“Well, that’s that,” she said.
She went back to the thought she had had when Winona told her the news. It couldn’t have lasted.
“It couldn’t have lasted. It wasn’t true from the beginning. It wasn’t the real me that Phil liked. No particular compliment in having him crazy about somebody who wasn’t even me.
“I’m darned glad I went down to Tom’s for that sour cream cake, even though it did make Phil mad, and that was the beginning of everything. I wanted to go.
“And I’m darned glad I did my best on the Essay Contest. The Essay Contest was more important than he was. It belonged to me, not to some person I was pretending to be.
“I’m not even sorry I acted so silly at the picnic. I’m sorry about the song…that hurt his feelings. But when I acted silly I was doing what I had a right to do. I was just being myself.”
That last phrase brought into her mind something which comforted her. It was the poetry Julia had been reciting around the house last winter.
“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”
“That’s exactly what I’m trying to say!” Betsy cried, and jumped up in her excitement.
“‘To thine own self be true!’ ‘To thine own self be true!’ That’s what I have to do if I’m going to get out and make something of myself. I lost the Essay Contest. But that’s all right. I tried. I’ve done terrible work in school all spring and I have to get busy now if I’m going to pass my exams.”
She started walking rapidly toward home. It was hard to go, for she knew her father would be making sandwiches. Julia would have a beau, and there would be singing…all the songs she and Phil had danced to. But thinking that, she only walked faster and when she reached home things weren’t so hard as she had expected them to be.
For Tacy was there. Tacy had heard from Alice, who had heard it from Carney, who had heard it from Winona, who had heard it from Irma that Phil had asked Irma to go to the track meet. Tacy had had a feeling, probably, that Betsy might like to have her around. Betsy was so glad to see her that she gave her a bear hug. Not that she needed to confide in her now. She had done her confiding to the stars in Lincoln Park. But the loving warmth of Tacy’s presence helped.
The family had finished eating but her father made some sandwiches for her, and Betsy and Tacy went out into the kitchen to watch him. They joked about the coming examinations, and stood with their arms about each other acting silly through the singing.
Tacy did not so much as mention Phil. But when Katie and Leo came to call for her, she said good-by to Betsy with a curious and helpful remark.
“Betsy, did it ever occur to you that the better people know you, the better they like you?”
Betsy thought this over. She thought of Tacy and Tib and Alice and Winona and Carney and Tony and Cab…all very old friends now.
“Why, yes,” she answered. “I guess they do. What of it?”
“It shows how silly you are ever to act like somebody you aren’t,” said Tacy, and gave her another hug, and went out.
It all fitted in with what William Shakespeare had said hundreds of years before.
The next day at school Betsy went to Carney. “If you’re still looking for members, I’ll go into that Girls’ Debating Club. I think I’d enjoy it.”
A few days later she went to Miss Clarke, “Tacy and I,” she said, “have decided that if you still want us to, we’ll sing the ‘Cat Duet.’ We’ve done it for so many years. It’s too bad to break the tradition.”
“That’s what I thought,” Miss Clarke answered eagerly. “I was awfully sorry when you decided against it.”
“There’s another thing,” said Betsy, “I’ve been wanting to tell you. I really worked on the Essay Contest this year, Miss Clarke. But something happened, and I didn’t write a very good essay. I’m sorry.”
“Why, that’s all right, Betsy.”
“I just thought I’d tell you,” said Betsy, “so that you wouldn’t be building up any false hopes. I’m afraid that next year you’ll be choosing someone else to represent our class on the Essay Contest. I wouldn’t blame you,” she added, “I’ve let you down for two years running.”
Miss Clarke put her arm around Betsy with one of those little girlish gestures she had.
“We’ll see about that,” she replied.
In the ensuing days Betsy studied. She really studied. She made a game out of seeing how much she could raise her marks, which she knew were bad, by passing good examinations. She wanted to study instead of going to the track meet, but she feared that this was weakness. So she pinned on the school colors and went with the other girls to watch the boys in the hundred yard dash, the two hundred and twenty yard dash, the discus throwing, the high jump, the hurdle races and the pole vault.
She sat beside Carney driving out. Carney had been very nice to her since the quarrel. She hadn’t mentioned Phil at all, but she referred to him diffidently now.
“It must be hard,” she said, slapping the reins over Dandy’s back, “to break off with a boy you’ve been going around with. It must be something like…having him go away.”
“I guess it is,” said Betsy. After a pause she remarked, “I’m glad you’ve started going with Al, Carney. He’s an awfully nice kid.”
“Yes, he is,” said Carney. “But I’m going to tell you something, Betsy. Larry has been gone for a whole year now, and I like him as much as I ever did.”
“Do you?” Betsy asked.
“I still like him better than anyone,” said Carney. Her dimple didn’t show at all, and she looked almost stern.
Betsy thought this over at the track meet, for Irma, looking charming, sat in the red auto with Phil and a big box of candy. Betsy didn’t like it…but she didn’t mind it so much as she had thought she would.
“It can’t be,” she thought, “that I liked Phil anywhere near as much as Carney liked Larry.”
She was glad she had seen them together for the first sting was gone. And their appearance at the meet had another good effect. It must have confirmed significant rumors for Tony, Cab and Dennie all appeared as of old the next night for Sunday night lunch.
Everyone was very glad to see them. They went out to watch Mr. Ray buttering bread and slicing onions; they sang around the piano, teased Betsy about her curls. Mr. Gaston came that night for the very first time…which made it quite an occasion.
He flushed when he saw the boys, but after a period of uncertainty he started acting boyish himself. He laughed harder than anyone, made poor jokes. And he must, Betsy thought pityingly, be all of twenty-three! Betsy felt almost sorry for him and hoped that Julia wouldn’t really seek revenge.
The next week was filled with examinations, and rehearsals for the commencement exercises. The chorus was singing “Damascus.”
“Save the holy sepulchre,
A-a-men.”
Betsy and Tacy heard it in their dreams.
Julia was practising her solo.
“A rose in the garden,
Over the way…”
“I think it was heartless of you to choose that song,” Betsy said.
She and Julia had washed their hair and were drying it out on the lawn at the back of the house. The trees were in full leaf now; the bridal wreath was coming into bloom.
“Why?” Julia asked, shaking her long locks.
“Because of Harry. That’s his song. You learned it to please him.”
“Oh…Harry,” said Julia. “I don’t feel guilty about turning Harry down. You know, Bettina, I had to be true to myself.”
“You what?” Betsy cried. After an incredulous moment she told Julia how those lines from William Shakespeare had fitted into her own life that spring. She said how foolish she thought she had been to try to be different from herself.
Julia listened thoughtfully.
“You’re absolutely right,” she said
when Betsy finished. “Fundamentally, that is. Each one of us has to be true to the deepest thing that is in him. But Bettina…a little play-acting has its place…with a woman, that is.”
“What do you mean?”
“You wanted Phil, and you went out and got him. It took grit. It took determination. It was all right. And you couldn’t have done it without a little of what Cab calls ‘la de da.’”
“But I didn’t keep him.”
“Silly! You didn’t want to.”
Betsy threw down the brush with which she had been conscientiously adding gloss to her hair.
“What do you mean, I didn’t want to?”
“You know you didn’t. You wanted other things more.”
“What?”
“Well, the Essay Contest, for example.”
“That’s true,” Betsy thought, staring at her brush. “And I wanted the picnic more, and not hurting Tom’s feelings. I wanted…my freedom more.”
She did not answer.
“You didn’t want to go to the bother of keeping him,” Julia continued. “But, Bettina, the whole affair did you a lot of good. You’re better groomed, more poised, you have sweeter manners and…well…more charm than you had before you started it. Don’t be scornful of ‘la de da,’ Bettina. You may want to use it sometime with someone you really like.”
“But then,” cried Betsy, “surely I wouldn’t have to use it! Not with someone who was my own kind!”
“Oh…wouldn’t you?” asked Julia, and smiled inscrutably, and began to shake her hair again.
This was too confusing! Betsy stretched out on the grass and looked up at the sky, June blue with puff-ball clouds.
“Life,” she said, “is complicated…for a woman, at least.”
“You have to be wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove,” Julia agreed, looking anything but harmless.
23
Julia’s Graduation
THE FIRST EVENT OF Commencement Week was the joint evening meeting of Philomathians and Zetamathians at which the essay cup would be awarded.
Betsy put on the pink silk dress and the daisy wreath. She wanted to look nice for she would have to sit on the platform with the other contestants, but she well knew, this year, that she would not be asked to stand and bow. Joe Willard who sat opposite her, very blond in a new dark suit, would be the one to rise when the sophomore points were awarded. This year no one would be surprised. Betsy had told not only Miss Clarke but everyone she knew that she could not possibly win.
The assembly room was crowded, even to the bookcases. It was gay with Zetamathian blue and Philomathian orange. Betsy felt festive and untroubled even when, at the end of Miss Bangeter’s speech, Joe was announced as the winner.
“That’s because I did my best,” she thought, applauding.
It was consoling, too, that the Zetamathians won the cup. Competing freshmen, juniors, and seniors had saved the day. The Zetamathians had already won the athletics cup, so now they had two out of three. No loyal Zetamathian could fail to find the evening glorious.
Betsy went up to Joe and offered her congratulations. He smiled.
“This luck can’t last forever. It’ll be your turn next year.”
“Heavens!” cried Betsy. “He’s being polite.”
“I’m always polite.”
“No, it means you’re sorry for me. You’re hurting my pride.”
He grinned. “I do have a few kind emotions. Do you know what I almost did this spring when the apple trees were in bloom up at Butternut Center? I almost ’phoned to tell you not to worry. They were rosy.”
“Well, why didn’t you?” asked Betsy. She heard her voice growing soft and sweet, the way she had tuned it for Phil. She remembered her conversation with Julia on the lawn, and blushed. Joe Willard laughed.
Betsy looked for him the next night at Class Day exercises. He wasn’t there. She looked again at the class play. He wasn’t there either. Artfully, late the following afternoon, she went to the library. He was not there.
She asked Miss Sparrow about him. He and Miss Sparrow, she knew, were friends.
“Why, he’s left town,” Miss Sparrow explained. “He’s going to work with a threshing rig this summer. He’ll get three dollars a day, he said, and earn all he needs for next year. You know, Betsy, Joe supports himself. Entirely. It’s pretty wonderful, I think.”
“I think so too,” Betsy replied. She heard herself telling Miss Sparrow something of her difficulties with Joe…how she had tried to get him into the Crowd, and how he had told her the Crowd bored him.
“I think,” Miss Sparrow said, “I can explain that.” They were alone in the library except for some children in the Children’s Room. She leaned across the desk, lowered her voice, and made quite a speech about Joe.
“I figure him out this way,” she said. “He has no father or mother. He has to work for a living. And being barred from the usual things high school students do, the things requiring money and time, he takes refuge in books. He not only reads them, but he dreams about them. He sees himself as the heroes he admires. He is confident that he could behave as Ivanhoe did, or Marco Polo, or D’Artagnan. Do you know what I mean?”
Betsy said she did.
“He isn’t a boy who pities himself. Not at all. He has to work, but he makes that an adventure. He would really like to play football, or baseball after school, but he can’t. He has to go to the Creamery. So he just makes plans about playing them in college. It helps that, when he has a spare hour and can play, he is better than average.
“His routine is quite satisfactory to him but only because he puts out of his mind the things he cannot have. And they are the boy and girl pleasures. If he let you draw him into your Crowd, he would be constantly embarrassed. He would be forced to admit that he isn’t, perhaps, quite so lucky as he thinks he is. Don’t you see, Betsy? Living as he does now, he doesn’t mind shabby clothes. But he is a proud boy. He wouldn’t like coming to call on you in shabby clothes. When you urge him to come he gets desperate. He just has to be rude. Don’t you see?”
“Yes,” Betsy answered. “I see.”
Walking home she thought over what Miss Sparrow had said. Next year, she resolved, she would find some way to make a friend of Joe…and without making things hard for him, either.
Commencement night was drawing very near. The chorus was rehearsing in the Opera House.
“Save the holy sepulchre,
A-a-men.”
Presents were flooding in for Julia. She was being fitted to a lace-trimmed, white silk dress with a crushed white satin belt and elbow length sleeves. There was much talk at home about her plans. It had been decided that she was going to go to the state university at Minneapolis. She would take the music course.
“This is the end of something, Bob,” Mrs. Ray kept saying. “It’s the first break in the family. Next year Julia will be gone.”
“Minneapolis isn’t very far away,” Mr. Ray answered with his usual optimism. “Besides, she isn’t going until fall. We’re all going out to the Inn at Murmuring Lake and have one swell-elegant vacation.”
“Just the same,” Mrs. Ray persisted. “It’s the end of something. You know it as well as I do.”
He did, and Betsy knew it too. She felt increasingly solemn. Julia was through with high school; next year she would be gone. There wouldn’t be any Julia around to play the piano, or to fix her hair, or to tell her to tell boys she had had a dream about them.
Betsy felt tearful at supper, and she could see that her mother did. Mr. Ray acted unusually cheerful, as always when he felt the opposite. Julia put on the white graduating dress.
“You look puny, lovey,” Anna said.
“She looks like a bride,” Mrs. Ray mourned. “She’ll be getting married, the next thing we know.”
Mr. Gaston had sent her a gift of pink carnations. Her father had sent her pink roses. Julia mixed them into one superlative bouquet.
They drove down to the Opera House behi
nd Old Mag. Mr. and Mrs. Ray and Margaret and Anna sat together, near the front. Betsy, because of being in the chorus, sat on the stage with the graduates. It was a sweet June night, but inside the Opera House there was only that stuffy opera house smell.
Betsy and Tacy sang with the chorus.
“Save the holy sepulchre,
A-a-men.”
Julia sang her solo.
“There’s a rose in the garden,
Over the way…”
Betsy, sitting behind her, admired the lovely line of Julia’s upswept hair.
The diplomas were handed out. The members of the graduating class marched up one by one to fond applause. Julia went up, and Katie, her cheeks as red as the red carnations she carried.
After it was over Betsy and Tacy started home together.
“I don’t see why we had to sing that Holy Sepulchre song,” Betsy said. “I felt badly enough already.”
“So did I,” said Tacy. “It seemed like a funeral at our house tonight. Of course Katie isn’t going so far away as Julia is. She’ll just be going to the college on the hill. But things won’t be the same, Mamma says.”
“It’s the first break in our family,” Betsy answered.
“Remember how we used to fight with them when we were kids?” Tacy asked, smiling.
“Do I! Remember the contest for May Queen?”
“And how we peeked and saw them at their club? And now they are graduating. Life is funny.”
“Life is queer.”
They reached the foot of Plum Street Hill where they must part, and had just concluded plans for a picnic the next day when Tacy said:
“Betsy! We’ve come to the end of your Winding Hall of Fate.”
“That’s right,” Betsy cried. “And what a hall it’s been! You sang a solo at school. I went to Milwaukee. We found out that Tib is maybe coming back, and I’ve had…you might say…my First Big Love Affair. I’ll have to go home and write it all up in my journal.”
Heaven to Betsy and Betsy in Spite of Herself Page 41