The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence Read Free Book Online Page B

asked me for another dance, I danced with him.
    “I’d like to show you my place sometime,” he said. “I’ve had some bad luck, but we’re coming on now. I’m getting another team in the fall. Percherons. Reuben Pearl’s selling them to me. It’ll be worth looking at, someday, that place of mine.”
    As Auntie Doll and I were getting our wraps that night, I chanced to see Lottie Drieser, still light and tiny, her yellow hair puffed up and arranged so carefully.
    “I saw you dancing with Bram Shipley,” she said, and snickered.
    Lottie herself was keeping company with Telford Simmons, who’d gone to work in the bank.
    I was furious. I still am, thinking of it, and cannot even wish her soul rest, although God knows that’s the last thing Lottie would want, and I can imagine her in heaven this very minute, slyly whispering to the Mother of God that Michael with the flaming sword spoke subtle ill of Her.
    “Why shouldn’t I?” I said.
    “Common as dirt, as everyone knows,” she breathed, “and he’s been seen with half-breed girls.”
    How clearly her words come to mind. If she’d notsaid them, would I have done as I did? Hard to say. How silly the words seem now. She was a silly girl. Many girls were silly in those days. I was not. Foolish I may have been, but never silly.
    The evening I told Father I was bound on marrying Bram Shipley, he was working late in the store, I recall, and he leaned across the counter and smiled.
    “I’m busy. No time for your jokes now.”
    “It’s not a joke. He’s asked me to marry him, and I mean to.”
    He gaped at me for a moment. Then he went about his work. Suddenly, he turned on me.
    “Has he touched you?”
    I was too startled to reply.
    “Has he?” Father demanded. “Has he?”
    The look on his face was somehow familiar. I had seen it before, but I could not recollect when. It was this kind of look—as though destruction were a two-edged sword, striking inward and outward simultaneously.
    “No,” I said hotly, but fearful, too, for Bram had kissed me.
    Father looked at me, scrutinizing my face. Then he turned back to the shelves and went on arranging the tins and bottles.
    “You’ll marry no one,” he said at last, as though he hadn’t meant a thing by the pliable boys of good family whom he’d trotted home for my inspection. “Not at the moment, anyway. You’re only twenty-four. And you’ll not marry that fellow ever, I can vow to that much. He’s common as dirt.”
    “That’s what Lottie Drieser said.”
    “She’s no whit different,” my father snapped. “She’s common as dirt herself.”
    I almost had to laugh, but that was the one thing he could never bear. Instead, I looked at him just as hard as he was looking at me.
    I’ve worked for you for three years.”
    “There’s not a decent girl in this town would wed without her family’s consent,” he said. “It’s not done.”
    “It’ll be done by me,” I said, drunk with exhilaration at my daring.
    “I’m only thinking of you,” Father said. “Of what’s best for you. If you weren’t so pig-headed, maybe you could see that.”
    Then, without warning, he reached out a hand like a lariat, caught my arm, held and bruised it, not even knowing he was doing so.
    “Hagar—” he said. “You’ll not go, Hagar.”
    The only time he ever called me by my name. To this day I couldn’t say if it was a question or a command. I didn’t argue with him. There never was any use in that. But I went, when I was good and ready, all the same.
    Never a bell rang out when I was wed. Not even my brother set foot in the church that day. Matt had married Mavis McVitie the year before, and Father and Luke McVitie had gone halves on building them a house. Mavis was inclined to simper, but she was a nice enough girl. She sent me a pair of embroidered pillowcases. Matt sent nothing. But Auntie Doll (who came to my wedding, bless her, despite everything) told me he’d almost sent a wedding gift to