My Little Sister Part 32

I looked round, in a sudden terror, lest anyone should be noticing that my eyes were wet.

Mercifully, the people were all looking at Betty. I looked at Betty, too. I could not see her eyes, but the nearer cheek was that lovely colour whose name she gave once to an evening sky. We had come up on the top of a knoll and stood for a moment, breathless. My mother had said no painter could get such a colour. And neither were there any words in the language to describe it. For it was not red, not flame, not pink, nor orange. But Betty, looking steadily, had found the right words for it: "A fiery rose."

And that was the colour in Betty's cheeks on the way to London.

No wonder people looked at her. There was a man who got out of the first-cla.s.s carriage next us at every station, and walked by our window.

He looked in at Bettina. I was glad our carriage was full. I felt sure, if it had not been, he would have come in. I could see Bettina did not resent the staring. And then I saw her look out of the corner of her eyes.

"Bettina!" I whispered. "Don't encourage that strange man to stare in here."

"_Me?_" she said. "What am I doing?"

I told her again that she encouraged him. But I was handicapped by not being able to say just how. I admitted that what she did was very slight. But it was enough. "It was what you did to Eddie Monmouth."

Then, because she pretended not to understand, I told her that she was falling into bad deceitful ways. I knew she had written to Ranny Dallas.... Yes, and kept writing, though the moment I realised what was going on I wrote to Ranny myself. I said if any more letters came from him, I should have to tell Betty about the girl in Norfolk. Ranny wrote back that he had told Betty himself! And still they went on corresponding, secretly. I said to her now, that I should hardly be surprised if she was hoping to meet Ranny in London.

"Oh, one may 'hope' almost anything," said Betty airily.

"Not of a man who is engaged to another girl!"

"Yes," said Betty; "as long as he isn't married...."

Then, rather frightened, I asked outright if she was really expecting to meet Ranny somewhere.

"How can I say? He is fond of the opera," she said in a very superior, grown-up way. "I _might_ happen to see him some night in the throng----"

"In the throng! Betty," I said. "You have given Ranny Dallas your address."

"No," she said; "but I've given it to Tom Courtney."

Tom Courtney was Ranny's red-haired friend. "If you had watched," Betty said, "you would know that I was corresponding with Tom Courtney, too.

Chiefly about Ranny. Tom Courtney is a splendid friend. He explains things much better than Ranny can. And then" (Betty's momentary annoyance vanished in laughter)--"then, too, Tom can spell--beautifully!"

I refused to laugh.

"I knew you'd be horrified," Betty said again, "and that is why I have to keep things from you. You are a sort of nun. _You_ never feel as if all your blood had been whipped to a syllabub. And besides----"

"Besides?"

"I do like nice men. I don't mind their knowing. And I don't mean to be an old maid. _You_ wouldn't care."

"You think I wouldn't?" I had no time to say more, for the train stopped. We thought at first we had reached Victoria Station, but it was only Clapham Junction. The "staring" man pa.s.sed once more, with a porter behind carrying golf-clubs and portmanteau. Our carriage, too, was emptying. The people stood and reached things down from the racks, and then filed out. When the train went on we were alone.

Betty was still excited, but more grave, even hara.s.sed--a look that sat rather pitiful on her babyish face.

I moved up close to her again, and I told her there was something I had to say before we got to London. "You and I, you see, we don't know very much, and we get carried away."

"You mean me," said Betty. "You are thinking about Eddie Monmouth and----"

Then I told her I did not mean her alone. "I don't know how it is," I said, remembering Mr. Whitby-Dawson and Captain Monmouth and Ranny--yes, and others--"I don't know how it is, but girls seem to 'care' more than men do."

"I've thought that, too," Bettina said.

I said I was sure it was true. Men had so much to do. Life was so full for them ... perhaps that took their minds off. I put my arm round Bettina and held her close. "I am going to confess something," I said, "that most older sisters would deny. But you have got n.o.body but me. And I have n.o.body but you. We must help each other."

"I shall have Aunt Josephine," Betty reminded me.

"A stranger--and too old besides." I dismissed Aunt Josephine for the particular purpose in view. "I am going to tell you something very--particular." Then, while she looked at the cushions opposite, and I looked out of the window, I told her I had learned from Eric Annan what she had learned through the others. "We'll say it just this once, and never, never again so long as we live! And we may have to deny it,"

I warned her. "But I think, if I'm honest about it with you, maybe you won't feel that I don't understand ... or that I am, as you say, 'different.' You will feel closer to me," I pleaded. "And maybe we shall both be stronger for that." I waited a moment. I was glad Betty still stared straight in front of her. "We don't only care more than men do,"

I said. "We _need_ men more than they need us."

Bettina turned at that. I felt her eyes on me. Then she looked down and stroked my hand.

"I think Mr. Annan does care about you," she said.

"A little," I said. "Not enough. Not as I care."

Bettina pointed out that Eric Annan was not so young as we. "Why, he must be thirty. Perhaps when he was our age"--our eyes met in the new comradeship, and then fell--"he may have taken more interest in--more interest in the things we think about."

Then she took it back. "No, no. You may depend it's only girls who are like that--caring so terribly much. I thought it was only me. But if you are like that too, maybe there are others." After a moment: "You were good to tell me," she said. "I don't feel so--unnatural."

The train was slowing. The light grew grey. We were in a dim place, between a smoky wall and a rattling train going out as we came in. Then the platform, and the porters running along by our windows. "Luggage, miss?"

Bettina started up.

"Aunt Josephine!"

CHAPTER XXVI

AUNT JOSEPHINE

She was an imposing figure, beautifully dressed in black. She was handsomer than her picture, and younger-looking than we expected. It occurred to me that bio-vibratory sympathism had a thinning effect.

Her manner was more decisive than I had expected from a dreamer. Very commanding and important, she stood there with her liveried servant behind her. Bettina had known her instantly by the grey hair rolled high and the pear-shaped earrings.

She kissed us, and said I was more like my mother. And were our boxes labelled?

She hardly waited for us to answer. She did not wait at all for our little trunk.

"A footman will attend to the luggage," she said. As she led us down the platform, her eyes kept darting about in a way that made me think she must be expecting someone else by that train. I looked round, too. But n.o.body else seemed to be expecting Aunt Josephine, though a woman towards the end of the platform looked very searchingly at our party as we pa.s.sed. Aunt Josephine did not seem to notice. She was busy putting on a thick motor-veil over the lace one that was tied round her hat--her lovely hat, that, as Betty said afterwards, was "boiling over with black ostrich-feathers."

A wonderful scent had come towards us with Aunt Josephine--nothing the least like that faint garden-smell that clung to our linen, from the sprays of lavender and dried verbena our mother put newly each year under the white paper of our wardrobe-shelves. Such a ghost of fragrance could never have survived here. This perfume of Aunt Josephine's--not so much strong as dominant--routed the sooty, acrid smell of the station.

When she lifted her arms to put the chiffon over her face, fresh waves of the rich, mysterious scent came towards us.

She seemed in haste to leave so mean a place as Victoria. She spoke a little sharply to the footman. He explained--and, indeed, we could see--that a great, shining motor-car was threading its way as well as it could through a tangle of taxi-cabs and inferior cars. Aunt Josephine stood frowning under her double veil, and once I saw her eyes go towards the woman who had noticed us. The woman was speaking to one of the porters. The porter, too, looked at Aunt Josephine and nodded. The dowdy woman gave the porter a tip, and sent him on an errand. I was far too excited to notice such uninteresting people, but for the curious personal kind of detestation in the look the dowdy woman fixed upon Aunt Josephine.