Betsy Was a Junior / Betsy and Joe

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  Somehow there’s nothing just right,

  Honey, you know why….”

  She was to sing that all alone on the stage, looking at an artificial moon.

  Dennie was to be a ballet dancer. Tony was singing an old Joe Howard success:

  “What’s the use of dreaming,

  Dreams of rosy hue,

  What’s the use of dreaming, dreaming,

  Dreams that never could come true….”

  He had sung it for years at the Ray piano; it was a favorite song of Mr. Ray’s, and Mrs. Poppy had transposed the music to suit Tony’s deep bass voice. Betsy liked to hear him rehearse it, but Tony almost drove Mr. Maxwell to distraction. Mr. Maxwell liked him, of course. Everyone liked Tony. But he was late at rehearsals. He didn’t learn his lines. He was always clowning.

  At the back of the stage among dusty piles of scenery, Tony would take off Lillian Russell, or he would borrow spectacles to imitate the church choir tenor, whose solo was one of the classical highlights of the show. When there was music, he and Betsy waltzed in the wings. Sometimes they wandered through the empty Opera House, which always reminded Betsy of Uncle Keith.

  When she came there to plays, it seemed elegant beyond description—the glittering crystal chandelier, seats upholstered in red velvet, boxes hung with red velvet draperies tied back with golden cords. Now it was dark and chilly and the curtain (which showed a sedan chair and ladies in hoop skirts) was half way up, revealing the barnlike stage. But Betsy was still enchanted by it.

  “I even like the smell,” she said to Tony, sniffing.

  “I feel at home here myself,” he replied thoughtfully, gazing around.

  Rehearsals were glamorous. They made many new matches—and revived some old ones. Take Dennie and Tib! Maddox was the star of the basketball team now, but such was the influence of Thespis that Dennie was crowding Maddox out of Tib’s life.

  All the girls were thinking that perhaps they should go on the stage, that their talents were better suited to Broadway than to Deep Valley High School.

  Of course, everyone was getting behind in school, and Betsy was dimly worried because she wanted to make the Honor Roll. She knew that she ought to be practising, too, “A Night in Venice” for Miss Cobb’s recital. And Joe grew stiffer and stiffer in the classroom, and she heard that he had bought two tickets for the show. But none of this seemed as real as it would after Up and Down Broadway was over. What was real now was the big, bare Opera House filled with staccato excitement.

  The dress rehearsal was terrible. Mr. Maxwell shouted at the top of his voice. The girls wept and the boys stormed, but nobody could possibly have been persuaded to leave.

  On the day of the performance, it snowed, as heavily, as persistently, as though there hadn’t been a flake all winter. But nobody minded. The house had been sold out for weeks, from the first row in the parquet all the way to the rafters.

  After Betsy was dressed for the opening number in her glow worm costume, she visited Tacy and Tib in their dressing room. Tib was cool and poised, arranging her yellow curls under a winged cap. Tacy was so pale that the paint on her cheeks looked grotesque, and her hands were as cold as ice.

  Betsy kissed her on the top of her head.

  “Cheer up!” she said. “It will all be the same a hundred years from now.”

  But Tacy was too wretched to joke. She was stiff with wretchedness.

  On the stairs which lead up to the stage, Betsy met Tony. He was wearing a plain dark suit, but his face was painted, and charcoal made his black eyes look even wickeder than usual.

  “Come on!” he said, catching her hand. “Let’s take a look at the audience.”

  Sets were being run into place on the stage, and they made their way cautiously to the curtain, found two peep holes, and looked out.

  The audience was streaming in. Betsy saw her father and mother and Margaret. Where the dress circle met the parquet, in the very center of the house, were two wide, well-padded seats. These had been built especially for the excessively stout Mr. and Mrs. Poppy, who were seated in them now, Mr. Poppy in a dress suit, Mrs. Poppy in a low-cut gown, with plumes in her yellow hair.

  Joe was coming in with a girl Betsy didn’t know. She was very, very pretty. They talked all the way down the aisle, and she kept turning around to smile into his face while he was helping her off with her coat and laying it over the chair.

  Betsy felt that pressure about her heart. She turned and smiled meaningfully into Tony’s black-rimmed eyes. This was unfair to Tony, and she knew it, but she didn’t seem to care.

  “Take a look at Margaret,” she said. “She looks so serious. I know she’s praying for you.”

  “You praying for me, too, Ray of Sunshine?”

  “You don’t need anybody’s prayers. You’re wonderful.”

  “Say that again.”

  But the orchestra was tuning up now, and Mr. Maxwell, suave and smiling in a dress suit, called everyone out on the stage. He told them he knew the performance was going to be fine, because it was good luck to have a dress rehearsal go badly.

  “On Broadway we’re scared to death if the dress rehearsal goes well. I’ve known Belasco to call off a performance just because the dress rehearsal clicked.”

  Betsy thought this sounded a little excessive, but she had to admit that in spite of last night’s mistakes and wearisome confusion, Up and Down Broadway went off to perfection.

  The high school chorus opened the show:

  “Shine, little glow worm, glimmer,

  Shine, little glow worm, glimmer….”

  The stage was dark at first, and the girls carried phosphorescent wands. Then the lights went on, and the girls in their black and orange costumes were themselves the glow worms. The audience stamped and whistled. It seemed that Deep Valley thought broilers important, just as Broadway did.

  The leading lights of the town did their numbers, and the high school celebrities did theirs. Dennie, with his cherubic face, made a fetching ballet dancer. He wore a short-skirted tulle dress, a feather headdress, ropes of pearls, earrings, and long white gloves with bracelets and rings outside. A big spangly ornament on one black-stockinged leg almost brought the house down.

  Tacy came out on the stage like a sleep-walker. Her dress was of old blue Liberty silk, covered with gauze of changing coppery colors. Mr. Maxwell had wanted her to wear a picture hat, but Tacy had unexpectedly objected. People didn’t go out singing to the moon in picture hats, she said. She hadn’t even dressed her hair in the fashionable puffs, but wore her familiar coronet braids. And although she looked beautiful, she looked just like Tacy when the curtain rose and the spotlight found her gazing at a tinsel moon.

  “I’m awfully lonesome tonight,

  Somehow there’s nothing just right,

  Honey, you know why….”

  The house was very quiet listening to Tacy’s harp-like voice. At the end there was a burst of applause, and after Tacy reached the wings where Betsy and Tib were listening tensely, there was another burst so loud that she had to go back. She was slow returning this time.

  “What can it be?” asked Betsy, peeking.

  “Flowers, probably,” said Tib.

  Every girl performer received a bouquet. Their families sent them if no one else did. But Tacy came into the wings with a bouquet no father would have sent. It was the biggest bouquet anyone had received that evening. Her arms could hardly hold the dozens of long-stemmed yellow roses.

  Betsy and Tib spoke together, the same words, “Mr. Kerr?”

  Tacy nodded happily. “He came all the way from St. Paul just to see the show.”

  The most professional number on the program was undoubtedly the Dutch Girl’s song and dance. The quaint costume with its many petticoats emphasized Tib’s tiny waist, and she didn’t forget one of the winning smiles or dainty gestures Mr. Maxwell had taught her. The chorus came out and danced behind her for many, many encores, and she had flowers galore.

  Yet Tib wasn’
t the hit of the show. To everyone’s surprise, especially Mr. Maxwell’s, that honor went to Tony.

  When the music for his song began, he strolled carelessly out on the stage and straddled a chair. He got out his pipe and filled it, tamping down the tobacco as thoughtfully as though he were sitting in the Rays’ parlor, with all the time in the world. The orchestra kept on playing. Then, holding the pipe in his hand, his arms folded on top of the chair, he began to sing:

  “What’s the use of dreaming,

  Dreams of rosy hue,

  What’s the use of dreaming, dreaming,

  Dreams that never could come true….”

  His lazy charm, his rich deep voice won the audience completely. He was called before the curtain again and again. He sauntered out, at ease and smiling, saluted nonchalantly, retreated. He couldn’t sing an encore, for he had none prepared. At last Mr. Maxwell signified to the orchestra that Tony could repeat the chorus, and he did.

  “You are worth a million,

  There is not a doubt,

  .. …..

  .. …..

  Then your pipe goes out.”

  Betsy and Tony, Dennie and Tib went to the Moorish Cafe after the show. Betsy and Tib kept a little of their make-up on their cheeks and felt like actresses. Joe and the pretty girl were there, but Betsy ignored them. She flirted gaily with Tony.

  She started a game which had just reached popularity, writing down dashes which, properly decoded, spelled out words and messages.

  Her “—— ——- —— — —- ——?” was translated at last: “What color eyes do you like?”

  Tony pulled his curly thatch and wrote, “—— —— —- —— — - ——.” “They have the name of a girl.”

  “Hazel!” Tib shrieked, and Betsy wrote (in code, of course), “I like curly hair.”

  Tony’s eyes sought hers with laughing boldness. He set down dashes firmly. “I like unnaturally curly hair.”

  Dennie seized the pencil then, and Tib peeped over his shoulder. Their table resounded with mirth.

  Tib came to stay all night at the Rays’.

  “You were darling,” Betsy told her as they undressed. “You really ought to go on the stage, Tib.”

  “Maybe I will,” Tib said. “But there are lots of things I like to do. I like to draw, I like to cook, I like to keep house….”

  “If I were making up a plot,” said Betsy, “I’d have Mr. Maxwell getting back to New York and telegraphing for you to come and go into the Follies.”

  “You can make up all the plots you like,” said Tib, matter-of-factly. “But I’m going to go through high school and graduate along with you and Tacy.”

  “Betsy,” she added after a moment. “You’re getting to like Tony pretty well, aren’t you?”

  “What makes you think so?” Betsy asked.

  “You acted that way tonight. Joe didn’t like it, either. I could tell, the way he stuck his lip out.”

  “That…go-to-the-deuce…look, you mean,” said Betsy flippantly.

  But she didn’t answer Tib’s question.

  18

  “Toil and Trouble”

  BETSY SAT AT THE PIANO, practising Nevins’ “A Night in Venice,” which she was going to play at Miss Cobb’s recital. She played badly, for she felt cross. She had been feeling cross for some time, although she tried not to show it…ever since Up and Down Broadway, in fact.

  She had been having difficulties with Tony. Encouraged by her coquetry that night, he had changed. All winter, in spite of the fact that he had been going with no one but her, he had not acted lover-like.

  “He was never spoony,” she thought. “And not because he doesn’t like me, either!”

  He liked her—too much. She had known for some time that he did. She had seen it in his touchingly good behavior, his mock-serious gallantries, the adoring look his black eyes held sometimes. But he had tried not to show it. He would have kept on trying—because he thought she didn’t share his feeling—if she hadn’t given him false hopes.

  She had brought it all on herself. Just because she had seen Joe with that girl at the show! And after all, he hadn’t taken her out again. She was just a girl who had been visiting in town. Of no consequence at all! Betsy brought her hands down bitterly on the keys.

  In the Crowd, she had been snappish. She had quarreled violently with Winona and Irma—Betsy, who never quarreled! They didn’t speak for three days until Irma apologized for something she hadn’t even done. She had quarreled with Cab about whether he had broken some casual date. It was something that really shouldn’t have mattered a fig.

  “I don’t know what ails me,” Betsy thought. “Of course,” she added defensively, “I’m working pretty hard.”

  She was. Everything that had been pushed away and put aside while Up and Down Broadway was in preparation now had to be faced. In Miss Bangeter’s Shakespeare class they had finished the comedies, As You Like It and The Merchant of Venice, and were deep in the grim tragedies of Hamlet and Macbeth.

  “Bubble, bubble,

  Toil and trouble….”

  Toil and trouble expressed exactly what she was going through, Betsy decided. In physics she was facing an examination on “Light.”

  “Why does anyone have to do anything about light except enjoy it?” she demanded, running a scale.

  In German, she was struggling with adjectives. It seemed so unreasonable of the Germans to change their adjectives, for gender, number, case.

  “Why can’t they just say klein for ‘small’? Why does it have to be kleiner, kleines, kleine, and goodness knows what else! If one adjective is good enough for English, it ought to be for German,” stormed Betsy, banging.

  The Honor Roll would be announced soon. And Betsy wanted to be on it. She wanted to be on the program commencement night, to give an oration as Carney had done.

  “I should have thought about that earlier in the year, or last year, or the year before that, or the year before that,” she told herself, making a discord.

  She wasn’t properly prepared even for Miss Cobb’s recital, although Miss Cobb had been planning it happily for months. Well, Betsy thought, she would stick to her practising for an hour this morning if it killed her.

  But she wasn’t too sorry when the telephone rang.

  It was Alice, who was also to play at Miss Cobb’s recital.

  “Betsy! Have you heard? Miss Cobb has left for Colorado. Leonard died last night.”

  “Leonard…died?”

  She could hardly take it in.

  Then Leonard had lost his fight! He would never compose that music which had been running in his head. He would never hear the operas, the great orchestras he had longed to hear.

  “There won’t be any recital, of course,” Alice said.

  After she shut down the telephone, Betsy stared at it through a blur of tears. She was sorry she hadn’t written Leonard that long funny letter about Up and Down Broadway which had been rolling around in her head. She would never write it now, and he would never read it. It would have made him laugh.

  She thought about Miss Cobb. Dear, brave Miss Cobb! This was the third child to die, of the four she had taken to raise. And she had been so cheerful all winter, although the news from Leonard had been bad.

  Betsy dashed the tears out of her eyes and went upstairs to her mother’s bedroom, where Mrs. Ray and Miss Mix were busy with the Easter sewing.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” Mrs. Ray said, when Betsy had told her the news. “It’s a very good thing she has Bobby.”

  Bobby, the one remaining nephew, was a youthful, masculine counterpart of his sturdy aunt. The family enemy wouldn’t get him, at least.

  “Let’s ask Bobby up to supper while his aunt is gone,” said Mrs. Ray. “Ask Margaret to telephone him.”

  Betsy went reluctantly to tell the news to Margaret. Margaret had taken Miss Cobb into the small circle of her affections along with Washington and Lincoln, Mrs. Wheat and Tony. And Margaret had deep feelings, alt
hough she could never express them. She could never find an outlet for her emotions in small ejaculations of pity or sympathy as other people did.

  She said nothing at all now, just stared with dark, troubled eyes. When Betsy asked her to telephone Bobby, she marched away, her back very straight. But she went into the coat closet and stayed there a while before she telephoned.

  Betsy closed “A Night in Venice” and put it away. She never wanted to hear it again.

  But she did. Bobby came to supper. And after a few days Miss Cobb returned from Colorado with Leonard. Half the high school went to the funeral, and Miss Cobb’s pupils sent a big wreath. Then lessons began again. Miss Cobb looked pale, but she was as calmly cheerful as ever. She didn’t mention the recital, though. There was no recital that year.

  Sadness weighed Betsy down for several days, although there was good news at school. When the civics class was leaving the classroom, Miss Clarke beckoned to her.

  “Will you drop in to see me after school?” she whispered.

  That meant, Betsy knew, that she had been chosen for the Essay Contest. She ought to be glad, but she didn’t feel anything. She just felt tired out.

  In English class, she did what she rarely did these days, glanced across the room at Joe. He was leafing through Macbeth, but just as she looked at him he looked at her. He didn’t smile. He only looked at her and turned back to his book. But Betsy felt sure that he, too, had been asked to write in the Essay Contest. He was thinking what she was thinking: they would be competing again this year!

  Entering Miss Clarke’s room, she tried to muster a smile which would match Miss Clarke’s kind excitement.

  “I’ve some good news for you, Betsy. The Zetamathians have chosen you again for the Essay Contest. The Philomathians have chosen Joe, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Betsy, smiling.

  “And…I want you to know…there was no dissenting voice about you this year. Miss Bangeter, Miss Fowler, and I all think you are the one to represent the senior Zetamathians.”