“You will not say you forgive me for singing last night. You don’t say a word to me—because you are dead—that’s it—because you are dead—murdered!”
The echo of her own last word recalled her wandering reason.
“My God! murdered!” she exclaimed, suddenly rising to her full hight, with an awful air; “who do you suppose did it?”
Her cousin was standing near; her eyes fell upon him as she asked the question. The look, the manner, were too much for his already overwrought sensibility; he shrunk away, caught my arm, and sunk down, insensible. I did not wonder. We all of us felt as if we could endure no more.
Going to the family physician, who waited in another apartment, I begged of him to use some influence to withdraw Miss Argyll from the room, and quiet her feelings and memory, before her brain yielded to the strain upon it. After giving us some directions what to do with James, he went and talked with her, with so much wisdom and tact, that the danger to her reason seemed passing; persuading her also into taking the powder which he himself administered; but no argument could induce her to leave the mute, unanswering clay.
The arrival of the relatives was the last scene in the tragedy of that day. Unable to bear more of it, I went out in the darkness and walked upon the lawn. My head was hot; the cool air felt grateful to me; I leaned long upon the trunk of an oak, whose dark shadow shut out the starlight from about me; thought was busy with recent events. Who was the murderer? The question revolved in my brain, coming uppermost every other moment, as certainly as the turning of a wheel brings a certain point again and again to the top. My training, as a student of the law, helped my mind to fix upon every slightest circumstance which might hold a suspicion.
“Could that woman?”—but no, the hand of a woman could scarcely have given that sure and powerful blow. It looked like the work of a practiced hand—or, if not, at least it had been deliberately given, with malice aforethought. The assassin had premeditated the deed; had watched his victim and awaited the hour. Thus far, there was absolutely no clue whatever to the guilty party; bold as was the act, committed in the early evening, in the haunts of a busy community, it had been most fatally successful; and the doer had vanished as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up. No one, as yet, could form any plausible conjecture, even as to the motive.
In the name of Eleanor Argyll—in the name of her whom I loved, whose happiness I had that day seen in ruins, I vowed to use every endeavor to discover and bring to punishment the murderer. I know not why this purpose took such firm hold of me. The conviction of the guilty would not restore the life which had been taken; the bloom to a heart prematurely withered; it would afford no consolation to the bereaved. Yet, if to discover, had been to call back Henry Moreland to the world from which he had been so ruthlessly dismissed, I could hardly have been more determined in the pursuit. In action only could I feel relief from the oppression which weighed upon me. It could not give life to the dead—but the voice of Justice called aloud, never to permit this deed to sink into oblivion, until she had executed the divine vengeance of the law upon the doer.
As I stood there in silence and darkness, pondering the matter, I heard a light rustle of the dry leaves upon the ground, and felt, rather than saw, a figure pass me. I might have thought it one of the servants were it not for the evident caution of its movements. Presently, where the shadows of the trees were less thick, I detected a person stealing toward the house. As she crossed an open space, the starlight revealed the form and garments of a female; the next moment she passed into the obscurity of shadows again, where she remained some time, unsuspicious of my proximity, like myself leaning against a tree, and watching the mansion. Apparently satisfied that no one was about—the hour now verging toward midnight—she approached with hovering steps, now pausing, now drawing back, the west side of the mansion, from one of the windows of which the solemn light of the death-candles shone. Under this window she crouched down. I could not tell if her attitude were a kneeling one. It must have been more than an hour that she remained motionless in this place; I, equally quiet, watching the dark spot where she was. For the instant that she had stood between me and the window, her form was outlined against the light, when I saw that this must be the young woman whose strange conduct at the gate had attracted my attention. Of course I did not see her face; but the tall, slender figure, the dark bonnet, and nervous movement, were the same. I perplexed myself with vain conjectures.
I could not help connecting her with the murder, or with the victim, in some manner, however vague.