further discussion now. If you will come with me, James, I shall be glad to hear all the particulars of your marriage.”
James had not perhaps so fully realised the situation as to feel the full force of his anger against his brother. He followed his uncle, and the family solicitor, who had been present at the reading of the will, took leave, saying that he should call again on the next day, when matters were more ripe for discussion.
The door closed behind him, and the husband and wife were left alone.
She had remained in her seat by the fire, silent except when appealed to, through the whole interview. Now she sprang up and ran to him, laying her hands on his, and looking right into his eyes, with a passionate appeal in her own.
“George, we can give it back to him,” she said, breathlessly.
“My dear Mary,” said George, turning his head away, “don’t be so unreasonable: James has forfeited it over and over again. This is better for him and for all of us.”
“But the letter – ”
“Surely, Mary, you do not mean to join with those who insult me by such a suspicion,” cried George, angrily.
She looked right into his face, then turned away and burst into an agony of weeping, and George, anxious to think the matter well over, left her alone to recover herself.
Chapter Three
Found Drowned
Mrs Kingsworth remained near the library fire by herself. Her tears soon ceased, and she sat still and silent, in the grasp of a conviction from which she could not free herself. Every word that George had said might be true, and yet she knew, she felt that all his wishes had worked in his own favour, that a “covetous desire” had been granted perhaps even in spite of weak and inadequate words and actions telling the other way. An intense feeling of shame seized on her. What in all the world, she thought, was worth the loss of self-respect? She heard, without heeding, loud and angry voices, and the sudden shutting of the front door; but she never moved till Canon Kingsworth came into the room.
“Well,” he said, “James has told me the whole story. It was very foolish, he had no right to marry in the relations in which he stood towards his father; but the whole thing has been much misrepresented. I take blame to myself for my hasty account of it.”
“It ought to be set right,” said Mrs Kingsworth, steadily.
“Set right? do you mean reverse the will? Ah, my dear, that is impossible: but I think that though my brother might in any case have made the same will in the main, had he known the facts, he would not have left James penniless.”
“He would not have made any new will at all, but for that false report,” said Mrs Kingsworth. Her tone was so marked and so miserable that Canon Kingsworth turned away from the subject at once.
“I shall take an opportunity of talking to George,” he said, “to-morrow, when our minds are quieter. I am very anxious to avoid further discussion to-night. James is very angry, and I am afraid unforgetable words passed as he went out.”
“Has he gone out?”
“Yes; I think George did so too, afterwards.”
Mrs Kingsworth sat on by the fire, she felt no impulse to move, to talk the matter over, or to try to gain any new lights upon it. She was absolutely silent; while the Canon took up a book from the table, and read, or feigned to read it, till the butler looked in and said, “Will the gentlemen be in to dinner, ma’am?”
“To dinner? Is it dinner-time? Are they still out? Oh yes, we will wait for them.”
They waited, till the Canon grew impatient, and went to look out of the window.
“Why, there is a dense fog,” he said, “what can induce either of them to stay out in it?”
Mrs Kingsworth roused herself with a start. “It is close upon eight o’clock,” she said, “what can keep them?”
“The fog is thick enough to make them lose their way. I’ll have the dinner bell rung outside the door.”
They hardly knew how impatience gradually melted into uneasiness, and uneasiness into alarm; but before the next two hours were over, every man-servant in the place was shouting and searching, ringing the great bell in every direction, losing themselves and each other in the blinding mist, and with one conviction growing stronger every moment in their minds.
“The cliffs!” That whisper was in every one’s mind long before it found its way to their lips; but the first sound of it terrified Mrs Kingsworth almost out of her senses. She had been very slow to take alarm; but her fears once excited, all hope was gone from her. As for the Canon, he instituted every possible search and said nothing; but his mind was filled with terrible possibilities, which he would not put into words.
The night passed in perplexity and alarm, and even the dawn brought no relief; for the heavy sea-fog still hung thick over the cliffs and the shore; till, suddenly, as it seemed almost in a moment, it rolled back and left the white cliffs and the glittering waves bright in the morning sun.
The tide was low, and on the beach beneath the cliffs were found the bodies of James and George Kingsworth, clasped in each other’s arms as if each had tried to rescue the other, or – But there was nothing to justify any other interpretation.
From the moment when James’ passionate words to his brother as he hurried out of the house had been dimly overheard in the hall, till the bodies were found on the beach, nothing was known of him. George had gone out a few minutes later, with a cigar, quietly and by himself.
They had gone out into the mist and darkness, and mist and darkness hung impenetrably over their memories.
Among all the painful duties that devolved upon Canon Kingsworth that of disclosing what had passed to James’ wife weighed on him by far the most heavily.
It was due to her that the family should now recognise her claims. She had, according to James’ story, been living at Dinan, and there the Canon went to fetch her, leaving the other poor young widow in a strange state of silent stunned grief. As soon as might be he returned, bringing Mrs James Kingsworth and her baby with him. She was a pretty young woman, and her reception of him before she knew the sad news he had come to tell had impressed him favourably; but now she was in a state of anger and half-realised grief, speaking of James as if he had been in all respects perfection in her eyes, and only now and then rousing herself from her distress, to remember that her child was disinherited. Canon Kingsworth was very glad to see her safely in her room and under charge of the housekeeper, and as he turned into the library to consider the situation, his other niece stood before him, with a letter in her hand.
“Uncle, I have found it. Here is James’ letter. I found it in the writing-case George always used. Now there is but one thing to be done. My baby shall not profit by this injustice. Let James’ child take it all. It is not Katharine’s.”
“Hush, you do not know what you are saying. Let me look at the letter.”
He glanced it over, and said gravely, “Yes, it concurs in all respects with what James told me. Mary, it is impossible now to judge. The past must be laid to rest. The will is valid, and secures this property to your child. Nothing that you can do can alter it. Some provision it is no doubt necessary should be made for James’ daughter out of the estate, and I need not ask you to show kindness to one as bitterly afflicted as yourself.”
