"Hump! I was going a little further than that. He would likely have done the bawlin'. But don't you worry yourself about d.i.c.kie. He's safe for this time--so long's you don't blame me, or--The Aura."

His voice on the last word suffered from one of its cracks. It was as though it had broken under a load of pride and tenderness.

Sheila saw for a moment how it was with him. To every man his pa.s.sion and his dream: to Sylvester Hudson, his Aura. More than wife or child, he loved his bar. It was a fetish, an idol. To Sheila's fancy d.i.c.kie suddenly appeared the sacrifice.

CHAPTER VI

THE BAWLING-OUT

d.i.c.kie's room in The Aura Hotel was fitted in between the Men's Lavatory and the Linen Room. It smelt of soiled linen and defective plumbing.

Also, into its single narrow window rose the dust of ashes, of old rags and other refuse thrown light-heartedly into the back yard, which not being visible from the street supplied the typical housewife of a frontier town with that relaxation from any necessity to keep up an appearance of economy and cleanliness so desirable to her liberty-loving soul. The housekeeper at The Aura was not Mrs. Hudson, but an enormously stout young woman with blonde hair, named Amelia Plecks. She was so tightly laced and booted that her hard breathing and creaking were audible all over the hotel. When d.i.c.kie woke in his narrow room after his moonlight adventure, he heard this heavy breathing in the linen room and, groaning, thrust his head under the pillow. With whatever bitterness his kindly heart could entertain, he loathed Amelia. She took advantage of the favor of Sylvester and of her own exalted position in the hotel to taunt and to humiliate him. His plunge under the pillow did not escape her notice.

"Ain't you up yet, lazybones?" she cried, rapping on the wall. "You won't get no breakfast. It's half-past seven. Who's at the desk to see them Duluth folks off? Pap's not going to be pleased with you."

"I don't want any breakfast," muttered d.i.c.kie.

Amelia laughed. "No. I'll be bound you don't. Tongue like a kitten and a head like a cracked stove!"

She slapped down some clean sheets on a shelf and creaked toward the hall, but stopped at the open door. Sylvester Hudson was coming down the pa.s.sage and she was in no mind to miss the "bawling-out" of d.i.c.kie which this visit must portend. She shut the linen-room door softly, therefore, and controlled her breathing.

But d.i.c.kie knew that she was there and, when his father rapped, he knew why she was there.

He tumbled wretchedly from his bed, swore at his injured ankle, hopped to the door, unlocked it, and hopped back with panic swiftness before his father's entrance. He sat in his crumpled pajamas amidst his crumpled, dingy bedclothes, his hair scattered over his forehead, his large, heavy eyes fixed anxiously upon Sylvester.

"Say, Poppa--" he began.

Then "Pap's" voice cracked out at him.

"You hold your tongue," snapped Sylvester, "or you'll get what's comin'

to you!" He jerked d.i.c.kie's single chair from against the wall, threw the clothing from it, and sat down, crossing his legs, and holding up at his son the long finger that had frightened Sheila. d.i.c.kie blinked at it.

"You know what I was plannin' to do to you after last night? I meant to come round here and pull you out of your covers and onto the floor there"--he pointed to a spot on the boards to which d.i.c.kie fearfully directed his own eyes--"and kick the stuffin' out of you." d.i.c.kie contemplated the long, pointed russet shoes of his parent and shuddered visibly. Nevertheless in the slow look he lifted from the boot to his father's face, there was a faint gleam of irony.

"What made you change your mind?" he asked impersonally.

It was this curious detachment of d.i.c.kie's, this imperturbability, that most infuriated Hudson. He flushed.

"Just a little sa.s.s from you will bring me back to the idea," he said sharply.

d.i.c.kie lowered his eyes.

"What made me change was--Miss Arundel's kindness. She came and begged you off. She said you hadn't done anything or said anything to frighten her, that you'd been"--Sylvester drawled out the two words in the sing-song of Western mockery--"'sweet and love-ly.'"

d.i.c.kie's face was pink. He began to tie a knot in the corner of one of his thin gray sheet-blankets.

"I don't know how sweet and lovely you can be, d.i.c.kie, when you're lit up, but I guess you were awful sweet. Anyway, if you didn't say anything or do anything to scare her, you don't deserve a kickin'. But, just the same, I've a mind to turn you out of Millings."

This time, d.i.c.kie's look was not ironical. It was terrified. "Oh, Poppa, say! I'll try not to do it again."

"I never heard that before, did I?" sneered Sylvester. "You put shame on me and my bar. And I'm not goin' to stand it. If you want to get drunk buy a bottle and come up here in your room. G.o.d d.a.m.n you! You're a nice son for the owner of The Aura!"

He stood up and looked with frank disgust at the thin, huddled figure.

Under this look, d.i.c.kie grew slowly redder and his eyes watered.

Sylvester lifted his upper lip. "Faugh!" he said. He walked over to the door. "Get up and go down to your job and don't you bother Miss Sheila--hear me? Keep away from her. She's not used to your sort and you'll disgust her. She's here under my protection and I've got my plans for her. I'm her guardian--that's what I am." Sylvester was pleased like a man that has made a discovery. "Her guardian," he repeated as though the word had a fine taste.

d.i.c.kie watched him. There was no expression whatever in his face and his lips stood vacantly apart. He might have been seven years old.

"Keep away from her--hear me?"

"Yes, sir," said d.i.c.kie meekly.

After his father had gone out, d.i.c.kie sat for an instant with his head on one side, listening intently. Then he got up, limped quietly and quickly on his bare feet out into the hall, and locked the linen-room door on the outside.

"Amelia's clean forgot to lock it," he said aloud. "Ain't she careless, though, this morning!"

He went back. There was certainly a sound now behind the part.i.tion, a sound of hard breathing that could no longer be controlled.

"I'll hand the key over to Mary," soliloquized d.i.c.kie in the hollow and unnatural voice of stage confidences. "She'll be goin' in for the towels about noon."

Then he fell on his bed and smothered a fit of chuckling.

Suddenly the mirth died out of him. He lay still, conscious of a pain in his head and in his ankle and somewhere else--an indeterminate spot deep in his being. He had been forbidden to see the girl who ran away out into the night to look at the stars, the girl who had not laughed at his attempt to describe the white ecstasy of the winter moon. He had frightened her--disgusted her. He must have been more drunk than he imagined. It _was_ disgusting--and so hopeless. Perhaps it would be better to leave Millings.

He sat up on the edge of his bed and let his hands hang limply down between his knees. It seemed to him that his thoughts were like a wheel, half-submerged in running water. The wheel went round rapidly, plunging in and out of his consciousness. Hardly had he grasped the meaning of one half when it went under and another blur of moving spokes emerged.

Something his father had said, for instance, now began to pa.s.s through his mind.... "I've got my plans for her".... d.i.c.kie tried to stop the turning wheel because this speech gave him a distinct feeling of anger and alarm. By an effort of his will, he held it before his contemplation.... What possible plans could Sylvester have for Sheila?

Did she understand his plans? Did she approve of them? She was so young and small, with that sad, soft mouth and those shining, misty eyes.

d.i.c.kie, with almost a paternal air, shook his ruffled head. He shut his eyes so that the long lashes stood out in little points. A vision of those two faces--Sheila's so gleaming fair and open, Sylvester's so dark and shut--stood there to be compared. Her guardian, indeed!

d.i.c.kie dressed slowly and dragged himself down to the desk, where very soberly and sadly he gave the key of the linen room to Mary. Then he sat down, turned on the Victor, and lit a cigarette. The "Duluth folks" had gone without any a.s.sistance from him. There was nothing to do. It occurred to d.i.c.kie, all at once, that in Millings there was always nothing to do. Nothing, that is, for him to do. Perhaps, after all, he didn't like Millings. Perhaps that was what was wrong with him.

The Victor was playing:

"Here comes Tootsie, Play a little music on the band.

Here comes Tootsie, Tootsie, you are looking simply grand.

Play a little tune on the piccolo and flutes, The man who wrote the rag wrote it especially for Toots.

Here comes Tootsie--play a little music on the band."

On the last nasal note, the door of The Aura flew open and a resplendent figure crossed the chocolate-colored varnish of the floor. Tootsie herself was not more "simply grand." This was a young man, perhaps it would be more descriptive to say _the_ young man that accompanies _the_ young woman on the cover of the average American magazine. He had--a nose, a chin, a beautiful mouth, large brown eyes, wavy chestnut hair, a ruddy complexion, and, what is not always given to the young man on the cover, a deep and generous dimple in the ruddiest part of his right cheek. He was dressed in the latest suit produced by Schaffner and Marx; he wore a tie of variegated silk which, like Browning's star, "dartled"

now red, now blue. The silk handkerchief, which protruded carefully from his breast pocket, also "dartled." So did the socks. One felt that the heart of this young man matched his tie and socks. It was resplendent with the vanity and hopefulness and illusions of twenty-two years.

The large, dingy, chocolate-colored lobby became suddenly a background to Mr. James Greely, cashier of the Millings National Bank, and the only child of its president.

Upon the ruffled and rumpled d.i.c.kie he smiled pleasantly, made a curious gesture with his hand--they both belonged to the Knights of Sagittarius and the Fire Brigade--and came to lean upon the desk.