89CHAPTER VIIICousin Ann Looks Backward
Mildred was right. Buck Hill was a perfect place for parties—of all kinds. There was a long, broad hall leading into double parlors on one side and on the other the dining-room and sitting-room. The satiny floors—ideal for dancing—reflected in their polished surfaces rare pieces of old mahogany. French windows opened on the porches, where comfortable wicker chairs and hammocks were plentiful.
The garden to the south of the house was noted in a county famous for gardens. Mr. Bucknor prided himself on having every kind of known rose that would grow in the Kentucky climate. The garden had everything in it a garden should have—marble benches, a sun dial, a pergola, a summer house, a box maze and a fountain around which was a circle of stone flagging with flowering portulacca springing up in the cracks. The shrubs were old and huge, forming pleasant nooks for benches—now a couple of syringa bushes meeting overhead, now90lilacs, white and purple extending an invitation to lovers to come sit on the bench. Oh, Buck Hill was a place for lovers! The garden a place of all places!
The house party was in full swing. Five guests had arrived on the six-thirty and three more on the seven o’clock trolley and a car of six had driven over from Lexington in time for supper. The mansion was filled and running over, but the overflow could always be taken care of in “The Office,” a cottage near the house, a building quite common in old southern homes, often set aside for young male visitors.
Cousin Ann had been lying down all afternoon in response to the earnest pleadings of old Billy. He had pressed the sprigged muslin and it hung on a hook behind the door in readiness for the mistress. Then he brought her a pitcher of water, fresh from the well, and a funny little tight bouquet of verbenas.
“I thought you mought w’ar ’em in yo’ ha’r, Miss Ann,” he said. “I ’member how you uster always w’ar verbeny in yo’ ha’r.”
“So I did, Billy.” Miss Ann raised her hand to her hair, but quickly dropped it, remembering suddenly that her own snowy locks were exposed to view. She did not relish having even old Billy see her without her wig. She drew a scarf91over her head and Billy turned his away, pretending he had not seen what she did not want him to see.
“Now you dress up pretty, Miss Ann, an’ ’member th’ain’t gonter be nary pusson here what kin hol’ a can’le to you.”
“Have they come yet, Billy?”
“Some air come an’ mo’ air comin’, so I reckon you’d bes’ rise an’ shine, Miss Ann. Kin I he’p you none?”
Such was the old man’s devotion to his mistress that he would gladly have served her as lady’s maid had he been called on to do so.
“I hope the fuss these young folks kick up ain’t gonter ’sturb you none,” he said as he opened the door and shrieks of gay laughter floated up from the hall below.
The business of dressing was a serious one for Miss Ann Peyton. In the first place she was exquisitely neat and particular and every article of clothing must be exactly right. Her clothes were old and worn and every time she dressed some break was discovered that must be darned. Her hoop skirt was ever in need of repair, with tapes that had broken from their moorings or strings that had come loose. On this evening she discovered a small hole in her little satin slipper that must be adroitly mended with court plaster.92The auburn wig must be combed and curled. A touch of rouge must be rubbed on the poor old cheeks. The Peyton pearls must be taken from the strong box—a necklace, earrings, breastpin and tiara. When all was over Miss Ann really did look lovely. With the dignity and carriage that any queen might have envied she swept down the broad stairway.
“Heavens! Mildred, why didn’t you let us know you were to have a fancy dress ball?” cried Jean Roland, and all of the gay young things gathered in the broad hall looked up as Miss Ann descended. To most of them she was but a figure of fun.
“Oh, that’s nobody but old Cousin Ann Peyton,” explained Mildred. “She’s our chronic visitor. She always dresses like a telephone doll.”
Miss Ann heard both remarks, but gave no sign of annoyance, except to hold her head with added dignity. A chronic visitor could not afford to show resentment at the thoughtless rudeness of young persons. It seemed to the old lady that young cousins in all the homes where she visited were growing more and more outspoken and rude and less and less considerate of her. She still deemed it her right to be honored guest wherever she chose to bestow the privilege of her93company, although her self-esteem had had many a quiet dig and a few hard knocks in the recent months.
Sometimes the thought came to Cousin Ann that the young cousins were perhaps taking their cue from the older generation. Were the older ones quite as polite and cordial as they had been? Of course one might expect brusqueness from Betty Throckmorton, but was there not a change of manner even here at Buck Hill—not just rudeness from Mildred, who was nothing but a spoiled child, but from Mr. and Mrs. Bucknor themselves? Then there was Big Josh and Little Josh, both of whom had made excuses about having her and had assured her they would write for her to come to them later on and she had heard from neither of them.
She paused a moment and looked down on the happy young people. She wondered if they realized how happy they were or if it would be necessary to be old to appreciate the blessing of merely being young. Suddenly a picture of her youth came back to her with a poignancy that almost hurt. It was in that very hall and she was standing on those very stairs—perhaps in that self-same spot. There was a house party at Buck Hill and she had come from Peyton only that morning in a brand new carriage with94Billy driving the spanking pair of nags. Billy was young then, but so trustworthy that her father had been willing to let him take charge of his daughter. She remembered the rejoicing in the family when she arrived. How they gathered around her and embraced her! Robert Bucknor, the father of the present owner, was then a young man. How gentle and tender he was with her, how courtly and kind!
When he saw her standing alone on the stairs looking down on the assembled company he had sprung up the steps, two at a time, and taken her hand in his: “Oh, Cousin Ann, how beautiful you are! If I could only feel that the time might come when this would be your home—yours and mine.”
And she had answered, “Not yet, Cousin Robert, please don’t talk about it yet,” because the memory of Bert Mason, the young lover who had been killed in the war, was still too vivid for her to think of other ties. “But you are very dear to me and if ever—” Thus she had put him off.
While she had stood there talking to Robert Bucknor—young then and now old and dead and gone—Billy, with ashen face, had come to her with the news that Peyton, her beloved home, was completely destroyed by fire. She95had fainted. Young ladies usually fainted in those days when overcome by emotion. How the friends and cousins rallied around her with offers of assistance! They actually quarreled about her, so eager were they for her to visit them.
“You must make your home with me.”
“No, with me!”
“I must have part of her.”
“My turn is next,” and so on.
And then the owner of Buck Hill and his sweet wife had told her that their home was hers and she was ever to feel as free to be there as though she had been truly a daughter of the house. Then had begun the years of visiting for Ann Peyton. Her father had died a few weeks after the fire and later an only brother. She had more invitations to visit than she knew what to do with. Billy had been welcome, too, and there was always stable room for her horses and a place in the coach house for her carriage, no matter where she visited.
How many years had passed since that evening in June when she had stood in that spot and looked down on the crowd of young men and women? She dared not count, but there was the grandson of that Robert Bucknor, standing in the great hall and trying hard to96pretend to be interested in what a beautiful girl was saying to him. The beautiful girl was the one who had made the remark about a fancy dress ball. The grandson of Robert Bucknor had not heard her say it nor had he heard his sister’s cruel answer, as he had come into the hall the moment afterward. Now he was plainly bored, but trying to conceal it. The girl was chattering like a magpie. Suddenly Jeff looked up and saw Miss Ann.
“Oh, Cousin Ann!” he cried, bounding up the steps, two at a time, quite as his grandfather had done on that day so many, many years ago, “how lovely you look! I’d like to dance a minuet with you.” Then he gave her his arm and escorted her down the stairs. Supper was announced immediately and Jeff marched in with his aged cousin, much to the chagrin of Mildred, who had planned otherwise for her good-looking brother.
“Horrid old thing!” she said to Tom Harbison, who was dancing attendance on her. “Grabbing Jeff that way! How does she expect the men to go around if she takes one of the beaux?”
“And did you see her with flowers in her hair?” asked Nan in a stage whisper. “Verbenas!” and then a fat boy who sang tenor97and passed as something of a wag sang:
“Sweet Evelina,Last time I seen herStole a verbenaOut of her hair.”
At this all the young folks laughed. Miss Ann heard Nan’s stage whisper, and felt Mildred’s glance of disapproval and was quite conscious that the fat boy’s song was meant to make game of her, but nothing mattered much except that Robert Bucknor’s grandson, who looked so like him, had run up the steps to meet her and had told her she looked lovely and was now holding her hand tightly clasped against his warm young heart. She saw old Billy peeping from the pantry door as they entered the dining-room and she caught his glance of pride and gratification when she appeared with the young master.
“What I tell you?” he muttered. “Ain’t my Miss Ann the pick er the bunch?”
98CHAPTER IXThe Veterans’ Big Secret
“Mumsy dear,” said Judith, “I’m going over to Buck Hill this morning and sell all kinds of things to my cousins and their guests.”
“Judith, you are not! How can you go near those people when they treat you like the dust under their feet?”
“But, Mumsy, they don’t. People can’t treat you like dust under their feet unless you are beneath them, and I’m not in the least teensy weensy bit beneath the Bucknors of Buck Hill. Now they might treat me like the dust in the air—the dust they have to breathe when the wind blows—breathe that or stop breathing altogether. They might not like to breathe me in. I might be a little thick for them, but breathe me they must. I did not make myself kin to them. I justamkin to them. I don’t know that it makes any great difference to me to know that I am. I rather like to think that, way back yonder, what is now me had something to do with building Buck Hill,99because it is beautiful. The part that’s me may have planned the garden. Who knows?
“But I’m not going there to sell things because they are my cousins. I’m not going to mention such a disagreeable subject. I’m too good a salesman for that. I am merely going there because I think I might make some money. They have a house party on and when people go visiting they always forget their tooth brushes and hairpins. I don’t exactly enjoy having Mildred Bucknor pretend I’m not around when I know I’m very much in evidence. She had that way with her at school and then it would have hurt me, if I had not been perfectly conscious of the fact that she couldn’t tell the difference between nouns and verbs in Latin and got gender and case and tense all mixed up.
“Yes, Mumsy, I’m going to Buck Hill and clear about five dollars, even though I may have to take a good snubbing. I want to go less than ever since Jefferson Bucknor was so nice to me yesterday evening. I didn’t tell you he helped boost my basket on the trolley and actually took the can of buttermilk in his own aristocratic hands and swung it on to the platform. Well, he did, and he made his sister furious—and he bored a pretty girl with whom100he is supposed to fall in love—one of the house party. I don’t want poor Mr. Jeff Bucknor to have to take up for me—which he is sure to do if the hammers begin to knock—but even to spare his feelings I will not quit trying to sell my wares.”
“Judith, you must not lower yourself.”
“I’m not lowering myself one bit, Mumsy. Just look at it this way: Suppose I had a shop in Ryeville. Wouldn’t I serve any customers who came to the shop, whether they were kin and refused to admit kinship or not—whether they called me red-head, when everybody knows my hair is auburn, or not? I’d hardly refuse to sell to those persons who did not consider me their social equal and did not ask me to house parties or to dances when my feet are just itching to dance. I’d sell to any and everybody who came in the shop. Exactly! Well, now you see I have a shop on wheels. I must go to any and every body who might have use for my wares. I’d have a very limited clientele if I stuck to those who considered me on their level and whom I considered on mine. So give me your blessing, Mumsy, and wish me well.”
“Judith, how you do run on! Aren’t you afraid that that Jeff Bucknor will think you are running after him?”101
“Not in the least. He’s not that kind of a man. I know by the way his ears are set and the way his hair grows on his forehead and the way his eyes crinkle up at the corners as though he never missed a joke. People who never miss jokes don’t go around thinking other persons are running after them all the time. I know by the way he looks out of his eyes. It isn’t only his eyes that look at you but there is something behind them that looks at you. I reckon if I were a sissy girl I’d say his eyes were soulful, but you see I’m not. I tell you, Mumsy, my Cousin Jeff is a powerful likely young man and I’m quite proud of him. Too bad he doesn’t know he’s my kin.”
Mrs. Buck sighed. “I guess he wouldn’t claim relationship with you if he did know. Those Bucknors of Buck Hill are a proud-stomached lot. They’ve been dusting me on the pike ever since I was a little girl—dusting me and never even seeing me.”
“Did you ever speak to them?”
“Of course not. I was never one to put myself forward.”
“Well, why should they speak to you any more than you speak to them? Aren’t you as good as they are? Surely, and a great deal prettier. You are as much prettier than Mrs.102Bucknor as a day lily is prettier than a cabbage rose,” declared Judith.
“Oh, how you do talk, Judy! Of course, when I say they didn’t ever speak I mean they never went out of their way to speak. When we had deaths over here they kind of acted neighborly like and sent word to call on them if we needed anything, but we never did, as my mother and I always saved mourning from time to time. I guess they’d have been a little more back-and-forth friendly if it hadn’t have been for your Grandfather Buck. He was kind of difficult like when he was drinking and that was most times. He was either drinking or getting over drunks as a general thing. Then he was mighty lazy and shiftless.”
“Poor Mumsy! You’ve had a right hard time with us Bucks. Grandfather Buck was so lazy he worried you to death and I’m so energetic I know I annoy you terribly. But all this talking isn’t selling toilet articles to house parties. By the way, I got a ’phone message from my motormen. They want six suppers this evening. That means I must run into Ryeville and buy some more baskets and lay in provisions of all kinds. I wish I’d been triplets, or at least twins. I could accomplish so much more.”103
“Land sakes, Judy! Surely you do enough as it is. All six dinners at once?”
“Oh no! Two on the six, two on the six-thirty and two for the seven. I’m afraid I’ll wear the path into a ditch. I’m glad to see the beets are big enough to eat and before you know it we’ll have some snap beans and peas. I’m going to get a little darkey to work the garden, because I simply can’t give the time for it. Besides, my time is really too valuable for digging just now. Did I tell you I had taken the contract to develop all the amateur photographic films for Baker & Bowles? I saw them about it the other day. They have an awful time getting it done right and they knew I had done a lot of that work for school, so they asked me to try. Of course I couldn’t let such a chance slip and since I can do it at night I accepted. It will take only one or two evenings a week. They furnish all the chemicals and it pays very well. I’ll do it through the summer anyhow, until school starts.”
“What a child! What a child!” was all Mrs. Buck could say. “I don’t believe even the Norse sailor could have beat her.”
Again the old men on the hotel porch were treated to a sight of Judith Buck. She parked her little blue car directly across the street from104the Rye House and began the business of shopping.
“What you reckon that Judy gal is up to now?” queried Judge Middleton. “I betcher she’s goin’ in the butcher shop.”
“I betcher she ain’t,” said Pete Barnes for the sake of argument. “I betcher she’s going in the Emporium to buy herself a blue dress.”
“Maybe,” ruminated Major Fitch. “I always did hold to women folks that had sense enough to wear blue. That blue that Miss Judith Buck wears is just my kind of blue too—not too light and not too dark—kinder betwixt and between, like way-off hills or—”
“Kittens’ eyes,” suggested Colonel Crutcher with a twinkle.
“Cat’s foot! Nothin’ of the kind! Anyhow, that kind of blue is mighty becomin’ to Miss Judith.”
They all agreed to this and when Judith appeared again with her arms laden with bundles to be stowed in the back of the car the old men called in chorus:
“Hiyer, Miss Judith?”
“Hiyer, yourselves?” she answered.
“Come over and tell us the news,” they begged, and she ran across the street and perched on the railing of the Rye House, while105she recounted what news she had picked up on her peddling trip of the day before.
“Uncle Peter Turner has gone over to cook and wash dishes for the ladies at Mr. Big Josh Bucknor’s. They haven’t had a servant for weeks. They thought Miss Ann Peyton was coming but she turned in at Buck Hill, I saw her. She has been visiting the Throckmortons and left there in a hurry. Old Aunt Minnie, over at Clayton, has just had her hundredth descendant. She had sixteen children of her own and all of them have had their share of children and grandchildren. I know it’s so because I just sold one of the great-granddaughters some hair straightener and a box of flea powder and she thought of getting some talcum powder for the new baby, but decided to use flea powder instead.”
The old men laughed delightedly. “Tell us some more,” they demanded.
“The widow Simco, at Nine Mile House, asked me what had become of Mr. Pete Barnes. I sold her some henna shampoo and a box of bronze hairpins.”
Pete grinned sheepishly, but straightened his cravat and pulled his whiskers in a way men have when complimented by the fair sex.
“How’s your business?” asked Major Fitch.106
“Which business?” asked Judith. “I’ve got so many you’ll have to say which one. But all of them are coming on pretty well. I must be going. So long!” She was up and away like a blue flash.
“Now ain’t she likely?” quavered old Judge Middleton. “There ain’t many pretty gals like her’d stop an’ gossip with a bilin’ of ol’ has-beens like us.”
“Yes, that’s the truth,” said Colonel Crutcher. “Did you see Bob Bucknor’s oldest girl going by in her father’s car while Miss Judy was cheering us up? She had a young blood in with her—that young Harbison from Louisville. He nearly fell out of the car, rubbering at Miss Judy. That Bucknor miss hardly more than glanced this way, but she was showing the whites of her eyes in that glance. My granddaughter, Betty, was telling me only last night that the only reason Judy Buck wasn’t asked to join their dancing club was that the Bucknor gals got their backs up about asking her and kind of talked them down—calling Judy common and poor white trash and such like. Betty says the girls all like her better than they do the Bucknors, but you know how it is with the folks from Buck Hill—they just naturally107take the lead in social matters and nobody ever has crossed them. I wish I had a house of my own. I tell you I’d give that Judy Buck a comin’ out party that would make your hair curl,” declared the Colonel.
“Well, I’ve got a house, but it wouldn’t be big enough to ask all the people I’d want to have to Miss Judy’s ball,” spoke up Major Fitch.
“By golly, I got a idee!” exclaimed Pete Barnes, letting his chair that had been tilted against the wall drop on all four legs and bringing his feet, which had been draped over the railing, to the floor at the same time with a resounding stamp. “I got an idee for sure.”
“Well?” asked Major Fitch.
“Let’s all of us ol’ ones get together an’ hire the skating rink an’ give Miss Judy Buck a party that this county won’t ever forget.”
The other chairs came down on all fours and the veterans of the Rye House porch drew together in solemn conclave. Old tongues clicked and old beards wagged, while Pete Barnes’ idea took constructive shape.
“We’ll ask all the neighborhood and even some out of the neighborhood. We’ll have the band up from Louisville and a caterer from108there and do the thing up brown,” chuckled Pete.
“Maybe society will hold back when we ask them to come to old Dick Buck’s granddaughter’s ball,” suggested one.
“Don’t tell ’em whose ball it is until they get there. That’s the way to catch the snippy ones. Let’s don’t even tell Miss Judy. It might make her kind of shy. Just let ’em all get to dancin’ an’ kinder warmed up an’ then when we got ’em where they can’t back out without bein’ mighty rude we’ll up an’ make speeches an’ let the county know how we stand for that girl an’ what she is an’ how proud we are of her,” suggested Judge Middleton.
“We’ll get all the old boys in town to come in on it. I mean our crowd, and there won’t be one who will give the secret away. And we’ll give that gal a rush that would turn her pretty red head if it belonged to anybody else—but there is no turning a wise head like hers.”
“We won’t let any women in on it either,” said Pete.
“Not even the Widow Simco?” asked Major Fitch.
“The women oughter have looked after the gal long ago, and now we men folks will take109it on us. What’ll we call the ball?” asked Mr. Barnes, ignoring the Major’s thrust.
“Call it a dayboo party, but jes’ don’t say whose it is,” suggested Colonel Crutcher. “There’ll be plenty of jokes about it an’ the smart Alecks will try to get the laugh on us because they’ll be a thinkin’ we don’t know what dayboo means an’ we’ll take the laugh an’ keep it ’til we need it. Lets go get the invites struck off over to the Ryeville Courier right now.”
The old men got busy immediately, although it was a lazy morning in June and the Rye House porch was shady and cool. Recruits were mustered in until they numbered ten, all anxious and eager to share expense and glory. First, the skating rink was engaged for the following Friday night. A caterer in Louisville was next called up by telephone and supper ordered, “with all the fixin’s” that the latest thing in debut parties demanded. The band was engaged and the invitations set up in type and printed before the noon whistles blew for dinner. To be sure, the invitations did somewhat resemble notices of an auction sale, but what did it matter to the old men of Ryeville, who were undertaking this party for their110favorite girl? This was the card:
You Are Invited to Attend a Debut BallAt the Skating Rink on Friday NightBy the Old Men of RyevilleDancing and Refreshments FreeR. S. V. P. P. D. Q.
111CHAPTER XJudith Scores Again
The house party at Buck Hill was not proving the great success that Mildred and Nan had hoped for. All of the elements of pleasure and gaiety were present but to the anxious hostesses the affair seemed to drag somewhat. In the first place, brother Jeff utterly refused to fall in love with their prize guest and the prize guest, being accustomed to conquest, was peevish in consequence. Not that Jeff was in the least rude. On the contrary, he was especially polite and charming to all of his sisters’ friends, fetching and carrying for them, dancing with them, playing tennis with the athletic, talking sentimental nothings with the romantic, and gravely discussing the Einstein theory with the high-brows. He did everything that was required of him but fall in love with Jean Roland.
The young people were gathered at one end of the long piazza. At the other end sat Miss Ann Peyton and Mrs. Bucknor. Miss Ann was engaged in her favorite occupation of112crocheting thread lamp-mats and Mrs. Bucknor vainly endeavoring to get to the bottom of the family stocking basket. The forenoon is always a difficult period in which to entertain a house party. It seems almost impossible to start anything, at least so Mildred and Nan felt. Even the most frivolously inclined do not want to flirt in the morning.
Everybody was feeling a little dull, perhaps from having eaten more breakfast than is usual in this day and generation, but Buck Hill held to the custom of olden times of much and varied food with which to start the day. One can’t be very lively after shad roe, liver and bacon, hot rolls and corn cakes all piled on top of strawberries and cream, and the whole washed down with coffee.
Jean Roland smothered a yawn, a deliberate yawn—not the kind you can’t repress because the air is close and you feel like a goldfish when the water in the bowl has not been changed and you must gape for breath. The fat boy had been dancing attendance on her for the last hour and she was wearied with his witty sallies. Jeff and Willis Truman, a former classmate, had started a game of bridge with two of the more serious-minded girls.
“Bridge is one of the things I can’t play,”113Jean had announced, and it was hardly complimentary that the game was being played in spite of her.
“By the way, Jeff, you know the Titian-haired queen you were so taken up with at the station last evening that you couldn’t greet your guests?” asked Tom Harbison. “I saw her again this morning.”
“That little country person!” exclaimed Jean Roland. “No style at all to her.”
“Not a particle!” echoed Nan.
“Oh, that little cousin of ours?” said Jeff, pausing in his game.
“Jeff, how can you?” cried Mildred. “She’s a very common person who happens to be named Buck and now they are trumping up some foolish old tale that they were Bucknors ’way back yonder in the middle ages and that they are related to us. It is too ridiculous for words.”
“Our kin all the same,” teased Jeff, going on with his game.
“Right fetching skirt!” said Tom. “She was flirting with some men on the hotel porch when we drove by this morning. I reckon they were all cousins, too.”
Jeff looked up from his game with a gleam of anger in his eye. He lost track of the cards, got confused, played from the wrong hand,114blocked himself from a re-entry and promptly got set. All because Tom Harbison intimated that Judith Buck was not conducting herself with propriety.
“Here comes somebody! I saw a car turn in from the pike,” announced Nan. “I hope it isn’t any more company.”
The attention of everyone was focused on the approaching vehicle. It was Judith’s little blue car, skimming down the avenue with the usual speed exacted of it by its stern young mistress, who seemed bent on getting at least thirty-six hours out of the twenty-four. No one could have said she did not have style in her manner of turning a curve and neatly landing at the yard gate.
“Speak of the devil,” muttered Mildred, “if it isn’t that Judith Buck. What on earth can she want?”
Judith, with her usual expedition, was out of the car and with sample case in hand was through the gate and half way up the walk before any one attempted to answer Mildred’s query.
“Come to see your brother, perhaps,” suggested Jean Roland.
“Ah, be a sister to me,” sighed the fat boy, “please be a sister to me, Mildred.”115
Judith faltered not a moment, but marched straight up the steps. The young men all jumped from their seats and Jeff came forward with outstretched hand, but the girl pretended not to see the gesture. With a businesslike “Good-morning,” she proceeded to open up her sample case and begin her salesman’s patter: “I have here—” She was determined that the call should be purely a commercial one and that the Bucknors could none of them think for a moment that she sought or even desired any social dealings with them.
“Perhaps you had better take your wares to the back door. The servants may want to buy some,” suggested Mildred, with more insolence than her family dreamed she was capable of showing.
“Thank you. A little later on I shall take advantage of your kind suggestion. I have a line of wares especially put up for back doors. These things I have been telling you about are intended for front doors. Unlike most of the companies who have similar goods on the market, this one allows the agent to deliver the article the moment the sale is made,” Judith continued in her salesman’s manner. “I have a complete stock of goods in my car and while I sell by sample you do not have to wait for days116and weeks to enjoy the really excellent bargains I am enabled to offer you. This now is a cleansing cream. No matter how clean you may think your face is, you will find after applying this you are vastly mistaken. Yes, disconcerting for the moment but comforting when you realize how much cleaner you are to be than your neighbor.”
The young people had gathered around her and even Miss Ann Peyton and Mrs. Bucknor put down their work and came to see what Judith had to sell.
“Will any one of you young ladies let me prove the value of this cream by applying it to the countenance?”
“Anoint me,” suggested the fat boy.
“Oh, no, this is intended solely for ladies. I have a masculine brand to which I am coming later. I will give a sample jar to any one who will let me demonstrate on her.”
Judith’s manner was businesslike and impersonal, but her color was heightened by excitement that she was determined not to show.
“Why don’t you try it on yourself?” said Nan. “I bet yours will come off, all right.”
Judith dipped her fingers in the jar and daubed her glowing cheek with the cleansing cream. Everybody laughed. “And now while117we leave this cream on for a minute or two I will endeavor to interest you in my various powders.” She gave an animated recommendation of powders from talcum to insect.
“And now we will see the miraculous powers of the cleansing cream.” She took a handkerchief from her pocket and after a vigorous rubbing of the anointed cheek submitted the evidence to the audience.
“That is excellent,” said Mrs. Bucknor. “Let me have a jar.”
Next Judith demonstrated the virtues of a vanishing cream and made several sales. Then the men must be told of an excellent shaving soap and healing powder. Scented soaps of all kinds were then displayed, shampoos, hair tonics, pocket combs, tooth brushes and paste.
The lassitude which had held the house party in thrall was dispelled. It was almost as though Judith had applied a cleansing fluid to the atmosphere. She stood in their midst, displaying her wares with an earnestness and simplicity that was most convincing. Who could help but buy from the girl?
Miss Ann looked at her long and searchingly. So this was the girl that old Billy thought resembled his mistress. Her thoughts went back to her girlhood. When she was the age of this118Judith could she have so demeaned herself as to go around peddling cosmetics and soaps? Certainly not! She would have starved before she would have stooped to such an occupation. Starved! What did she know about starving? The morning she had gone away from Cousin Betty Throckmorton’s without her breakfast was the first time in her life she had ever missed a meal. Visitors in the blue-grass regions of Kentucky are not apt to be hungry. Would it have been better if, when she was young and strong, she, too, had endeavored to help herself instead of visiting, eternally visiting?
All of this flashed through the old lady’s mind. Suppose there had been no cousins and aunts and uncles to visit—what then? Suppose she had been as this girl was, with no relations on whom she might depend for assistance. Suppose her relations had been poor. Suppose they had not wanted her. Not wanted her! Did they want her? Did anybody want her? So intently did she gaze on Judith’s face that the girl’s eyes were drawn in the direction of the old lady. Miss Ann would have liked to buy some of the toilet articles, but the quarterly allowance from her small estate was not due for many days and never was there money enough for her to indulge herself in the kind of wares119Judith offered for sale. For a moment Judith stopped her salesman’s patter and gazed into the eyes of Cousin Ann Peyton.
“Poor old lady!” was her thought. “It must be terrible to be old and idle. I wish I could do something for her just to let her know I like her. I believe I might even love her.”
The sales had been larger than Judith in her fondest dreams had imagined they could be. Even the scornful Mildred purchased a few things that took her fancy and the young men, one and all, remembered they were sadly in need of shaving cream and tooth brushes, or if they were not in immediate need it was just as well to lay in a supply. There was much laughing and talking and badinage, but through it all Judith held herself with a certain poise that gave all of the buyers to understand that she was merely the store-keeper and did not wish to be regarded in any other light.
Jeff was singularly silent while Judith was crying up her wares. He stood moodily aside, looking on but never offering to purchase shaving cream or other masculine requirements. He wished she had not come. He resented her placing herself in a position for all of these wretched persons to patronize her. He hated the look on Tom Harbison’s face as he edged120closer and closer to the girl, insisting upon putting down his name for one of every article offered for sale.
Judith, however, was so bent on being a salesman that she was absolutely unaware of the admiration she had evidently created in the eyes of young Harbison. When she went to her car to get the wares stored in the back it was Harbison who sprang forward to assist her. Jeff watched the couple as they went down the walk to the yard gate and a suppressed fury gripped him when he noticed that Tom was much closer to Judith than was necessary. He knew perfectly well that Tom Harbison always walked too close to any girl, and had a habit of leaning over any member of the fair sex with a protecting air, occasionally touching her elbow as though to assist her over anything, even so small as a pebble, that might be in her way. When they reached the yard gate one might have supposed a dragon threatened the ladye faire, so solicitous was his manner, so brave his bearing.
Jeff could stand it no longer. He ran down the steps and with long strides arrived in time to assist the supposedly helpless maiden.
“I want to help you,” he said shortly.
“That’s very kind, but really the things are121not heavy,” and Judith began busily picking out the articles from the back of her car and putting them in a basket.
But Jeff had come to help, and help he would. He assumed a cousinly air that put Tom Harbison’s courtliness entirely in the shade. If any protecting was to be done he, Jeff Bucknor, was going to do it. He was the proper person to carry the basket of toilet articles as heir apparent to Buck Hill and an avowed kinsman of the lady. He even managed to crowd Harbison from the walk as, with basket in one hand, he protected the astonished Judith with the other. When the back-door customers were visited, the young master insisted upon accompanying Judith, and there he stood guard while she talked concerning the virtues of her anti-kink lotion and scented soaps.
She wished he would leave her for a moment, as she had a little private business to transact with Uncle Billy, but he stuck closer than any brother was ever known to stick and she must let him see her hand to the old man a package, saying:
“Please, Uncle Billy, give this to Miss Ann Peyton and tell her it is from a sincere admirer. It is just a bottle of lavender water, but I thought she might like it.”122
Uncle Billy bowed so low that his beard almost touched the ground.
“Thank you, thank you, missy! I been a sayin’ that you air the onlies’ one in the whole county what kin hol a can’le to what my Miss Ann wa’ in ol’ days—an’ air now fer that matter.”
123CHAPTER XIA Surprise for Cinderella
The Ryeville Courier reported that the county was “agog” over the ball to be given by the veterans of the Rye House porch. Invitations were delivered with the same expedition that they had been printed and by nightfall of the day the scheme was hatched everybody who was anybody, and a great many who made no pretense of being, had received a notice that he or she was expected to come to the skating rink on Friday night to a debut party.
“We’ll show ’em,” boasted Judge Middleton, who with Colonel Crutcher had driven about town in his buggy, delivering invitations. “First, we’ll stop at the Buck place and ask Judith. We can’t have a party without our Cinderella.”
Judith had returned from her peddling trip, and was busily engaged in preparing the motormen’s supper, when her old admirers arrived.
“Hi, Miss Judy!” they called from the buggy.124
“Hi, yourself!” she cried, appearing around the side of the house with floury hands and flushed face.
“We’re gonter give a ball and we want to ask you to come to it,” said the Colonel. “It is to be this Friday night coming.”
“Oh, I wish I could, but you know I never leave my mother at night. You see, she is all alone.”
“Of course you don’t, but your mother is especially invited to this ball. See her name is written over yours on the envelope. Why, child, it wouldn’t be a ball unless you came. We—we—” but here Judge Middleton dug an elbow into the Colonel’s ribs and took the conversation in his own hands.
“The fact is, Miss Judy, all of us old fellows think a lot of you and we are kind of ’lowing you’d dance with us and make it lively for us. We’ll take it as a special favor if you stretch a point and come—you and your mother.”
Judith glowed with appreciation and put a floury hand on the old man’s arm.
“Oh, Judge Middleton, you are good—all of you are so kind to me. I’d rather come to your party than do anything in the world. I never have been to a real ball—a picnic is about the closest I’ve come to one, that and some125school entertainments, but you see I haven’t a suitable dress. You wouldn’t like me to come looking like Cinderella after the clock struck twelve, would you now?”
“Well, you’d look better than most even if you did,” put in Colonel Crutcher, “but you needn’t be coming the Flora McFlimsey on us. Don’t we see you running around here in a blue dress all the time? And if that ain’t good enough I bet you’ve got a white muslin somewhere with a blue sash and maybe a blue hair ribbon.”
Judith laughed. “Well, I reckon I have and, after all, nobody is going to look at me and I do want to go. I’ll say yes and I can bulldoze Mother into accepting, too, I am sure. I think it is the grandest thing that ever happened for all of you to be giving a debut party, and I’m going to come, and what’s more, I intend to dance every dance.”
“Now you are talkin’,” shouted the old men. “Save some dances for us.”
After they had driven away, the buggy enveloped in the inevitable cloud of limestone dust, Judith still stood in the yard until she saw the cloud, little more than a speck in the distance, turn into the Buck Hill avenue.
“I reckon they’ll all laugh at the dear old126men and make fun of their having a debut party for themselves, but I think it is just too sweet of them. Oh, oh, oh, if I only had a new dress!”
There was a general invitation for Buck Hill, family and visitors, and an especial one for Miss Ann Peyton, to whom the old men of Ryeville wished to show marked respect as being of their generation.
“Of course, we shall all go,” announced Mr. Bucknor.
“It sounds rather common,” objected Mildred. “And only look at the invitations! Did anyone ever see such ridiculous-looking things?”
But everyone wanted to go in spite of Mildred’s uncertainty, so R. S. V. P.’s were sent P. D. Q. and old Billy got busy greasing harness and polishing the coach so that his equipage might be fit for the first lady of the land to go to the ball.
“Air you gonter ’pear in yo’ sprigged muslin?” he asked Miss Ann, “or is the ’casion sech as you will w’ar yo’ black lace an’ diments?”
“Black lace and diamonds,” said Miss Ann, “but I shall have to begin darning immediately. Lace is very perishable.”
“It sho’ is,” agreed Billy. Far be it from him to remind his mistress that the black lace had127been going long enough to deserve a pension. So Miss Ann darned and darned on the old black lace and with ammonia and a discarded tooth brush she cleaned the diamond necklace and earrings and the high comb set with brilliants and her many rings. It was exciting to be going to a ball again. It had been many a year since she had even been invited to one. She was as pleased as a child over having an invitation all to herself—not that she would let anyone know it, but she let old Billy express his gratification.
“I tell you, Miss Ann, that there Colonel Crutcher air folks, him an’ Judge Middleton both. They don’t put on no airs but they’s folksy enough not ter have ter. I reckon they knowed you’s a gonter be the belle er the ball wheresomever it air an’ that’s the reason they done brung you a spechul invite.”
The old men of the town met on the Rye House porch after supper that night to report progress.
“Everything’s goin’ fine,” was the general report.
“Not an out-and-out refusal yet.”
“Came mighty near not getting Miss Judith,” said Colonel Crutcher. “First she couldn’t leave her mother and then when we told her128Mrs. Buck was especially invited she put up a plea of not having the right kind of dress. Said she’d look like Cinderella after the clock struck twelve. But the Judge and I looked so miserable over it that the child finally said she’d come, but I reckon she’ll be wearing an old dress.”
“Looks like she’s got so many businesses she might buy herself a dress,” suggested one.
“Not her. She’s saving every cent to put guano on the land.”
“Well, beauty unadorned is adorned the most,” mused Major Fitch.
“Say, I got a idee,” put in Pete Barnes.
“Go to it, Pete! Your idees are something worth while here lately. What is it?”
“What’s the reason we can’t get little Judy a dress over to Louisville? Us old men can all chip in an’ it wouldn’t amount to mor’n a good nights losin’ at poker.”
“She’s right proud. Do you reckon she’d get her back up and decline to accept it?” asked Judge Middleton.
“Not Judith. She’s not the kind to be hunting slights, but suppose we send it to her anonymous like and pretend her fairy godmother had something to do with it,” suggested Pete.129
“And who’s gonter buy it? We don’t want any of the Ryeville women in on this,” said Colonel Crutcher.
“I got another idee,” said Pete. “Let’s get the motormen to get their wives down at the other end to shop for us. I was talkin’ to one only this mornin’ an’ he said Miss Judy cooked the best dinner he ever et an’ I’m pretty sure they’d be glad to help us out.”
“But they might help us out too gaudy like.”
“Gee, they couldn’t go wrong if we told them it must be white—white with a blue sash.”
“I’d like it to be white tarlatan or something thinnish and gauzy like and kind of stand-outy without being stand-offish.”
“And I think a few gold beads, kind of trimming it up, would be becoming to our debutante.”
“And we ought to get her slippers and stockings to match.”
“How about the size?”
That was a stumper until Pete Barnes had another idee, and that was that old Otto Schmidt, the trusty shoe repairer of Ryeville, might know. He did. In fact, even then he had a pair of Judith’s shoes to be half soled.
“She’s schlim and long,” said Otto, “five and a half touble A.”130
So five and a half double A it was. “And make ’em gold,” suggested the Colonel.
The motorman approached was delighted to undertake the commission. “My wife’s pretty grateful not to have to be worrying herself to death about my supper and she’ll be tickled stiff to have a chance to go spend some money even if it isn’t for herself. She used to be saleslady in the biggest shop in Louisville, before she married me. She’s just about Miss Buck’s size, too,” he said.
Minute directions were given the kindly motorman as to the dress being white and thinnish and standoutish, with a blue sash and gold bead trimming, the slippers long and slim and gold.
“A blue ribbin for her hair, if you don’t mind, too,” said Pete Barnes. “I been always a holdin’ that there ain’t anything so tasty as a blue ribbin in a gal’s hair.”
“They don’t wear ribbons in their hair any more,” said Major Fitch. “I believe they all are using tucking combs nowadays.”
“Well, then, I give in. Our gal must be stylish, but I’d sure like a blue ribbin in her hair. Get her a good tuckin’ comb then.”
The ball was to be on Friday. Judith’s mind was so full of it she found it difficult to attend to her many self-imposed duties.131
“Actually, Mumsy, I tried to sell anti-kink to a bald-headed white man. I really believe I shall have to give up my peddling job until after the ball is over,” she said.
Mrs. Buck had entered only half-heartedly into the plan of going to the ball, and had agreed to go only because Judith had pleaded so earnestly with her. Her best and only black silk must be taken out and sunned and aired and pressed.
“I declare, I’ve had it so long the styles have caught up with it again,” she exclaimed.
“Well, I wish I could say the same for my white muslin,” sighed Judith. “I’ve a great mind to wear it hind part before, to make a little change in it. Anyhow, I intend to have just as good a time in it as though it were white chiffon, embroidered in gold beads. My white pumps aren’t so bad looking. I’ll take time to-morrow to shampoo my hair. Do you know, Mumsy, Cousin Ann Peyton’s wig is just the color of my hair. Poor old lady! Pity she can’t lose it!”
It was Thursday night. The day’s work was over, the last dish from the motormen’s supper washed and put away and Mrs. Buck and her daughter were having a quiet chat, seated on the side porch. It was a pleasant spot, homelike132and comfortable. It was on this porch that the summer activities of the farm were carried on. Here they prepared fruit for preserving and even preserved, as a kerosene stove behind a screen in the corner gave evidence. Here they churned, in a yellow cradle churn, and worked the butter.
“It saves the house if you can do most of your work in the open,” Mrs. Buck had said.
Judith had stretched a hammock across the corner of the porch, and now she was allowing herself to relax for awhile before going to bed. She pushed herself gently to and fro with one slender foot on the porch floor, and looked out dreamily over the fields flooded with moonlight—fields bought by her grandfather Knight from her grandfather Buck, inherited by him from his father, who had inherited from his father. Each generation had done what it could to impoverish the land and never to improve it. Now it was up to her, nothing but a slip of a girl nineteen years old, to buy guano and bring the land back to its original value.
“Ho, hum! If Grandfather Buck hadn’t wasted so much and Grandfather Knight hadn’t saved so much I could put my earnings in a new georgette dress to wear to the old men’s debut ball,” she sighed.133
A few vehicles passed the house—now an old-fashioned buggy, now a stylish touring car—each one leaving a trailing cloud of limestone dust.
“Listen, Judith, I heard the gate click.”
“Nothing but an owl clucking, Mumsy. I heard it, too, but nobody would be coming to see us this time of night.”
“It might be some young beaux coming to see you,” suggested Mrs. Buck. “You’d have plenty of them if you weren’t so—so—businesslike.”
Judith laughed merrily. “Well, I reckon they’d come anyhow if they wanted to, but I must say, Mumsy, I’m kind of snobbish about your so-called beaux. I might like the boys if they would only stop being so silly and understand that I’m a human being with a mind and soul. I reckon I’ve always been too busy to play much with the boys around Ryeville. The old men like me though.”
“That’s not getting anywhere,” complained Mrs. Buck, who frankly hoped for a husband for her daughter, although her own matrimonial venture had not been any too successful.
“That was a knock!” insisted the mother a moment later. Judith jumped up from the hammock. “I’ll go outside and see who it is.”134
“Indeed you won’t! If it’s callers you’ve got to receive them in the house. Just light the lamp in the parlor and then open the door. I ain’t fit to see anybody so I won’t go in.”
Judith did as her mother directed, lit the lamp in the parlor and then cautiously opened the door. Nobody was there, but a large dress box was leaning against the door and fell into the hall when the door was opened. The girl picked it up and carried it into the parlor.
“Mumsy! Come quick! I don’t know what it is but it isn’t a beau. Never mind your dress, but just come!”
The string was broken by eager young hands, although Mrs. Buck begged to be allowed to pick out the knots. The top of the box was snatched off, disclosing much white tissue paper with a folded note pinned in the center.
“It must be flowers,” cried Judith. “I’m so excited I can’t make up my mind to take off the wrappings.
“Well, read the note! It’s addressed to you,” said Mrs. Buck.
“It says: ‘To Miss Judith Buck, from her old fairy god-fathers.’ Oh, Mumsy, my old men are sending me some flowers, to wear to the ball, I guess. I’ll clip the stems to keep them fresh.”135
“Well, why don’t you open ’em up?”
Layer by layer Judith removed the tissue paper. At last the precious contents of the box were revealed—a white chiffon dress, delicately broidered with tiny gold beads, with a twisted girdle of blue with cloth of gold, a dainty blue comb set with brilliants. In a separate wrapper at one end of the box, gold slippers and stockings were discovered.
“Oh, Mumsy! I’m going to cry,” and Judith did shed a few tears and sob a few sobs.
“Surely you are not going to accept clothes from any man, Judith.” Mrs. Buck’s tone was stern and disapproving.
“Of course not from any one man, but this is from about ten men—the dear old men who are giving the ball! I wouldn’t be so mean as not to accept this gift. What’s more, I’m going to try the things on this minute. Look! There’s even a silk slip to wear under it. Whoever bought this outfit knew how to buy. Mumsy, Mumsy! The slippers fit. Oh, I’m a real Cinderella, but the best thing about it is that the old men must truly love me, the dears.”