Corral Nocturne (5 page)

One evening near the middle of June, just as
twilight was falling, they drove down the lane to the Strickland
place, and Cole reined the team to a stop just outside the gate.
The chestnuts had taken exception to standing in the yard since the
day a chicken had flown up in their faces and nearly caused a
disaster just as Ellie was getting out between the buggy
wheels.

Tonight she stepped down nimbly, keeping her
skirts clear of the wheel with one hand. As she turned around near
the gatepost, Cole, gathering the reins and buggy whip in his
hands, leaned from his seat to speak to her. “Say, Ellie, there’s
something I wanted to ask you,” he said. “Will you go with me to
the Fourth of July dance in town next month?”

For a second Ellie’s eyes flashed with
surprise and eagerness. The Fourth of July dance! The dance and
celebration was an annual affair, the biggest of the year. Held on
a gaily decorated open-air platform near the edge of town, the
dance ran all night long, with a potluck supper beforehand and
fireworks at midnight. Ellie had not been to the celebration on the
Fourth for several years, and the prospect of going again was one
of unmixed delight. But in the next second the light in her face
faltered a little, checking the words of ready acceptance that had
nearly been on her lips.

“I’d
like
to go—if I can,” she said
cautiously, hoping that Cole could see how much she really did want
it, in spite of her hesitation. Conflicting feelings made her speak
carefully and deliberately. “I’d very much like to, but I’ll have
to see…May I tell you in a day or two, when I know?”

She had fancied she saw a slight trace of
disappointment in Cole’s face at her apparent lack of enthusiasm.
But whether imagined or not, it was gone quickly, replaced by his
ready smile. “Of course. How about Sunday afternoon? I’ll come by
for a drive then, and you can tell me if you’ve made up your
mind.”

“All right,” said Ellie, whose mind would
have been made up in that instant had it not been for that one cold
little doubt that had caught at her. She managed to smile up at him
in her usual way. “I’ll know by then. Good night!”

“Good night, Ellie.”

She stood by the gatepost, in nearly the same
place she had stood on that first morning when he asked her to the
picnic, and watched him pull down into the yard and turn the buggy.
As he came back past her Cole lifted the hand that held the buggy
whip in farewell, and Ellie waved her hand to him, feeling
suddenly, inexplicably, very small and far away. The rattle of the
buggy dying away down the road as it grew smaller in the distance
completed the impression, leaving her standing alone in the soft
hush of the prairie evening, with only the faint cry of a
night-bird for company.

She walked across the yard to the house. She
looked meditatively down at the skirt of her blue gingham dress,
and watched it swing and brush the tops of her shoes as she walked.
Ellie bit her lip and looked up again at the house as she
approached it; the light of a lamp shone from a front window. There
was a spot of light from a lantern over near the barn, indicating
that Ed was out doing the evening chores; her mother would be
alone.

Ellie went up the two steps to the door and
pushed it open. She went in, turned around and closed the door, and
then she looked at her mother. Mrs. Strickland was sitting by the
table, sorting socks for darning. She glanced up without her thin,
work-hardened hands stopping in their task. “Did you have a good
time?” she said.

“Yes,” said Ellie a little absently. She laid
down her hat and the light shawl she had carried. Mrs. Strickland
gave her another glance, a slightly more observant one.

“Something on your mind?” she said.

“Well, a little,” said Ellie. She put her
folded arms across the top of a high-backed wooden chair. “Cole
asked me to go to the Fourth of July dance with him.”

“Oh, yes?” said Mrs. Strickland, displaying
some interest. “Do you want to go?”

“I’m not sure,” said Ellie. “But I don’t mean
that. That’s what I want to talk to you about, Mama. I’d just love
to go. I haven’t been to town on the Fourth for four years! And I
wasn’t old enough to dance then. It isn’t that, it’s just—” She
glanced down at her folded arms clad in the blue gingham. “I don’t
know if my best dress is nice enough to wear. Oh, it’s been
perfectly nice enough for all the other things I’ve gone to. But
you know what the girls wear to a big dance like this—lawn and
organdie, and those pretty white embroidered dresses—it’s a little
different.” Her clear young gray eyes sought her mother’s face
earnestly. “I don’t mind looking a bit plainer than everyone else,
really, Mama. But do you think it would look too—silly? I mean
would it be right? For a big dance like this?”

Mrs. Strickland looked at her for a minute.
Her forehead knit thoughtfully as her eyes traveled up and down the
figure of her daughter standing there by the chair, taking in the
plain blue gingham, the serious, questioning face, and the soft
light of the lamp on the girl’s hair. Habit, and a natural
disinclination toward making an effort to change anything, had made
of her an unquestioning, uncomplaining woman, who perhaps did not
realize she had anything to complain of; but she had not been blind
to the changes of this summer. She had seen, though she had not had
cause to give it close thought until this moment, the happiness and
life that a few simple amusements had given to Ellie, and perhaps
it had planted the tiny, barely stirring seeds of a revolt against
what her son’s petty tyranny had made of their life.

She looked at Ellie for a moment longer, and
then her mouth folded up determinedly. “Never mind about the blue,”
she said. “You’re going to go, and you’re going to have something
pretty to wear.”

Ellie straightened up, half alarmed, half
amazed. “But Mama, Ed wouldn’t—”

“Ed won’t have anything to do with it,” said
Mrs. Strickland firmly. She moved the pile of socks from her lap to
the table and got up. “I’ve been saving part of the egg money all
along for emergencies, and this is one. If we ever have a real
emergency, Lord forbid, then Ed’ll just have to pay up.” She opened
the cupboard in the corner and took down a chipped china pitcher,
the last of a set long broken and departed a piece at a time. From
this she took a small brown bag that chinked in her hand. “It’s
about time we stopped acting like we can’t spend money on a few
nice things every once in a while. We may live plain, but we’re not
poor
, Ellie, and your brother knows it as well as I do.”

Ellie stared at her, eyes shining with
subdued but growing delight. She came around the table and watched,
half-incredulously. Mrs. Strickland pulled open the drawstring of
the bag and shook out some coins on the table, spreading them out
with her fingers. “There’s enough here to buy a length of goods for
a dress, and there ought to be some left over to get you a nice
pair of shoes and stockings.”

“Shoes too? Mama, I don’t think—”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Strickland, nodding her head
even more decidedly as she sat down at the table again; “yes, you
ought to have a pretty pair of shoes to wear with a good dress.
They’ll last you a long time, anyway, Ellie; your foot’s not going
to get any bigger now you’re grown up. Yes, you get the shoes.”

“All right,” said Ellie, laughing, still
feeling like she had stumbled into a delicious dream.

“You can go into town with Ed tomorrow or day
after and pick out the things, and we’ll get the dress made in
plenty of time for the Fourth. What kind of material do they have
at the dry-goods? I haven’t been in there in a long while.”

“Well, last time I was there they were just
beginning to get in the summer goods…let’s see, they had a
pearl-colored lawn with a tiny dot and leaf pattern, kind of like
berries—and a green one with—”

“Don’t you get green unless it’s just right,”
said Mrs. Strickland decisively. “Green’s either the prettiest
color or the ugliest color on earth, and there aren’t too many
shades of difference between the two. Anyway, they’ll have more out
now, so you just pick the prettiest thing they’ve got to your
taste, so long as it’ll wash well.”

Ellie impulsively bent and flung her arms
around her mother’s neck and kissed her. “Oh, Mama, I wish I could
do something as lovely for you someday!”

“Well, well,” said Mrs. Strickland, smiling
and patting Ellie’s hand as it lay on her shoulder. “You’d better
get to bed. You want to get up early and go in the morning.”

“All right, Mama. But do you think Ed
will—?”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll fix Ed,” said
Mrs. Strickland, the determination in her voice making it sound as
if she intended to do it with a hammer.

No such persuasion was necessary, however.
Ellie was up betimes the next morning, dressed and ready before
breakfast, and sat through the meal in slightly anxious
anticipation of the moment when the question would be put. It was
something of a jolt when her mother, instead of the usual meek hint
on the subject, came briskly out with, “Ed, I think you ought to go
into town this morning instead of next week. Ellie’s got a few
little things to get at the dry-goods, so she can go with you. I
already gave her some of the egg money for it, so there’s no need
for you to bother about that.”

Ed could be handled when taken unawares. He
looked up with an annoyed frown, but it took him a minute or so to
come up with an answer, with a mouthful of coffee assisting in the
delay. “Why today? I got haying to start soon; I dunno why I should
drive those horses all the way into town and back another
time.”

“It isn’t
another
time if you don’t
have to go next week,” Mrs. Strickland pointed out sensibly.

“What’s she got to get at the dry-goods
anyway? I was there last time; why couldn’t I have gotten it
then?”

Ellie longed to say “Because you wouldn’t
have gotten it for me anyway,” but she did not dare to risk
sidetracking a conversation where her mother was holding the field
so well, and so held her peace.

“Now, Ed, do you suppose your sister’s going
to trust you to pick out the right sorts of stockings and things
for her? Besides, I don’t think you’d want to. Better let Ellie
go.”

Ed grumbled unintelligibly for another minute
or two, but the element of surprise was an effective weapon in that
it left him without his usual pre-prepared excuses. Before Ellie
had gotten over her own surprise and amusement at her mother’s
small victory, he had left the table and went out to harness the
team, and scarcely had the screen door swung closed behind him than
her mother was hurrying her out of her own chair to get her hat and
the little purse that held the precious money for the fabric. And
in less than half an hour they were on their way.

There were indeed shelves of pretty fabrics
in the dry-goods store, but Ellie knew the one she wanted almost as
soon as she saw it. It was a pale pink lawn, with a whisper-fine
print of tiny starry flowers in white. Cautiously she inquired the
price…and felt again that little inner leap of excitement when it
proved to be within her means. Still hardly able to believe that
she, Ellie Strickland, was doing all these very ordinary but
somehow incredible things, she paid for it and for a pair of silk
stockings she had selected. The shoes, she had determined after
conferring with the storekeeper, were to be mail-ordered from the
Montgomery Ward catalogue. She filled out the order blank and
counted out the money there at the counter, and took it to the post
office to mail it before meeting Ed back at the wagon.

That night as soon as supper was cleared away
they began work on the dress. Mrs. Strickland had always been a
fine seamstress, though it had been a long time since she had had
the chance to work on such pretty and delicate material. Armed with
a copy of
McCall’s
that was only a few months old, over
which she and Ellie pored with great attention, and assisted by
Ellie’s descriptions of the styles the other girls were wearing,
she cut out a pattern of her own. Evenings for the next two weeks
were a busy time, as mother and daughter cut, basted, stitched,
hemmed, gathered and fitted, with occasional breaks to tap, jiggle
and otherwise encourage the old sewing machine, long past the age
of retirement but still gamely trundling along.

“I hope I ordered the right size,” said Ellie
for the twentieth time, lingering again over the page of shoes in
the Montgomery Ward catalogue. “If they’re a little tight I can
manage, but if they’re too big I just can’t dance in them.”

“We’ll wedge them with newspaper,” said Mrs.
Strickland, who had certainly acquired new qualities of positivity
over this project, “or find some other way. You’ve spent too much
money and took too much trouble over all this to have it spoiled by
a shoe.”