§
Speaking of this time later on, Mrs. Luke was accustomed to say, ‘It was
a _mauvais quart d’heure_,’ and to smile; but in her heart, when she
thought of it, there was no smile.
She never forgot that coming down to breakfast on the morning of Sally’s
flight, so unconscious of anything having happened, pleased that it was
a fine day for her party, pleased with the pretty frock she had had sent
from Harrods for the child to wear, excited at the prospect of
presenting her to a dazzled South Winch, confident, somehow, with that
curiously cloudless confidence that seems to lay hold of those about to
be smitten by fate, that her beautiful daughter-in-law would behave
perfectly, and the whole thing be a great success. Fate was about to
smite her; and with more than the disappearance of a daughter-in-law,
for that disappearance was but the first step to having to give up,
renounce entirely and for always, her son.
Jocelyn came down to breakfast in a good humour too. He had slept like a
log, after his series of interrupted nights.
‘Sally’s late,’ he said presently.
‘She is, isn’t she,’ said his mother. ‘You won’t call her Sally this
afternoon, will you, dearest,’ she added, giving him his coffee.
‘Sorry, Mother. No. I’ll remember.’
And soon after that they made their discovery.
‘Now what,’ Mrs. Luke asked herself, pressing her cold hands together,
when an hour or two later it became evident beyond doubt that Sally
hadn’t merely gone, unaccountably, for an early walk, but had gone
altogether, ‘now what, what have I done to deserve this?’
And the period of torment began, the period of distress and anxiety, of
anger at first which soon flickered out, and of ever-growing, sickening
fear, which she afterwards spoke of quietly as a _mauvais quart
d’heure_.
It took some time before she and Jocelyn could be convinced that this
wasn’t just a before breakfast walk. They clung to the hope that it was,
in spite of their knowledge of Sally’s lack of initiative. Yet how much
more initiative would be needed, they thought, looking at each other
with frightened eyes, to do that which it became every moment more and
more apparent that she had done.
‘But why? But why?’ Mrs. Luke kept on asking, pressing her cold hands
together.
Jocelyn said nothing.
At eleven o’clock, when it was plain she wasn’t coming back, he went out
and fetched his car.
‘She’s gone to her father,’ he said.
‘But why? Oh, Jocelyn--why?’
‘We’ve made her unhappy,’ he said, pulling on his gloves, his face set.
‘Unhappy?’
‘_I_ have, anyway. I’ve been an infernal cad--I tell you I _have_,’ he
said, turning on his mother. ‘It’s no good your telling me I haven’t--I
_have_.’
And he drove off, leaving her at the gate pressing her cold hands
together, and staring after him with wide-open eyes.
But his coming back was worse than his going. It was after six before he
got home, tired and dusty, at the fag end of the terrible party.
Mrs. Luke hadn’t seen how not to have the party, and had told her
friends--ah, how much she shrank from them--when they trooped in
punctually at half-past four, eager to see Jocelyn’s bride, that her
daughter-in-law very unfortunately had had to go that morning to her
father, who had suddenly fallen ill.
‘An old man,’ said poor Mrs. Luke--after dreary and painful thought she
had come to the conclusion that if she said it was Sally who had fallen
ill, Hammond would be sure sooner or later to give her away,--‘an old
man, I’m afraid, and liable to--liable to----’
What was he liable to? Mrs. Luke’s brain wouldn’t work. Her lips, forced
into the continual smile of the hostess, trembled. She wanted to cry.
How badly, how badly she wanted just to sit down in a corner alone, and
cry.
Then Jocelyn came back. There were still the Walkers there, and Miss
Cartwright, and old Mrs. Pugh. Why wouldn’t they go? Why did they hang
on, and hang on, and never, never go?
They all heard the car. They all knew it was his, because it made so
much more noise than anybody else’s, and they all knew, because Mrs.
Luke had told them, that he had motored his wife himself that morning to
her sick father.
‘Ah. _Now_ we shall have the bulletin,’ said the Canon cheerfully; for
the illness, probably slight, of an unknown young lady’s almost
certainly inglorious father couldn’t be regarded, he felt, as an
occasion for serious gloom. ‘No doubt it is a good one, and Jocelyn has
been able to bring his wife back with him.’
‘I’ll go and see,’ said Mrs. Luke, getting up quickly, and almost
running out of the room.
‘What a lot of trouble there is in the world, to be sure,’ said old Mrs.
Pugh, shaking her head, ‘what a lot of trouble.’
‘Do you mean the father?’ asked Mrs. Walker.
‘Who _is_ the father?’ asked Miss Cartwright.
‘Nobody knows,’ said the Canon.
‘Not really?’ said Miss Cartwright.
‘Hush----’ said the Canon, raising his hand.
Outside the window, which was open, Jocelyn was speaking, and holding
their breaths they heard him say, ‘Well, Mother? What time did she get
back?’
§
He had been to Mr. Pinner. He had heard what Mr. Pinner had to say. The
man had behaved well, had done his duty and sent her straight home; but
she hadn’t got there.
Fear now descended on Jocelyn’s and his mother’s souls,--fear ten times
greater than the fear of the morning; such fear that they were hardly
aware of the Walkers, and Miss Cartwright, and old Mrs. Pugh, and said
goodbye to them mechanically, and hadn’t an idea what any of them were
saying, and the dusk deepened, and night came, and it grew late, and
they sat listening and watching at the window, the window wide open so
as to catch the first sounds of a footstep on the path, and they sat in
almost complete silence, for they were too much frightened to speak.
That child--somewhere out there in the darkness--that beautiful,
ignorant child, by herself in London--Sally, who had only to appear to
collect a crowd--Sally, so trustful, so ready to obey anybody....
But what did one _do_? Who did one go to? What _could_ one do but still,
in the dark, not speaking, hardly breathing so intently were they
listening, wait?
Fragments of what Mr. Pinner had said drifted in and out of Jocelyn’s
brain----
‘Told ’er to take a taxi all the way....’
‘Give ’er a pound, I did....’
‘Mistake was, lettin’ that there car go....’
That car? What car?
‘Mother,’ he said suddenly, ‘what car?’
‘What car, my darling?’
‘She arrived there in a car. Her father said so. I forgot to tell you.’
‘A car?’
Mrs. Luke got up quickly. So did he. She turned on the light, and it
shone on their pale faces staring at each other. He hadn’t remembered
the car till that moment.
Then without a word she went into the passage, snatched up a coat,
wrapped it round herself, and before he could speak was out of the
house. ‘Wait there,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘wait there--she
might come----’
A car. Whose car but Edgar’s? Had Edgar----? Was Edgar----?
No, no. Impossible. She had arrived alone at her father’s, and the car
had left her there.
But Edgar must know--he could tell her....
§
The butler hadn’t wanted to let her in, seeing her looking so wild on
the steps when he answered the ring, and no hat on, and an old coat
pulled round her shoulders, and he well knowing the affair with his
master was off; but what did she care for butlers? She simply pushed
past him, and went straight to the library--the handsome,
Turkey-carpeted, leathery library she so vividly remembered--and there,
as she expected, sat Mr. Thorpe.
He was in a deep chair before a great wood fire, with beside him, on a
little Moorish table, his coffee and his liqueur, in his hands the
evening paper, and in his mouth a huge cigar. He didn’t look in the
least unhappy, nor did he look in the least as if he were still angry.
On the contrary, he looked contented and pleased. But this expression
changed when, turning his head on hearing the door open, he saw Mrs.
Luke.
‘Edgar,’ she said, coming quickly across to him, holding Jocelyn’s coat
together at her neck with shaking fingers, ‘where is Salvatia?’
And it was no use his staring at her as if she were a ghost, which
indeed at first he thought she must be, so totally unlike the nicely
dressed, ladylike Margery of his misplaced love was this white-faced,
ruffled-haired woman,--it was no use his staring at her openmouthed and
not answering, and then getting up with deliberation and ostentatiously
going towards the bell, for she took no notice of any of that, and went
on to say that Salvatia wasn’t with her father, who had sent her back to
South Winch at once that morning, and hadn’t come home. Did he know
where she was?
Then Mr. Thorpe, in his turn, was frightened. Not with her father? Not
come home?
He stared at Mrs. Luke. What had he done? What, if that were the case,
had he done? And instead of the agreeable vision he had been so much
pleased with of paying out Margery and her stuck-up son, and the still
more agreeable vision of visiting Sally secretly and comfortably at her
father’s, and developing his friendship with her to almost any extent,
he saw, as he stood staring, a picture that really frightened him, a
picture of young beauty lost somehow in London, and quite peculiarly
defenceless.
What had he done?
But Mr. Thorpe was a man of action. Not his to wring his hands and wait
and hope; not his to waste time, either, confessing that he had behaved
abominably, and begging Margery’s pardon. He did both, but quickly,
economising words, and within five minutes was round at Almond Tree
Cottage, and within ten minutes his car was round there, and within an
hour he and Jocelyn were at Scotland Yard--Jocelyn, who also had no time
for anger with Mr. Thorpe, who had no time for anything but searching
for and rescuing Sally.
Nor did Mr. Thorpe say much to Jocelyn. His longest speech was to
remark, looking out of the window on his side of the car as they tore up
to London, that it was a pity one couldn’t get out of the habit of
behaving first and thinking afterwards. He could go no nearer than this
to apologising. He had done Jocelyn a great wrong, he knew, but he
couldn’t bring himself to say so. To the mother, yes; somehow it was
easier to eat humble pie to a woman. Contrition welled up in Mr. Thorpe,
but stuck in his throat. It wouldn’t come out.
‘Damned pity, eh?’ he repeated, though not as one who requires an
answer.
‘It’s so beastly _dark_,’ was all Jocelyn said, huddled, whitefaced and
sick, in the other corner.
§
Scotland Yard took down particulars.
‘Expense no object,’ said Mr. Thorpe.
‘I can’t pay,’ said Jocelyn, who was shivering.
‘But I can,’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘What you’ve got to do,’ he continued to
the official, ‘is to find her instantly--_instantly_, do you hear? Get a
move on. Not a minute to lose. If you’d seen her you’d understand--eh?’
he said, turning to Jocelyn for confirmation, who only shivered.
This great place--all the policemen they had met--all the being passed
on from one official to another--nothing but officials, officials
everywhere--it struck his heart cold. Sally in connection with this? He
couldn’t speak. His lips were dry. He felt sick.
‘Upset,’ said Mr. Thorpe confidentially to the official. ‘Husband. Bound
to be.’
The official nodded, and began telephoning.
‘I’ll let you know,’ he said to Mr. Thorpe, the receiver at his ear.
‘It’s no use your waiting here. Where can I--that you, Williams? Just
one moment--where can I ring you up?’
And he wrote down the name of the hotel Mr. Thorpe gave him, for Mr.
Thorpe wasn’t going to leave London till he had found Sally, not if he
had to stay in it ten years, and then bowed his head in abstracted
dismissal, his eyes gone absent-minded while he rapidly conversed with
the person at the other end of the telephone.
‘Come on,’ said Mr. Thorpe, laying hold of Jocelyn’s arm.
He took him away to the hotel. The hotel was the Carlton. ‘Know me at
the Carlton,’ said Mr. Thorpe, who in the first year of his widowerhood,
before he felt justified in beginning to court Mrs. Luke, had sometimes
consoled himself with the cooking of the Carlton. And thus it was that
Mrs. Luke presently found herself too at the Carlton, for Jocelyn, who
no more than Mr. Thorpe would leave the neighbourhood of Scotland Yard,
was concerned for his mother, left alone at Almond Tree Cottage. So Mr.
Thorpe sent the car back for her, and also for the necessary luggage. He
couldn’t quite see himself appearing next morning at the Carlton in the
dinner-jacket he put on every night at Abergeldie because of the butler.
§
She arrived at one in the morning. Mr. Thorpe by that time had taken
three bedrooms, and a sitting-room.
‘I can’t pay,’ said the unhappy Jocelyn on seeing these arrangements.
‘But I can,’ said Mr. Thorpe.
‘I don’t know why----’ began Jocelyn, shrinking under the accumulating
weight of obligations.
‘But _I_ do,’ said Mr. Thorpe, cutting him short.
Mrs. Luke never forgot that pink sitting-room at the Carlton, for it was
there that Jocelyn, walking up and down it practically demented, cast
himself adrift from her for ever. And yet what had she done but try to
help him? What had she ever done all his life but love him, and try to
help him?
‘There’s been too much of that--there’s been too _much_ of that,’
Jocelyn raved, when she attempted, faintly, for she was exhausted, to
defend herself.
She soon gave up. She soon said nothing more at all, but sat crying
softly, the tears dropping unnoticed on her folded hands.
Before this, however, while the car was fetching her from South Winch,
Mr. Thorpe, bracing himself to his plain and unshirkable duty, invited
Jocelyn into the sitting-room he had engaged, and ordered whiskies and
sodas. These he drank by himself, while Jocelyn, his head sunk on his
chest, sat stretched full length in a low chair staring at nothing; and
having drunk the whiskies, Mr. Thorpe felt able to perform his duty.
Which he did; and in a series of brief sentences described the girl’s
state of mind when he accidentally found her down by his fence, and how
it was the idea of being left alone with Jocelyn’s mother till the
summer that she couldn’t stand, because she simply couldn’t stand his
mother. Frightened of her. Scared stiff. Just simply couldn’t stand her.
At this Jocelyn, roused from his stupor, looked round at Mr. Thorpe with
heavy-eyed amazement.
‘Couldn’t stand my mother?’ he said in tones of wonder, his mouth
remaining open, so much was he surprised.
‘That’s the ticket,’ said Mr. Thorpe; and drank more whiskey.
He then, after explaining that he wasn’t an orator, told Jocelyn in a
further series of brief sentences that it was unnatural for wives to
live with their mothers-in-law instead of with their husbands, that his
wife knew and felt this, and that she was, besides, having been brought
up on the Bible and being otherwise ignorant of life, genuinely and
deeply shocked at what she regarded as his disobedience to God’s laws.
‘But my mother,’ said Jocelyn, ‘has been nothing but----’
‘Sees red about your mother, that girl does,’ interrupted Mr. Thorpe.
‘But _why_?’ said Jocelyn, sitting up straight now, his brows knitted in
the most painful bewilderment.
‘Don’t ask _me_,’ said Mr. Thorpe; and drank more whiskey.
He then told Jocelyn, in a third and last series of brief sentences, for
after that not only had he said his say but the young man didn’t seem
able to stand any more, that if--no, when--his wife was restored to him,
he had better see to it that his mother was as far off and as
permanently off as possible; and then, Jocelyn by this time looking the
very image of wretchedness, he gave him, poor young devil, the bit of
comfort of telling him that his wife had only meant to leave him till
she knew he was in Cambridge, and that then she had been going to join
him there, and live in some rooms somewhere near him. It wasn’t him she
was running from, it was his mother.
‘All that girl asked,’ said Mr. Thorpe, bringing his fist, weighty now
with whiskey, down shatteringly on the table, ‘was a couple of rooms,
and you sometimes in them. A girl in a thousand. If she’d been as ugly
as sin she’d still have been a treasure to any man. But look at
her--_look_ at her, I say.’
‘Oh, damn you!’ shouted Jocelyn, springing to his feet, unable to bear
any more, ‘Damn you--damn you! How dare you, how dare you, when it’s
you--_you_----’
And he came towards Mr. Thorpe, his arms lifted as if to strike him;
but he suddenly dropped them to his sides, and turning away gripped hold
of the chimneypiece, and, laying his head on his hands, sobbed.
§
Charles Moulsford, then, was right, and the Lukes suffered. So did Mr.
Thorpe, for it was all his fault really. He was amazed at the ease and
swiftness with which he had slipped away from being evidently and
positively a decent man into being equally evidently and positively an
evil-doer. That he had done evil, and perhaps irreparable evil, was
plain. Yet its beginning was after all quite small. He had only helped
the girl to go to her father. Such an act hadn’t deserved this
tremendous punishment. Mr. Thorpe couldn’t help feeling that fate was
behaving unfairly by him. If all his impulses and indiscretions
throughout his life had been punished like this, where would he have
been by now?
But that was neither here nor there. This terrible thing had happened,
and it was his fault. Without him she couldn’t have budged; and, weighed
down by his direct responsibility, when Jocelyn advanced on him with his
fists uplifted ready to strike him he rather hoped he would actually do
it, and when instead the poor devil broke down and began to cry, Mr.
Thorpe was very unhappy indeed. Perhaps he hadn’t been quite tactful in
the things he had said to him. Perhaps he had been clumsy. Whiskey was
tricky stuff. He had only meant----
Then Margery arrived, with her white face and great, scared eyes, and
found her son standing there holding on to the chimneypiece and crying,
and--well, Mr. Thorpe felt he had overdone the getting even business
altogether, and discovered with a shock that he could no longer regard
himself as a decent man.
He went away to his bedroom, leaving them alone. He didn’t know what
they were saying to each other, but he could hear that Jocelyn seemed to
be talking a good deal. Couldn’t stop, the poor devil couldn’t; went on
and on.
Mr. Thorpe sat down to think out plans, the ceaseless sound of that
voice in his ears. It was he who had lost the girl, and it was he who
was going to find her. If Scotland Yard found her first so much the
better, but he wasn’t going to sit still till they did, he was going off
on his own account next morning. He’d begin by sending Margery home, who
was doing no good here, he could tell by the sounds coming through the
door, pack Jocelyn, who was doing no good here either raving like that,
off to Cambridge because of the remote chance that the girl was going to
be able after all to do what she said and join him there, and he himself
would meanwhile make a bee-line for her father.
Pinner was the man. Pinner was the point to start from. Pinner and
Woodles. She had said his name was Pinner, and that he lived at Woodles.
Woodles? Funny sort of name that, thought Mr. Thorpe, trying to cheer
himself up by being amused at it. The sounds coming through the door
weren’t very cheering. Raving, the poor young devil was,--raving at his
mother. Mr. Thorpe feared he had perhaps been quite beastly tactless,
telling him of Sally’s not being able to stand his mother. He felt very
uncomfortable about it, sitting there with those sounds in his ears. And
meanwhile the night was slipping along, and where was that girl?
There were so many possible answers to this question, and all of them so
very unpleasant, that Mr. Thorpe couldn’t, he found, sit quiet in his
chair. Three o’clock. Fourteen hours now since last she was seen....
He got up and walked about. In the next room he could hear Jocelyn doing
the same thing. No--dash it all, thought Mr. Thorpe after listening for
some time to the ceaseless voice, he couldn’t be allowed to go on at his
mother like that. He’d had close on a couple of hours of it. All very
well being heartbroken, all very well being out of one’s senses, but he
couldn’t be allowed----
Mr. Thorpe opened the door and went in. There was Jocelyn, striding
about the room, up and down, round and round, enough to make one giddy
just to see him, his words pouring out, his face convulsed, and there
sitting looking at him, not saying a word, with tears rolling down her
face, was his mother.