He made his way home, defiantly challenging the ideal to produce such exquisite and perfect loveliness as the real had that night presented to him.
Flora hurried to her chamber, where poor Lotte yet lay senseless. She was too ill that night to leave her bed. She was placed under the careful skill of an eminent physician, who at once declared her illness to be occasioned solely by mental distress, and treated her accordingly.
We may here mention that Mrs. Bantom grew very uneasy when nine o’clock came and Lotte had not come back, and by ten Mr. “Jeems” Bantom was dispatched in search of her, with strong injunctions not to go about his task as if he was anxious to give her into the custody of the police on a charge of petty larceny, or to act in such a way as to induce persons to believe that he was on the prowl with the view of dishonestly possessing himself of property which “wasn’t his’n,” but to proceed at once, and make his inquiries in a clear and straightforward manner.
“Jeems” Bantom fortunately possessed the address of the knave for whom Lotte had worked without obtaining her earnings, and he went there direct. He quickly found that the place was shut up, and that the proprietor had “bolted.”
“The gal’s been done out of her wages,” he said, to himself, “and is afeard to come back. She’s a hiding of herself somewheres, an’ I must find her, else she’ll be goin’ and doin’ somethen foolish. I’d keep that gal jes’ the same as I would one of my own kids, rather than any harm should come to her—that I would; ’cos I’m sure she is honest, straightfor’ard, and hard-working. Ah! I’m blessed if ever I saw anyone, woman or man, work so hard as she did over them faddle-daddies wimmen will have, without carin’ a farden how many of their own blessed sort they kills in the makin’ on ‘em. I jes’ wish I could get hold o’ that cove that got the poor gal to do all that work, and then hooked it. I’d jes’ scrag him. I’d make a korps on him, or my name ain’t Jem Bantom.”
The chances are that if Mr. Bantom had fallen in with him, at the moment, he would have kept his word, or at least have so severely trounced him that his most intimate friends would, for a lengthened period, have been unable to recognise him.
Bantom was checked at the very place where he expected to obtain information. None of the persons living near to the house where Lotte had called for her money had seen her, and he had to start off to find a clue to her as best he could. He inquired at police-stations, at hospitals, and at cab-ranks, but without gaining any tidings of her; and the night had worn away when he returned to report his ill success.
Mrs. Bantom wrung her hands.
“The poor young lonesome thing ’as drownded herself,” she cried, “all along o’ the cussed money she told me she owed us. She said she would!—she said she would.”
Poor Mrs. Bantom sobbed bitterly as she uttered the last words.