III.
The name on a passing ambulance directed my steps to Roosevelt Hospital at the close of business, a few nights later. I don’t think I wanted to nail that very poor lie of Sandy’s but I knew Waldron, the Superintendent, and thought I’d invite him to dinner and joke him a bit about his new whisky ward.
Waldron was in, but could not go to dinner. Worst time in the day for him to get off, he said.
“By the way,” he continued, “too bad you couldn’t give Sandy McWhiffle a job—he would have it you’d take him, so we let him go, with a dose of whisky to carry him through. But you lazy devils get down so late it didn’t last him, and he fainted in the street on the way back. Queer fellow, but I liked him—his sense of humour hasn’t disappeared as it has with most of his class.”
Perhaps my sense of humour had disappeared, but I saw no fun in my rehearsed jokes of a few minutes previous.
“Is he here now?” I asked.
“No, we discharged him yesterday.—Hope he’ll get a job, but there’s an awful lot of men looking for work.”
It was probably because I was out of temper with myself, but the city seemed hideously cruel to me as I walked down Broadway from the Hospital. The clang of the car gongs sounded like fierce commands—the electric lights snapped and glittered like cunning, wicked eyes—the hot air from the shops offended like venomous breath—the rattle of the carts and cabs sounded reckless—the crowds seemed to jostle and grapple. The gaily-lighted windows mocked me with their glitter, and the darkened ones had a menace in their black indifference. In every elbow touching me I seemed to feel some threat—in every eye looking at me I seemed to read some impatient question asked in brutal scorn. These masses of men rushing by me this way and that—they hated me—longed to trample me down and crush me into the dirt beneath their feet!—No, they didn’t.—And wouldn’t?—Unless they found me in their path, and then they’d wipe me from it with scarce a thought—yes, and rush on without a sign, without knowledge of my obliteration.—Well, it wasn’t worth struggling against—the odds were too great.—And anyway, what difference did it make?
I felt a touch on my shoulder, and almost screamed. It was St. Clair Mowbray. I don’t like him much, but any companion was a friend just then, so we walked along together, he chatting and I silent.
As we passed the Metropolitan Opera House a line of people stretched from the box-office out into the street.
“What fools,” said Mowbray, “they must want tickets damned badly to do that. Don’t they look like a chain gang?”
“More like the bread line at Fleischmann’s,” I answered gloomily.
“Yes—but better bred.”
Mowbray chuckled approvingly at his sally.
I parted with him at the next corner feeling his wit would not appeal to me that evening.