THE TREACHERY OF MISS CHUFF
"My story," said Miss Chuff, as the car slid along the road, "is rich
in pathos. My father, as you can imagine, is an impossible man to live
with. My poor mother was taken to an asylum years ago. Her malady takes
a curious form: she is never violent, but spends all her time in poring
over books, magazines and papers. Every time she finds the word HUSBAND
in print she crosses it out with blue pencil.
"From my earliest days I was accustomed to hear very little else but
talk about liquor. The fairy tales that most children are allowed to
enjoy merely as stories were explained to me by my father as allegories
bearing upon the sinister seductions of drink. Little Red Riding Hood
and the Wolf, for instance, became a symbol of young womanhood pursued
by the devouring Bronx cocktail. The princess from whose mouth came
toads and snakes was (of course) a princess under the influence of
creme de menthe. Cinderella was a young girl who had been brought low
by taking a dash of brandy in her soup. Every dragon, with which good
fairy tales are liberally provided, was the Demon Rum. It is really
amazing what stirring prohibition propaganda fairy tales contain if you
know how to interpret them.
"All this kind of palaver naturally roused my childish curiosity as to
the subject of intoxicants. But, like a docile daughter, I fell into
the career marked out for me by my father. I became a militant for the
Pan-Antis. I distributed tracts by the million; I wrote a little poem
on the idea that the gates of hell are swinging doors with slats. I can
honestly say that I never felt any real hankering for liquor until it
was prohibited altogether. That is a curious feature of human nature,
that as soon as you forbid a thing it becomes irresistibly alluring.
You remember the story of Mrs. Bluebeard.
"It occurred to me, after booze had gone, that it was a sad thing that
I, Bishop Chuff's daughter, who was devoting my life to the prohibition
cause, should have not the slightest knowledge of the nature of this
hideous evil we had been pursuing. I brooded over this a great deal,
and fell into a melancholy state. The thought came to me, there must be
some virtue in drink, or why would so many people have stubbornly
contested its abolition? It would be too long a story to tell you all
the details, but it was at that time that I first became aware of my
psychic gift."
"Your psychic gift?" queried Bleak, wondering.
She turned her bright beer-brown eyes upon him gravely. "Yes," she
said, "I am an alcoholic medium. It is the latest and most superior
form of spiritualism. By gazing upon crystal--particularly upon an
empty tumbler--I am able to throw myself into a trance in which I can
communicate with departed spirits. A good drink does not die, you know:
its soul hovers radiantly on the twentieth plane, and through the
occult power of a medium those who loved it in life can get in touch
with it once more. Through these trances of mine I have been privileged
to put many bereaved ones in communication with their dear departed
spirits. To hear the table-rappings and the shouts of ecstasy you would
perceive that a great deal of the anguish of separation is assuaged."
"Do you often have these trances?" said Bleak, with a certain
wistfulness.
"They are not hard to induce," she said. "All that is necessary for a
seance is a round table, preferably of some highly polished brown wood,
a brass rail for the worshipers to put their feet on, and an empty
tumbler to concentrate the power of yearning. If those present all wish
hard enough there is sure to be a successful reunion with the Beyond."
"But surely," said the fascinated editor, "surely not any--well, actual
MATERIALIZATION?"
"Oh, no; but the communion of souls produces quite sufficient results.
You see, so many fine spirits passed over at once, suddenly, on that
First of July, that the twentieth plane is quite thronged with them,
and they are just as eager to come back as their friends could be to
welcome them. One good yearn deserves another, as we say. The only time
when these seances fail is when some inharmonious soul is present--some
personality not completely EN RAPPORT with the spirit of the gathering.
I remember, for instance, an occasion when a gentleman from Kentucky
had most ardently desired to get into communication with the astrals of
some mint juleps he had loved very deeply in life. Everything seemed
propitious, but though I struggled hard I simply could not get the
julep spirit to descend to our mortal plane. Finally I made inquiry and
found that one of the guests was a root-beer manufacturer. Of course
you may say that was petty jealousy on the side of the departed, but
even these vanished spirits have their human phases."
She was silent for a moment.
"You can imagine," she said, "what a perplexity I was in when I
discovered these hitherto unsuspected powers in myself. Was I justified
in putting them to use, for the good of humanity? And wasn't there a
certain pathetic significance in the fact that I, the daughter of the
man who had done so much to put these poor lonely spirits into the
Beyond, should be made their sole channel of reunion with their
bereaved and sorrowing adorers? In all his harangues, I had never heard
my Father attack anything but the actual DRINKING of liquor. This form
of communication seemed to me to solve so many problems. And it was in
this way that I first met Virgil."
"Virgil?" said Bleak, absent-mindedly, for he was wondering whether he
might be privileged to attend one of these seances.
"Virgil Quimbleton," she said. "In the early days of my trances I was
much haunted by the spirit of a certain cocktail--blended, I believe,
of champagne and angostura--which insisted that it would be
inconsolable until it could get in contact with Quimbleton and reassure
him as to the certainty of its existence beyond mortal bars. The deep
affection and old comradeship evidently cherished between Quimbleton
and this cocktail was very touching, and I was more than happy to be
able to effect their reunion. It was for this reason that Quimbleton,
under a careful disguise, came to live next door to us on Caraway
Street. I would go out into the garden and have a trance; Quimbleton,
poor bereaved fellow, would sit by me in the dusk and revel with the
spirit of his dear comrade. This common bond soon ripened into Jove,
and we became betrothed."
She stripped off one of her gloves and showed Bleak a beautiful
amethyst ring.
"This is my engagement ring," she said. "It's a very precious symbol,
for Quimbleton explained to me that the amethyst is a talisman against
drunkenness. I looked it up in the dictionary, and found that he was
right. As long as I wear this ring the departed spirits have no ill
effect upon me. But I sometimes wonder," she added with a sigh,
"whether Virgil really loves me for myself, or only as a kind of
swinging door into the spirit world."
The car was now approaching an open belt of country. Behind them lay
the dark line of pine woods; far off, across a wide shimmer of sun and
sandy fields sweetened by purple clover; and flowering grasses, was a
blue ribbon of sea. But even in this remote shelf of New Jersey the
implacable hand of Chuff was at work. From a meadow near by they saw an
observation balloon going up and the windlass unwinding its cable. A
huge paraboloid breath-detector (or breathoscope) was stationed on a
low ridge. This terribly ingenious machine, which had just been
invented by the pan-antis, records the vibrations of any alcoholic
breath within five miles, and indicates on a sensitive dial the exact
direction and distance of the breath. It was only too evident that the
search for Quimbleton was going forward with fierce system. In the
shelter of an old barn they heard a cork-popping machine-gun going off
rapidly. This was one of the most atrocious ruses employed by the
chuffs in their search for conscientious drinkers. The gun fires no
projectile, but produces a pleasant detonation like the swift and
repeated drawing of corks. Set up in the neighborhood of any
bottle-habited man, it will invariably lure him into an approach. Near
it was an ice-tinkling device, used for the same purposes of stratagem.
"Poor Virgil!" said Miss Chuff with a sigh. "I'm afraid he has had a
grievous ordeal. We must run carefully now, so as not to give him away."
Fortunately Miss Chuff's presence at the wheel, and Bleak's credentials
as war correspondent, enabled them to pass several scouting parties of
chuff uhlans without suspicion. In this way they neared the extensive
grounds surrounding the Federal Home for Inebriates, Cana, N. J. This
magnificent Gothic building, already showing some signs of decay from
two years of vacancy, stands on a slight eminence among what the real
estate agents call "old shade," with a fine and carefully calculated
view over one of the largest bodies of undrinkable fluid known to man,
the Atlantic Ocean.
The car turned into a narrow sandy road skirting one side of the walled
park. This byway was completely screened from outside observation by
the high bulwark of the Home and by thick masses of rhododendron
shrubbery. At a bend in the road Miss Chuff halted the motor, and
motioned Bleak to descend.
"Now we will look for the persecuted patriot," she said.
Bleak took charge of the basket of food, and Miss Chuff drew a small
rope ladder from a locker under the driver's seat. This she threw
deftly up to the top of the wall, hooking it upon the iron spikes.
Bleak politely ascended first, and they scaled the wall, dropping down
into a tangle of underbrush.
"I left him in here somewhere," said the girl, as they set off along a
narrow path. "This was obviously the best place to hide, as, except for
Father's horse, the Home hasn't had an inmate for two years. There was
some talk of Father making this the headquarters of the Great General
Strafe in this campaign, but I don't believe they have done so yet."
"Hush!" said Bleak. "What is that I hear?"
A dull, regular, recurrent sound, a sort of rasping sigh, stole through
the thickets. They both listened in some agitation.
"Sounds a little like an airplane, with one engine missing," said Bleak.
"Can it be the sea, the surf breaking on the sand?" asked Miss Chuff.
This seemed probable, and they accepted it as such; but as they pushed
on through the tangle of saplings and bushes the sound seemed to
localize itself on their left. Bleak peeped cautiously through a leafy
screen, and then beckoned the girl to his side. They looked down into a
warm sandy hollow, overgrown and sheltered by a large rhododendron with
knotted branches and dry, shiny leaves. Curled up on the sand bank, in
the unconsciously pathetic posture of sheer exhaustion, lay Quimbleton,
asleep. A droning snore buzzed heavily from where he lay.
"Poor Virgil!" said Miss Chuff. "How tired he looks."
He did, indeed. The gray and silver uniform was ragged and
soil-stained; his boots were white with dust; his face was unshaved,
though a razor lay beside him, and it seemed that he had been trying to
strop it on his Sam Browne belt. His pipe, filled but unlit, had fallen
from his weary fingers; beside him was an empty match-box and tragic
evidence of a number of unsuccessful attempts to get fire from a
Swedish tandsticker. Crumpled under the elbow of the indomitable
idealist was a much-thumbed copy of The Bartender's Benefactor, or How
to Mix 1001 Drinks, in which he had been seeking imaginary solace when
he fell asleep. Near his head ticked a pocket alarm clock, which they
found set to gong at two o'clock.
"It seems a shame to wake him," said Theodolinda. Her brown eyes
liquefied and effervesced with tenderness, until (as Bleak thought to
himself) they were quite the color of brandy and soda, without too much
soda.
The sleeper stirred, and a radiant smile passed over his unconscious
features--a smile of pure and heavenly beatitude.
"Say when, Jerry," he murmured.
"He's dreaming!" cried Theodolinda. "See, his soul is far away!"
"Two years away," said Bleak enviously. "Let him go to it while we
reconnoiter. I believe in the Prevention of Cruelty to Sleep. He didn't
intend to wake up just yet, you can see by the alarm clock."
"That's a good idea," she agreed. "I'd like to find out whether we're
in any immediate danger of pursuit."
They set the basket of food beside Quimbleton, and carefully moved on
through the strip of young trees until they neared the broad lawns that
surround the Home for Inebriates. Miss Chuff, spying delicately through
a leafy chink, gave a cry of alarm.
"Heavens!" she said. "The place is full of people!"
To their amazement, they saw the white banner of the Pan-Antis floating
on one of the towers of the building, and the grounds about the Home
blackened with a moving throng. Though they were too far distant to
discern any details of the crowd, it was plain (from the curious
to-and-fro of the gathering, like the seething of an ant-hill) that its
units were imbued with some strong emotion. At that distance it might
have been anger, or fear, or (more appropriate to the surroundings)
drink.
They hurried back to Quimbleton's hiding place, and found him already
sitting up and attacking the shrimp salad. Bleak courteously averted
his eyes from the affectionate embrace of the lovers.
"Bless your heart for this grub," said Quimbleton to Bleak. "As soon as
I smelt that shrimp salad I woke up. Do you know, I haven't eaten for
two days."
"Oh Virgil!" cried Theodolinda, "what does this mean--all the crowd
round the Home? Mr. Bleak and I looked up there, and the place is
simply packed. You can't stay undiscovered long with all those people
around. Who are they, anyway?"
Quimbleton had to delay his reply until deglutition had mastered a
bulky consignment of shrimp. His large, resolute face, while somewhat
marred by hardships, showed no trace of panic.
"I know all about it," he said. "It is the latest step on the route of
all evil taken by that fanatical person whom I shall presently call
father-in-law. He is not content with arresting people found drinking.
This morning they began to seize people who THINK about drinking. Any
one who is guilty of thinking, in an affirmative way, about liquor, is
to be interned in the Federal Home for a course in mental healing."
"But how can they tell?" asked Bleak, nervously.
"I don't know," said Quimbleton. "Perhaps they have a kind of Third
Degree, flash a seidel of beer on you suddenly, and if you make an
involuntary gesture of pleasure, you're convicted. Perhaps they've
invented an instrument that tells what you think about. Perhaps they
just arrest you on suspicion. At any rate all the folks who have been
thinking about booze are being collected and sent over here. I know
because I've seen most of my friends arriving all morning. I suppose
they'll get me next. I don't much care as long as I've had something to
eat."
"Virgil, dear," said Miss Chuff, "you MUSTN'T give up hope now, after
being so brave. You know I'll stand by you to the end--to the very
dregs."
"If only I had some disguise," said Quimbleton sadly, "it wouldn't be
so bad. But I must confess that these breath detectors and other
unscrupulous instruments they use have rather unnerved me."
Bleak suddenly remembered, and thrust his hand in his hip-pocket. He
pulled out the hank of white beard that had floated down from the
airplane a few days before. It was much crumpled, but intact.
"Good man!" cried Quimbleton. "My jolly old beard!" He clapped it onto
his face and beamed hopefully. "Now, if there were some way of getting
rid of this tell-tale uniform--"
They discussed this problem at some length, sitting in the sheltered
bowl of sand, while Quimbleton finished his lunch. Bleak's suggestion
of stitching together a sort of Robinson Crusoe suit of rhododendron
leaves did not meet Quimbleton's approval.
"No Robinson trousseau for me," he said. "I thought of pasting together
the leaves of The Bartender's Benefactor, but I'm afraid that would be
rather damning. No, I don't see what to do."
"I have it!" said Theodolinda, gleefully. "I've got a sewing kit in the
car--we'll unrip the upholstery and I can stitch you up a suit in no
time. At least it will be better than the C. P. H. get-up, which would
take you in front of a firing squad if it were seen."
This seemed a good idea. Bleak volunteered to escort Miss Chuff back to
the car and help her rip the covers off the cushions. This was done,
and they carried back to Quimbleton's hiding place many yards of pale
lilac colored twill (or whatever it is) and a flask of iced tea. In
spite of distant sounds of warfare, the time passed pleasantly enough.
Miss Chuff cut out and stitched assiduously; Quimbleton and Bleak,
under her directions, sewed on the buttons snipped from the uniform.
Birds twittered in the greenery about them, and they all felt something
of the elation of a picnic when the garments were done and Quimbleton
retired to a neighboring copse to make the change. The other two were
too seriously concerned for his welfare to laugh when they saw him.
"Splendid!" cried Bleak. "Now you can lie down in Miss Chuff's car and
if any one looks in they'll just think you're part of the furnishings."
"And I think we'd better get back to the car without delay," said
Theodolinda. "I'd like to get you out of this danger zone as soon as
possible."
They hastened back to the wall, scaled it with the rope ladder--and
stared in dismay. The car had gone. They could see it far down the
road, guarded by a group of Pan-Antis. A cordon of the enemy had been
thrown completely round the Home and escape was impossible. Worse
still, the treachery of Miss Chuff must have been discovered, and they
trembled to think what retaliation the Bishop might devise.
In this moment of crisis Quimbleton regained his customary hardihood.
Quilted in his lilac garments, with the white hedge of beard tossing in
the breeze, he looked the dashing leader.
"There's only one thing to do," he said. "We're surrounded in this
place. We must go to the Home, make common cause with the prisoners
there, and lead them in a sudden sally of escape."