It had been a contrast to the gay trip on the Columbic which had taken Betsy abroad in January. This was September, 1914. She was twenty-two years old.
I’m glad of my new Paris suit, she thought. The suit, of dark blue wool, was flattering to her slender figure. The skirt was long; the jacket belted with crushed crimson satin. A dark hat framed her shining face. Not just her eyes were shining. Something inside was shining because she was meeting Joe.
Joe Willard had been important to Betsy since high school days in Deep Valley, Minnesota. He had not gone with her Crowd—by his own choice, for his good looks, humor, and warmth drew people to him. But he was an orphan with scant pocket money and no time to waste. He had worked after school on the Deep Valley Sun.
He had worked on the Minneapolis Tribune during the following two years when he and Betsy attended the University of Minnesota. They had considered themselves almost engaged. But then Joe had won a scholarship to Harvard. He had gone East, getting work on the Boston Transcript—for Joe was always working. And they had quarreled.
“It was my fault,” Betsy said to the gulls, swooping past her toward the foam that boiled up along the vessel’s side. “Flirting with someone I didn’t give a hang for! No wonder Joe stopped writing!”
She had felt very badly about it but she had been too stubborn to try to make up.
When her trip abroad was planned—because she wanted to be a writer, and her father had thought she would profit from foreign travel—Betsy had not even let Joe know that she was sailing from the port of Boston. As it happened, however, she had caught a glimpse of him there.
He had been one of a group of reporters interviewing Mrs. Main-Whittaker, the author, and Betsy had recognized his walk. Joe Willard met life with a challenge which showed in his swinging walk. His blond hair had looked the same too, brushed back in a pompadour. The close-cropped mustache had been new. But Betsy had known him, and the sight of him had brought all her heartache flooding back.
She had sailed away determined to forget Joe Willard but she had not forgotten him, during her journey into the Great World.
“I didn’t forget him and I didn’t stop loving him,” she said. She spoke softly for there were people at her elbows now. The sun had come out, and the bay which had been gray was greenish-blue, full of dancing whitecaps. Suddenly a murmur ran along the railing, rising to glad cries and long-drawn-out “Ahs!” of admiration and wonder. Through a crack in the misty clouds ahead, the towers of Manhattan had come into view.
They looked unreal, white and glistening among the clouds, like the towers of a city in a fairy book—or the holy city in the Book of Revelation, Betsy thought, gazing.
“Why, it’s Lilliput! You feel you could take it up on the palm of your hand!” a man near her exclaimed.
As the ship churned forward, the buildings grew more substantial, but still they were only white pencils standing on end. It did not seem possible that these could be powerful masses of steel and concrete and stone, the celebrated skyscrapers of New York.
“There’s the Woolworth Building!” someone shouted, and everyone stared at that world-famous pile, the highest one of all.
New Yorkers all around her were eagerly identifying other famous buildings, but these cries died down. Gleaming in sunlight, majestic, benign, the Goddess of Liberty had come into view.
That figure with the upflung arm caused silence to fall along the line of travelers returning to their peaceful homeland from a Europe blazing with war. France, Betsy remembered, had given the United States this statue in tribute to the American fight for freedom. And now France was fighting for her freedom!
Tears blurred Betsy’s eyes but they weren’t just for France. They were for America, and Joe, and because she was so glad to be back. She cried and cried, wiping away the tears with both her hands, so she could look ahead.
Now everyone was shouting frantically again, above the din of whistles and hollow-sounding horns. They were exclaiming that a phantom bridge at their right was the wonderful Brooklyn Bridge. They were pointing out Ellis Island where immigrants stopped before entering the United States.
There were ferries, ploughing placidly between Staten Island and the Battery, and more ocean-going steamships, and grimy freighters, and busy little tugs. There was even a delicate four-masted schooner, speaking in silence of a gentle past.
Joe would like that schooner, Betsy thought, as she had thought so often when seeing lovely things during her travels. And then it came to her that in a few moments she could tell him about it, about anything she cared to, and she started crying again.
They had turned up the Hudson—it seemed to be called the North River—and the waterfront was lined with ships, flying flags of many nations. A pair of tugs began to nudge the Richmond into one of the rows of jutting piers. The water was quieter here although it still smelled salty and fishy. All mists had gone, and the sky above the waiting city was lavender blue, full of light spirals of cloud.
Betsy looked at the barnlike structure rising at the end of the pier. Joe was in there!
And I must look like an absolute fright! she thought, wiping her eyes with new determination. She took a powder puff out of the handbag swinging from her arm and powdered her hot cheeks. She found a tiny bottle and touched her earlobes with a new Parisian scent.
Joe would be waiting, strangely enough, because she had met Mrs. Main-Whittaker in Paris. Betsy had been too stubborn to write and make up their quarrel until that famous lady had inadvertently shown her a way. Mrs. Main-Whittaker had praised the story of her departure from Boston which Joe had written for the Transcript, and that had given Betsy the excuse her pride needed. She had passed along the compliment in a carefully casual note.
To be sure, she forgot in her confusion to include any address. But she had told him that she was bound for London and had mentioned chattily something Mrs. Main-Whittaker had said: that Betsy, because she liked to write stories, should be sure to read the column of Personals—the Agony Column, it was called—in the London Times.
That had been enough for Joe, who always knew how to find a way. After the Germans marched into Belgium he had cabled to the Agony Column.
“BETSY. THE GREAT WAR IS ON BUT I HOPE OURS IS OVER. PLEASE COME HOME. JOE.”
And Betsy had cabled in reply:
“JOE. PLEASE MEET S.S. RICHMOND ARRIVING NEW YORK SEPTEMBER 7. LOVE. BETSY”.
She had been bold, she thought now, color flooding up into her cheeks, to put in that “love.” And she had been assuming a good deal when she asked him to meet her in New York. He had been graduated in June, but she felt sure he was continuing on the Transcript in Boston.
A girl named Victoria came up and tugged at Betsy’s arm. “Have you remembered everything?”
“Everything. Even the doll for Tacy’s baby.” Betsy’s smile which showed white teeth parted a little in front was friendly like Betsy herself. Victoria knew all about Tacy, Betsy’s best friend, who was expecting a baby which Betsy was expecting to be a girl.
The doll, bought in Germany, was a bulky package piled, with Betsy’s suitcases and steamer trunk, out in the passageway. Her umbrella and camera were on the steamer chair behind her. She picked them up, for the liner was bumping now, conclusively, against the pier.
Betsy and Victoria were caught up in the crowd pushing toward the gangplank. Betsy went with deliberate slowness for her heart was thumping. She was even trembling a little. And she mustn’t, she told herself, act excited. Joe would expect her to be poised and dignified after almost a year in Europe.
She and Tacy had joked in their letters about Betsy’s acquiring “an indefinable Paris air.”
“But it’s no joke! That’s just what I ought to have,” Betsy declared firmly. She adjusted her hat to its most effective slant and patted her curls—she hoped they were still curls, but the sea air didn’t agree with Betsy’s hair. She remembered the models she had seen parading at Longchamps. They had that fashionable, spineless look
called “the debutante slouch.” Betsy let herself slink into it now.
Victoria understood.
“No need to get fixed for him yet,” she said. “We have to go through Customs, you know. People aren’t allowed to come in without passes, and with the war on, they’ll be hard to get.”
But Joe, Betsy knew, was the kind to get a pass no matter how strict regulations might be, and she continued to saunter like a Longchamps model down the gangplank and into the barnlike warehouse. This was divided into sections with the letters of the alphabet posted above to indicate where the passengers might find their luggage and open it for waiting Customs officials. Bidding Victoria an affectionate good-by, Betsy sauntered toward the “R’s.”
But suddenly she stood up straighter than an arrow. Not standing under the “R’s,” but swinging toward her with a cane hung over his arm, came a stocky blond young man.
Betsy ran toward him.
The next thing she knew he had his arms around her. She had dropped her umbrella and her new hat was knocked off but she didn’t care. He was holding her close and saying over and over, “Oh, Betsy! Betsy!” And Betsy, when she could lift her tear-wet face from where it was crushed into his woolly shoulder, tried to say “Joe! Joe!” but she couldn’t because he was kissing her and she was kissing him.
Joe held her off at arm’s length. Under his blond pompadour and tufted golden brows, his eyes were blazingly bright. Blushing, Betsy rescued her hat, and Joe picked up her umbrella.
He took hold of her arm in a strong and purposeful grasp.
“Let’s get this Customs business out of the way quick,” he said. “And then we’ll go to Tiffany’s and get you a ring. And then—” he turned swiftly to look into her face—“when can we get married?”
2
Joe’s Plan
“BUT WE HAVE TO BE engaged a little while!” Betsy was explaining, an hour or so later, in front of the Pennsylvania Station.
Her trunk, her suitcases, and Tacy’s doll had been checked and she had picked up her tickets. Mr. Ray had written Joe, asking him to make her reservations, and he had—on the latest train leaving New York that night which would make connections for Minneapolis in Chicago the following evening.
Betsy had given Joe his present, a British edition of Kipling’s Soldier Stories. He had been pleased, but he had teased her about the Ray custom of bringing home presents. He and Betsy had met first in Joe’s uncle’s store in Butternut Center when she was buying home-presents after a visit to a farm.
“You Rays!” he scoffed. “Do you have a parchment scroll for recording these old family customs? Bringing home presents! Muffins for special occasions! Sunday night lunches!”
He stopped with a wide grin.
“That reminds me! Marriage is a fine old family custom. When are we going to get married?”
It was then Betsy had protested that they had to be engaged a little while.
A taxicab slued to a stop. “The Waldorf, skipper!” Joe said.
“The Waldorf!” Betsy’s face was as bright as the corsage bouquet Joe had bought for her shoulder. She had heard all her life of the famous Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. They rolled in a great tide of motor cars and carriages to the corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street, and Joe helped her out, her green taffeta petticoat swishing.
Inside the celebrated door, she was pleased to remember that her suit came from Paris, for the women strolling along the marble corridor known as Peacock Alley were extremely modish.
But I have the handsomest escort! Betsy thought. He was so poised, too, amid this sophisticated splendor. She walked proudly with his hand gripping her arm, and gazed up at the carved and frescoed ceiling and around at deep leather chairs, rich oriental rugs.
At the Rose Room door Joe checked his hat and cane. The violins seemed to be singing just for them. They were seated at a window table, and a deferential waiter spread Betsy’s jacket over the back of her chair, and she transferred Joe’s flowers to her blouse—snowy crêpe de Chine with pleated frills at neck and wrists.
While Joe ordered, she looked out at Fifth Avenue—or tried to. The broad windows held a procession of curious faces as passersby paused to look in.
“They look in to see the celebrities,” Joe explained. “Celebrities like—oh, Betsy Ray! Author of ‘Emma Middleton Cuts Cross Country.’”
“Joe, did you read that?”
“After your letter came, I hunted up an Ainslee’s. Betsy!” His tone changed. “That was the happiest moment of my life—when your letter came.”
“Was it?” Betsy asked tremulously.
“But now—this one is.”
“It is for me, too.”
Joe leaned closer, his blue eyes bright. “Today,” he said, “I could do anything. I could swim seas, or topple mountains, or link the poles by tunnel. And that’s why I believe I can persuade you to marry me soon.”
Her cheeks turned to flames.
“Betsy,” he said, “when your father wrote me, I thought at first that I wouldn’t get those tickets. I thought, ‘Why don’t Betsy and I just get married and go to Boston?’”
“Joe!”
“I know. But I thought again. A Ray ought to be married in the bosom of her family. And I can wait a week!”
“A week!”
The waiter interrupted with eggs Benedict. Betsy asked hurriedly, “What are we going to do this afternoon?”
“That,” answered Joe, accepting the change of subject, “is a problem. For dinner tonight we’re going to a little French restaurant down in Greenwich Village and then, of course, you must see the Great White Way. But this afternoon—we have such a few hours, and this is such a marvelous mad city! Do you want the Metropolitan Museum? Or a Thé Dansant? (I can tango.) Or the Bowery because you’re a writer, or Fraunces Tavern because Washington ate there…? Betsy, you’re not listening!”
“Yes, I am,” she answered happily.
“Then what do you want to see most?”
You! Betsy thought. She couldn’t keep her eyes away from him—from the strong, finely-modeled face. His eyes were dancing. His lower lip was thrust out in a reckless way she remembered. “I’ll let you plan it,” she said demurely, and he grinned at her.
“Then we’ll go to Central Park and sit under a tree.”
The waiter brought salad, and Betsy asked about the uncle and aunt with whom Joe had lived for a time.
“Uncle Alvin died last spring. I went back to Butternut Center for the funeral. Aunt Ruth is carrying on with the store. I think a lot of Aunt Ruth.”
“I’m sorry about Uncle Alvin.”
“What’s new at 909?” Joe asked. That was his name for the Ray house. After Betsy finished high school, the family had moved from Deep Valley to 909 Hazel Street in Minneapolis.
She talked fast, telling him that her older sister, Julia, who was an opera singer, and Paige, her flutist husband, were in Minneapolis for a visit. Margaret was in high school now.
Joe had already heard Tacy’s news.
“What about Tib?” he asked. Betsy, Tacy and Tib had been a threesome ever since childhood when Betsy’s short braids, Tacy’s red ringlets, and Tib’s fluffy yellow curls were always seen together on the Big Hill in Deep Valley.
“She was graduated in June from the art department at Browner. In Milwaukee, you know. She stayed with her grandparents there while she was going through college.”
“This war will hit Tib hard,” Joe reflected, “because of her German ancestry.”
They talked about the war. Joe’s heart, like Betsy’s, was with the British and the French. His face grew grave when he said there was a great battle raging along a river called the Marne.
“I’m thankful you’re home safe,” he said.
“Joe,” Betsy asked, “did you see me on the Columbic?”
“Yes. Don’t mention it!” After a silence he added, “But sometime I want to hear all about your trip.”
“And I want to hear all about your graduat
ion. Oh, Joe!” Betsy said, and her voice trembled a little. “We have so much to catch up on!”
“We can do it,” he answered consolingly, “sitting beside our own fire after we’re married.”
Feeling her cheeks grow hot again, Betsy looked away—at pink damask walls and glimmering crystal chandeliers.
“Won’t it be long enough if we’re engaged a week?”
Betsy looked back at him. “Why, we’re not engaged yet!”
“But you said—”
“I meant that after we got engaged we’d have to wait a while. Joe Willard, you know very well that you haven’t even proposed!”
His deep laugh rang out. “Well, I certainly won’t do it here!” he said. “So hurry and finish your ice cream and we’ll get up to Central Park. Then we must get that ring. Did I tell you I have seven hundred dollars in the bank? And no debts? And a job?”
“That,” said Betsy, twinkling, “is the sort of thing you tell my father and not me.”
“Gosh!” said Joe. “I’m thankful your father likes me. At least he used to. Do you think he still does?”
She finished her ice cream and coffee and Joe paid the waiter and left a lavish tip. He guided Betsy out of the room, gripping her arm as though she might vanish if he let go.
In another taxicab they rolled up Fifth Avenue, past the fine shops, and the Public Library, and the brownstone mansions in which millionaires lived.
“Many a heroine I have put in those mansions!” Betsy said.
They alighted where Central Park’s hilly rectangle of grass and trees and rocks rolled northward, walled in by towering buildings. Near a fountain stood a row of horses hitched to ancient victorias with coachmen in tall hats.
“If I didn’t have to propose,” said Joe, “we could take a ride through the Park and I’d show you the Zoo and the Shakespeare Garden and the merry-go-round. We’d hire a rowboat and go riding on the lake. Sure you want me to propose?”
“Positive!” said Betsy.
So they found a bench under a tree which was dropping a few yellow leaves. Nursemaids were rolling carriages past, strollers were enjoying the sun, and a vendor was offering grapes and pomegranates and peaches while a hurdy-gurdy played “The Sidewalks of New York.”