Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower (reading strategies book .TXT) 📖

never miss the money. And, Val, she's giving that dance in your honor; you ought to appreciate that. The Hawley doesn't take a fancy to every woman she sees—and, let me tell you, she stands ace-high in this country. If she didn't like you, she could make you wish she did.”

“Well, upon my word! I begin to suspect you of being a humorist, Manley. And even if you mean that seriously—why, it's all the funnier.” To prove it, she laughed.

Manley hesitated, then left the room with a snort, a scowl, and a slam of the door; and the sound of Val's laughter followed him down the stairs.

Arline came up, her arms full of white satin, white lace, white cambric, and the toes of two white satin slippers showing just above the top of her apron pockets. She walked briskly in and deposited her burden upon the bed.

“My! them's the nicest smellin' things I ever had a hold of,” she observed. “And still they don't seem to smell, either. Must be a dandy perfumery you've got. I brought up the things, seein' you know they're here. I thought you could take your time about cuttin' off the trail and fillin' in the neck and sleeves.”

She sat down upon the foot of the bed, carefully tucking her gingham apron close about her so that it might not come in contact with the other.

“I never did see such clothes,” she sighed. “I dunno how you'll ever git a chancet to wear 'em out in this country—seems to me they're most too pretty to wear, anyhow, I can git Marthy Winters to come over and help you—she does sewin'—and you can use my machine any time you want to. I'd take a hold myself if I didn't have all the baking to do for the dance. That Min can't learn nothing, seems like. I can't trust her to do a thing, hardly, unless I stand right over her. Breed girls ain't much account ever; but they're all that'll work out, in this country, seems like. Sometimes I swear I'll git a Chink and be done with it—only I got to have somebody I can talk to oncet in a while. I couldn't never talk to a Chink—they don't seem hardly human to me. Do they to you?

“And say! I've got some allover lace—it's eecrue—that you can fill in the neck with; you're welcome to use it—there's most a yard of it, and I won't never find a use for it. Or I was thinkin', there'll be enough cut off'n the trail to make a gamp of the satin, sleeves and all.” She lifted the shining stuff with manifest awe. “It does seem a shame to put the shears to it—but you never'll git any wear out of it the way it is, and I don't believe—”

“Mis' Hawley!” shrilled the voice of Minnie at the foot of the stairs. “There's a couple of drummers off'n the train, 'n' they want supper, 'n' what'll I give 'em?”

“My heavens! That girl'll drive me crazy, sure!” Arline hurried to the door. “Don't take the roof off'n the house,” she cried querulously down the stairway. “I'm comin'.”

Val had not spoken a word. She went over to the bed, lifted a fold of satin, and smiled down at it ironically. “Mamma and I spent a whole month planning and sewing and gloating over you,” she said aloud. “You were almost as important as a wedding gown; the club's farewell reception—'To what base uses we do—'”

“Oh, here's your slippers!” Arline thrust half her body into the room and held the slippers out to Val. “I stuck 'em into my pockets to bring up, and forgot all about 'em, mind you, till I was handin' the drummers their tea. And one of 'em happened to notice 'em, and raised right up outa his chair, an' said: 'Cind'rilla, sure as I live! Say, if there's a foot in this town that'll go into them slippers, for God's sake introduce me to the owner!' I told him to mind his own business. Drummers do get awful fresh when they think they can get away with it.” She departed in a hurry, as usual.

Every day after that Arline talked about altering the satin gown. Every day Val was noncommittal and unenthusiastic. Occasionally she told Arline that she was not going to the dance, but Arline declined to take seriously so preposterous a declaration.

“You want to break a leg, then,” she told Val grimly on Thursday. “That's the only excuse that'll go down with this bunch. And you better git a move on—it comes off to-morrer night, remember.”

“I won't go, Manley!” Val consoled herself by declaring, again and again. “The idea of Arline Hawley ordering me about like a child! Why should I go if I don't care to go?”

“Search me.” Manley shrugged his shoulders. “It isn't so long, though, since you were just as determined to stay and have the shivaree, you remember.”

“Well, you and Mr. Burnett tried to do exactly what Arline is doing. You seemed to think I was a child, to be ordered about.”

At the very last minute—to be explicit, an hour before the hall was lighted, several hours after smoke first began to rise from the chimney, Val suddenly swerved to a reckless mood. Arline had gone to her own room to dress, too angry to speak what was in her mind. She had worked since five o'clock that morning. She had bullied Val, she had argued, she had begged, she had wheedled. Val would not go. Arline had appealed to Manley, and Manley had assured her, with a suspicious slurring of his esses that he was out of it, and had nothing to say. Val, he said, could not be driven.

It was after Arline had gone to her room and Manley had returned to the “office” that Val suddenly picked up her hairbrush and, with an impish light in her eyes, began to pile her hair high upon her head. With her lips curved to match the mockery of her eyes, she began hurriedly to dress. Later, she went down to the parlor, where four women from the neighboring ranches were sitting stiffly and in constrained silence, waiting to be escorted to the hall. She swept in upon them, a glorious, shimmery creature all in white and gold. The women steed, wavered, and looked away—at the wall, the floor, at anything but Val's bare, white shoulders and arms as white. Arline had forgotten to look for gloves.

Val read the consternation in their weather-tanned faces, and smiled in wicked enjoyment. She would shock all of Hope; she would shock even Arline, who had insisted upon this. Like a child in mischief, she turned and went rustling down the ball to the dining room. She wanted to show Arline. She had not thought of the possibility of finding any one but Arline and Minnie there, so that she was taken slightly aback when she discovered Kent and another man eating a belated supper.

Kent looked up, eyed her sharply for just an instant, and smiled.

“Good evening, Mrs. Fleetwood,” he said calmly. “Ready for the ball, I see. We got in late.” He went on spreading butter upon his bread, evidently quite unimpressed by her magnificence.

The other man stared fixedly at his plate. It was a trifle, but Val suddenly felt foolish and ashamed. She took a step or two toward the kitchen, then retreated; down the hall she went, up the stairs and into