MISSING
Mary scrambled into her clothes without pausing to do more than knot up
her hair. She tried to steady her nerves and to put from her the
thought that it was her visit which had upset her uncle. That thought
would only flurry her, and she must be cool. In little more than the
five minutes that she had named she was in the hall, and found Mrs.
Toft waiting for her. The door into the courtyard stood open, the bleak
light and raw air of a January morning poured in, but neither of them
heeded this. Their eyes met, and Mary saw that the woman, who was
usually so placid, was frightened.
“Where is Toft?” Mary asked.
“He’s away this ten minutes,” Mrs. Toft replied. “He’s gone to the Yew
Walk, where you found the Master before. But law, Miss, if he’s there
in this weather!” She lifted up her hands.
Mary controlled herself. “And Etruria?” she asked.
“She’s searching outside the house. If she does not find him she is to
run over to Petch the keeper, and bring him.”
“Quite right,” Mary said. “Did Toft take any brandy?”
“He did. Miss. And the big kettle is on, if there is a bath wanted, and
I’ve put a couple of bricks to heat in the oven.”
“You’re sure you’ve looked everywhere in the house?”
“As sure as can be, Miss! More by token, I’ve some coffee ready for you
in the parlor.”
But Mary said, “Bring it here, Mrs. Toft.” And snatching up a shawl and
folding it about her, she stepped outside. It was a gray, foggy
morning, and the flagged court wore a desolate air. In one corner a
crowd of dead leaves were circling in the gusts of wind, in another a
little pile of snow had drifted, and between the monsters that flanked
the Gateway, the old hound, deaf and crippled, stood peering across the
park. Mary fancied that the dog descried Toft returning, and she ran
across the court. But no one was in sight. The park with its clumps of
dead bracken, its naked trees and gnarled blackthorns, stretched away
under a thin sprinkling of snow. Shivering she returned to the hall,
where Mrs. Toft awaited her with the coffee.
“Now,” Mary said, “tell me about it, please—from the beginning.”
“Toft had left Mr. Audley about eleven,” Mrs. Toft explained. “The
Master had been a bit put out, and that kept him. But he’d settled
down, and when Toft left him he was much as usual. It could not have
been before eleven,” Mrs. Toft continued, rubbing her nose, “for I
heard the kitchen clock strike eleven, and I was asleep when Toft came
in. The next I remember was finding Toft had got out of bed. ‘What is
it?’ says I. He didn’t answer, and I roused up and was going to get a
light. But he told me not to make a noise, he’d been woke by hearing a
door slam, and thought that some one had crossed the court. He was at
the window then, looking out, but we heard nothing, and after a while
Toft came back to bed.”
“What time was that?”
“I couldn’t say, Miss, and I don’t suppose Toft could. It was dark and
before six, because when I woke again it was on six. But God knows it
was a thousand pities we didn’t search then, for it’s on my mind that
it was the poor Master. And if we’d known, Toft would have stopped
him.”
“Well?” Mary said gravely. “And when did you miss him?”
“Most mornings Etruria’d let me into the house. But this morning she
found the door unlocked; howsomever she thought nothing of it, for Toft
has a key as well, and since the Master’s illness and him coming and
going at all hours, he has not always locked the door; so she made no
remark. A bit before eight Toft came down—I didn’t see him but I heard
him—and at eight he took up the Master’s cup of tea. Toft makes it in
the pantry and takes it up.”
Mrs. Toft paused heavily—not without enjoyment.
“Yes,” Mary said anxiously, “and then?”
“I suppose it was five minutes after, he came out to me—I was in the
kitchen getting our breakfast—and he was shaking all over. I don’t know
that I ever saw a man more upset. ‘He’s gone!’ he said. ‘Law, Toft,’ I
said. ‘What’s the matter? Who’s gone?’ ‘The Master!’ he said.
‘Fiddlesticks!’ says I. ‘Where should he go?’ And with that I went into
the house and up to the Master’s room. When I saw it was empty you
could have knocked me down with a feather! I looked round a bit, and
then I went up to Mr. Basset’s room that’s over, and down again to the
library, and so forth. By that time Toft was there, gawpin about. ‘He’s
gone!’ he kept saying. I don’t know as I ever saw Toft truly upset
before.”
“And what then?” Mary asked. Twice she had looked through the door, but
to no purpose.
“Well,” I said, “if he’s not here he can’t be far! Don’t twitter, man,
but think! It’s my belief he’s away sleepwalking or what not, to the
place you found him before. On that I gave Toft some brandy and he went
off.”
“Shouldn’t he be back by now?”
“He should, Miss, if he’s not found him,” Mrs. Toft answered. “But, if
he’s found him, he couldn’t carry him! Toft’s not all that strong. And
if the Master’s lain out long, it’s not all the brandy in the world
will bring him round!”
Mary shuddered, and moved by a common impulse the two went out and
crossed the court. The old hound was still at gaze in the gateway,
still staring with purblind eyes down the vistas of the park. “Maybe he
sees more than we see,” Mrs. Toft muttered. “He’d not stand there,
would the old dog, as he’s stood twenty minutes, for nothing.”
She was right, for the next moment three figures appeared hurrying
across the park towards them. It was impossible to mistake Toft’s lanky
figure. The others were Etruria, with a shawl about her head, and the
keeper Petch.
Mary scanned them anxiously. “Have they found him?” she murmured.
“No,” Mrs. Toft said. “If they’d found him, one would have stopped with
him.”
“Of course,” Mary said. And heedless of the cold, searching wind that
swung their skirts and carried showers of dead leaves sailing past
them, they waited until Toft and the others, talking together, came up.
Mary saw that, in spite of the pace at which he had walked, Toft’s face
was colorless. He was almost livid. His daughter wore an anxious look,
while the keeper was pleasantly excited.
As soon as the three were within hearing, “You’ve not found him?” Mary
cried.
“No, Miss,” Etruria answered.
“Nor any trace?”
“No, Miss. My father has been as far as the iron gate, and found it
locked. It was no use going on.”
“He could not have walked farther without help,” Mrs. Toft said. “If
the Master’s not between us and the gardens he’s not that way.”
“Then where is he?” Mary cried, aghast. She looked from one to the
other. “Where can he be, Toft?”
Toft raised his hands and let them fall. It was clear that he had given
up hope.
But his wife was of different mettle. “That’s to be seen,” she said
briskly. “Anyway, you’ll be perished here, Miss, and I don’t want
another invalid on my hands. We’ll go in, if you please.”
Mary gave way. They turned to go in, but it was noticeable that as they
moved towards the house each, stirred by the same thought, swept the
extent of the park with eyes that clung to it, and were loth to leave
it. Each hung for a moment, searching this alley or that, fancying a
clue in some distant object, or taking a clump of gorse, or a jagged
stump for the fallen man. All were harassed by the thought that they
might be abandoning him; that in turning their backs on the bald,
wintry landscape they might be carrying away with them his last chance.
“’T would take a day to search the park,” the keeper muttered. “And a
dozen men, I’m afeared, to do it thoroughly.”
“Why not take a round yourself!” Mrs. Toft replied. “And if you find
nothing be at the house in an hour, Petch, and we’ll know better what’s
to do. The poor gentleman’s off his head, I doubt, and there’s no
saying where he’d wander. But he can’t be far, and I’m beginning to
think he’s in the house after all.”
The man agreed willingly, and strode away across the turf. The others
entered the hall. Mary was for pausing there, but Mrs. Toft swept them
all into the parlor where a good fire was burning. “You’ll excuse me,
Miss,” she said, “but Toft will be the better for this,” and without
ceremony she poured out a cup of coffee, jerked into it a little brandy
from the decanter on the sideboard, and handed it to her husband.
“Drink that,” she said, “and get your wits together, man! You’re no
better than a wisp of paper now, and it’s only you can help us. Now
think! You know him best. Where can he be? Did he say no word last
night to give you a clue?”
A little color came back to Toft’s face. He sighed and passed his hand
across his forehead. “If I’d never left him!” he said. “I never ought
to have left him!”
“It’s no good going over that!” Mrs. Toft replied impatiently. “He
means, Miss, that up to three nights ago he slept in the Master’s room.
Then when the Master seemed better Toft came back to his bed.”
“I ought to have stayed with him,” Toft repeated. That seemed the one
thought in his mind.
“But where is he?” Mary cried. “Where? Every moment we stand
talking—can’t you think where he might go? Are there no hiding—places
in the house? No secret passages?”
Mrs. Toft raised her hands. “Lord’s sake!” she exclaimed. “There’s the
locked closet in his room where he keeps his papers. I never looked
there. It’s seldom opened, and——”
She did not finish. With one accord they hurried through the library
and up the stairs to the old tapestried room, where Mr. Audley had
slept and for the last month had lived. The others had been in it since
his disappearance, Mary had not; and she felt a thrill of awe as she
passed the threshold. The angular faces, the oblique eyes, of the
watchers in the needlework on the wall, that from generation to
generation had looked down on marriage and birth and death—what had
they seen during the past night? On what had they gazed, she asked
herself. Mrs. Toft, less fanciful or more familiar with the room, had
no such thoughts. She crossed the floor to a low door which was
outlined for those who knew of its existence, by rough cuts in the
arras. It led into a closet, contained in one of the turrets.
Mrs. Toft tried the door, shook it, knocked on it. Finally she set her
eye to the keyhole. “He’s not there,” she said. “There’s no key in the
lock. He’d not take out the key, that’s certain.”
Mary scanned the disordered room. Books lay in heaps on the deep
window-seats, and even on the floor. A table by one of the windows was
strewn with papers and letters; on another beside the bed-head stood a
tray with night drinks, a pair of candles, an antique hour-glass, a
steel pistol. The bedclothes were dragged down, as if the bed had been
slept in, and over the rail at the foot, half hidden by the heavy
curtains, hung a nightgown. She took this up and found beneath it a
pair of slippers and a shoehorn.
“He was dressed then?” she exclaimed.
Toft eyed the things. “Yes, Miss, I’ve no doubt he was,” he said
despondently. “His overcoat’s gone.”
“Then he meant to leave the house?” Mary cried.
“God save us!”
“He’s taken his silver flask too,” Etruria said in a low voice. She was
examining the dressing-table. “And his watch.”
“His watch?”
“Yes, Miss.”
“But that’s odd,” Mary said, fixing her eyes on Toft. “Don’t you think
that’s odd? If my uncle had rambled out in some nightmare or—or
wandering, would he have taken his flask and his watch, Toft? Are his
spectacles there?”
Toft inspected the table, raised the pillow, felt under the bolster.
“No, Miss,” he said; “he’s taken them.”
“Ah!” Mary replied; “then I have hope. Wherever he is, he is in his
senses. Now, Toft!”—she looked hard at the man—“think again! Surely
since he had this in his mind last night he must have let something
drop? Some word?”
The man shook his head. “Not that I heard, Miss,” he said.
Mary sighed. But Mrs. Toft was less patient. She exploded. “You gaby!”
she cried. “Where’s your senses? It’s to you we’re looking, and a poor
stick you are in time of trouble! I couldn’t have believed it! Find
your tongue, Toft, say something! You knew the Master down to his shoe
leather. Let’s hear what you do think! He couldn’t walk far! He
couldn’t walk a mile without help. Where is he? Where do you think he
is?”
Toft’s answer silenced them. If one of the mute, staring figures on the
walls—that watched as from the boxes of a theatre the living actors—had
stepped down, it would hardly have affected them more deeply. The man
sat down on the bed, covered his face with his hands, and rocking
himself to and fro broke into a passion of weeping. “The poor Master!”
he cried between his sobs. “The poor Master!”
Quickly at that Mary’s feelings underwent a change. As if she had stood
already beside her uncle’s grave, sorrow took the place of perplexity.
His past kindness dragged at her heart-strings. She forgot that she had
never been able to love him, she forgot that behind the man whom she
had known she had been ever conscious of another being, vague,
shifting, inhuman. She remembered only the help he had given, the home
he had offered, the rare hours of sympathy. “Don’t, Toft, don’t!” she
cried, tears in her voice. She touched the man on the shoulder. “Don’t
give up hope!”
As for Mrs. Toft, surprise silenced her. When she found her voice,
“Well,” she said, looking round her with a sort of pride, “who’ll say
after this that Toft’s a hard man? Why, if the Master was lying on that
bed ready for burial—and we’re some way off that, the Lord be
thanked!—he couldn’t carry on more! But there, let’s look now, and weep
afterwards! Pull yourself together, Toft, or who’s the young lady to
depend on? If you take my advice, Miss,” she continued, “we’ll get out
of this room. It always did give me the fantods with them Egyptians
staring at me from the walls, and to-day it’s worse than a hearse! Now
downstairs——”
“You are quite right, Mrs. Toft,” Mary said. “We’ll go downstairs.” She
shared to the full Mrs. Toft’s distaste for the room. “We’re doing no
good here, and your husband can follow us when he is himself again.
Petch should be back by this time, and we ought to arrange what is to
be done outside.”
Toft made no demur, and they went down. They found the keeper waiting
in the hall. He had made no discovery, and Mary, to whom Toft’s
breakdown had given fresh energy, took things into her own hands. She
gave Petch his orders. He must get together a dozen men, and search the
park and every place within a mile of the Gatehouse. He must report by
messenger every two hours to the house, and in the meantime he must
send a man on horseback to the town for Dr. Pepper.
“And Mr. Basset?” Mrs. Toft murmured.
“I will write a note to Mr. Basset,” Mary said, “and the man must send
it by post-horses from the Audley Arms. I will write it now.” She sat
down in the library, cold as the room was, and scrawled three lines,
telling Basset that her uncle had disappeared during the night, and
that, ill as he was, she feared the worst.
Then, when Petch had gone to get his men together—a task which would
take time as there were no farms at hand—she and Mrs. Toft searched the
house room by room, while Etruria and her father went again through the
outbuildings. But the quest was as fruitless as the former search had
been.
Mary had known many unhappy days in Paris, days of anxiety, of
loneliness, of apprehension, when she had doubted where she would lodge
or what she would eat for her next meal. Now she had a source of
strength in her engagement and her love, which should have been
inexhaustible. But she never forgot the misery of this day, nor ever
looked back on it without a shudder. Probably there were moments when
she sat down, when she took a tasty meal, when she sought Mrs. Toft in
her warm kitchen or talked with Etruria before her own fire. But as she
remembered the day, she spent the long hours gazing across the wintry
park; now catching a glimpse of the line of beaters as it appeared for
a moment crossing a glade, now watching the approach of the messenger
who came to tell her that they had found nothing; or again straining
her eyes for the arrival of Dr. Pepper, who, had she known it, was at
the deathbed of an old patient, ten miles on the farther side of
Riddsley.
Now and again a hailstorm swept across the park, and Mrs. Toft came out
and scolded her into shelter; or a farmer, whose men had been borrowed,
“happened that way,” and after a gruff question touched his hat and
went off to join the searchers. Once a distant cry seemed to herald a
discovery, and she tried to steady her leaping pulses. But nothing came
of it except some minutes of anxiety. And once her waiting ear caught
the clang of the bell that hung in the hall and she flew through the
house to the front door, only to learn that the visitor was the carrier
who three times a week called for letters on his way to town. The
dreary house with its open doors, its cold draughts, its unusual
aspect, the hurried meals, the furtive glances, the hours of suspense
and fear—these stamped the day for ever on Mary’s memory: as sometimes
an hour of loneliness prints itself on the mind of a child who all his
life long hears with distaste the clash of wedding bells.
At length the wintry day with its gusts of snow began to draw in.
Before four Petch sent in to say that he had beaten the park and also
the gardens at the Great House, but had found nothing. Half his men
were now searching the slope on either side of the Riddsley road. With
the other half he was going to explore, while the light lasted, the
fringe of the Chase towards Brown Heath.
That left Mary face to face with the night; with the long hours of
darkness, which inaction must render infinitely worse than those of the
day. She had visions of the windswept park, the sullen ponds, the
frozen moorland; they spread before her fraught with some brooding
terror. She had never much marked, she had seldom felt the loneliness
of the house. Now it pressed itself upon her, isolated her, menaced
her. It made the thought of the night, that lay before her, almost
unbearable.