Betsy and the Great World / Betsy's Wedding Page 13

  “Do you like clothes?” Betsy asked, admiring a floppy flower-trimmed hat. She loved that picturesque kind.

  “I have never picked out my own clothes. My aunt always bought what was suitable for us. It might be very interesting to make a study of one’s own…type.”

  “You’re the aristocratic type,” Betsy volunteered. “I’ve never picked out my clothes either. My mother loved having three daughters to shop for. You must come up to my room and see my family.”

  “I’d like to, very much. Would you…” Helena’s pale face flushed again. “I’m going to hear Gabrilowitsch, the pianist, Sunday night. Would you care to go?”

  “I’d love it. Where do I go to get a ticket?” Betsy looked at her watch. “See here!” she said. “I’m meeting Tilda, Fräulein Dienemann, for coffee. I want you to get to know her. Won’t you join us?”

  “Thank you, but I really couldn’t.” In an instant the girl was stiff and cool again.

  “I’m meeting her at the Hall of the Fieldmarshals. We always meet there because we can feed the pigeons if either of us has to wait.”

  “I’m sorry. I must go.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” said Betsy, perplexed. “You can get a tram right here.”

  “I never take trams.”

  “You never take trams?” Betsy was astonished. How could anyone not take trams? And the streetcars in Munich were particularly nice. They were painted Bavarian blue, and the conductor lifted his cap and wished you good morning when you got on, and lifted it again and bade you farewell when you got off.

  There was an awkward pause. Then Helena smiled, and that made her look sweet and friendly again. “I have so enjoyed being with you. And I’ll pick up your ticket for Gabrilowitsch. Good-by…Betsy.”

  After coffee Betsy told Tilda about her. “I’ve been wondering why she came to dinner only every other day. Her father is ill; she and her mother can’t leave him alone.”

  “So she can’t leave her father!” Betsy was surprised to see Tilda’s piquant face harden. “Ask Fräulein Minnie!” she added satirically.

  “Why? What do you mean?”

  “Frau von Wandersee gives Minnie English lessons to pay for one dinner a day, and she and her daughter take turns eating it…because they like to eat.”

  Tilda was speaking German and Betsy was sure she had not understood. But when the dictionaries were produced, the remark remained the same.

  “She doesn’t seem poor,” Betsy replied thoughtfully. “And those cousins she’s lived with all her life were certainly rich. But poor or not, she’s awfully nice. Let’s include her in some of our bats.” Tilda had learned the word “bat,” a favorite with Betsy.

  “She wouldn’t go,” Tilda replied coldly.

  “Why not?”

  “Because she’s a snob.”

  They paused on a street corner over their dictionary, to put “snob” into English.

  She was much more of a snob than the princess, Tilda went on angrily.

  “The princess? What princess?”

  The woman in black at the other small table was a princess, Tilda said. But she was very pleasant. The girl was unbearable, and she was only a baroness.

  Again Betsy was sure she had misunderstood. “Who’s a baroness? Not Fräulein von Wandersee?”

  “She’s the Baroness von Wandersee.”

  Betsy was flabbergasted.

  “Heavens and earth!” she said, and began to laugh. “Well, I told her she looked aristocratic!” But Tilda didn’t smile, and Betsy sobered. Speaking slowly, in their mixture of tongues, she assured Tilda that Helena was not snobbish at all. She was lonely; she would be delighted to go about with them.

  Tilda snorted.

  They had reached the pension, and when they entered the courtyard they saw Frau Geiger standing in the doorway. Fräulein Minnie was behind her. The two called out in agitated voices.

  “What is it? What has happened?” Betsy asked, thinking wildly of a cable.

  It was her bath!

  The officers had gone out, Fräulein Minnie explained while Frau Geiger and Tilda jabbered in German. They were going to a dinner, to a most important banquet. This was her chance.

  Elated, Betsy pelted up the stairs, Tilda behind her. They rushed into Betsy’s room and Betsy undressed swiftly. She screwed her hair into a knot. She put on her cherry-red bathrobe.

  Hanni knocked with a pile of towels, although Betsy had plenty of towels already. Tilda ran down to her room for a bottle of cologne. Laden with towels, wash cloth, soap, bath salts, and cologne, Betsy stepped into the hall.

  A sizable crowd had gathered. The Japanese girl said something in German to Tilda who exclaimed, “Ach, lieber Gott!”

  “What did she say?” Betsy demanded.

  The poet, Tilda replied, had taken a bath one time. He had told Susuki about it. When he came out, an enraged officer was lying in wait.

  “You can’t scare me!” Betsy cried and raced down the corridor, chanting,

  “Half a league, half a league,

  Half a league onward,

  All in the valley of Death

  Rode the six hundred…”

  There weren’t quite six hundred, but her bodyguard included all the servants, Frau Geiger, Fräulein Minnie, Tilda, the Italian artist, the little Japanese.

  On they went, downstairs and through a door, to the strange sacred wing of the officers. They escorted Betsy to the bathroom itself. There, everyone but Hanni left her.

  A round heater had been lighted, but the tub was filled with boots and swords.

  “Those officers don’t appreciate their blessings,” Betsy thought as Hanni pulled out the grim impedimenta and attacked the dusty tin catchall. There were even cobwebs in it!

  Hanni scrubbed, and the heater roared and gurgled. Betsy glanced at it apprehensively, afraid it would explode. At last the water was drawn, and Hanni backed out. She would wait in the hall, she said.

  “I will be here, Fräulein. I will not leave you.”

  “Und I am here,” called Tilda.

  Betsy peeped out. Fräulein Minnie, her eyes popping, stood guard at the door of the wing. “And Frau Geiger,” Minnie called, “is waiting at the outer door…in case…”

  But that “in case” was too awful to contemplate. Betsy closed the door.

  The heater had done its work too well. And Hanni in her excitement had let only hot water run. The cold water came in a feeble trickle. Betsy tested it with a finger, with a toe. She dumped in rose geranium bath salts. At last she was able to step in herself.

  Betsy loved baths. She soaped luxuriously, and then lay back in the hot scented water. Her nervousness receded and she was flooded with peace. She lay dreaming. Should she go to Rome next? To Paris?

  “Fräulein! Fräulein!” Hanni called.

  Betsy started upright.

  “The officers!” This was Fräulein Minnie’s voice. “They are coming back!”

  “But why? What for?” They must have forgotten a sword or something, Betsy thought. Perhaps one of the very swords she was stepping over now as she climbed out. She rubbed herself frantically.

  “Hurry! Make haste!” Frau Geiger was delaying them, Fräulein Minnie explained, her voice shaking with fright.

  Betsy hurried into the cherry-red bathrobe. Gathering up towels, wash cloth, soap, bath salts, and cologne, she opened the door. A gust of warm perfumed air came with her.

  With Hanni scurrying ahead she got safely to the door leading from the wing to the main corridor. But there she met the officers. She met them face to face—the thick-set ugly one and his handsome blond companion!

  Behind them stood Frau Geiger, her face stricken. Fräulein Minnie was a picture of terror and Hanni had that look Betsy had seen before, of a dog who has been ill-treated. Tilda had disappeared.

  As for Betsy, there was no denying her guilt. The narrow passageway smelled of rose geranium, her hair was screwed into a knob, and her face, she knew, was moistly pink. In spite of herself
, Betsy broke into a smile.

  The young lieutenant who had ogled her so vainly smiled back in astonished delight. The dark, ill-natured-looking captain smiled, too. Both officers clicked their heels together. They bowed from the waist.

  Betsy acknowledged this salute as graciously as she could, with soap, bath salts, and cologne in her hands and towels dripping from her arm. She trailed her cherry-red robe triumphantly up the stairs.

  Tilda was trembling in a corner of the room.

  “Look at me!” Betsy cried, revolving proudly. “Look at me! I have had a bath!”

  12

  There’s Not a Crowd

  AT THE CONCERT, BETSY planned, she would see what she could do about bringing Tilda and Helena together. Tilda’s attitude was most discouraging. She not only disliked the young baroness; she seemed stubbornly sure that Helena would never accept her as a friend. But how could that possibly be?

  Tilda was engaging, well bred, well educated—her interests extended far beyond music. If money mattered—her father was a prosperous manufacturer. She didn’t have a title, of course, but neither did Betsy. Betsy liked Helena. She didn’t like her arrogance, but it was easier to forgive now that she knew Helena’s story.

  “Eating dinner only every other day! When she’s a baroness, too!”

  Betsy had always thought she would be overwhelmed with romantic excitement by a title, but she wasn’t. The baroness was just a nice girl whom she liked and wished she could help.

  She must make Helena and Tilda and herself into a threesome, she decided. Three made a crowd, in more ways than the old adage indicated. It made a Crowd.

  “Look at Tacy and Tib and me!” Betsy argued.

  She thought about it all through the concert while the Polish Gabrilowitsch with dazzling skill played Beethoven, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and his pretty wife, once Clara Clemens, sang German songs. It was thrilling to be seeing Mark Twain’s daughter.

  Betsy planned to begin her campaign on the walk home, but Helena’s mother was waiting, wearing the same rusty veil-swathed hat, the same worn suit, the same soiled blouse. “Doesn’t she ever wash it?” Betsy wondered.

  She didn’t like Frau von Wandersee. Her manner and her soft, purring voice were both insincere. On the walk home she asked questions about the concert…but not the music. She was curious to know what celebrities and society figures had attended. Had Betsy known any of them?

  “Won’t you sit at my table tomorrow?” she asked Betsy when they parted. “I should like to get to know you. My daughter is happy to have found a new friend.”

  “So am I,” Betsy answered. “I’ve found two wonderful friends at the Geiger. Helena, and Tilda Dienemann.”

  There was no answer from Helena or her mother.

  The following day, to Tilda’s good-humored scorn, Betsy did eat dinner with Frau von Wandersee and, more than ever, Betsy did not like her. She had a sly way of manoeuvring the conversation to bring out that her husband had once been wealthy, that the cousins with whom Helena had been raised were countesses and lived in a castle.

  All through dinner Betsy had the feeling that Helena’s mother was trying to find out how much money she had. Every question she asked about Betsy, or anyone else, bore on financial standing. Yet she made it clear that Helena would never play the piano professionally, and that her husband did nothing at all.

  “How can she love money so much and yet despise the good hard work which earns it?” Betsy wondered.

  The next day Helena and Betsy made a plan to visit the National Museum. This time Betsy didn’t suggest meeting Tilda.

  “And afterward, let’s go out for coffee,” she said. For a coffee table with its atmosphere of leisure and relaxation would be ideal for a talk.

  “I’m sorry. I never go into a coffee house.”

  This was even more amazing than the tram. “But, Helena! They’re such fun! And we’ll need nourishment after the museum.”

  “Mother will make us a little lunch,” Helena replied. “If it isn’t too cold we can eat it outdoors. There are some quite secluded places in the Gardens.”

  The National Museum was near the English Gardens. A rambling conglomeration of turrets, wings, arcades, and courtyards, it housed a renowned collection of Bavarian antiques.

  “You’ll love it, Betsy. Each room illustrates a period. They run from the Stone Age to the death of King Ludwig the Second. Let’s go through them in order!”

  “Oh, you Germans!” Betsy teased. “Such thoroughness! You know, don’t you, that there are over a hundred rooms?” But she agreed and they passed through the Prehistoric Ages and the Roman invasion of Bavarian soil before they found themselves ready for Helena’s lunch.

  It was very dainty, with small linen napkins lying on top, each sandwich wrapped separately, and fresh cookies beneath. And they were able to eat in the Gardens for the sun was very warm. Buds were swelling; and robins, sounding just like those in Minnesota, were singing with abandon.

  “Tilda would adore this,” Betsy plunged. “You must get to know her, Helena. The three of us can have such good times.”

  The young baroness was silent for a moment. Then she said in a strained voice, “Betsy, I may as well tell you. We Europeans feel differently than you Americans do about some things. Fräulein Dienemann may be very nice but she isn’t in my world and never could be.”

  “Why not?” Betsy asked. “She’s studying music, just as you are.”

  Helena paused. “Betsy,” she said, “I’ll be frank. Her father is in trade.”

  Betsy burst out laughing. It was hard to take this remark seriously, but Helena looked as though she had just announced that Tilda’s father was a murderer.

  “Forgive me!” Betsy said. “It isn’t funny, really. You may want to break off our friendship. My father is in trade. He runs a shoe store.”

  “I expected he did something like that,” Helena answered calmly. “But you are an American.”

  “Do you really mean that you can associate with me and yet you can’t associate with Tilda?”

  “That is exactly what I mean,” said Helena frigidly.

  Betsy was angry. In their short friendship, she had come to love Tilda. If she had to choose, she would certainly choose Tilda. It might be best to choose now, and be done with it.

  But when she looked up she saw something in Helena’s face. It was an almost pleading expression. She was too proud to say, “Betsy, I’m lonely.” But Betsy saw it shining in her eyes. And Betsy had learned since her trip started what it meant to be lonely. She reached over and gave Helena’s hand a quick warm pressure.

  “I wish you’d change your mind,” she said. “But whether you do or not, you and I are friends. You must let me fix the sandwiches sometimes.”

  “Oh, no!” said Helena. “We have a kitchen.” She turned her head and Betsy knew she was winking tears away.

  “Helena,” asked Betsy, “why do you object to a perfectly respectable coffee house?”

  “For one in my station,” Helena answered stiffly, “it is not suitable. If I could afford a private room at a fine hotel, yes. But I could not eat with common people.”

  “And the tram?” asked Betsy gently.

  “If I can’t have a private carriage, I prefer to walk.” Now tears rushed into Helena’s eyes too freely for her to conceal them. She touched them with a snowy handkerchief.

  “Betsy,” she said, “you don’t know what it is like to be in my station and be poor. At the castle I had my own bedroom, my own sitting room and bath, my maid. There was a coachman to take us everywhere.”

  “Do you like being in Munich?”

  Helena spoke in a low voice. “It is wonderful to be with someone who loves me. My aunt was kind but I never came first. With my mother, I come first.”

  She did not refer to her father.

  Betsy took her hand again and squeezed it. A feeling of thankfulness welled up in her at her decision not to choose.

  And so Betsy’s days came to be di
vided between Helena and Tilda. Tilda didn’t mind. She only joked a little about decayed aristocracy, and when Betsy said that Helena was nice, Tilda made a face.

  Betsy and Tilda began on the galleries, and the Old Pinakothek was very different for Betsy with Tilda beside her. The German and Netherlandish pictures were the ones to study here, Tilda said—the Holbeins, the Dürers.

  “The most important picture in the Pinakothek is Albrecht Dürer’s portrait of himself.”

  She told Betsy stories about the Nuremberg goldsmith’s apprentice who had made himself Germany’s first great painter. Betsy looked at his self-portrait respectfully but she liked best Van Dyck’s “Flight into Egypt.” She bought a print of that and put it up beside Lenbach’s “Shepherd Boy.”

  Tilda took her to an exhibition of ultra-modern paintings. She was interested in everything—like Julia and Joe, thought Betsy, watching her squint with lively curiosity at all the cubes and angles. Betsy remembered the Columbic dinner table, and how she had wished she knew something about the new art movements. She tried to understand these Cubist and Futurist pieces, but they seemed perfectly crazy.

  They dropped into churches and sometimes Tilda explained the architecture. Often in the candlelit dimness they just knelt to pray.

  Once they looked through an iron fence into a small enclosure with a shrine and two rows of graves. It had been a cemetery for some monks, Tilda said. Late sunlight lay on the plain black crosses, and green shoots of crocuses were pushing up from the graves. It was strange, thought Betsy, the stillness in there, when the world was so giddy with spring.

  She did not speak, but Tilda pressed her arm.

  “The spring…even there,” she whispered.

  One day they visited the golden Angel of Peace, poised atop a column beside the Isar, and afterward, they scrambled down to the river where children were wading and sailing boats. Betsy knew just the squashy, gritty, muddy, tired loveliness they felt. She remembered wading in the streams of melted snow that ran down the Big Hill.

  “I wish I could go wading.”

  “I, also.”

  “I hate growing up.”