“I wish very much,” said Agnes, with an earnestness and courage which somewhat startled Marian—“I wish very much you could come home with us to our little house in Bellevue.”
“Yes,” said Marian doubtfully; but the younger sister, though she shared the generous impulse, could not help a secret glance at Agnes—an emphatic reminder of Mamma.
“No, I must make no friends,” said Rachel, rising under the inspiration of Louis’s will and injunctions. “It is very kind of you, but I must not do it. Oh, but remember you are to come to Winterbourne, and I will try to bring Louis to see you; and I am sure you know a great deal better, and could talk to him different from me. Do you know,” she continued solemnly, “they never have given me any education at all, except to sing? I have never been taught anything, nor indeed Louis either, which is much worse than me—only he is a great genius, and can teach himself. The Rector wanted to help him; that is why I am always sure, if Louis would let him, he would be a friend.”
And again a faint half-distinguishable blush came upon Rachel’s face. No, it meant nothing, though Agnes and Marian canvassed and interpreted after their own fashion this delicate suffusion; it only meant that the timid gentle heart might have been touched had there been room for more than Louis; but Louis was supreme, and filled up all.
CHAPTER VI.
THREE FRIENDS.
That night, faithful to her purpose, Rachel did not appear in the drawing-room. How far her firmness would have supported her, had she been left to herself, it is impossible to tell; but she was not left to herself. “Mrs Edgerley came, saying just the same things as Lord Winterbourne,” said Rachel, “and I knew I should be firm. Louis cannot endure Mrs Edgerley.” She said this with the most entire unconsciousness that she revealed the whole motive and strength of her resistance in the words. Rachel, indeed, was perfectly unaware of the entire subjection in which she kept even her thoughts and her affections to her brother; but she could not help a little anxiety and a little nervousness as to whether “Louis would like” her new acquaintances. She herself brightened wonderfully under the influence of these companions—expanded out of her dull and irritable solitude, and with girlish eagerness forecast their fortunes, seizing at once, in idea, upon Marian as the destined bride of Louis, and with a voluntary self-sacrifice making over, with a sigh and a secret thrill of pride, the only person who had ever wakened any interest in her own most sisterly bosom, to Agnes. She pleased herself greatly with these visions, and built them on a foundation still more brittle than that of Alnaschar—for it was possible that all her pleasant dreams might be thrown into the dust in a moment, if—dreadful possibility!—“Louis did not like” these first friends of poor Rachel’s youth.
And when she brightened under this genial influence, and softened out of the haughtiness and solitary state which, indeed, was quite foreign to her character, Rachel became a very attractive little person. Even the sudden change in her sentiments and bearing when she returned to her old feeling of representing Louis, added a charm. Her large eyes troubled and melting, her pale small features which were very fine and regular, though so far from striking, her noble little head and small pretty figure, attracted in the highest degree the admiration of her new friends. Marian, who rather suspected that she herself was rather pretty, could not sufficiently admire the grace and refinement of Rachel; and Agnes, though candidly admitting that there was “scarcely any one” so beautiful as Marian, notwithstanding bestowed a very equal share of her regard upon the attractions of their companion. And the trio fell immediately into all the warmth of girlish friendship. The Athelings went to visit Rachel in her great bare study, and Rachel came to visit them in their pretty little dressing-room; and whether in that sun-bright gay enclosure, or within the sombre and undecorated walls of the room which looked out on the kitchen-garden, a painter would have been puzzled to choose which was the better scene. They were so pretty a group anywhere—so animated—so full of eager life and intelligence—so much disposed to communicate everything that occurred to them, that Rachel’s room brightened under the charm of their presence as she herself had done. And this new acquaintanceship made a somewhat singular revolution in the drawing-room—where the young musician, after her singing, was instantly joined by her two friends. She was extremely reserved and shy of every one else, and even of them occasionally, under the eyes of Mrs Edgerley; but she was no longer the little tragical princess who buried herself in the book and the corner, and neither heard nor saw anything going around her. And the fact that they had some one whose position was even more doubtful and uneasy than their own, to give heart and courage to, animated Agnes and Marian, as nothing else could have done. They recovered their natural spirits, and were no longer overawed by the great people surrounding them; they had so much care for Rachel that they forgot to be self-conscious, or to trouble themselves with inquiries touching their own manners and deportment, and what other people thought of the same; and on the whole, though their simplicity was not quite so amusing as at first, “other people” began to have a kindness for the fresh young faces, always so honest, cloudless, and sincere.
But Agnes’s “reputation” had died away, and left very little trace behind it. Mrs Edgerley had found other lions, and at the present moment held in delusion an unfortunate young poet, who was much more like to be harmed by the momentary idolatry than Agnes. The people who had been dying to know the author of Hope Hazlewood, had all found out that the shy young genius did not talk in character—had no gift of conversation, and, indeed, did nothing at all to keep up her fame; and if Agnes chanced to feel a momentary mortification at the prompt desertion of all her admirers, she wisely kept the pang to herself, and said nothing about it. They were not neglected—for the accomplished authoress of Coquetry and the Beau Monde had some kindness at her heart after all, and had always a smile to spare for her young guests when they came in her way; they were permitted to roam freely about the gardens and the conservatory; they were by no means hindered in their acquaintance with Rachel, whom Mrs Edgerley was really much disposed to bring out and patronise; and one of them, the genius or the beauty, as best suited her other companions, was not unfrequently honoured with a place in Mrs Edgerley’s barouche—a pretty shy lay figure in that rustling, radiant, perfumy bouquet of fine ladies, who talked over her head about things and people perfectly unknown to the silent auditor, and impressed her with a vague idea that this elegant and easy gossip was brilliant “conversation,” though it did not quite sound, after all, like that grand unattainable conversation to be found in books. After this fashion, liking their novel life wonderfully well, and already making a home of that sunny little dressing-room, they drew gradually towards the end of their fortnight. As yet nothing at all marvellous had happened to them, and even Agnes seemed to have forgotten the absolute necessity of letting everybody know that they “did not belong to great people,” but instead of a rural Hall, or Grange of renown, lived only in Number Ten, Bellevue.
CHAPTER VII.
A TERRIBLE EVENT.
For Agnes, we are grieved to confess, had fallen into all the sudden fervour of a most warm and enthusiastic girlish friendship. She forgot to watch over her sister, though Mrs Atheling’s letters did not fail to remind her of her duty; she forgot to ward off the constant regards of Sir Langham. She began to be perfectly indifferent and careless of the superb sentinel who mounted guard upon Marian every night. For the time, Agnes was entirely occupied with Rachel, and with the new world so full of a charmed unknown life, which seemed to open upon them all in this Old Wood Lodge; she spent hours dreaming of some discovery which might change the position of the unfortunate brother and sister; she took up with warmth and earnestness their dislike to Lord Winterbourne. If it sometimes occurred to her what a frightful sentiment this was on the part of children to their father, she corrected herself suddenly, and declared in her own mind, with heart and energy, that he could not be their father—that there was no resemblance between them. But this, it must be confessed, was a puzzling subject, and offered continual ground for speculation; for princes and princesses, stolen away in their childhood, were extremely fictitious personages, even to an imagination which had written a novel; and Agnes could not help a thrill of apprehension when she thought of Louis and Marian, of the little romance which Rachel had made up between them, and how her own honourable father and mother would look upon this unhappy scion of a noble house—this poor boy who had no name.