"Now, some young men--well, to put it plainly, if there's liquor we just
have to ask them to look for another room. Tobacco, with gentlemen, one
can't be too severe on. We overlook it, and try not to complain too
much. And, of course, only gentlemen visitors--"
With my assurance that I should do my utmost to live within their
regulations, they were good enough to leave me to my single chair and
the fungi. Dropping into the one and staring at the other, it seemed to
me that I had reached the uttermost edge of the forlorn. I could bear
the extreme modesty of this lodging, seeing that it gave me a shelter
from the storm; I could bear being hungry, cold, and wet; I could bear
the wall of darkness and blankness that hemmed in not only my future,
but my past; what I found intolerable was the sense of being useless.
The blows of Fate I could take with some equanimity, but, not to be able
to "make good" or to earn a living cut me to the quick in my
self-esteem.
And yet it was not that which in the end beat me to my knees beside the
bed, to bury my head against the counterpane of imitation crochet-work.
That was a more primal craving, a need as primal as thirst or the desire
for sleep. It was the longing for some sort of human companionship--for
the gay toleration of Lydia Blair, or Drinkwater's cheerfulness, or
Mildred Averill's....
*CHAPTER III*
But in the end I found work, so why tell of the paroxysm of loneliness
which shook me that night like a madness? Never before had I known
anything like it, and nothing like it has seized me since. I must have
remained on my knees for an hour or more, largely for the reason that
there was nothing to get up for. Though I had had no dinner, I didn't
want to eat, and what else was there to do? To eat and sleep, to sleep
and eat, that apparently would be my fate till my seventeen dollars gave
out. If the miracle didn't happen before then--but the miracle began to
happen not long after that, and this is how it came to pass:
I got up and crept supperless to bed. There I slept with the merciful
soundness of fatigue, wakened by the crashing past my window of an
Elevated train to a keen sunny morning, with snow on the ground and the
zest of new life.
As I washed, I could hear my neighbor washing on the other side of the
partition. The partition was, in fact, so thin that I had heard all his
movements since he got out of bed. The making of one man's toilet
taking about the same amount of time as that of another man in similar
conditions, we met at the doors of our respective rooms as we emerged to
go down-stairs.
I looked at him; he looked at me. With what he saw I am concerned; I
saw a stocky, broad-shouldered individual, with smooth black hair,
solemn black eyes, bushy black eyebrows, a clean-shaven skin so dark
that shaving could not obliterate the trace of hair, and a general air
of friendliness. Putting on the good-mixer voice, which was not natural
to me but which I could assume for a brief spurt, I said:
"Say, I wonder it you could advise a fellow where to get a breakfast?
Only breezed in last night--"
Between working-people there is always that camaraderie I had already
noticed in Drinkwater and Lydia Blair, and which springs from the
knowledge that where there is nothing to lose there is nothing to be
afraid of. While I cannot say that my companion viewed me with the
spontaneous recognition he would have accorded to a man of his own
class, he saw enough to warrant him in giving me his sympathy. The man
of superior station down on his luck is not granted the full rights of
the stratum to which he has descended; but even when an object of
suspicion he is not one of hostility. Between moral bad luck and sheer
fortuitous calamity the line is not strictly drawn; and wherever there
is need there is a free inclination to meet it.
"I'm on my way to my breakfast now," my neighbor said, after sizing me
up with a second glance. "Why don't you come along? It's not much of a
place to look at," he continued, as I followed him down-stairs, "but the
grub isn't bad. Most of the places round here is punk."
Within ten minutes' time I found myself in a little eating-place that
must once have been the cellar kitchen of a dwelling-house, sitting at a
bare deal table, opposite a man I had never seen till that morning.
"Don't take bacon," he advised, when I had ordered bacon and eggs; "it
'll be punk. Take ham. Coffee 'll be punk, too. Better stick to tea."
Having given me these counsels, he proceeded with those short and simple
annals of his history which I had already found to be the usual form of
self-introduction. An Englishman, a Cornishman, he had been twenty
years in America. He was married and had a family, but preferred to live
in New York while he maintained his household in Chicago.
"Married life is punk," was his summing up. "Got the best little wife in
the state of Illinois, and three fine kids, a boy and two girls--but I
couldn't come it."
"Couldn't come what?"
"Oh, the whole bloomin' business--toein' the line like, bein' home at
night, and the least little smell of anythink on your breath--"
A wave of his fork sketched a world of domestic embarrassment from which
he had freed himself only by a somber insouciance. A somber insouciance
might be called his key-note. Outwardly serious, ponderous,
hard-working, and responsible, he was actually light-hearted and
inconsequent. During the progress of the meal he recited the escapades
of a Don Juan with the gravity of a Bunyan.
Still with my good-mixer air I asked:
"How does a guy like me get a job in New York?"
"Ever work in a Turkish bath?" He answered this question before I could
do it myself. "Sure you didn't--not a chap of your cut. It isn't a bad
sort of thing for a"--he hesitated, but decided to use the epithet--"for
a--gentleman. Only a good class of people take Turkish baths. Hardly
ever get in with a rough lot. A few drunks, but what of that? Could
have got you a place at the Gramercy if you'd ha' turned up last week;
but a Swede has it now and it's too late."
By the end of breakfast, however, he had made a suggestion.
"Why don't you try the Intelligence? They'll often get you a berth when
everything else has stumped you."
I said I was willing to try the Intelligence if I knew what it was,
discovering it to be the Bureau of Domestic and Business Intelligence
conducted by Miss Bryne. You presented yourself, gave your name and
address, indicated your choice of work, told your qualifications for the
job, and Miss Bryne did the rest, taking as her commission a percentage
of your first week's pay.
"But I don't know any qualifications," I declared, with some confusion.
"Oh, that's nothing. Say clerical work. That covers a lot. Somethink
'll turn up."
"But if they ask me if I can do certain things--?"
"Say you can do 'em. That's the way to pull it off. Look at me. Never
was in a Turkish bath in my life till I went to an employment-office in
Chicago. When the old girl in charge asked me if I had been, I said I'd
been born in one. Got the job right off, and watched what the other
guys did till I'd learned the trick. There's always some nice chap that
'll show you the ropes. Gee! The worst they can do is to bounce you.
All employers is punk. Treat 'em like punk and you'll get on."
With a view to this procedure I was at the Bureau of Domestic and
Business Intelligence by half past nine, entering, unfortunately, with
the downcast air of the employer who is punk, instead of the perky
self-assertion which I soon began to notice as the proper attitude of
those in search of work. Miss Bryne's establishment occupied a floor in
one of the older office-buildings a little to the south of Washington
Square. Having ascended in the lift, you found yourself, just inside the
narrow doorway, face to face with a young lady seated at a desk, whose
duty it was to ask the first questions and take the first notes. She
was a pretty young lady, bright-eyed, blond, with a habit of cocking her
head in a birdlike way as she composed her lips to a receptive smile.
She so composed them, and so cocked her head, as I appeared on the
threshold, awkward and terrified.
"Such as--?"
I knew what she meant by the questioning look and the encouraging smile
of the bright eyes.
"I'm--I'm hoping to find a job," I stammered to her obvious
astonishment.
"Oh!" It was a surprised little crow. "To find one!"
"Yes, miss; to find one."
"Of--of what sort?"
"Clerical work," I said, boldly.