Betsy and the Great World and Betsy's Wedding

by Maud Hart Lovelace

  Tib did not flick an eyelash.

  They all heaped Tacy with compliments, and Mr. Bagshaw took her hand.

  “The Club chef could not duplicate that dinner, Mrs. Kerr. But may I duplicate the guests? Can’t you all dine with me a week from tonight?”

  He turned to Tib, but she reverted in a flash to her disdainful air.

  “Really, Rick!” she protested. “I can’t make an engagement without my book. I do know, though, that I’m busy for the next two Saturday nights.”

  Mr. Bagshaw seemed amused, but respectfully so. He restrained a smile. “Then we’ll make plans after Miss Tib has consulted that overstuffed engagement book. I do hope we can find an evening when all of you are free.”

  Next morning early Betsy and Tacy were on the telephone. Mr. Bagshaw, they agreed triumphantly, had fallen. Now the vital issue was Tib’s reaction. Had she liked him, and how well?

  “She seemed impressed.”

  “But did you notice how she crushed him when he tried to make a date?”

  “Oh, that was just technique! No girl gives a man the first date he asks for.”

  “I hope you’re right.” Tacy was a little doubtful. “Well, we can talk it over tonight. Harry and I are going to 909 for Sunday night lunch.”

  “Oh, good!” Betsy exclaimed, for she was longing to turn the subject inside out, and Joe was already bored with it.

  “Tib will never marry that grand-daddy!” he said.

  “Joe, he’s only a little older than Harry, and perfectly fascinating!”

  “So are you—fascinating, that is.”

  “Don’t you like him?”

  Joe grinned. “Well, it was entertaining to see the colonel unbend to the privates for the sake of a pretty girl.”

  He was more interested in the pancakes he was tossing than he was in getting Tib married. “Did you ever see more beautiful pancakes? Butter this stack, Betsy, while I fry some more.”

  He and Betsy both loved Sunday, when they were together all day long. One thing troubled her a little. She had almost stopped going to church. Joe had gone very seldom since leaving Butternut Center, and now although he went with Betsy when she asked him to, he seemed to feel that the proper Sunday routine was to sleep late and make pancakes for breakfast. Betsy ate them in pink negligee and cap. Then she had an extra good dinner to get, and Joe liked to read the Sunday papers, and they fed the squirrels that came to their snowy window ledge. This morning a robin appeared in the elm—fat, bright, and undismayed by the still arctic cold.

  “After all, it is March!” Betsy pointed out that afternoon when she and Joe walked down to the lake to watch the skaters. “Tacy and I could find crocuses up on the Big Hill, if we were back in Deep Valley.”

  They ended the walk at the Ray house where Sunday night lunches were a family tradition. Mr. Ray always made sandwiches. There was a crackling fire, and friends of all ages dropped in. It made Betsy feel very much married to see Margaret playing the piano while her high school friends sang.

  Margaret had not acquired a real Crowd such as Betsy had had in high school. But Louisa was always there, and sometimes a boy or two. Betsy asked her mother how Margaret got on with boys.

  “They admire her,” Mrs. Ray said thoughtfully. “They take her to school parties. But they’re a little scared of her, I think. You know how dignified she is, and she does nothing to encourage them.”

  “How about Louisa?”

  “She and Margaret help each other. Margaret helps to tone her down, and she draws Margaret out of her shell.”

  After the Kerrs arrived, they talked about last night’s party. Mrs. Ray was in on the plot.

  “Three Little Aids to Cupid!” Harry chortled, and the men withdrew to discuss the Great War, as it was beginning to be called. Spring, everyone believed, would bring a big British offensive which might end the conflict.

  Mrs. Ray, Betsy, and Tacy aired their great topic like a blanket suspected of moths.

  “Have you heard from Tib today?” Mrs. Ray asked.

  “No, and whenever we do, we must be sure to act casual.”

  “If we didn’t, we’d antagonize her, Mrs. Ray.”

  “You should have heard her, Mamma, when he tried to make a date for next Saturday night!”

  “I wish she’d ’phone,” Mrs. Ray said.

  “She won’t. She won’t think he’s important enough. You know Tib!”

  But the telephone shrilled through this prophecy, and the war, and Margaret’s friends’ singing. And it was Tib!

  “I knew where to find you, Liebchen,” she laughed. “I’m sorry to interrupt those onion sandwiches, but Rick has telephoned twice. He does want to get that party at the Club arranged. I told him I’d check with you and Tacy.”

  Betsy stiffened in her effort to keep calm.

  “Tacy’s here,” she said offhandedly.

  “Then how about a week from Friday night?”

  “Hold the line!”

  Betsy and Tacy conferred in hushed jubilation.

  “All right with everyone,” Betsy reported brightly. “What do you think? I saw a robin today.”

  Tib lowered her voice. “Betsy,” she said, “I have something else to tell you.”

  “What is it, dear?” Betsy’s voice was gentle, but she signaled wildly to Tacy who rushed up on tiptoe, Mrs. Ray following.

  “So soon?” she whispered. Betsy put a finger to her lips.

  “Something perfectly marvelous,” Tib went on. “It’s the most marvelous thing that ever happened to me.”

  Betsy rounded her eyes at Tacy and shook an elated hand in the air. “Tell me about it, honey.”

  “Well, you know Rick took me home!”

  “Yes.” Still rounder eyes, a more elated hand.

  “Well, that car—it’s just one he’s been renting! He’s having his own car sent from New York. And, Betsy, what do you think?”

  “About what?”

  “About the car, of course!” Tib sounded impatient, for Betsy’s tone was suddenly flat. “He’s going to let me drive it. Think of that! I’m going to practically have my own car, all summer long.”

  11

  No Troubles to Pack

  “Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag,

  And smile, smile, smile…”

  THE CROWD OF OLD FRIENDS, and Mr. Bagshaw, had no troubles to pack, but to that tune they danced away the summer.

  Of course, “Pack Up Your Troubles” was a war song, but a new one, and the war was a fire burning very far away. Twice in the spring its glare reached them briefly. When a strange new horror called poison gas was used by the Germans, Americans saw that glare. They were shocked because Canadian troops were stricken; Canada was close to home. And when a U-boat sank the British liner, Lusitania, one hundred and fourteen Americans were drowned.

  That night Joe came home late, looking tired and sober, but excited, too. He took Betsy slowly into his arms.

  “We’ll be in it now,” he said and she felt cold fingers on her heart. But President Wilson announced there was such a thing as being “too proud to fight,” and although Joe and Mr. Ray and many others, including Colonel Roosevelt, objected to that view, it seemed to cool the country’s wrathful fever. No big offensive came. Everything quieted down. And through that carefree summer of 1915, young and old continued to dance.

  Certainly the Crowd danced—in smart hotels as Mr. Bagshaw’s guests, in their homes entertaining Mr. Bagshaw, and, when the weather turned hot, at country clubs and leafy lakeside places Mr. Bagshaw was aware of. They danced the merry one-step and the swaying, gliding tango and the maxixe and the hesitation.

  Mr. Bagshaw delighted in leading Tib out to the dance floor, a blond sprite in a gossamer dancing cap and filmy dress, the jeweled ribbons of tango slippers tied about her dainty ankles.

  Ankles could be seen, for skirts were getting shorter. Girls were standing straighter. The debutante slouch was gone. Minneapolis quoted, chuckling, from its popular columnist, �
�Q”:

  “The joyful news is with us,

  Let paeans now be sung.

  The girls again have vertebrae

  On which their forms are strung.

  No longer does a figure S

  Come slouching down the street,

  The girls have got their backbones back,

  Instead of in their feet.”

  “I’d like to meet that ‘Q,’” Betsy said. “Why don’t you ask him out some night?”

  “Him!” laughed Joe. “It’s a girl. A very nice, demure one. She and Jimmy Cliff are always swapping rhymes.”

  There were Expositions going on in California. Mr. Ray took Mrs. Ray and Margaret to see them. They would visit Mrs. Ray’s mother, too. Anna took Kismet and the goldfish bowl to the country. Betsy missed them all, but being so entirely on her own made her feel even more married than usual, and that feeling was sweet.

  Louisa, lonely for Margaret, dropped in with bouquets from the garden. The elm tree now was thickly, darkly green. But all the secrets of its branches were revealed to the Willard bay window. Running her carpet sweeper blithely up and down, Betsy watched a robin’s nest, the eggs, the fledglings.

  “I think I’ll write a story about a little girl going to live with the birds!”

  It was hot and she did her housework early, then closed the windows and drew the shades as she had seen her mother do. When Joe came in from work, he remarked with satisfaction that their apartment was the coolest spot in town.

  Usually they were off for a swim or a sail or a picnic. Mr. Bagshaw dodged the picnics. But the Willards and the Kerrs met often at Lake Harriet’s picnic grounds, adjoining the pavilion where band concerts were played.

  “A Betsy-Tacy picnic!” Betsy and Tacy would say, spreading the table.

  It wasn’t exactly a Betsy-Tacy picnic. There was much more food than they had ever carried up the Big Hill. With husbands to feed, they brought salads, cold meats, pots of beans, layer cakes, and thermos bottles full of coffee. Kelly would be put down to crawl. He crawled very young, Harry and Tacy pointed out, watching the curly head progress in determined jerks across the grass.

  Clearing the table, Betsy and Tacy would discuss Tib and Mr. Bagshaw. He wanted them to call him Rick and they managed to when he was around, but when he wasn’t they still used the respectful “Mr. Bagshaw.”

  Tacy was able to report on him because Harry saw him every day. On Tib, Betsy was better informed. She and Joe were frequent companions of the romantic couple on weekends when the Kerrs were at the lake.

  “Mr. Bagshaw is really smitten,” Tacy announced.

  “Well,” Betsy answered jubilantly, “she says he isn’t a Lausbube!”

  The news grew even better. “Mr. Bagshaw had to go to New York but he hurried back here like mad.”

  “Tib likes him. She says he appreciates…listen to this…! he appreciates her giving him so much of her time.”

  “Flowers, dances, a Rolls-Royce, and he appreciates!”

  “Isn’t that just like Tib?”

  And later: “This almost settles it! She thinks he looks like John Drew!”

  He really did, Betsy thought, resemble that aging matinee idol. He had the same thinning hair, perfect tie and spats, an urbane yet weary air. She reflected on this again later in the evening.

  Usually they listened to the concert from a blanket spread on the grass. The real seats were in the pavilion, but there were listeners in carriages and automobiles all around and in canoes on the lake. Tonight the Kerrs left early and Joe and Betsy rented a canoe.

  Floating under the stars with her head on Joe’s shoulder, the music coming dreamily over the dark water, Betsy was thinking how wonderful it was to be married, when she gave a dismayed start. Could Tib float in this haze of joy with anyone so old and worldly as Mr. John Drew Bagshaw?

  “Why, he doesn’t even like canoes!”

  He liked sailboats, though. Sam kept a sailboat on Lake Calhoun and all of them, including the New Yorker, found it very pleasant about sunset to be out on the gilded, bouncing water. The Crowd scrambled over the boat, dove again and again, and swam around and around, calling insults and challenges. Mr. Bagshaw did not swim. He polished his glasses and smilingly watched Tib.

  In a shepherd’s-check bathing suit, like no other on the lake, Tib was worth watching. She wore silk stockings instead of the usual cotton ones. Her pretty legs gleamed as she balanced gaily before her birdlike dive. (When modestly under water she peeled off the stockings, hanging them neatly on the boat, but she always put them on again, under water, before climbing back.)

  Although Mr. Bagshaw never swam, he was an excellent sailor and looked trimly nautical in immaculate blue coat and white duck trousers. When he took the tiller, Sam’s boat showed its heels to every other boat of its class. He held his own with the younger men at tennis, too.

  “His forehand is classic,” Joe said. “His backhand is murder. If only he weren’t always so anxious to win!” For Joe and Sam, although they battled furiously, never really cared who won.

  “Probably he wants to impress Tib,” said Betsy.

  “No! It’s the same ruthless drive that made him a millionaire.”

  “You like him, don’t you?” she urged, a little anxiously.

  “Sure! Sure!” Joe said.

  They all did, in spite of his handicap of wealth and position. He tried so hard to be one of the Crowd that they were almost sorry for him. He did not know how to join in their crazy banter. At first he did not even understand the wild rush for a popcorn wagon.

  These inviting vehicles paraded the summer streets, whistling shrilly, trailing savory smells. After he under-stood, Mr. Bagshaw made a point of stopping every one. With a great affectation of boyishness he brought dozens of buttery bags back to the Rolls-Royce.

  He liked to be out in his big automobile, perhaps because Tib was so delighted to be driving it. Yellow hair bare, she settled herself behind the wheel with an amusing air of efficiency. Mr. Bagshaw sat sidewise, smiling at her.

  The Crowd took him to see all the sights.

  Fort Snelling, high on a bluff above the meeting of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers! The old fort had seen almost a hundred years of history, the Crowd announced.

  Minnehaha Falls! They were as well known in Europe as Teddy Roosevelt, Betsy said. Because of Longfellow, of course. She started to name the many people to whom she had promised post card pictures of the Falls but she did not finish. Too many of them were in trenches or war-blackened cities.

  Lake Minnetonka! One Sunday afternoon they called on the Kerrs. Joe and Betsy reached for each other’s hands at the first sight of the little green cottage on stilts.

  Harry and Tacy hospitably brought coffee and cake out to the lawn but, as soon as she could, Tacy took Betsy aside. Her news was sobering.

  “Mr. Bagshaw’s business here is finished, Harry says. He could go back to New York if he wanted to. He just doesn’t want to…without Tib.”

  “Without Tib?”

  “Without Tib!”

  New York seemed suddenly very far away.

  “He’ll propose before he goes back, as sure as shooting,” Tacy said.

  “Hmm!” said Betsy. Pushing her hands deep into the pockets of a green cardigan sweater, she looked across at the Japanese boathouse.

  “Hmm!” said Tacy.

  That very evening Mr. Bagshaw invited them all to a farewell dinner dance at the Inn on Christmas Lake. This sophisticated inn, which pretended to be rustic because it was in the country, was one of his favorite places.

  It was to be a gala party, merrily jangling telephones reported over the next few days. Orchids for the ladies, and souvenirs…would they prefer gold mesh bags or vanity boxes? Tib asked seriously.

  Joe insisted that Betsy must have a new dress. He had proposed that before, but Betsy always said she had plenty of dresses. As a matter of fact, the clothes fund had leaked mysteriously into the grocery fund…or off to the dentist.
/>   “The budget just won’t allow a new dress,” she admitted at last.

  Joe swung his shoulders. “The budget,” he said, “isn’t buying you this dress.”

  “Then how…”

  “My bonuses,” he answered.

  The Courier gave a bonus for the best news story every week. A five dollar bonus, and Joe had been winning and had kept all his prize money out of both budget and savings account.

  “For a new dress,” he explained now. So he and Betsy went downtown and picked out a white chiffon with a blue velvet bodice. The flounces were edged with blue velvet, and blue velvet ribbons tied a malines ruff around her neck.

  “I never felt so married as I did when I paid the clerk for that dress,” Joe remarked as he watched Betsy prinking on the night of the dance. He also was pleased with everything that made him feel married.

  “Do I look nice?”

  “Like a dream!”

  He was putting on the white coat he wore with blue trousers to summer parties when the doorbell rang and Betsy went to answer it. On the threshold stood a tall, handsome, smartly dressed girl with a mischievous expression. Peering over her shoulder were lively green eyes.

  “Cab!” Betsy shouted joyfully. “And this is Jean!”

  “My Missus!” he answered proudly, and Joe ran out and they all pumped one another’s hands. Cab had been an important member of the old Deep Valley Crowd. His solid dependability was engagingly wrapped in rollicking high spirits.

  He looked just the same, Betsy thought as they went inside—slim, springy, and neat as a bandbox. But when he took off his shining straw hat…! Where was his thick black hair?

  Cab followed her gaze. “I admit it,” he said. “But I’m not as bald as I was the first time Jean saw me.”

  Jean laughed, a throaty contagious laugh. “Tell them about it, Cab,” she said. Everyone sat down.

  “Well, I was losing my hair. And someone told me that the way to make your hair grow was to shave your head. I was making a business trip way out to North Dakota, and it seemed a good time to try this cure, so I had my head shaved.”

  “There wasn’t a spear left!” cried Jean. “Not a spear!”