IN THE PUBLIC EYE
No sight more familiar to the corner of Main and Resident Streets than
that of Sylvester Hudson's Ford car sliding up to the curb in front of
his hotel at two o'clock in a summer afternoon. He would slip out from
under his steering-wheel, his linen duster flapping about his long legs,
and he would stalk through the rocking, meditative observers on the
piazza and through the lobby past Dickie's frozen stare, upstairs to the
door of Miss Arundel's "suite." There he was bidden to come in. A few
minutes later they would come down together, Sheila, too, passing Dickie
wordlessly, and they would hum away from Millings leaving a veil of
golden dust to smother the comments in their wake. There were days when
Sheila's pony, a gift from Jim Greely, was led up earlier than the hour
of Hudson's arrival, on which days Sheila, in a short skirt and a boy's
shirt and a small felt Stetson, would ride away alone toward the mountain
of her dreams. Sometimes Jim rode with her. It was not always possible to
forbid him.
The day after Cosme Hilliard's spectacular passage was one of Hudson's
days. The pony did not appear, but Sylvester did and came down with his
prize. The lobby was crowded. Sheila threaded her way amongst the medley
of tourists, paused and deliberately drew near to the desk. At sight of
her Dickie's whiteness dyed itself scarlet. He rose and with an apparent
effort lifted his eyes to her look.
They did not smile at each other. Sheila spoke sharply, each word a
little soft lash.
"I want to speak to you. Will you come to my sitting-room when I
get back?"
"Yes'm," said Dickie. It was the tone of an unwincing pride. Under the
desk, hidden from sight, his hand was a white-knuckled fist.
Sheila passed on, trailed by Hudson, who was smiling not agreeably to
himself. Over the smile he gave his son a cruel look. It was as though an
enemy had said, "Hurts you, doesn't it?" Dickie returned the look with
level eyes.
The rockers on the piazza stopped rocking, stopped talking, stopped
breathing, it would seem, to watch Sylvester help Sheila into his car;
not that he helped her greatly--she had an appearance of melting
through his hands and getting into her place beside his by a sort of
sleight of body. He made a series of angular movements, smiled at her,
and started the car.
"Well, little girl," said he, "where to this afternoon?"
When Sheila rode her pony she always rode toward The Hill. But in that
direction she had never allowed Sylvester to take her. She looked vaguely
through the wind-shield now and said, "Anywhere--that cañon, the one we
came home by last week. It was so queer."
"It'll be dern dusty, I'm afraid."
"I don't care." Sheila wrapped her gray veil over her small hat which
fitted close about her face. "I'm getting used to the dust. Does it ever
rain around Millings? And does it ever stop blowing?"
"We don't like Millings to-day, do we?"
Sylvester was bending his head to peer through the gray mist of her veil.
She held herself stiffly beside him, showing the profile of a small
Sphinx. Suddenly it turned slightly, seemed to wince back. Girlie, at the
gate of Number 18 Cottonwood Avenue, had stopped to watch them pass.
Girlie did not speak. Her face looked smitten, the ripe fruit had turned
bitter upon her ruddy lips. The tranquil emptiness of her beauty had
filled itself stormily.
Sheila did not answer Hudson's reproachful question. She leaned back,
dropped back, rather, into a tired little heap and let the country slide
by--the strange, wide, broken country with its circling mesas, its
somber grays and browns and dusty greens, its bare purple hills, rocks
and sand and golden dirt, and now and then, in the sudden valley
bottoms, swaying groves of vivid green and ribbons of emerald meadows.
The mountains shifted and opened their cañons, gave a glimpse of their
beckoning and forbidding fastnesses and closed them again as though by a
whispered Sesame.
"What was the row last night?" asked Sylvester in his voice of cracked
tenderness. "Carthy says there was a bunch of toughs. Were you scared
good and plenty? I'm sorry. It don't happen often, believe _me._
"I wish you could 'a' heard Carthy talkin' about you, Sheila," went on
Sylvester, his eyes, filled with uneasiness, studying her silence and her
huddled smallness, hands in the pockets of her light coat, veiled face
turned a little away, "Say, that would 'a' set you up all right! Talk
about beacons!"
Here she flashed round on him, as though her whole body had been
electrified. "Tell me all that again," she begged in a voice that he
could not interpret except that there was in it a sound of tears. "Tell
me again about a beacon ..."
He stammered. He was confused. But stumblingly he tried to fulfill her
demand. Here was a thirst for something, and he wanted above everything
in the world to satisfy it. Sheila listened to him with unsteady, parted
lips. He could see them through the veil.
"You still think I am that?" she asked.
He was eager to prove it to her. "Still think? Still think? Why, girl, I
don't hev to think. Don't the tillbox speak for itself? Don't Carthy
handle a crowd that's growing under his eyes? Don't we sell more booze in
a week now than we used to in a--" Suddenly he realized that he was on
the wrong tack. It was his first break. He drew in a sharp breath and
stopped, his face flushing deeply.
"Yes?" questioned Sheila, melting her syllables like slivers of ice on
her tongue. "Go on."
"Er--er, don't we draw a finer lot of fellows than we ever did before?
Don't they behave more decent and orderly? Don't they get civilization
just for looking at you, Miss Sheila?"
"And--and booze? Jim Greely, for instance, Mr. James Greely, of the
Millings National Bank--he never used to patronize The Aura. And now he's
there every night till twelve and often later, for he won't obey me any
more. I wonder whether Mr. and Mrs. Greely are glad that you are getting
a better type of customer! Mrs. Greely almost stopped me on the street
the other day--that is, she almost got up courage to speak to me. Before
now she's cut me, just as Girlie does, just as your wife does, just as
Dickie does--"
"Dickie cut you?" Sylvester threw back his head and laughed uneasily, and
with a strained note of alarm. "That's a good one, Miss Sheila. I kinder
fancied you did the cuttin' there."
"Dickie hasn't spoken to me since he came to me that day when he heard
what I was going to do and tried to talk me out of doing it."
"Yes'm. He came to me first," drawled Sylvester.
They were both silent, busy with the amazing memory of Dickie, of his
disheveled fury, of his lashing eloquence. He had burst in upon his
family at breakfast that April morning when Millings was humming with
the news, had advanced upon his father, stood above him.
"Is it true that you are going to make a barmaid of Sheila?"
Sylvester, in an effort to get to his feet, had been held back by
Dickie's thin hand that shot out at him like a sword.
"Sure it's true," Sylvester had said coolly. But he had not felt cool. He
had felt shaken and confused. The boy's entire self-forgetfulness, his
entire absence of fear, had made Hudson feel that he was talking to a
stranger, a not inconsiderable one.
"It's true, then." Dickie had drawn a big breath. "You--you"--he seemed
to swallow an epithet--"you'll let that girl go into your filthy saloon
and make money for you by her--by her prettiness and her--her
ignorance--"
"Say, Dickie," his father had drawled, "you goin' to run for the
legislature? Such a lot of classy words!" But anger and alarm were
rising in him.
"You've fetched her away out here," went on Dickie, "and kinder got her
cornered and you've talked a lot of slush to her and you've--"
Here Girlie came to the rescue.
"Well, anyway, she's a willing victim, Dickie," Girlie had said.
Dickie had flashed her one look. "Is she? I'll see about that.
Where's Sheila?"
And then, there was Sheila's memory. Dickie had come upon her in a
confusion of boxes, her little trunk half-unpacked, its treasures
scattered over the chairs and floor. Sheila had lifted to him from where
she knelt a glowing and excited face. "Oh, Dickie," she had said, her
relief at the escape from Mrs. Hudson pouring music into her voice, "have
you heard?"
He had sat down on one of the plush chairs of "the suite" as though he
felt weak. Then he had got up and had walked to and fro while she
described her dream, the beauty of her chosen mission, the glory of the
saloon whose high priestess she had become. And Dickie had listened with
the bitter and disillusioned and tender face of a father hearing the
prattle of a beloved child.
"You honest think all that, Sheila?" he had asked her patiently.
She had started again, standing now to face him and beginning to be angry
at his look. This boy whom she had lifted up to be her friend!
"Say," Dickie had drawled, "Poppa's some guardian!" He had advanced upon
her as though he wanted to shake her. "You gotta give it right up,
Sheila," he had said sternly. "Sooner than immediately. It's not to go
through. Say, girl, you don't know much about bars." He had drawn a
picture for her, drawing partly upon experience, partly upon his
imagination, the gift of vivid metaphor descending upon him. He used
words that bit into her memory. Sheila had listened and then she had put
her hands over her ears. He pulled them down. He went on. Sheila's Irish
blood had boiled up into her brain. She stormed back at him.
"It's you, it's your use of The Aura that has been its only shame,
Dickie," was the last of all the things she had said.
At which, Dickie standing very still, had answered, "If you go there and
stand behind the bar all night with Carthy to keep hands off, I--I swear
I'll never set foot inside the place again. You ain't agoin' to be _my_
beacon light--"
"Well, then," said Sheila, "I shall have done one good thing at least by
being there."
Dickie, going out, had passed a breathless Sylvester on his way in. The
two had looked at each other with a look that cut in two the tie between
them, and Sheila, running to Sylvester, had burst into tears.
* * * * *
The motor hummed evenly on its way. It began, with a change of tune, to
climb the graded side of one of the enormous mesas. Sheila, having lived
through again that scene with Dickie, took out a small handkerchief and
busied herself with it under her veil. She laughed shakily.
"Perhaps a beacon does more good by warning people away than by
attracting them," she said. "Dickie has certainly kept his word. I don't
believe he's touched a drop since I've been barmaid, Mr. Hudson. I
should think you'd be proud of him."
Sylvester was silent while they climbed the hill. He changed gears and
sounded his horn. They passed another motor on a dangerous curve. They
began to drop down again.
"Some day," said Sylvester in a quiet voice, "I'll break every bone in
Dickie's body." He murmured something more under his breath in too low a
tone, fortunately, for Sheila's ear. From her position behind the bar,
she had become used to swearing. She had heard a strange variety of
language. But when Sylvester drew upon his experience and his fancy, the
artist in him was at work.
"Do you suppose," asked his companion in an impersonal tone, "that it was
really a hard thing for Dickie to do--to give it up, I mean?"
"By the look of him the last few months," snarled Sylvester, "I should
say it had taken out of him what little real feller there ever was in."
Sheila considered this. She remembered Dickie, as he had risen behind the
desk half an hour before. She did not contradict Sylvester. She had
learned not to contradict him. But Dickie's face with its tight-knit look
of battle stood out very clear to refute the accusation of any loss of
manliness. He was still a quaint and ruffled Dickie. But he was vastly
aged. From twenty to twenty-seven, he seemed to have jumped in a few
weeks. A key had turned in the formerly open door of his spirit. The
indeterminate lips had shut hard, the long-lashed eyes had definitely put
a guard upon their dreams. He was shockingly thin and colorless, however.
Sheila dwelt painfully upon the sort of devastation she had wrought.
Girlie's face, and Dickie's, and Jim's. A grieving pressure squeezed her
heart; she lifted her chest with an effort on a stifled breath.
"God! Sheila," said Sylvester harshly. The car wobbled a little. "Ain't
you happy, girl?"
Sheila looked up at him. Her veil was wet against her cheeks.
"Last night," she said unevenly, "a man was going to kiss me on my
mouth and--and he changed his mind and kissed my hand instead. He left
a smear of blood on my fingers from where those--those other men had
struck his lips. I don't know why it f-frightens me so to think about
that. But it does."
She seemed to collapse before him into a little sobbing child.
"And every day when I wake up," she wailed, "I t-taste whiskey on my
tongue and I--I smell cigarette smoke in my hair. And I d-dream about men
looking at me--the way Jim looks. And I can't let myself think of Father
any more. He used to hold his chin up and walk along as if he looked
above every one and everything. I don't believe he'd ever seen a barmaid
or a drunken man--not really seen them, Mr. Hudson."
"Then he wasn't a real artist after all," Sylvester spoke slowly and
carefully. He was pale.
"He l-loved the stars," sobbed Sheila, her broken reserve had let out a
flood; "he told me to keep looking at the stars."
"Well, ma'am," Sylvester spoke again, "I never knowed the stars to turn
their backs on anything. Barmaids or drunks or kings--they all look about
alike to the stars, I reckon. Say, Sheila, maybe you haven't got the
pluck for real living. Maybe you're the kind of doll-baby girl that
craves sheltering. I reckon I made a big mistake."
Sheila moved slightly as though his speech had pricked her.
"It kind of didn't occur to me," went on Sylvester, "that you'd care a
whole lot about being ig-nored by Momma and Mr. and Mrs. Greely and
Girlie. Say, Girlie's got to take her chance same's anybody else. Why
don't you give Jim a jolt?"
Sheila at this began to laugh. She caught her breath. She laughed and
cried together.
Sylvester patted her shoulder. "Poor kid! You're all in. Late hours too
much for you, I reckon. Come on now--tell Pap everything. Ease off your
heart. It's wonderful what crying does for the nervous system. I laid out
on a prairie one night when I was about your age and just naturally
bawled. You'd 'a' thought I was a baby steer, hanged if you wouldn't 'a'
thought so. It's the fight scared you plumb to pieces. Carthy told me
about it and how you let the good-looking kid out by the back. I seen him
ride off toward Hidden Creek this morning. He was a real pretty boy too.
Say, Sheila, wasn't you ever kissed?"
"No," said Sheila. "And I don't want to be." Sylvester laughed with a
little low cackle of intense pleasure and amusement. "Well, you shan't
be. No, you shan't. Nobody shall kiss Sheila!"
His method seemed to him successful. Sheila stopped crying and stopped
laughing, dried her eyes, murmured, "I'm all right now, thank you, Mr.
Hudson," and fell into an abysmal silence.
He talked smoothly, soothingly, skillfully, confident of his power to
manage "gels." Once in a while he saw her teeth gleam as though she
smiled. As they came back to Millings in the afterglow of a brief Western
twilight, she unfastened her veil and showed a quiet, thoughtful face.
She thanked him, gave him her hand. "Don't come up, please, Mr. Hudson,"
she said with that cool composure of which at times she was surprisingly
capable. "I shall have my dinner sent up and take a little rest before I
go to work."
"You feel O.K.?" he asked her doubtfully. His brown eyes had an almost
doglike wistfulness.
"Quite, thank you." Her easy, effortless smile passed across her face and
in and out of her eyes.
Hudson stood beside his wheel tapping his teeth and staring after her.
The rockers on the veranda stopped their rocking, stopped their talking,
stopped their breathing to see Sheila pass. When she had gone, they
fastened their attention upon Sylvester. He was not aware of them. He
stood there a full three minutes under the glare of publicity. Then he
sighed and climbed into his car.