So his thoughts were running in this perplexed and absent manner when
suddenly a very urgent question burst through.
“What of Agnes?”
She was not at home. He could think of no way to find her unassisted.
He knew not where to look next and time was pressing. It was necessary
to raise a wide alarm and organize a search. But he had no authority
to act. It was her father’s business to take such steps. Now recalling
what he had said to Enoch through the gate about Agnes he realized that
it was absurdly inadequate. He had not at all communicated his fears
concerning her. Therefore, though the thought of another encounter with
Enoch made him shudder, he would have to go back. On this decision he
came to a sudden stop and was surprised to see how far he had come
unawares, and that he was not on the highway. When or how he had left
it he did not remember. “I must have come fast,” he thought. He was
half way back to New Damascus, not far from the mill, in a road that
further on became a street running into sooty locust trees, cinder
sidewalks, rows of company houses and a stale, historic smell of fried
food. Turning in his tracks he was making back when his name was called
from the side of the road by a voice he instantly knew.
“Thane!” he said, going toward him. “I need you. Please go--oh! I’m
sorry. I thought you were alone.”
He veered off at seeing the figure of a woman behind Thane, leaning on
the fence, her face averted; but Thane, coming forward, caught him by
the arm, saying anxiously:
“I need your advice is why I called you.”
“Hold it, whatever it is, Thane,” John answered. “I can’t stop now. I
just can’t.” He was pulling away.
“Won’t hold,” said Thane.
“It must,” said John. “I can’t stop. I’m sorry.” He liked Thane and was
loath to leave him in a lurch. “Go to the hotel and wait for me there,”
he said, pushing him off. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
With that he was going when the woman spoke.
“Are you looking for me?”
“Agnes!” said John to himself, as a declaration of preposterous fact.
He wheeled around and stood stone still.
One instant before he had been mad with anxiety to hear her voice.
Yet to the sound of it, so collected and sure, his emotional reaction
was one of fierce anger. There was also a desolate world-wide sense
of loss. Why he was angry or what was lost he could not have said in
words. These feelings referred to her. Toward Thane there was a thought
that seemed to rise behind him with purpose and power of its own; and
he braced his back against it.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” he said, approaching her. “I
found these.” He held out the handkerchief and scarf. She took them.
“Then I went to the mansion ... and....” There he stopped.
“Yes. What did you learn there?” she asked.
His anger kept rising. How could she be so suave and frontal about it?
He had actually the impulse to set hands upon her roughly and demand
to know what she had been doing, how she came to be here alone on a
dark road with an iron puddler and how she could pretend to be so
unembarrassed.
“Nothing,” he said. “It had just this instant occurred to me to go back
and try again. I was in a beastly fume about you.”
“And seem to be still,” she said, in a way to put him in mind of the
high tone he had been using.
“For reasons to which you are pleased to be oblivious,” he retorted.
“It is to be imagined that I have some interest in seeing you safely
home. May I take you on from here?”
“Another one,” Agnes murmured in a tone of soliloquy. “How repetitious!”
The thought touched off her feelings. They exploded in a burst of
shrill, irrelevant laughter. John was scandalized. His rage was
boundless. Yet at the same time his sense of responsibility increased.
Abominable thoughts assailed him. He wondered if perhaps her father had
not been right to keep her under restraint. He fervently wished he had
never tempted her to break out. A resolve to get her home by force if
necessary was forming in his mind when Thane put in.
“They ain’t no home,” he said. “That’s the trouble.”
“What do you know about it?” John asked, blazing.
“Oughten I know somewhat about it seeing as she’s my own wife?” said
Thane, with dismal veracity.
John, for an instant appalled, turned fiercely on Agnes. “Now what
have you done?” he asked. She was so startled by his manner that she
couldn’t speak. “What have you done?” he demanded, now shaking her and
with such authority that for a moment her spirit quailed. “Is it true?
Are you married?”
“Yes,” she said.
“To a....” He caught the word just in time, slowly let go of her and
stepped back.
“Say it,” she dared him. “To a ... to ... a what? Go on. Say it.”
John’s anger was gone. Other emotions had swallowed it up,--sorrow,
pity, remorse, that devastating sense of loss again, more poignant than
before in some new way, and above all a great yearning toward both of
them.
“Where?” he asked, in a changed voice.
“In my father’s house,” said Agnes, derisively. “What a pity you missed
it!”
“But what happened?” asked John.