“Such things are always happening, my dear lady. He may have had to meet some man from London; he may even have had to go to London himself.”
“Dear me!” said Mrs. Dalyell, “you don’t think that’s likely? Without so much as a clean shirt! Besides, he would have sent a telegram,” she repeated, going back to the one thing of which she was sure.
“It’s the telegram you miss more than the man,” said Mr. Wedderburn with a laugh. It was very very little of a laugh. He was more miserable than she, for her anxiety was quite unmixed by any deeper sense of a possible reason for her husband’s absence. There was no reason for it, none whatever to her consciousness.
“That is just it. I want the telegram to explain the man. Of course, he might be called away. Would I have him tied to my apron-string? But a word of warning, that’s what I look for. ‘Kept by business and will not be back till the late train,’ or ‘Dining at the Lord President’s,’ or—it does not matter what it is. I am always glad that Robert should enjoy himself, so long as I have my telegram. But as it’s evident he’s not coming,” said Mrs. Dalyell, looking at her watch, “we must just take our dinner and hope he’s getting as good a one. He will be coming by the nine train.”
Mr. Wedderburn went in with very painful fancies, which he could not shake off. The moment would have come, perhaps, when Bob D’yell had to tell his family that he was a ruined man, and he would be shrinking from that stern necessity. His friend pictured him wandering about the dark streets, or sitting in the rooms above the Insurance Office, where there was space to receive on occasion a belated director, and counting up all he had—alas! would it not rather be all the debts he had—reckoning them, and asking himself how long it would be before the storm burst, and how he was to tell her, and what the poor children would do? That was what the poor fellow would be thinking, wherever he was. Instead of coming back—the good lawyer exclaimed within himself in a little attempt at anger, to keep his sympathy from becoming too heart-rending—to one that might have helped him! But that would be just like Bob D’yell—ready enough to come to you if you were in trouble, to give all his mind to what was to be done: but not if the trouble was his own: more likely then to hide himself, to think shame of it, as if misfortune was a man’s own fault. Mr. Wedderburn did not know what to do, whether to hurry into Edinburgh to make inquiries, or to wait on, and see whether he would arrive by the late train. Somehow he had very little faith that his friend would come home. He might go away, thinking, perhaps, that the creditors would be more gentle with his family if he were gone. And that would be called absconding! Heaven only could tell what in his despair the poor fellow might do.
Except suicide: there never occurred to his friend, in the endless thoughts he had on the subject, any fear of that, which to a Frenchman would be the first thing to be thought of—the natural refuge for a bankrupt. No, no!—come what might there was no need to think of that dark contingency. Besides, Mr. Wedderburn reflected, with a sense of the grim humour of the suggestion, that Dalyell, as the director of an insurance company, knew too well that such a step would take away the last resource his children might have. No, no!—not that. But he might go away. He might not be able to bear the sight of ruin as affecting them. That was what chiefly weighed upon himself—the woman and her children; the girls, who would not know what it meant; and poor Fred, who would know what it meant—who would have to abandon everything on which his heart was most set. Had Wedderburn been aware of the conversation which had taken place between Fred and his father his troubled thoughts would have been still more serious: as it was, all he could do was to keep his countenance, to look as like his ordinary as possible, not to frighten the poor things too soon.
But the dinner went over well enough. Mrs. Dalyell kept looking at the door every time it opened, though she knew it was only to admit a new dish, expecting her telegram. But it did not come. And the nine o’clock train arrived, and there was still no appearance of the master of the house. The footman was sent down to meet the train, and Wedderburn put on his coat, and said shyly that he would just take a turn and meet the truant. And the girls ran out by the terrace, and one strayed down the avenue to bring papa home. And though it was cold, Mrs. Dalyell opened one of the drawing-room windows that she might hear him coming. She was not alarmed: but she was so much surprised that it made her a little uneasy, for in all her married life such a thing had never happened to her before.
When it proved that he had not come by the nine o’clock train nobody knew what to think. By this time the telegraph-office was closed at the village, and there was no longer any hope of news that way: which, strangely enough, was a thing that rather calmed than otherwise Mrs. Dalyell’s mind.
“He must be coming by the midnight express,” she said.
“Would you like me to go in and see if there was anything the matter?” said Mr. Wedderburn.