I Walked in Arden Part 4

"Gee, did you want the orange first?" Her surprise sounded quite genuine. "I thought you ordered it last."

"Never mind the orange now"--after all, I did know when I was thoroughly beaten--"but I want black coffee, and I did say 'bacon,' not 'ham.' Also some toast. You may leave the ham, now it's here."

"Gee, you're an awfully fussy eater," was her comment. "You didn't order black coffee, did you?"

"No," I had to admit.

"Well, I'm only a waitress, not a mind reader," and with this unanswerable retort she scooped up my cup of coffee with a skilfully perilous gesture, and resumed her quest. Knowlton looked across at me and grinned.

"Having trouble with your breakfast? You can't expect breakfast at Schaefer's to be like dear old London," he went on, while something approaching a serious outburst was struggling in me. "When in Rome, do as the Romans do--that's the best plan."

"That's all very well," I said with extreme self-control, "but I am not going to eat prunes if the whole Holy Roman Empire ate them. I don't see why she can't bring me the breakfast I want when everything on G.o.d's earth is on that bill of fare."

"You'll shake down all right," he said in what was meant to be a soothing way. "Kicking about the grub won't do you any good. They don't know any better in a place like this. What's the use of getting in wrong with the waitress?"

It was hopeless to explain, so I snorted instead. Knowlton took a slice of bread and polished the inside of his now empty bowl until it glistened.

"Looks as though Fido had finished that off," he remarked, as he rolled and lit a cigarette; "I'll knock some ashes into it so they'll have to wash it."

The waitress appeared with a cup of coffee, a plate piled high with thick slices of toast on which chunks of b.u.t.ter were still melting, another plate with two oranges, and a third containing two rashers of coa.r.s.e bacon. With the grieved air of a person determined to do her duty in the face of all rebuffs she silently grouped this food about me.

"What will you have, Mr. Knowlton?" There was just a faint emphasis upon the "you."

"Thanks, you can bring me a steak, some German fried potatoes, a couple of soft-boiled eggs, and some griddle cakes."

"Do you want black coffee too?" she asked with meaning.

"No, make mine half milk, and bring along another plate of rolls."

"Sure!" remarked the waitress cheerfully and vanished.

"And how did she know your name?" I asked, realizing it was quite useless to question Knowlton about his theory of a hot weather diet.

"Oh, she asked the clerk, I guess. It's good business to always call customers by name. Makes 'em feel at home."

I looked around the room again and inwardly decided that something more than that simple and nave process would be needed in my case.

"They mean well," Knowlton went on, with his disconcerting habit of reading my thoughts, "but they don't always know how. Now, you're used to thinking of a girl like that as a servant. She isn't. She thinks she's as good as you are, and I guess there's something in that too. You treat her all right and she'll treat you the same. But don't pull any of that European stuff here. They don't know what it means."

Knowlton's breakfast arrived, and he fell upon it with gusto.

"You gents come from Pittsburgh?" the waitress enquired, evidently much mollified by Knowlton's treatment of his breakfast.

"Nope--New York," Knowlton answered.

"Gee, I'd like to go East," she said fervently. "It must be just grand.

What line you gents travelling in?"

"We aren't travelling men," Knowlton replied. "I'm an engineer, and my friend here is just a plain business man."

"Oh," she said, somewhat disappointed, I thought. It was clear that she did not rank us as highly as she did travelling men. "Just pa.s.sin'

through the city, I suppose," she continued.

"It's hard to say," said Knowlton. "Maybe we'll be here sometime."

"Going to board here?"--her interest in us somewhat renewed, at this announcement.

"We haven't settled on our eating joint yet. Thought we'd look round first."

"This is as O. K. as any," she said. "The grub's nothing wonderful, but it's as good as you'll get. Lou Meyer's Rathskeller hasn't anything on us, and he charges a dollar a week more. 'Course, if your friend's particular, he might try the Otooska House down on the park. They put on a lot of airs and charge New York prices there, but it's the same old grub."

"Well," said Knowlton, "we'll see. We'll try 'em all out before we decide."

At this moment another customer entered, to be conducted by the head-waitress with like ceremony, as in our case, to his seat, and our blaze of glory departed to ascertain his wants. As Knowlton rose, seized a toothpick, and started for the door, followed by me, I heard our waitress beginning her searching personal questions all over again.

We paid for our breakfasts--fifty cents apiece--at the desk, where the clerk took the same lack of interest in the transaction as before.

Knowlton asked him the way to the Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company, our destination.

"West Twelfth Street car to the end of the line," was the brief reply, and with that we set forth.

Although it was still very early in the morning, or seemed so to me, unaccustomed to begin a day's work at six thirty, it was rapidly growing hot with a peculiar dry, intense heat that made the sunlight painful.

West Twelfth Street proved to be in the direction of the railway station, and, although it was only two blocks from Schaefer's, I was thoroughly moist with perspiration when we joined a throng of blue-overalled mechanics, waiting with s.h.i.+ning tin dinner pails on the corner for the arrival of the car. There was no car in sight when we got there, and as we waited I listened to the peculiarly blasphemous conversation of the men about me. Their talk was intelligent, far more so than that of a corresponding cla.s.s of English working-men, but it was interlarded with an original and soul-curdling profanity. Rates of pay, politics, baseball, their foremen, and women seemed to be the staples of conversation. Young men predominated. Their faces were sharp and eager, and they seemed tense and alive, although affecting and even boasting of their dislike for their "jobs" and their dissatisfaction with the management of their factories. But it was obvious at a glance that they were well fed and clothed, and were excellent workmen. They played incessant practical jokes on each other, rolled innumerable cigarettes, and cheered the electric car when it at last arrived. Long before it stopped they charged the car _en ma.s.se_, with rough good nature, greeting conductor and motorman by name, and filled every inch of it before Knowlton and I could fight our way to a bare foothold upon the rear platform.

The car whizzed out a most dreary street--drearier even than the streets across the river in Bermondsey or over beyond the Elephant and Castle.

It was six inches deep in a choking grey dust which the fast moving car stirred up into a remorseless searching cloud. Overhead in the hot blue sky hung ma.s.ses of coal smoke, now beginning to pour from factory chimneys. Parallel to the car line ran a railway track, quite unguarded from the street proper, along which switch engines with freight cars smoked and clanged. On either side we pa.s.sed an endless row of factory buildings, some of brick, but more of wood--even those which were several stories high. In spite of the streaming, intense sunlight and the final blue of the sky, the scene was one of desolation.

The car stopped with a jerk--we had reached the end, it seemed--and with great promptness we pushed one another off the rear platform. This crowd of workmen simply treated Knowlton and me as non-existent, and, if we happened to be in front of them, attempted the physical paradox of walking right through us. As I reached the pavement, I saw before me a long narrow two-storied brick building, surrounded by various lesser sheds and outhouses, the whole surmounted by a huge sign which read "Deep Harbor Manufacturing Company." This was the magic purse of Fortunatus which I had come so far to seek. It looked prosaic enough, but not so dismal as my ride out Twelfth Street had caused me to fear.

It was the last of Twelfth Street, apparently, and the last of the factories at that end of town, for beyond I caught a glimpse of green cornfields, grey wooden fences, and, still further on, a blue sliver of the lake. "At least, there's air from the west," I thought, as I followed Knowlton, my heart thumping curiously now I was almost face to face with my ordeal.

We entered a door marked "Office--No Admittance Except on Business," and climbed a steep flight of stairs to pa.s.s into a railed-off outer room full of desks and typewriters. There was only one young man, slightly bald, with his coat off, adjusting black alpaca half-sleeves over his cuffs as we entered. From one lip hung the inevitable toothpick which seemed to be the totem pole of these regional tribes. He looked up at us and advanced to meet us, holding out one hand.

"Mr. Knowlton? I'm sure glad to meet you. Walk in. My name's Kane, Phil Kane, and I'm general sales manager for the D. H. M. Co."

He shook Knowlton's hand warmly.

"My friend and a.s.sociate, Mr. Ted Jevons, of London, England," said Knowlton.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Jevons," said Kane, looking at me with the same curiosity I studied him with. "They tell me London is some town,"

he added with a forced laugh and an attempt at hearty conversation. "I expect we seem a little out of it here by the lake, after them big cities, but Deep Harbor's pretty up-to-date at that. We have more miles of paved streets in proportion to our population than any city between Buffalo and Toledo. Have you seen the view from the Soldiers' Home, Mr.

Jevons?"

I informed him that we had only just arrived and had come directly to the factory, after a breakfast of sorts at Schaefer's.

"You'd ought to have taken Mr. Jevons to the Otooska House," said Kane, laughing. "They have music with meals there, just like a New York hotel.

'Course, it's only an electric organ, but it makes you feel cheerful.

Come right in, won't you? Mr. Norwood won't be out to turn the factory over to you gentlemen until about eight, but if there's anything I can do to show you around first, just say the word."

As I pa.s.sed through the little swinging gate that divided the inner from the outer office, Kane seized my hat with a murmured apology and hung it on a hook.