CHAPTER II—MRS. MINK
MRS. MINK was a pleasant looking woman, though somewhat thin, and with sharp gray eyes. She wore a plain, neat black dress, such as a self-respecting woman might wear to church in some small inland city. A large flowered rug covered the deck, a round mahogany table in the middle of it. There were a hammock and a number of upholstered chairs, each with a doily on the back of it. A work-basket stood on the table, brimming with sewing materials. A white crocheted shawl hung on the back of a chair, a red paper lampshade over the electric bulb.
The scene wakened sleeping associations of mine. Just such a shawl my maiden aunts wore in Connecticut, just such doilies were on their rocking chairs, just such flowered carpets were in their parlours. They dressed like Mrs. Mink too, but, to the best of my recollection, were not so agreeable to look at.
That weird glistening sea garden of coral and purple feathers and improbable fish was fresh in my mind, with Dr. Ulswater's talk, both undomestic, paradoxical, and showing coloured objects slumberously afloat in a transparent and deluding element. The wide blue harbour; the steep white town buried in tropical foliage; the big spruce yacht, too; the yellow-bearded Swede Jansen, and the crew in flat caps and jumpers—all these belonged to the world as I had known it of later years. With the line of the awning came the abrupt change; there ruled the flowered carpet, the centre table, the doilies, the provincial feminine touch, the tradition and influence of a million parlours and “sitting rooms” of the States. One missed the wall paper, and mantelpiece, the insipid and carefully framed print, and the black stove; but Mrs. Mink seemed to have made herself at home, so far as she was able, and the effect was homelike.
All this while Mrs. Mink looked critical, and Dr. Ulswater was introducing himself and me, and presently I became aware that Mrs. Mink was telling Dr. Ulswater her story.
It appeared that she came from the small city of Potterville, Ohio, whose aspect might be inferred and pictured—a half-dozen brick business blocks, a railway station, a dozen churches, dusty streets, board sidewalks, maples for shade trees—mainly young and not too healthy—clapboarded frame houses with narrow piazzas, a thin, monotonous current of social talk, a limited and local existence.
Until the year before, the fortunes of Mrs. Mink had hardly led her beyond the borders of the State, nor away from Potterville for more than a few days.
Mr. Mink, a silent, plodding man—as I gathered—a banker, counted a well-to-do citizen, but not suspected of unusual wealth, had died the year before, of a natural and normal sickness. There must have been a secretive element in him, something now forever unexplained. He had sat at his desk in his bank. Away from the bank he had never alluded to business. He had not liked any habits to be altered. No one in Potterville, not even the bank cashier, certainly not Mrs. Mink, suspected that Potterville harboured a millionaire. But when Mrs. Mink found herself a widow of extensive and varied wealth, she set herself to consider the situation. So far the story was partly inferential. Mrs. Mink spoke with some reserve.