The next morning was Sunday. Under one of the dark arches in Bloomsbury
Church--with Mrs. Ianson's large feathers tossing on one side, and
Jane's sickly unhappy face at the other--Agatha said her prayers in due
sabbatical form. “Said her prayers” is the right phrase, for trouble
had not yet opened her young heart to pray. Yet she was a good girl, not
wilfully undevout; and if during the long missionary-sermon she secretly
got her prayer-book and read--what was the most likely portion to
attract her--the marriage service, it was with feelings solemnised
and not unsacred. Some portions of it made her very thoughtful, so
thoughtful that when suddenly startled by the conclusion of the sermon,
she prayed--not with the clergyman, for “Jews, Turks, Infidels, and
Heretics”--but for two young creatures, herself and another, who perhaps
needed Heaven's merciful blessings quite as much.
When she rose up it was with moist eyelashes; and then she perceived
what until this minute she had not seen,--that close behind her, sitting
where he had probably sat all church-time, was Nathanael Harper.
If anything can touch the heart of a generous woman, when it is still
a free heart, it is that quiet, unobtrusive, proudly-silent love which,
giving all, exacts nothing. Agatha's smile had in it something even of
shy tenderness when at the church-door she was met by Mr. Harper.
And when, after speaking courteously to the Iansons, he came, quite
naturally as it were, to her side, and drew her arm in his, she felt
a strange sense of calm and rest in knowing that it was her betrothed
husband upon whom she leant.
At the door he seemed wishful enough to enter; but Mrs. Ianson
invariably looked very coldly upon Sunday visitors.
And something questioning and questionable in the glances of both that
lady and her daughter was very painful to Miss Bowen.
“Not to-day,” she whispered, as her lover detained her hand. “To-morrow
I shall have made all clear to the Iansons.”
“As you will! Nothing shall trouble you,” said he, with a gentle
acquiescence, the value of which, alas! she did not half appreciate.
“Only, remember, I have so few to-morrows.”
This speech troubled Agatha for many minutes, bringing various thoughts
concerning the dim future which as yet she had scarcely contemplated.
It is wonderful how little an unsophisticated girl's mind rests on the
common-sense and commonplace of marriage,--household prospects, income,
long or short engagements, and the like. When in the course of that
drowsy, dark Sunday afternoon, with the rain-drops dripping heavily on
the balcony, she took opportunity formally to communicate her secret to
the astonished Mrs. Ianson, Agatha was perfectly confounded by the two
simple questions: “When are you to be married? And where are you going
to live?”
“And oh! my dear,” cried the doctor's wife, roused into positive
sympathy by a confidence which always touches the softest chord in every
woman's heart--“oh, my dear, I hope it will not be a long engagement.
People change so--at least men do. You don't know what misery comes out
of long engagements!” And, lowering her voice, she turned her dull grey
eyes, swimming with motherly tears, towards the corner sofa where the
pale, fretful, old-maidish Jane lay sleeping.
Agatha understood a little, and guessed more. After that day, however
ill-tempered and disagreeable the invalid might be, she was always very
patient and kind towards Jane Ianson.
After tea, when her daughter was gone to bed, Mrs. Ianson unfolded
all to the Doctor, who nearly broke Miss Bowen's fingers with his
congratulatory shake; John the footman, catching fragments of talk,
probably put the whole story together for the amusement of the lower
regions; and when Agatha retired to rest she was quite sure that the
whole house, down to the little maid who waited on herself, was fully
aware of the important fact that Miss Bowen was going to be married to
Mr. Locke Harper.
This annoyed her--she had not expected it. But she bore it stoically as
a necessary evil. Only sometimes she thought how different all things
were, seen afar and near; and faintly sighed for that long ago lost
picture of wakening fancy--the Arcadian, impossible love-dream.
She sat up till after midnight, writing to Emma Thornycroft, the
only near friend to whom she had to write, the news of her
engagement--information that for many reasons she preferred giving
by pen, not words. Finishing, she put her blind aside to have one
freshening look at the trees in the square. It was quite cloudless now,
the moon being just rising--the same moon that Agatha had seen, as a
bright slender line appearing at street corners, on the Midsummer night
when she and Nathariael Harper walked home together. She felt a deep
interest in that especial moon, which seemed between its dawning and
waning to have comprised the whole fate of her life.
Quietly opening the window, she leant out gazing at the moonlight, as
foolish girls will--yet who does not remember, half pathetically, those
dear old follies!
“Heigho! I wonder what will be the end of it all!” said Agatha Bowen;
without specifying what the pronoun “it” alluded to.
But she stopped, hearing a footstep rather policeman-like passing up and
down the railing under the trees. And as after a while he crossed the
street--she saw that the “policeman” had the very unprofessional
appearance of a cloak and long fair hair:--Agatha's cheek burned; she
shut down the window and blind, and relighted the candle. But her heart
beat fast--it was so strange, so new, to be the object of such love.
“However, I suppose I shall get used to it--besides--oh, how good he
is!”
And the genuine reverence of her heart conquered its touch of feminine
vanity; which, perhaps, had he known, Nathanael would have done wiser
in going to bed like a Christian, than in wandering like a heathen
idolater round his beloved's shrine. But, however her pride may have
been flattered, it is certain that Agatha went to sleep with tears,
innocent and tender enough to serve as mirrors for watching
night-angels, lying on her cheek.
The next morning she waited at home, and for the first time received
her betrothed openly as such. She was sitting alone in her little
drawing-room engaged at her work; but put it down when Mr. Harper
entered, and held out her hand kindly, though with a slight restraint
and confusion. Both were needless: he only touched this lately-won
hand with his soft boyish lips--like a _preux chevalier_ of the olden
time--and sat down by her side. However deep his love might be, its
reserve was unquestionable.
After a while he began to talk to her--timidly yet tenderly, as friend
with friend--watching her fingers while they moved, until at length the
girl grew calmed by the calmness of her young lover. So much so, that
she even forgot he was a young man and her lover, and found herself
often steadfastly looking up into his face, which was gradually melting
into a known likeness, as many faces do when we grow familiar with them.
Agatha puzzled herself much as to who it could be that Mr. Harper was
like--though she found no nearer resemblance than a head she had once
seen of the angel Gabriel.
She told him this--quite innocently, and then, recollecting herself,
coloured deeply. But Nathanael looked perfectly happy.
“The likeness is very flattering,” said he, smiling. “Yet I would only
wish to be--what you called me once, the first evening I saw you. Do you
remember?”
“No.”
“Ah--well--it was not probable you should,” he answered, as if
patiently taking upon himself the knowledge which only a strong love can
bear--that it is _alone_ in its strength. “It was merely when they were
talking of my name, and you said I looked like a Nathanael. Now, do you
remember?”
“Yes, and I think so still,” she replied, without any false shame. “I
never look at you, but I feel there is 'no guile' in you, Mr. Harper.”
“Thanks,” he said, with much feeling. “Thanks--except for the last word.
How soon will you try to say 'Nathanael?'”
A fit of wilfulness or shyness was upon Agatha. She drew away her hand
which he had taken. “How soon? Nay, I cannot tell. It is a long name,
old-fashioned, and rather ugly.”
He made no answer--scarcely even showed that he was hurt; but he never
again asked her to call him “Nathanael.”
She went on with her work, and he sat quietly looking at her for some
little time more. Any Asmodeus peering at them through the roof would
have vowed these were the oddest pair of lovers ever seen.
At last, rousing himself, Mr. Harper said: “It is time, Agatha”--he
paused, and added--“dear Agatha--quite time that we should talk a
little about what concerns our happiness--at least mine.”
She looked at him--saw how earnest he was, and put down her work. The
softness of her manner soothed him.
“I know, dear Agatha, that it is very wrong in me; but sometimes I can
hardly believe this is all true, and that you really promised--what I
heard from your own lips two days ago. Will you--out of that good heart
of yours--say it again?”
“What must I say?”
“That you love--no, I don't mean that--but that you care for me a
little--enough to trust me with your happiness? Do you?”
For all reply, Agatha held out the hand she had drawn back. Her lover
kept it tight in that peculiar grasp of his--very soft and still, but
firm as adamant.
“Thank you. You shall never regret your trust. My brother told me all
you said to him on Saturday morning. I know you do not quite love me
yet.”
Agatha started, it was so true.
“Still, as you have loved no one else--you are sure of that?”
She thought a minute, then lifted her candid eyes, and answered:
“Yes, quite sure!”
He, watching her closely, betrayed himself so far as to give an inward
thankful sigh.
“Then, Agatha, since I love you, I am not afraid.”
“Nor I,” she answered, and a tear fell, for she was greatly moved. Her
betrothed put his arm round her, softly and timidly, as if unfamiliar
with actions of tenderness; but she trembled so much that, still softly,
he let her go, only keeping firm hold of her hand, apparently to show
that no power on earth, gentle or strong, should wrest that from him.
A few minutes after, he began speaking of his affairs, of which Agatha
was in a state of entire ignorance. She said, jestingly--for they had
fallen into quite familiar jesting now, and were laughing together like
a couple of children--that she had not the least idea whether she were
about to marry a prince or a beggar.
“No,” answered her lover, smiling at her unworldliness, and thereby
betraying that, innocent as he looked, his was not the innocence of
ignorance. “No; but I am not exactly a prince, and as a beggar I should
certainly be too proud to marry _you_.”
“Indeed! Why?”
“Because I understand you are a very rich young lady (I don't know
how rich, for I never thought of the subject or inquired about it till
to-day), while I am only able to earn my income year by year. Yet it is
a good income, and, I earnestly hope, fully equal to yours.”
“I don't know what mine is. But why are you so punctilious?”
“Uncle Brian, impressed upon me, from my boyhood, that one of the
greatest horrors of life must be the taunt of having married an heiress
for her money.”
“Has he ever married?”
“No.”
“And is he a very old man?” Miss Bowen asked, less interested in money
matters than in this Uncle Brian, whose name so constantly floated
across his nephew's conversation.
“Fifteen years in the colonies makes a man old before his time. And he
was not very young, probably full thirty, when he went out But I could
go on talking of Uncle Brian for ever; you must stop me, Agatha.”
“Not I--I like to hear,” she answered, beginning to feel how sweet it
was to sit talking thus confidentially, and know herself and her words
esteemed fair and pleasant in the eyes of one who loved her. But as she
looked up and smiled, that same witching smile put an effectual stop to
the chronicle of Brian Harper.
“And I have to go back to Canada so soon!” whispered Nathanael to
himself, as his gaze, far less calm than heretofore, fell down like a
warm sunshine over his betrothed, “The time of my stay here will soon be
over, and what then--Agatha?”
She did not wholly comprehend the question, and so let it pass. She was
quite content to keep him talking about things and people in whom her
interest was naturally growing; of Kingcombe Holm, the old house on the
Dorset coast, where the Harpers had dwelt for centuries; of its present
owner, Nathanael Harper, Esquire, of that venerable name so renowned in
Dorsetshire pedigrees, that one Harper had refused to merge it even in
the blaze of a peerage. Of the five Miss Harpers, of whom one was dead,
and another, the all-important “married sister,” Mrs. Dugdale, lived in
a town close by. Of Eulalie, the pretty _cadette_ who was at some
future time going to disappear behind the shadows of matrimony; of
busy, housekeeping Mary, whom nobody could possibly do without, and who
couldn't be suffered to marry on any account whatever. Last of all, was
the eye, ear, and heart of the house, kept tenderly in its inmost nook,
from which for twenty years she had never moved, and never would move
until softly carried to the house appointed for all living--Elizabeth,
the eldest--of whom Nathanael's soft voice grew softer as he spoke. His
betrothed hesitated to ask many questions about Elizabeth. The one of
whom she had it in her mind always to inquire, and whose name somehow
always slipped past, was Miss Anne Valery.
All this conversation--wherein the young lover bore himself much more
bravely than in regular “love-making”--a manufacture at which he was not
_au fait_ at all, caused the morning to pass swiftly by. Agatha thought
if all her life were to move so smoothly and pleasantly, she need never
repent trusting its current to the guidance of Nathanael Harper. And
when, soon after he departed, Emma Thornycroft came in, all smiles,
wonderings, and congratulations, Miss Bowen was in a mood cheerful
enough to look the happy _fiancée_ to the life; besides womanly and
tender enough to hang round her friend's neck, testifying her old
regard--until Master James testified his also, and likewise his general
sympathy in the scene, by flying at them both with bread-and-buttery
fingers.
“Ah, Agatha, there is nothing like being a wife and mother! you see what
happiness lies before you,” cried the affectionate soul, hugging her
unruly son and heir.
Miss Bowen slightly shuddered; being of a rather different opinion;
which, however, she had the good taste to keep to herself, since
occasionally a slight misgiving arose that either she was unreasonably
harsh, or that the true type of infantile loveableness did not exist in
the young Thornycrofts.
As a private penance for possible injustice, and also out of the general
sunniness of her contented heart, she was particularly kind to Master
James that day, and moreover promised to spend the next at the Botanic
Gardens--not the terrific Zoological!--with Emma and the babies.
“And,” added the young matron, with a gracious satisfaction, “you
understand, my dear, we shall--now and always--be most happy to see Mr.
Harper in the evening.”