The Girl Next Door (Crimson Romance) (5 page)

“Going my way?” she called.

Betsy flung up a startled head, and Marcia saw the glimmer of tears on her cheeks.

“I — no, thanks. I’m going home,” stammered Betsy, and turned her head away.

“Then hop in and I’ll drive you,” invited Marcia, swinging open the door. “It’s too hot to walk. Besides, I’m lonely. Be a good girl and join me in my miseries!”

Betsy lacked the strength or the composure to argue, so she climbed into the coupe and Marcia drove to the next corner and turned. Betsy sat huddled, her eyes straight ahead. Marcia glanced at her curiously.

“Want a shoulder to cry on?” she asked.

Betsy flinched, but said nothing.

“It’s a man, of course.”

Betsy flung her companion a defiant glance, but Marcia smiled and said:

“When a pretty girl walks along the street in tears, the answer is always a man.”

“What’s the good of being pretty when the only man you ever cared about can’t see you?” Betsy demanded.

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that, chick. First thing you know, he’ll snap out of it and his eyes will be opened and — ”

Betsy shivered. “He won’t ever snap out of it. He’s — he’s blind,” she whispered.

“Oh, you poor chick. I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t dream it could be anything like that,” said Marcia gently.

Betsy was struggling with tears, and as they turned into the street where they both lived, Marcia said impulsively, “Why don’t you come and have dinner with me? It’ll give you a chance to pull yourself together before you have to face your parents.”

“Thanks,” said Betsy huskily.

Inside the house, Marcia gave her shoulder a friendly pat and said, “Run upstairs to my bedroom and pull yourself together. You’ll find powder and things. Use whatever you need. I’ll telephone your mother — all right?”

Betsy couldn’t manage an answer, but she did manage a damp smile and fled gratefully up the old staircase.

When she came down a little later, she had washed her face in cold water, and had given herself a stern pep-talk. She was determined to be “very adult about the whole thing.” It was the “gang’s” favorite expression, and Betsy had decided that now was the time for her to put the expression into practice.

“Out here, chick,” Marcia called.

Betsy followed the sound of Marcia’s voice out to the old side-veranda, where honeysuckle and clemantis vines made a fragrant curtain of white and cream-colored blossoms.

Marcia sat relaxed in a wicker chair. As Betsy came out, she smiled and motioned to another wicker chair, with broad arms and faded cushions.

“We’re having dinner from trays out here on the porch,” she explained. “It’s too hot in the house, and anyway, the house smothers me. I use it just to sleep in.”

She was chattering on lightly, giving Betsy time to adjust herself. The smell of food did not, as Betsy anticipated, make her sick after all. Betsy was sniffing appreciatively of the fragrance that rose from her tray.

“Fall to,” said Marcia, and dug a fork into the crisp salad.

Betsy began to eat and, gradually, as her empty stomach stopped protesting so much, she began to feel better. Marcia chatted lightly, amusingly, and finally she won the tribute of a small giggle from Betsy.

“There! You see? What you needed most of all was good food and light conversation,” said Marcia, smiling.

“You’re a pretty swell person, Mrs. Eldon.”

“Not Mrs. Eldon, Betsy — in Heaven’s name! My name is Marcia!”

“Thanks. I’ll remember.”

It was not until Marcia had removed the trays and was relaxed, a cigarette in her hand, that she looked at Betsy and said quietly:

“Want to talk about it? Or would you rather I just kept quiet?”

“It’s something that can’t be helped by talking. Pete has come home and he’s blind.”

“What a rotten shame! But the doctors are wonderful nowadays — ” Marcia began.

Betsy shook her head. “No, it’s completely hopeless. Pete’s wonderful. He’s — well, he’s faced up to it, and is going to make the best of it.
I’m
the one that can’t take it,” she added, her chin quivering.

“It’s harder for you, of course,” Marcia said.

Betsy flung up her head. “Harder for me?” she repeated, incredulously.

Marcia nodded. “He has the — well, the challenge of a problem that will keep him fighting for a long time; all you can do is sit on the sidelines and watch — and cheer — and learn not to try to help him.”

“That’s what Professor Hartley said!”

“Great minds run in the same channel,” Marcia commented, grinning. “Who is this Professor Hartley?”

“He used to be a college professor,” answered Betsy. “And then he went blind. He’s been blind for twenty years. The first five years he was so bitter about it that he just lay down and let it lick him. Then he snapped out of it and began to fight And now — well, he’s tops. He lives alone in a cottage at the end of town; he has a garden that he tends himself, all except the plowing; and he does his own housework. He’s marvelous.”

“He sounds quite a person,” answered Marcia. “This Pete — who is he?”

Betsy’s eyes glowed and Marcia stared at her, touched with pity.

“Well, Pete’s — it’s a little hard to tell you,” Betsy tried to explain. “I’ve known him since I was in rompers; I’ve been in love with him since I was twelve; he was seventeen then, and I bored the dickens out of him trailing him everywhere he went. I was a brat, I guess. My hair was carroty, I had braces on my teeth, and I was skinny and long-legged and pretty dumb — ”

“Now he’s come back, and you’ve grown into a very pretty girl and he doesn’t know it,” Marcia finished, with womanly insight

“I guess that’s pretty dumb of me,” Betsy admitted.

“It isn’t anything of the sort. It’s perfectly natural. It’s the way any normal girl would feel.”

Betsy looked at her gratefully. “Thanks,” she said.

Marcia was silent for a moment, and then she said casually, “I’d like to meet this boy-friend of yours. Do you think he’d care to have company?”

“I think so. Pete always liked people and was more fun than anybody else in the gang.”

“Well, we’ll go out and see him then. Perhaps he’d like to go for a ride out in the country. We mustn’t let him get lonely or bored,” said Marcia.

“No, of course not.”

And so a few afternoons later, Betsy and Marcia drove into the gravelled driveway at the big Marshall home. Marcia looked about her, her eyebrows lifting a little in surprise.

“So this is where your Pete lives,” she murmured. “It’s obvious that none of his troubles are financial.”

“Oh, no, of course not.”

“Well, anyway,” murmured Marcia. “it’s nice your Peter won’t have to be bothered with earning his own living.”

Mrs. Marshall, hearing the car, had come out on the veranda. Now she came down the steps, greeting Betsy pleasantly, saying cordially to Marcia, “How nice of you to call, Mrs. Eldon! Won’t you come in? Or shall we go out in the garden? I believe it is cooler there.”

“The garden, by all means, Mrs. Marshall,” Marcia said. “What a lovely place you have here.”

“Thank you.”

Mrs. Marshall led the way along the flagstoned walk to the garden, where Pete lay relaxed in a canvas beach chair, the dog, Gus, at his feet.

“I’ve brought you some company, darling,” said Mrs. Marshall. “Here’s Betsy — and Mrs. Eldon. Mrs. Eldon, may I present my son?”

“Hello, Betsy,” said Peter. And to Marcia, “Delighted, Mrs. Eldon.”

“Thank you.” Marcia’s voice was warm and sweet, with a faintly husky note that was very intriguing. Pete sat up a little and turned his sightless eyes, shielded by the dark glasses, toward her.

Betsy was busy greeting Gus, thankful that for the moment she did not have to speak. Pete knew her voice so well that one wrong note would tell him how hard it was to look at him, knowing he could never look at her, or at anything, so long as he lived.

They were served tall glasses of iced tea, sprigged with mint, dainty sandwiches, and frosted cakes still warm from the oven.

Marcia looked about the lovely old garden and sighed.

“How very fortunate you are, Mr. Marshall,” she said.

Mrs. Marshall drew a sharp breath and Betsy looked up, white-faced and angry. But Pete, his sightless eyes on Marcia, merely tensed a little.

“Yes, I
am
fortunate. I admit it — and I’m grateful,” he said. It was as though he spoke to himself, as well as to those who sat about him.

“I knew you realized it,” Marcia told him. “This lovely house, a beautiful garden, all the creature comforts — ”

“While a heck of a lot of fellows in my position have nothing,” finished Peter. “I know.”

Marcia turned to Mrs. Marshall, who was looking at her with frightened eyes, and said lightly, “I was wondering, Mrs. Marshall, if you and Mr. Marshall could possibly endure an evening in the chamber of horrors? I’m asking you for dinner, if you can.”

Peter laughed. “The chamber of horrors? That’s the old Cunningham place where you’re staying — a pretty apt description, at that!”

“It’s very kind of you, Mrs. Eldon. We’d like it, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Marshall.

Marcia laid a hand on the older woman’s arm and said, “Please, won’t you call me Marcia? ‘Mrs. Eldon’ makes me feel — oh, old and stiff and done with life! I can’t afford a feeling like that, now that I’m losing a year out of my life, and I have so many things to do before I really
am
old.”

“Losing a year out of your life?” Peter repeated, interested.

Marcia nodded, as though he could see her.

“I am going to be a good singer,” she announced. “I have a very fine voice. But I made a fool of myself and overworked it. Now I have to take a year to rest up, and let my voice mend. I could have gone a long, long way this year, if I hadn’t been a fool!”

She mentioned her voice and her future as casually, as frankly, as though she were speaking of some other person. There was no attitude of false modesty, no pretense of deprecation. She was obviously quite firm in her belief in her voice and its future.

“That’s a rotten break,” said Pete.

“We’ll have to cheer each other up.” Marcia smiled. “I’ve offended the town’s best people by confessing that I look on my year in Centerville as little less than a prison sentence. I suppose it’s an affront to their civic pride — just as though I wouldn’t consider a year in Shangri-La a prison sentence, under the circumstances!”

She stood up to go. “Then I shall expect you for dinner — shall we say Thursday?” she said to Mrs. Marshall.

Pete echoed his mother’s enthusiastic acceptance of the invitation and, as Marcia and Betsy drove away, Betsy said enviously:

“You made him laugh! And you’ve coaxed him to accept an invitation away from home. Nobody else has been able to do either of those things.”

“That’s because he’s sorry for me.”

Betsy stared at her. “Sorry for you?”

“And not sorry for himself, pet!” Marcia added. “That’s the whole keynote of Pete’s character. He can be sorry for others, but he’s got too much courage to be sorry for himself! That’s why he’s — well, such a marvelous person.”

“Are
you
telling
me?”
Betsy demanded, indignantly.

Marcia laughed. “I don’t have to, do I?”

As she let Betsy out at the drive that led up to the Drummond house, Marcia said, “Of course, dear, you know I meant you are to come to dinner, too, on Thursday. You understood that, didn’t you?”

Betsy’s eyes brightened. “Well, no, I didn’t. But I’d love to come. Thanks a lot”

When Betsy ran across the lawn and up the weed-grown drive to the Cunningham place on Thursday night, she was thinking of nothing but that in a few minutes now she would see Peter. But the little tight pain of the thought that was always just behind — that Peter would never see anybody or anything again — made her wince.

She was startled when she entered the ugly old living room to see that there was already a group of people there. Peter and his mother had not yet arrived, but two young men and two pretty girls perched about on the slippery horsehair furniture, and Marcia was passing a tray of cocktails.

“Oh, hello, Betsy. Come in,” said Marcia. “I believe you know everybody, don’t you?”

“Of course.” Betsy exchanged greetings with Pauline Semmes, Anne Gray, Bobbie Prior and Steve Ellis. They were all several years older than she; Bobbie and Steve had been recently discharged from the service.

As Marcia took the cocktail tray to the kitchen, Betsy followed her, protesting in a low voice, “But, Marcia, I don’t think Pete wants to see — I mean, to meet — people, yet.”

“Then Peter is a very silly boy,” said Marcia. “It’s high time he was meeting people. It will be good for him; he can’t crawl into a hole, and pull the hole in after him — not unless he wants to get warped and morbid. I invited Steve and Bobbie and their dates because they’re just out of the Army, and veterans always like to trade experiences.”

“Experiences!” exclaimed Betsy, furiously. “Bobbie Prior spent his eighteen months in this country, at a desk job; and Steve Ellis broke his foot in the first six months of basic training and never got closer to combat duty — ”

“Is that their fault?” Marcia asked, and there was an edge to her voice. “You’re being very silly, Betsy. Shall we go back and join the others?”

Without waiting for an answer, Marcia pushed open the door and crossed the dining room to the living room, where the others were laughing and talking.

Betsy felt hot and uncomfortable. Marcia’s curtness had surprised her and she was resentful. She was convinced that Pete would not have come to dinner tonight if he had been told that there were going to be other guests.

When the sound of a car in the drive announced the arrival of Peter and his mother, Marcia went on talking to Bobbie Prior, although Betsy felt that she should have gone to the door to greet her guests. But the door stood open in the friendly, hospitable way that all doors stood open in Centerville throughout the summer, and a moment later Peter and his mother came into the hall.

Marcia met them at the doorway, and Peter’s smile flashed warmly at her.