BETTY
"There's a lady waiting to see you, sir," Dick's man servant informed
him on his arrival at his apartment one evening when he had been
dining at his club, and was putting in a leisurely appearance at his
own place after his coffee and cigar.
"A lady?"
"Yes, sir, she has been here since nine. She says it's not important,
but she insisted on waiting."
"The deuce she did."
Dick's quarters were not, strictly speaking, of the bachelor variety.
That is, he had a suite in one of the older apartment houses in the
fifties, a building that domiciled more families and middle-aged
married couples than sprightly young single gentlemen. Dick had fallen
heir to the establishment of an elderly uncle, who had furnished the
place some time in the nineties and when he grew too decrepit to keep
his foothold in New York had retired to the country, leaving Dick in
possession. Even if Dick had been a conspicuously rakish young
gentleman, which he was not, the traditional dignity of his
surroundings would have certainly protected him from incongruous
indiscretion in their vicinity.
Betty rose composedly from the pompous red velour couch that ran along
the wall under a portrait of a gentleman that looked like a Philip of
Spain, but was really Dick's maternal great grandfather.
"Why, Betty," Dick said, "this isn't _convenable_ unless you have a
chaperon somewhere concealed. We don't do things like this."
"I do," Betty said. "I wanted to see you, so I came. In these
emancipated days ladies call upon their men friends if they like. It's
archaic to prattle of chaperons."
"Still we were all brought up in the fear of them."
"Mine were brought up in the fear of me. I like this place, Dicky. Why
don't you give us more parties in it? You haven't had a crowd here for
months."
"Everybody's so busy," Dick said, "we don't seem to get together any
more. I'm willing to play host any time that the rest want to come."
"You mean Nancy is so busy with her old Outside Inn."
"You are busy there, too."
"I'm not so busy that I wouldn't come here when I was asked, Dicky."
"Or even when you weren't?" Dick's smile took the edge off his
obviously inhospitable suggestion.
"Or even when I wasn't," Betty said impudently. "Won't you sit down,
Mr. Thorndyke?"
"Can't I call you a cab, Miss Pope?"
"I don't wish to go away."
"Betty, be reasonable," Dick said, "it's after ten o'clock. It is not
usual for me to receive young ladies alone here, and it looks badly. I
don't care for myself, of course, but for you it looks badly."
"If it's only for me--I don't care how it looks. Come and sit down
beside me, and talk to me, Dicky, and I'll tell you really why I
came."
Dick folded his arms and looked down at her. Betty's piquant little
face, olive tinted, and pure oval in contour, was turned up to him
confidently; under the close seal turban the soft brown hair framed
the childish face, while the big dark eyes danced with mischief. She
patted the couch by her side invitingly.
"I'll go away in fifteen minutes, Dicky dear. It certainly wouldn't
look well if you put me out immediately, after all your establishment
knowing that I waited here an hour for you."
Dick took out his watch.
"Fifteen minutes, then," he said. "What's your trouble, Betty?"
"Well, it's a long sad story," she temporized. "Perhaps I had better
not begin on it now that our time is so short. You wouldn't like to
hold my hand, would you, Dicky?"
"I'm not going to, at any rate."
"I thought you'd say that," she sighed. "Have you seen Nancy lately?"
"Yesterday."
"She's looking better, don't you think so?"
"Yes."
"Preston Eustace is back."
"Is that so? I didn't know he was here yet. I knew he was coming."
"He's to be here six months, or so."
"Have you seen him?"
"No, Caroline told me." Her voice was carefully steadied but Dick
noticed for the first time the shadows etched under the big brown
eyes, and the flush of excitement splotched high on her cheek-bones.
She had been engaged to Preston Eustace for three months succeeding
her twentieth birthday.
"On second thoughts I think I will hold your hand, Betty," he said,
covering that childlike member with his own rather brawny one. "You
are not a very big little girl, are you, Betty?"
"My mother used to tell me that I was a very destructive child."
"I shouldn't wonder if you were that yet."
"Don't let's talk about me. Let's talk about you, Dicky."
"About me?"
"Yes, please. I think you're a very interesting subject."
Having arrived at some conclusion concerning this unprecedented attack
upon his privacy, Dick was disposed to be kind to his unexpected
visitor. The fact that Preston Eustace was in town and Betty had not
seen him shed an entirely new light on her recklessness. Like every
other incident in Betty's history her love-affair had been very
conspicuously featured.
"The interesting things about me just at present are--" he was just
about to say "six shirts of imported gingham" but he bethought himself
that she would be certain to demand to see them, so he finished lamely
with--"my game of golf, and my new dogs."
"What kind of dogs?"
"Belgian police dogs."
"Where do you keep them?"
"I haven't taken them over yet."
"I heard that you had bought a place up in Westchester, but I asked
Nancy, and she said she didn't know. I don't think Nancy appreciates
you, Dick."
"That so often happens."
"I mean that seriously."
"It's a serious matter--being appreciated. The only person who I ever
thought really appreciated me was Billy's old aunt. Every time she saw
me she used to say to me, 'You're such a clean-looking young man I
can't take my eyes off you.'"
"You _are_ clean-looking, and awfully good-looking too."
"Do you mind if I smoke, Betty?" Dick carefully disengaged his hand
from her clinging fingers, and a look of something like intelligence
passed between them, before Betty turned her ingenuous child's stare
on him again.
"Not if you'll give me a cigarette, too."
Dick fumbled through his pockets.
"It's awfully stupid, but I haven't any about me," he said, fingering
what he knew that she knew to be the well filled case he always
carried in his inner pocket. He did not approve of women smoking.
But "Poor Dicky!" was all she said.
"Your fifteen minutes are up, Betty," he said presently, taking out
his watch.
"Well, I suppose I'll have to go then."
Dick rose politely.
"You really don't care whether I go or stay, do you?" she sighed.
"I would rather have you go, Betty," he said gravely.
Betty's eyes filled with sudden tears, that Dick to his surprise
realized were genuine.
"I wanted you to want me to stay," she said incoherently.
"I suppose you're just a miserable little thing that doesn't want to
be alone," he concluded. "Come, I'll take you home."
The telephone bell on the table beside him rang sharply.
"I'm just going out," he said to Billy, on the wire. "Betty is here
with a fit of the blues. I'm going to take her home. Ride up with us,
will you?"
"He'll meet us down-stairs in ten minutes," he said. "I'll order a
taxi."
"I don't want to see Billy," Betty said rebelliously. She rose
suddenly, pulling on her gloves, and took a step forward as if about
to brush by him petulantly, but as she did so she staggered, put her
hand to her eyes, and fell forward against his breast.
Dick picked up the limp little body, and made his way to the couch
where he deposited it gently among the stiff red pillows there. Then
he began to chafe her hands, to push back the tumbled hair from which
the fur hat had been displaced, and finally fallen off, and to call
out her name remorsefully.
"Betty, dear, dearest," he cried, "I didn't know, I didn't dream,--I
thought you were just trying it on. I'm so sorry, dear, I am so
sorry."
She moaned softly, and he bent over her again more closely. Then he
gathered her up in his arms.
"Betty, dear, Betty," he said again.
She opened her eyes. Her two soft arms stole up around his neck, and
she lifted her lips.
"You little devil," Dick cried, almost at the same instant that he
kissed her.
"She deserves to be spanked," he told Billy grimly at the door. "She
got in my apartment when I was out, and insisted on staying there till
I came in, to make me a visit."
"He doesn't understand me," Betty complained, as she cuddled
confidingly in the corner of the taxi-cab, "when I'm serious he
doesn't realize or appreciate it, and he doesn't understand the nature
of my practical jokes."
"I don't like--practical jokes," Dick said. "Have you seen Preston
Eustace, Billy?"
"I haven't seen Caroline," Billy said, as if that disposed of all the
interrogatory remarks that might be addressed to him in the present or
the future.
"It's a nice-looking river," Betty said, looking out at the softly
gleaming surface of the Hudson, as their cab took the drive. "It looks
strange to-night, though, laden with all kinds of queer little boats.
I wonder how it would feel to be drifting down it, or up it, on a
barque or a barkentine--I don't know what a barkentine is--all dead
like Elaine or Ophelia,--with your hands neatly folded across your
breast?"
"For heaven sake's, Betty," Billy cried, "I don't like your style of
conversation. I'm in a state of gloom myself, to-night."
"I didn't say I was in a state of gloom," Betty said. They rode the
rest of the way in silence, but when Dick got out of the cab to open
her door for her, she whispered to him, "I'm awfully ashamed, Dick,"
before she fled up-stairs through the darkened hallway of her own
home.
"Queer little thing,--Betty," Billy said as Dick stepped back to the
cab again, "you never know where you have her. Full of the deuce as
she can stick. Unscrupulous little rascal, too, but made of good
stuff."
"Don't you think so?" Billy inquired presently as Dick did not
answer.
"Think what?"
"That Betty's a queer sort of girl."
Dick took his pipe out of his pocket and began stuffing it full of
tobacco. When this was satisfactorily accomplished, he struck a match
on his boot heel, and lit the mixture, drawing at it critically
meanwhile.
"Damn' queer," he admitted, between puffs.