DOUBTS AND FEARS.
Louis had not been told till this day of the peril which threatened the
little inheritance of the Athelings. When he did hear of it, the young
man gnashed his teeth with that impotent rage which is agony, desperate
under the oppression which makes even wise men mad. He scorned to say a
word of any further indignities put upon himself; but Rachel told of
them with tears and outcries almost hysterical--how my lord had
challenged him with bitter taunts to put on his livery and earn the
bread he ate--how he had been expelled from his room which he had always
occupied, and had an apartment now among the rooms of the servants--and
how Lord Winterbourne threatened to advertise him publicly as a vagabond
and runaway if he ventured beyond the bounds of the village, or tried to
thrust himself into any society. Poor little Rachel, when she came in
the morning faint and heart-broken to tell her story, could scarcely
speak for tears, and was only with great difficulty soothed to a
moderate degree of calm. But still she shrank with the strangest
repugnance from going away. It scarcely could be attachment to the home
of her youth, for it had always been an unhappy shelter--nor could it be
love for any of the family; the little timid spirit feared she knew not
what terrors in the world with which she had so little acquaintance.
Lord Winterbourne to her was not a mere English peer, of influence only
in a certain place and sphere, but an omnipotent oppressor, from whose
power it would be impossible to escape, and whose vigilance could not be
eluded. If she tried to smile at the happy devices of Agnes and Marian,
how to establish herself in their own room at Bellevue, and lodge Louis
close at hand, it was a very wan and sickly smile. She confessed it was
dreadful to think that he should remain, exposed to all these insults;
but she shrank with fear and trembling from the idea of Louis going
away.
The next evening, just before the sun set, the whole youthful party--for
Rachel, by a rare chance, was not to be “wanted” to-night--strayed along
the grassy road in a body towards the church. Agnes and Marian were both
with Louis, who had been persuaded at last to speak of his own
persecutions, while Rachel came behind with Charlie, kindly pointing out
for him the far-off towers of Oxford, the two rivers wandering in a
maze, and all the features of the scene which Charlie did not know, and
amused, sad as she was, in her conscious seniority and womanhood, at the
shyness of the lad. Charlie actually began to be touched with a
wandering breath of sentiment, had been seen within the last two days
reading a poetry book, and was really in a very odd and suspicious
“way.”
“No,” said Louis, upon whom his betrothed and her sister were hanging
eagerly, comforting and persuading--“no; I am not in a worse position.
It stings me at the moment, I confess; but I am filled with contempt for
the man who insults me, and his words lose their power. I could almost
be seduced to stay when he begins to struggle with me after this
downright fashion; but you are perfectly right for all that, and within
a few days I must go away.”
“A few days? O Louis!” cried Marian, clinging to his arm.
“Yes; I have a good mind to say to-morrow, to enhance my own value,”
said Louis. “I am tempted--ay, both to go and stay--for sake of the
clinging of these little hands. Never mind, our mother will come home
all the sooner; and what do you suppose I will do?”
“I think indeed, Louis, you should speak to the Rector,” said Agnes,
with a little anxiety. “O no; it is very cruel of you, and you are
quite wrong; he did not mean to be very kind in that mocking way--he
meant what he said--he wanted to do you service; and so he would, and
vindicate you when you were gone, if you only would cease to be so very
grand for two minutes, and let him know.”
“Am I so very grand?” said Louis, with a momentary pique. “I have
nothing to do with your rectors--I know what he meant, whatever he might
say.”
“It is a great deal more than he does himself, I am sure of that,” said
Agnes with a puzzled air. “He means what he says, but he does not always
know what he means; and neither do I.”
Marian tried a trembling little laugh at her sister’s perplexity, but
they were rather too much moved for laughing, and it did not do.
“Now, I will tell you what my plan is,” said Louis. “I do not know what
he thinks of me, nor do I expect to find his opinion very favourable;
but as that is all I can look for anywhere, it will be the better
probation for me,” he added, with a rising colour and an air of
haughtiness. “I will not enlist, Marian. I have no longer any dreams of
the marshal’s _baton_ in the soldier’s knapsack. I give up rank and
renown to those who can strive for them. You must be content with such
honour as a man can have in his own person, Marian. When I leave you, I
will go at once to your father.”
“Oh, Louis, will you? I am so glad, so proud!” and again the little
hands pressed his arm, and Marian looked up to him with her radiant
face. He had not felt before how perfectly magnanimous and noble his
resolution was.
“I think it will be very right,” said Agnes, who was not so
enthusiastic; “and my father will be pleased to see you, Louis, though
you doubt him as you doubt all men. But look, who is this coming here?”
They were scarcely coming here, seeing they were standing still under
the porch of the church, a pair of very tall figures, very nearly equal
in altitude, though much unlike each other. One of them was the Rector,
who stood with a solemn bored look at the door of his church, which he
had just closed, listening, without any answer save now and then a grave
and ceremonious bow, to the other “individual,” who was talking very
fluently, and sufficiently loud to be heard by others than the Rector.
“Oh, Agnes!” cried Marian, and “Hush, May!” answered her sister; they
both recognised the stranger at a glance.
“Yes, this is the pride of the old country,” said the voice; “here, sir,
we can still perceive upon the sands of time the footprints of our Saxon
ancestors. I say ours, for my youthful and aspiring nation boasts as the
brightest star in her banner the Anglo-Saxon blood. _We_ preserve the
free institutions--the hatred of superstition, the freedom of private
judgment and public opinion, the great inheritance developed out of the
past; but Old England, sir, a land which I venerate, yet pity, keeps
safe in her own bosom the external traces full of instruction, the
silent poetry of Time--that only poetry which she can refuse to share
with us.”
To this suitable and appropriate speech, congenial as it must have been
to his feelings, the Rector made no answer, save that most deferential
and solemn bow, and was proceeding with a certain conscientious
haughtiness to show his visitor some other part of the building, when
his eye was attracted by the approaching group. He turned to them
immediately with an air of sudden relief.
So did Mr Endicott, to whom, to do him justice, not all the old churches
in Banburyshire, nor all the opportunities of speechmaking, nor even
half-a-dozen rectors who were within two steps of a peerage, could have
presented such powerful attractions as did that beautiful blushing face
of Marian Atheling, drooping and falling back under the shadow of Louis.
The Yankee hastened forward with his best greeting.
“When I remember our last meeting,” said Mr Endicott, bending his thin
head forward with the most unusual deference, that tantalising vision of
what might have been, “I think myself fortunate indeed to have found you
so near your home. I have been visiting your renowned city--one of
those twins of learning, whose antiquity is its charm. In my country our
antiquities stretch back into the eternities; but we know nothing of the
fourteenth or the fifteenth century in our young soil. My friend the
Rector has been showing me his church.”
Mr Endicott’s friend the Rector stared at him with a haughty amazement,
but came forward without saying anything to the new-comers; then he
seemed to pause a moment, doubtful how to address Louis--a doubt which
the young man solved for him instantly by taking off his hat with an
exaggerated and solemn politeness. They bowed to each other loftily,
these two haughty young men, as two duellists might have saluted each
other over their weapons. Then Louis turned his fair companion gently,
and, without saying anything, led her back again on the road they had
just traversed. Agnes followed silently, and feeling very awkward, with
the Rector and Mr Endicott on either hand. The Rector did not say a
word. Agnes only answered in shy monosyllables. The gifted American had
it all his own way.
“I understand Viscount Winterbourne and Mrs Edgerley are at Winterbourne
Hall,” said Mrs Endicott. “She is a charming person; the union of a
woman of fashion and a woman of literature is one so rarely seen in this
land.”
“Yes,” said Agnes, who knew nothing else to say.
“For myself,” said Mr Endicott solemnly, “I rejoice to find the poetic
gift alike in the palace of the peer and the cottage of the peasant,
bringing home to all hearts the experiences of life; in the sumptuous
apartments of the Hall with Mrs Edgerley, or in the humble parlour of
the worthy and respectable middle class--Miss Atheling, with you.”
“Oh!” cried Agnes, starting under this sudden blow, and parrying it with
all the skill she could find. “Do you like Oxford, Mr Endicott? Have you
seen much of the country about here?”
But it was too late. Mr Endicott caught a shy backward glance of Marian,
and, smothering a mortal jealousy of Louis, eagerly thrust himself
forward to answer it--and the Rector had caught his unfortunate words.
The Rector drew himself up to a still more lofty height, if that was
possible, and walked on by Agnes’s side in a solemn and stately
silence--poor Agnes, who would have revived a little in his presence but
for that arrow of Mr Endicott’s, not knowing whether to address him, or
whether her best policy was to be silent. She went on by his side,
holding down her head, looking very small, very slight, very young,
beside that dignified and stately personage. At last he himself
condescended to speak.
“Am I to understand, Miss Atheling,” said the Rector, very much in the
same tone as he might have asked poor little Billy Morrell at school,
“Are you the boy who robbed John Parker’s orchard?”--“Am I to
understand, as I should be disposed to conclude from what this person
says, that, like my fashionable cousin at the Hall, you have written
novels?--or is it only the hyperbole of that individual’s ordinary
speech?”
“No,” said Agnes, very guilty, a convicted culprit, yet making bold to
confess her guilt. “I am very sorry he said it, but it is true; only I
have written just one novel. Do you think it wrong?”
“I think a woman’s intellect ought to be receptive without endeavouring
to produce,” said the Rector, in a slightly acerbated tone.
“Intelligence is the noblest gift of a woman; originality is neither to
be wished nor looked for.”
“I do not suppose I am very guilty of that either,” said Agnes,
brightening again with that odd touch of pugnacity, as she listened once
more to this haughty tone of dogmatism from the man who held no
opinions. “If you object only to originality, I do not think you need be
angry with me.”
She was half inclined to play with the lion, but the lion was in a very
ill humour, and would see no sport in the matter. To tell the truth, the
Rector was very much fretted by this unlooked-for intelligence. He felt
as if it were done on purpose, and meant as a personal offence to him,
though really, after all, for a superior sister of St Frideswide, this
unfortunate gift of literature was rather a recommendation than
otherwise, as one might have thought.
So the Rev. Lionel Rivers stalked on beside Agnes past his own door,
following Louis, Marian, and Mr Endicott to the very gate of the Old
Wood Lodge. Then he took off his hat to them all, wished them a
ceremonious good-night, and went home extremely wrathful, and in a most
unpriestly state of mind. He could not endure to think that the common
outer world had gained such a hold upon that predestined Superior of the
sisters of St Frideswide.