Miss Harper listened with all the quick intelligence of her bright eyes.
The only remark she made was:
"What could have led this miner to come back to Dorsetshire after our family?"
Agatha had never thought of this, indeed she did not want to think. Her heart was br.i.m.m.i.n.g with charity. She longed to empty it out in a torrent of benefactions, to which even Anne Valery"s constant stream of good deeds appeared measured and slow. Elizabeth watched her with a strange piercing expression--Elizabeth, who from her silent nest seemed to behold all things clearer, like a spirit sitting halfway in upper air, to whose pa.s.sionless wide vision distant mazes take form and proportion.
Often, there was something almost supernatural in Elizabeth and her attentive eyes.
"My dear," she said at last, when Agatha paused for a response to her own enthusiasm, "Man proposes--G.o.d disposes! Go and talk over these things with your husband first." Agatha went.
She met Nathanael on the staircase, going up to their own room.
"Ah; is it you? I am so glad. Come and tell me what has been done about the poor miner."
"He is gone. I have sent him back to Cornwall."
"What, so soon? Not to starve at that Wheal--Wheal something or other--I always forget the name?"
"Do forget it. Don"t let the matter trouble my little wife. Let her run down-stairs and think of something else."
He patted her head with a.s.sumed carelessness, and was pa.s.sing her by; but she stopped him.
"Ah! there it is--I am always to be a child! I am to run down-stairs and think of something else, while you go and shut yourself up to ponder over this affair. But I will not be shut out; I will go with you;--come!"
In playful force she drew him to their room, and closed the door.
"Now, sit down, and tell me the whole story. Why, how grave and pale it has made you look! But never mind; we"ll find out a plan to help the poor people."
He gave some inarticulate a.s.sent, which checked her by its coldness, sank on the chair she placed, and folded his fingers tightly in one another, so that Agatha could not even strengthen herself in the bold projects she was about to communicate, by stealing her own into her husband"s hand. However, she placed herself on the floor at his feet, in the att.i.tude of a Circa.s.sian beauty; or--she accidentally thought--not unlike a Circa.s.sian slave.
"Begin, please! I must hear about these mines."
"I doubt if you could understand,--at least with the few explanations I am able to give you at present."
"Nevertheless, I"ll try. Why are the poor men starving in this way?"
"You heard but now. Because the mines were first opened on a speculation, worked carelessly--dishonestly I fear--till the speculator"s money failed, and the vein stopped. Then the miners being thrown out of employ were reduced to great distress, as this man tells me."
"But why should he have come here after your father?"
"And," continued Nathanael, in a quick and rather inexplicable correlative, "the mines were lately sold as waste land. Anne Valery bought them."
"Why did she do that?"
"Out of charity; that she might begin some employment--flax-growing, I think--to find food for the poor people. There the tale"s ended, my Lady Inquisitive. Will you go down to my sisters?"
"Not yet. I want to talk to you a little--a very little longer. May I?"
And she drooped her head, blushing as the young will blush over the same charitable feeling which the old and hardened ostentatiously parade.
Mr. Harper gazed hopelessly around, as if longing any means of escape and solitude. His wife saw him and was pained.
"What--are you tired of me?"
"No, no, dear, Only I am so busy--and have so many things to think about just now."
"Tell me some of them."
"What--tell you all my business mysteries," he returned, playfully.
"Didn"t you say to me once, before we were married, that you hated secrets, and never could keep one in your life?"
"It is true--quite true. I do hate them," cried Agatha.
"And for all your smiling, I know you are keeping back something from me now."
"Foolish little wife!"
"Foolish--but still a wife. Look at me and tell the truth. Is there anything in your heart which I do not know?"
"Yes, Agatha, several things."
The sudden change from jest to deep earnest startled the wife so much that she was struck dumb.
"Circ.u.mstances may happen," he continued, "which a husband cannot always tell to his wife, especially a man of my queer temper and lonely ways.
I always knew that the woman I married would have much to bear from me.
Did I not tell her so, poor little Agatha?" And he tried to take her hand.
"You are talking in this way to soothe me, but I know well what you mean. No husband ever really thinks himself in fault, but his wife. Emma always said so."
Mr. Harper dropped the unwilling hand; but the next moment, by a strong effort, reclaimed it firmly.
"Agatha, are we beginning again to be angry with one another? Is there never to be peace between us?"
"Peace" only? Nothing closer, dearer? Yet what was it that, as Agatha looked at her husband, made her think even his "peace" better than any other"s love?
"Yes," she murmured, after watching him long in silence--"yes, there shall be peace. Whatever I am, I know how good you are. And," she added, gaily, "now let me unfold a plan of mine for proving how good we both are."
"What is it?"
"I want some money--a good deal."
Mr. Harper turned away. "Wherefore?"
"Cannot you guess? I thought you would at once--nay, that you would be the first to propose it. I am glad I am first. Now, do guess."
"I had rather not, if it is a serious matter. If otherwise, I am hardly quite merry enough for jests to-day. Tell me."
"It is a very simple thing, though it has cost me half-an-hour"s puzzling. I never thought so much about business in all my life.
Well,"--she hesitated.