Chapter 14

THE FETE

Behold Fairyland!

Well, at least an excellent imitation of what Fairyland must look like. Overhead, a clear, star-sprinkled sky; below, scores of gaily-hued lanterns shedding their soft glow over a charming scene. Through the side gate, please, on School Park. Twenty-five cents to the boy on duty there, and you are inside, with the manifold attractions awaiting you. On three sides of the transformed garden are the college booths, each decked with bunting and flags of appropriate colors, and each presided over by a patriotically attired young lady who will gladly, nay, eagerly, sell you almost anything from a cake of soap (“Donated by the Town Square Pharmacy, H. J. Congreve, Prop’r.”) to a knitted sweater or a gingham house-dress (“Compliments of The New York Store, High Class Dry Goods”). Near at hand, Yale is represented by Miss Polly Deane, capped and aproned in blue, her eyes sparkling and her voice sweetly insistent: “Won’t you buy something, please, sir? Post-cards, two for five! These pictures are only fifty cents, all beautifully framed and ready for hanging! Can I sell you something, ma’am?”

Beyond, gay with orange and black, is the Princeton booth; and still beyond, Dartmouth and Columbia and California; and then, a blur of brilliant crimson through the leafage, Harvard. And so on all around the garden, with merry voices sounding above the chatter of the throng that moves here and there. Down the center of Fairyland runs a leafy tunnel from within which blue and red and yellow and green rays twinkle. There, under the hanging lanterns, little tables and chairs are dotted on the gravel, and half a dozen aproned youths are busy bearing, not always without mishap, plates of salad and rolls and dishes of ice-cream and cake. Close to the back of the house is a platform illumined by a row of electric lights, the one glaring spot in the area of soft radiance.

“How’s it going?” asked a heavily-built youth of a slimmer one who had paused at the entrance to the arbor.

“Hello, Kewpie! Oh, bully, so far. We took in eighty-four dollars this afternoon, and we’ll do at least twice as well to-night. They’re still coming. Have you seen Whipple anywhere?”

“Yes, a minute ago, down at the Pennsylvania booth. She’s a mighty pretty girl, too, Nod. I bought a pocket-knife of her for a quarter, and got stung; but I don’t mind. I’m going back to get another pretty soon. When do I have to sing again?”

“You follow Wilson’s clog-dance. We’re switching you and Cheesman, Kewpie. His stuff is corking, but it’s pretty high-brow, and we thought you’d better bring up the end and make the audience feel cheerful.”

“All right; but it won’t feel very cheerful if those orchestra guys don’t do better than they did this afternoon. They were four or five notes behind me once! Nid said you had a new stunt this evening—something you left out this afternoon.”

“Yes; we couldn’t work it in daylight very well. It ought to go fine to-night, though.”

“What is it?”

“You wait and see. I’ve got to find Whipple. Say, if you see Ned, tell him I’ll be at the platform in five minutes and want him to meet me there. Everybody keeps getting lost here!”

On the way past the arbor, Laurie ran into George Watson, returning across lots balancing a couple of plates in one hand and holding a large slab of cake in the other, from which he nibbled as he went. “Hello!” he said, none too distinctly. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Wanted to bring me refreshments, I suppose.”

George looked at the empty plates, laughed, and shook his head. “Not exactly. I’ve been feeding Cornell. Somebody ought to take eats to those girls, Nod; they’re starving!”

“All right; you do it.”

“What do you think I am? A millionaire? I bought Mae a salad and an ice-cream, and I’m about broke. Lend me a half, will you? Thanks. Want an ice-cream? I’ll treat.”

“No, thanks. Have you seen Dan Whipple?”

“Sure! He’s over at the Pennsylvania booth, buying it out! Say, everything’s going great, isn’t it? Couldn’t have had a finer evening, either, what? Well, see you later. I’m hungry!” And George continued his way to the house, where Miss Tabitha, surrounded by willing and hungry helpers, presided sternly, but most capably, over the refreshments.

At eight o’clock the boy on duty at the entrance estimated the attendance as close to two hundred, which, added to the eighty-six paid admissions before supper, brought the total close to the first estimate of three hundred. It is safe to say that every Hillman’s boy attended the fête either in the afternoon or evening, and that most of the faculty came and brought Mrs. Faculty—when there was a Mrs. Faculty. Doctor Hillman was spied by Laurie purchasing a particularly useless and unlovely article in burnt wood from the auburn-haired Miss Hatch. Every one seemed to be having a good time, and the only fly in the ointment of the committee was the likelihood that the refreshments would be exhausted far too soon.

The Weather Man had kindly provided an evening of exceptional warmth, with scarcely enough breeze to sway the paper lanterns that glowed from end to end of the old garden, an evening so warm that ice-cream was more in demand than sandwiches or salad; and fortunately so, since ice-cream was the one article of refreshment that could be and was replenished. If, said Ned, folks would stick to ice-cream and go light on the other refreshments, they might get through. To which Laurie agreed, and Ned hied him to the telephone and ordered another freezer sent up.

At a few minutes after eight the Banjo and Mandolin Club took possession of the chairs behind the platform and dashed into a military march. Following that, six picked members of the Gymnastic Club did some very clever work, and Cheesman, a tall and rather soulful-looking upper middler, sang two ballads very well indeed, and then, as an encore, quite took the joy out of life with “Suwanee River”! Little Miss Comfort, present through the courtesy of the Committee on Arrangements, sniffled quite audibly, but was heard to declare that “it was just too sweet for anything!” A rather embarrassed junior attempted some card tricks that didn’t go very well, and then Wilson, garbed more or less in the character of an Irish gentleman returning from Donnybrook Fair, and swinging a shillaly, did some jig-dancing that was really clever and won much applause.

There was a brief unofficial intermission while three anxious committee members made search for Kewpie Proudtree. He was presently discovered consuming his fourth plate of ice-cream in the seclusion of the side porch, and was haled away, protesting, to the platform. In spite of what may seem an over-indulgence in refreshment, Kewpie was in excellent voice and a jovial mood, and sang four rollicking songs in a manner that captured his audience. In fact, long after Kewpie had vanished from the public gaze and returned to his ice-cream, the audience still demanded more.

Its attention was eventually captured, however, by Dan Whipple, who announced importantly that it gave him much pleasure to say that, at a great expense, the committee had secured as an added attraction the world-famed Signor Duodelli, who, with their kind permission, would exhibit for their pleasure and astoundment his miraculous act known as the Vanishing Man, as performed before the crowned heads of Europe, to the bewilderment and applause of all beholders. “Ladies and gentlemen, Signor Duodelli!”

The Signor had a noticeable likeness to Lew Cooper, in spite of his gorgeous mustache and flowing robe of red and purple cheese-cloth. Yet it might not have been Lew, for his manner was extremely foreign and his gestures and the few words he used in directing the arranging of his “properties” were unmistakably Latin. The properties consisted of a kitchen chair, a threefold screen covered with black baize, and a coil of rope. There was also in evidence a short wand, but the Signor held that in his hand, waving it around most eloquently. The audience laughed and applauded and waited patiently until the chair had been placed exactly to the Signor’s liking, close to the back of the platform, and the screen beside it. Previously several of the lights had been put out, and those that remained threw their glare on the front of the stage, leaving the back, while discernible, less in evidence.

“Now,” announced the Signor, narrowly escaping from falling off the platform as he tripped over his robe, “I aska da some one coma up and giva da help. Any one I aska. You, Signor, maybe, eh?” The magician pointed his wand at Mr. Cornish, in the front of the clustered audience; but the gentleman laughingly declined. The Signor seemed disappointed. “No-o-o? You no geta da hurt. Some one else, eh?” He looked invitingly around, and a small junior, urged by his companions, struggled to the front. Unfortunately for his ambitions to pose in the lime-light, the Signor’s glance had moved to another quarter, and, ere the junior could get his attention, a volunteer appeared from the semi-obscurity of the kitchen porch. He was peculiarly attired, wearing a simple white garment having a strong resemblance to the old-fashioned night-shirt, that covered him completely from neck to ankles. He was bareheaded, revealing the fact that his locks were red-brown in hue.

“Ah!” exclaimed the Signor, delightedly. “You will helpa me, si? Right thisa way, Signor. I thanka you!”

“That’s one of the Turner fellows,” muttered a boy, while the small junior and his companions called “Fake!” loudly. However, the good-natured laughter of the audience drowned the accusation, and some two hundred pairs of eyes watched amusedly and expectantly while, with the assistance of two other volunteers, the youth in the white robe was tied securely to the chair.

“Maka him tight,” directed the Signor, enthusiastically, waving his wand. “Pulla da knot. Ha, thata da way! Good! Signors, I thanka you!”

The two who had tied the victim to the chair retired from the platform. The Signor seized the screen and opened it wide and turned it around and closed it and turned it again.

“You seea?” he demanded. “There is nothing that deceive! Now, then, I placea da screen so!” He folded it around the boy and the chair, leaving only the side away from the audience uncovered. He drew away the width of the platform, and, “Music, ifa you please,” he requested. The orchestra, whose members had moved their chairs to one side, struck up a merry tune, and the Signor, folding his arms, bent a rapt gaze on the blank, impenetrable blackness of the screen. A brief moment passed. Then the Signor bade the music cease, took a step forward, and pointed to the screen.

“Away!” he cried, and swung his arm in a half-circle, his body following with a weird flaring of his brilliant robes until, with outstretched finger, he faced the audience. “Ha! He come! Thisa way, Signor! Comea quick!”

As one man the audience turned and followed the pointing finger. Through the deserted arbor came a boy in a white garment. He pushed his way through the throng and jumped to the stage. As he did so, the Signor whisked aside the screen. There was the chair empty, and there was the rope dangling from it, twisted and knotted.

A moment of surprised silence gave place to hearty applause. Theoretically it might have been possible for the boy in the chair to vanish from behind the screen, reach the farther end of the garden, and run back into sight; but actually, as the audience realized on second thought, it couldn’t possibly have been done in the few seconds, surely not more than ten, that had elapsed between the placing of the screen and the appearance of the boy behind them. And then, how had he got himself free from the rope? An audience likes to be puzzled, and this one surely was. The garden hummed with conjecture and discussion. There were some there who could have explained the seeming phenomenon, but they held their counsel.

Meanwhile, on the platform the Signor was modestly bowing alternately to the audience and to his subject, the latter apparently no worse for his magic transposition. And the orchestra again broke into its interrupted melody. The applause became insistent, but Signor Duodelli, perhaps because his contract with the committee called for no further evidence of his powers, only bowed and bowed and at last disappeared into the obscurity of the shadows. Whereupon the Banjo and Mandolin Club moved into the house, and presently the strains of a one-step summoned the dancers to the big drawing-room.

Laurie, unconsciously rubbing a wrist, smiled as he listened to the comments of the dissolving audience. “Well, but there’s no getting around the fact that it was the same boy,” declared a pompous little gentleman to his companion. “Same hair and eyes and everything! Couldn’t be two boys as much alike, eh? Not possibly! Very clever!”

Laurie chuckled as he made his way to Polly’s booth. That young lady looked a little tired, and, by the same token, so did the Yale booth! Only a bare dozen framed pictures and a small number of post-cards remained of her stock. “Don’t you think I’ve done awfully well?” asked Polly, a trifle pathetically. She seemed to need praise, and Laurie supplied it.

“Corking, Polly,” he assured her. “I guess you’ve sold more than any of the others, haven’t you?”

“N-no, I guess some of the others have done better, Nod; but I think they had more attractive articles, don’t you? Anyhow, I’ve taken in twelve dollars and thirty cents since supper, and I made four dollars and eighty-five cents this afternoon; only I must have dropped a dime somewhere, for I’m ten cents short. Or perhaps someone didn’t give me the right amount.”

“Why, that’s seventeen dollars!” exclaimed Laurie. “I didn’t think you had anywhere near seventeen dollars’ worth of things here, Polly!”

“Oh, I didn’t! Not nearly! Why, if I’d sold things at the prices marked on them, Nod, I wouldn’t have had more than half as much! But lots of folks wanted to pay more, and I let them. Mr. Conklin, the jeweler, bought a picture, one of the funny landscapes with the frames that didn’t fit at the corners, and he said it was ridiculous to sell it for a quarter, and he gave me a dollar for it. Then he held the picture up and just laughed and laughed at it! I guess he just wanted to spend his money, don’t you? You know, Ned said we were to get as much as we could for things, so I usually added ten cents to the price that was marked on them—sometimes more, if a person looked extravagant. One lady came back and said she’d paid twenty-five cents for a picture and it was marked fifteen on the back. I said I was sorry she was dissatisfied and I’d be very glad to buy it back from her for twenty.”

Laurie laughed. “What did she say to that?” he asked.

“She said if I wanted it bad enough to pay twenty cents for it she guessed it was worth twenty-five, and went off and didn’t come back.” Polly laughed and then sighed. “I’m awfully tired. Doesn’t that music sound lovely? Do you dance?”

Laurie shook his head. “No; but, say, if you want to go in there, I’ll watch the booth for you.”

Polly hesitated. “It’s funny you don’t,” she said. “Don’t you like it?”

It was Laurie’s turn to hesitate. “No, not much. I never have danced. It—it seems sort of silly.” He looked at Polly doubtfully. Although he wouldn’t have acknowledged it, he was more than half sorry that dancing was not included among his accomplishments.

“It isn’t silly at all,” asserted Polly, almost indignantly. “You ought to learn. Mae could teach you to one-step in no time at all!”

“I guess that’s about the way I’d do it,” answered Laurie, sadly—“in no time at all! Don’t you—couldn’t you teach a fellow?”

“I don’t believe so. I never tried to teach any one. Besides, Mae dances lots better than I do. She put the things she had left on Grace Boswell’s booth and went inside the minute the music started. She wanted me to come, but I thought I shouldn’t,” added Polly, virtuously.

“You go ahead now,” urged Laurie. “I’ll stay here till you come back. It isn’t fair for you girls to miss the dancing. Besides, I guess there won’t be much more sold now. Folks have begun to go, some of them, and most of the others are inside.”

Polly looked toward the house. Through the big wide-open windows the lilting music of a waltz floated out. The Banjo and Mandolin Club was really doing very well to-night. Polly sighed once and looked wistful. Then she shook her head. “Thanks, Nod,” she said, “but I guess I’ll stay here. Some one might come.”

“What do you care? You don’t own ’em! Anyway, I guess I could sell a post-card if I had to!”

“You’d have trouble selling any of those pictures,” laughed Polly. “Aren’t they dreadful? Where did they come from?”

“Pretty fierce,” Laurie agreed. “They came from the Metropolitan Furniture Store. The man dug them out of a corner in the cellar. I guess he’d had them for years! Anyway, there was enough dust on them to choke you. He seemed awfully tickled when we agreed to take them and let him alone!”

“I should think he might have! We girls agreed to buy things from each other, just to help, but the only things they bought from me were post-cards!” Polly laughed as though at some thought; and Laurie, who had elevated himself to an empty corner of the booth and was swinging his feet against the blue draping in front, looked inquiringly. “I was just thinking about the boys,” explained Polly.

“What about them? What boys do you mean?” Laurie asked coldly.

“The high school boys. They’re awfully peeved because we girls took part in this, and not one of them has been here, I guess.”

“Cheeky beggars,” grumbled Laurie. “Guess we can do without them, though. Here comes Bob’s father.”

Mr. Starling was bent on a most peculiar mission. Laurie and Polly watched him stop at the next booth and engage in conversation. Then a fat pocket-book was produced, a bill was tendered, and Mr. Starling strolled on. At the Yale booth he stopped again.

“Well, Turner,” he greeted, “this affair looks like a huge success, doesn’t it? Why aren’t you young folks inside there, dancing?”

“I don’t dance, sir,” answered Laurie, somewhat to his chagrin in a most apologetic tone. “And Polly thinks she ought to stand by the ship. This is Polly Deane, Mr. Starling.”

Bob’s father shook hands cordially across the depleted counter and assured its proprietor that he was very glad indeed to make her acquaintance. Then he added: “But you don’t seem to have much left, Miss Polly. Now, I’m a great hand at a bargain. I dare say that if you made me a fair price for what there is here I’d jump at it. What do you say?”

Polly apparently didn’t know just what to say for a minute, and her gaze sought counsel of Laurie.

“If you ask me,” laughed the latter, “I’d say fifty cents was a big price for the lot!”

“You’re not in charge,” said Mr. Starling, almost severely. “I’m sure the young lady has better business ability. Suppose you name a price, Miss Polly.”

“We-ell—” Polly did some mental arithmetic, and then, doubtfully: “A dollar and a half, sir,” she said.

“Done!” replied Mr. Starling. He drew forth a two-dollar bill. “There you are! Just leave the things where they are. I’ll look after them later. Now you youngsters go in and dance. What’s this? Change? My dear young lady, don’t you know that change is never given at an affair of this kind? I really couldn’t think of taking it. It—it’s a criminal offense!” And Mr. Starling nodded and walked away.

“By Jove, he’s a brick!” exclaimed Laurie, warmly. “Look, he’s doing the same thing everywhere!”

“I know,” answered Polly, watching. “It’s just dear of him, isn’t it? But, Nod, what do you suppose he will do with these awful pictures?”

“The same thing he will do with that truck he’s buying now,” was the laughing reply. “He will probably put them in the furnace!”

“Well,” said Polly, after a moment, “I suppose we might as well go inside, don’t you? We can look on, anyway, and”—with a stifled sigh—“I’d ’most as lief look on as dance.”

Laurie followed, for the second time in his life wishing that the Terpsichorean art had been included in his education!