Everyone was indignant, and the cocoa tasted very good.
In September also, Betsy entertained the two Triumvirates. It was the last time the Triumvirates were to meet. The group was bursting out in all directions, outgrowing its fixed mould of three boys and three girls. For one thing Betsy did not like leaving Tacy out, and Carney and Bonnie had grown fond of her too; and Tacy wasn’t bashful with Cab or Herbert or Larry although she still refused to consider them important. Then, Bonnie had a new junior boy to whom Julia had introduced her, a tall, thin, freckled boy nicknamed Pin, who had gone around with Katie but didn’t any more because Katie was busy with Leo.
The two Triumvirates merged into what was called simply, The Crowd.
“When are you going with The Crowd to Christian Endeavor?” Cab asked Betsy.
“I’ll go next Sunday night,” Betsy replied.
“Good!” put in Herbert. “I’ll call for you at a quarter to seven.”
“You’ll call for her, you big stiff!” said Cab.
“And both of you come back here for Sunday night lunch afterwards,” said Betsy.
No boy ever objected to that.
12
The Tall Dark Stranger
THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH stood on a corner of Broad Street. It was built of white stone with a pointed steeple and a round stained glass window on one side. But no colored light flowed from this window in the early Sunday evening when Cab, Herbert and Betsy approached to attend Christian Endeavor.
“Christian Endeavor’s held in the Sunday School room,” Cab explained, heading for the side door.
“What’s it like, anyway?” Betsy asked. She paused in the doorway to settle her hat.
“Religious exercises first,” said Cab. “But a social hour afterwards.”
“Refreshments?”
“Only cocoa on Sunday nights. Once a month they have a Friday meeting with games and real grub. The Presbyterians give you a good time; and then of course there’s Bonnie.”
“Bonnie’s president,” said Herbert. His tone was gloomy. Bonnie now walked to Christian Endeavor with Pin.
In the spacious Sunday School room, rows of folding chairs were ranged in one corner, and Carney and Larry were sitting there in devout silence with Pin. Cab, Herbert and Betsy tiptoed to seats beside them. They too sat in devout silence while at a table in front Bonnie conferred with another girl in whispers. She did not even glance their way.
The chairs were filling up, and Betsy saw that the boys had been telling the truth when they said that almost all denominations came to Christian Endeavor. She saw fellow Baptists, and boys and girls she knew were Methodists, Congregationalists, Camelites, Lutherans. The Humphreys represented the Episcopal Church, and Cab, of course, was a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist.
Bonnie looked sweet enough to have drawn them all. She gazed over the group with calm blue eyes. Then, grave and efficient, she called the meeting to order. She announced a hymn and they all stood up and sang: “Let a Little Sunshine In.”
Cab, Herbert and Betsy looked on one book. Betsy took the alto part, and they sang loudly and with spirit.
Bonnie prayed. It was amazing to Betsy that a ’teen-age girl could pray just like a minister. She didn’t use a prayer book, either, as they did in the Episcopal Church. She made it all up out of her head. At the end she led the others in saying the Lord’s Prayer. Then she turned the meeting over to her companion. It was the practise, she explained, for a different member to take charge each week.
The new presiding officer read haltingly from the Scriptures. Bonnie paid conscientious attention but the boys began to grow restive. Cab found a pencil and scribbled:
“Gosh, I feel religious. How about you?”
“Me, too,” scribbled Betsy, and passed the note to Carney who wrote, “Me, too,” and passed it on to Larry who wrote, “Maybe our Little Poetess will write an appropriate poem,” and passed it to Betsy who wrote “Brute!” and passed it back.
Herbert, the usually irrepressible, would take no part in these doings. He could not remove his adoring eyes from Bonnie. Herbert would stop being crazy about Bonnie, and then he would see her presiding at Christian Endeavor and it would all come back on him. So he had told Betsy one day in a confidential moment.
The meeting ended and the social hour began. It wasn’t a full hour; it merely spanned the interval between Christian Endeavor and the Sunday evening service. Members of the hospitality committee had slipped out to the kitchen during the final hymn and now came in with trays full of steaming cups. Bonnie in her friendly way was calling everybody to come and get cocoa when the door opened and two boys entered.
One of them was familiar to Betsy; he was a sophomore boy named Pete. The other she had never seen before.
“They’ve got their nerve,” muttered Cab. “If you drink the Presbyterians’ cocoa, you ought to come for their prayers. Don’t you think so, Betsy?”
But Betsy only nodded absently. The second boy was Tall, Dark, and a Stranger. He might almost have walked out of her conversation with Tacy. She stared with fascinated eyes.
He walked with a slouch that was inexplicably attractive. His hair, parted at the left side, stood up on the right side in a black curly bush. He had heavy eyebrows and large sleepy dark eyes and full lips. He looked about with an almost scornful expression which melted as Bonnie, mindful of her duties as president, crossed the room and held out her hand.
“I am Bonnie Andrews,” she said.
“My name’s Tony Markham,” Betsy heard him reply in a voice deeper than the voices of most of the other boys.
Bonnie shook hands with Pete, too.
“We’re having some cocoa,” she said. “Won’t you join us? Just introduce yourself,” she added to Tony. “We’re very informal around here.”
Tony smiled out of his sleepy eyes, and sauntered toward the table.
Tony Markham! Tony Markham! Betsy said his name over and over to herself. Cab brought her some cocoa, and she drank it, thankful for the banter between Herbert and Cab which made it unnecessary for her to talk very much. She looked between people’s heads and over their shoulders at Tony.
“You’re certainly taking a look at Christian Endeavor,” Cab remarked.
“Well,” she answered, “that’s what I’m here for.”
“Do you feel yourself turning just slightly Presbyterian?”
“Um…what did you say?”
When the meeting broke up Bonnie sought out Tony again, Betsy, Carney, Larry, Cab and Herbert were all within earshot.
“Christian Endeavor begins at seven,” she said. “I hope you will come next week for the first part of the meeting.” She smiled but the rebuke was apparent.
“Maybe I will,” Tony replied. His joking tone robbed the answer of rudeness. But Bonnie would not flirt at Christian Endeavor.
“I’m sure you’ll remember,” she said with a cool smile.
“Oh, you are, are you?” asked Tony. But he could not get a response in kind. Bonnie smiled again, reprovingly, and hurried away.
“What kind of a girl is that anyway?” asked Tony, turning to The Crowd.
“She’s president of Christian Endeavor,” said Carney. “She’s a wonderful girl.”
“She’d make a good school teacher,” said Tony.
Herbert stiffened.
“Nobody’s asking you to come here,” he said. “Why don’t you try staying away?”
“Aw, come off!” said Tony with his lazy smile. “I was only fooling. Some school teachers are fine and dandy.”
Carney remembered her duties as a bona fide Presbyterian.
“Don’t mind Herbert,” she said. “We all hope you’ll come regularly to Christian Endeavor. And on time.” She stressed the last two words but she showed her mischievous solitary dimple.
Tony turned to Pete.
“I didn’t think,” he said, “that Christian Endeavor was much in my line, but I’m getting to like it better all the time.”
E
veryone laughed. They moved out into the darkness, and Tony and Pete walked away.
Betsy’s heart was pounding. The Tall Dark Stranger, the Tall Dark Stranger, she said under her breath.
Climbing the Plum Street hill Herbert and Cab wrangled and brawled as usual, but Betsy was very quiet. In her mind she was reconstructing Tony’s image, recalling his curly bush of hair and the laughter in his eyes. She was startled out of her reverie by hearing Herbert say to Cab, “Who is this Markham guy, anyway?”
“He must be new in town,” answered Cab. “I never saw him before. Fresh, isn’t he?”
“So fresh he’ll get his nose punched if he doesn’t look out,” Herbert replied.
Betsy shuddered; Herbert was extremely brawny.
“Aw, he didn’t mean any harm,” Cab said soothingly. “Bonnie isn’t sacred, you know. She isn’t a plaster saint, with a ring around her head.”
Herbert kicked sulkily at the curb. But he cheered as they opened the door of the Ray house with its firelight, and piano music, and the festive smell of coffee. Herbert and Cab ignored the piano and the clamor of Julia’s crowd, to charge into the dining room where they pounced upon Mr. Ray’s sandwiches and Anna’s chocolate cake. Betsy put off her coat and hat and pushed into the kitchen to the niche beside the cellar door where the telephone was placed. She gave the Kellys’ number and when Mr. Kelly answered, she called breathlessly for Tacy.
“Tacy, this is Betsy.”
“Hello. You sound excited.”
“I am. Can you hear me? The piano is making such a racket.”
“I can hear you. Heavens, what is it?”
“I have to be careful for the boys might come in. Herbert and Cab are here. Tacy, I’ve seen the T.D.S.”
“The what?”
“The T.D.S. You remember our conversation…”
There was a bewildered silence.
“Think hard,” said Betsy. “The T.D.S. What I could be romantic about.”
“Oh-h-h-h-h-h-h!” Tacy’s voice swelled with illumination. “Where?”
“At Christian Endeavor. I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.”
“I’ll call for you early.”
“Oh, do! I don’t expect to sleep a wink tonight….” The swinging door from the dining room opened, and her father came in followed by Herbert and Cab. He was going to make more sandwiches, and they wanted to watch him, of course.
“Yes, the algebra lesson is in Chapter 8 ninety-six,” said Betsy changing her tone. “Ten problems. They’re hard as the dickens, too.”
“I hope you’ve done them,” said her father sharpening the knife as Betsy hung up the receiver.
“Julia helped me.”
“Mr. Ray,” said Cab. “In algebra, your daughter is not quite bright.”
“Just leave off the ‘in algebra,’” Herbert put in, and Betsy made a face, and thought for the first time to go to the mirror to see whether her hair was still in curl.
Beside the fire she munched an onion sandwich dreamily. And after the boys had gone, clearing the dining room table with her mother and Julia she was still silent and dreamy.
Julia came into her room to undress. She was full of talk to which Betsy gave but abstracted attention.
“Bettina,” said Julia. “Do you have something on your mind?”
“Not a thing,” said Betsy.
“You didn’t meet anybody new at Christian Endeavor, did you?”
“Not a soul.”
“I didn’t meet him; I only saw him,” she whispered after Julia was gone.
She turned out the gas and went to the window and looked out into the night.
“The Tall Dark Stranger, The Tall Dark Stranger,” she murmured dreamily, liking the sound of the words.
13
The Freshman Party
TACY CAME SO EARLY the next morning that Betsy was not yet downstairs. Red-cheeked from her long walk, bright-eyed with curiosity, Tacy burst into the bedroom and found Betsy, fully dressed, standing before the mirror staring into her own hazel eyes.
“Oh, Tacy!” she said in a lowered voice. “I wish I was prettier.”
“Why, Betsy, you’re plenty pretty enough. You’re better than pretty.”
“I don’t want to be better than pretty. I’m tired of being better than pretty. Sweet looking! Interesting looking! Pooh for that! I want to be plain pretty like you are.”
“Look at my freckles,” said Tacy.
“But look at your beautiful auburn curly hair and big blue eyes. And you have the reddest lips, and not a quarter as many freckles as you used to have.”
“Neither have you,” said Tacy. “Your skin is peaches and cream.”
“It’s the only decent thing about me.”
“It isn’t either. You have the smallest waist of any girl in The Crowd and the prettiest hands and ankles.”
“My ankles aren’t half as pretty as Carney’s, and she has a dimple besides.”
“Betsy, don’t wish to change the way you look,” said Tacy indignantly. And putting down her school books, she gave Betsy a hug to which Betsy responded by snuggling her head for a long comforting moment on Tacy’s shoulder.
“But he’s so unutterably marvelous, Tacy.”
“So are you.”
“Betsy!” came Mr. Ray’s stern voice from below. “Your breakfast is getting cold. And will you see whether your sister Julia is ready to come down?”
When Mr. Ray said, “your sister Julia,” he was really annoyed. Straightening up, Betsy called, “Coming, Papa!” She ran into Julia’s room, pulled the covers off the bed and threw them on the floor.
“Papa’s mad,” she hissed. Then she rushed downstairs, followed by Tacy.
She ate hurriedly so that they could get away before Cab arrived. For once they did not want a boy’s company. They went to the high school and sat down on the lawn, littered with colored leaves. The maples were all yellow now, or coral pink, or crimson. It was a beautiful place to sit and talk about a Tall Dark Stranger.
“But who is he?” asked Tacy after Betsy had finished her description of the upstanding curly black hair, the black eyes, the lazy saunter.
“His name’s Tony Markham. That’s all I know.”
“His family must have just moved here. But why hasn’t he come to school?”
“He will. Oh, Tacy, I hope he doesn’t show up in any of my classes! I couldn’t recite! I’d drop through the floor!”
“You’d do no such thing,” replied Tacy. “You’d put on your Ethel Barrymore droop and fascinate him like you do Cab and Herbert.”
Betsy knew that she didn’t really fascinate Cab and Herbert, but it was good of Tacy to say so.
“Look at you!” Tacy continued. “Only in high school a month, and two boys on the string. You’ll have this Tony too. See if you don’t!”
Silently Betsy squeezed Tacy’s hand.
“I hear the first gong,” she said after a moment.
Tony did not appear at school that day, or the next, or the next. There wasn’t a sign of him anywhere, although Betsy and Tacy looked both in school and out of it. They had agreed that if she saw him Betsy was to say, “T.D.S.” But the week passed without a sign of the Tall Dark Stranger.
By the end of the week they were almost talked out on the subject. Betsy could not even remember just exactly how he looked, nor just why she had been so crazy about him. She began to take some interest in the Freshman Party, scheduled for Friday night.
A get-together, it was called. Ten cents admission. Cab had not invited Betsy to go, and she suspected that the ten cents was standing in the way. Cab earned his pocket money by delivering papers; his family thought this was good for him; and it undoubtedly was, for when he had money he spent it lavishly. There weren’t many spare dimes clinking in his pocket.
“If no boy asks you, come with Alice and me,” said Tacy. “But I’m sure some boy will, worse luck!”
Betsy didn’t particularly care whether one did or not, unless it
were the Tall Dark Stranger, but on Friday morning she received a note from Herbert.
“Dear, dear Betsy,
It makes no difference to me which way you take the following. Will you accompany me to the High School this evening? My mother is going to serve punch, and I’m glad because then you can’t flirt with me. Of course, you’ll have to pay your own way. If you answer this, and if affirmative, tell me when to call. I remain
Yours very truly
Herbert W. Humphreys.”
Betsy passed the note to Tacy and both of them rocked with mirth, to the great satisfaction of Herbert, who had turned around in his seat to watch the reception of this masterpiece of wit.
After much pencil-chewing Betsy produced an answer Tacy approved, and they passed it furtively down the aisle.
“Dear Herbert,
I’m surprised that you don’t want me to pay your way too. Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to rob a bank for you? I am glad your mother is going to be there for she won’t let you monopolize the punch bowl. I saw you in action at Christian Endeavor, remember. I’ll be ready at half past seven with a rose in my hair.
Your obedient servant,
Betsy Warrington Ray.”
Betsy almost forgot about the Tall Dark Stranger in the fun of getting ready for the party. Here was an occasion suitable for her pale blue silk mull. Worn with a large hair ribbon and with stockings of the same soft blue, it was very becoming, and as usual on important occasions Julia dressed her hair.
Herbert called for her early, thinking perhaps that there might be an extra piece of pie, and when Betsy appeared he was eating it. He looked very big and handsome in his best blue serge suit. Anna was stealing admiring glances around the swinging door. Among all the boys who came to the Ray house, Herbert was Anna’s favorite.
When he saw Betsy he actually was startled into a compliment.
“Golly, you look nice!”
“For a change,” said Betsy pertly.
“I’m going to pay for you. Darned if I’m not!”
“Triumph of triumphs!” said Betsy.
She kissed her father and mother, Julia and Margaret…the Rays were great ones for kissing one another…and started off in a glow. She did look pretty, and she knew it.