WHERE?
I stood ringing. I thundered at the knocker.
I beat the door with my fist.
An old man opened at last.
"Mrs. Harborough! Where is she?" The old man tried to keep me out. But
he was gentle and frail. I forced my way past. I called and ran along a
passage, trying doors that opened into the darkness.
At last! A room where a woman sat alone--reading by a shaded light.
"Who are you?" I cried out. She laid her book in her lap. "Are _you_
Mrs. Harborough? Then come--come quickly ... I'll tell you on the
way----"
The old woman lifted the folds of her double chin and looked at me
through spectacles.
"You must come and help me to get Bettina...." I broke into distracted
sobbing on the name. "Bettina----! Bettina----!" I seized the lady's
hand and tried to draw her out of her chair.
But I was full of trembling. She sat there massive, calm, with a power
of inert resistance, that made me feel I could as easily drag her house
out of the Square by its knocker, as move the woman planted there in her
chair.
Neither haste nor perturbation in the voice that asked me: "What has
happened?"
"_Not yet!_" I cried out. "Nothing has happened yet! But we must be
quick. Oh, God, let us be quick----"
The butler had followed me in and was asking something. "Yes," said the
quiet voice, "pay the cabman."
"No!" I shrieked. "Keep him! I must go back, instantly...." And through
my own strange-sounding voice, hers reached me.
"You must see that you are quite unintelligible. Sit down and collect
yourself."
"Sit down! Isn't it enough that _one_ woman sits still,
while--while----"
She was putting questions.
I heard a reproach that seemed to fill the house: "You never came to
meet us!"
And while the charge was ringing I felt, with anguish, the injustice of
it. How could one have expected this woman to come!
But she should be moved and stirred at last!
"I sent my maid," she was defending herself, "--only a minute or two
late."
"The other woman was not late!"
"Who?"
I begged the butler to get a cloak for Mrs. Harborough. She was saying
Bettina and I should have waited. And again that I must calm myself and
tell her----
"Someone pretended to be you!" I hurled it at her. "She took us to a
house--a place where they do worse than murder. Betty is there now----"
I told her all I could pack into a few sentences.
"It isn't possible," my aunt said. "This is England."
"_Come and see!_ Betty----" But they only thought me mad; they tortured
me with questions.
I caught her by the arm. "God won't forgive you if you wait an instant
more."
Oh, but she was old and unbelieving! So old, I felt she had looked on
unmoved at evil since the world began.
But she was sending for wraps, sending messages. Still she sat there, in
the heavy, square-backed chair, her hands upon her knees, her two feet
side by side as motionless as the footstool, her heavy shoulders high
and square, her lace cap with square ends falling either side her face,
like the head-dress of an Egyptian, her air of monumental calm more like
a Theban statue than a living woman.
I turned away.
The figure in the chair rose up at last.
Oh, but slowly--slow, and stiff, and ponderous.
I felt in her all the heaviness of the acquiescent since Time began.
"That is right," she said to the old man who had brought the maid.
And the maid was old, too.
Three helpless ghosts.
Like death the sense came over me that I was as badly off with these
three, as I had been alone. Again I turned from them, frantic.
"I will go out," I cried, "and find help." I ran towards the door.
It was then the old man made the first sane suggestion. We could
telephone to the police.
That would save time! The police would meet us outside Betty's prison.
I followed the butler into the hall. We all stood there, by the
telephone. Ages seemed to go by while he was getting the number. And
when he had got the number, he could not hear the questions that were
put. I tore the receiver out of his hand--I pushed him aside. But I had
never used the telephone before, and I spoke too loudly. When they told
me so, I sobbed. The voice at the other end was faint and cool. Oh, the
easy way the world was taking Betty's fate!
And then the faint cool voice at the other end said something which
showed me I was not believed.
He, too, was thinking I was out of my mind.
The receiver dropped from my hand.
"They cannot understand," I said. I told Mrs. Harborough that she must
go to Bettina, and I would bring the police.
Some objection was made. I did not stop to hear it: "I cannot wait for
any words! And I will not wait another second for any human soul!"
Then, running beside me as I made for the front door, the old butler
spoke again: "----a policeman in our square." He would call the
policeman in.
The old man was right. A policeman stood at the corner, watching that no
harm should come to the ladies of Lowndes Square.
I had run out, with the butler protesting at my heels: "_Not in the
street_, miss!" he said, with the first hint of emotion I had found in
him.
I did not wait; but he must have brought the policeman in during my
outpouring, for the look of the hall during those swift seconds is
stamped on my brain. The elderly maid kneeling at her mistress's feet,
changing her shoes; the policeman facing my aunt, helmet in hand, his
reverent eye falling before the dignity of Mrs. Harborough, while I, at
his elbow, poured out broken sentences, interlarded with: "I'll tell you
the rest as we go----"
My strained voice was grown weak. I wondered, suddenly, if it had ever
really reached their ears.
I was like a person down under the sea, trying to make my voice heard
through a mile of murky water.
I was like a woman buried alive, who, in the black middle of the night,
beats at her coffin-lid in some deserted graveyard.
"It is no use!" I cried. "I shall go back alone."
At last we were all going out of the door. The policeman put on his
helmet.
"And where is this house?" he asked.
"It is--it is----"
A pit of blackness opened. I felt myself falling headlong. I heard a cry
that made my flesh writhe--as though the cry had been Bettina's, and not
mine.
A voice said: "It is not possible you have forgotten the address!"
I had never known it!