The Athelings; or, the Three Gifts. Vol. 2/3

CHAPTER VII.

A TERRIBLE EVENT.

For Agnes, we are grieved to confess, had fallen into all the sudden fervour of a most warm and enthusiastic girlish friendship. She forgot to watch over her sister, though Mrs Atheling’s letters did not fail to remind her of her duty; she forgot to ward off the constant regards of Sir Langham. She began to be perfectly indifferent and careless of the superb sentinel who mounted guard upon Marian every night. For the time, Agnes was entirely occupied with Rachel, and with the new world so full of a charmed unknown life, which seemed to open upon them all in this Old Wood Lodge; she spent hours dreaming of some discovery which might change the position of the unfortunate brother and sister; she took up with warmth and earnestness their dislike to Lord Winterbourne. If it sometimes occurred to her what a frightful sentiment this was on the part of children to their father, she corrected herself suddenly, and declared in her own mind, with heart and energy, that he could not be their father—that there was no resemblance between them. But this, it must be confessed, was a puzzling subject, and offered continual ground for speculation; for princes and princesses, stolen away in their childhood, were extremely fictitious personages, even to an imagination which had written a novel; and Agnes could not help a thrill of apprehension when she thought of Louis and Marian, of the little romance which Rachel had made up between them, and how her own honourable father and mother would look upon this unhappy scion of a noble house—this poor boy who had no name.

This future, so full of strange and exciting possibilities, attracted with an irresistible power the imaginative mind of Agnes. She went through it chapter by chapter—through earnest dialogues, overpowering emotions, many a varying and exciting scene. The Old Wood Lodge, the Old Wood House, the Hall, the Rector, the old Miss Rivers, the unknown hero, Louis—these made a little private world of persons and places to the vivid imagination of the young dreamer. They floated down even upon Mrs Edgerley’s drawing-room, extinguishing its gay lights, its pretty faces, and its hum of conversation; but with still more effect filled all her mind and meditations, as she rested, half reclining, upon the pretty chintz sofa in the pretty dressing-room, in the sweet summer noon with which this sweet repose was so harmonious and suitable. The window was open, and the soft wind blowing in fluttered all the leaves of that book upon the little table, which the sunshine, entering too, brightened into a dazzling whiteness with all its rims and threads of gold. A fragrant breath came up from the garden, a hum of soft sound from all the drowsy world out of doors. Agnes, in the corner of the sofa, laying back her head among its pretty cushions, with the smile of fancy on her lips, and the meditative inward light shining in her eyes, playing her foot idly on the carpet, playing her fingers idly among a little knot of flowers which lay at her side, and which, in this sweet indolence, she had not yet taken the trouble to arrange in the little vase—was as complete a picture of maiden meditation—of those charmed fancies, sweet and fearless, which belong to her age and kind, as painter or poet could desire to see.

When Marian suddenly broke in upon the retirement of her sister, disturbed, fluttered, a little afraid, but with no appearance of painfulness, though there was a certain distress in her excitement. Marian’s eyes were downcast, abashed, and dewy, her colour unusually bright, her lips apart, her heart beating high. She came into the little quiet room with a sudden burst, as if she had fled from some one; but when she came within the door, paused as suddenly, put up her hands to her face, blushed an overpowering blush, and dropped at once with the shyest, prettiest movement in the world, into a low chair which stood behind the door. Agnes, waking slowly out of her own bright mist of fancy, saw all this with a faint wonder—noticing scarcely anything more than that Marian surely grew prettier every day, and indeed had never looked so beautiful all her life.

“May! you look quite——” lovely, Agnes was about to say; but she paused in consideration of her sister’s feelings, and said “frightened” instead.

“Oh, no wonder! Agnes, something has happened,” said Marian. She began to look even more frightened as she spoke; yet the pretty saucy lip moved a little into something that resembled suppressed and silent laughter. In spite, however, of this one evidence of a secret mixture of amusement, Marian was extremely grave and visibly afraid.

“What has happened? Is it about Rachel?” asked Agnes, instantly referring Marian’s agitation to the subject of her own thoughts.

“About Rachel! you are always thinking about Rachel,” said Marian, with a momentary sparkle of indignation. “It is something a great deal more important; it is—oh, Agnes! Sir Langham has been speaking to me——”

Agnes raised herself immediately with a start of eagerness and surprise, accusing herself. She had forgotten all about this close and pressing danger—she had neglected her guardianship—she looked with an appalled and pitying look upon her beautiful sister. In Agnes’s eyes, it was perfectly visible already that here was an end of Marian’s happiness—that she had bestowed her heart upon Sir Langham, and that accordingly this heart had nothing to do but to break.

“What did he say?” asked Agnes solemnly.

“He said—— oh, I am sure you know very well what he was sure to say,” cried Marian, holding down her head, and tying knots in her little handkerchief; “he said—he liked me—and wanted to know if I would consent. But it does not matter what he said,” said Marian, sinking her voice very low, and redoubling the knots upon the cambric; “it is not my fault, indeed, Agnes. I did not think he would have done it; I thought it was all like Harry Oswald; and you never said a word. What was I to do?”

“What did you say?” asked Agnes again, with breathless anxiety, feeling the reproach, but making no answer to it.

“I said nothing: it was in Mrs Edgerley’s morning-room, and she came in almost before he was done speaking; and I was so very glad, and ran away. What could I do?” said again the beautiful culprit, becoming a little more at her ease; but during all this time she never lifted her eyes to her sister’s face.

“What will you say, then? Marian, you make me very anxious; do not trifle with me,” said Agnes.

“It is you who are trifling,” retorted the young offender; “for you know if you had told the people at once, as you said you would—but I don’t mean to be foolish either,” said Marian, rising suddenly, and throwing herself half into her sister’s arms; “and now, Agnes, you must go and tell him—indeed you must—and say that we never intended to deceive anybody, and meant no harm.”

“I must tell him!” said Agnes, with momentary dismay; and then the elder sister put her arm round the beautiful head which leaned on her shoulder, in a caressing and sympathetic tenderness. “Yes, May,” said Agnes sadly, “I will do anything you wish—I will say whatever you wish. We ought not to have come here, where you were sure to meet with all these perils. Marian! for my mother’s sake you must try to keep up your heart when we get home.”

The answer Marian made to this solemn appeal was to raise her eyes, full of wondering and mischievous brightness, and to draw herself immediately from Agnes’s embrace with a low laugh of excitement. “Keep up my heart! What do you mean?” said Marian; but she immediately hastened to her own particular sleeping-room, and, lost within its mazy muslin curtains, waited for no explanation. Agnes, disturbed and grave, and much overpowered by her own responsibility, did not know what to think. Present appearances were not much in favour of the breaking of Marian’s heart.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN EXPLANATION.

But Marian made no sign. She would not intrust her sister with any message from herself. She was almost disposed to be out of temper when Agnes questioned her. “You know very well what must be said,” said Marian; “you have only to tell him who we are—and I suppose that will be quite enough for Sir Langham. Do you not think so, Agnes?”

“I think it all depends upon how he feels—and how you feel,” said the anxious sister; but Marian turned away with a smile and made no reply. To tell the truth, she could not at all have explained her own sentiments. She was very considerably flattered by the homage of the handsome guardsman, and fluttered no less by the magnificent and marvellous idea of being a ladyship. There was nothing very much on her part to prevent this beautiful Marian Atheling from becoming as pretty a Lady Portland, and by-and-by, as affectionate a one, as even the delighted imagination of Sir Langham could conceive. But Marian was still entirely fancy free—not at all disinclined to be persuaded into love with Sir Langham, but at present completely innocent of any serious emotions—pleased, excited, in the sweetest flutter of girlish expectation, amusement, and triumph—but nothing more.

And from that corner of the window from which they could gain a sidelong glance at the lawn and partial view of the shrubbery, Sir Langham was now to be descried wandering about as restlessly as Marian, pulling off stray twigs and handfuls of leaves in the most ruthless fashion, and scattering them on his path. Marian drew Agnes suddenly and silently to the window, and pointed out the impatient figure loitering about among the trees. Agnes looked at him with dismay. “Am I to go now—to go out and seek him?—is it proper?” said Agnes, somewhat horrified at the thought. Marian took up the open book from the table, and drew the low chair into the sunshine. “In the evening everybody will be there,” said Marian, as she began to read, or to pretend to read. Agnes paused for a moment in the most painful doubt and perplexity. “I suppose, indeed, it had better be done at once,” she said to herself, taking up her bonnet with very unenviable feelings. Poor Agnes! her heart beat louder and louder, as she tied the strings with trembling fingers, and prepared to go. There was Marian bending down over the book on her knees, sitting in the sunshine with the full summer light burning upon her hair, and one cheek flushed with the pressure of her supporting hand. She glanced up eagerly, but she said nothing; and Agnes, very pale and extremely doubtful, went upon her strange errand. It was the most perplexing and uncomfortable business in the world—and was it proper? But she reassured herself a little as she went down stairs—if any one should see her going out to seek Sir Langham! “I will tell Mrs Edgerley the reason,” thought Agnes—she supposed at least no one could have any difficulty in understanding that.

So she hastened along the garden paths, very shyly, looking quite pale, and with a palpitating heart. Sir Langham knew nothing of her approach till he turned round suddenly on hearing the shy hesitating rapid step behind. He thought it was Marian for a moment, and made one eager step forward; then he paused, half expecting, half indignant. Agnes, breathless and hurried, gave him no time to address her—she burst into her little speech with all the eager temerity of fear.

“If you please, Sir Langham, I have something to say to you,” said Agnes. “You must have been deceived in us—you do not know who we are. We do not belong to great people—we have never before been in a house like Mrs Edgerley’s. I came to tell you at once, for we did not think it honest that you should not know.”

“Know—know what?” cried Sir Langham. Never guardsman before was filled with such illimitable amaze.

Agnes had recovered her self-possession to some extent. “I mean, sir,” she said earnestly, her face flushing as she spoke, “that we wish you to know who we belong to, and that we are not of your rank, nor like the people here. My father is in the City, and we live at Islington, in Bellevue. We are able to live as we desire to live,” said Agnes with a little natural pride, standing very erect, and blushing more deeply than ever, “but we are what people at the Willows would call poor.”

Her amazed companion stood gazing at her with a blank face of wonder. “Eh?” said Sir Langham. He could not for his life make it out.

“I suppose you do not understand me,” said Agnes, who began now to be more at her ease than Sir Langham was, “but what I have said is quite true. My father is an honourable man, whom we have all a right to be proud of, but he has only—only a very little income every year. I meant to have told every one at first, for we did not want to deceive—but there was no opportunity, and whenever Marian told me, we made up our minds that you ought to know. I mean,” said Agnes proudly, with a strange momentary impression that she was taller than Sir Langham, who stood before her biting the head of his cane, with a look of the blankest discomfiture—“I mean that we forget altogether what you said to my sister, and understand that you have been deceived.”

She was somewhat premature, however, in her contempt. Sir Langham, overpowered with the most complete amazement, had yet, at all events, no desire whatever that Marian should forget what he had said to her. “Stop,” said the guardsman, with his voice somewhat husky; “do you mean that your father is not a friend of Lord Winterbourne’s? He is a squire in Banburyshire—I know all about it—or how could you be here?”

“He is not a squire in Banburyshire; he is in an office in the City—and they asked us here because I had written a book,” said Agnes, with a little sadness and great humility. “My father is not a friend of Lord Winterbourne’s; but yet I think he knew him long ago.”

At these last words Sir Langham brightened a little. “Miss Atheling, I don’t want to believe you,” said the honest guardsman; “I’ll ask Lord Winterbourne.”

“Lord Winterbourne knows nothing of us,” said Agnes, with an involuntary shudder of dislike; “and now I have told you, Sir Langham, and there is nothing more to say.”

As she turned to leave him, the dismayed lover awoke out of his blank astonishment. “Nothing more—not a word—not a message; what did she say?” cried Sir Langham, reddening to his hair, and casting a wistful look at the house where Marian was. He followed her sister with an appealing gesture, yet paused in the midst of it. The unfortunate guardsman had never been in circumstances so utterly perplexing; he could not, would not, give up his love—and yet!

“Marian said nothing—nothing more than I have been obliged to say,” said Agnes. She turned away now, and left him with a proud and rapid step, inspired with injured pride and involuntary resentment. Agnes did not quite know what she had expected of Sir Langham, but it surely was something different from this.

CHAPTER IX.

AN EXPERIMENT.

But there was a wonderful difference between this high-minded and impetuous girl, as she crossed the lawn with a hasty foot, which almost scorned to sink into its velvet softness, and the disturbed and bewildered individual who remained behind her in the bowery path where this interview had taken place. Sir Langham Portland had no very bigoted regard for birth, and no avaricious love of money. He was a very good fellow after his kind, as Sir Langhams go, and would not have done a dishonourable thing, with full knowledge of it, for the three kingdoms; but Sir Langham was a guardsman, a man of fashion, a man of the world; he was not so blinded by passion as to be quite oblivious of what befalls a man who marries a pretty face; he was not wealthy enough or great enough to indulge such a whim with impunity, and the beauty which was enough to elevate a Banburyshire Hall, was not sufficient to gild over the unmentionable enormity of a house in Islington and a father in the City. Fathers in the City who are made of gold may be sufficiently tolerable, but a City papa who was poor, and had “only a very small income every year,” as Agnes said, was an unimaginable monster, scarcely realisable to the brilliant intellect of Sir Langham. This unfortunate young gentleman wandered about Mrs Edgerley’s bit of shrubbery, tearing off leaves and twigs on every side of him, musing much in his perturbed and cloudy understanding, and totally unable to make it out. Let nobody suppose he had given up Marian; that would have made a settlement of the question. But Sir Langham was not disposed to give up his beauty, and not disposed to make a mésalliance; and between the terror of losing her and the terror of everybody’s sneer and compassion if he gained her, the unhappy lover vibrated painfully, quite unable to come to any decision, or make up his mighty mind one way or the other. He stripped off the leaves of the helpless bushes, but it did him no service; he twisted his mustache, but there was no enlightenment to be gained from that interesting appendage; he collected all his dazzled wits to the consideration of what sort of creature a man might be who was in an office in the City. Finally, a very brilliant and original idea struck upon the heavy intelligence of Sir Langham. He turned briskly out of the byways of the shrubbery, and said to himself with animation, “I’ll go and see!”

When Agnes entered again the little dressing-room where her beautiful sister still bent over her book, Marian glanced up at her inquiringly, and finding no information elicited by that, waited a little, then rose, and came shyly to her side. “I only want to know,” said Marian, “not because I care; but what did he say?”

“He was surprised,” said Agnes proudly, turning her head away; and Agnes would say nothing more, though Marian lingered by her, and tried various hints and measures of persuasion. Agnes was extremely stately, and, as Marian said, “just a little cross,” all day. It was rather too bad to be cross, if she was so, to the innocent mischief-maker, who might be the principal sufferer. But Agnes had made up her mind to suffer no talk about Sir Langham; she had quite given him up, and judged him with the most uncompromising harshness. “Yes!” cried Agnes (to herself), with lofty and poetic indignation, “this I suppose is what these fashionable people call love!”

She was wrong, as might have been expected; for that poor honest Sir Langham, galloping through the dusty roads in the blazing heat of an August afternoon, was quite as genuine in this proof of his affection as many a knight of romance. It was quite a serious matter to this poor young man of fashion, before whose tantalised and tortured imagination some small imp of an attendant Cupid perpetually held up the sweetest fancy-portrait of that sweetest of fair faces. This visionary tormentor tugged at his very heart-strings as the white summer dust rose up in a cloud, marking his progress along the whole long line of the Richmond road. He was not going to slay the dragon, the enemy of his princess—that would have been easy work. He was, unfortunate Sir Langham! bound on a despairing enterprise to find out the house which was not a hall in Banburyshire, to make acquaintance, if possible, with the papa who was in the City, and to see “if it would do.”

He knew as little, in reality, about the life which Agnes and Marian lived at home, and about their father’s house and all its homely economics and quiet happiness, as if he had been a New Zealand chief instead of a guardsman—and galloped along as gravely as if he were going to a funeral, with, all the way, that wicked little imp of a Cupidon tugging at his heart.

Mrs Atheling was alone with her two babies, sighing a little, and full of weariness for the return of the girls; but Susan, better instructed this time, ushered the magnificent visitor into the best room. He stood gazing upon it in blank amazement; upon the haircloth sofa, and the folded leaf of the big old mahogany table in the corner; and the coloured glass candlesticks and flower-vases on the mantel-shelf. Mrs Atheling, who was a little fluttered, and the rosy boy, who clung to her skirts, and, spite of her audible entreaties in the passage, would not suffer her to enter without him, rather increased the consternation of Sir Langham. She was comely; she had a soft voice; a manner quite unpretending and simple, as good in its natural quietness as the highest breeding; yet Sir Langham, at sight of her, heaved from the depths of his capacious bosom a mighty sigh. It would not do; that little wretch of a Cupid, what a wrench it gave him as he tried to cast it out! If it had been a disorderly house or a slatternly mother, Sir Langham might have taken some faint comfort from the thought of rescuing his beautiful Marian from a family unworthy of her; but even to his hazy understanding it became instantly perceptible that this was a home not to be parted with, and a mother much beloved. Marian, a prince might have been glad to marry; but Sir Langham could not screw his fortitude to the pitch of marrying all that little, tidy, well-ordered house in Bellevue.

So he made a great bungle of his visit, and invented a story about being in town on business, and calling to carry the Miss Athelings’ messages for home; and made the best he could of so bad a business by a very expeditious retreat. Anything that he did say was about Agnes; and the mother, though a little puzzled and startled by the visit, was content to set it down to the popularity of her young genius. “I suppose he wanted to see what kind of people she belonged to,” said Mrs Atheling, with a smile of satisfaction, as she looked round her best room, and drew back with her into the other parlour the rosy little rogues who held on by her gown. She was perfectly correct in her supposition; but, alas! how far astray in the issue of the same.

Sir Langham went to his club—went to the opera—could not rest anywhere, and floundered about like a man bewitched. It would not do—it would not do; but the merciless little Cupid hung on by his heart-strings, and would not be off for all the biddings of the guardsman. He did not return to Richmond; he was heartily ashamed of himself—heartily sick of all the so-called pleasures with which he tried to cheat his disappointment. But Sir Langham had a certain kind of good sense though he was in love, so he applied himself to forgetting “the whole business,” and made up his mind finally that it would not do.

The sisters at the Willows, when they found that Sir Langham did not appear that night, and that no one knew anything of him, made their own conclusions on the subject, but did not say a word even to each other. Agnes sat apart silently indignant, and full of a sublime disdain. Marian, with, a deeper colour than usual on her cheek, was, on the contrary, a great deal more animated than was her wont, and attracted everybody’s admiration. Had anybody cared to think of the matter, it would have been the elder sister, and not the younger, whom the common imagination could have supposed to have lost a lover; but they went to rest very early that night, and spent no pleasant hour in the pleasant gossip which never failed between them. Sir Langham was not to be spoken of; and Agnes lay awake, wondering what Marian’s feelings were, long after Marian, forgetting all about her momentary pique and anger, was fast and sweet asleep.

CHAPTER X.

GOING HOME.

“No; it is quite true,” cried poor Rachel—“quite true. I should like to be your servant, and live with your mother. Oh! I ought to say,” she continued, raising herself with a little start and thrill of terror, “that if we were in a different position, and could meet people like equals, I should be so glad—so very glad to be friends.”

“But how odd Rachel would think it to live in Bellevue,” said Marian, coming to the rescue with a little happy ridicule, which did better than gravity, “and to see no one, even in the street, but the milkman and the greengrocer’s boy! for Rachel only thinks of the Willows and Winterbourne; she does not know in the least how things look in Bellevue.”

Rachel was beguiled into a laugh—a very unusual indulgence. “When you say that, I think it is a very little cottage like one of the cottages in the village; but you know that is all wrong. Oh, when do you think you will go to Winterbourne?”

“We will write and tell you,” said Agnes, “all about it, and how many are going; for I do not suppose Charlie will come, after all; and you will write to us—how often? Every other day?”

Rachel turned very red, then very pale, and looked at them with considerable dismay. “Write!” she said, with a falter in her voice; “I—I never thought of that—I never wrote to any one; I daresay I should do it very badly. Oh no; I shall be sure to find out whenever you come to the Old Wood Lodge.”

“But we shall hear nothing of you,” said Agnes. “Why should you not write to us? I am sure you do to your brother at home.”

“I do not,” said Rachel, once more drawing herself up, and with flashing eyes. “No one can write letters to us, who have no name.”

She was not to be moved from this point; she repeated the same words again and again, though with a very wistful and yielding look in her face. All for Louis! Her companions were obliged to give up the question, after all.

So there was another weeping, sobbing, vehement embrace, and Rachel disappeared without a word into the big bare room down stairs—disappeared to fall again, without a struggle, into her former forlorn life—to yield on her own account, and to struggle with fierce haughtiness for the credit of Louis—leaving the two sisters very thoughtful and compassionate, and full of a sudden eager generous impulse to run away with and take her home.

“Home—to mamma! It would be like heaven to Rachel,” said Agnes, in a little enthusiasm, with tears in her eyes.

“Ay, but it would not be like the Willows,” said the most practical Marian; and they both looked out with a smile and a sigh upon the beautiful sunshiny lawn, the river in an ecstasy of light and brightness, the little island with all its ruffled willow-leaves, and bethought themselves, finding some amusement in the contrast, of Laurel House, and Myrtle Cottage, and the close secluded walls of Bellevue.

Mrs Atheling had sent the Fly for her daughters—the old Islingtonian fly, with the old white horse, and the coachman with his shiny hat. This vehicle, which had once been a chariot of the gods, looked somewhat shabby as it stood in the broad sunshine before the door of the Willows, accustomed to the fairy coach of Mrs Edgerley. They laughed to themselves very quietly when they caught their first glimpse of it, yet in a momentary weakness were half ashamed; for even Agnes’s honest determination to let everybody know their true “rank in life” was not troubled by any fear lest this respectable vehicle should be taken for their own carriage now.

“Going, my love?” cried Mrs Edgerley; “the fatal hour—has it really come so soon?—You leave us all desolée, of course; how shall we exist to-day? And it was so good of you to come. Remember! we shall be dying till we have a new tale from the author of Hope Hazlewood. I long to see it. I know it will be charming, or it could not be yours.—And, my love, you look quite lovely—such roses! I think you quite the most exquisite little creature in the world. Remember me to your excellent mamma. Is your carriage waiting? Ah, I am miserable to part with you. Farewell—that dreadful word—farewell!”

Again that light perfumy touch waved over one blushing cheek and then another. Mrs Edgerley continued to wave her hand and make them pretty signals till they reached the door, whither they hastened as quickly and as quietly as possible, not desiring any escort; but few were the privileged people in Mrs Edgerley’s morning-room, and no one cared to do the girls so much honour. Outside the house their friend the gardener waited with two bouquets, so rare and beautiful that the timid recipients of the same, making him their humble thanks, scarcely knew how to express sufficient gratitude. Some one was arriving as they departed—some one who, making the discovery of their presence, stalked towards them, almost stumbling over Agnes, who happened to be nearest to him. “Going away?” said a dismayed voice at a considerable altitude. Mr Endicott’s thin head positively vibrated with mortification; he stretched it towards Marian, who stood before him smiling over her flowers, and fixed a look of solemn reproach upon her. “I am aware that beauty and youth flee often from the presence of one who looks upon life with a studious eye. This disappointment is not without its object. You are going away?”

“Yes,” said Marian, laughing, but with a little charitable compassion for her own particular victim, “and you are just arriving? It is very odd—you should have come yesterday.”

“Permit me,” said Mr Endicott moodily;—“no; I am satisfied. This experience is well—I am glad to know it. To us, Miss Atheling,” said the solemn Yankee, as he gave his valuable assistance to Agnes—“to us this play and sport of fortune is but the proper training. Our business is not to enjoy; we bear these disappointments for the world.”

He put them into their humble carriage, and bowed at them solemnly. Poor Mr Endicott! He did not blush, but grew green as he stood looking after the slow equipage ere he turned to the disenchanted Willows. Though he was about to visit people of distinction, the American young gentleman, being in love, did not care to enter upon this new scene of observation and note-making at this moment; so he turned into the road, and walked on in the white cloud of dust raised by the wheels of the fly. The dust itself had a sentiment in it, and belonged to Marian; and Mr Endicott began the painful manufacture of a sonnet, expressing this “experience,” on the very spot.

“But you ought not to laugh at him, Marian, even though other people do,” said Agnes, with superior virtue.

“Why not?” said the saucy beauty; “I laughed at Sir Langham—and I am sure he deserved it,” she added in an under-tone.

“Marian,” said Agnes, “I think—you have named him yourself, or I should not have done it—we had better not say anything about Sir Langham to mamma.”

“I do not care at all who names him,” said Marian, pouting; but she made no answer to the serious proposition: so it became tacitly agreed between them that nothing was to be said of the superb runaway lover when they got home.

CHAPTER XI.

HOME.

“Indeed, children, I am grieved to see how soon you have learned to despise your home,” said Mrs Atheling; and the good mother reddened, and contracted her forehead. She had watched them with a little jealousy from their first entrance, and they, to tell the truth, had been visibly struck with the smallness and the dulness of the family rooms.

“Despise!” cried Marian, kneeling down, and leaning her beautiful head and her clasped arms upon her mother’s knee. “Despise!” said Agnes, putting her arm over Mrs Atheling’s shoulder from behind her chair; “oh, mamma, you ought to know better!—we who have learned that there are people in the world who have neither a mother nor a home!”

“Well, then, what is the matter?” said Mrs Atheling; and she began to smooth the beautiful falling hair, which came straying over her old black silk lap, like Danae’s shower of gold.

“Nothing at all—only the room is a little smaller, and the carpet a little older than it used to be,” said Agnes; “but, mamma, because we notice that, you do not think surely that we are less glad to be at home.”

“Well, my dears,” said Mrs Atheling, still a little piqued; “your great friend, when he called the other day, did not seem to think there was anything amiss about the house.”

“Our great friend!” The girls looked at each other with dismay—who could it be?

“His card is on the mantelpiece,” said Mrs Atheling. “He had not very much to say, but he seemed a pleasant young man—Sir Something—Sir Langham; but, indeed, my dear, though, of course, I was pleased to see him, I am not at all sure how far such acquaintances are proper for you.”

“He was scarcely my acquaintance, mamma,” said Agnes, sorrowfully looking down from behind her mother’s chair upon Marian, who had hid her face in Mrs Atheling’s lap, and made no sign.

“For our rank in life is so different,” pursued the prudent mother; “and even though I might have some natural ambition for you, I do not think, Agnes, that it would really be wishing you well to wish that you should form connections so far out of the sphere of your own family as that.”

“Mamma, it was not me,” said Agnes again, softly and under her breath.

“It was no one!” cried Marian, rising up hastily, and suddenly seizing and clipping into an ornamental cross Sir Langham’s card, which was upon the mantelpiece. “See, Agnes, it will do to wind silk upon; and nobody cares the least in the world for Sir Langham. Mamma, he used to be like Harry Oswald—that is all—and we were very glad when he went away from the Willows, both Agnes and I.”

At this statement, made as it was with a blush and a little confusion, Mrs Atheling herself reddened slightly, and instantly left the subject. It was easy enough to warn her children of the evils of a possible connection with people of superior condition; but when such a thing fluttered really and visibly upon the verge of her horizon, Mrs Atheling was struck dumb. To see her pretty Marian a lady—a baronet’s wife—the bride of that superb Sir Langham—it was not in the nature of mortal mother to hear without emotion of such an extraordinary possibility. The ambitious imagination kindled at once in the heart of Mrs Atheling: she held her peace.

And the girls, to tell the truth, were very considerably excited about this visit of Sir Langham’s. What did it mean? After a little time they strayed into the best room, and stood together looking at it with feelings by no means satisfactory. The family parlour was the family parlour, and, in spite of all that it lacked, possessed something of home and kindness which was not to be found in all the luxurious apartments of the Willows. But, alas! there was nothing but meagre gentility, blank good order, and unloveliness, in this sacred and reserved apartment, where Bell and Beau never threw the charm of their childhood, nor Mrs Atheling dispersed the kindly clippings of her work-basket. The girls consulted each other with dismayed looks—even Rachel, if she came, could not stand against the chill of this grim parlour. Marian pulled the poor haircloth sofa into another position, and altered with impatience the stiff mahogany chairs. They scarcely liked to say to each other how entirely changed was their ideal, or how they shrank from the melancholy state of the best room. “Sir Langham was here, Agnes,” said Marian; and within her own mind the young beauty almost added, “No wonder he ran away!”

“It is home—it is our own house,” said Agnes, getting up for the occasion a little pride.

Marian shrugged her pretty shoulders. “But Susan had better bring any one who calls into the other room.”

Yes, the other room, when they returned to it, had brightened again marvellously. Mrs Atheling had put on her new gown, and had a pink ribbon in her cap. As she sat by the window with her work-basket, she was pleasanter to look at than a dozen pictures; and the sweetest Raphael in the world was not so sweet as these two little lovely fairies playing upon the faded old rug at the feet of Mamma. Not all the luxuries and all the prettinesses of Mrs Edgerley’s drawingrooms, not even the river lying in the sunshine, and the ruffled silvery willows drooping round their little island, were a fit balance to this dearest little group, the mother and the children, who made beautiful beyond all telling the sombre face of home.

CHAPTER XII.

A NEW ERA.

It came to be rather an exciting business to Agnes and Marian making their report of what had happened at the Willows—for it was difficult to distract Mamma’s attention from Sir Langham, and Papa was almost angrily interested in everything which touched upon Lord Winterbourne. Rachel, of course, was a very prominent figure in their picture; but Mrs Atheling was still extremely doubtful, and questioned much whether it was proper to permit such an acquaintance to her daughters. She was very particular in her inquiries concerning this poor girl—much approved of Rachel’s consciousness of her own equivocal position—thought it “a very proper feeling,” and received evidence with some solemnity as to her “manners” and “principles.” The girls described their friend according to the best of their ability; but as neither of them had any great insight into character, we will not pretend to say that their audience were greatly enlightened,—and extremely doubtful was the mind of Mrs Atheling. “My dear, I might be very sorry for her, but it would not be proper for me to forget you in my sympathy for her,” said Mamma, gravely and with dignity. Like so many tender-hearted mothers, Mrs Atheling took great credit to herself for an imaginary severity, and made up her mind that she was proof to the assaults of pity—she who at the bottom was the most credulous of all, when she came to hear a story of distress.

And Papa, who had been moved at once to forbid their acquaintance with children of Lord Winterbourne’s, changed his mind, and became very much interested when he heard of Rachel’s horror of the supposed relationship. When they came to this part of the story, Mrs Atheling was scandalised, but Papa was full of pity. He said “Poor child!” softly, and with emotion; while Charlie pricked his big ear to listen, though no one was favoured with the sentiments on this subject of the big boy.

“And about the Rector and the old lady who lives at Abingford—papa, why did you never tell us about these people?” said Marian; “for I am sure you must know very well who Aunt Bridget’s neighbours were in the Old Wood Lodge.”

“I know nothing about the Riverses,” said Papa hastily—and Mr Atheling himself, sober-minded man though he was, grew red with an angry glow—“there was a time when I hated the name,” he added in an impetuous and rapid undertone, and then he looked up as though he was perfectly aware of the restraining look of caution which his wife immediately turned upon him.

“Such neighbours as are proper for us you will find out when we get there,” said Mrs Atheling quietly. “Papa has not been at Winterbourne for twenty years, and we have had too many things to think of since then to remember people whom we scarcely knew.”

“Then, I suppose, since papa hated the name once, and Rachel hates it now, they must be a very wicked family,” said Marian; “but I hope the Rector is not very bad, for Agnes’s sake.”

This little piece of malice called for instant explanation, and Marian was very peremptorily checked by father and mother. “A girl may say a foolish thing to other girls,” said Mamma, “and I am afraid this Rachel, poor thing, must have been very badly brought up; but you ought to know better than to repeat a piece of nonsense like that.”

“When are we to go, mamma?” said Agnes, coming in to cover the blush, half of shame and half of displeasure, with which Marian submitted to this reproof; “it is August now, and soon it will be autumn instead of summer: we shall be going out of town when all the fashionable people go—but I would rather it was May.”

“It cannot be May this year,” said Mrs Atheling, involuntarily brightening; “but papa is to take a holiday—three weeks; my dears, I do not think I have been so pleased at anything since Bell and Beau.”

Since Bell and Beau! what an era that was! And this, too, was a new beginning, perhaps more momentous, though not such a sweet and great revulsion, out of the darkness into the light. Mamma’s manner of dating her joys cast them all back into thought and quietness; and Agnes’s heart beat high with a secret and mercenary pleasure, exulting like a miser over her hundred and fifty pounds. At this moment, and at many another moment when the young author had clean forgotten Hope Hazlewood, the thought came upon her with positive delight of the little hoard in Papa’s hands, safely laid up in the office, one whole hundred pounds’ worth of family good and gladness still; for she had not the same elevated regard for art as her sister’s American admirer—she was not, by any means, in her own estimation, or in anybody else’s, a representative woman; and Agnes, who began already to think rather meanly of Hope Hazlewood, and press on with the impatience of genius towards a higher excellence, had the greatest satisfaction possible in the earnings of her gentle craft—was it an ignoble delight?

The next morning the two girls, with prudence and caution, began an attack upon the Chancellor of the Exchequer touching the best room. At first Mrs Atheling was entirely horrified at their extravagant ideas. The best room!—what could be desired that was not already attained in that most respectable apartment? but the young rebels held their ground. Mamma put down her work upon her knee, and listened to them quietly. It was not a good sign—she made no interruption as they spoke of mirrors and curtains, carpets and ottomans, couches and easy-chairs: she heard them all to the end with unexampled patience—she only said, “My dears, when you are done I will tell you what I have to say.”

What she did say was conclusive upon the subject, though it was met by many remonstrances. “We are going to the Old Wood Lodge,” said Mrs Atheling, “and I promise you you shall go into Oxford when we are there, and get some things to make old Aunt Bridget’s parlour look a little more like yourselves: but even a hundred pounds, though it is quite a little fortune, will not last for ever—and to furnish two rooms! My dears, you do not know any better; but, of course, it is quite ridiculous, and cannot be done.”

Thus ended at present their plan for making a little drawing-room out of the best room; for Mamma’s judgment, though it was decisive, was reasonable, and they could make no stand against it. They did all they could do under the circumstances; for the first time, and with compunction, they secretly instructed Susan against the long-standing general order of the head of the house. Strangers were no longer to be ushered into the sacred stranger’s apartment; but before Susan had any chance of obeying these schismatical orders, Agnes and Marian themselves were falling into their old familiarity with the old walls and the sombre furniture, and were no longer disposed to criticise, especially as all their minds and all their endeavours were at present set upon the family holiday—the conjoint household visit to the country—the glorious prospect of taking possession of the Old Wood Lodge.

In Bellevue, Charlie alone was to be left behind—Charlie, who had not been long enough in Mr Foggo’s office to ask for a holiday, and who did not want one very much, if truth must be told; for neither early hours nor late hours told upon the iron constitution of the big boy. When they pitied him who must stay behind, the young gentleman said, “Stuff! Susan, I suppose, can make my coffee as well as any of you,” said Charlie; but nobody was offended that he limited the advantages of their society to coffee-making; and even Mrs Atheling, in spite of her motherly anxieties, left her house and her son with comfortable confidence. Harm might happen to the house, Susan being in it, who was by no means so careful as she ought to be of her fire and her candle; but nobody feared any harm to the heir and hope of the house.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE OLD WOOD LODGE.

It stood upon the verge of a wood, and the side of a hill, looking down into what was not so much a valley as a low amphitheatre, watered by a maze of rivers, and centred in a famous and wonderful old town. The trees behind the little house had burning spots of autumn colour here and there among the masses of green—colour which scarcely bore its due weight and distinction in the tremulous pale atmosphere which waited for the storm; and the leaves cowered and shivered together, and one terrified bird flew wildly in among them, seeking refuge. Under the shadow of three trees stood the low house of two stories, half stone and half timber, with one quaint projecting window in the roof, and a luxuriant little garden round it. But it was impossible to pause, as the new proprietors intended to have done, to note all the external features of their little inheritance. They hurried in, eager to be under shelter before the thunder; and as Mrs Atheling, somewhat timid of it, hurried over the threshold, the first big drops fell heavily among the late roses which covered the front of the house. They were all awed by the coming storm; and they were not acquainted any of them with the louder crash and fiercer blaze of a thunderstorm in the country. They came hastily into Miss Bridget’s little parlour, scarcely seeing what like it was, as the ominous still darkness gathered in the sky, and sat down, very silently, in corners, all except Mr Atheling, whose duty it was to be courageous, and who was neither so timid as his wife, nor so sensitive as his daughters. Then came the storm in earnest—wild lightning rending the black sky in sheets and streams of flames—fearful cannonades of thunder, nature’s grand forces besieging some rebellious city in the skies. Then gleams of light shone wild and ghastly in all the pallid rivers, and lighted up with an eerie illumination the spires and pinnacles of the picturesque old town; and the succeeding darkness pressed down like a positive weight upon the Old Wood Lodge and its new inmates, who scarcely perceived yet the old furniture of the old sitting-room, or the trim old maid of Miss Bridget Atheling curtsying at the door.

“A strange welcome!” said Papa, hastily retreating from the window, where he had just been met and half blinded by a sudden flash; and Mamma gathered her babies under her wings, and called to the girls to come closer to her, in that one safe corner which was neither near the window, the fireplace, nor the door.

Yes, it was a strange welcome—and the mind of Agnes, imaginative and rapid, threw an eager glance into the future out of that corner of safety and darkness. A thunderstorm, a convulsion of nature! was there any fitness in this beginning? They were as innocent a household as ever came into a countryside; but who could tell what should happen to them there?

Some one else seemed to share the natural thought. “I wonder, mamma, if this is all for us,” whispered Marian, half frightened, half jesting. “Are we to make a great revolution in Winterbourne? It looks like it, to see this storm.”

But Mrs Atheling, who thought it profane to show any levity during a thunderstorm, checked her pretty daughter with a peremptory “Hush, child!” and drew her babies closer into her arms. Mrs Atheling’s thoughts had no leisure to stray to Winterbourne; save for Charlie—and it was not to be supposed that this same thunder threatened Bellevue—all her anxieties were here.

But as the din out of doors calmed down, and even as the girls became accustomed to it, and were able to share in Papa’s calculations as to the gradual retreat of the thunder as it rolled farther and farther away, they began to find out and notice the room within which they had crowded. It had only one window, and was somewhat dark, the small panes being over-hung and half obscured by a wild forest of clematis, and sundry stray branches, still bristling with buds, of that pale monthly rose with evergreen leaves, which covered half the front of the house. The fireplace had a rather fantastic grate of clear steel, with bright brass ornaments, so clear and so resplendent as it only could be made by the labour of years, and was filled, instead of a fire, with soft green moss, daintily ornamented with the yellow everlasting flowers. Hannah did not know that these were immortelles, and consecrated to the memory of the dead. It was only her rural and old-maidenly fashion of decoration, for the same little rustling posies, dry and unfading, were in the little flower-glasses on the high mantel-shelf, before the little old dark-complexioned mirror, with little black-and-white transparencies set in the slender gilding of its frame, which reflected nothing but a slope of the roof, and one dark portrait hanging as high up as itself upon the opposite wall. It put the room oddly out of proportion, this mirror, attracting the eye to its high strip of light, and deluding the unwary to many a stumble; and Agnes already sat fixedly looking at it, and at the dark and wrinkled portrait reflected from the other wall.

Before the fireplace, where there was no fire, stood a large old-fashioned easy-chair, with no one in it. Are you very sure there is no one in it?—for Papa himself has a certain awe of that strangely-placed seat, which seems to have stood before that same fireplace for many a year. In the twilight, Agnes, if you were alone—you, who of all the family are most inclined to a little visionary superstition, you would find it very hard to keep from trembling, or to persuade yourself that Miss Bridget was not there, where she had spent half a lifetime, sitting in that heavy old easy-chair.

The carpet was a faded but rich and soft old Turkey carpet, the furniture was slender and spider-legged, made of old bright mahogany, as black and as polished as ebony. There was an old cabinet in one corner, with brass rings and ornaments; and in another an old musical instrument, of which the girls were not learned enough to know the precise species, though it belonged to the genus piano. The one small square table in the middle of the room was covered with a table-cover, richly embroidered, but the silk was faded, and the bits of gold were black and dull; and there were other little tables, round and square, with spiral legs and a tripod of feet, one holding a china jar, one a big book, and one a case of stuffed birds. On the whole, the room had somewhat the look of a rather refined and very prim old lady. The things in it were all of a delicate kind and antique fashion. It was not in the slightest degree like these fair and fresh young girls, but on the whole it was a place of which people like those, with a wholesome love of ancestry, had very good occasion to be proud.

And at the door stood Hannah, in a black gown and great white apron, smoothing down the same with her hands, and bobbing a kindly curtsy. Hannah’s eyes were running over with delight and anxiety to get at Bell and Beau. She passed over all the rest of the family to yearn over the little ones. “Eh, bless us!” cried Hannah, as, the thunder over, Mrs Atheling began to bestir herself—“children in the house!” It was something almost too ecstatic for her elderly imagination. She volunteered to carry them both up-stairs with the most eager attention. “I ain’t so much used to childer,” said Hannah, “but, bless ye, ma’am, I love ’um all the same;” and with an instinctive knowledge of this love, Beau condescended to grasp Hannah’s spotless white apron, and Bell to mount into her arms. Then the whole family procession went up-stairs to look at the bedrooms—the voices of the girls and the sweet chorus of the babies making the strangest echoes in the lonely house. Hannah acknowledged afterwards, that, half with grief for Miss Bridget, and half for joy of this new life beginning, it would have been a great relief to her to sit down upon the attic stairs and have “a good cry.”

CHAPTER XIV.

WITHIN AND WITHOUT.

The upper floor of the Old Wood Lodge consisted of three rooms; one as large as the parlour down stairs, one smaller, and one, looking to the back, very small indeed. The little one was a lumber-room, and quite unfurnished; the other two were in perfect accordance with the sitting-room. The best bedroom contained a bed of state, with very slender fluted pillars of the same black ebony-like wood, lifting on high a solemn canopy of that ponderous substance called moreen, and still to be found in country inns and seaside lodgings—the colour dark green, with a binding of faded violet. Hangings of the same darkened the low broad lattice window, and chairs of the same were ranged like ghosts along the wall. It was rather a funereal apartment, and the eager investigators were somewhat relieved to find an old-fashioned “tent,” with hangings of old chintz, gay with gigantic flowers, in the next room. But the windows!—the broad plain lying low down at their feet, twinkling to the first faint sun-ray which ventured out after the storm—the cluster of spires and towers over which the light brightened and strengthened, striking bold upon the heavy dome which gave a ponderous central point to the landscape, and splintering into a million rays from the pinnacles of Magdalen and St Mary’s noble spire, all wet and gleaming with the thunder rain. What a scene it was!—how the passing light kindled all the wan waters, and singled out, for a momentary illumination, one after another of the lesser landmarks of that world unknown. These gazers were not skilled to distinguish between Gothic sham and Gothic real, nor knew much of the distinguishing differences of noble and ignoble architecture. After all, at this distance, it did not much matter—for one by one, as the sunshine found them out, they rose up from the gleaming mist, picturesque and various, like the fairy towers and distant splendours of a morning dream.

“I told you it was pretty, Agnes,” said Mr Atheling, who felt himself the exhibitor of the whole scene, and looked on with delight at the success of his private view. Papa, who was to the manner born, felt himself applauded in the admiration of his daughters, and carried Beau upon his shoulder down the creaking narrow staircase, with a certain pride and exultation, calling the reluctant girls to follow him. For lo! upon Miss Bridget’s centre table was laid out “such a tea!” as Hannah in all her remembrance had never produced before. Fresh home-made cakes, fresh little pats of butter from the nearest farm—cream! and to crown all, a great china dish full of the last of the strawberries, blushing behind their fresh wet leaves. Hannah, when she had lingered as long as her punctilious good-breeding would permit, and long enough to be very wrathful with Mrs Atheling for intercepting a shower of strawberries from the plates of Bell and Beau, retired to her kitchen slowly, and drawing a chair before the fire, though the evening still was sultry, threw her white apron over her head, and had her deferred and relieving “cry.” “Bless you, I’ll love ’um all,” said Hannah, with a succession of sobs, addressing either herself or some unseen familiar, with whom she was in the habit of holding long conversations. “But it ain’t Miss Bridget—that’s the truth!”

The ground was wet, the trees were damp, everything had been deluged with the shower of the thunderstorm, and Mrs Atheling did not at all think it prudent that her daughters should go out, though she yielded to them. They went first through the fertile garden, where Marian thought “everything” grew—but were obliged to pause in their researches and somewhat ignorant guesses what everything was, by the unknown charm of that sweet rural atmosphere “after the rain.” Though it was very near sunset, the birds were all a-twitter in the neighbouring trees, and everywhere around them rose such a breath of fragrance—open-air fragrance, fresh and cool and sweet, as different from the incense of Mrs Edgerley’s conservatory as it was from anything in Bellevue. Running waters trickled somewhere out of sight—it was only the “running of the paths after rain;” and yonder, like a queen, sitting low in a sweet humility, was the silent town, with all its crowning towers. The sunshine, which still lingered on Hannah’s projecting window in the roof, had left Oxford half an hour ago—and down over the black dome, the heaven-y-piercing spire and lofty cupola, came soft and grey the shadow of the night.

But behind them, through a thick network of foliage, there were gleams and sparkles of gold, touching tenderly some favourite leaves with a green like the green of spring, and throwing the rest into a shadowy blackness against the half-smothered light. Marian ran into the house to call Hannah, begging her to guide them up into the wood. Agnes, less curious, stood with her hand upon the gate, looking down over this wonderful valley, and wondering if she had not seen it some time in a dream.

“Bless you, miss, if it was to the world’s end!” cried Hannah; “but it ain’t fit for walking, no more nor a desert; the roads is woeful by Badgeley; look you here!—nought in this wide world but mud and clay.”

Marian looked in dismay at the muddy road. “It will not be dry for a week,” said the disappointed beauty; “but, Hannah, come here, now that I have got you out, and tell us what every place is—Agnes, here’s Hannah—and, if you please, which is the village, and which is the Hall, and where is the Old Wood House?”

“Do you see them white chimneys—and smokes?” said Hannah; “they’re a-cooking their dinner just, though tea-time’s past—that’s the Rector’s. But, bless your heart, you ain’t likely to see the Hall from here. There’s all the park and all the trees atween us and my lord’s.”

“Do the people like him, Hannah?” asked Agnes abruptly, thinking of her friend.

Hannah paused with a look of alarm. “The people—don’t mind nothink about him,” said Hannah slowly. “Bless us, miss, you gave me such a turn!”

Agnes looked curiously in the old woman’s face, to see what the occasion of this “turn” might be. Marian, paying no such attention, leaned over the low mossy gate, looking in the direction of the Old Wood House. They were quite disposed to enjoy the freedom of the “country,” and were neither shawled nor bonneted, though the fresh dewy air began to feel the chill of night. Marian leaned out over the gate, with her little hand thrust up under her hair, looking into the distance with her beautiful smiling eyes. The road which passed this gate was a grassy and almost terraced path, used by very few people, and disappearing abruptly in an angle just after it had passed the Lodge. Suddenly emerging from this angle, with a step which fell noiselessly on the wet grass, meeting the startled gaze of Marian in an instantaneous and ghostlike appearance, came forth what she could see only as, against the light, the figure of a man hastening towards the high-road. He also seemed to start as he perceived the young unknown figures in the garden, but his course was too rapid to permit any interchange of curiosity. Marian did not think he looked at her at all as she withdrew hastily from the gate, and he certainly did not pause an instant in his rapid walk; but as he passed he lifted his hat—a singular gesture of courtesy, addressed to no one, like the salutation of a young king—and disappeared in another moment as suddenly as he came. Agnes, attracted by her sister’s low unconscious exclamation, saw him as well as Marian—and saw him as little—for neither knew anything at all of his appearance, save so far as a vague idea of height, rapidity—and the noble small head, for an instant uncovered, impressed their imagination. Both paused with a breathless impulse of respect, and a slight apprehensiveness, till they were sure he must be out of hearing, and then both turned to Hannah, standing in the shadow and the twilight, and growing gradually indistinct all but her white apron, with one unanimous exclamation, “Who is that?”

Hannah smoothed down her apron once more, and made another bob of a curtsy, apparently intended for the stranger. “Miss,” said Hannah, gravely, “that’s Mr Louis—bless his heart!”

Then the old woman turned and went in, leaving the girls by themselves in the garden. They were a little timid of the great calm and silence; they almost fancied they were “by themselves,”—not in the garden only, but in this whole apparent noiseless world.