Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  The house seemed bursting with Mullers, old and young. Betsy and Tib laid off their wraps in the Yellow Room upstairs and when they descended the wide, deeply carpeted stairs, they found themselves surrounded by uncles, aunts and cousins. The great hall, the front and back parlors, richly furnished and hung with mistletoe and holly, were swarming with them.

  All the uncles were large and stout, and so were the aunts whom Tib called Tante. They wore diamond ear rings, such as Mrs. Muller wore. Grosspapa Muller had given all his daughters-in-law diamond ear rings, Tib said. Their dresses were rich and elaborate, but none of them looked stylish, somehow. Tib’s mother, Betsy thought, was the only stylish looking woman there. She seemed more American, too, than the others, and so did Mr. Muller.

  The children ranged from pig-tailed twin girls Hobbie’s age to the tall cousin Heinrich whom Tib took to the Seminary dances. He was nice looking, with curly brown hair, but not half so fascinating, Betsy thought, as Uncle Rudy. Men and boys alike, when introduced to Betsy, bowed stiffly from the waist. Some said “How do you do?” but others said, “Guten Abend, Fräulein.”

  “Come,” said Tib. “I want you to meet Grosspapa.”

  “And Grossmama?” asked Betsy mischievously. It was funny the way all the Mullers referred only to Grosspapa Muller.

  “Grossmama, too, of course,” said Tib, not knowing that she was being teased.

  Grosspapa was larger and stouter than any of his sons. He had a gleaming bald head which seemed to begin at his black overhanging eyebrows. His black beard, speckled with white, almost concealed his snowy waist-coat. He addressed Betsy in German, and she found herself answering, “Guten Abend, Herr Grosspapa,” and curtseying, as Tib did.

  Grossmama Muller was small and timid. Her graying hair, which had once been fair was drawn back into a tight bun. She too wore diamond ear rings.

  The double doors leading to the library were closed. The children kept trying to look through the cracks and were pulled away by their elders. At last a bell was heard.

  “There’s the Christkindel’s bell,” Tib whispered to Betsy. But the company was not yet ready to answer the summons.

  One of the young lady cousins went to the piano, and it developed that the pig-tailed twins had prepared a surprise for their Grosspapa. Why not for Grossmama, too, Betsy wondered? They played a Mozart duet, somewhat shakily, with violin and flute and Grosspapa was pleased.

  After that everybody sang Christmas songs. From Grosspapa to Hobbie they sang with a will, and Betsy joined in, although she was the only one singing in English.

  But in the library the bell became imperative. The great doors slid back, and Betsy saw a Christmas tree so tall and majestic that it seemed to fill the large, high-ceilinged room. It was twinkling with lighted candles, sparkling with ornaments, and it threw off a delicious woodsy fragrance. After a long-drawn breath the company joined hands and marched around the tree singing…but in German…

  “O, Christmas tree, O, Christmas tree,

  How lovely are thy branches…”

  Betsy wanted to pinch herself, to make sure she was awake, but she couldn’t manage it very well with Tib holding one hand and a pig-tailed twin swinging from the other.

  All around the room were tables covered with sheets. The smiling servant girl hurried about taking off the sheets, and there were tables for everyone…the servant girl, the cook who came in from the kitchen, and old Johann, wrinkled and nut-like. There was even a table for Betsy laden with boxes of candy and cakes, hair ribbons, pin cushions, pen wipers, and sachet bags.

  The children were mad with excitement. They were throwing paper to the floor, and the aunts were picking it up and folding it neatly. Everyone was kissing and thanking everyone else.

  Then Betsy was swept on the tide of Mullers into the dining room for a delicious cold supper…roast fowl and ham, potato salad, pickled herring, pickles of many kinds and little curly anchovies; cream filled horns, cakes glazed with sugar and others decked out with peaches and cherries. There was hot chocolate for the children, and the men and women had wine. They toasted Grosspapa and Grossmama, and the President of the United States and Kaiser Wilhelm.

  “Grosspapa Hornik,” Tib whispered, “won’t toast Kaiser Wilhelm nor Kaiser Franz Josef either. He doesn’t like Kaisers. He and Grosspapa Muller don’t get on very well.”

  The children went back to the tree to play with their dolls and toys. Soon the younger ones began to grow sleepy. At last with mingled cries of “Fröhliche Weihnachten” and “Merry Christmas,” oldsters began to put on coats and furs.

  “Tib!” said Betsy. “I haven’t seen the dwarfs!”

  “Come quick!” cried Tib, catching her hand.

  She pulled Betsy toward the dining room and Fred and Hobbie and Cousin Heinrich followed. They ran through the pantry and kitchen, down spotless stairs, into the largest cleanest basement Betsy had ever beheld.

  There, indeed, were the seven dwarfs standing in a row. The biggest one didn’t come to Betsy’s shoulder. The smallest was about a foot high. They were made of cast iron and wore short Alpine jackets and little Alpine hats with feathers in them. Each hat was a different color…red, green, purple, yellow, pink, blue and brown.

  “Every winter,” said Tib, “Grosspapa has them repainted. And every spring, as soon as the snow melts, he puts them out on the lawn. Since he has retired from business he takes more interest in his dwarfs than in anything else, Papa says. Every year he puts them out differently. Some years they head north, and some south, and some east, and some west. But always the big dwarf leads.”

  “Grossmama Muller,” said Fred, “wishes that some year the little dwarf could lead. Every spring she asks Grosspapa…‘Just this once, Gerhard, just this one year let the little dwarf lead.’ But he won’t. He always has them go in a straight line with the big dwarf at the head.”

  “He had them made to order,” Tib remarked. “The molds were destroyed after they were made.”

  Hobbie looked reflective.

  “Do you know,” he said, “I’ve always thought that the big dwarf looks a little like Grosspapa.”

  Everyone looked at the big dwarf but nobody replied.

  14

  The Brave Little Tailor

  “YOU ALWAYS DID LOOK like a fairy tale princess,” Betsy told Tib, “So I’m not surprised to find that you live in a fairy book.”

  “I live in a duplex,” said Tib.

  “In a fairy book,” repeated Betsy firmly. “One grandfather has seven dwarfs, and the other one is a tailor. Fairy books are full of tailors. You remember The Brave Little Tailor? ‘Seven at one blow’?”

  “That’s right,” said Tib, and laughed.

  They were walking to Grosspapa Hornik’s ahead of the rest of the family so that Tib could help Aunt Dolly and Grossmama with dinner. It was midway of Christmas morning. At breakfast Betsy had given the Mullers the presents she had brought for them…except Tib. Tib had had hers earlier.

  Returning from Grosspapa Muller’s, the night before, Betsy had insisted upon hanging her stockings.

  “But we don’t hang stockings,” Tib had protested.

  “You’re you, and I’m me,” Betsy had returned. “I’m hanging my stockings. And if you have a spark of feeling, Fräulein Muller, you’ll fill them with those packages I brought from Deep Valley. By the way,” she added, “if you should happen to hang your own you might find something at the bottom of it in the morning.”

  So Tib had hung her stocking, too, over the foot of the bed, and there had been a mysterious scurrying about after the gas was turned out. In the morning they had taken the stockings into their bed and unpacked them jubilantly.

  Betsy’s gifts had included photographs from Tony and Irma at which Tib had gazed long and earnestly. The Deep Valley Crowd seemed as story bookish to Tib as the Milwaukee grandfathers seemed to Betsy.

  “The Brave Little Tailor,” Betsy repeated musingly now, pleased with her fancy.

  To reach the
tailor shop they walked toward the central part of the city. Arms hooked, they swung along happily through a white world full of chiming sleighbells.

  “Grosspapa Hornik,” said Tib, “is a very good tailor. You noticed what handsome clothes he makes for Uncle Rudy. He makes clothes for the very best people.”

  “The brave little tailor! But why, oh why, is he afraid of Grossmama?”

  “Oh,” said Tib. “She has the head for money. And besides, they wrangle about Emperor Franz Josef. Grosspapa’s father…he was Alois Hornik, too…was a Forty-Eighter, if you know what that is.”

  “I should say I do!” cried Betsy, stopping still.

  “Grosspapa was only a little boy when he came to Milwaukee, but he hates the emperor and everything about the court.”

  “He was a Bohemian?” prompted Betsy.

  “His father was a Bohemian. His mother was a Viennese, and she’s famous in the family because she was so beautiful, with golden hairs. She was a revolutionist, too. Grosspapa looks like her pictures, and so does Aunt Dolly. So do I, a little.”

  “How romantic!” Betsy exclaimed. “What was her name?”

  “Catherine Wilhelmina.”

  They proceeded in silence, Betsy thinking of the revolutionist, Alois Hornik and his beautiful, golden-haired wife, fleeing from Vienna after 1848. How strange that Tib, her friend, now walking calmly along a Milwaukee street, should look like that distant, lovely Catherine Wilhelmina.

  “And Grossmama Hornik?” she asked, after a while.

  “Her parents were Bohemian, too,” said Tib. “But they lived in Vienna until Grossmama was twenty-five. As a girl she did embroidery for the Court; and she was given the right to use a five-pointed crown on her linens, calling cards and stationery. She is very proud of it. Grosspapa doesn’t like it at all, and she doesn’t like his ideas either. When he talks against the Emperor, Grossmama says, ‘Ach, der pa!’ But they’re very fond of each other.” She broke off. “Here we are at the tailor shop already.”

  “Already yet so soon,” Betsy teased.

  The tailor shop was in a two-story brick building. A sign in gold letters read Alois Hornik, Schneider. It added in English in very small letters, “Tailor.” At the right of the door which led into the shop was another door on which two calling cards were tacked. One of them said Herr Alois Hornik, and the other said Frau Alois Hornik and that bore a tiny five-pointed crown.

  “Even a crown you have in your fairy tale, already yet,” Betsy said.

  Opening the door they walked down a long, dark, carpeted hall. At the end were two doors.

  “Dining room and kitchen,” Tib said. “The rest of the rooms are upstairs.”

  She opened the left-hand door and they went into the dining room which was small and dark but papered in a handsome, red, floral design. A table was set for dinner with polished glass and silver on a gleaming damask cloth.

  Tib lifted a corner of this cloth and showed Betsy the five-pointed crown again, in embroidery so fine that Betsy wished Carney could see it. No needlewoman herself, she knew she could not appreciate it but she clicked her tongue admiringly.

  Turning right through a small hall from which a carpeted stairway ascended they entered the kitchen. It was large and bright and full of savory odors. Shiny copper pans hung on the walls and you could see your face, although a trifle askew, in the polished nickel trim of the cook stove. The stove was covered with sauce pans in which things were bubbling briskly. Three open-faced apple pies sat ready on the table.

  “Everybody must be upstairs,” Tib was saying, when an exquisite apparition floated in. Yellow curls were piled on top of a small proud head. A pink messaline tea gown clung to a delicately molded figure. Long sleeves, like angels’ wings, hung almost to the floor. Betsy saw a pink and white doll’s face, blue eyes. It was Aunt Dolly, and she hadn’t changed a bit!

  “Why, Betsy!” she cried. She tripped across the room and lifted her cheek for Betsy to kiss. She was so tiny and dainty that she made Betsy feel like a giant…all the more so, when she said, “How tall you are, child!”

  “Wasn’t it nice,” cried Tib, “that Betsy could come for Christmas?”

  “Very nice. It’s too bad, though, that you had to find me looking such a fright.”

  “Why, Aunt Doily! You look lovely!”

  “A perfect fright!” she repeated happily. “Aren’t you ashamed, Tib, to bring your guest in before I’m dressed?” Then she began to trip about the kitchen, lifting sauce pan lids and changing dampers…capably, too, in spite of the swinging sleeves.

  She ought to be wearing an apron, Betsy thought frenziedly, but Aunt Dolly did not soil a single ribbon. She stirred with a practised hand, tasted critically, added salt and pepper, pinches of sugar, dashes of vinegar. Betsy watched fascinated, until she found herself between Tib and Aunt Dolly, going upstairs.

  At the top they came out into a room so large and gracious that you would not have expected to find it above a tailor shop. The carpet was of soft green, strewn with flowers. There were gold chairs, as fragile as Aunt Dolly. There were long lace curtains, and vases of red and white glass…Bohemian glass, Tib said. A grand piano stood in one corner, and in another a Christmas tree.

  From a door at the back leading toward the bedrooms, Grosspapa and Grossmama Hornik emerged. Tib embraced them both, and introduced Betsy.

  Grossmama spoke only German but she did not, Betsy found, present the problem which Grosspapa Hornik did. With Grossmama nothing was expected except curtseys and smiles. But Grosspapa prided himself on his almost unintelligible English.

  “How does it happen,” Betsy asked Tib later, “that he doesn’t speak English better? He was born here.”

  “Plenty of people in Milwaukee speak only German,” Tib replied. “You get on better here with only German than with only English, I can tell you that. Grosspapa likes to speak English but he can’t do it with Grossmama, or with most of his customers, so he doesn’t get much practise.”

  Grosspapa Hornik was small but erect, in a glossy cutaway coat. He was as blond as his famed mother had been, but his hair was thin and his graying mustaches turned down. He had a dimple in his chin, a small mouth, and a sweet spontaneous smile which showed even white teeth. There were two deep lines between his brows…a result of concentration over the tailor’s bench…but the look of severity vanished when he smiled.

  Grossmama Hornik was large and stately with dark hair parted in the middle and drawn smoothly back. A fresh apron partly covered her black satin dress which buttoned tightly over an imposing bosom. Presently she and Tib started down stairs.

  “You wait here,” Tib said to Betsy. Aunt Dolly departed to dress, and Betsy was left alone with Grosspapa Hornik.

  “Vat tink you of diese Milvaukee?” he asked Betsy. “Es ist gemütlich, nicht wahr?”

  “I like it very much,” said Betsy politely.

  “I am here sixty year; already,” he said. “Und es ist gut here. Ja, sehr gut. Here is no Kaiser, no Soldaten marching, marching all de time. Kaisers are nicht gut. Der Kaiser Franz Josef und der Kaiser Wilhelm are de same, beide nicht gut. Verstehen Sie?”

  “I verstehe,” said Betsy.

  “Die Grossmama versteht nicht. Weil der Kaiser likes her Stickerei, her embroidery, de Grossmama versteht nicht.” He frowned. “Here in Milvaukee ve have fun, nicht wahr? De people has joy mit his wife und Kinder und his Christmas tree und his music und his beer.”

  “Und his kuchen,” Betsy added.

  “Ja, ja!” Grosspapa Hornik’s sweet smile broke over his face. He patted her shoulder. “De Grossmama,” he said “has made so many kuchens you can’t count dat many yet.”

  “Grosspapa Hornik,” Betsy said, “do you have a picture of your mother?”

  “Was? Was sagen Sie?” Grosspapa Hornik was so startled that he lapsed into German.

  “Your mother,” Betsy repeated. “I want to see a picture of your mother, the beautiful Catherine Wilhelmina.”

  Then indeed,
Grosspapa Hornik smiled. His face shining, he led Betsy to one of the slender-legged tables and picked up a miniature, framed in chased gold. Betsy took it in both hands and stared. Catherine Wilhelmina did indeed look like Tib. It was the fearless expression in her eyes.

  “Oh, thank you, thank you!” Betsy cried, and to be sure he understood she added, “Danke, danke schön.”

  Grosspapa Hornik struck his chest. “Mit me, mein Kind,” he said, “you may speak alvays de English. Only mit de Grossmama müssen Sie Deutsch sprechen.”

  Fred and Hobbie came pounding up the stairs followed by their parents, and Grossmama Hornik and Tib. Uncle Rudy strode in also, and Aunt Dolly’s fiancé arrived, a dapper pleasant-faced young man, called Ferdy.

  Wearing a trailing blue lace dress now, Aunt Dolly tripped across the room to slip her arm possessively into Ferdy’s. There were mingled shouts of “Fröhliche Weihnachten!” and “Merry Christmas!” Packages were opened with cries of “Wunderbar!” and “Sehr schön!” and “Danke, danke sehr!” Again, as at Grosspapa Muller’s, there were presents for Betsy, too.

  They all went down stairs to goose with onion dressing, and potatoes, and gravy, and apple sauce, and various vegetables with piquant flavors. The apple pie was heaped with whipped cream. There was beer for everyone, and coffee.

  Most of the conversation was in German, but Betsy didn’t feel left out. Everyone kept smiling at her, and when they began raising beer mugs and proposing toasts, Uncle Rudy toasted her. Betsy blushed, but she was very pleased.

  They toasted Grosspapa and Grossmama Hornik, and Christmas time, and the President of the United States. But they didn’t toast a single kaiser…not Wilhelm nor Franz Josef.

  Grossmama Hornik said something in German and Tib whispered to Betsy, “She says that if Grosspapa were not such a stubborn Esel we should drink to the dear Kaiser Franz Josef who appreciates her beautiful embroidery.”

  “Those who likes kaisers should go back to the alt country,” Grosspapa Hornik muttered fiercely.