Lonesome Land (20 page)

“I’m not in the habit of apologizing to people for the clothes I wear.” Val lifted her chin haughtily. “I am not at all sure that I shall go. In fact, I—”

“Oh, you’ll go!” Arline rested her arms upon her bony hips and snapped her meager jaws together. “You’ll go, if I have to carry you over. I’ve sent for
fifteen yards of buntin’ to decorate the hall with. I ain’t going to all that trouble for nothing. I ain’t giving a dance in honor of a certain person, and then let that person
stay away. You—why, you’d queer yourself with the hull country, Val Fleetwood! You ain’t got the least sign of an excuse. You got the clothes, and you ain’t sick.
There’s a reason why you got to show up. I ain’t going into no details at present, but under the circumstances, it’s
advisable.
” She smelled something burning then,
and bolted for the kitchen, where her sharp, rather nasal voice was heard upbraiding Minnie for some neglect.

Polycarp Jenks came in, eyed Val and Manley from under one lifted eyebrow, smiled skinnily, and pulled out a chair with a rasping noise, and sat down facing them. Instinctively Val refrained
from speaking her mind about Arline and her dance before Polycarp, but afterward, in their own room, she grew rather eloquent upon the subject. She would not go. She would not permit that woman to
browbeat her into doing what she did not want to do, she said. In her honor, indeed! The impertinence of going to the bottom of her trunk, and meddling with her clothes—with that reception
gown, of all others! The idea of wearing that gown to a frontier dance—even if she consented to go to such a dance! And expecting her to amuse the company by playing “pieces” on
the violin!

“Well, why not?” Manley was sitting rather apathetically upon the edge of the bed, his arms resting upon his knees, his eyes moodily studying the intricate rose pattern in the faded
Brussels carpet. They were the first words he had spoken; one might easily have doubted whether he had heard all Val said.

“Why not? Manley Fleetwood, do you mean to tell me—”

“Why not go, and get acquainted, and quit feeling that you’re a pearl cast among swine? It strikes me the Hawley person is pretty level-headed on the subject. If you’re going
to live in this country, why not quit thinking how out of place you are, and how superior, and meet us all on a level? It won’t hurt you to go to that dance, and it won’t hurt you to
play for them, if they want you to. You
can
play, you know; you used to play at all the musical doings in Fern Hill, and even in the city sometimes. And, let me tell you, Val, we
aren’t quite savages, out here. I’ve even suspected, sometimes, that we’re just as good as Fern Hill.”

“We?” Val looked at him steadily. “So you wish to identify yourself with these people—with Polycarp Jenks, and Arline Hawley, and—”

“Why not? They’re shaky on grammar, and their manners could stand a little polish, but aside from that they’re exactly like the people you’ve lived among all your life.
Sure, I wish to identify myself with them. I’m just a rancher—pretty small punkins, too, among all these big outfits, and you’re a rancher’s wife. The Hawley person could
buy us out for cash tomorrow, if she wanted to, and 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 anytime 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 stared, 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 hall to the dining room. She wanted to show Arline. She had not thought of the possibility of finding anyone 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 her own room, the door of which she shut and locked.

“Such a fool!” she whispered vehemently, and stamped her white-shod foot upon the carpet. “He looked perfectly disgusted—and so did that other man. And no wonder.
Such—it’s
vulgar,
Val Fleetwood! It’s just ill-bred, and coarse, and horrid!” She threw herself upon the bed and put her face in the pillow.

Someone—she thought it sounded like Manley—came up and tried the door, stood a moment before it, and went away again. Arline’s voice, sharpened with displeasure, she heard
speaking to Minnie upon the stairs. They went down, and there was a confusion of voices below. In the street beneath her window footsteps sounded intermittently, coming and going with a certain
eagerness of tread. After a time there came, from a distance, the sound of violins and the “coronet” of which Arline had been so proud; and mingled with it was an undercurrent of
shuffling feet, a mere whisper of sound, cut sharply now and then by the sharp commands of the floor manager. They were dancing—in her honor. And she was a fool; a proud, ill-tempered,
selfish fool.

With one of her quick changes of mood she rose, patted her hair smooth, caught up a wrap oddly inharmonious with the gown and slippers, looped her train over her arm, took her violin, and ran
lightly downstairs. The parlor, the dining room, the kitchen were deserted and the lights turned low. She braced herself mentally, and, flushing at the unaccustomed act, rapped timidly upon the
door which opened into the office—which by that time she knew was really a saloon. Hawley himself opened the door, and his eyes bulged at sight of her.

“Is Mr. Fleetwood here? I—I thought, after all, I’d go to the dance,” she said, in rather a timid voice, shrinking back into the shadow.

“Fleetwood? Why, I guess he’s gone on over. He said you wasn’t going. You wait a minute. I—here, Kent! You take Mrs. Fleetwood over to the hall. Man’s
gone.”

“Oh, no! I—really, it doesn’t matter—”

But Kent had already thrown away his cigarette and come out to her, closing the door immediately after him.

“I’ll take you over—I was just going, anyway,” he assured her, his eyes dwelling upon her rather intently.

“Oh—I wanted Manley. I—I hate to go—like this, it seems so—so queer, in this place. At first I—I thought it would be a joke, but it isn’t; it’s
silly and—and ill-bred. You—everybody will be shocked, and—”

Kent took a step toward her, where she was shrinking against the stairway. Once before she had lost her calm composure and had let him peep into her mind. Then it had been on account of Manley;
now, womanlike, it was her clothes.

“You couldn’t be anything but all right, if you tried,” he told her, speaking softly. “It isn’t silly to look the way the Lord meant you to look.
You—you—oh, you needn’t worry—nobody’s going to be shocked very hard.” He reached out and took the violin from her; took also her arm and opened the outer door.
“You’re late,” he said, speaking in a more commonplace tone. “You ought to have overshoes, or something—those white slippers won’t be so white time you get
there. Maybe I ought to carry you.”

“The idea!” she stepped out daintily upon the slushy walk.

“Well, I can take you a block or two around, and have sidewalk all the way; that’ll help some. Women sure are a lot of bother—I’m plumb sorry for the poor devils that get
inveigled into marrying one.”

“Why, Mr. Burnett! Do you always talk like that? Because if you do, I don’t wonder—”

“No,” Kent interrupted, looking down at her and smiling grimly, “as it happens, I don’t. I’m real nice, generally speaking. Say! This is going to be a good deal of
trouble, do you know? After you dance with hubby, you’ve got to waltz with me.”

“Got
to?” Val raised her eyebrows, though the expression was lost upon him.

“Sure. Look at the way I worked like a horse, saving your life—and the cat’s—and now leading you all over town to keep those nice white slippers clean! By rights, you
oughtn’t to dance with anybody else. But I ain’t looking for real gratitude. Four or five waltzes is all I’ll insist on, but—” His tone was lugubrious in the
extreme.