Elizabeth Robins

“ Confidence, to be complete, must needs be mutual. If Betty and I had not been able to tear out of our hearts and hold up for inspection those shy hopes of ours, neither had our mother been able to show us the true face of memory. I did not know then how hard this was to do, or that the faithfullest intention must fall short; that genius itself cannot pass on to others all the poignancy of past Hope, or—mercifully—more than a pale reflection of past Despair. ”

“ Bettina's voice came floating in. She had grown tired of playing proper music. She was singing the nursery rhyme which my mother had set to variations of the tinkling old-world tune:
"Where are you going to, my pretty maid?"
I thought how strange and wonderful was the simplest, most ordinary little life. There must always be that question: what is going to become of me? I had long known what was the proper thing to happen. I ought to marry Lord Helmstone's heir. And Bettina should marry a prince. ”

“ I have seen her turn that look back on Bettina, lagging: "Soon home, now, little girl. Soon safe in our dear home."
I remember the look of the heath, at dusk, on winter days. The forbidding grey of the sky. The clammy chill. A white fog coming out of the hollows—a level mist; not rising high at first, but rolling nearer, nearer, like the ghost of an inundating sea. All the familiar things taking on an unreal look. A silence, and a shivering. Sometimes the dull oppression broken by a birds' note. ”

“ Work, work! It had seized him in a fresh grip.
I was thankful to the work for having carried him away that Monday afternoon, when Betty came back from seeing the Helmstones off. It was a Betty we had never seen before. I don't know what else Hermione had said to her, but Betty had been told that she, too, might have gone yachting.
It was like a stab to see my mother's face now, and to remember the confidence with which she had quoted the old story about Bettina's insisting on the promise that she should not be made to pay visits: "Not never?" "Not never!" ”

“ Our absent-minded man was not absent-minded any more. He was listening, with a look I could not understand, as if he took a malicious pleasure in poor Betty's mistake. Such a trifling slip to have taken the young man for Guy Whitby-Dawson, and yet it seemed to have put the company out of tune. Or perhaps it was the loss of the race. All except my man seemed to care very much about the lost race. The Tartar, in his annoyed voice, told his hostess and the Colonel how it happened. He leaned his elbow on the table, and almost turned his back on poor Bettina. ”

“ 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 [Pg 252] 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." ”

“ 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. ”

“ There were people—my mother was sorry if Lord Helmstone was one—who thought it superior to smile at the Fount of Honour.
Smiling at Founts was one thing. But to go a-yachting when you might help to crown the King of England, Emperor of India, Defender of the Faith...!
Bettina and I had agreed privately that the reason she was allowed the unheard-of licence of dining out alone was that she might embrace this final opportunity of probing the mystery before the Helmstones vanished. They had come down from London for their last week-end before going to Marseilles to join the Nautch Girl. ”

“ Could I trust even Eric to help? The man who had set his work before his love—who had said: "If all the people in the house were dying, if the house were falling about my ears and I thought I was 'getting it'—I'd let the house fall and the folks die and go on tracking the Secret home." Even if that were not quite seriously meant, no more than all the other good men and true, would that one leave the lesser task and set himself to cure this cancer at the heart of the world. ”

“ I begged the butler to get a cloak for Mrs. Harborough. She was saying Bettina and I should have waited. And again that I must calm myself and tell her——
"Someone pretended to be you!" I hurled it at her. "She took us to a house—a place where they do worse than murder. Betty is there now——" I told her all I could pack into a few sentences.
"It isn't possible," my aunt said. "This is England."
"Come and see! Betty——" But they only thought me mad; they tortured me with questions.
I caught her by the arm. "God won't forgive you if you wait an instant more." ”

“ My mother sometimes spoke a little anxiously about Bettina's being so much with Hermione. She surprised me one day by asking me outright if I thought the increasing intimacy was likely to do Bettina harm.
My feeling about it was too vague to produce. I could only suggest that if she was afraid of anything of the kind, why should she not speak to Betty?
"The child has so few pleasures," was the answer, with that brooding look of tenderness which the thought of Betty often brought into my mother's face. "Does she tell you what they talk about?" ”

“ Bettina, with her little air of large experience, said that Madame Aurore was the most "sympathetic" person she had ever met. Madame Aurore's benevolent concern about our clothes, our soups, sauces, and servants, and everything that was ours, extended to our friends and relations and everything that was theirs. She had never, she said, known people—let alone such charming people as we—with so few acquaintances. ”

“ Mademoiselle Bettina ought to be grateful, she said, to have a mother so devoted, so solicitous. Standing near the open door, she piled up an exaggerated case of maternal love. There was nothing in life like the love between mother and child. Ah, didn't she know! Her own little girl——
My mother said she must have the door shut now, and I was sent to undo Betty's gown.
Bettina thought it angelic of Madame Aurore not to resent our mother's lack of interest in the small Aurore. According to Bettina, Madame showed a wonderfully nice disposition in not withdrawing her interest from us after that. ”

“ I put my misgiving down to the fear that parting from Bettina for four long weeks, would be more than my mother's scant reserve of strength could bear.
As for Bettina (oh, when I remember that!) —Bettina showed the bravest front; calling back from the door: "I shall write you every blessed day."
"Yes," my mother steadied her voice to answer. "I shall want to hear everything. The good and—the less good."
"There won't be any 'less good.' It's all going to be glorious."
As Big Klaus's dog-cart took us across the heath I strained my eyes for some glimpse of Eric. ”

“ Bettina's look fell. No doubt the finishing touch would have been a pearl and emerald pendant. But——
Madame Aurore struck in with a torrential rapture, drowning explanation and regret. Life, Madame Aurore shrilled, was for ever using her, humble instrument though she was—for the working out of these benevolences. There had she—but three days ago—all innocent, unknowing—tossed that piece of chiffon tilleul into her trunk. Or rather, not her hand performed the act—not hers at all. The hand of Fate! And now, The Finger! ... pointing straight at the pearl and emerald pendant. ”

“ And for all her being a Biosophist she had asked us to stay for the Coronation. Bettina frequently led the conversation to the great event of June. But this queer little Frenchwoman was more interested in Aunt Josephine than she was in the King and Queen. Here was distinction for an Aunt!
And what was she like—this lady? We must have a picture of our only and so valuable relation.
Bettina went and rooted about in the deep print and photograph drawer, till she brought Aunt Josephine to light. Very faded and old-fashioned looking, but Madame Aurore regarded the face with a respectful enthusiasm. ”

“ Still, very dimly, if at all, could I have realised there was any connection between her continued shrinking from our fellow-creatures, and that old nameless fear we used to bar the door against. Yet in one guise or another, Fear still was at the gate. Yesterday the menace of Bettina's illness. To-day a hop-picker, bringing a whiff of the sick world's infection through our windows. ”

“ He liked Bettina, and flirted with her.
I began to see that I had not been looking after Bettina properly.
But I saw more than that.
I saw that I, too, had been drifting. I had no idea where any of us were. Where was my mother in her lonely struggle? Where was Bettina, in her ignorance, straying? I, myself? I had been content with dreaming. Or with waking now and then to thrill at stories about other [Pg 93] people's courage, insight, indomitable patience. Why should I not rouse myself and nerve myself? Why should not I, too, scorn delight and live laborious days? ”

“ What was happening at home all this time? I began to walk faster, with a great misery at my heart. What was the good of this man who wasn't a general practitioner? He was too like all the other broad-shouldered young golfers in Norfolk jackets—far too like them, to help in so dire a need as ours.
I tried to hearten myself by recalling what Lord Helmstone had said of him. That "the bigwigs in the world of science spoke of Annan with enthusiasm." "An original mind." "A demon for work" (that was, perhaps, why he hadn't wanted to come with me) . ”

“ But my thoughtfulness and gravity as a child, my being cast in a larger, soberer mould, lent validity to my assumption of the right to take care of Bettina. Even to harry her now and then, when her feet outstrayed the paths appointed.
Bettina was not only younger, she was delicate; she had to be protected against colds, against fatigue. [Pg 31]
There is, in almost every house, one main concern.
When I look back, I see that in ours the main concern was Bettina. If she had been less sweet-natured, she would have been made intolerable.
But the great need of being loved kept Bettina lovable. ”

“ In spite of the breathless shortness of the time of preparation, Bettina composed Coronation dances and practised curtseying to the Queen, though she knew quite well that she would only see Her Majesty at a distance driving by in her golden coach.
The one consideration that sobered Bettina was who, who—on this short notice, with all the feminine world crying passionately for frocks—who could be found to make ours? The more plain and simple, the more important was style and cut. Nobody in the country-side was competent for such an undertaking. ”

“ She was "not strong enough to stand the patchouli," so she missed the great moment of the final trying on. Bettina stood before the glass, looking somehow more childish than ever, or rather seeming less of common earth and more of fairyland, in the tunic-frock of green, her short curls on her neck.
My fancy that she was like somebody out of "The Midsummer Night's Dream," was set to flight by Madame Aurore's shower of couturière's compliment, mixed with highly practical considerations, such as: "See how it falls when you sit down. Parfaitement! ”

“ My mother reproved Eric's flippancy. Either she really did see daylight, and most excellent meaning, in the Biosophical Theory, or she concerned herself to make out a case for the defence of Aunt Josephine. She told Eric she was surprised that a man of science should at this time of the day cast ridicule on the doctrine of an essential harmony between "soul states" and the health of the body. For her part, she felt the attraction of this idea of ceasing the little lonely personal fight against overwhelming odds—this putting oneself into direct relation with the Infinite. ”

“ And certainly he tried to make me feel that what to me was like a maniac's nightmare, an abysmal horror beggaring language and crucifying thought—it was all a commonplace to men and women of the world. "Human nature!" "Human nature!"—like the tolling of a muffled bell. ”

“ We turned our backs and went home. I was twelve before I realised that we ourselves were trespassers.
The heath belonged to Lord Helmstone.
That was a blow.
Still worse, the later knowledge that Duncombe House and garden were not our own. The laying out of a golf course, and the cheapening of the motor-car, forced the facts upon our knowledge. But I am glad that as little children we did not know these things. We saw ourselves as heiresses to the prettiest house and garden in the world. ”

“ A region where we played with the infinite possibilities of existence—from the discovery of a wheat-ear's hidden nest, to the apparition of a pack of hounds on the horizon, followed by men in red coats and ladies in sober habit, on horses that came galloping out of the vague, up over the green rim of the world, jumping the five-barred gate into Little Klaus's meadow, and vanishing in a pleasant fanfare of horn, of baying and hallooing, leaving us standing there in a stirred and wonderful stillness. ”

“ Harborough was being helped into the cab after me, I leaned out of the window on the opposite side, looking up the street and down. The wind blew cold on my wet face.
"The Queen, the Queen! Oh, why are you Queen of England, if you can't help Betty?"
The door of the public-house opened, and a man reeled out. A man in chauffeur's dress. A man—with crooked shoulders! ”