THE PLAN EXTENDS ITSELF.
For three or four days Elsie lay at the Relfs’ lodgings at Lowestoft, seriously ill, but slowly improving; and all the -time, Mrs. Relf and Edie watched over her tenderly with unceasing solicitude, as though she had been their own daughter and sister. Elsie’s heart was torn every moment by a devouring desire to know what Hugh had done, what Hugh was doing, what they had all said and thought about her at Whitestrand. She never said so directly to the Relfs, of course; she couldn’t bring herself yet to speak of it to anybody; but Edie perceived it intuitively from her silence and her words; and after a time, she mentioned the matter in sisterly confidence to her brother Warren. They had both looked in the local papers for some account of the accident if accident it were and saw, to their surprise, that no note was taken anywhere of Elsie’s sudden disappearance.
This was curious, not to say ominous; for in most English country villages a young lady cannot vanish into space on a summer evening, especially by flinging herself bodily into the sea as Warren Relf did not doubt for a second Elsie had done in the momentary desperation of a terrible awakening without exciting some sort of local curiosity as to where she has gone or what has become of the body. We cannot emulate the calm social atmosphere of the Bagdad of the Califs, where a mysterious disappearance on an enchanted carpet aroused but the faintest and most languid passing interest in the breasts of the bystanders. With us, the enchanted carpet explanation has fallen out of date, and mysterious disappearances, however remarkable, form a subject rather of prosaic and prying inquiry on the part of those commonplace and unromantic myrmidons, the county constabulary.
So the strange absence of any allusion in the Whitestrand news to what must needs have formed a nine days’ wonder in the quiet little village, quickened all Warren Relfs profoundest suspicions as to Hugh’s procedure.
At Whitestrand, all they could possibly know was that Miss Challoner was missing perhaps even that Miss Challoner had drowned herself. Why should it all be so unaccountably burked, so strangely hushed up in the local newspapers? Why should no report be divulged anywhere? Why should nobody even hint in the “Lowestoft Times” or the “Ipswich Chronicle” that a young lady, of considerable personal attractions, was unaccountably missing from the family of a well-known Suffolk landowner?
Already on the very day after his return to Lowestoft, Warren Relf had hastily telegraphed to Hugh Massinger at Whitestrand that he was detained in the Broads, and would be unable to carry out his long-standing engagement to take him round in the “Mud-Turtle” to London. But as time went on, and no news came from Massinger, Warren Relf’s suspicions deepened daily. It was clear that Elsie, too, was lingering in her convalescence from suspense and uncertainty. She couldn’t make up her mind to write either to Hugh or Winifred, and yet she couldn’t bear the long state of doubt which silence entailed upon her. So at last, to set to rest their joint fears, and to make sure what was really being said and done and thought at Whitestrand, Warren Relf determined to run over quietly for an afternoon’s inquiry, and to hear with his own ears how people were talking about the topic of the hour in the little village.
He never got there, however. At Almundham Station, to his great surprise, he ran suddenly against Mr. Wyville Meysey. The Squire recognized him at a glance as the young man who had taken them in his yawl to the sandhills, and began to talk to him freely at once about all that had since happened in the family. But Relf was even more astonished when he found’ that the subject which lay uppermost in Mr. Meysey’s mind just then was not Elsie Challoner’s mysterious disappearance at all, but his daughter Winifred’s recent engagement to Hugh Massinger. The painter was still some years too young to have mastered the profound anthropological truth that, even with the best of us, man is always a self-centered being.
“Well, yes,” the Squire said, after a few commonplaces of conversation had been interchanged between them. “You haven’t heard, then, from your friend Massinger lately, haven’t you? I’m surprised at that. He had something out of the common to communicate. I should have thought he’d have been anxious to let you know at once that he and my girl Winifred had hit things off amicably together. Oh yes, it’s announced, definitely announced: Society is aware of it. Mrs. Meysey made it known to the county, so to speak, at Sir Theodore Sheepshanks’ on Wednesday evening. Your friend Massinger is not perhaps quite the precise man we might have selected ourselves for Winifred, if we’d taken the choice into our own hands: but what I say is, let the young people settle these things themselves let the young people settle them between them. It’s they who’ve got to live with one another, after all, not we; and they’re a great deal more interested in it at bottom, when one comes to think of it, than the whole of the rest of us put together.”
“And Miss Challoner?” Warren asked, as soon as he could edge in a word conveniently, after the Squire had dealt from many points of view all equally prosy with Hugh Massinger’s position, character, and prospects “is she still with you? I’m greatly interested in her. She made an immense impression on me that day in the sandhills.”
The Squire’s face fell somewhat. “Miss Challoner?” he echoed. “Ah, yes; our governess. Well, to tell you the truth if you ask me point-blank Miss Challoner’s gone off a little suddenly. We’ve been disappointed in that girl, if you will have it. We don’t want it talked about in the neighbourhood more than we can help, on Hugh Massinger’s account, more than anything else, because, after all, she was a sort of a cousin of his a sort of a cousin, though a very remote one; as we learn now, an extremely remote one. We’ve asked the servants to hush it all up as much as they can, to prevent gossip; for my daughter’s sake, we’d like to avoid gossip; but I don’t mind telling you, in strict confidence, as you’re a friend of Massinger’s, that Miss Challoner left us, we all think, in a most unkind and ungrateful manner. It fell upon us like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. She wrote a letter to Winifred the day before to say she was leaving for parts unknown, without grounds stated. She -slipped away, like a thief in the night, as the proverb says, taking just a small handbag with her, one dark evening; and the only other communication we’ve since received is a telegram from London sent to Hugh Massinger asking us, in the most mysterious, romantic school-girlish style, to forward her luggage and belongings to an address given.”
“A telegram from London!” Warren Relf cried in blank surprise. “Do you think Miss Challoner’s in London, then? That’s very remarkable. A telegram to Massinger! asking you to send her luggage on to London! You’re quite sure it came from London, are you?”
“Quite sure! Why, I’ve got it in my pocket this very moment, my dear sir,” the Squire replied somewhat testily. “When an elder man says “My dear sir” to a very much younger one, you may take it for granted he always means to mark his strong disapprobation of the particular turn the talk has taken.) “Here it is look: To Hugh Massinger, Fisherman’s Rest, Whitestrand, Suffolk. Ask Winifred to send the rest of my luggage and property to 27, Holmbury Place, Duke Street, St. James’. Explanations by post hereafter. Elsie Challoner.’ And here’s the letter she wrote to Winifred: a very disappointing, disheartening letter. I’d like you to read it, as you seem interested in the girl. It’s an immense mistake ever to be interested in anybody anywhere! A very bad lot, after all, I’m afraid; though she’s clever, of course, undeniably clever. We had her with the best credentials, too, from Girton. We’re only too thankful now to think she should have associated for so very short a time with my daughter Winifred.”
Warren Relf took the letter and telegram from the Squire’s hand in speechless astonishment. This was evidently a plot a dark and extraordinary plot of Massinger’s. Just at first he could hardly unravel its curious intricacies. He knew the address in Holmbury Place well; it was where the club porter of the Cheyne Row lived. But he read the letter with utter bewilderment.
Then the whole truth dawned piecemeal upon his astonished mind as he read it over and over slowly. It was all a lie a hideous, hateful lie. Hugh Massinger believed that Elsie was drowned. He had forged the letter to Winifred to cover the truth, and, incredible as it seemed to a straightforward, honest nature like Warren Relf’s, he had managed to get the telegram sent from London by some other person, in Elsie’s name, and to have Elsie’s belongings forwarded direct to the club porter’s, as if at her own request, by Miss Meysey. Warren Relf stood aghast with horror at this unexpected revelation of Massinger’s utter baseness and extraordinary cunning. He had suspected the man of heartlessness and levity; he had never suspected him of anything like so profound a capacity for serious crime for forgery and theft and concealment of evidence.
His fingers trembled as he held and examined the two documents. At all hazards, he must show them to Miss Challoner. It was right she should know herself for exactly what manner of man she had thrown herself away. He hesitated a moment, then he said boldly: “These papers are very important to me, as casting light on the whole matter. I’m an acquaintance of Massinger’s, and I’m deeply interested in the young lady. It’s highly desirable she should be traced and looked after. I have some reason to suspect where she is at present I want to ask a favor of you now. Will you lend me these documents, for three days only, and will you kindly mention to nobody at present the fact of your having seen me or spoken to me here this morning?” To gain time at least was always something.
The Squire was somewhat taken aback at first by this unexpected request; but Warren Relf looked so honest and true as he asked it, that, after a few words of hesitation and explanation, the Squire, convinced of his friendly intentions, acceded to both his propositions at once. It flashed across his mind as a possible solution that the painter had been pestering Elsie with too-pressing attentions, and that Elsie, with hysterical girlish haste, had run away from him to escape them or perhaps only to make him follow her. Anyhow, there would be no great harm in his tracking her down. “If the girl’s in trouble, and you think you can help her,” he said good-naturedly, “I don’t mind giving you what assistance I can in this matter. You can have the papers. Send them back next week or the week after. I’m going to Scotland for a fortnight’s shooting now at Farquharson’s of Invertanar and I shan’t be back till the 10th or 11th. But I’m glad somebody has some idea where the girl is. As it seems to be confidential, I’ll ask no questions at present about her; but I do hope she hasn’t got into any serious mischief.”
“She has got into no mischief at all of any sort,” Warren Relf answered slowly and seriously. “You are evidently laboring under a complete misapprehension, Mr. Meysey, as to her reasons for leaving you. I have no doubt that misapprehension will be cleared up in time. Miss Challoner’s motives, I can assure you, were perfectly right and proper; only the action of another person has led you to mistake her conduct in the matter.”
This was mysterious, and the Squire hated mystery; but after all, it favored his theory and besides, the matter was to him a relatively unimportant one. It didn’t concern his own private interest. He merely suspected Warren Relf of having got himself mixed up in some foolish love affair with Elsie Challoner, his daughter’s governess, and he vaguely conceived that one or other of them had taken a very remarkable and romantic way of wriggling out of it. Moreover, at that precise moment his train came in; and since time and train wait for no man, the Squire, with a hasty farewell to the young painter, installed himself forthwith on the comfortable cushions of a first-class carriage, and steamed unconcernedly out of Almundham Station.
It was useless for Warren Relf now to go on to Whitestrand. To show himself there would be merely to display his hand openly before Hugh Massinger. The caprice of circumstances had settled everything for him exactly as he would have wished it. It was lucky indeed that’ the Squire would be away for a whole fortnight; his absence would give them time to concert a connected plan of action, and to devise means for protecting Elsie. For to Warren Relf that was now the one great problem in the case how to hush the whole matter up, without exposing Elsie’s wounded heart to daws and jays without making her the matter of unnecessary suspicion, or the subject of common gossip and censorious chatter. At all costs, it must never be said that Miss Challoner had tried to drown herself in spite and jealousy at Whitestrand poplar, because Hugh Massinger had ventured to propose to Winifred Meysey.
That was how the daws and jays would put it, after their odious kind, over the five o’clock tea, in their demure drawing-rooms.
What Elsie herself would say to it all, or think of doing in these difficult circumstances, Warren Relf did not in the least know. As yet, he was only very imperfectly informed as to the real state of the case in all its minor details. But he knew this much that he must screen Elsie at all hazards from the slanderous tongues of five o’clock tea-tables, and that the story must be kept as quiet as possible, safeguarded by himself, his mother, and his sister.
So he took the next train back to Lowestoft, to consult at leisure on these new proofs of Hugh Massinger’s guilt with his domestic counselors.