Betty Wales, Freshman Part 33

"Oh, right under this tree, I guess," answered Katherine carelessly.

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye."

When Betty had fairly gone, doubts began to a.s.sail Katherine, as they have a habit of a.s.sailing impulsive people, after it is too late to pay heed to them. It occurred to her that she was cooperating in what might easily turn out to be a desperate adventure, and that it would have been the part of wisdom to enlist the services of more competent and better equipped searchers at once, without risking delay on the slender chance of finding Eleanor near the wharf. "Eleanor would have hated the publicity, but if she wants to come up here in the dark and frighten us all into hysteria she must take the consequences. And I'd have let her too, if it hadn't been for Betty."

An owl hooted, and Katherine jumped as nervously as Betty would have done. Poor Betty! She must be almost at the landing by this time. At that very moment a little quavering voice rang out over the water.

"Eleanor! Eleanor Watson! Eleanor! Oh, Eleanor, where are you?"

For a long moment there was silence. Then the owl hooted again. That was too much. Katherine jumped up with a bound and started down the bank toward Betty. She did not stop to find the path, and at the second step caught her foot and fell headlong. Apparently Betty did not hear her.

She had not yet given up hope, for she was calling again, pausing each time to listen for the answer that did not come.

"Oh, Eleanor, Eleanor, aren't you there?" she cried and stopped, even the courage of despair gone at last. Katherine, nursing a bruised knee on the hill above, had opened her mouth to call encouragement, when a low "Who is it?" floated across the water.

"Eleanor, is that you? It's I--Betty Wales!" shrieked Betty.

Katherine nodded her head in silent token of "I told you so," and slid back among the bushes to recuperate and await developments.

For the end was not yet. Eleanor was evidently far down toward the dam, close to the opposite bank. It was hard for her to hear Betty, and still harder for Betty to hear her. Her voice sounded faint and far off, and she seemed to be paralyzed with fear and quite incapable of further effort. When Betty begged her to paddle right across and began lighting matches in reckless profusion to show her the way, Eleanor simply repeated, "I can't, I can't," in dull, dispirited monotone.

"Shall--I--come--for--you?" shouted Betty.

"You can't," returned Eleanor again.

"Non--sense!" shrieked Betty and then stood still on the wharf, apparently weighing Eleanor's last opinion.

"Go ahead," called Katherine in m.u.f.fled tones from above.

Betty did not answer.

"Thinks I'm another owl, I suppose," muttered Katherine, and limped down the bank to the wharf, frightening the nervous, overwrought Betty almost out of her wits at first, and then vastly relieving her by taking the entire direction of affairs into her own competent hands.

"You go right ahead. It's the only way, and it's perfectly easy in a heavy boat. That canoe might possibly go down with the current, but a big boat wouldn't. Rachel and I tried it last week, when the river was higher. Now cross straight over and feel along the bank until you get to her. Then beach the canoe and come back the same way. Give me some matches. I'll manage that part of it and then retire,--unless you'd rather be the one to wait here."

"No, I'll go," answered Betty eagerly, vanis.h.i.+ng into the boat-house after a pair of oars.

"She must be hanging on to something on sh.o.r.e," went on Katherine, when Betty reappeared, "and she's lost her nerve and doesn't dare to let go.

If you can't get her into your boat, I'll come; but somebody really ought to stay here. I had no idea the fog was so thick. Hurry now and cross straight over. You're sure you're not afraid?"

"Quite sure." Betty was off, splas.h.i.+ng her oars nervously through the still water, wrapped in the mist, whispering over and over Katherine's last words, "Hurry and go straight. Hurry, hurry, go straight across."

When she reached the other sh.o.r.e she called again to Eleanor, and the sobbing cry of relief that answered her made all the strain and effort seem as nothing. Cautiously creeping along the bank where the river was comparatively quiet, backing water now and then to test her strength with the current, she finally reached Eleanor, who had happened quite by chance to run near the bank and now sat in the frail canoe hanging by both hands to a branch that swept low over the water, exactly as Katherine had guessed.

"Why didn't you beach the canoe, and stay on sh.o.r.e?" asked Betty, who had tied her own boat just above and was now up to her knees in the water, pulling Eleanor in.

"I tried to, but I lost my paddle, and so I was afraid to let go the tree again, and the water looked so deep. Oh, Betty, Betty!"

Eleanor sank down on the bank, sobbing as if her heart would break.

Betty patted her arm in silence, and in a few moments she stood up, quieted. "You're going to take me back?" she asked.

"Of course," said Betty, cheerfully, leading the way to her boat.

"Please wait a minute," commanded Eleanor.

Betty trembled. "She's going to say she won't go back with me," she thought. "Please let me do it, Eleanor," she begged.

"Yes," said Eleanor, quickly, "but first I want to say something. I've been a hateful, horrid thing, Betty. I've believed unkind stories and done no end of mean things, and I deserve all that I've had to-night, except your coming after me. I've been ashamed of myself for months, only I wouldn't say so. I know you can never want me for a friend again, after all my meanness; but Betty, say that you won't let it hurt you--that you'll try to forget all about it."

Betty put a wet arm around Eleanor's neck and kissed her cheek softly.

"You weren't to blame," she said. "It was all a mistake and my horrid carelessness. Of course I want you for a friend. I want it more than anything else. And now don't say another word about it, but just get into the boat and come home."

They hardly spoke during the return pa.s.sage; Eleanor was worn out with all she had gone through, and Betty was busy rowing and watching for Katherine's matches, which made tiny, glimmering dots of light in the gloom. Eleanor did not seem to notice them, nor the shadowy figure that vanished around the boat-house just before they reached the wharf.

From her appointed station under the pine-tree Katherine heard the grinding of the boat on the gravel, the rattle of oars thrown down on the wharf, and then a low murmur of conversation that did not start up the hill toward her, as she had expected.

"Innocents!" sighed Katherine. "They're actually stopping to talk it out down there in the wet. I'm glad they've made it up, and I'd do anything in reason for Betty Wales, but I certainly am sleepy," and she yawned so loud that a blue jay that was roosting in the tree above her head fluttered up to a higher branch, screaming angrily.

"The note of the nestle," laughed Katherine, and yawned again.

Down on the wharf Betty and Eleanor were curled up close together in an indiscriminate, happy tangle of rain-coat, golf-cape, and very drabbled muslin, holding a conversation that neither would ever forget. Yet it was perfectly commonplace; Harding girls are not given to the expression of their deeper emotions, though it must not therefore be inferred that they do not have any to express.

"Oh, Betty, you can't imagine how dreadful it was out there!" Eleanor was saying. "And I thought I should have to stay all night, of course.

How did you know I hadn't come in?"

Betty explained.

"I don't see why you bothered," said Eleanor. "I'm sure I shouldn't have, for any one as horrid as I've been. Oh, Betty, will you truly forgive me?"

"Don't say that. I've wanted to do something that would make you forgive me."

"Oh, I know you have," broke in Eleanor quickly. "Miss Ferris told me."

"She did!" interrupted Betty in her turn. "Why, she promised not to."

"Yes, but I asked her. It seemed to me queer that she should have taken such an interest in me, and all of a sudden it flashed over me, as I sat talking to her, that you were at the bottom of it. So I said, 'Miss Ferris, Betty Wales asked you to say this to me,' and she said, 'Yes, but she also asked me not to mention her having done so.' I was ashamed enough then, for she'd made me see pretty plainly how badly I needed looking after, but I was bound I wouldn't give in. Oh, Betty, haven't I been silly!"

"I didn't mean to hurt your feelings by what I said at that cla.s.s meeting, Eleanor," said Betty shyly.

"You didn't hurt them. I was just cross at things in general--at myself, I suppose that means,--and angry at you because I'd made you despise me, which certainly wasn't your fault."

"Eleanor, what nonsense! I despise you?"

A rustling on the bank reminded Betty that Katherine was waiting. "We must go home," she said. "It's after midnight."

"So it is," agreed Eleanor, getting up stiffly. "Oh, Betty, I am glad I'm not out there hanging on to that branch and s.h.i.+vering and wondering how soon I should have to let go and end it all. Oh, I shall never forget the feel of that stifling mist."