Ladies and Gentlemen

“Whew!” she exclaimed. “Where have you been? You smell like a rancid peppermint lozenge.”

“Been down in the storeroom in the basement getting out my winter suits,” he said. “Messy job. I broke up a party.”

“Whose?” she asked.

“Mr. and Mrs. Moth were celebrating their woolen wedding,” he explained. “They furnished the guests and I did the catering. You ought to see that heavy sweater of mine. It’s not heavy any more. I’m going to write a chapter to be added to that sterling work ‘Advice to an Expectant Moth-er.’”

“Oh dear!” she said. “That’s the trouble with living in one of these old converted houses.”

“This one has backslid,” he interjected. “Insectivorous, I call it. There were enough roaches down there to last a reasonable frugal roach-collector for at least five years. Any entomologist could have enjoyed himself for a week just classifying species.”

“And I fairly saturated your clothes with that spraying stuff before I packed them away,” she lamented. “And as for camphor balls – well, if I used up one camphor ball I used ten pounds.”

“You must have been a poor marksman. So far as I can judge you never hit a single one of ’em. And so all summer, while we flitted from place to place, gay butterflies of fashion that we are, they’ve been down there intent on family duties, multiplying and replenishing my flannel underwear, as the Scriptures so aptly put it. Devoted little creatures, moths! They have their faults but they have their domestic virtues, too. I wish they didn’t have so much of my golf sweater. It looked like drawn-work.”

“What did you do with it?”

“Gave it back to them. All or none – that’s my motto. But I piled the rest of the duds on my bed. By prompt relief work much of it may be salvaged.”

“Then for heaven’s sake close the door before I choke.”

He closed the door and came and sat down near her and lighted a cigarette. He wore the conventional flowing Windsor tie to prove how unconventional he was. But he did not wear the velveteen jacket; he drew the line there, having a sense of humor. Nor were his trousers baggy and unpressed. They were unbagged and impressive. Mr. Bugbee was a writer, also a painter. He was always getting ready to write something important and then at the last minute deciding to paint instead, or the other way around. What between being so clever at the two crafts he rarely prosecuted either.

But then as regards finances this pair did not have to worry. There was money on both sides, which among our native bohemians is a rare coincidence. He had inherited some and Mrs. Bugbee had inherited a good deal. So they could gratify a taste for period furniture and practice their small philanthropies and generally make a pleasant thing of living this life without the necessity of stinting.

It was agreed that they had such happy names – names to match their natures. His was Clement and hers was Felicia. It was as if, infants at the baptismal font though they were, they had been christened and at the same time destined for each other. Persons who knew them remarked this. Persons also made a play on their last name. While these twain were buzzing about enjoying themselves, their intimates often called them the Busy Bugbees. But when an idealistic impulse swept them off their feet, as occasionally it did, the first syllable was the one that was accented. It was really a trick name and provided some small entertainment for light-hearted members of the favored circle in which the couple mainly moved. It doesn’t take much to amuse some people.

“Just to think!” mused Mrs. Bugbee. “It seems only a week or two ago since we were wondering where we’d go to spend the summer. Time certainly does fly.”

“And what a small world it is,” amended Mr. Bugbee. “Why, we were sitting right here in this room when that subject first came up and, lo and behold, only five short months afterward we meet again on the very same spot. Where do they get that stuff about a fellow so rarely running into an old friend in New York?”

“You’d better save that cheap wit of yours for somebody who’ll appreciate it,” said Mrs. Bugbee, but she smiled an indulgent wifely smile as she said it. “Yes, indeed, time does fly! And here winter is almost upon us.” She lifted her voice and trilled a quotation: “‘And what will poor robin do then, poor thing?’” Mrs. Bugbee loved to sing. She sang rather well, too. About once in so often she thought seriously of taking up grand opera. Something always happened, though. With the Bugbees something always did.

“Don’t you be worrying your head about him,” said Mr. Bugbee. “Being a wise old bird, the robin will be down in Georgia dragging those long stretchy worms out of the ground. I wish they’d put as good a grade of rubber into elastic garters as they do into those Southern worms. It’s what we’ll be doing ourselves, poor things, that gives me pause.”

“First thing anybody knows Thanksgiving will be here.” She went on as though she had not heard him. “And then right away I’ll have to begin thinking about Christmas. Oh dear!” She finished with a sigh.

“Damn Christmas!” Mr. Bugbee was fervent.

“Why, Clem Bugbee, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

So he altered it: “Well, then, damn the kind of Christmas they have in this vast and presumably intellectual city! Giving other people things they don’t want that cost more money than you can afford to spend, because they are going to give you things you don’t want that cost more than they can afford to spend. Every retail shop turned into a madhouse with the inmates all running wild. Handing out money on all sides to people who hate you because it’s not more and you hating them right back because you’re being held up this way. Everybody and everything going stark raving crazy on Christmas Eve. Nervous prostrations. Jams in the streets. Sordidness, greed, ostentation, foolish extravagance. Postmen and clerks and expressmen dying on their feet. Truck-drivers spilling the sort of language that’s still regarded as improper except when spoken on the stage. Then it becomes realism, but the truck-driver, not being artistic but just a poor overworked slob of a vulgarian, he’s maybe arrested for using obscenity.

“Christmas Day, and you go around with ‘Merry Christmas’ on your lips and murder in your heart. And drink egg-nogs made out of amateur whisky. And eat too much. And go to fool parties where you’re bored stiff. Then the bills piling in. And the worthless junk piling up around the flat. And everything. Do I seem bitter? I do? Well, I am!”

“It’s easy enough to talk – goodness knows every rational human being deplores the commercialism and the – the mercenaryism – ”

“Where did you get that word?”

“Made it up. It’s a good word and it’s mine and I like it. And don’t interrupt. As I was saying, we all deplore the mercenaryism and the materialism and the senseless display that’s crept into Christmas, and a lot of people spout about it just as you’re doing, but nobody does anything to try to reform it. At least nobody has since they started the custom of sending Christmas cards instead of gifts. But that was a mistake; it’s been overdone into an evil. There’s a passion to see who can buy the most expensive cards; and you spend weeks beforehand making up the lists and addressing the envelops, and the cards cost as much as the presents used to cost and make ever so much more bother getting them out. Look at what happened to us last Christmas! Look at what’s sure to happen this Christmas! And all you do is stand there – sit there, I mean – and spout at me as though I were to blame. Suggest a way out, why don’t you? I’d be only too delighted if you would.”

“I will,” proclaimed the challenged party. He thought hard. “We’ll run away from it – that’s what we’ll do.”

“Where do we run?”

“That’s a mere detail. I’m working out the main project. In advance we’ll circulate the word that we’re escaping from the civilized brand of Christmas; that on December twenty-fifth we’re going to be far, far beyond the reach of long-distance telephones, telegraph lines, wireless, radio, mental telepathy, rural free delivery routes, janitors with their paws out for ten-dollar bills and other well-wishers; that we’re not going to send any presents to our well-to-do friends and are not expecting any from them; that we’re not even figuring on mailing out a single, solitary, dad-busted greetings card. There’s plenty of time ahead of us for putting the campaign through. We’ll remember our immediate relatives and your pet charities and any worth-while dependents we can think of. And then we’ll just dust out and forget to leave any forwarding address.”

“We could try Florida again,” suggested Mrs. Bugbee.

“The land of the sap and the sapodilla – we will not! What’s Florida now except New York with a pair of white duck pants on?”

“Well, the climate there is – ”

“It is not! It’s all cluttered up with real-estate agents, the climate is. Besides I never could see the advantages of traveling eighteen hundred miles in mid-winter to get into the same kind of weather that you travel eighteen hundred miles in midsummer to get out of.”

“Well, then, we might run up to Lake Placid or the Berkshires. Of course it’ll be too early at either place for the regular season, but I suppose there’ll be a few people we know – ”

“You don’t grasp the big theory at all. This is not to be an excursion, it’s an exploring expedition. We’re not a couple of tourists out for winter sports and chilblains on our toes. We’re pioneers. We’re going forth to rediscover the old Christmas spirit that’s sane and simple and friendly. If there is a neighborhood left anywhere in this country where the children still believe in Santa Claus we’re going to find it. And we’ll bring the word back when we come home and next year thousands of others will follow our examples, and generations yet unborn will rise up and bless us as benefactors of the human race. I shouldn’t be surprised if they put up monuments to us in the market-place.”

“You might as well be serious about it. And not quite so oratorical.”

“I am serious about it – I was never more serious in my life. Beneath this care-free exterior a great and palpitating but practical idea has sprouted to life.”

“Well, since you’re so practical, kindly sprout the name of the spot where we’re to spend Christmas. I’m perfectly willing to try anything once, even against my better judgment, but you can’t expect me to get on a train with you without at least a general notion as to the name of the station where we get off.”

Mr. Bugbee’s brow furrowed; then magically it unwrinkled. “I have it!” he said. “We’ll take the Rousseau cottage up at Pleasant Cove. The Rousseaus are sailing next Tuesday for Europe to be gone until spring. Only yesterday Rousseau offered me the use of his camp any time I wanted it and for as long as I pleased. I’ll see him tomorrow and ask him to notify his caretaker that we’ll be along about the second week in December.”

“But it’s eight miles from the railroad.” Her tone was dubious.

“So much the better. I wish it was eighty miles from one.”

“And right in the middle of the mountains.”

“You bet it is. I want to be right in the heart of the everlasting peaks. I hope to get snowed in. I crave an old-fashioned white Christmas. I’m fed up on these spangled green, blue, red, pink, purple and blind ones. I want to mingle with hardy kindly souls who have absorbed within them the majesty and the nobility of their own towering hills. I want to meet a few of the real rugged American types once more. I’m weary of these foreigners you see in the subway reading newspapers which seem to be made up exclusively of typographical errors. I yearn to hear the idioms of my native tongue spoken. You remember that gorgeous week we spent with the Rousseaus six summers ago, or was it seven? Anyhow you must remember it – those quaint ruralists, those straightforward sturdy honest old mountaineer types, those characters redolent of the soil, those laughing rosy-cheeked children?”

“I seem to recall that some of them were sallow, not to say sickly-looking.”

“December’s winds will remedy that. December’s eager winds will – ”

“How about servants? We’ll need somebody surely. And I doubt whether Emile and Eva would be willing to go.”

“Gladly would I leave behind those two whom you have heard me, in sportive moments, refer to as our Dull Domestic Finnish. Being aliens, they wouldn’t match the surroundings. No doubt some sturdy country lass would be glad to serve us.” Mr. Bugbee reverted again to the elocutionary. “We’ll throw ourselves into the Yuletide joy of the community. We’ll get up a Christmas tree. We’ll hang up our stockings. We’ll finance a holiday festival for the grown folks – it won’t cost much. You can organize a band of singers and teach them carols and Christmas waits. We’ll live and revel, woman, I tell you we’ll live.”

Before his persuasive eloquence the lingering traces of Mrs. Bugbee’s misgivings melted away. Herself, within the hour, she called up Mrs. Rousseau to inquire regarding housekeeping details in the bungalow on the slopes behind Pleasant Cove.

Their train got in at six-ten A. M., which in December is generally regarded as being very A. M. indeed. But the Bugbees didn’t much mind having to quit their berths at five-thirty. The sunrise repaid them. There was an eastern heaven that shimmered with alternating, merging, flowing bands of tender pinks and tenderer greens. Mrs. Bugbee said right off it reminded her of changeable silk. Mr. Bugbee said it reminded him of stewed rhubarb. He also said that when he reflected on the pleasing prospect that by coming up here they would miss the Baxters’ annual costume ball on Christmas night he felt like halting about once in so often and giving three rousing cheers.

He furthermore said he could do with a little breakfast. He did with a very little. Mrs. Bugbee had brought along a vacuum bottle of coffee and four sandwiches but they were rather small – sandwiches of the pattern usually described in cook-books as dainty; and the stopper of the vacuum bottle could not have been quite air-tight, for the coffee had turned lukewarm during the night.

They emerged from the smelly sleeper into a nipping morning. There was snow on the ground, not a great deal of snow but enough. The two adventurers rather had counted on a sleigh-ride through the woods but here they suffered a disappointment. A muffled figure of a man clunked in rubber boots toward them from the platform of the locked-up station. This was the only person in sight. The stranger introduced himself with a broad yawn and a fine outgushing of frosty breath.

“Name’s Talbot,” he stated when the yawn had run its course. “I look after the Rousseau camp winters. Boss writ me word to meet you folks. Huh, got quite a jag of baggage, ain’t you? I could go round the world twice’t with less than that. Well, let’s be joggin’.”

He relieved Mrs. Bugbee of her two hand-bags and led the way to a bespattered flivver which crouched apprehensively in a maze of frozen wheel tracks behind the shuttered building, Mr. Bugbee following with a heavy suitcase in either hand and a blanket-roll swung over his shoulder by its strap.

“Likely you’ll be a mite crowded, but that’s your own fault, fetchin’ so much dunnage with you,” stated their guide. “You two had better ride in the back there and hold a couple of them biggest grips on your laps. I guess I kin wedge the rest of it into the front seat alongside of me. All set?” he asked. “Let’s move then.”

The car slewed on its tires, then settled deeply into the frozen ruts, jouncing and jerking.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier traveling with a sleigh?” inquired Mr. Bugbee, speaking rather brokenly between jolts.

“Don’t do much sleddin’ in this country any more – not till later, anyway, when the weather gits set,” vouchsafed Mr. Talbot. “A thaw’s liable to come and then where would you be with your sled runners? Besides, purty near ever’body up here keeps an ottermobile. Set tight!” he commanded. “We’re about to hit a rough place.”

But by the time he had uttered his warning they had hit it.

“Yes, indeed,” went on Mr. Talbot, “ottermobiles is come into quite general use. You folks ever been here before? Yes? Then prob’ly you remember the old Turnbull Tavern that used to stand at the forks over to the Cove? Well, it’s gone. Tore it away to put up a fillin’ station. We got two fillin’ stations – that one and one other one – and they’s talk of a third one in the spring.”

Above the obstruction of a suitcase which he balanced precariously upon his knees, Mr. Bugbee peered across a landscape which so far as the immediate foreground was concerned mainly consisted of vistas and aisles of stumps, with puddles of ice and spindly evergreens interspersed and a final garnishing of slashed-off faded limbs.

“My recollection is that the wilderness used to come right down to the tracks,” he said.

“Ef by wilderness you mean standin’ spruce timber, then your recollection is right,” answered Mr. Talbot over his shoulder and through the folds of a woolen throat comforter. “But it’s mostly been lumbered off for pulp. They’re figgerin’ some on strippin’ the ridges of the hard woods next,” he added with a touch of local pride for local enterprise.

The car took the first steep rise into the range, buck-jumping and slewing like a skittish colt. Frequently it seemed to shy from bump to bump. The task of steering engaged Mr. Talbot. He addressed his vibrating passengers but rarely.

“Got a party booked to chore for you,” he told Mrs. Bugbee over his shoulder. “Name of Anna Rapley. Widder woman. Had quite a job of it gittin’ her to agree to do it. She told me to tell you her wages would be twenty-five a week fur ez long ez you stay.”

“Twenty-five a week?” echoed Mrs. Bugbee rather blankly.

“That’s whut she says. Says it’s her reg’lar price fur a special job like this one is. Says to tell you to take it or leave it, just ez you please. Says it don’t make a bit of difference to her either way. Independent, that’s her.”

“Oh, I’m sure we won’t quarrel over the wages!” Mrs. Bugbee hastened to explain. “Of course she’s competent?”

“Oh, spry enough so fur ez that goes, but strictly between you and me, watch her!” He twisted his head and punctuated the speech with a slow, significant wink.

“Watch her for what?”

“I ain’t sayin’. I ain’t even hintin’ at nothin’. All I’m tellin’ you in confidence is – watch her. She’s a good friend of my folks so mebbe I shouldn’t ’a’ said that much. Just keep your eyes open, that’s all.”

On through to their destination there was silence between the visitors – the silence of two persons engrossed in inner contemplations. As for Mr. Talbot, he was concerned with restraining his mettlesome conveyance.

At their journey’s end, the bungalow where it nestled against a background of mountains half a mile on beyond the clumping of small houses that was the village, made a gladdening sight for the Bugbees, what with its broad front windows shining redly in the clear cold and a slender spindle of smoke rising straight up the air from the mouth of its big stone chimney. Mrs. Bugbee hurried inside to establish liaison with the widow who was a friend to the Talbot family. Her husband tarried on the snow-piled veranda with his belongings piled about him.

“Let’s see, now,” Mr. Talbot said speculatively. “There’s your fare over from the depot – we’ll call that six dollars even for the two of you. And two dollars more fur your valises, I guess that’d be fair, considerin’. That comes to eight. Then there was some odds and ends I done myself fur you yistiddy ez an accommodation – shovelin’ out this path here and so forth. That’ll be about six dollars, I sh’d say.”

Mr. Bugbee unpocketed a fold of bills.

“Hold on,” bade Mr. Talbot. “Then I got you in three cords of firewood at ten dollars a cord; that mounts up to thirty more. You’re lucky I ain’t chargin’ you full city prices,” he continued, studying Mr. Bugbee’s expression. “There’s some around here would, namin’ no names. But you folks bein’ sent on by Mr. Rousseau I’m makin’ you a rate on that firewood. Thanky.”

He accepted payment.

“Oh, yes, there’s an order of provisions in the house, too, but the account fur them’ll be rendered in your reg’lar weekly bills. I’ll make the deliveries without extry cost,” he promised generously. “Just call freely fur more stuff ez you need it. I run the leadin’ grocery down below, you understand. There’s an opposition grocery but I wouldn’t recommend no stranger to do his tradin’ there unlessen he checked off the statements mighty close. Well, good-by and see you later.”

Mr. Bugbee, mechanically holding a depleted roll in his numbed grasp, watched the flivver as it lurched back down the highway. “But at least the sunrise was an unqualified success,” he remarked softly to himself. He further comforted himself with the philosophies that first impressions did not necessarily count and that a poor beginning often made a good ending and that to all rules there were exceptions, et cetera, et cetera.

Lack of space forbids that we should trace our two sojourners step by step and day by day through the ensuing fortnight. A few vignettes, a few small thumb-nail views of them, taken in the privacy of their fireside, will suffice, this chronicler hopes, progressively to suggest the course of developments in pursuance of their ambitions for the happiness of the dwellers in that isolated hamlet of Pleasant Cove.

For example, an intimate little scene was enacted before the hearthstone on the second evening but one following their arrival.

Mr. Bugbee was wrestling manfully with a cigar of an exceedingly formidable aspect. That morning he had made a lamentable discovery. It was that he had forgotten to bring along two boxes of his favorite brand of specially cured Havanas which were purchased expressly with that intent. His pocket case was almost empty when he became aware of the oversight. He looked upon it in the light of a tragedy; a confirmed smoker will appreciate how laden with tragic possibilities such a situation might become. He had wired for a supply to be forwarded immediately, but in these parts immediately might be a relative term. So to bridge over the emergency he had procured some substitutes from Mr. Talbot’s somewhat restricted stock.

It was with one of the substitutes that now he contended. He freed an intake of smoke and choked slightly, then coughed fretfully.

“It is called ‘Jake’s Choice,’” he said. “I read it on the box. It was an exceedingly beautiful box – a regular whited sepulcher of a box. I wonder who Jake was? Probably a friend of the manufacturer. But I’ll say this much for him – he was no customer! It may have its good qualities. It’s certainly very durable and it has splendid powers of resistance – fights back every inch of the way. But for smoking purposes it is open to the same criticisms that a rag carpet is.”

“Why don’t you throw it in the fire, then?” suggested Mrs. Bugbee. “When I came in here a minute ago I thought for a second the flue must be defective.”

“I’d have you know I’m not to be daunted by an enemy that I could crush – maybe – in the palm of my hand. Besides, it’s easy enough for you to give such advice – you with plenty of your favorite cigarettes on hand. But cigarettes are not for me – I’m what they call a man’s man.”

“Speaking of cigarettes – ” began Mrs. Bugbee, but got no further. It would seem that Mr. Bugbee was not to be diverted from his present morbid mood.

“Now you take Jake’s peculiar Choice,” he went on. “I wish I’d had the job of christening this article. I’d have labeled it the ‘R. C. N. W. M. P.’”

“What does that stand for?”

“Royal Canadian Northwestern Mounted Police – to give the full title.”

“I don’t see the application.”

“You would if you knew the motto of that magnificent force – ‘Always Gets Its Man.’” Again he coughed.

“Speaking of names, Anna – ”

“You were speaking of cigarettes a moment ago.”

“I tried to but you interrupted. Anyhow, cigarettes and Anna are all mixed up with what I wanted to say in the first place.”

“You refer to our culinary goddess?”

“Of course.”

“Does she smoke?”

“No – never.”

“Then why drag in Anna’s cigarettes, if she doesn’t use ’em?”

“I didn’t. It’s my cigarettes.”

“Well, why then Anna as a factor in this discussion?”

“I’m coming to that. Speaking of names – ”