Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself, Page 3

  “I had the dandiest time,” she kept repeating.

  “And you weren’t homesick?” asked Julia. “Bettina, you’re wonderful! I die with homesickness when I go away.”

  “You’re temperamental,” said Betsy. “You’re a temperamental prima donna.” To Tacy, and to Tacy alone would she confess how homesick she had been.

  Shortly Tacy came running across the street. Politeness had kept her away until she was sure the family reunion was over. Tacy too had grown tall, taller even than Betsy, and she too wore skirts down to her ankles. Her ringlets were gone, and thick auburn braids were bound about her head. She and Betsy hugged tempestuously, rocking back and forth.

  They all sat on the porch then, and Julia made lemonade. At intervals Betsy saw her mother and Julia, or Julia and Tacy, or Margaret and her mother, exchange mysterious glances. She wished she had asked about the surprise the minute she stepped out of the hack. Now she didn’t know how.

  “I must go and unpack,” she said. “I brought some presents. Shall 1 give Tacy hers and put the others on the supper table? We don’t want to open them, of course, until Papa comes home.”

  Margaret looked at her mother and then spoke, beaming.

  “We aren’t eating supper here.”

  “Not…why not?”

  “Papa’s taking us to a restaurant.”

  “But why? It isn’t Sunday, or a holiday, or anything.”

  “Oh, he likes to give me a rest once in a while,” Mrs. Ray put in breezily, “when we’re not keeping a hired girl.”

  “And there really isn’t room for a hired girl in this house,” added Julia with an exaggerated sigh.

  “What the dickens!” thought Betsy. But she was too stubborn to ask about the surprise since she hadn’t done it in the first place.

  “I’ll give Tacy hers anyway,” she said.

  Tacy proved to have a talent for the mouth organ. After experimenting only a short time, she said, “This is in Betsy’s honor,” and began a recognizable, “Home, sweet home.”

  “Be it ever so humble,

  There’s no place like home…”

  Betsy and Julia and Mrs. Ray intoned in close harmony. They all fell to laughing, but Betsy thought secretly how suitable the sentiment was.

  “Come on, Tacy,” she said. “Let’s look around.”

  They inspected the front lawn and the back lawn, backyard maple, garden, empty buggy shed and barn. They ran across the street and Betsy said “hello” to Mrs. Kelly, and to Katie, Tacy’s sister, Julia’s age, and to Paul, their youngest brother.

  “Let’s go up on the hill,” said Betsy, still holding Tacy’s hand. She wouldn’t really feel she was at home until she and Tacy had been up on the hill. “Let’s go up to our bench and talk.”

  But to her surprise Tacy refused.

  “I don’t dare,” she replied. “I’m afraid…” She broke off, but Betsy knew what she meant. She was afraid that alone on the hill she would give away the secret. “You see,” said Tacy hesitantly. “I’m going downtown with you.”

  “You’re what?”

  “Going down to the restaurant…for supper. Your father invited me. There comes your father now,” she cried, sounding relieved.

  Sure enough Old Mag was climbing up Hill Street, drawing the surrey.

  “But it isn’t five o’clock yet!” exclaimed Betsy. “What’s Papa coming home for?”

  “You’ll know! You’ll see!” Tacy cried.

  All the Kellys began to laugh, and when Betsy and Tacy raced across the street, Mr. Ray was smiling, Mrs. Ray and Julia were hugging one another, and Margaret for all her dignity was jumping up and down.

  She whispered to her mother; then, ran into the house.

  “And a safety pin, Margaret,” Mrs. Ray called.

  Margaret returned with a table napkin and a safety pin.

  “Sit down, Bettina,” Julia commanded.

  “But why? What for?”

  “We’re going to blindfold you. No questions, please.”

  Betsy sat down on the porch steps. She looked around at the laughing faces. She looked up at the loved green hill which seemed to be smiling, too, and down Hill Street. Obediently she closed her eyes and Julia with deft fingers adjusted the blindfold.

  “I’ll help her.”

  “No, let me!”

  Betsy was surrounded with clamoring voices. She was interested to discover how helpless she felt with her eyes bandaged.

  “It’s like this to be blind,” she thought.

  A soft hand took one of hers. That was Julia. Slender, rougher fingers took her other hand. That was Tacy. A whiff of violet perfume rushed by. That was her mother. There were light feet, Margaret’s, and her father’s firm tread.

  “Bring her along. This way. Careful of the stairs.”

  “Step up, now!” That was the hitching block.

  “Again. That’s right. Sit down.”

  She was in the back seat of the surrey. Julia and Tacy squeezed in on either side. Margaret, no doubt, was sitting with Papa and Mamma up in front.

  “Good-by! Surprise on Betsy!” Katie and Paul were calling from the Kellys’ hitching block. The surrey began to move.

  “We’re on Hill Street, going down,” thought Betsy. She resolved to keep track of where they were going. But she couldn’t. Right turn, left turn, down hill, up hill. She soon lost her way.

  “I give up. Where are we? And what’s it all about?”

  Tacy giggled and squeezed her hand.

  “We’re on our way to California to see Grandma,” said her mother.

  “We’re on our way to Washington to call on the Teddy Roosevelts,” said her father.

  “We’re almost there,” said Margaret. “Oh, Betsy! You’re going to be so surprised!”

  The clop clop of Old Mag’s hoofs stopped at last, and the surrey, too, halted. Betsy was helped out by agitated hands. She was led up a flight of stairs and across a level space and up another flight of stairs.

  “You’re fooling me!” she cried. “We’re back home again.”

  Everyone laughed uproariously.

  “You’re nor far wrong, at that,” Mr. Ray remarked.

  A door opened. There was a smell of fresh paint, of new wood, of the paste they stick wall paper on with. Betsy was pushed forward, turned around three times, and her blindfold taken off.

  She stood blinking in a small square room, empty of all but sunshine. A golden oak staircase went up at the right. The wall paper, a design of dark green leaves, was set in gold panels. The floor was oiled and shone with newness.

  “It’s the music room,” Julia cried. “The piano will stand right here, under the stairs.”

  Turning Betsy to the left they led her through an archway into another, larger room with a big window pushing out at the front. This was papered in lighter green with loops of roses for a border.

  “It’s the parlor,” everyone cried.

  Behind that, through another archway, was a room with a plate rail, papered above with pears and grapes. There was a fireplace in one corner, and a glittering gold-fringed lamp was suspended by a gold chain from the ceiling.

  “It’s the dining room,” came the shout.

  They pushed through a swinging door into a pantry, into a kitchen, empty and smelling of newness.

  Returning by a small door to the music room they climbed the golden oak stairs. There were two bedrooms at the front. Margaret rushed into the right-hand room.

  “Papa’s and Mamma’s room!” she cried.

  She rushed into the left-hand room which had a window seat.

  “Julia’s room!” she chanted.

  Back in the hall three doors remained unopened. Mrs. Ray opened the one at the head of the stairs.

  “This room is yours, Betsy,” she said.

  “And down the hall is a bathroom,” cried Julia. “A bathroom, Bettina! No more baths in a tub in the kitchen.”

  “And down at the end of the hall is my room,” said Margaret, sta
nding very straight. “I can arrange the bureau to suit myself.”

  “There’s a room on the third floor for the hired girl when we get one,” Mrs. Ray explained. “But now come in and see your room. It’s your very own.”

  “You don’t need to put up with me and my untidiness any more,” said Julia, putting her arm around Betsy.

  Everyone was talking very fast, perhaps because Betsy was saying so little. She had made a few exclamations of surprise, but for Betsy, who was usually such a talker, she was very quiet indeed.

  She looked around the generous room which was to be hers alone, with a great pang of loneliness for Julia who had always slept in the same room, in the very same bed, and for Margaret who when they had a hired girl slept in a small bed in the corner. She forced her lips into a smile and walked to one of the windows.

  She saw somebody’s house, some stranger’s dull ordinary house. Across from her window at home was Tacy’s house with tall trees behind it and the sunset behind that. She thought of the hill, the dear green hill where she and Tacy had picnicked ever since they were old enough to take their supper plates up to the bench.

  “I won’t cry! I won’t!” she thought, staring out the window. She forced the smile to her face again. It felt as though her lips were stretched tight against her teeth. But she must have managed a pretty fair imitation of a smile for her father who had been looking anxious smiled in return.

  “It’s ours, Betsy!” he said. “I’ve bought it. Mamma has her modern improvements at last.”

  Mrs. Ray danced across the empty room to hug him.

  “I’m going to take one bath after another all day long.”

  “But what about the new gas stove, Mrs. Ray?” asked Tacy. “You have to stop between baths long enough to cook on that.”

  “Oh, yes! My darling gas stove! No more horrid wood fires to build.”

  “And no more lamps to clean,” said Julia. “This house is lighted all over by gas. See the fixtures, Betsy?”

  “And it’s heated by a furnace,” Mr. Ray said. “No coal stove in the parlor.”

  Betsy thought her heart would break. Didn’t they know how much she loved that coal stove beside which she had read so many books while the tea kettle sang and the little flames leaped behind the isinglass window? Didn’t they know how she loved the yellow lamplight over the small cottage rooms? And she thought it was cozy to take baths in the kitchen beside the old wood-burning range! But her father’s face was so proud, and her mother’s so radiant…Julia and Margaret looked so happy…she couldn’t say a word. She glanced at Tacy. Tacy, she saw, understood. Tacy smiled now and said, “It’s just two blocks from the high school, Betsy. I’m going to stop in here before school and after school, every single day.”

  “Tacy is going to practically live here,” said Mrs. Ray. “Oh, my beautiful house! My beautiful new house!” And she hugged Mr. Ray again, and picked up her long skirts and waltzed around the empty room. Julia began to waltz with her, and Mr. Ray began to waltz in his stately way with Margaret, and Tacy caught Betsy. Everybody waltzed singing, “In the Good Old Summertime,” until they were laughing too hard either to waltz or to sing.

  Betsy laughed harder than anyone, and she and Tacy, hand in hand, raced all over the house. They looked into every nook and corner, and into the closets, and out the windows. And when they had finished they all went down to the restaurant for supper. There everyone talked at once about the new house, and about how the furniture would be arranged, and what new things would have to be bought.

  Betsy talked harder and faster than anyone, but inside she felt terrible. She felt as though she had fallen downstairs and had all her breath knocked out. She felt even worse than when she was visiting the Taggarts.

  4

  High Street

  IN A BREATHLESSLY SHORT space of time the Rays had moved from Hill Street where Betsy had lived all her life, to the new house at the windy junction of High Street and Plum.

  High Street, like Hill Street, was on a hill for Deep Valley was built upon the river bluffs. But where Hill Street ran up a hill like a finger pointing to the top, High Street ran lengthwise, one of a layer of streets of which the lowest was Front Street, parallel to the river.

  Two blocks from the Ray house, on the same side of the street, stood the red brick, turreted high school. Opposite were other houses with trees and shady lawns. Above them rows of rooftops indicated layers of streets, all the way to the top of High Street’s hill, where the sun came up behind a German Catholic College. It was different from the Hill Street hill, with its gifts of flowers and snow.

  Betsy’s room looked south to Plum Street. Behind Plum Street’s houses the road dipped into a ravine. There was a store where Margaret bought candy as Betsy and Tacy had once bought it at Mrs. Chubbock’s store. The road forked, at a watering trough, and one branch led off to Cemetery Hill; the other, with several jogs invisible from Betsy’s window, found its way to Hill Street.

  “At least,” Betsy thought with moody satisfaction, “I’m looking in the right direction.”

  The house sat proudly on a terrace. It was freshly painted, green. It looked at the moment a little bare but that wouldn’t last long. Mr. Ray was transplanting vines from the Hill Street house. The new home would be covered with the old familiar pattern by next summer. Mrs. Ray planned to hang baskets filled with daisies, geraniums and long trailing vines around the porch. Bridal wreath and hydrangeas would be set out on the lawn. This house had no garden, no orchard, no grape arbor; not even a buggy shed and barn. Old Mag lived in a barn Mr. Ray had rented down the street. Betsy missed the comfortable litter, the familiar smell of the barnyard. She wondered whether Old Mag wasn’t homesick, and she and Margaret secretly made frequent trips to see her, taking sugar.

  On moving day Betsy had been caught up into the excitement of the occasion. While men carried the furniture out of the yellow cottage, all the children and dogs of the neighborhood had looked on and rushed about. With scarcely a glance into the startled empty rooms, the family had hurried off in the surrey to reach High Street ahead of the dray.

  Tacy had gone along, bearing a cake from her mother, a bowl of potato salad from Mrs. Rivers, and various contributions from the other neighbors. Mr. Ray tucked a coffee pot under the surrey seat. They had picnicked gaily in the midst of the confusion, and the moment the piano was set down in the music room…some people would have called this room a hall, but Julia insisted upon music room…Julia sat down and began to trill “ni-po-tu-la-he….” There hadn’t been time or opportunity to feel lonely for Hill Street.

  But when the new house was comparatively settled and serene, the impact of the move struck Betsy with delayed force. Her mother was still blissfully busy with curtains and new purchases. Julia had joined the Girls’ Choir of St. John’s Episcopal Church which was directed by her singing teacher, Mrs. Poppy. She was busy with choir rehearsals, talking a language of vestments and te deums that Betsy did not even understand. She had also a new boy on the string, a solid, sober, well-dressed boy named Fred.

  Betsy turned to Margaret, but Margaret was six years her junior; Betsy with ankle-length skirts and turned-up braid felt foolish playing childish games. She went up to see Tacy often, but the windows of the empty yellow cottage stared like reproachful eyes. She took to writing long letters to Tib, and when she could find solitude adequate enough, she wrote poems, about childhood and Hill Street and Tacy. But there didn’t seem to be a place to write poems in the new house. Her Uncle Keith’s trunk was not in the spacious new room.

  Keith Warrington, her mother’s brother, was an actor. And his trunk, a real trouper’s trunk, flat-topped, four-square, had long served Betsy as a desk. It did not seem to belong in the new room, somehow. At Betsy’s own suggestion, on moving day, it had been put in the attic.

  “Papa and I will buy you a new desk,” her mother said absently. Betsy disliked the new desk in advance. Sometimes she climbed to the attic and stuffed smudged, scribbled pape
rs furtively into the trunk, standing forlorn in a dark corner. On such occasions she often cried a little; never much, for it always occurred to her how romantic it was to be crying about her trunk, and then she stopped, and couldn’t start again.

  “I’ll be glad when school begins,” she thought one day, sitting on the porch steps, looking across the street at older lawns and gardens where late summer flowers gave the look of fall.

  Her mother came out of the house just then, wearing the abstracted beatific look she had worn since moving day. Her red hair was tied up in a towel and she carried a hammer.

  She tip-toed out to the muddy lawn and squinted at the big front window.

  “I’m putting the new curtains up,” she explained. “Just wanted to get the effect. I’m fixing them in a stunning new way, crossed over, sort of. What I need for that window is a big brass bowl, with a palm in it, you know…” She stopped, sensing Betsy’s disinterest.

  Betsy spoke crossly. “I’ll be glad when school begins.”

  Mrs. Ray came out of her trance. She sat down on the steps, looking troubled.

  “I’m sure you will. You’ll be happier, too, when you get acquainted with some boys and girls. I don’t know why you haven’t already. You were always such a one for other children.”

  “There aren’t any around here,” said Betsy gloomily.

  “Why, there’s the Edwards boy.”

  Betsy could not deny it. The Rays’ back lawn ended in an alley, and across the alley was the Edwards’ barn. Their house looked the other way, fronting on the street below High Street, but it was as close as Tacy’s house had been. And there was an Edwards boy just about her age named Caleb. People called him Cab.

  “I don’t know him; he went to the other school. And he’s always busy with boys, playing ball,” Betsy said.

  “Go out and play with them.”

  “Mamma! You seem to think I’m no older than Margaret.”

  Mrs. Ray sighed. She looked at the stooped slender Betsy.

  “Sit up straight, Betsy,” she said in an irritated tone, but Betsy only stooped the more. Secretly she thought the stoop attractive. She did not consider it a stoop, but a droop, such as Miss Ethel Barrymore had. She had read in the newspapers about the Ethel Barrymore droop, and she hoped that the Betsy Ray droop was equally fascinating.