My Little Sister Part 17

"Just that she would send Betty home."

After some time she said quite suddenly: "That might mean alone in the motor."

I was going to say "Why not?" But as I looked up from my work at the face under the candle light, a most foolish and indefinable fear flashed across my mind--a feeling too ridiculous to own--sudden, indefinable dread of that inoffensive man, the Helmstones' head chauffeur. I had no sooner cast out the childish thought than I remembered the two under men. One only a sort of motor-house "odd man." To that hangdog creature might fall the task of driving Betty home! I had thought of this man vaguely enough before, yet with some dash of human sympathy, for it was common talk that he was "put upon" by the other men. He was a weakling, and unhappy; now I suddenly felt him to be evil--desperate.

Oh, why had I let Bettina go!

Even if the chauffeurs, all three, were decent enough ordinarily, what if just to-night they had been drinking?

Betty coming across the deserted heath with a drunken driver----

Oh, G.o.d, I prayed, don't let anything happen to Bettina....

A quarter past eleven.

I put on a bold face. "They wouldn't, I think, have a motor-car out for Betty at this hour, and the reason she is late is because she has told them she would like the walk."

"They will hardly send a woman with her at this time of night."

We both started violently, and all because a coal had fallen out of the grate on the metal fender.

My mother was the first to speak: "They are haphazard people, I sometimes think.... You don't suppose they would send her back with a groom...?"

I said I was sure they would not, though an hour before I would have asked, Why not?

"Lord Helmstone couldn't be expected to put himself out. I _wish_ I had not let the servants go to bed!" she exclaimed. "Why didn't you think of it? Of course, _they_ should have gone and brought Bettina home."

I saw now how right and proper this would have been.

Half past eleven.

"It is very strange," I said.

"Go and look out again, you may see a lantern, or the motor-lamps."

I leaned out into the fresh-smelling darkness, and I saw nothing, I heard nothing.

I hung there, unwilling to draw in my head and admit the world without was empty of Bettina. She had been thrown out of the car. She was lying by the roadside somewhere, dead, that was why she didn't come home.

Suddenly I thought of Gerald Boyne. What if, after all, he had been dining there. He would be sure to want to bring Bettina home. Yes, and those casual Helmstones would turn Bettina over to him without a thought. A man Ranny wouldn't let his sister dance with in a room full of her friends.... Bettina, setting out with Gerald Boyne to cross the lonely heath--and never reaching home.

I knew all this was wild and foolish ... then why did these imaginings make me feel I could not bear the suspense another moment? I shut the window and turned round. "You must let me go for her," I said.

The same suggestion must have been that moment on her lips. "Go, wake the servants," she said, "tell them to dress quickly. Get your cloak and light the lantern." She gave her short sharp directions. The young servant was to go with me. The old one was to lock the door behind us, and wait up with my mother. I went with a candle through silent pa.s.sages, and knocked on doors.

I left the lantern burning down in the hall, and in my cloak went back to my mother's room.

She was leaning out, over the side of the bed listening.

"Aren't they ready?"

"They are only just roused."

"Servants take ten times as long to dress as----Hark. Look out!"

I went back to the window and peered between the close-drawn curtains, with hands at my temples on either side of my eyes.

Nothing.

Except.... Yes, I could hear the heavy step of the older woman down in the hall unlocking, unbolting, unchaining the door ... that the housemaid and I might lose no time when she was ready.

The old woman must be waiting for us there below, with the lantern in her hand. A faint light was lying on the path. Not a sound now in all the world except my mother's voice behind me:

"You will take the short cut."

"Oh yes."

"And as you go don't talk--_listen_."

"Listen!" I echoed, with mounting horror. "What should I hear?"

"How do we know?"

A chill went down my back.

The bedroom-door opened, and Bettina walked in.

"Such a nice evening! They've been teaching me bridge. Why have you put on your cloak? Why are you looking--oh! what has happened to you?"

Not very much was said to Bettina that night. She and two of the Helmstones' maids had come round by the orchard-gate, walking softly on the gra.s.s, "so as not to waken mother."

Only a little crestfallen, she was sent away to bed. My mother had motioned me to wait. As I watched Bettina making her apologies and her good-night, I thought how worse than useless had been all that anxiety and strain. "I shall remember to-night," I said to myself, "whenever I am frightened again."

But this, I could see before she spoke, was not the moral my mother was drawing. "Shut the door," she signed. And when I had come back to her, she drew herself up in bed and laid her hand on mine. "I want you to make me a promise," she said. "It is not fair to girls not to let them know that terrible things _can_ happen. Promise me that you will take better care of Bettina. Never let anyone make you forget----"

I promised--oh, I promised that!

CHAPTER XV

MY SECRET

Eric, like the violets and primroses, came earlier that third spring.