Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  It’s true, it’s true,

  I love you so…”

  Betsy was certainly not in love with Phil Brandish. She was well aware of the fact. Yet the words seemed sweetly appropriate. The melody wove in and out in dulcet sadness and their feet followed in glad obedience.

  The melody changed. Mamie’s fingers rippled as Uncle Rudy’s fingers had.

  “And to the music’s chime,

  My heart is beating time…”

  “Exactly,” thought Betsy, swaying.

  A deep voice spoke in her ear. “Wasn’t it clever of me to ask her to play it?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  “She might have played it for the thirteenth waltz, the one you’ll be dancing with that Markham guy.”

  He had noticed that Tony took two dances! He was jealous! This was the glittering mountain peak of the evening.

  Talking breathlessly during the next intermission Betsy began to tell about Uncle Rudy. He interrupted.

  “The one who owns the Steamer?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a bum car!” He scowled. He seemed to be jealous of Uncle Rudy, too. Oh, beautiful! Beautiful!

  Another two-step, another schottische, Tony’s waltz, another two-step, and then Mamie Dodd, still smiling but looking a little weary, began the significant bars of “Home Sweet Home.”

  Phil found Betsy, as boys everywhere were seeking the girls who had brought them to the party. Everybody sang now as they waltzed. Then the girls broke away from their partners and rushed for the dressing room.

  “Wasn’t it fun?” “Wasn’t it divine?” “We’re going to Heinz’s; are you?”

  Out of the babble of voices, and down three steps of stairs! Phil was holding Betsy’s arm. They waited there for Julia and Harry, and when they had joined forces Phil asked casually: “How about the Moorish Café?”

  Betsy’s glance toward Julia was rapturous. Of course they could not go. But to have been asked!

  “It’s really more fun,” said Julia, “to go with the Crowd.”

  It was fun at Heinz’s. All their friends were there consuming banana splits and Deep Valley Specials and Merry Widow Sundaes. Merry Widow Sundaes were the rage. To be sure Phil did not mix well with the Crowd. He took a table for two and devoted himself entirely to Betsy. But that was all right. It was flattering. She hoped Irma noticed it.

  Going home they walked slowly up the Plum Street hill. The night was icily cold under icy stars. And just as Julia had warned her he might, he tried to act spoony. She put her hand into her coat pocket for warmth, and his hand followed.

  Betsy wondered what to say. She wondered with an intense concentration that was almost prayer. She didn’t want to sound priggish; she didn’t want to make him mad. But she had to put a stop to this…quickly!

  In the bottom of her pocket she felt something soft and silky and pulled it out, upsetting his hand.

  “Here’s what you’re looking for. Something to remember me by.”

  “I don’t need anything to remember you by.” He took her hand again. “I’m not going to forget you, and I’m not going to let you forget me.”

  She answered quickly and, for the first and only time that evening, she sounded like Betsy and not Betsye.

  “You might as well know,” she said with desperate honesty. “I don’t hold hands. I just don’t hold hands.”

  He laughed, and let go.

  “What were you going to give me?”

  “This.”

  They stopped beneath a street lamp and he scrutinized the silken scrap.

  “Why, it’s a piece of your daisy dress!” He put it to his nose. “It smells like you too.” He reached inside his overcoat and drew out his purse, opened it, and put the scrap in.

  “But it’s not,” he said, “to remember you by. My only trouble will be to forget you.”

  They climbed the hill dreamily and behind them Julia and Harry were climbing it dreamily, too.

  18

  Philip the Great

  JULIA ALWAYS SLEPT LATE after dances and Mrs. Ray thoroughly approved. Mr. Ray, having country ways, had objected at first. But Mrs. Ray had counted out for him the hours of sleep a growing girl requires, she had stressed Julia’s delicacy and had otherwise talked him down. Now it was taken for granted that although on other mornings the girls must appear for breakfast, fully dressed, on the mornings after late parties they might sleep.

  Betsy, therefore, would have been privileged to sleep late the morning after the Leap Year Dance; but she didn’t. She was awake very early. While the sky was still leaden she heard through the open slot in her storm window the liquid whistle of a bird; a spring bird, she felt sure. It was amazing how that clear, cool whistle, although it came across a snowy world, brought the whole feeling of spring into her heart.

  She could see the snow melting and rushing down the gutters where Margaret and her friends would sail boats. She could see pasque flowers—wind flowers, the children called them—on the soggy green hills, and marigolds goldening the slough. She could see buds swelling, feel the warmth of the sun. It was wonderful to have spring come on and be crazy about someone and have someone crazy about her.

  If he really were! Perhaps he wasn’t? Perhaps he treated all his girls the way he had treated her? Unable to stay in bed with that awful thought gnawing Betsy jumped up. She dressed swiftly and was out of the house before anyone was stirring, except Anna.

  “I’m going up to Tacy’s,” she told Anna. “I’ll have breakfast up there.”

  Climbing toward Hill Street she walked rapidly, her hands thrust into the pockets of her coat. There was a soft south wind. Early as it was, with a copper fish left over from sunrise still hanging in the east, the snow was beginning to melt. She heard another spring bird call and walked faster. She had to talk with Tacy.

  The Kellys, surprised but delighted, made room for her at their big table. Although she had thought she couldn’t possibly eat breakfast and had told Anna she was eating at the Kellys’ only to avoid dispute she found herself eating with a hearty appetite. She and Tacy talked a great deal, too, happily describing the dance. Mrs. Kelly excused Tacy from the dishes, and Betsy and Tacy went for a walk.

  Now Betsy poured out her heart. She told Tacy everything Phil had said and done, even about the scrap of pink silk. She confided more than was her wont, even to Tacy, because she had to have her tormenting fears assuaged.

  “It can’t be that he’s really crazy about me! Not Phil Brandish!”

  “I don’t see why not. Certainly he is!”

  “I think he is…and yet…How could he be?”

  “How could he help but be?”

  “I don’t see how I can go to school Monday,” said Betsy. “I’m so afraid he’ll just look at me casually, as though I were any girl. And yet I can’t bear not to go. I’d die if I had a sore throat or something and had to stay at home.”

  “Don’t get your feet wet in this slush then,” said Tacy, looking down anxiously. But even in the throes of her love affair Betsy had remembered to wear her overshoes, which made them both laugh.

  Even harder than waiting for Monday was doing homework. There was actually homework. No teacher was more sympathetic to young love than was Miss Clarke and yet she had inadvertently assigned for this particular weekend an outline of the French Revolution. The only advantage to this blunder was that it gave Betsy an excuse to refuse to see Tony, Dennie, and Cab. She didn’t enjoy their company today; they had no conception of her feelings.

  “I still can’t see why you asked that big stiff Brandish to the party,” Cab said frankly.

  “Betsy’s going to be a heart-smasher like sister!” Tony teased.

  Invoking the French Revolution, Betsy sent them off home. But it would take more than this remote upheaval to keep them away on Sunday night.

  “After all, Betsy, we don’t come here just to see you,” said Tony. “We like your father, too, you know.”

  “His sandwiches, you mean. I c
ertainly do know!” Betsy thought.

  On Sunday night there was the usual Crowd around. Betsy kept listening for the telephone. When Phil didn’t call, she was almost sure it meant that she wasn’t important to him. And yet in her heart she felt sure that she was.

  Torn by these confused and contradictory thoughts she was up early on Monday. She dressed with the greatest care, wearing a crisp openwork waist over a pale green under-waist, and her most becoming ten-gored skirt. Her cheeks were so red that her father asked her at breakfast whether she had a fever. He actually looked down her throat. But there were no white spots. She was allowed to go to school.

  As soon as she saw Phil she knew that everything was all right. She sensed again that—incomprehensible, astounding as it was—he felt about her as Julia’s beaus felt about Julia. She even felt sure that he, too, had been wracked with doubts and fears over Saturday and Sunday. The first glances from both of them were questioning, urgent. They were answered by smiles; and relief poured over Betsy like honey.

  During the fifth period he wrote her a note. “You haven’t told me what that dream was.” This was his first reference to the dream.

  Betsy wrote back, “I didn’t have a chance over Sunday.”

  He smiled and scribbled rapidly, “May I see you tonight?”

  Fearfully Betsy answered, “It’s a school night.”

  Again he wrote rapidly. “May I walk home from school with you, then?”

  Betsy answered yes.

  Acting as intermediary between them was that same nice, freckle-faced Hazel Smith who was treasurer of the class. She sat at a strategic point between Betsy’s aisle and Phil’s. After passing Phil’s last note to Betsy, she wrote one herself.

  “That Leap Year Dance was a good idea. Yes? No? Yes?”

  Betsy smiled broadly and answered, “Very!!!”

  Phil walked home from school with her and just to be contrary she didn’t ask him in. They stood on the steps talking until it grew so late that the melted snow began to freeze in the late afternoon chill. Inside the house Julia was singing from La Boheme, that song in which Mimi, the little seamstress, whose name was Lucia, tells how the flowers she embroidered transported her out into flowery meadows. Betsy felt transported now into a fragrant flowery world.

  Tony arrived, said “hello,” and went inside. Cab and Dennie arrived and walked past with jeering remarks, trying to act as though they hadn’t been headed for the Ray house. When Betsy went in, absent and dreamy, her mother reproved her gently.

  “I really would prefer, Betsy, to have you ask your friends inside. Phil must have felt as though he wasn’t welcome, and of course, he is very welcome. All your friends are.”

  “How do you like him, Mamma?” Betsy asked eagerly.

  “He has beautiful manners.”

  “Hasn’t he?” Betsy answered rapturously. She hugged her mother and floated upstairs.

  After that he walked home from school with her every day and on Friday night he took her to the Majestic. Saturday night Betsy took him to a party at Irma’s. Sunday night he came for lunch and after that it was Phil, Phil, Phil all the time around the Ray house, just as it was Harry, Harry, Harry.

  Phil separated her from the Crowd. It was hard to say just why. Everyone was polite to him; he was polite to everyone else. Perhaps it was because Betsy acted differently when he was around. Cab said she put on airs, acted la de da. Certainly she didn’t sing so wholeheartedly around the piano and when the rugs were rolled up she danced mostly with Phil.

  Phil was flatteringly inclined to be jealous. One afternoon she went for a walk with Tacy on the hills. They picked pasque flowers, found skunk cabbage in the woods, saw a chipmunk pale from its winter hibernation. Betsy talked about Phil all the time but, of course, Phil didn’t know that. He was annoyed with her for having gone.

  And he didn’t like her correspondence with Herbert. Ever since the Humphreys moved away, Herbert and Betsy had corresponded ardently. They still called each other C F, meaning Confidential Friend, and Herbert told Betsy all about his affairs of the heart. Of course Phil didn’t know that either, and when he and Betsy, coming in from school, found these thick missives waiting, he was plainly put out.

  But more, much more than Tacy or the far-removed Herbert, he resented Cab and Tony. Gradually the boys in the Crowd almost stopped dropping in.

  Not but what their presence wasn’t often felt! Sometimes when Betsy and Phil sat by the fire there were mock romantic serenades under the window. Once they made fudge and put it out to cool. When they went to bring it in, it was gone, and Betsy saw footsteps in the snow.

  Those long fireside conversations and all their conversations everywhere dealt with two subjects: Phil and his car.

  Betsy dug out of her memory something Julia had said last year. “That reforming line is one of the oldest in the world, and one of the best.” Betsy started reforming Phil. He smoked. He smoked a pipe. He was the only boy in Betsy’s circle who smoked, except behind the barn. It was a wonderful evening when Phil gave his pipe to Betsy. She hung it on a ribbon over her dressing table.

  The second and even more successful topic was the auto. He was counting the moments until he could get it out of storage. Melting snow meant pasque flowers to Betsy. But to Phil it brought nearer the joyful moment when he could bring out his car. He described it to Betsy in the most technical detail, and she paid devout attention.

  The warm weather continued and one never to be forgotten day he took the Buick out of storage. He could hardly wait to bring it, polished so you could see your face in its red sides, brass work gleaming, up to the Rays’ front door. It was the proudest moment of the spring when Betsy walked down the steps and was helped by Phil into the high front seat.

  He went around in front to crank it. All the neighborhood children looked on. After considerable rushing from the crank to the seat to work the throttle he climbed in beside her. They started off, and the wind created by the rapid motion blew her hat so that she had to cling to it with both excited hands.

  “I must buy myself an automobile veil,” she said. “That is,” she added with a sidelong glance, “if I’m going to have very many of these wonderful rides.”

  “Don’t buy it,” Phil said, and her heart stood still in dismay. But it soared again when he continued, “I’ve been wanting to bring you a present. You won’t let me bring candy, now it’s Lent. What about an automobile veil?”

  “Mamma wouldn’t let me accept it,” Betsy laughed. “She’s strict about things like that. It’s sweet of you to think of it, though.” (“I’ll buy myself one tomorrow, a green one,” she thought.)

  The ride was very bumpy for the roads were still frozen into great deep ruts, and more than once Phil had to get out and do things with wrenches and hammers. But when they were riding they went at a thrilling twenty miles an hour. She half closed her eyes and a blurred enchanted world rushed past. Now and then Phil squeezed a rubber bulb. The deep horn sounded.

  “Get out of the way! We’re coming! Phil and Betsy!”

  They did not ride again for a while. The unseasonably warm spell ended. Flakes as big as pieces of paper whirled in the wind; and snow dressed the world in white once more.

  But March could not be obnoxious enough to trouble Betsy this year.

  This was entirely different from being in love with Tony. Tony hadn’t been in love with her. That affair had consisted mainly of her own wistful yearnings. Phil Brandish—it was still unbelievable—felt now as she had felt then. The ecstatic feeling was mutual, or almost so. Deep inside, Betsy admitted that there was something lacking in her own emotions.

  But Phil was big and handsome; he was rich and he was a junior. He was very exciting.

  An almost equally great excitement came from her new prestige. The girls in the Crowd were respectful about this affair. And there was no need now for Betsy to worry about who would take her to anything. Phil asked her the moment any sort of party or entertainment was rumored.

>   The sophomore boys, returning the Leap Year compliment, gave another dance in Schiller Hall. Betsy was almost the first girl invited. And the second dance was almost as wonderful as the first one. Again Phil asked Mamie Dodd to play “The Merry Widow Waltz.”

  It was understood now that they would be together on Friday nights and Saturday nights, and that he would come to Sunday night lunch, and although they saw each other so often they exchanged notes every day in school via Hazel Smith at the fifth period.

  Betsy slaved over these notes which were all signed significantly, “Betsye.” She wrote and rewrote them when she should have been doing geometry, and copied them carefully on pale green stationery, heavy with the Jockey Club scent. Phil’s notes were mere untidy scribbles; he didn’t like to write. But the sight of his handwriting on a paper torn from a notebook made Betsy’s heart palpitate. She kept these notes in her handkerchief box.

  Betsy slaved over her notes, her hair, her clothes, her fingernails. Although Phil was so enchanted by her, she had a feeling that it couldn’t last. She didn’t dare just be herself. The common ordinary Betsy that Cab and Dennie and Tony all liked would not, she felt, be sufficient for Phil Brandish. She couldn’t imagine him liking her with her hair uncurled or when she was having a riotously good time.

  In high school they had formed a Girls Debating Club. Carney was excited about it and anxious for Betsy to join. But Betsy thought debating sounded intellectual, unfeminine. She thought Phil wouldn’t like it. She said no.

  Miss Clarke asked her and Tacy to sing the Cat Duet at Rhetoricals, as they had sung it every year since they were in sixth grade. Betsy couldn’t imagine singing the Cat Duet in front of Phil. She and Tacy always clowned through the Cat Duet. Each one tried to make her yowls worse than the other one’s yowls. She simply couldn’t do it. Again she said no.

  When in mid-March Miss Clarke asked her to be the sophomore representative in the Essay Contest, Betsy had a feeling of being actually torn. The Essay Contest was like debating. It wouldn’t seem important to Phil. Her being chosen would not raise her in his estimation. It might even lower her. And it would take time! For if she went into the Essay Contest this year she was resolved to do a good job. It would mean hours spent in the library, away from Phil, and in those hours some other girl might very well take him away from her. Irma, for example. Betsy had a deep-down fear of Irma.