Lemuel had to be up early in the morning to get the bills of fare, which
Mrs. Harmon called the Meanyous, written in time for the seven o'clock
breakfasters; and after opening the dining-room doors with fit ceremony,
he had to run backward and forward to answer the rings at the elevator,
and to pull out the chairs for the ladies at the table, and slip them
back under them as they sat down. The ladies at the St. Albans expected
to get their money's worth; but their exactions in most things were of
use to Lemuel. He grew constantly nimbler of hand and foot under them,
and he grew quicker-witted; he ceased to hulk in mind and body. He did
not employ this new mental agility in devising excuses and delays; he
left that to Mrs. Harmon, whose conscience was easy in it; but from
seven o'clock in the morning till eleven at night, when the ladies
came in from the theatre, he was so promptly, so comfortingly at their
service, that they all said they did not see how they had ever got along
without him.
His activities took the form of interruptions rather than constant
occupation, and he found a good deal of broken-up time on his hands,
which he passed in reading, and in reveries of Statira. At the hours
when the elevator was mostly in use he kept a book in it with him, and
at other times he had it in the office, as Mrs. Harmon called his little
booth. He remained there reading every night after the house quieted
down after dinner, until it was time to lock up for the night; and
several times Mr. Evans stopped and looked in at him where he sat in
the bad combustion of the gas that was taking the country tan out of his
cheeks. One night when he came in late, and Lemuel put his book down to
take him up in the elevator, he said, “Don't disturb yourself; I'm going
to walk up,” but he lingered at the door looking in with the queer smile
that always roused the ladies' fears of tacit ridicule. “I suppose you
don't find it necessary,” he said finally, “to chase a horse-car now,
when you want to find your way to a given point?”
Lemuel reddened and dropped his head; he had already recognised in Mr.
Evans the gentleman from whose kindly curiosity he had turned, that
first day, in the suspicion that he might be a beat. “No,” he said, “I
guess I can go pretty near everywhere in Boston now.”
“Well,” said Mr. Evans, “it was an ingenious system. How do you like
Boston?”
“I like it first-rate, but I've not seen many other places,” answered
Lemuel cautiously.
“Well, if you live here long enough you won't care to see any other
places; you'll know they're not worth seeing.” Lemuel looked up as if he
did not understand exactly, and Mr. Evans stepped in and lifted the book
he had been reading. It was one he had bought at second hand while he
was with Miss Vane: a tough little epitome of the philosophies in all
times, the crabbed English version of a dry German original. Mr. Evans
turned its leaves over. “Do you find it a very exciting story?” he
asked.
“Why, it isn't a story,” said Lemuel, in simple surprise.
“No?” asked Mr. Evans. “I thought it must be. Most of the young
gentlemen who run the elevators I travel in read stories. Do you like
this kind of reading?”
Lemuel reflected, and then he said he thought you ought to find out
about such things if you got a chance.
“Yes,” said the editor musingly, “I suppose one oughtn't to throw any
sort of chance away. But you're sure you don't prefer the novels? You'll
excuse my asking you?”
“Oh, perfectly excusable,” said Lemuel. He added that he liked a good
novel too, when he could get hold of it.
“You must come to my room some day, and see if you can't get hold of one
there. Or if you prefer metaphysics, I've got shelves full that you're
welcome to. I suppose,” he added, “you hadn't been in Boston a great
while when I met you that day?”
“No,” said Lemuel, dropping his head again, “I had just come.”
As if he saw that something painful lurked under the remembrance of the
time for Lemuel the editor desisted.
The next morning he stopped on his way to breakfast with some books
which he handed to Lemuel. “Don't feel at all obliged to read them,”
he said, “because I lend them to you. They won't be of the least use to
you, if you do so.”
“I guess that anything you like will be worth reading,” said Lemuel,
flattered by the trouble so chief a boarder as Mr. Evans had taken with
him.
“Not if they supplied a want you didn't feel. You seem to be fond of
books, and after a while you'll be wanting to lend them yourself. I'll
give you a little hint that I'm too old to profit by: remember that you
can lend a person more books in a day than he can read in a week.”
His laugh kept Lemuel shy of him still, in spite of a willingness that
the editor showed for their better acquaintance. He seemed to wish to
know about Lemuel, particularly since he had recognised the pursuer of
the horse-car in him, and this made Lemuel close up the more. He would
have liked to talk with him about the books Evans had lent him. But when
the editor stopped at the office door, where Lemuel sat reading one of
them, and asked him what he thought of it, the boy felt that somehow
it was not exactly his opinion that Mr. Evans was getting at; and this
sense of being inspected and arranged in another's mind, though he could
not formulate the operation in his own, somehow wounded and repelled
him. It was not that the editor ever said anything that was not kind and
friendly; he was always doing kind and friendly things, and he appeared
to take a real interest in Lemuel. At the end of the first week after
Lemuel had added the head waitership to his other duties, Evans stopped
in going out of the dining-room and put a dollar in his hand.
“What is it for?” asked Lemuel.
“For? Really, I don't know. It must be tribute-money,” said the editor
in surprise, but with a rising curiosity. “I never know what it's for.”
Lemuel turned red, and handed it back. “I don't know as I want any money
I haven't earned.”
That night, after dinner, when Evans was passing the office door on his
way out of the hotel, Lemuel stopped him and said with embarrassment,
“Mr. Evans, I don't want you should think I didn't appreciate your
kindness this morning.”
“Ah, I'm not sure it was kindness,” said Evans with immediate interest.
“Why didn't you take the money?”
“Well, I told you why,” said Lemuel, overcoming the obscure reluctance
he felt at Evans's manner as best he could. “I've been thinking it over,
and I guess I was right; but I didn't know whether I had expressed it
the best way.”
“The way couldn't be improved. But why did you think you hadn't earned
my dollar?”
“I don't do anything but open the doors, and show people to their
places; I don't call that anything.”
“But if you were a waiter and served at table?”
“I wouldn't _be_ one,” said Lemuel, with a touch of indignation; “and I
shouldn't take presents, anyway.”
Evans leaned against the door-jamb.
“Have you heard of the college students who wait at the mountain hotels
in vacation? They all take fees. Do you think yourself better than they
are?”
“Yes, I do!” cried Lemuel.
“Well, I don't know but you are,” said the editor thoughtfully. “But
I think I should distinguish. Perhaps there's no shame in waiting at
table, but there is in taking fees.”
“Yes; that's what I meant,” said Lemuel, a little sorry for his heat. “I
shouldn't be ashamed to do any kind of work, and to take my pay for it;
but I shouldn't want to have folks giving me money over and above, as if
I was a beggar.”
The editor stood looking him absently in the face. After a moment he
asked, “What part of New England did you come from, Mr. Barker?”
“I came from the middle part of the State--from Willoughby Pastures.”
“Do those ideas--those principles--of yours prevail there?”
“I don't know whether they do or not,” said Lemuel.
“If you were sure they did, I should like to engage board there for next
summer,” said the editor, going out.
It was Monday night, a leisure time with him, and he was going out to
see a friend, a minister, with whom Monday night was also leisure time.
After he was gone, some of the other boarders began to drop in from the
lectures and concerts which they frequented in the evening. The ladies
had all some favour to ask of Lemuel, some real or fancied need of
his help; in return for his promise or performance, they each gave him
advice. What they expressed collectively was that they should think that
he would put his eyes out reading by that gas, and that he had better
look out, or he would ruin his health anyway, reading so much. They
asked him how much time he got for sleep; and they said that from twelve
till six was not enough, and that he was just killing himself. They had
all offered to lend him books; the least literary among them had a sort
of house pride in his fondness for books; their sympathy with this taste
of his amused their husbands, who tolerated it, but in their hearts
regarded it as a womanish weakness, indicating a want of fibre in
Lemuel. Mrs. Harmon as a business woman, and therefore occupying a
middle ground between the sexes, did not exactly know herself what to
make of her clerk's studiousness; all that she could say was that he
kept up with his work. She assumed that before Lemuel's coming she had
been the sole motive power of the house; but it was really a sort of
democracy, and was managed by the majority of its inmates. An element
of demagoguery tampered with the Irish vote in the person of Jerry,
nominally porter, but actually factotum, who had hitherto, pending the
strikes of the different functionaries, filled the offices now united in
Lemuel. He had never been clerk, because his literature went no further
than the ability to write his name, and to read a passage of the
constitution in qualifying for the suffrage. He did not like the new
order of things, but he was without a party, and helpless to do more
than neglect the gong-bell when he had reason to think Lemuel had
sounded it.
About eleven o'clock the law-student came in with the two girl
art-students, fresh from the outside air, and gay from the opera they
had been hearing. The young man told Lemuel he ought to go to see it.
After the girls had opened their door, one of them came running back to
the elevator, and called down to Lemuel that there was no ice-water, and
would he please send some up.
Lemuel brought it up himself, and when he knocked at the door, the same
girl opened it and made a pretty outcry over the trouble she had given
him. “I supposed, of course, Jerry would bring it,” she said contritely;
and as if for some atonement, she added, “Won't you come in, Mr. Barker,
and see my picture?”
Lemuel stood in the gush of the gas-light hesitating, and the
law-student called out to him, jollily, “Come in, Mr. Barker, and
help me play art-critic.” He was standing before the picture, with his
overcoat on and his hat in his hand. “First appearance on any stage,” he
added; and as Lemuel entered, “If I were you,” he said, “I'd fire that
porter out of the hotel. He's outlived his usefulness.”
“It's a shame, your having to bring the water,” said Miss Swan; she was
the girl who had spoken before.
The other one came forward and said, “Won't you sit down?”
She spoke to Lemuel; the law-student answered, “Thank you; I don't care
if I do.”
Lemuel did not know whether to stay, nor what to say of Miss Swan's
picture, and he thanked the young lady and remained standing.
“O Jessie, _Jessie_, Jessie!” cried Miss Swan.
The other went to her, tranquilly, as if used to such vehement appeals.
“Just _see_ how my poor cow looks since I painted out that grass! She
hasn't got a leg to stand on!”
The law-student did nothing but make jokes about the picture. “I think
she looks pretty well for a cow that you must have had to study from a
milk-can--nearest you could come to a cow in Boston.”
Miss Carver, the other young lady, ignored his joking, and after some
criticisms on the picture, left him and Miss Swan to talk it over. She
talked to Lemuel, and asked him if he had read a book he glanced at on
the table, and seemed willing to make him feel at ease. But she did not.
He thought she was very proud, and he believed she wanted him to go,
but he did not know how to go. Her eyes were so still and pure; but they
dwelt very coldly upon him. Her voice was like that look put into sound;
it was rather high-pitched but very sweet and pure, and cold. He hardly
knew what he said; he felt hot, and he waited for some chance to get
away.
At last he heard Miss Swan saying, “_Must_ you go, Mr. Berry? So
_soon_!” and saw her giving the student her hand, with a bow of
burlesque desolation.
Lemuel prepared to go too. All his rusticity came back upon him, and he
said, “Well, I wish you good evening.”
It seemed to him that Miss Carver's still eyes looked a sort of starry
scorn after him. He found that he had brought away the book they had
been talking about, and he was a long time in question whether he
had better take it back at once, or give it to her when she came to
breakfast.
He went to bed in the same trouble of mind. Every night he had fallen
asleep with Statira in his thoughts, but now it was Miss Carver that he
thought of, and more and more uncomfortably. He asked himself what she
would say if she saw his mother in the bloomers. She was herself not
dressed so fashionably as Statira, but very nicely.