by Peggy Gaddis
“Of course not, child.” He urged her to the chair near him. “I guess it’s the heat. I’m a little tired.”
“Been hoeing the garden?” she demanded sternly. “I warned you not to, or to weed the flower beds. I told you I’d do it.”
“I haven’t been doing anything, my dear, but sitting here like a lazy old cat basking in the sunlight,” he assured her.
Betsy dropped into the chair, accepting his statement, and plunging instantly into the reason for her coming.
“I wanted to tell you, Professor Hartley, that Pete is letting Gus help him. Isn’t that wonderful? I saw them a little while ago. Gus had his harness on, and he was laughing fit to kill, and he looked so proud of himself. He’s been so confused and unhappy because Peter wouldn’t let him work — isn’t that marvelous?” she chattered.
“Yes, I know. Peter was out here this morning.”
“Oh, what for?”
The professor tried to laugh. “Must my friends always have a reason for coming to see me?”
“Well, I always have one,” Betsy told him. “I come to see you because I love you.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Betsy — thank you.”
“And now, why did Peter come this morning?’’
The old man hesitated. Yet would it not be kinder if someone she loved and trusted delivered the blow? Wouldn’t the merciful brutality of that be kinder than waiting for her to hear it from someone else — perhaps in bits and pieces that would leave her in suspense and anguish?
“He came to ask my advice,” said the professor. “He wanted to know if I thought he had the right to ask a woman to marry him.”
Betsy was silent. He could not see her; but he sensed her rigidity, the way the color left her face, the young eyes dark with pain.
“Marcia Eldon, of course,” she said at last, her voice too faint to have reached ears less keen than those of the man sitting nearby.
“Yes.”
Betsy sat very still for a while, and then suddenly her small clenched fists beat at her knees and she said through her teeth, “But she’s not good enough for him. She’s — spiteful, and malicious, and unkind!”
“Betsy, Betsy, child!”
“I know you think I’m being catty and mean. But truly I’m not. She isn’t kind, Professor. I saw her shrink from Peter one day. And the other night when we were having coca-colas, Pete spilled a little. He didn’t know it — nobody let on that they noticed it. But Marcia looked at him, and then at Bo Norris and wrinkled her nose in disgust. Bo wanted to smack her. I wish I’d let him — oh, I wish I’d let him!”
The tears had come now, and Betsy was weeping with heartbroken abandon. The professor cleared his throat to steady his voice, and tried to offer consolation.
“But, child, you’re behaving as though he’s already engaged to Mrs. Eldon. We don’t even know that she’ll accept him,” he pointed out, without in the least believing it.
“Oh, she’ll accept him. She’ll marry him so quickly he won’t know what happened! And the minute she’s finished with him, she’ll divorce him. When she gets all she can out of him — ” Betsy hid her face behind her shaking hands.
When at last she stood up to go, she said huskily, “Thanks for telling me, Professor Hartley. I’d much rather hear it from you than from anybody else in the world. I know how to protect myself, now. Forewarned is forearmed, isn’t it?”
“Betsy, you won’t do anything rash? Anything foolish?”
She bent and pressed her tear-wet cheek to his, her arm tight about his shoulders.
“No, Professor — oh, no. I won’t do anything foolish! I’m going to be very sensible from here on out!” she told him. “I’ll keep you posted.”
Then she was gone, running across the lawn and out to the street. A moment later he heard the sound of her little car racing off down the highway… .
George and Edith were at dinner when Betsy came in. They had waited for her, and then had decided that she was staying to eat with Professor Hartley. Edith had been a little annoyed that Betsy had been thoughtless enough not to telephone.
They heard her come into the hall, and stand there for a little while, before she came into the dining room and faced them. Her color was high, and her eyes were bright with excitement, but her mouth quivered as she spoke.
“I want you two to be the first to know,” she carolled, her voice a little too high, a shade too shrill. “Bo Norris and I are announcing our engagement. It’ll be in tomorrow’s paper.”
“Betsy!” Edith gasped.
“Aren’t you being a little premature?” demanded George. “Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I thought a father and mother were at least consulted — or notified — ”
“I’m notifying you now, Pops,” said Betsy with that unconvincing gaiety. “And there wasn’t a lot of time. After all, I can’t have the whole town thinking I married Bo just because Pete is marrying Marcia Eldon, now can I? This way, it will look as if I threw Pete over. My announcement will be in the morning paper. And even if Marcia and Pete hurry, they can’t get theirs in until the next day!”
“Is it so important?” George asked, baffled.
“Why, Pops, how you do talk!” Betsy’s eyes were round with affected surprise. “When I’ve been the girl whose heart was an open book, with Pete’s name on every page, and people knowing from the time I was twelve that I didn’t want to marry anybody else — ”
“Betsy, listen to me! You’re trying to do what I warned you I wouldn’t allow,” Edith exclaimed in dismay.
“Oh, no, darling. I said I was going to get engaged to Bo. Now I’m telling you I’m going to marry him. And it’s going to be the town’s fanciest wedding. I’m going to have eight bridesmaids, and a maid of honor. I may even go so far as to have a ring bearer in a white satin suit, and a little girl to strew rose petals and stuff.”
“Betsy!” wailed Edith.
“Yes, Mother?” Betsy was being very sweet, very polite, very wide-eyed.
“This is crazy. I won’t let you!”
Betsy’s eyes chilled. “Don’t try anything, Mother, will you?” she said softly. “Because if you do, Bo and I will just drive across the state line where we can be married at the drop of a hat. I’d rather do it formally, and all that — but I’m going to marry Bo, and nobody’s going to stop me.”
George looked from one to the other of these two women who were so dear to him, yet who seemed so much like strangers at this moment.
“But what’s all the fuss?” he asked. “If you love Bo and want to marry him, I can’t see any objection. Bo’s a fine boy, and has a promising future, and you’ve known him all your life — ”
“She’s not in love with Bo,” Edith broke in. “She hasn’t the faintest intention of marrying him. She’s only using him to whip Peter Marshall into line.”
George muttered a mild oath under his breath, and rumpled his graying hair. “Is this true, Betsy?” he asked.
“No, Pops.” Betsy smiled at him. It was a smile that was as strange and twisted as any grimace he had ever seen, and one he disliked extremely.
“Betsy, you’re lying!” cried Edith. “Have you forgotten the night your father went to lodge meeting, and you unfolded your pretty little plan to me? I told you then I wouldn’t let you get away with it.”
“That was before I knew Peter was going to marry Marcia, so he can support her in luxury while she finishes her musical training and then kicks him out,” said Betsy levelly.
“Betsy! What a hateful thing to say!” protested George feebly.
“Isn’t it? I’m finding out, the older I grow, that truth is seldom pretty,” returned Betsy. “But that’s got nothing to do with Bo and me. We’re going to buy that Henderson cottage on Maple Street, and you can give us our furniture, if you like. Bo’s father has already told him he’ll buy us the cottage and redecorate it. And, Mother, you and I are going to be terribly busy. I want the prettiest trousseau the family exchequer — and our credit �
�� will stand, and at least six bridesmaids and a maid of honor. Maybe I’ll ask Marcia to be my maid of honor. She’s very decorative, and wouldn’t it be nice if she could sing? Something like ‘The Voice That Breathed O’er Eden.’ But of course, she isn’t to be allowed to sing.”
“Betsy! Will you stop chattering like a little idiot?” cried Edith. “You’re out of your mind!”
A bleak look swept over Betsy’s young face and her eyes seemed frightened. But the next moment the look was gone and Edith couldn’t even be sure she had seen it. Betsy was once more bright and airy and nonchalant.
“No, Mother, I’m in my mind — at last! I’ve been out of it for a long, long time. You’ll see. Bo and I are going to be very happy. And if you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about it any more.”
She turned and ran out of the room. They heard her racing footsteps on the stairs, and a bang as her door closed behind her.
Chapter Twelve
Peter’s only hope of getting Marcia alone, away from her court of admiring young friends, was to ask her to drive him out into the country. He could not see her startled look when he suggested the drive, but there was no hesitation in her voice when she answered him.
“What a grand idea, Peter,” she exclaimed. “It’s such a lovely afternoon and, if we drove out to the river, we might even find a breeze — who knows? Anyway, it’s worth trying.”
When they got up to go across the veranda and down the steps to the drive, she was surprised to see Peter put his hand on Gus’ wooden harness and let Gus lead him down the steps and to the car. When Peter was settled, the dog leaped nimbly into the rumble and sat on his haunches. Gus loved to ride in a car; especially one where he could ride out in the open, as he could here.
“So you and Gus have decided to work together,” said Marcia, as she slid beneath the wheel and switched on the ignition.
Peter’s face tightened a little, but he answered her readily enough. “Oh, yes. I would have walked straight into a car yesterday with results that might have been tragic — though that’s a debatable point — if Gus hadn’t knocked me out of the way. I realized that if I’d been living up to what he expected of me, it would never have happened. So” — he shrugged — ”I still feel it’s a heck of a life for a fine pup, to have to drag a guy around, but I promised to make it up to him in other ways.”
“I’m sure you will,” said Marcia. “What a ghastly thing, Peter. You might have been killed.”
“Yes,” Peter agreed, without emotion. “It would be a little embarrassing to go through all the widely advertised horrors of war and then get bumped off by a car practically in your own front yard!”
“It’s nothing to joke about, Peter.” Marcia shuddered.
“No, I suppose not.” Peter’s tone said plainly that he was simply being polite, and was not at all convinced that it was not a bitter joke.
They were driving now through the outskirts of Centerville and into the open country. The day was hot, but it was late afternoon and the sun’s blistering heat was faintly tempered by a hint of coming evening.
Marcia drove easily, her hands expert on the wheel. Presently, she turned the car from the paved highway into a narrow sand road that led beneath tall pines, the earth thickly dark brown with pine needles. She came out at last on a bluff above the river and parked the car. Here, the stream was wide and deep. On the banks, lusty green willows bent over, as though to admire their own grace in the mirror-like water.
“Remember this place, Peter?” asked Marcia.
“Of course. It’s Pine Bluff — a favorite picnic spot for many years. I’ve been here thousands of times. As a cub-scout, later on as a full-fledged scout.”
“And still later, as a young man courting his sweetheart, I have no doubt,” Marcia teased. “I understand this is the town’s favorite lovers’ lane.”
Peter grinned. “I’m glad we came here,” he told her. “Somehow I have an idea that this is the one place in the world for me to say what I want to say to you.”
Marcia tensed, and flung him a speculative glance. But she was sitting a little away from him, so he was not aware of her tensions. Gus had been released from his harness and was racing through the woods, for the moment forgetful of his charge.
“Goodness, you sound — impressive,” Marcia made herself say at last, with an attempt at lightness.
But Peter was sitting with his brow furrowed a little, as he tried to find exactly the words with which to clothe his thoughts.
“You see, Marcia,” he said presently, “I know, of course, that you are young and beautiful and desirable. I know that you could have — well, any man you happened to want. I know it’s presumption on my part that I could dare to hope you’d even consider marrying me.”
Marcia’s eyes were wide, and her breath was held suspended. But Peter went on:
“I know you’re ambitious for a career that’s inevitably expensive — ”
“Also that I’m broke,” she added bitterly.
“Darling, please let me finish. I’ve been all night and most of the day trying to screw my courage up to the point of saying this.”
He turned to her swiftly, “and she had a vague feeling that his sightless eyes were seeing far more than she wanted them to see.
“Marcia, I’m in love with you,” he went on, “deeply and truly. But I know you don’t love me, that — well, that you can’t! The odds are stacked too heavily against that; but I thought that if you’d let me, I could make things a lot easier for you. I could take care of you, at least so far as money is concerned. And I wouldn’t ask an awful lot of you; just that you’d let me be around and maybe not mind it too much — ”
There was an almost unbearable humility in his voice, and Marcia said, “Stop belittling yourself, Peter! I’m very fond of you!”
He leaned toward her, his face radiant. Impulsively, she put out her hands, framed his face between them, and set her mouth on his.
His arms gathered her close and held her so tightly that for a moment she had to fight down the desire to free herself. She had been touched with pity — she had acted impulsively — but the strength of his arms that held her so tightly aroused in her a sudden surge of resentment.
She disliked being touched, caressed; she was by no means demonstrative; in fact, she was essentially cold, her whole heart wrapped up in her career and her ambitions. But she held herself still, and Peter sensed nothing of her instinct for withdrawal.
“Oh, darling, darling,” he said at last. “I can’t believe it. It’s too wonderful. I’d hoped that I could — well, sell you a bill of goods, make a sort of bargain with you; that you’d let me look after you, and that maybe some day you might grow a little fond of me. I never dared to dream that you loved me.”
Marcia hesitated a moment before she asked, “You were going to put it on a sort of business basis? You thought I would accept such a proposition?”
“I didn’t dare hope you’d be interested in anything else,” he acknowledged. “I think I fell in love with your voice the first time I heard it, and I’ve been falling deeper and deeper ever since. But I didn’t have the colossal conceit to think you’d ever care anything about me. I hoped I could offer you material advantages that would offset having a husband who is — blind.”
“You’re very sweet, Peter,” murmured Marcia.
“So are you!”
“But, Peter, I’ve got to be honest with you,” she told him, reluctantly. “I’m terribly self-centered. I don’t think I could ever love any man enough to be willing to give up my hope of a career.”
“Why should you? Darling, I want to help you realize that ambition.”
“You’d never be jealous? Music is a very demanding profession Peter, if one wants to be really great — and I’m going to be.” She said this with a quiet self-confidence that might have startled a man less deeply in love.
“Jealous? Of your career? When I want to do everything in the world that I can to further it?”
“There’s another thing, too,” she said after a moment. “I’ve been married, Peter. You know that. Everybody in Centerville knows it. What they don’t know is that my husband let me divorce him because he got tired of my using all the money I could lay my hands on for lessons, and letting the household bills go until we were being sued right and left. I want you to know the whole truth, Peter.”
He laughed. “If you’re trying to frighten me, sweet, you’re wasting your time,” he told her, undisturbed by her confession. “Every cent I have in the world is yours — with my blessing. It’s nothing compared to what you are giving me. Marcia — I love you so much!”
It was dusk when they left the little pine glade above the river. Marcia left Peter in front of the Marshall place, and drove away into the deepening twilight, as he and Gus went up the drive.
Mrs. Marshall, fighting down her anxiety because Peter was out later than she had expected, trying to remind herself that darkness meant nothing to him and that he was merely idling somewhere, met him at the door. She tried to disguise her sharp relief at sight of him, to hide it behind a gentle reminder that he was late for dinner.
“Mrs. Marshall,” he told her gaily, his arms about her, “I have some news for you.”
“Oh — then someone has told you? Perhaps I should have warned you.”
Peter looked puzzled. “Told me what?” he demanded.
“That Betsy is engaged,” she blurted it out, watching him anxiously.
“Betsy Drummond? That infant? Why, that’s absurd!”
“Darling, we all keep trying to tell you that Betsy is quite grown up — she’s almost nineteen — and Bo Norris is twenty-four.”
Peter grinned. “Oh, well, then, I’ll give ‘em my blessing,” he said generously, and laughed again.
“That wasn’t the news you had for me?” asked his mother.
“You mean about Betsy’s engagement? Nope, my news is about my engagement!”
Mrs. Marshall stood very still, and Peter, his arm about her, sensed the little shock that sped over her. Before she could check the words she had said, “Oh, Peter, not Marcia?”