THE BAWLING-OUT
Dickie's room in The Aura Hotel was fitted in between the Men's Lavatory
and the Linen Room. It smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing.
Also, into its single narrow window rose the dust of ashes, of old rags
and other refuse thrown light-heartedly into the back yard, which not
being visible from the street supplied the typical housewife of a
frontier town with that relaxation from any necessity to keep up an
appearance of economy and cleanliness so desirable to her liberty-loving
soul. The housekeeper at The Aura was not Mrs. Hudson, but an enormously
stout young woman with blonde hair, named Amelia Plecks. She was so
tightly laced and booted that her hard breathing and creaking were
audible all over the hotel. When Dickie woke in his narrow room after his
moonlight adventure, he heard this heavy breathing in the linen room and,
groaning, thrust his head under the pillow. With whatever bitterness his
kindly heart could entertain, he loathed Amelia. She took advantage of
the favor of Sylvester and of her own exalted position in the hotel to
taunt and to humiliate him. His plunge under the pillow did not escape
her notice.
"Ain't you up yet, lazybones?" she cried, rapping on the wall. "You
won't get no breakfast. It's half-past seven. Who's at the desk to see
them Duluth folks off? Pap's not going to be pleased with you."
"I don't want any breakfast," muttered Dickie.
Amelia laughed. "No. I'll be bound you don't. Tongue like a kitten and a
head like a cracked stove!"
She slapped down some clean sheets on a shelf and creaked toward the
hall, but stopped at the open door. Sylvester Hudson was coming down the
passage and she was in no mind to miss the "bawling-out" of Dickie which
this visit must portend. She shut the linen-room door softly, therefore,
and controlled her breathing.
But Dickie knew that she was there and, when his father rapped, he knew
why she was there.
He tumbled wretchedly from his bed, swore at his injured ankle, hopped to
the door, unlocked it, and hopped back with panic swiftness before his
father's entrance. He sat in his crumpled pajamas amidst his crumpled,
dingy bedclothes, his hair scattered over his forehead, his large, heavy
eyes fixed anxiously upon Sylvester.
"Say, Poppa--" he began.
Then "Pap's" voice cracked out at him.
"You hold your tongue," snapped Sylvester, "or you'll get what's comin'
to you!" He jerked Dickie's single chair from against the wall, threw the
clothing from it, and sat down, crossing his legs, and holding up at his
son the long finger that had frightened Sheila. Dickie blinked at it.
"You know what I was plannin' to do to you after last night? I meant to
come round here and pull you out of your covers and onto the floor
there"--he pointed to a spot on the boards to which Dickie fearfully
directed his own eyes--"and kick the stuffin' out of you." Dickie
contemplated the long, pointed russet shoes of his parent and shuddered
visibly. Nevertheless in the slow look he lifted from the boot to his
father's face, there was a faint gleam of irony.
"What made you change your mind?" he asked impersonally.
It was this curious detachment of Dickie's, this imperturbability, that
most infuriated Hudson. He flushed.
"Just a little sass from you will bring me back to the idea," he
said sharply.
Dickie lowered his eyes.
"What made me change was--Miss Arundel's kindness. She came and begged
you off. She said you hadn't done anything or said anything to frighten
her, that you'd been"--Sylvester drawled out the two words in the
sing-song of Western mockery--"'sweet and love-ly.'"
Dickie's face was pink. He began to tie a knot in the corner of one of
his thin gray sheet-blankets.
"I don't know how sweet and lovely you can be, Dickie, when you're lit
up, but I guess you were awful sweet. Anyway, if you didn't say anything
or do anything to scare her, you don't deserve a kickin'. But, just the
same, I've a mind to turn you out of Millings."
This time, Dickie's look was not ironical. It was terrified. "Oh, Poppa,
say! I'll try not to do it again."
"I never heard that before, did I?" sneered Sylvester. "You put shame on
me and my bar. And I'm not goin' to stand it. If you want to get drunk
buy a bottle and come up here in your room. God damn you! You're a nice
son for the owner of The Aura!"
He stood up and looked with frank disgust at the thin, huddled figure.
Under this look, Dickie grew slowly redder and his eyes watered.
Sylvester lifted his upper lip. "Faugh!" he said. He walked over to the
door. "Get up and go down to your job and don't you bother Miss
Sheila--hear me? Keep away from her. She's not used to your sort and
you'll disgust her. She's here under my protection and I've got my plans
for her. I'm her guardian--that's what I am." Sylvester was pleased like
a man that has made a discovery. "Her guardian," he repeated as though
the word had a fine taste.
Dickie watched him. There was no expression whatever in his face and his
lips stood vacantly apart. He might have been seven years old.
"Keep away from her--hear me?"
"Yes, sir," said Dickie meekly.
After his father had gone out, Dickie sat for an instant with his head
on one side, listening intently. Then he got up, limped quietly and
quickly on his bare feet out into the hall, and locked the linen-room
door on the outside.
"Amelia's clean forgot to lock it," he said aloud. "Ain't she careless,
though, this morning!"
He went back. There was certainly a sound now behind the partition, a
sound of hard breathing that could no longer be controlled.
"I'll hand the key over to Mary," soliloquized Dickie in the hollow and
unnatural voice of stage confidences. "She'll be goin' in for the towels
about noon."
Then he fell on his bed and smothered a fit of chuckling.
Suddenly the mirth died out of him. He lay still, conscious of a pain in
his head and in his ankle and somewhere else--an indeterminate spot deep
in his being. He had been forbidden to see the girl who ran away out into
the night to look at the stars, the girl who had not laughed at his
attempt to describe the white ecstasy of the winter moon. He had
frightened her--disgusted her. He must have been more drunk than he
imagined. It _was_ disgusting--and so hopeless. Perhaps it would be
better to leave Millings.
He sat up on the edge of his bed and let his hands hang limply down
between his knees. It seemed to him that his thoughts were like a wheel,
half-submerged in running water. The wheel went round rapidly, plunging
in and out of his consciousness. Hardly had he grasped the meaning of one
half when it went under and another blur of moving spokes emerged.
Something his father had said, for instance, now began to pass through
his mind.... "I've got my plans for her".... Dickie tried to stop the
turning wheel because this speech gave him a distinct feeling of anger
and alarm. By an effort of his will, he held it before his
contemplation.... What possible plans could Sylvester have for Sheila?
Did she understand his plans? Did she approve of them? She was so young
and small, with that sad, soft mouth and those shining, misty eyes.
Dickie, with almost a paternal air, shook his ruffled head. He shut his
eyes so that the long lashes stood out in little points. A vision of
those two faces--Sheila's so gleaming fair and open, Sylvester's so dark
and shut--stood there to be compared. Her guardian, indeed!
Dickie dressed slowly and dragged himself down to the desk, where very
soberly and sadly he gave the key of the linen room to Mary. Then he sat
down, turned on the Victor, and lit a cigarette. The "Duluth folks" had
gone without any assistance from him. There was nothing to do. It
occurred to Dickie, all at once, that in Millings there was always
nothing to do. Nothing, that is, for him to do. Perhaps, after all, he
didn't like Millings. Perhaps that was what was wrong with him.
The Victor was playing:
"Here comes Tootsie,
Play a little music on the band.
Here comes Tootsie,
Tootsie, you are looking simply grand.
Play a little tune on the piccolo and flutes,
The man who wrote the rag wrote it especially for Toots.
Here comes Tootsie--play a little music on the band."
On the last nasal note, the door of The Aura flew open and a resplendent
figure crossed the chocolate-colored varnish of the floor. Tootsie
herself was not more "simply grand." This was a young man, perhaps it
would be more descriptive to say _the_ young man that accompanies _the_
young woman on the cover of the average American magazine. He had--a
nose, a chin, a beautiful mouth, large brown eyes, wavy chestnut hair, a
ruddy complexion, and, what is not always given to the young man on the
cover, a deep and generous dimple in the ruddiest part of his right
cheek. He was dressed in the latest suit produced by Schaffner and Marx;
he wore a tie of variegated silk which, like Browning's star, "dartled"
now red, now blue. The silk handkerchief, which protruded carefully from
his breast pocket, also "dartled." So did the socks. One felt that the
heart of this young man matched his tie and socks. It was resplendent
with the vanity and hopefulness and illusions of twenty-two years.
The large, dingy, chocolate-colored lobby became suddenly a background to
Mr. James Greely, cashier of the Millings National Bank, and the only
child of its president.
Upon the ruffled and rumpled Dickie he smiled pleasantly, made a curious
gesture with his hand--they both belonged to the Knights of Sagittarius
and the Fire Brigade--and came to lean upon the desk.
"Holiday at the bank this morning," he said, "in honor of Dad's
wedding-anniversary. We're giving a dance to-night in the Hall. Want to
come, Dickie?"
"No," said Dickie, "I hurt my ankle last night on the icy pavement. And
anyhow I can't dance. And I sort of find girls kind of tiresome."
"That's too bad. I'm sure sorry for you, Hudson. Particularly as I came
here just for the purpose of handing you over the cutest little billy-doo
you ever saw."
He drew out of his pocket an envelope and held it away from Dickie.
"You're trying to job me, Jim,"--but Dickie had his head coaxingly on one
side and his face was pink.
"I'll give it to you if you can guess the sender."
"Babe?"
"Wrong."
"Girlie?"
"Well, sir, it ain't Girlie's fist--not the fist she uses when she drops
_me_ billy-doos."
Dickie's eyes fell. He turned aside in his chair and stopped the
grinding of the graphophone. He made no further guess. Jim, with his
dimple deepening, tossed the small paper into the air and caught it
again deftly.
"It's from the young lady from Noo York who's helping Mrs. Hudson," he
said. "I guess she's kind of wishful for a beau. She's not much of a
looker Girlie tells me."
"Haven't you met her yet, Jim?" Dickie's hands were in his pockets, but
his eyes followed the gyrations of the paper.
"No. Ain't that a funny thing, too? Seems like I never get round to it. I
just saw her peeping at me one day through the parlor curtains while I
was saying sweet nothings to Girlie on the porch. I guess she was kind of
in-ter-ested. She's skinny and pale, Girlie says. Your mother hasn't got
any use for her. I bet you, it won't be long before she makes tracks back
to Noo York, Dickie. Girlie says she won't be lingering on here much
longer. Too much competition."
Jim handed the note to Dickie, who had listened to this speech with his
seven-year-old expression. He made no comment, but silently unfolded
Sheila's note.
The writing itself was like her, slender and fine and straight, a little
reckless, daintily desperate. That "I," now, on the white paper might be
Sheila skimming across the snow.
"_My dear Dickie_--somehow I can't call you 'Mr. Hudson'--I am so
terribly sorry about the way I acted to you last night. I don't know
why I was so foolish. I have tried to explain to your father that you
did nothing and said nothing to frighten me, that you were very polite
and kind, but I am afraid he doesn't quite understand. I hope he won't
be very cross with you, because it was all my fault--no, not quite all,
because I think you oughtn't to have followed me. I'm sure you're sorry
that you did. But it was a great deal my fault, so I'm writing this to
tell you that I wasn't really frightened nor very angry. Just sorry and
disappointed. Because I thought you were so very nice. And not like
Millings. And you liked the mountains better than the town. I wanted--I
still want--you to be my friend. For I do need a friend here,
dreadfully. Will you come to see me some afternoon? I hope you didn't
hurt yourself when you slipped on those icy steps.
"Sincerely SHEILA ARUNDEL"
Dickie put the note into his pocket and looked unseeingly at Jim. Jim was
turning up the bottoms of his trousers preparing to go.
"So you won't come to our dance?" he asked straightening himself, more
ruddy than ever.
"Well, sir," said Dickie slowly and indifferently, "I wouldn't wonder
if I would."