Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  Tony slipped down until the desk almost hid his face. Cab’s ears were red.

  “Your admirably organized papers,” Mr. Gaston went on, “were in contrast to some I received. Some writers who, perhaps, had not even finished the book tried to show off their so-called literary skill at Scott’s expense.”

  At that Betsy turned crimson. Mr. Gaston had spoken in the plural, but no one in the class would doubt that he meant her alone. For just a moment she was appalled. Then the joke in the situation struck her, and she smiled around at Cab, Tony and Tacy. Joe Willard was looking at her with a puzzled expression.

  Tony and Cab after football practise, headed for the Ray house. They paused on the hill to pick a bouquet of sumac, goldenrod, asters and prickly thistles, and presented it to Betsy with sweeping bows. There was much joking and when Mr. Ray heard the story, he laughed until he shook.

  But saying good-by to Betsy, Cab turned serious. He was, after all, Welsh Calvinistic Methodist.

  “Betsy!” he said. He looked around to make sure that no one was listening. “Betsy, I just want you to know…. I’m going to read the noble work. The whole five hundred and thirty-four pages. Darned if I don’t!”

  And he did.

  5

  Septemberish

  SEPTEMBER WAS VERY Septemberish that year. It was Septemberish in the excitement of the opening days of school. These were so busy that soon the quiet summer at the lake seemed like a remote and peaceful dream. But a dream…Betsy thought…it was good to have had. She liked to remember the faintly rocking boat, the smell of water lilies, and her novel.

  School was demanding. It came at her from all sides.

  During the first week sophomores, juniors, and seniors, with ostentatious politeness invited the freshmen into the Social Room. There they talked up the merits of the two school societies. The freshmen must choose their societies, and rivalry was keen.

  “Just look at the trophy cups. You’ll find orange bows on two of them,” Betsy heard Philos everywhere saying, and every time she heard it, she writhed. If she had not lost the freshmen points to Joe Willard, the Zetamathians might have had the Essay Cup.

  Teaming up with Tacy, she worked frantically, telling freshmen boys that the Zets had all the pretty girls; freshmen girls that the Zets had all the nicest boys. It seemed to work.

  They saw Phil Brandish surrounded by Philo girls. As a newcomer, he too would join a society today.

  “Dreaming, dreaming,” hummed Tacy mischievously. “You’ll never have a better chance.”

  “I’ll think of the red auto and plunge,” Betsy said.

  But she didn’t, and Tacy had known that she wouldn’t speak to Phil Brandish. He was too old, too big, too worldly. They continued to court the freshmen.

  At the afternoon assembly Miss Bangeter and the presidents of the two societies spoke.

  “Philo, Philo, Philo!” “Zet! Zet! Zet!” shrieked the opposing clans. Lists were passed, and after the signing Phil Brandish wore an orange bow.

  Early in September, also, came class elections. Betsy felt a thrill when she was elected secretary of her class. The family at supper was pleased, too.

  “I’m not a bit surprised, though,” her mother said.

  “Na, neither am I,” said Anna, passing biscuits. “The McCloskey girl was secretary.”

  “Bettina is a natural leader,” said Julia, whose opinion of Betsy was so good that it kept Betsy busy living up to it. Margaret’s eyes were awed.

  Mr. Ray always laughed at Mrs. Ray for being proud of their daughters, but his face had a special look when one brought home news like this. He was anxious that Betsy should be a good secretary.

  “Go to every meeting, Betsy. And write up the minutes carefully in a notebook you keep for that purpose.”

  “I’ll buy one tomorrow,” Betsy said, happily. She had a weakness for fresh new notebooks and finely sharpened pencils.

  September brought plenty of these, along with new books, and the impact of new studies. Some of these jarred all too heavily.

  “Geometry is awful, simply awful,” Betsy wailed.

  Julia couldn’t understand this. “I love geometry. It’s like music.”

  “Like music?”

  “Yes. It’s exact, like music.”

  “Stop! Stop! I’ve always liked music. Don’t you go comparing it with something hideous….”

  “Poor Bettina!” said Julia, and that night she tried to help. She placed the ruler carefully with her slender white fingers, drew lines with fastidious precision, and explained that when two straight lines intersected, the vertical angles formed were equal. She spoke with such a glowing face that Betsy tried not to scowl.

  “Do you understand now, Bettina? Isn’t it fascinating?”

  “I’d never call it fascinating. But perhaps I begin to see…”

  She didn’t. When she was called to the blackboard next day she went on dragging feet. Chalk in an icy hand, she turned to look pleadingly at Tacy who was suffering with her, just as Betsy suffered when Tacy was called to the board.

  “Don’t look at Tacy. Look at the blackboard,” said Miss O’Rourke, good naturedly but crisply.

  Betsy looked. She tried despairingly to remember what Julia had said. What was that about vertical angles? It had all fled.

  “Betsy,” said Miss O’Rourke. “I think you’ve made up your mind that you can’t understand geometry. Well, you’ll have to unmake it. You understood algebra, and you can understand geometry.”

  She marked Betsy’s card with a firm unmistakable zero, and Betsy went back to her seat.

  It was good to escape from school after such a session, to pile into the surrey behind Old Mag or the Sibleys’ Dandy, and roam country roads in the lazy sunshine. The woods were still green except, here and there, for an old tree turning yellow. But September was in the smoky air.

  Only girls went on these expeditions, for the boys were busy with football practise. Joe Willard didn’t play. Betsy saw him sometimes after school streaking toward the Creamery while the other boys streaked toward the field. Tom had left for Cox, and on these feminine rambles the shortage of boys in the Crowd was a favorite topic.

  “There are plenty of boys in school. They just have to be lured into our Crowd.”

  “Irma could lure a few,” someone would say if Irma happened not to be along.

  “Yes, but when Irma lures them, she keeps them. What good would that do us?”

  “What about that good looking Joe Willard?”

  “He’s a woman hater,” said Winona who had tried vainly to inveigle him.

  “I think we get along fine without boys. I love hen parties,” Tacy said. But no one thought this even worth answering.

  “Why the heck the Humphreys had to go to California!” someone always groaned, and Carney always looked sober.

  Everyone in the Crowd missed the Humphreys but not as Carney did. The letters which passed steadily between Deep Valley and San Diego did not fill Larry’s place. Neither did any of the many boys who were attentive to her.

  As happened every September Chauncey Olcott came to the Opera House and Mr. Ray took the family to hear him. Anna went with Charley, her beau. They sat in the balcony, and between acts she came to the railing to wave to the Rays sitting below. She wore such a big hat, such a fluffy boa, so much perfume and jewelry of every sort that she attracted considerable attention. There was much craning of necks. But the Rays waved loyally back.

  This year’s play was called O’Neill of Derry, But the name didn’t matter much. The play was always like last year’s play, and probably next year’s too. They were all laid in Ireland, they were full of plumed hats, high boots, laced bodices; and the Irish tenor, still handsome although stoutish, always sang the ballad he had earlier made famous:

  “My wild Irish rose,

  The sweetest flower that grows…”

  When he began Mr. Ray always took Mrs. Ray’s hand, and the girls sat very still, not to miss a note or quaver.
Even Julia enjoyed it, although she infuriated Betsy later with condescending remarks.

  “Chauncey Olcott,” she said, “should really have done something with his voice.”

  “Done something!” Betsy repeated. “Done something! He’s made himself famous with it. What do you call doing something?”

  “He might have sung real music. Oh, Bettina, you must hear Mrs. Poppy’s records! You must hear the really great ones…Caruso, Scotti, Melba, Geraldine Farrar….”

  “Chauncey Olcott,” said Betsy stubbornly, “is good enough for me.”

  When not irritated by slurs on Chauncey Olcott, however, she was a sympathetic repository for Julia’s talk of the Great World.

  Julia took singing lessons from Mrs. Poppy, a large blond former actress whose husband managed the Melborn Hotel. They lived at the Hotel. Julia had been studying for a long time now, but she still came home from every lesson with burning cheeks and a faraway look in her eyes. She went straight to the piano, usually, and started to sing one of her opera scores. And after supper she often called Betsy into her room. She would talk and talk about pitch and resonance and breath control, illustrating with a “Ni-po-tu-la-he,” followed by another “Ni-po-tu-la-he” which to Betsy sounded just the same.

  “Do you hear the difference?” Julia would demand, and rush on without waiting for an answer. “Isn’t it marvelous?”

  She would dart across to Betsy, comfortably ensconced in the window seat, grasp Betsy’s hand and press it over her own diaphragm while she sang the “Ni-po-tu-la-he” again.

  “Do you feel that? Here! That’s the way to produce a tone.”

  Betsy felt as bewildered as she did by geometry, but she pretended to understand.

  Above Julia’s dressing table was a large picture cut from a magazine of Miss Geraldine Farrar, the American singer who was scoring such triumphs in Europe and New York. Her long glittering train coiled about her feet; her head was high; her smile, triumphant. Julia used to gaze at this picture thoughtfully.

  “I think I look like her.”

  “You do.”

  “She seems taller. But it’s just that train.”

  Julia, standing on tiptoe, pushed down her slender hips.

  Julia was soloist in the girls’ vested choir at St. John’s Episcopal Church. The choir too started in September after a summer recess. Betsy also was a member and she liked marching down the aisle and singing, in a long black robe and a black four-cornered hat. But she liked even better going alone to the early Sunday morning service.

  She could usually waken herself by planning to do so. She slipped out of the house while the rest of the family was sleeping. The world was misty, cool, the lawns frosted with dew and filled with great numbers of blackbirds feeding busily.

  The attendance at this service was small. There were usually just a few old ladies and Betsy. The Rev. Mr. Lewis knelt and rose, read the prayers, moved about the snowy candlelit altar, in a sort of reverent abstraction which Betsy shared.

  “Ye who do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins…and intend to lead a new life…”

  Every Sunday morning Betsy resolved dreamily to lead a new life.

  She always got back for breakfast very hungry and as for the new life…usually it didn’t last very long. But every Sunday morning she could start one again.

  As September moved on there was a fire in the grate for Sunday night lunch. It was cozy; it was remindful of last winter to have a fire again. Mr. Ray made the sandwiches as usual. He was famous for his Sunday evening sandwiches. And after these were eaten, along with coffee, and cocoa, and a big layer cake, the family and the ever-present guests sat around the fire and sang.

  But the grand climax of the month was, of course, Julia’s birthday. She was eighteen this year. Mrs. Ray gave her a party for eighteen girls, including some of Betsy’s friends. And Betsy and Carney, assigned to serve the refreshments, were hilariously inspired to wear their fathers’ dress suits. The black trousers were turned up, the waistcoats were padded out with pillows. Both girls painted on mustaches and goatees of burnt cork. They were, someone said, good enough to serve at a fashionable wedding.

  And that gave Winona an inspiration of her own.

  “Girls! Girls! Let’s have a mock wedding!”

  Mock weddings were a favorite diversion in Deep Valley.

  “I’ll be the groom,” cried Carney. “I’ll act like a typical male and pick Irma for my bride.” She fell to her knees at Irma’s feet.

  “I’ll be the minister,” shouted Betsy.

  They all scurried about, pushing palms into a half circle in the Rays’ front window, pinning a lace curtain on the giggling Irma and giving her a cabbage bouquet. Winona, in Mrs. Ray’s bathrobe, acted as bridesmaid and Tacy in Mr. Ray’s smoking jacket played the Best Man. Julia sang “O Promise Me” with many high falsetto trills and Mrs. Ray banged out the wedding march.

  Breathless from laughter Betsy rushed to the dining room table for the remnants of birthday cake.

  “We must each take a piece home and sleep on it. That’s what you always do after a wedding.”

  “Yes,” said Julia’s friend Dorothy. “You put it in a box along with the names of seven boys. Every morning for seven mornings you draw out a name, and the last one will be your future husband.”

  “Carney will make all seven ‘Larry.’”

  “No, you have to name seven different boys.”

  “But what if you haven’t met your future husband yet? I hope I haven’t,” Tacy said.

  “Write ‘A Stranger’ on one of the slips.”

  Julia ran upstairs for pencils; paper was hurriedly torn into strips, and the girls set to work.

  “Is there anyone here who isn’t beginning with Phil Brandish?” Betsy asked. But everyone was too busy to answer. She wrote “Phil Brandish” with a flourish and picked up the second slip of paper. On that she wrote without hesitation “A Stranger.”

  Herbert had acquired a romantic aura since going to California. She licked her pencil and wrote “Herbert.” Cab ought to be put down. Of course he had a crush on Irma, but everyone couldn’t go with Irma. She put down “Cab.” She put down “Tony” for old times’ sake, and “Tom” because she had known him longer than any other boy.

  “I have one slip left,” she announced.

  “I have five,” groaned Tacy.

  Everyone else was either thinking or writing.

  Betsy put the end of her pencil in her teeth, and her mind’s eye roved over Deep Valley High School. It paused at a challenging blond head.

  “Girls!” shouted Winona. “I’ve put down ‘Gaston.’ If I draw that last I invite you to my suicide.”

  “I’m putting down ‘Chauncey Olcott,’” said Tacy. “There’s a Mrs. Olcott, I believe, but Chauncey will just have to get rid of her.”

  “I haven’t a local boy in my list,” said Julia loftily.

  That caused a sensation among the seniors.

  “Why, Julia! What about Hugh?”

  “I’ll auction off Hugh.”

  “Really?” “May I have him?” “I think he’s cute.”

  Through the clatter of voices, Betsy pondered over her seventh slip.

  “See here,” she called out suddenly. “I’m thinking of the general good. I’m thinking of someone we could use in our Crowd.”

  “Who?”

  “Joe Willard.”

  “I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again, he’s a woman hater,” Winona declared.

  “Oh, fudge!”

  “If you think you can get him into the Crowd, why don’t you try?”

  “Ask him to a party or something?”

  “I will, maybe,” Betsy said. She wrote “Joe Willard” firmly on her seventh slip.

  Tacy and Katie stayed all night after the wedding, and there was more hilarity about putting the wedding cake, and the names, under their pillows.

  In the morning Betsy drew out Cab, and the following morning, Tony, and after
that Herbert and Tom. At last she was down to A Stranger, Phil Brandish, and Joe.

  But alas and alack, that morning she did not make her own bed! She was late, and left it for Anna who knew nothing about the great enterprise. Anna found some crumbs of cake and soiled papers and threw them all out. She even changed the sheets for good measure, and Betsy’s plight was pitiful. She was stranded by Fate not knowing whom she would marry…A Stranger, Phil Brandish, or Joe.

  6

  The Moorish Café

  THE MOCK WEDDING WAS followed shortly by a wedding anniversary, a real one…Mr. and Mrs. Ray’s.

  It came in mid-October and every year, or almost every year, the family celebrated in the same way. They went out to Murmuring Lake, had dinner at the Inn, and then visited Pleasant Park. Mr. and Mrs. Ray showed the three girls the oak tree they had been sitting under when Mr. Ray proposed; they pointed out the big bay window in which they had been married. The trip usually came at a glittering autumnal moment when Minnesota was a paradise of blue skies and lakes, with red and gold leaves overhead and underfoot.

  On the year Betsy was a sophomore, however, the fifteenth of October was a rainy day.

  The rain began the night before, but lazily.

  “It’ll clear. We won’t be starting until after school,” Mr. Ray said optimistically. Mr. Ray was always optimistic. He never expected things to go wrong, but if they did he was not daunted. If a plan upset he could always make another one, so pleasant that everyone was almost glad the first one could not be carried out.

  In the morning it was plain that he would have to plan, and plan fast. The rain was a torrent, and the wind was lashing the shrubs to and fro.

  Whistling, as he always did when troubled, Mr. Ray went to the basement and started the furnace. Heat crept comfortingly through the registers, but no one cheered up. Anna made popovers, which helped any situation. Still the breakfast table was subdued, until Mr. Ray, with his second cup of coffee, remarked:

  “I have a snoggestion.” “Snoggestion” was what he always called a particularly good suggestion. Faces brightened all around the table.