“Who’s Mr Agar?” asked Charlie. “And so that’s him—that’s the man that will take the Old Wood Lodge! I wish he would. I knew I owed him something. I’d like to see him try!”
“And Mrs Edgerley is his daughter,” said Agnes. “Is it not strange? And I suppose we shall all be neighbours in the country. But Mr Endicott said quite loud, so that everybody could hear, that papa was a friend of Lord Winterbourne’s. I do not like people to slight us; but I don’t like to deceive them either. There was that gentleman—that Sir Langham. I suppose he thought we were great people, Marian, like the rest of the people there.”
In the darkness Marian pouted, frowned, and laughed within herself. “I don’t think it matters much what Sir Langham thought,” said Marian; for already the young beauty began to feel her “greatness,” and smiled at her own power.
CHAPTER XXIX.
FAMILY SENTIMENTS.
When the fly jumbled into Bellevue, the lighted window, which always illuminated the little street, shone brighter than ever in the profound darkness of this late night, when all the respectable inhabitants for more than an hour had been asleep. Papa and Mamma, somewhat drowsily, yet with a capacity for immediate waking-up only to be felt under these circumstances, had unanimously determined to sit up for the girls; and the window remained bright, and the inmates wakeful, for a full hour after the rumbling “fly,” raising all the dormant echoes of the neighbourhood, had rolled off to its nightly shelter. The father and the mother listened with the most perfect patience to the detail of everything, excited in spite of themselves by their children’s companionship with “the great,” yet considerably resenting, and much disappointed by the failure of those grand visions, in which all night the parental imagination had pictured to itself an admiring assembly hanging upon the looks of those innocent and simple girls. Mr and Mrs Atheling on this occasion were somewhat disposed, we confess, to make out a case of jealousy and malice against the fashionable guests of Mrs Edgerley. It was always the way, Papa said. They always tried to keep everybody down, and treated aspirants superciliously; and in the climax of his indignation, under his breath, he added something about those “spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes.” Mrs Atheling did not quote Shakespeare, but she was quite as much convinced that it was their “rank in life” which had prevented Agnes and Marian from taking a sovereign place in the gay assembly they had just left. The girls themselves gave no distinct judgment on the subject; but now that the first edge of her mortification had worn off, Agnes began to have great doubts upon this matter. “We had no claim upon them—not the least,” said Agnes; “they never saw us before; we were perfect strangers; why should they trouble themselves about us, simply because I had written a book?”
“Do not speak nonsense, my dear—do not tell me,” said Mrs Atheling, with agitation: “they had only to use their own eyes and see—as if they often had such an opportunity! My dear, I know better; you need not speak to me!”
“And everybody has read your book, Agnes—and no doubt there are scores of people who would give anything to know you,” said Papa with dignity. “The author of Hope Hazlewood is a different person from Agnes Atheling. No, no—it is not that they don’t know your proper place; but they keep everybody down as long as they can. Now, mind, one day you will turn the tables upon them; I am very sure of that.”
Agnes said no more, but went up to her little white room completely unconvinced upon the subject. Miss Willsie saw the tell-tale light in this little high window in the middle of the night—when it was nearly daylight, the old lady said—throwing a friendly gleam upon the two young controversialists as they debated this difficult question. Agnes, of course, with all the heat of youth and innovation, took the extreme side of the question. “It is easy enough to write—any one can write,” said the young author, triumphant in her argument, yet in truth somewhat mortified by her triumph. “But even if it was not, there are greater things in this world than books, and almost all other books are greater than novels; and I do think it was the most foolish thing in the world to suppose that clever people like these—for they were all clever people—would take any notice of me.”
To which arguments, all and several, Marian returned only a direct, unhesitating, and broad negative. It was not easy to write, and there were not greater things than books, and it was not at all foolish to expect a hundred times more than ever their hopes had expected. “It is very wrong of you to say so, Agnes,” said Marian. “Papa is quite right; it will all be as different as possible by-and-by; and if you have nothing more sensible to say than that, I shall go to sleep.”
Saying which, Marian turned round upon her pillow, virtuously resisted all further temptations, and closed her beautiful eyes upon the faint grey dawn which began to steal in between the white curtains. They thought their minds were far too full to go to sleep. Innocent imaginations! five minutes after, they were in the very sweetest enchanted country of the true fairyland of dreams.