CHAPTER XIVONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON
Fromthe evening of the lawn party (the Ladies’ Aid was bitter about that) Annette Bowman’s influence upon the younger element of Polktown was established. Contrary to her brother’s expectations, Annette did not find the little provincial town a bore. Indeed, she began to “have the time of her young, sweet life,” as Frank confessed, with chagrin, to Janice.
“I wouldn’t believe it if I didn’t see it with my own eyes. I thought she would be disgusted with the place in a day—dead sore on it in a week—and desirous of never hearing the word ‘Polktown’ mentioned as long as she lived, when she turned her back on it and hiked for New York, where we have a lively bunch of cousins.
“But what do you think?” continued the amazed young civil engineer. “She is talking now of our taking a house, if one can be found, hiring a woman to do the work, and remaining all winter. For I shall be on this job, I expect, all this year and next. She declares she is going to wake Polktown up. Sheis going to innovate carpet dances, and hopes to see frequent balls in the Odd Fellows’ Hall, and wants to stir up the whole place as it hasn’t been stirred since the Year One.
“Believe me, Miss Janice! I didn’t think it was in her. I thought she would make everybody laugh at her, or angry with her, inside of a week—everybody she met, I mean. And I declare! Old Mrs. Parraday almost worships her already. That funny little Mrs. Scattergood—the mother of your friend—has been to call on her, and Annette put herself out to delight the old lady.
“Old Dexter is beginning to stop and talk whenever he meets her; and if you’ll believe it, she was in Massey’s drug store yesterday with Maggie Price and Mrs. Price, and she was teaching those old loafers that congregate there—Cross Moore, and Dexter, and Len Phinney—some dancing steps.
“She says what they need and what she is going to import—if she can get one—is a dancing teacher. What do you know about that? A dancing teacher, no less! Says people ought not to be allowed to grow up and just exist, as folks do here, until Death reaps ’em, without getting any joy out of life.”
“I guess she’s right as far as that goes, Mr. Bowman,” said Janice reflectively.
“Well, I think she got it all out of a book,” said the young engineer, rather doubtfully. “You never heard such talk in your life! I imagine it’s just apose of Annette’s. She’s a nice enough girl, but she’s got Aunt Lettie’s idea of always being in the public eye. I don’t know how long the Polktown public will stand for her.”
There was a branch of it already that was displeased with Annette Bowman, as Janice very well knew. The ladies of the Aid Society laid it all to her that they had not made a financial success of the lawn party. People had been so much interested in the exhibitions of dancing on the Prices’ porch that they had forgotten to spend their money at the tables. So, much of the food prepared had been wasted.
Elder Concannon led a party, too, who opposed the régime of the city girl, though that was a chronic opposition that did not count for much, after all. And Miss Bowman set out at once to charm away the grouch of the Ladies’ Aid. She succeeded to a degree, for she was willing to be interviewed upon the subject of dress morning, noon and night, and idling about the village as she did all day, she was always ready to be questioned, and offered advice in the matter of style, in and out of season.
Janice and Annette did not meet frequently. The former could not complain of any particular neglect upon the part of Frank’s sister—not at all! Nor did Miss Bowman slight her when they were in company together. Only the girl from the fashionable boarding school appeared to set Janice in her placeas a girl of much tenderer years; which might have hurt Janice had she been sensitive about her lack of age.
Frank often expressed his desire that Janice and Annette should be good friends; but, to tell the truth, neither girl desired any intimacy. They had few tastes in common. Whereas Janice Day was as ready and as eager for a good time as any normal girl possibly could be, her idea of amusement was not always in accord with the ideas of Annette and the crowd of girls whom she very quickly won to her train.
Janice had her car, and she could have filled it every afternoon with a party of girls of her own age, and ridden about the country, or to Middletown or some neighboring hamlet. But Janice found most of the girls distasteful to her. When she had first come to Polktown the big girls in Miss ’Rill Scattergood’s school had been very unkind. Their treatment had driven Janice to find companionship and friends in other directions. She visited more people like Miss ’Rill and her mother, Hopewell Drugg, the Hammett Twins, and the like, than she did houses where there were girls of her own age.
She did not wish to be considered arrogant, or selfish; therefore she had asked many of the girls to ride with her. But almost always her companions talked of things that did not interest Janicein the least. Of late the conversation of most of the girls of a companionable age was made up of fashion and dress, while they sang the praises of Annette Bowman, what she was doing and what she was going to do.
“I am afraid I must be jealous of her,” thought Janice, with some horror. “I even wish Mr. Bowman would stop talking about her. And I am sure she dislikes me. I never did feel just so about anybody in my life before.”
So she took out older ladies in her car almost entirely. Sometimes she went to call on the Hammett Twins—Miss Blossom and Miss Pussy. Neither of them had plucked up sufficient courage to ride in Janice’s car; but they loved to have the girl come to see them.
And when she was alone, she liked to ride around by the squatters’ cabin in Elder Concannon’s woods. Not that she could get near to the Trimmins children, nor did she meet their mother again. But she had such a deep interest in the black-haired girl, Jinny, that Janice actually could not keep her out of her mind.
“There must be something I can do for her. There is something to do for all the girls around town of her age. They are running wild—a good many of them; and they will grow up to be as silly as their older sisters are now, if something isn’t found to interest them.”
Not that this problem occupied all Janice Day’s thought. Since the lawn party she had hoped that Nelson Haley would become more friendly again. She heartily wished that she had been able that evening to broach the subject of their estrangement, but there had been too many people around to enter into any private conversation.
He did not seem to be with Annette so much during these few days before the school opened, but Janice did not happen to run across him save in some public place. She was looking forward to the next Sunday and determined to try to get the school teacher to stroll home with her, as he had formerly been so fond of doing. Saturday, however, intervened; and Saturday was a fateful day.
If Janice had but known it, Nelson Haley was quite as desirous of being friendly with her as she was with him. In spite of his careless, easy-going manner, the young man was sensitive in the extreme. The sight of Frank Bowman speeding about town with Janice in her car had hurt Nelson.
Then slighting little remarks that Annette had let drop served to fan the flame of Nelson’s jealousy. Annette continued to speak of Janice and treat her as though she were a little girl. But she intimated that Frank had become strangely enamored “of the child.” She chose to consider Frank’s praise of Janice as intimating that her brother was in love withher. Her sneering, laughing little quips about this supposed attachment cut Nelson to the quick.
For underneath Nelson Haley’s easy-going exterior was a serious character that he seldom showed to the world. Janice knew it was there; she had seen flashes of sentiment and of strength that few people who met the school teacher would ever have suspected was back of his semi-humorous smile and light-hearted speech. To Janice he had confided his desires and hopes regarding his future career. It had been her suggestion that perhaps, after all, he should teach another year in Polktown before accepting the offer from the small college which he had received a few weeks before.
Nelson missed his quiet little talks with the girl. She had been a help and an inspiration to him and he had long since learned to think much of her. The way she seemed to have taken Frank Bowman, the civil engineer, into her confidence, and to have made a companion of him, did not please Nelson at all. He could not understand Janice’s being fickle; yet it seemed as though she must be. Why—the day she and Marty came to the hotel and drove off with Frank in the car, Janice had not even suggested his going along! And there were seats for four. He and Bowman’s sister might have been asked to join the party, crowding Marty in with them.
Take it all in all, Nelson Haley had spent a veryuncomfortable summer. It had been nothing like what he expected when school closed in June and he had come to Janice with the offer he had received from the college faculty to join it in the fall. He thought he had “made good” with her then; and she had been more than kind to him. Now he felt Janice was becoming a stranger.
It bothered Nelson in his studies (he had spent most of the summer in preparing for his work in the Polktown school for the coming winter) and finally, on this Saturday before the opening of the term, he determined that he must have a fair and square understanding with Janice, and free his mind.
He came downtown immediately after dinner, did some errands, and then walked up Hillside Avenue to the old Day house. Had he glanced into the rain-soaked roadway (it had showered the night before) he would have seen the wheel-tracks of Janice’s automobile; but he saw with a pang that the garage door was open when he reached the house.
“I declare for’t, Mr. Haley!” exclaimed Aunt ’Mira, coming to the door to meet him. “Janice? If she ain’t jest gone! Didn’t you meet her? I declare for’t! She gits about in that ortermobile as lively as a water-witch. Marty, he’s gone fishin’, so Janice said she’d run over an’ take Miss ’Rill andher mother out for a run. She’ll be back ’long about five. Won’t you stop, Mr. Haley?”
But the disappointed school teacher refused her polite offer, and Aunt ’Mira went back to the wonderful gown she was making with a sigh of relief. Haley returned to Mrs. Beasely’s cottage. As he passed Hopewell Drugg’s store he heard the storekeeper’s violin and saw the flutter of a white dress on the side porch between the store and the dwelling.
“Why, there’s Miss ’Rill now!” he thought, in some surprise. “Can it be possible that Janice is with her?”
But he saw no sign of the car anywhere about, and was quite sure that Janice would not have lent it to anybody. Nelson walked across the street for a nearer view of Drugg’s vine-enshrouded porch. Hopewell was sawing away at the gay little tune he now played so much, “Jingle Bells.” Miss ’Rill and he were alone.
Nelson felt almost a physical pang at the discovery. Surely Aunt ’Mira could not have been mistaken as to what Janice had told her. Nor could the girl have already taken out the Scattergoods and returned.
Suspicion took hold upon the young man’s mind, and it was all the keener as jealousy tinged it. Almost in spite of himself he began to walk toward High Street. The Scattergoods lived just aroundthe corner, having half of a double cottage, with a pretty flower-garden in front and a bit of lawn.
He came in sight of this and there was old lady Scattergood, in her sunbonnet and garden gloves, working in the flower-bed. Surely she had not been automobiling, nor did she expect to go this afternoon.
Nelson stopped, hesitated, then turned on his heel with the sudden stiffening all through his body that proclaimed indignation. It looked as though Janice had not told her aunt the truth. He would never have suspected the girl of speaking a falsehood! He strode down the hill toward the hotel. He was determined to find out if Frank Bowman was there.