Dorothy's House Party

“The Campbells Are Coming,” whistled Herbert merrily, and with the air of a courtier led the embarrassed Jane into the midst of the circle. She jerked her hand away with the reproof:

“Don’t be silly! I’ve made trouble enough without acting foolish over it.”

She seemed so completely ashamed of herself that Dorothy pitied her and hastened to put her arm about her and say:

“Why should you think of trouble to anybody else since you’re – alive?”

“Alive! Did you think I might be dead, then? That makes it worse, still. I was never in the slightest danger. I was only just a – dunce.”

“You couldn’t ever be that, Jane Potter!” cried Molly Martin, enthusiastically embracing the restored one from her other side.

But Jane shook herself free from the caresses of both and calmly explained:

“Since you’ll all want to know I may as well tell just how thoughtless I was. I wanted to find that secret staircase Jim had told about, and the hidden chamber above it, under the roof. I couldn’t at first. It led out of the paneled chamber, he said, where all the side walls looked like doors and only one of them would move. Finally, after I’d tried ’em all, and that took some time, I slid one open. It was the secret stair; nothing but a close sealed cupboard, so little that even I could hardly squeeze up it. It wasn’t a regular stair, only tiny three-cornered pieces of board nailed in the back angles, first one side and then another. They are far apart and some are gone. I thought I’d never get up the thing, but I hadn’t stayed behind to be worsted by a sort of old grain-chute like that.”

“Weren’t you scared? Didn’t you feel as if some enemy were after you?” Molly Breckenridge interrupted to ask.

Jane coolly sat down and glanced contemptuously at the questioner. All the company felt a trifle disappointed by Jane’s manner. They had expected a more exciting revelation.

“What should I be afraid of? I haven’t any enemies, as I know.”

“But it must have been very dark in such a place, a shut-in box like that,” protested Helena, who as well as the others thought Jane might have made more out of her adventure.

“No, it wasn’t, not there. The panel-door let the light through from the big room where there are no blinds or curtains. All the light there was – only dusk, you know – came through. It was at the top, after I’d climbed off the top step into the hidden chamber that it got dark – black as night. Because, you see, I accidentally hit my foot against the trap-door and it fell shut. That’s all. I ain’t dead, you see, and there’s nothing to be sorry for except the trouble I gave Mr. Winters and this boy. I’ve told them I was sorry, so that’s all there can be done about it now. Anyway I’ve learned something, and that is how a prisoner must feel, shut up in a box like that.”

A sort of groan came from the further side of the room where the Master had sunk into a great chair as if he were utterly weary. Then he said:

“I’m glad Jane is so philosophical. I think she doesn’t know just how dangerous her situation was. The ‘hidden chamber’ under the roof was nothing but a closely sealed box, without any possible ventilation. Nobody could have lived long shut up in that space, breathing the vitiated air. It was well we found her, and you must all thank God for a tragedy averted. Nor would I have thought of looking there for her if Jim hadn’t remembered talking with her about the place and told Herbert just as we started. He’d inspected it himself, had read of it, yet even I who had visited that old mansion many times didn’t know of its existence.”

“Oh! I wish you’d told us all, Jim Barlow, when we were there! I think it was selfish mean of you not to, when we were sight-seeing on purpose,” pouted Jolly Molly.

“Wish ’t I had, now, since you all seem to care. I didn’t think then anybody – I mean – I didn’t think at all, except for myself,” frankly answered the lad, which made them laugh again and so restored their ordinary mood.

“Well, it’s about breaking up time. I move that Dorothy C. give us a bit of music from her violin,” said the Master, smiling upon his beloved child.

She smiled in return but it was such a wan little attempt that it pained more than pleased him. Something was sorely troubling sunshiny Dolly and he wondered what, not knowing the purport of her begging letter to Mrs. Calvert nor what the telegram had said. He feared she was still grieving about the lost one hundred dollars and could sympathize in that, for he also grieved and puzzled. He made up his mind to ask her about it at the first opportunity; meanwhile, there was the obliging girl already tuning her violin and asking from her place beside the mantel piece:

“What shall it be – when I’ve done squeaking this way?”

“Yankee Doodle!” “God Save the King!” cried Herbert and Melvin, together; and immediately she began, first a strain of one, then the other, till even the mischievous petitioners cried that they had had enough of that medley and would be glad of a change.

One after another she played the selections asked, watching with curiosity which all the others shared, the strange effect her music had on Luna. The waif now seemed to consider herself entirely one of the Party – the “Silent Partner,” Danny called her; for though she never spoke she had learned to keep close to some one or other of the young folks, and so to avoid that big room where Dinah had placed her earlier on her visit. She took no part in any of their games but watched them with that vacant smile upon her wrinkled face, keeping out of the way of being jostled by cuddling down in some corner just as the twins did. Indeed, there was a close intimacy between the three “uninvited”; the little ones promptly realizing that no matter how mischievous they had been and how much they deserved punishment, they would be unmolested in Luna’s neighborhood. She paid scant attention to them, no more than she did to anything, except gay colors and music. She slept much of the time, and just as the twins did; cuddled upon the floor or lounge or wherever drowsiness had overcome her. Yet let even the faintest strain of music be heard and she would instantly arouse, her eyes wide open and her head bent forward as one intently listening; and the strangest part of this attraction was that she dumbly realized the sort of melody she heard.

At the jumble of the two national airs she had smiled, then frowned, and finally looked distressed. It was this expression upon the dull face she watched that had made Dorothy give over that nonsense, even more than the protests of her mates; and now as Molly begged:

“Something of your own making-up, Dolly Doodles!” she let her bow wander idly over the strings, until a sort of rhythmic measure came to her; fragments she knew of many compositions but bound into a sheaf, as it were, by a theme of her own.

It was a minor, moving melody and slowly but effectually touched the heart of every listener. Melvin leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, picturing to his sometime homesick soul a far-away Yarmouth garden, with roses such as bloomed no other where and a sweet-faced, widowed mother gently tending them.

Helena pondered if she did right to be in this house, a guest, with her own home so near and her parents thus deserted of both their children, and unconsciously she sighed.

James Barlow and Jane Potter, after the habit of each, drifted into thought of the wide field of learning and the apparent hopelessness of ever crossing far beyond its boundaries. “The worst of studying is that it makes you see how little bit you can ever know;” considered the ambitious lad, while Jane regretted that she had not been left in peace in that old house from which she had been rescued and so have had the chance of her life to learn history on the spot.

More or less, all within the sound of that violin grew thoughtful; but it was upon poor, “unfinished” Luna that the greatest stress was wrought. She did not rise to her feet but began to creep toward the player, inch by inch, almost imperceptibly advancing as if drawn forward by some invisible force.

Presently they all became aware of her movement and of nothing else, save that low undercurrent of melody that wailed and sobbed from the delicate instrument, as the player’s own emotions ruled her fingers.

Even the Master sat erect, he who made a study of all mankind, touched and influenced beyond himself with speculations concerning this aged woman who was still a child.

“Music! Who knows but that was the key to unlock her closed intelligence? Oh! what a pity that it came so late! But how sad is Dorothy’s mood to evoke such almost unearthly strains! It’s getting too much for her and for that helpless creature. I must stop it;” thought the farrier, but didn’t put his thought into action. Just then he could not.

“Makes me think of a snake charmer I saw once,” whispered Monty Stark to Littlejohn.

“Ssh! Luna’s cryin’! Did you ever see the beat? Alfy Babcock, stop snivellin’ as if you was at a first class funeral!” returned master Smith, himself swallowing rather hard as he happened to think of his mother bringing in her own firewood.

Luna had reached the spot directly before Dorothy and was on her knees looking up with a timid, fascinated stare. Her small hands were so tightly clasped that their large veins seemed bursting, and great tears chased one another down her pink, wrinkled cheeks. Her close cropped head was thrown back and her back was toward the windows over which no curtains had been drawn. In her gay frock, which firelight and lamplight touched to a brilliant flame color, she must have appeared to one beyond the panes like a suppliant child begging pardon for some grave misdoing.

Suddenly Alfaretta screamed, and Molly Breckenridge promptly echoed her; then bounded to Dorothy’s side and snatched the violin from her hands.

“Stop it, Dolly, stop it! I couldn’t help doing that, for in another minute you’d have had me and – and everybody crazy! What made you – ”

“Why, Alfaretta! Whatever is the matter? Why do you stand like that, pointing out into the night as if you’d seen a ghost?” demanded Jane Potter, going to her schoolmate and shaking her vigorously. “Don’t yell again. It’s – it’s more frightful to hear you than it was to be locked up in that hidden chamber, with a spring-locked trap shut between you and liberty.” Which was the only admission this self-contained young person ever gave that she had once known fear.

Alfy gulped, shivered, and slowly answered:

“So I did. It – was a ghost. Or – or – just the same as one! A – lookin’ – a lookin’ right through the window – with his face – big and white – He – he wore a hat – ”

“Wise ghost! Not to cavort around bare-headed on a damp September night!” cried Monty, as much to reassure his own shaken nerves as those of the mountain girl.

“Dorothy’s music was so strange – weird you might say – that she’s made us all feel spooky; but we have no apparitions at Deerhurst, let me tell you,” said Herbert, consolingly.

“Huh! You may say what you like, but that one apparited all right. I seen it with my very own eyes and nobody else’s!” retorted Alfaretta, with such decision and twisting of good English that those who heard her laughed loudly.

The laughter effectually banished “spookiness” and as now poor Luna sank down upon the floor in her accustomed drowsiness, her enwrapt mood already forgotten, the Master lifted her in his strong arms and carried her away to Dinah and to bed. But as he went he cast one keen glance toward the windows, where nothing could now be seen – if ever had been – save the dimly outlined trees beyond. Yet even he almost jumped when Jim, having followed him from the room, touched his arm and asked:

“What do you s’pose sent old Oliver Sands to peekin’ in our windows?”

CHAPTER XI

MORNING TALKS

“Did anybody ever know such a succession of beautiful days?” asked Helena, next morning, stepping out into a world full of bird-song and sunshine. “And without doing anything extraordinary, nothing that anybody in the world couldn’t have done, what a happy time we’re having. Why, Dolly darling, you – what’s wrong, honey? Are you in trouble? Can I help you?”

Dorothy had been sitting on the broad piazza, waiting for her guests and breakfast, a very sober, worried girl. But she now sprang up to greet her friend and tossing back her dark curls seemed to toss away anxiety also. A smile rose the more readily, too, for at that moment there came around the corner Monty Stark and Danny Smith, kindred spirits, each singing at the top of his voice:

“The elephant now goes round and round,
The band begins to play,
The little boys under the monkeys’ cage
Had better get out of the way —