Work of Art

15

The Westward Ho! to the eyes of Myron Weagle, was a palace. The Westward, as its habitués called it, had 650 bedrooms, and in 1905 was one of the largest six hotels in the world. It was new, built in 1900, and had the benefit not only of Byzantine, Moorish, and Gothic architecture, but also of the room-telephones, elevators and telautographs of America.

Before Myron reported to Mark Elphinstone--the offices of the whole Elphinstone chain were in the Westward--he stopped to adore the façade of the new cathedral in which he was to serve altar. There were fifteen stories of brown sandstone, pleasingly diversified with balconies, grey marble plaques, and small pink marble pillars, all rising to minarets of corroded green copper and huge Moorish brick turrets shaped like hexagonal pears. The building's glory was its main entrance: the golden archway above authentic red porphyry pilasters from Syria, shadowed by the carriage-awning of glass and gilded iron. The lobby, inside, was two stories high, floored with pink marble, wainscoted with yellow marble, supported with pillars of marble pink and yellow and green and black. Above the wainscoting was a frieze (painted by one of the best firms of commercial painters in New York) showing the development of New York from the Dutch, through the English, Irish, and Jews, to the Italians: a fine and lively incitement to American patriotism. The elevator doors were of bronze--rather like the doors of St. Peter's in miniature. The café and bar-room at one side of the lobby was lined with green marble, and full of tapestries, silver medallions, carved oak cabinets, carved ivory chessmen under glass, a carved oak ceiling, onyx-topped tables, teak tables, Flemish oak tables, English oak tables, French iron tables from the boulevards, sporting prints, a gilded harp draped with a silken scarf, a portrait of Mark Elphinstone draped with a Shriner's sash, a photograph of Oscar of the Waldorf inscribed 'To my friend M.E.', tufted leather chairs, curved oak chairs, gilded bamboo chairs, and lights--a glory and miracle of lights--ceiling-clusters of lights, lights peeping out of mauve glass lilies, lights in a large horseshoe formation on the wall, lights and lights and lights behind the glassware that upreared like fairy stalagmites behind the bar.

'Good gracious what a room! Why, it's like--it's like King Edward's own palace!' said Myron.

But Myron had seen, as yet, only what a guest might see. The inner shrine was the world behind the green baize doors at the ends of corridors; the world of the real hotel-makers--the engine-room, large enough to heat and light a city, the shops of upholsterers and carpenters and plumbers, thousands of sheets, table-cloths, and sets of silver and glass and china, mounds of stationery and report blanks, detectives, paymasters, tailors, printers, musicians, florists, cooks, girls who did nothing all day save prepare salads, men who did nothing but open oysters and clams, gardes manger who did nothing but prepare cold meat and find use for scraps, assistant storekeepers who received (and save on written order would not issue to the clamorous cooks) everything from five hundredweight of sugar to a single vial of rosewater; and all the office-world: book-keepers, auditors, telephone-girls, telautograph-operators and all the other workers rarely seen by the guest, to whom the personnel of an hotel is composed only of clerks, bell-boys, elevator-operators, waiters, and the affable cigar-stand clerk.

The whole great hotel was to be torn down, as antiquated, by 1929.

And long before that, by 1911, Myron was to be an assistant manager, one of the princes royal of the Westward, and to regard it with affectionate contempt as merely a hovel in comparison with the new Plaza and the Ritz-Carlton which, now beginning construction, was really to be the Last Word in Modern Hotels!

Mark Elphinstone had, in a case in his tulipwood-panelled private office, one of the least spurious of the guaranteed authentic swords of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Elphinstone looked across the top of his desk at Myron and piped, 'Do you still want to be a king-pin hotel-man?'

'Yes.'

'Want to learn the whole thing?'

'Yes.'

'Well, I think I'll start you all over again--as 'bus boy, then maybe porter, then maybe ice-cream maker or even pot-washer in the kitchen, and then you can shovel coal a while in the engine-room . . .'

'No.'

'What?'

'No. I've pretty much done all that. I'm an executive now. I'm twenty-five and no use wasting time.'

'Oh, there isn't, eh? What do you propose to do this summer? What'll you do if you don't follow my advice, Weagle?'

'Don't know, till I've had a real talk with you! That's a pleasure you promised me six months ago, Mr. Elphinstone.'

Napoleon in spats chuckled. 'You're growing up. Growing up. Maybe you will be of some use to me! All right. Start in as day-clerk.'

Day-clerk. Assistant cashier. Cashier. A sudden switch to another department, and chief storekeeper, then assistant restaurant and banquet manager, then restaurant and banquet manager--a sort of industrialized maître d'hôtel, with the rank of assistant manager. During this time, after hours, two years of evening school in the New York University School of Commerce, really learning accountancy. A journey to inspect all the Elphinstone hotels and restaurants, and the devising, then, and installation of their first scientific food-cost-system.

It increased food-profits in various units of the chain from five to thirty per cent. Napoleon was pleased, and called in Myron one March day in 1911, when Myron was thirty-one.

The office was unchanged, and the two men seemed to each other, since they had been together almost daily, unchanged in the six years since Myron had first faced the old boar at the Westward. But Elphinstone was grey-faced, and puffed whenever he moved, while Myron's thinner hair had a sleekness, his clothes had an ease, his forehead had lines of worry, that had been unknown in the rustic and earnest young man who had come to New York from Tippecanoe and Florida.

'You've done pretty well, Myron,' said Elphinstone. 'Other hotels are copying our food-costs dope. Well. So it goes. You are now in a new job.'

'Yes. 'Bus-boy again?'

'It wouldn't hurt you a bit! Not a bit! Like all my young men, you feel you could run the whole shebang now. Run the whole show. Well, maybe you could. Wish to God you would! I'm tired! I'm sixty-two. Forty-five years I've been in the hotel business. I suppose I've helped to make beds and furnish chow for maybe three hundred thousand different folks. And all I've got out of it is confirmation of my suspicion that all my waiters drink the heeltaps of cocktails when they remove 'em, and all my accountants think I'm an old fogey who can't add a column of figures--which is perfectly correct. But that isn't what I called you in to talk about, my boy. Your new job is chief purchasing-agent for the whole chain. I'll expect you to put in new systems. Fire any steward or housekeeper or chief engineer that doesn't toe the line about buying. Cut the costs, my boy, cut the costs, cut the horrid costs. Good morning. I'll dictate a memo about your duties, and authorization for you to disturb everybody that is singing at his work and just raise hell with him, raise hell, yes, lots of hell, good morning?'

Myron's chief worry, just now, aside from feeling more fagged than was normal, was that the better his food-cost-systems were, the more he made an enemy of Carlos Jaynes.

Carlos Jaynes had been the restaurant and banquet manager of the Westward, and was now the head of the Pan Dandy chain of Elphinstone restaurants. He was a cold, driving, handsome, disagreeable, uncomfortably competent man of thirty-five; one of the few college graduates, as yet, in the Elphinstone organization, and as ambitious as Queen Elizabeth, whom he resembled in everything save red hair and sex. He had criticized Myron's systems sharply and usefully. At first, Myron, the friendly, had been dismayed by the evident hatred of Carlos Jaynes; then it gave lively drama to his work to be not merely a serenely grinding machine but a human being in the midst of a feud, as the Elphinstone employees gathered behind Myron or Jaynes, and all of them looked to Mark Elphinstone and his royal power of life or death.

Myron was tired.

He was none the less tired in that, during this week when he was struggling to co-ordinate all his notions for the re-organization of purchasing, he had to get Ora out of trouble again.

Ora had, after the literary success but financial failure of Black Slumber and after a little ghostwriting and a little fiction-writing and the production of a Guide to Canada, which had cost him two whole weeks of travel, two more of research in the library, and three weeks of actual writing, been made editor of a fiction magazine named Cherry Pie, and had recently been discharged from the same for buying stories from himself under six other names. He went on a bender which was the talk of all Sixth Avenue, and Myron bought him out of jail, got him sobered and bathed and re-shaved, lent him another hundred, listened to his jeers--Ora aptly mentioned Horatio M. Alger--and found him a job with a theatrical press agent.

But dealing with Ora was picturesque compared with going on working. Myron believed that he was ripening for the 'flu, and in that irritable, feeble state, he recalled, rather surprised, that not in all his life since he was seven--over twenty-four years now--had he had a leisurely vacation.

Oh yes, he did like his profession; he did take pride in mastering it, in being one of the few hotel-men who were by new methods actually transforming it. But there had been so many details, so many years. Every new guest who arrived at any of the Elphinstone hotels on any new day was a new problem and there were so many hotels, so many guests, so many days, so many years, so many details . . .

He was cheered when Elphinstone's secretary whispered that he had a notion that the Old Man was, in his secretive mind, contemplating the raising of Myron to the position of vice-president of the whole chain, with a gambling chance that in another ten or twelve years he might actually be Elphinstone's successor, if Carlos Jaynes did not get in ahead of him.

That did excite him. And he told himself firmly that he was going on being excited. But it was not easy as he struggled with 'Standard of Towelling Specifications: test of weight per square yard, percentage of sizing, breaking strength, warp and filling, threads per inch, fibre', or 'Key Tag Specifications: size, weight, composition, mailability, legibility, remarks'.

So many details, so many years, in the warmed-over air of stale hotel offices and lobbies and halls and kitchens.

Mr. Jewett, this lady has left a pocket-book in the Palm Court and I want you . . .

I'm very sorry, sir; I would like to cash your cheque, but we have a rule that we must have identification before . . .

I want you to try out both sweet butter and salt butter on the same group of tables, and give me a detailed report on how . . .

If the room-service tables tend to rip the carpet seams, it would be economy to mount them on wheels not less than six inches in diameter . . .

(This must be the 'flu. His head ached so.)

Experience has not shown that cafeterias require fewer employees than lunch-rooms and the wasted space behind the bar-room would make . . .

Mr. Exington, I have been very patient, but if you don't have that woman out of your room in ten minutes, I'll come up with the house officer myself and . . .

Dear Madame, in reply to your much valued communication of the sixteenth inst., would say that we shall be very glad to reserve accommodations with bath--without bath--at our lowest rate--at a special rate--with bath--with southern exposure--near fire-escape--away from elevators--with private bath--at our lowest rate--glad to reserve, delighted to reserve, enchanted to reserve, beatified to reserve--you are the only customer who has ever wanted lower rates--we love to make lower rates--we prize your custom--with bath--without bath--at lowest rates . . .

Why no, Mr. Bobbable, I don't think I've ever heard that one before; it certainly is a mighty clever story; why no, indeed--our theatre-ticket office is closed for the night, but I'd be delighted to telephone myself and make reservations for seats--two in the orchestra?--with bath?--without bath?--all the seats have baths, six hundred and fifty seats, six hundred and fifty baths, unexampled cuisine, a bath and a half for a dollar and a half . . .

Yes, indeed, Mrs. Javelain, I'll speak to the engineer about your radiator clanking; I'm terribly sorry you were disturbed, and I do hope it won't occur . . .

At our very best rates. With bath, oh yes indeed, Mr. Smith, Mrs. Smith, Mr. Smith, Jun., the very best we can do . . .

In contrast with entrees, oysters should gross at least two hundred and fifty on raw cost not taking in labour costs, overhead or . . .

If you furnished it in Chippendale you would get away from that heavy hotel-effect . . .

Even if you stretch your budget, you've got to include pointing up the stonework, and the operating valves have to be relined . . .

Yes, indeed, I thought the Flushing Ladies' League's St. Patrick's Day Bridge Tournament was one of the most recherché affairs we've ever had in the Carcassonne Room, and those score-pads covered with green cardboard cut like four-leaf clovers were about the most original and . . .

Gentlemen of the Staff, the thought I want you to take away from this Conference to-day is that an hotel is like a three-legged stool . . .

Yes, Miss Heatherington, at seven dollars a head we can serve each of your guests a pint of Rauenthaler Auslese with or without bath at our lowest rates with southern exposure near fire-escape away from elevators at a very special rate by the month with or without bath . . .

'Oh my Lord!' wailed Myron, as his head cracked.

'Influenza' or ''flu' is one of those back-attic words into which is thrown everything for which no use can be found. It is to doctors what the back-attic words 'idealism', and 'patriotism' are to politicians, 'virtue' to the moralists, 'realism' and 'satire' to the critics, 'hysteria' to husbands.

Myron presumably did have the 'flu, and for years he had worked too steadily, with too little sunshine and exercise, eaten too irregularly, and never, in fifteen years, spent more than seven consecutive hours in sleep. When he let go, the hotel doctor made him stay abed for two weeks. His nose ran, his temples ached, his eyes were hot, and he was shamefully weak, yet all the while he rather enjoyed his first experience of being nursed and not having to be responsible.

He had time to think--even to think of something beyond the comparative costs of bed-linen with and without the hotel name woven into it.

Just why have I worked so hard and so long and with so little variety?

Just why have I, who am youngish and strong and without dependents, failed to see foreign lands, make love to more women, read more books that did not deal with oil v. washed coal for heating, ride horseback, go fishing, learn to paint?

He meant to be very profound about it. Possibly if his furlough had occurred not in 1911 but after the Great War, when it became the fashion to be disillusionized and revolutionary, he would have decided that his work, along with Faith, Hope, Charity, machinery, contemporary art, and the Government had been futile. But he could feel none of the puritanical guilt which afflicts young socialists and anarchists so much more than it ever does Presbyterian elders. He had enjoyed keeping hotel! He had enjoyed making better bedrooms at lower prices. He had enjoyed competing with other driving young men. He did not, he admitted, see that his career had contributed notably to making the world perfect. But then he did not see that anybody's career had done so, except possibly, just possibly, Shakespeare's and Goethe's and Edison's and Rembrandt's and Paul Ehrlich's.

He gave up his effort to make a frugal use of this time-off by fretting about his soul. If he fretted at all, it was because he could not seem to fret. He envied Ora, who could, on the slightest amount of alcohol, begin to fret like anything.

'I'm a smug, complacent, mechanical, ordinary food-merchant. But I enjoy it!' he lamented, touched at the spectacle of a man who couldn't be modern and melancholy.

He actually had time, that fortnight abed and another week achair after it, to see his friends, especially Alec Monlux, sometime manager of the Pierre Ronsard. Alec was manager now of the St. Casimir, a huge, dull, residential hotel near Riverside Drive. What small distinction had ever been made between them as chief and subordinate had vanished now; Alex was pleased to consider Myron an innovator in hotel-keeping, while he himself, he said, was 'simply a glorified boarding-house landlord for a lot of old women with more money and fox terriers than good sense'. Alec was more tender than any woman in his attentions to the sick hero, and he brought in the damndest gifts--a nice book of dirty limericks, a bottle of Piper Heidsieck, a puzzle in which (for no reason that the impatient Myron could ever discover) you were supposed to wiggle a steel ball through an asinine labyrinth of tiny nails, a box of Chinese candy one-quarter of which would have been enough to kill Myron in his present condition, and a most interesting pamphlet by John T. Semmelwack, of the Prince's Own Hotel, Wabasa, Oklahoma, entitled, 'A Study of Modern Flying Machines or Aeroplanes, with an Authoritative Account of the Achievements of Wright Brothers, Curtiss, Bleriot, & Deperdussin, and a Prophetic Suggestion of the Future Effect of Universal Flying on the Installation of Resort Hotels in Locations Now Inaccessible'.

'That's certainly a real idea,' said Myron, turning over his hot pillow.

'Yes, it certainly is--it gives you some real ideas,' said Alec.

Before Alec left, they had planned to open a magnificent tavern on top of Mt. Ranier, served by aeroplanes. They outlined the size, number of rooms, tariff, method of procuring milk, eggs, and oysters, decoration of the lobby, and whether to use bamboo or wicker chairs on the great porch. And that was the beginning and the end of the Mt. Ranier House.

More often, Myron saw Luciano Mora.

It was rumoured that Mora, the young, tall, curly-headed Italian, was the son of an important hotel proprietor in Naples, but whether or no, he had worked his way up from baggage-porter to reservation-clerk at the Westward. He was a student of hotel-keeping such as would not often be found among native Americans for another ten or fifteen years. He had worked in Paris and Baden-Baden and Madrid, and at the Adelphi in Liverpool; he had come to New York to learn Americanese and American mechanical methods, and he had gone so far that he now really liked corn on cob. He admitted that he knew more about omelettes, cognac, and room-waiters than most people at the Westward, but with all the fervour of any recent convert he worshipped, and incessantly talked about, the American hotel's superiority in mattresses, vacuum-cleaners, express elevators, automatically controlled central heating, and coffee.

The Myron who had had for pious dogma the belief that the worst American hotel had better 'service' and 'accommodations' than the greatest palace hotel in all Europe had been shocked to find that Luciano was swifter and suaver in conciliating guests than Mark Elphinstone himself, and from Luciano he had received confirmation of his own mystical belief in the pride and value and honour of hotel-keeping.

'Six generations my mouldy old ancestors have kept tavern in Napoli, and now I am going to show the old buffers a really good hotel,' laughed Luciano.

Not even with Mr. Coram of Torrington, or Alec Monlux or Elphinstone had Myron been able to discuss innkeeping as though it were anything more than an interesting way of earning a living. But Luciano was as fanatic as himself. He was the first hotel-man Myron had known who would not have been vaguely ashamed, after the hard-boiled Anglo-American non-emotional tradition, to hear innkeeping glorified as veritably an art. Now, Myron had time, and Luciano Mora took it, and for hours they raved in an agreeable, childish manner not so unlike that of bearded painters at a Montparnasse café.

'I've been considering,' said Luciano, whose English was, of course, better than Myron's, 'the necessary languages for the front office of a real international hotel. No one person there need speak all of them, but naturally, there must be someone who speaks any given one. Well. For a while I was content with English, Italian, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Greek, Swedish, Dano-Norwegian, and Hungarian. An hotel could get along if it could provide those. But still, I've been feeling lately that if you're going to have a really efficient hotel, there ought to be people available who speak--here's my list that I wrote--who also speak Japanese, Portuguese, which would handle Brazilians also, Czech, Arabic, Croatian, Slovene, Chinese--the Pekin dialect--Hindustani, Finnish, Roumanian, and Turkish. But honestly, with these, too, I tell to you I simply cannot see any need of others at all, can you?'

Luciano was beaming with that naive, defenceless excitement which is to be found only in the well-lettered and well-bred young European, and he was gratified when Myron drawled, 'No, I guess with those, any hotel could get along fairly well, though I don't believe you should put your ideals too low!'

'Oh yes, that is so very so!'

'Say, Luciano, remember we were talking about central-station power versus the hotel's own plant? Now I've got some really reliable figures on the standard of steam costs per kilowatt. . . .'

'Splendid!'

Mark Elphinstone dropped in to inquire.

Something had happened to the Old Man; he did not chatter now, and he seemed, except for occasional glorious flashes of bad temper, not to care what happened to his hotels. He would come strutting in, bark 'How's the lad, how's the lad--how much longer you going to take a free vacation on me, heh, heh?' and subside in an armchair by the window, looking out up the zigzag of Broadway, and for half an hour the two men would keep each other company in silence. Then he would grunt, 'Wasting time--wasting time--thought you brats were going to teach me this new stunt you call "efficiency". Huh!' And stump out.

Myron believed that, in this dark valley between bright crags of industry, he had found his brother.

He did not expect much of Ora now--though he did keep reminding himself that Ora really had paid back one of the dozen or so loans. When he had his secretary telephone to the press agent's office where Ora worked that 'Mr. Weagle was kind of under the weather' and would be glad if 'your Mr. Weagle could find a moment to drop in', Myron did not expect a response. But Ora came that evening, and when for the first time in his life he saw his older brother inferior to him in energy and determination, he was all friendliness.

'Don't see why you should get run down! Nothing to do but hand out room-keys and collect from the goats!' he jeered, but it was a kindly jeer, and he actually drew up the covers--which Myron had just pushed down because he was too hot. 'Say, old man, why didn't you put me on to this theatrical press-game before? It's the best sport of anything I've ever tackled. Oh God, what we put over! Did you see this morning's papers about Lizette Lilydale's engagement to the Grand Duke of Eisbeintafelberg?'

'Yes, I noticed it.'

'I'll bet you did. Some story! Of course she's never seen His Blooming Highness, but why let little . . .'

'You mean it's a fake? Why, I don't know that I entirely like that, Ora.'

'Now what the hell! Don't be silly! You advertise single rooms with bath in the hotel here for three dollars. Have you got one?'

'Well . . . Yes we have!'

'Who's occupying it?'

'Oh . . . a fellow.'

'By the year?'

'Well, sort of.'

'And haven't you ever served fresh peas out of a can?'

'Not exactly--we call 'em "green peas" then, not "fresh".'

'Oh, how very scrupulous, Mr. Pickwick.'

'Well, I guess maybe you win, Ora.'

'Look here, when the doc lets you out of this, why don't you get away for a while?'

'Oh, I couldn't. I'll have to get right back to work. . . .'

'Why? Do you think the "hotel-world", as you always call it, won't be able to get on without you? Guests just be sleeping in the street?'

'No, but . . .' Proudly: 'They depend on me. I'm going to organize a whole new system of chain purchasing.'

'Isn't that nice! I certainly do love to watch you kid yourself, Myron! You really like to work, and so you do nothing else. You take refuge in it. You're afraid of adventure, you're afraid of facing anything unfamiliar, and so you wall yourself in with a lot of audit-forms and inspection-reports. And yet you get a kick out of feeling superior to us lazy dogs, because you think you're more industrious, when you're simply more timid. Why don't you, for once, let go of the hotel desk and try to swim? Jump on a ship and go to Africa?'

'Oh, that's all nonsense!' Myron said feebly.

He wondered if it was all nonsense.

'Well, it's none of my business. Heaven knows why I should horn in, old man. I'm certainly sorry to see you knocked out. What can I do to cheer you up? Shall I bring in a couple of pretty actresses from our shop? Like me to come and read to you?'

'Oh, thanks, no. Just want to rest.' Myron was so touched that he hinted, 'By the way, kid, how are you off for money?'

'Well, I didn't like to speak of it, but . . . You've been so darn decent to me, and I've been wretchedly slow about paying you back, but . . .'

Jump on a ship and go to Africa? No, that would be too much. But the kid was right. He had stuck too closely to his knitting. He might take a little more time off and go . . . But where? And it wasn't so much fun to travel alone. Now if he were only married. Well. But somehow he never seemed to meet women who were not hotel employees or guests, nor to think of them otherwise than as employees or guests. What had ever become of that lovely Tansy Quill? Ora had told him that when he had left Florida, six years ago, Tansy had been blooming and, Ora understood, engaged to a man with whom she was immediately going out West. Myron hoped she was well. But . . .

Where did he want to go? Why should he go anywhere? What he wanted to do, this minute, was to get back to planning the systematized purchase of knife-cleaning machines, pilot valves, butter-cutters . . .

Butter-cutter, cutter-butter, butter-cutter, with a bath, at lowest rates . . .

Oh, lord, his head! No, he wasn't well yet, not by a long shot. He had to go away. But where?

He knew, suddenly. To Black Thread Centre, to the familiar shops and friendly citizens, to the little American House where he had made his start, to the fields that would be kindly with late May when he came out of the imprisonment of sickness, and most of all to his mother, whom he had not seen since the trip to New York he had given her two years ago. He had seen neither his father nor Black Thread in seven years. It would be, he admitted shyly, sort of fun to show off to the men he had known as kids--to let them know, if they pressed him, that he was making six thousand dollars a year and apartment free!

Oh, that was childish.

Showing off, like a circus ring-master.

But it would be fun!

And so, for that least dignified and best of reasons, he prepared to go to Black Thread for a fortnight's vacation.

On the day he left, Mark Elphinstone called him in to bark that he was to take not a fortnight but two or three months, on pay.

'That's the only way you can get well. If you're here where I can get my hands on you and shove work on you, I'll do it. So you damn well stay away for at least two months!' yelped Elphinstone.

And that, Myron admitted to himself, was perfectly true.

Myron looked over his wardrobe. It was extensive; it had to be, in the hotel business. It was almost too extensive, for he would never dare to appear on the streets of a jeering Yankee village in the voluptuous morning coat and striped wedding-trousers he had worn as a desk-clerk at the Westward. Yet he bought seven new and expensive ties, white flannels and white buckskin shoes, a bathing-suit, very expensive, and a vaguely useful sweater, and it cannot be said that the researcher into Scientific Purchasing According to Standards showed himself any more scientific when he got into the hands of an uppish haberdashery clerk than any other oaf. He stood meekly and held up the tie which the clerk had so deftly twisted and cheeped, 'Yes, I guess that would look nice.'

Also he bought, unscientifically, a new pigskin bag.

And for his mother so many stockings, blouses, inlaid Italian boxes, fur tippets, satin dressing-gowns, and canisters of imported Russian caravan tea that he had to get still another bag to hold them. But for his father and Jock McCreedy, the bartender, who alone was left of the American House staff that Myron had known, he needed no great storage space: he wisely took each of them nothing but a bottle of forty-year-old Bourbon whisky.

The Myron who entrained at the Grand Central was thirteen years older than the boy who had left Black Thread for Torrington, at eighteen. His face was far older, thinner, more lined, yet his quick step was really younger than that of the lurching rustic who had gone doubtfully out to conquer the world. He had seemed a biggish club of a lout, then; now he was a thin sure blade.

He was excited as they came into Bridgeport, as he changed cars for Black Thread, as they crept up a valley filled with May. He was grateful to Ora. He felt that he was entering upon an adventure, perfectly concealed from him yet greater than any he had known. Perhaps it was that, after learning book-keeping and fish-frying and plumbing and buying pillow-cases, he was going to learn Myron Weagle.