Chapter 19

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_ CHAPTER XIX

Mr. Harper did not ride home by midnight, as his wife was well assured he would not do, though with some idle hope put into her mind by Eulalie, she sat at the window until the stars whitened in the dawn.

At noon--which seemed to come slowly, every hour a day--Mr. Dugdale appeared with a message, which by some wondrous good fortune he remembered to deliver--that Nathanael had returned from Weymouth to Kingcombe, and was waiting there. Agatha gathered with difficulty that her husband wished her to return with Mr. Dugdale.

"I will not go."

"That's right! I wouldn't do it upon any account," said Eulalie, with not the kindest of laughs. "I wouldn't be sent for like a school-girl. Let Nathanael come himself and fetch you. What a rude fellow he is!"

"Eulalie!--You forget you are speaking of your brother and my husband. I will be ready in five minutes, Mr. Dugdale."

Duke lifted his placid but observant eyes, and smiled. "That's good. Come along, my child."

He had never spoken so kindly to her before. It was as if he read her trouble. Her anger faded--she was near bursting in tears. In a little while she had taken the good man's arm--which Eulalie pointedly informed her was not the fashion at Kingcombe--and was walking with him to meet her husband.

Marmaduke talked but little; marching on leisurely in a meditative mood, and leaving his young sister-in-law to follow his example. Once or twice she felt stealing down upon her one of his kindly, paternal glances, and heard him saying to himself his usual winding-up of every mental difficulty:

"Eh!--We know nothing! Nobody knows anything. But everything always comes clear sometime."

At the verge of the town, apparently coming to meet them, she saw Nathanael--saw him a long way off. Her heart leaped at the first vision of the tall slender figure and light hair; but when he approached she was walking steadfastly along. Her eyes lowered, and her mouth firm set. He came up, silently gave her his arm, and she took it as silently.

Mr. Dugdale and her husband immediately began to talk, so there was no need for Agatha to do anything but walk on, trying to remember where she was, and what course of conduct she had to pursue; trying above all to repress these alternate storms of anger and lulls of despair, and deport herself not like a passionate child, but a reasonable woman--a woman who, after all, might have been heavily wronged.

Sometimes she essayed to consider this--to recall, as is so difficult always, the original cause of difference, the little cloud which had produced this tempest--but everything was in an inextricable maze.

Ere long, Nathanael's silence warned her that they two were alone, Mr. Dugdale having made himself absent, and being seen afar off, diving into a knot of market-politicians. Arm-in-arm the husband and wife passed on through the street. Agatha pulled her veil down, and caught more steadfast hold of her husband's arm--he was her husband, and she would maintain their honour in the world's sight. She felt how many curious eyes were watching them from windows--how many gossiping tongues would be passing comment on the looks and demeanour of Mr. and Mrs. Locke Harper.

"Shall we go over the house now, or would you like to call for my sister?"

"No--we will go at once," returned Agatha.

Steadfastly--mechanically--the young husband and wife looked over their future home, which was all but ready for habitation. It was not a mean abode now; to Mr. Wilson's furniture had been added various comforts and luxuries. Agatha asked no questions--scarcely noticed anything. She merely moved about, trying to sustain her position in the eyes of the work-people that showed her round the house; stopping a minute to speak kindly to the servant who was already installed there, and who, dropping a dozen respectful curtsies, explained that she was the daughter of "Master Nathanael's" nurse.

Everything seemed arranged for Mrs. Harper's comfort, as by invisible hands. She never inquired, or even thought, who was the origin of it all. She could not believe she was in her own home;--her married home;--she felt as if each minute she should wake and find herself Agatha Bowen, in the old rooms in Bedford Square, with all things else a dream.

"Oh, that it were," she sighed within herself. "Oh that I had never"--

She paused here--she could not wish that she had never seen Nathanael.

They quitted the cottage and went out into the street, for country and town blended together in tiny Kingcombe. Mr. Harper closed the wicket-gate, and looked back upon the little house. There was an unquiet glitter in his eye, and his chest heaved violently for a few moments. Then, with all outward observance, he linked his wife's arm in his, and they proceeded onwards.

At the end of East Street they met Harriet Dugdale--the Dugdales seemed always wandering about Kingcombe after one another, and turning up at intervals at odd corners.

"Here you both are! I was looking for my husband. Has anybody seen Duke. Oh, where on earth is Duke gone to? He said he would be back in five minutes--which means five hours."

"I left him at the market-place."

"That's an hour ago. He has been home two or three times since then. Do you think he could get on for a whole hour without wanting the Missus? Oh, there he is. Stop, and I'll catch him."

He was caught, and led forward prisoner by his pretty wife, who never once let him go, lest he should slide away again, and become absorbed in the mysterious electioneering groups that haunted the town.

"Now--Harrie--Missus, just wait--I'll be back in a minute."

"Not a minute! Anne has sent word that she wants you directly--you and Nathanael. You'll go, brother!"

"Whither?"

"To Thornhurst, to meet Mr. Trenchard and some other folk. You must start immediately."

Mr. Harper glanced towards his wife, who had dropped his arm; not pointedly, but as though release were welcome.

"What, couldn't it leave its pet again?" cried Harrie, laughing. "Bless it, nobody demands that terrible sacrifice. Do you think Anne would invite husbands without their wives? We are all to go--if you agree, Agatha."

"Oh, yes!" It was quite indifferent to her where she went, or what she did.

So they all four started in one of those inimitable conveyances called dog-carts, which seem to offer every facility for "accidental death," either by flying over the horse's head, tumbling under the wheels, or slipping off behind.

"Where will you sit, my dear? Beside your husband, I suppose? Mine drives."

Agatha answered by springing up beside Mr. Dugdale, with some vague jest about husbands being no company at all. The dark fit had passed, and she was now in a mood of desperation.

They dashed on quickly; Marmaduke was a daring driver.

Sometimes Agatha even thought he would overturn them in the road. Little she cared! She was in that state of excitement when the utmost peril would only have made her laugh. Passing under the three hills, and looking up at the old castle, silent and grey, the daylight shining through the fissured apertures that had been windows, she turned round and recklessly proposed to Harrie their scrambling up the green slope and rolling down again.

"E--h, my child!" said Duke Dugdale, turning his mild benevolent looks on the flushed face beside him. "Don't'ee try that, don't'ee, now! When people once set themselves rolling down-hill they never stop till they get to the bottom. It's always so in this world."

Agatha laughed more loudly. She wished her husband to hear how merry she was. She talked incessantly to Mr. Dugdale or Harrie, and held herself very upright, so that Nathanael, who sat behind her, might not even feel the touch of her shoulder. She, who had hitherto been so indifferent to everybody, so mild in her likings and dislikes--never till now had she felt such strange emotions. Yet each and all carried with them a fierce charm. It was like a person learning for the first time what thirst was, and drinking fire, because, in any case, he must drink. And with all her wrath there seemed a spell over heart, brain, and senses, which never for a moment allowed her to cease thinking of her husband. Every movement he made, every word he uttered, she distinctly felt and heard.

The way grew unfamiliar; they were passing through a track of country, wilder, and more peculiar than any Mrs. Harper had yet seen in Dorsetshire--a road cut through furzy eminences, looking down on deep, abrupt valleys, that might have been the bed of dried-up lakes or bays; long heathery sweeps of undulating ground, with great stones lying here and there; cultivation altogether ceasing--even sheep becoming rare; and ever when they chanced to rise on higher ground, a sharp, salt, sea-wind blowing, not a human being to be seen for miles.

"Here's the gate. I'll open it. Now we get into Anne Valery's property," said Harrie, as she leaped down and leaped up again, mocking Nathanael's "brown study."

"What a change!" Agatha cried. "I have not seen such trees in Dorsetshire."

"They seem indeed to have grown on purpose for Anne. Her grandfather built Thornhurst. A queer desolate spot to choose, but it's a perfect little nest of beauty. There!"

The road opened upon a semicircular green plane, levelled among the hills, as it were on purpose, and planted round with a sheltering bulwark of trees--lime, chestnut, oak--rising higher and higher, until at the summit, where the sea-breeze caught them, grew nothing but the perpetual Dorsetshire fir. On the edge of the semicircle stood the house, this green plane before it, behind, a wide stretch of country, where the tide, running for miles inland, made strange-shaped lakes and broad rivers, spread out glistening in the afternoon sun.

"Anne, must always be near the sea. I don't think she would live even here unless she knew that just climbing those rocks would bring her in sight of the Channel. She has quite an ocean-mania."

"I'll learn it from her. I want a convenient little mania. Suppose I cure myself of my old grudge against the sea, and go from hatred into love, or from love back again into hatred--as people do."

"What a comical girl you are!"

"Very. Stay now. Wait till the horse is quiet, and I'll take a leap down--just like a person leaping into"--

"Hold, Agatha"--and she felt her arm caught by her husband. It was the first time he had touched or addressed her since they left Kingcombe. "Don't spring down--it is not safe. Stay till I lift you."

"I do not want your help."

"Excuse me, you do; you are not used to this sort of carriage.'

"Stand aside--I _will_ jump down," she cried, roused by the contest, slight as it was, but enough to show the clashing of the two wills. "Stand aside," she repeated, leaning forward with glittering eyes, giddy, and in so great confusion of mind as to be in real danger--"we will see who gives way."

"Are you in earnest?" Nathanael whispered.

"Quite. Go!"

"I would go if it were play. But when I see my wife about to do any frantic thing to her own injury, I shall restrain her--thus."

Balancing himself on the carriage-step, he clasped the little figure in his arms--tight--strangely tight and close. Before Agatha could resist, he had lifted her safely down, and set her free.

She stood passive--astonished. What could it be in that firm will, in that sudden clasp, which made her feel--was it anger? No not anger, though her cheeks glowed and her breast heaved. Why was it, that as Nathanael walked onward towards the house, his wife looked after him with such a mingling of attraction and repulsion? What could it be, this strange power which gave him the preeminence over her--which taught her, without her knowing it, the mystery that causes man to rule and woman to obey; Very thoughtful--even unmoved by Harrie's loud laughter at the "excellent joke"--Mrs. Harper suffered herself to be led on by her sister-in-law.

"Nonsense, child, don't look so serious. Men will have their way--especially husbands. Mine gets obeyed as little as any one; but now and then, when it comes to the point"--here Harrie looked astonishingly grave, for her--"I'm obliged to give in to Pa; and somehow Pa's always right, bless him!"

How every word of one happy wife went like a dagger into the other wife's heart! But there was no shield. Here they were in Anne Valery's house, obliged to appear as cheerful guests, especially the newest guest, the bride. Agatha tried, and tried successfully, to play her part:--misery makes such capital hypocrites!

"Isn't this a large house for a single woman?" said Mrs. Dugdale, as the two ladies passed up-stairs. "Yet Anne constantly manages to fill it, especially in summer-time. The dozens of sick friends she has staying here to be cured by sea-breezes! the scores of young people that come and make love in those green alleys down the garden! But then in the lulls of company the house is dull and silent--as now."

It was very silent, though not with the desolation which often broods over a large house thinly inhabited. The room--Anne's bedroom--lay westward, and a good deal of sunshine was still glinting in. A few late bees were buzzing about the open window, cheated perhaps by the feathery seeds of the clematis, which had long ceased flowering. There was no other sound. But many fine prints, a few painted portraits, and several white-gleaming statuettes, seemed as the sunlight struck them to burst the silence, with mute speech.

"Oh, you are looking at Anne's 'odds and ends' as I call them. Rather a contrast, her walls and ours. I don't see the use of prints and plaster images--always in the way where there are children. But Anne is so dreadfully fond of pretty things. She says they're company. No wonder! A solitary old maid must find herself very dull at times."

"Must she?--then she is the more glad to see her visitors"--a pleasant voice, a silken-rustling step, which in Agatha's fancy seemed always to enter like daylight into a dusky room--and Miss Valery came to welcome her guests.

She addressed Mrs. Harper first, and then Harrie, who looked confused for the moment. But it was not a trifle that could upset the equanimity of the honest-speaking Harrie Dugdale.

"Bless us, Anne, how softly you walk!' Listeners,' etc.--You know the saying! But you might listen at every door in Dorsetshire, and never hear worse of yourself than I said just now."

"Thank you. When I want a good character I shall be sure to come to Harriet Dugdale.--And now, what is the news with the little wife! whom I have yet to bid welcome to Thornhurst. Welcome Mrs. Locke Harper." Anne said the name, as she often did, with a peculiar under-tone of hesitation and tenderness; then, according to her frequent habit, she put her hand on her favourite's shoulder, and began to play with the brown curls. "Have you been quite well and happy since I saw you?"

The question, so simple, so full of kindness, pierced Agatha's soul. Alas? how much had happened since she sat on the stone seat at Corfe Castle, and looked over the view with Anne Valery! How little did Anne or any one know that she was wretched--maddened--hating herself and the whole world--believing in nothing good, nothing holy--not even in her who spoke. The words, the smile, appeared the mocking hypocrisy of one who had persuaded her to marry, and must ere long know of that hasty marriage the miserable result This thought steeled her heart even against Anne Valery.

She burst into a sharp laugh. "Well! Happy! Cannot you see? You are the best person to answer your own question." And she moved away out of the room.

Anne looked after her, thoughtfully, rather sadly. Perhaps she was used to have her pets glide from her, dancing out indifferently into the merry world. She made no attempt to follow Agatha, but led the way down-stairs into the drawing-room.

"Mr. Trenchard, come and let me introduce you to Mrs. Locke Harper."

As Miss Valery said this, an elderly gentleman, dapper, dandy, and small, escaped from under the hands of Duke Dugdale--those big earnest hands that were laid upon him in all the apostleship of sincere argument--and came, nothing loth, as his eager bow showed, to do the polite to the young bride who had been lately brought to the county. For Mr. Trenchard, besides the wondrously sweetening power of his candidateship, came of a very ancient name in Dorsetshire. He was evidently a beau too--one of those harmless general adorers whom the influence of a graceful woman touches even unto old age.

Agatha saw in his first look that he admired her, and she was in that proud desperate mood when a girl is ready to catch hold of the attentions or conversation of any one--even an elderly gentleman. She was very gracious to Mr. Trenchard--nay, altogether bewitching--though for the first ten minutes she herself saw and heard nothing save a thing in black with white hair, talking to her of the beauties of Dorsetshire. More distinctly than aught he said, she heard what was passing in the group at the other end of the room--especially her husband's voice, so quiet and deep, always a tone deeper than any other voices, falling through all the rest like a note of music. And she soon found out that Anne was listening also--to Nathanael, of course. She always did.

Mr. Trenchard followed the direction of the two ladies' eyes, and ingeniously took up the text.

"I assure you, Mrs. Harper, it is a pleasure to all the neighbourhood that your husband has come back from America. I remember him quite a child, and his uncle a young man. And really, how like he is, in both feature and voice, to what his uncle used to be at that time. As he stands there talking, I could almost fancy it was Mr. Locke Harper."

"Mr. Locke Harper," repeated Agatha. "Was that the name Uncle Brian went by?"

"Yes, save with those privileged people who called him Brian. But they were few. He had not the fortune or misfortune of possessing a thousand and one intimate friends. Yet all respected him, and remember him still. It will be a real satisfaction to have in the country a second Mr. Locke Harper,--Dear me, how like he is! Don't you see it, Miss Valery?"

"There is a general likeness running through all the Harper family."

"Except the eldest son, though even to him I can trace some resemblance here"--and he bowed to Mrs. Dugdale. "And this reminds me that I knew beforehand I should probably have the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Harper in Dorsetshire. Only two days ago I saw at Paris Major Frederick Harper."

"Is Major Harper at Paris?" eagerly cried Agatha, caught by the name, which had so soon passed out of the daily interests of her life, that its sound was already quite strange. It reached her now like a comforting breath of old times--a something to catch hold of in the wide, dreary maze around her. Her former guardian seemed to rise up before her; with all his cheery, good-natured ways; his compassion when she had been newly made an orphan; his kindness of manner that remained--ay, to the very last.

In a rush of many feelings that softened her voice to positive tenderness, she cried, "Oh do tell me all about Major Harper?"

And this time she did not notice that, in the political discussion going forward, it was Mr. Dugdale who spoke, his brother-in-law having ceased the argument and become silent.

"Madam," returned the candidate, with a smile--perhaps a little too meaning a smile--"I will, with pleasure, tell you everything. I guessed from his anxious questions concerning you, and whether I had met you in Dorsetshire, that before he was your brother-in-law Major Harper had the happiness of being an intimate friend of yours."

"He was my guardian."

"That fact he did not inform me of. Indeed we had little time for conversation. We merely dined together, and parted almost immediately. He seemed in the midst of a whirl of pleasant engagements, as Major Harper invariably is. Charming, agreeable man! An immense favourite with all ladies."

Agatha answered "Yes" rather coldly. Her attention was wandering; she had missed the sound of her husband's voice altogether. But the next moment she heard him behind her.

"Mr. Trenchard?"

"Well, my dear sir? Are you also come to ask questions about your brother, whom, as I have been telling Mrs. Harper, I had the pleasure to meet in Paris?"

"So I have just heard you say. Where, and how was he living?"

Agatha thought this a strange question for Nathanael to put to a third party concerning his own brother. She was glad to hear Miss Valery observe, with genuine tact, that Major Harper was always careless in the matter of giving addresses.

"He was living--let me see--at 102 Rue--, one of the handsomest and pleasantest streets in Paris. I remember he said he was obliged to take this _appartement_ for three months, after which he was going to act the hermit and economise. Very unlikely that, I should think, for a man of Major Harper's social habits."

"Very," Agatha said, being looked to for a response. She was much surprised to learn this of her brother-in-law; still more did she wonder at the rigid silence with which her husband heard the same.

"I think, Mrs. Harper, we may safely say that his determination will not last. A mere fit of misanthropy after rather too much gaiety. In such a pleasant fellow as Frederick Harper we must excuse a few broken resolutions."

"We ought," said Anne Valery, with that rare gentleness which makes men listen to a woman even when she "preaches." "It is a very hard trial for any one to be thrown into the world with so many gifts as Major Harper. A man whom all men like, and not a few women are prone to love, goes through an ordeal so fierce, that if he withstand it he is one of the greatest heroes on earth. If he fall"--and Anne lowered her voice so that Agatha could scarcely hear, though she felt sure Nathanael did--"if he fall, we ought, through all the wrong, clearly to discern the temptation."

It was a new doctrine, the last Agatha would have expected to hear on the lips of such a sternly good woman as she had painted Miss Valery. She said so, adding, with her usual plainness, "I thought, somehow, that you did not like Major Harper?"

"Nay, we were young together. But hush, my dear, your husband is speaking."

He was saying, with quite an altered expression, something about "my brother Frederick." But after that mention Major Harper's name died out of the conversation, as out of Agatha's memory. Alas, not the unfrequent fate of the Major Harpers of society--meteors, never thought of but while they are shining, and forgotten as soon as they have burnt themselves out.

By this time the two or three stray visitors--gentlemen-farmers, Anne's tenants, as Mrs. Dugdale whispered--had disappeared, and Mr. Trenchard was the sole stranger left in the drawing-room. Miss Valery did the honours of her house with a remarkably simple grace.

"I give no state dinner parties," she said, smiling, to Mr. Trenchard. "It is a whim of mine that I never could see the use of friends meeting together merely to eat and drink, or of offering them more and richer fare than is customary or necessary. But if you will stay and dine with me, and with these my own people, country fashion, even though you have been a ten years' resident in London"--

"But have never forgotten Dorset, and good Dorset ways," said the old gentleman, as he bowed over the hostess's hand. Then, obeying Anne's signal, he offered his arm to Mrs. Harper to lead her in to dinner;--the innocent daylight dinner, with real China-roses looking in at the window, and an energetic autumn-robin singing his good-night before the sun went down.

Agatha could have been happy, merry--she was still so young, and the weight on her heart was the first that ever had fallen there. At intervals she struggled to forget it--almost succeeded; and then the first glimpse of her husband's face, the first tone of his voice, brought the burden back again. Her spirits grew wilder than ever, lest any one should guess she was so very, very miserable.

After dinner, dreading Anne's eyes, she rushed off into the garden with Harrie Dugdale; tossing back her hair, and inhaling by gasps the cold evening wind, that it might bring calm and clearness to her brain. Even yet she felt as though she were dreaming.

Returning, she found lights in the drawing-room. Mr. Trenchard, in a patient attitude, was listening to Marmaduke Dugdale; some distance off, Nathanael sat talking to Miss Valery. Anne was leaning back in an arm-chair: the lamp shining full on her face showed how very pale and worn it was. Her voice, too, sounded feeble, as Agatha caught the words:

"In two months, you think? That is a long time."

"It cannot be sooner, Marmaduke says. I met him on board the ship at Weymouth; when he told me of this innocent little scheme he was transacting."

"But you will not tell"--

"Uncle Brian? No, of course not. Yet I think it would do Uncle Brian good to know how dearly Marmaduke and all his friends here care for him. Yet he might not believe it--I think he never did."

Anne was silent.

"He used to say," continued Nathanael, who was sitting where he could not see his wife, and for once heard not her soft step over the carpet--"Uncle Brian used to say, that it was wisest neither to love nor need love. I think different. It is a cruel, hardening, embittering thing for a man to feel that no one loves him."

--"Love--love! Have you two sage ones been discussing that folly? Now, may I have the honour to hear?"

"If Anne will talk; I have done speaking," said Mr. Harper, as he gave Agatha his chair, and slowly moved away to the other circle.

Thus, ever thus, he went from her, escaping the chance of either being wounded or healed. Agatha was nearly wild. With all her might she flung herself into conversation with Mr. Trenchard, and tried to conjugate that verb--hitherto a mystery to her innocent mind--_to flirt_. She wished to make herself beautifully hateful--bewitchingly foul; or rather she did not care what she made herself, if she only made _him_--who had now in her thoughts sank to the namelessness, which proves that one name is fast filling up the whole world--made him stir from that mountain height of impassive calm--melted him into repentance--shook him into frenzied jealousy. Anything--anything--so that he no longer should stand before her like a serene Alp, which nothing human could disturb, and which--ah, in all her madness, she saw that but too clearly!--which had always such a heavenly light shining on its forehead--a purity "God-given," like his name.

His name, which she had once so disliked, but which now caught a strange beauty. Lately, she had looked out its meaning in a list of Bible names; and many a time, the night before, she had said it to herself, crying it out into the dark, until its soft Hebrew vowels grew musical, and its holy Hebrew meaning grew divine. "Nathanael--Nathanael--_God-given_." Might he not indeed be a husband given unto her of God--to lead her in the right way, and make a true noble woman of her; such as a woman is always made by the love of, and the loving of, a noble man.

But these were sacred night-time thoughts which vanished in the daylight, or only came in snatches and rifts, careering through the blackness that surrounded her.

And still she talked to the fortunate Mr. Trenchard; made herself more agreeable than she had ever believed possible. The elderly beau was fascinated, and even Mr. Dugdale turned from election-papers, to look at his fair sister-in-law with genuine admiration--now and then nodding to Harrie, as if to see what she thought of this new light that had shot across their country hemisphere. At which Mrs. Dugdale once or twice pretended to be mightily jealous, until her husband, with his inconceivable sweet smile, his way of patting her knees with his big gentle hand, and the utterly inexpressible tone of his "Nay, now Missus" made matters quite straight, and plunged back into his politics.

All this while Anne Valery sat in her arm chair--speaking little, looking from one to the other of her guests with a wandering, thoughtful eye, that, for once, noticed little the things around her, because her mental vision was afar off.--Whither--

And Marmaduke went on with his benevolent schemes for improving Dorsetshire and the world; and his Harrie had her dreams too--possibly about the advantage an M.P.'s interest might prove in future days to "the children;" and the young couple, in all the whirl of their misery, still clung to hope and youth and life, so little of which way they had trod, and so much of which lay before them. No one thought of her who sat apart, looking smilingly on them all, but to whom they and the things surrounding them were day by day growing more dim--who was fading, fading, even while she smiled. _

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