Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe (14 page)

“Don't you like the U?”

“I'd love it except that I want to be a singer and singers ought to start young. As it is, I'm only interested in Epsilon Iota and my lessons from Fraulein.”

“And Pat,” teased Betsy.

“Patrick McFadden, certainly,” answered Julia,
and started to take down her hair.

“What do you think of Dave?” Betsy asked.

“Oh, I adore that strong silent type. I could be crazy about him, Bettina, if he weren't yours and so awfully young.”

Betsy was rapturous. “Really? Maybe I like him better than think I do. He
is
sort of fascinating. You don't know what goes on behind that sober face.”

“I'd find out,” said Julia, and began to hum an aria from
Carmen
, the one Carmen sings when she comes down from the bridge. Julia sang it under her breath and took the red rose off her dress and threw it at Betsy, just as Carmen tossed it at the hapless Don Jose.

“Oh, Bettina!” she broke off. “You ought to hear
Carmen
. And I ought to be singing it. Of course I'd probably have to be Micaela. That role is better for my voice. She's the girl Carmen takes Don Jose away from, a perfect namby pamby, not at all like me.”

Betsy paid no attention.

“The strong silent type,” she murmured thoughtfully.

T
HE STRONG SILENT TYPE
, Betsy soon discovered, had drawbacks as well as charms. Dave Hunt was handsome, he was fascinating, and she was proud to be his girl. But he could be exasperating! She realized it as the date approached for the Inter-Society debate.

This was late in January, for after vacation came mid-year exams. All activities were suspended during their grim reign.

“
O tempora! O mores!
” groaned Betsy and Tacy, taking Cicero's classic cry for their own. Tib, although German was her language, seized upon it too. She even added to it: “
O tempora! O mores! O Himmel!
”

Alone, in groups, at school, at home, everyone studied. They chanted dates and botanical terms. They heard one another recite poetry which must be memorized.

“‘Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote….'”

“I wish that April with his shoures soote was here right now,” Cab exclaimed. “Gosh, I hate this English stuff! Do you suppose they have it at the U?”

“Four years of it.”

“Not in the engineering course, I'll bet. That's what I'm going to take. Engineers don't give a darn if the Ides of March are percèd to the roote….”

“Not ‘ides,' Cab! That's Shakespeare. This is Chaucer.”

“Cheer up!” Tacy always said. “Maybe the school will burn down.”

It didn't, and they passed in everything, although Betsy's grades weren't what she had planned on Murmuring Lake: Botany, 83; Domestic Science, 84, Cicero, 87, U. S. History, 90, Foundations of English Literature, 93. She rejoiced, nevertheless, and was in a mood for relaxation when word spread that there
was to be a party after the Inter-Society Debate, refreshments and games in the Domestic Science room. Boys were asking girls.

Betsy waited, confident of an invitation. Was she not, this year, a “popular” girl? The other Okto Deltas were invited one by one, but nobody invited Betsy. Her confidence waned and her fears grew. She confided in Tib. Tib confided in Dennie who said in a tone of surprise, “Why, Dave is taking Betsy.”

Betsy didn't believe it, and steeled herself to go alone. As a loyal Zet, she couldn't stay away. Besides, Hazel Smith was on the team and Betsy wanted to hear her. She was said to be the best girl debater in the state. When the night came Betsy dressed with palpitating care, and Dave arrived on time, serene and silent. The evening was saved for Betsy, although the Philos won the cup.

Soon after this an Okto-Omega party was planned, to be held in the “frat house” above Lloyd's garage. Lloyd promptly invited Tib and Al invited Carney. When Cab invited Irma, Betsy began to grow nervous. Again Tib made inquiries, from Lloyd this time.

She and Betsy planned out beforehand just what she was to say.

“You can call for me at Betsy's. We'll be going together, I suppose. By the way, who's taking Betsy?”

“Dave, of course,” Lloyd replied.

Tib hastened to deliver this reassuring news, and during the next few days Betsy flung herself at Dave. She stopped him in the hall and after classes. She manoeuvred to stand beside him in the Social Room. He didn't speak, and she was in a desperate state when Tib arrived to dress with her for the party.

“I'll do your hair in puffs,” Tib offered as a gesture of comfort. Puffs were new, and Betsy had not learned to make them. Tib covered Betsy's head with an airy regiment of puffs but Betsy stared in the mirror glumly.

“If he doesn't come I'll stay home.”

“You'll do no such thing. You'll go with Lloyd and me.”

“I won't. I'll stay home.”

“And waste these magnificent puffs?”

Mrs. Ray poked her head in. “He'll show up.”

“He'll show up,” Margaret echoed gleefully.

Promptly at eight the doorbell rang. Anna shouted with a note of triumph, “Bet-see!” Betsy ran downstairs and there was Dave, with his hair brushed to a shine, a new bow tie and a pleased glow on his face.

“The strong silent type!” Betsy raged. She wished she could hurl it reproachfully at Julia, but Julia had gone back to the U where she had been asked to sing the role of Yum Yum in
The Mikado
. She was rehearsing daily and wrote of little else.

“I won't put up with it!” Betsy stormed later to Tib. “I just won't stand it!”

But she did.

The new term brought basketball contests with all the neighboring towns. Who could resist a proprietary stake in the star of the team? Dave could not take her to the games, of course; she went with Tib and her escort, but everybody knew that Dave would join them afterwards. She watched his long legs scissoring and leaping and heard the adoring roar:

Betsy thought basketball more thrilling even than football and talked knowingly of “those rough Spaulding rules.”

Honeymoon Trail
came to the Opera House, and she heard from Tib that Lloyd and Dave were taking them. It proved to be true. They sat in the parquet, and Betsy had the same uncanny feeling of being grown-up she had when she and Tacy and Tib drank their coffee at Heinz's. It couldn't be, she thought unbelievingly, that they were sitting in the Opera House at night, downstairs, with boys who had paid for their tickets! But they were.

That was the hit song of the show. Betsy bought it and picked out the chords on the piano when she was alone. She found she could almost play it, which gave a tremendous impetus to her piano lessons and to the hour of practise she split into two parts and found time for every day.

January had been mild, but February came in cold and snowy. The air was filled continually with a white descending haze. Drifts climbed to the window ledges. The thermometer dropped to twenty, thirty, thirty-five below. Tacy and Tib, stopping to call for Betsy in the morning, wore scarves over their faces.

Tib came early so that she could do Betsy's hair. Mr. and Mrs. Ray both protested the practise.

“Betsy doesn't need puffs for school.”

“But I'm coming right past the house, Mrs. Ray. I always stop anyway; and I love to do them.”

She continued to come, and although Betsy felt a little silly she delighted in the puffs. Sustained by them she joined Tacy in singing the “Cat Duet” at Zetamathian Rhetoricals. It was definitely childish but it had to be sung; it had become a tradition in the Deep Valley High. Betsy read an original poem for rhetoricals. It was named “Those Eyes” and sounded a little like Poe. She wrote more poems than stories on Uncle Keith's trunk this year—when she found time to write at all. This was usually late at night,
when she had finished her homework or come in from a party. The house would be quiet; cold, too, sometimes, but she put on a warm bathrobe. She curled up beside the trunk and read poetry and wrote it, and she had an uncanny feeling then, too. This wasn't Betsy Ray, the “popular” girl. This wasn't Betsy Ray, the Okto Delta.

The Sistren still met regularly, sometimes with boys, sometimes alone. The girls brought their sewing to the afternoon parties, and Betsy always brought the jabot. She offered to read aloud if someone would work on it for her and the famous piece of neckwear passed from hand to hand.

“What a souvenir for college!” Carney said. “Samples of everybody's sewing, as well as all these choice knots and spots.”

“Those spots you refer to so lightly,” said Betsy, “are where I was pricked by a needle. You're taking my heart's blood to Vassar.”

Carney was looking ahead to the Vassar entrance exams and working harder all the time. Tacy was sobered by a growing interest in music, but Betsy and Tib continued irrepressible.

Madame DuBarry and Madame Pompadour revived their soirees. These were hilarious affairs, for Cab and Dennie were irrepressible, too. Fast friends, the same age and about the same height, they were a
carefree pair. They were, Betsy admitted, more fun than Dave.

But he was fun, too, on outdoor excursions. Groups of four, six, eight Okto and Omega Deltas often braved the cold for moonlight strolls. One night for a lark boys and girls exchanged wraps. Dave was as comical as Dennie, parading in Betsy's furs. He was always the first to sight a pan of fudge set to cool on a doorstep—lawful booty, whether the doorstep belonged to friend or stranger.

In recompense for stolen fudge, perhaps, the groups went serenading. They sang in parts underneath lighted windows, their breath congealing into silver notes.

The Crowd, Julia often said, sang like a trained chorus. But the Okto and Omega Deltas were not quite the Crowd. They missed Tony's rolling bass.

As Betsy had feared, they saw Tony less and less. He still came to the Rays' now and then but he had dropped the Crowd and what he had put in its place was not good. He skipped school, hung around a pool hall which had a bad reputation in Deep Valley. He went with that fast clique of older boys he had
been drifting toward early in the winter. Tony had always had a zest for new experiences whether good or bad. But he had been restrained before by his scornful, indulgent, deeply loyal fondness for the Crowd.

Betsy felt pricked all the time by worry about Tony. She wouldn't give in to it; she was having too much fun. But she looked for a chance to say a restraining word and one Sunday night she thought she saw it.

Sometime before she had revived her last year's successful experiment in “reforming.” Phil's pipe still hung beside her dressing table. She discovered that Dave had a pipe and secured it to hang beside Phil's. Dennie gave her a sack of tobacco and some cigarette papers. Cab contributed a cigar.

Betsy had protested that. “You don't smoke! You're giving me one of your father's cigars.”

“Well, gosh, Betsy!” Cab grinned. “If everyone else is going to be reformed, I want to be reformed, too.”

Her father teased her about this enterprise and he brought up the subject as Tony and Betsy stood out in the kitchen watching him make his inimitable sandwiches. He always sat down to make them for he was growing heavier and his feet tired easily. There was often an admiring circle around his chair.

“Have you heard about Betsy turning Carrie Nation?” he asked, spreading slices of bread with
butter which he had set out to soften earlier. A cold loin of pork and a jar of mustard stood alongside. “I can't make out why she doesn't object to my cigars.”

“You're too old to reform,” said Betsy, smoothing his silky dark hair.

Tony searched through his pockets and found a piece of billiard chalk.

“Here,” he said. “Add this to your collection. You ought to try to keep boys away from the pool hall, Betsy. It's a den of iniquity, Miss Bangeter says.”

Betsy said she would tie the chalk on a ribbon and hang it over her mirror. She laughed into Tony's black eyes which looked hurt, although he was smiling. A new group of guests came to watch Mr. Ray and Betsy went back to the fire. Tony followed with his lazy saunter.

They sat down and looked into the flames, and Betsy said, imitating a grave tone of Julia's, “There was truth in what Miss Bangeter said about that pool hall, Tony. I wish you'd spend less time there and more time—well, at the Rays', or out serenading with the Crowd.”

“What Crowd?” asked Tony. His face looked a little bitter. “There isn't any Crowd any more, just a couple of frats. I'm a barb. You don't want me around.”

“Tony!” said Betsy. “Don't be ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous, am I?”

“Everybody misses you. The Crowd, Papa, Mamma, Margaret.”

“You said one true thing. Margaret does.” Tony called out to Margaret, who was reading the funny papers in her father's big chair. “Margaret, I'll beat you a game of parchesi.”

Margaret's face lighted and she ran to get the board. Betsy felt snubbed.

Dave came in just then, followed shortly by Squirrelly, and Tib, and Winona. Winona went to the piano and when the parchesi game ended Tony lifted his voice in song. But after the sandwiches were eaten he quickly said good-by.

He shrugged into his overcoat, set his cap at a rakish angle on his bushy curly hair.

“I'll see you when I need some more reforming,” he said to Betsy and went out.