A gust of wind swept round the kitchen, fluttering the herbs which hung from the ceiling and blowing the dust and flame from the front of the fire.
"Dear, dear!" Mr. Gillat exclaimed as he drew back, "What a wind!"
Then, as he caught the whisper and whistle of the leafless things which whisper to one another out of doors even in the dead winter time, he realised that the outer door must be open.
"Shut it!" he said. "The latch is so old, it is beginning to get worn out, and the wind is so strong, too. Let me see if I can shut it." He went to the back kitchen for that purpose and found that he was talking to empty air, the Captain was gone.
In great consternation he went out after his charge. He had not had a minute's start; he could not have got far, not much more than round the corner of the house. So thought Mr. Gillat, and started round the nearest corner after him. Julia would not have done that; with the instinct of the wild animal and the rogue for cover, and for the value of the obvious in concealment, she would have looked by the water butt first. It was not a hiding-place; the bush beside did not half conceal Captain Polkington, yet he stood dark and unobtrusive against it and so close to the door that in looking out for him one naturally looked beyond him. As Johnny went round one side of the house the Captain left the meagre shelter of the butt and went round the other, bent now on finding some better hiding-place till it should be safe for him to go to his precious store. And seeing that he was braced by an insatiable whisky thirst and so possessed by one idea that he had almost a madman's cunning in achieving his purpose, it is not wonderful that he succeeded. While Johnny hastily searched the out-buildings he lay hid. And when at last Mr. Gillat went back to the house, being convinced that his charge must have gone back before him, he, nerved and strengthened by a dose of the precious spirit, carefully climbed over the garden wall, carrying with him all that was left of his store. It was rather heavy, and the rising wind was strong, but he was strong, too, and he bore more strength with him. He could carry a weight and fight with the wind if he wanted to; his heart was well enough when it was properly treated. And it should be properly treated as long as he had his comfort, his precious medicine safe and in a place where prying hands could not touch it.
Julia came home from Halgrave later than she expected, but the wind had increased to a gale, so that walking along the exposed road had been no easy matter. Johnny by this time was almost desperate with alarm, for Captain Polkington had not come back and, in spite of a continuous search in likely and unlikely places, he had not been able to find any trace of him or his whisky. It is true his search was not very systematic at the best of times; it is not likely to have been now; as his alarm increased, it grew worse, until, by the time Julia came in, it had become little more than a repeated looking in the same unlikely places and an incessant toiling up and down-stairs and across the garden in the howling wind.
His account of the Captain's vanishing was much obscured by self-condemnation and anxiety, still she managed to make it out and she did not at first think so very seriously of it. She concluded from it that her father had succeeded in getting at his whisky and Johnny had failed to prevent him or find out the whereabouts of the store--a not very astonishing occurrence. The fact that the Captain had not returned or shown himself for so long was surprising and to be regretted, seeing the badness of the weather. But it was not inexplicable; he might be anxious to demonstrate his freedom, or, by frightening them, to pay them out for the watch lately kept on him; or--and this was the one serious aspect of the matter--he might have taken more of the spirit than he could stand in his weak state and be too stupid and muddled to come back alone. Julia reassured Johnny as well as she could, and then, accompanied by him, set to work to search thoroughly the house, garden and out-buildings.
It was dinner time before they had finished. Julia came to the doorway of the bulb shed uneasy and perplexed. "It is clear he is not here,"
she said, and turned to fasten the door. A gust of wind tore it from her hand, flinging it back noisily. She caught it again and secured it. "It is dinner time," she said; "come along indoors, there is no reason why you should go hungry because father chooses to."
Johnny followed her to the house. When they were indoors he said, "Do you think--you don't think he has had an attack?--that he is lying unconscious somewhere?" That was precisely what Julia was beginning to think; there seemed no other possible explanation. Johnny read her mind in her face and was overwhelmed with the sense of his own shortcomings and their possible consequences.
"It is not your fault," Julia assured him; "you might as well say it is father's for being so foolish and obstinate about his whisky--a great deal better and more truly say it is mine for leaving you, and for driving him into this corner, for not having managed the whole thing better."
Johnny, though a little relieved that she did not think him to blame, was not comforted. "Let us go and find him," he said; "we must find him; never mind about dinner--we must go and look for him--though I don't know where."
"We must look beyond the garden," Julia said; "he must have got further than we first thought--but I don't see how he can be far in this weather. Cut some cheese and bread; we can eat it as we go along."
In a little while they set out together, Julia taking restoratives with her, though she was also careful to leave some on the kitchen-table in case Captain Polkington should make his way back and feel in need of them in her absence. Outside the garden wall one felt the force of the wind more fully, and realised how impossible it was that the Captain should have gone far. Julia stood a moment by the gate. Before her lay the road to Halgrave; her father might have gone down it a little way; but if he had he must have turned off and sought concealment somewhere for she had seen no sign of any one when she came home. To the left stretched the heath-land, brown and bare, to the belt of wildly tossing pines; it was hard to imagine her father choosing that way. To the right lay the sandhills, a place of unsteady outline, earth and sky alike pale and blurred as the north-west wind fled seawards, lifting and whirling the fine particles till the air seemed full of them; it was impossible to think of any one choosing that way.
"We will go down the road to begin with," Julia said, and started.
All through the early part of the afternoon they searched; sometimes stopped for a moment by a gust of wind; Julia caught and whirled, Johnny brought to a panting standstill. But on again directly, struggling down the road, looking in ditches and behind scant bushes, leaving the track first on the right hand then on the left, searching in likely and unlikely places. But always with the same result, there was no sign of the missing man. At last, when they had reached a greater distance than it was possible to imagine the Captain could have gone, they turned towards the house across the heath. It was difficult to think of the Captain going that way, seeing he would have been walking in the teeth of the wind, but it almost seemed he must have done it.
The short day was already beginning to close in when they reached the belt of pines. It had grown much colder; one could almost believe there would be frost in the air by and by. The wind was lulling a little; it still roared with strange rushings and half-demented tearings at the tree-tops, almost like some great spirit prisoned there, but it had spent its first strength. The rain clouds were going, too; already in places the sky was swept clear so that a pale light gleamed behind the trees.
Julia stood in the vibrant shelter of the pines, pushing back her hair; she was bareheaded; a hat had been an impossible superfluity when she started out.
"Johnny," she said, "we have come too far; father could not have got to the trees in such weather as it was when he started; we must go back. I expect he is somewhere nearer home; we have not half searched the possible radius yet."
Johnny said "Yes." He was dog-tired, so tired that his anxiety was now little more than dull despair animated by an unquestioning determination to continue the search.
He would have done so somehow, and with his flagging energies been more hindrance than help, had not Julia prevented him; as they neared the house, now almost merged in the dusk, she said--
"I am going to fetch a lantern; the moon will be up soon, but until then I shall want a light. I am just coming in to get it, then I shall go out again; but you must stop at home; father may come back, and if he found us both out after dark he would think something was wrong and start to look for us; then we should be worse off than ever."
Johnny said "Yes"; but suggested, "I think we'd better look round about the house once more. I think I'll take a light and look round again."
Julia did not think it would be much use; however she consented, though she had to go with Johnny; she did not trust him with a lantern among the out-buildings. They looked round once more, in the sheds and in the dark garden; afterwards they went out and looked beyond the wall all round, on the side where the heather grew and also on the side where the loose sand came close. It took time; Johnny was too tired to move quickly or even to understand quickly what was said to him. At last Julia stopped and spoke decisively.
"You had better go in now," she said; "it won't do for us both to be out any longer; one of us must go in, and I think it had better be you. Make a good fire, see that there is plenty of hot water and get something to eat so as to be ready to do things when I come back."
Johnny acquiesced and Julia, having watched him into the house, took up her lantern and set out in the direction of the sandhills.
It was her last resource; it did not seem to her likely that her father could have gone there; at the best of times he disliked the place, finding it very tiring. Still, with the wind behind him as it would have been this morning, it is possible he would have found it the easiest way--if he could have managed to forget what the coming back would be. At all events she determined to try it, so she set out for the waste.
By this time the moon was rising, and, in spite of the driving clouds which had not all dispersed, at times it shone clear. Beneath it the stretch of sand lay pale and desolate, a new-formed landscape of fresh contours, loosely-piled hills and shallow scooped hollows shaped by to-day's wind. An easy place for a man to miss his way with a gale blowing and the sand dancing blinding reels. A hard place for a man to travel far when he had to face the wind; a strong man would have found it very tiring, a weak man might well have given it up, driven to waiting for a lull in the weather. As for a man in the Captain's health--when Julia thought of it she hurried on, although she knew if her father had to-day, as he had all through his life, followed the line of least resistance, the chances were that her help would be of little avail to him now.
She carried her lantern low, looking carefully for footprints; soon, however, she put it out; she would do better without in the increasing moon-light. But she found no prints; after all, as she remembered, she was hardly likely to; the wind and blowing sand would have obliterated them. Over the first level of sand she went to the nearest rise without seeing anything; up to that and down the following hollow, looking in every curve and indentation, still without seeing anything.
Then she began to climb the next rise. The moon was struggling through a long cloud, one moment eclipsed, the next shining with a half radiance which made the landscape unevenly black and white. For a second it looked out clear, and the sand showed like silver, tear-spotted with ink in the hollows; then the cloud swept up and all turned to a level grey. She had climbed to the top of a rise by now, sinking deep and noiseless into the soft sand. It was too dark to see what was below; all was shadow, black shadow--or was it a blackness more substantial than shadow?
The cloud passed from off the moon's face, the light shone out once more, turning the sand to silver. All the great empty space, where the dying wind still throbbed, was white silver, except down in the hollow where, black and still, lay the man who had followed the line of least resistance.
CHAPTER XXIII
PAYMENT AND RECEIPT
On the day of Captain Polkington's funeral, a letter was brought to White's Cottage. Julia herself took it in, and when she saw that it was from Holland she asked the postman to wait a minute as she would be glad if he would post a letter for her. He sat down, nothing loth; the cottage was the last place on his round and he never minded a rest there. He waited while Julia went up-stairs with her letter. She opened it before she got to her room and barely read the contents; there was enclosed a cheque for thirty pounds, the price of "The Good Comrade."
It had come, then, at last, this money for which she had been waiting two years--but too late. The man in whose name she would have paid the debt lay dead. She had planned to clear him without his knowledge, reinstate him in the good opinion of his debtor without letting her hand be seen; and she could not, for he was dead, and there was no hand but hers, and no name to clear. It was not a week too late, yet so much, so bitterly much. Too late for her cherished plan, too late for any of the things she had hoped, too late for triumph, or joy, or satisfaction; too late to demonstrate the once hoped for equality; too late for the fulfilling of anything but a dogged purpose. For a moment she looked at the cheque, feeling the irony which had sent her the means of paying his debt now that her father lay in his coffin, indifferent to his good name and his honour; unable, alike, to clear or be cleared, to wrong or be wronged; removed by kindly death from the scope of earthly judgment, even the just thoughts of one who had suffered on his account.
She put down the cheque and pencilled some hasty words--"In payment of Captain Polkington's debt (to Mr. Rawson-Clew) discharged by Hubert Farquhar Rawson-Clew on the--November 19--"
So she wrote, then she put the slip with the cheque in an envelope and addressed it to the London club where the explosive had been sent.
"It will be posted before the funeral," she thought; "I'm glad--it will all end together--poor father!"
She went down-stairs and gave the letter to the postman. Mrs.
Polkington came into the kitchen as she was doing so, for Mrs.
Polkington was at the cottage now.
There are some women who seem designed by nature for widows, just as there are others designed for grandmothers and yet others for old maids. Mrs. Polkington was of the first sort; she seemed specially created to adorn the position of widow-hood; she certainly did adorn it; she was a pattern to all widows and did not miss a single point of the situation. Of course she came to the cottage as soon as possible after receiving news of her husband's death. The journey was long and expensive, the weather somewhat bad; that weighed for nothing with her; she was there as soon as might be, feeling, saying and doing just what a bereaved widow ought. The fact that she and her husband had been obliged through the force of circumstances, to live separate the past year did not alter her emotions, her real tears or her real grief. Considering the practice and experience she had had it would have been surprising if she had not succeeded in deceiving herself as well as most of her world in these things. So acute were her feelings that when she came into the kitchen and saw Julia dispatching the letter, she felt quite a shock.
"What is it?" she asked; "What is the matter?"
"Only a letter that could not wait," Julia answered.
"Surely it could have waited till to-morrow," her mother said; "under the circumstances surely one would be excused."
Julia thought differently but did not say so, and in silence set about some necessary preparation.
The Reverend Richard Frazer came to the funeral; Violet was unable to do so; he represented her and supported his mother-in-law too. The banker, Mr. Ponsonby, also made the tedious journey to Halgrave; he came out of respect for death in the abstract, and also because he expected affairs would want looking to, and it would suit him better to do it now than later. These two with Johnny, Julia and her mother, were the only mourners at the funeral; a few village folk, moved by curiosity, attended, but no one else; there was not even an empty carriage, representative of a good family, following the humble cortege. Mrs. Polkington observed this and felt it; an empty carriage and good livery following would have given her satisfaction, without in any way diminishing her sorrow and proper feeling. It is conceivable she would have found satisfaction in being shipwrecked in aristocratic company, without at the same time, suffering less than she ought to suffer.
After the funeral they returned to the cottage and had a repast of Julia's providing, eminently suitable to the occasion. Everything was eminently suitable, every one's behaviour, every one's clothes; Mr.
Frazer's grave face, the banker's jerky manner--the manner of a man concerned with the world's money market and ill at ease in the intrusive presence of death. Mrs. Polkington's voice, face, feelings, sayings, everything. Julia's own behaviour was perfect, though all the time she saw how it looked as plainly as if she had been another and disinterested person, and once or twice she had an hysterical desire to applaud a good stroke of her mother's or prompt a backward speech of her uncle's. Mr. Gillat, of course, did nothing suitable; he never did. He kept up a preternaturally cheerful appearance during the meal, stopping his mouth with large corks of bread, answering "Ah, yes, yes, just so," indiscriminately whenever he was spoken to, and starting three separate conversations on the weather on his own account. As soon as the table was cleared, he fled into the back kitchen, shut himself in with the dishes, and was seen no more. The others remained in the sitting-room and talked things over, arranging plans for the future and for the immediate present. And when the time came and the conveyance was brought to the gate, they set out on the homeward journey together. Johnny did not come out of the kitchen to say good-bye; only Julia came to the gate.
Mr. Ponsonby was going back home; Mr. Frazer and Mrs. Polkington were going with him to spend the night in town and go on westwards the next morning. Mr. Frazer was anxious to get back to his parish, and Mrs.