"It is not a question." I said. "It is something that I want to tell you. Perhaps I ought to have told you before. One afternoon last week I was at Lady Naselton's for tea. I met a man there--half a foreigner he seemed to me. He had lately returned from South America. His name was Berdenstein."

He heard me in perfect silence. He did not utter a single exclamation. Only I saw his head sink, and a curious marble rigidity settle down upon his features, chasing away all expression. In the silence which followed before I spoke again I could hear his breathing sharp and low, almost like the panting of an animal in pain.

"Don't think that I have been spying on you, father," I begged. "It all came about so naturally. I gave you your letters the morning that you went away, and I could not help seeing that one of them was from South America. On the envelope was written: 'In London about the 15th.' Well, as you left for London at once, I considered that you went to meet that person, whoever it was. Then at Lady Naselton's this man stared at me so, and he told me that he came from South America. Some instinct seemed to suggest to me that this was the man who had written that letter. I talked to him for awhile, and I was sure of it."

Then my father spoke. He was like a man who had received a stroke. His voice seemed to come from a great distance. His eyes were fixed upon that break in the trees on the distant hillside beyond which was Naselton Hall.

"So near," he said, softly--"so very near! How did he come here? Was it chance?"

"He was good to Lady Naselton's son abroad," I answered. "He is very rich, they say."

"Ay, ay!" My father nodded his head slowly. His manner was becoming more natural. Yet there was a look of deadly earnest in his white, set face. To look at him made me almost shudder. Something in his expression was like a premonition of the tragedy to come.

"We shall meet soon, then," he said, thoughtfully. "It may be to-morrow. It may be to-day. Kate, your eyes are younger than mine. Is that a man coming along the road there?--down in the hollow on the other side of the turn. Do you see?"

I stood up by his side. There was a figure in sight, but as yet a long way off.

"It is a man," I said. "He is coming towards us."

We stood there side by side for several minutes. My father was leaning upon my shoulder. The clutch of his fingers seemed to burn their way through my dress into my flesh. It was as though they were tipped with fire. He did not move or speak. He kept his eyes steadfastly fixed upon the bend of the road. Suddenly a slight change flashed into his face. He leaned forward; his upper lip quivered; he shaded his eyes with his hand. I followed his rapt gaze, and in the middle of the dusty white road I could see the man now. Well within sight, I watched him draw nearer and nearer. His carriage was buoyant and un-English, and he carried a cane, with which he snapped off the heads of the thistles growing by the hedge-side. He seemed to be whistling softly to himself, showing all the while those rows of white, glistening teeth unpleasantly prominent against the yellowish tinge of his cheeks. From the first I had scarcely doubted that this was the man of whom we had been talking. The coincidence of his coming never even struck me. It seemed at the time to be a perfectly natural thing.

He came to within a yard or two of us before he appeared to recognize me. Then he took off his hat and made me a sweeping bow. In the middle of it he encountered my father's steady gaze. His hat slipped from his fingers--he stood like a man turned to stone. His black eyes were full of horror; he looked at my father as a man would look at one risen from the dead. And my father returned his gaze with a faint, curious smile parting his thin lips.

"Welcome to England once more, Stephen," my father said, grimly. "You were about to address my daughter. Have you lost your way?"

The man opened his lips twice before he spoke. I could almost fancy that his teeth were chattering. His voice was very low and husky.

"I was going to ask the way to Deville Court," he said. All the time his eyes never left my father's face. For some reason or other they were full of wonder; my father's presence seemed to terrify him.

"The way to Deville Court?" my father repeated. "I am returning in that direction. I will show it to you myself. There are several turns before you get on to the straight road."

My father descended the bank into the road. The stranger muttered something inaudible, which my father ignored.

"We had better start," he said, calmly. "It is rather a long way."

The man whom my father had called Stephen hesitated and drew back.

"The young lady," he suggested, faintly--"she will come with us."

"The young lady has an engagement in another direction," he said, with his eyes fixed on me. "I want you, Kate, to call upon Mr. Charlsworth and tell him to be sure to be at church to-night. You can tell him why it is important."

There was a ring in my father's tone, and a light in the glance which he flashed upon me which forbade any idea of remonstrance. Yet at the thought of leaving those two men together a cold chill seemed to pa.s.s through all my veins. Something seemed to tell me that this was no ordinary meeting. The man Berdenstein's look of terror as he had recognized my father was unmistakable. Even now he was afraid to go with him. Yet I was powerless, I dared not disobey. Already the two men were walking side by side. I was left alone, and the farmhouse to which my father had bidden me go lay in altogether a different direction. I stood and watched them pa.s.s along the lane together. Then I went on my errand. There was nothing else I could do.

I reached home in about an hour. Alice met me at the door.

"Has father come in yet?" I asked her, quickly.

She nodded.

"About five minutes ago. The walk seemed to have done him good," she added. "He was quite cheerful, and had a wonderful color. Why, Kate!

what have you been doing to yourself? You are as white as a ghost."

"He was alone, I suppose?" I asked, ignoring the question.

"Alone! Of course he was alone. Come in and have some tea at once. You look tired out."

CHAPTER IX

A TERRIBLE INTERRUPTION

By some means or other the news had spread in the village, and such a congregation as I had never seen filled our little church long before the usual time. In a dark corner I saw, to my surprise, Bruce Deville leaning against a pillar with folded arms, and on my way to my pew I pa.s.sed Adelaide Fortress seated in a chair in the nave. Neither of these two had I ever seen in church before, and what had brought them there on that particular evening I never clearly understood. It was a little irony of fate--one of those impulses which it is hard to believe are altogether coincidences.

The Bishop came early, and sat by Lady Naselton's side, the centre of all eyes. I looked away from him to the chancel. I was strangely nervous. It was still dimly lit, although the bells had ceased to ring. There was only a moment's pause, however, then the little s.p.a.ce was filled with white-robed figures, and my sister's voluntary, unduly prolonged in this instance, died away in a few soft chords. I drew a long breath of relief. Everything was going as usual. Perhaps, after all this night might be a fateful one to us.

I watched the Bishop's face from the first. I saw him glance up as if in surprise at my father's rich, musical voice, which woke the echoes of the dark little church with the first words of the service. At the singing, which was always wretched, he frowned, and, catching a sideway glance from Lady Naselton, smiled somewhat. Studying him through half-closed eyelids, I decided that country services in the abstract did not attract him, and that he was a little bored.

It was only when my father stood up in the pulpit and looked around him in that moment or two of hushed suspense which precedes the giving out of the text, that the lines of his face relaxed, and he settled himself down with an air of interest.

For me it was a terribly anxious moment. I knew my father's state of health, and I remembered the few weary and pointless words which had gone to make his morning sermon. Contrary to his usual custom, he stood there without any notes of any sort. I scarcely dared to hope that he would be able to do himself justice. Yet the first words of his text had scarcely left his lips when some premonition of what was to come sent a strange thrill through all my nerves. "The wages of sin is death." No words could give any idea of the marvellous yet altogether effortless solemnity with which these words pa.s.sed from my father's lips. Scarcely uttered above a whisper, they yet penetrated to the utmost corners of the little church. Was it really intense earnestness or a wonderful knowledge and appreciation of true dramatic effect which made him close the book with a slow movement of his forefinger, and stand up there amongst the deep shadows as pale as the surplice which hung around his pale form? Yet when he spoke his voice did not tremble or falter. His words, tense with life, all vibrating with hidden fire, penetrated easily to the furthest and darkest corner of the building.

"The wages of sin--the eternal torment of a conscience never sleeping, never weary!" It was of that he went on to speak. I can scarcely remember so much as a single sentence of that sermon, although its effect upon myself and those who formed the congregation of listeners, is a memory which even now thrills me. From those few opening words, pregnant as they were with dramatic force, and lit with the fire of true eloquence, not for one moment did the attention of the little congregation wander. A leaf could have been heard to drop in the church, the rustle of a pocket handkerchief was a perfectly audible sound. Not even a child looked sideways to watch the dark ivy waving softly against the stained gla.s.s windows or wondered at the strange pattern which a ray of dying sunlight had traced upon the bare stone aisles. There was something personal--something like the cry of human sorrow itself in that slow, pa.s.sionate outpouring. Was it by any chance a confession or an accusation to which we were listening? It was on the universality of sin of which my father spoke with such heart-moving emphasis. Our lives were like cupboards having many chambers, some of which were open indeed to the daylight and the gaze of all men, but there were others jealously closed and locked. We could make their outside beautiful, we could keep the eyes of all men from penetrating beneath that fair exterior. We could lock them with a cunning and secret key, so that no hand save our own could lay bare the grisly spectre that lurked within. Yet our own knowledge, or what we had grown to call conscience, sat in our hearts and mocked us. Sometime the great white light swept into the hidden places, there was a tug at our heartstrings, and behold the seal had fallen away. And in that church, my father added slowly, "he doubted whether any one could say that within him those dark places were not."

Suddenly his calm, tense eloquence became touched with pa.s.sion. His pale face gleamed, and his eyes were lit with an inward fire. Gesture and tone moved to the beat of a deeper and more subtle rhetoric. He was pleading for those whose sin beat about in their bosoms and lay like a dark shadow across all the sweet places of life. Pa.s.sionate and more pa.s.sionate he grew. He was pleading--for whom? We listened entranced. His terrible earnestness pa.s.sed like an electric thrill into the hearts of all of us. Several women were crying softly; men sat there with bowed heads, face to face with ghosts long since buried. Bruce Deville was sitting back in his corner with folded arms and downcast head. Adelaide Fortress was looking steadfastly up towards that pale, inspired figure, with soft, wet eyes. Even the Bishop was deeply moved, and was listening to every word. For my part there was a great lump in my throat. The sense of some terrible reality behind my father's impa.s.sioned words had left me pale and trembling. A subtle sense of excitement stole through the church. When he paused for a moment before his concluding sentence, there was something almost like a murmur amongst the congregation, followed by another period of breathless suspense.

In the midst of that deep hush a faint sound attracted me. My seat was on a level with the open door, and I glanced out. A man was leaning against the porch--a man in very grievous condition. His clothes were disordered and torn, and there was a great stain on the front of his coat. I alone had gazed away from the preacher in the pulpit towards him, and whilst I looked the sound which had first attracted me was repeated. A low, faint moan, scarcely louder than a whisper, pa.s.sed between his lips. He stood there supporting himself with his hands against the wall. His lined face was turned towards me, and, with a thrill of horror, I recognized him. I half rose from my seat. The man was either ill or dying. He seemed to be making frantic signs to me. I tried my utmost to signal to Mr. Charlsworth, but, like all the rest, his eyes seemed riveted upon the pulpit. Before I could leave my seat, or attract any one's attention, he had staggered through the door into the church itself. He stood leaning upon a vacant chair, a wild, disordered object, with blood stains upon his hands and clothes, and his dark eyes red and gleaming fiercely beneath his wind-tossed ma.s.s of black hair.

So fascinated was the congregation that save myself only one or two stray people had noticed him. He stood amongst the shadows, and only I, to whom his profile appeared against the background of the open door, was able to mark the full and terrible disorder of his person. And while I waited, numb with some nameless fear, the preacher's voice rang once more through the building, and men and women bowed their heads before the sweet, lingering pa.s.sion of those sad words.

"The wages of sin is death. For all things may pa.s.s away save sin. Sin alone is eternal. Sin alone must stamp itself wherever it touches with an undying and everlasting mark. Retribution is like the tides of the sea, which no man's hands can stay; and Death rides his barque upon the rolling waves. You and I and every man and woman in this world whom sin has known--alas! that there should be so many--have looked into his marble face, have felt the touch of his pitiless hands, and the cold despair of his unloving embrace. For there is Death spiritual and Death physical, and many of us who bear no traces of our past in the present of to-day, have fought our grim battle with the death--the--death----"

And then my father's words died away upon his lips, and the whole congregation knew what had already thrown me into an agony of terror. The man had struggled to the bottom of the aisle, and the sound of his shuffling movements, and the deep groan which accompanied them, had drawn many eyes towards him. His awful plight stood revealed with pitiless distinctness in the open s.p.a.ce where he was now standing. The red blood dripped from his clothing upon the bare stone floor, a foam which was like the foam of death frothed at his lips. He stood there, the focus of all horrified eyes, swaying to and fro as though on the eve of collapse, his arms outstretched, and his eyes flashing red fire upon the thin almost spectral-like figure of the preacher now leaning over towards him from the pulpit. The slight color forced into my father's cheeks by the physical effort of his impa.s.sioned oratory died away. To his very lips he was white as the surplice he wore. Yet he did not lose his nerve or falter for a moment. He motioned to Mr. Charlsworth and the other church wardens, and both left their places and hurried down the aisle towards the wild, tragical looking figure. Just as they reached him the cry which his lips had twice declined to utter burst out upon the tense, breathless silence. He made a convulsive movement forward as though to spring like a wild cat upon that calm, dignified figure looking down upon him with unfaltering and unflinching gaze.

"Judas! you, Judas! Oh! my G.o.d!"

His hands, thrown wildly out, fell to his side. He sank back into the arms of one of those who had hurried from their places at my father's gesture. A last cry, more awful than anything I have ever heard, woke hideous echoes amongst the wormeaten, black oak beams, and before it had died away, I saw Adelaide Fortress glide like a black wraith from her seat and fall on her knees by the fainting man's side. My father lifted up his arms, and with a deep, solemn tremor in his tone p.r.o.nounced the Benediction. Then, with his surplice flying round him, he came swiftly down the aisle between the little crowd of horrified people. They all fell back at his approach. He sank on one knee by the side of the prostrate man and looked steadfastly into his face. The congregation all waited in their places, and Alice, who was only partly aware of what was going on, commenced to play a soft voluntary.

There was some whispering for a moment or two, then they lifted him up and carried the lifeless body out into the open air.

My father followed close behind. For a few minutes there was an uneasy silence. People forgot that the Benediction had been p.r.o.nounced, and were uncertain whether to go or stay. Then some one made a start, and one by one they got up and left the church.

Lady Naselton paused and sat by my side for a moment. She was trembling all over.