 | CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOTEL CHILD. A woman in armor |  |
16. CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOTEL CHILD.
THREE o'clock of a February morning
in Chicago. The great city turned in
her sleep, as you might say, and heard
the lake whisper in her ear. It was the quietest
hour of the twenty-four in the Grand Atlantic.
The late arrivals were all folded in; the early
morning din was yet to come.
If angels walk among men, and keep specially
kind eyes on little children, there must have
been a sad one standing invisible in a small
back room of the Grand Atlantic. A room
over kitchens, near stables, and looking into a
deep court where the weekly washing was dried.
There is no room for children in hotels; the
marts of men cannot be made the sites of family
life. Watch those little unfortunates whose
parents place them on such a highway. They
wander about very homesick. There are no
play-houses; there is nothing to climb except
forbidden balustrades; they never sit by mamma's
jokes go round. They cannot run to the pantry
for cookies when they want to have “pic-a-nics.”
There are so many big people, and the
big people do not care for them at all. They
are snubbed. The head-waiter is terrible in
their eyes. When nurse takes them into the
second table, strangles them with napkins around
the neck, and stuffs them most uncomfortably,
they watch that awful dignitary until they may
be said literally to eat him and drink him. If
they hurt themselves and cry, everybody in the
house is indignant. If they prowl down in the
office, the clerk slays them with his terrible eye,
if not by his more terrible voice. Mamma
doesn't want them to litter up her rooms; one
is so crowded even in a suite! She has very
little time to give them, too, because she is always
“going out,” or chatting with Mrs.
Thomas, Richard, and Henry—her neighbors
of like elegant leisure.
There is no “out-doors” for them. They are
taken for an “airing” by Mary Maloney, who
saunters at their head, pushing the baby's “perambulator.”
They may look at the stores, and
be pushed by passers-by. They must not run
ahead, nor be lagging behind, nor get run over
at the crossings. They must not shout, nor
dirty their clothes. There are no green, good
places, no home romping—perhaps even no cellar-door
to slide on—for hotel children. Their
they grow to tolerate them as such.
By and by they grow pert. They stand up
for themselves, order their dishes with old
tongues and tastes, and retort on passing travellers
who make remarks to them. They catch all
the slang in the air, state their opinions to their
elders, are sly and curious about the parlor-door
(which is Blue-Beard's secret door to them);
they even beard that lion, the clerk, in his own
den!
There is no room for children in hotels. They
enter innocent and trembling. The Amorites
and the Hivites and the Perizzites push them.
They stand up for themselves at an age when
their parents ought to stand for them—and they
come out bold and bad, and no longer children.
G. Guest, Esq., had an elegant suite of rooms
in the Grand Atlantic. The waiters in the house
adored him. No other gentleman so free, so gracious,
yet so exacting. The business which had
hurried him from Little Boston seemed completed.
He had only to bask in all the good
which God sent upon the earth those murky
February days. From the windows of his dressing
room, when he rose late of mornings, he
could see the hard-worked world going about
its labor, and he smiled, smoothing his golden
mustaches in the plenitude of his comfort.
Yet deem not G. Guest, Esq., an idle man.
Nay: he was busy all day long, and often all
of the city; he was president of several
clubs; he belonged to a Turf organization.
The crêpe on his hat dwindled away as fast as
the moon. His wealth, his ease, his handsome
presence, gave him entrée to society in Chicago,
where people have not time to inquire into your
antecedents; where they weigh you and give
you a trial before they cast you out. G. Guest,
Esq., felt himself a patron of the whole city, and
wrought hard to extract his pleasure from it.
His son he rarely saw. His son had a nursery
at the back of the house, where young ones were
kept out of the road, and Maggie Maloney
took care of the little pest. If Maggie Maloney
told him George needed anything, he threw her
a frown and a bill, which latter Maggie Maloney
expended as seemed to her best.
If G. Guest, Esq., had lived with George, and
worked for him from the time of his birth—if he
had watched the sensitive little soul spread out,
and feel for love and care—perhaps even his
gross heart would have learned tenderness for
his own. But there was no sweet past to draw
them together. On the child's side was unconquered
fear and distrust; on the father's side,
indifference and tyranny.
When George, in his wanderings through the
great No-Home, put a timid face into his
father's rooms, G. Guest, Esq., either waived
him off, or, in facetious mood, called him in to
with a cane, to use him as a whetstone for sarcasm.
Sometimes the boy turned on him with
all his baby energy; but he oftener slunk away
to cry himself to sleep on the nursery floor.
There were no pretty surprises for this child
—no sudden toys, no quick-planned excursions,
no arrivals of playmates. Once, indeed, Maggie
Maloney took him to a matinee: but she was
so long getting back to the hotel—she had so
many big Irishmen to meet and inquire after on
the way—that George was quite tired out; and
there was no one to talk the wonderful scenes
over with, either. When he got up in bed to
ask a burning question about the little angels
that danced, Maggie Maloney slapped him for a
“little spalpeen who wouldn't lit her git a wink
o' slape wid his gab.”
His pent-up life was a tragic one. His heart
broke every day, if he sat and thought about his
mamma and his Toola. He could not realize
their being gone from him, but watched the
great entrance and the stairs day after day for
their coming. A shape, a garment, a voice
which he thought resembled Toola's would set
all his pulses a-flutter with delight. Thus, perhaps,
a dozen times a day disappointments
crushed him. The faintness of homesickness
oppressed this child. Often, in his despair and
hunger for some dear touch, he clung around
door.
Maggie Maloney was a good creature, coarse
and strong. She liked the little fellow—when
he did not vex her; she dressed him and fed
him, and dragged him out to walk. This was
the limit of her capacity. She had no mother-heart;
she loved to slip out of evenings and
dance with Paddy and Mike, and she had her
own settlement in life to look after. When
George asked her questions, his big eyes shining
through the twilight, she, thinking of Mike
or Paddy, answered “Yes,” or “No,” or “Like
enough”—at random, thus switching his laboring
mind off on sad, sad tracks. She kissed
him with the effusion of her race, but he missed
evermore the deep, speechless love on which
his life had been nourished.
Once Maggie Maloney and he were walking,
and they stopped on a draw to watch the boats
on the river. The bell rung—the bridge began
to turn—Maggie Maloney shrieked to George to
follow, and bounded to the end of the bridge
where she jumped on solid ground, leaving him
behind. People were crowding everywhere.
George's head turned with the draw. He saw
the awful gap grow between him and his nurse
—he felt himself swaying into mid-river—the
hot, black smoke of the passing tug enveloped
him—he thought he was going to be killed.
When Maggie Maloney came back, the draw
to the bridge—white even to his lips. She
laughed good-naturedly, and led him on. But
night after night George lived this shock over,
and night after night his faithful nurse slapped
him for disturbing her by screaming or sobbing
in his sleep. Or, being wakeful, she told him
stories to compose him:—about the Banshee
that comes to the window and cries, the underground
people who steal children, about murders
and witchcraft, and other such somniferous tales.
At three o'clock this February morning he sat
bolt upright in his bed, panting with terror.
He had lived it all over—the draw had turned
and sunk into the river—the water was up to his
neck—the black smoke was strangling him!
Did his mother see her curly four-year-and-a-half
baby? Did she try to soothe him when he
screamed and reached into the darkness?
He was all alone; Maggie was not there!
There was no one in the world to help him. Just
as he realized being in his nursery and alone, a
horrid yell burst through his window. He
thought of the Banshee, and leaped from the
bed. Yell after yell followed—a scrambling—a
spitting and a war-whoop! George was beside
himself; he dashed against the door and seized
the knob with all his speed and strength. Maggie
Maloney had left it unlocked, fortunately for
the reason of this child. He fled down passages
and stairways, his bare, soft feet almost winged
fell against his father's parlor door, which stood
ajar, and, bursting in, clasped his father's
knee.
G. Guest, Esq., was just in from a champagne
supper. His face was inflamed even through
the eyes. He had dropped in an easy-chair—
his cane fell below his hand—he was sinking
down long vistas into a doze—when the child
startled him. He felt irritable; his nerves were
racked by that sudden jar.
“What's the matter with you?” he cried,
kicking the boy off. “What doing here, hey?
Go to bed. Best place folks 's time o'night!
Where's M'g'loney? Go to her.”
“Me's — me — me — me's 'fraid!” sobbed
George, finding a voice in this human presence.
“Oh—papa—papa!”
You would think he could scarce help gathering
the child in his arms and soothing him.
You would think the baby-shape in its nightdress
would appeal to all which was tender in
the man; that the innocent, frightened eyes
looking to him, would make him almost a
woman for the time.
But G. Guest, Esq., had little tenderness, except
for his own case. His ease was disturbed
by a brawling brat. That is the way he looked
at it.
He picked up his cane, cut the brawling brat
across the shoulders, and put him into the passage.
the night sweetly away in infantile sleep!
When Boots went to distribute his last night's
spoils at the doors of their respective owners,
he found by the dawn's light a little round white
ball in the corner of the main passage. It
wheezed and strangled as he picked it up. It
was not cold with the February chill, but not
with fever.
“Bress my soul!” said Boots, “here's dat
little chap of Mars' Guest, run off and laid all
night in de hall, an' cotch de croup fer his
pains!”
| CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOTEL CHILD. A woman in armor | |