“Now, mother, you are beginning to fuss again,” said Joan, in a vexed tone. “Dear, dear, haven’t we trouble enough?” Even she who shared the real family grief so warmly thought this one of “mother’s fusses,” and was impatient at her folly. “As if everybody didn’t know that Will and Tom were just——Will and Tom,” Joan said to herself. That they had turned out to be so instead of being heroes, did not strike her as a subject of complaint.
Mr. Selby was gone three days. The mission he had undertaken soon showed itself to be more difficult than he thought. Harry had gone away without leaving a trace behind him. He had appeared at the office for an hour or two quite unexpectedly before his leave had expired, and paid a few small debts, and taken away some small articles which were in his desk, disappearing again without a word as to his destination. At his lodgings Harry had not been seen at all. His portmanteau was there, forlorn in the dusky lobby of the lodging-house, and the unfortunate hamper, out of which odours not altogether delightful were proceeding, and which the mistress of the house implored Mr. Selby to take away with him. He did not know what to do: finally, but with great secrecy, that his principals might not be offended, he put a detective on Harry’s track, such as it was. But there seemed no track, not so much as a circle in the water or a footprint upon the soil, to show where he had gone. Selby had gone to Liverpool with great confidence in himself; pleased, for he had a good heart, to please and console these two women; but also pleased, for his own part, to show at once how kind and how clever he was. He had not a doubt that he would succeed and go back triumphant, and prove himself so superior to all the clowns about, that Joan could have no further hesitation; and it was in this confidence, being so sure that the work he had taken up would be prosperous, that he had set out upon his mission. But when he returned his mind was very different; he was greatly depressed, not only with the sense that what he had to tell was unsatisfactory, but that his own prestige would be seriously impaired. He had left home with the conviction that he would find everything out and set everything right; that neither would adverse fate be able to baffle him in the wisdom of his investigations, nor Harry be able to resist his brotherly-fatherly representations. And when Philip Selby found nothing but a blank void, in which there was nobody to persuade and remonstrate with, he felt himself tumble down from the vantage ground which he had thought so certain. How was he to go back and say he had failed? His detectives had indeed done their best to buoy him up with hope; but he was obliged to come back with no news, presenting a very blank countenance to the anxious looks of the mother and sister. The first sight of him sent their hearts down, down to the very depths.
“He is not there, Mrs. Joscelyn; but I hope soon to hear news of him,” he said deprecating, as if it had been his fault—which was not the satisfactory position he had hoped to hold in coming back.
And then the fact had to be faced in all its simplicity. Harry had disappeared. The firm could throw no light on the question. They did not know where he had gone, nor why he had gone. He had gone honourably, that was all, had got payment of the salary which was due to him, and had settled various little debts which he was owing. Nobody knew anything of larger liabilities, if he had them. He was gone absolutely, without leaving a trace behind. His employers were surprised by the inquiries, not giving much importance as yet to the fact that he had exceeded his time of leave; but they could give no information, and satisfy no anxiety. He was gone, that was all about it. The whole tale was written in Selby’s face to the two anxious women who had awaited him with so much hope.
ALL great evils are more intolerable, more terrible, before than after they come. It seems to us in advance as if the mind could never accustom itself to such a change, or life close over the wound. And yet, when but a very short time has elapsed, we find that obedient Nature has accepted and acknowledged the inevitable fact, and that use and wont, so rent asunder by the change, have begun to throw new fibres of their cobweb tissue over the chasm. There was a moment when poor Mrs. Joscelyn thought that she could not bear this rending asunder. She turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes, and declared that she could not endure the light. She lay thus for weeks, but not in any stupor; on the contrary, with every sense alert, and all standing sentinel, hearing Harry’s step in every sound outside, and divining him in every whisper of the wind. She had no objection to the detective now, but was kept alive from morning to morning by the news which Selby brought her, scraps of news entirely delusive, but which kept a fire of agitation and expectation alive in her heart. Selby spent a great deal of money upon the detective with little use, an expense which neither Joan nor her mother divined or thought of. To them he had said at first that he had left a “friend” on the spot to pursue the inquiry, and they had not doubted his statement. But by-and-by there came a time when the expenditure seemed to him no longer necessary. He was not rich, although he was sufficiently well-off, and it was doing no good, neither in respect to Harry nor to Joan, who was short and sharp with him in her angry grief, and seemed almost to blame him for the catastrophe altogether; and, indeed, Joan was unreasonably sharp. She could not help asking within herself what was the good of a man if he could not do as much as this? She felt sure that if she had gone herself she must have discovered something; and she began to get sick of the sight of Selby coming up to the White House morning after morning with his no news. It provoked her entirely without reason; his long face provoked her. If he would but stay away and hold his tongue when he could do no good! She was all the more unjust to him, perhaps, that she had secretly built upon his success almost as much as he himself had done, and had felt that it would justify anything that might follow out of gratitude for such a service. But the service had not been accomplished, though it had cost more trouble and expenditure of one sort and another than if it had been successfully done, and not only was Joan very miserable about her brother, but she was thrown out altogether in respect to the suitor, who had, she grudgingly allowed to herself, established a certain claim upon her by his efforts, even though he had not been successful. She was very difficult to get on with, all the household acknowledged, at this period. A lover might well have been alarmed had he heard her voice lifted high in the dairy, and in the house, setting everything in order. Woe to the maid who neglected her work in these days, or the man either. Joan came upon them like a thunderstorm; there were times when Selby, stalking up to the house with his bulletin, heard her and trembled. If this was how she was going to be, would it not be wiser in a lover to give up such a dangerous pursuit? But though it gave him a cold shiver he persevered, and took her sharpness gently, and bore with her unreason, having a soul above his judgment. There were times when this little conflict going on within him, and the trial of his faithful purpose over all doubts, was visible in his countenance, betraying Joan to a momentary amusement in the midst of her irritation and trouble; and she would be still sharper to him afterwards—then break into a short laugh within herself. It was her only diversion in her trouble to see how Selby got frightened and swerved, and then took heart again.
“I’m enough to give any decent man a fright,” Joan said to herself, with her half laugh; and it was true that she led the household, as all the maids said, “a terrible life.”
But Mrs. Joscelyn lay with her face to the wall, and moaned by times: but generally listened, listened, night and day, her whole being concentrated into her ears. She got a kind of monomania on the subject. He seemed to her to be always coming home, on the road, drawing nearer and nearer. Joan, dozing in a chair by her bedside, when she was at her worst, she would wake up suddenly and implore to go down to the door and look out.
“Somebody went by and stopped, I am sure he stopped—and looked to see if there was any one up. Run down, run down, and open to him, Joan!”
Joan did it a dozen times at least, and standing at the open door in the middle of the night, looking over the black invisible country, or into the pale moonlight which revealed it in a vague whiteness, would shed a few tears, and feel the night wind go chill to her heart before she shut and locked again the door that had been once closed upon her brother.
“Oh, there’s a deal of mother in him, the Lord have a care of him!” Joan would say: and going back again, add: “There was no one, I knew very well there was no one; I went to humour you. Now just you humour me and go to sleep, go to sleep, poor dear!” and she would smooth the pillow and the bed very softly for all her scolding.
It was a dreadful day, the day on which the portmanteau came back, and the hamper, which smelt so badly, and which was now a half rotten mass, not fit even for the pigs. To see them coming in the cart from the station was like a funeral; the very horse went slowly, though he was wont to break into a clumsy canter as soon as he came within sight of his stable. Even the dumb beast felt it, old Simon said; and the man got the things out very quietly, and carried them up to Harry’s room with solemnity, as they might have carried his coffin. Joan unpacked all his clothes again as she had folded them, with her tears falling like rain. She put them back in his drawers with many a dismal thought. Would he ever come back to find them all there waiting for him? or was it over for ever, and would Harry never enter the house again? The arrival of these relics increased Mrs. Joscelyn’s sufferings so much that the doctor had to be sent for, who made but one prescription, succinct, in one word: “Liddy:” for he knew the family well, and all its members. Joan clasped her hands together as the thought struck her. “And me never to have thought of that! It shows the head I must have,” she said.
And this was how it came about that suddenly, without anyone knowing of it, one afternoon when Joan had been absent for an hour or two, there arose a sudden commotion in the house, a clanging of doors, a sound of voices, a rush up the stairs of something that was between the flight of a bird and the blowing of a brisk wind and the patter of airy steps—a movement, and a sentiment of fresh life, and arrival, and new hope. It was not a noise, the creature was too light, too melodious for that: her step scarcely touched the stair, the door which she pushed open did not bang as when other hands touched it, but flew round upon its hinges as airy as herself; and when she flung herself upon the bed with a soft cry of “Mother!” the whole place seemed full of her, brightening and growing warm with pleasure. Mrs. Joscelyn turned round with an answering cry, and took happiness into her feeble arms with a shock of sudden consolation that sent the blood into motion again in her veins. She was not happy herself, poor soul! but happiness stood by her bed, and clasped her neck, and breathed into her its soft natural sweetness.
“Oh, my Liddy, my Liddy!” the poor woman said.
Liddy was all in a commotion of gladness to get back; to stop her lessons in mid-career of the “half;” to be of such importance that she was sent for to help and cure her mother. Harry’s loss was a very secondary matter to the girl, who had not seen very much of Harry, nor had ever been used to look upon him as a necessary part of home; but she listened to all the story, which her mother found a great relief in telling her from beginning to end, with a childish pleasure in the tale as well as sympathy with the teller.
“Oh, but he’ll come back,” Liddy said, with a happy confidence, which made far more impression on her mother than all that had been said by people who knew a great deal better than Liddy.
“Do you think so, my darling?” she asked with piteous eyes—as if the child could tell. Joan looking on, and much advantaged herself by the little stir of mind which her resolution to send for Liddy, and the prompt carrying out of the same, had roused within her, could not but laugh once more that sharp laugh of mingled amusement and wonder, to see how efficacious her remedy was.
“Mother’s very queer when all’s done,” she said to herself. She had done everything for everybody throughout all this troubled moment; but Liddy, who could do nothing save kiss Mrs. Joscelyn’s white face and warm her chilly hands, and promise with confident ignorance, “Oh, but he’ll come back,” was of far greater account than she. But it was a great relief to her mind all the same. And by and by this great event which had disturbed even the rude soul of Ralph Joscelyn, and filled him with shame and angry confusion, began to be a thing they were all used to, and which had entered into the fabric of their lives.
END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
London: Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street.