Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe (3 page)

T
HE
L
ONG
I
NN DOCK
was lined with boats and draped with fishnets. Old Pete, smoking his pipe in the lee of the boathouse, hobbled forward with rheumatic slowness to pull Betsy in. She stepped out cautiously, the boat rocking beneath her feet, and lingered to talk with him. They were great friends. He sometimes told her stories about when her mother
was a girl and lived at Pleasant Park across the lake.

“She was a handsome redhead. I used to see her out in her sailboat, ‘The Queen of the Lake.' Her brother Keith would be with her, the one who ran away to be an actor. He was redheaded, too, and as handsome as they come.”

“He's still an actor. He's with Mr. Otis Skinner this season in
The Honor of the Family
,” Betsy had answered, glowing. Her mother's brother, Keith Warrington, was very close to Betsy although she had seen him only once.

She used his old theatrical trunk for a desk. She kept her manuscripts, notebooks and pencils in the tray, and wrote on the smooth top with pleasure, feeling that in some intangible way the storied background, the venturesome travels of the trunk added magic to her pencil. The trunk had come to represent her writing, her dearest plans for her life.

Old Pete said now only that there was going to be a change in the weather.

“This gloriously perfect summer can't last forever,” answered Betsy. She ran up a steep flight of stairs, which spanned the high bank through a tangled growth of bushes and trees.

At the top she was greeted by a delicious smell from the Inn kitchens—baking cake, she thought. A clothes line hung full of bathing suits and stockings.
Betsy selected her own and paused at the pump which stood at one end of the porch just outside Mrs. Van Blarcum's office.

Mrs. Van Blarcum was small, spare, vivacious, always busy from morning until night. Mr. Van Blarcum was courtly, with drooping white mustaches, always leisurely. They had operated the Inn for many years and the same families returned summer after summer from Deep Valley and other Minnesota towns, as well as from Iowa, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Missouri.

The Inn was old. It had received so many additions at different periods that it had quite lost its original shape and sprawled in strange directions, unified only by white paint and a narrow open porch across the front.

Guests overflowed the main building and slept in cottages. These ranged in an uneven semicircle among old apple trees around the smooth green lawn. The Rays had the cottage on the end of the point. It consisted only of two bedrooms with a porch in front. Unplastered, it smelled freshly of the lake which could be seen in a rippling silver sheet through the foliage outside the windows.

The three sisters occupied one bedroom. Julia and Margaret were there putting on their bathing suits, when Betsy dashed in. The bathing suits were all of
heavy blue serge, trimmed with white braid around the sailor collars, the elbow-length sleeves, and the skirts which came to the knee over ample bloomers. With them the girls wore long black stockings and neatly laced canvas oxfords. Julia was tying a red bandana around her dark hair.

She was a beautiful girl with violet eyes, a classic nose, and white teeth which, unlike Betsy's, were conventionally spaced. She was shorter than Betsy, but made the most of every inch of height, longing to be tall because of her operatic ambitions.

“How's the novel going?” she asked Betsy, adjusting the ends of her kerchief artfully and looking in a hand mirror to see the effect.

“I wasn't working on that today; just writing in my journal. I'm making wonderful plans for next year. Gee, it seems funny to be an upper classman!”

“It doesn't seem a bit funny to me to be finished,” Julia said. “In fact I feel as though I should have finished long ago. Eighteen years of my life gone and I haven't yet got down to music in a serious way! Come here, Margaret dear,” she added to the younger sister, “and I'll tie your bandana.”

“Yoo hoo, Betsy!” came voices from outside.

“No matter where we live or go,” Julia said, laughing, “there's always someone yoo-hooing outside for you, Bettina.”

This was true, and Betsy liked to hear it.

“There's been a grand crowd out here this summer,” she replied, scrambling into her suit.

She had enjoyed getting acquainted with people from other places. There were two boys her own age from Deep Valley too. Betsy looked for them now as, tying her kerchief hurriedly, she rushed out the door.

Dave Hunt had already run down the stairs. He ignored girls and usually went fishing with the men. Yet his presence had added an extra fillip to the summer, for now and then Betsy found him staring at her out of deep-set dark blue eyes. He was over six feet tall and very thin, with a stern, spare face.

E. Lloyd Harrington was highly social. He, too, was tall, but fragile. He had beautiful manners and loved to dance. He usually wore glasses and was blinking now without them.

Julia was joined by Roger Tate, a University student. For a week he had been trailing her, talking about the U, as he called it, and making plans for the days following her arrival there. He was going to take her, Julia told Betsy, to a fraternity dance—whatever that was; riverbanking—that meant walking along the Mississippi, he explained; to lunch in Minneapolis tea rooms. He was teaching her to swim.

“Today I want you to go as far as the buoy,” he said.

“I'll try.” Julia lifted her violet eyes, smiled with intention. Roger blushed and began to talk hurriedly, almost senselessly, about side strokes and breast strokes. Betsy shook her head. She had seen plenty of Julia's conquests and they always amused and interested her. But she didn't like it at the end when Julia threw her victims over.

Dave went so far out into the lake that Old Pete blew a horn and summoned him back. Betsy could swim only a little, but she had fun with water wings and floated a long time, looking up into the blue world of the sky, thinking about next winter.

At five o'clock everyone went dripping back to his room to dress for supper.

A day at Murmuring Lake Inn did not have one climax; it had three: the three superb meals. Guests rose from the enormous breakfast swearing that they could never eat again. Yet they were waiting hungrily on the porches when the dinner bell rang. And although the noon meal was abundant beyond all reason, everyone was waiting shamelessly for the supper bell.

The Ray girls and their mother waited on the porch of their cottage. Julia and Betsy had changed into white dotted swiss dresses, Margaret into a yellow sailor suit. Mrs. Ray wore crisp pale green trimmed with bands of plaid.

“Papa's late tonight,” she said. “He's almost always here by now.”

An inadvertent tinkle sounded as one of the maids came out on the porch carrying a big brass bell. Before she had a chance to ring it guests started streaming toward the dining room. She swung it heartily and the loud metallic clangor caused those guests who were housed in cottages to start from their porches, except for the Rays.

“I'm starving,” Betsy said.

“So am I,” answered Mrs. Ray. “But it isn't civilized not to wait for Papa.”

“At least three minutes,” Julia said.

“There he is now,” Margaret said.

Sure enough, a fringed surrey had stopped at the far side of the Inn, and Mr. Ray alighted.

“Why, he's helping somebody out,” said Mrs. Ray. “I wonder who it can be.”

Curiosity born of their quiet days sent them hurrying over the lawn.

They saw a small, golden-haired figure, very chic in a high-waisted, lilac-sprigged dress. Betsy stared. Then she shrieked. Then she began to run.

“Tib!” she cried. “Tib Muller!”

She and Tib flung their arms about each other.

“Where did you come from?”

“I rode out from Deep Valley with your father.”

“But you belong in Milwaukee.”

“No,” said Tib. “We've moved back. I live in Deep Valley now. I'm going to go to the Deep Valley High School right along with you and Tacy.”

They looked into each other's eyes, almost tearful with joy. Then Tib embraced Mrs. Ray, Julia and Margaret.

“Take her to Mrs. Van Blarcum and get her a room,” said Mr. Ray, looking pleased with himself. He was a tall, dark-haired man, with hazel eyes like Betsy's.

Hand in hand, in a quiver of excitement, Betsy and Tib ran to Mrs. Van Blarcum. The room must be big enough for Betsy, too, they insisted, hugging each other; they refused to be separated. They reached the supper table late, but by this time they had quieted down enough to remember that they were sixteen, and they walked demurely across the dining room.

Mrs. Van Blarcum had put a chair for Tib at the Ray family table. Everyone was happily agitated by her arrival.

“When did you get back?” Mrs. Ray asked, as Betsy and Tib helped themselves liberally to crisply-fried lake fish, cottage-fried potatoes, stewed fresh tomatoes, green corn on the cob, cold slaw and muffins still warm to the touch.

“Just yesterday,” said Tib. “Mamma and Matilda
are very busy settling, but they said I might come out when Mr. Ray invited me. I was so anxious to see Betsy.” She spoke with a slight foreign inflection, a result of the years in Milwaukee with her German relatives.

“Have you seen Tacy?” asked Julia.

“Yes,” said Tib. “I went up to her house last night. I could hardly believe it, how tall and grown-up she was. But after I had talked with her a minute I could see that she hadn't changed.”

“Tacy is always the same.”

“Margaret has changed, though,” said Tib, smiling at Betsy's younger sister. “You're ten years old now, aren't you, Margaret?”

“Yes,” said Margaret, looking up gravely out of large blue eyes, heavily lashed with black.

“Margaret has braids,” said Betsy, lifting one.

They were short, but that didn't matter, for they were almost completely concealed by giant hair bows behind each ear, yellow tonight, to match the sailor suit.

“You're just Hobbie's age,” said Tib, referring to her brother. She had two brothers, Frederick and Hobson. “You'll have to come up and play with him.”

“Thank you,” said Margaret politely, but the Rays knew that she was quite unlikely to accept the invitation. Margaret didn't play very much, even with girls.
She liked books, and Washington, her cat, and Abe Lincoln, her dog, and the company of grown-ups, especially a neighbor, Mrs. Wheat. She liked to be with her father and went with him on walks and rambles, always holding his hand and standing very straight as he did. The Persian Princess, her sisters called her.

Blaming the lake air, they emptied a plateful of muffins. It was filled again. For dessert stewed plums were served with Lady Baltimore cake. There were coffee and tea, both iced and hot, and big pitchers of milk.

Betsy stole a look around the crowded, clattering dining room. She was gratified to see that Dave Hunt was looking at her as usual. He looked away when she met his eyes. Lloyd was staring frankly at Tib, and as soon as supper was over he joined them to be introduced. All the boys and girls came except Dave.

Tib was gracious, a trifle flustered. She laughed all the time, a little tinkling laugh which sounded exactly as she looked. Betsy remembered having recommended such a laugh during her visit to Milwaukee.

It was on New Year's Eve. They had stayed awake all night planning new personalities, and Betsy had resolved to be Dramatic and Mysterious. Tib, they had decided, should be the silly type. She was really practical and exceptionally competent, but Betsy had
declared that she must conceal it if she wanted to fascinate boys. Betsy had long since stopped acting Dramatic and Mysterious, but Tib was still acting adorably silly with very good effect.

Lloyd stared at her admiringly behind his glasses. He proposed getting Pete to take them all out in the launch. As they went chug-chugging into the lake, spreading ruffles of foam in the sunset-tinted water, he sat next to Tib.

When they returned he talked with Mrs. Van Blarcum and proudly announced a hop. Betsy was puzzled.

“But I thought there wasn't going to be one tonight. So many people are making an early start tomorrow.”

“Plans have been changed. Guess why!” said Lloyd.

Tib laughed her little tinkling laugh and Betsy whispered, hugging her, “What you're going to do to the Deep Valley High School!”

Impromptu though it was, the hop was a success. Mrs. Ray and another mother alternated at the piano. Mrs. Ray knew only two dance tunes, a waltz and a two-step, but she played them over and over, and with such zest that they eclipsed in popularity the more extensive repertoire of the other mother.

Tib flashed from boy to boy. Betsy had plenty of partners, too. Julia danced most of the evening with
Roger, looking pensive, presumably because they must now be parted until the University opened its doors.

At last Mrs. Ray played “Good Night Ladies,” Mrs. Van Blarcum served lemonade, and Betsy and Tib could get away.

Tib's room was on the second floor of the hotel. It was plainly furnished, as all the Inn rooms were, but with a drift of white towels on the wash stand and snowy linen on the bed. It smelled of the lake, and the girls were delighted to find that it had its own small balcony.

“We'll go out there and talk,” Betsy cried, “as soon as we're ready for bed.”

They put gaily patterned kimonos over their nightgowns. Tib tied her yellow curls with a ribbon and Betsy wound her hair on Magic Wavers. Then they went stealthily outside, sat down on the floor and looked upward.

Clouds had come into the sky; you could see the stars only through ragged holes. The tops of the apple trees stirred above the small dark cottages. Crickets were singing.

“How did you get along with your new personality after you got home?” Tib asked.

“Well, I took Phil Brandish's scalp,” answered Betsy. “I got tired, though, of not being myself.”