It was a frightful night. Brecky turned up the collar of his overcoat,
pulled his cap lower over his eyes, and left the shelter of the railway
station for the open road. He heard the train that had brought him from
the city pull out again and rush whistling through the fields and
marshes. When it had gone, everything human had vanished, leaving him
alone with the great and terrible wind and the cold rain.
He made what haste he could along the muddy road, his head down against
the gale. The driving rain half blinded him, the tumult confused him,
with the unceasing rush of the wind and the dull sound of the sea. His
way lay through immeasurable desolation, past house after house empty
and black, shops all closed and shuttered, streets in which there was
not one human creature. It was a sort of Pompeii, a deserted village, a
nightmare; but to the practical Brecky it was nothing more or less than
Shorehaven, a summer resort, naturally deserted in midwinter.
He was not a man of imagination, this Johnny Breckenbridge. He was a
wiry young chap with an impassive, weather-beaten face. He dressed very
soberly, but he had an incorrigibly sporting air, and there was
something rakish and jaunty about him. He was nimble, alert, and just a
trifle bow-legged. He was never tired, never discouraged. He had all his
wits about him, and knew his way in the world.
He had been, one might say, born a jockey, and he had been a good one,
too, for years; but he had grown tired of the restrictions of a jockey’s
life. He was fond of eating and drinking, and he liked to be his own
master.
He had continued his activities on the race track in a less official
capacity. He had done well as a bookie, too, for he was shrewd,
cautious, and trustworthy; but he had suddenly fallen in love and
married.
“And that’s no life for a married man,” he observed to his many friends.
“Got to settle down now.”
Brecky was thorough in everything, and he wished to be a thoroughly
married man. He took his new obligations with great seriousness. He
intended to do well for his jolly little Kathleen. He knew that his duty
in life was to make money for her.
He never thought of consulting her, however. She had been a waitress in
a little restaurant in the city, and he had admired her brisk good humor
and her common sense. She was a pretty kid, too--dark, small, vigorous.
She had received a great deal of attention, but she was never silly or
vain about it. She knew how to take care of herself. She liked a good
time, but no monkey business. She was mighty independent, Kathleen was.
To Brecky’s uncomplex mind, the wedding ring was to transform her
completely. She was to be no longer Kathleen, but a wife; and to him all
good wives were alike. They were kind, gentle, contented, and very
helpful. You made money gladly for them; but if you were a real man, you
didn’t let them spend much of it.
He had looked about the world thoughtfully for a few months. Then he had
taken nearly every penny he had saved and had bought a hotel at the
seaside, with a heavy mortgage on it. To this place he had brought his
Kathleen, that she might help and comfort him while he mastered his new
business.
Extraordinary friends of his used to come down and give him advice. He
listened and learned. He knew a number of men connected with hotels,
night clerks, head waiters, and so on; and they were willing and
anxious to help him, because every one liked him.
He had no iconoclastic ideas. He wished to run his hotel according to
all the tried and tested rules of the business. He wore out his
advisers. Those who came down to look over Brecky’s hotel went away
exhausted and squeezed dry, leaving whatever valuable knowledge they
owned in Brecky’s possession.
In midwinter, when the place lay like a frozen village on the shore of
an inhuman sea, lights used to shine from the windows of Brecky’s
immense hotel, and to flit from one floor to another. That meant Brecky
and some consulting friend, muffled in sweaters and overcoats,
inspecting the rows and rows of bedrooms, discussing the wall paper, the
flimsy furniture, debating with breath that congealed in the frigid air,
whether this or that room was going to be cool enough, shady enough,
airy enough.
But however the lights might flit about the building in those winter
nights, there was one that remained steady and constant as the beam from
a lighthouse. It came from the kitchen window. It sprang up every
evening when dusk began to close in, and it always burned until nine
o’clock or so. Brecky saw it now, as he turned the corner and struggled
down the street at the end of which his hotel stood.
This was the hardest stretch, in the teeth of the terrific wind blowing
inshore. It was like leaving the world and plunging into chaos. He went
at it, head down, his eyes fixed upon the cheerful light, an agreeable
hunger rising within him. That light meant Kathleen and the excellent
dinner she was sure to have ready for him.