Very soon after Mr. Houghton’s departure, Betsey’s Aunt Susan, growing weary of the life of her quiet country place, big and luxurious though it was, had pressed upon her niece a dazzling invitation. It was to accompany her on a journey that would include Bermuda, Panama, California, and, when hot weather came, the Canadian Rockies. It became difficult for Elizabeth even to think of more months of plodding study, when, sitting at her desk, she could picture the flowers and palms of Bermuda, its coral caves with floors of rippling water, or the lazy breakers tumbling in on some California beach. But to go would mean giving up college, that was certain. And Elizabeth’s mother, who had died five years before, had always wanted her to go to college!
So long did she sit there on the stone under the big oak tree, hesitating and debating, that presently there was a rumble of thunder, followed by the sharp spatter of rain on the little new leaves above her head. The low-hanging branches sheltered her like a roof so that she had only to sit there with her hands clasped about her knee, waiting for the shower to pass and for her puzzled thoughts to set themselves in order. She was wishing greatly for her father’s advice, but that it would be impossible to get in time. Anna, good-natured and interested as she was, could offer little more than, “Sure it would be grand to go to college and learn so much,” or, if the talk happened to turn in another direction, “Sure it would be grand to go to California and see all the pretty flowers,” so that her opinions were of no very great help.
Elizabeth could see below her, as she sat there, rolling stretches of field and meadow and patches of woodland turning from brown to fresh spring green. Almost too far away to be visible on this day of fitful lights and shadows, were the crowded roofs and spires of a distant town and, to the east of them, the high, gray towers of that very college about which her dreams and ambitions had clustered so long.
“But it will be so lonely here!” she cried almost aloud, all her thoughts rising to sudden protest. She had friends of her own age at school, plenty of them, but what older person was there to whom she could go in doubt or difficulty, who was there to give her help or advice when she should need it? She felt lost and helpless at the thought and utterly forlorn. No, she could not bear it, she would go with Aunt Susan, her choice would be for change and travel and the seeing of beautiful things instead of the long empty road of hard work that stretched before her. Her battered geometry and Latin books slipped from her knee and lay, face downward and unheeded, on the grass. She had made up her mind—almost.
The shower had cleared and the clouds were sweeping away in rolling thunderheads of gray and shining silver. The moving sunlight touched the roofs of the town and lit, at last, the slim towers of the college so that they showed white and glittering against the dark background of the trees. Usually they seemed dim and distant, Elizabeth had thought, and never, as to-day, so near, so clear, possessed of such dignity of grace and beauty. She could not quite tell what it was, curiosity, doubt, hesitation, or all three at once that made her, when she got up to go, turn into Somerset Lane instead of along the highway, and that caused her to put off again the moment of letting Aunt Susan convince her that she should go to Bermuda.
She began to feel, as she climbed the hill, a good deal of curiosity concerning this Miss Miranda of whom her father had said so much and whom she should have gone to see long ago. Would she be all stiff manners and critical eyes, she wondered, the kind of person to make you feel awkward and tongue-tied the moment you crossed the threshold? It was the feeling that she must be something of the sort that had kept Betsey from coming for all this time. For some distance the lane wound and twisted so that she could not catch any glimpse of the white cottage that she sought. Once she stopped where a side path, a mere rough track bordered by Lombardy poplars, led away to the left. Could that be the way, she wondered, but no, it must lead only to the fields beyond, for here was a heavy white farm horse, evidently just come from plowing, turning into the path through a gap in the hedge. The big creature lifted his feet slowly, seeming comfortably tired after a well-spent day among the furrows, as he trudged leisurely along under the slender shadows of the wet poplar trees. He bore an equally weary rider, a boy of about Elizabeth’s own age, who was perched sideways on the broad back, his legs swinging with every lurch of the horse’s shoulders, his hat held on his knee so that Elizabeth could see plainly his hot, sunburned face and his rumpled, red-brown hair. He did not observe her, for he was looking away across the valley toward that same group of towers that she herself had been watching, as though the distant college held a fascination for him as well as for her. She thought for a moment of waiting to ask him the way, but her eye caught sight, just then, of a green roof above her among the trees and she went onward.
As she opened the gate beside the lane and walked up the path to the house, she felt, almost in spite of herself, an immediate liking for the place. It was a tiny white cottage with a wide-eaved roof, with two big red brick chimneys that told of broad hearthstones inside, with swinging windows and clambering vines and a square lawn skirted at one side by a high stone wall. Beyond this wall she could see again the blackened ruins that had aroused her curiosity as she sat at the crossroads below. What a wide and stately house it must have been there at the top of the hill and how strange it was that it had never been rebuilt! She must be sure to ask Miss Reynolds about it, for there was, somehow, a spell of haunting mystery about those roofless walls and empty windows that seemed to stare away across the wide view spread out below them. There was time for her to observe all these things as she stood upon the doorstep for, although she rang the bell twice, no one came to admit her.
“I don’t want to come all this way for nothing,” she thought; “I will go to the side door and find some way of leaving word that I have been here.”
Following the pathway of flagstones, she turned the corner of the house and found that a wing of the cottage extended at right angles before her and that in it was a door, standing open. She stopped a moment to examine some crocuses that were pushing up through the new grass, but she was interrupted and startled by the sound of some one speaking, apparently to her.
“Good morning,” a voice was saying, a harsh rough voice with a rasp and a squeak in it such as she had never before heard. “Good morning, good morning!”