Chapter XI: The Fancy Dance

“What do you think _has_ happened and is going to happen?” Polly said, as they were laying the tables for lunch.

Polly generally managed to know what was going on, and was bursting with her news, which she began to impart. They had opened the old chest, she said, and it was full of brocades and laces and mulls, though she didn’t know what that was,—some kind of muslin, she believed,—and pongees and high-heeled, pointed slippers and jewelry and a fine white gown and piles of bed and table linen. The gowns were spread out in Miss Marsh’s room and smelt like dead folks, and they were all in there screeching with delight, and telling what they meant to do, and trying the length of the gowns to see who they would fit, “and, oh, dear Suz, such times as we are going to have! And, oh, I forgot the queer part. Somebody had moved the chest in the night. Miss Doane heard ’em walking softly, as if in their stocking feet, and heard the scrape on the floor. Mother Groves will be asking us next if we were up there. Let her. I can prove an alibi. Here she comes!”

Polly stopped, silenced by the appearance of Mrs. Groves, who came to look over the tables and see that everything was in order. Since Alex.’s interference with the length of the dinner that lady had subsided a good deal.

If Mr. Marsh was going to run things, he could run them, she confided to the _chef_, who replied:

“’F I’se you, I’d let him. Girls is a ticklish lot to manage. Better give ’em a long rope.”

And Mrs. Groves had given them quite a length of rope, but kept her eyes pretty close on Sherry, whose chin in the air still annoyed and irritated her. On this occasion she stopped to find fault with some trivial arrangement which she wished changed, and then, as Polly had predicted, said to them: “Young women, someone, I hear, was in the attic last night and moved the cedar chest; for what purpose I don’t know, unless to get into it. I took you all for honest girls, and shall be sorry to find I was mistaken. No. 4, were you in the attic last night?”

“No, ma’am!” and Polly squared her elbows as for a fight.

“No. 3, were you there, or do you know who was?” Mrs. Groves continued, while No. 3’s denial was as prompt as that of No. 4.

“No. 2, what do you know of it? Were you there?” was Mrs. Groves’ next question.

“If I were I did not know it, and went in my sleep,” was the reply of No. 2, for which Sherry blessed her, as it made her answer easy.

She was very white, with a look of defiance in her dark eyes, and another,—a strange, far-off look such as they always had after one of her somnambulistic fits. Mrs. Groves noticed it, and hesitated a little before she said, “Fanny, were you there?”

The _Fanny_ was a great concession,—made Mrs. Groves hardly knew why, except that with all her dislike of the girl she had a kind of respect for her.

“If I were there I was asleep and did not know it,” Fanny answered, with a decided upward tilt of her chin, and a flash in her eyes as she continued fearlessly: “If you and Mr. Marsh think either of us would be guilty of trying to break open a chest which did not belong to us, you should dismiss us at once.”

She looked like a young queen as she stood there with that strange shifting light in her eyes, and for a moment Mrs. Groves herself was quelled.

“Mr. Marsh has said nothing to me about it,” she answered. “My information came from another source, and as matron here it is my duty to inquire into things and keep order if I can.”

Sherry bowed her head, while Mrs. Groves departed, with Polly taking a few mimicking steps behind her.

“Oh, Polly!” Nos. 2 and 3 began, when Mrs. Groves was gone. “How did you hear all the stuff you are telling us? You surely have listened.”

“Not a bit of it,” Polly answered. “I was in my room near the attic stairs, and heard the squeals as they took out the things, and saw them bring ’em down to Miss Marsh’s room, and Mr. Reeves had put on a white bonnet with pink strings and a pair of stays, which looked like a saddle, and I heard ’em say the things were nearly a hundred years old, and belonged to that lady buried across the road. If I’se her, I’d appear to ’em, making fun of my clothes. They are to have a fancy dance and wear her things as far as they go. But, for the land’s sake, what’s the matter?” and she turned to Sherry, whose face was white as the lunch cloth and who was clutching a chair for support.

“Nothing much,” Sherry answered. “I did not sleep well and have a nervous headache. Go on and tell us of the fancy dance. When is it to be?”

Polly didn’t know. “We shall hear about it at lunch,” she said, and they did. The young people were all talking of the chest, wondering who could have moved it, and why, but soon dropping that for the more absorbing topic of the fancy dance to come off within a week, as at the end of that time some of them were to leave. People were to be invited from the different hotels in the vicinity; there was to be a string band from Fabyan’s, and the young ladies were to draw lots as to which should wear the dresses unearthed in the cedar chest, and which were in a good state of preservation. Twice a year they had been aired as long as Amos Marsh lived at Maplehurst, and on the occasion of his last visit there he had had them out, as Alex. remembered having been told by Bowles, who drove him from the station when he first visited the farm. The man had spoken of a “flowered silk,” and when, after lunch, Alex. went to Amy’s room to see the finery, he recognized the “flowered silk” in the heavy brocade at which the girls were looking with eager eyes, each hoping the right to wear it would fall upon herself. The lots were drawn and the brocade fell to Amy.

“Eureka!” she cried, holding the dress at arm’s length and pirouetting around the room. “I am in luck, but it needs a great deal of fixing to fit me, and who can do it?” Then, remembering how handy Sherry had been in helping her on the first night of her arrival, she continued: “I believe that girl who waits on us is just the one. I’ll have her up. Call her, Alex.”

He called her, and Sherry came, wondering why she was sent for, and starting when she saw the display on chairs and tables and the bed, the lovely brocade and the lace trimming, yellow with age, but showing how costly it must have been. The room was full of the sickly odor of clothes which had been long shut from the air, and Sherry felt it and held fast to the brass rod of the bedstead, while Amy explained what was wanted and asked if she could do it. Sherry knew she could, for she and Katy had always made their own dresses, but her first impulse was to decline. Then, remembering that she was there to obey, she signified her willingness to do what she could. “But not to-day, please,” she said. “My head aches; to-morrow I shall feel better.”

“To-morrow, then,” Amy replied; “and, by the way, we shall need you all day, and I will see that No. 4 waits upon us. Her table is next to ours.”

That night Sherry slept a quiet, dreamless sleep, and Miss Doane was not disturbed by noises over her head in the attic where the cedar chest stood open, with piles of things in it as yet untouched. The dresses were what were wanted for the present, and after breakfast Sherry presented herself in Amy’s room and asked what she was to do.

“Make this fit me. It is too big in some places and too small in others,” Amy said, putting on the brocade and examining herself before the mirror.

To Sherry it seemed like a wrong to the dead woman as she pinned and unpinned and ripped and basted and tried on, and when it came to the lace, which Amy said must be cut in two or three places to produce the desired effect, she ventured to say: “Can’t we arrange it in some other way? It seems a pity to cut it, and I keep thinking of the lady who used to wear it.”

Amy looked at her, wondering what possible interest she could have in the lady who used to wear it.

“Oh, she was dust and ashes long ago. She don’t mind,” she said, “and as the dress is now mine I want it as I like. So cut the lace here and here.”

Sherry hesitated a moment, and then her scissors slashed through the expensive material, which had cost a fabulous sum and been the wonder and admiration of the neighborhood. It was a hard day for Sherry, working on the old dresses and listening to the talk in which she could take no part. She was for the time being only a seamstress, whose duty was to be silent. The young ladies were well-bred and kind-hearted, and would not willingly injure the feelings of any one, but reared as they had been they felt there was an immeasurable distance between themselves and the girl who sat all day long in their midst, unnoticed except when wanted for advice or for some change in the dresses. She was very pretty, they thought, and very ladylike, and certainly understood her business.

“You must have worked in a dressmaking establishment, you are so deft with your needle and have such good taste,” one of them said to her, and she replied:

“I have made my own dresses, with my sister’s help.”

Amy, who had felt a good deal puzzled by Sherry, now began to question her.

“You have a sister?”

“Yes.”

“And a mother?”

“Yes.”

“Is your father living?”

“No.”

“And your home is in the country?”

“Yes.”

“Where, if I may ask?”

If Mrs. Groves could have seen Sherry then, she would have thought her head and chin higher than ever in the air. She was resenting being catechised so closely, but answered the last question promptly:

“In Buford, Massachusetts.”

“Buford?” Amy repeated. “Why, the Saltuses’ summer home is in Buford. Did you ever see them, Mr. Craig Saltus and his sister? You must have heard of them.”

“Yes, I have heard of them.”

“Is their place a very fine one?”

“Yes, very fine.”

“Inside as well as out? Perhaps, though, you were never inside. Were you?”

“Yes.”

“And have met Miss Saltus?”

“Yes.”

“I hear that she is very familiar with the country people. Invites them and accepts their invitations.”

As this was not a direct question Sherry did not feel called upon to answer. Her eyes were blazing with scorn at the questioning, which might have gone on if Ruth Doane had not called to her cousin and said: “For Heaven’s sake, Amy, don’t spend any more time talking of the Saltuses when we have so much to do; and I want to know if I can have this lovely scarf. See how it becomes me.”

She was draping around her head and neck a beautiful scarf of Spanish lace which Mrs. Crosby had brought from abroad and which was very becoming to Ruth’s dark style of beauty.

“Yes, you can have it,” Amy said, and as she could learn nothing in particular from Sherry she gave her up, but said to one of her friends: “Rose Saltus and I are great friends, although not at all alike. I hoped she might be here this summer, but she has to stay with her mother. But her brother Craig is coming soon. I hope he will be here for the party, though he can’t dance. What a pity he is so lame!”

Sherry was interested now, and her cheeks burned as she thought of Craig Saltus recognizing her as an acquaintance and friend, as she knew he would. She had heard from Mrs. Groves something about the Saltus family coming, but time had passed and they had not come, nor had she heard of them again until now, when she felt every nerve quiver with apprehension and dread. Rose Saltus had been very kind to her and so had Craig, and she wondered what he would say when he found her there.

“He will think me an impostor, and I begin to feel like one,” she thought, half resolving to leave before Craig Saltus came.

But something kept her, and for three days Polly waited upon her table, while she worked on the costumes, in which she became a good deal interested, especially the brocade which Amy was to wear, and which was made to fit her perfectly, thanks to Sherry’s deft fingers and taste. She had cut out a piece here and added a gore there, and made the waist lower so as to show Amy’s fine neck, and with every swish of her scissors she had felt she was inflicting bodily pain upon the great-grandmother she had never seen or scarcely heard of until recently. When the dress was done, Amy, who was about her size and figure, had asked her to put it on, that she might see how it looked and if there were any changes to be made. And Sherry put it on, and stood as a model while Mrs. Marsh and the young ladies and Alex. and Charley Reeves were called in to see what a beautiful dress it was.

“By George!” was all Alex. said, and then walked out.

He did not think it just the thing for Amy to make a model of Sherry to be gazed at, and when Charley Reeves said to him, “I say, Marsh, No. 1 is a stunner,” he felt for a moment as if he hated Charley for speaking thus of Sherry. What business had he to call her a stunner or speak of her as No. 1? He never did. He always called her Fanny and had a growing conviction that she was out of place as a waitress. When he could get time he’d find out somehow. Just now he was too busy with his preparations for the ball, which was to excel anything ever seen in the neighborhood. He had heard from Bowles, who had it from his grandfather, of the great Crosby party, talked of so long by the people. Just what they did at that party neither he nor Bowles knew.

“It was up to snuff,” Bowles said; “with grandees from all over, and dancing till four in the morning, and some of the grandees rather noisy with too much wine.”

Alex. did not mean to have anything of that sort. Otherwise everything should be first class; and he was busy everywhere and tired to death, he said, when the day came for what he called his “blow out.”

“You will have to help me dress,” Amy said to Sherry on the day of the party, and after dinner, which was served earlier than usual, Sherry found herself acting in the capacity of maid to Amy, whose hair she arranged and whose dress she put on, adjusting a ribbon here and a knot of lace there, fastening a brooch of pearls and rubies at her throat and long pendants in her ears.

“How do I look?” Amy asked, when her toilet was completed.

“I think you will be the belle of the evening,” Sherry answered, and Amy, who was beginning to be strangely drawn towards this girl whom she could not understand, said, next: “You will want to see the dance. There will be a crowd looking in at the windows from the piazza, and if you like come in and sit by the door.”

It was a good deal for Amy to unbend in this way, and she felt chagrined that Sherry did not seem more impressed with the permission to sit by the door.

“Thanks. You are very kind,” was all she said, as she left the room.

“She is an enigma,” Amy thought. “I mean to ask Craig Saltus about the family. He must have heard of them. Let me see,—Sherman is her name, I believe, though I only know her as Fanny, or No. 1. Queer fad of Mrs. Groves to designate them by numbers. This girl is certainly superior to the rest and has done my dress beautifully.”

It was time now for the expected guests to arrive, and pleased with herself, Amy went down to meet them. The night was fine. There was no moon, but the stars were out in full force, and the lanterns on the lawn and the reflectors on the piazza made it almost as light as day on three sides of the house, which presented a fairy scene after the dancing had commenced. As Amy had predicted, there were many lookers on. Young people from the different farmhouses in the neighborhood came to see the sight, and with the servants of the house crowded around the windows, watching the dancers, and occasionally, as the music became more and more exhilarating, taking a few steps themselves. Sherry was not with them, nor in the chair where Amy had told her she could sit and look on. With the first strain of music a wave of homesickness swept over her, and she would have given much to have been with her mother and Katy. It was a mistake coming here as she did. She was feeling it more and more, and had had hard work to keep back her tears ever since the guests began to arrive and she was free to do what she pleased. Going to the far end of the piazza, which looked towards the stables, she sat down in the shadow and listened to the sounds of revelry as they came to her from the other side of the house. If there was one thing she liked more than another it was to dance, and she kept time to the music with her hands and feet, until at last, as the strains of her favorite waltz came floating on the night air, she sprang up and began to whirl round and round half the length of the piazza and back to her chair, where she stopped a moment to take breath and then began her solitary dance again, shutting her eyes as she felt a little dizzy, and seeing nothing until she found herself in the arms of a young man coming from the opposite direction.

Alex. was having a good time, and, satisfied that his “blow out” bade fair to equal the Crosby party and that everybody was having a good time, he had started for the kitchen to tell the _chef_ that refreshments were to be served in half an hour. As he turned on to the side piazza, his nearest route to the kitchen, he caught the notes of the soft-toned, even-timed waltz, which was his favorite as well as Sherry’s, and saw the white figure coming towards him in the half shadows on that side of the house. Thinking it was his cousin Ruth, he began to whirl until he caught the figure in his arms, held it close to him and kept on till he reached a side light and saw that it was Sherry.

Wrenching herself from his arms, while her eyes flashed and her lips quivered, she said, “Mr. Marsh, how dare you insult me?”

“By George!” Alex. exclaimed, holding her hands in spite of her efforts to draw them from him. “I beg your pardon. I thought you were Ruth. You are about the same size, and that waltz got into my head. I meant no disrespect. I hope you will excuse me.”

He was apologizing to her as to a lady, and the angry look in her eyes began to soften and the tears to fill them. She couldn’t keep them back, and as Alex. held her hands they dropped upon her cheeks and stood upon her lashes.

“Fanny,” Alex. said, soothingly. “Don’t cry. You make me feel like a cad. I never insulted a woman in my life. I certainly would not begin with you. Why do you cry?”

“I don’t know, unless I am a little homesick,” Sherry replied, getting her hands free and wiping her tears away, while Alex. thought how beautiful she was, seen under that light.

As she met his look of admiration, which she could not mistake, she stepped back and continued: “I like to dance, and that waltz brought things back and made me think of home.”

“Yes, I see,” Alex. answered. “Of course you like to dance. Suppose we take another turn across the piazza.”

He held out his arms, but Sherry shook her head. She knew what was proper better than he, and said, “I think you’d better go. Your guests will be missing you.”

“Let them miss me,” Alex. said, with a feeling that he would rather stay there and talk to this girl, who fascinated and puzzled him, and whose face grew each moment lovelier as her smiles came and went and her eyes beamed upon him. “Fanny,” he said, impulsively, “haven’t I seen you before?”

Sherry shook her head, and he continued: “Then I have dreamed of you, or some one like you. I have it,” and he snapped his fingers exultingly; “I saw a girl at the opera with old,—I beg your pardon,—with the Pledgers more than a year ago. She was very like you. Queer, isn’t it? Where is your home?”

Before she could answer him there was a loud call for “Alex., Alex., where are you? We want you in the Lancers.”

“I must go, as I have to see the _chef_. I’d forgotten him entirely. You are sure you have forgiven me? I couldn’t help it, and you waltz as if you had been at it all your life,” Alex. said, offering her his hand, in which for answer she laid hers, blushing and withdrawing it quickly as she felt his fingers closing over it with a warm pressure.

The next moment he was gone, and when Sherry next saw him she, with Nos. 2, 3 and 4, was waiting upon his guests, while her cheeks burned as she recalled the waltz upon the piazza and felt again the pressure of Alex.’s hand and heard the tone of his voice as he called her Fanny and told her not to cry.

It was late before the party broke up, and later still before Alex. fell into a disturbed sleep, in which he dreamed of the lovely face which had looked at him so wistfully that he would liked to have kissed it. Other faces which had been close to his and other forms which had been in his arms, with no attempt to withdraw from them, were also in his dreams, as he lived over the events of the night, but Sherry was always to the front, and he was beginning a second waltz with her when Amy pounded at his door, telling him that breakfast had been over an hour and that some of them were going for a drive.