Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  At the supper table, she was bursting with the glories of Puget Sound, but she had to divide talking time with Julia.

  Julia had had a singing lesson that day, and she was bursting with news of some new records Mrs. Poppy had played on the gramophone.

  “They’re Caruso records. Enrico Caruso. When you hear him sing that ‘Laugh, Pagliaccio,’ you absolutely have to cry.”

  “Who is Enrico Caruso?” Margaret wanted to know.

  “Just a fat little fellow who likes his spaghetti,” Mr. Ray joked.

  “Just the greatest singer in the world,” Julia said, giving her father a crushing look.

  “Not so great as Chauncey Olcott, I’ll bet,” said Betsy.

  “Chauncey Olcott! You can’t mention him in the same breath. You’d better stick to Puget Sound, Bettina.”

  Steamers on Puget Sound, Mt. Rainier, spaghetti and Caruso surged through Betsy’s dreams that night. The next day after history class she spoke to Miss Clarke.

  “Miss Clarke, you wouldn’t mind, would you, if I put some characters into my essay? Took them on a trip through Puget Sound, maybe?”

  “I think it would be a nice idea,” Miss Clarke answered, beaming. “It would put a little color, a little life, into the paper.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Betsy said.

  She went to the library every day after school and at home, in front of the fire, wrote industriously in her notebook. Cab was disgusted and Herbert’s budding romantic interest died. Betsy didn’t mind. She had given herself heart and soul to Puget Sound.

  Her father was much interested in the essay. He talked about Puget Sound every night at supper, and when he paused for breath Julia chimed in about Enrico Caruso. She went often to Mrs. Poppy’s to listen to his records.

  “I’d give ten years of my life to hear him utter one note,” she cried dramatically.

  Betsy grew almost as absorbed in Enrico Caruso as she was in Puget Sound. She asked questions about him. He was an Italian she discovered, stout and dark, with a tenor voice so divine that his stoutness and darkness didn’t matter at all.

  The essay was finished at last and the day for Rhetoricals arrived. At noon Betsy changed from her school waist and skirt into the red velveteen. Mrs. Ray dressed up too. She was going to hear the program as parents often did when their children performed.

  “I wish I could go,” Mr. Ray said. “I’ll have to wait until supper to hear all about it. Will you let me read the essay tonight, Betsy?”

  “Of course,” said Betsy. Up to now no one in the family had read it; and this worried Mr. Ray a little.

  “Has one of the teachers read it?” he asked now. “Somebody ought to check your facts. I suppose you covered the salmon fisheries?”

  “Miss Clarke read it,” Betsy answered evasively, “last night after school.”

  “Did she like it?” Mr. Ray inquired.

  “She liked it all right,” Betsy said.

  As a matter of fact Miss Clarke had seemed surprised by the essay. She had changed color two or three times while she was reading. She had coughed and gone out for a glass of water. She had taken off her eyeglasses and polished them and put them on again.

  “It’s not exactly what I expected, Betsy,” she had said. “But perhaps it will do our Rhetoricals good.”

  This was such a queer compliment that Betsy did not repeat it to her father, and she thought about it with some trepidation when, sitting on the platform with the others taking part in the program, she watched Miss Bangeter, tall, dark and majestic, walk to the front of the platform. After a few words Miss Bangeter turned the meeting over to Miss Clarke.

  Miss Clarke explained that the program was to cover all parts of the United States. She announced the opening number, a contribution from the chorus. Since Betsy sang in the chorus she had a chance to stand on her shaky legs and get accustomed to the audience. It was vast and frightening.

  The chorus sang “Dixie,” and that covered the South. A girl read one of Brett Harte’s stories, and that covered California. A boy recited from Whittier’s “Snow Bound” and that covered New England. Betsy sat on the platform with her hands clutching her essay, copied out on foolscap paper in her best handwriting. Her legs were still shaky, her hands were like ice, and her mouth felt as dry as a piece of carpet.

  Miss Clarke announced that the next contribution would cover the Pacific Northwest. It was an essay on Puget Sound, written and read by Betsy Ray.

  Betsy rose and walked to the front of the platform.

  There was a burst of the hearty applause that high school students love to give as a welcome change from being quiet. She saw Herbert’s wide grin, Cab’s twinkling eyes, Tacy’s pale face. Julia too looked anxious but her mother was calm and confident, a little stern, as she was when Julia sang.

  “An Adventure on Puget Sound,” Betsy said.

  She started to read to the accompaniment of the fidgeting, whispering and paper rustling that usually keep pace with the reading of an essay to a high school audience. But after a moment you could have heard a pin drop. For Betsy’s essay wasn’t an essay, exactly. It was an account of a trip which half a dozen girls in stiffly starched sailor suits and breezy sailor hats were taking on the Steamer Princess Victoria on Puget Sound. The girls were named Betsy, Tacy, Julia, Katie, Carney and Bonnie.

  Betsy—in the story—was afraid the sea air would straighten out her home made curls. This brought a gust of laughter from the audience. Bonnie quoted the guide book, trying to make the trip educational. Carney flashed a lone dimple and cried, “O di immortales!” Katie talked with an Irish brogue, and Tacy was seasick.

  The gust of laughter became a wind. Miss Bangeter rapped for order.

  Betsy’s essay had a plot. Julia burst into the luxurious salon, richly upholstered in brown leather, where the ship’s orchestra was playing and a gay throng was assembled, to tell her companions that Enrico Caruso was on board. She was determined to have a look at him, and the girls searched the faces of their shipmates but saw no one who looked godlike enough to be Enrico Caruso. They saw, however, a short fat swarthy Italian; he seemed, indeed, to be eyeing them.

  In the dining room, hung in palest green, full of women in ball gowns, flowers and candlelight, with the orchestra now playing behind potted palms, they continued to search for Caruso. Failing to find him, they watched the stout Italian who consumed five spring chickens and vast quantities of spaghetti. It was at this point that Tacy grew seasick.

  They went out on deck and noted the panorama of wooded hill and fertile plain. Bonnie told them that Puget Sound was the Mediterranean of America. When not searching for Enrico Caruso they watched the sun set on Mt. Rainier, the color of candle flame.

  “How Caruso must be enjoying this!” sighed Julia. The Italian who was in the next deck chair, seemed interested in her remark. “I’d give ten years of my life to hear him utter one note,” Julia remarked dramatically.

  The moon rose, and someone suggested singing.

  “Girls!” rebuked Julia. “We couldn’t sing with Enrico Caruso on board!” But they talked her down, the moonlight called for singing so strongly. They began to sing.

  They sang “Shy Ann, Shy Ann, Hop on My Pony,” and “What’s the Use of Dreaming” and “Crocodile Isle” and “Cause I’m Lonesome.” Then Katie suggested “My Wild Irish Rose.”

  “We need a tenor. Fake one, Katie,” Julia said.

  But Katie didn’t need to fake one, for at that point the Italian joined in their song in a tenor voice so golden that the stars above Puget Sound swam in glory as they listened. At the end the little man rose and bowed to Julia.

  “The lady might like to know me. I am Enrico Caruso,” he said.

  “And he ate five spring chickens!” breathed Julia.

  That was the final line.

  The auditorium of the Deep Valley High School rocked and roared applause. Miss Clarke looked timidly toward Miss Bangeter. Miss Bangeter was laughing and clapping her hands.
She wiped her eyes too before she rose and rapped for order and walked to the front of the platform.

  “Betsy certainly surprised us,” she said. “She left out a few important facts about the Sound, I must admit. And I think she should turn in a report on the Salmon Fisheries, just to show that she knows about them, as I have no doubt she does. But she certainly made us all want to take that trip. Didn’t she?”

  Uproarious applause was the answer.

  Betsy’s knees that stopped shaking now. Her mouth felt natural again. She was happy. She was proud. Let Bonnie have Tony if she wanted him!

  “The pen is mightier than the sword,” she thought. Sword wasn’t the word, exactly. But it was the best she could find with the Deep Valley High School whistling and stamping its feet.

  25

  Change in the Air

  “When the days begin to lengthen,

  Then the cold begins to strengthen.”

  MR. RAY QUOTED THE OLD saw every February and every February it was true. The weather was mercilessly cold. Good black coal rattled steadily into the furnace. Bluejays took refuge under the eaves of the house, ruffling their feathers.

  “You can put molasses on the end of a stick and catch one,” Anna said. Margaret tried. She didn’t succeed, but it helped to defeat February.

  Mrs. Ray defeated it with a thimble bee; Betsy and Tacy wore their best dresses and served. Julia defeated it by writing to the music store in Minneapolis and ordering another opera score; Aïda this time. She also acquired a new beau named Hugh. The examination papers were barely dry when she started throwing bright glances at this slender studious youth who soon was completely at home in the Ray house. Only Washington now served as a reminder of the hapless Fred.

  Julia and Betsy were busy too with confirmation classes. They observed Lent rigorously for a time. Julia gave up dancing, a sacrifice Betsy could not very well make since The Crowd had not started going to dances. She equaled it, however; she gave up candy; she gave up fudge.

  “What shall we do with the money we save on the grocery bill?” Mr. Ray asked. “Would you like a trip to California, Jule? How about an auto?”

  In the after school gatherings at the Ray house there was a great emptiness, most imperfectly satisfied with cookies. When The Crowd gathered elsewhere and fudge was offered, Betsy accepted her portion, took it home and put it in a box.

  “I’m going to eat it Easter Sunday,” she explained.

  Before Easter she and Julia would be confirmed, and even sooner Betsy would be baptized. She had asked Mr. and Mrs. Humphreys to be her godparents.

  “Doesn’t that make us practically related?” Herbert asked, walking home from confirmation class.

  “I’d be glad if it would,” Betsy answered. “I never had a brother.”

  “You don’t seem like a sister exactly,” Herbert said. “I’ll tell you what you are; you’re my Confidential Friend.”

  After that Herbert and Betsy, writing notes to each other in school, put C.F. after their names.

  But Betsy did not confide in Herbert. She was not much of a confider, except to Tacy. Herbert, however, poured into Betsy’s ear his infatuation for a round-cheeked girl named Irma. This was not very flattering but it was good experience for a writer, Betsy thought. Since her triumph with Puget Sound she was very much the writer.

  “That affair with Tony helped my writing,” she told Tacy. “I mean, it will when I get around to write. It’s good for writers to suffer.”

  Tony dropped in often, teasing and affectionate as ever, and quite unaware of having improved her art.

  The girls in The Crowd were making friendship pillows. Carney and Bonnie had started the fad. They asked friends to write their names, nicknames and pet jokes on pillows, and then they embroidered over the penciled scrawls. Betsy was as poor at embroidery as she was at algebra but she started a friendship pillow. After school she often went down to the Sibleys’ to work on it with Carney and Bonnie.

  Usually there was a fire in the library grate, and beyond the windows stretched the snowy side lawn. Betsy’s thread tangled and knotted, the work bored her unspeakably. So shortly she took to reading aloud while the others sewed. Curled in Mr. Sibley’s chair she read “Helen’s Babies,” and they laughed until they cried into their friendship pillows. Carney finished Betsy’s pillow for her.

  When they fell to talking she was always surprised anew by how different Carney and Bonnie were from herself. They actually enjoyed embroidering and sewing; they were interested in learning to cook and keep house. They expected to marry and settle down, right here in Deep Valley, perhaps.

  A contrast to these domestic chats was provided by her bedtime talks with Julia.

  “When we’re out in the Great World”…Julia would begin. She spoke freely of New York, London, Berlin and Paris and expected to know them all intimately some day.

  March and St. Patrick’s Day brought the annual supper in the basement of the Catholic Church. Katie and Tacy with shamrocks on their shirt waists, green bows in their hair, waited on the Rays.

  “Who do you think I just waited on?” Tacy asked Betsy. She went on without waiting for an answer. “O’Rourke and Clarke. I was scared to death. I couldn’t get over the idea that O’Rourke was going to ask me to work an algebra problem.”

  “I suppose you chatted with Clarke about the Ancient Romans,” said Betsy.

  “No, we talked about you. That is, they asked me whether this supper was as good as the one we ate on Puget Sound. And Clarke said you were a very talented girl.”

  “Did she, really?”

  “Yes. And then she said something funny. She said you were going to have a chance to prove it. What do you suppose she meant by that?”

  Betsy found out the next day after school. Miss Clarke called her into the empty classroom, and it was plain that something important was in the wind. Miss Clarke was smiling tremulously; her soft cheeks were flushed. She took off her eyeglasses, polished them, and put them back.

  “I’m sure you know,” she began at last, “about the Essay Contest. The Philomathians and Zetamathians compete every year for the essay cup. Each society chooses one senior, one junior, one sophomore and one freshman to make up a team. A subject is assigned, and the two teams are excused from all homework in English in order to have time for library study.

  “Then on a Saturday morning in May, they are locked into a classroom with Miss O’Rourke and myself. They are not allowed to bring any notes, and they are given three hours in which to write. The essays are graded on the point system, and the society whose team piles up the most points, wins. The awarding of the cup, as Julia may have told you, is an event of Commencement Week.

  “Since the Philomathians have won the cup for debating,” Miss Clarke went on, “and we hold the athletics cup, the contest this year is extremely important. Naturally we are very anxious to win. I have selected with great care the students for the Zetamathian team. You will be interested to hear who our freshman representative will be.” She smiled at Betsy, and her eyes gleamed through her glasses. “After a conference with the English teachers,” she continued, “I have selected Betsy Ray.”

  Betsy blushed vividly. Her heart pounded with joy.

  “I am sure,” Miss Clarke said, “that the freshman points, at least, will go to the Zetamathians.”

  Betsy tried to look modest but she was sure of it too. She could almost hear her name read out when the winning contestants were announced. All eight contestants sat on the platform. The four who had won the higher ratings rose when the cup was presented.

  “What is the subject?” she asked.

  “‘The Philippines: Their Present and Future Value.’ And Betsy, there’s one thing Miss Bangeter advised me to mention. You mustn’t mind. I thought your story about Puget Sound was delightful. In fact, it led to your being chosen now. But on the Essay Contest you have to be serious. Your paper has to be a sound piece of work, well fortified by facts. Do you think you can write that sort
of thing?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Betsy. In her thoughts she added airily, “Just give me a pencil.” There was nothing she would have hesitated to write from an epic poem to an advertisement. “And I love to work at the library,” she added.

  “I know.” Miss Clarke smiled. “I always talk with Miss Sparrow before selecting students for the Essay Contest. She knows who is capable of study, and who is not. You haven’t asked,” Miss Clarke added mischievously, “who your Philomathian freshman rival is.”

  “Who is it?” asked Betsy politely.

  “Joe Willard,” Miss Clarke replied, “and he is an excellent English student. You’ll have to work to keep up with him.”

  “I certainly will,” laughed Betsy, but she was only saying what she thought was expected of her. True, Joe Willard wrote well, and he topped her grade in Composition. But had Joe Willard, or anyone else in high school, been writing poems, stories and novels all his life? Had Joe Willard written a paper on Puget Sound that was the sensation of the year? Betsy considered the freshman points as good as won.

  “The Zetamathians are relying on you, Betsy,” Miss Clarke said.

  Betsy was very, very pleased, and Tacy, waiting for her outside, was overjoyed.

  “Of course you’ll win,” she said. “Oh, Betsy, I’m so proud of you!”

  “Shucks!” said Betsy, but she was proud of herself.

  They burst into the house and told Mrs. Ray. She was busy with Miss Mix who was making her disturbing spring visit, but for a moment Mrs. Ray forgot about her checked brown and white suit, and Julia’s pink silk, and Betsy’s canary-colored silk, and Margaret’s plaid. She ran downstairs to tell Anna and to telephone Mr. Ray.

  Miss Mix gave Betsy one of her rare smiles.

  “I hope you’ll win,” she said.

  “Oh, she’s sure to win, Miss Mix,” said Tacy.