"Get up," I said; "here's my handkerchief. Get up quickly. Lady Helmstone is coming."
But who was the man with her?
It was Eric Annan.
CHAPTER XX
TWO INVITATIONS AND A CRISIS
Before those two were visible to the group round Duncombe front door, or within hailing distance of us, they turned into the bypath leading to Big Klaus's.
I could not tell whether Eric had seen us. But I was quite sure Lady Helmstone had. Sure, too, that she had deliberately avoided us.
Ranny didn't want to come back with me, and I didn't press him. I promised him I would say he was going to walk across the heath to the inn--"_had_ to get back--expecting a telegram."
I stayed behind in the gorse bushes alone, till I saw Lord Helmstone and all his party going home.
I couldn't bear the thought of meeting Betty.
I went round by the kitchen and crept up the back stairs. I listened at my mother's door.
Not a sound. Then I heard Betty downstairs playing the accompaniment to a song she and Ranny used to sing.
So I opened my mother's door and went in.
The first thing she said was, without any preface, "I know, now, why Lady Helmstone invited a child like Bettina to go yachting for six months rather than you."
"So do I," I answered; "they all adore Bettina. And then she is Hermione's special friend."
"There is another reason," my mother said, looking out of the window. "A reason that concerns--Lady Barbara." Then she glanced at me, a little shyly, and away her eyes went again to the window. "Lord Helmstone thinks a sea-voyage would be the best thing in the world for Mr. Annan.
They are asking him to be one of the party."
I felt as if some hard substance had struck me violently in the face.
But I managed to bring out the words: "Is he going, do you think?"
"No doubt he will go," she said.
Already I seemed to have lost him as utterly as though he had died. Yet with none of that sad comfort my mother had spoken of--the comfort of knowing one's possession safe beyond all risk of loss or tarnishing.
I had never been on a yacht.
I had never seen a yacht.
Yet I could see Eric on the _Nautch Girl_. And Lady Barbara!
Her mother's words came back: "Very little is done at balls." Very much, the story-books had told me, was done by throwing people together on a long voyage. My own heart told me the same.
Yes, I had lost him.
And I had lost myself.
The next day was Sunday. In the morning Hermione came to carry Bettina off for their last day together. I had to promise that, if Ranny should come to Duncombe, I would send for Betty.
As I sat with my mother, that same afternoon, the door opened, and there was the maid bringing in Mr. Annan.
I think I scarcely spoke or moved.
It was my mother who said: "I thought you would come to say good-bye."
"'Good-bye'?" Then, with unusual _brusquerie_ where my mother was concerned, he added: "When _I_ come to see people, what I say is, 'How do you do?'"
"But aren't you going away to-morrow?"
"Why should I?"
"Why, to catch the _Nautch Girl_."
"I can't think of a girl I should so little care to catch."
And he wasn't going at all! Had never contemplated it for a moment!
The weight of the world fell off my shoulders. And for nearly five minutes of a joy almost too great to be borne, I believed that it was because of me he wasn't going.
Then he told my mother it was because of his work. And so it was that, unconsciously, he made good the excuse I had offered for his bolting off the afternoon I told him my secret. He seemed to have forgotten that episode. At least, he behaved as though it had never happened.
He laughed a little over his interview with her ladyship. "Very determined individual, Lady Helmstone." He had told her, finally, that he hadn't time even to go to his sister's wedding. He had not thought it necessary, he said to add that he wouldn't have gone to his sister's wedding however much time he had.
Of course, my mother asked why such unbrotherly behaviour? He told us that he didn't approve of the marriage. There was nothing against the man's character. He was a "Writer to the Signet," which seemed in Scotland to mean a sort of barrister. I said "Writer to the Signet"
sounded much finer than "barrister." I was told that Maggie Annan could not be expected to live on a fine sound. And that was about all they would have. This particular "Writer to the Signet" was poor. "Oh, poorer than poor!"
I didn't like his way of saying that.
As we went downstairs I was rather glad of being able to disagree with him about something. It would keep me from being foolish. I had that feeling of the creature who has been straining long at bonds, and finds the sudden loosing a test of equilibrium. For fear I should seem too gloriously content with him, I taxed Eric with thinking over much about money. He said a man may put up with any sort of hardship he likes for himself. But no man had a right to marry till he could support a wife in some sort of comfort. I suggested that perhaps Maggie Annan cared less about comfort than she cared about other things. He retorted that Maggie probably hadn't thought it out at all. She was acting on impulse. "To think it out--that was the man's business." And so on.
I felt myself growing impatient when he said "comfort" for the second time.