At first he felt but vaguely what it meant. It had grown unfamiliar with
absence. The clerks were coming out. Jameson, looking crustier than
ever, as though he were forever thinking how much better than Jenkins he
could run the business; Danny, some inches taller, no longer an office
boy but spick and span in a blue serge suit and a necktie of the latest
style, exhaling health and correctness; Williamson, grown very gray and
showing on his face thirty years of routine; Baldwin, happy as of yore
at the ending of the day’s work, and smiling at the words of
Jenkins—Gilmartin’s successor who wore an air of authority, of the habit
of command which he had not known in the old days.
Of a sudden Gilmartin was in the midst of his old life. He saw all that
he had been, all that he might still be. And he was overwhelmed. He
longed to rush to his old associates, to speak to them, to shake hands
with them, to be the old Gilmartin. He was about to step toward Jenkins;
but stopped abruptly. His clothes were shabby and he felt ashamed. But,
he apologized to himself, he could tell them how he had made a hundred
thousand and had lost it. And he even might borrow a few dollars from
Jenkins.
Gilmartin turned on his heel with a sudden impulse and walked away from
Maiden Lane quickly. All that he thought now was that he would not have
them see him in his plight. He felt the shabbiness of his clothes
without looking at them. As he walked, a great sense of loneliness came
over him.
He was back in Wall Street. At the head of the Street was old Trinity;
to the right the sub-Treasury; to the left the Stock Exchange.
From Maiden Lane to the Lane of the Ticker—such had been his life.
“If I could only buy some Cosmopolitan Traction!” he said. Then he
walked forlornly northward, to the great Bridge, on his way to Brooklyn
to eat with Griggs, the ruined grocery-man.