"We'll assume the motive to be nothing but pure friendship, just the
desire that you should have every opportunity to make good again, and
nothing else. _Absolutely nothing else_! Do you understand? Would you
take it from him then? Please tell me as frankly as if--"
"I--I might."
"And because I'm not a man but a woman, you can't."
"It isn't the same thing."
"Which is just what we women complain of, just what we fight against,
the stupid conventions that force us into being useless in a world--"
"Oh, but there are other ways of being useful."
"No other way of being useful compensates for the one which seems to you
paramount, above all others, and from which you are debarred."
"But why should it? You and I never met till--"
"You can't argue that way. You can't reason about the thing at all.
I'm not reasoning, further than to say that--that I believe in you, in
your power of--of coming back. That's the phrase, isn't it? And as,
apparently, I'm the only one in a position to go to your aid--"
She threw out her hands with a gesture she sometimes used which implied
that all had been said.
And in the end we compromised. That is, I told her I had one more
possibility. If that failed, I would let her know. This she informed
me I could do by telephone, as Boyd's name was in the book. If it
didn't fail ... But as to that she forgot to exact a promise, just as
she forgot to tell me her new address. Like most shy people who dash
out of their shyness for some adventure too bold for the audacious, she
retreated as suddenly. Springing into her motor as soon as we had
arrived at a temporary decision, she drove away, leaving me still at a
loss as to whether or not I was Malvolio.
Dumfounded and distressed by this unexpected meeting, and the still more
unexpected offer made in it, my thoughts began to run wild. It was in my
power to live, to eat, to pay my way for a little longer. Of the money
at her disposal I need accept no more than a few hundred dollars, a
trifle to her, but to me everything in the world. Even if it did me no
more than a passing good, it would do me that. If I had in the end to
"get out," as I phrased it, I would rather get out in a month's time
than do it that very day. In the mean while there might be--the
miracle.
It was the mad prospect of all this that sent me out of Fifth Avenue to
crawl along the side of Creed & Creed's establishment, which flanked the
cross-street, without noticing the way I took. For the minute I had
forgotten the errand that brought me to this particular spot in New
York. It had been crowded out of my memory by the fact that, after all,
it might not matter whether I found work or not. I could live, anyhow.
All I had to do was to take a telephone list, call up Boyd Averill's
number, say that I had changed my mind....
It was a temptation. For you to understand how fierce a temptation it
was you would have to remember that for a month I had been
insufficiently fed, and that for a week I had not really been fed at
all. Moreover, I could see before me no hope of being fed in the
immediate future. I was asking myself whether it would be common sense
on the part of a drowning man to refuse a rope because a woman in whom
there might be a whole confusion of complex motives had thrown it, when
I suddenly found my passage along the pavement blocked.
It was blocked by what appeared to be a long cylindrical bar, some two
or three feet in diameter. Covered with burlap, it ran from a motor
truck, in which one end still rested, toward the entrance to that part
of Creed & Creed's establishment that lay slightly lower than the
pavement. It was a wide entrance, after which came two or three broad,
shallow steps, and then a cavern which was evidently a storehouse. Two
men were tugging at the long object, the one big, dark, brawny, clad in
overalls, and equal to the work, the other a little elf of an old man,
nattily dressed for the street, wearing a high soft felt hat, possibly
in the hope of making himself look taller. A gray mustache that sprang
outward in a semi-circle did not conceal a truculent mouth, though it
smothered his wrathful expletives. That he had once been agile I could
easily guess, but now his poor old joints were stiff from age or disuse.
It was also clear that he was lending a hand to an irksome task because
of a shortage of labor.
While the younger man--he was about my own age--could manage his end
easily enough, the old one tugged desperately at his, finally letting it
drop.
"Gr-r-r-r!"
The growl was that of an irascible man too angry to be articulate. If
the thread of flame ever led me, it was then. Without a minute's
hesitation, I picked up the dropped end of the cylinder, with no
explanation beyond the words, "Let me have a try," and presently I was
finding my way down the steps and into the cavern.
"Chuck it there, on top o' thim," my companion ordered, and our cylinder
lay as one of a pile of similar cylinders, which I could see from the
labels to have been shipped from India.
"There's eight or tin more of thim things," the big fellow was
beginning.
"Is that the Floater?" I asked in a hurried undertone, as the little man
hobbled down the steps and made his way toward us in the semi-darkness.
"He sure is, and some damn light floater at that."
Before I could analyze this reply the Floater himself stood in front of
me.
"Who are you?" he demanded, sharply.
"Do you mean my name?"
"I don't care a damn about your name. What business had you to pick up
that rug?"
"Only the business of wanting to help. I could see it wasn't a
gentleman's job--and--and I--I thought you might take me on."
He danced with indignation.
"Take you on? Take you on? What do you mean by that?"
"You see, sir, it was this way. I've just run up from the Intelligence
where I heard a fellow gassing about"--I varied the story from that
which I had heard at Miss Bryne's--"about being kicked out of here."
"Was he a gabby sort of a guy?" my big colleague inquired.
"That would describe him exactly; and so I thought if I could reach here
in time, before you'd had a chance to get any one else--"
"Chance to get any one else?" the little man snarled. "I can go out
into the street and shovel 'em in by the cartload. Dirt, I call 'em!"
"Yes, sir; but you haven't done it. That's all I mean. I thought if I
got here first--"
It was easy to size him up as a vain little terrier, and my respectful
manner softened him. He stood back for a minute to examine me.
"You don't look like a fellow that 'd be after this sort of a job. Does
he, Bridget?"
Bridget's answer, though non-committal, was in my favor:
"Sure I've seen ivery kind o' man lookin' for a job at one time or
another. It's not his looks that 'll tell in handling rugs; it's his
boiceps."
He tapped his own strong biceps to emphasize his observation, while I
endeavored to explain.
"You're quite right, sir. You'd see that when lots of other men
wouldn't. As a matter of tact, this job or any other job would be new
to me. I had some money--but the war's got me stone-broke. I lived in
France till just lately.
"If you lived in France, why ain't you fightin'?"
Not having the same dread of inventing a tale as with Boyd Averill, I
said, boldly:
"I did fight, till they discharged me. Got a blow on the head, and
wasn't any good after that. I was with the French army because my
people lived over there. When I got out of it, there was no provision
made for me, of course. My father and mother had died, my father's
business had been smashed to pieces--"
"What was he?"
Luckily my imagination didn't fail me.
"An artist. He was just beginning to make a hit. I was to have
been"--I sought for the most credible possibility--"an architect. I was
to have studied at the Beaux Arts, that's the big school for architects
in Paris; but of course all that was knocked on the head when my father
died, and so I sailed for New York."
"Haven't you got no relations here?"
I remembered that Lydia Blair thought she might have seen me in Salt
Lake City, but I was afraid of the Mormon connotation. "My family used
to live in--in California; but they're all scattered, and we'd been in
Europe for so many years--"
"Amur'cans should live in God's country--"
"Yes, sir; so I've found out. If we had, I shouldn't be asking for a
job in order to get a meal. I'm down to that," I confessed, showing him
the nickel and the dime.
He took a minute or two to reflect on the situation, saying, finally,
with a little relenting in his tone:
"There's nine more rugs out in that lorry. If you help this man to lug
them in you'll get fifty cents."
If it was not the miracle, it was a sign and a wonder none the less.
Fifty cents would tide me over the night. I should have sixty-five
cents in all, and it would be my own. I should not have cadged it from
a woman, whatever the motive of her generosity. It was that motive
which made me tremble. If it was what it might have been, if I was not
a mere fatuous fool, then there was no hole so deep that I had better
not hide in it, no distance so great that I had better not put it
between her and me. It would wound her if I did, but on every count
that would be preferable....
The Floater went off to regions where I couldn't follow him, and Bridget
spoke in non-committal but not unkindly tone.
"Better take off that topcoat and hang it in Clancy's locker. Clancy
was the gabby chap you heard at Lizzie's. That's Lizzie Bryne. Sure I
moind her when her mother kep' a little notion store down by Grime
Street, and now the airs she gives herself! Ah, well, there's no law
ag'in' it! Come awn now. We'll get these other bits in, because Daly,
that's the driver, 'll have to be after goin' back to the station for
the Bokharas."
"Will that be more to unload?" I asked, eagerly.
"Sure it 'll be more to unload. Dee ye think they'll walk off the truck
by theirselves?"
Vaguely afraid of something hostile or supercilious on Bridget's part, I
was pleasantly surprised to find him not merely good-natured, but
helpful and patient, showing me the small tricks of unloading long
burlap cylinders from a motor lorry, which proved to be as much an art
in its simple way as anything else, and enlivening the work by anecdote.
All that he knew of Creed & Creed I learned in the course of that
half-hour, though it turned out to be little more than I knew myself,
except as it concerned the minor personnel. Of the heads of the firm
and the managers he could tell me only as much as the peasants in the
vale of Olympus could have recounted of the gods on the mountain-top.
To Bridget they were celestial, shadowy beings, seen as they passed in
and out of the office, or stopped to look at some new consignment from
the Far East; but he barely knew their names.
The highest flight of his information was up to the Floater; beyond him
he seemed to consider it useless to ascend. Of the gods on the summit,
the Floater was the high priest, and in that capacity he, alone, was of
moment to those on the lower plane. He administered the favors and
meted out the punishments. "He's It," was Bridget's laconic phrase, and
in the sentence, as far as he was concerned, or I was concerned, or any
salesman or porter was concerned, Creed & Creed's was summed up.
Of the Floater's anomalous position in the establishment, the
explanation commonly accepted by the porters, the "luggers" they called
themselves, was that he was in possession of dark secrets, which it
would have been perilous to tempt him to divulge, concerning the firm's
prosperity. A mysterious blood-relationship with "Old Man Creed," who
had founded the house some sixty years before, was also a current
speculation. Certain it was that his connection with the business
antedated that of any one among either partners or employees, a fact
that gave him an authority which no one disputed and all subordinates
feared.
The job finished, Bridget and I sat on the pile, while he shared his
lunch with me, and I waited for the Floater to bring me my fifty cents.
When he appeared at last, I stood to attention, though Bridget
nonchalantly kept his seat. I learned that if the little man was
treated as an equal in the office he was treated as an equal in the
basement. This circumstance gave to my politeness in standing up and
saying "sir" a value to which he was susceptible, though too crusty to
admit it.
"There's another load coming, sir, isn't there?" I asked, humbly, after
I had been paid.
"What's it to you if there is?"
"Only that I might earn another fifty cents."
"Earn another fifty cents! Why, fifty cents would pay you for two such
jobs as the one you've done."
"Then I'd like to work off what you've paid me by unloading the other
lot for nothing."
He lifted a warning finger as he turned to go up-stairs. "See here,
young feller! You beat it. If I find you here when I come down
again--"
"You stay jist where y'are," Bridget warned me. "They're awful
short-handed above, and customers comin' in by the shovelful. They've
got to have four luggers to pull the stuff out for the salesmen to show,
and there's only six of us in all. When Clancy put the skids under
hisself last night I could see how it 'd be to-day. It was a godsend to
the little ould man when you blew in; but he always wants ye to think he
can beat the game right out of his own hand."
Thus encouraged I stood my ground, and when the next load came I had the
privilege of helping Bridget to handle it. By the end of the day I had
not only earned a dollar and a half but had been ordered by the Floater
to turn up again next morning.
"Ye're all right now," Bridget said, complacently. "Ye've got the job so
long as ye can hould it down. I'll give ye the dope about that, and wan
thing is always to trate him the way ye've trated him to-day. It's what
he wants of us other guys, and we've not got the trick o' handin' it
out. Men like us, that's used to a free country, don't pass up no soft
talk to no one. What's your name?"