The Widow Barnaby Volume Ii Part 12

This was said as the party descended the stairs, so that Agnes escaped without being obliged to answer; at which she greatly rejoiced, as refusal or acquiescence seemed alike impossible.

Colonel Hubert stopped at the door of the dining-room, wished the party good morning, and persisted in making his retreat, though much urged by Mrs. Peters to join their meal. But he was in no mood for it--he wanted to be alone--he wanted in solitude to question, and, if possible, to understand his own feelings; and with one short look at Agnes he left them, slipped a crown into the hand of the butler who opened the door for him, and set off for a long walk over Durdham Downs, taking, as it happened, exactly the same path as that in which he had met Agnes a fortnight before.

As soon as he was gone, another rather clamorous a.s.sault was made on Agnes upon the subject of her having so long kept her power of singing a secret from them all.

"I cannot forgive you for not having at least told me of it," said Mary.

"And what was there to tell, my dearest Mary? You that are used to such playing as that of Elizabeth and Lucy, would have had fair cause to laugh at me, had I volunteered to amuse you in their stead."

"I don't know how that may be," said Lucy; "what Colonel Hubert talked about was your singing. Do you think you can sing as well as me?"

"It is a difficult question to answer, Lucy," replied Agnes with the most ingenuous innocence; "but perhaps I might, one of these days, if I were as well instructed as you are."

"Well, my dear, that is confessing something, at any rate," said Lucy, slightly colouring. "I am sure I should be very happy to have you in a duet with me, only I suppose you have not been taught to take a second."

"Oh yes!... I think I could sing second," replied Agnes with great simplicity; "but I have not been much used to it, because in all our duets Miss Wilmot always took the second part."

"And who is Miss Wilmot, my dear?" said Mrs. Peters.

"The daughter of the clergyman, mamma, where Agnes was educated,"

replied Mary.

"Here comes Mr. Stephenson," exclaimed Mrs. Peters gaily. "Now, Agnes, you positively must go up stairs again, and let us hear what you can do.

I shall be quite delighted for Mr. Stephenson to hear you sing, if you really have a voice, for I have repeatedly heard him speak with delight of his sister, Lady Stephenson's, singing."

"Then I am sure that is a reason for never letting him hear mine," said Agnes, who was beginning to feel very restless, and longing as ardently for the solitude of her closet, in order to take a review of all the events of the morning, as Colonel Hubert for the freedom of the Downs.

But the friends around her were much too kind and much too dear for any whims or wishes of her own to interfere with what they desired; and when, upon the entrance of Frederick, they all joined in beseeching her to give them one song, she yielded, and followed meekly and obediently to the pianoforte.

She certainly did not sing now as she had done before; the fervour, the enthusiasm was pa.s.sed; yet, nevertheless, the astonishment and delight of her auditors were unbounded. Praises and reproaches were blended with the thanks of her female friends, who, forgetting that they had never invited her performance, seemed to think her having so long concealed her talent a positive injury and injustice. But in the raptures of Frederick Stephenson there was no mixture of reproach; he seemed rapt in an ecstasy of admiration and love, the exact amount of which was pretty fairly appreciated by every one who listened to him except herself. A knavish speech sleeps not so surely in a foolish ear, as a pa.s.sionate rhapsody in one that is indifferent. Our Agnes was by no means dull of apprehension on most occasions; but the incapacity she shewed for understanding the real meaning of nineteen speeches out of every twenty addressed to her by Frederick, was remarkable. It is probable, indeed, that indifference alone would hardly have sufficed to const.i.tute a defence so effectual against all the efforts he made to render his feelings both intelligible and acceptable; pre-occupation of heart and intellect may account for it better. But whatever the cause of this insensibility, it certainly existed, and in such a degree as to render this enforced exhibition, and all the vehement praises that followed it, most exceedingly irksome. A greater proof of this could hardly be given than by her putting a stop to it at last by saying,--

"If you really wish me to sing a song to-night, my dear Mrs. Peters, you must please to let me go now, or I think I shall be so hoa.r.s.e as to make it impossible."

This little stratagem answered perfectly, and at once brought her near to the solitude for which she was pining.

"Wish you to sing to-night, _pet.i.te_?..." said Mrs. Peters, clapping her little hands with delight ... "I rather think I shall.... I have had the terror of Mrs. Armstrong before my eyes for the last fortnight, and I think, Mary, that we have a novelty here that may save us from the faint praise usually accorded by her connoisseur-ship...."

"I imagine we have, mamma," replied Mary, who was in every way delighted by the discovery of this unknown talent in her favourite. "But Agnes is right; she must really sing no more now.... You have had no walk to-day, Agnes, have you?" kindly adding, "if you like it, I will put on my bonnet again and take a stroll with you."

Agnes blushed when she replied,--"No, I have not time to walk to-day....

I must go home now;" much as she might have done if, instead of intending to take a ramble with her thoughts, she had been about to enjoy a _tete-a-tete_ promenade with the object of them.

"At least we will walk home with you," replied her friend; and accordingly the two eldest girls and Mr. Stephenson accompanied her to Sion Row.

Ungrateful Agnes!... It was with a feeling of joy that made her heart leap that she watched the departure of her kind friends, and of him too who would have shed his blood for her with gladness ... in order that in silence and solitude she might live over again the moments she had pa.s.sed with Hubert--moments which, in her estimation, outweighed in value whole years of life without him.

Dear and precious was her little closet now. There was nothing within it that ever tempted her aunt to enter; her retreat, therefore, was secure, and deeply did she enjoy the conviction that it was so. It was not Petrarch, it was not Shakspeare, no, nor Spencer's fairy-land, in which, when fancy-free, she used to roam for hours of most sweet forgetfulness, that now chained her to her solitary chair, and kept her wholly unconscious of the narrow walls that hemmed her in. But what a world of new and strange thoughts it was amidst which she soon lost herself!...

Possibilities, conjectures, hopes, such as had never before entered her head, arose within her as, with a singular mixture of distinctness of memory and confusion of feeling, she lived again through every instant of the period during which Colonel Hubert had been in her presence, and of that, more thrilling still as she meditated upon it, when she unconsciously had been in his. How anxiously she recalled her att.i.tude, the careless disorder of her hair, and the unmeasured burst of enjoyment to which she had yielded herself!... How every song she had sung pa.s.sed in review before her!... Her graces, her _roulades_, her childish trials of what she could effect, all seemed to rise in judgment against her, and her cheeks tingled with the blushes they brought. Yet in the midst of this, perhaps,

... a sense of self-approving _power_ Mixed with her busy thought ...

and she felt that she was not sorry he had heard her sing.

Then came the glowing picture of the few short moments that followed the discovery ... the look that she had seen fixed upon her ... the voice that trembled as he asked to be forgiven ... his flushed cheek ... the agitation--yes, the agitation of his manner, of the stately Hubert's manner, as he approached, as he stood near, as he looked at, as he spoke to her! It was so; she knew it, she had seen it, she had felt it.... How strange is the const.i.tution of the human mind!... and how mutually dependent are its faculties and feelings on each other!.... The same girl who was so "earthly dull" as to be unable to perceive the undisguised adoration of Frederick Stephenson, was now rapt in a delirium of happiness from having read, what probably no other mortal eye could see, in the involuntary workings of Colonel Hubert's features for a few short instants, while offering an apology which he could hardly avoid making.

CHAPTER VIII.

SOME FARTHER PARTICULARS RESPECTING THE STATE OF MRS. BARNABY'S HEART.--TENDER DOUBTS AND FEARS, ON THE PART OF THE MAJOR, ALL SET TO REST BY THE GENTLE KINDNESS OF THE WIDOW.--SOME ACCOUNT OF MRS. PETERS'S CONCERT, AND OF THE TERRIBLE EVENTS WHICH FOLLOWED IT.

We have left the Widow Barnaby too long, and must hasten back to her.

There was altogether a strange mixture of worldly wisdom and of female folly in her character, for first one and then the other preponderated, as circ.u.mstances occurred. Had a man, richer than she believed the fascinating Major to be, proposed to her even at the very tenderest climax of his courtship, there is no doubt in the world but she would have accepted him, but when all her pecuniary anxieties were lulled into a happy doze by the pleasing statements of Messrs. William and Maintry, her love-making propensities awoke; she was again the Martha Compton of Silverton; and became so exceedingly attached to the Major's society, that neither Mrs. Peters's concert, nor any other engagement in which he did not share, could have compensated for one of those delightful _tete-a-tete_ evenings during which Agnes enjoyed the society of her friends.

When Major Allen saw the invitation card from Rodney Place lying on the table, he said,--

"Do you intend to go, dearest?"

"Have you a card, Major?" was the reply; and when the rejoinder produced a negative, she added,--"Then most a.s.suredly I shall not go;" a degree of fidelity that was very satisfactory to the Major, who began to discover that his newness in the society of Clifton was wearing off, and that he was eyed askance whenever he ventured to appear where gentlemen a.s.sembled.

A thousand fond follies, of course, diversified these frequent _tete-a-tetes_; and upon one occasion the Major in a sudden burst of jealous tenderness declared, that, notwithstanding the many proofs of affection she had granted him, there was one without which he could not be satisfied, as his dreams perpetually tormented him with visions of rivals who succeeded in s.n.a.t.c.hing her from him.

"Oh! Major, what folly!" exclaimed the lady. "Have you not yet learned to read my heart?... But what is there ... foolish as you are ... what is there that I could refuse to you ... that it was not inconsistent with my honour to grant?..."

"Your honour!... Beautiful Juno! know you not that your honour is dearer to me than my own?... What I would ask, my beloved Martha, can attach no disgrace to you, ... but, in fact, I shall not know a moment's ease till you have given me a promise of marriage. I know, my love, that you have relations here who will leave no stone unturned to prevent our union, ... and the idea that they may succeed distracts me!... Will you forgive this weakness, and grant what I implore?"

"You know I will, foolish man!... but I will have your promise in return, or you will think my love less fervent than your own," returned the widow playfully.

To this the Major made no objection; and so, "in merry sport," these promises were signed and exchanged amidst many lover-like jestings on their own folly.

This happened just three days before the eventful concert; and in the interval Major Allen received a letter from his friend Maintry, who was still at Bath, requesting him to join him there in order to give him the advantage of his valuable advice on a matter of great importance. It was, of course, with extreme reluctance that he tore himself away; but it was a sacrifice demanded by friendship, and he would make it, as he told the widow, on condition that she would rescind her refusal to Mrs.

Peters, and pa.s.s the evening of his absence at her house. She agreed to this, and he left her only in time to enable her to dress for the party.

The being accompanied by her aunt was a considerable drawback to any pleasure Agnes had antic.i.p.ated from the evening, and the stroke came upon her by surprise, for Mrs. Barnaby did not deem it necessary to stand on such ceremony with her sister as to ask leave to come after having been once invited.

Mrs. Peters looked vexed and disconcerted when she entered; but, perceiving the anxiety with which Agnes was watching to see how she bore it, she recalled her smiles, placed her prodigiously fine sister-in-law on a sofa with two other dowagers, desired Mr. Peters to go and talk to her, and then seizing upon Agnes, led her among the party of amateurs who were indulging in gossip and tea at a snug table in the second drawing-room. She was immediately introduced as a young friend who would prove a great acquisition, and two or three songs in her own old-fashioned style were a.s.signed, pretty nearly without waiting for her consent, to her performance; but with an observation from Mrs. Peters that she could not refuse, because they were the very songs she had sung when Mr. Stephenson was there in the morning.

All this was said and done in a bustle and a hurry, and Agnes carried off captive to the region where the business of the evening was already beginning with the tuning of instruments and the arrangement of desks, before she well knew what she intended to do or say. She would have felt the embarra.s.sment more had her mind been fully present to the scene; but it was not. She knew that Mr. Stephenson and his friend were expected, and no spot of earth had much interest for her at that moment except the doorway.

Her suspense lasted not long, however, for they soon entered together, and then her heart bounded, the colour varied on her cheek, and her whole frame trembled. Mr. Stephenson was by her side in a moment; but she was conscious of this only sufficiently to make her feel a pang because Colonel Hubert had not followed him. Far from approaching her, indeed, he seemed to place himself studiously at a distance, and instantly a deep gloom appeared in the eyes of Agnes to have fallen upon every object.... The lights were dim, every instrument out of tune, and the civilities of Mr. Stephenson so extremely troublesome, that she thought, if they continued, she must certainly leave the room.

The overture began, and she was desired to sit down in the place a.s.signed her; but this, as she found, left her open on one side to the pertinacious whisperings of Mr. Stephenson, and with a movement of irritation quite new to her, she got up again, with her cheeks burning, to ask for a place in the very middle of a row of ladies who could not comply with her request without real difficulty.

As soon as she had reached her new station she raised her eyes, and looked towards the spot where she had seen Colonel Hubert place himself; there he was still, and moreover his eyes were evidently fixed upon her.

"Why will he not speak to me?" mentally exclaimed poor Agnes; ... "or why does he so look at me?"

It would not have been difficult for Colonel Hubert to have given an answer. While they were taking coffee together half an hour before they set off, Frederick Stephenson told his friend that his fate would that night be decided, for he had made up his mind to propose to Miss Willoughby.