“What is it, Papa?” Margaret asked eagerly.
“We’ll put off the trip. But just so your mother won’t think I’m sorry she hooked me twenty-one years ago today, here’s what I’m going to do.”
“What?” Everyone waited radiantly.
“Take her out to supper tonight. Take her down to the Melborn Hotel. Poppy has put in a new café. The Moorish Café, he calls it. Oriental decorations, lights so low you can hardly see your nose, an orchestra making hoochy koochy music. All the fellows are taking their best girls there, and I’m going to take mine…tonight!”
“Bob!” cried Mrs. Ray. “How dear of you!” She tried not to show that she was disappointed because their daughters weren’t included.
Of the three girls, Julia rallied first.
“That’s a lovely snoggestion. It’s the proper thing for a bride and groom to go off all alone.”
“Um-hum,” said Betsy and Margaret.
“And the new café is wonderful. Just like the Twin Cities, Mrs. Poppy says. Maybe Anna will make us beef birds,” added Julia, glancing at Margaret who was especially fond of beef birds.
“But Anna has the evening off,” objected Mr. Ray.
Anna, replenishing popovers, spoke hastily. “Na, I’ll stay home. It does that Charley good to get left once in a while. Margaret and I’ll have fun making the beef birds. Won’t we, Margaret?”
“No,” said Mr. Ray. “It wouldn’t be right to disappoint Charley. I don’t like to see anybody disappointed.” He seemed not to notice the crestfallen faces around him.
“Well, I can’t make beef birds, but I can make pancakes…Margaret can help flop them,” Julia volunteered.
“Pancakes and maple syrup! You won’t have anything that good at the Moorish Café.” For Margaret’s benefit, Betsy smacked her lips in simulated delight.
“I like pancakes,” said Margaret sitting very straight. She even smiled, although glassily.
Mrs. Ray looked troubled, but she wanted Mr. Ray to know that she was appreciative so she said gaily, “I’m going to dress up. I’ll wear my new tan satin dress. And you have to put on your dress suit, Bob Ray, whether you want to or not.”
“It isn’t back from the dry cleaners, after Julia’s party.”
“Yes it is. It came yesterday.”
“But I haven’t a clean collar.”
“You have plenty of clean collars.”
“I’ve lost my studs!” Mr. Ray wailed.
He always pretended that he didn’t like to put on his dress suit. It was a family joke, and Margaret’s eyes began to shine.
“Your studs are right in my jewel case where they always are,” Mrs. Ray scolded. “If we’re going to the Moorish Café, we’re going to do it right.”
“Go late, Mamma,” urged Julia, laughing. “Twin City people eat very late, Mrs. Poppy says.”
“Of course we’ll go late. Seven o’clock.”
“I can’t wait until seven o’clock for my supper,” Mr. Ray groaned.
“Not supper. Dinner, Dinner!”
All the girls were laughing now.
“See how she picks on me, Anna?” Mr. Ray asked. “Don’t you think I’m a wonder to have stood it for twenty-one years?” He went around the table, kissing. And when he came to Mrs. Ray he kissed her twice. “I’m even willing to stand it for twenty-one more,” he said.
Julia, Betsy and Margaret in waterproof coats and rubbers braved the storm to go to school. They swam there and back, they reported at noon.
By late afternoon it had cleared a little. There were layers of turquoise between the gray clouds along the western sky.
“We could almost have gone to the lake. But I’m glad we didn’t. Because Mamma is going to the Moorish Café,” Margaret said.
“Let’s start to make our pancakes, shall we?” Betsy asked. Anna had left. The kitchen was clean and empty.
“Wait until after we’re gone,” Mr. Ray suggested. “Mamma will need you to hook her dress up, probably. And Julia always ties my tie.”
“All right. We’ll see you off in style before we eat,” said Julia.
So Mr. Ray went to the bathroom to shave, and the girls went to help their mother dress.
She was sitting at her dressing table, wearing a lacy corset cover and a bell-shaped taffeta petticoat, bright green. Her red hair was dressed in its high pompadour. She was powdered, and had darkened her reddish brows with the charred end of a match. She looked pretty, but she gazed at the mirror critically.
“I wish, I wish ladies could wear rouge, like actresses do,” she said.
Betsy laughed, but Julia was sympathetic. “I like your face pale, Mamma. Your hair is so red, your eyes so blue. Just remember to bite your lips going into the Moorish Café.”
She helped her mother into the tan satin dress, which was heavy with buckram lining, elaborate with high boned collar, lace-covered yoke, soutache braid on sleeves and flowing skirts. While Betsy hooked it, Julia went off to tie her father’s tie, and Margaret sprinkled violet perfume on a fine embroidered handkerchief. Mrs. Ray was buttoning white kid gloves, when Mr. Ray came in.
Mr. Ray looked handsome in his dress suit. In spite of his jokes he really liked to wear it. He was tall and very erect; he almost bent backwards, in fact. He was beginning to get stout around his middle. But it only made him look more dignified, Mrs. Ray said. His black hair lay flat and shining on his head. He had a big nose, fresh cheeks, and hazel eyes which were full of mischief now.
“Come on. Hurry up,” he said as Mrs. Ray stroked down the fingers of her gloves.
“Why, Bob! It’s only six o’clock.”
“I know. But I want to go for a ride before dinner, a long romantic ride in the twilight. Haven’t you any sentiment?”
“I have plenty of sentiment,” said Mrs. Ray and kissed him.
She turned for his inspection gaily. Mr. Ray shook his head at his daughters.
“Not one of you girls,” he said, “is as good-looking as your mother.”
Then he put on his top coat and got his silk hat and his gold-headed cane. He held Mrs. Ray’s wrap and they all went downstairs.
Betsy whispered to Margaret who ran into the kitchen and returned with one fist clenched.
“Good-by, darlings!” Mrs. Ray bestowed fragrant rustling kisses.
“Good-by! Have a good time.”
“It’s so nice for you two to go off alone,” said Julia, and her father turned and winked at her.
“Now!” Betsy hissed in Margaret’s ear.
Margaret ran through the doorway and threw a handful of rice.
“Margaret!” “You little rascal!” Mr. and Mrs. Ray shouted and dodged. The girls laughed and Julia banged the door and leaned against it.
“Bettina! Margaret! I know the most wonderful secret.”
“What?”
“Are they out of sight?”
“Not yet. They’re climbing into the surrey.”
“Well, wait! I won’t tell ’til they’re gone.”
After a breathless moment the sound of Old Mag’s clopping hoofs died out down the street.
“It’s a good thing I can act,” said Julia then. “I’ve known for the last ten minutes. Ever since I went to fix Papa’s tie.”
“Known what?”
“We’re going to the Moorish Café.”
“We’re going?”
“Me, too?” asked Margaret stupefied.
“Yes, baby. You, too. Mr. Thumbler’s hack is calling for us at a quarter to seven. We’re going to surprise Mamma. It’s Papa’s idea.”
Betsy leaped and squealed. Margaret was sedate as always, but her eyes almost swallowed her face. Julia flung her arms around them both.
“We’ve got to hurry! For once I can’t be late. Papa wants us sitting at the table when he brings Mamma in, and in our very best dresses.”
“I can button everything except the middle button,” Margaret said, and they made a rush for the stairs.
Julia was ready
last, of course. But before beginning on herself she had dressed Betsy’s pompadour and tied Margaret’s hair ribbon into sculptured beauty. They kept Mr. Thumbler waiting only five minutes.
In the hack Margaret sat erect and tense. Autumn fog circled the street lamps. Lighted parlors looked cozy in the dusk.
“Most people are doing their dishes. We’re going to the Moorish Café,” Margaret said.
Julia squeezed her hand. “Aren’t we glad we’re us?”
“If we weren’t us, who would we be?”
“Let’s see,” said Betsy. “If Mamma had married somebody else, we’d be just half ourselves.”
“And if Papa had married someone else, too, there’d be another half of us goodness knows where.”
“How exciting! I could pass myself on the street.”
“Half of yourself could say to the other half, ‘Miss Ray, your petticoat hangs.’”
Julia and Betsy were having fun but Margaret said, “Oh, dear!”
“Don’t worry!” said Julia. “It couldn’t possibly have happened. Papa and Mamma were meant for each other, and we were meant for them.”
Mr. Thumbler deposited them grandly at the Melborn’s limestone entrance, and Julia led the way inside. The Café was on the ground floor. One could enter it from the street or from the lobby. Mr. Ray had told Julia to enter from the lobby; Mr. Poppy would be waiting for them. And he was. Three hundred pounds of suave sophistication.
“Good evening, Mr. Poppy. Here are the three bears,” Julia said breezily. She was as poised as though she came to the Moorish Café every day. Betsy was fervently admiring. She assumed her Ethel Barrymore droop, and attempted a bored smile, but her own smile kept coming through, excited and eager.
“Three bears indeed!” said Mr. Poppy. “Three beautiful young ladies! You’re coming up to the apartment after dinner, Mamma says.” He always called Mrs. Poppy, “Mamma.”
Taking Margaret’s hand he led them into the Moorish Café.
Music swam out to greet them, seductive and soft. The long narrow room was mysteriously dim, lighted only by small brass lamps studded with red and green and purple glass. When she grew accustomed to this colored dusk, Betsy saw rich rugs and hangings, a turbaned orchestra.
They came to a table for five bearing a sign Reserved, and a large tissue-wrapped package.
“I’ve had my instructions,” Mr. Poppy said, and placed the three girls in a row facing the door which led to the street.
They were barely seated when the door opened. Mrs. Ray, looking tall and lovely, her red head rising above her velvet wrap, came in, followed by Mr. Ray. He gave his hat, coat, and stick to a girl who came forward to get them, and Mrs. Ray looked around graciously. She didn’t look to see anything. She looked as a woman looks who knows she is being inspected…head high, face proud and smiling.
Julia, Betsy and Margaret squeezed hands under the table.
“Table for two, sir?”
“It’s ordered. Ray is the name.”
The oriental waiter almost scampered down the room.
He paused before the three girls but for an instant Mrs. Ray did not even glance down. Then she looked to see what was causing the delay, and her company expression melted into amazement and delight.
“Girls! Girls! What are you doing here?”
“Papa invited us.” Margaret was almost bursting.
“Happy anniversary, Mamma!”
“Congratulations, Mamma!”
Mrs. Ray turned to Mr. Ray who smiled broadly.
“Bob,” she said, “this is perfect! Absolutely perfect!”
And it was!
The Moorish Café was even more Twin Cityish than Mrs. Poppy had said. The music was very hoochy koochy, and for dinner they had oyster cocktails, and then soup, and then fish, and then turkey, and then salad, and then dessert…pie, ice cream or Delmonico pudding. The coffee came in small long-handled brass pots.
“Just like they have in Little Syria,” Betsy cried.
Everyone had coffee, dark and very sweet, in cups the size of thimbles.
Mrs. Ray opened the tissue-wrapped package. It held a dish, gold-rimmed, hand-painted with sprays of green leaves and reddish colored berries.
“I thought it looked like October,” Mr. Ray said.
The orchestra stopped its hoochy koochy music, and played “O Promise Me,” which Julia had sung at the Mock Wedding. All the other diners smiled at the Rays, and Margaret sat straight and acted very dignified, as though she couldn’t imagine why they were smiling.
Even when the music ended the party wasn’t over, for the family went up in the elevator to the Poppys’ apartment overlooking the river. In her pink and gold parlor, large, pink and gold Mrs. Poppy passed candy and grape juice and cigars and played while Julia sang.
Standing like Geraldine Farrar in the picture…although she lacked the glittering train…Julia trilled through a waltz song by Arditi. Mr. Ray listened with crossed legs, looking grave. He didn’t understand much about music. Mrs. Ray looked stern, as she always did when her children performed. Betsy thought about the Moorish Café, and Margaret tried not to act sleepy.
Mrs. Poppy put her arm around Julia.
“You have a very talented little girl,” she said. “I wish she could hear some grand opera. She’s my star pupil—absolutely.”
And that was a nice thing for parents to hear on a wedding anniversary.
Leaving the Poppys, they went down in the elevator to the big, warm, brightly lighted lobby.
“You wait here,” Mr. Ray said. “I’ll go out and bring around Old Mag….”
He was interrupted by Margaret, still erect although very drowsy now.
“Oh, Papa! I almost forgot.”
“What, dear?”
From the pocket of her dress Margaret drew out a dollar and handed it to him.
“What’s this?” asked Mr. Ray looking mystified.
“It’s yours,” said Margaret, trying not to yawn. “You forgot and left it on the table down in the Moorish Café. I saw it just as we were leaving, I’ve been meaning to give it to you.”
“Oh, thank you, Button,” Mr. Ray said.
His lips twitched a little, and Mrs. Ray and Julia smiled at each other, but Betsy didn’t see anything funny in Papa forgetting a dollar and Margaret rescuing it.
“Wasn’t that killing about Margaret?” asked Julia at home, undressing while Betsy wound her hair on Magic Wavers.
“What about Margaret?”
“Her picking up the tip.”
“Tip?”
“The tip Papa left for the waiter.”
“Oh…oh…yes, of course. Perfectly killing,” said Betsy. She laughed heartily but her expression was puzzled. A tip! A tip! What, she wondered, was a tip?
7
The Man of Mystery
WINONA DID NOT ALLOW Betsy to forget that she was going to ask Joe Willard into the Crowd.
“When are you going to do it?” she prodded.
“Whenever I give a party.”
“Well, when are you going to give one?”
“Not until Papa forgets the fifty-four I got in my geometry test. Joe Willard will keep. Don’t worry.”
Yet she herself felt a little worried, and she couldn’t see why. It was certainly all right to invite Joe into the Crowd. It was the grandest Crowd in school and he belonged in it. She looked for a chance to speak with him alone but this was not easy to find.
He was elusive around school. He went from one class to another as though shot from a gun. If a girl wanted to talk to him she had to stop him; he never waylaid anyone. He swung through the halls confidently, a little brashly, and he was fun in class. He liked to say things that would startle people…teachers or pupils. At such times he had an infectious grin which swept the group into his mirthful mood.
He was popular, but very little known.
“He’s practically a Man of Mystery,” Betsy thought. She began to look for him outside of school.
; Every Saturday now there was a football game. Some were played in neighboring towns, and Julia’s friends made up parties and went off on the train with the team, and Stewie, the coach. Betsy’s crowd was content to meet the train when it returned with the conquering or defeated heroes.
But they attended the home games in a body. Wearing streamers of maroon and gold, they drove out behind Old Mag or Dandy, who waited patiently on the outskirts of the field.
This year there was an auto at the games, Phil Brandish’s bright red auto. When they saw it, Betsy and Tacy used to hum, “Dreaming, Dreaming.” But Phil Brandish didn’t know they were on earth. Big, obstreperous, noisy, he was usually with a crowd of boys. Once he brought a senior girl, alone. They sat in the auto with a big box of candy, watching the game from afar.
“The big stiff ought to go out for football,” Cab said. “He doesn’t care for a thing but that darn auto, takes it to pieces and puts it together again and crawls underneath it and lies there by the hour.”
Cab himself was still on the scrub team, but he practised ardently.
It was the custom for spectators to watch the games from the sidelines, walking up and down the field to follow the play. They saw it as it is never seen from grandstands…the mud on the heroes’ faces, the tears in the eyes of the boy sent out of the game, the grim concentration of the quarterback, calling signals hoarsely, the bottle of arnica, gore now and then.
Football was still puzzling to Betsy, but she enjoyed the excitement, the crisp air, the trees on the far horizon which, as the season progressed, changed from ruddy gold to russet and dry brown.
Betsy looked for Joe, but she never saw him. He worked every Saturday, football or no football. She remarked on this to Cab.
“Needs the filthy lucre, I suppose,” Cab replied. “I know he likes football. Sometimes when we practise late, he drops by the field. Stewie lets him take a fling, and he’s good. Darned good. Stewie’d give a lot to have him on the team. He told him so, the other night, and I thought Joe would be pleased. But he acted sort of superior about it. He said, ‘Oh, I’ll play in college!’ And got away as quickly as he could.”
“College!” said Betsy. “He’s going to college!”
Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself Page 26
