CHAPTER XXXVI
“WHAT is it, Betty? What’s up? He isn’t—dead?” the boy asked hoarsely.
Betty stared at him. “Come into the station—no, stand under this light, Tommy,” she bade him, “and read this.” And she thrust a paper into his hand with glaring headlines and an awful portrait of the bearded man of many aliases on the first page.
The boy’s eyes widened—seemed almost to start from his head as he gazed at the picture and the headlines. He swallowed the latter whole, then read the text wonderingly with great and growing excitement, with many interjections and, it must be owned, not without enjoyment of the dramatic completeness of the affair. But the moment he looked from the page to Betty’s tragic face, he was all sympathy.
Betty was not forced to explain. He understood it all in a twinkling.
“How much did the old skinflint get out of you?” he asked anxiously, as they walked up towards the avenue.
“O, Tommy! I don’t know, I’m sure!” cried Betty. “That’s no matter now. Think of Rose! This will simply kill her.”
“Ho! it won’t do anything of the sort!” he rejoined. “Believe me, she won’t take it anything like so hard as you do. I wouldn’t breathe this to anyone but you, Betty, but it’s my private opinion that Rose enjoys being blind.It gives her a sort of a cinch, you know, and then in a way it’s sort of fun. Do you remember once when I was a kid I limped around almost a whole term with a bad ankle? It really wasn’t lame a bit after one night, but I never enjoyed myself more in all my life. I’d be doing it now—limping—like as not, only one morning—it was after it had got to be so natural that I should ’a thought I’d ’a limped if I walked in my sleep—I forgot all about it and came downstairs in two jumps and landed plumb on that foot. And there was dad right on the spot and laughing fit to kill. By the way, did Vandegrift, alias Warrener, alias What-you-call-ums really look as slick as all that?”
“Yes—no—I don’t know, I’m sure!” cried the girl. “But he was so kind and seemed so learned, so scientific. O, Tommy, don’t you believe that even now there may be some mistake? He said the medical profession were jealous and persecuted him.”
“No, Betty, he’s a fakir all right. That’s plain to see,” quoth Tommy firmly. “When it comes to actually arresting him, you know, and all that horse jockey business, it means business.”
The girl wrung her hands. Tommy winced secretly.
“Betty, I’ll go home with you and then I’ll come back and tell Rose about it,” he proposed. “I’ll promise to break it to her very, very gently, and then you can see her later on if you want or wait till to-morrow.”
“O, Tommy! if you would!” she cried. “It seems as if I couldn’t now—and yet—I want her to know it. Let’s hurry. I’ve got to get home and do the dinner dishes. I hid them—under the sink!”
On a sudden, she began to laugh wildly. Then she stopped and leaned against a tree and in a few seconds the startled Tommy realized that she was sobbing violently.
Tommy went to her and put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Betty, don’t,” he entreated, “don’t, please. Listen— O gee, if you don’t quit, I shall be blubbering in just one minute, and then——”
As he choked, poor, unselfish Betty made a tremendous effort and controlled the tears that might have afforded her some slight relief. They went on in silence the rest of the way; but at her door Tommy assured her that he would be in to tell her about Rose directly after tea, and Betty thanked him in a voice that at least proved she wasn’t crying.
When he appeared after tea, Betty lay on the sofa in the sitting-room. She hadn’t been able to eat anything and looked so ill that even Aunt Sarah had been touched. She didn’t scold the girl nor even question her. She forbore the satisfaction of telling her brother how Betty had hidden the dish-pan under the sink and stolen away. And now she was washing up the tea things herself in the kitchen.
Betty sprang from the couch at sight of Tommy and stood gazing at him imploringly as if begging him to say that Rose wasn’t dead.
He pushed her back upon the sofa and sat down beside her.
“Rose is all hunky, Betty,” he informed her coolly. “Honest, she took it as easy as if it was all about somebody else. She was mighty interested in the story—mademe read every word of it. It is a thriller, you know, the cheek of him and all that. And slick—— We were trying to make out where it was he gave the sheriff the slip. You know that siding a few rods north of the water tower?”
“O, Tommy, tell me, is Rose honestly—resigned? Are you sure—O dear, it will just kill her, I know.”
“No such thing,” he declared. “You think she was bluffing me? Not on your tin-type. Betty Pogany! And she sent word that you’re not to take it any harder than she does and she’ll see you to-morrow.”
Tommy’s words carried a measure of conviction. At least Betty felt that as yet Rose wasn’t suffering as she would be later. Either she was stunned or she hadn’t contemplated what it really meant. As Tommy turned and gazed with perennial interest upon his favorite picture, which represented Vesuvius in violent eruption, the girl forgot his presence. But the partial and temporary relief in regard to Rose only cleared the way for other complications. On a sudden a vision of Mr. Meadowcroft flashed across her mind. He wasn’t—in a flash, Betty saw her conduct towards him stripped now entirely of its secret moral justification, in all its glaring, ugly nakedness.
She wrung her hands. It seemed as if she could not endure it.
“Betty!” cried Tommy, “what is it?”
“O, Tommy, there’s Mr. Meadowcroft!” she cried in utter consternation. “Whatever shall I do? You see all the time I was really just as bad as he thought I was, because Dr. Vandegrift wasn’t a good man and we weretruly running away. And I told him thatIwould never forgivehim!”
“Get your hat and come on over to his house. We’ll ask when he’s coming home, and that’ll give us something to figure on,” suggested Tommy.