Chapter 14

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.