"h.e.l.lo, Ted! How"s Ted?" said Jo Haley, casually. And dropped into the adjoining seat without any more fuss.
Ted wet his lips slightly and tried to say something. He had been a breezy talker. But the words would not come. Jo Haley made no effort to cover the situation with a rush of conversation. He did not seem to realize that there was any situation to cover. He champed the end of his cigar and handed one to Ted.
"Well, you"ve taken your lickin", kid. What you going to do now?"
The rawness of it made Ted wince. "Oh, I don"t know," he stammered.
"I"ve a job half promised in Chicago."
"What doing?"
Ted laughed a short and ugly laugh. "Driving a brewery auto truck."
Jo Haley tossed his cigar dexterously to the opposite corner of his mouth and squinted thoughtfully along its bulging sides.
"Remember that Wenzel girl that"s kept books for me for the last six years? She"s leaving in a couple of months to marry a New York guy that travels for ladies" cloaks and suits. After she goes it"s nix with the lady bookkeepers for me. Not that Minnie isn"t a good, straight girl, and honest, but no girl can keep books with one eye on a column of figures and the other on a traveling man in a brown suit and a red necktie, unless she"s cross-eyed, and you bet Minnie ain"t. The job"s yours if you want it. Eighty a month to start on, and board."
"I--can"t, Jo. Thanks just the same. I"m going to try to begin all over again, somewhere else, where n.o.body knows me."
"Oh yes," said Jo. "I knew a fellow that did that. After he came out he grew a beard, and wore eyegla.s.ses, and changed his name. Had a quick, crisp way of talkin", and he cultivated a drawl and went west and started in business. Real estate, I think. Anyway, the second month he was there in walks a fool he used to know and bellows: "Why if it ain"t Bill! h.e.l.lo, Bill! I thought you was doing time yet." That was enough.
Ted, you can black your face, and dye your hair, and squint, and some fine day, sooner or later, somebody"ll come along and blab the whole thing. And say, the older it gets the worse it sounds, when it does come out. Stick around here where you grew up, Ted."
Ted clasped and unclasped his hands uncomfortably. "I can"t figure out why you should care how I finish."
"No reason," answered Jo. "Not a darned one. I wasn"t ever in love with your ma, like the guy on the stage; and I never owed your pa a cent. So it ain"t a guilty conscience. I guess it"s just pure cussedness, and a hankerin" for a new investment. I"m curious to know how"ll you turn out.
You"ve got the makin"s of what the newspapers call a Leading Citizen, even if you did fall down once. If I"d ever had time to get married, which I never will have, a first-cla.s.s hotel bein" more worry and expense than a Pittsburg steel magnate"s whole harem, I"d have wanted somebody to do the same for my kid. That sounds slushy, but it"s straight."
"I don"t seem to know how to thank you," began Ted, a little husky as to voice.
"Call around to-morrow morning," interrupted Jo Haley, briskly, "and Minnie Wenzel will show you the ropes. You and her can work together for a couple of months. After then she"s leaving to make her underwear, and that. I should think she"d have a bale of it by this time. Been embroidering them shimmy things and lunch cloths back of the desk when she thought I wasn"t lookin" for the last six months."
Ted came down next morning at 8 A.M. with his nerve between his teeth and the chip still balanced lightly on his shoulder. Five minutes later Minnie Wenzel knocked it off. When Jo Haley introduced the two jocularly, knowing that they had originally met in the First Reader room, Miss Wenzel acknowledged the introduction icily by lifting her left eyebrow slightly and drawing down the corners of her mouth. Her air of hauteur was a triumph, considering that she was handicapped by black sateen sleevelets.
I wonder how one could best describe Miss Wenzel? There is one of her in every small town. Let me think (business of hand on brow). Well, she always paid eight dollars for her corsets when most girls in a similar position got theirs for fifty-nine cents in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Nature had been kind to her. The hair that had been a muddy brown in Minnie"s schoolgirl days it had touched with a magic red-gold wand. Birdie Callahan always said that Minnie was working only to wear out her old clothes.
After the introduction Miss Wenzel followed Jo Haley into the lobby. She took no pains to lower her voice.
"Well I must say, Mr. Haley, you"ve got a fine nerve! If my gentleman friend was to hear of my working with an ex-con I wouldn"t be surprised if he"d break off the engagement. I should think you"d have some respect for the feelings of a lady with a name to keep up, and engaged to a swell fellow like Mr. Schwartz."
"Say, listen, m" girl," replied Jo Haley. "The law don"t cover all the tricks. But if stuffing an order was a criminal offense I"ll bet your swell traveling man would be doing a life term."
Ted worked that day with his teeth set so that his jaws ached next morning. Minnie Wenzel spoke to him only when necessary and then in terms of dollars and cents. When dinner time came she divested herself of the black sateen sleevelets, wriggled from the shoulders down a la Patricia O"Brien, produced a chamois skin, and disappeared in the direction of the washroom. Ted waited until the dining-room was almost deserted. Then he went in to dinner alone. Some one in white wearing an absurd little pocket handkerchief of an ap.r.o.n led him to a seat in a far corner of the big room. Ted did not lift his eyes higher than the snowy square of the ap.r.o.n. The Ap.r.o.n drew out a chair, shoved it under Ted"s knees in the way Ap.r.o.ns have, and thrust a printed menu at him.
"Roast beef, medium," said Ted, without looking up.
"Bless your heart, yuh ain"t changed a bit. I remember how yuh used to jaw when it was too well done," said the Ap.r.o.n, fondly.
Ted"s head came up with a jerk.
"So yuh will cut yer old friends, is it?" grinned Birdie Callahan. "If this wasn"t a public dining-room maybe yuh"d shake hands with a poor but proud workin" girrul. Yer as good lookin" a divil as ever, Mister Ted."
Ted"s hand shot out and grasped hers. "Birdie! I could weep on your ap.r.o.n! I never was so glad to see any one in my life. Just to look at you makes me homesick. What in Sam Hill are you doing here?"
"Waitin". After yer ma died, seemed like I didn"t care t" work fer no other privit fam"ly, so I came back here on my old job. I"ll bet I"m the homeliest head waitress in captivity."
Ted"s nervous fingers were pleating the tablecloth. His voice sank to a whisper. "Birdie, tell me the G.o.d"s truth. Did those three years cause her death?"
"Niver!" lied Birdie. "I was with her to the end. It started with a cold on th" chest. Have some French fried with yer beef, Mr. Teddy.
They"re illigent to-day."
Birdie glided off to the kitchen. Authors are fond of the word "glide."
But you can take it literally this time. Birdie had a face that looked like a huge mistake, but she walked like a panther, and they"re said to be the last cry as gliders. She walked with her chin up and her hips firm. That comes from juggling trays. You have to walk like that to keep your nose out of the soup. After a while the walk becomes a habit.
Any seasoned dining-room girl could give lessons in walking to the Delsarte teacher of an Eastern finishing school.
From the day that Birdie Callahan served Ted with the roast beef medium and the elegant French fried, she appointed herself monitor over his food and clothes and morals. I wish I could find words to describe his bitter loneliness. He did not seek companionship. The men, although not directly avoiding him, seemed somehow to have pressing business whenever they happened in his vicinity. The women ignored him. Mrs. Dankworth, still dashing and still widowed, pa.s.sed Ted one day and looked fixedly at a point one inch above his head. In a town like ours the Haley House is like a big, hospitable clubhouse. The men drop in there the first thing in the morning, and the last thing at night, to hear the gossip and buy a cigar and jolly the girl at the cigar counter. Ted spoke to them when they spoke to him. He began to develop a certain grim line about the mouth. Jo Haley watched him from afar, and the longer he watched the kinder and more speculative grew the look in his eyes. And slowly and surely there grew in the hearts of our townspeople a certain new respect and admiration for this boy who was fighting his fight.
Ted got into the habit of taking his meals late, so that Birdie Callahan could take the time to talk to him.
"Birdie," he said one day, when she brought his soup, "do you know that you"re the only decent woman who"ll talk to me? Do you know what I mean when I say that I"d give the rest of my life if I could just put my head in my mother"s lap and have her muss up my hair and call me foolish names?"
Birdie Callahan cleared her throat and said abruptly: "I was noticin"
yesterday your gray pants needs pressin" bad. Bring "em down tomorrow mornin" and I"ll give "em th" elegant crease in the laundry."
So the first weeks went by, and the two months of Miss Wenzel"s stay came to an end. Ted thanked his G.o.d and tried hard not to wish that she was a man so that he could punch her head.
The day before the time appointed for her departure she was closeted with Jo Haley for a long, long time. When finally she emerged a bellboy lounged up to Ted with a message.
"Wenzel says th" Old Man wants t" see you. "S in his office. Say, Mr.
Terrill, do yuh think they can play to-day? It"s pretty wet."
Jo Haley was sunk in the depths of his big leather chair. He did not look up as Ted entered. "Sit down," he said. Ted sat down and waited, puzzled.
"As a wizard at figures," mused Jo Haley at last, softly as though to himself, "I"m a frost. A column of figures on paper makes my head swim.
But I can carry a whole regiment of "em in my head. I know every time the barkeeper draws one in the dark. I"ve been watchin" this thing for the last two weeks hopin" you"d quit and come and tell me." He turned suddenly and faced Ted. "Ted, old kid," he said sadly, "what"n"ell made you do it again?"
"What"s the joke?" asked Ted.
"Now, Ted," remonstrated Jo Haley, "that way of talkin" won"t help matters none. As I said, I"m rotten at figures. But you"re the first investment that ever turned out bad, and let me tell you I"ve handled some mighty bad smelling ones. Why, kid, if you had just come to me on the quiet and asked for the loan of a hundred or so why----"
"What"s the joke, Jo?" said Ted again, slowly.
"This ain"t my notion of a joke," came the terse answer. "We"re three hundred short."
The last vestige of Ted Terrill"s old-time radiance seemed to flicker and die, leaving him ashen and old.
"Short?" he repeated. Then, "My G.o.d!" in a strangely colorless voice--"My G.o.d!" He looked down at his fingers impersonally, as though they belonged to some one else. Then his hand clutched Jo Haley"s arm with the grip of fear. "Jo! Jo! That"s the thing that has haunted me day and night, till my nerves are raw. The fear of doing it again.
Don"t laugh at me, will you? I used to lie awake nights going over that cursed business of the bank--over and over--till the cold sweat would break out all over me. I used to figure it all out again, step by step, until--Jo, could a man steal and not know it? Could thinking of a thing like that drive a man crazy? Because if it could--if it could--then----"
"I don"t know," said Jo Haley, "but it sounds darned fishy." He had a hand on Ted"s shaking shoulder, and was looking into the white, drawn face. "I had great plans for you, Ted. But Minnie Wenzel"s got it all down on slips of paper. I might as well call her, in again, and we"ll have the whole blamed thing out."