Chapter III: Part 3

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.

“You see those boys in there? There are five of them, and two will probably stick to us. That’s about the proportion we keep permanently of all who come in. I don’t know which two they will be—you never can tell. Perhaps it will be the piano-mover and the Scotchman; perhaps the man they call Headlights and the Irishman; perhaps the little chap and some other one of them. But whichever they are they’ll chip in for the sake of the new ones we shall reclaim, and take on themselves the burden of the work.”

The thought that for the comforts I had enjoyed that morning I was dependent on the sacrifice of men who had hardly enough for their own children made me redden with a shame I think he understood.

“Their generosity is wonderful,” he went on, quietly; “and I tell it to a man like you only because you can appreciate how wonderful it is. It’s the fact that so much heart’s blood goes into this work that makes it so living. These fellows love to give. They love to have you take the little they can offer. You never had a meal at your own father’s table that was laid before you more ungrudgingly than the one you ate this morning. The men who provide it are doing humble work all over the city, all over the country—because we’re scattered pretty far and wide. And every stroke of a hammer, and every stitch of a needle, and every tap on a typewriter, and every thrust of a shovel, and every dig of a pick, and every minute of the time by which they scrape together the pennies and the quarters and the dollars they send in to us is a prayer for you. I suppose you know what prayer really is?”

His glance was now that of inquiry.

“I’d like to have you tell me, sir,” I answered, humbly.

He smiled again.

“Well, it isn’t giving information to a wise and loving Father as to what He had better do for us. It’s in trying to carry out the law of His being in doing things for others. That isn’t all of it, by any means; but it’s a starting-point. Spender tells me that that nice fellow Pyncheon brought you in. Well, then, every glass of soda-water Pyncheon draws is in its way a prayer for you, because the boy’s heart is full of you. Prayer is action—only it’s kind action.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said, with an effort to control the tremor of my voice; “I think I understand you.”

“You yourself will be praying all through this week, in your very effort to buck up. You’ll be praying in helping that poor man Lovey to do the same. In his own purblind way—of course I understand his type and what you’re trying to do for him—he’ll be praying, too. Prayer is living—only, living in the right way.” He said, suddenly, “I suppose you rather dread the week.”

“Well, I do—rather—sir.”

“Then I’ll tell you what will make it easier—what will make it pass quickly and turn it into a splendid memory.” He nodded again toward the back room. “Chum up with these fellows. You wouldn’t, of course, be condescending to them—”

“It’s for them to be condescending to me.”

He surprised me by saying: “Perhaps it is. You know best. But here we try to get on a broad, simple, human footing in which we don’t make comparisons. But you get what I mean. The simplest, kindliest approach is the best approach. Just make it a point to be white with them, as I’m sure they’ve been white with you.”

I said I had never been more touched in my life than by the small kindnesses of the past two hours.

“That’s the idea. If you keep on the watch to show the same sort of thing it will not only make the time pass, but it will brace you up mentally and spiritually. You see, they’re only children. Fundamentally you’re only a child yourself. We’re all only children, Frank. Some one says that women grow up, but that men never do. Well, I don’t know about women, but I’ve had a good deal to do with men—and I’ve never found anything but boys. Now you can spoil boys by too much indulgence, but you can’t spoil them by too much love.”

He stopped abruptly, because he saw what was happening to me.

The next thing I knew was his arm across my shoulders, which were shaking as if I was in convulsions.

“That’s all right, old boy,” I heard him whisper in my ear. “Just go up to the bath-room and lock the door and have it out. It’ll do you good. The fellows in there won’t notice you, because lots of them go through the same thing themselves.” Still with his arm across my shoulders he steered me toward the hall. “There you are! You’ll be better when you come down. We’re just boys together, and there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Only, when you see other fellows come in through the week—we have two or three new ones every day—you’ll bear with them, won’t you? And help them to take a brace.”

He was still patting me tenderly on the back as with head bowed and shoulders heaving I began to stumble up-stairs.

_CHAPTER V_

My acquaintance with Ralph Coningsby was the hinge on which my destiny turned. A hinge is a small thing as compared with a door, and so was my friendship with Coningsby in proportion to the rest of my life; but it became its cardinal point.

I met him first at the meeting of the club at which the Scotchman and the piano-mover presented themselves for membership. As to the five outsiders whom Lovey and I had found on arriving, Christian’s prediction was verified. Three went out when their week was over and they had got sobered up. Two stayed behind to go on with the work of reform. At the end of another week each stood up with his next friend, as a bridegroom with his best man, and asked to be taken into fellowship.

That was at the great weekly gathering, which took place every Saturday night. Among the hundred and fifty-odd men who had assembled in the two down-stairs sitting-rooms it was not difficult to single out Coningsby, since he was the only man I could see in whom there was nothing blasted or scorched or tragic. There was another there of whom this was true, but I didn’t meet him till toward the end of the evening.

I had now been some ten days within the four walls of the club, not sobering up, as you know, but trying to find myself. The figure of speech is a good one, for the real Frank Melbury seemed to have been lost. This other self, this self I was anxious to get rid of, had left him in some bright and relatively innocent world, while it went roaming through a land of sand and thorns. I had distinctly the feeling of being in search of my genuine identity.

For this I sat through long hours of every day doing absolutely nothing—that is, it was absolutely nothing so far as the eye could see; but inwardly the spirit was busy. I came, too, to understand that that was the secret of the long, stupefied forenoons and afternoons on the part of my companions. They were stupefied only because sight couldn’t follow the activity of their occupation. Beyond the senses so easily staggered by strong drink there was a man endeavoring to come forth and claim his own. In far, subliminal, unexplored regions of the personality that man was forever at work. I could see him at work. He was at work when the flesh had reached the end of its short tether, and reeled back from its brief and helpless efforts to enjoy. He was at work when the sore and sodden body could do nothing but sit in lumbering idleness. He was at work when the glazed eye could hardly lift its stare from a spot on the floor.

That was why tobacco no longer afforded solace, nor reading distraction, nor an exchange of anecdotes mental relaxation. I don’t mean to say that we indulged in none of these pastimes, but we indulged in them slightly. On the one hand, they were pale in comparison with the raw excitement our appetites craved; and on the other, they offered nothing to the spirit which was, so to speak, aching and clamorous. Apart from the satisfaction we got from sure and regular food and sleep, our nearest approach to comfort was in a kind of silent, tactual clinging together. None of us wanted to be really alone. We could sit for hours without exchanging more than a casual word or two, when it frightened us to have no one else in the room. The sheer promiscuity of bed against bed enabled us to sleep without nightmares.

The task of chumming up had, therefore, been an easy one. So little was demanded. When a new-comer had been shown the ropes of the house there was not much more to do for him. One could only silently help him to find his lost identity as one was finding one’s own.

“That’s about all there is to it,” Andrew Christian observed when I had said something of the sort to him. “You can’t push a man into the kingdom of heaven; he’s got to climb up to it of his own accord. There’s no salvation except what one works out through one’s own sweat and blood.” He gave me one of his quick, semi-humorous glances. “I suppose you know what salvation is?”

I replied that I had heard a great deal about it all my life, but I was far from sure of what it entailed in either effort or accomplishment.

“Salvation is being normal. The intuitive old guys who coined language saw that plainly enough when they connected the idea with health. Fundamentally health is salvation and salvation is health—only perfect health, health not only of the body, but of the mind. Did it ever strike you that health and holiness and wholeness are all one word?”

I said it never had.

“Well, it’s worth thinking about. There’s a lot in it. You’ll get a lot out of it. The holy man is not the hermit on his knees in the desert, or the saint in colored glass, or anything that we make to correspond to them. He’s the fellow who’s whole—who’s sound in wind and limb and intelligence and sympathy and everything that makes power. When we say, ‘O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,’ we mean, O worship the Lord in the beauty of the all-round man, who’s developed in every direction, and whose degree of holiness is just in proportion to that development.”

“That’s a big thought, sir,” I said. “I don’t believe many people who speak the English language ever get hold of it. But how does it happen that one of the two words is spelt with a ‘w,’ while the other—”

He laughed, showing two rows of small, regular white teeth, as pretty as a girl’s.

“That was another lot of intuitive guys; and a very neat trick they played on us. They saw that once the Anglo-Saxon, with his fine, big sporting instinct, got hold of the idea that holiness meant spreading out and living out in all manly directions—and by that I don’t mean giving free rein to one’s appetites, of course—but they saw that once the idea became plain to us the triumph of lust would be lost. So they inserted that little bluffing, blinding ‘w,’ which doesn’t belong there at all, to put us off the scent; and off the scent we went. Church and state and human society have all combined to make holiness one of the most anemic, flat-chested words in the language, when it’s really a synonym of normality.”

We exchanged these thoughts in the narrow hall of the club, as he happened to be passing, and stopped for a few words. It was always his way. He never treated us to long and formal interviews. From a handclasp and a few chance sentences we got the secret of a personality which gave out its light and heat like radium, without effort and without exhaustion.

“What do yer think ’e says to me?” Lovey demanded of me one day. “‘Lovey,’ says ’e, ‘yer’ve got a terr’ble responsibility on ye with that young fella, Slim. If you go under ’e goes under, and if you keep straight ’e keeps straight.’ What do yer think of that?”

“I think you’re doing an awful lot for me, Lovey.”

He slapped his leg.

“Ye got that number right, old son. There’s nobody else in the world I’d ’a’ done it for. If you ’adn’t taken a fancy to me, like, that night, and arsked me to go ’ome with you—But, say, Slim,” he went on, confidentially, “wouldn’t you like to ’ave a drink?”

Wouldn’t I like to have a drink? There was thirst in the very rustle of Lovey’s throat. There was the same thirst in my own. It was more than a thirst of the appetite—it was a thirst of the being, of whatever had become myself. It was one of the moments at which the lost identity seemed farther away than ever, and the Frank Melbury of the last three years the man in possession.

I couldn’t, however, let Lovey see that.

“Oh, one gets used to going without drinks.”

“Do ye? I don’t. I’d take a drink of ’air-oil if anybody’d give me one. I’d take a drink of ink. Anything that comes out of a bottle’d be better’n nothink, after all this water from a jug.”

During the first few days at the club this was my usual state, not of mind, but of sensation. During the next few days I passed into a condition that I can best express as one of physical resignation. The craving for drink was not less insistent, but it was more easily denied. Since I couldn’t get it I could do without it, and not want to dash my head against a stone. But after the words with Andrew Christian I have just recorded I began to feel—oh, ever so slightly!—that Nature had a realm of freedom and vigor in which there was no need of extraordinary stimulants, and of which sunshine, air, and water might be taken as the symbols. With the resting of my overexcited nerves and the response of a body radically healthy to regular sleep and simple food, I began to feel, at least at intervals, that water, air, and sunshine were the natural elements to thrive on.

My first glance at Ralph Coningsby showed me a man who had thriven on them. He was the type to whom most of us take at sight—the clean, fresh, Anglo-Saxon type, blue-eyed and fair, whom you couldn’t do anything but trust.

“God! how I should like to look like that!” I said to myself the minute I saw him come in.

I knew by this time that at the big weekly meetings there were sometimes friendly visitors whose touch with the club was more or less accidental. I had no difficulty in putting this man down as one. He entered as if he were at any ordinary gathering of friends, with a nod here, a handshake there, and a few words with some one else. Then for a minute he stood, letting his eyes search the room till they rested on me, where I stood in a corner of the front sitting-room.

There was at once that livening of the glance that showed he had found what he was looking for. Making his way through the groups that were standing about, he came up and offered his hand.

“Your name’s Melbury, isn’t it? Mine’s Coningsby. I think you must be the same Melbury who went to the Beaux Arts in the fall of the year in which I left in the spring.”

“Oh, you’re that Coningsby? You used to know Bully Harris?”

“Rather! He and I lived together for a year in the Rue de Seine.”

“And he and I spent a year in the same house in the Rue Bonaparte.”

“And now he’s out in Red Wing, Minnesota, doing very well, I hear.”

“The last time I saw him was in London. We dined together at the Piccadilly and did a theater.”

“And Tommy Runt? Do you ever hear of him?”

“Not since he went back to Melbourne; but that chap he was always about with—Saunderson, wasn’t it?—he was killed in a motor accident near Glasgow.”

“So I heard. Some one told me—Pickman, I think it was—an Englishman—but you didn’t know Pickman, did you? He left the year I came, which must have been three or four years before your time. By the way, why don’t we sit down?”

In the process of sitting down I remembered my manners.

“Mr. Coningsby, won’t you let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Lovey?”

Lovey was seated, nursing a knee and looking as wretched as a dog to whom no one is paying the customary attention. He resented Coningsby’s appearance; he resented a kind of talk which put me beyond his reach.

When Coningsby, who seated himself between us, had shaken hands and made some kindly observation, Lovey replied, peevishly:

“I ain’t in ’ere for nothink but to save Slim.”

“That’s what the boys call me,” I laughed, in explanation.

Coningsby having duly commended this piece of self-sacrifice, we went on with the reminiscences with which we had begun. It was the most ordinary kind of breaking the ice between one man and another; but for me the wonder of it was precisely in that fact. You have to be down and out to know what it means when some one treats you as if you had never been anything but up and in. There was not a shade in Coningsby’s manner, nor an inflection in his tone, to hint at the fact that we hadn’t met at the New Netherlands or any other first-class club. It was nothing, you will say, but what any gentleman would be impelled to. Quite true! But again let me say it, you would have to be in my place to know what it means to be face to face with the man who is impelled to it.

We stopped talking, of course, when business began, Coningsby giving me any necessary explanations in an undertone, and pointing out the notables whom I didn’t already know by sight.

One of these was Colonel Straight, who with Andrew Christian had founded the club. I don’t believe that he had ever been a colonel, but he looked like one; neither can I swear that his real name was Straight, though it suited him. In our world the sobriquet often clings closer to us, and fits us more exactly, than anything given by inheritance or baptism. Here was a man with a figure as straight as an arrow and a glance as straight as a sunbeam. What else could his name have been? With one leg slightly shorter than the other, as if he had been wounded in battle, a magnificent white mustache, a magnificent fleece of white hair—he had all the air not only of an old soldier, but of an old soldier in high command.

“You wouldn’t think, to look at him,” Coningsby whispered, “that he’s only an old salesman for ready-made clothes.”

“No; he ought to be at the head of a regiment.”

“But the odd thing I notice about this club is that a man’s status and occupation in the world outside seem to fall away from him as soon as he passes the door. They become irrelevant. The only thing that counts is what he is as a man; and even that doesn’t count for everything.”

“What does count for everything?” I asked, in some curiosity.

“That he’s a man at all.”

“That’s it exactly,” I agreed, heartily. “I hadn’t put it to myself in that way; but I see that it’s what I’ve been conscious of.”

“As an instance of that you can take the friendship between Straight and Christian. From the point of view of the outside world they’re of types so diverse that you’d say that the difference precluded friendship of any kind. You know what Christian is; but the colonel is hardly what you’d call a man of education. Without being illiterate, he makes elementary grammatical mistakes, and unusual ideas floor him. But to say that he and Christian are like brothers hardly expresses it.”

I pondered on this as the meeting, with Christian in the chair, came to order and the routine of business began.

When it grew uninteresting to people with no share in the management of the club I got an opportunity to whisper, “You settled in New York?”

“I’m with Sterling Barry; the junior of the four partners.”

The reply seemed to strip from me the few rags of respectability with which I had been trying to cover myself up. Had he gone on to say, “And I saw you break into his house and steal his daughter’s trinkets,” I should scarcely have felt myself more pitilessly exposed.

It was perhaps a proof of what the club had done for me that I no longer regarded this crime with the same sang-froid as when I entered. Even on the morning of my first talk with Andrew Christian I could have confessed it more or less as I should have owned to a solecism in etiquette. During the intervening ten days, however, I had so far reverted to my former better self that the knowledge that I was the man who had crept into a house and begun to rob it filled me with dismay.

I had to pretend that I didn’t want to interrupt the conducting of business to conceal the fact that I was unable to reply.

“You’ve worked in New York, too?” he began again, when there was a chance of speaking.

I had by this time so far recovered myself as to be able to tell him the names of my various employers. I didn’t add that they had fired me one after another because of my drinking-spells, since I supposed he would take that for granted.

“Ever thought of Barry’s?”

“I brought a letter of introduction to him from McArdle, of Montreal; but I never presented it.”

“Pity.”

“Yes, perhaps it was. But you see I didn’t like McArdle’s work, though I studied under him. As I was afraid of getting into the same old rut, I went to Pritchard.”

“What do you think of Barry’s things now?”

“Oh, I like them—though they’re not so severe as I should go in for myself. The modern French is a little too florid, and he goes them one better.”

“Just my feeling. I should like you to see a bit of work I’ve been doing on my own; rather a big order—for me, that is—in which I’ve had to be as American as the deuce, and yet keep to the best lines.”

“Like to,” I managed to whisper back as we heard Christian announce that two new men were now to be admitted to the club.

I was interested in the ceremony, having by this time got on friendly terms with both the piano-mover and the Scotchman, and learned something of their history. With necessary divergences the general trend of these tales was the same. Both were married men, both had children, in both cases “the home was broken up”—the phrase had become classic in the club; though in the one instance the wife had taken the children to her own people, and in the other she was doing her best to support them herself.

Their names being called, there was a scraping of chairs, after which the two men lumbered forward, each accompanied by his next friend. The office of next friend, as I came to learn, was one of such responsibility as to put a strain on anything like next friendship. The Scotchman’s next friend was a barber, who, as part of his return for the club’s benefits to himself, had that afternoon cut the hair of all of us inmates—nineteen in number; while the piano-mover had as his sponsor the famous Beady Lamont. The latter pair moved forward like two elephants, their tread shaking the floor.

I shall not describe this initiation further than to say that everything about it was simple, direct, and impressive. The four men being lined in front of Mr. Christian’s desk, the spokesman for the authorities was old Colonel Straight.

“The difference between this club and every other club,” he said, in substance, “is that men goes to other clubs to amuse theirselves, and here they come to fight. This club is an army. Any one who joins it joins a corps. You two men who wants to come in with us ’ave got to remember that up to now you’ve been on your own and independent; and now you’ll be entering a company. Up to now, if you worked you worked for yourself; if you loafed you loafed for yourself; if you was lounge lizards you was lounge lizards on your own account and no one else’s; and if you got drunk no one but you—leaving out your wife and children; though why I leave them out God alone knows!—but if you got drunk no one but you had to suffer. Now it’s going to be all different. You can’t get drunk without hurting us, and we can’t get drunk without hurting you. T’other way round—every bit of fight we put up helps you, and every bit of fight you put up helps us.

“Now there’s lots of things I could say to you this evening; but the only one I want to jam right home is this: You and us look at this thing from different points of view. You come here hoping that we’re going to help you to keep straight. That’s all right. So we are; and we’ll all be on the job from this night forward. You won’t find us taking no vacation, and your next friends here’ll worry you like your own consciences. They’ll never leave you alone the minute you ain’t safe. You’ll hear ’em promise to hunt for you if you go astray, and go down into the ditch with you and pull you out. There’ll be no dive so deep that they won’t go after you, and no kicks and curses that you can give ’em that they won’t stand in order to haul you back. That’s all gospel true, as you’re going to find out if you go back on your promises. But that ain’t the way the rest of us—the hundred and fifty of us that you see here to-night—looks at it at all. What we see ain’t two men we’re tumbling over each other to help; we see two men that’s coming to help us. And, oh, men, you’d better believe that we need your help! You look round and you see this elegant house—and the beds—and the grub—and everything decent and reg’lar—and you think how swell we’ve got ourselves fixed. But I tell you, men, we’re fighting for our life—the whole hundred and fifty of us! And another hundred and fifty that ain’t here! And another hundred and fifty that’s scattered to the four winds of the earth; we’re fighting for our life; we’re fighting with our back against the wall. We ain’t out of danger because we’ve been a year or two years or five years in the club. We’re never out of danger. We need every ounce of support that any one can bring to us; and here you fellows come bringing it! You’re bringing it, Colin MacPherson, and you’re bringing it, Tapley Toms; and there ain’t a guy among us that isn’t glad and grateful. If you go back on your own better selves you go back on us first of all; and if either of you falls, you leave each one of us so much the weaker.”