Betsy and the Great World and Betsy's Wedding Page 3

  Betsy had long ago worked out a system. When she finished a story she made a list of magazines to which she thought it might sell. As soon as it came back from one it was sent to the next. Many of her manuscripts had made twenty and thirty trips, and the record of their journeyings was kept in a small notebook which was now in Margaret’s keeping. She had promised to send out the stories while Betsy was abroad.

  September brought the beginning of the senior year for Joe. Betsy would be a disconsolate junior. More than once the pages of her story…underlined, crossed out, written in the margins…were damp with tears shed, not at the woes of her heroine, but at the prospect of beginning so miserable a year.

  At last, in a desperate moment, she went to her father. She broached the idea that perhaps—for a girl who wished to be a writer—two years of college were enough.

  He listened thoughtfully, sitting in his armchair with his legs crossed and his thumbs hooked in his vest. He looked at her with his kind, wise hazel eyes.

  “I don’t think so, Betsy,” he said. “I have an idea that the more education a writer has, the better. It’s a mistake, too, in this life, to start things and not finish them.”

  Betsy bent her head dejectedly. She had been sure that was what he would say.

  Mr. Ray took a cigar out of his pocket. He clipped off the end and lighted it and began to puff slowly.

  “Of course,” he went on, “we all make mistakes. If you’ve made a mistake in getting so little out of college, why, you have…that’s all. And it would be a pretty poor world if we couldn’t sweep up our mistakes, now and then, and go ahead.

  “You might make yourself finish college. But you certainly wouldn’t have much heart in it. And it seems too bad to throw away two years of your life just as a matter of discipline.”

  Betsy looked up quickly. This was encouraging. And the aromatic smell of his cigar, beginning to drift through the room, had something comforting about it. He always smoked when he was advising his children.

  “Don’t think,” Mr. Ray continued, “that Mamma and I haven’t seen which way the wind was blowing. You haven’t been happy, Betsy, and we’ve known it.”

  Betsy didn’t speak.

  “You’re going to be a writer,” he proceeded thoughtfully. “No doubt about that! You’ve been writing all your life. And you’ve worked harder this summer at that story you’re writing than you’ve worked for all your professors put together. What’s the name of it, anyway?”

  “‘Emma Middleton Cuts Cross Country,’” Betsy replied. “It’s about a little dressmaker, like the one who made my Junior Ball dress. She gets disgusted with everything and walks out and makes a new start.”

  “Sounds good,” said Mr. Ray, nodding sagely, although he never read stories, except Betsy’s. “You certainly write like a whiz. Do you remember the letter Dr. Sanford wrote you about your story in the college magazine?”

  Betsy nodded, moist-eyed.

  “I was very proud of that letter,” Mr. Ray said, which made her tears spill over for it seemed to her that she had given him very little reason to be proud of her lately. He put down his cigar.

  “You’re going to be a writer,” he repeated, “and you need more education. That’s plain. But college isn’t the only place to get an education. I have a ‘snoggestion.’” That was what Mr. Ray always called a particularly good suggestion. “I’ve sounded Mamma out and she approves. How would you like a year abroad?”

  “But, Papa!” Betsy had thrown her arms around him, frankly crying now. “What a glo-glo-glorious snoggestion! I’ve always planned to go. But I never thought of you sending me. I thought I’d earn the money for myself someday.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it would cost so much more than a year at the U!” said Mr. Ray. “You’d have to go in a modest way, of course. But Julia had two trips abroad. You’re entitled to one, too. Maybe when Margaret goes, Mamma and I will go along.”

  “Would I…would I go to school over there?”

  “You don’t seem to be getting what you need out of a school. But judging by our experience with Julia, you learn a lot just from traveling in Europe…seeing the art galleries, learning the languages, and all that stuff. You could go on a guided tour, like Julia did.”

  “No, Papa!” Betsy knelt beside him, her hands on his knee. “Guided tours are all right for some people, but not for a writer. I ought to stay in just two or three places. Really live in them, learn them. Then if I want to mention London, for example, in a story, I would know the names of the streets and how they run and the buildings and the atmosphere of the city. I could move a character around in London just as though it were Minneapolis. I don’t want to hurry from place to place with a party the way Julia did.”

  Her father looked perplexed.

  “But it doesn’t seem safe, Betsy. You’re only twenty-one. You know how much confidence Mamma and I have in you, but we wouldn’t want you living in those big foreign cities all alone.”

  “Maybe we could pick out cities where I know someone…or you do, or Julia.”

  “Maybe. I’ll talk it over with your mother.”

  So Betsy dashed off to Tacy’s apartment and they talked, talked about the wonderful trip.

  “I’m just going to travel around like Paragot,” Betsy said, referring to a character in William J. Locke’s novel, The Beloved Vagabond, a favorite with both of them.

  She wrote Tib, still in college in Milwaukee. And Carney, who was now Mrs. Sam Hutchinson and lived at Murmuring Lake. She took a yellow streetcar over the Mississippi to the University and told her sorority sisters. It sounded so glamorous, “studying abroad.”

  She went downtown and collected travel folders. She bought a paper-bound Italian Self-Taught and dug out her German grammar. She had studied German for a year in high school. She was thankful for her college French.

  “French is really all I need. French is the universal language,” she told Tacy grandly.

  “Of course, you’ll see Joe while you’re in the East,” Tacy said. Red-haired Tacy was so happy in her own marriage that she was anxious for Betsy to get married, too.

  Betsy shook her head. “Joe and I don’t even correspond anymore.”

  As Tacy was silent Betsy burst out indignantly, “You know, Tacy, I don’t usually quarrel with people. You and I have been friends since my fifth birthday party. I’m still friends with the high-school gang and the people I knew in college. Joe is just too touchy.”

  “You don’t quarrel when you’re together,” Tacy answered. “He’s so perfect for you, Betsy.” She looked at Betsy with pleading tender eyes. “Maybe you’ll just let him know about the trip.”

  But Betsy was stubborn. She didn’t write her great news to Joe. And presently her attention was distracted by greater news. Julia, the coquette, had fallen in love, and this time, she wrote, it was for keeps!

  She had met Paige in New York, where she was singing in the opera. Like Julia, he came from the Middle West, from Indiana, where he had attended the University before studying the flute in the East. Now he played with one of the orchestras there. He was, Betsy discovered later, a very attractive young man, tall, light haired, and ethereal looking.

  Julia wanted to be married at Christmastime. Bettina must be maid of honor; Margaret must string ribbons.

  “That’s all I care about. You plan the rest of it,” Julia wrote her mother.

  And because of all this excitement Betsy didn’t miss college at all. At Thanksgiving Julia came briefly to introduce her fiance, and at Christmas they were married.

  It wasn’t a large wedding, but it was candlelit and flower scented. Margaret, straight and slender, her dark hair in coronet braids, carried ribbons down the aisle of the Episcopal Church. Betsy, wearing green chiffon over pink, was maid of honor.

  Julia, in trailing bridal white, looked gravely lovely as she looked when she sang. An Indiana friend of Paige’s came to be best man, and afterward there was a merry supper at the Ray house.

&nb
sp; But through it all Betsy had felt an aching loneliness. What joy was there in a beautiful green dress, long and draped to the front, and an armful of pink roses, if Joe wasn’t there to see?

  Julia had insisted upon sending Joe an invitation. “He’s my friend as well as yours, Betsy.”

  “All right,” Betsy had conceded grudgingly, and for a few days she had felt a fluttering in her heart. If Joe was looking for a chance to make up, here it was! Maybe he would come!

  But he didn’t. He sent a silver serving spoon with a rhyme he had composed himself.

  “Could Betsy do as well as this?” he scrawled across the bottom.

  “Maybe he thinks I’ll use that as an excuse for writing him. Well, I won’t!” Betsy said.

  While Mrs. Ray and Betsy were busy with the wedding, Mr. Ray had occupied himself with Betsy’s trip. He had written his younger brother, a professor at the University of Chicago. Perhaps Steve knew some Europe-bound traveler who wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on Betsy?

  Steve did know just the person. Dr. Wilson and his sister, both on sabbatical leave, were sailing in January on the S.S. Columbic from Boston.

  Boston! Betsy wouldn’t have chosen that port. It was too near Harvard University. But she was far too proud to raise this objection. And the plan dovetailed beautifully with another which had already been worked out.

  Julia had a friend studying singing in Munich. Miss Surprise wouldn’t mind, she wrote, helping Betsy get settled there. Betsy had never thought of going to Munich. But it would do as a starting point. So her tickets were bought for the S.S. Columbic, which would take her to Genoa, where she could board a train for Munich.

  A crowd of friends saw her off at the Minneapolis station one January night. The green baize curtains of her berth drawn tightly, she had looked out at a dark, ghostly world rushing past. She had changed trains at Chicago, sending back a shower of excited postcards, and for two days had journeyed eastward, leaving the lakes and the flat familiar Middle West behind, climbing snowy mountains and pausing at towns full of staid green-shuttered houses.

  In Boston, she had made a patriotic pilgrimage…Faneuil Hall, the Cradle of Liberty, the State House, and the Old South Church.

  “If I lived in Boston I’d wear red, white, and blue costumes and eagle headdresses,” she wrote her family.

  She went through the Public Library and inspected the Art Museum. She marveled at the narrow twisting streets and walked elatedly across The Common. But she didn’t go out to Harvard. She did look up the telephone number of Joe’s college house and stood for a long time with her hand on the receiver. But she took her hand down at last, and walked away.

  Although lonely, the day had been exciting. It was fun to sleep in a hotel, and she had met the Wilsons at breakfast. Everything had gone according to plan.

  It had seemed like a wonderful plan. But it didn’t now, as she lay lonesomely in the upper berth of stateroom 52 listening to the dinner music being played above.

  3

  “And Haply May Forget”

  BETSY WASN’T SEASICK any more. Observing with sympathy and alarm the depths of Miss Wilson’s anguish, she suspected next morning that her own miseries had sprung more from homesickness than from mal de mer.

  Although Miss Wilson refused even coffee with a groan, Betsy ate breakfast in her bunk, charmed with the discovery that there was no salt in the butter and that hot milk was offered instead of cream. How continental! She lay down with the snowy blankets pulled up to her chin and her head on two fat pillows and reflected with astonishment on last night’s despair. Travel was delightful. How could she ever have thought otherwise?

  Later, she began on her steamer letters. Bob had sent one for each day of the voyage. So had Tacy. Tib, Carney, Cab, and Effie, her favorite sorority sister, had marked their letters “to be read when homesick” or “to be read when seasick” or “to be read when you need advice.” Betsy didn’t open many.

  But she did open Tib’s. (Tib Muller, next to Tacy, was her oldest friend.) And the letter was hilarious. She and Tacy had teased Betsy about picking up an American millionaire abroad, and Tib enclosed a sketch of Betsy strolling on deck in the moonlight with a man who was obviously a millionaire. He was dressed in a golfing suit, used a cigarette holder, and wore the dollar sign like a flower in his buttonhole.

  Julia and Paige had sent a box with a small gift for each day. The first one was a leather-bound book titled in gold lettering, “My Trip Abroad.” From other friends and relatives came a fountain pen, a lacy handkerchief, a collar and cuff set, a traveling clock, books. It was like Christmas morning in Betsy’s upper bunk.

  Presently the bath steward rapped. “Your bath is ready, Mum.” And Betsy descended softly past the stricken Miss Wilson. She put on her cherry-red bathrobe, boudoir cap, and slippers, collected toothbrush, soap, and towels, and tiptoed down the swaying corridor.

  The salt bath was exhilarating, and after she was dressed she regretted that she had not put her hair up on curlers last night. To offset its lamentable straightness, she tried to tie her scarf artfully.

  “I wish Julia…or Tib…was here,” she thought. They were good at coquetries like scarves. She squinted critically into a hand mirror. “Oh, well,” she said, “Celeste does her best.”

  Miss Wilson was still sleeping. Donning coat and furs, Betsy picked up a pencil and one of the small notebooks she always liked to carry to catch random thoughts “that might work into a story.” Her letters home were to be her diary.

  But when she was settled in her steamer chair, wrapped in the rug, her head back and her feet up, she had no wish to write or read or even think. The waves rose and fell and broke into foam as far as her eye could see and she gazed in dreamy fascination.

  She roused when two large ladies, rigidly corseted beneath their flopping coats and with elaborately waved coiffures under hats tied down by veils, settled into the chairs at her left. Two younger women helped them and ran errands patiently. At first Betsy thought these were merely devoted friends. Then she realized that one was called Taylor and the other Rosa (in kind but patronizing tones), and it dawned on her that they were ladies’ maids.

  Ladies’ maids! She was always putting them in stories. What luck to see some in the flesh!

  “I must write to Tacy,” she thought gleefully. “I’ll tell her that Celeste finds them most congenial.”

  She got out the passenger list and, sure enough, there they were! “Mrs. Sims and Maid. Mrs. Cheney and Maid.” But it was too bad, Betsy thought, to say just “Maid” as though these pleasant women had no names! She resolved to study them a bit.

  “And I want to get acquainted with that authoress. Maybe she can give me some hints…”

  But Betsy caught herself short. The authoress might, she just might, comment on Joe. And he was already too painfully clear in Betsy’s memory. She didn’t want him brought further to life by a vivid phrase or anecdote.

  She stretched back in her chair and watched the promenaders. There weren’t many, for the water was increasingly rough. Dr. Wilson was out, and Betsy noticed a pretty girl making the rounds. Her clothes were sensible and dowdy and her heels flat but she had a handsome aquiline nose and long fair hair blowing like a veil behind. When she came to rest at last it was in a deck chair but one removed from Betsy’s. Betsy smiled but she didn’t respond.

  Mrs. Sims and Mrs. Cheney, however, were extremely affable. Betsy chatted with them over the mid-morning bouillon. They were sisters, Bostonians, and well accustomed to travel.

  They went to the dining saloon for their lunch. (Saloon was what they called it, which seemed surprising to Betsy. A saloon, she had always thought, was a disreputable place where whisky was sold.) Betsy let the steward give her a tray on deck and she ate with appetite in the gray windy cold, watching the unremitting waves.

  The afternoon went like the morning. No reading, no writing, just lazily watching the water. Betsy bestirred herself only to visit Miss Wilson, who waved her away
with feeble moans.

  At four o’clock the steward brought tea with fascinating little scones and cakes.

  “And they do this every day! What bliss!” Betsy cried to Mrs. Sims and Mrs. Cheney, who smiled indulgently. “I love eating out of doors.”

  Over their trays she told them about the picnics she and Tacy had had since they were five. She told them about the Ray family picnics. Betsy was always a talker, but her loquacity today was partly the fault of her companions. They sustained it with questions—politely indirect, at first; then amused; then frankly startled. Was she going abroad…alone?

  “Practically,” Betsy answered as she had answered Mr. O’Farrell. “I want to be a writer, and my father thinks I ought to see the world. A writer has to live, you know,” she explained, feeling dashing. She glanced toward the second chair at her right, but the pretty girl was engrossed in a magazine.

  “Comme elle est charmante!” said Mrs. Sims.

  “Et excessivement naïve,” replied her sister.

  Betsy was annoyed to be thought naive but delighted to be found charming. She wondered whether honor compelled her to say that she understood French and decided that it didn’t.

  Returning from one of her fruitless calls on Miss Wilson, Betsy found it hard to keep her footing. Luckily she encountered Mr. O’Farrell, who removed his stiff cap, guided her safely back to her chair, folded her into her rug with solicitous care. When she thanked him he said, “It’s a pleasur-r-re to me!” and smiled into her eyes.

  “He’s a charmer!” Betsy thought. Looking after the trim erect figure in nautical blue, she decided to go down for a nap and put her hair in curlers.

  “Do we dress for dinner, Mrs. Sims?”

  “Not formally, except for the Captain’s Ball and the Diner d’Adieu. A dark silk will do.”

  Betsy was pleased that she had a dark silk. It was maroon, piped with old gold and trimmed with gold buttons. The skirt was long and fashionably tight. The sleeves, too, were long and tight with frills at the wrists. Betsy liked the frills for she knew her hands were pretty.