Exit Betty Part 6

"Why not?"

"'Cause. Folks might listen."

"I should worry! Well, since you say so. How about seein' a show together to-night?"

"Fine an' dandy, Jimmie! I'll be ready at the usual time. I gotta go now, the boss is comin'. So long, Jimmie!"

"So long, darling!"

But the receiver at the other end hung up with a click, while Jane with a smile on her lips thought of the pasteboard box under her bed and wondered what Jimmie would say if he could know. For Jane had fully made up her mind that Jimmie was not to know. Not at present, anyhow. Some time she might tell him if things turned out all right, but she knew just what lordly masculine advice and criticism would lie upon James Ryan's lips if she attempted to tell him about her strange and wonderful guest of the night before. Maybe she was a fool to have trusted a stranger that way. Maybe the girl would turn out to be insane or wrong somehow, and trouble come, but she didn't believe it; and anyhow, she was going to wait, until she saw what happened next before she got Jimmie mixed up in it. Besides, the secret wasn't hers to tell. She had promised Betty, and she always kept her promises. That was one reason why she was so slow in promising to think about a wedding veil in response to James Ryan's oft repeated question.

That evening on the way to the movies Jane inst.i.tuted an investigation.

"Jimmie, what kind of a man is your boss?"

"White man!" said Jimmie promptly.

"Aw! Cut it out, James Ryan! I don't mean how'd s'e look, or what color is he; I mean what kind of a _man_ is he?"

"Well, that's the answer. White man! What's the matter of that? I said it and I meant it. He's white if there ever was one!"

"Oh, that!" said Miss Carson in scorn. "Of course I know he's a peach.

If he wasn't you wouldn't be workin' for him. What I mean, is he a _sn.o.b_?"

"No chance!"

"Well, I saw him _with_ 'em last night. I was pa.s.sin' that big church up Spruce Street and I saw him standin' with his arms folded so----" she paused on the sidewalk and indicated his pose. "It was a swell weddin'

and the place was full up. He had a big white front an' a clawhammer coat. I know it was him 'cause I took a good look at him that time you pointed him out at church that evenin'. I wondered was he _in with_ them swells?"

Her tone expressed scorn and not a little anxiety, as if she had asked whether he frequented places of low reputation.

"Oh, if you mean, _could_ he be, why that's a diffrunt thing!" said James the wise. "_Sure_, he could be if he wanted, I guess. He's got a good family. His uncle's some high muckymuck, and you often see his aunts' and cousins' names in the paper giving teas and receptions and going places. But he don't seem to go much. I often hear folks ask him why he wasn't some place last night, or 'phone to know if he won't come, and he always says he can't spare the time, or he can't afford it, or something like that."

"Ain't he rich, Jimmie?"

"Well, no, not exactly. He may have some money put away, or left him by some one. If he don't have I can't fer the life of me see how he lives.

But he certainly don't get it in fees. I often wonder where my salary comes from, but it always does, regular as the clock."

"Jimmie, doesn't he have _any_ business at all?"

"Oh, yes he has business, but it ain't the paying kind. Fer instance, there was a man in to-day trying to get his house back that another man took away from him, and my boss _took the case_! He took it _right off the bat_ without waiting to see whether the man could pay him anything or not! He can't! He's only a poor laboring man, and a rich man stole his house. Just out an' out stole it, you know. It's how he got rich.

Like as not we'll lose it, too, those rich men have so many ways of crawling out of a thing and making it look nice to the world. Oh, he'll get a fee, of course--twenty-five dollars, perhaps--but what's twenty-five dollars, and like as not never get even the whole of that, or have to wait for it? Why, it wouldn't keep _me_ in his office long!

Then there was a girl trying to get hold of the money her own father left her, and her uncle frittered away and pertends it cost him all that, and _he's_ been supporting _her_! Well, we took that, too, and we won't get much out of that even if we do win. Then there come along one of these here rich guys with a pocket full of money and a nice slick tongue wanting to be protected from the law in some devilment, and _him we turned down flat_! That's how it goes in our office. I can't just figger out how it's coming out! But he's a good guy, a white man if there ever was one!"

"I should say!" responded Jane with shining eyes. "Say, Jimmie, what's the matter of us throwin' a little business in his way--real, payin'

business, I mean?"

"Fat chance!" said Jimmie dryly.

"You never can tell!" answered Jane dreamily. "I'm goin' to think about it. Our fact'ry has lawyers sometimes. I might speak to the boss."

"Do!" said Jimmie sarcastically! "And have yer labor for yer pains!

We'll prob'ly turn _them_ down. Fact'ries are _always_ doing things they hadn't ought to."

But Jane was silent and thoughtful, and they were presently lost in the charms of Mary Pickford.

The evening papers came out with pictures of Elizabeth Stanhope and her bridegroom that was to have been. Jane cut away the bridegroom and pasted the bride's picture in the flyleaf of her Bible, then hid it away in the bottom of her trunk.

CHAPTER VII

WHEN Betty found herself seated on the day coach of a way train, jogging along toward a town she had never seen and away from the scenes and people of her childhood, she found herself trembling violently. It was as if she had suddenly been placed in an airplane all by herself and started off to the moon without any knowledge of her motor power or destination. It both frightened and exhilarated her. She wanted to cry and she wanted to laugh, but she did neither. Instead she sat demurely for the first hour and a half looking out of the window like any traveler, scarcely turning her head nor looking at anything in the car.

It seemed to her that there might be a detective in every seat just waiting for her to lift her eyes that he might recognize her. But gradually as the time dragged by and the landscape grew monotonous she began to feel a little more at her ease. Furtively she studied her neighbors. She had seldom traveled in a common car, and it was new to her to study all types as she could see them here. She smiled at a dirty baby and wished she had something to give it. She studied the careworn man and the woman in black who wept behind her veil and would not smile no matter how hard the man tried to make her. It was a revelation to her that any man would try as hard as that to make a woman smile. She watched the Italian family with five children and nine bundles, and counted the colors on a smart young woman who got in at a way station.

Every minute of the day was interesting. Every mile of dreary November landscape that whirled by gave her more freedom.

She opened the little shabby handbag that Jane had given her and got out the bit of mirror one inch by an inch and a half backed with pasteboard on which lingered particles of the original green taffeta lining and studied her own strange face, trying to get used to her new self and her new name. Jane had written it, Lizzie Hope, on the back of the envelope containing the address of Mrs. Carson. It seemed somehow an identification card. She studied it curiously and wondered if Lizzie Hope was going to be any happier than Betty Stanhope had been. And then she fell to thinking over the strange experiences of the last twenty-four hours and wondering whether she had done right or not, and whether her father would have been disappointed in her, "ashamed of her," as her stepmother had said. Somehow Jane had made her feel that he would not, and she was more light-hearted than she had been for many a day.

Late in the afternoon she began to wonder what Tinsdale would be like.

In the shabby handbag was her ticket to Tinsdale and eight dollars and a half in change. It made her feel richer than she had ever felt in her life, although she had never been stinted as to pocket money. But this was her very own, for her needs, and n.o.body but herself to say how she should spend either it or her time.

Little towns came in sight and pa.s.sed, each one with one or two churches, a schoolhouse, a lot of tiny houses. Would Tinsdale look this way? How safe these places seemed, yet lonely, too! Still, no one would ever think of looking for her in a lonely little village.

They pa.s.sed a big brick inst.i.tution, and she made out the words, "State Asylum," and shuddered inwardly as she thought of what Jane had told her about the morning paper. Suppose they should hunt her up and _put her in an insane asylum_, just to show the world that it had not been their fault that she had run away from her wedding! The thought was appalling.

She dropped her head on her hand with her face toward the window and tried to pretend she was asleep and hide the tears that would come, but presently a boy came in at the station with a big basket and she bought a ham sandwich and an apple. It tasted good. She had not expected that it would. She decided that she must have been pretty hungry and then fell to counting her money, aghast that the meager supper had made such a hole in her capital. She must be very careful. This might be all the money she would have for a very long time, and there was no telling what kind of an impossible place she was going to. She might have to get away as eagerly as she had come. Jane was all right, but that was not saying that her mother and sisters would be.

It was growing dark, and the lights were lit in the car. All the little Italian babies had been given drinks of water, and strange things to eat, and tumbled to sleep across laps and on seats, anywhere they would stick. They looked so funny and dirty and pitiful with their faces all streaked with soot and mola.s.ses candy that somebody had given them. The mother looked tired and greasy and the father was fat and dark, with unpleasant black eyes that seemed to roll a great deal. Yet he was kind to the babies and his wife seemed to like him. She wondered what kind of a home they had, and what relation the young fellow with the shiny dark curls bore to them. He seemed to take as much care of the babies as did their father and mother.

The lights were flickering out in the villages now and gave a friendly inhabited look to the houses. Sometimes when the train paused at stations Betty could see people moving back and forth at what seemed to be kitchen tables and little children bringing dishes out, all working together. It looked pleasant and she wondered if it would be like that where she was going. A big lump of loneliness was growing in her throat.

It was one thing to run away from something that you hated, but it was another to jump into a new life where one neither knew nor was known.

Betty began to shrink inexpressibly from it all. Not that she wanted to go back! Oh, no; far from it! But once when they pa.s.sed a little white cemetery with tall dark fir trees waving guardingly above the white stones she looked out almost wistfully. If she were lying in one of those beside her father and mother how safe and rested she would be. She wouldn't have to worry any more. What was it like where father and mother had gone? Was it a real place? Or was that just the end when one died? Well, if she were sure it was all she would not care. She would be willing to just go out and not be. But somehow that didn't seem to be the commonly accepted belief. There was always a beyond in most people's minds, and a fear of just what Betty didn't know. She was a good deal of a heathen, though she did not know that either.

Then, just as she was floundering into a lot of theological mysteries of her own discovery the nasal voice of the conductor called out: "Tinsdale! Tinsdale!" and she hurried to her feet in something of a panic, conscious of her short hair and queer clothes.

Down on the platform she stood a minute trying to get used to her feet, they felt so numb and empty from long sitting. Her head swam just a little, too, and the lights on the station and in the houses near by seemed to dance around her weirdly. She had a feeling that she would rather wait until the train was gone before she began to search for her new home, and then when the wheels ground and began to turn and the conductor shouted "All aboard!" and swung himself up the step as she had seen him do a hundred times that afternoon, a queer sinking feeling of loneliness possessed her, and she almost wanted to catch the rail and swing back on again as the next pair of car steps flung by her.

Then a voice that sounded a little like Jane's said pleasantly in her ear: "Is this Lizzie Hope?" and Betty turned with a thrill of actual fright to face Nellie Carson and her little sister Emily.

"Bobbie'll be here in a minute to carry your suitcase," said Nellie efficiently; "he just went over to see if he could borrow Jake Peter's wheelbarrow in case you had a trunk. You didn't bring your trunk? O, but you're going to stay, aren't you? I'm goin' up to the city to take a p'sition, and Mother'd be awful lonesome. Sometime of course we'll send fer them to come, but now the children's little an' the country's better fer them. They gotta go to school awhile. You'll stay, won't you?"

"How do you know you'll want me?" laughed Betty, at her ease in this unexpected air of welcome.

"Why, of course we'd want you. Jane sent you. Jane wouldn't of sent you if you hadn't been a good scout. Jane knows. Besides, I've got two eyes, haven't I? I guess I can tell right off."

Emily's shy little hand stole into Betty's and the little girl looked up: