THE HANDS WITH THE RINGS
Peter Rolls, Jr., unlike his father, had practically no talent for
revenge. In common with every warm-blooded creature lower than the
angels, he could be fiercely vindictive for a minute or two--long
enough, when a small boy, to give a bloody nose and to get one; long
enough, at all ages, to want to hit a man, thoroughly smash him,
perhaps, or even to kick him into the middle of next week; long enough
to feel that he would like to make a woman sorry that she had been
rude.
But there was always a spiritual and mental reckoning of a painful
description: a soul's housecleaning which turned him out of doors a
miserable waif; and it invariably came too soon, before he had had
time to gloat over the blood on another boy's nose, or a man's
humiliation, or a woman's repentant blush. Instead of heartily
disliking people for the spiteful things they sometimes did, he was
apt to turn round and wonder if the fault had not been his; if he were
not the abysmal beast.
He had not half repaid Winifred Child for her rudeness with his
coldness, yet no sooner was he in the huge gray automobile--which
could comfortably have seated eight instead of six--than he felt a
pang of remorse, exactly like a gimlet twisting through his heart from
top to bottom.
"I oughtn't to have left her like that!" he reproached himself. "I
ought to have hung around and seen that everything went all right. She
said she had the address of a good, cheap boarding-house. But it may
have changed. Or it may be full. And, anyway, how will she get there?
She ought to take a cab. But will she? And if she does, won't she fall
dead at the price? I ought to have warned the poor child. There are
shoals of tips I might have put her up to if I hadn't always been
talking about myself. What if she _was_ cross? There must have been a
reason. I must have done something she didn't feel like pointing out
when I asked. What I don't know about women would make three
encyclopedias."
It was too late, however, to act upon second thoughts which might or
might not be "best." Peter was in the automobile, and it had started.
Even if he went back, it would doubtless be only to find Miss Child
gone. He tried to console himself with the fact that Ena had been nice
to the girl, and that Miss Child had said--or anyhow intimated--that
she would write. If she didn't, he could, at worst, find out her
whereabouts by going to Nadine. Superior as Miss Child was to the
other dryads, she would surely keep up communication with them. Miss
Devereux was the sort who might lunch with him on the strength of "old
friendship." He would give her oysters and orchids, and find out how
things were going with the girl who had left her dryadhood behind the
cabin door.
He tried to console himself with these arguments, but the pleasure of
homecoming was spoiled. Father did not show any very exuberant joy at
seeing him again, and it was disappointing to a warm-hearted nature
if people were not exuberant, even for a minute, when you had been
away for months.
The automobile, with its gray-silk cushions, its immense plate-glass
windows, its travelling boudoir of mirrors, gold scent bottles, and
other idiocies, its bouncing bouquet of fresh violets, its electric
fittings, its air pillow embroidered with silver monograms and crests,
its brocade-lined chinchilla rugs, tricky little extra seats, and
marvellous springs, struck Peter as disgustingly ostentatious.
He wondered what Raygan and his mother and sister would think of folks
in a democratic country using chinchilla for automobile rugs; and he
was sure they must be having interior hysterics over the Rolls coat of
arms--a dragon holding up a spiky crown of some nondescript sort on a
cushion. The dragon looked rather like a frog rampant, and the crowned
cushion bore a singular resemblance to a mushroom with an angry
ladybird on its apex. How this family insignia had been obtained Peter
did not know. His ribald questions had been treated by his sister with
silent scorn. He would not be surprised if Ena had designed the thing
herself!
As the car smoothly bowled Peter out of Winifred Child's life, away
toward the Long Island manor house and the welcome mother would give,
the deposed dryad was having her first experience of New York.
She parted company on the pier with Nadine (in private life Lady
Darling), Nadine's manageress, Miss Sorel, and the quartet of models.
They had almost forgotten her before they had gone two blocks
"uptown"; and she had no reason to remember any of them with
affection, except, perhaps, Miss Sorel, a relative of her one-time
dressmaker who had "got her the job."
Win had heard that the cost of cabs was "something awful" in America,
but she said to herself: "Just this first time I _must_ have one." A
bad night and the scene with Peter had dimmed the flame of her
courage, and she felt a sinking of the heart instead of a sense of
adventure in the thought of taking a "trolley." She would be sure to
lose herself in searching for the boarding-house.
Her luggage--checked and in the hypnotic power of a virile
expressman--had already vanished. It would arrive at its destination
ahead of her. Perhaps there was no room there. In that case it would
be sent away. Dreadful picture! False economy not to take a cab! Win
supposed that a taxi would be no dearer than the horse variety and one
would sooner learn the secrets of the future.
One of these secrets began to hint at its own hideous nature with
every convulsive tick of the metre. It hiccuped nickels, and as Win's
terrified eyes, instead of taking in New York, watched the spendthrift
contrivance yelping for her dollars, she remembered that she owned but
two hundred. She had had to be "decent" about tips on board. But forty
pounds--two hundred dollars--had looked magnificent in her hand bag
that morning. Paper money spread itself in such a lordly manner and
seemed able to buy so many separate things. But by the time the
merciless taxi had bumped her through devious ways up to Fifty-Fourth
Street, three of the beautiful green dollar bills were as good as
gone.
She longed to pray "Oh, _do_ stop taxying!" at the doorstep before she
darted up to inquire whether Miss Hampshire still kept the
boarding-house; and it was maddening to hear that "teuf, teuf"
desperately going on, chewing its silver cud, in the long pause before
an answer came to the bell.
A black woman who flung open the door was startling as a
jack-in-the-box for the English girl. Win had thought of American
negroes but vaguely, as a social problem in the newspapers or dear
creatures in Thomas Nelson Page's books. What with the surprise and
the nervous strain of the disappearing dollars, she asked no further
questions after the welcome news that Miss Hampshire existed and had a
"room to rent." Hastily she paid off the chauffeur, adding something
for himself (it seemed like tipping the man at the guillotine) and
breathed again only when her trunk and dressing-bag blocked the narrow
hall.
"I'm sure I don't see whoever's goin' to tote them things up to the
third story," sighed the female jack-in-the-box, who was, after all,
more purple than black when you looked closely, an illusion produced
by a dusting of pink powder over a dark surface. "And how do I know
Miss Hampshire'll _take_ you?"
"But you said there was a room." The freeborn independence of a whole
nation, irrespective of colour, shocked the effete stranger's breath
away. She gasped slightly.
"Yeh. But that ain't to say you can have it. Miss Hampshire's mighty
pertickler about her woman boarders," explained the purple lady. "You
catched me all of a heap or I wouldn't o' let that feller slam yer
things into the house and git away. You'll have to wait till I call
Miss Hampshire. _She'll_ talk to you."
"Tell her I was recommended by Miss Ellis, from London who boarded
here three years ago," Win desperately tossed after a disappearing
figure.
It was a mortifying commentary upon her personal appearance not to be
invited to wait in the drawing-room, and Miss Child wondered what
foreign strangeness in hat, hair arrangement, or costume had excited
suspicion. She did not know whether to be more angry or amused, but
recalled her own motto, "Laugh at the world to keep it from laughing
first."
Suddenly the episode became part of an adventure, a great and wildly
funny adventure, of which she was dying to see the next part. How she
would love to tell Mr. Balm of Gilead! How his eyes would twinkle!
But--there was no Mr. Balm of Gilead in this or any world. It was a
dreary hall she stood in, with varnished brown paper pretending to be
oak panels, a long-armed hatrack that would have made an ideal
scarecrow, and ghosts of past dinners floating up from below with
gloomy warnings.
From the same region came Miss Hampshire, smelling slightly of Irish
stew. She was pale with the pallor which means shut windows and
furnace heat, a little sharp-nosed, neat-headed woman in brown, whose
extraordinarily deep-set eyes were circled with black, like spectacle
rims. She was graciously willing to accept a guest recommended by Miss
Ellis, hinting that, as she was of British ancestry, the English for
her came under the favoured nation clause.
"To _you_ the room with board'll be ten dollars a week," she said with
flattering emphasis. "A well-known poetess has just left it to be
married. It's not large, but, being at the back of the house, it's
nice and quiet."
When Win was shown the third-floor back hall bedroom she saw that
even a poetess of passion might have snapped at her first proposal. As
Miss Hampshire said, it was not large; but there was the advantage of
being able to reach anything anywhere while sitting on the bed, and
unless the people six feet distant in a back room of the opposite
house snored at night it ought to be quiet.
Win christened her room the "frying pan," because to search for
another boarding-house might be jumping into the fire. And luckily her
trunk would just squeeze under the bed.
"I suppose it would be no use calling on a business man before three
o'clock?" She applied to Miss Hampshire for advice when she had
unpacked her toothbrush and a few small things for which she could
find niche or wall space.
"Before three? And why not?" The pale lady opened her eyes in their
dark caverns.
"Why, I only thought they wouldn't be back in their offices from
luncheon," explained the English girl.
"When you know a little more about N'York," replied Miss Hampshire,
whose manner was involuntarily less mellow when she had hooked a fish,
"you'll see why it could never be run as it is along _those_ lines.
Many of our most prominent business men consider a piece of pie with a
tumbler of milk a good and sufficient lunch, and it takes them five
minutes to swallow it."
Primed with this information and intricate instructions concerning
street cars (a child once burned dreads a taxi), Winifred started out
soon after her own midday meal, eaten in a basement dining-room.
She went first to see the editor; for somehow newspaper reporting
seemed more congenial to the vivid New York climate than singing in a
church choir, and the hugeness of the _To-day and To-morrow_ building
turned her again into a worm. It did not so much scrape the sky as
soar into it, and when she timidly murmured the words "editorial
offices" she was shot up to the top in an elevator as in a
perpendicularly directed catapult.
When the fearsome thing stopped she had the sensation that her head
alone had arrived, the rest had been shed on the way, but in a large
open space furnished with roll-top desks and typewriters and men and
girls she was looked at as though nothing unusual had happened.
"A letter of introduction for Mr. Burritt?" repeated a young man with
a whimsical expression. "I'm afraid you'll have to go higher up to
deliver it."
"I thought I'd got to the top," said Win. "Or"--and she tried to catch
the office note of sprightliness--"does he inhabit a roof garden?"
The young man smiled. "He used to be fond of them after office hours.
But not being a spiritualist, I haven't heard from him concerning his
present habits."
"He is--dead?"
"That's about it," said the young man. "A year ago. But he was only
our city editor, so maybe he didn't get a black border in your English
papers."
Miss Child did not ask how one knew that she was English. She
recovered herself, thought of taking leave, and then decided not to be
precipitate. Instead, she inquired if she could see any other editor.
"Which other have you got a letter to?" the young man temporized.
"None. But---"
"Then I'm afraid it's no use without an appointment. Anyhow, this
isn't the right hour to snapshot editors of daily papers. They're
night-blooming flowers. Would you like to try for an appointment with
Mr. Shaw, Burritt's successor?"
Win thanked him, but thought it would be no use. She would have liked
to walk down, only there seemed to be no stairs. A merry youth who ran
the nearest elevator asked if she would care to use the fire-escape.
The address of Mr. Noble, the organist, was that of a private house.
It was a far cry from _To-day and To-morrow_, up in the hundreds, and
Miss Hampshire had told Miss Child to take the elevated. Easier said
than done. You could go up the steps and reach a platform on top of
the improved Roman viaduct, but there were so many other people intent
on squeezing through the iron gate and onto the uptown train--people
far more indomitable than yourself--that nothing happened except the
slam, slam of that gate in your face.
At last, however, Miss Child was borne along with a rush from behind
and found herself swinging back and forth like a pendulum on a strap
which she clutched wildly. Men in America were supposed to jump up and
give women their seats, but there were no men in this train. It was
peopled with women who had been shopping, and who carried bundles.
Many went on so far that Win began to believe they were taking a jaunt
for fun, especially as they did not seem at all tired, but chewed
something unremittingly with an air of calm delight. This was,
perhaps, what Americans called a "joy ride!"
There seemed to be no end to New York, and vistas of cross streets
looked so much alike that Win did not wonder they were named only with
numbers. She wanted One Hundred and Thirty-Third Street, and Mr.
Noble's house was a long way from the elevated station. When she found
it at last it was only to learn that six months ago the organist had
accepted a position in Chicago. And New York seemed twice as big,
twice as absent-minded, when both letters of introduction had failed.
Win had often tried to check her tendency to over-optimism by telling
herself that neither Mr. Burritt nor Mr. Noble might have work to
give. But Miss Ellis (now comfortably married in London) had said they
were kind men. If they had nothing to offer, they would certainly
introduce Miss Child to some one who had. It had never occurred to her
that they might thoughtlessly have died or gone elsewhere. Editors and
organists seemed so importantly permanent to the lay mind.
This was indeed being alone in New York! And at the very thought--now
she could guess what it might be like--her one hundred and ninety-six
dollars and twenty-eight cents seemed to be shrinking in the wash.
"Nonsense!" said she, on the elevated again, tearing downtown. "Don't
be a silly. Any one would think you were the leading lady in a
melodrama, turned out of the house without your hat, in a snowstorm
that followed you round the stage like a wasp! You'll be all right.
Miss Ellis told you they _loved_ English girls in New York. Just you
wait till to-morrow, my dear!"
The rest of the day she spent in the frying pan, "pulling herself
together," and "seeing where she stood," a process consisting mostly
of counting her greenbacks and comparing them with their equivalent in
English money. After all, there was not too much time for this mental
adjustment of things, because, being late in October, darkness fell
early, and Miss Hampshire's boarders dined at six-thirty. Promptness
was obligatory if you were a female. A little more latitude--a raising
of the eyebrows instead of a frown--was granted if you were fortunate
enough to be of the opposite sex. Miss Hampshire's sad smile seemed to
concede that men had temptations.
There were bank clerks and schoolteachers and translators though no
more poetesses; and everybody was kind to the new boarder, the
Englishwoman, especially in telling her all about New York.
"What do you think of Broadway?" asked her neighbour a handsome young
German Jew, who was more insistently American than any of those native
born.
Win was shamefacedly not sure whether she had seen it.
"Not sure whether you have seen _Broadway_!" exclaimed Mr. Löwenfeld.
"Wait till you've been on the Great White Way after dark. _Then_ I
guess you won't make any mistake."
"Is it so wonderful?" she asked.
"I should smile! There's nothing like it on earth. Would you like to
walk out and see it to-night? Miss Secker and I'll take you, if you
would, won't we, Miss Secker?"
"Only too pleased," rather shrilly replied a fair-haired girl on his
other side--a pretty girl in eyeglasses who, Miss Hampshire had
announced, was "translating secretary" for a firm of toy importers.
Somehow the tone suggested to Win an incipient engagement of marriage
and jealousy of new importations.
But Mr. Löwenfeld had spoken no more than the truth. Broadway at
night, seen as a pedestrian at the side of Miss Secker, was
astonishing, was marvellous, was unique. The whole sky was alight and
pulsing with its magnificence. Twenty moons would not have been
noticed. Everything that could happen was happening by electricity. It
was Crystal Palace Fireworks, and the Lord Mayor's Show, and
Coronation, and Mafeking, and naval manoeuvres with searchlights, all
flashing and flaming, blazing and gyrating at the same time. Broadway
gleamed white as the north pole, jewelled with rainbow colours,
amazing rubies, emeralds, topazes, grouped in letters or forming
pictures on invisible frames rising high above tall buildings or
appearing on their façades.
Green sea waves billowed brightly, a giant cat winked golden eyes, two
brilliant boxers fought an endless round, a dazzling girl put on and
took off illuminated gloves; a darky's head, as big as a balloon, ate
a special brand of pickled melon; a blue umbrella opened and shut; a
great gilded basket dropped ruby roses (Buy them at Perrin Frères); a
Japanese Geisha, twice life-size, told you where to get kimonos; a
trout larger than a whale appeared and disappeared on a patent hook;
and above all, brighter than all, rose against the paling sky from
somewhere behind Broadway a pair of titanic hands.
These hands fascinated Win. They beckoned her gaze and held it. Slowly
they came up and drew attention to themselves, silently filching it
from Broadway's emblems of business success. The stranger in New York
stopped involuntarily as if hypnotized, watching for the ten colossal
outspread fingers to materialize on their unseen frames; to become
hands, with wrists and upraised arms; and then to drop out of sight,
like the last appeal for help of a drowning Atlas who had lost his
grip on the globe.
Yet this immense, arresting gesture was never the last. Three seconds
gone, then blazing back again, came fingers, hands, wrists, arms. And
on every one of the ten fingers (including thumbs) flashed a huge
ring, each different from the other in colour and design. Each ring
was adorned with a jewelled letter, and as the hands reached toward
the zenith the colour of the rings changed rapidly twice. It was
impossible to remove the eyes from this sign until the gesture pageant
had completed itself. To the lost dryad New York seemed dominated by
Peter Rolls's Hands.