"But why--why?" she choked, almost stumbling headlong down the stairway in her effort to reach the two men at the bottom. "Pete, why did he go?"
There was no answer.
"Pete,"--Bertram"s voice was very sharp--"what is the meaning of this?
Do you know why my brother left his home?"
The old man wet his lips and swallowed chokingly, but he did not speak.
"I"m waiting, Pete."
Billy laid one hand on the old servant"s arm--in the other hand she still tightly clutched the mirror k.n.o.bs.
"Pete, if you do know, won"t you tell us, please?" she begged.
Pete looked down at the hand, then up at the troubled young face with the beseeching eyes. His own features worked convulsively. With a visible effort he cleared his throat.
"I know--what he said," he stammered, his eyes averted.
"What was it?"
There was no answer.
"Look here, Pete, you"ll have to tell us, you know," cut in Bertram, decisively, "so you might as well do it now as ever."
Once more Pete cleared his throat. This time the words came in a burst of desperation.
"Yes, sir. I understand, sir. It was only that he said--he said as how young folks didn"t _need_ any one else around. So he was goin"."
"Didn"t _need_ any one else!" exclaimed Bertram, plainly not comprehending.
"Yes, sir. You two bein" married so, now." Pete"s eyes were still averted.
Billy gave a low cry.
"You mean--because _I_ came?" she demanded.
"Why, yes, Miss--no--that is--" Pete stopped with an appealing glance at Bertram.
"Then it was--it _was_--on account of _me_," choked Billy.
Pete looked still more distressed
"No, no!" he faltered. "It was only that he thought you wouldn"t want him here now."
"Want him here!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Bertram.
"Want him here!" echoed Billy, with a sob.
"Pete, where is he?" As she asked the question she dropped the mirror k.n.o.bs into her open bag, and reached for her coat and gloves--she had not removed her hat.
Pete gave the address.
"It"s just down the street a bit and up the hill," he added excitedly, divining her purpose. "It"s a sort of a boarding-house, I reckon."
"A _boarding-house_--for Uncle William!" scorned Billy, her eyes ablaze.
"Come, Bertram, we"ll see about that."
Bertram reached out a detaining hand.
"But, dearest, you"re so tired," he demurred. "Hadn"t we better wait till after dinner, or till to-morrow?"
"After dinner! To-morrow!" Billy"s eyes blazed anew. "Why, Bertram Henshaw, do you think I"d leave that dear man even one minute longer, if I could help it, with a notion in his blessed old head that we didn"t _want_ him?"
"But you said a little while ago you had a headache, dear," still objected Bertram. "If you"d just eat your dinner!"
"Dinner!" choked Billy. "I wonder if you think I could eat any dinner with Uncle William turned out of his home! I"m going to find Uncle William." And she stumbled blindly toward the door.
Bertram reached for his hat. He threw a despairing glance into Pete"s eyes.
"We"ll be back--when we can," he said, with a frown.
"Yes, sir," answered Pete, respectfully. Then, as if impelled by some hidden force, he touched his master"s arm. "It was that way she looked, sir, when she came to _you_--that night last July--with her eyes all shining," he whispered.
A tender smile curved Bertram"s lips. The frown vanished from his face.
"Bless you, Pete--and bless her, too!" he whispered back. The next moment he had hurried after his wife.
The house that bore the number Pete had given proved to have a pretentious doorway, and a landlady who, in response to the summons of the neat maid, appeared with a most impressive rustle of black silk and jet bugles.
No, Mr. William Henshaw was not in his rooms. In fact, he was very seldom there. His business, she believed, called him to State Street through the day. Outside of that, she had been told, he spent much time sitting on a bench in the Common. Doubtless, if they cared to search, they could find him there now.
"A bench in the Common, indeed!" stormed Billy, as she and Bertram hurried down the wide stone steps. "Uncle William--on a bench!"
"But surely now, dear," ventured her husband, "you"ll come home and get your dinner!"
Billy turned indignantly.
"And leave Uncle William on a bench in the Common? Indeed, no! Why, Bertram, you wouldn"t, either," she cried, as she turned resolutely toward one of the entrances to the Common.
And Bertram, with the "eyes all shining" still before him, could only murmur: "No, of course not, dear!" and follow obediently where she led.
Under ordinary circ.u.mstances it would have been a delightful hour for a walk. The sun had almost set, and the shadows lay long across the gra.s.s.
The air was cool and unusually bracing for a day so early in September.
But all this was lost on Bertram. Bertram did not wish to take a walk.
He was hungry. He wanted his dinner; and he wanted, too, his old home with his new wife flitting about the rooms as he had pictured this first evening together. He wanted William, of course. Certainly he wanted William; but if William would insist on running away and sitting on park benches in this ridiculous fashion, he ought to take the consequences--until to-morrow.
Five, ten, fifteen minutes pa.s.sed. Up one path and down another trudged the anxious-eyed Billy and her increasingly impatient husband. Then when the fifteen weary minutes had become a still more weary half-hour, the bonds Bertram had set on his temper snapped.
"Billy," he remonstrated despairingly, "do, please, come home! Don"t you see how highly improbable it is that we should happen on William if we walked like this all night? He might move--change his seat--go home, even. He probably has gone home. And surely never before did a bride insist on spending the first evening after her return tramping up and down a public park for hour after hour like this, looking for any man.