Complete Stories (77 page)
Authors: Dorothy Parker,Colleen Bresse,Regina Barreca
But do you know, the Grews laughingly ask you, that they regard that, really, as one of the assets of the place? It gives our own crowd, you glean, such a perfectly corking opportunity to see the screaming way the other half lives. In fact our own crowd gets so many hearty snickers out of the mannerisms and the sports clothes of the transients that the summer is practically a whirlwind of merriment. Mr. Grew, who has the driest way of playing on words, often speaks of this outer circle not as guests but as jests, and, as you can readily see, it’s a riot.
Another splendid thing about the Pebbly Point House is that it is so unspoiled. The Grews as good as admit that, even if the rates were twice what they are, they would be simply tickled to death to pay them for the privilege of stopping at a place so refreshingly free from the Ritzy note. Mrs. Grew is just about on tenterhooks as each fresh summer approaches for fear she will get to the hotel only to find it utterly ruined by the introduction of city-chap ideas in regard to rooms, service and cuisine. What our own crowd loves to do, the members frequently declare, is to go up to the Pebbly Point House and just rough it. And good old Mr. Blatch, the genial on-and-off host, sees to it that they get their wish.
Our own crowd does not, really, assume the proportions of a mob scene. There are but six members, all charter—the Grews, Mr. and Mrs. Eddy and Mr. and Mrs. Rinse. As soon as the Grews explain to you the series of curious coincidences that threw them together you realize for yourself that they were slated from the very beginning to be fast friends, and could you meet them you would see at a glance that “fast” is used in the best sense of the word.
In the first place, all three couples made their initial visit to the Pebbly Point House seven summers ago. Then scarcely had they been there a month before Mrs. Grew discovered that Mrs. Rinse’s sister-in-law lived in the exact same apartment house where the Grews had been during 1910 - 1911, and was just as dissatisfied with the elevator service and the hot-water supply as they were. As additional proof that the world is small to the point of stuffiness, it later came out that Doctor Creevy, who had been Mrs. Grew’s family physician before she was married, was living not much more than a stone’s throw from the Eddy’s house in South Orange, and both Mr. and Mrs. Eddy knew him very well by sight. It is things like that that make you stop and think, as Mrs. Grew said at the time.
The real leader of our own crowd is Mrs. Eddy. She is a woman born to command, and brought up accordingly. Until she came to the Pebbly Point House she had never set so much as a foot in any summer resort where the rates were less than ten dollars a day for one. You know that for a positive fact, because she tells you so herself shortly after you have been introduced to her. Naturally, she enjoys tremendous prestige at the hotel. She has one of the rooms with running water.
Rocking gently on the porch, Mrs. Eddy gives a series of short talks on how she locks up her jewels in the safe-deposit vault during the summer months and just goes a-gypsying along without them. Also, she explains that it is her practice to leave at home her really good gowns and hats. It may seem a bit selfish of her, at first thought, to deprive the guests of the privilege of seeing the real hot dog, but when you consider all the bother about luggage she saves herself and the railroads you can see that it is the only sensible course for her to take. She really has to laugh, though, and pretty frequently, too, when she thinks of the bewilderment of her winter friends, could they see her at the Pebbly Point House, snuggling right up close to Nature in simple frock and canvas shoes, no more bejeweled than the day she was born.
Mrs. Eddy is one of the most interesting conversationalists on the entire porch. “Well informed” is but a lukewarm term for her. She might, really, be called the Girl With the Camera Eye. She can tell you without a moment’s floundering just who was sitting on the moonlit pier with whom, how close and until when on any night you can name; precisely how far things have got between that Sisson girl and the Binney boy; what Mrs. Binney thinks of it and what she would do if she were Mrs. Binney; at exactly what hour and in what state the McBirch party got back from that motor ride to the Goldenrod Inn.
Try to catch her—that’s all she asks. She has never been known to make a memory-slip. It is not too much to say that she is losing time out of vaudeville.
Mrs. Rinse, now, is less the intellectual type and more the fluffy. She runs to ruffled organdie dresses with naïve sashes, and when she is really willing to let herself go she tucks a rose into her hair over one ear, where it balances the delicate gold chain that fetters her glasses to the other ear. She is full of fluttery gestures, and often, before she can control herself, she breaks out skipping.
She is the envied possessor of a flutelike soprano, delightfully lilting but not quite massive enough to be called a parlor voice—a kitchenette voice, say. Oftentimes, of a Sunday evening, she may be cajoled into giving the guests a musical treat. Her selections are amorous, in a refined way. She has done much to make popular “Just A-Wearyin’ for You” and “Little Gray Home in the West.”
Mrs. Rinse makes a winsome picture standing there by the piano, gripping a property roll of music, her eyelids, behind the sparkling glasses, fluttering with the tender emotions caused by the lyrics. It has often been remarked what a shame it is that the hotel parlor, also used as a dance room, is so big and high-ceilinged. Those sitting back of the third row of camp chairs at Mrs. Rinse’s recital might just as well be at the movies.
Mrs. Rinse is, also, a perfect shark with children. She explains it by admitting that she herself is nothing but a kiddie at heart. To put them at their ease, she employs baby talk in her conversations with them, which goes big with little boys of ten or twelve years old.
Annually she conceives and directs an entertainment given by the tiny guests in the dance room, with herself as prima donna. Two summers ago, for example, they did “The Woodsy Fairy’s Birthday Party,” Mrs. Rinse playing the lead, and the supporting company, cast as wild flowers, in crêpe-paper costumes.
The plot of the piece unfolded to show how the Woodsy Fairy bade the woodland folk to her birthday feast; and, loosening up over the rose leaves and dew, they all came right out and told what they were thankful for. Some were thankful for the sunbeams, others for the brooklets; and that’s the way it went, one thing leading to another. The Woodsy Fairy—being the author and producer, it was only fair that she got the big line of the show—was thankful that there was just nothing but happiness in all this great big old world.
Sex interest was supplied by the love of Spring Beauty for Jack-in-the-Pulpit, and comedy relief was provided by Johnny Chickadee, a character part played by a somewhat hard-boiled actor of eleven years, who was merely adequate in the role.
The guests at the Pebbly Point House, however, were almost unanimous in declaring that last summer’s Rinse production was even better. It was called “Vacation Days at the Pebbly Point House,” and the theme was much less generic than that of the Woodsy Fairy drama. It was a revue composed of sly cracks, in more-or-less verse, at recent local events. A member of the company would step forward, and, bucked up by tremendous laughter and applause, recite such telling thrusts as:
Sherlock Holmes could do wonderful things,
But we doubt if he could find Mr. Armbruster’s water wings.
When the audience were back in their seats again another performer would declaim:
Whenever you see Tommy MacWinch looking blue,
It’s a sign Mildred won’t go out with him in the canoe.
The song hit of the piece, rendered by Mrs. Rinse, had a generous number of topical verses and wound up with a stirring chorus of:
Then we’ll give three cheers for the Pebbly Point,
And we’ll all give three cheers more;
And we’ll hope to all be back again
Next summertime once more.
It is, as you can see, a great thing for our own crowd to be able to list as a member one so feminine yet so full of fun as Mrs. Rinse.
She and Mrs. Eddy set each other off splendidly. And the beauty of it is that Mrs. Grew is entirely something else again—just a good fellow, she is; a regular pal to the college boys that spend their holidays at the Pebbly Point House, given to sailor hats and talk of cold showers, walking with the hands thrust deep in the sweater pockets, and even occasionally letting slip a goshdarn or a by golly before she catches herself.
The ladies of our own crowd do not go in any too heavily for athletics. Now and then, if it gives signs of being a reasonably cool day, they wander over the golf course, agreeing beforehand that there is no use in being fanatical about the thing and counting it as a stroke when you pick up your ball and toss it out of the rough. But usually a saunter into the sea as far as the waist, a conservative dip to get the shoulders wet, a good, rousing rock on the porch, and they are just about used up.
What energy remains goes into the knitting of sweaters or the crocheting of strips of lace for those guest towels that make such thoughtful Christmas gifts. The work goes easily, for the toilers are beguiled by Mrs. Eddy’s tales of the troubles her maids give her, by Mrs. Grew’s description of her trip to Bermuda, and by Mrs. Rinse’s account of her sister-in-law’s operation, from the day she first felt that peculiar shooting pain to the funny cracks she made on her way out of the ether.
In the evenings the ladies form a select group on the porch close to the dance-room windows, where they go off into perfect bursts of merriment at the remarks which Mrs. Eddy, who admittedly shook a mean schottish when she was a girl, makes about the technic of the dancers. Occasionally they participate in the hotel bridge parties. To Mrs. Eddy, as the brightest social light, falls the task of collecting the twenty-five-cent entrance fee from each of the players, which is no fool of a job either. She and her two friends form the committee which goes to the village and purchases the sweet-grass baskets for the prizes.
In short, or at least pretty short, the three female members of our own crowd are not out of one another’s sight during the entire summer, save during the hours of sleep or during those few necessary moments when they are upstairs whitening their shoes. It is doubtful if they ever have a thought which they do not split three ways.
Each is constantly finding fresh words of encouragement to buoy up the others. If Mrs. Eddy remarks that she really must do something in the way of dieting, both Mrs. Grew and Mrs. Rinse are loud to reassure her that it’s so much more becoming to her when her face is full, and that if they were in her shoes they would not cut out so much as a single calorie. If Mrs. Rinse knits a sweater, her two friends vow they have never seen a stitch so novel, without being
risqué.
If Mrs. Grew springs a new sports skirt, Mrs. Eddy and Mrs. Rinse can hardly wait to get the address of her seamstress. And so it goes, day in, day out. It’s enough, really, to put your faith in human nature right back on its feet again.
risqué.
If Mrs. Grew springs a new sports skirt, Mrs. Eddy and Mrs. Rinse can hardly wait to get the address of her seamstress. And so it goes, day in, day out. It’s enough, really, to put your faith in human nature right back on its feet again.
The big day of the week for our own crowd is Friday. For on Friday night the ladies are joined by the boys, which is the name that they have worked out for their husbands. The aggregate age of the boys, at the present writing, is somewhere along around one hundred and twenty-five, but the nickname sticks.
The boys cannot conscientiously be said to do much in the way of snapping things up on Friday evenings. Each naturally has to reply in full to his wife’s anxious inquiries as to how affairs at the homestead are staggering along without her. There must be detailed reports on the weather in the city, the behavior of the maid, the promptness of the laundry, the regularity of the iceman’s visits and the stand the cleaner has taken about the return of the rugs. It is an evening given over to connubial confidences. And as a concession to the boys’ five days of labor in the city, and their grueling ride up on the train, our own crowd drifts hayward at a rurally early hour.
All day Saturday the boys devote to golf, although a casual observer of their game might pick up the idea that it was just so much devotion thrown away. The ladies meanwhile forge ahead on the sweaters and the guest towels. It is not until Saturday night that our own crowd really gets into its stride.
It isn’t as if the members have to house a family of cocktails before they can get going. With nothing more to work on than the tomato omelet and the tinned cherries served for supper, they are off on an evening of revelry. Continuous laughter resounds from their jolly big circle of chairs on the porch, while lesser guests brush apologetically past. Any remark is good for a laugh, particularly allusions to jokes and adventures of past summers.
The Grews and the Eddys and the Rinses are so closely knitted together that their repartee is of a local, not to say an intimate, nature which makes a newcomer feel as cozily at home as if they were speaking in code. But the members of our own crowd, with their background of seven seasons at the Pebbly Point House, can feel for newcomers nothing more than a flicker of amused resentment. As they all agree, they don’t want any outsiders, anyway; so that makes it just fine for everybody.
Even Mr. Eddy unbends on these occasions and becomes practically a boy again. Mr. Eddy, you can see at a glance, is a man weighted down with affairs. As he strides down the porch in his stylish stout flannels and the yachting cap which he wears out of compliment to the Pebbly Point House’s nearness to the water, it is whispered after him that he is something down in the Street, and that his position is good for anywhere from ten thousand to twenty-two hundred a year.
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