Steve was angry.
You could see that from the way he strode up and down the platform of
the covered railroad station, talking to himself in staccato explosives,
like an automobile getting under way. Steve had lost his sample trunk;
and a drummer without his trunk is as helpless as a lone fisherman
without bait.
Outside, a snow-storm was working itself up into a blizzard; cuts level
with the fences, short curves choked with drifts, flat stretches bare of
a flake. Inside, a panting locomotive crawled ahead of two Pullmans and
a baggage--a Special from Detroit to Kalamazoo, six hours late, loaded
with comic-opera people, their baggage, properties--and Steve's lost
trunk.
When the train pulled up opposite to where Steve stood, the engine
looked like a snow-plough that had burrowed through a drift.
Steve moved down to the step of the first Pullman, his absorbing eye
taking in the train, the fragments of the drift, and the noses of the
chorus girls pressed flat against the frosted panes. The conductor was
now on the platform, crunching a tissue telegram which the
station-master had just handed him. He had stopped for orders and for a
wider breathing space, where he could get out into the open and stretch
his arms, and become personal and perhaps profane without wounding the
feelings of his passengers.
Steve stepped up beside him and showed him an open telegram.
"Yes, your trunk's aboard all right," replied the conductor, "but I
couldn't find it in a week. A lot of scenery and ladders and truck all
piled in. I am sorry, but I wouldn't----"
"What you 'wouldn't,' my sweet Aleck, don't interest me," exploded
Steve. "You get a couple of porters and go through that stuff and find
my trunk, or I'll wire the main office that----"
"See here, young feller. Don't get gay. Hit that gourd of yours another
crack and maybe you'll knock some sense into it. We're six hours late,
ain't we? We got three hours to make Kalamazoo in, ain't we? This show's
got to get there on time, or there'll be H to pay and no pitch hot. Now
go outside and stand in a door somewheres and let the wind blow through
you. I'll wire you in the morning, or you can take the 5.40 and pick
your trunk up at Kalamazoo.--Let her go, Johnny"--this to the
engine-driver. "All aboard!"
Steve jerked a cigar from his waistcoat pocket, cut off the end, and
said, with a bite-in-two-ten-penny-nail expression about his lips:
"Steve, you're 'it.' I'll git that trunk at Kalamazoo."
Then he crossed the platform, made his way to the street entrance, and
stepped into the omnibus of the only hotel in the town.
When the swinging sign of the Two-dollar House, blurred in the whirl of
the storm, hove in sight, Steve's face was still knotted in wrinkles. He
had a customer in this town good for three hundred dozen table cutlery,
and but for "this gang of cross-tie steppers," he said to himself, he
would.... Here the hind heels of the 'bus hit the curb, cutting short
Steve's anathema.
The drummer picked up his grip and made his way to the desk.
"What's the matter, Stevey?" asked Larry, the clerk. "You look sour."
"Sour? I am a green pickle, Larry, that's what I am--a green pickle.
Been waiting five hours for my trunk in that oriental palm garden of
yours you call a station. It was aboard a Special loaded with chorus
girls and props. Conductor wouldn't dump it, and now it's gone on to
Kalamazoo and----"
"Oh, but you'll get it all right. All you've got to do, Steve, is
to----"
"Get it! Yes, when the daisies are blooming over us. I want it _now_,
Larry. Whenever I run up against anything solid it's always one of these
fly-by-nights. What do you think of going upstairs in the dark and
hauling out a red silk hat and a pair of gilt slippers, instead of a
sample card of carvers? Well, that's what a guy did for me last fall
down at Logansport. Sent me two burial caskets full of chorus-girl props
instead of my trunk. Oh, yes, I'll _get_ it--get it in the neck. Here,
send this grip to my room."
The clerk pursed his lips and looked over his key-rack. He knew that he
had no room--none that would suit Stephen Dodd--had known it when he saw
him entering the door, the snow covering his hat and shoulders, his grip
in his hands.
"Going to stay all night with us, Stephen?" Larry asked.
"Sure! What do you think I'm here for? Blowing and snowing outside fit
to beat the band. What do you want me to do--bunk in the station?"
"H'm, h'm," muttered the clerk, studying the key-rack and name-board as
if they were plans of an enemy's country.
Steve looked up. When a clerk began to say "H'm," Steve knew something
was wrong.
"Full?"
"Well, not exactly full, Steve, but--h'm--we've got the 'Joe Gridley
Combination' with us overnight, and about everything----"
"Go on--go on--what'd I tell you? Up ag'in these fly-by-nights as
usual!" blurted out Steve.
The clerk raised his hand deprecatingly.
"Sorry, old man. Put you on the top floor with some of the troupe--good
rooms, of course, but not what I like to give you. Leading lady's got
your room, and the manager's got the one you sometimes have over the
extension. It'll only be for to-night. They're going away in the
morning, and I----"
"Cut it out--cut it out--and forget it," interrupted Steve. "So am I
going away in the morning. Got to take the 5.40 and hunt up that trunk.
Can't do a thing without it. Only waltzed in here to get something to
eat and a bed. Be back later. Put me anywhere. This week's hoodooed, and
these show guys are doing it. You want a guardian, Stephen--a gentle,
mild-eyed little guardian. That's what you want."
The clerk rang a gong that sounded like a fire-alarm and the porter came
in on a run.
"Take Mr. Dodd's grip and show him up to Number 11."
On the way upstairs Steve's quick eye caught the flare of a play-bill
tacked to one wall.
"What is it?" he asked of the porter, pointing to the poster--"an 'East
Lynne' or a 'Mother's Curse'?"
"No--one o' them mix-ups, I guess. Song and dance stunts. Number 11, did
Larry say? There ye are--key's in the lock." And the porter pushed open
the door of the room with his foot, dropped Steve's bag on the pine
table, turned up the gas--the twilight was coming on--asked if there was
"anything more"--found there wasn't--not even a dime--and left Steve in
possession.
"'Bout as big as a coffin, and as cold," grumbled Steve, looking around
the room. "No steam-heat--one pillow and"--here he punched the bed--"one
blanket, and thin at that--the bed hard as a--Well, if this don't take
the cake! If this burg don't get a hotel soon I'll cut it out of my
territory."
Steve washed his hands; wiped them on a 14x20 towel; hung it flat, that
it might dry and be useful in the morning, gave his hair a slick with
his comb, scooped up a dozen cigars from a paper box, stuffed them in
his outside pocket, relocked his grip, and retraced his steps
downstairs.
When he reached the play-bill again he stopped for particulars.
Condensed and pruned of inflammatory adjectives, the gay-colored
document conveyed the information that the "Joe Gridley Combination"
would play for this one night, performance beginning at 8 P.M., sharp.
Molly Martin and Jessie Hannibal would dance, Jerry Gobo, the clown,
would dislocate the ribs of the audience by his mirth-provoking sallies,
and Miss Pearl Rogers of International, etc., etc., would charm them by
her up-to-date delineations of genteel society. Then followed a list of
the lesser lights, including chorus girls, clog dancers, and acrobats.
The porter was now shaking the red-hot stove with a cast-iron crank the
size and shape of a burglar's jimmy, the ashes falling on a square of
zinc protecting the uncarpeted floor. Steve recognized the noise, and
looking down over the hand-rail called out, pointing to the poster:
"How far's this shebang?"
"'Bout a block."
"That settles it," said Steve to himself in the only contented tone of
voice he had used since he entered the hotel. "I'll take this in." And
continuing on downstairs, he dropped into a chair, completing the circle
around the dispenser of comfort.
The business of the hotel went on. Trains arrived and were met by the
lumbering stage, the passengers landing in the snow on the
sidewalk--some for supper, one or two for rooms.
Supper was announced by a tight-laced blonde in white muslin, all hips
and shoulders, throwing open the dining-room and mounting guard at the
entrance, her face illumined by that knock-a-chip-off-my-shoulder
expression common to her class.
Instantly, and with a simultaneous scraping of chair legs, the segments
of the circle around the stove flung themselves into the narrow
passageway.
Soon the racks were spotted with hats, their owners being drawn up in
fours around the several tables--Steve one of them--the waiter-ladies
serving with a sweetness of smile and elegance of manner found nowhere
outside of a royal court, accompanied by a dignity of pose made all the
more distinguished by a certain inward scoop of the back and
instantaneous outward bulge below the waist line seen only in wax
figures flanking a cloak counter.
Steve had a steak, liver and bacon, apple pie, a cup of coffee, and a
toothpick--all in ten minutes. Then he resumed his place by the stove,
lit a cigar, and kept his eye on the clock.
Three hours later Steve was again in his chair by the stove. He had been
to the show and had sat through two hours of the performance. If his
expression had savored of vinegar over the loss of his sample trunks, it
was now double-proof vitriol!
"Thought you was goin' to the show," grunted the porter between his
jerks at the handle; he was again at the stove, the thermometer marking
zero outside.
"Been. Regular frost; buncoed out of fifty cents! That show is the
limit! A couple of skinny-legged girls doing a clog stunt; a bag of
bones in a low-necked dress playing Mrs. Langtry; and a wall-eyed clown
that looked like a grave-digger. Rotten--worst I ever saw!"
"Full house?"
"Full of empties. 'Bout fifty people, I guess, counting deadheads--and
ME."
Steve accentuated this last word as if his fifty cents had been the only
real income of the house.
The outer door now opened, letting in a section of the north pole and a
cough.
Steve twisted around in his chair and recognized Jerry Gobo, the clown.
His grease paint was gone, but his haggard features and the graveyard
hack settled his identity.
Jerry loosened the collar of his frayed, almost threadbare coat,
approached the stove slowly, and stretching out one blue, emaciated
hand, warmed it for an instant at its open door--in an apologetic
way--as if the warming of one hand was all that he was entitled to.
Steve absorbed him at a glance. He saw that his neck was thin,
especially behind the ears, the cords of the throat showing; his cheeks
sunken; the sad, kindly eyes peering out at him furtively from under
bushy eyebrows, bright and glassy; his knees, too, seemed unsteady. As
he stood warming his chilled fingers, his hand and arm extended toward
the heat, his body drawn back, Steve got the impression of a boy
reaching out for an apple, and ready to cut and run at the first alarm.
"Kind o' chilly," the clown ventured, in a voice that came from
somewhere below his collar-button.
"Yes," said Steve gruffly. He didn't intend to start any conversation.
He knew these fellows. One had done him out of eleven dollars in a
ten-cent game up at Logansport the winter before. That particular galoot
didn't have a cough, but he would have had if he could have doubled his
winnings by it.
Jerry, rebuffed by Steve's curt reply, brought up the other hand,
toasted it for an instant at the kindly blaze, rubbed the two sets of
bony knuckles together, and remarking--this time to himself--that he
"guessed he'd turn in," walked slowly to the foot of the stairs and
began ascending the long flight, his progress up one wall and half
around the next marked by his fingers sliding along the hand-rail. Steve
noticed that the bunched knuckles stopped at the first landing (it was
all that he could see from where he sat), and after a spell of coughing
slid slowly on around the court.
The drummer bit off the end of a fresh cigar; scraped a match on the
under side of his chair seat; lit the domestic, and said with his first
puff of smoke, his mind still on the emaciated form of the clown:
"Kindlin' wood for a new crematory."
Again the outer door swung open.
This time the Walking Lady entered, accompanied by the Business Agent.
She wore a long brown cloak that came to her feet and a stringy fur
tippet, her head and face covered by a hat concealed in a thick blue
veil. This last she unwound inside the hall, and seeing Steve
monopolizing the stove, began the ascent of the stairs, one step at a
time, as if she was tired out.
Steve turned his face away. The bag of bones looked worse than ever.
"'Bout fifty in the shade, I should think," he said to himself. "Ought
to be taking in washing and ironing." Meantime Mathews, the Business
Agent, was occupied with the clerk--Larry had presented him with a bill.
The rates, the agent pleaded, were to be a dollar-sixty. Larry insisted
on two dollars. Steve pricked up his ears; this interested him. If Larry
wanted any backing as to the price he was within call. This information
he conveyed to Larry by lifting his chin and slowly closing his left
eye.
The outer door continued its vibrations with the rapidity of its
green-baize namesake leading from the dining-room to the kitchen,
ushering in some member of the troupe with every swing, including an
elderly woman who had played the Duchess in the first act and a fishwife
in the second; some young men with their hats over their noses, and four
or five chorus girls. The men looked around for the index hand showing
the location of the bar, and the girls, after a fit of giggling, began
the ascent of the stairs to their rooms. Steve noticed that two of them
continued on to the third floor, where Jerry Gobo, the clown, had gone,
and where he himself was to sleep. One of the girls looked down at him
as she turned the corner of the stairs and nudged her companion--all of
which was lost on the drummer. They had probably recognized him in the
audience.
[Illustration: Some young men ... and four or five chorus girls.]
Nothing, however, in their present make-up could have recalled them to
Steve's memory. Molly Martin had exchanged her green silk tights and
gauze wings for a red flannel shirt-waist, a black leather belt, blue
skirt, and cat-skin jacket. And Jessie Hannibal had shed her frou-frou
frills and was buttoned to her red ears in a long gray ulster that
reached down to her active little feet, now muffled in a pair of
galoshes.
The dispute over the bill at an end, the Business Agent fished up a roll
from one pocket and a handful of silver and copper coins from the other,
counted out the exact amount, waited until the clerk marked a cross
against his room number, calling him at seven o'clock A.M., tucked the
receipt in his inside pocket, and began the weary ascent.
Steve shook himself free from the chair. This was about his hour. Rising
to his legs, he elongated one side of his round body with his pudgy
arm, and then the other, yawned sleepily, tipped his hat farther over
his eyebrows, called to Larry to be sure and put him down for the 5.40,
and mounted the stairs to his room. If he had had any doubts as to the
fraudulent character of the whole "shooting match," his chance
inspection of the caste had removed them.
On entering his room Steve made several discoveries, no one of which
relieved his gloom or sweetened the acidity of his mind.
First, that the temperature was so far below that of a Pullman that the
water-pitcher was skimmed with ice and the towel frozen as stiff as a
dried codfish. Second, that Jerry, the clown, occupied the room to the
right, and the two coryphées the room to the left. Third, that the
partitions were thin as paper, or, as Steve expressed it, "thin enough
to hear a feller change his mind."
With the turning-off of the gas and the tucking of Steve's fat round
face and head under the single blanket and quilt, the sheet gripped
about his chin, there came a harsh, rasping cough from the room on his
right. Jerry had opened. Steve ducked his head and covered his ears. The
clown would stop in a minute, and then Mr. Dodd would drop off to sleep.
Another sound now struck his ear--a woman's voice this time, with a note
of sympathy in it. Steve raised his head and listened.
"Say, Jess, ain't that awful? I knew Jerry'd get it on that long jump we
made. I ain't heard him cough like that since we left T'ronto."
"Oh, dreadful! And, Molly, he don't say a word 'bout how sick he is.
Billy had to help him off with his-- Oh, just hear Jerry!"
The talk ceased and Steve snuggled his head again. He wasn't interested
in Jerry, or Molly, or Jessie. What he wanted was six hours' sleep, a
call at 4.45, and his sample trunk.
Another paroxysm of coughing resounded through the partition, and again
Steve freed his ear.
"Jerry ain't got but one little girl left, and she's only five years
old. She's up to the Sacred Heart in Montreal. He sends her money every
week--he told me so. He showed me her picture oncet. Say! give me some
of the cover; it's awful cold, ain't it?"
Steve heard a rustling and tumbling of the bedclothes as the girls
nestled the closer. Molly's voice now broke the short silence.
"Say, Jess, I'm dreadful worried 'bout Jerry. I bet he ain't got no more
cover 'n we have. He's right next to us, and 'tain't no warmer where he
is than it is here. I'd think he'd tear himself all to pieces with that
cough. I hope nothin' 'll happen to him. He ain't like Mathews. Nobody
ever heard a cross word out of Jerry, and he'd cut his heart out for ye
and----"
Steve covered his head again and shut his eyes. Through the coarse
cotton sheet he caught, as he dozed off to sleep (Jerry's cough had now
become a familiar sound, and therefore no longer an incentive to
insomnia), additional details of Jerry's life, fortunes and misfortunes,
in such broken sentences as--
"She never cared for him, so Billy told me. She went off with--Why,
sure! didn't you know he got burnt out?--lost his trick ponies when he
was with Forepaugh-- It'll be awful if we have to leave him behind,
and--I'm goin' to see a doctor just as soon as we get to----"
Here Steve fell into oblivion.
Ten minutes later he was startled by the opening of his door. In the dim
glow of the hall gas-jet showing through the crack and the transom, his
eyes caught the outline of a girl in her night-dress, her hair in two
braids down her neck. She was stepping noiselessly and approaching his
bed. In her hand she carried a quilt. Bending above him--Steve lying in
the shadow--she spread the covering gently over his body, tucked the end
softly about his throat, and as gently tiptoed out of the room. Then
there came a voice from the other side of the partition:
"He ain't coughin' any more--he's asleep. I got it over him. Now get all
your clo'es, Molly, and pile 'em on top. We can get along."
Steve lay still. His first impulse was to cry out that they had made a
mistake--that Jerry was next door; his next was to slip into Jerry's
room and pile the quilt on him. Then he checked himself--the first
would alarm and mortify the girls, and the second would be like robbing
them of the credit of their generous act. Jerry might wake and the girls
would hear, and explanations follow and all the pleasure of their
sacrifice be spoiled. No, he'd hand it back to the girls, and say he was
much obliged but he didn't need it. Again he stopped--this time with a
sudden pull-up. Going into a chorus girl's room, under any pretence
whatever, in a hotel at night! No, sir-ee, Bob! Not for Stephen! He had
been there; none of that in his!
All this time the quilt was choking him--his breath getting shorter
every minute, as if he was being slowly smothered. A peculiar hotness
began to creep over the skin of his throat and a small lump to rise near
his Adam's apple, followed by a slight moistening of the eyes--all new
symptoms to Steve, new since his boyhood.
Suddenly there flashed into his mind the picture of a low-roofed garret
room, sheltering a trundle-bed tucked away under the slant of the
shingles. In the dim light where he lay he caught the square of the
small window, the gaunt limbs of the butternut beyond, and could hear,
as he listened, the creak of its branches bending in the storm. All
about were old-fashioned things--a bureau with brass handles; a
spinning-wheel; ropes of onions; a shelf of apples; an old saddle; and a
rocking-chair with one arm gone and the bottom half out. A soft tread
was heard upon the stairs, a white figure stole in, and a warm hand
nestling close to his cheeks tucked the border of a quilt under his
chin. Then came a voice. "I thought you might be cold, son."
With a bound Steve sprang from the bed.
For an instant he sat on the edge of the hard mattress, his eyes on the
floor, as if in deep thought.
"Those two girls lying there freezing, and all to get that feller warm!"
he muttered. "You're a dog, Stephen Dodd--that's what you are--a yellow
dog!"
Reaching out noiselessly for his shoes and socks, he drew them toward
him, slipped in his feet, dragged on his trousers and shirt, threw his
coat around his shoulders--he was beginning to shiver now--opened the
door of his room cautiously, letting in more of the glow of the
gas-jet, and stole down the corridor to the staircase. Here he looked
into a black gulf. The only lights were the one by the clerk's desk and
the glow of the stove. Quickening his steps, he descended the stairs to
the lower floor. The porter would be up, he said to himself, or the
night watchman, or perhaps the clerk; somebody, anyway, would be around.
He looked over the counter, expecting to find Larry in his chair; passed
out to the porter's room and studied the trunks and boot-stand; peered
behind the screen, and finding no one, made a tour of the floor, opening
and shutting doors. No one was awake.
Then a new thought struck him. This came with a thumping of one fist in
the palm of the other hand, his face breaking out into a satisfied smile
at his discovery. He remounted the stairs--the first flight two steps at
a time, the second flight one step at a time, the last few levels on his
toes. If he had intended to burglarize one of the rooms he could not
have been more careful about making a noise. Entering his own apartment,
he picked up the quilt the girls had spread over him, folded it
carefully and laid it on the floor. Then he stripped off his own
blanket and quilt and placed them beside it. These two packages he
tucked under his arm, and with the tread of a cat crept down the
corridor to the stairway. Once there, he wheeled and with both heels
striking the bare floor came tramping toward the girls' room.
Next came a rap like a five-o'clock call--low, so as not to wake the
more fortunate in the adjoining rooms, but sure and positive. Steve knew
how it sounded.
"Who's there?" cried Molly in a voice that showed that Steve's knuckles
had brought her to consciousness. "'Tain't time to get up, is it?"
"No, I'm the night watchman; some of the folks is complaining of the
cold and saying there warn't covering enough, and so I thought you
ladies might want some more bedclothes," and Steve squeezed the quilt in
through the crack of the door.
"Oh, thank you," began Molly; "we were sort o'----"
"Don't mention it," answered Steve, closing the door tight and shutting
off any further remark.
The heels were lifted now, and Steve crept to Jerry's door on his toes.
For an instant he listened intently until he caught the sound of the
labored breathing of the sleeping man, opened the door gently, laid the
blanket and quilt he had taken from his own bed over Jerry's emaciated
shoulders, and crept out again, dodging into his own room with the same
sort of relief in his heart that a sneak thief feels after a successful
raid. Here he finished dressing.
Catching up his grip, he moved back his door, peered out to be sure he
was not being watched, and tiptoed along the corridor and so on to the
floor below.
An hour later the porter, aroused by his alarm clock to get ready for
the 5.40, found Steve by the stove. He had dragged up another chair and
lay stretched out on the two, his head lost in the upturned collar of
his coat, his slouch hat pulled down over his eyes.
"Why, I thought you'd turned in," yawned the porter, dumping a shovelful
of coal into the stove.
"Yes, I did, but I couldn't sleep." There was a note in Steve's voice
that made the porter raise his eyes.
"Ain't sick, are ye?"
"No--kind o' nervous--get that way sometimes. Not in your way, am I?"