by Willa Cather
The enthusiasm for the dance, which the Vannis had kindled, did not atonce die out. After the tent left town, the Euchre Club became the OwlClub, and gave dances in the Masonic Hall once a week. I was invited tojoin, but declined. I was moody and restless that winter, and tired of thepeople I saw every day. Charley Harling was already at Annapolis, while Iwas still sitting in Black Hawk, answering to my name at roll-call everymorning, rising from my desk at the sound of a bell and marching out likethe grammar-school children. Mrs. Harling was a little cool toward me,because I continued to champion Antonia. What was there for me to do aftersupper? Usually I had learned next day's lessons by the time I left theschool building, and I could n't sit still and read forever.
In the evening I used to prowl about, hunting for diversion. There lay thefamiliar streets, frozen with snow or liquid with mud. They led to thehouses of good people who were putting the babies to bed, or simplysitting still before the parlor stove, digesting their supper. Black Hawkhad two saloons. One of them was admitted, even by the church people, tobe as respectable as a saloon could be. Handsome Anton Jelinek, who hadrented his homestead and come to town, was the proprietor. In his saloonthere were long tables where the Bohemian and German farmers could eat thelunches they brought from home while they drank their beer. Jelinek keptrye bread on hand, and smoked fish and strong imported cheeses to pleasethe foreign palate. I liked to drop into his bar-room and listen to thetalk. But one day he overtook me on the street and clapped me on theshoulder.
"Jim," he said, "I am good friends with you and I always like to see you.But you know how the church people think about saloons. Your grandpa hasalways treated me fine, and I don't like to have you come into my place,because I know he don't like it, and it puts me in bad with him."
So I was shut out of that.
One could hang about the drug-store, and listen to the old men who satthere every evening, talking politics and telling raw stories. One couldgo to the cigar factory and chat with the old German who raised canariesfor sale, and look at his stuffed birds. But whatever you began with him,the talk went back to taxidermy. There was the depot, of course; I oftenwent down to see the night train come in, and afterward sat awhile withthe disconsolate telegrapher who was always hoping to be transferred toOmaha or Denver, "where there was some life." He was sure to bring out hispictures of actresses and dancers. He got them with cigarette coupons, andnearly smoked himself to death to possess these desired forms and faces.For a change, one could talk to the station agent; but he was anothermalcontent; spent all his spare time writing letters to officialsrequesting a transfer. He wanted to get back to Wyoming where he could gotrout-fishing on Sundays. He used to say "there was nothing in life forhim but trout streams, ever since he'd lost his twins."
These were the distractions I had to choose from. There were no otherlights burning downtown after nine o'clock. On starlight nights I used topace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little,sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and covered backporches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly built of lightwood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by the turning-lathe.Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envy and unhappinesssome of them managed to contain! The life that went on in them seemed tome made up of evasions and negations; shifts to save cooking, to savewashing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongue of gossip. Thisguarded mode of existence was like living under a tyranny. People'sspeech, their voices, their very glances, became furtive and repressed.Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution.The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the micein their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip overthe surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and cindersin the back yards were the only evidence that the wasteful, consumingprocess of life went on at all. On Tuesday nights the Owl Club danced;then there was a little stir in the streets, and here and there one couldsee a lighted window until midnight. But the next night all was darkagain.
After I refused to join "the Owls," as they were called, I made a boldresolve to go to the Saturday night dances at Firemen's Hall. I knew itwould be useless to acquaint my elders with any such plan. Grandfather didn't approve of dancing anyway; he would only say that if I wanted to danceI could go to the Masonic Hall, among "the people we knew." It was just mypoint that I saw altogether too much of the people we knew.
My bedroom was on the ground floor, and as I studied there, I had a stovein it. I used to retire to my room early on Saturday night, change myshirt and collar and put on my Sunday coat. I waited until all was quietand the old people were asleep, then raised my window, climbed out, andwent softly through the yard. The first time I deceived my grandparents Ifelt rather shabby, perhaps even the second time, but I soon ceased tothink about it.
The dance at the Firemen's Hall was the one thing I looked forward to allthe week. There I met the same people I used to see at the Vannis' tent.Sometimes there were Bohemians from Wilber, or German boys who came downon the afternoon freight from Bismarck. Tony and Lena and Tiny were alwaysthere, and the three Bohemian Marys, and the Danish laundry girls.
The four Danish girls lived with the laundryman and his wife in theirhouse behind the laundry, with a big garden where the clothes were hungout to dry. The laundryman was a kind, wise old fellow, who paid his girlswell, looked out for them, and gave them a good home. He told me once thathis own daughter died just as she was getting old enough to help hermother, and that he had been "trying to make up for it ever since." Onsummer afternoons he used to sit for hours on the sidewalk in front of hislaundry, his newspaper lying on his knee, watching his girls through thebig open window while they ironed and talked in Danish. The clouds ofwhite dust that blew up the street, the gusts of hot wind that witheredhis vegetable garden, never disturbed his calm. His droll expressionseemed to say that he had found the secret of contentment. Morning andevening he drove about in his spring wagon, distributing freshly ironedclothes, and collecting bags of linen that cried out for his suds andsunny drying-lines. His girls never looked so pretty at the dances as theydid standing by the ironing-board, or over the tubs, washing the finepieces, their white arms and throats bare, their cheeks bright as thebrightest wild roses, their gold hair moist with the steam or the heat andcurling in little damp spirals about their ears. They had not learned muchEnglish, and were not so ambitious as Tony or Lena; but they were kind,simple girls and they were always happy. When one danced with them, onesmelled their clean, freshly ironed clothes that had been put away withrosemary leaves from Mr. Jensen's garden.
There were never girls enough to go round at those dances, but every onewanted a turn with Tony and Lena. Lena moved without exertion, ratherindolently, and her hand often accented the rhythm softly on her partner'sshoulder. She smiled if one spoke to her, but seldom answered. The musicseemed to put her into a soft, waking dream, and her violet-colored eyeslooked sleepily and confidingly at one from under her long lashes. Whenshe sighed she exhaled a heavy perfume of sachet powder. To dance "Home,Sweet Home," with Lena was like coming in with the tide. She danced everydance like a waltz, and it was always the same waltz--the waltz of cominghome to something, of inevitable, fated return. After a while one gotrestless under it, as one does under the heat of a soft, sultry summerday.
When you spun out into the floor with Tony, you did n't return toanything. You set out every time upon a new adventure. I liked toschottische with her; she had so much spring and variety, and was alwaysputting in new steps and slides. She taught me to dance against and aroundthe hard-and-fast beat of the music. If, instead of going to the end ofthe railroad, old Mr. Shimerda had stayed in New York and picked up aliving with his fiddle, how different Antonia's life might have been!
Antonia often went to the dances with Larry Donovan, a passenger conductorwho was a kind of professional ladies' man, as we said. I remember howadmiringly all the boys looked at her the night she first wore hervelvet
een dress, made like Mrs. Gardener's black velvet. She was lovely tosee, with her eyes shining, and her lips always a little parted when shedanced. That constant, dark color in her cheeks never changed.
One evening when Donovan was out on his run, Antonia came to the hall withNorwegian Anna and her young man, and that night I took her home. When wewere in the Cutter's yard, sheltered by the evergreens, I told her shemust kiss me good-night.
"Why, sure, Jim." A moment later she drew her face away and whisperedindignantly, "Why, Jim! You know you ain't right to kiss me like that.I'll tell your grandmother on you!"
"Lena Lingard lets me kiss her," I retorted, "and I'm not half as fond ofher as I am of you."
"Lena does?" Tony gasped. "If she's up to any of her nonsense with you,I'll scratch her eyes out!" She took my arm again and we walked out of thegate and up and down the sidewalk. "Now, don't you go and be a fool likesome of these town boys. You're not going to sit around here and whittlestore-boxes and tell stories all your life. You are going away to schooland make something of yourself. I'm just awful proud of you. You won't goand get mixed up with the Swedes, will you?"
"I don't care anything about any of them but you," I said. "And you'llalways treat me like a kid, I suppose."
She laughed and threw her arms around me. "I expect I will, but you're akid I'm awful fond of, anyhow! You can like me all you want to, but if Isee you hanging round with Lena much, I'll go to your grandmother, as sureas your name's Jim Burden! Lena's all right, only--well, you know yourselfshe's soft that way. She can't help it. It's natural to her."
If she was proud of me, I was so proud of her that I carried my head highas I emerged from the dark cedars and shut the Cutters' gate softly behindme. Her warm, sweet face, her kind arms, and the true heart in her; shewas, oh, she was still my Antonia! I looked with contempt at the dark,silent little houses about me as I walked home, and thought of the stupidyoung men who were asleep in some of them. I knew where the real womenwere, though I was only a boy; and I would not be afraid of them, either!
I hated to enter the still house when I went home from the dances, and itwas long before I could get to sleep. Toward morning I used to havepleasant dreams: sometimes Tony and I were out in the country, slidingdown straw-stacks as we used to do; climbing up the yellow mountains overand over, and slipping down the smooth sides into soft piles of chaff.
One dream I dreamed a great many times, and it was always the same. I wasin a harvest-field full of shocks, and I was lying against one of them.Lena Lingard came across the stubble barefoot, in a short skirt, with acurved reaping-hook in her hand, and she was flushed like the dawn, with akind of luminous rosiness all about her. She sat down beside me, turned tome with a soft sigh and said, "Now they are all gone, and I can kiss youas much as I like."
I used to wish I could have this flattering dream about Antonia, but Inever did.