“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.
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?”
Peter’s arm dropped from her waist and he stood straight before her, the radiance leaving his face, his jaw setting a little.
“I’m happy beyond words, Mother, to tell you that Marcia has consented to marry me,” he announced stiffly. “I may as well add that I feel that makes me one of the luckiest men alive.”
“But, Peter, she’s — well, she’s
older!”
Mrs. Marshall put both shaking hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry, dear. That’s not important, is it? After all, if you are fond of her — ”
“I’m deeply in love with her, Mother. That she’s willing to marry me is the finest thing that ever happened to me.”
“Then — I’m terribly glad for you. And for me, too. Whatever makes you happy, darling, means happiness for me. You know that,” said Mrs. Marshall.
But there was still a hint of constraint between them, though Peter grinned at her and said, “Thanks, Mom!”
He went up the stairs, one hand lightly touching the balustrade, the other guiding his cane.
Marcia was on the side veranda the following morning, dawdling dispiritedly after the light breakfast of coffee and fruit juice that was all she allowed herself, when Betsy came in.
“Oh, hello,” said Marcia. Then, when she saw the girl’s taut face and blazing eyes: “Why, what’s wrong? You look upset.”
“So you finally pulled it off,” exclaimed Betsy. “Congratulations!”
Marcia sat back down in her wicker chair and eyed Betsy coolly.
“I suppose you mean Peter,” she said.
“What else
would
I mean?”
Marcia shrugged. “I can’t see why you are so upset. After all, since you are going to marry Bo Norris, why should you mind what happens to Peter?”
Betsy drew a long, deep breath and her hands were clenched tightly at her sides. “But I do mind what happens to Peter,” she said. “I mind very much. That’s why I’ve come to tell you that if you hurt him or make him unhappy, I’ll probably try to kill you.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Betsy. You’re not the type.” Marcia’s voice was a deliberate goad.
“Do you love Peter?” demanded Betsy.
“Would I be marrying him otherwise?”
“Of course you would — and it was a silly question to begin with, because I knew the answer long before I asked it,” answered Betsy. “You’re marrying Peter — exactly as I told him you would, if he asked you — because you’re broke and he has money.”
Marcia stiffened with anger. “You told Peter?”
Betsy nodded. “He had some crazy idea that he wasn’t worthy of you. That’s funny, isn’t it?” There was youthful bitterness and venom in her voice. “Because of course you’d jump at the chance of marrying anybody who had money enough to guarantee that darned career of yours.”
Marcia was on her feet now, her eyes blazing.
“Really, Betsy, even your youth is no excuse for this sort of impertinence. I think you had better go, don’t you?”