4. CHAPTER IV
On the day of the marriage Agnes Lockwood sat alone in the little
drawing-room of her London lodgings, burning the letters which had been
written to her by Montbarry in the bygone time.
The Countess's maliciously smart description of her, addressed to
Doctor Wybrow, had not even hinted at the charm that most distinguished
Agnes — the artless expression of goodness and purity which instantly
attracted everyone who approached her. She looked by many years younger
than she really was. With her fair complexion and her shy manner, it
seemed only natural to speak of her as
'a girl,'
although she was now
really advancing towards thirty years of age. She lived alone with an old
nurse devoted to her, on a modest little income which was just enough to
support the two. There were none of the ordinary signs of grief in her face,
as she slowly tore the letters of her false lover in two, and threw the pieces
into the small fire which had been lit to consume them. Unhappily for
herself, she was one of those women who feel too deeply to find relief in
tears. Pale and quiet, with cold trembling fingers, she destroyed the letters
one by one without daring to read them again. She had torn the last of the
series, and was still shrinking from throwing it after the rest into the
swiftly destroying flame, when the old nurse came in, and asked if she
would see 'Master Henry,' — meaning that youngest member of the Westwick
family, who had publicly declared his contempt for his brother in the
smoking-room of the club.
Agnes hesitated. A faint tinge of colour stole over her face.
There had been a long past time when Henry Westwick had owned that
he loved her. She had made her confession to him, acknowledging that her
heart was given to his eldest brother. He had submitted to his
disappointment; and they had met thenceforth as cousins and friends. Never
before had she associated the idea of him with embarrassing recollections.
But now, on the very day when his brother's marriage to another woman had
consummated his brother's treason towards her, there was something
vaguely repellent in the prospect of seeing him. The old nurse (who
remembered them both in their cradles) observed her hesitation; and
sympathising of course with the man, put in a timely word for Henry.
'He says, he's going away, my dear; and he only wants to shake hands,
and say good-bye.'
This plain statement of the case had its effect. Agnes
decided on receiving her cousin.
He entered the room so rapidly that he surprised her in the act of
throwing the fragments of Montbarry's last letter into the fire. She
hurriedly spoke first.
'You are leaving London very suddenly, Henry. Is it business? or
pleasure?'
Instead of answering her, he pointed to the flaming letter, and to some
black ashes of burnt paper lying lightly in the lower part of the fireplace.
'Are you burning letters?'
'Yes.'
'His letters?'
'Yes.'
He took her hand gently.
'I had no idea I was intruding on you, at a
time when you must wish to be alone. Forgive me, Agnes — I shall see you
when I return.'
She signed to him, with a faint smile, to take a chair.
'We have known one another since we were children,'
she said.
'Why should I feel a foolish pride about myself in your presence? why
should I
have any secrets from you? I sent back all your brother's gifts to me some
time ago. I have been advised to do more, to keep nothing that can remind
me of him — in short, to burn his letters. I have taken the advice; but I
own I shrank a little from destroying the last of the letters. No — not
because it was the last, but because it had this in it.'
She opened her
hand, and showed him a lock of Montbarry's hair, tied with a morsel of golden
cord.
'Well! well! let it go with the rest.'
She dropped it into the flame. For a while, she stood with her back to
Henry, leaning on the mantel-piece, and looking into the fire. He took the
chair to which she had pointed, with a strange contradiction of expression
in his face: the tears were in his eyes, while the brows above were knit
close in an angry frown. He muttered to himself,
'Damn him!'
She rallied her courage, and looked at him again when she spoke.
'Well, Henry, and why are you going away?'
'I am out of spirits, Agnes, and I want a change.'
She paused before she spoke again. His face told her plainly that he
was thinking of her when he made that reply. She was grateful to him,
but her mind was not with him: her mind was still with the man who had
deserted her. She turned round again to the fire.
'Is it true,'
she asked, after a long silence,
'that they
have been married to-day?'
He answered ungraciously in the one necessary word: —
'Yes.'
'Did you go to the church?'
He resented the question with an expression of indignant surprise.
'Go to the church?'
he repeated.
'I would as soon go to — '
He
checked himself there.
'How can you ask?'
he added in lower tones.
'I have never spoken to Montbarry, I have not even seen him, since he
treated you like the scoundrel and the fool that he is.'
She looked at him suddenly, without saying a word. He understood her,
and begged her pardon. But he was still angry.
'The reckoning comes to
some men,'
he said,
'even in this world. He will live to rue the day
when he married that woman!'
Agnes took a chair by his side, and looked at him with a gentle
surprise.
'Is it quite reasonable to be so angry with her, because your
brother preferred her to me?'
she asked.
Henry turned on her sharply.
'Do you defend the Countess,
of all the people in the world?'
'Why not?'
Agnes answered.
'I know nothing against her.
On the only occasion when we met, she appeared to be a singularly timid,
nervous person, looking dreadfully ill; and being indeed so ill that
she fainted under the heat of my room. Why should we not do her justice?
We know that she was innocent of any intention to wrong me; we know that
she was not aware of my engagement — '
Henry lifted his hand impatiently, and stopped her.
'There is such a
thing as being too just and too forgiving!'
he interposed.
'I can't bear to hear you talk in that patient way, after the scandalously
cruel manner in
which you have been treated. Try to forget them both, Agnes. I wish to
God I could help you to do it!'
Agnes laid her hand on his arm.
'You are very good to me, Henry;
but you don't quite understand me. I was thinking of myself and my trouble
in quite a different way, when you came in. I was wondering whether
anything which has so entirely filled my heart, and so absorbed all that is
best and truest in me, as my feeling for your brother, can really pass away
as if it had never existed. I have destroyed the last visible things that
remind me of him. In this world I shall see him no more. But is the tie that
once bound us, completely broken? Am I as entirely parted from the good
and evil fortune of his life as if we had never met and never loved? What
do you think, Henry? I can hardly believe it.'
'If you could bring the retribution on him that he has deserved,'
Henry Westwick answered sternly,
'I might be inclined to agree with
you.'
As that reply passed his lips, the old nurse appeared again
at the door, announcing another visitor.
'I'm sorry to disturb you, my dear. But here is little Mrs. Ferrari
wanting to know when she may say a few words to you.'
Agnes turned to Henry, before she replied.
'You remember Emily
Bidwell, my favourite pupil years ago at the village school, and afterwards my
maid? She left me, to marry an Italian courier, named Ferrari — and I am
afraid it has not turned out very well. Do you mind my having her in here
for a minute or two?'
Henry rose to take his leave.
'I should be glad to see Emily again
at any other time,'
he said.
'But it is best that I should go now.
My mind is disturbed, Agnes; I might say things to you, if I stayed here any
longer, which — which are better not said now. I shall cross the Channel by
the mail to-night, and see how a few weeks' change will help me.'
He took
her hand.
'Is there anything in the world that I can do for you?'
he
asked very earnestly. She thanked him, and tried to release her hand. He
held it with a tremulous lingering grasp.
'God bless you, Agnes!'
he
said in faltering tones, with his eyes on the ground. Her face flushed again,
and the next instant turned paler than ever; she knew his heart as well as he
knew it himself — she was too distressed to speak. He lifted her hand to his
lips, kissed it fervently, and, without looking at her again, left the room.
The nurse hobbled after him to the head of the stairs: she had not forgotten
the time when the younger brother had been the unsuccessful rival of the
elder for the hand of Agnes.
'Don't be down-hearted, Master Henry,'
whispered the old woman, with the unscrupulous common sense of persons in
the lower rank of life.
'Try her again, when you come back!'
Left alone for a few moments, Agnes took a turn in the room, trying to
compose herself. She paused before a little water-colour drawing on the
wall, which had belonged to her mother: it was her own portrait when she
was a child.
'How much happier we should be,'
she thought to herself
sadly,
'if we never grew up!'
The courier's wife was shown in — a little meek melancholy woman, with
white eyelashes, and watery eyes, who curtseyed deferentially and was
troubled with a small chronic cough. Agnes shook hands with her kindly.
'Well, Emily, what can I do for you?'
The courier's wife made rather a strange answer:
'I'm afraid to tell
you, Miss.'
'Is it such a very difficult favour to grant? Sit down, and let me
hear how you are going on. Perhaps the petition will slip out while we are
talking. How does your husband behave to you?'
Emily's light grey eyes looked more watery than ever. She shook her
head and sighed resignedly.
'I have no positive complaint to make against
him, Miss. But I'm afraid he doesn't care about me; and he seems to take
no interest in his home — I may almost say he's tired of his home. It might
be better for both of us, Miss, if he went travelling for a while — not to
mention the money, which is beginning to be wanted sadly.'
She put her
handkerchief to her eyes, and sighed again more resignedly than ever.
'I don't quite understand,'
said Agnes.
'I thought your husband
had an engagement to take some ladies to Switzerland and Italy?'
'That was his ill-luck, Miss. One of the ladies fell ill — and the
others wouldn't go without her. They paid him a month's salary as
compensation. But they had engaged him for the autumn and winter — and the
loss is serious.'
'I am sorry to hear it, Emily. Let us hope he will soon have
another chance.'
'It's not his turn, Miss, to be recommended when the next applications
come to the couriers' office. You see, there are so many of them out of
employment just now. If he could be privately recommended — '
She stopped, and left the unfinished sentence to speak for itself.
Agnes understood her directly.
'You want my recommendation,'
she rejoined.
'Why couldn't you say so at once?'
Emily blushed.
'It would be such a chance for my husband,'
she
answered confusedly.
'A letter, inquiring for a good courier (a six
months' engagement, Miss!) came to the office this morning. It's another
man's turn to be chosen — and the secretary will recommend him. If my
husband could only send his testimonials by the same post — with just a word
in your name, Miss — it might turn the scale, as they say. A private
recommendation between gentlefolks goes so far.'
She stopped again, and
sighed again, and looked down at the carpet, as if she had some private reason
for feeling a little ashamed of herself.
Agnes began to be rather weary of the persistent tone of mystery in which
her visitor spoke.
'If you want my interest with any friend of mine,'
she said,
'why can't you tell me the name?'
The courier's wife began to cry.
'I'm ashamed to tell you,
Miss.'
For the first time, Agnes spoke sharply.
'Nonsense, Emily! Tell me the
name directly — or drop the subject — whichever you like best.'
Emily made a last desperate effort. She wrung her handkerchief hard in
her lap, and let off the name as if she had been letting off a loaded
gun: —
'Lord Montbarry!'
Agnes rose and looked at her.
'You have disappointed me,'
she said very quietly, but with a
look which the courier's wife had never seen in her face before.
'Knowing
what you know, you ought to be aware that it is impossible for me to
communicate with Lord Montbarry. I always supposed you had some delicacy of
feeling. I am sorry to find that I have been mistaken.'
Weak as she was, Emily had spirit enough to feel the reproof. She
walked in her meek noiseless way to the door.
'I beg your pardon, Miss. I
am not quite so bad as you think me. But I beg your pardon, all the
same.'
She opened the door. Agnes called her back. There was something in
the woman's apology that appealed irresistibly to her just and generous
nature.
'Come,'
she said;
'we must not part in this way. Let me
not misunderstand you. What is it that you expected me to do?'
Emily was wise enough to answer this time without any reserve.
'My
husband will send his testimonials, Miss, to Lord Montbarry in Scotland. I
only wanted you to let him say in his letter that his wife has been known
to you since she was a child, and that you feel some little interest in his
welfare on that account. I don't ask it now, Miss. You have made me
understand that I was wrong.'
Had she really been wrong? Past remembrances, as well as present
troubles, pleaded powerfully with Agnes for the courier's wife.
'It seems
only a small favour to ask,'
she said, speaking under the impulse of
kindness which was the strongest impulse in her nature.
'But I am not
sure that I ought to allow my name to be mentioned in your husband's letter.
Let me hear again exactly what he wishes to say.'
Emily repeated the
words — and then offered one of those suggestions, which have a special value
of their own to persons unaccustomed to the use of their pens.
'Suppose
you try, Miss, how it looks in writing?'
Childish as the idea was, Agnes
tried the experiment.
'If I let you mention me,'
she said,
'we
must at least decide what you are to say.'
She wrote the words in the
briefest and plainest form: —
'I venture
to state that my wife has been known from her childhood to Miss Agnes
Lockwood, who feels some little interest in my welfare on that account.'
Reduced to this one sentence, there was surely nothing in the
reference to her name which implied that Agnes had permitted it, or that
she was even aware of it. After a last struggle with herself, she handed
the written paper to Emily.
'Your husband must copy it exactly, without
altering anything,'
she stipulated.
'On that condition, I grant your
request.'
Emily was not only thankful — she was really touched. Agnes
hurried the little woman out of the room.
'Don't give me time to repent
and take it back again,'
she said. Emily vanished.
'Is the tie that once bound us completely broken? Am I as entirely
parted from the good and evil fortune of his life as if we had never met
and never loved?'
Agnes looked at the clock on the mantel-piece. Not ten
minutes since, those serious questions had been on her lips. It almost
shocked her to think of the common-place manner in which they had
already met with their reply. The mail of that night would appeal once
more to Montbarry's remembrance of her — in the choice of a servant.
Two days later, the post brought a few grateful lines from Emily. Her
husband had got the place. Ferrari was engaged, for six months certain, as
Lord Montbarry's courier.
