A Bride from the Bush

CHAPTER XIV

‘HEAR MY PRAYER!’

Miss Travers did not, after all, succeed in cornering Gladys at the garden-party, but she did contrive to get herself asked to stay later, and without much difficulty (she would probably have found it far more difficult to go with the rest—hostesses were tenacious of Miss Travers); and after dinner, when the ladies went off to the drawing-room, her stubborn waiting was at last rewarded.

Some other people had stayed to dinner also, in the same informal way, and among them one or two of Granville’s friends. These young men had come to the garden-party by no advice of Gran’s—in fact, those who chanced to have mentioned to him Lady Bligh’s invitation he had frankly told to stay away and not to be fools. But, having come, he insisted on their staying. ‘For,’ he said, ‘you deserve compensation, you fellows; and the Judge’s wine, though I say it, hasn’t a fault—unless it’s spoiling a man for his club’s.’

And while the young men put the truth of this statement to a more earnest test than could be applied before the ladies left the table, Miss Travers, in the drawing-room, at last had Gladys to herself. And Miss Travers was sadly disappointed—as, perhaps, she deserved to be. Gladys had very little to say to her. As a matter of fact, it was no less irksome to the Bride to listen than to talk herself. But they happened to be sitting close to the piano, and it was not long before a very happy thought struck Gladys, which she instantly expressed in the abrupt question:—

‘You sing, Miss Travers, don’t you?’

‘In a way.’

‘In a way! I’ve heard all about the way!’ Gladys smiled; Miss Travers thought the smile sadly changed since yesterday. ‘Sing now.’

‘You really want me to?’

‘Yes, really. And you must.’ Gladys opened the piano.

Miss Travers sang a little song that Gladys had never heard before, accompanying herself from memory. She sang very sweetly, very simply—in a word, uncommonly well. The voice, to begin with, was an exceptionally sound soprano, but the secret and charm of it all was, of course, in the way she used her voice. Gladys had asked for a song to escape from a chat, but she had forgotten her motive in asking—she had forgotten that she had asked for it—she had forgotten much that it had seemed impossible to forget, even thus, for one moment—before the song was half finished. Very possibly, with Gladys, who knew nothing of music, this was an appeal to the senses only; but it gave her some peaceful, painless moments when such were rare; and it left her, with everything coming back to her, it is true, but with a grateful heart. So grateful, indeed, was Gladys that she forgot to express her thanks until Miss Travers smilingly asked her how she liked that song; and then, instead of answering, she went over to where Lady Bligh was sitting, bent down, and asked a question, which was answered in a whisper.

Then Gladys came back to the piano. ‘Yes, I do like that song, very, very much; and I beg your pardon for not answering you, Miss Travers, but I was thinking of something else; and I want you, please, to sing Mendelssohn’s “Hear my Prayer!”’ These words came quickly—they were newly learnt from Lady Bligh.

Miss Travers could not repress a smile. ‘Do you know what you are asking me for?’

‘Yes; for what we heard in church last Sunday evening. That’s the name, because I’ve just asked Lady Bligh. I would rather you sang that than anything else in the world!’

‘But——’ Miss Travers was puzzled by the Bride’s expression; she would have given anything not to refuse, yet what could she do? ‘But—it isn’t the sort of thing one can sit down and sing—really it isn’t. It wants a chorus, and it is very long and elaborate.’

‘Yes?’ Gladys seemed strangely disappointed. ‘But there was one part—the part I liked—where the chorus didn’t come in, I am sure. It was sung by a boy. You could do it so much better! It was about the wings of a dove, and the wilderness. You know, I come from the wilderness myself’—the Bride smiled faintly—‘and I thought I’d never heard anything half so lovely before; though of course I’ve heard very little.’

‘No matter how little you have heard, you will never hear anything much more beautiful than that,’ said Miss Travers, with sympathetic enthusiasm.

‘Since I cannot hear it now, however, there is an end of it.’

Gladys sighed, but her eyes pleaded still; it was impossible to look in them long and still resist. Miss Travers looked but for a moment, then, turning round to the keys, she softly touched a chord. ‘I will try the little bit you liked,’ she whispered, kindly, ‘whatever I make of it!’

What she did make of it is unimportant, except in its effect upon Gladys. This effect was very different from that produced a few minutes before by the song; this, at least, was no mere titillation of the senses by agreeable sounds. And it differed quite as much from the effect produced by the same thing in church on Sunday, when Gladys, after being surprised into listening, had listened only to the words. Then, indeed, the music had seemed sweet and sad, but to-night each note palpitated with a shivering, tremulous yearning, dropping into her soul a relief as deep as that of sorrow unbosomed, a comfort as soothing as the comfort of tears. And there was now an added infinity of meaning in the words; though it was the words that had thrilled her then—then, before she had brought all the present misery to pass.

It is only a few bars, the solo here; and at the point where the chorus catches up the refrain Miss Travers softly ceased. She turned round slowly on the stool, then rose up quickly in surprise. Her ardent listener was gone. And as Miss Travers stood by the piano, peering with raised eyebrows into every corner of the room, and out into the night through the open French window, the men entered the room in a body—she was surrounded.

But Gladys had stepped softly through the window on to the lawn, re-entered the house by another way, and stolen swiftly up to her room. The last strains came to her through the open window of the drawing-room, and in at her own window, at which Gladys now knelt: and this short passage through the outer air brought them upward on the breath of the night, rarefied and softened as though from the lips of far-off angels: and so they reached her trembling ears.

The scent of roses was in the air. The moon was rising, and its rays spanned the river with a broad bridge of silver, against which some of the foliage at the garden-end stood out in fine filigree. It was a heavenly night; it was a sweet and tranquil place; but yet—

Gladys had been home-sick before; she had been miserable and desperate for many, many hours; but at this moment it seemed as though hitherto she had never known what it was to pant and pray in real earnest for her old life and her own country. She was almost as a weak woman in the transports of spiritual fervour, her vision riveted upon some material mental picture, the soul for one ecstatic instant separated from the flesh—only Gladys missed the ecstasy.

There was no light in the room; and the girl remained so entirely motionless, as she knelt, that her glossy head, just raised above the level of the sill, would have seemed in the moonlight a mere inanimate accessory, if it had been seen at all. But only the bats could have seen Gladys, and they did not; at all events, it was the touch of a bat’s wing upon the forehead that recalled her to herself, making her aware of voices within earshot, immediately below her window. Her room was over the dining-room. The voices were men’s voices, and the scent of cigars reached her as well. She could hear distinctly, but she never would have listened had she not heard her own name spoken; and then—the weakness of the moment prevented her from rising.

‘No,’ said one of the voices, ‘not a bit of it; oh dear, no! Gladys has her good points; and, frankly, I am getting rather to like her. But she is impossible in her position. The whole thing was a fearful mistake, which poor old Alfred will live to repent.’

The voice was unmistakable; it was Granville’s.

‘But’—and the other voice was that of Granville’s most intimate friend, whom he had introduced to Gladys during the course of the afternoon—‘doesn’t he repent it already, think you?’

‘Upon my word, I’m not sure that he doesn’t,’ said Granville.

‘If you ask me,’ said his friend, ‘I should say there isn’t a doubt of it. I’ve been watching him pretty closely. Mark my words, he’s a miserable man!’

‘Well, I’m half inclined to agree with you,’ said Granville. ‘I didn’t think so two or three days since, but now I do. You see, there are camels’ backs and there are last straws (though I wish there were no proverbs); and there never was a heavier straw than yesterday’s—’gad! ’twas as heavy as the rest of the load! I mean the perfectly awful scene in the Park, which you know about, and the whole town knows about, and the low papers will publish, confound them! Yes, I believe you’re right; he can’t get over this.’

‘Poor chap!’ said Granville’s friend.

‘You may well say that. Alfred is no genius’—Granville was, apparently—‘but he has position; he has money—luckily for him; he means to settle down in the country somewhere, and, no doubt, he’d like to be somebody in the county. But how could he? Look at his wife!’

‘There ought to be a separation,’ said the friend, feelingly.

‘Well, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as that,’ said Granville, wearing ship. ‘Anyway, there never will be one; you may trust her for that. And, I must own, I don’t think it’s all the main chance with her, either; they’re sufficiently spooney. Why, she will not even leave him for a week on a visit, though, as I understand, he’s doing his best to persuade her to.’

Gladys’s hands tightened upon the woodwork of the window-frame.

‘Can’t persuade her to?’ cried the friend. ‘What did I tell you? Why, Lord love you, he wants to get rid of her already!’

This was rather strong, even for an intimate friend, and even though the intimate friend had drunk a good deal of wine. Granville’s tone cooled suddenly.

‘We’ll drop the subject, I think. My cigar’s done, and you’ve smoked as much as is good for you. You can do as you like, but I’m going inside.’

Their footsteps sounded down the gravel-path; then the sound ceased; they had gone in by the drawing-room window.

Gladys had never once altered her position; she did not alter it now. The moon rose high in the purple sky, and touched her head with threads of silver. It was as though gray hairs had come upon her while she knelt. The sudden turning of the door-handle, and a quick step upon the threshold, aroused her. It was Alfred come for an easier coat. The people were gone.

‘What—Gladys!’ he cried. She rose stiffly to her feet, and confronted him with her back to the moonlight. ‘Up here—alone?’

‘You didn’t miss me, then?’ Her tone was low and hoarse—the words ran into one another in their hurried, eager utterance.

‘Why, no,’ cried Alfred; ‘to tell you the truth, I didn’t.’

He seemed to her in better spirits than he had been all day; his voice was full and cheery, and his manner brisk. Why? Evidently the evening had gone off very agreeably. Why? Was it because he had got rid of her for an hour? Was it, then, true that he was doing his best to get rid of her for a week—that he would be only too glad to get rid of her for ever? It was as though a poniard were being held to her breast. She paused, and nerved herself to speak calmly, before, as it were, baring her bosom to the steel.

‘Alfred,’ she said at length, with slow distinctness, but not with the manner of one who is consciously asking a question of life or death, ‘I have been thinking it over, about the Barringtons; and I think I should like to go to them on Saturday after all. May I go?’

‘May you?’ Alfred fairly shouted. ‘I am only too delighted, Gladdie! Of course you may.’

The poniard went in—to the hilt.

So delighted was Alfred that he caught her in his arms and kissed her. Her cheek was quite cold, her frame all limp. Though she reeled on her feet, she seemed to shrink instinctively from his support.

‘What’s the matter, Gladdie?’ he cried, in sudden alarm. ‘What’s wrong—are you ill? Stop, I’ll fetch——’

She interrupted him in a whisper.

‘Fetch no one.’ She dropped one hand upon the dressing-table, leant her weight upon it, and motioned him back with the other. ‘I am not ill; I only was faint, just for a moment. I am all right now. There, that’s a long breath; I can speak quite properly again. You see, it was only a passing faintness. I must have fallen asleep by the window. I was enjoying the lovely night, and that must have done it. There, I am only tired now, and want—sleep!’

That acid had been applied, and not in drops. Its work was complete.

CHAPTER XV

THE FIRST PARTING

It was Saturday forenoon, and everything was ready for the departure of Gladys. Moreover, the moment had come. Garrod was at the door with the carriage; the phlegmatic stable-boy, having performed feats of unsuspected strength with the luggage, had retired into his own peculiar shell, and lurked in sullen humility at the far side of the horse; while Mr Dix figured imposingly in the hall. Alfred was here too, waiting for Gladys to come down. But Gladys was upstairs saying good-bye to Lady Bligh, and lingering over the parting somewhat strangely, for one who was going away for a week only.

‘If I hear any more such absurd talk,’ Lady Bligh said at last, and with some impatience, ‘about forgiveness and the like, I shall punish you by not allowing you to leave me at all.’

‘It is too late to do that,’ Gladys hastily put in. ‘But oh, Lady Bligh! if only you knew how happy you have made me—how happily I go away, having your forgiveness for everything, for everything——’

‘Except for what you are saying now. How wildly you do talk, child! One would think you were going for ever.’

‘Who knows, Lady Bligh? There are accidents every day. That’s why I’m thankful to be leaving like this.’

Lady Bligh hated sentimentality. Only the intense earnestness of the girl’s voice and manner restrained her from laughing; sentimentality was only fit to be laughed at; but this was sentimentality of a puzzling kind.

A minute later, with passionate kisses and incoherent expressions, out of all proportion to the occasion, and fairly bewildering to poor Lady Bligh, Gladys was gone.

Alfred scanned her narrowly as they drove to the station. By the way she kept turning round to gaze backward, you would have thought her anxious to ‘see the last of’ things, as small boys are when the holidays are over, and bigger boys when they go finally out into the world. Alfred was going with her to Liverpool Street. She had refused to go at all if he took her (as he wanted to) all the way into Suffolk, to return himself by the next train.

‘Gladdie,’ he said, after watching her closely, ‘you look cut up; is it from saying good-bye to the mater?’

‘I suppose it must be—if I really look like that.’

‘There is still, perhaps, some soreness——’

‘No, there is none now,’ said Gladys, quickly.

‘Then what is it?’

‘Only that it is so dreadful, saying good-bye!’

‘My darling!—by the way you talk you might be going for good and all. And it is only for a week.’

She did not answer, but pressed the hand that closed over her own.

During the half-hour’s run to Waterloo he continued to glance furtively, and not without apprehension, at her face. It was unusually pale; dark rings encircled the eyes, and the eyes were unusually brilliant.

They had a compartment to themselves. He held her hand all the way, and she his, like a pair of moonstruck young lovers; and, for the most part, they were as silent.

‘You have not been yourself these last few days,’ he said at length; ‘I am glad you are going.’

‘And I am glad of that,’ she answered.

Her tone was odd.

‘But I shall be wretched while you are gone,’ he quickly added.

She made no reply to this; it seemed to her an afterthought. But, if it was, it grew upon him with swift and miserable effect as the minutes remaining to them gradually diminished. When they drove up to Liverpool Street he was in the depths of dejection.

It was their first parting.

She insisted on sending the necessary telegram to the Barringtons herself. His depression made him absent, and even remiss. He stood listlessly by while she filled in the form; at any other time he would have done this for her, or at least looked over her shoulder—humorously to check the spelling; but this afternoon he was less attentive in little things than she had ever known him, because she had never known him so depressed.

It was their first parting.

He had got her a compartment to herself, but only at her earnest insistence; he had spoken for a carriage full of people, or the one reserved for ladies—anything but solitary confinement. It was the Cambridge train; there were few stoppages and no changes.

Gladys was ensconced in her corner. For the moment, her husband sat facing her. Four minutes were left them.

‘You have a Don in the next carriage to you; an ancient and wonderfully amiable one, I should say,’ observed Alfred, with a sickly attempt at levity. ‘I wish you were under his wing, my dear!’

Gladys made a respondent effort, an infinitely harder one. ‘No, thanks,’ she said; ‘not me!’

‘Come, I say! Is it nervousness or vanity?’

‘It is neither.’

‘Yet you look nervous, Gladdie, joking apart—and, honestly, I never felt less like joking in my life. And you are pale, my darling; and your hand is so cold!’

She withdrew the hand.

But one more minute was left. ‘Better get out, sir,’ said the guard, ‘and I’ll lock the lady in.’

Gladys felt a shiver pass through her entire frame. With a supreme effort she controlled herself. They kissed and clasped hands. Then Alfred stepped down heavily on to the platform.

The minute was a long one; these minutes always are. It was an age in passing, a flash to look back upon. These minutes are among the strangest accomplishments of the sorcerer Time.

‘It is dreadful to let you go alone, darling, like this,’ he said, standing on the foot-board and leaning in. ‘At least you ought to have had Bunn with you. You might have given way in that, Gladdie.’

‘No,’ she whispered tremulously; ‘I—I like going alone.’

‘You must write at once, Gladdie.’

‘To-morrow; but you could only get it latish on Monday.’

The bell was ringing. You know the clangour of a station bell; of all sounds the last that it resembles is that of the funeral knell; yet this was its echo in the heart of Gladys.

‘Well, it’s only for a week, after all, isn’t it, Gladdie? It will be the weariest week of my life, I know. But I shan’t mind—after all, it’s my own doing—if only you come back with a better colour. You have been so pale, Gladdie, these last few days—pale and excitable. But it’s only a week, my darling, eh?’

She could not answer.

The guard blew his whistle. There was an end of the minute at last.

‘Stand back,’ she whispered: her voice was stifled with tears.

‘Back?’—Alfred peered up into her face, and a sudden pallor spread upon his own—‘with your dear eyes full of tears, where I never yet saw tears before? Back?—God forgive me for thinking of it, I’ll come with you yet!’

He made as though to dive headlong through the window; but, looking him full in the eyes through her tears, his girl-wife laid a strong hand on each of his shoulders and forced him back. He staggered as the platform came under his feet. The train was already moving. He stood and gazed.

Gladys was waving to him, and smiling through her tears. So she continued until she could see him no more. Then she fell back upon the cushions, and, for a time, consciousness left her.

It was their first parting.

CHAPTER XVI

TRACES

Alfred did not become unconscious, nor even feel faint: he was a man. But he did feel profoundly wretched. He tried to shake off this feeling, but failed. Later, on his way back through the City, he stopped somewhere to try and lunch it off, and with rather better success. He was a man: he proceeded to throw the blame upon the woman. It was Gladys who had supplied all the sentiment (and there had been an absurd amount of it) at their parting; it was the woman who had exaggerated this paltry week’s separation, until it had assumed, perhaps for them both—at the moment—abnormal dimensions; he, the man, was blameless. If his way had obtained, she should have gone away in highest spirits, instead of in tears—and all for one insignificant week! He should write her a serious, if not a severe, letter on the subject. So Alfred went down to Twickenham in quite a valiant mood to face his week of single-blessedness, and to affect a droll appreciation of it in the popular, sprightly manner of the long-married man.

But the miserable feeling returned—if, indeed, it had ever been chased fairly away; and it returned with such force that Alfred was obliged to own at last that it, too, was exaggerated and out of all proportion to the exciting cause. He, in his turn, was sentimentalising as though Gladys had gone for a term of years. He was conscious of this; but he could not help it. His thoughts seemed bound to the parting of this Saturday, powerless to fly forward to the reunion of the next. A vague, dim sense of finality was the restraining bond; but this sense was not long to remain dim or vague. Meanwhile, so far as Alfred was concerned, the Sunday that followed was wrapped in a gloom that not even the genial presence of the distinguished (but jocular) guest could in any way pierce or dissipate. Nevertheless, it contained the last tranquil moments that Alfred was to know at that period of his life; for it led him to the verge of an ordeal such as few men are called upon to undergo.

He was not a little surprised on the Monday morning to find among the letters by the first post one addressed to his wife. She had received scarcely any letters since her arrival in England—two or three from tradesmen, an invitation or so, nothing from Australia; but this letter was directed in a large, bold hand, with which Alfred fancied he was not wholly unfamiliar; and he suddenly remembered that he had seen it before in Miss Barrington’s note of invitation. Now, the post-mark bore the name of the town to which Gladys had booked from Liverpool Street, and the date of the day before; and how could Miss Barrington write to Gladys at Twickenham, when Gladys was staying with Miss Barrington in Suffolk?

He tore open the envelope, and his hand shook as he did so. When he had read to the end of the letter, which was very short, his face was gray and ghastly; his eyes were wild and staring; he sank helplessly into a chair. The note ran thus:—

Alfred read the letter a second time, and an extraordinary composure came over him.

He folded the letter, restored it to its envelope, and put the envelope in his pocket. Then he looked at the clock. It wanted a quarter to eight. The Judge was no doubt up and about somewhere; but none of the others were down. Alfred rang the bell, and left word that he had received a letter begging an early interview on important business, and that he would breakfast in town.

Alfred was stunned; but he had formed a plan. This plan he proceeded to put into effect; or rather, once formed, the plan evolved itself into mechanical action without further thought. For some hours following he did not perfectly realise either what he was doing or why he was doing it. He never thoroughly pulled himself together, until a country conveyance, rattling him through country lanes, whisked into a wooded drive, and presently past a lawn where people were playing lawn-tennis, and so to the steps of a square, solid, country house. But he had all his wits about him, and those sharpened to the finest possible point, when he looked to see whether Gladys was, or was not, among the girls on the lawn. She was not. That was settled. He got out and rang the bell. He inquired for Mr Barrington; Mr Barrington was playing at lawn-tennis. In answer to a question from the butler, Bligh said that he would rather see Mr Barrington in the house than go to him on the tennis-court. He could wait until the set was finished. He had come from London expressly to speak for a few minutes with Mr Barrington. His name would keep until Mr Barrington came; but he was from Australia.

The last piece of information was calculated to fetch Mr Barrington at once; and it did. He came as he was, in his flannels, his thick hairy arms bare to the elbow: a bronzed, leonine man of fifty, with the hearty, hospitable manner of the Colonial ‘squatocracy.’ Alfred explained in a few words who he was, and why he had come. He had but one or two questions to ask, and he asked them with perfect self-possession. They elicited the assurance that nothing had been heard of Gladys in that quarter, beyond the brief message received on the Saturday. Mr Barrington found the telegram, and handed it to his visitor. It read: ‘Prevented coming at last moment. Am writing—Gladys.’ By the time of despatch, Bligh knew that it was the message she had written out in his presence.

‘Of course she never wrote?’ he said coolly to the squatter.

‘We have received nothing,’ was the grave answer.

‘Yet she started,’ said Alfred. ‘I put her in the train myself, and saw her off.’

His composure was incredible. The Australian was more shaken than he.

‘Did you make any inquiries on the line?’ asked Barrington, after a pause.

‘Inquiries about what?’

‘There might have been—an accident.’

Bligh tapped the telegram with his finger. ‘This points to no accident,’ he said, grimly. ‘But,’ he added, more thoughtfully, ‘one might make inquiries down the line, as you say. It might do good to make inquiries all along the line.’

‘Do you mean to say you have made none?’

‘None,’ said Alfred, fetching a deep sigh. ‘I came here straight. I could think of nothing else but getting here—and—perhaps—finding her! I thought—I thought there might be some—mistake!’ His voice suddenly broke. The futility of the hope that had sustained him for hours had dawned upon him slowly, but now the cruel light hid nothing any longer. She was not here; she had not been heard of here; and precious hours had been lost. He grasped his hat and held out his trembling hand.

‘Thank you! Thank you, Mr Barrington! Now I must be off.’

‘Where to?’

‘To Scotland Yard. I should have gone there first. But—I was mad, I think; I thought there had been some mistake. Only some mistake!’

The squatter was touched to the soul. ‘I have known her, off and on, since she was a baby,’ he said. ‘Bligh—if you would only let me, I should like to come with you.’

Alfred wrung the other’s hand, but refused his offer.

‘No. Though I am grateful indeed, I would rather go alone. It would do no good, your coming; I should prefer to be alone. So only one word more. Your daughter was a great friend of Gladys; better not tell her anything of this. For it may still be only some wild freak, Mr Barrington—God knows what it is!’

It was evening when he reached London. A whole day had been wasted. He stated his case to the police; and then there was no more to be done that night. With an eagerness that all at once became feverish he hastened back to Twickenham. It was late when he arrived at the house; only Granville was up; and, for an instant, Granville thought his brother had been drinking. The delusion lasted no longer than that instant. It was not drink with Alfred: his excitement was suppressed: he stood staring at Granville with a questioning, eager expression, as though he expected news. What could it mean? What could be the explanation of such fierce excitement in stolid Alfred, of all people in the world?

Granville thought of the one thing, or rather of the one person, likely, and threw out a feeler:—

‘Have you heard from Gladys?’

‘No,’ said Alfred, in a hollow voice. ‘Have you seen her?’

This was the last idea that had possessed him: that Gladys might have come home, that he might find her there on his return. It was the second time that day that he had cheated himself with vain, unreasoning hopes.

‘Seen her?’ Granville screwed in his eyeglass tighter. ‘Of course I haven’t seen her! How should we see her here, my good fellow, when she’s down in Suffolk?’

Alfred turned pale, and for an instant stood glaring; then he burst into a harsh laugh.

‘You know how odd she is, Gran! I thought she might have tired of her friends and come back. She’s capable of it, and I feared it—that’s all!’

He left the room abruptly.

‘Poor chap!’ said Granville, with a sentient shake of the head; ‘he is far gone, if you like.’

Next morning Alfred walked into Scotland Yard as the clocks were striking eleven. His appointment was for that hour, and he had striven successfully to keep it to the second; though commonly he was a far from punctual man. In point of fact, he had been sitting and loitering about the Embankment for a whole hour, waiting until the moment of his appointment should come, as unwilling to go to it a minute before the time as a minute late. So he entered the Yard while Big Ben was striking. And this was a young man with a reputation for unpunctuality, and all-round unbusinesslike, dilatory habits.

Moreover, for a man who, as a rule, was not fastidious enough about such matters, his appearance this morning was wellnigh immaculate. Yet, perhaps, he had only sought, by a long and elaborate toilet, to while away the long, light hours of the early morning: for, on looking at him closely, it was impossible to believe that he had slept a wink. The fact is, abnormal circumstances had conduced to bring about in Alfred an entirely abnormal state of mind. In a word, and a trite one, he was no longer himself. A crust of insensibility had hardened upon him. Had there been no news for him at all at the Yard this morning, possibly this crust might have been broken through: for he was better prepared for one crushing blow than for the bruises of repeated disappointment. Thus, the very worst news might have affected him less, at the moment, than no news, which is supposed, popularly, to be of the best. But there was some news.

Official investigation had thus far discovered what a person of average intelligence, with a little more presence of mind than Alfred had shown, might have ascertained, perhaps for himself. Yet the information was important. Gladys had left the train, with her luggage, two stations before her destination. This was testified by the guard of the train. But there was a later fact still. It was certain that Gladys had returned to town by the next up-train: for she had personally deposited her luggage in the cloak-room at Liverpool Street between the hours of six and seven on the Saturday evening. There all trace of her was lost, for the present; but it was extremely likely that fresh traces would be forthcoming during the course of the day.

The simple nature of the inquiries that had elicited the above information will be at once apparent; but Alfred went away with an exalted opinion of the blood-hound sagacity of the police. In his present condition of mind, his opinion, good or bad, was not worth much. He went to a club which he had not been in for years, and of which he had long ceased to look upon himself as a member; but his bankers, doubtless, still paid his subscription; and in any case it was not likely that he would be turned out. He would find some quiet corner and sit down and wait until the messenger came from Scotland Yard; for, of course, something more would be discovered during the course of the day—had they not promised as much? The quiet corner that he chose was an upstairs window, from which there was a fair glimpse of the river. The river fascinated him most strangely to-day. During the hour he had loitered on the Embankment, between ten and eleven, he had raised his eyes but seldom from the river.

He sat long at the window—so long that minutes ran into hours and the summer afternoon melted into the summer evening. The room was a reading-room; the windows were in snug recesses. Alfred had his recess to himself for hours and hours. He was conscious of no other presence; certainly no one spoke to him: very possibly, with his beard, no one recognised him.

The sun was sinking. He could not see it from this window; but he could see the heightened contrast of light and shadow among the ripples of the river, and the shadows deepening far away under Westminster Bridge. This was where his gaze rested. It was a stony gaze; his lips were compressed and bloodless, his features pointed and pale. A hideous vision filled his mind; but it was a vision only; it had no meaning. He did not realise it. He realised nothing.... Some one came and asked if he was Mr Bligh. It was a club servant. A man awaited him below. Alfred went down; the messenger from Scotland Yard was come at last.

The messenger was the bearer of these few words:—

‘A lady’s hat and jacket have been found in the river below Blackwall. If you wish to see them, they are here.’

Five minutes later Alfred walked into the office in which he had heard the result of the investigations that morning, and identified instantly the jacket and hat awaiting his inspection.

Gladys had gone away in them on Saturday.

CHAPTER XVII

WAITING FOR THE WORST

For the second time, it was Granville whom Alfred first encountered on his return from town. They met in the twilight. Dinner was over, and Granville sauntered alone in the bit of garden between the house and the road, smoking a cigarette. Suddenly the gate was opened, and the one brother, looking up, saw the other coming quickly towards him through the dusk.

It was too dark for the ready reading of faces; but it struck Granville that the approaching footsteps were hasty and unusual. He recalled Alfred’s unaccountable manner of the night before. Indeed, all his movements, during the past two days, were mysterious: up to London first thing in the morning, back late, and not a word to any one; whereas the whole household, as a general rule, were in possession of most of Alfred’s private plans and hopes and fears. But Granville had no time to speculate now. Alfred came straight up to him.

‘I want to speak to you, Gran,’ he said. ‘I’m glad I found you here.’

The step had been suspicious; the voice was worse. It was calm enough, but it was not Alfred’s voice at all. Something had happened. Granville put up his eyeglass; but in that light it did not avail him much.

‘Let us sit down, then,’ said Granville, leading the way to a seat under the trees.

‘What is it about?’

Then Alfred began, in set tones and orderly phrases. The affectation of his manner was almost grotesque.

‘I want a kind of professional opinion from you, Gran, about—let us say, about a case that interests me, rather. That will be near enough to the mark, I think.’

‘Delighted to help you, if I can.’ Granville lounged back carelessly on the garden-seat, but his keen glance lost not a line of the other’s profile, as Alfred bent forward with his eyes upon the ground; and those lines seemed strangely hardened.

‘Thank you. The case is, briefly, this,’ Alfred continued: ‘somebody—no matter who—has been missing for some days. The number of days is of no consequence either. The police were not informed immediately. They only heard of it last night. But, this afternoon, they found——’

Alfred checked himself, sat upright, shifted his position, and met Granville’s gaze.

‘What should you consider incontestable evidence of drowning, Gran?’

‘The body.’

‘Of course. But you have to look for bodies. What should you find, to make you search with the absolute certainty of discovering the body at last?’

‘Nothing else could make it an absolute certainty. But lots of things would set you searching—a hat, for instance.’

‘They have found her hat!’ said Alfred, through his clenched teeth.

‘Her hat! Whose?’

Alfred stretched over, caught Granville’s arm in a nervous grip, and whispered rapidly in his ear. In a moment Granville knew all. But he did not speak immediately. When he did speak, it was to ask questions. And there was another unnatural voice now, besides Alfred’s—Granville’s was quite soft.

‘Was she unhappy at all?’ he asked.

‘Just the reverse, I thought, until last week. You know what happened in the Park yesterday week. She said some very wild things after that, and spoke as though she had never been quite happy here; she vowed she would never forgive herself for what she had done; and she said she wished she was dead. Well, I did not think much about her words; I thought more of what she had done; I put down what she said to the shame and temper of the moment, not to real unhappiness. But, when I said good-bye to her, then she was unhappy—more so than I ever knew her before.’

From his tone, no one could have guessed that he was speaking of his wife.

‘And you think she—she——’

Granville could not bring his lips to utter the words.

Alfred could. ‘I think she has drowned herself,’ he said calmly.

Granville shuddered. Callous as he was himself by nature, callousness such as this he could not have imagined possible; it was horrible to see and to hear.

Neither spoke for some little time.

‘Did it never occur to you,’ said Granville, at last, ‘that she might have drowned herself without all this trouble, simply by walking to the bottom of the garden here?’

‘What?’ cried Alfred, sharply. His fingers tightened upon Granville’s arm. His voice fell, oddly enough, into a natural tone.

Granville repeated his question.

‘No,’ said Alfred, hoarsely, ‘that never crossed my mind. But there’s something in it. God bless you, Gran, for putting it into my head! It’s almost like a ray of hope—the first. If I hadn’t seen the things and identified them as hers——’

‘The things! You did not say there was anything else besides the hat. What else was there?’

‘The jacket she went away in.’

‘You are sure it was hers?’

‘Yes.’

‘You could swear to both hat and jacket?’

‘Yes.’

Granville leapt to his feet.

‘Who throw their things into the water’—he asked, in strange excitement, for him—‘the people who mean to sink or the people who mean to swim—or the people who mean to stay on the bank?’

Alfred stared at him blankly. Gradually the light dawned upon him that had entered Granville’s quicker intelligence in a flash.

‘What do you mean?’ whispered Alfred; and, in a moment, his voice and his limbs were trembling.

‘Nothing very obscure,’ replied Granville, with a touch of contempt, which, even then, he could not manage to conceal (Alfred’s slow perception always had irritated him); ‘simply this: Gladys has not drowned herself. She was never the girl to do it. She had too much sense and vitality and courage. But she may mean us to think there’s an end of her—God knows with what intention. She may have gone off somewhere—God knows where. We must find out——’

He stopped abruptly, and nearly swore: for Alfred was wringing his hand, and weeping like a child.

Granville hated this, but bore it stoically. It was now plain to him that Alfred had been driven very nearly out of his senses: and no wonder—Granville himself could as yet scarcely realise or believe what he had heard. And this outburst was the natural reaction following upon an unnatural mental condition. But was there any ground for hope? Granville was less confident than he appeared when he amended his last words and said:—

‘I will find out.’

Alfred wrung his hand again. He was calmer now, but terribly shaken and shattered. The weakness that he had been storing up during the past two days had come over him, as it were, in the lump. Granville led him to his room. Alfred had never in his life before known Granville half so good-natured and sympathetic; he blessed him fervently.

‘You were her friend,’ he said, huskily. ‘She thought no end of you, Gran! You got on so splendidly together, after the first few days; and she was always talking about you. Find her—find her for me, Gran; and God bless you—and forgive her for this trick she has played us!’

Granville did not often feel contrition, or remorse, or shame: but he felt all three just then. He knew rather too well the measure of his own kindness to Gladys. For the first time in his life—and not, perhaps, before it was time—he disliked himself heartily. He felt vaguely that, whatever had happened, he had had something to do with it. He had had more to do with it than he guessed. ‘I’ll do my best—I’ll do my best,’ he promised; and he meant his ‘best’ to be better than that of the smartest detective at Scotland Yard.

He left Alfred, shut himself up alone, and reviewed the situation. An hour’s hard thinking led to a rather ingenious interview—one with the girl Bunn. It took place on the stairs, of all places. Granville saw her set foot upon the bottom stair; he immediately sat down upon the top one, produced a newspaper, and blocked the gangway.

‘Bunn, you have a sweetheart in Australia. Don’t pout and toss your head; it’s nothing to be ashamed of—quite the contrary; and it’s the fact, I think—eh?’

‘Lor’, Mr Granville, what if I have?’

‘Well, nothing; only there is something about it in this newspaper—about Australia, I mean; not about you—that’s to come. You shall have the newspaper, Bunn; here it is. I thought you’d like it, that’s all.’

Bunn took the paper, all smiles and blushes.

‘Oh, thank you, Mr Granville. And—and I beg your pardon, sir.’

‘Don’t name it, my good girl. But, look here, Bunn; stay one moment, if you don’t mind.’ (She could scarcely help staying, he gave her no chance of passing; besides, he had put her under an obligation.) ‘Tell me now, Bunn—didn’t Mrs Alfred know something about him? And didn’t Mrs Alfred talk to you a good deal about Australia?’

‘That she did, sir. But she didn’t know my young man, Mr Granville. She only got his address from me just as she was going away, sir.’

‘Ah! she wanted his address before she went away, did she?’

‘Yes, sir. She said she would name him in writing to her father, or in speaking to Mr Barrington, or that, any way, it’d be nice to have it, against ever she went out there again, sir.’

‘Oh, she gave three reasons all in one, eh? And did she say she’d like to go out again, Bunn?’

‘She always said that, sir, between ourselves—“between you and I, Bella,” it used to be. But, time I gave her the address, she went on as if she would like to go, and meant a-going, the very next day.’

‘Yet she didn’t like leaving this, even for a week—eh, Bunn?’

‘Lor’, no, sir! She spoke as if she was never coming back no more. And she kissed me, Mr Granville—she did, indeed, sir; though I never named that in the servants’ hall. She said there might be a accident, or somethink, and me never see her no more; but that, if ever she went back to Australia, she’d remember my young man, and get him a good billet. Them were her very words. But, oh, Mr Granville!—oh, sir!—--’

‘There, there. Don’t turn on the waterworks, Bunn. I thought Mrs Alfred had been cut up about something; but I wasn’t sure—that’s why I asked you, Bunn; though I think, perhaps, you needn’t name this conversation either in the servants’ hall, or tell any one else what you have told me. Yes, you may go past now. But—stop a minute, Bunn—here’s something else that you needn’t name in the servants’ hall.’

The something else was a half-sovereign.

‘It was worth it, too,’ said Granville, when the girl was gone; ‘she has given me something to go upon. These half-educated and impulsive people always do let out more to their maids than to any one else.’

He went back to Alfred.

‘There was something I forgot to ask you. How much money do you suppose Gladys had about her when she went away?’

‘I have no idea,’ said Alfred.

‘Do you know how much money you have given her since you have been over—roughly?’

‘No; I don’t know at all.’

‘Think, man. Fifty pounds?’

‘I should say so. I gave her a note or so whenever it struck me she might want it. She never would ask.’

‘Do you think she spent much?’

‘I really can’t tell you, Gran; perhaps not a great deal, considering everything; for, when I was with her, I never would let her shell out. I never knew of her spending much; but she had it by her, in case she wanted it; and that was all I cared about.’

And that was all Granville cared about. He ceased his questioning; but he was less ready to leave Alfred alone than he had been before. He had found him sitting in the dark by the open window, and staring blankly into the night. Granville had insisted on lighting the gas: only to see how the room was filled with Gladys’s things. In every corner of it some woman’s trifle breathed of her. Granville felt instinctively that much of this room, in the present suspense, might turn a better brain than Alfred’s, in Alfred’s position.

‘Look here,’ said Granville, at last: ‘I have been thinking. Listen, Alfred.’

‘Well?’ said Alfred absently, still gazing out of window.

‘I have got a theory,’ went on Granville—‘no matter what; only it has nothing to say to death or drowning. It is a hopeful theory. I intend to practise it at once: in a day or two it ought to lead me to absolute certainty of one thing, one way or the other. No matter what that one thing is; I have told you what it is not. Now, I shall have to follow out my idea in town; and if I find the truth at all, I shall most likely come across it suddenly, round a corner as it were. So I have been thinking that you may as well be in town too, to be near at hand in case I am successful. If you still have a club, you might hang about there, and talk to men, and read the papers; if not—— Why do you shake your head?’

‘I am not going to town any more,’ said Alfred, in low, decided tones. ‘If you are right, and she is not dead, she may come back—she may come back! Then I shall be here to meet her—and—and—— But you understand me, Gran?’

‘Not very well,’ said Granville, dryly, and with a shrug of his shoulders that was meant to shift from them all responsibility for Alfred’s possible insanity. ‘In your case I should prefer to be in town rather than here. However, a man judges for himself. There is one thing, however; if you stay here all day——’

‘What’s that?’

‘The question whether you should tell the Judge and the mater.’

‘No,’ said Alfred, resolutely; ‘I shall not tell them—not, that is, until the worst is known for certain. They think she is at the Barringtons’. I shall say I have heard from her. I would tell a million lies to save them the tortures of uncertainty that I am suffering, and shall suffer, till—till we know the worst. Oh, Granville!—for God’s sake, find it out quickly!’

‘I’ll do my best—I’ve already told you I would,’ said Granville almost savagely; and he left the room.

Granville’s best, in matters that required a clear head and some little imagination, was always excellent. In the present instance his normal energies were pushed to abnormal lengths by the uncomfortable feeling that he himself had been not unconcerned in bringing about that state of unhappiness which alone could have driven his sister-in-law to her last rash, mysterious step; by a feverish desire to atone, if the smallest atonement were possible; and by other considerations, which, for once, were unconnected with the first person singular. Nevertheless, on the Wednesday—the day following the foregoing conversation—he found out nothing at all; and nothing at all on the Thursday. Then Alfred made up his mind that nothing but the very worst could now come to light, and that that was only a question of time; and he fell into an apathy, by day, that Granville’s most vigorous encouragement, in the evening, could do nothing to correct. Thus, when the news did come, when the terrible suspense was suddenly snapped, Alfred was, perhaps, as ill-prepared for a shock (though he had expected one for days) as it was possible for a man to be.

It was on the Friday night. Lady Bligh and Sir James were deep in their game of bezique. Alfred sat apart from them, without a hope left in his heart, and marvellously altered in the face. His pallor was terrible, but perhaps natural; but already his cheekbones, which were high, seemed strangely prominent; and the misery in his large still eyes cried out as it sometimes does from the eyes of dumb animals in pain. He was conscious of his altered looks, perhaps; for he sedulously avoided looking his parents in the face. They did not know yet. It added to his own anguish to think of the anguish that must come to them too, sooner or later—sooner now—very soon indeed.

The door opened. Granville entered, with a brisk, startling step, and a face lit up—though it was Granville’s face—with news.

Alfred saw him—saw his face—and rose unsteadily to his feet.

‘Speak! Say you have found her! No—I see it in your face—she is there. Let me come to her!’

As Alfred stepped forward, Granville recoiled, and the light left his face.

Alfred turned to his parents. The Judge had risen, and glanced in mute amazement from one son to the other: both were pale, but their looks told nothing. Lady Bligh sat back in her chair, her smooth face wrinkled with bewilderment and vague terror.

‘It is Gladys come back,’ said Alfred, in tremulous explanation; ‘it is only that Gladys has come back, mother!’

Even then he chuckled in his sleeve to think that they had never known, and never need know, anything of this, the worst of his wife’s many and wild escapades.

But Granville recoiled still farther, and his face became gray.

‘I have not seen her,’ he said, solemnly. ‘She is not here.’

‘Not seen her? Not here?’ Alfred was quickly sobered. ‘But you know where she is? I see it in your face. She is within reach—eh? Come, take me to her!’

‘She is not even within reach,’ Granville answered, squeezing out the words by a strenuous effort. ‘I cannot take you to her. Gladys sailed for Australia last Monday morning!’

Alfred sunk heavily into a chair. No one spoke. No one was capable of speech. Before any one had time to think, Alfred was on his feet again, tottering towards the door.

‘I must follow!’ he whispered, in hoarse, broken tones. ‘I will follow her to-night! Stand aside, Gran; thanks; and God bless you! Good-bye! I shall know where to find her out there. I have no time to stop!’

Granville stood aside in obedience; but for one instant only: the next—he sprang forward to catch in his arms the falling form of Alfred.