Quickly at that Mary’s feelings underwent a change. As if she had stood already beside her uncle’s grave, sorrow took the place of perplexity. His past kindness dragged at her heart-strings. She forgot that she had never been able to love him, she forgot that behind the man whom she had known she had been ever conscious of another being, vague, shifting, inhuman. She remembered only the help he had given, the home he had offered, the rare hours of sympathy. “Don’t, Toft, don’t!” she cried, tears in her voice. She touched the man on the shoulder. “Don’t give up hope!”
As for Mrs. Toft, surprise silenced her. When she found her voice, “Well,” she said, looking round her with a sort of pride, “who’ll say after this that Toft’s a hard man? Why, if the Master was lying on that bed ready for burial—and we’re some way off that, the Lord be thanked!—he couldn’t carry on more! But there, let’s look now, and weep afterwards! Pull yourself together, Toft, or who’s the young lady to depend on? If you take my advice, Miss,” she continued, “we’ll get out of this room. It always did give me the fantods with them Egyptians staring at me from the walls, and to-day it’s worse than a hearse! Now downstairs——”
“You are quite right, Mrs. Toft,” Mary said. “We’ll go downstairs.” She shared to the full Mrs. Toft’s distaste for the room. “We’re doing no good here, and your husband can follow us when he is himself again. Petch should be back by this time, and we ought to arrange what is to be done outside.”
Toft made no demur, and they went down. They found the keeper waiting in the hall. He had made no discovery, and Mary, to whom Toft’s breakdown had given fresh energy, took things into her own hands. She gave Petch his orders. He must get together a dozen men, and search the park and every place within a mile of the Gatehouse. He must report by messenger every two hours to the house, and in the meantime he must send a man on horseback to the town for Dr. Pepper.
“And Mr. Basset?” Mrs. Toft murmured.
“I will write a note to Mr. Basset,” Mary said, “and the man must send it by post-horses from the Audley Arms. I will write it now.” She sat down in the library, cold as the room was, and scrawled three lines, telling Basset that her uncle had disappeared during the night, and that, ill as he was, she feared the worst.
Then, when Petch had gone to get his men together—a task which would take time as there were no farms at hand—she and Mrs. Toft searched the house room by room, while Etruria and her father went again through the outbuildings. But the quest was as fruitless as the former search had been.
Mary had known many unhappy days in Paris, days of anxiety, of loneliness, of apprehension, when she had doubted where she would lodge or what she would eat for her next meal. Now she had a source of strength in her engagement and her love, which should have been inexhaustible. But she never forgot the misery of this day, nor ever looked back on it without a shudder. Probably there were moments when she sat down, when she took a tasty meal, when she sought Mrs. Toft in her warm kitchen or talked with Etruria before her own fire. But as she remembered the day, she spent the long hours gazing across the wintry park; now catching a glimpse of the line of beaters as it appeared for a moment crossing a glade, now watching the approach of the messenger who came to tell her that they had found nothing; or again straining her eyes for the arrival of Dr. Pepper, who, had she known it, was at the deathbed of an old patient, ten miles on the farther side of Riddsley.
Now and again a hailstorm swept across the park, and Mrs. Toft came out and scolded her into shelter; or a farmer, whose men had been borrowed, “happened that way,” and after a gruff question touched his hat and went off to join the searchers. Once a distant cry seemed to herald a discovery, and she tried to steady her leaping pulses. But nothing came of it except some minutes of anxiety. And once her waiting ear caught the clang of the bell that hung in the hall and she flew through the house to the front door, only to learn that the visitor was the carrier who three times a week called for letters on his way to town. The dreary house with its open doors, its cold draughts, its unusual aspect, the hurried meals, the furtive glances, the hours of suspense and fear—these stamped the day for ever on Mary’s memory: as sometimes an hour of loneliness prints itself on the mind of a child who all his life long hears with distaste the clash of wedding bells.
At length the wintry day with its gusts of snow began to draw in. Before four Petch sent in to say that he had beaten the park and also the gardens at the Great House, but had found nothing. Half his men were now searching the slope on either side of the Riddsley road. With the other half he was going to explore, while the light lasted, the fringe of the Chase towards Brown Heath.