The Girl at the Halfway House, Emerson Hough [best summer books .TXT] 📗

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. With all our might we belie this clause, though in the time of Ellisville it might have had some footing. That day has long since passed.

The men of the Cottage Hotel continued big, brown, bespurred and behatted, yet it might have been observed that the tenantry of the Stone Hotel became gradually less sunburned and more immaculate. Mustaches swept not so sunburned, blonde and wide, but became in the average darker and more trim. At the door of the dining-room there were hat racks, and in time they held "hard hats." The stamping of the social die had begun its work. Indeed, after a time there came to be in the great dining-room of the Stone Hotel little groups bounded by unseen but impassable lines. The bankers and the loan agents sat at the head of the hall, and to them drifted naturally the ministers, ever in search of pillars. Lawyers and doctors sat adjacent thereunto, and merchants not far away. There was yet no shrug at the artisan, yet the invisible hand gradually swept him apart. Across the great gulfs, on whose shores sat the dining-room tables, men and women looked and talked, but trod not as they came in to meat, each person knowing well his place. The day of the commercial traveller was not yet, and for these there was no special table, they being for the most part assigned to the Red Belt; there being a certain portion of the hall where the tablecloths were checkered red and white. It was not good to be in the Red Belt.

Sam, the owner of the livery barn, had one table in the corner, where he invariably sat. His mode of entering the dining-room varied not with the passing of the years. Appearing at the door, he cast a frightened look at the occupants who had preceded him, and in whose faces he could imagine nothing but critical censure of his own person. Becoming aware of his hat, he made a dive and hung it up. Then he trod timidly through the door, with a certain side-draught in his step, yet withal an acceleration of speed which presently brought him almost at a run to his corner of refuge, where he dropped, red and with a gulp. Often he mopped his brow with the unwonted napkin, but discovery in this act by the stern eye of Nora, the head waitress, caused him much agony and a sudden search for a handkerchief. When Nora stood at his chair, and repeated to him frostily the menu of the day, all the world went round to Sam, and he gained no idea of what was offered him. With much effort at nonchalance, he would again wipe his face, take up his fork for twiddling, and say always the same thing.

"Oh, I ain't very hungry; jes' bring me a little pie an' beef an' coffee." And Nora, scornfully ignoring all this, then departed and brought him many things, setting them in array about his plate, and enabling him to eat as really he wished. Whether Sam knew that Nora would do this is a question which must remain unanswered, but it is certain that he never changed the form of his own "order."

Sam was a citizen. He had grown up with the town. He was, so to speak, one of the charter members of Ellisville, and thereby entitled to consideration. Moreover, his business was one of the most lucrative in the community, and he was beyond the clutching shallows and upon the easy flood of prosperity. No man could say that Sam owed him a dollar, nor could any man charge against him any act of perfidy, except such as might now and then be connected with the letting of a "right gentle" horse. There was no reason why Sam might not look any man in the face, or any woman. But this latter Sam had never done. His admiration for Nora bade fair to remain a secret known of all but the one most interested. Daily Sam sat at the table and listened to Nora's icy tones. He caught his breath if the glitter of her glasses faced him, and went in a fever as he saw her sail across the floor. Daily he arose with the stern resolve that before the sun had set he would have told this woman of that which so oppressed him; yet each day, after he had dined, he stole furtively away to the hat rack and slouched across the street to his barn, gazing down at his feet with abasement on his soul. "I ain't afeard o' any hoss that ever stood up," said he to himself, "but I can't say a word to that Nory girl, no matter how I try!"

It was one of Sam's theories that some day he would go in late to dinner, when there was no one else left in the great hall. He would ask Nora to come to serve him. Then he would grasp her hand, there as she stood by him, and he would pour forth to her the story of his long unuttered love. And then—but beyond this Sam could not think. And never yet had he dared go into the dining hall and sit alone, though it was openly rumoured that such had been the ruse of Curly with the "littlest waiter girl," before Curly had gone north on the Wyoming trail.

Accident sometimes accomplishes that which design fails to compass. One day Sam was detained with a customer much later than his usual dinner hour. Indeed, Sam had not been to dinner at the hotel for many days, a fact which the district physician at the railway might have explained. "Of course," said Sam, "I done the drivin', an' maybe that was why I got froze some more than Cap Franklin did, when we went down south that day." Frozen he had been, so that two of his fingers were now gone at the second joint, a part of his right ear was trimmed of unnecessary tissue, and his right cheek remained red and seared with the blister of the cold endured on that drive over the desolated land. It was a crippled and still more timid Sam who, unwittingly very late, halted that day at the door of the dining-room and gazed within. At the door there came over him a wave of recollection. It seemed to him all at once that he was, by reason of his afflictions, set still further without the pale of any possible regard. He dodged to his table and sat down without a look at any of his neighbours. To him it seemed that Nora regarded him with yet more visible scornfulness. Could he have sunk beneath the board he would have done so. Naught but hunger made him bold, for he had lived long at his barn on sardines, cheese, and crackers.

One by one the guests at the tables rose and left the room, and one by one the waiter girls followed them. The dining hour was nearly over. The girls would go upstairs for a brief season of rest before changing their checked gingham mid-day uniform for the black gown and white apron which constituted the regalia for the evening meal, known, of course, as "supper." Sam, absorbed in his own misery and his own hunger, awoke with a start to find the great hall apparently quite deserted.

It is the curious faculty of some men (whereby scientists refer us to the ape) that they are able at will to work back and forth the scalp upon the skull. Yet other and perhaps fewer men retain the ability to work either or both ears, moving them back and forth voluntarily. It was Sam's solitary accomplishment that he could thus move his ears. Only by this was he set apart and superior to other beings. You shall find of very many men but few able to do this thing. Moreover, if you be curious in philosophy, it shall come to be fixed in your memory that woman is disposed to love not one who is like to many, but to choose rather one who is distinct, superior, or more fit than his fellow-men; it being ever the intent of Nature that the most excellent shall attract, and thus survive.

As Sam sat alone at the table, his spoon rattling loud upon his plate in evidence of his mental disturbance, he absent-mindedly began to work back and forth his ears, perhaps solicitous to learn if his accomplishment had been impaired by the mishap which had caused him other loss. As he did this, he was intensely startled to hear behind him a burst of laughter, albeit laughter quickly smothered. He turned to see Nora, his idol, his adored, standing back of him, where she had slipped in with professional quiet and stood with professional etiquette, waiting for his departure, so that she might hale forth the dishes he had used. At this apparition, at this awful thought—for never in the history of man had Nora, the head waitress, been known to smile—the heart of Sam stopped forthwith in his bosom.

"I-I-I-I b-b-beg your—I-I d-didn't know you was there," he stammered in abject perturbation.

Nora sniffed. "I should think you might of knowed it," said she.

"I d-d-don't b-b-blame you fer laughin', M-M-Miss M-M-M-Markley," said
Sam miserably.

"What at?" demanded Nora fiercely.

"At m-m-my air. I know it's funny, cut off, that way. But I c-c-can't help it. It's gone."

"I didn't," exclaimed Nora hotly, her face flushing. "Your ears is all right. I was laughin' at seein' you move 'em. I beg your pardon. I didn't know anybody could, that way, you know. I'm—I'm sorry."

A great light broke over Sam. A vast dam crashed free. His soul rushed forth in one mad wave.

"M-M-Miss M-M-Markley—Miss—Nory!" he exclaimed, whirling about and facing her, "d-d-d-do y-y-you l-l-like to s-s-see me work my airs?"

"Yes, it's funny," admitted Nora, on the point of another outbreak in spite of herself.

This amiability was an undreamed thing, yet Sam saw his advantage. He squared himself about, and, looking solemnly and earnestly in Nora's face, he pulled first his right and then his left ear forward until the members stood nearly at right angles to his head.

After all, the ludicrous is but the unexpected. Many laugh who see an old woman fall upon the slippery pavement. This new spectacle was the absolutely undreamed-of to Nora, who was no scientist. Her laughter was irrepressible. In a trice the precedents of years were gone. Nora felt the empire of her dignity slipping away, but none the less could not repress her mirth. And more than this; as she gazed into the honest, blue-eyed face before her she felt a lessening of her desire to retain her icy pedestal, and she struggled the less against her laughter. Indeed, with a sudden fright, she found her laughter growing nervous. She, the head waitress, was perturbed, alarmed!

Sam followed up his advantage royally. "I can work 'em both to onct!" he exclaimed triumphantly. And did so. "There! They was a boy in our school onct that could work his airs one at a time, but I never did see no one else but me that could work 'em both to onct. Look a-here!" He waggled his ears ecstatically. The reserve of Nora oozed, waned, vanished.

Even, the sternest fibre must at length succumb under prolonged Herculean endeavour. No man may long continuously wag his ears, even alternately; therefore Sam perforce paused in time. Yet by that time—in what manner it occurred no one may know—Nora was seated on the chair next to him at the table. They were alone. Silence fell. Nora's hand moved nervously among the spoons. Upon it dropped the mutilated one of Sam.

"Nory," said he, "I'd—I'd work 'em all my life—fer you!" And to Nora, who turned away her head now, not for the purpose of hiding a smile, this seemed always a perfectly fit and proper declaration of this man's regard.

"I know I'm no good," murmured Sam. "I'm a awful coward. I-I-I've l-l-loved you ever sence the fust time that I seen you, but I was such a coward, I—I couldn't—couldn't—"

"You're not!" cried Nora imperiously.