BETTY MAKES HER CHOICE
Nothing unusual nor very alarming in this summons, thought Betty, as
she turned for a final look at her pretty reflection in the glass.
Her father often called her into the library when he had anything
special to speak to her about. The summons usually meant a row about
her allowance, she thought, with a suggestion of a pout on her pretty
mouth.
What if she did sometimes spend a month’s allowance in a week?
Were they not the owners of the best house, the best cars, the
most expensive clothes in Greenville? Did they not employ the
highest-waged servants? Surely they had a position to keep up!
How like your mother, Betty! Mr. Browning would have said, and smiled
could he have read his daughter’s thoughts just then, but it would
not have been a happy smile!
One more fluffing up of the fair hair and with an added droop of
discontent on her pretty mouth Betty turned toward the door.
Halfway there a thoughtful look came into her eyes.
This summons might mean more than the ordinary bi-monthly “row,”
which Betty almost invariably won, having her mother on her side.
Perhaps her father meant to break his silence concerning his involved
affairs. Perhaps the time had come----
She did not complete the thought, but hurried toward the stairway,
vague panic in her heart.
There was the sound of voices in the library, her mother’s petulant
but controlled, her father’s, a gruff undertone.
As Betty descended the stairs silence fell, and the girl read
something dreadful into that silence.
She knocked at the closed door of the library and her father called a
brief, “Come in.”
Betty stood just within the doorway and looked upon the scene with
widening eyes.
It was a luxurious room, this library in the finest house on Rose
Hill.
There was a big open fireplace where, in the winter, burning logs
blazed cheerily. The floor was brightly polished and animal skins
were scattered in an effect of careless beauty over its polished
surface.
A davenport was drawn up before the fireplace, and this, heaped with
cushions, backed up against a long slender table that bore a lamp of
exquisite design and workmanship.
Books there were lining three sides of the room, well-thumbed books
that looked as if they had been well read by at least one member of
the family.
Easy chairs were scattered about, and the whole room bore an air of
homeliness not characteristic of the rest of the house.
This was Mr. Browning’s room. He had insisted that one place in
the house that had been built with his money should be furnished
according to his taste. He loved books, and so had chosen the library
as his room.
In one of the big easy chairs reposed Mrs. Browning--though Betty
thought at the moment that the expression on her mother’s face was
anything but reposeful. But since it was Mrs. Browning’s private
boast that nothing could disturb her self-control or poise, she
reclined gracefully now, even in face of the truly devastating shock
just dealt her by her husband.
Mrs. Browning’s face was sullen and angry and as her daughter entered
the room she turned away so that only her profile was visible.
Mr. Browning had evidently been striding up and down the room.
He paused as Betty came in and motioned her to a seat.
“I’ll keep you but a few moments,” he said in a curiously hard, dry
voice. “I thought you ought to know this, Betty, and, since your
mother desired me to tell you, now is as good a time as any.”
Betty sat down on the edge of a chair while her father resumed his
restless pacing up and down, up and down, the room.
What was he about to say? What could that look on his face mean?
For several moments her father did not speak, and the room was tense
with suspense. Betty glanced at her mother and saw that the latter
was stubbornly looking the other way. A small, exquisitely shod foot
was tapping, tapping on the polished floor.
Mr. Browning came and stood before his daughter, his eyes steadily
meeting hers.
“The long and short of it is, Betty, I’ve lost practically all my
money. That’s the simple truth, and the sooner we all get used to it,
the better.”
“Your father can speak of it like that!” Mrs. Browning whirled
about and faced her daughter, hand upraised. “To drag us down into
poverty--and then to speak of it like that!”
“I--I don’t think I quite understand, dad,” Betty was groping,
bewildered. Her eyes had never once left her father’s face. “Shall we
be really poor?”
“I’m afraid so, Betty.” The father’s tone had softened; there were
deep unhappy lines about his mouth. “We have very little left.”
“We shall have to--leave this house?” Betty passed a hand before her
eyes as though to brush aside a curtain that obscured her sight.
“Assuredly.”
Mr. Browning was watching her intently. Even Mrs. Browning’s foot
stopped its restless tapping as she watched, with angry attention,
the scene between father and daughter.
“And the servants will have to go, I suppose,” said Betty, still
groping her way. “And we can’t have either of the cars?”
“Good gracious, Betty! Can’t you understand that your father has
ruined us, that he has dragged us down to poverty!”
“Wait!” commanded Mr. Browning, his hand uplifted, his eyes on Betty.
“Give the girl a chance. It’s all pretty new--and pretty rotten, eh,
Betty?”
“I--I don’t know.”
Betty got up and walked over to the window, the eyes of both her
parents following her. She stood for a long time looking out at the
beautifully kept grounds that had, for almost as long as she could
remember, formed the boundaries of her life and wondered what life
would seem like without all the luxurious things to which she had
been accustomed.
She had always had money, and so her imagination failed her when she
tried to consider life without it.
Still, other people had no money and they seemed to get along. When
you lost your money you didn’t just die. You must get along some way.
Behind her she heard her mother recommence her high-pitched, nagging
accusations. She listened to them absently, still turning the problem
over and over in her own mind, trying to understand.
“You have always been reckless,” she heard her mother say. “You have
always taken chances with your money----”
“And those chances made us a fortune,” her father interrupted, in
hopeless, dogged tones.
“Yes, and where is it now? I always told you you would lose
everything you had if you didn’t stop gambling.”
“Who was it drove me on and on to wilder chances by extravagance, by
demands out of all proportion to my income? But this must stop,” he
caught himself up harshly. “Recriminations never did help, and they
can’t help now. The fact is that we shall have to give up this house
at once.”
“Now?” cried his wife, startled from her languid pose. “Why, that’s
impossible!”
“At once!” repeated Mr. Browning, as though he had not heard her.
“Everything else must go. Our two cars, servants, everything.”
“I never heard such nonsense! Give up both cars? Never!”
“Then what are you going to do, dad?” Betty spoke quietly from the
window, startling her parents to attention.
“I am going into business,” said Mr. Browning with a promptness that
showed he had thought the thing out long before. “And I am going to
start right in this town where I first made my money.”
Mrs. Browning gave a shriek and sank back among the cushions.
“Oh, the disgrace! The disgrace of it!” she moaned. “I shall never be
able to hold up my head again!”
“Oh, mother, don’t! Can’t you see how you are worrying dad?”
“Worrying him?” Mrs. Browning looked at her daughter in honest
bewilderment. “You can speak of worrying him after what he has
done to me--to us! Have you no thought for yourself, if you cannot
consider your poor mother?”
“Why,” said Betty, her eyes wandering to the grim, haunted-eyed face
of her father, “just then I was thinking of dad!”
Mr. Browning tried to speak, but sank down heavily in a chair near
the table, holding his head in his hands.
The drooping of his shoulders, the struggling of emotion she had seen
in his lined face before he hid it from her, did something queer to
Betty.
She could see with a sudden startling plainness all that her father
had passed through during that last week or two, could see that he
had faced his trouble all alone, but bravely. There had been no one
to care, no one to help him, no one to do anything but blame and
reproach him.
Slowly she crossed the room and laid a hand on his broad shoulder.
“It must have been awfully hard, dad. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry--for me, Betty?” Mr. Browning looked up incredulously into
the lovely face of his daughter. His fingers reached up until they
grasped the slender hand on his shoulder.
“So sorry, dad! Is there anything I can do to help?”