He forced himself to eat some breakfast for fear he might otherwise collapse in the pulpit, and he drank a cup of strong coffee with the same idea of being kept up. The thought that it was his own mother-in-law who had brought all this trouble on him had a peculiar sting. Quite evidently there had been an accident, and God knew how he would get through his sermon, with the fear crushing him of the effect such terrible news would have on the beloved mother of his child to be. There was no blessing, he told himself, outside the single straight path of one’s duty. If his mother-in-law had continued in that path as she used to continue in it, instead of suddenly taking to giving way to every impulse—that she should still have impulses was in itself indecent—this misery for Virginia, and accordingly for himself, would have been avoided. To go rushing about the country with a young man,—why, how scandalous at her age. And the punishment for this, the accident that had so evidently happened, fell most heavily, as punishments so mysteriously often did—only one must not question God’s wisdom—on the innocent. What living thing in the whole world could be more innocent than his wife? Except the child; except the little soul of love she bore about with her beneath her heart; and that too would suffer through her suffering.
Stephen prayed. He couldn’t bear the thought of what Virginia was going to suffer. He bowed his head on his arms and prayed. Mrs. Mitcham found him like this when she came to clear away the breakfast. She was deeply sorry for him; he seemed to have been so much more attached to her mistress than one would have ever guessed.
‘You’ll feel better, sir,’ she consoled him, ‘when your breakfast has had more time.’ And she ventured to ask, ‘Was it Miss Virginia’s car bringing Mrs. Cumfrit up? I beg pardon, sir—I mean, your car? Because if so, I’ll be bound she’ll be safe with Smithers.’
Stephen shook his head. He could bear no questions. He could not go into the story of the motor-cycle with Mrs. Mitcham. He felt ill after his night walking about the drawing-room; his head seemed to be bursting. He got up and left the room.
He had to go to the hotel on his way to St. Jude’s to fetch his sermon. He waited till the last possible minute, still hoping that some news might come; and then, when he dared wait no longer, and Mrs. Mitcham was helping him into his coat, he told her he would come back immediately after morning service and consider what steps should be taken as to informing the police.
‘The police?’ repeated Mrs. Mitcham, much shocked. The police and her mistress. Out of her heart disappeared the last ray of optimism.
‘We must somehow find out what has happened,’ said Stephen sharply.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Mrs. Mitcham, opening the door for him.
The police and her mistress. She had a feeling that the mere putting the police on to search would make them find something dreadful,—that if nothing had happened, the moment they began to look something would have happened.
Feeling profoundly conscious of being only a weak woman in a world full of headstrong men, she opened the door for Stephen, and he, going through it without further speech, met Catherine coming out of the lift,—Catherine perfectly sound and unharmed,—and with her was Christopher.