Agatha could have been happy, merry--she was still so young, and the weight on her heart was the first that ever had fallen there. At intervals she struggled to forget it--almost succeeded; and then the first glimpse of her husband's face, the first tone of his voice, brought the burden back again. Her spirits grew wilder than ever, lest any one should guess she was so very, very miserable.

After dinner, dreading Anne's eyes, she rushed off into the garden with Harrie Dugdale; tossing back her hair, and inhaling by gasps the cold evening wind, that it might bring calm and clearness to her brain. Even yet she felt as though she were dreaming.

Returning, she found lights in the drawing-room. Mr. Trenchard, in a patient att.i.tude, was listening to Marmaduke Dugdale; some distance off, Nathanael sat talking to Miss Valery. Anne was leaning back in an arm-chair: the lamp shining full on her face showed how very pale and worn it was. Her voice, too, sounded feeble, as Agatha caught the words:

"In two months, you think? That is a long time."

"It cannot be sooner, Marmaduke says. I met him on board the ship at Weymouth; when he told me of this innocent little scheme he was transacting."

"But you will not tell"--

"Uncle Brian? No, of course not. Yet I think it would do Uncle Brian good to know how dearly Marmaduke and all his friends here care for him.

Yet he might not believe it--I think he never did."

Anne was silent.

"He used to say," continued Nathanael, who was sitting where he could not see his wife, and for once heard not her soft step over the carpet--"Uncle Brian used to say, that it was wisest neither to love nor need love. I think different. It is a cruel, hardening, embittering thing for a man to feel that no one loves him."

--"Love--love! Have you two sage ones been discussing that folly? Now, may I have the honour to hear?"

"If Anne will talk; I have done speaking," said Mr. Harper, as he gave Agatha his chair, and slowly moved away to the other circle.

Thus, ever thus, he went from her, escaping the chance of either being wounded or healed. Agatha was nearly wild. With all her might she flung herself into conversation with Mr. Trenchard, and tried to conjugate that verb--hitherto a mystery to her innocent mind--_to flirt_. She wished to make herself beautifully hateful--bewitchingly foul; or rather she did not care what she made herself, if she only made _him_--who had now in her thoughts sank to the namelessness, which proves that one name is fast filling up the whole world--made him stir from that mountain height of impa.s.sive calm--melted him into repentance--shook him into frenzied jealousy. Anything--anything--so that he no longer should stand before her like a serene Alp, which nothing human could disturb, and which--ah, in all her madness, she saw that but too clearly!--which had always such a heavenly light shining on its forehead--a purity "G.o.d-given," like his name.

His name, which she had once so disliked, but which now caught a strange beauty. Lately, she had looked out its meaning in a list of Bible names; and many a time, the night before, she had said it to herself, crying it out into the dark, until its soft Hebrew vowels grew musical, and its holy Hebrew meaning grew divine. "Nathanael--Nathanael--_G.o.d-given_."

Might he not indeed be a husband given unto her of G.o.d--to lead her in the right way, and make a true n.o.ble woman of her; such as a woman is always made by the love of, and the loving of, a n.o.ble man.

But these were sacred night-time thoughts which vanished in the daylight, or only came in s.n.a.t.c.hes and rifts, careering through the blackness that surrounded her.

And still she talked to the fortunate Mr. Trenchard; made herself more agreeable than she had ever believed possible. The elderly beau was fascinated, and even Mr. Dugdale turned from election-papers, to look at his fair sister-in-law with genuine admiration--now and then nodding to Harrie, as if to see what she thought of this new light that had shot across their country hemisphere. At which Mrs. Dugdale once or twice pretended to be mightily jealous, until her husband, with his inconceivable sweet smile, his way of patting her knees with his big gentle hand, and the utterly inexpressible tone of his "Nay, now Missus"

made matters quite straight, and plunged back into his politics.

All this while Anne Valery sat in her arm chair--speaking little, looking from one to the other of her guests with a wandering, thoughtful eye, that, for once, noticed little the things around her, because her mental vision was afar off.--Whither--

And Marmaduke went on with his benevolent schemes for improving Dorsetshire and the world; and his Harrie had her dreams too--possibly about the advantage an M.P.'s interest might prove in future days to "the children;" and the young couple, in all the whirl of their misery, still clung to hope and youth and life, so little of which way they had trod, and so much of which lay before them. No one thought of her who sat apart, looking smilingly on them all, but to whom they and the things surrounding them were day by day growing more dim--who was fading, fading, even while she smiled.

CHAPTER XX

When, late at night, the party reached Kingcombe, it was resolved that the Harpers should remain there until morning. Agatha, worn out with bodily fatigue and the great tension of her mind during so many hours, laid her head down on her pillow, closed her aching eyes, and never opened them till near upon broad noon. Then she found breakfast was long over in the early house of the Dugdales, and that Nathanael had left her and gone out some hours before.

"He would not let me come and wake you--he said you slept so heavily and looked so tired. Certainly, he is the very kindest husband! Who ever would have believed that stiff, cold disagreeable Nathanael, who came home from America some months ago, puzzling us all, would have turned out so well. It is your ladyship's doing, I suppose."

So ran on Mrs. Dugdale, nor noticed how beneath her words her sister-in-law writhed, as though they had been sharp swords. Harrie was not a penetrating woman; Agatha had already discerned that, and thought, with a bitter smile, that it was well they were coming to live at Kingcombe, and that Mrs. Dugdale would be a very safe and amusing companion.

"Now, what is to be done to-day?" said she, as she ate the breakfast which Harrie brought her, and looked round the strange bed-room, which made her feel more bewildered than ever. So many phases, so many lives did she seem to have pa.s.sed through since she was married.

"The first thing to be done, my dear, is to take you back to Kingcombe Holm, to do respectful to your papa-in-law. Very punctilious is the Squire. If Nathanael had not ridden over there at some unearthly hour this morning, he never would have forgiven your not returning at night--the last night too, for I see your husband is determined to be settled at the cottage this evening."

"Ah, that is well." Agatha breathed more freely. She was so glad to hide herself under any roof that was her own. And perhaps a vague thought crept up, that some time--not for days yet, but when she could bend her pride to soften him--when they were living quite alone together--all might be gradually explained, nay, healed, between her and her husband.

She was on the whole not sorry to go "home."

"I see you two are quite agreed," laughed Harrie. "Marvellous union, Mrs. Locke Harper. You'll be really a pattern couple soon, and throw Duke and me cruelly in the shade. Now, dress like lightning, and I'll drive you and the children over to grandpapa's. Most likely well meet Pa and Nathanael somewhere about the town."

But, with the general vagueness of the Dugdale habits, that meeting did not arrive, nor was Mr. Harper anywhere to be seen.

"I dare say he is at the cottage, where I was bid not to take you upon any account. Charming little mysteries, I suppose, attendant on bringing home the bride. Very nice. Heigh-ho! I remember how happy I was when my poor dear Duke brought me home for the first time!"

"Where was that?" They were dashing over the moors, Agatha sitting rather silent, and Harrie's tongue galloping as fast as Dunce, her steed. Little Brian was perched on his mother's knee, holding the reins--a baby Phaeton, though with small danger of setting the world on fire--at least just yet.

"Where was it, my dear? Why, to the same old house we live in, empty and gloomy then, though it's full enough now. And I had been married--(hold your tongues, Fred and Gus! you can't have the whip, simpletons!)--married only three weeks, and it was queer coming back to my native place; and my father was rather cross that I had married Duke at all, and--I was foolish enough to cry."

Here Harrie laughed, and gave Dunce a lash that quite discomposed his pony faculties, and made Brian scream with delight.

"And what did your husband say?"

"Say? Nothing. He never speaks when he's vexed or hurt; only, a little while afterwards he came beside me, and said something about my being such a young girl, so gay-hearted and pretty--(bah!--though I was pretty then)--too young, he said, to marry such an elderly man, etc. etc. etc."

"And what did _you_ say?"

"Likewise nothing. I just jumped on his knee, and took him round the neck, and--But that isn't of the slightest consequence to anybody. Tuts!

On with you, Dunce!" And Harrie leaned forward, her eyelashes glittering wet in spite of her fun.

"I know I don't deserve him," she continued. "I never did. n.o.body could.

There are a lot of bad men in the world, but when a man is really good, there's hardly a woman alive that is good enough for him. And I'm not half good enough for Duke--but--I love him! That's all. Bless thee, Brian! thee is Pa's own boy all over!"

And Harrie kissed the little fellow pa.s.sionately, with something more even than a mother's love.--Agatha could have lifted up her arms and shrieked with misery.

It was a strange long day at Kingcombe Holm; many things to be arranged, many questions to be parried, many prying eyes to be avoided. But the general conclusion seemed to be, that this sudden movement was a mysterious whim of Nathanael--and Nathanael was supposed by one-half of his family to be mightily p.r.o.ne to mysteries and whims.

At length, when the day was nigh spent, and Agatha had dressed for the last of those formal dinners to which she had never been able quite to reconcile herself, she took refuge in Elizabeth's room. Thither she had of late absented herself; there was something so formidable in the keenness of Elizabeth's silent eyes. Hesitating before the door, she remembered when she had last quitted it. It required all her bravery to cross the threshold once more.

"Come in. I hear your foot, Agatha." There was no stepping back now.

The same atmosphere of peace and sanct.i.ty pervading the pretty room; the same lights dancing through the painted window on the silk coverlet; the same face, which had all the colourless reality of death, without any of its ghastliness--a smiling repose, such as is seen only at the beginning and end of life's tumult--in the cradle and in the coffin. Its effect upon Agatha was instantaneous. Her trembling ceased; she stepped lightly, as one does in entering a holy place.

"Elizabeth!" It seemed a beautiful name, a saint's name, and as such came quite naturally, though she had rarely before been so familiar with any one of her new sisters. She kneeled down and kissed Elizabeth.

"That is right. You are good to come. And where have you been, my little sister?--I have not seen you for three days."

"Is it so long?"

"Yes--though it may seem longer to me here. You remember you came and told me a long story about a Cornish miner. How did the tale end? What, no answer?"

None. She tried to hide herself--crush herself into the very floor where she sat, out of reach of Elizabeth's eyes.

"Ah, well, dear! I shall not ask."