My dear Agnes,” he cried, before he had more than entered the room. “My dear Agnes. I only heard this afternoon of the heroic way you behaved on that day—that terrible day when those fools made the run upon the bank. I have come to thank you. Why on earth I was not told of that incident the day I arrived, I am at a loss to know. I don't think that the bank can boast of much intelligence. At any rate, I know now that you saved us—you saved us from—well, the cashier says the doors of the bank would have been closed inside half an hour if you had not appeared so opportunely. How can I ever thank you sufficiently?” She looked at him. He failed to notice within her eyes a strange light. He could not know that she had heard nothing of his speech.
“Yes, I repeat that we owe all to you,” he went on. “I'm sure that poor Dick felt it deeply. And Sir Percival Hope—it was his cheque, the cashier told me; and yet he didn't say a word to me about it when I called upon him a few days ago. But how on earth did you raise the money? Perhaps—I don't know—should I congratulate you—and him? Yes, certainly, and him.”
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I was wondering—ah, these things sometimes do occur—I mean—Is it possible that you intend to remain at the Court during the winter? Surely your doctors will not allow it. You will go abroad.”
“I see that you evade my question,” said he, with a laugh. “There is no reason why you should do so. I think Hope a very good chap, especially since I have heard that it was his cheque. And I said in my letters to Dick that I supposed you had got married long ago.”
“I'm afraid that I have not been paying sufficient attention to what you are saying. Sir Percival Hope?—you mentioned Sir Percival,” said Agnes.
“Heavens! I have been wasting my compliments—you have been thinking of something else.”
“I wonder if you have learned to forgive as well as to forget,” said she.
“What on earth do you mean?” he cried. “You are a trifle distraite, are you not? What has forgiving or forgetting to do with what I have been saying?”
“The wretched man—I was thinking of him. You have forgotten a good deal of the past that others have remembered, but forgiveness—that is different.”
“Do you mean to ask me if my feelings are unchanged in respect of that ruffian—that wretch who killed the best man that ever lived in the world? If that is your question I can answer you. I stand here and tell you that no night passes without my cursing him and all that belongs to him. If he has a brother—if he has a wife—if he has a child—may they all suffer what”—
“No, no, no, no; for God's sake, don't say those words, Claude. You do not know what they mean. You cannot know.”
She had sprung from her chair and had caught the hand which he had clenched fiercely as he spoke.
“You cannot tell who it is that you are cursing,” she said imploringly. “No one can tell. He may have a wife—a child—would you have them suffer for the crime of their father?”
“I would have them suffer. It is not I, but God, who said 'unto the third and fourth generation.' I am on the side of God.”
“And this is the man whom I once loved!”
He started as she flung his hand from her—the fingers were still bent—and walked across the room, striking her palms together passionately.
He started. There was a pause before he said slowly and not without tenderness—the tenderness of the sentimentalist, not the lover:
“How young we both were in those days! I'm sure we both believed most fervently that we were in love. Alas! alas! But in affairs like these the statute of limitations is automatic in its working. Nature has decreed, so we are told, that in the course of seven years every particle of that work which we call man becomes dissolved; so that nothing whatever of the man whom we see to-day is a survival of the man whom we knew seven years ago.”
“Ah, that is true—so much we know to be true,” she cried, and in her voice there was a note of tenderness.
She looked across the room and saw that his eyes were not turned toward her. They were turned toward the window. She saw that he was staring into the garden, and on his face there was an expression of surprise, mingled with doubt.
She took a few steps to one side, and her hand made a little spasmodic grasp for the curtain, when she had seen all that he saw.
Out there a charming picture presented itself against a background of bare trees, and a blue autumn sky from which the sun had just departed. A tall girl, wearing a white dress and crowned with shining golden hair, stood on the grass, while above and around her and at her feet scores of pigeons flew and circled and strutted. She was encircled with moving plumage—snow-white, delicate mauve, slate blue—some trembling poised about her head, some with their wings drawn up as they were in the act of alighting, others curving in front of her, and now and again letting themselves drop daintily upon her shoulders, and perching upon the finger which she held out to them. All the time she was laughing and crooning to them in a musical tone.
That was the scene which he was watching eagerly, as he gazed through the window, quite oblivious of the tact that Agnes was watching him breathlessly.
“Merciful heaven!” she heard him whisper. “Merciful heaven!”
She gave a little gasp. There was a silence in the room. Outside there was a laugh and the strange croon of the girl.
He turned to Agnes.
“Who is that girl?” he asked.
She affected not to understand his question. She raised her eyes, saying:
“Girl? What girl?”
“There—outside—on the lawn.”
“Oh, Miss Tristram—have you seen her before?”
“Have I seen—how does she come to be here? Ah, I need not ask you. You heard me speak of her and invited her here. You are so good. Did you tell her that I was in this part of the country? I do not think that I ever mentioned that my home was in Brackenshire.”
The expression of surprise which had been on his face became one of pleasure.
She watched him dumbly, as he unfastened the latch of the window and opened one of the leaves. She saw Clare turn round at the click of the latch, and glance toward the window. She saw the look of surprise that had been on Claude's face come to Clare's as she stood there in the midst of the wheeling birds. The pause lasted only a few seconds; it was broken by the laugh of the girl as she went to the window.
He stepped out to meet her with outstretched hand, and the girl laughed again.
Agnes fell back against the tapestry curtain clutching it with each hand, and staring across the empty room.
“My God! he knows her—he knows her.”
One of her hands went down instinctively to the pocket into which she had thrust the letter brought by Clare. She kept her hand over it as though she were trying to hold it back from some one who wanted to get it. That was her attitude while she listened to the surprised greeting of the girl by Claude. He was saying that they had not been parted for long—certainly not so long as Clare—he called her Clare quite trippingly—had predicted they should be; and Clare inquired of him if he knew Miss Mowbray. Was he also a guest in Miss Mowbray's house?
“Heavens!” he cried, “surely I mentioned in the course of one of my long chats aboard the oldAndalusianthat I lived near Brackenhurst.”
“Lived near Brackenhurst?” she said with a laugh. “Why, I was under the impression that you lived near Bettinviga, in the land of the Gakennas, beyond the great Smoke Falls of the Zambesi I hope I have improved in my pronunciation of the names. Oh no; you never said anything about Brackenshire. If you had done-so I should certainly have told you that I was going into that country also—that is, if I succeeded in inducing Miss Mowbray to receive me.”
The expression that Agnes's face had worn gradually passed away as she heard them chatting together making mutual explanations. She was able to loose her hands from the curtain that had supported her. She was even able to give a smile—a sort of smile—as she straightened herself and took a step free of the curtain and facing the window.
“Is it possible that you were fellow-passengers on theAndalusianshe asked.
“I fancied that I had told you of meeting Clare and her friends aboard the steamer that took us on from Aden,” said he. “Yes, I feel certain that I told you how much better I felt for the sympathy they offered me.”
“You mentioned that, but you did not give me any names,” said Agnes. “Pray come back to the sphere of influence of the fire, Clare; you must learn not to trust our English climate too implicitly. How the pigeons have taken to you! You must have some charm for them.”
“We lived in Venice for two years, and the pigeons of St. Mark's became my greatest friends,” said the girl. “I used to feed them daily, and it was while feeding them that a dear old man, who loved them also, taught me how to talk to them. I could not resist the temptation of trying if the birds here understood the language, so I went out to them from the next room when I saw them on the lawn.”
“And I think you may assume that your experiment was a success,” said Agnes, closing the window when the girl had entered, followed by-Claude. “Do you know of any other charms to prevail upon other creatures?”
“Oh yes,” she cried: “a fakir whom I knew at Cairo taught me how to charm lizards. The first time we see any green lizards I will show you how to mesmerise them.”
“I'm afraid you'll not have quite so much practice here as you had in Egypt,” said Agnes. “Our green lizards are not plentiful. I will get you to impart to me your secret so far as the pigeons are concerned; I won't trouble you to teach me the incantation for the lizards. You joined theAndalusianat Suez, I suppose?”
“Yes; Colonel and Mrs. Adrian took charge of me on the voyage to England, and it was from their house in London I wrote to you,” replied Clare.
“Adrian and I had gone through a campaign together,” said Claude. “His face was the first that I recognised on my return to civilisation. I knew no one at Uganda, and at Zanzibar I avoided seeing any one, though the newspaper correspondents were very friendly; but Adrian was the first man I saw when I got aboard the steamer at the Red Sea. Seeing him made me feel old. I had left him a captain with about half-a-dozen between him and a majority. It appears that the frontier people had taken advantage of my enforced absence to get up a quarrel or two with their legitimate rulers who had annexed them a year or two before; and it only required a few accidents to give Adrian his command.”
“Colonel Adrian told us that Mr. W'estwood had been giving it as his opinion that it was very hard that he had not had an opportunity of distinguishing himself while the Colonel had been so fortunate,” laughed Clare, turning to Agnes.
“Did the newspaper men show any great desire to have an interview with your friend, Colonel Adrian?” said Agnes.
“If they had they would have learned something about the Chitralis and their ways,” said Claude. “I'm afraid that the people in England are slightly indifferent to the great question of the North-West frontier.”
Clare laughed, and Agnes perceived that he had been giving a little imitation of the Indian officer, who had become an authority on the great frontier question and could not understand how people at home refused to devote themselves to its study.
“Englishmen want to hear about nothing but Africa just now,” said Agnes. “They have come to regard Africa as an English colony.”
“And yet the greatest living explorer of Africa refuses to communicate a single paragraph to the newspapers in regard to his discoveries,” cried Clare. “I consider that a great shame; I hope you feel as strongly on the subject, my dear Miss Mowbray.”
“Mr. Westwood seems to have lost all his early ambition,” said Agnes.
“That is true,” said Claude, in a low voice. “I have lost my brother.”
Clare looked grave. Agnes glanced at the man. She wondered how it was possible that he could forget the words which he had spoken in that same room when she only had been there to hear them. “It is for you—it is for you,” he had cried. “It is for you I mean to go to Africa. I have set my heart upon winning a name that shall be in some degree worthy of you, my beloved!”
Those were the words which he had said to her while his arms were about her and her cheek rested on his shoulder. How was it possible that he could forget them? How could he now talk about having lost all his ambition? She was his ambition. He had gone forth to win a jewel of honour that should be worthy of her wearing, and he had returned, having snatched that jewel from the very hand of Death, but he had not laid it at her feet.
Still she was silent. She remembered what Sir Percival had said to her: it was left for her to win him back.
It was Clare who had the boldness to break the impressive silence that followed his pathetic phrase, “I have lost my brother.”
“You told me that he had ambition,” said she. “You told me that his ambition was your success, and yet you refuse to let the world know how you have succeeded.”
He looked at her for a few moments. Her face was slightly flushed by the force of the earnestness with which she had spoken.
“Perhaps,” he said, slowly, “perhaps my ambition may awake again one of these days. I saw some queer things. Sometimes, when I think of them—of the strange people—savages, but with a code and religious traditions precisely the same as those of the Hebrews—I feel that it might perhaps be well if I wrote something about them; but then, I feel—oh no, I can't bring myself to do anything now. I cannot do anything until”—
His face darkened. He walked away from her to the window. In an instant he called out in quite a different tone from that in which he had spoken:
“There are your pets still, Clare. They are waiting for you on the lawn.”
“I must send them back to their cote without delay,” said the girl “May I step outside for one moment, Miss Mowbray?”
“Only for a moment, my dear child. I am afraid that you place too much confidence in our English climate.”
He opened the window, and Clare stepped out among the pigeons that rose in a cloud to meet her. Claude followed her slowly.
Agnes watched them without leaving her seat. They stood side by side in the fading light.
“God help her! God help her!” said Agnes, in a low voice.
Iwonder if you will think our life here desperately dull,” said Agnes, when she had dinedtête-à-têtewith Clare that same night. “I wonder will you beg of me to turn you out after you have experienced a week of our country life.”
“I don't think it very likely,” said Clare. “I feel too deeply your kindness in taking me in. You see, I was not brought up to look upon much society as indispensable. We lived in many places on the Continent, my mother and I, but we never mingled with the English colony in any place. My mother seemed to shun her own countrypeople. We made only a few friends in Italy, and even fewer during the two years we were in Spain. Of course, when we went to Egypt we had to be more or less with the English there; but I suppose my mother had her own reasons for never becoming amalgamated with the regular colony. As a rule, we saw very little society; and, indeed, I don't feel as if I wanted much more now. I think I have become pretty independent of my fellow-creatures. If I am allowed to paint all day and to sing all night, I'll ask for nothing more.”
“You will sing for me to-night,” said Agnes, “and to-morrow you can begin your painting. I suppose you had many chances of studying both arts in Italy.”
“No one could have had more,” replied Clare. “I know that my education generally was neglected. I'm not sure of my spelling of English, and as for my sums, I know they are deplorable. But my dear mother was afraid that one day I might find myself compelled to earn money to live, and she said that no girl ever made money by spelling and working out sums.”
“I think she was right in that idea. Being a governess is not the same as making money. And so she gave you a chance of studying painting and music? But painting and music do not invariably mean making money either.”
Clare laughed.
“No one knows that better than I do, Miss Mowbray,” she cried.
“Please do not call me Miss Mowbray,” said Agnes. “Have I once called you Miss Tristram? My name is not a horrid one. It does not set one's teeth on edge to pronounce it. Now don't say that there's such a difference between our ages; there really is not, you know.”
“I shall never call you anything but Agnes again,” said the girl.
“That's right; and perhaps in time I shall come to think myself as young as you are. The story of your education interests me greatly. Pray continue it. Did you learn painting or singing first? I suppose that question is absurd; you must have found your voice when you were a child.”
“I found myself with a kind of voice, but no one seemed to think that it was worth considering. That was why I spent five years studying the technique of painting. It was only one day when I thought myself alone in a picture gallery and began singing a country song, that a little grey-haired man appeared from behind one of the pillars. I thought that he was one of the caretakers, and I did not pause until I found that he was looking at me, as I thought angrily. I then asked him if singing was prohibited in the gallery. I shall never forget the way he looked at me and laughed. 'Singing—singing?' he cried. 'Ah, my sweet signorina, even if singing is prohibited you could not be charged with having transgressed. Singing!' Then he shook his head. 'But it was I who sang just now,' I explained. 'Great god Bacchus! you do not flatter yourself that that sort of thing is singing,' he cried. 'Oh no; singing is an art—and an art in which you will excel rather than in the art of painting. Fling that execrable daub in which you caricature the blessed St. Sebastian into the place where the dust is thrown, and come with me. I shall make you a singer.'”
“How amusing! And you obeyed him?”
“I stared at the old man for a minute, thinking him the most impudent person! had ever met; but like a flash it came upon me that he was not a caretaker, but Signor Marini, the great maestro. I was so overcome with surprise that in an instant I had done exactly what he told me. I threw away the picture on which I was working—I really don't think it was so very bad—and I went away with him. He asked me where I lived, and he accompanied me there. He amazed my poor mother with what he said about mv voice, or rather about the possibilities he fancied he foresaw for my voice, and he taught me for two years for nothing.”
“And were his predictions regarding your voice fulfilled?”
“I am afraid he fancied that I should become much better than I am. But at any rate he made it possible for me to earn money by my singing. I hope, however, I may not have to support myself in that way. I do not like facing an audience. I had to do so twice in Italy, and I found it distasteful.”
“But you do not mind facing an audience of one, I hope.”
“Oh, I will sing to you all night. I sang almost every night aboard theAndalusian. I think Mr. Westwood liked me to do so. There was a bond between us—a bond of suffering. My dear mother had only been a month dead. I sang with my thoughts full of her.”
“And there is a bond between you and me also—a bond of suffering. You will sing to me, my Clare.”
Agnes had her hand in her own as they went to the drawing-room, and after a short time the girl sat down to the piano and sang song after song for more than an hour.
Her singing was the sweetest that Agnes had ever heard. She did not sing brilliantly at first, but tenderness and sympathy were in every note. No one could hear her without being affected by her. It seemed as if no one could be critical of her art: it is only when one ceases to feel that one becomes critical; but Clare made it pretty plain to Agnes when they talked together later on that Maestro Marini had never been quite so carried away by the singing of any of his pupils as to be unable to criticise it, and Agnes declared that he must be the most unfeeling man living.
Before leaving the piano the girl sang an operatic scena of the most brilliant character and amazed Agnes with the extent of her resources. She showed that her imagination was on a level with that of the great master who had built up the work to a point of sublimity that had aroused the enthusiasm of Europe. Agnes saw that Clare had at least the genius to know what the maestro meant when he had taught her how to treat the scena.
She kissed the girl, saying:
“Yes, you can always earn money by your singing; but you can always achieve much more by it: there is no one alive who could remain unmoved when you sing.”
“I will sing to you every night,” cried Clare. “You will tell me when I fail to do what I set out in the hope of doing in any of my songs. That, the maestro says, is the sure test of singing; if you make yourself intelligible you can sing, if you are unintelligible you are wrong. No composer who is truly great will write merely for the sake of showing what difficulties a vocalist can overcome by teaching and practice; he will not be intricate, only when he cannot express himself with simplicity. I think music is the most glorious of all the arts.”
She quoted from her master as they went upstairs to their bedrooms and then kissed and parted. But though Clare was asleep within a few minutes of lying down, Agnes was not so fortunate. She lay awake for an hour thinking her thoughts, and then she rose, and wrapping a fur-lined cloak about her, sat down in a chair in front of the fire, looking into its depths.
“I cannot send her away again,” she said. “I cannot send her out into the world. God has given me her life, and I have accepted the trust. I cannot send her away. He need never learn the truth, the terrible truth. Oh, if he had but some pity! If she could but impart some pity to him!”
Another hour had passed before she rose, saying once more, in a tone of decision:
“Yes, she shall stay. Whether it be for good or evil she shall stay. If I cannot win him back I shall still have her.”
Somehow, Agnes did not now feel so strongly as she had done a few days before that it was laid on her to win back Claude. The fact was that, after her last conversation with Sir Percival, she had been led to consider by what means she should endeavor to win him back to her. What were the arts which she should practise to compass this end? She had often read of the successful attempts made by young women to regain the affections of the men who had been cruel enough—in some cases wise enough—to forsake them. She could not, however, remember exactly what means they had adopted to effect their purpose. She had an idea that most of the men had been brought by force of circumstances to perceive how false-hearted the other girl was; she had a distinct recollection that the other girl played a very important part in the return of the lover to his first and only true love.
After giving some consideration to the matter she came to the conclusion that she, too, could only trust to time to lead Claude back to her. She thought of the lines:
“Having waited all my life, I can well wait
A little longer.”
She had spent her life in waiting for him to return to her, but he had not yet done so; the man who had gone forth loving her, and with her promise to love him, had not returned to her and her love. She would have to wait a little longer.
But somehow she did not now feel impatient to see him once again at her feet. The terrible sense of loneliness that had fallen on her when he had left her presence on the day after his arrival at the Court—that appalling consciousness of desertion—was no longer experienced by her. She awoke from her few hours' sleep on the morning after Clare had come to her, without her previous feeling of being alone in the world. Her first thought now was that in half an hour she would be seated at the breakfast-table opposite to that sweet girl who had been sent to her by a kind Fate, just at the moment when she needed her most.
Before the half hour had quite passed she was sitting opposite to Clare; and before another hour had passed she was sitting by the side of Clare in her phaeton, pointing out to her the various landmarks round that part of Brackenshire, as the ponies trotted along the road. Agnes felt as happy as though she had succeeded in solving the problem of how to win back an errant lover.
“It's not a bit like the England of my fancy,” cried Clare, when the phaeton had been driven on for some miles beyond the little town of Brackenhurst.
“Is it possible that this is the first glimpse you have had of England?” cried Agnes.
“It is practically my first glimpse of England. I could not have been more than a year old when I was taken abroad.”
“And yet I am sure that you had all an exile's longing to return to England—you learned to allude to it as home, did you not?” said Agnes.
“Oh, of course, I always thought of England as home, though I managed to live very happily wherever I found myself,” replied the girl. “Sometimes when I was suddenly brought face to face with a party of English men and women making a tour of Italy, my longing to be in England was easily repressed. Indeed I may safely say that at no time did I feel very patriotic. The greater number of the people whom I met painted such a picture of England as reconciled me to live abroad.”
“You do not recognize the country from their description?”
“Why, they talked of nothing but fogs—they made me believe that from August to May there was nothing but fog hanging over the whole of the country—fog and damp and rain and snow. Well, we haven't driven into a fog up to the present, and I find these furs that Mrs. Adrian advised me to buy in London, almost oppressive. The green of the meadows beside the little stream is brighter than the green of olive trees in winter. Yesterday the sky was blue, and to-day it is the same. Oh, I have become more English than the English themselves; I feel myself ready to refer to every one who is not English as a miserable foreigner.”
“That is the proper spirit to acquire: I hope you will be able to retain it all through the winter. We do not invariably have blue skies and dry roads during November and December in England. But we have at least comfortable houses, with capacious fireplaces.”
“That is something. I never saw a really good fire until I came to England. I have sat shivering in the house in which we lived at Siena. The little brazier of charcoal which was brought into the room for a few minutes only seemed to make us colder.”
Agnes laughed, and there was a considerable pause before she said:
“And your mother. I wonder if she was quite happy living abroad all her life?”
“Only during her last illness did she express a wish to see England once more,” said Clare. “Ah, I cannot speak of it—I could not tell you all she said in those last piteous days. After she had written that letter which I brought to you—she would not allow me to see a line of it, but sealed it and put it away under her pillow—all her thoughts seemed to return to her home. Every night as I sat up with her I could hear her murmur: 'If I could only see it again—if I could only see the meadows, and smell the English may!' Ah, I cannot speak of it.”
The girl turned her head away, and a little sob struggled in her throat.
“My poor child!” said Agnes. “You have all my sympathy. I can sympathise with you.”
They did not exchange a word for some time; and when the silence was broken it was by Clare.
“Just before her illness I ventured to suggest to her that we might go for a month or two to England,” she said.
“And then”—
“The look that came to her face was one of fear—of absolute terror. I was frightened, and began to think that there were perhaps graver reasons than I had ever fancied for our exile. It took her some moments to recover from the shock that my suggestion had given her, and then she said, 'You must never think of such a thing as possible. I shall never see England again!'”
“Poor woman! Ah, what it is laid on woman to bear!” said Agnes. “And she would have been so happy if it had not been for her faithlessness. If she had only trusted the true man who loved her, she would have been happy. I fear that she cannot ever have been happy with your father.”
“She never spoke to me of him.”
Clare spoke in a low tone.
“He died when you were a child—so much, I think, was taken for granted,” said Agnes.
“I have always taken it for granted,” said Clare. “Oh yes; I remember asking about him when I was quite young, and my mother told me that I had no father.”
“Then you must assume that he is dead,” said Agnes; “and pray that you may never have sufficient curiosity to lead you to seek to know more about him.”
Clare looked at her with some surprise on her face.
“What! You know”—she began.
“I know nothing,” said Agnes quickly, interrupting her. “I have heard that he was not a good man, and I know that if he had had anything of good in his nature, your mother would not have parted from him. But he is dead, and we have no need to talk about him. Now let me tell you the names of all the places we can see from here.”
They had driven to the summit of one of the low Brackenshire hills, and from there Agnes pointed out the various landmarks. Far away to the north the great manufacturing town of Linnborough lay beneath the great shadow of its own smoke, and to the right the exquisite spire of Scarchester Cathedral was seen, and by the side of the old minster ran the river Leet. All through the valley lay the villages of Nessvale, with its Norman church, from the tower of which the curfew is still rung; Green-ledge, with its tall maypole, and Holmworth, with its grey castle and moat. Then on every hand were to be seen the splendid park lands surrounding the manor houses, the broad meadows, the brown furrowed fields of Brackenshire, with here and there a farmhouse, and down where the Lambeck flowed, a brown mill with its slow-moving water wheel. The quacking of ducks that swam in the little stream was borne up from the valley at intervals and mingled with the melancholy whistle of a curlew, and the occasional notes of a robin sitting on a gate at the side of the road.
“England—England—this is England!” cried Clare. “I never wish to see any other land so long as I live. Ah, my poor mother! This is what she was longing to see before she died.”
Agnes did not speak. She knew that the girl saw all the incidents of the English landscape through a mist of tears.
It was not until the phaeton was making the homeward circuit and had just come abreast of the wall of Westwood Court, that a word was exchanged between Agnes and Clare. All the interest of the girl was once more awakened when she learned that Claude Westwood had been born in that great house which was just visible through the trees of the park, and that he was now the owner of all.
“And the murder—it was done among those trees?” said Clare, in a whisper.
Agnes nodded.
“The wretch—the wretch! What punishment would be too great for the monster who did that deed?” cried Clare, with something akin to passion in her voice.
“Mr. Westwood told you of it?” said Agnes.
“He did not need to tell me of it,” replied the girl. “I had read all about it at Cairo.”
“Of course. You got the English newspapers there.”
“Very rarely; strange to say, a copy of a newspaper containing a paragraph referring to the reprieve of the murderer was sent to my mother by some one in England. I saw the paper by chance. It had not been sent to her because of that paragraph, of course; but on account of some other piece of news.”
“Then you knew who it was that sent the paper?”
“That was the mystery. It troubled mother for some time thinking who could have sent it.”
“But she knew why it had been sent to her—she knew what was the particular paragraph it contained of interest to her?”
“I don't think that she was quite certain on that point; but she came to the conclusion that it was on account of a paragraph referring to the production of an opera in London in which a friend of mine—of ours, I mean—had taken the tenorrôle.”
“Ah; a friend of yours? What is his name?”
“His name is Giro Rodani; he was one of the maestro's pupils. We used to sing duets under the guidance of the maestro; it was good for both of us, he said, and so, I suppose, it was. At any rate Giro got his engagement, and perhaps he sent mother that newspaper. He certainly sent me the six papers that praised his singing. He didn't send those that were not quite so complimentary: it was the maestro who sent them to me.”
“The paper may have been addressed to you; it is not a matter of importance. You would probably never have recollected reading the paragraph about the reprieve of the man if you had not met Mr. Westwood a few months afterwards.”
“I certainly should have forgotten all about it; but now—well, now it is different. And it was among those trees the terrible deed was done?”
“Yes, it was among those trees. I have not been near the place since it happened.”
“It was horrible—horrible! And yet they did not hang the man—they gave the wretch his life!” The girl spoke almost fiercely—almost in the same tone as Claude Westwood's had been when denouncing the man.
Agnes gave a little cry.
“Do not say that—for God's sake do not say that,” she said. “Ah, if you only knew what you are saying!”
“If I only knew!” cried Clare, in a tone of astonishment.
“If you only knew how your indignation that a wretched man's life was spared to him shocks me!” said Agnes. “Dear child, surely you are on the side of mercy; you have not been, accustomed to the savage code of a life for a life.”
Clare was silent.
“It shocks me to hear any one speak as Claude Westwood does of that poor wretch,” continued Agnes. “It is not possible that you—Tell me, Clare, do you think your mother would have had the same thought as you had just now? Was she indignant when she read that the life of that man Standish was spared?”
“She cried 'Thank God!' as fervently as if she had known the wretch all her life,” replied Clare. “Ah, my dear mother was a better woman than I am. Her heart was full of tenderness.”
“And so is yours, my child,” said Agnes gently. “You did not speak from your heart just now. Your words were but an echo of those I have heard Claude Westwood speak.”
There was a long silence before Clare put her hand on the arm of her companion, saying in a low voice:
“I was wrong, dear Agnes. I spoke unfeelingly, without thinking of all that my words meant. I only thought of the passion of grief in which Mr. Westwood had expressed his indignation that the man who brought so much unhappiness into his life had been spared.”
“Pray for him,” cried Agnes quickly. “Pray for that man as Christ prayed for His murderers. Pray that his life may not have been given to him in vain.”
“I will pray that God may pity him,” said the girl. “We all stand in need of forgiveness, do we not?”
The remainder of the drive to The Knoll was silent; and so was Agnes, when she went to her room, and seated herself in front of the fire. She was breathing hard as she leant forward with her head resting on her hands. She remained motionless, staring into the glowing coals until the luncheon bell rang. Then she rose hastily, saying in a whisper:
“It was too terrible! God pity her! God pity her!”
Her maid entered the room, and she changed her dress.
While in the act of going downstairs she heard the sound of Claude Westwood's voice in the hall. He was talking to Clare in front of the blazing logs of the hall fire, and Agnes saw that he now wore the dress of a country gentleman. When he had called at the house the previous day as well as on the day after his return to England, he had worn a black morning coat. She paused beneath the stained-glass window of the little lobby where the broad staircases turned off at right angles to the half-dozen shallow steps at the bottom—she paused, and could not move for some moments, for the scene which was before her eyes appeared to her like a glimpse of a day she remembered well: the same man wearing the same jacket and gaiters, had stood talking in the same voice to a young girl who looked up to his face as she stooped somewhat over the big grate, holding her fingers over the blaze, just as Clare was doing.
She stood motionless on the landing. The crimson roses of the stained-glass of the window made her a splendid head-dress, and in the panels on each side spread branches of rosemary—rosemary for remembrance.
Alas! she remembered but too well the words which had been spoken between the two people who had stood there long ago. “It is for you—it is all for you,” he had said. “I mean to make a name that shall be in some measure worthy of you.” Those were his words, and then she had looked up to his face and had put her hand, warm from the fire, into his hand. She had trusted him; and now—
“Is it a ghost?” cried Clare, laughing. “Are you a ghost, beautiful lady, or do you see a ghost?”
She had gone along the hall to the foot of the half-dozen shallow oak steps beneath the window.
“A ghost—a ghost,” said Agnes, descending. “Yes, I have seen a ghost.”
Claude advanced to the middle of the hall to meet her. She greeted him silently.
“I saw your ponies in the distance and hurried after you, hoping that you would ask me to lunch,” said he.
“A woman's lunch!” she cried. “You cannot surely know what our menu is.”
“I will take it on trust,” said he. “You represent company here. When I come to you I forget the loneliness of the Court.”
When speaking he had looked first at Agnes, then at Clare. He seemed to take care to prevent the possibility of Agnes's fancying that he was addressing her individually when he said, “You represent company here.”
“And you represent company to us; for the capacity of two lone women to feel lonely is quite as great as that of one man,” said she, smiling in her old way.
“He brings us news, Agnes—good news,” said Clare. “He has got the medal of the—the society—what was the name that you gave the society, Mr. Westwood?”
“The Geographical,” said he. “They have treated me well, I must confess. They have been compelled to take me on trust, so to speak—to accept my discoveries, without any demonstration on my part. No one knows anything of what I have seen or what I have done in Central Africa. The outline that was cabled home represented only the recollections of a missionary at Uganda. It is a little better than nonsense.”
“That is the greater reason, I say, why you should take the opportunity that is offered to you now of letting the world know all that you have passed through,” said Clare.
“All—all—all that I have passed through, did you say?” he cried. Then he laughed curiously.
“Well, I don't suppose that you could tell all in an hour—I suppose they would give you an hour?” said Clare.
“They might even make it two hours without forcing me to repeat myself,” said he. “But all—all! Good heavens! If I were to tell all! Luckily I cannot: the language has not got words adequate for the expression of some of the things that I saw. Still—well, I saw some few things that might be described.”
“Then you will go? You will give them the lecture which you say they have invited you to deliver?” cried Clare.
He shook his head.
“Oh yes, you will,” she said, going close to him, and speaking in a child's voice of coaxing. “Agnes, you will join with me in trying to show this man in what direction his duty lies.”
“Ah, in what direction his duty lies!” said Agnes gently. “What woman can show a man where lies his duty if his inclination points in another direction? But I am forgetting mine. Luncheon!”
She pointed to the door of the dining-room, at which the butler was standing with an aggrieved expression upon his face: luncheon had been waiting for some time.
“Duty!” said Agnes, when Clare and Mr. Westwood had passed through. “Duty!” She gave a little laugh.