CHAPTER XVIII.

They did not exchange a word for some time; and when the silence was broken it was by Clare.

“Just before her illness I ventured to suggest to her that we might go for a month or two to England,” she said.

“And then”—

“The look that came to her face was one of fear—of absolute terror. I was frightened, and began to think that there were perhaps graver reasons than I had ever fancied for our exile. It took her some moments to recover from the shock that my suggestion had given her, and then she said, 'You must never think of such a thing as possible. I shall never see England again!'”

“Poor woman! Ah, what it is laid on woman to bear!” said Agnes. “And she would have been so happy if it had not been for her faithlessness. If she had only trusted the true man who loved her, she would have been happy. I fear that she cannot ever have been happy with your father.”

“She never spoke to me of him.”

Clare spoke in a low tone.

“He died when you were a child—so much, I think, was taken for granted,” said Agnes.

“I have always taken it for granted,” said Clare. “Oh yes; I remember asking about him when I was quite young, and my mother told me that I had no father.”

“Then you must assume that he is dead,” said Agnes; “and pray that you may never have sufficient curiosity to lead you to seek to know more about him.”

Clare looked at her with some surprise on her face.

“What! You know”—she began.

“I know nothing,” said Agnes quickly, interrupting her. “I have heard that he was not a good man, and I know that if he had had anything of good in his nature, your mother would not have parted from him. But he is dead, and we have no need to talk about him. Now let me tell you the names of all the places we can see from here.”

They had driven to the summit of one of the low Brackenshire hills, and from there Agnes pointed out the various landmarks. Far away to the north the great manufacturing town of Linnborough lay beneath the great shadow of its own smoke, and to the right the exquisite spire of Scarchester Cathedral was seen, and by the side of the old minster ran the river Leet. All through the valley lay the villages of Nessvale, with its Norman church, from the tower of which the curfew is still rung; Green-ledge, with its tall maypole, and Holmworth, with its grey castle and moat. Then on every hand were to be seen the splendid park lands surrounding the manor houses, the broad meadows, the brown furrowed fields of Brackenshire, with here and there a farmhouse, and down where the Lambeck flowed, a brown mill with its slow-moving water wheel. The quacking of ducks that swam in the little stream was borne up from the valley at intervals and mingled with the melancholy whistle of a curlew, and the occasional notes of a robin sitting on a gate at the side of the road.

“England—England—this is England!” cried Clare. “I never wish to see any other land so long as I live. Ah, my poor mother! This is what she was longing to see before she died.”

Agnes did not speak. She knew that the girl saw all the incidents of the English landscape through a mist of tears.

It was not until the phaeton was making the homeward circuit and had just come abreast of the wall of Westwood Court, that a word was exchanged between Agnes and Clare. All the interest of the girl was once more awakened when she learned that Claude Westwood had been born in that great house which was just visible through the trees of the park, and that he was now the owner of all.

“And the murder—it was done among those trees?” said Clare, in a whisper.

Agnes nodded.

“The wretch—the wretch! What punishment would be too great for the monster who did that deed?” cried Clare, with something akin to passion in her voice.

“Mr. Westwood told you of it?” said Agnes.

“He did not need to tell me of it,” replied the girl. “I had read all about it at Cairo.”

“Of course. You got the English newspapers there.”

“Very rarely; strange to say, a copy of a newspaper containing a paragraph referring to the reprieve of the murderer was sent to my mother by some one in England. I saw the paper by chance. It had not been sent to her because of that paragraph, of course; but on account of some other piece of news.”

“Then you knew who it was that sent the paper?”

“That was the mystery. It troubled mother for some time thinking who could have sent it.”

“But she knew why it had been sent to her—she knew what was the particular paragraph it contained of interest to her?”

“I don't think that she was quite certain on that point; but she came to the conclusion that it was on account of a paragraph referring to the production of an opera in London in which a friend of mine—of ours, I mean—had taken the tenor rôle.”

“Ah; a friend of yours? What is his name?”

“His name is Giro Rodani; he was one of the maestro's pupils. We used to sing duets under the guidance of the maestro; it was good for both of us, he said, and so, I suppose, it was. At any rate Giro got his engagement, and perhaps he sent mother that newspaper. He certainly sent me the six papers that praised his singing. He didn't send those that were not quite so complimentary: it was the maestro who sent them to me.”

“The paper may have been addressed to you; it is not a matter of importance. You would probably never have recollected reading the paragraph about the reprieve of the man if you had not met Mr. Westwood a few months afterwards.”

“I certainly should have forgotten all about it; but now—well, now it is different. And it was among those trees the terrible deed was done?”

“Yes, it was among those trees. I have not been near the place since it happened.”

“It was horrible—horrible! And yet they did not hang the man—they gave the wretch his life!” The girl spoke almost fiercely—almost in the same tone as Claude Westwood's had been when denouncing the man.

Agnes gave a little cry.

“Do not say that—for God's sake do not say that,” she said. “Ah, if you only knew what you are saying!”

“If I only knew!” cried Clare, in a tone of astonishment.

“If you only knew how your indignation that a wretched man's life was spared to him shocks me!” said Agnes. “Dear child, surely you are on the side of mercy; you have not been, accustomed to the savage code of a life for a life.”

Clare was silent.

“It shocks me to hear any one speak as Claude Westwood does of that poor wretch,” continued Agnes. “It is not possible that you—Tell me, Clare, do you think your mother would have had the same thought as you had just now? Was she indignant when she read that the life of that man Standish was spared?”

“She cried 'Thank God!' as fervently as if she had known the wretch all her life,” replied Clare. “Ah, my dear mother was a better woman than I am. Her heart was full of tenderness.”

“And so is yours, my child,” said Agnes gently. “You did not speak from your heart just now. Your words were but an echo of those I have heard Claude Westwood speak.”

There was a long silence before Clare put her hand on the arm of her companion, saying in a low voice:

“I was wrong, dear Agnes. I spoke unfeelingly, without thinking of all that my words meant. I only thought of the passion of grief in which Mr. Westwood had expressed his indignation that the man who brought so much unhappiness into his life had been spared.”

“Pray for him,” cried Agnes quickly. “Pray for that man as Christ prayed for His murderers. Pray that his life may not have been given to him in vain.”

“I will pray that God may pity him,” said the girl. “We all stand in need of forgiveness, do we not?”

The remainder of the drive to The Knoll was silent; and so was Agnes, when she went to her room, and seated herself in front of the fire. She was breathing hard as she leant forward with her head resting on her hands. She remained motionless, staring into the glowing coals until the luncheon bell rang. Then she rose hastily, saying in a whisper:

“It was too terrible! God pity her! God pity her!”

Her maid entered the room, and she changed her dress.

While in the act of going downstairs she heard the sound of Claude Westwood's voice in the hall. He was talking to Clare in front of the blazing logs of the hall fire, and Agnes saw that he now wore the dress of a country gentleman. When he had called at the house the previous day as well as on the day after his return to England, he had worn a black morning coat. She paused beneath the stained-glass window of the little lobby where the broad staircases turned off at right angles to the half-dozen shallow steps at the bottom—she paused, and could not move for some moments, for the scene which was before her eyes appeared to her like a glimpse of a day she remembered well: the same man wearing the same jacket and gaiters, had stood talking in the same voice to a young girl who looked up to his face as she stooped somewhat over the big grate, holding her fingers over the blaze, just as Clare was doing.

She stood motionless on the landing. The crimson roses of the stained-glass of the window made her a splendid head-dress, and in the panels on each side spread branches of rosemary—rosemary for remembrance.

Alas! she remembered but too well the words which had been spoken between the two people who had stood there long ago. “It is for you—it is all for you,” he had said. “I mean to make a name that shall be in some measure worthy of you.” Those were his words, and then she had looked up to his face and had put her hand, warm from the fire, into his hand. She had trusted him; and now—

“Is it a ghost?” cried Clare, laughing. “Are you a ghost, beautiful lady, or do you see a ghost?”

She had gone along the hall to the foot of the half-dozen shallow oak steps beneath the window.

“A ghost—a ghost,” said Agnes, descending. “Yes, I have seen a ghost.”

Claude advanced to the middle of the hall to meet her. She greeted him silently.

“I saw your ponies in the distance and hurried after you, hoping that you would ask me to lunch,” said he.

“A woman's lunch!” she cried. “You cannot surely know what our menu is.”

“I will take it on trust,” said he. “You represent company here. When I come to you I forget the loneliness of the Court.”

When speaking he had looked first at Agnes, then at Clare. He seemed to take care to prevent the possibility of Agnes's fancying that he was addressing her individually when he said, “You represent company here.”

“And you represent company to us; for the capacity of two lone women to feel lonely is quite as great as that of one man,” said she, smiling in her old way.

“He brings us news, Agnes—good news,” said Clare. “He has got the medal of the—the society—what was the name that you gave the society, Mr. Westwood?”

“The Geographical,” said he. “They have treated me well, I must confess. They have been compelled to take me on trust, so to speak—to accept my discoveries, without any demonstration on my part. No one knows anything of what I have seen or what I have done in Central Africa. The outline that was cabled home represented only the recollections of a missionary at Uganda. It is a little better than nonsense.”

“That is the greater reason, I say, why you should take the opportunity that is offered to you now of letting the world know all that you have passed through,” said Clare.

“All—all—all that I have passed through, did you say?” he cried. Then he laughed curiously.

“Well, I don't suppose that you could tell all in an hour—I suppose they would give you an hour?” said Clare.

“They might even make it two hours without forcing me to repeat myself,” said he. “But all—all! Good heavens! If I were to tell all! Luckily I cannot: the language has not got words adequate for the expression of some of the things that I saw. Still—well, I saw some few things that might be described.”

“Then you will go? You will give them the lecture which you say they have invited you to deliver?” cried Clare.

He shook his head.

“Oh yes, you will,” she said, going close to him, and speaking in a child's voice of coaxing. “Agnes, you will join with me in trying to show this man in what direction his duty lies.”

“Ah, in what direction his duty lies!” said Agnes gently. “What woman can show a man where lies his duty if his inclination points in another direction? But I am forgetting mine. Luncheon!”

She pointed to the door of the dining-room, at which the butler was standing with an aggrieved expression upon his face: luncheon had been waiting for some time.

“Duty!” said Agnes, when Clare and Mr. Westwood had passed through. “Duty!” She gave a little laugh.