Some uncontrollable feeling made Nathanael move to his wife's side, and s.n.a.t.c.h her hand.

"Yes," said he, meeting his brother's eye, "we are married."

Major Harper sank into one of the vestry-chairs, muttering something, inaudible to all ears save those which seemed fatally gifted with preternatural acuteness--the young bridegroom's. Nathanael fancied--nay, was certain--that he heard his brother say, "_Oh, my poor Agatha._" He looked suddenly at his bride, whose weeping had changed into silent but violent trembling. He dropped her hand, then with a determined air again took possession of it, saying sharply to his brother:

"What is the reason of all this? Is anything amiss?"

"No, nothing--have I said anything?"

"Then why startle us thus? It is not right, Frederick."

"Hush--perhaps he is ill," whispered Anne Valery.

Major Harper looked up, and among the many inquiring eyes, met hers. It seemed to fix him, sting him, rouse him to self-command.

"I am quite well," he cried, with a hoa.r.s.e attempt at laughter. "A gay bachelor always feels doubly cheery at a wedding. So it is all over, Nathanael? I beg your pardon for being too late; but I have been running about town on important business, till I am half-dead. Still, let me offer my congratulations to the bride."

He came forward jauntily, seized Agatha's hand and was about to kiss it, but for a slight shrinking on her part. The colour rushed to her face--his darkened with an expression of uncontrollable pain. At least so it appeared to one who never for a moment relaxed his watch--the younger brother.

"Really," said Mr. Th.o.r.n.ycroft, who, during the few minutes thus occupied, had bustled in and out of the vestry--"really, are we never intending to come home? Somebody must make a diversion here. Major Harper, will you take my wife? Miss Valery, allow me."

This fortunate interference effected a change. All moved away a little from the bridegroom, who was still standing by his wife's chair.

"Agatha--will you come?"

She mechanically rose; Mr. Harper drew her arm in his, and led her down the aisle. There were a few stray lookers-on at the church-door, who peered at them curiously. An inexplicable shadow hung over them. Never were a newly-married couple more silent or more grave.

Only, as they stood on the entrance-steps that were wet with a past shower of thunder-rain, and Agatha in her thin white shoes was walking right on, her husband drew her back.

"It will not hurt me. Do let me go," she said.

"No, you must not; you are mine now," was the answer, with a look that would have made the tone of control sound in any loving bride's ear the sweetest ever heard.

He left Agatha in the church, and hurried a little in advance. His brother and Mrs. Thomycroft were standing at the porch outside, Emma laughing and whispering. And while waiting for the carriage, it so chanced that Nathanael caught what they were saying.

"Why, Major Harper, you look as dull as if you had been in love with Agatha yourself! And after what you confessed to me, I did positively believe she was in love with you."

"Agatha in love with me! really you flatter me," said Major Harper, looking down and tapping his boot, with his own self-complacent, regretful smile.

"I did indeed think it, from her agitation when I hinted at such a thing. And I never was more amazed in my life than when she told me she was going to marry your brother. I do hope, poor dear Agatha"--

"Don't speak of her," cried Major Harper, in a burst of real emotion.

"And she liked me so well, poor child! Oh, I wish to Heaven I had married her, and saved her from"--

Here a voice was heard calling "Mr. Harper--Mr. Harper," but the bridegroom was nowhere to be seen. Some one--not her husband--put Agatha into the carriage. Several minutes after, Nathanael appeared.

"Where have you been? Your wife is waiting."

"My wife?" He looked round bewildered, as if the words struck him with the awful irrevocable sense of what was done. Hurriedly he ran down the steps, sprang into the carriage beside Agatha, and they drove away.

Through many streets and squares they pa.s.sed, for the breakfast was to be at Emma's house. Agatha sat for the first time alone with her husband. The sun just coming out threw a soft crimson light through the closed carriage blinds; the very air felt warm and sweet, like love.

Agatha's heart was stirred with a new tenderness towards him into whose keeping she had just given her whole life.

For a little while she sat, her eyes cast down, wondering what he would say or do, whether he would take her hand, or draw her softly to his breast and let her cry her heart out there, as she almost longed to do--poor fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless girl, who in her husband alone must concentrate every earthly tie.

But he never spoke--never moved. He leaned back in the carriage as pale as death, his lips rigidly shut together, his eyes shut too, except that now and then they opened and closed again, to show that he was not in a state of total unconsciousness. But towards his young wife no look ever once wandered.

At length he started as from a trance and saw her sitting there, very quiet, for the pride of her nature was beginning to rise at this strange treatment from him to whom she had just given herself--her all. She was nervously moving the fingers of her left hand, where the newly placed ring felt heavy and strange.

Nathanael s.n.a.t.c.hed the hand with violence.

"Agatha,--are you not my Agatha? Tell me the truth--the whole truth. I will have it from you!"

"Mr. Harper!" she exclaimed, half frightened, half angry.

His long, searching gaze tried to read her every feature--her pale cheeks--her lips proud, nay, almost sullen--her eyes, from which the softness so lately visible had changed into inquietude and trouble.

There was in her all maidenly innocence--no one could doubt that; but nothing could be more unlike the shy tenderness of a bride, loving, and married for love.

Slowly, slowly, the young bridegroom's gaze fell from her, and his thoughts settled into dull conviction. All his violence ceased, leaving an icy composure, which in itself bore the omen of its lasting stay.

"Forgive me," he said, in a kind but cold voice, while his vehement grasp relaxed into a loose hold. "You are my dear wife now, and I will try to be a good husband to you, Agatha."

Stooping forward, his lips just touched her cheek--which shrank from him, Agatha scarcely knew why.

"I see!" he muttered to himself "Well, be it so! and G.o.d help us both!"

The carriage stopped. Honest Mr. James Thomycroft was at the door, bidding a gay and full-hearted welcome to the bridegroom and bride.

What a marriage-day!

CHAPTER X.

"Are you quite warm there, Agatha?"

"Yes, thank you, quite warm," she said, turning round a little, and then turning back. She sat working, or seeming to work, at a large bay window that fronted the sea at Brighton. Already there had come over her the slight but unmistakable change which indicates the wife--the girl no longer. She had been married just one week.

Her husband sat at a table writing, as was his habit during the middle of the day, in order that they might walk out in the evening. He had often been thus busy during the week, even though it was the first week of the honeymoon.

The honeymoon! How different the word now sounded to Agatha! Yet she had nothing to complain of. Mr. Harper was very kind; watchful and tender over her to a degree which she felt even more than she saw. In the mornings he read to her, or talked, chiefly upon subjects higher and withal pleasanter than Agatha had ever heard talked of before; in the evenings they drove out or walked, till far into the starry summer night. They were together constantly, there never pa.s.sed between them a quick or harsh word, and yet--

Agatha vainly tried to solve the dim, cloudy "yet" which had no tangible form, and only arose now that the first bewilderment of her changed existence was settling into reality, and she was beginning to recognise herself as Agatha Harper, no longer a girl, but a married woman. The sole conclusion she could come to was, that she must be now learning what she supposed every one had to learn--that a honeymoon is not quite the dream of bliss which young people believe in, and that few married couples are quite happy during the first year of their union.

And Mrs. Harper (or Mrs. Locke Harper, as her husband had had printed on the cards, omitting the name which she had once stigmatised as "ugly,") was probably not altogether wide of the truth, though in this case she judged from mistaken because individual evidence. It is next to impossible that two lives, unless a.s.similated by strong attachment and rare outward circ.u.mstances, if suddenly thrown together, should at once mingle and flow harmoniously on. It takes time, and the influence of perfect love, to melt and fuse the two currents into one beautiful whole. Perhaps, did all young lovers believe and prepare for this, there would be fewer disappointed and unhappy marriages.

Though sitting at the open window, with the sharp sea-breeze blowing in upon her--it happened to be a sunless and gloomy day--Agatha had answered that she was "quite warm." Nevertheless her heart felt cold.

Not positively sad, yet void. A great deal of pa.s.sionate devotion is necessary to make two active human beings content with one another's sole company for eight entire days, having nothing to occupy them but each other.