THE MELTING OF MR. CONNOLLY
The main dining-room of the Hotel Cosmopolis is a place. The is dim, and the old on the seem, with their calm, to any essay in the riotous. Soft-footed waiters to and over thick, to the music of an which from the noisy of jazz. To Archie, who the past days had been to Miss Huskisson rehearsing, the place had a of quiet, like the just the of a cyclone. As Lucille had said, Miss Huskisson’s voice was loud. It was a powerful organ, and there was no that it would take the of the Cosmopolis dining-room and it on one ear. Almost unconsciously, Archie himself his and his as he had done in France at the approach of the zero hour, when the of a barrage. He to the of Mr. Blumenthal.
The music-publisher was talking with some on the of Labour. A printers’ had into Mr. Blumenthal’s soul. The man, he considered, was landing God’s Country in the soup, and he had twice his with the of his gesticulation. He was an right-and-left-hand talker.
“The more you give ’em the more they want!” he complained. “There’s no ’em! It isn’t only in my business. There’s your father, Mrs. Moffam!”
“Good God! Where?” said Archie, starting.
“I say, take your father’s case. He’s doing all he to this new hotel of his finished, and what happens? A man for on his job, and Connolly calls a strike. And the operations are up till the thing’s settled! It isn’t right!”
“It’s a great shame,” Lucille. “I was reading about it in the paper this morning.”
“That man Connolly’s a guy. You’d think, being a personal friend of your father, he would—”
“I didn’t know they were friends.”
“Been friends for years. But a of that makes. Out come the men just the same. It isn’t right! I was saying it wasn’t right!” Mr. Blumenthal to Archie, for he was a man who liked the attention of every of his audience.
Archie did not reply. He was across the room at two men who had just come in. One was a large, stout, square-faced man of personality. The other was Mr. Daniel Brewster.
Mr. Blumenthal his gaze.
“Why, there is Connolly in now!”
“Father!” Lucille.
Her met Archie’s. Archie took a drink of ice-water.
“This,” he murmured, “has it!”
“Archie, you must do something!”
“I know! But what?”
“What’s the trouble?” Mr. Blumenthal, mystified.
“Go over to their table and talk to them,” said Lucille.
“Me!” Archie quivered. “No, I say, old thing, really!”
“Get them away!”
“How do you mean?”
“I know!” Lucille, inspired, “Father promised that you should be manager of the new hotel when it was built. Well, then, this you just as much as else. You have a perfect right to talk it over with them. Go and ask them to have dinner up in our where you can discuss it quietly. Say that up there they won’t be by the—the music.”
At this moment, while Archie wavered, like a on the of a spring-board who is trying to up the necessary nerve to project himself into the deep, a bell-boy approached the table where the Messrs. Brewster and Connolly had seated themselves. He something in Mr. Brewster’s ear, and the of the Cosmopolis rose and him out of the room.
“Quick! Now’s your chance!” said Lucille, eagerly. “Father’s been called to the telephone. Hurry!”
Archie took another drink of ice-water to his nerve-centers, his waistcoat, his tie, and then, with something of the air of a Roman entering the arena, across the room. Lucille to the music-publisher.
The nearer Archie got to Mr. Aloysius Connolly the less did he like the looks of him. Even at a the Labour leader had had a aspect. Seen close to, he looked more uninviting. His had the of having been out of granite, and the which with Archie’s as the latter, with an attempt at an smile, up a chair and sat at the table was hard and frosty. Mr. Connolly gave the that he would be a good man to have on your a rough-and-tumble on the water-front or in some lumber-camp, but he did not look chummy.
“Hallo-allo-allo!” said Archie.
“Who the devil,” Mr. Connolly, “are you?”
“My name’s Archibald Moffam.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“I’m old Brewster’s son-in-law.”
“Glad to meet you.”
“Glad to meet you,” said Archie, handsomely.
“Well, good-bye!” said Mr. Connolly.
“Eh?”
“Run along and sell your papers. Your father-in-law and I have to discuss.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Private,” added Mr. Connolly.
“Oh, but I’m in on this binge, you know. I’m going to be the manager of the new hotel.”
“You!”
“Absolutely!”
“Well, well!” said Mr. Connolly, noncommittally.
Archie, pleased with the with which had opened, winsomely.
“I say, you know! It won’t do, you know! Absolutely no! Not a like it! No, no, from it! Well, how about it? How do we go? What? Yes? No?”
“What on earth are you talking about?”
“Call it off, old thing!”
“Call what off?”
“This old strike.”
“Not on your—hallo, Dan! Back again?”
Mr. Brewster, over the table like a thundercloud, Archie with more than his hostility. Life was no thing for the of the Cosmopolis just now. Once a man hotels, the thing like dram-drinking. Any hitch, any cutting-off of the daily dose, has the effects; and the which was up the of his latest had Mr. Brewster into a gloom. In to having this on his hands, he had had to his fishing-trip just when he had to it; and, as if all this were not enough, here was his son-in-law at his table. Mr. Brewster had a that this was more than man was meant to bear.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
“Hallo, old thing!” said Archie. “Come and join the party!”
“Don’t call me old thing!”
“Right-o, old companion, just as you say. I say, I was just going to to Mr. Connolly that we should all go up to my and talk this over quietly.”
“He says he’s the manager of your new hotel,” said Mr. Connolly. “Is that right?”
“I so,” said Mr. Brewster, gloomily.
“Then I’m doing you a kindness,” said Mr. Connolly, “in not it be built.”
Archie at his with his handkerchief. The moments were flying, and it to to shift these two men. Mr. Connolly was as settled in his chair as some rock. As for Mr. Brewster, he, too, had seated himself, and was at Archie with a repulsion. Mr. Brewster’s always Archie as though there were on his shirt-front.
And from the at the other end of the room there came a familiar sound, the of “Mother’s Knee.”
“So you’ve started a cabaret, Dan?” said Mr. Connolly, in a satisfied voice. “I always told you you were the times here!”
Mr. Brewster jumped.
“Cabaret!”
He at the white-robed which had just the dais, and then his on Archie.
Archie would not have looked at his father-in-law at this if he had had a free and choice; but Mr. Brewster’s his with something of the which a snake’s has for a rabbit. Mr. Brewster’s was and intimidating. A might have gone to him with for a of lessons. His right through Archie till the to his back-hair in the flames.
“Is this one of your fool-tricks?”
Even in this moment Archie time almost to his father-in-law’s and intuition. He to have a of sense. No this was how great were made.
“Well, as a of fact—to be accurate—it was like this—”
“Say, cut it out!” said Mr. Connolly. “Can the chatter! I want to listen.”
Archie was only too to him. Conversation at the moment was the last thing he himself desired. He managed with a to himself from Mr. Brewster’s eye, and to the dais, where Miss Spectatia Huskisson was now the of Wilson Hymack’s masterpiece.
Miss Huskisson, like so many of the female of the Middle West, was tall and and on lines. She was a girl the old and pancakes and home to dinner after the morning’s ploughing. Even her did not this impression. She looked big and and healthy, and her were good. She the of the song with something of the and of with which in other days she had with mules. Her was the of one to call the home in the teeth of Western hurricanes. Whether you wanted to or not, you every word.
The of and had ceased. The diners, to this of thing at the Cosmopolis, were trying to their to with the outburst. Waiters transfixed, frozen, in of service. In the and Archie the of Mr. Brewster. Involuntarily he to at him once more, as from Pompeii may have to upon Vesuvius; and, as he did so, he of Mr. Connolly, and paused in astonishment.
Mr. Connolly was an man. His whole had a change. His still looked as though from the rock, but into his had an which in another man might almost have been called sentimental. Incredible as it to Archie, Mr. Connolly’s were dreamy. There was in them a of tears. And when with a of Miss Huskisson the high note at the end of the and, after it as some storming-party, but victorious, the of a hard-won redoubt, off suddenly, in the which there from Mr. Connolly a sigh.
Miss Huskisson the second verse. And Mr. Brewster, to from some of a trance, to his feet.
“Great Godfrey!”
“Sit down!” said Mr. Connolly, in a voice. “Sit down, Dan!”
“He to his mother on the train that very day:
He there was no other who make him and gay:
He her on the and he whispered, ‘I’ve come home!’
He told her he was going any more to roam.
And through the happy years, till he old and grey,
He once those he once did say:
It’s a long way to mother’s knee—”
The last high note across the room like a shell, and the that was like a shell’s bursting. One have the of the Cosmopolis dining-room. Fair were napkins; men were on the tables with the butt-end of knives, for all the world as if they themselves to be in one of those midnight-revue places. Miss Huskisson bowed, retired, returned, bowed, and retired again, the her face. Over in a Archie see his brother-in-law strenuously. A waiter, with a of that did him credit, an order of new peas.
“Thirty years ago last October,” said Mr. Connolly, in a voice, “I—”
Mr. Brewster him violently.
“I’ll fire that orchestra-leader! He goes to-morrow! I’ll fire—” He on Archie. “What the do you by it, you—you—”
“Thirty years ago,” said Mr. Connolly, away a tear with his napkin, “I left me dear old home in the old country—”
“My hotel a bear-garden!”
“Frightfully sorry and all that, old companion—”
“Thirty years ago last October! ’Twas a autumn the ye’d wish to see. Me old mother, she came to the station to see me off.”
Mr. Brewster, who was not in Mr. Connolly’s old mother, to inarticulately, like a trying to go off.
“‘Ye’ll always be a good boy, Aloysius?’ she said to me,” said Mr. Connolly, with, his autobiography. “And I said: ‘Yes, Mother, I will!’” Mr. Connolly and the again. “’Twas a I was!” he observed, remorsefully. “Many’s the dirty I’ve played since then. ‘It’s a long way to Mother’s knee.’ ’Tis a true word!” He to Mr. Brewster. “Dan, there’s a of trouble in this world without me going out of me way to make more. The is over! I’ll send the men tomorrow! There’s me hand on it!”
Mr. Brewster, who had just managed to co-ordinate his views on the and was about to them with the which was his when with his son-in-law, himself abruptly. He at his old friend and enemy, if he have aright. Hope to into Mr. Brewster’s heart, like a dog that has been away from home for a day or two.
“You’ll what!”
“I’ll send the men to-morrow! That song was sent to me, Dan! It was meant! Thirty years ago last October me dear old mother—”
Mr. Brewster attentively. His views on Mr. Connolly’s dear old mother had changed. He wanted to all about her.
“’Twas that last note that girl sang it all to me as if ’twas yesterday. As we waited on the platform, me old mother and I, out comes the train from the tunnel, and the engine lets off a the way ye’d it ten miles away. ’Twas thirty years ago—”
Archie from the table. He that his presence, if it had been required, was no longer. Looking back, he see his father-in-law Mr. Connolly on the shoulder.
Archie and Lucille over their coffee. Mr. Blumenthal was out in the telephone-box settling the end with Wilson Hymack. The music-publisher had been in his of “Mother’s Knee.” It was sure-fire, he said. The words, Mr. Blumenthal, were to hurt, and the him of every other song-hit he had heard. There was, in Mr. Blumenthal’s opinion, nothing to stop this thing selling a copies.
Archie contentedly.
“Not a evening’s work, old thing,” he said. “Talk about with one stone!” He looked at Lucille reproachfully. “You don’t over with joy.”
“Oh, I am, precious!” Lucille sighed. “I was only about Bill.”
“What about Bill?”
“Well, it’s to think of him for life to that-that steam-siren.”
“Oh, we mustn’t look on the old dark side. Perhaps—Hallo, Bill, old top! We were just talking about you.”
“Were you?” said Bill Brewster, in a voice.
“I take it that you want congratulations, what?”
“I want sympathy!”
“Sympathy?”
“Sympathy! And of it! She’s gone!”
“Gone! Who?”
“Spectatia!”
“How do you mean, gone?”
Bill at the tablecloth.
“Gone home. I’ve just her off in a cab. She’s gone to Washington Square to pack. She’s the ten o’clock train to Snake Bite. It was that song!” Bill, in a voice. “She says she she sang it to-night how New York was. She said it came over her. She says she’s going to give up her career and go to her mother. What the are you your for?” he off, irritably.
“Sorry, old man. I was just counting.”
“Counting? Counting what?”
“Birds, old thing. Only birds!” said Archie.
