‘Agnes—who is Agnes!’ said Mrs. Meredith. ‘O, Cara, what does it all mean? I know nothing about him—where he is. He was to come back to-day.’
‘Agnes is Agnes Burchell,’ said Cara. ‘He has been telling me of her all this time. He has been spending his whole time going after her. And she is gone too, and it is her father who is downstairs. Oh, think how we can find them! Her father is very anxious. Oswald should not have done it,’ said Cara, with the solemnity of her age. ‘I always begged him, and he always promised, to ask you to go.’
‘This is extraordinary news,’ said Mrs. Meredith, dropping into the nearest chair. She was trembling with this renewed agitation. ‘And you knew it, Cara; you have been his confidante? Oh, what a strange mistake we have all made!’
‘It was not my fault,’ said Cara, softly. She gave a furtive glance at Edward as she spoke, and his mother looked at him too. Edward’s countenance was transformed, his eyes were lit up, smiles trembling like an illumination over his face. Mrs. Meredith’s heart gave a leap in her motherly bosom. She might have been wounded that it was none of her doing; but she was too generous for so poor a thought. He will not go to India now, she said to herself in her heart. The pang which Cara had given her unwittingly was nothing to the compensation thus received from her equally unconscious hands.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE WORST SCRAPE OF ALL.
A rumour had spread in the little hamlet which had gathered about the junction, of some travellers who had missed their train. The faintest rumour echoes a long way in the quiet of the country, and as the village was chiefly formed of the cottages of railway labourers and porters, it was natural that this kind of report should travel more swiftly than anything else. Oswald and his companion walked down the still road in the soft dusk like two ghosts. In the mind of Agnes nothing less than despair was supreme. What was to become of her? Shame, disgrace, destruction, the loss of all things. How could she dare to face the wondering women in the House? Sister Mary Jane might understand her, but who else? And what comments there would be, and what talk! And home—how could she go home? To spend a night at an inn at all was something entirely strange to Agnes. But thus—all alone, and with a gentleman; one who was not related to her, of whom she could give no account or befitting explanation! A wild fancy seized her of flying from him, disappearing into some corner behind a high hedge, some nook under the trees. But this was as futile as everything else, and might be worse than anything else. She had the bondage of custom before her, though she had put herself into a position in which all her familiar habits were thrown to the winds. And yet going to the inn with Oswald was about as bad as spending a night in direful desolation in the dark corner of a field. The one was not much better than the other! If she could have got away at once, it was the field she would have chosen. She could have crept into a corner in the dark, and there waited, though she might have been frightened, till the morning broke and there was an early train. Had she but done that at once, stolen away before he could see what she was doing! But she could not disappear from his side now, at the risk of being pursued and argued with and entreated and brought back. So, with her mind in a blank of despair, not knowing what to think, she walked close by his side between the hedgerows through the soft darkness. Oh, what a punishment was this for the indiscretion of the day! It was indiscretion, perhaps, but surely the punishment was more terrible than the guilt. She drew the thick gauze veil which was attached to her bonnet over her face. What could anyone think of her—in that dress? Then there came into her mind, to increase her pain, an instant vivid realisation of what her mother would say. Mrs. Burchell would judge the very worst of any such victim of accident. ‘Why did she lose her train?’ her mother would have said. ‘Depend upon it, such things don’t happen when people take common care.’ Agnes knew how her mother would look, denouncing the unfortunate with hard eyes in which was no pity; and naturally her mother was her standard. So, no doubt, people would think—people who were respectable, who never placed themselves in embarrassing situations. They would go further, she thought, with a still more poignant touch of anguish—they would say that this is what comes of religious vagaries, of sisterhoods, of attempts at being or doing something more than other people. They would laugh and sneer, and hold her up as an example—and oh, never, never, never, could she get the better of this! it would cling to her all her life—never, never could she hold up her head again!
Oswald too was full of thought, planning in his mind how he was to carry out his intentions, his mind so overflowing with plans that he could not talk. He had been grieved to the heart by the dilemma into which his carelessness had plunged them. But now he began to recover, and a certain sensation of boyish pleasure in the escapade came stealing into his mind. He would not have acknowledged it, but still there it was. The village was a mere collection of common cottages in yellow brick, as ugly as it was possible to imagine; but the inn was an old roadside inn of past times, red, with a high-pitched roof all brown with lichen, showing the mean modernness of the others. An inquisitive landlady stood at the door watching for them, inquisitive but good-natured, the fame of their failure having travelled before them. Oswald strode on in advance when he saw the woman. ‘Good evening,’ he said, taking off his hat, which was a civility she was not used to. ‘If you are the landlady, may I speak to you? There is a young lady here who has missed her train. She is very much frightened and distressed. Can you give her a room and take care of her. It is all an accident. Can you take care of her for the night?’
‘And you too, sir?’ asked the woman.
‘Oh, never mind me. It is the young lady who is important. Yes, Miss Burchell,’ he said, going back to Agnes, ‘here is someone who will attend to you. I will not ask you to talk to me to-night,’ he added, dropping his voice, ‘but do not be surprised if you find me gone in the morning. I shall be off by the first train, and you will wait for me here. I think you will be comfortable—everything shall be settled directly.’