me is no fancy, but a passion—do you hear?—a passion which will make life a heaven or hell for the man who has inspired it. You should have thought of this when you opposed me.”
And with a look in which love and hatred contended for mastery, she bent and imprinted a kiss upon his forehead. Next moment she was gone.
Or so he thought. But when, after an interval of nameless recoil, he rose and attempted to stagger from the place, he discovered that she had been detained in the hall by two or three men who had just come in by the front door.
“Is this Miss Page?” they were asking.
“Yes, I am Miss Page—Amabel Page” she replied with suave politeness. “If you have any business with me, state it quickly, for I am about to leave town.”
“That is what we wish to prevent,” declared a tall, thin young man who seemed to take the lead. “Till the inquest has been held over the remains of Mrs. Webb, Coroner Talbot wishes you to regard yourself as a possible witness.”
“Me?” she cried, with an admirable gesture of surprise and a wide opening of her brown eyes that made her look like an astonished child. “What have I got to do with it?”
“You pointed out a certain spot of blood on the grass, and—well, the coroner’s orders have to be obeyed, miss. You cannot leave the town without running the risk of arrest”
“Then I will stay in it,” she smiled. “I have no liking for arrests,” and the glint of her eye rested for a moment on Frederick. “Mr. Sutherland,” she continued, as that gentleman appeared at the dining-room door, “I shall have to impose upon your hospitality for a few days longer. These men here inform me that my innocent interest in pointing out to you that spot of blood on Mrs. Webb’s lawn has awakened some curiosity, and that I am wanted as a witness by the coroner.”
Mr. Sutherland, with a quick stride, lessened the distance between himself and these unwelcome intruders. “The coroner’s wishes are paramount just now,” said he, but the look he gave his son was not soon forgotten by the spectators.
Chapter IX.
A Grand Woman
There was but one topic discussed in the country-side that day, and that was the life and character of Agatha Webb.
Her history had not been a happy one. She and Philemon had come from Portchester some twenty or more years before to escape the sorrows associated with their native town. They had left behind them six small graves in Portchester churchyard; but though evidences of their affliction were always to be seen in the countenances of either, they had entered with so much purpose into the life of their adopted town that they had become persons of note there till Philemon’s health began to fail, when Agatha quit all outside work and devoted herself exclusively to him. Of her character and winsome personality we can gather some idea from the various conversations carried on that day from Portchester Green to the shipyards in Sutherlandtown.
In Deacon Brainerd’s cottage, the discussion was concerning Agatha’s lack of vanity; a virtue not very common at that time among the women of this busy seaport.
“For a woman so handsome,” the good deacon was saying “(and I think I can safely call her the finest-featured woman who ever trod these streets), she showed as little interest in dress as anyone I ever knew. Calico at home and calico at church, yet she looked as much of a lady in her dark-sprigged gowns as Mrs. Webster in her silks or Mrs. Parsons in her thousand-dollar sealskin.”
As this was a topic within the scope of his eldest daughter’s intelligence she at once spoke up: “I never thought she needed to dress so plainly. I don’t believe in such a show of poverty myself. If one is too poor to go decent, all right; but they say she had more money than most anyone in town. I wonder who is going to get the benefit of it?”
“Why, Philemon, of course; that is, as long as he lives. He doubtless had the making of it.”
“Is it true that he’s gone clean out of his head since her death?” interposed a neighbour who had happened in.
“So they say. I believe widow Jones has taken him into her house.”
“Do you think,” asked a second daughter with becoming hesitation, “that he had anything to do with her death? Some of the neighbours say he struck her while in one of his crazy fits, while others declare she was killed by some stranger, equally old and almost as infirm.”
“We won’t discuss the subject,” objected the deacon. “Time will show who robbed us of the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in these parts.”
“And will time show who killed Batsy?” It was a morsel of a girl who spoke; the least one of the family, but the brightest. “I’m sorry for Batsy; she always gave me cookies when I went to see Mrs. Webb.”
“Batsy was a good girl for a Swede,” allowed the deacon’s wife, who had not spoken till now. “When she first came into town on the spars of that wrecked ship we all remember, there was some struggle between Agatha and me as to which of us should have her. But I didn’t like the task of teaching her the name of every pot and pan she had to use in the kitchen, so I gave her up to Agatha; and it was fortunate I did, for I’ve never been able to understand her talk to this day.”
“I could talk with her right well,” lisped the little one. “She never called things by their Swedish names unless she was worried; and I never worried her.”
“I wonder if she would have worshipped the ground under your feet, as she did that under Agatha’s?” asked the deacon, eying his wife with just the suspicion of a malicious twinkle in his eye.
“I am not the greatest-hearted and most capable woman in town,” retorted his wife, clicking her needles as she went on knitting.
In Mr. Sprague’s house on the opposite side of the road, Squire Fisher was relating some old tales of bygone Portchester days. “I knew Agatha when she was a girl,” he avowed. “She had the grandest manners and the most enchanting smile of any rich or poor man’s daughter between the coast and Springfield. She did not dress in calico then. She wore the gayest clothes her father could buy. her, and old Jacob was not without means to make his daughter the leading figure in town. How we young fellows did adore her, and what lengths we went to win one of her glorious smiles! Two of us, John and James Zabel, have lived bachelors for her sake to this very day; but I hadn’t courage enough for that; I married and”—something between a sigh and a chuckle filled out the sentence.
“What made Philemon carry off the prize? His good looks?”
“Yes, or his good luck. It wasn’t his snap; of that you may be sure. James Zabel had the snap, and he was her first choice, too, but he got into some difficulty—I never knew just what it was, but it was regarded as serious at the time—and that match was broken off. Afterwards she married Philemon. You see, I was out of it altogether; had never been in it, perhaps; but there were three good years of my life in which I thought of little else than Agatha. I admired her spirit, you see. There was something more taking in her ways than in her beauty, wonderful as that was. She ruled us with a rod of iron, and yet we worshipped her. I have wondered to see her so meek of late. I never thought she would be satisfied with a brick-floored cottage and a husband of failing wits. But no one, to my knowledge, has ever heard a complaint from her lips; and the dignity of her afflicted wife-hood has far transcended the haughtiness of those days when she had but to smile to have all the youth of Portchester at her feet.”
“I suppose it was the loss of so many children that reconciled her to a quiet life. A woman cannot close the eyes of six children, one after the other, without some modification taking place in her character.”
“Yes, she and Philemon have been unfortunate; but she was a splendid looking girl, boys. I never see such grand-looking women now.”
In