“I’m looking forward to Charles meeting you. I guess he’ll be a little
put out at our having you, but there’s no harm letting him see I’m to
be reckoned with. Naturally his wife, Millie, is more or less
mentioned as a social leader, but I never could see that she is really
any more prominent than I am. In fact, last year after our Bazaar of
All Nations our pictures in costume were in the Spokane paper as ‘Red
Gap’s Rival Society Queens,’ and I suppose that’s what we are, though
we work together pretty well as a rule. Still, I must say, having you
puts me a couple of notches ahead of her. Only, for heaven’s sake,
keep your eye on Cousin Egbert!”
“I shall do my duty, Madam,” I returned, thinking it all rather
morbidly interesting, these weird details about their county families.
“I’m sure you will,” she said at parting. “I feel that we shall do
things right this year. Last year the Sunday Spokane paper used to
have nearly a column under the heading ‘Social Doings of Red Gap’s
Smart Set.’ This year we’ll have a good two columns, if I don’t miss
my guess.”
In the smoking-compartment I found Cousin Egbert staring gloomily into
vacancy, as one might say, the reason I knew being that he had vainly
pleaded with Mrs. Effie to be allowed to spend this time at their
Coney Island, which is a sort of Brighton. He transferred his stare to
me, but it lost none of its gloom.
“Hell begins to pop!” said he.
“Referring to what, sir?” I rejoined with some severity, for I have
never held with profanity.
“Referring to Charles Belknap Hyphen Jackson of Boston, Mass.,” said
he, “the greatest little trouble-maker that ever crossed the
hills--with a bracelet on one wrist and a watch on the other and a
one-shot eyeglass and a gold cigareet case and key chains, rings,
bangles, and jewellery till he’d sink like lead if he ever fell into
the crick with all that metal on.”
“You are speaking, sir, about a person who matters enormously,” I
rebuked him.
“If I hadn’t been afraid of getting arrested I’d have shot him long
ago.”
“It’s not done, sir,” I said, quite horrified by his rash words.
“It’s liable to be,” he insisted. “I bet Ma Pettengill will go in with
me on it any time I give her the word. Say, listen! there’s one good
mixer.”
“The confirmed Mixer, sir?” For I remembered the term.
“The best ever. Any one can set into her game that’s got a stack of
chips.” He uttered this with deep feeling, whatever it might exactly
mean.
“I can be pushed just so far,” he insisted sullenly. It struck me then
that he should perhaps have been kept longer in one of the European
capitals. I feared his brief contact with those refining influences
had left him less polished than Mrs. Effie seemed to hope. I wondered
uneasily if he might not cause her to miss her guess. Yet I saw he was
in no mood to be reasoned with, and I retired to my bed which the
blackamoor guard had done out. Here I meditated profoundly for some
time before I slept.
Morning found our coach shunted to a siding at a backwoods settlement
on the borders of an inland sea. The scene was wild beyond
description, where quite almost anything might be expected to happen,
though I was a bit reassured by the presence of a number of persons of
both sexes who appeared to make little of the dangers by which we were
surrounded. I mean to say since they thus took their women into the
wilds so freely, I would still be a dead sportsman.
After a brief wait at a rude quay we embarked on a launch and steamed
out over the water. Mile after mile we passed wooded shores that
sloped up to mountains of prodigious height. Indeed the description of
the Rocky Mountains, of which I take these to be a part, have not been
overdrawn. From time to time, at the edge of the primeval forest, I
could make out the rude shelters of hunter and trapper who braved
these perils for the sake of a scanty livelihood for their hardy wives
and little ones.
Cousin Egbert, beside me, seemed unimpressed, making no outcry at the
fearsome wildness of the scene, and when I spoke of the terrific
height of the mountains he merely admonished me to “quit my kidding.”
The sole interest he had thus far displayed was in the title of our
craft--_Storm King_.
“Think of the guy’s imagination, naming this here chafing dish the
_Storm King_!” said he; but I was impatient of levity at so
solemn a moment, and promptly rebuked him for having donned a cravat
that I had warned him was for town wear alone; whereat he subsided and
did not again intrude upon me.
Far ahead, at length, I could descry an open glade at the forest edge,
and above this I soon spied floating the North American flag, or
national emblem. It is, of course, known to us that the natives are
given to making rather a silly noise over this flag of theirs, but in
this instance--the pioneer fighting his way into the wilderness and
hoisting it above his frontier home--I felt strangely indisposed to
criticise. I understood that he could be greatly cheered by the flag
of the country he had left behind.
We now neared a small dock from which two ladies brandished
handkerchiefs at us, and were presently welcomed by them. I had no
difficulty in identifying the Mrs. Charles Belknap-Jackson, a lively
featured brunette of neutral tints, rather stubby as to figure, but
modishly done out in white flannels. She surveyed us interestedly
through a lorgnon, observing which Mrs. Effie was quick with her own.
I surmised that neither of them was skilled with this form of glass
(which must really be raised with an air or it’s no good); also that
each was not a little chagrined to note that the other possessed one.
Nor was it less evident that the other lady was the mother of Mrs.
Belknap-Jackson; I mean to say, the confirmed Mixer--an elderly person
of immense bulk in gray walking-skirt, heavy boots, and a flowered
blouse that was overwhelming. Her face, under her grayish thatch of
hair, was broad and smiling, the eyes keen, the mouth wide, and the
nose rather a bit blobby. Although at every point she was far from
vogue, she impressed me not unpleasantly. Even her voice, a
magnificently hoarse rumble, was primed with a sort of uncouth
good-will which one might accept in the States. Of course it would
never do with us.
I fancied I could at once detect why they had called her the “Mixer.”
She embraced Mrs. Effie with an air of being about to strangle the
woman; she affectionately wrung the hands of Cousin Egbert, and had
grasped my own tightly before I could evade her, not having looked for
that sort of thing.
“That’s Cousin Egbert’s man!” called Mrs. Effie. But even then the
powerful creature would not release me until her daughter had called
sharply, “Maw! Don’t you hear? He’s a _man_!” Nevertheless she
gave my hand a parting shake before turning to the others.
“Glad to see a human face at last!” she boomed. “Here I’ve been a
month in this dinky hole,” which I thought strange, since we were
surrounded by league upon league of the primal wilderness. “Cooped up
like a hen in a barrel,” she added in tones that must have carried
well out over the lake.
“Cousin Egbert’s man,” repeated Mrs. Effie, a little ostentatiously, I
thought. “Poor Egbert’s so dependent on him--quite helpless without
him.”
Cousin Egbert muttered sullenly to himself as he assisted me with the
bags. Then he straightened himself to address them.
“Won him in a game of freeze-out,” he remarked quite viciously.
“Does he doll Sour-dough up like that all the time?” demanded the
Mixer, “or has he just come from a masquerade? What’s he represent,
anyway?” And these words when I had taken especial pains and resorted
to all manner of threats to turn him smartly out in the walking-suit
of a pioneer!
“Maw!” cried our hostess, “do try to forget that dreadful nickname of
Egbert’s.”
“I sure will if he keeps his disguise on,” she rumbled back. “The old
horned toad is most as funny as Jackson.”
Really, I mean to say, they talked most amazingly. I was but too glad
when they moved on and we could follow with the bags.
“Calls her ‘Maw’ all right now,” hissed Cousin Egbert in my ear, “but
when that begoshed husband of hers is around the house she calls her
‘Mater.’”
His tone was vastly bitter. He continued to mutter sullenly to
himself--a way he had--until we had disposed of the luggage and I was
laying out his afternoon and evening wear in one of the small detached
houses to which we had been assigned. Nor did he sink his grievance on
the arrival of the Mixer a few moments later. He now addressed her as
“Ma” and asked if she had “the makings,” which puzzled me until she
drew from the pocket of her skirt a small cloth sack of tobacco and
some bits of brown paper, from which they both fashioned cigarettes.
“The smart set of Red Gap is holding its first annual meeting for the
election of officers back there,” she began after she had emitted twin
jets of smoke from the widely separated corners of her set mouth.
“I say, you know, where’s Hyphen old top?” demanded Cousin Egbert in a
quite vile imitation of one speaking in the correct manner.
“Fishing,” answered the Mixer with a grin. “In a thousand dollars’
worth of clothes. These here Eastern trout won’t notice you unless you
dress right.” I thought this strange indeed, but Cousin Egbert merely
grinned in his turn.
“How’d he get you into this awfully horrid rough place?” he next
demanded.
“Made him. ‘This or Red Gap for yours,’ I says. The two weeks in New
York wasn’t so bad, what with Millie and me getting new clothes,
though him and her both jumped on me that I’m getting too gay about
clothes for a party of my age. ‘What’s age to me,’ I says, ‘when I
like bright colours?’ Then we tried his home-folks in Boston, but I
played that string out in a week.
“Two old-maid sisters, thin noses and knitted shawls! Stick around in
the back parlour talking about families--whether it was Aunt Lucy’s
Abigail or the Concord cousin’s Hester that married an Adams in ‘78
and moved out west to Buffalo. I thought first I could liven them up
some, _you_ know. Looked like it would help a lot for them to get
out in a hack and get a few shots of hooch under their belts, stop at
a few roadhouses, take in a good variety show; get ‘em to feeling
good, understand? No use. Wouldn’t start. Darn it! they held off from
me. Don’t know why. I sure wore clothes for them. Yes, sir. I’d get
dressed up like a broken arm every afternoon; and, say, I got one
sheath skirt, black and white striped, that just has to be looked at.
Never phased them, though.
“I got to thinking mebbe it was because I made my own smokes instead
of using those vegetable cigarettes of Jackson’s, or maybe because I’d
get parched and demand a slug of booze before supper. Like a Sunday
afternoon all the time, when you eat a big dinner and everybody’s
sleepy and mad because they can’t take a nap, and have to set around
and play a few church tunes on the organ or look through the album
again.”
“Ain’t that right? Don’t it fade you?” murmured Cousin Egbert with
deep feeling.
“And little Lysander, my only grandson, poor kid, getting the fidgets
because they try to make him talk different, and raise hell every time
he knocks over a vase or busts a window. Say, would you believe it?
they wanted to keep him there--yes, sir--make him refined. Not for me!
‘His father’s about all he can survive in those respects,’ I says.
What do you think? Wanted to let his hair grow so he’d have curls.
Some dames, yes? I bet they’d have give the kid lovely days. ‘Boston
may be all O.K. for grandfathers,’ I says; ‘not for grandsons,
though.’
“Then Jackson was set on Bar Harbor, and I had to be firm again. Darn
it! that man is always making me be firm. So here we are. He said it
was a camp, and that sounded good. But my lands! he wears his full
evening dress suit for supper every night, and you had ought to heard
him go on one day when the patent ice-machine went bad.”
“My good gosh!” said Cousin Egbert quite simply.