CHAPTER XXXVIII
MRS. PHILLIPS had guests that evening. Her brother excused himself directly after dinner and retired to his own apartments. He had scarcely opened his book when Herbie came up to say that Miss Betty was at the door to ask when he was coming home.
Meadowcroft looked at the man incredulously. He didn’t of course mean what he said. And Herbie hastened to explain.
“Of course I told her you was home, sir. She said she’d come again, but I was sure you would want to see her and she’s waiting.”
“Ask her to come right up, Herbie,” Meadowcroft bade him. And he hobbled across the length of the great room and stood at the door to greet her, resting on one crutch. But though he reached out his hand eagerly, he didn’t, somehow, expect anything other than the frigid politeness that had been her attitude during the last weeks of their intercourse. He was amazed almost beyond words at her sudden and complete change of front.
“O, Mr. Meadowcroft, I shouldn’t think you’d want to shake hands with me!” she cried. “I shouldn’t think you’d be willing even to see me.”
“It’s certainly a mighty pleasant sight to see you, Betty,” he assured her warmly as he grasped her hand. “Come and sit down and let me tell you what I have been doing in Philadelphia.”
Betty wouldn’t even have allowed herself the luxuryof a chair, except for the fact that she wouldn’t keep Mr. Meadowcroft standing. It wasn’t possible to select an uncomfortable one; but she sat uncomfortably erect on the extreme edge of the straightest one near the wheeled chair.
“I don’t know how to begin,” she said rather tragically, “only it has all been a frightful mistake and I was just as bad as you thought I was—perhaps worse—only——”
“Only you didn’t mean to be—you didn’t understand?” he suggested.
She looked at him helplessly.
“It is so different looking back,” she faltered. “It seems so perfectly awful now. I only found out to-day.” She clasped her hands rather wildly. She looked ill indeed; but he saw that there was nothing to do but to get through the explanation.
“You were making weekly visits to some sort of specialist—was that the case, Betty?” he asked kindly.
“Yes, sir, to Dr. Vandegrift, an eye-specialist. He promised to cure Rose and—he wouldn’t let us breathe a word to anyone,” she returned.
Meadowcroft sat erect. “I might have known!” he said to himself. To the girl he said: “Tell me all about it from the beginning, my poor child.”
Whereupon she began with the day of his first departure for Philadelphia and related the whole story in detail. She spoke falteringly, with downcast eyes, and now and again she choked. But she went on bravely, omitting nothing, yet making no attempt whatever at self-justification. Even now, she wasn’t wholly out from the spell of Dr. Vandegrift. And deeply touched as Meadowcroftwas, his lips twitched more than once at the utter absurdity of the tragic recital. At the end, she handed him the newspaper with its sensational revelations.
Meadowcroft glanced through it. Then he rose, gave it to her, and held out his hand.
“My poor child, this has been a terrible experience for you,” he said very gently. “I can’t bear to think how deeply you have suffered, and I can’t tell you—I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am for you. And I wish——”
“Don’t be sorry forme!” she protested. “And I am glad I suffered. I ought to have. And I feel as if I should justdiewhen I think of how I acted to you. I thought—O, Mr. Meadowcroft, I just kept my mind on June, else I never could have borne it or gone on. And now—now there isn’t any June!”
“O, my dear Betty, but there is a June! I trust there’s many and many a June before you!” he cried. “After all, you have a good deal to sustain you at this very minute. You thought you were doing right, and certainly you acted unselfishly. You made a mistake. Your premises were false, but you were unaware of that, and all the while you were striving and suffering for what you believed a holy cause. You chose what you believed to be the greater good—the greatest good, indeed, the veritablesummum bonum—and you sinned against formal law in your pursuit of it. You did wrong not unconsciously but wholly for another and with the zeal and courage of a martyr. You have learned your error, but don’t reproach yourself further. Lack of judgment is all that a more severe judge than I could charge you with. For my part—” he smiled that rare,charming smile peculiar to him—“I have nothing but admiration for you. The generous, suicidal audacity you showed has all the magnificence of a forlorn hope.”
Tears filled her eyes. Her lips trembled pitifully as she tried to smile.
“I ought to have had more sense,” she declared.
“I’m not so sure. You’re not yet fourteen and you had never come in contact with duplicity before. And doubtless that scamp was plausible?”
She raised her eyes quickly.
“O, he was—I mean he seemed so scientific,” she returned ingenuously. “It seemed to stretch your mind to take in his explanations. And really, he seemed just to long to cure Rose, partly because he loved his profession and partly because he wanted her to be happy.”
“His insistence upon the fee didn’t bother you?”
“Sometimes just a wee bit at first. Then I felt that he wanted to make sure of our never missing a week and believed we wouldn’t be so likely to if we had sort of hard work scraping together the money, you know,” she explained.
He smiled. “Now that, Betty, is sound psychology. If you could have only been as reasonable in other directions!” he exclaimed. “You know, your great mistake was in promising to keep it all secret. It almost seems as if you ought to have known better than that. And when I think of all you went through—of all you might have been saved——”
He paused, arrested by her pleading look.
“O, Mr. Meadowcroft, not me!” she cried vehemently. “It doesn’t matter in the least about me. It’s poor Rose. It’s——”
“Betty, sit back in your chair, or we’ll have to stop right here and postpone the rest of the discussion until to-morrow,” he bade her. She complied so meekly that he almost felt as if he sat behind the school-master’s desk.
“It is worst of all for Rose, of course,” she said mournfully. “But it was harder on Tommy than you might think. And—of course it’s different with you, Mr. Meadowcroft. I feel so mortified, so frightfully ashamed as well as sorry.”
“Nonsense, Betty. Don’t dwell on that longer. You have said you regretted your mistake and everything is all right between us. Honestly, so far as I am concerned, I don’t carethat,” he assured her, and snapped his fingers.
She gazed at him sorrowfully.
“Didn’t it—didn’t it spoil all the pleasure you might have had in the school?” she asked, and a shadow clouded his brow.
“Well, Betty, I daresay it did—for the time,” he had to admit. “But I think it will work itself out so that later the memory won’t be unhappy. And now and for always I can truthfully say I don’t mind at all. I don’t care a copper. My sympathy remains with you.”
“But Rose?” she cried.
“To tell you the truth, Betty, I do not believe Rose requires much sympathy,” he said seriously. “I cannot think that she will take it greatly to heart. I have observed Rose very carefully—partly because of my desire to get some clew to the mystery—and I doubt extremely if she has really suffered at all. It is my belief that she didn’t go into the thing deeply in the beginning and that it won’t be painful for her to get out. Tellme truly: have you any evidence whatever of this being a great blow to Rose?”
“She acts just about the same,” Betty confessed, “but—Rose is very brave. I feel as if she were hiding it in her heart.”
“You needn’t feel so,” he declared. “Rose is daring; but she hasn’t that slow, enduring, patient sort of courage that would enable her to bluff in a matter of this sort. I don’t say that Rose is shallow; but she isn’t as yet deep. She’s young and she is extremely immature. Certainly, she doesn’t hide her feelings. If she says she doesn’t mind and acts accordingly, you can rest assured that she doesn’t. She is truly sadly afflicted, but really, Betty, I cannot see how such a deprivation could possibly be felt less than Rose has felt it since that day last spring when you rescued her from unalleviated wretchedness. Her mother has told me more than once that Rose was never so happy in all her former life as she has been continuously since that time. No doubt she might be still happier if, having known blindness, she could recover her sight. Nevertheless, I am quite convinced that Rose is and will remain sufficiently content and happy for all common and useful purposes.”
Meadowcroft dropped back in his chair. He didn’t understand the wave of exhaustion that swept over him until he saw Betty’s face. Then he realized how he had striven to impress her. He had seldom made a greater effort than that of compelling the girl to see that Rose wouldn’t take the tragedy as she herself took it. He could scarcely believe that he had been successful. But truly Betty seemed impressed and relieved. And his heart leaped.
She made a movement as if to rise.
“No, no, sit still,” he bade her. “I have such a lot to tell you, and Baker will take you home in the carriage afterwards. You’re tired, I know, but we shall get very cheerful, I feel sure, while we’re discussing things. And you will be ready to go straight to Rose the first thing in the morning.”