The Athelings

“No, mamma,” said Agnes, turning away hastily. She went to get some work, that no one might observe her own looks, with a sudden nervous tremor and impatience upon her. The Rector had been very kind to Louis, had done a brother’s part to him—far more than any one else in the world had ever done to this friendless youth—yet Louis’s friends were labouring with all their might, working in darkness like evil-doers, to undermine the supposed right of Lionel—that right which made his breast expand and his brow clear, and freed him from an uncongenial fate. Agnes sat down trembling, with a sudden nervous access of vexation, disappointment, annoyance, which she could not explain. She had been accustomed for a long time now to follow him with interest and sympathy, and to read his thoughts in those wild public self-revelations of his, which no one penetrated but herself; but she felt actually guilty, a plotter, and concerned against him now.

“I am sorry for Lionel,” said Miss Rivers, who had not lost a single fluctuation of colour on Agnes’s cheek, nor tremble of emotion in her hurried hands—“but it would have been more grievous for poor George had he lived. There will be only disappointment—not disgrace—for any other heir.”

She paused awhile, still watching Agnes, who bent over her work, greatly disposed to cry, and in a very agitated condition of mind. Then she said as suddenly as before, “I forget my proper errand—I have come for the girls. You are to go up with me to the Priory. Go, make haste—put on your bonnet—I never wait, even for young ladies; call your sister, and make ready to go.”

Agnes rose, startled and unwilling, and cast an inquiring look at Mamma. Mrs Atheling was startled too, but she was not insensible to the pride and glory of seeing her two daughters drive off to Abingford Priory in the well-known carriage of Miss Anastasia. “Since Miss Rivers is so good, make haste, my dear,” said Mrs Atheling; and Agnes had no alternative but to obey.

When she was gone, Miss Rivers looked round the room inquisitively. Rachel was no great needlewoman, nor much instructed in ordinary feminine pursuits; there were no visible traces of the presence of a third young lady in the little dim parlour. “Where is the girl?” said Miss Anastasia, cautiously,—“I was told she was here.”

“The Rector asked her to go and see his sister—she is at the Old Wood House,” said Mrs Atheling. “I am very sorry—but we never thought of you coming to-day.”

“I might come any day,” said Miss Rivers, abruptly—“but that is not the question—I prefer not to see her—she is a frightened little dove of a girl—she is not in my way. Is she good for anything?—you ought to know.”

“She is a very sweet, amiable girl,” said Mrs Atheling, warmly—“and she sings as I never heard any one sing, all my life.”

“Ah!” said Miss Rivers, with a look of gratification, “it belongs to the family—music is a tradition among us—yes, yes! You remember my great-grandfather, the fourth lord—he was a great composer.” Miss Anastasia was perfectly destitute of the faculty herself, and more than half of the Riverses wanted that humblest of all musical qualifications, “an ear”—yet it was amusing to mark the eagerness of the old lady to find a family precedent for every quality known as belonging to Louis or his sister. “I recollect,” added Miss Rivers, bending her brows darkly, “they wanted to make a singer of her—the more disgrace the better—Oh, I understand their tactics! You are sorry for him?—look at the devilish plans he made.”

Mrs Atheling shook her head, but did not reply; she only knew that she would have been sorry for the vilest criminal in the world, had he lost his only son.

“I have heard from your boy,” said Miss Rivers. “He is gone now, I suppose. What does Will Atheling think of his son? If he does but as I expect he will, the boy’s fortune is made; he shall never repent that he did this service for me.”

“But it is a great undertaking,” said Mrs Atheling. “I know Charlie will do his best—he is a very good boy, Miss Rivers; but he may not succeed after all.”

“He will succeed,” said the old lady; “but even if he does not—which I cannot believe—so long as he does all he can, it will not alter me.”

The mother’s heart swelled high with gratification and pleasure; yet there was a drawback. All this time—since the first day when she heard of it, before she made her discovery—Miss Anastasia had never referred to the engagement between Louis and Marian. Did she desire to discourage it? Was she likely to perceive a difference in this respect between Louis nameless and without friends, and Louis the heir of Winterbourne?

But Mrs Atheling’s utmost penetration could not tell. Miss Rivers began to pull down the books, to look at them, to strike her riding-whip on the floor, and call out good-humouredly in her loud voice, which every one in the house could hear, that she was not to be kept waiting by a parcel of girls. Finally the girls made their appearance in their best dresses; their new patroness hurried them into her carriage, and drove instantly away.

CHAPTER X.

MARIAN ON TRIAL

Miss Anastasia “preferred not to see” Rachel—yet, with a wayward inclination still, was moved to drive by a circuitous road in front of the Old Wood House, where the girl was. The little vehicle went heavily along the grassy road, cutting the turf, but making little sound as it rolled past the windows of the invalid. There was the velvet lawn, the trim flower-plots, the tall autumnal flowers, the straight and well-kept garden-paths, lying vacant and shadowless beneath the sun—but there was nothing to be discovered under the closed blinds of this shut-up and secluded house.

“Why do they keep their blinds down?” said Miss Anastasia; “all the house surely is not one invalid’s room? Lucy was a little fool always. I do not believe there is anything the matter with her. She had what these soft creatures call a disappointment in love—words have different meanings, child. And why does this girl go to see Lucy Rivers? I suppose because she is such a one herself.”

“It is because Miss Rivers was kind to her,” said Agnes; “and the Rector asked her to go–”

“The Rector? Do you mean to tell me,” said Miss Anastasia, turning quickly upon her companion, “that when Lionel Rivers comes to the Lodge it is for her he comes?”

“I do not know,” said Agnes. She was provoked to feel how her face burned under the old lady’s gaze. She could not help showing something of the anger and vexation she felt. She looked up hastily, with a glance of resentment. “He has been very much interested in Louis—he has been very kind to him,” said Agnes, not at all indisposed, for the sake of the Rector, whom every one plotted against, to throw down her glove to Miss Anastasia. “I believe, indeed, it has been to inquire about Louis, that he ever came to the Lodge.”

Miss Anastasia touched her ponies with her whip, and said, “Humph!” “Both of them! odd enough,” said the old lady. Agnes, who was considerably offended, and not at all in an amicable state of mind, did not choose to inquire who Miss Anastasia meant by “both of them,” nor what it was that was “odd enough.”

Marian occupied the seat behind. She liked it very well, though she would rather have written her letter to Louis. She did not quite hear the conversation before her, and did not much care about it. Marian recognised the old lady only as Agnes’s friend, and had never connected her in any way with her own fortunes. She was shy of speaking in that stately presence; she was even resentful sometimes of the remarks of Miss Anastasia; and the lofty old gentlewoman had formed but an indifferent idea yet of the little beauty. She was amused with the pretty pout of Marian’s lip, the sparkle, sometimes of fun, sometimes of petulance, in her eye; but Marian would have been extremely dismayed to-day had she known that she, and not Agnes, was the principal object of Miss Anastasia’s visit, and was, indeed, about to be put upon her trial, to see if she was good for anything. At all events, she was quite at ease and unalarmed now.

They drove along in silence for some time after this—passing through the village and past the Park gates. Then Miss Anastasia took a road quite unfamiliar to the girls—a grass-grown unfrequented path, lying under the shadow of the trees of Winterbourne. She did not say a word till they came to a sudden break in the trees, when she stopped her ponies abruptly, and fixed a sorrowful gaze upon the Hall, which was visible, and close at hand. The white, broad, majestic front of the great house was not unlike a funeral pile at any time; now, with white curtains drawn close over all its scarcely perceptible windows, still veiled in the pomp of mourning, without a gleam of light or colour, in its blind, grand aspect, turning its back upon the sun—there was something very sadly imposing in the desolated house. No one was to be seen about it—not even a servant: it looked like a vast mausoleum, sacred to the dead. “It was very well for him,” said Miss Anastasia with a sigh, “very well. If it were not so pitiful a thing to think of, children, I could thank God.”

But as the old lady spoke, the tears stood heavy in her eyes.

This was very dreadful, very mysterious, altogether beyond comprehension to Marian. She was glad to turn her eyes away from the house with dislike and terror—it had been Louis’s prison and place of suffering, and not a single hope connected with the Hall of Winterbourne was in Marian’s mind. She drew back from Miss Rivers with a shudder—she thought it was the most frightful thing in existence to thank God because this young man had died.

The Priory opened its doors wide to its mistress and her young guests. She led them herself to her favourite room, a very strange place, indeed, to their inexperienced eyes. It was a long narrow room, built over the archway which crossed the entrance to the town of Abingford. This of itself was peculiarity enough; and the walls were of stone, wainscoted to half their height with oak, and the roof was ribbed with strong old oaken rafters, and of course unceiled. Windows on either side, plain lattice-windows, with thick mullions of stone, admitted the light in strips between heavy bars of shadow, and commanded a full sight of every one who entered the town of Abingford. On the country side was a long country road, some trees, and the pale convolutions of the river; on the other, there was a glimpse of the market-place of the town, even now astir with a leisurely amount of business, in the centre of which rose an extraordinary building with a piazza, while round it were the best shops of Abingford, and the farmers’ inns, which were full on market days. A little old church, rich with the same rude Saxon ornament which decorated the church of Winterbourne, stood modestly among the houses at the corner of the market-place. A few leisurely figures, such as belong to country towns, stood at the doors, or lounged about the pavement; and market-carts came and went slowly under the arch. Marian brightened into positive amusement; she thought it very funny indeed to watch the people and the vehicles slowly disappearing beneath her, and laughed to herself, and thought it a very odd fancy of Miss Anastasia, to choose her favourite sitting-room here.

The old lady came and stood beside her, somewhat to the embarrassment of Marian. She bade the girl take off her bonnet, which produced its unfailing result, of throwing into a little picturesque confusion those soft, silken, half-curled tresses of Marian’s hair. Marian looked out of the window somewhat nervously, a little afraid of Miss Rivers. The old lady looked at her with a keen scrutiny. She was stooping her pretty shoulders in an attitude which might have been awkward in a form less elastic, dimpling her cheek with the fingers which supported it, conscious of Miss Anastasia’s gaze, somewhat alarmed, and very shy. In spite of the shrinking, the alarm, and the embarrassment, Miss Rivers looked steadily down upon her with a serious inspection. But even the cloud which began to steal over Marian’s brow could not disenchant the eyes that gazed upon her—Miss Anastasia began to smile as everybody else; to feel herself moved to affection, tenderness, regard; to own the fascination which no one resisted. “My dear, you are very pretty,” said the old lady, entirely forgetting any prudent precautions on the score of making Marian vain; “many people would tell you, that, with a face like that, you need no other attraction. But I was once pretty myself, and I know it does not last for ever; do you ever think about anything, you lovely little child?”

Marian glanced up with an indignant blush and frown; but the look she met was so kind, that it was not possible to answer as she intended. So the pretty head sank down again upon the hand which supported it. She took a little time to compose herself, and then, with some humility, spoke the truth: “I am afraid, not a great deal.”

“What do you suppose I do here, all by myself?” said Miss Anastasia, suddenly.

Marian turned her face towards her, looked round the room, and then turned a wistful gaze to Miss Rivers. “Indeed, I do not know,” said Marian, in a very low and troubled tone: it was youth, with awe and gravity and pity, looking out of its bright world upon the loneliness and poverty of age.

That answer and that look brought the examination to a very hasty and sudden conclusion. The old lady looked at her for an instant with a startled glance, stooped over her, kissed her forehead and hurried away. Marian could not tell what she had done, nor why Miss Anastasia’s face changed so strangely. She could not comprehend the full force of the contrast, nor how her own simple wonder and pity struck like a sudden arrow to the old lady’s heart.

Agnes was puzzled too, and could not help her sister to an explanation. They remained by themselves for some time, rather timidly looking at everything. There were a few portraits hanging high upon the walls, portraits which they knew to be of the family, but could not recognise; and there was one picture of a very strange kind, which all their combined ingenuity could not interpret. It was like one of those old Dyptichs used to preserve some rare and precious altarpiece. What was within could not be seen, but on the closed leaves without were painted two solemn angels, with a silvery surrounding of wings, and flowers in their hands. If Miss Anastasia had been a Catholic—even if she had been a dilettante or extreme High Churchwoman, it might have been a little private shrine: perhaps it was so: there was a portrait within, which no eyes but her own ever saw. Between the windows the walls were lined with book-cases; that ancient joke of poor Aunt Bridget’s, her own initials underneath her pupil’s name—the B. A., which conferred a degree upon Anastasia Rivers—turned out to be an intentional thing after all. The girls gazed in awe at Miss Anastasia’s book-shelves. She was a great scholar, this old lady. She might have been one of the Heads of Houses in the learned city, but for the unfortunate femininity which debarred her. All by herself among these tomes of grey antiquity—all by herself with her pictures, the sole remnant of another time—it was not wonderful that the two girls paused, looking out from the sunshine of their youth with reverence, yet with compassion. They honoured her with natural humility, feeling their own ignorance, but notwithstanding, were very sorry for Miss Anastasia, all by herself—more sorry than there was occasion to be—for Miss Anastasia was used to be all by herself, and found enjoyment in it now.

When Miss Anastasia came back she took them to see her garden, and the state-apartments of her great stately house. When they were a little familiar she let them stray on before her, and followed watching. Agnes, perhaps, was still her own favourite of the two; but all her observation was given to Marian. As her eyes followed this beautiful figure, her look became more and more satisfied; and while Marian wandered with her sister about the garden, altogether unconscious of the great possibilities which awaited her, Miss Anastasia’s fancy clothed her in robes of state, and covered her with jewels. “He might have married a duke’s daughter,” she said to herself, turning away with a pleased eye—“but he might never have found such a beautiful fairy as this: she is a good little child too, with no harm in her; and a face for a fairy queen!”

CHAPTER XI.

DISCONTENT

No one knew the real effect of the blow which had just fallen upon Lord Winterbourne. The guests, of whom his house was full, dispersed as if by magic. Even Mrs Edgerley, in the most fashionable sables, with mourning liveries, and the blinds of her carriage solemnly let down, went forth, as soon as decency would permit, from the melancholy Hall. After all the bustle and all the gaiety of recent days, the place fell into a pause of deadly stillness. Lord Winterbourne sought comfort from no one—showed grief to no one; he made a sudden pause, like a man stunned, and then, with increased impetus, and with a force and resolution unusual to him, resumed his ancient way once more, and rushed forward with exaggerated activity. Instead of subduing him, this event seemed to have roused all his faculties into a feverish and busy malevolence, as if the man had said, “I have no one to come after me—I will do all the harm I can while my time lasts.” All the other gentry of the midland counties, put together, did not bring so many poachers to “justice” as were brought by Lord Winterbourne. It was with difficulty his solicitor persuaded him to pass over the pettiest trespass upon his property. He shut up pathways privileged from time immemorial, ejected poor tenants, encroached upon the village rights, and oppressed the village patriarchs; and animated as he was by this spirit of ill-will to every one, it was not wonderful that he endeavoured, with all his might, to press on the suit against the Athelings for the recovery of the Old Wood Lodge.

Mrs Atheling and her daughters, unwilling, embarrassed, and totally ignorant of their real means of defence, remained in their house at the pleasure of the lawyer, and much against their own inclination. Mrs Atheling herself, though with a spark of native spirit she had seconded her husband’s resolution not to give up his little inheritance, was entirely worried out with the task of defending it, now that Charlie was gone, and winter was approaching, and her heart yearned to her husband and her forsaken house in Bellevue. When she wrote to Mr Atheling, or when she consulted with Agnes, the good mother expressed her opinion very strongly. “If it turns out a mistake about Louis, none of us will care for this place,” said Mrs Atheling; “we shall have the expense of keeping it up, and unless we were living in it ourselves, I do not suppose it is worth ten pounds a-year; and if it should turn out true about Louis, of course he would restore it to us, and settle it so that there could be no doubt upon the subject; and indeed, Agnes, my dear, the only sensible plan that I can think of, would be to give it up at once, and go home. I do think it is quite an unfortunate house for the Athelings; there was your father’s poor little sister got her death in it; and it is easy to see how much trouble and anxiety have come into our family since we came here.”

“But trouble and anxiety might come anywhere, mamma,” said Agnes.

“Yes, my dear, that is very true; but we should have known exactly what we had to look for, if Marian had been engaged to some one in Bellevue.”

Mamma’s counsels, accordingly, were of a very timid and compromising character. She began to be extremely afraid that the Old Wood Lodge, being so near the trees, would be damp after all the autumn rains, and that something might possibly happen to Bell and Beau; and, with all her heart, and without any dispute, she longed exceedingly to be at home. Then there was the pretty pensive Marian, a little love-sick, and pining much for the society of her betrothed. She was a quiet but potent influence, doing what she could to aggravate the discontent of Mamma; and Agnes had to keep up the family courage, and develop the family patience, single-handed. Agnes, in her own private heart, though she did not acknowledge, nor even know it, was not at all desirous to go away.

The conflict accordingly, about this small disputed possession, lay a great deal more between Lord Winterbourne and Miss Anastasia than between that unfriendly nobleman and the house of Atheling. Miss Anastasia came frequently on errands of encouragement to fortify the sinking heart of Mrs Atheling. “My great object is to defer the trial of this matter for six months,” said the old lady significantly. “Let it come on, and we will turn the tables then.”

She spoke in the presence of Marian, before whom nothing could be said plainly—in the presence of Rachel even, whom it was impossible to avoid seeing, but who always kept timidly in the background—and she spoke with a certain exultation which somewhat puzzled her auditors. Charlie, though he had done nothing yet, had arrived at the scene of his labours. Assured of this fact, the courage of his patroness rose. She was a woman and an optimist, as she confessed. She had the gift of leaping to a conclusion, equal to any girl in the kingdom, and at the present moment was not disturbed by any doubts of success.

“Six months!” cried Mrs Atheling, in dismay and horror; “and do you mean that we must stay here all that time—all the winter, Miss Rivers? It is quite impossible—indeed I could not do it. My husband is all by himself, and I know how much I am wanted at home.”

“It is necessary some one should be in possession,” said Miss Rivers. “Eh? What does Will Atheling say?—I daresay he thinks it hard enough to be left alone.”

Mrs Atheling was very near “giving away.” Vexation and anxiety for the moment almost overpowered her self-command. She knew all the buttons must be off Papa’s shirts, and stood in grievous fear of a fabulous amount of broken crockery; besides, she had never been so long parted from her husband since their marriage, and very seriously longed for home.

“Of course it is very dreary for him,” she said, with a sigh.

“Mr Temple is making application to defer the trial on the score of an important witness who cannot reach this country in time,” said Miss Rivers. “Of course my lord will oppose that with all his power; he has a natural terror of witnesses from abroad. When the question is decided, I do not see, for my part, why you should remain. This little one pines to go home, I see—but you, Agnes Atheling, you had better come and stay at the Priory—you love the country, child!”

Both the sisters blushed under the scrutinising eye of Miss Anastasia; but Agnes was not yet reconciled to the old lady. “We are all anxious to go home,” she said with spirit, and with considerably more earnestness than the case at all demanded. Miss Rivers smiled a little. She thought she could read a whole romance in the fluctuating colour and troubled glance of Agnes; but she was wrong, as far-seeing people are so often. The girl was disturbed, uneasy, self-conscious, in a startled and impatient condition of mind; but the romance, even if it were on the way, had not yet definitely begun.