A BRIEF FOR THE DEFENSE
"DEAR DOROTHY--
"I have thought and thought all the afternoon and I can't do it. I should
only--"
"DEAR DOROTHY--
"If you are perfectly sure that there is nobody else to go--"
"DEAR DOROTHY--
"Don't you think that Mary Brooks or Marion Lawrence would be a lot
better? Mary can always talk--"
"Oh, Dorothy, I don't know what to say--"
Betty had slipped up-stairs to her room the minute dinner was over. The
rest of the Belden House girls still lingered in the parlors, talking or
dancing,--enjoying the brief after-dinner respite that is a welcome
feature of each busy day at Harding. Ida Ludwig was playing for them. She
had a way of dashing off waltzes and two-steps that gave them a perfectly
irresistible swing. As Betty wrote, her foot beat time to the music that
floated up, faint and sweet and alluring, through her half-open door. The
floor around her was strewn with sheets of paper which she had torn, one
after another, from her pad, and tossed impatiently out of her way.
"Such a goose as I am, trying to write before I've made up my mind what
to say!" she told the green lizard, as she sent the seventh attempt
flying after the others. "And I can't make it up," she added
despondently, and shut her fountain pen with a vicious little snap. She
would go down and have a two-step with Roberta, who had been Mary's guest
at dinner. Roberta could lead beautifully--as well as a man--and the
music was too good to lose. Besides, Roberta might feel hurt at her
having run off the minute dinner was over.
A shadow suddenly darkened the door and Betty turned to find Eleanor
Watson standing there, smiling radiantly down at her.
"Eleanor!" she gasped helplessly. Somehow the sight of the real Eleanor,
smiling and lovely, made the deceit she had practiced seem so much more
concrete and palpable, the penalty she must pay at best so much more real
and dreadful. Betty had puzzled over the rights and wrongs of the matter
until it had come to be almost an abstraction--a subject for formal,
impersonal debate, like those they used to discuss in the junior English
classes, in high school days--"Resolved: that it is right to help
plagiarists to try again." Now the reality of it all was forced upon her.
In spite of her surprise at seeing Eleanor, who almost never came to her
room now, and her dismay that she should have come on this evening in
particular, she found time to be glad that she had not yet refused
Dorothy's request--and time to be a little ashamed of herself for being
so glad.
Her perturbation showed so plainly in her face and manner that Eleanor
could not fail to notice it. Her smile vanished and a troubled look stole
into her gray eyes. "May I come in, Betty?" she asked. "Or are you too
busy?"
"No-o," stammered Betty. "Come in, Eleanor, of course. I--I was just
writing a note."
Eleanor glanced at the floor, littered with all Betty's futile
beginnings, and her smile came flashing back again. "I should think," she
said, "that you must be writing a love letter--if it isn't a sonnet--
judging by the trouble it's making you. They told me downstairs that you
were cramming history, but I was sure it would take more than a mere
history cram to keep you away from that music. Isn't it lovely?"
"Yes," said Betty. "Would you like--shan't we go down and dance?" It
would surely be easier to talk down there, with plenty of people about
who did not know.
Again her embarrassment and constraint were too evident to be ignored,
and this time Eleanor went straight to the heart of the matter.
"Betty," she said, "don't tell me that you're not glad to see me back
again after all this time. I know I'm queer and horrid and not worth
bothering about, but when you find it out,--when you give me up--you and
Jim--I shall stop trying to be different."
For an instant Betty hesitated. Then the full import of Eleanor's words
flashed upon her. There was no mistaking their sincerity. She knew at
last that she did "really mean something" to somebody. Ethel Hale had
been wrong. Eleanor had not forgotten her old friends--and Betty would go
to New York. With a happy little cry she stretched out her arms and
caught Eleanor's hands in hers.
"I'm so glad you feel that way," she said, "and I shall never stop caring
what you do, Eleanor, and neither will Jim. I know he won't."
"He gave me up once before, and if you knew something--" She broke off
suddenly. "Betty, Jim is coming Friday night. That's one reason why I'm
here. I didn't want him to miss seeing you just because I'd been
disagreeable and was too proud to come and say I'm sorry. I am sorry,
Betty,--I'm always sorry when it's just too late."
"Oh, that's all right. I knew you didn't mean anything," said Betty,
hastily. Apologies always made her nervous, and this particular one was
fraught with unpleasant suggestions little guessed at by its maker.
"You'll be awfully glad to see your brother, won't you?"
Eleanor's assent was half-hearted. "To tell the truth, I'm too tired to
care much what happens."
"Oh, you won't feel tired when he gets here," suggested Betty,
cheerfully.
Eleanor shook her head. "I'm tired all through," she said. "I don't
believe I shall ever be rested again."
"What are you going to do to entertain him?" asked Betty, wishing to
change the current of Eleanor's thoughts, since she did not dare to
sympathize with them.
Eleanor detailed her plans, explained that Judge Watson had suddenly been
called home from Cornell and so was not coming with Jim, according to the
summer plan that Betty remembered, and rose to go. "I know you'll like
Jim, Betty," she said, "and he'll like you. He's your kind."
The moment she was left alone, Betty sat down again at her desk and
dashed off her note to Dorothy.
"Dear Dorothy:
"I have thought it over and seen Eleanor. I am the one to go, and I'll do
my best.
"Yours ever,
"Betty.
"P.S.--I can't start till Wednesday."
She twisted the note into a neat little roll, and slipping out the back
way went down to leave it at the florist's, to be sent to Dorothy--
securely hidden in a big bunch of English violets, lest any martinet of a
nurse should see fit to suppress it--the very first thing in the morning.
On the way back to her room she danced up the stairs in her most joyous
fashion, and when Mary Brooks, coming up from escorting Roberta to the
door, intercepted her and demanded where she had been all the evening,
she chanted, "Curiosity killed a cat," and fled from Mary's wrath with a
little shriek of delight, exactly as if there were no such things in the
world as plagiarism and hard-hearted editors. For had not Eleanor come
back to her, and was not the difficult decision made at last?
And yet, when Betty was a senior and took the course in Elizabethan
tragedies, she always thought of the visit of Jim Watson as a perfect
example in real life of the comic interlude, by which the king of
Elizabethan dramatists is wont to lighten, and at the same time to
accentuate, his analyses of the bitter consequences of wrong-doing. For
close upon her first great relief at finding her decision made, followed
a sudden realization that the incident was not yet closed. Madeline had
read the November "Quiver"; some less charitable person might have done
likewise. If she had been careless in leaving her magazine in sight, so
might one of the three editors have been careless, with disastrous
results. Mr. Blake might write to the college authorities. Everything, in
short, might come out before Jim Watson had finished his week-end visit
to Harding. Helping to entertain him seemed therefore a good deal like
amusing oneself on the verge of a crackling volcano.
Jim's personality made it all the harder; he was so boyishly light-
hearted, so tremendously proud of Eleanor, so splendid and downright
himself, with a flash in his fine eyes--the only feature in which he
resembled Eleanor--and a quiver about his sensitive mouth, that suggested
how deep would be his grief and how unappeasable his anger, if he ever
found out with what coin his sister had bought her college honors.
He "blew in," to use his own phrase for it, on an earlier train than
Eleanor had expected, and marched up to the Hilton House with a jaunty
air of perfect ease and assurance. But really, he confided to Eleanor, he
was in a "blooming blue funk" all the way.
"And what do you think?" he added ruefully, "somehow I got mixed up with
the matron or whatever you call her. I thought, you see, that this was
like a boarding-school, and that I'd got to have some gorgon or other
vouch for me before I could see you. So I asked for her first, and she's
invited me to dinner. Did you say there were thirty girls in this house?
Sixty! I see my finish!" concluded Jim, dolefully.
Nevertheless he rose to the occasion and, ensconced between Eleanor and
the matron he entertained the latter, and incidentally the whole table,
with tales of mountain-climbing, broncho-busting and bear-hunting, that
made him at once a hero in the eyes of the girls. But Jim disclaimed all
intention of following up his conquest, just as he had, though
ineffectually, disclaimed any part in the thrilling escapades of his
stories.
"I can talk to a bunch of girls if I have to, but if you leave me alone
with one, I shall do the scared rabbit act straight back to Cornell," he
warned Eleanor. "I came to see you. Dad and I compared notes and we
decided that something was up."
"Nonsense!" laughed Eleanor, but her eyes fell under Jim's steady gaze,
and her cheeks flushed. "Well then, I'm tired," she admitted. "I suppose
I've done too much."
"I should think so," retorted Jim, savagely. "Quit it, Eleanor. If you
break down, what good will it do you to have written a fine story? I
say"--his tone was reproachful--"one of those girls at the dinner you
gave last night said your story was printed somewhere, and you never sent
it to dad and me. You never even told us about it."
"It wasn't worth while."
"You might let us decide about that. The girl at the dinner said it was a
corker, and got you into some swell club or other. That's another thing
you didn't write us about."
"No," said Eleanor, wearily. "You can't expect me to write every little
thing that happens, Jim."
Jim, who remembered exactly what his fair informant had said regarding
the importance of a Dramatic Club "first election," knit his brows and
wondered which of them was right. Finally he gave up the perplexing
question and went off to order a farewell box of roses for his sister.
It was at about this time that Betty Wales, going sorrowfully to pay a
book bill that was twice as large as she had anticipated, heard swift,
determined steps behind her, and turned to find Jim Watson swinging after
her down Main Street.
"I say, Miss Wales," he began, blushing hotly at his own temerity,
"Eleanor is off at a class this hour. I'm such a duffer with girls--is it
all right for me to ask you to go for a walk?"
"Of course," said Betty, laughing. "And if you ask me, I'll go."
"Then," said Jim, "I do ask you. You'll have to pick out a trail, for I
don't know the country."
"Let's walk out to the river," suggested Betty. "It's not so very pretty
at this season of the year, but it's our prize walk, so you ought to see
it anyhow."
Silently Jim fell into step beside her.
"Have you had a good time?" inquired Betty, who had decided by this time
that Jim really enjoyed talking, only he couldn't manage it without a
good deal of help. She had seen more of him in the three days of his
visit than any one else but Eleanor, but this was their first tete-a-
tete. Hitherto, when Eleanor was busy Jim had gone on solitary tramps or
sought the friendly shelter of his hotel.
"Great," replied Jim, enthusiastically. "Harding College is all right.
I'm mighty glad Eleanor wanted to stay on here."
"You're very fond of Eleanor, aren't you?" asked Betty, sure that this
topic would draw him out.
"You bet." Jim's eyes shone with pleasure. "Eleanor's a trump when she
gets started. She was splendid at home this summer. Of course you know"--
Jim flushed again under his tan--"my mother--I'm awfully fond of her too,
but of course her being so young makes it queer for Eleanor. But Eleanor
fixed everything all right. She made dad and me, and mother too, just
fall dead in love with her. You know the way she can."
Betty nodded. "I know."
"And I guess she's made good here, too," said Jim, proudly, "though you'd
never find it out from her. Do you know, Miss Wales, she never wrote us a
word about her story that came out in the college magazine."
"Didn't she?" said Betty, faintly.
"Nor about getting into some club," continued Jim, earnestly. "I forget
the name, but you'll know. Isn't it considered quite an honor?"
"Why, yes," said Betty, in despair, "that is, some people consider it--
Oh, Mr. Watson, here's the bridge!"
Poor Jim, unhesitatingly attributing Betty's embarrassment to some
blunder on his part, was covered with mortification. "It's evidently a
secret society," he decided, "and that other fool girl didn't know it,
and got me into this mess."
So he listened with deferential attention while Betty tried to tell him
how lovely the snowy meadows and the bleak, ice-bound river looked on a
bright June day, and carefully followed her lead as she turned the
conversation from river scenery to skating and canoeing; so that they
reached home without a second approach to the dangerous topics.
Jim was going back to his work that evening. As he said good-bye, he
crushed Betty's hand in a bear-like grip that fairly brought tears to her
eyes.
"I'm awfully glad to have met you," he said, "though I don't suppose
you'd ever guess it--I'm such a duffer with girls. Eleanor told me how
you stuck by her last year and helped her get her start. I tell you we
appreciate anything that's done for Eleanor, dad and I do."
As Betty watched him stride off to the Hilton House, she remembered
Madeline's advice. "I guess she isn't enjoying her honors very much," she
thought. "Imagine getting into Dramatic Club and not writing home about
it! Why, I should telegraph! And if I had a thing in the 'Argus'"--Betty
smiled at the absurdity of the idea--"half the fun would be to see Nan's
face. And if I was ashamed to see her face!"
Betty gave a sigh of relief that the comic interlude was over. Under
ordinary circumstances the entertaining of Jim would have been the height
of bliss. Just now all she wanted was to go to New York and get back
again, with her errand done and one source of danger to Eleanor, if
possible, eliminated.
Jim left Harding on Tuesday evening. Wednesday morning bright and early,
Betty started for New York. She went by the early train for two reasons.
It was easier to slip away unquestioned during chapel-time, and
furthermore she meant to reach New York in time to see Mr. Blake that
same afternoon and take the sleeper back to Harding. She thought that
spending the night with any of her New York cousins would involve too
much explanation, and besides she could sleep beautifully on the train,
and she wanted to be back in time for the Thursday basket-ball practice.
The girls played every day now, and very often Miss Andrews dropped in to
watch them and take the measure of the various aspirants for a place on
the official teams, which it would soon be her duty to appoint.