Strawberry Acres Part 18

JACK-O'-LANTERNS

To the strains of the intermezzo from the "Cavalleria Rusticana," which the orchestra was sending out through the open windows, Max was returning from the gateway to the house. The October night was so mild that he had stolen out bareheaded upon the errand which had taken him to the road.

The errand might have been considered an odd one: he wanted to look at the house!

To be sure, illuminated as it was by many gayly coloured lights, the lanterns glowing all across the porch and down the driveway, it was well worth looking at. But it was not this decorative effect which the young host had come out to exult over. And, viewed as a residence only, he had certainly observed it many times before, and under varying conditions. He knew to a nicety just how many slats were lacking from certain of the blinds, just how the ragged edge of the great chimney showed against the sky line, precisely where the big pillared porch needed repairing. No, it was not in any of these aspects that he had come curiously out to view it now. He wanted to see it with the eyes of the prospective purchasers, Jarvis Burnside and Neil Chase. He wanted particularly to see it as Chase saw it, that upon mention of the fact that Max had already been interviewed by a prospective buyer, he had, in spite of his effort to appear indifferent, really shown such eagerness to be given an option upon the place.

Max walked slowly back toward the house, under the shadow of the row of great trees bordering what had once been a lawn. Two figures had just come out upon the porch; he recognized them, even at this distance, as the Chases. At the moment, n.o.body else occupied the porch. Neil and Dorothy stood for a moment under the lanterns, looking back into the hall, then turned and descended the steps. They surveyed the house as they did so; they backed farther away from it; they strolled round to the west side, and viewed it from that point. Finally, as Max halted beside a tree-trunk, watching them, they began to walk slowly down the driveway, turning from time to time to gaze back at the house-front.

As they pa.s.sed Max, catching no hint of his presence in the shadow, they conversed in phrases which were of interest to him, and to which, since they intimately concerned himself, he might be excused for listening.

"It's simply stunning," Dorothy was saying eagerly, as they pa.s.sed. "I'd rather have it than forty new houses. When it's restored it will have such an air! I don't suppose they appreciate it at all, do they? Oh, do get hold of it before anybody tells them!"

"Max says Sally is crazy to live in it. But that can't be because she realizes its value."

"No, she's just old-fashioned child enough to like it because it's homelike, and her uncle and grandfather lived in it, not because it's such a swell type of the real old thing that people rave over now."

"Max isn't the sort to care for it either. But he has an eye on the cash.

I shall have to put up a fair price, all right, to get it. I'll try bluffing first, though. He's too much of an office grind to care for anything else, so long as he gets his money. I say, won't that gateway be a corker, when it's put right?"

They walked on out of hearing, but Max had heard all that was necessary to make him tingle.

"Oh, it will be a corker, will it?" he said to himself, as he made for the back of the house by way of the pine grove. "Maybe it will, old, man--but not when _you_ put it right! An office grind, am I? Too dull to know a good thing when I own it, eh? And you'll try bluffing, will you?

All right, bluff away--and much good may it do you! I'd sell it to Jarve Burnside before I'd sell it to you, but I--h.e.l.lo, where are you going?"

He had almost run into Jarvis, hastily emerging from the kitchen door with a smoking jack-o'-lantern, the declining candle of which had made of it both a wreck and the source of a horrible odour. Jarvis cast the pumpkin to one side and wiped his hands on his handkerchief. "Just prevented a small conflagration of corn-stalks," he explained. "What are you doing, prowling round your own back door?"

"Making up my mind not to sell this place to you or to anybody else,"

said Max, promptly, speaking under the impulse of his irritation.

"Good work! I don't blame you. I certainly don't want it--_if you do_. I hope you won't go back on letting me rent a few acres, though, to try my hand at farming, in the spring?"

"Jarve,"--Max sat down on the kitchen step--"do you seriously think a fellow could make a living off this land--taking into account all the squash-bugs and fruit-tree pests and tomato-grubs and every other thing that I've always understood makes the life of the farmer miserable?"

"I think," replied Jarvis, laughing a little at Max's way of putting it, but awake to the importance of discussing the matter seriously, if Max showed an inclination to do so, "that trying to do it, with the help of all the experience that modern experiment stations have placed at our hands, would be about the most interesting thing possible. You might not want to give up all other business till you had proved that you really could do it, but I certainly do think the thing would be well worth trying. It's being attempted more and more these days by educated men, college graduates and professional men of all ranks, partly for the pure interest of the thing, partly because the out-door life is about the best worth living. Look at Don Ferry, for an example. Could he possibly have the hold he has on that crowd of his at the Old Dutch if he weren't a man made of substantial flesh and blood, his brain as healthy and his heart as warm as exercise and oxygen can make them?--Well, perhaps he could, if he were one of your pale and scholarly ghosts, but I doubt it."

"This idea of living out here in winter--" Max went off on a new tack--"it's seemed to me absolute foolishness. But if Neil Chase is so, confoundedly anxious to move in before we can move out--"

"Neil Chase!"

"Yes. He practically made me an offer for the place to-night."

"Well, well!" Jarvis's eyes gleamed with satisfaction in the darkness. So old Neil was helping the thing along, was he? Nothing could have been better. "Going to consider it?"

"Hardly! See here, could we keep warm in that barracks this winter?"

"You don't have to live all over it. With those fireplaces and waste wood enough in your lot up there to run a blast-furnace, I don't see why you should have any fear of freezing."

"Our little stock of furniture wouldn't go anywhere in furnishing."

"It would furnish a certain amount of s.p.a.ce. Keep the rest shut up till you could furnish it."

"I shouldn't think of the thing for a minute," said Max, in the tone of one who explains the inconsistency of so sudden a change of att.i.tude, "if I hadn't this day been notified that the price of our flat is to go up ten dollars a month on the first of November. It's an outrage!"

"It's an extraordinary piece of luck," said Jarvis to himself. But aloud he admitted that it was a good deal of a jump, and a pretty high price for the flat.

At this moment some one looked out of the kitchen window, and then asked Mary Ann inside if she had seen anything lately of Mr. Max.

"I suppose we'll have to go back to the crowd," admitted Max, and they returned just in time to see the first guests taking their leave.

When all had gone, Jarvis hunted up Sally. He found her in one of the dressing-rooms, extinguishing candles which had nearly burned to the bottoms of the lanterns, and were threatening their inflammable surroundings.

"Here, don't touch those things, with your thin clothes on!" Jarvis cried. "We fellows must go round and make all safe--no taking any chances with the house full of dry corn-stalks. But first--have you had a good time to-night?"

"A glorious time. All the evening I've felt as if I lived here--it looked so furnished, somehow, with all the lights and decorations."

"It made you want to live here more than ever, didn't it?"

"It did, indeed. And in ten days we shall be going back to town,"

"Perhaps you won't."

She stared at him. "What in the world do you mean?"

"I don't mean anything," said he, laughing. "I'm like a small boy bursting with the secret information that there's to be ice-cream for dinner. So I don't mean anything--but I'd like to shake hands on it, just the same."

"Jarvis!" She let him seize both her hands and shake them up and down.

"You do mean something!"

"Come out in the hall and do the corn-stalk prance with me."

"The corn-stalk prance! What in the world is that? Are you crazy?"

"I'll teach it to you," and he led her out into the wide hall, which had been all the evening the most attractive spot in the house. He pulled two stalks from one of the sheaves which stood on each side of the great fireplace. He handed her one, and throwing the other across his shoulder as if it were a gun, marched to the drawing-room door. The musicians were just putting away their instruments, having played till the last guests were out of hearing.

"Just one more, will you?" he asked, grinning at them in a way which they understood meant an extra fee.

Then he came back to Sally. "Now for it!" he said. "I never did this myself,--nor heard of it--but if we can't do an impromptu turn to-night, on our high spirits, we never can again. Come on!"--as the music burst forth. And he made her an impressive bow.

Smiling, and ready enough to follow his lead, Sally returned him a sweeping courtesy, in minuet style.

"Hi, what's this?" cried Bob, returning from the porch, where he, with the others, had been watching the departure of the procession of carriages and automobiles which had borne the guests away.

"Here, come and see what's going on!" he shouted back to the porch, and they came hurrying in. Mrs. Burnside and Donald Ferry, Josephine and Max, Mrs. Ferry and Alec and Uncle Timothy ranged themselves along the walls, their faces all enjoyment of the somewhat remarkable affair now in progress.

Jarvis and Sally might have been improvising, there was no doubt that they were, but the result was the product of inspiration. Up and down, double and single, in and out, round and round, with all manner of fancy steps, both surprising and picturesque, saluting each other every now and then with bows, with wavings of the corn-stalks, with gestures of greeting and farewell.

Jarvis, without his gla.s.ses, his face brilliant with life and merriment, looked a different fellow from the one his friends had been accustomed to see of late; and Sally, her cheeks like crimson carnations, her eyes dark with fun and happiness, her steps the embodiment of youthful grace, was a fascinating figure to watch.