“Elizabeth sent for me—Elizabeth only showed me that kindness. Oh, it was very cruel of you all—you should have told me my father was dying.”
It must have been a hard heart that could have closed itself altogether against Frederick Harper now.
He leant against the doorway, the miserable ghost of his gay self. Born only for summer weather, on him any real blast of remorse or misfortune fell suddenly, entirely, overthrowing the whole man.
“Elizabeth says it happened yesterday; and must have been because—because Grimes—Oh, God forgive me! it is I that have killed my father!”
Every one shrank back. None of his sisters understood what he meant; but the mere expression seemed to draw a line of demarcation between them and the self-convicted man. Agatha only approached him—she felt so very sorry for her old friend.
“You must not talk in this way, Major Harper. If you did vex him in any way, it is very sad; but he will forgive you now. You cannot have done any real harm to your father.”
Her kind voice, her perfectly guileless manner, struck each of the brothers with various emotion. The eyes of both met on her face: Frederick dropped his, and groaned; Nathanael's brightened. For the first time he addressed his brother:
“Frederick, she is right; you must not talk thus. Compose yourself.”
It was in vain; his easy temperament was plunged into depths of childish weakness. “Oh, what have I done? You said truly, it would kill him to hearthat. And my heedlessness drove Grimes to go and tell him. Yes, your prophecy was true: I have been the disgrace of our house—the destruction of my father. What shall I do, Nathanael?”
And he held out his hands to his younger brother in the helplessness of despair.
“The first thing, Frederick, is for you to be silent Anne, take my sisters away; my brother and I have something to say to one another. What? no one will go? Then, brother, come with me.”
The other rose mechanically; Agatha likewise. She began to put circumstances together, and guess darkly at what was amiss. Probably she herself had to do with it. She remembered in what strict honour the old Squire held the duty of a guardian, as he had shown in what he said about his own relation to Anne Valery. Perhaps some carelessness of his son's had caused her own loss of fortune. Yet that was not a thing to break his father's heart, or harden his brother's against him. Mere chance it must have been; ill-luck, or at the worst carelessness. There could not be any real dishonour in Major Harper. And after all what was money, when they could be so much happier without it? She determined to go to her husband and openly say so, telling all that had come to her knowledge of their secrets. They should no longer be angry with one another—if it were on her account.
So she followed after them, with her soft, noiseless step; and when the two brothers stood together in their father's deserted study, there she was between them.
“Agatha!” They both uttered her name—the elder in much confusion. He had seemed all along as though he could scarcely bear the sight of her innocent face.
“Don't send me away,” she said, laying a hand on either. “I know I am a young ignorant thing, and you are wise men; but perhaps a straightforward girl may be as wise as you. Why are you angry with one another?”
Both looked uncomfortable. Major Harper tried to throw the question off.
“Are we angry with one another? Nay, I am sure”—
“Don't deceive me—this is no time for making pretences of any kind. What is this quarrel between you two?” And she turned from one to the other her fearless eyes.
Major Harper could not meet them; Nathanael did, calmly, but sorrowfully.
“Agatha, I cannot tell you.”
“But I can tellyou; and I will, for it is right. Major Harper, do not be unhappy. Believe me, I care not one jot for all the money I ever had. If you have lost it, I am sure it was accidentally. You would not wilfully wrong me of a straw.”
Again Major Harper groaned. Nathanael stood speechless with amazement. At length he said, very gently:
“How did you find this out, Agatha?”
“Mr. Grimes told me.”
“Was that all he told?”
“Yes.”
Major Harper looked relieved. Nathanael watched him sternly. After a while he said:
“Frederick, this is the right time to explain all. Do not start; you need not fearme; in any case I shall hold to my promise. But if you would explain—for my sake, for others' sake”—
The other shrank away. “No, not now,” he whispered; “oh! brother, not now. Give me a little time. Don't disgrace me before her—before them all.”
Nathanael's stature rose. Without again speaking, he shook his brother's hand from off his shoulder with a gesture, slight yet full of meaning, and turned towards Agatha. He seemed to yearn over her, though he checked every expression of feeling except the softness of his voice.
“I am glad you have found out we are poor—that in some things my wife may see I have not been so cruel to her as she thought.”
Agatha's cheeks crimsoned with emotion. Why—why were they not alone that she need not have smothered it down, and stood so quiet that he believed she did not feel? He went on, rather more sadly:
“But this is not a time to talk of our own affairs; you shall know all ere long. Will you be content until then?” And he held out his hand.
She took it, looking eagerly into his face. There was something there so intrinsically noble and true! Though his conduct yet seemed strange—unreasonable towards her, harsh towards his brother, still, in defiance of all, there was that in his countenance which compelled faith. And there was that in her own heart, a something neither reason nor conviction, but transcending both, which leaped to him as through intervening darkness light leaps to light. She felt that she must believe in her husband.
He seemed partly to understand this, and smiled—a pale, faint smile, that quickly vanished.
“Now, Agatha,” he said, opening the door for her, “go and see how my father is, and then you must go to bed. I will sit up with him to-night. I cannot have my poor wife killing herself with watching.”
His voice sunk tenderly; he even put out his hand, as if to stroke her hair after his old habit, but drew it back—Major Harper was looking on. Again the dark fire, lit so fatally on his marriage-day, and since then sometimes fiercely raging, sometimes smothered down to a mere spark, yet never wholly extinguished, rose up in the young man's strong, self-contained, strangely silent heart. Would his pride never let it burst forth, that, mingling with the common air, it might burn itself to nothingness! But how many a whole life has been tortured and consumed by just such a little flame, a mere spark, let fall by some evil tongue which is set on fire of hell.
While they paused—the wife waiting, she knew not for what, except that it seemed so easy to follow and so hard to quit her husband—there was a cry heard on the staircase at the foot of which they stood. Mrs. Dugdale came running down in terror.
“Nathanael—Agatha—I have told my father that Fred is here. Oh, come to him, do come!”
No time for pitiful earthly passions, jealousies, and regrets. Nathanael ran quick as lightning, his wife following. But at the door of the sick-room even she recoiled.
The old man sat up in bed, raised on pillows; either the paralysis had not been so entire as was at first supposed, or he had slightly recovered from it. His right arm moved feebly; his tongue was loosed, though only in a half-intelligible jabber. But his countenance showed that, however lay the miserable body, the poor old man was in his right mind. Alas! that mind was not at peace, not lighted with the holy glow cast on the dying by the world to come, It was filled with rage and torment.
Nathanael ran to him, “Father, father, you will destroy yourself. What is it you want?”
The answer was unintelligible to his son, but Agatha gathered from it that the chamber-door was to be shut and bolted. She did so; yet even then the sick man's fury scarce abated. Broken words—curses that the helpless lips refused to ratify; terrible outbursts of wrath, mingled with the piteous moan of senility. Last of all came the name, once given proudly by the young father to his first-born, and now gasped out with maledictions from the same father's dying lips—“Frederick.”
Nathanael and Agatha looked at one another with horror. They both knew that the old Squire was bent on driving from his death-bed his own, his first-born son.
Agatha instinctively held down the palsied hands, which were trying to lift themselves towards heaven—not in prayers!
“Father, don't say—don't even think such terrible things. Whatever he has done, forgive him!—for the love of God, forgive him!”
The old man regarded her, and his excitement seemed redoubled. Agatha fancied it was the father's pride, dreading lest she, a stranger, knew the cause of his anger.
“No, no!” she cried, “I scarcely understand anything; my husband would not tell me. Whatever has happened can all be hushed up. We would forgive anything to a brother—oh, would we not?” And she appealed to Nathanael, who stood motionless, great drops lying on his forehead, though his features were so still.
“It is true, father,” he whispered. “No one knows anything but me, and I have kept your honour safe that he might redeem it some time. Perhaps he may. And remember, he is your son—the first-born of his mother. Hush, Agatha!” Nathanael continued, as he saw a sudden change come over the old man's face. “Don't say any more now. Leave me to talk with my father.”
With the grave tenderness that he always showed her, he took his wife by the hand, led her to the door, and closed it. Greatly moved, yet feeling satisfied he would do what was right, Agatha obeyed and went down-stairs.
The sisters and brother were assembled in the study. Marmaduke was there too, but took little part in the family lamentation, except in keeping a perpetual tender watch over the grief of his own Harrie. Anne Valery was absent.
Frederick Harper sat apart. A sullen gloom had succeeded to his misery—with him no feeling ever lasted long, at least in the same form. Harriet and Eulalie were inspecting with great curiosity their elder brother, whose presence among his long-estranged household seemed accompanied with such a mysterious discomfort. They eyed him doubtfully, as if he had done something very wrong that nobody knew of. Mary only, who was next eldest to himself, ventured to address some kind words, and bestir herself about his comfort.
Thus the family sat, Agatha among them, for more than an hour. No one thought of going to bed. All remained together, in a strangely quiet, subdued state, Major Harper being with them all the time, though he hardly spoke, or they to him. He seemed a stranger in his father's house.
Once when he had gone for a few minutes to Elizabeth's room—he had been with Elizabeth long before his coming was known to any of the rest, it was believed—Mary began in her lengthy wandering way to tell anecdotes of his boyish doings; how handsome he was, and how naughty too; and how, when he got into disgrace, she, by the scheming of Elizabeth, used secretly to carry bread-and-honey and apples to his bedroom. And she wiped her eyes, the good, plain-looking sister Mary, saying over and over again,
“Poor Fred!” She never thought of him, like the world, as “Major Frederick Harper,” but only as “Poor Fred!”
Several times Agatha stole up-stairs to the door of the room which enclosed the sorrow-mystery of the house. It was always shut, but she could hear Nathanael's voice within—his soft, kind voice, talking quietly by the bedside.
“I never see anything like 'un,” said the coachman's wife, who sat without the door. “He do manage th' Squire just as the poor dear Missus did. He do talk just like his mother.” And that was evidently the perfection of everything in the old woman's eyes.
Agatha sat down beside her on the staircase, listening to the wind without, that swept fiercely over the hollow in which Kingcombe Holm lay, as if ready to bear away on its pinions a departing soul. It was an awful night to die in. Agatha listened, sensitive to every one of its terrors. But above them all—above the shadow of coming death, fear of the future, anxiety in the present—rose one thought—the thought of her husband.
It gave her no pain—it gave her no joy—yet there it was, a visible image sitting strong and calm in the half-lighted chamber of her heart, every feeling of which crept to its feet and lay there, like priestesses in the twilight before a veiled god.
Nathanael at last opened the door. He looked like one who has struggled and conquered not only with things without, but things within. His face had all the pallor, but likewise all the peace of victory. Agatha rose to meet him.
“Have you been waiting for me this long while? Good child!” And he smiled, but solemnly, as with an inward sense of the Presence which makes all things equal—softens all asperities and calms all passions.
“Do you know where my brother is?” asked Nathanael.
“Down-stairs, with the rest.”
“Will you go and fetch him?”
Agatha looked up at her husband half incredulously. “Have you then succeeded? Is all made right?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, how good—how good you are!” She grasped his hands and kissed them, her eyes floating in tears; then, lest he should be displeased, ran quickly away.
Miss Valery met her at the stairhead, coming from the gallery where were Elizabeth's rooms. They exchanged the usual question, “How is he now?” and then Agatha said:
“Be glad with me! I am sent to fetch Major Harper.”
Anne pressed her hand. “Go and tell him. He is with Elizabeth.”
And there Agatha found him overcome with grief—the gay, handsome Major Harper! steadfast neither in good nor evil. He sat, his head bent, his hair falling disordered, its greyness showing, oh! so plain. Plainer still were the wrinkles which a life of smiles had carved only the deeper round the mouth—token of how near upon him was creeping a desolate unhonoured age. By his side, talking softly, with his hand in hers, lay the crippled sister, perhaps the only living creature who really loved him.
“Major Harper,” Agatha spoke softly, laying her hand upon his shoulder. The poor broken-down man, dropping into old age! there was no fear of his thinking she was in love with him now.
“Well, what do you want?”
“I am sent to fetch you to your father.”
He looked incredulous;—Agatha repeated her message.
“My husband sent me. Your father wishes very much to see you. Come.”
“Elizabeth!” He turned to her as if she could make him understand this incomprehensible news.
Elizabeth clasped his hand and loosed it. She said nothing, but Agatha saw she was weeping for joy. Her brother rose and went through the long gallery they passed, his sister-in-law carrying the light, and leading him. He had quite forgotten his courteous manners now. Agatha thought of the days in London—when he had escorted her to operas, and murmured over her in drawing-rooms, making her so happy and honoured in his notice. Poor Major Harper! How vain were all the shows of his brilliant life, the men who had courted him, the women who had flattered and admired him! Agatha forgave him all his follies—ay even all the hearts he had broken. There was not one of those poor hearts, not one, on which he could rest his tired head now!
At the door of their father's room Nathanael met him, a new and more righteous Jacob dealing with a more desolate Esau. And like Esau's was the cry that broke from Frederick Harper as he went in and flung himself on his knees by the bed.
“Bless me—even me also—O' my father.”
There was no answer. The words of forgiveness were denied his hearing. The old Squire could but look at his son, and move his lips in an articulate murmur.
Agatha ran to Major Harper's side. It was pitiful to see the shock he had received, and the frenzied way in which he called upon his father to speak—if only one word.
“He cannot speak, you know, but he does indeed forgive you. Be sure that he forgives you!”
Her husband drew her away to the little curtained alcove which had been Mrs. Harper's dressing-room. There they stood, close together—for Nathanael did not let her go, and she clung to him in tears—while the father and son had their reconciliation.
It was silent throughout, for after the first burst, Major Harper was not heard to speak. Now and then came a sound like the smothered sob of a boy. No one saw the faces of father and son; they were bent together, just as when, years upon years ago, the proud father had sometimes condescended to let his baby son, his first-born and heir, go to sleep upon his shoulder.
Thus, after many minutes, Nathanael found them lying.
He held the curtain aside to see his father's countenance; it was very peaceful now, though with a dimness gathering in the open eyes. Agatha had never before seen that look—the unmistakable shadow of death. She shrank back, trembling violently. Her husband put his arm round her.
“Do not be afraid, my child,” he whispered, using the old word and tone. She rested on him, and was quieted.
“I think we had better call them all in now.”
“Shall I fetch them?” said his wife, and went out, flitting once more through the still, ghostly house. But she thought of her husband, of his last word and look, and had no fear.
They came in, all that were now living of the old man's children—save one—the poor Elizabeth. They stood round the bed, a full circle, his two sons, his three daughters, his son-in-law and daughter-in-law, and lastly Anne Valery. She was the palest and most serene of all.
Thus for an hour or more they waited—so slow was the last closing of the long-drawn-out life. There was no pain or struggle; merely the ebbing away of breath. The palsied hands, white and beautiful to the last, lay smooth on the counterpane; and when occasionally one or other of his daughters knelt down and kissed him, the old man feebly smiled. But whenever he opened his eyes, they travelled no farther than to the face of his eldest son—rested there, brightened and closed.
And thus, lying quietly in the midst of his children, at daybreak the old Squire died.
It was the day after that on which he had been borne to the place appointed for all living. A new coffin rested beside that of Catherine Harper in the family vault; the portrait still smiled, but on an empty bed. There was no separation now.
At Kingcombe Holm the house had awakened from its sleep of mourning; the shutters were opened, and the sunshine came in familiarly on the familiar rooms—where was missed the presence of him who had abided there for threescore years and ten. But what were they? Counted only as “labour and sorrow”—they had all passed away, and he was gone.
The family met—a large table circle. They looked melancholy, all in their weeds, but otherwise were as usual. A certain gravity and under-tone in speaking alone remained. Mary had again begun to busy herself over her housekeeping; and Eulalie, looking prettier than ever in her black dress, was listening with satisfaction to the Reverend Mr. Thorpe, a worthy, simple young man, who had come at once to pay the family of his affianced the respect of attending the funeral, and to plan another ceremony, when the decent term of mourning should be expired.
Major Harper, now recovering something of his old elasticity of manner, took the place at the foot of the breakfast-table, whence Mary, presiding as usual, cast over to him glances sometimes of pride, sometimes of doubtful curiosity, as if speculating on what sort of a ruler the future head of the house would be.
A very courteous and graceful one, most surely!—to judge by the way in which he was doing the agreeable to his sister-in-law. Quite harmlessly, only it seemed as necessary for Major Harper to warm himself in the fair looks of some woman or other, as for a drenched butterfly to dry its wings in the sunshine. He was indeed a poor helpless human butterfly, not made for cloudy weather, storm, or night!
But he fluttered in vain; Agatha took no notice of him whatsoever. Her whole nature had deepened down to other things—things far beneath the shallow ken of Major Harper.
During this week, when the numerous duties of the brothers of the family left its womenkind nearly alone, shut up in the house of mourning, with nothing outwardly to do or to think of beyond the fold of crape or a gown, or the make of a bonnet—Agatha had learnt strange secrets. They were not of Death, but of Love.
She had seen very little of her husband. Either by necessity or design, he had been almost constantly away; at Thornhurst, arranging business for Miss Valery, who had gone home; sometimes at Kingcombe, in his own house—his lonely house; and for two days and nights, to the astonishment and slight scandal of his sisters, he had been absent in Cornwall. But wherever he was, or whatever he had to do, he either saw or wrote to his wife every day; kind, grave words, or kinder letters; brother-like in their wisdom and tenderness—just the sort of tenderness that he seemed to believe she would wish for from him.
Agatha accepted all—these brief meetings—these constant letters; saw the wounding curiosity of his sisters relax, and even Harriet Dugdale acknowledged how mistaken had been her former notions, and on what excellent terms her brother and his wife now evidently were; she really never thought Nathanael would have made such an attentive, affectionate husband! And Agatha smiled outwardly a proud satisfied smile; while inwardly—-oh, what a crushed, remorseful, passionate heart was there!
A heart which now began to know itself—at once its fulness and its cravings. A heart thirsting for that love, wanting which, marriage is but a dead corrupting body without the soul—love, the true life-union, consisting of oneness of spirit, sympathy, thought, and will—love which would have been the same had they lived twenty thousand miles apart, ay, had they never married at all, but waited until eternity united those whom no earthly destinies could altogether put asunder. Now out of her own soul she learnt—what not one human being in a million learns, and yet the truth remains the same—the unity, the immortality, the divineness of Love, to which the One Immortal and Divine gave His own name.
She sat in her usual quiet mood, she did everything in such a quiet, self-contained fashion now—sat, idly talked to by Major Harper, whom she did not hear at all. She only heard, at the further end of the table, Nathanael talking to Mary. Sometimes she stole a glance, and thought how cordial his manner to his sister was, and how tender his eyes could look at times. And she sighed. At her sigh, her husband would turn, see her listening to Frederick with that absent downcast look—and become silent.
Not an angry jealous silence now—his whole manner showed how much he honoured and trusted his wife—but the hush of a deep, abiding pain, a sense of loss which nothing could ever reveal or remove.
But men must keep up worldly duties; it is only women, and not all of these, who can afford the luxury of a broken heart. Mr. Harper rose, nerved for the day's task—a painful one, as all the family knew. The elder brother had shrunk from it, and it had been left to Nathanael, who in all things was now the thinker and the doer. The impression of this had fixed itself outwardly, effacing the last remnant of his boyish looks. As he stood leaning over Mary, Agatha thought he had already the aspect of middle age.
“It will not take me long, Mary, since you say my father kept his papers in such order. Probably I shall have done by the time the Dugdales come. You are quite sure there was a will?”
“Quite sure; you will probably find it in the cabinet. I saw him looking there the very afternoon of the day he died. I was calling him to dinner, but his back was turned, and I could not make him understand—poor father!”
Mary's eyes filled, but the younger brother said a few kind words, and her grief ceased The rest were silent and serious, until Nathanael, going away, addressed Frederick rather formally. All speech between them, though smooth, was invariably formal and rare.
“You are satisfied to leave this duty in my hands?—you do not wish to share it?”
“Oh, no, no!” hurriedly answered the other, walking away in the sunny window-seat, and breathing its freshness eagerly, as if to drive away the bare thought of death and the grave.
Nathanael went out—but ere he had closed the door a little hand touched him.
“What do you want, Agatha?”
“I should like to go with you, if you would allow—that is, if you would not forbid me.”
“Forbid you? Nay! But”—
“I want—not to interrupt you, or share any family secrets—but just to sit near you in the room. This is such a strange, dreary house now!” And she shivered.
Her husband sighed. “Poor child—such a child to be in the midst of us and our trouble! Come with me if you will.” And he took her into the study.
No one had been there since the father died; directly afterwards some careful hand had locked the door, and brought the key to Nathanael; and it was the only room in the house whose window, undarkened, had met during all that week the eye of day. It felt close with sunshine and want of air. Mr. Harper opened the casement, and placed an arm-chair beside it, where Agatha might look out on the chrysanthemum bed, and the tall evergreen, where a robin sat singing. He pointed out both to her, as if wishing to fortify her with a sense of life and cheerfulness, and then sat down to the gloomy task of looking over his father's papers.
They were very few—at least those left open in the desk; merely accounts of the estate, kept with brevity and with much apparent labour; sixty years ago literature, nay, education, were at a low ebb among English country gentlemen. But all the papers were so carefully arranged, that Nathanael had nothing to do but to glance over them and tie them up—simple yearly records of the just life and honest dealings of a good man, who transferred unencumbered to his children the trust left by his ancestors.
“I think,” said Nathanael—breaking the dreary silence—“I think there never was one of the Harper line who lived a long life so stainlessly, so honourably, as my father.”
And somehow, as he tied up the packets, his finger slightly trembled. Agatha came and stood by him.
“Let me help you; I have ready hands.”
“But why should I make use of them?”
“Have you not a right?” she said, smiling.
“Nay, I never claim as a right anything which is not freely given.”
“But I give it. It pleases me to help you,” said Agatha, in a low tone, afraid of her own voice. She took the papers from him, and tried to make herself busy, in her innocent way. It cheered her.
Nathanael watched her for a minute. “You are very neat-handed, Agatha, and it is kind of you to help me.”
“Oh, I would help any one.” Foolish, thoughtless words! He said no more, but went and looked over the cabinet.
This was a sadder duty. There were letters extending over more than a half century. The Squire received so few that he seemed never to have burnt one. The oldest—fifty years old—were love-letters, of the time when people wrote love-letters beginning “Honoured Miss,” and “Dear and respected Sir,” overlaying the plain heart-truth with no sentimentalisms of the pen. The signatures, “Catherine Grey,” and “Nathanael Harper,” in round, formal, girl and boy hand, told how young they were when this correspondence began;—young still, when its sudden ceasing showed that courtship had become marriage. From that time, for nearly twenty years, there was scarcely a letter signed Catharine Harper.
“This looks,” said Agatha, who unconsciously to both had come to stand by her husband and share in his task—“this looks as if they were so rarely parted that they had no need for letter-writing.”
“It was so: I believe my father and mother lived very happily together.”
“I should like to read these letters all through, if I might? They are the only love-letters I ever saw.”
“Are they, indeed?”
The sharp questioning look startled Agatha. She remembered that first letter of Nathanael's—perhaps he was vexed that she had apparently forgotten it—the letter which had been such a solemn epoch in her young life. She coloured vividly and painfully.
“I mean—that is”—
Her husband looked another way. “You shall have these letters if you so much desire it.”
“Thank you. I would like to keep something of your mother's. And she was indeed so happy in her marriage?”
“Very happy, Anne Valery says. My father's was not a perfect temper, but she understood him thoroughly, and he trusted her. He had need; he knew—what is a rare thing in marriage now-a-days—that he had been his wife's first love.”
Agatha made no reply, and the conversation dropped.
Next to Mrs. Harper's letters, and preserved with almost equal care, was another packet. It began with a child's scrawl—double-lined, upright and stiff:
“My dear Father,
“Uncle Brian has ruled me this paper, and ruled Anne another. We are all very merry at Weymouth. We don't want to come home, except to see”—(here a word, apparently “ponies” had been carefully altered, by a more delicate hand, into something like “Papa”)—“Anne's love, and everybody's, from your dutiful son,
“Frederick.”
“'Frederick?'—I thought the letter was yours.”
“No, if he had kept any it was sure to be my brothers. Frederick must have them back.”
“Let me tie them up,” said Agatha stretching out her hand.
“No—no—are they so very precious? Why do you want to touch them?” said he, sharply, drawing them out of her reach.
“Only that I might help you.”
Mr. Harper regarded her a moment, and then put back the letters into her lap. “Forgive me, I did not mean to be cross with you. But this task confuses me.”
He leaned his elbow on the cabinet, covering his eyes, and stood thus for two or three minutes. Agatha remained silent—who could have intruded on the emotion of a son at such a time? None but a wife who could have stolen into his heart with a closer, dearer claim, and she, alas!shedared not. Weeks ago—when she believed herself wronged—it would have been far easier. The higher he rose, the lower she sank, weighed down by the bitter humility that always comes with fervent love. She watched him—her heart throbbing, bursting, yearning to cast itself at his feet—yet she dared not.
“Now let us look over some other letters. I wonder whether Mary was right, and it is here we shall find the will!”
He, then, was only thinking of letters and wills! Agatha turned away, and went to sit by the window and watch the chrysanthemums.
At last she was attracted back by her husband's voice.
“This is the will, I see, by the endorsement. Take it, Agatha; we will not touch it till the Dugdales come. And here are more letters to my father. Do you think I ought to burn them or look them over first?”
The confidential tone in which he spoke soothed Agatha. It was a sort of tacit acknowledgment of her wifely rights to his trust.
“I think, suppose you look them over”—
“I cannot,” said he, wearily. “Will you?” And he gave her a handful in her lap. Agatha felt pleased; she thanked him, and turned them over one by one.
“Here is a hand which looks like Miss Valery's.”
“It is hers. Set them by.”
She opened another, in a careless and very illegible hand, which she could not recognise at all:
“My dear Brother,
“The approaching marriage in your family, of which you inform me, unfortunately cannot alter my plans. I must recover my lost fortunes abroad.
“Frederick told me yesterday his certainty of being accepted by Miss Valery. He might have told me sooner, but perhaps thought me too much of a crusty old bachelor to sympathise with his felicity. Possibly I am.
“You ask if Anne has communicated to me the coming change in her life? No.
“Farewell, brother, and God bless you and yours.
“B. L. H.”
“Why, this is Uncle Brian!” cried Agatha, giving the letter to her husband. He read it, laid it aside without comment, and sat thinking. She did the same. Turning, their eyes met; and they understood each other's thoughts, but apparently neither liked to speak. At last Nathanael said:
“It must have been so, though I never guessed it before.”
“But I did, though she never openly told me.”
“Well, it is a strange world!” mused the young man. “Poor Uncle Brian!”
“When do you expect him home?”
“Any day, every day. Thank God!”
“Did you not think she seemed a little better yesterday,” said Agatha hesitatingly. “Just a very little, you know.”
“A little better; is she ill? What, very ill?”—Agatha's mute answer was enough. “Oh, poor, poor Anne! And he is coming home!”
“Perhaps,” said Agatha, shocked to see her husband's emotion—“perhaps if we take great care, and she is very happy,—people must live when they are happy”—
“Few would live at all then,” was the answer, unwontedly bitter. “Better not—better not; poor Anne! It is a hard, cruel, miserable world.”
“Why do you say that, Nathanael?”
He started, and Agatha too, for opening the door, with a bright, clear look, was she of whom they were just talking—Anne Valery.
“I knew I might come in. I heard what you were doing here,” and a slight sadness crossed her face. “Is it all done, now?”
“Nearly,” and Mrs. Harper hurriedly folded the letter, which lay still on her lap. Miss Valery's eye caught the writing; Nathanael gave it to her.
Anne read it; at first with a natural womanly feeling—nay, even agitation. Soon this ceased, absorbed in the infinite peace and content of her whole mien. “I knew all this long ago,” she said calmly. “It was a—amistakeof Frederick's.”—Then, still calmly; “What do you think I have just heard from Marmaduke!—He”—there could be but one she meant—“he has safely landed at Havre.”
“Uncle Brian!” the young people both cried, and then instinctively repressed the joy. It seemed too sacred to be expressed in ordinary fashion. And passing naturally from one thought to another, Nathanael glanced round the room; the unused desk, the scattered papers left to be examined by the unfamiliar hands of a younger generation. Had the absent one come but a little sooner! “Alas!” he said, “it seems as if the world's universal sorrow lay in those words, 'Too late.'”
Miss Valery sank on a chair, her temporary strength departing. Her hands dropped into that fold that was peculiar and habitual to them—a simple attitude, not unlike Chantrey's “Resignation.”
“You speak truly, Nathanael. But 'our times are inHishand.'”
She said no more, and shortly Mr. Harper, taking with him the sealed packet that was endorsed “My Will” led the way to where the family were assembled. In doing so there grew over him the hard silence always visible when he was much affected. But Agatha was not surprised or hurt: she began to understand him better now.
In the dining-room were only the immediate family. Every one knew the probable purport of the will, and how simple a document it was likely to be; for the patriarchal old Squire hated the very mention of law, and it had been his pride that, though not entailed, the inheritance of Kingcombe Holm had descended for centuries unbroken by a single legal squabble. Therefore they all waited indifferently, merely to go through a necessary form; Harriet Dugdale and her husband, Eulalie and herfiancé, and the solitary Mary. Major Harper alone was rather restless, especially when the three others came in from the study. It was noticeable that, with all his smooth manner, Frederick never seemed quite at ease in the presence of Miss Valery. Nevertheless he tried, and successfully, to assume his position as elder brother and present head of the family. He gave Anne a gracious welcome.
“I scarcely expected you would have honoured us so far. This is entirely a family meeting.”
“Shall I leave?”
“Oh, no,” cried everybody at once, “Anne is so thoroughly one of the family.”
“Certainly,” responded Major Harper, bowing though his brows were knit. He waited till Anne took her seat, and then sat down, silent. Many changes, vivid, and various, passed over his flexible mouth. At last, leaning forward, he hid it with his hand. There was a brief hush in the men, of solemnity—in the women, of mourning. More than one tear splashed on the black dress of the tender-hearted Mary.
Nathanael stood—the will in his hand—hesitating.
“It seems to me, that as this is a family meeting, we might—not necessarily, but still out of kindness and respect—postpone it for a few days, that the only remaining member of the family may be present.”
“Who is that?” said the elder brother.
“Uncle Brian.”
One or two voices, especially the Dugdales, seconded this, and eagerly proposed to wait for Uncle Brian.
“Impossible!” Major Harper said, hastily. “I have engagements. I cannot wait for any one.”
“But”—
“Nathanael—don't argue. Remember, I am the elder brother. Give me my father's will.” Nathanael paused a moment, and gave it. “The seal has been broken and re-fastened,” Frederick added, breaking it with rather nervous hands. He tried to glance over it, but his eyes wandered unsteadily. “There, take it and read. I hate business.”
And he threw himself back in his seat, which happened to be the old Squire's especial chair. Agatha thought it was thoughtless of him to use it.
Nathanael read the will aloud. It was dated ten years back, and was in the Squire's own hand, drawn up simply, but with perfect clearness. The division of fortune was as they all expected: a moderate funded sum to each of the daughters and to Nathanael; the estate, with all real and personal property, to go to the eldest son. There were a few small bequests to servants, and one gift of the late Mrs. Harper's jewels.
“I meant them,” the old man wrote, “for my eldest son's wife. Disappointed in this, I leave them to Anne Valery.”
Major Harper moved restlessly in his chair. Anne sat quiet. The young Agatha looked at them, and wondered if people grew callous as they grew old.
“Is it all read?” said Frederick.
“Yes. Stay, here are a few lines; a codicil, I fancy, affixed with seals to the body of the will I can hardly make it out.”
And as Mr. Harper perused it, his wife observed his countenance change. He let the paper drop, and sat silent.
“What is it? Read,”, cried Harrie Dugdale.
“I cannot—Anne, will you? God knows, brothers and sisters”—and he looked all round the circle with an eagerly appealing gaze—“God knows I never knew or dreamed of this. Anne, read.”
“Shall I read, Major Harper?”
He was gazing out of the window with an absent air. At the sound of her voice he started, and gave some mechanical assent.
Anne read the date—of only twelve days back.
“That was the very day that he was taken ill, you know,” whispered Mary.
The codicil began:
“I, Nathanael Harper, being in sound mind and body, do hereby make my last will and testament, utterly revoking all others, in so far as relates to my two sons. I leave to my younger son, Nathanael Locke Harper, all my landed, real, and personal estate, praying that he may long live and maintain our name in honour at Kingcombe Holm. To my eldest son—having no desire to expose to ruin the family estate, or link the family name with more dishonour than it already bears—to my eldest son, Frederick Harper, I leave the sum of One Shilling.”
Anne's reading ceased. Dead silence, utter, frightened silence, followed. Then arose a chorus of women's voices—“Oh, Frederick!—oh, Frederick!”
Frederick rose, feebly smiling. “It is a mistake—all a mistake. My father was not in his right mind.”
The sisterly tide turned. “Oh, hush, Frederick! How wicked of you to say so!”
“Well read it over again,” said Marmaduke Dugdale, waking up into the interests of the world around him. Anne gave him the paper, and he read it with his ponderous, manly voice, rounding out every bitter word which Anne had softened down. All was undoubtedly legal, signed in his own hand, and witnessed by two of his servants. There could be no doubt it was done immediately before the paralytic attack, when he was perfectly in his senses; indeed, he could not be said ever to have lost them.
The family sat, awed by their father's deed; to question which never struck them for a moment—legal chicanery was not rife at Kingcombe Holm. They looked at the disinherited brother with a sort of shrinking wonder, as if he had done some great unknown wickedness. He might have sat there ever so long, conscience-stricken and stupified, but this family gaze stung him into violence.
“I say it is a cheat—how or by whom contrived I know not—but it is a cheat. My father loved me—the only one of you who ever did. If there was a coolness between us, he forgave me when he died. You all saw that.”
There was no denying it. Every one remembered how the father's last dying look of love had been on his eldest son. Again the tide of family feeling changed. They threw doubtful glances towards Nathanael, except his wife. But she drew closer to him, and trembled and doubted no more.
He stood, meeting the eyes of all his family. In his aspect was great distress, but entire composure—not a shadow of hesitation or confusion. Nor, on the other hand, was there any triumph. When he spoke—they seemed expecting him to speak—his voice was low and steady:
“You know, brother, and all the rest of you know, that I have had no hand in this matter.”
“I know nothing of the sort,” cried Frederick. “I only know that I have been defrauded—disgraced.—Not by any act of my father's, or he would not lie quiet in his grave. My father always loved me.” And the quick feeling natural to Major Harper made him hesitate—unable to proceed. But soon he continued, vehemently:
“I will find out this. Evil speakers, malicious, underhand hypocrites, have turned my father against me. I declare to Heaven that I never wronged any”—
Frederick stopped—interrupted not by words, for there was perfect silence—but by a certain quiet look of Anne Valery's, which fastened on his face. He turned crimson—he had so much of the woman in him, though of womanhood in its weakest form. He glanced from Miss Valery to Agatha, and then back again.
“Anne—Anne Valery, tell me do you know anything?”
“Everything.”
“You—even you!” For the moment, he cowered in such emotion as was pitiful to see; but it passed and he grew desperate.
“I say, I will contest this will. It shall be proved invalid. My lawyer Grimes”—
“Mr. Grimes has been here, and is now gone to America,” Anne whispered. “I urged and assisted him to go, that he should not throw disgrace on the family.”
Again Frederick cowered down, then rose, goaded to the last degree. “Nevertheless, this will shall not stand. I will throw it into Chancery. I will leave for London this very day.”
“Stay,” said Nathanael, starting from deep thought, and intercepting him as he was quitting the room. “One word, Frederick.”
“Not one! You are all against me, but I will brave you all. I will have my rights—ay, even if I plead my father's insanity.”
“Oh, horrible!” cried his sisters.
“Frederick, you know that to be impossible,” said Nathanael, sternly.
“Then I will plead what may prove a deeper disgrace to the family than madness, or even—what I am supposed to have done,” catching his brother's arm, and hissing out the words in his face—“I will plead that the will isa forgery.”
Nathanael wrenched away his hold, thereby throwing Frederick back almost to the floor. The two stood for a moment glaring at one another, in that deadly animosity, most deadly when it arises between brothers,—and then the younger recovered himself. It might be because, instantaneously as the struggle had begun and ended, he had heard a woman's cry of terror, and the name uttered was not “Frederick,” but “Nathanael.” Also, as he stood, he felt two little hands steal from behind and tighten over his own. He grew very calm then.
“Frederick, you must unsay that word. There are some things which a man cannot bear even from his brother. No doubt can exist that this is my father's own writing, and no forgery. You know that as well as I do.”
“As well as you do! Exactly what I meant to observe,” said Major Harper, with his keenest and politest sneer.
Nathanael moved back. A man's roused passions are always terrible; but there is something ten times more awful in fury that is altogether calm—molten down as it were to a white heat. Never but once—that uneffaceableonce—had Agatha seen her husband look as he looked now.
“Pause one minute, Frederick. If you had waited and heard me speak——”
“I dare you to speak!”
“It would be better not to dare me. I am at my last ebb of patience. I have kept faithfully my promise to you. None of our family know—not even my own wife—all that is known by you and me, and our father whom we buried yesterday. I would have saved him from the knowledge if I could, but it was not to be. Now, take care. If you drive me to it”—
He hesitated. Agatha felt his hand—the thin boyish hand—grow cold as ice and rigid as iron. She uttered a faint cry.
“Agatha, my wife,” with the old sweetness in the whisper, “go and sit down. Leave me to reason with my brother.”
“No, letmedo that,” said one coming between. It was Anne Valery.
She had risen from the chair where, during almost all this time, she had sat like a statue, only none watched her, not even Agatha. When she rose, it was with a motion so slow and gliding, her soft black dress scarcely rustling as she moved, that Frederick Harper might well start, thinking a supernatural touch was on his arm.
“Anne, is it you? I had forgotten you. No”—he muttered, half to himself, turning from the contest with his brother to gaze on her—“no, I never did—never do forget you.”
“I believe that. Come and speak to me here.”
Unresisted, she put her arm in his, and led him away to the deep bay-window, circled with a low-cushioned sill, such as delights children. Anne sat down.
“Are you determined on this cruel course?”
“I must recover my rights,” was the sullen answer. “Any man would.”
“And when you have done this—supposing it practicable—what further do you purpose?”
“What further?” He looked puzzled, but at last perceived her meaning. With an impulse eagerly caught, as Major Harper caught all impulses, good and ill, he cried—“Yes, I understand you. My first act, on coming to my property shall be to right poor Agatha.”
“I thought so,” said Anne, kindly. “But you will not be able. There are others whose claims will be upon you the instant you have money to satisfy them—the shareholders. They know nothing of Agatha Bowen. Remember you expended her fortune as you worked the mine—in your own name.”
Major Harper looked confounded with shame. “And you knew all this, Anne—you! For how long?”
“For some months—ever since I bought Wheal Caroline.”
“And you never betrayed me!”
“We were playfellows, Frederick.” She spoke softly, and turned her face to the other side of the bay-window.
He forgot she was old now—he remembered only the familiar voice and attitude, the same as when in her girlish days she used to sit on the cushioned window-sill and talk with him for hours.
“Playfellows! Was that all, Anne? Only playfellows?”
“Only playfellows,” she repeated firmly. “Never anything more. You knew that always.” And, perhaps unconsciously, Anne looked down on a ring—plain, not unlike a childish keepsake—which she always wore on the wedding-finger of her left hand.
Major Harper sighed, not one of his sentimental sighs, but one from the deeps of his heart. A smile, hollow and sad, followed it. “I suppose it is idle talking now, but—but—you were my first-love, Anne! If things had gone differently, I might have been a different man.”
“Not so. God ordained your fate, not I. No man need be ruined for life because a woman cannot love him. Human beings hang not on one another in that blind way. We have each an individual soul; on another soul may rest all its hopes and joys, but on God only rests its worth, its duties, and its nobility. We may live to do His work, and rejoice therein, long after we have forgotten the very sound of that idle word—happiness.”
She paused.
“Go on; you talk as you always used to do.”
“Not quite,” said Anne, with a faint smile; “I am hardly strong enough. Frederick,” and her eyes had their former lovely, earnest look—earnest almost to tears, save that girl-tears had from them long been dried,—“Frederick, for the sake of our olden days—of your mother whom we both loved—of your father who has gone to her—listen to me for a little. Trust to your brother—he will not act unjustly. Do not create dissensions in your family; do not let people say that the moment Mr. Harper's head was laid in the grave his children quarrelled over his property.”
“I do not quarrel—I but take my right,” cried Major Harper, becoming again the “man of the world,” as he saw, the curious glances that from time to time reached the bay-window. “Thank you for this good advice; for which my brother owes you even more than I. But I am not a child now, nor a boy in love, to be talked over by a woman.”
Miss Valery rose, rather proudly. “Nor am I that woman, Major Harper. But I have been so long united in affection with your family; I could not bear to think it would be brought to dishonour. Surely—surelyyouwill not be the one to do it.”
Again as he turned to go, she drew him back by those earnest eyes.
“Frederick, it would grieve me so, ay, break my heart, to see them brought into open shame, the old familiar home, and the name—the dear, dear name.”
Major Harper's bitter tongue burst its control and stung. “I now see your motive. Everybody knows how very dearly Anne Valery has all her life loved the Harper name.”
Anne rose to her full height, and a blush, vivid as a girl's, dyed her cheek. “I have,” she said—“I have loved it, and I am not ashamed.”
The blush paled—she sank back on the window-sill. Major Harper was alarmed.
“Anne—how ill you look! What have I done to you?”
“Nothing,” she answered; and, catching his arm, drew herself upright once more.
“Frederick, we were children together, and you loved me; some day you will remember that. Afterwards we grew up young people, and, still thinking you loved me—but it was only vanity then—you did me a great wrong; I will not say how, or when, or why, and no one knows the fact save me—but you did it. You did the same wrong to another lately.”
“How—how?”
“You said to Mrs. Thornycroft—you see I have learnt all, for I wrote and asked her—you said that you 'feared' poor little Agatha loved you, and”—
“I know—I know.”
“You know, too, that vanity misled you; that it was not true. But it was a wicked thing to say; trifling with a woman's honour—torturing those who loved her—bringing on her worlds of suffering. Still, she is young, and her suffering may end in joy;—mine”—
Anne paused; the human nature struggled hard within her breast—she was not quite old yet. At length it calmed down—that last anguished cry of the soul against its appointed destiny.
She took her old playmate by the hand, saying gently,
“I am going away soon—goinghome. Before I go, I would like to say, as I used to do when you were unkind to me as a child, 'Good-night, and I forgive Fred everything.'”
“Oh, Anne—Anne.” He kissed her hand in strong emotion.
“Hush! I cannot talk more,” she went on quickly. “You will do as I ask? You will wait until—until”—
She stopped speaking, and put her handkerchief to her lips. Slowly, slowly, red drops shone through its folds. Major Harper called wildly for his sisters.
“I knew how it would be,” cried Mary Harper. “It has happened twice before, and Doctor Mason said if it happened again”—
“Oh, God forgive me!” groaned Frederick, as his brother carried Anne Valery away. “She will die—and I shall have killed her!”