It was barely a minute before Mr. Langley had stopped and was calling her by name.
“Why Miss Lorraine, is it indeed you?” he cried, surprised to see the girl out alone after dark. He bade her come back as far as the Smiths’ with him that he might get their horse and drive her back to Miss Penny’s, giving her no opportunity to refuse.
They were hardly in the carriage when Alice turned to the minister.
“Mr. Langley, I heard lately of a man returning to his birthplace after years of absence longing to find out all about the friends of his boyhood and to see them if he could do it secretly. How would you account for such a thing?”
Though Mr. Langley was quite accustomed to being bombarded with odd questions, sometimes hypothetical, sometimes otherwise, he hesitated now. He could not say to this girl whose father was in prison that the obvious solution of her problem was that the man had committed a crime and was a fugitive from justice or was ashamed of his record. But before the pause became awkward an happy suggestion came to his mind.
“Well, it might be another case of Enoch Arden,” he said. “This man might have been missing for so long that he had been taken for dead. That used to be very common in sea-faring places and among sea-faring people. His wife or sweet-heart may have married another. Or I can imagine a man being unwilling to make himself known when relatives have come into possession of his more material property.”
Alice’s heart leaped. She remembered Enoch Arden only vaguely, but enough to feel a thrill at her heart at the thought of re-reading it in her bed that night. There was a copy of Tennyson’s complete poems in the book-case of the room she occupied—which was Reuben’s old room.
The Smiths’ horse was a fine, strong creature which did not get sufficient exercise, but he didn’t fancy starting out just at supper time any more than Miss Penny’s fat pony, and he showed his reluctance plainly. It came to Alice that this was her chance to find out more of Richard Cartwright. She had said she would seize her first opportunity. Besides, Mr. Converse had spoken slightingly of him. It wouldn’t be bad to have Mr. Langley’s own word as to his respect and admiration for the dead genius.
“O Mr. Langley, I have—well living in the cottage where he lived I suppose it is natural for me to wonder about Mr. Cartwright,” she observed. “But—no one seems to have anything to say about him. Of course, he can’t be forgotten?”
“His son has rather overshadowed Cartwright’s memory,” Mr. Langley remarked quietly.