The Best Short Stories of 1917 Part 2

Old man Hutch he died and left everything to Mabel, and she never goes near her own sister!"

Mrs. Bean raised gray-cotton gloved hands signifying horror.

"St--st--st----!" she deplored. She searched in her reticule for more calamus-root. "He didn't leave her _nothing_?"

"No, ma'am! This one!" With a jerk of the head, Mrs. Tinneray indicated a das.h.i.+ng blue feather seen through a distant saloon window. "This one's got it all; hair to everything."

"And what did she do--married a traveling salesman and built a tony brick house. They never had no children, but when he was killed into a railway accident she trimmed up that parrot's cage with c.r.a.pe--and now,"--Mrs. Tinneray with increasing solemnity chewed her calamus-root--"_now_ she's been and bought one of them ottermobiles and runs it herself like you'd run your sewin'-machine, just as _shameless_--"

Both of the ladies glared condemnation at the distant blue feather.

Mrs. Tinneray continued, "Hetty Cronney's worth a dozen of her. When I think of that there bird goin' on this excursion and Hetty Cronney stayin' home because she's too poor, I get _nesty_, Mrs. Bean, yes, I do!"

"Don't your cousin Hetty live over to Chadwick's Harbor," inquired Mrs.

Bean, "and don't this boat-ride stop there to take on more folks?"

Mrs. Tinneray, acknowledging that these things were so, uncorked a small bottle of cologne and poured a little of it on a handkerchief embroidered in black forget-me-nots. She handed the bottle to Mrs. Bean who took three polite sniffs and closed her eyes. The two ladies sat silent for a moment. They experienced a detachment of luxurious abandon filled with the poetry of the steamboat saloon. Psychically they were affected as by ecclesiasticism. The perfume of the cologne and the throb of the engines swept them with a sense of esthetic reverie, the thrill of travel, and the atmosphere of elegance. Moreover, the story of the Hutch money and the Hutch hairs had in some undefined way affiliated the two. At last by tacit consent they rose, went out on deck and, holding their reticules tight, walked majestically up and down. When they pa.s.sed Mrs. Turtle's blue feathers and the gold parrot-cage they smiled meaningly and looked at each other.

As the _Fall of Rome_ approached Chadwick's Landing more intimate groups formed. The air was mild, the sun warm and inviting, and the water an obvious and understandable blue. Some serious-minded excursionists sat well forward on their camp-stools discussing deep topics over half-skinned bananas.

"Give me the Vote," a lady in a purple raincoat was saying, "Give me the Vote and I undertake to close up every rum-hole in G.o.d's World."

A mild-mannered youth with no chin, upon hearing this, edged away. He went to the stern, looking down for a long time upon the white path of foam left in the wake of the _Fall of Rome_ and taking a harmonica from his waistcoat pocket began to play, "Darling, I Am Growing Old." This tune, played with emotional throbbings managed by spasmodic movements of the hands over the sides of the mouth, seemed to convey anything but age to Miss Mealer, the girl who was so refined. She also sat alone in the stern, also staring down at the white water. As the wailings of the harmonica ceased, she put up a thin hand and furtively controlled some waving strands of hair. Suddenly with scarlet face the mild-mannered youth moved up his camp-stool to her side.

"They're talkin' about closing up the rum-holes." He indicated the group dominated by the lady in the purple raincoat. "They don't know what they're talking about. Some rum-holes is real refined and tasty, some of them have got gramophones you can hear for nothin'."

"Is that so?" responded the refined Miss Mealer. She smoothed her gloves. She opened her "mesh" bag and took out an intensely perfumed handkerchief. The mild-mannered youth put his harmonica in his pocket and warmed to the topic.

"Many's the time I've set into a saloon listening to that Lady that sings high up--higher than any piano can go. I've set and listened till I didn't know where I was settin'--of course I had to buy a drink, you understand, or I couldn't 'a' set."

"And they call that _vice_," remarked Miss Mealer with languid criticism.

The mild-mannered youth looked at her gratefully. The light of reason and philosophy seemed to him to s.h.i.+ne in her eyes.

"You've got a piano to your house," he said boldly, "can you--ahem--play cla.s.sic pieces, can you play--ahem--'Asleep on the Deep'?"

In another group where substantial sandwiches were being eaten, the main theme was religion and psychic phenomena with a strong leaning toward death-bed experiences.

"And then, my sister's mother-in-law, she set up, and she says, 'Where am I?' she says, like she was in a store or somethin', and she told how she seen all white before her eyes and all like gentlemen in high silk hats walkin' around."

There were sighs of comprehension, gasps of dolorous interest.

"The same with my Christopher!"

"Just like my aunt's step-sister afore she went!"

Mrs. Tuttle did not favor the grave character of these symposia.

With the a.s.sured manner peculiar to her, she swept into such circles bearing a round box of candy, upon which was tied a large bow of satin ribbon of a convivial shade of heliotrope. Opening this box she handed it about, commanding, "Help yourself."

At first it was considered refined to refuse. One or two excursionists, awed by the superfluity of heliotrope ribbon, said feebly, "Don't rob yourself."

But Mrs. Tuttle met this restraint with practised raillery. "What you all afraid of? It ain't poisoned! I got more where this come from." She turned to the younger people. "Come one, come all! It's French-mixed."

Meanwhile Mrs. Bean and Mrs. Tinneray, still aloof and enigmatic, paced the deck. Mrs. Tuttle, blue feathers streaming, teetered on her high heels in their direction. Again she proffered the box. One of the cynical youths with the ivory-headed canes was following her, demanding that the parrot be fed a caramel. Once more the sky-blue figure bent over the ornate cage; then little Mrs. Bean looked at Mrs. Tinneray with a gesture of utter repudiation.

"Ain't she _terrible_?"

As the steamboat approached the wharf and the dwarf pines and yellow sand-banks of Chadwick's Landing, a whispered consultation between these two ladies resulted in one desperate attempt to probe the heart of Mabel Hutch that was. Drawing camp-stools up near the vicinity of the parrot's cage, they began with what might to a suspicious nature have seemed rather pointed speculation, to wonder who might or might not be at the wharf when the _Fall of Rome_ got in.

Once more the bottle of cologne was produced and handkerchiefs genteelly dampened. Mrs. Bean, taking off her green gla.s.ses, polished them and held them up to the light, explaining, "This here sea air makes 'em all of a muck."

Suddenly she leaned over to Mrs. Tuttle with an air of sympathetic interest.

"I suppose--er--your sister Hetty'll be comin' on board when we get to Chadwick's Landing--her and her husband?"

Mrs. Tuttle fidgeted. She covered Romeo's cage with a curious arrangement like an altar-cloth on which gay embroidered parrakeets of all colors were supposed to give Romeo, when lonely, a feeling of congenial companions.h.i.+p.

Mrs. Bean, thus evaded, screwed up her eyes tight, then opened them wide at Mrs. Tinneray, who sat rigid, her gaze riveted upon far-off horizons, humming between long sighs a favorite hymn. Finally, however, the last-named lady leaned past Mrs. Bean and touched Mrs. Turtle's silken knee, volunteering,

"Your sister Hetty likes the water, I know. You remember them days, Mis'

Tuttle, when we all went bathin' together down to old Chadwick's Harbor, afore they built the new wharf?"

Mrs. Tinneray continued reminiscently.

"You remember them old dresses we wore--no cla.s.sy bathin'-suits then--but my--the mornings used to smell good! That path to the sh.o.r.e was all wild roses and we used to find blueberries in them woods. Us girls was always teasin' Hetty, her bathin'-dress was white muslin and when it was wet it stuck to her all over, she showed through--my, how we'd laugh, but yet for all," concluded Mrs. Tinneray sentimentally, "she looked lovely--just like a little wet angel."

Mrs. Tuttle carefully smoothed her blue mitts, observing nervously, "Funny how Mis' Tinneray could remember so far back."

"Is Hetty your sister by rights," suavely inquired Mrs. Bean, "or ony by your Pa's second marriage, as it were?"

The owner of the overestimated parrot roused herself.

"By rights," she admitted indifferently, "I don't see much of her--she married beneath her."

The tip of Mrs. Tinneray's nose, either from cologne inhalings or sunburn, grew suddenly scarlet. However she still regarded the far-off horizons and repeated the last stanza of her hymn, which stanza, sung with much quavering and sighing was a statement to the effect that Mrs.

Tinneray would "cling to the old rugged cross." Suddenly, however, she remarked to the surrounding Summer air,

_"Hen Cronney is my second cousin on the mother's side. Some thought he was pretty smart until troubles come and his wife was done out of her rights._"

The shaft, carefully aimed, went straight into Mrs. Turtle's blue bosom and stuck there. Her eyes, not overintelligent, turned once in her complacent face, then with an air of grandiose detachment, she occupied herself with the ends of her sky-blue automobile veil.

"I'll have to fix this different," she remarked unconcernedly, "or else my waves'll come out. Well, I presume we'll soon be there. I better go down-stairs and primp up some." The high heels clattered away. Mrs. Bean fixed a long look of horror on Mrs. Tinneray, who silently turned her eyes up to heaven!

As the _Fall of Rome_ churned its way up to the sunny wharf of Chadwick's Landing, the groups already on the excursion bristled with excitement. Children were prepared to meet indulgent grandparents, lovers their sweethearts, and married couples old school friends they had not seen for years. From time to time these admonished their offspring.

"Hypatia Smith, you're draggin' your pink sash, leave Mommer fix it.