He handed Ernestina back to the sofa from which she had sprung. An essential reason for his call, a decision he had come to on his long return, he now perceived must be left for discussion on the morrow. He sought for some way to demonstrate the correct attitude; and could find none better than that of lightly changing the subject.

“And what great happenings have taken place in Lyme today?”

As if reminded, Ernestina turned to her aunt. “Did you get news of her?” And then, before Aunt Tranter could answer, she looked up at Charles, “There has been an event. Mrs. Poulteney has dismissed Miss Woodruff.”

Charles felt his heart miss a beat. But any shock his face may have betrayed passed unnoticed in Aunt Tranter’s eagerness to tell her news: for that is why she had been absent when Charles arrived. The dismissal had apparently taken place the previous evening; the sinner had been allowed one last night under the roof of Marlborough House. Very early that same morning a porter had come to collect her box—and had been instructed to take it to the White Lion. Here Charles quite literally blanched, but Aunt Tranter allayed his fears in the very next sentence.

“That is the depot for the coaches, you know.” The Dorchester to Exeter omnibuses did not descend the steep hill to Lyme, but had to be picked up at a crossroads some four miles inland on the main road to the west. “But Mrs. Hunnicott spoke to the man. He is most positive that Miss Woodruff was not there. The maid said she had left very early at dawn, and gave only the instructions as to her box.”

“And since?”

“Not a sign.”

“You saw the vicar?”

“No, but Miss Trimble assures me he went to Marlborough House this forenoon. He was told Mrs. Poulteney was unwell. He spoke to Mrs. Fairley. All she knew was that some disgraceful matter had come to Mrs. Poulteney’s knowledge, that she was deeply shocked and upset…” The good Mrs. Tranter broke off, apparently almost as distressed at her ignorance as at Sarah’s disappearance. She sought her niece’s and Charles’s eyes. “What can it be—what can it be?”

“She ought never to have been employed at Marlborough House. It was like offering a lamb to a wolf.” Ernestina looked at Charles for confirmation of her opinion. Feeling far less calm than he looked, he turned to Aunt Tranter.

“There is no danger of…”

“That is what we all fear. The vicar has sent men to search along towards Charmouth. She walks there, on the cliffs.”

“And they have…?”

“Found nothing.”

“Did you not say she once worked for—”

“They have sent there. No word of her.”

“Grogan—has he not been called to Marlborough House?” He skillfully made use of his introduction of the name, turning to Ernestina. “That evening when we took grog—he mentioned her. I know he is concerned for her situation.”

“Miss Trimble saw him talking with the vicar at seven o’clock. She said he looked most agitated. Angry. That was her word.” Miss Trimble kept a ladies’ trinket shop at the bottom of Broad Street—and was therefore admirably placed to be the general information center of the town. Aunt Tranter’s gentle face achieved the impossible—and looked harshly severe. “I shall not call on Mrs. Poulteney, however ill she is.”

Ernestina covered her face in her hands. “Oh, what a cruel day it’s been!”

Charles stared down at the two ladies. “Perhaps I should call on Grogan.”

“Oh Charles—what can you do? There are men enough to search.”

That, of course, had not been in Charles’s mind. He guessed that Sarah’s dismissal was not unconnected with her wanderings in the Undercliff—and his horror, of course, was that she might have been seen there with him. He stood in an agony of indecision. It became imperative to discover how much was publicly known about the reason for her dismissal. He suddenly found the atmosphere of the little sitting room claustrophobic. He had to be alone. He had to consider what to do. For if Sarah was still living—but who could tell what wild decision she might have made in her night of despair, while he was quietly sleeping in his Exeter hotel?—but if she still breathed, he guessed where she was; and it oppressed him like a shroud that he was the only person in Lyme to know. And yet dared not reveal his knowledge.

A few minutes later he was striding down the hill to the White Lion. The air was mild, but the sky was overcast. Idle fingers of wet air brushed his cheeks. There was thunder in the offing, as in his heart.

25

It was his immediate intention to send Sam with a message for the Irish doctor. He phrased it to himself as he walked—“Mrs. Tranter is deeply concerned”… “If any expense should be incurred in forming a search party”… or better, “If I can be of any assistance, financial or otherwise”—such sentences floated through his head. He called to the undeaf ostler as he entered the hotel to fetch Sam out of the taproom and send him upstairs. But he no sooner entered his sitting room when he received his third shock of that eventful day.

A note lay on the round table. It was sealed with black wax. The writing was unfamiliar: Mr. Smithson, at the White Lion. He tore the folded sheet open. There was no heading, no signature.

Charles read the note twice, three times; then stared out at the dark air. He felt infuriated that she should so carelessly risk his reputation; relieved at this evidence that she was still alive; and outraged again at the threat implicit in that last sentence. Sam came into the room, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief, an unsubtle hint that he had been interrupted at his supper. As his lunch had consisted of a bottle of ginger beer and three stale Abernethy biscuits, he may be forgiven. But he saw at a glance that his master was in no better a mood than he had been ever since leaving Winsyatt.

“Go down and find out who left me this note.”

“Yes, Mr. Charles.”

Sam left, but he had not gone six steps before Charles was at the door. “Ask whoever took it in to come up.”

“Yes, Mr. Charles.”

The master went back into his room; and there entered his mind a brief image of that ancient disaster he had found recorded in the blue lias and brought back to Ernestina—the ammonites caught in some recession of water, a micro-catastrophe of ninety million years ago. In a vivid insight, a flash of black lightning, he saw that all life was parallel: that evolution was not vertical, ascending to a perfection, but horizontal. Time was the great fallacy; existence was without history, was always now, was always this being caught in the same fiendish machine. All those painted screens erected by man to shut out reality—history, religion, duty, social position, all were illusions, mere opium fantasies.

He turned as Sam came through the door with the same ostler Charles had just spoken to. A boy had brought the note. At ten o’clock that morning. The ostler knew the boy’s face, but not his name. No, he had not said who the sender was. Charles impatiently dismissed him; and then as impatiently asked Sam what he found to stare at.

“Wasn’t starin’ at nuffin’, Mr. Charles.”

“Very well. Tell them to send me up some supper. Anything, anything.”

“Yes, Mr. Charles.”

“And I do not want to be disturbed again. You may lay out my things now.”

Sam went into the bedroom next to the sitting room, while Charles stood at the window. As he looked down, he saw in the light from the inn windows a small boy run up the far side of the street, then cross the cobbles below his own window and go out of sight. He nearly threw up the sash and called out, so sharp was his intuition that this was the messenger again. He stood in a fever of embarrassment. There was a long enough pause for him to begin to believe that he was wrong. Sam appeared from the bedroom and made his way to the door out. But then there was a knock. Sam opened the door.