The Arrival
The girls got here on Friday, the eighth of May. Sam and I rode down
to Rattail in the sedan to meet them, and John took the small truck
down to bring up their baggage.
Number Twenty came roaring up, on time, and stopped with a snort of
angry protest, as it always does when it has to stop at Rattail, which
is not often; not more than a dozen times a year at best, I guess.
Sam and I hurried down the tracks to where the porter’s white, rapidly
swinging arms were piling up the shining black baggage.
I don’t know what there is about riding in a train that turns folks
haughty and supercilious; but there is something that does. A person
who would be right hearty and human on his own two feet, sits in a car
window and looks out at the platform people as if they were something
he wanted to be careful not to step in. By the time I had passed fifty
or more windows, and had reached where the girls were standing, I was
so heated up I couldn’t find a word to say but, “Pleased to meet you,”
which was not the truth.
One of them smiled real sweet, and said, “Mary! Upon my soul you
haven’t changed at all in sixteen years,” and made as if to kiss me;
which I did at once.
The other one gave me a jerky nod, and stood there, watching the train
pull out, until Sam, who had been poking along behind me, managed to
catch up.
“Uncle Sam,” she exclaimed, laughing and standing on tiptoe, and
putting her hands on his shoulders, and tipping her pointed chin up to
him, “you dear, to have us! I had always remembered that you were the
biggest man in the world, and now I see that I was right about it.”
Sam didn’t kiss her, as she had expected him to. He patted her hands,
took them down off his shoulders and held them a minute before he
dropped them and reached to shake hands with the twin who had kissed
me.
“Well, now,” he said, “this is sure great. Little girls all grown up
to ladies, and coming to see their old uncle.” (He had bitten on that
uncle bait, though he was no more their uncle than I was.) “Which of
you is which, now? Let’s get you sorted out, so I can call you by
name. I used to get you all mixed up, when you were little
tykes—couldn’t tell one from the other.”
“You won’t have that trouble any more,” said the one who had nodded at
me. “I am Gabrielle, and that prim little puss is Danielle. People
never get confused about us any longer.”
Indeed, I should think not. Danielle was dressed pretty and neat in a
suit of gray about the shade of a Maltese cat, with a nice little
round hat to match, and not more than ten inches of gray silk stocking
showing between the edge of her skirt and the tops of her neat gray
pumps. Gabrielle had on a floppy coat thing, that looked more like a
bathrobe, cut off at the knees, the way it lopped and draped, with
nothing but a big buckle on one hip to hold it together at all. It was
about two shades darker than good cream tomato soup. Her hat was as
near as she could match it, I guess; and, though it was small, it was
soft and loppy. Her stockings, sixteen inches of them in sight, if an
inch, were a kind of sickly cross between yellow and pink. Her black
satin shoes had stilt heels and silver buckles. She wore, also, a pair
of earrings, dangling almost to her shoulders, that looked like the
spinners the boys use here, in the fall, when they go after the big
trout.
The population of Rattail had come running to the depot, of course,
when the train stopped; and, at last, swaggering his way among males,
females, Indians, cowpunchers, and dogs, here came John.
He doesn’t usually trim his walk with that swagger; but, bashful as an
overfed coyote, he is hard put to it, at times, to cover up this
deficiency of his. So he swings his shoulders, and talks loudly, and
boasts around, when a person with a keen ear could hear his knees
clicking together.
“La-la!” exclaimed Gabrielle, when she caught sight of him. “Who is
this picturesque man thing coming toward us?”
John did look pretty fine, wearing his new corduroy suit, and his
shining new leather puttees, and his new sixteen-dollar sombrero. He
had even gone so far as to button up the collar of his brown flannel
shirt. I was sorry he had not been around, when the train came in, to
add tone to Sam and to me.
“He,” Sam answered, beaming with pride, “is my boy, John.”
“How thrilling!” chirped Gabrielle. “It is like living in a cinema,
isn’t it, Danny?” And off she went, sort of skipping along the tracks,
to meet him.
When they met, John gave her about the same attention that a passenger
gives the ticket chopper at the gate, in a city depot, when he sees
the train he is trying to catch moving slowly out through the yards.
He pulled off his hat with a bow, but he passed her, walking very
fast. I thought that he was so flustered that he did not know what he
was doing. He knew. He was headed straight for Danny. He had been in
the freight house since long before the train came in, sizing up from
a safe distance the girls’ arrival. Then he had sneaked out the back
way, up past the station house, and around it and back again, to give
the appearance of having just that minute got into Rattail.
“John,” I said, when he reached Danny and me, and stopped short, like
he had just been lassoed from the rear, “this is Danielle Canneziano.”
John dropped his hat in the alkali dust, his new hat, and reached out
and took both of Danny’s hands in his. Falling on his knees in front
of her would not have been much showier.
“I—” he produced, “I—I heard you laugh.”
To me, it barely made sense; but she seemed to find it interesting and
important.
“Really?” she said, and sort of trilled it full of meaning.
Standing there, with my new shoes hurting my corns, and Sam and
Gabrielle completely out of sight around the corner of the depot, I
felt as necessary, useful, and welcome as a hair in the soup, and a
sight more conspicuous. Rattail’s population was beginning to close in
around us. I pulled at John’s sleeve; but I declare, if a freight
hadn’t come along, forcing those two to get off the tracks, they might
have been standing there yet, gazing into each other’s eyes.
I was halfway home, riding beside Danny in the sedan, when Gabrielle’s
laughing out again, at some remark of Sam’s, made me remember that she
had been the only one who had done any laughing when we had met. Danny
had only smiled. So, if that laugh was what had put John clear off his
head, he had picked the wrong twin.