The Star in the Window (Stokes)/Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII
IT was after Reba had walked a mile or two more, along the unfamiliar state-road, that her teeth again began to chatter. Another automobile had slowed down beside her, and this time not one masculine voice from its dark interior had addressed her, but two and three, and in a manner less civil than the first man's upon the country road. It was very late—almost twelve now, and very dark. A rain-drop fell on Reba's cheek soon after the carful of urging men had disappeared. There was nothing frightful in a rain-drop, of course, but it started her foolishly hurrying and stumbling again. Her breath came with difficulty in little gasps, and when in the distance she saw approaching a reeling man harmlessly drunk, she thought she should scream with the horror of the place and the hour, and the rain, and she, all unprotected stumbling on blindly, she knew not where, possibly into even worse terrors than she had left behind.
It was soon after the drunken man had passed Reba, with the width of the road between them, and with never as much as a word to her, that she came upon what, in the day time, might prove to be a town. She decided then that she must seek shelter under a roof somewhere, or go mad; and she began to search for a house that presented a friendly front. All the houses were dark and apparently deep in sleep, and as she proceeded she despaired of finding a single spark of life in the part of the town along the state-road.
When a light did appear ahead of her at last, gleaming dimly but steadily, she hurried eagerly toward it. It was with a wave of thanksgiving that she read beneath the light, "Grand Hotel. Rooms and lodging. Open all the year." True, the part of the hotel that the light illuminated was anything but "grand." The few wooden steps that led to its front door were worn and very shabby, and the railing that ran along what was supposed to represent a veranda was in a disreputable state of unrepair. Still, it did offer a roof, and there was a light not only over the door, but also shining in two or three of its windows.
Reba mounted the steps. As she did so, she heard a loud raucous laugh from within—a man's laugh, followed by the high shrill cackle of a woman. Looking through the open door of the "Grand Hotel," Reba saw near the end of its dimly lighted corridor a sign protruding, reading, "Bar." She hesitated, turning toward the dark road again. It was raining in earnest now. She caught the first low rumble of thunder.
"Oh, I can't! I can't go out into that again," she whispered, and turned toward the entrance of the Grand Hotel.
Before rapping on the loose-jointed screen-door, however, Reba armored herself as best she knew how. Recalling her wedding-ring in the bottom of her shopping-bag, she took it out, and slipped it onto the third finger of her left hand.
A very large fat man in shirtsleeves, holding aloft a small old-fashioned kerosene lamp, responded to Reba's rap. He came out of the bar-room, and standing under the sign that designated it, called out gruffly, toward the front door, "Anybody there?"
"Yes, there is," replied Reba.
"Shut up, you fellers," he ordered, turning toward the bar; then approached the screen door and opened it. He looked down at Reba in frank amazement. Then, "Party of you?" he asked, and looked past her, toward the street.
"No, I'm alone," said Reba. "I missed the last train to Boston, and so—I saw this was a hotel, and Could I have a room?" she broke off.
"Well, now," replied the man, still staring in amazement. "I guess so. Come right in, miss. Come right in. Guess we can fix you up. Lost the last train, did yer? Well now! That was too bad. Come into the office."
Reba followed her escort into a bare little room with a few settees (the kind they used in the vestry in the Congregational Church at home) placed around the edge of it, and one or two brown mottled spittoons in front of the settees. In one corner of the room there was a high desk with a stool drawn up to it. The man placed the lamp on the desk, stuffed his hands into his pockets, and surveyed Reba.
"So you want a room, miss, do yer?"
"Yes. Haven't you got one? For if you haven't" (again Reba heard a shrill laugh from the bar-room) "I'll go. I'll go right off."
"Oh, we got one all right," reassured the fat man. "We've got one—real nice one. Too bad yer lost yer train," he remarked, still staring frankly at Reba.
"Yes," she acknowledged briefly.
The fat man scratched his head reflectively. "'Course we like our guests to register usually." He squinted up his eyes at Reba. "Any objections?"
"No," promptly Reba replied.
The fat man swung the huge book on top of the desk around to Reba, and dipped a rusty pen into a muddy mixture, in a besmeared inkwell.
Reba laid her left hand prominently upon the desk and wrote with some difficulty, but clearly, "Mrs. Nathaniel Cawthorne, Ridgefield, Mass."
"Oh, missis, is it?" inquired the fat man, after inspecting the signature, and still eyeing his guest curiously. "Well, missis, come up and I'll show yer what we got."
As Reba mounted the creaky flight of stairs she caught a glimpse of the inside of the noisy bar-room, through the open door, and closed her eyes suddenly, as if they had been burned. There were half a dozen or more men in the room, and two girls, or women—at least something in skirts. Reba shuddered and followed the fat man, but she felt such a wave of faintness pass over her that she grasped the infirm railing by her side for support. She followed her guide dumbly (numbly, too, after that) through narrow corridors that turned and turned, to left and right, to right and left, on and on.
Reba had never seen anything in the way of bedrooms that was more repulsive than the hole the fat man finally showed her into. It smelled of stale tobacco, and something else, musty and stifling. There was a long jagged crack across the cheap mirror that was hung askew over a broken-legged set of drawers. The bed was so misshapen and deformed that it recalled to Reba the image of a humpbacked idiot that she had once seen grovelling around the Poor Farm in Ridgefield. Its linen was dirty, too. The pillow-covers were wrinkled, and even in the dim light of the fat man's lamp, which he left with Reba, she could see that the grimy spread had an oily stain on the center of it. On the edge of the untidy commode there was a half-smoked cigar, and an empty bottle beside it. But she locked herself in, with all this squalor, with no word of complaint to the proprietor. When the sound of his footsteps had died away, along the labyrinthine corridors, Reba went over to the window and raised it, placing the piece of kindling-wood which she had found upon the sill, beneath the sash to keep it up. Then she drew the only chair, converted from a porch-rocker into a straight-backed, short-legged affair, close to the window, and sat down.
She could not lie down, of course—not on that bed. She could not undress in such a place. She did take off the white suede pumps, however, smeared and begrimed now from her long walk, and placed them side by side at the foot of the bed. Then as quickly as possible she blew out the lamp, covering with a blanket of darkness the awful surroundings.
It flashed across the tortured Reba that to find herself in such a bedroom as this, forced to listen to the laughter, and shrill, delirious shrieks that issued now and again from the bar-room below, her eyes still smarting from what she had seen in that bar-room, was but the just outcome of her relations with Chadwick Booth. The forbiddenness of those relations loomed up before Reba in enormous proportions.
Why, he had never meant to marry her! It had never even occurred to him to make her his wife! And she—she—had let herself drink deep and long of the permeating sweetness of every one of his caresses, had rehearsed afterward for hours and hours every slight swift touch of his hands, every long lingering pressure of his lips, with an unrestraint, an abandon that only a betrothal of marriage could make right. In her imagination Reba had been betrothed to Chadwick Booth ever since that night beside the sea; had been ready to face the possible disgrace of divorce without a quiver; had secretly, joyfully, wondered to herself, as higher and higher she built her castle, if she could create sometime, with him, something of the atmosphere that pervaded the Park home. Had gone into minute details.
Reba suddenly leaned forward in the broken old chair and buried her face in her hands! This horrible endless night was the culmination of all her dreams—this dirty bedroom, this stale smell of old tobacco, that room below, that woman down there with the red plaid skirt and disheveled hair whom she had caught a glimpse of, laughing and singing, perched on a man's knee—oh, the shame—the degrading shame of it!
As Reba sat and listened to the uproariousness in the bar-room below, she was lashed again and again by Chadwick Booth's casual explanation of his relations to her. Why, those creatures down there—that man and that woman were not annoyed by the discussion of domestic trivialities either! They also were not married, nor obliged to haggle about children. They too met for happiness' sake! What difference—what difference really between that woman down there and her—Reba Jerome?
"It's just as if I looked into a mirror, when I looked into that room down there, and I'm uglier than I thought!"
Of course Reba was being cruel to herself, harsh and unjust, but there lay buried in her the instincts of generation upon generation of New England ancestors, and on this night of her disillusionment they rose up and cried out in protesting chorus.
It was not until the sky began to show the faint gray light of dawn, and the noise in the bar-room had stopped, that Reba fell asleep for an hour or so, her head resting against the window-casing, and her hands limp and tired lying upturned in her lap.
The sun was shining strong and clear, and beautifully undisturbed by soiled linen, upon the pillows of the bed, when Reba woke up. She drew in a deep sigh of relief at the assurance that the night was over. For a moment or two, as she gazed at one stray sunbeam lying in her lap in such a casual fashion, it seemed to her as if the last twenty-four hours must have been a nightmare, and in a moment the cracked mirror and tipsy-looking set of drawers would fade away and in their place appear the familiar chiffonier in her room at the Alliance.
She moved her hands, but the cracked mirror didn't disappear. She rubbed her eyes,—it was all true. Even her hair was proof of that. It had slipped down, and lay in a loose untidy roll upon her shoulder. Reba looked at her watch. Eight o'clock! So late? Time for breakfast! Swiftly her thoughts shot forward over the miles, to the pleasant sunlit dining-room at the Alliance, filled at this instant with the fragrance of coffee, and the pleasant chatter of several dozen girls.
The realization that she would not be there laid its cold hold upon Reba's drowsy consciousness. She sat up abruptly. Her absence would be sure to be observed. Mamie would carry coffee and toast on a tray up to her room within half an hour, as she often did if she slept over. She would find the room empty! The bed undisturbed! At half-past nine, a short hour and a half from now, when prayers were held in the Alliance parlors, conducted this month by Miss Ellsworth, Mamie would, no doubt, report her absence to the General Secretary!
Reba had not thought of this last night when she had let that train speed away without her. She recalled now with what quiet earnestness and persistence Miss Ellsworth had set to work hunting for a girl a year ago, who failed to return to her room one night, never reporting afterward where they had found her, nor explaining why she never came back to the Alliance as a lodger again. They would begin to hunt for her, in the same grim determined way, Reba concluded. And one of the steps they would take, it flashed across her with sickening certainty, would be to communicate with Louise Bartholomew! And Louise had seen her last night!
As Reba pictured herself returning to the Alliance, awaited by anxious watchers, questioned by suspicious investigators, forced to explain her absence, and expose the pitiful story of her disillusionment, she recoiled. Her desire to conceal herself, hide her suffering, was as instinctive as with a hurt animal. Besides, might they not doubt her story? Might they not think about her the awful thing Mamie had thought about that other girl, who had not come back all night? To clear away their doubts it would not be improbable for them to come here to this awful hotel, and talk with the fat proprietor. They would discover her signature in the register! She would be forced to tell them about Nathaniel Cawthorne! What excuse, then, could she give to Miss Ellsworth and Louise, for receiving attentions from Chadwick Booth? She could not plead innocence of the knowledge of her own marriage, could she?
"No, no, I can't go back," Reba whispered to herself. "I'd rather stay here in this hotel forever and ever than go back!"
After Louise's reprimand, and all that had happened since, Reba felt sure that it could be only after a long and painful investigation that Miss Ellsworth would consider her suitable for a secretaryship at the Alliance. And if finally she was allowed a second trial, could she, she asked herself, endure meeting Chadwick Booth two and three times a week, as he passed in and out of the classrooms? He could not well give up his classes at the Alliance. It was fall, the beginning of a busy new year. Classes were just being formed, and doctors were greatly in demand with their ranks already depleted by the ever-increasing number of units sailing for France.
"No, I can't go back," whispered Reba again. "I can't ever go back. But oh" She looked despairingly about the unlovely room. "Of course I can't stay here! What can I do? Where can I go?"