THE PARTY
Dinner hour was over in Oakwood and the evening life of the stately old
town was beginning to stir when Mr. Wing stepped off the train and
walked briskly through the softly falling twilight toward his home. Not
far from the station he met the artist, Eugene Prince, strolling about
admiring the landscape, and hailed him cordially. "I've just come home
on a flying trip over night," he explained. "Have to go to Washington in
the morning. I wonder if the folks are at home; I should have telephoned
them I was coming, I suppose." Mr. Wing seemed very much elated about
something.
"How's the big case coming?" asked the artist. He had always been such a
ready listener while Mr. Wing expressed his various theories About the
matter and showed such a lively interest that Mr. Wing had gotten into
the habit of talking about it to him by the hour and listening to him
express _his_ theories.
Now when the artist mentioned the big case Mr. Wing could not conceal
his triumph, for _his_ theory had been right after all, and the artist's
had been wrong. "It's exactly what I expected," he said jubilantly, and
spoke in a low, confidential tone for some minutes.
The artist whistled in blank surprise.
The two men passed up the street, talking in low tones. "Come up to the
house with me," said Mr. Wing presently, "and I'll show you--Hello,
what's this?"
A creaking rumble behind them made them start and turn around, and a
singular sight greeted their eyes. Down the street puffed an immensely
fat negro woman clad in a calico wrapper and a bright red turban,
pushing a wheelbarrow in which sat a negro baby somewhat larger than its
mammy. In the wheelbarrow beside the baby stood a feeding bottle of
gigantic proportions, being in very truth a three-gallon flask designed
to hold a solution to spray trees with; six feet of garden hose
constituted the tube, and a black rubber diving cap at the upper end of
it completed the feeding apparatus.
"_Pour l'amour de Mique!_" laughed Mr. Wing, as the unique outfit
rumbled by. "What on earth do you suppose _that_ is?" They followed the
progress of the billowing mother and her husky infant with amused eyes,
and at the corner of the street she attempted to turn the barrow, ran
into a stone, upset the barrow and spilled the infant on the ground.
The infant immediately sprang up, clutching the Gargantuan feeding
bottle, and berated his mother in emphatic terms, delivered in a deep
bass voice, addressing her as "Captain." "Look out, you'll break the
bottle, dumping the wheelbarrow over like that," he remarked warningly.
The old mammy stooped over to readjust him in the barrow and as she did
so several feet of masculine garments became visible under her short
skirt.
"Minstrel show in town," remarked Mr. Wing with another laugh of
amusement. His amusement turned to surprise when the picturesque pair
preceded him up the street and turned in at his own yard. The house was
lighted from one end to the other; groups of young people were visible
everywhere, on the porches, on the lawn, in the doorways.
"Seems to be a party going on here," remarked Mr. Wing.
"Father!" exclaimed a voice from the crowd, and Agony darted forward to
embrace him. "Why didn't you tell us you were coming? You're just in
time for the party."
Mr. Wing greeted the guests affably and after a short interval escaped
with the artist to his study on the second floor, where they spent an
hour in close consultation behind a locked door.
"Now let's go down and look in on the party," said Mr. Wing, locking a
package of letters carefully into a small drawer in his desk. Before
going down he went to his own room and changed to a suit of white
flannels in honor of the occasion.
As he was finally making for the stairway he met Veronica Lehar in the
upstairs hall. "May I use the telephone in the study?" she asked.
"Certainly," he replied, and went in and turned the light on for her and
then went on downstairs.
Shouts of laughter filled the air; the negro mammy and the gigantic
infant, together with the wheelbarrow and the feeding bottle, were
holding the stage at the end of the spacious sitting room. Slim was
being given his birthday presents and was surrounded with nonsensical
articles of every kind--toys, rattles, all-day suckers, and so forth,
and was convulsing the crowd with his antics.
The merriment went on until somebody called for Veronica to play on her
violin and she came downstairs with her violin in her hands. Then a hush
fell on the crowd, and the merrymakers listened, spellbound and
dreamy-eyed, to the strains which the passionate-eyed little Hungarian
girl drew from the fiddle resting so caressingly in the hollow of her
shoulder.
It was a plaintive, melancholy melody she played first, throbbing with
unsatisfied longing and quivering with pain and heartbreak. Sahwah
shivered and thought of ice cold rain drops falling on long dead leaves,
and the restless unhappiness seized upon her again. The melody wandered
on, and in its weird minor thirds there seemed to be all the anguish of
an oppressed people, hopeless of release from bondage; condemned to toil
in darkness forever.
Then a new note crept into the music, a note of protest, of rebellion.
Fury took the place of hopelessness; dumb resignation gave way to angry
stirrings. Fiercely the storm raged for a moment, and then subsided into
feeble murmurs, and flickered out into hopelessness again, blacker and
deeper than before. Then came flight, sudden and headlong, hurried and
confused; and days of wandering by land and sea, hours of loneliness and
homesickness, of mingled hope and fear, of faith and perplexity, ending
in a magnificent hymn of thanksgiving and praise for deliverance. It
made Sahwah think of the persecuted Jews in Russia, fleeing from a
massacre and coming to America for refuge.
But now the music had taken a gayer, brighter turn. Everywhere there was
the hum of industry, a contented sound like the buzzing of bees intent
upon gathering honey. Songs of happiness rose on every side, mingled
with the sound of joyful feet passing in a gay dance. The music took on
an irresistible lilt; the feet of the listeners itched to join in the
measure and tapped out the time involuntarily.
Suddenly the dance turned into marching, the earth resounded with the
tramp, tramp of advancing feet, the music became a martial strain; it
stirred the blood to fever heat and set the pulses leaping madly. Louder
and more triumphant swelled the strain, louder came the tramp of the
victorious armies following in the wake of trumpets, until the whole
earth seemed to mingle its voice in one great shout of victory.
Without knowing it the listeners were on their feet, clutching each
other with tense fingers, their eyes blurred with tears, their throats
aching with emotion, their hearts burning to perform deeds of valor for
their country, to fight to the last ditch, to die as heroes for their
native land.
They hardly realized when Veronica had stopped playing and slipped
quietly out of the room.
"God, what playing!" breathed Mr. Wing to the artist. "Music like that
would turn cowards into heroes and heroes into demi-gods; would inspire
a wooden dummy to fight to the last ditch for freedom and native land.
Daggers and Dirks! What a red-hot little American she is! Why, if a
_dead_ man heard her play the 'Star Spangled Banner' the way she just
played it, he'd rise up to protect his country. Yes, and his very
_monument_ would shoulder a gun and get into the ranks against the foe!"
Refreshments were brought in and the babel of tongues broke loose again.
Everyone asked for Veronica, wanted to sit beside her and tell her what
a wonderful genius she was, but she was nowhere to be found.
Grandmother Wing came in presently and said that Veronica had slipped
out and gone home because she had a sick headache and wanted to be
alone.
"She has those headaches so often," said Migwan in a tone of concern. "I
wonder if I hadn't better go home after her."
"She said she wanted to be alone," said Nyoda thoughtfully. "She always
does, you know, when she has a headache. I don't believe I'd go after
her. She'll go right to bed and be all right in the morning."
With many expressions of regret at Veronica's indisposition the boys and
girls resumed their frolic.
Slim and the Captain, still in their roles of mammy and pickaninny,
walked home with the Winnebagos when the party finally broke up, the
pickaninny trundling his own one-wheeled chariot, which was so full of
presents there was no room for him.
Nyoda broke the news to them of their appointment as executioners of
Kaiser Bill and they accepted the commission gravely. "'Horatius,' quoth
the consul, 'as thou sayst, so let it be,'" quoted Slim with a dramatic
flourish. "We'll execute your orders and the goat at the same time. But
does it take two to speed the fatal ball? Why am I honored thus when
here beside me stands the world's champion crack shot, even the great
Cicero St. John?"
The Captain suddenly flushed and glared at Slim, but said nothing.
"'Herminius beat his bosom, but never a word he spake,'" quoted Slim,
grinning. "You see," he continued, turning to the girls, "the Captain
and I were practising shooting at a target once, out in the country, and
the Captain came so near the bull's eye that he shot the perch out from
under a parrot in a cage fifty feet away. O Mother dear, Jerusalem! You
never saw such a surprised bird in all your life!" Slim was overcome by
the remembrance, and the Captain grinned feebly at the laughter which
the tale invoked.
"Don't you worry, I guess I can shoot a goat all right," said the
Captain with some asperity.
"Uttered like a man, Captain," grinned Slim. "'Then out spoke brave
Horatius, the Captain of the gate--'"
His flow of nonsense was interrupted by an exclamation of surprise from
Nyoda as they reached the front gate. A messenger boy was running up the
steps of Carver House just ahead of them.