Ma Pettengill Part 8

And I didn't see it a minute later when Dulcie wolfed her tenth marshmallow and broke out about winter sports. She first said what perfectly darling snow we had here. This caused some astonishment, no one present having ever regarded snow as darling but merely as something to shovel or wade through. So Dulcie p.r.o.nged off a piece of sticky chocolate cake and talked on. She said that everyone in New York was outdooring, and why didn't we outdoor. It was a shame if we didn't go in for it, with all this perfectly dandy snow. New York people had to go out of town for their winter sports, owing to the snow not being good for sport after it fell there; but here it was right at hand, and did we mean to say we hadn't organized a winter-sports club.

No one spoke, for no one could guess what you did to outdoor properly.

About all they could think of was hustling out after another chunk for the fireplace or bringing a scuttle of coal up from the cellar. But they soon got the idea. Dulcie said right from this window she could see a corking hill for a toboggan slide, and it would be perfectly darling to be out there with plenty of hot coffee and sandwiches; and there must be some peachy trips for snowshoe parties with sandwiches and coffee at the end; or skating in the moonlight with a big bonfire and coffee and sandwiches.

She suggested other things with coffee and sandwiches and finally got up some real enthusiasm when she said she had brought some of the dearest sport toggery with her. The girls was excited enough when they found out you had to dress especial for it. They was willing to listen to anything like that if New York society was really mad about it, even if it conflicted with lifelong habits--no one in Red Gap but small boys having ever slid downhill.

And still I didn't suspect Dulcie was going to groundsluice Vernabelle.

It looked like the Latin Quarter would still have the best of it, at least during a cold winter. Which goes to show that you can't tell what society will go mad about, even in Red Gap, when you can dress for it.

The girls had got a line on Dulcie and was properly impressed by her, and then with an evening affair at the Wales home the dancing men had their chance. Even some of the Bohemians was let to come, just to have 'em see that there was indeed a better life; and reports of Dulcie was such that all took advantage of it. The male s.e.x was strong for the girl at once.

She didn't know that life is anything but selective, or that all the arts round out one's appreciation of the beautiful, or that anything was "by way of being" something. But all the food she took didn't make her torpid; she giggled easily and had eyes like hothouse grapes, and in spite of her fat there was something about her, like Cousin Egbert said of Vernabelle. Anyway, she prevailed. Oswald c.u.mmings, the pagan, for one, quickly side-stepped his destiny of splendid sins, and Hugo Jennings told Dulcie he had merely gone to this Latin Quarter as he would go to an animal show, never having meant for one moment to take Bohemians up, any more than New York society would.

First thing I hear, the winter-sports club has been organized, snowshoes sent for and a couple of toboggans, and a toboggan slide half a mile long made out in Price's Addition, starting at the top of the highest hill, where Lon's big board sign with the painted bungalow made a fine windshield, and running across some very choice building lots to the foot of the grade, where it stopped on the proposed site of the Carnegie Library. Lon was very keen about the sport himself after meeting Dulcie, and let a fire be built near his sign that burned it down one night, but he said it was all good advertising, more than he'd ever got out of being a Bohemian.

Of course there was a great deal of fuss about the proper sport toggery, but everyone got rigged out by the time the toboggans got there. Dulcie was a great help in this and was downtown every day advising one or another about the proper sweaters or blanket coats or peaked caps with ta.s.sels, or these here big-eyed boots. You'd meet her in a store with Stella Ballard, eating from a sack of potato chips; and half an hour later she'd be in another store with Daisy Estelle Maybury, munching from a box of ginger wafers; with always a final stop at the Bon Ton Kandy Kitchen for a sack of something to keep life in her on the way home.

There really got to be so much excitement about winter sports that you hardly heard any more talk about the Latin Quarter. People got to speaking to each other again.

By the opening day of the sports club you wouldn't of thought any one in town had ever tried to get away from it all. Even them that thought it crazy came and stood round and said so. Cousin Egbert Floud said this Dulcie was some sparrow, but nutty--going out in the cold that way when nothing drove her out. Dulcie made a great hit with the club this first day, having the correct Canadian toggery and being entirely fearless in the presence of a toboggan. She'd zip to the bottom, come tramping back, shooting on all six, grab a sandwich--for not a morsel of food had pa.s.sed her lips since she went down the time before--and do it all over again.

And every last ex-Bohemian, even Edgar Tomlinson, fighting for the chance to save her from death by starvation! Dulcie played no favourites, being entranced with 'em all. She said they was the dearest gentleman friends she'd ever had. The way they was fighting for her favours she could of called 'em her gentleman frenzy. Ain't I the heinous old madcap, thinking of jokes like that?

Next day there was a snowshoe trip up to Stender's spring and back by way of the tie camp. Dulcie hadn't ever snowshoed and it wasn't any light matter when her shoes threw her down--requiring about three of the huskiest boys to up-end her--but she was game and the boys was game and she was soon teaching snowshoeing shoes how to take a joke. And from that on winter sports ruled in Red Gap. The chamber of commerce even talked of building an ice palace next year and having a carnival and getting the town's name in the papers. Oh, there certainly must of been a surprised lot of snow round there that winter. Nothing like this had ever happened to it before.

And all being done on nothing stronger than coffee, with hardly a cigarette and never anything that was by way of being a punk stick in a closed room. It was certainly a lot healthier than a Latin Quarter for these young people, and for the old ones, too. Dulcie had sure put one large crimp into Bohemia, even if she could not be justly called an intellectual giantess.

And Vernabelle knew who to blame, too, when the little group quit coming round to get away from it all. She knew it was Dulcie. She said that Dulcie seemed to be a pampered society b.u.t.terfly that devoted all her thoughts to dress. This was repeated to Dulcie by an ex-Bohemian, but she found no poison in it. She said of course she devoted all her thoughts to dress; that a young girl with her figure had to if she ever expected to get anywhere in the world.

Even ex-comrade Lon Price would now shut his office at four o'clock every day and go up on the hill and outdoor a bit, instead of getting away from it all in a smoky Bohemian way. Besides he'd had a difference of opinion with Vernabelle about the poster she was doing for him, the same being more like an advertis.e.m.e.nt for some good bath soap, he said, than for choice villa sites.

"I don't know anything about art," says Lon, "but I know what my wife likes." Which left Vernabelle with another design on her hands and brought Comrade Price out of Bohemia.

Even if Dulcie's winter sports hadn't done the trick I guess it would of been done easy by her report that Bohemians was no longer thought to be smart in New York, Red Gap being keenly sensitive in such matters. Metta Bigler's mother firmly turned out the half-lights in Bohemia when she heard of this talk of Dulcie's. I don't blame her. She didn't one bit relish having her neat home referred to as a slum, say nothing of having her only child using a lip stick and acting like an abandoned woman with cigarettes and the wine cup.

She said just that to me, Metta's mother did. She said she had heard that New York was all broken up into social sets, the same way Red Gap is, and if Bohemians wasn't being took up by the better element in New York, then they shouldn't be took up by the better element of Red Gap--at least not in any home of which the deed was still in her name. She said of course she couldn't keep Metta's guest from being a Bohemian, but she would have to be it alone. She wasn't going to have a whole mob coming round every day and being Bohemians all over the place, it being not only messy but repugnant alike to sound morality and Christian enlightenment. And that settled it. Our town was safe for one more winter. Of course G.o.d only knows what someone may start next winter. We are far off from things, but by no means safe.

Cousin Egbert was kind of sorry for Vernabelle. He said if she'd just stuck to plain gla.s.s blowing she might of got by with it. He's a wonder, that man--as teachable as a granite bowlder.

My G.o.dfrey! Ten-thirty, and me having to start the spring sport of ditch cleaning to-morrow morning at seven! Won't I ever learn!

IV

VENDETTA

By the evening lamp in the Arrowhead living room I did my bit, for the moment, by holding a hank of gray wool for Ma Pettengill to wind. While this minor war measure went forward the day's mail came. From a canvas sack Lew Wee spilled letters and papers on the table. Whereupon the yarn was laid by while Ma Pettengill eagerly shuffled the letters. She thought fit to extenuate this eagerness. She said if people lived forever they would still get foolishly excited over their mail; whereas everyone knew well enough that nothing important ever came in it. To prove this she sketched a rapid and entirely unexciting summary of the six unopened letters she held.

One of them, she conceded, might be worth reading; and this she laid aside. Of the remaining five she correctly guessed the contents of four.

Of the fifth she remarked that it would be from a poor f.e.c.kless dub with a large family who had owed her three hundred dollars for nine years. She said it would tell a new hard-luck tale for non-payment of a note now due for the eighth time. Here she was wrong. The letter inclosed a perfectly new note for four hundred and fifty dollars; and would Mrs. Pettengill send on the extra one hundred and fifty dollars that would enable the debtor to get on his feet and pay all his debts, as there was a good season of hog buying ahead of him!

"I guessed wrong," admitted the lady. "I certainly did that little man an injustice, not suspecting he could think up something novel after nine years." Grimly she scanned the new note. "As good as a treaty with Germany!" she murmured and threw it aside, though I knew that the old note and the new hundred and fifty would go forward on the morrow; for she had spoken again of the debtor's large family. She said it was wonderful what good breeders the shiftless are.

"Ain't I right, though, about the foolish way people fly at their mail?"

she demanded. "You might think they'd get wise after years and years of being fooled; but--no, sir! Take me day after to-morrow, when the next mail comes. I'll fall on it like I fell on this, with all my old delusions uninjured. There sure does seem to be a lot of human nature in most of us."

Then she opened the possibly interesting letter that had been put aside.

The envelope, at least, was interesting, bearing as it did the stamp of a military censor for the American Expedition to France.

"You remember Squat Tyler, that long cow-puncher working for me when you were here last time?"

I remembered Squat, who was indeed a long cow-puncher--long enough to be known, also, to his intimates as Timberline.

"Well, Squat is over there in the trenches helping to make the world a pleasant place to live in. He's a good shot, too."

The lady read the letter hurriedly to herself; then regaled me with bits of it.

"The life here is very," she read. "That's all he says, at first--'The life here is very.' I should judge it might be that from what I read in the papers. Or mebbe he couldn't just think of the word. Let's see!

What else? Oh, yes--about digging. He says he didn't take to digging at first, not having gone there for any common purpose, but one day he was told to dig, and while he was thinking up something to say a million guns began to go off; so he dug without saying a word. Hard and fast he says he dug. He says: 'If a badger would of been there he would of been in my way.' I'll bet! Squat wouldn't like to be shot at in all seriousness.

What next? Here he says I wouldn't dream what a big outfit this here U.S.

outfit is; he says it's the biggest outfit he ever worked for--not even excepting Miller & Lux. What next? Oh, yes; here he tells about getting one.

"'Last night I captured a big fat enemy; you know--a Heinie. It was as dark as a cave, but I heard one snooping close. I says to my pardner I keep hearing one snoop close; and he says forget it, because my hive is swarming or something; and I says no; I will go out there and molest that German. So I sneaked over the bank and through our barbed-wire fence that everyone puts up here, and out a little ways to where I had heard one snoop; and, sure enough--what do you think? He seen me first and knocked my gun out of my hands with the b.u.t.t of his. It got me mad, because it is a new gun and I am taking fine care of it; so I clanched him'--that's what Squat says, clanched. 'And, first, he run his finger into my right eye, clear up to the knuckle it felt like; so I didn't say a word, but hauled off quick and landed a hard right on the side of his jaw and dropped him just like that. It was one peach I handed him and he slumped down like a sack of mush. I am here to tell you it was just one punch, though a dandy; but he had tried to start a fight, so it was his own fault. So I took all his weapons away and when he come alive I kicked him a few times and made him go into the U.S. trenches. He didn't turn out to be much--only a piano tuner from Milwaukee; and I wish it had of been a general I caught snooping. I certainly did molest him a-plenty, all right. Just one punch and I brought him down out of control. Ha! Ha! The life here is very different.'

"There; that must of been what he tried to say at the beginning--'The life here is very different.' I should think he'd find it so, seeing the only danger that boy was ever in here was the sleeping sickness."

Hereupon the lady removed the wrapper from a trade journal and scanned certain market quotations. They pleased her little. She said it was darned queer that the war should send every price in the world up but the price of beef, beef quotations being just where the war had found them.

Not that she wanted to rob any one! Still and all, why give everyone a chance but cattle raisers? She muttered hugely of this discrimination and a moment later seemed to be knitting her remarks into a gray sock.

The mutterings had gradually achieved the coherence of remarks. And I presently became aware that the uninflated price of beef was no longer their burden.

They now concerned the singular reticence of all losers of fist fights.

Take Squat's German. Squat would be telling for the rest of his life how he put that Wisconsin alien out with one punch. But if I guessed the German would be telling it as often as Squat told it I was plumb foolish.

He wouldn't tell it at all. Losers never do. Any one might think that parties getting licked lost their powers of speech. Not so with the winners of fights; not so at all!

At this very minute, while we sat there in that room at a quarter past eight, all over the wide world modest-seeming men were telling how they had licked the other man with one punch, or two or three at the most. It was being told in Kulanche County, Washington, and in Patagonia and Philadelphia and Africa and China, and them places; in clubs and lumber camps and Pullman cars and ships and saloons--in states that remained free of the hydrant-headed monster, Prohibition--in tents and palaces; in burning deserts and icy wastes. At that very second, in an ice hut up by the North Pole, a modest Eskimo was telling and showing his admiring wife and relatives just how he had put out another Eskimo that had come round and tried to start something. Which was another mystery, the man winning the fight being always put upon and invariably in the right. In every one of these world-wide encounters justice always prevailed and only the winner talked about it afterward.

"And lots of times," continued the lady, "this talkative winner has been set upon by as many as three others. But he licks 'em all. Sometimes he admits he had a little luck with the third man; but he gets two of the cowards easy. Why, down in Red Gap only the other night I saw a kind of a slight young man in a full-dress suit lick three big huskies that set on him. He put two out with a punch apiece and got the third after about one round of sparring. There he stood winner over all three, and hardly his hair mussed; and you wouldn't of thought in the beginning that he could lick one of the bunch. It was a good picture, all right, with this fight coming in the first reel to start things off lively. But what I want to know is why, out of these million fights that come off, you never hear a word out of a loser! I'll bet all my Liberty Bonds right now that you never yet heard a man tell about how he was licked in a fair fight."

I had to decline the wager. The most I could submit was that I had heard some plausible excuses. The lady waved her entire knitting in deprecation.

"Oh, excuses! You hear 'em a-plenty when the loser can't deny he was licked. Most losers will odd things along till they sound even. I heard a lovely excuse down in Red Gap. Hyman Leftowitz, who does business there as Abercrombie, the Quality Tailor, made a suit for Eddie Pierce that drives the depot hack, and Eddie was slow pay. So Hyman lost his native tact one night and dunned Eddie when he was walking down Fourth Street with his girl. Eddie left his girl in at the Owl Drug Store and went back and used Hyman hard; and all Hyman did was to yell 'Help!' and 'Murder!'

I was in his shop for a fitting next day and Hyman's face arrested the attention much more than usual. It showed that Eddie had done something with him. So I says: 'Why didn't you fight back? What was your fists for?' And Hyman says: 'I pledge you my word I didn't know it was a fight.' Oh, excuses--sure! But that ain't what I'm getting at. You've heard the winners talk, like we all have, how they did it with the good old right hook to the jaw, or how they landed one straight left and all was over; but did you ever hear any talk from a loser without excuses, one who come out plain and said he was licked by a better man?"

We debated this briefly. We agreed that the reticence of losers is due to something basic in human nature; a determination of the n.o.blest sort to disregard failure--that is, Ma Pettengill said you couldn't expect everything of human nature when it had its earrings in, and I agreed in as few words as would suffice. I had suddenly become aware that the woman was holding something back. The signs in her discourse are not to be mistaken. I taxed her with this. She denied it. Then she said that, even if she was holding back something, it was nothing to rave about. Just an anecdote that this here talk about fighting characters had reminded her of. She wouldn't of thought of it even now if Ben Steptoe hadn't told her last spring why he didn't lick his Cousin Ed that last time. And this here Ed Steptoe was the only honest male she had ever known. But that was because something was wrong in his head, he being a born nut. And it wasn't really worth going back over; but--well--she didn't know.

Possibly. Anyway--

These Steptoe cousins come from a family back in the East that was remote kin to mine and they looked me up in Red Gap when they come out into the great boundless West to carve out a name for themselves. About fifteen years ago they come. Ben was dark and short and hulky, with his head jammed down between his shoulders. Ed was blond and like a cat, being quick. Ben had a simple but emphatic personality, seeing what he wanted and going for it, and that never being more than one thing at a time. Ed was all over the place with his own aspirations and never anything long at a time; kind of a romantic temperament, or, like they say in stories, a creature of moods. He was agent for the Home Queen sewing machine when he first come out. But that didn't mean sewing machines was his life work. He'd done a lot of things before that, like lecturing for a patent-medicine professor and canva.s.sing for crayon portraits with a gold frame, and giving lessons in hypnotism, and owning one-half or a two-headed pig that went great at county fairs.