They sat on the porch swing, talking.
“Joe,” said Betsy, “how beautifully this year has turned out! I was a little blue when you first went on night work, and Aunt Ruth was coming. But now—I almost hate to see her go.”
“And I got the plot for ‘Wheat’ from her, in a way.”
“And the night side gave us so much time for writing, and thinking, and talking. It certainly pays to wrestle with an angel.”
“Let’s get out the Bible and read the story of Jacob,” Joe said.
“I’m going to do more than that,” said Betsy with sudden vigor. “It’s shabby the way I just go to church when I’m worried. I ought to go when I’m thankful and happy, too. I’m going to start going every Sunday.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” said Joe.
Before that eventful August ended, Tacy’s second boy was born. And after she returned from the hospital, Betsy went out to the Kerr apartment. She went in the early evening, for Joe was still working at night. Tacy was in bed, the baby beside her, a brown-haired, brown-eyed elf.
“I just can’t be sorry he isn’t a girl,” Tacy said.
“Neither can I. He’s so sweet! And it is nice for Kelly to have a baby brother.”
Tacy laughed. “That’s funny,” she said. “Before he came Harry and I talked about him always just in relation to Kelly. But now he’s come, he isn’t just Kelly’s brother. He’s himself. And we adore him.”
“No wonder!” Betsy said, touching the soft cheek.
Harry was getting Kelly ready for bed. Splashes and shouts of laughter emerged from the bathroom, and at last, Kelly—curly-haired, flaming-cheeked, in snowy fresh pajamas, upright in his father’s arms. They made the round of the windows and came to the bedroom. Kelly yanked down the shade, trying to join in his father’s chant.
“We go around and turn out the light
And we go to the window and say good night
To the moon and the stars that shine so bright
And we go to bed, and everything’s right.”
Harry held Kelly down to kiss his mother, and his brother, and Aunt Betsy.
“Everything’s right!” When they were gone, Tacy put out a slim freckled hand, and took Betsy’s, and squeezed it. “Everything is right; isn’t it? Joe’s story selling, the new job, and Harry and I with our new son. Of course it’s not completely right,” she added, “until things get right for little Tib.”
“Everything’s almost right,” said Betsy.
Things couldn’t be perfect, for herself or Tacy either, unless Tib was happy too.
17
Just Like Tib
TIB SEEMED ALMOST LIKE Tib that winter, although Betsy and Tacy, who knew her so well, were aware that she was unhappy. Toward men who thought all blondes were frivolous she perfected a crushing disdain. With people who expected all German-Americans to be unpatriotic, she relied on the adage that actions speak louder than words. Her small skillful fingers made better bandages faster than any other ten in the Red Cross workroom. They were swift, too, on her drawing board, back at the store, and at making her own lovely fragile dresses. She had her accustomed good-natured cheerfulness.
She did not return to the Violent Study Club although that was its merry self again. Betsy knew it made Tib’s heart ache to go to the places or do the things she associated with Rocky. She loved to go out to the Kerrs’ and play with the babies, and she rejoiced wholeheartedly in the Willards’ good fortune.
Joe had sold a second story to The Thursday Magazine. Betsy was able to save only a part of the magnificent checks. For their second wedding anniversary, he had bought her a wrist watch, and he insisted on buying her clothes—a blue, smartly belted coat and a furry blue felt hat. Bedecked with a chrysanthemum, she wore these to the Homecoming Football Game at the U. He bought her a swooping black velvet hat.
“It makes me look like a vamp,” Betsy protested.
“Well, who vamped me?” Joe asked.
A coral silk dress trimmed with silver lace was fine for the nights they went with Sam and Carney to hear Dr. Oberhoffer conduct the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, and for plays at the Metropolitan. With Joe working days again, they were able to entertain. Betsy had learned a second company dinner. Chicken fricasseed in cream, and a marshmallow pudding!
She tried it out on Margaret and Louisa, who were charmed to be dinner guests. Margaret was soft-voiced and formal but Louisa exploded into excitement.
“This food is scrumptious!” she declared. “Isn’t it, Bogie? And I heard you say, Betsy, that you didn’t know how to cook when you got married. I suppose that after you get married you just sort of know how, automatically. Is that it? You’re married, and so you’re keeping house and so naturally you know how to cook. Is that the way it is?” And Louisa opened wide, inquiring eyes.
“Well, sort of!” Betsy said. “What’s new at school?”
“A new drinking fountain!” Louisa cried. “No germs anymore! I don’t know how we survived with that old cup on a chain. Really, I don’t! But I’m certainly glad I did survive, because it’s so nice to be a senior.” She stopped. “You know, don’t you, about the Senior Sleigh Ride? Bogie, have you told them?”
“How could I?” answered Margaret. “We only voted for it today.”
“That’s just it!” said Louisa. “It didn’t take that Clay Dawson two minutes to get over to Margaret. Of course, he’s got awfully long legs. That’s why he’s so good at jumping. He jumped over to her, absolutely jumped, and asked her for the sleigh ride.”
“He’s the boy from the cafeteria?” Betsy asked.
“That’s right.”
“Going with him, Margaret?”
“Oh, yes!” Margaret lifted pointedly indifferent brows. “This pudding is delicious, Betsy. You ought to give the recipe to Anna.”
“What,” Joe could not resist inquiring, “are Bill and Bub going to do?”
“Both of them,” replied Louisa, “are taking me! One on either side in the sleigh! Won’t that be jolly? Oh, I hope we’ll have lots of snow! Do you suppose we will, Joe?”
At Christmas time Anna fell ill of the grippe, and Betsy entertained the family. Joe stuffed the turkey and her mother brought the pies.
Christmas at 7 Canoe Place this year wasn’t just a reflection of 909. The Ray traditions were all observed—stockings, joke presents, the readings, and the carols—but new Willard traditions were forming—the red Santa holding up mistletoe, window-candles to light the Christ Child on his way.
There was a doll under the Christmas tree. It was for Sally Day, who busily undressed it and draped it in a napkin to represent a fairy.
“I’m Queen of the Fairies, so naturally I have to have some fairies,” she explained, rolling her eyes.
“I have an idea,” Betsy said to Joe after everyone was gone, “that when Bettina comes, she’ll be quite a bit like Sally Day.”
“I think so, too,” said Joe.
In one department, the Willards behaved parentally toward the senior Hawthornes, who always spent lavishly and then were rueful about their extravagances. On a mirthful New Year’s Eve, budget-wise Joe and Betsy reckoned up what their prodigal elders should spend weekly, and what they might save.
“Why, we’ll be millionaires!” Eleanor Hawthorne cried with mellow laughter.
“We can take a trip to Japan,” Brad announced.
Joe and Betsy made personal resolutions. They were going to write and write and let nothing interfere. Betsy, in all her years of trying, had never made a sale comparable to Joe’s sales to The Thursday Magazine. She didn’t mind, but Joe did. He tried to put his finger on what was wrong.
“Your stories don’t express you, Betsy. I think you need the meadowlike space of a novel. I’m going to make you start one in 1917.”
But as February blew in, chill and bitter, 1917 began to reveal its own menacing purpose. The Germans resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, and President Wilson broke diplomatic relati
ons with the Kaiser’s government.
“It means war, Betsy,” Joe said.
“Maybe not. Our troops are coming home from Mexico. That turned out all right.”
She could not look war in the face, although she felt it staring at her. She treasured, more and more, the cozy, lamplit evenings at home.
“You were eating an apple and reading a book, the first time I saw you,” she reminded Joe one night, when he put down Charnwood’s Abraham Lincoln to go to the kitchen for an apple.
The porch creaked and the doorbell rang. Joe turned back to answer it. Stamping snow from their feet on the threshold, were Tib and a tall young man.
“We’ve been skating,” said Tib, which was obvious from her dress. She had long since made herself a skating suit, trimmed with white fur at the neck and around the closely-fitted jacket and the flaring skirt. The little peaked cap had a knob of fur. She was slapping her cold cheeks, laughing, and there was a look about her, Betsy thought quickly, that had not been there since….
The tall young man had wavy dark hair, and bright dark eyes.
“Betsy and Joe Willard, Jack Dunhill! He’s just back from Mexico,” said Tib, as they came in, “and feeling gay.”
“I’m feeling gay,” he admitted, “but it has nothing to do with getting back from the Border. I just don’t pick up a girl like this every day.”
“It’s a joke!” Tib explained. “He means he picked me up from the ice.”
“That,” said Joe, “I refuse to believe. Tib fall on the ice? Never!”
Tib and Jack Dunhill went off into gales of laughter.
“Well, she did tonight!” he said. “I was watching her perform, the conceited little monkey, and wondering who she was. Everyone was wondering and watching. I skated close, willing her to fall.”
“And I fell!” trilled Tib. “And was I furious! Especially when he started picking me up, for he said he’d been watching me.”
“And she said,” Jack Dunhill put in, “‘I am not the blonde you’ve been looking for.’”
“And he said…” Tib bubbled with laughter, “‘How do you know you’re not?’”
“The logical answer, wasn’t it? And I suggested that we go somewhere for a cup of coffee and talk the whole thing over.”
Tib sat down, pulling off the peaked cap. “And I said Ja, I’d go to have coffee, if he’d let me pick the place. And he said, of course he would. And so, here we are! He thought it was a restaurant until Joe opened the door.” She laughed and laughed. “But we can have some coffee, can’t we, Betsy, honey?”
“You certainly can,” Betsy said. It was the first word either she or Joe had been able to get in since Joe’s remark about Tib falling.
Joe took Jack Dunhill’s leather jacket, and Tib ran upstairs. She came back with her curls pinned into place, and she and Betsy went to the kitchen.
Jack was an advertising man, Tib said as they made the coffee. “And you know, Betsy, I’m in advertising, in a way. I do art-advertising at the store. Jack wrote copy in a big advertising office. He went there right after he graduated from the U. And he gave up a good job when he left with the Guard for Mexico.”
“It seems to me,” said Betsy, “that you learned quite a lot about him, just walking up from the lake.”
“Ach!” said Tib. “I walked him all around Robin Hood’s barn, looking for that restaurant which didn’t exist.” And she and Betsy were still laughing when they wheeled a loaded tea wagon into the living room.
The men were briskly discussing the war.
“If we get into it,” Jack was saying, “I’d like to be an aviator. Golly, how Pershing needed airplanes in Mexico! They could have sailed over those mountains where Villa was hiding, and we could have gotten somewhere. I’ve put in my application for aviation training.”
“What’s your rank in the Guard?”
“Lieutenant. I’m staying in for the time being.”
“How do you like him?” Betsy asked Joe as soon as Tib and Jack were out of the door. “I like him,” said Joe. “I like him a lot.”
“I almost think it’s the real thing.”
“So do I.”
“Do you? Oh, Joe, I’m so happy! I won’t even tell Tacy. I’ll just pray.”
Tib ‘phoned the third day. She was driving Jack’s car. “It isn’t a Rolls-Royce but it’s a perfectly beautiful Ford.”
The next time, they had gone dancing. “He loves to dance. He’s as good as my brother Fred. He’s a marvelous skater, too, and he’s going to teach me to play golf. I’ll be good at it, he says.”
And the time after that: “I wish Jack would hang on to his money. He has two thousand dollars in the bank. What do you think of that? But it won’t last long with roses for me all the time and big boxes of candy. I’m taking him down to Deep Valley over Sunday.”
Betsy broke down and told Tacy then. “I didn’t call sooner for fear of jinxing it.”
“I wondered,” Tacy cried, “why she hasn’t been coming out to see the baby! Well, ‘phone me the minute she gets back! I can’t bear this suspense.”
“Neither can I.”
“My folks are crazy about him,” Tib reported on Monday. “He loaded Mamma with flowers. He and my dad talked golf, golf, golf, and he told Fred and Hobbie about the army. Hobbie brought half the boys in Deep Valley to meet him.” Her tone grew serious. “Betsy, when can I see you and Tacy? I’d like to see you together. Can you come down to lunch with me soon?”
“We can!” Betsy cried. “Tomorrow!”
Tacy called for Betsy in the Buick around noon.
“Now don’t get your hopes up!” Betsy warned, climbing into the auto. It was April weather, although the calendar still said March. The air was balmy, snow and ice were melting, and children were sailing boats along the gutters.
“Fine romantic day, though,” Tacy said. “We could almost have made it a picnic. I wonder why she wants us at the Radisson?”
“Don’t wonder! Don’t jinx it!”
“If you could know the trouble I had finding a woman to stay with the babies! But I’d have come if I’d had to bring them both.”
Tib was waiting outside the swinging doors of the hotel.
“Come on in! Jack has reserved a table for us. He isn’t rich like Mr. Bagshaw,” she commented, “but he certainly knows how to do things.”
He certainly did! The table bore three corsages of violets and roses.
“Tib, what is this?” Tacy asked, and Betsy’s frown warned, Don’t jinx it!
“I love a corsage!” she remarked in a careless tone.
As soon as they were seated, Tib stripped off her gloves. Brimming with smiles, she extended her hand to show a diamond.
“It’s set in platinum,” she said.
“Radisson or no Radisson!” Tacy cried and jumped up and kissed her. So did Betsy. Tib kissed and hugged them both.
“When did it happen?” Betsy asked.
“I guess it began when he picked me up off the ice. I never felt before the way I felt when I looked at him. He just—thrilled me. He still does.”
“And when are you going to be married?” Tacy asked.
“That’s what I want to talk with you about. Soon, because Jack thinks we’re going to be in this war.”
“That’s what Harry thinks,” said Tacy.
“Well, Harry probably won’t have to go, on account of the children. But Jack will go. And I want him to, if he wants to. But of course we must be married first!”
“Of course!”
The waiter served their soup, but Tib did not touch it. She sat straight and spoke in a businesslike tone.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I don’t want a hurried-up wedding. Both of you had that kind and mine ought to be different. I told Mamma so when we were talking it over. I told her I wanted a big beautiful wedding. She liked the idea.
“I want it to be in church, in our little St. John’s Episcopal Church in Deep Valley. I want the church to be decorate
d with flowers, and I want everyone there, all the old Crowd.
“I want a white dress,” Tib went on, shining faced. “I won’t have a train. I’m too short. And do you know what else I want?” She looked up brightly.
“This is one reason I planned the big wedding. Did you ever stop to think that we’d never been bridesmaids for each other? It isn’t right; we’ve been friends so many years. I’ll have two or three more, of course. But I’m asking you two first. Will you be my bridesmaids?”
Would they! Betsy and Tacy braved the crowded dining room again to fall upon her with kisses. They pulled away to look at each other with laughing eyes. They said together:
“Isn’t that just like Tib?”
“Why—why—what did I say?” cried Tib. “I just asked you to be my bridesmaids! There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
“No, darling!” cried Betsy. “There’s nothing wrong at all. Everything is beautifully, wonderfully, magically all right!”
18
The Nest Is Feathered
“THE WORLD MUST BE made safe for Democracy,” said President Woodrow Wilson on the second day of April, and he asked the Congress to declare war on Germany. It did so. On April sixth he announced that a state of war existed.
“Betsy,” said Joe, “you know without my saying so that I’m going to get in—and soon.”
“I do know, darling!” Out in the purple spring twilight a robin’s song went up and down, up and down.
A few days later he said, “There’s talk of opening a camp for training officers. Out at Fort Snelling. I’d like that, if I can make the grade.”
“It would be wonderful. You wouldn’t be going too far away for a while.”
The Officers’ Training Camp was soon officially announced. It would open early in May and would commission successful students after three months of study. Jokes came thick and fast about Ninety-day Wonders.
“What if West Point does take four years to make a lieutenant!” Betsy cried indignantly. “We haven’t got four years.”
“If only I’m accepted,” Joe grinned, “they can call me anything.” With hordes of other young men, he submitted a summary of his college and employment record and the three required letters of recommendation.