“I am content to wait, my dear Dick. I have come to think of waiting as part of my life. Will it be all my life, I wonder?”
“No, no; that would be impossible. That would be too cruel even for Fate.”
Agnes Mowbray looked at him for a few moments. He saw that the tears came into her eyes. Then she gave an exclamation of impatience, saying:
“Psha! my friend. What does it matter in the general scheme of things if one woman dies waiting to marry the one man on whom she has set her heart? My dear Dick, what is life more than waiting—a constant waiting that is never repaid? Is any man, any woman, ever satisfied? No matter what it is that we get, do we not resume our waiting for something else—something that we think worth waiting for? Psha! I am beginning to preach; and whatever women do they should not preach. Good-bye, Dick. Why, we are almost left alone.”
“My poor Agnes—my poor Agnes!” said he, looking at her with tenderness in his eyes. “Never think for a moment that he will not return. Eight years is a long time for him to be lost, but he will return. Oh, never doubt that he will return.”
“I have never yet doubted the goodness of God,” said she. “I will wait. I will accept without a murmur my life of waiting. He will not mind my grey hairs.”
She gave a laugh—after a little pause. In her laugh there was a curious note that sounded like a defiance of Fate. The man laughed also, but she saw that he knew very well that as a matter of fact there were several grey threads among the beautiful brown of her hair.
That was all the conversation they had at that time. She went away with her brother Cyril, who had been trying to get Mr. Calmour to listen to his views regarding the bowling policy to be pursued at Saturday's match. Cyril had his own views regarding the slow bowling of young Sharp, the rector's son. It was supposed to be very baffling, and so it was on a bad wicket. But if the wicket was good—and there was every likelihood that the fine weather would last over Saturday—the batsmen would simply send every ball across the boundary, Cyril declared with great emphasis.
He was in some measure put out when Mr. Calmour turned to him suddenly, saying:
“I beg your pardon. What is it you've been talking about?”
“What should I be talking about if not the bowling for Saturday?” cried Cyril.
“Oh, the bowling. What bowling? Saturday—what is to happen on Saturday?” said the cashier.
“You idiot! Haven't we been discussing”—
“Oh, go away—go away,” said Mr. Calmour wearily. “Heaven only knows what may happen between to-day and Saturday. If you could have any idea of what I've gone through to-day already—bless my soul! it all seems like a queer dream. Where are all the people gone? Why have they gone, can you tell me? I haven't paid away all my gold yet. I've still over two thousand pounds left. Have they closed the doors of the bank? They were fools—oh, such fools! But I could have held out. I had three or four tricks left. And now what's to become of me? I support my mother—she's an old woman; and I have a sister in another town—she is an epileptic. We are all ruined with the bank.”
The cashier put his hands up to his face and burst into tears. The strain of the previous hour had been too much for him. It was in vain that Cyril Mowbray slapped him on the back and assured him that the bank was safe and that his mother and sister might reasonably look forward to a brilliant future. It was in vain that Mr. Westwood shook him by the hand, promising never to forget the way in which he had worked through the crisis. Mr. Calmour refused to be comforted. He continued weeping, and had to be conveyed to his home in a fly.
Richard Westwood had begged Cyril to drive to Westwood Court and dine with him; and now the banker was sitting in his bedroom, staring into the empty grate as he recalled the incidents of the terrible day through which he had passed.
The boom of the gong which came half an hour later aroused him from his reverie. He started up with a great sigh, and was surprised to find himself as weary as if he had had a twenty-mile ride. He went to a looking-glass and examined his face narrowly. It looked haggard. He remembered having heard of men's hair becoming grey in a single night. He quite believed such stories. He thought it strange that his hair should remain black. He was thirty-six years of age—four years older than Agnes, and he had noticed that she had many grey hairs—she had talked of them when they had stood face to face in the bank.
He wondered if waiting for an absent lover was more trying than being the senior partner in a bank during a severe financial crisis.
He went downstairs to dinner without coming to any satisfactory conclusion on this rather difficult question.
CHAPTER IV
Westwood Court had been in the possession of the family of bankers since the days of George II. It had been built by that Stephen Westwood whose portrait was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. In the picture the man's right hand carries a scroll bearing a tracing of the plans of the house. Before it had been completed, however, Sir Thomas Chambers had something to say in regard to the design, the result being sundry additions which were meant to impart to the plain English mansion the appearance of the villa of a Roman patrician.
It was a spacious house situated in the midst of one of the loveliest parks in Brackenshire—a park containing some glorious timber, some brilliant spaces of greensward, and a trout stream that was never known to disappoint an angler, however exacting he might be. It was scarcely surprising that love for this home was the most prominent of the characteristics of the Westwood family. Every member of the family, with but one exception, seemed to have inherited this trait. The one exception was Claude Westwood, the younger brother of Richard.
During his father's lifetime he had been in a cavalry regiment, and while serving in India, had taken part in a rather perilous frontier campaign against a strange set of tribesmen in the northwest. He had become greatly interested in the opening up of the conquered territory, and as soon as his father died he had left the regiment and had done some remarkable exploration work on his own account, both in the northwest of India and in the borderland of Persia.
He returned to England to recover from the effects of a snake-bite, and to stay for a month or two with his brother, to whom he was deeply attached. But when in Brackenshire he had formed another attachment which threatened to interfere with the Future he had mapped out for himself as an explorer. He did not notice any change in his brother's demeanour the day he had gone to him confiding in him that he had fallen in love with Agnes Mowbray, the beautiful daughter of Admiral Mowbray, who had bought a small property known as The Knoll, a mile from the gates of the Court. Richard Westwood had found it necessary for the successful carrying on of the banking business, which he had inherited, to keep himself always well in hand. If his feelings were not invariably under control, his expression of those feelings certainly was so; and this was how it came that, after a pause of only a few seconds, he was able to offer his brother his hand and to say in a voice that was neither husky nor tremulous:
“Dear old chap, you have all my good wishes.”
“I knew that you would be pleased,” Claude had said. “She is the sort of girl one only meets once in a lifetime. I have lived for a good many years in the world now, and yet I never met any girl worthy of a thought alongside Agnes. How on earth you have remained in her neighbourhood for a year without falling in love with her yourself is a mystery to me.”
A sudden flash came to Dick's eyes, and he was at the point of crying out, “Have I so remained?” But his usual habits of self-control prevented his showing to his brother what was in his heart He had merely given a laugh as he said:
“I suppose it must always seem