Miss Wilson ran shouting out into the alleyway, and Betsy stared down in astonishment. Suit cases and bags were afloat. Her boudoir cap was sailing along, trailing its pale pink ribbons, as though on a gay adventure.
“Oh! Oh! And my best brown shoes!” Betsy began to wring her hands.
She heard excited male voices in the corridor. The door burst open, and in came a trail of agitated stewards.
Oh, dear! Betsy thought in panic. No boudoir cap, and the awful flannel night gown! But, of course, stewards were used to seeing ladies in queer outfits…
An angry, all-too-familiar Irish voice froze her in horror! Mr. O’Farrell strode in, so handsome in his dress uniform with its swagger short jacket that Betsy could hardly bear it. She looked at him aghast.
Mr. O’Farrell’s face twitched. “Miss Wilson has gone down to Number 87 to sleep. You must go, too,” he said.
“I’ll stay right here,” said Betsy.
“You can’t do that.”
She tried for a crushing dignity. “My bunk is perfectly dry.”
“It is impossible for you to stay. The men will be working here till morning.”
“But I don’t know where to find my bathrobe or slippers!” Tears rose and almost spilled over. She pointed an outraged finger. “There’s my cap!”
“Get a wrap and go!” said Mr. O’Farrell, and he motioned the stewards to leave and went out himself, very quickly, shutting the door.
Betsy climbed down, sniffing back tears. She caught the boudoir cap, but it was too wet to wear. Her slippers swam beyond her reach. The bathrobe, still on its hook, was soaked around the bottom, but she put it on anyway and clutched both bathrobe and night gown up to her knees.
The water was icy around her bare feet, but she couldn’t resist stopping to look in the mirror.
“Oh, oh!” she moaned, recoiling. Wading to the door, she fled down the crowded corridor to Number 87 and Miss Wilson’s arms.
“Why, why did I have to be wearing this hideous flannel night gown?” she wept.
“It was very sensible, dear, on such a cold night!”
“But why couldn’t I have been wearing a pink silk night gown? Why couldn’t I have had my cap on? Oh, these ghastly curlers!” Betsy was laughing now through her tears. “I’m not going to see Mr. O’Farrell again! Not ever! Not even if I have to jump off the boat!”
“Don’t talk such nonsense!” said Miss Wilson, and hugged her warmly, and kissed her. “The stewardess has gone for hot tea, for both of us, and all our clothes will be sent to the tailor for pressing. Everything will be shipshape by morning, she says…”
“Morning!” Betsy shuddered, and they both shook with laughter. “I won’t go to breakfast! I absolutely won’t!”
But she did, and Mr. O’Farrell strode in, smiling broadly.
“Do you know,” he said, as he unfolded his napkin, “last night proved to me the truth of a French proverb. ‘Even in the misfortunes of our friends we find a certain pleasure.’”
“What do you mean by that?” asked Betsy.
He poured his tea zestfully. “That stateroom was the drollest sight of my whole life! You were staring over the bunk, looking as though you’d seen a banshee, and down below, shoes and stockings and bags were floating around, and a little cap sailing like a lacy frigate…” Mr. O’Farrell choked with laughter.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” Betsy said, trying not to laugh herself, “about poor Miss Wilson being soaked, and both of us being hustled down cold halls…”
“Come on with the militancy!” Mr. O’Farrell cried.
The table was uproariously merry. Such wild tales were abroad that Betsy almost came to believe she had floated through the porthole onto an angry sea and been rescued from direst peril by the Captain, no less.
Mr. O’Farrell said that the Minneapolis papers would probably run extras with her picture.
“‘Minnesota belle in flood! Minded loss of cap more than salt water.’”
Catching Miss Wilson’s eye, Betsy laughed and blushed.
6
The Captain’s Ball
MR. O’FARRELL HAD SEEN her with her hair in curlers and he still liked her, Betsy thought joyfully, coming out from breakfast. The sea was smiling today. Rosettes of foam, scattered all over its surface, twinkled in the sunshine.
It was Sunday, and she attended Divine Service again. She enjoyed it, although the clergyman always prayed for King George and Queen Mary, King Victor Emmanuel and Queen Elena, before he got around to the President of the United States!
Mr. Chandler continued to dog her footsteps. No snubbing deterred him, and Betsy was furious. Why, Maida had really liked him! She had wondered if her mother would mind if they got married! And now he was showing his big white teeth and tossing his wavy head, trying to charm her, Betsy.
He was always slamming Mr. O’Farrell.
“A deuced charming chap! Of course, he isn’t an officer of the line.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Why, a purser just keeps the accounts, attends to freight and tickets! Sort of like a clerk.”
“He wasn’t much like a clerk in South Africa!” Betsy thought indignantly, but she didn’t say it aloud. She wasn’t going to discuss Mr. O’Farrell with Mr. Chandler!
She was delighted when his duties called him away, and she had a leisurely, lovely afternoon. She opened some of her steamer letters—she was three behind on Bob’s daily epistles—and read cozily while Mrs. Sims chuckled over Daddy-Long-Legs and Mrs. Cheney perused The Inside of the Cup.
Part of the time she lay back in her chair and watched the water. Twenty-one from thirty-seven made sixteen! Was sixteen years’ difference in age too much? she wondered dreamily. She didn’t think so. Husbands were proud of young wives.
“Faith, you’re hardly more than a child!” she heard Mr. O’Farrell saying tenderly.
His word would be her law. She would listen while he talked with her eyes raised to his in adoration—almost.
“What a sweet ending!” Mrs. Sims remarked, closing Daddy-Long-Legs with a long, romantic sigh. Now that heroine, Betsy remembered, had married an older man!
After tea she went to the upper deck to watch the sunset. The western clouds were golden as the sun sank, but afterward they changed to copper-color and then to raspberry pink. She rested her arms on the railing and gazed.
Mr. O’Farrell came up behind her. “And do you see Proteus rising from the sea?” he asked.
Betsy turned a glowing face; she loved the Wordsworth sonnet. “The world is too much with us. I don’t see half enough sunsets and sunrises, and I adore them both.”
“I’m starting a little list of things Miss Ray adores: islands, balconies, sunrises. What else now?”
“Waltzing,” said Betsy artfully, for it had been announced that the Captain’s Ball would be held tomorrow night after they left Gibraltar. Mr. O’Farrell had once told her that he waltzed. But Mr. Chandler bounded up inopportunely, and Mr. O’Farrell strolled away.
That evening a crowd was singing on the upper deck—Mr. Chandler next to Betsy of course. The stars were brighter than she had ever seen them, although they were familiar stars. She saw the Pleiades, in a dainty sisterly group.
Betsy loved to sing, and relaxed happily as they went from “Annie Laurie” and “Tavern in the Town,” through “Down by the Old Mill Stream” and “Shine on Harvest Moon,” to the newer song hits, “Peg o’ My Heart,” “Trail of the Lonesome Pine,” and “Giannina Mia.”
Surprisingly, Mr. O’Farrell joined them.
“And why not some Irish melodies, if I may be so bold?” he asked, resting lightly against a tier of lifeboats. Moonlight outlined his nautical cap, his slim uniformed figure.
They gave him “Kathleen Mavourneen,” in parts.
“Would you be knowing ‘The Harp That Once Through Tara’s Halls’?” He rolled the r in “harp” and “Tara.”
No one knew it except Betsy, who had sung it w
ith Tacy long ago. But Betsy didn’t mind singing it alone, although she wasn’t a real singer, like Julia.
“The harp that once through Tara’s halls
The soul of music shed,
Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls
As if that soul were fled…”
When the last note died away, Mr. O’Farrell touched her lightly on the shoulder. “It’s a pretty good Irishman you are,” he said, departing.
Gibraltar was overshadowed by the Captain’s Ball. Britain’s Rock was high, it was mighty, but it couldn’t compare—for Betsy and the other young people who had slipped into Maida’s place—with the only real ball of the voyage, scheduled for that evening.
There had been casual waltzing, fox trotting, and Castle Walking, but this was to be a real ball, with programs and everyone in formal dress. And next day part of the company would leave the ship at Algiers.
Of course, it was exciting to see Gibraltar. The Columbic was in the Strait when Betsy came rushing up, camera in hand. Mr. Chandler, lying in wait as usual, took her forward. The huge familiar Rock loomed against the horizon. Back of it curved the coast of Spain, and opposite ran the misty shoreline of Tangier. Europe and Africa, making a pathway to the Mediterranean Sea!
“Oh! Oh!” Betsy stared. The Rock looked just like the pictures, but something was missing.
Mr. Chandler chuckled. “I suppose you expect to see that dashed advertisement there.”
That was it, Betsy admitted to herself. But she gave him a crushing look. “I was thinking,” she answered with dignity, “about the Pillars of Hercules.”
They had discussed them last night. Mr. O’Farrell had remarked that the great Rock and its companion on the opposite side of the Strait were said to have been tossed up by Hercules.
“He was looking for the oxen of Geryon!” Betsy had cried. (There was some advantage, after all, in knowing the classics.) “It was during one of the Twelve Labors!”
The table had tried then to remember the Twelve. With much merriment, they had managed to name eight.
Mr. Chandler brought her back to Gibraltar. It was a British fortress and Crown colony, he explained; captured from the Spanish in 1704. They could see the city now, glittering white against the Rock.
Presently the Columbic passengers were on their way, in a big launch that was half fancy-work shop. Shawls, embroideries, drawn work, and hand-made lace were laid out for sale by importunate vendors.
“But don’t buy a thing until you get ashore!” Mrs. Sims warned. “Shopping in Gibraltar is an occupation for the Gods!”
Ships from every corner of the world brought treasures to this crossroads port.
Barely off the launch, they were caught in a babel of beseeching tongues. Arabs held up wicker bags of tangerines and strawberries. Dusky children lifted flat baskets of roses, pansies, daffodils. And swarthy merchants, in open-fronted shops, flung out dazzling wares—shawls and silks, precious stones and Oriental scents, carved ivory and cedar.
The ladies from the Columbic were bargaining furiously. Taylor and Rosa, who had been permitted by their mistresses to come ashore, snatched at Malta lace collars. Betsy bought gifts with reckless abandon, and for herself a pair of jade and silver bracelets.
“They’re probably not real jade; they only cost sixty cents. But aren’t they ducky, Miss Wilson?”
She would wear them tonight, she planned, with her maid-of-honor dress, at the Captain’s Ball.
Because of the ball she did not regret that they had only two hours ashore. She and the Wilsons had time to drive, in a shabby little carriage with a fringed top, through the city and up to the fortifications.
Betsy looked eagerly around the crowded streets. There were Englishmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, Japanese, Chinese.
“Othello!” she whispered, squeezing Miss Wilson’s arm, at her first sight of a Moor in a robe and turban.
In spite of the polyglot population and the semitropical vegetation, the place seemed very English. Statues of Wellington and Queen Victoria. Burly policemen. Rosy nursemaids. Tall, well-built soldiers pacing before the sentry boxes or lounging around the barracks that grew more frequent as they climbed the hill. An Anglo-Saxon air of propriety hung about the houses. These were of the Spanish type, but they looked English just the same.
Betsy remarked on the absence of beggars.
“They are allowed only on Friday and Saturday,” Dr. Wilson explained.
“That shows the British influence, probably,” Miss Wilson observed. “But this horse certainly doesn’t.”
Their horse was so pitifully thin and the road so nearly vertical that the Wilsons and Betsy got out and walked.
At the fortifications, Betsy surrendered her camera and they acquired a guide.
The Rock was tunneled out and the openings bristled with cannon. The British could certainly command the Strait in case of war, Betsy thought. But there was never going to be another war, so why all this fuss? She went back to the carriage where it was pleasant sitting in the sunshine, thinking about the ball.
The ball, when they were afloat again, triumphed over the Mediterranean, although this was blue, as reported. It was cornflower blue, and so was the sky, with boats spreading snowy wings against the brilliance. But Betsy was longing for the evening.
“I want to get those curlers out of Mr. O’Farrell’s mind,” Betsy confided to Miss Wilson when, at last, she was dressing for dinner. Miss Wilson was assisting. It was almost like having Julia to help her, Betsy said. She looked around.
“Where are Margaret, and the cat?”
And Miss Wilson laughed, for she knew the Ray family now. She knew how Margaret, pussy in arms, used to watch her older sisters get ready for a dance.
Betsy’s hair was dressed, hiding her forehead and ears under soft shining loops. She shook pink powder on a chamois skin and rubbed it over her face while Miss Wilson watched with interest. Miss Wilson never used powder, pink or white.
Under a frothy petticoat, Betsy’s legs shone elegantly. (A pair of silk stockings had been in Julia’s package today.) She slipped into green satin slippers, and Miss Wilson lifted the maid-of-honor dress carefully over her head.
It was a beautiful dress—filmy green chiffon over pink, with roses sewn into the bodice. The sleeves were short, ideal for her new bracelets. She wore them both on one arm, and they matched her jade and silver ring and the jade and silver pendant Julia had given her for a maid-of-honor gift.
After spraying perfume on her hair as usual, Betsy looked into the mirror and was glad—since only actresses used rouge—that her cheeks always flushed for a party. Assuming a blasé expression, she sank into the debutante slouch and revolved languidly.
“Don’t I have an indefinable Paris air?”
Miss Wilson chuckled. “You look very nice.”
Everyone looked nice! The English lady had bared her scrawny shoulders in a jet-trimmed gown. Miss Wilson was winning in prim black silk with a cameo in a nest of soft lace at her throat. Dr. Wilson and Mr. Glenn were wearing evening clothes, and Mr. O’Farrell was resplendent. Above the swagger dress uniform, his hair shone like satin.
Talk was all of the ball. Mr. Glenn reminded Betsy of their Hesitation. Mr. Chandler came up to hang over her chair and ask how many dances he could have. As many as possible, he pleaded, and one of them must be a waltz. Mr. O’Farrell said nothing. Leaning his head on one hand, a cigarette in the other, he smiled musingly.
Leaving the table, Betsy managed a gay hint. “My waltzes are going fast.”
It didn’t work.
“I’ll not be spoiling your evening with my old-fashioned dancing,” he replied. She smiled back (like a Cheshire cat, she told herself) to cover her disappointment.
The deck was hung with the flags of all nations. Red and green electric lights glimmered. The floor was waxed. There were cozy corners for fussers, and chairs at one end for lookers-on. The Mesdames Sims and Cheney, and Miss Wilson, sat there, self-appointed chaperones for B
etsy.
The musicians started tuning up. They plunged with hearty jollity into “Over the Waves.” Betsy danced with Dr. Wilson, who was as light as a puppet on strings—a puppet of a little professor with mustaches and a trembling spike of beard.
Dr. Wilson yielded her to Mr. Glenn, to Mr. Chandler, to Mr. Burton, and others. The sea was like glass, and moonlight poured over the world. In spite of Mr. O’Farrell Betsy couldn’t be unhappy. She floated effortlessly, the skirt of the maid-of-honor dress caught lightly in her hand.
She loved the new dances: the graceful Boston Dip, the demure Hesitation, the rollicking Turkey Trot, and the absurd stiff-legged Castle Walk. Mr. Glenn, pale and slender though he was, proved to be marvelously adept. Mr. Chandler, too, was excellent, although he held her too tightly.
“‘Peg of my heart, I love you…’” he sang meaningfully.
She was taught the new Marjory Step by a New Yorker who said he knew the Castles. He studied Betsy through half-closed lids as they danced, and told her that she was a fascinating type.
“A tropical beauty!”
A tropical beauty from Minneapolis! Betsy thought, wishing Mr. O’Farrell could hear.
Mr. O’Farrell, she noticed, was being charming to the chaperones. She glanced at him now and then during the intermission, when sandwiches, lemonade, and chocolate ice cream were served. He was talking with Mrs. Main-Whittaker, who had doubled her feathers in honor of the ball. She wore a low-cut gown of raspberry pink.
Dancing began again, and now Betsy saw him watching her. Perhaps, she thought later, he noticed that she was a good dancer. Perhaps he noticed that she hadn’t smiled or waved at him as usual. At any rate when the orchestra began the rolling opening phrases of “The Beautiful Blue Danube,” he made his way to where she stood with Mr. Chandler to whom she was engaged for the dance.
Mr. O’Farrell offered his arm.
“Isn’t this my waltz, Miss Ray?”
Betsy’s face broke into joy. “Why, yes! I believe it is!”
Betsy and the Great World / Betsy's Wedding Page 7