In the hotel Claire was conscious of the ugliness of the poison-green
walls and brass cuspidors and insurance calendars and bare floor of the
office; conscious of the interesting scientific fact that all air had
been replaced by the essence of cigar smoke and cooking cabbage; of the
stares of the traveling men lounging in bored lines; and of the lack of
welcome on the part of the night clerk, an oldish, bleached man with
whiskers instead of a collar.
She tried to be important: "Two rooms with bath, please."
The bleached man stared at her, and shoved forward the register and a
pen clotted with ink. She signed. He took the bags, led the way to the
stairs. Anxiously she asked, "Both rooms are with bath?"
From the second step the night clerk looked down at her as though she
were a specimen that ought to be pinned on the corks at once, and he
said loudly, "No, ma'am. Neither of 'em. Got no rooms vacant with bawth,
or bath either! Not but what we got 'em in the house. This is an
up-to-date place. But one of 'm's took, and the other has kind of been
out of order, the last three-four months."
From the audience of drummers below, a delicate giggle.
Claire was too angry to answer. And too tired. When, after miles of
stairs, leagues of stuffy hall, she reached her coop, with its iron bed
so loose-jointed that it rattled to a breath, its bureau with a list to
port, and its anemic rocking-chair, she dropped on the bed, panting, her
eyes closed but still brimming with fire. It did not seem that she could
ever move again. She felt chloroformed. She couldn't even coax herself
off the bed, to see if her father was any better off in the next room.
She was certain that she was not going to drive to Seattle. She wasn't
going to drive anywhere! She was going to freight the car back to
Minneapolis, and herself go back by train--Pullman!--drawing-room!
But for the thought of her father she would have fallen asleep, in her
drenched tweeds. When she did force the energy to rise, she had to
support herself by the bureau, by the foot of the bed, as she moved
about the room, hanging up the wet suit, rubbing herself with a slippery
towel, putting on a dark silk frock and pumps. She found her father
sitting motionless in his room, staring at the wall. She made herself
laugh at him for his gloomy emptiness. She paraded down the hall with
him.
As they reached the foot of the stairs, the old one, the night clerk
leaned across the desk and, in a voice that took the whole office into
the conversation, quizzed, "Come from New York, eh? Well, you're quite a
ways from home."