I
When he was sober the man always insisted that his name was Evans, but
in his cups he was accustomed to declare, in a boastful fashion, that
his name was not Evans at all. However, he never went further than this,
and since none of us were particularly interested, we were satisfied to
call him Evans, or, more often, Bum, for short. He was the second
assistant janitor; and whereas, in some establishments, a janitor is a
man of power and place, it is not so in a newspaper office. In such
institutions, where great men are spoken of irreverently and by their
first names, a janitor is a man of no importance. How much less, then,
his second assistant. It was never a part of Evans’s work, for example,
to sweep the floors. There is something lordly in the gesture of the
broom. But the janitor’s first assistant attended to that; and Evans’s
regular duties were more humble, not unconnected with such things as
cuspidors. There was no man so poor to do him honor; yet he had always a
certain loftiness of bearing. He was tall, rather above the average
height, with a long, thin, bony face like a horse, and an aristocratic
stoop about his neck and shoulders. His hands were slender; he walked in
a fashion that you might have called a shuffle, but which might also
have been characterized as a walk of indolent assurance. His eyes were
wash-blue, and his straggling mustache drooped at the corners.
Sober, he was a silent man, but when he had drunk he was apt to become
mysteriously loquacious. And he drank whenever the state of his credit
permitted. At such times he spoke of his antecedents in a lordly and
condescending fashion which we found amusing. “You call me Evans,” he
would say. “That does well enough, to be sure. Quite so, and all that.
Evans! Hah!”
And then he would laugh, in a barking fashion that with his long, bony
countenance always suggested to me a coughing horse. But when he was
pressed for details, the man--though he might be weaving and blinking
with liquor--put a seal upon his lips. He said there were certain
families in one of the Midland Counties of England who would welcome him
home if he chose to go; but he never named them, and he never chose to
go, and we put him down for a liar by the book. All of us except
Sheener.