The Good Comrade

by Una L. Silberrad

His account of the Captain's vanishing was much obscured by self-condemnation and anxiety, still she managed to make it out and she did not at first think so very seriously of it. She concluded from it that her father had succeeded in getting at his whisky and Johnny had failed to prevent him or find out the whereabouts of the store—a not very astonishing occurrence. The fact that the Captain had not returned or shown himself for so long was surprising and to be regretted, seeing the badness of the weather. But it was not inexplicable; he might be anxious to demonstrate his freedom, or, by frightening them, to pay them out for the watch lately kept on him; or—and this was the one serious aspect of the matter—he might have taken more of the spirit than he could stand in his weak state and be too stupid and muddled to come back alone. Julia reassured Johnny as well as she could, and then, accompanied by him, set to work to search thoroughly the house, garden and out-buildings.

It was dinner time before they had finished. Julia came to the doorway of the bulb shed uneasy and perplexed. "It is clear he is not here," she said, and turned to fasten the door. A gust of wind tore it from her hand, flinging it back noisily. She caught it again and secured it. "It is dinner time," she said; "come along indoors, there is no reason why you should go hungry because father chooses to."

Johnny followed her to the house. When they were indoors he said, "Do you think—you don't think he has had an attack?—that he is lying unconscious somewhere?" That was precisely what Julia was beginning to think; there seemed no other possible explanation. Johnny read her mind in her face and was overwhelmed with the sense of his own shortcomings and their possible consequences.

"It is not your fault," Julia assured him; "you might as well say it is father's for being so foolish and obstinate about his whisky—a great deal better and more truly say it is mine for leaving you, and for driving him into this corner, for not having managed the whole thing better."

Johnny, though a little relieved that she did not think him to blame, was not comforted. "Let us go and find him," he said; "we must find him; never mind about dinner—we must go and look for him—though I don't know where."

"We must look beyond the garden," Julia said; "he must have got further than we first thought—but I don't see how he can be far in this weather. Cut some cheese and bread; we can eat it as we go along."

In a little while they set out together, Julia taking restoratives with her, though she was also careful to leave some on the kitchen-table in case Captain Polkington should make his way back and feel in need of them in her absence. Outside the garden wall one felt the force of the wind more fully, and realised how impossible it was that the Captain should have gone far. Julia stood a moment by the gate. Before her lay the road to Halgrave; her father might have gone down it a little way; but if he had he must have turned off and sought concealment somewhere for she had seen no sign of any one when she came home. To the left stretched the heath-land, brown and bare, to the belt of wildly tossing pines; it was hard to imagine her father choosing that way. To the right lay the sandhills, a place of unsteady outline, earth and sky alike pale and blurred as the north-west wind fled seawards, lifting and whirling the fine particles till the air seemed full of them; it was impossible to think of any one choosing that way.

"We will go down the road to begin with," Julia said, and started.

All through the early part of the afternoon they searched; sometimes stopped for a moment by a gust of wind; Julia caught and whirled, Johnny brought to a panting standstill. But on again directly, struggling down the road, looking in ditches and behind scant bushes, leaving the track first on the right hand then on the left, searching in likely and unlikely places. But always with the same result, there was no sign of the missing man. At last, when they had reached a greater distance than it was possible to imagine the Captain could have gone, they turned towards the house across the heath. It was difficult to think of the Captain going that way, seeing he would have been walking in the teeth of the wind, but it almost seemed he must have done it.

The short day was already beginning to close in when they reached the belt of pines. It had grown much colder; one could almost believe there would be frost in the air by and by. The wind was lulling a little; it still roared with strange rushings and half-demented tearings at the tree-tops, almost like some great spirit prisoned there, but it had spent its first strength. The rain clouds were going, too; already in places the sky was swept clear so that a pale light gleamed behind the trees.