It is Miss Finch who instigates the biweekly bridge parties, collecting the entrance fees—in itself no mean undertaking—and selecting the prizes. It is she who engineers the various tournaments of the more active sports; who soothes the usual hard feeling caused by the handicap awards; who presents the silver-finished cups, accompanying each by a humorously apt speech, composed of sly yet inoffensive hits at the prize winner. She arranges the annual straw ride, the beach party, the moonlight sail, cheerfully deferring each from the appointed date to the next clear night; she intimidates faint-hearted male guests into attending the midsummer masquerade. If a time arrives for which no special event is scheduled, Miss Finch collects a gathering about the hotel piano and, seating herself firmly upon the stool, plays formerly popular airs strictly according to note and in rigid time, thus endeavoring to inspire a spontaneous outburst of song.
In short, Miss Finch gives unstintingly of her time, spirits and ingenuity, so that every moment of the long summer may be replete with entertainment. It is safe to say that the social life of the hotel would be virtually nowhere without her. And it is pleasant to record that her efforts are thoroughly appreciated by the guests. One could walk scarcely half the length of the porch without overhearing some tribute to her abilities. Perhaps the compliment oftenest repeated is that Miss Finch’s gift for bringing people together amounts to a real talent.
Where she soars to positive genius is in her unerring instinct for bringing together those who, from their first glimpse of one another, have been straining every effort to keep apart.
MRS. HENRY LARKIN
There is but one interest in life for Mrs. Larkin; she admits freely that nothing else can ever be of the slightest importance to her. She exists solely, as she almost constantly explains, for the sake of her daughter. Her own life, continues the gently flowing recital, is, as a unit, not worth the living, so cruelly straitened is it by the extreme delicacy of her health. Year after year Mrs. Larkin visits the hotel, seeking in vain for recovery in the abundant sea air. There is, fortunately, nothing organically wrong; hers is an intangible affection, hopelessly permanent, which necessitates complete rest, congenial surroundings, soothing medicines, tempting food, exemption from any responsibility or worry, and the elimination of all effort.
It is a lesson by which many a one might profit to see how courageously Mrs. Larkin bears up; it plucks at the heartstrings to see her resting wearily in her rocking-chair, fragile as fine porcelain in her semi-invalid robes of delicate lavender, yet always wearing a brave little smile as she answers: “Not any worse, thank you,” to anxious inquiries about her condition. She feels that she must make the best of it, as she tells one, so that her daughter may not be made unhappy. Sometimes, while the tears rise becomingly to her slightly faded blue eyes, Mrs. Larkin even hints that were it not for her little girl—as she tenderly, though in an entirely reminiscent sense, refers to her daughter—she would give up the struggle and pass almost imperceptibly away.
What little can be done to make things more bearable for Mrs. Larkin her friends conscientiously try to do. There is always a solicitous group about her chair, seeking to beguile her with chat or with rubbers of bridge. It is amazing what a revivifying effect this seems to have upon Mrs. Larkin; she joins animatedly in the talk or plays an exceptionally shrewd game. Yet, in quiet moments during some rare interval when the group about her has dispersed, she will take one into her somewhat overcrowded confidence and explain that such things would mean nothing to her had she not her daughter’s happiness always on her mind. It is only that she feels she must nerve herself up to seeing people for her little girl’s sake. Then, too, Mrs. Larkin admits that her friends would be wholly at a loss should she not see them. Were it not for disappointing them Mrs. Larkin often says that she would much prefer to be left quietly alone.
How true it is that a great sacrifice is grossly unappreciated in this world.
MISS ANNA LARKIN
It is difficult to pass on any definite description of Mrs. Larkin’s daughter. There is an indistinct impression as of a mild someone in the last twenties, with neatly unobtrusive dress and rapidly forgotten features, but anything clearer is almost impossible to discern; she never remains still long enough to permit study. Her chair is usually empty, still rocking violently from her last hurried exit. Almost as soon as she regains her place in it Miss Larkin jumps up again, in obedience to a plaintively sweet request, and runs up to their fourth-floor suite to fetch her mother’s scarf, her mother’s sweater, her mother’s embroidery silk, her mother’s book or her mother’s digestive tablets.
In the brief intervals between her dashes upstairs Miss Larkin knits desperately, as if making up for time out, on other scarfs or sweaters, all in that pale tint of lavender which is so subtly flattering to Mrs. Larkin’s exquisitely delicate pallor. When each garment is finished Mrs. Larkin gracefully accepts it; it then becomes one more thing that her daughter may run upstairs to fetch. Upon infrequent occasions Miss Larkin has stolen time from her usual knitting to make a baby carriage robe for one of her school friends; Mrs. Larkin’s wistful smile during these periods of neglect rends the heart of the beholder.
Outside interests are palpably impracticable for Miss Larkin; they would cut in too heavily on her personal messenger service. If, in a spirit of mild and kindly meant roguery, someone playfully mentions matrimony in connection with Miss Larkin, tears start in Mrs. Larkin’s eyes and her lips tremble piteously with unspoken appeals.
It ends, always, in Miss Larkin’s having to put down her knitting and run upstairs to bring her mother a fresh handkerchief and the smelling salts.
MRS. VIRGIL COMEE
Mrs. Comee is unanimously admitted to be the outstanding figure in hotel intellectual circles. She is, as she herself not infrequently concedes, a woman of broad knowledge and high cultural attainments. This, she acknowledges with a deprecatory smile, is not solely due to her natural gifts; she owes not a little of it to her habitual environment of lofty culture and her exceptional opportunities of keeping in touch with the great contemporary minds.
From her plentiful discourse on the fascinating subject one learns that Mrs. Comee’s home suburb—that favored place where she spends all of her year save the two hottest months—is inhabited almost entirely by people who do things. The verb to do and the noun things are not, in this connection, to be taken in any merely physical sense; it is understood that they refer to intellectual pursuits. As but a few examples of the types of intelligentsia who are her fellow residents in the community Mrs. Comee cites an artist whose drawings ornament some of the most widely circulated mail-order catalogues; an authoress who writes the descriptive rhapsodies under the pictured costumes in an important fashion magazine; and a composer, more than one of whose songs have been used as encores by a professional singer. Mrs. Comee speaks of these personages with perfect composure; it is plain to see that such people are her accustomed acquaintances.
And even among such lions one understands that Mrs. Comee has no difficulty in holding her own. She speaks with natural pride of the culture club of which she is the presiding officer, and which suspends its activities during her absence, thus giving the less intellectual members a chance to relax the mental strain during the torrid months. Mrs. Comee seldom tires of describing the notable work accomplished by the club. Its members have taken up, and, one gathers, put lingeringly down again, art, literature, eugenics, the drama and civic improvement. Logically, since Mrs. Comee has thus thoroughly plumbed these subjects, hers is the last word upon the porch on all of them.
But there is an even greater glamour about her. She has had the inestimable advantage of travel. Shortly after her honorable graduation from high school Mrs. Comee spent the month of July, 1896, in touring Europe. It follows, therefore, that she is a recognized authority upon European history, geography and customs, and she often gives little impromptu lectures upon them, while rocking gently on the porch. When really warmed to her subject Mrs. Co
mee will even fetch her photograph album and give illustrated travelogues. In the snapshots Europe figures chiefly as a background for Mrs. Comee, wearing the costume of her post-high-school period. She is shown feeding the doves in front of St. Mark’s, standing by the lion of Lucerne, about to climb the Eiffel Tower, just completing the descent of the Eiffel Tower, and doing countless other appropriate and instructive things. These views do much to give the Continent that note of personal interest which one so often misses in professional photographs.
The hotel guests say that it is indeed a treat to listen to Mrs. Comee’s conversation. Mrs. Comee, herself, generously grants one every possible opportunity of enjoying the privilege.
MRS. EARLE STALEY
Almost immediately after one has met Mrs. Staley—with but the conventional interlude for the usual speculation that the day must be a scorching one in the city, and the customary concurrence in the opinion that humidity is infinitely harder to cope with than heat—she will put aside all generalities and explain, at some length, that the most arresting thing about her is her remarkable frankness. Half jokingly, she warns new acquaintances that they had best avoid her, if they are seeking for pleasing flattery; it is her invariable habit to speak her mind. In more serious vein Mrs. Staley goes on to say that it is at once her pride and her comfort always to know that, be the remainder of the world as deceitful as it may, her mind will, so long as she retains her faculties, be spoken.
It may not always be pleasant, Mrs. Staley avers, but she is not the one to let that cow her. She refuses to cover her true opinions with any cloak of evasion or ambiguity merely for the sake of easing some one’s foolishly sensitive feelings. Thus, should her judgment of a friend’s new frock be solicited, Mrs. Staley, if she thinks it unbecoming, promptly speaks her mind; more, she adds gratuitous bits of frankness by declaring that the color is unflattering, the material unattractive, the cut unskilled; and she ends by remarking that her friend must have been mentally unbalanced to have made such an ill-advised purchase.
If, on the contrary, Mrs. Staley does approve of the dress, she does not hesitate to admit it, frankly saying that it is infinitely less unsightly than many another in the friend’s wardrobe. Should any friend not be looking her best, Mrs. Staley tells her of it immediately, with her refreshing bluntness. This procedure may, and often does, cause some little hard feeling, but Mrs. Staley generously overlooks it. As it is her whimsy to phrase it, if people don’t like her frankness they can lump it. She must either speak her mind or else she must not speak at all.
There are many who feel that she makes an unfortunate choice.
MRS. WILMOT HOPPING
Her health, so Mrs. Hopping says, is the main thing. Obviously, she deems any other consideration so poor a second that she does not even admit it into her scheme of living. Her life is arranged to the sole end of fostering that enviably excellent health with which beneficent nature has so liberally endowed her.
Naturally a life of such devotion entails its sacrifices. At the table, for instance, Mrs. Hopping can take no part in the light conversation around her. Her attention is concentrated upon choosing only those foods which go directly into nourishment, upon masticating each mouthful an impressively high number of times, and upon keeping score of the exact number of calories which she consumes at a sitting. On the porch Mrs. Hopping cannot settle down to soothing idleness; her daily schedule has it otherwise. She must spring up, when the time set for exercise arrives, and take a rapid walk, always over the same course, which she enlivens by inhaling deeply for six steps and exhaling grudgingly during the next six.
When her daily bathing hour, scheduled at just the correct distance from her last meal, comes around, Mrs. Hopping does not permit herself any indulgence in haphazard immersion. She walks determinedly to the water’s edge, and stooping over—without bending the knees—applies a handful of the salt liquid to each wrist and to her forehead; not till then does she feel that she can safely give herself over to Neptune. While she disports herself amid the health-giving billows, a daughter, stationed on the beach with a watch, sees that she does not overstay her allotted time.
The most diverting entertainment cannot hold Mrs. Hopping one minute past her self-appointed bedtime; nor can she linger blissfully in bed of a morning. She bounds up immediately, when the tinkle of her alarm clock tells her that the last second of the hours of sleep necessary to perfect health has elapsed. Her rising and retiring, as everything else throughout her day, must be done at the physiological moment.
Mrs. Hopping shows herself a woman of adamant will power in her rigid adherence to the stringent régime under which she has placed herself. But it has its rewards, as Mrs. Hopping so proudly enumerates, in her cheerily brisk circulation, her imperturbable blood pressure, her un deviatingly correct pulse and her lavishly open pores. Indeed, if one were to make the deduction solely from her conversation, one would think that to Mrs. Hopping there were no other events of importance in the world. There are times, truthfully, when one finds oneself wishing that she might, if but for a brief interval, touch upon some other, and perhaps some more general, topic of the day.
But her health, so Mrs. Hopping says, is the main thing.
MRS. RAMSAY BRACKET
Her truly remarkable memory is perhaps the most striking of the many admirable traits with which Mrs. Bracket is equipped. It must undoubtedly have been of unusual retentiveness congenitally, and she has so developed it by many summers of rigorous training that she is now able to perform, without an effort, feats of recollection which are little short of startling. With never a moment’s brain racking Mrs. Bracket can give you the name, address, approximate age, marital condition, social status and financial rating of every guest in the hotel, down to the most obscure transient; she can even add to each account intimate details of the subject’s most personal concerns—details so minute that they would slip unperceived from any memory less highly schooled.
Figures themselves hold no terror for her; she has all the latest statistics at her tongue’s tip—the number of times an evening that the Hopping girl dances with the Comee boy; the number of suitors imported from the city by the elder Miss Staley; the number of hours, to date, that the visiting belle from New Orleans has spent on the moonlit pier. Mrs. Bracket, as she sits at her pleasant task of punching holes in a potential centerpiece and carefully sewing them up again, is cordially ready to quote you the correct figures in any of such cases.
It is Mrs. Bracket who is the acknowledged head of the rocking-chair board of censorship. Thus far, none among the hotel guests has been stamped with her approval.
In fact, the only guest upon whom she can conscientiously bestow her thorough approval in every way is Mrs. Ramsay Bracket.
MR. GEORGE WILLIS
It would be in no way overstating the case to call Mr. Willis, as many another admirer has called him before, the life of the hotel. It is impossible to conjure up a mental picture of the hotel front without visualizing his figure in its specially reserved rocking-chair on the end.
The gay frocks and sweaters of the ladies are given value by the dark note of his blue serge suit. To show that he has a fitting sense of appropriate attire for a seaside resort Mr. Willis affects navy blue serge suits, vaguely suggestive in cut of the uniform of a sea captain. He heightens this effect by wearing a crisp white yachting cap with a glistening black vizor and, as a concession to the summery weather, completes his costume with such cool touches as white canvas shoes and a white necktie fresh from the capable hands of the laundress.
No business drags him away to the city; an adequate income assures his being dependably on hand all summer long, standing ever ready to fetch a chair, to open a parasol, to pick up a dropped knitting needle, to make a fourth at bridge, to hold yarn, or to read aloud from the headlines—and to do it all with a geniality that verges on the jocose.
In fact, as a joker he is highly thought of. His humor depends almost entirely upon his personality; it is not, as
the ladies agree, so much what Mr. Willis says as the way he says it. He has a trick of looking upon a sunny sky and saying: “A pretty nice day, if I do say so myself,” which fairly convulses his hearers; while his dry dismissal of a rainy day as “Fine weather—for ducks” must really be heard to be appreciated.
He is in no way appalled by being oftentimes, for a stretch of midweek days, the only man about the porch; indeed, Mr. Willis seems to thrive on it. It is with enormous tact that he distributes his attentions, so that no one lady may read unintended meanings into them. Common talk has it that many wily spinsters have sought to draw him into matrimony, and some of the more optimistic element even hold to the idea that he will succumb yet.
But the summers flit by, changing Mr. Willis’ hair from an interesting gray to a distinguished white, and he still doggedly remains a bachelor—thus conferring an inestimable boon upon some fortunate woman.
Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1920
An Apartment House Anthology
THE GROUND FLOOR
Mr. and Mrs. Cuzzens much prefer living on the ground floor, they often say. Sometimes, when Mrs. Cuzzens is really warmed up to it, she puts the thing even stronger, and announces to the world that she would turn down flat all offers to live on an upper floor, in this or any other apartment house in New York City, even if you were to become desperate at her firmness and present her with an apartment rent free.
Complete Stories Page 51