MYSTERY
Betty presently broke into the opening strains of "There's a long, long
road awinding," and the girlish voices took it up eagerly. They put into
the melody all the pathos and longing of their hearts. They forgot where
they were, the pleasant room faded away, and they saw only a sinister
gray line of trenches, trenches that were death traps for the flowering
youth of America. They were singing to the boys, their boys, and as she
listened Mrs. Ford's eyes filled with tears.
Nor was she the only one of that little audience who could not listen to
the song unmoved. Joe Barnes felt a great, unaccustomed lump rising in
his throat, and as the hot tears stung his eyes he rose hastily and
stood staring at, though not seeing, a great picture of some illustrious
ancestor that hung over the mantel.
And Mrs. Barnes, looking at her son, pressed a hand over her heart, as
though to still a hurt, while in her eyes grew a look of yearning.
"My poor, poor boy!" she murmured over and over to herself.
And the girls, all unaware of the emotions they had awakened, drew the
last sweet note to a lingering close and stood quiet for a moment while
Betty's fingers rested on the keys. Then--
"That was very beautiful," said Mrs. Barnes, trying to speak in a
matter-of-fact tone. "You girls sing wonderfully together."
"We ought to," said Betty, forcing a lightness she did not feel, for as
usual she was the first to sense the tense quality in the atmosphere,
"for we have certainly had practice enough. We used to sing for the
soldier boys at the Hostess House almost every night."
"Yes, but it was sometimes very hard to make _them_ sing," added Amy.
"Often they didn't want to at first. But they always joined in toward
the end, and the gloomiest of them went away with a smile on his lips."
"They could afford to laugh," said Joe Barnes bitterly. He had left the
picture of his illustrious ancestor and had dropped down in his old
position on the edge of the table, leg swinging idly. But his expression
had changed. It was grim and hard.
Betty, looking at him, suddenly remembered, and she could see by the
expressions on the faces of her chums that they also had awakened to
the situation.
With horrible lack of tact, they had offended their kind host and
hostess. That they had not done so deliberately, helped their
self-condemnation not at all.
They had sung patriotic songs, they had spoken of their work at the
Hostess House and of the soldier boys, while Joe Barnes, of military age
and seemingly in perfect health, did not wear a uniform. Even though he
were a slacker, it was terribly bad taste to tell him so in his own
home, while accepting his, or his mother's, hospitality.
And something deep down in their hearts, intuition, perhaps, perhaps a
sort of sixth sense born of their wide experience of boys of all ages,
told them that he was not a slacker. There must be some reason, some
real excuse for his behavior.
"Won't you sing some more?" asked their hostess in an attempt to relieve
the situation, while she kept one eye anxiously on her son. "Surely you
haven't finished."
"I'm afraid we have," said Betty, with a gay little laugh, "for the very
good reason that we don't know any more songs to sing."
"And we want to hear some more real music," added Mollie, gamely
following her lead. "That is, if you are not tired."
"Oh, no, music never tires us," returned Mrs. Barnes, adding, with a
little entreating glance at her son: "Will you put on another record,
dear--something light and merry this time?"
"How about some dance music?" queried Joe pleasantly. He was very much
ashamed of his weakness and ill temper, and was determined to make up
for it. "That's about the lightest and merriest we have."
The girls assented eagerly, and in a few minutes the unpleasant episode
was forgotten--or apparently forgotten. At least, for the time being it
was relegated to the background, and it was not till some time later
that Joe unexpectedly broached it to Betty.
The drenching downpour had changed to a sort of dismal drizzle and Mrs.
Ford, upon remarking this fact had made the suggestion that they get
into the machines again and try to make Bensington. But Mrs. Barnes had
so promptly and emphatically negatived this that there was really no
room left for argument.
"Why, even with dry roads it would take you two hours or more to get
there, for at all times the road is bad between here and Bensington, but
such a thing is simply out of the question with roads that are two feet
deep in mud. No, you must stay for the night. I have plenty of room and
am more than delighted to have you. No, please don't object, for I will
not hear of your doing otherwise."
And so it had been settled, much to everybody's satisfaction.
However, Betty was very much surprised when, in the midst of a beautiful
dance with Joe Barnes--for Joe was a rather wonderful dancer--the latter
whirled her off toward a window seat in one corner of the room and
placed her, a little breathless, upon it.
"Well," she said, that unconquerable imp of mischief dancing in her
eyes, "have you any adequate excuse to offer for the spoiling of an
exceptionally good dance?"
"Is it spoiled?" he asked reproachfully, as he sank down beside her. "I
thought perhaps I was improving--the occasion."
She made a little face at him, incidentally showing all her dimples.
"I suppose, if I were a coquette," she said, flushing a little under the
very open admiration of his eyes, "which I am not--"
"I'm not so sure," he murmured but she pretended not to hear the
interruption.
"I should deny that you had spoiled the dance. As it is," she flashed
him a pretty smile that robbed her words of all sting, "I'm telling you
the truth."
"And I," he countered, "am telling you the truth when I say that if it
were possible to talk with you and dance at the same time, I should not
have brought you here. As it is, I choose the greater of the two
blessings."
"It must be very important--this that you have to say to me," replied
Betty, adding demurely: "Perhaps if you would tell me all about it, we
could dance again."
"In other words, 'get the agony over'," said Joe, with a grimace. He
waited a moment, while the girls, who had danced to the end of the
record, turned it over, put in a new needle and started off all over
again.
"I don't know whether it will seem important to you or not," he said at
last, turning slowly toward her. "But what I have to tell you is just
about the most important thing in life to me."
The tone as well as the words sobered Betty, and she turned to him
earnestly.
"I shall be very glad to hear it then," she said simply.
"I--you--it's rather hard to begin," he stammered, then straightened up
and faced her frankly.
"The truth is, I can't help knowing that you wondered when you first
saw me and am wondering now--as any one has a right to wonder these days
when they see a fellow like me in civilian clothes--"
Betty started and the color rushed to her face.
"No, I haven't--" she began, then stopped confused, remembering that she
had been wondering just that thing only a few minutes, yes, only a
minute before. "I mean I thought--"
"Yes, it's easy to guess what you thought," he interrupted,
misinterpreting her sentence while the bitter look crept once more into
his eyes. "It's easy enough to guess what everybody thinks. But," he
straightened his shoulders and threw back his head, "I don't think
anybody will have a right to think that very much longer. You see," he
added, turning to her again and speaking more calmly, "I tried to enlist
at the beginning of the war, but they told me there was something wrong
here," he touched his chest, "with my lungs."
Betty gave an involuntary exclamation of pity.
"The doctor said it was just beginning," he went on slowly, "and he
said--he was a good old scout, that doctor--that if I got out of the
city where I could get fresh air, eggs, and milk--you know, the same old
stuff--that I might succeed in curing myself up in a hurry and get in
the game in time to bring in my share of helmets after all."
"Oh, so that's why you and your mother are away out here!" cried Betty
eagerly, laying an impulsive little hand on his. "And you are well,
aren't you? Why, you must be! You look the very picture of health."
Joe gulped a little, looked at the friendly little hand on his, tried to
speak once or twice and failed, then--
"I feel just fine," he said, striving to make his voice sound natural.
"I never cough any more, and I've got the appetite of a wolf--you saw
how I ate to-night--" a faint smile lighted his eyes and found an
answering one in Betty's. "Yet, I've been holding off for more than
three weeks for fear--just for fear--everything isn't all right. You
see, they've made a coward of me. I'm afraid of being refused twice."
"Oh, but you won't be!" cried Betty, with honest conviction in her
voice. "I'm not much of a doctor, although I've met so many of them at
Camp Liberty and heard them talk so much about different diseases that I
feel I ought at least to qualify as an assistant," she paused to smile
at herself and he thought he had never seen anything so pretty in his
life, "and I would say that whatever your trouble has been, it is cured
now. I'm sure of it."
"Hold on, hold on," he entreated a little huskily. "If I could only
believe that--"
"Say, you two over there," Mollie's voice broke in upon them gayly,
"we've been trying hard to be polite and not interrupt, but the clock
has just struck twelve and we have a long ride before us to-morrow--or
rather, to-day!"
Betty replied laughingly, but before she could rejoin the others, Joe
had whispered another question.
"You really meant what you said?" he asked.
"With all my heart," she answered earnestly.