Читать книгу: «The Little Colonel at Boarding-School», страница 5
"Very well, miss," answered Barbry, who, a middle-aged woman, was the most trustworthy of well-trained maids. Mrs. Walton never felt any hesitancy in leaving the children in her care.
"And – oh, Barbry," said Allison, as she turned to leave the room. "To-night is Hallowe'en, and they say the witches are out and ghosts rise out of their graves. What is that tale they tell about a ghost that used to be seen about the seminary grounds?"
"Sure, an' your mother would be afther gettin' angry if I filled your heads with such nonsense. Who said there was ever a ghost at all in the Valley?"
But after much teasing Barbry allowed herself to be persuaded into telling a tale that had been afloat for years, of the little woman in gray who had once owned the land on which the seminary was built. She lived all alone, and was an odd character. Her peculiar mode of living, and the mystery surrounding her death, gave rise to the rumour that her spirit still haunted the seminary grounds. It was said that the little woman never appeared in public without a gray veil, and her wraith was recognized by the long gauzy covering floating loosely back from its face, not gray but white, as more becoming a spirit.
No sooner had Barbry finished her tale than Allison beckoned the girls to follow, and led the way up-stairs to the sewing-room. "I thought at first I'd just put a pillow-case over my head and wrap up in a sheet, but I'm going to make the girls think I'm the real article. How will this do?"
Taking a roll of cotton from one of the shelves, she pinned it over her hair to make a short white wig, powdered her face till it was as white as the cotton, and over it all threw a long piece of tulle, which she brought from a bureau drawer in her room. "Aunt Elise gave it to me last time I was in town," she said. "She had yards and yards of it that had been used some way in decorating with lilies for a luncheon. Wait till I wrap a sheet around me. Now how do I look?"
"Perfectly awful!" exclaimed Kitty, gazing at her in fascinated wonder that flesh and blood could look so truly ghost-like. Katie hid her eyes with a little scream.
"Don't look at me that way," she begged. "If you are this terrifying in daylight to people who know who you are, what will you be at night?"
Well satisfied with the effect she had produced, Allison folded up the veil, carefully removed the wig, and washed the powder from her face, while Kitty and Katie rummaged in the drawers for some old, long-sleeved gingham aprons that had been discarded long ago. They had decided to go as rag dolls, as that would be the most complete disguise they could think of. Even their hair would be covered, and they would not need to speak.
"It will be terribly hot with all that cotton stuffed about our heads and necks," said Katie. "But we'll look so funny. And we must hold ourselves limp and lean up against things or flop over, just as real rag dolls do."
"Here are the aprons," cried Kitty, at last. "See? They'll fit up close around the neck and hide the place where the muslin that covers our head is tied on."
"I'll paint the faces on you the last thing before we start," said Allison.
"Mercy me! Allison!" exclaimed Katie. "We can't walk down past the depot and the store rigged up that way, even if it is dark. Somebody might think we were escaped freaks, and chase us. We ought to wait till we get to the seminary before we dress."
"No, there won't be time then, and everybody will know it's only a Hallowe'en frolic. If Kitty wears her golf-cape and you wear mine, and pull the hoods away over your faces, nobody will notice. I'll not dress till afterward, for I'm not going to appear till the middle of the evening. I'm not going to go up to the gymnasium at all, but just glide around on the outskirts and lay a cold finger on some one now and then. I'll get a lump of ice out of the cooler if I can manage to slip into the dining-room. Now if you'll bring me the scissors I'll cut the muslin and fit it over your heads."
Mrs. Walton, sorry that her absence would deprive the girls of their anticipated Hallowe'en party, compensated for their disappointment as far as possible by ordering an unusually delicious little supper for them and their guest.
"Isn't it too tantalizing!" exclaimed Kitty, when Barbry had left the room for some hot biscuits. "Here's everything I like best, and I'm in such a hurry and so excited that I can hardly choke down a mouthful."
"Don't talk, then," commanded Allison. "Just eat!"
The meal proceeded in silence for a few moments, but the silence itself grew funny as they thought of the ludicrous figures they would soon present, and they began to giggle.
The giggles grew into shrieks of laughter a little later, when they had gone up-stairs, and the two rag dolls, all stuffed, painted, and dressed, leaned limply against the wall and leered at each other. Even their hands looked comical, covered in white woollen gloves, each finger held stiffly out from the other. After one glance Allison rolled on the bed, holding her sides, laughing and gasping in turn.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, finally, sitting up and wiping her eyes and then going off into a fresh paroxysm of laughter as she looked at them again. "I never saw anything so funny in my life. The girls will simply shriek when they see you."
Norah and Barbry, sitting over their own supper, heard the laughing far down in the kitchen. They looked at each other and smiled, and then, as the contagious sound continued, laughed themselves. The merriment was irresistible. But a little later, busy with their preparations for their coming friends, they did not notice that the house grew strangely still, and that not another sound came from the rooms above all that evening.
Kitty's room adjoined Allison's. Bolting the door which opened into her mother's, on the inside, she passed through Allison's with Katie, and out into the hall. Then Allison locked her door on the outside and hid the key under the hall rug. Creeping down the stairs, they stole out at the side door, locked it after them, and hid the key inside a large flower-pot on the porch.
"That's safer than carrying it," said Allison. "We'd be sure to lose it, and then we would be in a pretty pickle."
The moon, overcast by shifting clouds, was just beginning to throw a faint, ghostly glimmer over the Valley as the girls hurried out.
"Let's go back way until we are past grandmother's gate," said Kitty. Edgewood, Mrs. MacIntyre's place, was just across from The Beeches, and some one was strolling up the avenue toward it. "Uncle Harry," whispered Allison, crouching down in the shadow of a tree until he had gone in.
Rustling along in the dry leaves, they passed the rear of the cottage next door, the manse, and the little stone church. That brought them out into the wide, open space below the ridge, where the lights gleamed from every window in the Soldiers' Home. The girls drew their hoods closer over their faces as they hurried across the churchyard, out through the iron gate into the road.
"It makes me think of the night we had a Hallowe'en party at the haunted house of Hartwell Hollow," said Katie, looking up at the bare branches overhead, which were beginning to toss in the rising wind. Then she clapped a white-gloved hand over her rag mouth to choke back a giggle. Kitty had begun holding her arms in the aimless fashion peculiar to rag dolls, and was walking along as if she had no bones.
"For goodness' sake, behave yourself," begged Allison. "Don't get us to laughing out here on the road!"
Kitty straightened up as they passed the deserted post-office, and they quickened their pace until they were safely beyond the store and the depot. A moment later they had passed through the woodland gate of Clovercroft, raced along the path below the ice-house, and were squeezing through the gap in the picket fence to the seminary grounds.
"They must be almost through supper," whispered Katie, peeping in at one of the dining-room windows, over which the blind had not been entirely drawn. "With all that laughing and talking they'll never hear us go up the stairs. We can make as much noise as we please."
A dim light burned in the upper hall, but no lamp was lighted in Betty and Lloyd's room.
"Let's not make any," suggested Allison. "They'll think we haven't come. Let's hide and see what they do when they suddenly discover us."
As she spoke there was a sound of many feet in the lower hall, then on the stairs, and an unusual buzz of voices. The girls were scattering to their rooms to dress for the masquerade.
"Hurry!" gasped Allison, stooping down behind a tall rocking-chair. Kitty rolled under one bed and Katie under the other, and there they lay waiting, trying to stifle the giggles which nearly choked them.
CHAPTER VII
THE HALLOWE'EN MASQUERADE
"I'll make a light," said Betty, groping across the room with a handful of matches which she had taken from the box in the hall. Lloyd started to follow, but, stumbling over a footstool, felt her way to the bed and sat down on the edge of it to wait for a light. On the way up from supper she had started to repeat a funny story which she had heard at Clovercroft that afternoon, and she kept on with it as Betty, having found her way to the table, struck a match. But she stopped again, as the match went out with a sudden puff, as if a strong draught had blown it.
"There! It never fails to do that when I'm in a hurry," exclaimed Betty, striking another match as she spoke. It was extinguished as suddenly as the first. She tried another and another with the same result.
"How strange!" she said, wonderingly. "There isn't a window open anywhere, is there?"
"It's the witches," declared Lloyd, laughing. "There must be one standing there by yoah elbow."
The laugh ended in a piercing shriek as she felt something clutch her ankle. "Murdah! Murdah!" she yelled. "Ow! There's something awful undah the bed! It grabbed me by the foot! Ow! Ow!"
"Hush up, goosey!" commanded a familiar voice, and as Betty struck her fifth and last match, which burned steadily, they saw Allison dashing to the door to lock it. Doors were opening all along the corridors, and footsteps hurrying from every direction in response to Lloyd's terrified cry.
"Tell them that it's all right! That it's only a Hallowe'en scare," demanded Allison, in a stage whisper. "Don't let them in. I blew out the matches, and it's only Kitty and Katie under the beds."
"It's all right," called Lloyd, in a quavering tone, but the matron's knock was imperative, and Betty, beckoning the girls frantically toward the closet, fumbled with the bolt until they had whisked into hiding. The one brief glimpse of the rag dolls, falling over each other in their mad haste to escape, was so comical that both Lloyd and Betty were choking with laughter when the matron entered. They could hardly control their voices while they tried to tell her how the matches had gone out and Lloyd had imagined that there were witches in the room.
Smiling indulgently at their foolishness, which she attributed to the excitement of the occasion, the matron withdrew. She could hear them still laughing when she passed through the hall again, several minutes later, for the rag dolls, coming out of the closet as soon as she disappeared, began taking one ridiculous pose after another, in the middle of the floor. The solemn silence in which they struck their limp, boneless attitudes, made the scene all the funnier, and as the girls looked at the surprised expressions Allison had painted on the flat muslin faces, they went into such hysterical laughter that the tears streamed down their faces.
"Oh, girls, do stop!" begged Lloyd, finally, wiping her eyes. "I've laughed till I ache, and it's time for me to dress, for I promised Magnolia to help her into her costume."
Katie and Kitty subsided into a heap on the divan. "Could you have told who we were if you hadn't known we were coming?" asked Katie.
"Never in the world," answered Betty. "I couldn't tell which is which now, if it were not for your voices."
"We're not going to say a word to any one," said Katie. "We oughtn't to talk, you know, if we carry out our part as it should be. We'll slip up into the gymnasium pretty soon, and be sitting on the floor in a corner when the others come up. We'll lop around and watch the fun till the unmasking begins, then we'll come down here and wait for the rest of you."
All the time they had been performing, Allison had been busy before the mirror, and now turned around in her spectral attire.
"The ghost of the veiled lady!" cried Lloyd. "Oh, Allison, yoah make-up is splendid. You're enough to freeze the blood in one's veins. There couldn't be anything moah spooky-looking than that thin tulle veil. I wish Mom Beck could see you. I've heard her talking about that queah little woman whose house used to stand where the seminary cellah is dug now, till I couldn't close my eyes at night. All the darkies believe she still haunts the place."
Betty had never heard the story, so Allison repeated it while she dressed, adding, "You two must do all you can to spread the report that I'm lurking around. You have seen me yourself, you know. If I had my lump of ice, you'd soon feel the touch of my clammy fingers. I wish you'd give me a piece of newspaper to wrap it in, Betty. Then it won't drip."
"I wish we could carry a lump of ice around with us," gasped Kitty. "All this cotton packed around my head and neck makes me so hot I can scarcely breathe."
Miss Edith and Mrs. Clelling, putting the finishing touches to the decorations in the gymnasium, looked around, well pleased. A score of jack-o'-lanterns grinned sociably from the brackets between the windows. Two more kept guard on each side of the piano, and at least a dozen lighted the long table stretched across one end of the room, on which the spread was arranged. Graceful sprays of bittersweet-vine trailed their bright berries over the white cloth. A huge pumpkin-bowl piled with grapes formed the centrepiece. A pitcher of sweet cider stood at each end, and nuts, persimmons, pop-corn balls, gingerbread, and apples filled all the space between.
"It is well worth the trouble," said Miss Edith, lighting the last candle. "The girls will enjoy it thoroughly."
Some one called both teachers from the room just then, and in their absence two uninvited guests, who had been waiting behind the door, hurried in and seated themselves on the floor in the dimmest corner.
"I should say it is worth the trouble," whispered one rag doll to the other, as they looked around the room at the fantastic decorations. "It's lots more fun coming here this way, than having the party at home, and it's more fun than if we'd been invited."
"I'm nearly roasted," panted the other one, "but I'm glad I'm here. Oh, how pretty!"
It was the entrance of one of the older girls in court train and powdered hair that caused the exclamation, and while they were trying to guess who it could be, the others began to arrive. Old King Cole and Pocahontas came in arm in arm, followed by Red Riding Hood and a brownie, while Puss in Boots proudly escorted Aladdin with his lamp.
Little Bo-Peep and Boy Blue were soon recognized, for Betty had made no attempt to hide the brown curls which helped to make her such a pretty little Dresden shepherdess; and while Lloyd had gathered up her long, light hair under the wide-brimmed hat with its blue ribbon, every graceful gesture and every step she took, holding herself erect with a proud lifting of the head, proclaimed the Little Colonel.
For once in her short life, little Magnolia Budine tasted the sweets of social success, for no one there was more popular or more admired than the saucy Knave of Hearts. With the putting on of the costume she had put on a courage and self-possession that never could have been assumed with the old-fashioned tight-waisted blue merino and the stiff short tails of hair. Grasping the stolen tart firmly in her chubby hands, and lifting the little slippers with their huge bows and buckles in the high, mincing step Miss Katherine had taught her, she swaggered coquettishly up and down the room, her red mantle sweeping behind her. Wherever she went a flock of admiring girls crowded around her.
For many a month afterward her red and white crown hung over her mirror, not only as a souvenir of the jolly revel, but as a token that for one night, at least, she had found favour in the eyes of the Princess. Not only had Lloyd circled around her when she was dressed, exclaiming again that she looked perfectly lovely, but when they chose partners for the ghost-walk, to march solemnly through the halls to the slow music of the Dead March, the Princess had chosen her. Lloyd had looked around for Ida, who had come as a Puritan Maid; but the cap and kerchief were nowhere to be seen. She had evidently grown tired of the affair and gone to her room.
Magnolia did not know that she was second choice. Her cup of happiness was overflowing when Boy Blue turned away from Aladdin and Red Riding Hood, who were both trying to claim her, and said, "No, this little Knave must be my partner. He has stolen my heart as well as the queen's tarts."
In their corner near the piano Kitty and Katie sat stiffly against the wall, seemingly incapable of moving themselves. Several times some of the larger girls made an attempt to lift them, and in whatever position they fell when they were dropped, they lay with hands thrust out and heads lolling to one side. There was a laughing crowd around them continually.
"Oh, my country!" gasped Katie, as the first solemn chords of the Dead March struck her ear and all light in the room was suddenly extinguished except what gleamed from the eyes and mouths of the jack-o'-lanterns. "They've gone and dragged in old Sally, the skeleton. It's bad enough to hear her bones rattle in the physiology class in the daytime; but this is more than I bargained for."
"Now is the time for us to go," whispered Kitty. "They'll unmask soon. We've seen how they all look and set them to guessing, and we'd better miss the refreshments than run the risk of being discovered."
Katie eyed the table wishfully. "It seems a pity to miss all that spread. Couldn't we creep around the wall to the far side and slip something into our apron pockets? The cloth is so long it would hide us."
"What's to hinder our getting under the table and staying through the whole performance?" suggested Kitty. "The cloth comes nearly to the floor, and I don't believe anybody would think of looking under it. Then we could hear them wonder who we are and where we've disappeared to when they unmask and we are missing."
"Quick, then, while their backs are turned!" exclaimed Katie, not waiting to consider consequences or means of escape later in the evening. Slowly, solemnly, with measured tread, the long procession filed by, and, wheeling to the music, started back toward the other end of the long gymnasium.
Creeping on hands and knees, fearful lest some backward glance might discover them should they stand erect, the two girls, like wary mice, scuttled across the room and disappeared under the sheltering table-cloth.
Grown bold with their successful venture, Kitty proposed that each time the procession turned away from them, they should reach out and grab something from the table. It was an exciting performance. Time after time, as the motley figures turned their backs, two ludicrous heads popped up above the table, and four white woollen gloves clawed hastily at different dishes. When the marauders dropped from sight the last time, there was a goodly store of provisions gathered up in each gingham apron.
"I wouldn't have missed this for anything," giggled Katie some time later, when the unmasking began, and the girls crowded around the table for nuts and apples with which to try their fortunes. In such a babel of voices there was no danger of being overheard.
"Listen! we can tell from the different remarks who every one represented," they whispered to each other.
"Oh, Evelyn Ward, I knew all the time that you were the court lady. I recognized your rings."
"That's what fooled me about Aladdin. Susie Figgs had changed rings with Ada."
"Well, I guessed nearly everybody the first half-hour, except those ridiculous rag dolls. Does anybody know where they have gone?"
That started the discussion the two under the table had been waiting for, and the various guesses, falling wide of the mark, were so amusing that their mirth nearly betrayed their hiding-place. Once they thought their discovery was certain. They had been feeding themselves from the store of provisions in their aprons as well as the size of their muslin mouths would allow. The mouths had been only small slits at first, but they had stretched and torn them with their fingers until they were large enough to allow them to take a good-sized bite of apple. As they sat there, munching nuts and pop-corn, Kitty whispered, "We're like the man in the verse:
"'There was a young man so benighted,
He never knew when he was slighted.
He went to a party,
And ate just as hearty
As if he'd been really invited.'"
Katie tried hard not to laugh, but the effort ended in a snort, and she almost choked on a grain of pop-corn. If some one had not upset a jack-o'-lantern just then and started a wild scramble to put out the candle before it burned the cloth, the unbidden guests must certainly have been discovered.
Gradually the crowd around the table dwindled away, as little groups gathered in different parts of the room, intent on various ways of fortune-telling. Having eaten all they could, and not being able to hear anything more of interest, the girls under the table began to grow tired of their position. Moreover, the heat of their costumes seemed to grow more unbearable every minute.
"We're in a trap," groaned Katie. "How we are ever going to make our escape is – "
Kitty never heard the rest of the sentence, for half a dozen girls, who had ventured down the cellar steps with candle and looking-glass, came bursting into the room almost hysterical with fright. Breathless from their headlong race up three flights of stairs, they gasped out their news in broken sentences, each voice in a different key.
"Oh, a real ghost! None of your sheet and pillow-case affairs!"
"White hair and a face like marble and a long floating veil!"
"And it clutched Mary Phillips with fingers that were like the dead! Didn't it, Mary?"
"No, it didn't come out of the cellar. It just appeared!"
"The most awful wail as it vanished!"
"The cook saw it earlier in the evening, floating away toward the graveyard, not walking, you know, but floating! About a foot above the ground!"
"Allison has evidently had as much fun as anybody," whispered Kitty. "Oh, will you listen! There goes Lloyd vowing it's the spirit of the veiled lady, and that she saw it twice this evening."
"And Betty, too! That will convince them if anything could. Betty is always so serious in the way she tells things."
"Now is the time to go, while they're all so excited and in the other end of the room," whispered Kitty. "Let's make a wild dash for the door nearest us, bang it behind us, and blow out the hall light. Then we can slide down the banister, put out the light in the lower hall, and be safe in the west wing before they come to their senses. Now, ready!"
It was a daring move, but it proved successful. Every one heard a scramble, and turned in time to see two crouching figures dash into the hall. They were too startled to know whether they were human or not. Somebody screamed when the door banged violently, and Mary Phillips, who had been in a tremble ever since her flight from the cellar, was nearly paralyzed with fright. She clutched her nearest neighbour, wailing, "Oh, what is it?"
By the time matches were brought and the lamps were relit, Katie and Kitty were safely locked in Lloyd's room, tearing off their disguises and wiping the perspiration from their flushed faces. For a few minutes they waited, half-expecting that a search would be made, but as time went on and no one ventured into that part of the house, they began to try the Hallowe'en charms that they could not take part in up-stairs. When Allison came in half an hour later, she found them whirling apple parings around their heads and flinging them over their shoulders, to see what initials they would form in falling.
By the time Allison had washed the powder from her face and picked the cotton from her hair, Lloyd and Betty came in. It seemed as if they could never settle down enough to think of sleep. There was so much to talk over. Allison curled up on the divan, announcing that it was not worth while to undress, as it would soon be time for them to start home. Kitty and Katie followed her example, appropriating Lloyd's single bed. Lloyd and Betty took the other one, and they lay whispering until midnight.
Just as the clock struck twelve Lloyd got up and lighted a candle. Five eggs, which she had boiled in the chafing-dish earlier in the evening, lay on a plate on the table. The yolks had been removed and the space filled with salt. According to a previous agreement, each girl got up and took one of the eggs. Standing in the middle of the floor in solemn silence they ate them stoically, although the salt burned and choked them. Then without a drop of water afterward, they walked backward to bed. According to the charm, whatever they dreamed after that performance would come true, and unless they were to be old maids, some one would appear in their dreams bearing a cup of water. That one would be their "fate."
None of the five slept soundly that night. The salt made them thirsty, the crowded quarters restless. Allison wakened every time a rooster crowed or a dog barked, because she felt that the responsibility of getting home before Barbry wakened rested upon her. Once when she was about to sink into a delicious doze, the shrill whistle of a locomotive aroused her to the consciousness that the early freight-train was rumbling past the depot. Opening her eyes she saw that the gray dawn was beginning to steal over the Valley. With a groan she sat up and stumbled across the room to arouse the others.
She had to shake Kitty several times, and when she at last staggered to her feet she yawningly quoted old Aunt Cindy's expression, that she was "as tired as a thousand of dawgs," and vowed she could never get home unless she was dragged there. Katie complained of a headache and a miserable "after the ball" feeling. It was a sorry-looking little trio which finally stumbled down the back stairs and out into the frosty dawn. Not a word was spoken on the way home. In silence they slipped up the stairs at The Beeches; in silence they undressed and crept into bed, and three hours later, when Barbry came as usual to call them, she knocked half a dozen times before she succeeded in arousing them.
