Joe was in a fever for fear she wouldn’t win.
“I can’t stand it, if you don’t. I’ll cut my throat. Of course, you know, it’s not of the slightest importance….”
“Then why,” Betsy wanted to know, “would you cut your throat?”
“Oh, well! I know you want to win the darn thing.”
“I shan’t care at all if I don’t. And I don’t expect to. After all, I was competing against that Joseph Willard who signs his stories for the Minneapolis Tribune.”
But she won. Standing on the platform, before a roaring assembly, decorated in orange and turquoise blue, Betsy received her class points. Miss Bangeter smiled when she announced it.
Joe, clapping vociferously, joined in the Zetamathian cry:
“What’s the matter with Betsy? She’s all right.”
He even started to join the chant, “Poor old Philos! Poor old Philos!” but he caught himself in time.
The Zetamathians won the cup, which gave them two out of three. All the Zets were happy about that. And other Philos than Joe were pleased that Betsy had won at last. Winona looked almost as happy as Tacy and Tib. Miss Fowler was radiant and Miss Clarke wiped her eyes.
The next night, Class Day, was Tib’s night of glory. She played the lead in A Fatal Message with triumphant success. The play came last on a crowded program. Preceding it, various members of the Class of 1910 delivered the Class Will, the Class Prophecy. Everyone was ribbed and slammed.
Betsy Ray was supposed to will a curling iron to a straight-haired sophomore. Tib willed all the junior boys to the junior girls. It was prophesied that Tacy would demonstrate a henna rinse, that Hazel would become the first woman president.
Cab, who had come to share in the fun, enjoyed it all hugely. He was wearing a new gray tailor-made suit.
“See?” he said to Betsy. “I can have the suit if I can’t have the diploma.”
He joined the Crowd, which swarmed into the Ray house afterwards for one of Julia’s rarebits.
Commencement Day, that never-to-be-forgotten third of June, dawned hot.
“Shades of my ancestors!” Betsy wrote in her journal. “Such a day!”
The telephone kept ringing, for all the girls in the Crowd had to confer. The doorbell kept ringing, too, as presents arrived. There was a telegram of congratulations to Betsy from Julia’s man. There were red roses from Joe.
Betsy rehearsed her oration to Miss O’Rourke in the Opera House. She rehearsed it again to Julia, who made some suggestions about putting in expression. Betsy ignored them. She went about muttering, “The heroines of Shakespeare were essentially human….”
Tacy sang “Sylvia” for Julia, who gave her some pointers straight from Berlin. Tacy tried to profit by them but she was getting nervous. Her eyes had a hunted look and she swallowed with difficulty.
Tib alone was completely carefree; she had done her chore the night before.
“Nothing to do now but collect my diploma!” she said airily.
“Get out of our sight!” Betsy and Tacy moaned.
There was an early supper at the Rays’, so Betsy could start dressing. This was the first appearance of the graduation dress. It was a fine white voile, trimmed with yards of lace and insertion, ankle-length, with elbow sleeves.
Her mother, Margaret, and Anna watched while Julia dressed Betsy’s hair.
“Too bad to spoil it with a hat,” Betsy said. But, of course, she had to. A pale blue picture hat with the sweeping pale blue plume Julia had sent from Paris. Her father held her pale blue opera cape and Anna brought out Joe’s red roses, which she had been keeping fresh in the ice box.
Anna watched glumly as Betsy revolved.
“What’s the matter, Anna? Don’t I look all right?”
“Of course, lovey. You look even punier than the McCloskey girl did. But when Margaret graduates, I’m going to marry Charlie.”
“Anna! You wouldn’t!” cried all the Rays together.
Betsy put on her long white gloves. She was wearing white slippers, also. They didn’t go into a party bag tonight, for Betsy, Tacy, and Tib were riding to the Opera House in a hack! Mr. Thumbler called first for Tacy and Tib, and both of them were sitting inside, wearing picture hats and opera capes and carrying flowers, when the vehicle stopped at the Ray residence.
“We’re late,” said Tib. “But it doesn’t matter. Things can’t begin without us because you two are both on the program. I have very important friends.”
“I wish they would begin without us. I wish they’d finish without us,” said Tacy through chattering teeth.
“Stop and think!” Betsy said. “We’re graduating! Remember, Tacy, how you cried and went home on your first day of school? If I hadn’t grabbed you and pulled you back, you might not be graduating now.”
“I wish I wasn’t,” chattered Tacy.
“And if I hadn’t come back from Milwaukee, I wouldn’t be with you. I’m certainly glad I came,” said Tib.
The hack rolled down the hill to Second Street and around to the back door of the Opera House. The girls were greeted by a burst of fragrance…from bouquets and the blossoming boughs with which the stage was decorated.
As they took off their hats and opera capes, Betsy kept muttering, “The heroines of Shakespeare were essentially human….” She wasn’t so nervous as Tacy but she didn’t feel exactly calm.
The Class of 1910 was brought to order, seated in ascending rows on the stage. Betsy and Tacy, because of being on the program, sat in the front row, and Miss Bangeter placed Tib there, too, right next to Betsy and Tacy. She said it was because Tib was so small.
Tib looked angelic in a white chiffon dress she had made with her own hands. It looked different from the other girls’ dresses; Tib’s clothes always did. Tacy’s dress was organdy, very white and crisp, below her crown of auburn braids, her fear-struck eyes.
Down in the pit the high school orchestra started to play, “Morning, Noon and Night in Vienna.” The music made Betsy’s heart shake.
“This is a very important occasion. It’s momentous,” she kept thinking. But she couldn’t seem to realize it, and slowly the curtain rose.
The graduates searched for their families seated in the auditorium. Betsy found her father, a pansy in his buttonhole, looking too cheerful; her mother, in a new hat with roses, looking stern; Julia, in earrings, looking fascinating and foreign; and Margaret a picture of dignity. Anna didn’t look glum any more. She was wearing her best hat with a bird on it.
Betsy saw the Kelly family, too, and Mr. Kerr; the Muller family; Joe’s uncle and aunt.
She rose with the chorus and began to sing:
“Hark! Hark! the lark,
At heaven’s gate sings
And Phoebus ’gins arise….”
The joyful music filled the auditorium…and her breast.
But her nervousness increased as the program ran on. While Hazel, who preceded her, delivered her oration with the poise of a star debater, Betsy kept saying under her breath, “The heroines of Shakespeare were essentially human….” She couldn’t remember what came after that. She hadn’t the faintest idea.
When her turn came, she stepped to the front as if in a dream. The lights swam and the faces beyond the footlights blurred.
“The heroines of Shakespeare,” she began, “were essentially human….”
And when she had said that much she remembered it all. It came pouring out almost too rapidly. She drew a long breath, bowed quickly, and sat down.
She wished she could give some of her glad relief to Tacy, who now took the center of the stage. Tacy looked desperate. She couldn’t retreat. She had to go on, so she did.
And, of course, she sang beautifully.
“Sylvia, take the lilly, daffodil,
Sylvia, take whate’er the garden grows….”
At the end an usher came hurrying down the aisle. He handed her a corsage of tiny white roses tied with a big bow and dripping with ribbons. She had already rece
ived flowers from her father. She went back to her seat, smiling, and Betsy and Tib leaned over.
“Mr. Kerr?” they asked.
Tacy blushed happily and nodded.
Oration followed oration. “For Pearls We Dive,” “The Farmer of the Twentieth Century,” “Factory Life for Women.” Joe came last with “The Bread Basket of the World.”
“As Whitman says, ‘The earth never tires.’” That was his beginning, and he told vividly of wheat rolling in a golden torrent from threshing machines, of mill wheels turning, of the middle west feeding the world. He spoke clearly and he didn’t forget. But Betsy thought he was as near to being nervous as she had ever seen him. He went at a brisk pace back to his seat.
The President of the school board spoke. His topic was, “After Commencement Day, What?”
“An era in your life is ended,” he said, and Betsy, Tacy, and Tib regarded each other with bright mischievous eyes. They would have wiped away mock tears if they hadn’t been sitting in the very front row. They all felt silly, they were so relieved to have the oration and the solo over.
But the truth of his statement dawned on Betsy presently.
He took his place behind a table piled high with parchment cylinders tied with white ribbons. He called the names of the graduates in turn, and each one crossed the stage to a burst of applause.
“Irma Biscay.” She was dewy-eyed and radiant.
“Dennis Farisy.” That was Dennie looking cherubic.
“Dave Hunt.” He looked sober as a judge.
“Tacy Kelly.” “Alice Morrison.” “Tib Muller.” “Betsy Ray.”
For four years they had been in high school together. Some of them had been together since kindergarten. Now they were being blown in all directions, like the silk from an opened milkweed pod.
What would happen to Winona, returning now to her seat looking chastened, to Hazel, accepting her diploma with a frank smile of pleasure and pride? The President of the school board reached the W’s and Joe. Then the curtain went down. It was over.
The girls didn’t walk home together. Tacy went with Mr. Kerr. Tib went with Ralph, and Betsy went with Joe. They strolled slowly through a warm night full of fireflies, smelling of the honeysuckle in bloom over Deep Valley porches.
Joe was leaving the next day for North Dakota. He was going to work again on the Wells Courier News.
“Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“What shall we do? Go riding?”
“I’ll tell you,” said Betsy. “I’ll take you up on the Hill. Why, you haven’t even seen the Secret Lane.”
“Tomorrow then,” said Joe, “I see the Secret Lane.” And he left her on the porch of the Ray house.
Joe Willard had lived in Deep Valley for four years, but he had never been up on the Big Hill. He didn’t even know which hill the Big Hill was.
“Lots of them are big,” he said. “Agency Hill. Pigeon Hill. Why isn’t one of them the Big Hill?”
“Agency Hill! Pigeon Hill!” Betsy repeated scornfully. “Better not let Tacy hear you talking like that. This is the Big Hill!”
They had reached the little yellow cottage where Betsy had lived until she was fourteen years old. Across the street stood Tacy’s house. Beyond that on Hill Street there weren’t any houses. There was a bench where they sometimes took their supper plates. There were the hills, billowy and green, running one into another so that you couldn’t quite tell where one ended and another began.
Waving at the Kellys, they climbed the steep road which rose behind Betsy’s old house. Betsy showed him the thornapple tree she and Tacy used to play under. She pointed out the place where wild roses used to grow, and roses were in bloom there that moment! Flat, pink, wild roses, with yellow centers, very fragrant. Betsy picked some and put them in her hair.
At the top she showed him the Eckstrom house. There was a ravine behind it.
“We thought the sun came up out of that ravine,” she said.
“Who lives in these other houses?” asked Joe, looking around at the pretty modern cottages now perched on the brow of the hill overlooking Deep Valley.
“We don’t know. We ignore those houses. They weren’t here when we were little,” said Betsy, leading him on.
“This is the Secret Lane,” she said, and they went down a path bordered with beech trees, which cast such heavy shadows that the grass was sparse beneath them. No flowers grew there but the chilly waxy Ghost Flowers.
“Our club used to meet here,” Betsy told him. “It was the T.C.K.C. Club. You never could guess what that stands for.”
Joe wasn’t listening too attentively. He looked harder than he listened…looked at Betsy. Now he said, “I love the way the color rushes up in your face when you talk.”
They came out on the crest of the hill overlooking Little Syria and the slough and Page Park and the river. They sat down in the grass, and Joe picked a strand and started to chew it. Betsy took off the big straw hat covered with poppies and put her arms around her knees.
They looked down the grassy slope, full of yellow bells and daisies, over the valley at the changing shadows cast by the drifting glistening clouds.
Joe began to recite a poem they had learned in junior English.
“And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays.”
Betsy took it up:
“Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten….”
She broke off. “I’m happy!” she announced.
“So am I,” said Joe.
There was a pause.
“That was a pretty serious talk last night, that ‘After Commencement Day, What?’” Betsy said.
“Did you think so?” Joe asked.
“Yes. The older I get the more mixed up life seems. When you’re little, it’s all so plain. It’s all laid out like a game ready to play. You think you know exactly how it’s going to go. But things happen….”
“For instance?”
“Well, there’s Carney. She went with Larry the first two years in high school. Now he’s gone to California and she can’t fall in love with anyone else until she sees him again. And how is she going to manage to do that?”
“Well, she isn’t through Vassar yet,” said Joe.
“And there’s Cab. He thought as much as any of us that he would go through high school, but he didn’t, and he never will now. He won’t be an engineer at all.”
“He will be if he wants to enough,” Joe replied.
“And there’s Tony! On the stage! I always thought Tib was the one who would go on the stage.”
“Maybe she will.”
“And Tacy and I were going to go around the world. We were going to go to the top of the Himalayas, and up the Amazon. We were going to live in Paris and have French maids. We were going to do all sorts of things, and now that Mr. Kerr has appeared! He says he’s going to marry Tacy, and you know how he made Papa stock knitwear!”
Joe laughed. “I don’t think he’s selling Tacy a bill of goods. I think Tacy likes him.”
“Yes,” Betsy said. “I’m afraid she does.”
“What about you?” Joe asked, looking up at her as he lay in the grass.
“Well, I was always sure I was going to be an author. I’m sure of it still. But I ought to begin selling my stories. I’ve been sending them out for almost a year now, and I don’t even get a letter back. Just a printed slip that says they thank me for thinking of them. Do you write stories and send them out?”
“I write them, but I haven’t started sending them out. I’m afraid they aren’t good enough.”
“I’m sure they are,” Betsy cried. “I can’t imagine you writing anything which wasn’t perfectly wonderful.”
Joe looked at her. “I think it’s perfectly wonderful that you think so,”
he said slowly. “I never had anybody to have confidence in me until I met you.”
“You never needed anybody. You had confidence in yourself.”
“But it’s a wonderful feeling, Betsy, having you like me.”
“I liked you the first time I saw you in Butternut Center,” said Betsy quickly, and then she stopped, color rushing up into her face.
“There it goes,” said Joe.
“I can’t help it. I shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why not?”
“It sounds…bold,” said Betsy, at which Joe laughed and sat up abruptly. He kept on looking at her.
“You’re coming to the U, aren’t you, Betsy?” he asked.
“Yes, I am. A writer needs a lot of education. Besides, I want to learn a way to earn my living. You can’t start living on your stories when your stories don’t sell.”
“I’m glad you’re going to be there,” Joe said. “Because I am. I’m going to be working at the Tribune, you know. I’d like to finish at Harvard, if I can.”
“Harvard!” Betsy breathed in admiration.
“But first of all,” said Joe, “I’m going to go through the U.”
Then he kissed her. Betsy didn’t believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn’t mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.
“Remember what that fellow said last night?” asked Joe. “‘After Commencement Day, What?’”
“Of course,” said Betsy. “That’s what we’ve been talking about.”
“I’ve got the answer,” Joe said. “After Commencement Day, Betsy.” He smiled and looked enormously pleased with himself. “How does that sound?”
Betsy didn’t answer.
“It sounds just right to me,” Joe said. “It has the right ring. Sort of a permanent ring.”
Betsy smiled, and her fingers lay in his, but she spoke firmly.
“Never mind how it sounds,” she said. “You’ve just graduated from high school. You have college ahead of you. You can’t go talking about permanent rings.”