Mr. Ray asked Julia several times to let him know if her allowance wasn’t big enough. He acted too cheerful. Mrs. Ray reminded Julia to buy some new jabots, and a pair of long kid gloves. Betsy made jokes that didn’t come off and Margaret acted cross, which was always her defense against emotion. Anna kept coming in from the kitchen.
“Oh, my poor lovey! Going all the way to Minneapolis! Your bedroom will look like a tomb.”
“No, it won’t, Anna. I’m going to go in and muss it up, throw her clothes on the floor.”
But the joke failed miserably.
“Her clothes have gone away already,” Anna wailed. “The closet is as empty as though she had never been born. Charlie asked me last night, ‘Did that McCloskey girl go away to the State University?’ and I said, ‘Na, Mr. and Mrs. McCloskey kept her right at home where she belonged.’”
At last, although Julia was going to eat supper on the diner, Mr. Ray went to the kitchen and put the coffee pot on. The Ray family always put the coffee pot on in moments of crisis. Anna brought out butternut cookies and everyone cheered up. They even got to laughing.
But just before she left for the train, when Old Mag was standing at the hitching post, Julia went to the piano and began to play. She played an operatic aria she had sung all last winter.
“Mi chiamano Mimi….”
She sang a few bars and then broke off, and Mrs. Ray, waiting for her on the porch, wiped her eyes. And when Julia came out, very briskly, her eyes were red.
At the station things were exciting. School was over and Betsy’s Crowd was there along with all of Julia’s friends. Katie, rosy and smiling, had come down from the German Catholic College. Julia was a credit to Miss Mix in a new brown suit with a long fitted jacket cut in points, two in front and two in back. Her hat was enormous and she wore a corsage bouquet of little yellow roses.
Her face looked white and strained but she didn’t cry again. Nobody cried. The Rays didn’t believe in crying at trains. Margaret stood straight and smiled brightly at everyone who looked at her. When the train arrived the family trouped into the parlor car with Julia. Then they came out, and she appeared on the observation platform.
She smiled as the train pulled away and showed her white teeth set so close together. She leaned over the railing, blew kisses with both hands. She didn’t look like Julia as Julia looked at home. She looked like Julia acting in a play.
Somehow that made everything easier. Mr. Ray took the family, Tacy, Tib and Katie up to Heinz’s for ice cream. Everybody laughed and joked and felt better than they had felt for a week.
But when they got back to High Street the house seemed funny without Julia.
7
Howdy, Cy!
SCHOOL RUSHED IN TO try to fill the vacuum left by Julia’s departure. School had a new flavor this year because of Tib. She was so small that when she sat at her desk in the assembly room her feet did not touch the floor. Miss Bangeter, to the general amusement, provided her with a footstool. Yet she made her presence felt. Half the boys in school were smitten with her, especially Lloyd and Dennie.
In September, as usual, the Zetamathians and Philomathians began a drive for members. Betsy was assigned to the membership committee and on Wednesday preceding the Monday on which the freshmen would choose their societies, the committee met in Miss Clarke’s room.
Betsy went in with Carney, and was pleased to find Dave Hunt in the group.
“How that Dave Hunt has changed!” Carney whispered, and Betsy agreed. He had been in high school all along but he hadn’t seemed important until this year. Over the summer he had been unaccountably transformed.
His extreme height—he was six foot three—was now impressive. Impressive, too, was his stoic calm. Dave Hunt seldom spoke but you knew it was because he did not wish to speak. He seldom smiled. But when a smile flickered over his stern, clean-cut face, it changed him from a deacon into a daredevil.
He was characteristically silent while Miss Clarke proposed brightly that money be appropriated to buy turquoise blue baby ribbon. The girls on the committee, Betsy and Carney, could make bows to pin on the new members. This was routine procedure.
“Maybe,” suggested Betsy, “we might do something flashy this year. How about buying blue cambric and making arm bands for the Zets? Carney can sew.”
“So can you,” said Carney. “You’re making me a jabot.”
“Really?” asked Miss Clarke. “How nice! Sewing is such a valuable accomplishment.”
Dave Hunt surprised everyone by speaking.
“Make a pennant, too,” he said.
“A pennant?” “A big one?” Betsy and Carney waited radiantly.
Dave did not answer. His silence made it clear that when he said pennant he meant pennant, and that he couldn’t possibly want a small one.
“Would we have any use for a pennant?” Miss Clarke asked, but her question was obviously rhetorical. “I don’t suppose we’d be permitted to hang one on the stage unless the Philomathians did, too. Maybe it might work into the decorating, though. Certainly it would! That’s a good idea, Dave,” she added kindly.
Dave did not seem to hear her; she might have been a mouse squeaking. But the expression in his deep-set, dark blue eyes told Betsy and Carney that he expected a pennant. Two dollars were entrusted to the girls and they went down to purchase turquoise blue ribbon and cambric.
Thursday after school Carney hemmed arm bands while Betsy read aloud from “The Shuttle.” They had saved a large piece of blue cambric and when the arm bands were finished they cut this into a triangle and Carney hemmed it.
“I hope it’s big enough to suit him,” Carney said. “He scares me. Doesn’t he you?”
“He makes me feel about as big as a pin.”
“Al says he’s wonderful at football. He’s sure to be a track star, too.”
“He ought to be. Those long legs!”
Carney made her sewing very neat and Betsy inspected it with critically pursed lips.
Friday morning in the Social Room they approached Dave with an innocent looking package.
“Thanks,” he said thrusting it into his pocket.
“Is it a secret what you’re going to do with it?” Betsy asked, smiling.
But Dave didn’t answer except with his calm gaze. That said, “Don’t be silly. Of course it’s a secret.”
Monday morning Tacy and Tib called for Betsy as usual. Many Philomathians had been wooing Tib, but in vain. She already wore a blue rosette in her hair. Betsy and Tacy, of course, wore blue arm bands. These had been distributed to all Zetamathians secretly over the week-end. High Street was dotted with them, to the annoyance of passing Philos.
Cab, wearing an arm band, joined the girls. He was smiling broadly and several times, for no apparent reason, burst into a loud guffaw.
“Cab! What ails you?”
“You’ll see.”
Dennie, with arm band also, met them and the boys started ostentatiously to yawn.
“It’s really too bad,” said Tacy, “that you had to get up to go to school.”
“We’re going to school, but we didn’t get up, did we, Dennie?”
“What do you mean?” asked Tib. “You must have gotten up. You went to bed.”
“Oh, did we? That’s what our mothers think.”
“Well, you didn’t stay up all night, did you?”
“All I’ve got to say,” said Dennie, “is that it gets darned chilly along about three A.M.”
This mystifying dialogue was interrupted by a cry from Tacy.
“Gee, is the school burning down? Look at that crowd!”
A churning mass of boys and girls extended from the big front doors out into the street. Cab and Dennie began to hurry and the girls kept pace. They saw that everyone was looking up at the cupola which rose high above the main building. They, too, stared up and saw something floating from the top of the peaked cap of roof. It was a turquoise blue pennant, the pennant Carney had hemmed.
Betsy, Tacy and Tib grabbed each other and began to yell. After a moment Betsy paused to ask, “How did it get up there? That’s a very steep roof.”
“Search me,” said Cab. “But it gets cold up in that cupola.”
“Swell view of the sunrise, though,” said Dennie, “and somebody had to stay on guard….”
“Not that any Philo would dare—”
A Philomathian boy fell upon him from behind. As he thumped to the ground, Dennie grabbed the Philo. Boys were wrestling all over the school lawn. Dave Hunt, sober as always, was looking on and Betsy saw Joe Willard, grinning, take a swing at him. They locked in mock battle.
The gong, unusually loud and angry, broke through the uproar. Reluctantly holds were loosed, clothes straightened and boys and girls began to stream indoors. Everyone was talking at once.
“Who put it up?”
“He might have broken his neck.”
“Squirrelly tried to get it down. He climbed as far as the cupola but Miss Bangeter stopped him. She’s mad as a wet hen.”
Carney pulled Betsy aside. “I feel like Barbara Fritchie or whoever it was made the flag.”
“It was Betsy Ross, idiot.” She lowered her voice and whispered, “Dave must have done it!”
Carney nodded. Her dimple pierced her cheek.
Miss Bangeter did indeed emit sparks of fury as she rapped the assembly to a semblance of order. She did not mention the pennant, however, and a noisy rendition of “The Men of Harlech” cleared the atmosphere somewhat. There wasn’t much studying done that morning. A long ladder blocking the windows on the turret side of the building showed that the janitor was hauling down the pennant. But the query, “Who put it up?” still buzzed through classrooms and along the halls.
In the Social Room, after a tumultuous noon recess, the query was being answered. Nobody knew how the secret had slipped out. But it had.
“Dave Hunt put it up.”
“Cab and Dennie and a bunch of other Zets stayed up in the cupola all night guarding it.”
“Dave Hunt put it up.”
“Dave Hunt.”
“Dave Hunt.”
Everyone was looking in Dave’s direction, but his face was imperturbable.
When, at the end of the afternoon, the freshmen chose their societies, turquoise blue bows blossomed everywhere. The pennant, it was clear, had tipped the scales.
“You wait till next year. Just wait!” Philos were muttering. Winona hissed to the other girls after school, “Wait till next year. We’ll get even.”
Carney laughed. “Maybe you’re going to get even now. Dave has been asked to stay and see Miss Bangeter.”
“Gee, he’s cute,” said Winona forgivingly. “I wonder when he’ll start taking out girls.”
“He’ll have to learn to talk first.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You could look at him.”
No one ever heard what Miss Bangeter said to Dave, but no one had any doubt about what he said to her. Nothing, it was agreed. Nothing at all.
After the boiling excitement of this day the current of school ran smoothly. Junior class elections were held. Betsy was re-elected secretary. The junior girls were enchanted with Domestic Science. They began their study with canning, made grape jelly and peach jam. It was fun, as Tacy had thought it would be, to eat what they cooked.
Next to Domestic Science, Betsy liked Foundations of English Literature under little Miss Fowler. United States History as Miss Clarke taught it was supremely restful. In Cicero they struggled through the First Oration against Cataline under Miss Erickson’s hard, marble-blue eyes.
They were supposed to be making herbariums for botany but not Betsy nor Tacy nor Tib had yet begun. The fall flowers were still abundant. It seemed such an easy thing to do to pick and press just one of each kind, that they forgot to do it.
Yet September was passing. Chauncey Olcott, as much a part of the season as the goldenrod, came to the Opera House. Ragged Robin, said the Rays, who went in a body as usual, was the best play he had had in years. It teemed with “good little people,” banshees, will-o’-the-wisps, and tenderly wistful songs.
“Don’t You Love the Eyes that Come from Ireland?”—Betsy thought of Tacy when she heard that one. “Sweet Girl of My Dreams” was almost as appealing as “My Wild Irish Rose,” which Chauncey Olcott, wearing a plumed hat, sang as always after the second act.
Tony brought the songs up to the Ray house next day, but there was no one to play them! Betsy, who always found it easier to make plans than to carry them out, had not yet started her piano lessons. Not that she didn’t miss Julia’s music. It was unbelievably strange to have the piano silent. Mrs. Ray knew how to play but she had stopped practising since Julia had become so proficient. She never touched the instrument now except when Betsy had company and asked for her famous waltz and two-step. Fortunately, Carney could play and so could Winona. So the Crowd still sang sometimes around the Ray piano.
But having Tony bring the Olcott songs reminded Betsy sharply of her resolution. At supper that night she said, “I believe I’ll start taking piano lessons, if you still want me to.”
“We certainly do,” her mother said. And Mr. Ray added, “I could stand a few scales myself.”
Betsy telephoned Miss Cobb and the next Saturday morning she walked down to Miss Cobb’s house on a steep hillside street below the high school.
Betsy knew the little house from the days when Julia had studied there. The rooms were small, low-ceilinged, always comfortably warm and smelling of the potted geraniums Miss Cobb kept in the windows. There were a grand piano and an upright piano in the front parlor. In the back parlor was Leonard, the nephew who was ill. A slender fifteen-year-old boy with sandy hair and vivid cheeks, he often lay on a couch listening to the music. Bobby, the younger boy, was like his aunt, large and robust.
Miss Cobb’s red-gold hair was dimmer than it had been when Julia studied with her. She wore glasses on a chain and snowy shirt waists belted neatly above black flowing skirts. Miss Cobb gave a feeling of largeness, and not only because of her Junoesque figure. It was the expression in her face, calm and courageous.
She was a gentle teacher. Under her tutelage you didn’t have to worry too much about practising scales. Soon you were playing “The Merry Farmer” and “The Sailor Boy’s Dream.” She herself had studied abroad under a very fine master.
“She’s a better musician than she is a teacher,” Julia had remarked one time.
“And a finer human being than either,” Mr. Ray had added.
Miss Cobb whirled the piano stool now until it was the proper height and Betsy sat down. Miss Cobb struck a note and said, as she had said to Julia, “This is middle C.” Betsy liked that. It gave her a warm feeling of the continuity of life. Though she knew that she could never learn to play the piano as Julia did, she was glad she had begun.
Betsy missed Julia. Close as she was to Tacy, wonderful as it was to have Tib back, she missed the confidential talks in her sister’s once brightly cluttered room. Now the room looked so unnaturally neat that she could not bear to go inside it.
The whole family missed Julia. Anna kept forgetting and would set five places at the table.
“That’s a sign Julia wishes she was home, the poor lovey,” Anna said darkly.
Mrs. Ray would never leave the house until the mail came and when there was a letter she telephoned Mr. Ray. They read them over and over and Betsy often read them aloud in the evening, Margaret sitting on her father’s knee.
They were good letters. Just as Julia had always shared everything—bon bons, handkerchiefs, her excitement over a new opera or book—she was trying lovingly now to share this new experience. She described the campus, her classrooms and teachers, the dormitory where she lived. Roger had taken her to lunch in Minneapolis. She had found a bewildering number of friends.
She sounded happy. Nevertheless, there was that in her letters which told that Anna’s divination might be correct. The pages were so full of lon
ging and remembering. She asked about everything and everyone at home. The family wrote to her often. Betsy weighed the postman down with fat and supposedly funny letters. Yet Julia kept asking for more and more.
One evening toward the end of September Betsy wrote a long letter to Julia. She finished her homework and her telephone conversations, wound her hair on Magic Wavers and went to bed. Margaret was already asleep and Anna had gone up to her lofty room. Mr. Ray wound the clock and Mrs. Ray put Washington and Lincoln in the basement. Nobody locked doors in Deep Valley. Soon the lights were out and the house was still.
Betsy had barely fallen asleep when she was awakened by the sound of music. The air was shattered by great crashing chords. It was the new song everyone was barn-dancing to.
“Morning Cy,
Howdy Cy,
Gosh darn, Cyrus, but you’re
Looking spry….”
Betsy started up, but her room was dark. She ran to the door. The whole house was dark. In the upper hall she bumped into her mother and father. Mr. Ray was striking matches. From downstairs the music continued jubilantly.
“Right in line,
All the time,
Jiminy crickets, but you’re
Looking fine…”
Nobody could play like that but Julia.
Betsy, Wavers and all, rushed down stairs, followed by Margaret, rubbing her eyes, and her mother, in a nightdress, and Anna, who came down from the third floor holding a lighted candle and shouting “Stars in the sky!” Just as they reached the landing Mr. Ray succeeded in lighting the gas.
Julia sat at the piano, playing, with tears streaming down her face.
“Julia!” The music broke off. Everyone fell upon her with hugs and kisses.
“What’s the matter?” asked Mr. Ray. “Get fired?”
“No,” said Julia. “I just got homesick and so I came home. Mr. Thumbler brought me up in the hack.”
She wept and everybody wept.
“I never knew, until I went away from home, how nice we all are!” Julia sobbed.
“Oh, we are, are we?” asked Mr. Ray. He went up stairs and put a bathrobe over his nightshirt. When he came back he said, “Well, I’ll go put the coffee pot on.”