AFTER ANTONIA WENT TO live with the Cutters, she seemed to care about
nothing but picnics and parties and having a good time. When she was not
going to a dance, she sewed until midnight. Her new clothes were the
subject of caustic comment. Under Lena's direction she copied Mrs.
Gardener's new party dress and Mrs. Smith's street costume so ingeniously
in cheap materials that those ladies were greatly annoyed, and Mrs. Cutter,
who was jealous of them, was secretly pleased.
Tony wore gloves now, and high-heeled shoes and feathered bonnets, and she
went downtown nearly every afternoon with Tiny and Lena and the Marshalls'
Norwegian Anna. We high-school boys used to linger on the playground at
the afternoon recess to watch them as they came tripping down the hill
along the board sidewalk, two and two. They were growing prettier every
day, but as they passed us, I used to think with pride that Antonia, like
Snow-White in the fairy tale, was still `fairest of them all.'
Being a senior now, I got away from school early. Sometimes I overtook the
girls downtown and coaxed them into the ice-cream parlour, where they would
sit chattering and laughing, telling me all the news from the country.
I remember how angry Tiny Soderball made me one afternoon. She declared
she had heard grandmother was going to make a Baptist preacher of me. `I
guess you'll have to stop dancing and wear a white necktie then. Won't he
look funny, girls?'
Lena laughed. `You'll have to hurry up, Jim. If you're going to be a
preacher, I want you to marry me. You must promise to marry us all, and
then baptize the babies.'
Norwegian Anna, always dignified, looked at her reprovingly.
`Baptists don't believe in christening babies, do they, Jim?'
I told her I didn't know what they believed, and didn't care, and that I
certainly wasn't going to be a preacher.
`That's too bad,' Tiny simpered. She was in a teasing mood. `You'd make
such a good one. You're so studious. Maybe you'd like to be a professor.
You used to teach Tony, didn't you?'
Antonia broke in. `I've set my heart on Jim being a doctor. You'd be good
with sick people, Jim. Your grandmother's trained you up so nice. My papa
always said you were an awful smart boy.'
I said I was going to be whatever I pleased. `Won't you be surprised, Miss
Tiny, if I turn out to be a regular devil of a fellow?'
They laughed until a glance from Norwegian Anna checked them; the
high-school principal had just come into the front part of the shop to buy
bread for supper. Anna knew the whisper was going about that I was a sly
one. People said there must be something queer about a boy who showed no
interest in girls of his own age, but who could be lively enough when he
was with Tony and Lena or the three Marys.
The enthusiasm for the dance, which the Vannis had kindled, did not at once
die out. After the tent left town, the Euchre Club became the Owl Club,
and gave dances in the Masonic Hall once a week. I was invited to join,
but declined. I was moody and restless that winter, and tired of the
people I saw every day. Charley Harling was already at Annapolis, while I
was still sitting in Black Hawk, answering to my name at roll-call every
morning, rising from my desk at the sound of a bell and marching out like
the grammar-school children. Mrs. Harling was a little cool toward me,
because I continued to champion Antonia. What was there for me to do after
supper? Usually I had learned next day's lessons by the time I left the
school building, and I couldn't sit still and read forever.
In the evening I used to prowl about, hunting for diversion. There lay the
familiar streets, frozen with snow or liquid with mud. They led to the
houses of good people who were putting the babies to bed, or simply sitting
still before the parlour stove, digesting their supper. Black Hawk had two
saloons. One of them was admitted, even by the church people, to be as
respectable as a saloon could be. Handsome Anton Jelinek, who had rented
his homestead and come to town, was the proprietor. In his saloon there
were long tables where the Bohemian and German farmers could eat the
lunches they brought from home while they drank their beer. Jelinek kept
rye bread on hand and smoked fish and strong imported cheeses to please the
foreign palate. I liked to drop into his bar-room and listen to the talk.
But one day he overtook me on the street and clapped me on the shoulder.
`Jim,' he said, `I am good friends with you and I always like to see you.
But you know how the church people think about saloons. Your grandpa has
always treated me fine, and I don't like to have you come into my place,
because I know he don't like it, and it puts me in bad with him.'
So I was shut out of that.
One could hang about the drugstore; and listen to the old men who sat there
every evening, talking politics and telling raw stories. One could go to
the cigar factory and chat with the old German who raised canaries for
sale, and look at his stuffed birds. But whatever you began with him, the
talk went back to taxidermy. There was the depot, of course; I often went
down to see the night train come in, and afterward sat awhile with the
disconsolate telegrapher who was always hoping to be transferred to Omaha
or Denver, `where there was some life.' He was sure to bring out his
pictures of actresses and dancers. He got them with cigarette coupons, and
nearly smoked himself to death to possess these desired forms and faces.
For a change, one could talk to the station agent; but he was another
malcontent; spent all his spare time writing letters to officials
requesting a transfer. He wanted to get back to Wyoming where he could go
trout-fishing on Sundays. He used to say `there was nothing in life for
him but trout streams, ever since he'd lost his twins.'
These were the distractions I had to choose from. There were no other
lights burning downtown after nine o'clock. On starlight nights I used to
pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping
houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered back porches.
They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of light wood, with
spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe. Yet for all
their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappiness some of them
managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed to me made up of
evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to save washing and
cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. This guarded mode of
existence was like living under a tyranny. People's speech, their voices,
their very glances, became furtive and repressed. Every individual taste,
every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those
houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to
make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the
dark. The growing piles of ashes and cinders in the back yards were the
only evidence that the wasteful, consuming process of life went on at all.
On Tuesday nights the Owl Club danced; then there was a little stir in the
streets, and here and there one could see a lighted window until midnight.
But the next night all was dark again.
After I refused to join `the Owls,' as they were called, I made a bold
resolve to go to the Saturday night dances at Firemen's Hall. I knew it
would be useless to acquaint my elders with any such plan. Grandfather
didn't approve of dancing, anyway; he would only say that if I wanted to
dance I could go to the Masonic Hall, among `the people we knew.' It was
just my point that I saw altogether too much of the people we knew.
My bedroom was on the ground floor, and as I studied there, I had a stove
in it. I used to retire to my room early on Saturday night, change my
shirt and collar and put on my Sunday coat. I waited until all was quiet
and the old people were asleep, then raised my window, climbed out, and
went softly through the yard. The first time I deceived my grandparents I
felt rather shabby, perhaps even the second time, but I soon ceased to
think about it.
The dance at the Firemen's Hall was the one thing I looked forward to all
the week. There I met the same people I used to see at the Vannis' tent.
Sometimes there were Bohemians from Wilber, or German boys who came down on
the afternoon freight from Bismarck. Tony and Lena and Tiny were always
there, and the three Bohemian Marys, and the Danish laundry girls.
The four Danish girls lived with the laundryman and his wife in their house
behind the laundry, with a big garden where the clothes were hung out to
dry. The laundryman was a kind, wise old fellow, who paid his girls well,
looked out for them, and gave them a good home. He told me once that his
own daughter died just as she was getting old enough to help her mother,
and that he had been `trying to make up for it ever since.' On summer
afternoons he used to sit for hours on the sidewalk in front of his
laundry, his newspaper lying on his knee, watching his girls through the
big open window while they ironed and talked in Danish. The clouds of
white dust that blew up the street, the gusts of hot wind that withered his
vegetable garden, never disturbed his calm. His droll expression seemed to
say that he had found the secret of contentment. Morning and evening he
drove about in his spring wagon, distributing freshly ironed clothes, and
collecting bags of linen that cried out for his suds and sunny
drying-lines. His girls never looked so pretty at the dances as they did
standing by the ironing-board, or over the tubs, washing the fine pieces,
their white arms and throats bare, their cheeks bright as the brightest
wild roses, their gold hair moist with the steam or the heat and curling in
little damp spirals about their ears. They had not learned much English,
and were not so ambitious as Tony or Lena; but they were kind, simple girls
and they were always happy. When one danced with them, one smelled their
clean, freshly ironed clothes that had been put away with rosemary leaves
from Mr. Jensen's garden.
There were never girls enough to go round at those dances, but everyone
wanted a turn with Tony and Lena.
Lena moved without exertion, rather indolently, and her hand often accented
the rhythm softly on her partner's shoulder. She smiled if one spoke to
her, but seldom answered. The music seemed to put her into a soft, waking
dream, and her violet-coloured eyes looked sleepily and confidingly at one
from under her long lashes. When she sighed she exhaled a heavy perfume of
sachet powder. To dance `Home, Sweet Home,' with Lena was like coming in
with the tide. She danced every dance like a waltz, and it was always the
same waltz-- the waltz of coming home to something, of inevitable, fated
return. After a while one got restless under it, as one does under the
heat of a soft, sultry summer day.
When you spun out into the floor with Tony, you didn't return to anything.
You set out every time upon a new adventure. I liked to schottische with
her; she had so much spring and variety, and was always putting in new
steps and slides. She taught me to dance against and around the
hard-and-fast beat of the music. If, instead of going to the end of the
railroad, old Mr. Shimerda had stayed in New York and picked up a living
with his fiddle, how different Antonia's life might have been!
Antonia often went to the dances with Larry Donovan, a passenger conductor
who was a kind of professional ladies' man, as we said. I remember how
admiringly all the boys looked at her the night she first wore her
velveteen dress, made like Mrs. Gardener's black velvet. She was lovely to
see, with her eyes shining, and her lips always a little parted when she
danced. That constant, dark colour in her cheeks never changed.
One evening when Donovan was out on his run, Antonia came to the hall with
Norwegian Anna and her young man, and that night I took her home. When we
were in the Cutters' yard, sheltered by the evergreens, I told her she must
kiss me good night.
`Why, sure, Jim.' A moment later she drew her face away and whispered
indignantly, `Why, Jim! You know you ain't right to kiss me like that.
I'll tell your grandmother on you!'
`Lena Lingard lets me kiss her,' I retorted, `and I'm not half as fond of
her as I am of you.'
`Lena does?' Tony gasped. `If she's up to any of her nonsense with you,
I'll scratch her eyes out!' She took my arm again and we walked out of the
gate and up and down the sidewalk. `Now, don't you go and be a fool like
some of these town boys. You're not going to sit around here and whittle
store-boxes and tell stories all your life. You are going away to school
and make something of yourself. I'm just awful proud of you. You won't go
and get mixed up with the Swedes, will you?'
`I don't care anything about any of them but you,' I said. `And you'll
always treat me like a kid, suppose.'
She laughed and threw her arms around me. `I expect I will, but you're a
kid I'm awful fond of, anyhow! You can like me all you want to, but if I
see you hanging round with Lena much, I'll go to your grandmother, as sure
as your name's Jim Burden! Lena's all right, only--well, you know yourself
she's soft that way. She can't help it. It's natural to her.'
If she was proud of me, I was so proud of her that I carried my head high
as I emerged from the dark cedars and shut the Cutters' gate softly behind
me. Her warm, sweet face, her kind arms, and the true heart in her; she
was, oh, she was still my Antonia! I looked with contempt at the dark,
silent little houses about me as I walked home, and thought of the stupid
young men who were asleep in some of them. I knew where the real women
were, though I was only a boy; and I would not be afraid of them, either!
I hated to enter the still house when I went home from the dances, and it
was long before I could get to sleep. Toward morning I used to have
pleasant dreams: sometimes Tony and I were out in the country, sliding
down straw-stacks as we used to do; climbing up the yellow mountains over
and over, and slipping down the smooth sides into soft piles of chaff.
One dream I dreamed a great many times, and it was always the same. I was
in a harvest-field full of shocks, and I was lying against one of them.
Lena Lingard came across the stubble barefoot, in a short skirt, with a
curved reaping-hook in her hand, and she was flushed like the dawn, with a
kind of luminous rosiness all about her. She sat down beside me, turned to
me with a soft sigh and said, `Now they are all gone, and I can kiss you as
much as I like.'
I used to wish I could have this flattering dream about Antonia, but I
never did.
Read next: BOOK II - The Hired Girls#Chapter 13
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