“Would not it be a good thing to go up to the Larches, and hear what Robert has to say on the subject,” Arthur asked, and when he was told that Robert was in London, he still held to his suggestion. “For someone else in the house may know about it,” he declared. “Rob may have confided in his mother or sister. At the worst we can get his address, and telegraph to him for information, if she has not returned before we get back. She might even have gone to the Larches herself to—to see Rosalind!”
“Peggy doesn’t like Rosalind. She never goes to see her if she can help it. I’m quite sure she has not gone there,” said Mellicent shrewdly. “It is more likely she has gone to Fräulein’s lodgings, to tell her about Arthur. She is fond of Fräulein.”
The suggestion was not very brilliant, but it was hailed with eagerness by the listeners as the most probable explanation yet offered.
“Then I’ll tell you what we will do. I’ll go off to the Larches,” cried Arthur, “and one of you fellows can see Fräulein and find out if Peggy has been there. We must try every place, likely and unlikely. It is better than sitting here doing nothing.”
Max frowned and hesitated. “Or—er—or you might go to Fräulein, and I’ll take the Larches! It is a long walk for you after your journey,” he suggested with a sudden access of politeness, “and there seems more probability that Fräulein may be able to help us. You could go there and back in a short time.”
“Just as you like, of course. It is all the same to me,” returned Arthur, in a tone which plainly intimated that it was nothing of the sort. Mrs. Asplin looked from one to the other of the flushed faces realising that even in the midst of anxiety, the image of beautiful, golden-haired Rosalind had a Will-o’-the-wisp attraction for the two big lads, but her husband saw nothing of what lay behind the commonplace words, and said calmly—
“Very well, then, Max, be off with you as fast as you can go. Find out if Robert has said anything about the work which he has had on hand; find out his address in town, and, if possible, where a telegram would reach him this evening. Arthur will call at Fräulein’s lodgings, and, Oswald, you might go with him so far, and walk through the village. Ask at old Mrs. Gilpin’s shop if Miss Saville has been there, but don’t talk about it too much; we don’t want to make more fuss than we can help. Keep your eyes open!”
The three lads departed without further delay; the Vicar put on his coat and hat preparatory to searching the garden and the lanes in the immediate neighbourhood, and the womenkind of the household settled down to an hour of painful waiting.
Mrs. Asplin lay back in her chair, with her hand to her head, now silent, now breaking out into impetuous lamentations. The fear lest any accident had happened to Peggy paralysed her with dread. Her thoughts went out to far-away India; she imagined the arrival of the ominous cablegram; pictured it carried into the house by a native servant; saw the light die out of two happy faces at the reading of the fatal words. “Oh, Peggy, Peggy,” she groaned. “Oh, the poor father—the poor mother! What will I do? What will I do? Oh, Peggy, dearie, come back! come back!”
Esther busied herself looking after a dozen little domestic arrangements, to which no one else seemed capable of attendance, and Mellicent laid her head on her mother’s lap, and never ceased crying, except for one brief interval, when she darted upstairs to peep inside the old oak chest, prompted thereto by a sudden reminiscence of the bride of the “Mistletoe Bough.” There was no Peggy inside the chest, however; only a few blankets, and a very strong smell of camphor; so Mellicent crept back to her footstool, and cried with redoubled energy. In the kitchen the fat old cook sat with a hand planted on either knee, and thrilled the other servants with an account of how “a cousin of me own brother-in-law, him that married our Annie, had a child as went a-missing, as fine a girl as you could wish to see from June to January. Beautiful, kerly ’air, for all the world like Miss Mellicent’s, and such nice ways with her! Everybody loved that child, gentle and simple. ‘Beller,’ ’er name was, after her mother. She went out unbeknownst, just as it might be Miss Peggy, and they searched and better searched”—cook’s hands waved up and down, and the heads of the listeners wagged in sympathy—“and never a trace could they find. ’Er father—he’s a stone mason by trade, and getting good money—he knocked off work, and his friends they knocked off too, and they searched the country far and wide. Day and night I tell you they searched, a week on end, and poor Isabeller nearly off her head with grief. I’ve heard my sister say as she never tasted bite or sup the whole time, and was wasted to a shadow. Eh, poor soul, it’s hard to rare up a child, and have it go out smiling and bonnie, and never see nothink of it again but its bones—for she had fallen into a lime pit, had Beller, and it was nothing but her skeleton as they brought ’ome. There was building going on around there, and she was playing near the pit—childlike—just as it might be Miss Peggy....” So on and on. The horrors accumulated with every moment. The housemaid had heard tell of a beautiful little girl, the heiress to a big estate, who had been carried off by strolling gipsies, and never been seen again by her sorrowing relations; while the waitress hinted darkly that the time might come when it would be a comfort to know force had been employed, for sharper than a serpent’s tooth was an ungrateful child, and she always had said that there was something uncanny about that little Miss Saville!