—
Bettina was smiling with pleasure as the train picked up speed, but her mother cried all the way back to the house. Having lost her own mother a month before, now having Bettina and the baby leave was almost more than she could bear. Sybil was waiting to hug her when she got home. They were sitting in Sybil’s office while Gwyneth cried, when they both heard a huge commotion on the stairs. Sybil thought she was imagining it, but she could hear Augusta calling orders to Phillips, and Angus in the background. Both women rushed to the landing to look down the stairs in time to see Phillips dragging her trunks up the stairs and Augusta in an enormous hat, ordering Angus around too. She glanced up and saw Sybil and Gwyneth, and they both started to laugh. Her trunks were everywhere and she was pointing at them with her cane, telling Phillips where to put them. Sybil and Gwyneth ran down the stairs to help her and hugged her. She was back! It hadn’t taken long to return at all—she had the strongest spirit of all of them, even more so than her grandson Josiah, who had taken four months to return after he died. Augusta had taken four weeks, and had probably bullied her brother into joining her. She was in full command. Bert appeared to help Phillips with the trunks, as Augusta took off her hat with a victorious expression. Angus disappeared to his room.
She asked about Bettina and they told her she had left for France that morning.
“Sorry I missed her,” she said, and then asked about Quinne, whom she had liked and who was there when she died.
“She’s back in Scotland with Andy,” Sybil told her, as they all stood on the landing together.
“Nice girl, unsuitable hair for a countess,” she commented tartly.
“Welcome back, Mother Campbell,” Bert said to her and smiled, as Gwyneth accompanied her to her room. It took the sting out of Bettina’s departure. Her daughter and grandchild had left and her mother had returned. Violet and Rupert came running down the stairs to greet them, barking frantically. They had been mournful for the past month without their masters, and made up for it now. It was good to see Augusta and her brother again, at full strength, their spirits recharged and in fine form. They looked ready for another century at least.
“It’s wonderful that they all come back,” Sybil said to Blake that night. She hated the thought of people leaving whom they’d never see again, as happened in real life. With the Butterfields, in the dimension where they had taken refuge for the past century, they all came back to the home and people they loved. It was comforting to know that they would. But Sybil knew that she would miss Bettina’s baby. It had been so sweet to hold Lili on her lap, or sing to her at bedtime, smell her hair right after it had been washed, or listen to the little snuffling sounds she made when she was sleeping. Lili reminded Sybil of her own babies. It made her sad to think about it, and even more so for Gwyneth. She knew just how terribly she would miss Lili.
—
After the small towns Bettina’s train passed through, where they stopped just long enough for people to board the train for the trip east, the first big city was Chicago. They had the whole afternoon to look around. And after that, they would travel to New York, where Bettina was going to spend the night at the Plaza hotel, stay for a day or two, and then board the ship to France.
Chicago had been interesting, but New York was throbbing with excitement when Bettina checked in to the Plaza. There was a telegram from her father waiting when she arrived to say that her grandmother and Uncle Angus were back, and Bettina smiled. She hired a carriage to take her around to look at the sights. She had a wonderful time and felt quite safe alone. She had dinner in her suite that night, and the next morning she boarded the ship with all her steamer trunks and bags and got settled in her stateroom. She had a second one for Lili and the nurse. The crossing would take nine to ten days to Cherbourg, with a stop in Liverpool. The Baltic was back in passenger service after her wartime activities carrying troops. She had been attacked by German U-boats but escaped undamaged. There would be entertaining things to do on the ship every day and night: games, teatime, elegant evenings, and the captain’s dinner. Bettina was a beautiful young widow, and her eyes were wide with anticipation when the ship pulled away from the dock. The nurse was standing next to her, holding Lili. Bettina had sent her parents a telegram from the hotel to assure them that all had gone well so far.
It didn’t frighten her at all to be making the trip unescorted. Other young women her age might have shrunk at the thought, but not Bettina. All she wanted now was to see the world, get to Paris, and escape her quiet life. Waiting for the war to end so she could leave San Francisco and travel had seemed endless, and nine months of pregnancy before that. She felt like she’d been released from prison. She was twenty-three years old, it was 1919, and she couldn’t wait to spread her wings and fly. And contrary to her family’s wishes for her, the last thing she wanted now was a husband. That would be just another form of jail, with a man as her jailer. Bettina wanted freedom! With the wind on her face as the tugboats guided the ship out of New York Harbor, she knew that she had done the right thing leaving, and she was in no hurry to go back.