AN EXPERIMENT.
But there was a wonderful difference between this high-minded and
impetuous girl, as she crossed the lawn with a hasty foot, which almost
scorned to sink into its velvet softness, and the disturbed and
bewildered individual who remained behind her in the bowery path where
this interview had taken place. Sir Langham Portland had no very bigoted
regard for birth, and no avaricious love of money. He was a very good
fellow after his kind, as Sir Langhams go, and would not have done a
dishonourable thing, with full knowledge of it, for the three kingdoms;
but Sir Langham was a guardsman, a man of fashion, a man of the world;
he was not so blinded by passion as to be quite oblivious of what
befalls a man who marries a pretty face; he was not wealthy enough or
great enough to indulge such a whim with impunity, and the beauty which
was enough to elevate a Banburyshire Hall, was not sufficient to gild
over the unmentionable enormity of a house in Islington and a father in
the City. Fathers in the City who are made of gold may be sufficiently
tolerable, but a City papa who was _poor_, and had “only a very small
income every year,” as Agnes said, was an unimaginable monster, scarcely
realisable to the brilliant intellect of Sir Langham. This unfortunate
young gentleman wandered about Mrs Edgerley’s bit of shrubbery, tearing
off leaves and twigs on every side of him, musing much in his perturbed
and cloudy understanding, and totally unable to make it out. Let nobody
suppose he had given up Marian; that would have made a settlement of the
question. But Sir Langham was not disposed to give up his beauty, and
not disposed to make a _mésalliance_; and between the terror of losing
her and the terror of everybody’s sneer and compassion if he gained her,
the unhappy lover vibrated painfully, quite unable to come to any
decision, or make up his mighty mind one way or the other. He stripped
off the leaves of the helpless bushes, but it did him no service; he
twisted his mustache, but there was no enlightenment to be gained from
that interesting appendage; he collected all his dazzled wits to the
consideration of what sort of creature a man might be who was in an
office in the City. Finally, a very brilliant and original idea struck
upon the heavy intelligence of Sir Langham. He turned briskly out of the
byways of the shrubbery, and said to himself with animation, “I’ll go
and see!”
When Agnes entered again the little dressing-room where her beautiful
sister still bent over her book, Marian glanced up at her inquiringly,
and finding no information elicited by that, waited a little, then rose,
and came shyly to her side. “I only want to know,” said Marian, “not
because I care; but what did he say?”
“He was surprised,” said Agnes proudly, turning her head away; and Agnes
would say nothing more, though Marian lingered by her, and tried various
hints and measures of persuasion. Agnes was extremely stately, and, as
Marian said, “just a little cross,” all day. It was rather too bad to be
cross, if she was so, to the innocent mischief-maker, who might be the
principal sufferer. But Agnes had made up her mind to suffer no talk
about Sir Langham; she had quite given him up, and judged him with the
most uncompromising harshness. “Yes!” cried Agnes (to herself), with
lofty and poetic indignation, “this I suppose is what these fashionable
people call love!”
She was wrong, as might have been expected; for that poor honest Sir
Langham, galloping through the dusty roads in the blazing heat of an
August afternoon, was quite as genuine in this proof of his affection
as many a knight of romance. It was quite a serious matter to this poor
young man of fashion, before whose tantalised and tortured imagination
some small imp of an attendant Cupid perpetually held up the sweetest
fancy-portrait of that sweetest of fair faces. This visionary tormentor
tugged at his very heart-strings as the white summer dust rose up in a
cloud, marking his progress along the whole long line of the Richmond
road. He was not going to slay the dragon, the enemy of his
princess--that would have been easy work. He was, unfortunate Sir
Langham! bound on a despairing enterprise to find out the house which
was not a hall in Banburyshire, to make acquaintance, if possible, with
the papa who was in the City, and to see “if it would do.”
He knew as little, in reality, about the life which Agnes and Marian
lived at home, and about their father’s house and all its homely
economics and quiet happiness, as if he had been a New Zealand chief
instead of a guardsman--and galloped along as gravely as if he were
going to a funeral, with, all the way, that wicked little imp of a
Cupidon tugging at his heart.
Mrs Atheling was alone with her two babies, sighing a little, and full
of weariness for the return of the girls; but Susan, better instructed
this time, ushered the magnificent visitor into the best room. He stood
gazing upon it in blank amazement; upon the haircloth sofa, and the
folded leaf of the big old mahogany table in the corner; and the
coloured glass candlesticks and flower-vases on the mantel-shelf. Mrs
Atheling, who was a little fluttered, and the rosy boy, who clung to her
skirts, and, spite of her audible entreaties in the passage, would not
suffer her to enter without him, rather increased the consternation of
Sir Langham. She was comely; she had a soft voice; a manner quite
unpretending and simple, as good in its natural quietness as the highest
breeding; yet Sir Langham, at sight of her, heaved from the depths of
his capacious bosom a mighty sigh. It would not do; that little wretch
of a Cupid, what a wrench it gave him as he tried to cast it out! If it
had been a disorderly house or a slatternly mother, Sir Langham might
have taken some faint comfort from the thought of rescuing his beautiful
Marian from a family unworthy of her; but even to his hazy understanding
it became instantly perceptible that this was a home not to be parted
with, and a mother much beloved. Marian, a prince might have been glad
to marry; but Sir Langham could not screw his fortitude to the pitch of
marrying all that little, tidy, well-ordered house in Bellevue.
So he made a great bungle of his visit, and invented a story about being
in town on business, and calling to carry the Miss Athelings’ messages
for home; and made the best he could of so bad a business by a very
expeditious retreat. Anything that he did say was about Agnes; and the
mother, though a little puzzled and startled by the visit, was content
to set it down to the popularity of her young genius. “I suppose he
wanted to see what kind of people she belonged to,” said Mrs Atheling,
with a smile of satisfaction, as she looked round her best room, and
drew back with her into the other parlour the rosy little rogues who
held on by her gown. She was perfectly correct in her supposition; but,
alas! how far astray in the issue of the same.
Sir Langham went to his club--went to the opera--could not rest
anywhere, and floundered about like a man bewitched. It would not do--it
would not do; but the merciless little Cupid hung on by his
heart-strings, and would not be off for all the biddings of the
guardsman. He did not return to Richmond; he was heartily ashamed of
himself--heartily sick of all the so-called pleasures with which he
tried to cheat his disappointment. But Sir Langham had a certain kind of
good sense though he was in love, so he applied himself to forgetting
“the whole business,” and made up his mind finally that it would not do.
The sisters at the Willows, when they found that Sir Langham did not
appear that night, and that no one knew anything of him, made their own
conclusions on the subject, but did not say a word even to each other.
Agnes sat apart silently indignant, and full of a sublime disdain.
Marian, with, a deeper colour than usual on her cheek, was, on the
contrary, a great deal more animated than was her wont, and attracted
everybody’s admiration. Had anybody cared to think of the matter, it
would have been the elder sister, and not the younger, whom the common
imagination could have supposed to have lost a lover; but they went to
rest very early that night, and spent no pleasant hour in the pleasant
gossip which never failed between them. Sir Langham was not to be spoken
of; and Agnes lay awake, wondering what Marian’s feelings were, long
after Marian, forgetting all about her momentary pique and anger, was
fast and sweet asleep.