Agatha's Husband Part 70

"Ah! well!" There was the slightest possible compression of eyelids and mouth, and Anne resumed her place again. "It is very kind of Marmaduke."

The visitors came in softly. Duke Dugdale was the kindest, gentlest soul to any one that was ill--wise as a doctor, merry as a child. But now--though he strove to hide it--his countenance was overcast.

"It's no use, Anne," he said, after a brief greeting, during which he felt her pulse in quite a professional way, and p.r.o.nounced it "stronger--much stronger--and too quick almost."

"What is of no use?"

"Brian Harper won't come home! All his abominable, con--yes, I'll out with it--his confounded pride." And Duke tried to look very savage, but couldn't manage it.

"Where is he?"

"Somewhere near Havre; we can't make out where. He will not write. Ask Nathanael."

"I am afraid it is too true," said Nathanael, leaving his wife, to whom he had been talking by the window. "I shall have to hunt him out, and use all my persuasions before he will come home; because he is too proud to return poor as he went out. What shall I say to him, Anne? I shall start to-morrow."

Agatha turned quickly round. Her husband did not see her anxious look--he was watching Miss Valery.

"Tell him, Nathanael, that his brother is dead, and his presence needed in the family. Once make him understand that it is right to come, and he will come. No one was ever more able to do or to suffer _for the right_, than Brian Harper."

Marmaduke shook her hand heartily. "Anne, you are as wise as a man, and as faithful as a woman. If poor Brian were going to be hanged for murder, I do believe-his old friend would find a good word to say for him!"

"Well," said Nathanael, after a silence, "I shall go to Havre to-morrow.

You can spare me, Anne? And for my wife"--

Agatha hung her head. A vague dread smote her. She would have given worlds to have courage enough to beg him not to go.

"Havre is across the sea," she murmured. "Surely Uncle Brian would come home in time, if you waited."

Waited! she caught a sight of Anne's bent profile, marble-like, with the shut eyes. Waited!

Agatha crept to her husband's side. "No--no waiting," she whispered.

"Go. I would not keep you back an hour. Bring him. Quick--quick."

Could Anne have heard, that she wakened up into such a life-like smile?

"No, dear, you must not send your husband away so hastily. Let him sail from Southampton to-morrow; that will do. He wants to talk to you to-day."

Nathanael looked surprised. "It is true, I did; and I told my brother to meet me here this afternoon. Did you know that too?"

"I guessed it. You are doing right, quite right. I knew you would. I knew _you_, Nathanael."

She held out her hand to him, warmly.

"Dear Anne! But you forget--it is not I only who have to do it."

"Not a word! Go and tell her all. Let her be the first to hear it. Away with you! the sun is coming out. Run and talk in the garden-alleys, children!"

Her manner, so playful, yet full of keen penetration, drove them away like a battery of sunbeams.

"What does she mean?" said Agatha, looking up puzzled, as they stood in the hall.

"She reads people's minds wonderfully clear; she always did, but clearer than ever now. It is strange. Agatha, do you think"--

"I think all sorts of things about her--different and contrary every hour. But the chief thought of all is, that you must go to Havre at once. I long for Uncle Brian's coming. How soon can you return?"

"As soon as practicable, you may be sure of that. But you must relax your interest even in Uncle Brian just now; I want to talk to you. Shall we go, as Anne said, into the garden-alleys?"

"Anywhere that is sunny and warm," said Agatha, with a light shiver. Her husband regarded her with that serious pathetic smile which was one of his frequent moods.

"Must you always have sunshine, Agatha? Could you not walk a little while in the shade? Not if I were with you?"

She cast her eyes down, trembling with a vague apprehension of ill; then gazed in the kind face that grew kinder and dearer every day. She put her hand in her husband's without speaking a word. He folded it up close, the soft little hand, and looked pleased.

"Come now, let us go into the garden."

Agatha wrapped a shawl about her, gipsy-fashion, and met him there. It was one of those mild days that sometimes come near upon Christmas, as if the year had repented itself, and just before dying, was dreaming of its lost springtide. The arbutus-trees were glistening with sunshine, and under the high wall a row of camellias, grown in great bushes in the open air, the pride of Anne's gardener and of the whole county of Dorset, were beginning to show buds, red, white, and variegated, as beautiful as summer roses.

"I used to be so fond of this walk when I was a little lad," said Nathanael, "I remember, after I had the scarlet-fever, being nursed well here; and how every day when my brother came, he used to carry me up and down this sunny walk on his back. Poor Fred! he was the kindest fellow to children."

"Kindness seems his nature. I think that if your brother did any harm it would never be through malice or intention, but only weakness of character."

"I perceive," Mr. Harper said, abruptly--"you have no bitter feeling against my brother Frederick."

"How could I? He never did me wrong. Except, perhaps, it was his carelessness that made me poor." Here Agatha hesitated, for she was touching upon a dangerous subject--one so fraught with present emotion and with references to past suffering, that hitherto both husband and wife had by tacit consent abstained from it. There had been no confidential talk of any kind between them.

"Go on," her husband said; "we must speak of these things some time; why not now?"

"Though he made me poor," she continued, "it was probably through accident. And I have no fear of poverty"--how simply and ignorantly she p.r.o.nounced that terrible word!--"I do not mind it in the least, if you do not."

"Was there any need for that _if_, Agatha?"

"No," she replied, and was silent. Shame and remorse gathered over her like a cloud. She thought of those wicked words she had spoken--words which to this day he had neither answered nor revenged. He had even suffered the smooth surface of daily kindnesses to grow over that gaping wound of division. Was it there still? Did he remember it? Could she dare to allude to it, if only to implore him to forgive her? She would in a little time--perhaps when they were by themselves in their own house, when she would throw herself at his knees and weep out a confession that was beyond all words--words could but insult him the more. There are some wounds that can only be healed by love and silence.

"I think it is time," said the husband--"full time that you heard all, or nearly all, connected with this painful matter. It is mere business, which I will try to make intelligible if possible. You ought not to be quite so ignorant of worldly matters as you are, since, if anything happened to me--But I have provided against almost everything."

"What are you talking of?" said Agatha, holding him tight, with a faint intuition of his meaning.

"Of nothing painful. Do not be afraid. Only that I think it right to explain to you what has occurred to us since our marriage--in worldly things I mean."

"Yes. I am listening."

"Before we married," he continued, distinctly, and rather proudly, "I knew nothing whatever of your fortune--not even its amount. I made no inquiries, interfered in no way, except reading the settlement I signed.

The settlement stated that your property was safe in the Funds. This was a"--his brow darkened--"it was--_not true_. The whole had been taken out, contrary to your father's expressed will, and embarked in a mining speculation in Cornwall."

"Those miners whom Miss Valery aided? Was it my money that was wasted at Wheal Caroline? Was it me from whom the poor miner came to seek redress?"

"No; the transaction was more blameable even than that. It was all carried on in my brother's name. He was made what they call 'managing director' of the company: Grimes being solicitor. There were a few shareholders--his clients--widows and unmarried women who had put by their savings, and such like poor people who wanted large interest, and some richer ones, important enough to make public their ruin--for everybody lost all."

"But the poorer shareholders--the widows--the old maids?"