He did not even try to flirt
with her, as our innocent Agnes understood that much-tried verb; and she
regarded their friendship as a pleasant interlude in her placid,
well-regulated existence, and as a most excellent influence on his more
agitated life. Mr. Ferrier lifted his hat. He smiled down into Agnes's blue eyes. What
very charming, nay, what beautiful eyes they were! Deeply, exquisitely
blue, but unshadowed, as innocent of guile, as are a child's eyes. "Somehow, I had a kind of feeling that you would be coming by just now,"
he said in a rather hesitating voice; "so I left my work and came out on
chance." Now, Agnes was very much interested in Mr. Ferrier's work. Mr. Ferrier
was not only a writer--the only writer she had ever known; he was also a
poet. She had been pleasantly thrilled the day he had given her a slim
little book, on each page of which was a poem. This gift had been made
when they had known each other only two months, and he had inscribed it:
"From G. G. F. to A. M. B." Mr. Ferrier had a charming studio flat in Chelsea, that odd, remote
place where London artists live, far from the pleasant London of the
shops and theatres which was all Agnes knew of the great City near which
she dwelt. But he always spent the summer in the country, and his summer
lasted from the 1st of May till the 1st of October. He had already
spent two holidays at Summerfield, and had been a great deal at The
Haven. When with Mr. Ferrier, and they were much together during the long
week-days when Summerfield is an Adamless Eden, Agnes Barlow made a
point of often speaking of dear Frank and of Frank's love for her,--not,
of course, in a way that any one could have regarded as silly, but in a
natural, happy, simple way. How easy, how very easy, it is to keep this kind of
friendship--friendship between a man and a woman--within bounds! And how
terribly sad it was to think that Teresa Maldo had not known how to do
that easy thing! But then, Teresa's lover had been a married man
separated from his wife, and that doubtless made all the difference. Agnes Barlow could assure herself in all sincerity that, had Mr. Ferrier
been the husband of another woman, she would never have allowed him to
become her friend to the extent that he was now. Mr. Ferrier--Agnes never allowed herself to think of him as Gerald
(although he had once asked her to call him by his Christian name)--held
an evening paper in his hand. "I was really on my way to The Haven," he observed, "for there are a few
verses of mine in this paper which I am anxious you should read. Shall
I go on and leave it at your house, or will you take it now? And then,
if I may, I will call for it some time to-morrow. Should I be likely to
find you in about four o'clock?" "Yes, I'll be in about four, and I think I'll take the paper now." And then--for she was walking very slowly, and Ferrier, with his hands
behind his back, kept pace with her--Agnes could not resist the pleasure
of looking down at the open sheet, for the newspaper was so turned about
that she could see the little set of verses quite plainly. The poem was called "My Lady of the Snow," and it told in very pretty,
complicated language of a beautiful, pure woman whom the writer loved in
a desperate but quite respectful way. She grew rather red. "I must hurry on, for I am going to church," she
said a little stiffly. "Good evening, Mr. Ferrier. Yes, I will keep the
paper till to-morrow, if I may. I should like to show it to Frank. He
hasn't been to the office to-day, for he isn't very well, and he will
like to see an evening paper." Mr. Ferrier lifted his hat with a rather sad look, and turned back
toward the house where he lodged. And as Agnes walked on she felt
disturbed and a little uncomfortable. Her clever friend had evidently
been grieved by her apparent lack of appreciation of his poem. When she reached the church her parents had helped to build, she went
in, knelt down, and said a prayer. Then she got up and walked through
into the sacristy. Father Ferguson was almost certain to be there just
now. Agnes Barlow had known the old priest all her life. He had baptized her;
he had been chaplain at the convent during the years she had been at
school there; and now he had come back to be parish priest at
Summerfield. When with Father Ferguson, Agnes somehow never felt quite so good as she
did when she was by herself or with a strange priest; and yet Father
Ferguson was always very kind to her. As she came into the sacristy he looked round with a smile. "Well?" he
said. "Well, Agnes, my child, what can I do for you?" Agnes put the newspaper she was holding down on a chair. And then, to
her surprise, Father Ferguson took up the paper and glanced over the
front page. He was an intelligent man, and sometimes he found
Summerfield a rather shut-in, stifling sort of place. But the priest's instinctive wish to know something of what was passing
in the great world outside the suburb where it was his duty to dwell did
him an ill turn, for something he read in the paper caused him to utter
a low, quick exclamation of intense pain and horror. "What's the matter?" cried Agnes Barlow, frightened out of her usual
self-complacency. "Whatever has happened, Father Ferguson?" He pointed with shaking finger to a small paragraph. It was headed
"Suicide of a Lady at Dover," and Agnes read the few lines with
bewildered and shocked amazement. Teresa Maldo, whom she had visioned, only a few minutes ago, as leading
a merry, gloriously careless life with her lover, was dead. She had
thrown herself out of a bedroom window in a hotel at Dover, and she had
been killed instantly, dashed into a shapeless mass on the stones below. Agnes stared down at the curt, cold little paragraph with excited
horror. She was six-and-twenty, but she had never seen death, and, as
far as she knew, the girls with whom she had been at school were all
living. Teresa--poor unhappy, sinful Teresa--had been the first to die,
and by her own hand. The old priest's eyes slowly brimmed over with tears. "Poor, unhappy
child!" he said, with a break in his voice. "Poor, unfortunate Teresa! I did not think, I should never have believed, that she would seek--and
find--this terrible way out." Agnes was a little shocked at his broken words. True, Teresa had been
very unhappy, and it was right to pity her; but she had also been very
wicked; and now she had put, as it were, the seal on her wickedness by
killing herself. "Three or four days before she went away she came and saw me," the
priest went on, in a low, pained voice. "I did everything in my power to
stop her, but I could do nothing--she had given her word!" "Given her word?" repeated Agnes wonderingly. "Yes," said Father Ferguson; "she had given that wretched, that wickedly
selfish man her promise. She believed that if she broke her word he
would kill himself.