In Trust: The Story of a Lady and Her Lover

by Mrs. Oliphant

Cosmo’s first visit had been at Christmas, when all was new to him, and when the revelation of the two girls at Mount, so full of life and movement amid the gentle stagnation of the parish, had been the most delightful surprise to the resigned visitor, who had come as a matter of duty, determined to endure anything, and make himself agreeable to Charley’s friends. ‘You never told me what sort of neighbours you had,’ he had said almost with indignation. ‘Neighbours! I told you about the Mountfords and the Woodheads, and Lord Meadowlands, who is our great gun,’ said Charley tranquilly. ‘You speak as if they were all the same—Mountfords and Woodheads and Smiths and Jones—whereas Miss Mountford would be remarked in any society,’ Douglas had said. He remembered afterwards that Charley had looked at him for a moment before he replied, and had grown red; but all he had said was, ‘I didn’t know that you thought much about girls.’ All this passed through Douglas’s mind as he stood looking after the two brothers, watching the mournfulness of their march with an irrepressible sense of the ludicrous. To see that victim of fate leaning on his brother’s arm, dropping now and then a melancholy word or deep-heaved sigh, and walking gloomily, as after a funeral, to the afternoon ‘game,’ was a sight at which the most sympathetic looker-on might have been excused for smiling. ‘I didn’t know that you thought much about girls!’ Was there ever a more stupid remark? And how was I to know he thought much about girls? Douglas asked himself with another laugh. His conscience was easily satisfied on this point. And he had come down at the beginning of the long vacation to see a little more of the Ashleys’ neighbours. He could not but feel that it must be a relief to them also to see a conversible being, an alive and awake human creature amidst those scenes of rural life.

But now how far things had gone! Douglas had been a month at the Rectory, and as his eyes followed the two Ashleys along the white sun-swept road and away under the shadow of the park trees, the idea came to him, with a curious sense of expansive and enlarged being, that the masses of foliage sweeping away towards the west, amid which the two solemn wayfarers soon disappeared, would one day, in all probability, be his own. ‘No, by the bye, not that; that’s the entailed part,’ he said to himself; then laughed again, this time partly in gentle self-ridicule, partly in pleasure, and turned his face the other way, towards Lower Lilford—for he had made himself master of the whole particulars. Facing this way, and with the laugh still on his lips, he suddenly found himself in the presence of the Rector, who had come out by his own study window at the sight of the solitary figure on the lawn. Douglas felt himself taken in the act—though of what it would have been hard to say. He grew red in spite of himself under the gaze of the Rector’s mild and dull eyes.

‘Have the boys left you alone? I can’t think how they could be so rude,’ Mr. Ashley said.

‘Not rude at all, sir. It is I who am rude. I was lazy, and promised to follow them when I had finished my—novel.’ Happily, he recollected in time that he had been holding one in his hand. ‘I am going now,’ he added. ‘I dare say I shall catch them up before they get to the house.’

‘I was afraid they were leaving you to take care of yourself—that is not our old-fashioned way,’ said the old clergyman. ‘I wish you a pleasant walk. It is a fine afternoon, but you will find the road dusty. I advise you to go over the meadows and round the lower way.’

‘That is just how I intended to go.’

‘Very sensible. The boys always take the high road. The other takes you round by the Beeches, much the prettiest way; but it is longer round, and that is why they never use it. A pleasant walk to you,’ Mr. Ashley said, waving his hand as he went back to the house.

Douglas laughed to himself as he took the path through the meadows which Mr. Ashley had indicated. The Rector had not as yet interested himself much in what was going on, and the simplicity with which he had suggested the way which the lovers had chosen, and which led to their trysting-place, amused the intruder still more. ‘If he but knew!’ Douglas said to himself, transferring to the old clergyman the thoughts that filled the mind of his son, by a very natural heightening of his own importance. And yet, to tell the truth, had Mr. Ashley known, it would have been a great relief to his mind, as releasing Charley from a great danger and the parish from a possible convulsion. To know this, however, might have lessened the extreme satisfaction with which Douglas set out for the meeting. He went slowly on across the green fields, all bright in the sunshine, across the little stream, and up the leafy woodland road that led to the Beeches, his heart pleasantly agitated, his mind full of delightful anticipations. Anne herself was sweet to him, and his conquest of her flattered him in every particular. Happiness, importance, wealth, an established place in the world, were all coming to him, linked hand in hand with the loves and joys which surrounded the girl’s own image. He had no fear of the consequences. Remorseless fathers were not of his time. Such mediæval furniture had been cleared out of the world. He expected nothing from this meeting but acceptance, reconciliation, love, and happiness.

CHAPTER IV.
THE BEECHES.

The Beeches were a beautiful clump of trees on a knoll in the middle of the park. They were renowned through the county, and one of the glories of Mount. When the family was absent—which did not happen often—picnic parties were made up to visit them. There was nothing like them in all the country round. The soil was rich and heavy round them with the shedding of their own leaves, and when the sun got in through their big branches and touched that brown carpet it shone like specks of gold. Some of the branches were like trees in themselves, and the great grey trunks like towers. One of them had been called, from time immemorial, the lover’s tree. It was scrawled over with initials, some of them half a century old, or more. From the elevation on which they stood the spectator looked down upon the house lying below among its gardens, on the green terrace and the limes, and could watch what the group there was doing, while himself safe from all observation. When Douglas had informed Anne of her father’s rejection of his suit, she had bidden him come to this spot to hear the issue of her own interview with Mr. Mountford. He seated himself tranquilly enough under the lover’s tree to await her coming. He was not too much agitated to smoke his cigar. Indeed, he was not much agitated at all. He had no fear for the eventual issue. True, it might not come immediately. He did not know that he wanted it to come immediately. To love is one thing, to marry another. So long as he was sure of Anne, he did not mind waiting for a year or two. And he felt that he was sure of Anne, and in that case, eventually, of her father too. Consequently, he sat still and waited, pleased, in spite of himself, with the little lawlessness. To be received in the ordinary way as a son-in-law, to kiss the ladies of the house, and shake hands with the men, and be told in a trembling voice that it was the choicest treasure of the family that was being bestowed upon him, were all things which a man of courage has to go through, and does go through without flinching. But on the whole it was more delightful to have Anne steal away to him out of all commonplace surroundings and make him sure of her supreme and unfailing love, whatever anyone might say—with, bien entendu, the paternal blessing in the background, to be won after a little patience. Douglas was flattered in all his wishes and fancies by this romantic beginning. He would have the good, he thought, both of the old system of love-making and the new—Anne by herself, without any drawbacks, willing to dare any penalties for his sake; but at the end everything that was legitimate and proper—settlements and civilities. He liked it better so than if it had been necessary to wind up everything in a few months, and marry and be settled; indeed it pleased him much, being so sure as he was of all that was to follow, to have this little secret and clandestine intercourse. He liked it. To get Anne to do so much as this for him was a triumph; his vanity overflowed while he sat and waited for her, though vanity was but a small part of his character. He reached that spot so soon that he saw the beginning of the ‘game,’ and Anne’s white figure going back through the flower garden all blazing with colour, to the house. What excuse had she been able to find for leaving them? She must have invented some excuse. And he saw the curate settling himself to that ‘game,’ with unspeakable amusement. He took his cigar from between his lips to laugh. Poor old Charley! his heart was broken, but he did his duty like a man. He watched him settling to his afternoon’s work with Gertrude Woodhead as his partner, and laughed, feeling the full humour of the event, and enjoying the tremendous seriousness with which that sacrifice to duty was made. Then, while the game went on in the bright foreground of the picture, he saw the moving speck of that white figure re-issuing on the other side of the house, and advancing towards him, threading her way among the trees. It was for him that Anne did this, and he it was alone of all concerned who could sit here calmly puffing the blue smoke among the branches, and waiting for his happiness to come to him. Never was man more elated, more flattered, more perfectly contented with himself.