“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.