"At last you are alone," said Dillwyn, advancing to meet her. "I
thought that fellow would never go. I could only see the top of
his head, and I longed for a pea-shooter."
"It was Dicky Browne. And at all events he saw you. And fancy--
he wouldn't tell me you were there, just to tease me!"
"Or perhaps to keep you a little longer to himself," said
Dillwyn, who was too thorough a lover not to be jealous of every
one.
"What a fancy!" said Agatha, laughing. "You must have a brilliant
wit to imagine Dicky in love." She stopped laughing and grew very
grave. "Such an unfortunate thing has happened," said she; and
she told him of little Vera's mistake.
"What does it matter," said he. "The sooner every one learns that
we belong to each other the better. Where is Mrs. Greatorex? If I
could see her, even a word would explain matters."
"Jack, I entreat you not to speak to her, here, before all these
people." She grew very pale. "She is quite sure to say something
dreadful to you. I _beg_ you to wait."
"But for how long?"--impatiently.
"Until to-morrow, at all events. And if you wait for even longer
than that--- Well, well"--seeing his expression--"until
to-morrow. Do you know, Jack, I came here just now only to ask
you to go away, and so avoid seeing Aunt Hilda at all."
"That I won't do," said Dillwyn firmly. "You are mine, and I
claim you. You yourself, of your own free-will have given
yourself to me, and do you think I shall make little of that
gift? No, no; come back with me to the grounds, and let all the
world see how it is with us."
She slipped her hand through his arm, and turned to go back to
the tennis-grounds. It was a most satisfactory answer. Half-way
down the alley, however, a sound behind them made them turn.
There stood the unhappy Edwy, waving his long arms and
gesticulating frantically. He must have followed Dillwyn (for
whom he had a great affection) through the little gate. He was
evidently in a frightful state of excitement. His face was livid,
his eyes staring. He was looking through an interstice in the
rhododendron hedge, and his hands, extended, were grasping the
air convulsively.
"Oh poor Edwy!" said Agatha. "Something is troubling him. Let us
go back."
"He has been growing much worse of late," said Dillwyn, studying
the unfortunate idiot attentively. "His mother's death seems to
have preyed upon him a good deal. Poor boy! I suppose she was his
sole comfort. He has grown more violent and unreasonable, and the
form his increasing mania has taken is a hatred of his father.
Every one is remarking that. He cannot see him without going into
a frightful state of excitement."
"What is it, my poor fellow?" said Dillwyn gently, who always
spoke to him as though he could hear.
He tried to release his hand from Agatha's arm. There was a
difficulty about doing this, the idiot being strong; but Dillwyn
had a strange influence over him. He made a slight gesture, and
at once the boy turned to him, letting Agatha go.
"Sho! Sho!" he growled in his unnatural voice--a voice full of
living anguish, however--pointing through the hole in the
rhododendrons.
Dillwyn and Agatha followed his gaze, and saw Darkham far away
over there, talking to Mrs. Greatorex, who had evidently come
down to the courts.
The idiot pointed again to his father, and lifted his hands and
shook them violently. There was horror and an awful hatred in his
wild black eyes that were so like Darkham's.
"Sho! Sho!" shouted Edwy again, not knowing that he shouted; and
then he turned to Agatha, staring at her, as if to compel her
attention, and pointed again to his father, and suddenly drew a
handkerchief from his pocket.
He folded it, clumsily, it is true, and then, with a weird
movement, laid it across his mouth and nostrils, and pressed his
hands upon it. With all his _might_ he pressed.
She grew deadly pale. Had he--had that man murdered his wife?
Oh no! Oh _no!_ It was impossible.
The boy was still pressing his hands against his mouth, and
pinching his nostrils to keep out his breath. He was growing
livid. Dillwyn went to him and tore down his hands. The idiot
gasped, and then laughed in that horribly foolish way so
distressing in those whose minds are affected.
"Sho! Sho!" cried the poor creature again in heartrending
accents. It was as though the mere sight of his father roused all
his passions within him. He kept pointing frantically to where
Darkham stood, and presently his cry rose into a fierce scream--
the scream of a wounded animal.
Dillwyn laid his hand upon his arm and drew him gently away from
the opening in the hedge through which his father could be seen.
Dillwyn's own face was very pale. For the first time a suspicion
that Mrs. Darkham had been foully murdered entered into his
brain.
He drew back Edwy with a certain force, and the boy fell to the
ground in short but fierce convulsions.
Dillwyn loosened his collar, and soon it was all over. Edwy rose,
looked strangely round him, and with a queer twitching of the
features rushed past Dillwyn before he could prevent him, and
disappeared into the wood.
"Poor fellow!" said Dillwyn sadly.
Agatha struggled with herself, and then burst into tears.
"My darling! What is it? _Agatha!_" The hideous thought that had
come to himself he would not have revealed to her for all the
world, and now a fear that she, too, had entertained it horrified
him. He held her to him, her head pressed against his breast.
"Oh, I knew it! I knew it all through: I _felt_ it," sobbed she
violently. Words of Darkham's that day in the wood came back to
her. 'For the sake of the heaven I have lost!' _How_ had he lost
it? "Jack, he killed her! He murdered her!"
"Agatha, my beloved! Why have such a thought as that? You must
remember that that poor boy---"
"Oh, no, no! It is true. He"--trembling--"he smothered her!
Didn't you see how Edwy pressed that handkerchief across his own
nose and mouth, as if to _show_ something? And you tell me the
poor boy has shown hatred to his father of late. It is plain. It
is quite, _quite_ plain. Oh, poor boy! Jack"--in a nervous
whisper; she was now shaking from head to foot--"he must have
seen it! _Seen_ his father kill his mother!" She cowered as if in
terror.
"Agatha, I entreat you to compose yourself. All this is mere
supposition."
"It is not. It is all the awful terrible truth! And what
frightens me is, that he will kill _you_ too, if he can. You
laughed at me last night. You made light of my fears, but I tell
you to beware of him." She burst into bitter weeping again. "I am
_sure_ he will try to kill you, and you--you will do nothing to
save yourself--not even for my sake. And yet you say you love
me."
"Love seems a poor word," said Dillwyn. "My dear, _dear_ girl,
have pity on me, if not upon yourself. Don't cry like that. I'll
do anything you like--_anything_, if you will only try and be
happy again. Why, look here now, Agatha; it isn't altogether so
easy a matter to murder a person without being found out as you
seem to imagine."
"You, too, then"--eagerly--"think that---"
"It is impossible to know what to think," said he, with some
emotion. He paced to and fro upon the path, his head down-bent,
pondering. Suddenly he lifted it. "Look here, this has got
nothing to do with us in any way," he said. "Why spoil this hour
because of it?"
"It has something to do with me, at all events," said the girl,
who was now deadly pale.
"I have a weight on my heart, Jack! I _must_ tell you about it."
She drew her breath sharply, but with a great courage went on. "I
think now--I hardly understood it then--but I think that
before his wife died he--wished to marry me."
"Well!" Dillwyn's face was hard and cold. But he caught her to
him, and pressed her face down against him. It would be easier
for her to speak like that, where her face could not be seen. His
poor, poor darling! What she had gone through!
"Well"--miserably--"I think now that but for me--he--
might not have killed her! _Oh, Jack!_"
Jack lifted her face and kissed her.
"Think something else," said he. "That you are my own brave girl,
and that morbid thoughts are unworthy of you. Even if what you
say was the case, Agatha, still it leaves your soul as white as
heaven. There now, beloved! Will you grieve me? Think one thing
more, Agatha. Think of me and of my love for you--my undying
love. If that will not help you, then"--with a tender smile--
"I shall be afraid you do not care for it."
She clung to him.
"I'm afraid, after all, you will have your own way, and that I
shall not be able to speak to Mrs. Greatorex to-day," said he
presently. "Your eyes are sad tell-tales. Come with me into the
wood, and down to the river. There we can bathe them."