On the twenty-ninth, Hunter usually got drunk and Stephen had to hustle out and read the unread meters and hustle back and make out the rest of the bills.
When Townsend, the Old Man, who owned the business and five other gas businesses in larger towns, paid his semimonthly visit to Maysville, Stephen had to take a severe bawling out for failing to squeeze blood from Maysville’s turnips and allowing Hunter to get drunk.
All in all, Stephen earned the $22.50 per week which he had been getting the eight years he had worked for the gas company.
He was now thirty-one. At twelve, he had been obliged to quit school and go to work as a Western Union messenger boy. His father was dead and his mother, who established herself, without much profit as a dressmaker, easily could use the few dollars Stephen drew from the telegraph company. Later on he had jobs as driver of a grocery wagon, soda clerk in a drug store and freight wrestler at the Lackawanna depot.
The $22.50 offer from the gas office was manna from somewhere; it topped his highest previous salary by seven dollars and a half.
Stephen’s mother died and Stephen married Stella Nichols, to whom lack of money was no novelty. But they had a couple of children and soon fell into debt, which made Stephen less efficient than ever as a collector of the company’s back bills. He couldn’t blame other people for not settling when he was stalling off creditors himself.
All he could do was wish to heaven that the Old Man would come across with a substantial raise, and he knew there was as much chance of that as of Stella’s swimming the English Channel with a kid under each arm.
The Gales were too poor to go to picture shows; besides, there was no one to leave the children with. So Stephen and Stella stayed at home evenings and read books from the town library. The books Stephen read were books of poetry.
And often, after Stella had gone to bed, he wrote poetry of his own.
He wrote a poem to Stella and gave it to her on one of her birthdays and she said it was great and he ought to quit the darn old gas company and write poetry for a living.
He laughed that off, remarking that he was as poor now as he cared to be.
He didn’t show Stella his other poems—poems about Nature, flowers, the Lackawanna Railroad, the beauties of Maysville, et cetera—but kept them locked in a drawer of his desk at the gas office.
There was a man named Charley Roberts who traveled out of New York for an instantaneous water-heater concern. For years he had been trying to sell old Townsend, but old Townsend said the heater ate up too much gas and would make the customers squawk. They squawked enough as it was. Roberts was a determined young man and kept after Townsend in spite of the latter’s discouraging attitude.
Roberts was also a wisecracking, kidding New Yorker, who, when at home, lunched where his heroes lunched, just to be near them, look at them and overhear some of their wisecracks which he could repeat to his fellow drummers on the road. These heroes of his were comic-strip artists, playwrights and editors of humorous columns in the metropolitan press.
His favorite column was the one conducted by George Balch in the Standard and when he was in the small towns, he frequently clipped silly items from the local papers and sent them to George, who substituted his own captions for Charley’s and pasted them up.
Charley had a tip that Old Man Townsend would be in Maysville on a certain day, and as he was in the neighborhood, he took an interurban car thither and called at the gas office. Stephen had just got back from a fruitless tour among the deadheads and was in the shop, behind the office, telling Ed Hunter that Mrs. Harper’s pilot-light wouldn’t stay lighted.
Roberts, alone in the office, looked idly at Stephen’s desk and saw a book.
It was a volume of poems by Amy Lowell. A moment later Stephen reentered from the shop.
“Hello there, Gale,” said Roberts.
“How are you, Mr. Roberts?” said Stephen.
“I heard the Old Man was here,” said Roberts.
“You’ve missed him,” said Stephen. “He was here yesterday afternoon and left for Haines City last night.”
“Will he be here tomorrow?”
“I couldn’t tell you. He’s hard to keep track of.”
“He’s hard to sell, too. But I’ll run over there and take a chance. I notice you’ve been reading highbrow poetry.”
“I got this from the library.”
“How do you like it?”
“I’m not strong for poetry that don’t rhyme,” said Stephen.
“I guess it’s easier to write,” said Roberts.
“I don’t believe so. It isn’t much trouble rhyming if you’ve got it in you. Look at Edgar Guest.”
“How do you know he doesn’t have trouble?”
“His works don’t read like it,” said Stephen, and after a pause: “Besides, I’ve tried it myself.”
“Oh, so you’re a poet, are you?” asked Roberts.
“I wouldn’t exactly claim that, but I’ve written a few verses and it was more like fun than work. Maybe other people would think they were rotten, but I get pleasure writing them just the same.”
“I’d like to read them, Gale,” said Roberts eagerly.
“I don’t know if I’d like you to or not. And I don’t know if I’ve saved any. I wrote a poem to my wife on her birthday three years ago. She thought it was pretty good. I might let you read that, only I don’t know if I’ve got a copy of it around here.”
He knew very well he had a copy of it around there.
“See if you can find it,” said Roberts.
Stephen looked in two or three drawers before he unlocked the one that contained his manuscripts.
“It’s just a little thing I wrote for my wife on her birthday. You’ll probably think it’s rotten. It’s called ‘To Stella.’ That’s my wife’s first name.”
Charley Roberts read the poem:
Stella you
