Hidden Creek Part 7

"Holiday at the bank this morning," he said, "in honor of Dad's wedding-anniversary. We're giving a dance to-night in the Hall. Want to come, d.i.c.kie?"

"No," said d.i.c.kie, "I hurt my ankle last night on the icy pavement. And anyhow I can't dance. And I sort of find girls kind of tiresome."

"That's too bad. I'm sure sorry for you, Hudson. Particularly as I came here just for the purpose of handing you over the cutest little billy-doo you ever saw."

He drew out of his pocket an envelope and held it away from d.i.c.kie.

"You're trying to job me, Jim,"--but d.i.c.kie had his head coaxingly on one side and his face was pink.

"I'll give it to you if you can guess the sender."

"Babe?"

"Wrong."

"Girlie?"

"Well, sir, it ain't Girlie's fist--not the fist she uses when she drops _me_ billy-doos."

d.i.c.kie's eyes fell. He turned aside in his chair and stopped the grinding of the graphophone. He made no further guess. Jim, with his dimple deepening, tossed the small paper into the air and caught it again deftly.

"It's from the young lady from Noo York who's helping Mrs. Hudson," he said. "I guess she's kind of wishful for a beau. She's not much of a looker Girlie tells me."

"Haven't you met her yet, Jim?" d.i.c.kie's hands were in his pockets, but his eyes followed the gyrations of the paper.

"No. Ain't that a funny thing, too? Seems like I never get round to it. I just saw her peeping at me one day through the parlor curtains while I was saying sweet nothings to Girlie on the porch. I guess she was kind of in-ter-ested. She's skinny and pale, Girlie says. Your mother hasn't got any use for her. I bet you, it won't be long before she makes tracks back to Noo York, d.i.c.kie. Girlie says she won't be lingering on here much longer. Too much compet.i.tion."

Jim handed the note to d.i.c.kie, who had listened to this speech with his seven-year-old expression. He made no comment, but silently unfolded Sheila's note.

The writing itself was like her, slender and fine and straight, a little reckless, daintily desperate. That "I," now, on the white paper might be Sheila skimming across the snow.

"_My dear d.i.c.kie_--somehow I can't call you 'Mr. Hudson'--I am so terribly sorry about the way I acted to you last night. I don't know why I was so foolish. I have tried to explain to your father that you did nothing and said nothing to frighten me, that you were very polite and kind, but I am afraid he doesn't quite understand. I hope he won't be very cross with you, because it was all my fault--no, not quite all, because I think you oughtn't to have followed me. I'm sure you're sorry that you did. But it was a great deal my fault, so I'm writing this to tell you that I wasn't really frightened nor very angry. Just sorry and disappointed. Because I thought you were so very nice. And not like Millings. And you liked the mountains better than the town. I wanted--I still want--you to be my friend. For I do need a friend here, dreadfully. Will you come to see me some afternoon? I hope you didn't hurt yourself when you slipped on those icy steps.

"Sincerely SHEILA ARUNDEL"

d.i.c.kie put the note into his pocket and looked unseeingly at Jim. Jim was turning up the bottoms of his trousers preparing to go.

"So you won't come to our dance?" he asked straightening himself, more ruddy than ever.

"Well, sir," said d.i.c.kie slowly and indifferently, "I wouldn't wonder if I would."

CHAPTER VII

DISH-WASHING

On that night, while all Millings was preparing itself for the Greelys'

dance, while d.i.c.kie, bent close to his cracked mirror, was tying his least crumpled tie with not too steady fingers, while Jim was applying to his brown crest a pomade sent to him by a girl in Cheyenne, while Babe was wondering anxiously whether green slippers could be considered a match or a foil to a dress of turquoise blue, while Girlie touched her cream-gold hair with cream-padded finger-tips, Sheila Arundel prowled about her room with hot anger and cold fear in her heart.

Nothing, perhaps, in all this mysterious world is so inscrutable a mystery as the mind of early youth. It crawls, the beetle creature, in a hard sh.e.l.l, hiding the dim, inner struggle of its growing wings, moving numbly as if in a torpid dream. It has forgotten the lively grub stage of childhood, and it cannot foresee the dragon-fly adventure just ahead.

This blind, dumb, numb, imprisoned thing, an irritation to the nerves of every one who has to deal with it, suffers. First it suffers darkly and dimly the pain growth, and then it suffers the sharp agony of a splitting sh.e.l.l, the dazzling wounds of light, the torture of first moving its feeble wings. It drags itself from its sh.e.l.l, it clings to its perch, it finds itself born anew into the world.

When Sheila had left the studio with Sylvester, she was not yet possessed of wings. Now, the sh.e.l.l was cracking, the dragon-fly adventure about to begin. To a changed world, changed stars--the heavens above and the earth beneath were strange to her that night.

It had begun, this first piercing contact of reality, rudely enough. Mrs.

Hudson had helped to split the protecting sh.e.l.l which had saved Sheila's growing dreams. Perhaps "Momma" had her instructions, perhaps it was only her own disposition left by her knowing husband to do his trick for him.

Sheila had not overstated the unhappiness that Mrs. Hudson's evident dislike had caused her. In fact, she had greatly understated it. From the first moment at the station, when the hard eyes had looked her over and the harsh voice had asked about "the girl's trunk," Sheila's sensitiveness had begun to suffer. It was not easy, even with Babe's good-humored help, to go down into the kitchen and submit to Mrs.

Hudson's hectoring. "Momma" had all the insolence of the underdog. Of her daughters, as of her husband, she was very much afraid. They all bullied her, Babe with noisy, cheerful effrontery--"sa.s.s" Sylvester called it--and Girlie with a soft, unyielding tyranny that had the smothering pressure of a large silk pillow. Girlie was tall and serious and beautiful, the proud possessor of what Millings called "a perfect form."

She was inexpressibly slow and untidy, vain and ignorant and self-absorbed. At this time her whole being was centered upon the attentions of Jim Greely, with whom she was "keeping company." With Jim Greely in her mind, she had looked Sheila over, thin and weary Sheila in her shabby black dress, and had decided that here no danger threatened.

Nevertheless she did not take chances. Sheila had been in Millings a fortnight and had not met the admirable Jim. Her attempt that morning to send the note to d.i.c.kie by Jim was exactly the action that led to the painful splitting of her sh.e.l.l.

She had seen from her window Sylvester's departure after breakfast. There was something in his grim, angular figure, moving carefully over the icy pavement in the direction of the hotel, that gave her a pang for d.i.c.kie.

She was sure that Hudson was going to be very disagreeable in spite of her attempt to soften his anger. And she was sorry that d.i.c.kie, with his odd, wistful, friendly face and his eyes so wide and youthful and apologetic for their visions, should think that she was angry or disgusted. She wrote her letter in a little glow of rescue, and was proud of the tact of that reference to his "fall down the steps"--for she reasoned that the self-esteem of any boy of nineteen must suffer poignantly over the memory of being knocked down by his father before the eyes of a strange girl. She wrote her note and ran down the stairs, then stopped to wonder how she could get it promptly to d.i.c.kie. It was intended as a poultice to be applied after the "bawling-out," and she could not very well take it to him herself. She knew that he worked in the hotel, and the hotel was just around the corner. All that was needed was a messenger.

She was standing, pink of cheek and vague of eye, fingering her ap.r.o.n like a cottage child and nibbling at the corner of her envelope, the light from a window on the stairs falling on the jewel-like polish of her hair, when Girlie opened the door of the "parlor" and came out into the hall. Girlie saw her and half-closed the door. Her lazy eyes, as reflective and receptive and inexpressive as small meadow pools under a summer sky, rested upon Sheila. In the parlor a pleasant baritone voice was singing,

"Treat me nice, Miss Mandy Jane, Treat me nice.

Don't you know I'se not to blame, Lovers all act just the same, Treat me nice..."

Girlie's fingers tightened on the doork.n.o.b.

"What do you want, Sheila?" she asked, and into the slow, gentle tones of her voice something had crept, something sinuous and subtle, something that slid into the world with Lilith for the eternal torment of earth's daughters.

"I want to send this note to your brother," said Sheila with the simplicity of the aristocrat. "Is that Mr. Greely? Is he going past the hotel?"

She took a step toward Jim, but Girlie held out her soft long hand.

"Give it to me. I'll ask him."

Sheila surrendered the note.

"You'd better get back to the dishes," said Girlie over her shoulder.

"Momma's kind of rushed this morning. She's helping Babe with her party dress. I wouldn't 'a' put in my time writing notes to d.i.c.kie to-day if I'd 'a' been you. Sort of risky."

She slid in through the jealous door and Sheila hurried along the hall to the kitchen where there was an angry clash and clack of crockery.

The kitchen was furnished almost entirely with blue-flowered oilcloth; the tables were covered with it, the floor was covered with it, the shelves were draped in it. Cold struck up through the shining, clammy surface underfoot so that while Sheila's face burned from the heat of the stove her feet were icy. The back door was warped and let in a current of frosty air over its sill, a draught that circled her ankles like cold metal. On the table in the middle of the room, "Momma" had placed an enormous tin dish-pan piled high with dirty dishes, over which she was pouring the contents of the kettle. Steam rose in clouds, half-veiling her big, fierce face which, seen through holes in the vapor, was like that of a handsome, vulgar witch.

Through the steam she shot at Sheila a cruel look. "Aren't you planning to do any work to-day, Sheila?" she asked in her voice of harsh, monotonous accents. "Here it's nine o'clock and I ain't been able to do a stroke to Babe's dress. I dunno what you was designed for in this house--an ornament on the parlor mantel, I guess."

Sheila's heart suffered one of the terrible swift enlargements of angry youth. It seemed to fill her chest and stop her breath, forcing water into her eyes. She could not speak, went quickly up and took the kettle from "Momma's" red hand.

The table at which dish-washing was done, was inconveniently high. When the big dishpan with its piled dishes topped it, Sheila's arms and back were strained over her work. She usually pulled up a box on which she stood, but now she went to work blindly, her teeth clenched, her flexible red lips set close to cover them. The Celtic fire of her Irish blood gave her eyes a sort of phosph.o.r.escent glitter. "Momma" looked at her.

"Don't show temper!" she said. "What were you doin'? Upstairs work?"