Betty narrowed her eyes again and studied the mountain intensely. Of course a bride would have to wear white, and it wouldn’t look exactly right to trim it in black, even though black and white were awfully smart just now. But wait! Why did a bride always have to wear white? Why couldn’t the bride wear black? Black velvet, that was it, with a dash of ermine, and the bridesmaids in white organdy. They could still wear the monkey fur tassel on their hats. That certainly would be different from anyone else, and the headlines in the newspapers could read THE BRIDE IN BLACK! Black had always been attractive on her, and Mums would never let her wear it; she said it was too old for a young girl. Mums was extremely old-fashioned. But of course she couldn’t pull off any outfits like that if she were married at home or in the church. Well, one ought to consider all those things, but everything taken into consideration it would really be easier, and she’d get far more of a kick out of accepting Dud’s suggestion.
And wouldn’t it make a sensation at school? She could fairly see Miss House’s irate complexion turn brick color when the news came out. And wouldn’t the girls envy her? Of course she would drive
Dudley’s car whenever she liked after that, even before she told that she was married. But perhaps, after all, she and Dudley wouldn’t bother to go back to high school. Why should they? Married people didn’t need a diploma. It was only a gesture.
Into the midst of her reflections came a clear call for supper, and Betty was hungry. She had been skating all the afternoon and she was ravenous. She went down to the dining room and mingled with the family, taking part in the conversation and seeming to be just as she had been two hours before, but her mind was running on other things. She was thinking all the time, What would they say if they knew I was going to be married in a couple of weeks? Am I?
So she toyed with the idea, laughing a good deal with Jane and Chris to cover her self-consciousness, playing paper dolls with Doris most obligingly and a game of checkers with John on an old checkerboard he had found in the desk drawer.
“What if I should?” she kept saying over and over to herself. “What if I should? But of course—how could I?”
By the time she went up to bed she had reached the stage of wondering how she could get a telegram off to Dudley Weston. If she should decide to do it, how could she send him word without the family becoming aware of it? Of course she might send a letter, but she doubted if it would get by the family censorship. Chester Thornton had told his daughter she was to have no communication whatever, ever, with Dudley Weston; that he was not fit for a decent girl to speak to. If her father should see a letter addressed to Dudley lying with the letters to be carried down to the mail when he drove down to the village as he did almost every morning with the milkman, he would be sure to destroy it and forbid her to write again. Well, she might enclose it to Gyp, or Fran, and ask them to mail it or give it to Dud, but could she really trust them with an errand so momentous? If anything happened that they left it around or told anybody else—Fran might tell that new man, for instance, or
Gyp might think she would steam the letter open and read it or hold it up to the light and get a few words. Gyp was very curious and she might think as she was her best friend that she had a right to find out how matters stood between her and Dud. No, a letter sent that way was not really quite safe, and besides, there was Gwen Phillips, and no telling how much influence she might have over Dudley in the meantime. Even a day was precious. She really ought to send a telegram. Dud would be upset if she didn’t do as he suggested, even though it was unreasonable of him. She must somehow manage. Couldn’t she steal out of the house early in the morning and catch the milkman down at the foot of the lane? Dad didn’t go in town every day. She could send it tomorrow perhaps.
She lay awake a long time after the family were all asleep thinking about it, making plans. By this time she had fully made up her mind that she was going. How could any girl give up a chance like that?
Having decided to go, Betty now turned her thoughts to the wording of a telegram.
It must be brief. It must be businesslike. It must be misleading to all but the one concerned. Phrase after phrase formulated itself only to be rejected, but at last she settled on the following words as covering the case satisfactorily:
“Will arrive railroad station Springfield, Massachusetts, noon Saturday. Companion preferred.”
She solaced her conscience by saying that it would be easy enough to call it off later if she changed her mind, and so thinking went to sleep.
But she missed her calculation and overslept, and the morning was far on its way before she awoke. There was no alternative but to get her father to take her with him when he went down to the village next time, trusting to luck to get away and send her telegram.
As she went about her dressing, thinking this all out, she remembered with sudden dismay that she had no money to send that telegram, and how was she to get any? Of course she could send it collect, but that didn’t seem just right. Betty was a proud little thing. But at last that problem, too, was solved.
At the supper table the night before, the conversation had run on Christmas and the prospect of no gifts, each one of the children bewailing the fact that they had not bought nor brought anything that would do for that purpose. Their mother had looked up with a quick smile that nevertheless contained a swift warning look toward their father and said, quite as if it were a usual thing to do:
“We’ll have to make our Christmas presents this year. I was thinking about that last night. I believe it will be interesting. Just make some little thing, each of you for each of the rest, and we’ll give a prize for the most original gift.”
“But there’s nothing to make them out of,” mourned Jane.
“Oh, plenty!” said Eleanor, still smiling. “There is a wonderful attic full of beautiful things, and there’s all the outdoors also. When I was a girl I made a braided rug for my mother for Christmas once, out of old rags that were to be thrown away. She loved it, and I enjoyed the making, too.”
“What’s out of doors, I’d like to know?” asked Chris.
“Well, pinecones and acorns and acorn cups. We used to make picture frames out of those. And you have your camera. There are plenty of beautiful pictures that someday you can have enlarged. Once my father made me a dollhouse out of a packing box—”
“Oh–hh,” said Doris, looking from one to another of the family hopefully.
Betty remembered this now and turned it over in her mind. It gave her an idea, and one idea brought another. Later when they were washing dishes together she said:
“Mother, could you give me about a dollar or two? I want to get a new thimble. And my toothbrush keeps shedding bristles. I broke my comb, too, and I’d like some decent letter paper. I thought I’d ask
Dad to let me go along down to the village tomorrow if he goes. I hate to ask him for money, since you say he hasn’t any.”
“Why, I think I can manage that much,” said Eleanor, smiling. It seemed a reasonable request. But Betty went up to her room feeling like a liar and a thief. She had done far worse things than that at home sometimes, without being troubled, but somehow this seemed a more flagrant offense, because she was deliberately planning to bring trouble and sorrow to her mother and father. Yet she went straight on with her planning.
The next morning Betty went down to the village on a farmer’s sleigh, an old farm wagon with runners beneath and straw for upholstery. Chester went to the hotel to do some telephoning. He told Betty to float around and do her shopping. He pointed out the shopping district: a general merchandise store, dry goods and groceries combined; a drugstore combined with the post office; and the railroad station a little farther down the street.
Betty went to the last one first and got a timetable to make sure she could reach Springfield at the hour named. She also sent her telegram and discovered the price of a ticket to Springfield. How was she ever to get enough together even for so short a journey? She must hoard her money
. Her mother had given her two dollars, and there was not much over a dollar left after sending the telegram. She must have some cigarettes, too!
The man in the drugstore gave her a sharp look when she asked for cigarettes, and she thought for a moment that he was going to refuse her. But she told him she was buying them for her brother, and he finally went and got them. She bought Chris some, too. It seemed only fair, since Chris would have done as much for her if he had the chance. Then she went back to the hotel and wrote a letter to Dudley Weston. It had necessarily to be brief lest her father appear before she finished, and she wanted to mail it if possible today. She wrote:
Old thing,
You’ve said it! Parent stuff. Pinned all right. Broke, too. All kinds of a time getting wire off. Meet you in Springfield railroad station at noon, Saturday the 22nd. If school closes early Friday afternoon you ought to make it by then. If you write don’t put your name on outside of envelope. Forbidden stuff! Hard going! If you want to send anything, make it chocolates with a layer of smokes inside. This is a perfectly poisonous place. Empty as a flask! Be sure to bring Gyp and Sam, or else get Fran and somebody. And let’s make it companionate. That sounds newer. Don’t be late.
Thorny
Chapter 16
Betty slipped out and mailed her letter and then came back and sat down in the funny old stuffy parlor and waited. She stared out of the window at the little empty street with its mountains of snow on either side and its far vista of frozen lake at the end. The lake was surrounded by a huddle of closed summer cottages and boathouses shivering on the bank like worn old ladies in white fur capes and hoods. She was thinking that she had done it now. The word had gone out of her hand that she would marry Dudley Weston. She could not call it back! It was under the United States stamp and seal! It had to go with its message. If she wanted to retract she would have to go back on her word, and there was an unwritten law that one who did that had a streak of “yellow.” Betty had never showed a streak of yellow. She was known all over school as a “game kid.” She would have to carry it through now, no matter what.
Her cheeks glowed and her eyes shone. It was going to be a lot of fun, anyway, something to break the horrible monotony of this snowbound dump to which they had brought her.
When her father came back to her she was looking almost happy, and her cheeks glowed so brightly that he gave a relieved sigh. Betty was standing the exile better than he had dared to hope. Perhaps if they stayed long enough she would forget all about the dreadful things she had left behind her and become again the pure, sweet child she had been. If only it might prove that he had not discovered things too late! He had just arranged to have a telephone put into the old house, which would make it possible for him to stay all winter, with only a trip to the office now and then.
“Well, Betty, did you get everything that you wanted?” he asked pleasantly.
Betty looked up then answered evasively:
“Well, no, not everything. Some things cost more than I thought. I didn’t have enough money.”
“Not enough money?” he said, smiling, and dropped a five-dollar bill in her lap. “Run along and get what you want. I want to write a letter, and then we’ll be ready to go when Mr. Brown comes back.”
Betty took the money, her cheeks growing very red, and went slowly over to the store. She would have to get something or her mother would ask about it. She felt as if she were taking her father’s lifeblood in that five-dollar bill. She almost ran back to give it to him and tell him she didn’t need the things, that he had better keep it for necessities, that she knew he couldn’t afford it. Then she reflected that it would go far toward making her journey to Springfield possible; and after all, when she was gone, there would be one less in the family to support.
She bought a twenty-five-cent toothbrush, a ten-cent thimble, a thirty-cent box of letter paper, and came slowly, almost shamefully, back to her father, feeling that she ought to give the change back, yet knowing she did not mean to do so unless he asked her.
Chester did not ask for the money. Betty got into the old sleigh and settled down in the straw, telling her conscience that she wasn’t doing anything criminal. The money would be there in her pocket if either her father or mother asked for it back again. She wasn’t stealing it. They had given it to her. She reflected, as she drove back to the merry jingle of the sleigh bells, that she had done very well to get things so far under way for her going, and she could afford to be nice and pleasant the rest of the time she had to stay. Of course they were going to be terribly upset with her for a while, and perhaps it was a rather rotten thing for her to do. Yet after all, it was rotten of them to bring her away from her friends and park her up in a mountain to die! They had no right! It was her own life, and she had to live it. She was preparing to live it to the limit, and the thought made her fairly sparkle with goodwill toward her family.
As a sort of atonement she entered at once into plans for Christmas as soon as she got back to the farm. She instituted an expedition to the attic immediately after lunch in search of materials and professed to have great ideas for what she was going to do. But she said nothing at all about the other ideas she had developed while hunting through the old trunks and bandboxes and chests. She came down with her arms full of old velvets and satins and silks, but she did not tell about the rose-colored taffeta she had found in the depths of the biggest trunk. It had been a part of Great-Aunt Elizabeth Thornton’s ancient trousseau. She brought it down wrapped in an old hand-embroidered nightgown of firm, fine linen embroidered in delicate vines and flowers. The taffeta was made with a silk fitted waist and a long, full skirt, very much like the present-day fashion of evening dresses. It had a low, round neck and a bertha collar of priceless old lace. Why, wouldn’t it do to take along for a dance frock? She had nothing whatever fit to appear in before her own world except the little jersey dress she had worn away from school that day. She scorned all the sensible garments her mother had brought along. Of course when she got home, after the marriage and a suitable interval for some kind of a honeymoon, depending on how much money Dud could rake up, she would be able to get into the house and perhaps find some of her own clothes. Surely everything must be there just as when they left it. The house couldn’t have been sold with all their clothes in it, not so soon anyway. Of course Mother and Dad had had a lot of conferences behind closed doors and hadn’t breathed a word. There was no telling what had been done. Mother looked awfully sad sometimes when she came out, and once Betty had caught her crying. It was hard on Mums, of course. After she was married and living in luxury she would invite Mums a great deal to visit her. Of course she would be living in luxury, for Dud’s father was said to be fabulously rich, and he had been awfully generous with Dud. When he found he was really married and settled down he would of course likely build him a house and furnish it. Too bad Dad couldn’t get her a decent trousseau, but going off this way would really let him off. Nobody could expect him to do anything when he hadn’t been told, and of course he would be angry for a while. That would be natural, and people wouldn’t expect anything of him till he got over it. Then by that time he would likely have pulled up in his business, and of course Dad would come across handsomely with chests of silver and things as fast as he got into shape. He had always been generous.
So reasoned Betty as she locked her door against intrusion, turned her back on Great-Aunt Elizabeth’s limp china doll that she had brought down to dress for Doris for Christmas, and arrayed herself in the rose-colored taffeta. It certainly was attractive, with its fall of rich old lace about the shoulders, almost down to the slim little waist. The skirt was put onto the waist with a cord and hung about her deliciously. If she could only manage to curve up the hemline in front a little, it would make it more chic, but on second thought that might be dangerous, with no long mirror by which to get the effect and no one to help her pin it up. Besides, there were many dresses made nowadays with straight hems, and it would be charming to say it was be
ing worn just as her great-aunt had worn it on her wedding trip! All it really needed was ironing, and she could easily manage to bring up an iron and an ironing board or something and smooth out the wrinkles. This business of making Christmas gifts for each other was going to make it quite possible for her to do a lot of things in privacy without exciting suspicion, because they were all working behind closed doors.
She whirled about to let the rich, rosy waves of silk swish around her and the lace collar foam around her shoulders. She spread out her young white arms before the old mirror where perhaps her aunt had once stood in that same dress. She put her head to one side and sighed happily. It looked as if a real thrill was on the way.
Then she suddenly shivered. It wasn’t as warm up in that old Vermont farmhouse bedroom, heated only by a drum from the sitting room below, as it was in her steam-heated bedroom at home in Briardale. Primping and admiring herself might be at the expense of a cold, and she mustn’t run that risk now or she might not be able to get away with her plan.
So she slipped out of the rosy silk and folded it safely away in its shrouding of embroidered linen in her bottom drawer, locked the drawer, and put the key in her sweater pocket. Then she put on her warm farm garments again and stole downstairs to read by the fire. She had found an old book that was thrilling and wanted to finish it. It told of lords and ladies and quaint old times of persecution when knights fought for ladies fair, and love was supreme. The essence of the story somehow mimicked what Betty was planning to do. She began to idealize the noble Dudley as her rescuer.
Yet she had a very tender feeling toward her mother and the rest of the family. She even laid down her book and went to the kitchen door to ask if she could help her mother when she heard her sigh as she shut the oven door on a couple of big apple pies she had just made.
The Prodigal Girl Page 16