"Ivy, you"ll do one last thing for your old father, won"t you?"
"Maybe," answered Ivy, coolly.
"Don"t make that fellow any promises. Now wait a minute! Let me get through. I won"t put any crimp in your plans. I won"t speak to Schlachweiler. Promise you won"t do anything rash until the ball season"s over. Then we"ll wait just one month, see? Till along about November. Then if you feel like you want to see him----"
"But how----"
"Hold on. You mustn"t write to him, or see him, or let him write to you during that time, see? Then, if you feel the way you do now, I"ll take you to Slatersville to see him. Now that"s fair, ain"t it? Only don"t let him know you"re coming."
"M-m-m-yes," said Ivy.
"Shake hands on it." She did. Then she left the room with a rush, headed in the direction of her own bedroom. Pa Keller treated himself to a prodigious wink and went out to the vegetable garden in search of Mother.
The team went out on the road, lost five games, won two, and came home in fourth place. For a week they lounged around the Parker Hotel and held up the street corners downtown, took many farewell drinks, then, slowly, by ones and twos, they left for the packing houses, freight depots, and gents" furnishing stores from whence they came.
October came in with a blaze of sumac and oak leaves. Ivy stayed home and learned to make veal loaf and apple pies. The worry lines around Pa Keller"s face began to deepen. Ivy said that she didn"t believe that she cared to go back to Miss Shont"s select school for young ladies.
October thirty-first came.
"We"ll take the eight-fifteen to-morrow," said her father to Ivy.
"All right," said Ivy.
"Do you know where he works?" asked he.
"No," answered Ivy.
"That"ll be all right. I took the trouble to look him up last August."
The short November afternoon was drawing to its close (as our best talent would put it) when Ivy and her father walked along the streets of Slatersville. (I can"t tell you what streets, because I don"t know.) Pa Keller brought up before a narrow little shoe shop.
"Here we are," he said, and ushered Ivy in. A short, stout, proprietary figure approached them smiling a mercantile smile.
"What can I do for you?" he inquired.
Ivy"s eyes searched the shop for a tall, golden-haired form in a soiled baseball suit.
"We"d like to see a gentleman named Schlachweiler--Rudolph Schlachweiler," said Pa Keller.
"Anything very special?" inquired the proprietor. "He"s--rather busy just now. Wouldn"t anybody else do? Of course, if----"
"No," growled Keller.
The boss turned. "Hi! Schlachweiler!" he bawled toward the rear of the dim little shop.
"Yessir," answered a m.u.f.fled voice.
"Front!" yelled the boss, and withdrew to a safe listening distance.
A vaguely troubled look lurked in the depths of Ivy"s eyes. From behind the part.i.tion of the rear of the shop emerged a tall figure. It was none other than our hero. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and he struggled into his coat as he came forward, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, hurriedly, and swallowing.
I have said that the shop was dim. Ivy and her father stood at one side, their backs to the light. Rudie came forward, rubbing his hands together in the manner of clerks.
"Something in shoes?" he politely inquired. Then he saw.
"Ivy!--ah--Miss Keller!" he exclaimed. Then, awkwardly: "Well, how-do, Mr. Keller. I certainly am glad to see you both. How"s the old town?
What are you doing in Slatersville?"
"Why--Ivy----" began Pa Keller, blunderingly.
But Ivy clutched his arm with a warning hand. The vaguely troubled look in her eyes had become wildly so.
"Schlachweiler!" shouted the voice of the boss. "Customers!" and he waved a hand in the direction of the fitting benches.
"All right, sir," answered Rudie. "Just a minute."
"Dad had to come on business," said Ivy, hurriedly. "And he brought me with him. I"m--I"m on my way to school in Cleveland, you know. Awfully glad to have seen you again. We must go. That lady wants her shoes, I"m sure, and your employer is glaring at us. Come, dad."
At the door she turned just in time to see Rudie removing the shoe from the pudgy foot of the fat lady customer.
We"ll take a jump of six months. That brings us into the lap of April.
Pa Keller looked up from his evening paper. Ivy, home for the Easter vacation, was at the piano. Ma Keller was sewing.
Pa Keller cleared his throat. "I see by the paper," he announced, "that Schlachweiler"s been sold to Des Moines. Too bad we lost him. He was a great little pitcher, but he played in bad luck. Whenever he was on the slab the boys seemed to give him poor support."
"Fudge!" exclaimed Ivy, continuing to play, but turning a spirited face toward her father. "What piffle! Whenever a player pitches rotten ball you"ll always hear him howling about the support he didn"t get.
Schlachweiler was a b.u.m pitcher. Anybody could hit him with a willow wand, on a windy day, with the sun in his eyes."
V
THE KITCHEN SIDE OF THE DOOR
The City was celebrating New Year"s Eve. Spelled thus, with a capital C, know it can mean but New York. In the Pink Fountain room of the Newest Hotel all those grand old forms and customs handed down to us for the occasion were being rigidly observed in all their original quaintness.
The Van d.y.k.ed man who looked like a Russian Grand Duke (he really was a chiropodist) had drunk champagne out of the pink satin slipper of the lady who behaved like an actress (she was forelady at Schmaus" Wholesale Millinery, eighth floor). The two respectable married ladies there in the corner had been kissed by each other"s husbands. The slim, Puritan-faced woman in white, with her black hair so demurely parted and coiled in a sleek knot, had risen suddenly from her place and walked indolently to the edge of the plashing pink fountain in the center of the room, had stood contemplating its shallows with a dreamy half-smile on her lips, and then had lifted her slim legs slowly and gracefully over its fern-fringed basin and had waded into its chilling midst, trailing her exquisite white satin and chiffon draperies after her, and scaring the goldfish into fits. The loudest scream of approbation had come from the yellow-haired, loose-lipped youth who had made the wager, and lost it. The heavy blonde in the inevitable violet draperies showed signs of wanting to dance on the table. Her companion--a structure made up of layer upon layer, and fold upon fold of flabby tissue--knew all the waiters by their right names, and insisted on singing with the orchestra and beating time with a rye roll. The clatter of dishes was giving way to the clink of gla.s.ses.
In the big, bright kitchen back, of the Pink Fountain room Miss Gussie Fink sat at her desk, calm, watchful, insolent-eyed, a G.o.ddess sitting in judgment. On the pay roll of the Newest Hotel Miss Gussie Fink"s name appeared as kitchen checker, but her regular job was G.o.ddessing. Her altar was a high desk in a corner of the busy kitchen, and it was an altar of incense, of burnt-offerings, and of s...o...b..ead. Inexorable as a G.o.ddess of the ancients was Miss Fink, and ten times as difficult to appease. For this is the rule of the Newest Hotel, that no waiter may carry his laden tray restaurantward until its contents have been viewed and duly checked by the eye and hand of Miss Gussie Fink, or her a.s.sistants. Flat upon the table must go every tray, off must go each silver dish-cover, lifted must be each napkin to disclose its treasure of steaming corn or hot rolls. Clouds of incense rose before Miss Gussie Fink and she sniffed it unmoved, her eyes, beneath level brows, regarding savory broiler or cunning ice with equal indifference, appraising alike lobster c.o.c.ktail or onion soup, traveling from blue points to brie.
Things a la and things glace were all one to her. Gazing at food was Miss Gussie Fink"s occupation, and just to see the way she regarded a boneless squab made you certain that she never ate.
In spite of the I-don"t-know-how-many (see ads) New Year"s Eve diners for whom food was provided that night, the big, busy kitchen was the most orderly, shining, spotless place imaginable. But Miss Gussie Fink was the neatest, most immaculate object in all that great, clean room. There was that about her which suggested daisies in a field, if you know what I mean. This may have been due to the fact that her eyes were brown while her hair was gold, or it may have been something about the way her collars fitted high, and tight, and smooth, or the way her close white sleeves came down to meet her pretty hands, or the way her shining hair sprang from her forehead. Also the smooth creaminess of her clear skin may have had something to do with it. But privately, I think it was due to the way she wore her shirtwaists. Miss Gussie Fink could wear a starched white shirtwaist under a close-fitting winter coat, remove the coat, run her right forefinger along her collar"s edge and her left thumb along the back of her belt and disclose to the admiring world a blouse as unwrinkled and unsullied as though it had just come from her own skilful hands at the ironing board. Miss Gussie Fink was so innately, flagrantly, beautifully clean-looking that--well, there must be a stop to this description.
She was the kind of girl you"d like to see behind the counter of your favorite delicatessen, knowing that you need not shudder as her fingers touch your Sunday night supper slices of tongue, and Swiss cheese, and ham. No girl had ever dreamed of refusing to allow Gussie to borrow her chamois for a second.
To-night Miss Fink had come on at 10 P.M., which was just two hours later than usual. She knew that she was to work until 6 A.M., which may have accounted for the fact that she displayed very little of what the fans call ginger as she removed her hat and coat and hung them on the hook behind the desk. The prospect of that all-night, eight-hour stretch may have accounted for it, I say. But privately, and entre nous, it didn"t.
For here you must know of Heiny. Heiny, alas! now Henri.