Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman Part 11

Josie eyed him dully, which meant that not one detail of his countenance or clothing escaped her. She even noted the make of the car. The man glanced casually at Josie but she was nothing more than a pedestrian crossing the alley to him, and a stupid-looking pedestrian at that, who did not cross the alley even when she had a chance. Josie stood for a moment after the car had pa.s.sed the crossing.

"Could that be Chester Hunt?" she mused. "If so, he is not my idea of a villian in appearance. He is too pleasant looking and his countenance is entirely too open and engaging. Too good looking, in fact! I was looking for a black-browed villain with selfishness and deviltry written all over his face. If that is he then woe be to poor d.i.n.k and Mrs. Waller! When evil has so much the appearance of good it is difficult to combat."

She crossed the alley and continued her walk, not returning to the Elberta Inn by way of the Waller house. She did not want the inmates of that house, whoever they might be, by any chance to become familiar with her face and form, disguised or natural.

It was too late in the evening to see about an office and the business of making good as a saleswoman for household necessities and jeweled novelties, but it was not too late to get a pretty good idea of the city and a general notion of the kind of persons who made Atlanta their home. Josie walked for an hour, noting and remembering the names of the streets, the lines of trolleys, the princ.i.p.al hotels and clubs and many other things that an ordinary tourist would have pa.s.sed by or forgotten in a moment. She stopped at a drug store and bought a map of the city.

Then when she got home she traced on the map the streets she had traversed or followed in her walk.

"Now I am beginning to get my bearings," she declared as she freshened up a bit for dinner. "I mustn't let myself slump into too great respectability," she grinned at herself in the mirror.

CHAPTER X AT MISS DENTON'S DINNER TABLE

Seven o'clock dinner at Elberta Inn was a function in spite of the dried apple pies. Miss Oleander Denton always insisted upon making of it a real dinner party. It seemed as though, for the hour, she attempted to forget that her guests were paying ones. To her black silk gown she gave a festive air by turning it in at the neck, thereby exposing her too prominent clavicles, but the effect was softened by a beautiful old lace collar and a large cameo breastpin of rare workmanship, depicting a lady in hoop skirts by a grave, over which leant a weeping willow tree. Major Denton wore a rusty dress suit and a carnation in his b.u.t.tonhole. The boarders dressed or not as they chose, but as a rule they played up to Miss Oleander's role of hostess and appeared at dinner in festive raiment.

The table was set with care and taste, but Josie found the food no better than the one meal she had eaten at Mrs. Pete's in Dorfield. Mrs.

Pete's cabbage and the accompanying corned beef had been excellent, although the table had been covered with a red cloth, the crockery of the thickest, unbreakable variety and a large toothpick holder the only ornament. Miss Denton always had flowers on the table and her china was what remained in the family after the administration of the hundred slaves. It did not match but it was all good, some thin porcelain with a gold band, some Canton whose blue made Josie homesick for the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop and the little breakfast set, a gift from Mary Louise.

The great difference between 126 East Centre and the Elberta Inn lay in the type of boarders. A wider gulf existed between the clientele of the two places than that between a red table cloth and a fine damask one, or Canton china and Mrs. Pete's heavy stone crockery, or a vase of roses and a toothpick holder.

Most of the boarders were permanent ones and while it was a rule of the house to resent transients, they were secretly welcome because of the added zest they gave to the humdrum of everyday life. The permanent guests of Elberta Inn knew only too well all about each other and it was a relief to have outsiders to pick on in spite of the ignominy of having to sit down to meals with persons whose antecedents might be doubtful. Elberta Inn was of the old South. The inroad of Western and Northern capital had not touched the Maison Denton. To be sure the transients who occasionally bore down upon them were often northerners or westerners but they did not represent much capital or they would have put up at a first-cla.s.s hotel. This the boarders who called Elberta Inn home year in and year out well understood and so it was all transients were more or less looked down upon. They were not rich or they would not be there and they were hardly well born, since they were not born in the South. Of course they sympathized with Miss Oleander in wanting to rent her rooms and the fact that a much higher board was charged transients than permanents made transients somewhat desirable if too long intervals did not elapse between their goings and comings.

All of the foregoing Josie gathered at her first dinner. She was introduced with great eclat by her hostess. The party was seated as she came into the dining room and down one side of the table and up the other Miss Oleander called the names, each time repeating Josie as "Miss Blossom, Colonel Brent; Miss Blossom, Miss Kite-Smith; Miss Blossom, Mrs. Bucknow; Miss Blossom, Major Dugan; Miss Blossom, Mrs.

Claiborne; Miss Blossom, Judge Tuttle; Miss Blossom, my father, Major Denton," and so forth and so on down a line of twenty.

Josie felt she had never been among so many t.i.tles in all her life. She recalled some lines from an opera of Gilbert and Sullivan's:

"With admirals the ocean teemed And bishops in their shovel hats Were cheap as any tabby cats, In point of fact too many."

"The women have no t.i.tles but their names sound so aristocratic," she thought. "Why, oh, why did I choose such a silly name as Blossom? There were plenty of nice plain names that would have done me just as well and I wouldn't feel such a fool when I am introduced. I thought Miss Oleander would never get through calling out Blossom."

She was relieved to find that her henna wig was not so very much out of place. Miss. .h.i.te-Smith was blondined in the back, with a transformation in the front that did not quite match and all of the aristocratic dames had resorted to cosmetics of one kind or another. Powder predominated but an occasional dash of rouge gave color to the party.

Dinner was in courses, served by two colored maids whose social strata must have been about that of Betty's at Mrs. Pete's. To be sure they had on white caps and ap.r.o.ns, garnishings of which Betty boasted not, but their motions were reminiscent of the cornfield, as though they might still be walking over ploughed ground.

Josie could not help thinking that perhaps the grandfather, he of the hundreds of slaves and thousands of acres, would have turned over in his grave again if he could have seen the type of repast served on his beautiful old china. There was course after course but each was merely a sample, from soup to coffee. Josie remembered the heaping plate of cabbage and corned beef with the hunk of corn bread at Mrs. Pete's with regretful sentiment.

"Blossom, Blossom! Did I hear aright, young lady?" asked Judge Tuttle.

"Is your name Blossom?"

"Yes, sir," said Josie, respectfully, but wishing in her heart the old gentleman would not insist on that absurd name, "Sally Blossom!"

"Ah, and from what part of the country do you come?"

"Washington," answered Josie, thankful that at one time she had lived there--was living there in fact when her father, Detective O'Gorman, died. "I have been in Dorfield lately, though, on business."

"My grandmother's maiden name was Blossom," continued the judge, "and strange to say, it was also Sally, or Sarah by the time she got to be my grandmother. But she was a Virginian, a Virginian of tide-water fame. What Blossom are you?"

"Just Blossom, sir; a blooming Blossom! My father was English," she said in desperation. "At least I think he was. He died before he was born--I mean I was born."

"Ah, very sad!" ventured the Judge and Miss. .h.i.te-Smith thought so too.

Josie, for her part, thought he was much better dead--that fict.i.tious Blossom. This questioning was more than she had bargained for. People usually let her do the questioning. She rather fancied it was the bobbed wig and the artificial complexion that made persons like the judge notice her.

"That is a beautiful old house on the corner near here," she ventured.

"You mean the Haskins?" spoke up Miss Denton. "Yes, it is very handsome, no doubt, but too ornate and pie-crusty for my--taste." Then a discussion ensued concerning architecture, old and new.

"I mean the house going East from this place," put in Josie, not at all interested in the Haskins house. "The old home with the ivy and the box-bushes in the yard."

"Oh, the Waller house!" said Major Denton. "That is perhaps the finest specimen of the old South left in the city. It was saved from the Yankee invasion by a piece of luck."

He then plunged into war reminiscences that lasted through three courses, his table companions listening with bored politeness.

"Do the same people still live there?" asked Josie, after Major Denton had fired the last shot for states' rights.

"Well, they do and they don't," began the Major.

"I can't see why you say they do," broke in Judge Tuttle. "Chester Hunt hasn't an ounce of Waller blood in his veins."

"Indeed he has," declared Mrs. Claiborne. "Chester Hunt's mother's great-grandmother was a niece of old Edmund Waller's, the English founder of the Waller family. That is a well-known fact."

"Ah, yes, a niece but--ah, well--the presence of ladies would deter my pressing my point," said Judge Tuttle, who then whispered sibilantly to a pink-cheeked old man across the table.

"As I was saying," continued Major Denton, "they do and they don't. The present occupant of the Waller mansion is a stepbrother of Stephen Waller's. He, poor fellow, was killed during the war, the world war, I mean, not the war between the states."

"Yes," breathed Josie, "and the stepbrother inherited his property?"

"Oh, no, there is a widow and two children. A very sad story, very sad!

The widow has been crazed by grief and I hear is hopelessly insane. The two children have been placed in care of an excellent woman and are now living near their mother, so if she should ever ask for them they can be reached quickly. She has shown no sign as yet of wanting to see them. A sad case!"

"Yes, and I wouldn't trust those sanitariums," spoke Miss Oleander.

"They are often very tricky."

"Neither would I," said a young woman across the table from Josie. Her name was Miss Chisholm and she had the distinction of being in business. The ladies at Miss Denton's were not the type to be in business.

"But Chester Hunt has been to the place again and again and says his step-sister-in-law is receiving every attention and is being watched with the greatest care. She is raving, so he says, and he is very sad over it. Chester Hunt is a fine young fellow in spite of the unkind things some persons say about his great-great-grandmother," declared Mrs. Claiborne, vindictively.

"I don't like him," a.s.serted Miss Chisholm.

"Indeed!" and Mrs. Claiborne eyed Miss Chisholm through her lorgnette.

"He is very popular with young ladies." There was a slight accent on the ladies.

"Popular enough with girls who see him in society but you ask stenographers how they like him," flushed Miss Chisholm.

"I am hardly likely to converse with stenographers on the subject of Mr. Hunt," was the insolent answer.

Josie determined to cultivate Miss Chisholm and to give Mrs. Claiborne a wide berth.