CHAPTER VIII

It was at this point in her meditations that Prendergast moved. He wanted attention and at last he received it. Miss Strickland made up the fire and brought him a little warm milk with a dash of brandy in it. Prendergast responded to the stimulant and began to wander restlessly about the room. He could not make up his mind what he wanted. He moved about vaguely and stiffly as one who is practising the art of walking. His desires broke in him; and Miss Strickland, with a divine patience gratified in turn and without hurry, each of his passing fancies.

No one who knew Onoria Strickland as she was to the world, to her pupils, or even to her friends, could have believed in this tender, ministering Onoria, carrying out with anxious solicitude the whims of an old dog.

She did not leave Prendergast till he had finally decided on a return to his basket. When his feeble snores told her that he was at rest, she groped her way to the mantelpiece for matches, and tidied herself for going out once more.

Miss Strickland had never in her life looked untidy and she was not going to begin now.

She had decided to make an appeal to Elsie’s parents.

Hitherto she had considered parents unreasonable and obstructive people who paid the piper and considered themselves entitled to call for inappropriate tunes.

Miss Bretherton and Miss Strickland together railed and laughed in turn at the delinquencies of parents—their ineffectual hankerings, their odd explosions of indignation and their ineradicable faith in the production of figs from thistles.

None of them knew what their children were really like, and all of them thought they did. Nevertheless, Providence had provided parents with a little brief authority, and there were moments when it came in very usefully.

It had flashed through Onoria’s mind, at the first instant when she saw her will defied by the truant couple, that perhaps Mrs. Andrews might be able to do something with Elsie.

Miss Strickland did not know the Andrewses very well. She often said that they were like glass to her and that she could read them like a book; but Mrs. Andrews only came to tea with Miss Strickland once a year; and Miss Strickland returned her call within a fortnight.

She had met Mr. Andrews twice, and they had had on both these occasions acrimonious disputes on politics.

Mr. Andrews described Miss Strickland as a “strong-minded female for whom he had no manner of use,” and Miss Strickland said Mr. Andrews was “nothing but a hen-headed old grocer.”

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were eating their supper when Miss Strickland was announced.

They were not surprised that Elsie was late as they neither of them knew how long oratorios lasted; but they were frightened when they saw that Miss Strickland was alone.

Mrs. Andrews exclaimed at once, “Where’s Elsie? Has she been run over?” and Mr. Andrews said, “Nonsense, Mother! Of course not. Where _is_ the child, Miss Strickland? We hold you responsible you know! We hold you _strictly_ responsible!”

“I don’t know,” said Onoria firmly.

She took an armchair and faced the questioning parents with her usual deliberate self-assurance. “That is what I came to ask you.”

“But surely—” Mr. and Mrs. Andrews began together. “Surely you took Elsie to the oratorio?—she said, didn’t she, she was going this afternoon over to Mellingham?”

“I was,” said Miss Strickland, “at the oratorio in Mellingham this afternoon, and so was Elsie, but she was not with me.”

“Well I never!” said Mr. Andrews. “Fancy her going off like that all by herself! It’s certainly time she was back. Girls are so independent nowadays.”

“She was _not_ alone,” Miss Strickland said significantly.

Mr. Andrews leaned forward, “Who was she with?” he asked truculently.

“She was with Peter Gubbins,” said Miss Strickland, leaning back in her chair.

If she had intended to create a sensation she had succeeded beyond her wildest dreams; but the incredible part of it was the type of sensation she had created. She had expected shame, indignation and alarm. Mr. and Mrs. Andrews were quite obviously pleased.

Once more Onoria was confronted by the inexplicable nature of parents.

They did not wish to show their satisfaction too plainly, but the tone in which Elsie’s mother said, “Well I never!” was one of flattered maternal pride, and Mr. Andrews, when he had drawn a long breath, exclaimed, “I never would have thought it!” in much the way in which he would have greeted a smart trick of the trade.

“You can never tell with the quiet kind,” Mrs. Andrews continued reminiscently. “I was like that myself as a girl, I never went out of my way to attract anybody, and as to mentioning it at home—well—I’d have been ashamed! I just let things take their course as it were—and here I am! Dear me!”

“Shouldn’t you say Peter Gubbins was a warm man?” enquired Mr. Andrews, ignoring this revelation of his wife’s tactics. “I’ve always understood he had a tidy little sum put by.”

“I couldn’t possibly tell you,” said Miss Strickland, who had, during this outburst of vulgarity, recovered her secret poise. “To tell the truth, the idea of Elsie’s having arrived at any notion of matrimony had not occurred to me. I merely thought that it was unfortunate she should appear in public unchaperoned with a man who is old enough to be her father, but who is not her father.”

“Oh, well, you know,” said Mr. Andrews, “young people will be young people, won’t they Mother? And we all know Peter Gubbins about here. Peter Gubbins is as safe as the Bank of England. I don’t call fifty old for a man.”

“Appearances,” said Miss Strickland coldly, “are never safe. I had not intended to mention it, but I see I had better put you in command of all the facts.

“Peter Gubbins has been in the habit of meeting Elsie at my house, in my absence, without my knowledge or consent.”

Mr. and Mrs. Andrews looked at each other. Mr. Andrews whistled.

“Dear! dear!” said Mr. Andrews after an awkward pause.

“I’m sure we’re very sorry, Miss Strickland. Elsie oughtn’t to have done it, I allow, but if you won’t mind my saying so, you should have thought of it before! What I mean to say is—it’s a little late in the day, isn’t it—for you to mind what Peter Gubbins does?”

“It’s only natural,” interposed Mrs. Andrews, “for him to take to a young girl like Elsie. We each have our turn, you know, Miss Strickland, and then we have to stand aside and let the young ones have theirs! It’s hard lines I know, but there it is——”

“You quite misunderstand me,” said Onoria, who had turned brick red under this last onslaught of a parent’s imagination.

“What Peter Gubbins does, or what he fancies, is, and always has been, a matter of perfect indifference to me. In this case, my sole concern has been Elsie and the compromising position to which such clandestine meetings give rise.”

It was a good sentence with a swing that took the wind out of Mr. Andrews’ sails. Still, Miss Strickland would have preferred to fling the vulgar truth upon the table. She wanted to say:

“My dear good people, I’ve refused Peter Gubbins dozens of times, and Elsie is merely taking my leavings, if she does take them, but that seems to me no good reason for carrying on behind my back!”

But education takes from us our most effective weapons. It would have been ill-bred to make this statement, and Miss Strickland, though she never minded being rude, did not wish to appear ill-bred; and in spite of the excellence of her sentence she knew that the Andrewses, still believed that Elsie had cut her out.

“Since you are not alarmed at Elsie’s having failed to return at the termination of the oratorio,” she said, rising to her feet, “or at the fact that she has apparently vanished into space with Peter Gubbins at eight o’clock at night—there is nothing further to be said. I can only congratulate you on the strength of your nerves.”

“It is a _little_ late,” Mrs. Andrews admitted. “Still——”

There was a sound at the garden gate; a moment later a loud knock heralded the telegraph boy.

Mr. Andrews put on his glasses and read out loud: “Missed train after oratorio—too late to return—staying with Aunt Anne—Elsie.”

“Her Aunt Anne,” explained Mr. Andrews with restored satisfaction, “is a clergyman’s widow, who lives at Clapham. Elsie won’t come to any harm staying with her Aunt Anne—Peter Gubbins or no Peter Gubbins.”

“Probably he’s come home,” said Mrs. Andrews comfortably. “He never was much of a gadabout. I’m sure we’re just as grateful to you, Miss Strickland, for coming in to tell us what you knew. You couldn’t have been kinder if you’d been a parent yourself.”

“Thank God I’m not!” Miss Strickland energetically and rather shockingly declared (though in a sense it would have been more shocking had she wished to be a parent). “If I _were_ I should hardly take my responsibilities as lightly as you do.”

“I shall write to my sister to-morrow,” said Mr. Andrews with dignity, “and my wife will write to Elsie.”

Miss Strickland walked to the door. Her last hope had flickered out with the mention of Aunt Anne at Clapham. A situation occupied by Aunt Anne was impregnable.

Onoria knew herself outwitted by the ponderous stupidity of facts.

It was a cold, foggy evening, the streets of Little Ticklington were badly lighted and empty.

It seemed a long way home. A curious stifling sense of dread overtook Onoria. She told herself sharply that when a thing has already happened it is silly to be afraid of its happening again.

Nevertheless she hurried, as if she might by hurrying escape what was to overtake her.

Bridget had lit the gas in the hall, and the fire in the drawing room burnt brightly.

Prendergast lay a little on one side in his basket.

He was not snoring as he usually did. Miss Strickland leaned over him anxiously. He did not open his eyes or turn his head to look at her, and then she saw that he never would again. He had made up his mind what he wanted.

A wild impulse to rush across and tell Peter Gubbins shook Miss Strickland.

Nobody else loved Prendergast, but Peter had loved him. He had loved him nearly as much as he loved Samson.

Miss Strickland looked down with quivering lips at the obese form of the dead pug. He was all she had in the world, and he had taken this opportunity to slip out of it.

Miss Strickland was a fighter. She was a very fine fighter and up till this moment no wave of disaster had ever been beyond her power to surmount. But you cannot fight the memory of a dead dog.

Prendergast overwhelmed Miss Strickland. She sank on the floor beside his basket sobbing as if her heart, which was already broken, could break again.

“They might have left me this!” she said between her sobs.

She spoke as if Elsie and Peter between them had killed Prendergast, although she knew that this was nonsense.