CHAPTER XIIITHE LAWN PARTY
TheLadies’ Aid gave, as it did every summer, a lawn party in Major Price’s front yard. The big mansion, which had been built by some Price ancestor, was always thrown open to the guests at that time. Mrs. Price and her two maids, with Maggie’s help, cleaned and furbished for a week previous to the annual event. New curtains were hung, the rugs were beaten, and of late years a vacuum-cleaner was imported to do much of the heavy work for the women-folk. Major Price was not a niggard, although he was “as old-fashioned as the hills,” his wife declared. And the Vermont hills are very old-fashioned, indeed!
The Major was a portly man who advertised his station as the magnate of Polktown by the wearing of a white shirt with a stiff, short bosom, every day in the week. The linen was immaculate, but his torso, swollen by good feeding, seemed about to burst through the shirt.
The old man had a jovial voice, a great mop of silvery hair, watery blue eyes which usually helda twinkle swimming in their moist depths, and enormous, hairy hands which of late had begun to shake a little. He was smoothly shaven—scrupulously so every morning—and his complexion was ruddy. This was fortunate, too, for it made comparison less odious between his sagging cheeks and his nose. The latter was swollen and angry-looking and it was whispered that the Major was a secret drinker.
However, the old gentleman and his family placed the full resources of their house and grounds at the disposal of the church ladies. The latter and all the young girls and boys they could enmesh in the scheme worked for two days preparing the tables, decorating the trees with strings of Japanese lanterns, putting up bunting, gathering flowering branches from the woods, and doing a thousand and one things to decorate and make the old yard more attractive.
Janice and her car were requisitioned, and it brought many a load to the gate of the Price place. That week was a busy one for her, for in a few days more the seminary would open and she was brushing up the studies that she had dropped months before.
This lawn party was really the first public entertainment at which the younger element of Polktown society could display the influence exerted upon it by the coming and appearance of Annette Bowman.Mrs. Hutchins (and presumably Mr. John-Ed., head of the basting-pulling department) had been very, very busy for more than a fortnight. Every other woman who pretended to do dressmaking in Polktown had likewise been engaged to the full.
And certainly an amazingly-dressed crowd of girls and younger women began to flutter through Polktown’s streets to the Major’s place next to old Bill Jones’ market, as evening dropped.
Some of the girls had come earlier to make ready the tables and help the ladies of the Aid Society. But these girls included most of the steady ones. Vira Snow, Maybelle Woods, and Icivilly Sprague, and their kind, did not come to help, but to be observed.
And they most certainly were observed!
Those who had essayed the tighter effects in skirts had not yet practised walking so mincing a gait as was necessary; and it was told afterward that Phin Pollock, who was with Icivilly, grew impatient and picked her up in his arms and strode along with her for a couple of blocks, to the delight of some small boys. Icivilly could not struggle much, she was too tightly sheathed for that, and all the attention big Phin gave to her sputterings was:
“Wal, dern my hat! ’f you air bound to tie yerself up in a hard knot this a-way, ’Villy, don’t blame me. I wanter git there b’fore old Elder Concannon eats up all the ice-cream.”
The Elder had gradually become a perfect volcano of repressed emotion. On this evening the volcano boiled over.
Annette was wonderfully garbed in a frock that suggested nothing so much as it did a brown moth. It really was pretty, saving that the way Annette wore it, and her own light actions, served to make the dress seem immodest. And she did the very thing to-night that her brother had warned her against. She went exactly opposite to the conventions of Polktown.
Although this lawn party was not held within sight, even, of the church premises, it was engineered by a church society and the profit went into the church treasury. There was, therefore, in the mind of the Polktown public some simple reverence to be shown the occasion; and before those to be served first sat down at the tables, Elder Concannon asked a blessing.
Ten minutes later Annette, with the help of Maggie Price, had gathered together a crowd of the older girls and boys. They had rolled the big talking machine out upon the veranda, and finding several records of the newer dance tunes, Annette insisted upon starting one. Of course, young folks could not hear that music and keep their feet from fairly itching to dance.
Frank hurried from a far part of the grounds to try and halt his sister; but she was in the midstof the dance when he arrived, her partner being one of the traveling men who had come up from the hotel. He knew the modern steps, and so did Annette. They were almost the only couple dancing, but the crowd was increasing at the edge of the veranda. Polktown’s eyes were being opened. Nothing just like this had ever been seen before!
The ladies could scarcely get people enough to fill the tables, and pay their quarter apiece for ice-cream and cake, or for smoking baked beans and brownbread. The Elder (who preached “temperance in all things” but never seemed to consider that it might apply to eating) left the table to see what was attracting the crowd to the broad veranda.
His amazement and rage can be better imagined than explained when he saw Annette and her brother Frank (she having discarded the salesman for the benefit of Maggie Price) giving exhibition steps of the fox-trot, the dip, and various other terpsichorean athletics.
The Elder was, after all, a gentleman; this was a private place offered to the women of the Ladies’ Aid by the courtesy of the host and hostess. He could say nothing; but he strode away in unspeakable indignation, refusing his third dish of ice-cream, and afterward favored poor Mr. Middler with a diatribe against all intemperate living and dressing.
“The town is being cursed by it!” he declared,having cornered the little pastor and laying down the law to him in his usual dogmatic fashion. “The women and young girls have gone crazy over fashions and furbelows. This girl from the city that her brother’s brought here is stirring up the whole community to vanity and foolishness.
“Such a disgraceful scene as is being enacted on the porch our town council would not have allowed exhibited on the ungodly stage of the Opera House. Our people are becoming contaminated, Mr. Middler, with the bacilli of the modern craze for amusement. I tell you, our church is in danger. Were I once more the occupant of that pulpit,” added the Elder, with angry desire, “I would thunder forth such a denunciation of these goings-on as would rock Polktown to its foundations, sir.”
“I am not sure,” rejoined mild Mr. Middler, “that denunciations count for much in these days, Elder. The people have learned to think and to choose for themselves. As for this silly wave of overdressing among the younger women, to oppose it would be like trying to stop water from seeking its level.”
“Hah!” snorted the Elder, his head high and his eyes glowing.
“The rage for vain adornment will run its course—it is bound to,” proceeded Mr. Middle, “like the scarlet fever. Nothing that is not fatal can stop it. Our girls are not wicked even if they are silly. Andperhaps all is not even silliness. Polktown is growing; we are advancing in many ways——”
“Tut, tut!” exploded the Elder. “I am tired of that ‘progress’ idea. We have had too much of it. I am sorry I ever countenanced the first new thing.”
“You surely would not say the Public Library is not a good thing, Elder?” cried Mr. Middler.
“I don’t know but I would. It was a wedge—a wedge driv’ by that little Day girl. And now she’s flittering about the roads in one of those devil wagons that I am convinced, Brother Middler, was prophesied against in the Book of Daniel.” Here, having reached a more satisfactory subject for discussion, the old Elder spread forth before his ministerial friend the prophetical statements of the great hero of Biblical history anent the automobile craze of the present day.
Janice had helped all afternoon to prepare the feast of the evening, and then waited on table. She did not even go to watch the dancing on the veranda, and she was glad to see that Nelson Haley was not in the crowd at the house. Indeed, she served him at one end of a long table that was about half filled with guests.
“It is too bad, too,” she confided to the teacher, “for that dancing is just ruining the ladies’ chance of making enough money to get new shades for thechurch parlors. You know that was what they held this lawn fête for.”
“What’s the matter with everybody?” asked Nelson, good-naturedly. “Not that I ever could see the reason for insulting one’s stomach with hot beans and brownbread, and cold cream and cake, even in the most righteous cause.”
“But these are the viands expected,” said Janice, her eyes dancing. “New England combinations of food were a mystery to me when I first came here. And one combination still remains a puzzle.”
“What’s that?” asked Nelson, entering into the spirit of kindly raillery which she had evinced.
“Why, oh, why, do they always serve cheese with pie? It is like the pilot-fish before the shark, or that bird they say always accompanies the rhinoceros; one can never be seen without the other. No housewife in Polktown would serve a piece of pie without putting a slab of cheese on the plate beside it.”
“Good gastronomic reason for it,” declared Nelson, confidently. “As the Frenchman says, ‘Ze cheese, he cor-r-rects ze reechness of heem.’ However, Janice, if you please, you may bring me another helping of beans—I recognize their flavor—they are Mother Beasely’s; and I will have my ice-cream and some of Miss ’Rill’s chocolate cake afterward.”
“I see you like to insult your stomach once in awhile, too,” she laughed, as she tripped away to fill his order.
Annette’s dancing exhibition seemed to promise a distinct gain for Janice Day. Nelson did not go near the veranda, but sat and talked with her during her flittings to and fro. There was so much interest shown by the spectators in the music and dancing that the Ladies’ Aid did suffer in pocket and Janice had plenty of time to talk.
She learned that the board of the college which had called Nelson had agreed to keep the position open for him for another year, so he was to stay in Polktown. The increase in his salary he could send to the old aunt who had helped him get an education. On her part, Janice explained her reason for attending school in Middletown, and what a great help Daddy’s present was going to be to her in getting back and forth.
But the real source of the difference between them—the barrier o’er which their confidences could not leap—was touched upon by neither. Nelson could not speak about Frank Bowman, nor could Janice open her lips about Annette.