Agatha Webb (4 page)

Abel started to obey, just as the young girl laid her hand on the
gate to open it.

"Won't you help me?" she asked. "The crowd is so great they won't
let me through."

"Won't they?" The words came from without. "Just slip out as I
slip in, and you'll find a place made for you."

Not recognising the voice, she hesitated for a moment, but seeing
the gate swaying, she pushed against it just as a young man
stepped through the gap. Necessarily they came face to face.

"Ah, it's you," he muttered, giving her a sharp glance.

"I do not know you," she haughtily declared, and slipped by him
with such dexterity she was out of the gate before he could
respond.

But he only snapped his finger and thumb mockingly at her, and
smiled knowingly at Abel, who had lingered to watch the end of
this encounter.

"Supple as a willow twig, eh?" he laughed. "Well, I have made
whistles out of willows before now, and hallo! where did you get
that?"

He was pointing to a rare flower that hung limp and faded from
Abel's buttonhole.

"This? Oh, I found it in the house yonder. It was lying on the
floor of the inner room, almost under Batsy's skirts. Curious sort
of flower. I wonder where she got it?"

The intruder betrayed at once an unaccountable emotion. There was
a strange glitter in his light green eyes that made Abel shift
rather uneasily on his feet. "Was that before this pretty minx you
have just let out came in here with Mr. Sutherland?"

"O yes; before anyone had started for the hill at all. Why, what
has this young lady got to do with a flower dropped by Batsy?"

"She? Nothing. Only—and I have never given you bad advice, Abel—
don't let that thing hang any longer from your buttonhole. Put it
into an envelope and keep it, and if you don't hear from me again
in regard to it, write me out a fool and forget we were ever chums
when little shavers."

The man called Abel smiled, took out the flower, and went to cover
up the grass as Dr. Talbot had requested. The stranger took his
place at the gate, toward which the coroner and Mr. Sutherland
were now advancing, with an air that showed his great anxiety to
speak with them. He was the musician whom we saw secretly entering
the last-mentioned gentleman's house after the departure of the
servants.

As the coroner paused before him he spoke. "Dr. Talbot," said he,
dropping his eyes, which were apt to betray his thoughts too
plainly, "you have often promised that you would give me a job if
any matter came up where any nice detective work was wanted. Don't
you think the time has come to remember me?"

"You, Sweetwater? I'm afraid the affair is too deep for an
inexperienced man's first effort. I shall have to send to Boston
for an expert. Another time, Sweetwater, when the complications
are less serious."

The young fellow, with a face white as milk, was turning away.

"But you'll let me stay around here?" he pleaded, pausing and
giving the other an imploring look.

"O yes," answered the good-natured coroner. "Fenton will have work
enough for you and half a dozen others. Go and tell him I sent
you."

"Thank you," returned the other, his face suddenly losing its
aspect of acute disappointment. "Now I shall see where that flower
fell," he murmured.

Mr. Sutherland returned home. As he entered the broad hall he met
his son, Frederick. There was a look on the young man's face such
as he had not seen there in years.

"Father," faltered the youth, "may I have a few words with you?"

The father nodded kindly, though it is likely he would have much
preferred his breakfast; and the young man led him into a little
sitting-room littered with the faded garlands and other tokens of
the preceding night's festivities.

"I have an apology to make," Frederick began, "or rather, I have
your forgiveness to ask. For years" he went on, stumbling over his
words, though he gave no evidence of a wish to restrain them—"for
years I have gone contrariwise to your wishes and caused my
mother's heart to ache and you to wish I had never been born to be
a curse to you and her."

He had emphasised the word mother, and spoke altogether with force
and deep intensity. Mr. Sutherland stood petrified; he had long
ago given up this lad as lost.

"I—I wish to change. I wish to be as great a pride to you as I
have been a shame and a dishonour. I may not succeed at once; but
I am in earnest, and if you will give me your hand—"

The old man's arms were round the young man's shoulders at once.

"Frederick!" he cried, "my Frederick!"

"Do not make me too much ashamed," murmured the youth, very pale
and strangely discomposed. "With no excuse for my past, I suffer
intolerable apprehension in regard to my future, lest my good
intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the
knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it
with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I
should certainly be a base poltroon if I should disappoint you or
her twice."

He paused, drew himself from his father's arms, and glanced almost
solemnly out of the window. "I swear that I will henceforth act as
if she were still alive and watching me."

There was strange intensity in his manner. Mr. Sutherland regarded
him with amazement. He had seen him in every mood natural to a
reckless man, but never in so serious a one, never with a look of
awe or purpose in his face. It gave him quite a new idea of
Frederick.

"Yes," the young man went on, raising his right hand, but not
removing his eyes from the distant prospect on which they were
fixed, "I swear that I will henceforth do nothing to discredit her
memory. Outwardly and inwardly, I will act as though her eye were
still upon me and she could again suffer grief at my failures or
thrill with pleasure at my success."

A portrait of Mrs. Sutherland, painted when Frederick was a lad of
ten, hung within a few feet of him as he spoke. He did not glance
at it, but Mr. Sutherland did, and with a look as if he expected
to behold a responsive light beam from those pathetic features.

"She loved you very dearly," was his slow and earnest comment. "We
have both loved you much more deeply than you have ever seemed to
realise, Frederick."

"I believe it," responded the young man, turning with an
expression of calm resolve to meet his father's eye. "As proof
that I am no longer insensible to your affection, I have made up
my mind to forego for your sake one of the dearest wishes of my
heart. Father" he hesitated before he spoke the word, but he spoke
it firmly at last,—"am I right in thinking you would not like
Miss Page for a daughter?"

"Like my housekeeper's niece to take the place in this house once
occupied by Marietta Sutherland? Frederick, I have always thought
too well of you to believe you would carry your forgetfulness of
me so far as that, even when I saw that you were influenced by her
attractions."

"You did not do justice to my selfishness, father. I did mean to
marry her, but I have given up living solely for myself, and she
could never help me to live for others. Father, Amabel Page must
not remain in this house to cause division between you and me."

"I have already intimated to her the desirability of her quitting
a home where she is no longer respected," the old gentleman
declared. "She leaves on the 10.45 train. Her conduct this morning
at the house of Mrs. Webb—who perhaps you do not know was most
cruelly and foully murdered last night—was such as to cause
comment and make her an undesirable adjunct to any gentleman's
family."

Frederick paled. Something in these words had caused him a great
shock. Mr. Sutherland was fond enough to believe that it was the
news of this extraordinary woman's death. But his son's words, as
soon as lie could find any, showed that his mind was running on
Amabel, whom he perhaps had found it difficult to connect even in
the remotest way with crime.

"She at this place of death? How could that be? Who would take a
young girl there?"

The father, experiencing, perhaps, more compassion for this soon-
to-be-disillusioned lover than he thought it incumbent upon him to
show, answered shortly, but without any compromise of the unhappy
truth:

"She went; she was not taken. No one, not even myself, could keep
her back after she had heard that a murder had been committed in
the town. She even intruded into the house; and when ordered out
of the room of death took up her stand in the yard in front, where
she remained until she had the opportunity of pointing out to us a
stain of blood on the grass, which might otherwise have escaped
our attention."

"Impossible!" Frederick's eye was staring; he looked like a man
struck dumb by surprise or fear. "Amabel do this? You are mocking
me, sir, or I may be dreaming, which may the good God grant."

His father, who had not looked for so much emotion, eyed his son
in surprise, which rapidly changed to alarm as the young man
faltered and fell back against the wall.

"You are ill, Frederick; you are really ill. Let me call down Mrs.
Harcourt. But no, I cannot summon her. She is this girl's aunt."

Frederick made an effort and stood up.

"Do not call anybody," he entreated. "I expect to suffer some in
casting this fascinating girl out of my heart. Ultimately I will
conquer the weakness; indeed I will. As for her interest in Mrs.
Webb's death"—how low his voice sank and how he trembled!" she
may have been better friends with her than we had any reason to
suppose. I can think of no other motive for her conduct.
Admiration for Mrs. Webb and horror—"

"Breakfast is served, gentlemen!" cried a thrilling voice behind
them. Amabel Page stood smiling in the doorway.

"Wait a moment, I must speak to you." It was Amabel who was
holding Frederick back. She had caught him by the arm as he was
about leaving the room with his father, and he felt himself
obliged to stop and listen.

"I start for Springfield to-day," she announced. "I have another
relative there living at the house. When shall I have the pleasure
of seeing you in my new home?"

"Never." It was said regretfully, and yet with a certain
brusqueness, occasioned perhaps by over-excited feeling. "Hard as
it is for me to say it, Amabel, it is but just for me to tell you
that after our parting here to-day we will meet only as strangers.
Friendship between us would be mockery, and any closer
relationship has become impossible."

It had cost him an immense effort to say these words, and he
expected, fondly expected, I must admit, to see her colour change
and her head droop. But instead of this she looked at him steadily
for a moment, then slipped her hand down his arm till she reached
his palm, which she pressed with sudden warmth, drawing him into
the room as she did so, and shutting the door behind them. He was
speechless, for she never had looked so handsome or so glowing.
Instead of showing depression or humiliation even, she confronted
him with a smile more dangerous than any display of grief, for it
contained what it had hitherto lacked, positive and irresistible
admiration. Her words were equally dangerous.

"I kiss your hand, as the Spaniards say." And she almost did so,
with a bend of her head, which just allowed him to catch a glimpse
of two startling dimples.

He was astounded. He thought he knew this woman well, but at this
moment she was as incomprehensible to him as if he had never made
a study of her caprices and sought an explanation for her ever-
shifting expressions.

"I am sensible of the honour," said he, "but hardly understand how
I have earned it."

Still that incomprehensible look of admiration continued to
illumine her face.

"I did not know I could ever think so well of you," she declared.
"If you do not take care, I shall end by loving you some day."

"Ah!" he ejaculated, his face contracting with sudden pain; "your
love, then, is but a potentiality. Very well, Amabel, keep it so
and you will be spared much misery. As for me, who have not been
as wise as you—"

"Frederick!" She had come so near he did not have the strength to
finish. Her face, with its indefinable charm, was raised to his,
as she dropped these words one by one from her lips in lingering
cadence: "Frederick—do you love me, then, so very much?"

He was angry; possibly because he felt his resolution failing him.
"You know!" he hotly began, stepping back. Then with a sudden
burst of feeling, that was almost like prayer, he resumed: "Do not
tempt me, Amabel. I have trouble enough, without lamenting the
failure of my first steadfast purpose."

"Ah!" she said, stopping where she was, but drawing him toward her
by every witchery of which her mobile features were capable; "your
generous impulse has strengthened into a purpose, has it? Well,
I'm not worth it, Frederick."

More and more astounded, understanding her less than ever, but
charmed by looks that would have moved an anchorite, he turned his
head away in a vain attempt to escape an influence that was so
rapidly undermining his determination.

She saw the movement, recognised the weakness it bespoke, and in
the triumph of her heart allowed a low laugh to escape her.

Her voice, as I have before said, was unmusical though effective;
but her laugh was deliciously sweet, especially when it was
restrained to a mere ripple, as now.

"You will come to Springfield soon," she avowed, slipping from
before him so as to leave the way to the door open.

"Amabel!" His voice was strangely husky, and the involuntary
opening and shutting of his hands revealed the emotion under which
he was labouring. "Do you love me? You have acknowledged it now
and then, but always as if you did not mean it. Now you
acknowledge that you may some day, and this time as if you did
mean it. What is the truth? Tell me, without coquetry or
dissembling, for I am in dead earnest, and—" He paused, choked,
and turned toward the window where but a few minutes before he had
taken that solemn oath. The remembrance of it seemed to come back
with the movement. Flushing with a new agitation, he wheeled upon
her sharply. "No, no," he prayed, "say nothing. If you swore you
did not love me I should not believe it, and if you swore that you
did I should only find it harder to repeat what must again be
said, that a union between us can never take place. I have given
my solemn promise to—"