The Thread of Flame

Chapter 1

I had made this experiment as a concession to what you will consider common sense. Ever since landing in New York the idea that the natural thing to do was to make my situation known had haunted me. Well, I had made it known, much against the grain, with results such as I had partly expected. I had laid myself open to the semi-accusation of trumping up a c**k-and-bull story to get money under false pretences.

So no one could help me but myself! I had felt that from the first, and now I was confirmed in the conviction. It was useless either to complain or to rebel. Certain things were to be done, and no choice remained with me but to do them in the heartiest way possible. I had the wit to see that the heartier the way the more likely I was to attain to the mental rest which was apparently a condition of my recovery.

From this point of view work became even more pressing than before, and I searched myself for things that I could do.

Of all my experiences this was the most baffling. In the same way that I knew I had enjoyed a generous income I knew I had never been an idler. That is, I knew it by the habit of a habit. I had the habit of a habit of occupation. I got up each morning with a sense of things to do. Finding nothing to be done, I felt thwarted, irritated, uneasy in the conscience. I must always have worked, even if pay had not been a matter of importance.

But what had I worked at? I had not been a doctor, nor a lawyer, nor a clergyman, nor a banker, nor a merchant, nor a manufacturer, nor a teacher, nor a journalist, nor a writer, nor a painter, nor an actor, nor a sculptor, nor a civil engineer. All this was easy to test by the things I didn't know and couldn't do. I could ride and drive and run a motor-car. I had played tennis and golf and taken an interest in yachting and aviation. I could not say that I had played polo, but I had looked on at matches, and had also frequented horse-races. These facts came to me not so much as memories, but as part of a general equipment. But I could find no sense of a profession.

Thrown back on the occupations I can only class as nondescript, I began looking for a job. That is, I began to study the advertised lists of "Wants" in the hope of finding some one in search of the special line of aptitude implied by cultivation. I had some knowledge of books, of pictures, of tapestries, of prints. Music was as familiar to me as to most people who have sat through a great many concerts, and I had followed such experiments as those of the Abbey Theater in Dublin and Miss Horniman's Manchester Players in connection with the stage.

Unfortunately, there was no clamor for these accomplishments in the press of New York and the neighboring cities, the end of a week's study finding me just where I began. For chauffeurs and salesmen there were chances; but for people of my order of attainment there were none. I thought of what Mildred Averill had said during our last conversation:

"After all, what the world wants is producers; and the moment one doesn't produce"

She left her sentence there because all had been said. The world wanted producers and was ready to give them work. It would also give them pay, after a fashion. One producer might get much and another little, but every one would get something. The secret of getting most evidently lay in producing the thing most required.

I remembered, too, that Mildred Averill had defined the producer as he seemed to her: I suppose I mean all who contribute, either directly or indirectly, either mentally or physically, to the sum total of our needs in living.

There again, the more vital the need, the greater the contribution, and needs when you analyzed them were mostly elementary. The more elemental you were, the closer you lived to the stratum the world couldn't do without. That stratum was basic; it was bedrock. Wherever you went you had to walk on it, and not on mountain-peaks or in the air.

I was not pleased with these deductions. It seemed to me a gross thing in life that salesmen and chauffeurs should be more in demand than men who could tell you at a glance the difference between a Henri Deux and a Jacobean piece of furniture, or explain the weaves and designs of a Flemish tapestry as distinguished from a Gobelin or an Aubusson. I was eager to prove my qualifications for a place in life to be not without value. To have nothing to do was bad enough, but to be unfit to do anything was to be in a state of imbecility.

So I made several attempts, of which one will serve as an instance of all.

Walking in Fifth Avenue and attracted by the shop windows, I couldn't help being struck by New York's love of the antique. To me the antique was familiar. Boyd Averill had asked me if I hadn't sold it. I had said I hadn'tbut why not? Beauty surely entered into the sum total of needs in living, and I had, moreover, often named it to myself as the thread of flame by which I should find my way.

All the same, it required some effort to walk into any of these storehouses of the loot of castles and cathedrals and offer my services as judge and connoisseur. On the threshold of three I lost my courage and stepped back. It was only after stopping before a fourth, the window severely simple with three ineffable moon-white jars set against a background of violet shot with black, that I reasoned myself into taking the step. It was a case of de l'audace, de l'audace, et encore de l'audace. By audacity alone were high things accomplished and great fortunes won. Before I could recoil from this commendable reflection I opened the door and went in.

I found myself in a gallery resembling certain venerable sacristies. The floor was carpeted in red, the walls lined with cabinets paneled in ebony, their doors discreetly closed on the treasures inside. In a corner an easel supported a black-framed flower-piece, probably by Huysmans. On a well-preserved Elizabethan table partly covered with a square of filet lace was a tea-service of Nantgarw or Rockingham. Nothing could have been more in accordance with my own ideas of conducting a business than this absence of crude display.

I had leisure to make these observations, because the only other visible occupant of the shop, if I may use the word of a shrine so dignified, was a young lady who moved slowly toward me down the gallery. She was in the neatest black, with only a string of pearls for ornament. Healthily pale, with fair hair carefully "marcelled," her hands resting on each other in front of her, she approached me with a faint smile that emphasized her composure.

"You wish?"

I had not considered the words in which I should frame my application, so I stammered:

"II thought II might be ofof some use here."

The faint smile faded, but the composure remained as before.

"Somewhat?"

"Use. II understand these things. That tea-service, now, it's Rockingham or Nantgarw, possibly Chelsea. The three moon-white jars in the window, two of them gourd-shaped"

"Did you want to look at them?"

"No," I blurted out, "toto sell them."

"Sell them? How do you mean? We mean to sell them ourselves."

"But don't you everever needwhat shall I call itan extra hand? Don't you ever have a place for that?"

She grew nervous, and yet not so nervous as to lose the power of keeping me in play.

"Oh yes! Certainly! Anan extra hand! I'll call Mr. Chessland. Mr. Chessland! Pleasepleasecome here. Lovely day, isn't it?" she continued, as a short, thick-set figure came waddling from the back of the premises. "We don't often have such lovely weather at this time of year, though sometimes we dowe do very often, don't we? You never can tell about weather, can you?"

Mr. Chessland, who was more Armenian than his name, having come near enough to keep an eye on me, she fell back toward him, whispering something to which he replied only in pantomime. Only in pantomime he replied to me, pursing his rosy, thick lips, and lifting his hands, palms outward, as in some form of Oriental supplication, pushing me with repeated gestures back toward the door. I went back toward the door in obedience to the frightened little fat man's urge, since I was as terrified as he. Though I was out on the pavement again the door didn't close till I heard the girl ask, in an outburst of relief:

"Do you think he was nervy, or only off his nut?"

It came to me slowly that a man in search of work is somehow the object of suspicion. The whole world being so highly mechanized, it admits of no loose screw. The loose screw obviously hasn't fitted; and if it hasn't fitted in the place for which it was made it is unlikely to fit in another.

Furthermore, a man is so impressionable that he quickly adopts of himself the view that others take of him. Going about from shop to shop, bringing my simple guile to bear first on one smooth-spoken individual and then another, only in the end, in the phrase once used to me, "to get the gate," I shrank in my own estimation. The gate seemed all I was fit for. I began to see myself as going out through an endless succession of gates, expelled by hands like Mr. Chessland's, but never welcomed within one. For a man who had instinctively the habit of rating himself with the best, of picking and choosing his own company, of ignoring those who didn't suit him as if they had never existed, the revolution of feeling was curious.

Then I discovered that one point of contact with organized society had been also removed.

Early in December I went to look up Drinkwater, whom I hadn't seen for a month. It was not friendliness that sent me; it was loneliness. Day after day had gone by, and except for the people to whom I applied for work I hadn't spoken to any one.

True, I had been busy. In addition to looking for a job I had written articles for the press and had made strenuous efforts to secure a place as French teacher in a boys' school. This I think I should have got had I been actually French; but when the decision was made a native Frenchman had turned up and been given the preference. As for my articles, some of them were sent back to me, and of the rest I never heard. So I had been less lonely than I might have been, even if my occupations had brought me no success.

In addition to that I had refrained from visiting the blind boy from a double motive: there was first the motive that was always present, that of not wishing to continue the acquaintance of people outside my class in life; then there was the reason that I was anxious now to avoid a possible chance meeting with Miss Averill.

I could easily have been in love with her. There was no longer a question about that. It must be remembered that I was appallingly adriftand she had been kind to me. I had been grotesque, suspected, despisedand she had been kind to me. She had gone out of her way to be kind to me; she had been sisterly; she had been tender. Something that was of value in me which no one else had seen, she had seen and done justice to. In circumstances that made me a mystery to every one, myself included, she had had the courage to believe me a gentleman and to put me on a level with herself. As the days went by, and this recognition remained the sole mitigation of a lot that had grown infinitely bitterer than I ever supposed it could become, I felt that if I didn't love her I adored her.

For this reason I had to avoid her; I had to take pains that she should not see me. Even if other circumstances had not made friendship between us hopeless, my impending social collapse must have had that effect. No good could ensue from our meeting again; and so I kept away from places where a meeting could occur.

But an afternoon came when some sort of human intercourse became necessary to keep me from despair. It was the day when I lost my chance at the boys' school. It was also a day when three of my articles had fluttered back to me. It was also a day when I had made two gentlemanly appeals for employment, losing one because I couldn't write shorthand, and the other because the man in need of a secretary didn't want a high-brow.

Drinkwater was, then, a last resort. He would welcome me; he would tell me of his good luck; he would call me Jasper; he would make a fuss over me that would have the warmth of a lighted fire.

But at the door I was met by Miss Flowerdew's little colored maid with the information, given with darky idioms that I cannot reproduce, that Mr. Drinkwater had gone to take his old position with Doctor Averill, and was living in his house. Miss Blair had also found a job, though the little maid couldn't tell me where. Miss Flowerdew knew, but, unfortunately, she was spending a week in Philadelphia, "where her folks was."

It was a shock, but a shock with a thrill in it. If Drinkwater had gone to Boyd Averill's, to Boyd Averill's I ought to follow him. That which I had denied myself for one reason might, therefore, become unavoidable for another. I forgot that I had been planning to drop Drinkwater from the list of my acquaintances, for Drinkwater in Boyd Averill's house had another value.

He stood for a temptation. It was like wrestling with a taste for drink or opium. At one minute I said I wouldn't go; at another I admitted that I couldn't help myself. In the end I went. As I turned from Fifth Avenue my heart pounded and my legs shook. I knew I was doing wrong. I said I would do it just this once, and never any more.

But I sinned in vain. The house was empty. In the window beside the door hung a black-and-white sign, "To Let."