THE PINCH OF NECESSITY
By Friday of the week of her arrival in Beaconhite, Cis found herself
a burden on her own hands. Five days of what had become compulsory
idleness and pursuit of pleasure, were too many for the nerves of
active Cis Adair, trained by her lifelong habit into ways of industry.
Beaconhite did not offer enthralling pleasure to dwellers on its
surface. There were theatres, one principal one, two insignificant
ones, a vaudeville house, but even to the best of these, first-class
companies did not come; this week the third-class company which
was giving a metropolitan success for six nights and a matinée in
Beaconhite, had already been seen by Cis when they were doing the
same thing in her native city. There were “movies,” but Cis happened
to be one of those persons to whom silent drama is annoying; she
wanted the spoken line, and disliked the necessary exaggeration of
the pictures. She went one night to see again the play which she had
already seen, and another night to the moving pictures; here she found
a film showing, which she had seen twice before, and this, added to her
dislike for this form of entertainment, sent her back to her hotel in a
bad temper.
She had hoped to hear from Mr. Wilmer Lucas by this time, founding the
hope upon his suggestion that he might communicate with her before
Saturday, but no word came from him.
“Looking up my record at home, maybe, though Mr. Robert Lucas’ letter
ought to be enough for him,” thought Cis. “Goodness, if he shouldn’t
take me at all! I’ll be dippy if I hang around after Monday; all I can
do to hold out till then! If I don’t get into Mr. Lucas’ office, I’ll
have to take a job at anything, good or bad; I’ll kick the stall out if
I’m left standing any longer. Besides, I can’t stay on at $5.00 per,
at the Beacon Head longer than that; $35.00 is my limit to spend on
loafing--and I haven’t had my money’s worth so far!”
Cis realized, as she had not done, how much she had depended upon
companionship. She had earned her living among girls, some of whom she
had liked, some disliked, to the great majority of whom she had been
indifferent; but they were quick-witted, full of life and spirits;
“they kept things moving,” Cis told herself, and the days spent without
anyone to speak to except a hotel clerk, a chambermaid, waiter and bell
boy, grew oppressive.
Cis tried to talk to some of the attractive girls who were always to
be met in the lobby, the elevator, in the dining room, but all of them
froze up when she made advances to them; all but one replied to her
small talk, but replied so forbiddingly that Cis did not persist.
“Afraid I may be the wrong sort and that it’ll come off!” thought Cis.
“Idiots! How do you ever get anywhere in this world if you tote a shell
around, like a snail? Miss a lot if you don’t try people out first,
and freeze up afterward, provided you find them the kind that needs
dropping! I wanted to jar poor Mrs. Dowling when I said what I did
about picking up boy acquaintances, but it’s the truth, nevertheless.
I’m going to look around for a nice fellow and try him out, see if he
won’t be bold enough to risk a decent answer. I’ve got to get someone
started, that’s sure! This hotel and town are getting to feel like a
diving bell, ’way down below human noises.”
With deliberate intention to carry out her plan, purvey to her need,
Cis scanned the male portion of her fellow-guests in the hotel for the
rest of that day and evening, but none measured up to her requirement.
They were a lot of average young Americans, but the frank face, the
businesslike air, the quality of manliness that conveyed the ability to
understand and meet her like a fellow-being, not like a girl seeking
attentions, seemed to Cis wanting to them all.
She went to bed lonely and discouraged, somewhat inclined to tears,
but so healthy-minded that she quickly fell asleep instead of crying.
Her last waking thought was that if Beaconhite showed her no jolly,
sensible girls, no friendly, chummy boys, it was no place for Cis
Adair, and that she might move on by Monday, Mr. Lucas or no Mr. Lucas.
Friday morning found Cis refreshed and ready to postpone her decision
to move on, also quite sure that before the day was over she should
hear from Mr. Lucas that he was ready to test her in the highly
honorable position of his confidential clerk. Therefore her merry face
was as bright as ever when she had finished her toilette and came down
to breakfast like a sun maiden, all in white, her red hair gloriously
shining above her snowy raiment.
Two young men breakfasting together looked smilingly up at Cis as she
passed their table, unmistakably ready to leap out into acquaintances
at the least sign of welcome from her; indeed one of them slightly
pushed out the chair next to him, leaning forward with an ingratiating
smile. Cis knew the type and “had no time for it,” she would have said.
“Call themselves men!” Cis once had exclaimed to Nan.
After her solitary breakfast, which she enjoyed as a hungry girl
should, Cis turned her mind upon the problem of how to dispose of that
day; she found it insoluble. “May as well take a trolley and ride till
it stops, but of all stupid things, sliding along past a lot of houses
is the worst! Wish I had my bunch of little newsys here! Wonder if they
miss me badly, poor little scraps! I made Tom Dowling promise he’d do
something for them.”
Cis left the dining room and went to the desk. Here she found two
letters in the pigeonhole that bore the number of her room, but neither
was from Mr. Lucas, as she had been sure one must be. There was a
brief note from Jeanette Lucas in reply to one which Cis had written
her, telling her that she had seen her uncle and that he held out hope
of a position for her. Miss Lucas said nothing of herself beyond that
she was to sail for Europe the following week. She wrote to Cis with
much more than the politeness of a slight acquaintance; the short
note breathed warmth of feeling for Cis, and a personal sadness that
depressed Cis, though she could not have said wherein it lay.
The other letter was a long one from Nan, full of love and longing for
Cis, and all the trivial news of the office, her home, their common
acquaintances, which are such important items to an exile, just because
they are so homely and unimportant. Cis folded this letter and slipped
it into her pocket with homesick heaviness of heart that surprised her.
“Of course there’s nothing to prevent me from going back if I want to,”
she reminded herself.
Deciding against the trolley trip, Cis arose from the leather seat
upon which she had been sitting, and began to stroll up and down the
lobby, and down its adjacent corridors, returning on her beat. One of
the corridors had shop-like rooms up and down its length, rented for
various sorts of business--a little toy shop, candy shop, book shop,
flower shop, a shop for fancy work materials, all sorts of attractive
things offered for sale; while a manicure, a chiropodist, a barber and
a bootblack were lodged there, in their respective rooms, to minister
to the personal comfort of the patrons of the hotel, and people from
beyond its walls.
The bootblack’s establishment especially attracted Cis’s eye; it was
the apotheosis of the elevated chair and foot rest and the active
little Italian ministrant, to be found on street corners. Here were
several chairs, better said, thrones; the walls were panelled in
attractive colors; there were hangings of deep yellow, framing the
casement of the door and one window at the rear; a table, with papers
and magazines upon it, in its centre a well-shaped vase holding two
perfect yellow roses.
Cis looked into this palace of charity to wayworn shoes, admiring its
perfection. There were two or three assistants at work on as many
customers, and there were two other customers waiting to have their
shoes polished. In a chair unmistakably comfortable sat one of these
waiting customers; he was reading a magazine. As Cis loitered, looking
in at the open door from the hotel corridor, this customer turned over
his magazine, which he held doubled over for convenience in reading it,
and his eyes met Cis’s eyes.
He was exceedingly good looking, dark haired, blue eyed, fresh tinted,
with well-cut features, but it was not for his good looks that Cis
instantly decided that here was the person for whom she had been
seeking. It was rather for an indescribable air of man of the world
about him; the ease of his excellent clothes and their manner of
wearing; his steady, unembarrassed gaze, that did not intrude upon
her, yet seemed to take Cis in as to her every detail, to approve her
and like her, be ready to meet her friendliness on its own ground; “be
a human being,” Cis would have summed it up. But there was no denying
that this young man possessed decided good looks and instant charm
which were not a necessary part of the qualifications upon which Cis
had insisted as a part of the outfit of the person whom she should
adopt as the one who should make her wilderness blossom with comradery.
Cis Adair had never hesitated to take anything that she wanted, nor,
if it did not come after her, to go out after it. She had never wanted
anything that was forbidden by the highest, nor the lower laws, but
she invariably reached out after what she wanted. Now she glanced down
at her shoes, which were shapely, fine as to leather, and which she
decided were enough in need of polishing to warrant her treating them
to it. She entered the attractive shop.
The customers happened at that moment to be all men, but Cis had no
shyness with men; she was nearer to shy with women. She came in without
embarrassment, though every eye turned on her. The young man who had
innocently trolled her hither at once got upon his feet; the other
waiting customer did not move.
“This is the most comfortable chair,” he said, indicating the one
which he had just vacated for Cis. “Please take it; I’ll sit here.”
He dropped into the chair next beyond his former one, which Cis took
with a hearty “Thank you,” and a bright smile. His voice was quite
beautiful, soft, rich, mellow, caressing, like a musical cadence, as he
spoke these few words.
“I never saw a bootblacking place like this,” Cis commented.
“No. There can’t be many as nice. There’s one in Chicago that--well, we
won’t say it is better, because we ought to be loyal to our own city,
but it’s by way of peachiness,” said the young man, and his smile was
as gay and bright as Cis’s own, and it revealed two dimples to her one.
“I don’t have to be loyal to Beaconhite,” said Cis. “I’m a stranger,
staying in this hotel, but I don’t mind sticking up for its bootblack.”
“I fancy you’d be good at sticking up for anything that you felt
belonged to you,” said the young man, and Cis suddenly perceived
that he was not as young a man as she had at first thought him. His
brilliant coloring, his grace and charm gave him the effect of greater
youth than was his. Cis decided that he was well on in his twenties, if
not just beyond them, and this somewhat checked her readiness to take
him on in the capacity of good fellowship. Yet this was silly, she told
herself; a good fellow was one at any age. What did it matter if this
one were anywhere from five to ten years her senior?
“You aren’t a Beaconhitette then?” he went on. “That’s hard luck. Now
I am. I wasn’t always; came here last year, in fact, but I’m living
here, and may go on living here, till I cease living altogether. You’re
a jolly girl; you ought to stay.”
His eyes were keen on Cis’s face, handsome eyes, softly blue, somewhat
veiled by dark lashes, yet seeing eyes that could be keen as they now
were, studying this singular girl who was so ready to talk, yet did not
strike him as bold, but rather as maidenly. “Boyish sort, I think, but
you never can be sure of them at first,” thought the man.
“I may stay on,” Cis was answering meanwhile. “I came to stay, if
things worked out; got tired of the place where I’d always lived,
and jumped off. I’ve a letter to Mr. Lucas, here, and he may have a
position for me by Monday.”
“You’re one of the independent army, then?” asked the young man. “Well,
you don’t look like a pampered, spoiled one! (This partly explains
her”) he thought. “Do you mean Wilmer Lucas? Dear me! Your letter was
addressed high up in the line of this town; Wilmer Lucas is _the_ big
man of Beaconhite!”
“That’s the way he struck me,” agreed Cis. “There’s a chair vacant for
you.”
“Certainly not; you take it,” protested the young man.
“Not a bit of it! You were here first; I’m not one of the sort that
wants to grab privilege, because I’m a girl. I’m in the world like a
man, and I like give and take; straight play. Besides, I’m just killing
time; I’ve nowhere to go, nothing to do till I get my position--if I
do!” said Cis.
The young man glanced down at Cis’s shoes, which were not badly in need
of polishing. He was far too attractive not to have known long ago that
women liked to talk to him, admired his face and manner. Had this girl
come in because she saw him, and wanted to make the acquaintance of
so personable a young man? She had said that she was killing time. He
speculated upon Cis while he took the chair which she refused, and the
attendant treated his shoes, which sadly needed it.
The next chair vacated was Cis’s in justice; the other man who had been
waiting a turn had preceded Cis’s acquaintance; his shoes had been
attended to and he had quickly gone out.
Cis mounted her chair, and another attendant dressed and polished her
shoes, which her neighbor and acquaintance viewed with approval.
He was through before Cis, but he lingered; in an instant, after
hesitating, he turned to her, and said:
“You are merely killing time, and I’ve nothing on this morning; I’m
going to wait for you.”
“That’s nice of you!” cried Cis heartily. “I hoped you would. It’s
pretty punk being alone, a stranger in a strange land.”
She paid her charge, dismounted, and went out into the hotel corridor,
followed by her new acquaintance, still somewhat uncertain how to take
Cis, but considerably helped in an accurate estimate of her by the
boyish frankness with which she had acknowledged hoping that he would
wait for her.
“How about going into the tea room and fitting on our labels?”
suggested the young man. “There’s not likely to be anyone there at this
hour, and I feel it in my bones that we’ve not met just to part, so we
ought to waste no time in learning whom we’ve met, each of us. Names
matter less; they’re only labels, but I’d like to have you tell me all
about yourself. You’re not like most girls.”
“All right; tea room is all right,” assented Cis. “It won’t take me
long to tell you about Cecily Adair; she’s _just_ like other girls!”
“That’s never your name! Why it’s a song!” cried the young man.
“Mine, though!” laughed Cis. “I’m called Cis. Haven’t you a name;
chorus or hymn, if mine’s a song?”
“Yes, but it’s just a name, nothing in the musical line. Hope you don’t
mind names parted in the middle? My name is George Rodney Moore, but I
use the middle name, sign G. Rodney, you know,” said the young man, and
he looked as if he really hoped that Cis would not disapprove his name.
“Gee! Rodney!” cried Cis, but quickly added, as if she feared to hurt
him by what was not ridicule, but unavoidable nonsense:
“Rodney is a fine name; I like it. I don’t blame you for shedding the
George, and using it. I suppose I’d drop George altogether, and keep
only Rodney, but you can do that later, if you want to. Oh, do you like
stuffy tea rooms? Why not go out into the air--that is, if you really
want to lighten my gloom?”
“It’s the other way about, Miss Adair. I should like being out on
this fine day, but you surely have been taught by this time that you
are sent into the world to lighten the gloom of any man whom you will
tolerate,” G. Rodney Moore said experimentally.
They had turned toward the side entrance of the hotel; in the doorway
Cis stopped short.
“See here, none of that; cut it out, if you please,” she said. “I like
boys, but I don’t like them one bit when they forget I’m not one, and
you wouldn’t say that sort of thing to a boy, now would you?”
“No, I’m free to confess that I would not!” cried Moore, and he
chuckled. “All right, old chap, you’re the kind that makes it jolly for
a pal--better?”
“Heaps!” said Cis, and laughed. “You lead; you know the country and I
don’t.”
“Like to walk? Because I know a nice place, but it’s fairly far, and
taxis grow in this soil, if you’ll have one,” suggested Moore.
“I’m a walker; I’ll risk the distance,” replied Cis, and they started
out.
Three miles from the Beacon Head they came into a pretty glade, wooded,
suggestive at a glance of song birds and flowers. Here they seated
themselves, Cis on a bank, G. Rodney Moore just below her. All the
way there they had talked, Cis with her customary frankness, till, on
their arrival, Moore had justly decided that she was exactly what she
seemed and announced herself to be; a single-minded, honest girl, of
extraordinary directness and simplicity; lonely, wanting comradeship,
not hesitating to take it where she should find it, with confidence
that she would find understanding where she found congeniality, and
without the smallest shade of coquetry, or of hidden purpose.
“Mighty odd, quite unique, but the gods were good to me when they let
her decide that I’d answer for a stop-gap till she got acquainted in
Beaconhite. Never saw her equal! It will be my own fault if I let her
drift away from me, and I won’t!” he told himself, listening to Cis’s
merry talk, watching her changing face, all gay laughter and wholesome
sweetness, its red hair framing it in an aureole, wind-made.
Cis told Rodney all about herself; he told her some things about
himself. They were friends at the end of the little excursion, “pals,”
Cis liked to call it, finding this “pal” more delightful than any other
she had known; clever, humorous, charming. She did not hesitate to
speak of this charm.
“I didn’t know anyone but a girl had your kind of fun; boys don’t
usually know how to play your way,” Cis cried delightedly. “You’re lots
of fun, and you’re really as nice as you can be!”
“I’m not a boy, Cicely,” Rodney replied, a trifle sadly--they were
Cicely and Rodney by this time. “I don’t suppose I played this way when
I was a boy, but I had the material in me and experience cultivated it.
Glad you like me, jolly Cicely.”
“Yes, I do. It was luck that made me find you to-day; I knew luck was
running my way when I came to Beaconhite! Aren’t you a boy, quite
young, anyway? You haven’t told me that,” said Cis.
“I’m thirty, shall be thirty-one next spring, and that’s beyond
boyhood. Why do you lay such stress on boyhood, my dear? Neither it,
nor girlhood lasts,” he said.
“I shall be twenty-two on Christmas Day,” said Cis slowly. “I don’t
know why, but I belong with boys; I don’t belong with grown men.”
“Only with this grown man. We’re friends, and dates don’t alter it,”
he said quickly. “Were you born on Christmas Day? What a sell! Shame,
Pal-Cicely.”
“Shame? Why is it? I always liked it a lot; nice day to be born on,
seems to me,” cried Cis. “The whole world glad on your birthday,
and----” she checked herself.
“Does you out of a separate _festa_, and additional gifts,” said
Rodney. “But your magnificent hair would serve for Christmas
decorations; I never saw such hair, Cicely! I’m going to call you
Holly; do you mind?”
“Not I!” Cis laughed delightedly. “It isn’t that kind of red, but it’s
pretty flaring.”
“It is glorious; copper, gold and pure flame! Wouldn’t Titian have had
a fit over it! Holly, I hate to say it, but if we’re to lunch, we’ve
got to be getting back to it,” suggested Rodney.
“I am hungry,” agreed Cis. “I’ve had a fine morning; much obliged.
You’ve no idea how lonely I was beginning to feel, and the girls I
tried to creep up toward poked me off with icy finger tips, wouldn’t
stoop to use a whole palm! Are you going to introduce me to some nice
girls?”
“Want another pal already?” Rodney said reproachfully.
“Oh, no; you’re all-around satisfactory, but I do want to know girls,
too. Please let me know your nicest friends,” begged Cis, laughing, but
in earnest.
Rodney considered. Rapidly he passed in mental review the girls whom he
knew; society girls, young matrons, some of other rank. None to whom he
could compare this dewy, sweet, merry, daring, innocent Cicely, none
with whom he could think of her in combination.
“I’ll look some up, Cicely,” he said. “I had a sister, but she has been
gone these many years, and would have been too old for you; older than
I am. We’re all right as we are for the time being, aren’t we?”
“Happy as clams!” cried Cis. “Now if I get my position, with a pal in
town, and a place like that--how about it?”
“Nifty!” cried Rodney. “Will you go to a show with me to-night? I know
of private theatricals for a charity, and they won’t be half-bad. Will
you go, dear young pal of mine?” He sang the refrain of the song, one
word appropriately altered.
“Yes, but Dutch treat!” cried Cis, and as he was about to expostulate,
she added: “Or not at all. If I’m to be a real pal, then I stand on my
own, just as real pals do and should. Dutch treat? Say yes, and I’ll
say yes, with pleasure.”
“Yes, then, but you’re a girl all right; girls insist on their own
way,” grumbled Rodney.
Cis laughed, and threw her hat into the air, catching it deftly.
“Best of both parts, the girl’s and the boy’s, that’s what this Cis
Adair is out for, and independence comes both ways,” she triumphed.