He did not let Mrs. Purp know of the change in his condition, and every
morning left his lodging at the usual time. By some curious attraction
he felt drawn to that downtown region where his kinsman's office was.
This part of the city he had not properly explored.
It was a world wholly different from Fifth Avenue. There was none of
that sense of space and luxury he had known on the wide slopes of Murray
Hill. He wandered under terrific buildings, in a breezy shadow where
javelins of colourless sunlight pierced through thin slits, hot
brilliance fell in fans and cascades over the uneven terrace of roofs.
Here was where husbands worked to keep Fifth Avenue going: he wondered
vaguely whether Mrs. Sealyham had bought those stockings? One day he
saw his uncle hurrying along Wall Street with an intent face. Gissing
skipped into a doorway, fearing to be recognized. He knew that the old
fellow would insist on taking him to lunch at the Pedigree Club, would
talk endlessly, and ask family questions. But he was on the scent of
matters that talk could not pursue.
He perceived a sense of pressure, of prodigious poetry and beauty and
amazement. This was a strange jungle of life. Tall coasts of windows
stood up into the pure brilliant sky: against their feet beat a dark
surf of slums. In one foreign street, too deeply trenched for sunlight,
oranges were the only gold. The water, reaching round in two arms, came
close: there was a note of husky summons in the whistles of passing
craft. Almost everywhere, sharp above many smells of oils and spices,
the whiff of coffee tingled his busy nose. Above one huge precipice
stood a gilded statue--a boy with wings, burning in the noon. Brilliance
flamed between the vanes of his pinions: the intangible thrust of that
pouring light seemed about to hover him off into blue air.
The world of working husbands was more tender than that of shopping
wives: even in all their business, they had left space and quietness for
the dead. Sunken among the crags he found two graveyards. They were cups
of placid brightness. Here, looking upward, it was like being drowned
on the floor of an ocean of light. Husbands had built their offices
half-way to the sky rather than disturb these. Perhaps they appreciate
rest all the more, Gissing thought, because they get so little of it?
Somehow he could not quite imagine a graveyard left at peace in the
shopping district. It would be bad for trade, perhaps? Even the churches
on the Avenue, he had noticed, were huddled up and hemmed in so tightly
by the other buildings that they had scarcely room to kneel. If I ever
become a parson, he said (this was a fantastic dream of his), I will
insist that all churches must have a girdle of green about them, to set
them apart from the world.
The two little brown churches among the cliffs had been gifted with a
dignity far beyond the dream of their builders. Their pointing spires
were relieved against the enormous facades of business. What other
altars ever had such a reredos? Above the strepitant racket of the
streets, he heard the harsh chimes of Trinity at noonday--strong jags of
clangour hurled against the great sounding-boards of buildings; drifting
and dying away down side alleys. There was no soft music of appeal in
the bronze volleying: it was the hoarse monitory voice of rebuke. So
spoke the church of old, he thought: not asking, not appealing, but
imperatively, sternly, as one born to command. He thought with new
respect of Mr. Sealyham, Mr. Mastiff, Mr. Dachshund, all the others
who were powers in these fantastic flumes of stone. They were more than
merely husbands of charge accounts--they were poets. They sat at lunch
on the tops of their amazing edifices, and looked off at the blue.
Day after day went by, but with a serene fatalism Gissing did nothing
about hunting a job. He was willing to wait until the last dollar was
broken: in the meantime he was content. You never know the soul of a
city, he said, until you are down on your luck. Now, he felt, he had
been here long enough to understand her. She did not give her secrets to
the world of Fifth Avenue. Down here, where the deep crevice of Broadway
opened out into greenness, what was the first thing he saw? Out across
the harbour, turned toward open sea--Liberty! Liberty Enlightening the
World, he had heard, was her full name. Some had mocked her, he had also
heard. Well, what was the gist of her enlightenment? Why this, surely:
that Liberty could never be more than a statue: never a reality. Only a
fool would expect complete liberty. He himself, with all his latitude,
was not free. If he were, he would cook his meals in his room, and save
money--but Mrs. Purp was strict on that point. She had spoken scathingly
of two young females she ejected for just that reason. Nor was Mrs. Purp
free--she was ridden by the Gas Company. So it went.
It struck him, now he was down to about three dollars, that a generous
gesture toward Fortune might be valuable. When you are nearly out of
money, he reasoned, to toss coins to the gods--i. e., to buy something
quite unnecessary--may be propitiatory. It may start something moving
in your direction. It is the touch of bravado that God relishes. In a
sudden mood of tenderness, he bought two dollars' worth of toys and had
them sent to the children. He smiled to think how they would frolic over
the jumping rabbit. He sent Mrs. Spaniel a postcard of the Aquarium.
There is a good deal more to this business than I had realized, he said,
as he walked uptown through the East Side slums that hot night. The
audacity, the vitality, the magnificence, are plain enough. But I seem
to see squalor too, horror and pitiful dearth. I believe God is farther
off than I thought. Look here: if the more you know, the less you know
about God, doesn't that mean that God is really enjoyed only by the
completely simple--by faith, never by reason?
He gave twenty-five cents to a beggar, and said angrily: “I am not
interested in a God who is known only by faith.”
When he got uptown he was very tired and hungry. In spite of all Mrs.
Purp's rules, he smuggled in an egg, a box of biscuits, a small packet
of tea and sugar, and a tin of condensed milk. He emptied the milk into
his shaving mug, and used the tin to boil water in, holding it over the
gas jet. He was getting on finely when a sudden knock on the door made
him jump. He spilled the hot water on his leg, and uttered a wild yell.
Mrs. Purp burst in, but she was so excited that she did not notice the
egg seeping into the clean counterpane.
“Oh, Mr. Gissing,” she exclaimed, “I've been waiting all evening for
you to come in. Purp and I wondered if you'd seen this in the paper
to-night? Purp noticed it in the ads., but we couldn't understand what
it meant.”
She held out a page of classified advertising, in which he read with
amazement: