The young man in the village was, if possible, more perplexed,
round-eyed and generally inconclusive than anyone else in this series of
nocturnal disturbances. He spent long intervals sitting on his
window-sill regarding a world that was scented with nightstock, and
seemed to be woven of moonshine and gossamer. Being an inexpert and
infrequent soliloquist, his only audible comment on his difficulties was
the repetition in varying intonations of his fervent, unalterable
conviction that he was damned. But behind this simple verbal mask was a
great fury of mental activity.
He had something of Marjorie's amazement at the position of affairs.
He had never properly realized that it was possible for any one to
regard Marjorie as a daughter, to order her about and resent the
research for her society as criminal. It was a new light in his world.
Some day he was to learn the meaning of fatherhood, but in these night
watches he regarded it as a hideous survival of mediaeval darknesses.
"Of course," he said, entirely ignoring the actual quality of their
conversation, "she had to explain about the Magnet affair. Can't
one--converse?"
He reflected through great intervals.
"I _will_ see her! Why on earth shouldn't I see her?"
"I suppose they can't lock her up!"
For a time he contemplated a writ of Habeas Corpus. He saw reason to
regret the gaps in his legal knowledge.
"Can any one get a writ of Habeas Corpus for any one--it doesn't matter
whom"--more especially if you are a young man of six-and-twenty,
anxious to exchange a few richly charged words with a girl of twenty
who is engaged to someone else?
The night had no answer.
It was nearly dawn when he came to the entirely inadvisable
conclusion--I use his own word's--to go and have it out with the old
ruffian. He would sit down and ask him what he meant by it all--and
reason with him. If he started flourishing that stick again, it would
have to be taken away.
And having composed a peroration upon the institution of the family of a
character which he fondly supposed to be extraordinarily tolerant,
reasonable and convincing, but which was indeed calculated to madden Mr.
Pope to frenzy, Mr. Trafford went very peacefully to sleep.