OTHERWISE THAN INTENDED
Scarcely had the housekeeper given this answer to her master’s
inquiry, when a loud knocking at the front door, and the long tinkling
of the electric bell, announced that some one was there, some one, as
they all guessed, who was acquainted with what had happened.
There was something so startling in this thundering at the door at the
very moment when they were on their way upstairs towards the room
which they imagined to be the scene of a tragedy, that both Sir Robert
and Mrs. Hawkes stopped and turned upon the staircase.
“Who’s that?” hissed the housekeeper.
A man-servant had run to the door, but Sir Robert turned once more and
pointed imperiously upwards.
“Go on, go on, or let me pass,” he said.
And then, as if the knocking at the door had been only the result of
their own imaginations, excited by their fears, they both hurried on
up the stairs.
Swiftly there passed through the minds of both a succession of
terrible thoughts, born of the events of the past month. The
housekeeper was as well aware as her master and mistress themselves
that there was acute tension between them, and in all the anxiety and
suspense which the whole household had endured since the thefts from
the gallery had become known and whispered about, the chief hope of
everybody that some sort of satisfactory way out of the family
difficulties might be found, centred on Rhoda Pembury.
With her quiet manners, her attachment to the invalid boy, her evident
efforts to preserve the peace between husband and wife, the girl had
endeared herself to the lower members of the household as well as to
Caryl, and Mrs. Hawkes in particular had persisted in believing that
she would end by finding means to bring the ill-assorted couple
together.
But now the housekeeper was filled with fear that the peace-maker had
been the victim of a fresh tragedy.
She was even vaguely suspicious as to the hand by which such a tragedy
as she feared might have been brought about. It was inevitable that
some inkling of the truth about the death of poor Langton should have
trickled through to the servants’ hall during those ten years which
had elapsed since the death of the butler, that gossip should have
fixed upon Jack Rotherfield as the possible holder of the clue to that
old mystery.
Now, therefore, it was not surprising that Mrs. Hawkes should ask
herself whether Jack Rotherfield, who had already the guilt of one
outrage at his door, might not have committed another. If Rhoda
Pembury had been murdered because she stood between Lady Sarah and her
husband’s rival, who but that rival could have been guilty of the act?
So thought Mrs. Hawkes as she hurried along the corridor to the door
of Rhoda’s room.
Bursting it open without knocking, so sure was she that the sounds she
had heard proceeded from this room, the housekeeper found herself in
darkness. The electric light had not been turned on. The window was
open, the curtains were drawn back, and a little light came from the
moon, not long risen.
For a moment Mrs. Hawkes saw nothing. Then, her eyes becoming
accustomed to the gloom, she perceived that there was something on the
floor close by the window, something that did not move, did not utter
a sound.
She moved forward quickly, and knelt down on the floor. Then a shudder
went through her, and she sat back with a low cry.
Once more bending down, she raised the inert mass from the floor,
turned the limp head, stared down into the ghastly face.
For a moment sight and sense seemed to fail her, and then she was
roused by sounds of voices and footsteps outside the door.
Scrambling quickly to her feet, the housekeeper hurried across the
floor, just as a loud knock sounded on the door of the room.
She heard the rattling of the handle and quickly turned the key in the
lock at the sound of master’s voice.
“Mrs. Hawkes, can I speak to you? Can you come out?”
She tried to recover her natural voice, as she answered quickly:
“In one moment, Sir Robert. Will you send for a doctor at once?”
“A doctor!” The voice was that of Jack Rotherfield.
“What has happened?” This was in Sir Robert’s voice.
There was a pause, during which Mrs. Hawkes heard other voices in a
confused buzz.
“There has been an accident. A bad accident, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, yes. An accident. But I was the cause of it. I did it. Oh, God,
let me come in, let me in.”
These words were uttered in the strong voice of Jack Rotherfield, and
at the same moment there came a terrific lunge against the door, which
he was trying to break open.
The stern voice of Sir Robert, remonstrating, had the desired effect
of making the young man desist, and then the housekeeper heard her
master giving orders to one of the men-servants to go at once for a
doctor.
In the meantime Mrs. Hawkes had hurriedly recrossed the floor to the
window, and made one more examination of the body of the woman lying
in a heap on the rug under the window.
Then the voice of Jack Rotherfield sounded loud and clear above all
the others outside.
“She’s dead, I know she’s dead.”
“Hush!”
It was Minnie who was trying to silence him, but the young man still
ejaculated, in a tone of passionate remorse and horror,
“I know she’s dead. I know it. It was I killed her.”
“What!”
Sir Robert hissed out the word, in horror and dismay.
Jack Rotherfield went on, in a deathlike silence which made every word
ring out:
“I meant only to frighten her. It was an accident. I fired a revolver
into the air, as I thought, but the bullet struck her as she leaned
out of the window.”
There were sounds of sobbing and suppressed screaming, and in the
midst of it Sir Robert knocked again at the door.
“You had better let me come in.”
The housekeeper turned the key in the lock, and opened the door.
At the same moment a figure came flying along the corridor from
Caryl’s room, and Rhoda Pembury, pale and alarmed, joined the little
group of three persons: Sir Robert, Jack Rotherfield, and Mrs. Hawkes.
“What is it? What has happened?” cried the girl. “What is all the
noise?”
Sir Robert fell back, reeling.
“Thank God!” he said hoarsely, under his breath, as he looked at her.
She stared at him, trembling, then at Jack Rotherfield, who was
striving to get past Mrs. Hawkes; and at the housekeeper, who held him
fast by the arm.
The housekeeper suddenly relaxed her hold of Jack and beckoned to
Rhoda.
“Come in with me,” she said.
Rhoda staggered back.
“What is it? In my room?” stammered she.
The housekeeper nodded.
“Lady Sarah,” she whispered. “She is--” And with her lips she formed
the word “dead.”
Both Sir Robert and Rhoda understood, and in silence they both entered
the room, where Mrs. Hawkes turned up the light.
There, under the window, in her light satin dress, with the jewels
round her neck and on her hands, the flowers still pinned to her
bodice, her beautiful dark hair disordered by her fall, lay Lady
Sarah, inert, lifeless.
A little dark stain on her satin bodice showed where the blood had
oozed through from the wound in her breast.
Jack Rotherfield burst into the group and threw himself on the ground
beside the dead woman. Unprincipled as he was, guilty as he was, not
one of the three persons present could fail to be moved by the anguish
in his face. Solemn as the moment was, and deeply as they were all
impressed by the swiftness of the unexpected and as yet imperfectly
understood tragedy, not one of those three, Sir Robert, Rhoda, or Mrs.
Hawkes, showed half the despair which convulsed the features of the
young man.
He was mad with grief. He babbled out words to which they would all
fain have shut their ears; he took the lifeless hands and pressed them
within his own, staring down at the dead face, calling to her, now
loudly, now softly, in a way which wrung all their hearts.
The group broke up on the arrival of the doctor, and only Mrs. Hawkes
and Sir Robert remained in the room while he made his brief
examination.
There had never been the least doubt about the result of it. Lady
Sarah had been shot through the heart, and must have died
instantaneously.
Jack Rotherfield made no secret of the fact that he had been the cause
of her death, but it soon leaked out that, while he declared that he
had accidentally shot the lady, while intending only to attract her
attention and to frighten her, he had believed, as he did so, that the
woman he was frightening was Rhoda Pembury.
It was Lady Sarah’s scream which had acquainted him with the fact that
the bullet had struck the wrong woman.
His explanations, rambling and confused, deceived no one. All his
hearers knew that he must have been on the watch for Rhoda’s
appearance at the window of her room, where it was often her habit to
sit looking out at the water that ran through the grounds. The room
being unlighted, the moment he saw a woman’s figure at the window,
Jack had jumped to the conclusion that it was that of Rhoda Pembury,
and he had shot her, by his own account accidentally, but none the
less effectually.
He was suffered to leave the house without molestation, and indeed it
was necessary to suggest his withdrawal, so anxious was he to remain
in the vicinity of the dead woman to whom, it could not be doubted, he
had been deeply attached.
It was the doctor who got rid of him, and who then turned his
attention to Rhoda, upon whom the tragic event, which she understood
better than any one, had had an overwhelming effect.
For a short time she lay prostrate, absolutely overcome by the
knowledge that it was in mistake for herself that Jack Rotherfield had
shot Lady Sarah. Rhoda remembered the glances which the unfortunate
lady had thrown repeatedly in her direction during dinner, and did not
doubt that Lady Sarah had gone to the room of her boy’s companion in
order to speak to her privately. There seated or standing at the
window, in the half darkness, she had been mistaken by Jack
Rotherfield for Rhoda, and, although his statement was to the effect
that his intention had only been to attract her attention or to
frighten her--for he had given both explanations--Rhoda was quite sure
that he had intended to shoot her, in revenge for what she had done in
keeping him apart from Lady Sarah, or to prevent any indiscretions on
her part in the shape of revelations concerning the death of Langton.
Suddenly Rhoda raised herself from the couch in Lady Sarah’s boudoir
where she had been placed.
“Caryl!” she whispered.
Mrs. Hawkes, having superintended the carrying of the body of poor
Lady Sarah into her own bedroom, had left Sir Robert alone with the
dead lady and had given her attention to Rhoda.
Rhoda had caught the faint sound of the boy’s voice, through the open
doors. He was calling for her.
“I must go to him.” She struggled to her feet, and turning unsteadily,
said: “Mrs. Hawkes, will you send word to the Priory of what has
happened? And ask whether Lady Eridge will come? She will have to take
Caryl away.”
“Yes. Quite right. I hadn’t thought of it.”
Rhoda went slowly to the boy’s room and found him crying in his little
bed. His nurse was with him, doing her best to soothe him, but rumours
of the tragedy which had killed his mother had already reached his
ears, and he would not be comforted without his friend.
“Rhoda, Rhoda,” cried he, as she came in, looking very white, “Is it
true? Is mama dead?”
“Oh, they shouldn’t have told you!”
“But I guessed.” She was beside him by this time, and his arm was
round her neck. “You remember that evening when she was kind, and
kissed me, and cried? I knew that meant something was going to happen,
and I’ve wondered and wondered what it was. Now I know.”
Rhoda wiped away her own tears. He drew her head down to his level.
“Poor mama. I’m sorry. She was so pretty!” There was a pause, while
Rhoda acquiesced, sobbing. Then he said quickly: “But you will stay
with me, won’t you?”
Rhoda did not know what to say.
“Your grandmama will want to take care of you, Caryl, I think,” she
said. “She will be very, very kind, and so will your aunts, I’m sure.”
“Yes, they’re all kind, but I want _you_. Will you promise to stay
with me?”
“I can’t promise anything yet. You must wait, and be sure we will take
good care of you, Caryl,” said the girl, who could scarcely speak.
The wrench of the tragedy had been great: that of parting with Caryl
would, she felt, be greater still. Yet how was it to be avoided?
Within half an hour the marchioness arrived with Lady Aileen; and
both, after a long and distressing interview with Sir Robert, came
with him into Caryl’s room.
At once Rhoda noticed, with deep distress, that there was a difference
in his manner to herself.
Instead of being merely sad and grave, Sir Robert, when he turned
towards her, was distant, formal, stern and cold. She was cut to the
heart, and understood that he looked upon her as in part the cause of
the death of his wife.
True though this was, in a sense, yet as Rhoda was wholly innocent in
the matter, she felt that it was an injustice that she should be
treated in this manner.
In the circumstances, it was, of course, impossible either to explain
or to accuse. She could only submit, and suffer.
Before many minutes were over, however, she had something to think
about which distracted her thoughts, for the time, from Sir Robert and
his unkindness.
Lady Eridge, deeply distressed as she was at her daughter’s sudden and
tragic death, seemed to feel something not unlike a sense of relief
that her troubles on behalf of the erratic and self-willed Lady Sarah
were at an end.
“What are you going to do, Miss Pembury?” she asked in a low voice, as
she bent over the boy.
“She is going to stay with me,” cried Caryl, as he joined his hands
together round Rhoda’s neck, and clinging to her, refused to relax his
hold.
Lady Eridge looked at her.
“You can’t stay here, of course?”
“Of course not. I am going away at once,” said Rhoda.
The boy burst into loud sobs.
The marchioness bent down to whisper in her ear.
“I’m going to take him to the Priory, to-night, out of the way of
everything. His father will not mind, I’m sure.”
“No. That will be the best thing possible.”
“Will you come with him?”
“Oh, to the Priory? I think I’d rather not. You see I feel so
miserable, and as if I were guilty of--of----”
“Hush! That is absurd. If you come with us, there will be no question
that it will be best for you as well as for Caryl. And it will show
that her people understand. Now will you come?”
Still feeling as if she were held guilty by the boy’s father, Rhoda
glanced towards him.
“If Sir Robert agrees, I’ll go,” said she.
The marchioness went over to him and they exchanged a few words. Then
Lady Eridge came back.
“He agrees with me that nothing could be better. And he thinks that
you had better both come at once. Of course you had better be near at
hand, for there will be questions to answer, since the terrible affair
happened in your room. And you will be near enough at the Priory.”
It was settled at once. Within an hour little Caryl had been removed
to his couch on wheels, and wrapped up carefully, was on his way to
the Priory, in the company of Rhoda, his grandmother, and one of his
aunts.
Rhoda took care not to meet Sir Robert before leaving the house. She
could not face those cold looks of his again. And it was with a very
heavy heart, and a sense that, in spite of her utmost efforts, she had
lost a dear friend, that she left the Mill-house for a second time.