Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  20

  Julia Sees the Great World

  JULIA WAS SINGING, “Ni-po-tu-la-he.” When she had sung it a number of times with a look of critical attention, she opened her copy of La Boheme and began Mimi’s song about being called Mimi although her name was Lucia.

  “‘Mi chiamano Mimi,’” she sang in her own version of Italian. She greatly preferred the Italian text to the English translation.

  “How do you think my voice sounds in that aria?” she asked Betsy, breaking off.

  “Fine!” said Betsy.

  “I wish I could hear Farrar sing it. Then I’d know what I do wrong.”

  “You don’t do anything wrong,” Betsy replied.

  Julia sighed and closed the book. She sat still on the piano stool, her hands in her lap.

  “They’re coming next week, and they’re going, and not one soul who will hear them needs to hear them so much as I do.”

  “You mean the grand opera?”

  Julia nodded in profound dejection. Before Betsy could find a word of comfort, Anna poked her head in from the kitchen.

  “Your pa hasn’t come in yet? I don’t like to complain about such a nice gentleman, but Mr. McCloskey always came home on time the night I made cheese soufflé.”

  “I hear him outside now, Anna,” Betsy answered.

  “Strike the gong for me; will you, lovey? Then he’ll hurry up his washing.”

  Betsy beat a brisk tattoo, and the family gathered expeditiously. It was light at supper time now, and tonight the windows were open, for the day had been unseasonably warm. The soft yet exhilarating air came into the dining room. Julia began to tease her father.

  “I don’t know about your father, but my father brought me up to be on time for meals.”

  “Especially,” chimed in Betsy, “the nights we have cheese soufflé.”

  “Anna’s soufflé,” said Mr. Ray, “actually improves by waiting. And I was busy tonight, Anna. Had to pick something up.”

  “A birthday present for Betsy?”

  “When is Betsy’s birthday?”

  “You know perfectly well. It’s next Thursday.”

  “By George!” said Mr. Ray. “I’d forgotten. That’s bad.” He looked worried. “Anna, do you know how to make a cake?”

  “Do I know how to…what?” Anna stared.

  “Make cake?”

  “Stars in the sky!” she said. “The man’s taken leave of his senses.”

  “I’m only thinking about a birthday cake for Betsy,” said Mr. Ray in an injured tone.

  “Bob,” said Mrs. Ray. “What are you driving at? Anna makes the best cakes in the world, and for that matter there’s nothing wrong with mine.”

  “But you won’t be here.”

  “I won’t be here on Betsy’s birthday?” Mrs. Ray sounded amazed.

  “It’s going to hurry you awfully to get back,” Mr. Ray answered. He reached into his inside pocket.

  Sudden silence fell on the table. A song sparrow perched on a greening shrub outside gave vent to his joy in three notes and a trill which echoed through the dining room.

  In a leisurely gesture Mr. Ray brought out a long envelope. He carefully extracted a pack of papers, sorted them thoughtfully on the tablecloth while Anna and the family gazed entranced. There were railroad tickets. And there were two small packs in rubber bands containing four pink tickets each. And there was that folder Mrs. Poppy had given Julia with pictures of Farrar and Caruso and information about the St. Paul grand opera season.

  Julia grabbed Betsy’s knee under the table.

  Mr. Ray looked the folder over slowly. “Maybe, you can make it home by Thursday night. It will hurry you though.”

  Julia put her napkin down.

  “Papa,” she said in a choked voice.

  “Bob!” said Mrs. Ray. “What have you done?”

  Mr. Ray flipped the tickets thoughtfully.

  “I’m just sending you and Julia up to St. Paul to grand opera. That is, if Betsy and Margaret can keep house and Anna knows how to bake a birthday cake.”

  “Papa!” cried Julia again. This time she jumped up and ran around the table to her father’s chair. She pressed her cheek against his shiny dark hair.

  Mr. Ray said, “Hey! Do you think I need my face washed?” for a tear was trickling down his forehead to his cheek.

  Julia ran to kiss her mother. She kissed Betsy and Margaret and Anna.

  “I’m going to grand opera! I’m going to grand opera!” Tears were running down her cheeks, and she didn’t even seem to know it.

  Mrs. Ray jumped up too to kiss Mr. Ray. And Betsy and Margaret jumped up just to jump up and down. Julia ran into the music room. She sat down at the piano and began to play La Boheme. She didn’t sing. Suddenly the music stopped.

  “Julia, you idiot! Come and finish your supper.”

  No answer.

  “Will you come? Or shall we come and get you?”

  “I’ll come,” said Julia, and she came back, blowing her nose and wiping her eyes. She sat down but she didn’t eat any more supper. She just sat at the table, smiling, a faraway look in her eyes.

  Anna brought in the dessert, but she didn’t go back to the kitchen. As usual on exciting occasions she leaned against the door jamb.

  “How long will they be away?” she asked.

  “Five days, Anna.”

  “Where will we stay?” Mrs. Ray wanted to know.

  “The Frederick Hotel. Reservations are all made.”

  “That’s where Mrs. Poppy is staying,” Julia cried.

  “Farrar and Caruso are staying there, too.”

  “What?” cried Julia jumping up again. “I’m going to be under the same roof with Geraldine Farrar?”

  She went into the parlor, out of sight, and sat down.

  “Bob,” said Mrs. Ray. “Whatever made you think of it?”

  “I’ve got a pretty good think tank.”

  “You’ve got a wonderful think tank. But what about Betsy’s birthday?”

  “You leave that to Anna and Margaret and me. I remember now, I remember perfectly, Anna can make cake.”

  “Stars in the sky!” said Anna, shaking her head, and went back to the kitchen.

  Mrs. Ray and Julia left on the four forty-five train. Julia was missing almost a week of school but Miss Bangeter had agreed that the trip was educational. Mr. Ray hitched up Old Mag and took the whole family to the train. Harry came, too, of course.

  Mrs. Ray and Julia wore their new Easter suits and Merry Widow hats. Mrs. Ray looked excited, and Julia looked as she had looked when she was baptized, and confirmed, and when she sang. She didn’t pay much attention to Harry.

  Mrs. Poppy was there, large, elegant and radiant, and Mr. and Mrs. Home Brandish, and others of Deep Valley’s rich and great. They all had seats reserved in the parlor car. So had Mrs. Ray and Julia.

  “You shouldn’t be doing this, Bob,” Mrs. Ray said. “We can’t afford to be going up to Grand Opera along with all these millionaires.”

  “I’d like to know who will appreciate that music any more than you and Julia.”

  “It isn’t a question of our appreciating it. It’s a question of your being able to afford it.”

  “You leave that to me,” Mr. Ray said.

  Julia came up to her father.

  “Papa,” she said formally, “I want you to know that I’m going to get everything possible out of this trip. I do appreciate all the advantages you’re giving me.”

  “I know you do, my dear,” Mr. Ray replied.

  Betsy squeezed Julia’s hand. “Julia,” she said, “you’re going to see the Great World.”

  “At last!” Julia answered.

  Betsy felt important in her new position as lady of the house. She sat in her mother’s chair and poured the breakfast coffee. She conferred with Anna about meals and told Margaret what dresses and hair ribbons to wear. She asked Phil to dinner, that he might see her in this new dignity, and he was properly admiring.

/>   As her birthday approached Anna suggested that she ask the Crowd to a party but Betsy thought it better not to. Phil still didn’t get on any too well with the Crowd, and he was feeling grumpy anyway because Betsy was working so hard on the Essay Contest.

  “I’ll just have the girls come in for birthday cake in the evening,” she decided. “And Tacy for supper, if that’s all right.”

  “Lovey,” said Anna. “On your sixteenth birthday, anything’s all right!”

  Her sixteenth birthday! It was, Betsy realized, a pretty important occasion! Her father and Margaret awakened her by squeezing a wet sponge in her face which wasn’t a very dignified beginning. And Betsy chased them all over the house until she stumbled on her long night gown, which made it worse. And at breakfast she was given sixteen spanks, with one to grow on; and sixteen more, when Tacy came in. All very childish! But the day, as it wore on, grew up, quickly, just as Betsy was doing, to adult stature.

  Home presents were to wait until her mother’s return but when she came in from school at noon she found two packages.

  One was from Tib, a pair of stockings with tiny blue flowers embroidered on them. “Very Frenchy!” Betsy thought. “They look just like Tib.”

  The second package was from Herbert, a Japanese print showing a big white bird with a long beak and long legs, among some rushes. Betsy liked it…not just because it came from Herbert. It reminded her of the quiet bay, smelling of water lilies, and the faintly rocking boat, in which, last summer, she had started her novel.

  She hurried up to her room and hung it over Uncle Keith’s trunk. If she left it down stairs she would have to show it to Phil. It was more and more inconvenient, having Phil so touchy.

  Before the afternoon was over, however, she forgave him everything.

  He walked home from school with her but he did not mention her birthday and neither did she. She could not help wondering, though, whether he remembered it. She did not ask him in, and later Tacy came and they went up to Betsy’s room where Betsy changed into a white duck skirt and a white silk waist.

  “Just think,” Betsy said. “I’m older than Juliet.”

  “Juliet who?”

  “Juliet out of Romeo and Juliet. She had a big love affair and died before she was sixteen.”

  “Well, you’ve had the love affair,” said Tacy who always said the right thing.

  And with equal rightness at just that moment the doorbell rang.

  The girls hurried down. A florist’s boy stood on the porch with a long green cardboard box. Boxes like that had often come for Julia but never for Betsy before. Betsy and Tacy began to squeal in unison, and Betsy seized the box and unwrapped it while Tacy, Anna, and Margaret hovered near.

  Inside, in a nest of glazed paper, were sixteen pink roses—sixteen perfect pink roses, surely the most beautiful roses that had bloomed since the world began.

  Betsy hugged them, ignoring the thorns. She buried her face in their fragrance. She ran swiftly to telephone Phil while Anna put the roses into a tall vase.

  Her father teased her about them all through the supper, and the girls when they arrived, laden with packages, exclaimed and teased too.

  Irma ran out to the kitchen and got sixteen cubes of sugar and tied them by ribbons from a chandelier.

  “Sweet sixteen!” someone cried.

  “Sweet sixteen and never been kissed!”

  “She gets pink roses, though.”

  It was glorious.

  There was chocolate ice cream, and Anna outdid herself on the cake.

  “What do you think, Mr. Ray?” she asked as she brought it in, candles gleaming, “Can I make cake or can’t I? Stars in the sky! You should have heard Charley when I told him what you said.”

  And before Betsy blew the candles out (at one puff, with a secret wish that Phil might keep on being crazy about her forever), her mother and Julia walked in. They had come from the train in Mr. Thumbler’s hack. Mr. Ray had not met them, for the ecstatic jumbled postal cards and letters which had flooded the mails ever since they reached St. Paul had not made clear just when they would return.

  Both were radiant and even before Julia took off her Merry Widow hat she gave Betsy her present. The box bore the name of a St. Paul jewelry store. The girls crowded around as Betsy opened it.

  “Oh, how beautiful! How lovely!” It was a gold linked bracelet, the first really fine piece Betsy ever had owned. She hung it on her wrist, pushed it up her slender arm.

  She wore it over the wristband of her night gown when she sat on Julia’s bed later hearing the story of the trip. Her hair was wound on Magic Wavers which always made her face look childishly round. Julia was in bed, her dark hair loose around her shining face.

  “It was too unutterably wonderful,” Julia said. “I was longing for you, Bettina. I could hardly stand it that you weren’t there.”

  “It would have been over my head,” Betsy said.

  “Nonsense! You’re much more musical than you let on,” said Julia, who had a gracious habit of investing Betsy with all the qualities she most admired.

  The first opera had been Die Walküre.

  “That was over my head,” Julia said. “I came back to the hotel so blue. I thought, ‘Can I possibly be mistaken? Can it be that I don’t like opera after all?’ But I know now it was because Walküre is so hard. It’s the ultimate, Mrs. Poppy says.”

  “The next was La Boheme! I saw Geraldine Farrar come in with her candle. I heard her sing ‘Mi chiamano Mimi.’ Oh, Bettina how I cried! And I knew then. Cavalleria and Pagliacci only made me surer, and so did Aïda, although that’s pretty hard, too. Not like Wagner, of course. He’s just the ultimate.”

  “I thought Die whatever-it-is was the ultimate?”

  “But that’s Wagner. Don’t you see, darling? I’m going to send for all the scores, and then you’ll understand.”

  “Tell me about seeing Farrar and Caruso around the hotel,” Betsy said, reaching for some bedclothes. The room was growing cold.

  “Well, I saw them. You did Caruso an injustice in your essay on Puget Sound last year. He isn’t really short and fat, and he’s very magnetic. Farrar is adorable. She was wearing a suit, just as simple as could be. And, Bettina, she does look like me!”

  “Does she really?”

  “Yes. Or I look like her. It might be more respectful to put it that way.”

  Julia paused a moment, and when the talk stopped the room was very quiet. For it was late now. Betsy’s sixteenth birthday was a thing of the past.

  “The trip settled one thing for me,” Julia said. “I belong in the Great World. There’s no doubt about that. I’m definitely going to be an opera star.”

  “But, Julia?” asked Betsy. “What about Harry?”

  “Harry?” asked Julia vaguely. “Harry?” She sounded almost as though she were asking, “Who is Harry?”

  “Oh, Harry!” she said, bringing her thoughts back from far spaces. “Harry will get along all right.”

  21

  Dree-eee-eaming Again

  HARRY PROPOSED TO JULIA. He didn’t wait for her to graduate. Perhaps he thought the coolness which developed so rapidly after her return from St. Paul would be checked by laying his heart and his hand at her feet. So he only waited for a moonlight night, and laid them there.

  Julia refused him. Naturally she was gratified by having received a proposal…her first. Coming into the house, after it happened, she went to Betsy’s room and told her all about it, and called her mother who slipped on a kimono and came in to hear, too. Julia described the proposal in detail, but she hardly bothered to mention that she had turned him down. That was taken for granted.

  “Poor Harry!” mourned Betsy. “Did he feel badly, Julia? I hope you were nice to him.”

  “Oh, I was lovely,” said Julia, and went out of the room singing “Mi chiamano, Mimi.”

  “We all know your name is Lucia!” Betsy called after her. “What we want to know is how poor Harry felt.”

  B
ut Julia was already taking the pins out of her hair.

  “I must say,” said Mrs. Ray, going back to bed, “that Papa does a lot of unnecessary worrying.”

  Harry stopped coming to the house but Julia didn’t seem to mind. She was busy just then with Tacy’s lessons. Miss Clarke had asked Tacy again to sing at Rhetoricals and Julia had almost hypnotized her into accepting. Now they were working hard on the song Tacy would sing.

  “There’s a bower of roses,

  By Bendemeer’s stream…”

  Tacy sang it over and over. Sometimes Betsy, in the parlor, heard her break off and say;

  “Julia! I just can’t do it!”

  But Julia would answer, “Nonsense!” and start over again. When Tacy wasn’t thinking about Rhetoricals, she sang it very sweetly.

  On the great afternoon Betsy was as nervous as Tacy. They walked to school together, and Betsy kept tight hold of Tacy’s icy hand. Tacy’s eyes were full of misery. Her cheeks which were usually flushed were so pale that Betsy could see the freckles on them. She was dressed up, of course, in her Sunday blue silk, but she wore her red hair just as always in Grecian braids. No one had been able to persuade Tacy into a pompadour.

  “Cheer up!” said Betsy. “Maybe the school will burn down. I’d touch a match to it if I weren’t so sure that you’re going to sing like an angel.”

  Tacy tried to smile.

  Rhetoricals got under way, with a chorus number. Betsy among the second sopranos kept looking anxiously at Tacy among the first sopranos and then accusingly at Julia. It was all Julia’s fault, but her expression was guiltlessly bright. Katie looked as grim as Betsy. She and Betsy were feeling just the same.

  Alice recited a piece. “Johnny gets a hair cut.” It was humorous and people laughed. But Betsy could not laugh, looking at Tacy’s stony profile; and neither could Katie. Julia laughed and clapped.

  Number by number, inexorably, the program went forward. At last Miss Clarke announced a solo by Tacy Kelly. Betsy twisted her fingers and looked into her lap. She could not watch Tacy going down the aisle, like a sleep walker, white and stiff.

  Julia, who was to play her accompaniment, went forward with her usual assurance. She swung the piano stool up to a proper height, sat down and opened her music. The piano was placed so that she could look at Tacy, and she looked up now, full in her face, and smiled.