II

Leaving the plant that day was the hardest thing I have ever done. My

first impulse was to get my coat and hat and just slip away. But my

pride would not let me do that. So I braced and went back to the room

where I had been working. I told some of the fellows with whom I was

the best acquainted that I had been fired; and shook hands with them

in farewell.

There was a pretty tight feeling in my throat. But they helped me to

try and carry the thing off as something of a joke. I could see the

pity, though, in their eyes.

It was raining-a cold, drizzling, late-October rain. But I did not

notice it. I took the same old route I had taken for years, to the

Sixth Avenue Elevated station.

I did not remember, however, until I started up the station steps,

that it was forenoon and not my usual time for going home. Then I

halted and moved back again to the sidewalk, and stood there in the

rain. I understood later why I had done this. I had been suddenly

jerked out of a deep rut of habit, and was dazed at finding myself in

new conditions. Then, too, I was weighted, groggy, with the aching

depression that I was done for, out of the game-old.

I dreaded to go home and tell my wife. If I had been a drinking man,

I should have gone off on a drunk.

People jostled by me on their way up the stairs to the Elevated.

Dripping umbrellas swished against me. My overcoat was wet, and the

rain trickled from my hat-brim. But I stood there lost, dead-like one

just sent out of life.

Then my gaze was suddenly caught by an old chap who sold newspapers

in this district. I often bought my evening paper from him. He was

a little old fellow, with watery eyes, a stubby beard, and straight

gray hair that grew a little long. He had one incongruous feature,

though-good teeth that were kept clean. I had always noticed them.

My vague interest in him had tabulated him a boozer. But to-day I

watched him with a new and curious fascination.

He had halted in a doorway, and stood there, hunched up, with his

newspapers under his arm. He still wore a summer’s stained and

battered straw hat, and a dirty bandana handkerchief was tied about

his neck. He was wet and pinched with the cold. He had turned up

the collar of his old coat, and stood with one hand in his trousers

pocket, as with the effort to coax a little warmth. For the minute,

he had forgotten everything but his own discomfort. The hopeless

misery of the man looked out of his watery eyes.

A dull sympathy of understanding stirred in me. The next instant I

resented this feeling. I resented it because it put me in this old

chap’s class. Then the man’s necessity to live pushed him on again to

work. He started in my direction, calling out his papers in a cracked

and wheezy voice.

I bought a paper from him and started across the street. I had the

feeling of hurrying away from something that was clutching at me-as

a man, using his last spurt of strength to swim for his own life,

tries to keep away from the reach of another who is drowning. But I

couldn’t get away from this old fellow. The picture of him filled my

inner vision. The feeling of him pulsed through my blood. We truly

_were_ in the same class-both old, and both on the edge of life

making our struggle.

It was noon. I went into a Child’s restaurant and bought a cup of

coffee. That brought me back nearer to normal. I decided to look for

another job. Having secured that, I could face my wife with more of

encouragement.

All that afternoon I went from one printing-office to another. But

they all turned me down. Of course, my rain-soaked appearance did not

inspire much confidence. Had I waited, and gone the rounds looking a

little less down-and-out, I might have met with success. But later

experience has made me feel that it would have made small difference.

After each refusal I grew a few years older. I tried to make my sense

of humor work a little. But it wouldn’t. That and every other part

of my being was caught in the grip of a shrinking fear. By the time

I turned into the doorway of my own Harlem apartment house I was a

shuffling old man.

The halls of the house, as usual, were filled with the odors of

Kosher cooking. I dragged up the one flight of stairs and fumbled the

key into the lock of my own door. Downstairs the front door opened

and closed. Someone had come in. A quick panic seized me that it

might be Miss Marsh. I hurried into my own apartment to escape her. I

was feeling now a new shrinking from Miss Marsh.

My wife was not at home. I remembered that she had said at breakfast

that she was going over to Brooklyn to see the two grandchildren who

had been sick. She might have been held up in the subway. But I was

home more than an hour earlier than my usual time.

My first feeling was one of relief, not to find her there. It gave

me the chance to change my wet clothing before she came. The rooms

smelled of the newly generated steam hissing up in the pipes. The

heat felt good. I took off my wet clothes and hung them on two chairs

by the front-room radiator.

When I had finished dressing, my wife had not yet come. I filled the

teakettle and put it on the gas-range in the kitchen. Then I turned

on the light in the dining-room, and sat down by the table to read

the want advertisements in the evening paper.

But my thoughts were not on the advertisements: they were seething

with other things. Here, in the seclusion and comfort of my own home,

they began to work more clearly. I finally threw the newspaper on

the table, rose, dropped into the old rocker by the window, and let

myself think. I have always been something of a philosopher; and I

faced my situation now with more of that spirit.

I, Harvey Allen, was sound and well, with fair intelligence, and a

thorough knowledge of my work, gained by long experience. I had never

been a drinking man, but had worked steadily, and had always been

reliable. Yet, because I was sixty years of age, I was being thrown

on the dump-heap. My father had lived to be eighty-four. In all

probability I should live to be as old. That would mean twenty-four

years on the dump-heap. Twenty-four years!-over a fourth of my

existence. It was not good social business. Something was wrong. We

don’t allow that waste with a horse or cow.

I had worked steadily for wages ever since I was seventeen years old.

Most folks would say that I ought to have laid up enough to take care

of myself and wife during our old age. Perhaps I ought. But I hadn’t.

My present bank-account was about a hundred dollars.

During the twenty years in which we had lived in this little dark

New York apartment I had paid between ten and eleven thousand dollars

in rent. Then there had been the expense of educating our two boys.

It had been a big expense. For both my wife and I had wanted them

to have the best. We had given them both technical educations at

Cornell. Of course, they themselves had helped some. Then they had

married young. Babies had come fast. I had had to help tide them over

some financial rocks. And of late years my wages had been steadily

decreasing.

Perhaps I had not been as provident as I should. But we had never

spent money very wildly. I sent a look around the apartment.

Everything we had was old. No new thing had been bought in the home

for years. The only real extravagance had been the piano. But that

had seemed almost a necessity to my wife, who loved music, and tried

to keep up a little in her playing. And I had paid my debts; had

always taken pride in never owing any man a cent. In fact, nothing

had ever worried me more than indebtedness. But now-I cringed.

The boss had said that it was up to my two boys to take care of me.

Why should it be? They had their children to care for and educate,

just as I had had mine. Their first duty was that of fathers.

Besides, even though they could, I didn’t want them to take care of

me. All I asked was the opportunity to work and take care of myself

and my wife, who was dependent upon me.

Then my gaze turned out of the window. It was still raining. The

woman in the apartment up above had left some washing hanging on the

line-some suits of men’s underwear. The lights from the back windows

shone upon them. They flopped about weakly in the drizzling storm.

Somehow they brought back to my mind the picture of the old chap

standing that morning in the downtown doorway, his newspapers tucked

under his arm, a helpless victim of the storm. It stirred, too, a

vague, uneasy sense of affinity in me.

The clock struck. I roused from my thoughts and began to feel a

little anxious about my wife. It was most unusual for her to be as

late as this. I decided to telephone over to George’s and learn if

she had started. I was just taking down the receiver, when I heard

her key scrape in the lock. I went quickly and opened the door for

her. She came in breathless from having hurried. I followed her into

the dining-room, and saw that she was looking white and anxious.

George was sick. Had pneumonia. He had been sitting up nights with

his sick children, was all worn out, and had taken cold. George, who

is the younger, has always been the less robust of our two boys.

“I should have gone over and relieved him of the care of the

children,” my wife said, with the pain of self-censure in her face.

“But I’m going back now to take care of him. I’ve come home to get

some things that I need.”

“Why didn’t you telephone,” I reprimanded, “and have me bring over

what you wanted, instead of making this long trip in the rain?”

But she had thought that I wouldn’t know where to find the things.

And she wanted to see, too, that I was fixed all right, as she might

be gone for several days.

“You must have something to eat,” I said, “then I’ll go back with

you.”

I carried her wet umbrella into the kitchen, and she went into the

bedroom to gather up her things.

I decided not to add to her worry by telling her now about my day’s

experience. But she herself made the discovery. I have never been

able to conceal anything from her for long. She went into the front

room, and saw my wet clothes hanging on the chair by the radiator.

Then she came out to the kitchen, where I was making a clumsy effort

to brew her a cup of tea.

“How did you happen to get so wet to-day?” she asked.

The question took me unawares, and I hesitated before making the

excuse that I had had no umbrella. She did not speak again, but

stood there watching me. My hands trembled so that I spilled the hot

water when I tried to pour it into the teapot.

Finally, I turned and met her gaze. Then there was no need of further

words between us. When her eyes looked into mine, she seemed to know

the whole story as fully as if I had told it to her. I could never

describe the look that came into her face. It was something like the

mother-look that I had seen there when she was nursing one of her

babies. But it was intensified. She moved toward me, put her arms

around my neck, and gazed up into my face.

“Don’t worry, Harve; you’ll find something else soon.”

I think it was the fine instinct of the thoroughbred in my wife that

made her now call me “Harve.” It had been a long time since she had

called me that. We had grown to be to each other just “Dad” and

“Mother.” But the “Harve” brought with it a certain reassurance of

youth-an encouragement to the personality that was mine irrespective

of my fatherhood; to the _me_ who had been her lover, husband, pal.

It sent a thrill through me that braced my spine. I put my arms

around her, drew her to me, and laid my face down against hers.

Since then I have learned that the lover always is young.

From this time on my wife and I fell back into the old habit of

calling each other “Harve” and “Mattie.”

During the days that followed I missed her more than I could ever

tell. But we were both a good deal worried about George, who was

pretty sick. I went over to Brooklyn each evening, to see how he was,

and to do what things I could to help. The days I put in looking for

work. George’s sickness, which was going to be a big expense, added

to my feeling that I must find an immediate job.

It happened that Walter was not at home just at this time. He is an

electrical engineer, and his company had sent him out in the state

to do some work.

I trailed around to printing-offices, little and big. As yet I had

made no attempt to find work outside of my own trade, in which I had

had a lifetime of training. But nothing offered. A good many printers

happened to be looking for jobs at this same time; and the younger

man was always given the preference. I had two or three promises

from bosses-men whom I had known. But these promises all turned out

disappointments.

Then, one night, I was going home after having traveled the rounds

all day in Harlem. I was tired and pretty well discouraged. After

having paid my next month’s rent and some other small bills, and

taken money over to Brooklyn to help out with the expenses of

George’s sickness, I had only about ten dollars left in the bank.

By this time I had come to understand that I must look for some kind

of work aside from a printing-office. So this day I had made the try

for a job in several stores, and other places. But with no success.

They had no jobs for men of my years. If I had been a cook, I might

have got a place in a Third Avenue restaurant. There seemed to be

more demands for cooks than for any other kind of labor.

As I walked along now, I saw a “Janitor Wanted” sign on the area

railing of an apartment house. I halted and looked at it. After

having lived all my life in New York apartments, I knew what a

janitor’s job was like. It would mean taking my wife to live in

a dark garbage-smelling basement. But I had come to a state of

desperation-of almost panic. I hesitated, then swallowed my pride,

braced myself, and went down the area-steps to the basement. This

janitor’s job might tide over until I could find something else.

The wiry little Yiddish superintendent of the building was there,

just inside the basement door, talking to two other applicants-a big

negro and an Italian. When I arrived, the superintendent turned to

me.

“How about this janitor’s job?” I asked; and my manner might have

shown a little something of patronage.

He looked me over critically. The negro and Italian watched

anxiously. Then the superintendent gave a Jew shrug, shook his head,

and dismissed me with a belittling smile.

“I vant a man dat could lif’ de garbage cans und big tings. You vas

too old.”

The last drop of gall was added to the bitterness of my humiliation.

I was too old to be the janitor of even a third-rate Harlem apartment

house. As I stumbled back up the area-steps, I heard him hire the

big negro for the job. Every atom of me tingled so with humiliation

that I forgot to take a street car, but walked the rest of the long

distance home. By the time I reached there, I was trembling and

pretty well all in.