Betsy and the Great World / Betsy's Wedding Read online

  “This is the best thing in the world for my German,” Betsy consoled herself, and tried to pick out phrases. But the enterprise lagged.

  One girl looked German, another Italian, another was certainly Japanese. Which, Betsy wondered, was the aspiring prima donna? The artist, who was old and wrinkled, wore his hair to his shoulders, and a black Windsor tie. The other men were young with dark Slavic faces. They might be Bulgarians or Russians.

  The tablecloth was not too clean. The dishes were thick and the meal was light. That dinner to which outsiders came in was clearly the substantial meal of the day. Supper offered only cold meat, bread and butter, a bit of salad, stewed fruit, and tea.

  Fortunately, Betsy had lost her appetite. She was choked by that feeling of being an outsider. She cut the meat but couldn’t put it in her mouth. She buttered the bread but returned it to her plate. She dipped a spoon into the sauce but carried to her lips only the smallest portion, and even that went down untasted.

  One of the girls—the Italian—finished her supper and lighted a cigarette.

  “She smokes it as calmly as—as Papa smokes his cigars,” Betsy thought, shocked.

  She rose as soon as she dared. Walking with leisurely dignity she left the dining room, but she ran up the stairs to Mr. O’Farrell’s map on the wall.

  Her pillow was soaked with tears when she heard a light knock. She didn’t say “Come in,” hoping that whoever was there would go away. Instead the door opened, and the servant girl who had carried up her trunk entered with a coal scuttle. Betsy turned her wet face back to the pillow.

  But presently, after the rattle of coal subsided, Betsy felt a touch on her shoulder, and turned again. The servant girl stood looking down at her with a tender, pitying face.

  She ran to the bureau and came back with Mrs. Ray’s photograph. “Mutter!” she said, and thrust it into Betsy’s hands.

  She ran to the bureau again. This time she returned with Mr. Ray. “Vater!” she said.

  She rushed across for Tacy and Tib. “Schwester! Schwester!” she cried triumphantly, pushing them all into Betsy’s hands.

  Betsy sat up, dashing the tears from her eyes.

  “Nein! Nein!” She pointed to Margaret and to Julia. “There are my sisters. Da…ist…Schwesters.”

  The servant ran to get them, laughing.

  She brought Bob Barhydt’s picture. “Schatz!” she cried. But Betsy remembered this meant sweetheart, and shook her head firmly. That word brought only the image of Joe.

  “Nein! Nicht Schatz! Freund! Freund!” she answered.

  Both of them were laughing now.

  “Was heisst…” Betsy began, trying to ask, “What is your name?”

  “Johanna,” replied the maid, and added as though it were a nickname, “Hanni.”

  “Guten Tag, Hanni,” Betsy said.

  “Guten Tag, gnädiges Fräulein!” That meant “gracious Fräulein,” Betsy remembered. How nice!

  Hanni said something else with a rising inflection, but Betsy didn’t understand. Hanni opened her mouth and put her finger in it.

  “Ja, ja!” cried Betsy, bouncing off the featherbed. “Ja, I am hungry, très hungry. Ich habe Hunger.”

  Hanni beamed.

  She rushed out of the room and Betsy jumped up and washed her face. She took down her hair and braided it, and sat down smiling beside the tile stove which was crackling now with heat.

  “I just love this stove,” she thought. “It belongs in a fairy tale, like that house across the street. And what a nice girl!”

  Presently Hanni came back with a tray full of cold meat, bread and butter, salad, stewed fruit, and tea…everything there had been at supper, and more! Pickles and jam!

  Betsy ate ravenously while Hanni replaced the pictures, turned back Betsy’s bed, turned over the wet pillow, and plumped it up invitingly.

  She picked up her coal scuttle at last and stood in the doorway, smiling.

  “Gute Nacht, Fräulein.”

  “Gute Nacht, Hanni,” Betsy answered. But just “Good night” wasn’t enough. She looked up from her bread and jam with grateful shining eyes.

  “Ich liebe dich, Hanni!” she cried.

  And Hanni chuckled. “Amerikanische!” she said.

  Betsy could hear her chuckling as she hurried down the hall.

  10

  Betsy Makes a Friend

  THE NEXT MORNING, of course, Betsy made a list. Lists were always her comfort. For years she had made lists of books she must read, good habits she must acquire, things she must do to make herself prettier—like brushing her hair a hundred strokes at night, and manicuring her fingernails, and doing calisthenics before an open window in the morning. (That one hadn’t lasted long.)

  It was fun making this list, sitting in bed with her breakfast tray on her lap…hot chocolate, crisp hard rolls, and a pat of butter. Hanni had brought it to her after closing the windows and pushing back the velvet draperies. Betsy felt like a heroine in one of her own stories; their maids always awakened them that way.

  1. Learn the darn money.

  2. Study German. (You’ve forgotten all you knew.)

  3. Buy a map and learn the city—from end to end, as you told Papa you would.

  4. Read the history of Bavaria. You must have it for background.

  5. Go to the opera. (You didn’t stay in Madeira because Munich is such a center for music and art???)

  6. Go to the art galleries. (Same reason.)

  7. Write!

  Full of enthusiasm, she planned a schedule. First, each morning, she would have her bath, and then write until noon. After the midday dinner she would go out and learn the city. She would go to the galleries, museums, and churches. She would have coffee out—for atmosphere.

  “Then I’ll come home and study German and read Bavarian history. And after supper…” she tried not to remember the look of that dining room…“I’ll write my diary-letter, except when I go to the opera or concerts.”

  It sounded delightfully stimulating. Having finished her breakfast and tacked the list beneath Mr. O’Farrell’s map, she rang for Hanni and said, “Bad, bitte.”

  She had her towel over her arm and her soap in her hand. That ought to make it clear, Betsy thought, that she expected a tub bath. But Hanni said, “Ja, ja, Fräulein,” as before, and came rushing back with a jug of hot water again.

  Betsy felt disgruntled. A sponge bath didn’t take the place of a tub. It simply didn’t! She must get out her German dictionary and make it clear that she wanted her bath in a tub. Tub! What the dickens was the word for “tub”?

  “I’ll ask Fräulein Minnie,” Betsy decided. When she was dressed she sat down importantly at the marvelous desk.

  It was pleasant to look over at the picture-book house and start a story. What should it be about? If it was to have an author in it, she had seen an author. If it concerned a New York debutante, she knew two ladies’ maids. Not able to decide between an author and a debutante, Betsy made her heroine a woman of mystery. She wrote:

  “Meet Miss So and So.”

  A cute title, she remarked judicially.

  Hanni came in to clean, and Betsy tried to explain that she would like that work done early before she started writing. She picked up her pen and wrote in the air. She pointed to a book.

  “Ich verstehe,” said Hanni, nodding eagerly, and tiptoed about, glancing at Betsy now and then with admiring awe. Evidently, thought Betsy, tickled, she wasn’t the first writer to live at the Pension Geiger.

  Going into Frau Geiger’s office later (looking unsuccessfully for Fräulein Minnie to take up the subject of baths), Betsy met two officers coming out, resplendent in their blue and scarlet, with clanking swords. One was black haired, ugly, and thick-set; the other was young with blond mustaches twisted into peaks. He gave her a languishing look.

  “I didn’t suppose we had any of those gorgeous creatures here,” thought Betsy, and looked for them at that one-thirty dinner to which Fräulein Minnie had said s
o many outsiders came. But they weren’t there, that day or any other. Yet she saw them occasionally in the halls.

  There was another mystery that grew as the days went by. At dinner, the two small tables in the dining room were occupied. Betsy still sat at the large table, listening in vain for the English Fräulein Minnie had promised, but the people at the small tables puzzled her.

  Each sat by herself and neither spoke to the people at the big table. They bowed coming in, and said “Mahlzeit” going out. Everyone did that and Betsy soon learned to do it, too. But except for these formalities the two held themselves aloof.

  One was a pleasant-faced lady in black who eavesdropped cheerfully and smiled when the people at the big table laughed. The other, at Betsy’s first dinner, was a girl of about her own age with a most disdainful expression.

  She was tall but delicately built, with black hair and eyes and a pale soft skin—like white rose petals, Betsy thought. She wore a gray suit, a white blouse, and a crisp black straw hat. White gloves lay beside her purse. Everything about her was fresh and immaculate.

  “But what a superior manner!” thought Betsy, progressing through noodle soup, stewed meat with dumplings, Brussels sprouts, hot potato salad, pudding with chocolate sauce, and a small side-dish of stewed fruit such as she had had the night before. This was the first thing served and the last taken away.

  After her meal the tall girl stood up, murmuring “Mahlzeit.” She walked out, erect and arrogant, and when she was gone, everyone started talking at once in scornful voices.

  The next day, to Betsy’s disappointment, the girl’s table was occupied by a dingy woman in a shapeless veil-swathed hat and a worn suit with a soiled lace blouse beneath. Her dyed hair needed re-doing. Her skin had blotches and her nails were ill-kept.

  The following day the tall exquisite girl was back. After that, she and the dingy woman occupied the table on alternate days. It was certainly a mystery.

  “Story material!” Betsy thought, as she too said “Mahlzeit” (whatever that meant!) and left on her afternoon rounds.

  She followed her schedule rigidly—except for the tub bath which she had not yet achieved. Hanni continued to bring only a jug of hot water and Fräulein Minnie forgot all her English whenever Betsy mentioned tubs. After the morning’s writing, and her dinner, Betsy set out briskly, armed with camera, notebook, pencils, and Complete Pocket Guide. But it was a false briskness. In spite of her list, in spite even of Hanni, she was miserably homesick again.

  Whether the sun shone or went under a cloud, whether it rained or snowed, Munich was the same to Betsy. She read in her guidebook that this was one of the most charming capitals of Europe, that Ludwig the First had laid it out in magnificent avenues and decorated it with copies of famous buildings and statues in Greece and Italy. Betsy didn’t care.

  The city stood on the green Isar, she read—that “Isar, rolling rapidly” of Campbell’s poem. The river was bordered by landscaped paths, spanned by snowy bridges. Betsy walked the paths and bridges, aching for the Mississippi.

  She discovered a park called the English Gardens. Miles long, it was like a tract of country put down in the middle of the city. It had a stream, a lake, waterfalls. She sat on a bench and watched the people.

  There were whole families together, enjoying the February sun. There were lovers with their arms about each other, and schoolgirls in giggling pairs, artists in soft hats, and those young men she had noticed before wearing colored caps. And of course there were soldiers, soldiers everywhere.

  “What do they want all the soldiers for?” thought Betsy. “There isn’t any war.”

  There were almost as many dogs as soldiers—aristocrats led by chains, and curs bounding joyously ahead of their owners. Bicycles, too, crowded the paths.

  “This park would be nice if Tacy were here,” Betsy thought wistfully.

  She strolled past the Royal Palace and loitered in its arcaded garden. She fed the pigeons in front of the Hall of the Fieldmarshals, but she felt self-conscious, doing it alone. She hunted up the Frauenkirche, Church of Our Lady, whose twin towers she had seen on the first day. This was to Munich what the Eiffel Tower was to Paris, she read. It was nothing to Betsy. But she sent flocks of post cards telling her friends that it was simply fascinating.

  Americans were everywhere—smartly dressed, immersed in guidebooks, chattering. Some of them wore small American flags. They were all in twos or threes or fours and made Betsy feel lonelier than ever.

  “I wander lonely as a cloud,” she paraphrased Wordsworth, but she couldn’t manage a smile. She felt desolate, even in the coffee houses. Oh, for Tib!

  The guidebook made much of these convivial places, and of the overflowing beer halls. “Gemütlich,” it said, was the word for München, as the Germans called their city.

  “Gemütlich!” That meant something like…cozy, which Mr. Brown had used in connection with the city. If there was anything Munich wasn’t, Betsy thought bitterly, it was gemütlich!

  Walking its streets was only better than being alone in her silent little room—at twilight when that din of practising began. The prima donna was learning Madame Butterfly, one of Julia’s roles. The familiar arias twisted Betsy’s heart.

  She still did not know which girl was the prima donna. The Italian? The Japanese? The plain little German with crimped hair? She looked too small, but Julia was small, and this girl carried herself like a singer.

  In the evenings Betsy studied German fiercely.

  “Ich bin, du bist, er ist…”

  And she studied the history of Bavaria. It was quite distinct from Germany, she found, but its troops were at the Emperor’s command. That Ludwig the First who had made Munich so beautiful had become infatuated with a Spanish dancer, Lola Montez. He had built her a palace and made her a countess. Finally, the people rebelled. She was obliged to flee, and Ludwig had to give up his throne. Not very edifying, Betsy thought.

  She wrote notes to her Columbic friends and glowing letters home. She answered flippantly Margaret’s reports on the stories she was sending out.

  “It’s too bad Colliers didn’t appreciate ‘Emma.’ But let’s be magnanimous and give them a chance at ‘The Girl with Lavender Eyes.’ You might try ‘Emma’ on Ainslee’s next.”

  She stretched the evenings out and out, for bedtime was a time to weep.

  Hanni always managed to drop in. She wasn’t much older than Betsy but she was as tender as a mother.

  “Fraulein Ray hat Heimweh,” she would say, bringing the family pictures one by one, and Joe Willard’s picture—Betsy had found one pasted in a kodak book, and had steamed it off and put it in a frame.

  On Sunday Betsy went to the American Church. But the hymns, the dear familiar ritual, reduced her to tears and she rushed out without even speaking to the rector.

  A day or two later she returned, for she had noticed a book-lined library. Here, over tea and toast, you could read American magazines, and the Paris edition of the New York Herald. She went there the next day and the next.

  “But I didn’t come to Munich to read the Saturday Evening Post!” Betsy told herself furiously, and rushed outdoors again.

  She went to the Hoftheatre and bought tickets for Lohengrin and Tannhäuser. She plodded through the galleries, beginning with the Old Pinakothek.

  “But I don’t know what to look for in these paintings,” she thought despairingly, roaming past Raphael, Titian, Van Dyck, Rubens—The guidebook starred Rubens. She stared at his gigantic rosy figures.

  “They’re certainly fat!” she thought.

  The New Pinakothek meant even less and the building wasn’t heated. The Glyptothek had mostly sculpture, white and cold. In the Shack Gallery she found one painting she really liked.

  A barefoot boy had thrown himself down on a hilltop. The sky was intensely blue, the grass was starred with flowers, and the boy was happily relaxed, one arm thrown over his eyes.

  He reminded Betsy of herself and Tacy and Tib on the Bi
g Hill back in Deep Valley. She could remember the warmth of the sunshine, the smell of hot grass, the hum of insects.

  She bought a print of the Shepherd Boy—by Lenbach, her guidebook said—and put it up in her room. She loved it almost as much as Mr. O’Farrell’s map.

  Every night Betsy looked at that map and resolved to start home on the morrow. Every morning she decided to stick it out another day. But as though the situation weren’t bad enough already, something happened to make it worse.

  The street crowds began to grow fantastic. People were powdered, painted, masked; some were in costume. She ran into clowns, American Indians, court ladies, and girls in baggy trousers such as Betsy had seen in Algiers. Children were brownies and fairies. Even the dogs (and there were thousands of dogs, mostly squatty little dachshunds) had paper ruffs. Old men and women were selling bags of confetti. The air twinkled with dancing colored flakes.

  It was the Carnival, Fräulein Minnie explained. It would last until Ash Wednesday. She herself had a shepherdess costume, she added, smiling broadly.

  A carnival! But for a carnival…you needed to feel gay. It was awful if you didn’t. And Betsy felt increasingly awful as the city turned into one huge masquerade ball. The crowds were laughing, shouting. They were orderly crowds, just childishly merry. But how could you be merry all alone?

  Betsy tried. After half a dozen masks had showered her with confetti, she bought a bag and threw a handful. She didn’t throw another. It was no good…

  Giving her bag to a diminutive cowboy, she turned abruptly and walked toward the pension. She went faster and faster. She must, she must get home before she cried.

  But back in her room at last, she didn’t cry. She sat down and dropped her face despairingly into her hands.

  “What I need is some friends,” she said aloud.

  She had never really appreciated friends before. Of course, she had always had them. Wonderful friends back in Deep Valley—Tacy…Tib…Carney. And at the University, Effie and Bob and the rest. She had always been surrounded with friends. She had taken them for granted. Never again, she thought, would she take friends for granted.