Agatha's Husband Part 47

"I would go if it were play. But when I see my wife about to do any frantic thing to her own injury, I shall restrain her--thus."

Balancing himself on the carriage-step, he clasped the little figure in his arms--tight--strangely tight and close. Before Agatha could resist, he had lifted her safely down, and set her free.

She stood pa.s.sive--astonished. What could it be in that firm will, in that sudden clasp, which made her feel--was it anger? No not anger, though her cheeks glowed and her breast heaved. Why was it, that as Nathanael walked onward towards the house, his wife looked after him with such a mingling of attraction and repulsion? What could it be, this strange power which gave him the preeminence over her--which taught her, without her knowing it, the mystery that causes man to rule and woman to obey; Very thoughtful--even unmoved by Harrie's loud laughter at the "excellent joke"--Mrs. Harper suffered herself to be led on by her sister-in-law.

"Nonsense, child, don't look so serious. Men will have their way--especially husbands. Mine gets obeyed as little as any one; but now and then, when it comes to the point"--here Harrie looked astonishingly grave, for her--"I'm obliged to give in to Pa; and somehow Pa's always right, bless him!"

How every word of one happy wife went like a dagger into the other wife's heart! But there was no shield. Here they were in Anne Valery's house, obliged to appear as cheerful guests, especially the newest guest, the bride. Agatha tried, and tried successfully, to play her part:--misery makes such capital hypocrites!

"Isn't this a large house for a single woman?" said Mrs. Dugdale, as the two ladies pa.s.sed up-stairs. "Yet Anne constantly manages to fill it, especially in summer-time. The dozens of sick friends she has staying here to be cured by sea-breezes! the scores of young people that come and make love in those green alleys down the garden! But then in the lulls of company the house is dull and silent--as now."

It was very silent, though not with the desolation which often broods over a large house thinly inhabited. The room--Anne's bedroom--lay westward, and a good deal of sunshine was still glinting in. A few late bees were buzzing about the open window, cheated perhaps by the feathery seeds of the clematis, which had long ceased flowering. There was no other sound. But many fine prints, a few painted portraits, and several white-gleaming statuettes, seemed as the sunlight struck them to burst the silence, with mute speech.

"Oh, you are looking at Anne's 'odds and ends' as I call them. Rather a contrast, her walls and ours. I don't see the use of prints and plaster images--always in the way where there are children. But Anne is so dreadfully fond of pretty things. She says they're company. No wonder! A solitary old maid must find herself very dull at times."

"Must she?--then she is the more glad to see her visitors"--a pleasant voice, a silken-rustling step, which in Agatha's fancy seemed always to enter like daylight into a dusky room--and Miss Valery came to welcome her guests.

She addressed Mrs. Harper first, and then Harrie, who looked confused for the moment. But it was not a trifle that could upset the equanimity of the honest-speaking Harrie Dugdale.

"Bless us, Anne, how softly you walk!' Listeners,' etc.--You know the saying! But you might listen at every door in Dorsetshire, and never hear worse of yourself than I said just now."

"Thank you. When I want a good character I shall be sure to come to Harriet Dugdale.--And now, what is the news with the little wife! whom I have yet to bid welcome to Thornhurst. Welcome Mrs. Locke Harper."

Anne said the name, as she often did, with a peculiar under-tone of hesitation and tenderness; then, according to her frequent habit, she put her hand on her favourite's shoulder, and began to play with the brown curls. "Have you been quite well and happy since I saw you?"

The question, so simple, so full of kindness, pierced Agatha's soul.

Alas? how much had happened since she sat on the stone seat at Corfe Castle, and looked over the view with Anne Valery! How little did Anne or any one know that she was wretched--maddened--hating herself and the whole world--believing in nothing good, nothing holy--not even in her who spoke. The words, the smile, appeared the mocking hypocrisy of one who had persuaded her to marry, and must ere long know of that hasty marriage the miserable result This thought steeled her heart even against Anne Valery.

She burst into a sharp laugh. "Well! Happy! Cannot you see? You are the best person to answer your own question." And she moved away out of the room.

Anne looked after her, thoughtfully, rather sadly. Perhaps she was used to have her pets glide from her, dancing out indifferently into the merry world. She made no attempt to follow Agatha, but led the way down-stairs into the drawing-room.

"Mr. Trenchard, come and let me introduce you to Mrs. Locke Harper."

As Miss Valery said this, an elderly gentleman, dapper, dandy, and small, escaped from under the hands of Duke Dugdale--those big earnest hands that were laid upon him in all the apostleship of sincere argument--and came, nothing loth, as his eager bow showed, to do the polite to the young bride who had been lately brought to the county.

For Mr. Trenchard, besides the wondrously sweetening power of his candidateship, came of a very ancient name in Dorsetshire. He was evidently a beau too--one of those harmless general adorers whom the influence of a graceful woman touches even unto old age.

Agatha saw in his first look that he admired her, and she was in that proud desperate mood when a girl is ready to catch hold of the attentions or conversation of any one--even an elderly gentleman. She was very gracious to Mr. Trenchard--nay, altogether bewitching--though for the first ten minutes she herself saw and heard nothing save a thing in black with white hair, talking to her of the beauties of Dorsetshire.

More distinctly than aught he said, she heard what was pa.s.sing in the group at the other end of the room--especially her husband's voice, so quiet and deep, always a tone deeper than any other voices, falling through all the rest like a note of music. And she soon found out that Anne was listening also--to Nathanael, of course. She always did.

Mr. Trenchard followed the direction of the two ladies' eyes, and ingeniously took up the text.

"I a.s.sure you, Mrs. Harper, it is a pleasure to all the neighbourhood that your husband has come back from America. I remember him quite a child, and his uncle a young man. And really, how like he is, in both feature and voice, to what his uncle used to be at that time. As he stands there talking, I could almost fancy it was Mr. Locke Harper."

"Mr. Locke Harper," repeated Agatha. "Was that the name Uncle Brian went by?"

"Yes, save with those privileged people who called him Brian. But they were few. He had not the fortune or misfortune of possessing a thousand and one intimate friends. Yet all respected him, and remember him still.

It will be a real satisfaction to have in the country a second Mr. Locke Harper,--Dear me, how like he is! Don't you see it, Miss Valery?"

"There is a general likeness running through all the Harper family."

"Except the eldest son, though even to him I can trace some resemblance here"--and he bowed to Mrs. Dugdale. "And this reminds me that I knew beforehand I should probably have the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Harper in Dorsetshire. Only two days ago I saw at Paris Major Frederick Harper."

"Is Major Harper at Paris?" eagerly cried Agatha, caught by the name, which had so soon pa.s.sed out of the daily interests of her life, that its sound was already quite strange. It reached her now like a comforting breath of old times--a something to catch hold of in the wide, dreary maze around her. Her former guardian seemed to rise up before her; with all his cheery, good-natured ways; his compa.s.sion when she had been newly made an orphan; his kindness of manner that remained--ay, to the very last.

In a rush of many feelings that softened her voice to positive tenderness, she cried, "Oh do tell me all about Major Harper?"

And this time she did not notice that, in the political discussion going forward, it was Mr. Dugdale who spoke, his brother-in-law having ceased the argument and become silent.

"Madam," returned the candidate, with a smile--perhaps a little too meaning a smile--"I will, with pleasure, tell you everything. I guessed from his anxious questions concerning you, and whether I had met you in Dorsetshire, that before he was your brother-in-law Major Harper had the happiness of being an intimate friend of yours."

"He was my guardian."

"That fact he did not inform me of. Indeed we had little time for conversation. We merely dined together, and parted almost immediately.

He seemed in the midst of a whirl of pleasant engagements, as Major Harper invariably is. Charming, agreeable man! An immense favourite with all ladies."

Agatha answered "Yes" rather coldly. Her attention was wandering; she had missed the sound of her husband's voice altogether. But the next moment she heard him behind her.

"Mr. Trenchard?"

"Well, my dear sir? Are you also come to ask questions about your brother, whom, as I have been telling Mrs. Harper, I had the pleasure to meet in Paris?"

"So I have just heard you say. Where, and how was he living?"

Agatha thought this a strange question for Nathanael to put to a third party concerning his own brother. She was glad to hear Miss Valery observe, with genuine tact, that Major Harper was always careless in the matter of giving addresses.

"He was living--let me see--at 102 Rue--, one of the handsomest and pleasantest streets in Paris. I remember he said he was obliged to take this _appartement_ for three months, after which he was going to act the hermit and economise. Very unlikely that, I should think, for a man of Major Harper's social habits."

"Very," Agatha said, being looked to for a response. She was much surprised to learn this of her brother-in-law; still more did she wonder at the rigid silence with which her husband heard the same.

"I think, Mrs. Harper, we may safely say that his determination will not last. A mere fit of misanthropy after rather too much gaiety. In such a pleasant fellow as Frederick Harper we must excuse a few broken resolutions."

"We ought," said Anne Valery, with that rare gentleness which makes men listen to a woman even when she "preaches." "It is a very hard trial for any one to be thrown into the world with so many gifts as Major Harper.

A man whom all men like, and not a few women are p.r.o.ne to love, goes through an ordeal so fierce, that if he withstand it he is one of the greatest heroes on earth. If he fall"--and Anne lowered her voice so that Agatha could scarcely hear, though she felt sure Nathanael did--"if he fall, we ought, through all the wrong, clearly to discern the temptation."

It was a new doctrine, the last Agatha would have expected to hear on the lips of such a sternly good woman as she had painted Miss Valery.

She said so, adding, with her usual plainness, "I thought, somehow, that you did not like Major Harper?"

"Nay, we were young together. But hush, my dear, your husband is speaking."

He was saying, with quite an altered expression, something about "my brother Frederick." But after that mention Major Harper's name died out of the conversation, as out of Agatha's memory. Alas, not the unfrequent fate of the Major Harpers of society--meteors, never thought of but while they are shining, and forgotten as soon as they have burnt themselves out.

By this time the two or three stray visitors--gentlemen-farmers, Anne's tenants, as Mrs. Dugdale whispered--had disappeared, and Mr. Trenchard was the sole stranger left in the drawing-room. Miss Valery did the honours of her house with a remarkably simple grace.

"I give no state dinner parties," she said, smiling, to Mr. Trenchard.

"It is a whim of mine that I never could see the use of friends meeting together merely to eat and drink, or of offering them more and richer fare than is customary or necessary. But if you will stay and dine with me, and with these my own people, country fashion, even though you have been a ten years' resident in London"--

"But have never forgotten Dorset, and good Dorset ways," said the old gentleman, as he bowed over the hostess's hand. Then, obeying Anne's signal, he offered his arm to Mrs. Harper to lead her in to dinner;--the innocent daylight dinner, with real China-roses looking in at the window, and an energetic autumn-robin singing his good-night before the sun went down.