Agatha Webb

  XXII

  SWEETWATER ACTS

  Sweetwater had promised Mr. Sutherland that he would keep counsel inregard to his present convictions concerning Frederick's guilt; but thishe knew he could not do if he remained in Sutherlandtown and fell underthe pitiless examination of Mr. Courtney, the shrewd and ableprosecuting attorney of the district. He was too young, too honest, andhad made himself too conspicuous in this affair to succeed in anundertaking requiring so much dissimulation, if not actual falsehood.Indeed, he was not sure that in his present state of mind he could hearFrederick's name mentioned without flushing, and slight as such a hintmight be, it would be enough to direct attention to Frederick, whichonce done could but lead to discovery and permanent disgrace to all whobore the name of Sutherland.

  What was he to do then? How avoid a consequence he found himselfabsolutely unable to face? It was a problem which this night must solvefor him. But how? As I have said, he went down to his house to think.

  Sweetwater was not a man of absolute rectitude. He was not so muchhigh-minded as large-hearted. He had, besides, certain foibles. In thefirst place, he was vain, and vanity in a very plain man is all the moreacute since it centres in his capabilities, rather than in hisappearance. Had Sweetwater been handsome, or even passably attractive,he might have been satisfied with the approbation of demure maidens anda comradeship with his fellows. But being one who could hope for nothingof this kind, not even for a decent return to the unreasoningheart-worship he felt himself capable of paying, and which he had oncepaid for a few short days till warned of his presumption by theinsolence of the recipient, he had fixed his hope and his ambition ondoing something which would rouse the admiration of those about him andbring him into that prominence to which he felt himself entitled. Thathe, a skilful musician, should desire to be known as a brilliantdetective, is only one of the anomalies of human nature which it wouldbe folly and a waste of time on our part to endeavour to explain. That,having chosen to exercise his wits in this way, he should so wellsucceed that he dared not for his life continue in the work he had sopublicly undertaken, occasioned in him a pang of disappointment almostas insufferable as that brought by the realisation of what his effortswere likely to bring upon the man to whose benevolence he owed his verylife. Hence his struggle, which must be measured by the extent of hisdesires and the limitations which had been set to his nature by hissurroundings and the circumstances of his life and daily history.

  If we enter with him into the humble cottage where he was born and fromwhich he had hardly strayed more than a dozen miles in the twenty-twoyears of his circumscribed life, we may be able to understand himbetter.

  It was an unpainted house perched on an arid hillside, with nothingbefore it but the limitless sea. He had found his way to itmechanically, but as he approached the narrow doorway he paused andturned his face towards the stretch of heaving waters, whose low or loudbooming had been first his cradle song and then the ceaselessaccompaniment of his later thoughts and aspirations. It was heaving yet,ceaselessly heaving, and in its loud complaint there was a sound ofmoaning not always to be found there, or so it seemed to Sweetwater inhis present troubled mood.

  Sighing as this sound reached his ear, and shuddering as its meaningtouched his heart, Sweetwater pushed open the door of his small house,and entered.

  "It is I, mamsie!" he shouted, in what he meant to be his usual voice;but to a sensitive ear--and what ear is so sensitive as amother's?--there was a tremble in it that was not wholly natural.

  "Is anything the matter, dear?" called out that mother, in reply.

  The question made him start, though he replied quickly enough, and inmore guarded tones:

  "No, mamsie. Go to sleep. I'm tired, that's all."

  Would to God that was all! He recalled with envy the days when hedragged himself into the house at sundown, after twelve long hours ofwork on the docks. As he paused in the dark hallway and listened till heheard the breathing of her who had called him DEAR--the only one in theworld who ever had or ever would call him DEAR--he had glimpses of thatold self which made him question if his self-tutoring on the violin, andthe restless ambition which had driven him out of the ways of hisancestors into strange attempts for which he was not prepared by anyprevious discipline, had brought him happiness or improved his manhood.He was forced to acknowledge that the sleep of those far-distant nightsof his busy boyhood was sweeter than the wakefulness of these laterdays, and that it would have been better for him, and infinitely betterfor her, if he had remained at the carpenter's bench and been satisfiedwith a repetition of his father's existence.

  His mother was the only person sharing that small house with him, andonce assured that she was asleep, he lighted a lamp in the empty kitchenand sat down.

  It was just twelve o'clock. This, to anyone accustomed to this peculiaryoung man's habits, had nothing unusual in it. He was accustomed to comehome late and sit thus by himself for a short time before goingup-stairs. But, to one capable of reading his sharp and none too mobilecountenance, there was a change in the character of the brooding intowhich he now sank, which, had that mother been awake to watch him, wouldhave made every turn of his eye and movement of his hand interesting andimportant.

  In the first place, the careless attitude into which he had fallen wastotally at variance with the restless glance which took in every objectin that well-known room so associated with his mother and her daily workthat he could not imagine her in any other surroundings, and wonderedsometimes if she would seem any longer his mother if transplanted toother scenes and engaged in other tasks.

  Little things, petty objects of household use or ornament, which he hadseen all his life without specially noticing them, seemed under thestress of his present mood to acquire a sudden importance and fixthemselves indelibly in his memory. There, on a nail driven long beforehe was born, hung the little round lid-holder he had pieced together inhis earliest years and presented to his mother in a gush of pridegreater than any he had since experienced. She had never used it, but italways hung upon the one nail in the one place, as a symbol of his loveand of hers. And there, higher up on the end of the shelf barren enoughof ornaments, God wot, were a broken toy and a much-defaced primer,mementos likewise of his childhood; and farther along the wall, on asort of raised bench, a keg, the spigot of which he was once guilty ofturning on in his infantile longing for sweets, only to find he couldnot turn it back again until all the floor was covered with molasses,and his appetite for the forbidden gratified to the full. And yonder,dangling from a peg, never devoted to any other use, hung his father'sold hat, just where he had placed it on the fatal morning when he camein and lay down on the sitting-room lounge for the last time; and closeto it, lovingly close to it, Sweetwater thought, his mother's apron, theapron he had seen her wear at supper, and which he would see her wear atbreakfast, with all its suggestions of ceaseless work and patientevery-day thrift.

  Somehow, he could not bear the sight of that apron. With the expectationnow forming in his mind, of leaving this home and leaving this mother,this symbol of humble toil became an intolerable grief to him. Jumpingup, he turned in another direction; but now another group of objectsequally eloquent came under his eye. It was his mother's work-basket hesaw, with a piece of sewing in it intended for him, and as if this werenot enough, the table set for two, and at his place a little covereddish which held the one sweetmeat he craved for breakfast. Thespectacles lying beside her plate told him how old she was, and as hethought of her failing strength and enfeebled ways, he jumped up againand sought another corner. But here his glances fell on his violin, anda new series of emotions awakened within him. He loved the instrumentand played as much from natural intuition as acquired knowledge, but inthe plan of action he had laid out for himself his violin could have nopart. He would have to leave it behind. Feeling that his regrets werefast becoming too much for him, he left the humble kitchen and wentup-stairs. But not to sleep. Locking the door (something he neverremembered doing before in all his life
), he began to handle over hisclothes and other trivial belongings. Choosing out a certain strongsuit, he laid it out on the bed and then went to a bureau drawer anddrew out an old-fashioned wallet. This he opened, but after he hadcounted the few bills it contained he shook his head and put them allback, only retaining a little silver, which he slipped into one of thepockets of the suit he had chosen. Then he searched for and found alittle Bible which his mother had once given him. He was about to thrustthat into another pocket, but he seemed to think better of this, too,for he ended by putting it back into the drawer and taking instead a bitfrom one of his mother's old aprons which he had chanced upon on thestairway. This he placed as carefully in his watch pocket as if it hadbeen the picture of a girl he loved. Then he undressed and went to bed.

  Mrs. Sweetwater said afterwards that she never knew Caleb to talk somuch and eat so little as he did that next morning at breakfast. Suchplans as he detailed for unmasking the murderer of Mrs. Webb! Suchbusiness for the day! So many people to see! It made her quite dizzy,she said. And, indeed, Sweetwater was more than usually voluble thatmorning,--perhaps because he could not bear his mother's satisfiedsmile; and when he went out of the house it was with a laugh and acheery "Good-bye, mamsie" that was in spiking contrast to theirrepressible exclamation of grief which escaped him when the door wasclosed between them. Ah, when should he enter those four walls again,and when should he see the old mother?

  He proceeded immediately to town. A ship was preparing to sail thatmorning for the Brazils, and the wharves were alive with bustle. Hestopped a moment to contemplate the great hulk rising and falling at hermoorings, then he passed on and entered the building where he had everyreason to expect to find Dr. Talbot and Knapp in discussion. It was veryimportant to him that morning to learn just how they felt concerning thegreat matter absorbing him, for if suspicion was taking the direction ofFrederick, or if he saw it was at all likely to do so, then would hisstruggle be cut short and all necessity for leaving town be at an end.It was to save Frederick from this danger that he was prepared to cutall the ties binding him to this place, and nothing short of theprospect of accomplishing this would make him willing to undergo such asacrifice.

  "Well, Sweetwater, any news, eh?" was the half-jeering,half-condescending greeting he received from the coroner.

  Sweetwater, who had regained entire control over his feelings as soon ashe found himself under the eye of this man and the superciliousdetective he had attempted to rival, gave a careless shrug and passedthe question on to Knapp. "Have you any news?" he asked.

  Knapp, who would probably not have acknowledged it if he had, smiled theindulgent smile of a self-satisfied superior and uttered a few equivocalsentences. This was gall and wormwood to Sweetwater, but he kept histemper admirably and, with an air of bravado entirely assumed for theoccasion, said to Dr. Talbot:

  "I think I shall have something to tell you soon which will materiallyaid you in your search for witnesses. By to-morrow, at least, I shallknow whether I am right or wrong in thinking I have discovered animportant witness in quite an unexpected quarter."

  Sweetwater knew of no new witness, but it was necessary for him not onlyto have a pretext for the move he contemplated, but to so impress thesemen with an idea of his extreme interest in the approaching proceedings,that no suspicion should ever arise of his having premeditated an escapefrom them. He wished to appear the victim of accident; and this is whyhe took nothing from his home which would betray any intention ofleaving it.

  "Ha! indeed!" ejaculated the coroner with growing interest. "And may Iask----"

  "Please," urged Sweetwater, with a side look at Knapp, "do not ask meanything just yet. This afternoon, say, after I have had a certaininterview with--What, are they setting sails on the Hesper already?" heburst out, with a quick glance from the window at the great ship ridingat anchor a little distance from them in the harbour. "There is a man onher I must see. Excuse me--Oh, Mr. Sutherland!"

  He fell back in confusion. That gentleman had just entered the room incompany with Frederick.