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The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point; or a Wreck and a Rescue, a novel by Laura Lee Hope |
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Chapter 16. The Shadow Of Disaster |
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_ CHAPTER XVI. THE SHADOW OF DISASTER Betty put a steadying arm about Mollie and asked gently: "Would it make it any easier if I were to read it, dear?" "No, oh, no!" cried Mollie, then smoothed out the crushed paper and read the telegram through while her face grew whiter and her lips closed in a tense line. With a queer little sound in her throat she turned away and handed it to Betty. "Read it," she commanded in a choked voice. Mrs. Ford put an arm about Mollie while Betty read aloud and the girls crowded closer. It was a brief, paralyzing message the telegram contained.
"Gone!" added Grace, stupefied. "Oh, Betty, are you sure you read it aright?" For answer, Betty handed her the telegram and turned to comfort Mollie, who was sobbing bitterly. "I knew I shouldn't have gone away," she was saying over and over again. "I knew I should have stayed at home." "But your staying at home probably wouldn't have made any difference," argued Betty soothingly. "And by this time they may have been found, anyway," added Mrs. Ford, gently leading Mollie toward the house, Betty at her side, while Grace and Amy followed, mute with sympathy. "Yes; or by this time they may be dead!" sobbed Mollie, refusing to be comforted. "They must have met with some accident or they wouldn't have stayed away all n-night." "Maybe they ran away," suggested Grace, trying hard to think of something cheering to say. "They've done it before, you know." "Yes," agreed Mollie, sinking into a porch chair and searching desperately for a handkerchief in her pocketless bathing suit. "But they always came home before night. I know it must be something awfully serious to keep them away over night." Mrs. Ford was very much worried and disturbed, but she nevertheless managed a bright smile. "As you say, they probably ran away," she said. "Only this time they have wandered too far and haven't been able to find their way back. But if your mother has notified the police, as she surely has by this time, they are sure to be found. And now," she added, rising briskly and making for the door, "since everything seems a good deal worse than it is on an empty stomach, I'm going to give you some lunch and we'll decide what to do afterward." Left alone, the girls gazed helplessly at each other. Mollie had stopped sobbing and was staring moodily out at the ocean, her eyes and nose swollen with weeping. "I'll have to go home, of course," she said suddenly, breaking a silence filled with unhappy thoughts. "I don't know that I'll be any good, but I can at least comfort mother. I'm sorry," she gave them a wistful, apologetic little glance that went straight to their hearts and brought the tears to their eyes, "to break up the party." "You darling," cried Betty, trying to laugh and not making a very great success of it, "do you think we care a rap about our old party? Only," she added thoughtfully, "as you say yourself, I don't see that you can do very much good by going home." "I could comfort mother," repeated Mollie, in a flat tone, as though she were repeating a lesson. "But she said not to come," suggested Grace. "She said she was doing everything possible--" "I know," interrupted Mollie, wearily. "Of course she would say not to come. And I suppose," she added, dabbing impatiently at her eyes, "all I'd do would be to weep anyway, and make things about ten times worse." "Do you want your lunch inside or out here?" Mrs. Ford asked from the doorway and the girls jumped to their feet. "Here we are, letting you do all the work again," cried Betty self-reproachfully. "I guess we'd rather have it out here, but we'll bring it out ourselves. Please go over there, get into the swing, and don't stir until we say you may." Betty had a pretty manner, half of deference, half of _camaraderie_, with older people that made them love her. Mrs. Ford patted her cheek with a little smile and obeyed her command while the three girls ran into the kitchen to bring out the sandwiches and cake that she had already prepared. And all the time Mollie sat motionless, staring out over the ocean, apparently unconscious of everything that was going on around her. "Little Dodo and Paul," she said over and over to herself. "What has happened to them? Oh, I must go home, I must!" "Come to your lunch," called Betty. After lunch Mollie began to take a less gloomy view of the situation and hope, which in youth can never long be forced into the background, began to revive. "In the first place," Betty argued, as she began to clear away the dishes and Amy rose to help her, "it couldn't have been an accident, or your mother would have read about it in the papers. The children are old enough to tell their names and where they live." "I know," said Mollie, while the troublesome tears welled to her eyes again. "But it's possible they may have been unconscious, and then they wouldn't be able to tell anything." "But there would have been at least an announcement describing the children," Amy argued in support of Betty. "And, anyway, pretty nearly everybody in Deepdale knows the twins," Grace added. "Well, then, there are only two or three things left that might have happened," said Mollie, her lips quivering. "It's barely possible they may have wandered off into the woods and gotten lost. In that case somebody will have to hurry up and find them or they will just stay there and s-starve! And that's almost worse than being run over." "Well, with everybody in Deepdale, civilians as well as police, searching for them," said Betty confidently, "I don't think there is very much chance of their starving to death. If that's the solution, I shouldn't wonder but that they are safe at home now with everybody rejoicing." Mollie's face brightened a little at this picture, but almost immediately clouded over again. "But we don't know that," she said. "And until we do, I'm not going to let myself get too happy." "I wonder," she said suddenly, after the girls had cleared away the lunch and had perched themselves on the porch railing, "just what I ought to do first. Send a telegram to mother, I suppose," answering her own question. "Yes, I think I would," said Betty, adding, as Mollie got up with characteristic impulsiveness and started for the house: "Do you mind telling us what you are going to say in it--about going home, I mean?" Mollie paused uncertainly. "I--I don't just know," she admitted. "One minute I think there's no question but what I ought to go, and the next, I wonder if I wouldn't only be in the way." "There's another thing to consider," Mrs. Ford put in. "It is almost a certainty that the children will be found in a day or two, perhaps are found already, and in that case you would have all your trip for nothing. I don't like to advise--" "Oh, please do," Mollie begged, adding with a pathetic little smile: "I feel so awfully lonesome, trying to decide everything all by myself." "You poor little girl," said the woman tenderly, then fearing lest sympathy would only make the girl feel worse, added hurriedly: "In that case I should most strongly advise that you wait a day or two at least and give things a chance to straighten out. At the end of that time, if they haven't been found and you still think you ought to go, we'll pack up everything and go along with you, of course." "That's what I'll do then," agreed Mollie, relieved to have the question settled for her. "And now," she added, making for the door once more, "I'm going to get into my street things and wiz down to that station in record time. Who wants to come with me?" It seemed everybody did, and in a very short time the girls had changed from their bathing suits to their street clothes and were ready for the dash to the station, which was about two miles from their house. They all climbed into Mollie's car, and the big machine started slowly backward down the steep incline. "Better hold on," Mollie warned them. "I've never done quite so steep a hill as this backward, and the old boy may balk. Take your time, old man," addressing the car, as it showed a tendency to pick up speed too rapidly. "Of course we're in a hurry, but we don't want to land on our ears. That's the way--gently now. All right--we're off!" as they reached the foot of the hill in safety and swung around into the road. "Now let's see how long it will take you to reach that station." As a matter of fact, it took scarcely any time at all, for the demon of speed seemed to have taken possession of Mollie, and she drove so recklessly that even the girls, who were used to her daring, were startled. Yet something about the young driver's straight little back and tightly compressed lips kept them from protesting. However, the wild ride came to an end without accident, and the girls tumbled out of the machine and on to the station platform. They looked about them, but the only person in sight was an unpromising looking person with a bald head--though he could not have been over thirty-five--beaked nose, and small red-rimmed eyes. This decidedly unattractive individual lounged against the door of the waiting room and eyed the girls with insolent admiration. "Anything I can do for you?" he asked, as he saw that they hesitated. "Always willing to oblige the ladies," he added. The girls exchanged a glance, then Betty approached the lounger who had the grace to straighten up as she addressed him. "We want to send a telegram," she explained coldly. "We understood we could send one from here." "Sure! That's me," he responded with alacrity. "Right this way, ladies." The girls followed him reluctantly into a little square booth-like place, and Mollie scribbled a telegram on the blank he gave her. Then they hurried out to the machine again. A little way down the road Amy turned and looked back. The fellow had resumed his lounging position and was looking after them with his little red-rimmed eyes. "Ugh! wasn't he awful?" said Betty, as Mollie rounded a turn in the road on two wheels. "I'm glad we don't have to see him often, he'd give me the nightmare." But Mollie did not answer. Her mind was once more on the twins, and she was repeating over and over the same old question. "What has happened--what has happened? What could have happened?" "Betty," she said aloud, so suddenly that Betty started, "there's just one thing we didn't think of as being a solution. It's strange, too, for it is the most probable solution of all." "What?" asked Betty anxiously. "Suppose--" said Mollie, her voice so low that Betty had to bend forward to catch the words. "Suppose they have been kidnapped!" _ |
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