Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 459
However that may be, Mrs. Massey was going to Teas, bridge parties and luncheons pretty regularly almost every afternoon, by now, and it wasn’t long after Eddie’s serenade when she came home from one of ’em with a funny look she has that always means she’s holding something back until she gets good and ready to tell it. The girls were going to the Allstovers’ to dinner but she had a confab with them before they went, and I heard Clarissa shouting, “For heaven’s sake!” pretty often in her room where the conference went on, and Enid came downstairs squealing back at her mother, “How many more times are we expected to go through this? I’m getting tired of it!” But Mrs. Massey wouldn’t tell me anything until about ten o’clock when I was reading something interesting by a lamp in the living-room and wanted to go on and had gotten over any desire to talk at all. The gist of what she had to say was that she’d found out we might be making a little mistake about the Allstovers. At these women’s parties she’d been going to she’d been getting a great deal more light on family standing at Mary’s Neck lately, and one of the ladies she’d been getting confidential with had enlightened her upon the real facts of the case.
“The way it began,” Mrs. Massey told me, “she said that though she’d known me such a short time she felt she just must speak out, because she took such an interest in my daughters’ looks, and she didn’t like to see such sweet young girls beginning to be noticed going about everywhere with that little Eugene Allstover and his set. Those boys might be all right in their way, she said, but the real Mary’s Neck didn’t approve of them at all. She said she knew how easy it would be for a new family to get confused about who constituted the real Mary’s Neck, and the Allstover family certainly didn’t belong to it. ‘Oh, never!’ she said, ‘Never in the world! Please don’t make that mistake, Mrs. Massey!’ The people we really ought to know, she said, were the Ruckleboys.”
“Who?” I asked Mrs. Massey. “What sort of boys did your lady-friend say — —”
“Not boys,” Mrs. Massey told me. “It’s a name, Ruckleboy. She said the Ruckleboys were the most desirable people along all this section of coast. They’re a historical family, too, because Mr. Ruckleboy had an ancestor on the mother’s side that made a famous speech in Congress during the War of Eighteen-twelve, denouncing England. She says the Ruckleboys are terribly exclusive; they don’t even go to the beach. They don’t accept any invitations; they practically don’t go anywhere or meet anybody, and very few people ever have the opportunity of even seeing them.”
“How do they get their sustenance?” I asked Mrs. Massey. “Do you suppose if we sneaked up their way after dark we could get the chance to catch one of these Ruckleboys creeping out to feed on night herbs, maybe?”
This didn’t bother Mrs. Massey; she just looked dreamy, and went on about what her lady-friend had told her. “She says the Ruckleboys are Bostonians. There are other families from Boston here, she says; but the Ruckleboys are the only Bostonians. They have a daughter, and two adopted nephews are spending the summer with them. She says she’d never seen more charming, well-brought-up girls than Enid and Clarissa, and she was sure they’d be more congenial with the Ruckleboy young people than anyone else here. The only difficulty was that the Ruckleboys kept to themselves so exclusively it might be almost impossible to arrange; but she did hope somehow to bring it about.”
Well, either Mrs. Massey’s lady-friend was pretty energetic or else the Ruckleboys were in a yielding mood just then, because it was only about two days after that when Mrs. Ruckleboy and her daughter called on Mrs. Massey and Enid and Clarissa and left Mr. Ruckleboy’s card for me, and that evening the two adopted Ruckleboy nephews drove up in a car that didn’t have much on the Dorio-Grecco for looks, and the only reason it didn’t make more noise was that nothing could. Young Allstover and two of his friends were there, and so was George Bullfinch; and, from what I could make out, the party of young gentlemen had much the same kind of a time among themselves that Eugene and Eddie had on the evening of Eddie’s latest final departure.
Mrs. Massey stayed in the living-room part of the time; and afterwards, she and Enid and Clarissa were enthusiastic about what superior young men the two Ruckleboys were, and Clarissa and Enid were excited about going on a sailing-party with them the next afternoon. Well, here came in a coincidence I’d hardly believe if someone else told me it had happened to himself, and maybe it couldn’t happen anywhere except at Mary’s Neck or another summer place of that nature. Anyhow I’ll just go ahead and state the facts. The girls were out on the Ruckleboys’ sailing-party, and Mrs. Massey and I were sitting on the piazza watching the Atlantic ocean, when a fashionable-looking old gentleman with white hair and a buttonhole bouquet drove up in a closed car and got out and came in and introduced himself as Mr. William Jaffray. I knew that the Logansville Light and Power Company, of which I may have mentioned I’m president, had a few Eastern stockholders, and I recognized the name as belonging to the largest of them. He was a friendly-spoken old fellow, right likeable, and said he’d happened to hear the president of the company had taken a cottage at Mary’s Neck and so he’d driven over from Pigeon Cove, ten miles away where he lived, to pay his respects and ask if he could do anything for our pleasure or comfort. Mrs. Massey and I thanked him, and we chatted a while; then he asked us how in the world we’d ever happened to decide on spending the summer at Mary’s Neck.
“Of course the place itself is pretty enough,” he said, “and so’s the view, and your cottage is about the best here. What I mean is the people. I used to come here, myself; but after about five years I couldn’t stand it — I couldn’t get along with ’em at all. I moved over to Pigeon Cove, though of course in the way of summer residents, Pigeon Cove is pretty bad and I haven’t found it much of an improvement.”
Mrs. Massey gave a laugh, for manners, and said we’d found most of the people at Mary’s Neck quite delightful.
“What!” he said, and he got red, all at once wearing a right quarrelsome-tempered kind of expression. “Then you certainly haven’t learned to know ’em yet! In the first place, there are whole families here that never have a decent word to say for almost anybody, and, for my part, I think that’s the only thing they’re right about. A summer resort is the worst place on earth for people to get along together, and I’m an amiable man; but I certainly couldn’t get along with anyone at Mary’s Neck — or Pigeon Cove, either, for that matter, for there are no end of inconsiderate people over there, too, always getting up a feud about something, usually the behavior of somebody’s children. But, as I say, Mary’s Neck is worse. Except yourselves, there are very few here that aren’t virtually just trash.”
This upset Mrs. Massey quite a little. “Why, Mr. Jaffray!” she said. “You can’t mean that. You couldn’t mean to include the whole of Mary’s Neck in such a sweeping condemnation. For instance, there’s one family we’ve met lately, the most perfectly delightful people — —”
“They must be new here, then,” he told her. “You must be speaking of a family that’s come here since my time! Seriously, Mrs. Massey, if I were you, I’d be careful about having much to do with anybody in the place, especially as I understand you have two daughters to look out for. The only way to enjoy a place like this is to have nothing to do with anybody. For instance, there’s a family here named Ruckleboy; they were my next door neighbors and I know ’em like a book! So does everybody else, you’ll find, if you make inquiries! They’re the pariahs of Mary’s Neck — —”
“The pariahs?” Mrs. Massey asked him. “The pariahs?”
“Whatever you do,” he told her, “for heaven’s sake, don’t let anybody introduce the Ruckleboys to you! Keep clear of them and, for that matter, of all the people here you can. There’s only one family here that really have any standing at all and that you might like to know and could have a little respectable intercourse with; that’s the Bullfinches. The Bullfinches are really pretty fairly nice people; but they’re the only ones here that are.”
CHAPTER XIV
OF COURSE WHAT this spiky old gentleman made us mainly think was that he’d be pretty hard to get along with, himself, after you knew him better; but when he’d gone, I told Mrs. Massey we seemed to have been around the circle and to be back with the Bullfinches again. She didn’t say anything and I could see she was disturbed in her mind, and there can’t be any doubt she was finding Mary’s Neck considerably upsetting sociably, as I suppose most summer places likely are for a new family. But the Neck hadn’t finished its confusingness for us — not by any means — and the coincidence I spoke of wasn’t over. A day or so after old Mr. Jaffray had made his peculiar remarks, Mrs. Massey and I were sitting on the beach by ourselves; — that is, there wasn’t anybody we knew right near us. But a few feet behind us there were two or three ladies sitting and looking on, and we made out from their conversation that they were staying at one of the hotels on their first visit to Mary’s Neck. Of course they didn’t know who we were, and it happened they began to talk about Enid and Clarissa, who were playing ball in their bathing-suits with pretty nearly all of the boys and young men on the beach.
The Ruckleboy nephews were in the game and so were Eugene Allstover and his friends, and even Eddie Bullfinch. I noticed that Enid was making up with Eddie again. She put some sand down his back, and he tried to slap her for it and fell down, and I was glad to see this, because I understood it meant I’d have some more breakage to pay for pretty soon, which would be really a small price for the pleasure of hearing Eddie talk sometimes. I didn’t have to worry about the Dorio-Grecco, either, because, not hearing it anywhere for over twenty-four hours, I’d asked Zebias if he knew what the quiet was due to, and he came right out with a direct answer. The Dorio-Grecco had gone over a small cliff with Eddie in it, he said, and Eddie had got out of the ocean but the Dorio-Grecco never would, which Zebias considered as valuable an accident as could have happened to the community, and so did I. Our agreement in this and other matters seemed to cement a friendship that was growing up between Zebias and me; he was what I’ve heard called an acquired taste — you had to know him — yet I found I was getting kind of a fondness for him.
But as I was saying, the hotel ladies behind Mrs. Massey and me at the beach were talking about our girls, not knowing they belonged to us. “Do you see that slim flowerlike young thing?” one of these ladies said. “She’s the sister of that lovely dark-haired girl just throwing the ball. They certainly seem to be the belles of the place. They belong to a family that lives in that big cottage the driver pointed out to us yesterday, and of course would never deign to notice us mere hotel people — high-and-mighty cottagers! Their name’s Massey and they’re just about the leading family here. The waitress at my table told me so this morning.”
Well, I looked at Mrs. Massey, and I could see that she was as pleased as pie. What’s more, I can’t deny I felt that way myself. Of course I knew that the information this lady had about us came from only a humble girl working in a hotel and I also realized from recent experience that there was much difference of opinion about which were the leading families at the Neck; still, if even a waitress had that conception of the Masseys, it seemed to me that the idea might be getting general, as it were.
Naturally, I knew it was soon for us to become a leading family; but anybody could see (as the lady said) that Clarissa and Enid were certainly the leading girls, and, after all, I am president of the Logansville Light and Power Company and concerned with other enterprises in a way that I thought might have become known even as far away from home as Mary’s Neck; — for instance, Mr. Jaffray might have let it out to somebody, I thought likely. No; I can’t deny that I kind of glossed over all we’d been hearing about other leading families, and, what’s worse to contemplate in my own character, I can’t help admitting that right there and then I got the beginning of a development inside of me that led pretty promptly to results I’d rather have had otherwise. There must be a sort of vanity-spot somewhere inside most of us. If it’s reached just right, the most sensible character seems to go wrong without any loss of time. I’m afraid what that strange lady said on the beach about the leading Massey family reached mine just right.
It broke out on me even quicker than you’d expect. We’d just sat down to lunch, and Clarissa began to say something about how modest the two Ruckleboy nephews were. Some girl had told her. “You’d never in the world hear it from them,” Clarissa said, “but during the War of Eighteen-twelve an ancestor of theirs — —”
I interrupted her. Of course I laughed; but there’d been quite a little of this kind of talk in the family and I began to be bothered by it. “Look here!” I said. “You seem to forget that the Masseys were among the first settlers in our part of Illinois, and that Packsburg in our county is named after George H. Pack, my own mother’s uncle.”
All three of them stared at me and then burst out laughing, and I wasn’t very well pleased. In fact, I was a little huffed and didn’t go on talking; but after lunch an incident occurred that made me feel better and as if I’d regained the right-of-way over ’em. Mr. Allstover called and asked to see me alone, so I took him round the corner of the piazza and we sat down. He looked affable but serious.
“I was glad to learn,” he said, “that you and your family were elected to membership in the Rocky Meadow, Mary’s Neck’s family club. I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”
“Yes,” I told him. “I got a notice a couple of weeks ago, I think, and sent in the payments. I’ve been in there once or twice and everything seems pretty handsome and comfortable. Mrs. Massey and my daughters have been there several times and say they’re going to enjoy it a great deal. We were very much pleased to become members.”
“Not at all, not at all!” he said. “The board was more than delighted. You may have observed on the notification card that I’m the club’s secretary. There was a meeting of the Executive Committee last evening and I should tell you that I am now speaking for that committee. Mr. Massey, you are new to Mary’s Neck this season; but it is the club’s policy to bring new members — desirable ones — into the active life of the club. We want you there, Mr. Massey. Probably you’ve not noticed it; but we’ve been observing you and we want you with us.”
Well, I was embarrassed; but it seemed to me he was a right likeable man. I laughed and coughed a little, to be cordial, and told him I appreciated what he said very much.
“Not at all,” he told me. “I’ve come really to bring the news of an honor we wish to pay you. At the meeting last evening we elected you Chairman of the House Committee.”
“Why, my goodness!” I said. “I’m afraid I haven’t had much experience in the work, Mr. Allstover. I certainly do appre — —”
“Not at all, not at all!” he told me. “We want you with us, Mr. Massey; we want you. You’re exactly the man we’ve been looking for — exactly. You see, Mr. Dalrymple resigned the office last week, because — I believe it was because he felt he couldn’t be here this summer, except week-ends. Mr. Massey, I’d like to notify the president of the club and Mr. Bullfinch, the treasurer, that you accept.”
“I hardly know what to say,” I told him, though there’s no denying I was pretty gratified and already planning the careless sort of manner I’d use in telling the family about it. “Mr. Allstover, I hardly know what I ought to — —”
He got up and leaned over and shook hands with me right then. “Mr. Massey, it’s going to be a relief — a relief and a great pleasure to me personally to make the announcement that you accept. You’ll certainly allow me to make it, Mr. Massey?”
“Well — —” I told him. “I suppose I — —”
“Good!” he said. “Good! Do you think you could conveniently assume the active duties of the chairmanship by to-morrow morning?”
“I suppose I might,” I told him. “I take it you mean I’d better call a meeting of this House Committee and preside over it?”
He looked kind of surprised. “Oh, no,” he said. “Our House Committee never have any meetings; you’ll never be bothered with the other members of the committee. As a matter of fact, I don’t remember who they are; they just give the use of their names, you see, and nobody ever pays any attention except to the chairman. You’ll be the whole thing of course, Mr. Massey.”
Well, I couldn’t help feeling that this was more and more gratifying. “You mean I don’t have to even consult the other members of the committee?” I asked him.
“Goodness, no!” he said. “You don’t have to consult anybody. You just take complete charge of the clubhouse, Mr. Massey. The Chairman of the House Committee has absolute control of the whole place: servants, house-rules, conduct of members — everything. All you have to do is to go over to the club and run it practically as if it were your own property. I suppose there isn’t a more autocratic position anywhere, and it’s going to be the greatest pleasure in the world that you’re to fill it for us, Mr. Massey.”
Well, there’s no denying I felt some pride in being selected to occupy the chief sociable position, so to speak, in the whole of Mary’s Neck. Coming right on top of what the hotel lady at the beach said her waitress had told her, it seemed to me fairly significant, and I guess there’s no denying I took it that way. Now, of course we have a golf club, back in Logansville, the same as most of our smaller cities nowadays; the clubhouse isn’t much to speak of — mainly locker-room and shower-bath and some bottles of ginger ale in a refrigerator — and I’d have thought it a good deal of a chore if I’d been elected to office there, especially as I don’t play the game myself. No, I can’t claim to have ever been much of a clubman; but this Rocky Meadow Club is a different sort of matter, imposing appearing on the outside and calculated to make a stranger feel timid, as if he committed trespass in just looking at it. Well, to be put practically at the head of an institution like that, particularly when such an honor was the last thing I could have been looking for —— No, I’ve got to admit that right then and there it seemed to me I ought to begin looking at myself in a new light, as it were, and that maybe there were things about me to appreciate I’d theretofore been too simple to suspect.
