CHAPTER X

COUSIN ROXY’S “SOCIAL”

The night of the entertainment down at the Town Hall finally arrived. Doris said it was one of the specially nice things about Gilead, things really did happen if you just waited long enough. There was not room enough for all the family in the buggy or democrat with only one horse, so the Judge sent Ben down to drive Mrs. Gorham over and the two youngest. Shad took the rest with Princess. All along the road they met teams coming from various side roads, and the occupants sent out friendly hails as they passed. It was too dark to recognize faces, but Kit seemed to know the voices.

“That’s Sally Peckham and her father,” she said. “And Billy’s on the back seat with the boys. I heard him laugh. There’s Abby Tucker and her father. I hope her shoes won’t pinch her the way they did at our lawn party last year. And Astrid and Ingeborg from the old Ames place on the hill. Hello, girls! And that last one is Mr. Ricketts and his family.”

“Goodness, Kit,” Jean cried. “You’re getting to be just like Cousin Roxy on family history. I could never remember them all if I lived out here a thousand years.”

“‘An I should live a thousand years, I ne’er should forget it,’” chanted Kit, gaily. “Oh, I do hope there’ll be music tonight. Cousin Roxy says she’s tried to hire some splendid old fellow, Cady Graves. Isn’t that a queer name for a fiddler? He’s very peculiar, she says, but he calls out wonderfully. He’s got his own burial plot all picked out and his tombstone erected with his name and date of birth on it, and all the decorations he likes best. Cousin Roxy says it’s square, and on one side he’s got his pet cow sculptured with the record of milk it gave, and on the other is his own face in bas relief.”

“It’s original anyway,” said Jean. “I suppose there is a lot of satisfaction in fixing up your own last resting place the way you want it to be.”

“Yes, but after he’d sat for the bas relief, there it was with a full beard, and now he’s clean shaven, and Cousin Roxy says if he didn’t get the stone cutter over to give the bas relief a shave too.”

Down Huckleberry Hill they drove with all its hollows and bumps and “thank-ye-ma’ams.” These were the curved rises where the road ran over a hidden culvert. Gilead Center lay in a valley, a scattered lot of white houses set back from the road in gardens with the little church, country store and Town Hall in the middle of it. The carriage sheds were already filled with teams, so the horses were blanketed and left hitched outside with a lot of others. Inside, the little hall was filled with people, the boys perched up on the windowsills where they could get a good view of the long curtained-off platform that was used as a stage.

Cousin Roxy was busy at her end of the room, preparing the supper behind a partition, with Mrs. Peckham and Mrs. Gorham to help. Around the two great drum stoves clustered the men and older boys, and the Judge seemed to loom quite naturally above these as leader. Savory odors came from the corner, and stray tuning up sounds from another corner, where Mr. Graves sat, the center of an admiring group of youngsters. Flags were draped and crossed over doorways and windows, and bunting festooned over the top of the stage.

Jean took charge behind the curtain, getting the children ready for their different parts in the tableaux. Then she went down to the old tinkling, yellow keyed piano and everybody stood up to sing “My Country, ’Tis of Thee.”

“Land alive, it does grip the heartstrings, doesn’t it?” Cousin Roxy exclaimed, once that was over. “I often wish I’d done something in my life to give folks a happy holiday every time my birthday came ’round.”

Then the Judge rose and took the platform, so tall that his head just missed the red, white and blue bunting overhead. And he spoke of Lincoln until it seemed as if even the smallest children in the front rows must have seen and known him too. Jean and Kit always enjoyed one of the Judge’s speeches, not so much for what he said, as for the pleasure of watching Cousin Roxy’s face. She sat on the end of a seat towards the back now, all in her favorite gray silk, her spectacles half way down her nose, her face upraised and smiling as she watched her sweetheart deliver his speech.

“When you look at her you know what it means in the Bible by people’s faces shining, don’t you?” whispered Kit, as the Judge finished in a pounding applause in which hands, feet and chair legs all played their part.

Next came the tableaux amid much excitement both before the curtain and behind. First of all the curtain was an erratic and whimsical affair, not to be relied on with a one-man power, so two of the older boys volunteered to stand at either end and assist it to rise and fall at the proper time in case it should fail to respond to the efforts of the official curtain raiser, Freddie Herrick. But Fred’s mind was on the next ten minutes when he was to portray the twelve-year-old schoolboy Abe, and the crank failed to work, so the curtain went up with the pulley lines instead, and showed the interior of the little cabin with Dug Moffat industriously learning to read at Jean’s knee. And a very fair, young Nancy she made too, with her dark hair arranged by Cousin Roxy in puffs over her ears, and the plain stuff gown with its white kerchief crossed in front. On the wall were stretched ’possum and squirrel pelts, and an old spinning wheel stood beside the fireplace.

“You looked dear, Jean,” Helen whispered when the curtain fell. “Your eyes were just like Mother’s. Is my hair all right?”

Jean gave it a few last touches, and then hurried to help with the music that went in between the scenes. The school room scene was a great success. Benches and an old desk made a good showing, with some old maps hung around, and a resurrected ancient globe of the Judge’s.

Mr. Ricketts appeared in all his glory, with stock, skirted coat, and tight trousers. And Fred, lean and lanky, his black forelock dangling over his eyes as he bent over his books, made a dandy schoolboy Lincoln. So they went on, each picture showing some phase in the life of the Liberator. But the hit of the evening was Doris pleading for the life of her sentinel brother. She had said she would surely cry real tears, and she did. Kneeling beside the tall figure of the President, her little old red fringed shawl around her, she did look so woe begone and pathetic that Cousin Roxy said softly,

“Land sakes, how the child does take it to heart.”

Last of all came the tableau of the North and South being reunited by Columbia, and Kit looked very stern and judicial as she joined their reluctant hands, and gave the South back her red, white and blue banner.

It was all surprisingly good considering how few things they had had to do with in the way of properties and scenery, but Cousin Roxy sprang a last surprise before the dancing began. Up on the platform walked three old men, Philly Weaver first, in his veteran suit, old Grandpa Bide Tucker, Abby’s grandfather, and Ezra Hicks, the “boy” of seventy. Solemn faced and self conscious they took their places, and there was the old Gilead fife and drum corps back again.

“Oh, bless their dear old hearts,” cried Kit, her eyes filled with sudden tears as the old hands coaxed out “The Girl I Left Behind Me.”

There was hardly a dry eye in the Town Hall by the time the trio had finished their medley of war tunes. Many were there who could remember far back when the little village band of boys in blue had marched away with that same trio at its head, young Bide and Ezra at the drums, and Philly at the fife. When it was over and the stoop-shouldered old fellows went back to their benches, Cousin Roxy whispered to the Judge, and he rose.

“Just one word more, friends and neighbors,” he said. “Mrs. Ellis reminds me. A chicken dinner will be served after the dancing.”

The floor was cleared for dancing now, and Cady Graves took command. No words could quite do justice to Cady’s manner at this point. He was about sixty-four, a short, slender, active little man, with a perpetual smile on his clean shaven face, and a rolling cadence to his voice that was really thrilling, Helen said.

It was the girls’ first experience at a country dance. They sat around Cousin Roxy watching the preparations, but not for long. Even Doris found herself with Fred filling in to make up a set. When the floor was full Cady walked around like a ringmaster, critically surveying them, and finally, toe up, heel down hard ready to tap, fiddle and bow poised, he gave the word of command.

“Sa-lute your partners!”

Jean thought she knew how to dance a plain quadrille before that night, but by the time Cady had finished his last ringing call, she was reduced to a laughing automaton, swung at will by her partner, tall young Andy Gallup, the doctor’s son. Cady never remained on the platform. He strolled back and forth among the couples, sometimes dancing himself where he found them slowing down, singing his “calling out” melodiously, quaintly, throwing in all manner of interpolated suggestions, smiling at them all like some old-time master of the revels.

“Cousin Roxy, do you know he’s wonderful,” said Kit, sitting down and fanning herself vigorously.

“Who? Cady?” Cousin Roxy laughed heartily. She had stepped off with the Judge just as lightly as the girls. “Well, he has got a way with him, hasn’t he? Cady’s more than a person up here. He’s an institution. I like to think when he passes over the Lord will find a pleasant place for him, he has given so much real happiness to everyone.”

Last of all came the chicken supper, served at long tables around the sides of the hall. All of the girls were pressed into service as waitresses, with Cousin Roxy presiding over the feast like a beaming spirit of plenty.

“Land, do have some more, Mis’ Ricketts,” she would say, bustling around behind the guests. “Just a mite of white meat, plenty of it. Mr. Weaver, do have some more gravy. I shall think I missed making it right if you don’t. There’s a nice drumstick, Dug.”

“Had two already, Mis’ Ellis,” Dug piped up honestly.

“Well, they’re good for you. Eat two more and maybe you’ll run like a squirrel, who knows,” laughed Cousin Roxy.

“Kit,” Helen said once, as they rested a moment near the little kitchen corner, “what a good time we’re having, and think of the difference between this and an entertainment at home. Why is it?”

“Cousin Roxy,” answered Kit promptly. “Put her down there and she’d bring people together and make them have a good time just as she does here. Doesn’t Jean look pretty tonight? I don’t believe in praising the family, of course, far be it from me,” she laughed, her eyes watching Jean. “But I think my elder sister in her Nancy get-up looks perfectly dear. She’s growing up, Helenita.”

Helen nodded her head in the old wise fashion she had, studying Jean’s appearance judicially.

“Well, I don’t think she’ll ever be really beautiful,” she said, gently, “but she’s got a wonderful way with her like Mother. I heard Cousin Beth tell Father she had charm. What is charm, Kit?”

“Charm?” repeated Kit, thoughtfully. “I don’t know exactly. But Jean and Mother and Doris have it, and you and I, Helenita, have only our looks.”