"You don"t look well, mother. Don"t come down to-day."
"I shall certainly come down by luncheon-time," said Lady Coryston, sharply. "Tell Arthur that I wish to have some conversation with him before he goes back to London. And as for you, Marcia, the best thing you can do is to go and rest for a time, and then to explain all you have been doing to Edward. I must say I think you will have a great deal to explain. And I shall scold Bellows and Mrs. Drew for letting you hear such a horrible thing at all--without coming to me first."
"Mother!" cried Marcia, in a kind of despair. "Aren"t you--aren"t you sorry for those two people?--and don"t you understand that I--I hoped I might have helped them?"
At last she began to weep. The tears ran down her cheeks. Lady Coryston frowned.
"Certainly, I"m sorry. But--the fact is, Marcia--I can"t stand any extra strain this morning. We"ll talk about it again when you"re more composed.
Now go and lie down."
She closed her eyes, looking so gray and old that Marcia, seized with a new compunction, could only obey her at once. But on the threshold she was called back.
"If any messenger arrives with a letter for Arthur--tell them down-stairs to let me know."
"Yes, mother."
As soon, however, as she had closed the door Marcia"s tired mind immediately dismissed the subject of Arthur, even of her mother. The tumult of anguish returned upon her in which she had stood ever since she had come back from her faint to the bitter consciousness of a world--an awful world--where people can die of misery for lack of pity, for lack of help, and yet within a stone"s-throw of those who yearned to give them both.
She went back to her room, finished her dressing mechanically, wrote a short letter, blotting it with tears, and then went tottering down-stairs.
In the central hall, a vast pillared s.p.a.ce, crowded with statuary and flowers, where the men of the house were accustomed to smoke and read the newspapers after breakfast, she perceived Reginald Lester sitting alone.
He sprang up at sight of her, came to her, took her hands, looked into her face, and then stooped and kissed her fingers, respectfully, ardently; with such an action as a brother might have used to a much younger sister.
She showed no surprise. She simply lifted her eyes to him, like a miserable child--saying under her breath:
"You know--I saw them--the night before last?"
"I know. It has been a fearful shock. Is there anything I can do for you?"
For he saw she had a letter in her hand.
"Please tell them to send this letter. And then--come back. I"ll go to the library."
She went blindly along the pa.s.sages to the library, hearing and flying from the voices of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur in the dining-room as she pa.s.sed. When Lester returned, he saw her standing by his desk, lost in an abstraction of grief. But she roused herself at sight of him, and asked for any further news there might be. Lester, who had been suffering from a sprained wrist, had that morning seen the same doctor who had been called in on the discovery of the tragedy.
"It must all have happened within an hour. His sister, who had come to stay with them, says that John Betts had seemed rather brighter in the evening, and his wife rather less in terror. She spoke very warmly to her sister-in-law of your having come to see her, and said she had promised you to wait a little before she took any step. Then he went out to the laboratory, and there, it is supposed, he was overcome by a fit of acute depression--the revolver was in his drawer--he scrawled the two words that were found--and you know the rest. Two people on the farm heard the shot--but it was taken as fired by the night watcher in a field beyond, which was full of young pheasants. About midnight Mrs. Betts went out to bring him in--her sister-in-law having gone up to bed. She never came back again--no one heard a sound--and they were not discovered till the morning.
How long she was alone with him before she killed herself cannot even be guessed."
Marcia"s trembling fingers fumbled at the bosom of her dress. She drew out a crumpled paper, and pushed it toward him. He read:
"Good-by, dear Miss Coryston. He sits so still--not much injured. I have often seen him look so. My John--my John--I can"t stay behind. Will you please do something for my boy? John--John--if only we hadn"t met again--"
It ended incoherently in blots and smudges.
"You poor child!" said Lester, involuntarily, as he looked up from the letter. It was a word of sudden compa.s.sion wrested from him by the sight of Marcia"s intolerable pain. He brought forward one of the deep library chairs, and made her sit in it, and as he bent over her his sympathy drew from her piteous little cries and stifled moans which he met with answering words of comfort. All consciousness of s.e.x dropped away; the sharp-chinned face, the blue, black-fringed eyes, behind their spectacles, the n.o.ble brow under its pile of strong grizzled hair:--she saw them all as an embodied tenderness--courage and help made visible--a courage and help on which she gradually laid hold. She could not stop to ask herself how it was that, in this moment of shock and misery, she fell so naturally into this att.i.tude of trust toward one with whom she had never yet set up any relation but that of a pa.s.sing friendship. She only knew that there was comfort in his voice, his look, in his understanding of her suffering, in the reticence with which he handled it. She had lived beside him in the same house for months without ever really knowing him. Now suddenly--here was a friend--on whom to lean.
But she could not speak to him of Newbury, though it was the thought of Newbury that was burning her heart. She did mention Coryston, only to say with energy: "I don"t want to see him yet--not _yet_!" Lester could only guess at her meaning, and would not have probed her for the world.
But after a little she braced herself, gave him a grateful, shrinking look, and, rising, she went in search of Sir Wilfrid and Arthur.
Only Sir Wilfrid was in the hall when she reentered it. He had just dismissed a local reporter who had got wind of Miss Coryston"s visit to the farm, and had rushed over to Coryston, in the hope of seeing her.
"My dear child!" He hurried to meet her. "You look a perfect wreck! How _abominable_ that you should be mixed up with this thing!"
"I couldn"t help it," she said, vaguely, turning away at once from the discussion of it. "Where is Arthur? Mother wanted me to give him a message."
[Ill.u.s.tration: NOW SUDDENLY--HERE WAS A FRIEND--ON WHOM TO LEAN]
Sir Wilfrid looked uneasy.
"He was here till just now. But he is in a curious state of mind. He thinks of nothing but one thing--and one person. He arrived late last night, and it is my belief that he hardly went to bed. And he is just hanging on the arrival of a letter--"
"From Enid Glenwilliam?"
"Evidently. I tried to get him to realize this horrible affair--the part the Newburys had played in it--the effect on you--since that poor creature appealed to you. But no--not a bit of it! He seems to have neither eyes nor ears--But here he is!"
Sir Wilfrid and Marcia stepped apart. Arthur came into the hall from the library entrance. Marcia saw that he was much flushed, and that his face wore a hard, determined look, curiously at variance with its young features and receding chin.
"Hullo, Marcia! Beastly business, this you"ve been getting into. Think, my dear, you"d have done much better to keep out of it--especially as you and Newbury didn"t agree. I"ve just seen Coryston in the park--he confessed he"d set you on--and that you and Newbury had quarreled over it.
_He"s_ perfectly mad about it, of course. That you might expect. I say--mother is late!"
He looked round the hall imperiously.
Marcia, supporting herself on a chair, met his eyes, and made no reply.
Yet she dimly remembered that her mother had asked her to give him some message.
"Arthur, remember that your sister"s had a great shock!" said Sir Wilfrid, sternly.
"I know that! Sorry for you, Marcia--awfully--but I expect you"ll have to appear at the inquest--don"t see how you can get out of it. You should have thought twice about going there--when Newbury didn"t want you to. And what"s this they say about a letter?"
His tone had the peremptory ring natural to many young men of his stamp, in dealing with their inferiors, or--until love has tamed them--with women; but it came strangely from the good-tempered and easy-going Arthur.
Marcia"s hand closed instinctively on the bosom of her dress, where the letter was.
"Mrs. Betts wrote me a letter," she said, slowly.
"You"d better let me see it. Sir Wilfrid and I can advise you."
He held out an authoritative hand. Marcia made no movement, and the hand dropped.
"Oh, well, if you"re going to take no one"s advice but your own, I suppose you must gang your own gait!" said her brother, impatiently. "But if you"re a sensible girl you"ll make it up with Newbury and let him keep you out of it as much as possible. Betts was always a cranky fellow. I"m sorry for the little woman, though."
And walking away to a distant window at the far end of the hall, whence all the front approaches to the house could be seen, he stood drumming on the gla.s.s and fixedly looking out. Sir Wilfrid, with an angry e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n, approached Marcia.
"My dear, your brother isn"t himself!--else he could never have spoken so unkindly. Will you show me that letter? It will, of course, have to go to the police."
She held it out to him obediently.
Sir Wilfrid read it. He blew his nose, and walked away for a minute.