Kitabı oku: «Rim o' the World», sayfa 10
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ABOUT A PIANO
In the lazy hour just after a satisfying dinner, Lance stood leaning over an end of the piano, watching Belle while she played–he listened and smoked a cigarette and looked as though he hadn’t a thing on his mind.
“I remember you used to sing that a lot for the little Douglas girl,” he observed idly. “She used to sit and look at you–my word, but her eyes were the bluest, the lonesomest eyes I ever saw! She seemed to think you were next to angels when you sang. I saw it in her face, but I was too much of a kid then to know what it was.” He lighted a fresh cigarette, placed it between Belle’s lips so that she need not stop playing while she smoked, and laughed as if he were remembering something funny.
“She always looked so horrified when she saw you smoking,” he said. “And so adoring when you sang, and so lonesome when she had to ride away. She was a queer kid–and she’s just as unexpected now–just as Scotch. Didn’t you find her that way, dad?”
“She was Scotch enough,” Tom mumbled from his chair by the fire. “Humpin’ hyenas! She was like handlin’ a wildcat!”
“The poor kid never did have a chance to be human,” said Belle, and ceased playing for a moment. “Good heavens, how she did enjoy the two hours I gave her at the piano! She’s got the makings of a musician, if she could keep at it.”
“We-ell–” Having artfully led Belle to this point, Lance quite as artfully edged away from it. “You gave her all the chance you could. And she ought to be able to go on, if she wants to. I suppose old Scotty’s human enough to get her something to play on.”
“Him? Human!” Tom shifted in his chair. “If pianos could breed and increase into a herd, and he could ship a carload every fall, Scotty might spend a few dollars on one.”
“It’s a darned shame,” Belle exclaimed, dropping her fingers to the keys again. “Mary Hope just starves for everything that makes life worth living. And that old devil–”
“Say–don’t make me feel like a great, overgrown money-hog,” Lance protested. “A girl starving for music, because she hasn’t a piano to play on. And a piano costs, say, three or four hundred dollars. Of course, we’ve got the money to buy one–I suppose I could dig up the price myself. I was thinking I’d stake our schoolhouse to a library. That’s something it really needs. But a piano–I wish you hadn’t said anything about starving. I know I’d hate to go hungry for music, but–”
“Well, humpin’ hyenas! I’ll buy the girl a piano. I guess it won’t break the outfit to pay out a few more dollars, now we’ve started. We’re outlaws, anyway–might as well add one more crime to the list. Only, it don’t go to the Douglas shack–it goes into the schoolhouse. Lance, you go ahead and pick out some books and ship ’em on to the ranch, and I’ll see they get over there. Long as we’ve started fixin’ up a school, we may as well finish the job up right. By Henry, I’ll show the Black Rim that there ain’t anything small about the Lorrigans, anyway!”
“Dad, I think you’re showin’ yourself a real sport,” Lance laughed. “We-ell, if you’re game to buy a piano, I’m game to buy books. We staked Black Rim to a school, so we’ll do the job right. And by the way, Belle, if you’re going to get me to Jumpoff in time for that evening train, don’t you think it’s about time you started?”
That is how it happened that Mary Hope walked into the schoolhouse one Monday and found a very shiny new piano standing across one corner of the room where the light was best. On the top was a pile of music. In another corner of the room stood a bookcase and fifty volumes; she counted them in her prim, frugal way that she had learned from her mother. They were books evidently approved by some Board of Education for school libraries, and did not interest her very much. Not when a piano stood in the other corner.
She was early, so she opened it and ran her fingers over the keys. She knew well enough who had brought it there, and her mouth was pressed into a straight line, her eyes were troubled.
The Lorrigans–always the Lorrigans! Why did they do these things when no one expected goodness or generosity from them? Why had they built the schoolhouse–and then given a dance where every one got drunk and the whole thing ended in a fight? Every one said it was the Lorrigans who had brought the whisky. Some one told her they had a five-gallon keg of it in the shed behind the schoolhouse, and she thought it must be true, the way all the men had acted. And why had they burned the Whipple shack and all the school books, so that she could not have school until more books were bought?–an expense which the Swedes, at least, could ill afford.
Why had Lance taken her to Jumpoff, away from the fighting, and then gone straight to the saloon and gotten so drunk that he fought every one in town before he left in the morning? Why had he never come near her again? And now that he was back in California, why did he ignore her completely, and never send so much as a picture postal to show that he gave her a thought now and then?
Mary Hope would not play the piano that day. She was more stern than usual with her pupils, and would not so much as answer them when they asked her where the piano and all the books had come from. Which was a foolish thing to do, since the four Boyle children were keen enough to guess, and sure to carry the news home, and to embellish the truth in true range-gossip style.
Mary Hope fully decided that she would have the piano hauled back to the Lorrigans. Later, she was distressed because she could think of no one who would take the time or the trouble to perform the duty, and a piano she had to admit is not a thing you can tie behind the cantle of your saddle, or carry under your arm. The books were a different matter. They were for the school. But the piano–well, the piano was for Mary Hope Douglas, and Mary Hope Douglas did not mean to be patronized in this manner by Lance Lorrigan or any of his kin.
But she was a music-hungry little soul, and that night after she was sure that the children had ridden up over the basin’s brim and were out of hearing, Mary Hope sat down and began to play. When she began to play she began to cry, though she was hardly conscious of her tears. She seemed to hear Lance Lorrigan again, saying, “Don’t be lonely, you girl. Take the little pleasant things that come–” She wondered, in a whispery, heart-achey way, if he had meant the piano when he said that. If he had meant–just a piano, and a lot of books for school!
The next thing that she realized was that the light was growing dim, and that her throat was aching, and that she was playing over and over a lovesong that had the refrain:
“Come back to me, sweetheart, and love me as before–
Come back to me, sweetheart, and leave me nevermore!”
Which was perfectly imbecile, a song she had always hated because of its sickly sentimentality. She had no sweetheart, and having none, she certainly did not want him back. But she admitted that there was a certain melodious swing to the tune, and that her fingers had probably strayed into the rhythm of it while she was thinking of something totally different.
The next day she played a little at noontime for the children, and when school was over she played for two hours. And the next day after that slipped away–she really had meant to ride over to the AJ, or send a note by the children, asking Jim Boyle if he could please remove the piano and saying that she felt it was too expensive a gift for the school to accept from the Lorrigans.
On the third day she really did send a prim little note to Jim Boyle, and she received a laconic reply, wholly characteristic of the Black Rim’s attitude toward the Devil’s Tooth outfit.
“Take all you can git and git all you can without going to jale. That’s what the Lorrigans are doing, Yrs truly,
“J. A. Boyle.”
It was useless to ask her father. She had known that all along. When Alexander Douglas slipped the collars up on the necks of his horses, he must see where money would be gained from the labor. And there was no money for the Douglas pocket in hauling a piano down the Devil’s Tooth Ridge.
But the whole Black Rim was talking about it. Mary Hope felt sure that they were saying ill-natured things behind her back. Never did she meet man or woman but the piano was mentioned. Sometimes she was asked, with meaning smiles, how she had come to stand in so well with the Devil’s Tooth. She knew that they were all gossiping of how Lance Lorrigan had taken her home from the dance, with Belle Lorrigan’s bronco team. She had been obliged to return a torn coat to Mrs. Miller, and to receive her own and a long lecture on the wisdom of choosing one’s company with some care. She had been obliged to beg Mrs. Miller not to mention the matter to her parents, and the word had gone round, and had reached Mother Douglas–and you can imagine how pleasant that made home for Mary Hope.
Because she was lonely, and no one seemed willing to take it away, she kept the piano. She played it, and while she played she wept because the Rim folk simply would not understand how little she wanted the Lorrigans to do things for her. And then, one day, she hit upon a plan of redeeming herself, for regaining the self-respect she felt was slipping from her with every day that the piano stood in the schoolhouse.
She would give a series of dances–they would be orderly, well-behaved dances, with no refreshments stronger than coffee and lemonade!–and she would sell tickets, and invite every one she knew, and beg them to come and help to pay for the school piano.
Even her mother approved that plan, though she did not approve dances. “But the folk are that sinfu’ they canna bide wi’ any pleasure save the hoppin’ aboot wi’ their arms around the waist of a woman,” she sighed. “A church social wad be far more tae my liking, Hope–if we had only a church!”
“Well, since there isn’t any church, and people won’t go to anything but a dance, I shall have to get the money with dances,” Mary Hope replied with some asperity. The subject was beginning to wear her nerves. “Pay for it I shall, if it takes all my teacher’s salary for five years! I wish the Lorrigans had minded their own business. I’ve heard nothing but piano ever since it came there. I hate the Lorrigans! Sometimes I almost hate the piano.”
“Ye shud hae thought on all that before ye accepit a ride home wi’ young Lance, wi’ a coat ye didna own on your back, and disobedience in your heart. ’Tis the worst of them a’ ye chose to escort ye, Hope, and if he thought he could safely presume to gi’ ye a present like yon piano, ye hae but yersel’ tae blame for it.”
“He didn’t give it!” cried Mary Hope, her eyes ablaze with resentment. “He wasna here when it came. I havena heard from him and I dinna want to hear from him. It was Belle Lorrigan gave the piano, as I’ve said a million times. And I shall pay for it–”
“Not from your ain pocket will ye pay. Ye can give the dance–and if ye make it the Fourth of July, with a picnic in the grove, and a dance in the schoolhouse afterwards, ’tis possible Jeanie may come up from Pocatello wi’ friends–and twa dollars wad no be too much to ask for a day and a night of entertainment.”
“Well, mother! When you do–” Mary Hope bit her tongue upon the remainder of the sentence. She had very nearly told her mother that when she did choose to be human she had a great head for business.
It was a fine, practical idea, and Mary Hope went energetically about its development. She consulted Mrs. Kennedy. Mrs. Kennedy also had friends in Pocatello, and she obligingly gave the names of them all. She strongly advised written invitations, with a ticket enclosed and the price marked plainly. She said it was a crying shame the way the Lorrigans had conducted their dance, and that Mary Hope ought to be very careful and not include any of that rough bunch in this dance.
“Look how that young devil, Lance Lorrigan, abused my Bill, right before everybody!” she cited, shifting her youngest child, who was teething, to her hip that she might gesticulate more freely. “And look how they all piled into our crowd and beat ’em up! Great way to do–give a dance and then beat up the folks that come to it! And look at what Lance done right here in town–as if it wasn’t enough, what they done out there! Bill’s got a crick in his back yet, where Lance knocked him over the edge of a card table. You pay ’em for the piano, Hope; I’ll help yuh scare up a crowd. But don’t you have none of the Lorrigans, or there’ll be trouble sure!”
Mary Hope flushed. “I could hardly ask the Lorrigans to come and help pay for their own present,” she pointed out in her prim tone. “I had never intended to ask the Lorrigans.”
“Well, maybe not. But if you did ask them, I know lots of folks that wouldn’t go a step–and my Bill’s one,” said Mrs. Kennedy.
So much depends upon one’s point of view. Black Rim gossip, which persisted in linking Mary Hope’s name with Lance Lorrigan, grinned among themselves while they mentioned the piano, the schoolhouse, and the library as evidence of Lance’s being “stuck on her.” The Boyle children had frequently tattled to Mary Hope what they heard at home. Lance had done it all because he was in love with her.
Denial did not mend matters, even if Mary Hope’s pride had not rebelled against protesting that the gossip was not true. Lance Lorrigan was not in love with her. Over and over she told herself so, fiercely and with much attention to evidence which she considered convincing. Only twice she had seen him in the two weeks of his visit. Once he had come to mend the lock his father had broken, and he had taken her home from the dance because of the fighting. Never had he made love to her… Here she would draw a long breath and wonder a little, and afterwards shake her head and say to herself that he thought no more of her than of Jennie Miller. He–he just had a way with him.
Mary Hope’s point of view was, I think, justifiable. Leaving out the intolerable implication that Lance had showered benefits upon her, she felt that the Lorrigans had been over-generous. The schoolhouse and the books might be accepted as a public-spirited effort to do their part. But the piano, since it had not been returned, must be paid for. And it seemed to Mary Hope that the Lorrigans themselves would deeply resent being invited to a dance openly given for the purpose of raising money to repay them. It would never do; she could not ask them to come.
Moreover, if the Lorrigans came there would be trouble, whether there was whisky or not. At the house-warming dance the Lorrigans had practically cleaned out the crowd and sent them home long before daylight. There had been no serious shooting–the Lorrigans had fought with their fists and had somehow held the crowd back from the danger-line of gun-play. But Mary Hope feared there would be a killing the next time that the Jumpoff crowd and the Lorrigans came together.
She tried to be just, but she had heard only one side of the affair,–which was not the Lorrigan side. Whispers had long been going round among the Black Rim folk; sinister whispers that had to do with cattle and horses that had disappeared mysteriously from the Rim range. Mary Hope could not help hearing the whispers, could not help wondering if underneath them there was a basis of truth. Her father still believed, in spite of Tom’s exoneration, that his spotty yearling had gone down the gullets of Devil’s Tooth men. She did not know, but it seemed to her that where every one hinted at the same thing, there must be some truth in their hints.
All of which proves, I think, that Mary Hope’s point of view was the only one that she could logically hold, living as she did in the camp of the enemy; having, as she had, a delicate sense of propriety, and wanting above all things to do nothing crude and common. As she saw it, she simply could not ask any of the Lorrigans to her picnic and dance on the Fourth of July.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE LORRIGAN VIEWPOINT
I have said that much depends upon one’s point of view. Mary Hope’s viewpoint was not shared by the Devil’s Tooth. They had one of their own, and to them it seemed perfectly logical, absolutely justifiable.
They heard all about the Fourth of July picnic and dance, to be held at Cottonwood Spring and in the schoolhouse of their own building. Immediately they remembered that Cottonwood Spring was on Lorrigan land, that Lorrigan money had paid for the material that went into the schoolhouse, that Lorrigan labor had built it, Lorrigan generosity had given it over to the public as represented by Mary Hope Douglas and the children who came to her to be taught. In their minds loomed the fact that Lorrigan money had bought books for the school, and that Tom Lorrigan himself had paid close to four hundred dollars for the piano.
They heard that invitations were being sent broadcast, that a crowd was coming from Pocatello, from Lava, from Jumpoff–invited to come and spend a day and night in merry-making. Yet no invitation came to the Devil’s Tooth ranch, not a word was said to them by Mary Hope, not a hint that they were expected, or would be welcome.
Belle met Mary Hope in the trail one day, just a week before the Fourth. Mary Hope was riding home from school; Belle was driving out from Jumpoff. It is the custom of the outland places for acquaintances to stop for a bit of friendly conversation when they meet, since meetings are so far between. But, though Belle slowed the pintos to a walk, Mary Hope only nodded, said, “How do you do,” and rode on.
“She looked guilty,” Belle reported wrathfully to Tom and the boys at the supper table. “Guilty as sin. She seemed to be afraid I was going to ask her if I couldn’t come to her dance. The little fool! Does she think for a minute I’d go? She hasn’t so much as thanked you for that piano, Tom. She hasn’t said one word.”
“Well, I didn’t put my name and ad-dress on it,” Tom palliated the ingratitude while he buttered a hot biscuit generously. “And there wasn’t any name on the books to show who bought ’em. Maybe she thinks–”
“I don’t care what she thinks! It’s the way she acts that counts. Everybody in Jumpoff has got invitations to her picnic and dance. They say it’s to pay us for the piano–and they think she’s doing some wonderful stunt. And we’re left out in the cold!”
“We never was in where it was right warm, since I can remember,” said Al. “Except when we made it warm ourselves.”
“Sam Pretty Cow was saying yesterday–” and Duke repeated a bit of gossip that had a gibe at the Lorrigans for its point. “He got it over to Hitchcocks. It come from the Douglases. I guess Mary Hope don’t want nothing of us–except what she can get out of us. We been a good thing, all right–easy marks.”
Duke had done the least for her and therefore felt qualified to say the most. His last sentence did its work. Tom pulled his eyebrows together, drew his lip between his teeth and leaned back in his chair, thinking deeply, his eyes glittering between his half-closed lids.
“Easy marks, ay?” he snorted. “The Lorrigans have been called plenty of things, fur back as I can remember, but by the humpin’ hyenas, they never was called easy marks before!”
That was Tom’s last comment on the subject. Belle, not liking the look on his face, because she knew quite well what it portended, passed him two kinds of preserves and changed the subject. Al and Duke presently left for the bunk house. Mary Hope’s party and her evident intention to slight the Lorrigans was not mentioned again for days.
But Tom’s wrath was smoldering. He was not hasty. He waited. He himself met Mary Hope in the trail one day, lifted his hat to her without a word and rode on. Mary Hope let him go with a chilly nod and a murmured greeting which was no more than an empty form. Certainly she did not read Tom’s mind, did not dream that he was thinking of the piano,–and from an angle that had never once presented itself to her.
So, now that you see how both were justified in their opinions, as formed from different points of view, let me tell you what happened.
Mary Hope had her picnic, with never a thunderstorm to mar the day. Which is unusual, since a picnic nearly always gets itself rained upon. She had sent out more than a hundred invitations–tickets two dollars, please–and there were more who invited themselves and had to be supplied with tickets cut hastily out of pasteboard boxes that had held sandwiches.
Mary Hope was jubilant. Mother Douglas, as official hostess, moved here and there among the women who fussed over the baskets and placated with broken pieces of cake their persistent offspring. Mother Douglas actually smiled, though her face plainly showed that it was quite unaccustomed to the expression, and tilted the smile downward at the corners. Mother Douglas was a good woman, but she had had little in her life to bring smiles, and her habitual expression was one of mournful endurance.
It was sultry, and toward evening the mosquitoes swarmed out of the lush grass around the spring and set the horses stamping and moving about uneasily. But it was a very successful picnic, with all the chatter, all the gourmandizing, all the gossip, all the childish romping in starched white frocks, all the innocuous pastimes that one expects to find at picnics.
Mary Hope wondered how in the world they were all going to find room inside the schoolhouse to dance. She had been frugal in the matter of music, dreading to spend any money in hiring professional musicians, lest she might not have enough people to justify the expense. Now she wished nervously that she had done as Lance Lorrigan had done, and brought musicians from Lava. Of course, there had been no piano when Lance gave his party, which was different. She herself meant to play, and Art Miller had brought his fiddle, and Jennie had volunteered to “chord” with him. But, Mary Hope felt much nervous apprehension lest these Pocatello and Lava people should think it was just Scotch stinginess on her part.
Late in the afternoon a few of the ranchers rode hastily homeward to “do the chores,” but the Lava and Pocatello crowd remained, and began to drift up to the schoolhouse and drum on the piano that was actually going to pay for itself and free Mary Hope’s pride from its burden.
By sundown a dozen energetic couples were waltzing while a Pocatello dentist with a stiff, sandy pompadour chewed gum and played loudly, with much arm movement and very little rhythm; so very little rhythm that the shuffling feet frequently ceased shuffling, and expostulations rose high above his thunderous chords.
By dusk the overworked ranch women had fed the last hungry mouth and put away the fragments of home-baked cakes and thick sandwiches, and were forming a solid line of light shirtwaists and dark skirts along the wall. The dance was really beginning.
As before, groups of men stood around outside and smoked and slapped at mosquitoes–except that at Lance’s party there had been no mosquitoes to slap–and talked in undertones the gossip of the ranges. If now and then the name of Lorrigan was mentioned, there was no Lorrigan present to hear. At intervals the “floor manager” would come to the door and call out numbers: “Number one, and up to and including sixteen, git your pardners fer a two-step!” Whereupon certain men would pinch out the glow of their cigarettes and grind the stubs into the sod under their heels, and go in to find partners. With that crowd, not all could dance at once; Mary Hope remembered pridefully that there had been no dancing by numbers at the party Lance Lorrigan gave.
What a terrible dance that had been! A regular rowdy affair. And this crowd, big as it was, had as yet shown no disposition to rowdyism. It surely did make a difference, thought Mary Hope, what kind of people sponsored an entertainment. With the Devil’s Tooth outfit as the leaders, who could expect anything but trouble?
Then she caught herself thinking, with a vague heaviness in her heart, how Lance had taken her away from that other dance; of that long, wonderful, silent ride through the starlight; how careful he had been of her–how tender! But it was only the way he had with him, she later reminded herself impatiently, and smiled over her shoulder at the whirling couples who danced to the music she made; and thought of the money that made her purse heavy as lead, the money that would wipe out her debt to the Lorrigans,–to Lance, if it really were Lance who had bought the piano.
A faint sound came to her through the open window, the rattle of a wagon coming down the hill in the dark. More people were coming to the dance, which meant more money to give to the Lorrigans. Mary Hope smiled again and played faster; so fast that more than one young man shook his head at her as he circled past, and puffed ostentatiously, laughing at the pace she set. She had a wild vision of other dances which she would give–Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s–and pay the Lorrigans for everything they had done; for the books, for the schoolhouse, everything. She felt that then, and then only, could she face Lance Lorrigan level-eyed, cool, calm, feeling herself a match for him.
The rattle of the wagon sounded nearer, circled the yard, came in at the gate. Mary Hope was giving the dancers the fastest two-step she could play, and she laughed aloud. More people were coming to the dance, and there might not be coffee and sandwiches enough at midnight,–she had over three hundred dollars already.
The dancers whirled past, parted to right and left, stopped all at once. Mary Hope, still playing, looked over her shoulder–into the dark, impenetrable gaze of Tom Lorrigan, standing there in his working clothes, with his big, black Stetson on his head and his six-shooter in its holster on his hip. Behind him Mary Hope saw Al and Duke and Belle, and behind them other Devil’s Tooth men, cowboys whom she only knew slightly from meeting them sometimes in the trail as she rode to and from school. The cowboys seemed to be facing the other way, holding back the crowd near the door.
Mary Hope looked again into Tom’s face, looked at Belle. Her fingers strayed uncertainly over the keys, making discords. She half rose, then sat down again. The room, all at once, seemed very still.
“I’m sorry to disturb yuh,” Tom said, touching his hat brim and lifting his eyebrows at her, half smiling with his lips pulled to one side, like Lance–oh, maddeningly like Lance!–“but I’ve come after the piano.”
Mary Hope gasped. Her arms went out instinctively across the keyboard, as if she would protect the instrument from his defaming touch.
“I’ll have to ask yuh to move,” said Tom. “Sorry to disturb yuh.”
“I–I’m going to pay for it,” said Mary Hope, finding her voice faint and husky. She had an odd sensation that this was a nightmare. She had dreamed so often of the dance and of the Lorrigans.
“I paid for it long ago. I bought the piano–I’ve come after it.”
Mary Hope slid off the stool, stood facing him, her eyes very blue. After all, he was not Lance. “You can’t have it!” she said. “I won’t let you take it. I’m raising money to pay you for it, and I intend to keep it.” She reached for her purse, but Tom restrained her with a gesture.
“It ain’t for sale,” he said, with that hateful smile that always made her wonder just what lay behind it. “I own it, and I ain’t thinking of selling. Here’s the shipping bill and the guarantee and all; I brought ’em along to show you, in case you got curious about whose piano it is. You see the number on the bill–86945. You’ll find it tallies with the number in the case, if you want to look. Pete, Ed, John, take it and load it in the wagon.”
“Well, now, see here! This is an outrage! How much is the darn thing worth, anyway? This crowd is not going to stand by and see a raw deal like this pulled off.” It was the Pocatello dentist, and he was very much excited.
“You saw a raw deal, and stood for it, when you saw the Lorrigans cold-shouldered out of the dance,” Belle flashed at him. “We’ve stood for a lot, but this went a little beyond our limit.”
“We’re not going to stand for anything like this, you know!” Another man–also from Lava–shouldered his way up to them.
“Git outa the way, or you’ll git tromped on!” cried Pete over his shoulder as he backed, embracing the piano and groping for handholds.
The Lava man gripped Pete, trying to pull him away. Pete kicked back viciously with a spurred heel. The Lava man yelled and retreated, limping.
Just how it happened, no two men or women afterward agreed in the telling. But somehow the merrymakers, who were merry no longer, went back and back until they were packed solidly at the sides and near the door, a few squeezing through it when they were lucky enough to find room. Behind them came four of the Devil’s Tooth men with six-shooters, looking the crowd coldly in the eyes. Behind these came the piano, propelled by those whom Tom had named with the tone of authority.
The crowd squeezed closer against the wall as the piano went past them. There was not so much noise and confusion as one would expect. Then, at the last, slim, overworked, round-shouldered Mother Douglas, who had done little save pray and weep and work and scold all her life, walked up and slapped Belle full on the cheek.
“Ye painted Jezebel!” she cried, her eyes burning. “Long have I wanted to smack ye for your wickedness and the brazen ways of ye–ye painted Jezebel!”
Blind, dazed with anger, Belle struck back.
“Don’t you touch my mother! Shame on you! Shame on you all! I didna ask you for your favors, for any gifts–and you gave them and then you come and take them–” This was the voice of Mary Hope, shrill with rage.
“You gave a dance in a house built for you by the Lorrigans, on Lorrigan land, and you danced to the music of a Lorrigan piano–and the Lorrigans were not good enough to be asked to come! Get outa my way, Hope Douglas–and take your mother with you. Call me a painted Jezebel, will she?”
