The Man Next Door Part 5

"That's about the beginning," says Bonnie Bell. "You have to have a cook and a kitchen girl and two first-floor maids and two upper-floor maids and a footman."

"Well, that will help some," says her pa. "I've been bored a good deal and lonesome, but maybe, living with all them folks, somebody will start something sometime. When did you say we could get in?"

"They tell me we'll be lucky if we have everything ready by Christmas,"

says Bonnie Bell.

"It looks like a merry summer, don't it?" says he sighing.

"And like a h.e.l.l of a Merry Christmas!" says I.

IV

US AND CHRISTMAS EVE

How we spent all that spring and summer I don't hardly see now. We was the lonesomest people you ever seen. Old Man Wright he'd go over to his new club once in a while and sometimes out to the stockyards, and sometimes he'd fuss round at this or that. Bonnie Bell and me we'd go riding once in a while when she wasn't busy, which was most of the time now. She had a lot of talking to do with the folks that was building her house and furnishing it--she never would tell me where it was.

Well, it got cold right early in the winter. It was awful cold, colder than it gets in Wyoming. When it gets cold in Chicago the folks say: "This certainly is most unusual weather!"--just like we do when there is a blizzard out in Wyoming. Old Man Wright and me we thought we'd freeze, because, you see, we had to wear overcoats like they had in the city, and couldn't wear no sheep-lined coats like we would have wore on the range.

"Well, you see," said Bonnie Bell when we complained to her, "when we get our motor car running we won't have to walk. n.o.body that amounts to anything walks in the city. Our best people all have cars; so they don't need sheepskin coats. Our car will be here any time now; so we can see more of the city and be more comfortable than you can on horseback.

n.o.body rides horseback except a few young people in the parks in the summertime--I found that out."

"Don't our best people do that now?" ast her pa.

"Some, but not many," says she. "There's a good many people that wants you to think they're the best people; but they ain't. You can always tell them by the way they play their hands. Most of the people I've seen riding in the parks is that sort--they want you to look at them when they ride because they're perfectly sure they're doing what our best people are doing. You can tell 'em by their clothes, whether they are riding or walking. It's easy to spot them out."

"I wonder," says I, "if they can spot out your pa and me?"

She comes over and rumples up my hair like she sometimes did.

"You're a dear, Curly!" says she.

"I know that," says I; "but don't muss up my new necktie, for I worked about a hour on that this morning, and at that it's a little on one side and some low. But I'm coming on," says I.

Now, Old Man Wright, when he wore his spiketail coat, he had the same trouble with his tie that I had with mine. He told his tailor about that one time, but his tailor told him that the best people wore them that way--mussed up and careless. Natural like it was a hard game to play, because how could you tell when to be careless and when not to be? But, as I said, we was coming on.

Mr. Henderson--he was the hotel manager and a pretty good sport too--he sort of struck up a friendship with Old Man Wright, and you couldn't hardly say we didn't have no visitors, for he come in every once in a while and was right nice to us. You see, what with Old Man Wright wearing his necktie careless and Bonnie Bell dressing exactly like she come out of a fashion paper, if it hadn't been for me our outfit might of got by for being best people, all right. Like enough I queered the game some; but Henderson he didn't seem to mind even me.

The day before Christmas Bonnie Bell said her new house was all done and all furnished, everything in, servants and all, ready for us to move in that very night and spend Christmas Eve there. But she says Mr.

Henderson, the manager of the hotel, wanted us to eat our last dinner that night in the hotel before we went home. To oblige him we done so.

He taken us in hisself that night. The man at the door s.n.a.t.c.hed our hats away, but he taken Bonnie Bell's coat--fur-lined it was and cost a couple of thousand dollars--over his arm, and he held back the chair for her. There was flowers on the table a plenty. I reckon he fixed it up.

There wasn't no ham shank and greens, but there was everything else.

I shouldn't wonder if some of the best people was there. Everybody had on the kind of clothes they wear in the evening in a town like this--spiketails for the men, and silk things, low, for the womenfolks.

Old Man Wright, with his red moustache, a little gray, him tall, but not fat, and his necktie a little mussed up, was just as good-looking a man as was in the place.

As for Bonnie Bell--well, I looked at our girl as I set there in my own best clothes and my necktie tied the best I knew how, and, honest, she was so pretty I was scared. The fact is, pretty ain't just the word. She was more than that--she was beautiful.

Her dress was some sort of soft green silk, I reckon, cut low, and her neck was high and white, and her hair was done up high behind and tied up somehow, and her chin was held up high. She had some color in her face--honest color--and her eyes was big and bright. Her arms was bare up above where her gloves come to. She didn't have on very many rings--though, Lord! if she wanted them she could of had a bushel. She didn't have on much jewelry nowhere; but I want to tell you everybody in that room looked at her all they dared.

I looked at her and so did her pa. I don't know as you could say we both was proud--that ain't the right word for it. We was both scared. It didn't seem possible she could be ours. It didn't seem possible that us two old cowmen had raised her that way out on the range and that she had changed so soon. She must of had it in her--her ma, I reckon.

There was a table not very far from ours, just across the first window, where there was a old man and a old woman and a young man. They seen us all right. I seen the young man looking at Bonnie Bell two or three times, always looking down when he seen I noticed. He was a good-looking young man and dressed well, I suppose, for all the men was dressed alike. His necktie was tied kind of mussy and careless, like Old Man Wright's, and he didn't have to keep pushing at his shirt. Did Bonnie Bell notice him? Maybe she did--you can't tell about womenfolks; their eyes is set on like a antelope's and they can see behind theirself.

"That's Old Man Wisner," says Henderson, the hotel manager, quiet, to us, leaning over and pretending like he was fixing our flowers some more. "Mrs. Wisner and young Mr. James Wisner are with him. You know, he is one of the richest men here in Chicago--packing and banking, and all that sort of thing. They are among our best people. They live up in Millionaire Row."

"Yes, I know," says Bonnie Bell.

From where I set I could see them Wisners over at the other table. The old man was big, with gray whiskers and gray hair, rather coa.r.s.e. He had big eyebrows and his eyes was kind of cross-looking, like his stomach wasn't right. He was a portly sort of man--you've seen that kind. Some is bankers and some packers and some brewers; they all look alike, no matter what they are. They can't ride or walk.

This old party he didn't seem to be paying much attention to his wife, and I don't know as I blame him. She may have had some looks once, but not recent. They wasn't happy.

After a while the folks at that table got up and went on out before we was done with our dinner, which was going strong at the end of a couple of hours--there wasn't anything in the whole wide world we didn't have to eat except ham shank and greens. At that, we had a right good time.

By and by it got to be maybe eleven o'clock, and Bonnie Bell turns down her long white gloves, which she had tucked the hands of them back into the wrists.

"Shall I call your car, Mr. Wright?" ast the manager, Mr. Henderson.

"I don't know," says Old Man Wright. "Have we got a car, sis?"

"Yes, papa," says she--she mostly said "papa" when folks was round; don't overlook it that Old Man Smith turned out girls with real cla.s.s.

She didn't talk like her pa and me neither.

"Yes, papa," says she now. "I was going to surprise you about our car; it's been on hand for a week. I employed a driver and told him to be ready for us about now." You see all our things had gone out to the new house.

We all three of us helped Bonnie Bell on with her coat. She picked up her m.u.f.f and we all went out. I don't think any man in the place that had bra.s.s b.u.t.tons forgot that Christmas Eve.

The tall man in front at the door, like a drum major in a band, he knew us well enough by now; he opens the door for us and we stand there, looking out.

I said it was cold in Chicago and it was sh.o.r.e cold that night. It was snowing--snow coming in off the lake slantwise, like a blizzard on the plains. You couldn't hardly see across the walk. Out beyond the awning, which covered the sidewalk, we could see our new car--a long, shiny one with lights inside and lamps all over it, red, white and blue, or maybe green. There was a couple of men on the front seat outside--I don't know when the kid had hired them. They was both wrapped up in big fur overcoats, which they certainly did need that night, since they couldn't ride in the e-limousine, like us.

Bonnie Bell walks across the sidewalk now, under the awning, with her m.u.f.f up against her face, bending over against the storm. She looks up, after she has said good-by to Mr. Henderson, who run out with us, laughing and saying "Merry Christmas!"--she just looks up at the man on the seat, and says she: "Home, James!"

I reckon the man must of been new that she had hired. He looks round at first, as if he was trying to read our brand. Then all at once, sudden, he jumps down offen the seat, touches his cap and opens the door.

We all got in and said good-by to the hotel where we'd been living so long. The chauffore touches his hat again, shuts the door and climbs back in his seat. He turned that long car round in one motion in the street. The next minute we was out on the avenue, away from the hotel, and right in the middle of that row of lights several miles long, where the bullyvard is at, along the lake there. He turns her north on the bullyvard, without a skip or a bobble, and she runs smooth as grease. I seen Bonnie Bell was certainly a good judge of a car, like she was of a horse or anything else.

"Daughter," says Old Man Wright to her after a time--and he didn't usual call her that--"you're a wonder to your dad tonight! Where did you get it? Where did you learn it?"

She looks up at him quick from her m.u.f.f, plumb serious, and just put out her hand on his, in its white glove.

We moved right along up the avenue, along a little crooked street or so, round a corner and over the bridge; and then we come out where the lights was in a long row again, and we could hear the roar of the lake right close to the road.

"Where are you taking us, kid?" says I after a while, seeing that her pa wasn't going to say nothing, nohow.