_Wherein Miss Betty Modeyne posts a Letter_
Betty, to avoid meeting Noll, had taken her walks abroad in the dusk
only; but the restriction began to fret her will; and she had besides
been compelled to the conclusion that she must add a few shillings a
week to her slender means, or she would soon run through her small
capital.
She decided to take the loyal Netherby Gomme into her confidence, to
put her position before him, and to rely on him to help her in evading
Noll and the Baddlesmeres. She hoped, too, that he might get her
some post of daily governess or companion to a city family, or some
secretarial billet in a city office.
She stole out one evening, and watched the Gommes’ house until she felt
sure the place was free of visitors.
She tripped up the steps at last, plotting what she would say if, by
some chance, Noll should open the door.
When she rang the bell, she was answered by the old lady, who was
grimly rejoiced to see her.
Betty put the old lady into a smiling and important mood, almost before
the bang of the slammed door had ceased to echo in the gloomy hall, by
at once begging her to summon Netherby downstairs to assist them in
serious council on a delicate situation.
The grim old woman fussed away, important and bustling.
Netherby came with a smile on his long pale face, but the happy
glint was soon gone, its place usurped by something akin to tears in
his solemn steadfast eyes, as his melancholy features took on their
habitual lugubrious length and gloom, when he sat down to discuss the
situation--solemn promises of alliance and secrecy being sworn and
given.
He did not dare to tell Betty of the pathetic scenes that he had gone
through, in these very rooms, with the youth Noll; indeed, Betty gave
him little opportunity, for she showed no sense of grievance, and
passed, as lightly as could be, over the scene with Noll’s father;
but Netherby’s lips hardened, and showed an unwonted severity during
the reserved statement of the details which had driven the girl to
flight--he could fill in Anthony’s phrases, and build upon the skeleton
of his mind, all so unwitting of its own limitations.
But to Betty, the air of this dingy house was cheerful to
breathe--there was in its very greyness a note of remembered gaiety--it
had sounded as she entered the place, at once she had heard Noll’s feet
on the stair, in the hall--she was amongst kindly faces.
She was relieved, too, to find that Noll’s day was now very fully
occupied with work for a tutor. He was to enter at Magdalen as soon as
he could go up to Oxford.
She could now extend her hours of freedom and the range of her walks
without risk of meeting him. She knew when he would be abroad, and
where. During the old lady’s absence from the room, it was arranged
between Netherby and Betty that Julia was to come and see her in the
evenings as often as could be.
But Netherby’s keen wits were not deceived by the girl’s reservations.
He saw full well that she hungered for the slightest news of Noll--hung
upon the smallest details.
Before Betty left the house, she was the possessor of a letter of
introduction to a Mr. Pompey Malahide, in which her family and
connections were recited at a length that, had she known it, would have
embarrassed her as much as they were destined to overwhelm the great
man--a letter in which she was recommended as an excellent friend and
companion to the daughters of that rich personage. This letter that she
dropped into the post went under cover to a personal friend of Netherby
Gomme’s, and bore the address of a certain Bartholomew Doome.