The Athelings

When the news became diffused through the house that Charlie was coming home to-night, and that Miss Anastasia was to wait for him, a very great stir and bustle immediately ensued. The best room was hastily put in order, and Mrs Atheling’s own bedchamber immediately revised and beautified for the reception of Miss Anastasia. It was with a little difficulty, however, that the old lady was persuaded to leave the family parlour for the best room. She resisted energetically all unusual attentions, and did not hesitate to declare, even in the presence of Rachel, that her object was to see Charlie, and that for his arrival she was content to wait all night. A great anxiety immediately took possession of the household. They too were ready and eager to wait all night; and even Susan became vaguely impressed with a solemn sense of some great approaching event. Charlie was not to be alone either. The excitement rose to a quite overpowering pitch—who was coming with him? What news did he bring? These questions prolonged to the most insufferable tediousness the long slow darksome hours of the March night.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHARLIE’S RETURN

The girls could not be persuaded to go to rest, let Mamma say what she would. Rachel, the only one who had no pretence, nor could find any excuse for sitting up, was the only one who showed the least sign of obedience; she went up-stairs with a meek unwillingness, lingered as long as she could before lying down, and when she extinguished her light at last, lay very broad awake looking into the midnight darkness, and listening anxiously to every sound below. Marian, in the parlour on a footstool, sat leaning both her arms on her mother’s knee, and her head upon her arms, and in that position had various little sleeps, and half-a-dozen times in half-a-dozen dreams welcomed Charlie home. Agnes kept Miss Anastasia company in the best room, and Papa, who was not used to late hours, went between the two rooms with very wide open eyes, very anxious for his son’s return. Into the midnight darkness and solemnity of Bellevue, the windows of Number Ten blazed with a cheerful light; the fires were studiously kept up, the hearths swept, everything looking its brightest for Charlie; and a pair of splendid capons, part produce of Miss Anastasia’s hamper, were slowly cooking themselves into perfection, under the sleepy superintendence of Susan, before the great kitchen-fire—for even Susan would not go to bed.

Miss Anastasia sat very upright in an easy-chair, scorning so much as a suspicion of drowsiness. She did not talk very much; she was thinking over a hundred forgotten things, and tracing back step by step the story of the past. The old lady almost felt as if her father himself was coming from his foreign grave to bear witness to the truth. Her heart was stirred as she sat gazing into the ruddy firelight, hearing not a sound except now and then the ashes falling softly on the hearth, or the softer breath of Agnes by her side. As she sat in this unfamiliar little room, her mind flew back over half her life. She thought of her father as she had seen him last; she thought of the dreary blank of her own youthful desolation, a widowhood almost deeper than the widowhood of a wife—how she did not heed even the solemn pathos of her father’s farewell—could not rouse herself from her lethargy even to be moved by the last parting from that last and closest friend, and desired nothing but to be left in her dreary self-seclusion obstinately mourning her dead—her murdered bridegroom! The old lady’s eyes glittered, tearless, looking into the gleaming shadowy depths of the little mirror over the mantelpiece. It was scarcely in human nature to look back upon that dreadful tragedy, to anticipate the arrival to-night of the witnesses of another deadly wrong, and not to be stirred with a solemn and overwhelming indignation like that of an avenger of blood. Miss Anastasia started suddenly from her reverie, as she caught a long-drawn anxious sigh from her young companion; she drew her shawl close round her with a shudder. “God forgive me!” cried the vehement old lady; “did you ever have an enemy, child?”

In this house it was a very easy question. “No,” said Agnes, looking at her wistfully.

“Nor I, perhaps, when I was your age.” Miss Anastasia made a long pause. It was a long time ago, and she scarcely could recollect anything of her youth now, except that agony with which it ended. Then in the silence there seemed to be a noise in the street, which roused all the watchers. Mr Atheling went to the door to look out. It was very cold, clear, and calm, the air so sharp with frost, and so still with sleep, that it carried every passing sound far more distinctly than usual. Into this hushed and anxious house, through the open door came ringing the chorus of a street ballad, strangely familiar and out of unison with the excited feelings of the auditors, and the loud, noisy, echoing footsteps of some late merry-makers. They were all singularly disturbed by these uncongenial sounds; they raised a certain vague terror in the breasts of the father and mother, and a doubtful uneasiness among the other watchers. Under that veil of night, and silence, and distance, who could tell what their dearest and most trusted was doing? The old people could have told each other tales, like Jessica, of “such a night;” and the breathless silence, and the jar and discord of those rude voices, stirred memories and presentiments of pain even in the younger hearts.

It was now the middle of the night, two or three hours later than Miss Anastasia had anticipated, and the old lady rose from her chair, shook off her thoughtful mood, and began to walk about the room, and to criticise it briskly to Agnes. Then by way of diversifying her vigil, she made an incursion into the other parlour, where Papa was nursing the fire, and Mamma sitting very still, not to disturb Marian, who slept with her beautiful head upon her mother’s knee. The old lady was suddenly overcome by the sight of that fair figure, with its folded arms and bowed head, and long beautiful locks falling down on Mrs Atheling’s dark gown, like a stream of sunshine. She laid her hand very tenderly upon the sleeper’s head. “She does not know,” said Miss Anastasia—“she would not believe what a fairy fortune is coming to her, the sleeping beauty—God bless them all!”

The words had scarcely left her lips, the tears were still shining in her eyes, when Marian started up, called out of her dream by a sound which none of them besides had been quick enough to hear. “There! there! I hear him,” cried Marian, shaking back her loose curls; and they all heard the far-off rapid rumble of a vehicle, gradually invading all the echoes of this quietness. It came along steadily—nearer—nearer—waking every one to the most overpowering excitement. Miss Anastasia marched through the little parlour, with an echoing step, throwing her tall shadow on the blind, clasping her fingers tight. Mr Atheling rushed to the door; Marian ran to the kitchen to wake up Susan, and see that the tray was ready for Charlie’s refreshment; Mamma stirred the fire, and made it blaze; Agnes drew the blind aside, and looked out into the darkness from the window. Yes, there could be no mistake; on came the rumbling wheels, closer and closer. Then the cab became absolutely visible, opposite the door—some one leapt out—was it Charlie?—but he had to wait, to help some one else, very slow and uncertain, out of the vehicle. They all crowded to the door, the mother and sisters for the moment half forgetting Miss Anastasia; and there stood a most indisputable Charlie, very near six feet high, with a travelling-cap and a rough overcoat, bringing home the most extraordinary guest imaginable to his amazed parental home.

It was a woman, enveloped from head to foot in a great cloak, but unbonneted, and with an amazing head-dress; and after her stumbled forth a boy, of precisely the same genus and appearance as the Italian boys with hurdy-gurdies and with images, familiar enough in Bellevue. Charlie hurried forward, paying the greatest possible attention to his charge, who was somewhat peevish. He scarcely left her hand when he plunged among all those anxious people at the door. “All safe—all well, mother; how did you know I was coming?—how d’ye do, papa? Let her in, let her in, girls!—she’s tired to death, and doesn’t know a word of English. Let’s have her disposed of first of all—she’s worth her weight in gold– Miss Rivers!”

The young man fell back in extreme amazement. “Who is she, young Atheling?” cried Miss Anastasia, towering high in the background over everybody’s head.

Charlie took off his cap with a visible improvement of “manners.” “The nurse that brought them home,” he answered, in the concisest and most satisfactory fashion; and, grasping the hand of every one as he passed, with real pleasure glowing on his bronzed face, Charlie steered his charge in—seeing there was light in it—to the best room. Arrived there, he fairly turned his back to the wall, and harangued his anxious audience.

“It’s all right,” said Charlie; “she tells her story as clearly as possible when she’s not out of humour, and the doctor’s on his way. I’ve made sure of everything of importance; and now, mother, if you can manage it, and Miss Rivers does not object, let us have something to eat, and get her off to bed, and then you shall hear all the rest.”

Marian went off instantly to call Susan, and all the way Marian repeated under her breath, “All the rest! all the rest of what? Oh, Louis! but I’ll find out what they mean.”

CHAPTER XXII.

CHARLIE’S REPORT

It was far from an easy achievement to get her safely conveyed up the stairs. She turned round and delivered addresses to them in most lively and oratorical Italian, eloquent on the subject of her sufferings by the way; she was disposed to be out of temper when no one answered her but Charlie, and fairly wound up, and stimulated with Miss Anastasia’s capon and Mrs Atheling’s wine, was not half so much disposed to be sent off to bed as her entertainers were to send her. These entertainers were in the oddest state of amaze and excitement possible. It was beginning to draw near the wintry morning of another day, and this strange figure in the strange dress, which did not look half so pretty in its actual reality, and upon this hard-featured peasant woman, as it did in pictures and romance—the voluble foreign tongue of which they did not know a word—the emphatic gestures; the change in the appearance of Charlie, and the entire suddenness of the whole scene, confused the minds of the lookers-on. Then a pale face in a white cap, a little shrinking white-robed figure, trembling and anxious, was perceptible to Mrs Atheling at the top of the stair, looking down upon it with terror. So Mamma peremptorily sent Charlie back beside Miss Anastasia, and resumed into her own hands the management of affairs. Under her guidance the woman and the boy were comfortably disposed of, no one being able to speak a word to them, in the room which had been Charlie’s. Rachel was comforted and sent back to bed, and then Mrs Atheling turned suddenly upon her own girls. “My dears,” said Mamma, “you are not wanted down stairs. I don’t suppose Papa and I are wanted either; Miss Anastasia must talk over her business with Charlie—it is not our business you know, Marian, my darling; go to sleep.”

“Go to sleep!—people cannot go to sleep just when they choose at five o’clock in the morning, mamma!” cried the aggrieved and indignant Marian; but Agnes, though quite as curious as her sister, was wise enough to lend her assistance in the cause of subordination. Marian was under very strong temptation. She thought she could almost like to steal down in the dark and listen; but honour, we are glad to say, prevailed over curiosity, and sleep over both. When her pretty young head touched the pillow, there was no eavesdropping possible to Marian; and in the entirest privacy and silence, after all this tumult, in the presence of Mamma and Mr Atheling, and addressing himself to Miss Anastasia, Charlie told his tale. He took out his pocket-book from his pocket—the same old-fashioned big pocket-book which he had carried away with him, and gave his evidences one by one into Miss Anastasia’s hands as he spoke.

But the old lady’s fingers trembled: she had restrained herself as well as she could, feeling it only just that he should be welcomed by his own, and even half diverted out of her anxiety by the excited Tyrolese; but now her restrained feelings rushed back upon her heart. The papers rustled in her hand; she did not hear him as he began, in order, and deliberately, his report. “Information! I cannot receive information, I am too far gone for that,” cried the old lady, with a hysterical break in her voice. “Give me no facts, Charlie, Charlie!—I am not able to put them together—tell me once in a word—is it true?”

“It is true,” said Charlie, eagerly—“not only true, but proved—certain, so clear that nobody can deny it. Listen, Miss Rivers, I could be content to go by myself with these evidences in my hand, before any court in England, against the ablest pleader that ever held a brief. Don’t mind the proofs to-night; trust my assurance, as you trusted me. It is true to the letter, to the word, everything that you supposed. Giulietta was his wife. Louis is his lawful son.”

Miss Anastasia did not say a word; she bowed down her face upon her hands—that face over which an ashy paleness came slowly stealing like a cloud. Mrs Atheling hastened forward, thinking she was about to faint, but was put aside by a gesture. Then the colour came back, and Miss Anastasia rose up, herself again, with all her old energy.

“You are perfectly right, young Atheling—quite right—as you have always been,” said Miss Rivers; “and, of course, you have told me in your letters the most part of what you could tell me now. But your boy is born for the law, Will Atheling,” she said, turning suddenly to Charlie’s pleased and admiring father. “He wrote to me as if I were a lawyer instead of a woman: all facts and no opinion; that was scant measure for me. Shake hands, boy. I’ll see everything in the morning, and then we’ll think of beginning the campaign. I have it in my head already—please Heaven! Charlie, we’ll chase them from the field.”

So saying, Miss Anastasia marched with an exultant and jubilant step, following Mrs Atheling up the narrow stairs. She was considerably shaken out of her usual composure—swells of great triumph, suddenly calmed by the motion of a moved heart, passed over the spirit of this brave old gentlewoman like sun and wind; and her self-appointed charge of the rights of her father’s children, who might have been her own children so far as age was concerned, had a very singular effect upon her. Mrs Atheling did not linger a minute longer than she could help with her distinguished guest. She was proud of Miss Anastasia, but far prouder of Charlie,—Charlie, who had been a boy a little while ago, but who had come back a man.

“Come here and sit down, mother,” said Charlie; “now we’re by ourselves, if you will not tell the girls, I’ll tell you everything. First, there’s the marriage. That she belonged to the family I wrote of—the family Remori—I got at after a long time. She was an only daughter, and had no one to look after her. I have a certificate of the marriage, and a witness coming who was present—old Doctor Serrano—one of your patriots who is always in mischief; besides that, what do you think is my evidence for the marriage?”

“Indeed, Charlie, I could not guess,” cried Mrs Atheling.

“There’s a kind of tomb near the town, a thing as like the mausoleum at Winterbourne as possible, and quite as ugly. There is this good in ugliness,” said Charlie, “that one remarks it, especially in Italy. I thought no one but an Englishman could have put up such an affair as that, and I could not make out one way or another who it belonged to, or what it was. The priests are very strong out there. They would not let a heretic lie in consecrated ground, and no one cared to go near this grave, if it was a grave. They wouldn’t allow even that. You know what the Winterbourne tomb is—a great open canopied affair, with that vast flat stone below. There was a flat stone in the other one too, not half so big, and it looked to me as if it would lift easily enough. So what do you think I did? I made friends with some wild fellows about, and got hold of one young Englishman, and as soon as it was dark we got picks and tools and went off to the grave.”

“Oh, Charlie!” Mrs Atheling turned very pale.

“After a lot of work we got it open,” said Charlie, going on with great zest and animation. “Then the young fellow and I got down into the vault—a regular vault, where there had been a lamp suspended. It, I suppose, had gone out many a year ago; and there we found upon the two coffin-lids—well, it’s very pitiful, mother, it is indeed—but we wanted it for evidence—on one of the coffins was this inscription:—‘Giulietta Rivers, Lady Winterbourne, née Remori, died January 1822, aged twenty years.’ If it had been a diamond mine it would not have given so much pleasure to me.”

“Pleasure! oh Charlie!” cried Mrs Atheling faintly.

“But they might say you put it there, Charlie, and that it was not true,” said Mr Atheling, who rather piqued himself upon his caution.

“That was what I had the other young fellow for,” said Charlie quietly; “and that was what made me quite sure she belonged to the Remoris; it was easy enough after that—and I want only one link now, that is, to make sure of their identity. Father, do you remember anything about the children when they came to the Hall?”

Mr Atheling shook his head. “Your aunt Bridget, if she had been alive, would have been sure to know,” said Mamma meditatively; “but Louis found out some old servant lately that had been about Winterbourne long ago.”

“Louis! does he know?” cried Charlie.

“He is doing something on his own account, inquiring everything he can about Lord Winterbourne. He does not know, but guesses every possible kind of thing, except the truth,” said Mr Atheling; “how long he may be of lighting upon that, it is impossible to say.”

“Now Charlie, my dear boy, you can ask all about Louis to-morrow,” said Mrs Atheling. “Louis! Dear me, William, to think of us calling him Louis, and treating him like any common young man, and he Lord Winterbourne all the time! and all through Charlie!—and oh, my Marian! when I think of it all, it bewilders me! But, Charlie, my dear, you must not be fatigued too much. Do not ask him any more questions to-night, papa; consider how important his health is; he must lie down directly. I’ll make him all comfortable; and, William, do you go to the parlour—bid him good-night.”

Papa obeyed, as dutiful papas are wont to obey, and Charlie laughed, but submitted, as his mother, with her own kind unwearying hands, arranged for him the sofa in the best room; for the Tyrolese and Miss Anastasia occupied all the available bedrooms in the house. Then she bade him good-night, drawing back his dark elf-locks, and kissing his forehead tenderly, and with a certain respect for the big boy who was a boy no longer; and then the good mother went away to arrange her husband similarly on the other sofa, and to take possession, last of all, of the easy-chair. “I can sleep in the day if I am disposed,” said Mrs Atheling, who never was disposed for any such indulgence; and she leaned back in the big chair, with a mind disturbed and glowing, agitated with grand fancies. Marian! was it possible? But then, Agnes—after all, what a maze of splendid uncertainty it was!

CHAPTER XXIII.

PROCRASTINATION

“You may say what you like, young Atheling,” said Miss Rivers, “you’ve a very good right to your own opinion; but I’m not a lawyer, nor bound by rule and precedent, mind. This is the middle of March; it comes on in April; we must wait for that; and you’re not up with all your evidence, you dilatory boy.”

“But I might happen to be up with it in a day,” said Charlie, “and at all events an ejectment should be served, and the first step taken in the case without delay.”

“That is all very well,” said the old lady, “but I don’t suppose it would advance the business very much, besides rousing him at once to use every means possible, and perhaps buy off that poor old Serrano, or get hold of Monte. Why did you not look for Monte, young Atheling? The chances are that he was present too?”

“One witness was as much as I could manage,” said Charlie, shrugging his shoulders at the recollection; “but the most important question of all—Louis—I mean—your brother—the heir—”

“My brother—the heir.” Miss Rivers coloured suddenly. It was a different thing thinking of him in private, and hearing him spoken of so. “I tell you he is not the heir, young Atheling; he is Lord Winterbourne: but I will not see him yet, not till the day; it would be a terrible time of suspense for the poor boy.”

“Then, if it is your pleasure, he must go away,” said Charlie, firmly—“he cannot come here to this agitated house of ours without discovering a good deal of the truth; and if he discovered it so, he would have just grounds to complain. If he is not told at once, he ought to have some commission such as I have had, and be sent away.”

Miss Rivers coloured still more, all her liking for Charlie and his family scarcely sufficing to reconcile her to the “sending away” of the young heir, on the same footing as she had sent young Atheling. She hesitated and faltered visibly, seeing reason enough in it, but extremely repugnant. “If you think so,” she said at last, with a slightly averted face, “ah—another time we can speak of that.”

Then came further consultations, and Charlie had to tell his story over bit by bit, and incident by incident, illustrating every point of it by his documents. Miss Anastasia was particularly anxious about the young Englishman whose name was signed with Charlie’s own, in certification of the inscription on the coffin. Miss Anastasia marvelled much whether he belonged to the Hillarys of Lincolnshire, or the Hillarys of Yorkshire, and pursued his shadow through half-a-dozen counties. Charlie was not particularly given to genealogy. He had the young man’s card, with his address at the Albany, and the time of his possible return home. That was quite enough for the matter in hand, and Charlie was very much more concerned about the one link wanting in his evidence—the person who received the children from the care of Leonore the Tyrolese.

As it chanced, in this strange maze of circumstance, the Rector chose this day for one of his visits. He was very much amazed to encounter Miss Anastasia; it struck him evidently as something which needed to be accounted for, for she was known and noted as a dweller at home. She received him at first with a certain triumphant satisfaction, but by-and-by a little confusion appeared even in the looks of Miss Anastasia. She began to glance from the stately young man to the pale face and drooping eyelids of Agnes. She began to see the strange mixture of trouble and hardship in this extraordinary revolution, and her heart was touched for the heir deposed, as well as for the heir discovered. Lionel was “in trouble” himself, after an odd enough fashion. Some one had just instituted an action against him in the ecclesiastical courts touching the furniture of his altar, and the form in which he conducted the services. It was a strange poetic justice to bring this against him now, when he himself had cast off his high-churchism, and was luxuriating in his new freedom. But the Curate grew perfectly inspired under the infliction, and rose to the highest altitude of satisfaction and happiness, declaring this to be the testing-touch of persecution, which constantly distinguishes the true faith. It was on Miss Anastasia’s lips to speak of this, and to ask the young clergyman why he was so long away from home at so critical a juncture, but her heart was touched with compunction. From looking at Lionel, she turned suddenly to Agnes, and asked, with a strange abruptness, a question which had no connection with the previous conversation—“That little book of yours, Agnes Atheling, that you sent to me, what do you mean by that story, child?—eh?—what put that into your idle little brain? It is not like fiction; it is quite as strange and out of the way as if it had been life.”

Involuntarily Agnes lifted her heavy eyelids, and cast a shy look of distress and sympathy upon the unconscious Rector, who never missed any look of hers, but could not tell what this meant. “I do not know,” said Agnes; but the question did not wake the shadow of a smile upon her face—it rather made her resentful. She thought it cruel of Miss Anastasia, now that all doubt was over, and Lionel was certainly disinherited. Disinherited!—he had never possessed anything actual, and nothing was taken from him; whereas Louis had been defrauded of his rights all his life; but Agnes instinctively took the part of the present sufferer—the unwitting sufferer, who suspected no evil.

But the Rector was startled in his turn by the question of Miss Anastasia. It revived in his own mind the momentary conviction of reality with which he had read the little book. When Miss Anastasia turned away for a moment, he addressed Agnes quietly aside, making a kind of appeal. “Had you, then, a real foundation—is it a true tale?” he said, looking at her with a little anxiety. She glanced up at him again, with her eyes so full of distress, anxiety, warning—then looked down with a visible paleness and trembling, faltered very much in her answer, and at last only said, expressing herself with difficulty, “It is not all real—only something like a story I have heard.”

But Agnes could not bear his inquiring look; she hastily withdrew to the other side of the room, eager to be out of reach of the eyes which followed her everywhere. For his part, Lionel’s first idea was of some distress of hers, which he instinctively claimed the right to soothe; but the thing remained in his mind, and gave him a certain vague uneasiness; he read the book over again when he went home, to make it out if he could, but fell so soon into thought of the writer, and consideration of that sweet youthful voice of hers, that there was no coming to any light in the matter. He not only gave it up, but forgot it again, only marvelling what was the mystery which looked so sorrowful and so bright out of Agnes Atheling’s eyes.