But Mr. Dalyell did not come by the midnight express.
There is something dreadful in the aspect of a room from which its habitual occupant is absent unexpectedly all night. Its good order, its cold whiteness, the unused articles in tidy array, undisturbed by any careless natural movements, strike a chill to the heart. In any case, even when the usual tenant is pleasantly absent, or gone on a visit, there is something ominous in the empty room. It seems to breathe of a time when the familiar person will be gone for ever. And how much more when the beloved occupant has gone mysteriously--absent, lost in the unknown--no one knowing where he has passed the night! Mrs. Dalyell was not a fanciful woman, she was not given to morbid imaginations, but when she glanced into her husband’s dressing-room next morning her heart sank for a moment with this chill, that would not be reasoned away. She did reason it away, however, and recovered her composure. For, after all, what was it?--nothing. A man in active life has a hundred calls upon him. He might be whipped off to London upon some railway business without any warning. The only thing that really troubled her was the absence of that telegram. It was still almost summer weather; nothing to interrupt the working of the telegraph anywhere. Already even she might have had one had he telegraphed from any station on the way up to London. This was the thing which she could not understand.
“No, there is no word,” she said. “I have made up my mind he must have been called off at a moment’s notice to London; but why he didn’t telegraph, I can’t imagine--even from Berwick he might have done it, and I should have had it by this time. I never knew Robert so careless before.”
“Here it is, mother,” cried Alice, rushing in with the famous yellow envelope, the hideous messenger of so much trouble. But when Mrs. Dalyell took it, she flung it back again almost with indignation, and turned upon the girl with a sort of fury.
“Couldn’t you see,” she cried, “that it was for Mr. Wedderburn?” The poor lady had kept her nerves quiet and her imagination suppressed till now. But this felt to her like an injury. She got up from the breakfast-table, and paced about the room, wringing her hands. It had come, but it was not for her! This seemed to put terror into the anxiety, an increase of every involuntary tremor. In the sickness of the disappointment tears came rushing to her eyes. She took Alice by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Couldn’t you see? you little careless monkey!” Poor Mrs. Dalyell was unjust in the heat of her disappointment. But after a while reason once more resumed its sway. “I am letting it get upon my nerves,” she said with a tremulous laugh, as she came back to the table. Then, with a glance at Mr. Wedderburn’s disturbed face, “It is not by any chance--about Robert?” she cried.