Delphi Complete Works of Booth Tarkington (Illustrated), page 511
Edna continued her apologies uneasily as she began to work. “I’m so sorry — I’m so sorry! I really couldn’t help it. I knew it was getting later and later; but it — they — I mean it was embarrassing. I couldn’t think of — I didn’t know what to say. It seemed to be just impossible to get away. Something happened. I want to tell you—”
“Pipe’s all caked up,” Long Harry remarked musingly, as she paused. “Guess I’m makin’ a mess on your floor; but I’ll clean it up, myself, later.”
“No, you won’t,” she said, busy at the stove. “You’re not supposed to do any housework — and not any cooking, either. I couldn’t help being late this time because — because something happened. You see, when I came out of Captain Embury’s I ran straight into Mildred Kerr. You remember my telling you about her?”
“Yes,” he said, scraping earnestly at his pipe. “Yes, I remember.”
“I simply couldn’t get away from her — I simply couldn’t! She was in a car with — with some other people, and they wouldn’t let me go. I couldn’t get away from them at all! They’d heard somewhere that I was spending the summer at a camp on one of the lakes and I thought maybe — maybe I’d better let ’em go on thinking that. At least — I thought so. I — I—”
“Yes,” Long Harry said, not looking away from his pipe. “Yes; guess ’twas jest as well. Guess ’twould help to avoid compilcations, like we spoke of the night you come home.”
“That’s what I thought,” Edna went on quickly. “I thought I’d better try to do that. It seemed better. I mean I thought probably that would be the best thing to do and that you’d think so, too, so I just let them go on thinking I was at a camp and I told them I had to get back there; but they said they’d take me. Then I said it was too far, and, besides, the people from the camp were going to drive over here for me and I’d have to meet them at Cargo Square. So they — I mean Mildred — Mildred said they’d drive me down to the Square and wait there with me until the people came, and I said they mustn’t do that because one of these people from the camp was a nervous invalid — a woman that I was taking care of and in such a peculiar state that anything upset her and made her ask questions all night — the doctor said she mustn’t be allowed to get started with her questions; but I knew she would if she saw me with other people. It was a terrible story; but I finally convinced them and they let me telephone for one of the summer taxis from the Square, and that’s how I got away at last. I was even afraid they might follow me in another car, at that, so I stopped the taxi as soon as it got away from the Point and jumped out and ran all the rest of the way. I’m so sorry — so sorry — but that’s all—”
“Yes; guess that’s all,” Pelter said slowly, in a gentle voice. Then he moved out of her way as she began to set dishes upon the table. “Wind’s worked round inshore again; another good day to-morrow.”
“Isn’t that splendid!” she exclaimed, and in her voice there was a tremor of excitement that he did not attribute to prospects of fine weather. He understood, too, the cause of the relief expressed in both her voice and look, and, glancing up as if carelessly, saw more. It seemed to him that her eyes were happier and brighter than he had ever seen them — for they were shining with the light that gleams from eyes thrice merry to-night because merriment dies to-morrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
THERE WAS IN Mirthful Haven at this time, however, a lady for whom merriment seemed never in any danger of perishing, Mrs. Warbeck. From a window of her motor-car she had been a spectator of the blue cabriolet’s misadventure, and, returning home, she gave an account of it that became incoherent with laughter. Her husband warned her against publicly taking so cheerful a view of a neighbor’s distress. “You’d better be careful,” Warbeck said. “George Corning’s fond of declaring that we’re all ‘just one big happy family’, and I suppose a big family might still be called ‘happy’ with some of its members barely speaking to one another; but I’d prefer not to strain our relations with the Gordons and Cornings, myself. Mrs. Gordon hasn’t George’s mental capacity; but she’s altogether his sister in temperament; they’re both amiable but nervously excitable and sensitive, and they won’t regard this canine episode as in the slightest degree humorous. At the beach to-morrow, I think you’d better constrain your natural disposition with an iron will and appear sympathetic.” Mrs. Warbeck wiped her eyes and promised to be tactful, but had no imminent occasion to exercise this restraint upon herself, for the shock to Mrs. Gordon’s nerves had been so severe that for several days she remained indoors. When she did again make her appearance upon the beach it was with the air of a distinguished survivor. Still made indignant by her discovery that a supposedly orderly universe could put upon her a grossly disorderly experience, she suffered not more from the shock to her nerves than from that inflicted upon her unconsciously acquired convictions: omnipotence seemed to be capable of a disturbing fallibility.
Her frequently repeated account of the affair between Prince and the Sealyham was sincere and vivid, though naturally both emotional and partisan; the Sealyham had only defended his mistress against an enemy who had once nearly had his life, and the champion was still under the care of a veterinary surgeon. The chauffeur’s hand was still bandaged; his cap could be shown to anybody who doubted the ferocity of the attack, and the blue cabriolet was in the paint-shop. Mrs. Gordon smiled wanly as she described how it felt to be borne down upon by the two simultaneous Juggernauts, a motor-bus and a baggage-truck, and at the same time attacked by a vicious beast without a collar. “Just the sight of a dog without a collar has always made me nervous,” she added. “Collarless dogs are always dangerous; I brought the children up never, never to go near one. And then to be attacked by one, myself—” She paused eloquently, leaving this experience to the imaginations of the listeners; then, with a reproachful glance at her brother, shook her head and concluded: “Of course the thing that I simply can’t understand is that nothing whatever has been done about it or appears to have any prospect of being done!”
Corning sighed, and spoke apologetically. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t believe we need go into that again, Virgie, especially as your chauffeur isn’t sure which of ’em it was that hurt his hand.”
“But I’m sure, haven’t I told you? Is my testimony supposed to be entirely worthless? Didn’t your own chauffeur tell you that the dog is dangerous and that every chauffeur at the Point has almost had an accident because of him? And when he attacks your own sister—”
“My dear Virgie! You needn’t think I don’t give it weight; but a prosecution’s simply out of the question and a law-suit against a native, before a native jury — well, I don’t see it! Besides, we’ve certainly had enough trouble with that fellow, Pelter, and all we ever get out of it is just more and more irritation for ourselves.”
“That’s because you’ve gone on tolerating him and letting him do whatever he wants to, year after year, until now he believes he can do any outrageous thing he pleases! You may think it’s a fine thing to show the patience of Job; but when his dog attacks your own sister—” Mrs. Gordon continued to amplify the theme while Corning sat, indeed patient, in his beach-chair, and, although his sister’s voice became somewhat shrill, forbore to interrupt her. A sister-in-law, however, is not always so indulgent as is a brother, and Mrs. Corning came to his rescue.
“Virgie, for heaven’s sake let my poor husband have his summer in peace and don’t try to egg him into a controversy with a native! Hasn’t he had enough trouble with that terrible old Pelter, as it is? For mercy’s sake let him alone and forget it!” Here Mrs. Corning withdrew her brusque gaze from the incensed but temporarily silenced Mrs. Gordon, turned to Mrs. Vandenbrock and began to chatter in a lowered voice. “How in the world do you keep peace between your children, Mrs. Vandenbrock? They always seem so polite to one another, your young people. We have the most violent feuds in our house, and I never know how to settle them. My Agatha, you see, is in the younger young set — worlds apart from Gordie and Wallace and the Gordon girls and their friends. Wallace and Agatha are always at daggers drawn; they’re really funny. Wallace seems to think that it’s perfectly outrageous for Agatha and her friends to do the things that he and the other older young people do, and that makes Agatha absolutely wild! You see—”
“I’m sure it’s nothing to what goes on in our house,” Mrs. Vandenbrock said, pleased to continue the general theme with a reversion to the special subject of her own children. “Of course mine are younger, still in the pre-adolescent stage; but they make things lively sometimes, I can tell you! Only yesterday the most dreadful row broke out between Patsy and Tommy, just at bedtime. You see, Patsy’s a very nervous, high-strung—”
“High-strung!” Mrs. Corning echoed, eagerly taking up the word. “That’s exactly the expression I was trying to think of to describe Agatha! She’s such a tense, passionate little thing that sometimes I just don’t know what to do about her — especially when she gets into one of her quarrels with Wallace. I’m always so afraid their father may hear them; it would upset him dreadfully, of course.” Mrs. Corning changed the subject; but went on hastily, to prevent Mrs. Vandenbrock from talking any more about Patsy and Tommy. “I hear we’ve got to do something about the Casino — it seems the young people all insist on running over to New Yarmouth to a speak-easy before they come to the Casino dances, and it makes the dances terribly late. I do hope my poor husband won’t get stirred up about it, and I haven’t even spoken of it with him — he’s terribly strict in such matters.”
At the other side of her, Mrs. Gordon was beginning a fresh narration of her troubles for the benefit of Mrs. Warbeck who had just arrived, and the latter’s expression was incentive to so much uneasiness on the part of Warbeck that he decided to put himself at a distance. His new friend, Mrs. Arden, consented to accompany him for a stroll; they walked two-thirds of the way to the breakwater, ascended to the sand dunes at the upper edge of the beach and sat down congenially. “One swallow doesn’t make a summer,” he remarked, “and a single dog-fight oughtn’t to make one, either; but I fear it’s going to do that for poor Mrs. Gordon. She won’t talk about anything else the rest of this summer, at least. Luckily the time is short and already one or two of the cottages are beginning to close, I’ve noticed, preparing for the Labor Day flight.”
“Yes; the hotel dining-room tables begin to show vacancies. Dear me!” Mrs. Arden shivered. “What a desolate place this must be when the people all go!”
“Not for everybody!” Warbeck said, and laughed. “Spend an autumn in Mirthful Haven some time if you want to see a tribe emerging from bondage and becoming care-free. There aren’t many of them; but the burden lifted from their shoulders is enormous. Upon our departure they begin to make festivals of rejoicing, church-suppers and—” He interrupted himself and peered through his nose-glasses as his attention was distracted by a hand-organ playing near the breakwater. “What’s going on down there?”
“It’s that set of young people — the Corning boys and their cousins and a few others, and the dainty little Miss Kerr who’s visiting the Gordon girls and engaged to Wallace Corning, I think I’ve heard — and yes, there’s that daughter of a hundred Earls, Miss Shellpool. They’ve withdrawn themselves from the populous part of the beach and seem to be having a grand time capering in and out of the surf together. Interesting type, that girl; something piquant about her — piquing to my curiosity at least; I don’t know just why.”
“Perhaps it’s the same thing that made you call our evening at Captain Embury’s a strange one,” Warbeck suggested. “Yes, she’s interesting — a little more so, probably, because of Captain Embury’s eulogy of her family tree. One of his most delightful misconceptions is on that subject — the importance of ‘old family’. The Captain ought to read Lord Burleigh’s advice to his son that there’s no use setting up to be ‘old family’ or of noble blood without enough property to back up the claim. Burleigh said a family’s continued hold upon property was all that could give it family importance — a shrewd perception of an obscure fact. Judging from Miss Shellpool’s appearance, however, I should say that her three hundred years of recorded ancestry had left her at least enough property to claim the precedence that the Captain accorded to her.”
“Why, no,” Mrs. Arden said. “I believe not. Someone told me — Mrs. Corning, I think — that Miss Shellpool isn’t very well off, though extremely nice and well brought up. I got the impression there’d been a shrinkage in an estate that was to have been left to her, or something of the sort, and that she’s lately very pluckily accepted a position as a companion or something to somebody who’s had a nervous breakdown and owns a camp on one of the woodland lakes. She can only get away to join the young people here now and then, I believe.”
“That certainly doesn’t seem to interfere with her gayety when she does get here,” Warbeck observed. “I passed by the Gordons’ tennis-court yesterday afternoon and she—”
“Look!” Mrs. Arden cried. “They’re all out of the water now and dancing to the hand-organ, the light-hearted young things! What a pretty sight!”
“Yes, it is,” Warbeck agreed, half-closing his eyes to see better. “Like figurines at this distance, little Tanagra figures undraped and brightly tinted. Now they’ve stopped.”
“No — one of them hasn’t; they’re making her dance alone, and it’s Miss Shellpool. Oh, how charming!”
Warbeck echoed the word, and for a time they sat without speaking, engaged with the distant spectacle — a semicircle of figurines applauding a green and ivory one that became rhythmically nimble for half a minute, then whirled like a top for a dozen seconds, suddenly lifted its arms in what appeared to the distant two spectators as a derisive gesture of hands kissed in farewell, and, turning, fled into the sea. With a protestive shouting faintly audible to Mrs. Arden and Warbeck, the semicircle broke up to plunge in pursuit; but the green cap, rising every moment upon the crest of a farther wave, was in no danger of being overtaken.
“Good gracious!” Mrs. Arden exclaimed. “She’s going rather riskily far out, it seems to me. Does she think she can swim to Spain? No — she’s turned, and anyhow she must be all right; the others are coming back to the beach and beginning to chase one another again.”
“But I don’t seem to see Miss Shellpool with them.”
“No; she’s still in the water. I can see her green cap — there it goes, but on the other side of the breakwater; evidently she’s swimming into the harbor, probably to meet her invalid somewhere, and her young friends all appear to be trooping back toward the bath-houses. I’m afraid that means it’s time for lunch, Mr. Warbeck.”
Sighing, he followed the example she set him, and rose. “I suppose so,” he said, as they began the mild descent from the dunes. “I’m afraid we may be returning to a sea of troubles if my wife didn’t find it better in her mind to suffer the slings and arrows of her outrageous humor, and I’m sorry that the pretty scene we’ve had before us didn’t last longer. I must admit that I find Miss Shellpool fully as piquant as you do. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, brave in reverses, companioning a neurotic, then in free moments becoming a magically plastic Greek figurine with the instantaneous transformation into an unquestionable mermaid — something of Undine there, something of a watery, crystalline, luring mysteriousness that impels me toward an unreasoning sympathy with young Gordon Corning. Psychically speaking, I have a feeling that such a creature might prove too much for him — he’s not an illuminated person, I take it. For my part I hope to catch further glimpses of Miss Shellpool, swimming or dancing or doing anything whatever, and it’s a pleasure to me to imagine that just at this moment she’s emerging from the water to sit upon a foam-splashed rock, with her extraordinary hair released from that cap and descending about her in the sunlight.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE ELDERLY GENTLEMAN’S fancy in this little flight fell not so wide of the actual mark: as Edna scrambled out upon a float at the end of her father’s pier, her cap was dislodged, fell into the water, and her hair, descending, came not far from presenting the picture sketched by the Warbeckian imagination. A heavy-shouldered, short young man, rowing up-stream in a small dory, reversed the motion of his oars and admiringly remained in position for a continued view.
“My Godfrey, Edna!” he said covertly. “You’re even cuter lookin’ than you was before Vinnie Munson coaxed you from bein’ my sweetheart. Set next you in the ‘bus from New Yarmouth, I did, and you certain’y fooled me! Never let on a mite! Bet you laughed afterwards, didn’t you?” He laughed, himself, ingratiatingly, caught a corner of the float with a soiled brown hand, and, speaking in a lowered, urgent voice, went on, “How ‘bout you and me fixin’ up a little date like old times, Edna? Vinnie Munson’s steppin’ out ‘way up with them top-notchers on the Point and couldn’t see you if you was standin’ on the lid of a sardine can together, so how ‘bout me? It’s around town that Hugo Wicks already see you once slippin’ in Pelter’s along ‘bout daylight since you come back to Mirthful Haven, and Hugo swears he’s goin’ to try to beat my time with you, Edna. How ‘bout us bein’ too smart fer him, what? How soon—”
But she had retrieved her cap from the water and finished a hurried coiling of her hair about her head; she ran up the incline from the float, sped at top speed over the worn planking of the pier, gasped, “Dinner for you in ten minutes!” to her father, whom she met in the doorway, and disappeared within the house.
Pelter came out upon the verandah, and, observing that Henry Marsh in his dory remained tentatively alongside the float, walked out to the end of the pier and engaged in conversation with him. He was still thus occupied, a quarter of an hour later, when Edna called to him from the house that his dinner was ready. He returned reflectively to take his place at the table but not to meet directly the eyes of his daughter; days had passed since either had looked at the other with a full and open gaze.
