Part 22

He had made a mistake, his slow brain was grasping the fact--a mistake--why should he have made a mistake? Surely it had been the right man, had he not climbed the wall and waited and seen a man with a woman and that woman Betty--who else could it have been? And then--then--

"A terribul strong intentioned man I be!" Abram muttered. "Terribul passionate and quick----" His eyes roved round restlessly, he still worked at his frayed and torn collar. "I must be going, time be getting on, very late it be growing, I've stayed too long!" He would have turned, but old Markabee faced him resolutely.

"Stir from here, 'ee don't, Abram Lestwick, after what 'ee hev done!"

One sweep of his arm would have felled Markabee and left the way clear for him to depart, yet Abram Lestwick never thought of that--he stood still, silent, submissive.

His dull brain refused to answer the question that he would have put to it. A mistake--how had he come to make a mistake--another man--what other man could it be? Had he not seen his enemy standing erect, unhurt, the lamplight on his face?

"It be past, all past my understanding----" Abram Lestwick muttered. "All misty and dizzy it du seem to I--all misty and dizzy!"

They had carried the victim into the house, now they came back for Lestwick, they took him and bound his hands behind his back, those terrible, those death dealing hands, and he submitted without a word, without a struggle.

Sullenly and with bent head, he shambled along between his captors. They took him into the house, into the light, he stood with bent head, then slowly lifted it, his restless eyes roamed the room, they fell on Kathleen's white face for a moment, then strayed away again.

The man was muttering to himself, they bent near to listen, yet could make but little of it.

"Wonderful pleasant spoken he be----" he said, and said it again and yet again, a score of times.

Old Markabee, tremulous, but staunch, gripping a Dutch hoe, stood on guard. "I du remember," he said, "aye I du remember his mother, my Lady, and it be the same wi' Abram as it were wi' she--strange she were always, terribul strange and they du say aye I have heard it said as her did die in the madhouse!"

Kathleen drew back, but the horror died out of her face and in its place there came pity, a great pity for this stricken wretch, the dull eyes rested for a moment on her face, then sank to the ground, his fingers were picking at the rope that bound his wrists together, but not with any intention of picking himself free, just for the sake of picking and fraying and tearing the cords, that was all.

*CHAPTER XXXV*

*"I SHALL RETURN"*

"Kathleen--Kathleen----"

"Yes, Harold, here beside you." She touched his cheek with her fingers. "You are easier now, better?"

"With you beside me, yes." He lifted his hand slowly to the bandaged throat.

"It was--Homewood--Allan Homewood who--saved--who dragged that man off me?"

"Yes, it was Allan, we heard your cry for help, he and I, we were together in the garden and----"

"You--you and he--you and he in the garden?"

"We had been talking in the yew walk, we were returning to the house and then we heard----"

He said nothing, his face twisted a little, as with pain, then it passed.

"The man, Abram Lestwick was mad, quite mad, Harold. He made no effort to get away, he was docile and quiet, dazed and stupid. They took him before the magistrates the next day, but the doctors certified at once, he will not have his liberty again, poor creature, they say he is a homicidal maniac. Yet why--why should he have come creeping into the garden that night, why should he have attacked you, Harold, you a stranger to him?"

But it seemed that he was not listening, as though what she said had no interest for him. He lay looking at her, thinking--It was she--she in the garden with Homewood that night, she walking with Homewood, his arm about her.

He saw it all again, in memory, as he had seen it that night in reality, the man and the woman walking as lovers walk, the man's arm about the woman, her head against his shoulder--and it was Homewood and Kathleen, the husband and the wife--and he had thought--

"The doctor tells me that I shall mend soon, that I shall soon be my own man again, Kathleen, and then," he smiled, "then I shall go back."

"Need you?"

He did not answer the question. "You know why I came, what hopes I had. It was folly and the hopes are over and ended and dead--so I shall go back alone as I came. There is nothing to remain for--nothing." His hand sought hers and she put hers into it. He held it for a time and then let it go.

"So I shall go back," he said again, and said it quietly and with a fixity of purpose that she knew would never be changed.

Her eyes, filled with pity, looked down on him. Yet she knew, better that he went back, better that in the years to come they should never meet again.

Her heart ached for him, but not for herself. And then the door opened and Allan came softly to the bedside and looked down at the invalid and standing beside Kathleen his arm went round her and he never knew what suffering it meant to the man lying there.

"Kathleen has told you about Lestwick, Scarsdale? The poor wretch is hopelessly insane. There was no reason for his act, there could be none. It has all been horrible, you can imagine what our feelings have been that you, our guest, our friend----" very kind was Allan's smile as he looked down on the man who would have been his enemy, "should have to bear this. But thank God it is no worse than it is. You will be a well man again soon, Scarsdale, and then you will stay on and rest here, Kathleen will be your nurse----"

"You are good, but I shall leave you as soon as I may, for I am going back to the place I came from, Homewood, going back soon."

"Going back? I remember that you told me once you hoped----"

Scarsdale smiled faintly. "I hoped--but that is over, I had hope, but not now. There is nothing to hold me to England. I am a stranger in a strange land, I shall be better out there among the people who know me."

"Are you sure--sure that there is no hope for you, Scarsdale?"

Again Scarsdale smiled. "There never was," he said. "Yet I did not realise it, would not understand it--but there was never any hope for me, so--so I shall go, thanking my good friends for their care of me, thanking them and blessing them----" As he spoke he looked up at Kathleen and Allan watching saw the yearning, the hunger, the love that the lips could not utter, and then suddenly he understood that this was the man!

Yet, even understanding, he stooped and touched the other's hand.

"Remember, if you will stay, my wife and I will be glad--we would have you stay as long as you can--Scarsdale."

They turned away, went out of the room together, and then when the door had closed on them, he turned to her.

"Kathleen, I remember that night you told me that you had met the man again--it was he."

"He came back," she said, "he came back and I knew it meant nothing to me. It was a dream, as yours was dear, and it passed, as yours did, my Allan and so--so----" she held up her arms and put them about his neck and lifted her face to his.

"I meant to tell you--at first and then--then I forgot, yes forgot, Allan--because of something of which I wanted to tell you far, far more."

"I know," he said, he put his arms about her and held her closely. "Something that has made me the happiest and proudest man in all the world, beloved."

* * * * *

A winter and a spring had passed and the garden at Homewood was blooming with a loveliness that it had not been able to attain last summer. Old Markabee, bearing the weight of yet one more year on his round shoulders, was snipping at the ivy covered wall.

"A pernicious thing be ivy, sir," he said, "a terribul pernicious thing, eating away the very wall as du support it, tearing it away bit by bit, ruining it, sir, it du--with them terribul little clinging fingers it hev got, workin' and workin' till the old wall be crumbled quite and ready to fall, a most terribul pernicious thing ivy be."

"Yes, yes to be sure, but hush my good man, not--not so loudly if you please----"

Markabee turned contritely, "I bain't gone and woke he wi' my chatter?" he asked.

"No, no, he is still sound asleep."

Sir Josiah rose from the stone bench, he peered under the holland awning over the perambulator.

His reign was but short and presently nurse would come and demand of him, her charge. It was a great favour that she did him, leaving him here in charge of the slumbering infant, there was no one else nurse would trust, but she knew that she might Sir Josiah.

"You may look at him, Markabee, if you like, did you ever see a healthier looking child?"

Markabee poked his brown face under the awning, holding his breath the while. Not till he was safely away did he trust himself with speech.

"A wunnerful child he be," he said. "And so powerful strong he du look."

"Would you say, Markabee?" Sir Josiah enquired anxiously, "is the child like his mother or his father?"

"A bit like both," said Markabee. "And wi' a look, aye now I du see it quite plain, a look of his grandfather tu, he hev got."

"You don't say so!" said Sir Josiah. "You don't say so--well bless my heart!" His round red face beamed and Markabee, cunning old sinner, chuckled behind his hand.

"That ought to be good enough for half a suvereign for I," he thought.

And now came nurse to take possession of her charge.

"He hasn't awakened, Sir Josiah, has he?" she said.

"Bless you my dear, no, not moved, he hasn't," Sir Josiah said.

She smiled. "I always feel I can trust you with him at any rate, Sir Josiah."

"A good woman that, a sensible woman, couldn't have found a better," Sir Josiah said as nurse wheeled the baby carriage away. "And you were saying just now, Markabee?"

"I were saying a terribul pernicious thing is this ivy working with its little fingers on they old walls as du support it, tearing and tearing, wonderful like the fingers of Abram Lestwick's, I du remember."

"Ah poor fellow!" said Sir Josiah.

"Mad!" said Markabee, "like his mother were afore him--mad--and mad in love moreover."

"Indeed!"

"Wi' the prettiest maid in these parts, old Mother Hanson's grand-darter, sir."

"Little Betty Hanson?" said Sir Josiah--"whom my daughter-in-law Lady Kathleen sent to me months and months ago, and to think that poor mad fellow loved her. But she's married now, Markabee, and married well--married to a young fellow who works for me, a lad named Cope! I'm paying him six pounds a week, Markabee, and he's worth it, a hard working honest lad. I had tea with them in their little house and a prettier little hostess you never saw. But if you'll believe me, Markabee, an arrant little flirt, with those pretty eyes of hers----"

"Her mother were the same," said Markabee. "All wimmen more or less be the same--specially when they du have fine eyes as Betty had."

"Why I don't know that you aren't right Markabee, and yet not all, not all women Markabee, there is one----"

Sir Josiah looked up and saw the one of whom he spoke. She was coming slowly towards them along the flagged pathway, her husband's arm about her, her head against his shoulder and as they came slowly in the sunshine, they halted now and again, for not yet, had all her strength come back to her, though thank God, it was coming. She was still a little pale, still a little languid in her movements. But in her eyes there was a great and wonderful happiness and a deep tenderness and unutterable love. Love for this man beside her, this man to whom she clung, this man, who was friend, lover, husband all in one. Was ever woman so blessed as she?

Sir Josiah stood watching them, knowing that these two had found a happiness that was almost beyond his understanding.

And then he would have turned and gone quietly away, but Kathleen called to him.

"Won't you come here and sit with us in the sunshine dear? Don't go, don't go!"

He came back with a happy pleased look on his old face.

"I didn't think you and Allan would want the old man," he said, "I thought you two--together----"

"We want you always, when you are here our little world is all complete," she said softly. "I have those whom I love and those who love me," she lifted her hand and held it against his cheek.

And so on the sunwarmed old stone bench they sat, and there was no sound save the steady 'clip clip' of old Markabee's shears and the rustle of the falling glossy green leaves from the ivied wall.

About them, was the sunshine and the glory of the flowers in bloom, the little pool lay shimmering like molten gold, and from its midst rose the slim white figure of the stone maiden, for ever holding the broken pitcher on her sun kissed shoulder.

THE END

T. H. BEST PRINTING CO. LIMITED, TORONTO