Agatha Webb (17 page)

The next day was the day of Agatha's funeral. She was to be buried
in Portchester, by the side of her six children, and, as the day
was fine, the whole town, as by common consent, assembled in the
road along which the humble cortege was to make its way to the
spot indicated.

From the windows of farmhouses, from between the trees of the few
scattered thickets along the way, saddened and curious faces
looked forth till Sweetwater, who walked as near as he dared to
the immediate friends of the deceased, felt the impossibility of
remembering them all and gave up the task in despair.

Before one house, about a mile out of town, the procession paused,
and at a gesture from the minister everyone within sight took off
their hats, amid a hush which made almost painfully apparent the
twittering of birds and the other sounds of animate and inanimate
nature, which are inseparable from a country road. They had
reached widow Jones's cottage in which Philemon was then staying.

The front door was closed, and so were the lower windows, but in
one of the upper casements a movement was perceptible, and in
another instant there came into view a woman and man, supporting
between them the impassive form of Agatha's husband. Holding him
up in plain sight of the almost breathless throng below, the woman
pointed to where his darling lay and appeared to say something to
him.

Then there was to be seen a strange sight. The old man, with his
thin white locks fluttering in the breeze, leaned forward with a
smile, and holding out his arms, cried in a faint but joyful tone:
"Agatha!" Then, as if realising for the first time that it was
death he looked upon, and that the crowd below was a funeral
procession, his face altered and he fell back with a low
heartbroken moan into the arms of those who supported him.

As his white head disappeared from sight, the procession moved on,
and from only one pair of lips went up that groan of sorrow with
which every heart seemed surcharged. One groan. From whose lips
did it come? Sweetwater endeavoured to ascertain, but was not
able, nor could anyone inform him, unless it was Mr. Sutherland,
whom he dared not approach.

This gentleman was on foot like the rest, with his arm fast linked
in that of his son Frederick. He had meant to ride, for the
distance was long for men past sixty; but finding the latter
resolved to walk, he had consented to do the same rather than be
separated from his son.

He had fears for Frederick—he could hardly have told why; and as
the ceremony proceeded and Agatha was solemnly laid away in the
place prepared for her, his sympathies grew upon him to such an
extent that he found it difficult to quit the young man for a
moment, or even to turn his eyes away from the face he had never
seemed to know till now. But as friends and strangers were now
leaving the yard, he controlled himself, and assuming a more
natural demeanour, asked his son if he were now ready to ride
back. But, to his astonishment, Frederick replied that he did not
intend to return to Sutherland town at present; that he had
business in Portchester, and that he was doubtful as to when he
would be ready to return. As the old gentleman did not wish to
raise a controversy, he said nothing, but as soon as he saw
Frederick disappear up the road, he sent back the carriage he had
ordered, saying that he would return in a Portchester gig as soon
as he had settled some affairs of his own, which might and might
not detain him there till evening.

Then he proceeded to a little inn, where he hired a room with
windows that looked out on the high-road. In one of these windows
he sat all day, watching for Frederick, who had gone farther up
the road.

But no Frederick appeared, and with vague misgivings, for which as
yet he had no name, he left the window and set out on foot for
home.

It was now dark, but a silvery gleam on the horizon gave promise
of the speedy rising of a full moon. Otherwise he would not have
attempted to walk over a road proverbially dark and dismal.

The churchyard in which they had just laid away Agatha lay in his
course. As he approached it he felt his heart fail, and stopping a
moment at the stone wall that separated it from the highroad, he
leaned against the trunk of a huge elm that guarded the gate of
entrance. As he did so he heard a sound of repressed sobbing from
some spot not very far away, and, moved by some undefinable
impulse stronger than his will, he pushed open the gate and
entered the sacred precincts.

Instantly the weirdness and desolation of the spot struck him. He
wished, yet dreaded, to advance. Something in the grief of the
mourner whose sobs he had heard had seized upon his heart-strings,
and yet, as he hesitated, the sounds came again, and forgetting
that his intrusion might not prove altogether welcome, he pressed
forward, till he came within a few feet of the spot from which the
sobs issued.

He had moved quietly, feeling the awesomeness of the place, and
when he paused it was with a sensation of dread, not to be
entirely explained by the sad and dismal surroundings. Dark as it
was, he discerned the outline of a form lying stretched in
speechless misery across a grave; but when, impelled by an almost
irresistible compassion, he strove to speak, his tongue clove to
the roof of his mouth and he only drew back farther into the
shadow.

He had recognised the mourner and the grave. The mourner was
Frederick and the grave that of Agatha Webb.

A few minutes later Mr. Sutherland reappeared at the door of the
inn, and asked for a gig and driver to take him back to
Sutherlandtown. He said, in excuse for his indecision, that he had
undertaken to walk, but had found his strength inadequate to the
exertion. He was looking very pale, and trembled so that the
landlord, who took his order, asked him if he were ill. But Mr.
Sutherland insisted that he was quite well, only in a hurry, and
showed the greatest impatience till he was again started upon the
road.

For the first half-mile he sat perfectly silent. The moon was now
up, and the road stretched before them, flooded with light. As
long as no one was to be seen on this road, or on the path running
beside it, Mr. Sutherland held himself erect, his eyes fixed
before him, in an attitude of anxious inquiry. But as soon as any
sound came to break the silence, or there appeared in the distance
ahead of them the least appearance of a plodding wayfarer, he drew
back, and hid himself in the recesses of the vehicle. This
happened several times. Then his whole manner changed. They had
just passed Frederick, walking, with bowed head, toward
Sutherlandtown.

But he was not the only person on the road at this time. A few
minutes previously they had passed another man walking in the same
direction. As Mr. Sutherland mused over this he found himself
peering through the small window at the back of the buggy,
striving to catch another glimpse of the two men plodding behind
him. He could see them both, his son's form throwing its long
shadow over the moonlit road, followed only too closely by the man
whose ungainly shape he feared to acknowledge to himself was
growing only too familiar in his eyes.

Falling into a troubled reverie, he beheld the well-known houses,
and the great trees under whose shadow he had grown from youth to
manhood, flit by him like phantoms in a dream. But suddenly one
house and one place drew his attention with a force that startled
him again into an erect attitude, and seizing with one hand the
arm of the driver, he pointed with the other at the door of the
cottage they were passing, saying in choked tones:

"See! see! Something dreadful has happened since we passed by here
this morning. That is crape, Samuel, crape, hanging from the
doorpost yonder!"

"Yes, it is crape," answered the driver, jumping out and running
up the path to look. "Philemon must be dead; the good Philemon."

Here was a fresh blow. Mr. Sutherland bowed before it for a
moment, then he rose hurriedly and stepped down into the road
beside the driver.

"Get in again," said he, "and drive on. Ride a half-mile, then
come back for me. I must see the widow Jones."

The driver, awed both by the occasion and the feeling it had
called up in Mr. Sutherland, did as he was bid and drove away. Mr.
Sutherland, with a glance back at the road lie had just traversed,
walked painfully up the path to Mrs. Jones's door.

A moment's conversation with the woman who answered his summons
proved the driver's supposition to be correct. Philemon had passed
away. He had never rallied from the shock he had received. He had
joined his beloved Agatha on the day of her burial, and the long
tragedy of their mutual life was over.

"It is a mercy that no inheritor of their misfortune remains,"
quoth the good woman, as she saw the affliction her tidings caused
in this much-revered friend.

The assent Mr. Sutherland gave was mechanical. He was anxiously
studying the road leading toward Portchester.

Suddenly he stepped hastily into the house.

"Will you be so good as to let me sit down in your parlour for a
few minutes?" he asked. "I should like to rest there for an
instant alone. This final blow has upset me."

The good woman bowed. Mr. Sutherland's word was law in that town.
She did not even dare to protest against the ALONE which he had so
pointedly emphasised, but left him after making him, as she said,
comfortable, and went back to her duties in the room above.

It was fortunate she was so amenable to his wishes, for no sooner
had her steps ceased to be heard than Mr. Sutherland rose from the
easy-chair in which he had been seated, and, putting out the lamp
widow Jones had insisted on lighting, passed directly to the
window, through which he began to peer with looks of the deepest
anxiety.

A man was coming up the road, a young man, Frederick. As Mr.
Sutherland recognised him he leaned forward with increased
anxiety, till at the appearance of his son in front his scrutiny
grew so strained and penetrating that it seemed to exercise a
magnetic influence upon Frederick, causing him to look up.

The glance he gave the house was but momentary, but in that glance
the father saw all that he had secretly dreaded. As his son's eye
fell on that fluttering bit of crape, testifying to another death
in this already much-bereaved community, he staggered wildly, then
in a pause of doubt drew nearer and nearer till his fingers
grasped this symbol of mourning and clung there. Next moment he
was far down the road, plunging toward home in a state of great
mental disorder.

A half-hour afterwards Mr. Sutherland reached home. He had not
overtaken Frederick again, or even his accompanying shadow.
Ascertaining at his own door that his son had not yet come in, but
had been seen going farther up the hill, he turned back again into
the road and proceeded after him on foot.

The next place to his own was occupied by Mr. Halliday. As he
approached it he caught sight of a man standing half in and half
out of the honeysuckle porch, whom he at first thought to be
Frederick. But he soon saw that it was the fellow who had been
following his son all the way from Portchester, and, controlling
his first movement of dislike, he stepped up to him and quietly
said:

"Sweetwater, is this you?"

The young man fell back and showed a most extraordinary agitation,
quickly suppressed, however. "Yes, sir, it is no one else. Do you
know what I am doing here?"

"I fear I do. You have been to Portchester. You have seen my son—
"

Sweetwater made a hurried, almost an entreating, gesture.

"Never mind that, Mr. Sutherland. I had rather you wouldn't say
anything about that. I am as much broken up by what I have seen as
you are. I never suspected him of having any direct connection
with this murder; only the girl to whom he has so unfortunately
attached himself. But after what I have seen, what am I to think?
what am I to do? I honour you; I would not grieve you; but—but—
oh, sir, perhaps you can help me out of the maze into which I have
stumbled. Perhaps you can assure me that Mr. Frederick did not
leave the ball at the time she did. I missed him from among the
dancers. I did not see him between twelve and three, but perhaps
you did; and—and—"

His voice broke. He was almost as profoundly agitated as Mr.
Sutherland. As for the latter, who found himself unable to
reassure the other on this very vital point, having no remembrance
himself of having seen Frederick among his guests during those
fatal hours, he stood speechless, lost in abysses, the depth and
horror of which only a father can appreciate. Sweetwater respected
his anguish and for a moment was silent himself. Then he burst
out:

"I had rather never lived to see this day than be the cause of
shame or suffering to you. Tell me what to do. Shall I be deaf,
dumb—"

Here Mr. Sutherland found voice.

"You make too much of what you saw," said he. "My boy has faults
and has lived anything but a satisfactory life, but he is not as
bad as you would intimate. He can never have taken life. That
would be incredible, monstrous, in one brought up as he has been.
Besides, if he were so far gone in evil as to be willing to
attempt crime, he had no motive to do so; Sweetwater, he had no
motive. A few hundred dollars but these he could have got from me,
and did, but—"

Why did the wretched father stop? Did he recall the circumstances
under which Frederick had obtained these last hundreds from him?
They were not ordinary circumstances, and Frederick had been in no
ordinary strait. Mr. Sutherland could not but acknowledge to
himself that there was something in this whole matter which
contradicted the very plea he was making, and not being able to
establish the conviction of his son's innocence in his own mind,
he was too honourable to try to establish it in that of another.
His next words betrayed the depth of his struggle: