His chief trouble in organizing the staff was in refusing the offers of Black Threaders whom he had known as boys. He would have hated himself had he been supercilious to men with whom he had once smoked cornsilk cigarettes in the livery stable; he was uncomfortably and almost too noisily cordial when they came poking about the rising walls of the Inn; but he tried to persuade them that their training in the railroad section gang or the clothes-pin factory or the shoe store hadn't really qualified them as to clerk in an expensive hotel, an occupation which they pictured as doing nothing all day long but wearing lovely new tail-coats and shaking hands and swapping dirty stories with fashionable guests. Myron heard, seven times a day, 'Sure, I know: you've gotten too good for your old friends. Your hat has got too small for you, since you went off to the City.'
He explained to himself, 'Anybody with the intelligence of a rabbit would have known that I was a fool to start this thing too near the old home town. You aren't very bright, Myron. You work hard, but you haven't got much intuition or inspiration. That's what Ora's told me, all along. Oh, damn Ora! Now, the old bunch here in the Centre will want me to fail. Oh well, damn them, too! Nobody can stop me, nothing can stop me, from making this the greatest success in the world! I'll have Vanderbilts begging for a reservation a year ahead!'
It was in such a mood of boastful depression that he determined to get even with the Fates by raising the minimum rate-per-day, room and meals, from twelve to fifteen dollars.
His old acquaintances, who remembered him so much more lovingly than seemed probable after twenty-eight years, continued to come around and, when he was most trying to be affectionate and very jokey, they drawled, 'Now don't try to pull any high-hat stuff on me! I knew you when you was emptying slops at the American House!'
He had some thirty local workmen employed in building, and when the Inn opened, he would use as many people from Black Thread as showed themselves willing to keep their shoes blacked and endure strict training. But he saw that to one faction he must forever continue to be an ingrate who 'pulled high-hat stuff'.
'Cheer up', said T. J. Dingle; 'consider what they think of me, the blood-sucking banker!'
His father was a trial. He was a case of hives. Not that old Tom ever bothered him by presenting his qualifications for working at the Inn. Tom was entirely satisfied with his present two hours a day of supervising the American House clerk. But he did come over to Lake Nekobee to tell the workers that he was Myron's dad and had taught Myron all he knew, and to direct them in their building. All that, Myron could settle easily enough. He set his mother on Tom and thereafter his father stayed home, grumbling to all guests whom he could persuade to listen that a serpent's tooth is nothing at all compared with a thankless child, and that throughout Myron's youth, half a century or so, he had risen at five daily to instruct his ungrateful son in every art of inn-keeping.
But Myron's mother was beatific. Now, as the Black Thread Inn advanced, she knew absolutely, where formerly she had only suspected, that her son was the greatest hotel-man the world had ever known, and late afternoons, guiltily leaving the supervision of supper at the American House to the second cook, she walked arm in arm with Myron about the scaffolding-covered walls, while he triumphantly showed the future terrace, sun-porch, cabañas, squash court.
Naturally, Professor Herbert Lambkin, B.A., M.A., was the worst pest of all. The moment Myron began to build, Herbert charged in with suggestions.
Myron must come stay with them at the Old Home.
Thanks no. Myron was perfectly comfortable at the American House. Besides. He had to be in New York so much--only spent a few nights at the Centre.
Well, look here, then. Did Myron remember that conceited fool, Monlux, who had offered Herbert a miserable thirty a week in New York? Herbert had always been pretty sore about that, and he didn't entirely absolve Myron from blame, and now was Myron's chance to make up for the insult. He, Herbert, as superintendent of schools, was free in the summer time, just when Myron would most need him in the Inn, and he would be willing to sink his social prestige and serve as assistant manager for seventy-five or eighty a week, and then he thought he might bring himself to forgive Monlux, Myron, Effie, and Heaven.
No . . . Myron was so sorry . . . But he had already chosen his whole staff.
That was only the beginning of happy talks between the brothers-in-law.
Myron reported it to Effie May, in Mt. Vernon, but for once she did not back him. 'Why, I think that's real mean of you! It would mean so much to Berty to have the job; it would please him like anything, and I think it's horrid giving all these dandy jobs to complete strangers when our own family need them!'
'He isn't trained--he hasn't the temperament--he'd make lots of trouble', Myron said feebly. But he was considerably less feeble when he returned to Black Thread and Herbert again pounced.
Then Herbert granted that if Myron would build a summer cottage for him and let him have it for the cost of electricity and telephone only, he would forgive Myron to a considerable extent and try to forget his origin.
Back in Mt. Vernon again, Myron suffered with a pity for her that was purest love when Effie May cried, 'Listen, duckie! If you'll give Herbert the job, like he wants, I'll turn in and help you, with ideas! I've been thinking them up all this week you've been gone. Listen! This would be just won'erful! Why not have a great big picnic ground, with big rustic tables, and get all the Sunday Schools for miles around to have their basket picnics there every summer! Of course you couldn't charge them, but it would make the Inn grounds so lively, and advertise the place like anything!'
And the question of liquor, that to any hotel project in 1926 was a sick headache.
Myron had planned space for a bar in the basement billiard-room of the Inn, and he intended, if Prohibition should be repealed, to have the best cellar in the State. He did not expect to interfere with guests who brought their own flasks, and were not too noisy. But on the other hand he would not sell any illicit liquor, nor permit any employee to sell it.
Then Mr. Everett Beasy came to him, and Mr. Everett Beasy was the sheriff of the county. He did not resemble the sheriffs of fiction; he had neither chin-whiskers combined with shrewdness in finding which tramp had fired the barn, nor a leather vest and a notched six-gun. He had been a respectable grocer, and he still looked like a respectable grocer: a small man in a well-pressed pepper-and-salt suit and a new derby.
'Well, Weagle, fine thing for the whole country round here, your putting up this big hotel. Give work to lots of needy folks, and set an example of nice living for all our young people.'
'Glad you like it.'
'You bet we like it. You're a real public benefactor. And now listen. I know how it is. You're going to have a lot of city folks that will want a little drink. Mostly, of course, that's against the law, but we don't feel disposed to be too hard on folks that will bring good money here, as long as they behave themselves and don't kick up any rows. If they mind their business, we'll mind ours. But of course you want to be able to give 'em first-class stuff that you can guarantee. Now myself, I'm against booze, and I never touch a drop, hardly, you might say, but I know a fellow that's a really honest bootlegger . . .'
'Shan't need one.'
'Look here. I don't know as we can allow anybody supplying you that we can't depend on. We officers of the law have got a responsibility to the public, let me tell you!'
'But I shan't sell any liquor at all. Really. I mean it. Not a drop'.
'Oh yes, you will! You don't think you will, but you will! And if you deal with the right people, it'll save you a lot of trouble in taxes and building-inspection and any fights that drunk guests might get into and traffic charges and all sorts of things. I just want to help you out. Think it over, and when you get ready, I'll have this fellow I know come see you.'