CHAPTER VI.
The next morning was Sunday. Under one of the dark arches in Bloomsbury Church—with Mrs. Ianson's large feathers tossing on one side, and Jane's sickly unhappy face at the other—Agatha said her prayers in due sabbatical form. “Said her prayers” is the right phrase, for trouble had not yet opened her young heart to pray. Yet she was a good girl, not wilfully undevout; and if during the long missionary-sermon she secretly got her prayer-book and read—what was the most likely portion to attract her—the marriage service, it was with feelings solemnised and not unsacred. Some portions of it made her very thoughtful, so thoughtful that when suddenly startled by the conclusion of the sermon, she prayed—not with the clergyman, for “Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics”—but for two young creatures, herself and another, who perhaps needed Heaven's merciful blessings quite as much.
When she rose up it was with moist eyelashes; and then she perceived what until this minute she had not seen,—that close behind her, sitting where he had probably sat all church-time, was Nathanael Harper.
If anything can touch the heart of a generous woman, when it is still a free heart, it is that quiet, unobtrusive, proudly-silent love which, giving all, exacts nothing. Agatha's smile had in it something even of shy tenderness when at the church-door she was met by Mr. Harper. And when, after speaking courteously to the Iansons, he came, quite naturally as it were, to her side, and drew her arm in his, she felt a strange sense of calm and rest in knowing that it was her betrothed husband upon whom she leant.
At the door he seemed wishful enough to enter; but Mrs. Ianson invariably looked very coldly upon Sunday visitors.
And something questioning and questionable in the glances of both that lady and her daughter was very painful to Miss Bowen.
“Not to-day,” she whispered, as her lover detained her hand. “To-morrow I shall have made all clear to the Iansons.”
“As you will! Nothing shall trouble you,” said he, with a gentle acquiescence, the value of which, alas! she did not half appreciate. “Only, remember, I have so few to-morrows.”
This speech troubled Agatha for many minutes, bringing various thoughts concerning the dim future which as yet she had scarcely contemplated. It is wonderful how little an unsophisticated girl's mind rests on the common-sense and commonplace of marriage,—household prospects, income, long or short engagements, and the like. When in the course of that drowsy, dark Sunday afternoon, with the rain-drops dripping heavily on the balcony, she took opportunity formally to communicate her secret to the astonished Mrs. Ianson, Agatha was perfectly confounded by the two simple questions: “When are you to be married? And where are you going to live?”
“And oh! my dear,” cried the doctor's wife, roused into positive sympathy by a confidence which always touches the softest chord in every woman's heart—“oh, my dear, I hope it will not be a long engagement. People change so—at least men do. You don't know what misery comes out of long engagements!” And, lowering her voice, she turned her dull grey eyes, swimming with motherly tears, towards the corner sofa where the pale, fretful, old-maidish Jane lay sleeping.