'Oh yes, Mr. Weagle!' trembled the faithful Cleaver.
And the pretty young chambermaids would always be out in the woods by moonlight with the pretty young waiters, and the old and less pretty chambermaids would find this rural bliss very low and nasty, and they would threaten to quit, and Myron would try to keep from thinking of his clean sweep once at Tippecanoe Lodge, and how nice it would be to discharge every one of his trained staff, chase out every guest with a shot-gun, and sit happily alone amid the ruins.
As in every summer hotel, the hardest guests to manage were not the crooks, the blackmailers who pretended to have lost a case of jewels, and threatened to sue, nor the noisy boozers, but the respectables who were just plain nuisances: the run-of-the-mill pests, the bores, the imaginative old gentlemen who wanted the moon, and wanted it fried, and wanted it quick.
The resolute young lady who played the piano all afternoon in the ballroom-sunroom, and played it badly, so that her fellow customers went pale and thought about moving away. The resolute old lady who, happily spying, saw evil where none existed and--what made a great deal more trouble--where it did exist. The other old ladies who just rocked and watched and rocked and watched until less locomotive people went crazy. The man who wanted the desk to get impossible long-distance telephone-calls for him, and wanted his mail before it had ever reached Black Thread; and his cousin the man who was extremely important in Bellows Falls or Augusta or Tacoma, and who expected to be known here and treated with reverence--and flattering room-rates. The middle-aged ladies who all day long, with firm, quiet, steady, never-ceasing voices, told agonized strangers about their relatives--in particular about what Professor Pibkik--of course you know his name and what an authority he is, and he told me himself, he said, Mrs. Snodbody, in my opinion, after my thirty years of teaching, your son has one of the most remarkable intellects I have ever encountered, and I predict for him an extraordinary . . . Firm, quiet, steady, relentless voice, and Myron, hearing it through his open office window, longed for a decent drunken quartet singing 'Down Mobile Bay'.
But these were just the normal pleasures of his business. With them, he was beginning to have distresses out of the ordinary.
31
For weeks they had been holding acrimonious conferences, but it was in December, 1927, some six months after the opening of the Inn, that Pye and Charian told their partners, Myron and T. J. Dingle, what changes they were going to make in the management, to 'save' the place . . . and they had an excess of stock, to give them control. It was so peaceful-sounding a conference: the four men sitting in tilted chairs about Myron's desk, Pye's voice light and cheerful, Dingle polite and wary, Myron and Charian speaking slowly, as though nothing in particular was afoot--as, indeed, there was nothing, save perhaps as regarded Myron, and for him only the ruin of everything he had planned in his forty-seven years of life.
They would, announced Dick Pye, lower rates to six-to-eight dollars a day. To make it possible, they would consciously cheapen food and service; discharging Gritzmeier, with Clark Cleaver, and a certain number of chambermaids, waiters, bell-boys. The skilled floor-waiters would be replaced by ordinary tray-toters. The number of rooms served by each chambermaid would be increased from ten to fourteen, with a proportionate lessening in the dusting, sweeping, check of furnishings.
And they would sell liquor.
That is, they wouldn't exactly sell it, Pye explained. That would be illegal, and might subject the hotel to being closed. But they would make peace with Sheriff Beasy--and what could be more legal than that?--and the staff would be permitted to oblige guests with the name of the sheriff's friend, the bootlegger, and it was none of the hotel's business if the bootlegger sold his wares here; the hotel would have nothing to do with it, except taking a percentage from him. And if he used a loft of the stable to store his wares, and the hotel didn't know it, how was that their fault?
Myron, trying to sound no more serious than the chatty Dick Pye, fought him point to point, particularly in regard to discharging Gritzmeier and selling liquor, and was beaten point by point, and at the last Pye prattled, 'Now one final suggestion. At first you won't care for the idea, Weagle, but when you think it over you'll see that it will make things easier for you. Charian and I appreciate the way you've tried to make this the highest-class joint possible, and we understand thoroughly that it isn't your fault that things haven't broken right. We're sure they will later, and then you can go back to all your original arrangements, and nobody'll be gladder about it than we. We've decided that since a lot of the changes will be distasteful to you, we'll bring Jimmy Shanks out here from the Dickens to take charge. No! Wait! We'll promote you to the title of General Director--though at the same salary, I'm afraid--and you can devote yourself to direct-mail advertising, and to getting acquainted with the guests. Or, if you would rather try something else, we'll try to buy out your interests at a fair price--perhaps Mr. Dingle, here, can help us in arbitrating . . .'
'In other words, Pye, since I have a contract with you, you can't fire me, so you're going to run me out on it.'
Dick Pye looked seraphic as he warbled, 'Oh, I wouldn't say that! Come now! Title of "General Director"? Think how much better that sounds than just "Manager"!'
The system technically called 'running a man out on his contract' is one of the most admirable devices known to the modern business-world of doing illegal things legally. It exterminates any executive, any employee important enough to have a contract whereby he cannot be discharged except for proven fault.
First, he is humiliated. His private office and secretary are taken from him. He is treated with mocking courtesy, while he is being crucified, but he is stationed at a contemptible little desk, in the main office among his former subordinates. Then, if he is lazy, if he would merely read newspapers all day if he were given nothing more important to do, he is set at such petty tasks that every one begins to laugh at him. On the other hand, if he is industrious and ambitious, he is left idle and ignored day after day after day, till his pride explodes, and he quits. In neither case is he likely to endure it, for the term of his contract.
Since Myron was industrious and ambitious, Pye and Charian through Jimmy Shanks, used the second method. He was relieved from all duties save sitting in his office, frenzied with the first enforced idleness since he had lain abed with that less tormenting illness, the 'flu--nothing at all to do, except watch Jimmy Shanks, the new manager, briskly and amiably defiling the shrine.
Gritzmeier and Clark Cleaver were discharged.
The new chef was a fancy fellow from New York, with experience in night clubs, large cheap hotels, chain cafeterias, and the summer roof-garden of an hotel. He could prepare splendid desserts for special dinners, with glistening ropes of spun sugar, but he cared not at all for the patient processes of making bouillon with a real taste, nor for the freshness of vegetables. Jimmy Shanks and the new chef between them did a great deal of what was known as 'effecting economies.' They mixed evaporated milk with the cream. They made butterless and eggless cakes. They introduced at the Inn all the women's-club and women's-page desserts that Myron hated: horrible drug-store things with raspberry syrup and nuts and slices of pineapple and marshmallows and canned cherries. They advertised and were successful with the 'Old-time New England Dinner, every Friday evening'--with clam-chowder, beans, corned beef and cabbage, and pumpkin pie made with cornstarch instead of eggs--and made every motoring New Yorker, exclaim over its delicious quaintness.