It would have been easy enough to find out where the Averills had moved
to, but I didn't make the attempt. It was best for me to lose sight of
them; it was best for them to lose sight of me. Now that the process
had begun I decided to carry it to the utmost.
Nothing is simpler than being lost in a city like New York, so long as
it is to nobody's interest to find you. You have only to move round a
corner, and it is as if you had gone a thousand miles. The minute I
carried my bags away from the Barcelona without leaving an address I was
beyond the ken of any one inclined to follow me.
I did this not of choice, but of necessity. In the matter of choice I
should have preferred staying where I was. Though it was a modest,
uncleanly place, I had grown used to it; and I dreaded another
expedition into the unknown. But I had come down to my last ten dollars,
with no relief in sight. A humbler abode was imperative even to tide me
over a few days.
On the Odyssey of that afternoon I could write a good-sized volume.
Steps that would have been simple to a working-man were difficult
*CHAPTER II*
It would have been easy enough to find out where the Averills had moved
to, but I didn't make the attempt. It was best for me to lose sight of
them; it was best for them to lose sight of me. Now that the process
had begun I decided to carry it to the utmost.
Nothing is simpler than being lost in a city like New York, so long as
it is to nobody's interest to find you. You have only to move round a
corner, and it is as if you had gone a thousand miles. The minute I
carried my bags away from the Barcelona without leaving an address I was
beyond the ken of any one inclined to follow me.
I did this not of choice, but of necessity. In the matter of choice I
should have preferred staying where I was. Though it was a modest,
uncleanly place, I had grown used to it; and I dreaded another
expedition into the unknown. But I had come down to my last ten dollars,
with no relief in sight. A humbler abode was imperative even to tide me
over a few days.
On the Odyssey of that afternoon I could write a good-sized volume.
Steps that would have been simple to a working-man were difficult to me,
because I had never had to take them. Moreover, because the business was
new to me I went at it in the least practical way. Instead of securing
a bed in one place before giving it up in another, I followed the
opposite method. Paying my bill at the Barcelona, I went out in the
street with no definite direction before me.
Rather, I had one definite direction, but that was only a first stage.
I had spotted on my walks a dealer in old clothes to whom I carried the
ridiculous suits I had brought with me from France. He was a little old
Polish Jew, dressed in queer, antiquated broadcloth, whose beard and
tousled gray hair proclaimed him a sort of Nazarite.
When I mentioned my errand he shook his head with an air of despair,
lifting his hands to heaven somewhat in the manner of Mr. Chessland.
"No, no! Open not," he exclaimed, as I laid the suit-case on the
counter in order to display my wares. "Will the high-born gentleman but
look at all the good moneys spent on these beautiful garments, and no
one buys my merchandise? Of what use more to purchase?"
When I had opened the suit-case he cast one look at the contents,
turning away dramatically to the other side of the reeking little shop.
A backward gesture of the hand cast my offerings behind him.
"Pah! Those can I not sell. Take 'em away." He came back, however,
fingering first one suit and then the other, appraising them rapidly.
"One dollar!" he cried, lifting a bony forefinger and defying me to ask
more. "One! One! One! No more but one!"
I raised him to two, to three, and finally to five for each suit. In
spite of his tragic appeals to Ruin not to overtake him, he seized my
hand and kissed it.
Thus I was out on the pavement, with twenty dollars in my pocket, and so
much liberty of action that I didn't know what to do. It was about
three in the afternoon of a sullen December day, and big flakes of snow
had begun to fall softly. It was cold only in the sense that my suit
had been bought for hot weather, and the light French box-coat, which
was all I had besides, added little in the way of warmth. Unable to
stand with my two bags in the doorway of a shop for second-hand clothes,
I moved on more or less at random.
But one thought was clearly in my mind. I must find a house where the
sign "Rooms" was displayed in a window, and there I must go in.
For the first half-hour I kept this purpose in view, walking slowly and
turning my head now to one side of the street, now to the other, so as
to miss no promising haven. A room being all I needed, any room within
my price would do. Having no experience, I could have no choice. If I
had choice, it would have been for Miss Flowerdew's; but that would have
brought me back into the circle from which I was trying to slip out.
Miss Flowerdew's setting my only standard as to "Rooms," I had imagined
myself as walking into something of the kind, though possibly more
cheerful. It is hardly necessary to say that in this I was
disappointed. Drifting in and out of houses through most of that
afternoon, I saw women and conditions that almost shattered such faith
as I had left in human nature. The first to answer my ring at a doorbell
was a virago. An enormous creature, bigger if not taller than myself,
and clad in a loose pink-flannel wrapper that added to her bulk, she
challenged me to find a fault with the room I declined after having seen
it. "Better men than you have slept in that bed," she called after me
as I clattered down the stairs, "and any one who says different 'll
lie." The next was a poor, leering thing who smiled in a way that would
have been horrible if it had not been so sickeningly imbecile. The next
was a slattern, pawing her face and wiping it with her apron while she
showed me the doghole for which I was to pay seven dollars a week.
There were others of whom it is useless to attempt a catalogue further
than to say that they left me appalled. When the lights were being lit
I was still in the streets with my two bags, and the snow falling
faster.
I was about to go back to the Barcelona for the night when something
happened which I tell to you just as it occurred.
That morning I had read in a paper the account given by a young Canadian
officer of his escape from a German prison, of his beating his way to
the Rhine, and of his final swim across the river to Switzerland. But
the point that remained in my memory was his picture of himself as he
lay like a lizard with his nose to the stream and his feet in the
underbrush as the bank rose behind him. Listening to the current, he
could guess how strong it was; putting his hand in the water, he could
feel it cold. For over two hours he lay there in the darkness, resting,
wondering, and thinking of a little cemetery not far from Basel where
lay the bodies of the prisoners who had tried to make this swim.
Then, as the minute approached at which he must give himself to these
difficult waters, he prayed. His account of the act was simple and
straightforward. He asked God to have him in His keeping while he made
this attempt, and to comfort those at home if he failed. With that he
slipped into the stream and struck outward.
Well, standing somewhere in the neighborhood of Eighth Street and Sixth
Avenue I turned this over in my mind, considering its advisability. I
was not what would be called a praying man. As to that, I had not prayed
in years. I had sometimes told myself that I didn't know what prayer
was, that its appeal seemed to me illogical. Illogical it seemed to me
now, in the sense of imploring God to do what He wouldn't do of His own
accord.
So, although I didn't pray, something passed through my mind that might
have been prayer's equivalent. As far as I can transcribe it into the
words which I did not use at the time it ran like this:
"I know there is a God. I know that His will is the supreme law for all
of us. I know that that law is just and beneficent. It is not just and
beneficent for me to be standing here in the snow and the slush,
chilled, hungry, with wet feet, workless, and homeless. Consequently,
this is not His will. Consequently, I must give myself to discovering
that will as the first principle of safety. When I have got into touch
with that first principle of safety I shall find a home and work."
Of this the immediate result was that I did not return to the Barcelona.
Something like a voice, the voice of another, told me that the thread of
flame led onward. Onward I drifted, then, hardly noticing the way I
went, hypnotized by the physical process of being on the move. It was
just on and on, through the slanting snowfall, through the patches of
blurred light, with feet soggy and heart soggier, a derelict amid these
hundreds of vehicles, these thousands of pedestrians, all bound from
somewhere to somewhere, and knowing the road they were taking. I didn't
know the road I was taking and in a sense I didn't care. Having given
up from sheer impotence the attempt to steer my ship, I was being borne
along blindly.
When I lifted my head to look about me again I was in a part of New York
not only new to me, but almost refreshing to the eye. I mean that it
was one of those old-fashioned down-town regions where the streets
hadn't yet learned the short and easy cut to beauty of running only at
right angles. Two or three thoroughfares focused in an irregular open
space, which I saw by the signboard to bear the name of Meeting-House
Green. There was no meeting-house in the neighborhood now, and probably
nothing green even in spring. If it was like the rest of New York it
would be dirty in winter and fetid in summer, but after the monotonous
ground plan of the uptown regions its quaintness relieved the
perceptions to a degree which the thunder of the near-by Elevated
couldn't do away with. Just now all was blanketed in white, through
which drays plunged heavily and pedestrians slipped like ghosts.
As I stared about me my eye was once more arrested by the magic notice
"Rooms," though this time with the qualifying phrase, "for gentlemen."
Rooms for gentlemen! The limitation seemed to fit my needs. It implied
selection and a social standard.
The house, too, was that oasis in New York, an old-time dwelling in
gray-painted brick which progress has not yet swept away. Standing
where Wapping Street and Theodora Place ran together at a sharp angle,
it was shaped like a sadiron or a ship's prow. The tip of the ground
floor was given over to a provision dealer, while a barber occupied the
long slit in the rear. Between the two shops a door on the level of the
pavement of Theodora Place gave on a little inset flight of steps which
led up to the actual entrance. The vestibule was shabby, but, moved by
my experience in the early part of the afternoon, I observed that it was
clean.
The woman who answered my ring was not only clean, but neatly dressed in
what I suppose was a print stuff, and not only neatly dressed, but
marked with a faded prettiness. What I chiefly noticed for the minute
was a pair of those enormous doll-blue eyes on a level with the face, as
the French say, _a fluer de fete_, which make the expression sweet and
vacuous. In her case it was resignedly mournful, as if mournfulness was
a part of her aim in life. A single gas-jet flickered behind her,
showing part of a hallway in which the same walnut furniture must have
stood for so many years that it was now groggy on its feet. To my
question about a room she replied with a sweet, sad, "Won't you step
in?" which was tantamount to a welcome.
The floor of the hallway was covered with an oilcloth or linoleum which
had once simulated a terra-cotta tiling, and was now but one remove from
dust. On a mud-brown wall a steel-engraving of a scow, with Age at the
helm, and Youth peering off at the bow, sagged at an angle which
produced a cubist effect in its relation to the groggy-footed hat-rack.
The doors on the left of the hall were closed; on the right a graceful
stairway, lighted by a tall window looking out on Theodora Place, curved
upward to the floor above.
At the sound of voices in the hall one of the closed doors opened, and a
second woman, a replica of the first, except for being older, came out
and looked inquiringly. She, too, was fadedly pretty; she, too, was
mournful; she, too, was saucer-eyed; she, too, was neatly dressed in a
print stuff.
"This gentleman is looking for a room," was the explanation, sadly
given, of my presence.
The ladies withdrew to the foot of the stairway for a whispered
conference. This finished, the elder came back to where I stood on the
door-mat.
"We generally ask for references--" she began, with a glance at my
sodden appearance.
"If that's essential," I broke in, "I'm afraid it must end matters.
I've only recently come over from France, and I'm a total stranger in
New York. I rang the bell because I saw the notice and I liked the look
of the house."
As it happened, the last was the most tactful thing I could have said,
going to the hearts of my hostesses. Something, too, in my voice and
choice of words must have appealed to their sense of gentility.
"It's a nice old house," the elder lady smiled, with her brave air of
having to overcome agony before being able to speak at all. "It's
old-fashioned, of course, and horribly in the wrong part of the city
nowadays; but my sister and I love it. We've always lived here, and our
dear father before us. He was Doctor Smith, quite a famous oculist in
his day; you may have heard of him?"
"I've heard the name," I admitted, politely.
"We've two good rooms vacant at present; but if you can't give
references"--a wan smile deprecated the unladylike suggestion--"I'm
afraid we should have to ask you for a week's rent in advance. I
shouldn't speak of it if it was not our rule."
When I had agreed to this she led the way over the frayed cocoanut
matting of the staircase to an upper hallway, also carpeted in
pulverized oilcloth. With one sister ahead of me, and the other
shepherding me behind, I was ushered into a large prow-shaped room
immediately over the provision dealer, and smelling faintly of raw meat.
I could have borne the odor if the rent had not been six a week.
"We've another room just over this," the spokeswoman informed me, "but
it's only half this size."
"If it's only half this rent--"
"It's just half this rent."
So, marshaled as before, I mounted another stairway in cocoanut matting
to a slit of a room shaped like half a ship's prow, with its single
window placed squintwise. As the smell of raw meat was less noticeable
here, the squint of the window out into Meeting-House Green, and the
rent so low, I made my bargain promptly.
In the days of the famous oculist the room must have been a maid's. It
was still furnished like a maid's in a house of the second order. A
rickety iron bedstead supported a sagging mattress covered with a cotton
counterpane in imitated crochet-work. A table, a washstand, a chair,
and a chest of drawers were perhaps drearier than they might have been,
because of the sick light of the gas-jet. On a drab wooden mantelpiece,
which enshrined a board covered with a piece of cretonne where once had
been a fireplace, stood the only decoration in the room, three large
fungi, painted with landscapes. The fungi were of the triangular sort
which grow about the trunks of trees. There was a big one in the middle
of the mantelpiece, and smaller ones at each end, giving glimpses of
rivers and bays, with castles on headlands, to one tired of the prospect
of Meeting-House Green. Taking the initiatory three dollars from my
purse, I bent to study these objects of art.
Once more the act was ingratiating to my hostesses.
"That's my work," said the little woman who had admitted me to the
house. Her tone was one of shy pride, of a kind of fluttered
boastfulness.
"My sister's an artist," the elder explained, taking my three one-dollar
bills as if their number didn't matter, but making conversation in order
to count them surreptitiously. "She's a widow, too, Mrs. Leeming. I'm
Miss Smith. We've had great sorrows. We try not to complain too much,
but--"
A long-drawn sigh with a quiver in it said the rest, while Mrs.
Leeming's eyes spilled tears with the readiness of a pair of fountain
cups.
To escape the emotional I returned to my inspection of the landscapes,
at which I was destined to gaze for another two years.
"Are these studies of--of Italy?" I asked, for the sake of showing
appreciation.
Mrs. Leeming recovered herself sufficiently to be faintly indignant.
"Oh no! I never copy. I work only from imagination. Landscapes just
come to me--and all different."
Before they left me Miss Smith managed to convey a few of the principles
on which they conducted their house.
"We've three very refined gentlemen at present, two salesmen and a
Turkish-bath attendant. One has to be so careful. We almost never take
gentlemen who don't bring reference; but in your case, Mr. Soames--well,
one can see." Her wan, suffering smile flickered up for a minute and
died down. "There's a sort of free-masonry, isn't there? We _have_
taken gentlemen on that, and they've never disappointed us."