CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE REV. LIONEL RIVERS.
THE next day, somewhat to the consternation of this disturbed and troubled family, they were honoured by a most unlooked-for and solemn visit from the Rector. The Rector, in stature, form, and features, considerably resembled Miss Anastasia, and was, as she herself confessed, an undeniable Rivers, bearing all the family features and not a little of the family temper. He seemed rather puzzled himself to give a satisfactory reason for his call—saying solemnly that he thought it right for the priest of the parish to be acquainted with all his parishioners—words which did not come with half so much unction or natural propriety from his curved and disdainful lip, as they would have done from the bland voice of Mr Mead. Then he asked some ordinary questions how they liked the neighbourhood, addressing himself to Mamma, though his very grave and somewhat haughty looks were principally directed to Agnes. Mrs Atheling, in spite of her dislike of the supreme altitude of his churchmanship, had a natural respect for the clergyman, who seemed the natural referee and adviser of people in trouble; and though he was a Rivers, and the next heir after Lord Winterbourne’s only son, it by no means followed on that account that the Rector entertained any affectionate leaning towards Lord Winterbourne.
“I knew your old relative very well,” said the Rector; “she was a woman of resolute will and decided opinions, though her firmness, I am afraid, was in the cause of error rather than of truth. I believe she always entertained a certain regard for me, connected as she was with the family, though I felt it my duty to warn her against her pernicious principles before her death.”
“Her pernicious principles! Was poor Aunt Bridget an unbeliever?” cried Agnes, with an involuntary interest, and yet an equally involuntary and natural spirit of opposition to this stately young man.
“The word is a wide one. No—not an unbeliever, nor even a disbeliever, so far as I am aware,” said the churchman, “but, even more dangerous than a positive error of doctrine, holding these fatal delusions concerning private opinion, which have been the bane of the Church.”
There was a little pause after this, the unaccustomed audience being somewhat startled, yet quite unprepared for controversy, and standing beside in a little natural awe of the Rector, who ought to know so much better than they did. Agnes alone felt a stirring of unusual pugnacity—for once in her life she almost forgot her natural diffidence, and would have liked nothing better than to throw down her woman’s glove to the rampant churchman, and make a rash and vehement onslaught upon him, after the use and wont of feminine controversy.
“My own conviction is,” said the Rector with a little solemnity, yet with a dissatisfied and fiery gleam in his eager dark eyes, “that there is no medium between the infallible authority of the Church and the wildest turmoil of heresy. This one rock a man may plant his foot upon—all beyond is a boundless and infinite chaos. Therefore I count it less perilous to be ill-informed or indifferent concerning some portions of the creed, than to be shaken in the vital point of the Church’s authority—the only flood-gate that can be closed against the boiling tide of error, which, but for this safeguard, would overpower us all.”
Having made this statement, which somehow he enunciated as if it were a solemn duty, Mr Rivers left the subject abruptly, and returned to common things.
“You are acquainted, I understand,” he said, with haste and a little emotion, “with my unfortunate young relatives at the Hall?”
The question was so abrupt and unlooked for, that all the three, even Mamma, who was not very much given to blushing, coloured violently. “Louis and Rachel? Yes; we know them very well,” said Mrs Atheling, with as much composure as she could summon to meet the emergency—which certainly was not enough to prevent the young clergyman from discovering a rather unusual degree of interest in the good mother’s answer. He looked surprised, and turned a hurried glance upon the girls, who were equally confused under his scrutiny. It was impossible to say which was the culprit, if culprit there was. Mr Rivers, who was tall enough at first, visibly grew a little taller, and became still more stately in his demeanour than before.
“I am not given to gossip,” he said, with a faint smile, “yet I had heard that they were much here, and had given their confidence to your family. I have not been so favoured myself,” he added, with a slight curl of disdain upon his handsome lip. “The youth I know nothing of, except that he has invariably repelled any friendship I could have shown him; but I feel a great interest in the young lady. Had my sister been in better health, we might have offered her an asylum, but that is impossible in our present circumstances. You are doubtless better acquainted with their prospects and intentions than I am. In case of the event which people begin to talk about, what does Lord Winterbourne intend they should do?”
“We have not heard of any event—what is it?” cried Mrs Atheling, very anxiously.
“I have no better information than common report,” said the Rector; “yet it is likely enough—and I see no reason to doubt; it is said that Lord Winterbourne is likely to marry again.”
They all breathed more freely after this; and poor little Marian, who had been gazing at Mr Rivers with a blanched face and wide-open eyes, in terror of some calamity, drooped forward upon the table by which she was sitting, and hid her face in her hands with sudden relief. Was that all?
“I was afraid you were about to tell us of some misfortune,” said Mrs Atheling.
“It is no misfortune, of course; nor do I suppose they are like to be very jealous of a new claimant upon Lord Winterbourne’s affections,” said the Rector; “but it seems unlikely, under their peculiar and most unhappy circumstances, that they can remain at the Hall.”
“Oh, mamma!” exclaimed Marian, in a half whisper, “he will be so very, very glad to go away!”
“What I mean,” resumed Mr Rivers, who by no means lost this, though he took no immediate notice of it—“what I wish is, that you would kindly undertake to let them know my very sincere wish to be of service to them. I cannot at all approve of the demeanour of the young man—yet there may be excuses for him. If I can assist them in any legitimate way, I beg you to assure them my best endeavours are at their service.”
“Thank you, sir, thank you—thank you!” cried Mrs Atheling, faltering, and much moved. “God knows they have need of friends!”
“I suppose so,” said the Rector; “it does not often happen—friends are woeful delusions in most cases—and indeed I have little hope of any man who does not stand alone.”
“Yet you offer service,” said Agnes, unable quite to control her inclination to dispute his dogmatisms; “is not your opinion a contradiction to your kindness?”
“I hold no opinions,” said the Rector haughtily, with, for the instant, a superb absurdity almost equal to Mr Endicott: he perceived it himself, however, immediately, reddened, flashed his fiery eyes with a half defiance upon his young questioner, and made an incomprehensible explanation.
“I am as little fortified against self-contradiction as my fellows,” said Mr Rivers, “but I eschew vague opinions; they are dangerous for all men, and doubly dangerous in a clergyman. I may be wrong in matters of feeling; opinions I have nothing to do with—they are not in my way.”
Again there followed a pause, for no one present was at all acquainted with sentiments like these.
“I am not sure whether we will continue long here,” said Mrs Atheling, with a slight hesitation, half afraid of him, yet feeling, in spite of herself, that she could consult no one so suitably as the Rector. “Lord Winterbourne is trying to put us away; he says the house was only given to old Miss Bridget for her life!”
“Ah! but that is false, is it not?” said the Rector without any ceremony.
Mrs Atheling brightened at once. “We think so,” she said, encouraged by the perfectly cool tone of this remark, which proved a false statement on the part of my lord no wonder at all to his reverend relative; “but, indeed, the lawyer advises us not to contest the matter, since Lord Winterbourne does not care for expense, and we are not rich. I do not know what my husband will say; but I am sure I will have a great grudge at the law if we are forced, against justice, to leave the Old Wood Lodge.”
“Papa says it was once the property of the family, long, long before Aunt Bridget got it from Lord Winterbourne,” said Agnes, with a little eagerness. This shadow of ancestry was rather agreeable to the imagination of Agnes.
“And have you done anything—are you doing anything?” said the Hector. “I should be glad to send my own man of business to you; certainly you ought not to give up your property without at least a legal opinion upon the matter.”
“We expect my son to-morrow,” said Mrs Atheling, with a little pride. “My son, though he is very young, has a great deal of judgment; and then he has been—brought up to the law.”
The Rector bowed gravely as he rose. “In that case, I can only offer my good wishes,” said the churchman, “and trust that we may long continue neighbours in spite of Lord Winterbourne. My sister would have been delighted to call upon you, had she been able, but she is quite a confirmed invalid. I am very glad to have made your acquaintance. Good morning, madam; good morning, Miss Atheling. I am extremely glad to have met with you.”
The smallest shade of emphasis in the world invested with a different character than usual these clergymanly and parochial words: for the double expression of satisfaction was addressed to Agnes; it was to her pointedly that his stately but reverential bow bore reference. He had come to see the family; but he was glad to know Agnes, the intelligent listener who followed his sermons—the eager bright young eyes which flashed warfare and defiance on his solemn deliverances—and, unawares to herself, saw through the pretences of his disturbed and troubled spirit. Lionel Rivers was not very sensitively alive to the beautiful: he saw little to attract his eye, much less his heart, in that pretty drooping Marian, who was to every other observer the sweetest little downcast princess who ever gained the magic succours of a fairy tale. The Rector scarcely turned a passing glance upon her, as she sat in her tender beauty by the table, leaning her beautiful head upon her hands. But with a different kind of observation from that of Mr Agar, he read the bright and constant comment on what he said himself, and what others said, that ran and sparkled in the face of Agnes. She who never had any lovers, had attracted one at least to watch her looks and her movements with a jealous eye. He was not “in love,”—not the smallest hairbreadth in the world. In his present mood, he would gladly have seen her form an order of sisters, benevolent votaresses of St Frideswide, or of some unknown goddess of the medieval world, build an antique house in the “pointed” style, and live a female bishop ruling over the inferior parish, and being ruled over by the clergy. Such a colleague the Rector fancied would be highly “useful,” and he had never seen any one whom he could elect to the office with so much satisfaction as Agnes Atheling. How far she would have felt herself complimented by this idea was entirely a different question, and one of which the Rector never thought.