Volume Ii Part 12 (1/2)

This was said as the party descended the stairs, so that Agnes escaped without being obliged to answer; at which she greatly rejoiced, as refusal or acquiescence seemed alike impossible.

Colonel Hubert stopped at the door of the dining-room, wished the party good morning, and persisted in making his retreat, though much urged by Mrs. Peters to join their meal. But he was in no mood for it--he wanted to be alone--he wanted in solitude to question, and, if possible, to understand his own feelings; and with one short look at Agnes he left them, slipped a crown into the hand of the butler who opened the door for him, and set off for a long walk over Durdham Downs, taking, as it happened, exactly the same path as that in which he had met Agnes a fortnight before.

As soon as he was gone, another rather clamorous a.s.sault was made on Agnes upon the subject of her having so long kept her power of singing a secret from them all.

”I cannot forgive you for not having at least told me of it,” said Mary.

”And what was there to tell, my dearest Mary? You that are used to such playing as that of Elizabeth and Lucy, would have had fair cause to laugh at me, had I volunteered to amuse you in their stead.”

”I don't know how that may be,” said Lucy; ”what Colonel Hubert talked about was your singing. Do you think you can sing as well as me?”

”It is a difficult question to answer, Lucy,” replied Agnes with the most ingenuous innocence; ”but perhaps I might, one of these days, if I were as well instructed as you are.”

”Well, my dear, that is confessing something, at any rate,” said Lucy, slightly colouring. ”I am sure I should be very happy to have you in a duet with me, only I suppose you have not been taught to take a second.”

”Oh yes!... I think I could sing second,” replied Agnes with great simplicity; ”but I have not been much used to it, because in all our duets Miss Wilmot always took the second part.”

”And who is Miss Wilmot, my dear?” said Mrs. Peters.

”The daughter of the clergyman, mamma, where Agnes was educated,”

replied Mary.

”Here comes Mr. Stephenson,” exclaimed Mrs. Peters gaily. ”Now, Agnes, you positively must go up stairs again, and let us hear what you can do.

I shall be quite delighted for Mr. Stephenson to hear you sing, if you really have a voice, for I have repeatedly heard him speak with delight of his sister, Lady Stephenson's, singing.”

”Then I am sure that is a reason for never letting him hear mine,” said Agnes, who was beginning to feel very restless, and longing as ardently for the solitude of her closet, in order to take a review of all the events of the morning, as Colonel Hubert for the freedom of the Downs.

But the friends around her were much too kind and much too dear for any whims or wishes of her own to interfere with what they desired; and when, upon the entrance of Frederick, they all joined in beseeching her to give them one song, she yielded, and followed meekly and obediently to the pianoforte.

She certainly did not sing now as she had done before; the fervour, the enthusiasm was pa.s.sed; yet, nevertheless, the astonishment and delight of her auditors were unbounded. Praises and reproaches were blended with the thanks of her female friends, who, forgetting that they had never invited her performance, seemed to think her having so long concealed her talent a positive injury and injustice. But in the raptures of Frederick Stephenson there was no mixture of reproach; he seemed rapt in an ecstasy of admiration and love, the exact amount of which was pretty fairly appreciated by every one who listened to him except herself. A knavish speech sleeps not so surely in a foolish ear, as a pa.s.sionate rhapsody in one that is indifferent. Our Agnes was by no means dull of apprehension on most occasions; but the incapacity she shewed for understanding the real meaning of nineteen speeches out of every twenty addressed to her by Frederick, was remarkable. It is probable, indeed, that indifference alone would hardly have sufficed to const.i.tute a defence so effectual against all the efforts he made to render his feelings both intelligible and acceptable; pre-occupation of heart and intellect may account for it better. But whatever the cause of this insensibility, it certainly existed, and in such a degree as to render this enforced exhibition, and all the vehement praises that followed it, most exceedingly irksome. A greater proof of this could hardly be given than by her putting a stop to it at last by saying,--

”If you really wish me to sing a song to-night, my dear Mrs. Peters, you must please to let me go now, or I think I shall be so hoa.r.s.e as to make it impossible.”

This little stratagem answered perfectly, and at once brought her near to the solitude for which she was pining.

”Wish you to sing to-night, _pet.i.te_?...” said Mrs. Peters, clapping her little hands with delight ... ”I rather think I shall.... I have had the terror of Mrs. Armstrong before my eyes for the last fortnight, and I think, Mary, that we have a novelty here that may save us from the faint praise usually accorded by her connoisseur-s.h.i.+p....”

”I imagine we have, mamma,” replied Mary, who was in every way delighted by the discovery of this unknown talent in her favourite. ”But Agnes is right; she must really sing no more now.... You have had no walk to-day, Agnes, have you?” kindly adding, ”if you like it, I will put on my bonnet again and take a stroll with you.”

Agnes blushed when she replied,--”No, I have not time to walk to-day....

I must go home now;” much as she might have done if, instead of intending to take a ramble with her thoughts, she had been about to enjoy a _tete-a-tete_ promenade with the object of them.

”At least we will walk home with you,” replied her friend; and accordingly the two eldest girls and Mr. Stephenson accompanied her to Sion Row.

Ungrateful Agnes!... It was with a feeling of joy that made her heart leap that she watched the departure of her kind friends, and of him too who would have shed his blood for her with gladness ... in order that in silence and solitude she might live over again the moments she had pa.s.sed with Hubert--moments which, in her estimation, outweighed in value whole years of life without him.

Dear and precious was her little closet now. There was nothing within it that ever tempted her aunt to enter; her retreat, therefore, was secure, and deeply did she enjoy the conviction that it was so. It was not Petrarch, it was not Shakspeare, no, nor Spencer's fairy-land, in which, when fancy-free, she used to roam for hours of most sweet forgetfulness, that now chained her to her solitary chair, and kept her wholly unconscious of the narrow walls that hemmed her in. But what a world of new and strange thoughts it was amidst which she soon lost herself!...

Possibilities, conjectures, hopes, such as had never before entered her head, arose within her as, with a singular mixture of distinctness of memory and confusion of feeling, she lived again through every instant of the period during which Colonel Hubert had been in her presence, and of that, more thrilling still as she meditated upon it, when she unconsciously had been in his. How anxiously she recalled her att.i.tude, the careless disorder of her hair, and the unmeasured burst of enjoyment to which she had yielded herself!... How every song she had sung pa.s.sed in review before her!... Her graces, her _roulades_, her childish trials of what she could effect, all seemed to rise in judgment against her, and her cheeks tingled with the blushes they brought. Yet in the midst of this, perhaps,