Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe (21 page)

His mouth smiled but his eyes were stormy and rebellious. He looked as though he had come from a battle. Betsy knew that he had taken Phyllis to her automobile but had refused to go home before the eleventh dance.

Betsy smiled. Joe put his arm around her and they moved out onto the dance floor. He danced well, not smoothly like Dave, nor with Tony's rhythmic skill but with zest and in perfect time. He whirled her as she had never been whirled before.

She was glad to be whirled. It was a triumph to be dancing with Joe Willard. Yet it wasn't just triumph which filled her.

“Does it mean anything?” she wondered. “For next year, of course.”

Joe would not, she felt sure, desert Phyllis now, even though they had had a disagreement. He was a fundamentally loyal person. He had been unwilling to humiliate Betsy by leaving her without a partner, and he would certainly not humiliate Phyllis, with whom he had had such a good time all year, by deserting her at the beginning of a gay Commencement week—when she was a senior, too. He would see her through.

But maybe, just the same, he didn't care about her any more. Maybe he never had.

“I wonder, what about next year,” thought Betsy, whirling in Joe Willard's arms.

“P
ERHAPS IT WASN'T
such a good idea to rouse the Philos' fighting spirit by putting up that pennant last fall,” Carney said.

A group of Zet girls sat together on the alcove bookcase in the high school auditorium. This was gay with Zetamathian blue and Philomathian orange. It
was the evening assembly at which the Essay Cup would be awarded.

Always a great occasion, opening Commencement week, this year it held unusual importance. The Philomathians had already won in debating and athletics. If they won the Essay Cup tonight they would have the almost unprecedented honor of holding all three cups.

Betsy found it exciting to be sitting with the others. In her freshman and sophomore years she had been a contestant, and so had sat in regal aloofness on the platform. Down in the teeming, turbulent, rumor-filled auditorium, suspense enveloped her and hemmed her in. It was terrible to think that the Philos might win tonight, but Betsy agreed with Carney that there was danger.

“Joe Willard,” she declared, “will win over Stan.”

She was a good prophet. The freshman points went to the Philos. The sophomore points went to the Philos. Then, before a screaming, cheering crowd, Joe Willard for the third year in succession was announced to have won his class points. He stood up to take the applause, his yellow hair shining, his face shining, too, with pleasure.

No matter where the senior points went, the Philos had won now, and they almost went mad with joy.

And, of course;

Betsy felt mixed emotions. As a Zetamathian she was crushed. This year, she felt sure, she could have been the deciding factor in winning the Essay Contest. The third orange bow, which Miss Bangeter was tying now, reproached and mocked her. On the other hand, liking Joe as she did, she couldn't help rejoicing in his moment of splendid triumph.

The next morning report cards were given out. Tacy and Tib called for Betsy. They met Cab and Dennie on High Street, and just as she had done the previous fall, Tacy cried out suddenly, “What's that crowd doing in front of the high school? Is it on fire?”

“Gosh!” said Cab. “It would be wasteful to have it burn down now when examinations are over.”

Something remarkable was going on, for the crowd pushed from the school lawn out into the street. Everyone was looking up at the roof, and Cab and Dennie began to run.

“Were you up on that roof again last night?” Tib cried.

“Heck, no! and neither was Dave!”

But it developed shortly that not Cab nor Dennie nor Dave could possibly have been suspected of this skulduggery. Giant letters were painted on the high school roof. But the paint was orange. The letters spelled out PHILOMATHIAN.

“How could anyone have painted on that steep roof?”

“They must have had a ladder.”

“See that strip of black paint underneath.”

But it wasn't black paint, they discovered when they reached the school house.

“It's tar. It was put on so no Zetamathian boy could reach the letters and paint them out. Dave Hunt shinnied up to the cupola, all the way to the roof, but then he discovered the tar. He almost got stuck in it.”

“He must be mad,” Betsy cried.

“Not so mad as Miss Bangeter.”

Miss Bangeter, the students discovered when a furiously clanging gong had brought them into the high school, was really angry. She did not even announce an opening song. Tall and terrible, her black eyes flashing beneath the high twist of black hair, she came to the front of the platform.

“Last fall a Zetamathian pennant was put up on the roof,” she said. “The perpetrator was reprimanded and it was explained to the whole school that it was dangerous to attempt to climb the high school roof. But last night, as you have all seen, this rule was disobeyed. Will all the Philomathian boys in the school please rise?”

There was a clatter as more than a hundred boys rose to their feet.

“Will you form a line and march past me?”

They formed a line and marched. Carney did not play a tune. The procession wasn't exhilarating and gay. It was awkward, anxious, slow; and it soon became slower.

“It isn't likely,” Miss Bangeter said, when the line reached the platform, “that the boys who spread that tar on the roof could have done it without getting some on their own feet. Will each boy stop as he passes my desk and show me the bottom of his shoes?”

The long line filed past her. As each boy passed he stopped and lifted his feet. Now and then Miss Bangeter asked one to step out of line. The others returned to their seats. At the end there were three boys standing beside her. They were Squirrelly, Tony, and Joe.

Squirrelly looked innocent as he always did. Tony's
eyes were laughing. Joe Willard's lips were compressed.

“I take it,” said Miss Bangeter, “that you three boys painted the letters on the roof?”

“I did,” said Squirrelly.

“I did,” said Tony, in his deep voice.

“I didn't,” said Joe, and after a wave of surprise which rolled over the assembly room had subsided he said with a broad grin, “I spread the tar.”

Miss Bangeter's lips twitched.

“You three may come to my office after school,” she said.

Punishment, every one knew, would be severe and it was. The three boys were suspended, but that was a formality, since school was already over. They were obliged, however, to pay for having the letters and the tar removed and that proved to be expensive. Workmen swarmed up tall ladders with buckets and brooms but it was a long time before the orange Philomathian and the black band of tar were erased from the Deep Valley High School roof. In fact, the tar never quite came off.

Report cards were an anti-climax, although Betsy was pleased to find that most of her grades had improved. Miss Fowler raised her to 95; Miss Clarke, grieving about the Essay Contest, perhaps, gave her 93; Miss Erickson, forgiving the “old pill” incident, conceded her 90.

Mr. Gaston awarded a grim 75 to Betsy, to Tacy and to Tib.

“Never, never in my whole life,” said Mr. Gaston, (he was twenty-four), “never in my whole career as a teacher,” (he had taught for three years), “have I seen such herbariums! Not a fall flower included!”

But he felt a little guilty, perhaps because he could not identify all the specimens they had presented. At any rate, for whatever reason, he passed them.

The chorus was practising in the Opera House for Commencement.

Betsy loved that song, and it wove itself through the events of the torrid June week when Julia, back from the U, was getting ready to sail away to Europe and Carney was getting ready to graduate. Carney's hard work had not been for nothing. She had been accepted for Vassar.

“We…are…the class of oh-nine,” sang Carney, Al, Squirrelly and the rest of the seniors on Class Day to the now familiar tune of “Old, Old is Honeymoon Trail.” Then Commencement was upon them.

The Opera House was crowded with proud relatives
and friends, and the graduates sat on the platform with the chorus behind them.

“I heard the trailing garments of the night,” sang Betsy and Tacy. There were speeches; Carney made one of them. And the seniors crossed the stage one by one, received their diplomas while loyal hands applauded.

Phyllis in a white lace dress carried a big bouquet of roses. It came from Joe, Betsy felt sure, but she did not see Joe in the audience. Phil came right behind his sister looking sheepishly pleased, not sulky at all.

Carney came, her dimple showing, and she, too, carried roses.

“Do you know who sent Carney her bouquet?”

“Al Larson, I suppose.”

“No. It was Larry Humphreys. He's been out in California three years now, but he hasn't forgotten her.”

Carney received a large number of presents but none of them, she assured Betsy, was more cherished than the jabot which Betsy finished and delivered, wrapped in tissue paper and ribbon, along with a silver spoon.

“It's very nice,” said Carney smoothing the tortured looking object. “I'm going to take it to Vassar with me.”

“Will you wear it?”

“I promised to. Didn't I? But just once! Then I'll hang it up as a souvenir.”

After the graduating exercises Mr. and Mrs. Sibley gave a party for Carney. It was the one Carney had suggested the day she and Betsy agreed to break up Okto Delta. The Crowd was invited along with many other friends—Hazel and Stan and the Brandishes and Joe.

It was a beautiful party. There was punch in a big crystal bowl. There were little frosted cakes. Young and old moved happily through the front and back parlor and the library of the Sibleys' spacious house. Betsy kept looking for Joe Willard. But he wasn't there.

“He's left for the summer,” Carney explained when Betsy asked her at last. “He's going to the harvest fields again.”

Betsy wished she had seen him before he left.

“Cab isn't here either,” Irma remarked.

“No,” answered Carney, looking serious. “He telephoned early this evening. His father has gone to the hospital.”

C
AB'S FATHER DIED
. He had been ill for some time, and Mrs. Ray had been sending cakes, pies and hot casserole dishes over to the Edwards family, who lived less than a block away. tirst he was ill at home and then he was removed to the hospital. One day in mid-June Dennie came into the Ray house to say,
“Mr. Edwards died last night. I was down at the hospital with Cab.”

Dennie looked as though he hadn't slept. His curly hair was more than ordinarily rumpled and his eyes were swelled. He didn't have the jaunty carefree look which usually characterized both him and Cab.

The Rays grew suddenly sober, as people in a happy home do when death strikes in another happy home. Betsy didn't know Cab's father very well. She knew he was stern but also just and kind, and that Cab's mother was a gentle, somewhat helpless woman, and that there were several younger children.

The Crowd sent flowers and many of them went to the funeral. Betsy went with her father and mother. The Edwards' house seemed odd and unfamiliar, with folding chairs set out in the parlor, the air heavy with the scent of flowers. Betsy caught a glimpse of Cab in a dark, well-pressed suit, looking pale but composed and manly. He kept close hold of the arm of his mother, whose face was hidden under a thick black veil. The little sisters sat with some of the older relatives. Betsy saw Cab turn and look at them once or twice, especially when the littlest sister cried.

Two days later, when Betsy was baking a Domestic Science plum cake, he came in at the kitchen door. He seemed almost like his usual self and remarked, sniffing, that something smelled good.

“And I produced it!” Betsy said. “Anna is busy washing and ironing for Julia. She leaves the last of the week, you know.”

“How soon will it be done?” asked Cab.

“In time to give you a piece.”

She couldn't bring herself to mention his father but when they went into the parlor her own father, coming in for dinner, referred to his loss and Cab seemed glad to talk.

“My mother's been wonderful,” he said.

“I just stopped in at your house,” Mr. Ray replied. “She said the same thing about you.”

Cab flushed. “There's been a lot to attend to,” he said. “Not just the funeral. My uncle and aunt helped us to make arrangements for that. But Dad's store…. Somebody has to pitch in and take his place, and it looks as though it would be me.”

“You mean this summer?” Betsy asked.

“Not just this summer.” He addressed Mr. Ray. “You know old Mr. Loring has been Dad's clerk for years. He can take charge, but the business wouldn't justify hiring another clerk. I've worked there vacations. I'd fit in pretty well and at the same time I'd learn the business so that I could take over from Mr. Loring some day.”

“You won't…go back to school?” Betsy could hardly take it in.

“Nope. Will you buy your furniture from me, Betsy?”

“But, Cab, you were going to be an engineer!”

“Mamma can't run the business. She has to take care of the kids.”

“But…could you…can you….”

“Heck!” said Cab. “I'm seventeen.”

After dinner Betsy went up to her bedroom. She had cried at Cab's father's funeral. She didn't feel like crying now, but she had a heavy sick feeling.

“Cab isn't going to graduate. He wanted to, just as much as I do. He had all kinds of class spirit. But he's not even going back.

“He's taking over his father's store. And he's no older than I am. I wonder if I could do that if my father died—stop school, pitch in and help my mother.”

She looked at herself closely in the mirror.

“I'm seventeen, but I've certainly not been acting it. How silly and kiddish we've all been this year! Well, it's all for over for Cab. He's grown up.”

She sat down, knotting her hands tightly together, trying to think.

Cab was one of her best friends. Yesterday he had been as sheltered and carefree as she was. Now he had joined the ranks of those who, like Joe and Mamie Dodd, had no fathers to look after them.

“Just one thing happened. Something that could happen to anyone in a minute. His father dying has made all the difference.”

It seemed strange and a little wonderful that Cab had been able to grow up so suddenly, that he had been able to produce when he needed it the strength to take care of his mother and little sisters.

“I don't suppose he knew he had it in him. I hope I have it in me. I hope I could pull out strength and courage like that if I found I needed to.”

She got up and began to walk around again.

“Oh, I'm sorry, sorry that Cab is leaving school!”

“Betsy,” called her mother. “Don't forget you have a music lesson.” As Betsy came down the stairs Mrs. Ray said anxiously, “You look pale. Are you sure you feel able to go? I'll call Miss Cobb.”

“Listen to that!” Betsy thought to herself. “My mother and father are always looking after me. I've got to start standing on my own two feet. I've got to start growing up, too.”

“No, thanks,” she said cheerfully. “I feel fine. I haven't practised a bit this week but I don't think Miss Cobb will expect it. She knows we're in a dither getting Julia off.”

“She's busy with the same sort of thing, only less happy,” Mrs. Ray said. “She's getting Leonard ready to go to Colorado. He hasn't been getting any
better…he's been getting worse. So she's sending him out to the mountains.”

“Will he get well, do you think, Mamma?”

“I hope so,” Mrs. Ray said doubtfully. “But I'm glad young Bobby is so husky.”

After her lesson Betsy went into the little back parlor to say good-by to Leonard. He looked even thinner than usual and his cheeks were like crimson tissue paper. But he laughed and joked, saying good-by to Betsy.

“Don't learn too much piano while I'm gone,” he said. “I want you to be coming for lessons when I get home again.”

“I'm practically a Paderewski this minute,” Betsy answered. “I can play the ‘Soul Kiss' music. But I intend to keep on studying just because I like your Auntie.”

“I'm not surprised,” said Leonard. “I like her myself.”

He smiled at Miss Cobb, whose answering smile was as calm and cheerful as though he were going to St. John to play football instead of to the Colorado mountains to die.

“I hope he'll prove it by writing some letters,” she said. “And not just the ‘having-a-fine-time-hope-you-are-too' kind of letters. That's the sort he usually writes.”

Betsy tried to imitate Miss Cobb's serene matter-of-factness.

“Will you write to me, too? If you do, and if what your aunt says is true, you'll get the best of the bargain. I write simply gigantic letters to Julia and to Herbert Humphreys out in California.”

Leonard's face brightened. “I could use some long epistles like that while I'm in Colorado.”

“See that you answer them,” Betsy replied.

Leonard's brother Bobby passed her on the steps. He was rushing into the house, rosy and disheveled. Betsy knew why her mother was glad that Bobby was so husky. Miss Cobb would have one out of the four children she had raised.

“That's one promise I'm going to keep,” Betsy muttered in an undertone, walking away. “I'm going to write to Leonard every week as long as he lives.”

She walked up the hill toward her own home slowly, for the weather was still warm. The air smelled of roses in bloom in every dooryard. There were snow balls in bloom, too, white and luscious, and orioles were singing and whistling in the maples. Betsy kept thinking about Leonard and Cab.

When she reached home she found a postal card lying on the music room table. It lay face up and she saw the picture of the Main Street of a small north Texas town.

She turned it over and found that it was addressed to herself. It came from Joe Willard. He had written, “Did anyone ever tell you that you're a good dancer? Joe.”

She stood for some time with the card in her hand before she went upstairs.

Her mother and Julia were busy with the trunk in Julia's room. They called “Hello” and she responded but she didn't join them. She went to her own room.

She put the card first in the handkerchief box where she always put notes from boys she was in love with, but after a few minutes she took it out. It didn't seem to belong there.

She stuck it into the mirror where she sometimes put dance programs and invitations and other gay things. She left it there a while but it didn't seem right there either.

She wandered over to Uncle Keith's trunk, her beloved desk. Above it hung a picture of a long-legged white bird which Herbert had sent her. She kept it above the trunk because it reminded her of Babcock's Bay out at Murmuring Lake.

Still holding the postal card from Joe, she stared at the bird reflectively.

All those resolutions she had made on Babcock's Bay! How they had been smashed to smithereens! She
wondered whether life consisted of making resolutions and breaking them, of climbing up and slipping down.

“I believe that's it,” she thought. “And the bright side of it is that you never slip down to quite the point you started climbing from. You always gain a little. This year I've gained my music lessons, and all the things Miss Fowler taught me about writing, and a postal card from Joe.” That seemed funny to her and she laughed, but she grew serious again.

She thought about those lists she had made in her programs for self-improvement. She hadn't followed them out by any means, but they had revealed her ideals.

At first they had been mostly about brushing hair and teeth. Then she had reached out for charm: green bows, foreign phrases, perfumes, a bath every day. Last summer's resolves to be thoughtful at home and to excel at school, had shown a sort of groping after maturity.

“And this year,” she thought. “I haven't even started a list. I've just realized definitely that there were things I wanted to do….”

She was going to write to Leonard, to reach out for people like Hazel Smith, to get Tony away from that wild gang and keep him safe in the Crowd.

“Gosh!” she thought. “I must be growing up.”

It came to her that there was more to growing up than drinking coffee at Heinz's.

The whole Crowd, she decided, was growing up. Carney had begun when she worked so hard on those entrance exams for Vassar. Tony had begun when he took his stand against fraternities, and even when he had that fling at wildness which Betsy hoped to end. Tacy had begun in her absorption in music and Tib, when she had seen so clearly how silly they had been about herbariums.

Cab, of course, had grown up more than any of them.

But all of them were growing up, Betsy thought intensely. They would never be quite so silly again. The foolish crazy things they had done this year they would do less and less frequently until they didn't do them at all.

“We're growing up,” Betsy said aloud. She wasn't even sure she liked it. But it happened, and then it was irrevocable. There was nothing you could do about it except to try to see that you grew up into the kind of human being you wanted to be.

“I'd like to be a fine one,” Betsy thought quickly and urgently.

Anna came up to Julia's bedroom with an armful of freshly pressed clothes for the trunk. Betsy could hear Julia's voice and Margaret's and her mother's. A
second trunk stood open in Mrs. Ray's room, for the Ray family was going to the lake as soon as Julia sailed away. Betsy could almost smell the water lilies on Babcock's Bay. She opened the trunk and got out her novel.

“I'm going to finish this, although it's terrible. And I'm going to start another, better one; or maybe I'll do a short story first and send it to the
Delineator
. It's time I started selling my stories. Here! Here! Here!” she thought, laughing. “I'm making a list.”

But perhaps people who liked to write always made lists! Just for the fun of it.

She heard the front door downstairs open and Tacy and Tib called, “Yoo hoo!”

“Yoo hoo! Come on up,” called Betsy.

She put Joe Willard's postal card into Uncle Keith's trunk.