Agatha Webb (18 page)

"It is that girl who has ruined him, Sweetwater. He loves but
doubts her, as who could help doing after the story she told us
day before yesterday? Indeed, he has doubted her ever since that
fatal night, and it is this which has broken his heart, and not—
not—" Again the old gentleman paused; again he recovered himself,
this time with a touch of his usual dignity and self-command.
"Leave me," he cried. "Nothing that you have seen has escaped me;
but our interpretations of it may differ. I will watch over my son
from this hour, and you may trust my vigilance."

Sweetwater bowed.

"You have a right to command me," said he. "You may have
forgotten, but I have not, that I owe my life to you. Years ago—
perhaps you can recall it—it was at the Black Pond—I was going
down for the third time and my mother was screaming in terror on
the bank, when you plunged in and—Well, sir, such things are
never forgotten, and, as I said before, you have only to command
me." He turned to go, but suddenly came back. There were signs of
mental conflict in his face and voice. "Mr. Sutherland, I am not a
talkative man. If I trust your vigilance you may trust my
discretion. Only I must have your word that you will convey no
warning to your son."

Mr. Sutherland made an indefinable gesture, and Sweetwater again
disappeared, this time not to return. As for Mr. Sutherland, he
remained standing before Mr. Halliday's door. What had the young
man meant by this emphatic repetition of his former suggestion?
That he would be quiet, also, and not speak of what he had seen?
Why, then—But to the hope thus given, this honest-hearted
gentleman would yield no quarter, and seeing a duty before him, a
duty he dare not shirk, he brought his emotions, violent as they
were, into complete and absolute subjection, and, opening Mr.
Halliday's door, entered the house. They were old neighbours, and
ceremony was ignored between them.

Finding the hall empty and the parlour door open he walked
immediately into the latter room. The sight that met his eyes
never left his memory. Agnes, his little Agnes, whom he had always
loved and whom he had vainly longed to call by the endearing name
of daughter, sat with her face towards him, looking up at
Frederick. That young gentleman had just spoken to her, or she had
just received something from his hand for her own was held out and
her expression was one of gratitude and acceptance. She was not a
beautiful girl, but she had a beautiful look, and at this moment
it was exalted by a feeling the old gentleman had once longed, but
now dreaded inexpressibly, to see there. What could it mean? Why
did she show at this unhappy crisis, interest, devotion, passion
almost, for one she had regarded with open scorn when it was the
dearest wish of his heart to see them united? It was one of the
contradictions of our mysterious human nature, and at this crisis
and in this moment of secret heart-break and miserable doubt it
made the old gentleman shrink, with his first feeling of actual
despair.

The next moment Agnes had risen and they were both facing him.

"Good-evening, Agnes."

Mr. Sutherland forced himself to speak lightly.

"Ah, Frederick, do I find you here?" The latter question had more
constraint in it.

Frederick smiled. There was an air of relief about him, almost of
cheerfulness.

"I was just leaving," said he. "I was the bearer of a message to
Miss Halliday." He had always called her Agnes before.

Mr. Sutherland, who had found his faculties confused by the
expression he had surprised on the young girl's face, answered
with a divided attention:

"And I have a message to give you. Wait outside on the porch for
me, Frederick, till I exchange a word with our little friend
here."

Agnes, who had thrust something she held into a box that lay
beside her on a table, turned with a confused blush to listen.

Mr. Sutherland waited till Frederick had stepped into the hall.
Then he drew Agnes to one side and remorselessly, persistently,
raised her face toward him till she was forced to meet his
benevolent but searching regard.

"Do you know," he whispered, in what he endeavoured to make a
bantering tone, "how very few days it is since that unhappy boy
yonder confessed his love for a young lady whose name I cannot
bring myself to utter in your presence?"

The intent was kind, but the effect was unexpectedly cruel. With a
droop of her head and a hurried gasp which conveyed a mixture of
entreaty and reproach, Agnes drew back in a vague endeavour to
hide her sudden uneasiness. He saw his mistake, and let his hands
drop.

"Don't, my dear," he whispered. "I had no idea it would hurt you
to hear this. You have always seemed indifferent, hard even,
toward my scapegrace son. And this was right, for—for—" What
could he say, how express one-tenth of that with which his breast
was labouring! He could not, he dared not, so ended, as we have
intimated, by a confused stammering.

Agnes, who had never before seen this object of her lifelong
admiration under any serious emotion, felt an impulse of remorse,
as if she herself had been guilty of occasioning him
embarrassment. Plucking up her courage, she wistfully eyed him.

"Did you imagine," she murmured, "that I needed any warning
against Frederick, who has never honoured me with his regard, as
he has the young lady you cannot mention? I'm afraid you don't
know me, Mr. Sutherland, notwithstanding I have sat on your knee
and sometimes plucked at your beard in my infantile insistence
upon attention."

"I am afraid I don't know you," he answered. "I feel that I know
nobody now, not even my son."

He had hoped she would look up at this, but she did not.

"Will my little girl think me very curious and very impertinent if
I ask her what my son Frederick was saying when I came into the
room?"

She looked up now, and with visible candour answered him
immediately and to the point:

"Frederick is in trouble, Mr. Sutherland. He has felt the need of
a friend who could appreciate this, and he has asked me to be that
friend. Besides, he brought me a packet of letters which he
entreated me to keep for him. I took them, Mr. Sutherland, and I
will keep them as he asked me to do, safe from everybody's
inspection, even my own."

Oh! why had he questioned her? He did not want to know of these
letters; he did not want to know that Frederick possessed anything
which he was afraid to retain in his own possession.

"My son did wrong," said he, "to confide anything to your care
which he did not desire to retain in his own home. I feel that I
ought to see these letters, for if my son is in trouble, as you
say, I, his father, ought to know it."

"I am not sure about that," she smiled. "His trouble may be of a
different nature than you imagine. Frederick has led a life that
he regrets. I think his chief source of suffering lies in the fact
that it is so hard for him to make others believe that he means to
do differently in the future."

"Does he mean to do differently?"

She flushed. "He says so, Mr. Sutherland. And I, for one, cannot
help believing him. Don't you see that he begins to look like
another man?"

Mr. Sutherland was taken aback. He had noticed this fact, and had
found it a hard one to understand. To ascertain what her
explanation of it might be, he replied at once:

"There is a change in him—a very evident change. What is the
occasion of it? To what do you ascribe it, Agnes?"

How breathlessly he waited for her answer! Had she any suspicion
of the awful doubts which were so deeply agitating himself that
night? She did not appear to have.

"I hesitate," she faltered, "but not from any doubt of Frederick,
to tell you just what I think lies at the bottom of the sudden
change observable in him. Miss Page (you see, I can name her, if
you cannot) has proved herself so unworthy of his regard that the
shock he has received has opened his eyes to certain failings of
his own which made his weakness in her regard possible. I do not
know of any other explanation. Do you?"

At this direct question, breathed though it was by tender lips,
and launched in ignorance of the barb which carried it to his
heart, Mr. Sutherland recoiled and cast an anxious look upon the
door. Then with forced composure he quietly said: "If you who are
so much nearer his age, and, let me hope, his sympathy, do not
feel sure of his real feelings, how should I, who am his father,
but have never been his confidant?"

"Oh," she cried, holding out her hands, "such a good father! Some
day he will appreciate that fact as well as others. Believe it,
Mr. Sutherland, believe it." And then, ashamed of her glowing
interest, which was a little more pronounced than became her
simple attitude of friend toward a man professedly in love with
another woman, she faltered and cast the shyest of looks upward at
the face she had never seen turned toward her with anything but
kindness. "I have confidence in Frederick's good heart," she
added, with something like dignity.

"Would God that I could share it!" was the only answer she
received. Before she could recover from the shock of these words,
Mr. Sutherland was gone.

Agnes was more or less disconcerted by this interview. There was a
lingering in her step that night, as she trod the little white-
embowered chamber sacred to her girlish dreams, which bespake an
overcharged heart; a heart that, before she slept, found relief in
these few words whispered by her into the night air, laden with
the sweetness of honeysuckles:

"Can it be that he is right? Did I need such a warning,—I, who
have hated this man, and who thought that it was my hatred which
made it impossible for me to think of anything or anybody else
since we parted from each other last night? O me, if it is so!"

And from the great, wide world without, tremulous with moonlight,
the echo seemed to come back:

"Woe to thee, Agnes Halliday, if this be so!"

Meanwhile Mr. Sutherland and Frederick stood facing each other in
the former's library. Nothing had been said during their walk down
the hill, and nothing seemed likely to proceed from Frederick now,
though his father waited with great and growing agitation for some
explanation that would relieve the immense strain on his heart. At
last he himself spoke, dryly, as we all speak when the heart is
fullest and we fear to reveal the depth of our emotions.

"What papers were those you gave into Agnes Halliday's keeping?
Anything which we could not have more safely, not to say
discreetly, harboured in our own house?"

Frederick, taken aback, for he had not realised that his father
had seen these papers, hesitated for a moment; then he boldly
said:

"They were letters—old letters—which I felt to be better out of
this house than in it. I could not destroy them, so I gave them
into the guardianship of the most conscientious person I know. I
hope you won't demand to see those letters. Indeed, sir, I hope
you won't demand to see them. They were not written for your eye,
and I would rather rest under your displeasure than have them in
any way made public."

Frederick showed such earnestness, rather than fear, that Mr.
Sutherland was astonished.

"When were these letters written?" he asked. "Lately, or before—
You say they are old; how old?"

Frederick's breath came easier.

"Some of them were written years ago—most of them, in fact. It is
a personal matter—every man has such. I wish I could have
destroyed them. You will leave them with Agnes, sir?"

"You astonish me," said Mr. Sutherland, relieved that he could at
least hope that these letters were in nowise connected with the
subject of his own frightful suspicions. "A young girl, to whom
you certainly were most indifferent a week ago, is a curious
guardian of letters you decline to show your father."

"I know it," was Frederick's sole reply.

Somehow the humility with which this was uttered touched Mr.
Sutherland and roused hopes he had supposed dead. He looked his
son for the first time directly in the eye, and with a beating
heart said:

"Your secrets, if you have such, might better be entrusted to your
father. You have no better friend—" and there he stopped with a
horrified, despairing feeling of inward weakness. If Frederick had
committed a crime, anything would be better than knowing it.
Turning partially aside, he fingered the papers on the desk before
which he was standing. A large envelope, containing some legal
document, lay before him. Taking it up mechanically, he opened it.
Frederick as mechanically watched him.

"I know," said the latter, "that I have no better friend. You have
been too good, too indulgent. What is it, father? You change
colour, look ill, what is there in that paper?"

Mr. Sutherland straightened himself; there was a great reserve of
strength in this broken-down man yet. Fixing Frederick with a gaze
more penetrating than any he had yet bestowed upon him, he folded
his hands behind him with the document held tightly between them,
and remarked:

"When you borrowed that money from me you did it like a man who
expected to repay it. Why? Whence did you expect to receive the
money with which to repay me? Answer, Frederick; this is your hour
for confession."

Frederick turned so pale his father dropped his eyes in mercy.

"Confess?" he repeated. "What should I confess? My sins? They are
too many. As for that money, I hoped to return it as any son might
hope to reimburse his father for money advanced to pay a gambler's
debt. I said I meant to work. My first money earned shall be
offered to you. I—"

"Well? Well?" His father was holding the document he had just
read, opened out before his eyes.

"Didn't you expect THIS?" he asked. "Didn't you know that that
poor woman, that wretchedly murdered, most unhappy woman, whose
death the whole town mourns, had made you her heir? That by the
terms of this document, seen by me here and now for the first
time, I am made executor and you the inheritor of the one hundred
thousand dollars or more left by Agatha Webb?"