A girl who he judged by her frowzled hair and her heavy eyes had just
been aroused from sleep, stood behind the counter pouring hot and
steaming coffee into thick china cups. The smell to the hungry man was
divine. Fairfax's mouth watered. From the one pot the coffee came out
with milk added, and from another the liquid poured clear. Fairfax asked
for coffee with milk and a sandwich, and as the girl pushed the plate
with hunks of bread and ham towards him, he asked, "How much, please?"
The girl raised her heavy lids. Her gray eyes could have sparkled if she
had been less sleepy. She glanced at him and responded in a soft
brogue--
"Two cints a cup. Sandwiches two cints apiece."
He took his breakfast over to the table where a customer was already
seated before a huge breakfast. After watching Fairfax for a few
moments, this man said to him--
"Got a rattling good appetite, Mister."
"I have, indeed," Fairfax returned, "and I'm going to begin over again."
The man wore a red shirt under his coat, his battered bowler was a-cock
on his head. Antony often recalled Sanders as he looked that morning.
His face from his neck up was clean. He exuded water and brown soap; he
had a bright healthy colour; he was a good-looking workman, but his
hands! Fairfax thought them appalling--grimed with coal. They could
never be washed clean, Fairfax reflected, and one finger on the left
hand was missing.
"Stranger?" the man asked him. "Just going through?"
And as Fairfax replied, he thought to himself, "He doesn't dream _how_
strange I am and that I don't even know the name of the town."
He asked the man, "Much going on here?"
"Yards. Up here in West Albany it's nothing but yards and railroading."
"Ah," nodded Fairfax, and to himself: "This is the capital of New York
State--_Albany_--that's where I am."
And it was not far enough away to please him.
The man's breakfast, which had been fed into him by his knife, was
disposed of, and he went on--
"Good steady employment; they're decent to you. Have to be, good men are
scarce."
A tall, well-set-up engineer came to the coffee counter, and Fairfax's
companion called out to him--
"Got your new fireman yet, Joe?"
And the other, with a cheerful string of oaths, responded that he had
not got him, and that he didn't want anybody, either, who wasn't going
to stay more than five minutes in his cab.
"They've got a sign out at the yards," he finished, "advertising for
hands, and when I run in at noon I'll call up and see what's doing."
Fairfax digested his meal and watched the entrance and exit of the
railroad hands. Nearly all took their breakfast standing at the counter
jollying the girl; only a few brakemen and conductors gave themselves
the luxury of sitting down at the table. Antony went and paid what he
owed at the counter, and found that the waitress had waked up, and, in
spite of the fact that she had doled out coffee and food to some fifty
customers, she had found time to glance at "the new one."
"Was it all right?" she asked.
She handed him the change out of his quarter. He had had a dime's worth
of food.
"Excellent," Fairfax assured her; "first-rate."
Her sleeves came only to the elbow, her fore-arm was firm and white as
milk. Her hands were coarse and red; she was pretty and her cheerfulness
touched him.
He wanted to ask for a wash-up, but he was timid.
"I'll be back at lunchtime," he said to her, nodding, and the girl,
charmed by his smile, asked hesitatingly--
"Workin' here?"
And as Fairfax said "No" rather quickly, she flashed scarlet.
"Excuse me," she murmured.
He was as keen to get out of the restaurant now as he had been to cross
its threshold. The room grew small around him, and he felt himself too
closely confined with these common workmen, with whom for some reason or
other he began to feel a curious fraternity. Once outside the house,
instead of taking his way into the more important part of West Albany,
he retraced his steps down Nut Street, now filled with men and women.
Opposite the gateman's house at the foot of the hill, he saw a sign
hanging in a window, "New York Central Railroad," and under this was a
poster which read, "Men wanted. Apply here between nine and twelve."
Fairfax read the sign over once or twice, and found that it fascinated
him. This brief notice was the only call he had heard for labour, it was
the only invitation given him to make his livelihood since he had come
North. "Men wanted."
He touched the muscles of his right arm, and repeated "Muscles of iron
and a heart of steel." There was nothing said on the sign about
sculptors and artists and men of talent, and poets who saw visions, and
young ardent fellows of good family, who thought the world was at their
feet; but it did say, "Men wanted." Well, he was a man, at any rate. He
accosted a fellow who passed him whistling.
"Can you tell me where a chap can get a shave in this neighbourhood? Any
barbers hereabouts?"
The other grinned. "Every feller is his own razor in Nut Street,
partner! You can find barber shops uptown."
"I want to get a wash-up," Fairfax said, smiling on him his light smile.
"I want to get hold of a towel and some soap."
The workman pointed across the street. "There's a hotel. They'll fix you
up."
Fairfax followed the man's indication, and he saw the second sign that
hung in Nut Street. It gave the modest information, "Rooms and board
three dollars a week. Room one dollar a week. All at Kenny's first-class
hotel. Gents only." Of the proprietor who stood in the doorway, and
whose morning toilet had gone as far as shirt and trousers, Antony
asked--
"How much will it cost me to wash-up? I'd like soap and a towel and to
lie down on a bed for a couple of hours."
The Irish hotel-keeper looked at him. Fairfax took off his hat, and he
didn't explain himself further.
"Well," said Patrick Kenny, "yez don't look very dirthy. Charge fifteen
cents. Pay in advance."
"Show me up," accepted Fairfax, and put the last of Bella's charity into
the man's hand.