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The Athelings

CHAPTER XIX.
LIONEL

The Rector became a very frequent visitor during the few following weeks at Bellevue. Louis had gone to see him, as he desired, and Mr Rivers anxiously endeavoured to persuade the youth to suffer himself to be “assisted.” Louis as strenuously resisted every proposal of the kind; he was toiling on in pursuit of himself, through his memoir of Lord Winterbourne—still eager, and full of expectation—still proud, and refusing to be indebted to any one. The Rector argued with him like an elder brother. “Let us grant that you are successful,” said Mr Rivers; “let us suppose that you make an unquestionable discovery, what position are you in to pursue it? Your sister, even—recollect your sister—you cannot provide for her.”

His sister was Louis’s grand difficulty; he bit his lip, and the fiery glow of shame came to his face. “I cannot provide for her, it is true. I am bitterly ashamed of it; but, at least, she is among friends.”

“You do me small credit,” said the Rector; “but I will not ask, on any terms, for a friendship which is refused to me. You are not even in the way of advancement; and to lose your time after this fashion is madness. Let me see you articled to these people whom you are with now; that is, at least, a chance, though not a great one. If I can accomplish it, will you consent to this?”

Louis paused a little, grateful in his heart, though his tongue was slow to utter his sentiments. “You are trying to do me a great service,” said the young man; “you think me a churl, and ungrateful, but you endeavour to benefit me against my will—is it not true? I am just in such a position that no miracle in the world would seem wonderful to me; it is possible, in the chances of the future, that we two may be set up against each other. I cannot accept this service from you—from you, or from any other. I must wait.”

The Rector turned away almost with impatience. “Do you suppose you can spend your life in this fashion—your life?” he exclaimed, with some heat.

“My life!” said Louis. He was a little startled with this conclusion. “I thank you,” he added abruptly, “for your help, for your advice, for your reproof—I thank you heartily, but I have no more to say.”

That was how the conversation ended. Lionel, grieved for the folly of the boy, smiling to himself at Louis’s strange delusion that he, who was the very beau-ideal of the race of Rivers, belonged to another house, went to his rest, with a mind disturbed, full of difficulties, and of ambition, working out one solemn problem, and touched with tender dreams; yet always remembering, with a pleasure which he could not restrain, the great change in his position, and that he was now, not merely the Rector, but the heir of Winterbourne. Louis, on his part, went home to his dark little lodging, with the swell and tumult of excitement in his mind, and could not sleep. He seemed to be dizzied with the rushing shadows of a crowd of coming events. He was not well; his abstinence, his studiousness, his change of place and life, had weakened his young frame; these rushing wings seemed to tingle in his ears, and his temples throbbed as if they kept time. He rose in the middle of the night, in the deep wintry silence and moonlight, to open his window, and feel the cold air upon his brow. There he saw the moonbeams falling softly, not on any imposing scene, but on the humble roof underneath whose shelter sweet voices and young hearts, devout and guileless, prayed for him every night; the thought calmed him into sudden humility and quietness; and, in his poverty, and hope, and youth, he returned to his humble bed, and slept. Lionel was waking too; but he did not know of any one who prayed for him in all this cold-hearted world.

But the Rector became a very frequent visitor in Bellevue. He had read the little book—read it with a kind of startled consciousness, the first time, that it looked like a true story, and seemed somehow familiar to himself. But by-and-by he began to keep it by him, and, not for the sake of the story, to take it up idly when he was doing nothing else, and refer to it as a kind of companion. It was not, in any degree whatever, an intellectual display; he by no means felt himself pitted against the author of it, or entering into any kind of rivalship with her. The stream sparkled and flashed to the sunshine as it ran; but it flowed with a sweet spontaneous readiness, and bore no trace of artificial force and effort. It wanted a great many of the qualities which critics praise. There was no great visible strain of power, no forcible evidence of difficulties overcome. The reader knew very well that he could not have done this, nor anything like it, yet his intellectual pride was not roused. It was genius solacing itself with its own romaunt, singing by the way; it was not talent getting up an exhibition for the astonishment, or the enlightenment, or the instruction of others. Agnes defeated her own purpose by the very means she had taken to procure it. The Rector forgot all about the story, thinking of the writer of it; he became indifferent to what she had to tell, but dwelt and lingered—not like a critic—like something very different—upon the cadence of her voice.

To tell the truth, between his visits to Bellevue, and his musings thereafter—his study of this little fable of Agnes’s, and his vague mental excursions into the future, Lionel Rivers, had he yielded to the fascination, would have found very near enough to do. But he was manful enough to resist this trance of fairyland. He was beginning to be “in love;” nobody could dispute it; it was visible enough to wake the most entire sympathy in the breasts of Marian and Rachel, and to make for the mother of the family wakeful nights, and a most uneasy pillow; but he was far from being at ease or in peace. His friends in London were of a class as different as possible from these humble people who were rapidly growing nearer than friends. They were all men of great intelligence, of great powers, scholars, philosophers, authorities—men who belonged, and professed to belong, to the ruling class of intellect, prophets and apostles of a new generation. They were not much given to believing anything, though some among them had a weakness for mesmerism or spiritual manifestations. They investigated all beliefs and faculties of believing, and received all marvellous stories, from the Catholic legends of the saints to the miracles of the New Testament, on one general ground of indulgence, charitable and tender, as mythical stories which meant something in their day. Most of them wrote an admirable style—most of them occasionally said very profound things which nobody could understand; all of them were scholars and gentlemen, as blameless in their lives as they were superior in their powers; and all of them lived upon a kind of intellectual platform, philosophical demigods, sufficient for themselves, and looking down with a good deal of curiosity, a little contempt, and a little pity, upon the crowds who thronged below of common men.

These were the people to whom Lionel Rivers, in the first flush of his emancipation, had hastened from his high-churchism, and his country pulpit—some of them had been his companions at College—some had inspired him by their books, or pleased him by their eloquence. They were a brotherhood of men of great cultivation—his equals, and sometimes his superiors. He had yearned for their society when he was quite removed from it; but he was of a perverse and unconforming mind. What did he do now?

He took the strange fancy suddenly, and telling no man, of wandering through those frightful regions of crime and darkness, which we hide behind our great London streets. He went about through the miserable thoroughfares, looking at the miserable creatures there. What was the benefit to them of these polluted lives of theirs? They had their enjoyments, people said—their enjoyments! Their sorrows, like the sorrows of all humanity, were worthy human tears, consolation, and sympathy,—their hardships and endurances were things to move the universal heart; but their enjoyments—Heaven save us!—the pleasures of St Giles’s, the delights and amusements of those squalid groups at the street corners! If they were to have nothing more than that, what a frightful fate was theirs!

And there came upon the spectator, as he went among them in silence, a sudden eagerness to try that talisman which Agnes Atheling had bidden him use. It was vain to try philosophy there, where no one knew what it meant—vain to offer the rites of the Church to those who were fatally beyond its pale. Was it possible, after all, that the one word in the world, which could stir something human—something of heaven—in these degraded breasts, was that one sole unrivalled Name?

He could not withdraw himself from the wretched scene before him. He went on from street to street with something of the consciousness of a man who carries a hidden remedy through a plague-stricken city, but hides his knowledge in his own mind, and does not apply it. A strange sense of guilt—a strange oppression by reason of this grand secret—an overpowering passionate impulse to try the solemn experiment, and withal a fascinated watchfulness which kept him silent—possessed the mind of the young man.

He walked about the streets like a man doing penance; then he began to notice other passengers not so idle as himself. There were people here who were trying to break into the mass of misery, and make a footing for purity and light among it. They were not like his people;—sometimes they were poor city missionaries, men of very bad taste, not perfect in their grammar, and with no great amount of discretion. Even the people of higher class were very limited people often to the perception of Mr Rivers; but they were at work, while the demigods slept upon their platform. It would be very hard to make philosophers of the wretched population here. Philosophy did not break its heart over the impossibility, but calmly left the untasteful city missionaries, the clergymen, High Church and Low Church, who happened to be in earnest, and some few dissenting ministers of the neighbourhood, labouring upon a forlorn hope to make them men.

All this moved in the young man’s heart as he pursued his way among these squalid streets. Every one of these little stirrings in this frightful pool of stagnant life was made in the name of Him whom Lionel Rivers once named with cold irreverence, and whom Agnes Atheling, with a tender awe and appropriation, called “Our Lord.” This was the problem he was busy with while he remained in London. It was not one much discussed, either in libraries or drawing-rooms, among his friends; he discussed it by himself as he wandered through St Giles’s—silent—watching—with the great Name which he himself did not know, but began to cling to as a talisman, burning at his heart.

CHAPTER XX.
AN ARRIVAL

While the Athelings at home were going on quietly, but with anxiety and disturbance of mind in this way, they were startled one afternoon by a sudden din and tumult out of doors, nearly as great as that which, not much short of a year ago, had announced the first call of Mrs Edgerley. It was not, however, a magnificent equipage like that of the fashionable patroness of literature which drew up at the door now. It was an antique job carriage, not a very great deal better to look at than that venerable fly of Islington, which was still regarded with respect by Agnes and Marian. In this vehicle there were two horses, tall brown bony old hacks, worthy the equipage they drew—an old coachman in a very ancient livery, and an active youth, fresh, rural, and ruddy, who sprang down from the creaking coach-box to assault, but in a moderate country fashion, the door of the Athelings. Rachel, who was peeping from the window, uttered an exclamation of surprise—“Oh, Agnes, look! it is Miss Anastasia’s man.”

It was so beyond dispute, and Miss Anastasia herself immediately descended from the creaking vehicle, swinging heavily upon its antiquated springs; she had a large cloak over her brown pelisse, and a great muff of rich sables, big enough to have covered from head to foot, like a case, either little Bell or little Beau. She was so entirely like herself in spite of those additions to her characteristic costume, and withal so unlike other people, that they could have supposed she had driven here direct from the Priory, had that been possible, without any commonplace intervention of railway or locomotive by the way. As the girls came to the door to meet her, she took the face—first of Agnes, then of Marian, and lastly of Rachel, who was a good deal dismayed by the honour—between her hands, thrusting the big muff, like a prodigious bracelet, up upon her arm the while, and kissed them with a cordial heartiness. Then she went into the little parlour to Mrs Atheling, who in the mean time had been gathering together the scattered pieces of work, and laying them, after an orderly fashion, in her basket. Then Papa’s easy-chair was wheeled to the fire for the old lady, and Marian stooped to find a footstool for her, and Agnes helped to loose the big cloak from her shoulders. Miss Anastasia’s heart was touched by the attentions of the young people. She laid her large hand caressingly on Marian’s head, and patted the cheek of Agnes. “Good children—eh? I missed them,” she said, turning to Mamma, and Mamma brightened with pleasure and pride as she whispered something to Agnes about the fire in the best room. Then, when she had held a little conversation with the girls, Miss Rivers began to look uneasy. She glanced at Mrs Atheling with a clear intention of making some telegraphic communication; she glanced at the girls and at the door, and back again at Mamma, with a look full of meaning. Mrs Atheling was not generally so dull of comprehension, but she was so full of the idea that Miss Anastasia’s real visit was to the girls, and so proud of the attraction which even this dignified old lady could not resist, that she could not at all consent to believe that Miss Rivers desired to be left alone with herself.

“There’s a hamper from the Priory,” said Miss Anastasia at last, abruptly; “among other country things there’s some flowers in it, children—make haste all of you and get it unpacked, and tell me what you think of my camellias! Make haste, girls!”

It was a most moving argument; but it distracted Mrs Atheling’s attention almost as much as that of her daughters, for the hamper doubtless contained something else than flowers. Mamma, however, remained decorously with her guest, despite the risk of breakage to the precious country eggs; and the girls, partly deceived, partly suspecting their visitor’s motive, obeyed her injunction, and hastened away. Then Miss Rivers caught Mrs Atheling by the sleeve, and drew her close towards her. “Have you heard from your boy?” said Miss Anastasia.

“No,” said Mrs Atheling with a sudden momentary alarm, “not for a week—has anything happened to Charlie?”

“Nonsense—what could happen to him?” cried the old lady, with a little impatience, “here is a note I had this morning—read it—he is coming home.”

Mrs Atheling took the letter with great eagerness. It was a very brief one:—

Madam,—I have come to it at last—suddenly. I have only time to tell you so. I shall leave to-day with an important witness. I have not even had leisure to write to my mother; but will push on to the Priory whenever I have bestowed my witness safely in Bellevue. In great haste.—Your obedient servant,

C. Atheling.

Charlie’s mother trembled all over with agitation and joy. She had to grasp by the mantel-shelf to keep herself quite steady. She exclaimed, “My own boy!” half-crying and wholly exultant, and would have liked to have hurried out forthwith upon the road and met him half-way, had that been possible. She kept the letter in her hand looking at it, and quite forgetting that it belonged to Miss Anastasia. He had justified the trust put in him—he had crowned himself with honour—he was coming home! Not much wonder that the good mother was weeping-ripe, and could have sobbed aloud for very joy.

“Ay,” said Miss Anastasia, with something like a sigh, “you’re a rich woman. I have not rested since this came to me, nor can I rest till I hear all your boy has to say.”

At this moment Mrs Atheling started with a little alarm, catching from the window a glimpse of the coach, with its two horses and its antiquated coachman, slowly turning round and driving away. Miss Anastasia followed her glance with a subdued smile.

“Do you mean then to—to stay in London, Miss Rivers?” asked Mrs Atheling.

“Tut! the boy will be home directly—to-night,” said Miss Anastasia; “I meant to wait here until he came.”

Mrs Atheling started again in great and evident perturbation. You could perceive that she repeated “to wait here!” within herself with a great many points of admiration; but she was too well-bred to express her dismay. She cast, however, an embarrassed look round her, said she should be very proud, and Miss Rivers would do them honour, but she was afraid the accommodation was not equal—and here Mrs Atheling paused much distressed.

“I have been calculating all the way up when he can be here,” interrupted Miss Anastasia. “I should say about twelve o’clock to-night. Agnes, when she comes back again, shall revise it for me. Never mind accommodation. Give him an hour’s grace—say he comes at one o’clock—then a couple of hours later—by that time it will be three in the morning. Then I am sure one of the girls will not grudge me her bed till six. We’ll get on very well; and when Will Atheling comes home, if you have anything to say to him, I can easily step out of the way. Well, am I an intruder? If I am not, don’t say anything more about it. I cannot rest till I see the boy.”

When the news became diffused through the house that Charlie was coming home to-night, and that Miss Anastasia was to wait for him, a very great stir and bustle immediately ensued. The best room was hastily put in order, and Mrs Atheling’s own bedchamber immediately revised and beautified for the reception of Miss Anastasia. It was with a little difficulty, however, that the old lady was persuaded to leave the family parlour for the best room. She resisted energetically all unusual attentions, and did not hesitate to declare, even in the presence of Rachel, that her object was to see Charlie, and that for his arrival she was content to wait all night. A great anxiety immediately took possession of the household. They too were ready and eager to wait all night; and even Susan became vaguely impressed with a solemn sense of some great approaching event. Charlie was not to be alone either. The excitement rose to a quite overpowering pitch—who was coming with him? What news did he bring? These questions prolonged to the most insufferable tediousness the long slow darksome hours of the March night.

CHAPTER XXI.
CHARLIE’S RETURN

The girls could not be persuaded to go to rest, let Mamma say what she would. Rachel, the only one who had no pretence, nor could find any excuse for sitting up, was the only one who showed the least sign of obedience; she went up-stairs with a meek unwillingness, lingered as long as she could before lying down, and when she extinguished her light at last, lay very broad awake looking into the midnight darkness, and listening anxiously to every sound below. Marian, in the parlour on a footstool, sat leaning both her arms on her mother’s knee, and her head upon her arms, and in that position had various little sleeps, and half-a-dozen times in half-a-dozen dreams welcomed Charlie home. Agnes kept Miss Anastasia company in the best room, and Papa, who was not used to late hours, went between the two rooms with very wide open eyes, very anxious for his son’s return. Into the midnight darkness and solemnity of Bellevue, the windows of Number Ten blazed with a cheerful light; the fires were studiously kept up, the hearths swept, everything looking its brightest for Charlie; and a pair of splendid capons, part produce of Miss Anastasia’s hamper, were slowly cooking themselves into perfection, under the sleepy superintendence of Susan, before the great kitchen-fire—for even Susan would not go to bed.

Miss Anastasia sat very upright in an easy-chair, scorning so much as a suspicion of drowsiness. She did not talk very much; she was thinking over a hundred forgotten things, and tracing back step by step the story of the past. The old lady almost felt as if her father himself was coming from his foreign grave to bear witness to the truth. Her heart was stirred as she sat gazing into the ruddy firelight, hearing not a sound except now and then the ashes falling softly on the hearth, or the softer breath of Agnes by her side. As she sat in this unfamiliar little room, her mind flew back over half her life. She thought of her father as she had seen him last; she thought of the dreary blank of her own youthful desolation, a widowhood almost deeper than the widowhood of a wife—how she did not heed even the solemn pathos of her father’s farewell—could not rouse herself from her lethargy even to be moved by the last parting from that last and closest friend, and desired nothing but to be left in her dreary self-seclusion obstinately mourning her dead—her murdered bridegroom! The old lady’s eyes glittered, tearless, looking into the gleaming shadowy depths of the little mirror over the mantelpiece. It was scarcely in human nature to look back upon that dreadful tragedy, to anticipate the arrival to-night of the witnesses of another deadly wrong, and not to be stirred with a solemn and overwhelming indignation like that of an avenger of blood. Miss Anastasia started suddenly from her reverie, as she caught a long-drawn anxious sigh from her young companion; she drew her shawl close round her with a shudder. “God forgive me!” cried the vehement old lady; “did you ever have an enemy, child?”

In this house it was a very easy question. “No,” said Agnes, looking at her wistfully.

“Nor I, perhaps, when I was your age.” Miss Anastasia made a long pause. It was a long time ago, and she scarcely could recollect anything of her youth now, except that agony with which it ended. Then in the silence there seemed to be a noise in the street, which roused all the watchers. Mr Atheling went to the door to look out. It was very cold, clear, and calm, the air so sharp with frost, and so still with sleep, that it carried every passing sound far more distinctly than usual. Into this hushed and anxious house, through the open door came ringing the chorus of a street ballad, strangely familiar and out of unison with the excited feelings of the auditors, and the loud, noisy, echoing footsteps of some late merry-makers. They were all singularly disturbed by these uncongenial sounds; they raised a certain vague terror in the breasts of the father and mother, and a doubtful uneasiness among the other watchers. Under that veil of night, and silence, and distance, who could tell what their dearest and most trusted was doing? The old people could have told each other tales, like Jessica, of “such a night;” and the breathless silence, and the jar and discord of those rude voices, stirred memories and presentiments of pain even in the younger hearts.

It was now the middle of the night, two or three hours later than Miss Anastasia had anticipated, and the old lady rose from her chair, shook off her thoughtful mood, and began to walk about the room, and to criticise it briskly to Agnes. Then by way of diversifying her vigil, she made an incursion into the other parlour, where Papa was nursing the fire, and Mamma sitting very still, not to disturb Marian, who slept with her beautiful head upon her mother’s knee. The old lady was suddenly overcome by the sight of that fair figure, with its folded arms and bowed head, and long beautiful locks falling down on Mrs Atheling’s dark gown, like a stream of sunshine. She laid her hand very tenderly upon the sleeper’s head. “She does not know,” said Miss Anastasia—“she would not believe what a fairy fortune is coming to her, the sleeping beauty—God bless them all!”

The words had scarcely left her lips, the tears were still shining in her eyes, when Marian started up, called out of her dream by a sound which none of them besides had been quick enough to hear. “There! there! I hear him,” cried Marian, shaking back her loose curls; and they all heard the far-off rapid rumble of a vehicle, gradually invading all the echoes of this quietness. It came along steadily—nearer—nearer—waking every one to the most overpowering excitement. Miss Anastasia marched through the little parlour, with an echoing step, throwing her tall shadow on the blind, clasping her fingers tight. Mr Atheling rushed to the door; Marian ran to the kitchen to wake up Susan, and see that the tray was ready for Charlie’s refreshment; Mamma stirred the fire, and made it blaze; Agnes drew the blind aside, and looked out into the darkness from the window. Yes, there could be no mistake; on came the rumbling wheels, closer and closer. Then the cab became absolutely visible, opposite the door—some one leapt out—was it Charlie?—but he had to wait, to help some one else, very slow and uncertain, out of the vehicle. They all crowded to the door, the mother and sisters for the moment half forgetting Miss Anastasia; and there stood a most indisputable Charlie, very near six feet high, with a travelling-cap and a rough overcoat, bringing home the most extraordinary guest imaginable to his amazed parental home.

It was a woman, enveloped from head to foot in a great cloak, but unbonneted, and with an amazing head-dress; and after her stumbled forth a boy, of precisely the same genus and appearance as the Italian boys with hurdy-gurdies and with images, familiar enough in Bellevue. Charlie hurried forward, paying the greatest possible attention to his charge, who was somewhat peevish. He scarcely left her hand when he plunged among all those anxious people at the door. “All safe—all well, mother; how did you know I was coming?—how d’ye do, papa? Let her in, let her in, girls!—she’s tired to death, and doesn’t know a word of English. Let’s have her disposed of first of all—she’s worth her weight in gold– Miss Rivers!”

The young man fell back in extreme amazement. “Who is she, young Atheling?” cried Miss Anastasia, towering high in the background over everybody’s head.

Charlie took off his cap with a visible improvement of “manners.” “The nurse that brought them home,” he answered, in the concisest and most satisfactory fashion; and, grasping the hand of every one as he passed, with real pleasure glowing on his bronzed face, Charlie steered his charge in—seeing there was light in it—to the best room. Arrived there, he fairly turned his back to the wall, and harangued his anxious audience.

“It’s all right,” said Charlie; “she tells her story as clearly as possible when she’s not out of humour, and the doctor’s on his way. I’ve made sure of everything of importance; and now, mother, if you can manage it, and Miss Rivers does not object, let us have something to eat, and get her off to bed, and then you shall hear all the rest.”

Marian went off instantly to call Susan, and all the way Marian repeated under her breath, “All the rest! all the rest of what? Oh, Louis! but I’ll find out what they mean.”