Sweetwater felt the poignancy, but did not suffer from the terror. His attention had been attracted in a new direction, and he found himself watching, with anxious curiosity, the attitude and absorbed expression of a good-looking young man whom he was far from suspecting to be the secret representative of the present suspect, whom nobody could forget, yet whom nobody wished to remember at this hallowed hour.
Had this attitude and this absorption been directed towards the casket over which the clergyman's words rose and fell with ever increasing impressiveness, he might have noted the man but would scarcely have been held by him. But this interest, sincere and strong as it undoubtedly was, centred not so much in the services, careful as he was to maintain a decorous attitude towards the same, but in the faint murmurs which now and then came down from above where unconsciousness reigned and the stricken brother watched over the delirious sister, with a concentration and abandonment to fear which made him oblivious of all other duties, and almost as unconscious of the rites then being held below over one who had been as a mother to him, as the sick girl herself with her ceaseless and importunate "Lila! Lila!" The detective, watching this preoccupied stranger, shared in some measure his secret emotions, and thus was prepared for the unexpected occurrence of a few minutes later.
No one else had the least forewarning of any break in the services. There had been nothing in the subdued but impressive rendering of the prayers to foreshadow a dramatic episode; yet it came, and in this manner:
The final words had been said, and the friends present invited to look their last on the calm face which, to many there, had never worn so sweet a smile in life. Some had hesitated; but most had obeyed the summons, among them Sweetwater. But he had not much time in which to fix those features in his mind; for the little girls, who had been waiting patiently for this moment, now came forward; and he stepped aside to watch them as they filed by, dropping as they did so, a tribute of fragrant flowers upon the quiet breast. They were followed by the servants, among whom Zadok had divided his roses. As the last cluster fell from the coachman's trembling hand, the undertaker advanced with the lid, and, pausing a moment to be sure that all were satisfied, began to screw it on.
Suddenly there was a cry, and the crowd about the door leading into the main hall started back, as wild steps were heard on the stairs and a young man rushed into the room where the casket stood, and advanced upon the officiating clergyman and the astonished undertaker with a fierceness which was not without its suggestion of authority.
"Take it off!" he cried, pointing at the lid which had just been fastened down. "I have not seen her—I must see her. Take it off!"
It was the brother, awake at last to the significance of the hour!
The clergyman, aghast at the sacrilegious look and tone of the intruder, stepped back, raising one arm in remonstrance, and instinctively shielding the casket with the other. But the undertaker saw in the frenzied eye fixed upon his own, that which warned him to comply with the request thus harshly and peremptorily uttered. Unscrewing the lid, he made way for the intruder, who, drawing near, pushed aside the roses which had fallen on the upturned face, and, laying his hand on the brow, muttered a few low words to himself. Then he withdrew his hand, and without glancing to right or left, staggered back to the door amid a hush as unbroken as that which reigned behind him in that open casket. Another moment and his white, haggard face and disordered figure would be blotted from sight by the door-jamb.
The minister recovered his poise and the bearers their breath; the men stirred in their seats and the women began to cast frightened looks at each other, and then at the children, some of whom had begun to whimper, when in an instant all were struck again into stone. The young man had turned and was facing them all, with his hands held out in a clench which in itself was horrible.
"If they let the man go," he called out in loud and threatening tones, "I will strangle him with these two hands."
The word, and not the shriek which burst irrepressibly from more than one woman before him, brought him to himself. With a ghastly look on his bloated features, he scanned for one moment the row of deeply shocked faces before him, then tottered back out of sight, and fled towards the staircase. All thought that an end had come to the harrowing scene, and minister and people faced each other once more; when, loud and sharp from above, there rang down the shrill cry of delirium, this time in articulate words which even the children could understand:
"Break it open, I say! break it open, and see if her heart is there!"
It was too awful. Men and women and children leaped to their feet and dashed away into the streets, uttering smothered cries and wild ejaculations. In vain the clergyman raised his voice and bade them respect the dead; the rooms were well-nigh empty before he had finished his appeal. Only the very old uncle and the least of the children remained of all who had come there in memory of their departed kinswoman and friend.
The little one had fled to the old man's arms before he could rise, and was now held close to his aged and shaking knees, while he strove to comfort her and explain.
Soon these, too, were gone, and the casket was refastened and carried out by the shrinking bearers, leaving in those darkened rooms a trail of desolation which was only broken from time to time by the now faint and barely heard reiteration of the name of her who had just been borne away!
"Lila! Lila!"
XIII
"WHAT WE WANT IS HERE"
Sweetwater, however affected by this scene, had not lost control of himself or forgotten the claims of duty. He noted at a glance that, while the candid looking stranger, whose lead he had been following, was as much surprised as the rest at the nature of the interruption—which he had possibly anticipated and for which he was in some measure prepared—he was, of all present, the most deeply and peculiarly impressed by it. No element of fear had entered into his emotion; nor had it been heightened by any superstitious sense. Something deeper and more important by far had darkened his thoughtful eye and caused that ebb and flow of colour in a cheek unused, if Sweetwater read the man aright, to such quick and forcible changes.
Sweetwater took occasion, likewise, while the excitement was at its height, to mark what effect had been made on the servants by the action and conduct of young Cumberland. "They know him better than we do," was his inner comment; "what do they think of his words, and what do they think of him?"
It was not so easy to determine as the anxious detective might wish. Only one of them showed a simple emotion, and that one was, without any possibility of doubt, the cook. She was a Roman Catholic, and was simply horrified by the sacrilege of which she had been witness. There was no mistaking her feelings. But those of the other two women were more complex.
So were those of the men. Zadok specially watched each movement of his young master with open mistrust; and very nearly started upright, in his repugnance and dismay, when that intruding hand fell on the peaceful brow of her over whose fate, to his own surprise, he had been able to shed tears. Some personal prejudice lay back of this or some secret knowledge of the man from whose touch even the dead appeared to shrink.