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The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point; or a Wreck and a Rescue, a novel by Laura Lee Hope |
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Chapter 19. Betty Confesses |
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_ CHAPTER XIX. BETTY CONFESSES Betty woke up the next morning with a sense of deadly depression weighing her down. For a few moments she lay staring up at the ceiling trying to collect her thoughts. Then the events of the day before came back to her and she frowned unhappily. The whereabouts of poor little Dodo and Paul was still a mystery, and Will Ford, whom she had come to regard almost as a brother, was terribly wounded somewhere in France. She probably would never see him again. And there was Allen too, to worry about every minute of the day and night. She had not heard from him in--oh, ages. Yes, it must be every bit of two weeks since she had read his last letter. For all she knew, he might be worse off than poor Will. "Oh, well," she sighed, and, turning on her side, looked out of the window. There was no relief there from the gloom of her thoughts, for the sky was leaden and overcast, looking as if it, too, were mourning for the troubles of the world, and the surf beat loud and threateningly on the shore. "Guess it's going to rain and make things still more cheerful," she said, and at the sound Grace opened heavy eyes and turned over restlessly. "What are you mumbling about?" she asked sleepily, closing her eyes again and sighing a little. "Nothing but the weather," replied Betty, adding, with unusual gentleness: "It's early, so you can turn over and get forty winks." "What has happened to you?" asked Grace, opening her eyes again in surprise at this unheard of advice. Then as the full force of her trouble came home to her she turned over noisily and burrowed her head into the pillow. "Guess I will," she said in a muffled voice. "Don't any one dare wake me up till they have some good news to tell me. I'm going to be another Rip Van Winkle." "Goodness, I hope it won't be that long before we have any good news," said Betty, trying to speak lightly. This would never do, she thought. They simply had to find some way out of this terrible slough of despondency before it mastered them completely. "I'm going to get up," she announced briskly, jumping out of bed. "I've got to find something to keep me busy till that good news of ours feels like coming along. I'm getting absolutely morbid just sitting around and thinking." "Well, what is there to do?" asked Grace, rolling over and regarding her listlessly. "There's the house to be put in order," Betty pointed out, recovering a little of her old spirits, now that she had decided on a definite plan of action. "And we never have really unpacked our trunks because Mollie has been undecided about staying." "Yes, I know. And my clothes are a perfect wreck. I haven't a thing to put on that doesn't look as if it had been through the wars," Grace agreed. "Not that it really matters," she added indifferently. "Of course it makes a difference," returned Betty sharply. She was determined to rouse Grace out of her lethargy, no matter what means she had to take. "Don't you know that when you are dressed neatly and becomingly everything seems brighter and more hopeful? And, anyway," she added, watching Grace out of the corner of her eye, "it isn't like you to be careless about your dress." "Well, it isn't like me either to go moping around as if I had one foot in the grave and the other was slipping," retorted Grace, with a spirit that showed the experiment had worked. "I don't think it's nice for you to make remarks like that when you know how I'm feeling and the excuse I have." "Nobody has any excuse for giving up and acting as if everything were lost when it isn't," said Betty decidedly. "If our soldiers did that the first time they had to retreat, how long do you suppose our army would last?" "But Will isn't your brother," insisted Grace stubbornly. "If he were, maybe you would feel differently." There was a moment's pause. "No he isn't my brother," returned Betty, knowing she was going to hurt her friend but believing that the result would justify the means. "But if he were I would try to behave so that when he came back he would have a right to be proud of me." "Betty Nelson!" Grace sprang out of bed with her eyes blazing, "do you know what you are saying? Do you mean that if Will should come back, he wouldn't be proud of me?" "Not if you keep on taking your trouble lying down," said Betty, sticking gamely to her guns, though she was a little frightened at the success of her experiment. "I may," she thought to herself, "have done not wisely, but too well." However, after one outraged and enraged stare at Betty, Grace pointedly turned her back and began hastily to pull on her clothes. She finished dressing before Betty, and without a word left the room. "Now you have done it, Betty, my dear," said Betty making a little face at her pretty reflection in the mirror. "I shouldn't wonder if Grace would never speak to you again. Poor Gracie, perhaps I shouldn't have said what I did, but I simply had to start something." On her way downstairs she tapped at Mollie's door and found that she and Amy were both up and dressing. "Come in," called Mollie; "I need your help. Amy's eyes are so swollen," she explained, as Betty obeyed, "that she can't see to do me up. Just the middle one, Betty. That's a dear." As Betty obligingly did the "middle one" she stole a glance at Amy, who was absently doing up her hair without looking in the mirror. "Look out!" she cried suddenly, making both the girls jump. "You nearly stuck that hairpin in your eye, Amy," she explained, as they looked at her reproachfully, "and that isn't the place for it you know." Amy smiled a crooked little smile and put the unruly hairpin in the right place. "I'm apt to do anything to-day," she said, with a sigh that seemed to come from her toes. "If any of you want to live, you had just better keep out of my way, that's all." "Isn't it just wonderful weather?" said Mollie sarcastically, gazing out at the leaden landscape. "Just the kind of a day to put the J into Joy." "If something doesn't happen pretty soon," put in Amy, with another deep sigh, "I'll just naturally pass away. I wonder," she added, looking really interested in the subject, "if anybody ever did die of the blues." "I don't believe so--but there's always hope," said Betty dryly, adding with sudden spirit; "Now look here, girls, something's got to be done about this. We really will make ourselves sick if we don't try to look on the hopeful side of things. It won't do anybody, least of all, ourselves, any good to sit here and mope all day. We've just got to fight against depression and cheer up." "That's all very well for you, Betty," Amy voiced almost the same sentiment as Grace had only a few moments ago, "but you are the only one of us who hasn't been hurt personally. Suppose it were Allen. Would you feel the same way then--about cheering up and taking it bravely?" Betty flushed angrily, at the same time feeling a wild desire to go away and cry. "I hope I would," she said steadily. "And if I didn't, I would surely feel ashamed of myself. It isn't," she paused at the door and looked back at them, "as though Will or the twins were dead. We have hope in both cases, so I don't see any use of giving up. You talk," she choked back a sob, "as though I didn't sympathize, as if I were an outsider just because nothing has happened to--Allen--yet--" her voice choked in a real sob this time and she fled from the room. The girls gazed after her unhappily. "Did you ever!" gasped Mollie. "I didn't mean to make her feel bad. Betty, of all people!" said Amy, conscience stricken. "And of course she's right about our trying to cheer up. Only, I don't want to, someway." "Betty's a darling," said Mollie thoughtfully. "But of course she can't quite realize how badly we feel. If it were her little brother and sister, now--" And so gradually Betty came to feel herself more or less of an outsider with these girls who were so close to her. And it was all because they misunderstood her effort to cheer them up and thought she could not feel for them because nothing terrible had happened to her yet. "I'll show them," she told herself fiercely, "if anything should happen to Allen--" But she shivered and turned away shudderingly from the thought. Allen--if only she could see him for five minutes--just five minutes-- Some way the days dragged through until a week passed, then part of another. Still there had been no clue to the whereabouts of the twins, nor any further news of Will. "And this is the wonderful vacation we planned!" said Grace with a wry smile, breaking one of the long silences that had become common with the Outdoor Girls these days. They were, as usual, sitting on the sand and trying to occupy their minds with sewing or reading, yet always with an eye to the road in readiness to rush to their red-headed combination of delivery boy and postman whenever he saw fit to put in an appearance. Betty opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. She had learned that any suggestion she might make would be wrongly interpreted by the girls who were engrossed in their own troubles, and so she had wisely decided to say nothing. "I haven't heard from Frank for ever so long," said Mollie, as if the fact had just occurred to her. "I wonder if anything can have happened to him?" "I didn't see any name we knew in the casualty list last night," ventured Betty. "Betty, is that what you read so carefully every night?" asked Mollie, wide-eyed. "Oh, I don't see how you ever have the courage!" as Betty nodded. "If I saw the name of anybody I--I--cared for in that dreadful list, I don't know what I'd do." "Oh, I don't know," returned the Little Captain, while a wistful light grew in her eyes and her lips quivered. "When I don't find--what I'm afraid to find--I feel like a criminal who has been reprieved, and it gives me courage to face another day." Then suddenly the girls saw Betty in her true light. Why, she was suffering too! Think of her reading that awful list every night with fear in her heart! And in the light of this revelation, her brave efforts to cheer them seemed suddenly heroic. "Betty dear," Mollie moved over toward her friend and put an arm about her. "Do you care that much?" A little sob of pent-up misery broke from Betty and she dropped her head on Mollie's shoulder. "Oh, so much!" she whispered brokenly. Then everybody cried a little and the girls called themselves all sorts of awful names for being "brutes" to their adored Little Captain, and when the storm cleared up everything seemed brighter and they could even smile a little. Then that night, when the little god of hope seemed about to take his accustomed place in the hearts of the Outdoor Girls, there came another blow, even more staggering than the ones that had gone before. As Betty was scanning the casualty list with terrified, yet eager, eyes, she gave a little cry, half gasp and half sob that brought the girls running to her. Her face was ashen pale, and she pointed with trembling finger to a name half-way down in the column. "Oh, girls, it's come--it's come! Allen! Allen! It can't be true!" and she dropped her head upon her arms, crumpling the paper in her hand. _ |
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