Читать книгу Paul Rundel - Will N. Harben - Страница 10

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AT certain times during the year Paul was en abled to earn a little extra money by hauling fire-wood to the village and selling it to the householders. One morning he was standing by his wagon, waiting for a customer for a load of oak, when Hoag came from the bar-room at the hotel and steered toward him. The planter's face was slightly flushed from drink, and he was in a jovial mood.

“Been playing billiards,” he said, thickly, and he jerked his thumb toward the green, swinging doors of the bar. “Had six tilts with a St. Louis drummer, an' beat the socks off of 'im. I won his treats an' I'm just a little bit full, but it will wear off. It's got to. I'm goin' in to eat dinner with my sister—you've seen 'er—Mrs. Mayfield. She's up from Atlanta with her little girl to git the mountain air an' country cookin'.”

At this moment Peter Kerr, the proprietor of the hotel, came out ringing the dinner-bell. He was a medium-sized man of forty, with black eyes and hair, the skin of a Spaniard, and an ever-present, complacent smile. He strode from end to end of the long veranda, swinging the bell in front of him. When Kerr was near, Hoag motioned to him to approach, and Kerr did so, silencing the bell by catching hold of the clapper and swinging the handle downward. Hoag laid his hand on Paul's shoulder and bore down with unconscious weight.

“Say, Pete,” he said, “you know this boy?”

“Oh, yes, everybody does, I reckon,” Kerr answered patronizingly.

“Well, he's the best hand I've got,” Hoag said, sincerely enough; “the hardest worker in seven States. Now, here's what I want. Paul eats out at my home as a rule an' he's got to git dinner here at my expense to-day. Charge it to me.”

Paul flushed hotly—an unusual thing for him—and shook his head.

“I'm goin' home to dinner,” he stammered, his glance averted.

“You'll do nothing of the sort,” Hoag objected, warmly. “You've got that wood to sell, an' nobody will buy it at dinner-time. Every livin' soul is at home. Besides, I want to talk over some matters with you afterward. Fix 'im a place, Pete, an' make them niggers wait on 'im.”

There was no way out of it, and Paul reluctantly gave in. With burly roughness, which was not free from open patronage, the planter caught him by the arm and drew him up the steps of the hotel and on into the house, which Paul knew but slightly, having been there only once or twice to sell game, vegetables, or other farm produce.

The office was noisily full of farmers, traveling salesmen, lawyers, merchants, and clerks who boarded there or dropped in to meals at the special rate given to all citizens of the place and vicinity. On the right hand was a long, narrow “wash-room.” It had shelves holding basins and pails of water, sloping troughs into which slops were poured, towels on wooden rollers, and looking-glasses from the oaken frames of which dangled, at the ends of strings, uncleanly combs and brushes.

When he had bathed his face and hands and brushed his hair, Paul returned to the office, where the proprietor—with some more patronage—took him by the arm and led him to the door of the big dining-room. It was a memorable event in the boy's life. He was overwhelmed with awe; he had the feeling that his real ego was encumbered with those alien things—legs, arms, body, and blood which madly throbbed in his veins and packed into his face. He would not have hesitated for an instant to engage in a hand-to-hand fight with a man wearing the raiment of an emperor's guard, if occasion had demanded it; but this new thing under the heavens gave him pause as nothing else ever had done. The low-ceiled room, with its many windows curtained in white, gauzy stuff, long tables covered with snowy linen, glittering glass, sparkling plated-ware, and gleaming china, seemed to have sprung into being by some enchantment full of designs against his timidity. There was a clatter of dishes, knives, forks, and spoons; a busy hum of voices; the patter of swift-moving feet; the jar and bang of the door opening into the adjoining kitchen, as the white-aproned negroes darted here and there, holding aloft trays of food.

Seeing Paul hesitating where the proprietor had left him, the negro head waiter came and led him to a seat at a small table in a corner somewhat removed from the other diners. It was the boy's rough aspect and poor clothing which had caused this discrimination against him, but he was unaware of the difference. Indeed, he was overjoyed to find that his entrance and presence were unnoticed. He felt very much out of place with all those queer dishes before him. The napkin, folded in a goblet at his plate, was a thing he had heard of but never used, and it remained unopened, even after the waiter had shaken it out of the goblet to give him ice-water. There were hand-written bills of fare on the other tables, but the waiter simply brought Paul a goodly supply of food and left him. He was a natural human being and unusually hungry, and for a few moments he all but forgot his surroundings in pure animal enjoyment. His appetite satisfied, he sat drinking his coffee and looking about the room. On his right was a long table, at which sat eight or ten traveling salesmen; and in their unstudied men-of-the-world ease, as they sat ordering cigars from the office, striking matches under their chairs, and smoking in lounging attitudes, telling yams and jesting with one another, they seemed to the boy to be a class quite worthy of envy. They dressed well; they spent money; they knew all the latest jokes; they traveled on trains and lived in hotels; they had seen the great outer world. Paul decided that he would like to be a drummer; but something told him that he would never be anything but what he was, a laborer in the open air—a servant who had to be obedient to another's will or starve.

At this moment his attention was drawn to the entrance. Hoag was coming in accompanied by a lady and little girl, and, treading ponderously, he led them down the side of the room to a table on Paul's left. Hoag seemed quite a different man, with his unwonted and clumsy air of gallantry as he stood holding the back of his sister's chair, which he had drawn out, and spoke to the head waiter about “something special” he had told the cook to prepare. And when he sat down he seemed quite out of place, Paul thought, in the company of persons of so much obvious refinement. He certainly bore no resemblance to his sister or his niece. Mrs. Mayfield had a fair, smooth brow, over which the brown tresses fell in gentle waves; a slender body, thin neck, and white, tapering hands. But it was Ethel, the little girl, who captured and held from that moment forth the attention of the mountain-boy. Paul had never beheld such dainty, appealing loveliness. She was as white and fair as a lily. Her long-lashed eyes were blue and dreamy; her nose, lips, and chin perfect in contour. She wore a pretty dress of dainty blue, with white stockings and pointed slippers. How irreverent, even contaminating, seemed Hoag's coarse hand when it rested once on her head as he smiled carelessly into the girl's face! Paul felt his blood boil and throb.

“Half drunk!” he muttered. “He's a hog, and ought to be kicked.”

Then he saw that Hoag had observed him, and to his great consternation the planter sat smiling and pointing the prongs of his fork at him. Paul heard his name called, and both the lady and her daughter glanced at him and smiled in quite a friendly way, as if the fork had introduced them. Paul felt the blood rush to his face; a blinding mist fell before his eyes, and the whole noisy room became a chaos of floating objects. When his sight cleared he saw that the three were looking in another direction; but his embarrassment was not over, for the head waiter came to him just then and told him that Mr. Hoag wanted him to come to his table as soon as his dinner was finished.

Paul gulped his coffee down now in actual terror of something intangible, and yet more to be dreaded than anything he had ever before encountered. He was quite certain that he would not obey. Hoag might take offense, swear at him, discharge him; but that was of no consequence beside the horrible ordeal the man's drunken brain had devised. Hoag was again looking at him; he was smiling broadly, confidently, and swung his head to one side in a gesture which commanded Paul to come over. Mrs. Mayfield's face also wore a slight smile of agreement with her brother's mood; but Ethel, the little girl, kept her long-lashed and somewhat conscious eyes on the table. Again the hot waves of confusion beat in Paul's face, brow, and eyes. He doggedly shook his head at Hoag, and then his heart sank, for he knew that he was also responding to the lady's smile in a way that was unbecoming in a boy even of the lowest order, yet he was powerless to act otherwise. Like a blind man driven desperate by encroaching danger that could not be located, he rose, turned toward the door, and fairly plunged forward. The toe of his right foot struck the heel of his left, and he stumbled and almost fell. To get out he had to pass close to Hoag's table, and though he did not look at the trio, he felt their surprised stare on him, and knew that they were reading his humiliation in his flaming face. He heard the planter laugh in high merriment, and caught the words: “Come here, you young fool, we are not goin' to bite you!”

It seemed to the boy, as he incontinently fled the spot, that the whole room had witnessed his disgrace. In fancy he heard the waiters laughing and the amused comments of the drummers.

The landlord tried to detain him as he hurried through the office.

“Did you git enough t'eat?” he asked; but, as if pursued by a horde of furies, Paul dashed on into the street.

He found a man inspecting his load of wood and sold it to him, receiving instructions as to which house to take it to and where it was to be left. With the hot sense of humiliation still on him, he drove down the street to the rear fence of a cottage and threw the wood over, swearing at himself, at Hoag, at life in general, but through it all he saw Ethel Mayfield's long, golden hair, her eyes of dreamy blue, and pretty, curving lips. She remained in his thoughts as he drove his rattling wagon home through the slanting rays of the afternoon sun. She was in his mind so much, indeed, from that day on, that he avoided contact with the members of his family. He loved to steal away into the woods alone, or to the hilltops, and fancy that she was with him listening to his wise explanation of this or that rural thing which a girl from a city could not know, and which a girl from a city, to be well informed, ought to know.