“We mustn’t get hot and messy,” she cried, “going to a party for the great Phyllis Brandish. My—almost—ex-sister-in-law.”
Irma lived in a large substantial house, with porches and bay windows, set in a large lawn which had diamond-shaped flowerbeds on either side of the walk. Mrs. Biscay was soft-eyed and smiling like her daughter.
It was quite a large party because, since Phyllis was a senior, Irma had included a number of senior girls. Phyllis arrived late, wearing a dress of green Rajah silk cut in the new princesse effect and a large hat laden with plumes. She didn’t try very hard to be friendly. She discussed Browner Seminary with Tib and seemed to take no interest in the things the girls told her about high school.
She didn’t know whether she would be a Philomathian or a Zetamathian; she didn’t expect to try out for the chorus; she smiled at the idea of going in for debating, and yawned when they discussed the football team.
“I doubt that I’ll bother to go to the games,” she said, “unless Joe has to cover them.” She brought Joe into her conversation all the time. It was Joe this and Joe that.
“I think it’s wonderful that Joe’s a reporter,” said Betsy.
“Is he doing just school news?” Alice asked.
“No,” said Phyllis. “Lots of other things. He covers meetings in the evenings. It’s a nuisance for me, but it’s good experience for him. He wants to be a foreign correspondent, you know.”
Betsy despised hearing Joe Willard’s plans from Phyllis. She was the one he should have told about wanting to be a newspaper man!
“I think,” she couldn’t resist saying, “he’s planning to go to college.”
“Oh, of course,” said Phyllis. “Naturally!”
But there was nothing natural, Betsy thought, about a boy without father or mother, who supported himself, going away to college. It was quite remarkable, in fact. She didn’t say anything, however. She was careful to make sure that nothing in her manner gave a hint of her deep interest in Joe.
Irrationally, for she could take no credit, she felt proud of his new job. It was wonderful, she thought, for a sixteen-year-old boy to be even a part-time reporter. But it wasn’t surprising that Joe had been able to do it. He had always been different from the general run of boys.
It was the reporter’s job, of course, which made it possible for him to be friends with Phyllis. The Brandishes were rich. Their big rambling house across the slough was removed socially as well as physically from the rest of Deep Valley. Phyllis Brandish was snobbish. Betsy didn’t think that Joe, wonderful as he was, would be acceptable to her if he were still working in the creamery.
As a reporter he was acceptable socially and he had always had an air. It wasn’t only his striking blonde good looks; it was the way he carried himself. His life had made him more independent, more mature than the other boys. Compared to them he seemed like a man of the world. And the fact that he wasn’t one of the high school crowd made him more desirable to Phyllis.
In a curious way Joe and Phyllis were alike. Neither one “belonged.” They were different, Phyllis because she was rich and Joe because circumstances had always set him apart. He was accustomed to being different and had come to like it. Yes, Betsy thought, looking searchingly at Phyllis, who was chatting over an embroidery frame, in that way they were well matched.
“Always assuming,” she thought, “that Joe brought plenty of money back from the harvest fields.”
On second thought, she decided, he wouldn’t need very much. He would need clothes, and he had evidently bought them. He was probably tired of dressing shabbily as he had been forced to do in his first two years of high school. As a reporter he would get passes to the shows that came to town, and since Phyllis had an auto and a big house to entertain in, he really wouldn’t need more money than he earned.
Unconsciously Betsy kept watching Phyllis, trying to see something in the small-featured little face which could attract Joe Willard. To her Phyllis looked waspish, sharp, unlovable. But she conceded that the girl was pretty with her smooth olive skin and those strange eyes like her brother’s, the great fluff of dark hair and her exquisite clothes.
“Probably,” Betsy thought, “Joe doesn’t realize how much those clothes do for her. He thinks that what they do for her is part of her. It almost is, for she has been rich all her life. She has an air, too.”
She knew that Joe had not been influenced in his choice by the Brandish money or prestige. The fact that Phyllis was so cosmopolitan, that she had traveled abroad and had lived in New York—those things would fascinate him. But most of all, Betsy felt, their “differentness” drew them together.
She wondered how they had met and was glad when Carney asked the question.
“How did you and Joe get together, anyway?”
Phyllis laughed.
“I went to the Sun office to put in an ad for Grandmother; she was trying to find a new second maid. When I went back to my auto I couldn’t get it started, and Joe came out and helped me.”
“How did Joe Willard happen to know how to run a machine?”
“He learned this summer while he was working on a farm. The farmer had a Buick, too. Some farmers have a great deal of money, Joe says,” Phyllis remarked, and seemed pleased to be able to offer information about such a strange species of human beings as farmers. Since almost all the girls had grandparents, uncles or aunts on farms they were both amused and plagued.
Irma’s party was very elegant, with flowers all around the parlor and back parlor where the girls sewed and talked. At the dining room table there were more flowers, pink candles, little pink baskets filled with candy and nuts, even place cards. The refreshments were delicious—fruit salad, rolls, sherbet and two kinds of cake, devil’s food cake with white frosting and angel food cake iced in pink. There were two dishes of sherbet apiece for those who wanted it, Irma announced. Most of the girls acclaimed this with enthusiasm, but Phyllis looked supercilious as she refused the second saucer.
“I simply can’t like her,” Betsy thought, and was relieved to observe that there was no real danger of Phyllis going with their Crowd. She thanked Irma graciously for their party but she didn’t ask the girls to come to see her, and to Carney’s impulsive, hospitable suggestion that she drop in on the Sibley lawn as most people did after school, Phyllis responded with a noncommittal smile.
After the party Betsy and Carney went down to the Lion Department Store and bought a jabot for Betsy to embroider. They were even more hilarious than usual in their reaction from Phyllis Brandish and from having acted so ladylike all afternoon. Carney asked Betsy to come home with her to supper and since they were still talking hard and fast at nine o’clock she invited her to stay all night. Permission was secured and Carney loaned a night gown.
Well-supplied with crackers, plums, layer cake, cheese and dill pickles, they looked over old snapshots and party programs, postal cards and souvenirs Larry had sent from California. They discussed the Humphreys.
Herbert and Betsy still corresponded too, but they weren’t sentimental. They were what they had always called each other, “Confidential Friends.”
Carney, in a sudden rush of words, grew confidential now.
“I wish I could see Larry,” she said. “I’m afraid that until I see him again, no one else is going to interest me.”
She looked very serious, sitting in her long-sleeved night gown. Her hair, braided for the night, swung in neat pigtails.
“He’ll come back to see you sometime,” Betsy prophesied.
When Carney spoke again, she changed the subject.
“Do you know, Betsy, I was surprised when I heard that Joe Willard was going with Phyllis Brandish.”
“Why?” Betsy asked.
“I always thought,” said Carney bluntly, “that he would be a good one for you.”
“Joe Willard?” Betsy asked. “Joe Willard?” She lay on her back and looked thoughtfully up at the ceiling. “He’s a very nice boy. But to me he only means the Ess
ay Contest.”
Then it was Betsy’s turn to change the subject.
“Doesn’t it seem funny, Carney, to be a senior? Have you decided what you’re going to do next year?”
“Yes,” said Carney. “I’m going to go to Vassar if I can pass the exams.”
6
Julia Leaves for the U
THE NEXT NIGHT BETSY and Julia hitched up Old Mag and went riding. It was almost unheard-of for Betsy not to be with a crowd of boys and girls on Saturday night. But for once she didn’t want to be. Julia was leaving the following Tuesday.
Betsy had seen very little of her sister since returning from Murmuring Lake. Miss Mix, the dressmaker, was in the house. Julia and Mrs. Ray were shopping all day long for materials and trimmings, as well as for hats, night gowns, underwear, shoes and all the other things Julia must take to the U.
“Anyone would think there wasn’t a store in Minneapolis,” Mr. Ray grumbled. “Why don’t you just fill a trunk with her duds and let her buy what else she needs in the cities?”
But this was unthinkable. Mrs. Ray loved to shop. Every purchase must be discussed from all angles, colors matched, accessories pondered over. The two had been lost in a maze of clothes.
Betsy was glad tonight to have Julia to herself. It was a fine chance to talk, jogging along behind Old Mag, the reins held loosely, the whip in the right hand, but as a gesture merely. Old Mag always took her own gait.
Riding was a favorite evening diversion in Deep Valley, especially since Front Street and Broad Street had been paved. The Rays usually went as a family, Mr. and Mrs. Ray in the front seat, the three girls behind. They would drive down High Street past the high school and court house to the end, turn and drive up Broad past the library, the Catholic, Presbyterian, Baptist and Episcopal churches, and Carney’s house. At Lincoln Park they would turn and angle down Second where there were more homes and more churches, livery stables, the post office, the fire house, the Opera House. Then, turning again, they would drive up Front past the Big Mill and the Melborn Hotel and Mr. Ray’s shoe store. Sometimes they stopped for ice cream.
Out riding you continually passed and hailed friends who were likewise out riding, going up one street and down another while sunset died out of the sky. Occasionally an automobile whizzed past and then you had to hang on to the reins. Old Mag still detested automobiles.
Betsy held the reins tonight. Julia looked pensively over the pleasant streets, dimmed by the cool September twilight. She looked as though she were bidding them good-by, as indeed she was.
“I both hate it and love it,” Julia said.
“Deep Valley? How could you possibly hate it?”
“Because it has held me for so long,” Julia said. “And it isn’t my native heath. Never was.”
Julia was taking the music course at the U. She began talking about how hard she planned to work, not only at singing lessons but at piano, history and theory of music, languages.
“Of course,” she explained, “the U wasn’t my choice. What I would really like to do is go to New York or Berlin to study. But Papa thinks I’m too young for that, and I’m willing to go to the U first if he wants me to.”
She drew her finely arched brows together.
“It’s not so good, though,” she said. “You ought to begin young in music. I’d like to start work with some great teacher. Geraldine Farrar made her debut when she wasn’t much older than I am.”
Betsy wanted to tell Julia how much she would miss her, but it didn’t come easy to Betsy to say things like that.
“When you’re gone, I’m going to go into your room every day and muss it up. I’m going to pull open your bureau drawers and throw your clothes on the floor. You know, make the place look natural.”
“I’m not that bad, Bettina,” Julia said, slipping her arm through her sister’s.
“Worse! Gee, we’re going to miss you!”
Old Mag’s hoofs rang on the asphalt of Broad Street. Betsy and Julia bowed to the Brandishes, waved to the Roots, gazed thoughtfully at the first timid star.
“Yes, Papa and Mamma will miss me,” said Julia at last.
“I’m going to stay around home more,” Betsy said, awkwardly. “Go places with Mamma. Do the best I can.”
“I’m very thankful that they have you, Bettina. I don’t see how ‘only’ children ever manage to leave home.”
“Julia, I think I’ll start taking piano lessons.”
“What?” Julia received this declaration with such a cry of pleasure that it sent Old Mag into a trot. “Oh, Betsy, I’m so glad! How grand to have another musician in the family!” It was just like Julia to assume that Betsy’s success at the instrument was already assured.
“I’ll never be a musician,” said Betsy. “But there has to be a piano being played around the Ray house.”
“You’ll study with Miss Cobb?”
“Of course.”
Everyone in Deep Valley began piano study with Miss Cobb, a large, mild, blonde woman who was a Deep Valley institution, and one of its most widely admired heroines. Students of the piano who had any large talent ultimately went on to other teachers but their parents would have felt guilty about starting them with anybody but Miss Cobb. The fact that she had a particular gift with very small children was the least part of the explanation.
The town felt that Miss Cobb deserved its support. Years before, on the death of a sister, she had broken her own engagement to marry and had taken the sister’s four children to raise. The little girl had followed her mother and the youngest boy had followed his sister. One of the two remaining boys was delicate. Miss Cobb kept on staunchly, year in and year out, teaching the young of Deep Valley to play.
“I remember,” Julia said dreamily, “sitting down before the key-board and having Miss Cobb show me where middle C was. It’s one of those memories that stand out like a photograph. There it is…me, aged six or so, all swelled up with importance, sitting on the piano stool with Miss Cobb’s face quite close to me, and her gentle, kind voice saying, ‘Now we always begin with middle C.’”
Julia stared at the star which was brighter now in the lofty leafy lane made by the treetops.
“If I were told today that I was beholding the Garden of Eden it couldn’t possibly rate in importance with the way middle C seemed to me that day. It’s queer, Bettina, to be thinking of that just as I’m leaving Deep Valley.”
“Julia,” said Betsy, “you talk as though you weren’t ever coming back.”
“I’m not,” said Julia. She stared upward again and her violet gaze reached beyond the brightening star to wherever opera singers of the future were singing gloriously to hushed enraptured audiences. “Not to stay,” she added. “Not in the way I’m here now.”
Sunday morning Julia and Betsy went to the little Episcopal church. They sang in the choir, and today, putting on their black robes and black four-cornered hats, both of them were aware that it might be a long time before Julia did it again.
The choir girls marched down the aisle, two abreast, singing. Julia looked rapt and far away, as always when she sang. But she loved the little brown stone church. Once during the prayers Betsy saw her lift her head and look around tenderly, then drop her face into her hands again.
Sunday night was always a special occasion at the Ray house. Friends of all members of the family dropped in for supper, which was called Sunday night lunch. Mr. Ray took charge, making the sandwiches for which he was renowned. There was talk and music. But tonight the shadow of Julia’s departure hung over it all.
Everything was supposed to be just the same as usual, but it wasn’t. Anna had baked a towering five-layer banana cake instead of the common uncomplicated kind. Mrs. Ray had provided roast chicken and other sandwich materials. Usually Mr. Ray made his sandwiches of anything which came handy—Bermuda onions, for example.
Most upsetting of all, Mrs. Ray had made a salad, a gelatin salad with fruit molded in.
“Why the salad?” Mr. Ray dem
anded, indignant. “What’s the matter with my sandwiches? Aren’t they good enough?”
“Of course, darling!” Mrs. Ray cried. “Your sandwiches are marvelous. But I thought that just tonight, since Julia was going away…”
“What’s that got to do with it? Anyone would think that Julia was going to the North Pole!”
But he felt as upset as anyone.
There was more company than usual, so many came to say good-by to Julia. Tony, unobtrusively helpful as always, passed sandwiches, poured coffee and made jokes with Mr. Ray about it being a wake.
“Bob Ray! You keep still! You stop that!” Mrs. Ray said.
When it was time for singing, Julia skipped the hymns and the old songs like “Annie Laurie” and “Juanita”…the kind which make people homesick. They sang “San Antonio” and “O’Reilly” and “Waiting at the Church” and that new song to which you danced the barn dance—
“Morning, Cy,
Howdy, Cy,
Gosh darn, Cyrus, but you’re
Looking spry….”
Everyone was noisier and gayer than usual, yet it wasn’t a very successful Sunday night lunch.
The next day started off oddly: Julia was up so early. Her trunk was filled, closed and locked. It went off on the dray.
That night Mr. Ray took the family down to the Moorish Café. This was in the Melborn Hotel, which was run by the husband of Julia’s singing teacher. Mr. and Mrs. Poppy, both stout, cosmopolitan and merry, joined the family at the table and it was a gayer occasion than the Sunday night lunch had been.
“New things are easier to do than old familiar things when there’s going to be a change,” Betsy decided profoundly.
It was hard for her to imagine what the house would be like without Julia, who had always been the buoyant center of it all.
On Tuesday, although Julia’s train didn’t leave until four forty-five, Betsy was excused from school at noon. Margaret had been excused, too, and Mr. Ray came home early from the store. These extravagant gestures were a mistake. The family sat around feeling strange, making conversation.