FAMILY SENTIMENTS.
When the fly jumbled into Bellevue, the lighted window, which always
illuminated the little street, shone brighter than ever in the profound
darkness of this late night, when all the respectable inhabitants for
more than an hour had been asleep. Papa and Mamma, somewhat drowsily,
yet with a capacity for immediate waking-up only to be felt under these
circumstances, had unanimously determined to sit up for the girls; and
the window remained bright, and the inmates wakeful, for a full hour
after the rumbling “fly,” raising all the dormant echoes of the
neighbourhood, had rolled off to its nightly shelter. The father and the
mother listened with the most perfect patience to the detail of
everything, excited in spite of themselves by their children’s
companionship with “the great,” yet considerably resenting, and much
disappointed by the failure of those grand visions, in which all night
the parental imagination had pictured to itself an admiring assembly
hanging upon the looks of those innocent and simple girls. Mr and Mrs
Atheling on this occasion were somewhat disposed, we confess, to make
out a case of jealousy and malice against the fashionable guests of Mrs
Edgerley. It was always the way, Papa said. They always tried to keep
everybody down, and treated aspirants superciliously; and in the climax
of his indignation, under his breath, he added something about those
“spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes.” Mrs Atheling did not
quote Shakespeare, but she was quite as much convinced that it was their
“rank in life” which had prevented Agnes and Marian from taking a
sovereign place in the gay assembly they had just left. The girls
themselves gave no distinct judgment on the subject; but now that the
first edge of her mortification had worn off, Agnes began to have great
doubts upon this matter. “We had no claim upon them--not the least,”
said Agnes; “they never saw us before; we were perfect strangers; why
should they trouble themselves about us, simply because I had written a
book?”
“Do not speak nonsense, my dear--do not tell me,” said Mrs Atheling,
with agitation: “they had only to use their own eyes and see--as if they
often had such an opportunity! My dear, I know better; you need not
speak to me!”
“And everybody has read your book, Agnes--and no doubt there are scores
of people who would give anything to know you,” said Papa with dignity.
“The author of _Hope Hazlewood_ is a different person from Agnes
Atheling. No, no--it is not that they don’t know your proper place; but
they keep everybody down as long as they can. Now, mind, one day you
will turn the tables upon them; I am very sure of that.”
Agnes said no more, but went up to her little white room completely
unconvinced upon the subject. Miss Willsie saw the tell-tale light in
this little high window in the middle of the night--when it was nearly
daylight, the old lady said--throwing a friendly gleam upon the two
young controversialists as they debated this difficult question. Agnes,
of course, with all the heat of youth and innovation, took the extreme
side of the question. “It is easy enough to write--any one can write,”
said the young author, triumphant in her argument, yet in truth somewhat
mortified by her triumph. “But even if it was not, there are greater
things in this world than books, and almost all other books are greater
than novels; and I do think it was the most foolish thing in the world
to suppose that clever people like these--for they were all clever
people--would take any notice of me.”
To which arguments, all and several, Marian returned only a direct,
unhesitating, and broad negative. It was _not_ easy to write, and there
were _not_ greater things than books, and it was not at all foolish to
expect a hundred times more than ever their hopes had expected. “It is
very wrong of you to say so, Agnes,” said Marian. “Papa is quite right;
it will all be as different as possible by-and-by; and if you have
nothing more sensible to say than that, I shall go to sleep.”
Saying which, Marian turned round upon her pillow, virtuously resisted
all further temptations, and closed her beautiful eyes upon the faint
grey dawn which began to steal in between the white curtains. They
thought their minds were far too full to go to sleep. Innocent
imaginations! five minutes after, they were in the very sweetest
enchanted country of the true fairyland of dreams.
While Charlie, in his sleep in the next room, laboriously struggled all
night with a bloodless apparition, which smiled at him from an open
doorway--fiercely fought and struggled against it--mastered it--got it
down, but only to begin once more the tantalising combat. When he rose
in the morning, early as usual, the youth set his teeth at the
recollection, and with an attempt to give a reason for this instinctive
enmity, fiercely hoped that Lord Winterbourne would try to take from his
father his little inheritance. Charlie, who was by no means of a
metaphysical turn, did not trouble himself at all to inquire into the
grounds of his own unusual pugnacity. He “knew he owed him something,”
and though my Lord Winterbourne was a viscount and an ex-minister, and
Charlie only a poor man’s son and a copying-clerk, he fronted the great
man’s image with indomitable confidence, and had no more doubt of his
own prowess than of his entire goodwill in the matter. He did not think
very much more of his opponent in this case than he did of the big
folios in the office, and had as entire confidence in his own ability to
bring the enemy down.
But it was something of a restless night to Papa and Mamma. They too
talked in their darkened chamber, too proper and too economical to waste
candlelight upon subjects so unprofitable, of old events and people half
forgotten;--how the first patroness of Agnes should be the daughter of
the man between whom and themselves there existed some unexplained
connection of old friendship or old enmity, or both;--how circumstances
beyond their guidance conspired to throw them once more in the way of
persons and plans which they had heard nothing of for more than twenty
years. These things were very strange and troublous events to Mr
Atheling and his wife. The past, which nearer grief and closer
pleasure--all their family life, full as that was of joy and sorrow--had
thrown so far away and out of remembrance, came suddenly back before
them in all the clearness of youthful recollection. Old feelings
returned strong and fresh into their minds. They went back, and took up
the thread of this history, whatever it might be, where they had dropped
it twenty years ago; and with a thrill of deeper interest, wondered and
inquired how this influence would affect their children. To themselves
now little could happen; their old friend or their old enemy could do
neither harm nor benefit to their accomplished lives--but the
children!--the children, every one so young, so hopeful, and so well
endowed; all so strangely brought into sudden contact, at a double
point, with this one sole individual, who had power to disturb the rest
of the father and the mother. They relapsed into silence suddenly, and
were quieted by the thought.
“It is not our doing--it is not our seeking,” said Mr Atheling at
length. “If the play wants a last act, Mary, it will not be your
planning nor mine; and as for the children, they are in the hands of
God.”
So in the grey imperfect dawn which lightened on the faces of the
sleeping girls, whose sweet youthful rest was far too deep to be broken
even by the growing light, these elder people closed their eyes, not to
sleep, but to pray. If evil were about to come--if danger were lurking
in the air around them--they had this only defence against it. It was
not the simple faith of youth which dictated these prayers; it was a
deeper and a closer urgency, which cried aloud and would not cease, but
yet was solemn with the remembrance of times when God’s pleasure was not
to grant them their petitions. The young ones slept in peace, but with
fights and triumphs manifold in their young dreams. The father and the
mother held a vigil for them, holding up holy hands for their defence
and safety; and so the morning came at last, brightly, to hearts which
feared no evil, or when they feared, put their apprehensions at once
into the hand of God.