Presently the supper bell began to ring in the depths of the house, and
the sound proceeded steadily upward, growing in intensity all the way
up towards the upper floors. The higher it came the more maddening was
the noise, until at last what it lacked of being absolutely deafening,
was made up of the sudden crash and clatter of an avalanche of boarders
down the uncarpeted stairway. The peerage did not go to meals in this
fashion; Tracy’s training had not fitted him to enjoy this hilarious
zoological clamor and enthusiasm. He had to confess that there was
something about this extraordinary outpouring of animal spirits which
he would have to get inured to before he could accept it. No doubt in
time he would prefer it; but he wished the process might be modified
and made just a little more gradual, and not quite so pronounced and
violent. Barrow and Tracy followed the avalanche down through an ever
increasing and ever more and more aggressive stench of bygone cabbage
and kindred smells; smells which are to be found nowhere but in a cheap
private boarding house; smells which once encountered can never be
forgotten; smells which encountered generations later are instantly
recognizable, but never recognizable with pleasure. To Tracy these
odors were suffocating, horrible, almost unendurable; but he held his
peace and said nothing. Arrived in the basement, they entered a large
dining-room where thirty-five or forty people sat at a long table. They
took their places. The feast had already begun and the conversation was
going on in the liveliest way from one end of the table to the other.
The table cloth was of very coarse material and was liberally spotted
with coffee stains and grease. The knives and forks were iron, with
bone handles, the spoons appeared to be iron or sheet iron or something
of the sort. The tea and coffee cups were of the commonest and heaviest
and most durable stone ware. All the furniture of the table was of the
commonest and cheapest sort. There was a single large thick slice of
bread by each boarder’s plate, and it was observable that he economized
it as if he were not expecting it to be duplicated. Dishes of butter
were distributed along the table within reach of people’s arms, if they
had long ones, but there were no private butter plates. The butter was
perhaps good enough, and was quiet and well behaved; but it had more
bouquet than was necessary, though nobody commented upon that fact or
seemed in any way disturbed by it. The main feature of the feast was a
piping hot Irish stew made of the potatoes and meat left over from a
procession of previous meals. Everybody was liberally supplied with
this dish. On the table were a couple of great dishes of sliced ham,
and there were some other eatables of minor importance—preserves and
New Orleans molasses and such things. There was also plenty of tea and
coffee of an infernal sort, with brown sugar and condensed milk, but
the milk and sugar supply was not left at the discretion of the
boarders, but was rationed out at headquarters—one spoonful of sugar
and one of condensed milk to each cup and no more. The table was waited
upon by two stalwart negro women who raced back and forth from the
bases of supplies with splendid dash and clatter and energy. Their
labors were supplemented after a fashion by the young girl Puss. She
carried coffee and tea back and forth among the boarders, but she made
pleasure excursions rather than business ones in this way, to speak
strictly. She made jokes with various people. She chaffed the young men
pleasantly and wittily, as she supposed, and as the rest also supposed,
apparently, judging by the applause and laughter which she got by her
efforts. Manifestly she was a favorite with most of the young fellows
and sweetheart of the rest of them. Where she conferred notice she
conferred happiness, as was seen by the face of the recipient; and at
the same time she conferred unhappiness—one could see it fall and dim
the faces of the other young fellows like a shadow. She never
“Mistered” these friends of hers, but called them “Billy,” “Tom,”
“John,” and they called her “Puss” or “Hattie.”
Mr. Marsh sat at the head of the table, his wife sat at the foot. Marsh
was a man of sixty, and was an American; but if he had been born a
month earlier he would have been a Spaniard. He was plenty good enough
Spaniard as it was; his face was very dark, his hair very black, and
his eyes were not only exceedingly black but were very intense, and
there was something about them that indicated that they could burn with
passion upon occasion. He was stoop-shouldered and lean-faced, and the
general aspect of him was disagreeable; he was evidently not a very
companionable person. If looks went for anything, he was the very
opposite of his wife, who was all motherliness and charity, good will
and good nature. All the young men and the women called her Aunt
Rachael, which was another sign. Tracy’s wandering and interested eye
presently fell upon one boarder who had been overlooked in the
distribution of the stew. He was very pale and looked as if he had but
lately come out of a sick bed, and also as if he ought to get back into
it again as soon as possible. His face was very melancholy. The waves
of laughter and conversation broke upon it without affecting it any
more than if it had been a rock in the sea and the words and the
laughter veritable waters. He held his head down and looked ashamed.
Some of the women cast glances of pity toward him from time to time in
a furtive and half afraid way, and some of the youngest of the men
plainly had compassion on the young fellow—a compassion exhibited in
their faces but not in any more active or compromising way. But the
great majority of the people present showed entire indifference to the
youth and his sorrows. Marsh sat with his head down, but one could
catch the malicious gleam of his eyes through his shaggy brows. He was
watching that young fellow with evident relish. He had not neglected
him through carelessness, and apparently the table understood that
fact. The spectacle was making Mrs. Marsh very uncomfortable. She had
the look of one who hopes against hope that the impossible may happen.
But as the impossible did not happen, she finally ventured to speak up
and remind her husband that Nat Brady hadn’t been helped to the Irish
stew.
Marsh lifted his head and gasped out with mock courtliness, “Oh, he
hasn’t, hasn’t he? What a pity that is. I don’t know how I came to
overlook him. Ah, he must pardon me. You must indeed
Mr—er—Baxter—Barker, you must pardon me. I—er—my attention was directed
to some other matter, I don’t know what. The thing that grieves me
mainly is, that it happens every meal now. But you must try to overlook
these little things, Mr. Bunker, these little neglects on my part.
They’re always likely to happen with me in any case, and they are
especially likely to happen where a person has—er—well, where a person
is, say, about three weeks in arrears for his board. You get my
meaning?—you get my idea? Here is your Irish stew, and—er—it gives me
the greatest pleasure to send it to you, and I hope that you will enjoy
the charity as much as I enjoy conferring it.”
A blush rose in Brady’s white cheeks and flowed slowly backward to his
ears and upward toward his forehead, but he said nothing and began to
eat his food under the embarrassment of a general silence and the sense
that all eyes were fastened upon him. Barrow whispered to Tracy:
“The old man’s been waiting for that. He wouldn’t have missed that
chance for anything.”
“It’s a brutal business,” said Tracy. Then he said to himself,
purposing to set the thought down in his diary later:
“Well, here in this very house is a republic where all are free and
equal, if men are free and equal anywhere in the earth, therefore I
have arrived at the place I started to find, and I am a man among men,
and on the strictest equality possible to men, no doubt. Yet here on
the threshold I find an inequality. There are people at this table who
are looked up to for some reason or another, and here is a poor devil
of a boy who is looked down upon, treated with indifference, and shamed
by humiliations, when he has committed no crime but that common one of
being poor. Equality ought to make men noble-minded. In fact I had
supposed it did do that.”
After supper, Barrow proposed a walk, and they started. Barrow had a
purpose. He wanted Tracy to get rid of that cowboy hat. He didn’t see
his way to finding mechanical or manual employment for a person rigged
in that fashion. Barrow presently said:
“As I understand it, you’re not a cowboy.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Well, now if you will not think me too curious, how did you come to
mount that hat? Where’d you get it?”
Tracy didn’t know quite how to reply to this, but presently said,
“Well, without going into particulars, I exchanged clothes with a
stranger under stress of weather, and I would like to find him and
re-exchange.”
“Well, why don’t you find him? Where is he?”
“I don’t know. I supposed the best way to find him would be to continue
to wear his clothes, which are conspicuous enough to attract his
attention if I should meet him on the street.”
“Oh, very well,” said Barrow, “the rest of the outfit, is well enough,
and while it’s not too conspicuous, it isn’t quite like the clothes
that anybody else wears. Suppress the hat. When you meet your man he’ll
recognize the rest of his suit. That’s a mighty embarrassing hat, you
know, in a centre of civilization like this. I don’t believe an angel
could get employment in Washington in a halo like that.”
p124.jpg (22K)
Tracy agreed to replace the hat with something of a modester form, and
they stepped aboard a crowded car and stood with others on the rear
platform. Presently, as the car moved swiftly along the rails, two men
crossing the street caught sight of the backs of Barrow and Tracy, and
both exclaimed at once, “There he is!” It was Sellers and Hawkins. Both
were so paralyzed with joy that before they could pull themselves
together and make an effort to stop the car, it was gone too far, and
they decided to wait for the next one. They waited a while; then it
occurred to Washington that there could be no use in chasing one
horse-car with another, and he wanted to hunt up a hack. But the
Colonel said:
“When you come to think of it, there’s no occasion for that at all. Now
that I’ve got him materialized, I can command his motions. I’ll have
him at the house by the time we get there.”
Then they hurried off home in a state of great and joyful excitement.
The hat exchange accomplished, the two new friends started to walk back
leisurely to the boarding house. Barrow’s mind was full of curiosity
about this young fellow. He said,
“You’ve never been to the Rocky Mountains?”
“No.”
“You’ve never been out on the plains?”
“No.”
“How long have you been in this country?”
“Only a few days.”
“You’ve never been in America before?”
“No.”
Then Barrow communed with himself. “Now what odd shapes the notions of
romantic people take. Here’s a young fellow who’s read in England about
cowboys and adventures on the plains. He comes here and buys a cowboy’s
suit. Thinks he can play himself on folks for a cowboy, all
inexperienced as he is. Now the minute he’s caught in this poor little
game, he’s ashamed of it and ready to retire from it. It is that
exchange that he has put up as an explanation. It’s rather thin, too
thin altogether. Well, he’s young, never been anywhere, knows nothing
about the world, sentimental, no doubt. Perhaps it was the natural
thing for him to do, but it was a most singular choice, curious freak,
altogether.”
Both men were busy with their thoughts for a time, then Tracy heaved a
sigh and said,
“Mr. Barrow, the case of that young fellow troubles me.”
“You mean Nat Brady?”
“Yes, Brady, or Baxter, or whatever it was. The old landlord called him
by several different names.”
“Oh, yes, he has been very liberal with names for Brady, since Brady
fell into arrears for his board. Well, that’s one of his sarcasms—the
old man thinks he’s great on sarcasm.”
“Well, what is Brady’s difficulty? What is Brady—who is he?”
“Brady is a tinner. He’s a young journeyman tinner who was getting
along all right till he fell sick and lost his job. He was very popular
before he lost his job; everybody in the house liked Brady. The old man
was rather especially fond of him, but you know that when a man loses
his job and loses his ability to support himself and to pay his way as
he goes, it makes a great difference in the way people look at him and
feel about him.”
“Is that so! _Is_ it so?”
Barrow looked at Tracy in a puzzled way. “Why of course it’s so.
Wouldn’t you know that, naturally. Don’t you know that the wounded deer
is always attacked and killed by its companions and friends?”
Tracy said to himself, while a chilly and boding discomfort spread
itself through his system, “In a republic of deer and men where all are
free and equal, misfortune is a crime, and the prosperous gore the
unfortunate to death.” Then he said aloud, “Here in the boarding house,
if one would have friends and be popular instead of having the cold
shoulder turned upon him, he must be prosperous.”
“Yes,” Barrow said, “that is so. It’s their human nature. They do turn
against Brady, now that he’s unfortunate, and they don’t like him as
well as they did before; but it isn’t because of any lack in Brady—he’s
just as he was before, has the same nature and the same impulses, but
they—well, Brady is a thorn in their consciences, you see. They know
they ought to help him and they’re too stingy to do it, and they’re
ashamed of themselves for that, and they ought also to hate themselves
on that account, but instead of that they hate Brady because he makes
them ashamed of themselves. I say that’s human nature; that occurs
everywhere; this boarding house is merely the world in little, it’s the
case all over—they’re all alike. In prosperity we are popular;
popularity comes easy in that case, but when the other thing comes our
friends are pretty likely to turn against us.”
Tracy’s noble theories and high purposes were beginning to feel pretty
damp and clammy. He wondered if by any possibility he had made a
mistake in throwing his own prosperity to the winds and taking up the
cross of other people’s unprosperity. But he wouldn’t listen to that
sort of thing; he cast it out of his mind and resolved to go ahead
resolutely along the course he had mapped out for himself.
Extracts from his diary:
Have now spent several days in this singular hive. I don’t know quite
what to make out of these people. They have merits and virtues, but
they have some other qualities, and some ways that are hard to get
along with. I can’t enjoy them. The moment I appeared in a hat of the
period, I noticed a change. The respect which had been paid me before,
passed suddenly away, and the people became friendly—more than
that—they became familiar, and I’m not used to familiarity, and can’t
take to it right off; I find that out. These people’s familiarity
amounts to impudence, sometimes. I suppose it’s all right; no doubt I
can get used to it, but it’s not a satisfactory process at all. I have
accomplished my dearest wish, I am a man among men, on an equal footing
with Tom, Dick and Harry, and yet it isn’t just exactly what I thought
it was going to be. I—I miss home. Am obliged to say I am homesick.
Another thing—and this is a confession—a reluctant one, but I will make
it: The thing I miss most and most severely, is the respect, the
deference, with which I was treated all my life in England, and which
seems to be somehow necessary to me. I get along very well without the
luxury and the wealth and the sort of society I’ve been accustomed to,
but I do miss the respect and can’t seem to get reconciled to the
absence of it. There is respect, there is deference here, but it
doesn’t fall to my share. It is lavished on two men. One of them is a
portly man of middle age who is a retired plumber. Everybody is pleased
to have that man’s notice. He’s full of pomp and circumstance and self
complacency and bad grammar, and at table he is Sir Oracle and when he
opens his mouth not any dog in the kennel barks. The other person is a
policeman at the capitol-building. He represents the government. The
deference paid to these two men is not so very far short of that paid
to an earl in England, though the method of it differs. Not so much
courtliness, but the deference is all there.
Yes, and there is obsequiousness, too.
It does rather look as if in a republic where all are free and equal,
prosperity and position constitute _rank_.