“So here is the result of family dinner-parties, and family-talks kept
up till midnight!” said Mary Harper, with a little natural acerbity.
“It is provoking for the mistress of a precise household to sit waiting
breakfast for a whole hour.”
“Mary, be charitable! We did not know you were ready, and we were so
busy in my room. No laziness, was it, Agatha?”
“No, indeed: I think Miss Valery is the very busiest woman I ever knew.
How can she get through it all?”
“Only by first making up my mind, and then acting upon it. Your
husband's plan, too, I see. He and I shall get on as if we had worked
together all our lives. Shall we not, my 'right-hand' Nathanael?”
He answered pleasantly; he looked quite a new man this morning. “Yes: I
seem to understand your ways already. My first half-hour's business in
the memorable 'Anne's room' at Kingcombe Holm has been like a return of
old times. What a woman you are! You might have been brought up as I was
by Uncle Brian. You have just his ways.”
Anne smiled: and with a jest about the treble compliment he had
contrived to pay, let the conversation slip past to other things.
Mary and Eulalie talked excessively. They were both much scandalised by
their brother's new position and intended course of life, to be put in
practice immediately.
Both the Miss Harpers were that sort of feminine minds which are like
some kinds of flower-bells--the less fair the wider they open. Agatha
wondered to see how very patient Miss Valery was over Mary's mild
platitudes and Eulalie's follies. But Anne's good heart seemed to cast
a shield of tenderness over everybody that bore the name of Harper. At
length the young wife got tired of the after-breakfast discussion, which
consisted of about a dozen different plans for the day--severally put
up and knocked down again--each contradicting the other. The mild
_laissez-faire_ of country life in a large family was quite too much for
her patience; she longed to get up and shake everybody into common-sense
and decision. But her husband and Miss Valery took everything
easily--they were used to the ways at Kingcombe Holm.
“Oh, if your sister Harriet would but come in, or Mr. Dugdale!” she
whispered to her husband, “surely they would settle something.”
“Not at all; they would only make matters worse. And, look!--'speaking
of angels, one often sees their wings.'--Is that you, Marmaduke?”
“Ay.”
Mr. Dugdale walked in composedly through the sash-window, beaming around
him a sort of general smile. He never attempted any individual greeting,
and Agatha offering her hand, was met by his surprised but benevolent
“Eh!” However, when required, he gave her a hearty grasp. After which,
peering dreamily round the room, he pounced upon a queer-looking folio,
and buried himself therein, making occasional remarks highly interesting
of their kind, but slightly irrelevant to the conversation in general.
Agatha amused herself with peeping at the title of the book--some
abstruse work on mechanical science--and then watched the reader,
thinking what great intellectual power there was in the head, and what
acuteness in the eye. Also, he wore at times a wonderfully spiritual
expression, strangely contrasting with the materiality of his daily
existence. No one could see that look without feeling convinced that
there were beautiful depths open only to Divinest vision, in the silent
and abstracted nature of Marmaduke Dugdale. Nevertheless, he could be
eminently practical now and then, especially in mechanics.
“Nathanael, Nathanael! just look here. This is the very contrivance that
would have suited Brian in his old clay-pits. See!”
And he began talking in a style that was Greek itself to Agatha, but to
which Nathanael, leaning over his chair-back, listened intelligently.
It was very nice to see the liking between the two brothers-in-law--the
young man so tender over the oddities of the elder one, who seemed such
a strange mixture of the philosopher and the child. These were the sort
of traits which continually turned Agatha's heart towards her husband.
“Talking of clay-pits,” said Duke, with a gleam of recollection, “I've
something for you here!” He drew out of the voluminous mass of papers
that stuffed his pockets one more carelessly scrawled than the rest.
“It's a plan of my own, for giving a little help to our own clay-cutters
and to the stone-cutters in the Isle of Portland, who are shockingly off
in the winter sometimes. Here's Trenchard's name down for a good sum--it
will make him and Free-trade popular, you know.”
And Mr. Dugdale smiled with the most amiable and innocent
Machiavellianism.
Nathanael shook his head mischievously, greatly to the amusement of his
wife, who had stolen up to see what was going on, and stood hanging on
his arm and peeping over at the illegible paper.
“Excellent plan, Marmaduke--very long-headed. You give them Christmas
dinners, and they give you--votes.”
“Bless you, no! That would be bribery. We”--he reflected a minute--“Oh,
we will only help those who have got no votes.”
“Then the voters will all be against you.”
Mr. Dugdale, much puzzled, pushed up his hair until it stood right aloft
on his forehead. Soon a dawn of satisfaction reappeared. “All against
us? Dear me, no! They would be pleased to see their poor neighbours
helped on in the world, as you or I would, you know. They'd side at once
with Trenchard and Free-trade. Come now, Nathanael, you'll assist? By
the way, somebody told me you were very rich--or at least that your wife
was an heiress. She looks a kind little soul She'll put her name down
under Anne Valery's here?”
And he turned to Agatha with that air of frank goodness by which
Marmaduke Dugdale could coax everybody round to his own ends.
“Ay, that we will, though I suppose I am not so rich as Miss Valery.
Still, we have enough to help poor people--have we not?”
She appealed gaily to Mr. Harper, but he replied nothing. She persisted:
“We need not give much, since Mr. Trenchard and Miss Valery are both on
the list before us. We'll give--let me see--fifty pounds. Ah, now,
just go up-stairs and fetch me down fifty pounds!” said she, hanging
caressingly on her husband's arm.
He looked down on her, and looked away. He had become very grave. “We
will talk of this some other time, dear.”
“But another time will not do. I want it now. I fear,” she whispered,
blushing--“I fear, before I married, I was very thoughtless and selfish.
I would like to cure myself, and spend my money usefully, as Anne Valery
does. Charity is such a luxury.”
“Too dear a luxury for every one,” said Nathanael sighing.
She looked up, scarcely believing him to be in earnest. Her
open-hearted, open-handed nature was much hurt. She said, with a bitter
meaning:
“I did not know I had such a very prudent husband.”
He took no notice, but addressed himself to Mr. Dugdale. “Nay, Duke, you
and your benevolences are too hard upon us young married people. We must
tighten our purse-strings against you this time.”
Agatha's cheek flamed. “But if _I_ wish it”--
“Dear, it cannot be, we cannot afford it.”
Agatha moved angrily from his side, and soon after, though not so soon
as to attract notice to him or herself, she quitted the room. Scarcely
had she reached her own when she heard a step behind her.
“Are you angry with me, my wife, and for such a little thing?”
Nathanael stood there, holding both her hands, and looking down upon her
with a face so kind, so regretful, so grave, that she felt ashamed of
the quick storm which had ruffled her own spirit The cause of this did
seem now a very “little thing.” She hung her head, child-like, and made
no answer.
“Why is it,” said Mr. Harper, putting his arm round her--“why is it that
we are always having these 'little things' rising up to trouble us?
Why cannot we bear with one another, and take the chance-happiness that
falls to our lot? It is not much, I fear”--
She looked uneasy.
“Nay, perhaps that is chiefly my fault. I often wish Heaven had given
you a better husband, Agatha.”
And his countenance was so softened, mournful, and tender, that Agatha's
affection returned. There was something childish and foolish in these
small wranglings. They wore her patience away. For the twentieth time
she vowed not to make herself unhappy, or restless, or cross, but to
take Nathanael's goodness as she saw it, believing in it and him. Since
according to that wise speech of Harriet--which even Anne Valery smiled
at and did not deny--the best of men were very disagreeable at times,
and no man's good qualities ever came out thoroughly until he had been
married for at least a year.
With a tear in her eye and a quiver on her lip, Agatha held up her young
face to her husband. He kissed her, and there was peace.
But though he had made this concession, and made many others in the
course of the next hour, to remove from her mind every thought of pain,
still he showed not the slightest change of will regarding the cause of
dispute. And perhaps in her secret heart this only caused his wife to
respect him the more. It is usually the weak and erring who vacillate.
Firmness of purpose, mildly carried out, implies a true motive at the
root. Agatha began to think whether her husband might not have some
reason for his conduct; probably the very simple one of disliking to see
his name or her own paraded in a subscription-list, or mixed up with a
political clique.
Nevertheless, he puzzled her. She could not think why, with all his
tenderness, he so often put his will in opposition to her own, and
prevented her pleasure; why he was so slow in giving her his confidence;
why he more than once plainly stated that there was “a reason” for
various disagreeable whims, yet had not told her what that reason was.
All these were trivial things--yet in the early sunrise of married life
the least molehill throws a long black shadow.
“I will be a wise woman. I will not disquiet myself in vain,” said the
little wife to herself, as her husband left her, in answer to repeated
calls from some feminine voice which had just entered the house, and
was immediately audible half over it. Harriet Dugdale's, of course. To
her--sharp-sighted and merry-tongued woman that she was--Agatha would
not for worlds have betrayed anything; so, dashing cold water on her
forehead to hide the very near approach to tears, she quickly descended.
Harrie was in a state of considerable indignation, mixed with laughter.
“I never knew such people as you are! and certainly never was there the
like of my Duke there. He set off to fetch you all to Corfe Castle--his
own proposition. I waited an hour and a half--then I took the pony to
see after you--and lo!--there he is, sitting quite at his ease. Oh,
Duke--Duke!”
She shook her riding-whip at him twice before she disturbed him from his
book.
“Eh, Missus--what do'ee want, my child?”
“Want? Don't you see what a passion we're all in? Abuse him,
Anne--Agatha--Nathanael! Do! I've no patience with him. Didn't he say
himself that he would take us all to Corfe Castle? Oh, you--you----” And
Harrie looked unutterable things.
Mr. Dugdale gazed round placidly. “Really, now, that's a pity! Never
mind, Missus! I only forgot.” And patting her hand with ineffable
gentleness and good-humour, he opened his book again.
“Oh, you--you”--here she put on a melodramatic scowl--“you inconceivably
provoking, misty, oblivious, incomprehensible old darling!”
And springing upon the back of his chair, Harrie hugged him to a degree
that compelled the unfortunate philosopher to renounce his book. He took
the caresses very patiently, and smiled with superior love upon his
merry wife.
“That'll do, Missus! Eh--and before folk, too! Now don't'ee, my child!”
And shaking himself, hair and all, into something like order, he picked
up the folio, tucked it under his arm, and wended his way through the
window slowly down the lawn.
Agatha glanced at her husband, who stood talking to Miss Valery. She
wondered what Nathanael would say if _she_ were to take a leaf out of
his sister's book, and treat her own liege lord after the unceremonious
fashion of Harrie Dugdale!
“There--off he goes, quite cross, no doubt.” (He was smiling as
benevolently as if he could embrace the whole world.) “But we must catch
him at the stables. I brought White-star galloping after me, and Duke
will rouse up when he sees his beloved horse. You shall take my pony,
Agatha. Of course you can ride?”
Agatha could--in a London riding-school and London parks. She had her
doubts about the country, but felt strongly inclined to try; for Mrs.
Dugdale had entered Kingcombe Holm like a breath of keen fresh air,
putting life and spirit into everybody. Nathanael made no opposition,
only he insisted on Mary's quiet grey mare being substituted for
Harrie's skittish pony.
“I shall ride with you part way,” said he, “and then leave you in Mr.
Dugdale's charge, while I stay at Kingcombe.”
“Why so?”
“I have business there.”
Still the same weary “business” which he never explained or talked
about, yet which always seemed to rise up like a bugbear on their
pleasures, until Agatha was sick of the sound of the word!
She turned away, and put herself altogether under Mrs. Dugdale's care to
be equipped for the ride.
Anne Valery, coming in with her quiet common sense, succeeded in making
up the party, which, with one exception, Harrie had left to make itself
up according to its own discretion. When Mrs. Harper descended, she
found all settled for the spending of a day at Corfe Castle, in picnic
style--glorious and free--with a moonlight canter home in the evening.
No one was omitted except the Squire, who with considerable dignity
declined such _al fresco_ amusements; and Anne Valery, who promised to
peep in upon them as she passed the Castle on her way to her own house,
after spending a few hours with Elizabeth.
Agatha had never been on horseback since she was married. It made her
feel like a girl again, and brought back all the wild spirits of her
youth, now repressed in propriety by her changed life--until sometimes
she hardly knew herself, or fancied she was growing into that object of
her former scorn, an ordinary young lady. She cast the subdued and meek
“Mrs. Locke Harper” to the winds, and dashed wildly back for this day at
least into “Agatha Bowen.”
Her husband, putting her on her horse, with many injunctions, was
surprised to see her give him a careless nod and dart off delightedly,
as if she and the grey mare had wings. The Dugdales followed, a wild
pair, for Marmaduke was quite another being on horseback.
“Look at him, Agatha,”--and Harrie's laugh ringing on the wind caused
the mild grey mare to seem rather restless in her mind. “Did you think
my Duke could ride as he does? He never looks so well as on horseback.
He is a perfect Thessalian!”
Agatha was amused to find classic lore in Harrie Dugdale, and she gave
most cordial admiration to Duke. “He is a magnificent rider; he sits the
horse just as if he were born to it.”
“Bless him! so he was. He rode his father's horses at four years old,
and went hunting at fourteen. And he has such a beautiful temper, and
such a firm will besides--that he could manage the wildest brute in the
county. See there!”
White-star had become rather obstreperous, showing his spirit; his
master carelessly lent down, giving him a box on each ear, just as if
the stately blood horse had been a naughty child; then composedly rode
him back to the two ladies.
“Harrie! Missus! do'ee come on! Nathanael is behind, all right. Come
along!”
He gave his wife's pony a switch, and off they dashed, she laughing
merrily, and he galloping away with such ease and grace that Agatha
could not take her eyes off him.
She looked after them with a vague sense of envy,--this odd married
pair, in whose union so many things appeared unequal and peculiar,
except for one thing--the love which hallowed and perfected all. When
her own husband came up, she, unwilling to talk, and dreading above all
that his quick eye should detect anything amiss in her, pushed her horse
forward, and calling to Nathanael to follow, rode on after the Dugdales.
Ere they had ridden far, all her wild spirits came back again, and all
her wifely feelings too, for her husband seemed as happy as herself, and
entered into all her frolics. They swept along like two children, across
the breezy moors, purple and fragrant, down by the hilly sheep-paths,
lying bare in autumn sunshine. Nathanael proved himself almost as good a
horseman as Duke Dugdale: a great pleasure to Agatha, for of all things
women do like a man to be manly. Nay, once, in the descent of a hill so
steep, that a Cockney equestrian would have been frightened out of his
seven senses, Nathanael's prudent daring stood out in such bold relief
that Agatha was perforce reminded of the day when he snatched little
Jemmie from the bear, the first day when her liking and respect had been
awakened towards him. She hinted this, and said how pleasant it was to
feel that one's husband was, as she expressed it, “a man that could take
care of one.”
“And how very foolish and helpless townfolk--drawing-room gentlemen,
appear in the country! I wonder,” and she could not help telling him the
comical idea, though not very complimentary to her husband's brother--“I
wonder how Major Harper would look on horseback?”
“What did you say? The wind blew that sentence away.”
She hardly liked to repeat it exactly, but said something about Major
Harper and his coming down to Dorset.
Nathanael spurred his horse forward without replying. A minute
afterwards he returned to his wife's side, bringing her a great bunch of
heather, with yellow gorse mixed, and made jokes about the Dorsetshire
saying, “When gorse is out of bloom kissing's out of season.” And
evermore he looked secretly at her, to notice if she laughed and was
happy, had roses on her cheeks, and pleasure in her eyes. Seeing this,
the husband appeared contented and at ease.
They and the Dugdales rode merrily into Kingcombe, much to that good
town's astonishment. The equestrian quartette at Marmaduke's door was
a sight that the worthy inhabitants of that sleepy street would not get
over for a week. Everybody gathered at doors and windows, and a small
group of farmers at the market quadrangle stared with all their eyes.
The sensation created was enormous, and likewise the crowd,--almost as
dense as a wandering juggler gathers in a quiet suburban London street!
Agatha, passing through it, laughed till she could laugh no longer.
Her husband, pleased at her gaiety, came to lift her off her horse.
“Not a bit of it!” Mrs. Dugdale cried. “Keep your seat, Agatha; no time
to lose; on we go in a minute, when Duke has been to get his letters.
Here, Brian, my pet.”--There had rushed out round her horse a cluster of
infantine Dugdales.--“Lift Brian up here, Uncle Nathanael, and I'll give
him a canter. Bravo! He's Pa's own boy, born for a rider! Come along,
Auntie Agatha.”
Agatha would willingly have followed down the street. She was amused by
the daring of the mother and the boy, and amused especially by her new
title of “Auntie Agatha.”
“Do let me go, Mr. Harper; I don't want to dismount, indeed.”
“But I have something to say to you--just a few words. We must decide
to-day about the house, you know.”
“Never mind the house; I had rather not think about it.” And the mere
shadow of past vexation still vexed her. “Ah!” she added, entreatingly,
“do be good to me--do let me enjoy myself for once!”
“I would not prevent you for the world.” He dropped her bridle with a
sigh, and turned back among his little nephews.
Fred had coaxed the horse from the groom, and Gus was bent on mounting;
there was a dreadful struggle, and angry cries for Uncle Nathanael. In
the midst of it Uncle Nathanael appeared, like an angel of peace, and
setting the boys one behind another on his horse's back, led the animal
up and down carefully.
Agatha looked after them, thinking how kind and good her husband was.
She wished she had not refused so hastily such a simple request; she
began to think herself a wretch for ever contradicting him in anything.
The little party started again, increased by the arrival of the family
carriage from Kingcombe Holm, wherein sat Mary and Eulalie. To these
were speedily added the three young Dugdales, all in high glee. And it
spoke well for the Miss Harpers, whom Agatha was disposed to like least
of her husband's relatives, that they made very lenient and kindly aunts
to those obstreperous boys.
Agatha was crossing the bridge which bounded South Street, trying to
make her horse stand still while Mr. Dugdale pointed out the identical
red cliff where the Danes drew up their ships, and laughing with Harrie
at the notion of how terribly frightened the quiet souls in Kingcombe
would be at such an incursion now, when Nathanael came on foot to his
wife's side.
“Why did you start without speaking to me?”
“I could not help it; I thought you were gone. You will come after us
soon?” And she felt angry with herself for having momentarily forgotten
him.
“I will come when I have settled this business of the house. You
understand, Agatha, I am obliged to decide to-day? You will not blame
me afterwards?”
“Oh, no--no!” His extreme seriousness of manner jarred with her youthful
spirits. She did not think or care about what he did, so that for this
day only he let her be gay and happy. From some incomprehensible cause,
his very love seemed to hang over her like a cloud, and so it had been
from the beginning. She did so long to dash out into the sunshine of
her careless, girlish life, and scamper over the beautiful country with
Harrie Dugdale.
“Oh, no!” she repeated only wishing to satisfy him. “Take any house you
like, and come onward soon; and oh, do let us be cheerful and merry!”
“We will!” His bright look as she patted his shoulder--a very
venturesome act---gave her much cheer; and when, after she had cantered
a good way down the road, she turned and saw him still leaning on the
bridge looking after her, her heart throbbed with pleasure. Despite all
his reserves and peculiarities, and her own conscious failings, there
was one thing to which she clung as to a root of comfort that
would never be taken away, and would surely bear blossom and fruit
afterwards--the belief that her husband truly loved her.
[Illustration: On horseback p212]
“If so,” she thought, “I suppose all will come right in time, and Agatha
Harper will be as happy as, or happier than, Agatha Bowen.”
So on she went, yielding to the delicious excitement of being on
horseback. She was also much interested by the country round about,
which appeared to her as old, desolate, and strange as if she had been
a Thane's daughter riding across the moors to the gates of that renowned
castle which, as Harrie declared, putting on the physiognomy of some
school-child drawling out a history-lesson, “was celebrated for being
the residence of the ancient Saxon kings.”
“And this was the place,” continued she in the same tone, pointing to an
old gate-post--“this was the place where His Majesty's most illustrious
horse did stop when His Majesty's most sainted body was dragged along by
the leg, in the stirrup, on account of the wound given him when he was
a-drinking at the castle-door, by his stepmother, Queen Elfrida. All of
which is to be seen to the present day.”
Agatha first laughed at this comical view of the subject, then she
felt a little repugnance at hearing that stern old tragedy so lightly
treated. As she walked her horse along the road which might have been,
and probably was, the very same Saxon highway as in those times, she
thought of the wounded horseman dashing out from between those green
hills and of the murdered body dropping slowly, slowly from the saddle,
dragged in dust, and beat against stones, until the woman that loved
him--for even a king might have had some woman that loved him--would not
have known the face she thought so fair.
It was an idle fancy, but beneath it her tears were rising; chiefly
for thinking, not of “The Martyr,” but of the woman--whoever she
was--(Agatha had not historical erudition enough to remember if King
Edward had a wife)--to whom that day's tragedy might have brought
a lifetime's doom. She began to shudder--to feel that she too was a
wife--to understand dimly what a wife's love might come to be--also
something of a wife's terrors. She wished--it was foolish enough, but
she did wish that Nathanael had not been riding on horseback, or else
that, in picturing to herself the dead head of the Martyr dragged along
the road, she did not always see it with long fair hair. And then she
wondered if these horrible fancies indicated the dawning of that feeling
which she had deceived herself into believing she already possessed. Was
she beginning to find out the difference between that quiet response
to secured affection, that pleasant knowledge of being loved, and
the strong, engrossing, self-existent attachment which Anne Valery
described--the passion which has but one object, one interest, one joy,
in the whole wide world?
Was she beginning really _to love_ her husband?
The answer to that question involved so much, both of what had been, and
what was yet to come, that Agatha dared not ponder over it.
“Mrs. Harper! Mrs. Harper!” She mused no longer, but hurried on after
the Dugdales.
It was not to point out the Castle that Harrie had been so vociferous,
but to show a place which she evidently deemed far more interesting.
“Do you see that white house far among the trees? That's where my Duke
was born. He lived there in peace and quietness till he got acquainted
with Uncle Brian, and came to Kingcombe Holm and fell in love with me.”
“How did he do it? I want to know what is the fashion of such things in
Dorset.”
“How did Duke fall in love with me? Really I can't tell. I was fifteen
or so--a mere baby! He first gave me a doll, and then he wanted to marry
me!”
“But how did he make love, or 'propose' as they call it?” persisted
Agatha, to whom the idea of Marmaduke Dugdale in that character was
irresistibly funny.
“Make love? Propose? Bless you, my dear, he never did either! Somehow it
all came quite naturally. We belonged to one another.”
The very phrase Anne Valery had used! It made Nathanael's wife rather
thoughtful. She wondered what was the feeling like, when people
“belonged to one another.”
But she had no time for meditation; for now the great grey ruin loomed
in sight, and everybody, including the shouting boys in the carriage
behind, was eager to point it out, especially when Agatha made the
lamentable confession that she had never seen a ruined castle in her
life before.
“And you might go all over England and not find such another as this,”
said Mr. Dugdale, riding up to her with a smile of great satisfaction.
“Nobody thinks much of it in these parts, and few antiquarians ever come
and poke about it. Perhaps it's as well. They couldn't find out more
than we know already. But no!”--and his eye, taking in the noble
old ruin arched over by the broad sky, assumed its peculiar dreamy
expression--“We don't know anything. Nobody knows anything about this
wonderful world!”
Agatha looked around. On the top of a smooth conical hill, each side of
which was guarded by other two hills equally smooth and bare, rose the
wreck of the magnificent fortress, enough of the walls remaining to show
its extent and plan. Its destroyer had been--not Father Time, who does
his work quietly and gracefully--but that worse spoiler, man. Huge
masses of masonry, hurled from the summit, lay in the moat beneath,
fixed as they had been for centuries, with vegetation growing over them.
Some of the walls, undermined and shaken from their foundations, took
strange, oblique angles, yet refused to fall. Marks of cannon-balls were
indented on the stonework of the battered gateway, which still remained
a gateway--probably the very same under which Queen Elfrida, “fair and
false,” had offered to her son the stirrup-cup.
The general impression left on the mind was not that of natural decay,
solemn and holy, but of sudden destruction, coming unawares, and
struggled against, as a man in the flower of life struggles with
mortality. There was something very melancholy about the ruined fortress
left on the hill-top in sight of the little town close below, where its
desolation was unheeded. Agatha, sensitive, enthusiastic, and easily
impressed, grew silent, and wondered that her companions could laugh
so carelessly, even when passing under the grey portal into the very
precincts of the deserted castle.
“We shall not find a soul here,” said Harrie; “scarcely anybody ever
comes at this season, except when our Kingcombe Oddfellows' Club have
a picnic on this bowling-green; or schoolboys get together and climb
up the ivy to frighten the jackdaws--my husband has done it many a
time--haven't you, Duke?”
“I see mamma,” vaguely responded Duke, who was busy lifting his boys
down from the carriage, with a paternal care and tenderness beautiful
to see. He then, with one little fellow on his shoulder, another holding
his hand, and a third clinging to his coat-tails, strode off up the
green ascent, without paying the slightest attention to Mrs. Harper.
Which dereliction from the rules of politeness it never once came into
her mind to notice or to blame.
“There they go! Nobody minds me; it's all Pa!” said Mrs. Dugdale, with
an assumption of wrath; a very miserable pretence, while her look was so
happy and fond. “You see, Agatha, what you'll come to--after ten years'
matrimony!”
Agatha's heart was so full, she could not laugh but sighed, yet it was
not with unhappiness.
He and Harrie wandered over the castle together, for the two Miss
Harpers did not approve of climbing. The little boys and “Pa” reappeared
now and then at all sorts of improbable and terrifically dangerous
corners, and occasionally Mrs. Dugdale made frantic darts after them.
Especially when they were all seen standing on one of the topmost
precipices, the father giving a practical scientific lesson on the
momentum of falling bodies; in illustration of which Harrie declared he
would certainly throw little Brian out of his arms, in a fit of absence
of mind, thoroughly believing the child was a stone.
At last, when their excitement had fairly worn itself out, and even Mrs.
Dugdale's energetic liveliness had come to a dead stop in consequence
of a fit of sleepiness and crossness on the part of Brian--Agatha roamed
about the old castle by herself; creeping into all the queer nooks with
a childish pleasure, mounting impassable walls so as to find the highest
point of view. She always had a great delight in climbing, and in
feeling herself at the top of everything.
It was such a strange afternoon too, grey, soft, warm, the sun having
long gone in and left an atmosphere of pleasant cloudiness, tender and
dim, the shadowing over of a fading day, which nevertheless foretells no
rain, but often indicates a beautiful day to-morrow. Somehow or other,
it made Agatha think of Miss Valery; nor was she surprised when,
as suddenly as if she had dropped out of the sky, Anne was seen
approaching.
“Let me help you up these stones. How good of you to come, and how tired
you seem!”
“Oh no, I shall be rested in a minute. But I am not quite so young as
you, my dear.”
She came up and leaned against the ivy-wall that Agatha had climbed,
which was on the opposite side of the hill to the bowling-green, the
gathering-spot of the little party. It was a nook of thorough solitude
and desolation, nothing being visible from it but the widely extended
flat of country, looking seaward, though the sea itself was not in view.
“Why did you climb so high?” said Agatha, as, earnestly regarding her
friend, she perceived more than ever before the difference in their
years, and felt strongly tempted to wrap her strong young arms round
Miss Valery's waist, and support her with even a daughter's care.
“I shall be well presently,” Anne repeated, with cheerfulness. “I have
not climbed up to this spot for many years. I thought I would like to
come here once again.”
She sat down on a flat stone raised upon two others.
“What a comfortable seat! It might have been made on purpose for you.”
“So it was--long ago. No one has disturbed it since. Come, my dear.”
She drew Agatha beside her--there was just room for two; and they sat in
silence, looking at the view, except that Agatha sometimes cast her eyes
about rather restlessly. It was a magical answer to her thoughts when
Anne observed:
“I met your husband as I drove through Kingcombe. He desired me to
tell you he was detained a little, but would be here ere long. How very
thoughtful and good he is!”
Agatha said “Yes”--a mere “Yes,” quiet and low.
Miss Valery made no further remark, but sat a long time, absently
gazing over the low-lying sweep of country which gradually melted into a
greyness that looked like sea.
“Is it the sea?” asked Mrs. Harper.
“No, it lies yonder, behind the hill opposite--where there is the smoke
of the furze burning. From that spot I should think one could trace the
line of coast almost to Weymouth. Do you remember ever seeing Weymouth?”
“No! how could I?” returned Agatha, surprised by the suddenness of the
question, and its form. “I never was in Dorsetshire before.”
Anne said something, either in jest or earnest, about one's often
fancying one has seen places in a previous existence, and changed the
theme by pointing out the view on the other hand. “My house, Thornhurst,
lies in that direction. You must come and see me soon, and we will talk
more pleasantly than I can do to-day. It is so strange to be sitting
here with Mrs. Locke Harper.”
“Why so? What makes you so often call me by that name?”
“Only a whim I have. But is it not a good name--a beautiful name? Ah,
you child!--you poor little one! To think of _you_ becoming Mrs. Locke
Harper!”
There was a pathos--a kind of tender retrospection in Anne Valery's
manner as she touched the brown curls and smoothed the neat dress,
which--riding hat and skirt having been laid aside or tucked up--made
a pretty mountain-maiden out of Nathanael's wife. Agatha never could
understand the peculiar fondness with which Miss Valery sometimes
regarded her--to-day especially. She seemed constantly on the point of
saying something--which she never did say. At last she rose from the
stone seat.
“We will talk another day. We must go now.” Yet she lingered. “Just
let us stand here, in this exact spot; and look at the view.” She
looked--her eyes absorbing it from every point, as one drinks in, for
the last time, a long-familiar draught of landscape beauty.. “My dear!”
The whisper was strangely soft--even solemn.
“You will remember, dear, it was I that brought you here first. You'll
come here sometimes, will you not?”
“Oh, very often indeed! It is a delicious place.”
“I thought so when I was your age. And you'll not forget the stone seat,
Agatha? I hope no one will disturb it. Good-bye! poor old stone.”
Saying this in a whisper, she stooped and patted it with her hand--the
thin white hand that might once have been so round, pretty, and young.
The act, natural even to childishness, might have made Agatha smile,
but for a certain something about Miss Valery that invested with dignity
even her simplicities. So, merely echoing “Goodbye, old stone!” she
followed Anne down the slope.
After a loud-lamenting adieu, especially from the Dugdale boys, Miss
Valery mounted her little carriage and drove away into the gathering
shadow--Agatha knew not where.
“What a good woman she is! I wish we were all like her!” she said,
thoughtfully.
“My dear, nobody can be, especially with a husband and four children. It
is a blessing to society in general that Anne Valery never married.”
“But people do marry late in life sometimes. So may she. Do you think
she will?”
“Can't say! Don't know! Very mysterious!” ejaculated Harrie. “My brother
Fred once hinted--and Fred was a very fascinating young fellow when I
was a child--But all that belongs to the year One. I'll hold my tongue.”
Agatha had too much delicacy to inquire further. Still, it seemed very
odd that there should be a general impression of Anne's early attachment
to Major Harper, in contradistinction to the old Squire's regretful hint
that she had refused his eldest son. But these scraps of romance, so far
back in the past, were useless searching.
“An excellent woman is Anne Valery,” continued Harrie--“really
excellent: but sometimes rather a bore to her friends who have families.
My Duke often forgets he has four children to provide for, when he
listens to her charitable schemes. 'Twas but the other day he and she
were mad about some starving Cornish miners that she sent poor Mr.
Wilson to look after.”
“Ah, I remember,” cried Agatha, now interested in things which she had
before heard indifferently. She was thirsting for some opportunity of
doing good--of redeeming the long waste of idle years and unemployed
fortune. “Do tell me about those miners.”
“Little to tell, my dear. Only philanthropic ideas about helping poor
wretches that had been thrown out of work by some cheating speculators
shutting up the mines. Anne sent Wilson to find out who the man was, and
what could be done. After that I never heard any more of it, nor did my
husband either.--Stop--don't run and question him! For goodness' sake
let the nonsense drop out of his poor dear head.”
Agatha, thus rebuffed, ceased her inquiries, but she inwardly resolved
to find out all about the Cornish miners, and consult with her husband
about assisting them. He could not object to this good deed--it should
be done as privately as ever he liked--she would take care not even to
make mention of it before anybody, as in the matter of the subscription.
And surely, though he was strange and had his peculiar notions,
Nathanael was generous at heart, and would not thwart her in anything
really essential, especially when she only wished to follow in the steps
of Anne Valery, and use worthily her large fortune.
With these thoughts elevating and cheering her mind, she sat and watched
for her husband until he came. She was so glad to see him that she quite
forgot to inquire about the house. He seemed at first expectant of her
questions, and rather grave, but at last gave himself up to the general
merry mood.
Once only, when they were riding homeward side by side, the fading
sunset before them, and the low moon hiding herself behind the great
black hill of Corfe, Nathanael suddenly said:
“My dear Agatha, perhaps you would like me to tell you”--
“No,” she cried, with a quick instinct of reluctance. “Tell me nothing
to-night. Let us be happy for this one day.”
Her husband sighed, and was silent.