CHAPTER VThat which, in my condition, irked me more than anything was the impossibility of being by myself. The steamer was a small one, with all the passengers of one class. Those who now crossed the Atlantic were doing it as best they could; and to be thrown pell-mell into a second-rate ship like theAuvergnewas better, in the opinion of most people, than not to cross at all. It was a matter of eight or ten days of physical discomfort, with home at the other end.I knew now that the month was September, and the equinox not far away. It was mild for the time of year, and, though the weather was rough, it was not dirty. With the winds shifting quickly from west to northwest and back again, the clouds were distant and dry, lifting from time to time for bursts of stormy sunshine. For me it was a pageant. I could forget myself in its contemplation. It was the vast, and I was only the infinitesimal; it was the ever-varying eternal, and I was the sheerest offspring of time, whose affairs were of no moment.Nevertheless, I had pressing instant needs, or needs that would become pressing as soon as we reached New York. Between now and then there were five or six days during which I might recover the knowledge that had escaped me; but if I didn't I should be in a difficult situation. I should be unable to get money; I should be unable to go home. I should be lost. Unless some one found me I should have to earn a living. To earn a living there must be something I could do, and I didn't know that I could do anything.Of all forms of exasperation, this began to be the most maddening. I must have had a profession; and yet there was no profession I could think of from which I didn't draw back with the peculiar sick recoil I felt the minute I approached whatever was personal to myself. In this there were elements contradictory to each other. I wanted to know—and yet I shrank from knowing. If I could have had access to what money I needed I should have been content to drift into the unknown without regret.But there was a reserve even here. It attached to the word home. On that word the door had not been so completely shut that a glimmer didn't leak through. I knew I had a home. I longed for it without knowing what I longed for. I could see myself arriving in New York, fulfilling the regular dock routine—and going somewhere. But I didn't know where. Of some ruptured brain cell enough remained to tell me that on the American continent a spot belonged to me; but it told me no more than the fact that the spot had love in it. I could feel the love and not discern the object. As to whether I had father or mother or wife or child I knew no more than I knew the same facts of the captain of the ship. Out of this darkness there came only a vision of flaming eyes which might mean anything or nothing.I was unable to pursue this line of thought because Miss Blair came strolling by with the same nonchalant air with which she had passed me before lunch. I can hardly say she stopped; rather she commanded, and swept me along."Don't you want to take a walk, Mr. Soames? You'd better do it now, because we'll be rolling scuppers under by and by."For making her acquaintance it was too good an opportunity to miss. In spite of my inability to play up to her gay cheerfulness I found myself strolling along beside her.I may say at once that I never met a human being with whom I was more instantly on terms of confidence. The sketch of her life which she gave me without a second's hesitation came in response to my remark that from her questions to me at table I judged her to have traveled."I was born on the road, and I suppose I shall never get off it. My father and mother had got hitched to a theatrical troupe on tour."A distaste acquired as a little girl on tour had kept her from trying her fortunes on the boards. She had an idea that her father was acting still, though after his divorce from her mother they had lost sight of him. Her mother had died six years previously, since which time she had looked after herself, with some ups and downs of experience. She had been a dressmaker, a milliner, and a model, with no more liking for any of these professions than she had for the theatrical. In winding up this brief narrative she astounded me with the statement:"And now I'm going to be an adventuress.""A what?" I stopped in the middle of the deck to stare at her.She repeated the obnoxious noun, continuing to walk on."But I thought you were a stenographer.""That's part of it. I'm deceiving poor Miss Averill. She's my dupe. I make use of people in that way—and throw them aside.""But doing the work for Doctor Averill in the mean time.""Oh, that's just a pretext.""A pretext for what?""For being an adventuress. Goodness knows what evil I shall do in that family before I get out of it.""What do you mean by that?""Oh, well, you'll see. If you're born baleful—well, you've just got to be baleful; that's all. Did you ever hear of an adventuress who didn't wreck homes?"I said I had not much experience with adventuresses, and didn't quite know the point of their occupation."Well, you stay around where I am and you'll see.""Have you wrecked many homes up to the present?" I ventured to inquire."This is the first one I ever had a chance at. I only decided to be an adventuress about the time when Miss Averill came along."That, it seemed, had been at the Settlement, to which Miss Blair had retired after some trying situations as a model. Stenography being taught at the Settlement, she had taken it up on hearing of several authenticated cases of girls who had gone into offices and married millionaires. The discouraging side presented itself later in the many more cases of girls who had not been so successful. It was in this interval of depression on the part of Miss Blair that Mildred Averill had appeared at the Settlement with all sorts of anxious plans about doing good, "If she wants to do good to any one, let her do it to me," Miss Blair had said to her intimates. "I'm all ready to be adopted by any old maid that's got the wad." That, she explained to me, was not the language she habitually used. It was mere pleasantry between girls, and not up to the standard of a really high-class adventuress. Moreover, Miss Averill was not an old maid, seeing she was but twenty-five, though she got herself up like forty.All the same, Miss Averill having come on the scene and having taken a fancy to Miss Blair, Miss Blair had decided to use Miss Averill for her own malignant purposes.For by this time the seeming stenographer had chosen her career. A sufficient course of reading had made it clear that of all the women in the world the adventuress had the best of it. She went to the smartest dressmakers; she stayed at the dearest hotels; her jewels and furs rivaled those of duchesses; her life was the perpetual third act of a play. Furthermore, Miss Blair had yet to hear of an adventuress who didn't end in money, marriage, and respectability.Having been so frank about herself, I could hardly be surprised when she became equally so about me. As the wind rose she slipped into a protected angle, where I had no choice but to follow her. She began her attack after propping herself in the corner, her hands deep in her pockets, and her pretty shoulders hunched."You're a funny man. Do you know it?"Though inwardly aghast, I strove to conceal my agitation. "Funny in what way?""Oh, every way. Any one would think—""What would any one think?" I insisted, nervously, when she paused."Oh, well! I sha'n't say.""Because you're afraid to hurt my feelings?""I'm a good sort—especially among people of our own class. For the others"—she shrugged her shoulders charmingly—"I'm an anarchist and a socialist and all that. I don't care who I bring down, if they're up. But when people are down already—I'm—I'm a friend."As there was a measure of invitation in these words I nerved myself to approach the personal."Are you friend enough to tell me why you thought you had seen me in Salt Lake City?"She nodded. "Sure; because I did think so—there—or somewhere.""Then you couldn't swear to the place?""I couldn't swear to the place; but I could to you. I never forget a face if I give it the twice-over. The once-over—well, then I may. But if I've studied a man—the least little bit—I've got him for the rest of my life.""But why should you have studied me—assuming that it was me?""Assuming that that water's the ocean, I study it because there's nothing else to look at. We were opposite each other at two tables in a restaurant.""Was there nobody there but just you and me?""Yes, there was a lady."My heart gave a thump. "At your table or at mine?""At yours.""Did she"—I was aware of the foolish wording of the question without being able to put it in any other way—"did she have large dark eyes?""Not in the back of her head, which was all I saw of her."Once more I expressed myself stupidly. "Did you—did you think it was—my wife—or just a friend?"She burst out laughing. "How could I tell? You speak as if you didn't know. You're certainly the queerest kid—"I tried to recover my lost ground. "I do know, but—""Then what are you asking me for?""Because you seem to have watched me—""I didn't watch you," she denied, indignantly. "The idea! You sure have your nerve with you. I couldn't help seeing a guy that was right under my eyes, could I? Besides which—""Yes? Besides which—?" I insisted.She brought the words out with an air of chaffing embarrassment. "Well, you weren't got up as you are now. Do you know it?"As I reddened and stammered something about the war, she laid her hand on my arm soothingly."There now! There now! That's all right. I never give any one away. You can see for yourself that I can't have knocked about the world like I've done without running up against this sort of thing a good many times—""What sort of thing?""Oh, well, if you don't know I needn't tell you. But I'm your friend, kid. That's all I want you to know. It's why I told you about myself. I wanted you to see that we're all in the same boat. Harry Drinkwater's your friend, too. He likes you. You stick by us and we'll stick by you and see the thing through."It was on my lips to say, "What thing?" but she rattled on again."Only you can't wear that sort of clothes and get away with it, kid. Do you know it? Another fellow might, but you simply can't. It shows you up at the first glance. The night you came on board you might just as well have marched in carrying a blue silk banner. For Heaven's sake, if you've got anything else in your kit go and put it on.""I haven't.""Haven't? What on earth have you done with all the swell things you must have had? Burned 'em?"The question was so direct, and the good-will behind it so evident, that I felt I must give an answer. "Sold them.""Got down to that, did you? What do you know? Poor little kid! Funny, isn't it? A woman can carry that sort of thing off nine times out often; but a fat-head of a man—"She kept the sentence suspended while gazing over my shoulder. The lips remained parted as in uttering the last word. I was about to turn to see what so entranced her, when she said, in a tone of awe or joy, I was not sure which:"There's that poor little blind boy coming down the deck all by himself. You'll excuse me, won't you, if I run and help him?"So she ran.CHAPTER VIBeyond this point I had made no progress when we landed in New York. I still knew myself as Jasper Soames. Miss Blair still suspected that I was running away from justice. That I was running away from justice I suspected myself, since how could I do otherwise? All the way up the Bay I waited for that tap on my shoulder which I could almost have welcomed for the reason that it would relieve me of some of my embarrassments.Those embarrassments had grown more entangling throughout the last days of the voyage. The very good-will of the people about me increased the complications in which I was finding myself involved. Every one asked a different set of questions, the answers I gave being not always compatible with each other. I didn't exactly lie; I only replied wildly—trying to guard my secret till I could walk off the boat and disappear from the ken of these kindly folk who did nothing but wish me well.I accomplished this feat, I am bound to confess, with little credit; but credit was not my object. All I asked was the privilege of being alone, with leisure to take stock of my small assets and reckon up the possibilities before me. As it was incredible that a man such as I was could be lost on the threshold of his home I needed all the faculties that remained to me in order to think out the ways and means by which I could be found.So alone I found myself, though not without resorting to ruses of which I was even then ashamed.It was Miss Blair who scared me into them. Coming up to me on deck, during the last afternoon on board, she said, casually:"Going to stay awhile in New York?"It was a renewal of the everlasting catechism, so I said, curtly:"I dare say.""Oh, don't be huffy! Looking for a job?""Later, perhaps; not at once."In her smile, as her eye caught mine, there was a visible significance. "You'll be a good kid, wont you? You'll—you'll keep on the level?"I made a big effort on my own part, so as to see how she would take it. "If I'm not nabbed going up the Bay.""Oh, you won't be. It can't be as—as bad as all that. Even if it was—" She left this sentiment for me to guess at while she went on. "Where do you expect to stay?"I was about to name one of New York's expensive hotels when it occurred to me that she would burst out laughing at the announcement, she would take it as a joke. I realized then that it struck me also as a joke. It was incongruous not only with my appearance, but with my entire rôle throughout the trip. I ended by replying that I hadn't made up my mind."Well, then, if you're looking for a place—""I can't say that I'm that.""Or if you should be, I've given Harry Drinkwater a very good address."It was only a rooming-house, she explained to me, but for active people the more convenient for that, and with lots of good cafés in the neighborhood. She told me of one in particular—Alfonso was the name of the restaurateur—where one could get a very good dinner, with wine, for seventy-five cents, and an adequate breakfast for forty. Moreover, Miss Blair had long known the lady who kept the rooming-house in question, a friend of her mother's she happened to be, and any one whom she, Lydia Blair, sent with her recommendation would find the place O.K.I was terrified. I didn't mean to go to this well-situated dwelling, "rather far west" in Thirty-fifth Street; I only had visions of being wafted there against my will. So much had happened in which my will had not been consulted that I was afraid of the kindliest of intentions. When at dinner that evening Miss Mulberry apologized across the table for her coldness toward me during the trip, ascribing it to a peculiarity of hers in never making gentlemen friends till sure they were gentlemen, and offering me her permanent address, I resolved that after that meal none of the whole group should catch another glimpse of me.For this reason I escaped to my cabin directly after dinner, packed my humble belongings, and went to bed. When, toward eleven, Drinkwater came down, putting the question, as he stumbled in, "'Sleep, Jasper?" I replied with a faint snore. For the last two or three days he had been scattering Jaspers throughout his sentences, and I only didn't ask him to give up the practice because of knowing that with men of his class familiarity is a habit. Besides, it would be all over in a few days, so that I might as well take it patiently.And yet I was sorry that it had to be so, for something had made me like him. During the days of the equinoctial bad weather it had fallen to me to steer him about the staggering ship, and one is naturally drawn to anything helpless. Then, too, of all the men to whom I ever lent a hand he was the most demonstrative. He had a boy's way of pawing you, of sprawling over you, of giving your hand little twitches, or affectionate squeezes to your arm. There was no liberty he wouldn't take; but when he took them they didn't seem to be liberties. If I betrayed a hint of annoyance he would pat me on any part of my person he happened to touch, with some such soothing words as:"There, there, poor 'ittle Jasper! Let him come to his muvverums and have his 'ittle cry."But I had to turn my back on him. There was no help for it. I understood, however, that people in his class were less sensitive to discourtesy than those in mine. They were used to it. True, he was blind; but then it was not to be expected that I should look after every blind man I happened to run against in traveling. Besides all this, I had made up my mind what I meant to do, and refused to discuss it further even with myself.He was hoisting himself to the upper bunk when he made a second attempt to draw me."You'll have people to meet you to-morrow morning?""Oh, I suppose so," I grunted, sleepily. "Some of 'em will be there." A second or two having passed, I felt it necessary to add, "Same with you, I suppose?"He replied from overhead. "Sure! Two or three of the guys 'll be jazzing round the dock. There'll be—a—Jack—and—a—Jim—and—a—well, a pile of 'em." He was snuggling down into his pillow as he wound up with a hearty, "Say, Jasper, I'll be—I'll be all right—I'll befine."Deciding that I wouldn't call this bluff, I turned and went to sleep. Up with dawn, I slipped out of the cabin before the blind man had stirred. Early rising got its reward in a morning of silver tissue. Silver tissue was flung over the Bay, woven into the air, and formed all we could see of the sky. Taking my place as far toward the bow as I could get, I watched till two straight lines forming a right angle appeared against the mist, after which, magical, pearly, spiritual, white in whiteness, tower in cloud, the great city began to show itself through the haze, like something born of the Holy Ghost.Having nothing to carry but my bag and suitcase, I was almost the first on shore. So, too, I must have been the first of the passengers ready to leave the dock. But two things detained me, just as I was going to take my departure.The first was fear. It came without warning—a fear of solitude, of the city, of the danger of arrest, of the first steps to be taken. I was like a sick man who hasn't realized how weak he is till getting out of bed. I had picked up my bags after the custom-house officer had passed them, to walk out of the pen under the letter S, when the thought of what I was facing suddenly appalled me. Dropping my load to the dusty floor, I sank on the nearest trunk.I have read in some English book of reminiscences the confession of dread on the part of a man released after fifteen years' imprisonment on first going into the streets. The crowds, the horses, the drays, the motors, the clamor and gang, struck him as horrific. For joining the blatant, hideous procession already moving from the dock I was no more equipped than Minerva would have been on the day when she sprang, full-grown and fully armed, from her father's head.Looking up the long lines of pens, I could see Miss Blair steering Drinkwater from the gangway toward the letter D. I noticed his movements as reluctant and terrified. The din I found appalling even with the faculty of sight must have been menacing to him in his darkness. He was still trying to take it with a laugh, but the merriment had become frozen.Seizing my two bags again, I ran up the line."Oh, you dear old kid!" Miss Blair exclaimed, as I came within speaking distance, "I'm sure glad to see you. I was afraid you'd been—"Knowing her suspicion, I cut in on her fear. "No; it didn't happen. I—got off the boat all right. I—I've just been looking after my things and ran back to see if there was anything I could do—""Bless you! There's everything you can do. Harry's been crying for you like a baby for its nurse.""Where is he?"The words were his. Confused by the hub-bub, he was clawing in the wrong direction, so that the grab with which he seized me was like that of a strayed child on clutching a friendly hand.In the end I was in a taxicab, bound for the rooming-house "rather far west" in Thirty-fifth Street, with my charge by my side."Say, isn't this the grandest!"The accent was so sincere that I laughed. We were out in the sunlight by this time, plowing our way through the squalor."What's grand about it?""Oh, well, Miss Blair finding me that house to go to—and you going along with me—and the doctor coming to see me to-morrow to talk about a job—""What job?""Oh, some job. There'll be one. You'll see. I've got the darnedest good luck a guy was ever born with—all except my name.""What about the fellows you said would be jazzing around the dock to meet you?"I was sorry for that bit of cruelty before it had got into words. It was one of the rare occasions on which I ever saw his honest pug-face fall."Say, you didn't believe that, did you?""You said it.""Oh, well, I say lots of things. Have to."We jolted on till a block in the traffic enabled him to continue without the difficulty of speaking against noise. "Look here! I'm going to tell you something. It's—it's a secret.""Then for Heaven's sake keep it.""I want you to know it. I don't want to be your friend under false pretenses."It seemed to me an opportunity to clarify the situation. We were on land. We were in New York. It was hardly fair to these good people to let them think that our association could continue on the same terms as at sea. Somewhere in the back of my strained mind was the fact that I had formerly classed myself as a snob and had been proud of the appellation. That is, I had been fastidious as to whom I should know and whom I should not know. I had been an adept in the art of cutting those who had been forced or had forced themselves upon me, and had regarded this skill as an accomplishment. Finding myself on board ship, and in a peculiar situation, I had carried myself as a gentleman should, even toward Mr. Finnegan and Miss Mulberry.That part had been relatively easy. It was more difficult to dispose of the kindly interest of the Averills. He had made more than one approach which I parried tactfully. Mrs. Averill had contented herself with disquieting looks from her almond eyes, though one day she had stopped me on deck with the condescending inquiries as to my health that one puts to a friend's butler. Miss Averill had been more direct—sensible, solicitous, and rich in a shy sympathy. One day, on entering the saloon, I found her examining some rugs which a Persian passenger was displaying in the interests of trade. Being called by her into council, I helped her to choose between a Herati and a Sarouk, the very names of which she had never heard. My connoisseurship impressed her. After that she spoke to me frequently, and once recommended the employment bureau of her Settlement, in case I were looking for work.All this I had struggled with, sometimes irritated, sometimes grimly amused, but always ill at ease. Now it was over. I should never see the Averills again, and Drinkwater must be given to understand that he, too, was an incident."My dear fellow, there are no pretenses. We simply met on board ship, and because of your—your accident I'm seeing you to your door. That's all. It doesn't constitute friendship.""You bet it does," was his unexpected rejoinder. "I'm not that kind at all. When a fellow's white with me, he's white. I'm not going to be ashamed of him. If you ever want any one to hold the sponge for you, Jasper—"I repeated stupidly, "Hold the sponge?""Go bail for you—do anything. I couldn't go bail for you on my own, of course; but I could hustle round and get some one to do it. Lydia Blair knows a lot of people—and there's the doctor. Say, Jasper, I'm your friend, and I'm going to stand by the contract."The taxi lumbered on again, while I was debating with myself as to what to say next, or whether or not to say anything. One thing was clear, that no matter what fate awaited me I couldn't have Drinkwater holding the sponge for me, nor could I appear in court, or anywhere else, with a man of his class as my backer.We were lurching into Broadway when he grasped me suddenly by the arm, to say:"Look here, Jasper! To show what I think of you I'm going to make you listen to that secret. I—I wasn't expecting any one to meet me. There's no onetomeet me. Do you get that?"I said that I got it, but found nothing peculiar in the situation."Oh, but there is, though. I've got—I've got no friends—not so much as a father or a mother. I never did have. I was—I was left in a basket on a door-step—-twenty-three years ago—and brought up in an orphans' home in Texas. There, you've got it straight! I've passed you up the one and only dope on Harry Drinkwater, and any guy that's afraid he can't be my friend without wearing a dress-suit to breakfast—"It was so delicate a method of telling me that I was as good as he was that it seemed best to let the subject of our future relations drop. They would settle themselves when I had carried out the plan that had already begun to dawn in me.CHAPTER VIIMiss Goldie Flowerdew, for that was the name on our note of introduction, was at home, but kept us waiting in a room where I made my first study of a rooming-house. It was another indication of what I hadnotbeen in my past life that a rooming-house was new to me.This particular room must in the 'sixties have been the parlor of some prim and prosperous family. It was long, narrow, dark, with dark carpets, and dark coverings to the chairs. Dark pictures hung on dark walls, and darkobjets d'artadorned a terrifying chimneypiece in black marble. Folding-doors shut us off from a back room that was probably darker still; and through the interstices of the shrunken woodwork we could hear a vague rustling.The rustling gave place to a measured step, which finally proceeded from the room and sounded along the hall, as if taken to the rhythm of a stone march like that in "Don Giovanni," when the statue of the Commander comes down from its pedestal. My companion and I instinctively stood up, divining the approach of a Presence.The Presence was soon on the threshold, doing justice to the epithet. The statue of the Commander, dressed in the twentieth-century style of sweet sixteen and crowned by a shock of bleached hair of tempestuous wave, would have looked like Miss Goldie Flowerdew as she stood before us majestically, fingering our note of introduction."So she's not coming," was her only observation, delivered in a voice so deep that, like Mrs. Siddons's "Will it wash?" it startled."Did you expect her?" I ventured to say.The sepulchral voice spoke again. "Which is the blind one?"Drinkwater moved forward. She, too, moved forward, coming into the room and scanning him face to face."You don't look so awful blind.""No, but I am—for the present.""For the present? Does that mean that you expect to regain your sight?""The doctors say that it may come back suddenly as it went.""And suppose it don't?""Oh, well, I've got along without it for the past six months, so I suppose I can do it for the next sixty years. I've given it a good try, and in some ways I like it.""You do, do you?""Yes, lady.""Then," she declared, in her tragic voice, "I like you."He flushed like a girl flushes, though his grin was his own specialty."Say," he began, in confidential glee, "Miss Blair said you would—""Tell Lydia Blair that she's at liberty to bestow her affections when and as she chooses; but beg her to be kind enough to allow me to dispose of mine. You'd like to see her room."She was turning to begin her stone march toward the stairs, but Drinkwater held her back."Say, lady, is it—is it her room?""Certainly; it's the one she's always had when she's been with me, and which she reserved by letter four weeks ago. I was to expect her as soon as the steamer docked.""Oh, then—" the boy began to stammer."Nonsense, my good man! Don't be foolish. She's gone elsewhere and the room is to let. If she hadn't sent me some one I would have charged her a week's rent; but now that she's got me a tenant she's at liberty to go where she likes. She knows I'd rather have men than women at any time of day.""Oh, but if it's her room, and she's given it up for me—""It isn't her room; it's mine. I can let it to any one I please. She knows of a dozen places in the city that she'll like just as well as this, so don't think she'll be on the street. Come along; I've no time to waste.""Better go," I whispered, taking him by the arm, so that the procession started.The hall was papered in deep crimson, against which a monumental black-walnut hat-and-umbrella stand was visible chiefly because of the gleam of an inset mirror. The floors were painted in the darkest shade of brown, in keeping with the massive body of the staircase. Up the staircase, as along the hall, ran a strip of deep crimson carpet, exposing the warp on the edge of each step.A hush of solemnity lay over everything. Clearly Miss Flowerdew's roomers were off for the day, and the place left to her and the little colored maid who had admitted us. Drinkwater and I made our way upward in a kind of awe, he clinging to my arm, frightened and yet adventurous.The long, steep stairs curved toward the top to an upper hall darker than that below, because the one window was in ground glass with a border of red and blue. Deep crimson was again the dominating color, broken only by the doors which may have been mahogany. All doors were closed except the one nearest the top of the stairs, which stood ajar. Miss Flowerdew pushed it open, bidding us follow her.We were on the spot which above all others in the world Lydia Blair called home. When the exquisite bit of jewel-weed drifted past me on the deck of theAuvergnethis haven was in the background of her memory.Through the gloom two iron beds, covered with coarse white counterpanes, sagged in the outlines of their mattresses, as beds do after a great many people have slept in them. A low wicker armchair sagged in the seat as armchairs do after a great many people have sat in them. A great many people had passed through this room, wearing it down, wearing it out; and yet there was a woman in the world whose soul leaped toward it as the hearth of her affections. Because it was architecturally dark a paper of olive-green arabesques on an olive-green background had been glued on the walls to make it darker still; and because it was now as dark as it could be made, the table, the chest of drawers, the washstand, like the doors, were all of the darkest brown. Miss Flowerdew pointed to their bare tops to say:"Lydia has her own covers, and when she puts her photographs and knickknacks round it makes a home for her.""Say, isn't it grand!" Drinkwater cried, looking round with his sightless eyes."It's grand for the money," Miss Flowerdew corrected. "It's not the Waldorf-Astoria, nor yet is it what I was used to when on the stage; but it's clean"—which it was—"and only respectable people have roomed here. Come, young man, and I'll show you how to find your way."Miss Flowerdew may have been on the stage, but she ought to have been a nurse. Not even Lydia Blair could take hold of a helpless man with such tenderness of strength. Holding Drinkwater by the hand, she showed him how to find the conveniences of this nest, pointing out the fact that the bath-room was the first door on the right as you went into the hall, and only a step away."I hope I sha'n't give you any more trouble, lady, after this," the blind boy breathed, gratefully."Trouble! Of course you'll give me trouble! The man who doesn't give a woman trouble is not a man. I've had male roomers so neat and natty you'd have sworn they were female ones—and I got rid of 'em. When a man doesn't know whether to put his boots on the mantelpiece or in the wash-basin when he takes them off, I can see I've got something to take care of. I guess I may as well cart these away."The reference was to two photographs that stood on the ledges of the huge black-walnut mirror."I put 'em out to give Lydia a home feeling as soon as she arrived. That's her father, Byron Blair," she continued, handing me the picture of an extremely good-looking, weak-faced man of the Dundreary type, "and that's her mother, Tillie Lightwood, as she was when she and I starred in 'The Wages of Sin.'" I examined the charming head, with profile overweighted by a chignon, while Miss Flowerdew continued her reminiscences. "I played Lady Somberly to Tillie's Lottie Gwynne for nearly three years on end, first here, on Broadway, and then on the road. Don't do you any good, playing the same part so long. Easy work and money, but you get the mannerisms fixed on you. I was a good utility woman up to that time; but when I came back to Broadway I was Lady Somberly. I never could get rid of her, and so ... I'll show you some of my notices and photographs—no, not to-day; but when you come round to see your friend—that is"—she looked inquiringly—"that is, if you don't mean to use the other bed."This being the hint I needed, I took it. With the briefest of farewells I was out on the pavement with my bags in my hands, walking eastward without a goal.Once more I had to stifle my concern as to Drinkwater. I saw him, when Miss Flowerdew would have gone down-stairs, sitting alone in his darkness, with nothing to do. His trunk, the unpacking of which would give him some occupation, would not arrive until evening; and in the mean time he would have no one but himself for company. He couldn't go out; it would be all he could do to feel his way to the bathroom and back, though even that small excursion would be a break in his monotony....But I took these thoughts and choked them. It was preposterous that I should hold myself responsible for the comfort of a boy met by chance on a steamer. Had I taken him in charge from affection or philanthropy it would have been all very well; but I had no philanthropic promptings, and, while I liked him, I was far from taking this wavering sympathy as affection. I was sorry for him, of course; but others must take care of him. I should have all I could do in taking care of myself.So I wandered on, hardly noticing at first the way I took, and then consciously looking for a hotel. As to that, I had definitely made up my mind not to go to any of those better known, though the names of several remained in my memory, till I had properly clothed myself. Though in a measure I had grown used to my appearance, I caught the occasional turning of a head to look at me, and once the eyebrows of a passer-by went up in amused surprise.I discovered quickly enough that I knew New York and that I knew it tolerably well; and almost as quickly I learned that I knew it not as a resident, but from the point of view of the visitor. Now that I was there, I could see myself always coming and always going. From what direction I had come and in what direction I turned on leaving still were mysteries. But the conviction of having no abiding tie with this city was as strong as that of the spectator in a theater of having no permanent connection with the play.Coming on a modest hotel at last, I made bold to go in, finding myself in a lobby of imitation onyx and an atmosphere heavy with tobacco. I crossed to the desk, under the eyes of some three or four colored boys who didn't offer to assist me with my bags, and applied for a room. A courteous young man of Slavic nationality regretted that they were "full up." I marched out again.Repeating this experience at another and another, I was saved from doing it at a fourth by a uniformed darky porter, who, as I was about to go up the steps, shook his head, at the same time sketching in the air an oval which I took to be a zero. I didn't go in, but I was oddly disconcerted. It had never occurred to me till then that hotels had a choice in guests, just as guests had a choice in hotels. I had always supposed that a man who could pay could command a welcome anywhere; but here I was, with nearly four hundred dollars in my pockets, unable to find a lodging because something strange in my clothes, or my eyes, or in my general demeanor, or in all together, stamped me as unusual. "Who's that freak?" I heard one bell-boy ask another, and the term seemed to brand me.The day was muggy. After the keen sea air it was breathless. When I could walk no longer I staggered into a humble eating-house that seemed to be half underground. There was no one there but two waitresses, one of whom, wearing her hairà la madone, came forward as I closed the door. She did not, however, come forward so quickly but that I heard her say to her companion, "Well, of all the nuts—!" The observation, though breathlessly suspended there, made me shy about ordering my repast.And when it came I couldn't eat it. It was good enough, doubtless, but coarse and ill served. I think the young lady who found me a nut was sorry for me when it came to close quarters, for she did her best to coax my appetite with other kind suggestions. All I could do in response was to flourish the roll of notes into which I had changed my French money on board and give her an amazing tip.But a new decision had come to me while I strove to eat, and on making my way up to daylight again I set out to put it into operation. Reaching Broadway, I drifted southward till I came on one of the large establishments for ready-to-wear clothing which I knew were to be found in the neighborhood. On entering the vast emporium I adopted a new manner. No longer shrinking as I had shrunk since waking to the fact of my misfortune, I walked briskly up to the first man whom I saw at a distance eying me haughtily."See here," I said, in a good-mixer voice, "I've just got back from France, and look at the way they've rigged me out. Was in hospital there, after I'd got all kinds of shock, and this is the best I could do without coming back to God's country in a French uniform. Now I want to see the best you can do and how pretty you can make me look."On emerging I was, therefore, passable to glance at, and after a hair-cut and a shave I was no longer afraid to see my reflection in a glass. I had, too, another inspiration. It occurred to me that I might startle myself into finding the way home. Calling a taxi, I drove boldly with my bags to the Grand Central Terminal, trusting to the inner voice to tell me the place for which to buy my ticket. With half the instinct of a horse my feet might take the road to the stable of their own accord.I recognized the station and all its ways—the red-capped colored men, the white-capped white ones, the subterranean shops, the gaunt marble spaces. I recognized the windows at which I must have taken tickets hundreds of times, and played my comedy by walking up first to one and then to another, waiting for the inner voice to give me a tip. I found nothing but blank silence. The world was all before me where to choose—only Providence was not my guide. Or if Providence was my guide, His thread of flame was not visible.I suppose that in that station that afternoon I was like any other man intending to take a train. At least I could say that. So pleased was I with myself that more than once during the two hours of my test I went into the station lavatory just for the sake of seeing myself in the glass. It was a long glass, capable of reflecting some dozen men at a time, and I was as like the rest as one elephant is like another. Oh, that relief! Oh, that joy! Not to be a freak or a nut made up for the moment for my sense of homelessness.When tired of listening for a call that didn't come, I went into the waiting-room and sat down. Again I was like all the other people doing the same thing. Propped up by a bag on each side, I might have been waiting for a train to any of the suburbs. I might have had a family expecting me to supper. The obvious reflection came to me. To all whose glances happened to fall on me I was no more than an unstoried human spot; and yet behind me was a history that would have startled any one of them. So they were unstoried human spots to me; and yet behind each of them there lay a drama of which I could read no more than I could see of the world of light beyond the speck I called a star. Was there a Providence for me, or them, or any other strayed, homeless dog? As I glanced at the faces before me, faces of tired women, faces of despondent men, young faces hardened, old faces stupefied, all faces stamped with the age-long soddenness of man, I asked if anywhere in the universe love could be holding up the lamps to them.Like millions of others who have asked this question, I felt that I had my trouble for my pains; but I got another inspiration. As it was now the middle of the afternoon, the folly of expecting help from the inner voice became apparent. I must resort to some other expedient, and the new suggestion was a simple one.Checking my bags in the parcel-office, I made for the nearest great hotel. The hall with its colossal furnishings was familiar from the moment of my entry. The same ever so slightly overdressed ladies might have been mincing up and down as on the occasion of my last visit there; the same knots of men might have begun to gather; the same orchestra might have been jigging the same tunes; if only the same men were at the office desk I might find my ingenuity rewarded."I wonder if there are any letters for me here? I'm not staying in the house; but I thought—""Name?"No one said, as I hoped, "I'll see, Mr. Smith," or, "I'll find out, Mr. Jones," as often happens when a man has been a well-known guest.Nevertheless, it was a spot where strangers from other places congregated, and I knew that in the lobbies of hotels one often met old friends. I might meet one of mine. Better still, one of mine might meet me. At any minute I might feel a clap on the shoulder, while some one shouted, "Hello, old Brown!" or, "Why, here's Billy Robinson! What'll we have to drink?" These had been familiar salutations and might become so again.So I walked up and down. I was sorry I had neither stick nor gloves, but promised to supply the lack at once. In the mean time I could thrust my hands into my pockets and look like a gentleman at ease because he is at home. Having enjoyed this sport for an hour or more, I went out to make my purchases.Fortified with these, I repeated my comedy in another hotel, and presently in a third. In each I began with the same formula of asking for letters; and in each I got the same response, "Name?" In each I receded with a polite, "Never mind. I don't think there can be any, after all." In each I paraded up and down and in and out, courting the glances of head waiters, bell-hops, and lift-men, always in the hope of a recognition and a "How do, Mr. So-and-so?" that never came.But by six o'clock the game had played itself out for the day and I was not only tired, but depressed. I was not discouraged, for the reason that New York was full of big hotels, and I meant to begin my tramp on the morrow. There were clubs, too, into which on one pretext or another I could force my way, and there were also the great thoroughfares. Some hundreds of people in New York at that moment would probably have recognized me at a glance—if I could only come face to face with them. All my efforts for the next few weeks must be bent on doing that.But in the mean time I was tired and lonely. There were two or three things I might do, each of which I had promised to myself with some anticipation. I could go to a good restaurant and order a good feed; I could go to a good hotel and sleep in a good bed; I could buy the evening papers and find out what kind of world I was living in.As to carrying out this program, I had but one prudential misgiving. It might cost more money than it would be wise for me to spend. My visit to the purveyor of clothing in the afternoon had not only lightened my purse, but considerably opened my eyes. Where I had had nearly four hundred dollars I had now nearly three. With very slight extravagance, according to the standards of New York, it would come down to nearly two and then to nearly one, and then to ... But I shuddered at that, and stopped thinking.Having stopped thinking along one set of lines, I presently found myself off on another. I saw Harry Drinkwater sitting in the dark as I was sitting in the hall of a hotel. That is, he was idle and I was idle. He was eating his heart out as I was eating out mine.It occurred to me that I might go back to Thirty-fifth Street and take him out to dinner. Alfonso, recommended by Miss Blair, might be no more successful as a host than the lady with tressesà la madonewho had given me my lunch; but we could try. At any rate, the boy wouldn't be alone on this first evening in New York, and would feel that some one cared for him.And then something else in me revolted. No! No! A thousand times no! I had cut loose from these people and should stay loose. On saying good-by to Drinkwater that morning I had disappeared without a trace. For any one who tried to follow me now I should be the needle in a haystack. What good could come of my going back of my own accord and putting myself on a level to which I did not belong?Like many Americans, I was no believer in the equality of men. For men as a whole I had no respect, and in none but the smallest group had I any confidence. Looking at the faces as they passed me in the hall, I saw only those of brutes—and these were mostly people who had had what we call advantages. As for those who had not had advantages I disliked them in contact and distrusted them in principle. I described myself not only as a snob, but as an aristocrat. I had worked it out that to be well educated and well-to-do was the normal. To be poor and ill educated was abnormal. Those who suffered from lack of means or refinement did so because of some flaw in themselves or their inheritance. They were the plague of the world. They created all the world's problems and bred most of its diseases. From the beginning of time they had been a source of disturbance to better men, and would be to the end of it.It was the irony of ironies, then, that I should have become a member of a group that included a lady's maid, a chauffeur, and two stenographers, and been hailed as one of them. The lady's maid and the chauffeur I could, of course, dismiss from my mind; but the two stenographers had seemingly sworn such a friendship for me that nothing but force would cut me free from it. Very well, then; I should use force if it was needed; but it wouldn't be needed. All I had to do was to refrain from going to take Drinkwater out to dinner, and they would never know where I was.And yet, if you would believe it, I went. Within half an hour I was knocking at his bedroom door and hearing his cheery "Come in."Why I did this I cannot tell you. It was neither from loneliness, nor kind-heartedness, nor a sense of duty. The feet that wouldn't take the horse to the stable took him back to that crimson rooming-house, and that is all I can say.Drinkwater was sitting in the dark, which was no darker to him than daylight; but when I switched on the light his pug grin gave an added illumination to the room."Say, that's the darnedest! I knew you'd come in spite of the old lady swearing you wouldn't. I'd given you half an hour yet; and here you are, twenty-five minutes ahead of time."The reception annoyed me. It was bad enough to have come; but it was worse to have been expected."How have you been getting on?" I asked, in order to relieve my first anxiety."Oh, fine!""Haven't you been—dull?""Lord, no!""What have you had to do?""Oh, enjoy myself—feeling my way about the house. I can go all round the room, and out into the hall, and up and down stairs just as easily as you can. It's a cinch.""Have you heard anything of Miss Flair?""Sure! Called up about an hour ago to say she'd found the swellest place—in Forty-first Street. But, say, Jasper, what do you think of a girl who gives up the room she's reserved for a month and more, just to—"I broke in on this to ask where he'd had his lunch."Oh, the old girl made me go down and have it with her. She's not half a bad sort, when you come to know her. I've asked her to come out to dinner with me at Alfonso's. Lydia Blair says it's a dandy place—and now you can join the party.""No; I've come to take you out.""Say, Jasper! Do you think I'm always going to pass the buck, just because ... You and little Goldie are coming to dinner with me."Not to dispute the point, I yielded it, asking only:"What made you think I was coming this evening?—because, you know, I didn't mean to.""Oh, I dunno. Like you to do it. You're the sort. That's all."So within another half-hour I found myself at Alfonso's, on Drinkwater's left, with little Goldie opposite. Little Goldie seemed somehow the right name for the Statue of the Commander, now that she wore a lingerie hat and a blouse of the kind which I believe is called peek-a-boo. She was well known at Alfonso's, however, her authority securing us a table in a corner, with special attentions from head and subordinate waitresses.How shall I tell you of Alfonso's? Like the rooming-house, it was for me a new social manifestation. It was what you might call the home of the homeless, and the homeless were numerous and noisy. They were very noisy, they were very hot. The odor of food struck upon the nostrils like the smell of a whole burnt sacrifice when they offered up an ox. The perfume of wine swam on top of that food, and over and above both the smell of a healthy, promiscuous, perspiring humanity, washed and unwashed, in a festive hurtling together, hilarious and hungry.The food was excellent; the wine as good as anyvin ordinairein France; the service rapid; and the whole a masterpiece of organization. I had eaten many a dinner for which I paid ten times as much which wouldn't have compared with it.During the progress of the meal it was natural that Miss Flowerdew, whose eye commended the change in my appearance, should ask me what I had been doing through the day. I didn't, as you will understand, find it necessary to go into details; but I told her of my unsuccessful attempts to find a room."Did you try the Hotel Barcelona, in Fourth Avenue?"I told her I had not."Then do so." Fumbling in her bag, she found a card and pencil. "Take that," she commanded, when she had finished scribbling, "and ask for Mr. Jewsbury. If he isn't in, show it to the room clerk, but keep it for Mr. Jewsbury to-morrow. I've told them you must have a room and bath, not over two-fifty a day—and clean. Tell them I said so.""Is Mr. Jewsbury a friend of yours?" I asked, inanely, after I had thanked her."He used to be my husband—-the one before Mr. Crockett. I could be Mrs. Jewsbury again, if I so chose; but I do not so choose."With this astonishing hint of the possibilities in Miss Goldie Flowerdew's biography I saw the value of discretion, and as soon as courtesy permitted took my leave to visit the Hotel Barcelona.
CHAPTER V
That which, in my condition, irked me more than anything was the impossibility of being by myself. The steamer was a small one, with all the passengers of one class. Those who now crossed the Atlantic were doing it as best they could; and to be thrown pell-mell into a second-rate ship like theAuvergnewas better, in the opinion of most people, than not to cross at all. It was a matter of eight or ten days of physical discomfort, with home at the other end.
I knew now that the month was September, and the equinox not far away. It was mild for the time of year, and, though the weather was rough, it was not dirty. With the winds shifting quickly from west to northwest and back again, the clouds were distant and dry, lifting from time to time for bursts of stormy sunshine. For me it was a pageant. I could forget myself in its contemplation. It was the vast, and I was only the infinitesimal; it was the ever-varying eternal, and I was the sheerest offspring of time, whose affairs were of no moment.
Nevertheless, I had pressing instant needs, or needs that would become pressing as soon as we reached New York. Between now and then there were five or six days during which I might recover the knowledge that had escaped me; but if I didn't I should be in a difficult situation. I should be unable to get money; I should be unable to go home. I should be lost. Unless some one found me I should have to earn a living. To earn a living there must be something I could do, and I didn't know that I could do anything.
Of all forms of exasperation, this began to be the most maddening. I must have had a profession; and yet there was no profession I could think of from which I didn't draw back with the peculiar sick recoil I felt the minute I approached whatever was personal to myself. In this there were elements contradictory to each other. I wanted to know—and yet I shrank from knowing. If I could have had access to what money I needed I should have been content to drift into the unknown without regret.
But there was a reserve even here. It attached to the word home. On that word the door had not been so completely shut that a glimmer didn't leak through. I knew I had a home. I longed for it without knowing what I longed for. I could see myself arriving in New York, fulfilling the regular dock routine—and going somewhere. But I didn't know where. Of some ruptured brain cell enough remained to tell me that on the American continent a spot belonged to me; but it told me no more than the fact that the spot had love in it. I could feel the love and not discern the object. As to whether I had father or mother or wife or child I knew no more than I knew the same facts of the captain of the ship. Out of this darkness there came only a vision of flaming eyes which might mean anything or nothing.
I was unable to pursue this line of thought because Miss Blair came strolling by with the same nonchalant air with which she had passed me before lunch. I can hardly say she stopped; rather she commanded, and swept me along.
"Don't you want to take a walk, Mr. Soames? You'd better do it now, because we'll be rolling scuppers under by and by."
For making her acquaintance it was too good an opportunity to miss. In spite of my inability to play up to her gay cheerfulness I found myself strolling along beside her.
I may say at once that I never met a human being with whom I was more instantly on terms of confidence. The sketch of her life which she gave me without a second's hesitation came in response to my remark that from her questions to me at table I judged her to have traveled.
"I was born on the road, and I suppose I shall never get off it. My father and mother had got hitched to a theatrical troupe on tour."
A distaste acquired as a little girl on tour had kept her from trying her fortunes on the boards. She had an idea that her father was acting still, though after his divorce from her mother they had lost sight of him. Her mother had died six years previously, since which time she had looked after herself, with some ups and downs of experience. She had been a dressmaker, a milliner, and a model, with no more liking for any of these professions than she had for the theatrical. In winding up this brief narrative she astounded me with the statement:
"And now I'm going to be an adventuress."
"A what?" I stopped in the middle of the deck to stare at her.
She repeated the obnoxious noun, continuing to walk on.
"But I thought you were a stenographer."
"That's part of it. I'm deceiving poor Miss Averill. She's my dupe. I make use of people in that way—and throw them aside."
"But doing the work for Doctor Averill in the mean time."
"Oh, that's just a pretext."
"A pretext for what?"
"For being an adventuress. Goodness knows what evil I shall do in that family before I get out of it."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Oh, well, you'll see. If you're born baleful—well, you've just got to be baleful; that's all. Did you ever hear of an adventuress who didn't wreck homes?"
I said I had not much experience with adventuresses, and didn't quite know the point of their occupation.
"Well, you stay around where I am and you'll see."
"Have you wrecked many homes up to the present?" I ventured to inquire.
"This is the first one I ever had a chance at. I only decided to be an adventuress about the time when Miss Averill came along."
That, it seemed, had been at the Settlement, to which Miss Blair had retired after some trying situations as a model. Stenography being taught at the Settlement, she had taken it up on hearing of several authenticated cases of girls who had gone into offices and married millionaires. The discouraging side presented itself later in the many more cases of girls who had not been so successful. It was in this interval of depression on the part of Miss Blair that Mildred Averill had appeared at the Settlement with all sorts of anxious plans about doing good, "If she wants to do good to any one, let her do it to me," Miss Blair had said to her intimates. "I'm all ready to be adopted by any old maid that's got the wad." That, she explained to me, was not the language she habitually used. It was mere pleasantry between girls, and not up to the standard of a really high-class adventuress. Moreover, Miss Averill was not an old maid, seeing she was but twenty-five, though she got herself up like forty.
All the same, Miss Averill having come on the scene and having taken a fancy to Miss Blair, Miss Blair had decided to use Miss Averill for her own malignant purposes.
For by this time the seeming stenographer had chosen her career. A sufficient course of reading had made it clear that of all the women in the world the adventuress had the best of it. She went to the smartest dressmakers; she stayed at the dearest hotels; her jewels and furs rivaled those of duchesses; her life was the perpetual third act of a play. Furthermore, Miss Blair had yet to hear of an adventuress who didn't end in money, marriage, and respectability.
Having been so frank about herself, I could hardly be surprised when she became equally so about me. As the wind rose she slipped into a protected angle, where I had no choice but to follow her. She began her attack after propping herself in the corner, her hands deep in her pockets, and her pretty shoulders hunched.
"You're a funny man. Do you know it?"
Though inwardly aghast, I strove to conceal my agitation. "Funny in what way?"
"Oh, every way. Any one would think—"
"What would any one think?" I insisted, nervously, when she paused.
"Oh, well! I sha'n't say."
"Because you're afraid to hurt my feelings?"
"I'm a good sort—especially among people of our own class. For the others"—she shrugged her shoulders charmingly—"I'm an anarchist and a socialist and all that. I don't care who I bring down, if they're up. But when people are down already—I'm—I'm a friend."
As there was a measure of invitation in these words I nerved myself to approach the personal.
"Are you friend enough to tell me why you thought you had seen me in Salt Lake City?"
She nodded. "Sure; because I did think so—there—or somewhere."
"Then you couldn't swear to the place?"
"I couldn't swear to the place; but I could to you. I never forget a face if I give it the twice-over. The once-over—well, then I may. But if I've studied a man—the least little bit—I've got him for the rest of my life."
"But why should you have studied me—assuming that it was me?"
"Assuming that that water's the ocean, I study it because there's nothing else to look at. We were opposite each other at two tables in a restaurant."
"Was there nobody there but just you and me?"
"Yes, there was a lady."
My heart gave a thump. "At your table or at mine?"
"At yours."
"Did she"—I was aware of the foolish wording of the question without being able to put it in any other way—"did she have large dark eyes?"
"Not in the back of her head, which was all I saw of her."
Once more I expressed myself stupidly. "Did you—did you think it was—my wife—or just a friend?"
She burst out laughing. "How could I tell? You speak as if you didn't know. You're certainly the queerest kid—"
I tried to recover my lost ground. "I do know, but—"
"Then what are you asking me for?"
"Because you seem to have watched me—"
"I didn't watch you," she denied, indignantly. "The idea! You sure have your nerve with you. I couldn't help seeing a guy that was right under my eyes, could I? Besides which—"
"Yes? Besides which—?" I insisted.
She brought the words out with an air of chaffing embarrassment. "Well, you weren't got up as you are now. Do you know it?"
As I reddened and stammered something about the war, she laid her hand on my arm soothingly.
"There now! There now! That's all right. I never give any one away. You can see for yourself that I can't have knocked about the world like I've done without running up against this sort of thing a good many times—"
"What sort of thing?"
"Oh, well, if you don't know I needn't tell you. But I'm your friend, kid. That's all I want you to know. It's why I told you about myself. I wanted you to see that we're all in the same boat. Harry Drinkwater's your friend, too. He likes you. You stick by us and we'll stick by you and see the thing through."
It was on my lips to say, "What thing?" but she rattled on again.
"Only you can't wear that sort of clothes and get away with it, kid. Do you know it? Another fellow might, but you simply can't. It shows you up at the first glance. The night you came on board you might just as well have marched in carrying a blue silk banner. For Heaven's sake, if you've got anything else in your kit go and put it on."
"I haven't."
"Haven't? What on earth have you done with all the swell things you must have had? Burned 'em?"
The question was so direct, and the good-will behind it so evident, that I felt I must give an answer. "Sold them."
"Got down to that, did you? What do you know? Poor little kid! Funny, isn't it? A woman can carry that sort of thing off nine times out often; but a fat-head of a man—"
She kept the sentence suspended while gazing over my shoulder. The lips remained parted as in uttering the last word. I was about to turn to see what so entranced her, when she said, in a tone of awe or joy, I was not sure which:
"There's that poor little blind boy coming down the deck all by himself. You'll excuse me, won't you, if I run and help him?"
So she ran.
CHAPTER VI
Beyond this point I had made no progress when we landed in New York. I still knew myself as Jasper Soames. Miss Blair still suspected that I was running away from justice. That I was running away from justice I suspected myself, since how could I do otherwise? All the way up the Bay I waited for that tap on my shoulder which I could almost have welcomed for the reason that it would relieve me of some of my embarrassments.
Those embarrassments had grown more entangling throughout the last days of the voyage. The very good-will of the people about me increased the complications in which I was finding myself involved. Every one asked a different set of questions, the answers I gave being not always compatible with each other. I didn't exactly lie; I only replied wildly—trying to guard my secret till I could walk off the boat and disappear from the ken of these kindly folk who did nothing but wish me well.
I accomplished this feat, I am bound to confess, with little credit; but credit was not my object. All I asked was the privilege of being alone, with leisure to take stock of my small assets and reckon up the possibilities before me. As it was incredible that a man such as I was could be lost on the threshold of his home I needed all the faculties that remained to me in order to think out the ways and means by which I could be found.
So alone I found myself, though not without resorting to ruses of which I was even then ashamed.
It was Miss Blair who scared me into them. Coming up to me on deck, during the last afternoon on board, she said, casually:
"Going to stay awhile in New York?"
It was a renewal of the everlasting catechism, so I said, curtly:
"I dare say."
"Oh, don't be huffy! Looking for a job?"
"Later, perhaps; not at once."
In her smile, as her eye caught mine, there was a visible significance. "You'll be a good kid, wont you? You'll—you'll keep on the level?"
I made a big effort on my own part, so as to see how she would take it. "If I'm not nabbed going up the Bay."
"Oh, you won't be. It can't be as—as bad as all that. Even if it was—" She left this sentiment for me to guess at while she went on. "Where do you expect to stay?"
I was about to name one of New York's expensive hotels when it occurred to me that she would burst out laughing at the announcement, she would take it as a joke. I realized then that it struck me also as a joke. It was incongruous not only with my appearance, but with my entire rôle throughout the trip. I ended by replying that I hadn't made up my mind.
"Well, then, if you're looking for a place—"
"I can't say that I'm that."
"Or if you should be, I've given Harry Drinkwater a very good address."
It was only a rooming-house, she explained to me, but for active people the more convenient for that, and with lots of good cafés in the neighborhood. She told me of one in particular—Alfonso was the name of the restaurateur—where one could get a very good dinner, with wine, for seventy-five cents, and an adequate breakfast for forty. Moreover, Miss Blair had long known the lady who kept the rooming-house in question, a friend of her mother's she happened to be, and any one whom she, Lydia Blair, sent with her recommendation would find the place O.K.
I was terrified. I didn't mean to go to this well-situated dwelling, "rather far west" in Thirty-fifth Street; I only had visions of being wafted there against my will. So much had happened in which my will had not been consulted that I was afraid of the kindliest of intentions. When at dinner that evening Miss Mulberry apologized across the table for her coldness toward me during the trip, ascribing it to a peculiarity of hers in never making gentlemen friends till sure they were gentlemen, and offering me her permanent address, I resolved that after that meal none of the whole group should catch another glimpse of me.
For this reason I escaped to my cabin directly after dinner, packed my humble belongings, and went to bed. When, toward eleven, Drinkwater came down, putting the question, as he stumbled in, "'Sleep, Jasper?" I replied with a faint snore. For the last two or three days he had been scattering Jaspers throughout his sentences, and I only didn't ask him to give up the practice because of knowing that with men of his class familiarity is a habit. Besides, it would be all over in a few days, so that I might as well take it patiently.
And yet I was sorry that it had to be so, for something had made me like him. During the days of the equinoctial bad weather it had fallen to me to steer him about the staggering ship, and one is naturally drawn to anything helpless. Then, too, of all the men to whom I ever lent a hand he was the most demonstrative. He had a boy's way of pawing you, of sprawling over you, of giving your hand little twitches, or affectionate squeezes to your arm. There was no liberty he wouldn't take; but when he took them they didn't seem to be liberties. If I betrayed a hint of annoyance he would pat me on any part of my person he happened to touch, with some such soothing words as:
"There, there, poor 'ittle Jasper! Let him come to his muvverums and have his 'ittle cry."
But I had to turn my back on him. There was no help for it. I understood, however, that people in his class were less sensitive to discourtesy than those in mine. They were used to it. True, he was blind; but then it was not to be expected that I should look after every blind man I happened to run against in traveling. Besides all this, I had made up my mind what I meant to do, and refused to discuss it further even with myself.
He was hoisting himself to the upper bunk when he made a second attempt to draw me.
"You'll have people to meet you to-morrow morning?"
"Oh, I suppose so," I grunted, sleepily. "Some of 'em will be there." A second or two having passed, I felt it necessary to add, "Same with you, I suppose?"
He replied from overhead. "Sure! Two or three of the guys 'll be jazzing round the dock. There'll be—a—Jack—and—a—Jim—and—a—well, a pile of 'em." He was snuggling down into his pillow as he wound up with a hearty, "Say, Jasper, I'll be—I'll be all right—I'll befine."
Deciding that I wouldn't call this bluff, I turned and went to sleep. Up with dawn, I slipped out of the cabin before the blind man had stirred. Early rising got its reward in a morning of silver tissue. Silver tissue was flung over the Bay, woven into the air, and formed all we could see of the sky. Taking my place as far toward the bow as I could get, I watched till two straight lines forming a right angle appeared against the mist, after which, magical, pearly, spiritual, white in whiteness, tower in cloud, the great city began to show itself through the haze, like something born of the Holy Ghost.
Having nothing to carry but my bag and suitcase, I was almost the first on shore. So, too, I must have been the first of the passengers ready to leave the dock. But two things detained me, just as I was going to take my departure.
The first was fear. It came without warning—a fear of solitude, of the city, of the danger of arrest, of the first steps to be taken. I was like a sick man who hasn't realized how weak he is till getting out of bed. I had picked up my bags after the custom-house officer had passed them, to walk out of the pen under the letter S, when the thought of what I was facing suddenly appalled me. Dropping my load to the dusty floor, I sank on the nearest trunk.
I have read in some English book of reminiscences the confession of dread on the part of a man released after fifteen years' imprisonment on first going into the streets. The crowds, the horses, the drays, the motors, the clamor and gang, struck him as horrific. For joining the blatant, hideous procession already moving from the dock I was no more equipped than Minerva would have been on the day when she sprang, full-grown and fully armed, from her father's head.
Looking up the long lines of pens, I could see Miss Blair steering Drinkwater from the gangway toward the letter D. I noticed his movements as reluctant and terrified. The din I found appalling even with the faculty of sight must have been menacing to him in his darkness. He was still trying to take it with a laugh, but the merriment had become frozen.
Seizing my two bags again, I ran up the line.
"Oh, you dear old kid!" Miss Blair exclaimed, as I came within speaking distance, "I'm sure glad to see you. I was afraid you'd been—"
Knowing her suspicion, I cut in on her fear. "No; it didn't happen. I—got off the boat all right. I—I've just been looking after my things and ran back to see if there was anything I could do—"
"Bless you! There's everything you can do. Harry's been crying for you like a baby for its nurse."
"Where is he?"
The words were his. Confused by the hub-bub, he was clawing in the wrong direction, so that the grab with which he seized me was like that of a strayed child on clutching a friendly hand.
In the end I was in a taxicab, bound for the rooming-house "rather far west" in Thirty-fifth Street, with my charge by my side.
"Say, isn't this the grandest!"
The accent was so sincere that I laughed. We were out in the sunlight by this time, plowing our way through the squalor.
"What's grand about it?"
"Oh, well, Miss Blair finding me that house to go to—and you going along with me—and the doctor coming to see me to-morrow to talk about a job—"
"What job?"
"Oh, some job. There'll be one. You'll see. I've got the darnedest good luck a guy was ever born with—all except my name."
"What about the fellows you said would be jazzing around the dock to meet you?"
I was sorry for that bit of cruelty before it had got into words. It was one of the rare occasions on which I ever saw his honest pug-face fall.
"Say, you didn't believe that, did you?"
"You said it."
"Oh, well, I say lots of things. Have to."
We jolted on till a block in the traffic enabled him to continue without the difficulty of speaking against noise. "Look here! I'm going to tell you something. It's—it's a secret."
"Then for Heaven's sake keep it."
"I want you to know it. I don't want to be your friend under false pretenses."
It seemed to me an opportunity to clarify the situation. We were on land. We were in New York. It was hardly fair to these good people to let them think that our association could continue on the same terms as at sea. Somewhere in the back of my strained mind was the fact that I had formerly classed myself as a snob and had been proud of the appellation. That is, I had been fastidious as to whom I should know and whom I should not know. I had been an adept in the art of cutting those who had been forced or had forced themselves upon me, and had regarded this skill as an accomplishment. Finding myself on board ship, and in a peculiar situation, I had carried myself as a gentleman should, even toward Mr. Finnegan and Miss Mulberry.
That part had been relatively easy. It was more difficult to dispose of the kindly interest of the Averills. He had made more than one approach which I parried tactfully. Mrs. Averill had contented herself with disquieting looks from her almond eyes, though one day she had stopped me on deck with the condescending inquiries as to my health that one puts to a friend's butler. Miss Averill had been more direct—sensible, solicitous, and rich in a shy sympathy. One day, on entering the saloon, I found her examining some rugs which a Persian passenger was displaying in the interests of trade. Being called by her into council, I helped her to choose between a Herati and a Sarouk, the very names of which she had never heard. My connoisseurship impressed her. After that she spoke to me frequently, and once recommended the employment bureau of her Settlement, in case I were looking for work.
All this I had struggled with, sometimes irritated, sometimes grimly amused, but always ill at ease. Now it was over. I should never see the Averills again, and Drinkwater must be given to understand that he, too, was an incident.
"My dear fellow, there are no pretenses. We simply met on board ship, and because of your—your accident I'm seeing you to your door. That's all. It doesn't constitute friendship."
"You bet it does," was his unexpected rejoinder. "I'm not that kind at all. When a fellow's white with me, he's white. I'm not going to be ashamed of him. If you ever want any one to hold the sponge for you, Jasper—"
I repeated stupidly, "Hold the sponge?"
"Go bail for you—do anything. I couldn't go bail for you on my own, of course; but I could hustle round and get some one to do it. Lydia Blair knows a lot of people—and there's the doctor. Say, Jasper, I'm your friend, and I'm going to stand by the contract."
The taxi lumbered on again, while I was debating with myself as to what to say next, or whether or not to say anything. One thing was clear, that no matter what fate awaited me I couldn't have Drinkwater holding the sponge for me, nor could I appear in court, or anywhere else, with a man of his class as my backer.
We were lurching into Broadway when he grasped me suddenly by the arm, to say:
"Look here, Jasper! To show what I think of you I'm going to make you listen to that secret. I—I wasn't expecting any one to meet me. There's no onetomeet me. Do you get that?"
I said that I got it, but found nothing peculiar in the situation.
"Oh, but there is, though. I've got—I've got no friends—not so much as a father or a mother. I never did have. I was—I was left in a basket on a door-step—-twenty-three years ago—and brought up in an orphans' home in Texas. There, you've got it straight! I've passed you up the one and only dope on Harry Drinkwater, and any guy that's afraid he can't be my friend without wearing a dress-suit to breakfast—"
It was so delicate a method of telling me that I was as good as he was that it seemed best to let the subject of our future relations drop. They would settle themselves when I had carried out the plan that had already begun to dawn in me.
CHAPTER VII
Miss Goldie Flowerdew, for that was the name on our note of introduction, was at home, but kept us waiting in a room where I made my first study of a rooming-house. It was another indication of what I hadnotbeen in my past life that a rooming-house was new to me.
This particular room must in the 'sixties have been the parlor of some prim and prosperous family. It was long, narrow, dark, with dark carpets, and dark coverings to the chairs. Dark pictures hung on dark walls, and darkobjets d'artadorned a terrifying chimneypiece in black marble. Folding-doors shut us off from a back room that was probably darker still; and through the interstices of the shrunken woodwork we could hear a vague rustling.
The rustling gave place to a measured step, which finally proceeded from the room and sounded along the hall, as if taken to the rhythm of a stone march like that in "Don Giovanni," when the statue of the Commander comes down from its pedestal. My companion and I instinctively stood up, divining the approach of a Presence.
The Presence was soon on the threshold, doing justice to the epithet. The statue of the Commander, dressed in the twentieth-century style of sweet sixteen and crowned by a shock of bleached hair of tempestuous wave, would have looked like Miss Goldie Flowerdew as she stood before us majestically, fingering our note of introduction.
"So she's not coming," was her only observation, delivered in a voice so deep that, like Mrs. Siddons's "Will it wash?" it startled.
"Did you expect her?" I ventured to say.
The sepulchral voice spoke again. "Which is the blind one?"
Drinkwater moved forward. She, too, moved forward, coming into the room and scanning him face to face.
"You don't look so awful blind."
"No, but I am—for the present."
"For the present? Does that mean that you expect to regain your sight?"
"The doctors say that it may come back suddenly as it went."
"And suppose it don't?"
"Oh, well, I've got along without it for the past six months, so I suppose I can do it for the next sixty years. I've given it a good try, and in some ways I like it."
"You do, do you?"
"Yes, lady."
"Then," she declared, in her tragic voice, "I like you."
He flushed like a girl flushes, though his grin was his own specialty.
"Say," he began, in confidential glee, "Miss Blair said you would—"
"Tell Lydia Blair that she's at liberty to bestow her affections when and as she chooses; but beg her to be kind enough to allow me to dispose of mine. You'd like to see her room."
She was turning to begin her stone march toward the stairs, but Drinkwater held her back.
"Say, lady, is it—is it her room?"
"Certainly; it's the one she's always had when she's been with me, and which she reserved by letter four weeks ago. I was to expect her as soon as the steamer docked."
"Oh, then—" the boy began to stammer.
"Nonsense, my good man! Don't be foolish. She's gone elsewhere and the room is to let. If she hadn't sent me some one I would have charged her a week's rent; but now that she's got me a tenant she's at liberty to go where she likes. She knows I'd rather have men than women at any time of day."
"Oh, but if it's her room, and she's given it up for me—"
"It isn't her room; it's mine. I can let it to any one I please. She knows of a dozen places in the city that she'll like just as well as this, so don't think she'll be on the street. Come along; I've no time to waste."
"Better go," I whispered, taking him by the arm, so that the procession started.
The hall was papered in deep crimson, against which a monumental black-walnut hat-and-umbrella stand was visible chiefly because of the gleam of an inset mirror. The floors were painted in the darkest shade of brown, in keeping with the massive body of the staircase. Up the staircase, as along the hall, ran a strip of deep crimson carpet, exposing the warp on the edge of each step.
A hush of solemnity lay over everything. Clearly Miss Flowerdew's roomers were off for the day, and the place left to her and the little colored maid who had admitted us. Drinkwater and I made our way upward in a kind of awe, he clinging to my arm, frightened and yet adventurous.
The long, steep stairs curved toward the top to an upper hall darker than that below, because the one window was in ground glass with a border of red and blue. Deep crimson was again the dominating color, broken only by the doors which may have been mahogany. All doors were closed except the one nearest the top of the stairs, which stood ajar. Miss Flowerdew pushed it open, bidding us follow her.
We were on the spot which above all others in the world Lydia Blair called home. When the exquisite bit of jewel-weed drifted past me on the deck of theAuvergnethis haven was in the background of her memory.
Through the gloom two iron beds, covered with coarse white counterpanes, sagged in the outlines of their mattresses, as beds do after a great many people have slept in them. A low wicker armchair sagged in the seat as armchairs do after a great many people have sat in them. A great many people had passed through this room, wearing it down, wearing it out; and yet there was a woman in the world whose soul leaped toward it as the hearth of her affections. Because it was architecturally dark a paper of olive-green arabesques on an olive-green background had been glued on the walls to make it darker still; and because it was now as dark as it could be made, the table, the chest of drawers, the washstand, like the doors, were all of the darkest brown. Miss Flowerdew pointed to their bare tops to say:
"Lydia has her own covers, and when she puts her photographs and knickknacks round it makes a home for her."
"Say, isn't it grand!" Drinkwater cried, looking round with his sightless eyes.
"It's grand for the money," Miss Flowerdew corrected. "It's not the Waldorf-Astoria, nor yet is it what I was used to when on the stage; but it's clean"—which it was—"and only respectable people have roomed here. Come, young man, and I'll show you how to find your way."
Miss Flowerdew may have been on the stage, but she ought to have been a nurse. Not even Lydia Blair could take hold of a helpless man with such tenderness of strength. Holding Drinkwater by the hand, she showed him how to find the conveniences of this nest, pointing out the fact that the bath-room was the first door on the right as you went into the hall, and only a step away.
"I hope I sha'n't give you any more trouble, lady, after this," the blind boy breathed, gratefully.
"Trouble! Of course you'll give me trouble! The man who doesn't give a woman trouble is not a man. I've had male roomers so neat and natty you'd have sworn they were female ones—and I got rid of 'em. When a man doesn't know whether to put his boots on the mantelpiece or in the wash-basin when he takes them off, I can see I've got something to take care of. I guess I may as well cart these away."
The reference was to two photographs that stood on the ledges of the huge black-walnut mirror.
"I put 'em out to give Lydia a home feeling as soon as she arrived. That's her father, Byron Blair," she continued, handing me the picture of an extremely good-looking, weak-faced man of the Dundreary type, "and that's her mother, Tillie Lightwood, as she was when she and I starred in 'The Wages of Sin.'" I examined the charming head, with profile overweighted by a chignon, while Miss Flowerdew continued her reminiscences. "I played Lady Somberly to Tillie's Lottie Gwynne for nearly three years on end, first here, on Broadway, and then on the road. Don't do you any good, playing the same part so long. Easy work and money, but you get the mannerisms fixed on you. I was a good utility woman up to that time; but when I came back to Broadway I was Lady Somberly. I never could get rid of her, and so ... I'll show you some of my notices and photographs—no, not to-day; but when you come round to see your friend—that is"—she looked inquiringly—"that is, if you don't mean to use the other bed."
This being the hint I needed, I took it. With the briefest of farewells I was out on the pavement with my bags in my hands, walking eastward without a goal.
Once more I had to stifle my concern as to Drinkwater. I saw him, when Miss Flowerdew would have gone down-stairs, sitting alone in his darkness, with nothing to do. His trunk, the unpacking of which would give him some occupation, would not arrive until evening; and in the mean time he would have no one but himself for company. He couldn't go out; it would be all he could do to feel his way to the bathroom and back, though even that small excursion would be a break in his monotony....
But I took these thoughts and choked them. It was preposterous that I should hold myself responsible for the comfort of a boy met by chance on a steamer. Had I taken him in charge from affection or philanthropy it would have been all very well; but I had no philanthropic promptings, and, while I liked him, I was far from taking this wavering sympathy as affection. I was sorry for him, of course; but others must take care of him. I should have all I could do in taking care of myself.
So I wandered on, hardly noticing at first the way I took, and then consciously looking for a hotel. As to that, I had definitely made up my mind not to go to any of those better known, though the names of several remained in my memory, till I had properly clothed myself. Though in a measure I had grown used to my appearance, I caught the occasional turning of a head to look at me, and once the eyebrows of a passer-by went up in amused surprise.
I discovered quickly enough that I knew New York and that I knew it tolerably well; and almost as quickly I learned that I knew it not as a resident, but from the point of view of the visitor. Now that I was there, I could see myself always coming and always going. From what direction I had come and in what direction I turned on leaving still were mysteries. But the conviction of having no abiding tie with this city was as strong as that of the spectator in a theater of having no permanent connection with the play.
Coming on a modest hotel at last, I made bold to go in, finding myself in a lobby of imitation onyx and an atmosphere heavy with tobacco. I crossed to the desk, under the eyes of some three or four colored boys who didn't offer to assist me with my bags, and applied for a room. A courteous young man of Slavic nationality regretted that they were "full up." I marched out again.
Repeating this experience at another and another, I was saved from doing it at a fourth by a uniformed darky porter, who, as I was about to go up the steps, shook his head, at the same time sketching in the air an oval which I took to be a zero. I didn't go in, but I was oddly disconcerted. It had never occurred to me till then that hotels had a choice in guests, just as guests had a choice in hotels. I had always supposed that a man who could pay could command a welcome anywhere; but here I was, with nearly four hundred dollars in my pockets, unable to find a lodging because something strange in my clothes, or my eyes, or in my general demeanor, or in all together, stamped me as unusual. "Who's that freak?" I heard one bell-boy ask another, and the term seemed to brand me.
The day was muggy. After the keen sea air it was breathless. When I could walk no longer I staggered into a humble eating-house that seemed to be half underground. There was no one there but two waitresses, one of whom, wearing her hairà la madone, came forward as I closed the door. She did not, however, come forward so quickly but that I heard her say to her companion, "Well, of all the nuts—!" The observation, though breathlessly suspended there, made me shy about ordering my repast.
And when it came I couldn't eat it. It was good enough, doubtless, but coarse and ill served. I think the young lady who found me a nut was sorry for me when it came to close quarters, for she did her best to coax my appetite with other kind suggestions. All I could do in response was to flourish the roll of notes into which I had changed my French money on board and give her an amazing tip.
But a new decision had come to me while I strove to eat, and on making my way up to daylight again I set out to put it into operation. Reaching Broadway, I drifted southward till I came on one of the large establishments for ready-to-wear clothing which I knew were to be found in the neighborhood. On entering the vast emporium I adopted a new manner. No longer shrinking as I had shrunk since waking to the fact of my misfortune, I walked briskly up to the first man whom I saw at a distance eying me haughtily.
"See here," I said, in a good-mixer voice, "I've just got back from France, and look at the way they've rigged me out. Was in hospital there, after I'd got all kinds of shock, and this is the best I could do without coming back to God's country in a French uniform. Now I want to see the best you can do and how pretty you can make me look."
On emerging I was, therefore, passable to glance at, and after a hair-cut and a shave I was no longer afraid to see my reflection in a glass. I had, too, another inspiration. It occurred to me that I might startle myself into finding the way home. Calling a taxi, I drove boldly with my bags to the Grand Central Terminal, trusting to the inner voice to tell me the place for which to buy my ticket. With half the instinct of a horse my feet might take the road to the stable of their own accord.
I recognized the station and all its ways—the red-capped colored men, the white-capped white ones, the subterranean shops, the gaunt marble spaces. I recognized the windows at which I must have taken tickets hundreds of times, and played my comedy by walking up first to one and then to another, waiting for the inner voice to give me a tip. I found nothing but blank silence. The world was all before me where to choose—only Providence was not my guide. Or if Providence was my guide, His thread of flame was not visible.
I suppose that in that station that afternoon I was like any other man intending to take a train. At least I could say that. So pleased was I with myself that more than once during the two hours of my test I went into the station lavatory just for the sake of seeing myself in the glass. It was a long glass, capable of reflecting some dozen men at a time, and I was as like the rest as one elephant is like another. Oh, that relief! Oh, that joy! Not to be a freak or a nut made up for the moment for my sense of homelessness.
When tired of listening for a call that didn't come, I went into the waiting-room and sat down. Again I was like all the other people doing the same thing. Propped up by a bag on each side, I might have been waiting for a train to any of the suburbs. I might have had a family expecting me to supper. The obvious reflection came to me. To all whose glances happened to fall on me I was no more than an unstoried human spot; and yet behind me was a history that would have startled any one of them. So they were unstoried human spots to me; and yet behind each of them there lay a drama of which I could read no more than I could see of the world of light beyond the speck I called a star. Was there a Providence for me, or them, or any other strayed, homeless dog? As I glanced at the faces before me, faces of tired women, faces of despondent men, young faces hardened, old faces stupefied, all faces stamped with the age-long soddenness of man, I asked if anywhere in the universe love could be holding up the lamps to them.
Like millions of others who have asked this question, I felt that I had my trouble for my pains; but I got another inspiration. As it was now the middle of the afternoon, the folly of expecting help from the inner voice became apparent. I must resort to some other expedient, and the new suggestion was a simple one.
Checking my bags in the parcel-office, I made for the nearest great hotel. The hall with its colossal furnishings was familiar from the moment of my entry. The same ever so slightly overdressed ladies might have been mincing up and down as on the occasion of my last visit there; the same knots of men might have begun to gather; the same orchestra might have been jigging the same tunes; if only the same men were at the office desk I might find my ingenuity rewarded.
"I wonder if there are any letters for me here? I'm not staying in the house; but I thought—"
"Name?"
No one said, as I hoped, "I'll see, Mr. Smith," or, "I'll find out, Mr. Jones," as often happens when a man has been a well-known guest.
Nevertheless, it was a spot where strangers from other places congregated, and I knew that in the lobbies of hotels one often met old friends. I might meet one of mine. Better still, one of mine might meet me. At any minute I might feel a clap on the shoulder, while some one shouted, "Hello, old Brown!" or, "Why, here's Billy Robinson! What'll we have to drink?" These had been familiar salutations and might become so again.
So I walked up and down. I was sorry I had neither stick nor gloves, but promised to supply the lack at once. In the mean time I could thrust my hands into my pockets and look like a gentleman at ease because he is at home. Having enjoyed this sport for an hour or more, I went out to make my purchases.
Fortified with these, I repeated my comedy in another hotel, and presently in a third. In each I began with the same formula of asking for letters; and in each I got the same response, "Name?" In each I receded with a polite, "Never mind. I don't think there can be any, after all." In each I paraded up and down and in and out, courting the glances of head waiters, bell-hops, and lift-men, always in the hope of a recognition and a "How do, Mr. So-and-so?" that never came.
But by six o'clock the game had played itself out for the day and I was not only tired, but depressed. I was not discouraged, for the reason that New York was full of big hotels, and I meant to begin my tramp on the morrow. There were clubs, too, into which on one pretext or another I could force my way, and there were also the great thoroughfares. Some hundreds of people in New York at that moment would probably have recognized me at a glance—if I could only come face to face with them. All my efforts for the next few weeks must be bent on doing that.
But in the mean time I was tired and lonely. There were two or three things I might do, each of which I had promised to myself with some anticipation. I could go to a good restaurant and order a good feed; I could go to a good hotel and sleep in a good bed; I could buy the evening papers and find out what kind of world I was living in.
As to carrying out this program, I had but one prudential misgiving. It might cost more money than it would be wise for me to spend. My visit to the purveyor of clothing in the afternoon had not only lightened my purse, but considerably opened my eyes. Where I had had nearly four hundred dollars I had now nearly three. With very slight extravagance, according to the standards of New York, it would come down to nearly two and then to nearly one, and then to ... But I shuddered at that, and stopped thinking.
Having stopped thinking along one set of lines, I presently found myself off on another. I saw Harry Drinkwater sitting in the dark as I was sitting in the hall of a hotel. That is, he was idle and I was idle. He was eating his heart out as I was eating out mine.
It occurred to me that I might go back to Thirty-fifth Street and take him out to dinner. Alfonso, recommended by Miss Blair, might be no more successful as a host than the lady with tressesà la madonewho had given me my lunch; but we could try. At any rate, the boy wouldn't be alone on this first evening in New York, and would feel that some one cared for him.
And then something else in me revolted. No! No! A thousand times no! I had cut loose from these people and should stay loose. On saying good-by to Drinkwater that morning I had disappeared without a trace. For any one who tried to follow me now I should be the needle in a haystack. What good could come of my going back of my own accord and putting myself on a level to which I did not belong?
Like many Americans, I was no believer in the equality of men. For men as a whole I had no respect, and in none but the smallest group had I any confidence. Looking at the faces as they passed me in the hall, I saw only those of brutes—and these were mostly people who had had what we call advantages. As for those who had not had advantages I disliked them in contact and distrusted them in principle. I described myself not only as a snob, but as an aristocrat. I had worked it out that to be well educated and well-to-do was the normal. To be poor and ill educated was abnormal. Those who suffered from lack of means or refinement did so because of some flaw in themselves or their inheritance. They were the plague of the world. They created all the world's problems and bred most of its diseases. From the beginning of time they had been a source of disturbance to better men, and would be to the end of it.
It was the irony of ironies, then, that I should have become a member of a group that included a lady's maid, a chauffeur, and two stenographers, and been hailed as one of them. The lady's maid and the chauffeur I could, of course, dismiss from my mind; but the two stenographers had seemingly sworn such a friendship for me that nothing but force would cut me free from it. Very well, then; I should use force if it was needed; but it wouldn't be needed. All I had to do was to refrain from going to take Drinkwater out to dinner, and they would never know where I was.
And yet, if you would believe it, I went. Within half an hour I was knocking at his bedroom door and hearing his cheery "Come in."
Why I did this I cannot tell you. It was neither from loneliness, nor kind-heartedness, nor a sense of duty. The feet that wouldn't take the horse to the stable took him back to that crimson rooming-house, and that is all I can say.
Drinkwater was sitting in the dark, which was no darker to him than daylight; but when I switched on the light his pug grin gave an added illumination to the room.
"Say, that's the darnedest! I knew you'd come in spite of the old lady swearing you wouldn't. I'd given you half an hour yet; and here you are, twenty-five minutes ahead of time."
The reception annoyed me. It was bad enough to have come; but it was worse to have been expected.
"How have you been getting on?" I asked, in order to relieve my first anxiety.
"Oh, fine!"
"Haven't you been—dull?"
"Lord, no!"
"What have you had to do?"
"Oh, enjoy myself—feeling my way about the house. I can go all round the room, and out into the hall, and up and down stairs just as easily as you can. It's a cinch."
"Have you heard anything of Miss Flair?"
"Sure! Called up about an hour ago to say she'd found the swellest place—in Forty-first Street. But, say, Jasper, what do you think of a girl who gives up the room she's reserved for a month and more, just to—"
I broke in on this to ask where he'd had his lunch.
"Oh, the old girl made me go down and have it with her. She's not half a bad sort, when you come to know her. I've asked her to come out to dinner with me at Alfonso's. Lydia Blair says it's a dandy place—and now you can join the party."
"No; I've come to take you out."
"Say, Jasper! Do you think I'm always going to pass the buck, just because ... You and little Goldie are coming to dinner with me."
Not to dispute the point, I yielded it, asking only:
"What made you think I was coming this evening?—because, you know, I didn't mean to."
"Oh, I dunno. Like you to do it. You're the sort. That's all."
So within another half-hour I found myself at Alfonso's, on Drinkwater's left, with little Goldie opposite. Little Goldie seemed somehow the right name for the Statue of the Commander, now that she wore a lingerie hat and a blouse of the kind which I believe is called peek-a-boo. She was well known at Alfonso's, however, her authority securing us a table in a corner, with special attentions from head and subordinate waitresses.
How shall I tell you of Alfonso's? Like the rooming-house, it was for me a new social manifestation. It was what you might call the home of the homeless, and the homeless were numerous and noisy. They were very noisy, they were very hot. The odor of food struck upon the nostrils like the smell of a whole burnt sacrifice when they offered up an ox. The perfume of wine swam on top of that food, and over and above both the smell of a healthy, promiscuous, perspiring humanity, washed and unwashed, in a festive hurtling together, hilarious and hungry.
The food was excellent; the wine as good as anyvin ordinairein France; the service rapid; and the whole a masterpiece of organization. I had eaten many a dinner for which I paid ten times as much which wouldn't have compared with it.
During the progress of the meal it was natural that Miss Flowerdew, whose eye commended the change in my appearance, should ask me what I had been doing through the day. I didn't, as you will understand, find it necessary to go into details; but I told her of my unsuccessful attempts to find a room.
"Did you try the Hotel Barcelona, in Fourth Avenue?"
I told her I had not.
"Then do so." Fumbling in her bag, she found a card and pencil. "Take that," she commanded, when she had finished scribbling, "and ask for Mr. Jewsbury. If he isn't in, show it to the room clerk, but keep it for Mr. Jewsbury to-morrow. I've told them you must have a room and bath, not over two-fifty a day—and clean. Tell them I said so."
"Is Mr. Jewsbury a friend of yours?" I asked, inanely, after I had thanked her.
"He used to be my husband—-the one before Mr. Crockett. I could be Mrs. Jewsbury again, if I so chose; but I do not so choose."
With this astonishing hint of the possibilities in Miss Goldie Flowerdew's biography I saw the value of discretion, and as soon as courtesy permitted took my leave to visit the Hotel Barcelona.