By six, he was whistling, awake and lively, which was as it should be, for the ability to stay up brightly all day and all night and all day again is, probably more than any technical trick or profound learning, the secret of hotel-men, physicians, sea-captains, aviators, bootleggers, and bridegrooms.
When Myron came home from high school at noon, J. Hector was in a leather-upholstered rocker in the office, looking red-eyed but cheerful.
'Morning, Cap'n. Get any sleep?' called J. Hector.
'Oh, sure, plenty!'
'Well, can't say as I did. I sort of realized it this morning, when I tried to sell Brother Hickman a line of refrigerators at his store, and caught myself informing him that they would run on coal, wood, or old rags, and were unexcelled for broiling, roasting, and baking. Well . . . Say, that was an elegant spread you gave us, last night. Did I pay you for it?'
'Yes, sir. Say, uh, say, Mr. Warlock . . .' Myron ventured to sit down beside J. Hector, and to confide, 'Say, do you think hotel-keeping is a good business? Or do you think that a fellow, if he's got any ambition, had ought to get out and become a banker or a manufacturer or a doctor or something?'
'Look here, son! Somebody been ribbing you about hotel-keeping not being a dignified and highfalutin line of business? You tell 'em to go soak their head! Dignified--why say, fellow was telling me, he was a college professor or something, I met him on a train, and he showed me where in the Olden Days surgeons were barbers, too, and folks didn't think much of them. They about ranked with the third assistant hired girl. But now, good Lord, when a surgeon agrees to cut you up, you'd think he was the King of France! Hotel-keeping--well, up till now it hasn't been so good because the hotels--taverns they used to call 'em, and inns, and so on--and they weren't so good. But that's all changing. I tell you, way I figure it, some day there's going to be even bigger and sweller hotels than the Waldorf, and then, as the hotels get better, the hotel-men are going to be more important. Lots of swagger folks will get sick of housekeeping and go live in hotels. It will be one of the most important lines of business in the country, with some of the biggest folks in it.
'And as for the usefulness of hotels, well say, it takes a travelling-man to appreciate an hotel--come in all tired and wet and sick of day coaches and cinders, and get a good hot cup o' coffee like Mother Weagle makes, and a good clean bed like here--though you might have some of the mattresses made of straight-grained pine, next time, and not all this knotty stuff. But I'm just joking. Nothing you could do more important--or interesting--meet all kinds of people, and see 'em with their shirts off, you might say; see the Senator soused and the up-state banker meeting a peacherino. And you belong to the hotel; you've got the start. Nobody, hardly ever, learned hotel-keeping right down to the ground unless he was born under the kitchen sink and did his teething on a file of overdue bills! Go to it, boy! You'll have to learn a lot. You'll have to get into a lot bigger hotels than this--say, like in Bridgeport--biggest city of its size in the U.S.A.! You'll have to learn accounting and purchasing; not just run out and pick up a beefsteak, like you do here, but deal with big supply houses for maybe a thousand knives and forks, a hundred turkeys, five kegs of oysters--how to bargain and how to stand in with 'em. You'll have to learn manners--learn to be poker-faced with guys that would take advantage of you. Now, of course, you're only a kid, but even so, you're too doggone open-hearted; I can tell right away when you're pleased or kind of hurt. You'll have to know all about china and silver and glass and linen and brocade and the best woods for flooring and furniture. A hotel-manager has to be a combination of a house-frau, a chef, a bar-room bouncer, a doctor for emergencies, a wet nurse, a lawyer that knows more about the rights and wrongs of guests and how far he dast go in holding the baggage of skippers than Old Man Supreme P. Court himself, an upholsterer, a walking directory that knows right offhand, without looking it up, just where the Hardshell Baptist Church is and what time the marriage license bureau opens and what time the local starts for Hick Junction. He's got to be a certified public accountant, a professor of languages, a quick-action laundryman, a plumber, a heating-engineer, a carpenter, a swell speech-maker, an authority on the importance of every tinhorn State Senator or one-night-stand lecturer that blows in and expects to have the red carpet already hauled out for him, a fly-cop that can tell from looking at a girl's ears whether she's sure-enough married to the guy or not, a moneylender--only he doesn't get any interest or have any security. He's got to dress better 'n a Twenty-third Street actor, even if he's only got a thin dime in his pocket. He's got to be able just from hearing a cow's moo to tell whether she'll make good steaks. He's got to know more about wine and cigars than the fellows that make 'em--they can fool around and try experiments, but he's got to sell 'em. And all the time he's got to be a diplomat that would make Thomas F. Bayard look like John L. Sullivan on a spree. He's got to set a table like a Vanderbilt and yet watch the pennies like a Jew pedlar. If you can do all this, you'll have a good time. Go to it, Cap'n. Well, I think I'll go in and feed.'
Not again, for more than an occasional hour, did Myron aspire to anything save becoming a hotel-keeper--a great hotel-keeper of the fabulous coming post-Waldorf days.
6
To Myron, his brother Ora was a greater mystery than Miss Absolom or the Pleiades. He could not understand why Ora had no apparent satisfaction out of doing, neatly and on time, his small tasks about the hotel; how Ora could enjoy reading Scott and Dickens and Thackeray and Tennyson for hour on hour. Golly, didn't the kid ever get tired of all those fairy stories and lies about a bunch of knights and so on? And where did Ora get all these curious ideas?
Ora would confide, 'Some day I'm going to Venice. . . .'
'That's in Italy, ain't it?'
'Hell no! It's in Finland! I'm going to Venice and I'm going to have a gondola of my own, and ride around in it, and have a bunch of wha'-juh-call-'ems to sing Ytalian songs to me. By moonlight. Every night for years.'
'Gosh, I wouldn't think that would be much fun, Ora. Not after the first couple a nights. I'd rather get some time off from the hotel and go up to Maine, duck-hunting.'
'You would! And I'm going to know a lot of princes and dukes and all like that. And the Riveera. Gambling at Monte Carlo!'
With venerably shaking head Myron fretted, 'Never thought much of gambling. Good way to waste your money.'
'Well, your darned old Hector Warlock--with his fancy toothache vests that look like catsup spilled on a tablecloth--he gambles!'
'That's different. Just a little cards, with friends. And you say anything against Mr. Warlock and I'll slap your face off!'
'You would! That's about the only way you can argue. Warlock! I'm going places he never even heard about, with all his gassing about Fifth Avenue and Boston and the Parker House! I'm going to have a chalette right up on top of the Alps, and sleep all day and sit up all night and look at the stars. . . . Did you ever think, Myron: the stars are flowers in the fields of heaven?'
Myron looked at him suspiciously. Was Ora trying to kid him? But his brother was entirely serious. Myron did not jeer; he never jeered at Ora, however often he longed to assault him. 'No, I never thought about 'em that way. Sounds like Reverend Ivy.'