CHAPTER XVITHE BEST LAID SCHEMES
IT was the forenoon of the second. Several times during the morning Gerty left her preparations to take forecasts of the weather. It was not so hot as it had been and there was a moon. She congratulated herself; it would be a fine night.
Her tent door was locked all morning. A new variety of salad was on the way, the latest New York idea. For hours, Gerty’s fingers were shredding the skins from muscat grapes which were to be chilled, and served with French dressing on crisp desert lettuce. The grapes, too, were desert bred. It was a long task, and while her fingers worked, her mind ran ahead nervously to the few name-cards that had to be finished, white cards with a design of the palo verde, the characteristic tree of the region. The color scheme was pastel green and white. Pistachio ice-cream and vanilla had been ordered from Los Angeles, and Gerty herself had colored the cream peppermints. Innes had suggested using the yellow blossoms of the mesquit, but Mrs. Hardin hated yellow; it was too “positive.”
Her eyes watched the clock hands. Eleven o’clock, and those candle-shades not done! More time than she had reckoned on had gone into the building of the white mull lingerie dress; it had pressed her with the shades and cards. And she had no time to work at night, forthe Hardins were always around then. Not that there was any reason why she should not occupy herself indeed just as she chose, but she hated interference. If there was anything she resented more than another, it was interference. Rather than explain why she wanted name-cards, or must have paper shades for the candles, or moreover why it was necessary to have a frock that had not been seen before, she preferred to lock her doors and work “like mad.” Tom’s ridicule was so stupid, and his sister was getting to be like him; not that she said much, but she had such a scornful look!
The clock hands were flying. She stopped to count the grapes already peeled and seeded. “At least fifteen to each plate,” she had calculated. “And twenty guests, twenty times fifteen—three hundred.” She counted them again. “Only two hundred!” The clock hands ticked away another half-hour. Her fingers began to go wild; several finished grapes fell to the floor. “I’ll wash them off,” she thought.
She was peeling the two hundred and fiftieth, when there was a sound of wheels. A clear “Oo-hoo” summoned her.
“It is Mrs. Youngberg.” She was horrified. “And she wasn’t to come until after lunch.” She slipped off her gingham apron and ran out breathless to the sidewalk.
“Hope you don’t mind my coming early,” called Mrs. Youngberg. “It was now or never. Can you come with me?” She waved to the greens in the box buggy. “And are these enough?”
“Oh, yes,” responded Gerty absently. She was wondering what in the world she would do about the unpeeled grapes, and the unfinished shades and the name-cards. Perhaps she could do with eleven. Innes had offered tohelp; she supposed she could put her to work at the grapes. But she hated to have people help, people who looked scornful and superior. She could hear her say: “Why all this fuss? Why not a simpler salad?” If worse came to worse, she could put a plain card at her husband’s place, and her own. She needed Mrs. Youngberg’s help with the table—
“I’m afraid I’m putting you out,” her friend was taking note of the discomfiture. “You are not ready?”
Mrs. Hardin hastened to deny that. “Oh, yes! I was just thinking what I’d take along. Will you come in?” For once, she was grateful to the Youngberg habit of the buggy. She took the answer for granted, and the tent door mangled the response of the niece of Senator Graves.
When she came out, her arms were overflowing with bundles. A large hat box surmounted the smaller ones, held in place by her chin. The top bulged open. As she reached the sidewalk, her progress grew precarious, for a slight wind was blowing. She had not closed the hat box in fear of her precious shades.
“Give me something,” cried Mrs. Youngberg. She caught the band-box. A gust of evil wind raised the top; one of the shades blew out, and Gerty, helpless with crockery in her hands, watched it tumble toward the irrigation ditch. It danced, the pretty thing of pastel green and white, on the surface of the muddy stream.
“You can save it,” cried Mrs. Youngberg. “Oh, what a pity!” For as she spoke it collided with a floating branch. Mud-splashed and ruined, it sailed down the street.
“Oh, never mind that,” protested Gerty with magnificence.She forced a cheery smile as she clambered over her parcels into the buggy.
“And I was one short already!” she remembered as they drove down the main street, the buggy heaped high with boxes holding the treasured shades, the cards and napkins, and a few choice plates. The supper was to be at the hotel, but Gerty planned to use her own dishes and cutlery—to give it a home-like feeling! Coulter’s two clerks gaped at them from the store as they passed; the buggy trailing long willow branches, and Gerty with her boxes obscuring her vision.
In front of Fred Eggers’ store the usual group of Indians lounged, the squaws careening in many ruffles, the bucks brave in paint and shirts, heavy with beads. Young Morton bowed to them from the bank windows on which a man was laboriously working. He had already finished a faint black outline, The Desert Bank, and was beginning to fill in the first letter with gold-leaf. The festive buggy made quite a stir in the desert town; every one had heard of the progressive drive.
“The ditch is running very high this morning,” observed Mrs. Youngberg, noting its muddy flow.
“Somebody is irrigating his melons.” Mrs. Hardin’s observation was a trifle absent. She liked the attention they were attracting. How she would love to be in a position where she could use her social talents!
Mrs. Youngberg was reining up in front of the Desert Hotel. Half a dozen men jumped forward to tie the mare, and to help the ladies with their bundles. Gerty declared she would not let them carry the packages; she would send the boy after them. She felt the importance of a leader of society.
“You don’t mind if I do a few errands first,” called Mrs. Youngberg after her. Gerty whirled, her cheeks red, her eyes seeing not Mrs. Youngberg but a vision of the kitchen at home; the unpeeled grapes, the candle-shades, the waiting name-cards.
“Why, I thought you were going to help me,” she cried, her consternation shrilling her voice.
“I shall be right back,” reassured her friend. “You may rely on me. Mr. Youngberg could not come in this morning; he gave me a list a yard long. And I must see Mrs. Blinn about the Improvement Club; it can’t be put off. I’m not going to fail you. You may rely on me.”
It was really too provoking. The whole morning had gone wrong. Mrs. Hardin marched into the hotel, her color high. She might have guessed that Mrs. Youngberg would fall down; she always did. She should have relied on some one else, that homely Towne girl who is always so good-natured!
Already ruffled, she found everything to be exasperating in the Desert Hotel. She had taken it for granted when Patton had promised her the use of the dining-room weeks before that she could arrange the table as she would use it at eleven. He upset all her plans by telling her he needed the space; he had not intended to give her that impression. She had said, he reminded her, that she needed the room for an eleven o’clock supper.
She was convinced that she detected a difference in his manner to her. “He would never have treated me so last year. We are nobodies, now!”
The very best he could do, Mr. Patton assured her, was to let her arrange the table in the drummers’ sample room whence it could be carried “all set” into the dining-room after it was properly cleared. “I haveto consider my girls,” he said. “If I ask them to do anything extra, they would throw the whole waitresses’ union in my face.”
“Give me a soda lemonade, Mr. Patton,” ordered Gerty, moving to the white and silver counter. “I’ll think it over.”
When she returned to the attack, he was still obstinately fearful to antagonize the maids. “Servants are not servants in California!” He led the way to the drummers’ room, where she had an inspiration.
“Let me have this room, Mr. Patton,” she urged. “It will be so much cozier, and we can move the piano in, and have music without it being so public as it is in the hall.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Hardin, I’d like to accommodate you, but there’s always drummers coming in here. There’s sure to be one or more on that six o’clock train. It’s right after supper they spread their samples.”
“Then they’d ruin my table!” cried Gerty.
“Oh, no, I’ll give them another table, Mrs. Hardin,” protested Patton. “It’s the best I can do. I can’t afford to lose their custom. You see, they pass it about, from one place to the other, and if anything they don’t like happens, the first thing your custom has fallen off.”
Haughtily, Gerty had to succumb. She found her next block when she wished to bank the willow greens in the dining-room. It lacked a few minutes to twelve. The doors of the dining-room would be thrown open to the patrons of the hotel; she compromised on vases. They brought her a few small affairs which refused to stand when filled with the top-heavy branches.
“I’ve got some crockery jugs in the kitchen,” Patton volunteered. “I’ll have them washed and sent in to you.”
“And I’m waiting for the cloth, Mr. Patton. None of mine was long enough.”
Patton confessed that his were too short for the long drummers’ table, but she could use two. No one would ever see where they doubled in the center.
“Oh, very well,” cried Gerty Hardin. Her nerves were on edge with the delay. She busied herself with unpacking her bundles, listening for the sound of Mrs. Youngberg’s buggy wheels. The table was fully set, the candle-shades placed, the name-cards adjusted, even the willows arranged as best she could in the gray crockery jugs before Mrs. Youngberg returned.
She professed herself entranced with everything. And where had she got the idea of those darling shades? The green blotting-paper cut out stencil-wise in the design of water lilies, the white paper lining making the petals, was altogether charming and original. Would Mrs. Hardin mind if she copied them?
Mrs. Hardin’s answer was a little strained. “Of course, I do not mind.” Mrs. Youngberg decided to use pink and green when she made her copies; the whitewasa little insipid! She was taking keen note of the arrangement of the guests, of her husband’s name and Mrs. Hatfield’s, side by side.
“Is it all right?” inquired Mrs. Hardin, watching her face. “It’s the hardest thing to place people, I think.”
Not for the world would Mrs. Youngberg have suggested her annoyance. Every one put her husband next to Mrs. Hatfield. He did not like that incorrigible coquette! Every one knew by this time that rightfully she was a grandmother. Her divorced husband was in a remote background with the children and grandchildren. The second husband was a minus, negative enough tomaintain the tie which Mrs. Hatfield’s coquetry must put under severe strain.
“Admirable,” said Mrs. Youngberg. She wondered if Mrs. Hardin knew that a wind was rising? She would not tell her. “Admirable,” she repeated.
Gerty’s eye casually observed every corner of the hall as the two women made their way out. She wanted to look at the register to see if Rickard’s name were there, but her self-consciousness withheld her. He might see her. Not until it was too late did she reflect that she might have announced a curiosity as to new arrivals. The street reached, she stared blankly at the wind-struck town; then at Mrs. Youngberg.
“Isn’t it a shame?” murmured her friend. “I hated to tell you.”
Ready to cry was Gerty. Even the wind sided against her party. It was blowing down the main street like a baby hurricane with the colic. Her hat was wrenched from its moorings.
“It’s not so bad as it used to be,” shrieked Mrs. Youngberg, clambering into the buggy. “Before the alfalfa was planted!”
The loungers had left the sidewalk. Up-stairs, the disheveled chambermaids were making the beds in the overhanging bird-cage. The street was deserted, save for the Cocopahs who flanked the door of Eggers’ store like bronze inscrutable sentinels. Two squaws came out to watch the progress of the wind-blown buggy. Their wide ruffled skirts were blown into balloons. Large colored handkerchiefs, sewn together into a cloak, bellied with the breeze. They watched the two white women incuriously, steadily. Mrs. Youngberg was hanging on to her Mexican sombrero with her left gauntleted hand.Gerty was grabbing her pretty sun hat with her tired fingers.
As they passed the bank, the workman was leaving his job; the day was not propitious for gold-leaf. Two words were completed, “The Desert.” The rest of the letters were inconspicuous skeletons.
Gerty jumped out at her tent door. She would not risk asking Mrs. Youngberg in. The unexpected might happen.
“You are going just the same?” called Mrs. Youngberg, her mouth full of dust.
Mrs. Hardin nodded. “Sure.” She ran in to her wilting grapes.