These Golden Pleasures Page 3

  Aunt Ada glared at them both impartially.

  Meekly Roxanne set the basket of eggs on the scoured wooden table.

  “Here, Roxanne, start shelling these peas,” ordered Aunt Ada, shoving a big earthenware bowl toward her and kicking a basket of newly-picked peas in her direction.

  Sitting down on a straight wooden chair, Roxanne began shelling the peas.

  “Pies smell mighty good,” observed Buck, sniffing.

  “Julie makes good pies,” said Aunt Ada slyly.

  “I know, but she hasn’t made any lately,” Buck replied.

  Roxanne kept her eyes cast down. That was the key to all this, she guessed hotly. Julie hadn’t done anything for him lately. Julie, for all her dark beauty, was thin, so thin; her very bones seemed to protrude from her shoulders. Her soft voice always sounded tired now. Her fragile health made her incapable of any but the lightest tasks. Roxanne felt angry at Buck. He should be loyal to Julie; she deserved his loyalty and needed it.

  And yet. . . and yet Roxanne was achingly aware of those long legs standing beside her, the hard thighs within her range of vision even with her eyes cast down. Buck was a sturdy oak, just as Julie was a weak sapling, and he had a strong physical appeal with his exuberant farm-boy strength and ruddy complexion.

  She bit her lip. Aunt Ada had given her a cold reception when she’d arrived in Kansas. Uncle Josh had been kind, but he worked from dawn till dark in the fields. The women she’d met had eyed with alarm this too-beautiful child of the South who’d been dropped unbidden in their midst, and who caused the men’s heads to turn—even married men that should have known better. Only Julie Smith had been unreservedly nice to her.

  Doggedly Roxanne kept her eyes fixed on the peas she was shelling, dropping the peas into the big earthenware bowl and tossing the pods into the empty slop bucket. Buck talked a while longer, but Roxanne did not look up again until he left.

  Roxanne was glad that he was gone. Treacherous feelings swept over her when he came near—her pulse beat faster and her heart rocked. Even when he just looked at her, a kind of surging excitement pounded in her head. She wanted Buck Wentworth and she hated herself for it. Because no matter how she felt about him, Buck wasn’t fair game. Julie was too vulnerable, too easy to hurt.

  Viciously Roxanne snapped the peas in half until Ada said dryly, “You’re like to break your fingernails the way you’re going at those peas. Why don’t you go out and finish churning?”

  Grateful to be out of the steaming kitchen and away from her aunt’s surveillance, Roxanne set the bowl on the table and opened the screen door.

  “And wear your sunbonnet!” snapped Aunt Ada. “You’re sixteen now, and you want to keep your complexion fair so some man will want to marry you. Not that there’s many good catches in the county, but with that face you ought to get one of them. Time you put up your hair too, and not let it fall down your back like a child.”

  “It’s too hot to wear a sunbonnet,” cried Roxanne, sweeping her damp hair back from her forehead. “It’s blistering out there!”

  Her aunt grunted as the screen door banged and Roxanne feverishly attacked the churn. It surprised her that Aunt Ada had remembered her birthday at all.

  At supper Aunt Ada watched her steadily, her eyes hard. When Uncle Josh tried to lighten the atmosphere with a joke, she crushed him by observing that his views were sacrilegious. Uncle Josh subsided, and ate his fried pork chops and peas and potatoes in silence. Roxanne wondered how he stood it. Aunt Ada was fond of reminding him that her people had been Kansas pioneers, that they’d come west from Pennsylvania in a prairie schooner when two million acres were made available for settlers in 1854. Come to settle with nothing but a spinning wheel and some corn for planting and what the wagon would carry.

  Casting a brooding look at Roxanne, Aunt Ada launched into her favorite subject. Her people had put down roots here, she declared grandly. Here in these prairies. Her father had been a “Jayhawker,” killed on a raid into Missouri to burn out Southern sympathizers.

  At this Roxanne bristled, but managed to keep silent as Aunt Ada went on: But that hadn’t stopped her ma. They’d weathered droughts and hordes of grasshoppers and Indian troubles and Quantrill’s raiders.

  “And Carrie Nation and the Women’s Temperance Crusade,” Uncle Josh couldn’t resist remarking.

  “Did she really smash all the bottles in the saloons with an axe?” asked Roxanne, fascinated.

  But Aunt Ada was not to be diverted from her tirade. She silenced her husband with a look and told Roxanne how her family had survived the great blizzard of 1886 and the record-breaking corn crop of 1889—which had driven down the price of corn to ten cents a bushel and ruined so many farmers. She added abruptly that she was for free silver and William Jennings Bryan.

  Roxanne looked blank. Down south she’d never heard of free silver. As if to punish her for that omission, Aunt Ada suddenly jabbed, “Are you setting your cap for that Buck Wentworth?”

  “Of course not,” said Roxanne indignantly, putting down her fork. “He’s engaged to Julie Smith.”

  “Just wondered if you remembered that,” her aunt said coldly. “Your ma,” she added, “up and married another girl’s intended. That’s why she and your pa went north. The other girl’s big brothers were going to horsewhip your pa and—”

  “Ada,” murmured Uncle Josh reprovingly, “that’s enough.”

  Roxanne looked upset. She’d never heard that about her mother.

  “Your mother fell in love and followed her heart,” her uncle said kindly. “She was pretty like you, and your father just didn’t stand a chance against her. He gave up a big dowry to marry her, Roxanne.”

  “And so neither of them ever had a thing!” sniffed Aunt Ada. “After all the money your folks spent educating your ma, too! So she ended up teaching in a girls’ school.”

  “It was nice there,” said Roxanne defiantly. “I remember it.”

  “Did they tell you she lost her job because the headmistress’s husband took a shine to her?” asked Aunt Ada, furious that her husband had chided her. “Your ma had a face like yours—bound for trouble.”

  “Ada,” groaned Uncle Josh. “That’s all water over the dam now. My sister’s dead. Let her rest.”

  “It’s because of her we lost all your family antiques,” scolded Aunt Ada. And that, Roxanne perceived, was the sore point. “Your grandmother sold them all, Roxanne, when your pa couldn’t make it up north and owed so much money. That was what your ma brought him to, with her pretty face and her expensive tastes.”

  Roxanne fled to her room. She closed the door, fell on the bed, put her head in her pillow and wept. She wished she’d never come to Kansas.

  As if in a kind of grim apology for what she’d said about Roxanne’s mother, Aunt Ada announced the following morning at breakfast that they were going in to Wichita. All three of them. Roxanne’s spirits rose. She seldom got to go in to Wichita; usually Aunt Ada had chores for her to do that kept her home.

  Promptly after breakfast they piled into the buck-board and headed for Wichita. Aunt Ada sat stiff and silent, but Uncle Josh pointed out interesting things about the countryside, such as a barn that had been picked up by a tornado three years ago and lifted off its foundations and then set back down facing the other way! They called Kansas “Tornado Alley,” he added cheerfully.

  Roxanne shivered. She had never seen one of those great, whirling, funnel-like twisters that pounced down out of the sky. But Uncle Josh, observing her expression, said she didn’t need to worry, they had a sturdy cyclone cellar back at the farm.

  Once they reached the outskirts of Wichita, he pointed out where the old Chisholm Trail had gone through. Millions of head of cattle had been driven through there on their way north from Texas to the big Eastern markets—’course, that was before barbed wire had fenced off the prairie and the lowing longhorns had been diverted elsewhere. The sodbusters had won. Corn was king here now, but soon it would be wheat—esp
ecially that kind called Turkey Red, brought in by the Mennonites.

  Roxanne wasn’t listening. Indeed she hardly saw the Arkansas River gliding by. She was staring hungrily at avenues lined with elms and cottonwoods, at the big gingerbread houses. Once this had been a wild cowtown, with signs posted on the outskirts announcing Anything goes in Wichita and advising citizens to check their guns. But Roxanne was oblivious to her uncle account of its past, its wild saloons and roistering trail hands; all she saw was the mansard roofs bristling with wrought iron and the sawtooth gables and the turrets and the gingerbread. Behind those fancy Victorian fronts was a more congenial way of life than days spent churning butter and gathering eggs and slopping hogs and running about at Aunt Ada’s beck and call.

  Roxanne yearned for that life. She didn’t want to be a farmer’s wife and live in drought-plagued Kansis fighting grasshoppers and falling corn prices. She didn’t want to fall in love with Buck. She didn’t want to betray the one friend she had—Julie.

  She found herself wondering if her aunt had decided on this jaunt into Wichita to get her away in case Buck came over to borrow some more nails, and she was stunned when Aunt Ada marched her into a woman’s apparel shop and bought her a pair of stockings and some high-heeled shoes and a white batiste dress. The dress had a bow at the neck, leg-o’-mutton sleeves and a long bell-shaped skirt with a little train. To this array, a fluffy white parasol and a pair of short white linen gloves were added, though Roxanne was in most immediate need of underwear than gloves, for her own underwear had been mended so frequently that it was near disintegration. Then Roxanne was turned this way and that as the alterations lady pinned and tucked and—on her knees with a mouth full of pins—said everything would be ready by late afternoon.

  “Now you look more like a lady and less like hoyden,” approved Aunt Ada, surveying her bewildered charge. “Tomorrow night we’re having company,” she added. “You’ll wear that dress and put your hair up. Makes you look older.”

  “Who’s coming?” asked Roxanne.

  “Never you mind,” snapped Aunt Ada. “Just you wear your sunbonnet in the daytime to keep your skin nice and white and mind your manners.”

  The next evening they ate a hurried supper, and Roxanne was told to tidy up the front parlor. So grateful was Roxanne for her new clothes that she would have scrubbed the floor if Aunt Ada hadn’t stopped her with a surprising, “Stop that, Roxanne. You’ll make your hands rough. And remember to wear your white gloves!”

  Roxanne gawked at her. It was true that in fashionable homes back east ladies wore gloves indoors, but this was the first time she’d heard of anybody doing that on the Kansas prairies!

  “Hurry and dress,” cried Aunt Ada," and Roxanne, galvanized, flew upstairs to put on the new stockings and to slip the new white dress over her threadbare underwear. Carefully combing her hair into an upswept pompadour and anchoring it firmly with combs, she was ready when Aunt Ada bellowed, “Roxanne, someone’s here to see you!”

  She came downstairs to find their neighbor, portly Ned Witherspoon, peering at her over his bifocals, and bowing so low that the round bald spot on the back of his head gleamed in the lamplight.

  “Miss Roxanne,” he said formally, in the same sugary tone in which he might have said “Delicious!” of his hostess’s cake.

  Roxanne paused and looked about, wondering who else was there—someone who conceivably might have come to see her. But Mr. Witherspoon was alone. He stood there wearing a satisfied look, just as he did behind his desk at the bank whenever someone made a really large deposit or paid off a loan.

  “Roxanne!” Aunt Ada spoke severely, interrupting her niece’s trance. “Take Mr. Witherspoon into the parlor and make him comfortable.”

  To Roxanne’s utter astonishment, she found herself entertaining her unlikely guest in the front parlor. They sat stiffly on the uncomfortable horsehair chairs and talked about the weather and the price of corn and how his married son and daughter were doing up in Missouri. He was a widower, he told her with some emphasis, his wife having passed away a year and a half ago. Roxanne now remembered hearing gossip that Mr. Witherspoon had got most of his money through his wife, a woman with buck teeth and a giant frame, whose people had made their pile in the days when great cattle herds were driven north from Texas. In those days, large herds were sold to Indian agents who were always ready to buy stock to send up the upper Missouri to feed the Indians. These herds often disappeared mysteriously—sometimes by stampede— the very night they were sold; the “lost” herds were then resold the next day to another Indian agent, or perhaps—with connivance—to the same buyer. Roxanne studied Mr. Witherspoon, whose fortune was said to have rested on such shenanigans; he did not look as if he had the courage to face a full grown steer, le alone incite a stampede. No doubt his wife’s people had been of a different stripe. She was still pondering this when Aunt Ada served them tea and cookies. Mr Witherspoon smacked his lips and said they were mighty good—did Miss Roxanne make them herself? Roxanne opened her mouth to say no, but Aunt Ada who was hovering in the hall, interposed in a loud voice that Roxanne had indeed made them. Roxanne looked startled at this outrageous lie. She was a very indifferent cook, and the delicate butter cookies were a culinary triumph.

  Still mystified at the end of the evening, Roxanne bade her gentleman caller good-bye. As he left he promised to take her for a whirl in his buggy on Sunday afternoon; perhaps they’d go into Wichita and see the Chatauqua. Aunt Ada promptly accepted for her.

  “Why,” demanded Roxanne after he’d gone, “did that old man come to see me? I’ve never even spoken to him except at church! And he has a granddaughter almost my age!”

  Aunt Ada looked at her. “Ned Witherspoon,” she said, as if explaining to a not-quite-bright child, “is president of a bank, Roxanne. He is president because he owns most of the stock. He doesn’t owe a penny in the world to anyone, and he owns four whole sections of prime corn land. The Widow Carter and the Widow Marley are both out to get him, but you caught his eye. He’s a catch, child!”

  Roxanne was speechless. She staggered off to bed. Was it for this that Aunt Ada had bought her the beautiful new clothes, let her put up her hair, baked all those delicious cookies? Was it for Ned Witherspoon that she was to keep her complexion fair by wearing a sunbonnet? She sat down on her bed and began to laugh from pure vexation. And then, surprising herself, she began to cry.

  The ridiculous situation went on for a week, as Mr. Witherspoon pursued his courtship relentlessly. On Sunday, as promised, he took Roxanne riding into Wichita in his buggy, which was black and gold and indeed handsome. Her cheeks were flushed with embarrassment, and she had occasion to use her new parasol—she hid behind it whenever they passed young people she knew.

  Every time Roxanne opened her mouth to tell her aunt that this May-December courtship was unthinkable, Aunt Ada stopped her by reminding her of Mr. Witherspoon’s very visible wealth. Of his big house with its modern conveniences. Of all the things he could do for a woman. As if Roxanne cared! Her dreams of young love certainly didn’t include a dried-up old widower whose grandchildren were almost her age!

  But he appeared punctually every evening after supper and smacked his lips over the assortment of cookies and cake and pie that Aunt Ada doled out with accompanying assurances that Roxanne had done the baking. Roxanne wanted to scream.

  Instead she sat sedately on the little horsehair sofa in the stifling front parlor with her ankles crossed decorously, and tried to laugh politely at Mr. Witherspoon’s sly little jokes and to keep from looking pained when he came out with something he thought shockingly modern, such as “Twenty-three skidoo!” or “Oh, you kid!”

  Roxanne tried to tell herself this was only a phase Aunt Ada was going through with regard to herself, and that Uncle Josh would understand how she felt. Once Aunt Ada discovered that Roxanne would never be interested in this elderly Lothario, she would soften up and let her niece go out to parties and receive beaux her own age
. In the meantime Roxanne must put up with Mr. Witherspoon’s persistent calls and Sunday drives until he tired of his unrewarding chase and turned to one or the other of the widows Aunt Ada vowed were after him.

  Roxanne had almost convinced herself that this was so when, one Wednesday night, as Mr. Witherspoon got up to leave, Aunt Ada came bustling in and said, “Roxanne, you tell Ned good night now and run along upstairs to your room. Ned and I have some talking to do.”

  Glad to escape, Roxanne hurried upstairs to light the cheap glass kerosene lamp in her room. There’d be time to read another chapter of a novel Julie had sent to her. But she closed the door so quickly her long dress caught in it, and she heard a little ripping sound. Aunt Ada mustn’t see that rip. Roxanne kicked oft her shoes and tiptoed back downstairs to get some white thread and a needle out of the sewing basket in the living room.

  Pausing on the landing, she could hear Aunt Ada talking to Mr. Witherspoon at the front door. They couldn’t see her. and something urgent in their voices made her stop to listen.

  “If she gives me trouble,” her aunt was saying darkly, “I’ll lock her in her room until she’s so hungry that she’ll do anything I say for a crust of bread!” Roxanne leaned forward. They were talking about her! “I wouldn’t want her to act unwillingly at the altar,” Mr. Witherspoon sounded upset. “I mean. I’ve a position to maintain in the community’, and if anyone thought I forced—”

  “She’ll be willing, Ned,” said Aunt Ada harshly. “Roxanne likes fine things—like her mother before her.” There was a sneer in her voice. (She’s still hating us over those antiques! thought Roxanne wildly.) “And you can give her fine things, Ned—a soft life. That’s appetizing to any young girl with no money and no prospects. Right now Roxanne’s just a little feisty because she’s young and wants to run about free. But once she’s married—why, you’ll break her to hand real easy. And after the first baby comes along, she’ll settle down.”