SETTLED
For love in sequel works with fate.
The four walked back to the library together. Mrs. Agar looked back over
her shoulder at every other footstep. She took no notice of her son. Her
affection for him seemed suddenly to have been absorbed and lost in some
other emotion.
Jem was half supporting, half carrying Arthur, whose eyes were like those
of a dead man, while his lips were parted in a vacant, senseless way.
Already Ruthine could be heard giving his orders to the gardeners and
other servants who had gathered round him in a wonderfully short space of
time.
Dora passed into the library first, treading carefully over the broken
glass, and Mrs. Agar followed her without appearing to notice the sound
of breakage beneath her feet. No one had spoken a word since Mark Ruthine
had told them that Seymour Michael was dead. There are some situations in
life wherein we suddenly realise what an inadequate thing human speech
is. There are some things that others know which we have never told them,
and would ever be unable to tell them. There are some feelings within us
for which no language can find expression.
Mrs. Agar was simply stupefied. When God does mete out punishment here on
earth, He does so with an overflowing measure. This devoted mother did
not even evince anxiety as to the welfare of her son, for whose sake she
had made so many blunders, so many futile plots.
Jem brought Arthur into the room, and led him to an arm-chair. There was
that steady masterfulness in his manner which comes to those who have
looked on death in many forms and whom nothing can dismay.
He offered no unnecessary assistance or advice, did not fussily loosen
Arthur's necktie, or perform any of those small inappropriate offices
which some would have deemed necessary under the circumstances. He knew
quite well that this was no matter of a necktie or a collar.
Mrs. Agar seated herself on a sofa opposite, and slowly swayed her body
backwards and forwards. She was one of those persons who can never
separate mental anguish from physical pain. They have but one way of
expressing both, and possibly of feeling both. Her hands were clasped on
her lap, her head on one side, her lips drawn back as if in agony. She
even went so far as to breathe laboriously.
Thus they remained; Jem watching Arthur, Dora watching Jem, who seemed to
ignore her presence.
It was Mrs. Agar who spoke first, angrily and bitterly.
“What is the good of standing there?” she said to Jem. “Can't you find
something more useful to do than that?”
Jem looked at her, first with surprise and then with something very
nearly approaching contempt.
“I am waiting,” he replied, “for Ruthine. He is a doctor.”
“Who wants a doctor now? What is the good of a doctor now--now that
Seymour is dead? I don't know what he is doing here, at any rate,
meddling.”
“Arthur wants a doctor,” replied Jem. “Can you not see that he is in a
sort of trance? He hears and sees nothing. He is quite unconscious.”
Mrs. Agar seemed only half to understand. She stared at her son, swaying
backwards and forwards in imbecile misery.
“Oh dear! oh dear!” she whispered, “what have we done to deserve this?”
After a few seconds she repeated the words.
“What have we done to deserve this? What have we done ...”
Her voice died away into a whisper, and when that became inaudible her
lips went on moving, still framing the same words over and over again.
In this manner they waited, with that dull senselessness to the flight of
time which follows on a great shock.
They all heard the clatter of horses' feet on the gravel of the avenue,
and probably they all divined that Mark Ruthine had sent for medical
help.
To Dora the sound brought a sudden boundless sense of relief. Amidst this
mental confusion it came as a practical common-sense proof that the
tension of the last year was over. The burden of her own life was by it
lifted from her shoulders; for Jem was here, and nothing could matter
very much now.
Presently Ruthine came into the room. As he went towards Arthur he
glanced at Dora and then at Mrs. Agar, but the young fellow was evidently
his first care.
While he was kneeling by the low chair examining Arthur's eyes and face,
Mrs. Agar suddenly rose and crossed the room.
“Is he dead?” she said abruptly.
“Who?” inquired Mark Ruthine, without looking round.
“Seymour Michael.”
“Yes.”
“Quite?”
“Yes.”
“Then Arthur killed him?”
“Yes.”
All this while Arthur was lying back in the chair, white and lifeless.
His eyes were open, he breathed regularly, but he heard nothing that was
said, nor saw anything before his eyes.
“Then,” said Mrs. Agar, “that was a murder?”
She was looking out of the window, towards the stone terrace, already
conscious that the scene that she had witnessed there would never be
effaced from her memory while she had life.
After a little pause Mark Ruthine spoke.
“No,” he answered, “it was not that. Your son was not responsible for his
actions when he did it. I think I can prove that. I do not yet know what
it was. It was very singular. I think it was some sort of mental
aberration--temporary, I hope, and think. We will see when he recovers
himself--when the circulation is restored.”
While he spoke he continued to examine his patient. He spoke in his
natural tone, without attempting to lower his voice, for he knew that
Arthur Agar had no comprehension of things terrestrial at that time.
“It was not,” he went on, “the action of a sane man. Besides, he could
not have done it. In his right mind he could not have killed Seymour
Michael, who was a strong man. As it is, I think that there was some sort
of paralysis in Seymour Michael--a paralysis of fear. He seemed too
frightened to attempt to defend himself. Besides, why should your son do
it?”
“He was born hating him.”
Mark Ruthine slowly turned, still upon his knees. He rose, and in his
dark face there was that strange eagerness again, like the eagerness of a
sportsman approaching some unknown quarry in the jungle.
“What do you mean, Mrs. Agar?” he asked.
“I mean that he was born with a hatred for that man stronger than
anything that was in him. His soul was given to him full of hate for
Seymour Michael. Such things are when a woman bears a child in the midst
of great passion.”
“Yes,” said Mark Ruthine, “I know.”
“The night he was born,” Mrs. Agar went on, “I first saw and spoke to
that man after he had come back from India--after I had learnt what he
had done.”
Ruthine turned round towards Jem and Dora.
“You hear that,” he said to them. “This is not the story of a mother
trumped up in court to save her son. It is the truth. There are some
things which we do not understand even yet. Don't forget what you have
heard. It will come in usefully.”
He turned to Mrs. Agar again.
“Did he know the story?” he asked.
“He never heard it until you told it just now.”
“Can you swear to that, Mrs. Agar?”
“Yes.”
“Then,” said Ruthine, “he does not know now that you are the woman whom
Seymour Michael wronged. He need never know it. The paroxysm had come on
before you spoke--that was why I shouted. He was mad with hate, before
you opened your lips.”
Mrs. Agar was now beginning to realise what was at stake. The mother's
love was re-awakening. The old cunning look came into her eyes, and her
quick, truthless mind was evidently on the alert. There was something
animal-like in Mrs. Agar; but she was of the lower order of animal, that
seeks to defend its young by cunning and not by sheer bravery.
Ruthine must have guessed at something, for he said at once:
“Remember what you have told me. You will have to repeat that exactly.
Add nothing to it, take nothing from it, or you will spoil it. Tell me,
has your son seen this man more than once?”
“No, only once; at Cambridge.”
“All right; I think I shall be able to prove it.”
As he spoke he went towards the writing-table and, sitting down, he wrote
out a prescription. Dora followed him and held out her hand for the
paper.
“Send for that at once, please,” he said.
Then he beckoned to Jem.
“I have sent for the local doctor,” he said to him. “But I should advise
having some one else--Llandoller from Harley Street. This is far above
our heads.”
“Telegraph for him,” answered Jem Agar.
While Ruthine wrote he went on speaking.
“We must get him upstairs at once,” he said. “I should like to have him
in bed before the doctor comes.”
In answer to the bell, rung a second time, the servant came, looking
white and scared.
“Show Dr. Ruthine Mr. Arthur's room,” said Jem; and Ruthine took Arthur
up in his arms like a child.
When they had gone there was a silence. Mrs. Agar made no attempt to
follow. She sat down again on the sofa, swaying backwards and forwards.
Perhaps she was dimly aware that there remained something still to be
said.
Jem Agar crossed the room and stood in front of her. Dora, from the
background, was pleading with her eyes for this woman. There were the
makings of a very hard man in James Edward Makerstone Agar, and seven
years of the grimmest soldiering of modern days had done nothing to
soften him. He was strictly just; but it is not justice that women want.
To all men there comes a time when they recognise the fact that all their
time and all their energies are required for the taking care of _one_
woman, and that all the rest must take care of themselves.
“You may stay,” he said to his step-mother, “until Arthur is removed from
this house--but no longer. I shall never pretend to forgive you, and I
never want to see you again.”
Mrs. Agar made no answer, nor did she look up.
“Go,” said Jem, with a little jerk of his head towards the door.
Slowly she rose, and without looking at either of them she passed out of
the room.
When, at last, they were left alone in the quiet library where they had
played together as children, where the happiest moments of his life and
the most miserable of hers had been lived through.
Dora did not seem to know quite what to do. She was standing by the
writing-table, with one hand resting on it, facing him, but not looking
at him. She suddenly felt unable to do that--felt at a loss, abashed,
unequal to the moment.
But Jem seemed to have no hesitation. He was quite natural and very
deliberate. He seemed to know quite well what to do. He closed the door
behind Mrs. Agar, and then he came across the room and took Dora in his
arms, as if there were no question about it. He said nothing. After all,
there was nothing to be said.
THE END