Name/Title
Scarlet Ball Dress, Short Story by Mary Alicia OwenEntry/Object ID
AM2013.3.70Scope and Content
Scarlet Ball Dress, Short Story by Mary Alicia Owen. About a red dress that seemed to be a curse. 11 pages. Typewritten.
For Transcript, click on the Multimedia button on top menu, then open the Word File.Context
Address
M.A. Own
306 N. 9th St.
St. Joseph, Mo.
THE SCARLET BALL DRESS
By Mary Alicia Owen
October 15. It has come!- aunt Maria Ginevra's present, I mean. Ever since she wrote that as cousin Lily lost her husband so soon after marriage there were some things in the trousseau that had never been worn, and that she was going to send them to cousin Eunice and me, mother and I have been in a fever of expectancy.
We are cool enough now; indeed, I think I might say that we have suffered a chill. Think of it!-a ball dress in Deepwater village. "Fightin' red at that", as Dorcas said when she helped us unpack it.
"If it had been a hat even", whimpered mother. "She said she bought all the things in Paris. I had hoped for something to give distinction to your little trousseau."
"My little trousseau is suited to my little self and a young professional's little finances", I said as lightly as I could, "but what shall be done with this?"- indicating the blazing mass of embroidery and chiffon.
"Ye'll have to cut it up into lamp shaded for the Alter Guild's Thanksgiving sale", sniffed Dorcas.
I wish we had taken her advice then and there.
"I don't wish to reflect on your poor dead father's only sister's judgement", sighed mother when Dorcas had received her dollar wage and started homeward, "but I do think-oh!" It was a gasp of mortal terror, and she was staring at the scarlet dress as it lay spread its full length in the narrow box. There was some crumpled tissue-paper in the end of the box, and in the twilight which had fallen suddenly it bore a dreadful resemblance to a ghastly face and shoulders rising from the decollete waist.
For a moment I could not stir. Then by a great effort I thrust mu hand among the papers. "Momsey, Momsey", I cried, "don't look like that! Don't you see that it's only paper?"
"If you say that it's paper", said the mother tremulously, "I'll try to believe it, but I can't look."- She had dropped her face in her hands.- "Put on the cover if you can."
I put it on, and, at her entreaty, tied it securely, and as a further ease to her feeling, carried the box into the hall. A tax on my strength was this last, for it was amazingly heavy, or I was amazingly weak.
By the time that Will came in in the evening, I was ashamed of my fears, but mother held fast to her impressions, although somewhat cheered by lamplight and firelight and a tea that I took pains to have particularly nice. She confided the whole story to Will, and he laughed and joked in an assured masculine way until we laughed with him, and did not flinch perceptibly when he would have a view of what he was pleased to term our "scarlet lady".
"That paper did not look queer", he said in an odd voice as he tore it out of the box and flung it to the floor. "Now, where do you want me to put this thing?" He clapped on the cover as he spoke. "Whe-ew! this packing case must be made of oak."
"Put her-it in the guest room", quavered mother, "and-and. Will, be sure to lock the door."
Will complied. He had had the run of the house since he was in knickerbockers, and there was a light in the upper hall, so I did not have to accompany him and I was glad of it.
"Did you lock the door?" Mother made no secret of her anxiety.
"I did", said Will with emphasis.
He stayed later than usual, and when grandmother's old Seth Thomas clock banged out eleven he fidgeted about the room, picking up and putting down books and vases without looking at them, and finally blurted out that he was too tired to go home and meant to spend the night on the couch "right here".
Mother agreed joyfully, but I sent him away. He is to operate on the little Davis girl's throat early in the morning, and must run no rist of having his hand rendered unsteady by uneasy slumber. Mother was really provoked, but now she is peacefully asleep in my bed-nothing would induce her to go to her own room, which is next to the guest chamber-and I sit here writing of our foolish fancies because that is always the easiest way to get anything off my mind.
Oct. 16th. It has rained all day. Will has called up four times to know if we were "all right". He will not be here this evening. John Peterman has let one of his cows knock him over against something and break his leg. I hate cows! Old Dr. Black wont go, so Will must plunge ten miles through the storm, over the worst kind of a country road. I feel sure the rain will turn to sleet presently.
Mother wept when I told her Will wasn't coming. She has been low-spirited and nervous all day, and I haven't been very pleasant. She started into her room this morning for her glasses, though she heard some one walking in the guest room, and fled downstairs. She wouldn't go back, or let me, so I've read to her instead of finishing the embroidery on my waist.
Oct. 17th. It is a beautiful morning. Cousin Eunice sent the carriage for mother. I was so glad to have her leave the house. I told her to stay all night, and I would stay with some of the girls. I'm not alone anyways, Dorcas has come to wash the windows. I hear her clumping around overhead at this minute. I told her to do mine first, and I would show her later about the others. I'll go into those closed rooms with her, though, of course, I know-
Dorcas has twisted her ankle, skinned her elbow and hobbled home. I heard a scream and the sound of a falling body, and ran upstairs. Dorcas was lying in the floor of the guest room, at the foot of the step-ladder. She said she had just started to take down the curtains when she happened to glance over her shoulder at the red dress as it lay over a chair, and it seemed to her that a sick lady had it on, so she started to run, not remembering that she was on the ladder.
"Why did you take it out of the box?" I asked.
She said she didn't, but she certainly did.
I pitched it back, flung on the cover and brought it down, intending to put it in the kitchen stove, then I thought I would throw it into the street, and then I was ashamed to do either. I dropped it in the hall as some one rang the door-bell.
Well! it is gone, and my feeling are a see-saw of relief and worry. That was Laura Maberly at the door, and she has borrowed the scarlet dress. She came for that purpose. Dorcas washed for the Maberlys yesterday, and told them about it, so Laura and her mother agreed that it was just the thing for Laura to wear when she takes the part of the Queen of Sheba in some tableaux at the Y.M.C.A. next week. I believe any one of those Maberlys would borrow a toothbrush. I'd lend them mine I'm so grateful, though I thought it my duty to point out to Laura that oriental queens didn't wear that kind of clothes. She wouldn't listen to anything, she was fairly greedy for that blazing chiffon. Finally she snatched it up, saying,
"If you wont lend it, I'll have to steal it, Olive", and away she went.
I called after her that it was too heavy for her to carry a block, and she said over her shoulder that it had no weight at all.
I did not find it a burden when I ran downstairs with it, I recall that now.
The other evening-
Yes, and Will spoke of its great weight.
I haven't said a word that could worry mother. She came home from the farm in such good spirits, and she became quite radiant when I told her about Laura. Well does she know that the Maberlys never return anything. She was so gay that she began to gossip, telling me about cousin Eunice's present, a lovely long white evening cloak, and the fortune Lily would have from the middle-aged husband who killed a month after marriage.
Oct. 18th. I could not write any more last night. Will came in while I was busy with this, and mother napping on the couch, but before he was seated there was a telephone call for him.
"Is it the Maberlys?" I faltered.
"Why, yes, it is" he answered, evidently surprised. "Did you know-?"
"No", I said vehemently, "but I must. Come back and tell me."
It was an hour before he returned. I waited in a perfect fever, after seeing mother safely tucked up in her own room.
"That confounded red dress", Will began.
"Don't tell me that it has killed Laura!" I almost shrieked.
"Came within an ace of it", growled Will. "It seems that she had been putting it on and off all day, she was so in love with her appearance in it, but when she went up for a final try this evening, she vowed the thing was standing looking at itself in her cheval-glass."
"Will!"
"Don't look like that, Ollie, the explanation is simple enough. When I reached the house, Laura was still lying in the hall, as she had fallen down the stairs as she fled from IT. Her father and I carried her up to her room, and the first thing I noticed was the scarlet dress hanging to the mirror-frame where she had undoubtedly left it in the afternoon."
"Is she very badly hurt? I quavered.
"She has a twisted ankle and a good many bruises", said Will with a worried air, "but I could easily set all that to rights if her state of mind were not so bad.-I would better tell you myself rather than risk having you hear it from some one else; she-the fact is, she went into such paroxysms of terror at sight of the dress that after it was carried out of the house I had to giver her a hypodermic to quiet her."
"Where is it now?" I inquired faintly.
"I-I well! that is the queer part of it, the dress has disappeared."
"Disappeared", I echoed stupidly.
"Her mother threw it into the box, and her father carried it out to the front porch, and I was to take it away", explained Will, rapidly," but when I went out, the open box was there-empty. I knew you wouldn't like it, but Jim Maberly sprinted off and told old McKorkle."
The policeman! Deepwater will be stirred to its septs before tomorrow night.
Oct. 19th. McKorkle has been more discreet than I could have hoped. To be sure, he asked every sort of an unnecessary question about the cut, color, value and usefulness of the missing garment, and wrote my replies down in a great book like a ledger, but he also enjoyed secrecy, and added that he had alreay warned the Maberlys "not to breath a word" or they might destory his clue and "lay themselves liable to damages". He trotted off finally, very pleased and mysterious, and without mother having seen him. For this last I was duly thankful.
Oct. 20th. McKorkle saw it last night. He came, with his book under his arm, fortunately while mother was at the grocery selecting the Sunday dinner. He was walking along Elm Street last night and saw, a few yards ahead of him, "a shiny red dress goin' as slick and fast as if 'twas on roller skate." He pursued, but he got out of the range of street lamps, a cloud went over the moon, he collided with a hitching-post, and had nothing to show for the race but a tear in his trousers and a knot on his head, for the dress had disappeared when he scrambled to his feet and opened his lantern. He thinks the wearer saw him and hid in somebody's shrubbery. He suspects "a certain hired girl", and intends to invite himself to a festival at the A.M.E. Church next week to verify his suspicion. He has all this and more written down in that horrid book, and persisted in reading it to me. I begged him to drop the matter as the dress would not be fit to wear if found, but I could not wring a promise from him. So little happens here, and he feels that he is going to prove himself a great detective.
Jim Maberly has had a tale to tell. Will broke it to me as gently as he could. The High School Fraternity met at Mitcham's last night. As the boys set out for home, signing and scuffling as boys always do, one of them exclaimed that if he were a girl without an escort he wouldn't be on the street in a rig like an open furnace door. Jim made haste to tell how the dress was stolen, and the boys broke into a run, determined to capture the thief. She moved ahead of them with amazing rapidity, and disappeared down a side street. At this they separated, going in different directions and thinking to surround her. Unaccountably they all came together with a rush and everybody was more or less hurt, little Bobby Smith having a rib broken.
What has aunt Maria Ginevra turned loose on this community?
Oct. 23rd. It was so stormy that we could not go to church Sunday, and I was glad of it. We are such a storm center of gossip that I felt it to be the natural outcome for the elements to befriend us, but the good will of bad weather did not last long. Monday dawned cool and clear and all Deepwater was out asking and answering question. Blessed by rural telephones! I hurried cousin Eunice in after mother. I promised to have Dorcas stay with me at night, but I find it no use to ask her. She was the first to tell me of the experience of the Saturday Night Card Club. It met with the Fetterbys out at the end of Elm Street. Before the members scattered on their way home they saw a woman in a red dress looking in at the lighted, uncurtained window of Rev. Moses Fax.
"There is the stolen dress the boys were after last night", said sone one, and the men hurried in pursuit while the women drew together on the sidewalk.
"She went like greased lighting", Dorcas continued, "and when she got behind the big elm at the corner she disappeared, and the men running around it bumped into each other and got mad and fought. I reckon that club is busted up, Miss Olive."
"What did the woman look like?" I was silly enough to ask.
"Nobody but me aint ever seen her at all", cried Dorcas. "I sort o; seen her when I walked off the ladder, but nobody else has ever paid any attention to anything by the dress. Nearly everybody has a glimpsed that, but they don't think of a face or a head or anything till you ask 'em and then they are all of a puzzle. I guess though that there aint any more puzzlement as to how that dress got off the Maberlys' porch. It wasn't solen, it walked off, Miss Olive, that's what it did."
"Dorcas you should be ashamed of yourself!" I exclaimed angrily.
"I dunno why", said Dorcas in her most impertinent tone, as she walked away. "I'm the one that's tellin' the truth, as any one seeing your chalk-white face would know."
Mrs. Peterman and old Miss Mott have been in to tell me that Gus Verhein's horses shied at IT as he was jogging home on the Savannah road, and then bolted and tan. Gus always goes home drunk after he has sold his produce, so I don't think seriously of that tale even if he did tumble out of the wagon and lame his shoulder and ankle.
Oct. 24. IT has been here. I telephones to Will that I was along and meant to retire early, and when he demanded that I should have some one with me and I had to tell him that there was such a buzz of gossip that I could not ask any one, he was determined that I should leave the house, but I couldn't, and I told him so. Then he besought me to sleep on the couch in the living-room with the telephone beside me, and I promised that I would, but I didn't! I locked the doors and was just drawing down the window-shade when I saw IT coming up the front steps. I fled up stairs, my heart busting with terror, barred my door, and lay cowering and smothering in my bed until I heard the milkman going his rounds at dawn.
Mother and cousin Eunice came in early. They had been uneasy about me. As soon as the opportunity offered, I told cousin Eunice all. She, good sturdy spinster, patted my shoulder and said in the most comforting tone, "We will put an end to this, my dear, we will put an end to it", and somehow, I felt that she would.
Oct. 25. After all, it was Will did it.
We were sitting silently about the grate, cousin Eunice, Will and I-mother having gone peacefully to sleep upstairs-, when Will asked sharply, "Is it sleeting?"
"It is going to sleet before morning", said cousin Eunice, "but at present we have nothing worse than a mean little rain."
"It might be a dog crowding against the door for shelter", said Will, going out into the hall.
Cousin Eunice and I had heard nothing, but Will's ears are keen enough to hear the grass grow.
As he opened the front door, cousin Eunice and I stood up and caught each other's hands, I don't know why. The next moment there was blown or flung into the hall a flaccid red mass that had the effect of a stumbled, sprawling human figure.
Will gave one glance. "I'll put you out of the way of further mischief', he said savagely, and caught up the heap almost as he slammed the door. "Here, Ollie, Miss Eunice, let's take this thing to the kitchen and burn it."
We followed in time to see him tear off the stove lids and press the dress down upon the embers, and hurried to hand him the kerosene can when he cried out that it was too wet to burn, and to bring him oil, for the infernal rag must be destroyed.
The blaze lasted scarcely a minute, but when it had almost died out there was a snap almost like a pistol shot-from the rubber bands in the skirt I suppose-and the flame leaped again and went out, and there was a sigh-we all three heard it!-that seemed to fill the room.
The next I knew was cousin Eunice begging Will not to throw any more water in my face or the front breadth of her dress would be entirely ruined.
Dec.9th. Home again! Cousin Eunice has an apologetic letter from aunt Maria G. She says she did not dream there was anything wrong with the scarlet ball dress. She bought it "at a very reasonable price" (trust aunt M.G. for that!) in one of the smaller shops of the rue e l'Opera. It was in a locked, upright show-case when she caught sight of it, and so entrancingly beautiful and cheap, and just Lily's size that she bought it at once, thinking nothing of Madame's explanation that it was made for a trousseau but refused by the bride because the shop-girl who was carrying it home fell downstairs and was killed. She says she know now what caused the death of Mr. Wardour, Lily's husband. He and Lily were going to a ball, and the scarlet dress was unpacked for the first time since it left the Custom House. It was spread out on the bed in Lily's room, and, as it was too early to dress, she and Mr. Wardour were trying some new music downstairs. A certain fugue they watched had been left in the room, and he went up to get it.
Almost at once there was a strangled cry, Lily rushed out of the music-room in time to see her husband fall headlong down the stairs, "I did not see anything when I put away that dress", protest aunt Maria G.
I suppose not.
She sent me some beautiful lace for a wedding-present. I wanted to burn it but was ashamed to. I keep it locked in a box and the box locked in a trunk. The trunk is an old one with iron bands and a brass lock.Lexicon
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