known to be a delicate, consumptive boy.
To the ladies of the family he was more interesting, for various reasons. Rose and her mother regarded him with perfectly simple and uncomplicated views. If he should happen to prove agreeable, if things fitted in and came right, why then—the arrangement was one which might have its advantages. The original estate of Mount which was comprehended in the entail was not a large one, but still it was not unworthy consideration, especially when he had a little and she had a little besides. Anne, it need not be said, took no such serious contingency into her thoughts. But she too looked for Heathcote’s arrival with curiosity, almost with anxiety. He was one who had been as she now was, and who had fallen—fallen from that high estate. He had been loved—as Anne felt herself to be loved; but he had been betrayed. She thought with awe of the anguish, the horror of unwilling conviction, the dying out of all beauty and glory from the world, which it must have been his to experience. And he had lived long years since then, on this changed earth, under these changed skies. She began to long to see him with a fervour of curiosity which was mingled with pity and sympathy, and yet a certain touch of delicate scorn. How could he have lived after, lived so long, sunk (no doubt) into a dreamy routine of living, as if mere existence was worth retaining without hope or love? She was more curious about him than she had ever been about any visitor before, with perhaps a far-off consciousness that all this might happen to herself, mingling with the vehement conviction that it never could happen, that she was as far above it and secure from it as heaven is from the tempests and troubles of earth.
The much-expected visitor arrived in the twilight of an October evening just before dinner, and his first introduction to the family was in the indistinct light of the fire—one of the first fires of the season, which lighted up the drawing-room with a fitful ruddy blaze shining upon the white dresses of the girls, but scarcely revealing the elder people in their darker garments. A man in evening dress very often looks his best: but he does not look romantic—he does not look like a hero—the details of his appearance are too much like those of everybody else. Anne, looking at him breathlessly, trying to get a satisfactory impression of him when the light leaped up for a moment, found him too vigorous, too large, too life-like for her fastidious fancy; but Rose was made perfectly happy by the appearance of a man with whom it would not be at all necessary, she thought, to be upon stilts. The sound of his voice when he spoke dispersed ever so many visions. It was not too serious, as the younger sister had feared. It had not the lofty composure which the elder had hoped. He gave his arm to Mrs. Mountford with the air of a man not the least detached from his fellow-creatures. ‘There will be a frost to-night,’ he said; ‘it is very cold outside; but it is worth while being out in the cold to come into a cosy room like this.’ Charley Ashley would have said the very same had it been he who had walked up to dinner from the rectory. Heathcote had not been in the house for years, not perhaps ever since all that had happened, yet he spoke about the cosy room like any chance visitor. It would not be too much to say that there was a certain disgust in the revulsion with which Anne turned from him, though no doubt it was premature to pass judgment on him in the first five minutes like this.
In the light of the dining-room all mystery departed, and he was seen as he was. A tall man, strong, and well developed, with dark and very curly hair tinged all about his temples with grey; his lips smiling, his eyes somewhat serious, though kindling now and then with a habit of turning quickly round upon the person he was addressing. Four pairs of eyes were turned upon him with great curiosity as he took his seat at Mrs. Mountford’s side; two of them were satisfied, two not so. This, Mr. Mountford felt, was not the rusty and irregular man about town, for whom he had felt a contempt; still he was turning grey, which shows a feeble constitution. At sixty the master of Mount had not a grey hair in his head. As for Anne, this grey hair was the only satisfactory thing about him. She was not foolish enough to conclude that it must have turned so in a single night. But she felt that this at least was what might be expected. She was at the opposite side of the table, and could not but give a great deal of her attention to him. His hair curled in sheer wantonness of life and vigour, though it was grey; his voice was round, and strong, and melodious. As he sat opposite to her he smiled and talked, and looked like a person who enjoyed his life. Anne for her own part scarcely took any part in the conversation at all. For the first time she threw back her thoughts upon the Italian princess whom she had so scorned and condemned. Perhaps, after all, it was not she who had suffered the least. Anne conjured up a picture of that forlorn lady sitting somewhere in a dim solitary room in the heart of a great silent palace, thinking over that episode of her youth. Perhaps it was not she, after all, that was so much in the wrong.
‘I started from Sandhurst only this morning,’ he was saying, ‘after committing all kinds of follies with the boys. Imagine a respectable person of my years playing football! I thought they would have knocked all the breath out of me: yet you see I have survived. The young fellows had a match with men far too strong for them—and I used to have some little reputation that way in old days——’
‘Oh, yes, you were a great athlete; you played for Oxford in University matches, and got ever so many goals.’