“THEY have left the Hall.”
That was all Marian said when she came to the door to meet her mother and sister, who paused in the porch, overcome with fatigue, haste, and anxiety. Mrs Atheling was obliged to pause and sit down, not caring immediately to see the young culprit who was within.
“And what has happened, Marian,—what has happened? My poor child, did he tell you?” asked Mrs Atheling.
“Nothing has happened, mamma,” said Marian, with a little petulant haste; “only Louis has quarrelled with Lord Winterbourne; but, indeed, I wish you would speak to him. Oh, Agnes, go and talk to Louis; he says he will go to London to-day.”
“And so he should; there is not a moment to be lost,” said Agnes,—“I will go and tell him; we can walk in with him to Oxford, and see him safely away. Tell Hannah to make haste, Marian,—he must not waste an hour.”
“What does she mean,—what is the matter? Oh, what have you heard, mamma?” said Marian, growing very pale.
“Hush, dear; I daresay it was not him,—it was Mr Endicott, who is sure to hate him, poor boy; he said Lord Winterbourne would put him in prison, Marian. Oh,” said Mrs Atheling, getting up hurriedly, “he ought to go at once to Papa.”
But they found Louis, whom they all surrounded immediately with terror, sympathy, and encouragement, entirely unappalled by the threatened vengeance of Lord Winterbourne.
“There is nothing to charge me with; he can bring no accusation against me; if he did ever say it, it must have been a mere piece of bravado,” said Louis; “but it is better I should go at once without losing an hour, as Agnes says. Will you let Rachel stay? and you, who are the kindest mother in the world, when will you have compassion on us and come home?”
“Indeed, I wish we were going now,” said Mrs Atheling; and she said it with genuine feeling, and a sigh of anxiety. “You must tell Papa we will not stay very long; but I suppose we must see about this lawsuit first; and I am sure I cannot tell who is to manage it now, since Charlie is gone.”
“Shall you go to Papa at once, Louis?” asked Marian, who was very anxious to conceal from every one the tears in her downcast eyes.
“Surely, at once,” said Louis. “We are in different circumstances now; I have a great deal to ask any one who knows the family of Rivers. Do you know it never before occurred to me that Lord Winterbourne must have had some powerful inducement for keeping me here, knowing as well as I do that I am not his son.”
Mrs Atheling and Agnes turned a sudden guilty look upon each other; but neither had betrayed the secret;—what did he mean?
“Unless it was his interest in some way—unless it was for his evident advantage to disgrace and disable me,” said Louis, groping in the dark, when they knew one possible solution of the mystery so well, “I am convinced he never would have kept me as he has done at the Hall.”
He spoke in a tone different to that which he had used to the Rector, and very naturally different—for Louis here was triumphant in the faith of his audience, and did not hesitate to say all he felt, nor fear too close an investigation into the grounds of his belief. He spoke fervently; and Marian and Rachel looked at him with the faith of enthusiasm, and Mrs Atheling and Agnes with wonder, agitation, and embarrassment. But, as he went on, it became too much for the self-control of the good mother. She hurried out on pretence of superintending Hannah, and was very soon followed by Agnes. “I durst not stay, I should have told him,” said Mrs Atheling, in a hurried whisper. “Who could put so much into his head, Agnes? who could lead him so near the truth?—only God! My dear child, I believe in it all now.”
Agnes had believed in it all from the first moment of hearing it, but so singular a strain was upon the minds of both mother and daughter, knowing this extraordinary secret which the others did not know, that it was not wonderful they should give a weight much beyond their desert to the queries of Louis. Yet, indeed, Louis’s queries took a wonderfully correct direction, and came very near the truth.
It was a day of extreme agitation to them all, and not until Louis, who had no travelling-bag to pack, had been accompanied once more to the railway, and seen safely away, with many a lingering farewell, was any one able to listen to, or understand, Rachel’s version of the events of last night. When he was quite gone—when it was no longer possible to wave a hand to him in the distance, or even to see the flying white plume of the miraculous horseman who bounded along with all that line of carriages, the three girls came home together through the quiet evening road—the disenchanted road, weary and unlovely, which Marian marvelled much any one could prefer to Bellevue. They walked very close together, with Marian in the midst, comforting her in an implied, sympathetic, girlish fashion—for Rachel, though Louis had belonged to her so very much longer, and was her sole authority, law-giver, and hero, instinctively kept her own feelings out of sight, and took care of Marian. These girls were very loyal to their own visionary ideas of the mysterious magician who had not come to either of them yet, but whose coming both anticipated some time, with awe and with smiles.
And then Rachel told them how it had fared with her on the previous night. Rachel had very little to say about the Rector; she had given him up conscientiously to Agnes, and with a distant and reverent admiration of his loftiness, contemplated him afar off, too great a person for her friendship. “But in the morning the maid came and took me to Miss Rivers—did you ever see Miss Rivers?—she is very pale—and pretty, though she is old, and a very, very great invalid,” said Rachel. “Some one has to sit up with her every night, and she has so many troubles—headaches, and pains in her side, and coughs, and every sort of thing! She told me all about them as she lay on the sofa in her pretty white dressing-gown, and in such a soft voice as if she was quite used to them, and did not mind. Do you think you could be a nurse to any one who was ill, Agnes?”
“She has been a nurse to all of us when we were ill,” said Marian, rousing herself for the effort, and immediately subsiding into the pensiveness which the sad little beauty would not suffer herself to break, even though she began in secret to be considerably interested about the interior of the mysterious Wood House, and the invisible Miss Rivers. Marian thought Louis would not be pleased if he could imagine her thinking of any one but him, so soon after he had gone away.
“But I don’t mean at home—I mean a stranger,” said Rachel, “one whom you did not love. I think it must be rather hard sometimes; but do you know I was very nearly offering to be nurse to Miss Rivers, she spoke so kindly to me? And then Louis will have to work,” continued the faithful little sister, with tears in her eyes; “you must tell me what I can do, Agnes, not to be a burden upon Louis. Oh, do you think any one would give me money for singing now?”