Читать книгу The Lieutenant's Lady - Bess Streeter Aldrich - Страница 6

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It was only a week later that a letter came down the river from Sioux City. Cynthia was in her usual excitement over its arrival and read it aloud glibly to Linnie. “ ‘I love you more than tongue can tell.’ ” Oh, how could she bear to let any one else know what was in it? “ ‘You are in my thoughts day and night and I live for the time we can be together.’ ”

It threw her into a feverish mood of preparation. What if Norman would send for her before all her new things were finished? Right in the heat of the summer she went down to the dry-goods stores nearly every day, coming back in a convulsed state to tell Linnie how George Hemming fell over himself to wait on her, joking her about the muslin and rickrack braid she was buying but acting sad about it, too.

Linnie and Aunt Louise were both helping with the sewing, and sometimes, when there was an end to her almost endless tasks, Olga helped, too.

Although a great cable joining two continents had just been laid and shining steel rails had crept slowly and painfully a few miles farther to the west, neither event was as significant to Cynthia as the awaited arrival of her next letter.

Two weeks went by and there was no word yet, with Cynthia more provoked than worried at the long delay.

It was hard for the girls to sew in the stifling heat which lay over the hilly town like a huge, smothering buffalo-hide.

Over at the Hernden House the guests sat out on the long porches in rockers, whacking at flies with their palm-leaf fans. Scarcely a day went by without its runaway, some fly-bitten horse plunging wildly down a hill street with careening buggy. Spring chickens, having escaped both the ax and their picketed yard, cuddled into the thick gray dust of residential streets. Cockle-burrs, sunflowers, and burdock wilted languidly in vacant lots. Some days Indian squaws begged at the Colsworth back door. Olga gave them cold pancakes with an uncharitable look thrown in for good measure.

On one of these hot afternoons, with the girls sewing on the side porch, Uncle Henry came driving home coatless, his collar wilted, and even his bristly whiskers drooping.

He had a piece of news. Word had come in that a band of Indians had swept down on a freight crew out at Plum Creek and captured the train. General Dodge had been out at the end of the line but had hooked on his private car to an engine and raced back to the scene with armed men. They had found the freight train burning, had fired on the Indians, and there had been quite a skirmish.

“Cynthia, if I thought there’d be any more trouble up around Fort Randall, I’d never let you set foot up there.”

At his own words he jumped up and went into the house to come back with a letter for Cynthia. The letter which would tell about her coming!

“Why, Father ... how could you forget it just for that old Indian uprising?”

Norman was up at Fort Randall, and, as he had said, several of the officers’ wives were there. But now he was bitterly disappointed over what he had to tell her. If he had been going to stay she could have come before winter closed in, but they had just been ordered on up the river to Fort Berthold in the Dakota Territory. It was a long journey, and there would be no possibility of her coming that fall. In the spring, though, at the breaking of the ice when navigation would start again, she must come on one of the very first boats. Father De Smet was at Fort Berthold working among the tribes there, or the commanding officer could marry them. It would be a long time before they could see each other, but she must remember his deep love and how they would both be waiting for the ice to go out in the spring.

Cynthia was disappointed but not fatally, as her next words proved.

“Listen to this, Linnie,” she squealed at the paragraph. “ ‘Though the ice will separate us, the river always runs below. That is like my love for you.’ Do you know, Linnie, I actually don’t believe George Hemming could write anything like that. Why, it sounds poetical, like Mr. Alfred Tennyson.” She read it again in rhythmic fashion. “ ‘Though the ice will separate us ... the river always runs below ... the lady of Shalott.’ See what I mean?”

The letter closed with all the love in his heart for her and his courteous regards to her parents and Linnie.

He had enclosed a hand-drawn map of the Missouri River and the forts which dotted it. Cynthia pinned it on the gilt wall-paper by the highboy so that the way of her potential journey would be there before her.

Sometimes, when she found herself alone in the bedroom, Linnie would stand for a few moments and look at the crude facsimile. It fired her imagination, that long line running its twisting northwest course with penciled spots for Fort Randall—Fort Pierre—Fort Rice—Fort Berthold. She pictured herself as Cynthia on one of those spring boats, uniformed soldiers all about her, passing Fort Randall, Fort Pierre, Fort Rice, then arriving at Fort Berthold and Norman Stafford meeting her. And after that to be with him always, to go wherever he was sent.

There was something peculiarly fascinating about the army life of which he had told her. She knew it must be hard and dangerous, but still it held an allure, at least it would if she could be with Norman Stafford. The very adventurousness of it appealed to her, the changes, the following the flag wherever it led. Deep in her heart she would wonder what quirk of fate had made Cynthia the one he loved while she had only his courteous regards. Then she would realize suddenly the audacity of her thinking and come back to the world of Uncle Henry and his household.

For Uncle Henry was in a constant foment over various events these days: the mismanagement of the Union-Republican convention (in which the party dropped its first name), President Johnson’s blunders, the skulduggery of the territorial Democrats. He loudly read lengthy vindictive articles from the local papers in which leading citizens were frankly called names of barnyard origin.

The womenfolks, with true femininity, shuddered at the epithets, but also with true femininity of the times failed to understand (or care) from the stormy monologues just what he was for and against. All they knew was that, with a few choice cronies, he constantly held long secret sessions from which he emerged with plans to manipulate affairs in the coming legislature.

Then—and this affected Cynthia much more than the complicated politics for which she had no liking—her father began turning against Norman for his stubborn clinging to the army when he had been offered a good chance here in the coming city of the west.

“It’s a wild goose chase ... tagging an army man around. I supposed of course he’d jump at the chance to get into something here. There’s money here. Figure it out for yourself. People have to eat. Put up a grocery store. They have to have buggies and harness. Buy into those businesses. They have to keep warm. Get into the wood and coal business. They need transportation. Get hold of railroad and steamboat stock. Town’s full of young fellows who’ll do all that and be worth a good deal some day.”

In September black clouds rolled down the river valley, the rains came, and the hilly streets were morasses. No self-respecting team made any attempt to run away, their horse sense telling them they would not get far. The cottonwoods and the willows dripped clammily, and all the white sweet-williams and the blue sage and the wild phlox at the edge of town were gone. The two seminaries opened. Steamers hurriedly disgorged late supplies at the dock for the Union Pacific. There was a traveling show in the Academy of Music, the town’s second story “opera house.”

October came on, bringing a few days of squaw winter, that first cold spell which would not stay. Then followed days which the Indians called second summer, with a haze hanging about the Missouri valleys like smoke from the lodges of Chief Fontenelle’s people, with great flocks of blackbirds flying across the sun and the sumac along the river-banks as red as any signal fires on the hillsides. A crowd of one hundred and fifty easterners arrived to hunt and to see the progress made by the shining new rails to the west. They came in sumptuous fashion, with a band, a photographer, cooks and caterers, provisions and rare wines. And Uncle Henry fairly blew up to the bursting point when he and the girls met and talked with some of the prominent ones during their brief stay.

Then the household moved again on its regular routine: Uncle Henry noisily arriving for his three big meals, leaving immediately afterward for the law office where almost everything was done except law. Aunt Louise planning to get out now, to make more friends and enter into the town’s activities, only to fall back to the comfort of the horsehair sofa. Olga and Magnus coming across the alley from their small home early in the morning, performing their tasks with all the thoroughness of their Swedish training. Linnie and Cynthia doing the lighter work about the house in their wide-skirted morning prints with jet breastpins at their neat collars, dressing up in the afternoon and changing to gold breastpins, even though they only sat and sewed on Cynthia’s quilts.

There was diversion from the monotony of all this in the occasional affairs which dotted the calendars of the town’s socially inclined. The twins, Victoria and Virgilla, gave a little party in their home. There was a dance on one of the steamboats tied at the dock and a dinner at the hotel, with Cynthia and Linnie quite frankly the acknowledged belles.

Sometimes Cynthia confided to Linnie the daring things George Hemming said to her at the parties: that he would wager she was in love with a uniform instead of a man and that he didn’t believe she would make a good army wife anyway; how he made her so angry she wouldn’t speak to him all evening, just turned her head when they met in the dance, until he said something so funny she had to burst right out laughing.

November came in, bleak and gray. The last of the wild geese flew honking down the valley, and the last steamboat, like a lone goose paddling after them, left for St. Louis. The river froze and the snows came. Magnus butchered one of the two hogs and Olga rendered lard, made sausage and headcheese, and pickled the feet, using everything but the “ears, tail and sqveal,” she said.

In the middle of the month came the first letters from Norman. Three of them at one time arrived by stage, as the mail was sent now from Fort Berthold by Indian runner to Virginia City or Helena in the Montana territory, thence to Omaha by overland stage. They had been over a month on the way. Cynthia said it just terrified her to read how much he thought of her.

Then there was no more word until a few days before Christmas. This time there was only one letter, but Cynthia was all excitement to read in it that, if all went well with the mails, a gift he had arranged for would be delivered to her door on the day before Christmas, and when she saw it she would know how much he loved her and wanted her.

When that day came, she could scarcely take her eyes from the street, so that when a boy arrived in the late afternoon she was ready to meet him at the door.

To her surprise it was only an envelop which he handed her, and the gift turned out to be a paid passage to Fort Berthold, good on any of the boats owned by the steamboat company in question: the Waverly, the River Rose, the Deer Lodge, and others. A note from the company asked Miss Colsworth to get in touch with the steamboat depot in the early spring and they could give her more information about the first running of the boats.

“What a queer present!” She was quite frank in her appraisal. “When you stop to think about it, it’s really just a piece of paper. You can’t wear it or get one bit of good from it for such a long time from now.”

Then she drew Linnie into their bedroom with secretive gestures and opened the bottom drawer of the highboy. “Look, Linnie! George Hemming gave me this.” A wide black-and-gold bracelet with gold padlocked clasp lay in its purple velvet box. “But I’m not going to tell the folks.”

“Oh, Cynthia, you’re not?”

“They’re so old-fashioned, they would have a fit and fall in it ... presents from two young men at one time.”

“I’ll wager they wouldn’t like you to take jewelry from a man not your betrothed.”

“Pooh! These are the late eighteen-sixties, not those old early forties when they were young. As good luck would have it, Mother was in bed and Olga not here, so no one knows about the steamboat papers but you. I’m not going to mention them, and they’ll just take it for granted the bracelet is a betrothal present from Norman. If they say anything to you about it, promise me you’ll pretend you got it from the post-office when you went downtown yesterday.”

“Oh, Cynthia, I couldn’t....”

“Oh, you prissy!” Cynthia’s amiability had fallen from her like a shawl. “You say one word to the folks about this bracelet coming from George and I’ll tell a few things about you. Don’t think I haven’t seen you stand and moon over Norman’s picture and ...”

“Cynthia!”

“See ... you’re blushing.”

“Who wouldn’t blush at such a bold-faced ...”

But Cynthia had picked up the fallen shawl of her amiability and was laughing a little self-consciously. “Anyway,” she wheedled, “promise you’ll try and help your cousin out of a hole.”

“At least I’ll not deliberately push you in,” Linnie said dryly and walked out of the room, deeply perturbed. Oh, what had Cynthia said!

January arrived and the Missouri River was frozen solid. Great snows were banked high with winds coming down from the north like so many Sioux warriors. The female population of the community was shut in, more or less, so that all three women in the Colsworth home spent much of their time with Cynthia’s sewing. Chemises. Petticoats with rickrack edging on countless tucked ruffles. Quilts—plain squares and the “orange peel” and Olga’s “floo-de-liss”—with Uncle Henry saying dryly the government would probably order that kind now for the whole army, and as far as he was concerned, unless Norman Stafford stopped his foolishness and resigned, he didn’t deserve them.

Olga fought her way through the deep snow every day, and Magnus curried the rough winter coats of the bays until they were reddish-brown silk. The girls cleaned Polly’s cage, dusted Mozart in the parlor and sad Lincoln in the back parlor, and did all the bedroom work. On those days when Olga was washing in the steamy kitchen, or ironing multitudinous flounces and table-cloths into glazed perfection, they brought the potatoes and the squash from the dirt cellar and prepared them, strained the sour milk through a clean cloth for Dutch cheese, polished and trimmed the coal-oil lamps and washed the chimney of the new hanging one over the dining-room table.

By two o’clock they were always ready for the sewing. Unless she was enjoying one of her bad spells, Aunt Louise, with her little bloodless feet on a warm soapstone, made all the buttonholes in her precise way.

Uncle Henry was wrapped in the doings of the last territorial legislature, which was convening in Omaha. It was asking for a new military post in the southwestern part as protection against the Indians, and, what was more important locally, authorizing the construction of a railway bridge across the river. It ended in a fine display of emotion when a legislator drew his pistol and another his sword at the end of a strongly worded argument. But as there was no massacre, the last territorial session finished with a semblance of peace.

Only a few times did the girls get out-of-doors that month. But when the wild winds abated after blowing the snow off the river in irregular paths, Uncle Henry took them and their friends, Victoria and Virgilla, in the double-seated cutter, across to the Iowa side where others of the citizenry were driving, too, like so many Israelites crossing a frozen Red Sea.

The tracks of the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad had been finished from Denison, Iowa, and the first train puffed into Council Bluffs. No longer would one need to take the creaking old stage as the girls had done on their return from the east. All Council Bluffs was celebrating with music, parades, and a speech by General Dodge.

They had dinner at the hotel, with Uncle Henry calling for the most expensive of everything for his guests. Uncle Henry was at his noisiest best when bestowing largess upon those around him. When he gave, he gave not only freely but loudly, with much attention to the giver.

The bitterly cold month was passing, and no letter had come from Norman, that mid-December letter remaining the last Cynthia had received. She chafed under the silence, cried a little at the neglect, with Linnie assuring her she would soon hear. But many times when Cynthia was unaware of it, Linnie looked to the north as though the ice-bound distance could tell the mystery of what lay beyond, even while she censured herself for the interest which was deeper than sympathy for Cynthia.

Then the stage got through from Montana territory to North Platte, where already the Union Pacific was running trains, and three letters came in over those shining new rails which had been laid for so dear a price. And the central theme of all three letters was Cynthia’s coming to Fort Berthold by the first boat in the spring.

February! And winter, the pugilist, lessened its stranglehold on the Nebraska Territory. Water started to run in little yellow streams down the hilly streets over old layers of ice. Uncle Henry refused to ride on the softening river. The girls received any number of valentines in the way of sentimental poetry from the town’s young blades.

A seamstress came to the house every day, sewing like mad. She had a mannish-looking hard face, but the things she turned out were marvels of intricate feminine furbelows. A room upstairs had been set aside for her, but scraps of cloth, thread and yarn, braid, buttons, paper patterns, pins, and whalebones oozed out and down the stairway into every room.

Several times now the girls went downtown together shopping, stepping over the miniature creeks. They held their dresses discreetly at the ankle’s lowest boundary line, never glancing toward a barbershop, turning their heads quickly if any of those orange-haired women passed by, although they confided to each other they would just admire to do the opposite of every one of those things sometime and see what would happen.

When they went into the dry-goods store, George Hemming always managed to shunt his current customer to another clerk and take charge, keeping Cynthia in such a state of convulsion that she could scarcely tell galloon braid from soutache.

On one of these mild days Linnie began to talk at the dinner-table about her year being over, that soon now she would go to Sioux City to visit the girlhood friend who lived there, saying before them all that she and Cynthia could travel together on the same boat as far as Sioux City. Uncle Henry said he wasn’t sure Cynthia was going to go on that wild-goose journey at all.

Cynthia flared up: “That’s a pretty thing to say when I’ve got my sewing all done and Norman sent ...” She broke off and turned red, looking guiltily at Linnie over the secret of the paid passage.

“Sewing or no sewing,” Uncle Henry said loudly, “we’re going to wait and see what the damn Indians are up to.”

Polly called out raucously, “Fit to kill.” Olga scuttled out to the kitchen to Magnus. And Aunt Louise put her hand to her head and told the girls to get the hot packs ready.