Clever Betsy

Irving threw back his head, and his ringing laugh caused Mrs. Bruce to look wonderingly down the garden.

“An absolute monarchy, eh?” he responded. “And you have the habit so, you want to tyrannize over me still?”

“Don’t leave me with the feelin’ that you want to shirk out of it by foolin’,” pursued Betsy, refusing to smile, and rising, conscious of Mrs. Bruce’s gaze.

Irving rose also and threw his arm tenderly around her thin shoulders as they moved toward the house.

She tried to escape, but the gentle vise held.

“You’ve made me feel very sentimental, referring as you have to our past, Betsy,” he said emotionally. “Know’st thou these verses, beginning —

“‘There is no friend like the old friend, who has shared our morning days’ (and teething nights!)”

“Please, Mr. Irving!”

With a desperate wriggle, Betsy escaped, and moved swiftly around toward the back door of the cottage.

“Did she refuse you?” called Nixie, as his friend stretched portentously, and then came on up the steps.

“Absolutely.”

“It must be a habit of hers,” remarked Mrs. Bruce. “Captain Salter has been returning to the charge for years, so I’ve heard lately.”

“Great work!” declared Nixie with zest. “He looks like a sea-dog that can hold on. I must have some fun with the great and only Betsy.”

“If you do,” remarked Irving lazily, “I’ll have some fun with you that will make you an interesting invalid for the rest of the summer.”

“Highty-tighty!” exclaimed Nixie. “I believe sonny is in earnest, Mrs. Bruce.”

“Doubtless,” she returned, with some bitterness. “Betsy has a true knight.”

“I am in earnest,” said Irving quietly. “Betsy’s private affairs are as much to be respected as your mother’s. Hands off.”

“I spoke to her about the captain once,” said Mrs. Bruce. “He’d been as much as making love to her under my very eyes, and I put some innocent question, but – ” the speaker shrugged her shoulders – “she snubbed me.”

“Quite right,” said Irving promptly.

“The man’s crazy,” declared Mrs. Bruce, “if he thinks Betsy could be persuaded to leave us, and go and drudge for him. Of course that’s all he wants her for; and she is clever. She knows it.”

“I don’t agree with you,” said Irving mildly. “Old Hiram’s in love with her. To his eyes she looks just the same as she did when they went to school together.”

“He shall have her then!” ejaculated Nixie enthusiastically. “I shall make it my pleasure, in slight, unostentatious ways, to throw them together.”

“Wretch!” exclaimed Mrs. Bruce. “Destroyer of homes! Do you want to give me nervous prostration?”

“Did you ever try to throw Betsy anywhere she didn’t want to go?” inquired Irving.

“That’s my comfort,” groaned Mrs. Bruce. “She looked at Captain Salter as if she could eat him when he told us what he had named the boat.”

Nixie laughed. “She’s a character, isn’t she? I’m not far from in love with her myself.”

CHAPTER XXI

A RAINY EVENING

The various and sundry hatchets which had been brandished in the mental atmosphere between the natural guardians of those two heroes, Irving Bruce and Robert Nixon, were all decently buried by the time the Yellowstone party were about to be reunited at Fairport.

Mrs. Bruce had quite the glow of a hostess as she placed flowers in the rooms of the expected ones; and Mrs. Nixon had invited the Bruce household, of which her son was to continue to be one, to dine with them at the inn on the evening of their arrival.

They had a cosy corner of the dining-room to themselves when the time came.

Helen Maynard looked charming in an evening gown of pale pink chiffon. The quiet little chrysalis familiar to their Yellowstone stage had yielded up a butterfly upon which Mrs. Nixon looked with pride as the work of her hands, noting with satisfaction the admiring curiosity in the eyes of the three men.

Even Helen’s demureness was not proof against the radiance of her content to-night as they took their places at the table. She was seated between the two young men, whose coats of tan provoked much comment from the newcomers.

When they had taken their places, Robert looked about with his usual cheerfulness.

“All present or accounted for but Hebe,” he declared. “It seems as if she ought to materialize and bring us our soup.”

Irving gazed at him. “You saw nothing unfitting, then, in that office for her?”

The speaker’s manner was always quiet, but his boon companion recognized the tone.

“Brute of my heart!” ejaculated the latter, “‘I would not live alway,’ but a little longer, please! You’ll pardon the natural yearnings of an affectionate nature. I can’t help missing lovely Hebe.”

“There is a more familiar face than Miss Vincent’s that we are missing,” said Helen. She turned to Mrs. Bruce. “How is Clever Betsy?”

“Very well indeed, thank you,” returned that lady. “She is evidently more than grateful to be on her native heath again. I think I never knew Betsy in such good spirits as she has shown the past week.”

“I noticed it in Boston,” said Helen. “When she came to see us she seemed so happy. She said the best part of any trip, no matter how delightful, was getting home again.”

While Helen Maynard spoke, she had a habit of turning at short intervals to Mr. Derwent as if to include him in all she said; and such was his ability to understand her, that his eyes sent her an acknowledgment even when there was no occasion for him to speak.

This time, however, he did answer.

“I don’t wonder at Betsy. I like the looks of this place very much myself.”

“And the taste of it,” added Robert, eating his soup with a seaman’s appetite. “This is very good, for a hotel. For myself, I live in a private family, and I pity you all. Mrs. Bruce has a cook with whom I’m liable to elope.”

“I’ll show her off to you some day soon,” said Mrs. Bruce graciously.

Betsy Foster was meanwhile enjoying the unwonted sole possession of the cottage. While she straightened the chaos in the young men’s rooms, a smile was on her lips, and a light of excitement burned in her eyes.

When all was neat within doors and she had eaten her simple supper, she went out on the veranda, and seating herself in the best rocker, rocked, and hummed one of Robert’s most abandoned two-steps.

While she was thus enjoying the dolce far niente of her unobserved evening, a light rain began to fall.

“I don’t know as I’m sorry if it does rain,” she murmured. “It’ll keep ’em in the house, and I want ’em all to be there. I’m sure it’ll please Mr. Derwent.”

While she thus reflected, a square-shouldered, sturdy, masculine figure entered the gate and came up the garden-path.

Betsy showed no surprise at his appearance. The pleasant light continued in her eyes as she arose.

“How do you do, Hiram?” she said, as he came up the steps. “Take the big chair.”

“Well!”

The sea-blue gaze scrutinized her as the guest’s hard hand held hers until she jerked it away with decision.

“Take the big chair,” she repeated.

“Ye’d rather give me that than your hand, eh?” returned Hiram, and he seated himself on the edge of the flexible wicker.

“Sit back, and take comfort,” said Betsy, returning to her rocker.

Captain Salter obeyed, moving cautiously.

“Well, travelin’ does improve folks, they say. I can see you’re improved, Betsy.”

“You thought there was need of it, did you?”

“Well, I should think so! I knew the minute I got your note this afternoon that you was beginnin’ to get more reasonable. To have you do somethin’ real decent like askin’ a feller to come and see you, showed that you was broadenin’ out, Betsy, broadenin’ out. Folks all gone to the inn to dinner, eh?”

“Yes. I thought it would be a good chance for me to hear some o’ the town gossip.”

“’Tis. Real good. It’s all over Fairport that you and me’s goin’ to be married this fall.” Betsy stopped rocking. “The name o’ the boat kind o’ started it up – ”

“You might have known it would, Hiram Salter!” said Betsy accusingly.

“O’ course I did. What d’ye s’pose I named her for?”

“’Twas a mean trick, Hiram!”

Captain Salter changed the blade of grass he was chewing to the other side of his mouth. “Why, certainly,” he responded. “Ye didn’t s’pose I wouldn’t descend to mean tricks, did ye? We heard even when we was goin’ to school that all’s fair in love and war.”

She looked at him for a moment with a baffled gaze, then she spoke.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” she said defiantly. “Everybody that knows me knows I ain’t ever goin’ to marry anybody. I wouldn’t anyway now – after you namin’ the boat. Do you s’pose I’d marry a man that shows right out plain that he’s a tyrant?”

Captain Salter emitted a low rumbling laugh, and sat quiet in his all-embracing chair.

“Tell me what’s doin’ in town,” asked Betsy in a different tone. “How’s Mrs. Pogram gettin’ along without Rosalie?”

“Oh, she’s havin’ a fierce time. She no sooner gets settled with somebody to help her, than Loomis upsets everything with some of his fool doin’s.”

“I’m goin’ to surprise you,” said Betsy, slowly, “more’n you ever was surprised in your life, Hiram.”

“How so? Goin’ to marry me this evenin’?”

“I found Rosalie Vincent out in Yellowstone Park.”

“Pshaw! Ye don’t say so! By the way, Betsy, I was glad o’ those sightly pictures you sent me. Course I s’pose they’re all lies – just advertisin’ – ”

“No, indeed!” exclaimed Betsy eagerly. “You never saw anything so beautiful. I – ”

“Yes,” interrupted Hiram, “I’ve got ’em pinned up on the wall, and, come October, you’ll tell me all about it evenin’s. I cal’late what with Europe and all the globe-trottin’ you’ve done lately, I’m goin’ to have a wife that’ll beat that She-Herod-Sady that told the Arabian Nights, all holler; and what’s more, you won’t ever be afraid ye’ll get yer head cut off; so ye’ll be ahead of her, every way.”

“Hiram,” said Betsy severely, “what do you think o’ my findin’ Rosalie ’way out there?”

“I think ’twas part of her good luck.”

“What good luck has the child ever had?”

“That, and all that come of it.”

Betsy stared, a little disappointed at her admirer’s foreknowledge.

“Has Mr. Irving told you – ” she began.

“Irving hasn’t had a chance to tell me much. That Nixie feller talks to beat the clapper of a bell.”

“But you like him, don’t you, Hiram? He’s an awful nice, kind boy.”

“I guess he will be when I get him trained,” returned Hiram equably. “He’s beginnin’ to understand that I’m the cap’n o’ the Betsy.”

“If you knew how disagreeable that sounds, you’d never say it in my presence!”

Hiram lifted the sea-blue eyes, and fixed hers with their gaze.

“That sentence has got more music in it,” he declared slowly, “than any other in the English language. I’ll be good to you, Betsy – as good as a man knows how to be to a woman. You’ve taken care o’ folks for the last twenty years. I want the job o’ takin’ care o’ you the next twenty.”

He looked very manly as he said it, his strong figure leaning square shoulders toward her. A swift vision chased through her brain of her precious boy henceforth busy in the bank by day, and in society by night; of Mrs. Bruce’s increasing querulousness and exactions, stretching out into an indefinite future.

The captain’s fireside, and herself mistress of his hearth and home, suddenly showed with an attraction she had never felt before; as if it were a haven of shelter from that monotonous other future, with its stern sense of duty, and its occasional high-lights.

“I believe you cal’late to tire me out, Hiram.”

“Shouldn’t wonder,” he returned, leaning back again and biting his blade of grass.

“Why don’t you ask me about Rosalie?” said Betsy. “What do you know?”

“Why, Irving told me that you found her out there, and wheedled some old gent into payin’ her way back East again, and that she was in Boston now, and that you’re keepin’ an eye on her.”

“Old gentleman!” repeated Betsy indignantly. “If you call yourself one, then he is. He’s just about your age.”

“I’m just the right age to be a bridegroom,” responded Captain Salter promptly.

“I hope Mr. Irving didn’t say anything about this before Mr. Nixon. It’s a secret.”

“No. He got a chance at me alone while we was mendin’ a sail. He told me mum was the word. I’ll bet a cookie, Betsy, that now you’ve got Rosalie in Boston you don’t know what to do with her.”

Betsy gave her one-sided smile, and Hiram continued: “Irving says you think a sight o’ the girl; and I’ve been sort o’ cogitatin’ about the whole business; and I finally made up my mind to tell ye that if ye want her to live with us, I haven’t a mite of objection.”

The speaker could see by his lady-love’s countenance that this bait glittered.

“I had thought, Hiram,” she returned ingratiatingly, “that seein’ you and Rosalie are such good friends, you might let Mrs. Bachelder move over to your place; then Rosalie could go there.”

Captain Salter gave his rare, broad smile.

“My! but you’re a good planner, ain’t you!”

“Would you – would you think of it, Hiram?” she asked, with some timidity.

“Not if I wanted to keep real well, I wouldn’t. Now don’t waste time in foolishness, Betsy. I’ve ben gettin’ ready for ye for years, and I am ready. Everything’s taut and ship-shape, and I’ve got a margin that’ll let Rosalie in, easy. We’ll be as cosy as bugs in rugs next winter.”

Captain Salter was an experienced fisherman. The expression on Betsy’s face was such that he believed the bait was swallowed.

“If obstinacy would get folks into the kingdom,” she observed, “your chances for bein’ an archangel would be real good, Hiram Salter.”

He let the reel spin, and the coveted fish dart away with the line.

“I always did hang onto an idea like a puppy to a root,” he said. “It’s kind o’ ingrained in my nature; but you’ll know best, Betsy. You’ve got to be ’tarnally unselfish to somebody in order to be happy; and you think it over. See if ’tain’t about time you changed the place and kept the pain.”

He rose, and Betsy did also. For a wonder she didn’t answer him.

“Good-night,” he said. “It was real clever of you to let me come this evenin’.”

He did not even take her hand at parting. He lifted the shabby yachting-cap and looked at her narrow, inscrutable face. “Good-night,” he said again, and was gone down the garden-path.

Betsy remained some minutes standing in the same position.

“I meant to ask him a hundred questions.” The reflection rose at last from the confusion of her thoughts. “He’s such a gump it makes it hard to talk to him; keeps goin’ back to say the same thing over and over, just like a poll-parrot, till he puts me out so I don’t know what I did want to say to him.”

As she went into the cottage, the picture of the upright figure, and the clean, bronzed, weather-beaten face went with her.

The appealing blue of Rosalie’s eyes seemed to plead with her. “Oh, if I only knew how she’s gettin’ along!” thought Betsy.

Captain Salter was right to smile into the darkness as he plodded down the street. The fish was darting here and there through the unresisting water after its fright, still proudly conscious of its own volition; but the bait was swallowed. The fisherman believed it was a matter of time, now.

CHAPTER XXII

THE WHITE DOVE

The dinner-party at the inn continued to be a merry one.

“I’m sorry it rains,” said Mrs. Bruce, looking at the dewy panes when at last they rose from table. “I wanted you to see how pleasant the outlook is from the verandas.”

The proprietor passed near them as they moved into the spacious living-room of the inn.

“Why couldn’t you have a pleasant evening for us, Mr. Beebe?” asked Mrs. Bruce.

“Sorry I couldn’t,” he returned. “I’m goin’ to make up for it the best I can, though. I’ve got an entertainment for you if you’ll take your friends to that other end o’ the room.”

“Music!” groaned Irving. “I feel in my bones that somebody is going to sing. Us for the porch, Nixie.”

This party had been last to leave the dining-room, and already a large group of guests had gathered in the living-room, and were waiting. Irving was already taking long, quiet strides away from the scene of danger when Robert caught him by the arm.

“Heavens, Brute!” he gasped. “Look there! Is it – or isn’t it!”

Irving turned, and beheld at the other end of the room Rosalie Vincent, dressed in white, standing quietly, looking about her and smiling a little as if in question of her audience, and wondering what she should do for them.

Irving’s heart gave the most acrobatic bound of its existence. He stood fixed in his tracks.

“Do you see who that is, mother?” inquired Robert, leaning over the ladies.

Mrs. Bruce’s busy eyes sought her lorgnette.

Helen Maynard was first to realize who it was that stood there tall and fair in the fleecy white gown, with the golden coronet of her hair shining as her only ornament, and her bare throat and arms, round and slender against a dark background.

“Most extraordinary!” exclaimed Mrs. Nixon. “I never saw such a resemblance.”

She looked over at her brother in a neighboring chair. He was smoothing his mustache; and he nodded at her in reply.

“Why, it is Hebe!” declared Robert, and his voice cracked high. “I never saw anything so lovely in my life.”

“How did it happen?” inquired Mrs. Bruce. She looked at Irving. His face was tense and scowling. “Tell me, Irving,” she demanded in low tones. “How in the world did she get here?”

“How should I know?” he returned; and so irefully that Mrs. Bruce stared at him. Why in the world should it make him angry?

Irving’s heart kept on its quickened pace. So this was what Betsy meant by saying he was likely to see her; why she had adjured him to keep away from her. She had said – Irving’s eyes devoured the white dove; but Rosalie began to speak, and again her voice was music.

“I scarcely know what you would like to hear this rainy evening,” she said, “but I think I will begin by going back to first principles, and telling you the story of Red Riding Hood.”

Mrs. Bruce’s lips would scarcely meet.

“What self-possession!” she murmured; and then for a time all speculation ceased, for the voice of a child began to narrate the classic in the language of a child, and Rosalie carried her audience with her. The little unobserved details of the infantile manner, its occasional abstractions and recalls to the subject, the catching of the breath, and a myriad other peculiarities, were all in evidence, and repeated laughter encouraged the story-teller.

Her big-eyed wonder and horror when she arrived at the thrilling crisis where the wolf devoured Red Riding Hood’s grandmother, “before she even had time to put on her spectacles to see who it was ate her up,” brought down the house; and when the tale drew to a close the clamor of tongues gave witness that Rosalie was a success.

“Isn’t she sweet!” – “Did you ever hear anything so natural!” sped from mouth to mouth. “What a lovely creature she is, and so unaffected!”

And Rosalie stood there looking about, unconsciously smiling, and tingling to her finger-tips with gladness that she had not disappointed Mr. Derwent, whom she could see sitting at the other end of the room.

Mr. Beebe came laughingly to Mrs. Bruce as a Fairport summer oracle.

“Say, ain’t she all right?” he demanded triumphantly.

“Where – ” asked Mrs. Bruce, stammering in her eagerness, “how did you happen to get her?”

“’Twas Clever Betsy’s doings. Didn’t she tell you? Seems Miss Vincent wanted a job o’ this kind for the summer, and Betsy thought she’d work me; and I’m mighty glad she did. The girl is onto her job. There, she’s goin’ to give another.”

The speaker hurried off, while Rosalie’s sweet voice began on one of the Riley favorites that bring tears as well as smiles.

Mrs. Bruce did not hear a word. She leaned back in her chair, a prey to conflicting emotions. She saw Mr. Derwent rise and change his position to one in the background of those who were closest to the speaker.

Robert Nixon stooped close to her ear. “You can’t lose the Yellowstone party,” he said, “and aren’t you the proud lady!”

It was an innocent speech on the part of the irresponsible Nixie, but it started the regulating of Mrs. Bruce’s confused thoughts. She realized that he was referring to the perspicacity with which she had recognized Rosalie’s gifts in an unpromising past, and the munificence with which she had cultivated them; so she sat on a fence, as it were, undecided on which side to get down.

She viewed the faces of the absorbed listeners, and considered that she might indeed accept the part of complacent patroness of this young heroine of the evening; might ask no questions, raise no objections, and behave as though this were the natural and expected outcome of her own perception and generosity; but her irritable vanity and love of managing whispered loudly that she had been outwitted.

Who had loosed Rosalie from the engagement in the Park? Who had paid her transportation east? Who had housed her since? Who had procured the dainty gown in which she now stood, and doubtless a trunk-full more if she were to live and entertain in this inn, as Mr. Beebe had plainly stated was the case? He had also plainly stated the answer to these various phases of one conundrum. Betsy it was, of course! For whom else had the clever one deserted her post of duty and gone to Boston to help a friend from the country to buy clothes? Did she really suppose that Mrs. Bruce was too dense to see completely through this millstone?

Yes, it was plain. The savings of a lifetime had been squandered by Betsy Foster, who must be in her dotage to have done such a thing; squandered on this blonde girl with the appealing, darkening eyes, who was this minute swaying her listeners to smiles and tears.

By this time Mrs. Bruce had decided on which side of the fence to get down, and she did so with energy; and glared across it at Rosalie and her poor dupe, the once clever Betsy.

To think of Betsy being such a traitor as not to ask her mistress’s advice, seeing that this was Mrs. Bruce’s affair, and she would be the best judge of what was right to do!

The offended woman glanced again at her son. Rosalie had not driven the unconscious frown from his tense face.

“I’m sure he suspects the same thing,” she reflected. “He is so loyal to Betsy, he will be outraged.”

Helen Maynard was another who heard as little of Rosalie’s recitation as Mrs. Bruce. Her mental questions were the same. Whose magic wand could have accomplished this transformation in the short time?

A cloud had descended on the heiress’s evening. She remembered the questions Irving Bruce had put to her in the Look-Out at Old Faithful Inn. She knew then that he was trying to probe her interest in her unfortunate school friend, and she remembered the hard obstinacy that at that time rose in her heart against Rosalie. Why, before she had had time to find herself in her new situation, should she begin to take care of and plan for another girl? Her first suspicion and her first look when she recognized Rosalie this evening had been directed toward Irving Bruce; but if his amazement were not unfeigned, he was more capable in histrionics than Rosalie herself.

It was a Saturday evening, and the week-end influx of men had given Proprietor Beebe an extra satisfaction in the presentation of a successful novelty on this rainy night.

Irving Bruce watched the faces of the men, some of whom he knew, and others not, and glared upon all alike because of the open admiration in their eyes for his white dove – more and more his, with every comment that he saw being made upon her; with every ring of applause bestowed upon her efforts to please.

He knew what would happen when this was over. Men as well as women would press upon the young girl to thank her, and he knew with what modest gratitude Rosalie would accept their tributes. He could see Mr. Beebe going about on the outskirts of the crowd, proud of her beauty and success, and knew that he would introduce to her anybody who asked it.

Irving drew near to Mrs. Bruce’s chair and stooped over.

“Join her when this is over, will you, Madama? I don’t believe she has any chaperon.”