Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself Page 4

  Mrs. Ray was yearning to get at her windows but she made another attempt.

  “Why don’t you go down to the Sibleys?” she asked. “They live so near, and Caroline is such a lovely girl.”

  Mrs. Ray never mentioned Caroline Sibley without adding that she was a lovely girl which always annoyed Betsy.

  “Caroline Sibley is a stick,” she said.

  “Why, Betsy, you hardly know her. I’m sure she isn’t a stick. And they have such a big beautiful lawn, and there’s always a crowd of young people there….”

  “And her father’s a banker,” Betsy put in rudely.

  Mrs. Ray rose.

  “Betsy, I really can’t let you talk to me like that. You know perfectly well it makes no difference to me that Caroline Sibley’s father is a banker. What interests me is that she is a very nice girl with a circle of friends who ought to be your friends, now that you live near. But there’s no use in my talking. I see that I can’t help you, at least in your present mood. And I’m busy. I wish to goodness I could get some help.”

  “Hasn’t anyone answered your advertisement, Mamma?” asked Betsy, trying to sound pleasant because she felt ashamed.

  “Not a soul. And I’m willing to pay top wages, two dollars a week.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “Not with the curtains, thanks. I just have to fuss until I get them right.” Thoughts of the new lace curtains, and the big shiny front window, brought the gleam back to Mrs. Ray’s eyes. “Why don’t you go to the Majestic?” she asked.

  “Oh, Mamma! May I?” Betsy jumped up, smiling. “I haven’t a cent,” she added.

  “Take a nickel out of my brown purse, and another nickel for ice cream,” Mrs. Ray answered, and went back to her curtains, swinging the hammer and humming.

  Betsy rushed upstairs to wash. The new bathroom was nice, she admitted, running hot water into the bowl. She combed her hair freshly, taking care not to comb out the curls, and tied the big taffeta hair ribbon which matched her pink lawn jumper. She scowled at a shiny nose.

  “I think I’ll run Mamma’s chamois skin over my face,” she said to herself. “Julia does it sometimes. It isn’t really powdering.”

  Having beautified herself, she took ten cents from the brown pocket book, caught up a pink ruffled parasol and ran downstairs to kiss her mother penitently.

  Starting down Plum Street she saw the Edwards boy sawing wood in his back yard. She had seen him first over the back fence the day they moved in, and several times since. He was about her own height, which was tall for a girl but not for a boy. He was thin and wiry with black hair, snapping green eyes and a dark monkeyish face which was not handsome but undeniably attractive, especially when, as now, he grinned.

  A year or two before Betsy would have given him a cheerful hello. Today, although she returned his smile, she did not speak or pause. She knew that her pink lawn jumper was becoming, and hoped that her Ethel Barrymore droop was fascinating, as she sauntered past his back yard and his front yard and on down the hill.

  Crossing Broad Street she saw the Sibleys’ house, and in spite of the indifference she had shown in talking to her mother, she glanced toward it wistfully. It was a large blue-grey frame house with a generous porch. At the side was a large lawn with a trampled comfortable look. Caroline had several brothers, and there was usually a game of some sort going on.

  Betsy acknowledged now that she was prejudiced against Caroline Sibley; perhaps because her mother always praised her so highly.

  “Probably I’d like her if I knew her better,” Betsy conceded, and at that moment caught sight of her, walking arm in arm with a girl whom Betsy did not know at all. She was short, with smooth yellow hair, a round figure, and skirts a shade longer than the other girls wore. Betsy wondered who she was, but although Caroline Sibley called, “Hello!” and Betsy answered, she did not pause to be introduced. As soon as she had left them behind, she was sorry.

  “I don’t know what ails me,” she thought dejectedly, and hurried on, glad to be going to the Majestic.

  The Majestic Theatre, now…according to the sign…a High Class Place of Amusement, with Up-to-date Moving Picture Entertainment, Especially for Ladies and Children…had been just a short time before an ordinary Front Street store. Moving Picture Entertainment had been only a rumor emanating from nearby St. Paul and Minneapolis. There, travelers said, pictures moved on a screen. Deep Valley had seen them move only in nickelodeons, small boxes into which one dropped a nickel and peeped at jerky horse races, prize fights or dancing girls. Then talk of a moving picture called “The Great Train Robbery” rolled over the country like a tidal wave. In Deep Valley as in thousands of other towns a store front was painted red and yellow; a screen was put up inside; a projection machine, a piano and rows of chairs were moved in. The first program was “The Great Train Robbery,” and Mr. Ray took the family to see it.

  Today the picture was a fantasy called “The Astronomer’s Dream.” That was the kind Betsy liked best. She sat on the hard chair in the dim stuffy show house and watched the flickering scenes in an enchanted silence. After the main picture there was an illustrated song. The girl who played the piano sang, as colored slides were flashed on the screen.

  “Keep a little cozy corner,

  In your heart for me,

  Just for me….”

  Betsy knew it well, for Julia played it.

  She had an ice cream soda at Heinz’s afterwards, but walking home under her pink ruffled parasol, she felt blue again. A game of prisoners’ base was in progress now on the Sibleys’ lawn. Cab Edwards had disappeared.

  “Down at the Sibleys, probably,” Betsy thought.

  She was returning more despondent than she had been when she left. And that wasn’t fair after her mother had spent ten cents to cheer her up. She didn’t know what she could do about it, though. Then in a twinkling she didn’t feel blue any more. Her spirits perked up like a terrier’s ears. For Mr. Thumbler’s hack was driving away from her house, and on the steps stood a stout woman wearing an elegant purple silk dress, a large hat trimmed with feathers, and a feather boa which, flung over one shoulder, shimmered down her ample body. She wasn’t just a caller, for she carried a valise. A visitor! How thrilling!

  Betsy collapsed her parasol, patted her curls. After the visitor had rung the bell and had been admitted and a suitable short interval had elapsed, Betsy put on her Ethel Barrymore droop and sauntered into the house.

  5

  Anna

  HER MOTHER AND THE visitor were seated in the parlor. The curtains had been hung. Mrs. Ray’s hair was no longer concealed by a towel but rose in its usual high red pompadour, and she was wearing a becoming waist and skirt.

  She called, “Come in, dear!” and said to the visitor…in a somewhat choked voice, Betsy thought…“This is my middle daughter, Betsy. Betsy, this is Anna Swenson who has come to work for us.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Betsy murmured.

  Under the feathered hat she saw a wide good-natured face.

  “Why, lovey!” said Anna Swenson. “How puny you look! Almost as puny as you are, lovey,” she added, to Mrs. Ray.

  “We’re a very puny family,” Mrs. Ray answered in the same choked voice.

  Anna nodded.

  “So were the McCloskeys. They’re the folks I used to work for, lovey. My, how they liked my raised biscuits and my meat balls and my chocolate layer cake! And every last one of them was puny. Charley used to say to me, ‘Anna, aren’t those McCloskeys the puniest folks?’ and I’d say, ‘Ja, Charley! They’re certainly puny.’ They were tony, too.”

  “And who is Charley?” asked Mrs. Ray while Betsy slipped into a chair and stared with fascinated eyes.

  “My beau,” Anna answered, smiling broadly. “A bartender down at the Corner Café.”

  “Is he puny, too?”

  “Na,” answered Anna regretfully, shaking her head. “He’s not puny. He’s a nice fellow, Charley is, and a good spender. But I’d
never call him puny.”

  “Are you engaged to him?” asked Betsy, hoping that if she was they would not be married soon.

  “I’m not much on the marrying,” Anna reassured her. “What I like to do is cook. You may think you know how to cook,” she said to Mrs. Ray, who certainly did think she knew how to cook and started to say so, but Anna waved her down. “You may think you know how to cook, but wait ‘til you taste my cinnamon buns. They melt in your mouth. ‘Anna,’ Mrs. McCloskey used to say to me, ‘your cinnamon buns just melt in my mouth.’” She turned to Betsy. “The McCloskey girl,” she added, “always said the same.”

  “Are you really coming to work for us?” cried Betsy.

  “Certainly I am,” Anna replied, beaming. “I said so to Charley last night. We were out buggy riding. A hired rig, but very tony. He’s a good spender, Charley is. I showed him your ad in the paper. Mrs. Robert Ray of High Street wants a hired girl, five in the family, two dollars a week. I said to Charley, That’s my place, Charley.’ ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I hope you’ll like them as well as you liked the McCloskeys.’”

  “Do you think you will?” Betsy asked eagerly.

  Anna looked around the parlor, and Mrs. Ray flashed Betsy a proud confident glance. The new lace curtains were draped with a dazzling effect. Embroidered pillows made a tidy nest at the head of the leather sofa. A gas lamp with a green shade stood on the mission oak table and photographs marched along a mission oak bookcase. Framed pictures dotted the walls.

  Anna spoke reflectively.

  “The McCloskeys’ house was tonier,” she said.

  For a moment Betsy wasn’t sure whether her mother would let Anna work for them or not. She wanted to hiss “cinnamon buns” warningly across the room. But to her relief her mother’s blue eyes began to dance. She jumped up and took Anna’s hands.

  “Anna,” she said. “It’s going to be our ambition in life to make you like us as well as you did the McCloskeys.”

  Julia came in then, swinging her music roll and looking very pretty. Margaret, too, appeared. She had been visiting a neighbor, Mrs. Wheat, on whom she called almost every afternoon. Anna was introduced, and pronounced them both puny. It was dawning upon Betsy that Anna did not give “puny” its usual insignificant meaning, that it was, on the contrary, the most complimentary word in her vocabulary.

  Followed by her daughters Mrs. Ray showed Anna the dining room, the pantry, the shining kitchen. Anna surveyed them with pursed thoughtful lips. She did not say how they compared with the McCloskeys’, but it was clear they did not quite measure up.

  “I’ll show her to her room, Mamma,” Betsy offered, picking up the valise. It was very heavy.

  “Thank you, lovey,” Anna said, and Betsy led the way to the second floor and the third, across the open attic where Uncle Keith’s trunk stood.

  Up to this moment she had thought the hired girl’s room very nice. It reminded her of her own room on Hill Street, being slant-roofed and small. There were an iron bed, a bureau, a wash stand with bowl and pitcher, a rocking chair beside the single window, a rag rug on the clean pine floor. It was neat as a pin and looked very inviting, but thinking about the McCloskeys Betsy waited anxiously.

  Anna looked around and smiled.

  “I’ll get along fine up here,” she said.

  “I like it, too,” said Betsy, much relieved. “I’ll come up and see you sometimes if you want me to.”

  “I’d like to have you, lovey. You can stay now and watch me unpack.”

  Betsy sat down in the rocking chair.

  Anna took off her feather boa, smoothed it lovingly and hung it in the closet. She removed her big feathered hat and placed it on the closet shelf. Her hair was wound in a big tight knob that made her broad face look even broader than it was. Her forehead was seamed.

  She opened her valise and unrolled a flannel night gown in which an alarm clock had been wrapped. She put that on the bureau. She unrolled another night gown and took out a tall, gilt-topped bottle.

  “Perfume,” she said. “Jasmine. Do you want some, lovey?”

  “Why, thank you,” Betsy answered. “I love perfume.”

  Anna sprinkled her liberally and put the bottle on the bureau. She returned to the valise and lifted out a black silk dress.

  “This is my best dress,” she remarked. “I wear it to weddings and funerals. I’ll wear it to your wedding, lovey, but I hope I won’t wear it to your funeral.”

  “I hope so, too,” said Betsy, but the idea was not entirely unpleasant. It was quite romantic.

  “The dress I have on is second best,” Anna continued.

  “It’s very stylish,” Betsy said.

  Anna took out a blue cotton dress, a red cotton dress, and a green cotton dress.

  “House dresses,” she commented. She hung them all on hangers in the closet and added a well worn wrapper. She took out a pile of aprons, and folded suits of underwear and disposed of them neatly in the bureau drawers. She ranged a pair of worn shoes and a pair of slippers in the closet.

  Last of all she lifted out a large square box covered with purple plush. She carried this to the bureau and proudly threw back the lid. Gleaming on white satin were a hand mirror, a comb and brush, a button hook, a shoe horn, a finger nail cleaner and a buffer.

  “My dresser set. Charley gave it to me for Christmas.”

  “It’s beautiful!”

  “It’s mother-of-pearl.”

  “I’d like to brush my hair with such a beautiful brush,” Betsy cried.

  “Come up and use it any time,” said Anna generously.

  She closed the valise, put it in the closet and sat down on the bed. The clothing, the alarm clock, the bottle of perfume and the plush-encased dresser set seemed to complete the list of her possessions. Bureaus in the Ray bedrooms bore cherished photographs. There wasn’t a single picture on Anna’s bureau. Not of Charley, not of the McCloskeys, not of her mother or father or sisters or brothers or home.

  “Anna,” said Betsy suddenly. “Where is your home?”

  Anna’s broad seamed face broke into a smile of unexpected gentleness.

  “Why, lovey!” she answered. “This is my home.”

  Anna had found a home…or had borrowed one as hired girls do…and Betsy had found a friend, her first friend on High Street. She walked to the lofty window and looked out, and for the first time saw beauty in the German Catholic College, grey and dour, on the heights.

  “The sun comes up behind that college,” she remarked.

  She sat down again to tell Anna about Hill Street, and Tacy.

  “Is she puny?” Anna asked.

  “The puniest girl I know,” Betsy answered, and praised Tacy’s curly auburn hair. “I wish I were punier,” she confided abruptly.

  “You’re plenty puny, lovey,” Anna answered. “You’re almost as puny as the McCloskey girl.”

  This Betsy knew now, was real praise. And Anna had more than compliments to give. She knew about a cream that took off freckles in a week.

  “I’ll buy you some on Thursday.”

  She knew about metal curlers…Magic Wavers, they were called…that produced a curl so tight and lasting it put kid rollers to shame.

  “I’ll find you some on Thursday, too,” she promised.

  They had a beautiful time until Anna looked at her clock and said it was time to change her dress and go down to start supper.

  “What would you like me to make, lovey? It’s too late for chocolate cake, and cinnamon buns have to raise, but I could stir up a floating island.”

  “I love floating island!” cried Betsy.

  She bounded down the stairs, spreading waves of jasmine perfume.

  Betsy liked High Street better after Anna came, and the rest of August slipped by swiftly. Margaret was still busy with her friend, Mrs. Wheat.

  “She’s a perfect little lady,” Mrs. Wheat said.

  Julia was busy with the Episcopal Choir, and “ni-po-tu-la-he,” and the new beau named Fred. He
had a fine voice and liked to sing and Julia played his accompaniments.

  “Love me…and the world is mine,” he bellowed with such feeling that his face grew red.

  He brought Margaret a grey and white kitten which she named Washington. He joked with Betsy about how green she would be on her first day at high school. He enlivened life considerably and so, in a different way, did Miss Mix, the dressmaker who…toward the last of the month…came to the Rays every day for a week.

  “I’m certainly lucky to have her…best dressmaker in town…three girls and myself to get ready for fall…”

  Mrs. Ray kept repeating this with variations for Miss Mix’s semi-annual visits always upset the house. She sewed only in Mrs. Ray’s bedroom, but bright scraps of cloth and snarls of thread, like the hum of her machine, permeated everywhere.

  Mr. Ray could find no peaceful spot in which to read his paper. He was irritable. Mrs. Ray was nervous and abstracted, and even Anna was jumpy. Every meal was a challenge; company food, and the best silver and dishes. Miss Mix, wherever she went, expected and received the best.

  Miss Mix was a favored character. She went to the twin cities often, bringing back the latest styles, the newest coiffures, not only in fashion books but on her person. Moreover she wore rouge. Women in Deep Valley did not use rouge; not even Julia’s singing teacher, Mrs. Poppy, whose husband owned the opera house and the hotel and who used to be an actress. Mrs. Ray sometimes surreptitiously darkened her eyebrows with a burned match, but she never even considered using rouge. Miss Mix used it unreproved…on her grave lips, her unsmiling middle-aged cheeks. Unlike most dressmakers she was not talkative. She worked silently, swiftly, intent upon materials, trimmings, patterns, seeming to take little interest in the wearers of the beautiful clothes she produced.

  So the sewing machine hummed in a littered bedroom, and Anna baked, and the ends of the maples in lawns along High Street turned yellow.