THE BREAK
BUT Frank did give careful consideration to what Frieda had said to him.
Her words came as a kind of revelation. Suddenly he began to appreciate
what it would mean to lose Jack, though of course there was no
possibility of such a thing. She was one of the most loyal persons in
the world and they had only had a difference of opinion.
Yet Frank decided that it would be best to let bygones be bygones and to
mention the fact to Jack at the first possible opportunity.
But somehow he seemed to have to wait for the opportunity to arrive;
certainly his wife did nothing to help him.
One night, coming home at the usual hour, Frank discovered that Jack was
not there. She had gone out a little before lunch on some errand, as
Olive and Frieda supposed, but leaving no word except that they were not
to wait luncheon for her.
Frieda and Olive, Frank found, were both a little uneasy. He laughed at
the idea. Jack had a great many things to attend to in the neighborhood
and knew everybody, while everybody knew her.
Afterwards, he went upstairs to the nursery and stayed half an hour
watching Vive and Jimmie being put to bed. When he came down to the
library to read, twilight was falling. But instead of reading Frank
found himself turning over the pages of the magazines, gazing at them,
and not knowing a word of their contents.
In a few moments it would be dinner time.
He got up and walked nervously up and down the room.
If Jack did not come in by dinner or send a message what would it be
wise to do?
A few moments later he telephoned two or three places where he thought
Jack might have remained later than she realized. But she had not been
at any one of the houses during the day, and naturally Frank did not
wish to ask too many questions, since she might return home at any
moment. It would then appear absurd to have started false rumors, or to
have created anxiety among their friends.
When the butler came in to announce dinner, Lord Kent explained that
Lady Kent was not yet at home and that dinner be kept waiting for
another half an hour.
Soon after Frieda joined him.
"I know I am silly, Frank," she confessed, "but I am worried. If Jack
had gone out on horseback, one might understand that she could have
gotten some distance away. But she did not ride, she walked, and could
not have continued walking since before noon."
"You are an infant, Frieda," Frank remarked. "Of course Jack has been
paying visits and has stayed too long. But perhaps I had best go and
look for her, unless she has found a friend to act as an escort it is
too late for her to be out alone."
"But where are you going to look?" Frieda questioned. And either her
brother-in-law did not hear her, or preferred to pretend he did not,
since he made no reply.
The fact of the matter was he had no plan. He thought it was rather
absurd for him to look at all, but had suddenly been overtaken with a
sense of uneasiness, a strange foreboding of disaster. We all yield to
these sensations now and then, but as they were not usual with Lord Kent
he was the more uncomfortable.
He could not even decide whether it would be wiser for him to ride or to
walk, but concluded he had best ride, in order to cover a greater
distance in a shorter time.
He searched very carefully for Jack down the long road which divided the
estate. And naturally he remembered the other evening, not so very many
months ago, when he had ridden down this same avenue peering through the
rain for her and Captain MacDonnell. Then he had discovered both of them
with but little difficulty.
Tonight Frank wished that he felt sure Jack had someone with her to take
care of her, as she had on that other evening. He would not then have
felt so ridiculously worried.
"Poor Bryan, one did not like to allow oneself to think of him too often
these days, yet he must be brought back home as soon as possible," Frank
thought. Some time ago he had decided that when the time came he would
himself go for Bryan. Perhaps this would be partly an act of expiation,
although Lord Kent had not said this to himself, or to his wife.
This evening he rode directly into the village, but although it was only
a little after eight o'clock, Granchester had long practiced the
daylight saving habit, not because of the war, but because of a fixed
habit of early sleep and early rising. There were only two or three
scattered lights in the little stone houses and only a few old men
outdoors talking together in front of a closed public house.
Nevertheless Frank rode up to the home of Frieda's old friend and
dismounted, for he had known Mrs. Huggins many long years. She was
accepted by everybody as a kind of unprinted village newspaper. If Jack
had been in Granchester during the afternoon, Mrs. Huggins would know
just where she had been and what she had done.
The old woman's light was out, but a moment after his knocking she
opened her door. In her hand she held a lamp and her old eyes shone
through the half darkness.
She was probably excited by the idea that someone had come to confide a
piece of news to her.
However, she had heard nothing of Lady Kent's having been in the village
during the day, and was in fact sure she had not been there.
When Lord Kent went away, however, she still seemed to think he had
brought her news.
"There is trouble in the big house, also," she said to herself, wagging
her old head. "Funny how when trouble of one kind gets loosed in the
world, so many other kinds follow it." Even after she had gone back to
bed she still kept thinking of Kent House.
Later, just before he was leaving Granchester, Frank telephoned to his
home.
Frieda came to the telephone to say that no word had yet come from her
sister.
Nevertheless Lord Kent could not make up his mind to ask for aid in his
search. He had a curious antipathy toward it, as if Jack herself would
not like this, as if in some way it might lead to a revelation they
would not wish others to share.
This was what made all his efforts so difficult. For each added moment
he was becoming more and more worried, and yet having to pretend that
Jack's failure to return home, her failure to send any word of her
whereabouts, was the most casual thing in the world.
There were several places belonging to friends and not far from the
village. Lord Kent stopped by at each place for a few moments, as if he
were making an ordinary visit, but of course to find out if Jack had
called during the day. Apparently no one of her friends had seen her.
At Captain MacDonnell's home, Frank inquired for the housekeeper. Mrs.
Naxie was still in charge and she and Frank were old friends. She had
been with Captain MacDonnell's uncle years before when he and Bryan were
both little boys.
Lord Kent was not ashamed to reveal his anxiety to Mrs. Naxie, and she
at least had a little information for him, the first he had secured.
"Yes, Lady Kent had stopped by a little before tea time and had seemed
tired. She explained that she had eaten no lunch, but enjoyed her tea,
and then started away again. Mrs. Naxie was under the impression she
intended going directly home.
"There was nothing more for him to do but to go home also," Frank then
concluded. If Jack had not returned and nothing was known of her, he
must throw away his scruples and ask for help.
It was now fully night and the sky filled with high, sweet stars.
Although he yearned to be at home at once, still Frank searched all the
roads, stared behind the tall hedges, and now and then in the darkness
called his wife's name. Nevertheless he continued to assure himself that
he was behaving like a fool and there was no real reason for him to feel
so alarmed. He had always been ridiculously nervous about Jack and
always before now she had laughed at him.
It was not until he had almost reached the beginning of his own land
that Frank was finally honest with himself. He had fought against
confessing the fact that he was to blame every moment since he first
began to grow uneasy about Jack. Had they been good friends these past
few weeks he knew he would not have been half so miserable. Whether he
had been right or wrong, he had realized that Jack had been anxious to
make peace and he had repulsed her. He would wait for no comfortable
opportunity now, as soon as he found his wife, they must be reconciled.
Near the edge of Kent Park, where the land dipped, there was a small
stream, deep in some places, and yet hardly to be dignified by the title
of river.
Yielding to an impulse Frank got off his horse here and walked slowly
along the bank. The stream was so narrow he could see almost equally
well on the farther side.
The trees and underbrush made shadows on the surface where the water was
deepest.
Suddenly Frank thought he saw one of the slender, young birches move a
step toward him. The next he heard Jack's voice say:
"Frank, is that you?"
Then she came slowly toward him.
The strange fact was that she did not appear surprised, nor did she
begin by offering any explanation of her own strange behavior, nor why
she should be found at such an hour in such a place.
"Sit down for a little while will you please, Frank? The ground is not
particularly damp in some places, I have been sitting here a long time."
Frank made no reply except to do what she liked. He knew that something
had happened which was of tremendous seriousness to Jack. If that were
true, then whatever it was, was equally so to him.
"You are not ill, are you, dear?" he inquired, after he had let go his
bridle and taken a seat beside his wife. His horse would only wander
about near by.
Jack shook her head.
"I was dizzy and very tired a little while ago, I don't know just how
long. I sat down here to rest and fell asleep for a time. I am quite all
right now." And indeed Jack was now speaking in a natural voice. One
must remember it was not so unusual for her, as it would be with most
other girls and women, to take her problems outdoors when she wished to
solve them.
"There is something I want to say to you, Frank. I have been making up
my mind to speak of it for some time. This afternoon I knew I had to
decide. I went off for a long walk and now I have decided."
Jack was sitting very still a few feet away from her husband. He now
moved over and put his arm about her, but though she made no movement to
resent it, she showed no sign of pleasure or of yielding.
"I want to go home, Frank?" she continued.
And for an instant believing she meant Kent House, Frank started to
rise. The next he understood his mistake.
"I mean I want to go back to the Rainbow ranch to see Jim and Ruth and
Jean, but Jim most of all," she added, this time with a little break in
her usually steady voice.
"Please don't answer, Frank, until I have explained to you a little
better. I know it seems horrid to leave you alone and to take the babies
away, when you are so worn out with your work and so sad over all the
wretched tragedy of the war. You will miss the babies, even if you will
not particularly miss me. Still I'll have to go, Frank. I can't live on
with you not forgiving, not caring for me any more. I won't stay long
unless you wish it and I'll come back whenever you send for me. But I
must go; it has seemed to me lately as if I could not breathe."
Jack turned her face directly to her husband, and although it was too
dark to see it distinctly, he could catch the dim outline.
"You see until lately I never dreamed that when things came to a crisis,
to a question of right, to a question of my judgment, or my conscience,
you would not be willing to let me do as I decided and thought best. I
knew you liked me to follow your way in little things and I never minded
most times. Often I was glad to do as you wished and when I didn't agree
to your way, I never considered the fact seriously one way or the other.
But lately I have seen that if we go on living together, I have got to
be a coward, a kind of traitor to myself by always appearing to agree
with you, or else live with you and have you angry and dissatisfied with
me. I cannot bear either. Marriage does not mean that to me, Frank. I
have to get away for a little while to see if I can find out what I
should do."
There was no sign of anger in Jack's manner, if she had been feeling
angry lately, and of course she had being perfectly human, her anger had
disappeared tonight during the long hours she had been thinking things
out alone.
Sitting beside his wife, suddenly as she finished speaking Frank
recalled something Frieda had lately said to him. Perhaps Frieda had
more brains than her family and friends realized. However, what she had
said was that whenever she was angry or wounded, her sister Jack was apt
to go off to herself and then do something unexpected.
Surely his wife's request tonight was wholly unexpected.
But Frank only answered, not revealing what he felt, nor what he
intended.
"I think this is a pretty severe punishment, Jack, if you think I am
unfair. But you must let me take you home to Kent House now; Olive and
Frieda are both dreadfully worried to know what has become of you."