It is almost painful to describe how that day finally ended.
The fugitives had disappeared into the vast countryside.
There were no more trains.
The people of Botley seemed completely uninterested in helping them. Whenever the rescue party asked about hiring a carriage or cart, they were met with suspicious looks and barely hidden amusement.
Even the landlord of the Heron Inn seemed to suspect that something strange was going on.
And tomorrow was Sunday.
The long, hot summer day had ruined Phipps’s perfect collar, stained Mrs. Milton’s skirt, and drained much of the excitement and heroism from the entire group.
Dangle’s black eye was now covered with sticking plaster.
He had tried for a while to look like a brave wounded knight, but even he soon realized how ridiculous it was and gave up.
No one openly blamed anyone else.
Not directly, anyway.
But their irritation flashed through the conversation like distant summer lightning.
Deep down, all four of them felt increasingly ridiculous.
And they secretly believed Jessie was mainly responsible.
After all, what was this young woman doing?
She wasn’t even a woman yet. She was only seventeen.
She had left a comfortable home in Surbiton, surrounded by everything a refined young woman could want.
And for what?
She had dragged all of them across the countryside, made them chase after her, and left them exhausted, dusty, jealous of one another, and completely miserable.
Now she had disappeared again, leaving them stranded in a miserable village pub on a Saturday night.
And the worst part was that she hadn’t even run away because of some great love affair.
If love and passion had been involved, at least there would have been some serious reason for her behavior, even if they disapproved of it.
No.
She had done it because of an idea.
A foolish, dramatic desire to be independent.
In other words, she had simply decided to ignore common sense.
Yet they still tried to speak of her kindly.
They called her misguided.
They said they were worried about her.
They talked about her as though she were a lost little lamb who had wandered away from home.
And Mrs. Milton, after finally eating something, continued to behave with remarkable dignity and concern.
She had the only comfortable chair in the room—a large cushioned basket chair.
The others were sitting on painfully hard horsehair chairs with little covers tied to their backs by pale yellow ribbons.
It was nothing like their comfortable conversations back in Surbiton.
Mrs. Milton sat facing the open window.
The night was warm and peaceful, and they had decided not to light the lamp.
The dim light suited her perfectly.
She spoke quietly, and her tired voice made it clear how exhausted she was.
For once, she seemed ready to admit that perhaps she herself had contributed to the whole mess.
“I feel that I am partly responsible,” she said.
“I have changed.”
“My first book—I still believe in everything I wrote. But people have misunderstood it.”
“They certainly have,” Widgery said.
He tried to sound deeply sympathetic.
“Deliberately misunderstood.”
“Don’t say deliberately,” Mrs. Milton replied.
“I prefer to believe that critics are honest, at least according to what they understand.”
She paused.
“I wasn’t really talking about the critics.”
“I mean Jessie.”
Dangle looked down at the sticking plaster over his eye.
“I suppose that is possible,” he said.
“When I write a book, I am presenting an argument,” Mrs. Milton explained.
“I want people to think about certain ideas. I don’t necessarily want them to copy the behavior of my characters.”
“I am trying to teach new ideas.”
“I put those ideas into stories so people will think about them.”
“And once those ideas become widely accepted, society will eventually change.”
“But at the moment, it is madness to completely ignore the rules of society.”
“Bernard Shaw has made much the same argument about Socialism.”
“We may believe that people should live on what they earn rather than on inherited investments.”
“But if only a handful of people believe that, they cannot simply abandon the whole system.”
“Someone else has to change first.”
“Exactly,” Widgery said.
“Those other people must go first.”
“And while they do that, you continue working in a bank?”
“If I didn’t, someone else would.”
Mrs. Milton smiled faintly.
“And I continue living on Mr. Milton’s money while trying to establish myself as a writer.”
“Trying?” Phipps interrupted.
“You’ve already succeeded.”
“That’s different,” Dangle said at the same moment.
Mrs. Milton looked at them gratefully.
“You are all very kind to me.”
“But there is an important difference in this particular situation.”
“In my novel, Georgina Griffiths lived alone in a Paris apartment. She attended life-drawing classes and had men visiting her.”
“But she was over twenty-one.”
“Jessie is only seventeen,” Dangle said.
“And she still behaves like a child in many ways.”
“That changes everything.”
“Georgina was a grown woman.”
“She also didn’t publicly parade her independence by riding a bicycle alone through the English countryside.”
“And she certainly didn’t spend nights away from home.”
Mrs. Milton shuddered.
“If people find out about this, it could ruin Jessie.”
“Ruin,” Widgery agreed.
“No decent man would want to marry a girl with that kind of reputation,” Phipps said.
“We must keep the whole thing quiet,” Dangle added.
Mrs. Milton sighed.
“I’ve always felt that life is really about individuals.”
“Every person has to be judged according to his or her circumstances.”
“You can’t simply apply one general rule to everyone.”
“I often think the same thing,” Widgery said seriously.
“Those are practically my own principles.”
“Of course, my books—”
“That’s different,” Dangle interrupted.
“Completely different.”
“A novel deals with typical situations.”
“Real life isn’t typical,” Widgery replied with great seriousness.
For a moment, no one spoke.
Then Phipps suddenly yawned.
He seemed almost as surprised by it as everyone else.
The yawn spread through the room.
Mrs. Milton yawned.
Widgery yawned.
Even Dangle, despite his efforts to remain dignified, looked exhausted.
They had simply talked themselves tired.
Soon they began making excuses to leave the room.
But none of them went straight to sleep.
As soon as Dangle was alone, he stood before a mirror and examined his injured eye with deep irritation.
He was an energetic man, but he was also very particular about his appearance.
The entire day’s adventure had been extremely frustrating.
They had come so close to catching Jessie, only to lose her again.
Phipps sat on his bed and stared unhappily at his collar.
Twenty-four hours earlier, he would never have believed that a Sunday collar could become so dirty and wrinkled.
Mrs. Milton sat quietly, thinking about the strange fact that even large, powerful-looking men with loyal brown eyes were still mortal and imperfect.
Widgery, meanwhile, felt miserable because he had spoken harshly to Mrs. Milton at the station.
He also hated the fact that, despite all his efforts, he had not managed to prove himself more capable than Dangle.
And, of course, he was still angry with Dangle.
All four of them cared far too much about appearances.
And now they could not escape the humiliating thought of what people in Botley must think of them.
They imagined the villagers laughing at them.
Farther away, they imagined London people hearing the story and making jokes about it.
And somewhere beyond that was Surbiton, where people would probably be wondering what on earth had happened.
For the first time, a disturbing question began to enter all their minds.
Perhaps they really were behaving absurdly after all.