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

And they fell into silence.

  They made a trip to the gigantic statue of Bavaria and ascended into her head to get the view. That night Tilda got to talking about Bavarian history.

  They always ate and made tea on the alcohol lamp before going to bed. This was quite in the German tradition, Tilda said. Germans in their homes ate six meals a day: breakfast, second breakfast, dinner, afternoon coffee, supper, and in the evening tea or beer with sandwiches and kuchen. Betsy, in the cherry-red bathrobe, and Tilda in a blue one, feasted merrily.

  The second King Ludwig (a dull Maximilian came in between) had been gloriously mad, Tilda said. He was dark and very handsome. On top of the Royal Residence in Munich he built a winter garden where, clad in silver armor, he used to float in a swan boat like Lohengrin’s. This mad Ludwig was the patron of Wagner.

  He built fabulous castles in lonely mountain spots. They often had French salons and gardens, for he was in love with Marie Antoinette.

  “But, Tilda! She was beheaded before he was born.”

  “He loffed her,” Tilda declared.

  He used to ride through the mountains in a carriage drawn by four white horses. In the winter his golden sleigh was shaped like a swan. He would drive all night through snow and storm. The villagers in their beds would hear him rushing by. Or they caught glimpses of him, his face pale, his eyes blazing under a diamond-studded cap.

  “Tilda! You’re scaring me!” But Tilda kept right on.

  The peasants loved him, she said, in spite of his extravagances, and when he died…

  “What did he die of?” Betsy interrupted.

  He drowned himself, Tilda answered, because he was forced to abdicate. The peasants made a hero of him then. To this day young mountaineers wore his picture in their hats.

  “There’s a song about him,” she added, and began to hum it. “König Ludwig der Zweite…”

  “It’s like a fairy tale,” said Betsy. “A dark sort of fairy tale…” She paused uncertainly but Tilda understood.

  “Ja,” she agreed. “It is of the dark Bavarian mountains!”

  History was less thrilling, more accurate, and much more arduously imbibed going through the National Museum with Helena. They proceeded slowly through relics of the Early Church, Guilds, the Reformation. Betsy liked the Knight Errantry room. It was lined with suits of armor, and there were life-sized models of armored men on horseback. She thought how much Joe would enjoy it.

  Helena explained everything exhaustively. She was very well educated. In addition to German and English, she spoke French, Italian, and Spanish.

  “You and Tilda make me feel so ignorant,” Betsy said. She never lost a chance to bring Tilda’s name into the conversation, but Helena always coolly changed the subject.

  On rainy days they took their afternoon sandwiches in damp and drafty halls. But there were rewards. Betsy got Helena to talking about the castle in which she had lived…the powdered servants in livery, bowing on the terrace; the great entrance hall which was a bower of growing plants with statues gleaming through; Englander, her riding horse. Listening was like reading the beginning of a novel.

  Frau von Wandersee took them to hear the orchestras. The concert halls were usually crowded with tables. During the music, the people were reverently silent, but when it stopped, everyone started smoking and eating and drinking beer.

  Betsy was delighted one day when Tilda offered her concert tickets which she was unable to use. She rushed off eagerly to the von Wandersee apartment.

  She had never been there before, and at first she wondered whether she had made a mistake. It was such a shabby place with dirty stairs and hall. But she found the card of the Baron von Wandersee tacked over the door.

  His wife answered the bell. She was wearing a soiled bathrobe, and she didn’t ask Betsy in. In fact, she pulled the door half shut behind her. Speaking in her usual purring voice, she said that Helena was out, but a strong odor of alcohol made Betsy suspect that the baron was in.

  “Is that why Helena never mentions her father?” Betsy wondered. She felt sick inside.

  Frau von Wandersee refused the tickets, and Betsy got away quickly. A few days later Helena, head high, told her that they would be moving soon.

  “We have had such trouble finding a pleasant apartment. We’ve moved three times,” she said.

  Museums, galleries, concerts were all very well, but Betsy liked the opera best. She had awaited her first one with some trepidation. Julia loved opera so much, and had chosen it for her career. How awful, Betsy thought, if she didn’t like it! But she liked it beyond words.

  She went to the Hoftheatre straight from afternoon coffee, for the operas began early, sometimes as early as six. There was always a line of people waiting for “standing places”—shabby, humble-looking people, and soldiers, and students. Yet inside, the great auditorium glittered and shimmered with fashion. Everybody went to the opera in Munich.

  The conductor was greeted with thunderous applause but there was a solemn silence when the lights dimmed. Betsy began to cry as soon as the overture started, and she never knew quite when she stopped. The music carried her off on a golden tide.

  She was a Wagnerite from the moment when Lohengrin, godlike in silver armor, floated on stage in his swan boat.

  “I don’t blame the Mad King for trying it,” she thought, munching sausages in a crowded lunchroom during the intermission. “I’d like to myself.”

  This opera and Tannhäuser—with its mountain castle and shrine and the steep dark path down which the pilgrims marched, made her think of Tilda’s stories.

  Tilda always waited up for her, and they talked the opera over while Betsy ate her supper. Hanni brought it to her whenever she came in; that was the custom.

  “You must hear something besides Wagner,” Tilda said, and Betsy bought tickets for Carmen, Madame Butterfly, The Barber of Seville. She slipped in Die Meistersinger, too. She bought these tickets early Sunday morning when the cheap seats went on sale.

  “You won’t be a Münchener until you have stood in line with the crowd on Sunday morning,” Tilda said. So Betsy got there at eight, but there were two or three hundred ahead of her. Some people stood from Saturday midnight on. Others hired street porters who would stand for them for a mark.

  Betsy considered herself quite a Münchener now. She had seen the plain princesses going to church, and the King and Queen in a gala street procession, with martial music and gentlemen and ladies-in-waiting in carriages of vivid light blue. The royal carriage was drawn by eight black horses.

  The King and Queen were old and dull. They hardly acknowledged the cheers of the crowd, just smiled in an absent-minded way. Nevertheless, when the Queen threw her bouquet, Betsy scrambled for some violets.

  “I want to send them to Margaret,” she told Tilda sheepishly.

  On Sunday Betsy went to the American Church; now she knew the rector and his wife. Afterward she crossed to the Hall of the Fieldmarshals for the band concert, when all Munich promenaded. She met Tilda, who was a Lutheran, or Helena, who was a Catholic (but never both of them together), and they promenaded like true Müncheners.

  And sometimes, also in München fashion, Betsy took her writing to a coffee house. It was “The Disappearing Dancer,” now, for “Meet Miss So and So” had gone on its way to Margaret. Scribbling with a coffee cup beside her, she flattered herself that impressionable American tourists would write home that they had seen an authoress composing a masterpiece in public.

  Betsy was devoted to the coffee houses. But she was disturbed by the little-boy waiters, wearing diminutive dress suits and running about with heavy trays. There was too much child labor in Munich. She could not forget that yellow-haired little girl buttoning and unbuttoning shoes, nor a pale little boy she had seen in a watch shop. Wearing an apron, bent over some delicate work, he had looked like a little old man.

  She didn’t like it that Hanni worked so hard and that she couldn’t marry her soldier. Hanni was so good to her! She polis
hed Betsy’s shoes, mended her clothes, and often brought little bouquets for her desk.

  “Celeste is quite jealous,” Betsy told Tilda, who knew all about Celeste.

  Tilda was well acquainted with all Betsy’s friends. She knew about Tacy’s gay struggles with housekeeping, and Tib’s affairs of the heart. Bob and Effie wrote from the University…about quizzes and spring track and who was leading the J.B.

  “Was ist ‘J.B.’?” asked Tilda, and received a glowing account of the Junior Ball.

  Tilda admired Joe’s picture, for even a snapshot showed how blond and muscular he was. She noticed also that although it stood at Betsy’s bedside, there were never any letters from him.

  “He used to be my beau, but he isn’t any more. I don’t have a beau.”

  It was true, and a strange situation for Betsy. But it was restful, she told Tilda, not to have to curl her hair. She hadn’t curled it since the first night in Munich. And she was getting fat.

  “Haven’t I the most beautiful arms?” she asked, turning in front of the mirror. “And my shoulders aren’t bony any more. I can hardly wait to wear a formal.”

  Munich agreed with her. But she must leave it soon to live in and learn another place. Her father and mother, aghast at first at Miss Surprise’s surprise, had accepted the fact that Betsy seemed safe, living alone in Munich. But they didn’t want her to try it in a second city. They had advised her to join a Thomas Cook party, make the Grand Tour, and come home. Betsy thought this would be horrible.

  Fortunately the Wilsons had written, suggesting that she come to Venice. They were leaving for Greece, but the Casa delle Rose d’Oro was charming—run by three tiny old ladies, unmarried sisters, always dressed in black.

  “You would put them into a story, Betsy,” Miss Wilson wrote. “And they would be ideal as chaperones.” Betsy could stay with them through May, and in June join the Wilsons for Switzerland and Paris.

  Her parents approved this plan and Betsy loved it.

  “Imagine me,” she said, “floating along in a gondola and feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square!”

  “For Venice,” Tilda pointed out, “you will want a sweetheart.”

  “Pshaw!” said Betsy. “I’m going to study the stones like Ruskin did.”

  13

  Dark Fairy Tale

  TILDA WAS IN BED with a cold and Betsy was having supper with her. Hanni had set a low table between them. In the center was a bouquet of hyacinths from the corner flower seller, and that wasn’t the only assurance of spring. The windows were pulled open to admit balmy air. And out in Schellingstrasse children were playing games with a joyful racket that took Betsy back to Hill Street.

  “I remember,” she told Tilda, “how I used to run in the house every two minutes and beg Mamma to let me take off my winter underwear.”

  “I have been thinking of summer clothes all day,” Tilda replied.

  “This weather is bad for work.” Betsy sighed, for “The Disappearing Dancer” wouldn’t disappear; she wouldn’t dance; she wouldn’t even budge. “No mail either,” Betsy added as though this too could be blamed on April.

  Tilda sat guiltily upright. “Betsy, I am a wretch! You were out, and Hanni brought a letter for you here.” She fished it from the pile of books on her bed.

  It was addressed in Mrs. Ray’s dashing hand.

  “Not very plump,” Betsy observed. “Do you suppose my family doesn’t love me any more?”

  “Ja, I am sure! You should come and live in Switzerland. We will keep cows.”

  “‘Cows, cows, beautiful cows!’” As Betsy ripped open the letter, an even thinner slip of paper fell out. She took it up. She stared at it. She threw her napkin into the air and shrieked.

  “Tilda! Tilda! Ainslee’s have succumbed!” Betsy spoke in English for she couldn’t remember any German.

  “Was ist Ainslee’s?” Tilda cried.

  “It’s a magazine, Tilda. They’ve bought one of my stories, ‘Emma Middleton Cuts Cross Country,’ for one hundred dollars!”

  Betsy flew over to the bed and they hugged each other until they were breathless. Hanni, coming in with fresh tea, stared in bewilderment.

  “Hundred dollars!” Tilda cried. “Betsy, that’s four hundred marks!”

  “Is it? Oh goodie! Goodie!”

  Tilda told the amazing news to Hanni.

  Betsy looked up from her letter. “Papa wants me to spend this money for anything I like. Something I couldn’t afford out of what he sends me. And, Tilda, I know what it will be! I’m going to travel around a little. I’ve been wishing I could, before I go to Venice.”

  “Wunderschön!” Tilda exclaimed. “Und to von place, I vill go mit.”

  “You will?” Betsy asked rapturously, and danced about the room.

  “‘Added hours had but heightened the wonder of the day,’ tra la!”

  “‘His gray gaze was inscrutable,’ yo ho!”

  “Betsy, bist du crazy?”

  “They’re excerpts from the immortal manuscript,” said Betsy. “One hundred dollars, Tilda! I never got more than ten before.” She ran for Mr. O’Farrell’s map.

  When she returned Hanni had pulled the draperies and lighted the gas and put a kettle over the alcohol lamp. This important discussion required more tea, of course. It was fascinating to take meditative sips over the rival charms of medieval Nuremberg and Wagner’s Bayreuth.

  “Pshaw! I’ll go to both!” Betsy cried—after all, a hundred dollars! And she would go to a little town called Sonneberg which the rector had told her about. It was the doll center of the world.

  Tilda was going home for the long Easter holiday, but afterward, they agreed, they would meet in Oberammergau. It wasn’t a Passion Play year but they both wished to see the famous village.

  “Will your parents mind your traveling alone?” Tilda asked.

  “Not this tiny jaunt! Germany is as safe as my own back yard. And you know, Tilda, I speak the language now.”

  “Ja, magnificently! Of course, you call everyone du, even the policemen, and that is supposed to be only for family and friends.”

  “The way to talk German,” answered Betsy, “is to talk German. If I bothered with forms, and genders and cases and tenses, I’d be tongue-tied. I just string along the words I want to say, and put Nicht wahr? at the end. Of course, I must have a new hat.”

  “With a hundred dollars? Natürlich!”

  Next day Betsy cashed her big check at the bank where she cashed the checks her father sent each month. Then she bought presents: A pipe rack for her father, a pewter platter for her mother, carved book-ends for Julia and Paige, a watch for Margaret, a pink enameled pin for Anna, the hired girl. She bought Tilda a print of Willem Key’s “Pieta” which both of them loved, and Hanni, a lace collar and jabot.

  Helena went with her, and she was a great help in shopping. There was something about her that made everyone jump. The milliner rushed for her finest creations, and Betsy bought a large black straw. One end touched her shoulder, the other shot off toward the sky, and under the skyward edge, next to her hair, was a luscious pink rose.

  “It’s a little extreme,” she admitted, “but why shouldn’t it be? I’m a famous lady author. You wouldn’t like some coffee, would you?” But even to celebrate “Emma” Helena would not go into a coffee house. Betsy bought her a box of marzipan.

  She and Helena finished up the National Museum. Betsy grew maudlin toward the end. Bavarian history, she said, was coming out her ears.

  “But I do thank you, Helena! I wouldn’t have missed it.”

  Easter was coming near. The streets were full of little girls in white dresses carrying candles. The shop windows showed rabbits, eggs, and chickens. Tilda would be leaving soon. Betsy put aside “The Disappearing Dancer”; Tilda skipped all the classes she dared to; and they set forth exuberantly every day.

  All Munich was out to celebrate spring. The squares were crowded with people, talking and drinking beer. The paths along the Isar we
re filled with loitering families.

  “Nobody works in Bavaria,” Tilda remarked.

  “Except Hanni.”

  “Oh, ja! The servants!”

  At Nymphenburg where the Mad King was born, they drank coffee out of doors. After that they did it every day. In the rustic English Gardens. In the Hofgarten, where the spring hats rivaled the tulips. In humbler parks where there were fewer tourists, artists, students, but more fat Müncheners, bicycles, and dogs.

  Strolling home through the sweet spring twilights, Betsy and Tilda talked of their careers. They made plans for touring Europe in 1917. Sometimes Tilda talked about August. She liked him better than she admitted, Betsy perceived. Betsy at these pensive moments always thought about Joe.

  In no time Tilda was packing for home. She and Betsy parted crying, “Auf Wiedersehen! Until Oberammergau!”

  On Easter Betsy and Helena made the rounds of the churches. In the Frauenkirche, lofty and grim in spite of candlelight and lilies, the people sang while the organ rolled out paeans of gladness. Thinking of Easter at home, Betsy wept a little.

  She was grateful for Helena, who ate dinner at the pension that day. Afterward they walked to the English Gardens and took snapshots under the trees. Helena had brought sandwiches as usual, but when four o’clock came, Betsy paused by the white-covered tables. Waitresses were rushing about with their moneybags jingling.

  “Let’s have coffee here! Please!” she pleaded.

  Helena raised her pretty eyebrows. “They’re very common people.”

  “So am I common. I’m terribly common. And, Helena, do you know what Abraham Lincoln said? ‘God must love the common people because he made so many of them.’”

  Helena laughed. “Come,” she said, taking Betsy’s arm. “I will drink coffee here. Not for the sake of your Abraham Lincoln, but because you are leaving so soon.”

  With their coffee they had sweet spirals of Schnecken, and above them birds were singing on frothy green boughs.

  “I don’t see why they call these English Gardens,” Betsy grumbled. “The count who laid them out was born in Massachusetts. Of course, I know he was a Tory and George the Third knighted him. Still, this is very like America.”