The Athelings

CHAPTER VII.

LORD WINTERBOURNE

Lord Winterbourne, all his life, had been a man of guile; he was so long experienced in it, that dissimulation became easy enough to him, when he was not startled or thrown suddenly off his guard. Already every one around him supposed he had quite forgiven and forgotten the wild escapade of Louis. He had no confidant whatever, not even a valet or a steward, and his most intimate associate knew nothing of his dark and secret counsels. When any one mentioned the ungovernable youth who had fled from the Hall, Lord Winterbourne said, “Pooh, pooh—he will soon discover his mistake,” and smiled his pale and sinister smile. Such a face as his could not well look benign; but people were accustomed to his face, and thought it his misfortune—and everybody set him down as, in this instance at least, of a very forgiving and indulgent spirit, willing that the lad should find out his weakness by experiment, but not at all disposed to inflict any punishment upon his unruly son.

The fact was, however, that Lord Winterbourne was considerably excited and uneasy. He spent hours in a little private library among his papers—carefully went over them, collating and arranging again and again—destroyed some, and filled the private drawers of his cabinet with others. He sent orders to his agent to prosecute with all the energy possible his suit against the Athelings. He had his letters brought to him in his own room, where he was alone, and looked over them with eager haste and something like apprehension. Servants, always sufficiently quick-witted under such circumstances, concluded that my lord expected something, and the expectation descended accordingly through all the grades of the great house; but this did not by any means diminish the number of his guests, or the splendour of his hospitality. New arrivals came constantly to the Hall—and very great people indeed, on their way to Scotland and the moors, looked in upon the disappointed statesman by way of solace. He had made an unspeakable failure in his attempt at statesmanship; but still he had a certain amount of influence, and merited a certain degree of consideration. The quiet country brightened under the shower of noble sportsmen and fair ladies. All Banburyshire crowded to pay its homage. Mrs Edgerley brought her own private menagerie, the newest lion who could be heard of; and herself fell into the wildest fever of architecturalism—fitted up an oratory under the directions of a Fellow of Merton—set up an Ecclesiological Society in the darkest of her drawing-rooms—made drawings of “severe saints,” and purchased casts of the finest “examples”—began to embroider an altar-cloth from the designs of one of the most renowned connoisseurs in the ecclesiological city, and talked of nothing but Early English, and Middle Pointed. Politics, literature, and the fine arts, sport, flirtation, and festivity, kept in unusual excitement the whole spectator county of Banbury, and the busy occupants of Winterbourne Hall.

In the midst of all this, the Lord of Winterbourne spent solitary hours in his library among his papers, took solitary rides towards Abingford, moodily courted a meeting with Miss Anastasia, even addressed her when they met, and did all that one unassisted man could do to gain information of her proceedings. He was in a state of restless expectation, not easy to account for. He knew that Louis was in London, but not who had given him the means to go there; and he could find no pretence for bringing back the youth, or asserting authority over him. He waited in well-concealed but frightfully-felt excitement for something, watching with a stealthy but perpetual observation the humble house of the Athelings and the Priory at Abingford. He did not say to himself what it was he apprehended, nor indeed that he apprehended anything; but with that strange certainty which criminals always seem to retain, that fate must come some time, waited in the midst of his gay, busy, frivolous guests, sharing all the occupations round him, like a man in a dream,—waited as the world waits in a pause of deadly silence for the thunderclap. It would rouse him when it came.

It came, but not as he looked for it. Oh blind, vain, guilty soul, with but one honest thought among all its crafts and falsehoods! It came not like the rousing tumult of the thunder, but like an avalanche from the hills; he fell under it with a groan of mortal agony; there was nothing in heaven or earth to defend him from the misery of this sudden blow. All his schemes, all his endeavours, what were they good for now?

CHAPTER VIII.

THE NEW HEIR

They had heard from Charlie, who had already set out upon his journey; they had heard from Louis, whom Mr Foggo desired to take into his office in Charlie’s place in the mean time; they had heard again and again from Miss Anastasia’s solicitor, touching their threatened property; and to this whole family of women everything around seemed going on with a singular speed and bustle, while they, unwillingly detained among the waning September trees, were, by themselves, so lonely and so still. The only one among them who was not eager to go home was Agnes. Bellevue and Islington, though they were kindly enough in their way, were not meet nurses for a poetic child;—this time of mountainous clouds, of wistful winds, of falling leaves, was like a new life to Agnes. She came out to stand in the edge of the wood alone, to do nothing but listen to the sweep of the wild minstrel in those thinning trees, or look upon the big masses of cloud breaking up into vast shapes of windy gloom over the spires of the city and the mazes of the river. The great space before and around—the great amphitheatre at her feet—the breeze that came in her face fresh and chill, and touched with rain—the miracles of tiny moss and herbage lying low beneath those fallen leaves—the pale autumn sky, so dark and stormy—the autumn winds, which wailed o’ nights—the picturesque and many-featured change which stole over everything—carried a new and strange delight to the mind of Agnes. She alone cared to wander by herself through the wood, with its crushed ferns, its piled faggots of firewood, its yellow leaves, which every breeze stripped down. She was busy with the new book, too, which was very like to be wanted before it came; for all these expenses, and the license which their supposed wealth had given them, had already very much reduced the little store of five-pound notes, kept for safety in Papa’s desk.

One afternoon during this time of suspense and uncertainty, the Rector repeated his call at the Lodge. The Rector had never forgiven Agnes that unfortunate revelation of her authorship; yet he had looked to her notwithstanding through those strange sermons of his, with a constantly-increasing appeal to her attention. She was almost disposed to fancy sometimes that he made special fiery defences of himself and his sentiments, which seemed addressed to her only; and Agnes fled from the idea with distress and embarrassment, thinking it a vanity of her own. On this day, however, the Rector was a different man—the cloud was off his brow—the apparent restraint, uneasy and galling, under which he had seemed to hold himself, was removed; a flash of aroused spirit was in his eye—his very step was eager, and sounded with a bolder ring upon the gravel of the garden path—there was no longer the parochial bow, the clergymanly address, or the restless consciousness of something unreal in both, which once characterised him; he entered among them almost abruptly, and did not say a word of his parishioners, but instead, asked for Louis—told Rachel his sister wished to see her—and, glancing with unconcealed dislike at poor Agnes’s blotting-book, wished to know if Miss Atheling was writing now.

“Mr Rivers does not think it right, mamma,” said Agnes. She blushed a little under her consciousness of his look of displeasure, but smiled also with a kind of challenge as she met his eye.

“No,” said the young clergyman abruptly; “I admire, above all things, understanding and intelligence. I can suppose no appreciation so quick and entire as a woman’s; but she fails of her natural standing to me, when I come to hear of her productions, and am constituted a critic—that is a false relationship between a woman and a man.”

And Mr Rivers looked at Agnes with an answering flash of pique and offence, which was as much as to say, “I am very much annoyed; I had thought of very different relationships; and it is all owing to you.”

“Many very good critics,” said Mrs Atheling, piqued in her turn—“a great many people, I assure you, who know about such things, have been very much pleased with Agnes’s book.”

The Rector made no answer—did not even make a pause—but as if all this was merely irrelevant and an interruption to his real business, said rapidly, yet with some solemnity, and without a word of preface, “Lord Winterbourne’s son is dead.”

“Who?” said Agnes, whom, unconsciously, he was addressing—and they all turned to him with a little anxiety. Rachel became very pale, and even Marian, who was not thinking at all of what Mr Rivers said, drew a little nearer the table, and looked up at him wistfully, with her beautiful eyes.

“Lord Winterbourne’s son, George Rivers, the heir of the family—he who has been abroad so long; a young man, I hear, whom every one esteemed,” said the Rector, bending down his head, as if he exacted from himself a certain sadness, and did indeed endeavour to see how sad it was—“he is dead.”

Mrs Atheling rose, greatly moved. “Oh, Mr Rivers!—did you say his son? his only son? a young man? Oh, I pray God have pity upon him! It will kill him;—it will be more than he can bear!”

The Rector looked up at the grief in the good mother’s face, with a look and gesture of surprise. “I never heard any one give Lord Winterbourne credit for so much feeling,” he said, looking at her with some suspicion; “and surely he has not shown much of it to you.”

“Oh, feeling! don’t speak of feeling!” cried Mrs Atheling. “It is not that I am thinking of. You know a great many things, Mr Rivers, but you never lost a child.”

“No,” he said; and then, after a pause, he added, in a lower tone, “in the whole matter, certainly, I never before thought of Lord Winterbourne.”

And there was nobody nigh to point out to him what a world beyond and above his philosophy was this simple woman’s burst of nature. Yet in his own mind he caught a moment’s glimpse of it; for the instant he was abashed, and bent his lofty head with involuntary self-humiliation; but looking up, saw his own thought still clearer in the eye of Agnes, and turned defiant upon her, as if it had been a spoken reproof.

“Well!” he said, turning to her, “was I to blame for thinking little of the possibility of grief in such a man?”

“I did not say so,” said Agnes, simply; but she looked awed and grave, as the others did. They had no personal interest at all in the matter; they thought in an instant of the vacant places in their own family, and stood silent and sorrowful, looking at the great calamity which made another house desolate. They never thought of Lord Winterbourne, who was their enemy; they only thought of a father who had lost his son.

And Rachel, who remembered George Rivers, and thought in the tenderness of the moment that he had been rather kind to her, wept a few tears silently.

All these things disconcerted the Rector. He was impatient of excess of sympathy—ebullitions of feeling; he was conscious of a restrained, yet intense spring of new hope and vigour in his own life. He had endeavoured conscientiously to regret his cousin; but it was impossible to banish from his own mind the thought that he was free—that a new world opened to his ambition—that he was the heir!

And he had come, unaware of his own motive, to share this overpowering and triumphant thought with Agnes Atheling, a girl who was no mate for him, as inferior in family fortune and breeding as it was possible to imagine—and now stood abashed and reproved to see that all his simple auditors thought at once, not of him and his altered position, but of those grand and primitive realities—Death and Grief. He went away hastily and with impatience, displeased with them and with himself—went away on a rapid walk for miles out of his way, striding along the quiet country roads as if for a race; and a race it was, with his own thoughts, which still were fastest, and not to be overtaken. He knew the truths of philosophy, the limited lines and parallels of human logic and reason; but he had not been trained among the great original truths of nature; he knew only what was true to the mind,—not what was true to the heart.

CHAPTER IX.

A VISIT

“Come down, Agnes, make haste; mamma wants you—and Miss Anastasia’s carriage is just driving up to the door.”

So said Marian, coming languidly into their sleeping-room, and quite indifferent to Miss Anastasia. She was rather glad indeed to hasten Agnes away, to make an excuse for herself, and gain a half-hour of solitude to read over again Louis’s letter. It was worth while to get letters like those of Louis. Marian sat down on one of Miss Bridget’s old-fashioned chairs, and leaned her beautiful head against its high unyielding angular back. The cover on it was of an ancient blue-striped tabinet, faded, yet still retaining some of its colour, which answered very well to relieve those beautiful half-curled, half-braided locks of Marian’s hair, which had such a tendency to escape from all kinds of bondage. She lay there half reclining upon this stiff uneasy piece of furniture, not at all disturbed by its angularity, her pretty cheek flushing, her pretty lips trembling into half-conscious smiles, reading over again Louis’s letter, which she held after an embracing fashion in both her hands.

And Rachel, with great diffidence, yet by the Rector’s invitation, had gone to visit Miss Rivers at the Old Wood House. When the other Miss Rivers, chief of the name, entered the little parlour of the Lodge, she found the mother and daughter, who were both acquainted with her secret, awaiting her very anxiously. She came in with a grave face and deliberate step. She had not changed her dress in any particular, except the colour of her bonnet, which was black, and had some woeful decorations of crape; but it was evident that she too had been greatly moved and impressed by her young cousin’s death.

“He is dead,” she said, almost as abruptly as the Rector, when she had taken her usual place. “Yes, poor young George Rivers, who was the heir of the house—it was very well for him that he should die.”

“Oh, Miss Rivers!” said Mrs Atheling, “I am very, very sorry for poor Lord Winterbourne.”

“Are you?” said Miss Anastasia;—“perhaps you are right,—he will feel this, I dare say, as much as he can feel anything—but I was sorry for the boy. Young people think it hard to die—fools!—they don’t know the blessing that lies in it. Living long enough to come to the crown of youth, and dying in its blossom—that’s a lot fit for an angel. Agnes Atheling, never look through your tears at me.”

But Agnes could not help looking at the old lady wistfully, with her young inquiring eyes.

“What does the Rector do here?—they tell me he comes often,” said Miss Rivers. “Do you know that now, so far as people understand, he comes to be heir of Winterbourne?”

“He came to tell us yesterday of the poor young gentleman’s death,” said Mrs Atheling, “and I thought he seemed a little excited. Agnes, I am sure you observed it as well as I.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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