Part 4

The house had been built in the primitive days when local architecture was still in such exact accord with local society that anything like graded receptions was undreamed of. Everybody who seemed too good to be kept waiting in the hall was shown into the front parlor. This room had a carpet whose design was in large baskets of bright flowers, and a ceiling that was frescoed in a manner derived from a former style of railroad decoration. This scheme of decoration centred around a massive and contorted chandelier with eight globes. Nobody had ever seen the whole eight "going" at one time. Lincoln and his family were on one side of the marble mantel-piece; Grant and his family on the other.

It was in this room that Ogden was received by the elder daughter of the house. She seemed a quiet, self-poised girl, four or five years the senior of her sister. She amply filled her gown of gray woollen; her hair was drawn back from her forehead and made a knot just above the nape of her neck. She had a pair of cool, steady gray eyes. She appeared wholesome, stable, capable of keeping herself well in hand.

"My father isn't able to see you," she said; "but if you will give me what you have brought I will take it to him."

There was a tremulousness in her voice, quite at variance with her manner and appearance. She put out her hand with a wavering motion; the flaring of the gas in her face seemed to strike her with a positive pain.

A door opened suddenly and her brother Burt came in. He was a stocky young man three or four years older than Ogden. He seemed stuffed with importance both present and future, both personal and parental--he was himself and his father rolled into one.

"Abbie," he said, in a sharp, curt way, "I wish you'd find father the copy of that report you made for him yesterday." He looked at Ogden in a fashion that changed the young man from a person to a thing. "We have been looking for you some time," he said. "I'll take those papers myself."

He spoke in a way that was abrupt and autocratic. Ogden recognized it as the utterance of a masterful nature, but he was unable to see that the masterful nature was moved by an emotion that must be controlled and concealed. His indignation made no allowance for this, and his subsequent ten minutes of solitary reflection left a bitterness that passed away but lingeringly. More and more, with every moment of this short wait, did he feel himself a gentleman turned into a lackey by his inferiors.

There was no salve for his wounded sensibilities save, perhaps, in the look of dumb expostulation which the girl cast upon her brother and in the few commonplace words which she addressed to their caller before she went out.

"Kindly wait a few moments, and the papers will be ready to take back. Perhaps you will find this other chair more comfortable."

It was after this fashion that he first met Abbie Brainard; met her--as he reported it to McDowell--and hardly more.

He followed his brother-in-law into the elevator and they dropped swiftly to the ground floor. At this level is situated the Acme Lunch Room.

V

McDowell took a cup of tea and an expeditious doughnut standing, and hurried away. Ogden, who had not overcome his habit of leisurely eating, lingered behind.

The Acme occupies a square, low-ceiled room in the hindermost corner of the Clifton: perhaps, with a lower ceiling and a situation on a level lower still, it would have been called the Zenith. It is fitted up with three or four oval counters, and a very close calculation of space allows room for an infinitesimal cashier's desk as well. Each oval encloses a high rack that is heaped with rolls, buns, and cakes, and close to each rack stands a brace of big, cylindrical, nickel-plated tanks that yield coffee and tea. Each oval is fringed with a row of stools--hard-wood tops on a cast-iron base; and in warm weather a pair of fans, which are moved by power supplied from the engine-room, revolve aloft and agitate the stifling atmosphere.

Ogden had spent the past week in trying a succession of dairies, lunch-rooms, and restaurants, and had ended by returning to the Acme, which seemed as decent and convenient as any. He found a place in a quiet corner; ordered his coffee, wheat-muffins, and pie, which all came together; and fell to work with his eye soberly fixed on the shining expanse of the freshly-wiped counter. Was he consistent, he wondered, in claiming any great consideration until he could lunch at a higher figure than fifteen or twenty cents?

The girl who had waited on him turned away, but another one, who stood a little distance off, called her back.

"Here, Maggie, change that mince. This gentleman don't want a piece with a whole corner knocked off."

Ogden buttered his muffin without raising his eyes. The second girl herself placed the new cut of pie before him and stood looking down upon him. The hour was a little late, and but three or four customers held places around the counters. Presently she spoke.

"Well, Mister Ogden," she said, with a humorous tartness, "you don't seem to recognize your old friends."

Ogden threw up his head. "Why, Nealie, is this you!" he exclaimed. It was a girl who had helped wait on table at his West Side boardinghouse.

She wore a dark dress with a plain white collar. Her brows made two fine straight lines over the yellowish green of her eyes. She had a strong, decided face, yet there was a certain lurking delicacy in the outlines of nose and chin.

"That's what," she replied. "I've made a change, you see. Been here pretty near a week. Come in often?"

"I'm in the building. What was the matter with your other place?"

The girl hitched up her shoulders. "The fact of it is, I couldn't get used to it. Never tried anything like that before."

She looked about cautiously and then resumed in a confidential voice,

"To tell the truth, I was just forced into it. Pa and ma didn't want me to come to Chicago, but I couldn't make out that I was going to have any terrible great show there in Pewaukee. I didn't s'pose it was going to be so awful hard to find something to do in a big place like this. But I made up my mind, all the same, that I wasn't going to cave in and go back to Wisconsin--not straight off, anyway. Kept right on trotting about. Any port in a storm, says I. And when I met that good old soul in the intelligence office, that settled it. She only wanted a second girl; but I thought I could stand it."

"Couldn't you?"

"I didn't tell ma, though, that I was living out. I wrote to her that I was clerking--ten dollars a week. Ten dollars!--I'm looking for the girl that gets more than six. I don't know what the folks would have thought if they'd known of me a-being ordered around by a lot of young fellers--run and fetch and carry for a parcel of strangers. It don't come natural to me to be bossed, I can tell you."

"But Mrs. Gore used you well?"

"She did, for a fact. But it wasn't the sort of thing I wanted at all. So I told her I guessed I'd go. 'Well,' says she, sort of resigned like, 'if you've made up your mind to, you must, I s'pose'; she was sorry to lose me, I know. She walked to the-basement door with me to say good-by--with her specs on top of her head. 'Be a good girl,' says she, 'and let us hear from you'--'most exactly what ma said when I came away. Gray hair, just like ma's, too. 'Yes, ma'am,' says I. I didn't say 'ma'am' because I thought I was a servant--I wasn't; but because she was older and because I had a respect for her. And so I _shall_ let her hear from me; when I get along a little further I'm going to call on her. And I'm going to get along, let me tell you; I haven't jumped on to this hobby-horse of a town just to stay still."

She nodded her head with great decision.

"It broke her all up when you went away," she resumed. "She kept a-wondering for two or three days what the matter was. Poor soul, she's a good deal too tender for this town. What _was_ the matter?"

"Nothing. I had friends in a different part of the city."

"In a different part of the city," she repeated. She spread her palms far apart on the inner edge of the counter and brought her face down almost to a level with his. "D'you know, I always liked the way you talked; it's real genteel. And you say 'cahn't,' too. And 'dinnuh' and 'suppuh.' Hardly anybody says 'cahn't' around here--except actors. Say, I went the other night. It cost fifty cents; but I was just wild to see a real out-and-out city show--couldn't hold in any longer. They all talked kind of artificial, except one man. He had a bad part--erring son, sort o'. He talked right out in plain, every-day style, and he was about the only one I really cared for. Of course, though, I don't like bad men better than good ones. But your way is nice, after all."

"Thanks."

"Well, I'm in a different par-r-t of the city myself." She gave a comprehensive glance over the sizzling coffee-urns. "Second in command." She tapped her breast-bone. "I don't think so everlasting much of Duggan here, but he recognizes talent. It didn't take him long to find out what I was and he raised me. I boss and help around when there's a rush, and now and then I take the cashier's place. It's all just like a store. Oh," she proceeded, after a shrewd look at him, "I know well enough what you've been thinking all this time. But here's your counter and there's your goods; and people just say what they want and get a check for it and pay at the door. No boarding-house in that, is there? They don't bulldoze _us_ very much."

The door opened and a belated clerk came in.

"Here, Gretchen," she called to one of her force, "see what this man wants." The newcomer dropped mechanically on to one of the stools and submissively took the damaged pie that had been taken away from Ogden. He had ordered apple.

"Most of 'em are tractable enough," she commented.

"I've got ten girls here," were her next words, "and they're quite a fair lot. But that mooneyed German girl over there--"

"Gretchen?"

"I _call_ her Gretchen; she don't look as if she knew beans, does she? Well, she don't. She was going on in the pantry yesterday about the rights of man. I knew she was due to break a saucer pretty soon. Well, she did. And we've got a Swede girl here who would be the best all around one of the lot if it wasn't for her temper. All of a sudden she gets mad and she stays mad, and you can't for the life of you find out what it was that made her mad. Those three Irish girls are pretty smart. H'm, yes; they were rigging up a strike Tuesday. They wanted fifty cents a week more. They found out their want at a quarter to twelve. 'All right, girls,' says I, 'you can go out if you want. Our regular people will kick and go somewhere else for a few days, perhaps; but the first rainy noon they'll all come in again, and they'll see that things are running all right with a new crew, and after that they'll stay.' Goodness me! I've heard more about rights and less about duties this last week than I ever did before in my life. My uncle says it's the same with him. He's the engineer here. He really got me this place. If you look down through that grating out there as you go along you may see him. It's talk and argue all the time--his men have more half-baked notions than you can think of, and he's kept on the k'jump all the time looking after things. Do _I_ kick? Do I squeal? Not much. And if I had come in from outside with a different language, maybe, and a different training and a different set of notions, and if I had been a real, dyed-in-the-wool, down-trodden peasant and all my folks the same for nobody knows how far back, perhaps I'd find some reason there for not keeping abreast with the tolerably smart lot of people that had let me in."

She cast a lofty eye over her various underlings. "Kind of a plain lot, ain't we? You know there's one place like this in town where they won't take a girl unless she's pretty. Their cashier is a regular bute. But I wouldn't work in such a place; no, indeed."

She paused. Ogden made no response. She eyed him with a sharp impatience.

"Not but what I could, though, if I had a mind," she remarked, with a vindictive little explosion.

"No, I couldn't, either," she added suddenly; "they're all brunettes this year."

And she laughed forgivingly.

"And you don't see me a-wearing rings and chains," she pursued; "I guess not. And I sha'n't, either, until I finish my course."

"Course"? Was she hinting at the close of her earthly career?

"Yep. Shorthand. But don't hurry away." He had dropped his feet to the floor. "Duggan went right off after the rush, and I guess I've been hard pushed enough to enjoy a little restful conversation. Shorthand and typewriting--that's what I'm steering for. I'll stand this for a while--until I can do eighty words. I've begun at the Athenæum already. I don't see why anybody should want to take 'lessons' in typewriting; it's practice you want. Same with the other. Well, I'm practising hard enough. I-shall-be ready for b-usiness in-three-months," she traced with her finger on the counter, giving considerable pressure to the "b" in "business." "I'm ahead of the class now.

"I'm educated, too," she continued. "I taught school one term up in Waukesha County. I know how to spell--you ought to see how some of those girls write out their notes. And I can punctuate--semicolons just as easy as anything else. Say, do you know Mrs. Granger S. Bates?"

"I've seen her name in the papers," said Ogden, emptying his glass and feeling in his pocket for his handkerchief.

"Sorry we don't give napkins. Well, she was a school-teacher, and look at her now. I went by her house on Calumet Avenue last Sunday. She's got about everything. She is one of the patronesses of the Charity Ball. Still, I suppose she must be getting along in years--her husband has come to be the Lord High Muck-a-muck of Most Everything; I've read about him for years. Hope _I_ haven't got to wait till I'm fifty to have a good time."

Ogden was shuffling his feet on the floor.

"Won't you have another piece of pie? _No?_ Well, try a cream-puff, then; it'll be my treat. And do take time with it. Anything but fifty men eating away like a house afire."

Only one other customer remained. The Swede girl began to collect the cream-jugs.

"I don't care so extra much about Mrs. Bates, though. But there's Mrs. Arthur J. Ingles, three-hundred-and-something Ontario Street--do you know _her_? Now there's a woman that interests me. She's in the papers every day; she goes everywhere. She's 'way up, I guess; I'd be wild if she wasn't. She was at a dance last Tuesday, and she gave a reception the day before, and her sister is going to be married nest month. It's easy to follow folks since the papers began to print their names all bunched up the way they do, and Mrs. Arthur J. is one that I've followed pretty close. She must be young--I never see his name except with hers. I guess he's just a society dude. Well, dudes are all right; you've got to have 'em in a big town. You wouldn't have the whole million and a half of us be grubbers?"

"I suppose not."

"She gave a dinner last week. Covers were laid for ten--what does that mean?"

"Probably that she and her husband had eight people."

"She wore heliotrope satin. Ornaments, diamonds. Great, wasn't it? One of our girls brought down a book this morning about lady Guinevere. Guinevere--your grandmother! What are we to Lady Guinevere, or what is Lady Guinevere to us? But when it comes to people living in your own town, why, that's getting down to business."

"Yes, let us talk about realities--Balzac."

"I should say so," she assented, missing the allusion. "Now then, why shouldn't _I_ be wearing heliotrope satin to dinner sometime?--if not under the name of Cornelia McNabb, then under some other as good or better. Anyway, I'm going to keep my hands as nice as I can; a girl never knows what she may have a chance to become. I don't imagine it will disfigure me much to run a typewriter. Dear me," she sighed, "how much time I've lost! If I hadn't been such a darned goose, I might have begun Pitman at home a year ago."

She reached down under the counter and pulled a newspaper up out of a dark corner.

"Some lunch-rooms have papers around--as many as a dozen, sometimes; but Duggan says this place is too cramped for him to give people any inducement to dilly-dally. It's eat and run. So I have to buy my own. This is the first chance I've had to look at it. I wonder what she's been up to now."

She opened the paper and ran down its columns with an expert eye.

"Yes, here she is, first pop. _Mr. and Mrs_.--Cluett, Parker, Ingles. My sakes, how I envy that woman! Course I don't want that she should come down here and wash my dishes, but wouldn't I like to go up there and eat off of hers! What did she wear?--it don't tell. Where was it?--at Mrs. Walworth Floyd's--a small dinner. Don't know them. How about the _Misses?_--Jameson, Parker, Wentworth--she's a great goer, too. And here are a few _Messrs_.--Johnson, J. L. Cluett, George Ogden--"

She stopped abruptly.

"You?"

There was a world of reproach in her voice.

"Yes."

"And you sit there and never let on! You're as mean as you can be. What is she like? Tell me, do. Ain't she young, now? What did she wear?"

"I didn't go. I had a trip to the "West Side."

"Your name's here."

"The reporters get the names in advance. Sometimes they copy them from cards or regrets."

"And you wasn't there?"

"Ho."

"Too bad! But you've seen her?"

"Never."

"How hateful! But you was really invited?"

"Yes."

"H'm!" she said, deliberately; "I see now why you moved. I don't blame you. I'm trying to get along, too. We're both in the same boat."

Ogden rose.

"What else is there?" she asked herself, looking over other columns. "Here's a marriage; it's in Milwaukee. Don't know whether it's a society item or not. Who are they?--J. Russell Vibert is the man, and Mary Adelaide Brainard is the woman. Both of Chicago--know 'em?" Ogden sat down suddenly.

She eyed him curiously.

"That's the first sign I've seen that you was willing to stay a single minute longer than you had to. You can go now, whenever you want. We've got to clean up. So long!"

VI

Ogden had been balked in his first social advance by the inconsiderate and unwarranted demands of the Brainards. He failed on Proposition No. I., but its attendant corollary he disposed of after the proper interval. He had missed the dinner, but he accomplished the dinner call.

He was moving around his room in his shirtsleeves; he had the leisurely air of one whose social orbit was so small as to involve no relations with the courses of cabs and of street-cars. To set himself right with the Floyds he had but to step around the corner.

His room was rather small and cramped, but he had preferred indifferent accommodations in a good house to good accommodations in an indifferent house--just as he would have chosen an indifferent house in a good neighborhood to a better house in a poorer one. His quarters, however, were well enough for a single young man of moderate pretensions. He had space for a three-quarter bed, a bureau, a wash-stand which displayed a set of pink-flowered crockery and two towels, a cane-seated chair, and a pair of book-shelves on the wall. And by means of a good deal of dexterous manœuvring he contrived to extract some comfort from an undersized rocker. His decorations were principally photographs, which showed to the extent common under the circumstances. Some of these were grouped in twos and threes, in frames faced with Chinese silk; they helped to achieve the disordered and over-crowded effect that the present taste in house-furnishing aims at, and can always accomplish in a back hall bedroom.

The photographs stood in the position in which he had first placed them a month and a half ago, although the recent arrival of several of the originals had given their shadows an altered importance. Everybody knows of the inertia that overtakes decorative detail, even when portable. There were the pictures of his father and his mother, arranged in a pair. His father offered a placid, gray-bearded face; it seemed rather forceless, though that effect may have been due to retouching; yet, independent of any practical processes, it was the face of a man who obviously could not have risen in advance to any adequate conception of the Western metropolis.

The face of his mother was serious, strenuous. She had in some degree the semi-countrified aspect of one who has run a quiet course in a quiet quarter of a minor town.

His sister's picture had been taken in the East just before her starting for her new home. It was now in the hands of Ogden's next-door neighbor, who had come in carrying a choice of white ties, and who now wove around it a contemplative cloud of tobacco-smoke from his briar-wood pipe. He was a young man with a high forehead and a pair of shrewd but kindly brown eyes.

"A mighty pretty girl," Brower said, heartily. "Get the right kind of a New England face, and you can't do much better. I must haul out my own photographs and fix them up some time."

Brower kept his collection in his trunk, along with his shirts and underwear generally. He used his bureau drawers for collars and cuffs, and for a growing accumulation of newspapers, magazines, and novels. He had been in the house two years, yet his trunk had never been unpacked and put away. He was an adjuster for an insurance company, and was subject to sudden calls to remote localities, in accordance with the doings of the busy monster that the press knows as the "fire fiend." If Isaac Sobrinski, off in Des Moines, had the misfortune to be burned out, at the close of a dull season or in the face of brisk and successful competition, then Des Moines was the place to which Brower immediately posted. He estimated the damage on the building, figured the salvage on socks and ulsters, and endeavored to decide, so far as lay in his powers, whether the catastrophe had been inflicted by Providence or had been precipitated by Sobrinski's own match-box. However, he never carried anything except his valise on such excursions; the general state of his trunk is to be accepted simply as the mental index of a constant and hurried traveller.

"Yes, she's a mighty pretty girl," he repeated, thoughtfully. "Where have they gone?"

"Oh, not far. There's been a good deal of travelling done already. They just went up to Milwaukee; Eugene had something to see about there. They'll be back to-morrow, I expect."

"Milwaukee, eh? That's come to be quite the fashion, hasn't it? Some folks go there after they're married, and some of them to _be_ married. We had one in our office a week or two ago; Vibert--have you met him?"

"It's in your office he is, then, is it? No, I've never met him. I've seen him and heard about him. Is he much thought of?"

"Well, the office doesn't have a great deal to say to a man as long as he keeps hours and attends to his work--when the position isn't responsible, I mean. What are you looking for--whisk-broom? Here; I'm sitting on it, I guess."

"I suppose he does attend to his work?"

"Oh, so-so; but a little break like that doesn't help a man any. He struck high, didn't he?"

"Yes."

"Wonder what he's got to keep her on. Great question--all that; ain't it? She's a rich girl, I hear. Subject for debate: is it safer to marry a rich girl or a poor girl--for a young man in moderate circumstances, I mean?"

"Oh, dear," said Ogden, sitting down on the edge of the bed, helplessly; "if you're going back to _that_ chestnut!"