HOME.
And now they were at home--the Fly dismissed, the trunks unfastened, and
Agnes and Marian sitting with Mamma in the old parlour, as if they had
never been away. Yes, they had been away--both of them had come in with
a little start and exclamation to this familiar room, which somehow had
shrunk out of its proper proportions, and looked strangely dull,
dwarfed, and sombre. It was very strange; they had lived here for years,
and knew every corner of every chair and every table--and they had only
been gone a fortnight--yet what a difference in the well-known room!
“Somebody has been doing something to the house,” said Marian
involuntarily; and Agnes paused in echoing the sentiment, as she caught
a glimpse of a rising cloud on her mother’s comely brow.
“Indeed, children, I am grieved to see how soon you have learned to
despise your home,” said Mrs Atheling; and the good mother reddened, and
contracted her forehead. She had watched them with a little jealousy
from their first entrance, and they, to tell the truth, had been visibly
struck with the smallness and the dulness of the family rooms.
“Despise!” cried Marian, kneeling down, and leaning her beautiful head
and her clasped arms upon her mother’s knee. “Despise!” said Agnes,
putting her arm over Mrs Atheling’s shoulder from behind her chair; “oh,
mamma, you ought to know better!--we who have learned that there are
people in the world who have neither a mother nor a home!”
“Well, then, what is the matter?” said Mrs Atheling; and she began to
smooth the beautiful falling hair, which came straying over her old
black silk lap, like Danae’s shower of gold.
“Nothing at all--only the room is a little smaller, and the carpet a
little older than it used to be,” said Agnes; “but, mamma, because we
notice that, you do not think surely that we are less glad to be at
home.”
“Well, my dears,” said Mrs Atheling, still a little piqued; “your great
friend, when he called the other day, did not seem to think there was
anything amiss about the house.”
“Our great friend!” The girls looked at each other with dismay--who
could it be?
“His card is on the mantelpiece,” said Mrs Atheling. “He had not very
much to say, but he seemed a pleasant young man--Sir Something--Sir
Langham; but, indeed, my dear, though, of course, I was pleased to see
him, I am not at all sure how far such acquaintances are proper for
you.”
“He was scarcely _my_ acquaintance, mamma,” said Agnes, sorrowfully
looking down from behind her mother’s chair upon Marian, who had hid her
face in Mrs Atheling’s lap, and made no sign.
“For our rank in life is so different,” pursued the prudent mother; “and
even though I might have some natural ambition for you, I do not think,
Agnes, that it would really be wishing you well to wish that you should
form connections so far out of the sphere of your own family as _that_.”
“Mamma, it was not me,” said Agnes again, softly and under her breath.
“It was no one!” cried Marian, rising up hastily, and suddenly seizing
and clipping into an ornamental cross Sir Langham’s card, which was upon
the mantelpiece. “See, Agnes, it will do to wind silk upon; and nobody
cares the least in the world for Sir Langham. Mamma, he used to be like
Harry Oswald--that is all--and we were very glad when he went away from
the Willows, both Agnes and I.”
At this statement, made as it was with a blush and a little confusion,
Mrs Atheling herself reddened slightly, and instantly left the subject.
It was easy enough to warn her children of the evils of a possible
connection with people of superior condition; but when such a thing
fluttered really and visibly upon the verge of her horizon, Mrs Atheling
was struck dumb. To see her pretty Marian a lady--a baronet’s wife--the
bride of that superb Sir Langham--it was not in the nature of mortal
mother to hear without emotion of such an extraordinary possibility. The
ambitious imagination kindled at once in the heart of Mrs Atheling: she
held her peace.
And the girls, to tell the truth, were very considerably excited about
this visit of Sir Langham’s. What did it mean? After a little time they
strayed into the best room, and stood together looking at it with
feelings by no means satisfactory. The family parlour was the family
parlour, and, in spite of all that it lacked, possessed something of
home and kindness which was not to be found in all the luxurious
apartments of the Willows. But, alas! there was nothing but meagre
gentility, blank good order, and unloveliness, in this sacred and
reserved apartment, where Bell and Beau never threw the charm of their
childhood, nor Mrs Atheling dispersed the kindly clippings of her
work-basket. The girls consulted each other with dismayed looks--even
Rachel, if she came, could not stand against the chill of this grim
parlour. Marian pulled the poor haircloth sofa into another position,
and altered with impatience the stiff mahogany chairs. They scarcely
liked to say to each other how entirely changed was their ideal, or how
they shrank from the melancholy state of the best room. “Sir Langham was
here, Agnes,” said Marian; and within her own mind the young beauty
almost added, “No wonder he ran away!”
“It is home--it is our own house,” said Agnes, getting up for the
occasion a little pride.
Marian shrugged her pretty shoulders. “But Susan had better bring any
one who calls into the other room.”
Yes, the other room, when they returned to it, had brightened again
marvellously. Mrs Atheling had put on her new gown, and had a pink
ribbon in her cap. As she sat by the window with her work-basket, she
was pleasanter to look at than a dozen pictures; and the sweetest
Raphael in the world was not so sweet as these two little lovely fairies
playing upon the faded old rug at the feet of Mamma. Not all the
luxuries and all the prettinesses of Mrs Edgerley’s drawingrooms, not
even the river lying in the sunshine, and the ruffled silvery willows
drooping round their little island, were a fit balance to this dearest
little group, the mother and the children, who made beautiful beyond all
telling the sombre face of home.