We Can't Have Everything Part 95

"We 'ain't a room left," said Skip.

"You've got to have," said Jim.

"Have to speak to the arts.h.i.teck," said Skip. Then he rubbed his head, trying to get out an idea by ma.s.sage. "There's the poller. Big lounge there, but not made up. Would you and your wife wish the poller?"

He dragged the "wife" with a tone that nearly got him throttled. But Jim paused. A complicated thought held him. To protest that Charity was not his wife seemed hardly the most rea.s.suring thing to do. He let the word go and ignored Skip's cynical intonation. Jim's knuckles ached to rebuke him, but he had not fought a waiter since his wild young days. And Skip was protected by his infirmity.

Charity was frightened and revolted, abject with remorse for such a disgusting consequence of such a sweet, harmless impulse. She was afraid of Jim's temper. She said:

"Take the parlor by all means."

"All right," said Jim.

Skip fumbled about the desk for a big book, and, finding it, opened it and handed Jim a pen.

"Register, please," said Skip.

"I will not."

"Rules of the house."

"What do I care about your rules!"

"Have to wake the boss, then."

"Give me the pen."

He started to write his own name; that left Charity's designation in doubt. He glanced at the other names. "Mr. and Mrs. George Washington"

were there, "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith" twice, as well as "William Jones and wife."

Jim wondered if the waiter knew him. So many waiters did. At length, with a flash of angry impulse, he wrote: "James D--," paused, finished "Dysart," hesitated again, then put "Mr. and Mrs." before it. Skip read, and grinned. He did not know who Jim was, but he knew he was no Dysart.

Skip led the way to the parlor up-stairs, lighted the lights, and hastily disappeared, fearing that he might be asked to fetch something to eat or drink. He was so tired and sleepy that even the prospect of a tip did not interest him so much as the prospect of his cot in the attic, where he could dream that he was in New York again.

Jim and Charity looked at each other. Jim munched his own curses, and Charity laughed and cried together. Jim's arms had an instinct for taking her to his heart, but he felt that he must be more respectful than ever since they were in so respectless a plight. She never seemed purer and sadder to him than then.

She noted how haggard and dismal he looked, and said, "Aren't you going to sit down?"

"No--not here," he said. "You curl up on that plush horror and get some rest."

"I will not!" said Charity.

"You will, too," said Jim. "You're a wreck, and I ought to be shot. Get some sleep, for G.o.d's sake!"

"What becomes of you?"

"I'll scout round and find a place in the office. I think there is a billiard-room. If worst comes to worst, I'll do what Mrs. Leslie Carter did in a play I saw--sleep on the dining-room table."

"Not less than a table d'hote will hold you," Charity smiled, wanly.

"Don't worry about me. You go by-by and pray the Lord to forgive me and help us both."

He waved his hand to her in a heartbreak of bemocked and benighted tenderness and closed the door. He prowled softly about the office and the adjacent rooms, but found no place to sleep. He was in such a fever of wrath at himself that he walked out in the rain to cool his head.

Then he sank into a chair, read an old Boston paper twice, and fell asleep among the advertis.e.m.e.nts.

He woke at daybreak. The rain had ended and he wandered out in the chill, wet grounds of the shabby inn. The morning light was merciless on the buildings, the leafless trees, and on his own costume. The promised view from the crest was swathed in haze--so was his outlook on the future.

His fury at the situation grew as he pondered it. He was like a tiger in a pit. He raged as much at himself as at the people who would take advantage of him. The ludicrousness of the situation added the ultimate torment. He could not save Charity except by ingenious deceptions which would be a proof of guilt if they did not succeed miraculously.

The dress he was in and the dress she was in were the very habiliments of guilt. Getting back to Newport in evening clothes would be the advertis.e.m.e.nt of their escapade. His expansive shirt-bosom might as well have been a sandwich-board. His broadcloth trousers and his patent-leather pumps would be worse than rags.

And Charity had no hat. There was an unmistakable dressed-up eveningness about them both.

This struck him as the first evil to remedy. As with an escaped convict, his prime necessity was a change of clothes. There was only one way to manage that. He went back to the hotel and found a startled early-morning waiter sweeping out the office. Jim asked where the nearest telephone was, and learned that it was half a mile away at a farm-house.

Jim turned up his collar, pulled down his motor-cap, and struck out along the muddy road. He startled the farmer's family and their large hands were not wide enough to hide their wider smiles.

On the long hike thither Jim had worked out his stratagem. He called up his house, or, rather, Kedzie's house, in Newport, and after much delay got his yawning valet to the telephone. He never had liked that valet less than now.

"That you, Dallam? My car broke down out in the country," he explained, every syllable a sugarless quinine pill in his throat. "That is to say, the gasolene gave out. I am in my evening clothes, so is--er--Mrs.--er--the lady I was with. I want you to bring me at once an outfit of day clothes, and a--one of my wife's long motor-coats--a very long one--and one of her small hats. Then get out my wife's limousine and send the suit-case and the coat and hat to me here at the Viewcrest Inn, and tell the chauffeur to bring an extra can of gasolene."

A voice with an intolerable smile in it came back: "Very good, sir. I presume I'd better not waken Mrs. Dyckman?"

"Naturally not. I don't want to--er--alarm her."

"She was quite alarmed when you didn't come home, sir, last night."

"Well, I'll explain when I see her. Do you understand the situation?"

"Perfectly, sir."

Jim writhed at that. But he had done his best and he would take the worst.

The farmer gave him a ride to the hotel in his milk-wagon. When Jim rode up in a parody of state he saw Charity peeping from the parlor window.

The morning light had made the situation plain to her. It did not improve on inspection. It took very little imagination to predict a disastrous event, though Jim explained the felicity of his scheme. He had planned to have Charity ride in in the limousine alone, while he took his own car back with the gasolene that was on the way.

The twain were compelled by their costume to stay in the parlor together. They were ferociously hungry and ordered breakfast at last.

It took forever to get it, for guests of that hotel were not ordinarily early risers.

Skip Magruder, dragged from his slumbers to serve the meal, found Charity and Jim in the room where he had left them. He made such vigorous efforts to overlook their appearance in bedraggled dinner clothes at a country breakfast that Jim threatened to break his head.

Skip grew surly and was ordered out.

After breakfast Jim and Charity waited and waited, keeping to the parlor lest the other guests see them.

At last the limousine arrived. As soon as he heard it coming Jim hurried to the window to make sure that it was his--or, rather, his wife's.

It was--so much his wife's that she stepped out of it. Also her mother.

Also her father. They advanced on the hotel.