Agnes sat down to the breakfast-table as if nothing had occurred, and Clare helped her to some fish, and put a portion on her own plate, and actually ate it with some appearance of appetite. Agnes tried to follow her example, but utterly failed. She could eat nothing. She thought she would be able, however, to drink her coffee, so she filled the cups, and, as usual, placed one before Clare. But Clare shook her head, saying:
“I don't like coffee to-day. I somehow feel that I cannot have anything to-day that I have had on other days. I cannot touch coffee.”
“Then I will take it away, and get you”—
There was a little crash. Clare had let her knife and fork fall upon her plate.
“Those were the words,” she cried. “'Take her away—take her away!' And I fancied that he spoke them—he—Claude—shuddering all the time and shrinking away from me.” Then she turned suddenly to Agnes, saying:
“Tell me the truth—surely I may as well know it sooner as later. Did he say those words when I entered the room?”
“Yes,” replied Agnes, judging rightly that Clare would be less affected by hearing the worst than if she were left in suspense. “Yes. Claude Westwood said those words—then you”—
“Yes, but why—why—why?” cried the girl. “Why should he say such words, when only a couple of hours before—I don't think it could have been more than a couple of hours before, though if you were to tell me that it was days before I would believe you—at any rate, hours or days, he told me that he loved me—yes, and that we must get married at once. And yet he said those words?”
“Dearest child,” said Agnes, “you must think no more about him. He should never have entered into your life. Have you never heard of the inconstancy of man?”
“I have heard more about the inconstancy of woman,” said the girl. “But even if I had heard that all men are inconstant in love I would not believe that Claude Westwood was inconstant. You must tell me some better story than that if you wish me to believe you.”
“Inconstant? Inconstant? Ah, if you but knew, Clare.”
“I do know. I know that it is a lie. He is a true man. I love him and he loves me. It is you who are not constant in your friendships. You profess to care for me”—
“It is because I do care for you that”——-
“That you tell me what is false?”
Agnes burst into tears.
Clare for a moment was rebellious. The effect of the anger, under the impulse of which she had made use of those bitter words, supported her; but in another moment she was on her knees beside her friend, with an arm round her waist, while she covered her hand with kisses.
“Forgive me, forgive me for my cruelty, my dearest Agnes,” she whispered. “Ah, my dearest, you are the only friend I have in the world, and what have I said to you? You will forgive me—you know that I am not myself to-day—that I do not know what I say!”
Agnes put down her face to the girl's and kissed her. It was some time, however, before she could speak, and in the meantime Clare was sobbing in her arms.
What was Agnes to say to comfort her? What words could she speak in her ears that would soothe her? She could only express the thought which was nestling in her own heart and seemed to give her some consolation in the midst of all the bitterness of life:
“My Clare—my Clare—we shall always be together. Whatever may happen, nothing can sunder us.”
And the girl was comforted. She was comforted, for she wept on Agnes's shoulder for a long time, and Agnes knew the consolation that comes through tears.
When she lifted up her head from its resting-place she was able to say:
“I will ask for nothing more, my dear Agnes. I will ask for nothing better to come to me than this—to be with you always—to feel that you will be ever near. You will not turn from me, dear—you will not cry out for some one to take me away?”
She could actually say the words now with a smile. She had, indeed, been comforted.
“I will take care of you,” said Agnes. “I will take care that no one shall come between us. We shall go away from here to-morrow, if you wish—anywhere you please. I know of some beautiful places along the shores of the Mediterranean. You and I shall go to one of them and stay there just as long as we please. Then we can cross to Africa. You have never been in Algiers. I was there once with my father. Everything you see there is strange. That is the place which we must seek. Sunshine in January—sunshine and warmth when the east wind is making every one miserable in England.”
“I was hoping to see an English spring,” said Clare, wistfully. “But I will go with you,” she cried, with suddenly brightening eyes. “Oh yes; I feel that I must go somewhere—somewhere—anywhere, so long as it is away from here.”
Agnes pressed her hand tenderly, saying:
“You may trust in me.”
Clare left the room shortly afterwards, and Agnes came upon her later on in the room that she had made her studio. She was standing in front of the easel on which her last half-finished drawing rested. On the small table beside her were a number of memoranda and suggestions for the pictures that were to illustrate the book.
“Who will finish them now?” she said, as Agnes came near and looked at the sketch on the easel. “Will they ever be finished?”
After a long pause she turned away with a sigh.
“I wonder if it is possible that he heard something bad about me,” she said. “I have heard of stories being told by unscrupulous persons—girls—about other girls. Is it possible, do you think, that some one has poisoned his mind by falsehoods about me?”
“No, no; do not fancy for a moment that anything like that happened,” said Agnes. “I am afraid—no—I should say that I hope—I hope with all my soul that you may never know the reason for his estrangement. It is a valid reason—I can give you that assurance; but I dare tell you no more. Now come away, my dear child. Whatever has occurred be sure that no blame attaches to you. Claude Westwood himself would never think for a moment that you are to blame. Oh, my Clare, you are only to be pitied.”
The girl stood irresolute for a few minutes, then she said:
“It is all a mystery—a terrible mystery! But God is above us—I will trust in God.”
In the afternoon Clare went to her room to lie down, and before she had been gone many minutes Sir Percival Hope called at The Knoll.
When he took Agnes's hand he looked inquiringly at her. His expression seemed to say:
“Is the time come yet?”
He did not let her hand go. She did not withdraw it. He could not fail to see the little flush that had come to her face.
“What you have suffered!” he said. “What you are suffering still! You did not sleep last night. My poor Agnes! I know now that I did not give you the right advice. You should not have been patient with him. You should not have hoped that he would be brought to you again. If I had given you the advice which my heart prompted me to give I would have said otherwise to you; but I wanted to see you made happy, and I thought that your happiness lay in patience.”
“You were wrong,” she said, with a wan smile. “I was patient, but no happiness came to me.”
“And you still love him?” said he in a low voice.
She snatched her hand away.
“I—love him—him?” she cried. “Oh no, no; he is not the man I loved. The moment he came before me with the look of a savage on his face and the words of a savage thirsting for blood on his lips, I knew that he was not the man I loved. The man whom I had promised to love—the man for whom I was waiting, was quite another one. The Claude Westwood who entered this room had, I perceived, nothing in common with the Claude Westwood who had parted from me in this same room, saying, 'I shall make a name that will be in some measure worthy of your acceptance.' Listen to me while I tell you that that very night, when I went to my room, I took the miniature of the man whom I had loved and trampled upon it. And yet—ah, I tried to force myself to believe that I was sorry. I tried to force myself to believe that I loved the man who had come to me telling me that his name was Claude Westwood. I knew in my heart that I did not love him. Ah, what he said to me was true. He said—a smile was on his face all the time—' Every seven years a man changes utterly: no particle of him remains to-day as it was seven years ago.' And then he went on to demonstrate, quite plausibly, quite convincingly, for indeed he convinced me at once, that it was ridiculous for a woman to hope that, after seven years, the same man whom she had once loved should return to her; it was physically impossible, he explained, and this system he termed, very aptly, 'Nature's Statute of Limitations.'”
“My poor Agnes!”
“Then it was I knew that, so far from being sorry that that man did not love me, I felt glad. I knew that there remained no particle of love for him in my heart when you told me that he loved Clare Tristram, for I felt no pang of jealousy. Poor girl—poor girl!”
“Let us talk no more about him. Agnes, has my time come yet? I have been wondering for some days past if I should tell you—if I should tell you what I told you on that morning long ago. You know that it was true then; you know that it is true now.”
“Not to-day—I implore of you not to ask me to say the words that you think will make you happy—the words which I know will make me happy.”
“I will not ask you to say one word beyond that, my beloved.”
He had caught her hand and was holding it in both his own, smiling.
She shook her head.
“Do not assume too much,” she cried. “I cannot be happy to-day—oh, it would be heartless for me to be happy while that girl is wretched!”
“Wretched? It cannot be possible that he has turned away from her within a month?” said Sir Percival. “Seven years, not weeks, was the space of time named by him.”
“It was impossible that anything but misery could come of his love for her,” said Agnes. “The misery has come. Poor child! I should be inhuman if I thought of my own happiness to-day while the waters have closed over her head.”
“I do not want another word from you, believe me,” said he. “I am content—more than content—with what you have said to me. There is in my heart nothing but hope. Good-bye.”
He remembered that on the morning when he had told her that he loved her, she had given him her face to kiss. But he made no attempt to kiss her forehead now. He did not even kiss her hand. The curious pathos of her words, “I cannot be happy to-day,” had appealed strongly to him. He was a man who had become accustomed to selfsacrifice. He left the house, having only touched her hand.
She heard his footsteps passing away on the hard gravel of the drive. She recollected how, on that morning when they had been together on the lawn, and he had left her with an abruptness that startled her, she had hurried to intercept him on the road. The impulse was now upon her to do as she had done that morning—to open the window and run across the lawn into his arms. She checked herself, however; she felt that it would be heartless for her to have so much happiness while Clare was overwhelmed with the misery that had fallen on her.
She turned away from the temptation of the window and seated herself in the dim light before the fire, giving herself up to her thoughts.
She had not quite recovered from the surprise that her own confession to Sir Percival had caused her. She had been amazed at the impulse under the force of which she had told him so much. Until that moment she had had no idea what was in her heart—what had been in her heart since the day of Claude Westwood's return. She knew, however, that she had confessed the truth to her friend: she had been deceiving herself when she thought she still loved Claude Westwood—when she thought she was sorry that she had flung his portrait on the floor of her room.
She had found it amazingly easy to be patient in regard to his returning to his old love for her; but it was only when she stood in front of Sir Percival that she knew how it was that she had neither been impatient for Claude's return to the old love which he had borne for her, nor jealous when she had come to learn that he loved Clare Tristram. She now knew that the Claude Westwood who had come back from Africa was not, in her eyes, the Claude Westwood whom she had promised to love.
Her awaking had come in a moment—the moment that Sir Percival had taken her hand. The scales fell from her eyes in a second, and her own heart was revealed to her, and what she saw in its depths amazed her. She felt amazed as the confession was forced from her in the presence of the man whom she trusted, and she had not recovered from that amazement when it was time for her to go to bed. She lay awake, thinking over all that had been revealed to her, and wondering how it was that she had been blind so long. It never occurred to her now to ask herself if what she had said to Sir Percival was true or false. When people see plainly the things before their eyes they do not need to puzzle over the question of the reality of those things.
The next day Clare was much more tranquil than she had been before. There was a certain brightness in her eyes that gave Agnes great hope that her future would not be so clouded, but that a glimpse ot sunshine would touch it. She made no allusion to Claude Westwood or his book; and after breakfast Agnes saw with pleasure that she had gone outside to feed the pigeons. She stood among them, calling them about her with that musical croon which acted like magic upon them; and they alighted upon her shoulders and whirled about her head, just as they had done on the afternoon she had arrived, when Claude had looked out at her.
Agnes was once again overcome with self-reproach as she thought how it might have been possible for her to prevent the misery that had entered the girl's life.
“If I had only known—if I had only considered the possibility which every one else but myself would have regarded as not merely possible—not merely probable—but absolutely inevitable, I would have taken her away the next day,” she moaned.
She turned away from the window with tears in her eyes, and when she looked out again, hearing footsteps on the drive, Clare was not to be seen. It was the postman who was coming up to the house.
Three letters were brought to Agnes. Two of them were ordinary business communications: the third was in the handwriting of Cyril. She had received two letters from her brother since he had arrived in Australia, and both were written in the most hopeful spirit. He had, he said, found the life that suited him.
She cut open the envelope, and began to read the letter. But before she had finished the first page, a puzzled look came to her face. She laid the letter down for a moment and put her hand to her forehead. In another second she had sprung to her feet with a short cry—not loud, but agonising—
“Oh, my God! my God! the thought of it—he—he—my brother!”
The letter dropped from her hand to the floor. She felt her knees give way. She staggered to a sofa and fell upon it. Her eyes closed. She had not fainted, however: the blessing of unconsciousness was denied to her. She could hear through the stillness every word of the conversation that took place between the postman and one of the maids who had been exchanging pots of heath for the porch with the gardener. The postman had clearly brought some piece of news of an enthralling character, for its discussion involved many interjectional comments in the local dialect.
She could hear every word now, though she had not paid any attention to the beginning of the conversation, having been in the act of reading Cyril's letter.
What was it that they were talking about?
A murder?—it must have been a murder. The postman became graphic as he described the nature of the wound. Agnes fancied she could hear the servant breathing hard in compliment to the skill of the narrator. The wound had been caused by a shot—so much was certain—it had struck the victim in the back and he had fallen forward clutching at the grass, “like this,” the narrator said—the pause of a few seconds was filled up by low exclamations of horror.
He was describing the murder of Dick Westwood, Agnes believed; for the details, so far as she heard, applied to that crime. She glanced with an affrighted eye toward Cyril's letter that still lay on the floor—yes, but why should they be talking about the murder of Mr. Westwood upon this day in particular? Why should the postman pause in his round to describe with a skill which only comes of long practice and a thorough acquaintance with the susceptibilities of a rustic audience, a deed which had been described times without number during a period of several months?
“There he lay in his own plantation, and there they found him,” continued the man, when he had illustrated the attitude of the man who was shot. “They found him and thought he was dead. He wasn't, just at that moment, but I heard said that the doctor was ready to take his oath that he couldn't be alive for six hours, so mayhap he's gone to his last long 'count by now, good friends. For Surgeon Ogden is none of the men that pulls a long jaw down at every little matter, whether natural—like females, or more terrifying, of the likes of us—nay, he's ever cheery, as you may know if you've been that fort'nate to come under his hands—ever cheery in hisself, though of course, being polite, he feels hisself bound to be as grave as the gravest when some of their ladyships fancies that there's summat wrong wi' 'em. Ah no; the surgeon is too much the gentleman hisself to make light o' th' ailments o' the nobility, as though they was as humble as us. And to be sure, if you give it a doo consideration, good people, you'll find it quite reasonable and natural-like for him that comes to cure to make out a case to be as evil as possible—'tis on the self-same principle that Tombs, the tailor, makes out that our old coats are terrible far gone when we take 'em to be repaired, so that when he sends 'em home as fresh as new we think a deal of his skill. Ay, and for that matter his reverence the vicar, or even a simple-minded curate, will tell us by the hour how terrible steeped in evil all of us is, so that when he gets one to take the pledge we looks on 'un as a dreadful sharp gentleman to be able to make us presentable. Well, well, him that lies dead this day was mayhap a bit hard, but 'tis a sad fate to fall upon any man; and so God help us all.”
Agnes heard every word that came from the long-winded postman, and the succeeding comments of his auditors. But her attention had not been taken away from the letter which was lying on the floor. It was only because it seemed to her that the subject of the man's story was the same as that of the letter, she had been startled into listening—curiously, eagerly.
But the instant the drone of the man and the long-drawn and wondering sighs of the maid had ceased, she got to her feet—not without an effort—and crossed the room to where the letter was lying. She looked at it for some time before she stooped and picked it up. She went over every line of it again, saying in a whisper the words that it contained. It was a short letter.
Could she by any possibility have misread it the first time? It was a short letter:—
“With what feelings, dear Agnes, will you read this letter! But I feel that I must write it—I should have confessed all to you when I could have done, so face to face, but I was a coward. Often at night aboard the steamer coming out here, I thought upon my guilt, and night by night when in the midst of the great pasturages I have thought over it, and felt how great a ruffian I was, especially as another is suffering for my sin. I cannot endure the stinging of my conscience any longer. Agnes, I must make a clean breast of it to you. Hear me and do not abhor me utterly when I confess to you now that that sin—that crime which came to light in the summer—you will know to what I allude—i cannot name it to you—was mine. I kept my guilt a secret and allowed one who was innocent to suffer for me. Was there ever so base, so cowardly a wretch? I am unworthy to be your brother. Only one way remains to me of making reparation, and you know what that way is. I am coming home by next steamer. Dearest Agnes, can you ever forgive me for the disgrace I have brought upon you? Indeed, I feel that this is the bitterest part of my punishment—the knowledge that I have disgraced our name.
“Cyril.”
She read the letter a second time. It left no loophole of escape for her. Its meaning was but too plain. It appeared in every line. The crime—there was only one crime to which it could refer—there was only one crime for which an innocent man was suffering punishment.
Once again the letter dropped from her hand. She looked at her lingers that had held it as though it had been written with blood that left a stain behind it. For some moments she gazed at the thing lying on the floor at her feet, trying to comprehend all that it meant to her. She felt stunned, as though she had been struck on the head with a heavy weapon. The sense of what that letter meant benumbed her. She was overwhelmed by the force of the blow which she had received.
She stood there in the middle of the room, both her hands pressed against her heart. She could hear its wild beating through the silence. The force of its beating caused her to sway to and fro on her feet.
“It is folly—folly!” she said, as if trying by giving articulation to her thoughts to convince herself against the evidence of her own judgment. “It is folly! He was his friend—Dick Westwood was his friend. Why should he have killed him? He dined at the Court that very night—he—Good God! he was the last to see him alive. Let me think—let me think! What did he say? Yes, he said that Dick had walked across the park with him. He admitted that he was the last person with whom Dick had spoken. Oh, my God—my God! he has written the truth—why should he write anything but the truth? Why should he be mad enough to confess to a crime that he never committed? He killed him, and he is my brother! Oh, fool—fool—that I was! I could not see that that girl was sent through the mercy of God. She was sent here that the man who loved her might be saved from marrying me. But, thank God! I have learned the truth before it is too late.”
And then, as she stood there, she recalled the most trivial incidents of the morning after the murder of Dick Westwood. She remembered how late it was when Cyril had appeared—how he had made excuse after excuse for remaining in bed. In every trivial act of his she perceived such evidence of his guilt that she was amazed that no one had attached suspicion to him. Why, even the fact of his having so eagerly accepted the offer of an appointment on a sheep station in Australia should have made her suspect that he had the gravest of reasons for wishing to get away from the country. She now saw that his anxiety was to leave the scene of his crime behind him.
Then she thought of the days that preceded his escape—that was how she had come to regard his sailing for Australia—how terrible her trouble had been with him. She had felt that he was going to destruction, idling about the tap-rooms of Bracken-hurst, walking with the most disreputable men to be found in the neighbourhood—utterly regardless of appearances and impatient at her remonstrances. Thinking of all this in the light of the confession which she had just read, she was left to wonder how it was possible that she had failed—that every one in Brackenhurst had failed—to attach suspicion to him.
“He did it—he did it!” she whispered.
Once again with a flicker of hope that was more dispiriting than despair, she read the letter, and with a cry of agony fell back upon the sofa and laid her head, face downward, upon one of its arms. Claude Westwood had uttered his curse against the murderer of his brother and against all that pertained to him! She had been horrified at the thought of Clare; but the curse had fallen, and she, Agnes, was crushed beneath it. Her brother was on his way home to pay the penalty of his crime, and Clare—
She got upon her feet, and stood with one hand grasping the back of the sofa, as the thought flashed through her mind: Clare would be happy. There was now no reason why she and Claude might not marry. Even at that moment, when the horror that had rested on Clare's head had been shifted to her own, Agnes felt a thrill of satisfaction when she reflected that it was in her power to give Clare happiness.
She took a step to the bell-rope, but while it was still in her hand, a thought suddenly flashed through her mind: the story which the postman had been telling to the gardener and the maidservant—to what did it refer?—to whom did it refer?
Some one had been shot during the night—so much she had gathered from the rambling discourse of the man; she had not given much attention to all that he had said, but she recollected that it had struck her as singular that the incidents of the matter to which his story referred closely resembled those of the murder of Dick Westwood: the man might have been describing the latter. The victim had, she gathered, been shot in the back, and—what had the man said?—he had been shot in his own grounds. Some one had been shot in his own grounds? Who—who—who?
Why, who could it be but Sir Percival Hope? It could be no one but Sir Percival Hope—the man whom she loved.
That was the terrible thought that swooped down upon her, so to speak—that hawklike thought that struck its talons through her; and at that moment such doubts as might have lingered in her heart were swept away. She now knew that she loved Sir Percival Hope, who was lying at the point of death, if the man who had come with the story had spoken the truth.
“Thank Heaven—thank Heaven that he knew the truth before he died; thank Heaven that he knew I loved him; and thank Heaven that he died before he could know that other truth—that we could never be anything more to each other than we were. I should have had to tell him that—all that that letter has told to me. But I have still to tell some one of it. Who is it—who is it?”
Her brain was whirling. She had forgotten for the moment that Clare had to be made happy; and some moments had passed before the sight of the bell-rope brought back her thoughts to the object which she had originally before her in going to it. She rang the bell, and when the butler appeared she had her voice sufficiently under control to ask him to tell her maid to find Miss Tristram and send her to the drawing-room.
As the butler was leaving the room she said—and now her voice was not quite so firm as it had been:
“I heard the postman telling some story to the gardener just now. Has some one been hurt?”
The man did not answer for a second or two, but that space was sufficient to send her thoughts wandering once more on a different track.
“Merciful Heaven!” she cried. “It cannot be possible that it is Mr. Westwood who was shot, as his brother was—within his own grounds?”
“Oh no, ma'am, it's not so bad as that,” replied the butler. “So far as I hear, it was the poachers that have been about Westwood Court one night and the Abbey Woods another night for the past month. It seems that Ralph Dangan, Sir Percival Hope's new keeper—-him that was at the Court for so long—he came upon them suddenly last night and they shot him. The story is that the poor man was not likely to live longer than a few hours.” Agnes gave a sigh—she wondered if the butler would know that it was a sigh of relief rather than one of sympathy for the unhappy man who had been shot.
“Poor fellow!” she said. “I hope his daughter has been sent for.”
“I didn't hear anything in that way, ma'am,” said the butler. “If she went to Sir Percival's sister, he will know her address, but they say that poor Dangan always refused to see her, though she was a good daughter except for her one slip.”
He left the room, and Agnes sat wondering how it was that she had been led to feel with such certainty that the story of the man who was shot referred to Sir Percival. And in its turn this question of hers became a terror to her, for in her condition of excitement she had lost all capacity to judge of incidents in an unprejudiced way. The condition of her brain caused her to distort every matter which she tried to consider on its merits.
She waited so long without any one appearing that she had actually forgotten what was the object of her waiting, and she was surprised when her maid came into the room saying:
“I cannot find Miss Tristram in the house, Miss Mowbray. I think she must have gone out for a walk by the lower gate; she could not have left by the drive without my seeing her, for I was sitting at the window of the workroom sewing.”
It is strange that she should have gone out without letting me know,” said Agnes. “I don't think that it is likely she would leave the grounds by the lower gate. She must still be somewhere in the garden. Having fed the pigeons she might have strayed up to the Knoll.”
The Knoll was the small hillock overgrown with pines from which the house took its name.
“She was in her dressing-room since she fed the pigeons,” said the maid. “I fancied that I heard her leave the room, but no one appears to have noticed whether she left the house or not.”
“You will please send a couple of the servants round the grounds and up to the Knoll,” said Agnes. “It is rather important that she should be found with as little delay as possible.”
“I beg your pardon,” cried the maid quickly. “I did not know that you wanted Miss Tristram particularly. I understood that you were making a casual inquiry for her. Not a moment shall be lost in seeking for her.”
When the door closed behind the maid, poor Agnes once again began to take exaggerated views of the simplest occurrences. The disappearance of Clare she thought of as something mysterious. Why should she go away without acquainting any one of the fact that she was leaving the house? Why should she steal out by the lower gate, which involved a walk through the damp grass of the shrubberies? The lower gate was scarcely ever used in the winter months, and but rarely in the summer except by the gardener, whose cottage was at that part of the grounds.
The incident assumed in her excited brain a magnitude which in ordinary circumstances she would never think of attributing to it. And her reflection in regard to this incident was followed by a suspicion that caused her to cover her eyes with her hands.
She was endeavouring to shut out the horrible sight which might be before the eyes of the servants who were searching the grounds. She had heard of sensitive girls, such as Clare undoubtedly was, making away with themselves when overcome with grief; and she began to wonder how it was that she had failed to see something more than usually pathetic in that picture of the girl surrounded by her pigeons on the lawn. That was the picture which had come before the eyes of Claude Westwood, and that was the picture which would always remain in her own memory, Agnes was assured—the last look she had had of the sweet girl who was now—
She shuddered at the thought that came to her; for with it came a cry of self-reproach:
“It is I—I—who have killed her! She may have been alive when I got the letter that should have given her happiness; but I waited—I tried to deceive myself into the belief that I had misread the letter when its meaning was clear to me from the first. I have killed her!”
She rushed from the room and hurried up the stairs to the apartment that Clare had occupied. She turned the handle of the door with trembling fingers, and looked fearfully into the room, not knowing what horrible sight might await her there. Rut the room was the same as ever; only when she entered did she notice that the bed was slightly pressed down in the centre, and that the pillow was no longer smooth; it was tossed, and there was a mark that was still damp upon it.
She knew that Clare had suddenly flung herself down on the bed, and had left the traces of her tears upon the pillow.
She gave a start, hearing the sound of feet on the oak of the hall. The servants had returned from their search, and the shuffling of their feet told her that they were carrying something with them—something with a cloak over it—a pall over it. She put up her hands to her eyes once more to shut out that sight; and then she heard the quiet steps of some one ascending.
She knew what this meant, some one was coming to break the awful news to her as gently as possible.
She was standing at the half-open door when the maid reached the lobby.
“You need tell me nothing; I see upon your face all that you come to tell me,” whispered Agnes.
The woman looked at her in surprise.
“I fear you are not quite well, ma'am,” she said quietly. “We did not need to search far: the gardener came up and told us that he had met Miss Tristram walking on the road not more than half-an-hour ago. He had been down to the larches and Miss Tristram was going in the direction of Unwin Church. It was as I suggested: she was taking a walk, having left the grounds by the lower gate. I am sure that she will be back again before lunch. Are you not well, Miss Mowbray?”
“I am quite well,” said Agnes. “I was only a little surprised that Miss Tristram could have left the grounds without my noticing her do so. I was in the drawing-room all the time.”
She went to her own room and stood at the window, wondering how it was that she had been so certain that Clare had resolved to die. Was it because she herself was ready to welcome death at that moment? She fell on her knees and prayed that she might have strength to live—she prayed that she might have strength to resist the temptation to end in a moment the terrible consciousness that in another week or two all the world would be ringing with the name which she bore—the consciousness that every finger would be pointed at her, while those who pointed at her would whisper the name of her brother. She prayed for strength to bear the appalling burden which had been laid upon her.
In that nervous condition which was hers she felt that she must do something: she could not rest patiently until the return of Clare. She felt that as she had told Claude the secret which had placed a gulf between him and Clare, it was right that she should tell him without delay that, although it was true that the girl was the daughter of Carton Stand-ish, yet Carton Standish was innocent of the crime for which he was suffering imprisonment.
She rang her bell, and gave orders for the brougham; and then, with nervous hands, she put on her fur coat and hat, and went down to the hall fire to wait for the sound of wheels. The butler, who was bringing some silver into the dining-room for the luncheon table, paused for a moment and asked her if she would wish the hour for lunch to be delayed. She told him that lunch was to be served when Miss Tristram should come in.
A sudden thought occurred to her. She would not keep Clare waiting for her good news should she come in before her own return from the Court.
She had thought of driving Claude back with her in the brougham after she had communicated her good news to him—it would be good news to him. What did he care how heavy was the blow that had fallen upon her so long as he was free to marry Clare?
She went into the study and wrote a few lines on a sheet of paper:
“Dearest,—God has been good to you. Something like a miracle has happened, and the barrier which Claude saw between you and him is removed. I am bringing him to you. Wait for our coming.
“Agnes.”
She addressed the cover and desired the butler to give it to Clare the moment she returned.
At last the sound of the broughem was heard on the drive. She entered the carriage after satisfying herself that Cyril's confession was in her pocket.
The butler at the Court said that Mr. Westwood was not at home at that moment; he thought that most likely he was gone to the cottage of Dangan, Sir Percival Hope's keeper, who, as perhaps Miss Mowbray had heard, had been shot during the night. Mr. Westwood had said, before leaving the Court, that he would be back for lunch, so perhaps Miss Mowbray would wait in the drawing-room for his coming. It was unlikely that he would be late.
Miss Mowbray said she would wait, and was shown into the drawing-room.
For a few minutes after seating herself she was calm; but then her brain began to whirl once more. The thought came to her that she was in the very room where Cyril and Dick had sat on that night before the horrible deed was done. She started up, thinking that perhaps she was sitting in the very chair in which her brother had sat looking in the face of the man whom he meant to kill.
She glanced at the portrait on the easel and seemed to see once again the form of Dick Westwood beside the window through which he had gone to his death.
“Why did he do it—why—oh, why?” she whispered. “You were always so good to him, Dick—you were always his friend when every one else shunned him. How could he do it?”
She had begun to pace the room wildly, but after some moments a curious doubt seemed to cross her mind. She took the letter out of her pocket and read it for the third time with beating heart, for the echo of that question of hers, “Why—why—why?” seemed to ring round the room. Surely she must have misread it.
She crushed it into her pocket once more.
“It is there—there,” she whispered. “He confesses it. There is no hope for me. No hope—no hope”—
She had begun pacing the room once more, and as she spoke she found herself standing in front of the glazed case of poisoned arrows which Claude had brought back with him from Africa.
She looked at the arrows and repeated the words, “No hope—no hope.”
The beating of her heart sounded through the stillness.
“I was wrong—I was wrong,” she whispered, with her eyes still gazing at those strange things as if they had power to fascinate her. She looked at them, then with a shudder she turned and fled across the room. “No, no, not that—not that!” she cried.
She stood beside the screen at the other side of the room; and then she seemed to hear again the voice which had said those words in her ear—“The sister of a murderer—the sister of the man who killed his best friend. He will be here in a day or two and all the world will ring with his name—with your name. There is no hope for you—no hope!”
She put her hands over her ears, trying to shut out that dread voice; but it would not be shut out. It came to her with maddening monotony. She walked to and fro saying beneath her breath:
“Mercy—mercy—for God's sake, mercy!”
She made a pause as if listening for something. Then with a cry, in the agony of her despair, she rushed back to the case of arrows and crashed in the glass with both her gloved hands.
In a second her hands were grasped from behind.
“Agnes! Agnes, my beloved!” said Sir Percival.
She turned to him, looking wonderingly up to his face.
“My dearest, what has happened? What does that mean?”
He pointed to the broken glass while he was leading her away.
“You will soon know all,” she said. “I have the letter—it will tell you what I have no words to tell.”
He took the letter from her hand, and with one of his hands still holding hers, he read it.
“This tells me no more than I have known from the first,” said he.
“What, you knew that he was guilty?” she said.
“I knew it: I hoped that he would confess to you.”
“Good God! You knew of his guilt and let the innocent man suffer?”
“I heard nothing of that. I liked the girl for keeping the secret; he will marry her now.”
She stared at him.
“Who is the girl that knew it was he who killed Richard Westwood?” she asked.
“My poor Agnes! You are the victim of some dreadful misapprehension,” said Sir Percival. “This confession refers to Lizzie Dangan's fault.”
“What! But the murder—surely it can have but one meaning?” she cried.
“Oh, my beloved, I see it all now. Thank Heaven that I came in time to save you. You assumed that your brother's confession referred to the murder of Richard Westwood. You were wrong. I have just come from hearing the confession of the man who shot poor Westwood, and who died a quarter of an hour ago. It was Ralph Dangan who shot Richard Westwood with the revolver that by ill-luck he had found on the grass where the man Standish had thrown it. Dangan had seen Mr. Westwood with Lizzie that night—she had gone to him secretly for advice—and he shot him, believing that he was the girl's lover.” Agnes looked at him for a long time. She walked to the window and stood there for some moments; then with a cry she turned and stretched out her arms to him.
“My beloved—my beloved, you have suffered; but your days of suffering are over!” he whispered, as he held her close to him.
There were voices at the door.
Claude Westwood entered, followed by Clare; he hurried to Agnes.
“For God's sake, tell her nothing! It is too late now—she is my wife,” he said, in a low voice.
“Agnes—dearest, you will forgive me—but he sent for me, and I love him,” said Clare.
“Tell him,” said Agnes to Sir Percival, “tell him that it was Ralph Dangan who killed poor Dick.”