Lonesome Land by B. M. Bower (good books for 8th graders .TXT) đź“•
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- Author: B. M. Bower
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“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.
Some one—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, tool her violin, and ran lightly down-stairs. 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 in 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.
“Well, I'll waltz with you once—for saving the cat; and once for saving the slippers. For saving me, I'm not sure that I thank you.” Val stepped carefully over a muddy spot on the walk. “Mr. Burnett, you—really, you're an awfully queer man.”
Kent walked to the next crossing and helped her over it before he answered her. “Yes,” he admitted soberly then, “I reckon you're right. I am—queer.”
CHAPTER XIV. A WEDDING PRESENT
Sunday it was, and Val had insisted stubbornly upon going back to the ranch; somewhat to her surprise, if one might judge by her face, Arline Hawley no longer demurred, but put up lunch enough for a week almost, and announced that she was going along. Hank would have to drive out, to bring back the team, and she said she needed a rest, after all the work and worry of that dance. Manley, upon whose account it was that Val was so anxious, seemed to have nothing whatever to say about it. He was sullenly acquiescent—as was perhaps to be expected of a man who had slipped into his old habits and despised himself for doing so, and almost hated his wife because she had discovered it and said nothing. Val was thankful, during that long, bleak ride over the prairie, for Arline's incessant chatter. It was better than silence, when the silence means bitter thoughts.
“Now,” said Arline, moving excitedly in her seat when they neared Cold Spring Coulee, “maybe I better tell you that the folks round here has kinda planned a little su'prise for you. They don't make much of a showin' about bein' neighborly—not when things go smooth—but they're right there when trouble comes. It's jest a little weddin' present—and if it comes kinda late in the day, why, you don't want to mind that. My dance that I gave was a weddin' party, too, if you care to call it that. Anyway, it was to raise the money to pay for our present, as far as it went—and I want to tell you right now, Val, that you was sure the queen of the ball; everybody said you looked jest like a queen in a picture, and I never heard a word ag'inst your low-neck dress. It looked all right on you, don't you see? On me, for instance, it woulda been something fierce. And I'm real glad you took a hold and danced like you did, and never passed nobody up, like some woulda done. You'll be glad you did, now you know what it was for. Even danced with Polycarp Jenks—and there ain't hardly any woman but what'll turn him down; I'll bet he tromped all over your toes, didn't he?”
“Sometimes,” Val admitted. “What about the surprise you were speaking of, Mrs. Hawley?”
“It does seem as if you might call me Arline,” she complained
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