“Any time,” said Betsy. “But people still seem to be having an awfully good time.”
“Tony and Bonnie especially,” said Cab. “He’s smitten and smitten hard. She’ll make a Presbyterian out of him yet. Bet a nickel.”
“I’ll bet you haven’t got a nickel,” said Tacy.
“And I wouldn’t bet even if you had,” added Betsy, refusing Tacy’s offer to change the subject. “It looks to me like a perfectly awful case.”
“Maybe the big bum will stop hanging around your place, getting under my feet,” said Cab.
“I’m going to round the others up,” said Tacy quickly, “and tell them that we’re starting on.”
It was very cold, going home. Betsy’s hands ached, and her feet ached, and she knew that her nose was as red as a beet. But she laughed at Cab’s jokes even harder than usual, and at Tacy’s jokes too, for Tacy was full of jokes. Tacy kept her arm twined through Betsy’s, and thought of very silly things to say about Betsy’s crippled condition.
Betsy’s ankle felt all right now; as a matter of fact, it had felt all right all along. But she was glad that Julia, after they reached home, offered to make the rarebit.
“Keep off your ankle, Betsy. You know my rarebit is perfect.”
Betsy took off the stocking cap and resurrected her curls. She sat by the fire and her nose was its normal color by the time the rest came in. But it didn’t matter, for Tony paid no attention to her. He was teasing Bonnie.
“She pulled me out of the gutter practically,” he said to Julia who received his joke coldly. She sent him to the kitchen to make toast, but it only made things worse.
“Come along and help me, Bonnie. I’ll go to the dogs out here in the kitchen all alone.”
Bonnie went along and helped him. They were a long time making toast, and they burned it.
Betsy laughed continuously, even at Herbert’s jokes about her terrible skating. Now that they were at home, Herbert relented about her sad showing on the ice. He offered to take her out the next day and teach her to skate.
“And get my head snapped off?” asked Betsy. “I’m afraid of you when you get near ice, Herbie. I wouldn’t even let you go to the ice box with me.”
“Aw, I wasn’t that bad!” Herbert said.
For the first time he looked at Betsy with a faintly romantic eye. His adoration of Bonnie had died for lack of nourishment, and he hadn’t even noticed now that she was burning toast in the kitchen in Tony’s company.
“Gosh, you have red cheeks tonight, Betsy,” he said. “Do you paint?”
He took out his handkerchief and rubbed her face to find out. Cab helped him until Betsy cried for mercy. Tony and Bonnie were back from the kitchen then, but Tony didn’t join in the fun.
He joined, of course, in the singing that followed the rarebit. Arms locked, The Crowd circled about the piano, and sang until the room quivered.
“Dreaming, Dreaming,
Of you sweetheart, I am dreaming,
Dreaming of hours when you loved me best,
Dreaming of days that have gone to rest…”
Tony’s arm was locked in Bonnie’s, and now and then she looked up at him to smile. Betsy didn’t sing much. She was laughing with Herbert.
She was still full of laughter when she and Julia went up to bed.
“That reforming line worked all right,” she said. “Bonnie didn’t know it was a line, though.”
“I notice that Herbert looks at you with new eyes. And he’s so handsome! Much handsomer than Tony.”
“Tony, the dear departed,” Betsy said.
It was all very well until the lights were out, the slit in the storm window opened, and Betsy beneath the blankets. Then the tears she had been holding back gushed out in a relieving flood. She cried and cried, holding the pillow tight in her arms for comfort.
T-R-O-U-B-L-E, her Ouija Board had spelled.
This was trouble, all right.
22
New Year’s Eve
BETSY SUNK THAT NIGHT into a well of grief, and in the morning she did not propose to climb out. Her father knocked on her door as usual but she did not budge. Margaret, on her way downstairs, put her head in.
“Time to get up, Betsy.”
Still Betsy did not budge.
When Mr. Ray called Julia from the foot of the stairs, he called Betsy too. Betsy did not even answer.
Julia came in, tying the violet ribbons of a most becoming dressing sacque.
“What’s the matter, darling?”
“I just don’t want to get up,” said Betsy.
“It must be your ankle,” Julia said quickly. Of course! Her ankle! Julia was wonderful. She closed the window, adjusted the shades, and plumped up Betsy’s pillows. She went to the bathroom and returned with a wet washcloth and a towel. She handed Betsy a comb.
“I’ll explain to Papa about your ankle,” she said, departing, “and bring you some breakfast.”
Betsy didn’t even say “Thanks.” She just burrowed deeper into the pillow. With her eyes shut and her face half smothered she could keep out the picture of Tony smiling down at Bonnie, but she could not keep out an ominous feeling of something bad and sad waiting for her if she stirred.
Her father brought her tray himself.
“Sit up and wash your face,” he said cheerily. “I’ll have a look at that ankle.”
Betsy sat up reluctantly. She scrubbed her face with the cold washcloth, poked her foot out of bed beyond the hem of her outing flannel night gown.
“No swelling,” Mr. Ray observed.
Drawing up a chair he poked the ankle. “Hurt?”
“No,” said Betsy.
He poked it again. “Hurt?”
“No.”
When he poked it a third time, Betsy said, “Ouch!”
“It hurts there?” asked Mr. Ray, sounding surprised. He poked it again.
“Ouch!” said Betsy, pulling the foot away.
Mr. Ray looked perplexed.
“Must be a strained ligament. You can get up after breakfast, but no skating or rampaging today,” he announced.
“I’d just as soon stay in bed,” said Betsy. “I don’t feel very good. Not too bad,” she added hastily, remembering Tacy’s party the following night. Mrs. Ray had come into the room.
“A day in bed wouldn’t do Betsy any harm,” she remarked.
“If the ankle isn’t better tonight I’ll put a strap on it,” Mr. Ray said and patted her head, and departed, his wife following.
Betsy took the tray on her knees.
“I’m not a bit hungry,” she thought, looking morosely at the sausages and fried potatoes, the hot buttered toast, the jam, the steaming cocoa. But when Anna came up to get the tray, it was empty.
“I’m glad your ankle didn’t go to your stomach, lovey,” she said. “As long as a person can eat, he can put up with anything. That’s what Mrs. McCloskey used to say.”
“Did the McCloskey girl ever sprain her ankle?” Betsy asked listlessly.
“Both of them,” answered Anna. “I made her apple dumplings for dinner that day. How’d you like some apple dumplings, lovey?”
“Oh, Anna, I’d love them! That is,” Betsy added, “if I don’t get to feeling worse. If I move my ankle I feel terrible. But if I stay in bed I think I could eat some apple dumplings.”
“Sure you could,” Anna replied.
When the tray was gone Betsy had the feeling that the time had come to face her sorrow, but somehow she couldn’t get around to it. Margaret came in with one of her Christmas books and suggested hopefully that Betsy might feel better if she read aloud for a while.
“It’s a very appropriate book,” Margaret said. “It’s about a little lame prince, and you’re lame, Julia says.”
Betsy read out loud and grew so interested that she almost forgot to say, “Ouch! That hurts!” when her mother helped her into a chair in order to freshen the bed. While her mother dusted the room, they gossiped cheerfully. Julia came in
next.
“I’m going to beautify you,” said Julia. “There’s no reason why you shouldn’t look like an interesting invalid.”
“I don’t care how I look,” said Betsy, feeling suddenly completely wretched.
“You know how I love to fix people up,” Julia answered. “Where do you keep your best dressing sacque?”
“In the bottom drawer,” said Betsy.
It was made of pale blue silk and embroidered with little pink rosebuds. It tied with pink ribbons and was very becoming. Before Betsy put it on Julia brushed her hair and dressed it in a pompadour with two pink ribbons. She went into her mother’s room and came back with a chamois skin dipped in powder and ran this over Betsy’s face.
“Now lick your lips and wet your eyebrows,” Julia commanded. “And you’ll look pale and interesting enough for anybody.”
Betsy licked with rising interest.
Julia helped her into the dressing sacque, tied the ribbons, and put a small beribboned pillow in back of her head. Betsy enjoyed having Julia work about her. She liked the touch of her small white hands, and the smell of that cologne she used.
“Now,” said Julia, “I’m going to manicure your nails.”
They often manicured each other’s nails. Betsy was clumsy at it but Julia was skillful. She filed and clipped and buffed until Betsy’s nails looked like pink pearls.
“You have beautiful nails. I never saw such half moons,” Julia said.
In the midst of all this Cab and Herbert arrived.
“Come on up,” Julia called.
“Betsy’s sick, but it isn’t contagious,” Margaret explained gravely at the top step.
The boys tiptoed in clumsy solicitude into the blue and white freshness of Betsy’s room.
“You don’t look sick,” said Cab.
“Gosh, you look pretty!” exclaimed Herbert. The admiration which had dawned in his eyes the night before was brighter now. He looked at Betsy much as he had been wont to look at Bonnie.
Betsy languished on the pillow.
“It’s my ankle. Any time I go skating again!” she said, looking at Herbert reproachfully.
“Gosh, I’m sorry,” said Herbert. The boys sat down to watch the manicure. The doorbell rang again, for Tom and Pin.
“Hully gee!” exclaimed Tom looking at Betsy.
“What’s the matter?” asked Pin.
“Ankle. I twisted it last night. I was skating with a big brute who doesn’t know what it’s like to have weak ankles.”
“Help! Betsy! Go easy,” begged Herbert.
“Yes, you’re the brute,” said Betsy.
Flirting while my heart is breaking, she thought to herself. She was doing a good job of it too. Herbert straddled a frail chair, grasped the top of it with strong brown fingers, and stared in enchantment.
“You’re Anna’s favorite,” said Betsy. “But you’re not mine. I’m going to put a stop to that piece of pie business.”
“I would too,” said Julia, buffing.
“Make Anna give it to me,” said Cab.
“Or me,” said Tom.
“I never even tasted Anna’s pie,” said Pin.
“You ought to come to see me oftener,” said Betsy, giving him a radiant smile. Dog that I am, she thought. Pin had veered to Winona. He didn’t belong to Bonnie any longer. He wasn’t Betsy’s rightful prey. But she was too reckless to care.
“There’s an idea,” said Pin. “Just what nights do you have pie?”
“Betsy’s beaux,” said Julia, “are eating us out of house and home.”
Everything was going beautifully when the doorbell rang again. Betsy heard Tony’s voice speaking to Anna. She heard his lazy steps on the stairs. He lounged in the doorway.
“What do I see before me?” he asked. “Betsy or Madame DuBarry?”
“We all know you’re taking sophomore history.” But it was Julia who said it, not Betsy. At the sight of his curly thatch, his laughing black eyes, Betsy’s high spirits vanished. She leaned back and didn’t say a word.
Someone explained about the ankle. Someone else explained that Herbert was in bad. And anyone could see what Herbert’s condition was. He was staring at Betsy, rapt and tongue-tied. Anyone could see who looked, that is, or cared. Tony did neither. He seemed sorry about Betsy’s ankle, but having expressed himself in his usual offhand way, he lapsed into an abstracted silence. The banter went on but Tony didn’t join in, any more than Herbert did, or Betsy, who felt misery invading her again. He was so charming, so casual, so incomparably superior to all the other boys. How could she give him up? But she had given him up. She didn’t feel old enough or wise enough even to try to take him back from Bonnie.
“I’m tired,” said Betsy suddenly.
“And the manicure is finished,” Julia said, getting up. “I think Betsy had better rest now.”
“Clear out, all you kids,” said Herbert.
There was a scraping of chairs and pushing toward the doorway. Herbert was the last to go out.
“Going to be able to go to Tacy’s tomorrow night?” he asked.
“I hope so,” said Betsy, closing her eyes. Wretched as she was, she gave thought to the picture she must make, lying pale and exhausted on the lacy pillow.
“I wish my eyelashes were thick and curly like Margaret’s,” she thought. “I’m thankful that they’re dark at least.”
She hoped they looked startlingly dark, and that her fingers, helplessly curled, looked startlingly white against the blue counterpane.
Julia glanced at her approvingly, tiptoed out, and closed the door.
The boys stayed downstairs to sing a while. Tears slipped through Betsy’s fortunately dark lashes as she listened to the dear familiar tunes. She heard the boys departing one by one. Then Anna brought up her dinner.
The afternoon was punctuated with callers, female callers now. Tacy sat on the bed beside Betsy, holding her hand. Carney and Bonnie came, laughing, bringing the winter in on pink cheeks and snowy furs.
Betsy bestirred herself out of listlessness for them.
“Didn’t I tell you, Bonnie,” she asked, “that Tony was smitten? He’s simply crazy about you. He was in here this morning and just mooned around.”
“He ’phoned her three times this morning,” Carney chuckled.
Three times! Three dull blows at Betsy’s heart. He must have ’phoned her twice before he came over to the Rays, and probably once after he left. She couldn’t remember that Tony had ever ’phoned her. He wasn’t a telephone addict as some of the boys and most of the girls were.
“Did he call up just to talk?” Betsy asked.
“Oh, he called up the first time to ask me to go to your party with him, Tacy,” Bonnie said. She sounded amused. “And the second time he asked me not to forget that I had promised. And the third time he asked me not to let anybody else come along. But nobody would be apt to come anyway. Pin has gone over to Winona.”
“And Herbert,” said Tacy, “as you all may have noticed last night, has transferred his affections with a bang to Betsy.”
“Good!” said Bonnie. Her sincerity knocked Betsy’s triumph over like a house of cards.
During supper and the early evening Betsy was alone in her room. Sad as she was, she enjoyed lying in bed, warm, petted, while familiar household sounds floated up from below. This was only an interlude. Tomorrow she would be up on her two feet, facing the world and her trouble.
“No visitors for Betsy tonight,” Betsy heard her mother say after a ring of the bell. Then Margaret came upstairs.
“Herbert sent you this,” she said, holding out a small box of candy. “He says he’s sorry about your ankle. He wants to know, will you let him take you to Tacy’s party tomorrow night?”
“I’ll go with him if I’m able to go,” said Betsy. “You can have the candy, Margaret. Oh, I might take just a piece or two,” she added, thinking better of this gesture.
Julia went out that evening on a sleigh ride. Mr. and Mrs. Ray went
out too. Betsy and Margaret and Anna ate Herbert’s candy to the last stale chocolate drop, and Betsy told them Ethel Brown stones. It wasn’t an unhappy evening. But when the gas was turned out and the snowy world was quiet, her grief came back, seeking a little attention. Betsy gave it the tenderest attention. She thought of Tony, his charms and falseness, until she fell asleep.
The Crowd saw the old year out at Tacy’s. Betsy’s father, fearing for her ankle, drove her up in the sleigh but Cab and Herbert went along. Tony and Bonnie arrived late.
The rambling white house at the end of Hill Street was full of greens and Christmas cheer. The Crowd played games, and the refreshments—as always at the Kelly house—were superabundant. These were served about half past eleven, and the company was still eating when the bells and whistles of downtown Deep Valley sounded faintly. Everyone jumped up and began to cry “Happy New Year!” Betsy and Tacy kissed each other.
Breaking away from the rest they ran out of doors. The winter stars were icily bright. Snow gleamed on the hills where for so many years, winter and summer, they had played together.
In the little yellow cottage which had once been the Ray house, lights were shining. It could almost have been home still. Betsy and Tacy could almost have been children again.
“I wish I still lived there,” said Betsy, hugging Tacy, partly from love and partly from cold. “It’s such trouble to grow up.”
“I hope you have a very happy new year,” Tacy said.
23
The Talk with Mr. Ray
IT WAS ARRANGED that Betsy…the ankle had to be treated tenderly…was to stay all night with Tacy. The Kellys would drop her at home on their way to church New Year’s morning. She enjoyed sleeping in the slant-roofed bedroom with Tacy and Katie and eating breakfast with the large merry Kelly family. The Kellys were full of anecdotes about her childhood and Tacy’s, and it was comforting somehow.
Later Betsy and Tacy had a serious hour alone. They made their New Year’s resolutions, and when she got home Betsy wrote them down. Never had she made such serious, such sobering resolutions. She resolved to work harder at school, to read improving literature, to brush her hair a hundred strokes every night, not to think about boys…especially not about Tony…and to have the talk with her father about joining the Episcopal Church. After the holiday dinner when Mr. and Mrs. Ray went to take naps and Margaret departed with her Christmas sled for a little sedate coasting, Betsy broached the matter to Julia.
Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself Page 16