"Yes," I said, "I"m fired."
"But that isn"t right, Carleton," he protested. "I didn"t think it would come to that. I went to Morse and told him I wanted to get married and needed more money. He asked me if I thought I could do your work. I said yes. I"d have said yes if he"d asked me if I could do the president"s work. But--come back and let me explain it to Morse."
It was white of him, wasn"t it? But I saw clearly enough that he was only fighting for his right to love as I was fighting for mine. I don"t know that I should have been as generous as he was--ten years before. He had started toward the door when I called him back.
"Don"t go in there," I warned. "The first thing you know you"ll be doing my work without your two hundred."
"That"s so," he answered. "But what are you going to do now?"
"Get another job," I answered.
One of the great blessings of my life is the fact that it has always been easy to report bad news to Ruth. I never had to break things gently to her. She always took a blow standing up, like a man. So now I boarded my train and went straight to the house and told her. She listened quietly and then took my hand, patting it for a moment without saying anything. Finally she smiled at me.
"Well, Billy," she said, "it can"t be helped, can it? So good luck to Evans and his bride."
When a woman is as brave as that it stirs up all the fighting blood in a man. Looking into her steady blue eyes I felt that I had exaggerated my misfortune. Thirty-eight is not old and I was able-bodied. I might land something even better than that which I had lost. So instead of a night of misery I actually felt almost glad.
I started in town on Monday in high hope. But when I got off the train I began to wonder just where I was bound. What sort of a job was I going to apply for? What was my profession, anyway? I sat down in the station to think the problem over.
For twenty years now I had been a cog in the clerical machinery of the United Woollen Company. I was known as a United Woollen man. But just what else had this experience made of me? I was not a bookkeeper. I knew no more about keeping a full set of books than my boy. I had handled only strings of United Woollen figures; those meant nothing outside that particular office. I was not a stenographer, or an accountant, or a secretary. I had been called a clerk in the directory. But what did that mean? What the devil was I, after twenty years of hard work?
The question started the sweat to my forehead. But I pulled myself together again. At least I was an able-bodied man. I was willing to work, had a record of honesty and faithfulness, and was intelligent as men go. I didn"t care what I did, so long as it gave me a living wage. Surely, then, there must be some place for me in this alert, hustling city.
I bought a paper and turned to "Help Wanted." I felt encouraged at sight of the long column. I read it through carefully. Half of the positions demanded technical training; a fourth of them demanded special experience; the rest asked for young men. I couldn"t answer the requirements of one of them. Again and again the question was forced in upon me--what the devil was I?
I didn"t know which way to turn. I had no relatives to help me--from the days of my great-grandfather no Carleton had ever quit the game more than even. My business a.s.sociates were as badly off as I was and so were my neighbors.
My relations with the latter were peculiar, now that I came to think of it. In these last dozen years I had come to know the details of their lives as intimately as my own. In a way we had been like one big family. We knew each other as Frank, and Joe, and Bill, and Josh, and were familiar with one another"s physical ailments when any of us had any. If any of the children had whooping cough or the measles every man and woman in the neighborhood watched at the bedside, in a sense, until the youngster was well, again. We knew to a dollar what each man was earning and what each was spending. We borrowed one another"s garden tools and the women borrowed from each other"s kitchens. On the surface we were just about as intimate as it"s possible for a community to be. And yet what did it amount to?
There wasn"t a man-son of them to whom I would have dared go and confess the fact I"d lost my job. They"d know it soon enough, be sure of that; but it mustn"t come from me. There wasn"t one of them to whom I felt free to go and ask their help to interest their own firms to secure another position for me. Their respect for me depended upon my ability to maintain my social position. They were like steamer friends. On the voyage they clung to one another closer than bark to a tree, but once the gang plank was lowered the intimacy vanished. If I wished to keep them as friends I must stick to the boat.
I knew they couldn"t do anything if they had wanted to, but at the same time I felt there was something wrong in a situation that would not allow me to ask even for a letter of introduction without feeling like a beggar. I felt there was something wrong when they made me feel not like a brother in hard luck but like a criminal. I began to wonder what of sterling worth I had got out of this life during the past decade.
However that was an incidental matter. The only time I did such thinking as this was towards the early morning after I had lain awake all night and exhausted all other resources. I tackled the problem in the only way I could think of and that was to visit the houses with whom I had learned the United Woollen did business. I remembered the names of about a dozen of them and made the rounds of these for a starter. It seemed like a poor chance and I myself did not know exactly what they could do with me but it would keep me busy for a while.
With waits and delays this took me two weeks. Without letters it was almost impossible to reach the managers but I hung on in every case until I succeeded. Here again I didn"t feel like an honest man offering to do a fair return of work for pay, so much as I did a beggar. This may have been my fault; but after you"ve sat around in offices and corridors and been scowled at as an intruder for three or four hours and then been greeted with a surly "What do you want?" you can"t help having a grouch. There wasn"t a man who treated my offer as a business proposition.
At the end of that time two questions were burned into my brain: "What can you do?" and "How old are you?" The latter question came as a revelation. It seems that from a business point of view I was considered an old man. My good strong body counted for nothing; my willingness to undertake any task counted for nothing. I was too old.
No one wanted to bother with a beginner over eighteen or twenty. The market demanded youth--youth with the years ahead that I had already sold. Wherever I stumbled by chance upon a vacant position I found waiting there half a dozen stalwart youngsters. They looked as I had looked when I joined the United Woollen Company. I offered to do the same work at the same wages as the youngsters, but the managers didn"t want me. They didn"t want a man around with wrinkles in his face.
Moreover, they were looking to the future. They didn"t intend to adjust a man into their machinery only to have him die in a dozen years. I wasn"t a good risk. Moreover, I wouldn"t be so easily trained, and with a wider experience might prove more bothersome. At thirty-eight I was too old to make a beginning. The verdict was unanimous. And yet I had a physique like an ox and there wasn"t a gray hair in my head. I came out of the last of those offices with my fists clenched.
In the meanwhile I had used up my advance salary and was, for the first time in my life, running into debt. Having always paid my bills weekly I had no credit whatever. Even at the end of the third week I knew that the grocery man and butcher were beginning to fidget. The neighbors had by this time learned of my plight and were gossiping.
And yet in the midst of all this I had some of the finest hours with my wife I had ever known.
She sent me away every morning with fresh hope and greeted me at night with a cheerfulness that was like wine. And she did this without any show of false optimism. She was not blind to the seriousness of our present position, but she exhibited a confidence in me that did not admit of doubt or fear. There was something almost awesomely beautiful about standing by her side and facing the approaching storm. She used to place her small hands upon my back and exclaim:
"Why, Billy, there"s work for shoulders like those."
It made me feel like a giant.
So another month pa.s.sed. I subscribed to an employment bureau, but the only offer I received was to act as a sort of bouncer in a barroom. I suppose my height and weight and reputation for sobriety recommended me there. There was five dollars a week in it, and as far as I alone was concerned I would have taken it. That sum would at least buy bread, and though it may sound incredible the problem of getting enough to eat was fast becoming acute. The provision men became daily more suspicious. We cut down on everything, but I knew it was only a question of time when they would refuse to extend our credit for the little we _had_ to have. And all around me my neighbors went their cheerful ways and waited for me to work it out. But whenever I thought of the barroom job and the money it would bring I could see them shake their heads.
It was h.e.l.l. It was the deepest of all deep h.e.l.ls--the middle-cla.s.s h.e.l.l. There was nothing theatrical about it--no fireworks or red lights. It was plain, dull, sodden. Here was my position: work in my own cla.s.s I couldn"t get; work as a young man I was too old to get; work as just plain physical labor these same middle-cla.s.s neighbors refused to allow me to undertake. I couldn"t black my neighbors" boots without social ostracism, though Pasquale, who kept the stand in the United Woollen building, once confided to me that he cleared some twenty-five dollars a week. I couldn"t mow my neighbors" front lawns or deliver milk at their doors, though there was food in it. That was honest work--clean work; but if I attempted it would they play golf with me? Personally I didn"t care. I would have taken a job that day.
But there were the wife and boy. They were held in ransom. It"s all very well to talk about scorning the conventions, to philosophize about the dignity of honest work, to quote "a man"s a man for a"
that"; but a.s.sociates of their own kind mean more to a woman and a growing boy than they do to a man. At least I thought so at that time.
When I saw my wife surrounded by well-bred, well-dressed women, they seemed to me an essential part of her life. What else did living mean for her? When my boy brought home with him other boys of his age and kind--though to me they did not represent the highest type--I felt under obligations to retain those friends for him. I had begot him into this set. It seemed barbarous to do anything that would allow them to point the finger at him.
I felt a yearning for some primeval employment. I hungered to join the army or go to sea. But here again were the wife and boy. I felt like going into the Northwest and preempting a homestead. That was a saner idea, but it took capital and I didn"t have enough. I was tied hand and foot. It was like one of those nightmares where in the face of danger you are suddenly struck dumb and immovable.
I was beginning to look wild-eyed. Ruth and I were living on bread, without b.u.t.ter, and canned soup. I sneaked in town with a few books and sold them for enough to keep the boy supplied with meat. My shoes were worn out at the bottom and my clothes were getting decidedly seedy. The men with whom I was in the habit of riding to town in the morning gave me as wide a berth as though I had the leprosy. I guess they were afraid my hard luck was catching. G.o.d pity them, many of them were dangerously near the rim of this same h.e.l.l themselves.
One morning my wife came to me reluctantly, but with her usual courage, and said:
"Billy, the grocery man didn"t bring our order last night." It was like a sword-thrust. It made me desperate. But the worst of the middle-cla.s.s h.e.l.l is that there is nothing to fight back at. There you are. I couldn"t say anything. There was no answer. My eyes must have looked queer, for Ruth came nearer and whispered:
"Don"t go in town to-day, Billy."
I had on my hat and had gathered up two or three more volumes in my green bag. I looked at the trim little house that had been my home for so long. The rent would be due next month. I looked at the other trim little houses around me. Was it actually possible that a man could starve in such a community? It seemed like a satanic joke. Why, every year this country was absorbing immigrants by the thousand. They did not go hungry. They waxed fat and prosperous. There was Pasquale, the bootblack, who was earning nearly as much as I ever did.
We were standing on the porch. I took Ruth in my arms and kissed her.
She drew back with a modest protest that the neighbors might see. The word neighbors goaded me. I shook my fist at their trim little houses and voiced a pa.s.sion that had slowly been gathering strength.
"d.a.m.n the neighbors!" I cried.
Ruth was startled. I don"t often swear.
"Have they been talking about you?" she asked suddenly, her mouth hardening.
"I don"t know. I don"t care. But they hold you in ransom like b.l.o.o.d.y Moroccan pirates."
"How do they, Billy?"
"They won"t let me work without taking it out of you and the boy."
Her head dropped for a second at mention of the boy, but it was soon lifted.
"Let"s get away from them," she gasped. "Let"s go where there are no neighbors."
"Would you?" I asked.
"I"d go to the ends of the earth with you, Billy," she answered quietly.
How plucky she was! I couldn"t help but smile as I answered, more to myself:
"We haven"t even the carfare to go to the ends of the earth, Ruth. It will take all we have to pay our bills."
"All we have?" she asked.