I
THE Alders was the last place on earth where anyone would have expected
to encounter an atmosphere of tragedy and gloom. The very air of the
farm seemed charged with the essence of cheerfulness and friendliness.
There appeared to be diffused about the homestead some subtle influence
promoting sociability and cordiality.
Perhaps it was merely that the Hibbards had miraculous luck in
attracting only the right kind of boarders; possibly, they possessed
an almost superhuman intuition which enabled them to avoid accepting
any applicant likely to be uncongenial to the others, to themselves or
to the place; maybe it was merely the personal effect of the Hibbards
and of their welcome which seemed, in some magical fashion, to make
all newcomers as much at home as if they had lived at the Alders from
childhood. Certainly all their boarders were mutually congenial.
Never was summer-boarding-house so free from cliques, coteries,
jealousies, enmities, bickerings and squabbles. The children played
all day long apparently, but never seemed noisy or quarrelsome. The
old ladies knitted or crocheted, teetering everlastingly in their
rocking-chairs on the veranda, beaming at each other and at the
landscape. The almost daily games of cards gave rise to scarcely
any disputes. The folks at the Alders were very unlike an accidental
gathering of summer boarders and much more resembled an unusually large
and harmonious family.
This, I suppose, was due to the Hibbards’ positive genius for managing
a boarding-house and to their genial disposition. Naturally, from their
temperament, they enjoyed it, they showed that they enjoyed it and they
made everybody feel that they enjoyed it, so that each boarder felt
like an invited guest.
The girls never seemed to have anything to do except to make everybody
have a good time. Yet they had a great deal to do. In the heydey of the
Alders the four girls divided their duties systematically.
Susie, the eldest, and the head of the house, rose early, oversaw
the getting of the breakfast, and superintended everything. After
dinner she always took a long rest and nap. Then, after supper, she
stayed up until the last boarder had come indoors and said goodnight,
chiefly occupying herself with seeing to it that all together were
enjoying themselves, and each separately. She did it very well too.
It was a sight to see her, the moment she was free from presiding at
the supper table, appear out on the lawn or on the piazza, or in the
parlor, according to the weather. She was tall, plump and handsome,
held herself erect and had the art of making herself look well in
very inexpensive dresses, mostly of her own devising. She was always
smiling, her light brown hair haloing her face, her blue eyes shining.
As she came she swept one comprehensive glance over her guests,
unerringly picked out that one, man or woman, lad or girl, child or
baby, which seemed enjoying life least, made for that particular
individual and wholeheartedly devoted herself to affording enjoyment.
She could afford it, too. She was jolly and had an infectious gaiety
that was irresistible. She talked well. She was a fair pianist and
a really splendid singer. She played, if need be, and sang, too,
indefatigably. Never did a party of boarders have a more conscientious,
more solicitous or more tactful hostess.
Mattie, who was taller and stouter than Susie, with brown eyes looking
out of a face generally expressionless, but sometimes lit by a
sympathetic smile, habitually slept late and was abed early. But she
bore valiantly the brunt of the long middle of the summer days, took
upon herself all that pertained to personal dealings with the servants,
engaged them, dismissed them if unsatisfactory, controlled them when
restive or cajoled them if dissatisfied, oversaw the getting of the
dinner and supper, and made the desserts and ices. Among the boarders
her chief activity was the foreseeing of incipient coolnesses and
the tactful dissipation of any small cloud on the social atmosphere.
It was chiefly due to her that no germ of antipathy ever developed,
at the Alders, into dislike, that no seed of aversion, ever, in that
atmosphere, ripened into enmity. She did her part so cleverly that
few of the boarders realized that she ever did anything at all, or
suspected that she had any social influence.
The two younger sisters superintended the sweeping, dusting,
bed-making, lamp-cleaning and all the other details contributing to the
comfort of the boarders outside of the dining-room. Also Anna made the
always abundant and miraculously appetizing cakes in great variety.
The Alders was always full to its capacity, which meant thirty in the
house and any number of boys up to nine in one of the outbuildings, a
one-story stone cottage which had once been part of the slave quarters.
In it were two double-beds, three canvas cots and at least seven boys;
increased to eleven, sometimes, by casual transient guests of the
boyboarders.
The three boys of the family lived out there in summer with the
boarders and visitors and kept them in a perpetual good humor.
The Hibbards had learnt this not by precept, but by example. They had
grown up to it with their growth. For Susie had been a small girl, Buck
a small boy and the rest little children when their widowed mother had
begun to take boarders. They had learned much of her art, unconsciously
and without knowing that they were learning it.
She was dead and gone before I first knew the Alders. But her spirit
still informed the life of the place. She must have been a real lady,
every fiber and breath of her, and she must have been a level-headed,
practical woman. They quoted some of her aphorisms.
“You cannot make money on twenty-one really good meals a week when you
only charge six dollars board,” she was reputed to have said. “See
that everything is eatable and every meal abundant and give them fried
chicken and ice-cream, all they can eat, on Sundays and Thursdays, and
they’ll always be enthusiastic about the table.”
“People can have a good time only in their own way. Find out what they
like to do and encourage them to do it, if it is not wrong. That is the
only way to please anybody.”
“Either don’t take boarders at all or make them feel as welcome as
cousins.”
“Leave out what you can’t afford altogether. People never miss what no
one has and no one can see. But never skimp anything you have. It is
economy to offer everyone a third helping of everything.”
“Season the food with good nature.”
“Be easy-going about everything.”
They were easy-going about everything. I’ve seen Susie tired to death,
but gaily hiding it under an exterior of spontaneous vivacity, come
back into the big parlor at eleven o’clock Saturday night with two
handfuls of cornmeal to scatter on the floor to make it more slippery
for dancing. And she did it graciously. They all did such things, and
did them instinctively.
They had the faculty of foreseeing when any amusement was palling on
the participants and of starting something else before the boarders had
time to find out that they were getting tired of what they were doing.
They could always lead their guests into anything they began. On Sunday
nights Susie sat at the piano and the rest stood around her and they
all sang hymns in which all the singers on the farm invariably joined.
Two or three nights a week they gathered similarly and sang college
songs or popular tunes. Nearly every weekday evening they danced and of
course the guests danced too. Then there was Jack Palton, who foraged
among Uncle Hibbard’s guitars, found one with four strings left, tuned
it like a banjo, and accompanied himself and a bevy of girls in singing
glees. Mostly the boarders were too lazy to play tennis and most of the
Hibbards were too easy-going to see that the court was kept in order,
but nobody missed it. If they played tennis they suited themselves to
the court as it was.
The Alders was an easy-going place, full of merriment, of gaiety, of
diversion, of singing and dancing, of lovemaking and flirtations.
Especially of flirtations.
That was where the three boys came in strong.
Inevitably the boarders at the Alders were mostly women and young
women. Before they were half grown the three boys learned to act as
beaux for little girls, misses, hoydens, old-maids and grass-widows.
They had learned how without knowing it, without knowing it they made
an art of it. They did their best, quite spontaneously, to see to it
that every unmated feminine creature at the Alders had a good time.
Incidentally they had a good time, for attractive girls were always
present in abundance.
The result was as good as a comedy to watch.
Whenever a pretty girl, without a gallant in attendance, came to the
Alders, she was promptly annexed by the second brother, who had been
christened Ernest Paca Hibbard and was always known, spoken of and
addressed as “Pake.”
Pake was neither tall nor short. He was broad and thick. Also he was
fat, not too fat, but pleasantly fat. He had a bullet head, a short
neck and a round ruddy face. Withal he was good looking. He affected
bright hat-bands on his new stylish straw hats; bright effective
neck-ties, tan shoes, white duck trousers and blue coats. He looked
attractive, felt attractive and was attractive. Nearly every newcomer
liked Pake and, if he liked her, she was within three days spoken of as
“Pake’s girl.”
He was a born flirt, could have flirted if he had been walking in his
sleep, and he flirted well. Few girls could resist the charm of his
frank and ingenuous overtures or the sparkle of his brown eyes.
Then after Pake had annexed the girl, Buck would look her over. He
was in no hurry. He was tall, heavily built though spare, had a
good-natured countenance, in which blue eyes looked out of a tanned
face, and wore clothes which neither he nor anyone else ever noticed.
If Buck liked a girl well enough he took her away from Pake. Nobody
could ever describe or specify how he did it; but he did it. Buck’s
advances threw Pake completely into the shade.
Buck was the head of the family, ran the farm, gave orders to the
tenant-farmer, directed the selection of the calf that was to be
slaughtered every two weeks and of the two lambs killed each week,
talked fascinatingly of pigs and crops, had to ask no one but himself
when he wanted a horse hitched up to take a girl out driving, and was
generally jovial and delightful.
The girls he liked always liked him better than Pake. He had more
conversation and never bored anybody.
Then after Pake had transferred his attentions to some newcomer and
Buck and his girl were together during all Buck’s leisure as naturally
as cup and saucer, Rex would look her over deliberately. He was even
less in a hurry than Buck.
Rex was slight and silent, with a melancholy air and melting
yellow-brown eyes. He was, to the few girls he fancied, altogether
irresistible. Therein lay his fault. Rex took flirtation too
seriously. It was likely to slip into love making, which is not sound
boarding-house ethics.
But Rex never caused any trouble or got into any trouble. If things
looked serious to the gossips or the family, they never felt serious to
Rex or the girl.
Such was the Alders in its prime, which lasted some few years, during
which I was a resident there, first in the “Club,” as the boys called
their white-washed stone cottage, later in the house itself. I was
happy those four summers, and became almost an honorary member of the
family. The honorary members of the Hibbard family were numerous. The
Alders had entertained nearly two hundred individual boarders a year
for fifteen years. At least one in ten of them felt like an honorary
member of the family. Many of those who came there for a second summer
were treated as honorary members of the family, and I had spent four
summers at the Alders.
So I was treated quite as an honorary member of the family and enjoyed
it.
The family, in fact, was the best feature of life at the Alders. Seldom
could one encounter seven brothers and sisters so loving to each other,
so devoted. They had no motto, but they behaved as if their motto
were “all for one, one for all.” A pleasant feature of each day was
the sight of their habitual morning gathering, all to themselves, on
the small side porch. There they would sit for half an hour or more,
holding a sort of family council on the problems of that day. They
were a most united family, solicitous about each other, perpetually
interested in each other’s welfare.