Poor little Keziah quailed before this outburst. She shrank back with a look of pain as if she feared her mistress’s wrath would take some tangible form. She cried bitterly, sobbing aloud, ‘You’ve got no call to be angry, Miss Anne. You didn’t ought to be angry, Miss Anne. I’m a-going to do my duty; it’s nothing but my duty as I’m going to do!’
Anne felt, when the interview was over, that she had in all probability done more harm than good. She had frightened Keziah, and made her cling all the more to the comfort which sprang from a settled resolution, and she had even stimulated that resolve by the prick of opposition which moves the meekest of natures. She had made Keziah feel herself wronged, her sacrifice unappreciated, her duty misconceived, and the girl had fallen back with all the more confidence on the approval of her (as Anne thought) worldly-minded aunt, and the consolation of the old bridegroom, who, though he was old, was a great man in the servants’ hall—great as the butler and head of the establishment downstairs, and still more great as the prospective landlord of the ‘Black Bull’ at Hunston. To be the future mistress of such a place was a glory enough to turn a girl’s head. Keziah went away crying, and feeling that she had not deserved the cruel ‘scolding’ administered by Miss Anne. She going to the bad! when she was doing her duty in the highest and most superlative way, and had hanging over her head, almost touching it, the crown of that landlady’s cap, with the most becoming ribbons, which ranks like the strawberry leaves of another elevation in the housekeeper’s room and the servants’ hall.
It was the morning after this that Cosmo arrived. Anne was going downstairs to a morning’s work with Mr. Loseby, thoughtful and serious as she always was now; but by this time all the strangeness of her position was over; she had got used to it and even reconciled to it. She had work to do, and a position in the world which was all that one wanted for happiness. Indeed, she was better off, she said to herself, than if she had been in her natural position. In that case, in all probability, she would have had someone else to do for her what she was now to do for Rose, and her occupation would have been gone. She felt that she had passed into the second chapter of life—as if she had married, she said to herself with a passing blush—though so different. She had real work to do in the world, not make-believe, but actual—not a thing she could throw aside if she pleased, or was doing only for amusement. Perhaps it requires a whole life of leisure, and ideas shaped by that exemption from care which so often strikes the generous mind as ignoble, which made her appreciate so highly this fine burden of real unmistakable work, not done to occupy her time merely, but because it had to be done. She prepared herself for it, not only without pain but with actual pleasure. But on her way down to the library, where Mr. Loseby was waiting her, Anne chanced to cast her eyes out from the end of the corridor across the park. It was the same window to which she had rushed to listen to the cry the night her father died. It had been night then, with a white haze of misty moonlight and great shadows of blackness. But now it was morning, and the red sunshine lighted up the hoar frost on the grass, already pursuing it into corners, melting away the congealed dew upon the herbs and trees. She stood for a moment’s meditation, still gazing out without any object, scarcely knowing why. To a thoughtful and musing mind there is a great attraction at a window, which is a kind of opening in the house and in one’s being, full of long wistful vistas of inspection into the unseen. But Anne had not been there many minutes before a cry broke from her lips, and her whole aspect changed. Charley Ashley was coming along the road which crossed the park—but not alone. A thrill ran through her from her head to her feet. In a moment her mind went over the whole of the past fortnight’s story. Her chill and dumbness of disappointment, which she would not express even to herself, when he did not come; her acquiescence of reason (but still with a chill of the heart) in his explanations; the subdued sense of restraint, and enforced obedience to other rules, not first or only to those of the heart, and the effort with which she had bowed herself: her solitude, her longing for support, her uneasiness every way under the yoke which he had thought it necessary to impose upon himself and her, all this seemed to pass before her view in a moment. She had acquiesced; she had even reasoned herself into satisfaction; but oh! the glorious gleam of approval with which Anne saw all that she had consented to beforehand in the light of the fact that now he was here; now he was coming, all reason for his staying away being over—not hurriedly, as if wishing to chase the recollection of her father from her mind, or to grudge him that last pre-eminence in the thoughts of those belonging to him, which is the privilege of every man who dies. Cosmo had fulfilled every reverent duty towards him who was his enemy. He had done what it was most difficult to do. He had kept away till all the rites were accomplished; and now he was coming! All was over, not one other observance of affection possible; the very widow coming out again, thinking (a little) of the set of her cap and planning to go abroad in spring. And now there was no longer any reason why the lover should stay away. If there is one feeling in the world which is divine, it is the sense of full approval of those whom one loves most. To be able with one’s whole heart to consent and know that all they have done is well, to approve them not with blindness (though that is the silliest fable) of love, or its short-sightedness, but, on the contrary, with all its enlightenment in the eyes that cannot be content with less than excellence: to look on and see everything and approve—this, and not any personal transport or enjoyment, is heaven. Anne, standing by the window seeing the two figures come in sight, in a moment felt the gates of Paradise open before her, and was swept within them by a silent flood of joy. She approved, making no exception, reserving nothing. As she walked downstairs, her feet did not seem to touch the ground. What a poor, small, ignoble little being she had been not to read him all the time! but now that the illumination had come, and she saw his conduct from first to last, Anne saw, or thought she saw, that everything was right, everything noble. She approved, and was happy. She forgot Mr. Loseby and the morning’s business, and walked towards the hall with a serene splendour about her, a glory as of the moon and the stars, all beautiful in reflected light.
There was nobody in the hall, and the kind Curate when he came in did nothing but pass through it. ‘I suppose I shall find them in the drawing-room?’ he said, waving his hand and walking past. Anne accepted the passing greeting gladly. What did she want with Charley? He went through the hall while the other came to her side.
‘You wanted me, Anne?’
‘Wanted you—oh, how I have wanted you!—there has been so much to do; but I approve, Cosmo—I approve everything you have done. I feel it right that I should have stood alone till now. You help me more in doing my duty, than if you had done all for me. You were right all along, all through——’
‘Thank you, my dearest,’ he said. ‘But, Anne, I see in what you say that there have been moments in which you have not approved. This was what I feared—and it would have been so much easier to do what was pleasant.’
‘No—I do not think there were moments—at least not anything more. Cosmo, what do you think of me now, a woman without a penny? I wonder if you approve of me as I approve of you.’
‘I think I do more, dear: I admire, though I don’t think I could have been so brave myself. If you had not been just the girl you are, I fear I should have said, Throw me over and let us wait.’
‘You did say it,’ she said in a lower tone; ‘that is the only thing of all that I do not like in you.’