Four o’clock found him with Joe in the Schoonover’s pantry where they had chosen to pass the last half hour, deriving a sense of protection from the servant’s presence in the kitchen. Mrs. Schoonover had gone, the guests were due—and as at a signal agreed upon the doorbell and the phone pealed out together.
“There they are,” Joe whispered.
“If it’s my family,” said Terrence hoarsely, “tell them I’m not here.”
“It’s not your family—it’s the people for the party.”
“The phone I mean.”
“You’d better answer it.” Joe opened the door to the kitchen, “Didn’t you hear the doorbell, Irma?”
“There’s cake dough on my hands and Essie’s too. You go Joe.”
“No, I certainly will not.”
“Then they’ll have to wait. Can’t you two boys walk?”
Once again the double summons, emphatic and alarming rang through the house.
“Joe, you got to tell my family I’m not here,” said Terrence tensely. “I can’t say I’m not here, can I? It’ll only take a minute to tell them. Just say I’m not here.”
“We’ve got to go to the door. Do you want all the people to go home?”
“No, I don’t. But you simply got to——”
Irma came out of the kitchen wiping her hands.
“My sakes alive,” she said, “why don’t you tend the door before the children get away?”
They both talked at once, utterly confused. Irma broke the deadlock by picking up the phone.
“Hello,” she said. “Keep quiet Terrence, I can’t hear. Hello— hello… Nobody’s on that phone now. You better brush your hair, Terrence—and look at your hands!”
Terrence rushed for the sink and worked hastily with the kitchen soap.
“Where’s a comb?” he yelled. “Joe, where’s your comb?”
“Upstairs, of course.”
Still wet Terrence dashed up the back stairs, realizing only at the mirror that he looked exactly like a boy who had spent most of the day in the alley. Hurriedly he dug for a clean shirt of Joe’s; as he buttoned it a wail floated up the front stairs——
“Terrence, they’ve gone. There’s nobody at the door—they’ve gone home.”
Overwhelmed the boys rushed out on the porch. Far down the street two small figures receded. Cupping their hands Terrence and Joe shouted. The figures stopped, turned around—then suddenly they were joined by other figures, a lot of figures: a victoria drove around the corner and clopped up to the house. The party had begun.
At the sight of Dolly Bartlett Terrence’s heart rose chokingly and he wanted to be away. She was not anyone he knew, certainly not the girl about whom he put his arms a week ago. He stared as at a spectre. He had never known what she looked like, perceiving her almost as an essence of time and weather—if there was frost and elation in the air she was frost and elation, if there was a mystery in yellow windows on a summer night she was that mystery, if there was music that could inspire or sadden or excite she was that music, she was “Red Wing” and “Alice Where art thou going?” and the “Light of the Silvery Moon.”
To cooler observers Dollys hair was child’s gold in knotted pigtails, her face was as regular and as cute as a kitten’s and her legs were neatly crossed at the ankles or dangled helplessly from a chair. She was so complete at ten, so confident and alive that she was many boys’ girl—a precocious mistress of the long look, the sustained smile, the private voice and the delicate touch, devices of the generations.
With the other guests Dolly looked about for the hostess and finding none infiltrated into the drawing room to stand about whispering and laughing in nervous chorus. The boys also grouped for protection, save two unselfconscious minims of eight who took advantage of their elders’ shyness to show off, with dashings about and raucous laughter. Minutes passed and nothing happened; Joe and Terrence communicated in hissing whispers, their lips scarcely moving.
“You ought to start it,” muttered Terrence.
“You start it. It was your scheme.”
“It’s your party, and we might just as well go home as stand around here all afternoon. Why don’t you just say we’re going to play it and then choose somebody to go out of the room.”
Joe stared at him incredulously.
“Big chance! Let’s get one of the girls to start it. You ask Dolly.”
“I will not.”
“How about Martha Robbie?”
Martha was a tomboy who had no terrors for them, and no charm; it was like asking a sister. They took her aside.
“Martha, look, would you tell the girls that we’re going to play post-office?”
Martha drew herself away in a violent manner.
“Why, I certainly will not,” she cried sternly. “I most certainly won’t do any such thing.”
To prove it she ran back to the girls and set about telling them.
“Dolly, what do you think Terrence asked me. He wanted to——”
“Shut up!” Terrence begged her.
“——play post——”
“Shut up! We didn’t want anything of the sort.”
There was an arrival. Up the veranda steps came a wheel chair, hoisted by a chauffeur, and in it sat Carpenter Moore, elder brother of that Albert Moore from whom Terrence had drawn blood this morning. Once inside Carpenter dismissed the chauffeur and rolled himself deftly into the party looking about him arrogantly. His handicap had made him a tyrant and fostered a singular bad temper.
“Greetings and salutations, everybody,” he said. “How are you, Joe, boy?”
In a minute his eye fell on Terrence, and changing the direction of his chair he rolled up beside him.
“You hit my brother on the nose,” he said in a lowered voice. “You wait till my mother sees your father.”
His expression changed; he laughed and struck Terrence as if playfully with his cane.
“Well, what are you doing around here? Everybody looks as if their cat just died.”
“Terrence wants to play Clap-in-and-clap-out.”
“Not me,” denied Terrence, and somewhat rashly added, “Joe wanted to play it. It’s his party.”
“I did not,” said Joe heatedly. “Terrence did.”
“Where’s your mother?” Carpenter asked Joe. “Does she know about this?”
Joe tried to extricate himself from the menace.
“She doesn’t care—I mean she said we could play anything we wanted.”
Carpenter scoffed.
“I’ll bet she didn’t. And I’ll bet most of the parents here wouldn’t let them play that disgusting stuff.”
“I just thought if there was nothing else to do——” he said feebly.
“You did, did you?” cried Carpenter. “Well just answer me this— haven’t you ever been to a party before?”
“I’ve been to——”
“Just answer me this—if you’ve ever been to any parties before— which I doubt, which I very seriously doubt—you know what people do. All except the ones who don’t behave like a gentleman.”
“Oh, I wish you’d go jump in the lake.”
There was a shocked silence, for since Carpenter was crippled from the waist down and could not jump even in a hypothetical lake, it fell on every ear like a taunt. Carpenter raised his cane, and then lowered it, as Mrs. Schoonover came into the room.
“What are you playing?” she asked mildly, “Clap-in-and-clap-out?”
III
Carpenter’s stick descended to his lap. But he was by no means the most confused—Joe and Terrence had assumed that the telegram had taken effect, and now they could only suppose that Mrs. Schoonover had detected the ruse and come back. But there was no sign of wrath or perturbation on her face.
Carpenter recovered himself quickly.
“Yes, we were, Mrs. Schoonover. We were just beginning. Terrence is ‘It.’”
“I’ve forgotten how,” said Mrs. Schoonover simply, “but isn’t someone supposed to play the piano? I can do that anyhow.”
“That’s fine,” exclaimed Carpenter. “Now Terrence has to take a pillow and go into the hall.”
“I don’t want to,” said Terrence quickly suspecting a trap. “Somebody else be It.”
“You’re It,” Carpenter insisted fiercely. “Now we’ll push all the sofas and chairs into a row.”
Among the few who disliked the turn of affairs was Dolly Bartlett. She had been constructed with great cunning and startling intent for the purpose of arousing emotion and all her mechanism winced at the afternoon’s rebuff. She felt cheated and disappointed, but there was little she could do save wait for some male to assert himself. Whoever this might be something in Dolly would eagerly respond and she kept hoping it would be Terrence, who in the role of lone wolf possessed a romantic appeal for her. She took her place in the row with ill will while Mrs. Schoonover at the piano began to play “Every Little Movement has a Meaning all its Own.”
When Terrence had been urged forcibly into the hall Carpenter Moore explained his plan. The fact that he himself had never participated in such games did not keep him from knowing the rules, but what he proposed was unorthodox.
“We’ll say some girl has a message for Terrence, but that girl won’t be anybody but the girl next to you, see? So whoever he kneels to or bows to we’ll just say it isn’t her, because we’re thinking of the girl next to her, understand?” He raised his voice, “Come in, Terrence!”
There was no response and looking into the hall they found that Terrence had disappeared. He had not gone out either door and they scattered through the house searching, into the kitchen up the stairs and in the attic. Only Carpenter remained in the hall poking tentatively at a row of coats in a closet. Suddenly his chair was seized from behind and propelled quickly into the closet. A key turned in the lock.
For a moment Terrence stood in silent triumph. Dolly Bartlett, coming downstairs, brightened at the sight of his dusty, truculent face.
“Terrence, where were you?”
“Never mind. I heard what you were going to do.”
“It wasn’t me, Terrence.” She came close to him. “It was
