“Spoken like a pint-sized patriot!” he said.
Betsy waited anxiously. Tib smiled.
The Violent Study Club had never run to such a late hour before.
“My public will say I’m slipping if I try to be bright on this little sleep,” said “Q,” putting on her wraps. Marbeth flashed on the pillar porch lights, and everyone was exchanging good nights when Rocky came up to Tib. He looked at her with brightly quizzical eyes.
“Where can I find you?” he asked, and this time Betsy held her breath.
“Why do you want to know?” asked Tib.
“I’m going to take you to lunch.”
And to Betsy’s joyful amazement Tib named the store where she worked in the art department. She told him she lunched between one and two. She sounded almost docile.
The Willards, Tib, and “Q” left in the magazine editor’s car, after pushing a cushion of snow from its top. Betsy could not bring up the subject most on her mind, but as soon as she and Joe were inside 7 Canoe Place, she burst out:
“Isn’t it glorious? Did you notice how taken Rocky was with Tib? And she really liked him! Even after that spat about preparedness, she said she’d have lunch.”
“Um-hum,” murmured Joe, hanging up his coat and hat.
“I think they’re very well suited,” Betsy said. “You know, Tib understands writers because of you and me.”
“Um-hum,” said Joe. He was halfway up the stairs.
Oh, dear! Betsy thought. Aren’t men unsatisfactory! But it was too late to telephone Tacy, who would have shared her excitement. She followed Joe to their bedroom and kept on talking.
“I don’t suppose he earns much, but you know Tib! Makes all her own clothes, and can get up a simply delicious meal out of nothing. Why, Tib was just meant to starve in a garret!”
Joe undressed and scrambled into bed. Betsy, in a pink cashmere robe, started to brush her hair. She brushed and brushed until it spread over her shoulders, dark and shining. Usually Joe liked to watch her do this but tonight he lay with his hands under his head, looking up at the ceiling.
Betsy began to worry. Maybe he wasn’t just unsociable? Maybe he disapproved? She turned around, brush in hand.
“Darling,” she said, “do you think I’m wrong? Don’t you like this Rocky?”
Joe sat up in bed, and Betsy told herself that she must never allow him to wear any pajamas but blue ones.
“Look, Betsy!” he said. “Rocky’s a good enough guy. But he lives in a different world from Tib’s. He—has different ideas. He’s—been around. I’m worried about Tib.”
Betsy put down her brush, and sighed in relief.
“Is that all!” she said. “Well, you don’t need to worry about Tib! Men eat out of Tib’s hand. He’ll be following Tib around like a little puppy dog. Why—” Betsy began to giggle. “Tib will be tying a pink ribbon into that bushy hair of his.”
“That,” said Joe, “I’d like to see!”
But he chuckled, and went to sleep.
15
Rocky
AS SOON AS SHE WOKE up, Betsy telephoned Tacy.
“What shall we wear?” Tacy cried. “Yellow or blue?”
“Oh, the bride picks the bridesmaids’ colors!”
“Well, it can’t be pink, on account of my red hair!”
They were almost as jubilant when Betsy telephoned after the next meeting of the Violent Study Club. Tib had come with Rocky. She had left with Rocky.
“He calls her Tiny Tib.”
“How cute!”
“She isn’t haughty with him,” Betsy said, a little puzzled. “She doesn’t order him around.”
“Maybe a masterful man is just what she needs?”
“I think you’re right,” Betsy replied.
But her enthusiasm began to wane. The Violent Study Club wasn’t so much fun with Rocky there.
He dominated the once carefree meetings—sitting on his backbone, puffing at his pipe, being brilliant in his drawling voice. He had an engaging playfulness, sometimes, but it couldn’t be trusted.
When others spoke, he listened with what seemed to be flattering attention, but then he tore their arguments to humiliating tatters. He discussed the books they brought with such scornful irony that no one felt free any more to bring just whatever he was enjoying.
“Irvin S. Cobb’s Speaking of Operations is simply rich. But you have to bring Dreiser or Shaw to the club now,” Sigrid grumbled.
As for reading their own work—the members were soon reluctant to expose themselves to his attacks, so unlike the friendly, helpful criticisms of pre-Rocky meetings. He followed his scathing remarks with an apologetic smile, but this no longer seemed charming. One night there was an indignation meeting in the kitchen.
“I wouldn’t bring a story to the club any more for a farm.”
“What magazines has he sold to? What books has he written? He’s older than any of us!”
“Jimmy says he’s a genius. But Jimmy finds excuses for everyone.”
“Don’t worry! We always break up in the spring, and he’ll be gone before fall.” “Q”’s words were consoling to everyone but Betsy. She was disturbed about Tib, who had sat looking at Rocky with an awe close to reverence.
Betsy understood. Tib’s great capacity for admiration, in which she and Tacy had often sunned themselves, was called into full glow by Rocky’s magnetism.
Betsy was as worried now as Joe, and Tacy started worrying harder than either of them.
“What do they have in common?” she asked anxiously. “Are they congenial? Do they like to do the same things?”
“I’ll try to find out,” Betsy said.
She made a date for lunch with Tib on a cold bright day and remarked casually over the restaurant table:
“Fine skating weather! You and Rocky doing a lot of skating?”
Tib laughed fondly. “Rocky’s too fat for skating.”
“Do you go dancing then?”
“Rocky thinks dancing is effete.” Tib laughed again. “I asked him, as a favor, to come to the Radisson and watch Fred and me do a tango.”
“Your tango is a poem.”
“Rocky said he couldn’t help believing that the human mind—any human mind—deserved a better problem than figuring how many steps to take and when to sway and glide.”
Tib seemed to think this showed a superior intelligence and Betsy smothered her indignation.
“He doesn’t like the theatre, either,” Tib volunteered. “He thinks it’s silly for people to memorize somebody else’s words and stand up in front of other people and spout them.”
“What does he like to do?” Betsy asked.
After profound thought Tib said, “He likes to talk. And eat. We go a lot to that new restaurant—you know, where a chef in a white cap makes pancakes in the window? Rocky talks, and eats stacks of pancakes.
“That reminds me!” Tib added. “He likes Sauerbraten and you can’t get it fit to eat anywhere, outside of a home. May I come out to your house some Sunday and fix Sauerbraten and ask him to dinner?”
“Of course, dear,” said Betsy. “We’ll ask the Kerrs and make it a party.” She tried to sound enthusiastic but she was so perturbed that she went straight from the restaurant to the streetcar and out to see Tacy.
“She’s feeling domestic about him!” Betsy groaned.
Tacy agreed that this was very bad. “But at least,” she said, “the dinner will give us a chance to meet him. Harry is worried, too.”
“He and Joe aren’t joking us this time about being Little Aids to Cupid.”
Tacy made coffee, and they cheered themselves with Kelly, who was shouting on the sun porch over a toy duck that was losing its stuffing.
“Won’t it be nice,” Tacy said, “for him to have a baby brother? Sister, I mean.”
“I forgive you. What new words has he learned?”
“He learns some every day. And Betsy, he can understand even when we spell. Harry says, ‘It’s time for
Kelly to go to b-e-d.’ And Kelly shouts, ‘Don’ wanna b-e-d.’”
“That’s the smartest thing I ever heard,” Betsy said.
“Harry always makes a game of putting him to bed. After Kelly’s undressed, Harry carries him around to look out the windows. He’s made up a rhyme.”
Tacy chanted:
“We go around and turn out the light
And we go to the windows and say good night
To the moon and the stars that shine so bright
And we go to bed, and everything’s right.”
Kelly threw down his duck. He looked up at his mother with deep blue eyes, like hers.
“B-e-d!” he spelled. And Betsy and Tacy whooped with delight.
Betsy was pleased to have the joke to tell Joe. He was feeling a little blue these days. He didn’t like it that his stories were still selling only to the same small magazines. He and Betsy tried each new story on the big magazines, especially on The Thursday Magazine, the biggest one of all. The Thursday Magazine, however, kept sending them back.
And the war news was grim. In France, big guns were thundering again. But the Germans, not the British, had launched the great offensive at Verdun.
And spring was slow in coming.
At first the snow which melted in the daytime froze at night. But at last water babbled in the gutters all night long. Watching for Joe, Betsy walked along Canoe Place to the corner. She waited among the sleeping houses, the dark apartment buildings.
“‘Behold the height of the stars, how high they are!’” she whispered sometimes, staring upward.
At last the glittering streetcar rattled into view, and Joe came swinging toward her.
If they talked long over their cocoa, they were interrupted by bird voices. While the world was still dark, there would be a drowsy chirp or two, then a small burst of song, then another, and finally a jumbled chorus. Joe and Betsy would go out on the porch. Blackness had now paled into gray, and the stars had faded—except for a big bright one in the faintly flushing East.
“Venus!” Joe would say. “In the spring, the morning star is Venus.”
“It’s the first time I ever watched spring come at night,” Betsy observed.
Daytime spring was a more familiar joy, and yet there was a new ecstatic excitement in watching leaves bud on their own lilacs, in poking around their own walls among matted leaves to see what was coming up.
“Iris and lilies of the valley,” Aunt Ruth told them, examining the first green spears.
It was hard for Joe to get in any writing, but he almost always did, and when that was behind him…what raking and burning! What painting and digging!
Mr. Ray planted the cutting of that vine from Deep Valley. He and Joe planted hydrangea and bridal wreath bushes around the big porch.
Joe and Betsy bought their porch furniture. (He was head of the night copy desk now and had had another raise.) Just as planned, they bought a swing, wicker chairs and tables, and rattan curtains for when it rained. They started eating out.
“It’s divine! We smell lilacs while we eat. Why don’t you run over from school for lunch sometimes?” Betsy asked Margaret and Louisa, when they dropped in.
Louisa’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, we couldn’t, Betsy! He’d collapse! He’d die! He just lives for the noon hour.”
Betsy thought, A clue at last! For Margaret and Louisa still alternated between Bill and Bub with mysterious unconcern. Betsy asked casually, “Who’d collapse? Bill or Bub?”
“Why, neither of them!” exclaimed Louisa. “I mean that Long-legs who works in the cafeteria.”
Betsy was bewildered. She remembered vaguely hearing of such a boy, but a very long time ago.
Margaret interrupted with a sparkle in her long-lashed eyes. “Boogie! Don’t be silly! I wouldn’t even know his name if he didn’t play basketball or something.”
“Basketball or something! Betsy, he’s a star! At everything long-legged. Basketball, track, tennis! You should see him at tennis. He jumps like a grasshopper when Bogie’s at the matches.”
“Even if she’s with Bill or Bub?”
“All the higher then.”
Margaret’s slim foot put the swing into motion. She changed the subject with her Persian Princess air.
“You know, Betsy, that Julia and Paige are coming for their vacation. Well, what do you think Papa’s going to do to celebrate? He’s going to buy a car!”
“A car!” This news was so sensational that Margaret and Louisa had gone before Betsy remembered the long-legged tennis star.
Was he the reason Margaret had no choice between Bill and Bub? Margaret always kept her own counsel.
“And I didn’t even get his name!” Betsy mourned.
In front of the house the maple trees were hung with lacy tassels. In the small back yard the apple tree seemed to be spreading arms to display its rosy bloom.
“Remember Mr. Gaston?” Betsy asked Joe. “How he scolded me in high school English because I said apple blossoms were rosy? And you defended me.”
“He was speaking to the future Mrs. Willard,” Joe replied.
Sparrows settled in the birdhouse. This was intended for wrens, Aunt Ruth said, but sparrows were just as absorbing. The father perched on the roof, when he wasn’t replacing the mother on four speckled eggs.
Sally Day came to see the spectacle. With a piece of Aunt Ruth’s coffee cake, she sat on the kitchen steps announcing that she was going to sit there till the eggs hatched.
Brad Hawthorne dipped into a pocket for one of his little folded papers. “John Burroughs!” he said, and read aloud:
“As the bird feathers her nest with down plucked from her own breast, so one’s spirit must shed itself upon its environment before it can brood and be at all content.”
He looked at them keenly through his glasses. “You kids don’t realize that yet, but it’s true,” he said.
Like Mr. Ray, he always called Joe and Betsy “kids”; Mrs. Hawthorne said lovingly, “you children.” But they were Brad and Eleanor now to the Willards. Neither Joe nor Betsy was conscious of any difference in age between the Hawthornes and themselves—except when, as now, the Hawthornes shared their wisdom.
“Yes,” Eleanor Hawthorne nodded. “You have to live in a house before it’s home. Not just be happy in it, but work in it, suffer in it, build up memories.”
“I’ll remember Sally Day settling down with coffee cake to watch the sparrows hatch,” said Joe.
“I’ll remember Aunt Ruth telling me stories while the bread baked,” Betsy said. She loved these nightly sessions, but in a few days she learned that they would end in the autumn.
She and Joe and Aunt Ruth were eating lunch-breakfast on the porch.
“I might as well tell you,” Aunt Ruth said abruptly. “I’ve written my niece that I’ll come to California in the fall.”
“Why, Aunt Ruth!” Betsy cried.
“When did this happen, Auntie?”
“Oh,” said Aunt Ruth, “we’ve been writing back and forth! Bertha says that together we can afford to buy a bungalow. And I can keep house while she teaches school. She’s my own sister’s daughter, and we’ve always gotten along. But I couldn’t have gotten along with anyone better than I have with you and Betsy, Joe.”
“You’d get along with anyone!” Betsy said.
“I have only one bone to pick,” said Joe. “That homemade bread is making me fat.”
Aunt Ruth wiped her eyes. “Well, I’m going to keep on making it till I leave. And I want to put up some things for you, Betsy. Strawberries, peaches, watermelon pickles, tomato preserves.”
Betsy jumped up and kissed her. “We’ll miss you, Aunt Ruth,” she said, and knew she really meant it. “You’ve been so good to us!”
Aunt Ruth wiped her eyes again. “Well, I certainly did appreciate you two taking me in! I was so upset about Alvin—and selling the store. But you know I’ve always wanted to go to California. I do hate the cold. I even tried to make Alvin move ou
t there.”
“We’ll just have to have a good time till you leave,” said Joe.
“We’ll go riding in Papa’s automobile!” Betsy jumped up. “Joe! I forgot! It’s been delivered. It’s out in front of 909 right now.”
The new car was a fine black Overland and Mr. Ray displayed it proudly.
“What will Paige and Julia think of this, hey? It’s got all the newest wrinkles. Get in, Joe! Take us for a ride!”
“Don’t you want to drive, Dad?”
“I don’t know how. And to tell you the truth,” admitted Mr. Ray, “I don’t want to learn. But Jule’s going to learn. Aren’t you, Jule?” he asked his wife coaxingly.
“I’m starting lessons tomorrow,” she replied.
Joe took the wheel. Mr. and Mrs. Ray, Aunt Ruth, Margaret, and Betsy piled in and went whirling out into the country, past blooming orchards, brimming lakes, hillsides where wild plum was white.
“Oh, the picnics we’ll have!” cried Mrs. Ray. And next day she did start driving lessons. But after two of them, she stopped.
“I got on better with Old Mag,” she said. “Margaret’s seventeen. Let Margaret drive.”
So Margaret started lessons. But she didn’t like driving, either.
“If you don’t mind, Papa,” she said politely but firmly, “I’m not going to do it.”
Betsy wouldn’t even try to learn. “I’m not the type,” she shuddered. “I’d be making up a poem when I ought to be honking, or stopping, or something.”
“I’m certainly glad you came into the family, Joe,” chuckled Mr. Ray.
So with Joe at the wheel of an always overflowing car, they went riding almost every afternoon. There were snow drifts of bridal wreath now along Minneapolis streets. They called on Carney, and on Tacy, who always asked, “When is Tib going to cook that dinner?”
And at last Tib ’phoned to ask whether next Sunday would be a good day. She came out on Wednesday and put an enormous chunk of rump beef to soak in vinegar and water and bay leaf.
“It has to soak for four days,” she said with delighted importance. “I’ll be out early Sunday to set it stewing. I’m going to make potato dumplings, and we’ll have new peas, and a little wilted lettuce.”