|It was rather early on the next morning when Agnes Mowbray was visited
by Sir Percival Hope. Cyril, who had returned home late on the previous
night, and had not gone to bed for nearly an hour after entering the
house, was not yet downstairs; but his sister was in her garden when her
visitor arrived.
Sir Percival Hope was one of the latest comers to the county. He was
the younger son of a good family--the baronetcy was one of the oldest in
England--and had gone out to Australia very early in life. In one of
the southern colonies he had not only made a fortune, but had won great
distinction and had been twice premier before he had reached the age
which in England is considered young enough for entering political
life. On the death of his father--his elder brother had been killed when
serving with his regiment in the Soudan campaign of 1883--he had come
to England, not to inherit any estate, for the last acre of the family
property had been sold before his birth, but to purchase the estate of
Branksome Abbey in Brackenshire, which had once been in his mother's
family. He was now close upon forty years of age, and it was said that
he was engaged in the somewhat arduous work of nursing the constituency
of South Brackenshire. There were few people in the neighbourhood who
were disposed to think that when the chance came for him to declare
himself he would be rejected. It was generally allowed that he might
choose his constituency.
He was a tall and athletic man, with the bronzed face of a southern
colonist, and with light-brown hair that had no suggestion of grey about
it. As he stood on the lawn at The Knoll by the side of Agnes, and in
the shade of one of the great elms, no one would have believed that he
was over thirty.
“I got your letter,” said Agnes when she had greeted him with
cordiality, for though they had known each other only a year they had
become the warmest friends. “I got your letter an hour ago--just when
you must have got mine, which I wrote last night. I hope you are able to
give me as good news as I gave you.”
“You were able to tell me of the saving of the bank; I hope I can tell
you of the saving of a soul,” said Sir Percival.
“I hoped as much,” she cried, her face lighting up as she turned her
eyes upon his. “Your sister must be a good woman--as good a woman as you
are a man.”
“If you had waited for half an hour when you came to see me yesterday, I
could have told you what I come to tell you now,” said he. “But you were
in too great a hurry.”
“I had need to make haste,” laughed Agnes. “Every moment was worth
hundreds of pounds--perhaps thousands.”
“And the good people were perfectly satisfied with my cheque? Well,
they are a good deal more confiding than the colonists to whom I was
accustomed in my young days: they would have laughed at the notion of
offering them a cheque when they looked for gold, although in the bush
cheques are current. Oh no; when they make a run on a bank nothing but
gold can satisfy them.”
“I knew what I could do with those people yesterday. They only needed
some one to arrest their panic for a moment, and then like sheep they
were ready to go off in the opposite direction.”
“And you saved the bank?”
“No, not I. You saved it: the cheque was yours. And now it is through
you that that poor girl is to be saved. How good you are. What should we
do without you in this neighbourhood?”
“The neighbourhood did without me for a good many years. Never mind.
I have come to tell you that my sister will be glad to take your young
_protégée_ under her roof and to give her a chance of--well, may I say,
redeeming the past? You are not one of the women who think that for one
sin there is no redemption. Neither is my sister. She is, like you, a
good woman--not given to preaching or moralising in the stereotyped way,
but ever ready to lend a helping hand to a sister, not to push her back
into the mire.”
“After all, that is the most elementary Christianity. Was there any
precept so urged by the Founder as that? Christianity is assuredly the
religion for women.”
“It is the only religion for women--and men. My sister will treat the
girl as though she knew nothing of her lapse. There will be no lowering
of the corners of her mouth when she receives her. She will never, by
word or action, suggest that she has got that lapse forever in her mind.
The poor girl will never receive a reproach. In short, she will be given
a real chance; not a nominal one; not a fictitious one; not a parochial
one.”
“That will mean the saving of her soul. Her father has behaved cruelly
toward her. He turned her out of his house, as you know, because she
refused to say what was the name of her betrayer.”
“You mentioned that to me. All the people in the neighbourhood seem
to be most indignant with the poor girl because of her silence on this
point. They seem to feel that their curiosity is outraged. They do not
appear to be grateful to her for having stimulated their imagination.
And yet I think it was hearing of this attitude of the girl that caused
my sister to be attracted to her. That's all I have to say on this
painful matter, my dear friend.”
Agnes Mowbray gave him her hand. Her eyes were misty as she turned them
upon his face. Several moments had passed before she was able to speak,
and then her voice was tremulous. A sob was in her throat.
“You are so good--so good--so good!” she said.
He held her hand for a minute. He seemed to be at the point of speaking
as he looked earnestly into her face, but when he dropped her hand he
turned away from her without saying a word.
There was a long silence before he said:
“We have been very good friends, you and I, since I came back to
England.”
His words were almost startling in their divergence from the subject
upon which they had been conversing. The expression on Agnes's face
suggested that she was at least puzzled if not absolutely startled by
his digression.
“Yes,” she said mechanically, “we have indeed been good friends. I knew
in an instant yesterday that it was to you I should go when I was in
great need. I knew that you would help me.”
He looked at her gravely and in silence for some moments. Then he
suddenly put out his hand to her.
“Good-bye,” he said quickly--unnaturally; and before their hands had
more than met for the second time he turned and walked rapidly away to
the gate, leaving her standing under the shady elm in the centre of the
lawn.
For a moment or two she was too much surprised to be able to make any
move. He had never behaved so curiously before. She was trying to think
what she had said or what she had suggested that had hurt his feelings,
for it seemed to her that his sudden departure might be taken to
indicate that she had said something that jarred upon him.
She hastened across the lawn and through the tennis-ground, to intercept
him on the road. Only a low privet hedge stood between the road and
the gardens of The Kroll, and she reached this hedge and looked over it
before he had passed. She saw him approaching; his eyes were upon the
ground.
It was his turn to be startled as she spoke his name, looking over the
hedge. He looked up quickly.
“Did I say anything that I should not have said just now?” she asked.
“Why did you hurry away before our hands had more than met?”
“Shall I come back?” he said, after looking into her eyes with a curious
expression in his. “Will you ask me to return?”
“I will--I will--I will,” she cried. “Please return and tell me if I
said anything that hurt you. I would not do so for the world. Nothing
but gratitude and good feeling for you was in my heart. Oh yes, pray
return.”
“If I were wise I should not have returned when you made use of that
word 'gratitude,'” said he when he had come beside her, through the
small rustic gate which she opened for him from the inside. “Gratitude
is the opposite to love, and I love you.”
With a startled cry she took a step or two back from him, and held up
her hands as if instinctively to avert a blow.
“I have startled you,” he said. “I was rude; but indeed I do not know of
any way of saying that I love you except in those words. I have had no
experience either in loving or in confessing my love. I came here this
morning to say those words to you, but when I looked at you standing
beside me under the elm--when I saw how beautiful you were--how full
of God's grace, and goodness, and tenderness, and charity, I was so
overcome with the thought of my own unworthiness to love such a one as
you, that”--
“Oh no, no; for God's sake, do not say that--do not say that,” she
cried, holding out her hands to him in an appealing attitude. “Alas!
alas! that word love must never pass between us.”
“Why should not the word pass, when my heart and soul”--
“Ah, let me implore of you. I fancied that you knew all--all my story.
I forgot that it happened so long ago that people in this neighbourhood
had ceased to speak of it years before you came here.”
“Your story? I will believe nothing but what is good of you.”
“My story--my life's story is that I have promised to love another man.”
He gave a gasp. His head fell forward for a moment. Then he clasped
his hands behind him and looked at her in all tenderness and without a
suggestion of reproach.
“I had a suspicion of it yesterday,” he said. “The man who is more
fortunate than I is Richard Westwood.”
“No, not Richard Westwood, but Claude Westwood,” she replied, in a low
tone, and with her eyes fixed upon the ground.
A puzzled look was on his face.
“Claude Westwood--Claude Westwood?” he said. “But there is no Claude
Westwood. Was not Claude Westwood the African explorer killed years
ago--it must be nearly ten years ago--when trying to reach the Upper
Zambesi?”
“Claude Westwood is the man to whom I have given my promise,” said she
in an unshaken voice--the voice of one whose faith remains unshaken. “He
is not dead. He is alive and our love lives. Ah, my dear friend”--she
put out both her hands frankly to Sir Percival and he took them,
tenderly and reverently--“my dear friend, you may think me a fool; you
may think that I am wasting my life in waiting for an event that is as
impossible as the bringing of the dead back to life; but God has brought
the dead back to life, and I trust in God to bring the man whom I love
back to my love. At any rate, whatever you may think, I cannot help
myself; it is my life, this waiting, though it is weary--weary.”
She had turned away from him and was looking with wide, wistful eyes
across the long sweep of country that lay between the road and the Abbey
woods.
He had not let go her hands. He held them as he said:
“My poor Agnes! my poor Agnes. I had some hope--yes, a little--when I
first saw you. I had never thought of loving a woman before, but then...
ah, what is the good of recalling what my thoughts were--my hopes? I am
strong enough to face my fate. I am strong enough to hope with all
my heart that happiness may come to you--that--that--he may come to
you--the man who is blessed with such a love as has blessed few men. You
know that I am sincere, Agnes?”
“I am sure of it,” she said, and now it was her hand that tightened on
his. “Ah, my dear, dear friend, I know how good you are--how true! If I
were in trouble it is to you I would go for help, knowing that you would
never fail me.”
“I will never fail you,” he said. “There is a bond between us. You will
come to me should you ever be in trouble.”
“I give you my promise,” she said.
Her eyes were overflowing with tears as she put her face up to his. He
kissed her on the forehead very gently, and without speaking a good-bye
turned slowly away to the little gate.
While he was in the act of unlocking it, he started, hearing a cry from
the spot where they had been standing a dozen yards away.
He looked round quickly.
Agnes was being supported by a servant. He saw that her face was deathly
white, and in her hand that fell limply by her side there was an oblong
piece of paper. A telegraph envelope had fluttered to the ground.
He rushed back to her.
“What has happened?” he asked the servant.
“A telegram, sir; I brought it out to her--it had just come, and knew
that she was out here. She read it and cried out--I was just in time to
catch her. I don't think she has quite fainted, Sir Percival.”
The maid was right. Agnes had not fainted, but she was plainly overcome
by whatever news the telegram had conveyed to her.
She opened her eyes as Sir Percival put his arm about her, supporting
her to a garden chair that stood at the side of the tennis lawn.
“I think I can walk,” she murmured; and she made an effort to step out,
but all her strength seemed to have departed. She would have fallen if
Sir Percival had not supported her.
“You are weak,” he said; “but after a rest you will be yourself again.
Let me help you.”
“You are so good!” she said, and with his help she was able to take a
few steps. But then she gave a sudden gasp and became rigid when she
caught sight of the telegram which was crumpled in her hand. She raised
it slowly and stared at it. Then she cried out:
“Ah, God is good--God is good! It is no dream. He is safe--safe! Claude
Westwood is alive.”