Joe took Betsy’s hand and they smiled at each other.
“It’s wonderful to be sitting here together,” Betsy said.
“Together!” said Joe. “That’s a beautiful word. So much nicer than ‘apart.’ Aren’t you glad we’re going to be married next week?”
“Now Joe!” said Betsy. “You know I’ve been gone from home almost a year. I can’t leave Minneapolis right away….”
“That’s easy! We can live in Minneapolis.”
“But I wouldn’t for the world have you give up the Transcript!” Betsy cried, distressed. “I’ll live in Boston or wherever is best for you, but…”
“What I want to do,” said Joe, “is earn my living writing. And I’m going to do it sometime. But while I’m on a newspaper, I’d just as soon be in Minneapolis as Boston.”
“Would you really?” Betsy cried joyfully. “Oh, Joe! And you have such a fine record back there! You wouldn’t have a bit of trouble getting a job on the Tribune again.”
“I could telegraph and get one,” Joe said grandly. “The old man told me so when I left. I don’t think, though,” he added, “that I’ll telegraph. I want a good salary. You know…I’ll be a married man.”
Betsy squeezed his hand.
“I’ll go back to Boston,” Joe planned. “I’ll resign, pack my bags, and come out to Minneapolis. Wedding a week from today?” he questioned briskly, looking down.
Betsy burst into laughter. “You still haven’t proposed!”
“Well, there isn’t time now! Tiffany’s will be closing.” He jumped up but he sat down again.
“Wait a minute, Joe!” said Betsy, her voice serious. “Let’s save our seven hundred dollars for your trip out, and renting an apartment, and buying furniture. I don’t want an engagement ring. I don’t care a thing about it.”
“But I do. I want to buy you a ring and I want to buy it at Tiffany’s.”
A little smile crossed her face. “You might,” she suggested innocently, “buy me a wedding ring?”
“By Golly!” cried Joe. “What a woman I’m marrying! That’s exactly what I’ll do!”
Hands swinging, they ran for a taxi, and in spite of late afternoon traffic, they were soon in spacious, haughty Tiffany’s.
A clerk in a frock coat showed them trays of rings which Joe inspected critically. He acted, Betsy thought admiringly, as though he bought a wedding ring every day.
Wide bands, the regal clerk disclosed, were going out of fashion. Narrow bands were coming in. Platinum was much used.
“I like gold better,” Betsy said timidly, and he measured her finger for a slender gold band. She put it on.
Joe took her hand. He turned it this way and that, judicially, as though the soft white hand weren’t Betsy’s and the ring their wedding ring.
“Do you like it, Betsy?”
“I love it.”
The young man put it in a velvet-lined box which Joe dropped nonchalantly into his pocket. But back on Fifth Avenue he took it out and tore off the wrappings. He put the ring on Betsy’s right hand, and lifted her hand swiftly, and kissed it.
“Oh, Betsy!” he said.
They boarded a double-decker bus—Betsy had loved them in London. They sat on a top front seat with Betsy’s head on Joe’s shoulder, and the hand with the ring on it spread out for both to admire. Ahead in the strip of sky between the city’s buildings were thin banners of pink and great thick banners of mauve. It was an evening for banners.
At Washington Arch they put the ring back in its box and came down to terra firma. Skirting the north side of Washington Square, they turned into a maze of narrow twisting streets, of old houses and foreign-looking shops, and stables made over into studios. Betsy looked around delightedly. This, Joe said, was Greenwich Village where writers, artists, and musicians lived.
Chez Minette was in a basement. It was a place Joe came to often when he was in New York. Minette, short and stout in a tight black dress, sat at the cashier’s desk. She greeted him with laughter.
“Ah, m’sieu! Tonight you make the crêpes suzettes again? It was droll, mademoiselle, when he came out to the kitchen! My husband attached to him an apron!” She dabbed at dewy eyes.
“Joe!” cried Betsy. “Can you really make crêpes suzettes?”
“Superb ones!” he grinned. “But not tonight. I’ll toss some up when we’re having company some night. Minette, permit me to present my fiancée.”
“Ah, la chère petite!” cooed Minette, embracing Betsy. And when Joe and Betsy were seated, side by side, at a table with a red-checked cloth and a fat red candle in the center, he said triumphantly, “There! Our engagement is announced!”
They talked long and gaily over hors d’oeuvres, soup, roast chicken, and salad. Minette beamed on them but she did not interrupt even when a smiling waitress brought crêpes suzettes for dessert. Guests came and went. The candle burned low, and Joe’s high spirits also flickered down.
“We’ll have to leave,” he said at last, looking at his watch. “I do want you to see Broadway at night—that glaring white light, and the crowd moving slow as molasses up and down. It’s hard to let you go, though. But it’s all decided; isn’t it? We’ll be married as soon as I get there?”
“As soon as I can manage it,” Betsy amended. It wouldn’t be easy, she knew, to persuade her family to such haste.
Joe held her hands closely in both of his, and he looked at her with an earnestness she had never seen before in his blue eyes.
“Betsy,” he said, “I’ve been lonely for you these last three years. I was a pretty solitary kid, as you know, after my mother died. But I was never lonely. I was always self-sufficient. And after we fell in love I felt so warm and happy. But I should never have left you and gone away to Harvard…”
Betsy interrupted. “Why, Joe!” she cried. “What a thing to say! I was the one who failed, acting so silly and frivolous. But I never cared for anyone but you. Not for a moment!”
Joe did not answer that. He was silent for a long time.
“Betsy,” he said at last, “I love you. I love you from that cloudy dark hair down to your slender feet. I love your eyes, and your soft hands, and your sweet voice, and the way your laugh chimes out. Everything about you is enchanting to me. But Betsy, it’s lots more than that.”
He seemed to be thinking out loud.
“I can always talk to you,” he said. “I can make plans, or puzzle out ideas, or build castles in the air. I don’t need to think what I’m saying or guard my words. You understand my high moods and my low ones. You understand me, I guess.
“I want to be married to you and have you around all the time. I want to come home to you after work and tell you about my day. I want to hear you humming around, doing housework. I want to support you. I want to do things for you. If we were married and I was coming home to you tonight, I wouldn’t care if we had just bread and milk.
“You know, Betsy, we never quarrel when we’re together. We never will, I really believe, when we are married. But if we aren’t, something might come between us again.
“Betsy, you fit into my life as perfectly as a rose fits its stem. You and I match like the pieces of a broken coin.” After a long pause, he said, “Love me always, Betsy! I have given my whole heart to you.”
Betsy could not answer for a moment because her eyes and throat were full of tears. The restaurant was empty, except for Minette who was counting money busily into a long black bag. Betsy leaned close and put her wet cheek against Joe’s.
“I love you, too. Just the way you love me. And we’ll be married. I promise.”
3
Objections
WHEN BETSY PUSHED UP the shade and looked out the window of her berth on the second morning after leaving Joe, the train was running alongside a mighty river. A wide sweep of cold living water surged between rocky cliffs to which pines and white birches were clinging in a pallid light.
It was the Mississippi!
“Minnesota, hail to t
hee!” Betsy whispered, staring out. Then she pulled her underwear out of the hammock swinging beside her berth. For since they were following the river they would soon be reaching St. Paul. And then came Minneapolis!
Her family would be waiting at the station. And 909 would be shining. Her father always joked that her mother scoured the coal scuttle when the children came home from a journey. There would be a fire in the grate if it were cool enough, and flowers everywhere, and delectable odors floating from the kitchen.
“Don’t you dare eat breakfast!” Mrs. Ray would warn a traveler returning home in the morning. “Well, just a cup of coffee, maybe, if you want the fun of going to the diner! But breakfast will be waiting for you here.”
Betsy could imagine the culinary splendor that would be waiting for her after a trip to Europe. Fried chicken, probably! Or sausages and scrambled eggs! Anna’s muffins, and the choicest jams and jellies her mother had put up over the summer.
In kimono and boudoir cap, with toilet kit in hand, she went to the ladies’ dressing room. Removing the cap, she frowned at a crop of curlers. “Whatever am I going to do about curlers after I’m married!”
But the problem was lost in the rapturous thought of her engagement. She would not tell her family until evening, she planned. She did not want such glorious news lost in the hubbub of homecoming. Besides, it would take tact to reveal Joe’s plans.
By the time she was clad in her Paris suit and hat, the train was in St. Paul. The wait there seemed interminable. Then they were on their way again. The porter brushed her and was tipped. He began to stack luggage out in the vestibule.
Betsy took up her handbag, camera, umbrella, and the mummylike package that held Tacy’s doll. She was first in the line that started forming in the aisle. At last came the longed-for “Minneapolis!” The train slowed to a stop and, hidden behind a mountain of baggage, Betsy looked out to see a family portrait:
Her father, tall, portly, and erect, his straw hat in his hand, his hair thin and silvery above a face beaming with calm happiness.
Margaret, trim, dainty, and equally erect, beside him. She looked like a young lady, in skirts to her shoetops. She wore her hair, like Tacy’s, in coronet braids.
Julia’s smile poured out love and joy and eager welcome. Small but stately, with the carriage and manner of a singer, she clung to the arm of her tall young husband, Paige, and searched the train windows for Betsy’s face.
Red-haired Mrs. Ray seemed to be shooting out sparks of excitement. In a smart green suit and jaunty hat with pheasant feathers, she looked like another girl.
They were all there, as Betsy had known they would be, except Anna, the hired girl, and she would be frying the chicken. The porter opened the door, and Betsy flew into their arms—home at last, out of the Great World and into this small, cozy, dear one!
The Rays kissed and hugged and wept. They talked and laughed and interrupted one another. Betsy’s bags were collected and the party crowded into a taxicab. Paige sat with the driver but he kept looking around, quiet and smiling.
“Oh, how homesick I was!” Betsy wailed.
“Poor darling!” crooned Mrs. Ray.
“Darn fool girls!” grumbled Mr. Ray. “Getting married! Going to Europe! Only Margaret has sense enough to stay home.”
“What’s in that big bundle?”
“A doll for Tacy’s baby.”
“But how can you know it’s going to be a girl?”
“Tacy couldn’t have anything but a nice, quiet, little girl!”
“How’s Joe?” Julia asked.
“Fine! Fine!” Betsy tried to sound offhand.
Mr. Ray wanted news of the war. “Teddy Roosevelt and his Rough Riders could soon straighten things out.”
Talk was still gushing when the cab stopped. Betsy gazed out at a gray stucco bungalow, gay with striped awnings and flowers still bright in window boxes around a glassed-in porch. The porch was covered with reddening vines which her father had transplanted from their home in Deep Valley.
“Stars in the sky!” cried Anna from the doorway, and Betsy flew up the steps. Anna had changed. The knob of hair atop her head was gray, and her broad, kind face looked thinner.
“We were lonesome for you, lovey!” She wept as they hugged.
“Well, she’s home, Anna!” Mr. Ray said with satisfaction. “What’s more, she’s going to stay a while.”
“She isn’t going to stir from 909 for months and years!” Mrs. Ray cried gaily.
They swarmed into the wicker-and-cretonne-furnished porch. Betsy rushed for the chaise longue where she used to love to lounge and read. She flung herself down.
Jumping up, she spun through double doors into the living room, which had dark woodwork, leaded-glass panes, and a soft, green, oriental rug. At one end rose a small platform with a full-length mirror which reflected the stairway. At the other, the fireplace was flanked by bookcases, with niches above for photographs and the goldfish bowl. Her father’s leather chair stood near. Betsy ran to hug it.
Margaret hurried from the kitchen lugging a huge fluffy cat. “This is Kismet. He jumps up on Papa’s chair, and then up to the bookcase, and drinks from the goldfish bowl.”
Julia dropped down at the piano and started to play, “You’re Here, and I’m Here, so What Do We Care?” and Mr. Ray stood with his arm around Mrs. Ray, beaming. Anna pounded a brass gong.
“Remember, Julia,” Betsy cried as they all pushed out to the dining room, “how Anna used to bang that gong for breakfast? But I never could get you up.”
“Nobody else can either,” Paige remarked.
The table was laid with place mats and the best china and silver. And there was fried chicken, and there were muffins!
“Did you have them, Margaret, on the first day of school?” Betsy asked. “Why aren’t you in school today?”
“Because you came home from Europe.”
“You notice,” Mr. Ray said, “I’m not at the store.”
“Paige and I,” Julia remarked, “ought to be in New York this minute but we wouldn’t leave until you got home.”
“I should think not!” Mrs. Ray said, pouring coffee from the silver pot.
As soon as breakfast was over, Betsy brought out her presents.
“Lovey, it’s puny!” Anna exclaimed, putting on a pink enameled pin. “Puny” was Anna’s word for “beautiful.”
The Rays admired, paraded, cried their thanks, while Kismet rattled tissue paper and darted fiercely at ribbons. It was like Christmas morning in the Ray living room when Tacy burst in.
“Where’s that indefinable Paris air?” she shouted, as Betsy ran to hug her, but she was careful not to hug too hard for Tacy’s usually graceful body looked large and cumbersome.
Julia, at the piano again, began the “Cat Duet.”
“What’s going on here?” Paige demanded as Betsy and Tacy howled and yowled in unison.
“They sang it all the way through school,” Margaret explained with the soft amusement her sisters always roused in her.
Betsy tore herself away. “Here, my Titian-haired friend! See what I brought your child!”
Everyone watched expectantly as Tacy unwrapped the package. A pink plume showed, then flaxen curls, a pale blue dress, and pink gloves, shoes, and stockings.
“Wait till Harry sees this!” Tacy laughed. “He’s already bought his son a baseball mitt.”
“We’ll fool Harry!” Betsy cried.
But Mr. Ray shook his head in warning. “Harry Kerr almost always gets his own way.”
Julia wanted to dress Betsy’s hair in the new French roll. “The idea of your coming home from Europe wearing your hair the same way you wore it when you left!”
Betsy obligingly pulled out the pins, and Julia was brushing and twisting when a tall exuberant girl came in. During the last year Louisa Hilton had become Margaret’s inseparable friend. She called Margaret Bogie and Margaret called her Boogie.
“I can’t believe it!” Betsy whispered to J
ulia, for Margaret was the dignified one. Her sisters nicknamed her The Persian Princess.
Boogie stayed for lunch, and so did Tacy. Neighbors started dropping in. Betsy’s trunk arrived. She settled her belongings in her blue and white bedroom, furnished with bird’s-eye-maple furniture which she had inherited when Julia got married. Tacy helped her, while the others came in and out.
“Where’s Tib?” Betsy asked.
“Back in Deep Valley. In the chocolate-colored house.” That was their name for Tib’s home which had seemed like a mansion to them when they were children. “She wants to work here in Minneapolis this winter,” Tacy added.
“Oh, wouldn’t that be scrumptious!”
“What did you do in New York?” Julia wanted to know, for Julia loved New York. And Betsy told them about lunch at the Waldorf and dinner in Greenwich Village, but she did not tell her secret.
She told it to Tacy, though, when Tacy left and Betsy walked with her down to the corner. She almost always told her secrets to Tacy.
“Joe and I,” she announced abruptly, “are engaged.”
“Betsy!” Tacy threw her arms around her. “Oh, I’m so glad! I was afraid it hadn’t happened when you told us about New York. You acted so cool and collected.”
“Cool and collected!” Betsy laughed, hiding a hot face in Tacy’s shoulder. “I’m in a daze. I’m in a dither. I can’t take it in.”
“When are you going to be married?”
“Soon,” Betsy answered. “Very soon.”
She worried a little about that, walking back in the smoky September twilight. She had known all along that her father wouldn’t like Joe’s haste. And this talk about missing her so much, about her not leaving home…that made things hard.
But after dinner her father lighted a fire in the grate, and they all gathered in the dancing light—Paige and Julia on the couch, Betsy in a worn cherry-red bathrobe near her mother, and Margaret, with Kismet, on the floor beside her father, who was stretched out in his leather chair, his feet on a footstool, smoking. Betsy knew that the time had come.