Part 18 (1/2)

”Alas! alas!” exclaimed a grave and gentle old man. ”That Andrew Zane should not be here to meet a charge like this! But I'll not believe it till I have prayed with my G.o.d.”

Within the Zane residence all was as in other houses on funeral eves. In the front parlor, ready for an inquest or an undertaker, lay the late master of the place, laid out, and all the visitors departed except his housekeeper, Agnes, and her friend, ”Podge” Byerly. The latter was a sunny-haired and nimble little lady, under twenty years of age, who taught in one of the public schools and boarded with her former school-mate, Agnes Wilt. Agnes was an orphan of unknown parentage, by many supposed to have been a niece or relative of Mr. Zane's deceased wife, whose place she took at the head of the table, and had grown to be one of the princ.i.p.al social authorities in Kensington. In Reverend Mr.

Van de Lear's church she was both teacher and singer. The young men of Kensington were all in love with her, but it was generally understood that she had accepted Andrew Zane, and was engaged to him.

Andrew was not dissipated, but was fond of pranks, and so restive under his father's positive hand that he twice ran away to distant seaports, and thus incurred a remarkable amount of intuitive gossip, such as belongs to all old settled suburban societies. This occasional firmness of character in the midst of a generally light and flexible life, now told against him in the public mind. ”He has nerve enough to do anything desperate in a pinch,” exclaimed the very wisest. ”Didn't William Zane find him out once in the island of Barbadoes grubbing sugar-cane with a hoe, and the thermometer at 120 in the shade? And didn't he swear he'd stay there and die unless concessions were made to him, and certain things never brought up again? Didn't even his iron-shod father have to give way before he would come home? Ah! Andrew is light-hearted, but he is an Indian in self-will!”

To-night Agnes was in the deepest grief. Upon her, and only her, fell the whole burden of this double crime and mystery, ten times more terrible that her lover was compromised and had disappeared.

”Go to bed, Podge!” said Agnes, as the clock in the engine-house struck midnight. ”Oblige me, my dear! I cannot sleep, and shall wait and watch.

Perhaps Andrew will be here.”

”I can't leave you up, Aggy, and with that thing so near.” She locked toward the front parlor, where, behind the folding-doors, lay the dead.

”I have no fear of _that_. He was always kind to me. My fears are all in this world. O _darling_!”

She burst into sobs. Her friend kissed her again and again, and knew that feelings between love and crime extorted that last word.

”Aggy,” spoke the light-hearted girl, ”I know that you cannot help loving him, and as long as he is loved by you I sha'n't believe him guilty. Must I really leave you here?”

Her weeping friend turned up her face to give the mandatory kiss, and Podge was gone.

Agnes sat in solitude, with her hands folded and her heart filled with unutterable tender woe, that so much causeless cloud had settled upon the home of her refuge. She could not experience that relief many of us feel in deep adversity, that it is all illusion, and will in a moment float away like other dreams. Brought to this house an orphan, and twice deprived of a mother's love, she had only entered woman's estate when another cla.s.s of cares beset her. Her beauty and sweetness of disposition had brought her more lovers than could make her happy. There was but one on whom she could confer her heart, and this natural choice had drawn around her the perils which now overwhelmed them all.

Accepting the son, she incurred the father's resentment upon both; for he, the dead man yonder, had also been her lover.

”Oh, my G.o.d!” exclaimed the anguished woman, kneeling by her chair and laying her cheek upon it, while only such tears as we shed in supreme moments saturated her handkerchief, ”what have I done to make such misery to others? How sinful I must be to set son and father against each other! Yet, Heavenly Father, I can but love!”

There was a cracking of something, as if the dead man in the great, black parlor had carried his jealousy beyond his doom and was breaking from his coffin to upbraid her. A door burst open in the dining-room, which was behind her, and then the dining-room door also unclosed, and was followed by a cold, graveyard draft. A moment of superst.i.tion possessed Agnes. ”Guard me, Saviour,” she murmured.

At the dining-room threshold, advancing a little over the sill, as if to rush upon her, was the figure of a man, dressed, head to foot, in sailor's garments--heavy woollens, comforter, tarpaulin overalls, and knit cap. He looked at her an instant, standing there, s.h.i.+vering, and then he retired a pace or two and closed the door to the cellar, by which he had entered the house. Even this little movement in the intruder had something familiar about it. He advanced again, directly and rapidly, toward her, but she did not scream. He threw both arms around her, and she did not cry. Something had entered with that bold figure which extinguished all crime and superst.i.tion in the monarchy of its presence--Love.

A kiss, as fervent and long as only the reunited ever give with purity, drew the soul of the suspected murderer and his sweetheart into one temple.

”Agnes,” he whispered hoa.r.s.ely, when it was given, ”they have followed me hard to-night. Every place I might have resorted to is watched. All Kensington--my oldest friends--believe me guilty! I cannot face it. With this kiss I must go.”

”Oh, Andrew, do not! Here is the place to make your peace; here take your stand and await the worst.”

”Agnes,” he repeated, ”I have no defence. Nothing but silence would defend me now, and that would hang me to the gallows. I come to put my life and soul into your hands. Can you pray for me, bad as I am?”

”Dear Andrew,” answered Agnes, weeping fast, ”I have no power to stop you, and I cannot give you up. Yes, I will pray for you now, before you start on your journey. Go open those folding-doors and we will pray in the other room.”

”What is there?”

”Your father.”

He stopped a long while, and his cheek was blanched.

”Go first,” he whispered finally. ”I am not afraid.”