Agatha Webb (28 page)

"My look (and it was doubtless not a common look, for the sight of
a mass of money at that moment, when money was everything to me,
roused every lurking demon in my breast) seemed to appall, if it
did not frighten her, for she rose, and meeting my eye with a gaze
in which shock and some strange and poignant agony totally
incomprehensible to me were strangely blended, she cried out:

"'No, no, Frederick! You don't know what you are doing. If you
want my money, take it; if you want my life, I will give it to you
with my own hand. Don't stain yours—don't—'

"I did not understand her. I did not know until I thought it over
afterward that my hand was thrust convulsively into my breast in a
way which, taken with my wild mien, made me look as if I had come
to murder her for the money over which she was hovering. I was
blind, deaf to everything but that money, and bending madly
forward in a state of mental intoxication awful enough for me to
remember now, I answered her frenzied words by some such broken
exclamations as these:

"'Give, then! I want hundreds—thousands—now, now, to save
myself! Disgrace, shame, prison await me if I don't have them.
Give, give!' And my hand went out toward it, not toward her; but
she mistook the action, mistook my purpose, and, with a heart-
broken cry, to save me, ME, from crime, the worst crime of which
humanity is capable, she caught up a dagger lying only too near
her hand in the open drawer against which she leaned, and in a
moment of fathomless anguish which we who can never know more than
the outward seeming of her life can hardly measure, plunged
against it and—I can tell you no more. Her blood and Batsy's
shriek from the adjoining room swam through my consciousness, and
then she fell, as I supposed, dead upon the floor, and I, in
scarcely better case, fell also.

"This, as God lives, is the truth concerning the wound found in
the breast of this never-to-be-forgotten woman."

The feeling, the pathos, the anguish even, to be found in his tone
made this story, strange and incredible as it seemed, appear for
the moment plausible.

"And Batsy?" asked the coroner.

"Must have fallen when we did, for I never heard her voice after
the first scream. But I shall speak of her again. What I must now
explain is how the money in Mrs. Webb's drawer came into my
possession, and how the dagger she had planted in her breast came
to be found on the lawn outside. When I came to myself, and that
must have been very soon, I found that the blow of which I had
been such a horrified witness had not yet proved fatal. The eyes I
had seen close, as I had supposed, forever, were now open, and she
was looking at me with a smile that has never left my memory, and
never will.

"'There is no blood on you,' she murmured. 'You did not strike the
blow. Was it money only that you wanted, Frederick? If so, you
could have had it without crime. There are five hundred dollars on
that table. Take them and let them pave your way to a better life.
My death will help you to remember.' Do these words, this action
of hers, seem incredible to you, sirs? Alas! alas! they will not
when I tell you"—and here he cast one anxious, deeply anxious,
glance at the room in which Mr. Sutherland was hidden—"that
unknown to me, unknown to anyone living but herself, unknown to
that good man from whom it can no longer be kept hidden, Agatha
Webb was my mother. I am Philemon's son and not the offspring of
Charles and Marietta Sutherland!"

Impossible! Incredible!

Like a wave suddenly lifted the whole assemblage rose in surprise
if not in protest. But there was no outburst. The very depth of
the feelings evoked made all ebullition impossible, and as one
sees the billow pause ere it breaks, and gradually subside, so
this crowd yielded to its awe, and man by man sank back into his
seat till quiet was again restored, and only a circle of listening
faces confronted the man who had just stirred a whole roomful to
its depths. Seeing this, and realising his opportunity, Frederick
at once entered into the explanations for which each heart there
panted.

"This will be overwhelming news to him who has cared for me since
infancy. You have heard him call me son; with what words shall I
overthrow his confidence in the truth and rectitude of his long-
buried wife and make him know in his old age that he has wasted
years of patience upon one who was not of his blood or lineage?
The wonder, the incredulity you manifest are my best excuse for my
long delay in revealing the secret entrusted to me by this dying
woman."

An awed silence greeted these words. Never was the interest of a
crowd more intense or its passions held in greater restraint. Yet
Agnes's tears flowed freely, and Amabel's smiles—well, their
expression had changed; and to Sweetwater, who alone had eyes for
her now, they were surcharged with a tragic meaning, strange to
see in one of her callous nature.

Frederick's voice broke as he proceeded in his self-imposed task.

"The astounding fact which I have just communicated to you was
made known by my mother, with the dagger still plunged in her
breast. She would not let me draw it out. She knew that death
would follow that act, and she prized every moment remaining to
her because of the bliss she enjoyed of seeing and having near her
her only living child. The love, the passion, the boundless
devotion she showed in those last few minutes transformed me in an
instant from a selfish brute into a deeply repentant man. I knelt
before her in anguish. I made her feel that, wicked as I had been,
I was not the conscienceless wretch she had imagined, and that she
was mistaken as to the motives which led me into her presence. And
when I saw, by her clearing brow and peaceful look, that I had
fully persuaded her of this, I let her speak what words she would,
and tell, as she was able, the secret tragedy of her life.

"It is a sacred story to me, and if you must know it, let it be
from her own words in the letters she left behind her. She only
told me that to save me from the fate of the children who had
preceded me, the five little girls and boys who had perished
almost at birth in her arms, she had parted from me in early
infancy to Mrs. Sutherland, then mourning the sudden death of her
only child; that this had been done secretly and under
circumstances calculated to deceive Mr. Sutherland, consequently
he had never known I was not his own child, and in terror of the
effect which the truth might have upon him she enjoined me not to
enlighten him now, if by any sacrifice on my part I could
rightfully avoid it; that she was happy in having me hear the
truth before she died; that the joy which this gave her was so
great she did not regret her fatal act, violent and uncalled for
as it was, for it had showed her my heart and allowed me to read
hers. Then she talked of my father, by whom I mean him whom you
call Philemon; and she made me promise I would care for him to the
last with tenderness, saying that I would be able to do this
without seeming impropriety, since she had willed me all her
fortune under this proviso. Finally, she gave me a key, and
pointing out where the money lay hidden, bade me carry it away as
her last gift, together with the package of letters I would find
with it. And when I had taken these and given her back the key,
she told me that but for one thing she would die happy. And though
her strength and breath were fast failing her, she made me
understand that she was worried about the Zabels, who had not come
according to a sacred custom between them, to celebrate the
anniversary of her wedding, and prayed me to see the two old
gentlemen before I slept, since nothing but death or dire distress
would have kept them from gratifying the one whim of my father's
failing mind. I promised, and with perfect peace in her face, she
pointed to the dagger in her breast.

"But before I could lay my hand upon it she called for Batsy. 'I
want her to hear me declare before I go,' said she, 'that this
stroke was delivered by myself upon myself.' But when I rose to
look for Batsy I found that the shock of her mistress's fatal act
had killed her and that only her dead body was lying across the
window-sill of the adjoining room. It was a chance that robbed me
of the only witness who could testify to my innocence, in case my
presence in this house of death should become known, and realising
all the danger in which it threw me, I did not dare to tell my
mother, for fear it would make her last moments miserable. So I
told her that the poor woman had understood what she wished, but
was too terrified to move or speak; and this satisfied my mother
and made her last breath one of trust and contented love. She died
as I drew the dagger from her breast, and seeing this, I was
seized with horror of the instrument which had cost me such a dear
and valuable life and flung it wildly from the window. Then I
lifted her and laid her where you found her, on the sofa. I did
not know that the dagger was an old-time gift of her former lover,
James Zabel, much less that it bore his initials on the handle."

He paused, and the awe occasioned by the scene he had described
was so deep and the silence so prolonged that a shudder passed
over the whole assemblage when from some unknown quarter a single
cutting voice arose in this one short, mocking comment:

"Oh, the fairy tale!"

Was it Amabel who spoke? Some thought so and looked her way, but
they only beheld a sweet, tear-stained face turned with an air of
moving appeal upon Frederick as if begging pardon for the wicked
doubts which had driven him to this defence.

Frederick met that look with one so severe it partook of
harshness; then, resuming his testimony, he said:

"It is of the Zabel brothers I must now speak, and of how one of
them, James by name, came to be involved in this affair.

"When I left my dead mother's side I was in such a state of mind
that I passed with scarcely so much as a glance the room where my
new-found father sat sleeping. But as I hastened on toward the
quarter where the Zabels lived, I was seized by such compunction
for his desolate state that I faltered in my rapid flight and did
not arrive at the place of my destination as quickly as I
intended. When I did I found the house dark and the silence
sepulchral. But I did not turn away. Remembering my mother's
anxiety, an anxiety so extreme it disturbed her final moments, I
approached the front door and was about to knock when I found it
open. Greatly astonished, I at once passed in, and, seeing my way
perfectly in the moonlight, entered the room on the left, the door
of which also stood open. It was the second house I had entered
unannounced that night, and in this as in the other I encountered
a man sitting asleep by the table.

"It was John, the elder of the two, and, perceiving that he was
suffering for food and in a condition of extreme misery, I took
out the first bill my hand encountered in my overfull pockets and
laid it on the table by his side. As I did so he gave a sigh, but
did not wake; and satisfied that I had done all that was wise and
all that even my mother would expect of me under the
circumstances, and fearing to encounter the other brother if I
lingered, I hastened away and took the shortest path home. Had I
been more of a man, or if my visit to Mrs. Webb had been actuated
by a more communicable motive, I would have gone at once to the
good man who believed me to be of his own flesh and blood, and
told him of the strange and heart-rending adventure which had
changed the whole tenor of my thoughts and life, and begged his
advice as to what I had better do under the difficult
circumstances in which I found myself placed. But the memory of a
thousand past ingratitudes, together with the knowledge of the
shock which he could not fail to receive on learning at this late
day, and under conditions at once so tragic and full of menace,
that the child which his long-buried wife had once placed in his
arms as his own was neither of her blood nor his, rose up between
us and caused me not only to attempt silence, but to secrete in
the adjoining woods the money I had received, in the vain hope
that all visible connection between myself and my mother's tragic
death would thus be lost. You see I had not calculated on Miss
Amabel Page."

The flash he here received from that lady's eyes startled the
crowd, and gave Sweetwater, already suffering under shock after
shock of mingled surprise and wonder, his first definite idea that
he had never rightly understood the relations between these two,
and that something besides justice had actuated Amabel in her
treatment of this young man. This feeling was shared by others,
and a reaction set in in Frederick's favour, which even affected
the officials who were conducting the inquiry. This was shown by
the difference of manner now assumed by the coroner and by the
more easily impressed Sweetwater, who had not yet learned the
indispensable art of hiding his feelings. Frederick himself felt
the change and showed it by the look of relief and growing
confidence he cast at Agnes.

Of the questions and answers which now passed between him and the
various members of the jury I need give no account. They but
emphasised facts already known, and produced but little change in
the general feeling, which was now one of suppressed pity for all
who had been drawn into the meshes of this tragic mystery. When he
was allowed to resume his seat, the name of Miss Amabel Page was
again called.

She rose with a bound. Nought that she had anticipated had
occurred; facts of which she could know nothing had changed the
aspect of affairs and made the position of Frederick something so
remote from any she could have imagined, that she was still in the
maze of the numberless conflicting emotions which these
revelations were calculated to call out in one who had risked all
on the hazard of a die and lost. She did not even know at this
moment whether she was glad or sorry he could explain so cleverly
his anomalous position. She had caught the look he had cast at
Agnes, and while this angered her, it did not greatly modify her
opinion that he was destined for herself. For, however other
people might feel, she did not for a moment believe his story. She
had not a pure enough heart to do so. To her all self-sacrifice
was an anomaly. No woman of the mental or physical strength of
Agatha Webb would plant a dagger in her own breast just to prevent
another person from committing a crime, were he lover, husband, or
son. So Amabel believed and so would these others believe also
when once relieved of the magnetic personality of this
extraordinary witness. Yet how thrilling it had been to hear him
plead his cause so well! It was almost worth the loss of her
revenge to meet his look of hate, and dream of the possibility of
turning it later into the old look of love. Yes, yes, she loved
him now; not for his position, for that was gone; not even for his
money, for she could contemplate its loss; but for himself, who
had so boldly shown that he was stronger than she and could
triumph over her by the sheer force of his masculine daring.