The party took place in John’s rooms. First there was a dainty supper;
then dancing. It was a heart breaking failure. Everyone tried to save
it. A party that needs to be saved is already hopeless. The more
everyone tried the worse it was until the lovely, dark-eyed little
matron who chaperoned it was on the verge of tears, the girls were
divided between sulks and hysterics and the men wondered vaguely what
was wrong. It was inevitable. The fluids were perverse.
In the first place, the guest of honor flatly declined the rôle of
Cinderella. She was not in the least grateful. The little matron on
receiving her said: “We’ve tried so long to get you.”
What could be more innocent.
She replied, “Oh-h!” with ascending accent.
The wreck began there. The matron’s tone and manner revealed to her
the light in which she was regarded. She was an object of curiosity
and a subject of commiseration. One figure she hated as much as the
other. To be pitied--particularly that,--was intolerable. She was stung
with chagrin and humiliation. It was nobody’s fault,--at least, no
more theirs than her own. She might have known it would be so; she had
placed herself in this position. None the less, or perhaps all the more
for that reason, she could not help behaving in that way which is meant
when one says she took it out of them. She took it out of her own sex
of course. Her power to do that was extraordinary.
The matron did not know what next to say. That was generally the
trouble. None of the women knew how to talk to her. There was nothing
in common to talk about, except the circumstances, and these could not
be mentioned. At the slightest reference to them she coldly cut the
conversation.
“If she couldn’t get into the spirit of it why did she come at all?”
one girl asked another.
“That’s easy to see, I should think,” the other said.
What was easy to see was that she was too good looking. No other girl
was anywhere near so attractive to the male principle. That was why she
could carry off a reckless part. She became more heedless and dangerous
about it as the psychic tension increased. She did not care in the
least what happened.
It was nothing she did,--nothing you could isolate as an example and
criticise. Her behavior was basically naïve. It was what she was. It
was what she had been for thousands of threaded years. It was life at a
pitch of intensity, life of a certain quality, looking out of her eyes,
seeking itself.
“Don’t you see what she is doing?” asked a feline girl, speaking to
John in the dance.
“No,” he said. “I don’t see what she is doing. I see only that you are
treating her badly. I suppose it can’t be helped.”
“She’s having a very good time, all the same,” the girl retorted.
Most of the young men felt as John did and took pains to keep her
supplied with attention. She received it not ungraciously, but lightly,
with an amused and cynical smile. She seemed to be saying to herself:
“All grapes are a little sour.”
The party was rapidly approaching a state of distress when a call for
Mr. Breakspeare was handed in from the office. He went out. A feeling
of suspense went all around. It seemed only at that moment to have
occurred to anyone that there might reasonably be some sort of sequel.
John returned in ten minutes, claimed his partner and entered the dance
as if nothing had happened. But there was an uneasy look on his face.
When the dance was over he went about looking for someone. Then he
began to ask.
No one had seen her go. She had taken no leave. She had simply vanished.
When the fact was definitely established John excused himself and went
in pursuit. He hoped to overtake her on the road home, supposing, as
was true, that she had scented trouble and wished to meet it alone.
That much of her character he understood. His anxiety was real.
The man who had called for him at the inn was no other than his
corrupted gardener. And what he had come to say was that whoever
brought the young lady home had better be careful. He would do much
better not to bring her at all. For Enoch Gib, in waiting with a
blunderbuss, yearned to abate his existence.
“An’ he is after findin’ out who be takin’ th’ young laday away,” the
news bringer said at the end of his tidings.
All that had happened might have been foreseen if anyone had been
thinking of consequences.
When the gaoler woman discovered that Agnes was gone the first
thing she did was to go to her room and search it. She found John’s
notes--all of them. As the whole exhibit made too strong a case against
her gaolership she destroyed all but the last two. These, which
referred only to the surreptitious meetings at the boxwood, she took to
Enoch, saying she was sure from certain other evidence that it was not
an elopement but an escapade. Agnes would return before daylight.
The result upon Enoch may be imagined.
This was Aaron again,--the same Aaron who stole Esther away from him.
The terrible wound fell wide open. The pain of it wrecked his mind.
It would have killed him, perhaps, but for the solacing thought that
revenge was near.
So John pursued Agnes, Agnes was lost, and Enoch, waited with death in
his heart.