Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself

  The next day, however, Mr. Gaston was unusually affable. “Ashamed of himself, probably,” Tacy whispered. Betsy struggled faithfully to keep her rhetoric papers as dull as possible and things went smoothly for a while. But then Mr. Gaston assigned another short story. That was her downfall.

  He assigned it, of course, only because the schedule required it.

  “Any subject…any subject you like,” he said, waving his hands to express contempt. “Try not to be too flowery.”

  This, Betsy realized, was probably aimed at her, but she was too pleased to worry. She planned out her story walking home.

  It was a sunless afternoon. The look of the world spelled the word November.

  “I’m going to put my story in the spring,” she thought. “That’s what’s so nice about writing. You can go into any season you want to.”

  Her story was about a band of gypsies who stole a child, and before she began Betsy closed her eyes a minute and thought about spring. She thought about the apple orchard behind the Hill Street house, and saw blossoms swaying against a vivid sky. Then she wrote her opening sentence.

  “Under a tree hung with rosy apple blossoms, an infant boy was sleeping.”

  The stories were collected next day. The following day, before returning them, Mr. Gaston faced the class.

  “I asked you,” he said, “as a special favor, not to be too flowery. But our poetess…” Betsy squirmed and blushed…“is not only flowery. Her flowers are the wrong color. I haven’t read your story, Betsy, and I don’t intend to. The opening sentence is enough for me.” He read aloud scornfully:

  “Under a tree hung with rosy apple blossoms…”

  He laid down the paper.

  “Rosy apple blossoms! Rosy apple blossoms! Whoever heard of rosy apple blossoms? Apple blossoms, my dear young lady, aren’t pink. They are white.”

  Betsy’s blushes receded. She turned, in fact, a little pale.

  “I think they are pink, Mr. Gaston.”

  “You think they are pink?” Mr. Gaston glared at her through his thick glasses. “But I know they are white.”

  “It’s the under part of the petals,” Betsy said falteringly. “They’re pinkish, sort of.”

  “Pinkish, sort of!” Mr. Gaston mocked.

  Betsy looked around, a little wildly. Joe Willard was staring out of the window. She brought her gaze back to Mr. Gaston stubbornly.

  “We had lots of apple trees when we lived up on Hill Street. I always liked to look at them in May.”

  “You should have examined them accurately. You would have found that they are white.”

  “But they weren’t white.” Betsy was near to tears, but it was from anger.

  “They must have been peach trees,” Mr. Gaston said.

  “They were apples. I’ve eaten the apples.”

  “Betsy,” said Mr. Gaston, with a maddening, condescending smile. “If you were a little younger, I’d ask you to write a hundred times, ‘Apple blossoms are white.’ As it is I merely ask you to rewrite your story, and eliminate any inaccuracies.”

  He picked up another paper.

  But the subject was not quite done with. Joe Willard turned from his study of the trees beyond the window and raised his hand.

  “Yes, Joe?” Mr. Gaston said, changing his tone.

  “It is my opinion sir, that apple blossoms are pink.”

  Mr. Gaston was silent, stunned.

  “Pinkish, rather,” Joe continued. “I think Betsy’s word ‘rosy’ is excellent. They’re colored just enough to make the effect rosy.”

  The silence in the room had width, height, depth, mass and substance.

  Then Mr. Gaston found his voice, a particularly acid voice.

  “Very interesting. But we can’t let this turn into a botany class. Tacy, your story is mediocre, but it is at least short, blessedly short.”

  After class Betsy brushed past marching pupils to go up to Joe. He was wearing the odd coat and trousers and a distant triumphant smile.

  “Joe,” said Betsy. It was the first time she had addressed him since he told her that her Crowd bored him. “Joe, that was nice of you to speak up about the apple blossoms. I…I appreciate it.”

  The smile left his face.

  “It was just simple justice. Nothing personal in it. I’d have done it for anyone,” he replied coldly, looking her coldly in the eye.

  9

  Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson

  THE FIRST SNOW CAME, dramatic as always. One day, unexpectedly, it appeared in the air. Children all over Deep Valley held up their hands to catch the flakes on their mittens, and shouted and raced with delight.

  Presently the gray-brown world was covered with feathery white. Boys and girls, walking home from high school, pelted one another with snowballs. Margaret came out with her sled.

  She slid with dignity, small skirts spread tidily, her back straight as a ramrod, down to the watering trough. Hugh joined her, and pulled her up the slope so that she could slide down again. He was morose. He had dropped in on Julia, who had said she was busy, giving a lesson to Tacy. Hugh thought it was just another excuse for getting rid of him. But as a matter of fact Julia actually was giving Tacy singing lessons.

  Tacy’s voice was true and sweet. It was like an Irish harp with plaintive questioning and joy and sadness in it. And Tacy loved to sing. She was so shy that she could not imagine singing in front of the whole school, alone, as Julia did. But standing beside the Ray piano, with Julia whom she had known all her life, she poured out her heart in song.

  Julia passed on to Tacy readily all Mrs. Poppy had taught her. “I use Mrs. Poppy’s method,” Julia liked to say importantly. She was all seriousness during the lesson, and even Betsy was barred from the room.

  Julia was busy with the many and lofty activities of seniors, with the choir, and her singing lessons. But presently she grew busier still, for the Episcopalian ladies, wanting to raise money for new hymnals, decided to put on a home talent play. Wonderland was its name. It was to be given in the Opera House, and Julia was asked to play the leading part, the princess.

  Betsy’s crowd of girls was in the chorus. They were to dance a Scarf Dance. Through November the entries in Betsy’s journal were all about Wonderland: “Rehearsal for Wonderland.” “Homework and Wonderland.” “Practised the Scarf Dance for hours. My feet are killing me.” Then they began to read, “Wonderland and Harry.” The references to Harry which followed almost every night thereafter indicated, however, only Betsy’s interest in her sister’s affairs. It was Julia’s life into which Harry had entered.

  Harry was playing the part of the prince, and he was not a high school boy. He had been graduated from the High School some years since, had attended the state university for a year, and had now returned to work in his father’s bank. He was old. He was so old that he wore a mustache. He was a large self-assured young man, a trifle condescending to the town girls.

  He was graciously condescending to Julia at the first rehearsal, where it was discovered that they shared a duet and several love scenes. But they walked home from the second rehearsal, and after that he wasn’t condescending any more.

  “Same old story,” Betsy hummed mischievously when, after the third rehearsal Harry and Julia broke away from the group saying that they were going downtown for a snack. Harry had taken Julia’s arm possessively, and in his eyes was a look her sister knew well.

  He started coming to the Rays’ regularly. He brought Julia flowers and candy. He brought her the score of The Red Mill, and he and Julia sang a duet from it:

  “Not that you are fair, dear

  Not that you are true…”

  He lifted his eyebrows and puffed out his chest. He quite eclipsed poor Hugh.

  But Hugh did not give up easily. In the show window of a hardware store on Front Street some Spitz puppies were being exhibited. Julia took Margaret down to see them and Hugh, making one of his forlorn unwanted calls, heard their enthusiastic descriptions. Late the n
ext afternoon he appeared with one of the puppies under his coat, and presented it to Margaret…a delightful little fellow with soft white fur hanging almost to the floor, and a shiny black nose like patent leather.

  This gift seemed at first a masterstroke. Julia went into ecstasies more extravagant even than Margaret’s. Although the puppy was as white as snow, she gave him a bath and dried him in towels before the dining room fire. She rummaged through her ribbon box for blue and cherry-colored ribbons which she tied into his collar.

  “I’ll name him Lincoln. It goes so well with Washington. Don’t you think so?” Margaret asked.

  “Lincoln’s sort of hard to say. We could call him Abie, though,” Betsy volunteered.

  “You’re our sweet precious little Abie,” Julia cooed, and Hugh looked sheepishly triumphant.

  Harry dropped in that night and he wasn’t too pleased with Abie. He said that Spitz dogs shed their long white hairs in a most annoying way.

  “You won’t like it, Mrs. Ray. They have bad dispositions, too, I understand.”

  After Harry was gone, Mr. Ray looked down at Washington which Julia’s last year’s beau had given to Margaret, and at Hugh’s gift of Abraham Lincoln. They were sleeping peacefully, one on Margaret’s lap and one on Julia’s. Mr. Ray shook his head and chuckled.

  “When will Jefferson appear, and what will he be? White mice? A canary? We’ll have a menagerie, Julia, if this keeps up.”

  Julia’s soft white fingers rubbed Abie between the ears. She merely smiled.

  Hugh soon discovered that although Julia was so fond of Abie she was no fonder of him than she ever had been. And Harry had an enormous advantage. Because of the Wonderland rehearsals he was with Julia almost daily, and they joked about their love scenes, but they worked hard on the duets. Julia saw to that.

  There was a dress rehearsal in which everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong, but by the next evening all had miraculously straightened itself out. The house was packed even to the boxes. The boys in Betsy’s Crowd sat in the topmost gallery…the peanut gallery it was called…and they cheered and whooped when the Scarf Dance was executed flawlessly.

  Julia’s solo was a glorious success, and at its conclusion the usher presented her with two bouquets: pink roses from Hugh and red ones from Harry. Julia cradled them impartially, one in each arm, while she smiled and bowed. But when she appeared in the next scene she had a red rose in her hair.

  Soon after this the evening paper announced that an actress named Rose Stahl would come to Deep Valley in a Broadway success called The Chorus Lady. Immediately after supper the telephone rang. It was Anna’s night out and Julia, Betsy, and Margaret were doing the dishes, Julia washing, Betsy wiping, Margaret putting the dishes away.

  Margaret answered the telephone.

  “It’s for you, Julia,” she said. “It’s Hugh.”

  Julia dried her hands and sat down at the phone in a niche beside the cellar door. In a big checked coverall apron of Anna’s, she looked absurdly small. But the poise of her dark head on her slender smooth white neck was alert and resolute.

  Listening with interest, Betsy and Margaret heard her say:

  “Umm…I can’t hear you, Hugh.” She touched the receiver hook gently and pushed it up and down. “I hear such a queer sound. What can be the matter?”

  In a moment she said, “The phone must be out of order. You’d better call me back.” And she put the receiver into the hook and began to laugh.

  “Hugh said there was nothing wrong with this phone except that I was wiggling the hook.”

  “Well,” replied Betsy, “you were.”

  “Of course I was.” Julia was busy cranking to make a call of her own. “He was asking me to go to The Chorus Lady. I don’t want to accept if Harry is planning to ask me.”

  “What under the sun are you doing?” Betsy cried. “You can’t ask Harry whether he’s going to ask you.”

  “No,” agreed Julia. “But I can give him a chance.”

  And in a moment Betsy and Margaret, watching with fascinated eyes, heard her say sweetly, “Harry, what was that song you wanted me to learn? Was it ‘Rose in the Garden’? I’m ordering some music and I just wasn’t sure…”

  There was a silence followed by some unrevealing murmurs. Then Julia cried with a rising inflection, “Really? Why, I’d love to!” There were more unrevealing murmurs, and she said good-by.

  But before she could rise from her chair the phone rang again, angrily. Betsy and Margaret stood transfixed. Julia’s voice was sweet as honey.

  “Yes, Hugh, I hear you perfectly now. What could have been the matter? Rose Stahl in The Chorus Lady? I’m so sorry. I’ve accepted another invitation.”

  She put the receiver on the hook once more and came briskly back to the dishpan.

  “Julia,” said Betsy. “I don’t see how you can be so mean to poor Hugh.”

  “When he gave us Abie, too!” cried Margaret. She straightened into what Julia and Betsy called her Persian princess air. “I wish I was older. I’d go with Hugh to see the show,” she said and walked haughtily out of the kitchen.

  Betsy too saw The Chorus Lady. She went with Winona, Irma, Carney, Alice, and Tacy. Winona could not get passes for so many so they sat in the peanut gallery taking plenty of peanuts and Miss Clarke as chaperone. The boys in the Crowd appeared in a body and after the play they all went to Heinz’s, and Miss Clarke had more chaperoning to do than she had bargained for. She took off her glasses and polished them until she almost wore them out.

  Harry didn’t bring Julia to Heinz’s. He scorned this resort of the high school crowd. He took her instead to the Moorish Café, for an oyster stew, an expedition which had two unfortunate results.

  In the first place Mr. Ray was displeased.

  “She’s only a school girl,” he protested to Mrs. Ray.

  “But it’s such a lovely place. And he is such a fine young man,” Mrs. Ray replied. “And he asked Mrs. Poppy to join them, so Julia would have a chaperone.”

  Mr. Ray grumbled, unconvinced. “No judgment! Just what you’d expect from a Democrat!” Mr. Ray was a Republican.

  Julia, however, was so dazzled by oyster stew at the Moorish Café, that she broke off with Hugh completely. When he dropped in the next day she remarked that she thought Rose Stahl was as great as Sarah Bernhardt. Hugh protested mildly, and Julia retorted with such provocative fire that before Hugh knew exactly what had happened he was out on the steps going home. He and Julia had quarreled, irrevocably.

  “And I don’t give two cents for Sarah Bernhardt! I never saw the woman!” he wailed to Betsy, who was full of pity as she always was for Julia’s discarded beaus. Margaret was cross with Julia. She wore her Persian princess manner steadily for a week.

  Harry was aware that Margaret did not like him. He started bringing her gum drops and picture books.

  “How would you like some gold fish?” he asked her one night, and Mr. Ray choked over his cigar so violently that he had to go out to the porch and cough. He returned with dewy, twinkling eyes.

  “Harry,” he remarked soberly, “I know that you’re a rising young Democrat. I wonder whether you’ve given any thought to Thomas Jefferson.”

  “Why, sir,” said Harry, flattered, “I can’t say I ever did.”

  “I advise you to,” said Mr. Ray. “I advise you to consider him seriously.”

  “Papa,” said Julia next morning at breakfast, “that was really too bad of you. He might have caught on.”

  “I wish he had, the store window dummy!” Mr. Ray said. “Moorish Café, indeed!”

  The days slipped along to Thanksgiving. Tom came home, and that meant parties. Carney, Irma, and Winona all gave parties, and Tony took Betsy to Winona’s, while both he and Cab accompanied her to Irma’s. But Betsy wasn’t satisfied. With Julia’s great conquest so fresh in her mind, she was very dissatisfied indeed.

  “Tony’s just…Tony,” she said to Tacy. “And Cab…well, Cab couldn’t very well
take Irma to her own party. I wish I were more popular with boys.”

  “Why, Betsy!” cried Tacy. “Your house is always full of boys.”

  “We feed them,” said Betsy glumly.

  “It isn’t that. They like you.”

  “Exactly.” Betsy was bitter. “They like me so well they slap me on the back. I wish I could be different, suddenly. I wish I could change overnight. Walk into the high school tomorrow just utterly different, so that the boys would be struck dumb…even Phil Brandish.”

  “Drea-ee-eaming,” trilled Tacy, and she and Betsy began to laugh. But Betsy grew gloomy again.

  “Just wait,” she said, “I’ll go away some day, and come back all changed like that girl in The Conquest of Canaan, languid sort of, and wearing a slinky Paris gown.”

  “You won’t be half so nice as you are right now,” said Tacy, who didn’t like to hear Betsy criticized even by Betsy herself.

  The Rays had Thanksgiving dinner with the Slades this year. The families entertained each other at Thanksgiving, turn and turn about. The dinner was magnificent, as usual, and after it was finished, the grown people napped, Margaret went roller skating, Harry took Julia to the Majestic, and Tom and Betsy went for a walk. Betsy went for a walk. Betsy was pleased to go walking with Tom who looked distinguished in his Cox School uniform. They set off across the slough.

  They had reached a street which curved up toward the rambling Brandish mansion when a deep horn boomed, and a bright red automobile slowed to a stop beside them.

  “Hello,” Phil Brandish said.

  Betsy was so excited that she almost choked.

  “Ah,” said Tom. “Greetings and salutations!” This was an expression he had brought home from Cox.

  “Want a lift?” Phil Brandish asked.

  “No, thanks,” said Tom to Betsy’s disappointment.

  She hoped frantically that her hat was on straight, that her nose was not red from the wind. But Phil Brandish was not looking at her. He was looking at Tom’s uniform.

  “Still in jail, I see,” he said.

  It seemed to Betsy that he was trying in a heavy inept way to make a joke. But Tom did not take it so.