Part 34

Well, perhaps--

To-night, then?

No, not to-night.

To-morrow night?

No, no night this week or next week, but perhaps week after next.

Ah, that is so long, so long!

There was no earthly way to get to the stairs or elevators except by his stove. I came to dread it. Always the Spanish ex-tailor dropped everything with a clatter and chased after me. I managed to pass his confines at greater and greater speed. Invariably I heard his panting, "Listen! Listen!" after me, but I tore on, hoping to get an elevator that started up before he could make it.

One day the Spaniard, this tall thin roaster with the black mustache, was waiting as I came out of the locker room.

"Listen! Listen!" he panted, from force of habit. "Next week is still so very long off."

It so happened it was my last day at the hotel. I told him I was leaving that night.

"Oh, miss!" He looked really upset. "Then you will go out to-night with me. Surely to-night."

No, I had a date.

To-morrow night.

No, I had another date.

Sunday--oh, Sunday, just one Sunday.

Sunday I had two dates.

I should be able to flatter my female soul that at least he forgot the seasoning that night in his roasts.

Downstairs that first Saturday the little quiet Spaniard of the pies and ice cream screwed up his courage, crossed over to my precinct, leaned his arms on my front counter, and said, "If I had a wife like you I would be happy all the rest of my life!"

Having delivered himself of those sentiments, he hastily returned to his pies and ice cream.

The Greek coffee man would take me to a show that night.

Saturday, to my surprise, was a slack day in the café business. Trade is always light. Sunday our kitchen closed shop. Another reason why my job held allurements. I was the only girl to get Sunday off. Also, because we were the only department in the hotel to close down altogether, it seems we were wont to have an annual picnic. Alas that I had to miss it!

Plans were just taking shape, too, for this year's event. Last year they motored over to Long Island. Much food, many drinks. It was a rosy memory. This year Kelly wanted a hay ride. Kelly, he of the highly colored past, even so contended there was nothing in the world like the smell of hay.

There was no fun to the supper that Saturday night. I sat at a table with a deaf girl, two dirty men, and a fat, flabby female with pop eyes, and not a one of them acted as if he possessed the ability to speak. Except the deaf girl, who did tell me she couldn't hear.

So I ate hastily and made for the recreation room. For the first time the piano was in use. A chambermaid, surrounded by four admiring fellow-workers, was playing "Oh, they're killin' men and women for a wearin' of the green." That is, I made out she meant it for that tune. With the right hand she picked out what every now and then approached that melody. With the left she did a tum-te-dum which she left entirely to chance, the right hand and its perplexities needing her entire attention. During all of this, without intermission, her foot conscientiously pressed the loud pedal.

Altogether there were seven in the chambermaid's audience. I sat down next to a little wrinkled auburn-haired Irish chambermaid whose face looked positively inspired. She beat time with one foot and both hands. "Ain't it jus' grand!" she whispered to me. "If I c'u'd jus' play like that!" Her eyes sought the ceiling. When the player had finished her rendition there was much applause. One girl left the clouds long enough to ask, "Oh, Jennie, is it really true you never took a lesson?" Jennie admitted it was true. "Think of that, now!" the little woman by me gasped.

The chambermaid next gave an original interpretation of "Believe me if all those endearing young charms." At least it was nearer that than anything else. I had to tear myself away in the middle of what five out of seven people finally would have guessed was "Way down upon the Suwanee River." The faces of the audience were still wreathed in that expression you may catch on a few faces at Carnegie Hall.

Monday there was a chambermaids' meeting. Much excitement. They had been getting seven dollars a week. The management wished to change and pay them by the month, instead--thirty dollars a month. There was something underhanded about it, the girls were sure of that. In addition there was a general feeling that everyone was in for more or less of a cut in wages about September. A general undertone of suspicion that day was over everything and everybody. Several chambermaids were waiting around the recreation room the few moments before the meeting. They were upset over that sign under the picture of Christ, "No cursing no stealing when tempted look on his kindly face." As long as they'd been in that hotel they'd never heard no cursin' among the girls, and as for stealin'--well, they guessed the guests stole more than ever the girls did. There were too many squealers around that hotel, that was the trouble. One girl spoke up and said it wasn't the hotel. New York was all squealers--worst "race" she ever knew for meanness to one another--nothin' you'd ever see in the Irish!

I thought back over the dinner conversation that noon. An Irish girl asked me what my hurry was, when my work didn't begin till 1.30. I told her I helped out the Spanish woman and remarked that I thought it wrong that she didn't get more pay than I. "Say," said the Irish girl, "you jus' look out for your own self in this world and don't you go round worryin' over no one else. You got number one to look out for and that's all."