Agatha Webb (27 page)

Frederick was not visible in the great hall; but that he was near
at hand soon became evident from the change Sweetwater now saw in
Amabel. For while she had hitherto sat under the universal gaze
with only the faint smile of conscious beauty on her inscrutable
features, she roused as the hands of the clock moved toward noon,
and glanced at the great door of entrance with an evil expectancy
that startled even Sweetwater, so little had he really understood
the nature of the passions labouring in that venomous breast.

Next moment the door opened, and Frederick and his father came in.
The air of triumphant satisfaction with which Amabel sank back
into her seat was as marked in its character as her previous
suspense. What did it mean? Sweetwater, noting it, and the vivid
contrast it offered to Frederick's air of depression, felt that
his return had been well timed.

Mr. Sutherland was looking very feeble. As he took the chair
offered him, the change in his appearance was apparent to all who
knew him, and there were few there who did not know him. And,
startled by these evidences of suffering which they could not
understand and feared to interpret even to themselves, more than
one devoted friend stole uneasy glances at Frederick to see if he
too were under the cloud which seemed to envelop his father almost
beyond recognition.

But Frederick was looking at Amabel, and his erect head and
determined aspect made him a conspicuous figure in the room. She
who had called up this expression, and alone comprehended it
fully, smiled as she met his eye, with that curious slow dipping
of her dimples which had more than once confounded the coroner,
and rendered her at once the admiration and abhorrence of the
crowd who for so long a time had had the opportunity of watching
her.

Frederick, to whom this smile conveyed a last hope as well as a
last threat, looked away as soon as possible, but not before her
eyes had fallen in their old inquiring way to his hands, from
which he had removed the ring which up to this hour he had
invariably worn on his third finger. In this glance of hers and
this action of his began the struggle that was to make that day
memorable in many hearts.

After the first stir occasioned by the entrance of two such
important persons the crowd settled back into its old quietude
under the coroner's hand. A tedious witness was having his slow
say, and to him a full attention was being given in the hope that
some real enlightenment would come at last to settle the questions
which had been raised by Amabel's incomplete and unsatisfactory
testimony. But no man can furnish what he does not possess, and
the few final minutes before noon passed by without any addition
being made to the facts which had already been presented for
general consideration.

As the witness sat down the clock began to strike. As the slow,
hesitating strokes rang out, Sweetwater saw Frederick yield to a
sudden but most profound emotion. The old fear, which we
understand, if Sweetwater did not, had again seized the victim of
Amabel's ambition, and under her eye, which was blazing full upon
him now with a fell and steady purpose, he found his right hand
stealing toward the left in the significant action she expected.
Better to yield than fall headlong into the pit one word of hers
would open. He had not meant to yield, but now that the moment had
come, now that he must at once and forever choose between a course
that led simply to personal unhappiness and one that involved not
only himself, but those dearest to him, in disgrace and sorrow, he
felt himself weaken to the point of clutching at whatever would
save him from the consequences of confession. Moral strength and
that tenacity of purpose which only comes from years of self-
control were too lately awakened in his breast to sustain him now.
As stroke after stroke fell on the ear, he felt himself yielding
beyond recovery, and had almost touched his finger in the
significant action of assent which Amabel awaited with breathless
expectation, when—was it miracle or only the suggestion of his
better nature?—the memory of a face full of holy pleading rose
from the past before his eyes and with an inner cry of "Mother!"
he flung his hand out and clutched his father's arm in a way to
break the charm of his own dread and end forever the effects of
the intolerable fascination that was working upon him. Next minute
the last stroke of noon rang out, and the hour was up which Amabel
had set as the limit of her silence.

A pause, which to their two hearts if to no others seemed
strangely appropriate, followed the cessation of these sounds,
then the witness was dismissed, and Amabel, taking advantage of
the movement, was about to lean toward Mr. Courtney, when
Frederick, leaping with a bound to his feet, drew all eyes towards
himself with the cry:

"Let me be put on my oath. I have testimony to give of the utmost
importance in this case."

The coroner was astounded; everyone was astounded. No one had
expected anything from him, and instinctively every eye turned
towards Amabel to see how she was affected by his action.

Strangely, evidently, for the look with which she settled back in
her seat was one which no one who saw it ever forgot, though it
conveyed no hint of her real feelings, which were somewhat
chaotic.

Frederick, who had forgotten her now that he had made up his mind
to speak, waited for the coroner's reply.

"If you have testimony," said that gentleman after exchanging a
few hurried words with Mr. Courtney and the surprised Knapp, "you
can do no better than give it to us at once. Mr. Frederick
Sutherland, will you take the stand?"

With a noble air from which all hesitation had vanished, Frederick
started towards the place indicated, but stopped before he had
taken a half-dozen steps and glanced back at his father, who was
visibly succumbing under this last shock.

"Go!" he whispered, but in so thrilling a tone it was heard to the
remotest corner of the room. "Spare me the anguish of saying what
I have to say in your presence. I could not bear it. You could not
bear it. Later, if you will wait for me in one of these rooms, I
will repeat my tale in your ears, but go now. It is my last
entreaty."

There was a silence; no one ventured a dissent, no one so much as
made a gesture of disapproval. Then Mr. Sutherland struggled to
his feet, cast one last look around him, and disappeared through a
door which had opened like magic before him. Then and not till
then did Frederick move forward.

The moment was intense. The coroner seemed to share the universal
excitement, for his first question was a leading one and brought
out this startling admission:

"I have obtruded myself into this inquiry and now ask to be heard
by this jury, because no man knows more than I do of the manner
and cause of Agatha Webb's death. This you will believe when I
tell you that
I
was the person Miss Page followed into Mrs.
Webb's house and whom she heard descend the stairs during the
moment she crouched behind the figure of the sleeping Philemon."

It was more, infinitely more, than anyone there had expected. It
was not only an acknowledgment but a confession, and the shock,
the surprise, the alarm, which it occasioned even to those who had
never had much confidence in this young man's virtue, was almost
appalling in its intensity. Had it not been for the consciousness
of Mr. Sutherland's near presence the feeling would have risen to
outbreak; and many voices were held in subjection by the
remembrance of this venerated man's last look, that otherwise
would have made themselves heard in despite of the restrictions of
the place and the authority of the police.

To Frederick it was a moment of immeasurable grief and
humiliation. On every face, in every shrinking form, in subdued
murmurs and open cries, he read instant and complete condemnation,
and yet in all his life from boyhood up to this hour, never had he
been so worthy of their esteem and consideration. But though he
felt the iron enter his soul, he did not lose his determined
attitude. He had observed a change in Amabel and a change in
Agnes, and if only to disappoint the vile triumph of the one and
raise again the drooping courage of the other, he withstood the
clamour and began speaking again, before the coroner had been able
to fully restore quiet.

"I know," said he, "what this acknowledgment must convey to the
minds of the jury and people here assembled. But if anyone who
listens to me thinks me guilty of the death I was so unfortunate
as to have witnessed, he will be doing me a wrong which Agatha
Webb would be the first to condemn. Dr. Talbot, and you, gentlemen
of the jury, in the face of God and man, I here declare that Mrs.
Webb, in my presence and before my eyes, gave to herself the blow
which has robbed us all of a most valuable life. She was not
murdered."

It was a solemn assertion, but it failed to convince the crowd
before him. As by one impulse men and women broke into a tumult.
Mr. Sutherland was forgotten and cries of "Never! She was too
good! It's all calumny! A wretched lie!" broke in unrestrained
excitement from every part of the large room. In vain the coroner
smote with his gavel, in vain the local police endeavoured to
restore order; the tide was up and over-swept everything for an
instant till silence was suddenly restored by the sight of Amabel
smoothing out the folds of her crisp white frock with an
incredulous, almost insulting, smile that at once fixed attention
again on Frederick. He seized the occasion and spoke up in a tone
of great resolve.

"I have made an assertion," said he, "before God and before this
jury. To make it seem a credible one I shall have to tell my own
story from the beginning. Am I allowed to do so, Mr. Coroner?"

"You are," was the firm response.

"Then, gentlemen," continued Frederick, still without looking at
Amabel, whose smile had acquired a mockery that drew the eyes of
the jury toward her more than once during the following recital,
"you know, and the public generally now know, that Mrs. Webb has
left me the greater portion of the money of which she died
possessed. I have never before acknowledged to anyone, not even to
the good man who awaits this jury's verdict on the other side of
that door yonder, that she had reasons for this, good reasons,
reasons of which up to the very evening of her death I was myself
ignorant, as I was ignorant of her intentions in my regard, or
that I was the special object of her attention, or that we were
under any mutual obligations in any way. Why, then, I should have
thought of going to her in the great strait in which I found
myself on that day, I cannot say. I knew she had money in her
house; this I had unhappily been made acquainted with in an
accidental way, and I knew she was of kindly disposition and quite
capable of doing a very unselfish act. Still, this would not seem
to be reason enough for me to intrude upon her late at night with
a plea for a large loan of money, had I not been in a desperate
condition of mind, which made any attempt seem reasonable that
promised relief from the unendurable burden of a pressing and
disreputable debt. I was obliged to have money, a great deal of
money, and I had to have it at once; and while I know that this
will not serve to lighten the suspicion I have brought upon myself
by my late admissions, it is the only explanation I can give you
for leaving the ball at my father's house and hurrying down
secretly and alone into town to the little cottage where, as I had
been told early in the evening, a small entertainment was being
given, which would insure its being open even at so late an hour
as midnight. Miss Page, who will, I am sure, pardon the
introduction of her name into this narrative, has taken pains to
declare to you that in the expedition she herself made into town
that evening, she followed some person's steps down-hill. This is
very likely true, and those steps were probably mine, for after
leaving the house by the garden door, I came directly down the
main road to the corner of the lane running past Mrs. Webb's
cottage. Having already seen from the hillside the light burning
in her upper windows, I felt encouraged to proceed, and so
hastened on till I came to the gate on High Street. Here I had a
moment of hesitation, and thoughts bitter enough for me to recall
them at this moment came into my mind, making that instant,
perhaps, the very worst in my life; but they passed, thank God,
and with no more desperate feeling than a sullen intention of
having my own way about this money, I lifted the latch of the
front door and stepped in.

"I had expected to find a jovial group of friends in her little
ground parlour, or at least to hear the sound of merry voices and
laughter in the rooms above; but no sounds of any sort awaited me;
indeed the house seemed strangely silent for one so fully lighted,
and, astonished at this, I pushed the door ajar at my left and
looked in. An unexpected and pitiful sight awaited me. Seated at a
table set with abundance of untasted food, I saw the master of the
house with his head sunk forward on his arms, asleep. The expected
guests had failed to arrive, and he, tired out with waiting, had
fallen into a doze at the board.

"This was a condition of things for which I was not prepared. Mrs.
Webb, whom I wished to see, was probably upstairs, and while I
might summon her by a sturdy rap on the door beside which I stood,
I had so little desire to wake her husband, of whose mental
condition I was well aware, that I could not bring myself to make
any loud noise within his hearing. Yet I had not the courage to
retreat. All my hope of relief from the many difficulties that
menaced me lay in the generosity of this great-hearted woman, and
if out of pusillanimity I let this hour go by without making my
appeal, nothing but shame and disaster awaited me. Yet how could I
hope to lure her down-stairs without noise? I could not, and so,
yielding to the impulse of the moment, without any realisation, I
here swear, of the effect which my unexpected presence would have
on the noble woman overhead, I slipped up the narrow staircase,
and catching at that moment the sound of her voice calling out to
Batsy, I stepped up to the door I saw standing open before me and
confronted her before she could move from the table before which
she was sitting, counting over a large roll of money.