The row at the Grange was the least significant of the consequences that flowed from Thomas Wanless's visit to the Vicarage Gardens. Mrs. Morgan had apparently indicated to her mother the suspicions she entertained as to the aims of Mrs. Codling, and Lady Harriet, afraid to tackle her son about his amours, attacked Mrs. Codling instead. It was plainly enough intimated to that scheming woman that Lady Harriet disapproved of the constant visits of the Captain to the Vicarage, and Mrs. Codling was asked to discourage them.
A sensible person would have deferred to the wishes of the greatest lady in the parish on a point so delicate, but Mrs. Codling proved to be anything but sensible. Afraid of exciting the wrath of Lady Harriet by open hostility, she took refuge in underhand plots. The intercourse between the Captain and her daughter, which had hitherto been carried on, in a manner, openly, was now changed, with the mother's connivance, into a secret intrigue. By this change the whole moral attitude of the family became debased. Captain Wiseman was astute enough to see through the would-be mother-in-law's motives, and cunning enough to egg her on in a course of duplicity and folly. His mother need know nothing, he represented, till all was over. No doubt she would at first resent a secret marriage, but when she saw she could no longer help it, her wrath would soon cool down.
With talks like these it may be supposed that Adelaide Codling, apt pupil as she was, soon came to look upon a secret marriage as just the one thing desirable and necessary to secure her happiness; and, from this conclusion, it was but a step to destruction. Probably enough Captain Wiseman had never any intention of marrying the girl, but whether or not, he certainly had abandoned it, when, after a few weeks of secret meetings and clandestine letter writing, he succeeded in persuading her to join him in London. She left home just after Christmas, in secret to all appearance, though the village gossips would have it that her mother knew of her flight beforehand, and nobody doubted that she had run away after the Captain. In vain did Mrs. Codling give out that her daughter had been called away suddenly to visit a sick aunt. Nobody believed her. Secret intrigues cannot be successfully carried out in a quiet country village, and what was declared to be the true version of the flight was current in all the country side within a week of Adelaide's departure.
CHAPTER XV.
IS TOO BAD FOR DESCRIPTION.
Unthinkingly, Mrs. Robins repeated this story to Mrs. Wanless one day in Sally's hearing, and immediately repented of her folly, for Sally uttered a low moan and fainted. From that day the gloom of her life seemed deeper. With unceasing tenderness and watchfulness her parents had sought to bring back hope to their lost one's heart, and until this ugly bit of gossip reached her they had hopes of succeeding. Sally had began to talk a little more freely, and, recognising the burden she was to her parents, was becoming anxious to get a situation of some kind—provided always that it might be far away, where no one would know her. But from the time she came back to consciousness on this unhappy day, darkness again settled down on her spirit. She sat apart brooding, as when first her babe lay on her lap. That babe itself appeared to grow almost hateful in her sight, and was left to the care of her mother, weary though the old woman was with work and sorrow. With mouth hard set and eyes looking wistfully sometimes, as if in terror, into a world far away from the home nest, Sally heeded no one. Her father again grew deeply concerned about her, and tried casually to draw her out of the trance that seemed to chain her soul. It was useless. She answered him in monosyllables or never at all. At times too, and when he spoke to her, a strange, resolute look would gather on her face. It was not exactly obstinacy, though she certainly was unyielding. Rather was it a look as of one who had made up her mind to a great sacrifice, and feared that she might be betrayed into abandoning a duty. At that look her father always somehow grew afraid. It was evident to him that his daughter in some way connected Adelaide Codling's flight with her own life, but how he could not guess.
But his fears were only too well grounded, for one day, Sally, too, disappeared. Watching her opportunity when the babe was asleep, her mother busy washing, and her father away at the farm, she dressed herself as if for a walk, went out, and did not return. All day her mother had endured the keenest anxiety in the hope that Sally would come back. She was unwilling to send for her husband, and could only make one or two cautious inquiries through her nearest neighbours. They knew nothing; Sally had been seen, of course, but she looked and walked as usual, with hasty steps and eyes bent on the ground. Though startled at the news, Thomas was not surprised. The flight only fulfilled his own forebodings. Swallowing a morsel of food he started for Warwick, and soon learnt there that a girl answering to Sally's description had left by the slow London train at eleven o'clock. On his way home he bitterly reproached himself that he had not taken means to make such a step impossible. The two or three pounds that Sally had brought home with her he had scrupulously left untouched, and these she had taken with her, as also the few trinkets given to her by the Captain. Thomas had no doubt whatever that Sally had fled to London.
For a time this blow positively dazed Thomas and his wife. Once more their nights were nights of sorrow and tears, and for them the mornings brought no joy. Only the little one that lay sleeping in its wee cot was all unconscious of trouble, or that its presence added poignancy to the bitterness with which the labourer and his wife mourned for their lost one.