The Prodigal Girl (20 page)

Still, if the old man has got you pinned and you can’t help yourself, me for the rescue! How’d you like to get married? We might try the companionate way, it seems to be the latest now—or just go off, that’s really less trouble and lots are doing it, though it isn’t quite so new. Probably companionate would make less kick; it’s more formal, you know
.

But say, we could get away with it in vacation and nobody the wiser, and then sometime if anybody makes a kick about anything, or we want to pull something, we could spring it on ‘em. Whaddaya say? Mebbe I could get Gyp and Sam to come along. They’d do for witnesses. But you must let me know. Make it snappy. I’ll have to make arrangements. We could make a getaway after school the Friday before Christmas. Gwen has
a house party and all of us are going, of course, and nobody would miss us till we were off for good
.

I can’t seem to find out where you’ve gone. Everybody is vague. You send directions, and I’ll meet you where you say, and when; only don’t keep me waiting and spoil the game. Better wire if you accept
.

Yours to get drunk, Dud

P.S. The play went rotten. They put Sue Rounds in your place, but I kicked and now Gwen’s going to get it, but no worries if you wire O.K. I shan’t be there to see. Here’s hoping, and MAKE IT SNAPPY!

Chapter 15

M
ary Magilkey, otherwise Gipsy, had given more gossip:

Betts, you little beast! You’re the limit!

Here I give up a perfectly good date to spend the night with you and help you fix up that faun costume so your mother wouldn’t find out, and when I get to your house there’s nobody but that ugly old woman, and she says she doesn’t know when you’ll return. She won’t even say where you’ve gone, but I’m sending this through the post office. Of course they’ll forward it to you if you’re really away for long
.

But say, you certainly did one dirty trick leaving before rehearsal. It certainly was a scream. I thought I’d pass out. Sue Rounds volunteered to take your part, said she knew it all. You know she’s a wow for learning everybody’s part. She’s dying to get into a play sometime, and she’s just hanging around ready for any little old chance like you handed out to her. But oh, boy! If you could have seen her flirt with Dud! He glared at her like a jazz pirate and she rolled her eyes and got in that line
,
you know—“Oh, my dearest love! You have come back to me at last!” I nearly died! And Lois snickered right out and Miss House shut her lips hard and shook her head severely at her. But Sue went right on with her mushy speech. I thought Dud was going to knock her down, but he caught sight of Housey’s face and grabbed her round the waist like a bag of beans and said, “Come, let’s get out of here where we can talk!” and he sounded just like the chief of police come to arrest her. Honest, we all simply screamed and went into spasms, and Dud put out his foot and tripped Sue, and she fell flat! It was great! Housey finally dismissed the rehearsal and said there “wouldn’t be any play at all if this happened again,” etc., you know, like she always does when she’s mad. But afterward I heard Dud asking Gwen Phillips to take the part if you didn’t come back. He said he’d make it right with Housey. He’d threaten not to act himself. So you’d better get a move on you, Betts. You don’t want Gwen to nail him, and she will! I could see she was flattered when he asked her to take the star part with him. You can’t trust any man, Betts. Out of sight is out of mind. But perhaps you don’t care. Of course, Gwen is giving a house party in vacation and all that, but perhaps you know. She is going to have a big dance at Shillingsworth’s, too, and Dud’ll probably drive her to that if you don’t get back. But perhaps you’ve already had your invitation
.

And oh, yes, Fran’s uncle has let her ask the class to a trip on his yacht during Christmas week. You’d better get back. I’m having a couple of new casual things made just for the occasion. And Estelle has a new dress her aunt brought her from Paris. She calls it a “frock” but it looks like a patchwork quilt and hangs something fearful on her!

Now, darling, write me at once and tell me what you want me to say when Gertie Gates gets to prying about where you’ve
gone and why; and whether it is true that your dad thrashed Dud Weston and told him never to come near you again; and whether you and Dud have really had a fuss; and all that. You know Gertie. Besides I’m dying of anxiety about you. I shall pass out absolutely if I don’t hear by Wednesday. And precious, one word of advice, don’t let your parents put anything over on you! You’re almost of age and have a right to do as you please!
They
did, of course!

Passionately
,
Gyp

Frances Allison’s letter was brief and to the point:

Betts, old thing:

This is just to let you know that there’s a new man in our class. He came the day after you left, and he’s simply stunning! But he belongs to me, so hands off. He’s taken me out twice in his car, and it’s a humdinger. He lives in the old Foster place and his uncle is T.Y. Pettingill, the real estate man. They have simply scads of money, and he’s awfully generous. I think he would make a wonderful class president, in case Willie Boyer doesn’t get well enough to come back this year. We really ought to have somebody who looks the part, don’t you think?

And Betts! He has a cousin coming at Christmas, a college man. I’ve seen his picture, and he’s almost as good looking. If it’s really true as Gertie Gates is telling round that you and Dud are angry with each other I’ll introduce you to him first and give him the high sign. So you better hurry home
.

Your adoring Fran

Betty read these effusions through and then turned back to Dudley Weston’s, reading it again with thoughtful brows. Gone was the childlike look and the glow of the morning, gone the far view of distant mountains and sunsets and the vivid joy of skimming over perfect ice. Betty was back in her high school days, as if there had been no interval. Her heart burned hot with pride of possession, possession of her man—or what she was pleased to call a man. A flame of jealousy shot through her heart at the thought of Gwen Phillips and her house party. Dud used to go with Gwen down in the eighth grade. She
should not
get him back again!

Nor was Betty averse to attracting the new man from college, especially if he was good looking. It was just as well for Dudley Weston to see that he wasn’t the only one that admired her.

All the same Dudley had been fairly upright. Hadn’t he asked her to marry him? And that really was as much as he could be expected to do after her father had knocked him down. Yes, quite decent, suggesting a companionate marriage or any old thing she chose!

Betty narrowed her eyes and stared unseeing off at the mountains out of her window, trying to decide which she would prefer of the three.

It would be thrilling just to go off. She had always dreamed of that, albeit fearsomely. Some fragment of antiquity, perhaps, still lingered in her blood. One couldn’t quite get away from one’s stuffy ancestors, and even the psychologists admitted that a certain percentage of your character was inheritance, though not nearly as much as they used to think. The rest was environment, and of course if one had the courage to make one’s environment what one wished, why one could be
anything
—almost anything in the universe!

Betty’s heart swelled within her, and she rose, her head uplifted and her soul full of aspiring thoughts. What if she should go off with Dud? Just go off! Still, that was old stuff of course as Dud had said. People had been doing it for centuries. Of course companionate marriage was newer, and nobody in Briardale had tried it yet. It really sounded a lot better than just going off and made it easier to change around providing things didn’t go so smoothly. As for getting married, real downright, respectable getting married, of course every girl had that in the back of her mind as she grew up, veil stuff and white satin and orange blossoms. But one couldn’t have that and a thrill, too, and really nowadays most people would choose the thrill. There really wasn’t much you could get a kick out of in a wedding after all. There simply
weren’t
any new combinations of colors for bridesmaids unless one dared have them garbed in black velvet with big white horsehair hats trimmed in something severe, perhaps a tail of monkey fur—just one, like a tassel hanging down over one shoulder and drawn through the hat in a pinched fold!

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 T
HE
B
RIDE IN
B
LACK!
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: