She had feared, ever since she had been thinking of his return, that she would not be able to restrain her tears when they should be together. The very thought of meeting him had made her weep; but now when she turned her head and saw the tall man with the complexion of mahogany and the hands of teak—with the lean face and the iron-grey hair, she did not feel in the least inclined to weep—on the contrary, she gave a laugh. The change in his face did not seem to her anything to weep about; she had often during the previous three months tried to fancy what he would be like; and it actually struck her as rather amusing to find that he bore no resemblance whatsoever to the picture she had formed in her mind of the man who had lived for several years the life of a savage.
He stood looking at her for a few seconds.
Neither of them spoke.
Then he advanced with both hands outstretched.
“Agnes! Agnes!” he cried, “I have come to talk with you about him—Dick—poor Dick! You saw him on the day that ruffian killed him. You can tell me more than the others about him.”
He had both his hands held out to her—not outstretched in any attitude of passionate eagerness, but with encouraging friendliness; that was exactly what his attitude suggested to her—encouraging friendliness.
She put both her hands into his without a word—without even rising. He held them for a moment while he looked into her face. There was an expression of restlessness on his face. She saw that his forehead was furrowed with many lines. His eyes were sunken, and there was a curious fierceness in their depths.
Then he dropped her hands, and walked to the window, standing with his back to it and his head slightly bowed.
“It was a terrible shock to me to hear what happened; and to think that the same paper that contained an account of my safety told of his death! To think that within a couple of months we might have been together! My God! When I think that but for an idiotic man falling ill when we were within a month's journey of the lake—a man whose life was worth nothing—I might have been here—at his side—to stand between him and danger!”
He began pacing the room, his hands clenched fiercely and the fire of his eyes becoming more intense.
She sat there without a word, watching him. Her eyes followed him up and down the room.
He stopped suddenly opposite to her.
“It was the cruellest thing ever done on earth!” he cried. “Call it Fate or Destiny or the will of Heaven—whatever you please—I say it was the cruellest thing that ever happened! Why could not he have been spared for a couple of months—until I had seen him—until he had known that I was safe—that I had done more in the way of discovery than I set out to do? But to think that he was killed just the day before—perhaps only an hour before, the news of my safety arrived in England!—it maddens me—it maddens me! I feel that it would be better for me to have remained lost for ever than to return to this. I feel that all that fierce struggle for years—the struggle with those savages, with the climate, the malaria, the agues, the diseases which exist in that awful place but nowhere else in the world—I feel that all that struggle was in vain—that it would be better if I had given in at once—if I had sent a bullet through my head and ended it all I Where is your brother? He was with him on that fatal evening. Why did he go away before he had seen me and told me all that there was to tell about my poor Dick?”
Still she was silent. What answer could she make to such wild questions?
“Cyril should not have gone off to the other end of the world, as I hear he has done,” he continued. “He might have known that I would want to ask him much; and yet, when I come here, I find that he has been gone for more than a month, and there is positively no one in this neighbourhood who can tell me anything more of the horrible affair than has appeared in the newspapers. Fawcett, the solicitor, had kept for me the newspaper account of the inquest and the trial. I saw Fawcett last night, and then the surgeon—Crosby. We went to him after dinner. He it was who showed up the suicide theory. How could it ever be supposed that Dick would commit suicide? And yet, if it hadn't been for Crosby—Oh, it was clearly proved that he could not have shot himself; and yet if it wasn't for the possibility of his having shot himself, would they have pardoned the wretch who did the murder? I read the whole account of the trial, and Fawcett told me a good deal more. If ever a brutal murder was done by a man it was that—and yet they allowed the fellow to escape—to escape-to keep his life! That is what they call justice here! Justice! I tell you that those savages—the most degraded in existence—among whom I lived, have a better idea of justice than that.”
Still she was silent. What could she say to him while he was in this mood? He had resumed his pacing of the floor. She no longer watched him. She looked out of the window. She had a strange impression that she had been present at such a scene before, and that she had taken the same impersonal interest in it all. Yes, it had been at a theatre: she had watched one of the actors pacing the stage and raving about British justice—the playwright had made the character a victim of the unjustness of the law. But the man had kept it up too long: he had exhausted the interest of the audience. They had looked about the theatre and nodded to their friends; but now she only looked out of the window. The audience had yawned: she was not so impolite. She would not interrupt the man before her by speaking a word.
“What excuse did they give for letting the assassin escape?” Claude Westwood was standing once more at the window—the window through which she had watched him coming up the drive to bid her good-bye upon that October evening long ago. “Excuse? The man was found guilty of murder—the most contemptible of murders. He had not the courage to face his victim; he fired at him from behind—and yet they let him escape. But if they had only done that it would not have mattered so much. If they had given him his freedom I would have had a chance of amending the lapse of justice. But they give him his life and protection as well. Why did they not set him free and give me a chance of killing him as he killed my poor brother?”
He stamped upon the floor, and struck his left palm with his right fist as he spoke.
She gave a little cry as she shuddered. He had at last succeeded in startling her. She had put up her hands before her face.
He looked at her quickly and came in front of her.
“Forgive me, Agnes,” he said in an agitated voice. “Forgive me; I have frightened you—horrified you. I have been so long among savages; but I feel that I could kill that wretch, and be doing no more than the will of Heaven. I feel that I could kill all that bear his accursed name, and yet be conscious of doing no evil. My brother—ah, if you knew how I have been supported through these long dismal years by thinking of him—by the thought of the pleasure it would give him to see me again! It was chiefly during that eight months which I spent alone in the forests that I thought about him. What a life I led! I had previously lived the life of a savage, but in the forest I had to live as a wild beast. The terrible vigilance I needed to exercise—it was a war to the knife against all the wild things with fangs and tusks and claws. It was the Bottomless Pit; but the hope of returning to him made me continue the fight when I had made up my mind to fling away my knife and to await the end, whether it came by a snake, a wild elephant, or a lion. I thought of him daily and nightly; and now when I come home I find And I cannot kill the man who made my hour of triumph my hour of bitterness! There I go, raving again. Forgive me—forgive me, and tell me about him. You saw him on that day, Agnes.”
For the first time she spoke.
“Yes, I saw him,” she said. “He was just the same as when, you saw him last. He was not the man to change, nor was he the man to expect that others would change.”
He looked at her with something of a puzzled expression on his face.
“Change? Change? You mean that he—I don't quite know what you mean, Agnes. Change?”
“He never changed in his belief in you. When people took it for granted that you were dead—years ago—how many years ago?—he believed that you were alive—that you would one day return. He believed that and never changed in his faith. I believed it too.”
“And that is the man whose life was taken by a ruffian who remains alive to-day!”
He had sprung to his feet once more, and was speaking in a voice tremulous with passion. He had ignored her reference to herself and her changeless faith.
“He was a man whose soul was full of mercy,” she said. “Every one here has heard of his many acts of mercy. There was no one too black for him to pardon. The merciful are those whom Christ pronounced blessed.”
“It is not possible that you have set yourself to exculpate the murderer,” he cried.
“It is not for me to exculpate him,” she replied. “But I know that our God is a God of mercy. Are you not a living witness to that? Were not you spared when every one of your company was lost?”
“I am a poor example for a preacher,” said he. “I was spared, it is true; but for what? For what? I am spared to come back to my home to find that it is desolate. Is that your idea of mercy? I tell you that in all that I have passed through, in my hour of deepest misery, in all those terrible days spent in the loneliness of the forest, I never felt so miserable, so lonely, as I did in that house last night. Mercy? It would have been more merciful to me to have let the cobra and the vulture have their way with me; I should have been spared the supreme misery of my life.”
“How you loved him!” she said, after a little pause.
“Loved him! Loved him!” he repeated, as if the words made him impatient with their inadequacy. “And the way we used to talk about what would happen when I returned!”
“Ah! what would happen—yes. I do believe that we also talked about it together.”
“And here I returned to find all changed.”
“All changed? All? You take it for granted that all has changed? that nothing is as you left it? that no one—no feeling remains unchanged?”
She was looking up at him as he stood gazing out of the window.
“Everything has changed for me. I don't know why I came back. I tell you, Agnes, the very sight of the things that were familiar to me long ago only increases my sense of loss—my feeling that nothing here can ever be the same to me.”
“What! that nothing—nothing—can ever be the same to you?”
“That is what I feel.”
“You do not think it possible that it is you and you only who have changed?”
“What? Is it possible that you do not see that it is because my affection has not changed through all these years I am miserable to-day!”
“Your affection?”
“Is it possible that you know me so imperfectly as to fancy that my affection for my brother would decrease during the years of our separation? Ah, I thought you would take it for granted that I was differently constituted. I fancied that you would understand what my affection meant.”
“And have you found that I did you wrong?”
“You wrong me if you suggest—I do not say that you did actually go so far—that my affection for my brother could ever change.”
“I do not suggest that your affection—your affection for your brother—has changed. Oh, believe me, you have all my sympathy. I have felt times without number, after it was known that you were alive, that your home-coming would be cruel. I knew what a blow it would be to you to receive the news of poor Dick. I hoped that my sympathy—Ah, you must be assured that I feel for your suffering, with all my heart.”
“I am sure of it,” said he, taking for a moment the hand that she offered him. “If I had not been assured of it, should I be here to-day? I do not underrate the value of sympathy. I have felt better for the sympathy even of strangers. At Uganda—at Zanzibar—everywhere I got kind words; and aboard the steamer—God knows whether I should have landed or not if it had not been for the kind way some of my fellow passengers treated me. Ah! the world holds some good people! They took me out of myself—they made the world seem brighter—well, not brighter, but at least they made it seem less dark to me. When we separated in London yesterday the darkness seemed to fall upon me again. Ah, yes! I have felt what was meant by real sympathy; and yours is real, Agnes. I remember how good you were long ago. If you had been my sister you could not have taken a greater interest in me. And your father—ah, he died years ago, they told me last evening! You see, you were the first person for whom I inquired.”
“That was so good of you,” she said quietly. There was no satirical note in the low tone in which she spoke.
“Ah! Was it not natural?” he asked. “But I think that I was slightly disappointed to hear that you were still unmarried. I had fancied you now and again with your children about you; and I was ready with a score of stories for the youngsters. I wrote something to poor Dick about himself. I took it for granted that he too would have married and become surrounded with prattlers. Yes, I'm nearly sure that I mentioned your name in my letter to poor Dick.”
“Your memory does not deceive you,” she said, and now there was a suggestion of satire in her voice, though he did not detect it. “Yes, your letter was brought to me by Mr. Fawcett. Why he should have brought it to me, I am sure you could hardly tell.”
“He may have thought that it contained something that should be seen only by the most intimate friend of the family,” he suggested. “You see, poor Dick's will mentioned you prominently. That probably impressed Fawcett. But you read what I wrote? You saw that I had not forgotten you—I mentioned your name?”
“Yes, you mentioned my name in a way that showed me you had forgotten me,” she replied.
“I don't seem to understand you to-day,” he said. “I suppose when one has been for eight or nine years without hearing a word of English spoken, one degenerates.”
“Alas! alas!” she said.
Then he went away.
She had, of course, left her seat to shake hands with him, and when he had gone she did not sit down. She stood where he had left her, in the centre of the room, with her eyes turned listlessly toward the window. She watched him buttoning up his coat as he walked quickly down the drive. A breath of wind whisked and whirled about him the leaves that had fallen since morning.
Which was the dream—the man whom she seemed to see hurrying away from the house, or the man whom she seemed to see coming toward her amid the same whirling leaves, out from the same grey October landscape?
That was the form taken by her thoughts as she stood there. The landscape was precisely the same as it had been when she had awaited his coming to bid her good-bye before starting on his expedition. The same soft greyness was in the sky, the same skeleton trees stretched their gaunt arms out over the road; the sodden green of the grassy meadows, the great, bloom of the chrysanthemums that hid the garden walls, all were the same as they had been; but there was a man hurrying away on the road by which she had stood to watch his approach nine years before.
It seemed to her that she was having but another of the many dreams that had come to her of that man; yes, or was it the memory of a dream that returned to her at that moment—a dream of a devoted lover coming to hold her in his arms and to kiss her face before setting out on the expedition that was to bring honour to him—that was to give him a name of honour which she would share with him?
Which was the dream? Were both dreams? Had she passed her life in a dream, and had she only awakened now?
She drew her hand across her eyes and turned away from the window with an exclamation of impatience. But then she seated herself in front of the fire and bent forward, gazing into the glowing log that had burnt itself out in the grate.
Yes, she was awake now. She could look back and see clearly all that had taken place since she had had that dream of kissing a man and bidding him go forth and win a name for himself. She saw clearly that she had built up for herself the baseless fabric of a vision—that her life had been built upon a foundation no more substantial than air, and now she was sitting among its ruins.
She had lived with but one thought, with but one hope, ever before her, and that hope was to hear the footsteps of the man whom she loved, on the gravel of the drive down which he had gone after bidding her good-bye. Well, her hope had been realised. She had heard the sound of his feet coming to her—yes, and going from her. Heaven had answered her prayer—the one prayer which she had cried through all the years. She only asked to see him again; all the happiness to follow she took for granted.
And now she was seated gazing at the ashes of the log that had once been a tree—at the ashes of the love that had once been her life.
She was full of amazement. How had this wonderful thing come about? How was it that among all her thoughts of disaster, she had never taken account of the possibility of such a thing as the death of his love? His love had always seemed to her the one thing on earth which was certain. To have doubt of it would be as ridiculous as to question the likelihood of the light of the sun being quenched in darkness. Her faith had sustained her when nothing else had come to her aid.
And yet now she sat there looking into the ashes.
She was benumbed with astonishment; and what caused her most astonishment was her own selfpossession during the interview which she had just had with Claude Westwood. She marvelled how it was that she had sat in that chair quietly listening to him, while he boasted of his constancy—of his having remembered her name.
He could not understand what she meant when she said that the fact of his remembering her name was a proof that he had forgotten her. Surely he should have understood that she meant that he could not make such a reference to her as he had made in his postscript, unless he had forgotten what her nature was.
And yet, that one phrase which had been forced from her, was the solitary expression of the terrible thought that overwhelmed her—the thought that her life was laid in ashes. The reflection upon this marvellous calmness of hers amazed her.
She had heard of women finding themselves face to face with their perfidious lovers, and denouncing them in tragic tones. Was it possible that she was differently constituted from other women? Was ever woman so faithful to a man as she had been? And was not the unfaithfulness of the man in proportion to the fidelity of the woman? And yet she had been content to utter only that one sentence of reproach, and its meaning had been so obscure that he had failed to appreciate it!
The worst of it was that she felt in her heart no bitterness against him. She had no burning wish to reproach him for having made a ruin of her life. She had no fervid desire to be revenged upon him. She wondered if she was different from other women to whom revenge was dear. Had all the spirit—that womanly element which women call spirit—been crushed out of her by that antagonistic element known as constancy? Had her faith in that man made her faithless to her womanhood?
She failed to find an answer to any of these questions; and she went about her daily duties as she had always done, only with that feeling of numbness upon her heart.
But when night came, and her maid had left her with her freshly-brushed hair falling over her shoulders, she bent her head forward between the candles that were lighted on each side of her toilet glass. She turned over the masses of her hair, and saw the grey lines here and there among them. Then, and only then, her tears began to fall. They came silently, but irresistibly—not in a torrent of passion, but slowly, blinding her eyes, and causing all those pictures of the past which now came crowding before her, to be blurred.
It was a tear-blurred picture that she now saw of Claude Westwood as he had appeared before her eyes on the eve of his departure for Africa—that picture which she had cherished in her heart of hearts through the dreary years. She now failed to see in it any of the features of the man who had been with her that day speaking those wild words about the act of mercy which had been done in regard to the poor wretch who had been found guilty of the murder of Richard Westwood. She had noticed how his eyes had glared with the lust of blood in their depths, as he asked why the wretch had not been either hanged or set free—set free, so that he, Claude, might have a chance of killing him.
She shuddered, and covered her face with her hands, as if she were trying to shut out this new picture that came to take the place of the old. Was it her doom, she asked herself, to live for the rest of her days with this new picture ever before her eyes—this picture of the haggard, sun-scorched man, who had come back to civilisation with those deep eyes of his full of the blood-lust of the savage?
She picked up his portrait, which he had given her long ago, and which had been her sweetest consolation ever since. She had looked upon it and had kissed it the previous night—every night since he and she had parted. She looked at it now for a few moments.... With a cry she flung it on the floor and trampled upon it; she set her heel upon it, and ground the glass of the frame into the painted ivory.
“Wretch—wretch—wretch! Murderer of my youth!” she cried in a low voice, tremulous with passion. “As you have treated me, so shall I treat you. Thank God, I have recovered my womanhood! Thank God!”
She gave a laugh as she looked at the fragments at her feet But the second laugh which she gave was not a laugh, but a sob. In a torrent of tears she fell on her knees beside the shattered picture, moaning:
“My beloved! Oh, my beloved, forgive me! what have I said? What have I done? Oh, come back to me—come back to me, and we shall be so happy!”
Her tears fell on the fragments of ivory and glass as she gathered them off the floor. As she bent forward her hair fell upon them, hiding them from view. She gathered up all carefully and put every scrap she could find into a drawer, clasping her hands and crying once more:
“Forgive me—forgive me!”
She closed the drawer and fell on her knees, praying that he might be given back to her; but she stopped abruptly after she had repeated her imploration. “Give him back tome!” For the truth came upon her with a shock: it was not her heart that was uttering that imploration.
“Dead love lives nevermore;
No, not in heaven!”
That was what her heart was murmuring, while the vain repetition came from her lips:
“Give him back to me—give him back to me!” But before she had closed her eyes in sleep she had come to the conclusion that she had been somewhat unjust toward him. She felt that it was her wounded vanity which had caused her to be angry with him. She should have known that his first thought on returning to the house where he had lived with his brother, would be of his brother. She should have known that the reflection that he was for ever separated from the brother to whom he had ever been deeply attached, would take possession of him, excluding every other thought—even the thought that he had returned to be loved by her.
She felt that it should now be her duty to lead him back to her. So soon as the poignancy of his reflection that he was for ever separated from his brother had become less, he would turn to her for comfort, and he would be comforted. The memory of their old love would come back to him, and all the happiness to which she had looked forward for both of them would be theirs. Would it not be possible for them to gather up the fragments of their shattered love as she had gathered up the fragments of the picture she had broken?
Alas, the question which she asked herself failed to bring her happiness; for she knew that no hand could piece together the broken ivory which she had hidden away in her drawer; and still her heart kept moaning:
“Dead love lives nevermore;
No, not in heaven!”
The next morning her maid brought her among her letters one in a strange handwriting. It was signed “Clare Tristram.”
The name brought back to her long-distant memories of the girl bearing this name, who was to have married Agnes's uncle—her mother's brother, but who on the eve of the wedding, had fled with another man.
She recalled some of the incidents of the story, the most important being that she had been deprived of the privilege of wearing her bridesmaid's dress. She recollected that this had been a great grief to her; she had been about eleven years of age when that disappointment overtook her, and now she could not help recalling how, when she had been told by her mother that Clare Tristram had gone away to marry some one else, she had obligingly offered to wear the dress upon the occasion of Miss Tristram's wedding to somebody else, for she thought it would be a great pity that so lovely a dress should be locked up in a drawer.
The letter which she now found before her was not from this Clare Tristram, but from her daughter. Still it was signed Clare Tristram, and this fact set her thinking. She had never heard the name of the man whom the girl had actually married, and she had certainly never heard that the man was any relation to Clare Tristram.
“Dear Madam,—I write to you in great doubt and some fear,” the letter ran. “My mother, who died only two months ago at Cairo, where we have lived for several years, told me, a few days before the end came to her long illness, that I had no relations in the world, and no friends to whom she could entrust me after she was gone; but that she felt that you would accept the charge, if only to save me from her fate. These were the exact words of my dear mother, and I repeat them to you, because I think they may constitute some claim upon your pity, and I feel that I have only your pity to appeal to.
“My mother told me how she had done a cruel wrong to your mother's brother; but that act brought with it such a punishment as few women are called on to bear. The one for whom she forsook the noblest man in the world showed himself within a year of her marriage to be so bad that when he deserted her, she would not let me bear his name. She would not even let me know what that name was.
“Only a few days before her death I heard the pitiful story from her lips, and she told me to go to you, and entreat you to save me from the cruel fate that was hers. I ventured to ask her if she thought it likely that you would receive me, on the ground that she had done a great wrong to your relative; but she said, 'Agnes Mowbray's mother was my dearest friend and schoolfellow, and I know that her daughter will be as her mother was.'
“Dear Miss Mowbray, I venture to repeat to you the doubts which I expressed to my mother; and if you say to me that you do not wish to see me, I shall not trouble you further; nor indeed shall I pose as one who has been unjustly treated. I have sufficient money for my support, and besides, even if that were to come to an end, I can earn enough by my singing to keep myself comfortably—more than comfortably. The kind friends who took charge of me on the journey to England are quite willing that I should remain with them for an indefinite period. But I can do nothing except what my beloved mother desired me to do.
“That is why I write to you now, entreating you to reply to me. I hope you will.
“Clare Tristram.”
Agnes read this unexpected letter with mixed feelings. It had not much of a suppliant air about it. The writer seemed desirous only to place her in possession of the facts which had compelled her to write.
“Is this child sent by God to draw my thoughts away from myself?” she said as she laid down the letter. “Is the child coming to give me comfort in my sad hour?”
Before evening she had written to Clare Tristram asking her to come on a visit to The Knoll.
She felt better for the girl's coming before the girl had come. Her household was not on so large a scale as to make it unnecessary for her to busy herself with preparations to receive a guest; and this business prevented her from dwelling upon her own position. She had no time left even to consider what steps, if any, she should take to further her design of winning back to herself the love which she had once cherished.
Before she went to sleep on the next night it seemed to her that the time when Claude Westwood loved her was very far off; and before she woke it seemed to her that the time when she loved Claude Westwood was more remote still.
She wondered if her maid and the housemaid would notice the disappearance of the miniature which had stood upon her table. With the thought she glanced in the direction of the drawer in which the fragments were laid—only for a moment, however; she had no time for further reflections.
So far as the servants were concerned she might have made her mind easy. The housemaid had, when brushing out the room, come upon some small splinters of glass and ivory, and it did not require the possession on her part of the genius of a Sherlock Holmes to enable her to associate such a discovery with the disappearance of the only object of glass and ivory that had been in the room.
There was a good deal of innuendo in the comments made in the kitchen upon the housemaid's discovery. The parlour-maid shook her head and turned her eyes up to the ceiling. The housemaid said that if she wished to say something she could say it. The cook, however, scorning all innuendo, made the far-reaching statement that all men are brutes, and challenged her auditors to deny it if they could.
They could not deny it on the spur of the moment, though subsequently, when the cook was absent, they compared experiences, and came to the conclusion that the statement should be modified in order to be wholly accurate.
The next day Agnes was overtaken in the village by Sir Percival Hope. She could not understand why it was that her face should flush on seeing him; it made her feel uncomfortable for a few moments, and then the strange thought crossed her mind that he was about to tax her with having told him that she and Claude Westwood were to be married. Sir Percival had certainly looked narrowly at her for some time. But then he had begun to talk upon some general topic of engrossing local interest—the curate's health, or something of that sort. (The curate lived on the reputation of having a weak chest, and every autumn his chest became a topic in the neighbourhood.)
It was not until Sir Percival had walked back with her almost to the entrance to The Knoll that he said very quietly:
“I wonder if you are happy now.”
Again she felt her face flushing.
“Happy—happy?” she said, interrogatively.
“Happy in the prospect of happiness,” said he. “I suppose that is the simplest way of putting the matter.”
She was silent for a long time, until she came to perceive that the silence meant far more than she intended. That was why she cried rather quickly:
“You have seen him—Claude—you have conversed with him?”
“Yes. He came to see me yesterday,” replied Sir Percival. “Great heavens! What that man has gone through. He deserves his happiness—the greatest happiness that any man dare hope for.”
“Ah, I meant that he should be so happy,” she cried, and there was something piteous in her tone.
“And you will make him happy,” said her companion. “When a woman makes up her mind on this particular point, a man cannot help himself. His most strenuous efforts in the other direction count for nothing. He will be made happy in spite of himself.”
She turned her eyes upon him inquiringly.
“You heard him speak—you heard the way he talks on that terrible matter?”
“Yes; that was how it came about that he visited me. He wanted me to tell him all that I knew on the subject—he was anxious to have the scene in the Assize Court described to him by some new voice. He wished to know if I signed a petition for the reprieve of the murderer, and when I told him no petition had been signed, but that the Home Secretary had reprieved the man after, I supposed, consultation with the judge who tried the case, and with the law officers for the Crown, he seemed to be overcome with astonishment and indignation.”
“That's The most terrible thing,” said Agnes, with an involuntary shudder. “He regards the granting of his life to that man as a worse crime than the one for which he was condemned. I cannot understand that hunger for revenge—that thirst for the blood of a fellow-creature.”
“You cannot understand it because you are a Christian woman,” said Percival. “But for my part I must say that I have the widest sympathy for all people; and no passion, however strange it may seem to others, is quite unintelligible to me. I have lived long enough in queer places to have become impressed with the fact that the civilisation which we profess to regard as a part of ourselves is but the thinnest of veneers—nay, of varnishes. The best of us is but a savage with all the passions—all the nature—of a savage glowing beneath a coat of varnish. My dear Miss Mowbray, we should pray that we may not find ourselves in the midst of such circumstances as put a strain on our civilisation—upon our Christianity.”
She gave another little shudder, she knew not why, and turned her wondering eyes upon him.
“My sympathy with savages is unlimited,” continued Sir Percival. “One should not judge Claude Westwood from the standpoints to which we have accustomed ourselves. It must be remembered that he has lived for years among the worst savages known in the world; and that he has been obliged to struggle for his life after the most savage, that is the most natural, fashion. Nature regards a single life very lightly, and the worst of Nature is that she regards the life of a man as no more sacred than the life of a brute.”
“But we have our Christianity.”
“Thank God that we have that! Pray to God that we may be able to hold the shield of Christianity between ourselves and our nature. I have talked all this cheap philosophy to you—this elementary evolution—only to help you in your hour of need. I take it upon me to advise you unasked, and I would say to you, Do not judge too hastily a man who has lived for so long among barbarians—a man who was compelled to fight for his existence, not with the weapons of civilisation and Christianity, but with the weapons of savagery. In a short time he will once again have become reconciled to the principles of civilisation. He will learn once more to forgive. For the present, pity him.”
He spoke in a low voice, putting out his hand to her. She took his hand, and pressed it. When he turned and went away from her in the direction of his own gates she remained motionless in the road, looking after him. All her thought regarding him took the form of one thought—that he was the noblest man that lived. He sought only her happiness—so much was sure; he had done his best to reconcile her to the man who was his rival, because he believed that she loved that man.
And he had not pleaded in vain. She felt that she had been selfish and inconsiderate in regard to Claude. She had expected him to come to her just as he had left her—to take her into his arms just as he had done on the evening when they had parted. She had been intolerant of his indifference to her on his return—of his thirst for the blood of the man who had taken the life of his brother.
When she entered her house she went to the drawer where she had placed the fragments of his picture. She looked at these evidences of her impatience for a long time, and when she closed the drawer she was consolidated in her resolve to win him back to her—to wait patiently until he chose to return to her; she knew no better way of winning an errant love than by waiting for it to return.
The newspapers, however, were by no means disposed to adopt the policy of patience in respect of a distinguished African explorer who declined to give them any information regarding his travels. They had never found such a desire for retirement to be among the most prominent characteristics of African explorers, and they could not believe that Claude Westwood was sincere in objecting to give any of the representatives of the great organs of public opinion a succinct account of the past nine years of his life—as much copy as would make a couple of columns.
The great obstacle in the way of their enterprise was, of course, the handsome income enjoyed by Mr. Westwood. The splendid offers which they made to him produced no impression on him; nor did the assurance that they were not desirous of getting any information from him that might prejudice the sale of his forthcoming volume or volumes—they assumed that a volume or volumes would be forthcoming—no, their desire was merely to give him an opportunity of telling the public just enough to whet their curiosity for his book.
He replied that he had no intention of writing a book, and that he did not seek for publicity in any way.
This was very irritating to the representatives of the newspapers, who came down to Brackenhurst with such frequency during the first few days after Mr. Westwood's return. But they revenged themselves upon him in another way; for, as he refused to tell them anything about Central Africa, they told their readers everything about Brackenshire. They gave occasional photographs of Westwood Court: “Westwood Court—North View,” “Westwood Court—The Queen's Elms,” “Westwood Court—The Trout Stream.” One newspaper representative surpassed all his brethren by obtaining an excellent photograph of the interior of the dairy at the Home Farm.
This was how matters stood in regard to Mr. Westwood and the outer world when Agnes awaited the arrival of the girl whom she had invited to visit her for an indefinite period. The period was necessarily an indefinite one: Agnes could not tell how long she should have to wait for the return of the love that had once been hers.
She got a letter from Clare Tristram, in reply to her invitation, thanking her for her kindness, and suggesting a certain train by which she hoped to travel to Brackenhurst, if its arrival was at an hour that suited Miss Mowbray's convenience.
She arrived by that train. Agnes sent her brougham and her maid to meet her at the station, and she herself was waiting at the open door of the house when the visitor arrived.
She was a tall girl—quite as tall as Agnes—and with very dark hazel eyes; her hair was brilliantly golden, with a suggestion of coppery red about it in some lights. Her face possessed sweetness rather than beauty of shape or tint, and the curve of her mouth suggested the expression of a smile when seen from one direction. Looked at from the front its expression seemed one of sadness.
Agnes saw both the smile and the sadness as she gave her hand to the girl, and led her into one of the drawing-rooms.
“You must have some tea before changing your dress,” she said. (She had not failed to notice that the girl's travelling dress was extremely well made, and that her hat was in perfect taste. She knew that most women are to be known by their hats.) Then she stood in front of the girl, looking into her face tenderly. “I should know you in a moment from your likeness to your mother,” she continued.
“Ah, you did not see her recently,” said Clare, with a little sob.
“I did not see her since you were born,” said Agnes. “But still I recollect her face distinctly. I can see her before me when I look at you now. Poor woman! She suffered; but she had you. No one could take you from her.”
“That may have been a consolation to her long ago,” said Clare, “but I am afraid that during her last illness the thought of my future was a great burden to her. You see, we had no relations in the world; at least, none to whom I could be sent.”
“I feel that it was kind of your mother to think of me,” said Agnes, as they seated themselves and drank their tea.
“She used to speak daily of you, Miss Mowbray,” said the girl. “She told me how attracted she had been to your mother until—Ah, I heard the sad story. Believe me, she was bitterly punished.”
“Poor creature! I knew that she had been unhappy. Your father—I have been trying to recollect his name during the past few days, but I have not been successful.'
“I never heard what his name was. My mother kept it from me from the first. She said she never wished to hear it again. It was not until I was fifteen that I learned that she bore her maiden name, and not my father's. I fear he was—well, he cannot have been a good man.”
“We need not refer to him again. I have no curiosity on the subject, I assure you.”
“I have long ago lost any that I once had. I hope I am not an unnatural daughter, but I have no wish to hear anything about my father.”
“Instead of talking about him, my dear, we will talk together about your mother. I feel that in entrusting you to me she paid me the greatest compliment in her power. I am sure that we shall be friends—sisters, Clare.”
“How good you are! Ah, we shall be sisters. My dear mother knew you; though I feared—I told you so in my letter—that you would consider the claim made upon you a singular one. I did not say so to her; I did not wish her last days to be worried with doubts, so I promised her to go to you, and she gave me a letter which was to introduce me. She desired me to put it into your hand. I do so now, though there is no need for it, is there?”
“None whatever,” said Agnes, smiling, as she took the sealed letter which the girl handed to her. “I shall read it at my leisure. Oh no; you do not need any letter of introduction to me.”
“I was afraid to come here directly on landing,” said Clare; “yes, even though I bore that letter; so I thought it better to write to you from London, stating my case.”
She had risen, laying her tea-cup on the table. Agnes rang the bell for her maid to show Miss Tristram to her room.
So soon as she was alone Agnes clasped her hands and said:
“Thank God!—thank God! I feel that she has been sent here to comfort me.”
She was led to wonder what the girl would have done if she had come to Brackenhurst and found her, Agnes, on the eve of being married to Claude Westwood. How desolate the poor thing would have felt—almost as desolate as Agnes herself had felt a few days before!
She thought that Clare was the sweetest girl she had ever seen. She felt better for her coming already; and with this thought on her mind she picked up the letter which she had laid on the table. She broke the seal and began to read the first page. Before she finished it her eyes were tremulous. The words that the dying woman had written committing her daughter to her care, seemed full of pathos. She laid down the letter, she could not read it on account of her tears. Some time passed before she picked it up once more; but before she had read half-way down the second page she gave a start and a little cry. With her head eagerly bent forward and her eyes staring she continued reading, half articulating the words in a fearful whisper. The hand that was not holding the letter was pressed against her heart. Then she gave another cry, and almost staggered to a chair into which she dropped. The letter fell from her hands; she stared straight in front of her, breathing heavily.
“My God!” she cried at last. “My God! to think of it! To think of her in this house! Oh, the horror of it!”
Her words came with a shudder, and she covered her face with her hands. The next instant, however, she had started up and was gazing eagerly toward the window; the sound of a foot that she knew came from the gravel of the drive.
She stood there with one hand clutching the back of a chair, the other still pressed against her side. She was listening eagerly for the ringing of the bell.
The ring came. She rushed across the room to where the letter was lying, and hastily thrust it into her pocket. When Claude Westwood entered the room she was seated with a book in front of the fire.