She said this without looking round. When she did look she was somewhat surprised to see, not the butler, but Marmaduke Dugdale. It was odd, certainly, but then Duke had such very odd ways, and was always turning up at impossible hours and in eccentric fashion. He looked eccentric enough now, being thoroughly drenched with rain, with a queer, scared expression on his face.

Agatha was amused by it. "Why, what a late visitor! The children are gone home hours ago, though they waited ever so long for 'Pa.' Have you been all this while at Mr. Trenchard's?"

"I haven't been there at all."

Agatha smiled.

"Don't'ee laugh--now don't'ee, Mrs. Harper." And Duke sat down, pushing the dripping hair from his forehead, pulling his face into all sorts of contortions, until at last it sunk between his hands, and those clear, honest, always beautiful eyes, alone confronted her. There was that in their expression which startled Agatha.

"What did you come for so late, Mr. Dugdale?"

"What did I come for?" he vaguely repeated. "Now don't'ee tremble so. We must hope for the best, my child."

Agatha felt a sudden stoppage at the heart which took away her.

breath. "Tell me--quick; I shall not be frightened;--he is coming home to-morrow."

"My dear child!" muttered Duke again, as he held out his hands to her, and she saw that tears were dropping over his cheeks.

Agatha clutched at the hands threateningly--she felt herself going wild.

"Tell me, I say. If you don't--I'll"------

"Hush--I'll tell you--only hush!--think of poor Anne! And there's hope yet. Only they have not come into Southampton-roads--and last night there was a fire seen far out at sea--and it might have been a ship, you know."

Thus disconnectedly Marmaduke broke his terrible news. Agatha received them with a wild stare.

"It's impossible--totally impossible," she cried, uttering sounds that were half shrieking, half laughter. "Absolutely, ridiculously impossible. I'll not believe it--not a word. It's impossible-- _impossible!_"

And gasping out that one word, over and over again, fiercely and fast, she walked up and down the room like one distraught. She was indeed quite mad. She had not any sense of anything. She never once thought of weeping, or fainting, or doing anything but shriek out to earth and Heaven that one denunciation--that such a thing was and must be--"_impossible!_"

Marmaduke caught her--she flung him aside.

"Don't touch me--don't speak to me! I say it's _impossible!_"

"Child!" And his look became more grave and commanding than any one would have believed of the Dugdale. "Dare not to say impossible! It is sinning against G.o.d."

Agatha stopped in her frenzied walk. Of a sudden came the horrible thought that _it might be_--that the hand might have been lifted--have fallen, striking the whole world from her at one blow.

"Oh G.o.d!--oh merciful G.o.d!"

In that cry, scarcely louder than a moan, yet strong and wild enough to pierce the heavens, Agatha knew how she loved her husband. Not calmly, not meekly, but with that terrible love which is to the heart as life itself.

Of the next few minutes that pa.s.sed over her no one could write--no one would dare. It was utter insanity, yet with a perfect knowledge of its state. Madness, stone-blind, stone-deaf--that uttered no cry, and poured out no tears. She walked swiftly up and down the room, her hands clenched, her features rigid as iron. Mr. Dugdale and old Andrews could only watch pitifully, saying at times--which may all good Christians say likewise!--"G.o.d have mercy upon her."

No one else came near--the servants were all asleep, and Miss Valery's room was in another part of the house. Possibly she slept too--poor Anne!

"Now," said Agatha, in a cold, hard voice, clutching Marmaduke's arm, "I want to know all about it. I don't believe it, mind you!--not one word--but I would like to hear. Just tell me. How did you get the news?"

"From Southampton, to-night. It happened last night A steamer saw the burning ship, and went, but the fire had already reached to the water's edge. There was not a soul in or near the wreck when it went down."

Agatha shuddered, and then said, in the same hard voice: "It was some other ship--not the _Ardente_."

Marmaduke shook his head, drearily. "They found a spar with 'Ardente'

upon it. But they saw no boats, and some people think, as there were but few pa.s.sengers, they all got safe off, and may reach the sh.o.r.e."

"Of course they will!--I was sure of that;" returned Agatha, in the same wild, determined tone. "Let me see! it was a quiet night. I stood a long time looking at the moon--Ah!"

The ghastly thought of her standing there looking up at the moon, and the pitiless moon looking down on the sea and on him! Agatha's senses reeled--she burst into the most awful laughter.

Marmaduke held her fast--the whimsical absent Marmaduke--now roused into his true character, kind, as any woman, and wiser than most men.

"Agatha, you must be quiet. It is wicked ever to despair. There is a chance--more than a chance, that your husband has been saved. He has infinite presence of mind, and he is a young, strong, likely lad. But Brian--poor Brian! my dear old friend!"

Duke Dugdale's bravery gave way--he was of such a gentle, tender heart.

The sight of his emotion stilled Agatha's frenzy, and made it more like a natural grief, though it was hard yet--hard as stone.

"Come," she said, taking his hand, and smiling piteously--"come--don't cry. I can't!--not for the world. Let us talk. What are you going to do?"

"I am going right off to Southampton--whence they have sent steamers out in all directions to pick up the boats, if they are drifting anywhere about the Channel. Fancy--to be out in the open sea, this winter-time, with possibly no clothes or food!"

"Hush!"--shuddered Agatha's low voice--"hush! or I shall go quite mad, and I would rather not just yet--_afterwards_, I shall not mind."

"Poor child!"

"Don't now," and she shrank from him. "Never think of me--_that_ does not signify. Only something must be done. No weeping--no talking--_do_ something!"

"I told you I should. I am going"--

"Go then!" Her quick speech--the wild stamp of her foot--poor child, how mad she was still!

Mr. Dugdale took no notice except by a compa.s.sionate look--perhaps he, too, felt there was no time to lose. He went towards the door--she following.

"I am off now--I shall catch the train in two hours," said he, springing on his horse in the dark wet night. "Harrie will be with you directly--only she thought I had better come first. Go in--go in--my poor child."

Agatha obeyed mechanically, for the moment She walked about the house, in at one room and out at another, meeting no person--for Andrews had gone to call up some of the servants. The heavy quiet around stifled her. Faster and faster she walked--clutching her hands on her throat for breath--sometimes uttering, with a sort of laughing shriek, the one word in which seemed her only salvation--"Impossible!--utterly and entirely impossible!"

She sat down for a moment, trying to think over more clearly the chances of the case--but to keep still was beyond her power. She resumed that rapid walk as if she were flying through an atmosphere of invisible fiends. It felt like it.

Once, by a superhuman effort, she drove her mind to contemplate the _possible_--the winds, the flames, the waves, and him struggling among them. She saw the face which she had last seen so life-like--as a _dead face_, with its pale, pure features and fair hair. And even that face never to be again seen by her through any possible chance! For him to be blotted out altogether from the world, and she left therein! "Oh, G.o.d--oh, G.o.d!" The despairing, accusing shriek that she sent up to His mercy!--May His mercy have received and forgiven it!

She began to count up the hours that must pa.s.s before she could receive any tidings, good or ill. To stay quietly in the house and wait for them!--you might as well have told a poor wretch to sit still and wait for the bursting of a mine. No rest--no rest. The very walls of the house seemed to press upon her and hem her in. She saw a bonnet and shawl hanging up in the hall, caught both, and ran out at the front door.

Out--out under the stars. She walked with her face lifted right up to them, her eyes flashing out an insane defiance to their merciless calm.

The rain fell down thick, and it was very cold, but she never thought of putting on the bonnet or the shawl; or, if she thought at all, it was with a sort of longing that the rain might come and cool her through and through, or the sharp wind pierce to her breast and kill her. Once she had a thought of running a mile or two across the hills, and leaping from some cliffs into the sea; so that, whichever way this suspense ended, she might be safely dead beforehand--dead, too, in the same ocean, washed by the same wave. All the foolish Romeo-and-Juliet-like traditions of people killing themselves on some beloved's tomb, seemed to her now perfectly real, possible, and natural. Nothing was unnatural or impossible--save living.

How to live, even for a day, an hour, in this horrible, deathly stagnation, she did not know. At last, walking on blindly through the night, she came to the termination of the Thornhurst estate. Was she to go back and lull herself into the stupor of patience?--to be kissed and wept over, and preached resignation to?--left to sit mutely in that quiet house, while he was dashed about, fighting with the sea for life?--or watching the clock's travelling round hour after hour, not knowing but that every peaceful minute might be the terrible one in which he died?

"No," she said to herself, while the awful but delirious joy which has struck many in a similar position, struck her suddenly, "he is not dead.

If he had died, he would have told me--me whom he so loved He could not die anywhere, or at any time, but in some way or other I should certainly have known it."