“Heavens above! He didn't run away?” cried Cyril.
“On the contrary, he walked straight into the bank the first thing this morning, and tried to make a row because the cashier hadn't arrived,” said Major Borrowdaile. “He waited there, and when the news came that Mr. Westwood was dead and the doors of the bank were about to be closed, he refused to leave the premises. That was where he made a mistake; for he was arrested by my sergeant on suspicion, though the sergeant had heard that Mr. Westwood had shot himself. And yet we hear that there is no intelligence apart from Scotland Yard!”
CHAPTER IX.
The London evening papers were full of the name of Westwood, and the pleasant little country town of Brackenhurst was during the afternoon overrun with representatives of the Press, the majority of whom were, to the amazement of the legitimate inhabitants, far more anxious to obtain some items relating to the personal history—the more personal the better—of Claude Westwood, than to become acquainted with the local estimate of the character of his brother. The people of the neighbourhood could not understand how it was possible that the world should regard the reappearance of a distinguished explorer after an absence of eight years with much greater interest than the murder of a provincial banker—even supposing that Mr. Westwood was murdered, which was to place the incident of his death in the most favourable light—from the standpoint of those newspapers that live by sensational headlines.
The next morning every newspaper worthy of the name had a leading article upon the Westwoods, and pointed out how the tragic elements associated with the death of one of the brothers were intensified by the fact that if he had only lived for a few hours longer, he would have heard of the safety of his distinguished brother, to whom he was deeply attached. While almost every newspaper contained half a column telling the story—so far as it was known—of the supposed murder of Richard Westwood, a far greater space was devoted to the story of the escape of Claude Westwood from the savages of the Upper Zambesi, who had killed every member of his expedition and had kept him in captivity for eight years.
The people of Brackenhurst could not understand such a lapse of judgment on the part of the chief newspaper editors: they were, of course, very proud of the fact that Claude Westwood was a Brackenshireman, but they were far prouder of the distinction of being associated with the locality of a murder about which every one in the country was talking.
Cyril Mowbray found himself suddenly advanced to a position of unlooked-for prominence, owing to the amount of information he was able to give to the newspaper men regarding the scene during the run on the bank, and the scene in the drawingroom at the Court, when the man who called himself Standish had entered, demanding the money which he had lodged the previous year in Westwoods' bank. Only once before had Cyril found himself in a position of equal prominence, and that was when he had been finally sent down at Oxford for participating in a prank of such a character as caused the name of his college to appear in every newspaper for close upon a week under the heading of “The University Scandal.” Before the expiration of that week Cyril's name was in the mouth of every undergraduate, and he felt, for the remainder of the week, all the gratification which is the result (sometimes) of a sudden accession to a position of prominence after a long period of comparative obscurity.
But his sister Agnes was completely prostrated by what had now happened—by the gladness of hearing that her lover was safe—that her long years of watching and waiting had not been in vain, and by the grief of knowing that her gladness could not be shared by Dick Westwood. It seemed to her that her hour of grief had swallowed up her hour of joy. She could not look forward to the delight of meeting Claude once again without feeling that her triumph—the triumph of her constancy—was robbed of more than half its pleasure, since it could not be shared by poor Dick. A week ago the news that her lover was safe would have thrilled her with delight; but now it seemed to her a barren joy even to anticipate his return: she knew that he would never recover from the blow of his brother's death—she knew that all the love she might lavish upon him would not diminish the bitterness of the thoughts that would be his when he returned to the Court and found it desolate.