CHAPTER XXXIII.
DOUBTS AND FEARS.
LOUIS had not been told till this day of the peril which threatened the little inheritance of the Athelings. When he did hear of it, the young man gnashed his teeth with that impotent rage which is agony, desperate under the oppression which makes even wise men mad. He scorned to say a word of any further indignities put upon himself; but Rachel told of them with tears and outcries almost hysterical—how my lord had challenged him with bitter taunts to put on his livery and earn the bread he ate—how he had been expelled from his room which he had always occupied, and had an apartment now among the rooms of the servants—and how Lord Winterbourne threatened to advertise him publicly as a vagabond and runaway if he ventured beyond the bounds of the village, or tried to thrust himself into any society. Poor little Rachel, when she came in the morning faint and heart-broken to tell her story, could scarcely speak for tears, and was only with great difficulty soothed to a moderate degree of calm. But still she shrank with the strangest repugnance from going away. It scarcely could be attachment to the home of her youth, for it had always been an unhappy shelter—nor could it be love for any of the family; the little timid spirit feared she knew not what terrors in the world with which she had so little acquaintance. Lord Winterbourne to her was not a mere English peer, of influence only in a certain place and sphere, but an omnipotent oppressor, from whose power it would be impossible to escape, and whose vigilance could not be eluded. If she tried to smile at the happy devices of Agnes and Marian, how to establish herself in their own room at Bellevue, and lodge Louis close at hand, it was a very wan and sickly smile. She confessed it was dreadful to think that he should remain, exposed to all these insults; but she shrank with fear and trembling from the idea of Louis going away.
The next evening, just before the sun set, the whole youthful party—for Rachel, by a rare chance, was not to be “wanted” to-night—strayed along the grassy road in a body towards the church. Agnes and Marian were both with Louis, who had been persuaded at last to speak of his own persecutions, while Rachel came behind with Charlie, kindly pointing out for him the far-off towers of Oxford, the two rivers wandering in a maze, and all the features of the scene which Charlie did not know, and amused, sad as she was, in her conscious seniority and womanhood, at the shyness of the lad. Charlie actually began to be touched with a wandering breath of sentiment, had been seen within the last two days reading a poetry book, and was really in a very odd and suspicious “way.”
“No,” said Louis, upon whom his betrothed and her sister were hanging eagerly, comforting and persuading—“no; I am not in a worse position. It stings me at the moment, I confess; but I am filled with contempt for the man who insults me, and his words lose their power. I could almost be seduced to stay when he begins to struggle with me after this downright fashion; but you are perfectly right for all that, and within a few days I must go away.”
“A few days? O Louis!” cried Marian, clinging to his arm.
“Yes; I have a good mind to say to-morrow, to enhance my own value,” said Louis. “I am tempted—ay, both to go and stay—for sake of the clinging of these little hands. Never mind, our mother will come home all the sooner; and what do you suppose I will do?”
“I think indeed, Louis, you should speak to the Rector,” said Agnes, with a little anxiety. “O no; it is very cruel of you, and you are quite wrong; he did not mean to be very kind in that mocking way—he meant what he said—he wanted to do you service; and so he would, and vindicate you when you were gone, if you only would cease to be so very grand for two minutes, and let him know.”
“Am I so very grand?” said Louis, with a momentary pique. “I have nothing to do with your rectors—I know what he meant, whatever he might say.”
“It is a great deal more than he does himself, I am sure of that,” said Agnes with a puzzled air. “He means what he says, but he does not always know what he means; and neither do I.”
Marian tried a trembling little laugh at her sister’s perplexity, but they were rather too much moved for laughing, and it did not do.
“Now, I will tell you what my plan is,” said Louis. “I do not know what he thinks of me, nor do I expect to find his opinion very favourable; but as that is all I can look for anywhere, it will be the better probation for me,” he added, with a rising colour and an air of haughtiness. “I will not enlist, Marian. I have no longer any dreams of the marshal’s baton in the soldier’s knapsack. I give up rank and renown to those who can strive for them. You must be content with such honour as a man can have in his own person, Marian. When I leave you, I will go at once to your father.”
“Oh, Louis, will you? I am so glad, so proud!” and again the little hands pressed his arm, and Marian looked up to him with her radiant face. He had not felt before how perfectly magnanimous and noble his resolution was.
“I think it will be very right,” said Agnes, who was not so enthusiastic; “and my father will be pleased to see you, Louis, though you doubt him as you doubt all men. But look, who is this coming here?”
They were scarcely coming here, seeing they were standing still under the porch of the church, a pair of very tall figures, very nearly equal in altitude, though much unlike each other. One of them was the Rector, who stood with a solemn bored look at the door of his church, which he had just closed, listening, without any answer save now and then a grave and ceremonious bow, to the other “individual,” who was talking very fluently, and sufficiently loud to be heard by others than the Rector. “Oh, Agnes!” cried Marian, and “Hush, May!” answered her sister; they both recognised the stranger at a glance.
“Yes, this is the pride of the old country,” said the voice; “here, sir, we can still perceive upon the sands of time the footprints of our Saxon ancestors. I say ours, for my youthful and aspiring nation boasts as the brightest star in her banner the Anglo-Saxon blood. We preserve the free institutions—the hatred of superstition, the freedom of private judgment and public opinion, the great inheritance developed out of the past; but Old England, sir, a land which I venerate, yet pity, keeps safe in her own bosom the external traces full of instruction, the silent poetry of Time—that only poetry which she can refuse to share with us.”
To this suitable and appropriate speech, congenial as it must have been to his feelings, the Rector made no answer, save that most deferential and solemn bow, and was proceeding with a certain conscientious haughtiness to show his visitor some other part of the building, when his eye was attracted by the approaching group. He turned to them immediately with an air of sudden relief.
So did Mr Endicott, to whom, to do him justice, not all the old churches in Banburyshire, nor all the opportunities of speechmaking, nor even half-a-dozen rectors who were within two steps of a peerage, could have presented such powerful attractions as did that beautiful blushing face of Marian Atheling, drooping and falling back under the shadow of Louis. The Yankee hastened forward with his best greeting.
“When I remember our last meeting,” said Mr Endicott, bending his thin head forward with the most unusual deference, that tantalising vision of what might have been, “I think myself fortunate indeed to have found you so near your home. I have been visiting your renowned city—one of those twins of learning, whose antiquity is its charm. In my country our antiquities stretch back into the eternities; but we know nothing of the fourteenth or the fifteenth century in our young soil. My friend the Rector has been showing me his church.”
Mr Endicott’s friend the Rector stared at him with a haughty amazement, but came forward without saying anything to the new-comers; then he seemed to pause a moment, doubtful how to address Louis—a doubt which the young man solved for him instantly by taking off his hat with an exaggerated and solemn politeness. They bowed to each other loftily, these two haughty young men, as two duellists might have saluted each other over their weapons. Then Louis turned his fair companion gently, and, without saying anything, led her back again on the road they had just traversed. Agnes followed silently, and feeling very awkward, with the Rector and Mr Endicott on either hand. The Rector did not say a word. Agnes only answered in shy monosyllables. The gifted American had it all his own way.
“I understand Viscount Winterbourne and Mrs Edgerley are at Winterbourne Hall,” said Mrs Endicott. “She is a charming person; the union of a woman of fashion and a woman of literature is one so rarely seen in this land.”
“Yes,” said Agnes, who knew nothing else to say.
“For myself,” said Mr Endicott solemnly, “I rejoice to find the poetic gift alike in the palace of the peer and the cottage of the peasant, bringing home to all hearts the experiences of life; in the sumptuous apartments of the Hall with Mrs Edgerley, or in the humble parlour of the worthy and respectable middle class—Miss Atheling, with you.”
“Oh!” cried Agnes, starting under this sudden blow, and parrying it with all the skill she could find. “Do you like Oxford, Mr Endicott? Have you seen much of the country about here?”
But it was too late. Mr Endicott caught a shy backward glance of Marian, and, smothering a mortal jealousy of Louis, eagerly thrust himself forward to answer it—and the Rector had caught his unfortunate words. The Rector drew himself up to a still more lofty height, if that was possible, and walked on by Agnes’s side in a solemn and stately silence—poor Agnes, who would have revived a little in his presence but for that arrow of Mr Endicott’s, not knowing whether to address him, or whether her best policy was to be silent. She went on by his side, holding down her head, looking very small, very slight, very young, beside that dignified and stately personage. At last he himself condescended to speak.
“Am I to understand, Miss Atheling,” said the Rector, very much in the same tone as he might have asked poor little Billy Morrell at school, “Are you the boy who robbed John Parker’s orchard?”—“Am I to understand, as I should be disposed to conclude from what this person says, that, like my fashionable cousin at the Hall, you have written novels?—or is it only the hyperbole of that individual’s ordinary speech?”
“No,” said Agnes, very guilty, a convicted culprit, yet making bold to confess her guilt. “I am very sorry he said it, but it is true; only I have written just one novel. Do you think it wrong?”
“I think a woman’s intellect ought to be receptive without endeavouring to produce,” said the Rector, in a slightly acerbated tone. “Intelligence is the noblest gift of a woman; originality is neither to be wished nor looked for.”
“I do not suppose I am very guilty of that either,” said Agnes, brightening again with that odd touch of pugnacity, as she listened once more to this haughty tone of dogmatism from the man who held no opinions. “If you object only to originality, I do not think you need be angry with me.”
She was half inclined to play with the lion, but the lion was in a very ill humour, and would see no sport in the matter. To tell the truth, the Rector was very much fretted by this unlooked-for intelligence. He felt as if it were done on purpose, and meant as a personal offence to him, though really, after all, for a superior sister of St Frideswide, this unfortunate gift of literature was rather a recommendation than otherwise, as one might have thought.
So the Rev. Lionel Rivers stalked on beside Agnes past his own door, following Louis, Marian, and Mr Endicott to the very gate of the Old Wood Lodge. Then he took off his hat to them all, wished them a ceremonious good-night, and went home extremely wrathful, and in a most unpriestly state of mind. He could not endure to think that the common outer world had gained such a hold upon that predestined Superior of the sisters of St Frideswide.