RACHEL.
“Yes, I only came to-day,” said Rachel, who kept her eyes wistfully upon
Mrs Atheling, though she spoke to Agnes. “They made me go to town after
you left, and then kept me _so_ long at the Willows. Next season they
say I am to come out, and somebody has offered me an engagement; but
indeed, indeed,” cried Rachel, suddenly firing with one of her outbursts
of unexpected energy, “I never will!”
The girls scarcely knew what answer to make in presence of their mother.
They had not been trained to have independent friendships, and now
waited anxiously, turning silent looks of appeal upon Mamma. Mamma all
at once had become exceedingly industrious, and neither looked up nor
spoke.
“But then you might live in London, perhaps, instead of here; and I
should be very glad if you were near us,” said Agnes, with a good deal
of timidity. Agnes, indeed, was not thinking what she said--her whole
attention wandered to her mother.
“I do not mind for myself,” said Rachel, with a deep sigh. “I do not
think I should care if there were a hundred people to hear me sing,
instead of a dozen, for I know very well not one of them would care
anything for _me_; but I have to remember Louis. I cannot disgrace
Louis. It is bad enough for him as it is, without adding any more.”
Again there was a pause. Rachel’s poor little palpitating heart beat
very loud and very high. “I thought I should be welcome when I came
here,” she said, freezing half into her unnatural haughtiness, and half
with an unconscious and pitiful tone of appeal; “but I never intruded
upon any one--never! and if you do not wish me to be here, I can go
away.”
She turned to go away as she spoke, her little figure rising and
swelling with great subdued emotion; but Mrs Atheling immediately rose
and stretched out her hand to detain her. “Do not go away, my dear; the
girls are very fond of you,” said Mrs Atheling; and it cost this good
mother, with her ideas of propriety, a very considerable struggle with
herself to say these simple words.
Rachel stood before her a moment irresolute and uncertain, not appearing
even to hear what Agnes and Marian, assured by this encouragement,
hastened to say. The contest was violent while it lasted between Louis’s
sister, who was his representative, and the natural little humble child
Rachel, who had no pride, and only wanted the kindly succour of love;
but at last nature won the day. She seized upon Mrs Atheling’s hand
hastily and kissed it, with a pretty appealing gesture. “They do
everything you tell them,” cried Rachel suddenly. “I never had any
mother--never even when we were babies. Oh, will you tell me sometimes
what I ought to do?”
It was said afterwards in the family that at this appeal Mamma, fairly
vanquished and overcome, “almost cried;” and certain it was that Rachel
immediately took possession of the stool beside her, and remained there
not only during this visit, but on every after occasion when she came.
She brightened immediately into all her old anxious communicativeness,
concealing nothing, but pouring out her whole heart.
“Louis told me he had seen you in the garden,” said Rachel, with a low
laugh of pleasure; “but when I asked which it was, he said he knew
nothing of Agnes and Marian, but only he had seen a vision looking over
the old gate. I never know what Louis means when he speaks nonsense,”
said Rachel, with an unusual brightness; “and I am so glad. I never
heard him speak so much nonsense since we came to the Hall.”
“And are you left in the Hall all by yourselves, two young creatures?”
asked Mrs Atheling, with curiosity. “It must be very melancholy for
you.”
“Not to be alone!” cried Rachel. “But very soon my lord is coming, with
a great household of people; and then--I almost faint when I think upon
it. What shall I do?”
“But, Rachel, Mrs Edgerley is very kind to you,” said Agnes.
Rachel answered after her usual fashion: “I do not care at all for
myself--it is nothing to me; but Louis--oh, Louis!--if he is ever seen,
the people stare at him as they would at a horse or a hound; and Lord
Winterbourne tries to have an opportunity to speak and order him away,
and when he shoots, he says he will put him in prison. And then Louis
knows when they send for me, and sometimes stands under the window and
hears me singing, and is white with rage to hear; and then he says he
cannot bear it, and must go away, and then I go down upon my knees to
him. I know how it will happen--everything, everything! It makes him mad
to have to bear it. Oh, I wish I knew anything that I could do!”
“Mamma,” said Agnes earnestly, “Rachel used to tell us all this at the
Willows. Do you not think he ought to go away?”
Mrs Atheling shook her head in perplexity; and instead of answering,
asked a question, “Does he not think it his duty, my dear, to obey
your--your father?” said Mamma doubtfully.
“But he is not our father--oh no, no, indeed he is not! I should know he
was not, even without Louis,” cried Rachel, unaware what a violent
affirmation this was. “Louis says we could not have any father who would
not be a disgrace to us, being as we are--and Louis must be right; but
even though he might be a bad man, he could not be like Lord
Winterbourne. He takes pleasure in humiliating us--he never cared for us
all our life.”
There was something very touching in this entire identification of these
two solitary existences which still were but one life; and Rachel was
not Rachel till she came to the very last words. Before that, with the
strange and constantly varying doubleness of her sisterly character, she
had been once again the representative of Louis. One thing struck them
all as they looked at her small features, fired with this sudden
inspiration of Louis’s pride and spirit. About as different as
possible--at the extreme antipodes of unresemblance--were their two
visitors of this day,--this small little fairy, nervous, timid, and
doubtful, fatherless, homeless, and without so much as a name, and that
assured and commanding old lady, owning no superior, and as secure of
her own position and authority as any reigning monarch. Yes, they were
about as dissimilar as two human creatures could be; yet the lookers-on
were startled to recognise that subtle link of likeness, seldom a
likeness of features, which people call family resemblance. Could it
have come through this man, who was so repugnant to them both?
“They are all coming down on Monday next week,” said Rachel, “so we have
just three days all to ourselves; and I thought, perhaps--perhaps, if
you please to let me, I might bring Louis to-night?”
“Surely, my dear,” said Mrs Atheling.
“Oh, thank you!--thank you very much!” cried Rachel, once more bestowing
an eager yet shy caress upon that motherly hand. “Louis is not like me
at all,” added the anxious sister, afraid lest he should suffer by any
preconceived notion of resemblance. “He is a man; and old Miss Bridget
used to call him a noble brave boy, like what you read of in books. I do
not know,” said Rachel, “I never read of any one, even in a book, like
Louis. I think he ought to be a king.”
“But, indeed, Rachel,” said Agnes, “I am quite sure you are wrong. Ask
mamma. You ought to let him go away.”
“Do _you_ think so?” said Rachel wistfully, looking up in Mrs Atheling’s
face.
But Mrs Atheling, though under any other circumstances she would of
course have insisted upon the absolute propriety of a young man “making
his own way,” paused, much perplexed, and answered nothing for the
moment. “My dears,” she said at last, very doubtfully, “I do not know at
all what to say. You should have some one who could advise you better;
and it depends on the young gentleman’s inclinations, and a great many
things beside that I am not able to judge of; for, indeed, though it may
only be my old-fashioned notions, I do not like to hear of young people
going against the advice of their friends.”