Betsy Was a Junior and Betsy and Joe (36 page)

Betsy and Tony, Dennie and Tib went to the Moorish Cafe after the show. Betsy and Tib kept a little of their make-up on their cheeks and felt like actresses. Joe and the pretty girl were there, but Betsy ignored them. She flirted gaily with Tony.

She started a game which had just reached popularity, writing down dashes which, properly decoded, spelled out words and messages.

Her “—— ——- —— — —- ——?” was translated at last: “What color eyes do you like?”

Tony pulled his curly thatch and wrote, “—— —— —- —— — - ——.” “They have the name of a girl.”

“Hazel!” Tib shrieked, and Betsy wrote (in code, of course), “I like curly hair.”

Tony's eyes sought hers with laughing boldness. He set down dashes firmly. “I like unnaturally curly hair.”

Dennie seized the pencil then, and Tib peeped over his shoulder. Their table resounded with mirth.

Tib came to stay all night at the Rays'.

“You were darling,” Betsy told her as they undressed. “You really ought to go on the stage, Tib.”

“Maybe I will,” Tib said. “But there are lots of things I like to do. I like to draw, I like to cook, I like to keep house….”

“If I were making up a plot,” said Betsy, “I'd have Mr. Maxwell getting back to New York and telegraphing for you to come and go into the Follies.”

“You can make up all the plots you like,” said Tib, matter-of-factly. “But I'm going to go through high school and graduate along with you and Tacy.”

“Betsy,” she added after a moment. “You're getting to like Tony pretty well, aren't you?”

“What makes you think so?” Betsy asked.

“You acted that way tonight. Joe didn't like it, either. I could tell, the way he stuck his lip out.”

“That…go-to-the-deuce…look, you mean,” said Betsy flippantly.

But she didn't answer Tib's question.

B
ETSY SAT AT THE PIANO
, practising Nevins' “A Night in Venice,” which she was going to play at Miss Cobb's recital. She played badly, for she felt cross. She had been feeling cross for some time, although she tried not to show it…ever since
Up and Down Broadway
, in fact.

She had been having difficulties with Tony. Encouraged by her coquetry that night, he had changed.
All winter, in spite of the fact that he had been going with no one but her, he had not acted lover-like.

“He was never spoony,” she thought. “And not because he doesn't like me, either!”

He liked her—too much. She had known for some time that he did. She had seen it in his touchingly good behavior, his mock-serious gallantries, the adoring look his black eyes held sometimes. But he had tried not to show it. He would have kept on trying—because he thought she didn't share his feeling—if she hadn't given him false hopes.

She had brought it all on herself. Just because she had seen Joe with that girl at the show! And after all, he hadn't taken her out again. She was just a girl who had been visiting in town. Of no consequence at all! Betsy brought her hands down bitterly on the keys.

In the Crowd, she had been snappish. She had quarreled violently with Winona and Irma—Betsy, who never quarreled! They didn't speak for three days until Irma apologized for something she hadn't even done. She had quarreled with Cab about whether he had broken some casual date. It was something that really shouldn't have mattered a fig.

“I don't know what ails me,” Betsy thought. “Of course,” she added defensively, “I'm working pretty hard.”

She was. Everything that had been pushed away and put aside while
Up and Down Broadway
was in
preparation now had to be faced. In Miss Bangeter's Shakespeare class they had finished the comedies,
As You Like It
and
The Merchant of Venice
, and were deep in the grim tragedies of
Hamlet
and
Macbeth
.

Toil and trouble expressed exactly what she was going through, Betsy decided. In physics she was facing an examination on “Light.”

“Why does anyone have to do anything about light except enjoy it?” she demanded, running a scale.

In German, she was struggling with adjectives. It seemed so unreasonable of the Germans to change their adjectives, for gender, number, case.

“Why can't they just say
klein
for ‘small'? Why does it have to be
kleiner, kleines, kleine
, and goodness knows what else! If one adjective is good enough for English, it ought to be for German,” stormed Betsy, banging.

The Honor Roll would be announced soon. And Betsy wanted to be on it. She wanted to be on the program commencement night, to give an oration as Carney had done.

“I should have thought about that earlier in the year, or last year, or the year before that, or the year
before that,” she told herself, making a discord.

She wasn't properly prepared even for Miss Cobb's recital, although Miss Cobb had been planning it happily for months. Well, Betsy thought, she would stick to her practising for an hour this morning if it killed her.

But she wasn't too sorry when the telephone rang.

It was Alice, who was also to play at Miss Cobb's recital.

“Betsy! Have you heard? Miss Cobb has left for Colorado. Leonard died last night.”

“Leonard…died?”

She could hardly take it in.

Then Leonard had lost his fight! He would never compose that music which had been running in his head. He would never hear the operas, the great orchestras he had longed to hear.

“There won't be any recital, of course,” Alice said.

After she shut down the telephone, Betsy stared at it through a blur of tears. She was sorry she hadn't written Leonard that long funny letter about
Up and Down Broadway
which had been rolling around in her head. She would never write it now, and he would never read it. It would have made him laugh.

She thought about Miss Cobb. Dear, brave Miss Cobb! This was the third child to die, of the four she had taken to raise. And she had been so cheerful all
winter, although the news from Leonard had been bad.

Betsy dashed the tears out of her eyes and went upstairs to her mother's bedroom, where Mrs. Ray and Miss Mix were busy with the Easter sewing.

“Oh, I'm so sorry!” Mrs. Ray said, when Betsy had told her the news. “It's a very good thing she has Bobby.”

Bobby, the one remaining nephew, was a youthful, masculine counterpart of his sturdy aunt. The family enemy wouldn't get him, at least.

“Let's ask Bobby up to supper while his aunt is gone,” said Mrs. Ray. “Ask Margaret to telephone him.”

Betsy went reluctantly to tell the news to Margaret. Margaret had taken Miss Cobb into the small circle of her affections along with Washington and Lincoln, Mrs. Wheat and Tony. And Margaret had deep feelings, although she could never express them. She could never find an outlet for her emotions in small ejaculations of pity or sympathy as other people did.

She said nothing at all now, just stared with dark, troubled eyes. When Betsy asked her to telephone Bobby, she marched away, her back very straight. But she went into the coat closet and stayed there a while before she telephoned.

Betsy closed “A Night in Venice” and put it away. She never wanted to hear it again.

But she did. Bobby came to supper. And after a few days Miss Cobb returned from Colorado with Leonard. Half the high school went to the funeral, and Miss Cobb's pupils sent a big wreath. Then lessons began again. Miss Cobb looked pale, but she was as calmly cheerful as ever. She didn't mention the recital, though. There was no recital that year.

Sadness weighed Betsy down for several days, although there was good news at school. When the civics class was leaving the classroom, Miss Clarke beckoned to her.

“Will you drop in to see me after school?” she whispered.

That meant, Betsy knew, that she had been chosen for the Essay Contest. She ought to be glad, but she didn't feel anything. She just felt tired out.

In English class, she did what she rarely did these days, glanced across the room at Joe. He was leafing through
Macbeth
, but just as she looked at him he looked at her. He didn't smile. He only looked at her and turned back to his book. But Betsy felt sure that he, too, had been asked to write in the Essay Contest. He was thinking what she was thinking: they would be competing again this year!

Entering Miss Clarke's room, she tried to muster a
smile which would match Miss Clarke's kind excitement.

“I've some good news for you, Betsy. The Zetamathians have chosen you again for the Essay Contest. The Philomathians have chosen Joe, of course.”

“Of course,” said Betsy, smiling.

“And…I want you to know…there was no dissenting voice about you this year. Miss Bangeter, Miss Fowler, and I all think you are the one to represent the senior Zetamathians.”

Betsy tried to look as happy as she knew Miss Clarke expected her to look.

“What is the subject?” she asked with forced eagerness.

“It is ‘Conservation of Our Natural Resources.'”

“‘Conservation of Our…Natural Resources'?” Betsy repeated blankly.

“You know,” Miss Clarke said helpfully. “Keeping up our forests and things. You like the out-of-doors, Betsy. I think you can write a good essay on that subject.”

Betsy felt dubious, but she tried to act assured.

“I'll get right to work,” she said.

As a matter of fact, she put off going to the library. She dreaded meeting Joe at the little table in the stalls where contestants for the Essay Contest worked. She didn't feel up to seeing him across the table, his bent head shutting her out.

More good news followed. The Honor Roll was announced, and she was on it! She would give an oration at Commencement and Tacy would be singing a solo. Tib had the leading role in the class play.

“Oh, bliss! Joy! Rapture!” they cried.

Rejoicing, they went to Mr. Snow's Photographic Studio to sit for their class pictures. Betsy had one taken in her shirt waist, wearing her class pin; another, in her Class Day dress, the pale blue embroidered batiste Julia had sent from Switzerland. They got the proofs, and Betsy saw that in the shirt waist picture she looked just as she really looked. But the Class Day picture was dreamily flattering.

Miss Mix was making her beautiful clothes, because she was a senior. They included a new tan suit with a frilly white waist for Easter. Betsy bought her Easter hat—a big rough straw, turned up at one side, covered with red poppies. It was glamorously becoming.

Easter came early. And as though nature understood, spring came early, too. Long since, there had been pussy willows in the slough and blackbirds, with red patches on their wings, calling in raucous voices. Now the sun had melted the snow to gray slush. Patches of soggy exuberant grass appeared.

On the day before Easter, when Betsy and Margaret were coloring eggs in the kitchen, Mrs. Ray rushed in.

“Mail from Julia!” she called, waving a letter.

Every letter from Julia was an event, but this one brought especially dramatic news. Julia was going to spend Easter at the Von Hetternichs' castle in Poland.

“Only a hundred rooms are open,” Julia wrote, underlining the “only.”

Mrs. Ray telephoned Mr. Ray, and when he came home Betsy read the letter aloud to him. After they had eaten supper and Margaret, as usual, had made a nest for the Easter bunny out on the lawn, Betsy read the letter again.

Her father looked at her thoughtfully after she had finished.

“Julia doing all this traveling,” he said, “puts an idea into my head.”

“What is it?” the others wanted to know.

“I think that Betsy ought to do a little traveling—to the farm.”

“To the farm?” asked Betsy. She added jokingly, “Why not Chicago or New York?”

“You don't need Chicago or New York,” said Mr. Ray. “You're tired out.”

“Are you thinking of the Taggarts?” asked Mrs. Ray, mentioning the farmers Betsy had visited the summer before she went into high school.

“No,” said Mr. Ray. “I was thinking of the Beidwinkles, German customers of mine. They were in the store today and asked if one of you girls wouldn't like
to come out. Why wouldn't Easter vacation be a good time?”

“Oh, not Easter vacation, Papa!” cried Betsy. “There's a party planned for almost every day.”

“That's the trouble,” said Mr. Ray. “That's just what I'm getting at. You don't need parties. You need a rest. Don't you think so, Jule?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Ray. “I hate to have her miss the parties.” (Mrs. Ray loved parties.) “But you do seem tired, Betsy. You have all spring.”

Betsy wanted to cry. She wanted to cry if anyone looked at her these days. But she certainly didn't want to go to a lonesome old farm away from all the fun and excitement of Deep Valley. She winked her eyes rapidly.

“I'll go to your Beidwinkles sometime, Papa. I'd love to. But not in Easter vacation. Please!”

“All right,” said Mr. Ray, but he looked dissatisfied.

The telephone broke in on the conversation. It was Winona, suggesting that since the night was so warm, with a moon, it would be fun to go out serenading. Betsy agreed, and soon Tony called for her. A group of eight boys and girls wandered down the street in the mild air seeking the houses they would favor with song.

Tacy didn't come. Mr. Kerr was in town, Alice said.
But Irma was there to lead the sopranos, and the Crowd sang with full throated joy “My Wild Irish Rose,” “On Moonlight Bay,” “Rose of Mexico.”

Betsy loved singing, especially in parts. And Tony wasn't acting mushy tonight. He held her arm in comradely fashion, while his deep voice plunged downward in the bass, inventing impudent harmonies. When they walked he was full of tomfoolery, making everyone laugh.

“Wouldn't I be foolish to go to the country and miss fun like this?” Betsy thought.

After an hour, the serenaders broke into smaller groups. Tony and Betsy called good night and started up Plum Street Hill.

“Say,” said Tony, “this is a swell night.”

“Just like summer,” Betsy answered, looking up at the moon.

“Summer!” said Tony, turning her about. “That calls for ice cream!”

“Heinz's?” she asked.

“Heinz's! But let's not eat it there. Let's make them give us a sack and two spoons.”

Mr. Heinz, of course, complied. He was used to the vagaries of the young. Betsy and Tony took a quart of ice cream to Lincoln Park, that pie-shaped wedge of land with an elm tree and a fountain on it which stood where Hill Street began. They sat down on the
bench and consumed ice cream with relish, making absurd conversation.

When they had finished, they fell silent. Moonlight flooded everything and made a cloudy shadow of the big elm tree. Tony had been cheerfully unromantic all evening. Betsy was astonished, and taken unprepared, when suddenly he put his arm around her and kissed her.

She jumped up.

“Tony Markham! What are you doing?”

Tony got up, too, but only to kiss her again.

“There's nothing so strange about it, is there?” he asked. “We're going together, aren't we?”

“No…not exactly.”

“We certainly are.”

“We certainly aren't!” cried Betsy. “Not if it means acting spoony like this. I hate this.”

“You're acting stupid,” said Tony, roughly. “If you don't like me…”

“I do like you…but not in that way.”

She started toward home, Tony walking beside her in silence. He was angry. She could tell it by the swift pace of his walk, usually so slow. She wasn't angry with him; she was angry with herself, angry and confused.