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.
They reached her house. By the arc light on the corner she saw the little nest Margaret had put out. Since their departure, the bunny had visited it. It contained a fluffy hen and a flock of yellow chicks.
Betsy pointed to it, trying to speak naturally.
“Isn’t that cute?”
But Tony didn’t answer. They paused awkwardly.
“Come in?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” he answered. He brought his hand up to his cap in a reluctant concession to manners, walked rapidly away.
When Betsy went in the house, she dropped down on the sofa and started to cry. The house was dark and she didn’t want the lights. “Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” she wept. She felt forlorn and ashamed of herself.
Tony had not meant any disrespect when he kissed her. He respected her; he looked up to her. She knew it. He understood, too, that you didn’t let boys kiss you unless you were in love with them. She had let him think she was in love…or falling.
And he was really in love with her. She knew
it as well as though he had told her. He probably would have told her, if she had been different tonight. He might even have said that he wanted them to be engaged. But maybe not. Tony, although so bold, was inarticulate. It would have been hard for him to find words for that. He would have meant it, though.
Still crying, she jumped up and tiptoed down to the basement. She went to the small room where luggage was kept, brought out her satchel, and tiptoed upstairs. She started throwing piles of clothing into the satchel.
Tomorrow, after Margaret had found her nest, after Easter church and dinner, she was going away. She was going to ask her father to take her to the Beidwinkles’ after all.
19
Beidwinkles’
BETSY WOKE EARLY on the morning after Easter, flooded by a sense of peace. She had slept dreamlessly on a puffy feather bed beneath Mrs. Beidwinkle’s fresh-smelling sheets, her patchwork quilts and downy comforter, and she lay staring at a framed motto which said “Griiss Gott” in cross stitch, unable for a moment to remember where she was.
The window was a square of gray, but through the slot in the storm sash, she could hear a delicious jumble of bird voices. She recognized the killdeer shouting his own name and the robin going joyously up and down.
She felt happy. It came to her that she had not been happy for a very long time. Now the things which had been making her unhappy…the quarrel with Joe, the worry about Tony, the nervous, strained anxiety about school affairs—all these had faded away. She lay in bed smiling.
Presently she jumped up, closed the window, and poured water from the pitcher into the bowl. She gave herself a vigorous cold sponge, despite the fact that the room was chilly. She dressed warmly, putting on a red flannel waist and a plaid skirt. Not bothering with puffs, she braided her hair and turned it up with a ribbon. She realized suddenly that she had forgotten last night to put it up on Magic Wavers. When, she thought, bursting into a laugh, had she ever forgotten that before?
She and her father had arrived late, after supper. She had not even unpacked her suitcase, except for her dresses. She saw them on hangers in the closet, her Peter Thompson suit, the white and gold wool dress. Why on earth had she brought that? she wondered. She must have been crazy when she packed, thinking that parties pursued one everywhere.
Briskly, she laid her underwear and shirt waists in neat piles in the bureau drawers which stuck when she tried to open them, but were immaculately papered inside. She arranged her toilet articles on top of the bureau and set her family photographs around. She laid out her comb and brush and mirror.
There was a little table in one corner which would be perfect for her writing. She brought it up flush to the window, which looked out into a bare box elder tree and across the Beidwinkles’ front lawn, a sheet of gray snow in the gray light.
She took the starched white spread off the table, folded it, and put it away. Then she set out her tablets, notebooks, and pencils, her pencil sharpener and her eraser and the ruler she had brought…goodness knew why! She added the Bible, her prayer book, and the dictionary. There!
“I’m going to start a story this morning,” she decided. “I think it will be about a girl who goes away somewhere, to Newport, maybe. I’ll bet it will sell, too,” she added. (None of last summer’s stories had sold, although she had kept them continuously on the go.)
Last night’s impression of the house returned as she literally skipped down the narrow stairs. It was the cleanest house she had ever been in, and it looked very old-fashioned, with rag carpets and crocheted tidies on the chairs.
There was an organ in the parlor, she noticed, peeking into that formidable room. The horsehair chairs sat about in prickly splendor. On a square table there was a gigantic family Bible with a velvet-covered photograph album on the ledge beneath. On a round table were wax flowers under glass, with a stereopticon set on the ledge.
Betsy and her father had sat in the kitchen, which was, she soon found out, the most used and the pleasantest room in the house. It was large, with blue and white curtains, red geraniums in the windows, and a wood-burning cook stove, its nickel trim polished to the gleam of solid silver.
Fire was roaring in the stove this morning, and beside it Mrs. Beidwinkle leaned over a crate which held a flock of chirping yellow chicks. She was a large, big-busted woman with a childlike face. Her graying hair was parted and brushed smoothly down over her ears, in which tiny earrings were set. Graying braids were twisted round and round to make a bun in the back.
Betsy stooped to admire the chicks.
“The sweet little things! May I help you get breakfast?” she asked, feeling rather proud of being down so early.
Mrs. Beidwinkle laughed gleefully. “Breakfast!” she ejaculated. “Mein Mann milked the cows two hours ago. We had breakfast then. I have my wash on the line and was just going to have a little coffee.”
“Do you get up so early every day?”
“Earlier in the summertime. But you are to sleep as late as you can. I always have second breakfasts. My second can be your first.”
On a red-cloth-covered table Mrs. Beidwinkle set out coffee cake and a plateful of cookies, thickly sliced homemade bread, and a bowl of milk. She poured a cup of coffee for herself and offered one to Betsy, but Betsy didn’t want it. It had obviously been reheated and looked as black as ink. The bread and milk, coffee cake, and cookies were delicious.
Betsy enjoyed talking with Mrs. Beidwinkle, who plainly enjoyed talking with her. All her children—four sons and five daughters—were married and gone.
“But Amelia lives near. She is the youngest one.”
Mrs. Beidwinkle was full of legends of her children, their illnesses, their love affairs, their triumphs and disappointments, the death of one. When she got up at last, saying that she must bring in her wash, Betsy put on her cravenette and went out to explore.
It was cold. The wind almost blew her off her feet, and the windmill was whirling. Big clouds, some dark, some pearly white, sailed in a gray sky.
She went to the barn, where she made friends with a sheep dog and saw a litter of kittens. Big, bearded Mr. Beidwinkle, less impressive than he had seemed last night, called out to her from a shed where he was tinkering with a plough. He introduced her to small, grizzled Bill, the hired man.
They weren’t so busy as they would be later, Mr. Beidwinkle said. He couldn’t start ploughing until the frost was out of the ground. Meanwhile he was repairing and oiling farm machinery; he and Bill were building a new chicken house; he was hauling wood from the wood lot.
Betsy returned to the house, cold and blown, went up to her room, and started her story.
After dinner, which was eaten in the kitchen, she helped with the dishes, then went up to her room, undressed, and took a nap. She slept from two to four, got up and dressed again, put on her cravenette and overshoes, and took another walk.
It was colder than ever; she couldn’t face north. But the smell of spring was in the air. A crow flew out of an oak tree, flapping his big wings and croaking, “Caw! Caw! Caw!” She saw the green spears of tulips on the south side of the house.
She ate voraciously at supper, which was like a second dinner, with beer for the men. Mr. Beidwinkle addressed his wife in German and Betsy volunteered the information that she was studying it. They were delighted.
“Sz’e sprechen Deutsch, ja?” Mr. Beidwinkle asked.
“Ein wenig,” Betsy replied. “I’d love to try to talk it with you sometimes while I’m here.”
Bill began to point out articles on the table, giving their German names. But Betsy had played this game with the Mullers. She cried out the names before he had a chance to utter them and soon everyone was laughing. She was so expert that they had to point to the cupboards, to the stove, to find words she didn’t know.
After supper, the Beidwinkles went into the back parlor, where a ruddy-windowed coal stove reminded Betsy of Hill Street. Mr. Beidwinkle and Bill buried themselves in German newspapers, Mrs. Beidwinkle went t
o work on her embroidery. Betsy started Little Dorrit, which she had brought from home, but her thoughts kept going to the organ locked away in the front parlor.
At last she mentioned it hesitantly. “Would you mind if I went in sometimes and played your organ? Not tonight when Mr. Beidwinkle is reading, but tomorrow maybe.”
“What?” cried Mr. Beidwinkle. “You play the organ? Mamma! She plays the organ. We can make music.”
Mrs. Beidwinkle was as excited as her husband, and Bill, too, eased himself to his feet.
“That organ is never played since our last daughter married and went away. Ach, we would be happy to hear some music again!”
Mrs. Beidwinkle bustled into the front parlor and lit the lamp. Mr. Beidwinkle and Bill came in and took chairs, and Betsy began to feel stage fright.
“I don’t play very well, you know. Not like my sister, Julia. I just thought maybe I could practise…”
“You practise, and we listen,” Mr. Beidwinkle said. “You are used to an organ? Ja?”
“No. But I don’t think it’s very different from a piano.”
Mrs. Beidwinkle unlocked it proudly. She pointed out the eleven stops, the knee swells, the pedals covered with Brussels carpet. Betsy sat down timidly, and tried them out. She started her simple repertoire.
“Can’t you sing?” Mr. Beidwinkle demanded.
Betsy was nonplused. Of course she could sing; she had been singing all her life. But she didn’t sing for people all alone, as Julia and Tacy did. She just sang.
She discovered now that she could sing if she had to for other people, all alone. Mr. and Mrs. Beidwinkle and Bill were looking so radiantly expectant that she couldn’t disappoint them. Finding the proper chords, she sang “Juanita” and “Annie Laurie” and some of the other old songs her father loved. Then she began on the popular songs: “Tonight Will Never Come Again” (at which Mrs. Beidwinkle wiped her eyes), “I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now,” “The Rose of Mexico,” “Yip-i-addy-i-ay.” Bill liked that one.
At last she began the new song Julia had sent her at Christmas. Just for fun she sang it in German—“Kind, Du Kannst Tanzen….”