Corral Nocturne (8 page)

She thought that she had never seen him look
so handsome, though he wore his ordinary range clothes, dusty from
riding. He was staring at her with an unusually serious expression,
one she had never seen before. And as Ellie’s eyes fell on his face
her heart gave a quick unexpected bound, almost into her throat,
that was new and unknown from all the other times she had ever
looked at him.

She stood there as he came toward her,
weaving his way among the other people between them. His hat was in
his hand. He came up close to her and stopped, looking down at her.
Ellie had never realized before that he was so tall. He looked at
her for a moment, and then a slow smile spread across his face.
“We-l-l-l,” he said. “Look at you.”

It may not have been the most romantic of
speeches, but the look and tone were all any girl could have
desired.

As they stood there the first fiddle began to
sing, and the other fiddles and the accordion went after it into
the opening bars of a waltz. Cole glanced toward the musicians, and
then at Ellie. “May I have this one?” he said.

“Yes,” said Ellie faintly—because happiness,
or something very like it, was overwhelming her so that the
smallest action seemed an effort.

Cole took her hand, and in the same motion as
the step she took toward him so he could put his other arm about
her waist they moved away into the waltz. Neither spoke at first,
and they were unaware of the heads that turned curiously as they
passed—for there was something bound to draw notice not only in
their appearance, but in the unmistakable way that they looked at
each other.

“I got through late out at the roundup,” said
Cole after a minute or two, “so I rode straight back. I didn’t even
stop home to change. I left my team and buggy at the livery the
other day, though, because I figured that might happen, so I’ll be
able to drive you home.”

Ellie did not answer, for no answer seemed to
be required just then. Her head was close to his shoulder, and the
music was carrying them round in the circle of lights; and when she
lifted her eyes to look at him again, whatever it was he saw in
them seemed to satisfy him better than an answer.

“They’ll be full of ginger, after standing
two days in a stall!” he remarked presently, with the air of one
carrying on a previous conversation.

“I don’t mind,” said Ellie. “I like
them.”

Either her reply (for some unaccountable
reason) or the music must have infused some new spirit into Cole,
for Ellie caught her breath as the whirl of the waltz they took
threw her weight into the curve of his arm, and then spun her back
lightly across the middle of the floor. She had danced with him
before at other parties, but never like this. She had never known
that he could dance so well, or that she could feel so light.

The first dance ended and another began,
though Ellie hardly noticed how or where. Cole had not left her; he
had barely paused to toss aside the hat which he had still been
holding. Other couples were all around them, both strangers and
others whose faces were familiar, yet they were not
really
there; they were only part of the background. The singing fiddle
and its followers slid into a popular waltz, a light soaring melody
that seemed to carry the dancers around on it in colorful waves.
Ellie found herself humming, following the melody, the words
flitting through her head as Cole spun her around the floor:

After the ball is over

After the break of morn,

After the dancers’ leaving,

After the stars are gone…

The stars were overhead, and the skirt of the
new dress spinning about her in a fine pink cloud, and Cole’s arm
was around her waist. The night had become a dream, whirling in
waltz time. For she was dreaming now, as she had never dared to do
before; inarticulately still, but dreams born of Cole’s presence
and the attendant feeling of contentment which she did not yet know
how to name. And the fiddles sang on, and their waltz went on, and
Ellie did not care if the night never ended.

Ellie sat on the back steps to the platform,
out of sight of the dance that was still going on. She had come out
to sit for a moment and get a breath of air. Cole had had to leave
her for a few minutes to speak to some acquaintances of his
father’s, so she was waiting for him, thinking and resting. She had
danced several more dances with him, and a few, of necessity, with
the other young men who had asked her, and altogether it had been
the most heavenly evening of her life.

Outside in the dusk some small boys ran
around with the peculiar exhilaration of children up past bedtime,
and a few people strolled and talked in the shadows, but for the
most part she was alone. Ellie was gazing out into the darkness,
lost in her own thoughts, when a pair of girls’ voices floated down
to her from somewhere above. The bunting draped on the railings
concealed her from their view, but she could hear them distinctly
as they stood by the edge of the platform.

“She came with the McGregors, didn’t
she?”

“Jean told me that Cole asked her, but he had
to go away somewhere, so he asked the McGregors to bring her. Her
dress is pretty, isn’t it? I wonder if she made it herself.”

“Hmf…funny way to treat a girl you’ve asked
to a dance. But I daresay she’d feel more at home with
them
anyway.”

The voice was dripping with spite, but Ellie,
innocent still in some of these matters, sat very still, quivering
inwardly under the thrust of the flippant words to her soul. Nancy
Kennedy was still speaking. “I honestly didn’t think Cole Newcomb
would ask her to a big dance like this. Did you?”

“Well, he’s been going with her for almost
two months,” said Leila Moore.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say he’s going with her,”
said Nancy Kennedy. “Nobody really thinks much of the Stricklands,
and I’ll bet you he doesn’t either. He’s a different kind than
them. She’s
pretty
, I guess,” said Nancy dismissively, “so I
daresay he’s amusing himself taking her around, but I can’t imagine
him being
serious
. Besides, he must see the way she’s
setting her cap for him.”

“You think?”

“I should say. Didn’t you see the calf-eyed
way she looked at him when he got here tonight? It’s plain as
anything. He’s probably good and used to having caps set at him,
anyway.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet he is,” said Leila rather
dryly, but her irony, if any, was lost on her companion.

“I think he—”

Their voices grew indistinct as they moved
away. Ellie sat still for just a second, and then she got up
feverishly and stumbled down the steps. Her hand slipped over the
knotted end of the gaily-colored bunting draped on the rail, but
she felt it no more than if the hand had been numb. She had to get
away; she could never go back up onto that platform after what she
had just heard. She found her hands were trembling, and her throat
was hot.

Mechanically she held her skirts up off the
ground as she hurried round the corner of the platform, wanting
only to get away from the laughter and people up above. The lively
strains of “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” coming from the fiddles
floated down to her; voices were still laughing and talking as if
nothing had happened. The cheerful sounds buzzed against Ellie’s
ears like something in a nightmare. She did not know whether she
really believed the things they had said about Cole, but what she
had heard of herself carried anguishing conviction. Memories from
earlier in the evening burned her cheeks with shame and
embarrassment. With the spell of the moment stripped away she
recalled how she had stood tongue-tied and looked up at Cole when
he first came over to her—how she had floated dreamily through all
the dances with eyes only for him. She had made a spectacle of
herself, too blissfully ignorant to realize that everyone must see
it—Cole especially. He must have seen it. When he had smiled down
at her, had it been in private amusement at her starry-eyed
adoration? Was that how he had always looked at her?

The music above stopped for a moment, and
amidst the sound of applause Ellie’s footsteps quickened. She
thought she could remember the way they had come from the wagons.
The McGregors ought to be going home soon now, and she could go
back with them. She could tell them that something or other hadn’t
worked out and Cole couldn’t drive her home.

She found the wagons easily enough. But it
was only after she had traversed the long row twice, with the light
of a torch or two wavering on the dark humps of horses and the
buggy tops and high boxes of the rigs looming above her head, that
it was borne in upon her that the one she sought was gone. The four
lop-eared mules and the big wagon were nowhere to be found. The
McGregors must have left early, believing her to be provided with
an escort to see her home. And there flitted distressingly through
Ellie’s mind the trivial thought that her mother’s shawl had gone
with them on the wagon seat.

A horse stamped a heavy hoof in the grass,
and the music from the dance came faintly over to her. Ellie turned
away from the sound and went on down past the end of the row of
wagons, her shoes slipping in the trampled grass. Sharp straws of
it stabbed into her ankles through her thin stockings. She simply
could not go back to the dance now. She could never face Cole
Newcomb, not with the consciousness of all that she had heard—oh,
no, never! She would walk home if need be—five miles of road were
less to her than the chill sickly feeling of disillusionment that
made her shrink from even thinking back to what lay behind her. She
wanted to run the five miles, without stopping.

She came to the wooden bridge over the creek
at the edge of town. The music was almost out of her hearing now,
the lights a blot in the distance. Ellie caught up her skirts and
almost ran across the bridge, her footsteps light but hollow on the
planking. At the far end she stumbled and nearly fell; she caught
at the railing to save herself, with the dreadful thought of her
pretty dress ruined in the dust leaping through her head. Tears
stung her eyes for the first time as she thought how little reason
she would ever have to wear the dress again. She cast them away
with a defiant shake of her head and went on.

From time to time she looked back over her
shoulder, anxious that she might have heard the sound of a wagon.
She hoped no one else going home would come along, for she did not
want to try to explain why a girl who ought to have an escort was
walking home alone. Ellie stumbled again, and her toes hurt inside
her shoe. Tears came to her eyes again, not so much at the pain,
but at the grief that was making her throat ache from holding it
back. She had tried not to think about it, but the thoughts came up
and swirled around her. Her spirits had been sapped away bit by
bit, and there was no reason now why she should not believe every
suggestion and doubt. What reason did Cole Newcomb have to think
anything of her? He had been sorry for her, he had been nice to
her; because that was his nature. She could see that all now. He
thought her pretty and amusing, perhaps, but why should there be
anything more? He had never pretended to any other feeling.

But all the while she was thinking this
Ellie’s rebellious memory was bringing before her that glorious
waltz, with her face upturned to his, and the music carrying them
round under the colored lanterns, and her feeling that somehow this
was how her world was meant to be. The melody of the waltz followed
her now, rang dismally in her ears although she would rather have
forgotten it, rising and falling continuously like a never-ending
gramophone record. It suited bitterly. She had paid little
attention to the rest of the words during the dance even though she
knew them well, but now they came back to her.

…
After the dancers’ leaving

After the stars are gone,

Many a heart is aching

If you could read them all,

Many the hopes that have vanished

After the ball…