The Dower House Mystery Read Free Page B

There was a damp mist rising from the ground, thin, and white, and cold; a faint shaft of moonlight silvered it. The trees rose out of the mist like the cliffs of some black, unknown shore. The stillness and the silence were grateful.
    Try as she would, Amabel could not still her thoughts or silence the echoes of those scenes with Daphne. “Self-sacrifice is your strong suit. Suppose you do a little sacrificing for me this time”—that was Daphne angry. “You gave him up pretty easily, didn’t you? I don’t wonder he was furious. Your affair of course; but I’d have stuck it out and had him in spite of everyone”—that was Daphne half casual, half contemptuous. Oh, it hurt, it hurt ; after all these years it hurt most frightfully.
    Twenty years were wiped out as Amabel looked into the mist. The urge of youth to youth had been very strong. The gold and the glamour of romance had not been easily renounced. One may stand in the fires of self-sacrifice and sing aloud there; and yet—and yet—Daphne couldn’t understand that at all. Julian had not understood it either. The fire would not have been so hard to bear if Julian had understood. “We were both so dreadfully young.” The echo of her own words to Daphne came back upon Amabel now. Just for a moment Julian might have been there before her; she had such a vivid impression of his blazing scorn, his furious resentment. The very ring of his “You’re afraid to face up to it. You’re afraid of what people will say,” was in her ears.
    With a quick movement she closed the shutter, fastened it, and, crossing to the hearth, began to rake out the last remnants of the fire. The log, as she stirred it, sent out a little shower of brilliant sparks. She looked at it with a touch of rather sad humour. You think a thing’s dead; and then, all of a sudden, the sparks fly up—hot, burning sparks. Why, it was years and years since she had thought of Julian with pain like this. Curious how memory will stir. Julian’s name in the paper this morning had not hurt at all; she had been interested, pleased to think that his work had been crowned with success after so many ups and downs. She picked up the Times , and read the paragraph again, the lamplight flaring and falling across the page:
    â€œMr. Julian Forsham is to be congratulated upon the results of his arduous labours in Chaldæa. Just how remarkable his discoveries will prove to be will only emerge upon the publication of his eagerly awaited book. Pending this publication, Mr. Forsham is declining to grant interviews or to make any statement to the Press. He is, we understand, remaining in Italy for the present.”
    Amabel laid the paper down again.
    Agatha’s indiscreet gossip had not included Julian’s name, for the simple reason that Agatha had never known it. At least she was thankful for that. She could follow Julian’s career, hear his discoveries talked of, and note the growing interest in them without being exposed to comment. She felt pleasure and pride in his achievement. Whence then this pain, this stirring of things long buried? It was Daphne that had stirred the past. It was what Daphne demanded of life that had called up a past in which, for a moment, she too had stood on the threshold of things and had stretched out her hands to take. It was Daphne’s pain that had waked her own. The one was inextricably mixed with the other.
    Amabel felt all that was passionate and vital rise up in her at Daphne’s call. She had suffered; but why should Daphne suffer? Why should Daphne turn back from the threshold of life and take the shadowed way? Amabel stood there, her hands just touching the table. She felt a rush of emotion that changed slowly into something harder—something calm and determined. She put out the lamp with a steady hand. The flickering light leapt once, and died. As she stood there in the dark, her thoughts