The Seven Darlings
Page 12
XII
Warm weather and the real opening of the season arrived at the sametime. The Camp hummed with the activities and the voices of people. Andit became possible for the Darlings to withdraw a little into theirshells and lead more of a family life. As Maud said:
"When there were more proprietors than guests, we simply had to sail inand give the guests a good time. But now that the business is in fullblast, we mustn't be amateurs any more."
Langham, Renier, and the future Earl of Merrivale remained, of course,upon their well-established footing of companionship, but the Darlingsbegan to play their parts of innkeepers with the utmost seriousness andto fight shy of any social advances from the ranks of their guests.
Indeed, for the real heads of the family, Mary, Maud, and Eve, there wasserious work to be done. For, to keep thirty or forty exigent andextravagant people well fed, well laundered, well served, and wellamused is no frisky skirmish but a morning-to-night battle, a constantlooking ahead, a steady drain upon the patience and invention.
In Sam Langham Mary found an invaluable ally. He knew how to live, andcould guess to a nicety the "inner man" of another. Nor did he stop atadvice. Being a celebrated _bon viveur_ he went subtly among the guestsand praised the machinery of whose completed product they were theconsumers and the beneficiaries. He knew of no place, he confided, upand down the whole world, where, for a sum of money, you got exactlywhat you wanted without asking for it.
"Take me for an example," he would say. "I have never before been ableto get along without my valet. Here he would be a superfluity. I am'done,' you may say, better than I have ever been able to do myself. AndI know what I'm talking about. What! You think the prices are reallyrather high. Think what you are getting, man--think!"
Among the new guests was a young man from Boston by the name of Herring.He had written that he was convalescing from typhoid fever and that hisdoctor had prescribed Adirondack air.
Renier knew Herring slightly and vouched for him.
"They're good people," he said, "his branch of the Herring family--the'red Herrings' they are called locally--if we may speak of Boston as a'locality'--he's the reddest of them and the most showy. If there'sanything he hasn't tried, he has to try it. He isn't good at things. Buthe does them. He's the fellow that went to the Barren Lands with aniblick. What, you never heard of that stunt? He was playing in foursomeat Myopia. He got bunkered. He hit the sand a prodigious blow and theball never moved. His partner said: 'Never mind, Syd, you hit hardenough to kill a musk-ox.'
"'Did I?' said Herring, much interested, 'but I never heard of killing amusk-ox with a niblick. Has it ever been done? Are there any authoritiesone might consult?'
"His partner assured him that 'it' had never been done. Herring saidthat was enough for him. The charm of Herring is that he never smiles;he's deadly serious--or pretends to be. When they had holed out at theeighteenth, Herring took his niblick and said: 'Well, so long. I'm offto the Barren Lands.'
"They bet him there and then that he would neither go to the BarrenLands nor kill a musk-ox when he got there. He took their bets, whichwere large. And he went to the Barren Lands, armed only with his niblickand a camera. But he didn't kill a musk-ox. He said they came right upto be photographed, and he hadn't the heart to strike. He brought backplenty enough pictures to prove where he'd been, but no musk-ox. Heaimed at one tentatively but at the last moment held his hand. 'Heremembered suddenly,' he said, 'that he had never killed anything, anddidn't propose to begin.' So he came home and paid one bet and pocketedthe other. He can't shoot; he can't fish; he can't row. He's a perfectdub, but he's got the soul of a Columbus."
"Something tells me," said Pritchard, "that I shall like him."
Herring, having arrived and registered and been shown his rooms, was notthereafter seen to speak to anybody for two whole days. As a matter offact, though, he held some conversation with Renier, whom he had metbefore.
"It's just Boston," Renier explained. "They're the best people in theworld--when--well, not when you get to know them but when they get toknow you. Give him time and he will blossom."
"He looks like a blossom already," said Lee. "He looks at a littledistance like a gigantic plant of scarlet salvia, or a small maple-treein October."
Upon the third day Mr. Herring came out of his shell, as had beenprophesied. He went about asking guests and guides, with almostplaintive seriousness, questions which they were unable to answer. Hebegan to make friends with Pritchard and Langham. He solemnly presentedArthur with a baseball that had figured in a Yale-Harvard game. Then hegot himself introduced to Lee.
"You guide, don't you?" he said.
"I have guided," she said, "but I don't. It was only in the beginning ofthings when there weren't enough real guides to go around. But, surelyyou don't need a guide. You've been to the Barren Lands and all sorts ofwild places. You ought to be a first-class woodsman."
"I thought I'd like to go fishing to-morrow," he said. "It's verydisappointing. I've looked forward all my life to being guided by ayoung girl, and when I saw you, I said, if this isn't she, this is herliving image."
"You shall have Bullard," said Lee. "He knows all the best places."
Herring complained to Arthur. "Your sisters," he said, "are said to bethe best guides in the Adirondacks, but they won't take me out. How isa fellow to convalesce from typhoid if people aren't unfailingly kind tohim?"
Arthur laughed, and said that he didn't know.
"Let me guide you," he offered.
"No," said Herring, "it isn't that I want to be guided. It's that I wantthe experience of being guided by a girl. I want to lean back and berowed."
Herring walked in the woods and came upon Phyllis's garden, with Phyllisin the midst of it.
"Halloo again!" he said.
Now it so happened that he had never seen Phyllis before.
She straightened from a frame of baby lettuce and smiled. She lovedbright colors, and his flaming hair was becoming to her garden.
"Halloo again!" she said.
"Have you changed your mind?" he asked.
She sparred for time and enlightenment and said:
"It's against all the rules."
"We could," said he, "start so early that nobody would know. I haveoften gotten up at five."
"So have I," said Phyllis wistfully.
"We could be back before breakfast."
Phyllis appeared to think the matter over.
"Of course," he said, "you said you wouldn't. But if girls didn't changetheir minds, they wouldn't be girls."
"That," said Phyllis, "is perfectly true."
To herself she said:
"He's asked Lee or Gay to guide him, and thinks he's asked me."
Now, Phyllis was not good with oars or fishing-tackle, but she likedHerring's hair and the fact that he never smiled. Furthermore, shebelieved that, if the worst came to the worst, she could find some ofthe places where people sometimes took trout.
"I have never," said Herring, "been guided by a young girl."
"What, never!" exclaimed Phyllis.
"Never," he said. "And I am sure that it would work wonders for me."
"Such as?"
"It might lead me to take an interest in gardening. I have always hopedthat I should some day."
"People," thought Phyllis, "interested in gardening are rare--especiallybeautiful young gentlemen with flaming hair. Here is my chance toslaughter two birds with one stone."
"You'll swear not to tell?" she exhorted.
"Yes," he said, "but not here. Soon. When I am alone." He did not smile.
"Then," she said, "be at the float at five-thirty sharp."
That night she sought out Lee and Gay.
"Such a joke," she said. "I've promised to guide Mr. Herring--to-morrowat five-thirty, but he thinks that it's one of you two who has promised.Now, as I don't row or fish, one of you will have to take my place forthe credit of the family."
But her sisters were laughing in their slee
ves.
"My dear girl," said Gay, "why the dickens didn't you tell us sooner? Wealso have made positive engagements at five-thirty to-morrow morning."
"What engagements?" exclaimed Phyllis.
Gay leaned close and whispered confidentially.
"We've made positive engagements," she said, "to sleep till breakfasttime."