Carney's House Party/Winona's Pony Cart Page 10

  All the girls except Betsy had brought hand work—sewing, or tatting, or Irish crochet.

  “Perhaps your conscience would hurt you less, Miss Ray, if you read out loud to us,” someone suggested.

  “I won’t admit to a single pang of conscience, but I’d love to read.” Betsy picked up the new Ladies’ Home Journal. “Here’s just what we want, an article on women’s colleges.”

  It was written by a parent, and he didn’t like women’s colleges any too well. “‘Our daughter has come back to us mentally broadened, but somehow we feel a loss in emotional qualities. The head of the girl has been trained without the heart.’”

  “What nonsense!” Carney interrupted. “You don’t go to college to get your heart trained.”

  “Maybe if you went to the U you’d have emotional qualities like Bonnie and me,” said Betsy. “We’re frightfully emotional, aren’t we, Bonnie?”

  “I just palpitate,” said Bonnie. “Or I will. I can feel it coming on.”

  “I like Teachers College,” put in Alice. “It doesn’t take four years, and I’m anxious to get out into the world.”

  “I like it, too,” said Winona. “It’s near Dennie.” Winona and Dennie were going together.

  Perhaps because of Dennie, Winona was giving an evening party with men.

  In spite of all the daytime parties, men hadn’t been exactly absent from their lives. Every evening after work they descended on the Sibley household. Sam drove in from the lake, unshaven again, nonchalantly untidy. The Crowd, Carney noticed, had already taken him in. His wealth was easily forgotten, in spite of his extravagant ways, for he never brought his father’s money into a conversation. And he seemed to like the Crowd.

  They piled into his auto, or the Sibley’s, or Lloyd’s, and took the Seven Mile drive, three and a half miles out and three and a half miles back on the Fletcher Road. They sang loudly about Josephine and the flying machine, or “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” or “Down by the Old Mill Stream.”

  Carney felt that she belonged again. Had she ever found Deep Valley melancholy?

  The famous Minnesota heat arrived, pressing down over the valley like a smothering blanket. Almost every evening an electric storm cleared the air. Thunder crashed and rolled; lightning wrote its jagged fiery messages. For an hour or so it was blessedly cool. But the next day would be as hot as before.

  The girls didn’t mind. The sleeping porch was a boon, and they made a beauty parlor down in the basement, between the furnace and the laundry tubs. There they dressed one another’s hair in elaborate coiffures.

  Every morning Mrs. Sibley closed the windows and drew the shades for coolness, and, between engagements, the house party stayed in this semitwilight playing five hundred or social solitaire, reading, writing letters, playing the piano. Sometimes in the late afternoon they opened their parasols and walked down to Heinz’s for a soda.

  On the Tuesday of Winona’s party Carney and Betsy went to Heinz’s, and they fell to talking, as they often did, about California. Carney liked the subject because of Larry, and it was easy to get Betsy started.

  Betsy described her grandmother’s cottage.

  “She has a palm tree and a guava tree on her front lawn, and an arbor covered with bougainvillea in the back. She had a garden all winter long.”

  “Doesn’t it rain all winter?”

  “Just in the mornings, usually. We had a little fire for breakfast. Then I always went at my writing. I certainly led a lively bunch of heroines to the altar.

  “By noon it would have cleared, and I’d go for a walk. The pepper trees would still be shiny with rain, and the world would be so hot and bright, smelling of roses…” Betsy stopped, smiling.

  “Weren’t you lonesome,” Carney asked, “when Larry and Herbert were away at college?”

  “No,” Betsy answered. “Not a bit. I must be cut out for the quiet life. I got acquainted with a few kids, of course, but what I liked best was just being with my grandmother.

  “She told me stories about her childhood, and her married life with my real grandfather who went to the Civil War, and about when Mamma was a little girl. And, of course, Uncle Keith was there.”

  “Your uncle who is an actor?”

  “Yes. After my step-grandfather died, Uncle Keith bought a little ranch up in the mountains near Grandma. He drove down to see her every week-end and that was wonderful for me because…Uncle Keith likes to write, too, and he took such an interest in my work. He thought my stories would be more apt to sell if they were typewritten. And he gave me a typewriter.”

  “Have you sold any yet?” Carney asked.

  “Yes. It was partly the typewriter and partly…” Betsy paused.

  “Partly what?”

  After a moment Betsy pushed aside her chocolate nut sundae. She was wearing a Dutch collar with a Paisley tie, the green-brown color of her eyes, but it wasn’t just the tie which made her eyes so bright. Her cheeks were growing pink as they did when she got excited.

  “Near San Diego,” she said, “is Ramona’s marriage place…out of the novel. And there’s a wishing well with this sign on it.” She began to recite in a deepened voice.

  “Quaff ye the waters of Ramona’s well,

  Good luck they bring and secrets tell,

  Blest were they by sandaled Friar,

  So drink and wish for thy desire.”

  “I wished I would sell a story, and I did,” she said, resuming the chocolate nut sundae.

  “Betsy!” cried Carney. “You don’t believe in wishing wells!”

  “Don’t I?” Betsy asked.

  “Besides, if you did, what a silly thing to wish for. I should think you’d have wished something about Joe.”

  Betsy’s eyes grew wide. “Why, when I sold my story Joe was as happy as I was. I telegraphed him and he telegraphed back. We nearly died with joy.”

  Carney’s thoughts returned to what Sam Hutchinson had said. “Those musicians think music is everything. Writers are the same about writing…”

  “I don’t believe in wishing wells,” Carney thought. “But if I could make a wish, I’d wish for Larry to come.”

  As they neared the Sibley house Bobbie came running to meet them.

  “Sis! Sis! You’ve got a telegram.”

  Carney was astonished. “Who in the world could be telegraphing me? Everyone I know is here.”

  “Except Larry,” Betsy replied.

  Carney turned and looked at her. Larry! His letter was overdue.

  She ran up the steps and into the hall to a slender-legged table where mail was always placed. A yellow envelope was lying there.

  “Carney,” said her mother, coming out of the parlor, “there’s a telegram for you.”

  “There’s a telegram for you, Carney,” Bonnie and Isobel called down the stairs.

  Carney opened the envelope and unfolded the yellow paper. She read it and swallowed hard.

  “Larry is coming.”

  “What?”

  “Larry is coming. Friday. He’s staying with Tom.”

  “What is he coming for?” asked Mrs. Sibley.

  “He doesn’t say,” answered Carney. He didn’t need to, of course. She felt a tightening at her heart.

  “Right in the midst of the house party!” said Mrs. Sibley, sounding not too pleased. “And in all this heat!”

  Carney’s firm lips belied her sparkling eyes. She looked like Grandmother Hunter.

  “Oh, well, if he’s coming, let him come,” she said.

  11

  Young Lochinvar

  WINONA’S PARTY RANG WITH the news that Larry Humphreys was coming.

  “Have you heard…Have you heard…” everyone asked everyone else, “Larry is coming back from California to see Carney.”

  When someone said it to Sam Hutchinson he was startled. “A man at the house party?” he asked.

  The circle around the piano laughed. “Oh, no, not that! He’s staying with Tom.”

  “Then why do you s
ay he’s coming to see Carney?”

  The circle laughed even more heartily, and Winona explained, “Larry and Carney used to go together.”

  “Larry and Carney! I thought it was Larry and Bonnie.”

  “That’s a good one!” Alice cried.

  “Heck, no! Larry and Carney. They were practically Romeo and Juliet,” Cab said.

  Sam grinned amiably at his mistake. He was shaved tonight. He was wearing a white coat and navy blue trousers, looking, Winona had told him, suave.

  “But weren’t they just kids when the Humphreys went away?” he asked. “I can’t see what’s so important about this.”

  “It’s important, all right,” Winona answered. “They’ve corresponded for four years and haven’t missed a week. Lots of boys have rushed Carney…Al, Dave…but no one ever got anywhere. We all think Larry’s coming back to get engaged.”

  “Young Lochinvar in person,” said Sam, and he sought out Carney.

  She was all in white and looked sparkling and triumphant. Sam began to chant as he drew near:

  “Oh, young Lochinvar is come out of the west;

  Through all the wide border, his steed was the best…”

  “Don’t be silly,” Carney said.

  “Silly, is it? I understand that you’re practically at the altar.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  The others took their cue from Sam.

  “‘So faithful in love,’” Betsy said.

  “‘And so dauntless in war,’” Tom added.

  “‘There never was knight like the young Lochinvar.’”

  “Oh, stop it!” Carney cried. But she was too happy to mind. Larry was coming half way across the continent to see her. He was on his way this minute.

  It was a jolly party. Winona’s parties were just like Winona, full of careless gaiety. There were tables for cards but no one played much five hundred. They sang around the piano to Winona’s dashing accompaniment. They played wild games, and raced up and down stairs and in and out of doors.

  Winona loved races, fights, and scuffles. She would be a teacher soon. She had learned how to assume an expression of gentle sweetness. But tonight her black eyes flashed and her white teeth gleamed. Dennie of the curly topknot and deceptively cherubic face, was never far away.

  Carney’s thoughts kept racing ahead to the parties they would have when Larry came. He could stay two weeks, Tom had said when she telephoned him after receiving the wire. Now he radiated pride at having kept Larry’s secret.

  “How long have you known it?” she asked.

  “Two days.”

  “How did it happen? Did you write and invite him?”

  “Oh, I’ve invited him at intervals ever since they went away. And I’ve known for a long time that he was saving money for a trip. But this wire came out of a perfectly clear sky.”

  He must have wired on receiving her last letter. She had written him after the day at Sam’s. Carney felt that he had been drawn by her own urgent wish.

  Sam strolled up again.

  “Oh come ye in peace here, or come ye in war,

  Or to dance at our bridal, young Lord Lochinvar?”

  Carney tried to box his ears.

  Sam had given the house party ammunition which it used freely between Tuesday and Friday. From morning until night, all over the house, on walks downtown, on automobile rides, at parties, someone always picked up the chant.

  “He stayed not for break, and he stopped not for stone…”

  or

  “So stately his form, and so lovely her face…”

  “Stop it!” Carney would beg.

  Only Bonnie was merciful. “I won’t let them do it when he comes, Carney,” she promised. “You won’t hear a word out of them then.”

  Carney took the teasing good-naturedly, but as Friday drew near her smile became a little fixed.

  “You kids may not know it, but I’m fussed,” she said.

  She tried not to be. She tried to drive her nervousness away by keeping busy: she washed her hair and pressed her pink sprigged dimity. But inside she felt a growing excitement. Sometimes it pushed up into her throat and almost choked her. Larry had been important to her for so long!

  She asked Bonnie to walk down to Front Street for a soda. Maternal little Bonnie, warm and loving, was an ideal confidante. Isobel seemed amused by the California invasion. Betsy was most sympathetic but she dramatized the visit so much that she made Carney fidgety. She grumbled to Bonnie, “Betsy makes me feel like the star of a play. I don’t know how to act like Sarah Bernhardt.”

  “Larry won’t want you to. He likes you because you’re the way you are, always natural, never putting on.”

  “He used to like me, but do you suppose he still will?”

  “Of course. Everyone does. This is a good time for him to come,” Bonnie added. “There’s so much going on.”

  “I’m glad,” answered Carney, “that there’ll always be a lot of people around.”

  She had advanced so far in her thoughts that now she was withdrawing a little. But she still felt sure that she and Larry would reach an understanding.

  “I don’t suppose Dad would like an engagement until I’m through college,” she thought. “But we’ll know whether there’s ever going to be an engagement.”

  Wednesday passed, and Thursday. On Friday the heat simmered over the green lawn. It simmered over Mrs. Sibley’s bed of pink and white cosmos, and in the house behind the close-drawn shades.

  The girls were dressed in their thinnest clothes, playing cards, reading, doing fancy work as usual. Even the boys preferred to stay inside. Jerry was reading in his father’s big chair. Bobbie had brought up Snow White’s cage and was playing with the mice. He opened the door and let them run a little; the girls didn’t mind any more.

  The girls wanted Carney to play for them, but for once she refused. She would have been happier working but due to her unfortunate forehandedness—and her mother’s—there seemed to be nothing to do. She went out to the kitchen and made a pitcher of lemonade.

  Tom had not been able to tell her when Larry would arrive.

  “He didn’t mention a train,” Tom had said. “I suppose he’ll come up from Omaha but it could be down from Minneapolis. Depends on his route.”

  This increased the suspense.

  At first, whenever the telephone rang, Carney jumped. Once she dropped a winning five hundred hand all over the floor. But the rings were always false alarms. Ellen was calling for Hunter, or a grandmother for Mrs. Sibley, who was out, or Lloyd or Cab for one of the girls. At last the telephone lost its power to agitate. Carney answered without even thinking that it might be Larry, and she heard a deep voice.

  “Hello. May I speak to Carney, please?”

  The speech was slow, leisurely. Larry had always spoken so. Carney swallowed for her throat felt dry. Her heart seemed to race around like one of Snow White’s babies.

  “This is Carney,” she replied.

  “Well…” and he gave a little laugh. “Here’s your bad penny.”

  “I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Four years is a long time,” he remarked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “May we come right up?”

  “Of course.”

  The girls were listening undecidedly. Carney’s replies might indicate Larry, but her matter-of-fact tone certainly didn’t. She shut down the receiver.

  “He’s here. He and Tom are coming right up.”

  There was a scream in which she didn’t join, although she was smiling.

  “Is there time to change your dress?” asked Isobel.

  “I’m not going to change my dress.”

  “But you pressed the dimity.”

  “Just to have something to do.”

  Betsy was astonished. “Aren’t you even going to powder your nose?”

  “Of course not,” answered Carney. “You know I never use that stuff. Maybe I’ll wash my face,” she added trying to joke.
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br />   Bonnie took charge. “Pick up those cards, Isobel,” she said. “And Betsy, you put the table away. Take Snow White back to the basement, Bobbie. Come on upstairs now. We’re going to let Carney meet him alone.”

  “I’m not sure I want to,” Carney said

  “See?” cried Isobel sinking back into a chair. “She really wants us around.”

  “It would be wonderful for a lady author,” Betsy pleaded, “to see a reunion like this. I’d know how to describe one in a novel some day.”

  But Bonnie was inexorable. “No,” she said firmly. “Upstairs with you. I’ll follow.”

  “Bonnie,” said Carney, “you stay! I’d rather you did. Mother would like it better, too.”

  “All right,” Bonnie replied. “If you want me to. Shoo, now!” She clapped her hands, and Betsy and Isobel rushed up the stairs.

  “‘The Little Colonel’s Knight Comes Riding,’” they chanted as they headed not for Carney’s room, which was headquarters for the house party, but for Mrs. Sibley’s room which looked down to the street.

  Carney went to the mirror in the hall. Her blue lawn dress was fresh. Her pompadour was smooth. She looked just as usual except that her brown eyes had little snapping points in them.

  “It’s just Larry coming,” she told herself firmly. “Just Larry. He’s been to this house a thousand times.”

  Bonnie ran her arm through Carney’s and they went out to the porch.

  “Will you keep them for supper?” Bonnie asked.

  “I don’t know. I forgot to ask Mother. Do you think we should?”

  “It would be a nice thing to do unless Mrs. Slade is expecting them back. What are we having?”

  “Everything cold…except green corn. But I could bake muffins.”

  The commonplace housewifely conversation helped.

  At last Tom and a companion could be seen walking up Broad Street.

  “He’s tall,” Carney said.

  “He looks nice,” said Bonnie and squeezed Carney’s arm. But Carney didn’t return the squeeze. She waited stiffly.

  The pair turned in at the Sibley walk, and Tom suddenly became invisible. Carney saw only a tall, strapping, broad-shouldered young man in a handsome light-colored suit, wearing a bow tie and a straw hat set at a jaunty slant.