BUT neither Will nor Tom had any suggestion to make, or knew what to do in such an emergency. They thought it might be well to write to the office and ask what was known of him, or to his Liverpool lodgings; and for themselves, they were anxious to get back to their own homes, their wives, and their work. Even before the afternoon was out they had so far exhausted the subject of Harry that they were not unwilling to join their father in an examination of the Sister to Scythian, and “pass their opinion” on her, and the high hopes Joscelyn entertained of her. Joan looked on at this change of sentiment and subject with a half understanding and half bewilderment. In other family troubles before this she too had been glad to escape from the monotony of a painful subject with a half scorn and whole impatience of her mother’s persistence in it, exactly like the sentiment her brothers showed now. Only this time her own heart was profoundly engaged; she felt like her mother, and along with her comprehension of the feeling of “the boys,” had a perfectly new and bitter sense of their heartlessness, their stupid indifference, their desire to escape from this one thing which was more important than anything else in earth or heaven. What was the Sister to Scythian in comparison with Harry? And they had all allowed that Harry’s disappearance was a serious matter: they had not deceived themselves, or made it out to be some “nonsense of mother’s.” This time they had been obliged to confess there was grave cause for anxiety; and then they had gone to the stables with the father whom they had been unanimous in blaming, and had given all their minds to the points of the horse. Joan had never been given to investigating the feebleness of human character. She would scarcely have understood the words had they been suggested to her, or, at least, would have treated them as too high-flown for ordinary meaning; but for once in a way the wonder was brought home to her, and she saw and understood it. “The boys” were sorry about their brother, sorry that such a thing should have occurred; annoyed that their domestic affairs should thus be thrown open to the public, and more or less sympathetic with their mother, though not quite sure that it did not serve her right for making a favourite of her youngest son; but when they had expressed these feelings, what more were they to say? They could not go on talking about it for ever; they could not bring Harry back if they talked till doomsday; and besides, when once their opinion was expressed and their regrets said, Harry was not a subject of very great importance to them—whereas the Sister to Scythian might advance the interests of the family and make the Joscelyn stable celebrated. And Joan understood it all, she knew it by herself: yet was angry with a harsh and disappointed pain which all her reason could not subdue. Mrs. Joscelyn in the parlour, absorbed in that one passion of anxiety, did not even appreciate this failure of the interest of the others in what was so great a matter to herself so much as her daughter did.

“What do the boys say? What do they think we should do?” she asked Joan a hundred times. “What shall we do? Oh! Joan, what do they think we should do?”

“They are not thinking anything about it, mother,” Joan said. “They are off to the stables, looking at that beast. They are more taken up with her than with Harry. An ill-conditioned brute! I wish, for my part, she was at the bottom of the sea; but set a horse before the men, and they think of nothing else—if all the brothers in the world were perishing before their eyes.”

“Miss Joan,” said a voice behind her, “I am astonished to hear you say that; you whom I have always taken to be such an excellent judge of a horse yourself.”

The two women turned upon the new-comer with mingled feelings, half angry that he had intruded upon them, half excited by a sudden wild hope that a stranger might have some new light to throw upon a subject which they had exhausted, for they could not hide their trouble from him. Mrs. Joscelyn could not speak without an overflow of tears, and even Joan’s eyes were red, and there was that look of irritation and vexation and impatience in her face which comes so naturally to a capable person suddenly set down before a painful difficulty which she can see no way in her experience of coping with. Selby looked at her with anxious eyes. Was she angry with him? but, if so, there was a sudden gleam of expectation in her face too, suddenly looking up at him, as if she had said within herself, “If help is possible it is here—” which gave him courage; and he hastened to explain with that look and tone of sympathy in which strangers so often excel those who ought to be the natural consolers.

“I see I have come in at a wrong time,” he said. “I knocked, but I suppose you did not hear. I ought to go away, but I want to stay: for you are in trouble, and if I could be of any use to you——”

“Mr. Selby is—a true well-wisher,” said Joan, looking with almost timidity at her mother. She was not given to blushing, but she blushed now all over her face and her throat, and made such an appeal with her eyes as those eyes had never made before. “It will be best to tell him,” she said: “he, maybe, could think of something; and what is the use of trying to hide it? it will soon be all over the country-side.”

“Indeed I am a well-wisher,” he cried; “if I can do anything, I will do it with all my heart. If it’s about your brother Harry, I’ve heard something—” and he looked from Joan to Mrs. Joscelyn with eyes so full of sympathy that they felt the look as a sick man feels a cool hand laid upon his hot forehead.

They told him their story with anxious questions as to what he had heard. He had heard, of course, a great deal more than there was to hear, that Harry had come to blows with his father, that there had been a struggle and a fight, and that the young man had been kicked out of the house. Some added that he lay on the Fells all night, so much injured was he; and there were whispers of vice on Harry’s part as the cause of such a violent proceeding, which Selby was too wise to betray to the poor women. When they had told him all they knew, he sprang up to his feet and looked at his watch with an air of readiness and capability which at once gave them hope.

“It is quite clear what must be done,” he said; “you must send somebody to Liverpool at once, this very night. It’s too late for the mid-day train, but the night one will do.”

“Send somebody to Liverpool!” Joan’s countenance flushed again while her mother’s grew pale.

“Oh!” cried Mrs. Joscelyn, “but who can we get to go?” while Joan, who had never been beyond Carlisle in her life, stood up unconsciously with such a gasp as catches the breath after a sudden plunge into the sea. She knew nothing about the world, and she belonged to a generation which believed that a woman could do nothing out of her own home; but a rush of blood came to her face, and of tremendous energy to her heart. In the suggestion there seemed so much hope, although almost as much fear.

“Who will you get to go? Me if you like,” said Selby, with the benevolent glow of a man who feels himself a sort of good angel to women in trouble. “I have nothing very particular to do, and I have a pass on the railway, and I’m used to travelling. I will go to-night, and come back to-morrow night. You will hear sooner that way than any other way, and it is far easier to make inquiries personally than by letter—and far more satisfactory.”

The colour left Joan’s cheek; there was a little falling back of relief, yet half disappointment, from the sudden alarmed temerity of impulse that had come upon her. She looked at him with, in the midst of her trouble, a faint—the very faintest—touch of a smile at one corner of her mouth. “Aha, my lad! I know what that is for!” Joan said to herself, swift as lightning; but even the interested motive thus revealed was not displeasing to her, and the whole suggestion went through her mind like an arrow on the wind, showing only for a second against the dark atmosphere of anxiety within.

“Oh, Mr. Selby, how could I ask you to do that for me? How could I ever repay you for such kindness?” Mrs. Joscelyn cried, wringing her tremulous hands. There was no complication of ideas in her mind. She was bewildered by the suggestion, by the offer, by this unexampled effort of friendship. No one had ever offered her such a service before. To imagine that it was for the love of Joan that it was offered to her did not enter her mind. She knew no motive possible, and it filled her with astonishment—astonishment almost too great for hope. A journey was a thing which, in her experience, was only undertaken after great preparations and much thought. To go to-day and return to-morrow was a proceeding unknown to her. And then why should he, a stranger, not belonging to her, undertake such a journey for her? and how could she repay him? She had not even money to pay his expenses if she could have offered payment, and how was she to make it up to him? In this strait she turned her eyes anxiously upon Joan, who was standing by, silenced by an agitation such as had never been seen in her before.

“It is far, far too much trouble,” Joan faltered. “If I could go myself——”

“You!” cried the mother, upon whom the weakness of her sex and its incapacity had always been strongly impressed. “Oh, what could you do, Joan? what can a woman do? They will not even let a woman into these offices—or so I’ve heard. Oh no, no, not you—and it’s far too much, far too much, as you say, to ask—”

“You are not asking,” said Selby, beaming. “It is I who am offering to do it. I should like to do it; it would give me pleasure. You need not fear I will say anything to hurt his feelings. I will act as if he were a young brother of my own. As for the travelling it is nothing, and it will cost me even next to nothing, for I have my pass, being engaged on the railway. Not that I make much of that—for if it cost me ever so much I should be all the more glad to do it, Mrs. Joscelyn. To ease your mind I would do anything,” he said, and this time he glanced at Joan with a corner of his eye; but with meaning enough to make it very distinct to her prepared intelligence. And at the corner of Joan’s mouth, that infinitesimal curve, became for a second almost a dimple. How could she help seeing through him?—but she was not displeased.

“And if I find any difficulty in tracing him,” said Selby, a little carried away by his enthusiasm, “I will engage a detective—”

But at this Mrs. Joscelyn threw up her hands with a sudden paleness, and almost fainted; while Joan looked at him with a sternness that made the heart of her suitor tremble, as it had done for a moment when he heard her scolding Bess in the dairy.

“Do you think my brother is a lad that should have the police set after him?” she said.

“It is not the police,” said Selby mildly; but they were ignorant of all modern habits in this way, and the suggestion was so great an offence to them, that it nearly took away all their gratitude and hope in the proposal he had made. He was prudent enough to say no more about it; but took Harry’s address at his lodgings and at his office, making careful note of everything in a way that went to Mrs. Joscelyn’s heart. Her courage rose as she saw him make these notes. They looked like something doing, an effort which must come to some result. To-morrow early this good friend would be on the spot; would see with his eyes and hear with his ears everything that could be heard or seen; and she could not doubt that he would bring light out of the darkness. Her tears dried as she looked at him; the feeble wringing of her hands was stayed—they clasped each other instead with a tremulous patience and almost steadiness. Never before had there been a reasonable being like this, kind and sympathetic and understanding, to stand by her in any of her troubles; it seemed an almost miraculous goodness to the heart-broken woman. And Harry must hear reason at the hands of such a man. If he did so much for her, surely he would do more for Harry. She was comforted beyond measure by the very sight of him as he stood and took down the address. And that he should be willing to do so much for her, seemed miraculous to her. She could not think of any other reason for his kindness.

As for Joan, she was consoled too, partly by gratitude like her mother’s, but partly also by her insight into Selby’s real motive, which her mother did not guess. Her brow and her eyes were very grave and heavy still with anxiety; but the dimple remained at the corner of her mouth. She saw through him very well; he was not generous or disinterested, as her mother thought. She knew his motive. And Joan was not sure yet that it would do him any good notwithstanding her gratitude. She was by no means free from a little sidelong sense of that knavery which is common enough in such matters. She meant to accept, as far as this went, his self-devotion, but she was not sure that the hopes he was building upon it might not be fallacious hopes, and secretly entertained in her inmost heart a half-determination to cheat him yet, and prove him wrong in his reliance upon the services he was going to render her. But mingled as this process of thought was, it was on the whole exhilarating. Her heart rose a little. She thought more of herself as she caught a glimpse of herself in Philip Selby’s eyes, and as her self-esteem received a sensible stimulus, her hopes increased with it. The more we think of ourselves the more sure we are that good and not evil will happen to us. There is nothing more terrible in misfortune than the depression and sense of demerit which it brings with it. Joan thought better of herself through the spectacles which Selby provided, and she could not help feeling an incipient certainty, not altogether new to her, that with a person possessing such qualities as hers all must go well.

Fortified by these hopes, the mother and daughter saw Tom and Will depart with equanimity.

“Well, mother,” Will said, as he shook her by the hand (North-country people are not given to demonstrations of affection), “I hope you’ll soon have word of that boy. You needn’t fret: we’ve been in a good many scrapes, but we’ve always got safe out of them.”

Will was the best fellow of the two. Tom took it altogether more easily.

“Yes, yes, you’ll hear,” he said; “I’m not the least afraid. Harry’s like the ill-penny that always turns up. There’s nothing that I can see to fret about.”

Joan nodded to them when they got on their horses with a friendly satisfaction to be quit of them. She had no ideal to be offended in her brothers. Mrs. Joscelyn, when her momentary buoyancy of new hope was over, felt bitterly to the depths of her foolish heart that her sons were of a very common, selfish grain, such as some years ago it would have broken her heart to think of. She had been drilled into it, and had yielded to necessity; but still when something made her observation clearer she remembered and felt the downfall. The slow coming down of heart and hope by which a woman arrives at the fact that her child is not ideal, nor even excellent, nor superior in any way to the coarsest common pÂte of man, is very gradual. Perhaps the greater number do not reach it at all, but are content to deceive themselves and think all their offspring right and perfect. But Mrs. Joscelyn was not of this kind. She could not get over her sons’ indifference. “Another man going out to bring me news—taking all that trouble—a stranger that is nothing to us—and my own boys, my own boys caring nothing.” Over this again the poor soul, faithful in all the devices of self-torment, shed a few bitter tears.

“Now, mother, you are beginning to fuss again,” said Joan, in a vexed tone. “Dear, dear, haven’t we trouble enough?” Even she who shared the real family grief so warmly thought this one of “mother’s fusses,” and was impatient at her folly. “As if everybody didn’t know that Will and Tom were just——Will and Tom,” Joan said to herself. That they had turned out to be so instead of being heroes, did not strike her as a subject of complaint.

Mr. Selby was gone three days. The mission he had undertaken soon showed itself to be more difficult than he thought. Harry had gone away without leaving a trace behind him. He had appeared at the office for an hour or two quite unexpectedly before his leave had expired, and paid a few small debts, and taken away some small articles which were in his desk, disappearing again without a word as to his destination. At his lodgings Harry had not been seen at all. His portmanteau was there, forlorn in the dusky lobby of the lodging-house, and the unfortunate hamper, out of which odours not altogether delightful were proceeding, and which the mistress of the house implored Mr. Selby to take away with him. He did not know what to do: finally, but with great secrecy, that his principals might not be offended, he put a detective on Harry’s track, such as it was. But there seemed no track, not so much as a circle in the water or a footprint upon the soil, to show where he had gone. Selby had gone to Liverpool with great confidence in himself; pleased, for he had a good heart, to please and console these two women; but also pleased, for his own part, to show at once how kind and how clever he was. He had not a doubt that he would succeed and go back triumphant, and prove himself so superior to all the clowns about, that Joan could have no further hesitation; and it was in this confidence, being so sure that the work he had taken up would be prosperous, that he had set out upon his mission. But when he returned his mind was very different; he was greatly depressed, not only with the sense that what he had to tell was unsatisfactory, but that his own prestige would be seriously impaired. He had left home with the conviction that he would find everything out and set everything right; that neither would adverse fate be able to baffle him in the wisdom of his investigations, nor Harry be able to resist his brotherly-fatherly representations. And when Philip Selby found nothing but a blank void, in which there was nobody to persuade and remonstrate with, he felt himself tumble down from the vantage ground which he had thought so certain. How was he to go back and say he had failed? His detectives had indeed done their best to buoy him up with hope; but he was obliged to come back with no news, presenting a very blank countenance to the anxious looks of the mother and sister. The first sight of him sent their hearts down, down to the very depths.

“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.