Chance of a Lifetime (12 page)

“Boloney!” said Alan in a more lighthearted tone.

“No boloney about it,” said Sherrill. “Those are the facts. Just wait till I tell the society what they are to do and expect.”

“Say, look here, Sherrill, don’t you go putting anything over on me now. I won’t stand for being pushed to the front.”

“I don’t see that you can help it,” said Sherrill triumphantly. “You are vice president, aren’t you? By no act of your own. And your duty is to take the president’s place when she can’t serve. That pushes you into the place automatically, don’t you see? That’s what you are there for.

“Why, of course, Alan MacFarland. That goes without saying. Did you suppose I was going to be mum as an oyster all winter? Don’t you know I hate to go worse than you hate to have me go? You poor fish! I’ll bore you to death with directions, and watch every mail for your reports—just as I did when you went to Canada—and got nothing for my eagerness but half a dozen skimpy little postcards inscribed ‘O.K.A.M.’ or something to that effect.”

“Oh well,” said Alan. “I was only a kid then. I was too much interested in that new country.”

“You’re only a kid now, Alan, and don’t go to thinking you’re grown up, please, for you’ll spoil everything if you do. We’ve grown up together you know, and it isn’t fair for you to get ahead of me while I’m gone.”

“You don’t think New York and all those clever marriages your aunt is going to try to thrust upon you are going to age you any!” parried Alan.

“Certainly not,” said Sherrill cheerily. “Now take off that grouch and don’t let everybody know we’ve been having a fight.”

She gave him a friendly little pat, and they went up the steps of the house where they were to spend the evening together.

The door was flung wide, and happy voices and brightness greeted them eagerly. Sherrill felt a pang at the thought of leaving it all that threatened to overwhelm her. How hard it was going to be to drop out of all this dear circle, where all her interests had been since childhood.

She went in with her own bright smile, however, feeling that for Alan’s sake, at least, she must not let anything seem different.

They rushed upon her eagerly.

“You’re late, Sherrill! You two have been making such a fuss about everybody being on time and here you are ten whole minutes behind time yourselves.”

It was Alan who answered with a grave smile. “It couldn’t be helped this time, Willa. Keith had something important to tell me. We got away as soon as possible.”

Sherrill gave him a quick glance and noticed the quiet gravity on his usually merry face. So then her going was really cutting deep with Alan! She wondered why that should give her a pleasant sort of satisfaction, and somehow make it easier for her to go through the evening just as usual.

T
he social committee had outdone itself. The house, in which this festivity was being held, was a big, plain, roomy old affair that would have been the better with several coats of paint, both outside and inside. The furniture was, some of it, rare because very old, but the rest was plain and cheap. Yet it was a home where they all loved to go, the home of the beloved physician of Rockland, Dr. Barrington. Willa Barrington and her brother Fred were among the most active in the younger set. Since they all could remember, the Barrington home had been the center of some of their most delightful good times.

The doctor’s office was housed in a neat little building down on the corner of the lot, facing on both streets, and quite separate from the house, so that the clamor of joyous laughter and many young voices would not be disturbing. The Barrington lot was deep, and they had all helped to make the excellent tennis court at the back and contributed to the substantial back shops and other paraphernalia of the game. They had even planted the row of cosmos across the side fence that gave the tennis court a lovely setting in the fall; they had kept the lawn about the edge carefully cut, dividing the labor with the son of the house, so they all felt that they part owned the place. As indeed they felt about several other homes in which their activities were welcome at any time they chose to come.

But tonight the social committee had simply smothered the wide, plain, old rooms with bowers of lovely autumn colors. Great branches of autumn leaves framed all the pictures, and hid the mantels, and embowered the stair rail and newel post. Masses of outdoor pompon chrysanthemums filled the room with their spicy fragrance. White and pink in the old parlors, in vases and bowls and lovely old pitchers, standing on tables, and peering from between the curtains in the wide, old window seats; flame color and gold in the dining room, banked on the fine old sideboard—the sideboard that had been in the family for nearly two hundred years, with two tall white candles in unusual brass candlesticks at either side.

The dining room ceiling had been curiously decorated. Lines of fine, invisible wires had been strung across the room at intervals, and from it hung single flowers of bright chrysanthemums on silver wires, interspersed with especially lovely autumn leaves, either singly or in tall sprays, giving an effect of a fall garden.

From the chandelier above the long dining room table, which was spread to its full length and surrounded by a heterogeneous collection of chairs, came many small ribbons in shades of crimson and green and brown and gold, coming from a common center and spreading each to a place card at the table, cunningly fashioned from a folded card, and cut and painted in the shape of an autumn leaf.

Beside each place card stood a tiny toy candlestick, each containing a small yellow candle, and beside each candle lay half a cake of paraffin. Those guests who had penetrated to the dining room before they were expected to do so exclaimed and wondered, and a few who were wise exulted in the fun that lay before them.

The entertainment committee were consulting around the old square piano in the parlor, and a collection of instruments, running from cello and violin, down to guitar, ukulele, and banjo made it plain that an orchestra had a part in the program.

The girls were in pretty light dresses, varying from a few flowered chiffons, to printed dimities and organdies. The boys made no attempt at evening dress. Some of them even came in knickers and sweaters. They were a democratic, informal crowd, all knowing one another well and not met together for a display of raiment, just a jolly crowd who had grown up together and were not judging one another by worldly standards.

“They’re all here now, Prissy!” called Willa, as Sherrill came downstairs after having taken off her wraps and become enveloped as it were in the smiles and welcoming glances of her companions.

Priscilla Maybrick bustled her orchestra into position, and they struck into a lively little medley of familiar songs that ended each one in just the right place to make a laughable sentence with the words of the next melody, and kept the company in a series of out-breaking laughter as they listened and followed the words.

“Now,” called Priscilla, swinging around on the piano stool as the last note of the orchestra died away, “Phil Mattison will read an original poem of greeting from the new social committee, one verse written by each member of the committee.”

The poem was received with enthusiasm, being cunningly devised, and each verse rhyming with the name of its writer, which finished its last line.

At its close Priscilla Maybrick announced that as this was to be an original evening, the next item on the program would be an original song written by Rose Mattison and Riggs Rathbone in collaboration.

The song was indeed original, containing a verse about almost every member of the group, a rollicking, laugh-provoking bit of humor only to be appreciated by a local listener.

Sherrill, standing on the lower step of the stairway just opposite the wide arched parlor door, looked across the bright, laughing company and suddenly felt tears stinging into her eyes. How dear they all were! How could she go away and leave them for a whole winter? What was New York to this dear throng?

Then her eyes were drawn irresistibly across the room to where Alan stood with grave, earnest eyes upon her. Alan, who seemed suddenly to be older, more thoughtful, than he had been that morning when she had met him racketing around in his old Ford, collecting cakes for the evening. She sent him a bright flash of a smile, and his came instantly back, only somehow it seemed to have a depth of gravity in it that Alan’s smile had never held before, and she found herself wishing she could just put her head down on the newel post and sob out, “I don’t want to go to New York! I
won’t
go to New York!”

But Priscilla Maybrick was calling them all in order after the last verse of the solo was over. She was rapping on the back of a chair with a little wooden nutcracker mall that Will had produced, and they were having fun about that even. How every little trick of the occasion was being photographed on Sherrill’s brain to remember hungrily when she was gone from it all!

Pang after pang! It beat upon her soul and made her feel that she could not go away. Yet she knew her letter of acceptance had already been mailed to her uncle, and she was bound to go now, at least for a time.

“When the orchestra begins to play, you are all to form in line and march out into the dining room, where you will find your seats by the place cards,” announced Priscilla Maybrick.

As Sherrill turned to swing into line, she found Alan suddenly by her side and felt a comforting sense of strength about her. His fingers just touched hers with a quick furtive clasp as they stood together for the instant, and he said in a low tone, “You’re a good old sport, Sherry!”

She felt the warm color in her cheeks and a glow about her heart, as she walked along beside him. It had always been so. Alan had seemed to have some uncanny way of knowing when she felt sad. And suddenly it began to seem as if she must not go away and leave Alan. Yet, of course, that was absurd. She must go now. And Alan would be here when she came back. It would be good to go soon and get it over and get back to all the dear people.

When they entered the dining room all the little candles had been lighted, and the little cakes of paraffin lay white and mysterious before them.

With many exclamations and much laughter, they all found their seats. Alan and Sherrill were placed next to one another. Willa always favored friends, if she could, and put them together. She knew how to make everyone have a good time. Besides, were not these two the chief officers of the group?

When they were all seated, they were told that the next item on the program was for each person to mold, out of the block of paraffin before them, any object they pleased. The only implements they were allowed to work with were their own two hands and the warmth of the little candle before them. They might make people or animals, whichever they chose, and might choose whether they should model the whole figure in miniature, or use all the material in head and shoulders, or a figure or a bust.

Most of the company exclaimed in dismay as they took up the paraffin and felt its hardness.

“Why, we never can do that!” they said. “It’s too hard. Give us knives.”

The social committee had some difficulty convincing them that it was possible to work that cold, hard substance into malleability. But upon being assured that it was possible, they finally all set to work, holding the wax high over the candle flame, and working away with eager hands.

It was Sherrill who first voiced the discovery that the hard wax was yielding.

“This certainly is a good example for the Lookout Committee,” she said earnestly. “If that wax will yield to a tiny candle like that, we ought to not be discouraged when we try to bring new members, even from down on the Flats.”

“There’s one thing you forget, Sherry,” announced Alan gravely. “The warm human hand has a lot to do with molding the thing. It isn’t that it just brings the wax in contact with the flame either, but it molds it and works over it, and keeps close to it to know how near it needs to get. It gets a lot of heat from the hand, too. I guess there must be a lesson in that somehow, isn’t there?”

He looked up with his old grin gleaming, and they all laughed.

“Listen to Alan!” said Willa. “He’s caught the preaching habit from Sherrill. Pretty soon he’ll be studying to be a preacher!”

“I guess that’s right,” said Sherrill following out Alan’s thought. “It’s no good to go down after those Flats boys and girls unless we keep a warm human interest in them every minute, and follow it up continually. But we must not forget that it is the candle, after all, that makes the wax soft. The hand alone could not do it. I notice this wax gets cool mighty quick if we don’t keep it near that flame. I expect the prayer meeting committee might get some idea out of that. Wouldn’t prayer have something to do with keeping close to the flame?”

“That’s all right, Sherry,” called out Priscilla Maybrick from across the table where she was working with her chunk of wax. “I’ll go. I hate those old Flats like everything. It smells of oilcloth in the making down there, and chokes me, but I’ll go. I don’t like that Mary Ross you sent me after, either. She needs to wash her hair, and she is coarse and loud and hard, if there ever was one, but I’ll go and I’ll pray for her, too. Only Sherry! Don’t rub it in on me tonight. Have a heart. This is a social, and I’m molding a saint out of my paraffin! Yes, I am, see his halo?”

They all laughed at Priscilla and stretched their necks to catch a look of saintlikeness in the uncertain lump that she held in her hand.

“I shall make a Rolls-Royce out of mine!” announced Phil Mattison. “It’s the only way I’ll probably ever get one.”

“Mine begins to look like an Indian papoose,” said Rose Hawthorn, studying her wax with a troubled perplexity. “I think I’ll just wait and see what it turns out to be and then name it afterward.”

Amid the laughter and chatter, the various lumps of wax were beginning to take shape. There was a soldier and a sailor, a dog and an elephant, a Dresden shepherdess and a bust of George Washington. There were several attempts at presidents, past and present, and other noted characters, but in the end it was Sherrill’s head of an Indian chief that took the first prize; with a model of Spike, the Barrington collie, as a near second; and Rose Hawthorn’s papoose took the booby prize. There were boxes of candy for the first and second prizes, and a rag doll for the booby prize. Everybody was full of laughter and talk as they rose from the table and went into the parlor for the music that came next on the program, and the charades that were to follow.