By Clara Louise Burnham
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HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
CLEVER BETSY
[Illustration: SHE SANK INTO THE ARMS THAT CLASPED HER]
CLEVER BETSY
A Novel
by
Clara Louise Burnham
With Illustrations by
Rose O’Neill
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1910
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
_Published September 1910_
CONTENTS
I. OPENING THE COTTAGE 1
II. MISTRESS AND MAID 16
III. IRVING BRUCE 27
IV. MRS. POGRAM CONFIDES 38
V. ROSALIE VINCENT 47
VI. THE LAST STAGE 62
VII. THE NATIONAL PARK 75
VIII. THE BLONDE HEAVER 87
IX. THE FOUNTAIN HOUSE 102
X. ON THE RIVERSIDE 117
XI. FACE TO FACE 131
XII. THE FAITHFUL GEYSER 150
XIII. THE HEIRESS 160
XIV. THE LOOKOUT 176
XV. AN EXODUS 189
XVI. BETSY’S GIFT 202
XVII. SUNRISE 217
XVIII. HOMEWARD BOUND 232
XIX. MRS. BRUCE’S HEADACHE 246
XX. BETSY’S APPEAL 258
XXI. A RAINY EVENING 270
XXII. THE WHITE DOVE 282
XXIII. THE DANCE 296
XXIV. THE CLASH 313
XXV. WHITE SWEET PEAS 327
XXVI. IN BETSY’S ROOM 338
XXVII. BETSY RECEIVES 355
XXVIII. GOOD-BY, SUMMER 369
XXIX. THE NEW YEAR 387
CLEVER BETSY
CHAPTER I
OPENING THE COTTAGE
“HELLO there!” The man with grizzled hair and bronzed face under a
shabby yachting-cap stopped in his leisurely ramble up the street of
a seaport village, and his eyes lighted at sight of a spare feminine
figure, whose lean vigorous arms were shaking a long narrow rug at a
cottage gate. “Ahoy there—The Clever Betsy!” he went on.
The energetic woman vouchsafed a sidewise twist of her mouth intended
for a smile, but did not cease from her labors, and a cloud of dust met
the hastened approach of the seaman.
“Here, there’s enough o’ that! Don’t you know your captain?” he went
on, dodging the woolen fringe which snapped near his dark cheek.
“_My_ captain!” retorted the energetic one, while the rug billowed
still more wildly. She was a woman of his own middle age, and the cloth
tied around her head did not add to her charms; but the man’s eyes
softened as they rested on her.
“Here! You carry too much sail. Take a reef!” he cried; and deftly
snatching the rug, in an instant it was trailing on the walk behind
him, while Betsy Foster stared, offended.
“How long ye been here, Betsy?”
“A couple o’ days,” replied the woman, adjusting the cheese-cloth
covering more firmly behind her ears.
“Why didn’t ye let a feller know?”
“Thought I wouldn’t trouble trouble till trouble troubled me.”
The man smiled. “The Clever Betsy,” he said musingly. They regarded one
another for a silent moment. “Why ain’t ye ever clever to me?”
She sniffed.
“Why don’t ye fat up some?” he asked again.
“If I was as lazy as you are, probably I should,” she returned, with
the sidewise grimace appearing again, and the breeze from the wide
ocean a stone’s throw away ruffling the sparse straight locks that
escaped from her headdress.
“Goin’ to marry me this time, Betsy?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Same old reason.”
“But I _tell_ ye,” said the man, in half-humorous, half-earnest appeal,
“I’ve told ye a dozen times I didn’t know which I liked best then. If
you’d happened to go home from singin’-school with me that night it
would ’a’ ben you.”
“And I say it ain’t proper respect to Annie’s memory for you to talk
that way.”
“I ain’t disrespectful. There never were two such nice girls in one
village before. I nearly grew wall-eyed tryin’ to look at you both at
once. Annie and I were happy as clams for fifteen years. She’s been
gone five, and I’ve asked ye four separate times if you’d go down the
hill o’ life with me, and there ain’t any sense in your refusin’ and
flappin’ rugs in my face.”
“You know I don’t like this sort o’ foolin’, Hiram. I wish you’d be
done with it.”
“I ain’t ever goin’ to be done with it, Betsy, not while you live and I
live.”
“Have some sense,” she rejoined. “We both made our choice when we were
young and we must abide by it—both of us.”
“You didn’t marry the Bruce family.”
“I did, too.”
Betsy Foster’s eyes, suddenly reminiscent, did not suit in their
expression the brusqueness of her tone. She saw again her young self,
heart-sick with the disappointment of her girlish fancy, leaving this
little village for the city, and finding a haven with the bride who
became her friend as well as mistress.
“I did, too,” she repeated. “It was my silver weddin’ only last week,
when Mr. Irving had his twenty-fourth birthday.”
“Is Irving that old? Bless me! Then,” hopefully, “if he’s twenty-four
he don’t need to be tied to your apron-strings. Strikes me you’re as
much of a widow as I am a widower. There ain’t many o’ the Bruce family
left for you to be married to. After Irving’s mother died, I can see
plain enough why you were a lot o’ help to Mr. Bruce; but when he
married again you didn’t have any call to look after him any longer;
and seein’ he died about the same time poor Annie did, you’ve been free
as air these five years. You don’t need to pretend you think such an
awful lot o’ the widder Bruce, ’cause I know ye don’t. Don’t ye suppose
I remember how all your feathers stood on end when Mr. Bruce married
her?”
Betsy gave a fleeting glance over her shoulder toward the window of the
cottage.
“’Twasn’t natural that I should want to see anybody in Irving’s
mother’s place, but she’s—”
“I remember as if ’twas yesterday,” interrupted Hiram, “how you said
’twas Irving she married him for; how that she could never keep her
fingers out of any pie, and she didn’t like the hats Mr. Bruce bought
for Irving, so she married him to choose ’em herself.”
Betsy’s lips twitched in a short laugh. “Well, I guess there was
somethin’ in that,” she answered.
Hiram pursued what he considered his advantage. “When Irving was on the
football team at college, you told me yourself, standin’ right by this
gate, that she’d go to the game, and when she wasn’t faintin’ because
he was knocked out, she was hollerin’ at him how to play.”
Betsy bridled. “Well, what’s all this for?” she demanded.
“It’s to show you plain as the nose on your face that if you ever was
married to the Bruce family you’re a widder now; just as much as I’m a
widower.”
“No, sir, for better or for worse,” returned Betsy doggedly.
“Get out. They’re dead, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce, both dead; and the widder
Bruce nothin’ at all to you.”
“Stepmother to Mr. Irving,” declared Betsy.
“Well, he’s used to it by this time. Had twelve years of it. Holy
mackerel, that kid twenty-four! I can’t realize it. His mother—”
“No, no,” said Betsy quickly.
“Well, _she_ anyway, Mrs. Bruce, went over to Europe to meet him last
year, didn’t she, when she took you?”
“Of course she did. He went abroad when he left college, and do you
suppose she could stand it not to be in part of his trip and tell him
what to do?”
“There now! It’s plain how you feel toward _that_ member o’ the family.”
“But I told you, didn’t I? Can’t you understand English? I told you
‘for better or for _worse_.’”
“Go ’long, Betsy, go ’long! That husky football hero don’t need you
to fight his battles. If she presses him too hard, he’ll get married
himself. I guess he’s got a pretty solid place in the bank. When did
you get back?”
“A month ago.”
“Mrs. Bruce come down here with you?”
Hiram’s eyes as he asked the question left his companion’s face for the
first time, and roved toward the windows of the cottage retreating amid
its greenery.
As if his question had evoked the apparition, a light-haired lady
suddenly appeared in the open doorway. She was a woman of about
forty-five years, but her blonde hair concealed its occasional silver
threads, and her figure was girlishly slender. She regarded the couple
for a moment through her gold eye-glasses, and then came down the steps
and through the garden-path.
“I thought I couldn’t be mistaken, Captain Salter,” she said
graciously, extending one hand, ringed and sparkling, and with the
other protecting the waves of her carefully dressed hair from the
boisterous breeze.
The captain, continuing to trail the rug behind him, touched his cap
and allowed his rough fingers to be taken for a moment.
“The Clever Betsy here was carrying too much sail,” he explained. “I
took ’em down.”
Mrs. Bruce laughed amiably.
“And found you’d run into a squall, no doubt,” she responded, observing
her handmaid’s reddened countenance.
Mrs. Bruce’s eyes could be best described as busy. There was nothing
subtle about her glances. She made it quite evident that nothing
escaped her, and the trim exactness of her dress and appearance seemed
to match her observations.
“It seems good to be back in Fairport,” she went on. “One summer’s
absence is quite enough, though I plan to slip away just for a little
while to take a look at the Yellowstone this year.”
“That so? Should think you’d had travelin’ enough for one spell,”
rejoined Hiram.
“Oh, it’s an appetite that grows with what it feeds on, Captain Salter.
I dare say you have been a rover, too. I know how all you sea-captains
are.”
“No’m. My line’s ben fish, mostly.”
“And,” added Mrs. Bruce, “taking care of us poor land-lubbers in
summer. My son was well satisfied with your sale of his boat. I don’t
know whether he will get another this summer or not. You’ll be here as
usual, I hope?”
“Looks that way.”
“I’m glad. I’m positively attached to the Gentle Annie.”
“Haven’t got her no more,” returned Hiram quietly. “I’ve parted with
her.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I suppose the new one’s better.”
“Well, she’s just as good, anyway.”
“But if she’s not better, I don’t see why you let the Annie go.”
“’Taint always in our power to hold on to things when we’d like to,”
responded Hiram equably.
Mrs. Bruce’s eyes shone with interest behind her bi-focals. “Poor man!”
she thought. “How improvident these ignorant people are! Probably went
into debt, and had to lose his boat, and calculated on doing enough
business this summer to pay for the new one.”
“And what,” she asked, with an air of gracious patronage, “will you
call this one? Gentle Annie second, of course.”
He shook his head, his sea-blue eyes fixed intrepidly on the object of
his affections, who regarded him threateningly.
“Can’t be any Annie second,” he returned quietly.
“Now I think you make a great mistake, Captain Salter,” said Mrs.
Bruce, with vigor. “For your own welfare I feel you ought to keep that
name. The summer people have been attached to the Gentle Annie so long,
and had such confidence in her.”
Hiram nodded; but Mrs. Bruce could not catch his fixed eye as she
wished, to emphasize her point.
“They were right,” he answered. “She was a good craft.”
“Confidence in her and you too, I should have said, of course,” went on
the lady.
“Yes, we sort o’ went together, pretty comfortable; but—well, I’ve lost
her.”
“Yes, but there’s a good-will goes with the name. You make a great
mistake not to keep it. Captain Salter and the Gentle Annie; people
have said it so many years and had all their sails and their picnics
and clambakes with you, it’s like throwing away capital for you to take
a new name for your boat. Now if you haven’t already had it put on—”
“I have.”
Hiram’s eyes were steady, and his lady-love was nervously fighting with
the jealous wind for her cheese-cloth headdress, her face apparently
flushed by the effort, and her eyes defiant.
“What have you named her?” asked Mrs. Bruce, in disapproval.
“The Clever Betsy.”
“I don’t like it, emphatically. It seems very strange, and it will to
everybody.”
“Yes, at first,” rejoined Hiram imperturbably, “but you can get used
to anything. It used to be Captain Salter and the Gentle Annie; but in
future it’s goin’ to be Captain Salter and the Clever Betsy; and after
a while that’s goin’ to seem just as natural as the other.”
The speaker continued to rest his gaze on the narrow reddened
countenance, which looked back furiously.
Mrs. Bruce attributed his averted face to shyness, but the direction of
his glance gave her an idea.
“Well, I’m sure, Betsy, _you_ should be pleased,” she remarked. “One
might think the boat was named for you.”
“Betsy wasn’t ever clever to me,” said Hiram calmly. “She began
spellin’ me down at school here when we were children, and she’s ben
spellin’ me down ever since.”
Mrs. Bruce looked curiously at the frowning countenance of the capable
woman who had meant so much in her husband’s household.
“Just like a snapdragon always,” went on Hiram slowly; “touch her and
she’d fly all to pieces; and I guess you put on the finishin’ touch,
takin’ her to Europe, Mrs. Bruce. She’s so toploftical to-day that she
won’t scarcely speak to me.”
“Betsy was a good traveler; I wouldn’t ask a better,” said Mrs. Bruce
absently. The subject of the boat’s name rankled. Her desire to coerce
humanity for its own good was like a fire always laid and ready to be
kindled, and Hiram had applied the match.
“What do _you_ think of the new name, Betsy? Don’t you think your old
friend would have done better to stick to the Gentle Annie?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” was the explosive response. “That’s the
only name that’ll ever be connected with Cap’n Salter in this world,
and he’d better make the most of it. Hiram, if you’re perishin’ to wear
a trail I’ll make you one out o’ paper-cambric. Give me my rug. I want
to go in the house.”
Salter motioned toward the speaker with his head, then met Mrs. Bruce’s
eyes.
“You heard?” he said. “That’s what I say. Snappy, snappy.”
“I’m very sorry,” said Mrs. Bruce impressively, “that it’s painted on.
It’s a bad idea and won’t bring you luck.”
“Well now, we’ll see,” rejoined Hiram. “I feel just the other way
round. I think it’s a good idea and will bring me luck. Folks’ll begin
to say Cap’n Salter and the Clever Betsy, Cap’n Salter and the Clever
Betsy, and first news you know there’ll be—”
He paused. Lightnings would have shot from Betsy Foster’s eyes had they
been able to express all she felt; but the audacity of his look and
manner conveyed a totally new idea to Mrs. Bruce.
“I wish you’d both come out with me this afternoon,” he went on. “I’ll
show you just what a good, reliable, faithful craft I’ve got. A bit
unsteady sometimes, mebbe, but that’s only because she’s smart and
sassy; she always comes up to the mark in an emergency, and never goes
back on her skipper. She’s fast, too, and—”
“Sailin’!” interrupted Betsy, unable to endure another moment. “I
guess if you saw the inside o’ that cottage you wouldn’t talk to me
about sailin’. If you’re so fond of peacockin’ with that rug, I won’t
deprive you of it. You can leave it on the step when you get through.”
Mrs. Bruce’s idea received confirmation by Betsy’s manner and her
precipitate departure up the garden-path, and she looked at Hiram
Salter blankly. Betsy Foster was the prop of her household. She was
the property of the Bruce family. Did this man suppose for one moment
that just because they had gone to school together, he could remove her
from her useful position? What a selfish, impossible thought! Of course
the man wasn’t in love with Betsy. Nobody could be in love with such a
severely plain creature; and yet that fancy of the new boat and the new
name! It argued a plan of wooing which had some poetry in it.
Here was an affair which Mrs. Bruce would certainly stop with a high
hand if there were any real threat in it; but fortunately Betsy would
consider it as unthinkable as she herself. If ever displeasure was writ
large all over a woman it had been evident in Betsy Foster throughout
the interview.
After a short reflective silence during which, both hands behind him,
her companion waved the rug in gentle ripples, and met her gaze with an
undisturbed smile, she spoke.
“Do take my advice still, Captain Salter,” she said. “Wipe out the
Clever Betsy and go back to the Gentle Annie.”