Volume Iii Part 6 (1/2)
Agnes, as we have said, was sitting in darkness, and the girl very judiciously placed her slender tallow-candle in its tin receptacle on the table, saying, as she set a chair for ”the gentleman,” ”I will bring candles in a minute, miss,” and then departed.
Agnes raised her eyes as the visiter approached, and had the light been feebler still she would have found no difficulty in discovering that it was Colonel Hubert who stood before her. He bowed to the angle of the most profound respect, and though he ventured to extend his hand in friendly greeting, he took hers with the air of a courtier permitted to offer homage to a sovereign princess.
Agnes stood up, she received his offered hand, and raised her eyes to his face, but uttered no word either of surprise or joy. Her face was colourless, and traces of very recent tears were plainly visible; she trembled from head to foot, and Colonel Hubert, frightened, as a brave man always is when he sees a woman really sinking under her s.e.x's weakness, replaced her on the sofa almost as incapable of speaking as herself.
”Do not appear distressed at seeing me, dearest Miss Willoughby,” said he, ”or I shall be obliged to repent having ventured to wait on you. I should not have presumed to do this, had not your friends, your truly attached friends, my aunt and sister, authorized my doing so.”
”Oh! what kindness!” exclaimed poor Agnes, bursting into a flood of most salutary tears. ”Do not think me ungrateful, Colonel Hubert, if I could not say ... if I did not speak to you.... Do you, indeed, come to me from Lady Elizabeth?”
”Here are my credentials,” he replied, smiling, and presenting a letter to her. ”We learned that your foolish aunt ... forgive me, Miss Willoughby; but the step I have taken can only be excused by explaining it with the most frank sincerity ... we learned that Mrs. Barnaby, having quitted Cheltenham suddenly, (the ostensible reason for doing which was bad enough), had left a variety of debts unpaid; and that her creditors, alarmed at her not returning, were taking active measures to secure her person.... Is this true?... Is your aunt arrested?”
”She is,” replied Agnes faintly.
”Good G.o.d!... You are here, then, entirely alone?”
”I am quite alone,” was the answer, though it was almost lost in the sob that accompanied it.
”Oh! dearest Agnes!” cried Colonel Hubert, in a burst of uncontrolable emotion, ”I cannot see you thus, and longer retain the secret that has been hidden in my heart almost from the first hour I saw you!... I love you, Agnes, beyond all else on earth!... Consent to be my wife, and danger and desertion shall never come near you more!”
What a moment was this to hear such an avowal!... Human life can scarcely offer extremes more strongly marked of weal and woe than those presented by the actual position of Agnes, and that proposed to her by the man she idolized. But let De la Rochefoucault say what he will, there are natures capable of feeling something n.o.bler than the love of self; ... and after one moment of happy triumphant swelling of the heart that left no breath to speak, she heaved a long deep sigh that seemed to bring her back from her momentary glimpse of an earthly paradise to things as they are, and said slowly, but with great distinctness, ”No!
never will I be your wife!... never, by my consent, shall Colonel Hubert ally himself to disgrace!”
Had this been said to a younger man, it is probable that he would not have found in it anything calculated to give a mortal wound to his hopes and wishes; but it fell with appalling coldness on the heart of the brave soldier, who had long kept Cupid at defiance by the s.h.i.+eld of Mars, and who had just made the first proposal of marriage that had ever pa.s.sed his lips. It was her age and his own that rose before him as she uttered her melancholy ”No, never!...” and Agnes became almost the first object to whom he had ever, even for a moment, been unjust. He gave her no credit ... no, not the least, for the n.o.ble struggle that was breaking her heart, and meant most sincerely what he said, when he replied,--
”Forgive me, Miss Willoughby.... Had I been a younger man, the offer of my hand, my heart, my life, would not have appeared to you, as it doubtless must do now,--the result of sober, staid benevolence, desirous of preserving youthful innocence from unmerited sorrow.... Such must my love seem.... So let it seem; ... but it shall never cost one hour's pain to you.”... He was silent for a moment, and had to struggle, brave man as he was, against feelings whose strength, perhaps, only shewed his weakness.... ”But even so,” he added, making a strong effort to speak steadily, ”even so; let me not be here in vain: listen to me as a friend and father.”
Poor Agnes!... this was a hard trial. To save him, wors.h.i.+pped as he was, from a marriage that must be considered as degrading, she could have sacrificed herself with the triumphant courage of a proud martyr; but to leave him with the idea that she was too young to love him!...
to let that glowing, generous heart sink back upon itself, because it found no answering warmth in her!... in her! who would have died only to purchase the light of owning that she never did, and never could, love any man but him!... It was too terrible, and the words ”Hubert!
beloved Hubert!” were on her lips; but they came no farther, for she had not strength to speak them. Another effort might have been more successful, and they, or something like them, might have found way, had not the gentleman recovered his voice first, and resumed the conversation in a tone so chillingly reserved, that the timid, broken-spirited girl, had no strength left ”to p.r.i.c.k the sides of her intent,” and lay her innocent heart open before him.
”In the name of Lady Elizabeth Norris let me entreat you, Miss Willoughby, not to remain in a situation so every way objectionable,” he said. ”My aunt and sister both are full of painful anxiety on your account, and the letter I have brought contains their earnest entreaties that you should immediately take up your residence with my aunt. Do not refuse this from any fear of embarra.s.sment ... of persecution from me.... I shall probably go abroad.... I shall probably join my friend Frederick at Paris. He did you great justice, Miss Willoughby; ... and, but for me, perhaps.... Forgive me!... I will no longer intrude on you!--forgive me!--tell me you forgive me, for all the pain I have caused you, and for more injury, perhaps, than you will ever know! I never knew how weak--I fear I should say how unworthy--my character might become, till I knew you; ... and to complete the hateful retrospect,” he added, with bitterness, and rising to go, ”to complete the picture of myself that I have henceforth to contemplate, I was c.o.xcomb enough to fancy.... But I am acting in a way that I should scorn a youth for who numbered half my years.... Answer my aunt's letter, Miss Willoughby ... answer it as if her contemptible nephew did not exist ... he shall exist no longer where he can mar your fortune or disturb your peace!”
Agnes looked at him as if her heart would break at hearing words so harsh and angry, when, losing at once all sense of his own suffering, Colonel Hubert reseated himself, and, in the gentlest accent of friends.h.i.+p, alluded to the propriety of her immediately leaving London, and to the anxiety of her friends at Cheltenham to receive her.
”They are very, _very_ good to me,” said Agnes meekly; ”and I shall be most thankful, Colonel Hubert, to avail myself of such precious kindness, if the old aunt, to whom I have written, in Devons.h.i.+re, should refuse to save me from the necessity of being a burden on their benevolence.”
”But shall you wait for this decision here, Miss Willoughby?”
”I have promised to do so,” replied Agnes; ”and as I may have an answer here on Thursday, I think, at latest, I would not risk the danger of offending her by putting it out of my power immediately to obey her commands, if she should be so kind as to give me any.”
The eyes of Agnes were fixed for a moment on his as she concluded this speech, and there was something in the expression of that look that shook the sternness of his belief in her indifference. He rose again, and making a step towards her, said, with a violence of emotion that entirely changed the tone of his voice,--
”Agnes!... Miss Willoughby!... answer me one question.... Should my aunt herself plead for me ... could you, would you, be my wife?”
Agnes, equally terrified lest she should say too little or too much, faltered as she replied, ”If it were possible, Colonel Hubert ... could I indeed believe that your aunt, your sister, would not hate and scorn me....”
”You might!... You will let me believe it possible you could be brought to love me?... To love me, Agnes?... No! do not answer me ... do not commit yourself by a single word!... Stay, then, here; ... but do not leave the house!... Stay till.... Yet, alas! I dare not promise it!...
But you will not leave this house, Miss Willoughby, with any aunt, without letting me ... my family, know where you may be found?”