“No,” he said, in his sanest moments, “I can’t do it. I’ll get something else and save up.”
This getting-something proposition complicated itself the moment he began to think of what it was he wanted to do. Manage a place? Where should he get such a position? The papers contained no requests for managers. Such positions, he knew well enough, were either secured by long years of service or were bought with a half or third interest. Into a place important enough to need such a manager he had not money enough to buy.
Nevertheless, he started out. His clothes were very good and his appearance still excellent, but it involved the trouble of deluding. People, looking at him, imagined instantly that a man of his age, stout and well dressed, must be well off. He appeared a comfortable owner of something, a man from whom the common run of mortals could well expect gratuities. Being now forty-three years of age, and comfortably built, walking was not easy. He had not been used to exercise for many years. His legs tired, his shoulders ached, and his feet pained him at the close of the day, even when he took street cars in almost every direction. The mere getting up and down, if long continued, produced this result.
The fact that people took him to be better off than he was, he well understood. It was so painfully clear to him that it retarded his search. Not that he wished to be less well-appearing, but that he was ashamed to belie his appearance by incongruous appeals. So he hesitated, wondering what to do.
He thought of the hotels, but instantly he remembered that he had had no experience as a clerk, and, what was more important, no acquaintances or friends in that line to whom he could go. He did know some hotel owners in several cities, including New York, but they knew of his dealings with Fitzgerald and Moy. He could not apply to them. He thought of other lines suggested by large buildings or businesses which he knew of — wholesale groceries, hardware, insurance concerns, and the like — but he had had no experience.
How to go about getting anything was a bitter thought. Would he have to go personally and ask; wait outside an office door, and, then, distinguished and affluent looking, announce that he was looking for something to do? He strained painfully at the thought. No, he could not do that.
He really strolled about, thinking, and then, the weather being cold, stepped into a hotel. He knew hotels well enough to know that any decent individual was welcome to a chair in the lobby. This was in the Broadway Central, which was then one of the most important hotels in the city. Taking a chair here was a painful thing to him. To think he should come to this! He had heard loungers about hotels called chairwarmers. He had called them that himself in his day. But here he was, despite the possibility of meeting some one who knew him, shielding himself from cold and the weariness of the streets in a hotel lobby.
“I can’t do this way,” he said to himself. “There’s no use of my starting out mornings without first thinking up some place to go. I’ll think of some places and then look them up.”
It occurred to him that the positions of bartenders were sometimes open, but he put this out of his mind. Bartender — he, the ex-manager!
It grew awfully dull sitting in the hotel lobby, and so at four he went home. He tried to put on a business air as he went in, but it was a feeble imitation. The rocking chair in the dining-room was comfortable. He sank into it gladly, with several papers he had bought, and began to read.
As she was going through the room to begin preparing dinner, Carrie said:
“The man was here for the rent today.”
“Oh, was he?” said Hurstwood.
The least wrinkle crept into his brow as he remembered that this was February 2d, the time the man always called. He fished down in his pocket for his purse, getting the first taste of paying out when nothing is coming in. He looked at the fat, green roll as a sick man looks at the one possible saving cure. Then he counted off twenty-eight dollars.
“Here you are,” he said to Carrie, when she came through again.
He buried himself in his papers and read. Oh, the rest of it — the relief from walking and thinking! What Lethean waters were these floods of telegraphed intelligence! He forgot his troubles, in part. Here was a young, handsome woman, if you might believe the newspaper drawing, suing a rich, fat, candy-making husband in Brooklyn for divorce. Here was another item detailing the wrecking of a vessel in ice and snow off Prince’s Bay on Staten Island. A long, bright column told of the doings in the theatrical world — the plays produced, the actors appearing, the managers making announcements. Fannie Davenport was just opening at the Fifth Avenue. Daly was producing “King Lear.” He read of the early departure for the season of a party composed of the Vanderbilts and their friends for Florida. An interesting shooting affray was on in the mountains of Kentucky. So he read, read, read, rocking in the warm room near the radiator and waiting for dinner to be served.
Chapter XXXV
The Passing of Effort — The Visage of Care
The next morning he looked over the papers and waded through a long list of advertisements, making a few notes. Then he turned to the male-help-wanted column, but with disagreeable feelings. The day was before him — a long day in which to discover something — and this was how he must begin to discover. He scanned the long column, which mostly concerned bakers, bushelmen, cooks, compositors, drivers, and the like, finding two things only which arrested his eye. One was a cashier wanted in a wholesale furniture house, and the other a salesman for a whiskey house. He had never thought of the latter. At once he decided to look that up.
The firm in question was Alsbery & Co., whiskey brokers.
He was admitted almost at once to the manager on his appearance.
“Good-morning, sir,” said the latter, thinking at first that he was encountering one of his out-of-town customers.
“Good-morning,” said Hurstwood. “You advertised, I believe, for a salesman?”
“Oh,” said the man, showing plainly the enlightenment which had come to him. “Yes. Yes, I did.”
“I thought I’d drop in,” said Hurstwood, with dignity. “I’ve had some experience in that line myself.”
“Oh, have you?” said the man. “What experience have you had?”
“Well, I’ve managed several liquor houses in my time. Recently I owned a third-interest in a saloon at Warren and Hudson streets.”
“I see,” said the man.
Hurstwood ceased, waiting for some suggestion.
“We did want a salesman,” said the man. “I don’t know as it’s anything you’d care to take hold of, though.”
“I see,” said Hurstwood. “Well, I’m in no position to choose, just at present. If it were open, I should be glad to get it.”
The man did not take kindly at all to his “No position to choose.” He wanted some one who wasn’t thinking of a choice or something better. Especially not an old man. He wanted some one young, active, and glad to work actively for a moderate sum. Hurstwood did not please him at all. He had more of an air than his employers.
“Well,”
