Read Ebook: In Trust: The Story of a Lady and Her Lover by Oliphant Mrs Margaret

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IN TRUST.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

'My dear, the case is as plain as noonday; you must give this man up.'

'The case is not plain to me, father--at least, not in your sense.'

'Would he not be more unworthy the name of gentleman if he had done things which he could not confide to me?' said Anne; then reddening suddenly, she added, 'And even if it were so, father, if in those days he had done things unfit for my ears, let him be silent; I will not ask any questions: I know what he is now.'

Anne was silent. It was not that she was convinced, but that her indignation took words from her. She could not make any reply to such calumnies; and this was troublesome to her father, who preferred an argument to a distinct and unsupported statement. He looked at her for a moment, baffled, feeling himself cut short in the full flow of utterance--then picked up the thread again, and resumed:

'You would be a fool to trust in any man in that unguarded way: and above all in a lawyer. They are all rogues; it is in them. When did you ever hear a good word spoken for that class of men? I will not consent to any such nonsense: and if you act without my consent, you know the consequence. I will not give your mother's money to maintain in luxury a man who is--who will be--never mind! You shall not have it. I will give it to Rose, as I have the power.'

'You would not be so unjust,' said Anne.

'Unjust! I will do it if you defy me in this way. Rose has always been a better child to me than you have been; and she shall have the money if you don't mind.'

Whoever had looked at Anne Mountford then would not have given much for the chance of her submission. She said nothing, but her upper lip shut down upon the lower with an unrelenting, immovable determination. She would not even add a word to her protest against the possibility of the injustice with which she had been threatened. She was too proud to repeat herself; she stood still, unbending, betraying no impatience, ready to receive with calmness everything that might be said to her, but firm as the house upon its foundations, or the hills that are called everlasting. Her father knew something of the character of his eldest child; he knew very well that no small argument would move her, but perhaps he was not aware how far beyond his power she was. He looked at her, however, with a passionate annoyance very different from her calm, and with something vindictive and almost spiteful in his reddish-grey eyes. Most likely he had felt himself dashed against the wall of her strong will before now, and had been exasperated by the calm force of opposition which he could make no head against.

'You hear what I say,' he repeated roughly; 'if you insist, I shall exercise the right your mother gave me; I shall alter my will: and the fortune which is no doubt your chief attraction in this man's eyes--the fortune he has been calculating upon--I will give to Rose. You hear what I say?'

'Yes,' said Anne. She bowed her head gravely; no doubt that she understood him, and equally no doubt that what he said had moved her as much as a shower of rain might have done, and that she was fully determined to take her own way.

'On your own head be it then,' he cried.

She bowed again, and after waiting for a moment to see if he had anything further to say to her, went quietly out of the room. It was in the library of a country house that this interview had taken place--the commonplace business room of a country gentleman of no very great pretensions. The walls were lined with bookcases in which there was a tolerable collection of books, but yet they did not tell for much in the place. They were furniture like the curtains, which were rather shabby, and the old Turkey carpet--most respectable furniture, yet a little neglected, wanting renewal. Mr. Mountford's writing-table was laden with papers; he had plenty of business to transact, though not of a strictly intellectual kind. He was an old man, still handsome in his age, with picturesque snow-white hair in masses, clearly-cut, fine features, and keen eyes of that reddish hazel which betokens temper. Those eyes constantly burned under the somewhat projecting eyebrows. They threw a sort of angry lurid light on his face. The name of the house was Mount; it had been in the Mountford family for many generations; but it was not a beautiful and dignified house any more than he was a fine old English gentleman. Both the place and the man had traditionary rights to popular respect, but neither man nor place had enforced this claim by any individual beauty or excellence. There was no doubt as to the right of the Mountfords to be ranked among the gentry of the district, as good as the best, in so far that the family had been settled there for centuries; but they were of that curiously commonplace strain which is prevalent enough among the smaller gentry, without any splendour of wealth to dazzle the beholder, and which rouses in the mind of the spectator a wonder as to what it is that makes the squire superior to his neighbours. The Mountfords from father to son had got on through the world without any particular harm or good, uninteresting, ordinary people, respectable enough, yet not even very respectable. They were not rich, they were not able; they had nothing in themselves to distinguish them from the rest of the world; yet wherever the name of Mountford appeared, throughout all the southern counties at least, the claims of its possessor to gentility were founded on his relationship to the Mountfords of Mount. Most curious of all the triumphs of the aristocratical principle! Or rather perhaps it is the more human principle of continuance which is the foundation of this prejudice to which we are all more or less subject. A family which has lasted, which has had obstinacy enough to cling to its bit of soil, to its old house, must have something in it worth respect. This principle, however, tells in favour of the respectable shopkeeper quite as much as the squire, but it does not tell in the same way. The Mountfords felt themselves of an entirely different order from the shopkeeper--why, heaven knows! but their estimate was accepted by all the world.

Rose was now eighteen and Anne just over one-and-twenty. They were considered in the neighbourhood to be attractive girls. A household possessing two such daughters is naturally supposed to have all the elements of brightness within it; and perhaps if there had been brothers the girls would have taken their natural place as harmonisers and peacemakers. But there were no brothers, and the girls embodied all the confusing and disturbing influences natural to boys in their own persons, with certain difficulties appropriate to their natural character. It is true they did not get into scrapes or into debt; they were not expelled from school or 'sent down' from College. Duns did not follow them to the paternal door, or roistering companions break the family peace. But yet Anne and Rose contrived to give as much trouble to Mr. and Mrs. Mountford as if they had been Jack and Tom. These good people had lived for about a dozen years in their rural mansion like the cabbages in the kitchen garden. Nothing had disturbed them. There had been no call upon their reasoning faculties, no strain upon their affections: everything had gone on quite tranquilly and comfortably, with that quiet persistence of well-being which makes trouble seem impossible. They had even said to themselves with sighs, that to have only girls was after all good for something. They could not be tormented as others were, or even as the rector, one of whose boys had gone 'to the bad.' The thing which had been was that which should be. The shocks, the discoveries, the commotions, which the restless elements involved in male youth bring with them, could not trouble their quiet existence. So they consoled themselves, although not without a sigh.

This desire of the higher education on the part of Rose, who still said 'pon chour,' and was not at all certain that two and two always make four, would have been enough to keep the house in commotion if there had not occurred just then one of the family troubles appropriate to girls after so many that could not be called feminine. It has already been said that the rector of the parish had a son who had 'gone to the bad.' He had two other sons, rocks ahead for the young ladies at Mount. Indeed these two young men were such obvious dangers that Mrs. Mountford had taken precautions against them while Rose was still in her cradle. One was a curate, his father's probable successor; but as the living was in Mr. Mountford's hands, and it was always possible that someone else might be preferred to Charley, some Mountford connection who had a nearer claim, that prospect did not count for much. The other was nothing at all, a young man at Oxford, not yet launched upon life. But fortunately these young men, though very familiar in the house, were not handsome nor dangerously attractive, and this peril is one which must always be encountered in the country, even by people of much higher pretensions than the Mountfords. The first trouble, however, did not come from this obvious quarter, though it came through there. It was not one of the Ashleys; but it was a person still less satisfactory. One of the curate's friends arrived suddenly on a visit in the late summer--a young Mr. Douglas, a barrister, which sounds well enough; but not one of the Douglasses who have ever been heard of. They did not find this out for some time, imagining fondly that he belonged, at a distance perhaps, to the Morton family, or to the house of Queensberry, or at least to Douglasses in Scotland, of whom it could be said that they were of Lanarkshire or Selkirkshire or some other county. Indeed, it was not until the whole household was thrown into commotion by a morning call from Mr. Douglas, who asked for Mr. Mountford, and boldly demanded from him the hand of Anne, that it burst upon them that he was a Douglas of nowhere at all. He had been very well educated, and he was at the bar; but when he was asked what branch of the Douglasses he belonged to, he answered 'None,' with a smile. 'I have no relations,' he said. Relations can be dispensed with. There is no harm in being without them; but a family was indispensable, and he belonged to nobody. It was just like Anne, however, not to care. She did not in the least care, nor did she see any harm in her lover's countyless condition. And when Mr. Mountford politely declined the honour of an alliance with this Mr. Douglas of nowhere at all, she did not hesitate to say that she entirely disagreed with her father. This was the state in which things were at the time of the interview I have recorded. Mr. Mountford was determined, and so was his daughter. This struggle of wills had taken place before, but never before had it gone so far. In former cases Anne had given in, or she had been given in to, the one as much as the other. But now there was no yielding on one side or the other. The father had declared himself inexorable; the daughter had said little, but her countenance had said much. And the threat with which he wound up had introduced an entirely new element into the discussion. What was to come of it? But that was what at this moment nobody could venture to say.

THE REST OF THE FAMILY.

The old house of Mount was a commodious but ugly house. It was not even so old as it ought to have been. Only in one corner were there any picturesque remains of antiquity, and that was in the back of the house, and did not show. The only thing in its favour was that it had once been a much larger place than it was now, and a detached bit of lime avenue--very fine trees, forming in the summer two lovely walls of tender shade--was supposed in the traditions of the place to indicate where once the chief entrance and the best part of the mansion had been. At the foot of the terrace on which these trees stood, and at a considerably lower altitude, was the flower-garden, very formally laid out, and lying along the side of the house, which was of dull brick with very flat windows, and might almost have been a factory, so uninteresting was it; but the lawns that spread around were green and smooth as velvet, and the park, though not large, was full of fine trees. Mr. Mountford's room was in the back of the house, and Anne had to go from one end to another to reach the common morning-room of the family, which was the hall. This had been nothing but a mere passage in former days, though it was square and not badly proportioned; but the modern taste for antiquity had worked a great change in this once commonplace vestibule. It had been furnished with those remains which are always to be found about an old house, relics of past generations, curtains which had been rejected as too dingy for wear a hundred years ago, but now were found to be the perfection of tone and taste--old folding screens, and chairs and tables dismissed as too clumsy or too old-fashioned for the sitting-rooms of the family. All these together made a room which strangers called picturesque, but which old neighbours regarded with contempt, as a thing of shreds and patches. There was but one huge window reaching from the ceiling almost to the floor, and an equally large mantelpiece almost matching the window and opposite to it. The large round table before the fire was covered with an old Indian shawl carefully darned and mended for this use--a use which had revolted all the old ladies in the county--and with books, magazines, and newspapers, carefully arranged by old Saymore, the butler, in a kind of pattern; for Saymore followed his young ladies, and took a great interest in everything that was artistic. A work-table in one corner overflowed with crewels; in another stood an easel. The place was full of the occupations and fancies of the two girls who had fashioned it into its present shape. While Anne was having the conversation with her father which has been recorded, Mrs. Mountford and Rose were pursuing their different employments in this room. Mrs. Mountford was a contradiction to everything about her. She wore ribbons of the most pronounced brightness, dresses of the old gay colours; and did worsted work. She was a round plump woman, with rosy cheeks and a smiling mouth; but she was not quite so innocent and easy as her looks indicated. She could stand very fast indeed where any point of interest was concerned--and she was doubly immovable in consequence of the fact that her interests were not her own but those of Rose, and therefore she could not be made to feel guilty in respect to them. She had a little table of her own in the midst of all the properties--which she called rubbish--accumulated by the girls, and there pursued her placid way week after week and year after year, working, as if she had been born a century earlier, groups of roses and geraniums for cushions and footstools, and strips of many coloured work for curtains and rugs. Had she been permitted to have her will, the house would have been furnished with these from garret to basement; but as Rose was 'artistic,' poor Mrs. Mountford's Berlin wools were rarely made any use of. They were given away as presents, or disposed of at bazaars. There was a closet in her own room which was full of them, and a happy woman was she when any girl of her acquaintance married, or a fancy fair was announced for any charitable object, which reduced her stores. A workbasket full of the most brilliant wools in the tidiest bundles, a German pattern printed in squares, a little pile of tradesmen's books in red covers, and a small brown basket full of keys, were the signs of her little settlement in the hall. These possessions stood upon a small table with three legs, decorated with a broad band of Mrs. Mountford's work. She had said boldly that if she were not permitted to put her own work upon her own table, she did not know what the world would come to. And upon hearing this protest Anne had interfered. Anne was the only person who ever interfered to save her stepmother from the tyranny exercised over her by her own child; but Mrs. Mountford was not grateful enough to return this service by taking Anne's part.

Rose was the presiding spirit of the hall. Though she did not originate anything, but followed her sister's lead, yet she carried out all the suggestions that ever glanced across the surface of Anne's mind with an energy which often ended in making the elder sister somewhat ashamed of her initiative. Anne's fancies became stereotyped in Rose's execution, and nothing but a new idea from the elder changed the current of the younger girl's enthusiasm. When Anne took to ornamental design, Rose painted all the panels of the doors and window shutters, and even had begun a pattern of sunflowers round the drawing-room , when Anne fortunately took to sketching from nature, and saved the walls by directing her sister's thoughts in another direction. The easel remained a substantial proof of these studies, but a new impulse had changed the aspect of affairs. In the course of the sketching it had been discovered that some of the cottages on the estate were in the most wretched condition, and Anne, with the instinct of a budding squire and philanthropist united, had set to work upon plans for new houses. The consequence of which was that Rose, with compasses and rulers and a box of freshly-cut pencils, was deep in the question of sculleries and wash-houses, marking all the measurements upon the plan, with her whole heart in the work.

'Anne is a long time with papa,' said Mrs. Mountford; 'I suppose she is trying to talk him over; she might just as well try to move the house. You girls never will understand that it is of no use arguing with papa.'

'One never can help thinking that reason must prevail,' said Rose, without raising her head, 'at the end.'

'Reason!' said Mrs. Mountford, lifting her hands and her eyebrows; 'but, even if it were always reason, what would that matter? As for Anne, she has a great deal too much self-confidence; she always thinks she is right.'

'And so she is--almost always,' said Rose, very busy with her measuring. 'Do you happen to remember, mamma, whether it is ninety feet or a hundred that the pigsty must be off the house?'

'It is not her work,' said Rose, offended, 'it is my own. Mayn't I have something now and then that is my own? How many yards, Anne, do you remember, must the pigsty be off the house?'

Anne did not remember this important piece of knowledge. 'But,' she said, 'it is in that book of specifications. It is dry to read, but it is a very good book; you should have it on the table to refer to. You have made the living room too large in comparison with the rest of the house.'

'Because they are poor,' said Rose, indignantly. 'is that to say that they are to have nothing pretty in their lives?'

Mrs. Mountford looked at them with very watchful eyes. She knew what it was which had made her husband send for his eldest daughter into his study after breakfast. It was a circumstance which often galled Anne, a high-spirited girl, that her stepmother should be in the secret of all her personal concerns; but still man and wife are one, and it could not be helped. This fact, however, that everything was known about her, whether she would or not, shut her lips and her heart. Why should she be confidential and open herself to their inspection when they knew it all beforehand without her? This stopped all inclination to confide, and had its effect, no doubt, as all repression has, on Anne's character. Her heart was in a turmoil now, aching with anger and annoyance, and disappointment, and a sense of wrong. But the only effect of this was to make her more serious than ever. In such a mood to win a smile from her, to strike her sense of humour, which was lively, or to touch her heart, which was tender, was to open the floodgates, and the girl resented and avoided this risk with all the force of her nature. And, truth to tell, there was little power, either in Mrs. Mountford or her daughter, to undo the bonds with which Anne had bound herself. It was seldom that they appealed to her feelings, and when they made her laugh it was not in sympathy, but derision--an unamiable and unsatisfactory kind of laughter. Therefore it happened now that they knew she was in trouble, and watched her keenly to see the traces of it; and she knew they knew, and sternly repressed any symptom by which they might divine how much moved she was.

'You build your cottages your way,' cried Rose, 'and I will build mine in mine. Papa will let me have my choice as well as you, and just see which will be liked best.'

'If Heathcote should have to be consulted,' said Anne, 'it will be the cheapest that he will like best.'

'Oh, it would not matter,' said Rose, calmly, 'whatever happens; for they are for the Lilford houses on our very own land. Heathcote hasn't anything to do with them.'

'Anne might say, "Nor you either," my Rosie,' said her mother; 'for everybody knows that you are cut off out of it in every way. Oh, I don't find any fault. I knew it when I married, and you have known it all your life. It is rather hard, however, everything turning out against us, you and me, my pet; part of the property going away altogether to a distant cousin, and the rest all tied up because one of you is to be made an eldest son.'

'Mamma!' said Rose, petulantly, giving a quick glance up at her mother, and shrugging her shoulders with the superiority of youth, as who would say, Why speak of things you don't understand? Then she closed her compasses and put down her pencil. 'Are we to have a game this afternoon?' she said; 'I mean, Anne, are you going to play? Charley and Willie are sure to come, but if you go off as usual, it will be no good, for three can't play.'

The colour came in a flood over Anne's pale face. 'Mamma plays better than I do,' she said. 'I have a headache. I don't think I shall do anything this afternoon.'

'Will Mr. Douglas have a headache too?' said Rose; 'he generally has when you have. It is not much fun,' she added, with a little virtuous indignation, 'for Charley and Willie to play with mamma.'

Mrs. Mountford showed no resentment at this frank speech. 'No,' she said, 'it is not much fun for Charley and Willie. I don't think it has been much fun for them since Mr. Douglas came. Anne likes his talk; he is a very fine talker. It is more interesting to listen to him than to play.'

'Sometimes it is,' said Anne gravely, though with another blush; and then the two others laughed.

'My dear, you bring it on yourself; if we are not to have your confidence, we must have our laugh. We have eyes in our head as well as other people--or, at least, I have eyes in my head,' said the mother. Anne could not but acknowledge that there was reason in what she said, but it was not said in a way to soften the wounded and angry girl.

'I do not ask you not to laugh,' she said.

Anne's heart swelled as if it would burst out of her breast. There are states of mind in which everything can be borne but sympathy. The gates so hastily rolled to and pushed close began to open. The tears came to her eyes. But then she remembered that the threat her father had made was not one to be confided to them.

'Never mind. I have been talking to my father, and he and I don't see things in the same light. We don't always--one can't help that,' said Anne, in a subdued voice.

'Come up to my room,' said Rose in her ear. 'Never mind mamma--oh, come up to my room, Anne darling, and tell me all about it! I never was anyone's confidant before.'

But this was not a process which Anne, shy with a fervour of feeling more profound than Rose could understand, or she herself express, felt at all disposed to go through. She put her younger sister gently aside, and brought her plans too to the table. 'We had better settle about the pigsties,' she said, with a little relaxation of her gravity. She laughed in spite of herself. 'It is a safe subject. Show me, Rosie, what you have done.'

Rose was still fresh to this pursuit, and easily recalled to it, so she produced her drawings with little hesitation, and after a while forgot the more interesting matter. They sat with their heads together over the plans, while Mrs. Mountford pursued her worsted work. A moralist might have found in the innocent-seeming group all that inscrutableness of human nature which it is so easy to remark and so impossible to fathom. Rose, it was true, had not much in her little mind except the cottages, and the hope of producing a plan which should be approved as the best, having in her heart a childish desire to surpass Anne, which by no means diminished her faithful allegiance to her as the origin of all impulses and setter of every fashion. But Anne's heart, underneath the fresh crispness of her muslin dress, and the apparent interest with which she pursued her work, and discussed her sculleries, was beating high with much confused and painful emotion. Indignation and a sense of wrong, mingled with a certain contempt even for the threat which had wounded her as an empty menace, never to be carried out--a false and fictitious weapon meant for no end but that of giving her pain; and, on the other hand, the disappointment of her hopes, and a certainty of severance from the love which had been a revelation to her of so much in heaven and earth of which she was unaware before--filled her being. She would not give him up, but she would be parted from him. He would go away, and any intercourse they might hereafter keep up must be maintained in resistance to the authority under which she had lived all her life. Thus what she had supposed to be the crown and glory of existence was summarily turned into bitterness and wrong. She was turning it over and over in her mind, while she sat there steadily comparing her measurements with those of her sister, and wondering how long she must go on with this in order to confound her stepmother's suspicions, and prove that she was neither discouraged nor rendered unhappy by what had happened. Naturally, in her inexperience, Anne gave great importance to this feat of baffling her stepmother's observation, and looking 'just as usual;' and naturally, also, she failed altogether in the attempt. Mrs. Mountford was an experienced woman. She knew what it meant when a girl looked too much as if nothing had happened. And she watched with great vigilance, partly by simple instinct, partly with a slight sense of gratification, that the elder daughter, who was so much more important than her own child, should feel that she was mortal. It was not any active malevolence that was in Mrs. Mountford's mind. She would have been horrified had it been suggested to her that she wished Anne any harm. She wished her no harm; but only that she might feel after all that life was not one triumph and scene of unruffled success and blessedness--which is the best moral discipline for everybody, as is well known.

THE 'GAME.'

The name of the parish in which Mount was the principal house was Moniton, by some supposed to be a corruption of Mount-ton, the village being situated on the side of a circular hill looking more like a military mound than a natural object, which gave the name alike to the property and the district. Mount Hill, as it was called with unnecessary amplification, was just outside the park gates, and at its foot lay the Rectory, the nearest neighbouring house with which the Mountfords could exchange civilities. When one comes to think of it, the very existence of such ecclesiastical houses close by the mansions of the English gentry and nobility is a standing menace and danger to that nobler and more elevated class--now that the family living is no longer a natural provision for a younger son. The greatest grandee in the land has to receive the clergyman's family as equals, whatever may be his private opinion on the subject; they are ladies and gentlemen, however poor they may be, or little eligible to be introduced into closer connection with members of the aristocracy, titled or otherwise; and, as a matter of fact, they have to be so received, whence great trouble sometimes arises, as everybody knows. The young people at the Hall and the parsonage grow up together, they meet continually, and join in all each other's amusements, and if they determine to spend their lives together afterwards, notwithstanding all those social differences which are politely ignored in society, until the moment comes when they must be brought into prominence, who can wonder at it? The wonder is that on the whole so little harm occurs. The young Ashleys were the nearest neighbours of the Mountford girls. They called each other by their Christian names; they furnished each other with most of their amusements. Had the boys not been ready to their call for any scheme of pleasure or use, the girls would have felt themselves aggrieved. But if Charley or Willie had fallen in love with Anne or Rose, the whole social economy would have been shaken by it, and no earthquake would have made a greater commotion. Such catastrophes are constantly happening to the confusion of one district after another all over the country; but who can do anything to prevent it? That it had not happened in the present case was due to no exceptional philosophy or precaution on any side. And the chance which had made Mr. Cosmo Douglas speak first instead of his friend, the curate, was in no way a fortunate one, except in so far, indeed, that, though it produced great pain and sorrow, it, at least, preserved peace between the two families. The Rector was as much offended, as indignant as Mr. Mountford could be, at the audacity of his son's friend. A stranger, a chance visitor, an intruder in the parish, he, at least, had no vested rights.

The facts of the case were as yet, however, but imperfectly known. Douglas had not gone away, though it was known that his interview with Mr. Mountford had not been a successful one; but that was no reason why the Ashleys should not stroll up to Mount on this summer afternoon, as was their very general practice. There was always some business to talk about--something about the schools, or the savings bank, or other parochial affairs; and both of them were well aware that without them 'a game' was all but impossible.

'Do you feel up to it, old fellow?' Willie said to Charley, who was the curate. The elder brother did not make any distinct reply. He said, 'There's Douglas to be thought of,' with a somewhat lugubrious glance behind him where that conquering hero lay on the grass idly puffing his cigar.

'Confound Douglas!' said the younger brother, who was a secular person and free to speak his mind. Charley Ashley replied only with a stifled sigh. He might not himself have had the courage to lay his curacy and his hopes at Anne's feet, at least for a long time to come, but it was not to be expected that he could look with pleasure on the man who had rushed in where he feared to tread, his supplanter, the Jacob who had pushed him out of his path. But yet he could not help in a certain sense admiring his friend's valour. He could not help talking of it as they took their way more slowly than usual across the park, when Douglas, with a conscious laugh, which went sharply, like a needle, through the poor curate's heart, declined to join them but begged they 'would not mind' leaving him behind.

'When a fellow has the pluck to do it, things generally go well with him,' Charley said.

The two brothers were very good friends. The subject of Anne was one which had never been discussed between them, but Willie Ashley knew by instinct what were his brother's sentiments, and Charley was conscious that he knew. The little roughness with which the one thrust his arm into the other's spoke of itself a whole volume of sympathy, and they walked through the sunshine and under the flickering shadows of the trees, slowly and heavily, the curate with his head bent, and his brown beard, of which he was as proud as was becoming to a young clergyman, lying on his breast.

'Pluck carries everything before it,' he said, with a sigh. 'I never was one of your plucky ones.'

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