Agatha Webb Part 40

He would have drawn back, but a better impulse intervened and he stood his ground. Mr. Halliday, who walked very close to Agnes, cast her an admonitory glance which Frederick was not slow in interpreting, then stopped reluctantly, perhaps because he saw her falter, perhaps because he knew that an interview between these two was unavoidable and had best be quickly over.

Frederick found his voice first.

"Agnes," said he, "I am glad of this opportunity for expressing my grat.i.tude. You have acted like a friend and have earned my eternal consideration, even if we never speak again."

There was a momentary silence. Her head, which had drooped under his greeting, rose again. Her eyes, humid with feeling, sought his face.

"Why do you speak like that?" said she. "Why shouldn't we meet? Does not everyone recognise your innocence, and will not the whole world soon see, as I have, that you have left the old life behind and have only to be your new self to win everyone's regard?"

"Agnes," returned Frederick, smiling sadly as he observed the sudden alarm visible in her father's face at these enthusiastic words, "you know me perhaps better than others do and are prepared to believe my words and my more than unhappy story. But there are few like you in the world. People in general will not acquit me, and if there was only one person who doubted "--Mr. Halliday began to look relieved--"I would fail to give any promise of the new life you hope to see me lead, if I allowed the shadow under which I undoubtedly rest to fall in the remotest way across yours. You and I have been friends and will continue such, but we will hold little intercourse in future, hard as I find it to say so. Does not Mr. Halliday consider this right? As your father he must."

Agnes's eyes, leaving Frederick's for a moment, sought her father's.

Alas! there was no mistaking their language. Sighing deeply, she again hung her head.

"Too much care for people's opinion," she murmured, "and too little for what is best and n.o.blest in us. I do not recognise the necessity of a farewell between us any more than I recognise that anyone who saw and heard you to-day can believe in your guilt."

"But there are so many who did not hear and see me. Besides" (here he turned a little and pointed to the garden in his rear), "for the past week a man--I need not state who, nor under what authority he acts--has been in hiding under that arbour, watching my every movement, and almost counting my sighs. Yesterday he left for a short s.p.a.ce, but to-day he is back. What does that argue, dear friend? Innocence, completely recognised, does not call for such guardians.h.i.+p."

The slight frame of the young girl bending so innocently toward him shuddered involuntarily at this, and her eyes, frightened and flas.h.i.+ng, swept over the arbour before returning to his face.

"If there is a watcher there, and if such a fact proves you to be in danger of arrest for a crime you never committed, then it behooves your friends to show where they stand in this matter, and by lending their sympathy give you courage and power to meet the trials before you."

"Not when they are young girls," murmured Frederick, and casting a glance at Mr. Halliday, he stepped softly back.

Agnes flushed and yielded to her father's gentle pressure. "Good-bye, my friend," she said, the quiver in her tones sinking deep into Frederick's heart. "Some day it will be good-morrow," and her head, turned back over her shoulder, took on a beautiful radiance that fixed itself forever in the hungry heart of him who watched it disappear. When she was quite gone, a man not the one whom Frederick had described, as lying in hiding in the arbour, but a different one, in fact, no other than our old friend the constable--advanced around the corner of the house and presented a paper to him.

It was the warrant for his arrest on a charge of murder.

x.x.xV

SWEEt.w.a.tER PAYS HIS DEBT AT LAST TO MR. SUTHERLAND

Frederick's arrest had been conducted so quietly that no hint of the matter reached the village before the next morning. Then the whole town broke into uproar, and business was not only suspended, but the streets and docks overflowed with gesticulating men and excited women, carrying on in every corner and across innumerable doorsteps the endless debate which such an action on the part of the police necessarily opened.

But the most agitated face, though the stillest tongue, was not to be seen in town that morning, but in a little cottage on an arid hill-slope overlooking the sea. Here Sweet.w.a.ter sat and communed with his great monitor, the ocean, and only from his flas.h.i.+ng eye and the firm set of his lips could the mother of Sweet.w.a.ter see that the crisis of her son's life was rapidly approaching, and that on the outcome of this long brooding rested not only his own self-satisfaction, but the interests of the man most dear to them.

Suddenly, from that far horizon upon which Sweet.w.a.ter's eye rested with a look that was almost a demand, came an answer that flushed him with a hope as great as it was unexpected. Bounding to his feet, he confronted his mother with eager eyes and outstretched hand.

"Give me money, all the money we have in the house. I have an idea that may be worth all I can ever make or can ever hope to have. If it succeeds, we save Frederick Sutherland; if it fails, I have only to meet another of Knapp's scornful looks. But it won't fail; the inspiration came from the sea, and the sea, you know, is my second mother!"

What this inspiration was he did not say, but it carried him presently into town and landed him in the telegraph office.

The scene later in the day, when Frederick entered the village under the guardians.h.i.+p of the police, was indescribable. Mr. Sutherland had insisted upon accompanying him, and when the well-loved figure and white head were recognised, the throng, which had rapidly collected in the thoroughfare leading to the depot, succ.u.mbed to the feelings occasioned by this devotion, and fell into a wondering silence.

Frederick had never looked better. There is something in the extremity of fate which brings out a man's best characteristics, and this man, having much that was good in him, showed it at that moment as never before in his short but over-eventful life. As the carriage stopped before the court-house on its way to the train, a glimpse was given of his handsome head to those who had followed him closest, and as there became visible for the first time in his face, so altered under his troubles, a likeness to their beautiful and commanding Agatha, a murmur broke out around him that was half a wail and half a groan, and which affected him so that he turned from his father, whose hand he was secretly holding, and taking the whole scene in with one flash of his eye, was about to speak, when a sudden hubbub broke out in the direction of the telegraph office, and a man was seen rus.h.i.+ng down the street holding a paper high over his head. It was Sweet.w.a.ter.

"News!" he cried. "News! A cablegram from the Azores! A Swedish sailor--"

But here a man with more authority than the amateur detective pushed his way to the carriage and took off his hat to Mr. Sutherland.

"I beg your pardon," said he, "but the prisoner will not leave town to-day. Important evidence has just reached us."

Mr. Sutherland saw that it was in Frederick's favour and fainted on his son's neck. As the people beheld his head fall forward, and observed the look with which Frederick received him in his arms, they broke into a great shout.

"News!" they shrieked. "News! Frederick Sutherland is innocent! See! the old man has fainted from joy!" And caps went up and tears fell, before a mother's son of them knew what grounds he had for his enthusiasm.

Later, they found they were good and substantial ones. Sweet.w.a.ter had remembered the group of sailors who had pa.s.sed by the corner of Agatha's house just as Batsy fell forward on the window-sill, and cabling to the captain of the vessel, at the first port at which they were likely to put in, was fortunate enough to receive in reply a communication from one of the men, who remembered the words she shouted. They were in Swedish and none of his mates had understood them, but he recalled them well. They were:

"Hjelp! Hjelp! Frun hller p alb doda sig. Hon har en knif. Hjelp!

Hjelp!"

In English:

"Help! Help! My mistress kills herself. She has a knife. Help! Help!"

The impossible had occurred. Batsy was not dead, or at least her testimony still remained and had come at Sweet.w.a.ter's beck from the other side of the sea to save her mistress's son.

Sweet.w.a.ter was a made man. And Frederick? In a week he was the idol of the town. In a year--but let Agnes's contented face and happy smile show what he was then. Sweet Agnes, who first despised, then encouraged, then loved him, and who, next to Agatha, commanded the open wors.h.i.+p of his heart.

Agatha is first, must be first, as anyone can see who beholds him, on a certain anniversary of each year, bury his face in the long gra.s.s which covers the saddest and most pa.s.sionate heart which ever yielded to the pressure of life's deepest tragedy.

THE END