Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe (39 page)

Mrs. Beidwinkle wore her Sunday black silk dress with a brooch at the neck. Mr. Beidwinkle wore his Sunday black. Bill put on a paper collar and loaned a tie to Joe.

In the back parlor, a table was spread with a hand-embroidered cloth. Mrs. Beidwinkle set out bottles of beer and soda pop, rye bread with caraway seeds, thin slices of sausage, Dutch cheese, egg salad, and cake, cookies, and a jelly roll she had baked the previous day. She had made ice cream, too, she said, but she wouldn't bring that out until they were ready to eat.

The Beidwinkles' daughter and her husband arrived. Amelia, in a flower-sprigged dress, her husband, red-faced and suspicious, in a high choker collar. Betsy, in the white wool dress, feeling like a visiting countess, sat and talked with them.

They went into the parlor and looked at the photograph album. Betsy showed Joe all the bearded men, the anxious ladies, the stiff boys and girls in the album. They looked through the stereopticon set at views of the Holy Land, Niagara Falls, Europe with Side Trips to Egypt, Algeria, and the Madeira Islands.

At last Mr. Beidwinkle said, “How about some music?”

Betsy wondered for a panicky moment whether she could play the prima donna in front of Joe, but she certainly couldn't refuse. Her singing was the whole reason for the party. So she went to the organ.

She urged Amelia and her husband and Joe to join in, which they presently did. Amelia's husband, it
developed, loved to sing. He took off his stiff collar and sang with a will. They sang Betsy's repertoire of songs not once, but twice, three times, while Mr. Beidwinkle and Bill sipped their beer contentedly and listened. At the end Betsy had to sing alone: “Yip-i-addy-i-ay” for Bill, and “Tonight Will Never Come Again” for Mrs. Beidwinkle who wiped her eyes, of course, and “
Kind, Du Kannst Tanzen
” for Mr. Beidwinkle, who laughed and said, “Gollee!”

Then they went to the parlor and had ice cream and cake and cookies and jelly roll and soda pop and rye bread and egg salad and sausage and cheese.

They ate and ate until Amelia and her husband said they must go home and Joe said that he must go, too. The others looked tactfully away while he said good-by.

“Be back for school Monday?”

“Yes. I'm going back tomorrow night. Papa's driving out for me.”

“See you in Deep Valley then.”

“See you in Deep Valley.”

He looked into her eyes very hard, with his blue eyes which looked so bright and happy. He shook hands with her hard. Then he was gone.

O
N
M
ONDAY
, M
ISS
R
AYMOND
, who directed the high school chorus, announced that there would be a rehearsal after school. It was time, she said, to begin work on Commencement music. This made all the seniors look self-conscious.

“Commencement!” Tacy leaned across the aisle to groan.

“It's creeping up on us!”

Betsy welcomed the rehearsal because it would give her a chance to talk to Tony. She had come back from the Beidwinkles' determined to talk with him frankly. He realized now that she didn't care for him in a romantic way, and probably he would soon get over that feeling about her. She wanted to tell him that they must keep on being friends, good friends.

She looked for him while they were waiting for rehearsal to begin, but he was elusive. He took his place with the basses at once, instead of fooling around with the girls, as he usually did. She would see him at the end, Betsy decided, and at last Miss Raymond got the chattering group quiet.

She announced the numbers they would sing for Commencement…Schubert's “Hark! Hark! The Lark!” and a musical setting of Dickens' poem about the ivy.

“It has a bass solo in it and, of course, Tony Markham must sing that,” said Miss Raymond, smiling. Since
Up and Down Broadway
Tony's reputation as a singer had expanded.

The words of “The Ivy Green” were grim.

Betsy and Tacy looked at each other and shivered.

“Why the dickens did Miss Raymond choose that?” Betsy whispered. But when Tony's voice rolled out in the solo she knew why.

It was perfect for his deep-pitched velvety voice.

At the end of rehearsal, Betsy blocked his way into the cloakroom with a casual joking remark. But Tony was unresponsive. His big, sleepy eyes that had always looked at her so laughingly, so teasingly, were cold. They didn't look like Tony's eyes at all.

He had more poise than Betsy had. She couldn't keep acting flippant in the face of that cold gaze. She blurted out her message without preparation.

“Tony, I want to talk with you. I want to straighten things out between us.”

“Nothing needs any straightening out.”

“Yes, it does. Will you come up to see me tonight?”

“Sorry. I'm busy.”

“Tomorrow night?”

“Tomorrow night I'm even busier.”

He left her abruptly. She would have to wait for another chance, she thought, turning away.

But no other chance came. For now Betsy and Joe started going together—in earnest. Things were
different from what they had been back in the autumn. Then when they were together they had spent their time mostly talking about books and school. Joe had plainly enjoyed her. He had reveled in the company of a girl whom he liked wholeheartedly and who he knew liked him. But except for gay extravagant compliments, he had never talked personalities.

Now he was crazy about Betsy and didn't care who knew it.

The whole school knew it. The school was electric with it as schools are sometimes with affairs of that sort. The truth was in Betsy's eyes and Joe's, in the way they passed notes, and met after classes, and lingered in the halls. At the library, where they were studying for the Essay Contest, Miss Sparrow regarded them fondly. They strolled back to the Ray house slowly, through the purple spring twilights.

Tony didn't telephone Betsy nor come to see her. He hadn't been at the house since she returned from the Beidwinkles'. Margaret had asked for him at first; now she only looked at Betsy with grave accusing eyes.

Betsy's eighteenth birthday came along. She received a jade ring in a silver setting from her father, engraved calling cards from her mother.

“Miss Betsy Warrington Ray,” they said.

Margaret gave her a burned wood hand-mirror. She had made it herself in school.

From Joe came a dozen red roses. Betsy put them in a big vase on the parlor table. She put one in her hair when Tacy and Tib came for supper-with-birthday-cake. She put one in a bud vase beside her bed and sniffed it rapturously before she went to sleep.

At the last Zetamathian Rhetoricals, Betsy and Tacy sang their Cat Duet. They had sung it every year since they were in the fifth grade and the audience now joined in the caterwauls. But Tony didn't laugh. Looking in exasperation at his sullen face, Betsy resolved again to talk with him. She would do it Friday at the senior-faculty picnic.

“And nothing will stop me!” she declared.

Friday proved to be an ideal day for their famous annual picnic. The weather was so tantalizingly warm that even if they had been in school they couldn't have kept their minds on their books. At Page Park, the willows on the river bank were covered with tiny leaves. Birds were singing; the picnic ground was strewn with dandelions; and the seniors were wearing their gray and violet skull caps.

It was strange to be mingling, almost on an equal footing, with the teachers. The seniors paid their respects to Miss Bangeter in pairs, but they were flippant with the others.

Winona flirted openly with Stewie. Betsy tried out her broken German on Miss Erickson. She and Tacy told curly-haired Miss O'Rourke that they had
memorized all their geometry propositions without understanding them. She chased them with a switch.

Betsy and Joe went up to Mr. Gaston. “Seen any apple blossoms lately?”

Betsy had quarreled with Mr. Gaston in her sophomore year about the color of apple blossoms. Tib, always daring, even mentioned the herbariums she and Betsy and Tacy had made once under strange conditions.

The seniors had provided overflowing baskets and they ate at the long wooden tables. They swung, they waded in the river and skipped stones. The senior boys challenged the men teachers to a baseball game. Joe pitched; he was good, too, Betsy noticed.

It was a notable senior-faculty picnic. But Betsy didn't speak to Tony for the reason that he wasn't there.

On Saturday he wasn't at the Inter-Society Track Meet. The Zets won. The Philos had already won the athletics cup, so the Essay Contest was of vital importance to both sides now.

Sunday evening Margaret came running upstairs and burst into Betsy's room, her eyes glowing.

“Betsy! Tony's here. He's come for lunch.”

“Really?” Betsy swooped down to give Margaret a hug. Running downstairs, she remembered that Joe wasn't coming. He was covering a Christian Endeavor
convention which was meeting in Deep Valley. Perhaps Tony had known that Joe wouldn't be there? But as soon as she saw him she knew that it wouldn't have mattered. He was the old Tony.

He had Washington on his shoulder and Abie followed at his heels. He greeted Betsy carelessly, annexed Margaret's hand, and strolled out to the sandwich-making. He himself made the coffee.

“You're sure of a good cup of coffee tonight,” he joked with Mrs. Ray.

He was oblivious to the excitement his presence caused when the Crowd started drifting in.

Winona played the piano, and the Crowd sang. Harmonizing voices rolled out the open windows into the soft spring night: “My wild Irish rose….” “I wonder who's kissing her now….”

“What's the use of dreaming….” Tony sang that alone, by request, straddling a chair as he had done in
Up and Down Broadway
.

It was wonderful to have Tony back, and acting just like himself.

When he out-stayed the others, Betsy began to worry. Maybe that frightening ardor would return when they were alone? But it didn't. They did the dishes. Tony scraped and washed, Betsy wiped, and they talked and joked as usual.

Here was her chance, she thought, to make that speech she had planned. But she hated to break the mood of the evening with a speech. Moreover, it seemed unnecessary with Tony's attitude so matter-of-fact.

They returned to the parlor, and Tony went to the pile of photographs lying on the table, class photographs with the seal of the class in the upper left hand corner. They had been delivered the day before, and the Crowd had been busily exchanging them. Tony had not asked for one of Betsy's, but he looked them over now.

The large beautiful one, taken in the blue Class Day dress. The small Betsyish one, taken in a shirt waist.

“Do I rate one of these?” Tony asked.

“Of course,” Betsy replied. “And you're going to give me one of yours.”

“Heck!” said Tony. “I didn't sit for one.”

“You didn't…sit for one! Why, Tony Markham! How can you graduate without a class picture?”

“You'd be surprised.”

“Which one do you want?” Betsy asked. “The big one or the little one?”

“The little one.”

“The big one is much prettier.”

“But it doesn't look like you.”

“Oh, thanks,” mocked Betsy.

“Sorry,” said Tony. “Is it my fault if you're not good-looking?”

It was the old Tony come back, and Betsy felt a weight lift from her heart. But when they said good night she discovered that it wasn't the old Tony after all.

She strolled out on the porch with him, as she had done a thousand times. The stars were low and bright over the German Catholic College. Tony was telling her that he had hopped a freight and gone up to Minneapolis with his brakeman friend on Friday. That was why he hadn't been at the picnic.

“I wish you wouldn't do that, Tony,” Betsy said. “I'm like Papa. I worry for fear you'll lose a leg.”

“All right,” said Tony. “I can almost promise you I won't do it again.”

“You can?” Betsy asked, delighted.

“Almost,” said Tony. “Well, good-by, Ray of Sunshine.” And to Betsy's surprise he kissed her. He didn't ask if he might kiss her. He merely kissed her. She was so startled that she couldn't find a word to say.

No words were necessary, for Tony swung off the porch and went down the walk. He didn't even look back until he reached the arc light. Then he turned and lifted his hand in a rakish salute.

“Good-by,” he called again.

Betsy stood on the steps, disturbed and puzzled. Tony usually said “So long!” There had been something strange in the way he said “Good-by.” It had been strange, too, that he kissed her.

The next day at school she looked around for him. He wasn't there. At chorus practise Miss Raymond was annoyed.

“Where is Tony Markham? Does anyone know where Tony is? We can't practice ‘Ivy Green' without him.”

Nobody knew.

The next day he was still not at school. He wasn't there the next day either. On Thursday there was chorus practise again.

Miss Raymond distributed copies of a new song. It was from Wagner's
Tannhduser—
“Hark! Hear the cannons' thunder pealing.”

She asked Tib to collect the copies of “The Ivy Green.”

Someone waved a hand. “Why, Miss Raymond? Aren't we going to sing ‘The Ivy Green'?”

“No,” said Miss Raymond.

“Why not? We have it all learned.”

“Tony Markham won't be here.”

“Tony won't be here? Why, of course he will be! He's graduating.”

Betsy felt color creeping into her neck and face.

“I understand he won't be here,” Miss Raymond replied. “I can't give you any details.”

After chorus practise, Betsy sought Miss Clarke. Miss Bangeter was the one to ask, of course, but she was too awesome. Miss Clarke could always be approached.

“Miss Clarke, do you know what's happened to Tony Markham? Miss Raymond says he won't be graduating.”

“That's true,” Miss Clarke answered. She took off her glasses and polished them nervously. “Tony's gone away.”

“But where?”

“Nobody knows. He's gone away, that's all.”

Betsy looked into her face with entreaty. “But what do they think? Has his mother told Miss Bangeter? Tony's a very, very dear friend of mine. I didn't know he was going away.”

Miss Clarke hesitated. She lowered her voice.

“Yes, his mother has talked to Miss Bangeter. But she doesn't know where Tony has gone. He left a note and told her not to worry.”

“Could he have graduated? Were his grades all right?”

“I think so.”

“I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry,” Betsy said.

She thanked Miss Clarke and went out of the room, out of the building, down to the street. Tony was gone, and nobody knew where. Betsy didn't see exactly what she had done that was wrong, but she felt to blame. She had a lump in her throat.

Two things comforted her. Tony had said he wasn't going to be stealing rides on the freight cars any more. That meant, Betsy reasoned, that he had some sort of a job.

And the kiss he had given her! It hadn't seemed angry or accusing or desperate. It had been gentle, it had been loving. But it had definitely, she realized, been good-by.