Seven Keys to Baldpate/Chapter 19

T FOUR in the morning Baldpate Inn, wrapped in the arms of winter, had all the rare gaiety and charm of a baseball bleechers on Christmas Eve. Looking gloomily out the window, Mr. Magee heard behind him the steps on the stairs and the low cautions of Quimby, and two men he had brought from the village, who were carrying something down to the dark carriage that waited outside. He did not look round. It was a picture he wished to avoid.

So this was the end—the end of his two and a half days of solitude—the end of his light-hearted exile on Baldpate Mountain. He thought of Bland, lean and white of face, gay of garb, fleeing through the night, his Arabella fiction disowned in the real tragedy that had followed. He thought of Cargan and Max, also fleeing, wrathful, sneering, by Bland's side. He thought of Hayden, jolting down the mountain in that black wagon. So it ended.

So it ended—most preposterous end—with William Hallowell Magee madly, desperately, in love. By the gods—in love! In love with a fair gay-hearted girl for whom he had fought, and stolen, and snapped his fingers at the law as it blinked at him in the person of Professor Bolton. Billy Magee, the calm, the unsusceptible, who wrote of a popular cupid but had always steered clear of his shots. In love with a girl whose name he did not know; whose motives were mostly in the fog. And he had come up here—to be alone.

For the first time in many hours he thought of New York, of the fellows at the club, of what they would say when the jocund news came that Billy Magee had gone mad on a mountainside, He thought of Helen Faulkner, haughty, unperturbed, bred to hold herself above the swift catastrophies of the world. He could see the arch of her patrician eyebrows, the shrug of her exquisite shoulders, when young Williams hastened up the avenue and poured into her ear the merry story. Well—so be it. He had never cared for her. In her superiority he had found a challenge, in her icy indifference a trap, that lured him on to try his hand at winning her. But he had never for a moment caught a glimmering of what it was really to care—to care as he cared now for the girl who had gone from him—somewhere—down the mountain.

Quimby dragged into the room, the strain of a rather wild night in Upper Asquewan Falls in his eyes.

"Jake Peters asked me to tell you he ain't coming back," he said. "Mis' Quimby is getting breakfast for you down at our house. You better pack up now and start down, I reckon. Your train goes at half past six."

Mrs. Norton jumped up, proclaiming that she must be aboard that train at any cost. Miss Thornhill, the professor and Kendrick ascended the stairs, and in a moment Magee followed.

He stepped softly into number seven, for the tragedy of the rooms was still in the air. Vague shapes seemed to flit about him as he lighted a candle. They whispered in his ear that this was to have been the scene of achievement; that here he was to have written the book that should make his place secure. Ah, well, fate had decreed it otherwise. It had set plump in his path the melodrama he had come up to Baldpate to avoid. Ironic fate, she must be laughing now in the sleeve of her kimono. Feeling about in the shadows Magee gathered his things together, put them in his bags, and with a last look at number seven, closed the door forever on its many excitements.

A shivering group awaited him at the foot of the stair. Mrs. Norton's hat was on at an angle even the most imaginative milliner could not have approved. The professor looked older than ever; even Miss Thornhill seemed a little less statuesque and handsome in the dusk. Quimby led the way to the door, they passed through it, and Mr. Magee locked it after them with the key Hal Bentley had blithely given him on Forty-fourth Street, New York.

So Baldpate Inn dropped back into the silence to slumber and to wait. To wait for the magic of muslin, the lilt of waltzes, the tinkle of laughter, the rhythm of the rockers of the fleet on its verandas, the formal tread of the admiral's boots across its polished floors, the clink of dimes in the pockets of its bell-boys. For a few brief hours strange figures had replaced the unromantic Quimby in its rooms, they had come to talk of money and of love, to plot and scheme, and as they came in the dark and moved most swiftly in the dark, so in the dark they went away, and Baldpate's startling winter drama took reluctantly its final curtain.

Down the snowy road the five followed Quimby's lead; Mr. Magee picturing in fancy one who had fled along this path but a short time before; the others busy with many thoughts, not the least of which was of Mrs. Quimby's breakfast. At the door of the kitchen she met them, maternal, concerned, eager to pamper and to serve, just as Mr. Magee remembered her on that night that now seemed so long ago. He smiled down into her eyes, and he had an engaging smile, even at four-thirty in the morning.

"Well, Mrs. Quimby," he cried, "here is the prodigal straight from that old husk of an inn. And believe me, he's pretty anxious to sit down to some food that woman, starter of all the trouble since the world began, had a hand in."

"Come right in, all of you," chirruped Mrs. Quimby, ushering them into a pleasant odor of cookery. "Take off your things and sit down. Breakfast's most ready. My land, I guess you must be pretty nigh starved to death. Quimby told me who was cooking for you, and I says to Quimby: 'What,' I says, 'that no account woman-hater messing round at a woman's job, like that,' I says. 'Heaven pity the people at the inn,' I says. 'Mr. Peters may be able to amuse them with stories of how Cleopatra whiled away the quiet Egyptian evenings,' I says, 'and he may be able to throw a little new light on Helen of Troy, who would object to having it thrown if she was alive and the lady I think her, but,' I says, 'when it comes to cooking, I guess he stands about where you do, Quimby.' You see, Quimby's repertory consists of coffee and soup, and sometimes it's hard to tell which he means for which."

"So Mr. Peters has taken you in on the secret of the book he is writing against your sex?" remarked Billy Magee.

"Not exactly that," Mrs. Quimby answered, brushing back a wisp of gray hair, "but he's discussed it in my presence, ignoring me at the time. You see, he comes down here and reads his latest chapters to Quimby o' nights, and I've caught quite a lot of it on my way between the cook-stove and the sink."

"I ain't no judge of books," remarked Mrs. Norton from a comfortable rocking-chair, "but I'll bet that one's the limit."

"You're right, ma'am," Mrs. Quimby told her. "I ain't saying that some of it ain't real pretty worded, but that's just to hide the falsehood underneath. My land, the lies there is in that book! You don't need to know much about history to know that Jake Peters has made it over to fit his argument, and that he ain't made it over so well but what the old seams show here and there, and the place where the braid was is plain as daylight."

After ten more minutes of bustle, Mrs. Quimby announced that they could sit down, and they were not slow to accept the invitation. The breakfast she served them moved Mr. Magee to remark:

"I want to know where I stand as a judge of character. On the first night I saw Mrs. Quimby, without tasting a morsel of food cooked by her, I said she was the best cook in the county."

The professor looked up from his griddle cakes.

"Why limit it to the county?" he asked. "I should say you were too parsimonious in your judgment."

Mrs. Quimby, detecting in the old man's words a compliment, flushed an even deeper red as she bent above the stove. Under the benign influence of the food and the woman's cheery personality, the spirits of the crowd rose. Baldpate Inn was in the past, its doors locked, its seven keys scattered through the dawn. Mrs. Quimby, as she continued to press food upon them, spoke with interest of the events that had come to pass at the inn.

"It's so seldom anything really happens around here," she said, "I just been hungering for news of the strange goings-on up there. And I must say Quimby ain't been none too newsy on the subject. I threatened to come up and join in the proceedings myself, especially when I heard about the book-writing cook Providence had sent you."

"You would have found us on the porch with outstretched arms," Mr. Magee assured her.

It was on Kendrick that Mrs. Quimby showered her attentions, and when the group rose to seek the station, amid a consultation of watches that recalled the commuter who rises at dawn to play tag with a flippant train, Mr. Magee heard her say to the railroad man in a heartfelt aside:

"I don't know as I can ever thank you enough, Mr. Kendrick, for putting new hope into Quimby. You'll never understand what it means, when you've given up, and your life seems all done and wasted, to hear that there's a chance left."

"Won't I?" replied Kendrick warmly. "Mrs. Quimby, it will make me a very happy man to give your husband his chance."

The first streaks of dawn were in the sky when the hermits of Baldpate filed through the gate into the road, waving good-by to Quimby and his wife, who stood in their dooryard for the farewell. Down through sleepy little Asquewan Falls they paraded, meeting here and there a tired man with a lunch basket in his hand, who stepped to one side and frankly stared while the odd procession passed.

In the station Mr. Magee encountered an old friend—he of the mop of ginger-colored hair. The man who had complained of the slowness of the village gazed with wide eyes at Magee.

"I figured," he said, "that you'd come this way again. Well, I must say you've put a little life into this place. If I'd known when I saw you here the other night all the exciting things you had up your sleeve, I'd a-gone right up to Baldpate with you."

"But I hadn't anything up my sleeve," protested Magee.

"Maybe," replied the agent, winking. "There's some pretty giddy stories going round about the carryings-on up at Baldpate. Shots fired, and strange lights flashing—dog-gone it, the only thing that's happened here in years, and I wasn't in on it. I certainly wish you'd put me wise to it."

"By the way," inquired Magee, "did you notice the passengers from here on the ten-thirty train last night?"

"Ten-thirty," repeated the agent. "Say, what sort of hours do you think I keep? A man has to get some sleep, even if he does work for a railroad. I wasn't here at ten-thirty last night. Young Cal Hunt was on duty then. He's home and in bed now."

No help there. Into the night the girl and the two hundred thousand had fled together, and Mr. Magee could only wait, and wonder, as to the meaning of that flight.

Two drooping figures entered the station—the mayor and his faithful lieutenant, Max. The dignity of the former had faded like a flower, and the same withered simile might have been applied with equal force to the accustomed jauntiness of Lou.

"Good morning," said Mr. Magee in greeting. "Taking an early train, too, eh? Have a pleasant night?"

"Young man," replied Cargan, "if you've ever put up at a hotel in a town the size of this, called the Commercial House, you know that last question has just one answer—manslaughter. I heard a minister say once that all drummers are bound for hell. If they are, it'll be a pleasant change for 'em."

Mr. Max delved beneath his overcoat, and brought forth the materials for a cigarette, which he rolled between yellow fingers.

"If I was a drummer," he said dolefully, "one breakfast—was that what they called it, Jim?—one breakfast like we just passed through would drive me into the awful habit of reading one of these here books of Drummers' Yarns."

"Sorry," smiled Magee. "We had an excellent breakfast at Mrs. Quimby's. Really, you should have stayed. By the way, where is Bland?"

"Got shaky in the knees," said Cargan. "Afraid of the reformers. Ain't had much experience in these things, or he'd know he might just as well tremble at the approach of a blue-bottle fly. We put him on a train going the other direction from Reuton early this morning. He thinks he'd better seek his fortune elsewhere." He leaned in heavy confidence toward Magee. "Say, young fellow," he whispered, "put me wise. That little sleight of hand game you worked last night had me dizzy. Where's the coin? Where's the girl? What's the game? Take the boodle and welcome—it ain't mine—but put me next to what's doing, so I'll know how my instalment of this serial story ought to read."

"Mr. Cargan," replied Magee, "you know as much about that girl as I do. She asked me to get her the money, and I did."

"But what's your place in the game?"

"A looker-on in Athens," returned Magee. "Translated, a guy who had bumped into a cyclone and was sitting tight waiting for it to blow over. I—I took a fancy to her, as you might put it. She wanted the money. I got it for her."

"A pretty fairy story, my boy," the mayor commented.

"Absolutely true," smiled Magee.

"What do you think of that for an explanation, Lou," inquired Cargan, "she asked him for the money and he gave it to her?"

Mr. Max leered.

"Say, a Broadway chorus would be pleased to meet you, Magee," he commented.

"Don't tell any of your chorus friends about me," replied Magee. "I might not always prove so complacent. Every man has his moments of falling for romance. Even you probably fell once—and what a fall was there."

"Can the romance stuff," pleaded Max. "This chilly railway station wasn't meant for such giddy language."

Wasn't it? Mr. Magee looked around at the dingy walls, at the soiled time-cards, at the disreputable stove. No place for romance? It was here he had seen her first, in the dusk, weeping bitterly over the seemingly hopeless task in which he was destined to serve her. No place for romance—and here had begun his life's romance. The blue blithe sailor still stood at attention in the "See the World" poster. Magee winked at him. He knew about it all, he knew, he knew—he knew how alluring she had looked in the blue corduroy suit, the bit of cambric pressed agonizingly to her face. Verily, even the sailor of the posters saw the world and all its glories.

The agent leaned his face against the bars.

"Your train," he called, "is crossing the Main Street trestle."

They filed out upon the platform, Mr. Magee carrying Mrs. Norton's luggage amid her effusive thanks. On the platform waited a stranger equipped for travel. It was Mr. Max who made the great discovery.

"By the Lord Harry," he cried, "it's the Hermit of Baldpate Mountain."

And so it was, his beard gone, his hair clumsily hacked, his body garbed in the height of an old and ludicrous fashion, his face set bravely toward the cities once more.

"Yes," he said, "I walked the floor, thinking it all over. I knew it would happen, and it has. The winters are hard, and the sight of you—it was too much. The excitement, the talk—it did for me, did for my oath. So I'm going back to her—back to Brooklyn for Christmas."

"A merry one to you," growled Cargan.

"Maybe," replied Mr. Peters. "Very likely, if she's feeling that way. I hope so. I ain't giving up the hermit job altogether—I'll come back in the summers, to my post-card business. There's money in it, if it's handled right. But I've spent my last winter on that lonesome hill."

"As author to author," asked Magee, "how about your book?"

"There won't be any mention of that," the hermit predicted, "in Brooklyn. I've packed it away. Maybe I can work on it summers, if she doesn't come up here with me and insist on running my hermit business for me. I hope she won't, it would sort of put a crimp in it—but if she wants to I won't refuse. And maybe that book'll never get done. Sometimes as I've sat in my shack at night and read, it's come to me that all the greatest works since the world began have been those that never got finished."

The Reuton train roared up to them through the gray morning, and paused impatiently at Upper Asquewan Falls. Aboard it clambered the hermits, amateur and professional. Mr. Magee, from the platform, waved good-by to the agent standing forlorn in the station door. He watched the building until it was only a blur in the dawn. A kindly feeling for it was in his heart. After all, it had been in the waiting-room—