Agatha's Husband Part 68

"Everything."

"You--even you!" For the moment, he cowered in such emotion as was pitiful to see; but it pa.s.sed and he grew desperate.

"I say, I will contest this will. It shall be proved invalid. My lawyer Grimes"--

"Mr. Grimes has been here, and is now gone to America," Anne whispered.

"I urged and a.s.sisted him to go, that he should not throw disgrace on the family."

Again Frederick cowered down, then rose, goaded to the last degree.

"Nevertheless, this will shall not stand. I will throw it into Chancery.

I will leave for London this very day."

"Stay," said Nathanael, starting from deep thought, and intercepting him as he was quitting the room. "One word, Frederick."

"Not one! You are all against me, but I will brave you all. I will have my rights--ay, even if I plead my father's insanity."

"Oh, horrible!" cried his sisters.

"Frederick, you know that to be impossible," said Nathanael, sternly.

"Then I will plead what may prove a deeper disgrace to the family than madness, or even--what I am supposed to have done," catching his brother's arm, and hissing out the words in his face--"I will plead that the will is _a forgery_."

Nathanael wrenched away his hold, thereby throwing Frederick back almost to the floor. The two stood for a moment glaring at one another, in that deadly animosity, most deadly when it arises between brothers,--and then the younger recovered himself. It might be because, instantaneously as the struggle had begun and ended, he had heard a woman's cry of terror, and the name uttered was not "Frederick," but "Nathanael." Also, as he stood, he felt two little hands steal from behind and tighten over his own. He grew very calm then.

"Frederick, you must unsay that word. There are some things which a man cannot bear even from his brother. No doubt can exist that this is my father's own writing, and no forgery. You know that as well as I do."

"As well as you do! Exactly what I meant to observe," said Major Harper, with his keenest and politest sneer.

Nathanael moved back. A man's roused pa.s.sions are always terrible; but there is something ten times more awful in fury that is altogether calm--molten down as it were to a white heat. Never but once--that uneffaceable _once_--had Agatha seen her husband look as he looked now.

"Pause one minute, Frederick. If you had waited and heard me speak"----

"I dare you to speak!"

"It would be better not to dare me. I am at my last ebb of patience.

I have kept faithfully my promise to you. None of our family know--not even my own wife--all that is known by you and me, and our father whom we buried yesterday. I would have saved him from the knowledge if I could, but it was not to be. Now, take care. If you drive me to it"--

He hesitated. Agatha felt his hand--the thin boyish hand--grow cold as ice and rigid as iron. She uttered a faint cry.

"Agatha, my wife," with the old sweetness in the whisper, "go and sit down. Leave me to reason with my brother."

"No, let _me_ do that," said one coming between. It was Anne Valery.

She had risen from the chair where, during almost all this time, she had sat like a statue, only none watched her, not even Agatha. When she rose, it was with a motion so slow and gliding, her soft black dress scarcely rustling as she moved, that Frederick Harper might well start, thinking a supernatural touch was on his arm.

"Anne, is it you? I had forgotten you. No"--he muttered, half to himself, turning from the contest with his brother to gaze on her--"no, I never did--never do forget you."

"I believe that. Come and speak to me here."

Unresisted, she put her arm in his, and led him away to the deep bay-window, circled with a low-cus.h.i.+oned sill, such as delights children. Anne sat down.

"Are you determined on this cruel course?"

"I must recover my rights," was the sullen answer. "Any man would."

"And when you have done this--supposing it practicable--what further do you purpose?"

"What further?" He looked puzzled, but at last perceived her meaning.

With an impulse eagerly caught, as Major Harper caught all impulses, good and ill, he cried--"Yes, I understand you. My first act, on coming to my property shall be to right poor Agatha."

"I thought so," said Anne, kindly. "But you will not be able. There are others whose claims will be upon you the instant you have money to satisfy them--the shareholders. They know nothing of Agatha Bowen.

Remember you expended her fortune as you worked the mine--_in your own name._"

Major Harper looked confounded with shame. "And you knew all this, Anne--you! For how long?"

"For some months--ever since I bought Wheal Caroline."

"And you never betrayed me!"

"We were playfellows, Frederick." She spoke softly, and turned her face to the other side of the bay-window.

He forgot she was old now--he remembered only the familiar voice and att.i.tude, the same as when in her girlish days she used to sit on the cus.h.i.+oned window-sill and talk with him for hours.

"Playfellows! Was that all, Anne? Only playfellows?"

"Only playfellows," she repeated firmly. "Never anything more. You knew that always." And, perhaps unconsciously, Anne looked down on a ring--plain, not unlike a childish keepsake--which she always wore on the wedding-finger of her left hand.

Major Harper sighed, not one of his sentimental sighs, but one from the deeps of his heart. A smile, hollow and sad, followed it. "I suppose it is idle talking now, but--but--you were my first-love, Anne! If things had gone differently, I might have been a different man."

"Not so. G.o.d ordained your fate, not I. No man need be ruined for life because a woman cannot love him. Human beings hang not on one another in that blind way. We have each an individual soul; on another soul may rest all its hopes and joys, but on G.o.d only rests its worth, its duties, and its n.o.bility. We may live to do His work, and rejoice therein, long after we have forgotten the very sound of that idle word--happiness."

She paused.

"Go on; you talk as you always used to do."

"Not quite," said Anne, with a faint smile; "I am hardly strong enough.

Frederick," and her eyes had their former lovely, earnest look--earnest almost to tears, save that girl-tears had from them long been dried,--"Frederick, for the sake of our olden days--of your mother whom we both loved--of your father who has gone to her--listen to me for a little. Trust to your brother--he will not act unjustly. Do not create dissensions in your family; do not let people say that the moment Mr.

Harper's head was laid in the grave his children quarrelled over his property."

"I do not quarrel--I but take my right," cried Major Harper, becoming again the "man of the world," as he saw, the curious glances that from time to time reached the bay-window. "Thank you for this good advice; for which my brother owes you even more than I. But I am not a child now, nor a boy in love, to be talked over by a woman."

Miss Valery rose, rather proudly. "Nor am I that woman, Major Harper.

But I have been so long united in affection with your family; I could not bear to think it would be brought to dishonour. Surely--surely _you_ will not be the one to do it."

Again as he turned to go, she drew him back by those earnest eyes.

"Frederick, it would grieve me so, ay, break my heart, to see them brought into open shame, the old familiar home, and the name--the dear, dear name."

Major Harper's bitter tongue burst its control and stung. "I now see your motive. Everybody knows how very dearly Anne Valery has all her life loved the Harper name."