Читать книгу Little Man - George Herbert Sallans - Страница 13

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George took Pitch to their first party, a barn dance to celebrate the opening of Alex Burroughs' new barn. When Aunt Sadie had demurred, Pitch had stamped her foot and stormed: "Oh, Mother, you're so old-fashioned. Can't you see these are new times?"

"The boys often drink there, dear," said Aunt Sadie mildly. "They take little flasks in their pockets and leave the girls upstairs while they sneak out behind the barn to drink."

"And what if they do!" Pitch argued impetuously. "George won't, and I'm sure I won't."

George called for her in Daddy's new buggy, with King hitched to it. They jogged along to the Burroughs' farm, and Pitch had some kind of perfume that wafted past George's nose in a tantalizing inconstancy. He could not help seeing these days that Pitch had changed, that her flat bosom was rounding, that some new quality had come into her voice which she had trained with her singing lessons, as only Pitch's determination could train. Her voice came to him as cool and sweet as the evening breeze. He wanted to reach over and touch her taffeta-clad knee that perched so demurely beside his own in the buggy. It would be only a friendly pat, he told himself. "Aw, she's only my cousin. Can't have any fun taking your cousin out." Conscience told him so, and thus he knew otherwise.

At the new barn Pitch waited while George unharnessed King and put him in a stall of the old barn. Around the door young men were huddled together, snickering and whispering to each other and laughing uproariously. The girls were by themselves, waiting for the boys who had brought them. Now and then some of the youths would nudge each other and disappear around the corner of the barn.

The dance was held in the loft of the barn. The new wood gave a tang to the air that mingled with the whisky breath of some of the young men. Among the girls George saw Hattie Wilbur, and among the young men sneaking around the corner, her brother Johnny.

A ladder nailed to the uprights of the barn wall led into the loft. Pitch went first. She went differently to the other girls, who giggled and motioned their escorts to stand aside and look away. Pitch had no such inhibitions. She simply put her hands on the ladder rungs and sprang up before George thought to help her. George had a sudden vision of white petticoats flouncing in his face, of stockinged legs a few inches from his startled eyes, stockings that reached into the mysterious white clouds of her petticoats and vanished.

For a strained moment he looked, then tore his eyes away and looked firmly around at the lantern-lighted barn. It was his first, startled admission inside a girl's skirts. The hot flush in his face told him he was as red as a tomato. He grasped a rung for support, swung himself up the ladder, and did not dare to look again, though he knew that momentarily even now Pitch's legs were poised above him as she stepped from the ladder to the floor through the open trapdoor. But if Pitch saw his blush she paid no attention. She grasped his arm impulsively when he joined her. "Georgie," she whispered excitedly, "they're going to dance. Let's!"

The official caller-off wiped his brow with his sleeve. The white-clad girls were on benches along one side of the barn. On the other stood the boys, telling jokes among each other, a noticeable few of them clean. At the end of the barn was the orchestra, a violinist and pianist. The piano had been hoisted in through the hay-door at the end.

"Take your partners for a two-step," shouted the caller-off.

There was a thunder of clumping and sliding on the boards as the boys headed for the girls. Two boys came for Pitch, but she waved them off. The orchestra plunged into "Alexander's Ragtime Band."

"Come on an' hear!" cried Pitch to George. Her eyes were aflame with a swift new excitement that scared and unnerved him. He put his timid right arm around her, shivering with a nameless emotion to find her body so soft, so yielding, so luscious under his shy fingers. The electric shock of it ran up his arm and through him.

Ahead of the dancers ran a young man with a can of powder which he spilled generously on the floor. He did his work too well. George's heels were worn at the outside. As he and Pitch turned at the corner, George's left foot went from under him. In a second of dismay he found his balance gone, felt Pitch's arm suddenly tighten against his back, lumbered against her, his face brushing hers and his lips touching her cheek.

"Oh, gosh," he said. He recovered hastily, bit his lip, looked into Pitch's eyes in an agony of apology, saw there a world of amusement, woman's age-old amusement at her man. He heard Pitch's unrestrained laughter. In it was a throaty ring of more maturity than Pitch had, a note that no cousin had a right to have, that set his heart beating with a tumultuous, unbearable mixture of surprise and embarrassment.

But he had no time for that. He replaced his hand sternly on the small of her back and danced with decorous and angry care.

"That old Methodist foot again, Georgie?" giggled Pitch in his ear, her voice a dumbfounding riddle of delight and malice.

"Yeh—ah, I guess so," said George miserably.

The squeeze of her fingers on his reassured him only partly. At fifteen he was no psychologist.

When the dance was over he unceremoniously left her on a bench with other girls, and hastily retreated to the friendly smart-aleck atmosphere of the young farmers on the other side.

"Partners for a square dance!" barked the caller-off, whose self-assurance George envied hopelessly and bitterly.

The rush was on again, boys brushed past George in their haste to find partners. George followed them more gingerly, unable at once to find anyone he dared ask. One by one the girls were whisked off with heavy-booted partners. George saw, in despair, only older women left and was about to give up when Hattie's voice stopped him.

"Oh, Geordie!" Hattie, with a flower in her hair, her dress neck lower and more daring than the other girls wore, was already coming toward him, and there was no escape even if he wanted it.

Dumbly he took her arm and she trotted him off to where three other couples waited to make a foursome. As they went George saw with a flash of unreasonable resentment that Johnny Wilbur had Pitch, and was guffawing noisily and offensively at her.

The music started, and the caller-off barked.

"First couple up to the right—an' balance all ..."

George felt Hattie tugging him, found they were the first couple, and, sharply remindful of his stumble, went ahead with her gingerly, feeling every step and keeping the pressure off his treacherous heels. Then the caller-off again:

"Swing your partners all!"

George swung Hattie with a violence he hadn't intended. They spun around dizzily, and Hattie shrieked with delight. One of her knees went between George's to balance her. George squeezed it guiltily, but in sheer self-protection lest he go headlong to the floor. As if to reassure him, Hattie's knees closed on his in return.

"Whee!" squeaked Hattie, her face close to George's. "That was fun, Geordie. Oh, you kid, can't you swing!"

She was too good looking, too suggestive and too close for George's comfort. She had the Wilbur look in her eyes, too, that made George think of a smart aleck. But tonight there was a new light of excitement he had not heeded before. Hattie's eyes were deeper in colour than he'd thought. And nicer, too. They looked daring and disturbing against the copper background of her hair.

"Oh, I'm not so good; it was you did it all," George allowed, with more generosity than flattery. The knee technique bothered him. Not objectionable, but unnecessary, he thought. Other girls he swung with did it as he did, at arm's length, bodies not touching. But Hattie went to dances in town; maybe that was where she learned it. Took dancing lessons as well. Hattie said she was going to dance on the stage some day, but the day hadn't arrived yet. George had no doubt she would go when she made up her mind to it. He had a hearty respect for girls who made up their minds. They usually got their way.

The square dance grew more hilarious as the sets proceeded and young blood warmed. Beads of perspiration rolled down young men's faces, including George's. You'd have to be made of stone to dance squares the way Dick Burroughs called them off without getting a thrill. He had a speed, a constant acceleration of movements that whirled the dancers onward without rest or desire for it. He called two sets to a square, and made them longer than the usual, and much faster.

George marvelled at girls, how they could dance like that and never perspire, at least, not in their faces. Pitch's nose, for example, did not even get shiny. Hattie's became frankly oily in the heat and excitement. And yet girls did perspire, for he could feel the dampness on their backs through the thin dresses they wore. Stella Doolittle, for instance, made him aware of her condition every time it was his turn to swing her in their set.

"That girl is simply high," Pitch used to say.

"She smells," George said to himself. But he couldn't say it to anyone else, not even Pitch. It wasn't the sort of thing you could say or even think about a girl.

Grand right an' left to your partners all,

An' swing that partner away to the wall!

George was swinging with Stella when the order came. He let go of her suddenly, she cried "Yeep!" he caught her hand impatiently, slid his arm through hers, weaved through the girls as they came toward him, a grin on his face, his mouth dry, came to Hattie, and swung.

"Oh, you kiddo!" Hattie greeted him. "Jehosophat, I'm thirsty, and hot. Let's go down to the pump and get a cool drink."

George agreed willingly. The barn air was stifling. He went down the ladder first, waited politely, looking away till Hattie came down almost even with him, and then reached for her hand.

She grasped it, then for some reason released it, half-twisted her body, gave a small shriek and tumbled into his arms. Yet George knew mighty well he'd seen her foot firmly on the ladder rung. Hattie, from slightly above, billowed down over him bosom first into his face. Instinctively his arms went around her, and she slid down in them with her left arm tight around his neck.

"Oh, how stupid of me! I'm sorry, Geordie!"

"Liar," thought George, vexed because she had mussed his hair and probably soiled his clean collar. Aloud: "Gee, do you always come down a ladder that way?"

Her laugh was too high-pitched, too excited. "Race you to the pump," she cried, and hand in hand they ran across the dark yard. A tin cup hung on a chain. George gallantly pumped it full for her.

She sipped, held it up to his lips. "Loving cup?" George drank shyly. A situation was shaping up that baffled him. He knew he was clumsy on retorts of the kind Hattie expected, yet he felt silly if he tried to say the inane things the other boys said to make the girls laugh.

"Wouldn't it be fun to dance out here, on the grass!" said Hattie. "Oh, waltz me around again, Willie, around, around, around!" George went ruefully along with her. She threw back her head, and her face was pale and luminous in the moonlight. "Oh, the fresh air! Let's walk toward the breeze."

"But the—" George began uneasily, and stopped. Facing the breeze meant walking away from the barn, past the corner of the Burroughs haystack that would shut off the view of the barn entrance and the friendly lights. The pleasant tang of the new hay assaulted them.

"Oh, isn't it dee-vine!" whispered Hattie.

"It's timothy," said George soberly. "Alex always grows his own. No prairie wool for him."

"Goodie! That means no spears." Hattie's laugh had a dangerous sound in it. "Here's his ladder. Let's climb up on top and sit down where the breeze can get at us. No, not me first; we'll go together."

They set foot on the rungs, and George found he had to put his arm around her. He did so politely, and pinioned her other arm against her side. She carelessly slid her arm out and let his hand clasp her waist, which was too pliant and too lightly clothed for his comfort. At the top they sat on the broad hay roof, their feet dangling over its sloping side. No one could see them here. A nameless, gnawing excitement bothered George. They sat close, perhaps too close. He had an uneasy flash about Pitch, but dismissed it. Pitch was busy, anyway.

Among girls like Pitch, Hattie would not be beautiful, yet in the moonlight her face looked romantic. "Isn't it fun being here just by ourselves!" she purred. And there was something catlike, too, in the way she snuggled close, so imperceptibly that George felt he was crowding her instead. He edged politely away.

"Don't be so shy, silly boy," she scolded. "Besides, I might fall."

"But I thought you wanted to cool off. I was just—"

"Oh, I'm nice and cool, in fact—Br-rr!" She giggled softly. "I guess the breeze is fresher than we thought."

"I'll put my coat around you," George started to remove it.

"Oh, no, no! Just—" And again he wondered if he had jostled her. Tricky stuff to sit on, hay was.

"You can put your arms around me if you like," said Hattie.

George put one obediently over her shoulder, and held the muscle rigid so his hand wouldn't be too heavy on her. In some way her shoulder seemed to melt into the contour of her body, her hand was pressing his against the softness of her bosom. Hattie sighed, laid her head back again, and looked intently up into George's face.

"What are you thinking about, Geordie?" He wished she wouldn't call him Geordie, like some darn kid.

"Oh, just about the dance. Swell piano player, isn't he?"

"You're not in a hurry to go back, are you?"

"Oh, no, of course not. Nice out here."

"I'm afraid I'll hate to leave it."

George started. "Leave it? Where you going?"

"I'm going to Winnipeg. I'm going to be a dancer."

"Oh, when?"

"Some time soon," said Hattie, who hadn't the slightest idea.

"I'm going there myself, I guess."

"What are you going to do, Geordie?"

"Oh, to college, I guess. Soon's I get enough money."

"Oh, won't that be dee-vine! What are you going to study to be?"

"I don't know. An author, I guess—I mean—" George stammered in confusion, but she took him up eagerly.

"You mean, write books?"

"Oh, I've written a few things," said George, in deprecatory tones. He hadn't meant to reveal this to anyone. It was a secret he hugged to himself.

Hattie clasped him convulsively. "Won't it be great!" she whispered. "You a great author and me a famous dancer. Will you come and see me?"

"Why, yes, I guess so. But say, let's—"

"That's a bargain?" Her voice had suddenly become earnest. He looked down at her in surprise. Her eyes were deep, risky pools. "We could be bohemian, and have all sorts of fun!"

"Yes, couldn't we!" What, in God's name, he wondered, did bohemian mean?

"A kiss—to bind the bargain?"

"Why, I guess—" He aimed for her cheek, somehow met her lips instead, and her arm around his neck had a fierce, sudden strength. Her lips were warm, incredibly soft, and parted, and not as he had ever known a girl's lips. An instinctive flash of warning from his Methodist training made him pull away swiftly. But he pulled Hattie with him, and felt himself skidding with her into space, thrashing at the hay with his free arm. The two of them scrambled, but came away with their hands clutching timothy straws, and slid feet first down the side of the stack.

George had a momentary, appalling sight of Hattie's legs with her skirt pulled high, of white lace-trimmed pantalets. Their feet struck the ground with a thud together, and they tumbled forward on their knees.

"Hattie! Lord, you hurt?"

Hattie shrieked with laughter, and sprang up. "Oh, Geordie, you were so funny!"

"You were funny yourself," he said grumpily, dusting off his knees and hoping his Sunday suit wasn't ruined.

"Come on, George, let's go back!" With incredible speed she flew around the haystack, and George followed.

"Don't—don't tell them about the—stories," he panted.

"All right, I promise," Hattie gasped in turn. "And don't you tell them about—anything else!"

"Silly thing to say," George thought. "There wasn't anything else."

"Partners for a waltz!" yelled Dick Burroughs, and pounced on Hattie. "Hey, come on there, where you been?"

The boys stampeded across the floor again. The two-piece orchestra struck up:

Come away with me, Lucille,

In my merry Oldsmobile,

Down the road of life we'll fly—

George found himself a partner, but had little to say to her, and was glad of her silence in return, for it gave him a chance to think.

Automobile songs were the vogue then, and after the waltz came a one-step with "Get Out and Get Under." George one-stepped badly, so stood out the dance and hummed the song over to himself.

Sandwiches and cake and pots of tea were served by the Burroughs at midnight. George sought out Pitch, who gave him a brief scornful look, allowed him to sit awkwardly on the floor near her feet, and kept up a brittle conversation with girls and other young men around her. She seemed to enjoy them more than she did him, George thought sourly. Well, let her! See if he cared.

But Pitch did not relent easily and, two hours afterward, when the orchestra played the "Home, Sweet Home" waltz, he danced silently with her. After it was over he let her hand fall, and stood helplessly without voice while she said good-night to other girls.

"Well, I guess I'll go and get the horse," he said.

"By all means do, if that's what you call him," said Pitch frostily. "Or would you like me to go and get him?"

George departed in a black cloud of resentment, hitched King into the shafts, drove around to the lighted door, and waited in surly silence while Pitch climbed in and waved at others amid a chorus of "Good-night," "See you in church," "Don't take any wooden money," and similar farewells.

"G'night all," said George gruffly, slapped King's rump with the reins, clacked at him, and they rattled down the driveway.

Pitch sat silent till George could stand it no longer.

"Great night, isn't it?" he said.

"You seemed to think so."

"What d'you mean?"

"Just what I said. I hope you enjoyed it."

"Yes, great dance. I didn't have many with you, though."

"I was there all the time." Pitch emphasized the "all."

"So was I," said George miserably. "Why d'you say that?"

Pitch's lips were set in a thin straight line. "I really don't know. I'm sure it's of no interest to you."

"Well, it is." George turned suddenly to her. "Say, what's ailing you, anyway?"

"Nothing, I assure you. I have never felt better," said Pitch, who had never felt worse.

"Well, spill it, then! Holy old—"

"You don't need to swear. That's what people like Hattie do."

"I don't know what you mean," said George, who thought he did.

"Very well," Pitch's voice was as sharp as Harold's new razor with sudden resolve. "What were you doing outside with that hussy?"

"Nothing."

"You took a long time doing it."

"Say, I don't have to take that—" George began roughly, then stopped himself, flapped the reins on King's back again. King jogged along unimpressed.

"You can take it or leave it, I suppose," Pitch sounded bored. In fact, too bored.

"Well, put this in your pipe and smoke it," George blurted out, stung by her sarcasm, "I didn't ask her out. We went to get a drink at the pump."

"Do go on! And I suppose you fell down the well."

"No, we didn't fall down the damn well, you know damn well we didn't."

A muffled, explosive sound came from Pitch's tight mouth.

"Maybe the pump needed priming, then," she said.

"It didn't either," George fumbled desperately. He was no match for her rapier thrusts. "We just stood out to get cool."

"Stood out three dances," purred Pitch, with acid in every word.

"Well, we walked a little." George waited. No response. "Hattie wanted to take a little walk to feel the breeze."

Pitch was caught off guard. "Oh, she did, did she? She just wanted to—walk, did she? And where did you walk to?"

"Oh, around the corner and back."

"Around whose corner? Our place or your place? You were long enough."

"We didn't go around any corner—at least—Oh, the devil, you know what I mean."

"I'm sure I don't. I'm waiting to find out, if you can remember."

"Well, around the haystack corner," George flung out defiantly.

"So you had to stop and lean against the haystack for a rest," Pitch finished relentlessly. "It's all so clear."

"We didn't lean against any haystack."

"I see. You just stood still, and the haystack leaned up against you?" Pitch's voice grew fainter.

"It never did, either." George was too obsessed with his misery to guess how funny he sounded. "We climbed on top of it."

"Isn't that just too sweet! You bring me to a dance, and then you climb haystacks with Hattie. Was the dancing good up there?"

"We didn't dance at all. We just sat there for about a minute."

"I see. You just—sat—there." Pitch paused to let it sink in. "So while you were sitting there a straw came up and stuck in your coat collar and broke itself off."

George's hand shot around behind his collar, in alarm.

"Don't trouble yourself," Pitch said frigidly. "I pulled it out, before quite everybody saw it. It's a funny thing, though, about this hay of Alex Burroughs'. A whole head of timothy crawled up Hattie's back while she—sat—there, and tangled itself in her hair."

A great light burst on George. "Oh, I know what you're driving at," he shouted. "Ha ha!" He doubled over in the buggy seat. "Ho ho ho!" He gasped at the memory. "The hay gave way while we were sit—while we were up there just getting ready to come down and—Ho ho ho! We slid right to the ground. Funniest thing you ever saw."

"Ha ha!" said Pitch mirthlessly. "I'm laughing so hard I can't bear it."

George sobered. "Well, don't you believe me?"

"Oh, yes, certainly."

George peered at her. Pitch's face was expressionless.

"Well, you can believe it or lump it. See if I care!" he fumed. "Go ahead and blame me if you like. I didn't invent the fool idea of climbing a haystack. Girls make me sick."

He got no answer. "It's all right for them—" (he was careful not to say "you," though he'd have liked to) "—to go wherever they like. But just let a man dare go out for a minute and what do you get?"

"I'll bite," said Pitch sweetly, "what did you get?"

"Bah!" George exploded, and drove on in silence, tortured, frustrated. Had he looked around quickly he would have seen Pitch's eyes turned sidewise, full of mischief, while her face pointed straight and stonily ahead.

They were at Uncle Jim's gate when Pitch's warm little hand found George's, gave it a quick squeeze, with the swift, astonishing strength that girls' fingers seemed to have for such business.

"Well—" George yielded grudgingly.

"Good-night, Georgie," said Pitch softly, when the buggy stopped. She ran without another word to her door.

"Good-night," said George and drove glumly off home. His mind was a torment of questions, anger, remorse, a vexatious feeling that he had missed the whole point of two bouts in an evening.

His lips moved in the darkness as King trotted along the road. The moon had gone now, the darkness suited his mood. "Girls—make me sick—make liars out of you—make a fool out of you, too—why didn't I get that straw—?" He fell to brooding, putting two and two together, going carefully back over the Hattie episode. A stray thought drifted into his mind, started to drift out again, hovered, suddenly blazed up in a white light. That was it! It explained Pitch's cold fury, her sudden curiosity, Hattie's strange behaviour.

George straightened up in the seat, stared incredulously into the darkness at the dim shape of King, and suddenly thumped his knee.

"By the holy Judas!" he cried. "Why didn't I think of that before! Well, I'll be damned. Yes, I'll be double damned! Giddap, King!"

While George drove home, King Edward VII died six thousand miles away. And at the moment of his death George, unknown to himself, had a new King, a weather-beaten prince of the seas who had as hearty a vocabulary as any George himself had heard. The weather-beaten King whose course charted discoveries for George, important and illuminating, but maybe never so vital as the discovery he had made this night.

Another era had ended in the world's history, and another era in the life of George Battle.

Into her pillow Pitch Black laughed noiselessly, laughed until she found to her disgust that she was weeping.