|The letter dropped from her hand to the floor. She felt her knees give
way. She staggered to a sofa and fell upon it. Her eyes closed. She had
not fainted, however: the blessing of unconsciousness was denied to her.
She could hear through the stillness every word of the conversation
that took place between the postman and one of the maids who had been
exchanging pots of heath for the porch with the gardener. The postman
had clearly brought some piece of news of an enthralling character,
for its discussion involved many interjectional comments in the local
dialect.
She could hear every word now, though she had not paid any attention
to the beginning of the conversation, having been in the act of reading
Cyril's letter.
What was it that they were talking about?
A murder?--it must have been a murder. The postman became graphic as
he described the nature of the wound. Agnes fancied she could hear the
servant breathing hard in compliment to the skill of the narrator. The
wound had been caused by a shot--so much was certain--it had struck the
victim in the back and he had fallen forward clutching at the grass,
“like this,” the narrator said--the pause of a few seconds was filled up
by low exclamations of horror.
He was describing the murder of Dick Westwood, Agnes believed; for the
details, so far as she heard, applied to that crime. She glanced with an
affrighted eye toward Cyril's letter that still lay on the floor--yes,
but why should they be talking about the murder of Mr. Westwood upon
this day in particular? Why should the postman pause in his round to
describe with a skill which only comes of long practice and a thorough
acquaintance with the susceptibilities of a rustic audience, a deed
which had been described times without number during a period of several
months?
“There he lay in his own plantation, and there they found him,”
continued the man, when he had illustrated the attitude of the man who
was shot. “They found him and thought he was dead. He wasn't, just at
that moment, but I heard said that the doctor was ready to take his oath
that he couldn't be alive for six hours, so mayhap he's gone to his last
long 'count by now, good friends. For Surgeon Ogden is none of the men
that pulls a long jaw down at every little matter, whether natural--like
females, or more terrifying, of the likes of us--nay, he's ever
cheery, as you may know if you've been that fort'nate to come under his
hands--ever cheery in hisself, though of course, being polite, he feels
hisself bound to be as grave as the gravest when some of their ladyships
fancies that there's summat wrong wi' 'em. Ah no; the surgeon is too much
the gentleman hisself to make light o' th' ailments o' the nobility, as
though they was as humble as us. And to be sure, if you give it a
doo consideration, good people, you'll find it quite reasonable and
natural-like for him that comes to cure to make out a case to be as evil
as possible--'tis on the self-same principle that Tombs, the tailor,
makes out that our old coats are terrible far gone when we take 'em to
be repaired, so that when he sends 'em home as fresh as new we think a
deal of his skill. Ay, and for that matter his reverence the vicar,
or even a simple-minded curate, will tell us by the hour how terrible
steeped in evil all of us is, so that when he gets one to take the
pledge we looks on 'un as a dreadful sharp gentleman to be able to make
us presentable. Well, well, him that lies dead this day was mayhap a bit
hard, but 'tis a sad fate to fall upon any man; and so God help us all.”
Agnes heard every word that came from the long-winded postman, and the
succeeding comments of his auditors. But her attention had not been
taken away from the letter which was lying on the floor. It was only
because it seemed to her that the subject of the man's story was
the same as that of the letter, she had been startled into
listening--curiously, eagerly.
But the instant the drone of the man and the long-drawn and wondering
sighs of the maid had ceased, she got to her feet--not without an
effort--and crossed the room to where the letter was lying. She looked
at it for some time before she stooped and picked it up. She went over
every line of it again, saying in a whisper the words that it contained.
It was a short letter.
Could she by any possibility have misread it the first time? It was a
short letter:--
“With what feelings, dear Agnes, will you read this letter! But I feel
that I must write it--I should have confessed all to you when I could
have done, so face to face, but I was a coward. Often at night aboard
the steamer coming out here, I thought upon my guilt, and night by night
when in the midst of the great pasturages I have thought over it, and
felt how great a ruffian I was, especially as another is suffering for
my sin. I cannot endure the stinging of my conscience any longer. Agnes,
I must make a clean breast of it to you. Hear me and do not abhor me
utterly when I confess to you now that that sin--that crime which came
to light in the summer--you will know to what I allude--i cannot name
it to you--was mine. I kept my guilt a secret and allowed one who was
innocent to suffer for me. Was there ever so base, so cowardly a wretch?
I am unworthy to be your brother. Only one way remains to me of making
reparation, and you know what that way is. I am coming home by next
steamer. Dearest Agnes, can you ever forgive me for the disgrace I have
brought upon you? Indeed, I feel that this is the bitterest part of my
punishment--the knowledge that I have disgraced our name.
“Cyril.”
She read the letter a second time. It left no loophole of escape for
her. Its meaning was but too plain. It appeared in every line. The
crime--there was only one crime to which it could refer--there was only
one crime for which an innocent man was suffering punishment.
Once again the letter dropped from her hand. She looked at her lingers
that had held it as though it had been written with blood that left a
stain behind it. For some moments she gazed at the thing lying on the
floor at her feet, trying to comprehend all that it meant to her. She
felt stunned, as though she had been struck on the head with a heavy
weapon. The sense of what that letter meant benumbed her. She was
overwhelmed by the force of the blow which she had received.
She stood there in the middle of the room, both her hands pressed
against her heart. She could hear its wild beating through the silence.
The force of its beating caused her to sway to and fro on her feet.
“It is folly--folly!” she said, as if trying by giving articulation
to her thoughts to convince herself against the evidence of her own
judgment. “It is folly! He was his friend--Dick Westwood was his
friend. Why should he have killed him? He dined at the Court that very
night--he--Good God! he was the last to see him alive. Let me think--let
me think! What did he say? Yes, he said that Dick had walked across the
park with him. He admitted that he was the last person with whom Dick
had spoken. Oh, my God--my God! he has written the truth--why should he
write anything but the truth? Why should he be mad enough to confess to
a crime that he never committed? He killed him, and he is my brother!
Oh, fool--fool--that I was! I could not see that that girl was sent
through the mercy of God. She was sent here that the man who loved her
might be saved from marrying me. But, thank God! I have learned the
truth before it is too late.”
And then, as she stood there, she recalled the most trivial incidents of
the morning after the murder of Dick Westwood. She remembered how late
it was when Cyril had appeared--how he had made excuse after excuse
for remaining in bed. In every trivial act of his she perceived such
evidence of his guilt that she was amazed that no one had attached
suspicion to him. Why, even the fact of his having so eagerly accepted
the offer of an appointment on a sheep station in Australia should have
made her suspect that he had the gravest of reasons for wishing to get
away from the country. She now saw that his anxiety was to leave the
scene of his crime behind him.
Then she thought of the days that preceded his escape--that was how she
had come to regard his sailing for Australia--how terrible her trouble
had been with him. She had felt that he was going to destruction, idling
about the tap-rooms of Bracken-hurst, walking with the most disreputable
men to be found in the neighbourhood--utterly regardless of appearances
and impatient at her remonstrances. Thinking of all this in the light
of the confession which she had just read, she was left to wonder how
it was possible that she had failed--that every one in Brackenhurst had
failed--to attach suspicion to him.
“He did it--he did it!” she whispered.
Once again with a flicker of hope that was more dispiriting than
despair, she read the letter, and with a cry of agony fell back upon
the sofa and laid her head, face downward, upon one of its arms. Claude
Westwood had uttered his curse against the murderer of his brother and
against all that pertained to him! She had been horrified at the thought
of Clare; but the curse had fallen, and she, Agnes, was crushed beneath
it. Her brother was on his way home to pay the penalty of his crime, and
Clare--
She got upon her feet, and stood with one hand grasping the back of the
sofa, as the thought flashed through her mind: Clare would be happy.
There was now no reason why she and Claude might not marry. Even at that
moment, when the horror that had rested on Clare's head had been shifted
to her own, Agnes felt a thrill of satisfaction when she reflected that
it was in her power to give Clare happiness.
She took a step to the bell-rope, but while it was still in her hand, a
thought suddenly flashed through her mind: the story which the postman
had been telling to the gardener and the maidservant--to what did it
refer?--to whom did it refer?
Some one had been shot during the night--so much she had gathered from
the rambling discourse of the man; she had not given much attention
to all that he had said, but she recollected that it had struck her as
singular that the incidents of the matter to which his story referred
closely resembled those of the murder of Dick Westwood: the man might
have been describing the latter. The victim had, she gathered, been shot
in the back, and--what had the man said?--he had been shot in his own
grounds. Some one had been shot in his own grounds? Who--who--who?
Why, who could it be but Sir Percival Hope? It could be no one but Sir
Percival Hope--the man whom she loved.
That was the terrible thought that swooped down upon her, so to
speak--that hawklike thought that struck its talons through her; and at
that moment such doubts as might have lingered in her heart were swept
away. She now knew that she loved Sir Percival Hope, who was lying at
the point of death, if the man who had come with the story had spoken
the truth.
“Thank Heaven--thank Heaven that he knew the truth before he died; thank
Heaven that he knew I loved him; and thank Heaven that he died before
he could know that other truth--that we could never be anything more to
each other than we were. I should have had to tell him that--all that
that letter has told to me. But I have still to tell some one of it. Who
is it--who is it?”
Her brain was whirling. She had forgotten for the moment that Clare had
to be made happy; and some moments had passed before the sight of
the bell-rope brought back her thoughts to the object which she had
originally before her in going to it. She rang the bell, and when the
butler appeared she had her voice sufficiently under control to ask him
to tell her maid to find Miss Tristram and send her to the drawing-room.
As the butler was leaving the room she said--and now her voice was not
quite so firm as it had been:
“I heard the postman telling some story to the gardener just now. Has
some one been hurt?”
The man did not answer for a second or two, but that space was
sufficient to send her thoughts wandering once more on a different
track.
“Merciful Heaven!” she cried. “It cannot be possible that it is Mr.
Westwood who was shot, as his brother was--within his own grounds?”
“Oh no, ma'am, it's not so bad as that,” replied the butler. “So far
as I hear, it was the poachers that have been about Westwood Court one
night and the Abbey Woods another night for the past month. It seems
that Ralph Dangan, Sir Percival Hope's new keeper---him that was at the
Court for so long--he came upon them suddenly last night and they shot
him. The story is that the poor man was not likely to live longer than
a few hours.” Agnes gave a sigh--she wondered if the butler would know
that it was a sigh of relief rather than one of sympathy for the unhappy
man who had been shot.
“Poor fellow!” she said. “I hope his daughter has been sent for.”
“I didn't hear anything in that way, ma'am,” said the butler. “If she
went to Sir Percival's sister, he will know her address, but they
say that poor Dangan always refused to see her, though she was a good
daughter except for her one slip.”
He left the room, and Agnes sat wondering how it was that she had been
led to feel with such certainty that the story of the man who was shot
referred to Sir Percival. And in its turn this question of hers became
a terror to her, for in her condition of excitement she had lost all
capacity to judge of incidents in an unprejudiced way. The condition of
her brain caused her to distort every matter which she tried to consider
on its merits.
She waited so long without any one appearing that she had actually
forgotten what was the object of her waiting, and she was surprised when
her maid came into the room saying:
“I cannot find Miss Tristram in the house, Miss Mowbray. I think she must
have gone out for a walk by the lower gate; she could not have left by
the drive without my seeing her, for I was sitting at the window of the
workroom sewing.”