Evening Star Newspaper, June 28, 1931, Page 81

~ THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., JUNE 28, 193l 9 - . e ——————————————————— ‘Summer Colony Story—BY BOOTH TARKINGTON kind of surprising—you might say startling—not a bii like anybody else. She had the brightest big black eyes I ever saw, and the most black hair wound around her head, and she was so handsome it kind of made you nervous. She was pretty tall, with almost too much figure, as you might say, her complexion secmed to be almost too white —maybe because nearly all of it was on view, which is too striking, you might say, in a person. She was wearing some kind of & green jersey, and, besides that, she had highheeled, bright green rubber slippers & bright red silk robe was blowing back her on the wind. She kissed the little fuzzy dog about more times right on the mouth, then g A 8 Epef §: {4 dix the maid rubbed her big towels, Orlando put k shoulders and the procession tted up across the beach, got into her lim- ousine and drove away. Until then, from the it had arrived, I don't believe anybody on ; f i “Absolutely hardened insolence,” she told me, looking at me as if she thought there was pretty wrong about me for not in our faces!” Then she went on, getting more severe: “Has Mrs. Massey heard that you're around defending Mme. Palma, Mr, y2?" ‘That made me a little huffy, and I said I wasn’t defending Mme. Palma and wasn't even going around, which, of course, didn't do me any good, especially with Mrs, Bullfinch. The next day, when Mme. Palma upset the beach again in about the same way, Mrs. Bullfinch i the “knight-defender and H ] E* : '! presence part,” he said, “I don’t like it; what's more, I resent it on Mrs. Bulifinch’s account!” Everybedy seemed t8 feel be’d made a mighty ereditable statement of the rights of the case and deserved & gocd deal of praise for it, so went all around to the different families and groups of people, saying the same thing over and getting himself pretty comfortably pufficd up and self-satisfled—a good deal at my expense, I might say, because he'd generally in his quotation of himself with a preface. ‘I told Massey,” he'd begin, “I told Massey, as one else that attempted to excuse like it on my own account and I my wife’s!” That’s what I told &5 So you see, I was already getting to be kind queerest things about it was that this Orlando wasn’t an Italian at all—he wasn't even a temor. The very evening of the day that Mr. Bullfinch gathered so much credit over what he'd told Massey I was out secing how the green apples were coming on in the little orchard that’s in the back yard of our cot- tage, when I noticed Orlando looking over the hedge. I thought it wouldn’t be any harm to nod to him and, as soon as I did, he sur- prised m> considerably. “Look here,” he said, and Ms voice cer- tainly wasn’t any Italian’s. “Aren’t you from Logansille, Il.? Weren't you president of the Light & Power Co. out there about 15 years o F “My goodness!” I told him. *“I still am.” “I guess you don't remember me,” he safd. *“I wzs living in Mattoon myself, but Sundays I used to sing baritone in the Second Presby- terian Church choir at Logansville and I know your face like a book; your pew was fourth from the altar on the left side of the middle aisle.” “It cerlainly was,” I told him. “Well, I'll be dog-goncd! How in the world did you ever happen t;) land herc in Marys hjcck like this?” ELL, right there, he told me all about it. It seems he was local agent in Mattoon, where ha grew up, for the American Farm Implements Corporation, then he got to be State agent, and after that they sent him to Europe to supervise their agencies over there. 1 g sort of a musical person himself, I remember his telling me once you were the only checker player in Logansville he Well, at that, I kind of laughed. say he couldn’'t!” I said. “Old George Willcox never was what you might call a tournament checker player. “Do you play much here?” Orlando asked me. _“Goedness, no! I don’t even bring a checker- , “I don't get many chances to play, , but I always carry a board and a box of checker-men with me in case anything might . Massey I believed I'd cut’ for a little while. Of course, that sturg me in a sensitive spot, you might say—as I considered myself fully his equal and maybe his supericr; but we played four evenings until close to midnight before I could convince him he’d better not give me first move any more, and, as it happened, it wasn't until then thzt I evin caught a glimpse of Mrs. Willecox. That is to say, T me:n Mme. Palma, of course. All cf a sudden there was a yapping of dogs and she came sailing into the kitchen in a red and crange and green 2nd y:l- low and purple snd magenta wrapper, with three dogs in her arms and the rest jumping around her. She was chattering H § ; and, anyhow, whenever she came a good deal as if the had arrived. Orlando . made quite & fuss over I could see she usuzlly did over any- inly hadn't learned to speak ge in California, either. “You are beotifuls for my Orlandc!” she told me, and thet was the way she said it. “He goes lonzly somectime, and you are beootifuls old friends of him to play him some shaker.” That’s what she called checkers, JL ] “She seized him around the neck and kissed him with & good deal of neise.” turn- up. I suppose you're probably busy this evening, aren’t you?" I told him “No,” and that settled it. We went into the Ballinger cottage—I didn't see Madame Palma because she was upstairs some- where—and he got out his board and box of checkers and asked me if I'd mind playing in the kitchen. “She can’t stand smoke in any part of the house except the kitchen,” he said. “We can smoke all we want to out there and be right cozy.” I couldn't have asked for anything better, myself, especially as he turned out to be a gen- uine checker-fllayer and was s2ven games ahead when we quit at 11 o'clock because I thought Mrs. Massey might be geiting anxious about me. She wasn’t, as it turned out; but when I men- Sfll'putdv'nnmpltdfl\e&.ndnn me abcut a dosen pats on. the back, prais- EF gsggsgg 1L m in her big voice and kissing them with- from where they were standing they couldn't have seen any light in the Ballinger cottags, so they might have wondircd what I was doing prowling around there at that time of night. On this account I just went across the Ballinger front lawn, pushed through the hedge and let myself into the side door of our cottage with a latchkey. Mrs. Massey was awake when I got upstairs and pretty cross with me. “I ought to know by this time, though, that it's waste of breath to talk to you,” she ended. “You never have had any consideration for your health and your natural sleep when you've got one of your checker seizures on you.” . Well, it was a week or so after that, one evening, when O.lando asked me if I'd mind doing a little favor for him; he had to take the midnight train to New York, he =aid, and be there all the next day on some operatic business for his wife, and he’d be obliged ta me if I'd escoit her over to the beach, since he couldn’t do it himself. “She lixes {o have somebody wi'h her besides the maid and chauf- feur,” he told me, “b2c¢ause it ke:ps sirangerg from coming up and speaking to her, which is always liable to send her into a sort of tantrum, She’s taken a big liking to you—she realiy has— and so I thought if you wouldn't mind——" “Mind? No!"” I told him, because the truth was I felt flatiered. “I consider it a privilege.” That was the way I thought of it at first; but later when I got home I began to feel maybe I was going to look a little conspicuovs at the beach n°xt morning. Mrs. Massey said she thought I prcbably would, but laughed and told me to be brave. She was sorry she and the girls would have to miss it, she said; but they were going on an all-day sail to Lodgeport and back in a new bost belonging to Enid’s friend, Eddie Bullfinch. “Stop fretting,” Mrs. Massey told me, after I'd gone on talking to her about it some more. “If you feel conspicuous don't let anybody sec it; just act as if you'd spent half your life escorting great prima donnas around Logansviile.” It was good advice; but next morning, sitting with Madame Palma and her maid and the dogs in her car, I began to feel pretty doubtful about being able to act upon it. I'd got pretty well used to Madame Palma by this time, but there was something about her always kind of overpowering, you might say, especially in her bathing costum?, and, anyhow, every little thing she did seem>d to b2 about five or ten times more vigorous than the same thing done by ordinary people. She thanked me for escorting her as if I were doing something gnormous, and kept czlling me “my Massey” and telling_ me I was a “bootiful mens” to be such a friend to her Orlando. Finally, when we got to the beach, she handed me one of the dogs to carry, having another one herself, then took my arm and started the procession down to the water. When I realizcd how many people were look« ing at us I don't suppose there was a more embarrassed man in the United States, and yet, walking' down across the beach, leaving everybody staring behind us, wasn’t half the trial that the rest of my escorting turned out to be. Mr. and Mrs. Bullfinch and Mr. and Mrs. Weeder and Mrs. Dalrymple and Mrs, Allstover and four or five other middle-aged people were sitting together in the group that made me fe2l the most seif-conscious. I pre- tended not to se> them, but when we'd gone by them I could f2cl their eyes like about a dozen ice poultices plastered up and down my spine, Then I got into kind of a hot stew all ever because it was high tide and Madame Palma stopped and handed me her red silk robe right siraight in front of thosz people and only about 40 feet from thom. She gave me the dog she was carrying bosides, so U had two, and she told me not to put them down because those two weren't well and mustn't get their feet wet; then she went in the water and left me . 'Well, sir, I don’t believe I could have turned 2round to save my life, ‘snid as for that row of people behind me, standing in front of them gave me something like the feel- ing a paralyzed person would have in front " of an express t:ain. HEN Mme. Palma came out of the water, you could see she felt just splendid; she was kind of dancing and capering, and after hes maid had rubbed her with the towels she was even livelier. She had the four little dogs thad were on the ground all frisking and barking around her, then she grabbed the two I was carrying, kissed them—spang on their mouths, the way she always did—and said they musd me for holding them. I didn$ beach for her car. on top of Mr. others, we went looked red and Continyed on Twelfth Page