In Trust: The Story of a Lady and Her Lover

by Mrs. Oliphant

‘I dare say she was counting,’ said Worth.

‘And Miss Anne up by the writing-table, with her back against the wall, reading a book, never taking no notice no more than if she were seventy; and Miss Rose a-chattering. The two before the fire had it all their own way. They were writing down and counting up all the folks for this dance. Dash the dance!’ said Saymore; ‘that sort of a nonsense is no satisfaction to reasonable folks. But Miss Rose, she’s as merry as a cricket with her Cousin Heathcote and Cousin Heathcote at every word. She knows it’s all to her advantage what’s been a-doing to-day.’

‘That might be a match, I shouldn’t wonder—eh!’ said the cook, who was from the north-country; ‘the luck as some folks have—I never can understand these queer wills; why can’t gentlefolks do like poor folks, and divide fair, share and share alike? As for what you call entail, I don’t make head or tail of it; but if Miss Rose’s to get all the brass, and marry the man with the land, and Miss Anne to get nought, it’s easy to see that isn’t fair.’

‘If it’s the cousin you mean,’ said Mrs. Worth, ‘he is just twice too old for Miss Rose.’

‘Then he will know how to take care of her,’ said Saymore, which made the room ring with laughter: for though the affairs of the drawing-room were interesting, there was naturally a still warmer attraction in the drama going on downstairs.

Mr. Mountford was in his room alone. He had retired there after dinner, as was his custom. At dinner he had been very serious. He had not been able to get Mr. Loseby’s words out of his mind. Every word a nail in his coffin! What superstitious folly it was! No man ever died the sooner for attending to his affairs, for putting them in order, he said to himself. But this was not simply putting them in order. His mind was greatly disturbed. He had thought that, as soon as he had done it he would be relieved and at ease from the pressure of the irritation which had disturbed him so; but now that it was done he was more disturbed than ever. Perhaps for the first time he fully realised that, if anything should happen to himself, one of his children would be made to sustain the cruellest disappointment and wrong. ‘It will serve her right,’ he tried to say to himself, ‘for the way she has behaved to me;’ but when it became really apparent to him that this would be, not merely a tremendous rebuff and discomfiture for Anne, but a settled fate which she could not escape, a slight shiver ran through him. He had not seen this so plainly before. He had meant to punish her, cruelly, even bitterly, and with an ironical completeness. But then he had never meant to die. This made a greater difference than it was possible to say. He meant that she should know that her marriage was impossible; that he had the very poorest opinion of the man she had chosen; that he would not trust him, and was determined never to let him handle a penny of his (Mr. Mountford’s) money. In short, he said to himself, what he meant was to save Anne from this adventurer, who would no longer wish to marry her when he knew her to be penniless. He meant, he persuaded himself, that his will should have this effect in his lifetime; he meant it to be known, and set things right, not in the future, but at once. Now that all was done he saw the real meaning of the tremendous instrument he had made for the first time. To save Anne from an adventurer—not to die and leave her without provision, not really to give anything away from her, though she deserved it after the way in which she had defied him, had been his intention. Mr. Mountford thought this over painfully, not able to think of anything else. Last night even, no later, he had been thinking it over vindictively, pleased with the cleverness and completeness with which he had turned the tables upon his daughter. It had pleased him immoderately before it was done. But now that it was done, and old Loseby, like an old fool, had thrown in that bit of silly superstition about the nails in his coffin, it did not please him any longer. His face had grown an inch or two longer, nothing like a smile would come whatever he might do. When his wife came ‘to sit with him,’ as she often did, perturbed herself, half frightened, half exultant, and eager to learn all she could, he sent her away impatiently. ‘I have a great deal to do,’ he said. ‘What do I care for your ball? For heaven’s sake let me have a little quiet. I have a great mind to say that there shall be no ball——’ ‘Papa!’ his wife said, ‘you would not be so unkind. Rose has set her heart on it so.’ ‘Oh confound——!’ he said. Did he mean confound Rose, whom he had just chosen to be his heir, whom he had promoted to the vacant place of Anne? All through this strange business Mrs. Mountford’s secret exultation, when she dared to permit herself to indulge it, in the good fortune of her daughter had been chequered by a growing bitterness in the thought that, though Rose was to have the inheritance, Anne still retained by far the higher place even in her husband’s thoughts. He was resolved apparently that nobody should have any satisfaction in this overturn—not even the one person who was benefited. Mrs. Mountford went away with a very gloomy countenance after the confound——! The only thing that gave her any consolation was to see the brisk conversation going on between her daughter and Heathcote Mountford. Anne sat stiff and upright, quite apart from them, reading, but the two who were in front of the cheerful fire in the full light of the lamp were chattering with the gayest ease. Even Mrs. Mountford wondered at Rose, who surely knew enough to be a little anxious, a little perturbed as her mother was—but who showed no more emotion than the cricket that chirped on the hearth. Was it mere innocence and childish ease of heart, or was it that there was no heart at all? Even her mother could not understand her. And Heathcote, too, who knew a great deal, if not all that was going on, though he threw back lightly the ball of conversation, wondered at the gaiety of this little light-minded girl who was not affected, not a hair’s breadth, by the general agitation of the house, nor by the disturbed countenance of her mother, nor by her sister’s seriousness. He talked—it was against his principles not to respond to the gay challenges thrown out to him—but he wondered. Did she know nothing, though everybody else knew? Was she incapable of divining that other people were in trouble? The conversation was very lively in front of the fire, but he, too, as well as the others, wondered at Rose.

And Mr. Mountford alone in his library thought, and over again thought. Supposing after all, incredible as it seemed, that he was to die? He did not entertain the idea, but it took possession of him against his will. He got up and walked about the room in the excitement it caused. He felt his pulse almost involuntarily, and was a little comforted to feel that it was beating just as usual; but if it should happen as Loseby said? He would not acknowledge to himself that he had done a wrong thing, and yet, if anything of that sort were to take place, he could not deny that the punishment he had inflicted was too severe. Whereas, as he intended it, it was not a punishment, but a precaution; it was to prevent Anne throwing herself away upon an adventurer, a nobody. Better even that she should have no money than be married for her money, than fall into the hands of a man unworthy of her. But then, supposing he were to die, and this will, made—certainly, as he persuaded himself, as a mere precautionary measure—should become final? That would make a very great difference. For a long time Mr. Mountford thought over the question. He was caught in his own net. After all that had been said and done, he could not change the will that he had made. It was not within the bounds of possibility that he should send for that little busybody again and acknowledge to him that he had made a mistake. What was there that he could do? He sat up long beyond his usual hour. Saymore, extremely curious and excited by so strange an incident, came to his door three several times to see that the fire was out and to extinguish the lamp, and received the last time such a reception as sent the old man hurrying along the passages at a pace nobody had ever seen him adopt before, as if in danger of his life. Then Mrs. Mountford came, very anxious, on tiptoe in her dressing-gown, to see if anything was the matter; but she too retired more quickly than she came. He let his fire go out, and his lamp burn down to the last drop of oil—and it was only when he had no more light to go on with, and was chilled to death, that he lighted his candle and made his way to his own room through the silent house.

The victim herself was somewhat sad. She had spent the evening in a proud and silent indignation, saying nothing, feeling the first jar of fate, and the strange pang of the discovery that life was not what she had thought, but far less moved by what her father had done than by the failure round of her understanding and support. And when she had gone to her room, she had cried as did not misbecome her sex and her age, but then had read Cosmo’s letter over again, and had discovered a new interpretation for it, and reading between the lines, had found it all generosity and nobleness, and forthwith reconciled herself to life and fate. But her father had no such ready way of escape. He was the master of Anne’s future in one important respect, the arbiter of the family existence, with the power of setting up one and putting down another; but he had no reserve of imaginative strength, no fund of generous and high-flown sentiment, no love-letter to restore his courage. He did what he could to bring that courage back. During the hours which he spent unapproachable in his library, he had been writing busily, producing pages of manuscript, half of which he had destroyed as soon as it was written. At the end, however, he so far satisfied himself as to concoct something of which he made a careful copy. The original he put into one envelope, the duplicate into another, and placed these two packets in the drawer of his writing-table, just as his light failed him. As he went upstairs his cold feet and muddled head caused him infinite alarm, and he blamed himself in his heart for risking his health. What he had done in his terror that night might have been left till to-morrow; whereas he might have caught cold, and cold might lead to bronchitis. Every word a nail in his coffin! What warrant had Loseby for such a statement? Was there any proof to be given of it? Mr. Mountford’s head was buzzing and confused with the unusual work and the still more unusual anxiety. Perhaps he had caught an illness; he did not feel able to think clearly or even to understand his own apprehensions. He felt his pulse again before he went to bed. It was not feverish—yet: but who could tell what it might be in the morning? And his feet were so cold that he could not get any warmth in them, even though he held them close to the dying fire.

He was not, however, feverish in the morning, and his mind became more placid as the day went on. The two packets were safe in the drawer of the writing-table. He took them out and looked at them as a man might look at a bottle of quack medicine, clandestinely secured and kept in reserve against an emergency. He would not care to have his possession of it known, and yet there it was, should the occasion to try it occur. He felt a little happier to know that he could put his hands upon it should it be wanted—or at least a little less alarmed and nervous. And days passed on without any symptoms of cold or other illness. There was no sign or sound of these nails driven into his coffin. And the atmosphere grew more clear in the house. Anne, between whom and himself there had been an inevitable reserve and coldness, suddenly came out of that cloud, and presented herself to him the Anne of old, with all the sweetness and openness of nature. The wrong had now been accomplished, and was over, and there was a kind of generous amusement to Anne in the consternation which her sudden return to all her old habits occasioned among the people surrounding her, who knew nothing of her inner life of imaginative impulse and feeling. She took her cottage-plans into the library one morning with her old smile as if nothing had happened or could happen. The plans had been all pushed aside in the silent combat between her father and herself. Mr. Mountford could not restrain a little outburst of feeling, which had almost the air of passion. ‘Why do you bring them to me? Don’t you know you are out of it, Anne? Don’t you know I have done—what I told you I should do?’

‘I heard that you had altered your will, papa; but that does not affect the cottagers. They are always there whoever has the estate.’