She played the opening bars and her lips formed the words. She was almost singing. Tacy began to sing.
And Betsy began to breathe again, and Katie gulped and color swept into her face. For Tacy was singing beautifully, as she sang by the Ray piano.
“There’s a bower of roses,
By Bendemeer’s stream…”
Her voice was tender and plaintive like an Irish harp.
She was tremulously happy afterward. Miss Clarke said, “You’re not going to get out of singing solos after this, Tacy. You’re going to sing often for Rhetoricals.”
Betsy and Katie were radiant, and Julia was proud.
“I always knew she could do it. She has temperament. Lesson tomorrow at three forty-five, Tacy dear.”
Julia was engrossed with Tacy’s lessons, but being Julia she was soon engrossed also with more romantic affairs. May had warmed up gradually. On the hills around Deep Valley the wild white plum was in bloom, and one fine afternoon the faculty and the seniors had a picnic. It was an annual event, which Betsy considered important because it gave a holiday to the rest of the school. She and Phil had a splendid ride, and he had just left her at home when Julia came in.
She ran up the steps and into the house calling, “Bettina! Mamma! Bettina!”
“Yes, yes!” “What is it?” Mrs. Ray and Betsy came running.
Julia’s hair had blown loose and her small hands were grubby. She was holding a gigantic bouquet of purple violets.
“Bettina!” she said, looking mischievous. “You can now have your revenge.”
“What do you mean? What revenge? I don’t want any revenge.”
“Any time you want it.”
“But who on?” Betsy demanded.
“Who do you think fell for me at that picnic? And I didn’t try, Bettina. I give you my word I didn’t.”
“Who?”
Julia began to laugh, showing her pretty teeth, set close together like Geraldine Farrar’s. She looked more mischievous than ever.
“Gaston!” she cried. “Your precious Gaston!”
Betsy was thunderstruck.
“I don’t see how you can even be interested in such a horrid person,” Mrs. Ray said.
“But don’t you see?” asked Julia. “I can help Betsy get her revenge.”
“Maybe you can get me an ‘E,’” said Betsy. “I’d like that better. But I simply can’t believe it. He isn’t human. He cares for nothing but cutting up frogs.”
“He cares about violets,” said Julia and gave the big bunch to Betsy to smell while she went to get a vase.
It was true. Astounding as it seemed, Mr. Gaston now followed Julia with calf’s eyes. Betsy did not think she could count on an “E” but she did notice a marked softening in his attitude. He smiled at her sometimes, a little sheepishly. He reminded her that she was excused from her homework because she was studying for the Essay Contest.
She was certainly working hard on that. Oftener and oftener now she braved Phil’s displeasure and went to the library. Almost in spite of herself she had become fascinated by the life of James J. Hill. She came to know the tough-fibered young Canadian who arrived in Minnesota at the age of seventeen and was soon directing the boats on its rivers and the course of silvery rails across its land. She came to see the majestic northwest country, its Indians and trappers, its pine-encircled lakes and the rivers with magic names. Red River of the North! She said that over and over to herself. She read more than she needed to read, everything she could find, and her essay grew and took shape in her mind until she looked with a friendly challenge into Joe Willard’s blue eyes.
“I suppose,” he said one day, “you’re going to put pink apple blossoms into your essay?”
“Don’t you think,” Betsy returned, “that apple pie would be more in James J’s line?”
“An apple in his pocket, I’d say,” Joe answered, and they terminated the conversation quickly. Contestants weren’t supposed to discuss their subject with one another.
“After we’ve written our essays,” Betsy thought, “I’d like to talk James J. Hill over with Joe.”
Phil disliked the subject, and Betsy ruled it out of their conversation as they bounced, jounced and rattled about the countryside. Apple trees were coming into bloom, and she found herself squinting at them.
“They look pink, but like pink under gray gauze,” she remarked to Phil.
“What are you so interested in apple blossoms for?” he asked, and she explained, but he did not vouchsafe an opinion as to their color.
He was interested only in the auto, careening along at twenty miles or so an hour. They went too fast to admire the flowering bushes, the hosts of bright warblers, the brimming streams with violets and strawberry blossoms on their banks. The enchanting scent of May was blotted out by the bitter smell of gasoline.
Yet when they went, it was better than when they stood still. They were constantly getting stuck in the mud, which infuriated Phil. They got stuck going up hills, too; the engine stalled, and they had to pile rocks and pieces of wood behind the wheels. Betsy had always liked hills, but she came to dread the sight of one.
Things happened, too, to a red auto. Tires had to be patched. The insides had to be tinkered with. Farmers had to come and pull it to the nearest blacksmith shop and Phil always thought the blacksmith was an idiot.
A red auto, Betsy decided, was not so nice as a surrey.
The rest of the Crowd was taking picnics out behind Dandy or Alice’s Rex. Betsy had loved picnics ever since she and Tacy, at the age of five, started taking their suppers up to the Hill Street bench. But Phil cared no more for picnics than he did for scenery. He talked scornfully of spiders, and sandy sandwiches, and warm lemonade and other inconsequential things. The spring went by, and Betsy hadn’t eaten one hard-boiled egg out doors.
The Friday before the Essay Contest, which was always held on Saturday, the Crowd planned a picnic at Page Park. Tacy had had the idea last fall, the day she and Betsy, up on their own Big Hill, had made up the “Dreaming” song. It had never been carried out, but now the Crowd was enthusiastic.
“Don’t you think you and Phil could come?” Tacy pleaded. “I know the Essay Contest comes tomorrow, but you must have studied enough.”
“I have,” Betsy said. “My head wouldn’t hold one more fact about James J. Hill. I’d write a better essay if I went out on a picnic today and let the whole thing jell.”
“Then you’ll come?” Tacy cried joyfully.
“I’ll ask Phil.”
Phil was reluctant, as Betsy had known he would be. But she was more insistent than usual. Usually, they did without argument whatever Phil wanted to do. But today Betsy so yearned for a picnic, and the Crowd, and Page Park out on the river that she actually teased.
“I can’t imagine anything worse,” Phil said, but he gave in at last, with bad grace.
Betsy tried to forget about his ill humor. She hurried home after school, took her books to her room, and put out of sight in Uncle Keith’s trunk the notebook with her James J. Hill material.
“I’m just going to forget about you,” she said closing the lid. She knew she had done a thorough research job, and she would come back from the picnic so full of joy and fresh air that she couldn’t help sleeping well, and writing well tomorrow. “I’m going to write the durn best essay in the contest,” she remarked to space.
She put on an old blue sailor suit, and dressed her hair in a braid turned up with a big bow. That was the way she had worn it last year; the way Carney still wore hers. She and Anna filled a basket gleefully, and she looked so happy when she greeted Phil at the door that he almost forgave her for making him go on the picnic. They drove around collecting Tacy, Squirrelly, Pin, Winona. The rest were going with Carney and Alice in their surreys.
They drove across the slough and through the high white gate which admitted one to the glories of Page Park. There was a race track with a grandstand; then a hill with a flagpole, and on the other
side a picnic ground with tall swings and a little kitchen. Beyond that the river flowed over its sandy bottom.
The Crowd went to the picnic ground and swung in the big swings. They swung sitting down with someone pushing, and standing, in pairs, pumping up. Tony and Betsy went so high that they could see the river.
They went to the little kitchen, and made coffee in a big pot. They set out on one of the long tables potato salad, potted meat, sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, a chocolate cake, a cocoanut cake, and a jug of lemonade. It was a marvelous supper, and Betsy ached from laughing at the silly jokes which seasoned it. Everyone was having a very good time. Even Phil was smiling.
When the empty plates had been piled back into the baskets, the Crowd went to the river. The sky was still flushed with sunset. They skipped stones and the boys, to be daring, smoked punk wood. It grew dark and cool and they made a campfire and sat down around it and sang.
They sang the old songs first, “Annie Laurie,” “Juanita,” “My Wild Irish Rose,” and that one about a tavern.
“There is a tavern in the town,
in the town,
And there my true love sits him down,
sits him down.”
Tony chimed in expertly in his deep bass. Betsy sat with her arm around Tacy, singing alto and acting as silly as she used to act in the pre-Philip era.
Exhausting the old songs they came up to “Shine Little Glow Worm,” “In the Good Old Summer Time,” and others of more recent vintage. They sang “Because I’m Married Now,” and “I’m Afraid to Go Home in the Dark.” When they were almost sung out, Winona sprang up suddenly.
“I know one we ought to sing in honor of Betsy and Phil!”
She started to sing “Dreaming.”
Everyone chimed in, and instead of singing the right words they sang the words Betsy had made up. They had learned them the day of her fictitious dream, and had often sung them teasingly since. Winona, Betsy knew, didn’t mean any harm. She probably thought that Phil had heard the parody, and that, if he hadn’t, it would be a good joke. Tacy turned her head sharply toward Betsy. Her eyes in the darkness seemed to ask whether she should stop it. But it was too late to try to do that now, The Crowd was singing lustily:
“Dreaming, Dreaming,
Of your red auto I’m dreaming,
Dreaming of days when I got a ride,
Dreaming of hours spent by your side.
Dreaming, dreaming,
Of your red auto I’m dreaming,
Love will not change,
While the auto ree-mains,
Dree-ee-eaming.”
Betsy sang merrily along with the rest. Phil had never heard the parody, so far as she knew. But of course he wouldn’t mind. Yet she had a queer apprehensive feeling. Phil didn’t have a very good sense of humor.
He was not sitting near her and she could not see his expression. Walking back to the picnic ground for the baskets he did not seek her out. They went on to the field where Dandy and Rex were finishing their oats and where Phil had left the auto. Still neither chance nor design brought them together.
Calling jokes and farewells, people took the same seats they had occupied driving out. Betsy sat down on the front seat of the auto. Phil cranked and the car began to shake. He climbed up beside her but he did not speak.
They left Winona and Pin at Winona’s house, took Squirrelly to his home and Tacy to Hill Street. Tacy had noticed, Betsy knew, that Phil was very silent. Getting out of the auto, she leaned over and gave Betsy a kiss.
“You write a good essay tomorrow. Do you hear? I’ll be saying my prayers for you.”
“Thanks,” Betsy said, and she and Phil drove on.
Betsy felt terrible. Her apprehension had grown into a premonition of disaster. She felt slightly ill as the car bounced along down Hill Street, down Broad Street, and up the Plum Street hill. Phil had still not spoken. Betsy made one or two timid conversational overtures but he did not respond, so she too was silent.
He got out of the auto, and helped her out. They climbed the two flights of stairs to her porch, but he did not hold her arm as usual. She started to open the door.
“Good night,” she said. Then he burst out.
“What do you mean by making a fool of me with that ridiculous song?”
“Phil,” said Betsy. “You must believe me. I made up that song…or Tacy and I did together…way last September, before I even knew you.”
“It’s about me, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but…”
“I thought I meant more to you than that.”
“But don’t you see? I made up that song before I even knew you. Tacy and I were out on a picnic. We were just acting silly. You know how silly we act…” But he didn’t. She had never acted silly in front of Phil…until tonight.
“I thought you acted very silly at the park,” he said coldly.
“I suppose you didn’t like me that way.”
“No, I can’t say I did.”
All at once they were in the midst of a furious quarrel.
Betsy interrupted desperately. “Phil, listen to me. I tell you again that when I made up that song you were a perfect stranger. But I’m sorry. Do you hear? I’m apologizing. I’m very sorry.”
Phil jumped off the porch and ran back to his auto.
Betsy went into the house and up to her room.
“Have fun?” came a voice from her mother’s room.
“Wonderful,” said Betsy. She started undressing. She didn’t wash or put up her hair. She didn’t even think of doing it. She got into her night gown, and into bed, and started to cry.
She had lost Phil, She knew she had lost him. The proud dazzling structure of the Betsye-Phil affair had crashed about her head. She had lost Phil. Irma, probably, would get him. She cried for a very long time.
When the gong woke her next morning, she felt numb. Her head was aching. In the mirror she saw that she looked as badly as she felt. She couldn’t remember a thing about James J. Hill.
At breakfast everyone noticed how badly she looked. The family knew without being told that she had quarreled with Phil. She took coffee, found a pen, and said good-by. Everyone wished her good luck but with almost frightened glances. They knew, Betsy felt, that no one who looked as she looked this morning could possibly win.
She walked to school and found Miss Clarke and Miss O’Rourke waiting in the upper hall. Just as last year, they directed her into the algebra classroom where the other seven contestants were already gathered. Joe Willard grinned when Betsy came in, but when he saw her expression he looked troubled. A bell rang, and they all started to write.
Betsy’s essay was not so bad as she had feared it would be. Everything she knew about James J. Hill came back to her and she knew all there was to be found out about him in the Deep Valley Public Library. Yet even as she wrote her well organized and heavily factual paper, she knew it was not good. Not at one point did she kindle to her subject and bring it to life. Not one bit of the emotion she had felt when she read about the Red River of the North came back to her now and transferred itself to paper.
She wrote until twelve o’clock, then turned in her essay and went out into the hall.
Astonishingly, Joe Willard was waiting for her. It had never happened before. He stood brushing his hands over his yellow hair with a worried expression.
“You didn’t feel well; did you, Betsy?”
She managed to smile. “Yes, of course. I have a feeling, though, that the Philomathians have won the sophomore points.”
22
Betsye into Betsy
SHE STILL FELT NUMB, but that wore off at last. She began to be pricklingly conscious of the warm sweet day pushing in at the windows, the smell of lilacs, the song of birds. The telephone too grew harder to bear. It rang and rang, but it was always for Julia, or her father, or her mother; or if it was for her, it was not Phil. Her heart would rush up into her throat when she was called to the ’phone, and her mother and Julia must have se
nsed this, for they stopped saying just, “Telephone, Betsy.” They began to say gently, “It’s for you, Betsy, but it isn’t Phil.”
Late that Sunday afternoon Winona telephoned. She sounded anxious.
“Gee, Betsy, I hope I didn’t get you in Dutch starting that song Friday night. I thought Phil had heard it. And anyway, I never thought of it making him mad.”
Betsy swallowed. “What makes you think it did?”
“Why…er…you might as well know. He’s called Irma and asked her to go to the track meet. Next Saturday. He wants her to go out in his auto.”
So! It had come! But Betsy had known it would come. She had known even before last night when everything toppled. It had always been just a house of cards.
She was silent for so long that Winona spoke again.
“Irma didn’t wangle it, Betsy. She doesn’t even want to go.”
The powerful arm of pride stretched out to steady Betsy.
“Tell Irma for me she’s a chump not to go. That auto is fun.”
“You ought to know!” Winona gave a relieved giggle.
“Phil and I had a terrible row,” Betsy said, “and we’re finished. Tell Irma that if she wants to see the Merry Widow, she can just come up and look at me.”
“You don’t sound very heartbroken.”
“I’ll put on my Merry Widow hat for her,” Betsy joked. They talked a little longer, and then Betsy rang off.
She went to the closet for a jacket and a tam.
“I’m going for a walk,” she called carelessly to the family.
The May evening was poignantly sweet with a moon like a half slice of lemon in the sky. Betsy began to walk, and at the same time she began to cry. She walked and cried for a long time but that was the end of her tears. She found herself at Lincoln Park, that pie-shaped piece of land with a big elm tree and a fountain on it, which stood where Broad Street met Hill. Instinctively, in her trouble, she had headed for Hill Street and Tacy. But she stopped at Lincoln Park. She washed her face and hands in the fountain and dried them on her handkerchief and sat down on a bench and looked up at the sky.
Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself Page 40