“We thought,” said Paula, “we thought you might not think him enough—enough—of a gentleman for your sort of society.”
“I think you might have trusted me to know what was due to an old friend,” said Magdalen “but, oh, I ought to have made you feel that we could think together.”
“Perhaps,” said Agatha, “there was a little consciousness on poor dear Vera’s part that she did not want you to know the terms she was on.”
They had tried only to let Thekla know that they were much alarmed because Vera had gone out in a boat and not returned. It was observable that, on the principle that where there is life there is hope, Paula clung to the notion that Vera’s having fled to Filsted; while the two elder sisters, perhaps because they better knew what such a flight might seem to others, would almost have preferred to suppose there had been a fatal accident in the midst of youthful, innocent sport.
The two were lingering sadly over their uneaten breakfast, talking more freely when they had sent Thekla to feed her pets, when Mr. Flight came up on his bicycle; but it was plain at the first moment that he had no good news.
Nothing had been heard. It only appeared that one of the young gardeners at Carrara had taken Captain Henderson’s boat without leave, to fetch one of the girls, but on entering the cove had found the boathouse locked. He had moored the boat to a stake for want of the ring that secured it within. When the storm threatened he ran down to recover it, but it was gone, and he had concluded that the gardeners had put it into the boathouse. It now appeared that they had not seen it, and were very angry at its having been meddled with. An oar had drifted up with the morning tide, and had been recognised as belonging to the boat; but such a gale was blowing that it was impossible to put out to sea or make any search round the coast. Words could hardly describe the distress of Mr. Flight or of his ladies at not having better looked after the young girl; Sister Beata for never having thoroughly attended to the matter; and Sister Mena for having accepted confidences which, if she had only guessed it, told her more than there really was to be known. Both these two were inclined to the elopement idea, partly because it was the least shocking, and partly because they had looked at Vera’s grievances through her own spectacles, and partly from their unlimited notions of young men’s wickedness. Their vicar was not of the same opinion, knowing Hubert better, and besides having found his work, his orders to his subordinates, and the belongings at the lodgings in a state that showed that whatever he had done had been unpremeditated. Sending off notes to stop the garden party was a sort of occupation, broken by many signs, much listening, and much sorrowful discussion, not quite vain, since it made Paulina more one with Magdalen than ever before. Poor old Mr. Delrio arrived in the afternoon, a thin, grey-haired and bearded old man, who could only make it too certain that Paula’s theory of the innocent flight to Filsted was impossible. Moreover, he was as certain as a father could be, intimate with, and therefore confident of, his eldest son, that though Hubert might indulge in a little lively flirtation, it could never be otherwise than perfectly harmless. In the terrible suspense and restlessness, he went vibrating about in the torrents of moorland rain between Rock Quay and the Goyle, on the watch for telegrams from the office in London or his wife at home, or for the discovery of anything from the sea, or searching in his son’s lodgings, where nothing was found that did not show him to have been a pure-hearted young man, devoted to his art, and fond of poetry. Sundry compositions were in the blotting-book, one, indeed, to Vera’s name, under the supposition (a wrong one) [100] that it meant “true,” but mostly rough copies of a poem about the Saints Julitta and her child Cyriac. Hope sank as another stormy day rose; and still the poor old artist lingered in hopes of news by some returning craft which might have picked up the derelict. His chief comfort was in walking about between the showers with Magdalen, as an old friend, and trying to think of the two as innocent creatures, engulfed like mayflies in the stream.
Sister Mena came over, wanting to join Paula in bewailing entreaties; but Paula, in youthful hard-hearted wilfulness, declared that it was impossible to see her; and it fell to Magdalen to try to discuss the grief with her.
It turned out that Mr. Flight had spoken severely to her and to the far less implicated Sister Beata, declaring his confidence in them destroyed, so that they had begun to consider of throwing up their work in his parish. “And it was all my fault,” said Mena; “Sister Beata really knew nothing, or hardly anything of what Vera told me.”
“Indeed, I can quite understand that you had hardly experience enough to know that it might be wiser not to encourage what was not quite open.”
“But I thought,—I thought you—”