Heaven to Betsy / Betsy in Spite of Herself Page 5

  6

  The First Day of High School

  SCHOOL OPENED ON THE DAY after Labor Day. Betsy was awake at six o’clock. She hadn’t slept well, for the Magic Wavers weren’t as comfortable as the familiar kid rollers. They made a firm curl, though, and a dazzling entrance into high school was worth any discomfort.

  She was glad to be up early in order to have plenty of time in the bathroom. She could get in before her father started shaving and ahead of Julia, Margaret and her mother. She had taken a warm bath the night before but this morning she took the quick cold one which…she understood from novels, chiefly English…brought a glow to the cheek and a shine to the eye. Looking into the mirror afterwards she was not at all sure it had had this effect; she looked a trifle blue and chilly. But it gave her a good feeling, and she didn’t worry about her color knowing that her cheeks always flushed obligingly on exciting occasions.

  They were gratifyingly pink when, giddy with curls, wearing a large and jaunty pale blue hair ribbon and a pale blue and white sailor suit, closely belted to make her waist look even smaller than it was, Betsy descended the stairs. The family wasn’t down yet so she went out to the kitchen.

  “Do I look puny, Anna?”

  “Lovey, you do!” cried Anna admiringly. “I was saying to Charley last night that you get punier all the time.”

  “What smells so good?”

  “Muffins. They’re on account of it’s the first day of school. At the McCloskeys I always made muffins for the first day of school.”

  “The McCloskeys had the nicest customs,” said Betsy with a sigh. “Where did they live, Anna? What’s become of them?”

  She had asked these questions before, but Anna was always evasive.

  “They’ve moved away,” she answered vaguely. “They lived in a big tony house. Take the coffee in for me, will you, lovey? And strike the gong? I hear your father coming down.”

  Betsy took in the coffee and beat a tattoo on the gong. She also ran upstairs to prod Julia. It was Julia’s practise to tumble out of bed, not when she was called but after the breakfast gong sounded. Betsy hurried her along now with a tantalizing reference to muffins and rushed back to the dining room where her father, mother and Margaret were assembled. The checked taffeta hair ribbon atop Margaret’s English bob was as stiff with newness as her checked gingham dress. Her small face was sober for she, too, was starting at a new school and unlike Betsy was not sure that she was going to like it.

  “Where is Julia?” asked Mr. Ray as usual.

  “We won’t wait for her,” said Mrs. Ray quickly, and they sat down at the table. Mr. Ray asked the blessing while Betsy peeked into the sideboard mirror pleased to note the pinkness of her cheeks and the pronounced curl of her hair.

  “When I was a boy,” said Mr. Ray as soon as the blessing was over, “every child in the family was on time for every meal. There were ten of us, too.”

  Mr. Ray was a great one to joke, but he wasn’t joking now. He had been raised on a farm and believed in early rising, that habit so repugnant to Julia.

  Mrs. Ray hurried his coffee across the table and Betsy, as usual, tried to create a diversion.

  “I’m starting high school today, Papa. How do you like the new sailor suit Miss Mix made for me?”

  “Margaret has a new dress, too,” said Mrs. Ray.

  “I’m glad you have something to show for all that fuss,” said Mr. Ray, serving the bacon and eggs. He forgot Julia for a moment, but when Anna brought in the muffins he looked around.

  “My dear,” he said to Mrs. Ray. “It’s too bad for Julia not to get down while these muffins are hot.”

  “I told her about the muffins, Papa. She’s hurrying,” Betsy said and tried to think of another diversion. A sharp ring at the doorbell provided one. Betsy ran to the door and came back with Tacy whose arrival put Mr. Ray into such good humor that Julia slipped into her chair without a reprimand.

  “Well, well!” said Mr. Ray. “Betsy and Tacy starting high school together! How many years have you gone off together on the first day of school?”

  “This is the tenth,” Tacy said. “It’s too bad Tib isn’t here to go along.”

  “Sit down and have a muffin and a cup of cocoa with Betsy,” Mrs. Ray urged and Tacy slipped into a chair. Betsy’s pink cheeks looked pale beside Tacy’s which were sheets of scarlet. Under a round hat even her ears were red; and her eyes were shining.

  “I’m almost too scared to eat,” she said. “Not quite, though. These muffins look so good.”

  “Well, don’t cry and try to go home like you did in kindergarten,” Betsy responded.

  “And remember, both of you, all Katie and I have told you,” Julia said mischievously. “Don’t put Mr. or Miss in front of a teacher’s name. Except when you’re speaking to one, of course. You always say Bangeter, Clarke, O’Rourke, and so on. Not Miss Bangeter, Miss Clarke, Miss O’Rourke.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” replied Tacy meekly. “What else, ma’am?”

  “Did you ever hear of a Social Room?” asked Julia. “Do you know what a vacant period is?”

  “Certainly,” said Tacy. “I know what it means to flunk, too, and I only hope I won’t do it.”

  “Well, don’t act like freshies. Be a credit to Katie and me.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Betsy. “We’ll act as though we owned the school. We’ll saunter in with bored expressions. Won’t we, Tacy?”

  “Absolutely,” said Tacy. “And we’d better stop eating muffins if we’re going to saunter in early enough to get those seats.”

  “What seats?” asked Mr. Ray.

  “The back corner seats in the freshman row. They’re the seats everyone tries to get.”

  “I forbid you to choose those seats,” Mr. Ray said. “Front seats for both of you. You need to be where Miss Bangeter can keep her eyes on you.”

  But his hazel eyes were twinkling now.

  “It isn’t eight o’clock yet,” said Mrs. Ray. “School doesn’t begin until nine.”

  “We want to be there when the doors open. All the kids are after those back corner seats.”

  “Winona Root is after one. And you know we have to hump to get ahead of Winona.”

  “Good-by, Mamma. Good-by, Papa.” Betsy kissed them hurriedly.

  “The muffins were grand, Anna. Hope you get a nice teacher, Margaret.”

  “I’ll see you in school,” Julia cried.

  Betsy put on her hat before the music room mirror, picked up a new tablet and a freshly sharpened pencil. Tacy carried a spanking new tablet and pencil, too. Joining hands, they ran.

  Outside there was sunshine. The air smelled and tasted like September, like the first day of school. The flood of schoolbound children was not yet loosed. Betsy and Tacy had High Street to themselves.

  At the high school, the grizzled janitor was opening the big front doors. Betsy and Tacy rushed in. They rushed up the broad stairs which turned at a landing where a statue of Mercury was placed, through the spacious upper hall and the girls’ cloakroom into the big assembly room, empty and silent.

  Freshmen, they knew, were always assigned to the last half dozen rows on the far side of the room. They ran at once to these, and followed the last two rows back to the end. The back seats in these rows had advantages other than the obvious one of being so far from the presiding teacher’s desk. They were next to a bulging many-windowed alcove which served as the school library and could also…so they had heard from Julia and Katie…provide a sociable retreat. The alcove held not only a dictionary on an easel, an encyclopedia and other reference books, but offered a view over descending rooftops all the way to Front Street and the river. Betsy and Tacy paused to look at their own Deep Valley spread out before them on this momentous day.

  They sat down breathless, smiling at each other. They examined the inkwells, the grooves for pens and pencils where each one placed her pencil now, the empty interiors of the desks.

  “Let’s leave our tablets out on top,”
said Betsy. “They’ll stake our claim to the seats while we look around.”

  So leaving the tablets as evidence of ownership, they drifted down the aisle. They investigated the assembly room. Betsy even went up on the platform where stood a piano, two armchairs and a high reading desk.

  “Betsy! Come down! You shouldn’t!” hissed Tacy as Betsy sat down in one of the armchairs and tried to imitate tall, erect, queenly Miss Bangeter.

  Betsy ran down the steps at the other side of the platform and into the girls’ cloakroom again.

  Here they were delighted to find Winona Root hanging up a red hat. Winona was tall, thin, angular, yet jauntily graceful. She had heavy black hair worn in Grecian braids like Tacy’s but given a different effect by a red hair ribbon at the back. She had gleaming black eyes, gleaming white teeth and an habitual teasing smile. It vanished now when she saw Betsy and Tacy. For Winona too was carrying a tablet and pencil, and she too was breathless, obviously headed for one of the prized back seats.

  “Don’t bother to go in,” Betsy sang out. “We’ve got them.”

  “Got what?”

  “Got you know what.”

  “Got what you’re after yourself.”

  “Phooey!” cried Winona, and made a dash for the assembly room, Betsy and Tacy following.

  At the back of the room a scuffle ensued, but accepting defeat Winona placed her tablet and pencil on the back seat next to Tacy’s and they all raced to the front again. Winona ran up on the platform as Betsy had done, but her imitation of Miss Bangeter was much more daring. She stood up at the reading desk, threw out her chest and said, “Students of the Deep Valley High School…” with the strong Boston accent which characterized Miss Bangeter’s speech. Boys and girls were flooding in from the cloakrooms now.

  “Winona!” Betsy and Tacy pleaded. “Come down!”

  And Winona, flashing her white teeth, jumped down from the platform, ignoring the steps. She and Betsy and Tacy ran through the girls’ cloakroom, out into the hall, inspected, one after another, the empty classrooms that made a half circle around it, peeped into the Social Room where upper classmen were gathered, and looked at the trophy cups displayed behind glass in a case in the big hall.

  “Know which society you’re going to join?” Betsy asked Winona. The students were divided between Philomathians and Zetamathians, societies which competed in athletics, in debate and in essay writing as the three cups testified. “Tacy and I are going to be Zets,” she added.

  “Then I’ll be a Philomathian,” said Winona sticking out her tongue.

  “Just because we got the best seats!” jibed Tacy.

  “No. To make things interesting. Besides, the cutest boys are Philos.” Winona tossed her head and smiled. She looked around abruptly. “Who’s that cute boy?” she asked.

  Betsy and Tacy followed her penetrating gaze, and Betsy saw a yellow pompadour, an out-thrust lower lip. She looked almost directly into blue eyes which were puzzlingly familiar. While she hesitated the boy passed on. Then she remembered.

  “That’s Joe Willard…Tacy, you know…the boy from Butternut Center.” She started to run after him, but at that moment a gong clanged. There was a rush for the assembly room, and Joe Willard disappeared.

  “Do you know him?” Winona asked eagerly. “Gosh, introduce me! Have you heard that Tom Slade’s gone to Cox Military? Weep, weep! Herbert Humphreys is back, though. Don’t run like freshies. That’s only the first gong.” And Winona led the way nonchalantly to the girls’ cloakroom. They took turns at the mirror, Betsy and Tacy striving to act as nonchalant as Winona. They delayed so successfully that when Betsy and Tacy were halfway up the aisle the second gong sounded and quiet descended upon the big assembly room.

  “A good thing we’ve got our seats,” Betsy thought, trying not to hurry. Tacy was frankly hurrying and her ears, Betsy saw, were as red as fire. Betsy felt all eyes upon them and remembered to assume her Ethel Barrymore droop. Three-quarters of the way up the aisle, however, she stood upright. For lounging comfortably in the choice back corner seats were two boys. Herbert Humphreys and Cab Edwards!

  Tacy stopped stock still. If anything was going to be done, Betsy realized, she would have to do it. Forcing a smile she approached them.

  “Pardon me,” she said politely, in an undertone, “but these are our seats.”

  “They’re ours now,” said Herbert Humphreys, grinning.

  “We put our tablets on to hold them,” Betsy said.

  “Looking for these?” asked Cab, pulling two tablets and two pencils out of his desk. He too grinned at them impudently.

  Everyone else in the room was seated now. Miss Bangeter was rapping for order. There were several vacant seats in the freshman rows…far front, not together, most undesirable. Tacy nudged Betsy and pointed to them. She was agonized with embarrassment.

  But Betsy was stubborn.

  “We came early to get those seats,” she said in a loud whisper. The boys looked at each other and grinned. Betsy forgot herself. She blushed furiously, but not from shyness. “They belong to us. You get out!” she said.

  To her amazement the boys, with one accord, slipped out of the seats.

  “Take it easy! Take it easy!” Herbert Humphreys said.

  “And she looks so sweet and gentle, walking past my house,” Cab whispered.

  Covering their retreat with muttered witticisms, they hurried down the aisle.

  Betsy and Tacy sat down, breathing hard. All about them necks were craned. A wave of giggling swept through the room. Miss Bangeter rapped for order again.

  Then to Betsy’s horror, Miss Bangeter turned and descended the platform. She walked rapidly up the last aisle. Heads were turned to follow her progress. Betsy saw Julia’s anxious face, Katie’s.

  Miss Bangeter drew nearer. No feeble imitation of Betsy’s or Winona’s had conveyed her height, her sternness, her black-haired majesty. Betsy stole a glance at Tacy who had turned pale, and seemed frozen to her seat.

  Miss Bangeter drew nearer the two culprits, nearer, nearer…

  She passed them by, and going into the alcove, efficiently opened a window.

  7

  Cab

  EXCEPT FOR THE ADVENTURE of the Two Back Seats, the first day at high school did not amount to much. There were the usual opening exercises. The school joined lustily in singing a hymn, and for the first time Betsy and Tacy heard Miss Bangeter, with stern sincerity and an impressive Boston accent, read a psalm and lead in the Lord’s Prayer. Long before noon school was dismissed for the day.

  In the afternoon Betsy, Tacy and Winona went down to Cook’s Book Store to buy school supplies. They went to Heinz’s Restaurant for banana splits and back to the Ray house where…joined by Julia, Katie and Mrs. Ray…they discussed the morning. The banana splits proving insufficient, they made fudge. And Julia played, and all of them sang.

  Julia preferred operatic music. Some time before she had written to a music store in Minneapolis, grandly opened an account, asked for a list of their opera scores and ordered…because it was cheapest…the opera of Pagliacci. When alone, she played and sang Pagliacci by the hour. Not just the soprano part of Nedda, but all the parts…tenors, baritones, even the villagers. She told Betsy the story of the clown’s betrayal and Betsy almost wept at first when Julia sang, “Laugh, Pagliaccio,” with a sob in her voice. But the Rays had grown callous to the sorrows of the strolling players.

  When contemporaries were around, as now, Julia played popular songs and with such contagious zest that everyone gathered arm in arm around the piano and sang.

  After supper, Betsy telephoned Tacy and Winona for prolonged conversations, then went upstairs to wind her hair on Magic Wavers, take a warm bath with some of Julia’s bath salts in it, and rub the new freckle cream into her face. Wrapped in a kimono she sat down to manicure her nails.

  She still felt a little strange in the new bedroom. It was always so neat…. Julia had kept the old room cozily untidy. And she missed Uncle Keit
h’s trunk, gathering dust in the attic. She had to admit that the room was pretty, though; Mrs. Ray joyfully called it a typical girl’s room.

  It was papered in a pattern of large blue and white flowers clambering up vines. There were blue ruffled curtains at the windows, blue matting on the floor, a blue, white-tufted bedspread on the white iron bed. The furniture was Mrs. Ray’s old Hill Street bedroom set, freshly painted white.

  “You’ll have a set of bird’s eye maple some day,” her mother promised. But Betsy rather liked the low old-fashioned bureau with a tier of shelves at the side, and the chest and rocking chair in their shining new white coats. The walls were liberally sprinkled with photographs and Gibson Girls.

  “I’m going to get me a Deep Valley High School pennant,” Betsy planned, buffing luxuriously.

  Julia and Fred were downstairs. Betsy could hear their voices in the parlor, and that brought to her mind a question dormant since morning. Winona had created it with her talk about boys. Tacy didn’t care about boys, and with Tacy Betsy almost forgot how important they were.

  But she was in high school now. Would boys start coming to see her, as they came to see Julia?

  Tom Slade had come of course, since he was a little boy, but that was because his mother and Mrs. Ray were friends. And Tom had gone away to the military school that Julia’s friend Jerry had once attended. She knew Herbert Humphreys pretty well; his parents too were friends of her parents, and at intervals he and his older brother joined the Rays at a family party. But she couldn’t imagine Herbert coming to the house independent of his parents.

  She giggled to herself remembering the morning’s encounter with him and Cab.

  “No more H.H.A.S.,” Tacy had leaned out to whisper after Miss Bangeter returned to the platform. And Betsy agreed although admitting to herself that Herbert, in vacation tan, blonder, bigger and brawnier than ever, was outstandingly good looking. Cab Edwards was cute, too.