Romance Classics

by Peggy Gaddis

  “Oh,” said Betsy, bitterly humiliated yet anxious to get things back on a friendly basis, “I almost forgot. I brought you a present”

  She led Gus over to stand beside Peter.

  “Thanks — ” Peter began roughly, but when he felt the warmth of the dog’s body against his leg, put down an investigating hand. “Good gosh, a dog!” he said, as Gus sniffed his hand doubtfully.

  “And he’s beautiful, Pete. He’s a German shepherd, and so intelligent he really ought to have a college degree. Professor Hartley trained him for you — like the Seeing Eye dogs, you know!”

  Peter withdrew his hand from the dog’s head, his face white and set.

  “Oh, a Seeing Eye dog, eh? Where’s the tin cup and lead pencils?” he asked. “Or must I supply those myself?”

  Betsy stood quite still in front of him, looking at him with wide, hurt eyes.

  “You don’t like Gus?” she whispered. “Oh, Pete, he’s beautiful. And he’s been yours since the day he was born. Professor Hartley thought you’d like him.”

  The pain and humiliation in her tone cut straight at Peter, and he said, “Cut the tears, Betsy. Sure, he’s a swell dog. We’ll have fun together. Thanks a lot.”

  “I’ll take him away.”

  “Don’t, Betsy.”

  Her young head was high. “He’s much too nice a dog to be left somewhere where people don’t want him,” she announced hotly. “He loves me, and I’ll take him home with me!”

  “I’m sorry, Betsy.” The anger was gone from Peter’s voice now, and there was a trace of compunction there. “I’ll be glad to have him. I’ve always wanted a good dog. Gus and I will have a swell time together. Thanks a million!”

  Betsy hesitated. It was hard to tell what a man was really thinking unless you could see his eyes. But it seemed incredible that Peter could not want Gus.

  “Here’s his leash.” She put the leather loop in Peter’s hand. “Of course, he’s got a wooden harness, too. That fastens to his collar, and you hold it when you walk with him, so he can guide you.”

  Once more bitterness twisted Peter’s face. “Sure, I know. And then the dog puts in the rest of his life keeping a useless hulk from dashing his brains out at street crossings and the like. A heck of a life for a dog — just because a guy can’t get around by himself.”

  “I’m sorry, Peter. I thought you’d like him. I knew if you really wanted a Seeing Eye dog, you could go to Morristown, and they’d give you one and help you train him — and it would only cost you a dollar, because you’re a service man. Only — well, I sort of thought that if it was one that somebody liked you well enough to raise and train for you — ”

  “How old is he?”

  “Eight months old.”

  “How long has the training been going on?”

  “Five months and six days.”

  “Since the day Mom knew about me?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m sorry, Betsy. I blew up, I guess. You and the professor are tops. I’m grateful, honestly, and I’ll take good care of Gus.”

  “He’ll want to take care of you,” she pointed out. “That’s his job. That’s what he’s been trained for.”

  “Well, I guess if that’s what he wants, that’s what he’ll have to have,” said Peter, and the iron band that had enclosed Betsy’s heart loosened a little.

  She dared not trust herself to stay longer for the tears were crowding close. So she knelt beside the uneasy dog, put her arms about him, and said, “Be a good egg, Gus, and look after him — hear?”

  Before Peter could speak she was on her feet again, saying, “I’ve got to scoot for home now, or the folks will have a searching party out for me. ‘Bye, Pete.”

  The dog moved to follow her, but she said, “Back, Gus! You stay here.”

  Gus whimpered a little, but dropped obediently to the grass beside Peter, and watched her go, with mournful, anxious eyes.

  When the last click of her footsteps had gone, Peter dropped down into his chair. He put out his hand, feeling, until it encountered the dog’s rough coat.

  “Never mind, old boy,” he said. “We both know you’d be a darned sight happier with her, but we can’t go on kicking a kid in the teeth. You’re her gift to me, and it would break her heart if we didn’t make the best of it. But don’t worry, old timer. You’re going to be a dog, and not just a work-horse for a guy who’s going to find his way around without your help! You can chase squirrels, and cats and have yourself a time! So take it easy, pal.”

  Gus kept his eyes fixed longingly in the direction Betsy had taken.

  Chapter Six

  Marcia Eldon had been accepted by Edith’s friends, who were the town’s most representative women. Accepted politely, if not too cordially. There were reservations on both sides. Marcia accepted their hospitality politely; they extended it cautiously. But after the first few occasions on which she had been — as they all knew, though no one admitted it publicly — on trial, the other women relaxed a little.

  Marcia made no play for the attention of the men. She was friendly, but not unduly so. The men had been, at first, a little afraid of their wives, and not quite at ease with Marcia. But Marcia was obviously unimpressed to any great degree by any of them, and once the women saw that she played scrupulously fair with their husbands, the tension eased.

  “She’s a darned good-looking woman,” admitted Molly Prior one afternoon when she and Edith were spending a lazy hour in Edith’s garden. “I wonder how old she is.”

  “About twenty-seven, I imagine,” answered Edith absently, gazing contentedly at the double row of snapdragons which she had transplanted a week ago and which were thriving.

  “Nearer thirty, I’d say,” said Molly. “I wonder whatever happened to Mr. Eldon.”

  Edith laughed. “I’m afraid that’s something I wouldn’t know. She’s never mentioned him to me.”

  Marcia had kept her own counsel and, while the women invited her to their dinner parties at which the husbands were present, as well as to their “hen parties,” they knew little more about her now than they had when she came to Centerville.

  On the afternoon when Betsy had tried to make her peace with Peter, and had left her gift of the dog, Marcia was driving her gray coupe out toward the end of the city street. Seeing Betsy trudging along, her head down, her brown-toed slippers scuffing miserably at the dust, Marcia slowed the car and leaned out.

  “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.