The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris by Leon Garfield

Bunnion shrieked and fell with a sound like thunder. The house shook, and the wanderers in the night came rushing upon the scene before there was any chance of escape.
    They found him lying drunkenly beside Tizzy Alexander’s tumbled bed, and even in the uncertain candlelight it was plain there had been further damage done to his unlucky face. Denial—even if he’d been in a condition to make one—would have been hopeless, and the little academy quaked in the grip of confusion, anger and fear.
    Events which by skill, compromise and good will might have been halted, were now whirled out of all sensible men’s control on their fatal course of calamity. Dr. Bunnion could no longer uphold the innocence of his moaning, bleeding son, and MajorAlexander did not see how he could avoid avenging his daughter’s honor.
    Shortly before dawn, when Mr. Brett had at last managed to forget his own wretched situation sufficiently to fall into a light sleep, he was awakened by yet another knocking at his door. Savagely he cried out, “Go away! For God’s sake, leave me in peace! All of you, go to hell!”
    Outside the door, poor bewildered Tizzy Alexander sobbed quietly and went away.

Six
    THE BELLS OF St. Nicholas’s wrinkled the morning air as they summoned the town to prayer. Dully the two distressed households understood it to be Sunday and they must needs carry their griefs and perplexities to church to thank God for being alive.
    â€œLet us pray,” suggested Mr. Hudson, the vicar, when the time came, and the congregation knelt—some opening their hearts for relief from private anguish and others endeavoring to close them against the prying eyes of the Almighty. Chief among the former were Mrs. Harris and Tizzy Alexander, and chief among the latter were Bostock and Harris.
    Not even God can help me now, thought Harris as he peered around the well-filled pews for a sight ofRalph Bunnion, who, it turned out, had been the last living soul to clap eyes on Adelaide and had left her only he knew where. After the night’s disaster, it was plain that Adelaide was not in the school. He had some confused notion of throwing himself on the school hero’s mercy, confessing all (or nearly all) and imploring his aid. But Ralph Bunnion was nowhere to be seen.
    Sadly, Harris glanced sideways to where the sturdy Bostock knelt with closed eyes and open mouth. He envied his friend his slow, simple mind that was not tormented with dreadful thoughts. Though Bostock might never reach the heights that he, Harris, sometimes knew, he would never plummet to the depths that he, Harris, was now in.
    A great loneliness fell upon Harris as round about him prayers of all descriptions rose in silence to the church’s roof. He felt himself to be the outcast of creation against whom every man’s hand was raised. Then he looked at Bostock again and was briefly consoled. Bostock was his companion and friend; he was just as involved as Harris himself and would, therefore, be bound to suffer at his side. At once Harris felt less lonely and more a part of the common fate of mankind.
    Mr. Hudson nodded to his flock. He was a shaggy man with large hands and large feet, and as he began to snap and bark his sermon from the pulpit, was the very image of a pious sheepdog with a sharp eye for strays.
    As the town was becoming quite fashionable oflate by reason of an interest in sea bathing, Mr. Hudson thought it necessary to touch on the extreme difficulty of rich men entering the Kingdom of Heaven unaided. The poor were all right—here he smiled encouragingly at the fisherfolk at the back—but the rich—here he frowned at the private pews—stood in need of assistance. Though he didn’t say it outright, he implied pretty strongly that they weren’t likely to get such assistance from God direct. Their only chance lay through the proper channels. That was what churches were for. And St.