BETTY CONFESSES
Betty woke up the next morning with a sense of deadly depression
weighing her down. For a few moments she lay staring up at the ceiling
trying to collect her thoughts. Then the events of the day before came
back to her and she frowned unhappily.
The whereabouts of poor little Dodo and Paul was still a mystery, and
Will Ford, whom she had come to regard almost as a brother, was terribly
wounded somewhere in France. She probably would never see him again.
And there was Allen too, to worry about every minute of the day and
night. She had not heard from him in--oh, ages. Yes, it must be every
bit of two weeks since she had read his last letter. For all she knew,
he might be worse off than poor Will.
"Oh, well," she sighed, and, turning on her side, looked out of the
window.
There was no relief there from the gloom of her thoughts, for the sky
was leaden and overcast, looking as if it, too, were mourning for the
troubles of the world, and the surf beat loud and threateningly on the
shore.
"Guess it's going to rain and make things still more cheerful," she
said, and at the sound Grace opened heavy eyes and turned over
restlessly.
"What are you mumbling about?" she asked sleepily, closing her eyes
again and sighing a little.
"Nothing but the weather," replied Betty, adding, with unusual
gentleness: "It's early, so you can turn over and get forty winks."
"What has happened to you?" asked Grace, opening her eyes again in
surprise at this unheard of advice. Then as the full force of her
trouble came home to her she turned over noisily and burrowed her head
into the pillow.
"Guess I will," she said in a muffled voice. "Don't any one dare wake me
up till they have some good news to tell me. I'm going to be another Rip
Van Winkle."
"Goodness, I hope it won't be that long before we have any good news,"
said Betty, trying to speak lightly. This would never do, she thought.
They simply had to find some way out of this terrible slough of
despondency before it mastered them completely.
"I'm going to get up," she announced briskly, jumping out of bed. "I've
got to find something to keep me busy till that good news of ours feels
like coming along. I'm getting absolutely morbid just sitting around and
thinking."
"Well, what is there to do?" asked Grace, rolling over and regarding her
listlessly.
"There's the house to be put in order," Betty pointed out, recovering a
little of her old spirits, now that she had decided on a definite plan
of action. "And we never have really unpacked our trunks because Mollie
has been undecided about staying."
"Yes, I know. And my clothes are a perfect wreck. I haven't a thing to
put on that doesn't look as if it had been through the wars," Grace
agreed. "Not that it really matters," she added indifferently.
"Of course it makes a difference," returned Betty sharply. She was
determined to rouse Grace out of her lethargy, no matter what means she
had to take. "Don't you know that when you are dressed neatly and
becomingly everything seems brighter and more hopeful? And, anyway," she
added, watching Grace out of the corner of her eye, "it isn't like you
to be careless about your dress."
"Well, it isn't like me either to go moping around as if I had one foot
in the grave and the other was slipping," retorted Grace, with a spirit
that showed the experiment had worked. "I don't think it's nice for you
to make remarks like that when you know how I'm feeling and the excuse I
have."
"Nobody has any excuse for giving up and acting as if everything were
lost when it isn't," said Betty decidedly. "If our soldiers did that the
first time they had to retreat, how long do you suppose our army would
last?"
"But Will isn't your brother," insisted Grace stubbornly. "If he were,
maybe you would feel differently."
There was a moment's pause.
"No he isn't my brother," returned Betty, knowing she was going to hurt
her friend but believing that the result would justify the means. "But
if he were I would try to behave so that when he came back he would have
a right to be proud of me."
"Betty Nelson!" Grace sprang out of bed with her eyes blazing, "do you
know what you are saying? Do you mean that if Will should come back, he
wouldn't be proud of me?"
"Not if you keep on taking your trouble lying down," said Betty,
sticking gamely to her guns, though she was a little frightened at the
success of her experiment.
"I may," she thought to herself, "have done not wisely, but too well."
However, after one outraged and enraged stare at Betty, Grace pointedly
turned her back and began hastily to pull on her clothes. She finished
dressing before Betty, and without a word left the room.
"Now you have done it, Betty, my dear," said Betty making a little face
at her pretty reflection in the mirror. "I shouldn't wonder if Grace
would never speak to you again. Poor Gracie, perhaps I shouldn't have
said what I did, but I simply had to start something."
On her way downstairs she tapped at Mollie's door and found that she and
Amy were both up and dressing.
"Come in," called Mollie; "I need your help. Amy's eyes are so swollen,"
she explained, as Betty obeyed, "that she can't see to do me up. Just
the middle one, Betty. That's a dear."
As Betty obligingly did the "middle one" she stole a glance at Amy, who
was absently doing up her hair without looking in the mirror.
"Look out!" she cried suddenly, making both the girls jump. "You nearly
stuck that hairpin in your eye, Amy," she explained, as they looked at
her reproachfully, "and that isn't the place for it you know."
Amy smiled a crooked little smile and put the unruly hairpin in the
right place.
"I'm apt to do anything to-day," she said, with a sigh that seemed to
come from her toes. "If any of you want to live, you had just better
keep out of my way, that's all."
"Isn't it just wonderful weather?" said Mollie sarcastically, gazing out
at the leaden landscape. "Just the kind of a day to put the J into Joy."
"If something doesn't happen pretty soon," put in Amy, with another deep
sigh, "I'll just naturally pass away. I wonder," she added, looking
really interested in the subject, "if anybody ever did die of the
blues."
"I don't believe so--but there's always hope," said Betty dryly, adding
with sudden spirit; "Now look here, girls, something's got to be done
about this. We really will make ourselves sick if we don't try to look
on the hopeful side of things. It won't do anybody, least of all,
ourselves, any good to sit here and mope all day. We've just got to
fight against depression and cheer up."
"That's all very well for you, Betty," Amy voiced almost the same
sentiment as Grace had only a few moments ago, "but you are the only one
of us who hasn't been hurt personally. Suppose it were Allen. Would you
feel the same way then--about cheering up and taking it bravely?"
Betty flushed angrily, at the same time feeling a wild desire to go away
and cry.
"I hope I would," she said steadily. "And if I didn't, I would surely
feel ashamed of myself. It isn't," she paused at the door and looked
back at them, "as though Will or the twins were dead. We have hope in
both cases, so I don't see any use of giving up. You talk," she choked
back a sob, "as though I didn't sympathize, as if I were an outsider
just because nothing has happened to--Allen--yet--" her voice choked in
a real sob this time and she fled from the room.
The girls gazed after her unhappily.
"Did you ever!" gasped Mollie.
"I didn't mean to make her feel bad. Betty, of all people!" said Amy,
conscience stricken. "And of course she's right about our trying to
cheer up. Only, I don't want to, someway."
"Betty's a darling," said Mollie thoughtfully. "But of course she can't
quite realize how badly we feel. If it were her little brother and
sister, now--"
And so gradually Betty came to feel herself more or less of an outsider
with these girls who were so close to her. And it was all because they
misunderstood her effort to cheer them up and thought she could not
feel for them because nothing terrible had happened to her yet.
"I'll show them," she told herself fiercely, "if anything should happen
to Allen--" But she shivered and turned away shudderingly from the
thought. Allen--if only she could see him for five minutes--just five
minutes--
Some way the days dragged through until a week passed, then part of
another. Still there had been no clue to the whereabouts of the twins,
nor any further news of Will.
"And this is the wonderful vacation we planned!" said Grace with a wry
smile, breaking one of the long silences that had become common with the
Outdoor Girls these days.
They were, as usual, sitting on the sand and trying to occupy their
minds with sewing or reading, yet always with an eye to the road in
readiness to rush to their red-headed combination of delivery boy and
postman whenever he saw fit to put in an appearance.
Betty opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again. She had
learned that any suggestion she might make would be wrongly interpreted
by the girls who were engrossed in their own troubles, and so she had
wisely decided to say nothing.
"I haven't heard from Frank for ever so long," said Mollie, as if the
fact had just occurred to her. "I wonder if anything can have happened
to him?"
"I didn't see any name we knew in the casualty list last night,"
ventured Betty.
"Betty, is that what you read so carefully every night?" asked Mollie,
wide-eyed. "Oh, I don't see how you ever have the courage!" as Betty
nodded. "If I saw the name of anybody I--I--cared for in that dreadful
list, I don't know what I'd do."
"Oh, I don't know," returned the Little Captain, while a wistful light
grew in her eyes and her lips quivered. "When I don't find--what I'm
afraid to find--I feel like a criminal who has been reprieved, and it
gives me courage to face another day."
Then suddenly the girls saw Betty in her true light. Why, she was
suffering too! Think of her reading that awful list every night with
fear in her heart! And in the light of this revelation, her brave
efforts to cheer them seemed suddenly heroic.
"Betty dear," Mollie moved over toward her friend and put an arm about
her. "Do you care that much?"
A little sob of pent-up misery broke from Betty and she dropped her head
on Mollie's shoulder.
"Oh, so much!" she whispered brokenly.
Then everybody cried a little and the girls called themselves all sorts
of awful names for being "brutes" to their adored Little Captain, and
when the storm cleared up everything seemed brighter and they could even
smile a little.
Then that night, when the little god of hope seemed about to take his
accustomed place in the hearts of the Outdoor Girls, there came another
blow, even more staggering than the ones that had gone before.
As Betty was scanning the casualty list with terrified, yet eager, eyes,
she gave a little cry, half gasp and half sob that brought the girls
running to her.
Her face was ashen pale, and she pointed with trembling finger to a name
half-way down in the column.
"Oh, girls, it's come--it's come! Allen! Allen! It can't be true!" and
she dropped her head upon her arms, crumpling the paper in her hand.