The Athelings

“Time enough for that,” said Charlie, who had listened to all this without comment, but with the closest attention. “What he did once he’ll do again, mother; but we’re close at his heels this time, and he won’t get off now. I’m going to Oxford now to get some books. I say, mother, you’ll be sure, upon your honour, not to tell the girls?”

“No, Charlie,” said Mrs Atheling, with a somewhat faint affirmation; “but, my dear, I can’t believe in it. It can’t be true. Charlie, boy! if this was coming true, our Marian—your sister, Charlie!—why, Marian would be Lady Winterbourne!”

Charlie did not say a word in return; he only took down his little travelling-bag, laid it at his mother’s feet to be packed, and left her to that business and her own meditations; but after he had left the room, the lad returned again and thrust in his shaggy head at the door. “Take care of Marian, mother,” said Charlie, in a parting adjuration; “remember my father’s little sister Bride.”

So he went away, leaving Mrs Atheling a good deal disquieted. She had got over the first excitement of Miss Anastasia’s great intelligence and the sudden preparations of Charlie. She had scarcely time enough, indeed, to give a thought to these things, when her son demanded this history from her, and sent her mind away into quite a different channel. Now she sat still in Charlie’s room, pondering painfully, with the travelling-bag lying quite unheeded at her feet. At one moment she pronounced the whole matter perfectly impossible—at the next, triumphantly inconsequent, she leaped to the full consummation of the hope, and saw her own pretty Marian—dazzling vision!—the lady of Winterbourne! and again the heart of the good mother fell, and she remembered little Bride. Louis, as he was now, having no greater friends than their own simple family, and no pretensions whatever either to birth or fortune, was a very different person from that other Louis who might be heir of lands and lordship and the family pride of the Riverses. Much perplexed, in great uncertainty and pain, mused Mrs Atheling, half-resentful of that grand discovery of Miss Anastasia, which might plunge them all into renewed trouble; while Charlie trudged into Oxford for his Italian grammar—and Louis and Marian wandered through the enchanted wood, drawing homeward—and Rachel sang to the children—and Agnes wondered by herself over the secret which was to be confided only to Mamma.

CHAPTER II.

A CRISIS

That night Charlie had need of all his diplomatic talents. Before he returned from Oxford, his mother, by way of precaution lest Agnes should betray the sudden and mysterious visit of Miss Anastasia to Marian, contrived to let her elder daughter know mysteriously, something of the scope and object of the sudden journey for which it was necessary to prepare her brother, driving Agnes, as was to be supposed, into a very fever of suppressed excitement, joy, triumph, and anxiety. Mrs Atheling, conscious, hurried, and studying deeply not to betray herself—and Agnes, watching every one, stopping questions, and guarding off suspicions with prudence much too visible—were quite enough of themselves to rouse every other member of the little company to lively pursuit after the secret. Charlie was assailed by every shape and form of question: Where was he going—what was he to do? He showed no cleverness, we are bound to acknowledge, in evading these multitudinous interrogations; he turned an impenetrable front upon them, and made the most commonplace answers, making vast incursions all the time into Hannah’s cakes and Mamma’s bread-and-butter.

“He had to go back immediately to the office; he believed he had got a new client for old Foggo,” said Charlie, with the utmost coolness; “making no secret of it at all,” according to Mamma’s indignant commentary.

“To the office!—are you only going home, after all?” cried Marian.

“I’ll see when I get there,” answered Charlie; “there’s something to be done abroad. I shouldn’t wonder if they sent me. I say, I wish you’d all come home at once, and make things comfortable. There’s my poor father fighting it out with Susan. I should not stand it if it was me.”

“Hold your peace, Charlie, and don’t be rude,” said Mrs Atheling. “But, indeed, I wish we were at home, and out of everybody’s way.”

“Who is everybody?” said Louis. “I, who am going myself, can wish quite sincerely that we were all at home; but the addition is mysterious—who is in anybody’s way?”

“Mamma means to wish us all out of reach of the Evil Eye,” said Agnes, a little romantically.

“No such thing, my dear. I daresay we could do him a great deal more harm than he can do us,” said Mrs Atheling, with sudden importance and dignity; then she paused with a certain solemnity, so that everybody could perceive the grave self-restraint of the excellent mother, and that she could say a great deal more if she chose.

“But no one thinks what I am to do when you are all gone,” said Rachel; and her tearful face happily diverted her companions from investigating and from concealing the secret. There remained among them all, however, a certain degree of excitement. Charlie was returning home to-morrow—specially called home on business!—perhaps to go abroad upon the same! The fact stirred all those young hearts with something not unlike envy. This boy seemed to have suddenly leaped in one day into a man.

And it was natural enough that, hearing of this, the mind of Louis should burn and chafe with fierce impatience. Charlie, who was perfectly undemonstrative of his thoughts and imaginations, was a very boy to Louis—yet there was need and occasion for Charlie in the crowd of life, when no one thought upon this fiery and eager young man. It was late that night when Louis left this only home and haven which he had ever known; and though he would fain have left Rachel there, his little sister would not remain behind him, but clung to his arm with a strange presentiment of something about to happen, which she could not explain. Louis scarcely answered a word to the quiet talk of Rachel as they went upon their way to the Hall. With difficulty, and even with impatience, he curbed his rapid stride to her timid little footsteps, and hurried her along without a glance at the surrounding scene, memorable and striking as it was. The broad moonlight flooded over the noble park of Winterbourne. The long white-columned front of the house—which was a great Grecian house, pallid, vast, and imposing—shone in the white light like a screen of marble; and on the great lawn immediately before it were several groups of people, dwarfed into minute miraculous figures by the great space and silence, and the intense illumination, which was far more striking and particular than the broader light of day. The chances were that Louis did not see them, as he plunged on, in the blindness of preoccupation, keeping no path, through light and shadow, through the trees and underwood, and across the broad unshaded greensward, where no one could fail to perceive him. His little sister clung to his arm in an agony of fear, grief, and confidence—trembling for something about to happen with an overpowering tremor—yet holding a vague faith in her brother, strange and absorbing. She said, “Louis, Louis!” in her tone of appeal and entreaty. He did not hear her, but struck across the broad visible park, in the full stream of the moonlight, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left. As they approached, Rachel could not even hear any conversation among the groups on the lawn; and it was impossible to suppose that they had not been seen. Louis’s abrupt direct course, over the turf and through the brushwood, must have attracted the notice of bystanders even in the daylight; it was still more remarkable now, when noiseless and rapid, through the intense white radiance and the perfect stillness, the stately figure of the young man, and his timid, graceful little sister, came directly forward in face of the spectators. These spectators were all silent, looking on with a certain fascination, and Rachel could not tell whether Louis was even conscious that any one was there.

But before they could turn aside into the road which led to the Hall door—a road to which Rachel most anxiously endeavoured to guide her brother—they were suddenly arrested by the voice of Lord Winterbourne. “I must put a stop to this,” said his lordship suddenly and loudly, with so evident a reference to themselves, that even Rachel stopped without knowing it. “Here, young fellow, stop and give an account of yourself—what do you mean by wandering about my park at midnight, eh? I know your poaching practices. Setting snares, I suppose, and dragging about this girl as a protection. Get into your kennel, you mean dog; is this how you repay the shelter I have given you all your life?”

“It would be a fit return,” said Louis. He did not speak so loud, but with a tremble of scorn and bitterness and intense youthful feeling in his voice, before which the echo of his persecutor’s went out and died, like an ignoble thing. “If I were, as you say,” repeated the young man, “setting snares for your game, or for your wealth, or for your life, you know it would be a fit return.”

“Yes, I live a peaceful life with this villanous young incendiary under my roof!” said Lord Winterbourne. “I’ll tell you what, you young ruffian, if nothing better can restrain you, locks and bars shall. Oh, no chance of appealing to my pity, with that fool of a girl upon your arm! You think you can defy me, year after year, because I have given charity to your base blood. My lad, you shall learn to know me better before another week is over our heads. Why, gentlemen, you perceive, by his own confession, I stand in danger of my life.”

“Winterbourne,” said some one over his shoulder, in a reproving tone, “you should be the last man in the world to taunt this unfortunate lad with his base blood.”

Lord Winterbourne turned upon his heel with a laugh of insult which sent the wild blood dancing in an agony of shame, indignation, and rage even into Rachel’s woman’s face. “Well,” said the voice of their tyrant, “I have supported the hound—what more would you have? His mother was a pretty fool, but she had her day. There’s more of her conditions in the young villain than mine. I have no idea of playing the romantic father to such a son—not I!”

Louis did not know that he threw his sister off his arm before he sprang into the midst of these half-dozen gentlemen. She did not know herself, as she stood behind clenching her small fingers together painfully, with all the burning vehemence of a woman’s passion. The young man sprang forward with the bound of a young tiger. His voice was hoarse with passion, not to be restrained. “It is a lie—a wilful, abominable lie!” cried Louis fiercely, confronting as close as a wrestler the ghastly face of his tyrant, who shrank before him. “I am no son of yours—you know I am no son of yours! I owe you the hateful bread I have been compelled to eat—nothing more. I am without a name—I may be of base blood—but I warn you for your life, if you dare repeat this last insult. It is a lie! I tell every one who condescends to call you friend; and I appeal to God, who knows that you know it is a lie! I may be the son of any other wretch under heaven, but I am not yours. I disown it with loathing and horror. Do you hear me?—you know the truth in your heart, and so do I!”

Lord Winterbourne fell back, step by step, before the young man, who pressed upon him close and rapid, with eyes which flamed and burned with a light which he could not bear. The insulting smile upon his bloodless face had not passed from it yet. His eyes, shifting, restless, and uneasy, expressed nothing. He was not a coward, and he was sufficiently quick-witted on ordinary occasions, but he had nothing whatever to answer to this vehement and unexpected accusation. He made an unintelligible appeal with his hand to his companions, and lifted up his face to the moonlight like a spectre, but he did not answer by a single word.

“Young man,” said the gentleman who had spoken before, “I acknowledge your painful position, and that you have been addressed in a most unseemly manner—but no provocation should make you forget your natural duty. Lord Winterbourne must have had a motive for maintaining you as he has done. I put it to you calmly, dispassionately—what motive could he possibly have had, except one?”

“Ah!” said Louis, with a sudden and violent start, “he must have had a motive—it is true; he would not waste his cruel powers, even for cruelty’s sake. If any man can tell me what child it was his interest to bastardise and defame, there may be hope and a name for me yet.”

At these words, Lord Winterbourne advanced suddenly with a singular eagerness. “Let us have done with this foolery,” he said, in a voice which was certainly less steady than usual; “I presume we can all be better employed than listening to the vapourings of this foolish boy. Go in, my lad, and learn a lesson by your folly to-night. I pass it over, simply because you have shown yourself to be a fool.”

“I, however, do not pass it over, my lord,” said Louis, who had calmed down after the most miraculous fashion, to the utter amazement of his sister. “Thank you for the provision you have given us, such as it is. Some time we may settle scores upon that subject. My sister and I must find another shelter to-night.”

The bystanders were half disposed to smile at the young man’s heroical withdrawal—but they were all somewhat amazed to find that Lord Winterbourne was as far as possible from sharing their amusement. He called out immediately in an access of passion to stop the young ruffian, incendiary, mischief-maker;—called loudly upon the servants, who began to appear at the open door—ordered Louis to his own apartment with the most unreasonable vehemence, and finally turned upon Rachel, calling her to give up the young villain’s arm, and for her life to go home.

But Rachel was wound to the fever point as well as her brother. “No, no, it is all true he has said,” cried Rachel. “I know it, like Louis; we are not your children—you dare not call us so now. I never believed you were our father—never all my life.”

She exclaimed these words hastily in her low eager voice, as Louis drew her arm through his, and hurried her away. The young man struck again across the broad park and through the moonlight, while behind, Lord Winterbourne called to his servants to go after the fugitives—to bring that fellow back. The men only stared at their master, looked helplessly at each other, and went off on vain pretended searches, with no better intention than to keep out of Louis’s way, until prudence came to the aid of Lord Winterbourne. “I shall scarcely think my life in safety while that young fool wanders wild about the country,” he said to his friends, as he returned within doors; but his friends, one and all, thought this a very odd scene.

Meanwhile Louis made his rapid way with his little sister on his arm out over the glorious moonlit park of Winterbourne, away from the only home he had ever known—out to the night and to the world. Rachel, leaning closely upon him, scarcely so much as looked up, as her faltering footstep toiled to keep up with her brother. He, holding his proud young head high, neither turned nor glanced aside, but pressed on straight forward, as if to some visionary certain end before his eye. Then they came out at last to the white silent road, lying ghostlike under the excess of light—the quiet road which led through the village where all the houses slept and everything was still, not a curl of smoke in the moonlight, nor a house-dog’s bark in the silence. It was midnight, vast and still, a great desolate uninhabited world. There was not a door open to them, nor a place where they could rest. But on pressed Louis, with the rapid step and unhesitating course of one who hastened to some definite conclusion. “Where are we going—where shall we go?” said poor little Rachel, drooping on his shoulder. Her brother did not hear her. He was not selfish, but he had not that superhuman consideration for others which might have broken the fiery inspiration of his own momentous thoughts, and made him think of the desolate midnight, and the houseless and outcast condition which were alone present to the mind of Rachel. He did not see a vast homeless solitude—a vagabond and disgraceful wandering, in this midnight walk. He saw a new world before him, such as had never glanced before across his fancy. “He must have had a motive,” he muttered to himself. Rachel heard him sadly, and took the words as a matter of course. “Where are we to go?”—that was a more immediately important question to the simple mind of Rachel.

The Old Wood Lodge was as deep asleep as any house in the village. They paused, reluctant, both of them, to awake their friends within, and went back, pacing rapidly between the house of the Athelings and that of the Rector. The September night was cold, and Rachel was timid of that strange midnight world out of doors. They seemed to have nothing for it but pacing up and down upon the grassy road, where they were at least within sight of a friendly habitation, till morning came.

There was one light in one window of the Old Wood House; Rachel’s eye went wandering to it wistfully, unawares: If the Rector knew—the Rector, who once would have been kind if Louis would have let him. But, as if in very response to her thoughts, the Rector, when they came back to this point again, was standing, like themselves, in the moonlight, looking over the low wall. He called to them rather authoritatively, asking what they did there—but started, and changed his tone into one of wondering interest and compassion when Rachel lifted her pale face to him, with the tears in her eyes. He hastened to the gate at once, and called them to enter. “Nay, nay, no hesitation—come in at once, that she may have rest and shelter,” said the Rector in a peremptory tone, which, for the first time in his life, Louis had no thought of resenting. He went in without a word, leading his little sister. Perhaps it was the first great thing that ever had been done in all her life for Rachel’s sake—for the sake of the delicate girl, who was half a child though a woman in years,—for sake of her tenderness, her delicate frame, her privilege of weakness. The two haughty young men went in silently together into this secluded house, which never opened its doors to any guest. It was an invalid’s home, and some one was always at hand for its ailing mistress. By-and-by Rachel, in the exhaustion of great excitement, fell asleep in a little quiet room looking over that moonlit park of Winterbourne. Louis, who was in no mood for sleep, watched below, full of eager and unquiet thoughts. They had left Winterbourne Hall suddenly; the Rector asked no further questions, expressed no wonder, and left the young man who had repelled him once, with a lofty and dignified hospitality, to his meditations or repose.

CHAPTER III.

CHARLIE’S PREPARATIONS

Charlie Atheling was not at all of an imaginative or fanciful turn of mind. His slumbers were not disturbed by castle-building—he wasted none of his available time in making fancy sketches of the people, or the circumstances, among which he was likely to be thrown. He was not without the power of comprehending at a glance the various features of his mission; but by much the most remarkable point of Charlie’s character was his capacity for doing his immediate business, whatever that might be, with undivided attention, and with his full powers. On this early September morning he neither occupied himself with anticipations of his interview with Miss Anastasia, nor his hurried journey. He did not suffer his mind to stray to difficult questions of evidence, nor wander off into speculations concerning what he might have to do when he reached the real scene of his investigation. What he had to do at the moment he did like a man, bending upon his serious business all the faculties of his mind, and all the furrows of his brow. He got up at six o’clock, not because he particularly liked it, but because these early morning hours had become his habitual time for extra work of every kind, and sat upon Hannah’s bench in the garden, close by the kitchen door, with the early sun and the early wind playing hide-and-seek among his elf-locks, learning his Italian grammar, as if this was the real business for which he came into the world.

“Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do”—that was Charlie’s secret of success. He had only a grammar, a dictionary, and a little New Testament in Italian—and he had not at this moment the slightest ambition to read Dante in the original; but with steady energy he chased those unknown verbs into the deep caverns of his memory—a memory which was prodigious, and lost nothing committed to it. The three books accompanied him when he went in to breakfast, and marched off in his pocket to Oxford when it was time to keep his appointment with Miss Anastasia. Meanwhile the much-delayed travelling-bag only now began to get packed, and Mrs Atheling, silently toiling at this business, felt convinced that Susan would mislay all the things most important for Charlie’s comfort, and very much yearned in her heart to accompany her son home. They were to meet him at the railway, whence he would depart immediately, after his interview with Miss Rivers; and Charlie’s secret commission made a considerable deal of excitement in the quiet little house.

Miss Anastasia, who was much too eager and impetuous to be punctual, had been waiting for some time, when her young agent made his appearance at the office of her solicitor. After she had charged him with being too late, and herself suffered conviction as being too early, the old lady proceeded at once to business; they were in Mr Temple’s own room, but they were alone.

“I have made copies of everything that seemed to throw light upon my late father’s wanderings,” said Miss Anastasia—“not much to speak of—see! These papers must have been carefully weeded before they came to my hands. Here is an old guide-book marked with notes, and here a letter dated from the place where he died. It is on the borders of Italy—at the foot of the Alps—on the way to Milan, and not very far from there. You will make all speed, young Atheling; I trust to your prudence—betray nothing—do not say a word about these children until you find some certain clue. It is more than twenty years—nearly one-and-twenty years—since my father died; but a rich Englishman, who married among them, was not like to be forgotten in such a village. Find out who this Giulietta was—if you can discover the family, they might know something. My father had an attendant, a sort of courier, who was with us often—Jean Monte, half a Frenchman half an Italian. I have never heard of him since that time; he might be heard of on the way, and he might know—but I cannot direct you, boy—I trust to your own spirit, your own foresight, your own prudence. Make haste, as if it was life and death; yet if time will avail you, take time. Now, young Atheling, I trust you!—bring clear evidence—legal evidence—what will stand in a court of law—and as sure as you live your fortune is made!”

Charlie did not make a single protestation in answer to this address. He folded up carefully those fragments of paper copied out in Miss Anastasia’s careful old-fashioned lady’s hand, and placed them in the big old pocket-book which he carried for lack of a better.

“I don’t know much of the route,” said Charlie,—“over the Alps, I suppose,” and for once his cheek flushed with the youthful excitement of the travel. “I shall find out all about that immediately when I get to town; and there is a passport to be seen after. When I am ready to start—which will be just as soon as the thing can be done—I shall let you know how I am to travel, and write immediately when I arrive there;—I know what you mean me to do.”

Then Miss Anastasia gave him—(a very important part of the business)—two ten-pound notes, which was a very large sum to Charlie, and directed him to go to the banking-house with which she kept an account in London, and get from them a letter of credit on a banker in Milan, on whom he could draw, according to his occasions. “You are very young, young Atheling,” said Miss Rivers; “many a father would hesitate to trust his son as I trust you; but I’m a woman and an optimist, and have my notions: you are only a boy, but I believe in you—forget how young you are while you are about my business—plenty of time after this for enjoying yourself—and I tell you again, if you do your duty, your fortune is made.”

The old lady and the youth went out together, to where the little carriage and the grey ponies stood at the solicitor’s door. Charlie, in his present development, was not at all the man to hand a lady with a grace to her carriage; nor was this stately gentlewoman, in her brown pelisse, at all the person to be so escorted; but they were a remarkable pair enough, as they stood upon the broad pavement of one of the noblest streets of Christendom. Miss Anastasia held out her hand with a parting command and warning, as she took her seat and the reins.—“Young Atheling, remember! it is life and death!”

She was less cautious at that moment than she had been during all their interview. The words full upon another ear than his to whom they were addressed. Lord Winterbourne was making his way at the moment with some newly-arrived guests of his, and under the conduct of a learned pundit from one of the colleges, along this same picturesque High Street; and, in the midst of exclamations of rapture and of interest, his suspicious and alarmed eye caught the familiar equipage and well-known figure of Miss Anastasia. Her face was turned in the opposite direction,—she did not see him,—but a single step brought him near enough to hear her words. “Young Atheling!” Lord Winterbourne had not forgotten his former connection with the name, but the remembrance had long lain dormant in a breast which was used to potent excitements. William Atheling, though he once saved a reckless young criminal, could do no harm with his remote unbelievable story to a peer of the realm,—a man who had sat in the councils of the State. Lord Winterbourne had begun his suit for the Old Wood Lodge with the most contemptuous indifference to all that could be said of him by any one of this family; yet somehow it struck him strangely to hear so sudden a naming of this name. “Young Atheling!” He could not help looking at the youth,—meeting the stormy gleam in the eyes of Charlie, whose sudden enmity sprung up anew in an instant. Lord Winterbourne was sufficiently disturbed already by the departure of Louis, and with the quick observation of alarm remarked everything. He could understand no natural connection whatever between this lad and Miss Anastasia. His startled imagination suggested instantly that it bore some reference to Louis, and what interpretation was it possible to give to so strange an adjuration—“It is life and death!”

CHAPTER IV.

GOING AWAY

“Charlie, my dear boy,” said Mrs Atheling, with a slight tremble in her voice, “I suppose it may be months before we see you again.”

“I can’t tell, mother; but it will not be a day longer than I can help,” said Charlie, who had the grace to be serious at the moment of parting. “There’s only one thing, you know,—I must do my business before I come home.”

“And take care of yourself,” said Mrs Atheling; “take great care when you are going over those mountains, and among those people where bandits are—you know what stories we have read about such robbers, Charlie,—and remember, though I should be very glad to hear good news about Louis, Louis is not my own very boy, like you.”

“Hush, mother—no need for naming him,” said Charlie; “he is of more moment than me, however, this time—for that’s my business. Never fear—thieves may be fools there as well as at home, but they’re none such fools as to meddle with me. Now, mother, promise me, the last thing,—Agnes, do you hear?—don’t tell Marian a word, nor him. I’ll tell old Foggo the whole story, and Foggo will do what he can for him when he gets to London; but don’t you go and delude him, telling him of this, for it would just be as good as ruin if I don’t succeed; and it all may come to nothing, as like as not. I say, Agnes, do you hear?”