THE MAN FROM YESTERDAY
"You'll not use my name," he said, "because my family would be exceedingly grieved over the notoriety the thing would bring them."
Fifty or sixty or seventy—it was hard to tell how old he was. He looked like a panhandler and talked like a scholar. Life had knocked him out and walked over him. There was no money in his pocket, no food in his stomach, no hope in his heart. He was asking for a job—some kind of writing job. His hands were trembling and his face twitched. Despair underlay his words, but he kept it under. Hunger made his body jerked and his eyes shine with an unmannerly eagerness. But his words remained suave. He removed a pair of cracked nose-glasses and held them between his thumb and forefinger and gestured politely with them. Hungry, dirty, hopeless, his linen gone, his shoes torn, something inside his beaten frame remained still intact. There was no future. But he had a past to live up to.
He was asking for a job. What kind of job he didn't know. But he could write. He had been around the world. He was a cosmopolite and a rhymester and a press agent and a journalist. He pulled himself together and his eyes struggled hard to forget the hunger of his stomach.
"In the old days," he said, enunciating in the oracular manner of a day gone by—"ah, I was talking with Jack London about it before he died. Dear Jack! A great soul. A marvelous spirit. We were in the south seas together. Yes, the old days were different. Erudition counted for something. I was Buffalo Bill's first press agent. Also I worked for dear P. T. Barnum. I was his publicity man.
"Doesn't the world seem to have changed, to you?" he asked. "I was talking to George Ade about this very thing. Strange, isn't it? George and I are old friends. Who? Dickie Davis of the Sun? Certainly—a charming fellow. Stephen Crane? Genius, my friend, genius was his. That was the day when O. Henry was in New York. There was quite a crowd of us. We used to foregather in some comfortable grog shop and discuss. Ah, life and letters were talked about a great deal in those days."
* * * * *
His voice had the sound of a man casually relating incidents of his past. But his eyes continued to shine eagerly. And between sentences there were curious pauses. The pauses asked something.
"A most curious thing occurred the other evening," he smiled. "I had to pay for my oysters by writing a rhyme for the waiter." An anecdote by a dilettante, a gracefully turned plea worthy of M'sieur Bruinrmell. "You know, it grows more and more difficult to obtain employment. My wardrobe is practically gone." He glanced with apparent amusement at his weary-willie makeup. His hand moved tremblingly to his neck. "My collar is soiled," he murmured, apologizing with eyes that managed to smile, "and the other evening I lost my stick."
Then the hunger and the hopelessness of the man broke through the shell of his manner. He needed a job, a job, a job! Something to do to get him food and shelter. His fingers tried to place the cracked nose-glasses back in position.
"I would—pardon me for mentioning this—I would much rather sit with a man like you and discuss the phases of life and literature of interest to both of us. But I would write almost anything. I have written a great deal. And I have managed money. There was a time—" A look of pain came into his eyes. This was being vulgar and not in line with the tradition that his enunciation boasted.
"I have known a great many people. I don't desire to bore you with talk of celebrities and all that. But I assure you, I have been somebody. Oh, nothing important or perhaps very worth while. I dislike this sort of thing, you know." Another smile twisted his lips. "But, when one is down to the last—er—to the last farthing, so to speak, one swallows a bit of his pride. That's more than an aphorism with me. To go on, I have handled great sums of money. I have traveled all over the world, I have eaten and spoken with men of genius all my life. My youth was a very interesting one and—and perhaps we could go somewhere for dinner and—and I could tell you things of writing men of the past that—that might appeal to you. Marvelous fellows. There was O. Henry and London and Davis and Phillips and Stevie Crane. I dislike imposing myself on you this way, but—if I didn't think you would be interested in a discussion with a man who—who admires the beautiful things of life and who has lived a rather varied existence I would not—"
* * * * *
The cracked nose-glasses were back in place and he had stopped short. Despair and hunger now were talking out of his eyes. They had come too close to his words. They must never come into his words. That would be the one defeat that would drive too deeply into him. Of the past, of the easygoing, charmingly garrulous past, all that was left to this nomad of letters was its manner. He could still sit in his rags as if he were lounging in the salon of an ocean liner, still gesture with his nose-glasses as if he were fixing the attention of a Richard Harding Davis across a bottle of Chateau Yquem.
So he remained silent. Let his eyes and the twitching of his face betray him. His words never would. His words would always be the well-groomed, carefully modulated, nicely considerate words of a gentleman. He resumed:
"So you have nothing. Ah, that's rather—rather disturbing. Just a moment—please. I don't mean to impose on you. Won't you sit down—so I will feel more at ease? Thank you, sir. Perhaps there is something in the way of a—of another kind of job. Anything about a theater, a newspaper office, a magazine, a circus, an hotel. I know them all. And if you could only keep an eye open for me. Thank you, sir. I am glad to see that men of letters are still considerate of their fellow craftsmen. Ah, you would have liked Jack London. Did you know him? You know, we live in an age of jazz. Yes, sir, the tempo is fast. Life has lost its andante. Materialism has triumphed. There is no longer room for the spirit to expand. Machines are in the way. Noises invade the sanctity of meditative hours."
* * * * *
It was cold outside the cigar store. The man from yesterday stepped into the street. He stood smiling for a moment and for the moment in the courteous friendliness of his rheumy eyes, in the mannerly tilt of his head there was the picture of a sophisticated gentleman of the world nodding an adieu outside his favorite chophouse. Then he turned. The mannerly tilt vanished. There was to be seen a man—fifty, sixty or seventy, it was hard to tell how old—shuffling tiredly down the street, his body huddled together and his shoulders shivering.