Part 6
He sat for the greater part of an hour on the deserted platform of the junction, where signal lamps glistened on the steel rails that vanished into the night, into the west, the inscrutable future. The headlight of the massive locomotive flared unexpectedly, whitely upon him; the engine, with a brief glimpse of a sanguinary heart of fire illuminating a sooty human countenance, gleaming, liquid eyeballs, passed and stopped; and Anthony hastily mounted the train. He made his way through the narrow passage of buttoned, red curtains, and found his berth, when he sank into a weary, dreamless sleep.
XXIII
IN the morning his was the last berth made up for the day; the car, shaded against the sun, was rolling slightly, and he braced himself as he made his way toward breakfast. The tables were all occupied; but, at a carelessly hospitable nod, he found a place with two men. They were, he immediately saw, Jews. One was robustly middle aged, with a pinkly smooth countenance, a slightly flattened nose, and eyes as colorless as clear water in a goblet. He was carefully dressed in shepherd's plaid, with a gay tie that held a noticeably fine pearl. His companion was thin and dark, with a heavy nose irritated to rawness by the constant application of a blue silk handkerchief. The latter, Anthony discovered in the course of the commonplaces which followed, was sycophant and henchman of the first--a never failing source of applause for the former's witticisms.
“How far out are you bound?” queried the owner of the pearl. Then, when Anthony had told him his destination, “no business opportunities in California for a young man without capital behind him; only hard work and a day laborer's wages. Nothing West but fruit, land and politics on a large scale. My chauffeur at a hundred a month does better than eighty per cent, of the young ones in the West.”
This information fell like a dark cloud over Anthony's sanguine hopes for a speedy and opulent return. A sense of imminent misfortune pressed upon him, a sudden, unreasoning dread of what might be in store for Eliza and himself, of the countless perils of a protracted delay. At the end of two years he might be no better off than he was at present. His brother-in-law, he knew, would only pay him a nominal amount at first. The two years stretched out interminably in his imagination.
The more prosperous of his companions selected a cigar from a silk case, and, cutting it with a gold penknife, they removed to the smoking car. “I drove a car for a while,” Anthony informed them later, mingling the acidulous smoke of a Dulcina with the more fragrant clouds of Habana; “it was a Challenger six.”
“Hartmann here is a director in the Challenger factory,” the sycophant told him. “The factory's in our home city, where we are going. It's a great car.” Hartmann examined Anthony with a new and more personal interest. “Did you like it?” he demanded.
“It's all right, for the price,” Anthony assured him; “it's the most sporting looking car on the American market.”
“That's the thing,” the other declared with satisfaction; “big sales and a quick return on investment. A showy car is what the public want, the engine's unimportant, it's paint that counts.”
“Do you have any radiator trouble?” Anthony demanded. The other regarded him shrewdly. “I run a Berliet,” he announced; “I was discussing a popular article.” He arranged himself more comfortably in his leather chair, and prepared for sleep.
Anthony returned to his place in the coach, where he brooded dejectedly upon what he had heard about California. He thought of the distance widening at a dizzy rate between Eliza and himself, and plunged into a vast pit of loneliness... he had made a terrible mistake in leaving her. It seemed to him now that he had deserted her, perhaps she was suffering on account of him--had expected him to free her from an intolerable condition. Again he cursed in his heart the prudent counsel of old men, the cold sapience of the world, that had betrayed him, that had prevailed over him against his instinct, his longing.
XXIV
AT lunch he was progressing toward an empty table when Hartmann waved him imperiously to a place at his side. “Have a drink,” he advised genially; “this is my affair.” Beer followed the initial cocktail, and brandy wound the meal to a comfortable conclusion. A Habana in the smoking car completed Anthony's bodily satisfaction.
“California's no place for a young man without capital,” Hartmann reiterated; “you work like a dog for two and a half a day; no future.” He paused, allowing this to be digested, then: “I have a little plan to propose, you can take it or not--or perhaps you are not competent.--My chauffeur is laid up with a broken wrist, a matter of a month or more; how would you like to run my car until he returns? Then, if you are satisfactory, you can go into the Challenger factory, with something ahead of you, a future. Or you can go on to California... say seventy-five dollars richer.” Anthony shook his head regretfully. “Don't answer now,” Hartmann advised; “Spring City is three hours off. Think it over; seventy-five dollars; a chance, if you are handy, in the factory.”
Anthony was suddenly obsessed by the thought that, at Spring City, he would be only a day removed from Eliza. He wondered what his father would say to this new possibility? At worst he would only be delayed in his arrival in California, and with seventy-five dollars in consequence. At best--the Challenger factory: he expanded optimistically the opportunities offered by the latter. If he could show his father immediate fruits from a change of plan, the elder, he was certain, would add his approval. In a passing, sceptical mood he speculated upon Hartmann's motive in this offer to an entire stranger; but his doubts speedily vanished--any irregularity must be immediately visible.
“You can make a stop over on your ticket for a couple of days and try it,” the other interjected; “it will cost you nothing.”
Only a day removed from Eliza! he would write to his father, his brother-in-law, and explain! he had decided that it would do no harm to try it. “Good!” the Jew exclaimed; “see the conductor about your ticket. If you decide to remain you can send for your trunk.” He offered his cigar case to his companion, but, now, neglected to include Anthony. Imperceptibly their relations had changed; Hartmann's geniality decreased; his colorless gaze wandered indifferently. Anthony found the conductor, and arranged a stop-over at Spring City. He collected his belongings; and, not long after, he stood on a station platform beside his bag, watching with sudden misgivings the rear of the train he had left disappearing behind a bulk of factories and clustered shanties.
Hartmann handed him a card, with a written direction and address. “The garage,” he explained; “have the car ready to-morrow at nine. I'll allow you an expense of five dollars until a definite arrangement.”
Anthony quickly found the garage--a structure of iron and glass, with a concrete floor where cars were drawn up in glistening rows. A line of chairs fronted upon the pavement, occupied by mechanics in greasy overalls, smarter chauffeurs, and garrulous, nondescript hangerson. The foreman was within, busy with the compression tanks. He was short in stature, with a pale, concerned countenance. “Fourth on the right from the front,” he directed, reading Hartmann's card; “there's a bad shoe on the back.... So the old man's ready for another little trip,” he commented.
“His chauffeur has a broken wrist,” Anthony explained. “He's offered me the job for a month.”
“Wrist hell! Hartmann fired him, he knew too much--about sprees with Kuhn. He's a sharp duck; I'll bet he picked you up outside Spring City.”
“I met him on the Sunset Limited,” Anthony continued; “I understood he was a director in the Challenger Motorcar Company--”
“He's that, right enough; the rottenest car and shop in America; they're so dam' mean they won't provide their men with drinking water; they have to bring labor from the East, scabs and other truck.” The conviction settled heavily upon Anthony that, after all, he had made a mistake in listening to Hartmann, in falling in with his suggestion. If there had been another train through Spring City that night for California he would have taken it. But, as there was not, and he had committed himself for the next twenty-four hours, he made his way to the Berliet car indicated. There he took off his coat, and busied himself with replacing the damaged shoe. When that was accomplished the dusk had thickened to evening, the suspended gas globes in the garage had been lighted, and shone like lemon-yellow moons multiplied in the lilac depths of a mirrored twilight.
He saw, across the street, a creamery, and, at a bare table, consumed a quart of milk and a plate of sugared rusk. Then, on a chair in the line before the garage, he sat half intent upon the conversation about him, half considering the swift changes that had overtaken him in the past, few days. His fingers closed upon Eliza's letter in his pocket, and he gazed at the callous and ribald faces at his side, he heard the truculent laughter, with wonderment that they existed in the same world with her delicate beauty. She smiled at him, out of his memory, over a mass of white bloom, and the present seemed like an ugly dream from which he must awake in her presence. Or was the other a dream, a vision of immaterial delight spread before his wondering mind, and this harsh mirth, these mocking faces, Hartmann's smooth lies, the hateful reality?
The night deepened, one by one the chairs before the garage were deserted, the sharp pounding of a hammer on metal sounded from within, the disjointed measures of a sentimental song. A sudden weariness swept over Anthony, a distaste for the task of seeking a room through the strange streets; and, arranging the cushions in Hartmann's car, he slept there until morning. He awoke to the flooding of the concrete floor with a sheet of water flashing in the crisp sunlight. It was eight o'clock, and he made a hurried toilet at a convenient spigot, breakfasting at the creamery.
Hartmann appeared shortly after nine: his countenance glowed from a scented massage, his yellow boots shone with restrained splendor, and a sprig of geranium was drawn through an ironed buttonhole. He nodded briefly to Anthony, and narrowly watched the latter manouvre the Berliet from its place in the row onto the street. They sped smoothly across town to what, evidently, was the principal shopping thoroughfare; and, before a glittering plateglass window that bore the chaste design, “Hartmann & Company” drew up, and Hartmann prepared to descend.
“I think I'll go on West,” Anthony informed him; “this afternoon.”
Annoyance was plainly visible upon the other's countenance. “I was just congratulating myself on a find,” he declared; “you must at least stay with me until I get some one else.” He paused; Anthony made no comment. “Now, listen to what I will do,” he pronounced finally; “if you will stay with me for a month I'll give you a hundred dollars and your expenses--it will be clear money. I... I had thought of taking a little trip in the car, I'm feeling the store a little, and I need a discreet man. Think it over--a hundred in your pocket, and you may be able to get off in three weeks.” He left hurriedly, without giving Anthony an opportunity for further speech. It was an alluring offer, a hundred dollars secured for the future, for Eliza. He speculated about the prospective trip, Hartmann's wish to secure a “discreet” man, the foreman's insinuations. However, the motive didn't concern him, the wage was his sole consideration, and that, he decided, he could not afford to lose. He whistled to a newsboy, and, studying the baseball scores, waited comfortably for his employer.
Later he drove Hartmann, now accompanied by Kuhn, out of town, through a district of suburban villas, smooth, white roads and green lawns, into the farmland and pasturage beyond. They finally stopped at an inn of weathered grey stone set behind a row of ancient elms. A woman was sitting on the portico, and she rose and came forward sinuously as the men descended from the motor car. Anthony saw that she had a full, voluptuous figure, lustreless, yellow hair, and sleepy eyes. Hartmann patted her upon the shoulder, and the three moved to the portico, where they sat conversing over a table of whiskies and soda. Occasional shrill bursts of laughter, gross terms, reached Anthony. The woman lounged nonchalantly in her chair; she wore a transparent white waist, through winch was visible a confused tracery of purple ribband, frank rubicund flesh. When the men rose, Hartmann kissed her. “Thursday,” he reminded her; “shortly after three.”
“And I'll depend on you,” Kuhn added,--“a good figger and a loving disposition. We don't want any dead ones on this trip.”
“Laura's all right,” she assured him; “she's just ready for something of this sort; she goes off about twice a year.”
When they had started, Hartmann leaned forward. “Going Thursday... that little trip I spoke to you about.--No talking, understand. Look over the tires, get what you think-necessary for five or six hundred miles.” He tended Anthony a crisp, currency note. “Here's the five. Your salary starts to-morrow.”
That night Anthony wrote a letter of explanation to his father, a note to California in reference to his trunk, and a short communication to Eliza.--He was not certain that she would receive it. Her parents, he was convinced, were opposed to him--they were ignorant of the singleness, the depth, the determination, of his love.
XXV
IT. was nearly four, when, on Thursday, Anthony stopped the car before the inn by the elms. The woman with the yellow hair, accompanied by a figure in a shapeless russet silk coat, were waiting for them. The latter carried a small, patent-leather dressing case, and a large bag reposed on the portico, which Anthony strapped to the luggage rack. Kuhn, animated by a flow of superabundant animal spirits, bantered each member of the party: he gave Anthony a cigar that had been slightly broken, tipped off Hartmann's cap, and assisted the woman with profound gallantry into the car. Hartmann discussed routes over an unfolded map with Anthony; then, the course laid out, they moved forward.
Their way led over an old postroad, now between walls, trees, dank and grey with age and dust, now rising steadily into a region of bluish hills. Scraps of conversation fell upon Anthony's hearing: the woman in the russet coat, he learned, was named Laura Dallam. Kuhn talked incessantly, and, occasionally, she replied to his sallies in a cool, detached voice. She differed in manner from the others, she was a little disdainful, Anthony discovered. Once she said sharply, “Do let me enjoy the country.”
They slipped smoothly through the afternoon to the end of day. The sun had vanished beyond the hills when they stopped at an inn on the outskirts of an undiscovered town. It was directly on the road, and, built in a flimsy imitation of an Elizabethan hostelry, had benches at either side of the entrance.
There Anthony sat later, while, from a balcony above him, fell the tones of his employer and his companions. He could hear them clearly, distinguish Hartmann's heavy jocularity, the yellow-haired woman's syrupy voice, Laura Dallam's crisp utterances. Kuhn's labored wit had drooped with the afternoon, an accent of complaint had grown upon him. Occasionally there was a thin, clear tinkle of glasses and ice. As the night deepened, the conversation above grew blurred, peals of inconsequential laughter more frequent; a glass fell on the balcony, and broke with a small, sudden explosion. Some one--it was the Dallam woman, exclaimed, “don't!” She leaned over the railing above Anthony's head, and said despairingly, “I can't get drunk!” Kuhn pressed to her side, and she moved away impatiently. He became enraged, and they commenced a low, bitter wrangling. Finally Hartmann insinuated himself between them; the two women disappeared; and Kuhn complained aloud of the manner in which he had been treated.
“She's all right,” Hartmann assured him; “you went at it too heavy; take your time; she's not a flapper from the chorus.” They tramped heavily across the balcony, whispering tensely, into the hotel.
The morning following they failed to start until past eleven: Hartmann's countenance was pasty from the night's debauch, greenish shadows hung beneath his colorless eyes, his mouth was a leaden line; the yellow-haired woman was haggard, she looked older by ten years since the day previous. Kuhn was savagely, morosely, silent. But Mrs. Dallam was as fresh, as sparkling, as the morning itself. She nodded brightly at Anthony as she took a seat forward, by his side. A heavy veil was draped back from her face, and he saw that it was finely-cut; an intensely black bang fell squarely across her low, white forehead, beneath which eyes of a sombre, velvety blue were oddly compelling; and against the blanched oval of her face her mouth was like a print of blood. It was a potent, vaguely disturbing countenance; and, beneath the voluminous silk coat, he saw narrow black slippers with carelessly tied bows that, stinging his imagination, reminded him of wasps.
As he drove the car he was frequently aware of her exotic gaze resting speculatively upon him. On a high, sunny reach of road there was a shrill rush of escaping air, and he found a rear tire flat. Hartmann and his mate explored the road, Kuhn gloomed aloof, while Mrs. Dallam seated herself on a nearby bank, as Anthony replaced the inner tube. It was hot, and he removed his coat, and soon his shirt was clinging to the rippling, young muscles of his vigorous torso. Once, when he straightened up to wipe the perspiration from his brow, Mrs. Dallam caught his glance, and held it with a slow smile.
Their progress for the day ended at a small hotel maintained upon the roof of a ridge of hills. As the dusk deepened the valley beyond swam with warm, scattered lights, while above, in illimitable space, gleamed stars near, only a few millions of miles away, and stars far, millions upon millions of miles distant.
The ground floor of the hotel was divided by a passage, on one side the bar, and the other a dining and lounging room, lit with kerosene lamps swung below tin reflectors. When Anthony was ready for supper the others had disappeared above. He was served by the proprietor, a short, rotund man with a glistening red face and hands like swollen pincushions. He breathed stentoriously amid his exertions, muttering objurgations in connection with the name of an absent servitor, hopelessly drunk, Anthony gathered, in the stable.
A bell sounded sharply from above, and he disappeared abruptly, shouting up the stair. Then, shortly after, he reappeared in the dining room with a tray bearing a pitcher of water, glasses, and a bottle labelled with the name of a popular brand of whiskey. “Can you run this up to your folks?” he demanded, in a storm of explosive breaths; “I got enough to stall three men down here.” Anthony balanced the tray, and moved toward the stair.
He stopped in the hallway to redispose his burden, when he heard the changing gears of a second automobile without. He moved carefully upward, conscious of lowered voices at his back, then the sound of footsteps following him. He turned as he had been directed in the hall above, and knocked upon a closed door. Kuhn's sullen voice bade him enter. He had opened the door, when, almost upsetting the tray, a small group at his back pushed him aside, and entered Hartmann's room.
XXVI
THE flaring gas jet within shone on Hartmann, in his shirt sleeves, reclining collarless on a bed, while the yellow-haired woman, in a short, vividly green petticoat, but otherwise normally garbed, sat by him twisting her fingers in his hair. Mrs. Dallam, her waist open at the neck, was cold-creaming her throat, while Kuhn was decorating her bared arms with pats of pink powder from a silver-mounted puff. He turned at the small commotion in the doorway.... His jaw dropped, and his glabrous eyes bulged in incredulous dismay. The powder puff fell to the floor; he wet his dry lips with his tongue. “Minna!” he stammered; “Minna!”
The woman in the door had grey hair streaked and soiled with sallow white, and a deeply scored, harsh countenance. Her gnarled hands were tightly clenched, and her tall, spare figure shook from suppressed excitement and emotion. At her back were two men, one unobtrusive, remarkable in his lack of salient feature; the other stolidly, heavily, Semitic.
Hartmann hastily scrambled into an upright position; the woman at his side gave vent to a startled, slight scream, desperately arranging her scant draperies; Mrs. Dallam, with a stony face, continued to rub cold-cream into her throat.
“Now, Mrs. Kuhn,” Hartmann stuttered, “everything can he satisfactorily explained.” The woman he addressed paid not the slightest attention to him, but, advancing into the room, gazed with mingled hatred and curiosity at Mrs. Dallam. The two women stood motionless, tense, oblivious to the others, in their silent, merciless battle. The latter smiled slightly, with coldly-contemptuous lips, at the grotesque figure, the ill-fitting dress upon the wasted body, the hat pinned askew on the thin, time-stained hair, before her. And the other, painfully rigid, worn, brittle, gazed with bitter appraisal at the softly-rounded, graceful figure, the mature youth, that mocked her.
“Minna,” Kuhn reiterated, “come outside, won't you, I want to see you outside. Tell her to go out, Abbie,” he entreated the stolid figure at the door; “it ain't fit for her to be here. I will see you all down stairs.” He laid a shaking hand upon his wife's shoulder. “Come away,” he implored.
But still, unconscious apparently of his presence, she gazed at Mrs. Dallam.
“You gutter piece!” she said finally; “you thief!”
Mrs. Dallam laughed easily. “Steal that!” she exclaimed, indicating Kuhn, “that... beetle! If it's any consolation to you--he hasn't put his hand on me. It makes me ill to be near him. I should be grateful if you'd take him home.”
“That's so, Mrs. Kuhn,” Hartmann interpolated eagerly, “nothing's went on you couldn't witness, nothing.”
Tears stole slowly over the inequalities of Mrs. Kuhn's countenance. She trembled so violently that the man called Abbie stepped forward and supported her. Now tears streamed copiously over Kuhn's narrow countenance. “Oh, Minna!” he cried, “_can_ I go home with you? can I go _now?_ These people don't mean anything to me, not like you do.--I get crazy at times, and gotta have excitement; I hate it,” he declared; “but I can't somehow stand out against it. But you must give me another try.... Why, I'd be nothing in the world without you; I'd go down to hell alive without you, Minna.”
Mrs. Kuhn became unmanageable; she uttered a series of short, gasping cries, and wilted into the arm about her. “Take her out, Abbie,” Kuhn entreated, “take her out of this.” Anthony, with the tray still balanced in his grasp, stood aside. The man without characteristics was making rapid notes in an unostentatious wallet. Then Mrs. Kuhn, supported and followed by her husband and the third, disappeared into the hall.
“Shut the door,” Hartmann commanded sharply; “and give me a drink.” Anthony set the tray on a table. “God!” the yellow-haired woman ejaculated, “me too.” Mrs. Dallam returned to the mirror, and surveyed the effects of the cold cream. With an expression of distaste she brushed the marks of the powder from her arm. “The beetle!” she repeated.