I met a disreputable figure which towered above me so far that I could barely make out that it had good anatomical lines and a black patch over one eye.
I will here deceive no one: it was Billy. He explained afterward that he possessed better clothes, but had mislaid them somehow, and that the cut over his eye he got in quelling a pay-night insurrection in his line-gang out in Iowa, one of whom struck him with a pair of four-hole connectors. I am sorry to confess that I once felt pride in the fact that Billy knocked the linemen's heads together – and yet Pa talks of hard knocks! – until they subsided, the blood, meanwhile, running all down over his face and clothing and theirs. It was very brutal, in outward seeming, no matter what plea of necessity may be urged for it.
I almost fell back into the doorway, he was so near and so big. His way of removing his abominable old hat, and his bow, gave me a queer little mental jolt, it was so graceful and elegant, in spite of the overalls and the faded shirt.
"I was referred to this place as Mr. Blunt's office," said he. "Can you direct me to him?"
Now Pa is as hard to approach as any Oriental potentate; but I supposed that Billy was one of the men from the factory, and had business, and I was a little fluttered by the wonderful depth and sweetness of his voice; so I just said: "This way, please" – and took him in to where Pa was sawing the air and dictating a blood-curdling letter to a firm of contractors in San Francisco, who had placed themselves outside the pale of humanity by failing to get results from our new Polyphase Generator. (Billy afterward told them what was the matter with it.) I saw that my workman had picked out an exceedingly unpsychological moment, if he expected to make a very powerful appeal to Pa's finer instincts.
"Well," roared Pa, turning on him with as much ferocity as if he had been a San Francisco contractor of the deepest dye, "what can I do for you, sir?"
"My name is Helmerston," started Billy.
"I'm not getting up any directory," shouted Pa. "What do you want?"
"I'm just through with a summer's line-work in the West," answered Billy, "and I took the liberty of applying for employment in your factory. I have – "
"The blazes you did!" ejaculated Pa, glaring at Billy from under his eyebrows. "How did you get in here?"
I was over at the filing-cases, my face just burning, for I was beginning to see what I had done. Billy looked in my direction, and as our eyes met he smiled a little.
"I hardly know, Mr. Blunt," said he. "I just asked my way and followed directions. Is it so very difficult to get in?"
I saw at once that he was a good deal decenter than he looked.
"Well, what can you do?" shouted Pa.
"Almost anything, I hope," answered Billy. "I've had no practical experience with inside work; but I have – "
"Oh, yes, I know!" said Pa, in that unfeeling way which experience and success seem to impart to the biggest-hearted men – and Pa is surely one of these. "It's the old story. As soon as a dub gets so he can cut over a rural telephone, or put in an extension-bell, or climb a twenty-five without getting seasick, he can do 'almost anything.' What one, definite, concrete thing can you do?"
"For one thing," said Billy icily, "I think I could help some by taking a broom to this factory floor out here."
"All right," said Pa, after looking at him a moment. "The broom goes! Give this man an order for a broom. Put him on the pay-roll at seven dollars a week. Find out who let him in here, and caution whoever it was against letting it occur again. Call up Mr. Sweet, and tell him I want a word with him on those Winnipeg estimates. Make an engagement with Mr. Bayley of the street-car company to lunch with me at the club at two." And Pa was running in his groove again.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, as he passed me going out.
"Thank you," I answered. "It's of no consequence – "
And then I noticed that he was looking into my eyes in a wistful and pathetic way, as if protesting against going out. I blushed as I showed him to the door: and he wasn't the first whose eyes had protested, either.
"You mustn't violate the rules, Dolly," said Pa, as we crossed the bridge in the bubble, going home. "You know perfectly well that I can't say 'no' to these tramps – "
"He wasn't a tramp," said I.
"A perfect hobo," answered Pa. "I know the type well. I have to let Burns handle them."
"He was very graceful," said I.
"Any lineman is," replied Pa. "They have the best exercise in the world. If he steals anything, you're responsible, my dear."
I supposed the incident to be closed with my statement that he had nice eyes, and Pa's sniff; but, in a few days, Pa, who watches the men like a cat, surprised me by saying that my graceful hobo was all right.
"He gathered up and saved three dollars' worth of beeswax the other men were wasting, the first day," said Pa. "Melted and strained and put it in the right place without asking any questions. And then he borrowed a blow-torch and an iron, and began practising soldering connections. He looks good to me."
"Me, too," said I.
"Blessed be the hobo," said the Colonel, "for he shall reach paradise!"
It seems strange, now, to think of my hearing these things unmoved. The dreadful humiliation to which Billy was subjected, the noble fortitude with which he bore it, and the splendid way in which he uplifted the menial tasks to which he was assigned, have always reminded me of Sir Gareth serving as a scullion in Arthur's kitchen. It is not alone in the chronicles of chivalry – but I must hasten this narrative.
I must not delay even to inform you of the ways in which it was discovered that Billy could do all sorts of things; that there was no blue-print through which his keen eye could not see, and no engineering error – like that in the Polyphase Generator – that he couldn't detect; or how he was pushed up and up by force of sheer genius, no one knowing who he was until he found himself, like an eagle among buzzards, at the head of a department, and coming into the office to see Pa quite in a legitimate way.
"Hooray! Hooray!" came from behind the tree.
"Shut up, Poet!" commanded the Artist, "or I'll come back there!"
I didn't know these things personally, because I had left the office. I had found out that there seemed to be more soul-nurture in artistic metal work than in typewriting, and had fitted up a shop in the Fine Arts Building, where Louise Amerland and I were doing perfectly enchanting stunts in hammered brass and copper – old Roman lamps and Persian lanterns, after designs we made ourselves. Pa parted with his secretary with a sigh, the nature of which may be a question better left unsettled.
This romance really begins with my visit, after months and months of absence, to the restaurant which I had dinged at Pa until he had instituted for the help. I told him that the social side of labor was neglected shamefully, and for the work people to eat at the same table with their superintendents and employers would be just too dear and democratic, and he finally yielded growlingly. He was awfully pleased afterward when the papers began to write the thing up. He said it was the cheapest advertising he ever got, and patted me on the shoulder and asked me if I wasn't ashamed to be so neglectful of my great invention. So one day I got tired of working out Rubáiyát motifs in brass, and I went over to the café for luncheon, incog. And what do you think? Billy came in and sat down very informally right across from me!
"Hello!"
