Ma Pettengill Part 25

I remember at one time she was riding in parades when the boys would march down to the station to go off and settle things in their own crude way. I lost track of what she was taking up for a while, but I know she kept on getting new uniforms till she must of had quite a time every morning deciding what she was going to be that day, like the father of the German Crown Prince.

Finally, last spring, it got to be the simple uniform of a waitress. She had figgered out that all the girls then taking the places of men waiters would get called for nurses sooner or later; so why shouldn't prominent society matrons like herself learn how to wait on table, so as to take the girl waiters' places when they went across? Not exactly that; they wouldn't keep on lugging trays forever in this emergency--only till they could teach new girls the trade, when some new ones come along to take the places of them that had met the call of duty.

So Genievieve agitated and wrote letters from the heart out to about two dozen society buds; and then she terrified the owner of the biggest hotel in her home town till he agreed to let 'em come and wait on table every day at lunch.

Genevieve May's uniform of a poor working girl was a simple black dress, with white ap.r.o.n, cuffs, and cap, the whole, as was right, not costing over six or seven dollars, though her string of matched pearls that cost two hundred thousand sort of raised the average. The other society buds was arrayed similar and looked like so many waitresses. Not in a hotel, mebbe, but in one of these musical shows where no money has been spared.

The lady had a glorious two days ordering these girls round as head waiter and seeing that everybody got a good square look at her, and so on. But the other girls got tired the second day. It was jolly and all tips went to the Red Cross, and the tips was big; but it was just as hard work as if they had really been poor working girls, with not enough recreation about it. So the third day they rebelled at the head waiter and made Genevieve herself jump in and carry out trays full of dishes that had served their purpose.

This annoyed Genevieve May very much. It not only upset discipline but made the arms and back ache. So she now went into the kitchen to show the cook how to cook in a more saving manner. Her intentions were beautiful; but the head cook was a sensitive foreigner, and fifteen minutes after she went into his kitchen he had to be arrested for threatening to harm the well-known society matron with a common meat saw.

The new one they got in his place next day let her mess round all she wanted to, knowing his job depended on it, though it was told that he got a heartless devil-may-care look in his eyes the minute he saw her making a cheap fish sauce. But he said nothing.

That hotel does a big business, but it fell off surprising the day after this, twenty-three people having been took bad with poison from something they'd et there at lunch. True, none of these got as fur as the coroner, so it never was known exactly what they'd took in; but the thing made a lot of talk at stricken bedsides and Genevieve spent a dull day denying that her cooking had done this outrage. Then, her dignity being much hurt, she wrote a letter to the papers saying this hotel man was giving his guests cheap canned goods that had done the trick.

Next morning this brought the hotel man and one of the best lawyers in the state of Was.h.i.+ngton up to the palatial Popper residence, making threats after they got in that no lady taking up war activities should be obliged to listen to. She got rattled, I guess, or had been dreaming or something. She told the hotel man and lawyer to Ss.h.!.+ Ss.h.!.+--because that new cook had put ground gla.s.s in the lemon pie and she had a right to lull his suspicions with this letter to the papers, because she was connected with the Secret Service Department. She would now go back to the hotel and detect this spy committing sabotage on the mashed potatoes, or something, and arrest him--just like that! I don't know whatever put the idea into her head. I believe she had tried to join the Secret Service Department till she found they didn't have uniforms.

Anyway, this hotel man, like the cowardly dog he was, went straight off to some low sneak in the district attorney's office; and he went like a snake in the gra.s.s and found out it wasn't so; and a real officer come down on Genevieve May to know what she meant by impersonating a Secret Service agent. This brutal thug talked in a cold but rough way, and I know perfectly well this minute that he wasn't among those invited to the Popper costume ball of the Allied nations. He threw a fine scare into Genevieve May. For about a week she didn't know but she'd be railroaded to Walla Walla. She wore mere civilian creations and acted like a slacker.

But finally she saw the Government was going to live and let live; so she took up something new. It was still On to Berlin! with Genevieve May.

She wasn't quite up to pulling anything new in her home town; so she went into the outlying districts to teach her grandmother something. I didn't think up the term for it. That was thought up by G.H. Stultz who is her son-in-law and president of the Red Gap Canning Factory. This here new war activity she'd took up consisted of going rough to different places and teaching housewives how to practice economy in putting up preserves, and so on.

It ain't on record that she ever taught one single woman anything about economy, their hard-won knowledge beginning about where hers left off--which wasn't fur from where it started; but she did bring a lot of wholesome pleasure into their simple, hard-working lives.

In this new war activity it wasn't so much how you canned a thing as what you canned. Genevieve May showed 'em how to make mincemeat out of tomatoes and beets; how to make marmalade out of turnips and orange peel; how to make preserves out of apple peelings and carrots; and guava jelly out of mushmelon rinds, or some such thing. She'd go into towns and rent a storeroom and put up her canning outfit, hiring a couple of the lower cla.s.ses to do the actual work, and invite women to bring in their truck of this kind and learn regular old rock-bottom economy. They'd come, with their stuff that should of been fattening shotes, and Genevieve May would lecture on how to can it. It looked through the gla.s.s like sure-enough human food.

Then, after she'd got 'em all taught, she'd say wouldn't it be nice of these ladies to let her sell all this canned stuff and give the proceeds to the different war charities! And there wasn't a woman that didn't consent readily, having tasted it in the cooking. Not a one of 'em wanted to take home these delicacies. It was right n.o.ble or cautious, or something. And after visiting six or eight of these communities Genevieve May had quite a stock of these magic delicacies on sale in different stores and was looking forward to putting the war firmly on its feet--only she couldn't get many reports of sales from this stock.

Then she got a dandy idea. She would come to the Kulanche County Fair at Red Gap, a.s.semble all her stock there, give one of these here demonstrations in economic canning, and auction off the whole lot with a glad hurrah. She thought mebbe, with her influence, she might get Secretary Baker, or someone like that, to come out and do the auctioning--all under the auspices of Mrs. Genevieve May Popper, whose tireless efforts had done so much to teach the dear old Fatherland its lesson, and so on. She now had about three hundred jars and bottles of this stuff after her summer's work, and it looked important.

I got down to the county fair myself last year, having some sure-fire blue-ribbon stock there, and it was then that I hear G.H. Stultz talking about this here mother-in-law of his, he taking me aside at their home one night, so his wife, Lucille, wouldn't hear.

"This respected lady is trying to teach her grandmother how to suck eggs--no more, no less," he says. "Now she's coming here to pull something off. You watch her--that's all I ask. Everything that woman touches goes funny. Look how she poisoned those innocent people up at that hotel. And I'll bet this canned stuff she's going to sell off will kill even mere tasters. If she only hadn't come to my town! That woman don't seem to realize that I'm cursed with a German name and have to be miles above suspicion.

"Suppose she sells off this stuff! I give you my word she puts things in it that even a professional canning factory wouldn't dare to. And suppose it poisons off a lot of our best patriots! Do you think a mob will be very long blaming me for a hand in it? Why, it'll have me, in no time at all, reaching my feet down for something solid that has been carefully removed."

I tried to cheer the man up, but he was scared stiff.

"Mark my words," he says. "She'll pull a bloomer! If that woman could go into an innocent hotel kitchen, where every care is taken to keep things right, and poison off twenty-three people till they picked at the covers and had relatives wondering what might be in their safe-deposit boxes, think what she'd do in the great unsanitary outside, where she can use her imagination!

"There's but one salvation for me; I must have trusted agents in the crowd when that stuff is auctioned off, and they got to collar every last bottle of it, no matter what the cost. I have to lay down like a pup on the next bond drive, but this is my only hope. For the Lord's sake, don't you go there and start bidding things up, no matter who she gets for auctioneer! Don't you bid--even if Woodrow Wilson himself comes out."

That's the impression Genevieve May had made on her own daughter's husband, who is a clear-seeing man and a good citizen. And it looked like he must secretly buy up her output. She not only come to town with her canning outfit and her summer's stock of strange preserves, all beauteous in their jars, but she brought with her to auction off this stuff a regular French flying man with an honourable record.

She'd met this French officer in the city and entertained him at the palatial Popper home; and mebbe she'd hypnotized him. He wasn't in good shape, anyway. First place, he'd been fighting in the air for three years and had been wounded in five places--including the Balkans. Then, like that wasn't enough for one man, he'd been sent over here to teach our men to fly when they got a machine; and over here he'd fell out of a cloud one day when his brake or something went wrong, and this had give him a nice pleasant vacation on crutches.

Genevieve had fastened on him at a time when he probably hadn't the steely resistance Frenchmen been showing on the West Front. Or, being in a strange country, mebbe he didn't know when politeness to Genevieve May Popper would become mere cowardice. Anyway, he could talk English well enough; and Genevieve May brought him to town and made a big hit.

First thing she done was to set up her stock of canned goods in a section they give her in Horticultural Hall. Them three hundred bottles took up a lot of room and showed up grand between the fancy-work section, consisting of embroideries, sofa cus.h.i.+ons, and silk patch quilts, and the art section, consisting of hand paintings of interesting objects by bright pupils in the public school. Then she put in her canning outfit, with a couple of hired natives to do the work while she lectured on the science of it and tried to get weak-minded patriots to taste things.

Genevieve May had a good time at these demonstrations, speaking in tones of oratory and persuasion and encouraging the tasters to take a chance.

She certainly had discovered some entirely new flavours that the best chemists hadn't stumbled on. She was proud of this, but a heap prouder of her French flying man. When she wasn't thinking up new infamies with rutabagas and watermelon rinds, she'd be showing him off to the fair crowds. She give the impression when she paraded him that the French Army would of had few flyers if she hadn't stepped into the breach.

And mebbe she wasn't desperate with fear that some of the Red Gap society buds and matrons would want to stick in with nursing and attentions for the interesting invalid! Nothing like that with Genevieve May! She kept closer guard on that man than he would of got in the worst German prison camp. About the only other person in town she'd trust him to was Cousin Egbert Floud.

Cousin Egbert liked the Frenchman a lot at first, and rode him round town to see the canning factory and the new waterworks and the Chamber of Commerce, and Price's Addition to Red Gap, and so on. Also, he'd drag him all over the fair grounds to look at prize bulls and windmills and patent silos.

Cousin Egbert had refused from the first to taste any of Genevieve May's deviltry with the vegetable kingdom. He swore he was on a diet and the doctor wouldn't answer for his life if he even tasted anything outside.

He was telling me that last day of the fair that the woman ought to be arrested for carrying on so, Genevieve May being now busy with some highly artificial ketchup made of carrots, and something else unimportant, with pure vegetable dyes.

"Yes; and she just tried to hand me that same old stuff about what her j.a.panese maid calls her," he says to me at this time. "She says I could never guess what that funny little mite calls her. And I says no, I never could of guessed it if she hadn't already told me; but I says I know it is Madam Peach Blossom, and that j.a.p maid sure is one funny little mite, thinking up a thing like that, the j.a.panese being a serious race and not given to saying laughable things."

That's Cousin Egbert all over. He ain't a bit like one of them courters of the old French courts that you read about in the Famous Crimes of History.

"Madam Peach Blossom!" he says, snickering bitterly. "Say, ain't them j.a.ps got a great sense of humour! I bet what she meant was Madam Lemon Blossom!"

Anyway, Genevieve May trusted her flying man to this here brutal cynic when she wouldn't of trusted him to any of the younger, dancing set.

And Cousin Egbert pretty near made him late for his great engagement to auction off the strange preserves. It was on this third day of the fair, and Genevieve May was highly excited about it.

She had her stock set up in tiers against the wall and looking right imposing in the polished gla.s.s; and she had a box in front where the Frenchman would stand when he did the auctioning.

That hall was hot, let me tell you, with the high sun beating down on the thin boards. I looked in a minute before the crowd come, and it looked like them preserves had sure had a second cooking, standing there day after day.

And this Cousin Egbert, when he should of been leading the Frenchman back to Horticultural Hall to the auction block, was dragging him elsewhere to see a highly exciting sight. So he said. He was innocent enough. He wanted to give that Frenchman a good time, he told me afterward. So he tells him something is going to take place over at the race track that will thrill him to the bone, and come on quick and hurry over!

The Frenchman is still using one crutch and the crowd is already surging in that direction; but after finding out it ain't any more silos or windmills, he relies on Cousin Egbert that it really is exciting, and they manage to get through the crowd, though it was excited even now and stepped on him and pushed him a lot.

Still he was game, all right. I've always said that. He was about as excited as the crowd; and Cousin Egbert was, too, I guess, by the time they had pushed up to the railing. I guess he was wondering what Wild Western kind of deviltry he was going to see now. Cousin Egbert had told him it wasn't a horse race; but he wouldn't tell him what it was, wis.h.i.+ng to keep it for a glad surprise when the Frenchman would see it with his own eyes.

"Just you wait one minute now!" says Cousin Egbert. "You wait one minute and I bet you'll be glad you got through that rough crowd with me. You'd go through ten crowds like that, crutch or no crutch, to see what's going to be here."

The poor man was kind of used up, but he stands there waiting for the thrill, with Cousin Egbert beaming on him fondly, like a father that's going in one minute to show the little tots what Santa Claus brought 'em on the tree.

Then the Frenchman hears a familiar roar and a airplane starts up from the lower end of the field inside the track.

"There!" says Cousin Egbert. "Now I guess you're glad you pushed in here, leg or no leg. I knew it would be a dandy surprise for you. Yes, sir; the committee got a regular airplane to give a thrilling flight right here in front of us. You look up in the sky there and pretty soon you'll see it just as plain, sailing round and round like some great bird; and they say this man flying it is going to loop the loop twice in succession. Now I bet you're glad you come!"

Cousin Egbert says right at this minute he begun to take a dislike to the Frenchman. After he'd took all that trouble to get him there to see something exciting, the Frenchman just looked at him kind of sad for a long time, and then says he believes he'd rather go back some place where he can set down and rest his leg.

Cousin Egbert says he turned out to be like the Frenchmen you read about that is blase about everything in the world and kind of tired of life, not having the least bit of interest in whatever happens. But, of course, he was polite to his guest and helped push a way back through the crowd, with the crowd more excited than ever by this time, because the flying machine was right up in the air, hundreds of feet off the ground.

"You'll think I'm a liar," he says to me; "but it's the G.o.d's truth this Frenchman just kept pus.h.i.+ng through that crowd and didn't even turn to look up in the air when this man was actually risking his life by looping the loop twice in succession. He never turned his head the least bit."

Cousin Egbert says, here he'd been up in one himself and knew what flying meant, but he probably wouldn't of took the least notice if this dare-devil had been killed right there before thousands.

"I don't understand it," he says. "It sure wouldn't be the least use boosting for a brighter and busier Red Gap if everybody was as cold-blooded as the French." He was right grouchy about the French after this.

Anyway, he got his suffering man back to Horticultural Hall somewhat the worse for being stepped on by the crowd; in fact, the Frenchman is kind of all in when he gets to the auction block. He sets right down on it looking white, and Genevieve May gets him a gla.s.s of water to revive him.