CHAPTER XVIII

Terrible News

Ah! when the infinite burden of life descendeth upon us, Crushes to earth our hope, and under the earth, in the graveyard— Then it is good to pray unto God; for His sorrowing children, Turns He ne'er from His door, but He heals and helps and consoles them. LONGFELLOW.

THE days glided by. Betty, always occupied and busy, did not find time heavy on her hands. She corresponded with Mr. Russell, and his letters were her great delight. She followed them in imagination through all their wanderings; especially over the ground that was familiar to her. Mr. Russell told her that he was growing stronger daily, and was enjoying the exhilarating air of the Swiss mountains with increasing pleasure.

"And it is pleasant to have intercourse with such a well-stored mind as Gerald Arundel's," he wrote. "I tell him he ought not to miss the Red Manor library, for though the books are no longer his, their contents are stored in his brain. He and I find our walks and talks give us mutual benefit and satisfaction."

They had been staying at Lucerne when he last wrote, and were making their way up the Rhone Valley to Zermatt, where they hoped to do a little mountaineering.

One morning after breakfast Nesta was looking at the daily paper, when she gave an exclamation of dismay.

Betty was filling a china bowl with roses. "What is the matter?" she asked carelessly. "No horrible catastrophe, is there?"

Nesta did not answer, and when Betty came over to her, she closed the paper hastily.

"There is no need for us to be anxious," she said.

"What about? Is there prospect of another war? Don't be so mysterious, please!"

Then Nesta recovered her self-possession.

"It is about our travellers."

Betty's face blanched at once.

"Give me the paper. Oh, let me see!"

Nesta pointed to a small paragraph, headed "Zermatt."

"A party of Englishmen yesterday started to scale the Matterhorn. A very heavy storm of snow, however, made them retrace their steps. During the descent the party divided. Two Englishmen and two guides arrived in safety early this morning at the hotel, after experiencing great difficulty in finding their way home. No tidings have as yet been received of the others, and it is feared that some accident has befallen them. A rescue party has been out all day, but up to the present has been unsuccessful in the search. The names of the missing Englishmen are Mr. Russell and Mr. Arundel. They had one guide with them."

Betty read it, and seemed unable to speak.

"We must hope that they are safe," said Mrs. St. Clair, putting an arm round her. "Perhaps they have been found by this time. We will not think the worst."

"But how can we know?" Betty said at last, in a strangely quiet tone. "Who can tell us?"

"We will telegraph to the hotel," said Nesta promptly. "Let us drive to the station and do it at once."

Betty drew a breath.

"Oh yes," she said feverishly; "don't let us waste a minute. Do let us go!"

It took a certain time for the carriage to be brought round, and to Betty, who was pacing the hall in agony of mind, it seemed as if it were years. She tried to control herself, but her face of hopeless misery as she sat opposite to Nesta made her friend's heart ache.

They telegraphed and paid for the reply; then came home to wait for news.

Betty went about the house trying to do her usual little duties, but her eyes were far-away, and she did not seem to hear when spoken to. Nesta left her alone; she felt it was the kindest thing to do. Once she said to her,—

"Pray, Betty dear; don't forget to pray."

Betty nodded. She started and shivered at every bell-ring, but the day wore slowly away and the evening was well on before the message came. Betty stepped into the hall herself; and took the yellow envelope from the boy. She did not open it. She carried it with a trembling hand into the drawing-room to Nesta, and she stood with her hands lightly clasped behind her back, whilst Nesta read it in a faltering voice,—

"Bodies just found and brought in. Will friends come and identify?"

There was a dead silence. Neither Mrs. Fairfax nor Molly were in the room.

Betty's face whitened to her very lips.

"It can't be true!" she gasped. "Oh, say it isn't! It is too sudden, too unreal!"

Nesta took her straight into her arms.

"My poor darling, God will comfort you! Look straight up to Him!"

Betty clasped her hands over her eyes, and shuddered from head to foot. No tears would come. Her head was throbbing and well-nigh bursting with sudden pain. For a minute she leant it against Nesta's shoulder. Then she raised it.

"May I go to bed?" she asked wearily. "There is nothing to wait for now."

Nothing to wait for! As Betty crept upstairs and sought the solitude and darkness of her own room she felt that an end had come to her own life as well as theirs.

She could not at first think of any details.

Mr. Russell was with his little girl at last, the child whom he had never forgotten or ceased to mourn. Surely it was well with him! His life had been a sad and lonely one. It was bright now with infinite possibilities of increasing joy. Was it not selfish to wish him back?

And as she thought thus, she could not but own that it was well with him.

But with Gerald Arundel? She felt stunned and voiceless. She knew as she had never known before how her own life had secretly been twining round his. Not exactly unbidden. She had realised long ago that Gerald's heart was given to her, that it was only his prospects had made him tongue-tied; and she could not forget how flippantly she had stopped him, when he was trying to tell her of his diffidence in approaching her.

Oh, to unsay those words! How many times through life the powerlessness to remedy some thoughtless speech has made us realise the awful responsibility of our tongues!

She sat by her window, gazing out in speechless misery upon the still darkness without.

Nesta at last came to rouse her.

"Do not think me unsympathising, darling!" she said, coming over to her and putting her hand softly on her curly head. "But I have had a great deal to do. Frank has been here, and is such a help. He has found out the address of Mr. Russell's cousin, his nearest relative, and has wired to him, and Frank has offered to go over to Zermatt himself. Mr. Russell is such an old friend of ours. Frank is going up to town by the late mail train, and leaves Dover to-morrow morning."

"And has Mr. Arundel no friends to think of him?" demanded Betty, looking at Nesta with wide-open, tearless eyes. "Has no one given him a thought?"

"He seems to have no relatives in England," said Nesta sadly, as she pressed Betty's head lovingly against her shoulder; "but, of course, Frank is going on his account as well."

Betty shook off Nesta's hand, and began to pace the room restlessly, two spots of colour burning in her cheeks.

"If Frank can go, I can go. Why should I not? I must go. I must see them again. Oh, Mrs. St. Clair, you will take me; will you not? I know how they bury people abroad! I must see them once again; it will be too late if I do not go at once. I never said good-bye to him; I thought he was coming back again. I thought I should be able to tell him how sorry I was for what I said. I was afraid I had been too forward, so I was cruel to him. I saw it in his eyes, as if I had struck him. I can see him now, and he never said one word. Not one word, though I had killed all the hope in his heart; and when he shook hands, though I had been so unkind, he looked at me as kindly as ever. Oh, I can never, never, never forgive myself! If I could only tell him just a little of what I have always thought of him! I feel I could bring him back to life, if I could only—only touch him, cry to him, beseech him for forgiveness!"

Betty poured this forth excitedly and incoherently. Nesta, with aching heart, could only listen.

But when she besought her again to take her out to Switzerland, Nesta spoke quietly and firmly.

"No, Betty dear; it is not to be thought of. Frank will do all that is necessary, and will tell us all we wish to know."

"Let me see the telegram once more," urged Betty. "Do you think they may be still alive? It doesn't say they are dead."

Nesta placed the telegram in her hand. Betty read it and shuddered. Her talkativeness died away. She relapsed into hopeless silence, and at last was persuaded to go to bed. She did not sleep; hour by hour went by, and she lay with open eyes in the darkness. She could not pray. She seemed to lose the realisation of the Presence that always comforted her. It was a dark hour in her life, and when the next morning dawned fair and sunny, and a blackbird perched under her window on a bush and burst into song, and the village chimes began to ring out, reminding all that it was Sunday morning, it seemed to her perfect mockery.

She rose from her bed unrefreshed, and with an aching head. Half-way through her dressing she opened her window and leant out. Then she looked from the dew-laden garden below to the serene blue above.

"O God," she murmured, "I am wicked and rebellious. I gave myself long ago to Thee for Thy service, and I ought to want nothing more! I thought I was going to be quite happy in doing work for Thee, and I was content. Now it is worse than ever! I am miserable—and I always shall be miserable. Nothing will ever be the same to me again! And why, oh why, need such a dreadful thing have happened? Just when everything seemed going right!"

It was more a meditation than a prayer, perhaps; the clouds did not seem to lift, and Betty came down to breakfast with white face and tired eyes.

She persisted in going to church, though Nesta suggested her staying at home. Molly was full of horror and concern at it all; but her incessant surmises and conjectures as to what had really taken place rasped and irritated Betty's nerves. She maintained a stolid, imperturbable silence; only Nesta saw how she was suffering.

Nesta took the organ herself. Betty mechanically joined in the responses and singing. She never heard a word of the sermon. Her thoughts were entirely upon crevasses, precipices, and avalanches; step by step she was pursuing in imagination that ill-fated little party trying to ascend the Matterhorn. She walked home in silence, ate her luncheon as in a dream, and announced her intention of going to the afternoon service again.

"Why are you going, dear?" Nesta asked her gently. "You did not enjoy the service this morning."

"Enjoy it?" Betty looked at her friend in a dazed kind of way. "I think it would be a miracle if I did. I never meant a word of what I said or sung. I can't believe in the love of it, Mrs. St. Clair. It is too sudden and too awful!"

"It has been a great shock," said Nesta, looking at her with tears of sympathy; "but, Betty darling, it was a gloriously quick entrance into the kingdom above. Think of their joy!"

"Oh, why can't we all be taken?" exclaimed Betty. "I wish—oh, I wish some accident would happen to me!"

Nesta did not reproach her, as another might have done. She knew that it was too soon for her to see things as she would by-and-bye. She let her go to church with her, and offered no further remonstrance. When the service was over Betty waited in her seat whilst Nesta played the voluntary. The rector was in haste to leave, as he had to go over to a neighbouring parish and take the evening service, so the two of them were left in the church alone. The sexton lingered at the door. Nesta told him to go, as she would bring him the keys, and then she asked Betty to wait whilst she played on.

There was nothing that Betty loved better as a rule. Now she sat up in her seat, white and tearless.

Nesta played softly one sacred refrain after another—"O rest in the Lord," "Comfort ye, comfort ye My people," and then she sang David's pathetic refrain in "Resignation."

Betty listened, but none of them touched her; she felt herself that grief and misery were turning her to stone.

Nesta paused, then suddenly she began to play and sing the beautiful anthem that had so touched Betty as a little child. She had not sung it for years, but she threw her whole soul into it, and her beautiful voice rose and fell in the silent church, till the arched roof seemed to send back sweet mysterious echoes of the words,—

"'These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.'"

Betty shivered at first, then a light came into her eyes. She lifted her head, with a long-drawn sigh. The horror of death had left her; she saw her old friend, after his long, sad life, entering that blood-bought, happy throng; his little child, with outstretched arms, coming to meet him. How could she—how could she wish him back? The old associations and fascination of the verse took possession of her. The gate of heaven seemed thrown open to her, and standing by that golden portal she was conscious of the exquisite bliss of those within.

"'These are they—these are they which came out of great tribulation.'"

Nesta's voice rang out triumphantly, assuredly. Doubts and fears of the unknown world vanished; Betty's soul escaped from the snare of the fowler, and when the last notes died away, Nesta looked round and saw that tears had come to her relief. Betty was sobbing in her seat.

She stole up to her and put her arms round her. "My dear little Betty," she whispered, "God is love."

"All love," Betty sobbed; "all love, and I have pained Him by my wicked, selfish, unbelieving thoughts!"

Nesta let her cry on; she knew that her tears would relieve the tension of her nerves and brain.

And then, shortly after, when Betty had sufficiently recovered herself, they walked home together.

Nesta was not afraid when Betty shut herself up in her bedroom again. Deep though her grief would be still, it would be untainted with bitterness and despair.

When Mrs. Fairfax asked anxiously after her, Nesta was able to say,—

"She is better, mother dear. She will be her dear little self to-morrow."