CHAPTER XXTHE BARN DANCE
Annette Bowmanhad kept up her association with the Slater girls. Judge Slater’s place was fully ten miles from Polktown and on a road that branched south into the valley from the Lower Middletown pike. Annette went over to see the Slater girls at least once a week, or they came to visit her at the Lake View Inn.
Like Annette, the Judge’s daughters had been of the ultra-fashionable set that attended the private school in which the civil engineer’s sister was supposedly “finished.” Frank confessedly did not like them. He told Janice that they were “cacklers,” and that “they didn’t have an ounce of sense in their heads.”
The civil engineer liked girls who were of a practical turn of mind. He was jolly enough, and was good company; but of small talk he had little. He took life rather earnestly, did this young engineer, and he had an object to aim for, which, although he did not confide in Janice, she strongly suspected.
Frank had nothing to do with the barn dance that was arranged to take place at Judge Slater’s soon after the first heavy snow had fallen. The roads quickly became well packed, as they do in the Green Mountains, and sleighing promised to last until the February thaw. Annette was the prime mover in the barn dance, but Judge Slater and his wife saw to it that the invitations to Polktown people were quite general. The Judge was looking for an election to the State Legislature, and he ran no risk of offending anybody.
The Slater barn had an enormous floor, and the planks were in very good condition. There had been so much interest in dancing that fall in Polktown, that a big crowd made preparations to attend. Everything on runners owned in and about the village was requisitioned long before the evening named in the invitation.
Annette herself had gone over to Judge Slater’s the day before. “You’ll surely come, Frank, now, won’t you?” she said to her brother. “You know, dancing men will be awfully scarce. These ‘hicks’ are just about as graceful as cows on a dancing floor,” and she laughed carelessly.
“My goodness, Annette, but you are a hypocrite!” growled her brother. “You make me sick. Butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth when you’re talking to these people, while behind their backs you only make fun of them.”
“Well, what they don’t know won’t hurt them, will it?” she demanded. “Goodness! I have to let myself go once in a while, or I would burst! They are regular barbarians——”
“You don’t have to live among them,” interrupted Frank sternly.
“Neither do you,” snapped his sister.
“I have to be on the job. There’s not much doing on the construction work now, I know; but I’ve got to watch it. I tell you frankly, Annette, I’d feel better if you took a trip to New York and stayed there. You’ll do or say something yet that will get you in bad with the whole town.”
“‘Bah! bah! black sheep! have you any wool’?” laughed Annette. “But if you have, you can’t pull it over my eyes. You want me away so you can run around with that Day girl——”
“Now stop, Annette!” exclaimed her brother angrily. “You don’t know Janice, and you have taken a dislike to her and so are determined not to know her. I don’t run around after her. I like her. She is a good, jolly girl; but there’s no foolishness between us, and you know it!”
As she saw that he had become seriously angry, Annette began to make her peace and smooth over the trouble.
“You’ll come over to the barn dance, anyway, won’t you, dear?” she concluded. “It will be a failure without you.”
“I don’t suppose there’s a rig to be got for love or money,” Frank objected. “About everybody’s going.”
“Oh! you can find somebody that will let you squeeze in.”
“Have the Days been invited?” quickly inquired Frank.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” snapped his sister impatiently. “Goodness! that big, fat woman would be a sight on the floor—you know it. She dresses like an Italian sunset.”
“They’ve got a span of good horses,” said Frank firmly, “and a roomy double-seated sleigh. If they are invited they might ask me to go with them,” said the foxy engineer.
For Marty had expressed a desire to go to the dance, and said that his mother was fairly crazy to attend; but that no invitation from the Slaters had come to the Day house. Annette saw when she was beaten, and the very next day the belated invitation arrived for “Mr. Jason Day and family.”
Of course, Uncle Jason would not attend. Somebody had to stay at home and take care of the stock, and keep the fires up in the kitchen and sitting-room stoves. For the thermometer was below zero and wood fires have to be frequently tended. But Aunt ’Mira declared she was going if she had to walk!
“Well, yeou’d manage ter keep up a gentle perspiration,I reckon, if you walked clean from here to Slater’s, Almiry,” drawled Uncle Jason. “And I see by that book on physical culture ye got upstairs thet the doctors advise that so as ter help git flesh off a body. My soul! if you cut all the capers that’s pictered out in thet there book to try an’ git off your fat, it’d tickle me more’n a case of hives ter see ye—it sartain would!”
Aunt ’Mira was not to be ridiculed out of her attempts to get the best of her too fleshy figure. She studied the physical culture book as faithfully as she did the fashion magazines. One day, the family sitting downstairs, felt the whole house jar as though the foundations had suddenly settled. Uncle Jason and Marty stared at each other.
“Never heard a tree burst in the forest so early in the winter in my life before, I vum!” declared Uncle Jason.
“That warn’t no tree bustin’,” returned his son. “It must be blastin’ up to the marble quarries. An’ it was some blast, at that!”
“Why, Marty,” said his father, “they don’t work in the marble quarries in the winter. You know that well enough, son—I snum! there it is again!”
The house rocked—it continued to rock. The floor above shook. A dish rattled down from the dresser shelf and was broken on the floor. Janice jumped up with an exclamation and whisked upstairs. The two men followed her.
Mrs. Day’s chamber door had jarred open. The bed and other furniture had been moved back and there the unhappy lady was rolling on the floor, puffing and blowing, red of face and perspiring, but determined to follow the directions in her book for attaining “a sylph-like form.”
“What in all tarnation be yeou wallerin’ there for?” demanded Mr. Day. “Fust yeou know, Almiry, ye’ll hev the poller ornymints down off’n the what-not.”
At any rate, Aunt ’Mira was going to the dance. Marty wanted to go, too; and as he still worshiped at the shrine of Mr. Bowman, he asked if that young man could not occupy the fourth seat.
“But how do you suppose Mr. Haley will get over?” Janice asked doubtfully.
“Shucks!” said her cousin. “Teacher’ll have a dozen chances to go; but Frank Bowman was sayin’ to me yesterday that he didn’t suppose he’d be able to hire a horse and sleigh anywhere in town.”
So Frank was invited—as he expected to be. Nelson Haley went with Walky Dexter in his big pung, that seated a dozen people. Hopewell Drugg and Miss ’Rill, with little Lottie, crowded into a one-horse sleigh and went off to the dance to the tune of “Jingle Bells” in very truth. It had been many and many a long year since the little old maid and the storekeeper had been to any socialaffair together. Of course, Mrs. Scattergood had her comment to make:
“I sh’d think you was makin’ enough of a fule of yourself, Amarilla, by marryin’ that Drugg, an’ him a widderer with an unfortinit child, without your flirtin’ abeout the country with him to dances, and sech. And you air dressed scanderlous, too!”
Janice had picked out the dress Miss ’Rill wore—and she saw to it that it was a pretty one. With her cheeks pink with excitement, her hair fluffed up prettily, and the soft, lacy gown clinging to her arms and neck, ’Rill Scattergood was far more attractive than many younger women at the ball.
When the Slaters did anything in this line, they did it well. The Judge, who was a politician, as has been pointed out, could not afford to skimp anything. There was supper for an army—and an army came!
The crowd around the dancing floor—some even climbing into the haymows—had come to see as well as to participate in the dancing. More than the ladies and young people of Polktown had taken up the dance craze. And those who were ashamed to try the steps, or who did not know how, were eager to observe the gyrations of the others.
Bogarti was present—was a sort of Master of Ceremonies, in fact. The simpler dances, played by the orchestra in one end of the haymow, were for the guests in general. But when the measuresrang out to which the tango, fox-trot, and such complicated steps were danced, the dancing master and his most successful pupils were about all who ventured on the floor.
Annette, the Slater girls, Maggie Price, and a few other young women, with Frank Bowman and some young men who had come out from the city for the occasion, exhibited the fancy dances. This was all very well, as far as it went. But once when Frank was out of the barn, Bogarti seized Miss Bowman, and they danced in a way to utterly scandalize many of the plainer people present.
The girl seemed utterly reckless on this night. She did not care what she did, or what she said. Knowing the temper of his constituents, the Judge sent his wife to speak to the girl and advise her to deport herself in a quieter manner. Annette’s actions really sent some of the stricter people home from the dance early.
Janice was sorry for Frank. At first he did not understand why the people were whispering together, and staring at Annette. He knew she was acting pretty recklessly; but he had not seen her fancy dancing with Bogarti. When Mrs. Slater, her face very much flushed and her eyes hard and angry, came to him and asked him to take his sister home, the blow to the young man’s pride was a severe one, indeed.
“I am sorry to seem harsh, Mr. Bowman,” saidthe Judge’s wife; “but I have my own daughters’ reputation to think of. Annette is utterly reckless. The exhibition she made of herself just now on this floor, in the arms of that silky, oiled foreigner——”
“What foreigner?” demanded Frank.
“Bogarti.”
“Oh—that chap!” Frank would have laughed had not the Judge’s wife been so serious. “His real name’s O’Brien, and Annette and I have known him since we were kids. O’Brien isn’t a bad sort, and he’s the husband of our old nurse. That hair and mustache of his are dyed.”
“But people don’t know it,” said Mrs. Slater. “She has disgraced herself and you. I could not countenance such a thing. The Judge could not countenance such a thing. It would be as much as his nomination is worth. You must take her away, Mr. Bowman. I am very sorry to ask you to go.”
Frank was chagrined and very, very angry. He blamed the Slaters more than he did his sister. He came to Janice with the trouble even before he sought out Annette.
“Can we get away? Could she be squeezed into that pung of yours? The seats are quite wide——”
“Of course, Mr. Bowman,” Janice murmured. “I will get Auntie and Marty. We will be glad to go home at once. Don’t tell your sister anything about what has been said, Mr. Bowman. Just makeup some reason for your wanting her to go home with you to-night.”
“By George! you’re a good one, Janice Day,” declared the civil engineer. “And if Annette had any sense at all she’d be grateful to you the longest day she lives. But, of course, she won’t. I don’t know what possesses her—has possessed her, in fact, since she came out of that fancy school she attended. I wish to goodness,” concluded the worried young man, “that she’d sow her wild oats and get over it. No boy could ever be as much trouble and worriment as she is. I vow, if she were a few years younger I’d—I’d spank her!”