The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure Part 14

Lord Kent laughed. "Perhaps as a matter of vanity, yes, Frieda? But of course a good deal depends upon what one is thinking. What were you thinking of me?"

"Oh, only how unlike you and Henry are," she replied sweetly.

However, Frank understood something of her hidden meaning, for he flushed.

"Well, considering the fact that you didn't find it possible to continue to live with 'Henry,' I suppose I ought to be flattered. Only as a matter of fact, Frieda, I admire Professor Russell very much."

This time Frieda flushed, realizing that Frank had scored.

"Yet even though that is true, Frank, Henry never took the tone with me of insisting that he was always right and I was always in the wrong. Do you know, Frank, I am beginning to think--oh well, Henry was never so horrid to me as you are to Jack. He isn't a bit of a bully."

"So you think I am 'horrid' to Jack and a bully besides, do you, Frieda?" Frank returned grimly. He was angry, but not as angry as he felt he had the right to be. Somehow he could not manage to get into a violent state of mind with his youthful sister-in-law.

Frieda nodded energetically in response, without appearing the least bit frightened.

"Of course you are going to think I am interfering, Frank, and no one ever pays any real attention to what I say, but I just thought I'd tell you anyhow. You are making a big mistake. Of course I realize that you are not so silly as not to appreciate Jack, but I don't believe you have ever thought what it might mean to lose her. You see she isn't like most women, she really does not know how to quarrel for any length of time. But when she was hurt or seriously angry as a girl she used to keep still for a long time not saying a word. Then she used to do something unexpected." Frieda's voice shook a little with stronger feeling than she often showed.

"I've been afraid lately that Jack might do something queer now, something no one of us dreams she would think of doing. She is so very unhappy. You remember, Frank, don't you, what a long time it took you to win Jack? I wonder if it might not take you even longer to win her back again!"

Frank stiffened. "I cannot discuss my relations with Jack, even with you, Frieda. That is a matter between us alone."

Frieda nodded pensively.

"Certainly I appreciate your point of view, Frank, from my own sad experience."

CHAPTER XIII

THE BREAK

BUT Frank did give careful consideration to what Frieda had said to him.

Her words came as a kind of revelation. Suddenly he began to appreciate what it would mean to lose Jack, though of course there was no possibility of such a thing. She was one of the most loyal persons in the world and they had only had a difference of opinion.

Yet Frank decided that it would be best to let bygones be bygones and to mention the fact to Jack at the first possible opportunity.

But somehow he seemed to have to wait for the opportunity to arrive; certainly his wife did nothing to help him.

One night, coming home at the usual hour, Frank discovered that Jack was not there. She had gone out a little before lunch on some errand, as Olive and Frieda supposed, but leaving no word except that they were not to wait luncheon for her.

Frieda and Olive, Frank found, were both a little uneasy. He laughed at the idea. Jack had a great many things to attend to in the neighborhood and knew everybody, while everybody knew her.

Afterwards, he went upstairs to the nursery and stayed half an hour watching Vive and Jimmie being put to bed. When he came down to the library to read, twilight was falling. But instead of reading Frank found himself turning over the pages of the magazines, gazing at them, and not knowing a word of their contents.

In a few moments it would be dinner time.

He got up and walked nervously up and down the room.

If Jack did not come in by dinner or send a message what would it be wise to do?

A few moments later he telephoned two or three places where he thought Jack might have remained later than she realized. But she had not been at any one of the houses during the day, and naturally Frank did not wish to ask too many questions, since she might return home at any moment. It would then appear absurd to have started false rumors, or to have created anxiety among their friends.

When the butler came in to announce dinner, Lord Kent explained that Lady Kent was not yet at home and that dinner be kept waiting for another half an hour.

Soon after Frieda joined him.

"I know I am silly, Frank," she confessed, "but I am worried. If Jack had gone out on horseback, one might understand that she could have gotten some distance away. But she did not ride, she walked, and could not have continued walking since before noon."

"You are an infant, Frieda," Frank remarked. "Of course Jack has been paying visits and has stayed too long. But perhaps I had best go and look for her, unless she has found a friend to act as an escort it is too late for her to be out alone."

"But where are you going to look?" Frieda questioned. And either her brother-in-law did not hear her, or preferred to pretend he did not, since he made no reply.

The fact of the matter was he had no plan. He thought it was rather absurd for him to look at all, but had suddenly been overtaken with a sense of uneasiness, a strange foreboding of disaster. We all yield to these sensations now and then, but as they were not usual with Lord Kent he was the more uncomfortable.

He could not even decide whether it would be wiser for him to ride or to walk, but concluded he had best ride, in order to cover a greater distance in a shorter time.

He searched very carefully for Jack down the long road which divided the estate. And naturally he remembered the other evening, not so very many months ago, when he had ridden down this same avenue peering through the rain for her and Captain MacDonnell. Then he had discovered both of them with but little difficulty.

Tonight Frank wished that he felt sure Jack had someone with her to take care of her, as she had on that other evening. He would not then have felt so ridiculously worried.

"Poor Bryan, one did not like to allow oneself to think of him too often these days, yet he must be brought back home as soon as possible," Frank thought. Some time ago he had decided that when the time came he would himself go for Bryan. Perhaps this would be partly an act of expiation, although Lord Kent had not said this to himself, or to his wife.

This evening he rode directly into the village, but although it was only a little after eight o'clock, Granchester had long practiced the daylight saving habit, not because of the war, but because of a fixed habit of early sleep and early rising. There were only two or three scattered lights in the little stone houses and only a few old men outdoors talking together in front of a closed public house.

Nevertheless Frank rode up to the home of Frieda's old friend and dismounted, for he had known Mrs. Huggins many long years. She was accepted by everybody as a kind of unprinted village newspaper. If Jack had been in Granchester during the afternoon, Mrs. Huggins would know just where she had been and what she had done.

The old woman's light was out, but a moment after his knocking she opened her door. In her hand she held a lamp and her old eyes shone through the half darkness.

She was probably excited by the idea that someone had come to confide a piece of news to her.

However, she had heard nothing of Lady Kent's having been in the village during the day, and was in fact sure she had not been there.

When Lord Kent went away, however, she still seemed to think he had brought her news.

"There is trouble in the big house, also," she said to herself, wagging her old head. "Funny how when trouble of one kind gets loosed in the world, so many other kinds follow it." Even after she had gone back to bed she still kept thinking of Kent House.

Later, just before he was leaving Granchester, Frank telephoned to his home.

Frieda came to the telephone to say that no word had yet come from her sister.

Nevertheless Lord Kent could not make up his mind to ask for aid in his search. He had a curious antipathy toward it, as if Jack herself would not like this, as if in some way it might lead to a revelation they would not wish others to share.

This was what made all his efforts so difficult. For each added moment he was becoming more and more worried, and yet having to pretend that Jack's failure to return home, her failure to send any word of her whereabouts, was the most casual thing in the world.

There were several places belonging to friends and not far from the village. Lord Kent stopped by at each place for a few moments, as if he were making an ordinary visit, but of course to find out if Jack had called during the day. Apparently no one of her friends had seen her.