Chapter XIV: §

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.

No--damn it all--there were limits----

‘Better shut up now, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe firmly to the demented young man. ‘Said all there’s to say long ago, I bet. Won’t help, you know--this sort of thing.’

‘I’m telling my mother--I’m making it clear to her once and for all,’ raved Jocelyn, who indeed no longer had the least control of himself, ‘that if I ever find Sally never again as long as I _live_ shall she come between us, never shall she set _foot_----’

‘Oh, shut up. We know all that, don’t we, Margery. Who’s going to come between you, you silly young ass? Look here--no good crying, you know,’ said Mr. Thorpe, going to Mrs. Luke and putting his arm round her. It seemed natural. For two pins he would have kissed her. Habit. Can’t get away from habits.

But Mrs. Luke didn’t appear to know he was there. Her eyes, from which the tears dropped slowly and unnoticed, were fixed only on Jocelyn.

‘He’s so tired--so tired,’ she kept on whispering to herself. ‘Oh, my darling--you’re so _tired_.’

§

It was Mr. Pinner’s turn next day to have a bad time, and he had it. He had a most miserable day, from noon on, when the same car that had brought Sally drew up in front of his shop, and a stout elderly gentleman with a red face and a bristly moustache got out, and came and spent half an hour with him.

What a half hour that was; but all of a piece with the life he seemed now to be living. The day before there had been first Sally, and then Mr. Luke, and now there was this gentleman. Mr. Luke had soon been pacified, and only wanted to be getting home again, but the stout gentleman came in and sat down square to it, and at the end of half an hour Mr. Pinner felt as if he had been turned inside out, and wouldn’t ever be able to look himself in the face again.

For Sally hadn’t gone home, and it was his fault that she hadn’t. These were the facts; the gentleman said so. Terrible, terrible, thought Mr. Pinner, shrinking further than ever into his trousers. The first fact was terrible enough, but the second seemed even worse to Mr. Pinner. Responsibility, again--and he who had supposed when he got Sally safely married that he had done with it for good and all!

At first he had tried to make a stand and hold up his head, and had said politely--nothing lost by manners,--‘Excuse me, sir, but are you by any chance the gentleman my daughter mentioned to me as ’er father-in-law?’ And when the gentleman, after a minute, said he was, Mr. Pinner told him that in that case it was he who was responsible for her loss, for it was he who had lent her the car in which she had left her husband.

Wasn’t this true? Anybody would have thought so; but before Mr. Pinner could say knife the boot had been put on the other leg, and he found that it was his fault and his only that she was lost, because he hadn’t, as the gentleman said was his plain duty, taken her back himself to the very door.

Mr. Pinner, constitutionally unable not to feel guilty if anybody told him loud enough that he was, at once saw the truth of this. Terrible. Awful. Fancy. Yes, indeed--a daughter like that. Yes, indeed--_any_ daughter, but a daughter like that, a daughter in a million. No, indeed--he didn’t know how he came not to do such a thing----

And the more Mr. Thorpe cross-examined him about the details of that seeing-off at the station, the more did Mr. Pinner’s conduct appear criminal; for, under Mr. Thorpe’s searching questions, Mr. Pinner somehow began to be sure the lady in the carriage hadn’t been a lady at all, but something quite different, something terrible and wicked, who had carried Sally off into the sort of place one doesn’t mention. He remembered her black eyes, and how they rolled----

‘Rolled, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe, who was snatching at Mr. Pinner’s words almost before they appeared, trembling, on the edge of his mouth.

Yes--rolled. And bold-looking, she was too,--bold-looking, and pat as you please at answering. Not Mr. Pinner’s idea at all of a modest woman. Yes, and the compartment smelt of scent, now he came to think of it--yes, he dared say it was cheap scent. And powdered, her face was--he had remarked on it to himself, after the train had gone.

Thus did Mr. Thorpe’s own fears get by cross-examination into Mr. Pinner’s mind, and by the end of the half hour Mr. Pinner was as much convinced as Mr. Thorpe that Sally had fallen into the hands of somebody of whom Mr. Thorpe used an expression that Mr. Pinner wouldn’t have soiled his lips with for any sum one cared to mention. And then, after swearing at him, and asking him what sort of a father he thought he was, and Mr. Pinner, who by this time was wishing with all his heart that he wasn’t a father at all, tremblingly begging him not to blaspheme, Mr. Thorpe went away.

‘What ’ad I better do now, sir?’ Mr. Pinner asked, following him out on to the steps in much distress, clinging to him in spite of his horrifying language.

‘You? What can _you_ do? You’ve done your damnedest----’

‘Sir, sir----’

And he got into his car, and Mr. Pinner heard him tell the chauffeur to drive like the devil to London and go to Liverpool Street Station; and it seemed as if in a flash the street were empty, and he alone.

§

That afternoon Mr. Pinner himself arrived at Liverpool Street Station--an anxious little man in his Sunday clothes, his blue eyes staring with anxiety. He couldn’t just stay in his shop, and as likely as not never hear anything more, either one way or the other. He must do something. He must ask questions. Nobody would tell him if Sally were found or not, if he didn’t. She herself might some day perhaps drop him a line, but she wasn’t much of a one for writing, and besides he had been harsh to her. ‘Don’t believe you loves me,’ she had said, crying bitterly when he scolded her so and wouldn’t let her stay with him. Love her? He loved her dearly. She was all he had in the world. If anything had happened to that girl----

He timidly stopped a porter, and began to inquire. The porter, who was busy, stared at him and hurried on. He then tried a guard, who said, ‘Eh?’ very loud, looked past him along the platform, waved a green flag, jumped on to a train, and departed.

He then tried another porter; several porters; and at last, more timid than ever by this time, approached a ticket-collector.

Nobody seemed to have time for Mr. Pinner. His trousers were against him. So was his hat; so was everything he said and did. The ticket-collector, who didn’t like shabbiness and meekness, ignored him. He knew perfectly well who Mr. Pinner was talking about, for the whole station was invariably aware of any of the Duke’s family passing through it, and everybody the day before had seen Lady Laura and the young lady. Mr. Pinner hadn’t got beyond his first words of description before the ticket-collector knew what he was driving at, but he only looked down his long nose at the flushed little man in the corkscrew trousers, and said nothing. Give a thing like that information about her ladyship’s movements? Not much.

Yet this same ticket-collector, only an hour or two before, had been wax in the gloved hands of Mr. Thorpe, and with these words had parted from him:

‘Thank you, sir. Don’t mention it, sir. No trouble at all. Yes--a very striking young lady indeed, sir. Her ladyship was going to Goring House for a couple of days, so the chauffeur told me. Much obliged, sir. Yes, sir--Lady Laura Moulsford. That’s right, sir--the Duke of Goring’s daughter.’

This same ticket-collector had said all that; and to Mr. Pinner he said not a word. He merely down his long nose looked at him, and when the little man explained that he was the fair young lady’s father he looked at him more glassily than ever. So that presently for very shame Mr. Pinner couldn’t go on standing there asking questions that got no answers, and after lingering awhile uncertainly in the ticket-collector’s neighbourhood, for something told him that this man could throw light on Sally’s disappearance if he would, he went sorrowfully, but unresentfully, away.

Presently he found himself in South Winch. He seemed to have drifted there, not knowing what to do or where to go next, and unable to bear the thought of his lonely shop and of nobody’s letting him know about anything. He had thought it fine and peaceful at first to be independent and at last alone, but it didn’t seem so now. He missed his wife. Nobody now to mind what he did, good or bad. Nobody.

In South Winch he sought out the grocer, so as to get Jocelyn’s address, preferring him to the Post Office because the smell of currants and bacon made him feel less lonely, and, having followed the directions the grocer gave him, found the road and the house, and opened the white gate with deferential trepidation. Timidly at the door he asked if he might say a word to Mr. Luke, and the little maid, at once at ease with his sort of clothes, inquired pleasantly if Mrs. Luke wouldn’t do just as well; better, suggested the little maid, because she was there, and Mr. Jocelyn wasn’t. In fact she offered Mrs. Luke to Mr. Pinner, she pressed her upon him,--a lady he wouldn’t have dreamt of disturbing if left to himself.

So that Mr. Pinner, without apparently in the least wanting to, found himself in a beautiful drawing-room, and there by the fire sat a lady, leaning back on some cushions as though she were tired.

At first he thought she was asleep, and he was beginning to feel extremely awkward when she turned her head and looked at him.

A pale lady. A very pale lady; with a face that seemed all eyes.

‘Beg pardon, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner, wishing he hadn’t come.

The lady went on looking at him. She didn’t move. Her hands were hanging down over the arms of the chair as though she were tired. She just turned her head, but didn’t move else.

‘It’s about Sally,’ said Mr. Pinner. ‘’Appened to be passin’, and thought I’d----’

He stopped, for now he came to think of it he didn’t rightly know what he had thought.

The lady leant forward in her chair. ‘Do you know where she is?’ she asked quickly.

‘No, mum. Do you?’ asked Mr. Pinner.

‘No,’ said the lady in a queer sort of voice, her head drooping.

Mr. Pinner stood there very awkward indeed.

‘Are you her father?’ she asked, after a minute.

‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.

Then she got up and came across to him.

‘I’m afraid you are very unhappy,’ she said, looking at him.

‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.

She held out her hand, her eyes on his face.

He shook it respectfully, but without enthusiasm.

‘Why, you’re cold,’ she said.

‘That’s right, mum,’ said Mr. Pinner.

‘Won’t you come to the fire and get warm?’ she said; and before he had time to consider what he ought to do next, Mr. Pinner found himself sitting on the edge of the low chair the lady pushed up for him, warming his knees and not saying anything.

The lady talked a little. She had some nice hot tea made for him, and while he drank it talked a little, and said she was sure they would hear good news soon, and he mustn’t worry, because she was sure....

Then she fell silent too, and they sat there together looking into the fire; and it was funny, thought Mr. Pinner, how just to sit there quietly, and know she was sorry too about everything, seemed to make him feel better. A kind lady; a good lady. What did Sally mean, saying he wouldn’t be able to stand her either, if he knew her? The only thing wrong with her that Mr. Pinner could see, was that she looked so ill. Half dead, thought Mr. Pinner.

And after being with her he had more courage to go back to the lonely shop, and she promised faithfully to let him know the minute there was any news, and again told him not to worry and everything would come all right, and he went away comforted.

And she, watching him as he trotted off down to the gate, felt somehow comforted too; not quite so lonely; not quite so lost.

§

Meanwhile Mr. Thorpe, having lunched and tidied and generally freshened himself up, was on the steps of Goring House, asking for Lady Laura Moulsford.

‘Her ladyship is hout,’ said the footman haughtily, for he knew at once when Mr. Thorpe added the word Moulsford that he was what the footman called not one of Our Lot. No good his having a car waiting there, and a fur coat, and suède gloves; he simply wasn’t one of Our Lot. And the footman, his head thrown back, looked at Mr. Thorpe very much as the ticket-collector was at that moment looking at Mr. Pinner.

‘Out, eh?’ said Mr. Thorpe. ‘When will she be in?’

‘Her ladyship didn’t say,’ said the footman, his head well back.

‘You’ve got a young lady here of the name of Luke. She in?’

‘Mrs. Luke is hout,’ said the footman, beginning to shut the door.

‘Is anybody in?’ asked Mr. Thorpe, getting angry.

‘The family is hout,’ said the footman; and was going to shut the door quite when Mr. Thorpe went close up to him and damned him. And because Mr. Thorpe’s temper was quick and hot he damned him thoroughly, and the footman, as he heard the familiar words, strongly reminiscent not only of Lord Streatley but also of the different sergeants he had had during the war, who, however unlike each other to look at, were identical to listen to, thought he must be one of Lady Laura’s friends after all, and began to open the door again; and Mr. Thorpe advancing, damning as he went and saying things about flunkeys that were new to the footman, entered that marble hall which had struck such a chill into Sally’s unaspiring soul.

The butler appeared. The butler was suave where the footman had been haughty. He had heard some of the things Mr. Thorpe was saying as he hurried from his private sitting-room into the echoing hall, and had no doubt that he was a friend of the family’s.

Lady Laura had been in to lunch, but had gone out again; Mrs. Luke was motoring with Lord Charles--who the devil was _he_, Mr. Thorpe wondered--down to Crippenham, where she was going to stay the night. Her ladyship had had a telegram from his lordship to that effect, and she herself was going down the following morning.

‘Where’s Crippenham?’ asked Mr. Thorpe.

The butler was surprised. Up to that moment he had taken Mr. Thorpe for a friend, if an infrequent one, of Lady Laura’s.

‘His Grace’s Cambridgeshire seat,’ he said, in his turn with _hauteur_. ‘His Grace is at present in residence.’

‘Crikey!’ thought Mr. Thorpe. ‘Got right in with the Duke himself, has she?’ And he felt fonder of Sally than ever.

§

At this point Mr. Thorpe, who had been behaving so well, began to behave less well. The minute the pressure of anxiety was relaxed, the minute, that is, that he no longer suffered, he became callous to the sufferings of the Lukes; and instead of at once letting them know what he had discovered he kept it to himself, he hugged his secret, and deferred sending till some hours later a telegram to each of them saying, ‘_Hot on her tracks._’

Quite enough, thought Mr. Thorpe, as jolly again as a sand-boy, and immediately unable to imagine the world other than populated by sand-boys equally jolly,--quite enough that would be to go on with, quite enough to make them both feel better. If he told them more, they’d get rushing off to Crippenham and disturbing the Duke’s house-party. The whole thing should now be allowed to simmer, said Mr. Thorpe to himself. Sally should be given a fair field with her duke, and not have relations coming barging in and interrupting.

But what a girl, thought Mr. Thorpe, slapping his knee--he was in his car, on the way to his club--what a girl. She only had to meet dukes for them to go down like ninepins at her feet. Apart from her beauty, what spirit, what daring, what initiative, what resource! It had been worth all the anxiety, this magnificent _dénouement_. Safe, and sounder than ever. A glorious girl; and he too had at once seen how glorious she was, and at once, like the Duke, fallen at her feet. That girl, thought Mr. Thorpe, who began to believe she would rise triumphant even over a handicap like Jocelyn, might do anything, might do any mortal thing,--no end at all, there wasn’t, to what that girl couldn’t do. And, glowing, he telephoned to Scotland Yard, and later on, after having had his tea and played a rubber of bridge, sent his telegrams.

Then he went quietly home. Things should simmer. Things must now be left to themselves a little. He went quietly home to Abergeldie, and didn’t let Mrs. Luke know he was there. Her feelings, he considered, were sufficiently relieved for the present by his telegram; things must now be allowed to simmer. And he took a little walk in his shrubbery, and then had a hot bath, and dressed, and dined, ordering up a pint of the 1911 _Cordon Rouge_, and sat down afterwards with a great sigh of satisfaction by his library fire.

He smoked, and he thought; and the only thing he regretted in the whole business was the rude name he had called Lady Laura Moulsford to that fool Pinner. But, long as he smoked and thought, it never occurred to him to resent, or even to criticise, the conduct of the Moulsford family. Strange as it may seem, considering that family’s black behaviour, Mr. Thorpe dwelt on it in his mind with nothing but complacency.