THE END.
Agnes Atheling was alone in old Miss Bridget’s parlour; it was a fervent
day of July, and all the country lay in a hush and stillness of
exceeding sunshine, which reduced all the common sounds of life, far and
near, to a drowsy and languid hum--the midsummer’s luxurious voice. The
little house was perfectly still. Mrs Atheling was at the Hall, Papa in
Oxford, and Hannah, whose sole beatific duty it was to take care of the
children, and who envied no one in the world save the new nurse to the
new baby, had taken out Bell and Beau. The door was open in the fearless
fashion and license of the country. Perhaps Susan was dozing in the
kitchen, or on the sunny outside bench by the kitchen door. There was
not a sound about the house save the deep dreamy hum of the bees among
the roses--those roses which clustered thick round the old porch and on
the wall. Agnes sat by the open window, in a very familiar old
occupation, making a frock for little Bell, who was six years old now,
and appreciated pretty things. Agnes was not quite so young as she used
to be--four years, with a great many events in them, had enlarged the
maiden mind, which still was as fresh as a child’s. She was changed
otherwise: the ease which those only have who are used to the company of
people of refinement, had added another charm to her natural grace. As
she sat with her work on her knee, in her feminine attitude and
occupation, making a meditative pause, bowing her head upon her hand,
thinking of something, with those quiet walls of home around her--the
open door, the open window, and no one else visible in the serene and
peaceful house, she made, in her fair and thoughtful young womanhood, as
sweet a type as one could desire of the serene and happy confidence of a
quiet English home.
She did not observe any one passing; she was not thinking, perhaps, of
any one hereabout who was like to pass--but she heard a step entering at
the door. She scarcely looked up, thinking it some member of the
family--scarcely moved even when the door of the parlour opened wider,
and the step came in. Then she looked up--started up--let her work drop
out of her hands, and, gazing with eagerness in the bronzed face of the
stranger, uttered a wondering exclamation. He hastened to her, holding
out his hand. “Mr Rivers?” cried Agnes, in extreme surprise and
agitation--“is it _you_?”
What he said was some hasty faltering expressions of delight in seeing
her, and they gazed at each other with their mutual “interest,” glad,
yet constrained. “We have tried often to find out where you were,” said
Agnes--“I mean Louis; he has been very anxious. Have you seen him? When
did you come home?”
“I have seen no one save you.”
“But Louis has been very anxious,” said Agnes, with a little confusion.
“We have all tried to discover where you were. Is it wrong to ask where
you have been?”
But Lionel did not at all attend to her questions. He was less
self-possessed than she was; he seemed to have only one idea at the
present moment, so far as was visible, and that he simply expressed over
again--“I am very glad--happy--to see you here and alone.”
“Oh!” said Agnes with a nervous tremor--“I--I was asking, Mr Rivers,
where you had been?”
This time he began to attend to her. “I have been everywhere,” he said,
“except where pleasure was. I have been on fields of battles--in places
of wretchedness. I have come to tell you something--you only. Do you
remember our conversation once by Badgeley Wood?”
“Yes.”
“You gave me a talisman, Agnes,” said the speaker, growing more excited;
“I have carried it all over the world.”
“Well,” said Agnes as he paused. She looked at him very earnestly,
without even a blush at the sound of her own name.
“Well--better than well!” cried Lionel; “wonderful--invincible--divine!
I went to try your spell--I who trusted nothing--at the moment when
everything had failed me--even you. I put yonder sublime Friend of yours
to the experiment--I dared to do it! I took his name to the sorrowful,
as you bade me. I cast out devils with his name, as the sorcerers tried
to do. I put all the hope I could have in life upon the trial. Now I
come to tell you the issue; it is fit that you should know.”
Agnes leaned forward towards him, listening eagerly; she could not quite
tell what she expected--a confession of faith.
“I am a man of ambition,” said Lionel, turning in a moment from the high
and solemn excitement of his former speech, with a sudden smile like a
gleam of sunshine. “You remember my projects when I was heir of
Winterbourne. You knew them, though I did not tell you; now I have found
a cave in a wild mining district among a race of giants. I am Vicar of
Botallach, among the Cornish men--have been for four-and-twenty
hours--that is the end.”
Agnes had put out her hand to him in the first impulse of joy and
congratulation; a second thought, more subtle, made her pause, and
blush, and draw back. Lionel was not so foolish as to wait the end of
this self-controversy. He left his seat, came to her side, took the hand
firmly into his own, which she half gave, and half withdrew--did not
blush, but grew pale, with the quiet concern of a man who was about
deciding the happiness of his life. “The end, but the beginning too,”
said Lionel, with a tremor in his voice. “Agnes hear me still--I have
something more to say.”
She did not answer a word; she lifted her eyes to his face with one
hurried, agitated momentary glance. Something more! but the whole tale
was in the look. _They_ did not know very well what words followed, and
neither do we.
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Athelings; vol. 3/3, by Margaret Oliphant