“He is not there, Mrs. Joscelyn; but I hope soon to hear news of him,” he said deprecating, as if it had been his fault--which was not the satisfactory position he had hoped to hold in coming back.
And then the fact had to be faced in all its simplicity. Harry had disappeared. The firm could throw no light on the question. They did not know where he had gone, nor why he had gone. He had gone honourably, that was all, had got payment of the salary which was due to him, and had settled various little debts which he was owing. Nobody knew anything of larger liabilities, if he had them. He was gone absolutely, without leaving a trace behind. His employers were surprised by the inquiries, not giving much importance as yet to the fact that he had exceeded his time of leave; but they could give no information, and satisfy no anxiety. He was gone, that was all about it. The whole tale was written in Selby’s face to the two anxious women who had awaited him with so much hope.
All great evils are more intolerable, more terrible, before than after they come. It seems to us in advance as if the mind could never accustom itself to such a change, or life close over the wound. And yet, when but a very short time has elapsed, we find that obedient Nature has accepted and acknowledged the inevitable fact, and that use and wont, so rent asunder by the change, have begun to throw new fibres of their cobweb tissue over the chasm. There was a moment when poor Mrs. Joscelyn thought that she could not bear this rending asunder. She turned her face to the wall and closed her eyes, and declared that she could not endure the light. She lay thus for weeks, but not in any stupor; on the contrary, with every sense alert, and all standing sentinel, hearing Harry’s step in every sound outside, and divining him in every whisper of the wind. She had no objection to the detective now, but was kept alive from morning to morning by the news which Selby brought her, scraps of news entirely delusive, but which kept a fire of agitation and expectation alive in her heart. Selby spent a great deal of money upon the detective with little use, an expense which neither Joan nor her mother divined or thought of. To them he had said at first that he had left a “friend” on the spot to pursue the inquiry, and they had not doubted his statement. But by-and-by there came a time when the expenditure seemed to him no longer necessary. He was not rich, although he was sufficiently well-off, and it was doing no good, neither in respect to Harry nor to Joan, who was short and sharp with him in her angry grief, and seemed almost to blame him for the catastrophe altogether; and, indeed, Joan was unreasonably sharp. She could not help asking within herself what was the good of a man if he could not do as much as this? She felt sure that if she had gone herself she must have discovered something; and she began to get sick of the sight of Selby coming up to the White House morning after morning with his no news. It provoked her entirely without reason; his long face provoked her. If he would but stay away and hold his tongue when he could do no good! She was all the more unjust to him, perhaps, that she had secretly built upon his success almost as much as he himself had done, and had felt that it would justify anything that might follow out of gratitude for such a service. But the service had not been accomplished, though it had cost more trouble and expenditure of one sort and another than if it had been successfully done, and not only was Joan very miserable about her brother, but she was thrown out altogether in respect to the suitor, who had, she grudgingly allowed to herself, established a certain claim upon her by his efforts, even though he had not been successful. She was very difficult to get on with, all the household acknowledged, at this period. A lover might well have been alarmed had he heard her voice lifted high in the dairy, and in the house, setting everything in order. Woe to the maid who neglected her work in these days, or the man either. Joan came upon them like a thunderstorm; there were times when Selby, stalking up to the house with his bulletin, heard her and trembled. If this was how she was going to be, would it not be wiser in a lover to give up such a dangerous pursuit? But though it gave him a cold shiver he persevered, and took her sharpness gently, and bore with her unreason, having a soul above his judgment.