The Thread of Flame

Chapter 7

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 had not been 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 dark objets d'art adorned 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 amfor 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 itis 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 the Auvergne this 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 onesand 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 photographsno, not to-day; but when you come round to see your friendthat 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 hair 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 waysthe 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 chooseonly 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 glanceif 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 tresses la madone who 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 brutesand 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 beendull?"

"Lord, no!"

"What have you had to do?"

"Oh, enjoy myselffeeling 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 placein 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 placeand 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 any vin ordinaire in 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 dayand 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.