Read Online Corral Nocturne by Elisabeth Grace Foley - Free Book Online

to carry the dancers around on it in colorful waves.
Ellie found herself humming, following the melody, the words
flitting through her head as Cole spun her around the floor:
     
    After the ball is over
    After the break of morn,
    After the dancers’ leaving,
    After the stars are gone…
     
    The stars were overhead, and the skirt of the
new dress spinning about her in a fine pink cloud, and Cole’s arm
was around her waist. The night had become a dream, whirling in
waltz time. For she was dreaming now, as she had never dared to do
before; inarticulately still, but dreams born of Cole’s presence
and the attendant feeling of contentment which she did not yet know
how to name. And the fiddles sang on, and their waltz went on, and
Ellie did not care if the night never ended.
     

     
    Ellie sat on the back steps to the platform,
out of sight of the dance that was still going on. She had come out
to sit for a moment and get a breath of air. Cole had had to leave
her for a few minutes to speak to some acquaintances of his
father’s, so she was waiting for him, thinking and resting. She had
danced several more dances with him, and a few, of necessity, with
the other young men who had asked her, and altogether it had been
the most heavenly evening of her life.
    Outside in the dusk some small boys ran
around with the peculiar exhilaration of children up past bedtime,
and a few people strolled and talked in the shadows, but for the
most part she was alone. Ellie was gazing out into the darkness,
lost in her own thoughts, when a pair of girls’ voices floated down
to her from somewhere above. The bunting draped on the railings
concealed her from their view, but she could hear them distinctly
as they stood by the edge of the platform.
    “She came with the McGregors, didn’t
she?”
    “Jean told me that Cole asked her, but he had
to go away somewhere, so he asked the McGregors to bring her. Her
dress is pretty, isn’t it? I wonder if she made it herself.”
    “Hmf…funny way to treat a girl you’ve asked
to a dance. But I daresay she’d feel more at home with them anyway.”
    The voice was dripping with spite, but Ellie,
innocent still in some of these matters, sat very still, quivering
inwardly under the thrust of the flippant words to her soul. Nancy
Kennedy was still speaking. “I honestly didn’t think Cole Newcomb
would ask her to a big dance like this. Did you?”
    “Well, he’s been going with her for almost
two months,” said Leila Moore.
    “Oh, I wouldn’t say he’s going with her,”
said Nancy Kennedy. “Nobody really thinks much of the Stricklands,
and I’ll bet you he doesn’t either. He’s a different kind than
them. She’s pretty , I guess,” said Nancy dismissively, “so I
daresay he’s amusing himself taking her around, but I can’t imagine
him being serious . Besides, he must see the way she’s
setting her cap for him.”
    “You think?”
    “I should say. Didn’t you see the calf-eyed
way she looked at him when he got here tonight? It’s plain as
anything. He’s probably good and used to having caps set at him,
anyway.”
    “Yeah, I’ll bet he is,” said Leila rather
dryly, but her irony, if any, was lost on her companion.
    “I think he—”
    Their voices grew indistinct as they moved
away. Ellie sat still for just a second, and then she got up
feverishly and stumbled down the steps. Her hand slipped over the
knotted end of the gaily-colored bunting draped on the rail, but
she felt it no more than if the hand had been numb. She had to get
away; she could never go back up onto that platform after what she
had just heard. She found her hands were trembling, and her throat
was hot.
    Mechanically she held her skirts up off the
ground as she hurried round the corner of the platform, wanting
only to get away from the laughter and people up above. The lively
strains of “Oh, Dem Golden Slippers” coming from the fiddles
floated down to her; voices were still laughing and talking as