My, don’t we all look so fine?” Ruby Mae said that evening. “If Bessie could just see me in this dress! Wouldn’t she be green with envy?”
Christy and her mother had done some quick alterations on one of Christy’s dresses. The dress was silk and lace and came with a small matching clutch purse and shoes with heels. Christy watched nervously as Ruby Mae balanced in the painfully tight shoes. They were planning to walk the two blocks to the Barclay home.
“I feel like a regular princess,” Ruby Mae said. “Like out of a book.”
“Are you sure your feet are all right?” Christy asked.
“Oh, yes, Miz Christy. It just takes some getting used to. It’s kind of like the way you have to walk real careful and sort of on your toes when you cross the creek on the old log bridge.”
“Silly, impractical things, women’s shoes are!” Doctor MacNeill chuckled.
The evening air was warm and scented with flowers. As they neared the Barclay home, Christy noticed beautifully-clothed passengers climbing out of expensive automobiles.
The Barclays weren’t as rich as the Vanderbilts, but they were well-to-do. Their house was larger than the Huddleston home. It had its own carriage house, with servants’ quarters above it.
There were lanterns strung in the trimmed bushes and trees in front of the house. Through the windows, Christy could see the glint of silver and crystal. At the door, a servant assited arriving guests.
It wasn’t nearly as elegant as the parties that went on at the big estates among the truly wealthy class. But to Christy’s eyes, used to the subtler beauties of Cutter Gap, it seemed unbelievably bright and colorful and wondrous.
Inside the house, they were swept along to the large parlor. Most of the furniture had been removed to clear a large area for people to wander about and talk while munching delicate morsels of food. Later, Christy knew, there would be dancing on the gleaming wooden floor. In one corner, a string quartet played music by Beethoven.
Mrs. Barclay swept toward them. She was a somewhat heavy woman, with iron-gray hair and eyes to match. “Good evening, good evening! I’m so glad you were able to come on such short notice.”
“Mrs. Barclay,” Christy said, taking the woman’s hand, “allow me to introduce my friends, the Reverend David Grantland, Doctor Neil MacNeill, and one of my students, Ruby Mae Morrison.”
“Charmed,” Mrs. Barclay said.
“Thanks for having us.” The doctor smiled stiffly.
“There’s a Barclay family in Cutter Gap,” David said. “Are you perhaps related?”
Mrs. Barclay’s eyes narrowed. “I am quite certain that I would never be related to anyone from . . . where is it? Carter Gap?”
“Cutter Gap,” Doctor MacNeill corrected.
“Yes, of course. That’s the quaint little hamlet in the hills where Christy teaches the unfortunate illiterates. Christy, your mother tells me what you write in your letters. It moves me to tears to think of you up there among moonshiners with their blood feuds. No offense meant,” she added. “The mountaineers don’t know any better, I suppose.”
Christy felt a stab of embarrassment. She glanced at Ruby Mae, who just looked confused. Neil and David looked downright annoyed. The doctor started to say something rude in reply, but David cut him off smoothly.
“Yes,” David said, “we are all very grateful to have Christy with us. She is an invaluable part of the mission. I don’t know what we’d do without her.”
“Probably wallow in ignorance while we drink corn liquor and shoot at each other.” Doctor MacNeill’s quick, dry humor was lost on their hostess.
“Exactly,” Mrs. Barclay said. Christy, David, and Neil exchanged amused glances.
“Now if you three will excuse me, I simply must borrow Christy. There are so many of her friends waiting to see her!”
Before Christy could object, Mrs. Barclay had whisked her away. Suddenly there was a group of familiar faces all around her— Jeanette Grady, a childhood friend; Mabel and Melissa Bentley, sisters who were old school friends; and Elizabeth Deerfield, who had been in the church choir with Christy.
They crowded around Christy, chattering away at the same time.
“Christy, you have no idea what Terence Jones has been up to!”
“Christy, wait till I tell you what Martha Bates told me. You’ll just die !”
“Christy, you simply have to come with me to this wonderful new dress shop in the square. They have all the latest fashions from Paris and New York!”
“Christy, it’s so good to see you! Things just haven’t been the same around here without you. And it’s no secret that Lance Barclay has been missing you.”
“Christy, have you heard the newest music? They call it ragtime. My father simply cannot stand it!”
It was like being caught up in a whirlwind. Christy was surrounded by silk and crystal, taffeta and silver, lace and polished mahogany. Everyone’s hair was perfectly done up. Every face was clean and powdered. The air was filled with the scent of expensive perfume.
And then Christy happened to look down. She saw something that struck her as more noticeable than all the rest. Everyone was wearing shoes.
In the Cove, even many of the adults went around barefoot, whatever the weather.
Christy felt a pang of guilt. Suddenly, it seemed strange and wrong to be in a room filled with people wearing shoes.
She turned and looked for her friends. Her parents were nowhere in sight, but she soon located Neil and David and Ruby Mae. They were standing bunched together in a corner. The three of them looked simple and rugged and weatherbeaten.
Christy felt as if she were being pulled in two directions. Part of her wanted to rush back to her friends from Cutter Gap. But these other people were her friends, too. It would be ridiculous to ignore them, simply because they came from the city, rather than the mountains.
“Christy,” a new voice said.
She turned to see Lance Barclay, handsome as ever. “It really is you! And even more beautiful than I remembered.”
“Lance,” Christy said. She put out her hand to shake his. He took her hand, bowed, and gently kissed it.
“May I have the first dance?” he asked. “Unless, of course, you’ve already promised it to some other man.”
Christy was caught off guard. She hadn’t promised the first dance to anyone. “Um, no,” she said. “I mean, yes. No, I haven’t promised the first dance, and yes, I would be honored to save it for you.”
As if on cue, the music brightened suddenly into a waltz. The shifting groups of people moved toward the edges of the room, opening a large dance area in the middle of the room.
“Shall we?” Lance asked, still holding Christy’s hand.
Christy gave a little bow, then followed Lance out to the middle of the floor.
He truly was quite a handsome young man. His blond hair was perfectly combed. His smile was bright. His tuxedo was immaculately tailored.
Christy caught sight of David. He was standing to one side, looking severe and awkward in his dark suit. It was the same suit he wore on Sunday mornings when he preached. It was new, however. It had been a gift from his mother on her visit to Cutter Gap in May. David was watching Christy with an expression of shock.
Beside him, Neil seemed a trifle less awkward, but he looked even more out-of-place in his favorite tweed jacket. He was holding a glass and staring fixedly at the floor.
Christy felt a pang of regret. David had asked her to marry him. And even Neil had made his feelings for Christy known. It must look to the two men as if she had dumped them in a corner.
But following on the heels of her regret and guilt came a second feeling—resentment. Why should she have to worry about what David and Neil thought? Sometimes she felt as if she spent every minute of every day worrying about what people might think or say.
Every day in the Cove was a struggle to hold the respect of the suspicious mountain folk. Every day she had to worry about the feelings of dozens of difficult students in her class. Every day there were worries over money for school supplies, and worries about the diseases that stalked the mountains, and worries over the ever-present threat of moonshine-fueled violence. Worry, worry, worry! It seemed like a thousand years since she’d spent a worry-free night.
She was sick of worry. Tired of it. Wasn’t she entitled to some ease and comfort? Wasn’t she entitled to put on her best dress and dance?
Lance put his left arm around her waist and began to move with the music. Round and round they swirled.
And when the first dance was done, Christy accepted another with Lance. Between dances, they chatted with their Asheville friends about art, and poetry, and the traveling theater troupe that would be arriving soon to perform Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Lance asked her to go riding the next day, and she agreed.
It was late when the party began to break up. Christy found Ruby Mae in a corner, talking to a boy her own age.
“This here’s Thomas Wolfe,” Ruby Mae said. “Tom, this here’s my teacher, Miz Christy. I been a-tellin’ Tom all about folks in Cutter Gap,” she added.
“I’d love to hear more,” the boy said eagerly.
“But not tonight,” Christy said. “I think it’s rather late and we’d best all be getting home. Where are Reverend Grantland and Doctor MacNeill? Have you seen them?”
“Yes’m. They left some time back. Hours ago. I ’spect they were tuckered out. They both looked a might down.”
“They left?” Christy asked in alarm. “They both left?”
“Yes, Miz Christy. They said they was agoin’ back to the house. They said I should remind you about Bessie having her operation tomorrow. If you was still interested.”
“They said that? The part about ‘if I was still interested’?”
“Yes,” Ruby Mae said. “Although, factually speaking, it was the doctor what said it, and the preacher, he just nodded his head.”
“As if I wouldn’t care about Bessie,” Christy said angrily. “Of course I’ll be there.”
Just then, Lance appeared at Christy’s side. “You won’t forget our date to go riding tomorrow, will you?”
“Of course not, Lance. I’ll be there. Bessie’s operation is at eight in the morning. I’ll meet you at your stables at nine-thirty, just as we planned. That will leave plenty of time.”