"Quick, get the code and translate--don"t stand around arguing! Here, give me the book!"
I rushed into the outer office, but stopped almost at the threshold of my door. The room was completely encircled by a line of men, and every eye in the crowd was turned upon me. What a motley throng it was--shabbily dressed and unshaven for the most part--untidy to the point of dirtiness. Hardly a bright, healthy face among the lot--surly and ill-tempered looking many of them. Bah! I don"t like humanity in the abstract, and loathe it in the concrete of crowds. My disgust must have been apparent, and my thought audible as I said:
"Now, my men, the place is filled. You"d better all clear out."
But my words, forbidding as they were, did not free me.
"No, I haven"t any other job. No, I don"t expect to have any.... Yes, well, I can"t help it, can I?... Of course, I know--don"t bother me! I tell you the place is gone.... No, we never have any places in this office.... Charity Organisation, Twenty-third Street and Fourth Avenue.... Yes, yes, yes, I don"t doubt it, but I tell you I"ve filled the job--Junkin--get the janitor and clear the room--they"ll drive me mad!"
Almost frenzied, I rushed back to my private office.
How I was worked that day! The Section Traction Company almost caught us napping, and they"d have done it surely if we hadn"t obtained the Judge"s signature to the injunction by four o"clock that afternoon. They not only laid two miles of track inside of eighteen hours, and came within four blocks of crossing our main line, but they sold our stock on the market, thousands and thousands of shares--poured it in from ten o"clock till three, pounding and hammering every supporting bid we made, and the only thing that saved us was the Exchange closing at three o"clock. As it was, our Board man, Reynolds, became hysterical as the gong struck, and he"s never been up to much since.
Well, it was a shrewd, ably-planned move, and, executed earlier, would have succeeded in wrecking us. But it cost them, as we figured it, two millions, and sent them higher than a kite. I didn"t know they were so big--employed three thousand men, they say.
III.
The name on a pa.s.sing ambulance directed my steps to Roosevelt Hospital at the close of business, a few nights later. I don"t think I wanted to nail that very poor lie of Sandy"s but I knew Waldron, the Superintendent, and thought I"d invite him to dinner and joke him a bit about his new whisky ward.
Waldron was in, but could not go to dinner. Worst time in the day for him to get off, he said.
"By the way," he continued, "too bad you couldn"t give Sandy McWhiffle a job--he would have it you"d take him, so we let him go, with a dose of whisky to carry him through. But you lazy devils get down so late it didn"t last him, and he fainted in the street on the way back. Queer fellow, but I liked him--his sense of humour hasn"t disappeared as it has with most of his cla.s.s."
Perhaps my sense of humour had disappeared, but I saw no fun in my rehea.r.s.ed jokes of a few minutes previous.
"Is he here now?" I asked.
"No, we discharged him yesterday.--Hope he"ll get a job, but there"s an awful lot of men looking for work."
It was probably because I was out of temper with myself, but the city seemed hideously cruel to me as I walked down Broadway from the Hospital. The clang of the car gongs sounded like fierce commands--the electric lights snapped and glittered like cunning, wicked eyes--the hot air from the shops offended like venomous breath--the rattle of the carts and cabs sounded reckless--the crowds seemed to jostle and grapple. The gaily-lighted windows mocked me with their glitter, and the darkened ones had a menace in their black indifference. In every elbow touching me I seemed to feel some threat--in every eye looking at me I seemed to read some impatient question asked in brutal scorn. These ma.s.ses of men rushing by me this way and that--they hated me--longed to trample me down and crush me into the dirt beneath their feet!--No, they didn"t.--And wouldn"t?--Unless they found me in their path, and then they"d wipe me from it with scarce a thought--yes, and rush on without a sign, without knowledge of my obliteration.--Well, it wasn"t worth struggling against--the odds were too great.--And anyway, what difference did it make?
I felt a touch on my shoulder, and almost screamed. It was St. Clair Mowbray. I don"t like him much, but any companion was a friend just then, so we walked along together, he chatting and I silent.
As we pa.s.sed the Metropolitan Opera House a line of people stretched from the box-office out into the street.
"What fools," said Mowbray, "they must want tickets d.a.m.ned badly to do that. Don"t they look like a chain gang?"
"More like the bread line at Fleischmann"s," I answered gloomily.
"Yes--but better bred."
Mowbray chuckled approvingly at his sally.
I parted with him at the next corner feeling his wit would not appeal to me that evening.
IV.
The Club disappointed me. I thought companionship would relieve, but it only served to aggravate my loneliness. Everything talked about seemed local and trivial, and everybody appeared to sail under a different flag of interest. So after enduring this as long as possible I wandered out, walking down town for no other reason than to be among people I didn"t know and who didn"t know me--a hair-of-the-dog-that-bit-you cure for loneliness.
A conservative investor once told me there was no better or safer property than a cheap lodging-house on the Bowery. Possibly my informant imparted his discovery to others, for the number of these establishments has increased tremendously during the last few years. But when many Conservative Investors undertake to walk the same road, the result is usually the elimination of some of them--only those, of course, who are not really ent.i.tled to be termed conservative. This sorting of the just from the unjust does not occur, however, until the Malthusian Doctrine needs a business ill.u.s.tration. As I walked along the east-side thoroughfare and noted the lodging-houses packed to their utmost capacity, I concluded that the number of applicants for such accommodation must have increased in a manner at once flattering to the judgment of the Conservative Investor, and satisfactory to his highest interest.
Who inhabit these houses? Well, men who have no better homes--drunken, idle and shiftless men--strangers in this somewhat inhospitable town--men looking for work and men looking for mischief--great, hulking, ignorant brutes whose hope lies in their muscle, and well-formed fellows with intelligent faces--all sorts and conditions of men--a great tide of humanity that flows in at night and ebbs out in the morning, never and yet ever the same. A steadily rising tide? O, yes, perhaps,--but look at the embankments!
It was curiosity and not a desire to educate myself for the day when I might become a Conservative Investor that led me to enter No. 99-1/2 Bowery.
Its sign offered attractions suited to almost any purse, the management apparently catering to every taste in the scale of social refinement.
It read
ROOMS BY THE WEEK $1.25
ROOMS BY THE NIGHT 25c.
BEDS BY THE WEEK 60c.
BEDS BY THE NIGHT 10c.
There were several similar houses in the immediate vicinity, but this one seemed to secure most of the stragglers who came by during the ten or fifteen minutes I watched it from the opposite side of the street.
The reasons for its popularity were not to be spelled out of the sign, so I crossed over and climbed the ladder-like stairs upon which the street door opened.
I knew just about what was inside before I mounted a step. Everybody knows who"s travelled on the Third Avenue L at night and looked out of the windows of the train anywhere below Ninth Street.
It was one o"clock in the morning when I left the Club, so it must have been quite two when I entered the "Columbian," but even at that hour the smoking-room was more than comfortably filled.
A cloud of malodorous smoke so lowered the ceiling that one involuntarily stooped to avoid contact with it. Occasionally some current of air would draw a funnel-shaped drift from this cloud and whirl it like an inverted sea-spout toward the steam-screened windows and out of the cracks at their top, and occasionally the draught in the red-hot stove sucked down a whiff of it. Otherwise it hung motionless like some heavy, breathless canopy.
A long, narrow table filled the centre of the room, reaching almost from the windows in the front to the stove in the rear. Around this sat or lounged a score of men, and perhaps as many more occupied chairs about the stove and along the wall. Half a dozen were reading newspapers, tattered and greasy through constant handling, but the rest of the company stared idly at each other, or at nothing, talking little, but smoking almost to a man.
An artist could have found a study for almost every emotion in the figures and faces of that dimly-lighted room. Excitement in the expression of the fair-haired lad following with his finger the closely-printed "ads.," and quickly noting the promising ones on a sc.r.a.p of paper by his side.--Anxiety on the face of the handsome fellow with the pointed beard, turning the pages of the long-coveted newspaper to find his particular "want column."--Indifference in the att.i.tude of the strong but unhealthy looking man with hands in pockets, his outstretched legs forming a V, as he lolled back in his chair, pipe in mouth, his eyes on vacancy.--Despair in the huddled bit of humanity at the head of the table, with head on arms--his hair showing very white against the black coat-sleeve.
I walked into the room and took a seat at the long table, near the front windows. My entrance attracted no attention, either owing to the smoke in the room or the indifference of its occupants. But I viewed the neglect with complacency, whatever the cause.
"What are they waiting for--why don"t they go to bed?" I asked in a low tone of my neighbour at the table--a rough but shrewd looking fellow.
"Who"s _they_?" he replied surlily--"What"s yer waiting for yourself?"
"Nothing," I answered--"not sleepy, that"s all."
"Well, that"s what the rest"s waiting for--for nothing--not sleepy nor--nor anything." He gave a sharp glance at my face, and then, appearing to see a puzzled look on it, added, "Say, d"yer mean ter tell me yer don"t know what"s bitin" this crowd?"
"No," I replied, and my voice must have demonstrated my ignorance, for he exclaimed:
"Then yer must be a jay, sure. Why, they"re waiting for the morning papers, of course. Do yer think yer"ll ever get a job if yer wait till the noospapers gets on the stands? Well, yer will--I guess not! Where in h.e.l.l did yer drift from, anyway?"
"Hist--there he comes," exclaimed a man opposite.