“AND now, Charlie, my dear boy, I quite calculate on your knowing about it, since you have been so long at the law,” said Mrs Atheling: “your father is so much taken up about other matters, that he really says very little about this. What are we to do?”
Charlie, whose mobile brow was shifting up and shifting down with all the marks of violent cogitation, bit his thumb at this, and took time before he answered it. “The first thing to be done,” said Charlie, with a little dogmatism, “is to see what evidence can be had—that’s what we have got to do. Has nobody found any papers of the old lady’s?—she was sure to have a lot—all your old women have.”
“No one even thought of looking,” said Agnes, suddenly glancing up at the old cabinet with all its brass rings—while Marian, restored to all her gay spirits, promptly took her brother to task for his contempt of old women. “You ought to see Miss Anastasia—she is a great deal bigger than you,” cried Marian, pulling a shaggy lock of Charlie’s black hair.
“Stuff!—who’s Miss Anastasia?” was the reply.
“And that reminds me,” said Mrs Atheling, “that we ought to have let her know. Do you remember what she said, Agnes?—she was quite sure my lord was thinking of something—and we were to let her know.”
“What about, mother?—and who’s Miss Anastasia?” asked Charlie once more: he had to repeat his question several times before any answer came.
“Who is Miss Anastasia? My dear, I forgot you were a stranger. She is—well, really I cannot pretend to describe Miss Rivers,” said Mrs Atheling, with a little nervousness. “I have always had a great respect for her, and so has your father. She is a very remarkable person, Charlie. I never have known any one like her all my life.”
“But who is she, mother? Is she any good?” repeated the impatient youth.
Mrs Atheling looked at her son with a certain horror.
“She is one of the most remarkable persons in the county,” said Mrs Atheling, with all the local spirit of a Banburyshire woman, born and bred—“she is a great scholar, and a lady of fortune, and the only child of the old lord. How strange the ways of Providence are, children!—what a difference it might have made in everything had Miss Anastasia been born a man instead of a woman.” “Indeed,” confessed Mamma, breaking off in an under-tone, “I do really believe it would have been more suitable, even for herself.”
“I suppose we’re to come at it at last,” said Charlie despairingly: “she’s a daughter of the tother lord—now, I want to know what she’s got to do with us.”
“My dear,” said Mrs Atheling eagerly, and with evident pleasure, “I wrote to your father, I am sure, all about it. She has called upon us twice in the most friendly way, and has quite taken a liking for the girls.”
“And she was old Aunt Bridget’s pupil, and her great friend; and it was on account of her that the old lord gave Aunt Bridget this house,” added Agnes, finding out, though not very cleverly, what Charlie’s questions meant.
“And she hates Lord Winterbourne,” said Marian in an expressive appendix, with a distinct emphasis of sympathy and approval on the words.
“Now I call that satisfaction,” said Charlie,—“that’s something like the thing. So I suppose she must have had to do with the whole business, and knows all about it—eh? Why didn’t you tell me so at once?—why, she’s the first person to see, of course. I had better seek her out to-morrow morning—first thing.”
“You!” Mamma looked with motherly anxiety, mixed with disapproval. It was so impossible, even with the aid of all partialities, to make out Charlie to be handsome. And Miss Anastasia came of a handsome race, and had a prejudice in favour of good looks. Then, though his large loose limbs began to be a little more firmly knitted and less unmanageable, and though he was now drawing near eighteen, he was still only a boy. “My dear,” said Mrs Atheling, “she is a very particular old lady, and takes dislikes sometimes, and very proud besides, and might not desire to be intruded on; and I think, after all, as you do not know her, and they do, I think it would be much better if the girls were to go.”
“The girls!” exclaimed Charlie with a boy’s contempt—“a great deal they know about the business! You listen to me, mother. I’ve been reading up hard for six months, and I know something about the evidence that does for a court of law—women don’t—it’s not in reason; for I’d like to see the woman that could stand old Foggo’s office, pegging in at these old fellows for precedent, and all that stuff. You don’t suppose I mind what your old lady thinks of me—and I know what I want, which is the main thing, after all. You tell me where she lives—that’s all I want to know—and see if I don’t make something of it before another day.”
“Where she lives?—it is six miles off, Charlie: you don’t know the way—and, indeed, you don’t know her either, my poor boy.”
“Don’t you trouble about that—that’s my business, mother,” said Charlie; “and a man can’t lose his way in the country unless he tries—a long road, and a fingerpost at every crossing. When a man wants to lose himself, he had better go to the City—there’s no fear in your plain country roads. You set me on the right way—you know all the places hereabout—and just for this once, mother, trust me, and let me manage it my own way.”
“I always did trust you, Charlie,” said Mrs Atheling evasively; but she did not half like her son’s enterprise, and greatly objected to put Miss Anastasia’s friendship in jeopardy by such an intrusion as this.
However, the young gentleman now declared himself tired, and was conducted up-stairs in state, by his mother and sisters—first to Mrs Atheling’s own room to inspect it, and kiss, half reluctantly, half with genuine fondness, the little slumbering cherub faces of Bell and Beau. Then he had a glimpse of the snowy decorations of that young-womanly and pretty apartment of his sisters, and was finally ushered into the little back-room, his own den, from which the lumber had been cleared on purpose for his reception. They left him then to his repose, and dreams, if the couch of this young gentleman was ever visited by such fairy visitants, and retired again themselves to that dim parlour, to read over in conclave Papa’s letter, and hold a final consultation as to what everybody should do.
Papa’s letter was very long, very anxious, and very affectionate, and had cost Papa all the leisure of two long evenings, and all his unoccupied hours for two days at the office. He blamed his wife a little, but it was very quietly,—he was grieved for the premature step the young people had taken, but did not say a great deal about his grief,—and he was extremely concerned, and evidently did not express half of his concern, about his pretty Marian, for whom he permitted himself to say he had expected a very different fate. There was not much said of personal repugnance to Louis, and little comment upon his parentage, but they could see well enough that Papa felt the matter very deeply, and that it needed all his affection for themselves, and all his charity for the stranger, to reconcile him to it. But they were both very young, he said, and must do nothing precipitate—which sentence Papa made very emphatic by a very black and double underscoring, and which Mrs Atheling, but fortunately not Marian, understood to mean that it was a possibility almost to be hoped for, that this might turn out one of those boy-and-girl engagements made to be broken, and never come to anything after all.
It was consolatory certainly, and set their minds at rest, but it was not a very cheering letter, and by no means justified Marian’s joyful announcement that “papa was quite pleased.” And so much was the good father taken up with his child’s fortune, that it was only in a postscript he took any notice of Lord Winterbourne’s summons and their precarious holding of the Old Wood Lodge. “We will resist, of course,” said Papa. He did not know a great deal more about how to resist than they did, so he wisely left the question to Charlie, and to “another day.”
And now came the question, what everybody was to do? which gradually narrowed into much smaller limits, and became wholly concerned with what Charlie was to do, and whether he should visit Miss Anastasia. He had made up his mind to it with no lack of decision. What could his mother and his sisters say, save make a virtue of necessity, and yield their assent?