“Ah, it’s you,” he muttered, giving her a sharp glance.
“I do not know you,” she haughtily declared, and slipped by him with such dexterity she was out of the gate before he could respond.
But he only snapped his finger and thumb mockingly at her, and smiled knowingly at Abel, who had lingered to watch the end of this encounter.
“Supple as a willow twig, eh?” he laughed. “Well, I have made whistles out of willows before now, and hallo! where did you get that?”
He was pointing to a rare flower that hung limp and faded from Abel’s buttonhole.
“This? Oh, I found it in the house yonder. It was lying on the floor of the inner room, almost under Batsy’s skirts. Curious sort of flower. I wonder where she got it?”
The intruder betrayed at once an unaccountable emotion. There was a strange glitter in his light green eyes that made Abel shift rather uneasily on his feet. “Was that before this pretty minx you have just let out came in here with Mr. Sutherland?”
“O yes; before anyone had started for the hill at all. Why, what has this young lady got to do with a flower dropped by Batsy?”
“She? Nothing. Only—and I have never given you bad advice, Abel—don’t let that thing hang any longer from your buttonhole. Put it into an envelope and keep it, and if you don’t hear from me again in regard to it, write me out a fool and forget we were ever chums when little shavers.”
The man called Abel smiled, took out the flower, and went to cover up the grass as Dr. Talbot had requested. The stranger took his place at the gate, toward which the coroner and Mr. Sutherland were now advancing, with an air that showed his great anxiety to speak with them. He was the musician whom we saw secretly entering the last-mentioned gentleman’s house after the departure of the servants.
As the coroner paused before him he spoke. “Dr. Talbot,” said he, dropping his eyes, which were apt to betray his thoughts too plainly, “you have often promised that you would give me a job if any matter came up where any nice detective work was wanted. Don’t you think the time has come to remember me?”
“You, Sweetwater? I’m afraid the affair is too deep for an inexperienced man’s first effort. I shall have to send to Boston for an expert. Another time, Sweetwater, when the complications are less serious.”
The young fellow, with a face white as milk, was turning away.
“But you’ll let me stay around here?” he pleaded, pausing and giving the other an imploring look.
“O yes,” answered the good-natured coroner. “Fenton will have work enough for you and half a dozen others. Go and tell him I sent you.”
“Thank you,” returned the other, his face suddenly losing its aspect of acute disappointment. “Now I shall see where that flower fell,” he murmured.
CHAPTER VI
“BREAKFAST IS SERVED, GENTLEMEN!”
Mr. Sutherland returned home. As he entered the broad hall he met his son, Frederick. There was a look on the young man’s face such as he had not seen there in years.
“Father,” faltered the youth, “may I have a few words with you?”
The father nodded kindly, though it is likely he would have much preferred his breakfast; and the young man led him into a little sitting-room littered with the faded garlands and other tokens of the preceding night’s festivities.
“I have an apology to make,” Frederick began, “or rather, I have your forgiveness to ask. For years” he went on, stumbling over his words, though he gave no evidence of a wish to restrain them—“for years I have gone contrariwise to your wishes and caused my mother’s heart to ache and you to wish I had never been born to be a curse to you and her.”
He had emphasised the word mother, and spoke altogether with force and deep intensity. Mr. Sutherland stood petrified; he had long ago given up this lad as lost.
“I—I wish to change. I wish to be as great a pride to you as I have been a shame and a dishonour. I may not succeed at once; but I am in earnest, and if you will give me your hand—”
The old man’s arms were round the young man’s shoulders at once.
“Frederick!” he cried, “my Frederick!”
“Do not make me too much ashamed,” murmured the youth, very pale and strangely discomposed. “With no excuse for my past, I suffer intolerable apprehension in regard to my future, lest my good intentions should fail or my self-control not hold out. But the knowledge that you are acquainted with my resolve, and regard it with an undeserved sympathy, may suffice to sustain me, and I should certainly be a base poltroon if I should disappoint you or her twice.”
He paused, drew himself from his father’s arms, and glanced almost solemnly out of the window. “I swear that I will henceforth act as if she were still alive and watching me.”
There was strange intensity in his manner. Mr. Sutherland regarded him with amazement. He had seen him in every mood natural to a reckless man, but never in so serious a one, never with a look of awe or purpose in his face. It gave him quite a new idea of Frederick.
“Yes,” the young man went on, raising his right hand, but not removing his eyes from the distant prospect on which they were fixed, “I swear that I will henceforth do nothing to discredit her memory. Outwardly and inwardly, I will act as though her eye were still upon me and she could again suffer grief at my failures or thrill with pleasure at my success.”
A portrait of Mrs. Sutherland, painted when Frederick was a lad of ten, hung within a few feet of him as he spoke. He did not glance at it, but Mr. Sutherland did, and with a look as if he expected to behold a responsive light beam from those pathetic features.
“She loved you very dearly,” was his slow and earnest comment. “We have both loved you much more deeply than you have ever seemed to realise, Frederick.”
“I believe it,” responded the young man, turning with an expression of calm resolve to meet his father’s eye. “As proof that I am no longer insensible to your affection, I have made up my mind to forego for your sake one of the dearest wishes of my heart. Father” he hesitated before he spoke the word, but he spoke it firmly at last—“am I right in thinking you would not like Miss Page for a daughter?”
“Like my housekeeper’s niece to take the place in this house once occupied by Marietta Sutherland? Frederick, I have always thought too well of you to believe you would carry your forgetfulness of me so far as that, even when I saw that you were influenced by her attractions.”
“You did not do justice to my selfishness, father. I did mean to marry her, but I have given up living solely for myself, and she could never help me to live for others. Father, Amabel Page must not remain in this house to cause division between you and me.”
“I have already intimated to her the desirability of her quitting a home where she is no longer respected,” the old gentleman declared. “She leaves on the 10.45 train. Her conduct this morning at the house of Mrs. Webb—who perhaps you do not know was most cruelly and foully murdered last night—was such as to cause comment and make her an undesirable adjunct to any gentleman’s family.”
Frederick paled. Something in these words had caused him a great shock. Mr. Sutherland was fond enough to believe that it was the news of this extraordinary woman’s death. But his son’s words, as soon as he could find any, showed that his mind was running on Amabel, whom he perhaps had found it difficult to connect even in the remotest way with crime.
“She at this place of death? How could that be? Who would take a young girl there?”
The father, experiencing, perhaps, more compassion for this soon-to-be-disillusioned lover than he thought it incumbent upon him to show, answered shortly, but without any compromise of the unhappy truth:
“She went; she was not taken. No one, not even myself, could keep her back after she had heard that a murder had been committed in the town. She even intruded into the house; and when ordered out of the room of death took up her stand in the yard in front, where she remained until she had the opportunity of pointing out to
us a stain of blood on the grass, which might otherwise have escaped our attention.”
“Impossible!” Frederick’s eye was staring; he looked like a man struck dumb by surprise or fear. “Amabel do this? You are mocking me, sir, or I may be dreaming, which may the good God grant.”
His father, who had not looked for so much emotion, eyed his son in surprise, which rapidly changed to alarm as the young man faltered and fell back against the wall.
“You are ill, Frederick; you are really ill. Let me call down Mrs. Harcourt. But no, I cannot summon her. She is this girl’s aunt.”
Frederick made an effort and stood up.
“Do not call anybody,” he entreated. “I expect to suffer some in casting this fascinating girl out of my heart. Ultimately I will conquer the weakness; indeed I will. As for her interest in Mrs. Webb’s death”—how low his voice sank and how he trembled!” she may have been better friends with her than we had any reason to suppose. I can think of no other motive for her conduct. Admiration for Mrs. Webb and horror—”
“Breakfast is served, gentlemen!” cried a thrilling voice behind them. Amabel Page stood smiling in the doorway.
CHAPTER VII
“MARRY ME”
“Wait a moment, I must speak to you.” It was Amabel who was holding Frederick back. She had caught him by the arm as he was about leaving the room with his father, and he felt himself obliged to stop and listen.
“I start for Springfield today,” she announced. “I have another relative there living at the house. When shall I have the pleasure of seeing you in my new home?”
“Never.” It was said regretfully, and yet with a certain brusqueness, occasioned perhaps by over-excited feeling. “Hard as it is for me to say it, Amabel, it is but just for me to tell you that after our parting here today we will meet only as strangers. Friendship between us would be mockery, and any closer relationship has become impossible.”
It had cost him an immense effort to say these words, and he expected, fondly expected, I must admit, to see her colour change and her head droop. But instead of this she looked at him steadily for a moment, then slipped her hand down his arm till she reached his palm, which she pressed with sudden warmth, drawing him into the room as she did so, and shutting the door behind them. He was speechless, for she never had looked so handsome or so glowing. Instead of showing depression or humiliation even, she confronted him with a smile more dangerous than any display of grief, for it contained what it had hitherto lacked, positive and irresistible admiration. Her words were equally dangerous.
“I kiss your hand, as the Spaniards say.” And she almost did so, with a bend of her head, which just allowed him to catch a glimpse of two startling dimples.
He was astounded. He thought he knew this woman well, but at this moment she was as incomprehensible to him as if he had never made a study of her caprices and sought an explanation for her ever-shifting expressions.
“I am sensible of the honour,” said he, “but hardly understand how I have earned it.”
Still that incomprehensible look of admiration continued to illumine her face.
“I did not know I could ever think so well of you,” she declared. “If you do not take care, I shall end by loving you some day.”
“Ah!” he ejaculated, his face contracting with sudden pain; “your love, then, is but a potentiality. Very well, Amabel, keep it so and you will be spared much misery. As for me, who have not been as wise as you—”
“Frederick!” She had come so near he did not have the strength to finish. Her face, with its indefinable charm, was raised to his, as she dropped these words one by one from her lips in lingering cadence: “Frederick—do you love me, then, so very much?”
He was angry; possibly because he felt his resolution failing him. “You know!” he hotly began, stepping back. Then with a sudden burst of feeling, that was almost like prayer, he resumed: “Do not tempt me, Amabel. I have trouble enough, without lamenting the failure of my first steadfast purpose.”
“Ah!” she said, stopping where she was, but drawing him toward her by every witchery of which her mobile features were capable; “your generous impulse has strengthened into a purpose, has it? Well, I’m not worth it, Frederick.”
More and more astounded, understanding her less than ever, but charmed by looks that would have moved an anchorite, he turned his head away in a vain attempt to escape an influence that was so rapidly undermining his determination.
She saw the movement, recognised the weakness it bespoke, and in the triumph of her heart allowed a low laugh to escape her.
Her voice, as I have before said, was unmusical though effective; but her laugh was deliciously sweet, especially when it was restrained to a mere ripple, as now.
“You will come to Springfield soon,” she avowed, slipping from before him so as to leave the way to the door open.
“Amabel!” His voice was strangely husky, and the involuntary opening and shutting of his hands revealed the emotion under which he was labouring. “Do you love me? You have acknowledged it now and then, but always as if you did not mean it. Now you acknowledge that you may some day, and this time as if you did mean it. What is the truth? Tell me, without coquetry or dissembling, for I am in dead earnest, and—” He paused, choked, and turned toward the window where but a few minutes before he had taken that solemn oath. The remembrance of it seemed to come back with the movement. Flushing with a new agitation, he wheeled upon her sharply. “No, no,” he prayed, “say nothing. If you swore you did not love me I should not believe it, and if you swore that you did I should only find it harder to repeat what must again be said, that a union between us can never take place. I have given my solemn promise to—”
“Well, well. Why do you stop? Am I so hard to talk to that the words will not leave your lips?”
“I have promised my father I will never marry you. He feels that he has grounds of complaint against you, and as I owe him everything—”
He stopped amazed. She was looking at him intently, that same low laugh still on her lips.
“Tell the truth,” she whispered. “I know to what extent you consider your father’s wishes. You think you ought not to marry me after what took place last night. Frederick, I like you for this evidence of consideration on your part, but do not struggle too relentlessly with your conscience. I can forgive much more in you than you think, and if you really love me—”
“Stop! Let us understand each other.” He had turned mortally pale, and met her eyes with something akin to alarm. “What do you allude to in speaking of last night? I did not know there was anything said by us in our talk together—”
“I do not allude to our talk.”
“Or—or in the one dance we had—”
“Frederick, a dance is innocent.”
The word seemed to strike him with the force of a blow.
“Innocent,” he repeated, “innocent?” becoming paler still as the full weight of her meaning broke gradually upon him.
“I followed you into town,” she whispered, coming closer, and breathing the words into his ear. “But what I saw you do there will not prevent me from obeying you if you say: ‘Follow me wherever I go, Amabel; henceforth our lives are one.’”
“My God!”
It was all he said, but it seemed to create a gulf between them. In the silence that followed, the evil spirit latent beneath her beauty began to make itself evident even in the smile which no longer called into view the dimples which belong to guileless mirth, while upon his face, after the first paralysing effect of her words had passed, there appeared an expression of manly resistance that betrayed a virtue which as yet had never appeared in his selfish and altogether reckless life.
That this was more than a passing impulse he presently made evident by lifting his hand and pushing her slowly back.
“I do not know what you saw me do,” said he; “but whatever it was, it can make no difference in our relations.”
Her whisper, whi
ch had been but a breath before, became scarcely audible.
“I did not pause at the gate you entered,” said she. “I went in after you.”
A gasp of irresistible feeling escaped him, but he did not take his eyes from her face.
“It was a long time before you came out,” she went on, “but previous to that time the shade of a certain window was thrust aside, and—”
“Hush!” he commanded, in uncontrollable passion, pressing his hand with impulsive energy against her mouth. “Not another word of that, or I shall forget you are a woman or that I have ever loved you.”
Her eyes, which were all she had remaining to plead with, took on a peculiar look of quiet satisfaction, and power. Seeing it, he let his hand fall and for the first time began to regard her with anything but a lover’s eyes.
“I was the only person in sight at that time,” she continued. “You have nothing to fear from the world at large.”
“Fear?”
The word made its own echo; she had no need to emphasise it even by a smile. But she watched him as it sunk into his consciousness with an intentness it took all his strength to sustain. Suddenly her bearing and expression changed. The few remains of sweetness in her face vanished, and even the allurement which often lasts when the sweetness is gone, disappeared in the energy which now took possession of her whole threatening and inflexible personality.
“Marry me,” she cried, “or I will proclaim you to be the murderer of Agatha Webb.”
She had seen the death of love in his eyes.
CHAPTER VIII
“A DEVIL THAT UNDERSTANDS MEN”
Frederick Sutherland was a man of finer mental balance than he himself, perhaps, had ever realised. After the first few moments of stupefaction following the astounding alternative which had been given him, he broke out with the last sentence she probably expected to hear:
“What do you hope from a marriage with me, that to attain your wishes you thus sacrifice every womanly instinct?”
She met him on his own ground.
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 115
