Part 20

‘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.

XV

§

At Crippenham next morning it was very fine. London and South Winch were in a mist, but the sun shone brightly in Cambridgeshire, and the Duke woke up with a curiously youthful feeling of eagerness to get up quickly and go downstairs. He knew he couldn’t do anything quickly, but the odd thing was that for years and years he hadn’t wanted to, and that now suddenly he did want to; and just to want to was both pleasant and remarkable.

He had been thinking in the night,--or, rather, Charles’s thoughts, placed so insistently before him, had sunk in and become indistinguishable from his own; and he had thought so much that he hadn’t gone to sleep till nearly five. But then he slept soundly, and woke up to find his room flooded with sunshine, and to feel this curiously agreeable eagerness to be up and doing.

The evening before, when Charles came in from the garden and packed his bewitching guest off to bed, he had been very cross, and had listened peevishly to all his son was explaining and pointing out; not because he wasn’t interested, or because he resented the suggestions being made, but simply because the moment that girl left the room it was as if the light had gone out,--the light, and the fire. She needn’t have obeyed Charles. Why should she obey Charles? She might have stayed with him a little longer, warming him by the sight of her beauty and her youth. The instant she went he felt old and cold; back again in the condition he was in before she arrived, dropped back again into age and listlessness, and, however stoutly he pretended it wasn’t so, into a deathly chill.