"Missing"—"Lost"—"To—"—all the initials of the alphabet—we read these sort of advertisements in the newspapers; and unless there happens to be in them something intensely pathetic, comical, or horrible, we think very little about them. Only those who have undergone all that such an advertisement implies can understand its depth of misery1: the sudden missing of the person out of the home circle, whether going away in anger or driven away by terror or disgrace; the hour after hour and day after day of agonized2 suspense3; the self-reproach, real or imaginary, lest any thing might have been said or done that was not said or done—any thing prevented that was not prevented; the gnawing4 remorse5 for some cruel, or careless, or bitter word, that could so easily have been avoided.
Alas6! if people could only be made to feel that every word, every action carries with it the weight of an eternity7; that the merest chance may make something said or done quite unpremeditatedly, in vexation, sullenness10, or spite, the last action, the last word; which may grow into an awful remembrance, rising up between them and the irredeemable past, and blackening the future for years!
Selina was quite sure her unhappy nephew had committed suicide, and that she had been the cause of it. This conviction she impressed incessantly11 on her two sisters as they waited upon her, or sat talking by her bedside during that long Saturday, when there was nothing else to be done.
That was the misery of it. There was nothing to be done. They had not the slightest clew to Ascott's haunts or associates. With the last fingering of honest shame, or honest respect for his aunts, he had kept all these things to himself. To search for him in wide London was altogether impossible.
Two courses suggested themselves to Hilary—one, to go and consult Miss Balquidder; the other—which came into her mind from some similar case she had heard of—to set on foot inquiries12 at all police stations. But the first idea was soon rejected: only at the last extremity13 could she make patent the family misery—the family disgrace. To the second, similar and even stronger reasons applied14. There was something about the cool, matter-of-fact, business-like act of setting a detective officer to hunt out their nephew, from which these poor women recoiled16. Besides, impressed as he was—he had told his Aunt Johanna so—with the relentlessness17 of Mr. Ascott, might not the chance of his discovering that he was hunted drive him to desperation?
Hardly to suicide. Hilary steadfastly18 disbelieved in that. When Selina painted horrible pictures of his throwing himself off Waterloo Bridge: or being found hanging to a tree in one of the parks; or locking himself in a hotel bed chamber19 and blowing out his brains, her younger sister only laughed—laughed as much as she could—if only to keep Johanna quiet.
Yet she herself had few fears. For she knew that Ascott was, in a sense, too cowardly to kill himself. He so disliked physical pain, physical unpleasantness of all kinds. She felt sure he would stop short, even with the razor or the pistol in his hand, rather than do a thing so very disagreeable.
Nevertheless, in spite of herself, while she and her sisters sat together, hour after hour, in a stillness almost like that when there is a death in the house, these morbid20 terrors took a double size. Hilary ceased to treat them as ridiculous impossibilities, but began to argue them out rationally. The mere8 act of doing so made her recoil15; for it seemed an acknowledgment that she was fighting not with chimeras21 but realities.
"It is twenty-four hours since he went," she reasoned. "If he had done anything desperate he would have done it at once, and we should have heard of it long before now; ill news always travels fast. Besides, his name was marked on all his clothes in full. I did it myself. And his coat pockets were always stuffed with letters; he used to cram22 them in as soon as he got them, you know."
And at this small remembrance of one of his "ways," even though it was an unkind way, and had caused them many a pain, from the want of confidence it showed, his poor, fond aunts turned aside to hide their starting tears. The very phrase "he used to," seemed such an unconscious admission that his life with them was over and done; that he never would either please them or vex9 them any more.
Yet they took care that during the whole day every thing should be done as if he were expected minute by minute; that Elizabeth should lay the fourth knife and fork at dinner, the fourth cup and saucer at tea. Elizabeth, who throughout had faithfully kept her pledge; who went about silently and unobservantly, and by every means in her power put aside the curiosity of Mrs. Jones as to what could be the reason that her lodgers23 had sat up all night, and what on earth had become of young Mr. Leaf.
After tea, Johanna, quite worn out, consented to go to bed; and then Hilary, left to her own responsibility, set herself to consider how long this dreadful quietness was to last, whether nothing could be done. She could endure whatever was inevitable24, but it was against her nature as well as her conscience to sit down tamely to endure any thing whatsoever25 till it did become inevitable.
In the first place, she determined26 on that which a certain sense of honor, as well as the fear of vexing27 him should he come home, had hitherto prevented the examining of Ascott's room, drawers, clothes, and papers. It was a very dreary29 business—almost like doing the like to a person who was dead, only without the sad sanctity that belongs to the dead, whose very errors are forgotten and forgiven, who can neither suffer nor make others suffer any more.
Many things she found, and more she guessed at—things which stabbed her to the heart, things that she never told, not even to Johanna; but she found no clew whatever to Ascott's whereabouts, intentions, or connections. One thing, however, struck her—that most of his clothes, and all his somewhat extensive stock of jewelry30 were gone; every thing, in short, that could be convertible31 into money. It was evident that his flight, sudden as it was, had been premeditated as at least a possibility.
This so far was satisfactory. It took away the one haunting fear of his committing suicide; and made it likely that he was still lingering about, hiding from justice and Mr. Ascott, or perhaps waiting for an opportunity to escape from England—from the fear that his godfather, even if not prosecuting32 him, had the power and doubtless the will completely to crush his future, wherever he was known.
Where could he go? His Aunt tried to think over every word he had ever let fall about America, Australia, or any other place to which the hopeless outlaws33 of this country fly; but she could recollect34 nothing to enable her to form any conclusion. One thing only she was sure of—that if once he went away, his own words would come true; they would never see his face again. The last tie, the last constraint35 that bound him to home and a steady, righteous life would be broken; he would go all adrift, be tossed hither and thither37 on every wave of circumstance—what he called circumstance—till Heaven only knew what a total wreck38 he might speedily become, or in what forlorn and far off seas his ruined life might go down. He, Ascott Leaf, the last of the name and family.
"It can not be; it shall not be!" cried Hilary. A sharp, bitter cry of resistance to the death; and her heart seemed to go out to the wretched boy and her hands to clutch at him, as if he were drowning, and she were the only one to save him. How could she do it?
If she could only get at him, by word or letter! But that seemed impossible, until, turning over scheme after scheme, she suddenly thought of the one which so many people had tried in similar circumstances, and which she remembered they had talked over and laughed over, they and Ascott, one Sunday evening not so very long ago. This was—a Times advertisement.
The difficulty how to word it, so as to catch his attention and yet escape publicity39, was very great, especially as his initials were so common. Hundreds of "A. L.'s" might be wandering away from home, to whom all that she dared say to call Ascott back would equally apply. At last a bright thought struck her.
"A. leaf" (will a small l) "will be quite safe wherever found. Come.
Saturday. 15."
As she wrote it—this wretched double-entendre—she was seized with that sudden sense of the ludicrous which sometimes intrudes41 in such a ghastly fashion in the very midst of great misery. She burst into uncontrollable laughter, fit after fit; so violent that Elizabeth, who came in by chance, was terrified out of her wits, and kneeling beside her mistress, implored42 her to be quiet. At last the paroxysm ended in complete exhaustion43. The tension of the last twenty-four hours had given way, and Hilary knew her strength was gone. Yet the advertisement ought to be taken to the Times office that very night, in order to be inserted without fail on Monday morning.
There was but one person whom she could trust—Elizabeth.
She looked at the girl, who was kneeling beside the sofa, rubbing her feet, and sometimes casting a glance round, in the quiet way of one well used to nursing, who can find out how the sufferer is without "fussing" with questions. She noticed, probably because she had seen little of her of late, a curious change in Elizabeth. It must have been gradual, but yet its result had never been so apparent before. Her brusqueness had softened44 down, and there had come into her and shone out of her, spite of all her natural uncomeliness of person, that beautiful, intangible something, common alike to peasant and queen, as clear to see and as sad to miss in both—womanliness. Add............