CHAPTER XV.--THE GHOST PARTY.
"I don't see how you can play any gruesome Hallowe'en tricks in thishouse, Mrs. St. Clair," said Billie later at the dinner table. "It's theabode of cheerfulness. Look at this dining room, for instance. A skulland crossbones wouldn't even look dismal against this white wainscotingand these pale yellow walls."
"She's trying to pump you, mother," put in Percy. "Now don't tell heranything."
Mrs. St. Clair smiled archly. How pretty she looked, Billie thought, inher pink crepe dress, with a beautiful collar of pearls around herthroat. Nothing would induce the widow to wear black, and, after a yearor two of mourning, she had gone back to colors and cheerfulness.
"He has got some big surprises for you, my dear. I'll only tell you thismuch. It will be quite as ghastly as you could possibly desire, and Ihope nobody is wearing any clothes that will matter. Your dress, MissAlta, I am afraid will spot if you do all the things Percy is planningfor this evening. What a lovely frock, by the way. I think I have neverseen a more beautiful dress for a young girl."
All eyes were fastened on Fannie's dress, and there was general surpriseamong the girls to see that Fannie was wearing an exquisite gown of paleblue satin with an over-dress of blue gauze, edged with narrow silverfringe. In her hair was a wreath of pink roses.
She was quite unembarrassed under the scrutiny of all these people, andsmiled complacently at Mrs. St. Clair.
Nobody had taken much notice of Belle until now. They had supposed shehad kept so unusually quiet because she was not in her own "set," as sheloved to call her coterie of seven. But to those who were familiar withher, it was plain that something had happened. She did not seem herself.Her eyes had a strange gray look to them. Two little white dentsappeared on either side of her nose and her lips were shrunk into pale,narrow lines. But that was not all. Were they dreaming or was this thefirst of Percy's Hallowe'en jokes? The beautiful, proud Belle waswearing a faded yellow muslin.
She had tried to cover her shoulders with a little blue scarf, but itwas impossible to deceive the sharp eyes of her schoolmates.
"Nobody's clothes will be hurt, Mother," put in Percy, feeling somehowthat a cloud had fallen on the company, although he did not know enoughabout girls' clothes to take in this remarkable change in Belle'sappearance. "Remember that this is a ghost party."
"What is a ghost party?" demanded Fannie, suddenly becoming animatedfrom the admiration she felt she had attracted.
"Everybody wears a sheet and pillow-case," answered Percy, "and, for onething, not a vestige of dress shows."
A look of triumph came into Belle's eyes at this and the two dents beganto disappear.
"I hear the other people coming, so we had better get into our costumesif you are entirely through."
"Come up to my room, girls. Percy will take care of the boys. Marie andI are commissioned to dress you up. I am obeying orders, you see," saidMrs. St. Clair.
"And remember that you are supposed to be disguised," called Percy."Don't give yourself away by giggling, Miss Nancy-Bell."
"I'm sure I shan't want to giggle if I'm dressed as a ghost," answeredNancy, following the others up the steps.
Half an hour later a company of spectres invaded the halls and drawingroom of Pine Lodge. There were silent ghosts and giggling ghosts, and aroly-poly ghost, who bumped against a thin ghost and knocked him flatand the thin ghost cried out:
"Oh, shades of departed Jumbo, don't sit on me!"
Then all the ghosts laughed and one ghost danced a jig that had theshadow of a resemblance to the Fishers' Horn Pipe.
Presently there was a long and mournful trumpet call from up in the verytop of the house and a portly ghost who seemed to be holding up a trainunder her white cotton shroud said:
"Now, my dear spirits, we are all to go up, if you will be good enoughto follow me," and the whole troop of ghosts began moving in a spectralbody up the front staircase.
There was a second long-drawn-out and despairing trump, and the phantombeckoned them to hurry up, with her plump, pretty hand, and remarked:
"My darling Percival is so impatient."
Up the next staircase they trooped and finally up a narrow flight, atthe top of which hung a black curtain with cabalistic signs painted onit in bright red.
Once past the curtain and there was a gasp of surprise and wonder. Thegreat attic of Pine Lodge, which stretched over the entire house, hadbeen transformed into a spirit dance hall. From the ceiling hung pumpkinjack-o-lanterns of every size. Plates of salt and alcohol were burningabout the room, giving a ghastly greenish look to the picture. An oldwitch dressed in black, with a long broomstick, was stationed by acauldron of melted lead, placed on a charcoal stove.
Repeating a cabalistic verse with incredible rapidity, which soundedsomething like:
"Burra, burra pie, cat's eye, devil fry, Singer, dinger, singer dinger, blood!"
the black witch dropped a spoonful of the lead into a bowl of water.
"Here is your fortune," she said, in a sing-song voice to the nearestghost.
"The lead has taken the shape of a letter. It brings news to you. Itcomes from over the water on a ship. The letter is about somethinground----"
"Money is round," put in a tall ghost, standing near. "So are rings andnecklaces----"
"There is trouble ahead," went on the witch. "There is trouble beforethe letter ever reaches land."
The ghost who was listening moved away quickly.
"Of course, it was just a coincidence," she said to herself, "but Iwonder who the person was who said that about rings and necklaces. Oh,dear! Oh, dear! I wish I had never taken that box in charge."
In another part of the room a red witch was engaged in launching littlefortune sail boats, made of English walnuts, on a troubled sea in a tub.
There were four other witches about the attic telling fortunes withcards and in other ways, two gray ones, a white one, and a green one,and there was an enormous gray cat with electric eyes and a tail fourfeet long that curled up over its back. At last from behind a curtaincame the strains of weird music, and the witches and the gray cat danceda quadrille, the witches riding on their broomsticks in a circle,leaping over the cat as they advanced down the middle and finally endingwith a romp when all the ghosts joined in and danced together.
After a while the ghosts removed their sheets and pillow-cases andbecame human beings once more, and the side shows, as Percy called them,began. Every girl at the party bobbed for an apple, except Belle Rogers,who declined emphatically. But those who remembered the red rubbercurlers understood her reasons for not wishing to wet her aureole ofgolden hair.
Fannie Alta plunged her face and neck into the tub with a recklesslaugh, and spotted her pretty dress without a quiver of regret.
Nancy, in a little room hung in black in a remote corner of the attic,held a lighted candle over her head, while she looked fearfully in theglass and combed her hair. For just a breathing space a boy's fair,ruddy face passed across the mirror and disappeared.
With a little shriek, Nancy looked quickly over her shoulder, but shewas entirely alone.
Billie went rather later than the others to try her fortune in themirror room. She had lingered along with a laughing, teasing circlearound the apple plungers, and, seeing Nancy come out of the mirror roomalone, she strolled over there. Nancy explained what she was to do, andleft her alone to her fate.
"Did you see any one, Nancy?" laughed Billie incredulously.
"Yes," she whispered mysteriously, "I did; but I wasn't frightenedbecause----"
"Because what?" demanded Billie, pinching her friend's round cheek.
"Because--it wasn't a person who would frighten any one," answeredNancy, with a laugh, as she tripped away to the next side show, fromwhence issued suppressed screams and howls which were explained when shepulled the curtain and a skeleton jumped at her.
In the meantime, Billie had gone into the mirror room alone. She stoodlooking gravely at herself in the glass, while s
he ran a comb throughher smooth locks with one hand and held a candle with the other. Sheseemed to have waited a good while for the apparition which was supposedto appear to show its face.
"I suppose this booth isn't in working order any longer," she thought,as she laid down the comb, when suddenly from the deep shadows reflectedin the glass she made out the outline of a face.
Billie smiled. She had been prepared to recognize one of her friends,but the smile faded from her lips; she put down the candle quickly andfaced about. The black curtain forming the wall of the little room wasstill quivering, but no one was there.
She ran out hurriedly and looked about her. All the boys and girls weredancing the barn dance, and the attic had become very cheerful and gayit seemed to her in the brief moment in which she had tried her fortunein the mirror room.
"It was just a foolish, nervous notion," she said to herself, turning tomeet Merry Brown, who was looking for her to be his partner in thedance. "But that beaked nose and that wicked eye so close to it," herthoughts continued. "Could I have been mistaken?"
"Are there any strangers here to-night?" she asked Merry, as they danceddown the room together.
"Not a single stranger," he replied. "Only the High School crowd."
When the dance was over, they filed in a long, laughing procession downthe three flights of steps to supper, and there was nothing spectral orgruesome about the gay party which gathered around Mrs. St. Clair's longtable. Billie tried to talk and sing with the others and laugh at RolyPoly McLane and Percy, who recited an absurd dialogue they had preparedbeforehand in which Roly Poly took the part of a fat, old man and Percya thin old woman. But all the time she kept asking herself:
"Did I see him, or was it just my imagination?"