Mixed Faces

"Excellently. But, mind you, no box! I like to see a horse show from close down to the ground. They don't look so dressed up and silly as they do from the boxes. I rather suspect that the horses don't like those in the boxes," she said with a smile.

"Agreed," he answered, and made his devoirs.

He walked briskly as far as the corner, then turned and looked back to make certain that she had disappeared. He hastened back, intent on gaining the desk before others had reached it, but found himself too late. He was compelled to bide his time whilst several people registered, and then sidled up to the desk. A very haughty young man swung the register toward him but he ignored it and, leaning confidentially across, said, "There's a young lady and her mother stopping here and I can't remember their names. Perhaps you could tell me what – "

"Sorry! There are probably fifty young ladies and their mothers stopping here," said the hotel clerk, icily. "If you're on the square in asking for such information, I'm sorry I can't give it; but if you've got some lay of your own, you're in the wrong nest. This isn't the Sports Half-way House, you know."

"But see here. I'm in earnest about this, you know, and – " began Jimmy, and was interrupted with a curt "Sorry! Nothing doing!"

He might have argued the point had not there been another interruption and after a moment he left, shrugging his shoulders a trifle, and condemning himself as an ass for his failure to remember who this "Mabel" was. The failure rendered him doubly keen, for it was a part of his business training, self-imposed, to remember names and faces. He went to his own hotel and for an hour ran through the pages of his blue book. It was a peculiar creation of his own. It was strictly private. It contained details concerning customers. It was like a highly developed "Who's Who," diary in his trade and made interesting reading.

"Barclay, James W. 114z Chestnut, Philadelphia. Credit AAA1. Rather stiff. Likes to be Mistered. Teetotaler. Chief entertainment, Y. M. C. A. lectures. Home mission movements and prayer meetings. Hot stuff on religion. Show him the Zoo. P. S. Five children, all girls, oldest named Martha. P. S. On Oct. 14 youngest kid, Ruth, suffering from the flu. Note – don't forget mention it when next see him and express hope she has recovered satisfactorily.

"Barnes, Thomas R. 1627A La Salle St., Chicago. Credit fair. Called 'Tommy.' Red hot sport. Horseraces. Prize fights. Poker. (Go easy on stakes because unless careful will boost the comein.) Likes Pommery Sec. P. S. Likes chorus girls. P. S. Dangerous josher when loaded. P. S. When he expresses desire to spend quiet evening skidoo. P. S. Oct. 27th – Bailed Tommy out for hitting a policeman. Policeman not much hurt, Tommy a wreck. P. S. Jan. 15th, sent bell boy 3 a. m. to my room to borrow fifty bucks. P. S. Jan 17 – Tommy paid the fifty. P. S. Jan 19, got Tommy off on Century Limited, and separated him from girl named Lulu. P. S. Feb 1, letter from Tommy thanking me for separating him from girl named Lulu.

"Coldwell, Henry J.; Mgr. Fountain Conf. Co., Savannah. Credit A1. Likes a decent show. No legs. Moony about wife and family when away from home. Spiritualist. Wife a blonde who likes to think she's reforming lower classes. Grandfather old cuss named Poindexter who was defeated for Congress by but seventeen votes. P. S. Nov. 5, great grandmother a Fairfax of which very proud. P. S. Dec. 7, great great grandmother a Lee. P. S. Jan. 15, great aunt a Washington. P. S. Feb. 4, great grandmother danced with Lafayette. Mar. 15, brought ugly old painting of joker in wig and stock at second-hand shop Bowery and expressed to H. J. C., with note that was assured this was portrait of ancestor. Total cost $1.15, charged exs. Mar. 23 – Enthusiastic letter thanks from J. H. C. in which says exactly like miniature portrait in possession his aunt and no doubt of its authenticity. Mar. 28, got biggest order ever received from J. H. C. Hope cr. man will O. K. it"

There were some names and records in this interesting book that dealt with employees. For instance:

"Bangs, Reginald, 1 R Mohawk St., Buffalo. AA1. Sentimental cuss. Quotes poetry. Thinks has artistic temperament. Not much business head. Place made a success by head clerk, Miss Norah Cahill, who runs it and him as well. Play Norah to win, for first, second, and place. P. S. Jan. 13, gifts and hot air wasted on Norah and no good. Got to have the goods and the prices. P. S. Mar. 4, Cahill nearly scalped me over seventeen cents difference in accts. LOOK OUT FOR THE LOCOMOTIVE when dealing with this Cahill person. P. S. Cahill can be influenced by clerk named Mary Mooney. $1.50 Dr. Exs. flowers for Mooney."

In nearly all cases where clerks or counter girls had influence on orders, their names and foibles and identifications were carefully registered as they were learned; and these were scattered through as appurtenances to the different shops. "Mary Smith. Red-headed. Does hair up like a Hottentot. Jingles with bangles and is color blind"; or "Chief salesgirl Freda Isenheimer. Nose like prow of ship. Warts on her neck, grin like a cellar door, teeth like an old horse. Flaps hands when talks. Voice like saw mill and waddles like a duck lost on a desert." And "Jenny Gray. All peach. Goo-goo blue eyes. About thirteen hands high and chestnut in color. Well-gaited and has boss under thumb." But although Jimmy carefully read all these and pondered each, he was still uncertain regarding whither the name or place of the young lady he was to entertain at the horse show. And, the most annoying part of it all was that he, confirmed bachelor, suffered from an unwonted sense of liking for this same girl. Her conversation seemed to him peculiarly bright and entertaining. She looked so much more attractive than any other girl he had ever entertained. There was something about her face, and the line of her throat that he had discovered while surreptitiously studying her there in the half darkness of the theater that was so much more graceful, so much more refined, so much more beautiful than he had ever observed in any other girl. It began to seem difficult to believe that he could ever before have seen her, and yet failed to note such a combination of charms. He thought he must have been blind as a bat when he passed her by; but again he fell back on the excuse that a girl in a shop uniform was an entirely different appearing person from the same girl out on a holiday. He did not at all realize that his interest in this unidentified queen of chocolates was becoming less and less of a business nature until he finally blurted in desperation, "I don't give a cuss where she peddles the sweets; but by gosh! I've just got to learn her name and address because – Oh, hang it! Because!"

CHAPTER III

Jimmy Gollop, like most commercial travelers of the first flight, not only knew how to wear clothes but what clothes to wear. And on this day of days paid particular care to his appearance. He rather anticipated that the candy girl would appear in some plain, tailormade gown. Her hair, one of her chief charms of personal appearance, was heavy and beautiful, and of a most baffling shade of color that shone brown in darker shadows and yet in full light glinted as if subtly suggesting gold. Jimmy, who had a natural sense for color, pondered over this and decided that the tailormade would be of navy blue and that therefore violets would be the correct thing in the flower line to show his appreciation.

"But how in the deuce am I to send them up to her hotel when I don't even know her name!" he thought.

However, he was sufficiently independent to buy the finest violets he could find and to appear at the hotel entrance with them in his hand. The young lady was not there. Jimmy tried to appear unconcerned, and for a time stood like a rather modern statue of "Cupid bearing flowers." Now and then he peered into the hotel lobby and it seemed to him that whenever he did so the human icicle behind the desk was glaring in his direction as if contemplating a call for the police, or sending a message to the Ladies' Protective Association for Attractive Young Females.

At last when he was becoming fidgety and consulting his watch at intervals of not longer than three minutes, the girl appeared.

"Well, in the name of common sense," she demanded, "why didn't you send your card up, or have the desk call me? I hope you're not in the habit of expecting young ladies to meet you on the corner. I waited and waited, and then was just about to – " She stopped at sight of his lugubrious face, relented, and laughed. "Never mind! Don't take it to heart, and – are those violets for me? You are a dear, after all! I love them." She took them from his outstretched hand and buried her face in them, whilst he, usually so nimble of tongue and ready of word, was striving to overcome this alarming confusion and embarrassment that rendered him about as quick of wit as a soft-shelled clam. In fact, he felt like a jelly fish save that he was twice as incompetent.

"You see," he began lamely, "I didn't quite know what to do. I was afraid that maybe your mother had objected to your going to the horse show, and – "

"Why, you're not afraid of her, are you? You never seemed so before. I thought – I thought you and she were rather good friends." There was a vague tinge of sarcasm in her words and tone but like a wobbly legged pup trying to catch a butterfly he mentally leaped at this offering and began cudgeling his memory in quest of women who ran chocolate shops. Could it be that she was the daughter of the widow Haynes who owned the Bon-Ton in Detroit? Impossible! The widow was not more than thirty. Maybe Mrs. Harris of Miami? No, if Mrs. Harris had a daughter she would have that unmistakable Southern peculiarity of speech. This girl was from somewhere farther north. It couldn't be that she was the daughter of Mrs. Schumann of Milwaukee? Heaven forbid! For Mrs. Schumann was so fat she shook like an unsupported pyramid of blanc-mange whenever she moved.

"I had hopes for you yesterday," a voice aroused him from his lapse. "You acted as if you could talk when you turned loose; but now you're back in your old hopeless form. Come on! Wake up! Oh, I forgot to tell you the great news. Like to hear it?"

"I like to hear you say anything," said Jimmy, hopelessly at her mercy and speaking the truth, and nothing but the truth so help him Bob! and glancing at her with that unmistakable sick-calf expression that seems to be the inevitable accomplishment of all lovers, and that the original Eve must have noticed in the eyes of Adam as he stood lolling around Eden in his red flannel underwear.

"Mamma got an invitation to spend the winter down in St. Augustine with the Charles K. Wilmarths, and she knows I hate them. She wanted to go because, as you know, she thinks she's not at all well, and also because the Charles K. Wilmarths are rather swagger. Either because she wished to get rid of me, or because I raised such a fuss, she compromised. I'm to be allowed to stay here for the next four months and take painting lessons from Jorgensen. I intend to have a studio of my own. I'm to live at the Martha Putnam hotel, which, as you know, never, never allows a man farther through its doors than the waiting room. Happy? I'm so happy I could shout!"

"Then you've no longer any interest in the business?" inquired Jimmy, for the want of something better to say.

She looked out of the taxi-window for an instant, as if recalling something and then said, slowly, "Yes, to tell the truth I have. It means so much. I'll admit that I'm more or less a business person. I like to see things grow bigger and bigger, and sell more and more, and get to mean something. Not that the dollars and cents count so much, after a time, but because a name somehow becomes a standard. Yes, I shall miss what you call the business; but, after all, it will not stop because I'm not there to enthuse over it, and – " She interrupted herself with a half-suppressed laugh – "Mother doesn't look at things exactly as I do. She detests it and is ashamed of it, I have an ideal!"

Jimmy never quite idealized the chocolate trade before; but there was something rather fine in what she said, he thought. After all, maybe it was one form of Americanism that she had voiced, and it became a trifle nobler when he considered that it meant industry, energy, and honesty. To do something and do it well. To be proud of doing something well. To be proud that one wasn't a loafer or a drone, or a parasite on the body economic. He was striving to correlate all this when made aware that the taxi had stopped and that they were at their destination. He actually submitted to an overcharge of a half-dollar inflicted by the hatchet-faced brigand who had jerked his taxi-meter over with a bang before his fares had time to inspect it. And then, resolving to forget everything save the fact that they were entering the Horse Show, and that he was somehow treading in ether because he had found a girl who was different from all others, he became himself again.

"We're not so very late after all," he exclaimed as he glanced up at the big tower clock. "I thought I waited an hour for you. But, anyhow, here we are, and now for it!"

They sauntered in and he was proud to observe that many eyes were turned in the direction of his companion. It made him feel rather egotistical, for there were many girls there well worth looking at, and people don't always go to horse shows to look at horses. Jimmy forgot all about chocolates. Unconsciously he relapsed to his habitual self, and, inasmuch as most any one who is unassuming and entirely natural is entertaining, seemed to keep his companion happy.

"I like it all," she said, in an interval. "I like to look at those in the boxes who came here for nothing else than to be looked at. It makes them happy to see others looking at them. I suppose they must feel for the moment that they are as good as the horses. Some people will make mistakes of that sort, you know, and never learn the truth. And I like the horses for themselves. They are so unlike. So like people. Some of them are shy, some of them nervous, some of them conceited, and others are as self-satisfied as if already they had won the blue ribbons. Funny, isn't it, that I never suspected that you had any interest at all in them?"

"Well, you see," said Jimmy. "We never had much of a chance to understand really what either of us enjoys or dislikes before we met here. It makes a lot of difference when, how and where people meet. I suppose you'll laugh if I tell you when I first fell in love, because it was with a horse. Honestly, it was! I'm in earnest about it. Things didn't come any too easy around our house – I mean Maw's and mine – after my father died. Somehow his death sort of changed me from a boy into a man, and, – well, I just couldn't think of enough ways to keep her from wanting anything. I felt as if I'd have to be a man big enough to fill my father's place and to take care of her. There wasn't a way to make a penny that I didn't consider just on her account. And I got a job after school hours delivering stuff for a grocery store, down in our town. I had to care for and drive a poor old feller with the string halt, and spavins, and I used to wonder why I couldn't get his tail to grow longer. Honestly, I thought all horses' tails were about eight inches long until an old horse trader looked my friend over one day and said, 'Hello! That nag's been docked sometime! He didn't always pull a grocery cart. Shouldn't wonder if there'd been some class and pedigree to him sometime.' Then he had the impertinence to stick his dirty fingers into my friend's mouth and hoist his upper lip and say, 'Methusalem was old, but this plug could make him look like a suckling,' I remember that I was angry, and that I wished that my friend had bitten him. I'd have done it myself if I had been big enough, or a horse. You see, I was proud of that horse, and liked him, and he loved me. As a joke the hostlers down at the boarding stable where we kept him called him Bovolarapus; but I called him Bo for short, because it didn't seem fair that we shouldn't be familiar with each other. I'm sure he thought of me as Jim for short; so I called him Bo. He used to take a kick at anybody else who came near him, but I could put a hot iron on his poor old heels without a single vicious jerk from him. He bit nearly everyone who got too close or too curious, but he'd put his lips up to my cheek and kiss me when something had hurt my feelings, and I'd get into some quiet lane and tell him all about it – sometimes with my arms around his tired old neck! I tell you he was mighty comforting to me when everything went wrong. You won't believe it, but I used to fancy that sometimes he tried to whisper into my ear and that he said, 'Take it quietly, boy! Just do the best you can. I know that sometimes the hill is terribly hard to climb, and bitterly long, but somewhere there is always a top. Don't think of the load, the whip, or the hill, but keep thinking, always, of what it's like on top. Many times they'll hurt you when you're doing your best, because they're cruel, or don't understand. But most of those who drive you – and someone or something must drive you as long as you live, – don't really mean to be hard. It's merely because they don't understand. Sometimes you'll be very tired, and out of breath, and the sweat of hard work will drip and trickle from your ears down over your eyes, and you'll think that another yard is beyond all you can do. But keep on! Stick it! You can always do a little more than you think you can if you've the courage to try. And there's always a top to every hill, lad! It's only up there that you can breathe, and that the load is light, and that there is rest!'"

A band that had been playing off up in the balcony at the far end stopped, as if waiting for the next event, and abruptly aware that he had said so much, and surprised by his own unmeasured loquacity, he, too, stopped, abashed, and for the first time in his speech looked at her and met her eyes. They were soft, filled with wonder, absorbed. He could not have defined why he was so swiftly ashamed of thus openly flouting that boyhood heart of his upon his sleeve. He could not have explained what strange lapse had overpowered him to thus unbosom long forgotten things. He looked away from her toward the entrance. Men were bringing tall hurdles outward to place them in the arena. The jumpers were coming for exhibit.

"But," she insisted breathlessly, leaning toward him, and her hushed voice sounding distinct from all the murmur surrounding them, "Tell me the rest of it!"

"Tell you the rest of it? There's nothing more to tell! Nothing except – except – " He hesitated, then laughed as if in self-derision. "My friend fell down one day, half way up a hill. The top was there, just above him. The top for which he had so valiantly tried. I, a boy, his only friend, got his tired old head up on my knees and cried. A policeman came and shook his head and went away and phoned. A vet came and said, 'The best thing to do is to shoot him,' and then the policeman pulled out a gun, and went toward Bo's head and bent over the brave and tired old eyes of my friend, and – I fought! Fought so hard that they had to give us a chance, Bo and me. They laughed, but the vet phoned my employers and what they said, I never knew; but I do know that they gave me my friend, and that about midnight I got him home, weak and tottering, and put him out in our back garden, and told Maw all about it. I thought she would understand and she did. She understands everything. Everything! No one else ever could. And so – um-m-mh! Bovolarapus was the first horse I ever owned and the last. We had to go without some few things, Maw and I, to pay pasturage for a year or two until he died, but it doesn't at all matter now. You see he was a sort of inspiration to me because he told me so many things, and – that somewhere, a long way I fear from where I've ever reached, there's a top to the hill. He taught me that be we driver or driven there's a heart of things that has to be learned. That the driver may learn from the driven and that there is always the promise that the driven may drive. And so may God pity the man who thinks that he can drive his world alone, because, as far as I can dope it out, everything in life is made up of give if you would take, and take only when you give. I may be wrong. One never knows. That's the pity of it all. But that's the way it looks to me, and – that's the way communing with a poor old horse taught me, the only game I try to play. It's only when we've lost the true sense of things that we say 'Life's nothing but a horse show – after all!'"

Staring at the arena, and bringing his thoughts back to their surroundings, he waited for her to speak; but for the moment they seemed fixed in a little oasis of silence, embodying but them alone. It was the girl who broke the peculiar stillness.

"I – I – never thought you were like that," she said, almost as if soliloquizing. "I thought you were out for yourself and nothing else! I didn't in the least think you could ever feel anything beyond yourself. You humiliate me – in a way – my stupidity! And I feel like apologizing for my past unkindness, because I didn't; as you say – because I didn't at all understand!"

He couldn't quite grasp it all, although her every word had been audible and distinct. To what did she refer? "Past unkindness?" He strove to think when she had been unkind to him and where. The baffling sense of having forgotten something he should have remembered, again disturbed him and drove him to jest.

"Don't say that!" he cried in pretended alarm. "You make me feel like the coon who was sentenced for stealing chickens when the judge said, 'You are incorrigible. This is the twenty-seventh time we've had you up for this heinous, fearsome crime. But now you have gone the limit! You stole two black hens on the night of April seventh.' Then he stopped and glared at the nigger who leaned over the dock rail, hopefully, yet frightened, and said, 'I think you should be sentenced to ninety-nine years in the penitentiary!' And the nigger thought it over and looked at the judge, then around the court and gasped, and said, 'Jedge, sah! I thank my Gawd them chickens was black. It must have been the color, sah, that made you so kind, because I reckon if they'd been white you'd have sure had me hanged!'"

But she did not seem to accept it as a joke.

"I have been unkind," she said, with a shake of her head. "I had no idea you could be like – well – like you are. So there! And besides, I don't like to be made fun of."

"I'm not making fun of you," he declared. "I'm making fun of myself. I can't help it. I've a sense of proportion. I know what a mut I am better than anyone else does. It does me good to admit it whenever I get a proper chance."

For another interval she studied him, curiously, looked away, and again turned toward him as if still unconvinced of something, and then said, "Well, if you were wise, you would keep on being just yourself. You've something to learn from horses yet. I believe they are always natural, and unassuming, and sincere. That's a beautiful animal there now, isn't it? Well done! What a jump! Seven bars! That's pretty good for a practice take-off, I should say. What do you think?"

"I'd jump higher than that to remember something I've forgotten," Jim murmured; but his remark went unchallenged, due to a second splendid leap in the arena that was so swift and graceful that it resembled nothing so much as a glistening bay flash, a compound of splendidly correlated muscle, nerve and sinew, and the spectators burst into a storm of applause as the horse, proudly and daintily stepping on springing hocks, lifted a beautiful head, pricked sensitive ears, and stared through big, intelligent eyes at the boxes.

Even the perplexed and infatuated Jimmy forgot his secret questionings and gave himself up to the joys of the display. Event followed event in such rapid succession that he was astonished when the military band struck up its dispersing air, and he and his companion "The Candy Girl" as he had come to think of her, were caught into the leisurely maelstrom that surged slowly toward the exits. He had even forgotten the fact that he had as yet failed to learn his companion's name; but at the hotel entrance maneuvered for another chance.

"Isn't it possible to induce you and your mother to see a show, or hear a concert, or something of that sort to-night?" he asked wistfully.

"I wish we could," she said; "but I'm afraid it's quite impossible. We are dining with some friends."

"What about to-morrow, then?" he insisted, somewhat crestfallen.

"To-morrow we are going to visit some relatives in Connecticut where we shall spend the week-end."

His face, usually so cheerful and optimistic, might have competently served for an artist's study of "Gloom." He felt as if the props had been kicked from beneath a line on which swung all his best linen.

"I've got to get back to my work not later than day after to-morrow," he lamented. "In fact I ought to take the five o'clock flyer west to-morrow afternoon to keep up with my dates. I've sent out my cards that I am coming."

"Then for goodness sake, go!" she insisted. "I'll see you at home – no – I forgot I shall not be there for weeks, or perhaps months. I mustn't let this Jorgensen opportunity go to waste. I'm very keen on it. But you will be in town again and must come and call for me at the Martha Putnam. I shall – I shall look forward to it!"