These Golden Pleasures

by Valerie Sherwood

  But now, caught up in Julie’s despondency, something of the loneliness stole over her again.

  Roxanne had been born in Augusta, Georgia, where her mother had returned to have her baby after her young husband of only eight months had died up in Pennsylvania. After Roxanne’s birth, the young, genteel and impoverished Widow Rossiter had found employment teaching in a select girls’ school. But Roxanne could hardly remember those days, since she had been only five when they moved away. Her mother had lost her job, Roxanne wasn’t sure exactly why, and they had gone downriver to live with Grandmother Lanier in a tiny house on the outskirts of Savannah.

  Roxanne’s grandmother was a frail, lovely old lady for whom time seemed to have stopped with the Civil War. She spoke of little else. Mulberry Hall, the plantation where grandmother had spent her girlhood, was one of the many beautiful homes in the path of Sherman’s terrible March to the Sea—it had vanished in fire from the Yankee torch. Mulberry . . . her grandmother’s voice grew husky as she described it: the avenue of moss-draped live oaks that led up to the gracious fan-lighted front door, the spacious rooms, the whitewashed slave cabins . . . now it was all ashes, its fields charred and left to brambles or wilderness, the land sold long ago for taxes. . . .

  Her grandmother told her bitterly of the Yankees who had burned her home to the ground, and how all she had been able to save was a cartload of antiques. Roxanne sometimes wondered where the antiques were, for the tiny house they lived in was so sparsely furnished that her mother sometimes laughingly called it an empty house.

  Though they had dwelt in genteel poverty, Roxanne’s bearing, as well as her cultivated voice and soft Southern accent, marked her as a lady. Her clothes were cheap and worn and often patched, and she had received no formal schooling, but her mother had carefully taught her all the things young ladies were taught in the fashionable girls’ schools of the day—a smattering of French and Latin, a dab of history and philosophy, elementary figuring, good grammar, a graceful copybook script, daintiness with a fork and other social graces. Roxanne spoke well, and she was lovely to contemplate, but of course, since her education had been informal, she couldn’t say, “I attended Miss Gilbey’s School” or “I graduated from a seminary.” In Savannah, where she was known and accepted as her mother’s daughter and therefore a lady, that hadn’t mattered. Now it did.

  Both her mother and grandmother had come down with deep chest colds during a sudden freeze the winter before last, and in a long damp spring in the drafty cottage, they’d worsened and died within weeks of each other.

  When her mother—who was never strong—had died, Roxanne had sorrowed—but grandmother was still there. Then in rising panic she had seen the old woman weaken, and at her instruction had telegraphed her grandmother’s only other child, Joshua Lanier, who was married and lived in Kansas.

  Before Uncle Josh could arrive, grandmother had died, even though Roxanne, weeping a curtain of tears, had sat by her bedside begging her to get well. Her grandmother had patted her hand in an effort to comfort the grief-stricken girl. Dying, she had grown curiously prophetic. She had taken Roxanne’s hand and said—“You are too beautiful, Roxanne.” She sighed. “And too proud. You may suffer for it. I can leave you nothing of material value—the Yankees saw to that. But you have yourself, Roxanne. Yourself to answer to. Never forget it. And even though much of what you do may not be of your own will, take heart. For to be a woman—a real woman—is to strive, to love . . . and to forgive.” Her soft voice weakened, and the light in her penetrating old eyes flickered out. Her hand slipped lifelessly from Roxanne’s. She lay back on the pillow, not breathing, and Roxanne’s hot tears fell on her dead face.

  Those words never left her. They were to guide her life.

  The next day Uncle Josh arrived in Savannah. As Roxanne turned a tearstained face to greet him, he murmured, “How like your mother you are, Roxanne.” Uncle Josh himself had dark-blond hair like her mother’s and her own, for that matter, but there the resemblance ended. Uncle Josh was tall and melancholy and romantic-looking, with a weak chin. Her mother had been delicate, lighthearted even at the worst times, and she had had a dazzling smile.

  Uncle Josh made a quick assessment of Roxanne’s circumstances; she would now be left alone in a rented cottage with no money, for her mother had been destitute and the pittance her grandmother had left was dissipated by the funeral expenses. She was fourteen years old, was without any kind of formal education, and worse, she’d been brought up a lady, which ruled out the only kind of jobs that were open to penniless girls. So, just before he left, Joshua announced that Roxanne was going back to Kansas with him.

  But what about Aunt Ada? Roxanne had asked fearfully, noting that Aunt Ada hadn’t come east for the funeral.

  Her uncle gave her his pleasant melancholy smile. Aunt Ada would love her, he said in his cultivated Southern voice.

  That Aunt Ada wouldn’t, that she wouldn’t even approve of her niece, Roxanne had some inkling. For her mother had always said, “Oh, yes, Ada . . . ,” and then her voice would sort of drop away deprecatingly, and she’d change the subject, never telling Roxanne anything about the woman who had married Uncle Joshua.

  Yet it was evident to Roxanne that she had no choice but to accept her only relative’s well-intentioned offer. So she joined her Uncle Joshua as they boarded the steam locomotive that would take them over the miles into the hard flatlands of Kansas, far away from the gentle lands of the South . . . home.

  If I don’t like it, she had promised herself, I won’t stay. I’ll come back east—I’ll get a job. Even then, she knew that she was whistling in the dark. Jobs weren’t all that easy to find. Her lovely mother, with all her charm and credentials, hadn’t been able to find a job. How would an untrained fourteen-year-old fare? But she wouldn’t always be fourteen, Roxanne had reasoned. Every day, every hour, she was getting older. In July she’d be fifteen—and next year sixteen! Old enough to do anything!

  She smiled ruefully. Now that she’d be sixteen next month, Roxanne realized that nothing had really changed. Aunt Ada still disapproved of her, and she was no better prepared to go out into the world than she had been before—except that now she knew how to make butter and feed livestock and milk a cow and scrub floors. All things she had never done in Georgia.

  Aunt Ada was strict. She kept her niece working so hard, sometimes Roxanne felt she was a slave. And there was no recreation as she had known recreation back in Georgia. No carefree outings. Aunt Ada didn’t hold with those, just as she didn’t hold with dancing.

  Which was why Roxanne had slipped out tonight.

  Nadine came skipping out of the house. “Nance says the food is ready!”

  The banjo stopped playing and everyone trooped inside—except for one or two couples who slipped away behind the dark barn and came in tardily, the boys swaggering a little, the girls giggling and smoothing their skirts and patting their rumpled hair.

  “You don’t have a fellow, do you?” said Nadine in a slightly malicious voice. “You can share a plate with me.

  Roxanne followed Nadine into the Smiths’ big farm kitchen, which had been “modernized” with an iron hand pump to draw water. Each of the other girls piled a white ironstone plate with sandwiches, which she then shared with a boy. Julie shared hers with Buck, of course, and everybody else paired up. Roxanne gave the giggling stragglers a wistful look. Taking the plate Nadine had heaped high with sandwiches, she headed for the opposite side of the room, away from Julie and Buck. Nadine, discontented with this arrangement, talked absently to Roxanne but kept looking at Buck and pouting.

  The conversation faltered. Roxanne, putting flirtatious Nadine from her thoughts, looked around the big kitchen with its plain maple furniture. It was so much cozier than Aunt Ada’s barren kitchen. The whole house was much cozier, in fact. She supposed the difference was that Aunt Ada’s dour personality spilled over into everything she did. Upstairs here, she knew, Julie’s room had pretty flowered chintz cu
rtains and a gay green and yellow crazy quilt, and underfoot a colorful hooked rug. Julie had a little dressing table, too, where she could observe the newfound hollows in her flushed cheeks and study the feverish light in her candid gray eyes.

  Roxanne didn’t envy Julie; she’d rather have less and be able to dance the night away.

  After they’d eaten, Nadine insisted they have just one more dance. Roxanne knew she was going to sidle up to Buck and ask him to dance it with her.

  Julie knew it too. As Nadine approached, she jumped up and said with a laugh, “Buck, I can’t let you go without even one dance!”

  Laughing and chattering, they all went outside again, where the banjo struck up “Camptown Races.” Julie Smith, tossing back her black hair, looked pretty standing there slim as a willow wand, but though her smile was gay, her eyes had a desperate light. She’s afraid she’s losing Buck, thought Roxanne with a pang.

  Buck hesitated. “Do you think you should? The doctor—”

  “Sure, I should!” cried Julie recklessly. “This is my party at my house! Don’t I get to dance one dance? Come on, Buck, it won’t hurt me!”

  Buck grinned. This was the old lighthearted Julie, the girl he’d fallen in love with and asked to marry, to share his life. Everybody applauded as they whirled around to “Goin’ to run all night, goin’ to run all day!” Charlie Bonner grabbed his girl and joined in, and then the rest followed. But Roxanne, standing this time on the sidelines clapping her hands and tapping her feet, watched Julie anxiously. In his exuberance at dancing with her again, strong Buck was whirling Julie very fast. Her gray eyes were brilliant in the moonlight and she was laughing excitedly.

  All of a sudden she missed a step and doubled up, coughing. Buck—indeed all the dancers—came to a halt, and the music died away so that the only sound was that of the wracking cough as Julie’s slender shoulders shook uncontrollably. Buck had his arms around her. His face was white.

  “I shouldn’t have let her. . . .” he groaned. When the coughing had subsided and Julie, white and trembling, looked up at him and tried to smile, he picked her up without a word and carried her back into the house.

  Roxanne followed to wait outside Julie’s bedroom door. Julie was her special friend, and she wanted to be there in case she could help. Downstairs, Julie’s widowed father called querulously from his wheelchair, “Is Julie all right?” And old Nance, who had been the Smiths’ hired girl and general confidante since she was fourteen, called down curtly, “Yes,” as she shooed a frightened Nadine out of the room and shut the bedroom door in Roxanne’s face. After a while Nance came out looking grim, and then Buck left looking stern too, and Roxanne slipped in to say good night.

  Julie lay like a collapsed rag doll on the big square bed with its bright green and yellow crazy quilt. Her dark head was propped up by pillows. Tears spilled over her lashes.

  “It’s no good,” she whispered to Roxanne. “No good. . .

  “Oh, Julie, you just weren’t up to it yet,” insisted Roxanne anxiously. “Remember the doctor told you to rest—you’ll be fine soon.”

  “No.” Julie turned her tearstained face away. “No, I won’t.”

  Because she wanted to cry herself, Roxanne left then, feeling that there was nothing more she could do.

  On the way home Charlie Bonner said glumly, “Julie’s not gonna make it. Buck’s going to bury her— not marry her.”

  His sister put her hand on his arm and said, “Hush. How do you know?”

  Charlie shrugged, but Roxanne felt a chill around her heart for her only real friend on these lonesome prairies.

  The next Saturday night there was another barn dance, and Roxanne again slipped out. This time big Albert Dawes got too “likkered up” and tried to kiss her out behind the barn, and she slapped his face. It occurred to her that if it had been Buck who’d tried to kiss her, she might not have slapped him. Which made her angry with herself. Buck belonged to Julie—and as was proper he was calling on Julie tonight instead of attending the barn dance. It wasn’t the same without him.

  At church on Sunday, seated in the pew between Aunt Ada’s poker-stiff back and Uncle Josh’s resigned slump, Roxanne watched Buck Wentworth settle himself in the Smiths’ empty pew. Julie was still resting in bed, it was said, and Nadine had stayed with her. That must have irked Nadine, thought Roxanne, not getting to go to church alone with Buck. She stared at Buck’s back, remembering how they’d danced, how hotly he’d looked at her. Suddenly he turned and looked straight at her as if he knew she was thinking about him. But she couldn’t read the expression in his eyes. Then he faced forward again, and sat stiffly erect all during the hellfire sermon. Roxanne was very conscious of Aunt Ada’s disapproval. She cast her eyes down at her hymnal as they began to sing “Rock of Ages.”

  After church the congregation stood in little groups outside under the cottonwood trees and gossiped. In Roxanne’s group all the talk was about that wild Sarah Gregson, who had been caught in the haymow with big Albert Dawes without a stitch—no, her ma didn’t think anything had happened, but her pa had sure tanned her backside proper. No wonder she wasn’t at church—still couldn’t sit down, most likely! Roxanne couldn’t help smiling. Last week gossip had it that Sarah was clad in her combination undergarment, and the week before she’d been fully clothed. But it sobered Roxanne a little, hearing this new version, realizing how lightly a young girl’s reputation was lost.

  Beyond the gossiping group, Roxanne saw Buck Wentworth watching her. Their eyes caught, held for a second. There was no mistaking that look. More than interest ... . desire. Then he turned, climbed onto his horse and departed. Roxanne felt quivery inside. Buck was forbidden fruit, but he drew her like a magnet.

  Silent and thoughtful on the way home in the buck-board, Roxanne tried to ignore Aunt Ada’s pursed lips and deep frown.

  When they got home, Roxanne had barely managed to change from her Sunday-best calico to an old dress before Aunt Ada started ordering her about. Barking orders at her was not an unusual occupation for the woman, but this time there was a sharp, bitter note in her aunt’s voice. As if she hates me, thought Roxanne uneasily, trying to run everywhere at once under her aunt’s strident direction.

  “Roxanne”—Uncle Josh caught up with her as she dashed out on her way to clean the henhouse—“Ada knows. Someone told her after church how you’ve been slipping out nights. Dancing.”

  Roxanne came to a dead stop. She turned a questioning face to Uncle Josh.

  “I know you’re young, Roxanne,” he said, troubled. “I know you’re not doing anything wrong, you just want to be out with the young folks. But—you’ll be sixteen soon, and then Ada will let you have callers.”

  “And go to dances?”

  He hesitated. “Ada doesn’t hold with dancing. But remember, Roxanne, once you’re married you won’t have to listen to Ada. You’ll have your own house, and you can give parties or go to parties—you’ll only have to listen to your husband.”

  Roxanne gave him a puzzled look. “But I’m a long way from getting married, Uncle Josh.”

  He closed his mouth as if he had said too much. “We’ll see,” he said mysteriously.

  Prudently, Roxanne skipped the next barn dance. It was well she did, because her aunt showed up in her room in the middle of the night with an oil lamp and shined it in her face. When Roxanne sat up sleepily, blinking in the wavering yellow light, the woman said grimly, “I thought I heard something up here. Go back to sleep.”

  Bed check, thought Roxanne resentfully. Aunt Ada would probably check her room every night there was a dance. . . .

  And then she remembered. Today was her sixteenth birthday. It had passed unnoticed.

  She began to feel even lonelier.

  Chapter 2

  On Monday, Buck showed up at the Laniers’ farm on the pretext of borrowing some nails. He found Roxanne, who was making butter in a wooden churn, and went to stand near her. Lounging against the iron outdoor pump, he watched her fo
r a while before he spoke.

  “Need some help with that?” he asked, finally.

  Roxanne gave him a look through her sooty lashes and shook her head. Her heart was pounding. Buck had come to see her. His male presence was almost a palpable thing, as he stood over her, a broad grin on his face.

  “Roxanne,” called Aunt Ada from the kitchen. “Come carry this bucket of slop out to the hogs.”

  “I’ll carry it,” offered Buck, and Roxanne was left working the butter churn while Buck took a big bucket of skimmed milk and potato peelings from the kitchen out to the sleek Hampshire hogs. She could hear the hogs squealing as the delicacy approached.

  “The chickens!” called Aunt Ada, peering out the window. “Roxanne, go feed the chickens! And gather the eggs—I’m busy making pies.”

  Roxanne got some cracked corn from the granary and made her way to the weathered henhouse. There was a mad clucking rush for the grain as she stepped over the feeding chickens carefully and went into the shadowy, deserted henhouse. Standing on tiptoe, she reached up into the top row of wooden boxes filled with straw where the chickens laid their eggs, and began picking up the eggs.

  When she had filled her basket, she turned and saw that Buck’s tall figure darkened the door. Her heart missed a beat. Without speaking, she brushed by him. Since he gave no ground, her hip and shoulder came into contact with his muscular body, and a kind of electric tingle went through her at the touch. She hurried out, and he followed her at a leisurely pace back to the house. Flustered, she burst into the big kitchen, which was filled with the scent of berry pies baking in the large, black wood-burning range. A moment later she heard the screen door bang and Buck’s footstep behind her.