“You haven’t changed,” said Betsy.
“Are you going to tell Herbert that?”
“Don’t you want me to?”
“I suppose so,” said Carney. “But maybe Larry has changed awfully. Maybe he’s sophisticated now.”
Betsy threw up her hands. “I should think you’d go crazy with that Mystery in your life,” she said. “Is Larry going to like you or isn’t he? Are you or aren’t you going to like Larry?”
Carney chuckled.
The Crowd of girls repeated last year’s progressive dinner. As before, each course was served in a different home. But this year small programs showed with whom one took the dark icy walk from house to house.
Betsy went with Carney to Irma’s for grapefruit with brandied cherries in it. The table was in red.
She walked with Alice over to Hazel’s for bouillon with place cards and favors.
She walked with Katie to her own house for the fish course. Her table was in pink.
She walked with Hazel to Carney’s for the meat course. It was, however, chicken, and there was cranberry ice.
She walked with Tacy to Tib’s for delectable salad.
With Tib she took the long walk up Hill Street to the Kellys’. They loitered, having an important matter to discuss. Tom had asked Carney to the New Year’s Eve dance. Who, then, was going to take Tacy?
They arrived late and half frozen for the Kellys’ hot mince pies. Betsy clowned with Winona. She laughed and quipped in the giddiest spirits, for she dreaded the walk to Alice’s. Irma was her partner for that.
But Irma didn’t mention Joe or the dance. Slipping her arm sociably through Betsy’s, as they started down the frozen path, she suggested that they sing. She had a sweet soprano voice, and Betsy sang alto. They sang Christmas carols all the way to Alice’s house, throwing the music at the cold bright stars. Betsy felt ashamed, and squeezed Irma’s arm when they parted. Alice served after-dinner coffee and her decorations were in the holiday colors.
They went last to Winona’s. Betsy walked down with Winona. She wrote in her diary:
“That Winona is a scream. She had fixed up their dining room to look like a beer garden. And we drank grape juice and smoked cubebs. They’re just for asthma, of course, but the boys who were looking in the windows thought they were real cigarettes. We gave ‘Florabelle.’”
Betsy had composed “Florabelle” or “She Loved But Left Him” during the holidays. It was supposed to be a takeoff on a melodrama but it was definitely influenced by Shakespeare. The frenzied lovers lapsed frequently into atrocious blank verse. There were grave diggers and a balcony scene.
The shades were closely drawn, for Betsy and Winona had borrowed Winona’s father’s wardrobe. Winona and Tib were the lovers; Betsy, the villain. The audience, on pillows on the floor, collapsed in laughter.
At the end, there were cries of “Author! Author!” Betsy took her bows, flame-cheeked and mirthful, her thumbs in Winona’s father’s suspenders, which were holding up Winona’s father’s trousers.
But when she reached home, the chime clock was striking twelve. And from twelve to one and one to two it wrapped the quarter hours and half hours and hours into neat packages and stowed them away. Betsy stuffed her fingers into her ears. Hot tears dripped into her pillow.
She tried to see the quarrel from Joe’s point of view. That was simple. He was proud. He thought he had been made ridiculous and he was determined not to compete with Tony any longer. But she was proud, too. If he hadn’t gotten mad and asked Irma so quickly, she would have tried to explain. But now it was too late. There was nothing she could do.
At last the chime clock brought the New Year’s Eve dance.
Tacy wasn’t going. She had been given a second chance; Cab had asked her. But she had decided that she would prefer going to her uncle’s with the family.
“Her uncle’s!” said Tib, throwing complete incomprehension into her voice.
“I can’t make her out,” said Betsy.
“She’s sure to be an old maid unless we take steps.”
Tib had come as usual to dress for the party with Betsy—and to do Betsy’s multiplicity of puffs. The pompadour was rolled over a big sausagelike mat and each puff was rolled over a small one.
“The rat and all the little mice, Tony calls them,” said Betsy, acting lighthearted.
The new white wool dress was a dream. Below the tucked, form-fitting bodice, the skirt fell into pleats. It was trimmed with gold and she wore a gold band, of course, around her hair.
Tib’s self-made pink silk was a triumph. She wore pink shoes and stockings and a wide pink band around her head.
“You both look lovely,” said Mrs. Ray, dashing in, in her taffeta petticoat. She, too, was dressing for the ball.
Margaret, who was going to stay up for the first time to see the old year out, with Anna, making fudge, leaned over the rail as Betsy and Tib went lightly, proudly down the stairs.
Ralph and Tony waited, pressed and immaculate. Tony held the pale blue opera cape.
“Pretty skippy!” he said admiringly, putting it around Betsy’s shoulders.
Betsy didn’t like the new opera cape. She felt as though it were a hoo-doo.
The boys had engaged a hack. This unheard-of gesture was a tribute to the elegance of the Melborn Hotel. Betsy felt unbelievably worldly as the hack, on its winter runners, slid along the snowy streets and halted at the illuminated entrance to the Melborn.
They went through the swinging door into the lobby. It smelled of cigars and the fat red leather chairs. They crossed the room and ascended the grand staircase which rose at the far end.
The ballroom was two stories high and overlooked the river. Here Deep Valley gave its most fashionable parties. Mamie Dodd didn’t play for this dance. Lamm’s Orchestra, behind a screen of potted palms, was tuning up provocatively. The ballroom was decorated with poinsettia and holly. There were red shades on the chandeliers.
“Supper is going to be served in the Ladies’ Ordinary,” Carney told Betsy and Tib. She looked very pretty in the store-bought party dress, and Tom looked distinguished in his uniform.
The high school crowd seemed stimulated by this entrance into the world of fashion. All the girls looked pretty and the boys were kindled to unusual politeness, gallantry, and wit.
Betsy was excited, almost joyful, in spite of that doom in her breast, but her spirits died like a quenched fire at her first glimpse of Joe. She and Tony were dancing the opening waltz, “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now.” She was happily floating in his arms—no one could waltz like Tony, no one!—when she saw a light pompadour and stalwart shoulders. Joe’s lower lip was outthrust in a look Betsy knew. He was gazing at Irma, whose irresistible face, framed in natural (not Magically Waved) curls, was lifted to his.
“If he isn’t crazy about her now, he soon will be,” Betsy thought, and suddenly felt completely wretched. But she didn’t show it. She smiled glowingly at Tony.
Joe didn’t ask Betsy for a dance. The program ran on through “Howdy Cy” and “Ciri Biri Bin” and “Tonight Will Never Come Again.” Betsy grew gayer and gayer, but none of her vivacity came from within. Inside, she ached. She ached all over, as you do when you have the grippe.
Laughing and flushed, she barn-danced, waltzed, and two-stepped. She chattered with the other girls about the marvelous party. She rushed up to her mother to exclaim. Tony went with her, to ask Mrs. Ray for a dance. He nodded his head negligently at Betsy.
“That daughter of yours! She’s like a balloon on a string.”
“Not a balloon! Oh, Tony! No! I only weigh a hundred pounds.”
Mrs. Ray smiled at them. Loving parties, she was as happy as Betsy seemed to be. She whirled off with Tony, while Betsy, more sedately, circled with her father, who danced, as he did everything else, with benevolent dignity.
When the New Year came in, the orchestra played Auld Lang Syne. Everyone joined hands in a giant circle which revolved, singing:
>
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind….”
Tony’s dark eyes were bright with joy. He looked at Betsy as they swung hands and sang. Then the circle broke and people threw confetti and blew horns. Everyone called, “Happy New Year!” “Happy 1910!”
Nineteen-ten! That was the year they would graduate in, the year they had been looking forward to so long. How could it possibly start off so badly, so horribly! In the crowded, clamorous room, filled with laughing voices and the bright rain of confetti, Betsy felt forlorn.
She looked around and found Joe across the room. He was looking at her. But as soon as their glances crossed, he looked away.
And presently she saw him dancing with Irma to “Yip-i-addy-i-ay!”
15
Tacy’s Eighteenth Birthday
WHEN BETSY WOKE UP on New Year’s morning, she lay in bed looking at the window as it slowly changed from black to gray. She was more seriously unhappy than she had ever been in her life, but she was filled with a new determination.
She wanted to deal with her unhappiness in a manner worthy of her years.
“Like an adult,” she said out loud.
She remembered that day last spring when she had found out that Cab was going to leave school and take over his father’s business. She had realized then that she, too, was growing up.
She had been slow doing it, she reflected. One reason was that Tacy and Tib both loved her so much. They thought she was just about perfect, which had always made it easy for her to believe herself that she was pretty nice. You don’t grow up, she reasoned now, until you begin to evaluate yourself, to recognize your good traits and acknowledge that you have a few faults.
“To begin with,” she thought, “I’m too much of a baby.”
That came partly from having an older sister. Julia had always taken the brunt of things.
“We used to expect Julia to be perfect,” Betsy had often heard her mother say regretfully, speaking of the early years.
Julia had taught her father and mother not to expect perfection from a child. And she had done other kinds of pioneering. She had persuaded her parents that when you reach a certain age you are old enough to do certain things. She had thrashed out such matters as where one was allowed to go, how late one could stay out, the subject of boys.
And in school, as Betsy went from grade to grade and up into high school, she had always had a ready-made place, because she was Julia Ray’s sister.
To be sure, Betsy acknowledged, in justice to herself, she had to make good. The teachers had soon discovered that she had none of Julia’s talents. She had had to carve out a place for herself with her own abilities. But she had always been given a chance. And meanwhile Julia had sheltered and protected her.
“It’s a wonder I braced up for Christmas Eve,” Betsy thought. “I’m glad I did.”
She knew she had helped the family, and as a matter of fact, she had been happy. That, she realized, was because she had stopped thinking about herself.
“I’ve heard all my life that that’s the way it works. Papa is always thinking about other people and he’s always happy. I’ve got to stop thinking about myself so much—about how I look, how I’m impressing someone, whether I’m popular or not. I’ve got to start thinking about other people, all the people I meet.”
At the moment she didn’t want to meet anybody, not even her mother, who would want to talk over the party. She wished she could stay in bed. In the past when she had had blows of one sort or another she had sometimes pretended to be sick. The family had always fallen in with these deceptions, and she had been able to take her time in gathering her forces for recovery.
“Well,” she thought, “I won’t do that today. I’ll go down to the Y and serve punch the way I’m supposed to.”
With this resolution, she jumped out of bed. The room was frigid, but it suited her mood. She shut the slot in the storm window with a bang and scratched a little hole in the frost to look out at the world. It was cold, snowy, and desolate. So much the better!
It seemed a little ironic that her companion today was to be Irma. She and Irma had been invited days before to preside behind the punch bowls at the Y.M.C.A. New Year Reception.
“But nothing that has happened to me is Irma’s fault,” thought Betsy, pulling on her clothes. “She didn’t try to get Joe to ask her. He asked her because she’s the belle of the school. I might as well start right now being fair to Irma. All of us girls, except Tacy, have had it in for her just because she’s so popular with boys.”
Smiling a little fixedly, but smiling, she went through the holiday breakfast, the holiday dinner. She dressed in her white wool dress again and went to the reception. The Y.M.C.A. was having an open house for men and women, boys and girls. Tea was served in the parlors, fruit punch in the big gymnasium.
She answered Irma’s smile resolutely, and it was diverting to be serving punch to the boys and girls who flocked about their table. In a quiet moment, she and Irma served some to themselves.
“Wasn’t it a wonderful party last night?” Irma asked, sipping.
“Beautiful,” said Betsy.
“It was lucky for me,” said Irma, “that Tony asked you ahead of Joe. I don’t know what I’d have done, Betsy, when Dave got those terrible measles, if Joe hadn’t happened to be free.”
That was a gallant remark, and Betsy matched it.
“Half the boys in school would have broken their dates to take you, Irma. You know that,” she said.
A new wave of guests surged up to the table. Betsy was as busy as Irma; she wasn’t envious or jealous. But listening to Irma’s sweet laugh, observing her confiding manner, her fascinating way of gazing starry-eyed into people’s faces, Betsy felt a pressure about her heart. Joe was free to go with Irma if he cared to. All bets were off, he had said.
She waited with dread for him to appear at the reception, but he didn’t come. She didn’t see him until the following Monday when school reopened. By that time, Carney had gone back to Vassar; Tom had returned to Cox; Al, Pin, and Squirrelly, to the U. The Rays’ Christmas tree had been cast out into the snowy world. Wreaths had been burned and presents put away.
This ended the holidays, and Betsy returned to school wearing a clean, starched shirt waist and even more stiffly starched resolves.
More snow had fallen. The thermometer had sunk to ten degrees below zero and with regrettable bravado was still descending. Tib, who loved the winter sports, was exultant, but Betsy and Tacy were glum.
“‘Blow, blow, thou winter wind,’” Tacy murmured, as, rigid with extra wraps and underpinnings, they hurried through tunnel-like channels in the drifts.
“‘Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,’” Betsy chanted in return. She might well have added:
“Thy sting is not so sharp,
As friend remembered not….”
For Joe plainly had forgotten the warmth and sweetness of their old companionship. They didn’t speak to each other now except for casual hellos in the hall. He stared at a book when she recited in Miss Bangeter’s English class. They had changed seats at the new term and didn’t sit together any more.
But at least he didn’t seem to have fallen a victim to Irma’s charms. It appeared that he intended to do what he had told Betsy he would do—play the field.
January brought its usual diversions—sleighing parties, skating parties, debates, and basketball games. Joe went to everything, and he always took a girl. But it was seldom the same girl twice, although he lavished each one with flattering attentions.
By the time examinations put a stop to such activities, the high school had almost forgotten that the names of Betsy and Joe had ever been linked. It began to think of Joe as a single man again, to wonder when and with whom he was going to settle down.
Mr. Ray inquired for him several times. He wanted to tell Joe when Mr. Kerr came back to town and persuaded him to make a display of knit goods in the window.
/> “That Kerr! Joe ought to hear how he wangled me this time.”
But Mrs. Ray told her husband privately to stop asking for Joe. Betsy knew she had, for Mr. Ray avoided the subject with clumsy finesse. He began to joke about Tony, something he had never done before—the Rays had long since taken Tony for granted.
Tony was happy these days. He was really working at school. And although his manner was always scornfully reckless, he was behaving very well indeed.
“He’s trying to live up to me,” Betsy thought, with a little twinge of guilt.
He still didn’t act lover-like. He wasn’t mushy. But he had come quite rigidly to claim the prerogatives of a “steady beau.” He called for her at choir practice, took her to all the school activities, and never failed to come for Sunday night lunch.
Betsy tried to make the best of it. Her trait of dogged stubbornness stood her in good stead now. She was surprised at how much it helped unhappiness not to give in to it.
“Last year at this time I’d have been just wallowing in misery,” she thought.
She did grow a little thin and tense, and her father kept heaping her plate and saying that she ought to get more sleep. But she protested that she would be all right as soon as exams were over.
As usual, she was cramming for mid-term exams. She and Tib brought their physics notebooks up to date together, and Tib tried to explain the subject, which was easy for her but an occult mystery to Betsy. She helped Betsy in German, too, and Betsy tried to help her and Tacy in English.
No one worried about Civics.
“What would we do without Miss Clarke?” Tacy asked one day. “Each graduating class ought to give her a medal.”
They joked and toiled and burned the midnight gas, and examinations were all successfully disposed of in time to celebrate Tacy’s eighteenth birthday.