Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  And yet there was something in her stubborn nature which would not let her turn the Essay Contest down.

  “What is the subject this year?” she asked.

  “James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railroad,” Miss Clarke replied.

  “James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railroad!” Could anything be more remote from spring and the red auto?

  “Do you happen to know…who the Philomathians have chosen? I suppose it’s Joe.”

  “Yes. And they seem very confident about the sophomore points. But I am equally confident, if you will represent the Zetamathians, Betsy.”

  “Of course I will,” Betsy replied quickly.

  Everyone was surprised to hear that she was going out for the Essay Contest. At home they were surprised.

  “I’d rather you didn’t do it, Betsy, unless you can do it justice,” her father said.

  The Crowd was surprised.

  “What will Phil do?” “Who’s going to console Phil?” “Look out for Irma!”

  Phil was surprised.

  “What do you want to do that for?” he grumbled. “It’s just getting to be good autoing weather.”

  “I’ll take books on James J. Hill along, read them while you patch the tires,” she said. But Phil didn’t think that was funny.

  “I don’t have to patch tires as much as you think,” he answered sulkily.

  Joe Willard was surprised. He actually stopped to speak to her on the way out of class. She was wearing the usual green bow at her collar, a green pin in her pompadour, and was scented with Jockey Club perfume.

  He looked mischievous, his blue eyes were shining.

  “I hear,” he said, “that we’re competing again. I didn’t know you knew anything about railroads. I thought you specialized on autos.”

  Betsy blushed.

  Troubled, she sought out Julia, but before she managed to make her worries known Julia began confidences of her own. Surprisingly enough they didn’t deal with Harry’s love, nor her father’s objections, nor the rapidly impending proposal. They didn’t deal with Harry at all. It came to Betsy suddenly that Julia hadn’t been talking about Harry quite so much lately.

  She was obsessed with a longing to go to St. Paul for grand opera.

  “It’s perfectly fantastic, I know,” she said, low-voiced. “There isn’t a chance in the world.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too expensive! I couldn’t go alone. There’d be railroad fare and hotel bills, besides the opera tickets for both Mamma and me.” It was indeed a daring wish. Deep Valley’s rich and great went to the Twin Cities for shopping, concerts and plays. But the Rays were neither rich nor great. Mr. Ray’s shoe store didn’t yield an income of a size to support grand opera. Besides, Betsy had recently had her expensive trip.

  “Does Papa know you want to go?” asked Betsy.

  “No, and even Mamma doesn’t realize that I’ve thought of it seriously. It would never even enter Papa’s head to send me. But, oh, how I’m longing to go!”

  She took out the folder Mrs. Poppy had given her. Enrico Caruso was there in a clown suit, Geraldme Farrar in a ruffled dress and a poke bonnet as Mimi in La Boheme.

  “‘Mi chiamano Mimi,’” hummed Julia gazing at her.

  “Don’t feel badly,” Betsy said, deciding to postpone her confidences. “They aren’t coming until the end of April. Lots of things can happen in a month.” This proved to be absolutely true.

  19

  April Weather

  LOTS OF THINGS CAN HAPPEN in a month, especially if the month is April. Never, it seemed to Betsy, had April been so full of moods. She was especially conscious of them because of Phil who followed Nature’s mutations as a fish hawk follows the ripples in a blue Minnesota lake. This was because of the auto, of course. He wanted the weather to settle and the roads to dry so that the Buick could come out and stay out.

  But it rained and it snowed. The sun emerged and the snow melted, but it promptly rained and snowed again, sometimes with hail for good measure. Each time, however, there was a little progress. The bushes greened over; the buds on the maples burst open; and Margaret came down from the hills with small tight bouquets of blood-roots and Dutchman’s breeches and pinkish lavender hepaticas.

  Slowly the world was getting dressed for spring, and so were the girls in the Crowd. Talk was all of new suits and hats, especially hats. The Merry Widow hat had made its appearance this spring. It was as devastating as the Waltz.

  Merry Widow hats were sailors, very wide, the wider the better.

  “In New York,” Julia said, “ladies get stuck in the trolley car doors.”

  Miss Mix was at the Ray house making Easter out-fits and her visit was as confusing as the weather. The house was filled with the hum of the sewing machine. There were fittings and conferences, pins in the mouth, bright scraps and snarls of thread, touchy tempers and company meals. Everyone was heartily glad to see her go although she left lovely things behind.

  For Betsy it was a suit, her first suit, blue serge piped with green. Her Merry Widow hat was blue, extravagantly wide, trimmed with green foliage and ribbon. Betsy doted on that outfit. Of course, she was saving it for Easter and this gave her an interest in the weather almost as acute as Phil’s. What if Easter should be rainy? A rainy day, always a minor tragedy because it straightened out her curls, would be a major tragedy this year, when she had her first suit and a Merry Widow hat.

  She needed to look pretty for Phil’s moods were Aprilish, too; and April at its worst, right now. Betsy was starting work on the Essay Contest, and he didn’t like it at all. She had bought a new notebook and written on the first page, “James J. Hill and the Great Northern Railroad.” Armed with that, and plenty of sharp pencils, she had set off for the library. She would have been exhilarated if it weren’t for Phil.

  Books dealing with the assigned subject did not circulate. Miss Sparrow had assembled them on a special shelf in back of the stalls, near a table set apart for the contestants. There were eight of these…two freshmen, two sophomores, two juniors, and two seniors. One of each pair was a Philomathian, the other a Zetamathian. The essays were graded on the point system, and the society whose team piled up the most points won.

  Sometimes the table was almost empty; sometimes all eight were working busily at once. There was a good feeling of respect at that table, and a pleasant mingling of camaraderie and rivalry. Betsy enjoyed her sojourns there in spite of her nagging worry.

  Joe Willard came only in the late afternoon or evening. He was friendlier to Betsy now. He looked up and smiled from under his thick light brows when she came in and when she left. But he didn’t, this year, ask to walk home with her.

  “And just as well,” Betsy thought, although she admitted that she would have been pleased. Phil wouldn’t have been pleased. He was more and more inclined to be jealous and Betsy ceased to find it flattering.

  The approach of Easter, as usual, brought Tom home. He was Betsy’s oldest friend among the boys. Not knowing how Phil had changed the atmosphere of the Ray house, Tom came hurrying up the day of his arrival.

  “Grandma’s making sour cream cake,” he said. “The kind with cinnamon in it, and she said I could bring you back to supper.”

  “Wonderful!” Betsy cried. “Maybe she’ll tell us about the Indian massacre again.”

  “She’s sure to,” Tom replied.

  She did, and Betsy had a very enjoyable evening. But when she told Phil about it next day he began to act stiff and unnatural. At first Betsy could not make cut what was wrong. It was too, too ridiculous to be jealous of Tom. Then she remembered that he and Tom did not like one another because of Cox. Something, she realized, would have to be done about that.

  “You and Tom will just have to be friends,” she said with what she hoped was appealing frankness. “Our families get together, you know. He brings his violin to play with Julia. Why, during his vacations, he almost lives at our house.”

  “Just don’t expect
me to come when he’s here,” Phil relied.

  “But Phil, you wouldn’t be coming at all.”

  “All right, I won’t be coming at all.”

  Betsy was appalled. She couldn’t possibly tell Tom to stay away. The whole family would protest. And as for having Phil stay away…why, Easter was almost here. What would be the fun of a new suit and a Merry Widow hat if she had a quarrel with Phil?

  They were coming, however, perilously near to a quarrel. He left, saying coldly that she might let him know whether or not he would have to run into Slade. Betsy didn’t telephone him and he didn’t telephone her. The next day, the last before Easter vacation, the fifth period came and went without a note. Hazel Smith turned around in her seat. She raised her eyebrows at Betsy and gesticulated wildly. Betsy tried to smile but the result was feeble. Another evening passed and Phil did not ’phone. She cried herself to sleep.

  Betsy was stubborn, but she wasn’t so stubborn that she wouldn’t have patched up the quarrel if she could have seen a way to do it. She really couldn’t see one. It was absurd for Phil to expect her to bar Tom from the house.

  “Tom’s of no romantic interest to me!” she cried in her thoughts. “Never has been! Never will be!” It was all too utterly silly.

  But silly or not she came down stairs Saturday morning with red eyes.

  The family had noticed, of course, that Phil hadn’t ’phoned or come to the house for several days. Everybody tactfully refrained from mentioning him.

  Mrs. Ray and Julia went downtown to shop for accessories for the new Easter suits…gloves, jabots, and so on. Anna was baking a cake, and Betsy, remembering all the precepts about doing something kind for someone else when you’re feeling down in the mouth, offered to help Margaret dye Easter eggs.

  They both put on kitchen aprons, and Betsy twisted her hair in a tight knot out of the way. Unhappy as she was, she could not help enjoying the business of dyeing eggs. She had always loved it. The rich glowing colors brought back a procession of happy childhood Easters. She was telling Margaret gaily about how she and Tacy used to save their Easter dyes and dye sand and have sand stores, when the front door bell rang.

  Anna was folding in egg whites. Margaret’s hands were dripping purple. Betsy pushed back a wisp of hair and rushed through the music room to answer the door herself. On the porch stood Phil looking his handsomest and most immaculate, and he was not alone. Beside him was a slight graceful girl, beautifully and expensively dressed in a gray suit with a big fluffy fur and a Merry Widow hat so wide that it made the one Betsy cherished in a box upstairs look positively narrow.

  She was small where Phil was large, but they had the same heavily fringed, yellow-brown eyes, the same olive skin, the same somewhat sullen faces. Betsy almost collapsed in a heap, for she knew that this was Phil’s twin sister, Phyllis.

  Betsy had heard that when you are drowning one moment may seem like a lifetime. That was the kind of a moment she experienced now. Beyond Philip the Great, and his even greater sister, she saw the red auto and beyond that the greening hill with the German Catholic College on the top. Behind her she heard Margaret happily calling, “Betsy, come and see! It’s the most bee-utiful purple!”

  There was another aspect of the moment which suggested drowning, too. Betsy’s thoughts went so deeply into the gray waters of the past. She was like a diver going down for a pearl and she found it…the almost forgotten incident which could help her.

  She remembered a distant afternoon back in the Hill Street house when Mrs. Ray was housecleaning and the minister’s wife had come to call. Her mother had ignored the fact that she was in the midst of washing windows. She had not mentioned the towel around her head nor the wildly disordered parlor. She had calmly dried her hands and sat down to chat. When her mother referred to the housecleaning, at last, she had merely said that the hard work made her long for a good cup of coffee. She had made coffee and the two of them had drunk it, with a cookie for Betsy. When Betsy dredged up this memory now, she smiled and put out her hand.

  “How nice of you, Phil,” she said, “to bring your sister to see me!” And she asked them into the parlor.

  Betsy perspired but she tried to hew to her mother’s line.

  “Margaret and I are dyeing Easter eggs. Did you ever do that? Margaret, dear, bring in the eggs…. Aren’t they beauties?”

  Phyllis Brandish did not help her as the minister’s wife had helped her mother. Gracious but chilly, Phyllis managed to give the impression that she thought Easter eggs were silly, that she had certainly never dyed them even as a child (if, indeed, she had ever been a child, which Betsy doubted).

  While Margaret displayed the eggs Betsy excused herself, went into the kitchen, washed her hands and took off the stained apron. That was the best she could do. The miserable call ended somehow, just as Old Mag drew up before the house and her mother and Julia came in triumphantly laden with small packages. They helped immeasurably in covering the farewells, but when the callers were gone Betsy both laughed and cried.

  “If he’s worth a fig, he’ll like you just as well this way,” Julia comforted her.

  “You look cute!” her mother said.

  Betsy knew better. She went upstairs finally and blew her nose and combed her hair. She wished Cab and Tony had not stopped dropping in. Their presence would have been cheering now. Tom came, but aware of the great concession Phil had made in ending their quarrel by bringing his sister to call, Betsy didn’t have the heart to be very nice to Tom. In fact, she wasn’t nice at all, which hurt his feelings and didn’t help anyone.

  Her mother and Julia went into action. Families can be wonderful sometimes.

  “Betsy,” said her mother, “we’re having an extra good lunch tomorrow night because of its being Easter. Don’t you want to ask Phil to bring his sister?”

  Betsy nerved herself to telephone him, and somewhat to her surprise he accepted the invitation promptly. He even seemed pleased to receive it.

  That brought a little of the glory back to the new suit, the Merry Widow hat, and Easter day. In gratitude, next morning, Betsy went to early church. She hadn’t gone for a long time, and it was good to be there.

  “Lift up your hearts.”

  “We lift them unto the Lord.”

  Betsy loved those sentences always, but especially today in a church white and fragrant with lilies.

  She went to church again at eleven o’clock, to sing in the choir. Julia sang a solo.

  After dinner Phil drove up in the auto and took Betsy for a ride. Neither of them mentioned the quarrel and they were very happy. He said the new suit was spiffy, and the Merry Widow hat a dream. He took pictures of her with his big expensive camera. They drove up to see Tacy, and over to see Irma, and down to see Carney, and around to the rest of the Crowd.

  “Time now to go over and pick up Sis,” he said, and they turned toward the slough.

  The snow was gone except for absurd patches in shady hollows. The sun was so warm that even the new suit felt heavy. Robins were everywhere, and in the slough, red winged blackbirds swung from the cat tails. Betsy exclaimed over them, and he said absently, “Um…pretty; aren’t they? Listen to that motor! Did you ever hear anything sweeter?”

  The Brandish mansion had a porte-cochere at the side like Grosspapa Muller’s house in Milwaukee. Betsy was pleased to be grandly familiar with porte-cocheres.

  Phil took her in to meet his grandmother who had bright spots of rouge on her cheeks. Betsy had liked rouge on Aunt Dolly, but she didn’t care for it on this small, over-dressed, smilingly tight-lipped old lady. She liked old Mr. Brandish, though. He was a big, warm, alive sort of man with a curly gray beard. He could tell stories, Betsy imagined, to match Grandma Slade’s.

  “Phil is going to bring you over to dinner soon,” his grandmother said, as the young people departed.

  Phyllis, Betsy thought, was just like her grandmother. Betsy seldom had trouble making friends with people, especially with other girls, but she could
not feel close to Phil’s sister. They spoke of Browner, of Tib, of Milwaukee, but they seemed to speak in a vacuum.

  “It’s not that way with Phil and me,” Betsy thought, puzzled, for they were, she realized, equally uncongenial. Between them, however, paucity of interests did not matter.

  Julia got on with Phyllis better than Betsy did. Phyllis seemed taken with Julia. Yet Julia was not very nice to her. In fact, she came as close to snubbing as you could come and not do it.

  Phyllis was interested in Julia’s music and while Harry watched Mr. Ray make sandwiches and Phil talked with Mrs. Ray, Phyllis and Julia and Betsy looked over opera scores.

  “I suppose you’ll be going up to the Twin Cities for opera,” Phyllis said.

  Betsy knew what a sore spot that put a finger on, but Julia gave no sign.

  “I’d be glad if I could,” she answered casually. “Farrar will be singing in Boheme.”

  “I’m crazy about Farrar.”

  “Oh, have you heard her?”

  “Yes. Many times.” Phyllis circled the group with a daring smile. “They say that she and the German Crown Prince have been having quite an affair.”

  “I don’t believe it, and I don’t think it’s important,” Julia answered. That was one of the times when she came near to snubbing. “Just what roles have you heard?” she asked superciliously.

  The sandwiches were never better and the cake was superb. They had a very pleasant time. To be sure, Phil was not at his best in gatherings like this one. He always seemed a little ill at ease with the family as he did with the Crowd.

  But he wasn’t ill at ease with Betsy. The quarrel was over and things were as nice or nicer between them than they had been before.