"Why not, I"d like to know?"
"My dear madam," responded Mr. Magee, "only echo answers, and it but vacuously repeats, "Why not?". That, however, is the situation. Mr.
Peters loathes the s.e.x. I imagine that, until to-day, he was not particularly happy in the examples of it he encountered. Why, he has even gone so far as to undertake a book attributing all the trouble of the world to woman."
"The idiot!" cried Mrs. Norton.
"Delicious!" laughed the girl.
"I shall ask Peters to serve you," said Magee. "I shall appeal to his gallant side. But I must proceed gently. This is his first day as our cook, and you know how necessary a good first impression is with a new cook. I"ll appeal to his better nature."
"Don"t do it," cried the girl. "Don"t emphasize us to him in any way, or he may exercise his right as cook and leave. Just ignore us. We"ll play at being our own bell-boys."
"Ignore you," cried Mr. Magee. "What Herculean tasks you set. I"m not equal to that one." He picked up their traveling-bags and led the way up-stairs. "I"m something of a bell-boy myself, when roused," he said.
The girl selected suite seventeen, at the farther end of the corridor from Magee"s apartments. "It"s the very one I used to have, years and years ago--at least two or three years ago," she said. "Isn"t it stupid?
All the furniture in a heap."
"And cold," said Mrs. Norton. "My land, I wish I was back by my own fire."
"I"ll make you regret your words, Mrs. Norton," cried Magee. He threw up the windows, pulled off his coat, and set to work on the furniture. The girl bustled about, lightening his work by her smile. Mrs. Norton managed to get consistently in the way. When he had the furniture distributed, he procured logs and tried his hand at a fire. Then he stood, his black hair disheveled, his hands soiled, but his heart very gay, before the girl of the station.
"I hope you don"t expect a tip," she said, laughing.
"I do," he said, coming closer, and speaking in a voice that was not for the ear of the chaperon. "I want a tip on this--do you really act?"
She looked at him steadily.
"Once," she said, "when I was sixteen, I appeared in an amateur play at school. It was my first and last appearance on the stage."
"Thanks, lady," remarked Mr. Magee in imitation of the bell-boy he was supposed to be. He sought number seven. There he made himself again presentable, after which he descended to the office.
Mr. Bland sat reading the New York paper before the fire. From the little card-room and the parlor, the two rooms to the right and left of the hotel"s front door, Quimby had brought forth extra chairs. He stood now by the large chair that held Professor Bolton, engaged in conversation with that gentleman.
"Yes," he was saying, "I lived three years in Reuton and five years in New York. It took me eight years--eight years to realize the truth."
"I heard about it from John Bentley," the professor said gently.
"He"s been pretty kind to me, Mr. Bentley has," replied Quimby. "When the money was all gone, he offered me this job. Once the Quimbys owned most of the land around Baldpate Mountain. It all went in those eight years. To think that it took all those years for me to find it out."
"If I"m not impertinent, Quimby," put in Magee, "to find what out?"
"That what I wanted, the railroad men didn"t want," replied Quimby bitterly, "and that was--the safety of the public. You see, I invented a new rail joint, one that was a great improvement on the old kind. I had sort of an idea, when I was doing it--an idea of service to the world--you know. G.o.d, what a joke! I sold all the Quimby lands, and went to Reuton, and then to New York, to place it. Not one of the railroad men but admitted that it was an improvement, and a big one--and not one but fought like mad to keep me from getting it down where the public would see it. They didn"t want the expense of a change."
Mr. Quimby looked out at the sunlit stretch of snow.
"Eight years," he repeated, "I fought and pleaded. No, I begged--that was the word--I begged. You"d be surprised to know the names of some of the men who kept me waiting in their private offices, and sneered at me over their polished desks. They turned me down--every one. Some of them played me--as though I"d been a fish. They referred me to other ends of the same big game, laughing in their sleeves, I guess, at the knowledge of how hopeless it was. Oh, they made a fine fool of me."
"You might have put down some of your joints at your own expense,"
suggested the professor.
"Didn"t I try?" cried Quimby. "Do you think they"d let me? No, the public might see them and demand them everywhere. Once, I thought I had convinced somebody. It was down in Reuton--the Suburban Railway." There was a rustle as Mr. Bland let his paper fall to the floor. "Old Henry Thornhill was president of the road--he is yet, I guess--but young Hayden and a fellow named David Kendrick were running it. Kendrick was on my side--he almost had Hayden. They were going to let me lay a stretch of track with my joints. Then--something happened. Maybe you remember. Kendrick disappeared in the night--he"s never been seen since."
"I do remember," said the professor softly.
"Hayden turned me down," went on Quimby. "The money was all gone. So I came back to Upper Asquewan--caretaker of an inn that overlooks the property my father owned--the property I squandered for a chance to save human lives. It"s all like a dream now--those eight years. And it nearly drives me mad, sometimes, to think that it took me eight years--eight years to find it out. I"ll just straighten things around a bit."
He moved away, and the men sat in silence for a time. Then the professor spoke very gently:
"Poor devil--to have had his dream of service--and then grow old on Baldpate."
The two joined Mr. Bland by the fire. Mr. Magee had put from his mind all intention of work. The maze of events through which he wandered held him bewildered and enthralled. He looked at the haberdasher and the university scholar and asked himself if they were real, or if he was still asleep in a room on a side street in New York, waiting for the cheery coming of Geoffrey. He asked himself still more perplexedly if the creature that came toward him now through the dining-room door was real--the hairy Hermit of Baldpate, like a figure out of some old print, his market basket on his arm again, his coat b.u.t.toned to the chin.
"Well, everything"s shipshape in the kitchen," announced the hermit cheerfully. "I couldn"t go without seeing to that. I wish you the best of luck, gentlemen--and good-by."
"Good-by?" cried the professor.
"By the G.o.ds, he"s leaving us," almost wept Mr. Bland.
"It can"t be," said Mr. Magee.
"It has to be," said the Hermit of Baldpate, solemnly shaking his head.
"I"d like to stay with you, and I would of, if they hadn"t come. But here they are--and when women come in the door, I fly out of the window, as the saying is."
"But, Peters," pleaded Magee, "you"re not going to leave us in the hole like this?"
"Sorry," replied Peters, "I can please men, but I can"t please women. I tried to please one once--but let the dead past bury its dead. I live on Baldpate in a shack to escape the s.e.x, and it wouldn"t be consistent for me to stay here now. I got to go. I hate to, like a dog, but I got to."
"Peters," said Mr. Magee, "I"m surprised. After giving your word to stay! And who knows--you may be able to gather valuable data for your book. Stick around. These women won"t bother you. I"ll make them promise never to ask about the love-affair you didn"t have--never even to come near you. And we"ll pay you beyond the dreams of avarice of a Broadway chef. Won"t we, gentlemen?"
The others nodded. Mr. Peters visibly weakened.
"Well--" he began. "I--" His eyes were on the stair. Mr. Magee also looked in that direction and saw the girl of the station smiling down.
She no longer wore coat and hat, and the absence of the latter revealed a glory of golden hair that became instantly a rival to the sunshine in that drear bare room.
"No, Peters," she said, "you mustn"t go. We couldn"t permit it. Mamma and I will go."
She continued to smile at the obviously dazzled Peters. Suddenly he spoke in a determined tone:
"No--don"t do that. I"ll stay." Then he turned to Magee, and continued for that gentleman"s ear alone: "Dog-gone it, we"re all alike. We resolve and resolve, and then one of them looks at us, and it"s all forgot. I had a friend who advertised for a wife, leastways, he was a friend until he advertised. He got ninety-two replies, seventy of "em from married men advising against the step. "I"m cured," he says to me.
"Not for me." Did he keep his word? No. A week after he married a widow just to see if what the seventy said was true. I"m mortal. I hang around the buzz-saw. If you give me a little money, I"ll go down to the village and buy the provisions for lunch."
Gleefully Mr. Magee started the hermit on his way, and then went over to where the girl stood at the foot of the stairs.
"I promised him," he told her, "you"d ask no questions regarding his broken heart. It seems he hasn"t any."
"That"s horrid of him, isn"t it?" she smiled. "Every good hermit is equipped with a broken heart. I certainly shan"t bother him. I came down to get some water."
They went together to the kitchen, found a pail, and filled it with icy water from the pump at the rear of the inn. Inside once more, Mr. Magee remarked thoughtfully: