The sense of outrage with which Lemuel was boiling when Miss Vane came
in upon Sibyl and himself had wholly passed away, and he now saw his
dismissal, unjust as between that girl and him, unimpeachably righteous
as between him and the moral frame of things. If he had been punished
for being ready to take advantage of that fellow's necessity, and
charge him fifty cents for changing ten dollars, he must now be no
less obviously suffering for having abused that young lady's trust and
defencelessness; only he was not suffering one-tenth as much. When he
recurred to that wrong, in fact, and tried to feel sorry for it and
ashamed, his heart thrilled in a curious way; he found himself smiling
and exulting, and Miss Vane and her niece went out of his mind, and he
could not think of anything but of being with that girl, of hearing her
talk and laugh, of touching her. He sighed; he did not know what his
mother would say if she knew; he did not know where he was going; it
seemed a hundred years since the beginning of the afternoon.
A horse-car came by, and Lemuel stopped it. He set his bag down on
the platform, and stood there near the conductor, without trying to
go inside, for the bag was pretty large, and he did not believe the
conductor would let him take it in.
The conductor said politely after a while, “See, 'd I get your fare?”
“No,” said Lemuel. He paid, and the conductor went inside and collected
the other fares.
When he came back he took advantage of Lemuel's continued presence to
have a little chat. He was a short, plump, stubby-moustached man, and he
looked strong and well, but he said, with an introductory sigh, “Well,
sir, I get sore all over at this business. There ain't a bone in me that
hain't got an ache in it. Sometimes I can't tell but what it's the ache
got a bone in it, ache seems the biggest.”
“Why, what makes it?” asked Lemuel absently.
“Oh, it's this standin'; it's the hours, and changin' the hours so much.
You hain't got a chance to get used to one set o' hours before they get
'em all shifted round again. Last week I was on from eight to eight;
this week it's from twelve to twelve. Lord knows what it's going to be
next week. And this is one o' the best lines in town, too.”
“I presume they pay you pretty well,” said Lemuel, with awakening
interest.
“Well, they pay a dollar 'n' half a day,” said the conductor.
“Why, it's more than forty dollars a month,” said Lemuel.
“Well, it is,” said the conductor scornfully, “if you work every day in
the week. But I can't stand it more than six days out o' seven; and
if you miss a day, or if you miss a trip, they dock you. No, sir. It's
about the meanest business _I_ ever struck. If I wa'n't a married man,
'n' if I didn't like to be regular about my meals and get 'em at home
'th my wife, I wouldn't stand it a minute. But that's where it is. It's
regular.”
A lady from within signalled the conductor. He stopped the car, and the
lady, who had risen with her escort, remained chatting with a friend
before she got out. The conductor snapped his bell for starting, with a
look of patient sarcasm. “See that?” he asked Lemuel. “Some these women
act as if the cars was their private carriage; and _you_ got to act so
_too_, or the lady complains of you, and the company bounces you in a
minute. Stock's owned along the line, and they think they own _you_ too.
You can't get 'em to set more than ten on a side; they'll leave the car
first. I'd like to catch 'em on some the South End or Cambridge cars.
I'd show 'em how to pack live stock once, anyway. Yes, sir, these ladies
that ride on this line think they can keep the car standin' while they
talk about the opera. But you'd ought to see how they all look if a
_poor_ woman tries their little game. Oh, I tell you, rich people are
hard.”
Lemuel reflected upon the generalisation. He regarded Miss Vane as a
rich person; but though she had blamed him unjustly, and had used him
impatiently, even cruelly, in this last affair, he remembered other
things, and he said--
“Well, I don't know as I should say all of them were hard.”
“Well, may be not,” admitted the conductor. “But I don't envy 'em. The
way I look at it, and the way I tell my wife, I wouldn't want their
money 'f I had to have the rest of it. Ain't any of 'em happy. I saw
that when I lived out. No, sir; what me and my wife want to do is to
find us a nice little place in the country.”
At the words a vision of Willoughby Pastures rose upon Lemuel, and a
lump of home-sickness came into his throat. He saw the old wood-coloured
house, crouching black within its walls under the cold November stars.
If his mother had not gone to bed yet, she was sitting beside the
cooking-stove in the kitchen, and perhaps his sister was brewing
something on it, potion or lotion, for her husband's rheumatism. Miss
Vane had talked to him about his mother; she had said he might have her
down to visit him, if everything went on right; but of course he knew
that Miss Vane did not understand that his mother wore bloomers, and he
made up his mind that her invitation was never to be accepted. At the
same time he had determined to ask Miss Vane to let him go up and see
his mother some Sunday.
“'S fur's we go,” said the conductor. “'F you're goin' on, you want to
take another car here.”
“I guess I'll go back with you a little ways,” said Lemuel. “I want to
ask you--”
“Guess we'll have to take a back seat, then,” said the conductor,
leading the way through the car to the other platform; “or a standee,”
he added, snapping the bell. “What is it you want to ask?”
“Oh, nothing. How do you fellows learn to be conductors? How long does
it take you?”
Till other passengers should come the conductor lounged against the
guard of the platform in a conversational posture.
“Well, generally it takes you four or five days. You got to learn all
the cross streets, and the principal places on all the lines.”
“Yes?”
“It didn't take me more'n two. Boston boy.”
“Yes,” said Lemuel, with a fine discouragement. “I presume the
conductors are mostly from Boston.”
“They're from everywhere. And some of 'em are pretty streaked, I can
tell you; and then the rest of us has got to suffer; throws suspicion on
all of us. One fellow gets to stealin' fares, and then everybody's got
to wear a bell-punch. I never hear mine go without thinkin' it says,
'Stop thief!' Makes me sick, I can tell you.”
After a while Lemuel asked, “How do you get such a position?”
The conductor seemed to be thinking about some thing else. “It's a
pretty queer kind of a world, anyway, the way everybody's mixed up with
everybody else. What's the reason, if a man wants to steal, he can't
steal and suffer for it himself, without throwin' the shame and the
blame on a lot more people that never thought o' stealin'? I don't
notice much when a fellow sets out to do right that folks think
everybody else is on the square. No, sir, they don't seem to consider
that kind of complaint so catching. Now, you take another thing: A woman
goes round with the scarlet fever in her clothes, and a whole carful of
people take it home to their children; but let a nice young girl get in,
fresh as an apple, and a perfect daisy for wholesomeness every way, and
she don't give it to a single soul on board. No, sir; it's a world I
can't see through, nor begin to.”
“I never thought of it that way,” said Lemuel, darkened by this black
pessimism of the conductor. He had not, practically, found the world
so unjust as the conductor implied, but he could not controvert his
argument. He only said, “May be the right thing makes us feel good in
some way we don't know of.”
“Well, I don't want to feel good in some way I don't know of, myself,”
said the conductor very scornfully.
“No, that's so,” Lemuel admitted. He remained silent, with a vague
wonder flitting through his mind whether Mr. Sewell could make anything
better of the case, and then settled back to his thoughts of Statira,
pierced and confused as they were now with his pain from that trouble
with Miss Vane.
“What was that you asked me just now?” said the conductor.
“That I asked you?” Lemuel echoed. “Oh yes! I asked you how you got your
place on the cars.”
“Well, sir, you have to have recommendations--they won't touch you
without 'em; and then you have to have about seventy-five dollars
capital to start with. You got to get your coat, and your cap, and your
badge, and you got to have about twenty dollars of your own to make
change with, first off; company don't start you with a cent.”
Lemuel made no reply. After a while he asked, “Do you know any good
hotel, around here, where I could go for the night?”
“Well, there's the Brunswick, and there's the Van-dome,” said the
conductor. “They're both pretty fair houses.” Lemuel looked round at
the mention of the aristocratic hostelries to see if the conductor was
joking. He owned to something of the kind by adding, “There's a little
hotel, if you want something quieter, that ain't a great ways from
here.” He gave the name of the hotel, and told Lemuel how to find it.
“Thank you,” said Lemuel. “I guess I'll get off here, then. Well, good
evening.”
“Guess I'll have to get another nickel from you,” said the conductor,
snapping his bell. “New trip,” he explained.
“Oh,” said Lemuel, paying. It seemed to him a short ride for five cents.
He got off, and as the conductor started up the car, he called forward
through it to the driver, “Wanted to try for conductor, I guess. But
I guess the seventy-five dollars capital settled that little point for
him.”
Lemuel heard the voice but not the words. He felt his bag heavy in his
hand as he walked away in the direction the conductor had given him, and
he did not set it down when he stood hesitating in front of the hotel;
it looked like too expensive a place for him, with its stained-glass
door, and its bulk hoisted high into the air. He walked by the hotel,
and then he came back to it, and mustered courage to go in. His bag,
if not superb, looked a great deal more like baggage than the lank
sack which he had come to Boston with; he had bought it only a few days
before, in hopes of going home before long; he set it down with
some confidence on the tesselated floor of cheap marble, and when a
shirt-sleeved, drowsy-eyed, young man came out of a little room or booth
near the door, where there was a desk, and a row of bells, and a board
with keys, hanging from the wall above it, Lemuel said quite boldly
that he would like a room. The man said, well, they did not much expect
transients; it was more of a family-hotel, like; but he guessed they had
a vacancy, and they could put him up. He brushed his shirt sleeves down
with his hands, and looked apologetically at some ashes on his trousers,
and said, well, it was not much use trying to put on style, anyway, when
you were taking care of a furnace and had to run the elevator yourself,
and look after the whole concern. He said his aunt mostly looked after
letting the rooms, but she was at church, and he guessed he should
have to see about it himself. He bade Lemuel just get right into the
elevator, and he put his bag into a cage that hung in one corner of the
hallway, and pulled at the wire rope, and they mounted together. On
the way up he had time to explain that the clerk, who usually ran the
elevator when they had no elevator-boy, had kicked, and they were
just between hay and grass, as you might say. He showed Lemuel into a
grandiose parlour or drawing-room, enormously draped and upholstered,
and furnished in a composite application of yellow jute and red plush
to the ashen easy-chairs and sofa. A folding-bed in the figure of a
chiffonier attempted to occupy the whole side of the wall and failed.
“I'm afraid it's more than I can pay,” said Lemuel. “I guess I better
see some other room.” But the man said the room belonged to a boarder
that had just gone, and he guessed they would not charge him very much
for it; he guessed Lemuel had better stay. He pulled the bed down,
and showed him how it worked, and he lighted two bulbous gas-burners,
contrived to burn the gas at such a low pressure that they were like
two unsnuffed candles for brilliancy. He backed round over the spacious
floor and looked about him with an unfamiliar, marauding air, which had
a certain boldness, but failed to impart courage to Lemuel, who trembled
for fear of the unknown expense. But he was ashamed to go away, and when
the man left him he went to bed, after some suspicious investigation of
the machine he was to sleep in. He found its comfort unmistakable. He
was tired out with what had been happening, and the events of the day
recurred in a turmoil that helped rather than hindered slumber; none
evolved itself distinctly enough from the mass to pursue him; what he
was mainly aware of was the daring question whether he could not get the
place of that clerk who had kicked.
In the morning he saw the landlady, who was called Mrs. Harmon, and who
took the pay for his lodging, and said he might leave his bag a while
there in the office. She was a large, smooth, tranquil person,
who seemed ready for any sort of consent; she entered into an easy
conversation with Lemuel, and was so sympathetic in regard to the
difficulties of getting along in the city, that he had proposed himself
as clerk and been accepted almost before he believed the thing had
happened. He was getting a little used to the rapidity of urban
transactions, but his mind had still a rustic difficulty in keeping up
with his experiences.
“I suppose,” said Mrs. Harmon, “it ain't very usual to take anybody
without a reference; I never do it; but so long as you haven't been a
great while in the city--You ever had a place in Boston before?”
“Well, not exactly what you may call a place,” said Lemuel, with a
conscience against describing in that way his position at Miss Vane's.
“It was only part work.” He added, “I wasn't there but a little while.”
“Know anybody in the city?”
“Yes,” said Lemuel reluctantly; “I know Rev. David L. Sewell, some.”
“Oh, all right,” said Mrs. Harmon, with eager satisfaction. “I have
to be pretty particular who I have in the house. The boarders are all
high-class, and I have to have all the departments accordingly. I'll
see Mr. Sewell about you as soon as I get time, and I guess you can take
right hold now, if you want to.”
Mrs. Harmon showed him in half a minute how to manage the elevator, and
then left him with general instructions to tell everybody who came upon
any errand he did not understand, that she would be back in a very short
time. He found pen and paper in the office, and she said he might write
the letter that he asked leave to send his mother; when he mentioned his
mother, she said, yes, indeed, with a burst of maternal sympathy which
was imagined in her case, for she had already told Lemuel that if
she had ever had any children she would not have gone into the hotel
business, which she believed unfriendly to their right nurture; she said
she never liked to take ladies with children.
He enclosed some money to his mother which he had intended to send, but
which, before the occurrence of the good fortune that now seemed opening
upon him, he thought he must withhold. He made as little as he could of
his parting with Miss Vane, whom he had celebrated in earlier letters
to his mother; he did not wish to afflict her on his own account, or
incense her against Miss Vane, who, he felt, could not help her part
in it; but his heart burned anew against Miss Sibyl while he wrote. He
dwelt upon his good luck in getting this new position at once, and he
let his mother see that he considered it a rise in life. He said he was
going to try to get Mrs. Harmon to let him go home for Thanksgiving,
though he presumed he might have to come back the same night.
His letter was short, but he was several times interrupted by the lady
boarders, many of whom stopped to ask Mrs. Harmon something on their
way to their rooms from breakfast. They did not really want anything,
in most cases; but they were strict with Lemuel in wanting to know just
when they could see Mrs. Harmon; and they delayed somewhat to satisfy a
natural curiosity in regard to him. They made talk with him as he took
them up in the elevator, and did what they could to find out about him.
Most of them had their door-keys in their hands, and dangled them by the
triangular pieces of brass which the keys were chained to; they affected
some sort of _negligée_ breakfast costume, and Lemuel thought them very
fashionable. They nearly all snuffled and whined as they spoke; some had
a soft, lazy nasal; others broke abruptly from silence to silence, in
voices of nervous sharpness, like the cry or the bleat of an animal;
one young girl, who was quite pretty, had a high, hoarse voice, like a
gander.
Lemuel did not mind all this; he talked through his nose too; and he
accepted Mrs. Harmon's smooth characterisation of her guests, as she
called them, which she delivered in a slow, unimpassioned voice. “I
never have any but the highest class people in my house--the very
nicest; and I never have any jangling going on. In the first place I
never allow anybody to have anything to complain of, and then if they do
complain, I'm right up and down with them; I tell them their rooms are
wanted, and they understand what I mean. And I never allow any trouble
among the servants; I tell them, if they are not suited, that I don't
want them to stay; and if they get to quarrelling among themselves, I
send them all away, and get a new lot; I pay the highest wages, and I
can always do it. If you want to keep up with the times at all, you have
got to set a good table, and I mean to set just as good a table as any
in Boston; I don't intend to let any one complain of my house on that
score. Well, it's as broad as it's long: if you set a good table, you
can ask a good price; and if you don't, you can't, that's all. Pay as
you go, is my motto.”
Mrs. Harmon sat talking in the little den beside the door which she
called the office, when she returned from that absence which she had
asked him to say would not be more than fifteen minutes at the outside.
It had been something more than two hours, and it had ended almost
clandestinely; but knowledge of her return had somehow spread through
the house, and several ladies came in while she was talking, to ask when
their window-shades were to be put up, or to say that they knew their
gas-fixtures must be out of order; or that there were mice in their
closets, for they had heard them gnawing; or that they were sure their
set-bowls smelt, and that the traps were not working. Mrs. Harmon was
prompt in every exigency. She showed the greatest surprise that those
shades had not gone up yet; she said she was going to send round for the
gasfitter to look at the fixtures all over the house; and that she would
get some potash to pour down the bowls, for she knew the drainage was
perfect--it was just the pipes down _to_ the traps that smelt; she
advised a cat for the mice, and said she would get one. She used the
greatest sympathy with the ladies, recognising a real sufferer in each,
and not attempting to deny anything. From the dining-room came at times
the sound of voices, which blended in a discord loud above the clatter
of crockery, but Mrs. Harmon seemed not to hear them. An excited
foreigner of some sort finally rushed from this quarter, and thrust his
head into the booth where Lemuel and Mrs. Harmon sat, long enough to
explode some formula of renunciation upon her, which left her serenity
unruffled. She received with the same patience the sarcasm of a boarder
who appeared at the office-door with a bag in his hand, and said he
would send an express-man for his trunk. He threw down the money for his
receipted bill; and when she said she was sorry he was going, he replied
that he could not stand the table any longer, and that he believed that
French cook of hers had died on the way over; he was tired of the Nova
Scotia temporary, who had become permanent. A gentleman waited for the
parting guest to be gone, and then said to the tranquil Mrs. Harmon: “So
Mellen has kicked, has he?”
“Yes, Mr. Evans,” said Mrs. Harmon; “Mr. Mellen has kicked.”
“And don't you want to abuse him a little? You can to me, you know,”
suggested the gentleman.
He had a full beard, parted at the chin; it was almost white, and
looked older than the rest of his face; his eyes were at once sad and
whimsical. Lemuel tried to think where he had seen him before.
“Thank you; I don't know as it would do any good, Mr. Evans. But if he
could have waited one week longer, I should have had that cook.”
“Yes, that is what I firmly believe. Do you feel too much broken up to
accept a ticket to the Wednesday matinée at the Museum?”
“No, I don't,” said Mrs. Harmon. “But I shouldn't want to deprive Mrs.
Evans of it.”
“Oh, she wouldn't go,” said Mr. Evans, with a slight sigh. “You had
better take it. Jefferson's going to do _Bob Acres_.”
“Is that so?” asked Mrs. Harmon placidly, taking the ticket. “Well, I'm
ever so much obliged to you, Mr. Evans. Mr. Evans, Mr. Barker--our new
clerk,” she said, introducing them.
Lemuel rose with rustic awkwardness, and shook hands with Mr. Evans, who
looked at him with a friendly smile, but said nothing.
“Now Mr. Barker is here, I guess I can get the time.” Mr. Evans said,
well, he was glad she could, and went out of the street door. “He's just
one of the nicest gentlemen I've got,” continued Mrs. Harmon, following
him with her eye as far as she conveniently could without turning her
head, “him and his wife both. Ever heard of the _Saturday Afternoon_?”
“I don't know as I have,” said Lemuel.
“Well, he's one of the editors. It's a kind of a Sunday paper, I guess,
for all it don't come out that day. I presume he could go every night
in the week to every theatre in town, if he wanted to. I don't know how
many tickets he's give me. Some of the ladies seem to think he's always
makin' fun of them; but I can't ever feel that way. He used to board
with a great friend of mine, him and his wife. They've been with me now
ever since Mrs. Hewitt died; she was the one they boarded with before.
They say he used to be dreadful easygoing, 'n' 't his wife was all 't
saved him. But I guess he's different now. Well, I must go out and see
after the lunch. You watch the office, and say just what I told you
before.”