Part 5

The door when we got to it was something of a disappointment. It was at the head of a flight of old-time brownstone steps, and was just like any other door. About it was nothing of the magical or cabalistic Lovey and I had been half expecting.

More impressive was the neat little man who opened to our ring. He was a wan, wistful, smiling little figure of sixty-odd, on whom all the ends of the world seemed to have come. He was like a man who has been dead and buried and has come to life again—but who shows he has been dead. If I had to look like that....

But I took comfort in the thought of Pyn. Pyn showed nothing. He was like one of the three holy men who went through Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace—the smell of fire had not passed on him. A heartier, healthier, merrier fellow it would have been difficult to find.

He entered now with the air of authority which belongs to the member of a club.

“Fellows had their breakfast, Spender?”

Spender was all welcome, of the wistful, yearning kind.

“The men at work is gone; but the guys under restraint is still at table.”

“Mr. Christian not here yet?”

“Never gets here before nine; and it’s not half past seven yet.”

Pyn turned to me. “Say, do you want to go in and feed, or will you wash up first, or go to bed, or what?”

With this large liberty of choice I asked if we could do whatever we liked. It was Spender who explained.

“That’s the rule for new arrivals, unless they’ve got to be put under restraint at once.”

“I don’t want to be put under no restraint,” Lovey declared, indignantly.

“That’ll be all right,” Spender replied, kindly, “unless there’s vermin—”

Lovey jumped.

“See here, now! Don’t you begin no such immodest talk to me.”

“There, there, Lovikins,” Pyn broke in. “Spender don’t mean no harm. All sorts have to come to a place like this. But when we see a gentleman we treat him like a gentleman. All Spender wants to know is this, Is it eats for you first, or a bath?”

“And I don’t want no bath,” Lovey declared, proudly.

“Then it’ll be eats. Quick march! I’ve got to beat it back to my job.”

Pyn’s introduction of us to those already in the dining-room was simple.

“This is Lovey. This is Slim. You guys’ll make ’em feel at home.”

Making us feel at home consisted in moving along the table so as to give us room. In words there was no response to Pyn, who withdrew at once, nor was there more than a cursory inspection of us with the eyes. Whatever was kindly was in the atmosphere, and that was perceptible.

As we sat before two empty places, one of our new companions rose, went to the dresser behind us, and brought us each a plate, a spoon, a knife, and a cup and saucer. A big man went to the kitchen door and in a voice like thunder called out, “Mouse!”

By the time he had returned to his place a stumpy individual with a big red mustache and a limp appeared on the threshold. An explanation of the summons was given him when a third of our friends pointed at us with a spoonful of oatmeal porridge before he put it in his mouth.

Mouse withdrew into the kitchen, coming back with two basins of porridge, which he placed, steaming hot, before us. Presently, too, he filled our cups with coffee. Bread and butter, sugar and milk, were all on the table. The meal went on in silence, except for the smacking of lips and the clinking of spoons on the crockeryware.

Of our fellow-guests I can only say that they presented different phases of the forlorn. The man next to me was sallow, hatchet-faced, narrow-breasted, weak of physique, and looked as if he might have been a tailor. His hair was a shock of unkempt black curls, and his dark eyes the largest and longest and most luminous I ever saw in a man. In their nervous glance they made me think of a horse’s eyes, especially when he rolled them toward me timidly.

Opposite was a sandy, freckled-face type, whom I easily diagnosed as a Scotchman. Light hair, light eyebrows, and a heavy reddish mustache set off a face scored with a few deep wrinkles, and savage like that of a beast fretted with a sense of helplessness. The shaking hand that passed the bread to me was muscular, freckled, and covered with coarse, reddish hairs. I put him down as a gardener.

At the head of the table was a huge, unwieldy fellow who looked as if he had all run to fat, but who, as I afterward learned, was a mass of muscle and sinew, like a Japanese wrestler. He had bloated cheeks and bloated hands, and a voice so big and bass that when he spoke, as he did on going to the door to summon Mouse, he almost shook the dishes on the dresser. He proved to be, too, a pal of Beady Lamont’s, and as a piano-mover by profession he frequented Beady’s spheres.

At the big man’s right was a poor little whippersnapper, not more than five foot two, who looked as if a puff would blow him away; and opposite him a tall, spare, fine-looking Irishman, a hospital attendant, whose face would have been full of humor had it not been convulsed for the time being with a sense of mortal anguish. It was he who had brought us our dishes and took pains to see that our needs were supplied.

No more than any of the others were we eager for conversation. The fact that we were having good warm food served in a more or less regular way was enough to occupy all that was uppermost in our thoughts. Poor Lovey ate as he had drunk the chocolate half an hour before, with a greed that was almost terrible. Once more I might have done the same had I not taken his example as a warning. Not that anything I did would have attracted attention in that particular gathering. Each man’s gaze was turned inward. His soul’s tragedy absorbed him to the exclusion of everything else. Reaction from the stupor of excess brought nothing but a sense of woe. There was woe on all faces. There would have been woe in all thoughts if conscious thought had not been outside the range of these drugged and stultified faculties.

What was more active than anything else was a blind fellow-feeling. They did little things for one another. They did little watchful things for Lovey and me. They even quarreled over their kindnesses like children eager to make themselves useful.

“You’ll want to know where the barth-room is,” the timid tailor said to me as we rose from the table. “I’ll show you.”

There was a snarl from the whippersnapper across the way.

“Aw, put your lid on, Headlights. How long have you been showin’ barth-rooms in this here shebang?” He beckoned to me. “You come along o’ me, Slim—”

It was the Irishman who intervened to keep the peace.

“Listen to Daisy now, will you? He’s like a fox-terrier that owns the house and grounds and barks at every wan who goes by. Look now, Daisy! You take this ould gent up to the bath-room on the top floor; and you, Headlights, show Slim to the one on the second floor, and every wan o’ you’ll have a bite at the cake.”

With this peaceable division of the honors we started off.

I must describe the club as very humble. The rooms themselves, as was natural with an old New York residence, did not lack dignity. Though too narrow for their height, they had admirable cornices and some exquisite ceiling medallions. It is probable, too, that in days when there were no skyscrapers in the neighborhood the house was light enough, but now it wore a general air of dimness. The furnishings were just what you might have expected from the efforts of very poor men in giving of their small superfluity. There were plenty of plain wooden chairs, and a sufficiency of tables to match them. In the two down-stairs sitting-rooms, which must once have been Miss Smedley’s front and back drawing-rooms, there were benches against the wall. A roll-top desk, which I learned was the official seat of Mr. Christian, was so placed as to catch the light from Vandiver Street. A plain, black, wooden cross between the two front windows, and Franklin in the _salon_ of Marie Antoinette in the place of honor over a fine old white marble mantelpiece, completed the two reception-rooms.

The floor above was given over to the dormitories for outsiders, and contained little more than beds. They were small iron beds, made up without counterpanes. As every man made his own, the result would not have passed the inspection of a high-class chambermaid, but they satisfied those who lay down in them. Since outsiders came in, like Lovey and me, with little or nothing in the way of belongings, it was unnecessary to make further provision for their wardrobes than could be found in the existing closets and shelves. In the front bedroom, which I suppose must have been Miss Smedley’s, there were nine small beds; in the room back of that there were seven; and in a small room over the kitchen, given up to the men positively under restraint, there were five. Twenty-one outsiders could thus be cared for at a time.

On the third floor were the dormitories for club members—men who had kept sober for three months and more, and who wore a star of a color denoting the variety of their achievements. On this floor, too, was a billiard, card, and smoking room, accessible to any one, even to outsiders, who had kept sober for three weeks. On the top floor of all were a few bedrooms, formerly those of Miss Smedley’s servants, reserved for the occasional occupancy of such grandees as had preserved their integrity for three years and more; and here, too, was the sacred place known as “the lounge,” to which none were admitted who didn’t wear the gold or silver star representing sobriety for at least a year.

The whole was, therefore, a carefully arranged hierarchy in which one mounted according to one’s merit. Little Spender wore the gold star, indicating a five years’ fight with the devil; and Mouse, the cook, a blue one, which meant that he had been victorious for three months. All others in the club when Lovey and I arrived were outsiders like ourselves. Outsiders gave their word to stay a week, generally for the purpose of sobering up, but beyond that nothing was asked of them. At the beginning of the second week they could either continue their novitiate or go.

This information was given me by Spender as we stood on the threshold of the bath-room before I passed in. When the tale was ended, however, the Scotchman, who had taken little or no part in our reception, pushed by me and entered.

“You’ll be wanting a shave,” he said, in explanation of his rudeness. “There are my things”—he got down on all-fours to show me a safety razor and a broken cup containing a brush and shaving-soap, hidden behind one of the legs of the bath-tub—“and you’ll oblige me by putting them back. Daisy, the wee bye you saw at the table, is doing the same by your chum. I make no doubt your own things have been held in your last rooming-house.”

When I had admitted that this was exactly the case and had thanked my friends for their courtesies, they withdrew, leaving me to my toilet.

After the good meal the bath was a genuine luxury. It was a decent bath-room, kept by the men, as all the house was kept, in a kind of dingy cleanliness. Cleanliness, I found, was not only a principle of the club; it was one of the first indications that those who came in for shelter gave of a survival of self-respect. Some of their efforts in that way were amusing or pathetic, as the case might be, but they were always human and touching.

While shaving I had an inspiration that was to have some effect on what happened to me afterward. I decided to let my mustache grow. As it grew strongly in any case, a four days’ absence of the razor had given my upper lip a deep walnut tinge, and, should I leave the club after the week to which I had tacitly pledged myself by coming there at all, I should look different from when I entered. To look different was the first of the obscure and violent longings of which my heart was full. It would be the nearest possible thing to getting away from my old self. Not to be the same man at all as the one who had exchanged those few strange sentences with Regina Barry seemed to be the goal toward which I was willing to struggle at any cost of sacrifice.

Having bathed and shaved, I was not an ill-looking fellow till it came to putting on my shirt again. Any man who has worn a shirt for forty-eight hours in a city or on a train knows what a horror it becomes in the exposed spots on the chest and about the wrists. I had had but one shirt for a week and more—and but the one soft collar. You can see already, then, that in spite of some success in smartening up my damp and threadbare suit I left the bath-room looking abject.

I was not, however, so abject as Lovey when I found him again in the front sitting-room down-stairs.

In the back sitting-room our table companions were all arranged in a row against the wall. In spite of the fact that there were plenty of chairs, they sat huddled together on one bench; and though there was tobacco, as there were books, papers, and magazines, they sought no occupation. When I say that they could have smoked and didn’t, the wrench that had been given to their normal state of mind will be apparent. Close up to one another they pressed, the Scotchman against the piano-mover, and the piano-mover against the wee bye Daisy, like lovebirds on the perch of a cage or newly captured animals too terrified even to snap.

Without comment on any one’s part, Lovey roamed the front sitting-room alone.

“I say, sonny,” he began, fretfully, as I entered, “this ain’t no place for you and me.”

I tried to buck him up.

“Oh, well, it’s only for a week. We can stand it for that long. They’re very civil to us.”

“But they’re watchin’ of us already like so many cats.”

“Oh no, they’re not. They’re only kind.”

“I don’t want none o’ that sort of kindness. What do ye think that two-foot-four of a Daisy says to me when ’e offered me the loan of ’is razor? ‘Lovey,’ says ’e, ‘I’m goin’ to ’elp ye to knock off the booze. It’ll be terr’ble hard work for an old man like you.’ ‘To ’ell with you!’ says I. ‘Ye ain’t goin’ to ’elp me to do no such thing, because knock it off is somethink I don’t mean.’ ‘Well, what did you come in ’ere for?’ says ’e. ‘I come in ’ere,’ I says to ’im, ‘because my buddy come in ’ere; and wherever ’e goes I’ll foller ’im.’”

“Then that’s understood, Lovey,” I said, cheerfully. “If I go at the end of the week, you go; and if I stay, you stay. We’ll be fellas together.”

He shook his head mournfully.

“If you go at the end of the week, sonny, I go, too; but if you stay—well, I don’t know. I’ve been in jails, but I ’ain’t never been in no such place as this—nobody with no spunk. Look at ’em in there now—nothink but a bunch of simps.”

“You won’t leave me, Lovey?”

The extinct-blue eyes were raised to mine.

“No, sonny; I won’t leave ye—not for ’ardly nothink.”

_CHAPTER IV_

I don’t know how we got the idea that before we went any farther we should be interviewed by Andy Christian, but I suppose somebody must have told us. We had heard of him, of course. He was, in fact, the master wizard whose incantations were wrecking our institutions. It was a surprise to us, therefore, to see, about nine o’clock, a brisk little elderly man blow in and blow past us—the metaphor is the most expressive I can use—with hardly more recognition than a nod.

“Hello, fellows!” he called out, as he passed through the hall and glanced in at Lovey and me in the sitting-room. “Hello, boys!” he said, casually, through the second door, to the other group, after which he went on his way to talk domestic matters with Mouse in the kitchen.

He seemed a mild-mannered man to have done all the diabolical work we had laid at his door. Neatly dressed in a summery black-and-white check, with a panama hat, he was like any other of the million business men who were on their way to New York offices that morning. It was only when he came back from the kitchen and was in conference with some of the men in the back parlor that I caught in him that look of dead and buried tragedy with which I was to grow so familiar in other members of the club. Superficially he was clean-shaven, round-featured, rubicund, and kindly, with a quirk about the lips and a smile in his twinkling gray eyes that seemed always about to tell you the newest joke. His manner toward Lovey and me, when he came into the front sitting-room, was that of having known us all our lives and of resuming a conversation that only a few minutes before had been broken off.

“Let me see! Your name is—?”

He looked at Lovey as though he knew his name perfectly well, only that for the second it had slipped his memory.

Lovey went forward to the roll-top desk at which Mr. Christian had seated himself, and whispered, confidentially, “My name is Lovey, Your Honor.”

The quirk about the lips seemed to execute a little caper.

“Is that your first name or your second?”

“It’s my only name.”

“You mean that you have another name, but you don’t want to tell it?”

“I mean that if I ’ave another name it ain’t nobody’s business but mine.”

The head of the club was now writing in a ledger, his eye following the movement of his pen.

“I see that you’re a man of decided opinions.”

“I am—begging Your Honor’s parding,” Lovey declared, with dignity.

“That’ll help you in the fight you’re going to put up.” Before Lovey could protest that he wasn’t going to put up no fight the gentle voice went on, “And you seem like a respectable man, too.”

“I’m as respectable as anybody else—at ’eart. I don’t use bad langwidge, nor keep bad company, nor chew, nor spit tobacco juice over nothink, and I keeps myself to myself.”

“All that’ll be a great help to you. What’s been your occupation?”

“’atter.”

As our host was less used to the silent “h” than I, it became necessary for me to say, “Hatter, sir.”

I suppose it was my voice. Christian looked up quickly, studying me with a long, kind, deep regard. Had I been walking two thousand years ago on the hills of Palestine and met Some One on the road, he might have looked at me like that.

The glance fell. Lovey’s interrogation continued.

“And would you like that kind of job again—if we could get it for you—ultimately?”

“I don’t want no job, Your Honor. I can look after myself. I didn’t come in ’ere of my own free will—nor to pass the buck—nor nothink.”

There was an inflection of surprise, perhaps of disapproval in the tone.

“You didn’t come in here of your own free will? I think it’s the first time that’s been said in the history of the club. May I ask how it happened?”

I couldn’t help thinking that I ought to intervene.

“He came in on my account, sir,” I said, getting up and going forward to the desk. “He’s trying to keep me straight.”

“That is, he’ll keep straight if you do?”

“That’s it, sir, exactly.”

He continued to write, speaking without looking up at us.

“Then I can’t think of anything more to your credit, Mr.—Mr. Lovey—is that it?”

“I don’t want no mister, Your Honor—not now I don’t.”

“When a man takes so fine a stand as you’re taking toward this young fellow he’s a mister to me. I respect him and treat him with respect. I see that we’re meant to understand each other and get on together.”

Poor Lovey had nothing to say. The prospect of temptation and fall being removed by his own heroism rendered him both proud and miserable at once.

When the writing was finished the kind eyes were again lifted toward me. Though the inspection was so mild, it pierced me through and through. It still seemed to cover me as he said: “You needn’t tell me your real name if you don’t want to—but in general we prefer it.”

“I’ll tell anything you ask me, sir. My name is Frank Melbury.” In order to conceal nothing, I added, “As a matter of fact, it’s Francis Worsley Melbury Melbury; but I use it in the shortened form I’ve given you.”

“Thanks. You’re English?”

“I’m a Canadian. My father is Sir Edward Melbury, of Montreal.”

“Married?”

“No, sir. Single.”

“And you have a profession?”

“Architect.”

“Have you worked at that profession here in New York?”

I gave him the names of the offices in which from time to time I had found employment.

“And would you like to work at it again?”

“I should, sir.”

“As a matter of fact, we have a number of architects, not exactly in the club, but friendly toward it, and on intimate terms with us. I’ll introduce you to some of them when—when you get on your feet. How old are you? Thirty?”

“Thirty-one.”

For some two minutes he went on writing.

“How long since you’ve been drinking?”

“My last drink was three days ago.”

“And how long since you’ve been actually drunk?”

“About a week.”

“And before that?”

“It was pretty nearly all the time.”

“It’s a great advantage to you to come to us sober. It means that you know what you’re doing and are to some extent counting the cost. Men will take any kind of vow when they’re”—his glance traveled involuntarily to the back room—“when they’re coming off a spree. The difficulty is to make them keep their promises when they’ve got over the worst of it. In your case—”

“I’ve got a motive, sir.”

“Then so much the better.”

I turned to Lovey.

“Lovey, would you mind stepping into the next room? There’s something I want to speak about privately.”

“If it’s to let me in for worse, sonny—”

“No, it won’t let you in for anything. It’s only got to do with me.”

“Then I don’t pry into no secrets,” he said, as he moved away reluctantly; “only, when fellas is buddies together—”

“I’ve a confession to make,” I continued, when Lovey was out of earshot. “Last night I—”

“Hold on! Is it necessary for you to tell me this or not?”

I had to reflect.

“It’s only necessary in that I want you to know the worst of me.”

“But I’m not sure that we need to know that. It often happens that a man does better in keeping his secrets in his own soul and shouldering the full weight of their responsibility. Isn’t it enough for us to know of you what we see?”

“I don’t know that I can judge of that.”

“Then tell me this: What you were going to say—is it anything for which you could be arrested?”

“It’s nothing for which I shall be arrested.”

“But it’s an offense against the law?”

I nodded.

“And what renders you immune?”

“The fact that—that the person most concerned has—has forgiven it.”

“Man or woman?”

“Woman.”

His eyes wandered along the cornice as he thought the matter out. I saw then that they were wonderfully clear gray eyes, not so much beautiful as perfect—perfect in their finish as to edge and eyelash, but perfect most of all because of their expression of benignity.

“I don’t believe I should give that away,” he said, at last; “not now, at any rate. If you want to tell me later—” He changed the subject abruptly by saying, “Is that the only shirt you’ve got?”

I told him I had two or three clean ones in my trunk, but that that was held by my last landlord.

“How much did you owe him?”

I produced a soiled and crumpled bill. He looked it over.

“We’ll send and pay the bill, and get your trunk.”

The generosity almost took my breath away.

“Oh, but—”

“We should be only advancing the money,” he explained; “and we should look to you to pay us back when you can. It’s quite a usual procedure with us, because it happens in perhaps six of our cases out of ten. I don’t have to point out to you,” he continued, with a smile, “what I’m always obliged to underscore with chaps like those in there, that if you don’t make good what we spend on your account the loss comes not on well-disposed charitable people who give of their abundance, but on poor men who steal from their own penury. The very breakfast you ate this morning was paid for in the main by fellows who are earning from twelve to twenty-five dollars a week, and have families to support besides.”

I hung my head, trying to stammer out a promise of making good.