The Girl Next Door (Crimson Romance) (9 page)

“Hey, Bets — hold it up! Where did you ever garner so much profound wisdom? Or is it just crazy talk? You’re too young to know so much!” protested Peter, frowning.

Betsy looked at him. She could look at him all she liked and she didn’t have to be careful of her expression, of the revelation of her eyes, because Pete, poor darling, couldn’t see her. She blinked back the tears and brought the car to a halt in the driveway of the Marshall home.

“I’ve had years of experience,” she told Peter after a moment, “I’ve been in love since I was twelve!”

Peter looked slightly annoyed. “Betsy, Betsy — you’re still playing with dolls!” he scolded. “You’re still just a kid. You don’t know the first thing about love.”

“Bo Norris thinks I’m grown up enough to marry him, and maybe I will!” she announced with a calmness that surprised her.

But the look that flashed across Peter’s face was the most cruel blow she had ever received. It was one of acute relief! Peter was
glad
she was going to marry Bo! She had thought the news would shake him into a realization that he himself was in love with her — and, instead, he had looked relieved!

“Bo Norris, eh?” he was saying now. “Well, that’s great, Betsy. Bo’s a grand guy! Congratulations. I’ll send you a set of solid silver pickleforks for your wedding present.”

“And I’ll take good care of them, and send them back to you when you and Marcia get married,” Betsy said through her teeth.

Instantly the laughter faded from Peter’s face, and it was stern again. His hands tightened on the cane, and his body went rigid.

“I’m afraid you’ll keep ‘em for life, then, Betsy. For the Lord’s sake, do you suppose I’d ask any woman to share the sort of life I lead?” he burst out savagely.

“She’d like it — if she loved you.”

“But Marcia’s not in love with me.”

“No, I suppose not,” Betsy agreed with perfect sincerity. “But she’ll marry you like a flash if you want her to.”

Peter was still for a moment, but his expression told her it was only to control his temper. Then he said bitingly, “Marcia has never struck me as the sort of woman to make such a sacrifice for a ‘wounded hero.’” The last two words came with such bitterness that Betsy shrank a little.

“Well, gosh, who ever said it would be a sacrifice to marry you, Pete, you idiot?” she demanded. “Anyway, Marcia would marry you like a shot. She’s tired of being poor.”

“That’s enough!” snapped Peter.

“Well, don’t snap my head off,” Betsy protested, with some heat: “Marcia’s ambitious. She’s — well, she’s glamorous and all that, but she’s practical, too. She hasn’t any money, and she needs a lot of it to go on studying to be a great singer.”

“And you’re suggesting that she would tie herself to a useless hulk like me, just because my ancestors happened to be thrifty and were kind enough to leave me money? Well, thanks a lot, Betsy. I thought you were a friend of Marcia’s. I never suspected you of being a malicious spiteful little cat!”

“I’m not! I’m not a cat! I like Marcia. But that doesn’t mean I’m too stupid to understand her,” Betsy raged. “I know how ambitious she is. I’ve heard her say, ‘Nothing is ever going to stand in my way again. I’m a singer, I’m going to be a great singer, and nothing’s going to stop me.’ “

“And is being ambitious a disgrace?”

“No, and marrying a man you don’t love, if he will help you to realize your ambition isn’t disgraceful, either, I suppose?”

Suddenly Peter laughed. It wasn’t a very pleasant laugh, and his face looked tired.

“Betsy, my sweet,” he said dryly, “we’re a couple of fools. Here we sit arguing and throwing brick-bats at each other, and all because of a woman who would laugh her head off if she so much as suspected I’m in love with her.”

“Then you
are
in love with her.”

Peter nodded. “Now go ahead and laugh.”

Betsy was still for what seemed like a long, long time. It might have been a matter of moments; it was probably no more than seconds, but it was long enough for her to watch the dearest dream of her life shrivel and die.

“I’m laughing fit to kill,” she said at last, in a voice so low that Peter could scarcely distinguish the words.

“You should be, Betsy. It’s very amusing,” he said bitterly. “I thought the day they told me I was hopelessly blind was the worst day of my life. I know now it was only a sort of curtain raiser. To be hopelessly in love is far worse than to be hopelessly blind.”

Betsy sat very still. Even in this devastating moment of her own life, her first instinct was to help him, to offer comfort. It was a mark of the measure of her love that his happiness seemed more important than hers.

“It needn’t be a tragedy, Pete, unless you want it to,” she told him. “She will marry you. She’d like to! I’ve seen the way she looks at you.”

Peter turned to her sharply, but before the expression of hope could more than flicker across his face, it was gone. “Don’t, Betsy. Don’t build me up with false hopes. If I thought for a moment that she cared for me — ”

With her usual devastating honesty, Betsy blurted out, “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think Marcia’s in love with you. I don’t think she’s in love with anybody. I don’t believe she’s capable of loving anybody but herself. I only said she’d marry you, if you wanted her to.”

Peter’s eyebrows went up a little. “Charming picture, Betsy. You make Marcia sound enchanting.” He fumbled for the catch of the car door, and swung it open.

Gus, alert since the moment the car had stopped, was already on the sidewalk. As Peter climbed out of the car, Gus pressed against him, and Peter, in a moment of rare annoyance with the dog, said sharply, “Hang it, stop shoving me!”

“Stop shouting at him!” Betsy blazed. “If you’d give him a chance to do the thing he’s been trained to do — ”

“I will
not
be hauled around at the end of a wooden harness by a dog that deserves a better break!”

“Gus has been trained to be of service to the one he loves — and that happens to be you! If you weren’t so pig-headed and stubborn, you’d have sense enough to know that love likes to serve.”

With that parting shot, Betsy sent the car racing off down the street, so blinded by tears that she could scarcely see how to drive.

“Betsy!” Pete called out. “Wait a minute!”

He had taken a hasty step toward the sound of the car. That unconsidered step took him off the sidewalk, and he stumbled, just as another car came down the street. With lightning-like speed, Gus leaped forward, sending Pete sprawling, but out of the way of the car.

Peter put his hand down, and Gus lifted his head to meet it. Peter fondled the big, satiny head, the velvety pointed ears, and felt the powerful neck that he had sworn never to harness; and suddenly he was acutely ashamed. He had failed Gus.

“Sorry, old man,” he said huskily, and if the dog did not understand the words, he caught the note of affection in Peter’s voice, and quivered with pleasure. “You win,” said Peter. “No, that’s not quite right. You lose, old boy. But maybe that’s the way you’d like it. Betsy said love wants to serve. Well, you shall serve, Gus. I’ll try to make it up to you, some way. You’re still going to have freedom and fun, but I guess from here on out, the two of us will walk in step, huh?”

It was late afternoon when Professor Hartley heard Betsy coming across the lawn. It was almost as though his thoughts had evoked her physical presence, and he turned his face toward the sound of her steps, making himself smile warmly.

“Hello, Betsy, my dear. Come and sit down! I’m so glad to see you,” he said.

Betsy eyed him with suspicion. “What’s wrong? You’re not holding out on me? You haven’t been ill, or upset or anything, and trying not to let me know?”

“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 — ”