The Shuttle Part 14

Under such rather confusing conditions her plan would be to present to them, as an affectionate surprise, the unheralded visit, which might appear a trifle uncalled for. She felt happily sure of herself under any circ.u.mstances not partaking of the nature of collisions at sea. Yet she had not behaved absolutely ill at the time of the threatened catastrophe in the Meridiana. Her remembrance, an oddly sudden one, of the definite manner of the red-haired second-cla.s.s pa.s.senger, a.s.sured her of that. He had certainly had all his senses about him, and he had spoken to her as a person to be counted on.

Her pulse beat a little more hurriedly as the brougham entered Stornham village. It was picturesque, but struck her as looking neglected. Many of the cottages had an air of dilapidation. There were many broken windows and unmended garden palings. A suggested lack of whitewash in several cases was not cheerful.

"I know nothing of the duties of English landlords," she said, looking through her carriage window, "but I should do it myself, if I were Rosy."

She saw, as she was taken through the park gateway, that that structure was out of order, and that damaged diamond panes peered out from under the thickness of the ivy ma.s.sing itself over the lodge.

"Ah!" was her thought, "it does not promise as it should. Happy people do not let things fall to pieces."

Even winding avenue, and spreading sward, and gorse, and broom, and bracken, enfolding all the earth beneath huge trees, were not fair enough to remove a sudden remote fear which arose in her rapidly reasoning mind. It suggested to her a point of view so new that, while she was amazed at herself for not having contemplated it before, she found herself wishing that the coachman would drive rather more slowly, actually that she might have more time to reflect.

They were nearing a dip in the park, where there was a lonely looking pool. The bracken was thick and high there, and the sun, which had just broken through a cloud, had pierced the trees with a golden gleam.

A little withdrawn from this shaft of brightness stood two figures, a dowdy little woman and a hunchbacked boy. The woman held some ferns in her hand, and the boy was sitting down and resting his chin on his hands, which were folded on the top of a stick.

"Stop here for a moment," Bettina said to the coachman. "I want to ask that woman a question."

She had thought that she might discover if her sister was at the Court.

She realised that to know would be a point of advantage. She leaned forward and spoke.

"I beg your pardon," she said, "I wonder if you can tell me----"

The woman came forward a little. She had a listless step and a faded, listless face.

"What did you ask?" she said.

Betty leaned still further forward.

"Can you tell me----" she began and stopped. A sense of stricture in the throat stopped her, as her eyes took in the washed-out colour of the thin face, the washed-out colour of the thin hair--thin drab hair, dragged in straight, hard unbecomingness from the forehead and cheeks.

Was it true that her heart was thumping, as she had heard it said that agitation made hearts thump?

She began again.

"Can you--tell me if--Lady Anstruthers is at home?" she inquired. As she said it she felt the blood surge up from the furious heart, and the hand she had laid on the handle of the door of the brougham clutched it involuntarily.

The dowdy little woman answered her indifferently, staring at her a little.

"I am Lady Anstruthers," she said.

Bettina opened the carriage door and stood upon the ground.

"Go on to the house," she gave order to the coachman, and, with a somewhat startled look, he drove away.

"Rosy!" Bettina's voice was a hushed, almost awed, thing. "YOU are Rosy?"

The faded little wreck of a creature began to look frightened.

"Rosy!" she repeated, with a small, wry, painful smile.

She was the next moment held in the folding of strong, young arms, against a quickly beating heart. She was being wildly kissed, and the very air seemed rich with warmth and life.

"I am Betty," she heard. "Look at me, Rosy! I am Betty. Look at me and remember!"

Lady Anstruthers gasped, and broke into a faint, hysteric laugh. She suddenly clutched at Bettina's arm. For a minute her gaze was wild as she looked up.

"Betty," she cried out. "No! No! No! I can't believe it! I can't! I can't!"

That just this thing could have taken place in her, Bettina had never thought. As she had reflected on her way from the station, the impossible is what one finds one's self face to face with. Twelve years should not have changed a pretty blonde thing of nineteen to a worn, unintelligent-looking dowdy of the order of dowdiness which seems to have lived beyond age and s.e.x. She looked even stupid, or at least stupefied. At this moment she was a silly, middle-aged woman, who did not know what to do. For a few seconds Bettina wondered if she was glad to see her, or only felt awkward and unequal to the situation.

"I can't believe you," she cried out again, and began to shiver. "Betty!

Little Betty? No! No! it isn't!"

She turned to the boy, who had lifted his chin from his stick, and was staring.

"Ughtred! Ughtred!" she called to him. "Come! She says--she says----"

She sat down upon a clump of heather and began to cry. She hid her face in her spare hands and broke into sobbing.

"Oh, Betty! No!" she gasped. "It's so long ago--it's so far away. You never came--no one--no one--came!"

The hunchbacked boy drew near. He had limped up on his stick. He spoke like an elderly, affectionate gnome, not like a child.

"Don't do that, mother," he said. "Don't let it upset you so, whatever it is."

"It's so long ago; it's so far away!" she wept, with catches in her breath and voice. "You never came!"

Betty knelt down and enfolded her again. Her bell-like voice was firm and clear.

"I have come now," she said. "And it is not far away. A cable will reach father in two hours."

Pursuing a certain vivid thought in her mind, she looked at her watch.

"If you spoke to mother by cable this moment," she added, with accustomed coolness, and she felt her sister actually start as she spoke, "she could answer you by five o'clock."

Lady Anstruther's start ended in a laugh and gasp more hysteric than her first. There was even a kind of wan awakening in her face, as she lifted it to look at the wonderful newcomer. She caught her hand and held it, trembling, as she weakly laughed.

"It must be Betty," she cried. "That little stern way! It is so like her. Betty--Betty--dear!" She fell into a sobbing, shaken heap upon the heather. The harrowing thought pa.s.sed through Betty's mind that she looked almost like a limp bundle of shabby clothes. She was so helpless in her pathetic, apologetic hysteria.

"I shall--be better," she gasped. "It's nothing. Ughtred, tell her."

"She's very weak, really," said the boy Ughtred, in his mature way. "She can't help it sometimes. I'll get some water from the pool."

"Let me go," said Betty, and she darted down to the water. She was back in a moment. The boy was rubbing and patting his mother's hands tenderly.

"At any rate," he remarked, as one consoled by a reflection, "father is not at home."