Chapter LXXIII: Searching the Lake House

Lady Rose had, indeed, left the house. She knew best where to search for the missing girl. In the hall she met Mrs. Hipple. Snatching a garden-hat, she held it toward the old governess, who stood gazing upon her in astonishment.

"Take this, and come with me. I want help--come!"

Never had the lady spoken so imperiously; never had Mrs. Hipple seen her so terribly agitated. Before she had tied on the hat, Lady Rose was half-way down the terrace-steps.

"To the gardener's cottage," she directed, turning her head impatiently. "We must go there first."

Startled, and utterly bewildered, the old woman followed. She was a good walker, but failed to overtake Lady Rose until she stood before the cottage. The door was closed, the shutters tightly fastened, as she had never seen them before.

"Ruth may be lying dead there." Hesitating under the horror of this thought, she held on to the gate unable to go in or move away.

"Are you afraid?" she said to Mrs. Hipple.

"Afraid? No. Why should I be?"

"Ah, you have not been told, and I have no time; come."

Lady Rose swung the gate inward, went into the porch, and tried the door. It was not fastened. She pushed it open and entered the little parlor. The light was dim, but her quick glance searched the room--the table where Ruth worked, the chintz couch, the one great easy-chair.

"Not here! not here!" she cried. "Wait till I come."

She ran up-stairs into each chamber, calling out:

"Ruth! Ruth! Do not hide, Ruth. It is I, Lady Rose."

No answer; nothing but twilight darkness and the shadowy furniture. Down the stairs she went, through the kitchen, and out into the open air.

Mrs. Hipple followed her.

"Lady Rose! Lady Rose! what is this? you terrify me!" pleaded the old woman at last.

"How can I help it, being fearfully terrified myself? Oh, Hipple, Walton was privately married to Ruth Jessup, and she is missing!"

"Married--missing!"

"She may be dead; and oh, Hipple, my dear old friend, I drove her to it."

"You! no, no, my child; but come--where shall we search?"

Lady Rose led the way down to the Black Lake. The door of the old summer house was open. Through it she saw gleams of scarlet, outside the broken timbers.

"She is here--we are in time!" she cried out, rushing forward, but recoiled from the threshold with a faint moan. It was only a scarlet garment, with the morning sunshine pouring over it.

"It is hers. She has gone. Oh, God, forgive me, she has gone!" cried the poor lady, dragging her reluctant limbs through the opening. "Her own jacket and the pretty hat. God help me! I have killed her. I, who meant only to redeem him. Oh, Hipple, have I the curse of a great crime--the mark of Cain on me?"

"Hush," said the old lady, with gentle authority, placing the unhappy girl on the bench. "I have more calmness; let me search. This sacque--"

"It is hers! it is hers! I have seen her wear it, oh, so often," cried Lady Rose, covering her eyes, which the flame tints of the garment seemed to burn.

"No," answered the governess, examining the garment in her hand with keen criticism; "this is not Ruth Jessup's sacque. The one she wore had a delicate vine of embroidery about the edge; this is braided."

Lady Rose dropped her hands.

"It is true; it is true; and the hat--hers was turned up at the side with red roses; these are poppies. You are right, Hipple. She may be living yet."

While they were examining the garment Sir Noel came into the lake house. He looked around, taking in the scene at a glance--the scarlet jacket, the broken window, and the jagged timbers left of the balcony, and upon the floor an old pocket-book or portemonnaie. Lady Rose watched him as he opened it. Surely there was something there which might tell them of the girl's fate. Yes, a letter, folded twice, and thus made small enough to thrust into a pocket of the book; a letter, directed to Walton Hurst, which had been opened.

Lady Rose knew the writing, came close to Sir Noel, and read the letter over his shoulder.

"Oh, thank God! Thank God, I have not murdered them both," she cried, snatching the letter between her shaking hands, and kissing it wildly. "If her life has been sacrificed, his honor is saved."

Sir Noel took the letter from her and read it a second time. It ran thus:

MY YOUNG MASTER:--I was wrong to write you that letter; but the
fever was on me, and it came out of my love and out of my
dreams--wild dreams such as could not have reached me in my
senses.

I am getting well now, and have thought over all that happened
that night till everything is clear in my mind. This is the way
I remember it; but there must no harm to any one come from what
I write. I would never say a word only to take back the foolish
letter I sent to you. Richard Storms met me as I was crossing
the park on my way back from London that night. He was in a
rage, and said something about you and my daughter Ruth that
angered me in turn. In my wrath I knocked him down, and went
home, sorry that I had done it, for his father was an old
friend, and we had thoughts of being closer related through the
young people.

When I got home Ruth seemed shy, and complained that the lad
had forced his company on her, for which you had chastised him,
as he richly deserved. I got angry again, and went out in
haste, meaning to call him to a sharper account for the slander
he had hinted against her and you. It may be that in my heart I
was blaming you. It seems as if I never could have believed ill
of you as I feel now; but the young man's words rang in my ears
when I went out, and I might have been rough even with you if
we had met first.

Well, I hurried on by the great cedars, thinking to meet
Richard on his way home. When I got into the deep shadows a man
came suddenly under the branches between me and the light. I
saw the face; it was only a second that the moonlight struck
it, but I saw the face. It was Richard Storms. I was turning to
meet him when he lifted a gun and fired. I felt a flash of
fire go through me. I leaped toward him, but he pushed me
aside, and reeling till my face turned the other way, I fell.
Then it was that I saw you in the edges of the moonlight. The
other face came and went like lightning. It was yours that
rested in my mind and went with me through the fever, but it
was Storms that shot the gun; it was his face I saw, his voice
I heard mingling curses with blows as I lay bleeding on the
ground. The man who shot me and beat you down with the butt of
his gun was Richard Storms, the son of my old friend. I am sure
of this now, having questioned Ruth about the gun. He brought
it to the house that night, and she saw it behind the door
after you thrust him from the house and left it yourself, but
when I went out no such thing was there. I had no weapon in my
hand that night.

Storms must have come back and got the gun when Ruth saw him
peering through the window. Do you know, I think it was not me
he meant to shoot. More likely he was waiting for you, and only
found out his mistake when I was down and you came in sight;
for I can remember a great oath breaking over me, after I
fell--and you were near us then.

I am not strong, and this writing tires me; but some how I feel
that it must be done, or mischief may come from what I wrote in
my fever; which I pray you to forgive.

I know you will burn this letter with the other when you have
got it by heart. It must not be brought against the young man,
for he was used roughly that night; and both blows and kicks
are apt to turn some brave men into wild beasts.

He was to have wedded my daughter Ruth, but she could not bear
to hear of it; and when my fever left all these things clear, I
broke the old pledge. He loved my Ruth, and this was a blow to
him. I wish no greater harm than this to the young man; and beg
you to keep all that is against him a secret, for his father's
sake.

Always your faithful servant,
WILLIAM JESSUP

A great change came over Sir Noel's countenance as he read this letter. He did not thoroughly understand it; but Lady Rose was better informed. How Storms came in possession of the first letter, she could not tell; but that he had used it for his own interest, and the ruin of an innocent man, she saw clear enough. In a few brief sentences she explained this to Sir Noel. Then he understood the persecution that had driven Ruth to the fatal step she had taken.

There was nothing more to learn at the lake house, and with heavy hearts those three persons left it, turning their steps toward "The Rest." Mrs. Hipple, made thoughtful by experience, folded the garments they had found there, and carried them away under her shawl.

As Sir Noel was about to mount the terrace steps, a lad in uniform came up the chestnut avenue, and gave him a telegram, which he tore open with more agitation than such papers had ever produced in him before.

A young relative of ours, the daughter of William Jessup, a
gardener at 'Norston's Rest,' is with us, in a state of health
that requires immediate attention. I found her, by accident, in
the office of the Australian line of packets. She had taken a
passage, but not in her own name, and I could only persuade her
to go home with me by a promise that I must break, or permit
her to depart as she evidently wishes, unknown to her friends.
I send this in urgent haste, and confiding in your discretion.

The signature was that of a young artist, whose name was attached to a picture of some promise that Sir Noel had bought because he remembered that the person was a connection of Jessup's.

With his pencil Sir Noel wrote a brief reply, which the boy carried away with him.

Two events of unusual importance happened at "Norston's Rest," the next day. It was given out in the village that Sir Noel and his family had gone up to the London house that the young man might be nearer his physicians, and that Lady Rose had taken Ruth Jessup with her, thinking that change of scene might soften the melancholy into which she had fallen. This sudden movement hardly found general discussion, when something more terrible filled the public mind. The body of Richard Storms had been found floating in the Black Lake, three days after Sir Noel's departure. It had evidently risen from the depths, and become entangled in the broken timbers still swaying from the balcony. When he failed to return from the fair, as he had promised, his mother, remembering the weird visitor who had called her up in the dead of the night, betook herself to the lake, and was at last joined by the old farmer, whose distress was even greater than her own, for he had a deeper knowledge of the young man's character, and this gave ground for fears of which she, kind woman, was made ignorant by her deep motherly love.

Thus fear-haunted, these two old people wandered about the lake day after day, until, one morning, they found a group of men upon the bank, talking solemnly together, and looking down upon the broken timbers still weltering in the water, as if some painful interest had all at once been attached to them.

When these people saw the old man and woman coming toward them, they shrunk back and left a passage by which they could pass into the old building, but no one spoke a word.

No noise, no outcry came from those two people when they saw their only son lying upon the bench where the neighbors had laid him down; but when one of them went in, troubled by the stillness, he found the old man standing against the wall, mournful and dumb, looking upon the dead face, as if the whole world had for him been cast down there. He did not even seek to comfort the poor mother, who was kneeling by the bench, with her arms clasped about all that was left of her son, unconscious that his dripping garments were chilling her bosom through to the heart, or that the face to which she laid hers with such pathetic mournfulness had been frozen to marble in the depths of the lake.

As the kind neighbor drew near and would gladly have offered consolation, the poor old woman looked up with a piteous smile on her lips and said:

"My brave, brave lad lost his life in saving a poor creature, who would have been drowned but for him."

Then she dropped her face again, and was still as the dead she embraced; but as she spoke of her son's bravery, those scant, hot tears that agony forces on old age came to her eyes and burned there.