Agatha had begun to shudder. She shook so she rattled the door against which I leaned.
“And when you found that Providence was not so much upon your side as you thought, when you saw that the fraud was known and that your brother was suspected of it—”
“Don’t!” I pleaded, “don’t make me recall that hour!”
But she was inexorable. “Recall that and every hour,” she commanded. “Tell me why he sacrificed himself, why he sacrificed me, to a cur—”
She feared her own tongue, she feared her own anger, and stopped. “Speak,” she whispered, and it was the most ghastly whisper that ever left mortal lips. I was but a foot from her and she held me as by a strong enchantment. I could not help obeying her.
“To make it all clear,” I pursued, “I must go back to the time I rejoined James in Philemon’s room. He had finished his letter when I entered and was standing with it, sealed, in his hand. I may have cast it a disdainful glance. I may have shown that I was no longer the same man I had been when I left him a half-hour before, for he looked curiously at me for a moment previous to saying:
“‘Is that the wallet you have there? Was Mr. Orr conscious, and did he give it to you himself?’ ‘Mr. Orr was conscious,’ I returned—and I didn’t like the sound of my own voice, careful as I was to speak naturally—’ but he fainted just before I came out, and I think you had better ask the clerk as you go down to send someone up to him.’
“James was weighing the pocket-book in his hand. ‘How much do you think there is in here? The debt was ten thousand.’ I had turned carelessly away and was looking out of the window. ‘The memorandum inside gives the figures as two thousand,’ I declared. ‘He apologises for not sending the full amount. He hasn’t it.’ Again I felt James looking at me. Why? Could he see that guilty wad of bills lying on my breast? ‘How came you to read the memorandum?’ he asked. ‘Mr. Orr wished me to. I looked at it to please him.’ This was a lie—the first I had ever uttered. James’s eyes had not moved. ‘John,’ said he, ‘this little bit of business seems to have disturbed you. I ought to have attended to it myself. I am quite sure I ought to have attended to it myself.’ ‘The man is dying,’ I muttered. ‘You escaped a sad sight. Be satisfied that you have got the money. Shall I post that letter for you?’ He put it jealously in his pocket, and again I saw him look at me, but he said nothing more except that he repeated that same phrase, ‘I ought to have attended to it myself. Agatha might better have waited.’ Then he went out; but I remained till Philemon came home. My brother and myself were no longer companions; a crime divided us—a crime he could not suspect, yet which made itself felt in both our hearts and prepared him for the revelation made to him by Mr. Gilchrist some weeks after. That night he came to Sutherlandtown, where I was, and entered my bedroom—not in the fraternal way of the old days, but as an elder enters the presence of a younger. ‘John,’ he said, without any preamble or preparation, ‘where are the five thousand dollars you kept back from Mr. Gilchrist? The memorandum said seven and you delivered to me only two.’ There are death-knells sounded in every life; those words sounded mine, or would have if he had not immediately added: ‘There! I knew you had no stamina. I have taken your crime on myself, who am really to blame for it, since I delegated my duty to another, and you will only have to bear the disgrace of having James Zabel for a brother. In exchange, give me the money; it shall be returned tomorrow. You cannot have disposed of it already. After which, you, or rather I, will be in the eyes of the world only a thief in intent, not in fact.’ Had he only stopped there!—but he went on: ‘Agatha is lost to me, John. In return, be to me the brother I always thought you up to the unhappy day the sin of Achan came between us.’
“You were lost to him! It was all I heard. You were lost to him! Then, if I acknowledged the crime I should not only take up my own burden of disgrace, but see him restored to his rights over the only woman I had ever loved. The sacrifice was great and my virtue was not equal to it. I gave him back the money, but I did not offer to assume the responsibility of my own crime.”
“And since?”
In what a hard tone she spoke!
“I have had to see Philemon gradually assume the rights James once enjoyed.”
“John,” she asked—she was under violent self-restraint—“why do you come now?”
I cast my eyes at Philemon. He was standing, as before, with his eyes turned away. There was discouragement in his attitude, mingled with a certain grand patience. Seeing that he was better able to bear her loss than either you or myself, I said to her very low, “I thought you ought to know the truth before you gave your final word. I am late, but I would have been too late a week from now.”
Her hand fell from the door, but her eyes remained fixed on my face. Never have I sustained such a look; never will I encounter such another.
“It is too late now,” she murmured. “The clergyman has just gone who united me to Philemon.”
The next minute her back was towards me; she had faced her father and her new-made husband.
“Father, you knew this thing!” Keen, sharp, incisive, the words rang out. “I saw it in your face when he began to speak.”
Mr. Gilchrist drooped slightly; he was a very sick man and the scene had been a trying one.
“If I did,” was his low response, “it was but lately. You were engaged then to Philemon. Why break up this second match?”
She eyed him as if she found it difficult to credit her ears. Such indifference to the claims of innocence was incredible to her. I saw her grand profile quiver, then the slow ebbing from her cheek of every drop of blood indignation had summoned there.
“And you, Philemon?” she suggested, with a somewhat softened aspect. “You committed this wrong ignorantly. Never having heard of this crime, you could not know on what false grounds I had been separated from James.”
I had started to escape, but stopped just beyond the threshold of the door as she uttered these words. Philemon was not as ignorant as she supposed. This was evident from his attitude and expression.
“Agatha,” he began, but at this first word, and before he could clasp the hands held helplessly out before her, she gave a great cry, and staggering back, eyed both her father and himself in a frenzy of indignation that was all the more uncontrollable from the superhuman effort which she had hitherto made to suppress it.
“You too!” she shrieked. “You too! and I have just sworn to love, honour, and obey you! Love you! Honour you! the unconscionable wretch who—”
But here Mr. Gilchrist rose. Weak, tottering, quivering with something more than anger, he approached his daughter and laid his finger on her lips.
“Be quiet!” he said. “Philemon is not to blame. A month ago he came to me and prayed that as a relief to his mind I would tell him why you had separated yourself from James. He had always thought the match had fallen through on account of some foolish quarrel or incompatibility, but lately he had feared there was something more than he suspected in this break, something that he should know. So I told him why you had dismissed James; and whether he knew James better than we did, or whether he had seen something in his long acquaintance with these brothers which influenced his judgment, he said at once: ‘This cannot be true of James. It is not in his nature to defraud any man; but John—I might believe it of John. Isn’t there some complication here?’ I had never thought of John, and did not see how John could be mixed up with an affair I had supposed to be a secret between James and myself, but when we came to locate the day, Philemon remembered that on returning to his room that night, he had found John awaiting him. As his room was not five doors from that occupied by Mr. Orr, he was convinced that there was more to this matter than I had suspected. But when he laid the matter before James, he did not deny that John was guilty, but was peremptory in wishing you not to be told before your marriage. He knew that you were engaged to a good man, a man that your father approved, a man that could and would make you happy. He did not want to be
the means of a second break, and besides, and this, I think, was at the bottom of the stand he took, for James Zabel was always the proudest man I ever knew—he never could bear, he said, to give to one like Agatha a name which he knew and she knew was not entirely free from reproach. It would stand in the way of his happiness and ultimately of hers; his brother’s dishonour was his. So while he still loved you, his only prayer was that after you were safely married and Philemon was sure of your affection, he should tell you that the man you once regarded so favourably was not unworthy of that regard. To obey him, Philemon has kept silent, while I—Agatha, what are you doing? Are you mad, my child?”
She looked so for the moment. Tearing off the ring which she had worn but an hour, she flung it on the floor. Then she threw her arms high up over her head and burst out in an awful voice:
“Curses on the father, curses on the husband, who have combined to make me rue the day I was born! The father I cannot disown, but the husband—”
“Hush!”
It was Mr. Gilchrist who dared her fury. Philemon said nothing.
“Hush! he may be the father of your children. Don’t curse—”
But she only towered the higher and her beauty, from being simply majestic, became appalling.
“Children!” she cried. “If ever I bear children to this man, may the blight of Heaven strike them as it has struck me this day. May they die as my hopes have died, or, if they live, may they bruise his heart as mine is bruised, and curse their father as—”
Here I fled the house. I was shaking as if this awful denunciation had fallen on my own head. But before the door closed behind me, a different cry called me back. Mr. Gilchrist was lying lifeless on the floor, and Philemon, the patient, tender Philemon, had taken Agatha to his breast and was soothing her there as if the words she had showered upon him had been blessings instead of the most fearful curses which had ever left the lips of mortal woman.
The next letter was in Agatha’s handwriting. It was dated some months later and was stained and crumpled more than any other in the whole packet. Could Philemon once have told why? Were these blotted lines the result of his tears falling fast upon them, tears of forty years ago, when he and she were young and love had been doubtful? Was the sheet so yellowed and so seamed because it had been worn on his breast and folded and unfolded so often? Philemon, thou art in thy grave, sleeping sweetly at last by thy deeply idolised one, but these marks of feeling still remain indissolubly connected with the words that gave them birth.
DEAR PHILEMON:
You are gone for a day and a night only, but it seems a lengthened absence to me, meriting a little letter. You have been so good to me, Philemon, ever since that dreadful hour following our marriage, that sometimes—I hardly dare yet to say always—I feel that I am beginning to love you and that God did not deal with me so harshly when He cast me into your arms. Yesterday I tried to tell you this when you almost kissed me at parting. But I was afraid it was a momentary sentimentality and so kept still. But today such a warm well-spring of joy rises in my heart when I think that tomorrow the house will be bright again, and that in place of the empty wall opposite me at table I shall see your kindly and forbearing face, I know that the heart I had thought impregnable has begun to yield, and that daily gentleness, and a boundless consideration from one who had excuse for bitter thoughts and recrimination, are doing what all of us thought impossible a few short months ago.
Oh, I am so happy, Philemon, so happy to love where it is now my duty to love; and if it were not for that dreadful memory of a father dying with harsh words in his ears, and the knowledge that you, my husband, yet not my husband, are bearing ever about with you echoes of words that in another nature would have turned tenderness into gall, I could be merry also and sing as I go about the house making it pleasant and comfortable against your speedy return. As it is I can but lay my hand softly on my heart as its beatings grow too impetuous and say, “God bless my absent Philemon and help him to forgive me! I forgive him and love him as I never thought I could.”
That you may see that these are not the weak outpourings of a lonely woman, I will here write that I heard today that John and James Zabel have gone into partnership in the ship-building business, John’s uncle having left him a legacy of several thousand dollars. I hope they will do well. James, they say, is full of business and is, to all appearance, perfectly cheerful. This relieves me from too much worry in his regard. God certainly knew what kind of a husband I needed. May you find yourself equally blessed in your wife.
Another letter to Philemon, a year later:
DEAR PHILEMON:
Hasten home, Philemon; I do not like these absences. I am just now too weak and fearful. Since we knew the great hope before us, I have looked often in your face for a sign that you remembered what this hope cannot but recall to my shuddering memory. Philemon, Philemon, was I mad? When I think what I said in my rage, and then feel the little life stirring about my heart, I wonder that God did not strike me dead rather than bestow upon me the greatest blessing that can come to woman. Philemon, Philemon, if anything should happen to the child! I think of it by day, I think of it by night. I know you think of it too, though you show me such a cheerful countenance and make such great plans for the future. “Will God remember my words, or will He forget? It seems as if my reason hung upon this question.”
A note this time in answer to one from John Zabel:
DEAR JOHN:
Thank you for words which could have come from nobody else. My child is dead. Could I expect anything different? If I did, God has rebuked me.
Philemon thinks only of me. We understand each other so perfectly now that our greatest suffering comes in seeing each other’s pain. My load I can bear, but HIS—Come and see me, John; and tell James our house is open to him. We have all done wrong, and are caught in one net of misfortune. Let it make us friends again.
Below this in Philemon’s hand:
My wife is superstitious. Strong and capable as she is, she has regarded this sudden taking off of our first-born as a sign that certain words uttered by her on her marriage day, unhappily known to you and, as I take it, to James also, have been remembered by the righteous God above us. This is a weakness which I cannot combat. Can you, who alone of all the world beside know both it and its cause, help me by a renewed friendship, whose cheerful and natural character may gradually make her forget? If so, come like old neighbours, and dine with us on our wedding day. If God sees that we have buried the past and are ready to forgive each other the faults of our youth, perhaps He will further spare this good woman. I think she will be able to bear it. She has great strength except where a little child is concerned. That alone can henceforth stir the deepest recesses of her heart.
After this, a gap of years. One, two, three, four, five children were laid away to rest in Portchester churchyard, then Philemon and she came to Sutherlandtown; but not till after a certain event had occurred, best made known by this last letter to Philemon:
DEAREST HUSBAND:
Our babe is born, our sixth and our dearest, and the reproach of its first look had to be met by me alone. Oh, why did I leave you and come to this great Boston where I have no friend but Mrs. Sutherland? Did I think I could break the spell of fate or providence by giving birth to my last darling among strangers? I shall have to do something more than that if I would save this child to our old age. It is borne in upon me like fate that never will a child prosper at my breast or survive the clasp of my arms. If it is to live it must be reared by others. Some woman who has not brought down the curse of Heaven upon her by her own blasphemies must nourish the tender frame and receive the blessing of its growing love. Neither I nor you can hope to see recognition in our babe’s eye. Before it can turn upon us with love, it will close in its last sleep and we will be left desolate. What shall we do, then, with this little son? To whose guardianship can we entrust it? Do you know a man good enough or a woman sufficiently tender? I do not, but if God wills that
our little Frederick should live, He will raise up someone. By the pang of possible separation already tearing my heart, I believe that He WILL raise up someone. Meanwhile I do not dare to kiss the child, lest I should blight it. He is so sturdy, Philemon, so different from all the other five.
I open this to add that Mrs. Sutherland has just been in—with her five-weeks-old infant. His father is away, too, and has not yet seen his boy; and this is their first after ten years of marriage. Oh, that my future opened before me as brightly as hers!
The next letter opens with a cry:
Philemon! Come to me, Philemon! I have done what I threatened. I have made the sacrifice. Our child is no longer ours, and now, perhaps, he may live. But oh, my breaking heart! my empty arms! Help me to bear my desolation, for it is for life. We will never have another child.
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 136
