he gone to bed?”
“That’s what I want to know. I haven’t seen him lately.”
Everyone, except Johnnie Orgreave and a Swetnam or so, was preoccupied by the thought of children, by the thought of this incalculable and disturbing race that with different standards and ideals lived so mysteriously in and among their adult selves. Nothing was said about the strange disappearance of Bert Benbow, but each woman had it in mind, and coupled it with Hilda’s sudden apprehension concerning George, and imagined weird connections between the one and the other, and felt forebodings about children nearer to her own heart. Children dominated the assemblage and, made restless, the assemblage collectively felt that the moment for separation approached. The At Home was practically over.
Hilda rang the bell, and as she did so Johnnie Orgreave winked dangerously at Edwin, who with sternness responded. He wondered why he should thus deceive his wife, with whom he was so deliciously intimate. He thought also that women were capricious in their anxieties, and yet now and then their moods—once more by the favour of hazard—displayed a marvellous appositeness. Hilda had no reason whatever for worrying more about George on this night than on any other night. Nevertheless this night happened to be the night on which anxiety would be justified.
“Ada,” said Hilda to the entering servant. “Have you seen Master George?”
“No’m,” Ada replied, almost defiantly.
“When did you see him last?”
“I don’t remember, m’m.”
“Is he in bed?”
“I don’t know, m’m.”
“Just go and see, will you?”
“Yes’m.”
The company waited with gentle, concealed excitement for the returning Ada, who announced:
“His bedroom door’s locked, m’m.”
“He will lock it sometimes, although I’ve positively forbidden him to. But what are you to do?” said Hilda, smilingly to the other mothers.
“Take the key away, obviously,” Tertius Ingpen answered the question, turning quickly and interrupting his chat with Janet Orgreave.
“That ought not to be necessary,” said Fearns, as an expert father.
Ada departed, thankful to be finished with the ordeal of cross-examination in a full drawing-room.
“Don’t you know anything about him?” Hilda addressed Johnnie Orgreave suddenly.
“Me? About your precious? No. Why should I know?”
“Because you’re getting such friends, you two.”
“Oh! Are we?” Johnnie said carelessly. Nevertheless he was flattered by a certain nascent admiration on the part of George, which was then beginning to be noticeable.
A quarter of an hour later, when several guests had gone, Hilda murmured to Edwin:
“I’m not easy about that boy. I’ll just run upstairs.”
“I shouldn’t,” said Edwin.
But she did. And the distant sound of knocking, and “George, George,” could be heard even down in the hall.
“I can’t wake him,” said Hilda, back in the drawing-room.
“What do you want to wake him for, foolish girl?” Edwin demanded.
She enjoyed being called “foolish girl,” but she was not to be tranquillised.
“Do you think he is in bed?” she questioned, before the whole remaining company, and the dread suspicion was out!
After more journeys upstairs, and more bangings, and essays with keys, and even attempts at lock-picking, Hilda announced that George’s room must be besieged from its window. A ladder was found, and interested visitors went into the back-entry, by the kitchen, to see it reared and hear the result. Edwin thought that the cook in the kitchen looked as guilty as he himself felt, though she more than once asseverated her belief that Master George was safely in bed. The ladder was too short. Edwin mounted it, and tried to prise himself on to the window-sill, but could not.
“Here, let me try!” said Ingpen, joyous.
Ingpen easily succeeded. He glanced through the open window into George’s bedroom, and then looked down at the upturned faces, and Ada’s apron, whitely visible in the gloom.
“He’s here all right.”
“Oh, good!” said Hilda. “Is he asleep?”
“Yes.”
“He deserves to be wakened,” she laughed.
“You see what a foolish girl you’ve been,” said Edwin affectionately.
“Never mind!” she retorted. “You couldn’t get on the window. And you were just as upset as anybody. Do you think I don’t know? Thank you, Mr. Ingpen.”
“Is he really there?” Edwin whispered to Ingpen as soon as he could.
“Yes. And asleep, too!”
“I wonder how the deuce he slipped in. I’ll bet anything those servants have been telling a lot of lies for him. He pulls their hair down and simply does what he likes with them.”
Edwin was now greatly reassured, but he could not quite recover from the glimpse he had had of George’s capacity for leading a double life. Sardonically he speculated whether the heavenly penknife would be brought to his notice by its owner, and if so by what ingenious method.
iii
The final sensation was caused by the arrival, in a nearly empty drawing-room, of plump Maggie, nervous, constrained, and somewhat breathless.
“Bert has turned up,” she said. “Clara thought I’d better come along and tell you. She felt sure you’d like to know.”
“Well, that’s all right then,” Hilda replied perfunctorily, indicating that Clara’s conceited assumption of a universal interest in her dull children was ridiculous.
Edwin asked:
“Did the kid say where he’d been?”
“Been running about the streets. They don’t know what’s come over him—because, you see, he’d actually gone to bed once. Albert is quite puzzled; but he says he’ll have it out of him before he’s done.”
“When he does get it out of him,” thought Edwin again, “there will be a family row and George will be indicted as the corrupter of innocence.”
Maggie would not stay a single moment. Hilda attentively accompanied her to the
