CHAPTER XIX.

OTHERWISE THAN INTENDED

Scarcely had the housekeeper given this answer to her master’s inquiry, when a loud knocking at the front door, and the long tinkling of the electric bell, announced that some one was there, some one, as they all guessed, who was acquainted with what had happened.

There was something so startling in this thundering at the door at the very moment when they were on their way upstairs towards the room which they imagined to be the scene of a tragedy, that both Sir Robert and Mrs. Hawkes stopped and turned upon the staircase.

“Who’s that?” hissed the housekeeper.

A man-servant had run to the door, but Sir Robert turned once more and pointed imperiously upwards.

“Go on, go on, or let me pass,” he said.

And then, as if the knocking at the door had been only the result of their own imaginations, excited by their fears, they both hurried on up the stairs.

Swiftly there passed through the minds of both a succession of terrible thoughts, born of the events of the past month. The housekeeper was as well aware as her master and mistress themselves that there was acute tension between them, and in all the anxiety and suspense which the whole household had endured since the thefts from the gallery had become known and whispered about, the chief hope of everybody that some sort of satisfactory way out of the family difficulties might be found, centred on Rhoda Pembury.

With her quiet manners, her attachment to the invalid boy, her evident efforts to preserve the peace between husband and wife, the girl had endeared herself to the lower members of the household as well as to Caryl, and Mrs. Hawkes in particular had persisted in believing that she would end by finding means to bring the ill-assorted couple together.

But now the housekeeper was filled with fear that the peace-maker had been the victim of a fresh tragedy.

She was even vaguely suspicious as to the hand by which such a tragedy as she feared might have been brought about. It was inevitable that some inkling of the truth about the death of poor Langton should have trickled through to the servants’ hall during those ten years which had elapsed since the death of the butler, that gossip should have fixed upon Jack Rotherfield as the possible holder of the clue to that old mystery.

Now, therefore, it was not surprising that Mrs. Hawkes should ask herself whether Jack Rotherfield, who had already the guilt of one outrage at his door, might not have committed another. If Rhoda Pembury had been murdered because she stood between Lady Sarah and her husband’s rival, who but that rival could have been guilty of the act?

So thought Mrs. Hawkes as she hurried along the corridor to the door of Rhoda’s room.

Bursting it open without knocking, so sure was she that the sounds she had heard proceeded from this room, the housekeeper found herself in darkness. The electric light had not been turned on. The window was open, the curtains were drawn back, and a little light came from the moon, not long risen.

For a moment Mrs. Hawkes saw nothing. Then, her eyes becoming accustomed to the gloom, she perceived that there was something on the floor close by the window, something that did not move, did not utter a sound.

She moved forward quickly, and knelt down on the floor. Then a shudder went through her, and she sat back with a low cry.

Once more bending down, she raised the inert mass from the floor, turned the limp head, stared down into the ghastly face.

For a moment sight and sense seemed to fail her, and then she was roused by sounds of voices and footsteps outside the door.

Scrambling quickly to her feet, the housekeeper hurried across the floor, just as a loud knock sounded on the door of the room.

She heard the rattling of the handle and quickly turned the key in the lock at the sound of master’s voice.

“Mrs. Hawkes, can I speak to you? Can you come out?”

She tried to recover her natural voice, as she answered quickly:

“In one moment, Sir Robert. Will you send for a doctor at once?”

“A doctor!” The voice was that of Jack Rotherfield.

“What has happened?” This was in Sir Robert’s voice.

There was a pause, during which Mrs. Hawkes heard other voices in a confused buzz.

“There has been an accident. A bad accident, I’m afraid.”

“Yes, yes. An accident. But I was the cause of it. I did it. Oh, God, let me come in, let me in.”

These words were uttered in the strong voice of Jack Rotherfield, and at the same moment there came a terrific lunge against the door, which he was trying to break open.

The stern voice of Sir Robert, remonstrating, had the desired effect of making the young man desist, and then the housekeeper heard her master giving orders to one of the men-servants to go at once for a doctor.

In the meantime Mrs. Hawkes had hurriedly recrossed the floor to the window, and made one more examination of the body of the woman lying in a heap on the rug under the window.

Then the voice of Jack Rotherfield sounded loud and clear above all the others outside.

“She’s dead, I know she’s dead.”

“Hush!”

It was Minnie who was trying to silence him, but the young man still ejaculated, in a tone of passionate remorse and horror,

“I know she’s dead. I know it. It was I killed her.”

“What!”

Sir Robert hissed out the word, in horror and dismay.

Jack Rotherfield went on, in a deathlike silence which made every word ring out:

“I meant only to frighten her. It was an accident. I fired a revolver into the air, as I thought, but the bullet struck her as she leaned out of the window.”

There were sounds of sobbing and suppressed screaming, and in the midst of it Sir Robert knocked again at the door.

“You had better let me come in.”

The housekeeper turned the key in the lock, and opened the door.

At the same moment a figure came flying along the corridor from Caryl’s room, and Rhoda Pembury, pale and alarmed, joined the little group of three persons: Sir Robert, Jack Rotherfield, and Mrs. Hawkes.

“What is it? What has happened?” cried the girl. “What is all the noise?”

Sir Robert fell back, reeling.

“Thank God!” he said hoarsely, under his breath, as he looked at her.

She stared at him, trembling, then at Jack Rotherfield, who was striving to get past Mrs. Hawkes; and at the housekeeper, who held him fast by the arm.

The housekeeper suddenly relaxed her hold of Jack and beckoned to Rhoda.

“Come in with me,” she said.

Rhoda staggered back.

“What is it? In my room?” stammered she.

The housekeeper nodded.

“Lady Sarah,” she whispered. “She is--” And with her lips she formed the word “dead.”

Both Sir Robert and Rhoda understood, and in silence they both entered the room, where Mrs. Hawkes turned up the light.

There, under the window, in her light satin dress, with the jewels round her neck and on her hands, the flowers still pinned to her bodice, her beautiful dark hair disordered by her fall, lay Lady Sarah, inert, lifeless.

A little dark stain on her satin bodice showed where the blood had oozed through from the wound in her breast.

Jack Rotherfield burst into the group and threw himself on the ground beside the dead woman. Unprincipled as he was, guilty as he was, not one of the three persons present could fail to be moved by the anguish in his face. Solemn as the moment was, and deeply as they were all impressed by the swiftness of the unexpected and as yet imperfectly understood tragedy, not one of those three, Sir Robert, Rhoda, or Mrs. Hawkes, showed half the despair which convulsed the features of the young man.

He was mad with grief. He babbled out words to which they would all fain have shut their ears; he took the lifeless hands and pressed them within his own, staring down at the dead face, calling to her, now loudly, now softly, in a way which wrung all their hearts.

The group broke up on the arrival of the doctor, and only Mrs. Hawkes and Sir Robert remained in the room while he made his brief examination.

There had never been the least doubt about the result of it. Lady Sarah had been shot through the heart, and must have died instantaneously.

Jack Rotherfield made no secret of the fact that he had been the cause of her death, but it soon leaked out that, while he declared that he had accidentally shot the lady, while intending only to attract her attention and to frighten her, he had believed, as he did so, that the woman he was frightening was Rhoda Pembury.

It was Lady Sarah’s scream which had acquainted him with the fact that the bullet had struck the wrong woman.

His explanations, rambling and confused, deceived no one. All his hearers knew that he must have been on the watch for Rhoda’s appearance at the window of her room, where it was often her habit to sit looking out at the water that ran through the grounds. The room being unlighted, the moment he saw a woman’s figure at the window, Jack had jumped to the conclusion that it was that of Rhoda Pembury, and he had shot her, by his own account accidentally, but none the less effectually.

He was suffered to leave the house without molestation, and indeed it was necessary to suggest his withdrawal, so anxious was he to remain in the vicinity of the dead woman to whom, it could not be doubted, he had been deeply attached.

It was the doctor who got rid of him, and who then turned his attention to Rhoda, upon whom the tragic event, which she understood better than any one, had had an overwhelming effect.

For a short time she lay prostrate, absolutely overcome by the knowledge that it was in mistake for herself that Jack Rotherfield had shot Lady Sarah. Rhoda remembered the glances which the unfortunate lady had thrown repeatedly in her direction during dinner, and did not doubt that Lady Sarah had gone to the room of her boy’s companion in order to speak to her privately. There seated or standing at the window, in the half darkness, she had been mistaken by Jack Rotherfield for Rhoda, and, although his statement was to the effect that his intention had only been to attract her attention or to frighten her--for he had given both explanations--Rhoda was quite sure that he had intended to shoot her, in revenge for what she had done in keeping him apart from Lady Sarah, or to prevent any indiscretions on her part in the shape of revelations concerning the death of Langton.

Suddenly Rhoda raised herself from the couch in Lady Sarah’s boudoir where she had been placed.

“Caryl!” she whispered.

Mrs. Hawkes, having superintended the carrying of the body of poor Lady Sarah into her own bedroom, had left Sir Robert alone with the dead lady and had given her attention to Rhoda.

Rhoda had caught the faint sound of the boy’s voice, through the open doors. He was calling for her.

“I must go to him.” She struggled to her feet, and turning unsteadily, said: “Mrs. Hawkes, will you send word to the Priory of what has happened? And ask whether Lady Eridge will come? She will have to take Caryl away.”

“Yes. Quite right. I hadn’t thought of it.”

Rhoda went slowly to the boy’s room and found him crying in his little bed. His nurse was with him, doing her best to soothe him, but rumours of the tragedy which had killed his mother had already reached his ears, and he would not be comforted without his friend.

“Rhoda, Rhoda,” cried he, as she came in, looking very white, “Is it true? Is mama dead?”

“Oh, they shouldn’t have told you!”

“But I guessed.” She was beside him by this time, and his arm was round her neck. “You remember that evening when she was kind, and kissed me, and cried? I knew that meant something was going to happen, and I’ve wondered and wondered what it was. Now I know.”

Rhoda wiped away her own tears. He drew her head down to his level.

“Poor mama. I’m sorry. She was so pretty!” There was a pause, while Rhoda acquiesced, sobbing. Then he said quickly: “But you will stay with me, won’t you?”

Rhoda did not know what to say.

“Your grandmama will want to take care of you, Caryl, I think,” she said. “She will be very, very kind, and so will your aunts, I’m sure.”

“Yes, they’re all kind, but I want _you_. Will you promise to stay with me?”

“I can’t promise anything yet. You must wait, and be sure we will take good care of you, Caryl,” said the girl, who could scarcely speak.

The wrench of the tragedy had been great: that of parting with Caryl would, she felt, be greater still. Yet how was it to be avoided?

Within half an hour the marchioness arrived with Lady Aileen; and both, after a long and distressing interview with Sir Robert, came with him into Caryl’s room.

At once Rhoda noticed, with deep distress, that there was a difference in his manner to herself.

Instead of being merely sad and grave, Sir Robert, when he turned towards her, was distant, formal, stern and cold. She was cut to the heart, and understood that he looked upon her as in part the cause of the death of his wife.

True though this was, in a sense, yet as Rhoda was wholly innocent in the matter, she felt that it was an injustice that she should be treated in this manner.

In the circumstances, it was, of course, impossible either to explain or to accuse. She could only submit, and suffer.

Before many minutes were over, however, she had something to think about which distracted her thoughts, for the time, from Sir Robert and his unkindness.

Lady Eridge, deeply distressed as she was at her daughter’s sudden and tragic death, seemed to feel something not unlike a sense of relief that her troubles on behalf of the erratic and self-willed Lady Sarah were at an end.

“What are you going to do, Miss Pembury?” she asked in a low voice, as she bent over the boy.

“She is going to stay with me,” cried Caryl, as he joined his hands together round Rhoda’s neck, and clinging to her, refused to relax his hold.

Lady Eridge looked at her.

“You can’t stay here, of course?”

“Of course not. I am going away at once,” said Rhoda.

The boy burst into loud sobs.

The marchioness bent down to whisper in her ear.

“I’m going to take him to the Priory, to-night, out of the way of everything. His father will not mind, I’m sure.”

“No. That will be the best thing possible.”

“Will you come with him?”

“Oh, to the Priory? I think I’d rather not. You see I feel so miserable, and as if I were guilty of--of----”

“Hush! That is absurd. If you come with us, there will be no question that it will be best for you as well as for Caryl. And it will show that her people understand. Now will you come?”

Still feeling as if she were held guilty by the boy’s father, Rhoda glanced towards him.

“If Sir Robert agrees, I’ll go,” said she.

The marchioness went over to him and they exchanged a few words. Then Lady Eridge came back.

“He agrees with me that nothing could be better. And he thinks that you had better both come at once. Of course you had better be near at hand, for there will be questions to answer, since the terrible affair happened in your room. And you will be near enough at the Priory.”

It was settled at once. Within an hour little Caryl had been removed to his couch on wheels, and wrapped up carefully, was on his way to the Priory, in the company of Rhoda, his grandmother, and one of his aunts.

Rhoda took care not to meet Sir Robert before leaving the house. She could not face those cold looks of his again. And it was with a very heavy heart, and a sense that, in spite of her utmost efforts, she had lost a dear friend, that she left the Mill-house for a second time.