And as she stood in the dark road--quite alone with the hills and stars, calmed down into a supernatural awe, Agatha almost expected to see her husband stand before her in the old familiar likeness. She would not have been afraid.

But no apparition came. All nature, visible and invisible, was silent to her misery. If she went back to the house, all there would be silent too.

She took her resolution--though it could hardly be called a resolution, being merely the blind impulse of despair. She climbed over the gate--she had not wit enough to unfasten it--and ran, swift and silent as some wild animal, along the road to Kingcombe.

The rain ceased, and her dripping clothes dried of themselves, so as not to enc.u.mber her movements. By some happy chance her feet were well shod, and now, gathering her wits as she went, she put on the shawl--not the bonnet, her head burned so, and felt so wild Just then, far into the darkness, she heard wheels rolling and rolling. It was Mrs. Dugdale driving along rapidly towards Thornhurst--but without one slash of the whip or one word of conversation with Dunce. When she stopped to open a gate the glare of the chaise-lamps showed the little black figure by the roadside. Harrie screamed--she thought it was a ghost.

"Any news? any news?"

"Gracious! is it you, child? No news--none! Get up, quick, and come home."

But Agatha fled on and on, noticing nothing, except once, when with a start she saw the great black outline of Corfe Castle looming against the night-sky.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Along the road page 394]

When she reached Kingcombe, it was still dark. She could not even have found her way, save for the faint sky brightness lent by the overcast moon; and the distance she had traversed was all but miraculous.

It seemed as if she had not walked by natural feet, but some unseen influence had drawn and lifted her the whole way. When she stood in Kingcombe streets she hardly believed her senses--save that nothing was hard of belief just then, except the one horror--incredible, unutterable.

Mr. Dugdale was walking up and down Kingcombe railway station, waiting for the early train. One or two sleepy porters were eyeing him with a sort of pitying curiosity, for ill news spreads fast in a country neighbourhood. There was no one else about. n.o.body perceived a little figure creeping up the road and coming on the platform. Even Marmaduke did not lift his eyes or relax his melancholy walk until something touched him on the arm. He stood astonished.

"It is I, you see. You are not gone yet."

"How did you come--you poor child?"

"From Thornhurst--I walked. But how soon shall you start?"

"Walked from Thornhurst!--at this time of night!" said one of the railway-men, who knew the family--as indeed did every one in the neighbourhood. "Lord help us--it's that poor Mrs. Harper!"

Mr. Dugdale tried to remove Agatha from the platform, but she resisted.

"I am come to go with you to Southampton."

"What need of that? Go back to my house, poor child. If anything is to be done I can do it. If nothing--why"--

"I _will_ go."

The determination was so calm, the grasp of the little hand so strong, that her brother-in-law urged no more. He went in his quiet way to take her ticket, the railway folk moving respectfully aside, and whispering among themselves something about "poor Mrs. Harper, that was going to Southampton to see after her husband."

Coming back, Duke attempted not to talk to her, but stood by her side--she would stand--sometimes feeling at her damp shawl, or wrapping her up in the tender careful fashion that he used to his own little ones. At last the great fiery eye, accompanied by the iron beast's snorting gasps, appeared far in the dark. Agatha drew a long breath, like a sob.

Mr. Dugdale lifted her in the carriage, almost without a word. One of the railway-men brought from somewhere--n.o.body ever learned where--a rug for her feet, and a pillow for her head to lean on. A minute more, and they were whirled away.

CHAPTER XXIX.

Every one knows that story, perhaps the most terrible of its kind for many years--and Heaven grant! for many more to come--when a n.o.ble ship, with her full complement of human beings, fought at once with winds, and waves, and fire, until came down upon it, and upon all the homes which that one hour desolated, the certain doom. One shudders even at writing of such things, save that they must of necessity happen, and not rarely.

But for one such tale as that of the _Amazon_, which convulses a whole kingdom with horror, there must be many unknown chronicles of equal dread, save that the little vessel sinks unnoticed into its sea grave, and the destruction carried with it pa.s.ses not beyond its own immediate sphere. Such was the case with the Ardente.

When the train neared Southampton it was already bright morning.

Everybody was moving about on the solid, safe, sunshiny earth--n.o.body thought of shipwrecks and disasters at sea. Many a one looked lazily at the glittering Southampton-water; no one dreamed how, far beyond the curving line of horizon, human beings--husbands and brothers--might be floating about without food or water, frozen, thirsting, dying or dead, under the same sunny sky.

Pa.s.sing the spot where the wide reach of bay opens, Marmaduke quickly drew down the carriage-blind. He would not for worlds that the poor Agatha should look at that merry-glancing, cruel sea. She seemed to notice the movement, and stirred from the corner where she had sat during all the journey, motionless, save for her perpetually open eyes.

"How light it is! quite morning!"

Marmaduke turned, felt her pulse, and began softly chafing her cold hand.

"Don't, now," she said piteously. "Don't be kind to me--please don't!

Talk a little. Tell me what you think it best to do first."

The sharp-lined, worn face, not pallid, or without consciousness--some people, to their misery, never can lose consciousness--mournfully did worthy Duke regard it! But he did not say a word of sympathy; he knew she could not bear it. Her physical powers were so tightly strung that the least soft touch would make them give way altogether.

Mr. Dugdale stated briefly, and as if it had been the most matter-of-fact thing in the world, how he meant to go to the owners of the _Ardente_ and get the first tidings of her there; how, if neither that nor any rumours he could catch in and about the docks, were satisfactory, he should hire a small steamer and beat up and down Channel, calling in at all the ports where it was likely boats might have been picked up.

"They would be, probably, in twenty-four hours or so. If we don't hear in three days--three days at this time of year"--he stopped with a perceptible shudder--"then, Agatha," and Duke's gentle voice grew gentler, and solemn like a psalm, "then, my child, we'll go home."

Agatha bowed her head. Bodily exhaustion calmed her mind, and soothed her into a feeling which made even the last dread alternative less fearful. She felt a conviction that such "going home" would only be a prelude to the last going home of all, when she should never part from her husband more. She did not much mind now, even if all were to end so.

Perhaps it would be best.

They got out of the carriage. All her limbs were cramped--she could hardly stand. Mr. Dugdale took her unresisting, to a quiet inn he knew, and there made her lie down and take food. Somehow, even in the last extremity, Duke Dugdale could win people over to do his pleasure, which was always for their own good.. He sat by her and talked, but only for a few minutes--he had no thought of wasting even in kindness the time on which might hang life or death.

"I am going now, and you must stay here till my return, which is sure not to be for at least two hours."

"Two hours!--Oh, take me with you!"

Duke shook his head. "You would only hinder me, I fear. See there, now!"

Trying to rise and cross the parlour, she had nearly fallen. A drowsy weakness stole over her--she let her good brother have his own way entirely. Very soon she found herself alone in the parlour, lying in the dusky light of closed blinds, with the dull murmur creeping up from the street--lying quietly in a state of pa.s.sive patience.

No human brain can endure a great strain of mental anguish long. A merciful numbness usually seizes it, in which everything grows hazy and unreal, and consequently painless. Agatha felt convinced she was half-asleep, and that she should wake up in her own room at Thorn-hurst or at Kingcombe, and find out everything to be a dream. Or even granting its reality, she seemed to view the whole story like some unconcerned person, or some being from whom this troubled world had pa.s.sed away, and grown less than nothing and vanity. She gazed down upon herself as it were from a great height, thinking how sad a story it was, and how it would have grieved herself to hear it of any one else. But all her thoughts were disconnected and unnatural. The only tangible feeling was a sort of comfort in remembering the last day they had spent together--in thinking how he loved her, and that, living or dying, he would know how she loved him now.

In this state she lay for an indefinite time--a period that had no human measurement. It seemed at once a day and a moment. No counted time could ever appear so like eternity.

At last there was a hand upon the door. Mr. Dugdale had come back.

Agatha started up, and sat frozen. For her life she could not have uttered a sound. He took her hand, saying, gently:

"My dear child!"

Surely he could not have spoken so, if--No, in that case his lips would have been paralysed, like her own.

"We must bear up yet, little sister. There is a chance."

The flood broke forth. Agatha flung herself on the sofa-cushions, sobbing, weeping, and laughing at once. Duke patted her on the shoulder, walked round her, stood eyeing her with his mild, investigating look, as if he were pondering some great new problem in human nature. Finally, he sat down beside her, and cried likewise.

Agatha for the first time spoke naturally. "Thank you, brother--you are a very good brother to me. Now, tell me everything."

"Everything is but little. It's like hanging on a thread--but we'll hold on."