Agatha's Husband Part 43

"Go on, Agatha."

"I want--it must come out--I want you to take half or all of my--_our_ money which is in the Funds (as I believe Major Harper said, though I have not the least idea what Funds are)--and with it to buy a new mine, and set the poor miners all working again; they'll like it a great deal better than flax-growing. And perhaps we could afterwards build schools and cottages, and do oceans of good. Oh! how glad I am I was born an heiress!"

She rose, her eyes brightening; her little figure dilated; she had never looked so lovely--so loveable. And yet the husband sat as it were stone blind and dumb.

"You cannot have any objection to this, I know," Agatha went on. "It is not like giving money openly away--making a show of charity. n.o.body need know but that we do it on our own account--just to increase our riches;"

and she laughed merrily at the idea. "Think now--how much money would it take?"

"I cannot tell."

"A great deal, probably, since you look so serious over it," said the wife, a little vexed. "Perhaps my plan is foolish in some things; but I think it is right, and I am very firm--firmer than you imagine--when I feel I am in the right. Surely, living so cheaply in that tiny house--and we will live cheaper still if you choose--we shall have plenty to spare. We must do this. Say that we shall."

Her husband was silent.

Gradually the blush of enthusiasm deepened into that of annoyance--real anger. "Mr. Harper, I wait until you answer me."

As she turned away, Nathanael looked after her. Such a flood of tenderness, reverence, sorrow, pa.s.sion, rarely swept over a human face.

Then he rose, paced up the room in his usual fashion, and down again; pausing once at the window (a strange thing for him to notice just then) to let out a brown bee that, having come in for shelter from the rain, wanted to go out again with the sunshine. At last he came to Agatha's side.

"My dear wife, it grieves me to pain you by a refusal--grieves me more than you can tell; but the plan you propose is utterly impracticable."

"Indeed!" Her colour flashed, darkened of a stormy red, and paled. She was exercising very great self-restraint.

"I will ask less," she resumed, bitterly. "I had forgotten the extreme prudence of your character. Give me just what _you_ think is sufficient for charity." And her lip tried not to curl--her heart tried not to despise her husband.

Nathanael gave no answer.

"Mr. Harper, three--four times lately you have denied me what I asked.

Thrice it was merely my own pleasure--which I relinquished. This time it is a matter of principle, and I will not yield. Will you--since I have made you master of my fortune--will you allow me enough out of it for my own slight gratification? That at least is but justice."

"Justice!" echoed Nathanael, his features sinking gradually into the rigidity they sometimes wore--a warning of how much the gentleness of his nature could bear.

"Hear me for one minute, Agatha. I know this is hard, very hard for you.

I have prevented your living in London; I have taken a smaller house than you like; I have restricted you in acts of charity. But for all these things I have reasons."

"Will you tell me those reasons?" It was a tone, not of entreaty, but of threatening--such as a man rarely hears from a woman without all the pride within him recoiling into obstinacy.

Mr. Harper grew yet paler, though still his answer was soft--"Agatha, do not ask me. I cannot tell you."

"You dare not! You are ashamed!"

He walked away from her. When he returned, it was less the lover that spoke than the man. "I am not ashamed of anything I do, and I have clear motives for all. I only desire my wife to have patience for awhile, and trust her husband."

"I trust my husband!" she cried, in violent pa.s.sion--"When he acts outrageously, unjustly, insultingly--binds me hand and foot like a child, and then smiles and tells me 'to be patient!' When he has secrets from me--when, for all I know, his whole conduct may have been one long deceit towards me."

"Take care, Agatha." The words were said between his teeth, and then the lips closed in that strong straight line which made his face look all iron.

"I say it may have been--I have heard of such things"--and she laughed fearfully at the horrible thought a tempting devil was putting into her mind--"I have heard of young girls--poor desolate creatures, cursed with riches, and having no one to guard them--of some stranger coming and marrying them hastily, but not for love--oh, not for love!" And her laughter grew absolutely frightful in its mockery. "How do I know but that you thus married me?"

Her wild eyes fixed themselves on her husband. She saw his face change to very ghastliness, and guilt itself could not have trembled more than the shudder which ran through his frame.

"I was right," she gasped, her pa.s.sion subdued into cold horror--"you did marry me for my money!"

No answer--not a breath--only an incredulous stare. Once more Agatha's pa.s.sion rose, a sea of wrath, misery, despair, that dashed her blindly on, she recked not where.

"I see it all now--all your wickedness. You never loved me, you only loved my riches. You have them now, and so you can stand there and gaze at me, as hard, as dumb as a stone. But I will make you hear--I will shriek it into your silence again--again--You married me for my money!"

Still no word. The silence she spoke of was awful. Nathanael stood upright, his hands knotted together, the lids dropping over his eyes.

He neither looked at her nor at anything. There was not the slightest expression in his face--it might have been carved in granite. When at last almost to see if he were living man, Agatha clutched his arm, it also felt hard, immoveable, like a granite rock.

"Mr. Harper!" she cried, terror mingling with the outburst of her rage.

He merely lifted his eyes and looked at the door.--Not once--oh! never once at her!

"Ay, I will go," she answered--"most gladly, most thankfully! I will run anywhere to escape your presence."

She crossed the room and tried to unfasten the door, which she had herself bolted a little while before, out of play; but her trembling fingers were useless. She was obliged to call her husband's help, and he came.

Perfectly silent, without a single glance towards her, he undid the fastening, and set the door open for her to pa.s.s. A pang of fear, nay remorse, came over Agatha.

"Speak," she cried--"if only one word, speak!"

His lips moved, as though framing an inarticulate "No," and then closed again in that iron line. He still stood holding the door.

Hardly knowing what she did, Agatha sprang past the threshold and tottered a few steps on. Then turning, she saw the door shut behind her, slowly, noiselessly, but _it was shut_. She felt as if the door of hope had been shut upon her heart.

She turned again, and fled away.

CHAPTER XVIII.

It was late afternoon. The rain had ceased, and glowed into one of those soft October days, so exquisitely sunny and fair. The light glimmered through the closed Venetian blinds of "Anne's room," and danced on the carpet and about Agatha's feet as she sat, quiet at last, and tried to remember how she had come and how long she had been there. She had seen no one; n.o.body ever came into "Anne's room."

The dressing-bell rang--the only sound she had heard in the house for hours.

She started up, waking to the frightful certainty that all was real--that the ways of the household were going on just as usual--that she must rouse up, no matter staggering under what burden of misery, and go through her daily part, as if nothing had happened, and nothing was about to happen.

Nothing? when this day, perhaps this same hour, must decide one of two things--whether she were a wretched wife, bound for life to a man who married her solely for mercenary motives, or whether she were a wife--perhaps in this even more wretched--who had so wronged and insulted her husband that nothing ever could win his forgiveness or restore his love. His love, which, as she now dimly began to see, and shuddered in the seeing, was becoming to her the most precious thing in existence.

Never, until she sat there, quite alone, and feeling what it was to be left alone, after being so watched and cherished---never until now had she understood what the world would be to her if doomed to question her husband's honour or to outlive her husband's love.

"It must have been all a dream," she said, moving her cold fingers to and fro over her forehead. "He never could have wronged me so, or I him.

He must surely explain, and I will ask his pardon for what I said in my pa.s.sion--Unless, indeed, my accusation were true."

But she could not think of that possibility now--it maddened her.