“Do you not see it is raining?”
He had not indeed, though he had stood at the window in meditation ever since breakfast-time. As for Agatha, she had been so tired with her excursion the previous day that she had done nothing but sleep, and had scarcely opened her lips to her husband or to any one. Now, on this rainy day, she felt the reaction of her high spirits—was dull, dreamy; wished her husband would come and talk to her, and “make a baby” of her. She could not think why he stood at that odious window, pondering, counting rain-drops apparently, and then made the unaccountable proposition of a walk.
“Raining, is it?” He looked up at the murky sky. “What a change from last night.”
“I did not know you were so subject to elemental influences?”
“We all are, more or less; but I was just then thinking about other things than what I spoke of. My dear wife, I want to talk to you very much. Where shall we go, so as not to be interrupted?”
“Anywhere you like,” said she, resigning herself to her fate and to a long argument, which she supposed was about the new house. She did not remember about it clearly, but she had a floating suspicion that Nathanael was determined to settle the matter soon, and that she should have a hard struggle between the pretty house she liked, and Mr. Wilson's cottage, which her husband so unaccountably preferred. This was a matter in which she could not yield, come what might. Therefore the “anywhere you like” was in rather an ungracious manner. He seemed determined not to observe this.
“Suppose we go into the conservatory;—you have never seen it. But put on something to keep you warm.”
He wrapped Mary's crimson garden-shawl over her head—clumsily enough, for Mr. Harper was not a “ladies' man;” his whole character and habits of life being in curious opposition to the extreme delicacy which Nature had externally stamped upon his appearance. Pausing, he held his wife at arm's length, gazing at her admiringly.
“Will that do? What a gipsy you look, with your red shawl and brown face!”
“Pawnee-face, you know! Do you remember how you once called me so, and how your brother”—
“Come, let us go,” he said abruptly, and hurried her through the drawing-rooms. Agatha was rather hurt that his aspect should change so cloudily, and that he should thus quench her little reminiscences of courtship-days, so dear to every happy wife, and gradually becoming dearer even to herself. As they entered the conservatory, she shivered with an uncomfortable sense of gloom.
“What a large, bare place! Even the vines look cheerless—and where have they put all the flowers? What a shame to send them away, and turn it into a billiard-room.”
“It was done years ago, to please—my brother”—(Agatha was amazed at the hard tone of that tender fraternal word—so can the sense of words alter in the saying)—“and my father will not have it removed.”
“He must have been very fond of your brother,” said Agatha, as, with a woman's natural leaning to the injured side, she thought of Major Harper—his gaiety and his good-nature. She wondered why Nathanael was so rigid and cold in his forced and rare mentioning of his brother's name. As she pondered, her eyes took a serious shadow in their depths.
“What are you thinking about, Agatha?”
The suddenness of the question—the consciousness that she might vex Nathanael did she answer it—made her hesitate, blushing vividly—nay, painfully.
“No, don't tell me. I want to hear nothing, nothing, Agatha. I have before told you so. Do not be afraid.”
“How strange you are! What should I be afraid of?”
“Nothing. Forget I said anything. You are my wife now—mine—mine!” and for a moment he pressed her hand tightly. “In time”—he relinquished his hold with a sad smile—“in time, Agatha, I hope we shall become used to one another; perhaps even grow into a contented, sedate married couple.”
“Do you think so?” Alas! far more than this had been her thought—the thought which had dawned when she paused, shuddering over the tale of King Edward the Martyr and the woman that loved him—the dim hope, daily rising, of an Eden not altogether lost, even though she had married so rashly and blindly—a hope that this might have been only the burying of her foolish girlish dream of love, which must needs die in order to be raised up again in a different form and in a new existence.
Somewhat heavy-hearted, Agatha sat down on a raised bench that looked down on the battered and decaying billiard-table, listening to the rain that pattered on the glass roof above the vine-leaves—wondering how old were the ragged-looking, flowerless, fruitless orange-trees that were ranged on either side, the only other specimens of vegetation left. Evidently nobody at Kingcombe Holm cared much for flowers.
“I think we will quit this dull place. You do not seem to like it, Agatha?”
“Oh, yes, I like it well enough. I like the rain falling, falling, and the vine-branches crushing themselves against the panes. They'll never ripen, never—poor things! They are dying for sun, and it will not—will not shine!”
“Agatha, what do you mean?”
“I don't clearly know what I mean. Never mind. Talk to me about—whatever it was that you brought me to unfold. Be quick—I have not a large stock of patience, you know of old.”
“Do not laugh, for I am serious. I wanted to talk to you about our new house.”
“Our new house! Where and what like is it to be, I wonder!”
“Do you not recollect?”
“No; the two we looked at would not do,” said Agatha, determinedly. She guessed what was coming—that the discussion about Wilson's cottage, which Nathanael seemed so to have set his heart upon, was about to be renewed. But she would never consent to that—never! “The house I liked you did not approve of,” she continued, observing her husband's silence. “The other I could not think of for a moment.”
“But supposing there was no alternative, since we must settle at once?”
“This is the first time you have condescended to inform me of that necessity.”
“If,” he went on, taking no notice of her sharp speech, but speaking with the extreme gentleness of one who himself feels tenfold the pain he is compelled to inflict—“if, as I told you yesterday, we ought to form our plans immediately; and since, Kingcombe being such a small place, there is at present no choice left us but those two houses”—
“Build one! We are rich enough.”
“Not quite.” His eyes dropped, almost like those of guilt. After a pause, he cried out violently:
“Agatha, a secret at one's heart is ten times worse to the keeper of it than it can be to any one else. Have pity for me, have patience with me, just for a little while.”
“What are you talking about? What have you done?”
“Nothing,” said he. “Nothing to harm your peace, my little wife. Believe me, I have committed no greater crime, than”—
“Well!”
“Than having taken Wilson's cottage.”
He tried by smiling to teach her to make light of it—perhaps because it was a thing so light to him. But Agatha was enraged beyond endurance.
“You have absolutely taken it—that mean, wretched hovel that I told you I hated;—taken it secretly, without my knowledge or consent!”
“You mistake there. I told you we were obliged to decide yesterday; you were unwilling to consult with me, and at last—do you remember? you left the decision in my hands. I merely believed your own words, and knowing the necessity of acting upon them, did so. I cannot think I was wrong.”
“Oh, no! Not at all!” cried Agatha, laughing wildly. “It was only like you—under-handed in stealing my few pleasures—very frank and open when you can rule. Never honest or candid with me, except to my punishment. A kind, generous husband, truly!”
These and a torrent more of bitter words she poured out. She never knew till now the passion, the galling sarcasm, there was in her nature. She felt a longing to hate—a wish to wound. Every time she looked at her husband, there seemed a demon rising up within her—that demon which lurks strangely enough in the heart's closest and tenderest depths.
“Cannot you speak!” she cried, going up to him. “Anything is better than that wicked silence. Speak!”
“Agatha!”
“No—I'll not hear you. See what you have done—how you have made me disgrace myself” and she almost sobbed.—“Never in my life was I in a passion before.”
“Is it my fault then?” said he, mournfully.
“Yes, yours. It is you who stir up all these bad feelings in me.. I was a good girl, a happy girl, before you married me.”
“Was it so? Then you shall be held blameless. Poor child—poor child!”
His unutterable regret, his entire prostration, stung her to the heart, and silenced her for the moment; but speedily she burst out again:
“You call me a child—so perhaps I am, in years; but you should have thought of that before. You married me, and made me a woman. You took away my gay childish heart, and yet in all humiliating things you still treat me like a child.”
“Do I?” He answered mechanically, out of thoughts that lay deep down, far below the surface of his wife's bitter words. These last awoke in him not one ray of anger—not even when at last, in a fit of uncontrollable petulance, she tore his hand from before his eyes, bidding him look at her—if he dared.
“Yes, I dare.” And the look she courted, arose steady, sorrowful, like that of a man who turns his eyes upward, hopeless yet faithful, out of a wrecked ship. “Whatever has been, or may come, God knows that, from the first, I did love you, Agatha.”
Wherefore had he used the word “did!” Why could she not smother down the unwonted pang, the new craving? Or rather, why could she not throw herself in his arms and cry out, “Do you love me—do you love me now?” Pride—pride only—the restless wild nature upon which his reserve fell like water upon fire, without the blending spirit of conscious love which often makes two opposite temperaments result in closest union.
Nevertheless, she was somewhat soothed, and began to compress the mass of imaginary wrongs into the one little wrong which had originated it all.
“What made you take a liking to that miserable house? I hate small rooms—I cannot breathe in them—I have never been used to a little house. Why must I now? I am not going to be extravagant—nobody could be if they tried, in a poor place like Kingcombe. Since youwillinsist on our living there, andwillcarry out your cruel pride of independence”—
“Cruel—oh, Agatha!” He absolutely groaned.
“Wishing no extravagance, I do wish for comfort—perhaps some little elegance—as I have had all my life.”
“You shall have it still, Agatha,” her husband muttered. “I will coin my heart's blood into gold but you shall have it.”
“Now you are talking barbarously! Or else—how very very wrong am I! What can be the reason that we torture each other so?”
“Fate!” he cried, pacing wildly up and down. “Fate! that has netted us both to our own misery—nay, worse—to make us the misery of one another. Yet how could I know? You seemed a young simple girl, free to love—I felt sure I could make you love me. Poor dupe that I was! Oh, why did I ever see you, Agatha Bowen?”
He snatched his wife on his knee, and kissed her repeatedly—madly—just as he had done on the morning of their wedding-day; never since! Then he let her go—almost with coldness.
“There—I will not vex you. I must not be foolish any more.”
Foolish! He thought it foolish to show that he loved her! Without replying, Agatha sat down on the bench where her husband placed her. He might say what he liked: she was very patient now.
He began to explain his reasons for taking the house; that he had naturally more acquaintance with worldly matters than she had; that whatever their income, it was advisable for young people to begin housekeeping prudently, since it was easy to increase small beginnings, while of all outward domestic horrors there was nothing greater than the horror of running into debt. When he talked thus, at once with wisdom and gentleness, Agatha began to forgive him.
“After all,” said she, brightening, “your prudence—which I might call by a harder word, but I'll be good now—your prudence is only restraining me in my little pleasures, and I don't much mind. But if you ever tried to restrain me in a matter of kindness, as you did yesterday, only I guessed the motive”—
“Did you?”
“There—don't look so startled and displeased. I saw you did not like theéclatof political charities. But another time, if I want to do good—like Anne Valery, only in a very, very much smaller way—Hark! what is that noise?”
It was a decent-looking working-man, standing out in the pouring rain, watching them through the panes, and rattling angrily at the locked conservatory-door.
“What a fierce eye! It looks quite wolfish. What can he want with us?”
“I will go and see. Some labourer wanting work, probably; but the fellow has no business to come beckoning and interrupting. Stay here, Agatha.”
“No—I will come with you.” And she tripped after her husband, the momentary content of her heart creating a longing to do good—a sort of tithe of happiness thankfully paid to Heaven.
Nathanael unfastened the glass-door, not without annoyance; for, unlike his wife,hisjoy-tithe was not yet due.
“What do you want, my good fellow?”
“Some o' th' Harpers.”
“Indeed! Are you after work? You don't look like one of the clay-cutters. Where do you come from?”
“I be Darset, I be; but I comed fra Carnwall.”
“From where?” asked Agatha, puzzled by the provincialism, and attracted at once by the man's intelligent face, and by a keen, misery-stricken, hungry look, which she had truly called “wolfish.”
“I be comed fra the miners in Carnwall,” reiterated the man, raising his voice threateningly. “They sent I back to Darset to see some o' th' Harpers.”
“You must go in, Agatha; it is cold. I cannot have you standing here. Go—quick.” And Agatha was astonished to see how pallid and eager her husband looked, and how anxious he seemed to get her out of the way.
“No, thank you. I am not cold at all. I want to hear this man. Perhaps he is one of the poor miners Miss Valery spoke of at Wheal—what was it?”
“I be comed fra Wheal Caroline, Missus, and I do want one o' th' Harpers. There be the old 'un at the window! Thick's the man for we.”
And he was hurrying off to the bow-window of the Squire's room, which was alongside of the conservatory. But Nathanael called him back imperatively.
“Stay, friend. My father has nothing to do with the mines—it is I. I'll speak to you presently.—Some business of Anne's,” he explained hastily to his wife. “Leave us, dear.”
“Why do you make me go in? I want to hear about the poor miners; I want to help them, as well as Anne Valery.”
“Do'ee help we, Missus!” implored the man, softened by a woman's kind looks. “Do'ee give we some'at to keep 'un fra starving!”
“Starving!” cried Agatha in horror. And even her husband's anxiety was for the moment quelled in the deep pity which overspread his countenance.
“It be nigh that, I tell'ee. Us be no cheats—there be other folk as has cheated we. Fine grand folk as knew nowt o' the mines, but shut 'un up, and paid no money.”
“How wicked!”
“But I be come to find 'un out,” cried the man fiercely, as his eye lit on Nathanael. “For I do know thick fine folk. And I tell'ee”—
“Silence! you forget you are speaking before a lady. Wait for me, and I will talk with you.”
“Will'ee, Mister? Don't'ee cheat, now!” said the miner, with a rude attempt at a sneer.
The young man's cheek flushed, but he said very quietly—
“I promise you, I will speak with you here in half-an-hour. I am Nathanael Harper—Mr. Harper's youngest son.”
After a minute's keen observation, the miner pulled off his cap respectfully. “Thank'ee, sir! You bean'the, I see. But you be th' old Squire's son, and—I be Darset, I be!”
Another bow—the involuntary respect to the ancient county family from honest labour born upon its ancestral sod, and the man leaned exhausted against the ragged stem of one of the old vines.
“Missus,” he said, looking up hungrily—at the lady this time— “Missus, do'ee gie 'un a bit o' bread!”
Agatha, full of compassion, was eager to send the servants or take him into the kitchen, or even fetch him his dinner with her own hands. Mr. Harper interfered.
“I will bring him some food myself. Stay here, my man; don't stir hence. Remember, you have nothing to do with my father.”
There was a warning severity in the tone which annoyed Agatha. Why did her husband speak harshly to the poor miner?
Still she obeyed Mr. Harper's evident wish that she should go away; and spent the time in Elizabeth's room, telling her of this little incident.
Miss Harper listened with all the quick intelligence of her bright eyes. The only remark she made was:
“What could have led this miner to come back to Dorsetshire after our family?”
Agatha had never thought of this, indeed she did not want to think. Her heart was brimming with charity. She longed to empty it out in a torrent of benefactions, to which even Anne Valery's constant stream of good deeds appeared measured and slow. Elizabeth watched her with a strange piercing expression—Elizabeth, who from her silent nest seemed to behold all things clearer, like a spirit sitting halfway in upper air, to whose passionless wide vision distant mazes take form and proportion. Often, there was something almost supernatural in Elizabeth and her attentive eyes.
“My dear,” she said at last, when Agatha paused for a response to her own enthusiasm, “Man proposes—God disposes! Go and talk over these things with your husband first.” Agatha went.
She met Nathanael on the staircase, going up to their own room.
“Ah; is it you? I am so glad. Come and tell me what has been done about the poor miner.”
“He is gone. I have sent him back to Cornwall.”
“What, so soon? Not to starve at that Wheal—Wheal something or other—I always forget the name?”
“Do forget it. Don't let the matter trouble my little wife. Let her run down-stairs and think of something else.”
He patted her head with assumed carelessness, and was passing her by; but she stopped him.
“Ah! there it is—I am always to be a child! I am to run down-stairs and think of something else, while you go and shut yourself up to ponder over this affair. But I will not be shut out; I will go with you;—come!”
In playful force she drew him to their room, and closed the door.
“Now, sit down, and tell me the whole story. Why, how grave and pale it has made you look! But never mind; we'll find out a plan to help the poor people.”
He gave some inarticulate assent, which checked her by its coldness, sank on the chair she placed, and folded his fingers tightly in one another, so that Agatha could not even strengthen herself in the bold projects she was about to communicate, by stealing her own into her husband's hand. However, she placed herself on the floor at his feet, in the attitude of a Circassian beauty; or—she accidentally thought—not unlike a Circassian slave.
“Begin, please! I must hear about these mines.”
“I doubt if you could understand,—at least with the few explanations I am able to give you at present.”
“Nevertheless, I'll try. Why are the poor men starving in this way?”
“You heard but now. Because the mines were first opened on a speculation, worked carelessly—dishonestly I fear—till the speculator's money failed, and the vein stopped. Then the miners being thrown out of employ were reduced to great distress, as this man tells me.”
“But why should he have come here after your father?”
“And,” continued Nathanael, in a quick and rather inexplicable correlative, “the mines were lately sold as waste land. Anne Valery bought them.”
“Why did she do that?”
“Out of charity; that she might begin some employment—flax-growing, I think—to find food for the poor people. There the tale's ended, my Lady Inquisitive. Will you go down to my sisters?”
“Not yet. I want to talk to you a little—a very little longer. May I?”
And she drooped her head, blushing as the young will blush over the same charitable feeling which the old and hardened ostentatiously parade.
Mr. Harper gazed hopelessly around, as if longing any means of escape and solitude. His wife saw him and was pained.
“What—are you tired of me?”
“No, no, dear, Only I am so busy—and have so many things to think about just now.”
“Tell me some of them.”
“What—tell you all my business mysteries,” he returned, playfully. “Didn't you say to me once, before we were married, that you hated secrets, and never could keep one in your life?”
“It is true—quite true. I do hate them,” cried Agatha.
“And for all your smiling, I know you are keeping back something from me now.”
“Foolish little wife!”
“Foolish—but still a wife. Look at me and tell the truth. Is there anything in your heart which I do not know?”
“Yes, Agatha, several things.”
The sudden change from jest to deep earnest startled the wife so much that she was struck dumb.
“Circumstances may happen,” he continued, “which a husband cannot always tell to his wife, especially a man of my queer temper and lonely ways. I always knew that the woman I married would have much to bear from me. Did I not tell her so, poor little Agatha?” And he tried to take her hand.
“You are talking in this way to soothe me, but I know well what you mean. No husband ever really thinks himself in fault, but his wife. Emma always said so.”
Mr. Harper dropped the unwilling hand; but the next moment, by a strong effort, reclaimed it firmly.
“Agatha, are we beginning again to be angry with one another? Is there never to be peace between us?”
“Peace” only? Nothing closer, dearer? Yet what was it that, as Agatha looked at her husband, made her think even his “peace” better than any other's love?
“Yes,” she murmured, after watching him long in silence—“yes, there shall be peace. Whatever I am, I know how good you are. And,” she added, gaily, “now let me unfold a plan of mine for proving how good we both are.”
“What is it?”
“I want some money—a good deal.”
Mr. Harper turned away. “Wherefore?”
“Cannot you guess? I thought you would at once—nay, that you would be the first to propose it. I am glad I am first. Now, do guess.”
“I had rather not, if it is a serious matter. If otherwise, I am hardly quite merry enough for jests to-day. Tell me.”
“It is a very simple thing, though it has cost me half-an-hour's puzzling. I never thought so much about business in all my life. Well,”—she hesitated.
“Go on, Agatha.”
“I want—it must come out—I want you to take half or all of my—ourmoney which is in the Funds (as I believe Major Harper said, though I have not the least idea what Funds are)—and with it to buy a new mine, and set the poor miners all working again; they'll like it a great deal better than flax-growing. And perhaps we could afterwards build schools and cottages, and do oceans of good. Oh! how glad I am I was born an heiress!”
She rose, her eyes brightening; her little figure dilated; she had never looked so lovely—so loveable. And yet the husband sat as it were stone blind and dumb.
“You cannot have any objection to this, I know,” Agatha went on. “It is not like giving money openly away—making a show of charity. Nobody need know but that we do it on our own account—just to increase our riches;” and she laughed merrily at the idea. “Think now—how much money would it take?”
“I cannot tell.”
“A great deal, probably, since you look so serious over it,” said the wife, a little vexed. “Perhaps my plan is foolish in some things; but I think it is right, and I am very firm—firmer than you imagine—when I feel I am in the right. Surely, living so cheaply in that tiny house—and we will live cheaper still if you choose—we shall have plenty to spare. We must do this. Say that we shall.”
Her husband was silent.
Gradually the blush of enthusiasm deepened into that of annoyance—real anger. “Mr. Harper, I wait until you answer me.”
As she turned away, Nathanael looked after her. Such a flood of tenderness, reverence, sorrow, passion, rarely swept over a human face.
Then he rose, paced up the room in his usual fashion, and down again; pausing once at the window (a strange thing for him to notice just then) to let out a brown bee that, having come in for shelter from the rain, wanted to go out again with the sunshine. At last he came to Agatha's side.
“My dear wife, it grieves me to pain you by a refusal—grieves me more than you can tell; but the plan you propose is utterly impracticable.”
“Indeed!” Her colour flashed, darkened of a stormy red, and paled. She was exercising very great self-restraint.
“I will ask less,” she resumed, bitterly. “I had forgotten the extreme prudence of your character. Give me just whatyouthink is sufficient for charity.” And her lip tried not to curl—her heart tried not to despise her husband.
Nathanael gave no answer.
“Mr. Harper, three—four times lately you have denied me what I asked. Thrice it was merely my own pleasure—which I relinquished. This time it is a matter of principle, and I will not yield. Will you—since I have made you master of my fortune—will you allow me enough out of it for my own slight gratification? That at least is but justice.”
“Justice!” echoed Nathanael, his features sinking gradually into the rigidity they sometimes wore—a warning of how much the gentleness of his nature could bear.
“Hear me for one minute, Agatha. I know this is hard, very hard for you. I have prevented your living in London; I have taken a smaller house than you like; I have restricted you in acts of charity. But for all these things I have reasons.”
“Will you tell me those reasons?” It was a tone, not of entreaty, but of threatening—such as a man rarely hears from a woman without all the pride within him recoiling into obstinacy.
Mr. Harper grew yet paler, though still his answer was soft—“Agatha, do not ask me. I cannot tell you.”
“You dare not! You are ashamed!”
He walked away from her. When he returned, it was less the lover that spoke than the man. “I am not ashamed of anything I do, and I have clear motives for all. I only desire my wife to have patience for awhile, and trust her husband.”
“I trust my husband!” she cried, in violent passion—“When he acts outrageously, unjustly, insultingly—binds me hand and foot like a child, and then smiles and tells me 'to be patient!' When he has secrets from me—when, for all I know, his whole conduct may have been one long deceit towards me.”
“Take care, Agatha.” The words were said between his teeth, and then the lips closed in that strong straight line which made his face look all iron.
“I say it may have been—I have heard of such things”—and she laughed fearfully at the horrible thought a tempting devil was putting into her mind—“I have heard of young girls—poor desolate creatures, cursed with riches, and having no one to guard them—of some stranger coming and marrying them hastily, but not for love—oh, not for love!” And her laughter grew absolutely frightful in its mockery. “How do I know but that you thus married me?”
Her wild eyes fixed themselves on her husband. She saw his face change to very ghastliness, and guilt itself could not have trembled more than the shudder which ran through his frame.
“I was right,” she gasped, her passion subdued into cold horror—“you did marry me for my money!”
No answer—not a breath—only an incredulous stare. Once more Agatha's passion rose, a sea of wrath, misery, despair, that dashed her blindly on, she recked not where.
“I see it all now—all your wickedness. You never loved me, you only loved my riches. You have them now, and so you can stand there and gaze at me, as hard, as dumb as a stone. But I will make you hear—I will shriek it into your silence again—again—You married me for my money!”
Still no word. The silence she spoke of was awful. Nathanael stood upright, his hands knotted together, the lids dropping over his eyes. He neither looked at her nor at anything. There was not the slightest expression in his face—it might have been carved in granite. When at last almost to see if he were living man, Agatha clutched his arm, it also felt hard, immoveable, like a granite rock.
“Mr. Harper!” she cried, terror mingling with the outburst of her rage.
He merely lifted his eyes and looked at the door.—Not once—oh! never once at her!
“Ay, I will go,” she answered—“most gladly, most thankfully! I will run anywhere to escape your presence.”
She crossed the room and tried to unfasten the door, which she had herself bolted a little while before, out of play; but her trembling fingers were useless. She was obliged to call her husband's help, and he came.
Perfectly silent, without a single glance towards her, he undid the fastening, and set the door open for her to pass. A pang of fear, nay remorse, came over Agatha.
“Speak,” she cried—“if only one word, speak!”
His lips moved, as though framing an inarticulate “No,” and then closed again in that iron line. He still stood holding the door.
Hardly knowing what she did, Agatha sprang past the threshold and tottered a few steps on. Then turning, she saw the door shut behind her, slowly, noiselessly, butit was shut. She felt as if the door of hope had been shut upon her heart.
She turned again, and fled away.
It was late afternoon. The rain had ceased, and glowed into one of those soft October days, so exquisitely sunny and fair. The light glimmered through the closed Venetian blinds of “Anne's room,” and danced on the carpet and about Agatha's feet as she sat, quiet at last, and tried to remember how she had come and how long she had been there. She had seen no one; nobody ever came into “Anne's room.”
The dressing-bell rang—the only sound she had heard in the house for hours.
She started up, waking to the frightful certainty that all was real—that the ways of the household were going on just as usual—that she must rouse up, no matter staggering under what burden of misery, and go through her daily part, as if nothing had happened, and nothing was about to happen.
Nothing? when this day, perhaps this same hour, must decide one of two things—whether she were a wretched wife, bound for life to a man who married her solely for mercenary motives, or whether she were a wife—perhaps in this even more wretched—who had so wronged and insulted her husband that nothing ever could win his forgiveness or restore his love. His love, which, as she now dimly began to see, and shuddered in the seeing, was becoming to her the most precious thing in existence.
Never, until she sat there, quite alone, and feeling what it was to be left alone, after being so watched and cherished—-never until now had she understood what the world would be to her if doomed to question her husband's honour or to outlive her husband's love.
“It must have been all a dream,” she said, moving her cold fingers to and fro over her forehead. “He never could have wronged me so, or I him. He must surely explain, and I will ask his pardon for what I said in my passion—Unless, indeed, my accusation were true.”
But she could not think of that possibility now—it maddened her.
“I shall meet him soon. I wonder how he will meet me. That will decide all.—Hark!”
She listened—with a vague expectation of footsteps at the door. But no one came.
“I suppose he is in his room still—our room.” And all the solemn union of married life—the perpetual presence, the never parting night nor day, which makes estrangement in that tie worse than in any other human bond—rushed upon her with unutterable terror.
“If he has deceived and wronged me, how shall I endure the sight of him? If I have outraged him, and he will not forgive me—oh, what will become of me?”
She heard various bells ringing throughout the house, and knew that she had no time to lose. She rose up feebly, with that aching numbed feeling which strong agitation leaves in the whole frame, and tottered to the mirror.
“I must look at myself, to see that there is nothing strange about me, in case I meet any one in the passages.—Oh, what a face!”
It was sallow, blanched, with dark shadows round the eyes, and dark lines drawn everywhere. That first storm of wild passion—that agony of remorse following, had left indelible marks. She seemed ten years older since she had last beheld herself, which was when she pulled out her long curls in the morning. She pulled them out mechanically now, trying to make of them a screen to hide the poor face that she had used to fancy they adorned. Then she flew like a frightened creature along the passages, and without meeting any one, reached her chamber-door. It was a little way open; she need not knock then—knock and wait trembling for the answer. Perhaps Mr. Harper was not there, and so for a few minutes she was safe from the dreaded meeting. She went in.
The room was empty, but her husband's handkerchief and riding-gloves were lying about; he had apparently just gone down-stairs. Nevertheless, though a relief, it was rather a shock to her to find the room deserted. She felt a weight in its silence, forewarning her of she knew not what; she looked round inquiringly, as if the walls could tell her what had passed within them since she left. At last she took up her husband's gloves and laid them by with a care foreign to her general habit, and with a strange tenderness. When Mary's maid answered her summons, she could not forbear asking, carelessly, but with an inward heart-beat—“Where was Mr. Harper?”
“Mr. Locke Harper, ma'am, is sitting reading to master in the library.”
He then could sit and read quietly to his father. With him, too, all household ways went on unaltered—with her only was the tempest—the despair. Her remorse ebbed down—her pride and anger rose. Light—a fierce flashing light—came to her eyes, and crimson roses to her cheeks. She dressed herself with care, and went down—though not until the last minute—to the drawing-room.
Mary met her at the door. “I was just coming to fetch you. Nathanael said you had been sitting in Anne's room.”
How could he know? Had he watched her?
She answered flippantly, “'Tis very true. I have been enjoying my own company. Very good company too. Have I detained you, though? Is everybody here?”
Everybody was here.Hewas here. Though she never glanced that way, she saw him, and the look he wore. To others it might seem his ordinary look, a little paler, a little more reserved, but she knew what it meant. She knew likewise, now that her passion had subsided, how his whole life—his stainless life—gave the lie to the accusation she had cast upon him. She had outraged him in the keenest point where a proud honourable man can be outraged by his wife; her own hand had cleft a gulf between them which might never close.
At the thought her heart seemed dropping down—down in her bosom, like a bird whose wing is broken, it knows not how. Sick, giddy, she clung to Mary's arm for a moment.
“Nathanael, look here. What is the matter with your wife?”
“Nothing,” Agatha cried. “I have only stupified myself with—with thinking. I will think no more—no more.”
She tossed her head back with a fierce laugh. Her husband, who had half-risen at Mary's call, resumed his seat, making no remark.
He had never been used to show her much fondness or attention before his family, so it did not appear strange that in the few minutes before dinner he should talk to his sisters, and leave his wife to the courtesies of his father. For it was now an acknowledged fact at Kingcombe Holm that the Squire was growing very fond of Agatha.
Dinner came, the long, dreadful dinner, with the brilliant light glimmering in her face, and showing every expression there; with old Mr. Harper leaning forward to address her every time she relapsed into silence; with the consciousness upon her that there was no medium course, that she must talk and laugh, fast and recklessly, or else fall into tears; with the knowledge, worst of all, that there was one sitting at the bottom of the table whom she dared not look at, but whom nevertheless she perpetually saw.
Her husband had taken his usual place, and sustained it in his usual manner. There was the same brotherly chat with Mary and Eulalie, the same answers to his father, and when once, in the dinner-table courtesies, he addressed his wife, the tone was precisely as it had ever been.
Agatha could have shrieked back her answer, betraying him to all the household! This smooth outside of daily life—and with what below? It was horrible.
Yet she felt herself powerless to burst through it. His perfect silence, leaving his honour, the honour of both, in her hands, was like a chain of iron wrapped round her; however she writhed and dashed herself against it, there it was.
The Squire seemed to remain at table longer than ever to-day. He would not let his woman-kind depart. He had many toasts to give, and various old reminiscences to unfold to his daughter-in-law. She heard all in a misty dream, and kept on vaguely smiling. At last the purgatory was ended, and they rose.
Nathanael held the door open for his wife and sisters to retire—things went on so formally even in the every-day life at Kingcombe Holm. In passing, Agatha felt as if she must burst through that icy barrier he had drawn; shemustmeet her husband's look, and compel him to meet hers. She gave him a look, proud, threatening, yet full of hidden misery. He would surely answer that.
No! No response—not even anger. Some sorrow perhaps, but a sorrow that was stern, hopeless, undemonstrative, as was his own nature. If any wreck had been, it had already sank down into those deep waters, of which the surface appeared perpetually calm.
Agatha threw him back another look. Scorn was there and hatred—she felt as though she did really hate him at that moment. Her heart gave a leap, like a smitten deer, and then a “laughing devil” seemed to enter therein, and dash her on—anywhere—to anything.
“Come, Mary—come Eulalie, we must be very merry tonight, and my husband must join, for all his solemnity. Shake it off quick, Mr. Harper, or we'll call you a deciever—a smooth-faced, smiling cheat.”
Laughing out loud—she caught his hand, wrung it violently, and struck it aside.
“How comical you are!” said the languid Eulalie.
“But,” whispered sensible Mary, “are you quite sure Nathanael liked the joke.”
“Who cares?” Yet Agatha looked back.
He had merely drawn his hand in again to the other, and his colour faintly rose. Otherwise the poor, mad, passionate girl might as well have dashed herself against a rock. She grew still again, with a kind of fear. Her very limbs tottered as she went towards the drawing-room, and all the time that she lay there on the sofa, Mary bustling about her and chattering all kinds of domestic nothings, Agatha saw, as in a vision, her husband's face, so beautiful in its very sternness, so pure and righteous-looking, whilst she felt herself so desperately, daringly wicked. All the “black, ingrained spots,” which had become visible in her soul, and she knew herself to be worse than any one knew her—appeared gathering in one cloud, until she sickened at her own likeness. For beside it rose another image—and such an one! Yet there was a time when she had thought it a great sacrifice and condescension that Nathanael should be allowed to love her. Now—
No, she dared not hear the cry of her heart. She dared not do anything but hate him, as he must surely hate her. Had he stood before her that minute, she would have flung away this softness, made her flashing eyes burn up their tears, and appeared all indifference. He might if he chose be as cold as ice, as proud as Lucifer;—she would be the same. She would never once let him suspect that which this day's misery had shown her was kindling in her heart. A something, before which the pleasant little vanity of being adored, the content of an easy unexacting liking in return, fell like straws in a flame. A something which she tried to call wrath and hate, but which was truly the avenging angel, Love.
It seemed an age before Mr. Harper came up-stairs. When he did, his father was leaning on his arm. The old gentleman looked tired, as if they had been talking much, yet seemed to regard with a lingering tenderness his son, once so little of a favourite. Why did he? Why did Nathanael soon or late win every one's attachment? And how could he show that reverent attention to his father, that cheerful kindness to his sisters, whileshesat there, jealous of every look and word? Each time he addressed any of these three, Agatha felt as if some unseen power were lashing her into fury.
It is a strange and terrible thing, but nevertheless true, that a good man, a kind man, a generous man, may sometimes quite unconsciously drive a woman nearly mad; make her feel as though a legion of fiends were struggling for possession of her soul, goad her weakness into acts which torture alone causes, and the after-blackness of which, presented to her real self, creates a humiliation which only drives her madder still. Men, that is, good men, who are stronger and better able to do and to bear—ought to be very gentle, very wise, in the manner they deal towards women. No short-coming or wrong, however great, from the weaker to the stronger, can merit an equal return; and according to the law that the more delicate the mental and physical organisation, the keener is the power of suffering; so no man, be he ever so wise or tender-hearted, can rightly estimate the depth of a woman's agony.
Agatha rose, and went away by herself into a smaller room that led out of the other, not unlike her own pet sitting-room in her maiden days—the room where she had once stood by the firelight, and Nathanael had come in and given her the first trembling, thrilling love-kiss. She stood in the same attitude now. Did she remember it? Was she, in that shadowy corner, with glimpses of light and fragments of talk pouring in from the other room, dreaming over that old time—old, though it happened scarcely three months ago—dreaming it over, with oh! what different emotions!
And when she heard a step—her ears were very quick now. Did she turn, and think to see her lover of old—so little loved? Alas! without lifting her eyes, she felt the presence was no longer that of her timid young lover, but of her husband.
Mr. Harper came in, and for the first time since that fearful minute when she quitted him, the husband and wife were alone. Not quite so, for he had left the door wide open—purposely, she thought. There was a full vision of Mary playing chess with her father, and of Eulalie lounging on the sofa, gazing now and then with idle curiosity into the little room.
It was insulting! Why, if he came to speak healing words, did he let his whole family peer into the mysteries which ought to be strictly sacred between the two whom marriage had made one? If only he had shut the door! If only she could do it, and then turn and cling round his neck, or even weep at his knees—for that frantic desire did strike her for a moment—anything, to win from him pardon and peace!
“Agatha, are you quite at leisure?”
To dream of answering such a tone with a flood of tears! or of clinging round a neck that lifted itself up in such a marble pride! It was impossible.
“I am quite at leisure, Mr. Harper.”
At such a crisis, and between two such characters, the fate of a lifetime may depend upon the first word. The first word had been spoken, and answered.
Agatha turned to the fire again, and her husband to the shadow. Either it was fancy, or the effect of natural contact, but the one face seemed to flame, the other to darken—suddenly, hopelessly—as when the last glimmer of light fades out upon a wall.
“Can you speak with me for a few moments?”
“Certainly. Shall it be here?”
“I think so.”
Agatha sat down; smoothed her dress, and held her folded hands tight upon her knees, lest he should see how they were trembling.
Mr. Harper resumed. His tone was gentle, though with a certain strangeness in it, a want of that music which runs through all deep-toned low voices, and which in his was very peculiar.
“It appears to me—though nothing shall be done against your decision—that, considering all things, it would be better that our stay in my father's house were made as short as possible.”
“Yes—yes.” Two long pausing words, said beneath her breath.
“Accordingly I rode to Kingcombe this afternoon, and find that we can enter the cottage on Saturday. To-day is Thursday——”
“Is it?—Oh yes. I beg your pardon. Proceed.”
“If it would be agreeable and convenient to you, I think we had better arrange matters so. I have already told my father it was probable we should leave on Saturday. Are you willing?”
“Quite willing.”
“It is settled then. On Saturday evening we go home.”
Go home! To their first home! To that new bridal nest, which, be it the poorest dwelling on earth, seems—or should seem—holy, happy, and fair! What a coming home it was! Better, she thought, that he had cast her adrift, or torn himself from her and placed the wide world between them. Rather any open separation than the mockery of such a union.
“Home!” she cried. “I will not go—I cannot. Oh, not home!”
“To a house, then—call it by what name you please. To your own house, which we will merelysayis mine. Your comfort”—he stopped a little—“must always be the first consideration of your husband.”
“My husband!” she repeated, almost in a shriek—and the old fit of fierce laughter was coming back.
At this moment Eulalie's curious eyes were seen turning towards the little room. Nathanael moved so as to shield his wife from them. “Hush!” he said, sorrowfully, even with a sort of pity—“hush, Agatha. We are married. Between us two there must be, under all circumstances, honour and silence.”
His manner was so solemn, free from bitterness or anger, that Agatha's passion was quelled. She was awed as by the sight of some dead face, wronged grievously in life, but which now only revenges itself by the hopelessness of its mute perpetual smile. She remained staring blankly into the fire, plaiting and unplaiting the sash of her dress with heedless fingers. Eulalie might peer safely.
“There was another thing,” resumed Nathanael, “which, before telling the rest of the household, I wished to say to you. I had business in Weymouth to-morrow; and—if”—
“Well? I listen.”
“If—I were to ride there to-night”—
“Go.” A soft, quick word—a mere motion of the lips—and yet it was the one word of doom.
After that, without saying more, Mr. Harper walked back slowly into the drawing-room, and Agatha sat by the fireside alone.
She heard the rest talking—complaining—reasoning—heard one or two persuasive calls for “Agatha”—but she never moved. Then came the bell hastily pulled, and the old Squire's testy summons for “Mr. Locke Harper's horse,” and “was it a fine night, and the moon risen?” Then the drawing-room door opened and closed. No—he was not gone—not without saying adieu. He would surely pay his wife that deference. Outside the wall she heard his foot ascending the staircase, slowly, with heavy pauses between each step. She crept close to the farther door—behind the curtain, and listened.
“Agatha—where is she gone to?” said Mary, peeping carelessly into the dark room.
“Oh, she has followed her husband up-stairs, of course. Think of all the charges and farewells—the kissing and the crying. 'Tis a wonder she did not insist on riding with him across the country, and coming back at midnight, as I suppose Nathanael will do. La? what's to become of these very devoted husbands and wives.”
Agatha crushed her hands against the wall She felt as if she could almost have torn Eulalie's heart out—if she had a heart. While in her own bosom, leaping up in all its strength, ready at once for heroism, love, and fury—for any nobleness or any crime—was that fountain of all her sex's actions, that mainspring of all her life—the fatal woman-heart.
She waited until she heard Nathanael descend the stairs, and then, as he passed into the drawing-room to his sisters, she, by the little curtained door, passed out into the hall. There she remained until the rest came; the sisters trooping after Nathanael, and the old Squire following likewise, to see that his son had the best and steadiest horse for a night-ride, which ride, he took care to observe, pointedly, was a most uncourteous proceeding, and warranted by nothing, save the fact of its being performed on the especial service of Anne Valery.
“Agatha—where is Agatha hiding herself?” said Mary. “She ought not to keep her husband waiting a minute.''
“Oh, no?” And the little figure, all in white, glided out from some queer corner of the hall, and stood like a ghost in the moonlight. “Good night—good night.” She threw out her hand with those of the others—threw it—not gave it.
Nathanael took the hand, but did not say good night—indeed he never spoke at all.
“Well, are you not going to embrace one another, stage-fashion? Don't let Mary and me interrupt you, pray.” And the two Miss Harpers drew back a little from the young couple.
Mr. Harper bent coldly over his wife's brow, hid under the shadow of her heavy hair.
“No, no; not that,” Agatha whispered, recoiling from his touch. “Never that again.”
He opened the hall-door—saying adieu to neither father nor sisters—leaped on his horse, and was gone.
“Agatha, Agatha; where are you running? He is far down the road by this time. Come in, do! Are you so very reluctant to be left for a few hours alone?”
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” And Agatha went back to the drawing-room with her sisters-in-law.
Alone! The word she had repudiated rose up like a spirit, everywhere, all over the house. Not a room but what seemed empty, strange. Fast and busily the Miss Harpers talked—yet all around was, oh! such silence. The silence that we feel in a house when some voice and step has gone out of it, which no one misses except we, and which we miss as we should miss the daylight or the sun.
When all grew quiet, and Agatha sat in her own room—expecting nothing, for she knew he would not come—but still sitting, with her hair falling damp about her, and her eyes fixed on the mirror for company, yet half growing frightened as if it were a strange object on which she gazed—then, indeed, there was silence—then, indeed, she wasalone.