The Athelings

With almost the feeling of people in a dream, Agnes and Marian entered once more those well-remembered rooms of Mrs Edgerley, in which they had gained their first glimpse of the world; and Charlie, less demonstrative of his feelings, but not without a remembrance of the past, entered these same portals where he had exchanged that first glance of instinctive enmity with the former Lord Winterbourne. The change was almost too extraordinary to be realised even by the persons principally concerned. Marian, who had been but Agnes Atheling’s pretty and shy sister, came in now first of the party, the wife of the head of her former patroness’s family. Agnes, a diffident young genius then, full of visionary ideas of fame, had now her own known and acknowledged place, but had gone far beyond it, in the heart which did not palpitate any longer with the glorious young fancies of a visionary ambition; and Charlie, last of all—Charlie, who had tumbled out of the Islington fly to take charge of his sisters—a big boy, clumsy and manful, whom Lord Winterbourne smiled at, as he passed, with his ungenial smile—Charlie, almost single-handed, had thrust the usurper from his seat, and placed the true heir in his room. No wonder that the Athelings were somewhat dizzy with recollections when they came among all the fashionable people who were charmed to see them, and found their way at last to the boudoir where Agnes and Marian had looked at the faces and the diamonds, on that old Thursday of Mrs Edgerley’s, which sparkled still in their recollection, the beginning of their fate.

But though Louis and Marian, and Agnes and Rachel, were all extremely attractive, had more or less share in the romance, and were all more or less handsome, Charlie was without dispute the lion of the night. Mrs Edgerley fluttered about with him, holding his great arm with her pretty hand, and introducing him to every one; and with a smile, rueful, comical, half embarrassed, half ludicrous, Charlie, who continued to be very shy of ladies, suffered himself to be dragged about by the fashionable enchantress. He had very little to say—he was such a big fellow, so unmanageable in a delicate crowd of fine ladies, with draperies like gossamer, and, to do him justice, very much afraid of the dangerous steering; but Charlie’s “manners,” though they would have overwhelmed with distress his anxious mother, rather added to his “success.” “It was he who conducted the whole case.” “I do not wonder! Look, what a noble head! What a self-absorbed expression! What a power of concentration!” were the sweet and audible whispers which rang around him; and the more sensible observers of the scene, who saw the secret humour in Charlie’s upper-lip, slightly curved with amusement, acute, but not unkindly, and caught now and then a gleam of his keen eye, which, when it met with a response, always made a momentary brightening of the smile—were disposed to give him full credit for all the power imputed to him. Mrs Edgerley was in the highest delight—he was a perfect success for a lion. Lions, as this patroness of the fine arts knew by experience, were sadly apt to betray themselves, to be thrown off their balance, to talk nonsense. But Charlie, who was not given to talking, who was still so delightfully clumsy, and made such a wonderful bow, was perfectly charming; Mrs Edgerley declared she was quite in love with him. After all, natural feeling put out of the question, she had no extraordinary occasion to identify herself with the resentments or enmities of that ruined plotter at Baden; and he must have been a worthy father, indeed, who had moved Mrs Edgerley to shut her heart or her house to the handsome young couple, whom everybody delighted to honour, or to the hero of a fashionable romance, which was spoken of everywhere. She had no thought of any such sacrifice; she established the most friendly relations instantly with her charming young cousins. She extended the kindly title, with the most fascinating amiability, to Agnes and Charlie. She overwhelmed the young lawyer with compliments and invitations. He had a much stronger hold upon her fickle fancy than the author of Hope Hazlewood. Mrs Edgerley was delighted to speak to all her acquaintances of Mr Atheling, “who conducted all the case against poor dear papa—did everything himself, I assure you—and such a charming modesty of genius, such a wonderful force and character! Oh, any one may be jealous who pleases; I cannot help it. I quite adore that clever young man.”

Charlie took it all very quietly; he concerned himself as little about the adoration of Mrs Edgerley, as he did about the secret scrutiny of his mother concerning every young woman who chanced to cross the path of her son. Young women were the only created things whom Charlie was afraid of, and what his own secret thoughts might be upon this important question, nobody could tell.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

SETTLING DOWN

Many lesser changes had been involved in the great revolution which made the nameless Louis head of the family, and conferred upon him the estates and title of Lord Winterbourne: scarcely any one, indeed, in the immediate circle of the two families of Rivers and Atheling, the great people and the small, remained uninfluenced by the change of sovereignty, except Miss Anastasia, whose heart and household charities were manifestly widened, but to whom no other change except the last, and grand one, was like to come. The Rector kept his word; as soon as he heard of the definite settlement of that great question of Louis’s claim, he himself resigned his benefice; and one of the first acts of the new Lord Winterbourne was to answer the only request of Lionel, by conferring it upon Mr Mead. After that, Lionel made a settlement upon his sister of all the property which belonged to them, enough to make a modest maidenly income for the gentle invalid, and keep her in possession of all the little luxuries which seemed essential to her life. For himself, he retained a legacy of a thousand pounds which had been left to him several years before. This was the last that was known of the Rector—he disappeared into entire gloom and obscurity after he had made this final arrangement. It was sometimes possible to hear of him, for English travellers, journeying through unfamiliar routes, did not fail to note the wandering English gentleman who seemed to travel for something else than pleasure, and whose motives and objects no one knew; but where to look for him next, or what his occupations were, neither Louis nor his friends, in spite of all their anxious inquiries, could ever ascertain.

And Mr Mead was now the rector, and reigned in Lionel’s stead. A new rectory, all gabled and pinnacled, more “correct” than the model it followed, and truer to its period than the truest original in Christendom, rose rapidly between the village and the Hall; and Mr Mead, whose altar had been made bare by the iconoclastic hands of authority, began to exhibit some little alteration in his opinions as he grew older, held modified views as to the priesthood, and cast an eye of visible kindness upon the Honourable Rachel Rivers. The sentiment, however, was not at all reciprocal; no one believed that Rachel was really as old as Louis—older than the pretty matron Marian, older even than Agnes. She had never been a girl until now—and Rachel cared a great deal more for the invalid Lucy in her noiseless shadowy chamber in the Old Wood House, than for all the rectors and all the curates in the world. She was fancy free, and promised to remain so; and Marian had already begun with a little horror to entertain the idea that Rachel possibly might never marry at all.

The parent Athelings themselves were not unmoved by the changes of their children. Charlie was to be received as a partner into the firm which Mr Foggo, by dint of habit, still clung to, as soon as he had attained his one-and-twentieth year. Agnes, as these quiet days went on, grew both in reputation and in riches, girl though she still was; and the youngest of them was Lady Winterbourne! All these great considerations somewhat dazzled the eyes of the confidential clerk of Messrs Cash, Ledger, & Co., as he turned over his books upon that desk where he had once placed Agnes’s fifty-pound notes, the beginning of the family fortune. Bellevue came to be mightily out of the way when Louis and Marian were in town living in so different a quarter; and Mr Atheling wearied of the City, and Mamma concluded that the country air would be a great deal better for Bell and Beau. So Mr Atheling accepted a retiring allowance, the half of his previous income, from the employers whom he had served so long. The whole little household, even including Susan, removed to the country, where Marian had been delighting herself in the superintendence of the two or three additional rooms built to the Old Wood Lodge, which were so great a surprise to Mamma when she found them, risen as at the touch of a fairy’s wand. The family settled there at once in unpretending comfort, taking farewell affectionately of Miss Willsie and Mr Foggo, but not forgetting Bellevue.

And here Agnes pursued her vocation, making very little demonstration of it, the main pillar for the mean time, and crowning glory of her father’s house. Her own mind and imagination had been profoundly impressed, almost in spite of herself, by that last known act of Lionel’s—his hasty journey to London with Doctor Serrano. It was the kind of act beyond all others to win upon a temperament so generous and sensitive, which a more ostentatious generosity might have disgusted and repelled; and perhaps the very uncertainty in which they remained concerning him kept up the lurking “interest” in Agnes Atheling’s heart. It was possible that he might appear any day at their very doors; it was possible that he never might be seen again. It was not easy to avoid speculating upon him—what he was thinking, where he was?—and when, in that spontaneous delight of her young genius, which yet had suffered no diminution, Agnes’s thoughts glided into impersonation, and fairy figures gathered round her, and one by one her fables grew, in the midst of the thread of story—in the midst of what people called, to the young author’s amusement, “an elaborate development of character, the result of great study and observation”—thoughts came to her mind, and words to her lip, which she supposed no one could thoroughly understand save one. Almost unconsciously she shadowed his circumstances and his story in many a bright imagination of her own; and contrasted with the real one half-a-dozen imaginary Lionels, yet always ending in finding him the noblest type of action in that great crisis of his career. It blended somehow strangely with all that was most serious in her work; for when Agnes had to speak of faith, she spoke of it with the fervour with which one addresses an individual, opening her heart to show the One great Name enshrined in it to another, who, woe for him, in his wanderings so sadly friendless, knew not that Lord.

So the voice of the woman who dwelt at home went out over the world; it charmed multitudes who thought of nothing but the story it told, delighted some more who recognised that sweet faulty grace of youth, that generous young directness and simplicity which made the fable truth. If it ever reached to one who felt himself addressed in it, who knew the words, the allusions, that noble craft of genius, which, addressing all, had still a private voice for one—if there was such a man somewhere, in the desert or among the mountains far away, wandering where he seldom heard the tongue of his country, and never saw a face he recognised, Agnes never knew.

But after this fashion time went on with them all. Then there came a second heir, another Louis to the Hall at Winterbourne—and it was very hard to say whether this young gentleman’s old aunt or his young aunt, the Honourable Rachel, or the Honourable Anastasia, was most completely out of her wits at this glorious epoch in the history of the House. Another event of the most startling and extraordinary description took place very shortly after the christening of Marian’s miraculous baby. Charlie was one-and-twenty; he was admitted into the firm, and the young man, who was one of the most “rising young men” in his profession, took to himself a holiday, and went abroad without any one knowing much about it. No harm in that; but when Charlie returned, he brought with him a certain Signora Giulia, a very amazing companion indeed for this taciturn hero, who was afraid of young ladies. He took her down at once to Winterbourne, to present her to his mother and sisters. He had the grace to blush, but really was not half so much ashamed of himself as he ought to have been. For the pretty young Italian turned out to be cousin to Louis and Rachel—a delicate little beauty, extremely proud of the big young lover, who had carried her off from her mother’s house six weeks ago: and we are grieved to acknowledge that Charlie henceforth showed no fear whatever, scarcely even the proper awe of a dutiful husband, in the presence of Mrs Charles Atheling.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE END

Agnes Atheling was alone in old Miss Bridget’s parlour; it was a fervent day of July, and all the country lay in a hush and stillness of exceeding sunshine, which reduced all the common sounds of life, far and near, to a drowsy and languid hum—the midsummer’s luxurious voice. The little house was perfectly still. Mrs Atheling was at the Hall, Papa in Oxford, and Hannah, whose sole beatific duty it was to take care of the children, and who envied no one in the world save the new nurse to the new baby, had taken out Bell and Beau. The door was open in the fearless fashion and license of the country. Perhaps Susan was dozing in the kitchen, or on the sunny outside bench by the kitchen door. There was not a sound about the house save the deep dreamy hum of the bees among the roses—those roses which clustered thick round the old porch and on the wall. Agnes sat by the open window, in a very familiar old occupation, making a frock for little Bell, who was six years old now, and appreciated pretty things. Agnes was not quite so young as she used to be—four years, with a great many events in them, had enlarged the maiden mind, which still was as fresh as a child’s. She was changed otherwise: the ease which those only have who are used to the company of people of refinement, had added another charm to her natural grace. As she sat with her work on her knee, in her feminine attitude and occupation, making a meditative pause, bowing her head upon her hand, thinking of something, with those quiet walls of home around her—the open door, the open window, and no one else visible in the serene and peaceful house, she made, in her fair and thoughtful young womanhood, as sweet a type as one could desire of the serene and happy confidence of a quiet English home.

She did not observe any one passing; she was not thinking, perhaps, of any one hereabout who was like to pass—but she heard a step entering at the door. She scarcely looked up, thinking it some member of the family—scarcely moved even when the door of the parlour opened wider, and the step came in. Then she looked up—started up—let her work drop out of her hands, and, gazing with eagerness in the bronzed face of the stranger, uttered a wondering exclamation. He hastened to her, holding out his hand. “Mr Rivers?” cried Agnes, in extreme surprise and agitation—“is it you?”

What he said was some hasty faltering expressions of delight in seeing her, and they gazed at each other with their mutual “interest,” glad, yet constrained. “We have tried often to find out where you were,” said Agnes—“I mean Louis; he has been very anxious. Have you seen him? When did you come home?”

“I have seen no one save you.”

“But Louis has been very anxious,” said Agnes, with a little confusion. “We have all tried to discover where you were. Is it wrong to ask where you have been?”

But Lionel did not at all attend to her questions. He was less self-possessed than she was; he seemed to have only one idea at the present moment, so far as was visible, and that he simply expressed over again—“I am very glad—happy—to see you here and alone.”

“Oh!” said Agnes with a nervous tremor—“I—I was asking, Mr Rivers, where you had been?”

This time he began to attend to her. “I have been everywhere,” he said, “except where pleasure was. I have been on fields of battles—in places of wretchedness. I have come to tell you something—you only. Do you remember our conversation once by Badgeley Wood?”

“Yes.”

“You gave me a talisman, Agnes,” said the speaker, growing more excited; “I have carried it all over the world.”

“Well,” said Agnes as he paused. She looked at him very earnestly, without even a blush at the sound of her own name.

“Well—better than well!” cried Lionel; “wonderful—invincible—divine! I went to try your spell—I who trusted nothing—at the moment when everything had failed me—even you. I put yonder sublime Friend of yours to the experiment—I dared to do it! I took his name to the sorrowful, as you bade me. I cast out devils with his name, as the sorcerers tried to do. I put all the hope I could have in life upon the trial. Now I come to tell you the issue; it is fit that you should know.”

Agnes leaned forward towards him, listening eagerly; she could not quite tell what she expected—a confession of faith.

“I am a man of ambition,” said Lionel, turning in a moment from the high and solemn excitement of his former speech, with a sudden smile like a gleam of sunshine. “You remember my projects when I was heir of Winterbourne. You knew them, though I did not tell you; now I have found a cave in a wild mining district among a race of giants. I am Vicar of Botallach, among the Cornish men—have been for four-and-twenty hours—that is the end.”

Agnes had put out her hand to him in the first impulse of joy and congratulation; a second thought, more subtle, made her pause, and blush, and draw back. Lionel was not so foolish as to wait the end of this self-controversy. He left his seat, came to her side, took the hand firmly into his own, which she half gave, and half withdrew—did not blush, but grew pale, with the quiet concern of a man who was about deciding the happiness of his life. “The end, but the beginning too,” said Lionel, with a tremor in his voice. “Agnes hear me still—I have something more to say.”

She did not answer a word; she lifted her eyes to his face with one hurried, agitated momentary glance. Something more! but the whole tale was in the look. They did not know very well what words followed, and neither do we.

THE END