II
Leaving the plant that day was the hardest thing I have ever done. My first impulse was to get my coat and hat and just slip away. But my pride would not let me do that. So I braced and went back to the room where I had been working. I told some of the fellows with whom I was the best acquainted that I had been fired; and shook hands with them in farewell.
There was a pretty tight feeling in my throat. But they helped me to try and carry the thing off as something of a joke. I could see the pity, though, in their eyes.
It was raining-a cold, drizzling, late-October rain. But I did not notice it. I took the same old route I had taken for years, to the Sixth Avenue Elevated station.
I did not remember, however, until I started up the station steps, that it wasforenoon and not my usual time for going home. Then I halted and moved back again to the sidewalk, and stood there in the rain. I understood later why I had done this. I had been suddenly jerked out of a deep rut of habit, and was dazed at finding myself in new conditions. Then, too, I was weighted, groggy, with the aching depression that I was done for, out of the game-old.
I dreaded to go home and tell my wife. If I had been a drinking man, I should have gone off on a drunk.
People jostled by me on their way up the stairs to the Elevated. Dripping umbrellas swished against me. My overcoat was wet, and the rain trickled from my hat-brim. But I stood there lost, dead-like one just sent out of life.
Then my gaze was suddenly caught by an old chap who sold newspapers in this district. I often bought my evening paper from him. He was a little old fellow, with watery eyes, a stubby beard, and straight gray hair that grew a little long. He had one incongruous feature,though-good teeth that were kept clean. I had always noticed them. My vague interest in him had tabulated him a boozer. But to-day I watched him with a new and curious fascination.
He had halted in a doorway, and stood there, hunched up, with his newspapers under his arm. He still wore a summer’s stained and battered straw hat, and a dirty bandana handkerchief was tied about his neck. He was wet and pinched with the cold. He had turned up the collar of his old coat, and stood with one hand in his trousers pocket, as with the effort to coax a little warmth. For the minute, he had forgotten everything but his own discomfort. The hopeless misery of the man looked out of his watery eyes.
A dull sympathy of understanding stirred in me. The next instant I resented this feeling. I resented it because it put me in this old chap’s class. Then the man’s necessity to live pushed him on again to work. He started in my direction, calling out his papers in a cracked and wheezy voice.
I bought a paper from him and started across the street. I had the feeling of hurrying away from something that was clutching at me-as a man, using his last spurt of strength to swim for his own life, tries to keep away from the reach of another who is drowning. But I couldn’t get away from this old fellow. The picture of him filled my inner vision. The feeling of him pulsed through my blood. We trulywerein the same class-both old, and both on the edge of life making our struggle.
It was noon. I went into a Child’s restaurant and bought a cup of coffee. That brought me back nearer to normal. I decided to look for another job. Having secured that, I could face my wife with more of encouragement.
All that afternoon I went from one printing-office to another. But they all turned me down. Of course, my rain-soaked appearance did not inspire much confidence. Had I waited, and gone the rounds looking a little less down-and-out, I might have met with success. Butlater experience has made me feel that it would have made small difference.
After each refusal I grew a few years older. I tried to make my sense of humor work a little. But it wouldn’t. That and every other part of my being was caught in the grip of a shrinking fear. By the time I turned into the doorway of my own Harlem apartment house I was a shuffling old man.
The halls of the house, as usual, were filled with the odors of Kosher cooking. I dragged up the one flight of stairs and fumbled the key into the lock of my own door. Downstairs the front door opened and closed. Someone had come in. A quick panic seized me that it might be Miss Marsh. I hurried into my own apartment to escape her. I was feeling now a new shrinking from Miss Marsh.
My wife was not at home. I remembered that she had said at breakfast that she was going over to Brooklyn to see the two grandchildren who had been sick. She might have been held up in the subway.But I was home more than an hour earlier than my usual time.
My first feeling was one of relief, not to find her there. It gave me the chance to change my wet clothing before she came. The rooms smelled of the newly generated steam hissing up in the pipes. The heat felt good. I took off my wet clothes and hung them on two chairs by the front-room radiator.
When I had finished dressing, my wife had not yet come. I filled the teakettle and put it on the gas-range in the kitchen. Then I turned on the light in the dining-room, and sat down by the table to read the want advertisements in the evening paper.
But my thoughts were not on the advertisements: they were seething with other things. Here, in the seclusion and comfort of my own home, they began to work more clearly. I finally threw the newspaper on the table, rose, dropped into the old rocker by the window, and let myself think. I have always been something of a philosopher; and I facedmy situation now with more of that spirit.
I, Harvey Allen, was sound and well, with fair intelligence, and a thorough knowledge of my work, gained by long experience. I had never been a drinking man, but had worked steadily, and had always been reliable. Yet, because I was sixty years of age, I was being thrown on the dump-heap. My father had lived to be eighty-four. In all probability I should live to be as old. That would mean twenty-four years on the dump-heap. Twenty-four years!-over a fourth of my existence. It was not good social business. Something was wrong. We don’t allow that waste with a horse or cow.
I had worked steadily for wages ever since I was seventeen years old. Most folks would say that I ought to have laid up enough to take care of myself and wife during our old age. Perhaps I ought. But I hadn’t. My present bank-account was about a hundred dollars.
During the twenty years in which wehad lived in this little dark New York apartment I had paid between ten and eleven thousand dollars in rent. Then there had been the expense of educating our two boys. It had been a big expense. For both my wife and I had wanted them to have the best. We had given them both technical educations at Cornell. Of course, they themselves had helped some. Then they had married young. Babies had come fast. I had had to help tide them over some financial rocks. And of late years my wages had been steadily decreasing.
Perhaps I had not been as provident as I should. But we had never spent money very wildly. I sent a look around the apartment. Everything we had was old. No new thing had been bought in the home for years. The only real extravagance had been the piano. But that had seemed almost a necessity to my wife, who loved music, and tried to keep up a little in her playing. And I had paid my debts; had always taken pride in never owing any man a cent. In fact,nothing had ever worried me more than indebtedness. But now-I cringed.
The boss had said that it was up to my two boys to take care of me. Why should it be? They had their children to care for and educate, just as I had had mine. Their first duty was that of fathers. Besides, even though they could, I didn’t want them to take care of me. All I asked was the opportunity to work and take care of myself and my wife, who was dependent upon me.
Then my gaze turned out of the window. It was still raining. The woman in the apartment up above had left some washing hanging on the line-some suits of men’s underwear. The lights from the back windows shone upon them. They flopped about weakly in the drizzling storm. Somehow they brought back to my mind the picture of the old chap standing that morning in the downtown doorway, his newspapers tucked under his arm, a helpless victim of the storm. It stirred, too, a vague, uneasy sense of affinity in me.
The clock struck. I roused from my thoughts and began to feel a little anxious about my wife. It was most unusual for her to be as late as this. I decided to telephone over to George’s and learn if she had started. I was just taking down the receiver, when I heard her key scrape in the lock. I went quickly and opened the door for her. She came in breathless from having hurried. I followed her into the dining-room, and saw that she was looking white and anxious. George was sick. Had pneumonia. He had been sitting up nights with his sick children, was all worn out, and had taken cold. George, who is the younger, has always been the less robust of our two boys.
“I should have gone over and relieved him of the care of the children,” my wife said, with the pain of self-censure in her face. “But I’m going back now to take care of him. I’ve come home to get some things that I need.”
“Why didn’t you telephone,” I reprimanded, “and have me bring over whatyou wanted, instead of making this long trip in the rain?”
But she had thought that I wouldn’t know where to find the things. And she wanted to see, too, that I was fixed all right, as she might be gone for several days.
“You must have something to eat,” I said, “then I’ll go back with you.”
I carried her wet umbrella into the kitchen, and she went into the bedroom to gather up her things.
I decided not to add to her worry by telling her now about my day’s experience. But she herself made the discovery. I have never been able to conceal anything from her for long. She went into the front room, and saw my wet clothes hanging on the chair by the radiator. Then she came out to the kitchen, where I was making a clumsy effort to brew her a cup of tea.
“How did you happen to get so wet to-day?” she asked.
The question took me unawares, and I hesitated before making the excuse thatI had had no umbrella. She did not speak again, but stood there watching me. My hands trembled so that I spilled the hot water when I tried to pour it into the teapot.
Finally, I turned and met her gaze. Then there was no need of further words between us. When her eyes looked into mine, she seemed to know the whole story as fully as if I had told it to her. I could never describe the look that came into her face. It was something like the mother-look that I had seen there when she was nursing one of her babies. But it was intensified. She moved toward me, put her arms around my neck, and gazed up into my face.
“Don’t worry, Harve; you’ll find something else soon.”
I think it was the fine instinct of the thoroughbred in my wife that made her now call me “Harve.” It had been a long time since she had called me that. We had grown to be to each other just “Dad” and “Mother.” But the “Harve” brought with it a certain reassuranceof youth-an encouragement to the personality that was mine irrespective of my fatherhood; to themewho had been her lover, husband, pal. It sent a thrill through me that braced my spine. I put my arms around her, drew her to me, and laid my face down against hers.
Since then I have learned that the lover always is young.
From this time on my wife and I fell back into the old habit of calling each other “Harve” and “Mattie.”
During the days that followed I missed her more than I could ever tell. But we were both a good deal worried about George, who was pretty sick. I went over to Brooklyn each evening, to see how he was, and to do what things I could to help. The days I put in looking for work. George’s sickness, which was going to be a big expense, added to my feeling that I must find an immediate job.
It happened that Walter was not at home just at this time. He is an electricalengineer, and his company had sent him out in the state to do some work.
I trailed around to printing-offices, little and big. As yet I had made no attempt to find work outside of my own trade, in which I had had a lifetime of training. But nothing offered. A good many printers happened to be looking for jobs at this same time; and the younger man was always given the preference. I had two or three promises from bosses-men whom I had known. But these promises all turned out disappointments.
Then, one night, I was going home after having traveled the rounds all day in Harlem. I was tired and pretty well discouraged. After having paid my next month’s rent and some other small bills, and taken money over to Brooklyn to help out with the expenses of George’s sickness, I had only about ten dollars left in the bank.
By this time I had come to understand that I must look for some kind of work aside from a printing-office. Sothis day I had made the try for a job in several stores, and other places. But with no success. They had no jobs for men of my years. If I had been a cook, I might have got a place in a Third Avenue restaurant. There seemed to be more demands for cooks than for any other kind of labor.
As I walked along now, I saw a “Janitor Wanted” sign on the area railing of an apartment house. I halted and looked at it. After having lived all my life in New York apartments, I knew what a janitor’s job was like. It would mean taking my wife to live in a dark garbage-smelling basement. But I had come to a state of desperation-of almost panic. I hesitated, then swallowed my pride, braced myself, and went down the area-steps to the basement. This janitor’s job might tide over until I could find something else.
The wiry little Yiddish superintendent of the building was there, just inside the basement door, talking to two other applicants-a big negro and an Italian.When I arrived, the superintendent turned to me.
“How about this janitor’s job?” I asked; and my manner might have shown a little something of patronage.
He looked me over critically. The negro and Italian watched anxiously. Then the superintendent gave a Jew shrug, shook his head, and dismissed me with a belittling smile.
“I vant a man dat could lif’ de garbage cans und big tings. You vas too old.”
The last drop of gall was added to the bitterness of my humiliation. I was too old to be the janitor of even a third-rate Harlem apartment house. As I stumbled back up the area-steps, I heard him hire the big negro for the job. Every atom of me tingled so with humiliation that I forgot to take a street car, but walked the rest of the long distance home. By the time I reached there, I was trembling and pretty well all in.