**Written for FanFic100!**
A Familiar Face
055. Spirit.
"How do you enjoy the play, Miss Wickfield?"
"Very well, sir, thank you."
It was a question that had been repeated three times already, and the play only half-an-hour completed, but Mr. Waterbrook was a very solicitous host, and eager to ensure his companion's satisfaction with the evening proceedings.
At first Agnes had intended, as a matter of course, to be quite honest with the gentleman, and admitted, upon his first inquiry, that she had not yet caught the story's thread, and on the second to reply, "I believe so," but having eventually become absorbed in her own contemplations and losing the story entirely, upon the third and fourth questions she merely replied in the affirmative. "For I do not wish Mr. Waterbrook to think me ungrateful," she thought, and indeed, it was a very beautiful performance, "but…I think I would have been quite as happy in my room at the house."
Mr. and Mrs. Waterbrook had insisted upon the theatre, in order (as they said) to do honor to their young guest, and to encourage her to partake of the amusements of London. "You keep your room far too much for a child of your age! Not even twenty, and pent up like an old maid!" Mrs. Waterbrook had cried, that very day. Agnes was under the impression that perhaps Mrs. Waterbrook was the one who felt pent up, because Agnes had endeavored to be very sociable with her hosts and, indeed, was not as solitary as she was in her home in Canterbury. But, she well knew, it would make little difference to protest, and so she selected her green evening dress and allowed herself to be ushered out the door under the great arm of Mrs. Waterbrook, who continued to proclaim, "Why come to London if not to have a bit of pleasure!"
Why come to London indeed? It was a question Agnes had asked herself, over and over, for the past several days. It was that thread that ran through her mind during the theatre in place of the performance, and so absorbed her attentions that she had to laugh, with a sort of rueful smile, that Mr. Waterbrook had paid to bring her to the theatre, when he might as well have left her at home with her thoughts for much less expense.
Just a week before she had been secretly – very, very secretly – rejoicing at the rare opportunity of spending a few days alone with her papa. Uriah Heep had gone away to London and – of course, it was hateful to think so – she felt that Papa might come to be more like his old self, with his clerk gone and unable to influence him. Agnes had even wondered if, perhaps, she might have an opportunity to wield a bit of influence herself. But her small, carefully built and fragile plans were scattered the moment Papa told her the dread news – his considerations of partnership – so unlike any of the things she had hoped to speak of! Uriah Heep's influence hung about her father still, though he was scores of miles away.
And the very next day, her father had told her that Mrs. Waterbrook had requested a visit from her dear Miss Wickfield.
"I have only met Mrs. Waterbrook twice," Agnes had responded, quietly. She observed the letter Papa held in his hand, which he implied to be from Mrs. Waterbrook. She thought it strange it should be written on legal paper, and in a clerk's hand, and she said no more. But she wondered if, far away in London, Uriah had somehow divined her plans of influencing her Papa, and wished to create a separation from him.
It was thoughts of this sort of dismal nature that perplexed her weary mind. She felt mean, suspicious, and ungrateful, and she didn't think it fair she felt that way – which caused her to feel only meaner. It was not the girl's fault that she was seeing the truth – recognizing her father's weaknesses, and knowing their cause and their outcomes – and she had been taught, all her life, to honor what was true and good. What to do, then, when the truths she saw brought her only the harshest of feelings, and engendered such doubts and misgivings?
She ignored them. She swept them away. She did not feel any better for it, at least not yet, but she was content with telling herself how she was wrong in thinking her papa weak, and Uriah evil, for she was much used to blaming herself, until it was almost a sort of perverse comfort to her.
She had almost been able to determine the storyline of the play again, which was being enacted in quaint ancient costume and which involved a solemn sacrifice to a monstrous beast, most cunningly constructed out of pasteboard, when she observed Mrs. Waterbrook, who had sat perfectly still and focused on the play all evening, turn her turbaned head into the aisle.
"What, pray, is that?" that woman demanded, and Mr. Waterbrook's pug-like face assumed a ferocious expression, which caused Agnes to quickly hide her smiling face behind her hand.
"Why, it is a couple of drunken boys!" the lady pronounced and Agnes, having been trained in such perception for many years, instantly detected the odor of old wine. Turning toward the aisle herself, she saw who was stumbling down toward their box.
It was Trotwood.
With what mortification did she back into the corner of her box as her brother, her dear brother, blundered his way in! He smiled upon recognizing her, to be sure, but it was such a strange smile. It is like Trotwood's smile, but yet like my father's smile – and I know why.
Mr. Waterbrook, who had gone quite purple, was hemming and hawing with exceeding displeasure, and Mrs. Waterbrook was protesting loudly, but they both seemed content to simply sit and do nothing - as if they'd never seen a man who'd been drinking! thought Agnes, with a kind of exasperation.
He was very amiable, of course – he was Trotwood – but Agnes could not help but feel that if they had actually been brother and sister, his closeness to her, in the box, might have been brought into question. She barely knew what she was saying to him – not because of distress or confusion, as she supposed her company believed, but because she was simply repeating the words she had spoken so often before, adjuring him, out of habit, to listen for her sake.
While she spoke to dear Trotwood in hasty whispers – "Ask your friends to take you home!" – other gentlemen had made their way toward the box and she noticed one, who seemed to be very close to Trotwood, tried to drag him out of the box. He seemed to think it all a mighty good joke that Trotwood had been drinking, and though he lectured him as he dragged him back out of Agnes' company and into the aisle, there was a careless, swaggering smile on his face.
Mr. Steerforth – for so it was – said not a word to Agnes; but when she looked at him, she noted his amusement and satisfaction at Trotwood's expense with a bitterness that came upon her only once or twice in her life. She thought, "That is his Uriah."
Agnes sat in silence between Mr. and Mrs. Waterbrook until the excitement had died away, and their focus on the performance below resumed.
"How do you enjoy the play, Miss Wickfield?" Mr. Waterbrook whispered, once again.
"Very well, sir, thank you."
-X-
When Trotwood called upon her at Mr. Waterbrook's house the next day, he was so weighed down with a heavy remorse he shed tears – an action not uncommon in a man who has been drinking the night before and, as such, not unfamiliar to Agnes.
"When, Agnes," he cried in despair, "will you forgive me last night?"
"When I recall it," said Agnes.
After all, had she not taken great care to forget it?