Miss Billy's Decision
Copyright© 2024 by Eleanor H. Porter
Chapter 27: The Thing That Was the Truth
Bertram called that evening. Billy had no story now to tell—nothing of the interrupted romance between Alice Greggory and Arkwright. Billy carefully, indeed, avoided mentioning Arkwright’s name.
Ever since the man’s departure that afternoon, Billy had been frantically trying to assure herself that she was not to blame; that she would not be supposed to know he cared for her; that it had all been as he said it was—his foolish blindness. But even when she had partially comforted herself by these assertions, she could not by any means escape the haunting vision of the man’s stern-set, suffering face as she had seen it that afternoon; nor could she keep from weeping at the memory of the words he had said, and at the thought that never again could their pleasant friendship be quite the same—if, indeed, there could be any friendship at all between them.
But if Billy expected that her red eyes, pale cheeks, and generally troubled appearance and unquiet manner were to be passed unnoticed by her lover’s keen eyes that evening, she found herself much mistaken.
“Sweetheart, what is the matter?” demanded Bertram resolutely, at last, when his more indirect questions had been evasively turned aside. “You can’t make me think there isn’t something the trouble, because I know there is!”
“Well, then, there is, dear,” smiled Billy, tearfully; “but please just don’t let us talk of it. I—I want to forget it. Truly I do.”
“But I want to know so I can forget it,” persisted Bertram. “What is it? Maybe I could help.”
She shook her head with a little frightened cry.
“No, no—you can’t help—really.”
“But, sweetheart, you don’t know. Perhaps I could. Won’t you tell me about it?”
Billy looked distressed.
“I can’t, dear—truly. You see, it isn’t quite mine—to tell.”
“Not yours!”
“Not—entirely.”
“But it makes you feel bad?”
“Yes—very.”
“Then can’t I know that part?”
“Oh, no—no, indeed, no! You see—it wouldn’t be fair—to the other.”
Bertram stared a little. Then his mouth set into stern lines.
“Billy, what are you talking about? Seems to me I have a right to know.”
Billy hesitated. To her mind, a girl who would tell of the unrequited love of a man for herself, was unspeakably base. To tell Bertram Arkwright’s love story was therefore impossible. Yet, in some way, she must set Bertram’s mind at rest.
“Dearest,” she began slowly, her eyes wistfully pleading, “just what it is, I can’t tell you. In a way it’s another’s secret, and I don’t feel that I have the right to tell it. It’s just something that I learned this afternoon.”
“But it has made you cry!”
“Yes. It made me feel very unhappy.”
“Then—it was something you couldn’t help?”
To Bertram’s surprise, the face he was watching so intently flushed scarlet.
“No, I couldn’t help it—now; though I might have—once.” Billy spoke this last just above her breath. Then she went on, beseechingly: “Bertram, please, please don’t talk of it any more. It—it’s just spoiling our happy evening together!”
Bertram bit his lip, and drew a long sigh.
“All right, dear; you know best, of course—since I don’t know anything about it,” he finished a little stiffly.
Billy began to talk then very brightly of Aunt Hannah and her shawls, and of a visit she had made to Cyril and Marie that morning.
“And, do you know? Aunt Hannah’s clock has done a good turn, at last, and justified its existence. Listen,” she cried gayly. “Marie had a letter from her mother’s Cousin Jane. Cousin Jane couldn’t sleep nights, because she was always lying awake to find out just what time it was; so Marie had written her about Aunt Hannah’s clock. And now this Cousin Jane has fixed her clock, and she sleeps like a top, just because she knows there’ll never be but half an hour that she doesn’t know what time it is!”
Bertram smiled, and murmured a polite “Well, I’m sure that’s fine!”; but the words were plainly abstracted, and the frown had not left his brow. Nor did it quite leave till some time later, when Billy, in answer to a question of his about another operetta, cried, with a shudder:
“Mercy, I hope not, dear! I don’t want to hear the word ‘operetta’ again for a year!”
Bertram smiled, then, broadly. He, too, would be quite satisfied not to hear the word “operetta” for a year. Operetta, to Bertram, meant interruptions, interferences, and the constant presence of Arkwright, the Greggorys, and innumerable creatures who wished to rehearse or to change wigs—all of which Bertram abhorred. No wonder, therefore, that he smiled, and that the frown disappeared from his brow. He thought he saw, ahead, serene, blissful days for Billy and himself.
As the days, however, began to pass, one by one, Bertram Henshaw found them to be anything but serene and blissful. The operetta, with its rehearsals and its interruptions, was gone, certainly; but he was becoming seriously troubled about Billy.
Billy did not act natural. Sometimes she seemed like her old self; and he breathed more freely, telling himself that his fears were groundless. Then would come the haunting shadow to her eyes, the droop to her mouth, and the nervousness to her manner that he so dreaded. Worse yet, all this seemed to be connected in some strange way with Arkwright. He found this out by accident one day. She had been talking and laughing brightly about something, when he chanced to introduce Arkwright’s name.
“By the way, where is Mary Jane these days?” he asked then.
“I don’t know, I’m sure. He hasn’t been here lately,” murmured Billy, reaching for a book on the table.
At a peculiar something in her voice, he had looked up quickly, only to find, to his great surprise, that her face showed a painful flush as she bent over the book in her hand.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.