"I'm Luke Shelby."
"Luke Shelby! Oh yes! Why, how do you do?" She gave him her beautiful
hand, but she evidently lacked the faintest inkling of his identity.
Time had erased from recollection the boy who used to take her sliding
on his sled, the boy who used to put on her skates for her, the boy who
used to take her home on his grocery-wagon sometimes, pretending that he
was going her way, just for the benizon of her radiant companionship,
her shy laughter.
"I used to live here," he said, ashamed to be so forgettable. "My mother
was--my stepfather was A. J. Stacom, who kept the hardware-store."
"Oh yes," she said; "they moved away some years ago, didn't they?"
"Yes; after mother died my stepfather went back to Council Bluffs, where
we came from in the first place. I used to go to school with you,
Phoebe--er--Miss Carew. Then I drove Spate's delivery-wagon for a
while before I went East."
"Oh yes," she said; "I think I remember you very well. I'm very glad to
see you again, Mr.--Mr. Stacom."
"Shelby," he said, and he was so heartsick that he merely lifted his hat
and added, "I'm glad to see you looking so well."
"You're looking well, too," she said, and smiled the gracious, empty
smile one visits on a polite stranger. Then she went her way. In his
lonely eyes she moved with a goddess-like grace that made clouds of the
uneven pavements where he stumbled as he walked with reverted gaze.
He went back to the hotel lonelier than before, in a greater loneliness
than Ulysses felt ending his Odyssey in Ithaca. For, at least, Ulysses
was remembered by an old dog that licked his hand.
Once in his room, Shelby sank into a patent rocker of most uncomfortable
plush. The inhospitable garishness of a small-town hotel's luxury
expelled him from the hateful place, and he resumed the streets, taking,
as always, determination from rebuff and vowing within himself:
"I'll make 'em remember me. I'll make the name of Shelby the biggest
name in town."
On the main street he found one lone, bobtailed street-car waiting at
the end of its line, its horse dejected with the ennui of its career,
the driver dozing on the step.
Shelby decided to review the town from this seedy chariot; but the
driver, surly with sleep, opened one eye and one corner of his mouth
just enough to inform him that the next "run" was not due for fifteen
minutes.
"I'll change that," said Shelby. "I'll give 'em a trolley, and open cars
in summer, too."
He dragged his discouraged feet back to the hotel and asked when dinner
would be served.
"Supper's been ready sence six," said the clerk, whose agile toothpick
proclaimed that he himself had banqueted.
Shelby went into the dining-room. A haughty head waitress, zealously
chewing gum, ignored him for a time, then piloted him to a table where
he found a party of doleful drummers sparring in repartee with a damsel
of fearful and wonderful coiffure.
She detached herself reluctantly and eventually brought Shelby a supper
contained in a myriad of tiny barges with which she surrounded his plate
in a far-reaching flotilla.
When he complained that his steak was mostly gristle, and that he did
not want his pie yet, Hebe answered:
"Don't get flip! Think you're at the Worldoff?"
Poor Shelby's nerves were so rocked that he condescended to complain to
the clerk. For answer he got this:
"Mamie's all right. If you don't like our ways, better build a hotel of
your own."
"I guess I will," said Shelby.
He went to his room to read. The gas was no more than darkness made
visible. He vowed to change that, too.
He would telephone to the theater. The telephone-girl was forever in
answering, and then she was impudent. Besides, the theater was closed.
Shelby learned that there was "a movin'-pitcher show going"! He went,
and it moved him to the door.
The sidewalks were full of doleful loafers and loaferesses. Men placed
their chairs in the street and smoked heinous tobacco. Girls and women
dawdled and jostled to and from the ice-cream-soda fountains.
The streets that night were not lighted at all, for the moon was abroad,
and the board of aldermen believed in letting God do all He could for
the town. In fact, He did nearly all that the town could show of charm.
The trees were majestic, the grass was lavishly spread, the sky was
divinely blue by day and angelically bestarred at night.
Shelby compared his boyhood impressions with the feelings governing his
mind now that it was adult and traveled. He felt that he had grown, but
that the town had stuck in the mire. He felt an ambition to lift it and
enlighten it. Like the old builder who found Rome brick and left it
marble, Shelby determined that the Wakefield which he found of plank he
should leave at least of limestone. Everything he saw displeased him and
urged him to reform it altogether, and he said:
"I'll change all this. And they'll love me for it."
And he did. But they--did they?