"I"ve told James to answer all telephone calls and say that Betty is doing as well as could be expected, but that the doctor says she must have perfect quiet to save her from a nervous breakdown----" she answered him coldly. "I"m not quite a fool if you do think so----"
"Well, that"s all right for to-night, but what"ll we say to-morrow if we don"t find her----"
"Oh! She"ll come back," said the stepmother confidently. "She can"t help it. Why, where would she go? She hasn"t a place on earth since she"s lost confidence in that cousin of her mother"s because he didn"t come to her wedding. She hasn"t an idea that he never got her note asking him to give her away. Thank heaven I got hold of that before it reached the postman! If that old granny had been here we should have had trouble indeed. I had an experience with him once just before I married Betty"s father, and I never want to repeat it. But we must look out what gets in the papers!"
"It"s rather late for that, I suspect. The bloodhounds "ill be around before many minutes and you better think up what you want said. But I"m not so sure she wouldn"t go there, and we better tell the detectives that. What"s the old guy"s address? I"ll call him up long distance and say she was on a motoring trip and intended to stop there if she had time. I"ll ask if she"s reached there yet."
"That"s a good idea, although I"m sure she was too hurt about it to go to him. She cried all the afternoon. It"s a wonder she didn"t look frightful! But that"s Betty! Cry all day and come out looking like a star without any paint either. It"s a pity somebody that would have appreciated it couldn"t have had her complexion."
"That"s you all over, Mother, talking about frivolous things when everything"s happening at once. You"re the limit! I say, you"d better be getting down to business! I"ve thought of another thing. How about that old nurse, Candace? Betty used to be crazy about her? What became of her?"
Mrs. Stanhope"s face hardened, and anxiety grew in her eyes.
"She might have gone to her, although I don"t believe she knows where she is. I"m sure I don"t. I sent her away just before we began to get ready for the wedding. I didn"t dare have her here. She knows too much and takes too much upon herself. I wouldn"t have kept her so long, only she knew I took the trustee"s letter, and she was very impudent about it once or twice, so that I didn"t really dare to let her go until just a few days ago. I thought things would all be over here before she could do any harm, and Betty would be of age and have her money in her own right, and being your wife, of course there wouldn"t be any more trouble about it."
"Well, you better find out what"s become of her!" said the young man with darkening face. "_She_ ought to be locked up somewhere! She"s liable to make no end of trouble! You can"t tell what she"s stirred up already! Ring for a servant and find out if they know where she is. Ten to one that"s where Betty is."
Mrs. Stanhope, with startled face, stepped to the bell and summoned Aileen:
"Aileen, have you any idea where we could find Miss Betty"s old nurse, Candace?" she asked in a soothing tone, studying the maid"s countenance.
"I think it might be well to send for her in case Miss Betty needs her.
She was so much attached to her!"
Aileen lifted startled eyes to her mistress" face. There was reserve and suspicion in her glance:
"Why, she was here a few minutes ago," she said guardedly. "It seems Miss Betty sent her an invitation, and when Miss Betty took sick she was that scared she ran out of the church and come here to find out how she was. She might not have gone yet. I could go see."
"Here! Was she here?" Mrs. Stanhope turned her head to her son and her eyes said: "That"s strange!" but she kept her face well under control.
"Yes, you might go and see if you can find her, Aileen, and if you do, tell her I would like to see her a moment."
Aileen went away on her errand and Mrs. Stanhope turned to her son:
"Betty can"t have gone to her unless there was some collusion. But in any case I think we had better keep her here until we know something."
Quick trotting steps were heard hurrying along the hall and a little jerky knock announced unmistakably the presence of Candace.
Mrs. Stanhope surveyed the little red-faced creature coolly and sharply:
"Candace, you have broken one of my express commands in returning here without permission from me, but seeing it was done in kindness I will overlook it this time and let you stay. You may be useful if they bring my daughter home to-night and I presume she will be very glad to see you. Just now she is--umm----" she glanced furtively at her son, and lifting her voice a trifle, as if to make her statement more emphatic--"she is at a private hospital near the church where they took her till she should be able to come home. It will depend on her condition whether they bring her to-night or to-morrow or in a few days.
Meantime, if you like you may go up to your old room and wait until I send for you. I shall have news soon and will let you know. Don"t go down to the servant"s quarters, I wish to have you where I can call you at a moment"s notice."
Candace gave her ex-mistress a long, keen suspicious stare, pinned her with a glance as steely as her own for an instant, in search of a possible ulterior motive, and then turning on her little fat heel, vanished like a small fast racer in the direction of her old room.
"Now," said Mrs. Stanhope, turning with a sigh of relief, "she"s safe!
I"ll set Marie to watch her and if there"s anything going on between those two Marie will find it out."
But Herbert Hutton was already sitting at his mother"s desk with the telephone book and calling up Long Distance.
All the long hours when he had expected to have been standing under the rose bower downstairs in triumph with his bride, Herbert Hutton sat at that telephone in his mother"s boudoir alternately raging at his mother and shouting futile messages over the "phone. The ancient cousin of Betty"s mother was discovered to be seriously ill in a hospital and unable to converse even through the medium of his nurse, so there was nothing to be gained there. Messages to the public functionaries in his town developed no news. Late into the night, or rather far toward the morning, Bessemer was discovered at a cabaret where his persistent mother and brother had traced him, too much befuddled with his evening"s carouse to talk connectedly. He declared Betty was a good old girl, but she might go to thunder for all he cared; he knew a girl "worth twice of her."
His mother turned with disgust from his babbling voice, convinced that he knew nothing of Betty"s whereabouts. Nevertheless, by means of a financial system of threats and rewards which she had used on him successfully for a number of years, she succeeded in impressing upon him the necessity of coming home at once, and just as the pink was beginning to dawn in the gray of the morning, Bessemer drove up in a hired car, and stumbled noisily into the house, demanding to know where the wedding was. He wanted to kiss the bride.
Candace, still in her stiff black silk, stood in the shadowy hall, as near as she dared venture, and listened, with her head thoughtfully on one side. Betty in her note about the wedding had said she was going to be married to Bessemer. But Bessemer didn"t sound like a bridegroom. Had Bessemer run away then, or what? But some things looked queer. She remembered that Aileen had spoken as if Herbert was the bridegroom, but she had taken it for a mere slip of the tongue and thought nothing of it. When Aileen next came that way, she asked her if she happened to have got hold of one of the invitations, and Aileen, with her finger on her lips, nodded, and presently returned with something under her ap.r.o.n:
"I slipped it from the waste-basket," she said, "and Miss Betty got a holt of it, and there was a tremenjus fuss about something, I couldn"t make out what; but I heard the missus say it was all a mistake as she gave the order over the "phone, and she must have misspoke herself, but anyhow she thought she"d destroyed them all and given a rush order and they would be all right and sent out in plenty of time. So she sticks this back in the waste-basket and orders me to take the basket down and burn it, but I keeps this out and hides it well. I couldn"t see nothin"
the matter with it, can you?"
"There"s _all_ the matter with it!" declared the angry nurse as she glared at the name of Herbert Hutton thoughtfully, and read between the lines more than she cared to tell.
CHAPTER IV
NOT two miles away, Betty lay safe and warm in the flanellette nightgown, and watched Jane Carson turn out the light and open the window. A light leaped up from the street and made a friendly spot of brightness on the opposite wall, and Betty had a sense of cosiness that she had not felt since she was in boarding school with a roommate.
"Now," said Jane, climbing into bed and pulling up the covers carefully lest she should let the cold in on her guest, "let"s hear!--You warm enough?"
There was a curious tenderness in her voice as if she had brought home a young princess and must guard her carefully.
"Oh, perfectly!" said Betty, giving a little nervous shiver. "And I"m so glad to be here safe away from them all! Oh, I"ve needed some one to advise with _so_ much! I haven"t had a soul since they sent my old nurse away because she dared to take my part sometimes."
Suddenly Betty buried her face in the pillow and began to sob and Jane reached out quick gentle arms and gathered her in a close comforting embrace. In a moment more Betty had gained control of herself and began to explain:
"You see," she said, catching her breath bravely, "they were determined I should marry a man I can"t _endure_, and when I wouldn"t they tried to _trick_ me into it anyway. I never suspected until I got into the church and looked around and couldn"t see Bessemer anywhere; only the other one with his evil eyes gloating over me, and then I knew! They thought they would get me there before all that church full of people and I wouldn"t dare do anything. But when I realized it, I just dropped right down in the aisle. I couldn"t stand up, I was so frightened."
"But I don"t understand," said Jane. "Were there _two_ men?"
"Oh, yes," sighed Betty, "there were two."
"Well, where was the other one, the one you _wanted_ to marry?"
"I don"t know----" said Betty with a half sob in her voice. "That"s just what frightened me. You see they were my stepmother"s two sons, and it was my father"s dying wish that I should marry one of them. I didn"t really _want_ to marry Bessemer, but I simply _loathed_ Herbert, the younger one, who was so determined to marry me. I was terribly afraid of him. He had been frightfully cruel to me when I was a child and when he grew up he was always tormenting me; and then when he tried to make love to me he was so repulsive that I couldn"t bear to look at him. It really made me sick to think of ever marrying him. Oh--I _couldn"t_--no matter who asked me. So Bessemer and I decided to get married to stop the trouble. They were always nagging him, too, and I was kind of sorry for him."
"But why should you marry anybody you didn"t want to, I"d like to know!"
exclaimed Jane in horror. "This is a free country and n.o.body ever makes people marry anybody they don"t like any more. Why didn"t you just beat it?"
"I thought about that a good many times," said Betty, pressing her tired eyes with her cold little fingers, "but I couldn"t quite bring myself to do it. In the first place, I didn"t know where to go, nor what to do.
They never would let me learn to do anything useful, so I couldn"t have got any work; and anyhow I had a feeling that it wouldn"t be possible to get away where Herbert couldn"t find me if he wanted to. He"s that way.
He always gets what he wants, no matter whom it hurts. He"s _awful_--Jane--really!"
There was a pitiful note in her voice that appealed to the mother in Jane, and she stooped over her guest and patted her comfortingly on the shoulder:
"You poor little kid," she said tenderly, "you must have been worried something awful, but still I don"t get you; what was the idea in sticking around and thinking you _had_ to marry somebody you didn"t like? You coulda gone to some one and claimed pertection. You could uv appealed to the p"lice if worst came to worst----!"
"Oh! But Jane I couldn"t! That would have brought our family into disgrace, and father would have felt so _dreadfully_ about it if he had been alive! I couldn"t quite bring myself, either, to go against his dying request. We had always been so much to each other, Daddy and I.