At the Sunday dinner, the vacant place of Daisy Griffith stared at them.
Her father sat at the head of the table, looking down at his plate, in
silence; every now and then, without raising his head, he glanced up at
the empty space, filled with a madness of grief.... He had gone into
Tercanbury in the morning, inquiring at the houses of all Daisy's
friends, imagining that she had spent the night with one of them. He
could not believe that George Browning's story was true, he could so
easily have been mistaken in the semi-darkness of the station. And even
he had gone to the barracks--his cheeks still burned with the
humiliation--asking if they knew a Daisy Griffith.
He pushed his plate away with a groan. He wished passionately that it
were Monday, so that he could work. And the post would surely bring a
letter, explaining.
'The vicar asked where you were,' said Mrs Griffith.
Robert, the father, looked at her with his pained eyes, but her eyes
were hard and shining, her lips almost disappeared in the tight closing
of the mouth. She was willing to believe the worst. He looked at his
son; he was frowning; he looked as coldly angry as the mother. He, too,
was willing to believe everything, and they neither seemed very
sorry.... Perhaps they were even glad.
'I was the only one who loved her,' he muttered to himself, and pushing
back his chair he got up and left the room. He almost tottered; he had
aged twenty years in the night.
'Aren't you going to have any pudding?' asked his wife.
He made no answer.
He walked out into the courtyard quite aimlessly, but the force of habit
took him to the workshop, where, every Sunday afternoon, he was used to
going after dinner to see that everything was in order, and to-day also
he opened the window, put away a tool which the men had left about,
examined the Saturday's work....
Mrs Griffith and George, stiff and ill at ease in his clumsy Sunday
clothes, went on with their dinner.
'D'you think the vicar knew?' he asked as soon as the father had closed
the door.
'I don't think he'd have asked if he had. Mrs Gray might, but he's too
simple--unless she put him up to it.'
'I thought I should never get round with the plate,' said George. Mr
Griffith, being a carpenter, which is respectable and well-to-do, which
is honourable, had been made churchwarden, and part of his duty was to
take round the offertory plate. This duty George performed in his
father's occasional absences, as when a coffin was very urgently
required.
'I wasn't going to let them get anything out of me,' said Mrs Griffith,
defiantly.
All through the service a number of eyes had been fixed on them, eager
to catch some sign of emotion, full of horrible curiosity to know what
the Griffiths felt and thought; but Mrs Griffith had been inscrutable.