Hugo sat in Madison Square Park giving his attention in a circuit to the
Flatiron Building, the clock on the Metropolitan Tower, and the creeping
barrage of traffic that sent people scampering, stopped, moved forward
again. He had sat on the identical bench at the identical time of day
during his obscure undergraduate period. To repeat that contemplative
stasis after so much living had intervened ought to have produced an
emotion. He had gone to the park with that idea. But the febrile fires
of feeling were banked under the weight of many things and he could
suffer nothing, enjoy nothing and think but one fragmentary routine.
He had tried much and made no progress. He would be forced presently to
depart on a different course from a new threshold. That idea went round
and round in his head like a single fly in a big room. It lost poignancy
and eventually it lost meaning. Still he sat in feeble sunshine trying
to move beyond stagnancy. He remembered the small man with the huge
roll of bills who had moved beside him and asked for a cup of coffee. He
remembered the woman who had robbed him; silk ankles crossed his line of
vision, and a gusty appetite vaporized even as it steamed into the
coldness of his indecision.
He was without money now, as he had been then, so long ago. He budged on
the bench and challenged himself to think.
What would you do if you were the strongest man in the world, the
strongest thing in the world, mightier than the machine? He made himself
guess answers for that rhetorical query. "I would--I would have won the
war. But I did not. I would run the universe single-handed. Literally
single-handed. I would scorn the universe and turn it to my own ends. I
would be a criminal. I would rip open banks and gut them. I would kill
and destroy. I would be a secret, invisible blight. I would set out to
stamp crime off the earth; I would be a super-detective, following and
summarily punishing every criminal until no one dared to commit a
felony. What would I do? What will I do?"
Then he realized that he was hungry. He had not eaten enough in the last
few days. Enough for him. With some intention of finding work he had
left Mr. Shayne's house. A call on the telephone from Mr. Shayne himself
volunteering a position had crystallized that intention. In three days
he had discovered the vast abundance of young men, the embarrassment of
young men, who were walking along the streets looking for work. He who
had always worked with his arms and shoulders had determined to try to
earn his living with his head. But the white-collar ranks were teeming,
overflowing, supersaturated. He went down in the scale of clerkships and
inexperienced clerkships. There was no work.
Thence he had gone to the park, and presently he rose. He had seen the
clusters of men on Sixth Avenue standing outside the employment
agencies. He could go there. Any employment was better than hunger--and
he had learned that hunger could come swiftly and formidably to him.
Business was slack, hands were being laid off; where an apprentice was
required, three trained men waited avidly for work. It was appalling and
Hugo saw it as appalling. He was not frightened, but, as he walked, he
knew that it was a mistake to sit in the park with the myriad other men.
Walking made him feel better. It was action, it bred the thought that
any work was better than none. Work would not hinder his dreams,
meantime.
When he reached Forty-second Street he could see the sullen, watchful
groups of men. He joined one of them. A loose-jointed, dark-faced person
came down a flight of stairs, wrote on a blackboard in chalk, and went
up again. Several of the group detached themselves and followed him--to
compete for a chance to wash windows.