THE OLD GENTLEMAN OF THE OXYGEN.
POOR Myles had met with so many rebuffs and disappointments, and his
own opinion of himself had been so decidedly lowered that afternoon,
that he was fully prepared to have his offer of service refused by the
city editor of the _Phonograph_. He was therefore not at all surprised
when Mr. Haxall began in his kindly but unmistakable way to tell him
that there was no vacancy. He had already made up his mind to give
up trying for a reporter’s position and make an effort in some other
direction, when, to his amazement, he found himself accepted and
ordered to report for duty the following day. It was incomprehensible.
What had Van Cleef said to influence the city editor so remarkably?
There was no chance to ask just then, for Mr. Haxall had already
resumed his reading of the evening papers, a great pile of which lay
on his desk, and Myles realized that the short interview, by which
the whole course of his life was to be affected, was at an end. So he
merely said: “Thank you, sir, I’ll be on hand,” and turned to follow
Van Cleef, who had already started toward the door.
The boy’s mind was in a conflicting whirl of thoughts, and he was
conscious of a decided sense of exaltation. He had actually got into
business and was to receive a salary. To be sure, it was only promised
for one week; but even in that short time he felt that he could prove
so useful that the city editor would wonder how he had ever got along
without him.
As they passed into the anteroom of the office Van Cleef introduced
his companion to a Mr. Brown, a stout, middle-aged man, who occupied
a dingy little den, in which he was busily writing by the light of a
single gas-jet. Mr. Brown was affably condescending, was pleased to
make Mr. Manning’s acquaintance, and hoped he would like the office.
As they bade him good-evening and started downstairs Myles asked:
“Who is this Mr. Brown, Van? Is he one of the editors?”
“Bless you, no,” laughed Van Cleef. “He is the janitor of the building.”
“The janitor!” exclaimed Myles, with a slight tone of contempt in his
voice. “Why, I thought he must be the managing editor at the very
least. What on earth did you want to introduce me to the janitor for?
I’m not in the habit of knowing such people.”
“Oh, you are not, aren’t you!” replied Van Cleef, a little scornfully.
“Well, the sooner you form the habit the better you will get along as
a reporter. It’s no use putting on airs, old man,” he continued, more
kindly. “A reporter has got to be on friendly terms with all sorts of
men, from presidents to janitors, and a good deal lower in the social
scale than that too. Besides, Brown is a mighty good fellow, as you
will find out when you come to know him. He also occupies a position in
which he can smooth your path or make you uncomfortable in many little
ways, as he takes a notion. Why, for one thing, he has charge of all
those rascals of office-boys, and they will treat you respectfully or
the reverse according as they see that you are in Brown’s good or bad
graces. That seems a little thing, but you will find that it makes a
great difference to your peace of mind. Oh, yes, you must cultivate
Brown by all means.”
When they were seated in the elevated train on their way up-town Myles
suddenly remembered his companion’s mysterious communication to the
city editor, and asked him what he had said to cause Mr. Haxall to
alter his decision so completely.
“It was evident,” he continued, “that he was about to give me a
polite dismissal, but you whispered a word or two in his ear and he
immediately engaged me. What was it? Did you tell him I was one of the
principal stockholders in the paper?”
Van Cleef burst into a fit of laughter so uncontrollable that it was a
full minute before he could answer. At last he said:
“No, indeed; I didn’t tell him that you were a stockholder in the
paper; for, in the first place, I didn’t know that you were. In the
second place, the stockholders are the bane of his existence, and worry
him more than anybody else by forcing worthless fellows, who have some
claim upon them, into his department. Oh, no, I wasn’t going to ruin
your chances by representing you in any such unfavorable light as
that.”
“What did you tell him then?”
“Why, I simply mentioned that you owned a dress-suit.”
For a moment Myles stared at his companion in speechless amazement.
Finally he gasped out:
“A dress-suit! You told him that I owned a dress-suit! What in the
name of common sense could that have to do with his taking me on as a
reporter? Or are you only joking?”
“Not a bit of it,” answered Van Cleef. “It honestly was the dress-suit,
and nothing else, unless it was your manner and personal appearance
that fixed the business for you. You see, there are lots of places to
which a city editor wishes to send a reporter where only fellows in
full evening dress are admitted. Now, most reporters are too poor to
own dress-suits, or else they have so little use for such luxuries that
they don’t care to go to the expense. Thus it is often hard for the
city editor to find a man for some important bit of work just on this
account. He therefore keeps a list of all the reporters on the staff
who own swallow-tails, and is mighty glad to add to it, especially if
the proposed addition is evidently a gentleman. I saw that he wasn’t
going to give you a show, and just then it occurred to me to suggest
the only special recommendation I could think of. But what makes you
look so downcast? It worked all right, didn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Myles, whose self-esteem had just received the
severest shock of the day by learning the secret of his recent success,
which he had fondly imagined was owing to something far different.
“Yes, it worked all right; but I’ve always heard that clothes did not
make the man, while here is proof positive that clothes can at least
make a reporter. It is awfully humiliating, and the worst of it is that
I haven’t a dress-suit.”
“Why, I have seen you wear it time and again?” exclaimed Van Cleef.
“Yes, but I found it necessary to raise a little ready money to-day,”
answered Myles, though he hated to make the admission; “so I sold it
along with some other things I thought I should never need again to
Johnny, the ‘old-clo’ man.’”
“You don’t mean it!” cried Van Cleef. “Well, that is bad, and the only
thing for you to do is to go to Johnny first thing in the morning and
make him let you have it back.”
“But I am afraid I haven’t money enough to redeem it,” said Myles, with
a heightened color. In the set to which he had so recently belonged
poverty was the thing most sneered at, and Myles had not yet learned
that it was one of the last things to be ashamed of.
“Oh, I can make that all right,” answered the other, cheerfully. “I
have a few dollars put away against next year’s term-bills, and you are
more than welcome to them. Yes, indeed, you must take them,” he added,
earnestly, as he saw the shadow of a refusal in his companion’s face.
“We must get hold of that dress-suit again if it is a possible thing.
It will really be doing me a favor besides; for while I have them
I’m always tempted to spend those dollars. If they are invested as a
loan, though, I can’t spend them, and I shall have the satisfaction of
knowing they are safe.”
Myles had tried, unsuccessfully, to borrow a small sum of money that
morning from several of his wealthy classmates. Now, to have this
generous offer made by one of the very poorest among them was so
overwhelming that he hardly knew what to say. He hated to accept money
from one who was so little able to spare it. He also feared to hurt
his friend’s feelings by refusing, and he realized the importance of
recovering that dress-suit. These thoughts flashed through his mind
in an instant, and then he did exactly the right thing, by heartily
thanking Van Cleef for his kind offer and accepting it.
The “Oxygen” was a club occupying a small but well appointed
club-house, supported by one of the college Greek-letter fraternities
of which Myles had recently been made a member. He was very proud
of belonging to this, his first club, but he foresaw that, with his
altered circumstances, it was a luxury that he could no longer afford.
He had therefore made up his mind to hand in his resignation that very
evening.
After a particularly nice little dinner, for Myles, like many another,
was inclined to be very generous in the expenditure of his last dollar,
and after he had written a line to his mother, the friends sat in the
reading-room. Here they talked in low tones of their future plans and
of their college life, which, to Myles, already seemed to belong to
the dim past. The only other occupant of the room was a small, rather
insignificant looking old gentleman, who was carelessly glancing over
some papers at a table near them. Finally Van Cleef asked to be excused
for a short time, as he had an errand that would take him a few blocks
from there, and which must be done that evening.
He had hardly left when the old gentleman looked up from his papers and
said to Myles:
“I beg your pardon, but are you not Mr. Manning, captain of the X——
College ’Varsity crew?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Myles, “I am—that is, I was—I mean my name is
Manning, and I was until this morning captain of the crew; but I have
resigned.”
“Indeed! I am very sorry to hear it,” replied the old gentleman,
with an air of interest. “Would you mind telling me why you found it
necessary to do so? I am an old X—— College man myself, and take a
great interest in all its athletic sports, especially its boating. I
have been much pleased with the performance thus far of this year’s
crew under your captaincy, and regret seriously that you feel obliged
to give it up.”
Encouraged by the old gentleman’s friendly manner, and very grateful
for his sympathy and kindly interest in himself, Myles readily answered
his questions, and within a few minutes was surprised to find how
freely he was talking to this stranger. He could not have told how it
was brought about, but before their conversation ended he had confided
to the other all his trials, plans, and hopes, including the facts that
he was on the morrow to begin life as a reporter on the _Phonograph_,
and that he intended resigning from the Oxygen that evening.
When Myles realized that he was becoming almost too confidential, and
checked himself as he was about to relate the dress-suit incident, the
old gentleman said:
“I have been greatly interested in all this, and now, to show that I
appreciate the confidence you have reposed in me, I am going to ask a
favor of you.”
“Which I shall be only too happy to grant, sir, provided it lies within
my power,” answered Myles, who had taken a great fancy to the old
gentleman.
“It is that you will not resign from the Oxygen.”
“But I must, sir, much as I hate to.”
“Not necessarily,” replied the other. “You know that at the business
meetings of the club all members are allowed to vote by proxy if they
are unable to be personally present. Now I am nearly always compelled
to be absent from these meetings. In fact, I rarely find time to visit
the club at all; but, as one of its founders, I am most anxious for its
success, and desirous of still having a voice in the conduct of its
affairs. This I can only do by appointing a regular proxy, and if you
will kindly consent to act as such for me I will gladly pay your dues
to the club, and shall still consider myself under an obligation to
you.”
The temptation to accept this friendly proposal was so great that Myles
only protested feebly against it. His faint objections were quickly
overruled by the old gentleman, who had no sooner gained the other’s
consent to remain in the club and act as his proxy than he looked at
his watch and, exclaiming, “Bless me, it is later than I thought!” bade
Myles a cordial good-night and hurried away.
“What did you say his name was?” asked Van Cleef, after he had returned
and listened to Myles’ enthusiastic description of his new friend and
account of their interview.
“His name?” repeated Myles, hesitatingly, “why, I don’t believe he
mentioned it. I’ll go and ask the door-tender.”
But the door-tender had just been relieved and gone home, while the boy
who acted in his place of course knew nothing of who had come or gone
before he went on duty.
“Well, that is good,” laughed Van Cleef, when Myles returned and, with
a crestfallen air, announced that he could not discover the name of
the person for whom he had just consented to act as proxy. “The old
gentleman has shown himself to be a better reporter, or detective,
which is much the same thing, than you, Manning. He has gained a full
knowledge of you and your plans, while you have learned absolutely
nothing about him. He may be an impostor, for all you know.”
“Not much he isn’t,” answered Myles, somewhat indignantly; “I’d trust
his face for all that he claimed, and a good deal more beside. Anyhow
he is a _Psi Delt_, for he had the grip.”
“Oh, well,” said Van Cleef, good-naturedly, seeing that his companion
was a little provoked at being thought easily imposed upon, “I dare say
it’s all right, and you’ll hear from him in some way or other.”
As the friends thus talked they were walking rapidly toward the first
of the many police-stations that Van Cleef was obliged to visit every
night, for it wanted but a few minutes of ten o’clock.
The plain brick building situated in the middle of a block and used
as a police-station could be distinguished from the houses on either
side of it at a long distance up or down the street by the two
green lights on the edge of the sidewalk in front of it. Reaching
it, the reporters ran up a short flight of steps, and entered a big
square room, the silence of which was only broken by the ticking of
a telegraph instrument in one corner. The room was brightly lighted
and scrupulously clean. An officer in a sort of undress uniform, who
is known as a “door-man,” whose business it is to take care of the
station-house and of the cells beneath it, saluted Van Cleef as he
entered. Returning the salute, the reporter stepped up to a stout
railing that ran the whole length of the room at one side, and,
addressing another officer, who sat at a big desk writing in an immense
book, said:
“Good-evening, sergeant.”
“Good-evening, Mr. Van Cleef.”
“Any thing going on to-night?”
“Nothing more than ordinary.”
“You don’t mind my looking at the blotter?”
“Certainly not.”
“Hello! what’s this drowning case?” inquired Van Cleef, as he ran his
eye down a page of the big book, on which were recorded the arrests
or other important incidents reported by the officers of that station
during the day.
“That? Oh, that’s nothing particular. It happened a couple of hours
ago, and your head-quarters man has got all there is of it long before
this.”
Van Cleef asked no further questions, but, making a few notes of the
case, he bade the sergeant good-night, and he and Myles left the
station.
As they gained the street Van Cleef said:
“Head-quarters may or may not have got hold of that case, and it may
not amount to any thing anyway, but I think it’s worth looking up. So
if you don’t mind going a bit out of our way, we will see what we can
find out about it.”
“What do you mean by head-quarters?” asked Myles.
“Why, all the large papers keep a man at the Police Head-quarters on
Mulberry Street day and night, and he telegraphs all important police
news from there to them,” answered Van Cleef.
Away over to Tenth Avenue they went. There they hunted some time before
they found the right number. Then through a narrow, intensely dark
and vile-smelling alley, across a dirty court, and into a tall back
tenement swarming with human beings, up flight after flight of filthy
stairways they climbed to the very top of the house before they reached
the room of which they were in search. Van Cleef knocked at the closed
door, but, receiving no answer, he pushed it open and they entered.
A single flaring candle dimly lighted the scene. The room was so bare
that a rude bedstead, a ruder table, two chairs, and a rusty stove
constituted all its furniture. On the bed, still in its wet clothing,
lay the body of the drowned man. It was little more than a skeleton,
and the cheeks were white and hollow. Beside the bed, with her face
buried in her hands, knelt a woman moaning, while from a corner two
wretched children, huddled together on a pile of rags, stared at the
visitors with big, frightened eyes.
As Van Cleef touched the kneeling woman on the shoulder and spoke to
her, she ceased her moaning and lifted the most pitiful, haggard, and
altogether hopeless face Myles Manning thought he had ever seen.
“Go away!” she cried, “and leave me alone to die with him! O Jim,
my Jim! why couldn’t you take me with you? Why did you leave me,
Jim—Jim—my Jim, the best husband that ever a woman had?” Then she
again buried her face, and again began her heart-rending moaning.
It was a long time before Van Cleef, using infinite patience, tact, and
soothing words could learn her story. It was an old one of a husband
and father broken down in health, thrown out of employment, too proud
to seek public charity, and finally plunging into the river to escape
the piteous cries of his starving little ones. He had gone out that
evening to seek food, saying that he would either bring it or never
come back alive. He knew that if he were dead his family would stand a
better chance of being cared for than while he was living.
As Myles and Van Cleef left this place of sorrow and suffering, the
latter slipped a dollar into the woman’s hand and promised further aid
on the morrow. Myles, poor fellow, was so affected by what he saw
that he would have given her his sole bit of wealth—a five-dollar
bill,—but his companion restrained him.
They had to hurry through with the half-dozen police-stations and two
hospitals remaining on their route to make up for lost time.
Trinity bells were chiming a quarter to one o’clock as they reached
the _Phonograph_ office. The editorial rooms were ablaze with electric
lights. Reporters and messenger-boys were dashing in and out. Men in
their shirt-sleeves were writing or editing copy at the long desks. The
whole scene was the one of breathless haste and well ordered confusion
that always immediately precedes the going to press of a great daily.
Van Cleef made his report to the night city editor, and was ordered
to write out his story in full. While he was doing this, Myles sat
and watched him, wondering if he could possibly compose a readable
description of what they had just seen amid such surroundings. At last
Van Cleef finished, handed in his copy, and at half-past two o’clock
the two weary fellows turned into bed, Myles sharing his companion’s
humble lodgings for the night.