Читать книгу Mollie's Substitute Husband - Max McConn - Страница 5

Table of Contents

John Merriam, Principal of the High School at Riceville, Illinois--"Professor" Merriam, as he was universally called by the citizens of Riceville--was wickedly, carnally, gloriously happy. He was having an unwonted spree.

I fear the reader will be shocked. The principal of a high school, he will say, has no right to a spree, even an occasional one. The "Professor" has girl students in his classes--mostly girls, indeed, and usually the prettiest ones in town--and women teachers under his supervision. Every seventh day he teaches a young people's class in a Sunday School. He makes addresses at meetings of the Y.P.S.C.E., the Y.M.C.A., and other alphabetically designated societies that make for righteousness and decorum. He should at all times and in all places be a model, an exemplar, to the budding young men and women of the community in general and his school in particular.

In this reasoning the reader is in strict accord with what the sentiment of all Riceville would have been if it had known--if it could have known.

Nevertheless, it is the regrettable and shocking fact that John Merriam was sitting on that pleasant April evening in the Peacock Cabaret of the Hotel De Soto in the wicked city of Chicago. He was attired in evening clothes, a fact which, in itself would have seemed both odd and reprehensible to Riceville, and he was alone at a tiny table with a yellow-silk-shaded lamp. He had just been guided to that table, and pending the arrival of a waiter, he was gazing eagerly, boyishly about him at such delights as the somewhat garish Peacock Cabaret displayed.

For John Merriam, though a "professor," was young. He was only twenty-eight. He was tall and blond and athletic, as young men who grow up on farms in the Middle West and then go to college have a way of being. And after his season of strenuous and highly virtuous labours at Riceville he was really hungry, keen, for something--well, just a little less virtuous.

A distinguished looking gentleman in a dinner jacket, conspicuously labeled with a number, somewhat haughtily and negligently approached, bearing a menu card.

About three paces away this gentleman, having glanced at young Merriam, fairly stopped and stared at him. An odd expression showed upon his face--an expression, one would almost have said, of intense animosity. Then, as he still stared, one might have decided that his look betokened perplexity. He winked his eyes several times and once more scrutinised his waiting guest. At length--perhaps ten seconds had passed--his face slowly, wonderingly cleared, his usual air of vacant indifference returned, and he advanced and placed the menu card in Merriam's hands. The latter, still drinking in the sights and sounds of his unaccustomed environment, had noticed nothing.

Now it is always prudent to note a waiter's number when he first presents himself, for in case he should decide to begin his summer vacation immediately after taking your order you may need to mention his number to the head waiter. In this case the number was 73.

The hauteur and negligence displayed were partly habitual--professional, so to speak--but were intensified perhaps by the reaction from the emotion, whatever it was, which he had apparently just experienced--perhaps also by the look of alert and genuine pleasure on Merriam's face. Such a look did not wholly commend itself or him to a sophisticated metropolitan taste. What right had a patron of the Peacock Cabaret to look really pleased? It was hardly decent--and argued a small tip.

Inwardly Merriam, now aware of the waiter's presence, reacted acutely to this clearly perceptible disdain. Which shows how young and how rural he was. We maturer, urban folk are never, of course, in the least nonplused by those contemptuous, blasé silences of waiters who possess the bearing and manner of a governor or a capitalist.

But John Merriam had been excellent in amateur dramatics at college, and he now roused himself to a magnificent histrionic effort in the rôle of "man of the world."

He pushed the menu card aside without looking at it.

"A clam cocktail, please, and a stein of beer," he murmured, low enough to force the distinguished one to unbend slightly in order to catch the words.

"Yes, sir," said Waiter No. 73, with a tentative suggestion of respect in his tone. A customer who did not bother to look at the menu might be worth while after all.

"And then what?"

"I'll see how I feel then," said Merriam with a half yawn.

"Yes, sir," said Waiter No. 73, almost courteously, and departed at a pace slightly quickened over that of his approach, as a man strolling at complete leisure will instinctively increase the tempo of his step if he chances to recall a definite engagement on the day after to-morrow.

Merriam grinned delightedly. He had put it across--his little piece of acting. He had measurably imposed his rôle on his audience of one; at least he had shaken him.

And then--I shudder when I recall the views on nicotine of the Board of Education at Riceville--he drew from his pocket a package of cigarettes, and took a match from the table, and lit a cigarette, and sent a volume of smoke out through his nostrils--proving, alas, that it was not his first indulgence,--and, with a sigh that might almost be described as ecstatic, turned his attention again to the scene about him.

That scene was piquant to him--after the ugly dining room of his boarding house at Riceville and the barren assembly hall of the High School--to a degree almost incredible to persons more habituated to the Peacock Cabaret and similar resorts. Not being quite so fresh from Riceville, nor yet the advertising manager of the Hotel De Soto, I cannot, I fear, paint the prospect as Merriam saw it. I shall not be able to conceal some mental reservations as to its charms. The purple peacocks upon the walls and ceiling, from which the restaurant took its name, were certainly a trifle over-gorgeous, just as the music which the orchestra intermittently dispensed was too much syncopated. Again, the scores of small tables, each with its silk-shaded lamp, its slim glass vase for a single rosebud, its water bottle bearing the arms of the Chevalier De Soto, and its ash receptacle--all alike as shoe boxes in a shoe shop are alike,--might to a tired fancy suggest a certain monotony of pleasure, a too-much-standardised, ready-made brand of bliss. The small, skimped stage, with its undeniably banal curtain, and the crowded dancing floor did not really promise unlimited delights. Some perception of all this was apparent in the faces and bearing of many of the white-shirt-fronted men who sat at the scores of tables and of the women who were with them, however bird-of-paradise-like the raiment of the latter might be. Not a few indeed displayed an air of languor and ennui that might have won approval even from Waiter No. 73.

But in speaking thus of the Peacock Cabaret I am stepping outside my story, violating unity of point of view--in short, committing a heinous literary crime. For to Merriam at that moment the screaming purple peacocks, the regiments of rosebuds, the musical comedy melodies, the gay attire and bare shoulders of the women, and even the tired look of his fellow-diners, which he interpreted as sophistication rather than simple boredom, were thrillingly symbolical of all the delights which the great world held and which were absent from Riceville. And when Waiter No. 73 leisurely returned, to find him outwardly almost too near asleep to keep his cigarette going, and deposited his clam cocktail and the wicked stein before him, and at the same moment the orchestra became more noisy than ever, and all the lights except those upon the tables went out, and the stage curtain rose upon a short-skirted chorus, he was really in a sort of Omar Khayyam paradise. It was lucky that Waiter No. 73 had again departed to those unknown regions where waiters spend the bulk of their time, for Merriam could not have concealed the zest with which he alternately ate and drank and surveyed the moderately comely demoiselles upon the little stage.

Having finished his cocktail and drunk some of his beer and seen the curtain descend on the first "act" of the cabaret's dramatic entertainment, Merriam lit another cigarette, shifted his chair, and settled himself to await the probable future return of his servitor. His thoughts dwelt contentedly on the evening before him. For after his meal he would have a stroll with a cigar in the spring twilight (it was barely six-thirty then) through the noisy, brightly lighted streets of the Loop, which never failed to thrill him with a sense of a somehow wicked vastness, power, and riches in the great city of which they were the center. And then he was going to the "Follies." He fingered the small envelope in his pocket which held his ticket. And after the show he would have a supper in another cabaret.

Beyond that he did not let his fancy wander. For after that there was nothing for it but to catch the 2:00 A.M. train on the Illinois Central that would carry him back to Riceville for the remaining six weeks of the school year. He had come up to Chicago on this spring day--a Tuesday it was--to attend a convention of high-school principals and to engage a couple of new teachers for the next year, to replace two that were to be married in June. And he had faithfully done these things. And now he was giving himself just this one evening of amusement--two cabaret meals and a "show," sauced, so to speak, with a little tobacco and beer and the wearing of his evening clothes. Surely whatever Riceville might have thought, he will not seem to most of us very derelict from the austere ideals of his profession.

The only real point against him--most of us might argue--lies in the fact that when, you touch even the outermost fringes of the night life of a city, you are never quite certain what may come to you. For there are things happening all about you, under the conventional, monotonous surface--things amusing and things terrible--men and women playing with the fire of every known human passion,--and if the finger of some adventure reaches out for you you may not be able to resist its lure, perhaps even to escape its clutch.