Agatha's Husband Part 23

"I will not let you go. Come in, and tell me what ails you."

The soft whisper, the eyes of genuine compa.s.sion--womanly compa.s.sion only, without any love--were more than Major Harper could resist.

"I will go," he muttered. "Better tell it to you than to my brother."

And he followed her up-stairs.

The cool shadow of the room seemed to quiet his excitement; he drank a gla.s.s of water that stood by, and became more like himself.

"Well, my dear young lady," he said, with some return of the paternal manner of old times, "when did you come back to London?"

"Two days since, as I told you. And, as you will soon hear, your brother's plans are all changed--we are going to live in London."

"To live in London?"

"He has given up his appointment at Montreal. We have taken a house, or shall take it to-day, and settle here. He intends entering at the bar, or something of the sort; but you must persuade him not. What is the use of his toiling, when I--that is we--are so rich?"

While Agatha thus talked, chiefly to amuse her brother-in-law and make him feel that she was really his sister, one and the same in family interests--while she talked, she was astonished to see Major Harper's face overspread with blank dismay.

"And--Nathanael has really given up his appointment?"

"He has, and for my sake. Was it not good of him?"

"It was madness! Nay--it is I that have been the madman--it is I that have done it all Agatha, forgive me! But no--you never can!"

As they stood together by the fireplace he s.n.a.t.c.hed her hand, gazing down upon her with unutterable remorse.

"Poor Bowen's daughter that he trusted to me! Such a mere child too! Oh, forgive me, Agatha!"

She thought some extraordinary delusion had come upon him--perhaps the forerunner of some dreadful illness. She tried to take her hand away, though kindly, for she firmly believed him to be delirious. Nothing could really have happened to herself that Mr. Harper did not know. With him to take care of her, she was quite safe. And in that moment--for all pa.s.sed in a moment--Nathanael's wife first felt how implicitly she was beginning to put her trust in him.

While she remained thus--her hand still closed tightly in her brother-in-law's grasp, half terrified, yet trying not to show her terror--the door opened, and her husband entered.

At first Mr. Harper seemed petrified with amazement; then he turned deadly white. Crossing the room, he laid a heavy hand on his brother's shoulder:

"Frederick, you forget yourself; this is my wife,--Agatha!"

The searching agony of that one word, as he turned and looked her full in the face, was unutterable. She scarcely perceived it.

"Oh, I am so glad you are come," was all she said. He drew her to his side--indeed, she had sprung there of her own accord--and wrapped his arms tightly round her, as if to show that she was his possession, his own property.

"Now, brother, whatever you wished to say to my wife, say it to us both."

Major Harper could not speak.

"He was waiting to see you; he is ill--very ill, I think," whispered Agatha to her husband. "Shall I leave you together?"

"Yes," he answered, releasing her, but only to draw her back again, with the same wildly questioning look, the meaning of which was to her innocence quite inexplicable.--"My wife?"

"My dear husband!"

At that whisper, which burst from her full heart in the comfort of seeing him and of knowing that he would take on himself the burden of all her anxiety, Nathanael let her go. She crept away, most thankful to get out of the room, and leave Major Harper safe in his brother's hands.

But when a quarter of an hour--half-an-hour--pa.s.sed by, and still the two gentlemen remained shut up together, without sending for her to join their conference, or, as she truly expected, to tell her that poor Major Harper must be taken home in the delirium of brain fever--Agatha began rather to wonder at the circ.u.mstance.

She apprehended no evil, for her even course of existence had never been crossed by those sudden tragedies, the impression of which no one ever entirely overcomes, which teach us to walk trembling along the ways of life, lest each moment a gulf should open at our feet. Agatha had read of such misfortunes, but believed them only in books; to her the real world, and her own fate therein, appeared the most monotonous thing imaginable. It never entered her mind to create an adventure or a mystery.

She waited another fifteen minutes--until the clock struck five, and the servant came up to her to announce dinner, and to know whether the same information should be conveyed to the gentlemen in the drawing-room.

Servants seem instinctively to guess when there is something extraordinary going on in a house, and the maid--as she found her mistress sitting in her bed-chamber, alone and thoughtful--wore a look of curiosity which made Mrs. Harper colour.

"Go down and tell your master--no, stay, I will go myself."

She waited until the maid had disappeared, and then went down-stairs, but stopped at the drawing-room door, on hearing within loud voices, at least one voice--Major Harper's. He seemed pleading or protesting vehemently: Agatha might almost have distinguished the words, but--and the fact is much to her credit, since her brother-in-law's apparently sane tones having suppressed her fears, she was now smitten with very natural curiosity--but she stopped her ears, and ran up-stairs again.

There she remained, waiting for a lull in the dispute--in which, however, she never caught one tone of Nathanael's.

At last, feeling rather humiliated at being thus obliged to flutter up and down the stairs of her own abode, and crave admittance into her own drawing-room, Mrs. Harper ventured to knock softly, and enter.

Frederick Harper was sitting on the sofa, his head crushed down upon his hands. Nathanael stood at a little distance, by the fireplace. The att.i.tude of the elder brother indicated deep humiliation, that of the younger was freezing in its sternness. Agatha had never seen such an expression on Nathanael face before.

"What did you want?" he said abruptly, thinking it was the servant who entered.

She could not imagine what made him start so, nor what made the two brothers look at her so guiltily. The fact left a very uncomfortable impression on her mind.

"I only came"--she began.

"No matter, dear." Her husband walked up to her, speaking in a low voice, studiously made kind, she thought "Go away now--we are engaged, you see."

"But dinner," she added. "Will not your brother stay and dine with us?"

Major Harper turned with an imploring look to his brother's wife.

"No," said Mr. Harper emphatically; held the door open for Agatha to retire, and closed it after her. Never in all her life had she been treated so unceremoniously.

The newly-married wife returned to her room, her cheeks burning with no trifling displeasure. She began to feel the tightening pressure of that chain with which her life was now eternally bound.

But, after five minutes of silent reflection, she was too sensible to nourish serious indignation at being sent out of the room like a mere child. There must have been some good reason, which Mr. Harper would surely explain when his brother left. The whole conversation was probably some personal affair of the Major's, with which she had nothing to do. Yet why did her brother-in-law regard her so imploringly? It was, after all, rather extraordinary. So, genuine female curiosity getting the better of her, never did Blue Beard's Fatima watch with greater anxiety for "anybody coming" than did Agatha Harper watch at her window for somebody going--viz., Major Harper. She was too proud to listen, or to keep any other watch, and sat with her chamber-door resolutely closed.

At length her vigil came to an end. She saw her late guardian pa.s.sing down the street--not hastily or in humiliation, but with his usual measured step and satisfied air. Nay, he even crossed over the way to speak to an acquaintance, and stood smiling, talking, and swinging his cane. There could not be anything very wrong, then.

Agatha thought, having been once sent out of the room, she would not re-enter it until her husband fetched her--a harmless ebullition of annoyance. So she stood idly before the mirror, ostensibly arranging her curls, though in reality seeing nothing, but listening with all her ears for the one footstep--which did not come. Not, alas! for many, many minutes.

She was still standing motionless, though her brows were knitted in deep thought, and her mouth had a.s.sumed the rather cross expression which such rich, rare lips always can, and which only makes their smiling the more lovely--when she saw in the mirror another reflection beside her own.

Her husband had come softly behind her, and put his arms round her waist.

"Did you think I was a long time away from you? I could not help it, dear. Let us go down-stairs now."

Agatha was surprised that, in spite of all the tenderness of his manner, he did not attempt the slightest explanation. And still more surprised was she to find her own questions, wonderings, reproaches, dying away unuttered in the atmosphere of silentness which always seemed to surround Nathanael Harper. This silentness had from the very beginning of their acquaintance induced in her that faint awe, which is the most ominous yet most delicious feeling that a woman can have towards a man. It seems an instinctive acknowledgment of the much-condemned, much-perverted, yet divine and unalterable law given with the first human marriage--"_He shall rule over thee_."

After all that Agatha had intended to say, she said--nothing. She only turned her face to her husband, and received his kiss. Very soft it was--even cold--as though he dared not trust himself to the least expression of feeling. He merely whispered, "Now, come down with me;"