|
Main
- books.jibble.org
My Books
- IRC Hacks
Misc. Articles
- Meaning of Jibble
- M4 Su Doku
- Computer Scrapbooking
- Setting up Java
- Bootable Java
- Cookies in Java
- Dynamic Graphs
- Social Shakespeare
External Links
- Paul Mutton
- Jibble Photo Gallery
- Jibble Forums
- Google Landmarks
- Jibble Shop
- Free Books
- Intershot Ltd
|
books.jibble.org
Previous Page
| Next Page
Page 48
The next Sunday Lena appeared at church, a little late, with her hair done
up neatly on her head, like a young woman, wearing shoes and stockings, and
the new dress, which she had made over for herself very becomingly. The
congregation stared at her. Until that morning no one--unless it were
Ole--had realized how pretty she was, or that she was growing up. The
swelling lines of her figure had been hidden under the shapeless rags she
wore in the fields. After the last hymn had been sung, and the
congregation was dismissed, Ole slipped out to the hitch-bar and lifted
Lena on her horse. That, in itself, was shocking; a married man was not
expected to do such things. But it was nothing to the scene that followed.
Crazy Mary darted out from the group of women at the church door, and ran
down the road after Lena, shouting horrible threats.
`Look out, you Lena Lingard, look out! I'll come over with a corn-knife
one day and trim some of that shape off you. Then you won't sail round so
fine, making eyes at the men!...'
The Norwegian women didn't know where to look. They were formal
housewives, most of them, with a severe sense of decorum. But Lena Lingard
only laughed her lazy, good-natured laugh and rode on, gazing back over her
shoulder at Ole's infuriated wife.
The time came, however, when Lena didn't laugh. More than once Crazy Mary
chased her across the prairie and round and round the Shimerdas' cornfield.
Lena never told her father; perhaps she was ashamed; perhaps she was more
afraid of his anger than of the corn-knife. I was at the Shimerdas' one
afternoon when Lena came bounding through the red grass as fast as her
white legs could carry her. She ran straight into the house and hid in
Antonia's feather-bed. Mary was not far behind: she came right up to the
door and made us feel how sharp her blade was, showing us very graphically
just what she meant to do to Lena. Mrs. Shimerda, leaning out of the
window, enjoyed the situation keenly, and was sorry when Antonia sent Mary
away, mollified by an apronful of bottle-tomatoes. Lena came out from
Tony's room behind the kitchen, very pink from the heat of the feathers,
but otherwise calm. She begged Antonia and me to go with her, and help get
her cattle together; they were scattered and might be gorging themselves in
somebody's cornfield.
`Maybe you lose a steer and learn not to make somethings with your eyes at
married men,' Mrs. Shimerda told her hectoringly.
Lena only smiled her sleepy smile. `I never made anything to him with my
eyes. I can't help it if he hangs around, and I can't order him off. It
ain't my prairie.'
V
AFTER LENA CAME To Black Hawk, I often met her downtown, where she would be
matching sewing silk or buying `findings' for Mrs. Thomas. If I happened
to walk home with her, she told me all about the dresses she was helping to
make, or about what she saw and heard when she was with Tiny Soderball at
the hotel on Saturday nights.
The Boys' Home was the best hotel on our branch of the Burlington, and all
the commercial travellers in that territory tried to get into Black Hawk
for Sunday. They used to assemble in the parlour after supper on Saturday
nights. Marshall Field's man, Anson Kirkpatrick, played the piano and sang
all the latest sentimental songs. After Tiny had helped the cook wash the
dishes, she and Lena sat on the other side of the double doors between the
parlour and the dining-room, listening to the music and giggling at the
jokes and stories. Lena often said she hoped I would be a travelling man
when I grew up. They had a gay life of it; nothing to do but ride about on
trains all day and go to theatres when they were in big cities. Behind the
hotel there was an old store building, where the salesmen opened their big
trunks and spread out their samples on the counters. The Black Hawk
merchants went to look at these things and order goods, and Mrs. Thomas,
though she was I retail trade,' was permitted to see them and to `get
ideas.' They were all generous, these travelling men; they gave Tiny
Soderball handkerchiefs and gloves and ribbons and striped stockings, and
so many bottles of perfume and cakes of scented soap that she bestowed some
of them on Lena.
One afternoon in the week before Christmas, I came upon Lena and her funny,
square-headed little brother Chris, standing before the drugstore, gazing
in at the wax dolls and blocks and Noah's Arks arranged in the frosty show
window. The boy had come to town with a neighbour to do his Christmas
shopping, for he had money of his own this year. He was only twelve, but
that winter he had got the job of sweeping out the Norwegian church and
making the fire in it every Sunday morning. A cold job it must have been,
too!
Previous Page
| Next Page
|
|