Chapter Thirty.
Search.
Great was the consternation which prevailed at Cranston Hall as the day wore on and Hubert did not return.
When first it was reported that his room was undisturbed and his bed had not been slept in, Mrs Dorrien’s chief care was to keep the knowledge from her husband, but soon her fears got the better of her prudence on her son’s behalf, and it became necessary to acquaint the General with the fact, with a view to a search being instituted.
Very sternly and concisely the latter at once proceeded to enquire into the circumstances of the case, but, beyond the fact that the missing one had left home with the expressed intention of attending evening service at Cranston Church, no one at the Hall could throw any light on the matter.
“I don’t know what could possibly have happened to Hubert between this and the village,” he said to his wife. “Why, it’s barely twenty minutes’ walk. I really don’t know what to think about it, Eleanor. It is extremely painful to be obliged to say so, but it looks strangely as if Hubert had started on an unlawful errand, inventing a pretext for covering it. I have not found him invariably truthful, you know.”
She burst into a storm of tears, her hard nature stirred to its very depths; her cold heart sorely wounded in its one vulnerable point.
“Oh, my boy, my boy?” she sobbed. “I shall never see you again, something tells me I shall not. And you”—turning fiercely upon her husband—“you were always so stern, so severe with him. He may have left his home, left it for good. Couldn’t you remember that he was young, and make allowances—and in delicate health? Yes, it is you who have driven him away, even as you drove away the other. Oh, my boy, my darling boy! I shall never see him again!”