We Can\'t Have Everything

R >> Rupert Hughes >> We Can\'t Have Everything

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41

The room clerk marked down a number and slid a key to the page,
who gathered the family treasures together. Kedzie had more or less
helplessly recognized the page's admiration of her when he first
took the things from the porter. The sense of her beauty had choked
the boy's amusement at her parents.

Later Kedzie caught the glance of the room clerk and saw that she
startled him and cheated him of his smile at Adna. Still later
the elevator-boy gave her one respectful look of approval. Kedzie's
New York stir was already beginning.

The page ushered the Thropps into the elevator, and said,
"Nineteen."

It was the number of the floor, not the room. Adna warned his women
folk that "she" was about to go up, but they were not prepared for
that swift vertical leap toward the clouds. Another floor, and
Mrs. Thropp would have screamed. The altitude affected her.

Then the thing stopped, and the boy led them down a corridor so long
that Adna said, "Looks like we'd be stranded a hundred miles from
nowheres."

The boy turned in at a door at last. He flashed on the lights, set
the bags on a bag-rack, hung up the coats, opened a window, adjusted
the shade, lighted the lights in Kedzie's room, opened her window,
adjusted the shade, and asked if there were anything else.

Adna knew what the little villain meant, but he knew what was
expected, and he said, sternly, "Ice-water."

"Right here, sir," said the boy, and indicated in the bathroom
a special faucet marked "Drinking Water."

This startled even Adna so much that it shook a dime out of him.
The boy sighed and went away. Kedzie surprised his eye as he left.
It plainly found no fault with her.

Here in seclusion Mrs. Thropp dared to exclaim at the wonders of
modern invention. Kedzie was enfranchised and began to jump and
squeal at the almost suffocating majesty. Adna took to himself
the credit for everything.

"Well, momma, here we are in New York at last. Here we are, daughter.
You got your wish."

Kedzie nearly broke his neck with her hug, and called him the best
father that ever was. And she meant it at the moment, for the moment.

Mrs. Thropp was already making herself at home, loosening her
waistband and her corset-laces.

Adna made himself at home, too--that is, he took off his coat and
collar and shoes. But Kedzie could not waste her time on comfort
while there was so much ecstasy to be had.

She went to the window, shoved the sash high, and--discovered
New York. She greeted it with an outcry of wonder. She called to
her mother and father to "Come here and looky!"

Her mother moaned, "I wouldn't come that far to look at
New Jerusalem."

Adna yawned noisily and pulled out his watch. His very eyes yawned
at it, and he said: "'Levum o'clock. Good Lord! Git to bed quick!"

Kedzie was furious at ending the day so abruptly. She wanted to
go out for a walk, and they sent her to her room. She watched at
the window as she peeled off her coarse garments and put her soft
body into a rough nightgown as ill-cut and shapeless as she was
neither. She had been turned by a master's lathe.

She waited till she heard her father's well-known snore seesawing
through the panels. Then she went to the window again to gaze her
fill at the town. She fell in love with it and told it so. She vowed
that she would never leave it. She had not come to a strange city;
she had just reached home.

She leaned far out across the ledge to look down at the tremendously
inferior street. She nearly pitched head foremost and scrambled back,
but with a giggle of bliss at the excitement. She stared at the dark
buildings of various heights before her. There was something
awe-inspiring about them.

Across a space of roofs was the electric sign of an electric company,
partly hidden by buildings. All Kedzie could see of it was the huge
phrase LIGHT--HEAT--POWER. She thought that those three graces would
make an excellent motto.

She could see across and down into the well of the Grand Central
Terminal. On its front was some enormous winged figure facing down
the street. She did not know who it was or what street it was. She
did not know any of the streets by name, but she wanted to. She had
a passionate longing for streets.

Farther south or north, east or west, or whichever way it was,
was a tall building with glowing bulbs looped like the strings
of evergreen she had helped to drape the home church with at
Christmas-time. Here it was Christmas every day--all holidays
in one.

Down in the ravine a little in front of her she could read the sign
ATHENS HOTEL. She had heard of Athens. It was the capital of some
place in her geography. She who had so much of Grecian in her soul
was not quite sure of Athens!

In one of the opposite office buildings people were working late.
The curtains were drawn, but the casements were filled with light,
a honey-colored light. The buildings were like great honeycombs;
the dark windows were like the cells that had no honey in them.
Light and life were honey. Kedzie wondered what folks they were behind
those curtains--who they were, and what were they up to. She bet
it was something interesting. She wished she knew them. She wished
she knew a whole lot of city people. But she didn't know a soul.

It was all too glorious to believe. She was in New York! imparadised
in New York!

"Kedzie! Ked-zee-ee!"

"Yes, momma."

"Are you in bed?"

"Yes, momma." She tried to give her voice a faraway, sleepy sound,
for fear that her mother might open the door to be sure.

She crept into bed. The lights burned her weary eyes. She could not
reach them to put them out.

By the head of her bed was a little toy lamp. A chain hung from it.
She tugged at the chain--pouff! Out went the light. She tugged at
the chain. On went the light. A magical chain, that! It put the light
on and off, both. Kedzie could find no chains to pull the ceiling
lights out with. She let them burn.

Kedzie covered her head and yet could not sleep. She sat up quickly.
Was that music she heard? Somebody was giving a party, maybe.

She got up and out again and ran barefoot to the hall door, opened
it an inch, and peeked through. She saw a man and two ladies swishing
along the hall to the elevator. They were not sleepy at all, and
the ladies were dressed--whew! skirts short and no sleeves whatever.
They really were going to a party.

Kedzie closed the door and drooped back to bed--an awful place to go
when all the rest of the world was just starting out to parties.

She flopped and gasped in her bed like a fish ashore. Then a gorgeous
whim came to her. She would dive into her element. Light and fun were
her element. She came out of bed like a watch-spring leaping from
a case. She tiptoed to the parental door--heard nothing but the rumor
of slumber.

She began to dress. She put on her extra-good dress.

She had brought it along in the big valise in case of an accident
to the every-day dress. When she had squirmed through the ordeal
of hooking it up, she realized that its skirts were too long for
decency. She pinned them up at the hem.

The gown had a village low-neck--that is, it was a trifle V'd at
the throat. Kedzie tried to copy the corsage of the women who passed
in the hall. She withdrew from the sleeves, and gathering the waist
together under her arms, fastened it as best she could. The revelation
was terrifying. All of her chest and shoulders and shoulderblades
were bare.

She dared hardly look at herself. Yet she could not possibly deny
the fearful charm of those contours. She put her clothes on again
and prinked as much as she could. Then she sallied forth, opening
and closing the door with pious care. She went to the elevator, and
the car began to drop. The elevator-boy politely lowered it without
plunge or jolt.

Kedzie followed the sound of the music. The lobbies were thronged
with brilliant crowds flocking from theaters for supper and a dance.
Kedzie made her way to the edge of the supper-room. The floor, like
a pool surrounded by chairs and tables, was alive with couples dancing
contentedly. Every woman was in evening dress and so was every man.
The splendor of the costumes made her blink. The shabbiness of her
own made her blush.

She blushed because her own dress was indecent and immoral. It was
indecent and immoral because it was unlike that of the majority.
In this parish, conventionality, which is the one true synonym for
morality, called for bare shoulders and arms unsleeved. Kedzie was
conspicuous, which is a perfect synonym for immoral. If she had
fallen through the ceiling out of a bathtub she could not have felt
more in need of a hiding-place. She shrank into a corner and sought
cover and concealment, for she was afraid to go back to the elevator
through the ceaseless inflow of the decolletees.

She throbbed to the music of the big band; her feet burned to dance;
her waist ached for the sash of a manly arm. She knew that she could
dance better than some of those stodgy old men and block-bodied old
women. But she had no clothes on--for dancing.

But there was one woman whom Kedzie felt she could not surpass,
a dazzling woman with a recklessly graceful young man. The young man
took the woman from a table almost over Kedzie's head. They left at
the table a man in evening dress who smoked a big cigar and seemed
not to be jealous of the two dancers.

Some one among the spectators about Kedzie said that the woman was
Zada L'Etoile, and her partner was Haviland Devoe. Zada was amazing
in her postures and gyrations, but Kedzie thought that she herself
could have danced as well if she had had that music, that costume,
that partner, and a little practice.

When Zada had completed her calisthenics she did not sit down with
Mr. Devoe, but went back to the table where the lone smoker sat. Now
that she looked at him again, Kedzie thought what an extraordinarily
handsome, gloriously wicked-looking, swell-looking man he was. Yet
the girl who had danced called him Peterkin--which didn't sound
very swell to Kedzie.

He had very little to say to Zada, who did most of the talking.
He smiled at her now and then behind his cigar and gave her a queer
look that Kedzie only vaguely understood. She thought little of him,
though, because the next dance began, and she had a whole riot
of costumes to study.

There was a constant movement of new-comers past Kedzie's nook.
Sometimes people halted to look the crowd over before they went
up the steps, and asked two handsome gentlemen in full-dress suits
if they could have a table. The gentlemen--managers, probably, who
got up the party--usually said no. Sometimes they looked at papers
in their hands and marked off something, and then the people got
a table.

By and by two men and an elderly woman dressed like a very youngerly
woman paused near Kedzie. Both of the men were tall, but the one
called Jim was so tall he could see over the rail, or over the moon,
for all Kedzie knew.

The elderly lady said, "Come along, boys; we're missing a love of
a trot."

The less tall of the men said: "Now, mother, restrain yourself.
Remember I've had a hard day and I'm only a young feller. How
about you, Jim?"

"I'll eat something, but I'm not dancing, if you'll pardon me,
Mrs. Duane," said Jim. "And I'm waiting for Charity Coe. She's
in the cloak-room."

"Oh, come along," said Mrs. Duane. "I've got a table and I don't
want to lose it."

She started away, and her son started to follow, but paused as
the other man caught his sleeve and growled:

"I say, isn't that Pete Cheever--there, right there by the rail?
Yes, it is--and with--!"

Then Tom gave a start and said: "Ssh! Here's Charity Coe."

Both men looked confused; then they brightened and greeted a new
batch of drifters, and there was a babble of:

"Why, hello! How are you, Tom! How goes it, Jim? What's the good
word, Mary? What you doing here, Charity, and all in black? Oh,
I have to get out or go mad."

Kedzie, eavesdropping on the chatter, wondered at the commonplace
names and the small-town conversation. With such costumes she
must have expected at least blank verse.

She was interested to see what the stern sentinels would do to
this knot of Toms, Jims, and Marys. She peeked around the corner,
and to her surprise saw them greeted with great cordiality. They
smiled and chatted with the sentinels and were passed through
the silken barrier.

Other people paused and passed in or were rejected. Kedzie watched
Mr. Cheever with new interest, but not much understanding. He had
next to nothing to say. After a time she overheard Zada say to him,
raising her voice to top the noise of the band: "Say, Peterkin,
see that great big lad over there, the human lighthouse by the sea?
Peterkin, you can't miss him--he's just standing up--yes--isn't
that Jim Dyckman? Is he really so rich as they say?"

"He's rotten rich!" said Peterkin.

Then Zada said something and pointed. She seemed to be excited, but
not half so excited as Peter was. His face was all shot up with red,
and he looked as if he had eaten something that didn't sit easy.

Then he looked as if he wanted to fight somebody. He began to chew
on his words.

Kedzie caught only a few phrases in the holes in the noisy music.

"When did she get back? And she's here with him? I'll kill him--"

Kedzie stood on tiptoe, primevally trying to lift her ears higher
still to hear what followed. She saw Zada putting her hand on
Peter's sleeve, and she heard Zada say:

"Don't start anything here. Remember I got a reputation to lose,
if you haven't."

This had the oddest effect on Peter. He stared at Zada, and his anger
ran out of his face just as the water ran out of the silver washbowl
in the sleeping-car. Then he began to laugh softly, but as if he
wanted to laugh right out loud. He put his napkin up and laughed
into that.

And then the anger he had lost ran up into Zada's face, and she
looked at Peter as if she wanted to kill him.

Now it was Peter who put his hand on her arm and patted it and said,
"I didn't mean anything."

Mean what? Kedzie wondered. But she had no chance to find out, for
Peter rose from the table and, dodging around the dancing couples,
made his escape. He reappeared in the very nook where Kedzie watched,
and called up to Zada:

"Did they see me?"

Zada shook her head. Peter threw her a kiss. She threw him a shrug
of contempt. Peter went away laughing. Kedzie waited a few minutes
and saw that Mr. Devoe had come to sit with Zada.

After a moment the music was resumed, and Zada rose to dance again
with Mr. Devoe--a curious sort of dance, in which she lifted her feet
high and placed them carefully, as if she were walking on a floor
covered with eggs and didn't want to break any.

But Kedzie's eyes were filling with sand. They had gazed too long
at brilliance. She dashed back to the elevator and to her room.
She was exhausted, and she pulled off her clothes and let them lie
where they fell. She slid her weary frame between the sheets and
instantly slept.

* * * * *

Charity Coe danced till all hours with Jim, with Tom Duane and
other men, and no one could have fancied that she had ever known
or cared what horrors filled the war hospitals across the sea.

She was frantic enough to accept a luncheon engagement with Jim and
his mother for the next day. She telephoned him in the morning: "Your
angel of a mother will forgive me when you tell her I'm lunching
down-town with my husband. The poor boy was detained at his office
last night and didn't get my telegram till he got home. When he
learned that I had come in and gone out again he was furious with
himself and me. I hadn't left word where I was, so he couldn't come
running after me. He waited at home and gave me a love of a call-down
for my dissipation. It was a treat. I really think he was jealous."

Jim Dyckman did not laugh with her. He was thinking hard. He had seen
Cheever at the Biltmore, and a little later Cheever vanished. Cheever
must have seen Charity Coe then. And if he saw her, he saw him. Then
why had he kept silent? Dyckman had a chilling intuition that Cheever
was lying in ambush for him.

Again he was wrung with the impulse to tell Charity Coe the truth
about her husband. Again some dubious decency withheld him.

CHAPTER VII

The word "breakfast" was magic stimulant to the Thropps. Kedzie put
on her clothes, and the family went down to the elevator together.

They found their way to the Tudor Room, where a small number of men,
mostly barricaded behind newspapers, ate briskly. A captain showed
the Thropps to a table; three waiters pulled out their chairs and
pushed them in under them. Another laid large pasteboards before
them. Another planted ice-water and butter and salt and pepper
here and there.

Adna had traveled enough to know that the way to order a meal in
a hotel is to give the waiter a wise look and say, "Bring me the
best you got."

This waiter looked a little surprised, but he said, "Yes, sir. Do
you like fruit and eggs and rolls, maybe?"

"Nah," said Adna. "Breakfast's my best meal. Bring us suthin' hearty
and plenty of it. I like a nice piece of steak and fried potatoes
and some griddle-cakes and maple-surrup, and if you got any nice
sawsitch--and the wife usually likes some oatmeal, and she takes tea
and toast, but bring me some hot bread. And the girl--What you want,
Kedzie? The same's I'm takin'? All right. Oh, some grape-fruit, eh?
She wants grape-fruit. Got any good? All right. I guess I'll take
some grape-fruit, too; and let me see--I guess that'll do to start
on--Wait! What's that those folks are eatin' over there? Looks good
--spring chicken--humm! I guess you'd like that better'n steak, ma?
Yes. She'd rather have the chicken. All right, George, you hustle us
in a nice meal and I'll make it all right with you. You understand."

Adna called all waiters "George." It saved their feelings, he
had heard.

The waiter bowed and retired. Adna spoke to his family:

"Since we pay the same, anyway, might's well have the best they got."

The waiter gave the three a meal fitter for the ancient days when
kings had dinner at nine in the morning than for these degenerate
times when breakfast hardly lives up to its name.

The waiter and his cronies stood at a safe distance and watched
the Thropps surround that banquet. They wondered where the old man
got money enough to buy such breakfasts and why he didn't spend some
of it on clothes.

The favorite theory was that he was a farmer on whose acres somebody
had discovered oil or gold and bought him out for a million.
Mr. Thropp's proper waiter hoped that he would be as extravagant
with his tip as he was with his order. He feared not. His waiterly
intuition told him the old man put in with more enthusiasm than he
paid out.

At last the meal was over. The Thropps were groaning. They had not
quite absorbed the feast, but they had wrecked it utterly. Mr. Thropp
found only one omission in the perfect service. The toothpicks had to
be asked for. All three Thropps wanted them.

While Thropp was fishing in his pocket for a quarter, and finding
only half a dollar which he did not want to reveal, the waiter
placed before him a closely written manuscript, face down, with
a lead-pencil on top of it.

"What's this?" said Thropp.

"Will you please to sign your name and room number, sir?" the waiter
suggested.

"Oh, I see," said Thropp, and explained to his little flock. "You see,
they got to keep tabs on the regular boarders."

Then he turned the face of the bill to the light. His pencil could
hardly find a place to put his name in the long catalogue. He noted
a sum scrawled in red ink: "$11.75."

"Wha-what's this?" he said, faintly.

The surprised waiter explained with all suavity: "The price of
the breakfast. If it is not added correctlee--"

Thropp added it with accurate, but tremulous, pencil. The total
was correct, if the items were. He explained:

"But I'm a regular--er--roomer here. I pay by the week."

"Yes, sir--if you will sign, it will be all right."

"But that don't mean they're going to charge me for breakfast? 'Levum
dollars and seventy-five cents for--for breakfast?--for a small family
like mine is? Well, I'd like to see 'em! What do they think I am!"

The waiter maintained his courtesy, but Adna was infuriated. He
put down no tip at all. He lifted his family from the table with
a yank of the eyes and snapped at the waiter:

"I'll soon find out who's tryin' to stick me.--you or the
proprietor."

The old man stalked out, followed by his fat ewe and their ewe lamb.
Adna's very toothpick was like a small bayonet.

His wife and daughter hung back to avoid being spattered with the gore
of the unfortunate hotel clerk. The morning trains were unloading
their mobs, and it was difficult to reach the desk at all.

When finally Adna got to the bar he had lost some of his running
start. With somewhat weakly anger he said to the first clerk
he reached:

"Looky here! I registered here last night, and another young feller
was here said the two rooms would be twelve dollars."

"Yes, sir."

"Well, they sent me up to roost on a cloud, but I didn't kick. Now
they're tryin' to charge me for meals extry. Don't that twelve dollars
include meals?"

"Oh no, sir. The hotel is on the European plan."

Adna took the shock bravely but bitterly: "Well, all I got to say is
the Europeans got mighty poor plans. I kind of suspicioned there was
a ketch in it somewheres. After this we'll eat outside, and at the
end of the week we'll take our custom somewheres else. Maybe there
was a joke in that twelve dollars a week for the rooms, too."

"Twelve dollars a week! Oh no, sir; the charge is by the day."

Adna's knees seemed to turn to sand and run down into his shoes.
He supported himself on his elbows.

"Twelve dollars a day--for those two rooms on the top of the moon?"

"Yes, sir; that's the rate, sir."

Adna was going rapidly. He chattered, "Ain't there no police in
this town at tall?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, I've heard they're the wust robbers of all. We'll see
about this." He went back to his women folk and mumbled, "Come on
up-stairs."

They followed, Mrs. Thropp murmuring to Kedzie: "Looks like poppa
was goin' to be sick. I'm afraid he et too much of that rich food."

The elevator flashed them to their empyrean floor. Adna did not
speak till they were in their room and he had lowered himself feebly
into a chair. He spoke thickly:

"Do you know what that Judas Iscariot down there is doin' to us?
Chargin' us twelve dollars a day for these two cubby-holes--a day!
Twelve dollars a day! Eighty-four dollars a week! And that breakfast
was 'levum dollars and seventy-five cents! If I'd gave the waiter
the quarter I was goin' to, it would have made an even dozen dollars!
for breakfast! I don't suppose anybody would ever dast order a dinner
here. Why, they'd skin a millionaire and pick his bones in a week.
We'd better get out before they slap a mortgage on my house."

"Well, I just wouldn't pay it," said Mrs. Thropp. "I'd see the police
about such goings-on."

"The police!" groaned Thropp. "They're in cahoots with the burglars
here. This hull town is a den of thieves. I've always heard it, and
now I know it."

He was ashamed of himself for being taken in so. He began to throw
into the valises the duds that had been removed.

Throughout the panic Kedzie had stood about in a kind of stupor.
When her father tapped her on the shoulder and repeated his
"C'm'on!" she turned to him eyes all tears glistening like bubbles,
and she whimpered:

"Oh, daddy, the view! The nice things!"

Adna snapped: "View? Our next view will be the poorhouse if we don't
hustle our stumps. We got to get out of here and find the cheapest
place they is in town to live or go back home on the next train."

Kedzie began to cry, to cry as she had cried when she wept in
her cradle because candy had been taken from her, or a box of
carpet-tacks, or the scissors that she had somehow got hold of.

Adna dropped his valises with a thud. He began to upbraid her.
He had endured too much. He had still his bill to pay. He told her
that she was a good-for-nothin' nuisance and he wished he had left
her home. He'd never take her anywheres again, you bet. Kedzie
lost her reason entirely. She was shattered with spasms of grief
aggravated by her mother's ferocity and her father's. She could not
give up this splendor. She would not go to a cheap place to live.
She would never go back home. She would rather die.

Her mother boxed her ears and shook her and scolded with all her
vim. But Kedzie only shook out more sobs till they wondered what
the people next door would think. Adna was wan with wrath. Kedzie
was afraid of her father's look. She had a kind of lockjaw of grief
such as children suffer and suffer for.

All she would answer to her father's threats was: "I won't! I won't!
I tell you I won't!"

Her cheeks were blubbered, her nose red, her mouth swollen, her hair
wet and stringy. She gulped and swallowed and beat her hands together
and stamped her feet.

Adna glared at her in hatred equal to her own for him. He said to
his wife: "Ma, we got to go back to first principles with that girl.
You got to give her a good beatin'."