Also he bought, unscientifically, a new pigskin bag.
And for his mother so many stockings, blouses, inlaid Italian boxes, fur tippets, satin dressing-gowns, and canisters of imported Russian caravan tea that he had to get still another bag to hold them. But for his father and Jock McCreedy, the bartender, who alone was left of the American House staff that Myron had known, he needed no great storage space: he wisely took each of them nothing but a bottle of forty-year-old Bourbon whisky.
The Myron who entrained at the Grand Central was thirteen years older than the boy who had left Black Thread for Torrington, at eighteen. His face was far older, thinner, more lined, yet his quick step was really younger than that of the lurching rustic who had gone doubtfully out to conquer the world. He had seemed a biggish club of a lout, then; now he was a thin sure blade.
He was excited as they came into Bridgeport, as he changed cars for Black Thread, as they crept up a valley filled with May. He was grateful to Ora. He felt that he was entering upon an adventure, perfectly concealed from him yet greater than any he had known. Perhaps it was that, after learning book-keeping and fish-frying and plumbing and buying pillow-cases, he was going to learn Myron Weagle.
16
He had not let his family know that he was coming. Not expecting him, the 'busman at the Black Thread station, who had sat beside him for years in school, looked at this City Feller and muttered "Bus, sir? Take your baggage?' with a show of respect which he certainly would not have yielded to ole Myron Wiggles.
His baggage he did send to the hotel, but he walked, greeting each small building--the paint-shop that had once been a chapel, the farm-machinery warehouse, Lambkin's Drug Store, old Mr. Doane's noble Greek residence. 'There's where I socked Herbert Lambkin with a snowball!' he rejoiced, 'and there's--yes sir, by golly, it's the same old sign--there's the grocery sign we stole on Hallowe'en and hung on Prof. White's privy!'
He had always heard that when you returned to your native village, everything seemed ludicrously smaller and shabbier than you remembered. He did not find it so; everything seemed extremely important and excellent. What city drug store had such a handsome display of soaps, tennis shoes, hot-water bags, collyriums and bottled pickles as Lambkin's? And that was a most interesting improvement: the ratty old junk-shop had been torn down and replaced with a handsome new galvanized-iron potato warehouse! He rounded the corner and saw the American House. It certainly was as tall as the Westward, so built upon with memories was it above the visible bricks. He had swept that upper balcony, he had washed that plate-glass window, he had tacked up the netting on that screen-door, he had hauled trunks out of that slanted basement entrance. And there was another Myron Weagle, a gangling broad- chested youth, sprinkling the sidewalk with, surely, the same battered green watering-can!
Instantly he was no longer Mr. Weagle of the Westward, but the unfledged Myron of thirteen years ago. He had to work at it, to play his city-feller joke on the boy.
'Hello, Cap'n!' (But did he really sound like J. Hector Warlock?) 'How's chances for a room here to-night?'
'Sure, boss, come in and we'll fix you right up. What you travelling for?'
'Trail and discovery.'
'Don't know the company. Is it a new one?'
'Yes, and probably already bankrupt.'
'That a fact? Well, that's hard luck. Come on in and register.'
Meek behind this self-confident young hotel man, Myron entered the office and beamed upon worn leather rockers, tall brass spittoons (not polished as he's polished them!). Behind the desk, in his shirt sleeves, sucking a toothpick and trying to play tunes on the strings of his suspenders, was his father.
'Gent wants a room,' said the boy.
'Right here, brother. Put down your John Hancock,' said old Tom, as he had been wont to say it fifty times a week, thirteen years ago. Tom whirled the register round with the familiar click. The only very modern improvement was that the clotted pen reposed in a jar of shot, instead of in a potato.
'This is something like an inn,' Myron gloated to himself. 'No signing of an elegant little card, while the clerk aims his gardenia at you!'
The old smell of tomato soup and soap and straw matting and roast pork crept round him, instead of the Westward's scent of marble and face-powder and fur coats. He sighed contentedly as he signed the register.
The old man had not looked at Myron's face. He did not care. He had seen too many guests, and he was sixty years old now, and very grey, and the apple-jack wa'n't what 'twas when he was a youngster, not by a long shot! He was uninterestedly reading Myron's signature, upside-down. Then he gazed, he gaped, and whooped, 'Well, I'll be everlastingly, teetotally doggoned! Myron! Why, boy, I never had such a fine surprise in my life! Come right out and see your Ma. Why, say, you're dressed as fine as a Jew pants-salesman! Well, I guess maybe it's true what they say--that you're making good, and pulling down your sixty dollars a week.'
His mother was basting a roast, wearing what might have been, and possibly was, the same spattered apron she had worn thirteen years ago. She straightened up, peered through crooked gold-rimmed spectacles as though she was frightened, and cried, 'Why, my boy, has anything gone wrong?'
'No! No! Mother! I've just come back for a little vacation!'
'Oh!' She kissed him, held him off to look at him, but with all her undiminished fondness there was a rustic awe of this man who was not so much her son as a Great Success from the Big City.
He felt that he had lost her, along with his home village; lost all of her save her unquestioning love. He felt the tragedy of the surrendering generation, in especial the tragedy of a woman like his mother who, just because she had dedicated herself to managing her men-folk, old Tom and Ora and himself, so that they would not go too wrong, and had never expected anything more than halfway decency in them, was humble before them when one of them did turn out normally competent and self-reliant. Had he been a leering failure, he might have kept her mothering intimacy!
The women who serve without knowing that they serve, or ever whining about it!
So, while he was being chatty and affectionate, he was reflecting, 'I've never done a thing for her. Ora was right! I've been so absorbed in making myself a swell clerk that I've forgotten to be a human being. But I will do something for her, something fine!'
Old Tom did not suffer from obsequiousness to his son. 'Well, boy, now you're here, you better strip your coat off and help us a little. You ought to have some pretty good hotel experience by this time. I want to figure out a way of perking up the office a little. Guests getting so doggone choosy these days. Maybe you might paint it for me.'
'Why, the very idea!' Myron's mother turned on Tom with moist, gravy-smeared wrath. 'He's not going to do anything of the kind! Painting! Him all tired out after all his hard work in that great, big, huge New York hotel and coming home for a rest, and then you expect him to work like a nigger! I'm ashamed of you! Don't you want to go up and lie down awhile, Myron?'
'No, I want to see the old place. Had lots of good times here!' said Myron. 'Let's have a look at the old bar!'
Tom found this an admirable excuse to go in for a drink.
As they went through the wash-room to the bar-room, Myron noticed that above the cast-iron stationary bowl still hung, on thin chains, a public comb, and a brush worn soft as old linen.