My Ántonia
Page 31
VIII
THE Harling children and I were never happier, never felt more contentedand secure, than in the weeks of spring which broke that long winter. Wewere out all day in the thin sunshine, helping Mrs. Harling and Tony breakthe ground and plant the garden, dig around the orchard trees, tie upvines and clip the hedges. Every morning, before I was up, I could hearTony singing in the garden rows. After the apple and cherry trees brokeinto bloom, we ran about under them, hunting for the new nests the birdswere building, throwing clods at each other, and playing hide-and-seekwith Nina. Yet the summer which was to change everything was coming nearerevery day. When boys and girls are growing up, life can't stand still, noteven in the quietest of country towns; and they have to grow up, whetherthey will or no. That is what their elders are always forgetting.
It must have been in June, for Mrs. Harling and Antonia were preservingcherries, when I stopped one morning to tell them that a dancing pavilionhad come to town. I had seen two drays hauling the canvas and paintedpoles up from the depot.
That afternoon three cheerful-looking Italians strolled about Black Hawk,looking at everything, and with them was a dark, stout woman who wore along gold watch chain about her neck and carried a black lace parasol.They seemed especially interested in children and vacant lots. When Iovertook them and stopped to say a word, I found them affable andconfiding. They told me they worked in Kansas City in the winter, and insummer they went out among the farming towns with their tent and taughtdancing. When business fell off in one place, they moved on to another.
The dancing pavilion was put up near the Danish laundry, on a vacant lotsurrounded by tall, arched cottonwood trees. It was very much like amerry-go-round tent, with open sides and gay flags flying from the poles.Before the week was over, all the ambitious mothers were sending theirchildren to the afternoon dancing class. At three o'clock one met littlegirls in white dresses and little boys in the round-collared shirts of thetime, hurrying along the sidewalk on their way to the tent. Mrs. Vannireceived them at the entrance, always dressed in lavender with a greatdeal of black lace, her important watch chain lying on her bosom. She woreher hair on the top of her head, built up in a black tower, with red coralcombs. When she smiled, she showed two rows of strong, crooked yellowteeth. She taught the little children herself, and her husband, theharpist, taught the older ones.
Often the mothers brought their fancy-work and sat on the shady side ofthe tent during the lesson. The popcorn man wheeled his glass wagon underthe big cottonwood by the door, and lounged in the sun, sure of a goodtrade when the dancing was over. Mr. Jensen, the Danish laundryman, usedto bring a chair from his porch and sit out in the grass plot. Some raggedlittle boys from the depot sold pop and iced lemonade under a whiteumbrella at the corner, and made faces at the spruce youngsters who cameto dance. That vacant lot soon became the most cheerful place in town.Even on the hottest afternoons the cottonwoods made a rustling shade, andthe air smelled of popcorn and melted butter, and Bouncing Bets wilting inthe sun. Those hardy flowers had run away from the laundryman's garden,and the grass in the middle of the lot was pink with them.
The Vannis kept exemplary order, and closed every evening at the hoursuggested by the City Council. When Mrs. Vanni gave the signal, and theharp struck up "Home, Sweet Home," all Black Hawk knew it was ten o'clock.You could set your watch by that tune as confidently as by the Round Housewhistle.
At last there was something to do in those long, empty summer evenings,when the married people sat like images on their front porches, and theboys and girls tramped and tramped the board sidewalks--northward to theedge of the open prairie, south to the depot, then back again to thepost-office, the ice-cream parlor, the butcher shop. Now there was a placewhere the girls could wear their new dresses, and where one could laughaloud without being reproved by the ensuing silence. That silence seemedto ooze out of the ground, to hang under the foliage of the black mapletrees with the bats and shadows. Now it was broken by light-heartedsounds. First the deep purring of Mr. Vanni's harp came in silvery ripplesthrough the blackness of the dusty-smelling night; then the violins fellin--one of them was almost like a flute. They called so archly, soseductively, that our feet hurried toward the tent of themselves. Why hadn't we had a tent before?
Dancing became popular now, just as roller skating had been the summerbefore. The Progressive Euchre Club arranged with the Vannis for theexclusive use of the floor on Tuesday and Friday nights. At other timesany one could dance who paid his money and was orderly; the railroad men,the Round House mechanics, the delivery boys, the iceman, the farmhandswho lived near enough to ride into town after their day's work was over.
I never missed a Saturday night dance. The tent was open until midnightthen. The country boys came in from farms eight and ten miles away, andall the country girls were on the floor,--Antonia and Lena and Tiny, andthe Danish laundry girls and their friends. I was not the only boy whofound these dances gayer than the others. The young men who belonged tothe Progressive Euchre Club used to drop in late and risk a tiff withtheir sweethearts and general condemnation for a waltz with "the hiredgirls."