It was not her words so much as it was her pathetic tones.
She talked to him as if he were alive and could hear her. She was resolved to make him hear and feel her love through the dark death which was between them.
“Ah, Henry,” she said, in a low, caressing tone, pressing back the curls from his forehead with her hand, “your hair is wet still. To think that you should lie out there all night—all night—on the ground, in the rain, and I not know of it! I, to be sleeping in my warm bed—actually sleeping, and you lying out in the storm, dead. That is the strangest thing! that makes me wonder—to think I could! Tell me that you forgive me for that, darling—for sleeping, you know, when you were out there. I was thinking of you when I took the rose out of my dress at night. I dreamed of you all night, but if I had known where you were, I would have gone out barefooted, I would have stayed by you and kept the rain from your face, from your dear, dear hair that I like so much and hardly ever dare to touch. It was cruel of me to sleep so. Would you guess, I was vexed at you last evening because you didn’t come? It was that made me so gay—not because I was happy. Vexed at you for not coming, when you could not come because you were dead!” and she laughed.
As that soft, dreadful laughter thrilled through the room, with a groan Mr. Argyll arose and went out; he could bear no more. Disturbed with a fear that her reason was shaken, I spoke with Mary, and we two tried to lift her up, and persuade her out of the room.
“Oh, don’t try to get me away from him again,” she pleaded, with a quivering smile, which made us sick. “Don’t be troubled, Henry. I’m not going—I’m not! They are going to put my hand in yours and bury me with you. It’s so curious I should have been playing the piano and wearing my new dress, and never guessing it! that you were so near me—dead—murdered!”
The kisses; the light, gentle touches of his hands and forehead, as if she might hurt him with the caresses which she could not withhold; the intent look which continually watched him as if expecting an answer; the miserable smile upon her white face—these were things which haunted those who saw them through many a future slumber.
“You will not say you forgive me for singing last night. You don’t say a word to me—because you are dead—that’s it—because you are dead—murdered!”
The echo of her own last word recalled her wandering reason.
“My God! murdered!” she exclaimed, suddenly rising to her full height, with an awful air; “who do you suppose did it?”
Her cousin was standing near; her eyes fell upon him as she asked the question. The look, the manner, were too much for his already overwrought sensibility; he shrunk away, caught my arm, and sunk down, insensible. I did not wonder. We all of us felt as if we could endure no more.
Going to the family physician, who waited in another apartment, I begged of him to use some influence to withdraw Miss Argyll from the room, and quiet her feelings and memory, before her brain yielded to the strain upon it. After giving us some directions what to do with James, he went and talked with her, with so much wisdom and tact, that the danger to her reason seemed passing; persuading her also into taking the powder which he himself administered; but no argument could induce her to leave the mute, unanswering clay.
The arrival of the relatives was the last scene in the tragedy of that day. Unable to bear more of it, I went out in the darkness and walked upon the lawn. My head was hot; the cool air felt grateful to me; I leaned long upon the trunk of an oak, whose dark shadow shut out the starlight from about me; thought was busy with recent events. Who was the murderer? The question revolved in my brain, coming uppermost every other moment, as certainly as the turning of a wheel brings a certain point again and again to the top. My training, as a student of the law, helped my mind to fix upon every slightest circumstance which might hold a suspicion.
“Could that woman?”—but no, the hand of a woman could scarcely have given that sure and powerful blow. It looked like the work of a practiced hand—or, if not, at least it had been deliberately given, with malice aforethought. The assassin had premeditated the deed; had watched his victim and awaited the hour. Thus far, there was absolutely no clue whatever to the guilty party; bold as was the act, committed in the early evening, in the haunts of a busy community, it had been most fatally successful; and the doer had vanished as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up. No one, as yet, could form any plausible conjecture, even as to the motive.
In the name of Eleanor Argyll—in the name of her whom I loved, whose happiness I had that day seen in ruins, I vowed to use every endeavor to discover and bring to punishment the murderer. I know not why this purpose took such firm hold of me. The conviction of the guilty would not restore the life which had been taken; the bloom to a heart prematurely withered; it would afford no consolation to the bereaved. Yet, if to discover, had been to call back
