Before he reached the great house he was aware that the grim pleasure of imparting bad news was not to be his, for the blinds were all lowered--a detail likely to receive early attention in a feminine household, for it is only men who can hear of a death without thinking of mourning and the blinds.
The butler opened the door and took the Rector"s hat and stick with a silent _savoir-faire_ indicative of experience in well-bred grief. His chaste demeanour said as plainly as words that this was right and proper, the Rector being no more than he expected.
"Where"s your mistress?" asked Mr. Glynde, who had strong views upon butlers in general and Tims in particular--said Tims being so sure of his place that he did not always trouble to know it.
"Library, sir," replied Tims in an appropriately sepulchral voice.
The Rector went to the library without waiting to be announced. He was a man well versed in human nature, as most parsons are, and it is possible that he had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Agar watching his advent from the dining-room window.
The lady of the house was standing by the writing-table when he entered, and beneath her ill-concealed excitement there was something subtly observant, like the glance of an untruthful child, which he never forgot nor forgave, despite his cloth and the impossibilities popularly expected therefrom.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "it is you. I have telegraphed for Arthur. I have--telegraphed for Arthur."
"Why?"
She gave a nervous, almost a guilty little laugh, and looked at him with puzzled discomfort.
"Why?" he repeated, looking at her with a cold scrutiny much dreaded of the parish ne"er-do-wells.
"Oh, well," she replied, "it is only natural that I should want him at home in such a time as this--such a terrible affliction. Besides--"
"Besides," suggested the Rector imperturbably, "he is now master of Stagholme."
"Yes!" she said, with a simulated surprise which would scarcely have deceived the most guileless Sunday-school teacher. "I had not thought of that. I suppose something must be done at once--those horrid lawyers again."
Her eyes were dancing with breathless excitement. To this woman excitement even in the form of a death was better than nothing. The bourgeois mind, with its love of a Crystal Palace, a subscription dance, or even a parochial bazaar, was unquenchable even after years of practice as the county lady of position.
The Rector did not answer. He stood squarely in front of her with a persistence that forced her to turn shiftily away with a pretence of looking at the clock.
"This is a bad business," he said. "That boy ought never to have gone out there."
Mrs. Agar had her handkerchief ready and made use of it, with as much effect upon Mr. Glynde as might have been produced upon a granite sphinx.
There is no man harder to deceive than the innately good and conscientious man of the world who has tried to find good in human nature.
"Poor boy!" sobbed the lady. "Dear Jem! I could not keep him at home."
Thus proving herself a fool, and worse, before those wise eyes.
When occasion demanded Mr. Glynde could wield a very strong silence--stronger than he thought. He wielded it now, and Mrs. Agar shuffled before it, her eyes glittering with suppressed communicativeness. She was obviously bubbling over with talk relevant and irrelevant, but the Rector had the chivalry to check it by his cold silence.
After a pause it was he who spoke, in a quiet, unemotional voice which aggravated while it cowed her.
"When did you hear this news?" he asked.
"Oh, last night. It was so late that I did not send down. I--it was so sudden. I was terribly upset."
"M--yes."
"I telegraphed to Arthur first thing this morning," the mistress of Stagholme went on eagerly, "and I was just going to write to you when you came in."
With that nervous desire for corroborative evidence which arouses the suspicion of the observant whenever it appears, Mrs. Agar indicated the writing-table with open blotter and inkstand. Instantly, but too late, she regretted having done so, for a volume playfully called "Every Man his own Lawyer" lay confessed beside the writing-case, and its home on the bookshelf stared vacantly at them.
"And from whom did you hear it?" pursued the Rector, heartlessly looking at the book with an air of recognition.
"Oh, from a Mr. Johnson--at the War Office, or the India Office, or somewhere. I suppose I ought to write and thank him. Let me see--where is the telegram?"
She shuffled among the papers on the writing-table, and made the hideous mistake of pushing "Every Man his own Lawyer" behind the stationery case.
"Here it is!" she exclaimed at length.
It was a long doc.u.ment. Mr. Johnson, not having to pay for telegraphic expenses out of his own pocket, had done his task thoroughly. He stated clearly that the advance column under Colonel Stevenor, Major Agar, and another British officer had been surprised and annihilated. There were no particulars yet, nor could reliable details be expected, as it was quite certain that not one man of the ill-fated corps had survived. General Seymour, added the official, missing out in his haste the commanding officer"s surname, had promptly repaired to the scene of the disaster, to punish the victors, and, if possible, recover the effects of the slain.
Mrs. Agar was one of those persons who are incapable of reading a letter or a telegram thoroughly. She was one of those for whose comprehension the wrong end of the story must have been specially created. Had the official put Seymour Michael"s name in full, it is probable that in her infantile excitement she would have failed to take it in or to connect it with the man who had wronged her twenty years before.
She had not thought much about that little affair during late years, her feeling for Seymour Michael having settled down into a pa.s.sive hatred.
The longing to do him some personal injury had died away fifteen years before. She was, as a matter of fact, quite incapable of a lasting feeling of any description. Hers was a life lived for the present only. A tea-party next week was of more importance to her than a change in fortune next year. Some people are thus, and Heaven help those whose lives come under their fickle influence!
The one permanent motive of her existence was her son Arthur--the puny little infant who had been prematurely ushered into a world that seemed full of hatred twenty years before--and even his image faded from mind and thought before the short Cambridge terms were half expired.
At this moment she was thinking less of the death of Jem than of the approaching arrival of Arthur. There must have been something wrong with her mental focus, to which trifles presented themselves as of the first importance, to the obliteration of larger matters.
"And this is all the news you have had?" inquired the Rector, rather hurriedly. He saw Sister Cecilia coming up the avenue, and that lady was for him the embodiment of the combination of those feminine failings which aggravated him so intensely.
"Yes."
He moved towards the door, and standing there he turned, holding up a warning finger.
"You must be very careful," he said. "You must not consult any lawyer or take any steps in this matter. So far as you are concerned the state of affairs is unchanged. I, as the Squire"s executor, am the only person called upon to act in any way if that poor boy has died without making a will. You must remember that your son is under age."
With that he left her, rather precipitately, for Sister Cecilia, like all busybodies, was a quick walker.
In a few moments Miss Cecilia Harbottle entered the library. She glided forward as if afloat on a depth of the milk of human kindness, and folded Mrs. Agar in an emotional embrace.
"Dear!" she exclaimed. "Dear Anna, how I feel for you!"
In ill.u.s.tration of this sympathy she patted Mrs. Agar"s somewhat flabby hands, and looked softly at her. She could hardly have failed to see a glitter in the bereaved one"s eyes, which was certainly not that of grief. It was the gleam of pure, heartless excitement and love of change.
But Sister Cecilia probably misread it; for, like all excesses, that of charity seems to dull the comprehension.
"Tell me, dear," she urged gently, "all about it."
How many of us imagine the satisfaction of our own curiosity to be sympathy!
So Mrs. Agar told her all about it, and presently they sat down, with a view to fuller discussion. There was, however, a point beyond which even Mrs. Agar would not go. This point Sister Cecilia scented with the instinct of the terrier, so keen was her nose in the sniffing of other people"s business. When that point was reached a third time she gently led the way over it.
"Of course," she said, with a resigned glance at the curtain poles, "one cannot help sometimes feeling that a wise Providence does all for the best."
Gratifying as this must have been to the power in question, no miraculous manifestation of joy was forthcoming, and Mrs. Agar cunningly confined herself to a non-committing "Yes."
After a sigh, Sister Cecilia further expatiated.