CHAPTER V
THE MAYOR CASTS A SHADOW BEFORE
"From tears to smiles," said Mr. Magee, taking the girl's hand. "Whatworked the transformation? Not the Commercial House, I know, for Ipassed it last evening."
"No, hardly the Commercial House," laughed the girl. "Rather thesunshine of a winter morning, the brisk walk up the mountain, and thesight of the Hermit of Baldpate with eyes like saucers staring at alittle girl who once bought his postal cards."
"Then you know Mr. Peters?" inquired Magee.
"Is that his name? You see, I never met him in private life--he was justthe hermit when I knew him. I used to come to Baldpate in the summers,and send his cards back to the folks at home, and dream dreams of hislove-story when from my window I saw the light of his shack at night.I'm so glad to meet Mr. Peters informally."
She held out her hand, but Peters, by long practise wary of women, hadburdened himself with breakfast plates which prevented his clasping it.He muttered "How d'ye do?" and fled toward the door, narrowly avertingwhat would have proved a serious collision with the large woman on theway.
"Mr. Peters meets so few of your sex in winter," Magee apologized, "youmust pardon his clumsiness. This gentleman"--he indicated the professor,who arose--"is Thaddeus Bolton, a distinguished member of a certainuniversity faculty, who has fled to Baldpate to escape the press ofAmerica. And this is Mr. Bland, who hides here from the world the scarsof a broken heart. But let us not go into details."
The girl smiled brightly. "And you--" she asked.
"William Hallowell Magee," he returned, bowing low. "I have a neatlittle collection of stories accounting for my presence here, from whichI shall allow you to choose later. Not to mention the real one, which issimple almost to a fault."
"I am so happy to meet you all," said the girl. "We shall no doubtbecome very good friends. For mamma and I have also come to BaldpateInn--to stay."
Mr. Bland opened wide his usually narrow eyes, and ran his handthoughtfully over his one day's beard. Professor Bolton blinked hisastonishment. Mr. Magee smiled.
"I, for one, am delighted to hear it," he said.
"My name," went on the girl, "is Mary Norton. May I present my mother,Mrs. Norton?"
The older woman adopted what was obviously her society manner. Onceagain Mr. Magee felt a pang of regret that this should be the parent ofa girl so charming.
"I certainly am pleased to meet you all," she said in her heavy voice."Ain't it a lovely morning after the storm? The sun's almost blinding."
"Some explanation," put in Miss Norton quickly, "is due you if I am tothrust myself thus upon you. I am perfectly willing to tell why I amhere--but the matter mustn't leak out. I can trust you, I'm sure."
Mr. Magee drew up chairs, and the two women were seated before the fire.
"The bandits of Baldpate," he remarked flippantly, glancing at the twomen, "have their own code of honor, and the first rule is never tobetray a pal."
"Splendid!" laughed the girl. "You said, I believe, that ProfessorBolton was fleeing from the newspapers. I am fleeing for thenewspapers--to attract their attention--to lure them into giving me thatthing so necessary to a woman in my profession, publicity. You see, I aman actress. The name I gave you is not my stage name. That, perhaps, youwould know. I employ a gentleman to keep me before the public as much aspossible. It's horrid, I know, but it means bread and butter to me. Thatgentleman, my press-agent, evolved the present scheme--a mysteriousdisappearance."
She paused and looked at the others. Mr. Magee surveyed her narrowly.The youthful bloom of her cheek carried to him no story of grease paint;her unaffected manner was far from suggesting anything remotelyconnected with the stage. He wondered.
"I am to disappear completely for a time," she went on. "'As though theearth had swallowed me' will be the good old phrase of the reporters. Iam to linger here at Baldpate Inn, a key to which my press-agent hassecured for me. Meanwhile, the papers will speak tearfully of me intheir head-lines--at least, I hope they will. Can't you just seethem--those head-lines? 'Beautiful Actress Drops from Sight'." Shestopped, blushing. "Every woman who gets into print, you know, isbeautiful."
"But it'd be no lie in your case, dearie," put in Mrs. Norton, feelingcarefully of her atrociously blond store hair.
"Your mother takes the words from my mouth," smiled Mr. Magee. "Guard asthey will against it, the newspapers let the truth crop outoccasionally. And this will be such an occasion."
"From what part of Ireland do you come?" laughed the girl. She seemedsomewhat embarrassed by her mother's open admiration. "Well, setting allblarney aside, such will be the head-lines. And when the last clue isexhausted, and my press-agent is the same, I come back to appear in anew play, a well-known actress. Of such flippant things is a Broadwayreputation built."
"We all wish you success, I'm sure." Mr. Magee searched his memory invain for this "actress's" name and fame. Could it be possible, hewondered, at this late day, that any one would try for publicity by suchan obvious worn-out road? Hardly. The answer was simple. Another fablewas being spun from whole cloth beneath the roof of Baldpate Inn. "Wehave a New York paper here," he went on, "but as yet there seems to beno news of your sad disappearance."
"Wouldn't it be the limit if they didn't fall for it?" queried the olderwoman.
"Fall for it," repeated Professor Bolton, not questioningly, but withthe air of a scientist about to add a new and rare specimen to hisalcohol jar.
"She means, if they didn't accept my disappearance as legitimate news,"explained the girl "That would be very disappointing. But surely therewas no harm in making the experiment."
"They're a clever lot, those newspaper guys," sneered Mr. Bland, "intheir own opinion. But when you come right down to it, every one of 'emhas a nice little collection of gold bricks in his closet. I guessyou've got them going. I hope so."
"Thank you," smiled the girl. "You are very kind. You are here, Iunderstand, because of an unfortunate--er--affair of the heart?"
Mr. Bland smoothed back his black oily hair from his forehead, andsmirked. "Oh, now--" he protested.
"Arabella," put in Mr. Magee, "was her name. The beauties of history andmythology hobbled into oblivion at sight of her."
"I'm quick to forget," insisted Mr. Bland.
"That does you no credit, I'm sure," replied the girl severely. "Andnow, mamma, I think we had better select our rooms--"
She paused. For Elijah Quimby had come in through the dining-room door,and stood gazing at the group before the fire, his face reflecting whatMr. Magee, the novelist, would not have hesitated a moment in terming"mingled emotions".
"Well," drawled Mr. Quimby. He strode into the room. "Mr. Magee," hesaid, "that letter from Mr. Bentley asked me to let you stay at BaldpateInn. There wasn't anything in it about your bringing parties of friendsalong."
"These are not friends I've brought along," explained Magee. "They'resimply some more amateur hermits who have strolled in from time to time.All have their individual latch-keys to the hermitage. And all, Ibelieve, have credentials for you to examine."
Mr. Quimby stared in angry wonder.
"Is the world crazy?" he demanded. "Any one 'd think it was July, theway people act. The inn's closed, I tell you. It ain't running."
Professor Bolton rose from his chair.
"So you are Quimby," he said in a soothing tone. "I'm glad to meet youat last. My old friend John Bentley has spoken of you so often. I have aletter from him." He drew the caretaker to one side, and took anenvelope from his pocket. The two conversed in low tones.
Quickly the girl in the corduroy suit leaned toward Mr. Magee. Shewhispered, and her tone was troubled:
"Stand by me. I'm afraid I'll need your help."
"What's the matter?" inquired Magee.
"I haven't much of any right here, I guess. But I had to come."
"But your key?"
"I fear my--my press-agent--stole it."
A scornful remark as to the antiquated methods of
that mythicalpublicity promoter rose to Mr. Magee's lips, but before he spoke helooked into her eyes. And the remark was never made. For in theirwonderful depths he saw worry and fear and unhappiness, as he had seenthem there amid tears in the station.
"Never mind," he said very gently, "I'll see you through."
Quimby was standing over Mr. Bland. "How about you?" he asked.
"Call up Andy Rutter and ask about me," replied Bland, in the tone ofone who prefers war to peace.
"I work for Mr. Bentley," said Quimby. "Rutter hasn't any authorityhere. He isn't to be manager next season, I understand. However theprofessor wants me to let you stay. He says he'll be responsible." Mr.Bland looked in open-mouthed astonishment at the unexpected sponsor hehad found. "And you?" went on Quimby to the women.
"Why--" began Miss Norton.
"Absolutely all right," said Mr. Magee. "They come from Hal Bentley,like myself. He's put them in my care. I'll answer for them." He saw thegirl's eyes; they spoke her thanks.
Mr. Quimby shook his head as one in a dream.
"All this is beyond me--way beyond," he ruminated. "Nothing like it everhappened before that I've heard of. I'm going to write all about it toMr. Bentley, and I suppose I got to let you stay till I hear from him. Ithink he ought to come up here, if he can."
"The more the merrier," said Mr. Magee, reflecting cheerfully that theBentleys were in Florida at last accounts.
"Come, mamma," said Miss Norton, rising, "let's go up and pick out asuite. There's one I used to have a few years ago--you can see thehermit's shack from the windows. By the way, Mr. Magee, will you sendMr. Peters up to us? He may be able to help us get settled."
"Ahem," muttered Mr. Magee, "I--I'll have a talk with Peters. To bequite frank, I anticipate trouble. You see, the Hermit of Baldpatedoesn't approve of women--"
"Don't approve of women," cried Mrs. Norton, her green eyes flashing."Why not, I'd like to know?"
"My dear madam," responded Mr. Magee, "only echo answers, and it butvacuously repeats, 'Why not?'. That, however, is the situation. Mr.Peters loathes the sex. I imagine that, until to-day, he was notparticularly happy in the examples of it he encountered. Why, he haseven gone so far as to undertake a book attributing all the trouble ofthe world to woman."
"The idiot!" cried Mrs. Norton.
"Delicious!" laughed the girl.
"I shall ask Peters to serve you," said Magee. "I shall appeal to hisgallant side. But I must proceed gently. This is his first day as ourcook, and you know how necessary a good first impression is with a newcook. I'll appeal to his better nature."
"Don't do it," cried the girl. "Don't emphasize us to him in any way, orhe may exercise his right as cook and leave. Just ignore us. We'll playat being our own bell-boys."
"Ignore you," cried Mr. Magee. "What Herculean tasks you set. I'm notequal to that one." He picked up their traveling-bags and led the wayup-stairs. "I'm something of a bell-boy myself, when roused," he said.
The girl selected suite seventeen, at the farther end of the corridorfrom Magee's apartments. "It's the very one I used to have, years andyears ago--at least two or three years ago," she said. "Isn't it stupid?All the furniture in a heap."
"And cold," said Mrs. Norton. "My land, I wish I was back by my ownfire."
"I'll make you regret your words, Mrs. Norton," cried Magee. He threw upthe windows, pulled off his coat, and set to work on the furniture. Thegirl bustled about, lightening his work by her smile. Mrs. Nortonmanaged to get consistently in the way. When he had the furnituredistributed, he procured logs and tried his hand at a fire. Then hestood, his black hair disheveled, his hands soiled, but his heart verygay, before the girl of the station.
"I hope you don't expect a tip," she said, laughing.
"I do," he said, coming closer, and speaking in a voice that was not forthe ear of the chaperon. "I want a tip on this--do you really act?"
She looked at him steadily.
"Once," she said, "when I was sixteen, I appeared in an amateur play atschool. It was my first and last appearance on the stage."
"Thanks, lady," remarked Mr. Magee in imitation of the bell-boy he wassupposed to be. He sought number seven. There he made himself againpresentable, after which he descended to the office.
Mr. Bland sat reading the New York paper before the fire. From thelittle card-room and the parlor, the two rooms to the right and left ofthe hotel's front door, Quimby had brought forth extra chairs. He stoodnow by the large chair that held Professor Bolton, engaged inconversation with that gentleman.
"Yes," he was saying, "I lived three years in Reuton and five years inNew York. It took me eight years--eight years to realize the truth."
"I heard about it from John Bentley," the professor said gently.
"He's been pretty kind to me, Mr. Bentley has," replied Quimby. "Whenthe money was all gone, he offered me this job. Once the Quimbys ownedmost of the land around Baldpate Mountain. It all went in those eightyears. To think that it took all those years for me to find it out."
"If I'm not impertinent, Quimby," put in Magee, "to find what out?"
"That what I wanted, the railroad men didn't want," replied Quimbybitterly, "and that was--the safety of the public. You see, I invented anew rail joint, one that was a great improvement on the old kind. I hadsort of an idea, when I was doing it--an idea of service to theworld--you know. God, what a joke! I sold all the Quimby lands, and wentto Reuton, and then to New York, to place it. Not one of the railroadmen but admitted that it was an improvement, and a big one--and not onebut fought like mad to keep me from getting it down where the publicwould see it. They didn't want the expense of a change."
Mr. Quimby looked out at the sunlit stretch of snow.
"Eight years," he repeated, "I fought and pleaded. No, I begged--thatwas the word--I begged. You'd be surprised to know the names of some ofthe men who kept me waiting in their private offices, and sneered at meover their polished desks. They turned me down--every one. Some of themplayed me--as though I'd been a fish. They referred me to other ends ofthe same big game, laughing in their sleeves, I guess, at the knowledgeof how hopeless it was. Oh, they made a fine fool of me."
"You might have put down some of your joints at your own expense,"suggested the professor.
"Didn't I try?" cried Quimby. "Do you think they'd let me? No, thepublic might see them and demand them everywhere. Once, I thought I hadconvinced somebody. It was down in Reuton--the Suburban Railway." Therewas a rustle as Mr. Bland let his paper fall to the floor. "Old HenryThornhill was president of the road--he is yet, I guess--but youngHayden and a fellow named David Kendrick were running it. Kendrick wason my side--he almost had Hayden. They were going to let me lay astretch of track with my joints. Then--something happened. Maybe youremember. Kendrick disappeared in the night--he's never been seensince."
"I do remember," said the professor softly.
"Hayden turned me down," went on Quimby. "The money was all gone. So Icame back to Upper Asquewan--caretaker of an inn that overlooks theproperty my father owned--the property I squandered for a chance to savehuman lives. It's all like a dream now--those eight years. And it nearlydrives me mad, sometimes, to think that it took me eight years--eightyears to find it out. I'll just straighten things around a bit."
He moved away, and the men sat in silence for a time. Then the professorspoke very gently:
"Poor devil--to have had his dream of service--and then grow old onBaldpate."
The two joined Mr. Bland by the fire. Mr. Magee had put from his mindall intention of work. The maze of events through which he wandered heldhim bewildered and enthralled. He looked at the haberdasher and theuniversity scholar and asked himself if they were real, or if he wasstill asleep in a room on a side street in New York, waiting for thecheery coming of Geoffrey. He asked himself still more perplexedly ifthe creature that came toward him now through the dining-room door wasreal--the hairy Hermit of Baldpate, like a figure out of some old print,his market basket on his arm again, h
is coat buttoned to the chin.
"Well, everything's shipshape in the kitchen," announced the hermitcheerfully. "I couldn't go without seeing to that. I wish you the bestof luck, gentlemen--and good-by."
"Good-by?" cried the professor.
"By the gods, he's leaving us," almost wept Mr. Bland.
"It can't be," said Mr. Magee.
"It has to be," said the Hermit of Baldpate, solemnly shaking his head."I'd like to stay with you, and I would of, if they hadn't come. Buthere they are--and when women come in the door, I fly out of the window,as the saying is."
"But, Peters," pleaded Magee, "you're not going to leave us in the holelike this?"
"Sorry," replied Peters, "I can please men, but I can't please women. Itried to please one once--but let the dead past bury its dead. I live onBaldpate in a shack to escape the sex, and it wouldn't be consistent forme to stay here now. I got to go. I hate to, like a dog, but I got to."
"Peters," said Mr. Magee, "I'm surprised. After giving your word tostay! And who knows--you may be able to gather valuable data for yourbook. Stick around. These women won't bother you. I'll make them promisenever to ask about the love-affair you didn't have--never even to comenear you. And we'll pay you beyond the dreams of avarice of a Broadwaychef. Won't we, gentlemen?"
The others nodded. Mr. Peters visibly weakened.
"Well--" he began. "I--" His eyes were on the stair. Mr. Magee alsolooked in that direction and saw the girl of the station smiling down.She no longer wore coat and hat, and the absence of the latter revealeda glory of golden hair that became instantly a rival to the sunshine inthat drear bare room.
"No, Peters," she said, "you mustn't go. We couldn't permit it. Mammaand I will go."
She continued to smile at the obviously dazzled Peters. Suddenly hespoke in a determined tone:
"No--don't do that. I'll stay." Then he turned to Magee, and continuedfor that gentleman's ear alone: "Dog-gone it, we're all alike. Weresolve and resolve, and then one of them looks at us, and it's allforgot. I had a friend who advertised for a wife, leastways, he was afriend until he advertised. He got ninety-two replies, seventy of 'emfrom married men advising against the step. 'I'm cured,' he says to me.'Not for me.' Did he keep his word? No. A week after he married a widowjust to see if what the seventy said was true. I'm mortal. I hang aroundthe buzz-saw. If you give me a little money, I'll go down to the villageand buy the provisions for lunch."
Gleefully Mr. Magee started the hermit on his way, and then went over towhere the girl stood at the foot of the stairs.
"I promised him," he told her, "you'd ask no questions regarding hisbroken heart. It seems he hasn't any."
"That's horrid of him, isn't it?" she smiled. "Every good hermit isequipped with a broken heart. I certainly shan't bother him. I came downto get some water."
They went together to the kitchen, found a pail, and filled it with icywater from the pump at the rear of the inn. Inside once more, Mr. Mageeremarked thoughtfully:
"Who would have guessed a week ago that to-day I would be climbing thebroad staircase of a summer hotel carrying a pail of water for a ladyfair?"
They paused on the landing.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio," smiled the girl,"than are dreamed of, even by novelists." Mr. Magee started. Had sherecognized him as the Magee of light fiction? It seemed hardly likely;they read his books, but they rarely remembered his name. Her face wentsuddenly grave. She came closer. "I can't help wondering," she said,"which side you are on?"
"Which side of what?" asked Magee.
"Why, of this," she answered, waving her hand toward the office below.
"I don't understand," objected Mr. Magee.
"Let's not be silly," she replied. "You know what brought me here. Iknow what brought you. There are three sides, and only one is honest. Ihope, so very much, that you are on that side."
"Upon my word--" began Magee.
"Will it interest you to know," she continued, "I saw the big mayor ofReuton in the village this morning? With him was his shadow, Lou Max.Let's see--you had the first key, Mr. Bland the second, the professorthe third, and I had the fourth. The mayor has the fifth key, of course.He'll be here soon."
"The mayor," gasped Mr. Magee. "Really, I haven't the slightest ideawhat you mean. I'm here to work--"
"Very well," said the girl coldly, "if you wish it that way." They cameto the door of seventeen, and she took the pail from Mr. Magee's hand."Thanks."
"'Where are you going, my pretty maid?'" asked Magee, indicating thepail.
"'"I'll see you at luncheon, sir," she said,'" responded Miss Norton,and the door of seventeen slammed shut.
Mr. Magee returned to number seven, and thoughtfully stirred the fire.The tangle of events bade fair to swamp him.
"The mayor of Reuton," he mused, "has the fifth key. What in the name ofcommon sense is going on? It's too much even for melodramatic me." Heleaned back in his chair. "Anyhow, I like her eyes," he said. "And Ishouldn't want to be quoted as disapproving of her hair, either. I'm onher side, whichever it may be."