Of the three girls, Tacy got to be eighteen first. She always had the honor of ushering in each new age. Betsy and Tib were invited to her house for supper, and they walked up to Hill Street gladly in spite of the sub-zero weather.
Winter seemed closer at the Kellys’ house. From the bay window, one looked out at the hills submerged in snow with regiments of bare, black trees. When the curtains were drawn, the glowing windows of the Kellys’ coal stove expressed winter’s cheer as a register never could.
The big family gathered for supper in the dining room, but Betsy, Tacy, and Tib ate alone at a table set up in the parlor. Over creamed chicken, fruit salad, and hot rolls, they talked about past birthdays. The fifth birthday when Betsy had met Tacy. The tenth one when all three had been so eager to get two numbers in their age.
“You had told us, Betsy,” said Tib, “that we were going to be grown up when we got two numbers in our age. It was the beginning of growing up, you said.”
Tacy laughed. “I got to be ten first, of course. I didn’t look any different or feel any different. But I knew why that was. You and Tib weren’t ten yet.”
“Then I got to be ten,” Tib continued. “And I didn’t look any different or feel any different. But, of course, I didn’t expect to until Betsy got to be ten, too, and her birthday didn’t come until April.”
“Well,” Betsy said. “I was right. Wasn’t I? After I got to be ten, things did start happening. We all fell in love with the King of Spain.”
In the midst of their laughter, Katie came into the room and blew out the lamp. Everyone knew what that meant. She went back to the kitchen and returned bearing a birthday cake covered with eighteen flickering candles. Betsy and Tib started to sing:
“Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday, dear Tacy….”
Tacy made a wish and blew out her candles. She blew them all out in one puff.
“Now,” said Tacy, pounding her chest grandly, “I’m officially eighteen years old.”
“You’re of age,” said Betsy.
“You’re old enough to get married,” said Tib.
Tacy looked alarmed. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’m eighteen, but it doesn’t count yet. It doesn’t count until you and Betsy are eighteen. Remember?”
But Tacy was wrong. She was definitely eighteen.
16
Mr. Kerr
“THAT KERR!” SAID MR. RAY, chuckling. “What do you suppose he’s made me do now?”
The family, and Tacy, who had come to supper, looked up expectantly. For months they had been hearing anecdotes about Mr. Kerr, the super salesman. He had talked Mr. Ray into putting a line of knit goods into the shoe store. “Although I didn’t want it,” Mr. Ray always said, “any more than a cat wants nine tails.” He had achieved the virtual miracle of getting his knit goods into the shoe store’s display window.
“What has he done now?” Betsy asked.
“Now, by George, he’s wangled an invitation to come here for Sunday night lunch. He’s coming next Sunday if that’s all right with you, my dear,” Mr. Ray ended, addressing his wife.
“Of course,” said Mrs. Ray. “I’m dying to meet him. Is he married?”
“No. A bachelor.”
“How old is he? I ought to find him a girl.”
“Oh, twenty-seven or twenty-eight.”
Betsy groaned. “Heavens! How ancient! Why do your interesting friends all have to be gray-beards, Papa?”
Tacy looked up innocently. “Why,” she said, “I don’t think twenty-seven is so old.”
Everybody laughed and Tacy blushed, as only she could blush, to the roots of her auburn hair.
“All right, honey,” Mrs. Ray said. “You can look after Mr. Kerr.”
“I’m not even coming for Sunday night lunch this week,” Tacy said hastily.
“Oh, yes, you are!” answered Betsy. “Don’t you remember? We’re invited to Mrs. Poppy’s that afternoon, you and Tib and Tony and Dennie and I. She has some plan she wants to talk over. Then we’re all coming back here for lunch.”
On Sunday, Tib had a cold, but the others went down to the Melborn Hotel, and Mrs. Poppy’s plan proved to be engrossing. Her brother, who was an actor, was coming to visit her and put on a home-talent play. Mrs. Poppy wanted Tacy and Tony both to sing solos, and Tib to do a dance. The prospect was so exciting that it drove gray-beards of twenty-seven completely out of mind.
When they neared the Ray house, a stream of music told them that Winona had arrived. The quartet burst in and found that Cab and Lloyd were there, too. Then they saw Mr. Kerr, who was sitting in the parlor with Mr. and Mrs. Ray, somewhat removed by age, as well as by the archway, from the noisy music-room group.
Mr. Kerr was a fine-looking young man, very well groomed. He was moderately tall, with broad shoulders and a frank open face, lively blue eyes, fresh color, strong white teeth. He looked very good-humored, but something in the set of his jaw showed the determination Mr. Ray had described. He looked predominately likable.
He and Mr. Ray had been talking business, Mrs. Ray said.
“We’ll never get any sandwiches made at this rate,” she remarked briskly. “Tacy, Mr. Kerr is your responsibility now.”
Tacy blushed again as only Tacy could. Mr. Kerr surveyed her with his bright appraising eyes.
“And is Tacy my responsibility?”
“She certainly is.”
“I agree, if Tacy does,” he said.
Mr. Ray went out to make the sandwiches, and Tony strolled negligently after him. Tony, although he acted so lazy, knew how to be useful, mixing an egg with the coffee, filling the pot with cold water, and setting it to boil. Betsy put Anna’s cocoanut cake on the dining room table, along with pickles and olives, cream and sugar, cups and saucers. Winona was playing the piano and the Crowd was singing, when they weren’t joking, teasing, scuffling, and yelling. Mr. Kerr took everything in with a lively, observant twinkle.
Mr. Ray spoke in an undertone to Tony and Betsy.
“You’re seeing,” he said, “a smart young man in action. That Kerr is in command of a difficult situation. He doesn’t hold himself aloof from those kids, but he doesn’t mix too much either. He mixes just enough to make everyone at ease, but not enough to lose his dignity.”
Betsy watched and saw that what her father had said was true. Mr. Kerr was completely poised with the pretty girls, the clamoring boys. He didn’t make himself one of them. They all called him Mr. Kerr. But he wasn’t a wet blanket.
“Smart,” Mr. Ray said, as he applied a different sort of skill to buttering bread, slicing ham, adding mustard, salt, and pepper, and cutting the double sandwiches in two halves, slantwise, until a large platter was heaped.
Betsy noticed something else as the evening progressed. Mr. Kerr had been told to take charge of Tacy, and he was certainly doing it. Tacy was habitually shy, and sometimes in a crowd she went off by herself. Tonight, Mr. Kerr followed. Tacy was plied with sandwiches. Her coffee cup was never allowed to be empty. She had the choicest piece of cocoanut cake.
Tacy and Mr. Kerr ate supper together and he talked all the time. He was, Betsy observed, a great talker. Tacy didn’t act shy. She was listening attentively, and now and then she laughed or asked a question.
“It’s because he’s so old,” Betsy thought. “She feels as though she were with her own father.”
When everyone was carrying out the dishes after supper, Betsy went up to Tacy.
“Do you like him?” she asked.
“Who? Harry? Yes, he’s very nice.”
Harry! Betsy could hardly believe her ears. Harry! Then Mr. Kerr didn’t seem to Tacy like her father.
After a while, when the music gave way to general conversation, Mr. Kerr brought up the subject of cameras.
“Anybody interested in photography?” he asked. “I just bought a new Eastman.”
Lloyd had received an Eastman for Christmas, and he and Mr. Kerr plunged into a t
echnical discussion. Betsy said she used a square box Brownie.
“I’m so dumb I can’t take pictures with any other kind.”
“Why, you take good pictures, Betsy,” Tacy said.
Mr. Kerr turned away from Lloyd abruptly.
“I’ll bet you take mighty good ones,” he said, smiling persuasively at Betsy. “Won’t you show me some?”
Betsy brought out her bulging Kodak book, filled with pictures of the Rays, of the Crowd, of winter and summer excursions.
“Someone will have to explain this to me,” Mr. Kerr said, and presently he and Tacy were sitting on the couch while she told him who was who, laughing as she turned the pages.
“Betsy says this is me at my silliest,” Betsy heard her remark, and remembered the picnic up on the Big Hill when she had snapped Tacy acting like an Irish Colleen.
Mr. Kerr and Tacy looked at the Kodak book until the doorbell rang. One of Tacy’s brothers had come to call for her.
That was the signal for everyone to go. There was a scramble for wraps and overshoes, a burst of good-nights, shouted plans to meet in school.
Mr. Kerr waited, leafing through the Kodak book until all the young people had gone. Then he closed the book and said he, too, must leave, and Mr. Ray gave him his overcoat. The young man shook hands heartily with Mrs. Ray and Betsy and said to Mr. Ray, “Would you show me which direction I start off in?”
When Mr. Ray accompanied him to the porch, Mrs. Ray turned to Betsy.
“What a delightful young man!”
“Isn’t he!” said Betsy. She looked puzzled. “And wasn’t he nice to Tacy?”
“They got along beautifully,” Mrs. Ray replied. “I was pleased because Tacy is usually so shy.”
“She wasn’t shy with him,” Betsy said. She couldn’t quite make it out.
Mr. Ray returned from the porch. He closed the door behind him slowly, and came into the parlor with a strange look on his face. He sat down, rubbing his hands over his forehead, and then put them firmly on his knees.
“Well, I don’t know what to think! That Kerr just said the most amazing thing.”
“What was it?” Mrs. Ray and Betsy cried together.
“First, Betsy, he apologized to you for having stolen one of your Kodak pictures. He said you’re going to get a box of chocolates in return.”
Betsy ran to her Kodak book and riffled the pages quickly. She knew which snapshot would be missing.
“The Colleen from Hill Street!” she breathed.
That was, indeed, gone. Tacy, laughing, her braids loose, her hair blown into curls, was no longer in Betsy’s Kodak book.
Mrs. Ray and Betsy stared at each other. Her mother, Betsy thought, looked actually pale.
“But that isn’t all,” Mr. Ray went on. “In fact, it’s only the beginning. Do you know what else he said?”
“Tell us, for heaven’s sake!”
“He said,” answered Mr. Ray, “that Tacy was the girl he was going to marry. He said he didn’t care how long he would have to wait. She was the girl he was going to marry.” After a pause in which no one seemed even to breathe, Mr. Ray added, “Tacy had better watch out. If Harry Kerr can talk me into putting in a line of knit goods, he can talk her into marrying him.”
“Well!” said Mrs. Ray, color coming back into her cheeks, and her eyes beginning to sparkle. “I never heard the like.”
Betsy was stunned. She was dazed and confounded. Marriage was something infinitely remote. It had never occurred to her that it could touch her circle yet. And to touch, of all people, Tacy!
She could hardly wait to tell Tacy, who would be thrilled. Or would she? You never could tell about Tacy. But she would think it was ridiculous, of course. She would laugh long and heartily and remind Betsy of how they were going to see Paris and New York and London and the Taj Mahal by moonlight.
Somehow, Betsy was anxious to hear that laughter. It was thrilling, but it was painful, too, to have Mr. Kerr in love with Tacy. She went up to bed still dazed, and early the next morning telephoned Tacy that she would walk to meet her.
“And see that you’re alone! Don’t be with Alice, or Tib, or anyone!”
Betsy hurried through breakfast and hurried into her winter coat, tarn, and furs. She ran out of the house, in the direction opposite the school house, down the hill to the corner where a watering trough, now frozen and rimmed with icicles, marked the junction with Cemetery Road.
When she saw Tacy coming, she ran to meet her.
“Stand still! This can’t be told walking.”
She repeated dramatically what her father had said when he came in from the porch the night before.
“He said he was going to marry you! TO MARRY YOU !” Betsy repeated.
Of course, Tacy blushed. Betsy had expected that, but she hadn’t expected Tacy’s eyes to light with such a mischievous glimmer. Betsy had expected her to be flabbergasted, dumbfounded, but she didn’t seem very surprised.
When she spoke, it was in the Irish brogue she affected when she felt especially merry.
“Well, and sure now, did he?” she said, hooking her arm into Betsy’s. The next moment she asked Betsy about a physics formula. Then she brought up the subject of the home-talent play.
Betsy’s head was spinning. It felt actually light. Childhood seemed to be receding like a rapidly moving railway train.
“And Tib and I thought she was going to be an old maid…if we didn’t help her!” Betsy marveled.
17
Up and Down Broadway
THERE WAS NO DENYING that Mr. Kerr’s astounding announcement and Tacy’s calm reaction to it made Betsy feel blue. She was proud of Tacy’s conquest; she was stirred by it. But it made her feel lonely, too.
It was strange to be excluded from something which concerned Tacy. She and Tacy had always shared everything. Tacy had shared Betsy’s love affairs. She had rejoiced with her when things went well and grieved when they went badly. Betsy would gladly have rejoiced with Tacy now, but Tacy didn’t need her. She wasn’t half so excited about Mr. Kerr as everyone else was. She liked him, she said; and her aura of serene radiance showed that she did. But she had no confidences to impart.
It was fortunate for Betsy that the new home-talent play came along just then. Not only did she feel blue, but school had reached its February dullness. Winter had reached its February dreariness. She needed the tinsel world of make-believe.
All Deep Valley needed it. Tired of snow and more snow, of deceptively fair days followed by rain that turned to snow and sometimes blizzards, of shoveling walks and shoveling coal, Deep Valley yielded itself joyously to Up and Down Broadway.
That was the name of Mr. Maxwell’s production.
“I’m calling it Up and Down Broadway because I’m going to take a cast of amateurs and whip up a revue fit for Broadway,” he told Betsy. Broadway was Mr. Maxwell’s Paradise; he talked about it all the time.
He almost overflowed Mrs. Poppy’s doll-like apartment, for he was fat, like his sister. Like his sister, too, he was a figure of elegance. Blond, with side whiskers, he wore a plaid vest, a satin tie with a diamond stickpin in it, a long coat, and striped trousers.
He wanted Betsy to choose a chorus from among the high school girls. Up and Down Broadway wasn’t just a high school affair. It was a Deep Valley affair, a benefit for the Elks Lodge. Attractive young matrons, business men with a flair for theatricals, the town’s child wonders were all taking part. Most of the singers were from Mrs. Poppy’s class.
“How I wish Julia were here!” she kept interjecting now.
Choosing the chorus, Mr. Maxwell explained to Betsy earnestly, was important.
“On Broadway,” he said, fixing her with a gleaming eye, “the chorus is more important than the principals. You have to have cute snappy broilers, Georgie Cohan always says. Can you find me thirty cute, snappy girls in Deep Valley High School, Miss Ray? They must be able to sing and dance, of course.”
“Certainly,” said Betsy. She f
elt that the honor of Deep Valley was at stake.
Fortunately, the high school had plenty of pulchritude. The girls in the Crowd were secured first; then the junior, sophomore, and freshman classes were searched for talent. When the thirty assembled, glowing and smiling, on the bare dusty stage of the Opera House, Mr. Maxwell surveyed them with satisfaction and said that they would be a credit to Broadway.
His pleasure in them was short-lived. His good humor, they were to find, was spasmodic. When coats were doffed and the girls began singing timidly, dancing self-consciously in response to his suggestions, Mr. Maxwell changed completely. His rosy face grew purple. He shrieked and pounded the piano. He told them they were nitwits and dunces, clodhoppers, gawky as a bunch of milkmaids. He made Irma cry. Some of the girls told Betsy that they wouldn’t be in Up and Down Broadway, after all.
But while they were huffily putting on their wraps, Mr. Maxwell changed again. He moved about jovially, making jokes, beaming. He told them that they mustn’t mind him. That was the way Broadway producers always yelled at the broilers. He said they were so cute that he wished Flo Ziegfeld could see them.
After a while, the girls grew accustomed to his rapid changes of mood. It was nervous work, though, singing and dancing to please Mr. Maxwell.
Usually, after they had rehearsed, the broilers sat on boxes or folding chairs around the stage to watch the principals perform…especially those from the high school.
Tib’s Dutch Girl number was good from the start. She could not sing, but she could talk a song with airy coquetry, and her dancing was light, feathery, and bewitching. Mr. Maxwell wasn’t cross with her long, for she was always able to do exactly what she was told. He would stand at the edge of the stage to watch her practise and say to Mrs. Poppy, “That girl has talent. Broadway needs that girl.”
When Tacy first heard Mr. Maxwell rave and rant, she withdrew hastily from her scheduled solo. But Mr. Maxwell and Mrs. Poppy pleaded with her to reconsider, and she did. After that, Mr. Maxwell was gentle with Tacy.
“I’m awfully lonesome tonight,
Betsy Was a Junior / Betsy and Joe Page 32