The Sin of Monsieur Pettipon Part 20

"Already the costumes have cost four hundred dollars and more. We'll be lucky to make expenses if the Gulicks keep on putting in expensive scenes," she moaned.

She busied herself with the angel's wing, then paused to ask, "Ambrose, have you learned your historical epilogue?"

For answer he sprang to his feet, wrapped his cheese-cloth toga about him, struck a Ciceronian att.i.tude, and said loudly:

"_Who am I, oh list'ning peoples?

His'try's spirit, stern and truthful!

Come I here to tell you fully, Of our Granville's thrilling story, How Saul and other n.o.ble Gulicks, And a few who shall be nameless, Hewed a city from the forests, Blazed the way for civ'lization._"

"Stop," cried Mrs. Pottle. "I can't bear to hear another word about those Gulicks. You know it well enough."

"There are a few things I wish I could have put in," remarked Mr.

Pottle, wistfully.

His tone made her look up with quick interest.

"What do you mean?" she inquired.

"Oh, I found out a thing or two," he replied, "when I was down at the capital last week. I happened to drop into the state historical society's library and run over some old records."

He chuckled.

"P. Bradley Gulick told me I didn't have to go down there to get the facts. He'd give them to me, he said. So he did. Some of them."

"Ambrose, what do you mean?"

"Oh, nothing. All I will say is this: I'm a patient man and can be pestered a lot, but just let one of these Gulicks pester me a little too much one of these days, and I'll rear up on my hind legs, that's all."

There was a glint in his eye, and she saw it.

"Ambrose," she said, "if you do anything to spoil my pageant, I'll never forgive you."

He snorted.

"Your pageant? It's just as I said it would be. We Pottles will do the dirty work and the Gulicks will grab the glory. They've behaved so piggish that everybody in town is sore at them, and I don't see how the pageant is going to come out on top. You'd probably have gotten that thousand from old Felix Winterbottom if it hadn't been for them. Then you wouldn't have to be losing a pound a day over this pageant. Now if you'd only gotten up a nice old-fas.h.i.+oned chicken supper, and a minstrel show----"

"Ambrose! Go put on your trousers!"

--3

Despite Mr. Pottle's pessimistic predictions, there was not a vacant seat or an unused cubic foot of air in the Granville Opera House that clinging Spring night, when the asbestos curtain, tugged by tyro hands, jerkily ascended on the prologue of the Grand Historical Pageant of the Growth of Civilization in Granville for the Benefit of the Browning-Tagore Club's Day Nursery. Those who did not have relatives in the cast appeared to have been lured thither by a certain morbid curiosity as to what a pageant was. Their faces said plainly that they were prepared for anything.

After the orchestra had raced through "Poet and Peasant," with the cornet winning by a comfortable margin, Mrs. P. Bradley Gulick, somewhat short of breath and rendered doubly wall-eyed by an inexpert make-up, appeared in red, white and blue cheese-cloth, and announced in a high voice that she was the Spirit of Progress and would look on with a kindly, encouraging eye while history's storied page was turned and spread before them, and, she added, in properly poetic language, she would tell them what it was all about. The audience gave her the applause due the dowager of the town's leading family, and not one hand-clap more. Mr. P. Bradley Gulick, bony but impressive, in a Grecian robe, appeared and proclaimed that he was the Spirit of Civilization. A Ballet of the Waters followed, and as a climax, Evelyn Gulick, age thirteen, in appropriate green gauze, announced:

"_Who am I, oh friends and neighbors?

I'm the Spirit of the Waters, Lordly, swift, Monongahela; Argosies float on my bosom----_"

She tapped her narrow chest, and a look of horror crept into her face; her mind seemed to be groping for something. Tremulously she repeated,

"_Argosies float on my bosom._"

The voice of Mrs. Pottle prompted from the wings,

"_And fleets of s.h.i.+ps with treasures laden._"

Evelyn clutched at the sound, but it slipped from her, and she wildly began,

"_Argosies float on my bosom_ (Slap, slap) _And sheeps of flits--and sheeps of flits----_"

She burst into tears, and turning a spiteful face toward one of the boxes, she cried,

"You stop making faces at me, Jessie Winterbottom."

Then she fled to the wings.

This served to bring to the attention of the audience the fact that a strange thing had happened: Felix Winterbottom and his family had come to the pageant. He was there, concealed as far as possible by the red plush curtains of the box, defiant and forbidding. From the glance he now and then cast at the decollete back of his wife, it was evident that he had not come voluntarily.

Mrs. Pottle, in the wings, bit a newly manicured fingernail.

"I begged Mrs. Gulick to make that dumb child of hers learn her part,"

she whispered wrathfully to her husband.

"Mrs. Gulick says it's your fault for not prompting loud enough," said Mr. Pottle.

"She did, did she?" Mrs. Pottle a.s.sumed what is known in ring circles as a fighting face.

"I can't stand much more of their pestering," said Mr. Pottle darkly.

"Ssssh," said his wife. "The Paul Revere scene is going to start."

In the wings, Wendell Gulick, Junior, was making ready to mount his charger. The charger, as he had specified, was white, peculiarly white, for it had been found necessary at the last moment to conceal some harness stains by powdering her liberally with crushed lilac talc.u.m.

Agnes looked resentful but resigned. Mr. Gulick, Junior, was a plump young man, with nose-gla.s.ses, and satisfied lips, who had the distinction of being the only person in Granville who had ever ridden to hounds. He cultivated a horsey atmosphere, wore a riding crop pin in his tie, and was admittedly the local authority on things equine. He looked most formidable in hip-high leathern boots, a continental garb, and a powdered wig. It was regretable that the steed did not measure up to her rider. Save for being approximately white, Agnes had little to recommend her for the role. She had one of those long, sad, philosophic faces, and she appeared to be considerably taller in the hips than in the shoulders. She had a habit of looking back over her shoulder with a surprised expression, as if she missed her milk wagon.

Encouraged by a slap on the flank from a stage-hand, Agnes advanced to the center of the stage at a brisk, business-like trot, and there stopped, and nodded to the audience.

"Whoa, Agnes," shouted some bad little boy in the gallery.

Young Mr. Gulick, in the role of Paul Revere, affected to pat his mount's head, and in a voice of thunder, roared:

"_Gallant stallion, swift and n.o.ble,_"

Agnes reached out a long neck and nibbled at the scenery.

"_Lent me by my good friend, Gulick,_"

Agnes looked over her shoulder and smiled at her rider.