CHAPTER XII
A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
"DEAR DOROTHY— "I have thought and thought all the afternoon and I can't do it. I should only—"
"DEAR DOROTHY—
"If you are perfectly sure that there is nobody else to go—"
"DEAR DOROTHY— "Don't you think that Mary Brooks or Marion Lawrence would be a lot better? Mary can always talk—"
"Oh, Dorothy, I don't know what to say—"
Betty had slipped up-stairs to her room the minute dinner was over. The rest of the Belden House girls still lingered in the parlors, talking or dancing,—enjoying the brief after-dinner respite that is a welcome feature of each busy day at Harding. Ida Ludwig was playing for them. She had a way of dashing off waltzes and two-steps that gave them a perfectly irresistible swing. As Betty wrote, her foot beat time to the music that floated up, faint and sweet and alluring, through her half-open door. The floor around her was strewn with sheets of paper which she had torn, one after another, from her pad, and tossed impatiently out of her way.
"Such a goose as I am, trying to write before I've made up my mind what to say!" she told the green lizard, as she sent the seventh attempt flying after the others. "And I can't make it up," she added despondently, and shut her fountain pen with a vicious little snap. She would go down and have a two-step with Roberta, who had been Mary's guest at dinner. Roberta could lead beautifully—as well as a man—and the music was too good to lose. Besides, Roberta might feel hurt at her having run off the minute dinner was over.
A shadow suddenly darkened the door and Betty turned to find Eleanor
Watson standing there, smiling radiantly down at her.
"Eleanor!" she gasped helplessly. Somehow the sight of the real Eleanor, smiling and lovely, made the deceit she had practiced seem so much more concrete and palpable, the penalty she must pay at best so much more real and dreadful. Betty had puzzled over the rights and wrongs of the matter until it had come to be almost an abstraction—a subject for formal, impersonal debate, like those they used to discuss in the junior English classes, in high school days—"Resolved: that it is right to help plagiarists to try again." Now the reality of it all was forced upon her. In spite of her surprise at seeing Eleanor, who almost never came to her room now, and her dismay that she should have come on this evening in particular, she found time to be glad that she had not yet refused Dorothy's request—and time to be a little ashamed of herself for being so glad.
Her perturbation showed so plainly in her face and manner that Eleanor could not fail to notice it. Her smile vanished and a troubled look stole into her gray eyes. "May I come in, Betty?" she asked. "Or are you too busy?"
"No-o," stammered Betty. "Come in, Eleanor, of course. I—I was just writing a note."
Eleanor glanced at the floor, littered with all Betty's futile beginnings, and her smile came flashing back again. "I should think," she said, "that you must be writing a love letter—if it isn't a sonnet— judging by the trouble it's making you. They told me downstairs that you were cramming history, but I was sure it would take more than a mere history cram to keep you away from that music. Isn't it lovely?"
"Yes," said Betty. "Would you like—shan't we go down and dance?" It would surely be easier to talk down there, with plenty of people about who did not know.
Again her embarrassment and constraint were too evident to be ignored, and this time Eleanor went straight to the heart of the matter.
"Betty," she said, "don't tell me that you're not glad to see me back again after all this time. I know I'm queer and horrid and not worth bothering about, but when you find it out,—when you give me up—you and Jim—I shall stop trying to be different."
For an instant Betty hesitated. Then the full import of Eleanor's words flashed upon her. There was no mistaking their sincerity. She knew at last that she did "really mean something" to somebody. Ethel Hale had been wrong. Eleanor had not forgotten her old friends—and Betty would go to New York. With a happy little cry she stretched out her arms and caught Eleanor's hands in hers.
"I'm so glad you feel that way," she said, "and I shall never stop caring what you do, Eleanor, and neither will Jim. I know he won't."
"He gave me up once before, and if you knew something—" She broke off suddenly. "Betty, Jim is coming Friday night. That's one reason why I'm here. I didn't want him to miss seeing you just because I'd been disagreeable and was too proud to come and say I'm sorry. I am sorry, Betty,—I'm always sorry when it's just too late."
"Oh, that's all right. I knew you didn't mean anything," said Betty, hastily. Apologies always made her nervous, and this particular one was fraught with unpleasant suggestions little guessed at by its maker. "You'll be awfully glad to see your brother, won't you?"
Eleanor's assent was half-hearted. "To tell the truth, I'm too tired to care much what happens."
"Oh, you won't feel tired when he gets here," suggested Betty, cheerfully.
Eleanor shook her head. "I'm tired all through," she said. "I don't believe I shall ever be rested again."
"What are you going to do to entertain him?" asked Betty, wishing to change the current of Eleanor's thoughts, since she did not dare to sympathize with them.
Eleanor detailed her plans, explained that Judge Watson had suddenly been called home from Cornell and so was not coming with Jim, according to the summer plan that Betty remembered, and rose to go. "I know you'll like Jim, Betty," she said, "and he'll like you. He's your kind."
The moment she was left alone, Betty sat down again at her desk and dashed off her note to Dorothy.
"Dear Dorothy:
"I have thought it over and seen Eleanor. I am the one to go, and I'll do my best.
"Yours ever,
"Betty.
"P.S.—I can't start till Wednesday."
She twisted the note into a neat little roll, and slipping out the back way went down to leave it at the florist's, to be sent to Dorothy— securely hidden in a big bunch of English violets, lest any martinet of a nurse should see fit to suppress it—the very first thing in the morning. On the way back to her room she danced up the stairs in her most joyous fashion, and when Mary Brooks, coming up from escorting Roberta to the door, intercepted her and demanded where she had been all the evening, she chanted, "Curiosity killed a cat," and fled from Mary's wrath with a little shriek of delight, exactly as if there were no such things in the world as plagiarism and hard-hearted editors. For had not Eleanor come back to her, and was not the difficult decision made at last?
And yet, when Betty was a senior and took the course in Elizabethan tragedies, she always thought of the visit of Jim Watson as a perfect example in real life of the comic interlude, by which the king of Elizabethan dramatists is wont to lighten, and at the same time to accentuate, his analyses of the bitter consequences of wrong-doing. For close upon her first great relief at finding her decision made, followed a sudden realization that the incident was not yet closed. Madeline had read the November "Quiver"; some less charitable person might have done likewise. If she had been careless in leaving her magazine in sight, so might one of the three editors have been careless, with disastrous results. Mr. Blake might write to the college authorities. Everything, in short, might come out before Jim Watson had finished his week-end visit to Harding. Helping to entertain him seemed therefore a good deal like amusing oneself on the verge of a crackling volcano.
Jim's personality made it all the harder; he was so boyishly light- hearted, so tremendously proud of Eleanor, so splendid and downright himself, with a flash in his fine eyes—the only feature in which he resembled Eleanor—and a quiver about his sensitive mouth, that suggested how deep would be his grief and how unappeasable his anger, if he ever found out with what coin his sister had bought her college honors.
He "blew in," to use his own phrase for it, on an earlier train than Eleanor had expected, and marched up to the Hilton House with a jaunty air of perfect ease and assurance. But really, he confided to Eleanor, he was in a "blooming blue funk" all the way.
"And what do you think?" he added ruefully, "somehow I got mixed up with the matron or whatever you call her. I thought, you see, that this was like a boarding-school, and that I'd got to have some gorgon or other vouch for me before I could see you. So I asked for her first, and she's invited me to dinner. Did you say there were thirty girls in this house? Sixty! I see my finish!" concluded Jim, dolefully.
Nevertheless he rose to the occasion and, ensconced between Eleanor and the matron he entertained the latter, and incidentally the whole table, with tales of mountain-climbing, broncho-busting and bear-hunting, that made him at once a hero in the eyes of the girls. But Jim disclaimed all intention of following up his conquest, just as he had, though ineffectually, disclaimed any part in the thrilling escapades of his stories.
"I can talk to a bunch of girls if I have to, but if you leave me alone with one, I shall do the scared rabbit act straight back to Cornell," he warned Eleanor. "I came to see you. Dad and I compared notes and we decided that something was up."
"Nonsense!" laughed Eleanor, but her eyes fell under Jim's steady gaze, and her cheeks flushed. "Well then, I'm tired," she admitted. "I suppose I've done too much."
"I should think so," retorted Jim, savagely. "Quit it, Eleanor. If you break down, what good will it do you to have written a fine story? I say"—his tone was reproachful—"one of those girls at the dinner you gave last night said your story was printed somewhere, and you never sent it to dad and me. You never even told us about it."
"It wasn't worth while."
"You might let us decide about that. The girl at the dinner said it was a corker, and got you into some swell club or other. That's another thing you didn't write us about."
"No," said Eleanor, wearily. "You can't expect me to write every little thing that happens, Jim."
Jim, who remembered exactly what his fair informant had said regarding the importance of a Dramatic Club "first election," knit his brows and wondered which of them was right. Finally he gave up the perplexing question and went off to order a farewell box of roses for his sister.
It was at about this time that Betty Wales, going sorrowfully to pay a book bill that was twice as large as she had anticipated, heard swift, determined steps behind her, and turned to find Jim Watson swinging after her down Main Street.
"I say, Miss Wales," he began, blushing hotly at his own temerity, "Eleanor is off at a class this hour. I'm such a duffer with girls—is it all right for me to ask you to go for a walk?"
"Of course," said Betty, laughing. "And if you ask me, I'll go."
"Then," said Jim, "I do ask you. You'll have to pick out a trail, for I don't know the country."
"Let's walk out to the river," suggested Betty. "It's not so very pretty at this season of the year, but it's our prize walk, so you ought to see it anyhow."
Silently Jim fell into step beside her.
"Have you had a good time?" inquired Betty, who had decided by this time that Jim really enjoyed talking, only he couldn't manage it without a good deal of help. She had seen more of him in the three days of his visit than any one else but Eleanor, but this was their first tete-a- tete. Hitherto, when Eleanor was busy Jim had gone on solitary tramps or sought the friendly shelter of his hotel.
"Great," replied Jim, enthusiastically. "Harding College is all right.
I'm mighty glad Eleanor wanted to stay on here."
"You're very fond of Eleanor, aren't you?" asked Betty, sure that this topic would draw him out.
"You bet." Jim's eyes shone with pleasure. "Eleanor's a trump when she gets started. She was splendid at home this summer. Of course you know"— Jim flushed again under his tan—"my mother—I'm awfully fond of her too, but of course her being so young makes it queer for Eleanor. But Eleanor fixed everything all right. She made dad and me, and mother too, just fall dead in love with her. You know the way she can."
Betty nodded. "I know."
"And I guess she's made good here, too," said Jim, proudly, "though you'd never find it out from her. Do you know, Miss Wales, she never wrote us a word about her story that came out in the college magazine."
"Didn't she?" said Betty, faintly.
"Nor about getting into some club," continued Jim, earnestly. "I forget the name, but you'll know. Isn't it considered quite an honor?"
"Why, yes," said Betty, in despair, "that is, some people consider it—
Oh, Mr. Watson, here's the bridge!"
Poor Jim, unhesitatingly attributing Betty's embarrassment to some blunder on his part, was covered with mortification. "It's evidently a secret society," he decided, "and that other fool girl didn't know it, and got me into this mess."
So he listened with deferential attention while Betty tried to tell him how lovely the snowy meadows and the bleak, ice-bound river looked on a bright June day, and carefully followed her lead as she turned the conversation from river scenery to skating and canoeing; so that they reached home without a second approach to the dangerous topics.
Jim was going back to his work that evening. As he said good-bye, he crushed Betty's hand in a bear-like grip that fairly brought tears to her eyes.
"I'm awfully glad to have met you," he said, "though I don't suppose you'd ever guess it—I'm such a duffer with girls. Eleanor told me how you stuck by her last year and helped her get her start. I tell you we appreciate anything that's done for Eleanor, dad and I do."
As Betty watched him stride off to the Hilton House, she remembered Madeline's advice. "I guess she isn't enjoying her honors very much," she thought. "Imagine getting into Dramatic Club and not writing home about it! Why, I should telegraph! And if I had a thing in the 'Argus'"—Betty smiled at the absurdity of the idea—"half the fun would be to see Nan's face. And if I was ashamed to see her face!"
Betty gave a sigh of relief that the comic interlude was over. Under ordinary circumstances the entertaining of Jim would have been the height of bliss. Just now all she wanted was to go to New York and get back again, with her errand done and one source of danger to Eleanor, if possible, eliminated.
Jim left Harding on Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning bright and early, Betty started for New York. She went by the early train for two reasons. It was easier to slip away unquestioned during chapel-time, and furthermore she meant to reach New York in time to see Mr. Blake that same afternoon and take the sleeper back to Harding. She thought that spending the night with any of her New York cousins would involve too much explanation, and besides she could sleep beautifully on the train, and she wanted to be back in time for the Thursday basket-ball practice. The girls played every day now, and very often Miss Andrews dropped in to watch them and take the measure of the various aspirants for a place on the official teams, which it would soon be her duty to appoint.